Noon: 22nd Century

1. Night on Mars

Suddenly the red-brown sand under the crawler treads gave way. Pyotr Alekseevich Novago threw her into reverse. “Jump!” he shouted to Mandel. The crawler shuddered, throwing up clouds of sand and dust, and started to turn stern up. Novago switched off the engine and scrambled out of the crawler. He landed on all fours, and, without standing up, scurried off to one side. The sand slid and sank underneath him, but Novago managed to reach firm ground. He sat down, tucking his legs under him.

He saw Mandel, who was kneeling at the opposite edge of the crater, and the stern of the crawler, shrouded in steam and sticking up out of the sand on the bottom of the newly formed crater. Theoretically it was impossible for something like this to happen to a Lizard model. Here on Mars, at least. A Lizard was a light, fast machine—a five-seat open platform mounted on four autonomous caterpillar-tracked chassis. But here it was, slowly slipping

into a black pit, at the bottom of which sparkled the treasure of deep-buried water. Steam was gushing up from the water.

“A cavity,” Novago said hoarsely. “This wasn’t our day, it seems.”

Mandel, his face covered up to the eyes by his oxygen mask, turned to Novago. “No, it sure wasn’t,” he agreed.

There was absolutely no wind. Puffs of steam from the crater rose vertically into the violet-black sky sprinkled with bright stars. The sun hung low in the west-a small bright disk over the dunes. Black shadows stretched from the dunes to a reddish valley. It was completely still—the only sound was the rustling of the sand flowing into the crater.

“Well, all right,” Mandel said as he got up. “What’ll we do? We can’t drag it out.” He nodded in the direction of the cavity. “Or can we?”

Novago shook his head. “No, Lazar, we can’t pull it out.”

There was a long, slurping sound, the stern of the crawler disappeared, and on the black surface of the water a few bubbles swelled up and burst.

“You’re probably right—we can’t pull it out,” said Mandel. “So we’ll have to walk, Pyotr. But it’s no big deal—thirty kilometers. We should get there in five hours or so.”

Novago looked at the black water. A delicate pattern of ice was already forming on it.

Mandel glanced at his watch. “It’s eighteen-twenty now. We should be there by midnight.”

“Midnight,” Novago said dubiously. “Right at midnight.”

There are thirty kilometers left, he thought. Of which we’ll have to cover twenty in the dark. Of course we do have infrared glasses, but it’s still a bum deal. Something like this would have to happen… In the crawler we would’ve arrived before dark. Maybe we should go back to the base and get another crawler? But the base is forty kilometers away, and all the crawlers are out, and we’d get to the settlement tomorrow morning, which would be too late. Damn, what a mess this has turned out to be!

“Never mind, Pyotr,” Mandel said, and slapped himself on the thigh, where under his coat a pistol hung in its holster. “Let’s get a move on.”

“Where are the instruments?” Novago asked.

Mandel looked about. “I threw them off,” he said, “Aha! Here they are.” He took a few steps and picked up a small valise. “Here they are,” he repeated, brushing sand off the valise with the fur sleeve of his coat. “Shall we go?”

“Let’s go,” said Novago.

They crossed the valley, scrambled up a dune, and started down again. The going was easy. Even the one-hundred-and-eighty-pound Novago, together with oxygen tanks, heating system, fur clothing, and lead-soled boots, weighed less than ninety pounds here. Small, lean Mandel walked as if he were out for a stroll, casually swinging the valise. The sand was firm, caked together. Walking on it left almost no footprints.

“I’m really going to get it from Ivanenko about the crawler,” Novago said after a long silence.

“What are you talking about?” objected Mandel. “How could you have known that there was a cavity there? And anyhow, we discovered water.”

“The fact is the water discovered us,” Novago said. “And I’ll catch it for the crawler all the same. You know old Ivanenko—’Thank you for the water, but I’ll never trust you with a crawler again.’”

Mandel laughed. “Never mind, it’ll blow over. It won’t even be all that hard to tow out the crawler—look, what a beauty!”

On the crest of a nearby dune, with its fearsome triangular head turned toward them, sat a mimicrodon—a seven-foot lizard, brick red in imitation of the color of the sand. Mandel threw a pebble at it, but missed. The lizard crouched there with its legs spread, unmoving, like a piece of stone.

“Proud, beautiful, and imperturbable,” said Mandel.

“Irina says that there are a lot of them around the settlements,” said Novago. “She feeds them.”

By unspoken agreement they increased their pace.

The dunes came to an end. Now they were walking over a level salt flat. Their lead soles slapped resoundingly against the congealed sand. Great patches of salt glittered in the rays of the white setting sun. Around the patches, spheres of cactus bristling with long needles showed yellow. There were a lot of these strange, rootless, leafless, stemless plants on the flat.

“Poor Slavin,” said Mandel. “He’s worrying, no doubt.”

“Me too,” Novago muttered.

“Well, you and I are doctors,” Mandel said.

“So we’re doctors. You’re a surgeon and I’m an internist. I’ve performed a delivery exactly once in my life, and that was ten years ago in the best clinic in Archangel, with a full professor standing behind my back.”

“Never mind,” said Mandel. “I’ve done several deliveries. Everything will be O.K.”

A prickly sphere appeared at Mandel’s feet. Mandel kicked it skillfully. The ball described a long, gentle arc in the air, then started rolling, bouncing up and down and breaking off needles.

“It’s a kick, and the ball slowly rolls off,” Mandel said. “It’s something else that’s bothering me: how will the child develop under conditions of reduced gravity?”

“That’s the one thing not bothering me,” Novago said firmly. “I’ve already spoken with Ivanenko. We can set up a centrifuge.”

Mandel thought a moment. “It’s an idea,” he said.

As they were skirting the last salt patch, there was a shrill whistle, and a sphere ten paces from Novago rushed high into the sky and, trailing a whitish tail of moist air behind it, flew over the doctors and fell into the center of the salt patch.

“Damn!” shouted Novago.

Mandel laughed.

“What an abomination!” Novago complained. “Every time I go by a salt patch, one of these damn—”

He ran up to the nearest sphere and kicked it clumsily. The sphere clung with its needles to the bottom of his coat.

“Damn!” Novago snapped again. With great difficulty, as he walked, he tore the sphere first off the coat, then off his gloves.

The sphere fell onto the sand. It was supremely indifferent. So it would lie, entirely motionless, sucking in and compressing the rarified Martian air, until suddenly it let it all out at once with a deafening whistle, and shot like a rocket for thirty or forty feet.

Mandel suddenly stopped, looked at the sun, and brought his watch up before his eyes. “Nineteen thirty-five hours,” he muttered. “Half an hour and the sun will set.”

“What did you say, Lazar?” Novago asked. He stopped too and looked at Mandel.

“The bleating of the kid lures the tiger,” Mandel said. “Don’t talk so loudly when it’s almost sunset.”

Novago looked around. The sun was already very low. Behind, in the valley, the shining salt patches had already winked out. The dunes were dark. The sky in the east had grown as black as India ink.

“Right,” said Novago, looking back. “No sense in talking loud. They say it has very good hearing.”

Mandel blinked his frost-covered eyelashes, bent down, and drew his warm pistol from its holster. He drew the bolt back with a click and shoved the pistol into the top of his right boot. Novago got out his pistol too, and inserted it into the top of his left boot.

“You shoot left-handed?” Mandel asked.

“Yes,” Novago answered.

“Good,” said Mandel.

“They say it helps.”

They looked at each other, but by now it was impossible to make out anything above the masks and below the fur trim of the hoods.

“Let’s go,” said Mandel.

“Let’s go, Lazar. Only now we should walk single file.”

“Okay,” Mandel agreed cheerfully. “Dibs on going first.”

And they went on: Mandel first with the valise in his left hand, and Novago five paces behind him. It’s getting dark really fast, Novago thought. Twenty kilometers left. Well, maybe a little less. Twenty kilometers through the desert in total darkness… and any second it could jump us. From behind that dune, for instance. Or from that one, farther on. Novago shivered. We should have left this morning. But how could we know that there was a cavity on the route? Amazingly bad luck. But still, we should have left this morning. Or even yesterday, with the rover taking the diapers and equipment to the settlement. Or no, Mandel did an operation yesterday… It’s getting darker and darker. No doubt Mark is already fretting. Running to the tower again and again to see whether the long-awaited doctors are coming. But the long-awaited doctors are slogging through the sand in the desert at night. Irina tries to calm him down, but of course she’s worried herself. It’s their first child, and the first child born on Mars, the first Martian. She’s a very healthy and steady woman. A wonderful woman! But in their place I wouldn’t have had a child. Well, it will all work out. But if only we hadn’t been delayed…

Novago looked steadily to the right, at the gray crest of the dunes. Mandel was also looking to the right. Consequently, at first they didn’t notice the Pathfinders. The Pathfinders were also a pair, and they came up from the left.

“Hey there!” shouted the taller of the two.

The other, short, almost square, slung his carbine over his shoulder and waved.

“Whew!” Novago said with relief. “It’s Opanasenko and Morgan, the Canadian. Hey, comrades!” he shouted joyfully.

“Fancy meeting you here!” said the lanky Humphrey Morgan as he came up. “Good evening, doctor,” he said as he shook Mandel’s hand. “Good evening, doctor,” he repeated as he shook Novago’s.

“Hello, comrades,” boomed Opanasenko. “Fancy meeting you here.”

Before Novago could answer, Morgan said unexpectedly, “Thank you—it’s all healed,” and again stretched out his long arm to Mandel.

“What?” asked the perplexed Mandel. “I’m glad, whatever it is.”

“Oh, no, he’s still in camp,” said Morgan. “But he’s almost well too.”

“Why are you talking so strangely, Humphrey?” inquired Mandel, confused.

Opanasenko grabbed Morgan by the edge of his hood, drew him close, and shouted in his ear, “You’ve got everything wrong, Humphrey! You lose!”

Turning to the doctors, he explained that an hour before the Canadian had accidentally broken the diaphragms in his headphones, and now couldn’t hear, although he maintained that he could get along fine in the Martian atmosphere without the help of acoustic equipment. “He claims that he knows what people will say to him anyway. We made a bet, and he’s lost. Now he has to clean my carbine five times.”

Morgan laughed and said that the girl Galya at the base had nothing to do with anything. Opanasenko waved his hand hopelessly and asked, “You’re headed for the settlement, the biostation, I assume?”

“Yes,” said Novago. “To the Slavins.”

“Say, that’s right,” said Opanasenko. “They’ll really be wanting to see you. But why are you on foot?”

“What a pain in the neck!” said Morgan guiltily. “I can’t hear a blessed thing.”

Opanasenko again drew him over and shouted, “Hold on, Humphrey! I’ll tell you later!”

“Fine,” Morgan said in English. He walked off a few paces, looked around, and unslung his carbine. The Pathfinders had heavy double-barreled semiautomatics with magazines of twenty-five explosive bullets.

“Our crawler sank on us,” Novago said.

“Where?” Opanasenko quickly asked. “In a cavity?”

“Right. On the route, about forty kilometers out.”

“A cavity!” Opanasenko said joyously. “Do you hear, Humphrey? Another cavity!”

Humphrey Morgan stood with his back to them and turned his head within his hood, scanning the dark dunes.

“Okay,” said Opanasenko. “We’ll save that for later. So the crawler sank on you and you decided to go on foot? Are you armed?”

Mandel slapped his leg. “I’ve got this,” he said.

“Ri-ight,” said Opanasenko. “We’ll have to go with you. Humphrey! Damn—he can’t hear.”

“Hold it,” said Mandel. “Why all the fuss?”

“It is around here somewhere,” said Opanasenko. “We’ve seen tracks.”

Mandel and Novago exchanged glances.

“Of course you know best, Fedor,” Novago said indecisively, “but I had supposed… After all, we are armed.”

“Madmen,” Opanasenko said with conviction. “You people at the base are, forgive me, simpletons. We warn you, we explain to you, and look what happens. At night. Through the desert. With pistols. What’s the matter—wasn’t Khlebnikov enough?”

Mandel shrugged. “I had thought that under the circumstances—” he began, but Morgan broke in, “Quiet!” and Opanasenko instantly unslung his carbine and took a position next to the Canadian.

Novago quietly let out a breath and slipped the pistol from his boot.

The sun was almost gone—a narrow yellow-green stripe shone over the black serrated silhouettes of the dunes. The whole sky had turned black, and there was a vast multitude of stars. Starlight glinted off the barrels of the carbines, and the doctors could see the barrels slowly moving right and left.

“My mistake—sorry,” Humphrey said, and they immediately started forward.

Opanasenko shouted in Morgan’s ear, “Humphrey, they’re going to Irina Slavina at the biostation! They need an escort!”

“Fine. I’ll go,” said Morgan.

“We’re going together!” shouted Opanasenko.

“Fine. We’ll go together.”

The doctors were still holding the pistols in their hands. Morgan turned to them, took a good look, and exclaimed, “Hey, no! Put them away.”

“Yes, please,” said Opanasenko. “Don’t even think of shooting. And put on your glasses.”

The Pathfinders were already wearing infrared glasses. Mandel shamefacedly shoved the pistol into the deep pocket of his coat and transferred the valise to his right hand. Novago hesitated a moment, then put his pistol back into the top of his left boot.

“Let’s go,” said Opanasenko. “We won’t take you by the regular route—we’ll go cross-country, through the excavations. It’s faster.”

Now Opanasenko, with the carbine under his arm, was walking in front and to the right of Mandel. Behind and to the right of Novago paced Morgan. His carbine hung on a long strap over his shoulder. Opanasenko walked quickly, cutting sharply to the west.

Through the infrared glasses the dunes looked black and white, and the sky empty and gray. It was like a drawing in lead pencil. The desert quickly fell behind, and the drawing showed less and less contrast, as if obscured by a cloud of smoke.

“Why are you so happy about our cavity, Fedor?” asked Mandel. “The water?”

“Well, what do you think?” Opanasenko said without turning around. “Water in the first place, and, second, one cavity we found turned out to be lined with flagstones.”

“Yes,” said Mandel. “Of course.”

“You’ll find a whole crawler in our cavity,” Novago muttered darkly.

Opanasenko suddenly made a sharp turn, and skirted round a level sandy area. At its edge stood a pole with a drooping flag.

“Quicksand,” Morgan said from behind. “Very dangerous.”

Quicksand was real trouble. A month ago, a special detachment of volunteer scouts had been organized to locate and mark all the quicksand patches in the vicinity of the base.

“But as I recall, Hasegawa proved that the appearance of those stone slabs could also be explained by natural forces,” said Mandel.

“Yes,” said Opanasenko, “that’s just the point.”

“Have you found anything lately?” asked Novago.

“No. They discovered oil in the east, and they found some very interesting fossils. But nothing in our line.”

They walked silently for some time. Then Mandel said thoughtfully, “It could be there’s nothing strange in that. Archaeologists on Earth deal with the remains of cultures that are at most hundreds of thousands of years old. But here they’re tens of millions. On the contrary, it would be strange if—”

“Well, we’re not complaining much,” Opanasenko interrupted. “After all, we got such a fat tidbit right off—two artificial satellites. We didn’t even have to dig. But then,” he added after a pause, “looking is just as interesting as finding.”

“Especially since the area you’ve already gone over is so small,” said Mandel.

He stumbled and almost fell. Morgan said in an undertone, “Doctor Novago, Doctor Mandel, I suspect you’re talking all the time. You shouldn’t do that right now. Ask Fedor if you don’t believe me.”

“Humphrey’s right,” Opanasenko said guiltily. “We’d better keep quiet.”

They passed over the ridge of dunes and started down into a valley, where patches of salt glimmered weakly under the stars.

Here we go again, thought Novago. Those cactuses. He had never chanced to see them at night. They radiated a bright, steady infralight. Spots of light were scattered over the whole valley. Very pretty! thought Novago. Maybe they don’t go off at night. That would be a pleasant surprise. My nerves are on edge as it is: Opanasenko said that it is out here somewhere. Itis out here somewhere… Novago tried to imagine what it would have been like for them now without the escort, without these calm men with their heavy, deadly guns at the ready. A belated chill of fear ran over his skin, as if the outside cold had penetrated his clothing and had touched his bare body. Amid the dunes at night with just those little pistols… He wondered whether Mandel knew how to shoot. He must—he had worked for several years at Arctic stations. But all the same… You didn’t even think to get a rifle at the base, idiot! Novago told himself. We’d be in fine shape now without the Pathfinders. Of course, there was no time to think of rifles. And even now I should think about something else—about what will happen when we get to the biostation. That’s more important. Right now that’s the most important thing period, the most important thing of all.

It always attacks from the right, thought Mandel. Everyone says it attacks only from the right. No one knows why. And no one knows why it attacks at all. It’s as though for the past million years it had done nothing except to attack from the right those people who were careless enough to set off from the base on foot at night. You can understand why it’s the ones away from the base. You can imagine why it’s at night. But why people, and why from the right? Could there really have been Martian bipeds who were more vulnerable on the right than on the left? Then where are they? In five years of colonization on Mars we haven’t encountered one animal here bigger than a mimicrodon. At least until it appeared, two months ago. Eight attacks in two months. And no one here has got a good look at it—it attacks only at night. I wonder what it is. Khlebnikov had his right lung ripped out—they had to give him an artificial lung and two ribs. Judging by the wound, it has an unusually complex mouth mechanism. At least eight maxillae with incisor blades sharp as razors. Khlebnikov remembers only a long shining body with straight hair. It jumped him from behind a dune maybe thirty paces away. Mandel glanced quickly to both sides. There the two of us would be, walking along. I wonder, does Novago know how to shoot? Probably—for a long time he worked with the geologists in the taiga. He had a good idea there about the centrifuge. Seven or eight hours a day of normal weight should be quite enough for the little guy. Though come to think of it, why should it be a boy? What if it’s a girl? All the better—girls can stand variations from the norm better.

They had left the valley and the salt patches behind. To the right stretched long narrow trenches, and pyramidlike piles of sand. In one of the trenches stood an excavator, its bucket drooping despondently.

We should get the excavator out of here, Opanasenko thought. What is it standing around here for? Soon the storm season starts. Maybe I’ll take it myself on the way back. Too bad it’s so slow—less than a kilometer an hour on the dunes. Otherwise it would be just the thing. My legs ache. Morgan and I have covered around fifty kilometers today. They’ll be worried at the camp. Well, we’ll send a radiogram from the biostation. There must really be an uproar at the biostation by now! Poor Slavin. But still, it’s great. There’ll be a kid on Mars! So someday there’ll be people who will say, “I was born on Mars.” If only we’re not too late. Opanasenko started walking faster. And these doctors! Doctors think rules are made for other people. Good thing we met them. It’s clear that at the base they have no idea of what the desert is like at night. It would be a good idea to organize a patrol, or even better, a full-scale hunt. Use every crawler and rover the base has.

Humphrey Morgan, immersed in silence, walked with his hands resting on his carbine. He looked steadily to the right. He thought about how at the camp everyone must be asleep already except for the night watch, who would be worrying about his and Opanasenko’s absence; about how tomorrow they would have to transfer a group to Quadrant E-11; about how he would now have to clean Fedor’s gun five evenings in a row; about how he would have to get his headphones fixed. Then he thought that the doctors were men with courage, and that Irina Slavina also had courage. Then he remembered Galya, the radio operator at the base. Whenever they met, he thought regretfully, she always asked him about Hasegawa. The Japanese was an okay guy, but lately he had been showing up a lot at the base too. Of course, there was no denying that Hasegawa was smart. He was the first one to come up with the idea that hunting for the “flying leech” (sora-tobu hiru) could have a direct relation to the Pathfinders’ mission, because they might put humans onto the trail of Martian bipeds… Oh, those bipeds! Building two gigantic satellites and then not leaving anything else behind!

Opanasenko stopped suddenly and raised his arm. Everyone halted, and Humphrey Morgan threw up his carbine and turned sharply to the right.

“What’s happening?” Novago asked, trying to speak calmly.

He very much wanted to get out his pistol, but he felt too embarrassed.

“It is here,” Opanasenko said softly. He waved to Morgan.

Morgan came running up, and they bent down, examining the sand. Through the firm sand ran a broad shallow rut, as if a bag with something heavy in it had been dragged over the sand. The rut began five paces to the right and ended fifteen paces to the left.

“That’s it,” said Opanasenko. “It has tracked us down and is stalking us.”

He stepped across the rut, and they moved on. Novago noticed that Mandel had again transferred his valise to his left hand, and had stuck the right into his coat pocket. Novago smiled, but he felt uneasy. He had tasted fear.

“Well,” Mandel said in an unnaturally cheerful voice, “since it‘s already tracked us down, let’s start talking.”

“All right,” said Opanasenko. “And when it springs, fall face down.”

“What for?” asked Mandel, offended.

“It doesn’t touch anyone who’s lying on the ground,” Opanasenko explained.

“Oh, yes, right.”

“There’s only one minor detail,” muttered Novago. “Knowing when it’ll spring.”

“You’ll notice,” said Opanasenko. “We’ll start firing.”

“I wonder,” said Mandel. “Does it attack mimicrodons? You know, when they stand straight up? On the tail and hind legs… Hey!” he exclaimed. “Maybe it takes us for mimicrodons?”

“There’s no point in tracking and attacking mimicrodons only from the right,” Opanasenko said with some irritation. “You can just walk up and eat them—head first or tail first, as you please.”

Fifteen minutes later they again crossed a rut and after another ten minutes, still another. Mandel grew silent. Now he would not take his right hand out of his pocket.

“It will spring in five minutes or so,” Opanasenko said in a strained voice. “Now it’s to the right of us.”

“I wonder,” Mandel said quietly. “If we walked backward would it still spring from the right?”

“Be quiet, Lazar,” Novago said through his teeth.

It sprang after three minutes. Morgan shot first. Novago’s ears rang. He saw the double flash of the shots; the traces, straight as an arrow, of the two streams of fire; and the white stars of the explosions on the crest of the dune. A second later Opanasenko opened fire. Pow-pow, pow-pow-pow! thundered the carbine shots, and he could hear the bullets tear into the sand with a muffled whump. For an instant it seemed to Novago that he could see a snarling muzzle and bulging eyes, but the stars of explosions and the streams of fire had already moved far to one side, and he realized that he had been mistaken. Something long and gray rushed low over the dunes, crossing the fading threads of gunfire, and only then did Novago throw himself face down on the sand.

Crack! Crack! Crack! Mandel was up on one knee and, holding the pistol in his outstretched hand, was methodically ravaging an area somewhere between Morgan’s and Opanasenko’s lines of fire. Pow-pow-pow! Pow-pow-pow! thundered the carbines. Now the Pathfinders were firing by turns. Novago saw the tall Morgan scramble over the dune on all fours and fall, saw his shoulders tremble with the shots. Opanasenko fired kneeling, and time after time white flashes lit up his huge black glasses and the black muzzle of his oxygen mask.

Then silence returned.

“We beat it off,” said Opanasenko, getting up and brushing sand from his knees. “That’s how it always is—if you open fire in time, it jumps to the side and clears out.”

“I hit it once,” Humphrey Morgan said loudly. They could hear the metallic ring as he pulled out an empty clip.

“You got a good look at it?” asked Opanasenko. “Oh, right, he can’t hear.”

Novago, grunting, got up and looked at Mandel. Mandel had turned up the bottom of his coat and was cramming his pistol into its holster. Novago began, “You know, Lazar…”

Mandel coughed guiltily. “I think I missed,” he said. “It moves with exceptional speed.”

“I’m very glad you missed,” Novago said crossly. “Think of who you might have hit!”

“But did you see it, Pyotr?” Mandel asked. He rubbed his fur-gloved hands nervously. “Did you get a good look at it?”

“Gray and long like a hungry pike.”

“It has no extremities!” Mandel said excitedly. “I saw quite distinctly that it has no extremities! I don’t think it even has eyes!”

The Pathfinders walked over to the doctors.

“In all this commotion,” said Opanasenko, “it would be very easy to conclude it has none. It’s much harder to tell that it does have them.” He laughed. “Well, all right, comrades. The main thing is that we beat off the attack.”

“I’m going to look for the carcass,” Morgan said unexpectedly. “I hit it once.”

“Oh, no, you’re not,” said Novago quickly.

“No,” said Opanasenko. He drew Morgan over and shouted, “No, Humphrey! No time! We’ll look together tomorrow on the way back!”

Mandel looked at his watch. “Ugh!” he said. “It’s already ten-fifteen. How much farther, Fedor?”

“Ten kilometers, no more. We’ll be there by midnight.”

“Wonderful,” said Mandel. “But where’s my valise?” He turned around. “Ah, here it is.”

“We’ll walk the same way as before,” said Opanasenko. “You people to the left. It could be that it isn’t alone here.”

“There’s nothing to be afraid of now,” Novago muttered. “Lazar’s clip is empty.”

They set out as before. Novago was five paces behind Mandel. In front and to the right was Opanasenko, his carbine under his arm, and behind and to the right walked Morgan with his carbine hanging from his shoulder.

Opanasenko walked quickly. It was impossible to go on this way, he thought. Whether Morgan had killed that one monster or not, the day after tomorrow they would have to go to the base and organize a hunt. Using all the crawlers and rovers, with rifles, dynamite, and rockets. An argument to use with the unconvinced Ivanenko popped into his head, and he smiled. He would say to Ivanenko, “We have children on Mars now, so it’s time to rid the planet of these monsters.”

What a night! thought Novago. It’s no worse than the times I got lost in the taiga. But the most important part hasn’t even begun yet, and it won’t finish before five in the morning, Tomorrow at five, or, say, six o’clock the little guy will already be yelling over the whole planet. If only Mandel doesn’t let us down. No, Mandel won’t do that. Mark Slavin the proud papa can rest easy. In a few months all of us at the base will be taking the little guy in our arms and inquiring with monotonous regularity, “Well, who is this little fellow here, hey? Is it an itty bitty baby?” Only we’ve got to think out that business about the centrifuge very carefully. We’ll have to get them to send us a good pediatrician from Earth, The little guy has to have a pediatrician. Too bad the next ships won’t arrive for another year.

Novago never doubted that the child would be a little guy, and not a little girl. He liked boy babies. He would carry it in his arms, inquiring from time to time, “Is it an itty bitty baby?”

2. Almost the Same

They were sitting in the corridor on the windowsill opposite the door—they were about to be called in. Sergei Kondratev swung his feet, while Panin, twisting his short neck around, looked out the window at the park. There, in the volleyball court, the girls from the Remote Control Division were jumping up and down near the net. His chin resting on his hands, Sergei Kondratev looked at the door, at the shining black plate that read “Large Centrifuge.” In the Advanced School of Cosmonautics there were four divisions. Three of them had training halls, with plates with the same words hanging at the door. It always made you nervous waiting till they called you into the Large Centrifuge. Take Panin, for example. He was obviously gawking at the girls in order not to show how nervous he was. And Panin just had the most ordinary conditioning scheduled for today. “They play a good game,” Panin said in his bass voice.

“Right,” Sergei said without turning around.

“Number four does a great pass.”

“Yeah,” said Sergei. He shrugged. He had a great pass too, but he didn’t turn around.

Panin looked at Sergei, glanced at the door, and then said, “They’re going to carry you out of here today.”

Sergei remained silent.

“Feet first,” said Panin.

“Sure thing,” said Sergei holding himself back. “No chance of them carrying you, though.”

“Calm down, superjock,” said Panin. “A true superjock is always calm, cool, ready for anything.”

“I am calm,” said Sergei.

“You? Calm?” Panin said, poking him in the chest with his finger. “You’re vibrating, shaking like a smallfry at a launch. It’s disgusting, seeing the way you tremble.”

“So don’t look,” Sergei advised him. “Look at the girls instead. Great passing ability, and all that.”

“You haven’t got the right attitude,” Panin said, and looked through the window. “They’re fantastic girls! They play an amazing game!”

“So look,” said Sergei. “And try not to let your teeth chatter.”

“Whose teeth are chattering?” Panin asked in amazement. “Yours.”

Sergei remained silent.

“It’s all right for my teeth to chatter,” Panin said after thinking it over. “I’m not a jock.” He sighed, looked at the door and said, “But I wish they’d call us in and—” He broke off.

From the left, at the end of the corridor, appeared Grigory Bystrov, a second-year cadet who was class representative. He was wearing a test suit. He walked slowly, running his finger along the wall, his face pensive. He stopped in front of Kondratev and Panin and said, “Hello, guys.” His voice was sad.

Sergei nodded. Panin condescended to say, “Hello, Grigory. Do you start vibrating before you ride the Centrifuge, Grigory?”

“Yeah,” Grigory answered. “A little.”

“Well,” Panin said to Sergei. “So Grigory vibrates just a little. But then of course he’s still a smallfry.”

“Smallfry” was what they called underclassmen at the school.

Grigory sighed and sat down on the windowsill too. “Sergei,” he said, “Are you really making your first try at eight Gs today?”

“Yeah,” said Sergei. He had not the least desire to talk, but he didn’t want to offend Grigory. “If they let me, of course,” he added.

“Probably they will,” Grigory said.

“Think of it, eight Gs!” Panin said flippantly.

“Have you tried pulling eight yourself?” Grigory asked with interest.

“No,” said Panin. “But then I’m not a jock.”

“But maybe you will try?” said Sergei. “Right now, together with me.”

“I’m a simple man, a guileless man,” Panin answered. “There is a norm. The norm is five gravities. My simple, uncomplicated organism cannot bear anything exceeding the norm. My organism tried six once, and got carried out at six minutes some seconds. With me along.”

“Who got carried out?” asked Grigory, confused.

“My organism,” Panin explained.

“Oh,” said Grigory with a weak smile. “And I haven’t even pulled five yet.”

“You don’t have to pull five in the second year,” said Sergei. He jumped off the windowsill and started doing knee-bends alternately on right and left legs.

“Well, I’m off,” Grigory said, and jumped off the windowsill too.

“What happened, Great Leader?” Panin asked him. “Why such melancholy?”

“Someone played a joke on Kopylov,” Grigory answered sadly.

“Again?” said Panin. “What kind of joke?”

Second-year cadet Valentin Kopylov was famous throughout the division for his devotion to computer technology. Recently a very good new LIANTO waveguide computer had been installed in the division, and Valentin spent all his free time at its side. He would have spent his nights there too, but at night LIANTO did calculations for the diplomats, and Valentin was heartlessly shown the door.

“One of our people programmed a love letter,” Grigory said. “Now on the last cycle LIANTO prints, ‘Kopylov fills my life with blisses / So from LIANTO, love and kisses.’ In simple letter code.”

“‘Love and kisses,’” said Sergei, massaging his shoulders. “Some poets. They should be put out of their misery.”

“Just think,” said Panin. “One of the current smallfry has gotten all jolly.”

“And witty,” said Sergei.

“What are you telling me for?” said Grigory. “Go tell those idiots. ‘Love and kisses,’ indeed! Last night Kan was running a calculation, and instead of an answer, zap!—’Love and kisses.’ Now he’s called me on the carpet.”

Todor Kan, Iron Kan, was the head of the Navigation Division.

“Wow!” said Panin. “You’re going to have an interesting half hour, Great Leader. Iron Kan is a very lively conversationalist.”

“Iron Kan is a lover of literature,” Sergei said. “He won’t tolerate a class representative with such rotten versifiers for classmates.”

“I’m a simple man, a guileless man…” Panin began. At that moment the door opened slightly and the trainer stuck his head through.

“Panin, Kondratev, get ready,” he said.

Panin stopped short and straightened out his jacket. “Let’s go,” he said.

Kondratev nodded to Grigory and followed on Panin’s heels into the training hall. The hall was enormous, and in the middle of it sparkled a thirteen-foot double arm resting on a fat cubical base-the Large Centrifuge. The arm was turning. The gondolas on its ends, thrown outward by centrifugal force, lay almost horizontal. There were no windows in the gondolas; observation of the cadets was carried out from inside the base with the help of a system of mirrors. By the wall several cadets were resting on a vaulting box. Craning their necks, they followed the hurtling gondolas.

“Four Gs,” said Panin, looking at the gondolas.

“Five,” said Kondratev. “Who’s in there now?”

“Nguyen and Gurgenidze,” the trainer said.

He brought two acceleration suits, helped Kondratev and Panin to put them on, and laced them up. The acceleration suits looked like silkworm cocoons.

“Wait,” the trainer said, and went over to the base.

Once a week every cadet rode the centrifuge, getting acceleration conditioning. One hour once a week for the whole five years. You had to sit there and stick it out, and listen to your bones creak, and feel the broad straps dig through the thick cloth of the suit into your soft body, feel your face droop, feel how hard it was to blink, because your eyelids were so heavy. And while this was going on you had to solve boring problems, or else assemble standard computer subprograms, and this wasn’t at all easy, even though the problems and the subprograms were ones you had had your first year. Some cadets could pull seven gravities, while others couldn’t manage even three—they couldn’t cope with vision blackouts. They were transferred to the Remote Control Division.

The arm turned more slowly, and the gondolas hung more nearly vertical. From one of them crawled skinny, dark Nguyen Phu Dat. He stopped, hanging onto the open door, rocking. Gurgenidze tumbled clumsily from the other gondola. The cadets on the vaulting box jumped to their feet, but the trainer had already helped him up, and he sat down on the floor, propping himself up with his arms.

“Step lively now, Gurgenidze,” one of the cadets shouted loudly.

Everyone laughed. Everyone except Panin.

“Never mind, guys,” Gurgenidze said hoarsely, and got up. “Nothing to it!” He contorted his face horribly, stretching the numbed muscles of his cheeks. “Nothing to it!” he repeated.

“Boy, they sure are going to carry you out today, superjock!” Panin said, softly but very energetically.

Kondratev made as if he were not listening. If they do carry me out, he thought, that will be the end. They can’t do it. They mustn’t. “He’s on the chubby side, Gurgenidze is,” he said aloud. “The heavy ones don’t take acceleration well.”

“He’ll thin down,” Panin said cheerfully. “If he wants to, he’ll thin down.”

Panin had lost fifteen pounds before he had managed to endure the five gravities established as the norm. It was an excruciating process. But he did not at all want to get sent to Remote Control. He wanted to be a navigator.

A hatch opened in the base. Out crawled an instructor in a white coat, who took the sheets of paper with Nguyen and Gurgenidze’s answers.

“Are Kondratev and Panin ready?” he asked.

“Ready,” said the trainer.

The instructor glanced cursorily over the sheets of paper. “Right,” he said. “Nguyen and Gurgenidze can go. You’ve passed.”

“Hey, great!” Gurgenidze said. He immediately began to look better. “You mean I passed too?”

“You too,” said the instructor.

Gurgenidze suddenly hiccuped resoundingly. Everyone laughed again, even Panin, and Gurgenidze was very embarrassed. Even Nguyen Phu Dat laughed, loosening the lacing of his suit at the waist. He obviously felt wonderful.

The instructor said, “Panin and Kondratev, into the gondolas.”

“Sir—” began Sergei.

The instructor’s face took on a preoccupied look. “Oh, I forgot. I’m very sorry, Sergei, but the doctor has forbidden you to try accelerations above the norm. Temporarily.”

“What?” Sergei asked with fright.

“You’re forbidden.”

“But I’ve already pulled seven Gs.”

“I’m very sorry, Sergei,” the instructor repeated.

“It’s some sort of mistake. It’s got to be.”

The instructor shrugged.

“I can’t have this,” Sergei said in despair. “I’ll get out of shape.” He looked at Panin. Panin was looking at the floor. Sergei once again faced the instructor. “It’s the end of everything for me.”

“It’s only temporary,” said the instructor.

“How long is temporary?”

“Until further notice. Maybe two months, no longer. It happens sometimes. In the meantime you’ll be training at five Gs. You’ll catch up later.”

“Never mind, Sergei,” Panin said in his bass. “Take a little rest from your multigravities.”

“I would still like to ask—” Sergei began in a repulsively ingratiating voice that he had never used before in his life.

The instructor frowned. “We’re wasting time, Kondratev,” he said. “Get into the gondola.”

“Yes, sir,” Sergei said softly, and crawled into the gondola.

He seated himself in the couch, fastened himself in with the broad straps, and began to wait. In front of the couch was a mirror, and in it he saw his gloomy, angry face. It would be better if they did carry me out, he thought. Now my muscles will get soft and I’ll have to start all over Now when will I ever get to ten Gs? Or even eight? They all think I’m some sort of jock, he thought venemously. The doctor too. Maybe I should tell him? He imagined that he was telling the doctor why he had to have all this and that the doctor looked at him with cheery, faded eyes and said, “Moderation, Sergei, moderation.”

“Overcautious old bird,” Sergei said aloud. He meant the doctor, but suddenly he realized that the instructor might hear him over the speaking tube and take it personally. “Well, all right,” he said loudly.

The gondola rocked smoothly. The conditioning session had begun.

When they had left the training hall, Panin quickly started massaging the bags under his eyes. Like all the cadets inclined to stoutness, he always got bags under his eyes after the Large Centrifuge. Panin worried a good deal about his appearance. He was handsome and was used to being admired. Consequently, right after the Large Centrifuge he immediately set to work on the bags.

“You never get this crud,” he said to Sergei.

Sergei remained silent.

“You have a very efficient physique, superjock. Like a roach.”

“I wish I had your problems,” Sergei said.

“They told you it’s only temporary, worrywart.”

“That’s what they told Galtsev, and then they switched him over to Remote Control.”

“Oh, well,” Panin said judiciously, “so this wasn’t the job he was cut out for.”

Sergei clenched his teeth.

“Oh, agony!” said Panin. “They won’t let him pull eight Gs. Now take me, I’m a simple man, a guileless man…”

Sergei stopped. “You listen,” he said. “Bykov brought the Takhmasib back from Jupiter only by going to twelve gravities. Maybe you didn’t know that?”

“I know it,” said Panin.

“And Yusupov died because he couldn’t take eight. You know that too?”

“Yusupov was a test navigator,” Panin said, “so he doesn’t count here. And Bykov, I’ll have you know, did not have one hour of acceleration conditioning in his entire life.”

“Are you sure?” Sergei asked angrily.

“Well, maybe he did have conditioning, but he didn’t go try and rupture himself like you, superjock.”

“Do you really think I’m a jock?” Sergei asked.

Panin looked at him in puzzlement. “Well, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it. It’s a very useful thing out there, of course.”

“Okay,” said Sergei. “Let’s go over to the park. We have a chance to loosen up.”

They started down the corridor. Panin, still massaging the bags under his eyes, glanced through every window.

“The girls are still playing,” he said. He stopped at a window and stuck out his neck. “Ha! There she is!”

“Who?” asked Sergei.

“I don’t know her name.”

“Impossible.”

“No, really—I danced with her day before yesterday. But I have no idea what her name is.”

Sergei looked out the window too.

“That one,” said Panin. “With the bandaged knee.”

Sergei caught sight of the girl with the bandaged knee. “I see her,” he said. “Let’s go.”

“Very nice-looking,” said Panin. “Very. And smart.”

“Come on, come on,” said Sergei. He took Panin by the elbow and dragged him along.

“Where’s the fire?” Panin asked in surprise.

They walked past empty classrooms and glanced into the simulator room. The simulator room was fitted out like the navigation deck of a real interplanetary photon ship, except that on the control board was mounted the big white cube of the stochastic computer in the place of the video screen. The computer was the source of navigation problems. When turned on, it randomly supplied input for the board’s indicators. The cadet then had to set up a system of course commands optimally responding to the conditions of the problem.

Right now, a whole gaggle of obvious smallfry was crowded in front of the control board. They shouted to one another, waved back and forth, and shoved each other. Then suddenly it became quiet, and the clicking of the keys on the board could be heard. Someone was entering a command. The agonizing silence was broken by the buzz of the computer, and on the board a red light went on—an incorrect solution. The smallfry let out a roar. They dragged somebody out of the control seat and shoved him away. The disheveled unfortunate shouted loudly, “I told you so!”

“Why are you so sweaty?” Panin asked him with disdain.

“Because I’m so mad,” said the smallfry.

The computer buzzed again, and again the red light on the control board went on.

“I told you so!” the same smallfry yelled.

“Now then,” Panin said, and shouldered his way through the crowd.

All the smallfry quieted down. Sergei saw Panin bend over the board, then the keys clattered quickly and surely, the computer began to hum, and a green light appeared on the board. The smallfry groaned.

“Well, so that’s Panin,” someone said.

“That’s Panin for you,” the sweaty smallfry said to Sergei reproachfully.

“Smooth plasma,” said Panin, extracting himself from the crowd. “Carry on. Let’s go, Sergei.”

Then they glanced into the computer room. People were studying there, but beside the graceful gray casing of LIANTO squatted three technicians, rummaging through circuit diagrams. The sad second-year cadet, Grigory Bystrov, was there as well.

“From LIANTO, love and kisses,” Panin said. “It seems that Bystrov is still alive. Curious.”

He looked at Sergei and slapped him on the back. A respectable echo rang down the corridor. “Buck up,” Panin said.

“Cut it out,” said Sergei.

They descended the staircase, passed through the lobby with the big bronze bust of Tsiolkovsky, and went out into the park.

By the entrance a second-year man was watering the flowers with a hose. As he passed him, Panin declaimed, with exaggerated gestures, “Kopylov fills my life with blisses / So from LIANTO, love and kisses.” The second-year man smiled with embarrassment and glanced at a window on the second floor.

They walked along a narrow lane planted with bird-cherry bushes. Panin was about to begin a loud song, but a group of girls in shorts and T-shirts came out from around a bend, walking towards them. The girls were coming back from the volleyball court. In front, with the ball under her arm, walked Katya. That’s just what I needed, thought Sergei. Now she’ll stare at me out of those round eyes. And she’ll start the thousand-words-with-a-glance routine. He even stopped for a second. He had a fierce desire to jump through the bird-cherry bushes and crawl away somewhere. He glanced sidelong at Panin.

Panin smiled pleasantly, straightened his shoulders, and said in a velvet voice, “Hello, girls!”

The Remote Control Division vouchsafed him closed-mouthed smiles. Katya had eyes only for Sergei.

Oh, lord, he thought, and said, “Hi, Katya.”

“Hi, Sergei,” said Katya. She lowered her head and walked on.

Panin stopped.

“Well, what’s your problem?” Sergei asked.

“It’s her,” said Panin.

Sergei looked back. Katya was standing there, arranging her tousled hair and looking at him. Her right knee was wrapped in a dusty bandage. They looked at each other for several seconds—Katya’s eyes opened wide. Sergei bit his lip, turned, and went on without waiting for Panin. Panin caught up with him.

“Such beautiful eyes,” he said.

“Sheep’s eyes,” said Sergei.

“Sheep yourself,” Panin snapped. “She’s a very, very beautiful girl. Hold it,” he said. “How come she knows you?”

Sergei didn’t answer, and Panin kept silent.

In the center of the park was a broad meadow with thick soft grass. Here the cadets usually crammed before theory exams and rested after acceleration conditioning, and here couples met on summer nights. At present the place was occupied by the fifth-year men of the Navigation Division. Most of them were under a white awning, where a game of four-dimensional chess was in progress. This highly intellectual game, in which the board and pieces had four spatial dimensions and existed only in the imaginations of the players, had been introduced to the school several years before by Zhilin, the same Zhilin who was now engineer on the trans-Martian voyager Takhmasik. The senior classmen were quite fond of the game, but by no means could everyone play it. On the other hand, anyone who felt like it could kibitz. The shouts of the kibitzers filled the entire park.

“Should’ve moved the pawn to E-one-delta-H.”

“Then you lose the fourth knight!”

“So? The pawns move into the bishops’ volume—”

“What bishops’ volume? Where do you get bishops’ volume? You’ve got the ninth move down wrong!”

“Listen, guys, take old Sasha away and tie him to a tree. And leave him there.”

Someone, probably one of the players, yelled excitedly, “Shut up! I can’t think!”

“Let’s go watch,” said Panin. He was a great fan of four-dimensional chess.

“I don’t want to,” said Sergei. He stepped over Gurgenidze, who was lying on Malyshev and twisting his arm up toward his neck. Malyshev was still struggling, but it was clear who had won. Sergei walked a few paces away from them and collapsed on the grass, stretching out full length. It was a little painful to stretch muscles after acceleration, but it was very helpful, and Sergei did a neck bridge, then a handstand, then another neck bridge, and finally lay down on his back and gazed at the sky. Panin sat down beside him and listened to the shouts of the kibitzers while he chewed on a stem of grass.

Maybe I should go see Kan? Sergei thought. Go to him and say, “Comrade Kan, what do you think about interstellar travel?” No—not like that. “Comrade Kan, I want to conquer the universe.” Damn—what nonsense! Sergei turned over on his stomach and propped himself up on his elbows.

Gurgenidze and Malyshev had quit fighting, and they sat down near Panin. Malyshev caught his breath and asked, “What was on the SV yesterday?”

“Blue Fields,” Panin said. “Relayed from Argentina.”

“So how was it?” asked Gurgenidze.

“They should’ve kept it,” said Panin.

“Oh,” said Malyshev. “Is that where he keeps dropping the refrigerator?”

“The vacuum cleaner,” Panin corrected.

“Then I’ve seen it,” said Malyshev. “Why didn’t you like it? It’s not a bad film. The music is good, and it has a good odor scale. Remember, when they’re by the sea?”

“Maybe,” said Panin. “Only the olfactor on my set’s broken. It reeks of smoked fish all the time. It was really something when they went into the florist shop and smelled the roses.”

Gurgenidze laughed. “Why don’t you fix it?”

Malyshev said thoughtfully, “It would be something if they could figure out a way to broadcast tactile sensations in movies. Imagine—somebody is kissing somebody on the screen, and you feel like you’re getting slapped in the face…”

“I can imagine,” said Panin. “That’s already happened to me. Without any movie.”

And then I’d pick my crew, Sergei thought. Even now I could pick good guys for this. Mamedov, Petrov, Zavialov from Engineering. Briushkov from the third year can pull twelve gravities. He didn’t even need conditioning—he has some special sort of middle ear. But of course he’s a smallfry and doesn’t understand anything yet. Sergei remembered how, when Panin had asked him what the point of it was, Briushkov had puffed up self-importantly and said, “You try it, like me.” A smallfry, and too little to eat at that—a minnow smallfry. Yes, anyway, all of them are jocks, the smallfry and the final-year men. Maybe Valentin Petrov…

Sergei turned over on his back again. Valentin Petrov. Transactions of the Academy of Nonclassical Mechanics, Volume Seven. Valentin Petrov eats and sleeps with that book. And of course other people read it too. They’re always reading it! There are three copies in the library, all of them thumbed to pieces, and most of the time they’re all checked out. So I’m not alone? Does that mean other people too are interested in “The Behavior of Pi-Quanta in Accelerators” and that they’re drawing conclusions too? I should take Petrov aside, Sergei thought, and have a talk with him.

“Well, what are you staring at me for?” said Panin. “Guys, how come he’s staring at me? I’m terrified.”

Sergei only now realized that he was up on all fours, and looking straight into Panin’s face.

“Ah, the foreshortening!” said Gurgenidze. “I could use you as a model for ‘Reverie’.”

Sergei got up and looked around the meadow. Petrov wasn’t in sight. He lay back down and pressed his cheek against the grass.

“Sergei,” called Malyshev, “what’s your analysis of all this?”

“Of all what?” Sergei asked into the grass.

“The nationalization of United Rocket Construction.” He gave the name in English.

“‘Approve Mr. Hopkins’ present action. Expect more same spirit. Stop, Kondratev,’” said Sergei. “Send the telegram collect, payment through the Soviet State Bank.”

United Rocket has good engineers. We have good engineers too. And this is the time for all of them to get together and build ramscoops. It’s all up to the engineers now—we’ll do our part. We’re ready. Sergei imagined squadrons of gigantic starships at the launch, and then in deep space, at the edge of the light barrier, accelerating at ten or twelve gravities, devouring diffuse matter, tons of interstellar dust and gas. Enormous accelerations, powerful artificial-gravity fields.

…The special theory of relativity was no longer any good—it would end up standing on its head. Decades would pass on the starship, and only months on Earth. And so what if there was no theory—instead there were pi-quanta at superaccelerations, pi-quanta accelerated to near-light velocities, pi-quanta that aged ten, a hundred times more rapidly than was laid down by classical theory. To circumnavigate the entire visible universe in ten or fifteen subjective years and return to Earth a year after takeoff. Overcome space, break the chains of time, make his generation a gift of alien worlds—except that that damned doctor had taken him off acceleration indefinitely, damn him to hell!

“There he lies,” said Panin. “Only he’s depressed.”

“He’s in a bad way,” said Gurgenidze.

“They won’t let him train,” Panin explained.

Sergei raised up his head and saw that Tanya Gorbunova, a second-year cadet from the Remote Control Division, had walked over to him.

“Are you really depressed, Sergei?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Sergei. He remembered that Tanya and Katya were friends, and he began to feel uneasy.

“Sit down by us, Tanya old girl,” said Malyshev.

“No,” said Tanya. “I have to have a talk with Sergei.”

“Ah,” said Malyshev.

Gurgenidze shouted, “Hey, guys, let’s go get the kibitzers!”

They got up and left, and Tanya sat down next to Sergei. She was thin, with lively eyes, and it was remarkably pleasant to look at her, even if she was Katya’s friend.

“Why are you mad at Katya?” she asked.

“I’m not,” Sergei said gloomily.

“Don’t lie,” said Tanya. “You’re mad at her.”

Sergei shook his head and began to look off to the side.

“So you don’t love her.”

“Listen, Tanya,” said Sergei, “do you love your Malyshev?”

“I do.”

“Well, there you are. If you had a fight, I’d try to get you back together.”

“You mean you had a fight?” said Tanya.

Sergei was silent.

“Look, Sergei, if Misha and I have a fight, then of course we make up. Ourselves. But you—”

“We’re not going to make up,” said Sergei.

“So you did have a fight.”

“We’re not going to make up,” Sergei said distinctly, and looked straight into Tanya’s lively eyes.

“But Katya doesn’t even know you and she have had a fight. She doesn’t understand anything, and I feel just terrible about her.”

“Well, what do you want me to do, Tanya? Look at my side of it. The same thing has happened to you, I’ll bet.”

“It happened once,” Tanya agreed. “Only I told him right away.”

“There, you see!” Sergei said happily. “And how did he take it?”

Tanya shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “But he survived.”

She got up, brushed off her skirt, and asked, “They’re really not going to let you pull Gs?”

“Really,” Sergei said, getting up. “Look, it’s all right for you—you’re a girl—but how am I going to tell her something like that?”

“You’d better tell her.”

She turned and walked toward the four-dimensional chess fans, where Misha Malyshev was shouting something about mindless cretins. Sergei called after her, “Tanya…” She stopped and turned around. “I don’t know—maybe this will all blow over. Right now I haven’t got my head together.”

He knew it wouldn’t blow over. And he knew that Tanya realized this. But Tanya smiled and nodded.

After everything that had happened, Sergei wasn’t a bit hungry. He reluctantly dipped his cookies into strong, sweet tea, and listened as Panin, Malyshev, and Gurgenidze discussed the menu. Then they set to eating, and for a few minutes silence reigned at the table. They could hear someone at the next table assert, “These days you can’t write like Hemingway. You’ve got to write concisely, provide maximum information. Hemingway lacks precision.”

“And a good thing, too! Precision belongs in technical encyclopedias.”

“In encyclopedias? Take Strogov’s Road of Roads. Have you read it?”

“‘Precision, precision!’” said someone’s bass. “You yourself don’t even know what—”

Panin put down his fork, looked at Malyshev, and said, “Now tell us about the insides of a whale.”

Before school, Malyshev had worked in a whale-butchering complex.

“Hold it, hold it,” said Gurgenidze.

“I should tell you instead about how they catch cuttlefish off Miao-lieh Tao,” Malyshev proposed.

“Cut it out!” Sergei said irritably.

Everyone looked at him and fell silent. Then Panin said, “This can’t go on, Sergei. Get a grip on yourself.”

Gurgenidze got up and said, “Right! Time for a little snort.”

He went over to the buffet, came back with a decanter of tomato juice, and said excitedly, “Hey, guys, Phu Dat says that on the seventeenth Liakhov is leaving for Interstellar One.”

Sergei at once lifted up his head. “When exactly?”

“The seventeenth,” Gurgenidze repeated. “On the Lightning.”

The photon ship Khius-Lightning was the first manned ram-scoop in the world. It had been two years in construction, and for the last three years the best spacemen had been testing it within the System.

This is it, it’s begun, thought Sergei. He asked, “Do you know the range?”

“Phu Dat says one and a half light-months.”

“Comrade spacemen!” said Malyshev. “We must drink to the occasion.” He ceremoniously poured the tomato juice into their tumblers. “Let us raise our glasses,” he said.

“Don’t forget the salt,” said Panin.

All four clinked glasses and drank. It’s begun, it’s begun, thought Sergei.

“I’ve seen the Khius-Lightning,” said Malyshev. “Last year, when I was interning on the Astericus. It’s enormous.”

“The diameter of the mirror is seven hundred meters,” Gurgenidze said. “Not all that large. But on the other hand the span of the scoop is—get this—six kilometers. And the length from edge to edge is almost eight kilometers.”

Mass, one thousand sixteen metric tons, Sergei recalled mechanically. Average thrust, eighteen megasangers. Cruising speed, eighty megameters per second. Maximum rated acceleration, six G’s. Too little. Maximum rated intake, fifteen wahrs… Too little, too little.

“Navigators,” Malyshev said dreamily, “that’s our craft. We’ll ship out on ones like that.”

“Over the sun from Earth to Pluto!” Gurgenidze said.

Someone at the other end of the hall shouted in a ringing tenor, “Comrades! Did you hear? On the seventeenth the Lightning is leaving for Interstellar One!”

Noise broke out all over the hall. Three cadets from the Command Division got up from the next table and rapidly took to voice.

“The aces are right on course,” said Malyshev, following them with his eyes.

“I’m a simple man, a guileless man,” Panin said suddenly, pouring tomato juice into his glass. “And what I still can’t understand is who needs these stars, anyhow?”

“What do you mean, who needs them?” Gurgenidze asked in surprise.

“Well, the moon is a launching pad and observatory. Venus is for actinides. Mars is for purple cabbage, the atmosphere project, colonization. Wonderful. But what are the stars good for?”

“Do you mean to say you don’t know why Liakhov is going to Interstellar?” Malyshev asked.

“A freak!” said Gurgenidze. “A victim of mutation.”

“Listen,” Panin continued. “I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. Here we are, interstellar spacers, and we go off to UV Ceti. Two and a half parsecs.”

“Two point four,” said Sergei, looking into his glass.

“We travel,” Panin continued. “We travel a long time. Let’s even say there are planets there. We land, we do research, see the seven sails, as my grandfather says.”

“My grandfather has better taste,” Gurgenidze put in.

“Then we start back. We’re old and stiff, and arguing all the time. Or at least Sergei isn’t talking to anyone. And we’re already pushing sixty. Meanwhile on Earth, thanks to Einstein, a hundred and fifty years have gone by. Some bunch of very young-looking citizens meets us, and at first everything is very nice: Music, flowers, and shish kebab. But then I want to go see my home town, Vologda. And it turns out nobody lives there any more. You see, it’s a museum.”

“The Boris Panin Memorial Museum-City,” said Malyshev. “Chock full of memorial plaques.”

“Right,” Panin continued. “Chock full. Anyhow, you can’t live in Vologda, but on the other hand—and will you like that ‘other hand’?—there’s a monument there. A monument to me. I look at myself and inquire why there are horns growing out of my head. I don’t understand the answer. It’s clear only that they aren’t horns. They explain to me that a hundred and fifty years ago I wore a helmet like that. ‘No,’ I say, ‘I never had any such helmet.’ ‘Oh, how interesting!’ says the curator of the museum-city, and he starts making notes. ‘We must inform the Central Bureau for Eternal Memory of this immediately,’ he says. And the words ‘Eternal Memory’ have unpleasant connotations for me. But how can I explain this to the curator?”

“You’re getting carried away,” said Malyshev. “Get back to the point.”

“Anyhow, I begin to understand that I’ve ended up in another alien world. We deliver a report on the results of our expedition, but it gets a curious reception. You see, the results have only a narrow historical interest. Everything has already been known for fifty years, because human beings have been to UV Ceti—that’s where we went, isn’t it?—twenty times by now. And anyhow, they’ve built three artificial planets the size of Earth there. They can make trips like that in two months. You see, they have discovered some new property of space-time which we don’t yet understand and which they call, say, trimpazation. Finally they show us the News of the Day film clip covering the installation of our ship in the Archaeological Museum. We look, we listen…”

“How you do get carried away!” said Malyshev.

“I’m a simple man,” Panin said threateningly. “Now and again my imagination runs free.”

“I don’t like the way you’re talking,” Sergei said quietly.

Panin immediately became serious. “All right,” he said, also quietly. “Then tell me where I’m wrong. Tell me what we need the stars for.”

“Wait,” said Malyshev. “There are two questions here. The first is, what use are the stars?”

“Right, what?” asked Panin.

“The second question is, granting that they do have some use, can we exploit it in the present generation? Right?”

“Right,” said Panin. He was not smiling any longer, and he looked steadily at Sergei. Sergei remained silent.

“I’ll answer the first question,” said Malyshev. “Do you want to know what’s going on in the system of UV Ceti?”

“All right, I want to,” said Panin. “What of it?”

“Well, I myself want to very much. And if I go on wanting for my whole life, and if I go on trying to find out, then before my death—untimely, I hope—I will thank the nonexistent God for creating the stars and filling up my life.”

“Ah!” said Gurgenidze. “How beautiful!”

“You see,” said Malyshev, “we’re talking about human beings.”

“So?” asked Panin, turning red.

“That’s all,” said Malyshev. “First a creature said, ‘I want to eat.’ He wasn’t yet human at that point. But then he said ‘I want to know.’ Then he was a human being.”

“This human being of yours,” Panin said angrily, “still has no clear idea of what’s under his feet, and he’s already snatching at the stars.”

“That’s why he’s a human being,” Malyshev answered. “That’s the way he is. Look, don’t go against the laws of nature. It doesn’t depend on you. There’s a law: the aspiration to find out in order to live inevitably turns into the aspiration to live in order to find out. You, you’re just afraid of acceleration.”

“All right,” said Panin. “So I’ll become a teacher. I’ll plumb the depths of children’s souls for the sake of everyone. But for whose sake are you going to find out about the stars?”

“That’s the second question,” Malyshev began, but here Gurgenidze jumped up and started yelling, with eyes flashing, “You want to wait until they invent your trimpazation? So wait! I don’t want to wait! I’m going to the stars!”

“Bah,” said Panin. “Quiet down.”

“Don’t worry,” Sergei said without raising his eyes. “They won’t send you on a starship.”

“And why not?” inquired Panin,

“Who needs you?” shouted Gurgenidze. “Go sit on the Moon run!”

“They’ll pity your youth,” said Sergei. “As for whose sake will we find out about the stars… for our own, for everyone’s. Even for yours. But you won’t take part in it. You’ll make your discoveries in the newspapers. You’re afraid of acceleration.”

“Hold on, guys,” Malyshev said anxiously. “This is a purely theoretical discussion.”

But Sergei knew that another moment and he would start swearing and would try to prove that he wasn’t a jock. He got up and quickly left the dining hall.

“Had enough?” Gurgenidze said to Panin.

“Well,” said Panin, “in a situation like this, in order to remain a human being, you’ve got to act like an animal.”

He grabbed Gurgenidze by the neck and bent him in two. There no longer was anyone in the dining hall, except for the three aces from the Command Division, who were clinking glasses of tomato juice by the counter. They were drinking to Liakhov, to Interstellar One.

Sergei Kondratev went straight to the videophone. First I’ve got to straighten things out, he thought. Katya first. Oh, what a mess it’s all turned out to be! Poor Katya. Poor me, for that matter.

He took the receiver off the cradle and stopped, trying to remember the number for Katya’s room. And suddenly he dialed the number for Valentin Petrov. Until the last moment he was thinking about how he had to talk with Katya right away, so he was silent for a second or two, looking at the lean face of Petrov which had appeared on the screen. Petrov too was silent, arching his sparse eyebrows. Sergei said, “Are you busy?”

“Not particularly,” said Petrov.

“I have something to talk about. I’ll come over right away.”

“Do you need Volume Seven?” Petrov said, squinting. “Come on over. I’ll call someone else. Maybe we should invite Kan?”

“No,” said Sergei. “It’s too early. Just ourselves for now.”