Orbitsville

fourteen

“We’re going back,” Garamond announced flatly.

He studied the faces of his executive staff, noting how they were reacting. Some looked at him with open amusement, others stared downwards into the grass, seemingly embarrassed. Behind them, further along the hillside, the great scarred hulk of the Bissendorf shocked the eye with its incongruity, and beyond it microscopic figures moved on the plain in the rituals of a ball game. The sun was directly overhead, as always, creating only an occasional flicker of diamond-fire on the dark blue waters of the lakes which banded the middle distance. Garamond began to feel that his words had been absorbed by Orbitsville’s green infinities, sucked up cleanly before they reached the edge of the irregular ring in which the group was sitting, but he resisted the urge to repeat himself.

“It’s a hell of a long way,” Napier said, finally breaking the heavy silence. His statement of the obvious, Garamond knew, constituted a question.

“We’ll build aircraft.”

O’Hagan cleared his throat. “I’ve already thought of that, Vance. We have enough workshop facilities still intact to manufacture a reasonable subsonic aircraft, and the micropedia can give us all the design data, but the distance is just too great. You run into exactly the same problem as with wheeled vehicles. Your aircraft might do the trip in three or four years — except that we haven’t the resources to build a plane which can fly continuously for that length of time. And we couldn’t transport major repair facilities.” O’Hagan glanced solemnly around the rest of the group, reproving them for having left it to him to deal with a wayward non-scientist.

Garamond shook his head. “When I said we are going back, I didn’t mean all of us, in a body. I meant that I am going back, together with any of the crew who are sufficiently determined to make it — even if that means only half-a-dozen of us.”

“But…”

“We’re going to build a fleet of perhaps ten aircraft. We’re going to incorporate as much redundancy as is compatible with good aerodynamics. We’re going to fly our ten machines towards Beachhead City, and each time one of them breaks down we’re going to take the best components out of it and put them in the other machines, and we’re going to fly on.”

“There’s no guarantee you’ll get there, even with the last aircraft.”

“There’s no guarantee I won’t.”

“I’m afraid there is.” O’Hagan’s pained expression had become even more pronounced. “There’s this problem of direction which we have already discussed. Unless you’ve got a really accurate bearing on Beachhead City there’s no point in setting out.”

“I’m not worried about getting a precise bearing,” Garamond said, making a conscious decision to be enigmatic. He was aware that in the very special circumstances of the Bissendorf’s final flight the whole concept of command structure, of the captain-and-crew relationship, could easily lose its validity. It was necessary at this stage to re-establish himself in office without the aid of insignia or outside authority.

“How do you propose to get one?”

“I propose instructing my science staff to attend to that chore for me. There’s an old saying about the pointlessness of owning a dog and doing your own barking.” Garamond fixed a steady challenging gaze on O’Hagan, Sammy Yamoto, Morrison, Schneider and Denise Serra. He noted with satisfaction that they were responding as he had hoped — already there were signs of abstraction, of withdrawal to a plateau of thought upon which they became hunters casting nets for a quarry they had never seen but would recognize at first sight.

“While they’re sorting that one out,” Garamond continued, speaking to Napier before any of the science staff could voice objections, “we’ll convene a separate meeting of the engineering committee. The ship has to be cut up to get the workshop floors level, but in the meantime I want the design definition drawn up for the aircraft and the first production tapes prepared.” He got to his feet and walked towards the improvised plastic hut he was using as an office. Napier, walking beside him, gave a dry cough which was out of place issuing from the barrel of his chest.

“TB again?” Garamond said with mock sympathy.

“I think you’re going too fast, Vance. Concentrating too much on the nuts and bolts, and not thinking enough about the human element.”

“Be more specific, Cliff.”

“A lot of the crew have got the Orbitsville syndrome already. They don’t see any prospect of getting back to Beachhead City, and many of them don’t even want to get back. They see no reason why they shouldn’t set up a community right here, using the Bissendorf as a mine for essential materials.”

Garamond stopped, shielded his eyes and looked beyond the ship towards the plot of land, marked with a silver cross, where forty men and women had been buried. “I can understand their feelings, and I’m not proposing to ride herd on those who want to stay. We’ll use volunteers only.”

“There could be less than you expect.”

“Surely some of them, a lot of them, have reasons for getting back.”

“The point is that you aren’t proposing to take them back, Vance. The planes won’t make it all the way, so you’re asking them to choose between staying here in a strong sizeable community with resources of power, materials and food — or being dropped somewhere between here and Beachhead City in groups of ten or less with very little to get them started as independent communities.”

“Each plane will have to carry an iron cow and a small plastics plant.”

“It’s still a hell of a lot to ask.”

“I’ll also guarantee that a rescue mission will set out as soon as I get back.”

“If you get back.”

A dark thought crossed Garamond’s mind. “How about you, Cliff? Are you coming with me?”

“I’m coming with you. All I’m trying to do is make you realize there’s more to this than finding the right engineering approach.”

“I realize that already, but right now I’ve got all the human problems I can handle.”

“Others have wives and families they want to get back to.”

“That’s the point — I haven’t.”

“But…” “How long do you think Aileen and Chris will survive after I’m presumed dead? A week? A day?” Garamond forced himself to speak steadily, despite the grief which kept up a steady thundering inside his head. “The only reason I’m going back is that I have to kill Liz Lindstrom.”

Although it had been equipped and powered to carry out one emergency landing on the surface of a planet, the Bissendorf was in a supremely unnatural condition when beached with its longitudinal axis at right angles to the pull of gravity. The interior layout was based on the assumption that, except during short spells of weightlessness, there would be acceleration or retardation which would enable the crew to regard the prow as pointing ‘upwards’ and to walk normally on all its levels. Now the multitudinous floors of the vessel had become vertical walls to which were attached, in surrealistic attitudes, clusters of consoles, pedestals, desks, chairs, lockers, beds, tables and several hundred machines of varying types and capabilities. Because design allowance had been made for periods of free-fall — most small items, including paperwork, were magnetically or physically clamped in position — very little material had fallen to the lowermost side of the hull, but many of the ship’s resources could not be tapped until key areas were properly orientated to the ground.

Teams of forcemasters using valency cutters and custom-built derricks began slicing the Bissendorf’s structure into manageable sections and rotating them to horizontal positions. The work was slowed down by the need to sever and reconnect power channels, but within a week the cylinder of the central hull had been largely converted into a cluster of low circular or wedge-shaped buildings. Each was roofed with a plastic diaphragm and linked by cable to power sources on the ground or within the butchered ship. The entire complex was surrounded by an umbra of tents and extemporized plastic sheds which gave it the appearance of an army encampment.

Garamond had placed maximum priority on the design and workshop facilities which were to create his aircraft, and the work was advancing with a speed which would have been impossible even a century earlier. The assembly line was already visible as nine sets of landing skids surmounted by the sketchy cruciforms of the basic airframes.

After weighing all considerations, the computers from the spaceship had decreed that the stressed-skin principle of aircraft construction, universal to aviation, should be abandoned in favour of the frame-and-fabric techniques employed in the Wright Brothers era. This permitted most of the high technology and engineering subtlety to be concentrated in a dozen pieces of alloy per ship, and the tape-controlled radiation millers hewed these from fresh billets in less than a day. The plastic skinning could then be carried out to the standards of a good quality furniture shop, and the engines — standard magnetic pulse prime movers — fitted straight from the shelf. It was the availability of engines, of which there were twenty-one in the Bissendorf’s inventory, which had been the main parameter in deciding upon a fleet of nine twin-engined ships which would set out upon the journey with three powerplants in reserve.

Garamond, sitting alone in the prismatic twilight at the entrance to his tent, was halfway through a bottle of whisky when he heard someone approaching. The nights never became truly dark under the striped canopy of Orbitsville’s sky, and he was able to recognize the compact figure of Denise Serra while she was still some distance away. His annoyance at being disturbed faded somewhat but he sat perfectly still, making no sign of welcome. The whisky was his guarantee of sleep and to bring about the desired effect it had to be taken in precise rhythmic doses, with no interruptions to the ritual. Denise reached the tent, stood without speaking for a moment while she assessed his mood, then sat in the grass at the opposite side of the entrance. Appreciating her silence, Garamond waited till his instincts prompted him to take another measure of the spirit’s cool fire. He raised the bottle to his lips.

“Drinking that can’t be good for you,” Denise said.

“On the contrary — it’s very good for me.”

“I never got to like whisky. Especially the stuff Burton makes.”

Garamond took his slightly delayed drink. “It’s all right if you know how to use it.”

“Use it? Aren’t you supposed to enjoy it?”

“It’s more important to me to know how to use it.”

She sighed. “I’m sorry. I’ve heard about your wife being…”

“What did you want, Denise?”

“A child, I think.”

Garamond knew himself to have been rendered emotionally sterile by despair for his family, but he still retained enough contact with the mainstream of humanity to feel obliged to cap his bottle and set it aside.

“It’s a bad time,” he said.

“I know, but that’s the way I feel. It must be this place. It must be the Orbitsville syndrome that Cliff keeps talking about. We’re here, and it’s all around us, for ever, and things I used to think important now seem trivial. And, for the first time in my life, I want a child.”

Garamond stared at the girl through the veils of soft blue air, and a part of his mind — despite the pounding chaos of the rest — was intensely aware of her. It was difficult to pick out a single special attribute of Denise Serra, but the overall effect was right. She was a neat, complete package of femininity, intelligence and warmth, and he felt ashamed of having nothing to offer her.

“It’s still a bad time,” he repeated.

“I know. We all know that, but some of the other women are drinking untreated water. It’s only a matter of time till they become pregnant.” Her eyes watched him steadily and he remembered how, in that previous existence, it had given him pleasure to look at her.

“Haven’t you already got a partner, Denise?”

“You know I haven’t.”

That’s it into the open, he thought. For me to know that Denise Serra, among all the other female crew members, had no liaisons I would have to have been taking a special interest in her.

“I guess I did know.” Garamond hesitated. “Denise, I feel…” “Honoured?”

“I think that’s the word I would have used.”

“Say no more, Vance. I know what it means when somebody starts off by feeling honoured. I’ve done it myself.” She stood up in one easy movement.

Garamond tried for something less abrupt, and knew he was being clumsy. “Perhaps in a year, a few months…”

“The special unrepeatable offer will be closed before then,” Denise said with an uncharacteristic harshness in her voice. “Have you thought about what you’re going to do if we can’t get a bearing on Beachhead City, if your flight never gets off the ground?”

“I’m counting on your getting that bearing.”

“Don’t!” She turned quickly, walked away for a few paces, then came back and knelt close to him. “I’m sorry, Vance.”

“You haven’t done anything to apologize for.”

“I think I have. You see, we’ve pretty well solved the problem. Dennis O’Hagan didn’t want to say anything to you till he’d made a check on the math.”

“But…” Garamond’s attention was fully captured. “How is it going to be done?”

“Mike Moncaster, our particles man, came up with the idea. You know about delta particles?”

“I’ve heard of delta rays.”

“No, that’s historic stuff. Delta particles — deltons — are a component of cosmic rays discovered only a few years ago. During his last leave Mike got himself seconded on to the team investigating cosmic ray refraction by the force field which seals Beachhead City aperture. They were glad to have him because he’s pretty good on the Conservation of Strangeness and…”

“Denise! You started to tell me how you were going to get a bearing.”

“That’s what I’m doing. Deltons don’t interact much. That’s why it took so long to find them, but it also means they could travel ten or fifteen million kilometres through the air. Mike is fairly certain they get refracted by the force lens, just like other components of cosmic rays, so we’re going to build a big delton detector. Two of them, in fact. One behind the other to give us co-ordinates. All we need then is to pick up a delton, just one, and going back the way it came will give us a straight line home.”

“Do you think it’ll work?”

“I think so.” Denise’s voice was kind. “What we still have to determine is how long we’re likely to wait before a particle comes this way. It could be quite a while if things aren’t in our favour, but we can swing the odds by making the detectors as big as possible, or by erecting a whole bank of them.”

Garamond felt the distance between himself and Elizabeth Lindstrom shrink a little and the joyful sickness spurted within him. “This… is good news.”

“I know,” Denise said. “My dowry.”

“You’ll have to explain that one.” “The first time you ever noticed me was on board ship, when I gave the news you wanted to hear about going through the aperture.” She laughed ruefully. “Being a pragmatist, I must have decided that if it worked once it would work again.”

Garamond moved his hand uncertainly in the dimness and touched her cheek. “Denise, I…”

“Let’s not play games, Vance.” She pushed his hand away and stood up. “I was childish, that’s all.”

Later, while waiting for sleep to relieve him of the burden of identity, Garamond was acutely aware — for the first time in months — that the hard, angry vacuum of space began only a short distance beneath his cot. The feeling persisted into surrealistic dreams in which he had a sense of being poised, dangerously, on the rim of a precipice, with a kind of moral vertigo drawing him over the edge.