The Rape of The Sun Page 18

  Sven nodded. “That’s settled, then, because we won’t dare wait to be attacked. Wel, you’re relieved of missile duty, other than keeping them near the ship. I’ll do the firing.”

  Bill interposed: “What makes you think those missiles will stop them?”

  “Now Bill—five-megaton warheads? Each one five thousand times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb? Four of them?”

  Bill turned to our medic: “How big are the Dhomer ships, Mr. Collins?”

  Our medic raised his shoulders slowly and dropped them.

  Amazed, Sven demanded: “You don’t know how big they are?”

  “How would I know?” Collins queried. “Only my mind has been there, not my physical body for comparison. The ships looked gigantic compared to the Dhomers—but the Dhomers may be any size at all within the uncertain practical magnitude range for mammals: they may be tiny marmosets, they may be whales. And whatever size they may normally be, they are now three times larger relative to us.”

  “I know this much,” Bill declared. “I know the amount of energy required to move the sun. And you aren’t going to pack that much energy into a toy sailboat”

  Sven stared. His head went down. He nodded slowly.

  His head came slowly up. “Bill, are you suggesting that we should reserve a decision to fire until we can estimate the enemy’s magnitude?”

  Wel answered for Bill. “Nothing gets as mad as a bull stung by the darts of picadors.”

  Retorted Sven: “A five-megaton warhead is not a dart! Besides, we could be lucky and hit a vital spot. . . . Hel, how far out can our equipment spot them and estimate their size?”

  “How far out,” I temporized, “depends on their sizes and their electromagnetic emissions. If they were intentionally beaming right at us, the way explorer satellites beam at Earth, our equipment could pick them up at indefinite ranges. But if they are electromagnetically silent—all I can say is that our beam spreads with distance, and its resolution power diminishes with distance.”

  “Can’t you pin it down more than that?”

  Piqued, I shot: “You’re trained in this, too. Could you pin it down more than that?”

  Suddenly Sven seemed deflated; I suspected that he had been on the offensive primarily because he didn’t know how to defend.

  Brood. Collins went to the bar to make drinks around; it was a backup skill that he had learned. Having distributed drinks, Collins sat and fidgeted.

  I felt an urgency to semi-resolve issues in order to bring peace. I said, “Let’s all concentrate on what is important. I think we know for sure that there is no way now to play with tactics or strategy; we have to wait until we see what the situation is. But we do need to be mutually firm on our purpose, and I think we are. I think Sven has been trying to get across to us that we have to start right now concentrating on our purpose and being alert to our developing problems. Apart from the business of getting into sun-orbit, we have to keep the Dhomers on the top of our consciousness. Right now, it appears that we may be helpless, but we won’t know that absolutely until encounter. Buy it?”

  Wel said, “Yo.” The other three nodded grave affirmation.

  Said Collins abruptly, “If I am able to watch it happening, I will want to get into the action.”

  We stared at him who had emitted this uncharacteristic, unexpected charge-cry. And presently Wel responded: “Were I helpless in their hands, easily would I want you into the action. Collins, I would cry to you: Come away, servant; approach, my Ariel; come.”

  Collins, his face oddly eager, leaned toward Wel. “All hail, great master! Grave sir, hail! I come to answer your best pleasure; be it to fly, to swim, to dive into the fire, to ride on the curled clouds; to your strong bidding, task Ariel, and all his quality.”

  I breathed: “Holy Moley, it is Shakespeare’s Tempest!”

  Leaning back, Wel surveyed Collins, saying softly: “You do that, too?”

  “Aye,” said Collins. “I can quote everything he ever wrote. Pleasantly would I play Ariel to your Prospero.”

  I began to say something; touching my arm, Sven warned me off.

  “Still,” Wel mused aloud, “it isn’t quite appropriate. Prospero was master of his island; but were I a prisoner aboard a Dhorner ship, Prospero I would not be. What prisoner might I be, Collins? Try this:

  “O God! Methinks it were a happy life to be no better than a homely swain; to sit upon a hill, as I do now, to carve out dials quaintly, point by point, thereby to see the minutes | how they run—”

  Collins: “How many make the hour full complete; how many hours bring about the day; how many days will finish I up the year; how many years a mortal man may live. . . .

  But this is a typical self-pitying conceit of Henry the Sixth,

  Doctor Carr; as a prisoner, you would never declaim so.”

  Wel: “Good Mister Collins, will you at last call me Wel?”

  Collins: “But then, sir, you would have to call me Will for Willkie; whereas it is you who are Will.”

  Wel: “I am?”

  Collins: “So Captain Jensen has affirmed; I heard it in absentia. Good Wel, please call me just Collins, and press on to something more realistic in terms of yourself being prisoner on a Dhomer ship.”

  Wel, smiling fey: “Let us suppose that you are the fell Dhomer who is about to slay me. And then I shall say: “Teeth hadst thou in thy head when thou wast bom, to signify thou earnest to bite the world; and if the rest be true which I have heard, thou earnest—”

  Collins, furious, leaping erect: “I’ll hear no more; die, prophet, in thy speech; for this, amongst the rest, was I ordained—”

  And Collins charged the seated Wel and fell upon him as though to stab him in the belly, while, alarmed, Sven and I Bill drove in to seize Collins and hold him back: oho, a most merry scene it was. .. .

  Standing calmly with his arms gripped by his panting restrainers, Collins told Wel: “Somehow, master, .we slipped into thous and wasts. If it comes to a realistic situation, Elizabethan English has got to go.”

  19

  Solar turbulence seized and shook us: rough, rough. It was Day 17 aboard Mazda; still we were 74 million kilometers from Sun, but we had progressed 75 million from Earth and were down-hurtling at 21,000 kilometers per hour. Bill called the turbulence a transient magnetic storm. At our declination angle, we were riding it partly crosswise, like an ocean ship angling into wild-heavy seas. There was heavy duty around the clock for all, using more power than we liked in order to hold course. Wel's duty was the toughest: he was trying to control our satellites at a distance which had widened to three million kilometers.

  Our kicking-around continued on Day 18 but began to taper off, although duty continued harsh. The turbulence was driving us up the concave walls because even by perpetual daylight (which we got all the time from the largening sun on our forward flank) it was as invisible as a hurricane— more so, because no scudding clouds. We bounced all over the ship, despite Sven’s precaution of speeding our gravity rotation to a full g to help stabilize the ship. The instruments went crazy, the computer controls were erratic and had to be tightly followed up; and maybe our brains were affected too, because it was a lot harder to concentrate just when we needed maximum concentration. And Wel was almost tearfully in terror for his tormented missiles and satellites.

  There were a few accidents, mostly comedy, like Collins falling into my computer console and Wel spilling soup down his front; at times like these we could wish for the old-fashioned suck-bottles. All of us had some nasty bruises; these, including his own, medic Collins had gravely inspected, but of course he had no treatment to suggest, other than analgesic salve.

  Over supper on Day 18, there was a minor celebration. Three days ago we had been halfway to Sun in terms of time; since early yesterday, when hurrahs had been impossible, we were more than halfway in terms of space—right now 82 million kilometers from Earth, only 67 million from Sun, and only 59 million from the orbit into which we would ins
ert our four satellites. The festivities were not crimped by Bill when he reminded us that we could expect a lot more turbulence as we would proceed closer in, and particularly while we would be orbiting our star. It wasn’t news, we’d planned for this, our vehicles had been constructed to withstand this; but the subjective significance had now been bruisingly driven home by three days of intensive storm-shaken operations.

  We were comprehending two things. One: our seven weeks of orbiting would not be conducive to net-squash or even solid cribbage pegging. Two: during that orbiting, we as pilot crew would have to develop a lot of answers about telemetric maintenance of the solar-storm-twisted unmanned satellites, maintenance all the way from Earth after the pilot crew would abandon them and see if maybe we could escape and go home.

  Everybody, on Days 17 and 18, sacked out soon after supper. Therefore, little bull-shooting—and none about the enemy rape of the sun.

  On the morning of Day 19 and July 19, Sven called Houston: “Mazda here, Jensen talking. We’ve weathered two days and nights of heavy solar turbulence and are now riding fairly calm. Damage report negative. My figures seem to show that we and our satellites are just about on our courses; how do we look from there? Over.”

  Nine minutes later, reply: “Houston here, Controller Machin talking. All five of your vehicles are off your courses just a bit, not bad at all; congratulations.” Machin gave course figures for Mazda and for the satellites. “Recommend negative on further course correction for a few days until we see what further turbulence may do to you. Unless I have an exception from you, I will assume your approval.

  “I will now go right ahead with some good news and some bad news.

  “The good news is that your orbiting solar receptor field has been successfully launched and is floating lazily around Earth just inside Moon, awaiting your initial solar signals— which we assume it can handle. Meanwhile the field is already funneling direct-collection energy to earthside receptors, and the initial processing is operating smooth

  “The bad news is that while you’ve been fighting turbulence, we’ve been having some godawful earthquakes. Japan and California are all messed up, Iran is in bad trouble, some old volcanoes have opened up in Hawaii and Alaska to mention two bad ones, and quakes in many other parts of the United States and the world have run from 2.2 all the way up to 5.4—that last was in Tennessee. And the sun seems to be wobbling a bit, it’s the damnedest thing I ever saw; we’ll all be eagerly awaiting your reports on that—”

  No remarks were exchanged about our missiles; our signals were tapable.

  Afterward, Bill remarked: “We appear to be immersed four centuries into a dead past—and yet, look at all the electromagnetics that stay operationally vital! That communication with Earth, and Wel's telemetric satellite control, and solar magnetic turbulence. I’m amazed, I’m even upset decidely my time theory needs work.”

  The news about the receptor field was good indeed. Now our satellites, once in position, could go right ahead and start firing sunlight. - .

  But the earthquake situation was hideous, and the appearance of slight sun-wobble was gravely suggestive. As soon as transmission was completed—including the filing of Wel's daily story—Sven called us in for consultation, and he passed the ball to Bill.

  Day after day the sun had grown larger and angrier, during the days of our fall. It could be watched, of course, only from our nose where ship’s rotation was minimized in terms of the target ahead; until now, on our slightly oblique course, apparent sun-wobble had been taken merely as a phenomenon of our own spin. Even,with the darkest glasses, we couldn’t long watch Sun through a polarized window. Our star was now filling more than one degree of arc, double its apparent size from Earth.

  Uncomfortably, Bill said, “I do indeed have some uneasy thoughts about earthquakes and apparent sun-wobble in relation to the Dhomers. Mr. Collins, what do you think they are now doing?” <

  Simply responded Collins, “They are there.”

  Sven barked, “There? At Sun? A day early?”

  “They have completed their time-chord course and have risen in time to the spatiotemporal position of Sun, which is four hundred years in the past of what used to be our present. They have taken position some distance off Sun—I cannot estimate how far off, but not all that far. Position, I said, not orbit; they have power to position themselves. They are deploying to harness the sun. Would you perhaps like to have a visual?”

  Viciously snarled Haley: “For the love of Christ, of course/”

  “Relax, then,” gently said Collins. More liquor wasn’t needed now; we leaned back in our air-chairs, we were ready. . ..

  Dhurk was standing behind his command-chair watching the concavity of his forward bridge-window, which must have 1 been heavily polarized, because the stormy photosphere of I Sun dominated it and yet there was no glare. Small ships kept ! appearing in the window, mean little space-mantas buzzing on their sun-missions; each manta exuded from its tail-vent | quadruple jets of scarlet and blue which resolved themselves into a single broad band of purple. They kept disappearing left and right and above and below the window, presumably encircling the sun with their purple contrails....

  Cut vision. As dazedly we came to, Collins complacently remarked: “I told you all the time what they were up to. And now you have seen it happening.”

  Bill was examining his memory of the image. “They are doing something,” he mused, “but I couldn’t tell what. .Could any of you tell?” Four negative head-shakes.

  Sven wanted to know: “How far out do you think they are?”

  “Astonishingly close,” Bill judged. “The sun seemed in my image to intercept about nine degrees of visual arc, which works out to position them about nine million kilometers off the surface.”

  Wel murmured, “Inside the chosen orbit for our satellites. My, my!”

  I speculated: “Perhaps they have already begun to drag the sun down deeper into time, in preparation for towing it home and us with it.”

  “Helen,” Bill declared, “if we are actually capable of imagining hominids arriving at budging a mass like Sun off course in any dimension at all, then we are capable of supposing that the disturbance of Sun is causing the earthquakes and the visual wobbling. The planets would not respond instantly to a change in the sun’s position, they would lag, they would respond unequally. I keep coming back to my thesis, friend Welland, that releasing the truth to the people of Earth, no matter how dismaying that truth may be, is the only way to keep our planet from panicking and tearing itself apart. Only—”

  Wel prodded: “Only?”

  “Only—as one of our cultural predecessors once remarked in Judea—what is the truth?”

  Said Collins: “The truth is what I have shown you.”

  “Mister Collins, I don’t want to seem to distrust you—” “But you do. Because everything I have shown you might have been projective hallucination. I understand, Doctor Haley. And I think some demonstration may be in order. Captain Jensen, would you mind increasing the artificial gravity to a full g?”

  Without a question, Sven went to the control room, sped-up ship-spin, doubling our weight, and returned, walking rather heavily. Collins turned to Bill: “Even though our gravity at the shell is now the same as that on Earth, you’ll agree that as one rises from any point on the shell toward the axis of spin, gravity is reduced, until along the Mazda-cylinders axis, gravity is zero. So if one could rise off the shell with a thrust so perfectly measured that one would come to rest lying along the axis, without moving in the slightest degree away from the axis, one could stay there indefinitely. The radial distance from the shell to the axis is about two and a half meters; Doctor Haley, when you are standing on the shell, your head is almost up there, less than a meter below the axis. If you jump just right, you can lay yourself along the line of no gravity and float there. Care to try it?”

  Mystified, Bill bent knees, did a standing high jump, tried to horizontalize himself along the axis, went
past it, started to fall, and barely avoided hurting himself as he hit the shell on what now was our ceiling. He limped back around the shell like a defeated net-squash player, querying: “Is there any real point in my trying again?”

  “None,” said Collins, “if all of you fully appreciate the difficulty. Now watch.” Gracefully he levitated from his chair, floated up to the axis, leveled himself along it, and reposed there looking down at us. Wel was grinning; he’d seen a prior demonstration.

  “I want to push this,” Collins insisted from aloft. “Doctor Haley, be good enough to take hold of my belt, pull me down to your knee level, and let go.” Like a skeletal zombie, Haley obeyed—and watched deadpan while Collins floated back up to the axis and stayed there.

  Wel sang out: “You can come down now, Ariel, your point is made.”

  “In that case,” Collins responded as he drifted down, “be good enough to reduce the spin, Captain Jensen.” And he settled accurately into his chair.

  Silence. Into his chair Bill had collapsed.

  “All right,” Wel rejoined. “Let me get into this on the side of Bill. Collins, we don’t doubt your parapsychic abilities; but we still have to distrust whether you have projected into us truth or your own fiction about these alleged Dhorners and their ships. We do not yet know whether you are a luminous visionary or a brilliant imaginer. I pray that your next demonstration of veracity cleave more closely to the point, you should excuse the mangled metaphor.”

  Softly answered Collins: “That will be difficult. Any suggestions?”

  Haley snarled: “Where are we all going with this?”

  “I think,” Wel reminded him, “that we are trying to determine whether this science editor is justified in filing a story about the Dhorn-rape of the sun.”

  I had a thought. “Collins, if you can tap into the minds of these Dhorners and project their experiences into us—could you project thoughts into them?"