Dark Star

10

“DOOLITTLE, HELP ME!”

“Calm down,” Doolittle shouted into his mike, “I’ve got you in sight.” The spinning astronomer had at last come into view.

He ordered another burst from the jet pack. He wasn’t getting close as fast as he would have liked, but he would reach Talby in plenty of time to get them back to the ship. Naturally he would. Talby just had a long head start on him, that was all.

“Relax, Talby… I’m coming.”

Pinback looked at Boiler. “What should I do? How do we get it down?”

“You’re the talker—do something; tell it something… anything!”

Pinback clicked his fingers, spoke hesitantly. “Uh, snap out of it, bomb.”

“In the Beginning,” the bomb intoned, “there was Darkness, and the Darkness was without form and void.”

Boiler slowly removed his headset, staring at the zeros. He didn’t speak.

“Ah, hello, bomb?” whispered Pinback.

“What the devil is it talking about?” Boiler muttered.

Pinback shook his head uncertainly. “I don’t know, man… I don’t know.”

“And in addition to the Darkness,” the bomb went on inexorably, “there was also Me. And I moved upon the face of the Darkness. I saw that I was alone, and this was not good. And I determined to change this.”

Pinback removed his headset, as had Boiler, and raised his eyes to the zeros as his mind raced ahead, ahead to the inevitable.

“Oh my God,” he whined. And the bomb said:

“Let There Be Light!”

Fortunately, Doolittle had his back to the sudden, incredibly intense flare of light that erupted behind him. It still was brilliant enough to blind him.

The shock wave from the explosion, spitting displaced air and molecules in all directions, sent him tumbling and twirling crazily, turned the universe into a kaleidoscope of screaming colors and dizzying forms. He howled into the helmet.

The echo of his shriek came back to him. No, no… not an echo. It was Talby, somewhere, screaming also. Then the scream faded out and only strange, grumbling noises sounded over his suit speaker.

He was still tumbling, but his sight was coming back. He blinked the chromatic dots from his eyes and managed to get control of himself again. A couple of touches on the jet pack controls and he straightened himself out, faced the universe on an even keel.

“Doolittle,” came an unsteady flutter in his helmet, “Doolittle… where are you?” It was Talby. It had to be Talby. He found himself still tumbling slightly but didn’t try to correct it yet.

“Here I am,” he replied, part of him still not functioning, unaware of the incongruity of his words, “and I’m spinning.”

Irregular shapes began to come into view, likewise tumbling about the universe. Bits and pieces of plastic and metal and ceramic. Bits and pieces of their ship, the Dark Star. Maybe bits and pieces of his friends Boiler and Pinback, too—but he didn’t care to think about that.

It was unlikely, though. Of all the components comprising the Dark Star, surely the weakest was human flesh.

Better to concentrate on finding Talby. He turned and twisted within the suit, but he couldn’t spot the colorful form of the astronomer. He wasn’t in the section of sky where he’d been before.

Of course, Doolittle reminded himself, he was no longer in the section of sky he’d been in before. The destruction of the Dark Star had rearranged this little corner of the galaxy.

“I can’t see you anymore, Talby. Can you locate yourself? Can you see me?”

“No,” came a voice so near it startled him. “I’m moving away from the planet, I think. You?”

“I think I’m drifting toward it,” Doolittle told him after a quick study of his motion relative to the crimson globe below.

“What happened, Doolittle?” Now a faint crackle began to creep into Talby’s words. They must be moving apart very fast.

He was surprised at how calmly he replied, how easily the words came. “The bomb must have gone off inside the ship after all.”

“What? You say the ship blew up?”

But Doolittle didn’t repeat himself. He looked down and to his right. The ship should have been there. It wasn’t. It wasn’t anyplace, anymore.

“Funny,” he mused, talking out loud. “I thought I had the damned thing convinced, I wonder what went wrong.”

“Doolittle!”

He blinked. “Yes, Talby, the ship blew up. The last bomb detonated inside.”

“Boiler and Pinback?”

“They were aboard when it went, Talby. They’re dead. They’re dead and the ship is dead.”

There was a considerable pause before the astronomer replied quietly, “Then… we’re dead, too.”

“Yes.” He had a thought. “Maybe we can keep each other company. Keep talking, at least.” He tried the controls on his jetpack. Nothing happened.

“Hey, my jet pack’s busted. Oh, man… when your luck runs out…”

Another large piece of debris came tumbling slowly toward him, spinning only slightly. Assuming it was just another bit of torn hull, he barely spared it an idle glance. Then he stared as it came closer and he recognized it.

It was moving past him and slightly above, out toward deep space. An oblong shape with a naked man frozen in the center of it. Frozen in chemical ice which the cold of deep space would keep from thawing.

“Hey, it looks like the skipper,” he blurted.

“What’s that?” came Talby’s query.

“The skipper. He made it out of the ship in one piece. Commander Powell made it.”

The block went sailing by and Doolittle thought he heard—it was imagination, of course—an incredibly faint, puzzled whisper as it shrank into the engulfing blackness.

“Men… men… what happened, men?”

Imagination. Unless the near-dead commander had developed unsuspected abilities in his state of chill suspension. He followed the nearly transparent block until it vanished completely into the starfield.

What might some exploring alien intelligence make of the skipper? For he would stay frozen, whole, until plunging into a sun or coming within the gravity field of a planet.

“Yeah, the skipper always was lucky.”

Now that didn’t make too much sense… but then, he wasn’t feeling terribly rational right now. He pondered his options.

He could wait until his air supply went out. It would go quickly, in a puff, and he would choke, drowning in vacuum. Or if he adjusted it a little, measuring out the last drams precisely, he could slip into a gentle, painless sleep from which he’d never wake.

The first course was decidedly unappealing, but surprisingly, the easier way didn’t attract him much, either. There was something lacking—a certain nobility of passing which Doolittle suddenly felt he, as a member of the Dark Star complement, deserved.

Don’t rush into something, Doolittle, a little voice told him. After all, when the only thing left to do in life is decide how to die, it’s worth some serious consideration, it’s worth doing right.

But the only other choice he could think of was to crack the seal on his suit and let in the airless ultracold of space. That would be quicker than letting his air supply run out, but probably nearly as painful.

But if he could get his helmet off, he might have a few seconds of consciousness. A few seconds exposed to the elemental space no men experience. It would be a final accomplishment—and thrill.

He’d been a part of it for twenty years now, and it would be nice to go out as a part of it, too, with all the barriers finally gone between them once and for all.

But… there was the pain.

As a youngster Doolittle had nearly choked to death on a turkey bone. The memory of that excruciating experience had stayed with him all his life. The thought of choking again and not being able to do anything about it was an impossible emotion to overcome. No, removing his helmet was out. He would probably go out the quiet way, setting his airflow to the minimum and letting himself fall peacefully asleep.

But wait a minute. What about Talby? What was Talby going to do? They really ought to discuss it. They could at least die as a team.

He glanced behind him again. Yes, the explosion had definitely thrown him into a downward curve and he was coming up fast on the world below.

The reddish cast was more pronounced now, like a superintense Mars. He found himself wishing for a little brown and blue and was surprised at the tears forming in his eyes. He’d thought he had those emotions under control. Of all the times for an attack of homesickness…

This was ridiculous. When he let the air out, the cold would creep in and freeze the tears on his cheeks. That wasn’t the way to go out. There was a vital little device in the helmet that enabled a man to scratch his face. He used it to wipe away the tears.

“I’m going right toward the major continent,” he said, as though there’d been no break in their conversation. It took his mind off more maudlin thoughts—for a few minutes, at least. “If I remember the preliminary survey reports right, it’s got a pretty substantial atmosphere. Not breathable, but good and thick.”

“When you hit it,” Talby commented, “you should start to burn.” And he added, more reverently, “What a beautiful way to die… like a falling star.”

Now Doolittle hadn’t even thought of that! He perked up some—as much as it was possible for a man who was about to die.

“Yeah, that would be nice.” His body would be reduced to its basic components, neat and clean. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. There’d be no skeleton circling sordidly through space for a sardonic cosmos to jibe at.

And then it came to him. He wasn’t even thinking about it, just letting his thoughts drift, and there it was, blazoned in bold letters across his brain.

“Hey, Talby! Talby!”

“What is it, Doolittle, what’s the matter?”

Doolittle’s face broke into a wide, Rabelaisian grin. “Guess what, Talby… I remember my name! I remember my first name!”

“Gee, that’s great, Doolittle. I sure wish I could remember mine. It seems I’ve always been just ‘Talby’. You’re… you’re lucky, Doolittle.”

And that was it—he was lucky. He was going to die lucky.

“Hey, Doolittle.”

“Yeah, Talby?”

“What is it? What’s your first name?”

“Edward. Edward Vincent. Edward Vincent Doolittle.” He sighed and felt completely happy. “Ain’t that grand?”

“It’s a beautiful name, Doolittle… Ed.”

They were quiet then for a long time—several hours, in fact. Doolittle found himself drifting off to sleep. The sound of long, distant waves was in his ears, the cry of curious seagulls overhead, wondering at him sleeping on warm sand under his belly, when Talby’s voice came over the suit speaker and roused him again.

“Doolittle… I’m moving out fast, Doolittle and… there’s something else here with me. It’s behind me, still in the distance, but coming up fast. Something that glows.” Another pause and then, later, this: “It’s a lot of things all grouped together, Doolittle. I can’t describe it… a glow, radiation, internal light… but how they shine, Doolittle! I think it just might be the Phoenix, Doolittle!”

Doolittle roused himself sleepily and mumbled, “Phoenix?” He tried to turn himself, but no matter how he twisted his head, he couldn’t seem to locate the brilliant apparition Talby was describing.

That was strange. He felt he’d covered every section of the sky. But there was no gleaming mass of “things” from outside. According to Talby’s description, they should have dominated the heavens—if they were really there, that is.

Only it didn’t seem to matter, now. Nothing seemed to matter. Edward Vincent Doolittle… how melodic. Melodic—no, symphonic! He heard it on his organ, played variations on it, piled fugue on fugue, made adagios of Edwards and scherzos of Vincents and great roaring Doolittle fortissimos!

What’s in a name? Everything. What is a man but a measure of syllables?

If Talby saw his Phoenix, well, then he was glad for Talby. Yet it bothered him that he couldn’t see it too. It had always bothered him that Talby seemed able to see so many things no one else could.

But he liked the astronomer in spite of that. Talby’s excited voice cut in on his thoughts.

“It is… it’s got to be, Doolittle! The Phoenix!”

“That’s fine,” Doolittle agreed encouragingly. He wanted Talby to see his Phoenix. And who was he to say it wasn’t there, brought along specially for Talby by his good buddies the stars?

Talby saw them, all right. Drank them. They were so bright the intensity should have hurt his eyes, but somehow it didn’t. There appeared to be a pattern, a regularity of form to the asteroidal collage.

But that was quite impossible. Weren’t they purely a natural phenomenon? Weren’t they?

And yet it seemed, as he drifted closer, that the pattern took on a definite outline, forming clearly established planes and connections here, sides and walls there, all bound glittering together in an astronomical baroque conclave of gravity and light and color and—something else.

He tried to concentrate on the nearest element of the Phoenix, but here the light was strong enough to defeat him. Yet he was sure he’d gotten a glimpse, and that the object at the center of that incredibly intense luminary was something other than mere rock.

What else it might be he couldn’t put a name to. Or was it simply that in the last stages of life he saw what he wanted to see instead of what was really there? A peculiar tingling ran along his nerves, and there was a pulsing in his temple. He felt like a man teetering on the abyss of a great revelation.

“I’m… going into them,” he whispered into his headset. “I’m going to hit them, Doolittle.”

He ought to be sensible and close his eyes, he knew. The radiation that must surely be pouring from the ever-nearing Phoenix would undoubtedly burn out his retinas forever, despite the heavy shielding of his helmet faceplate.

But what mattered that? He would be dead inside an hour anyway. And there was no pain, no pain at all. Only that feeling of expectancy.

There was one last thing he had to do.

“Doolittle?”

“Yes, Talby,” came Doolittle’s ever-fading voice, distorted by static.

“Before we get too far apart and our signals go, I wanted to tell you… you were my favorite. Of all the guys on the ship you were my favorite. I really like you, Doolittle.”

Doolittle considered this. His own attention was focused on the rapidly growing world below.

“I really liked you too, Talby.”

Something floated past his face-plate. He blinked, forced his nearly quiescent mind back to a semblance of sentience.

“Hey, there’s more debris from the ship coming past, Talby.” Several large chunks of corridor wall ambled leisurely past him. “They’re coming right past me.”

“I’m going into them,” came Talby’s receding tones.

And then the astronomer looked down and saw something that amazed him, twice amazed that he could still see. The red world appeared to be receding far more rapidly than before.

“Hey, Doolittle. They’re taking me with them, Doolittle. I’m going with them. I’m gonna circle the universe. Hey, how about that?”

Then he looked down at his arm. Tiny motes of light like curious insects were dancing around the sleeve, and the bright suit material was glowing brighter, brighter, until it pained him to look at his own arm.

He looked further, down at his right leg, saw that it too was starting to shine like the miniature firmament of an incandescent lamp. And something—something was happening to his body. Something painless and passing strange—a space change, rare and beautiful.

“I’m with them now, Doolittle,” he called. “I’ll be back again this way some day.” And then the change was complete, and he fell into that abyss of revelation and—knew.

“Doolittle, it’s wonderful… Before it’s too late, I want to tell you. I know what the Phoenix is now, Doolittle, and I want to tell you… it’s…”

Edward Vincent Doolittle watched fragments of the Dark Star parade past him, tumbling slowly.

What was it Talby had said there at the last, before his suit radio had faded forever? He didn’t remember.

But it had been good, he knew that. Poor Talby, poor grand, gone, lucky Talby. Out of the ashes of the Dark Star at least one of them had been reborn.

And he—he had his name again. He eyed the debris and his gaze focused on one particular, unspecial piece. And perhaps—something more.

A slow smile started to spread across his face. A quick glance at the panel of miniature instruments inside his faceplate showed pressure outside—slight, but rising rapidly. He was in the outer edges of the atmosphere and falling fast.

It would be over very soon, but he still ought to have time.

“Talby,” he called, unaware that the astronomer was completely out of range. Even if he’d been within range, the present Talby couldn’t have heard him anyhow. But he called nonetheless. “Hey, Talby!”

The ladder would pass very close—the metal ladder that had once led from one level of the Dark Star to another. It would pass too far… no. He reached out and got a hand on it, pulled it close.

A long section of ship’s ladder, straight and unbroken. It held steady as the two of them plunged planetward together.

“I’ve caught a hunk of junk, Talby, and… I think I’ve figured out a way!”

He’d been sitting in the water for hours now. Hours. It was evening and overcast and the wind was starting to get really bad. But the tourists had long since gone and even most of the regulars had taken their boards in, strapped them atop their cars and called it a day.

But at the last minute before sunset the red ball of the sun had slipped under the clouds and now exploded over the mountainous horizon in a last warming burst of affection.

He knew it was out there. You had to be patient, that was all, and meet the vast open spaces on their own terms. Even so, they might play you false all day, all month, all year, forever… but eventually, if you were patient and played straight with them and bided your time, they’d come through.

And then he saw it—sensed it, rather—a ripple on the horizon coming toward him fast and strong, and he saw that he’d been right to stay with it, right to wait while all the others gave up and left.

Been right to go out far, farther than any of them, farther than all the waves broke, and then it was humping up like the back of a gray whale, sliding up out of the ocean toward him, stretching from point to land’s end. It was a little wider at the crest now as it heaved up behind him, but it wasn’t going to break early—it was going to be a good wave, a great wave.

A perfect wave.

He got to his knees on the board and bent forward and then, just at the right moment, he clawed furiously at the water. He was in such good position that he only had to paddle once. Then he felt himself being lifted up, up, in the palm of a green-gray-black God.

Up… and then he was on his feet, knees bent, arms outstretched for balance, sliding down the crest, hearing the thunder-wall behind him, hearing the shriek of air as the curl—big as a subway tunnel, it was!—overtook him and he settled in under the roiling foam.

He braced himself hard against it so the wind howling out of that cavern wouldn’t blow him off the board, stayed upright despite the fact that it tore and screamed at him, a friction generating a heat he could almost feel through his wetsuit. A charring, raging, surging heat as he bent his knees and slid into the atmosphere.

Beginning to glow… seeing the ladder beginning to glow beneath his feet and his suit glowing too, in spite of the water turning a cherry red, and the air wave was upon him, suffocating him, tearing at him. But it didn’t tear him down, even though he saw he wasn’t going to make it—wasn’t going to get out of the curl.

And even, finally, when his face plate cracked from the heat, his smile didn’t because the wave was lifting him up, up toward the blue sky, toward the planet, up and over and down and under into the star-flecked, foam-speckled blackness.

Wipeout…