Kondratev choked. “P-please do,” he muttered. “Don’t you feel well?”
Gorbovsky was already lying on the couch. “Ah, Comrade Kondratev!” he said. “You’re like the rest. Why does a man have to be feeling bad to want to lie down? In classical times practically everyone used to lie down—even at meals.”
Kondratev, without turning around, groped for the back of his chair and sat down.
“Even in those days,” Gorbovsky continued, “they had a multistage proverb the essence of which was, ‘Why sit when you can lie down?’ I’m just back from a flight. You yourself know, Navigator Kondratev—what sort of sofas do they have on shipboard? Disgustingly hard contrivances. And is it only on ships? Those unspeakable benches in stadiums and parks! The folding, or rather self-collapsing, chairs in restaurants! Or those ghastly rocks at the seaside! No, Comrade Kondratev, any way you like, the art of creating really comfortable things to lie on has been irretrievably lost in our stern era of embryomechanics and the D-principle.”
You don’t say! thought Kondratev. The problem of things to lie on presented itself to him in an entirely new light. “You know,” he said, “I started out at a time when what they called ‘private companies’ and ‘monopolies’ were still in business in North America. And the one that survived the longest was a small company that made a fabulous fortune on mattresses. It put out some sort of special silk mattress—not many of them, but frightfully expensive. They say billionaires used to fight over those mattresses. They were splendid things. On one of them your arm would never get pins and needles.”
“And the secret of them perished along with imperialism?” Gorbovsky asked.
“Probably,” Kondratev answered. “I shipped out on the Taimyr and never heard any more about it.”
They were silent a while. Kondratev was enjoying himself. Protos and Evgeny were splendid conversationalists too, but Protos liked to talk about liver operations, and Evgeny was usually teaching Kondratev how to drive a pterocar, or scolding him for his social inertia.
“And why?” said Gorbovsky. “We have splendid things to lie down on too. But no one is interested in them. Except me.” He turned onto his side, rested his cheek on a fist and suddenly said, “Ah, Sergei old fellow! Why did you land on Blue Sands?”
The navigator choked again. The planet Blue Sands hung before his eyes with horrifying vividness. Child of an alien sun. Itself very alien. It was covered with oceans of fine blue dust and in these oceans were tides, ferocious gales and typhoons, and even, it seemed, some sort of life. Round-dances of green flame whirled around the buried Taimyr, blue dunes shouted and howled in various voices, dust clouds crawled across the whitish sky like giant amoebas. And human beings had not solved a single one of Blue Sands’ mysteries. The navigator had broken his leg on the first sortie, they had lost every last cyberscout, and then in the middle of a total calm a real storm had set in, and good old Koenig, who had not had time to get back to the ship, was thrown along with the hoist against the reactor ring, was crushed, was flattened, was carried hundreds of miles into the desert, where among the blue waves gigantic rifts showered billions of tons of dust into the incomprehensible depths of the planet.
“Well, wouldn’t you have landed?” Kondratev said hoarsely.
Gorbovsky was silent.
“You’re in fine shape today on your D-ships. One sun today, tomorrow another, a third the day after tomorrow. But for me, for us, this was the first alien sun, the first really alien planet, do you understand? We had gotten there by a miracle. I couldn’t refuse to land, because otherwise… what would it all be for then?” Kondratev stopped. Nerves, he thought. Got to be calmer. It’s all behind me now.
Gorbovsky said thoughtfully, “The first one to land on Blue Sands after you must have been me. I started down in the landing boat and began with the pole. Ah, Sergei, what a time that was! For half a month I went around and around. Twelve probing runs! And all the machines we lost there! A quintessentially rabid atmosphere, Sergei. And you threw yourselves at her from the equator. Without reconnaissance. And in a decrepit old Tortoise. Yes.”
Gorbovsky put his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling. Kondratev could not figure out whether he was approving or condemning their action. “I couldn’t do anything else, Comrade Gorbovsky,” he said. “I repeat, that was the first alien sun. Try to put yourself in my place. It’s hard to think of an analogy you might understand.”
“Yes,” said Gorbovsky. “No doubt. Still, it was very audacious.”
Again, Kondratev did not know whether he was approving or condemning. Gorbovsky sneezed deafeningly and quickly sat up, taking his feet off the couch. “Pardon me,” he said, and sneezed again. “I’ve caught another cold. I lie one night on the shore, and I’ve got a cold.”
“On the shore?”
“Well, of course, Sergei. There’s a meadow, grass, and you watch the fish swimming to the factories—” Gorbovsky sneezed again. “Pardon me… And the moonlight on the water—’the road to happiness,’ you know?”
“Moonlight on the water…” Kondratev said dreamily.
“You don’t have to tell me! I’m from Torzhok myself. We have a river there—small, but very clean. And water lilies in the fish farms. Ah, marvelous!”
“I understand,” Kondratev said, smiling. “In my time we called that ‘pining for blue sky.’”
“We still call it that. But by the sea… So yesterday evening I was sitting by the sea at night, a wonderful moon, and girls singing somewhere, and suddenly out of the water, slowly, slowly, comes some bunch or other wearing horned suits.”
“Who!”
“Sportsmen.” Gorbovsky waved his arm and lay back down. “I come home a lot nowadays. I go to Venus and back, ferrying volunteers. Great people, the volunteers. Only they’re noisy, they eat a godawful lot, and they all, you know, are rushing off to some suicidal great deed.”
Kondratev asked with interest, “What do you think about the project, Leonid?”
“The plan is all right,” Gorbovsky said. “I was the one who made it up, after all. Not by myself, but I took part. When I was young I had a great deal to do with Venus. It’s a mean planet. But of course you know that yourself.”
“It must be very boring to haul volunteers on a D-ship,” said Kondratev.
“Yes, of course, the real missions of D-ships are a little different. Take me, for example, with my Tariel. When all this is over, I’m going to EN 17—that’s on the frontier, twelve parsecs out. There’s a planet Vladislava there, with two alien artificial satellites. We’re going to look for a city there. It’s very interesting, looking for alien cities, Sergei.”
“What do you mean ‘alien’?”
“Alien… you know, Sergei, as a spacer, you would probably be interested in what we are doing now. I made up a little lecture especially for you, and if you like, I’ll give it to you now. Okay?”
“It sounds fascinating.” Kondratev leaned back in the chair. “Please.”
Gorbovsky stared at the ceiling and began, “Depending on tastes and inclinations, our spacers are usually working on one of three problems, but I myself am personally interested in a fourth. Many consider it too specialized, too hopeless, but in my view a man with imagination can easily find a calling in it. Even so, there are people who assert that under no circumstances will it repay the fuel expenditure. This is what the snobs and the utilitarians say. We reply that—”
“Excuse me,” Kondratev interrupted. “What exactly does this fourth problem consist of? And the first three, while you’re at it.”