The Mile Long Spaceship (14 page)

Connie made a magnificent attempt to keep cool and controlled, but despite her effort, she blew up completely several times during the next few months, once weeping uncontrollably on Dr. Zorin's shoulder, unable to stop although she knew he was making clinical notes of her behavior all the while.

She envied and loved and hated Hank alternately during those last months. He was what she couldn't be, no matter how hard she tried, and she came to realize she was living only for him, pretending for his sake, when in her heart she knew she had long since been eliminated. Hank never mentioned the subject and for him she pretended and the talk never again drifted toward the agonizing possiblity of his going alone.

The group was decreased gradually from four thousand to two thousand. They only became aware of what was happening during the briefing sessions when the auditorium suddenly seemed bare and the fact was brought home that over half of the seats were empty. Supplies kept coming to be checked and stored aboard ship. Time was the worst, ever pressing enemy now, as the tentative date for departure drew nearer and nearer. Connie was becoming as thin as a dieting adolescent, and not only she alone, but also Hank and Phylis and nearly everyone else. Nerves were nearly visible, so close to the surface did they lay. Connie caught herself watching Hank with smouldering eyes as he chewed his food methodically or examined a new magazine with the same casual air of preoccupation he had always maintained.

"Why doesn't he break just once?" she asked herself in resentment. "How can he stay so calm and sure?" But he did and her fury with him mounted and was disguised as nervousness or tiredness or anything else so that he wouldn't suspect.

It would be a matter of weeks, they knew, when the last briefing was held. Less than a fourth of the seats were filled. Connie's wrath vanished as she swelled with pride, realizing that Hank was making it. A part of her would make it, she exulted and closed her eyes in a brief prayer that she would have the kind of strength she knew it would take to keep up the pretence of believing she would also go. He might need her now during these last weeks even if he hadn't before. Indeed it might be that because he was so sure she would go he was able to maintain his implacable calm.

She felt him nudging her and he was grinning and she listened to the remainder of the words being said from the stage. They were to have a holiday. After two months of being on call for twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, they were to have a holiday.

"We'll go to town and we'll swim at the club and we'll have lunch at the Rancho and... and dance... and..." she began counting off on her fingers as she talked excitedly.

"And I'll get a horse and buggy and we'll have a ride right out of a history book," Hank laughed back at her.

"And I'll take the veiling off my tiara and wear my wedding gown to our last formal dinner, Earth style."

"And..."

The day passed by swiftly, leaving only momentary intervals for the pure joy of it to register. The old mare Hank had found somewhere jogged along slowly and Connie snuggled her head against Hank's shoulder contentedly. "It was a gorgeous day, every minute of it," she murmured happily.

"How can you be sure?" Hank yawned. "I don't seem to be able to remember taking time out to ask myself if I was having fun."

"That's the beauty of a day like this. For the rest of your life you can keep scraping and always come up with something new to remember. Darling," she whispered, "I have the feeling that everything will be all right. It's just a feeling of rightness. Know what I mean?"

Hank squeezed her shoulders and planted a kiss on the end of her nose. "I never stopped having it," he said.

They drew up to the first check point where they had to leave the horse and buggy for the farmer to collect in the morning. Before them stretching endlessly lay more of the desert, fenced off and patrolled and studded with concrete bunkers that gleamed whitely under the watchful moon, and only in the far distance was there a glow of light, reflecting back from the luminous sky, where the barracks were and where the ship stood waiting impassively.

"Home again," Hank said, and the lightness of his tone seemed to dissipate as he unconsciously erected the shield he wasn't even aware existed.

Connie felt the tenseness return and knew the holiday hadn't done anything to ease the burdensome pangs of anxiety. She sighed and stepped from the buggy and suddenly she was falling and couldn't stop herself. In the instant it took before she hit the ground she knew her heel had caught in the unaccustomed floor length gown and she even had the wild thought, "So this is how I'll end it all."

Somehow they got her to the infirmary and her mind was as numb as her arm when they administered the local anesthetic. "Broken," the doctor said cryptically and put into motion the actions that would culminate in a cast. Connie couldn't even cry and when Hank tried to comfort her, she turned her bead from him and stared dry eyed at the wall.

Dr. Zorin was the first visitor of the morning and his cheery grin had the effect of changing Connie's self pity into all encompassing fury at the events that had led to her failure. "In the army," Dr. Zorin said, "they call it goldbricking."

"How dare you come in here and insult me now?" Connie flared back at him. He was going through his pockets and automatically she handed him her pen. "Go ahead and put your name on it! Makes you feel smug and superior, I suppose."

Hank entered while she was still railing at his imperturbable bent head as he signed his name with a flourish. "Connie," Hank said and for once there was a quality of near desperation in his voice, "you've had a rough night. Don't take it out on the doctor."

"Oh, shut up!" she snapped at him and handed the pen over without another glance at Zorin who was grinning at Hank.

"Well, I'll leave you two to point the bitter finger of accusation at one another," he said blithely. At the door he stopped again however and added meditatively, "She did furnish the pen, Hank."

The next day the ship got its first static firing test. On her narrow, antiseptic bed Connie felt the building shake and by closing her eyes she could imagine the huge ship quivering like a dog on a leash. It was self-sustaining. Nothing else was to be taken aboard or taken from it. To enter now, one first had to enter the air lock and wait for the exchange of air from outside with air from inside. They brought her news of it daily and it seemed in the week she spent in the infirmary more changes were wrought than in the entire four previous years. The surgery necessary for the urethrane treatment of her arm healed and the heavy cast was exchanged for a lightweight support. They said it wouldn't give her any more trouble and she was released. Again she was playing out the fantasy of pretending to believe she was going. Did Hank really believe it, she wondered. He acted so sure of it, never yielding, never indicating he'd ever had even the slightest doubt.

They were living aboard the ship in contingents of six hundred now. Never the same six hundred, but always a full crew aboard. Whole departments went through the routine of on-board living for days at a time, doing their work, eating, sleeping, occupying spare time with the ship's facilities for play as if in actual flight through space. It was impossible even to try to guess which ones would finally be eliminated now. Everyone seemed completely indispensable for the project. Connie tried not to think of the time immediately following take-off. There would still be some work to do on base, but she knew she wouldn't be able to stay and help with it. It would be a long time before she would be able to do work of any sort.

They weren't to be told when take-off would come. Connie heard the news with stunned disbelief. But she had counted so much on the last night together. Another small lifetime of memories had yet to be gathered. She put aside the plans for champagne and candle light and perhaps a few of her tears on his shoulder and went dazedly into the air lock to report for duty. She might go to sleep and awake to hear the roar of take-off. What if they didn't even have a chance for a last kiss. She was unaware of the others in the air lock with her and began planning for their every second together until the end. Every instant must have awareness, every word a deeper significance than its apparent meaning. There had to be enough memories to last a lifetime alone. She had to have more of him than she now possessed.

"Connie, report to Dr. Zorin," Phylis called to her and she turned impatientiy and headed down a corridor to the doctor's office aboard the ship.

"Connie, sit down. Here." Dr. Zorin sat opposite her and removed his glasses, carefully placing them inside their case and returning it to his pocket. He leaned back comfortably in his chair. "I wanted to talk to you before you got too busy for me. How's your arm?"

"Fine. Just about as strong as it ever was."

"Good. Confirms the report I got from the infirmary. Connie," he said quizzically, "why you remained so unsure of your place aboard will always be a mystery to me. I can see part of the reason in your continual comparison of yourself with Hank, but your interpretation was so wrong. You're strong and resilient. You have natural outlets for worry and anxiety and you use them—tears once in awhile, anger, but anger that subsides quickly, the ability to reason and see justice, and while conditions may disturb you, you can accept them with good humor once you've made your gesture of rebellion. Don't you see, my dear, that these things aren't faults? You're very easy to get along with, have many friends..."

"Dr. Zorin," Connie interrupted breathlessly, "are you telling me I will go?"

"That's what I'm saying," he admitted soberly.

"Dr. Zorin! It's... it's... I could hug you!" she sprang from her chair, but at the look on his face she sank back into it. "What else? What is it?"

"You will go, Connie. But Hank will stay."

Only much later did she remember the rest of his words. Much later after the ship was a silently moving speck among the myriad star points. "He's the very things you are not. He's brittle and inflexible and unyielding, he can't accept occasional failure and being human he must fail. He has never faced the possibility that one of you might not be selected. What will such a man do when he does erupt? We can never know, only guess. Having no smaller safety valves to release the pressure before it becomes unbearable, he is powerless to stem it if the break does come."

They felt the tug, the impatient, searching, straining of the ship as the mighty engines roared defiance at the confining gantries. Automatically the seats accepted their bodies, conforming to their shapes and with the pressure came the blankness of sleep for Connie.

Warren
approached the house warily, not obviously searching the surrounding woods, but scanning them carefully, nevertheless, although he could see nothing in the moonless night. He heard a snapping sound to his right and froze into immobility instantly. One hand was gripping with paralyzing tightness the borrowed gun as once more he continued, convincing himself that it must have been a small animal, a rabbit or a squirrel. He remembered grimly the serious warning his chief had given him along with the gun, "Use it if you have to and get the hell out fast! And get back here if you have to crawl. We need you."

In the distance he could hear the intermittent firing of small arms and only occasionally the carrying booming of the cannon and mortar. They would be this way eventually, he knew, but not for the next day or so, if the breaks were with him. They were being thorough. And no matter how anxious to find his kind, they couldn't cover the ground between his home and the city in less than two days and probably it would be three.

He had reached the edge of the woods and once more stopped his silent passage through the underbrush. The house was less than two hundred yards before him. No covering trees there for concealment, only the much too high grass because he'd put off cutting it for three weeks now. He didn't like yard work. The low ranchhouse, a replica of millions like it scattered in suburban America, was dark, tightly closed, quiet. Amy had followed his instructions at any rate. He ran the distance separating him from his family and was just melting into the shadow of the empty carport when he heard the approaching automobile. An instant later its lights lit up the narrow road and an extra, brighter light played along the walls of the house. A searchlight. They must have got word about him somehow. From the helicopter, maybe, the way it came in or the way it turned to return to New York. Or anywhere.

In desperation he inched his way up the wrought iron column that supported the carport, praying silently that its fragile look was deceptive, and then bellied his way along the roof to the rear of the house. He made no sound.

The car had stopped and three men jumped out. There was no conversation as they waited for the bell to be answered. Their silence was grim and more ominous than threats would have been. The house stayed quiet and one of them began to hammer on the door. It opened. Warren could see the illumination spread as it was forced open wider. One of the men said, "Are you Mrs. Staley?"

Amy's reply was inaudible to him on the roof top.

"I want to ask you some questions, Mrs. Staley. While you are talking to me, these men will look over your house." He asked nothing, his manner curt and authoritative.

"Who are you? What do you want with me?" Amy sounded frightened now and her voice raised with her fear.

"Just calm down, ma'm. Where is your husband?"

Warren forced himself to keep his head down when he heard the back door slam and knew that one of them was looking about the yard. The nearly flat roof wouldn't hide him from a direct look if the idea occurred to the hunter. From the corner of his eye he could see the glow from a small flashlight as it poked among the flower beds and along the shrubbery. Then the door opened and closed again. Once more he concentrated on the snatches of the conversation he could catch from the front of the house. Amy had again controlled herself and her replies were in a subdued murmur. From the questions he could hear, he realized that they didn't know about him yet. A spot check. They would be back though. They had seized graduate records from the universities, and would be checking the science majors. They would be back.