The Rape of The Sun Read online

  “Perhaps in a small degree, Doctor Cavell. Nothing so major as influencing them to abort their mission.”

  “A fascinating idea, my friend, but not what I had in mind. Our major problem is proving to all of us, and particularly to Bill and Wel, that what you are bringing to us is objective truth. Now suppose I were to think something that I know about Bill Haley, and you were to read it in my mind and project it into the Dhomer minds and require one of them to say something that would unmistakeably refer to it, while Bill and Wel were listening—”

  I broke off, vexed. “No, that wouldn’t do it. You could be influencing Bill and Wel to believe that the Dhorners were saying it. All right, here’s another idea. If you could influence them to send some physical manifestation directly to us—”

  “Negative.” Sven cut me off. “That would only flag them to our presence. Give up, friends, there is no feasible way for Collins to prove to us that the Dhomers are really there. This epistemological problem is unbeatable. I am proceeding on the assumption that they are there; but if Bill and Wel need objective proof in order for Wel to file a story about it, Bill and Wel are just going to have to await contact. Which may come.”

  After thought, Wel: “If at the risk of my reputation I should file the story—any of you tell me how it would help Earth.”

  Pondering. Then Sven: “In no way at all. Earth has no means of fighting this attack. Any Earth-launched salvo of rocket bombs able to knock out their fleet would take as long to arrive as we will take—and probably would miss targets. The only hope for Earth is our missiles.”

  “I agree with all but your last sentence,” somberly asserted Wel, “and therefore I will not file—sorry, Bill. But I agree with Sven that there may be contact. If they stay in one position while we are orbiting, we are sure to pick them up on instruments during our first pass.”

  I appended: “Which means, of course, that they are sure to pick us up. Collins, won’t they be hostile?”

  Sven, wearily: “It isn’t a thing we can do anything about, except with our missiles—”

  There was a heavy bump, and the ship lurched. “Meteor strike!” Sven called; and automatically all hurried to emergency posts.

  Sven and I checked instruments for evidence of damage: none and, in particular, no air leakage. However, I spotted an indicator which showed a heavy increase of thermal radiation leakage through the hull at a point forward of midships. Cutting ship-spin, braking it to zero, Sven ordered suiting-up, and we swam aft to do that. Our suits were protected with Jacobite coating. A space-walk for external repair was essential, and there was no question who would do it, the protocol was prearranged: Sven and Wel had to be the team, both of them having the most space experience.

  I hugged the controls, not happy about seeing both my men go out there; Bill and Collins checked the helmets of Sven and Wel, assisted them into the airlock, closed the inner hatch, opened the outer. With safety lines hooked* the hull-walkers crossed over Missile Evers and snowshoed forward on magnetic bootsoles, feeling no sense that anything but the ship was “down.” (Jacobite was permeable by magnetic force if not by thermal radiation.)

  Both of them sang out at once: Sven called “Here!” while Wel cried “There!” Sven was pointing at the hull-rupture, Well off into space. Sven followed Wel's point: it was another space-manta drifting near the ship, looking inert Sven asserted: “It will pay us to go get it”

  Said Wel: “Question of priorities. This rupture—” “Overruled!” yelled Sven, pushing off from the hull. Into space he floated, his line gradually uncoiling, until just short of line-exhaustion he had the monster by its horns and was signaling for a pull-in. Wel, who could not help, seeing that all was under control, bent to the job of space-welding a patch on our hull; only the outer shell had been punctured.

  Getting the monster into the ship was a problem: it was too big to be tucked into the airlock while we closed the outer hatch before opening the inner. Since all of us were suited anyway, Bill shouted that he was opening both hatches. He and Collins hauled while Sven pushed, and they got the creature in. Definitely it was inactivated. Departing the hatch, Sven went back to Wel who had just about finished the weld, and Sven went to work with his own equipment spray-painting the patch with Jacobite. Having hammer-tested, they gumshoed their way back and reentered the ship.

  I called: “No more thermal radiation leak. Shall I activate spin?” “Wait,” Sven answered; “we’d better lash our guest while it’s floating, it may be only stunned.” Immediately I came aft. In freefall, we were able to turn the mass on its back; rope was found, and we tied the manta to a couple of the convenience ringbolts which were installed everywhere aboard. Then Sven went forward to restore artigrav, and the creature sank on its back to the part of the shell that was its floor, whatever “floor” meant here. Although we were in Haley’s lab, fortunately none of his equipment had been damaged by the massive robot.

  “About the same size as the other one,” Sven adjudged. “Shall we board it and open up?”

  Wel objected: “From the Collins visions, it occurs to me that these things were supposed to self-destruct. This one hasn’t yet, so it may. What do you think?”

  I reassured him: “The one we picked up in Houston has been totally dissected and analyzed. They found a self-destruct mechanism, but it was jammed. Probably the same thing here, since it should have gone long ago. I move we open up.”

  “I move something additional,’’ Bill interposed. “I want to take a skin sample for analysis. Point is, they said that their niedersinken would permeate everything except megalite. I don’t know what megalite is; I infer that if the skin is anything that I can understand, it isn’t megalite.”

  Sven pressed: “From which you would further infer?”

  “That these things are shrinking precisely as much as we have shrunk, because they have lingered in our system.” Quietly interposed Collins: “Doctor Haley, Doctor Carr— would you possibly consider this as objective evidence that my visions have been truthful?”

  Wel set his jaw. “If it be true, then it is true. And yet I will not publish what has not yet come, and cannot be forestalled—and may not come. When it has happened, then is time enough to publish what is happening, and why, while Earth and all of us are voyaging under a captain who is not of Earth.”

  We were all terribly weary, and we scattered for our cubicles: the lashed-down monster could await the morrow. But after the other four had vanished down their private hatches, I hesitated, floating in the axis-corridor, worrying a personal doubt. Arriving at tentative resolution, I tapped on Sven’s closed hatch cover. “Come,” he said, opening up; and I drifted in and sat on the chair beside his worktable.

  He was sitting on his bunk, stripped to the waist. Cool, he queried: “Something?”

  I rapped it out. “Sven, you are uptight. I wish you would shake yourself loose. Can I do anything to help that?”

  He said harshly: “Whatever you might do to help that has been outlawed by yourself.”

  That was what I had uneasily suspected. I required myself to force it. “Are you angry with me because I cancelled out sex for the duration?”

  He looked down, both hands gripping his bunk-edge. He wet lips: “Irritated, I confess,*but not really angry. I know it has to be like this. Also I keep reminding myself that Wel has the same frustration.” . >

  “How about me?”

  “Right.”

  “Sven—Wel hasn’t touched me sexually since I told him about us.”

  “Is he angry?”

  “I’m sure not. He’s being considerate.”

  “Oh God!” Sven emitted, gazing at the ceiling.

  I dared lay a hand on one of his hands. “Listen, Sven. We three love each other. The time is going to come when you and I are no longer hot, and this will be behind us, and we can remember it with pleasure, and we three will remain firm friends. Believe this. Hold to this—”

  Sven looked at me directly, and his expression was
not good. “Get out of here, Hel. Fast.”

  I got—and suffered for an hour until sleep got me.

  Part Seven

  CONTACT OFF SUN

  20

  Solar turbulence snarled again on Day 20, rose to an insistent peak on Days 21 and 22, and began to ease off on the morning of Day 23. There was nothing we could do but clench teeth and cleave to our course and try to hold the distant satellites on course. We bolted meals and went back to duty; and sleep, or strapped-in bunk-rest anyhow, was for whenever there was somebody to relieve you.

  Tossed and counter-tossed in my bunk, I remembered a time in my girlish twenties when I had crossed Cape Hatteras in a tropical storm, bedded aft over the single screw of a tramp freighter. Every time the ship had nosed into a hell-wave, the tail had risen up out of the trough-water, and the propeller had wagged the tail—and I was in it. So now—multiplied by a furious factor.

  Sven saw to it that Bill and Collins were kept busy relieving the three prime duty people. Once relieved, sometimes I tried to rest, but just as often, I worked my way aft to probe into the space-manta-robot. I figured that there was no way for the guts-allusion to increase my seasickness; and besides, now I had a specific and clamant purpose.

  The ship’s-afternoon of Day 23 was, relatively speaking, almost calm. Having restored spin to one-half g, Sven called Houston. “Mazda here, Jensen talking; sorry we’ve missed three scheduled calls, it’s been a bit rough up here, or down here. How about down there, or up there? Over.”

  Eleven minutes later: “Ah, Mazda, this is Machin at Houston. Glad to learn that our hardware didn’t lie when it told us you were still around. A lot more earthquakes since your last call, a couple in the states were worse than eight Richter. The National Guards are widely operative. Otherwise, all pretty routine. Well wait eleven minutes for your next. Over.”

  Sven (voicing a crew-prearranged weasel): “We’ve had a good go-around on your earthquakes and sun-wobble, but as of now we have nothing special to report. Be advised, however, that we have reason to expect the utterly unexpected; make a note of that, and restrain yourself from questioning. Right now what we need is your advice on another course correction. We check ourselves as 39 million kilometers from Sun and 110 million from Earth, velocity about 83.1 per second, satellites averaging 38.6 million from Sun with average velocity about 82 per second. Acceleration 7.1 centimeters per second per second for Mazda and satellite One, lower for other satellites because we are braking them a bit. So far these figures and others seem about right for the planned orbits. It appears to us, however, that the turbulence has driven Mazda off course about one degree twenty minutes east, and the satellites are off averaging one degree fifty-one minutes each but scattered over a forty-minute range. How do you compare? Over.”

  Machin: “We have very slight differences.” (He read them off.) “Suggest you average our differences at this point. If your power is adequate, you may wish to do a correction now; but remember that more turbulence may force a third correction two days from now. Let us know your decision. Over.”

  Sven: “The closer in we get, the harder a correction will be and the more power it will use, obviously. So I think we’d better take our correction at this point, assuming that future off-course thrust will trend the same way, so this will minimize what we may have to do later. Our power is now marginal, but we should pick up a good deal more in the next two days, so I think we’re safe. Record that correction will be made this afternoon. We won’t have to communicate if it goes okay; you’ll monitor it and record it and that will be that Incidentally, our ship was bruised two days ago, probably a meteor, all repaired. Another thing: turbulence has prevented Doctor Carr from preparing a story to file today, just tell his correspondent down there the following in Carr’s name, quote: Two days of hideous solar turbulence out here, but we are all intact; story follows tomorrow; you’re probably having it tougher earthside, and we sympathize. End Carr quote. Over and out.”

  Machin: “All received loud and clear and acknowledged. Will transmit Carr notation to his correspondent. Houston out.”

  The course correction was no great sweat: same amount of g's, but for a shorter period of time. It was completed by 1500 hours, leaving Wel two hours before drinks to ride herd on his wandering dogies millions of kilometers distant from Mazda. He ran overtime a bit, but I brought him a drink; and after that he joined our weary-eager group—fatigued by the storm-bout, but still elated by our crossing of Mercury orbit two days before (this was our first chance to beat gums about it) and undergoing several qualities of anticipation referent to our early sun-orbit and the possibility of encountering Dhomers.

  Unlike Venus, Mercury had not been distant: instead, he was coming on fast, only half a million kilometers portside, looking as big and bright as a half-moon from Earth. Orbiting at nearly 200,000 kilometers per hour, he grew so swiftly as he rushed us that instinct warned of a mashing collision, although figures told us that he would pass below and behind. The spectacle was frighteningly sublime despite the way the planet-image tossed because of our own turbulent bobbing. Bill left post and went bruisingly aft to his cameras; it wasn’t easy to aim, but with multiple shooting he got several decently good photos.

  And the photos revealed an astonishing development. Mercury was pimpled with actively erupting volcanoes. This was not at all characteristic of Mercury, although the potential had been there, just as on Moon and Mars. The solar turbulence could not have triggered vulcanism, Bill insisted; if Collins was right about the Dhomer tugging at the sun, semi-confirmed by the earthside reports of apparent sun-wobble, that would fit the picture—Mercury was being shaken, and the planet was spitting. (If Mazda was also being shaken by wobbling sun-gravity, who’d know, in view of the turbulence?)

  So the aroused talking went, until the table rose out of the floor signaling that our food was hot in the cabinets. We snatched rations and fell to, amazed at how ravenous we were after two days of light forced eating. And shoving it in was all the business, until all were done and leaned back sighing. Presently, departing the table with languor, we bused our dishes to the disposer; I pushed a button, and the table vanished.

  We resumed our chairs, whose left arms had drink-rests; Sven officiated at the bar, serving brandy all around. (Brandy pills had thickeners.) Sleepily we sipped; our accumulated fatigue was taking cotton-fingered command,

  Sven uttered: “Some turbulence!”

  “Too much,” darkly growled Bill.

  Wel sought to pick up the mood. “Down with the topmast; yare; lower, lower; bring her in to try with main-course. A plague upon this howling! Lay her a-hold, a-hold; set her two courses; off to sea again; lay her off. All lost! to prayers, to prayers! all lost! Mercy on us! We split, we split!—Farewell my wife and children! Farewell, brother!—We split, we split, we split—”

  I could not resist inserting: “The wills above be done! but I would die a dry death.”

  Wel turned upon Collins. “Have you, spirit, performed to point the tempest that I bade you?”

  “To every article,” Collins assured him. “I boarded the king’s ship; now on the beak, now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin, I flamed amazement. Sometimes, I’d divide and burn in many places; on the top-mast, the yards, and bowsprit, would I flame distinctly, then meet, and join. Jove’s lightnings, the precursors of the dreadful thunder-claps, more momentary and sight-outrunning were not. The fire, and cracks of sulphurous roaring, the most might Neptune seemed to besiege, and make bold waves tremble, yea, his dread trident shake.” Pausing, Collins elevated his chin and peered proudly around him.

  Sven leaned forward. “But are we, Ariel, safe?”

  “Not a hair perished,” Collins asserted.

  Wel turned to Sven. “You see, my captain? Between us, Ariel and I whomped up this cosmic disturbance, and yet we survived: not a hair perished. Tell me, master, what now can defeat us?”

  Sven stared at Wel, then turned concerned to Bill. “I’m just pa
tterning on something. A few minutes ago, you remarked that the turbulence was too much. Was that just a complaint—or did it mean something?”

  After studying Sven’s feet. Bill temporized: “I do hate to interrupt the pleasant quoting from Tempest.” We were brought alert by the fact that Bill was evading the question.

  “You mean,” Sven insisted, “that your remark did mean something?”

  Brought to bay, Bill faced his Sven-hound. “A long time ago, friend Sven, at a certain party, you said that stars may be centers of experiencing, yet not alive. How do you reconcile this contradiction?”

  “Pleased that you remember,” Sven acknowledged. “It is a question of language. If a thing is real, somewhere among its components there is experiencing—or so I think. But the word life has rather a restricted definition. Life is the class of real things which experience holistically in organized ways.”

  I queried: “Do you mean that my computers are alive? Oh, joy—the stupid things! All that throbbing life, and they can’t even do Hegelian calculus—the best they can manage is the differential and the integral.”

  Wel took my hands. “Quiet, sweet. If the experience is merely at the level of individual atoms, as with sticks and stones and maybe your computers, that is not organized holistic experience for anything but the component atoms, and so it is not like for the whole shtick.”

  “Some of my computers argue with each other,” I insisted. “Interface to interface.”

  BUI pressed: “Sven, the sun is a star, and it is currently in trouble. I do urge, how about stars? Are they alive, do you think?”

  Sven countered: “What causes you to wonder whether a star has organized holistic experience?”

  “Oh, just a lot of funny things. For example, a star goes through an evolutionary process of emergence and decay; our sun is now in his prime. During decadence, there are crises when the star makes the most extraordinarily catastrophic adjustments to maintain a viable energy level in the face of self-explosion. Also, a regularity about cycles of sunspots which are, as you know, magnetic storms—like bursts of anger—”