It was a thousand tortures all at once. I remembered reading that some
worlds were so dense that a steel bar would flow like liquid. I felt like
the steel bar. I felt as if I was on the point of collapsing into the
constituent elements of my body, but something was stubbornly holding
me together to suffer more.
I never thought of the others below suffering the same thing. There comes
a point when nothing exists but one's own pain -- it shuts out the rest
of the universe.
I clung at first to the idea that this couldn't last long. Soon, however,
I had to give that up. To the creature I had been before I started the
blast, a few seconds were a mere breath of existence. But now every
instant was an eternity of agony.
I was actually praying for the last dregs of fuel to be used up and the
deceleration to stop. Instead of wishing we had more fuel I wished we
had less and that the ordeal would be over.
I watched the dials every millimeter of the way. I split their remaining
traverse into imaginary divisions, so that I could tell myself:
Now
there's only a quarter to go. An eighth. A sixteenth. A thirty-second . . .
I prepared myself for the awful moment of helplessness I'd been anticipating
the whole trip -- the moment when the drive stopped and the ship went on
and I couldn't do a thing about it. I was both dreading it and waiting
impatiently for it. When the needles touched the mark my impatience for
the ordeal to be over had almost won, and I tried to draw in a breath
of thankfulness.
But it didn't come, for though the instruments said the fuel was finished
-- the blast went on.
I looked around the dials again, thinking that under the strain I had
miscalculated. There wasn't a simple 30-20-10-0 type of gauge -- you had
to balance two or three things to calculate the actual quantity of fuel
left. I was still right. There was
no
fuel left.
And the drive still went on.
So there was a safety margin. After all, there might be enough. In one
blinding instant I experienced every emotion I had ever experienced
in my life. There was wild hope that we were going to be safe after
all. There was fury that we had been tricked, that all my calculations
had been ruined by this revelation that there had been something in
reserve. There was an apathetic desire that we would crash and die and
it would all be over. There was misery, self-pity, regret, disgust, fear.
Everything that was in me was being squeezed out. I was an organ on which
every stop was out, every note sounding together in shattering cacophony.
I realized that if I lived through this any horror that ever happened
to me subsequently would be a pale ghost beside it -- but that thought
was swept away by the passionate conviction that no one, nothing, could
live through this. I was dead, we were all dead, squirming in our last
agony like a crushed insect.
And then, unexpectedly, came a blessed release. The torture went on,
but it suddenly seemed unimportant. I could think again. I could wonder
whether the extra fuel was a mere accident, the result of faulty equipment
on the lifeship, or if it was a deliberately concealed reserve which
every lifeship had, a safety margin to turn the impossible into the
just barely possible. I could think of Leslie and hope fervently that
what had happened to Mary Stowe hadn't happened to her. I could marvel
that our rocket linings had stood the strain. I could think gleefully
of what I might, after all, be able to say to Sammy about whether we
had been lucky or not.
And just as I realized that the thousand-to-one chance had swelled
and swelled until it threatened to explode, we crashed. I had time to
appreciate no more than the fact that we were down, when I bounced out
of the couch as if I'd fallen on it from a great height, and smashed
the dials in front of me with my face.
When I became conscious again, two things registered at once, jamming each
other. There was gravity; and I couldn't see. For a second or two they
fought with each other, then a feeling of peace and relief flowed over me.
Even before I knew I wasn't blind, I realized that I'd much rather be alive
and blind than not alive at all. So it was with real pleasure that I found
that even through closed eyelids and bandages I could see light. It must
be bright. This was Mars, lit by the new, brighter sun.
I moved, and though I was sore all over it was quite a pleasant soreness
-- like rest after long, back-breaking labor. My arms, my legs, my head,
everything moved. I was in bed, and the sheets were cool.
"Leslie," I said. I don't know how I knew she was there, but I did.
I drew my arms clear of the sheets, ignoring the stiffness, reached out --
and Leslie was in them.
"Bill," she whispered. I sensed her bending over me, and her lips brushed
mine lightly. I felt her anxiously. She had an arm in a sling, but as far
as her knees I couldn't feel anything else wrong.
"No, I'm all right," she said. "So are you, except for perhaps a scar
or two that'll make you look distinguished."
For long seconds we just held each other. But then I had to ask:
"How many of us are safe?"
She laughed breathlessly. "All," she said. "Every one. Sammy, Harry, Bessie,
Morgan, Betty, the Stowes. And you and me. The lifeship didn't come through
too well, but . . ."
"The other ships?" I demanded. "How many of them are getting through?"
"Hundreds," she said lightly. "They're dropping all over Mars. Most of them
are dropping too hard, though. Don't think of that now, Bill. We don't know
the picture yet. We don't know how many lifeships are going to land safely,
but you were right enough -- it can only be one out of quite a lot."
She laughed again, and I felt her lay her cheek against my bandaged face.
"Still, with you piloting the ship, how could we help but be the one?"
One Too Many
1
"You and I ought to be friends, Bill," said Alec Ritchie, in his usual
good-humored tone, "because the two best-looking girls in what's left
of the human race come and visit us."
I grinned involuntarily. "Is that a good reason?" I asked. "Anyway, I didn't
know I was being unfriendly."
"You weren't," Ritchie said cheerfully, "but you don't like me and you make
only halfhearted attempts to hide it."
I didn't answer that, because it was perfectly true. Ritchie was one
of those fortyish, stocky, even-tempered men who laugh a lot with their
faces but never with their eyes, and whom hardly anyone ever does like
very much. Lieutenant Porter was dead, killed in the lifeship crash
that had broken Ritchie's leg, but he probably hadn't liked Ritchie
either. Why he had chosen Ritchie and brought him to Mars was all too
obvious. Ritchie's daughter Aileen was almost certainly one of the two
most beautiful girls on Mars, just as he said.
Whether Leslie was the other I couldn't say. I was biased. Besides, I hadn't
seen all the others. Neither had Ritchie, but he was evidently prepared
to guess. I imagined he would al- ways be ready to guess, particularly
if there was any percentage in it. Coming to Mars would have made no
difference to that.
Earth by this time was dead, boiled sterile. Ritchie and I were two of
the few thousand lucky people who had not only got a place on one of the
lifeships but had also landed safely on Mars. Fairly safely, anyway.
And Mars?
Take one small, moribund planet, cold, dry, brittle, dark, and cheerless.
Turn on spit for two months, one complete turn every twenty-four and a half
hours. Serve piping hot to fourteen thousand hungry and uncritical guests
just in from space.
And don't blame any remarks they may make on Emily Post.
When all that extra heat from the new, brighter sun first hit Mars,
practically all the water on the planet, whether it was ice, liquid,
or mixed with the dust of erosion in the dull, bodiless mud of Mars,
had been lifted right up into the atmosphere. A lot of the dust went
with it. There were black clouds, sandstorms, dust storms, and, as soon
as the particle-laden water vapor hit streams of colder air, torrents of
muddy rain. It couldn't have been an altogether pleasant time for the
seven thousand people who had been on Mars at the time -- the colony
which had existed before the big migration became necessary.
But at that time I had been mainly concerned with getting my lifeship
and the ten people in it to Mars, whatever the conditions there were
like. That was enough to worry about without looking for more.
Well, I'd done that. That worry was over. Now all I wanted to do was
stay in bed for twenty years or so, smiling modestly when people came
to visit me and tell me what a magnificent job I'd done.
Sammy came to visit me and told me: "You've been swinging the lead
long enough, Bill. While you still had those bandages over your eyes
there might have been some excuse, but now it's high time you stopped
malingering and started earning your keep."
Behind me, Ritchie laughed uproariously. "That's telling him," he spluttered
happily.
"This is a private discussion, mister," said Sammy coldly. "Bill's a friend
of mine. We've been through a lot. We understand each other. If we did happen
to want your opinion, we'd ask for it."
Sammy clearly didn't like Ritchie either. Ritchie merely laughed again.
He never lost his temper.
"Where's Leslie?" I asked Sammy.
"She's working, pinhead. Don't you know yet only one can get away from
the job at a time? Work Party No. 94 can't spare two people to come and
hold your hand, even if you are pretending to be dying."
"What's the job you're doing?"
"Digging holes," said Sammy succinctly.
"And filling them in again?" I asked, because that seemed to be the
implication.
"No, we don't have to do that. The wind does it for us."
"Who's in charge?"
"Of the whole show, or just 94?"
In the hospital we didn't know much about the general situation. No one
had time to explain it to us.
"You tell me, Sammy," I suggested, "taking it I know but nothing."
"You don't have to tell me that," Sammy assured me. "You always were
an ignorant cuss. Well, such government as there is at the moment is on
the additive principle. You know, you start with a hut, build two rooms
onto it, then a corridor all around, then an east wing, then a hall,
a west wing, some more corridors and an annex, all carefully planned
so that every time you want to go to the lavatory you have to go up and
down six flights of stairs and walk three miles along passages.
"Viz -- the original colony had its own administration, of course, and
when the big spaceships got here the top brass added themselves onto that,
and when the lifeships arrived the lieutenants were added onto
that
,
so that now -- "
He interrupted himself and asked belligerently: "Do you follow that,
or can't you understand a simple explanation?"
I grinned. "Now tell me who's in charge of 94."
"Me, until they throw you out of here. Leslie, when I'm not around."
"So I'm still the boss, am I?"
"I wouldn't say that, but you're still supposed to take the rap for anything
that goes wrong, if that's what you mean. Lifeship crews are staying together
as units, lieutenants in charge. Sometimes a work party wants a different
lieutenant, or a lieutenant wants a different work party, and there's
a switch. But that isn't happening often."
"Surprising," I commented, "but good to hear all the same."
"You mean, Sammy," said Ritchie from the next bed, "that as far as
the work parties are concerned these so-called lieutenants are still
the little tin gods -- no chance for anyone else to step in and run
things? No offense, Bill."
Sammy turned a cold eye on Ritchie again. "I thought I told you this
was a private discussion," he observed. "And my name's Hoggan."
"Pleased to meet you," said Ritchie affably. "My name's Ritchie."
Sammy's sense of humor almost got the better of him. He nearly laughed.
He was hard put to it to remember he didn't like Ritchie and retort bluntly:
"All right, Ritchie. You have my permission to exist. But do it quietly,
will you? I want to talk to Bill."
"Go ahead," said Ritchie airily.
Sammy stared at him for a moment, then turned back to me. "Seriously,"
he said, "there isn't much need for government just now, and by the time
we do need it there'll be something better. On the whole, things would
be all right but for -- Holy Moses, what's this?"