Authors: Arthur C Clarke
Still, I mustn't give the impression that all our time was spent in the
Morning Star
. There is plenty of work for everyone on a space-station, and perhaps because of this the staff made the most of their time off. And—this is a curious point that isn't very well known—we had more opportunities for amusement than you might think, because we needed very little sleep. That's one of the effects of zero gravity. All the time I was in space, I don't think I ever had more than four hours of continuous sleep.
I was careful never to miss one of Commander Doyle's lectures, even when there were other things I wanted to do. Tim had advised me, tactfully, that it would make a good impression if I were always there—and the Commander was a good speaker, anyway. Certainly I'm never likely to forget the talk on meteors which he gave to us.
Looking back on it, that's rather funny, because I thought the lecture was going to be pretty dull. The opening was interesting enough, but it soon bogged down in statistics and tables. You know, of course, what meteors are—tiny particles of matter which whirl through space and burn up through friction when they hit the Earth's atmosphere. The huge majority are much smaller than sand grains, but sometimes quite large ones—weighing many pounds—come tumbling down into the atmosphere. And on very rare occasions hundred—or even thousand-ton giants come crashing to Earth and do considerable local damage.
In the early days of space-flight many people were nervous of meteors: they didn't realize just how big space was, and thought that leaving the protective blanket of the atmosphere would be rather like entering a machine-gun barrage. Today we know better: yet though meteors are not a serious danger, small ones occasionally puncture stations or ships and it's necessary to do something about them.
My attention had strayed while Commander Doyle talked about meteor streams and covered the blackboard with calculations showing how little solid matter there really was in the space between the planets. I became rather more interested when he began to say what would happen if a meteor ever did hit us.
'You've got to remember,' he said, 'that because of its speed a meteor doesn't behave like a slow-moving object such as a rifle bullet, which moves at a mere mile a second. If a small meteor hits a solid object—even a piece of paper—it turns into a cloud of incandescent vapour. That's one reason why this Station has got a double hull: the outer shell provides almost complete protection against any meteors we're ever likely to meet.
'But there's a still a faint possibility that a big one might go through both walls and make a fairly large hole. Even that needn't be serious. The air would start rushing out, of course, but every room that has a wall towards space is fitted with one of these.'
He held up a circular disc, looking very much like a saucepan-cover with a rubber flange around it. I'd often seen these discs, painted a bright yellow, clipped to the walls of the Station, but hadn't given them much thought.
'This will deal with leaks up to six inches in diameter. All you have to do is to place it against the wall near the hole and
slide it along
until it covers the leak. Don't try and clamp the disc straight over the hole. Once it's in place, the air pressure will keep it there until a permanent repair can be made.'
He tossed the disc down into the class.
'Have a look at it and pass it round. Any questions?'
I wanted to ask what would happen if the hole were
more
than six inches across, but was afraid this might be regarded as a facetious question. Glancing around the class to see if anyone else looked like breaking the silence, I noticed that Tim Benton wasn't there. It was unusual for him to be absent and I wondered what had happened to him. Perhaps he was helping someone on an urgent job elsewhere in the Station.
I had no further chance of puzzling over Tim's whereabouts. For at that precise moment there was a sudden, sharp explosion, quite deafening in this confined space. And it was followed instantly by the terrifying, high-pitched scream of escaping air—air rushing through a hole that had suddenly appeared in the wall of the classroom.
For a moment, as the out-rushing air tore at our clothes and tugged us towards the wall, we were far too surprised to do anything except stare at the ragged puncture scarring the white paint. Everything had happened too quickly for me to be frightened:
that
came later. Our paralysis lasted for a couple of seconds: then we all moved at once. The sealing plate had been lying on Norman Powell's desk, and everyone made towards it. There was a moment of confused pushing, then Norman shouted above the shriek of air, 'Out of my way!' He launched himself across the room, and the air current caught him like a straw in a mill-race, slamming him into the wall. I watched in helpless fascination as he fought to prevent himself being sucked against the hole. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the whistling roar ceased. Norman had managed to slide the seal into place.
For the first time, I turned to see what Commander Doyle had been doing during the crisis. To my astonishment he was still sitting quietly at his desk. What was more, there was a smile on his face—and a stop-watch in his hand. A dreadful suspicion began to creep, into my mind—a suspicion that became a certainty in the next few moments. The others were also staring at him, and there was a long, icy silence. Then Norman coughed, and very ostentatiously rubbed his elbow where he had bruised it against the wall. If he could have managed a limp under zero gravity, I'm sure he'd have done so as he went back to his desk. When he had got there, he relieved his feelings by grabbing the elastic band that held his writing pad in place, pulling it away, and letting it go with a 'Thwack!' The Commander only kept on grinning.
'Sorry if you've hurt yourself, Norman,' he remarked. 'I really must congratulate you on the speed with which you acted. It only took you five seconds to get to the wall, which was very good when one allows for the fact that everybody else was getting in the way.'
'Thank you, sir,' replied Norman, with quite unnecessary emphasis on the 'sir'. I could see he still didn't like the idea of having a practical joke played on him, for a change. 'But wasn't it rather a dangerous—er—trick to play?'
'Not at all. If you want the technical details, there's a three-inch pipe around that hole, with a stop-cock at the end of it. Tim is sitting out there in a space-suit, and if we hadn't sealed the leak inside ten seconds, he'd have closed the tap and cut off the flow.'
'How was the hole made?' someone asked.
'Just a small explosive charge—a very small one,' replied the Commander. His grin had vanished and he had become quite serious again.
'I didn't do this just for fun. One day you may run into a real leak, and this test may make all the difference—you'll know what to do. As you've seen, a puncture this size can make quite a draught and could empty a room in half a minute. But it's easy enough to deal with if you act quickly and don't panic.'
He turned to Karl Hasse, who, like the good student he was, always sat in the front row.
'Karl, I noticed you were the only one who never moved. May we know why?'
Karl answered without any hesitation in his dry precise voice.
'It was simple deduction. The chance of being hit by a large meteor at all is, as you had explained, inconceivably rare. The chance of being hit by one just when you'd finished talking about them was—well, so rare that it's nearly impossible. So I knew there was no danger, and that it must be some sort of test. That's why I just sat and waited to see what would happen.'
We all looked at Karl, feeling a little sheepish. I suppose he was right: he always was. It didn't help to make him any more popular.
One of the biggest excitements of life in a space-station is the arrival of the mail rocket from Earth. The great interplanetary liners can come and go, but they're nothing like so important as the tiny, bright yellow ships that keep the crews of the stations in touch with home. Radio messages are all very well, but they can't compare with letters and—above all—parcels from Earth.
The Station mail department was a cubby-hole near one of the air-locks, and a small crowd usually gathered here even before the rocket had coupled up. As soon as the mail bags came aboard, they would be ripped open and some high-speed sorting would take place. Then the crowd would disperse, everyone hugging his correspondence—or else saying, 'Oh, well, I wasn't expecting anything this time…'
The lucky man who got a parcel couldn't keep it to himself for long. Space mail is expensive, and a parcel usually meant one of those little luxuries you couldn't normally obtain on the Station.
I was very surprised to find that I had quite a pile of letters, most of them from perfect strangers, waiting for me after the first rocket arrived. The great majority were from boys of my own age who'd heard about me—or maybe had seen my TV appearances—and wanted to know all about life on the Station. If I'd answered every one, there'd have been no time for anything else at all. What was worse, I couldn't possibly
afford
to acknowledge them, even if I had the time. The postage would have taken all my spare cash.
I asked Tim what I'd better do about it. He looked at some of the letters and replied:
'Maybe I'm being cynical, but I think most of them are after space-mail stamps. If you feel you
ought
to acknowledge them, wait until you get back to Earth. It'll be much cheaper…'
And that was what I did, though I'm afraid a lot of people were very disappointed.
There was also a parcel from home, containing a good assortment of candy and a letter from Mom telling me to be quite sure and wrap up tight against the cold. I didn't say anything about the letter, but the rest of the parcel made me very popular for a couple of days.
There cannot be many people on Earth who have never seen the TV serial 'Dan Drummond, Space Detective'. Most of you, at some time or another, must have watched Dan tracking down interplanetary smugglers and assorted crooks, or have followed his never-ending battle with Black Jervis, most diabolical of space pirates.
When I came to the Station, one of my minor surprises was discovering how popular Dan Drummond was among the staff. If they were off duty—and often when they weren't—they never missed an instalment of his adventures. Of course they all pretended that they tuned in for the laughs, but that wasn't quite true. For one thing, 'Dan Drummond' isn't half as ridiculous as many of the other TV serials: in fact, on the technical side it's pretty well done and the producers obviously get expert advice, even if they don't always use it. There's more than a suspicion that someone aboard the Station helps with the script, but nobody has ever been able to prove this. Even Commander Doyle has come under suspicion, though it's most unlikely that anyone will ever accuse him outright…
We were all particularly interested in the current episode, as it concerned a space-station supposed to be orbiting Venus. Blackie's marauding cruiser,
The Queen of Night
, was running short of fuel, so the pirates were planning to raid the station and replenish their tanks. If they could make off with some loot and hostages at the same time, so much the better. When the last instalment of the serial had ended, the pirate cruiser, painted jet black, was creeping up on the unsuspecting station, and we were all wondering what was going to happen next.
Now of course there's never been such a thing as piracy in space, and as no one except a multi-million combine can afford to build ships and supply them with fuel it's difficult to see how Black Jervis could hope to make a living. This didn't spoil our enjoyment of the serial, but it sometimes caused fierce arguments about the prospects for spatial crime. Peter van Holberg, who spent a lot of his time reading lurid magazines and watching the serials, was sure that
something
could be done if one were really determined. He amused himself by inventing all sorts of ingenious crimes and asking us what was to stop one getting away with them. We rather felt that he had missed his true vocation.
Black Jarvis' latest exploit made Peter unusually thoughtful, and for a day or so he went around working out just how valuable the contents of the Station would be to an interplanetary desperado. It made an impressive figure, especially when one included the freight charges. If Peter's mind hadn't already been working along these lines, he would never have noticed the peculiar behaviour of the
Cygnus
.
Besides the spaceships on the regular, scheduled runs, about two or three times a month ships on special missions touched at the Station. Usually they were engaged on scientific research, occasionally something really exciting like an expedition to the outer planets. Whatever it was they were doing, everyone aboard the Station always knew all about it.
But no one knew much about the
Cygnus
, except that she was down in Lloyd's Register as a medium freighter, and was about due to be withdrawn from service since she had been in operation for almost five years without a major overhaul. It attracted little surprise when she came up to the Station and anchored (yes, that's the expression still used) about ten miles away. This distance was larger than usual, but that might only mean that she had an ultra-cautious pilot. And there she stayed. All attempts to discover what she was doing failed completely. She had a crew of two—we knew that because they jetted over in their suits and reported on Control. They gave no clearance date and refused to state their business, which was unheard of but not illegal.