Bader visited the Tariel personally. He did a lot of nodding and saying “ah, yes,” and now, when Gorbovsky had cast off from the Tariel, he sat on a stool to one side of the observation board, and began to wait patiently.
All the Assaultmen had gathered by the screen and were watching the indistinct flashes on the gray oscillograph screen-the traces of the signal impulses sent by the telemetry on the boat. There were three Assaultmen in addition to Bader. They kept silent and thought about Gorbovsky, each in his own way.
Falkenstein thought about the fact that Gorbovsky would return in an hour. Falkenstein could not stand uncertainty, and he wished that Gorbovsky had already returned, even though he knew that the first search run always comes out all right, especially with Gorbovsky piloting the Assault boat. Falkenstein remembered his first meeting with Gorbovsky. Falkenstein had just returned from a jaunt to Neptune—had returned without losses, was proud of this, and was boasting dreadfully. That was on Chi Fei, the circumlunar satellite from which all photon ships usually took off. Gorbovsky had come over to him in the mess-room and had said, “Excuse me—you wouldn’t happen to be Mark Falkenstein?” Falkenstein had nodded and said, “What can I do for you?” Gorbovsky had a very sad expression. He sat down alongside, twitched his long nose and asked plaintively, “Listen, Mark, do you know where I can get a harp around here?”
“Here” was a distance of one hundred ninety thousand miles from Earth, at a starship base. Falkenstein choked on his soup. Gorbovsky looked him over with curiosity, then introduced himself and said, “Calm down, Mark; it’s not urgent. Actually, what I want to know is at what rate did you enter Neptune’s exosphere?” That was Gorbovsky’s way—to go up to somebody, especially a stranger, and ask a question like that to see how the victim would handle it.
The biologist Percy Dickson—black, overgrown, with curly hair—also thought about Gorbovsky. Dickson worked in space psychology and human space physiology. He was old, he knew a great deal, and he had carried out on himself and others a heap of insane experiments. He had come to the conclusion that a person who has been in space all in all for more than twenty years grows unused to Earth and ceases to consider it home. Remaining an Earthman, he ceases to be a man of Earth. Percy Dickson himself had become one such, and he could not understand why Gorbovsky, who had covered fifty parsecs and had touched on a dozen moons and planets, now and then would suddenly raise his eyes high and said with a sigh, “Oh, to be in a meadow! On the grass. Just to lie there. And with a stream.”
Ryu Waseda, atmosphere physicist, thought about Gorbovsky too. He thought about his parting words, “I’ll go see whether it’s worth it.” Waseda greatly feared that Gorbovsky, on returning, would say, “It’s not worth it.” That had happened several times. Waseda studied wild atmospheres and was Gorbovsky’s eternal debtor, and it seemed to him that he was sending Gorbovsky off to his death every time. Once Waseda had told Gorbovsky about this. Gorbovsky had answered seriously, “You know, Ryu, there hasn’t been a time yet when I haven’t come back.”
Professor and Assaultman August Johann Bader, general plenipotentiary of the Cosmonautical Council, director of the far-space starship base and laboratory Vladislava (EN 17), also thought about Gorbovsky. For some reason he remembered how Gorbovsky had said good-by to his mother fifteen years before, on Chi Fei. Gorbovsky and Bader were going to Transpluto. That was a very sad moment—taking leave of relatives before a space flight. It seemed to Bader that Gorbovsky had said good-by to his mother very brusquely. Bader, as ship’s captain—he had been captain of the ship then—had considered it his duty to provide inspiration for Gorbovsky. “In such a sad moment as this,” he had said sternly but softly, “your heart must beat in unison with that of your mother. The sublime virtue of every human being consists in…” Gorbovsky had listened silently, and when Bader finished his reprimand, had said in a strange voice, “August, do you have a mama?” Yes, that was how he said it! “Mama.” Not mother, not Mutter, but mama.
“He’s come out on the other side,” said Waseda.
Falkenstein looked at the screen. The splotches of dark spots had disappeared. He looked at Bader. Bader sat there gripping the seat of his stool, looking nauseated. He raised his eyes to Falkenstein’s and gave a labored smile. “It is one thing,” he said, enunciating with effort, “when it’s you yourself. Aber it is quite another when it is someone else.”
Falkenstein turned around. In his opinion it did not matter in the least who was doing it. He got up and went into the corridor. By the airlock hatch he caught sight of an unfamiliar young man with a tanned, clean-shaven face and a gleaming, clean-shaven skull. Falkenstein stopped and looked him over from head to toe and back. “Who are you?” he asked ungraciously. Meeting an unfamiliar person on the Tariel was the last thing he had expected.
The young man grinned a bit crookedly. “My name is Sidorov,” he said. “I’m a biologist and I want to see Comrade Gorbovsky.”
“Gorbovsky’s on a search run,” said Falkenstein. “How did you get on board?”
“Director Bader brought me—”
“Ah…” said Falkenstein. Bader had arrived on board two hours before.
“—and probably forgot about me.”
“It figures,” said Falkenstein. “That’s quite natural for Director Bader. He’s quite excitable.”
“I understand.” Sidorov looked at the toes of his shoes and said, “I had wanted to talk with Comrade Gorbovsky.”
“You’ll have to wait a little,” Falkenstein said. “He’ll be back soon. Come on, I’ll take you to the wardroom.” He took Sidorov to the wardroom, laid a bundle of the latest Earth magazines in front of him, and returned to the control room. The Assaultmen were smiling. Bader was wiping sweat from his forehead and smiling too. The flashes of dark could again be seen on the screen.
“He’s coming back,” said Dickson. “He said one turn is enough for the first time.”
“Of course it’s enough,” said Falkenstein.
“Quite enough,” said Waseda.
In a quarter-hour Gorbovsky scrambled out of the airlock, unfastening his pilot’s coverall as he walked. He seemed abstracted, and looked over their heads,
“Well?” Waseda asked impatiently.
“Everything’s all right,” said Gorbovsky. He stopped in the middle of the corridor and started climbing out of his flight suit. He freed one leg, stepped on a sleeve, and almost fell. “That is to say, everything’s all right, but nothing’s any good.”