Chapter 7 One Alone

Two minutes can be a very short time. It can zip by with lightning rapidity when your team is behind in the last quarter of a football game. It can seem like two seconds when you’re rushing to class before the bell rings. It can be gone before you realize it when you’re in the middle of an interesting discussion and you suddenly learn it’s time to go home.

Or it can be a very, very long time.

When you’re tight in the grip of acceleration, it can be a lifetime.

Ted fought it this time. He struggled against it with every muscle in his body. His teeth clenched tightly, and the cords in his neck stood out like thick wires. His eyes were squeezed shut, filled with a searing pain that threatened to push them through the back of his skull. The force pressed against him, and he retreated back into the depth of the cushion, his mind fighting the blackness that lurked on the fringes of his consciousness.

Two minutes, he kept repeating to himself. Two minutes and it’ll be all over. Two minutes minutes minutes minutes...

The pound of the jets picked up the chant in his head, echoed it back to him in a thousand roaring voices that filled the cabin of the ship. The bulkheads vibrated in response to the unleashed fury of the rockets.

The pain reached deep into his skull, probed at his brain, curled along his spine.

Two minutes. Two minutes.

It was easier to black out. It was far easier to succumb to the incessant force. He fought it tenaciously, like a man holding to the tail of an enraged tiger.

And then it was over. The two minutes had passed. They were dead, and the trail of fire that had lanced across the sky had died with them.

Ted lay back on the couch, his eyes still closed, his body covered with a fine sweat. His breathing was coarse and uneven. He lay there and rested, feeling the strength seep back into his exhausted muscles. He thought briefly of Jack, wondering if the acceleration would have finished his collarbone. He did not think of the Moon. The Moon was a distant sphere in the sky, something cold and bleak, something inaccessible. He did not think of it at all, and it never even remotely occurred to him that he was now speeding for the Moon with fantastic rapidity.

It seemed hot in the cabin, and he knew this was ridiculous because the temperature was undoubtedly controlled by air conditioning. Still, it seemed hot. He knew he was drenched with perspiration, but he made no move to wipe the moisture from his face; he lay there, instead, with one arm dangling over the side of the couch, his legs widespread, his mouth open.

The silence seemed to press on his ears like a physical force, and his mind toyed idly with the idea of lack of sound being noisier than the noisiest noise.

Merola’s voice cut through the silence. “Everybody okay?”

“Forbes here.”

“Gehardt here.”

“Phelps here.”

Ted hesitated, wondering if he had the strength to speak. He reached for his voice as a man would reach for a life raft in a raging sea. “B-Baker here, sir,” he said, surprised at the sound that came from his throat.

He made no attempt to change his position. He lay there like a dead man, his eyes still closed, his body motionless.

He heard a faint rustle from somewhere below him and then Merola said, “Don’t try to get up yet, Dr. Phelps. Rest awhile.”

“I thought I might give everyone a quick check,” the physician replied.

“That can wait. Rest for now.”

The voices came to Ted from somewhere far below him, like voices partially realized in a fragment of a dream.

Merola cleared his throat, and his voice sounded in the cabin like the monotonous roll of a solemn drum. There was no emotion in it, no attempt at rhetoric.

“We’re on our way to the Moon,” he said. “Anything can happen from this point on. If we reach the Moon, half our battle is over. If we don’t...” He paused, and the stillness crowded its way into the cabin again. “If we don’t, there’ll be others after us. We’ve had a bad start, and that puts one strike against us.”

Ted opened his eyes and looked down over the side of the couch. Merola was sitting up in his couch, his hands gripping the sides, his head staring at the deck.

“One of our men isn’t with us,” Merola went on, and Ted felt a hot flash of futility wash over his body. “He was a valuable man, and he rounded out a carefully selected crew. We’ll have to get along as best we can without him.”

Ted sighed heavily. Merola was talking about Jack as if he’d been killed in the line of duty. An impatience welled up inside him, and he wanted to scream the truth at the captain.

“Sir,” he started.

“Talbot was to have taken the place of any man in the crew if we ran into any trouble. Without that spare...”

“Sir,” Ted interrupted.

Merola looked up slowly, and his voice was extremely tired when he spoke. “What is it, Baker?”

“I just wanted you to know that...”

He stopped. What did he want them to know? What difference would it make now? They were already in space, headed for the Moon, and they apparently considered their loss an irreparable one.

“If you’re going to apologize,” Forbes cut in, “just skip it. The damage is already done.”

“Easy, Dan,” Merola said.

“Well, confound it!” Forbes shouted. “I’m plain burned up. How anyone could have the gall to assume he was a better man than the person who was specifically chosen for a job is just...”

“There’s no sense blowing your top,” Merola said. “He’s here, and we’ll have to make the best of it.”

“You can make the best of it,” Forbes said bitterly. “I’m just going to try and forget he’s around.”

Ted had the strange feeling that he was eavesdropping on a conversation he wasn’t supposed to be hearing. The men kept talking about him as if he weren’t there! He was beginning to feel like a rivet in the hull of the ship.

“Dan,” Dr. Phelps put in mildly.

“What?” Forbes’s voice was harsh.

“He’s only a boy. He made a mistake. Boys often make mistakes. If we let it upset us, we’ll be endangering the Moon trip.”

“Well, it has upset me, Doc. I’m sorry, but it’s upset me a lot. Suppose something does go wrong? What then? What’ll we do then?”

“Sir,” Ted said, “if I may...”

“Don’t give me the ‘sir’ business, Baker,” Forbes snapped. “You’re been sirring everyone like a recruit in Napoleon’s army.”

“I’m sorry, sir. I just...”

“The ‘sir’ routine doesn’t cut any ice with me, and I think George feels the same way. If you’d really had any respect for your superior officers, you wouldn’t have pulled such a fool stunt.”

“That’s just it, sir. I didn’t...”

Forbes swung out of his couch, his eyes flaring. “I said cut out the ‘sir’ routine! It’s coming out of my ears!”

“Dan, Dan,” Dr. Phelps interceded.

Forbes clenched his teeth and turned away from Ted. “I’m sorry, Doc. I’m a fine example of mental stability, am I not?”

“It’s not that,” Dr. Phelps said softly. “The boy is with us now. Believe me, I don’t like the idea of his forcible intrusion any more than you do.” He shrugged. “We can’t let it upset our equilibrium, though. Our crew was to have consisted of five men. We will get along with four.”

“Exactly,” Dr. Gehardt said, “as long as the boy doesn’t get in our way.”

Merola, who had been sitting thoughtfully with his chin cupped in his hands, suddenly said, “Maybe we’re tackling this in the wrong way.”

Ted’s heart skipped an apprehensive beat.

“How do you mean?” Forbes asked.

“Baker’s not exactly a complete loss, you know.”

“No?” Forbes asked derisively.

“I’ve been thinking,” Merola went on. “The boy has had training. After all, he’s within a year of being graduated from the Academy. It’s not as if we’d taken along someone who knew nothing at all about...”

“What are you driving at, George?” Forbes asked. “I hope it’s not what I’m thinking.”

“Well, what are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking you plan to substitute Baker for Jack.”

Merola shrugged sheepishly. “Well...”

“And I’m thinking I don’t like the idea. Not one bit. It smells from here to Mars. That’s what I’m thinking.”

Dr. Gehardt nodded his head. “Dan is right, George. I quite agree with him.”

“I’ll have to go along with the others,” Dr. Phelps said. “We’d be playing right into the boy’s hand otherwise.”

“Of course,” Forbes said triumphantly. “He obviously stowed away with the intention of taking Jack’s place. If we give it to him as a present, we’ll be condoning his action.”

Merola smiled. “Instead,” he said, “we’ll simply cut off our noses.”

“Huh?” Merola’s attitude threw Forbes off balance.

“To spite our faces,” Merola said. “We’ve got someone among us who could conceivably act as a spare. You’ve heard Baker talk about rockets. You know as well as I do that he’s not entirely ignorant on the subject.”

“I’ve also heard him talk about the Moon,” Forbes said caustically.

“All right,” Merola said, nodding, “look at it this way. Suppose we were lost in the jungle and the only person who could lead us out was a guide who had forced his way into the safari. Would you prefer to stay lost, or would you...”

Forbes smiled sardonically. “That’s beautiful logic, Cap,” he said. “Except that the comparison is a false one. We won’t be lost if we refuse to accept Baker’s gracious assistance.”

Merola shrugged, spreading his hands wide. “Suppose we put it to a vote?”

“Suits me fine.”

“All right,” Dr. Phelps said.

Dr. Gehardt nodded his approval.

“There are two courses we can follow,” Merola said. “One: we can forget Baker is with us, in which case we’d treat him like a common stowaway under temporary arrest.”

Ted bit his lip and stared down at the men below him. Outside the speeding ship, the stars passed no judgment. They stared at the shining metal pellet with blind, unwinking eyes.

“Or,” Merola continued, “we can accept him into the crew as an informed member with helpful knowledge. We’ll then suspend the stowaway charges until we get back to Earth.”

“If we get back to Earth under the circumstances,” Forbes put in.

“Shall we vote?” Merola asked. He waited, taking the men’s silence for approval.

Ted crossed his fingers and stared up at the overhead.

“All right,” Merola said, “all those in favor of treating Baker like a member of the crew, say aye.”

Only one voice said, “Aye.” It was Merola’s own.

A significant silence hung on the air in the cabin. Ted squeezed his eyes shut tightly.

“All those in favor of placing Baker under temporary arrest as a stowaway, say aye.”

“Aye.”

“Aye.”

“Aye.”

Again the silence, punctuated only by the heavy breathing of the men.

“I think you’re making a mistake,” Merola said.

Ted turned his head toward the bulkhead. The stars seemed to have gone out suddenly.

The freeze began then.

Ted could compare it to nothing he had ever experienced before. He simply ceased to exist as far as any other member of the crew was concerned. Merola spoke to him only to give instructions and orders, reluctantly abiding by the majority decision of the other men. The rest of the crew ignored him completely. If Ted came within reaching distance of any of the men, they invariably sought another part of the cabin.

During meals, they clustered together into a tight, forbidding knot, their backs to him. It was cold, a coldness generated by men who felt they were doing the right thing, a coldness more complete than that of the void outside the ship.

Ted was utterly miserable.

Coupled with the methodical ostracizing he suffered, he also had to contend with the uncomfortable conditions of space travel. Weightlessness on the short hop to the Station had been a comparative lark. It had become something more than that now.

There was a choice to be had, of course.

You could drift all over the small cabin, feeling like a gas-inflated tube, your stomach threatening to ooze out of your ears every time you moved.

Or you could wear the heavy, magnetized sandals that enabled you to establish the most synthetic of gravities in that they allowed you to walk on the deck if you so chose.

They also allowed you to walk on the bulkheads, or on the overhead, or indeed anywhere that boasted a metal surface.

The trouble was simply that the sandals were so heavy. After ten minutes of struggling around the cabin with them, having to fight free of the magnetic force every time you wanted to lift a foot and place it down again, your leg muscles were simply too tired to hold you up.

Those were the choices, and Ted pardoned his own pun as he mused that neither of them was exactly choice.

Tied in with the problem of motion was the problem of nourishment. Eating was a habit Ted had long become used to. This, and drinking, were simply a matter of form back on Earth, simple processes that could be undertaken with the eyes blindfolded and one hand tied behind the back. Not so in space.

Drinking was not too difficult at all. Naturally, open cups and bottles could not be used. When a liquid is weightless, it simply has no reason to leave a bottle, and it will not pour if the bottle it tilted. On the other hand, if the bottle were shaken, all of the contents would come rushing out in one sudden splash. All liquids were placed in closed containers made of plastic. When the sides of these containers were squeezed, the liquid squirted out.

It meant getting used to tasting milk in squirts rather than gulps, but Ted soon became adjusted to it.

Eating was another matter. When everything is weightless, a beefsteak will float about as aimlessly as will a body. A plate, unfortunately, will follow the same procedure. If a beefsteak were conceivably placed on a platter, then it would promptly float up toward the overhead at the slightest jar. And if someone inadvertently let go of a plate, it too would sail merrily off to another portion of the cabin.

As a result, the plates were made of magnetized metal, so that they clung to any metal surface upon which they were placed. Each plate was approximately two inches deep, with a plastic top covering it. The top was divided into four quarters which slid open at a touch of the finger tips.

Ted soon mastered the process of eating. No sit-down-and-stuff-yourself matter was this, he soon discovered. The food was cooked in a closed broiler. As soon as the broiler was opened, the food had to be speared with a fork immediately. Luckily, the fork utilized friction and not gravity, so there was no danger of a piece of food floating off a fork. After the food was speared, it was transferred to the plate, and the cover immediately put in place. The meal could then be begun.

Whenever a piece of food was desired, one of the quarters was slid open a fraction of an inch, and the fork thrust into that space to spear the food. The opening was then sufficiently enlarged to allow the food on the fork to pass through, and then snapped shut again. Cutting was a little more difficult in that the food had to be speared through the opening, the knife inserted into the slit, the food sliced, the knife withdrawn, the opening made wider, the food taken out, the opening closed. Nor was it possible to lay down a utensil on anything but a metal surface. Ted once put down his knife on a plastic clipboard and promptly had to chase it halfway across the cabin. He finally grasped it when its magnetism caught at the metal bulkhead.

Eating was no longer a pleasant pastime. It was, rather, a full-scale operation. This distressed Ted because he was a boy with an unusually large appetite, and weightlessness somehow took the edge off his hunger. At least, he attributed his loss of appetite to the weightless condition inside the rocket. Eating his meals alone, separate from the other men, may have had something to do with it.

At the end of their first day out from the Station, Ted was physically exhausted. And he soon discovered that sleeping was another pleasure which had been complicated by the peculiar properties of weightlessness.

It was conceivably possible to simply stretch out in mid-air and go to sleep that way. Barring any sudden jar, the body would simply hang there until it drifted off to sleep. Ted found this wasn’t the case. Every time he breathed, he found himself drifting over toward one or another of the bulkheads. When he finally settled himself close to one of the bulkheads, preventing any further drifting, he was surprised to discover he was slowly being sucked toward the intake grill of the air-conditioning system.

He gave it up as a bad try, and ended up by strapping himself into his couch, where he spent a tossless night — and, as a result, a sleepless one. He was not used to being strapped down in bed. He was a sprawling sleeper, and his inability to turn and toss at will kept him awake most of the night.

That was how he discovered the loose rivet.

He was lying on the couch, the straps across his waist and chest annoying the life out of him. He stared up at the overhead, tracing the pattern of rivets with his eyes. He decided to count the rivets, using them as substitutes for sheep. He started with the first rivet near the instrument panel, working his way aft, over his head, down the side of the bulkhead, and then across the deck. When he was back from where he’d started, he’d counted one hundred and thirteen rivets, and he then began on the rivets that ran athwartships.

He had reached one hundred and fifty-four when he saw the rivet hanging from the overhead. At first he thought his mind was just fuzzy from lack of sleep. He stared at the loose rivet, trying to decide whether its apparent looseness was simply an optical illusion, a trick being played by the shadows and the flickering lights of the instrument panel.

Undecided, he loosened his safety belts and shoved off from the couch, floating quickly across the cabin to the overhead. He hung beneath the questioned rivet, his eyes close to the overhead. Tentatively, he reached out to touch it, surprised when it almost fell out in his hands.

“Captain Merola!” he called.

The steady breathing of the other men filled the cabin, giving it the warm atmosphere of sleepy contentment.

“Captain Merola!” he shouted, his voice louder this time.

“Hm? Huh? What?” Merola stirred on his couch, straining against the straps for an instant and then sinking back against the cushion.

“Captain!” Ted pushed his fist against the overhead, dropped quickly to the captain’s couch. “Captain, wake up!”

Merola turned his head away from Ted. “No,” he mumbled. “Go ’way.”

Ted grabbed his shoulder and began to shake the man. “Come on,” he pleaded, “wake up.”

Merola’s eyes popped open suddenly, alert instantly. He twisted his head to one side, the alert cocker spaniel look on his face again. “What is it, Baker?” he asked quickly.

“A loose rivet, sir. In the overhead.”

“What!”

“Yes, sir. I just happened to see it while...”

“Where?”

Ted pointed. “Up there, sir. I can show you.”

Merola had already unbuckled his belts and he sat upright now. “Dan!” he called. “Roll out, Dan. On the double!”

Forbes was up so quickly it seemed as if he had been awake all the time. He swung out of his couch and pushed himself in the direction of the other two.

“What is it, George?” he whispered.

Ted was suddenly excited. The figures hovering in the darkness, the excited whispers, all contributed to a sense of intrigue that was rapidly growing inside him. For a moment, he felt as if he were one of the crew. He felt as he had at the Academy, on the occasions when the boys had staged midnight raids on the mess hall.

“Baker’s found a loose rivet. Where is it, Baker?”

Ted shoved off for the overhead, mentally counting the rivets as he drifted by. “This one, sir.”

Both Merola and Forbes were instantly beside him.

“It’s loose all right,” Merola said. “Almost falling out. Good work, Baker.”

Forbes grunted.

“Well have to pound it back home and then weld some strips over it to keep it in place,” Merola said.

“You can get back to bed,” Forbes told Ted.

“Can’t I help, sir?”

“Get back to bed,” Forbes insisted.

Ted reluctantly drifted down to his couch, tightening the belts over his body. He saw a flashlight go into play as Merola rummaged in the tool locker for the equipment he needed. The two officers spoke in hushed whispers, reluctant to wake either of the two doctors.

Ted watched Merola as he pulled a heavy hammer from the locker. “This should do it,” Merola whispered.

“You get started up there,” Forbes whispered back. “I’ll get the torch and the strips.”

“Roger.”

Ted watched Forbes float toward the upright locker that encased the larger tools, as Merola floated up to the troublesome rivet.

“This is going to wake up the whole joint,” Merola whispered.

“Can’t be helped,” Forbes said.

Ted saw Merola bring the heavy hammer back over his shoulder and swing it at the rivet. The steel rang against the heavier metal of the overhead, and Dr. Gehardt mumbled something in his sleep.

“This is going to be tough,” Merola said. “Wish we had a riveting machine.”

“Sure, sure.”

He brought the hammer back and took another healthy swing.

“Hasn’t budged an inch,” he said. He brought the hammer back again, swung it viciously at the rivet. Again, again.

Dr. Gehardt shook his head. “Is anything wrong?” he asked sleepily.

“Just a loose rivet,” Merola said, his voice ragged. “Go on back to sleep, Doc.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, everything’s under control.” He swung the hammer, missing the rivet and the overhead, and banging his clenched fist against the metal. “Tarnation!” he shouted. In anger, he pulled the hammer back and took a wild swing at the rivet. The hammer slammed into the overhead with surprising force, and Merola hurtled backward across the cabin.

“Hey!” he shouted.

Ted struggled to sit upright as Merola darted toward the port bulkhead. There was a dull thud, the sound of bone crashing against metal.

“George!” Forbes shouted.

Ted was erect immediately, his fingers fumbling with the remaining strap around his waist. He unbuckled this and rolled out of the couch, giving the cushion a shove that sent him hurtling across the compartment.

“Dr. Phelps!” Forbes shouted. “Dr. Phelps!”

Dr. Gehardt was out of his couch now, his eyes wide. He dropped to the deck, seemed startled as he bounced up again in a prone floating position. “What is it?” he asked.

Forbes snapped on the overhead fluorescents, and the cabin was suddenly trapped in the glare of the brilliant lights.

“What is it?” Dr. Gehardt repeated. “What is...”

He stopped abruptly as he saw Merola’s limp body floating in the air near the port bulkhead.

Ted looked at Merola, and a clammy hand clutched his stomach and began squeezing. A bright patch of red was spreading over the back of the captain’s head, running over his black hair, streaming down his collar,

“Dr. Phelps!” Forbes screamed again.