The Last Starship From Earth (20 page)

Tall, long-armed, a spaceman bent down and helped him up the final stages of the ladder. Blinking, he stood in the passageway, feeling his body bent forward.

Holding him by an arm to steady him, the spaceman reached behind him to a locker and pulled out a parka and a pair of fleece-lined boots. “Put this gear on and secure the hood of the parka. We’re back in space, and we’re circling a thousand kilometers above Hell. You’ll be going down in a few minutes. You’re in section eight and your letter is K. See that light down there marked ‘eight’?”

“Yes.”

“When your section’s called, walk down the passage behind the corpse marked ‘J.’ The letter’s stitched on its back. Go down the hatch and strap yourself into the seat marked ‘K.’ After that, your instructions will come from the ground.”

He left Haldane and went down the passageway to awaken other sleepers.

Haldane stood for minutes as the cobwebs left his brain and the energy returned to his body. The long sleep seemed to have affected him no more than an afternoon’s nap. Swiftly, as a hiker adjusts himself to the psychic load of a newly dropped pack, the balance organs of his body adjusted to the cant created by the centrifugal force, and he was able to don the heavy-weather gear while standing.

“Now, hear this,” the intercom crackled. “Now, hear this! Section eight, fall in.”

He faced right, seeing the J on the back of the corpse ahead of him. Slowly, guided by a spaceman, the column wended forward, each member staggering as his legs adjusted to a walk, and descended the hatch marked ‘eight’ into the interlocked hatch of an airplane appended to the hull. Haldane was the last corpse in the line.

It was a narrow opening that led into a nested ship which would be cast off from the mother ship when the lugs were released. Clambering down into the dimly lighted plane, he found the seat marked K and strapped himself in.

Above him, he heard the pneumatic wheeze of a closing port, and the hatch above him was sealed. Through the metal surrounding him he could hear a voice over the intercom of the mother ship saying, “Stand by to cast off eight.”

Then, far away and remote, he heard for the last time a voice of earth, calling “Cast off eight.”

There was a metallic click as the lugs disengaged, a wheeze as the exit hatch opened, a light forward movement as the plane was hurled along its short, grooved track, into the darkness a thousand kilometers above Hell. Then came weightlessness. They were falling through cold and darkness, drawn from airless space by the pull of the giant planet beneath them.

There was no apparent motion. Haldane craned his neck and looked out through the small port beside him. For the first time, he gazed on the home of the earth’s rejected, the frozen planet, and he was amazed.

In the pale light of a distant sun, a part of the planet was visible. On one side was the shadow of the night, but on the lighted side he could see the snow-covered surface, but it was not all white. There was a black expanse rippled by clouds which he knew was an ocean. The sight which drew him up short was the sight of sinuous lines drawn over portions of the snow field that were not concealed by clouds.

There was no denying the contour of those lines joined by lines. As the falling craft came closer to the planet, his wonderment became knowledge. The lines represented a river system drawn over the white surface of a continent.

The rivers of Hell were not frozen.

There was a gentle bump as the plane hit the atmosphere and leveled off under the guidance of an automatic pilot. There was a perceptible heating of the interior. He felt the drag cups of the plane strike the mass of air, throwing him slightly forward, and slowly the sensation of gravity filled the cabin.

They were volplaning down, boring into the night of the planet. The sun was lost, but a huge moon hung motionless in the sky.

Suddenly, well into the shadow of Hell’s night, the plane banked into a circle, focusing on a small point of light far below which flickered intermittently between drifting clouds. Slowly, in ever decreasing circles, they volplaned down, gliding through a thick overcast to emerge into moonless blackness.

The vehicle straightened its flight path and nosed down. He felt the crunch of runners striking the snow, heard their high, metallic squeal. The craft skittered and yawed, then straightened in a long, diminishing skid toward the point of light. Then it slowed to a stop.

Haldane IV had arrived on Hell.

As soon as the swish of the plane’s runners ceased, there was a clambering on the fuselage and a door beside him opened to let a gust of cold air enter from a night so dark the blackness seemed to enter the cabin.

“All out, on the double!” The command came from the darkness, and Haldane, closest to the door, unstrapped himself and stepped out onto the door ramp and onto a crust of snow impacted as solid as stone.

Beside him was a squat figure, dimly illuminated from the glow from the plane’s cabin, and the voice that came from it seemed heavy with unvoiced curses. “Step lively! As soon as the door’s closed, the plane returns to the ship.”

Dim figures tumbled through the doorway with alacrity. Apparently satisfied with the speed with which the exiles were moving, the man stepped back, waiting, and Haldane asked, “Are your nights always this dark?”

Though asked in disarming sociability, Haldane’s question was loaded. He felt he could determine by the man’s answer if he were a convict guard or another exile whose harshness was the natural tone of Hell’s inhabitants.

“No. Tonight we have clouds over the moon, and there’s a blackout on the field.”

His voice was absurdly gentle, the voice of a teacher speaking to a backward child Undaunted, Haldane asked, “Why do you have a blackout?”

“We don’t want that ship up there to know we’ve got lights. But we have, and lots besides. Some night, when that bastard’s orbiting up there, it’s going to meet a chunk of metal coming from the opposite direction.”

There was no doubt about this man’s status; he was an exile.

To the shadowy figures gathering around him, he said, “Step back and let your eyes get adjusted as I close the door. Then follow me. If you get detached from the group, make for that point of light. If you get lost on this planet, you’re dead.”

Keeping his eyes on the figure of their guide, the group trudged off through the snow.

It took them ten minutes to reach the landing field shack.

Inside, it was warm and well lighted, and a coffee urn in a corner filled the room with aroma. There were rough wooden tables and wooden benches, more wooden furniture than Haldane had ever seen before.

Their guide threw back his parka and said over his shoulder, “There are coffee cups and cream and sugar by the urn. Help yourself. Your guides into town will be here in about fifteen minutes.”

He turned and went into an area separated from the main room by a wooden railing. In the corner of the area was a radio transmitter, and Haldane, ignoring the coffee, watched him as he sat down at the transmitter and spoke into a microphone. “Joe, this is Charlie. The Marston Moor group is in. Three couples and two singles.”

“Five of them, on their way.”

“Are the lights on?”

“Three more minutes.”

“See you, Joe.”

After Charlie signed off, Haldane asked, “What’s the pressure and oxygen content of this atmosphere?”

“Twenty p.s.i. at sea level and twenty-eight per cent.”

“Where does the coffee come from?”

“From coffee beans, for Christ’s sake!”

“Two lumps of sugar and a dash of cream, coming up!”

He turned at her voice to see Helix coming toward him with a mug of coffee in her hand, moving with the willowy grace of old and the poise of a hostess at a Cap and Gown tea. He was mildly surprised to see her, more surprised to see her slender figure, and amazed at her smile which glowed with the self-satisfied pleasure of a woman who has kept a surprise party secret from her mate. There was nothing guilty about that smile.

He accepted the coffee and sipped it. It was delicious, aromatic, winey but at the same time fullbodied. He tried another sip and the taste was not illusory. “I had an idea I might run across you here. Flaxon figured you were prime material for this planet.”

“Who’s Flaxon?”

“He’s a man who mops floors at the San Francisco courthouse. But you should be…” He finished his sentence with a hand movement.

“As big as a grounded blimp.” She finished the sentence for him. “At my request, the doctor suspended my animation three days after I was arrested. I was positive the state would send you here.”

Something was radically wrong with his estimate of the situation, so wrong he decided to practice discretion. Something told him that recreation facilities on this planet might be less than adequate, and he did not wish to jeopardize any potential source of supply.

“How were you sure you were coming?”

“Because I read history books. A papal bull issued in 1858, the famous ‘guilt by association’ decree, exiled all mates of deviationists to Hell as co-deviationists.”

“Suppose they had not discovered I was a deviationist and merely S.O.S.ed me?”

“I knew they would spot you,” she said. “I recognized your Fairweather Syndrome from the very first day we met. Anyway, I had the doctor revive me on the day you were sentenced. I couldn’t miss the show.

“But I wasn’t about to wait eight years just to take a lottery chance on a genetic chart. I took direct action.”

“So that accounts for your security lapse. But what makes you think I’d mate with a girl who is not a virgin?”

“You already have, by papal decree.”

“The pope’s not infallible on Hell, and you can’t claim legality on a lawless planet.”

She shook her head sadly. “Logic was never your strong point, mate. I checked the stats before I made my move, and males outnumber females five to three on Hell. Before I spoke to you, I was casing that gray-haired gentleman looking out the window. He looks very lonely and in need of a woman’s sympathy.”

He sipped his coffee, and looked over the other two females. One was a dumpy blond going to fat and the other was too boney. Both were well over twenty-eight.

Someday he would outfigure Helix, the day after he had found the formula for squaring the circle. The only stupid act on her record was laughing at him for being in love with her. Who had followed whom to Hell?

“I’ll take you,” he said. “Now take this stupid cup so I can overcome my scruples about kissing a woman on the mouth.”

He worked up to her lips beginning with her neck on a rising tide of giggles and joy in an unseemly public demonstration which drew consternation from the haggard-faced men and possessive smiles from the anxiety-ridden women exiles.

“So, you’re mine,” he whispered. “How does it feel to be married to a man who never reads all of a small book of poetry?”

Her giggle, this time, sprang from nontactile causes.

“I tricked you by deriding Milton. I knew, with your syndrome, you’d be so involved with him you’d never get back to Fairweather… Psychology for the negative child… But I was proud of you, Haldane, and the girls in my block cheered when you didn’t break… When you rose to defend my… least favorite poet, and me, after all I had done, I broke down and wept.”

Tears of pride and relief were beginning to form in her eyes, and to keep the demonstration from becoming even more unseemly, he said, “I wonder if civilities are such on this planet that we might introduce ourselves to the other exiles.”

“Let’s try,” she said.

“You won’t make a play for the gray-haired man or that dark-haired, fairly young man?”

“You’re the only criminal I’ll ever mate with,” she said.

They had furnished enough diversion to let the watching group relax, with the exception of the old man, who still stood, cupping his eyes from the glare within, and peered out the window.

Their introductions were welcomed. The others seemed pathetically anxious to introduce themselves and to explain the crimes which had brought them to Hell.

Harlon V and his mate, Marta, had been sociologists found guilty of altering the files on workers up for liquidation hearings. Harlon estimated that he and Marta had saved nearly fifty prols from the cyanide chamber.

Hugo II was a Berlin musician whose long and frowsy hair stuck out at all angles. In a thick German accent, he explained brusquely that he had tried to form a group to stop the playing of machine-composed music at state festivals. The fourth man whom he had approached, a musician in his own orchestra, had been a member of the secret police.

His wife, Eva, was far more loquacious. “They came for us at midnight, and they knew all about Hugo. In three days Hugo was tried and convicted. In five days we were on our way.

“Our German
polizei
, ah, they are efficient devils. But my Hugo is efficient, too. All of Bach, in microfilm, is glued into his toupee. So, we have all come, Hugo, Bach, and I, to Hell. Is it not a charming name for so snowy a place?”

Hyman V was an accountant whose forebears had been Pharisees before the Hegemony of Judea. He had been apprehended reading the Torah while wearing a yarmulke. In Haldane’s estimation, the yarmulke was as senseless as the impregnation of a female.

Suddenly Haldane’s retroactive mind clicked, and he recalled, “I spotted the Fairweather Syndrome the first day.”

She had spotted a behavior pattern a lawyer and three trained investigators had missed! How? And how did she even know the Fairweather Syndrome existed?

He had some more explanations coming from Helix.

Hall II, the man by the window, introduced himself last, speaking in an easy, uncowed manner that pleased Haldane.

“I was a teacher, a naturalist, and the state didn’t care for my methods, but that’s behind me… Listen, I’ve been looking out the window, and I’m sure I can see trees. Trees mean chlorophyl, and chlorophyl means sunlight. That sun we saw couldn’t furnish enough energy for dandelions.”

“True,” Haldane agreed, “and the rivers aren’t frozen.”

“The light doesn’t come from the sun,” Hall swung to Haldane, “unless…” His brows puckered.