“But…”
“It’s all right, Sandy. I’ll be safe as long as I stay outside the circle.”
She approached him and took his hand in hers. “Are you going to take the film back with you?”
“You’re still in shock, little girl.” Harben laughed incredulously, withdrawing his hand. “That stuff is worth a fortune, especially if our visitor registered on it. Of course I’m taking it back.”
“But… don’t you remember what he said?”
“I’m not sure that he said anything, and what there was of it didn’t make too much sense to me.”
“He meant we all have to die – but not for the benefit of an audience.”
“I told you it didn’t make sense.”
“It’s very simple, Bernard.” Sandy’s eyes were dulled with drugs, and yet were oddly intent. “When you point your camera at any creature you make it special. You enlist the sympathy of millions of viewers, and if our sympathy isn’t worth anything… what are we worth?”
“I’ve never had myself valued.”
“He was filming us, but he didn’t let us die.”
“Sandy, this is just…’ Harben began to walk away, then he saw that she was crying. “Listen to me,” he said. ’The fawn is dead and gone, and there’s nothing anybody can do about it. And you’ll notice that he didn’t kill that brute off. It’s all right again, and it’s going to go on feeding itself in the only way it knows how. For all we know, that’s what happened to the Visex team a couple of years ago.”
“It’s a pity you weren’t here to film that.”
“You’ll feel better when I get you away from here,” Harben said curtly. He turned from her and collected his cameras at the points where they had fallen, being careful not to set foot within the circle of menace. Sandy’s last remark had stung him, but his thoughts were becoming preoccupied with new plans for the future. Quite apart from having yielded the fleeting but newsworthy contact with the super-naturalist, Hassan IV was an even richer treasure house than he had dreamed, one which could be exploited only through years of dedicated work. Already it was obvious that Sandy would not want anything to do with it, and that fact posed serious problems with regard to their marriage covenant.
Later, as they were crossing the uplands on the approach to the radio beacon, he realized he had come to a decision. He felt unexpectedly guilty at the prospect of broaching the subject while she was still so badly shaken, but he was entering a vital phase of his career and would have to learn to move quickly in everything he did.
“Sandy,” he said quietly, taking her elbow, “I’ve been thinking things over, and…”
She pulled her arm away from him without turning her head. “It’s all right, Bernard – I don’t want to stay married to you, either.”
Harben stood still for a moment, staring at her retreating back, experiencing an emotion compounded of puzzlement and relief; then he adjusted his camera pack to a more comfortable position and continued picking his way across the wet, grey shale.
FROST ANIMALS
The period of weightlessness had been very brief, but its psychological aftermath was profound. Hobart could see and hear the difference in his fellow officers as they moved about the upper deck’s rest room; and within himself he could feel a mixture of emotions – relief, expectation, nostalgia – which were going to make the remaining days of the voyage tedious. There was an irony in that fact, he realized. After weeks of steady deceleration the ship had cut its speed to a level at which the time dilation effect was negligible – but now his impatience to reach home had intervened to slow down subjective time. He was pondering the matter when the tall, angular figure of Harry Stiebel, the day exec, came into the room with a pile of fax sheets curved over his arm.
“Earth is still there, folks,” Stiebel called in a professionally jovial voice. “Still abiding away for all it’s worth. That’s good to know, isn’t it? Hands up everybody who thought the Earth wouldn’t still be there.”
“Why shouldn’t it still be there?” said Os Milburn, the chief systems engineer, who was seated near the door. “Eighteen years without your smart-assing around has probably rejuvenated the place.”
“Have a reorientation kit, lover.” Stiebel threw a fluttering bundle of paper on to Milburn’s lap and began working his way around the room, distributing the sheets with unnecessary vigour and a surprising amount of noise. Hobart watched his progress with affection and respect. Stiebel was completing his fifth trip to the Sirian system, which meant he was more than a hundred years old in Earth chronology, yet he showed no symptoms of dislocation. Thin, square-shouldered, invariably cheerful, he seemed determined to diffuse his normal life span over as many centuries as company regulations and Albert Einstein would allow. It was an ambition of which Hobart stood in awe.
“One for you, Denny,” Stiebel said as he reached Hobart. “See what you’ve been missing.”
“Thanks.” Hobart took the proffered sheaf and began to flick through pages that clung together electrostatically. Switching off the main impulsion torch for two minutes had, as well as giving the crew a warming glimpse of Earth, allowed communication to take place between the ship and the company headquarters in Montana, and the reorientation kits were part of the result. Their contents – fired through in a ten-second information bleep – were intended to familiarize the returning starmen with the major changes that had taken place during their absence. This was Hobart’s first voyage and as he glanced over the section headings on politics, world events, fashion, science, and sport, he tried to come to terms with the knowledge that in the past thirteen months of his own life the world and everybody in it had grown older by eighteen years. I’ve done it, he thought, bemusedly and proudly. I’ve travelled in space, and I’ve travelled in time…
“Before you delve in there and start checking on skirt lengths…” Stiebel paused long enough on his rounds to tap Hobart’s shoulder, “take a walk into George’s office, will you? He wants to see you about some little thing.”
“George wants to see me?” Hobart looked up at Stiebel in open surprise. As the most junior officer in the entire ship’s complement, he had been assigned a number of routine tasks, most of which were connected with monitoring erosion of the hull. There had been little enough actual work for him to do during the two acceleration phases of the voyage, and during retardation – when the ship was shielded against collisions with interstellar material by its own drive torch – there had been virtually no work at all. In any case, at no stage in the journey would Hobart have expected an individual summons from Captain George A. Mercier, commander of the Langer Willow.
“What do you think George wants?” he said to Stiebel. “Did he say anything?”
For a reply, Stiebel stared at him with slightly raised eyebrows then passed on his way, performing a menial administrative duty with gusto and an air of importance, the picture of the corporate space traveller. Hoping the exchange had not been overheard, Hobart stood up and glanced around him. He was a tall man with silver-blond hair and exceptionally clear skin, and he had always found it difficult to do things without being noticed. Several of the ship’s senior technical staff were watching him with amused expressions. There was no personal malice in their attitude, but he knew they were of a breed that firmly believed in the value of making life as irksome and embarrassing as possible for junior officers. Even if it were traditional at this stage of a trip for the captain to give a new man a drink and a clap on the back, nobody would have helped him by divulging the information in advance. Hobart nodded to the onlookers, left the rest room, and made his way along narrow corridors to the compartment Mercier used for office work and rare conferences. He tapped the door and immediately was told to enter.