Fallen Star (12 page)

Hip-ip-ip-ip! Hip-ip-ip! Hip-ip! Hip-ip-ip-ip-ip! Hip-ip-ip!

Farnsworth took his microphone by the throat, his face savage, but words had failed him at last. To the north another, smaller
plume of spray went up: above the spot where Hanchett was still plunging toward the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, there was
now a blow-hole in the ice-cap.

And Elvers was giggling. I will remember that sound as long as I live.

W
E
had to stop there. Hanchett had been our only sober astronomer, and our only navigator. We had also lost Dr. Wollheim, and
Dr. Benz, our senior oceanographer, and Ben Taurasi, our engineer-mechanic. We had been crazy to put Hanchett and Taurasi
in the lead buggy, but it was too late to know better now. They were gone. So were Sidney Goldstein and Benz, on both of whom
we had been planning to depend for survival on this frozen ocean.

And Wollheim was gone too. She wanted to live no less, however we had valued her. In this white desert any life was precious,
as it is precious anywhere, even in the deserts of cities. I had never known that before, but I knew it now, and it scared
the hell out of me. It still does. I keep thinking that people I despise have as much right to life as I do, and it’s not
a thought that I like. But when I see now in my unforgiving memory the buck bubble that was the end of Dr. Wollheim, I remember
that I was pleased to see her go—after all, she was unpleasant to look at, and no good to me—and I am terrified still at my
own cruelty and indifference. Forgive me, poor bag of bones I need your forgiveness; you no longer need anything.

That is what I ask for now, but it was not my first reaction. When I was small, I lived in my grandparents’ house with my
mother, who was divorced and was doing very badly at supporting us by teaching singing. I had very little consciousness of
the struggle, or of the bitterness that underlay it in the household on both sides, until the day that I broke my glasses
in some scramble or other—I forget just what.

It was a quiet summer afternoon when I came back to the house; I found my mother sitting in her second-floor room at her vanity-table,
one of the few pieces of furniture that she had not sold after the divorce. I told her what had happened, and tendered the
pieces—one lens and the frame still intact,
and every scrap of the broken lens, for I knew
even
then that opticians could get measurements from the pieces to make a new lens. I felt rather proud of myself for having salvaged
it all.

To my astonishment and fright, she burst into tears; and what she said was, “How am I ever going to pay for it now?”

I ran to my own room and shut the door. I puzzled painfully about it all the rest of the day, and finally emerged with the
only solution I could see: a cache of a dollar and seventy-two cents I had been putting together all summer long out of my
allowance. My mother had stopped crying by that time, but she took the money without comment, leaving me feeling
as
though nothing whatever had been settled. It would never have occurred to me then that she had not been crying about the
money at all, but about the disability—for it had never seemed like much of a disability to me. Indeed, I didn’t make the
connection until years later, when I remembered that she had also cried the day I had the glasses put on me for the first
time.

This is something that the Greeks never knew about tragedy, for it is an exclusive discovery of the twentieth century: that
first reactions to tragedy are almost invariably wildly trivial and inappropriate, because the deep emotions that they call
forth drag with them associations from the still-living past which seem more real, because they have been lived with longer,
than the immediate event itself seems. It would never have occurred to even so mighty an artist as Sophocles, for instance,
to have put into my mind, at the moment I saw the snowbuggy disappear, this first desperate cry:
But it isn’t MY fault at all!

But then, nobody has ever accused Sophocles of having been near-sighted.

Farnsworth, too, was shaken; God alone knew what
his
first reactions could have been. He said very little, but he promptly gave up any vestige of his desire to take the snow-buggies
to the Pole that might have remained after the disaster. Jayne recovered first, at least enough to remind him tentatively
of the commercial stake we had in using the snow-buggies. He snarled her down in four short, raw, ugly words, seemingly printable
enough in themselves, but delivered to Jayne in a voice I would not use to a garbage-robbing tramp. It-stunned everyone; there
was a long silence. It was as
though he had relieved himself at the foot of a monument.

“Shut up,” was what he said. “Make camp.”

Those were the four words: no more than that. And that is what they sounded like.

We made camp with a minimum of talk, tying down the remaining buggies, setting up our fifty-foot radio mast and our wind generator,
and taking intensive inventory of what we had lost in the way of equipment in the lead buggy. It was hard work getting the
mast up, even with the winch, and I for one raised a good sweat inside my outdoor clothes. Nevertheless, I was astonished
to see Elvers industriously cutting fifty-pound blocks of ice, wearing nothing but cleated shoes, wool socks, shorts and a
jacket. I pointed him out to Farnsworth while we rested from hauling on a guywire.

“What does he think he’s doing? He must be out of his mind.”

“He’s odd,” Farnsworth said grimly. “But he’s working. He’s going to build an igloo for the dogs. They’re supposed to live
outdoors whenever possible.”

“No, I mean running around half naked like that.”

“I notice you’re sweating, Julian. There’s almost no wind, so he isn’t likely to get frostbitten. He knows the North. Right
now he’s in more danger from sunburn than he is from the cold. See if you can snub that loop around the peg on the next heave.”

We met that “evening”, after a dinner which nobody ate much of, in the galley in Farnsworth’s buggy. We were a markedly gloomy
and depleted group, especially since neither Elvers nor Harry Chain was there; Elvers was still working, and Harry was testing
the radio. None of those present seemed to want to look any of the others in the face for longer than a few seconds at a time,
and I noticed that Wentz, who had been shocked sober and had remained that way all the rest of the day, working with the rest
of us, for once did not look any more haggard than anybody else.

“It comes down to this,” Farnsworth said at last, in oddly muffled tones. “We’re going to leave the buggies here as a home
base, and make the Pole our advance base. We’ll go on by sled, taking only what we need. At the Pole we’ll set up the tents,
but we’ll also build igloos for the research projects to operate in. You’ve all been watching Elvers and you can see that
there’s no trick to it, beyond having sufficient structural
vizualization to trim the blocks right. If you get into trouble, Elvers will be available to help you. He’ll drive the lead
team, with Jayne; I’ll bring up the rear with Fred Klein, and Wentz will be in the middle with Julian. Harriet, you and Harry
Chain will stay here; in an emergency, you’ll have Harry to drive the buggy.”

He looked from one to another of us, sombrely. “This isn’t how we planned it, but it’s how it’s going to have to be,” he said.
“Harriet, I know you’re determined to stick to me until you get your cheque. But this time you’re going to have to give in.
You’re totally ignorant of any skill we can use at the advance base. Here at the home base you just might save all the rest
of our lives. Understand?”

“No, not entirely,” Harriet said. I noticed, however, that her voice was quiet and steady. “What good am I here, for that
matter?”

“You’re a lifeline,” Farnsworth said. “Harry’s a healthy young man, but he still has the appendix God gave him when he was
born. If he were here all alone, and it should act up___”

“I see. Harry will teach me to run his radio, just in case. All right, Geoffrey. I’m scared, but I’ll do as you say.”

I was proud of her, and, I think, so was Farnsworth, in some way I couldn’t understand.

Wentz put up his hand.

“Yes, Joe, what is it?”

“Geoffrey,” the astronomer said, “have you given any thought to turning back? Fun is fun, but I’m beginning to wonder if I
see the joke any longer. With a third of our personnel and equipment gone, we’re in trouble right where we sit—and we could
make it back to Alert in maybe six hours, if we don’t hit any more trouble.”

“That needed to be said, and I’m glad you said it,” Farnsworth agreed. “I’ll say this: Jayne and I are not going back. I’d
be sorry to lose you, Joe, but you can go back if you like. Anybody who wants to leave can get in the other snowmobile; we’ll
make do with one.”

“No, no. You’re making a melodrama out of it,” Wentz said. “I’m not proposing a mutiny or a mass desertion, and it isn’t fair
to turn it into an appeal for loyalty. All I wanted to know was whether you’d thought about turning back. It’s
a serious question. There’s no room in it for challenges or heroics.”

Farnsworth said nothing: he simply spread his hands.

I said slowly, “I can’t assess the risks because I don’t know the North. But there is still work to be done, and I’d like
to see us try it. Maybe after today we’ll be less foolhardy.”

“Bravo,” Jayne said. “Fred, how do you feel?”

“I knew it was dangerous when I signed on,” the geologist said. “I agree with Mr. Cole—especially on the foolhardiness.”

“I’m not voting for going back,” Wentz said. “I’m raising the question, that’s all. You all have answered it to my satisfaction.”

There was a brief silence. I was just beginning to wonder what was going on in Harriet’s mind on this subject when the galley
door slid back and Harry Chain came in. He was carrying a piece of paper torn off a pad.

“Hi,” he said. “The mast works fine and we’re in business. I reported back to Alert about the accident——”

“Harry!” Jayne said. “You shouldn’t have done that. I was going to file a story on it. Everything you said is in the public
domain now—my bosses will have a hæmorrhage.”

“Well, I’m sorry, Jayne, but they asked how we were doing and I had to say something, so I told them. Also I’ve got a message
here for Mr. Cole.” He handed the paper to me.

I read it twice. It meant the same thing the second time through as it had the first. Everyone was watching me curiously.

“It’s from the IGY Committee,” I said. “Not from Ellen Fremd this time, but the Committee itself. That wild dispatch you sent
from Alert was too much for them to swallow, Jayne. They’ve disowned us—just as Ellen warned us they would.”

“Why, God damn their desiccated heads,” Jayne said furiously. “They can’t do that.”

“They sure as hell can, and they’ve done it. Now we’re in the soup for sure. There’s only once chance left for us, and that’s
to do the work they assigned us to do, and do it
right.”

Farnsworth snorted. “They can take that and shove it, as far as I’m concerned.”

“Which is just what they expect you to say. When they
hear about our losses, on top of everything else, they’ll sympathize for about five minutes—but that’ll convince them all
over again that we’re only a bunch of publicity-happy stumblebums, and probably got just what was coming to us.” I knew I
was on dangerous ground, but I had had one more shock than I could take; the words kept right on pouring out, regardless.
“Nothing will save us now,
nothing
, but going on to the Pole and doing an honest job of work. Otherwise we’ll be torn to shreds. Geoffrey, the newspapers will
have a field day with this tomorrow; half of them will ridicule us, and the other half will indict us for incompetence running
to the edge of manslaughter. After they’re through with you, your sponsors won’t recognize you when you come back even if
you meet them under a klieg light.
We’ve
got to do more now than just make it to the Pole and back. We’ll have to complete our IGY programme and the rest of our research,
and, do a bang-up job of it—whether we’ve got the proper instruments and people for it or not. Otherwise those of us who are
still alive will all be destroyed and Wollheim and Benz and Sid and Hanchett will have died for less than nothing.”

I discovered that I had been on my feet for some time, though I couldn’t remember having stood up. I sat down again, noting
with mild surprise that I was shaking.

“By God,” Farnsworth said softly. “He’s right. Thanks, Julian. I wish you’d been able to convince me sooner, but you sure
as hell tried. But maybe it isn’t too late. Does anybody have anything to add?”

“Yes,” Fred Klein said. “In the eight years that I’ve known you, Geoffrey, I’ve never before heard you admit you were wrong.
And I think that you’re a bigger man for the admission than you could possibly be by being right all the time.”

Farnsworth nodded grimly. The meeting hung in stasis for a long second, and then we were all getting up.

I wanted to hit my cabin right away; I was drained dry and I ached from neck to feet. But Wentz stopped me in the companionway.

‘That was fine,” he said, looking at me with his bloodshot, upsetting eyes, like those of a St. Bernard. “It’s been a long
time since I last heard a man throw all his emotions right out on the table like that. I’m a lousy old bum without a
conviction to my name any more, but by God even I was moved. That took doing.”

“Well—thanks, Joe. I surprised myself. I’m glad it helped.”

“It was the making of us all. Come on over to the other buggy with me. I’ve got some baggage to dispose of; we’ll have a small
party.”

My heart sank. I was more than tired; I was disgusted, and astonished that I had enough reserve left to feel anything at all.
“No, thanks,” I said through a grey fog. “I’m not thirsty, Joe. I just need sleep.”

“You don’t dig me,” the astronomer said. “I’m not thirsty either. I don’t want to drink the stuff, I want to burn it, out
on the ice. It’s mostly brandy. You’re the strongest of us all, Julian. I can’t do it by myself. Will you help?”