The Rape of The Sun Page 16

  Other Achilles’ heels were the Mazda windows: in the nose, and along the flanks. We thought we had this heat-vulnerability licked. Each window was a double pane of self-adjusting polarity. Between the panes was an opaque metal shutter with an exterior coating of Jacobite, openable or closeable at a button-touch. How long we could leave a window unshuttered would depend on Sun: our angle to him, our proximity to him.

  At that point, the fifth shuttle expelled our four nuclear missiles, and more space-flying maneuvered them into their launch tubes all around Mazda: on her back, her flanks, her belly. We were aloft now, the drag of their launch-weight was minimized, and they had to be secured to us because during our fall there would be independent accelerations: when we turned a comer, they’d better not keep going straight ahead.

  When all our assembling was done, and the meticulous inspections had been completed, the crew quintet said face-to-face good-byes and thanks and well dones and like that to our shuttle comrades; and we retired into our all-assembled Mazda, where during six hours we rested, each in his own cubicle.

  Then all five of us assembled on the Mazda bridge, and we gave the go-ahead to the orbiter pilots. The five shuttle-or-biters buried their noses in cradles built around the stem rocket-thrust nozzles of Mazda and the four satellites (Mazda being rumped by her compact escape booster, the largely solar-powered invention of Hugo Graben).

  Pushed by the shuttles, we began the difficult double maneuver of increasing altitude while changing our orbital orientation from west-east to east-west, counter to Earth’s rotation. By the time when we had risen to a neat forty thousand kilometers out from Earth, all of* our west-east momentum had been cancelled, and the effect of Earth’s rotation had also been cancelled. Most important, Earth’s feeble gravity pull was now only 3.5 kilometers per second as against Sun’s 42.5; and we could instrumentally feel the superior gravitational force of Sun tugging us away from our planet.

  We exchanged radio farewells with the shuttle pilots and unlocked them from their stem cradles. Accelerating in order to restore themselves to an earthwise orbit, the shuttles drifted away and nosed earthward.

  And we began our long fall toward Sun.

  16

  All during the sun-fall, we five were packed into the command cylinder, which was about fifteen meters long and five in diameter excluding our tail booster. Even though we were crammed into a space-tank, our togetherness was not as oppressive as one might suppose. On Earth, that sort of space would offer no more than seventy-five square meters of deployable floor for five people along with their compacted mass of diversified equipment. But because our cylinder was rotating to produce a minimum of artificial gravity, our total “floor” space—we called it shell space—included “walls” and “ceiling”, amounting in all to more than two hundred square meters. The layout of the cylinder had been planned in those terms.

  We christened our ship the Mazda, having rejected Prometheus on the basis that we did not intend to be chained to a mountain afterward. The names of our four unmanned satellites were equally exotic: One, Two, Three, and Skiddoo. Our missiles were: Tinker attached to our belly, Evers and Chance on our flanks, and Hoolihan on our back. (Although the god Mazda was a he, I am calling our vehicle she, for nautical sexist reasons.)

  Each of us was able to escape the others, for sleep or just for privacy refuge, in one’s own private cubicle. Our five cells were honeycombed all around the hull amidships, with a cylindrical tube through the axis of the cluster for passageway forward to the all-purpose salon and control room and aft to the utility room (which included Haley’s lab) and the main exterior hatch (there was also a small emergency hatch forward). The concave shell-floor of each cubicle was two meters long by three wide; its end walls were vertical, its side walls sloped inward; its ceiling, two meters above the floor, measured two meters long by three-fifths meter wide. So there was room for a bunk along one wall; and along the facing wall, a dresser, a worktable with drawers including a file drawer, a chair, and storage cupboards above. The entrance to a cubicle was in the ceiling: we floated in head-down (I couldn’t have worked the squeeze pregnant) and floated out head-up. I should remark that during fabrication, the furniture had been built-in prior to erection of the bulkheads.

  There were no taboos against entertaining guests in one’s cubicle. The only taboo during the mission barred entertaining a guest more lavishly than crew discipline could support. After prolonged thought, I had announced this taboo at a late-May crew meeting, having Wel and Sven particularly in mind, but aiming it also at Bill and Collins who were after all males. “At our ages,” I had remarked, “we should be able to suppress that urge during a few months in space—or, in a pinch, to redirect it alone in cubicle.” Wel had answered, “Okay, what the hell”; Sven had shrugged and nodded; Bill also had nodded, looking embarrassed; the Collins nod was vague, he was contemplating something.

  I was perfectly amazed at how dreamily languid one felt, falling into the sun. Well, almost into the sun: close enough to Sun so that you wouldn’t want to be there without a hell of a lot of protection. And you had to consider the possibility that you could miss your orbit and really fall in. Oboy: cookery. ...

  The point of languor was noticeable fall-acceleration so close to nil that it stopped being noticeable and seemed nil. When we had first virtually cancelled earth-gravity in order to start falling, already we were falling at the rate of 42.5 kps—which is how fast Earth is always falling toward Sun, only Earth’s orbital motion keeps her in eliptical freefall— and so we felt no sudden sunward acceleration; it seemed rather that Earth was sliding out from under us (or from above us, whichever). Even after falling for most of seven days, when our velocity had risen from the initial 42.5 kilometers per second to 45.5 kps, our acceleration was only .0008 g—like sitting in a parking lot, maybe. Nevertheless, by the end of that seventh day, we had fallen 26 million kilometers from Earth—a bit of a distance out—and had shortened our remaining sun-journey to 123 million. Under certain conditions, you can cover a lot of distance while seeming to stand still.

  On the other hand, those kilometer figures were deceptive now, weren’t they? since all distances had been reduced by one-third in our process of shrinkage. But on the third hand, the ship and we were also only one-third size, weren’t we? so it all came out the same.

  Once, during an evening bull-shoot, I raised this point of languor. “Lazy descent, yes,” Sven agreed, “but if we happen to miss the turning—watch out for that final step, it’s a killer.” I knew what he meant. If we should miss our sun-orbit and fall into the damn star, the g’s would hit an abrupt and body-smashing sixty-eight at fifty Earth-radii out, and would skyrocket above two billion just before final bum; and all this would happen in eight minutes. On the other hand, there was a contained blessing: the g's would kill us just as we would start to fry. Anyhow, I anticipated plenty of g's when we would execute our course corrections.

  We developed a standard diurnal routine. Up at 0700 hours (Sven insisted on the twenty-four-hour clock). After exercise and breakfast, into duty at 0900. Duty could be summarized as routine instrument checking in the control room, routine husbanding of our satellite brood, and routine inspection of the interior shell.

  We were all concerned to learn how to backstop each other’s duties.

  Each morning, we gathered around Sven while he did an oral check-out of instruments, buttons, and levers for ship guidance.

  Then they clustered over me while I did a rundown on our computer systems.

  Next, we haunted Wel while he studied the individual position of each satellite and missile and redeployed when there were drifts from formation. All eight were sun-falling near Mother Mazda, fronts in the forward sunlight. Wel then broke out all the satellites* appendages, put the mirror systems through coordination procedures with lasers, tested their other capabilities, and ran his charges through minimum maneuver practice. Mazda and the four satellites had solar receptors deployed, and increasingly t
he solar intake would be supplementing and finally replacing the energy fuel which we had brought along. All satellites and missiles had power packs for instrumental deployment and self-guidance at Wel's command—but nothing like the Mazda's grisly little tail booster, because the other bodies wouldn’t be trying to return from Sun.

  Completing morning duties (“morning” by convention, although there was no external day-night difference), we hung over Bill while, in Ms laboratory behind our sleep-cubicles, he lectured us on the use of one or another of Ms astronomical instruments and did a bit of solar observation, kymograph recording, and so on.

  Our movements about the capsule might be described as lazy-gravity motions, the way people move on Moon: like deep-sea divers wearing lead-soled shoes, although this crew wore sneakers.

  Then came lunch. At a button-touch, a section of floor rose to become a table, and five pneumatic chairs mushroomed around it; and the servings made magical appearance in a cabinet for our taking, belted forward from the aft stores. We could actually drop food languidly into our mouths; we could tilt our heads back for slow drinks out of a normal earthside tumbler—the liquid undulated oilily through our lips and down our gullets. Afterward, we dumped our containers into a recycling unit, and our table became floor again; and our chairs deflated into floor, the outpumped air being saved for the next inflation.

  We dined in an all-purpose room measuring four meters along the longitudinal axis. When we would reenter it after an hour of post-luncheon rest, we expected to find, and did find, the room bare all around the shell—freed for recreation-of-whim, on a concave floor four meters wide fore-to-aft, and more than fifteen long all around our cylindrical interior. Net-squash there was an adventurous game: the players necessarily slow-motion running, the ball going with normal speed and hitting concave surfaces to bounce anywhere; it was possible, pursuing a ball, to run up and around and over and down and return your opponent’s drive from his own side of the net. And there was other physical stuff. Or we played cards or had funny parties. From 1600 to 1700, one of us lectured the others on a topic of the speaker’s choice for half an hour, with lively discussion following. Wel and Sven and I were in on all of this; Bill and Collins were often absent, Bill studying the sun, Collins studying God knew what.

  We had a happy hour then. There used to be jokes about dehydrated water, but it was no longer a joke in 1995: to supplement what we recycled, we made fresh water aboard, out of hypfer-compressed hydrogen and oxygen, drawing on solar energy for the hydrolic synthesis. During happy hours, we dropped-in liquor pills, getting seventy-proof stuff, which wasn’t all that bad for primitive living.

  Then supper. Afterward, at 2000 hours, the evening was ahead of us.

  Under such conditions, what do you do with evenings? We had some music tapes, but dancing wasn’t a good idea with four men and one woman. Sex, I’ll repeat, we had eschewed: in this tank on this voyage, we could all afford monasticism.

  We had some pretty good films, but it worked out that movies were shown only three evenings during our trip sunward.

  Instead, we fell into bull-shoots. When that label emerged (it was Wel's coinage), Bill wondered whether we should find a term less sexist; I asserted, “Bulls I simply love to shoot,” and that was that.

  Sack time for most of us was about 2300, although some wandered away earlier. One frequent purpose of the away-wandering was not to sleep immediately, but to contemplate stars. Each of us was provided with a viewport at centerfloor of the cubicle; one would strip, douse the lights, and lie prone on one’s bunk with one’s head hanging over (only minor blood-to-head dizziness in low gravity), gazing into space. Because of our antigrav hull rotation, the stars kept moving past the window, but in leisurely fashion: we rotated once in 19.5 minutes; a given star would stay in your window during nearly a minute, and before too long it would be back again, although you might no longer be awake.

  Although the stars as viewed in space had always enthralled me, on this trip they were frightening, easily three times as big as they had ever been out here. Stars crowded up at me, threatened me. I knew why, and the reflection wasn’t comforting. The fireball whither we were drifting was fearsome enough in itself. But perhaps when we would arrive, we would be making rendezvous with power unspeakable— power to seize the sun with all its planets and steal them away.

  The rendezvous would be made while Sun and Earth and we ourselves were four centuries into our own past. But neither Sun nor any of its planets had, as of now, any present later than this past.

  Part Six

  SPACE-INTIMATIONS OF THE DRAGON FLEET

  Part Five

  LIFT-OFF, DROP-OFF

  17

  Our first bull-shoot, on the evening of our first day of falling (July 1), was desultory. We were weary from a full day of initial shakedown. Soon all of us were retiring for star-watch.

  The second evening’s bull-shoot was not desultory.

  After a few early exchanges, Sven speared Collins with the question: “What’s the status of the Dhorners?” The casual Collins reply brought us up sharply: “They took off from I Dhorn on June 25, they completed their time-descent in a short time, they are in their sixth day of progress along a time-chord toward Sun.”

  Sven’s fist hit an arm of his pneumatic chair. “While we were frigging around in low orbit, they beat us to the jump—” Leaning toward Collins, he commanded: “Share the launch with us!” He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes; three of us eagerly relaxed for the new vision. It came into us . . .

  darkness total . . . darkness punctuated by pirouetting lights winking-out some sort of code that escaped us . . . darkness quasi-brightening into pregnant twilight in which the light-ballet persisted, becoming

  a spreading spaceport on an alien world, a spaceport artificially illuminated with the brilliance of high daylight, a port

  resembling an earthside air terminal—all in a medium of azure, the port being situated high in the gaseous sea in which Dhorn was immersed.

  In the center of a spreading launch pad, a bizarre armada awaiting takeoff signal. The magnitude of the greatest among the ships was so mighty that even at half-kilometer distance it filled our vision and its extremities extended into vision’s periphery. All about the great ship were grouped junior ships: a triple score of them, each in minuscule closely resembling its formidable parent.

  And what was the appearance of each ship, really? Eh, it was our space-dragon all over again, many times larger: green manta rays with spreading wings, with a doublet of helical horns forward-spearing out of each ship—horns a hundred meters long on the largest ship and ten on the smaller ones. However, in contrast to the Houston space-manta, these ships were tailless.

  Abruptly we were hovering in midfield between where the ships were and where we had been. Looking at the ships with Collins, we found them trebled in perspective-size: as for the parent ship, only its nose and the bases of its wings were within our visual field, while its smaller cohorts trailed back out of our vision. Looking back, we saw a large grandstand-array of spectators. Our field narrowed on the central watchers whose platform was raised above the foot levels of the others: looming large, the Horn; small beside him, Hréda quivering in high anticipation....

  Now we seemed to be in the nose-bubble of the colossus, at the back of the ship’s spacious bridge which bristled with instrument consoles. Crewmen pored over those instruments or moved about; their skins were dark green, and their coverall uniforms were gold-yellow—except for patterns of green brocade on the sleeves, patterns which might indicate ranks. The bridge was suffused with blue-green atmosphere deeper in hue than the outer azure, suggesting that the ship’s life-support system was adjusted equivalent to somewhat deeper levels of Dhom’s gaseous ocean.

  Swivel chairs with arms were paired before an intricate array of instruments, buttons, and tiny levers at center-front. A uniformed homed man, his sleeves brocade-enriched, sat in the left-hand chair, peering out through the bu
bble-transparency, slight-swiveling restlessly; we could see only his back, but beyond doubt it was Captain Dhurk.

  A strident buzzer sounded through the ship. Profoundly from her bowels resounded a humming of potent engines which wavulated faint vibration through the hull—a vibration which felt blurred, as though the ship were not built of metal as we knew it. Men froze at their posts; a horned officer joined the captain in the adjacent chair. Flipping a switch, Captain Dhurk spoke into an invisible amplifier: his word-sounds were utterly alien, but the mind-sense of them came through to us:

  “Now hear this, Dear Ancestor the Horn of Dhom, Dear Sister Princess Hréda, and all outside. This is Ultrasuperior Dhurk. We are going to get what you want. We will not return without it. Bless you, and pray bless us. That is all.”

  Clearly the crowd outside was cheering (although in the ship their cheers were inaudible) as Captain Dhurk flipped two more switches and began reading clipped orders for the crew and for the smaller craft in his fleet. After several minutes of this came silence. An officer began a countdown from ten. At zero, Dhurk pressed buttons and moved levers; the humming of the engines crescendoed to a roaring; there was shipmotion and the ship was gone without us, leaving us in mid-azure with small ships buzzing all about us.