The Space Trilogy (33 page)

“I think that’s enough,” said Bradley, switching off the speaker and restoring silence. “Anyway, it should give you something new to write about—things have been pretty quiet lately, haven’t they?”

He was watching Gibson intently as he said this, but the author never responded. He merely jotted a few words in his notebook, thanked Bradley with absent-minded and unaccustomed politeness, and departed to his cabin.

“You’re quite right,” said Norden when he had gone. “Something’s certainly happened to Martin. I’d better have a word with Doc.”

“I shouldn’t bother,” replied Bradley. “Whatever it is, I don’t think it’s anything you can handle with pills. Better leave Martin to work it out his own way.”

“Maybe you’re right,” said Norden grudgingly. “But I hope he doesn’t take too long over it!”

He had now taken almost a week. The initial shock of discovering that Jimmy Spencer was Kathleen Morgan’s son had already worn off, but the secondary effects were beginning to make themselves felt. Among these was a feeling of resentment that anything like this should have happened to
him.
It was such an outrageous violation of the laws of probability—the sort of thing that would never have happened in one of Gibson’s own novels. But life was so inartistic and there was really nothing one could do about it.

This mood of childish petulance was now passing, to be replaced by a deeper sense of discomfort. All the emotions he had thought safely buried beneath twenty years of feverish activity were now rising to the surface again, like deep-sea creatures slain in some submarine eruption. On Earth, he could have escaped by losing himself once more in the crowd, but here he was trapped, with nowhere to flee.

It was useless to pretend that nothing had really changed, to say: “Of course I knew that Kathleen and Gerald had a son: what difference does that make now?” It made a great deal of difference. Every time he saw Jimmy he would be reminded of the past and—what was worse—of the future that might have been. The most urgent problem now was to face the facts squarely, and to come to grips with the new situation. Gibson knew well enough that there was only one way in which this could be done, and the opportunity would arise soon enough.

Jimmy had been down to the Southern Hemisphere and was making his way along the equatorial observation deck when he saw Gibson sitting at one of the windows, staring out into space. For a moment he thought the other had not seen him and had decided not to intrude upon his thoughts when Gibson called out: “Hello, Jimmy. Have you got a moment to spare?”

As it happened, Jimmy was rather busy. But he knew that there had been something wrong with Gibson, and realized that the older man needed his presence. So he came and sat on the bench recessed into the observation port, and presently he knew as much of the truth as Gibson thought good for either of them.

“I’m going to tell you something, Jimmy,” Gibson began, “which is known to only a handful of people. Don’t interrupt me and don’t ask any questions—not until I’ve finished, at any rate.

“When I was rather younger than you, I wanted to be an engineer. I was quite a bright kid in those days and had no difficulty in getting into college through the usual examinations. As I wasn’t sure what I intended to do, I took the five-year course in general engineering physics, which was quite a new thing in those days. In my first year I did fairly well—well enough to encourage me to work harder next time. In my second year I did—not brilliantly, but a lot better than average. And in the third year I fell in love. It wasn’t exactly for the first time, but I knew it was the real thing at last.

“Now falling in love while you’re at college may or may not be a good thing for you; it all depends on circumstances. If it’s only a mild flirtation, it probably doesn’t matter one way or the other. But if it’s really serious, there are two possibilities.

“It may act as a stimulus—it may make you determined to do your best, to show that you’re better than the other fellows. On the other hand, you may get so emotionally involved in the affair that nothing else seems to matter, and your studies go to pieces. That is what happened in my case.”

Gibson fell into a brooding silence, and Jimmy stole a glance at him as he sat in the darkness a few feet away. They were on the night side of the ship, and the corridor lights had been dimmed so that the stars could be seen in their unchallenged glory. The constellation of Leo was directly ahead, and there in its heart was the brilliant ruby gem that was their goal. Next to the Sun itself, Mars was by far the brightest of all celestial bodies, and already its disc was just visible to the naked eye. The brilliant crimson light playing full on his face gave Gibson a healthy, even a cheerful appearance quite out of keeping with his feelings.

Was it true, Gibson wondered, that one never really forgot anything? It seemed now as it if might be. He could still see, as clearly as he had twenty years ago, that message pinned on the faculty notice-board: “The Dean of Engineering wishes to see M. Gibson in his office at 3.00.” He had had to wait, of course, until 3.15, and that hadn’t helped. Nor would it have been so bad if the Dean had been sarcastic, or icily aloof, or even if he had lost his temper. Gibson could still picture that inhumanly tidy room, with its neat files and careful rows of books, could remember the Dean’s secretary padding away on her typewriter in the corner, pretending not to listen.

(Perhaps, now he came to think of it, she wasn’t pretending after all. The experience wouldn’t have been so novel to her as it was to him.)

Gibson had liked and respected the Dean, for all the old man’s finicky ways and meticulous pedantry, and now he had let him down, which made his failure doubly hard to bear. The Dean had rubbed it in with his “more in sorrow than in anger” technique, which had been more effective than he knew or intended. He had given Gibson another chance, but he was never to take it.

What made matters worse, though he was ashamed to admit the fact, was that Kathleen had done fairly well in her own exams. When his results had been published, Gibson had avoided her for several days, and when they met again he had already identified her with the cause of his failure. He could see this so clearly now that it no longer hurt. Had he really been in love if he was prepared to sacrifice Kathleen for the sake of his own self-respect? For that is what it came to; he had tried to shift the blame on to her.

The rest was inevitable. That quarrel on their last long cycle ride together into the country, and their returns by separate routes. The letters that hadn’t been opened—above all, the letters that hadn’t been written. Their unsuccessful attempt to meet, if only to say good-bye, on his last day in Cambridge. But even this had fallen through; the message hadn’t reached Kathleen in time, and though he had waited until the last minute she had never come. The crowded train, packed with cheering students, had drawn noisily out of the station, leaving Cambridge and Kathleen behind. He had never seen either again.

There was no need to tell Jimmy about the dark months that had followed. He need never know what was meant by the simple words: “I had a breakdown and was advised not to return to college.” Dr. Evans had made a pretty good job of patching him up, and he’d always be grateful for that. It was Evans who’d persuaded him to take up writing during his convalescence, with results that had surprised them both. (How many people knew that his first novel had been dedicated to his psychoanalyst? Well, if Rachmaninoff could do the same thing with the C Minor Concerto, why shouldn’t he?)

Evans had given him a new personality and a vocation through which he could win back his self-confidence. But he couldn’t restore the future that had been lost. All his life Gibson would envy the men who had finished what he had only begun—the men who could put after their names the degrees and qualifications he would never possess, and who would find their life’s work in fields of which he could be only a spectator.

If the trouble had lain no deeper than this, it might not have mattered greatly. But in salvaging his pride by throwing the blame on to Kathleen he had warped his whole life. She, and through her all women, had become identified with failure and disgrace. Apart from few attachments which had not been taken very seriously by either partner, Gibson had never fallen in love again, and now he realized that he never would. Knowing the cause of his complaint had helped him not in the least to find a cure.

None of these things, of course, need be mentioned to Jimmy. It was sufficient to give the bare facts, and to leave Jimmy to guess what he could. One day, perhaps, he might tell him more, but that depended on many things.

When Gibson had finished, he was surprised to find how nervously he was waiting for Jimmy’s reactions. He felt himself wondering if the boy had read between the lines and apportioned blame where it was due, whether he would be sympathetic, angry—or merely embarrassed. It had suddenly become of the utmost importance to win Jimmy’s respect and friendship, more important than anything that had happened to Gibson for a very long time. Only thus could he satisfy his conscience and quieten those accusing voices from the past.

He could not see Jimmy’s face, for the other was in shadow, and it seemed an age before he broke the silence.

“Why have you told me this?” he asked quietly. His voice was completely neutral—free both from sympathy or reproach.

Gibson hesitated before answering. The pause was natural enough, for, even to himself, he could hardly have explained all his motives.

“I just
had
to tell you,” he said earnestly. “I couldn’t have been happy until I’d done so. And besides—I felt I might be able to help, somehow.”

Again that nerve-racking silence. Then Jimmy rose slowly to his feet.

“I’ll have to think about what you’ve told me,” he said, his voice still almost emotionless. “I don’t know what to say now.”

Then he was gone. He left Gibson in a state of extreme uncertainty and confusion, wondering whether he had made a fool of himself or not. Jimmy’s self-control, his failure to react, had thrown him off balance and left him completely at a loss. Only of one thing was he certain: in telling the facts, he had already done a great deal to relieve his mind.

But there was still much that he had not told Jimmy; indeed there was still much that he did not know himself.

Seven

This is completely crazy!” stormed Norden, looking like a berserk Viking chief. “There must be
some
explanation! Good heavens, there aren’t any proper docking facilities on Deimos—how do they expect us to unload? I’m going to call the Chief Executive and raise hell!”

“I shouldn’t if I were you,” drawled Bradley. “Did you notice the signature? This isn’t an instruction from Earth, routed through Mars. It originated in the CE’s office. The old man may be a Tartar, but he doesn’t do things unless he’s got a good reason.”

“Name just one!”

Bradley shrugged his shoulders.

“
I
don’t have to run Mars, so how would I know? We’ll find out soon enough.” He gave a malicious little chuckle. “I wonder how Mac is going to take it? He’ll have to recompute our approach orbit.”

Norden leaned across the control panel and threw a switch.

“Hello, Mac—Skipper here. You receiving me?”

There was a short pause; then Hilton’s voice came from the speaker.

“Mac’s not here at the moment. Any message?”

“All right—you can break it to him. We’ve had orders from Mars to re-route the ship. They’ve diverted us from Phobos—no reason given at all. Tell Mac to calculate an orbit to Deimos, and to let me have it as soon as he can.”

“I don’t understand it. Why, Deimos is just a lot of mountains with no—”

“Yes—we’ve been through all that! Maybe we’ll know the answer when we get there. Tell Mac to contact me as soon as he can, will you?”

Dr. Scott broke the news to Gibson while the author was putting the final touches to one of his weekly articles.

“Heard the latest?” he exclaimed breathlessly. “We’ve been diverted to Deimos. Skipper’s mad as hell—it may make us a day late.”

“Does anyone know why?”

“No; it’s a complete mystery. We’ve asked, but Mars won’t tell.”

Gibson scratched his head, examining and rejecting half a dozen ideas. He knew that Phobos, the inner moon, had been used as a base ever since the first expedition had reached Mars. Only 6,000 kilometres from the surface of the planet, and with a gravity less than a thousandth of Earth’s, it was ideal for this purpose. The lightly built spaceships could land safely on a world where their total weight was under a ton and it took minutes to fall a few metres. A small observatory, a radio station, and a few pressurized buildings completed the attractions of the tiny satellite, which was only about thirty kilometres in diameter. The smaller and more distant moon, Deimos, had nothing on it at all except an automatic radio beacon.

The
Ares
was due to dock in less than a week, and already Mars was a small disc showing numerous surface markings even to the naked eye. Gibson had borrowed a large Mercator projection of the planet and had begun to learn the names of its chief features—names that had been given, most of them, more than a century ago by astronomers who had certainly never dreamed that men would one day use them as part of their normal lives. How poetical those old mapmakers had been when they had ransacked mythology! Even to look at those words on the map was to set the blood pounding in the veins—Deucalion, Elysium, Eumenides, Arcadia, Atlantis, Utopia, Eos… Gibson could sit for hours, fondling those wonderful names with his tongue, feeling as if in truth Keats’ charm’d magic casements were opening before him. But there were no seas, perilous or otherwise, on Mars—though many of its lands were sufficiently forlorn.