He dredged around in his mind for what the old boy had said about spells of duty: four weeks on, four weeks off - though that was hypothetical at present, and might need modification in the light of experience. All the same, the intention sounded generous enough, not bad at all....
He returned his attention to the marriage licence in his hand. There could be no doubt that from an official point of view, no such document should exist - on the other hand, if an Air Marshal chose to reveal clearly what he thought of the ban ... With such eminence on his side, even though unofficially...
Well, why delay? He’d got the job....
He folded the paper carefully, and restored it to his pocket. Then he strode purposefully to the telephone-box....
Ticker, standing in the mess-room of the hulk, and gazing out of the window, took his breakfast gloomily.
The hulk, as it had become known, even on official memos, was the one habitable spot in thousands of miles of nothing. It was the local office of works, and also the hostel for the men serving their tour of duty. Down its shadow-side, windows ran almost the full length, giving a view of the assembly area. The few ports to sunward were kept shuttered. On the outer sunside of the hull was mounted a ring of parabolic reflectors, none more than a foot across, and all precisely angled. When the eye of the sun shone full in the centre of the ring they were inactive, but it never did for long, and a variation of a degree or two would bring one or other of the reflectors into focus, collecting intense heat. Presently a small, invisible explosion of steam would correct the error by its recoil, and slowly the hulk would swing a little until another reflector came into focus, and gave another correction It went on all the time save for the brief ‘nights’ in the Earth’s shadow, so that the view from the leeward windows never altered: it was always the space-station assembly.
Ticker broke a roll, still warm from the oven operated by a large reflector on the sunside. He left the larger part of it hanging in the air while he buttered the lesser. He munched absent-mindedly, and took a jet of hot coffee. Then he relinquished the plastic coffee-bottle, and let it float while he reached back the rest of the roll before it could waft further. All these actions he performed without conscious thought. They had quickly ceased to be novelties and become part of the natural background conditions to one’s tour of duty - so customary that it was, rather, a propensity to poise things conveniently in mid-air when one was at home on leave that had to be checked.
Munching his roll, Ticker continued to regard the view with distaste. However enthusiastic one might be about the project as a whole, a sense of ennui and impatience to be away inevitably set in during the last few days of a spell. It had been so on the verge of his five previous leaves, and this time, for special reasons, it was more pronounced.
Outside, the curve of the Earth made a backdrop to half the window’s span, though there was no telling which continent faced him at the moment. Cloud hid the surface and diffused the light as it did most of the time, so that he seemed to be looking, not at a world, but at a segment of a huge pearl resting in a bed of utter blackness. As a foreground, there was the familiar jumble of work in progress.
The main framework of the station had already been welded together, a wheel-like cage of lattice girders, one hundred and forty feet in diameter and twenty-four feet thick. It sparkled in the unobstructed sunlight with a harsh silver glitter that was trying to the eyes. A few panels of the plating were already fixed, and small, bulbous-looking figures in space-suits were manoeuvring more sheets of metal into positions within the framework. The littered, chaotic impression of the whole scene was enhanced by the web of lines which criss-crossed it. Safety-lines and mooring-lines ran in every direction. There were a dozen or more from the hulk to the main assembly, and no single component, section, or instrument was without a tether to fasten it to some other. None of the lines was taut; if one became so, it remained like that for no more than a second or two. Most of them were continually moving in loops, like lazy snakes; others just hung, with barely perceptible motion. Every now and then one of the workers on the framework would pause as a case or an item of the structure as yet unused came nuzzling gently at the girders. He would give it a slight shove, and it would drift away again, its cable coiling in slow-motion behind it.
A large cylinder, part of the atmosphere regenerating plant, swam into Ticker’s view, on its way from the hulk to the assembly. The space-suited man who was ferrying it over had hooked himself to it, and was directing their mutual slow-progress by occasional, carefully aimed blasts from a wide-mouthed pistol. He and his charge were floating free in space but for his thin life-line undulating back to the hulk. There was no sense whatever that all this was taking place as they hurtled round the Earth at a speed of thousands of miles per hour. One was no more aware of it than one was of the pace at which the Earth hurtles round the sun.
Ticker paused in his eating to appreciate the skill of the pistol user; it looked easy, but everyone who had ever tried it knew that it was a great deal easier to set oneself and the load spinning giddily all ways over. That did not happen so often now that the really ham-handed had been weeded out, but a little misjudgement could start it in a moment. He grunted approval, and went on eating, and reflecting....
Four days now, four more days, and he would be back home again. ... And how many spells before it would be finished? he wondered. They were holding a sweep on that, with quite a nice prize. The schedules drawn up in comfortable offices back on Earth had gone to pieces at once. In real experience of the conditions progress with the earlier stages had been a great deal slower than the estimates had reckoned. Tricks, techniques, and devices had to be evolved to meet difficulties that the most careful consideration had overlooked. There had also been two bad hold-ups: one, because someone in logistics had made a crass error in the order of dispatch, the other on account of a parcel of girders that had never arrived, and was now presumably circling the Earth as a lonely satellite on its own account - if it had not shot away into space.
Working in weightless conditions had also been more troublesome than they had expected. It was true that objects of great bulk and solidity could be shifted by a touch, so that mechanical handling was unnecessary; but on the other hand, there was always the ‘equal and opposite reaction’ to be considered and dealt with. One was for ever seeking anchorage and purchase before any force whatever could be applied. The lifetime habit of depending on one’s weight was only slightly less than an instinct; the mind went on assuming that weight, just as it went on trying to think in terms of ‘up and down’ until it had been called to order innumerable times.
Ticker left off watching the guided drift of the cylinder, and took a final jet of coffee. He looked at the clock. Still half an hour to go before the shift changed; twenty minutes before he need start getting into his space-suit and testing it. He lit a cigarette, and because there was nothing else to do, found himself moodily contemplating the scene outside once more. The cigarette was half finished when the ship’s speaker system grated, and announced:
‘Mr Troon please call at the radio-cabin. Radio message for Mr Troon, please.’
Ticker stared at the nearest speaker for an apprehensive moment, and then ground out the remains of his cigarette against the metal wall. With a clicking and scraping of magnetic soles he made his way out of the mess-room. In the passage he disregarded the rules, and sent himself scudding along with a shove. He caught the radio-cabin’s door-handle and grounded his feet in one complicated movement. The radio operator looked up.
‘Quick worker, Ticker. Here you are.’ He handed over a folded piece of paper.
Ticker took it in a hand that irritated him by shaking slightly. The message was brief. It said simply:
’Happy birthday from Laura and Michael.’
He stood staring at it for some seconds, and then wiped his hand across his forehead. The radio man looked at him thoughtfully.
‘Funny things happen in space,’ he remarked. ‘Must be quite six months since you last had a birthday. Many happy returns, all the same.’
‘Er - ah - yes - thanks,’ said Ticker vaguely, and pulled himself out of the cabin.
Outside, he stood reading the short message again.
Michael, they had decided, if it were a boy: Anna, for a girl. But early, by at least a fortnight. Still, what did that matter? - except that he had hoped to be on hand. The important thing was ‘happy birthday’, which meant ‘both doing well’.
He became untranced suddenly, and pushed back into the radio-cabin. The dressing-bell for the next shift went while he was scribbling his reply. A few moments later he was whizzing down the passage, headed for the suit-store.
When Ticker’s turn came, he stepped to the edge of the open airlock, clipped the eye of his short lead round the guide-line, and then with a two-legged push-off against the side of the hulk, sent himself shooting out along the line towards the assembly. Practice had given all of them a pride in their ability to deal dexterously with the conditions; a quick twist, something like that of a falling cat, brought his feet round to act as buffers at the end of his journey. He hooked on to a local life-line then unhooked from the guide line, obeying the outside worker’s Rule Number One - that he should never for a moment work unattached. Then he pushed across to the far side of the frame where assembly was going on. One of the workers there saw him coming, and turned his head towards him so that his tight-beam radio sounded in Ticker’s helmet louder than the all-round reception.
‘All yours,’ he said. ‘And welcome to it. This plate’s a bastard,’
Ticker came up to him. They exchanged lines.
‘Be seeing you,’ said the other, and gave a yank on the line which took him back the way Ticker had come. Ticker shook his new safety-line to send it looping out of his way, and turned to give his consideration to the plate that was a bastard.
The new shift adjusted their general intercom radios to low power so that they could converse comfortably between themselves. They noticed the progress made since their last spell, compared it with the plan, identified the sections at hand, and started in.
Ticker looked his plate over, and then twisted it so that the markings lined up. It was no bastard after all, and slipped quite easily into place. He was not surprised. One got tired, and not infrequently a little stupid, by the end of a shift.
With the plate fixed, he paused, looking out at Earth with his eyeshield raised so that he saw it fully, in all its brilliance - a great shimmering globe that filled half the sky. Quite extensive patches here and there were free of cloud now, and through them there was blue; the sea, perhaps - and then again, perhaps not, for whenever one saw the surface it looked blue, just as the blackness of space seen from the Earth in daylight looked blue.
Somewhere over there, on that great shining ball, he now had a son. The idea came to him as a marvel. He could picture Laura smiling as she held the baby to her. He smiled to himself, and then chuckled. He had smuggled himself a family in spite of the regulations, and if they did find out now - he shrugged. And anyway, he had a well-grounded suspicion that he was not the only family man among his supposedly celibate companions. He did not underestimate the Security boys; he simply thought it likely that others besides the Air Marshal found a blind eye convenient. In just four days more - A nudge at his back interrupted him. He turned to find another plate that someone had pushed along for his attention. Gripping a girder between his knees for anchorage, he started to twist it into position.
Half an hour later a tight-beam radio voice from the hulk overrode their local conversation.
‘Unidentified object coming up,’ it announced, and gave a constellation bearing. The working party’s heads turned towards Aries. The great stars flaring there against the multitudinous speckling of the rest looked no different from usual.
‘Not a dispatch, you mean?’ someone asked.
‘Can’t be. We’ve had none notified.’
‘Meteor?’ someone else suggested, with a trace of uneasiness.
‘We don’t think so. There’s been a slight change of course since radar picked it up a couple of hours ago. That seems to rule out meteors.’
‘Can’t you get the telescope on it?’
‘Only for a glimpse. Damned hulk’s hunting too much, we’re trying to steady her up.’
‘Could it be that parcel of girders, do you think? The lot that went astray. Couldn’t it be that its homing gear has just got the range of us?’
‘Might be, I suppose,’ admitted the voice from the hulk. ‘It’s certainly got a line straight on us now. If it is, the proximity gear should stop it and hold it about a couple of miles off, and you’ll need to send somebody out with a line to make it fast. Plenty of time to see about that later. We’ll keep you informed, once we can get this damned tub steady enough to keep the glass on it.’
His wave cut off, and the assembly party, after vainly scanning the Aries region again, turned back to their work. Nearly an hour passed before the voice from the hulk spoke once more.
‘Hullo there, Assembly!‘ it said, and without waiting for acknowledgement, went on: ‘There’s something damned funny about that thing in Aries. It certainly isn’t the girder package. We don’t know what it is.’
‘Well, what’s it look like?’ inquired one of the working party, patiently.
‘It’s - er - well, it’s like a large circle, with three smaller circles set at thirds round the perimeter.’
‘You don’t say!’
‘Well, that’s what we see, damn it! The thing’s head on to us. The circles may be mile-long cylinders, for all we can tell.’
Again the helmeted heads of the working party turned towards Aries.
‘Can’t see anything. Is it blasting?’
‘There’s no sign of blast. It looks as if it’s free-falling at us. Just a minute - ‘ He broke off. Five minutes passed before he came in again. This time his tone was more serious.