The Space Trilogy (41 page)

He was suddenly aware that a great silence had fallen. Everyone was looking at him and Irene.

“Humph!” said the Chief Executive. “If you two have quite finished, we’d better get a move on. The show starts in ten minutes.”

Most of Port Lowell seemed to have squeezed into the little theatre by the time they arrived. Mayor Whittaker, who had hurried ahead to check the arrangements, met them at the door and shepherded them into their seats, a reserved block occupying most of the front row. Gibson, Hadfield, and Irene were in the centre, flanked by Norden and Hilton—much to Jimmy’s chagrin. He had no alternative but to look at the show.

Like all such amateur performances, it was good in parts. The musical items were excellent and there was one mezzo-soprano who was up to the best professional standards of Earth. Gibson was not surprised when he saw against her name on the program: “Late of the Royal Covent Garden Opera.”

A dramatic interlude then followed, the distressed heroine and old-time villain hamming it for all they were worth. The audience loved it, cheering and booing the appropriate characters and shouting gratuitous advice.

Next came one of the most astonishing ventriloquist acts that Gibson had ever seen. It was nearly over before he realized—only a minute before the performer revealed it deliberately—that there was a radio receiver inside the doll and an accomplice off-stage.

The next item appeared to be a skit on life in the city, and was so full of local allusions that Gibson understood only part of it. However, the antics of the main character—a harassed official obviously modelled on Mayor Whittaker—drew roars of laughter. These increased still further when he began to be pestered by a fantastic person who was continually asking ridiculous questions, noting the answers in a little book (which he was always losing), and photographing everything in sight.

It was several minutes before Gibson realized just what was going on. For a moment he turned a deep red; then he realized that there was only one thing he could do. He would have to laugh louder than anyone else.

The proceedings ended with community singing, a form of entertainment which Gibson did not normally go out of his way to seek—rather the reverse, in fact. But he found it more enjoyable than he had expected, and as he joined in the last choruses a sudden wave of emotion swept over him, causing his voice to peter out into nothingness. For a moment he sat, the only silent man in all that crowd, wondering what had happened to him.

The faces around provided the answer. Here were men and women united in a single task, driving towards a common goal, each knowing that their work was vital to the community. They had a sense of fulfilment which very few could know on Earth, where all the frontiers had long ago been reached. It was a sense heightened and made more personal by the fact that Port Lowell was still so small that everyone knew everybody else.

Of course, it was too good to last. As the colony grew, the spirit of these pioneering days would fade. Everything would become too big and too well organized; the development of the planet would be just another job of work. But for the present it was a wonderful sensation, which a man would be lucky indeed to experience even once in his lifetime. Gibson knew it was felt by all those around him, yet he could not share it. He was an outsider: that was the role he had always preferred to play—and now he had played it long enough. If it was not too late, he wanted to join in the game.

That was the moment, if indeed there was such a single point in time, when Martin Gibson changed his allegiance from Earth to Mars. No one ever knew. Even those beside him, if they noticed anything at all, were aware only that for a few seconds he had stopped singing, but had now joined in the chorus again with redoubled vigour.

In twos and threes, laughing, talking and singing, the audience slowly dissolved into the night, Gibson and his friends started back towards the hotel, having said good-bye to the Chief and Mayor Whittaker. The two men who virtually ran Mars watched them disappear down the narrow streets; then Hadfield turned to his daughter and remarked quietly: “Run along home now, dear—Mr. Whittaker and I are going for a little walk. I’ll be back in half an hour.”

They waited, answering good-nights from time to time, until the tiny square was deserted. Mayor Whittaker, who guessed what was coming, fidgeted slightly.

“Remind me to congratulate George on tonight’s show,” said Hadfield.

“Yes,” Whittaker replied. “I loved the skit on our mutual headache, Gibson. I suppose you want to conduct a post-mortem on his latest exploit?”

The Chief was slightly taken aback by this direct approach.

“It’s rather too late now—and there’s no real evidence that any real harm was done. I’m just wondering how to prevent future accidents.”

“It was hardly the driver’s fault. He didn’t know about the Project and it was pure bad luck that he stumbled on it.”

“Do you think Gibson suspects anything?”

“Frankly, I don’t know. He’s pretty shrewd.”

“Of all the times to send a reporter here! I did everything I could to keep him away, heaven knows!”

“He’s bound to find out that something’s happening before he’s here much longer. I think there’s only one solution.”

“What’s that?”

“We’ll just have to tell him. Perhaps not everything, but enough.”

They walked in silence for a few yards. Then Hadfield remarked:

“That’s pretty drastic. You’re assuming he can be trusted completely.”

“I’ve seen a good deal of him these last weeks. Fundamentally, he’s on our side. You see, we’re doing the sort of things he’s been writing about all his life, though he can’t quite believe it yet. What would be fatal would be to let him go back to Earth, suspecting something but not knowing what.”

There was another long silence. They reached the limit of the dome and stared across the glimmering Martian landscape, dimly lit by the radiance spilling out from the city.

“I’ll have to think it over,” said Hadfield, turning to retrace his footsteps. “Of course, a lot depends on how quickly things move.”

“Any hints yet?”

“No, confound them. You never can pin scientists down to a date.”

A young couple, arms twined together, strolled past them obliviously. Whittaker chuckled.

“That reminds me. Irene seems to have taken quite a fancy to that youngster—what’s his name—Spencer.”

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s a change to see a fresh face around. And space travel is so much more romantic than the work we do here.”

“All the nice girls love a sailor, eh? Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you!”

That something had happened to Jimmy was soon perfectly obvious to Gibson, and it took him no more than two guesses to arrive at the correct answer. He quite approved of the lad’s choice: Irene seemed a very nice child, from what little he had seen of her. She was rather unsophisticated, but this was not necessarily a handicap. Much more important was the fact that she had a gay and cheerful disposition, though once or twice Gibson had caught her in a mood of wistfulness that was very attractive. She was also extremely pretty; Gibson was now old enough to realize that this was not all-important, though Jimmy might have different views on the subject.

At first, he decided to say nothing about the matter until Jimmy raised it himself. In all probability, the boy was still under the impression that no one had noticed anything in the least unusual. Gibson’s self-control gave way, however, when Jimmy announced his intention of taking a temporary job in Port Lowell. There was nothing odd about this; indeed, it was a common practice among visiting space-crews, who soon got bored if they had nothing to do between trips. The work they chose was invariably technical and related in some way to their professional activities; Mackay, for example, was running evening classes in mathematics, while poor Dr. Scott had had no holiday at all, but had gone straight to the hospital immediately on reaching Port Lowell.

But Jimmy, it seemed, wanted a change. They were short of staff in the accounting section, and he thought his knowledge of mathematics might help. He put up an astonishingly convincing argument, to which Gibson listened with genuine pleasure.

“My dear Jimmy,” he said, when it was finished. “Why tell
me
all this? There’s nothing to stop your going right ahead if you want to.”

“I know,” said Jimmy, “but you see a lot of Mayor Whittaker and it might save trouble if you had a word with him.”

“I’ll speak to the Chief if you like.”

“Oh no, I shouldn’t——” Jimmy began. Then he tried to retrieve his blunder. “It isn’t worth bothering him about such details.”

“Look here, Jimmy,” said Gibson with great firmness. “Why not come clean? Is this your idea, or did Irene put you up to it?”

It was worth travelling all the way to Mars to see Jimmy’s expression. He looked rather like a fish that had been breathing air for some time and had only just realized it.

“Oh,” he said at last, “I didn’t know you knew. You won’t tell anyone, will you?”

Gibson was just about to remark that this would be quite unnecessary, but there was something in Jimmy’s eyes that made him abandon all attempts at humour. The wheel had come full circle; he was back again in that twenty-year-old-buried spring. He knew exactly what Jimmy was feeling now, and knew also that nothing which the future could bring to him would ever match the emotions he was discovering, still as new and fresh as on the first morning of the world. He might fall in love again in later days, but the memory of Irene would shape and colour all his life—just as Irene herself must be the memory of some ideal he had brought with him into this universe.

“I’ll do what I can,” said Gibson gently, and meant it with all his heart. Though history might repeat itself, it never did so exactly, and one generation could learn from the errors of the last. Some things were beyond planning or foresight, but he would do all he could to help; and this time, perhaps, the outcome might be different.

Eleven

The amber light was on. Gibson took a last sip of water, cleared his throat gently, and checked that the papers of his script were in the right order. No matter how many times he broadcast, his throat always felt this initial tightness. In the control room, the program engineer held up her thumb; the amber changed abruptly to red.

“Hello, Earth. This is Martin Gibson speaking to you from Port Lowell, Mars. It’s a great day for us here. This morning the new dome was inflated and now the city’s increased its size by almost a half. I don’t know if I can convey any impression of what a triumph this means, what a feeling of victory it gives to us here in the battle against Mars. But I’ll try.

“You all know that it’s impossible to breathe the Martian atmosphere—it’s far too thin and contains practically no oxygen. Port Lowell, our biggest city, is built under six domes of transparent plastic held up by the pressure of the air inside—air which we can breathe comfortably though it’s still much less dense than yours.

“For the last year a seventh dome has been under construction, a dome twice as big as any of the others. I’ll describe it as it was yesterday, when I went inside before the inflation started.

“Imagine a great circular space half a kilometre across, surrounded by a thick wall of glass bricks twice as high as a man. Through this wall lead the passages to the other domes, and the exits direct on to the brilliant green Martian landscape all around us. These passages are simply metal tubes with great doors which close automatically if air escapes from any of the domes. On Mars, we don’t believe in putting all our eggs in one basket!

“When I entered Dome Seven yesterday, all this great circular space was covered with a thin transparent sheet fastened to the surrounding wall, and lying limp on the ground in huge folds beneath which we had to force our way. If you can imagine being inside a deflated balloon you’ll know exactly how I felt. The envelope of the dome is a very strong plastic, almost perfectly transparent and quite flexible—a kind of thick cellophane.

“Of course, I had to wear my breathing mask, for though we were sealed off from the outside there was still practically no air in the dome. It was being pumped in as rapidly as possible, and you could see the great sheets of plastic straining sluggishly as the pressure mounted.

“This went on all through the night. The first thing this morning I went into the dome again, and found that the envelope had now blown itself into a big bubble at the centre, though round the edges it was still lying flat. That huge bubble—it was about a hundred meters across—kept trying to move around like a living creature, and all the time it grew.

“About the middle of the morning it had grown so much that we could see the complete dome taking shape; the envelope had lifted away from the ground everywhere. Pumping was stopped for a while to test for leaks, then resumed again around midday. By now the sun was helping too, warming up the air and making it expand.

“Three hours ago the first stage of the inflation was finished. We took off our masks and let out a great cheer. The air still wasn’t really thick enough for comfort, but it was breathable and the engineers could work inside without bothering about masks any more. They’ll spend the next few days checking the great envelope for stresses, and looking for leaks. There are bound to be some, of course, but as long as the air loss doesn’t exceed a certain value it won’t matter.