Completely around the world Kinsman spun, southward over the Pacific, past the gleaming whiteness of Antarctica, and then north again over the wrinkled, cloud-spattered land mass of Asia. As he crossed the night-shrouded Arctic, nearly two hours after being launched, the voices from his base began crackling in his earphones again. He answered them as automatically as the machines did, reading off the numbers on the control panel, proving to them that he was alive and functioning properly.
Then Murdock’s voice cut in: «There’s been another launch, fifteen minutes ago. From somewhere near Mongolia as near as we can determine it. It’s a high-energy boost; looks as though you’re going to have company.»
Kinsman acknowledged the information, but still sat unmoving. Then he saw it looming ahead of him, seemingly hurtling toward him.
He came to life. To meet and board the satellite he had to match its orbit and speed, exactly. He was approaching it too fast. No computer on Earth could handle this part of the job. Radar and stabilizing gyros helped, but it was his own eyes and the fingers that manipulated the retrorocket controls that finally eased the capsule into a rendezvous orbit.
Finally, the big satellite seemed to be stopped in space, dead ahead of his capsule, a huge inert hulk of metal, dazzlingly brilliant where the sun lit its curving side, totally invisible where it was in shadow. It looked ridiculously like a crescent moon made of flush-welded aluminum. A smaller crescent puzzled Kinsman until he realized it was a dead rocket-nozzle hanging from the satellite’s tailcan.
«I’m parked alongside her, about fifty feet off,» he reported into his helmet microphone. «She looks like the complete upper stage of a Saturn-class booster. Can’t see any markings from this angle. I’ll have to go outside.»
«You’d better make it fast,» Murdock’s voice answered. «That second ship is closing in fast.»
«What’s the E.T.A?»
A pause while voices mumbled in the background. «About fifteen minutes … maybe less.»
«Great.»
«You can abort if you want to.»
Same to you, Pal, Kinsman said to himself. Aloud, he replied, «I’m going to take a close look at her. Maybe get inside, if I can. Call you back in fifteen minutes.»
Murdock didn’t argue. Kinsman smiled grimly at the realization that the colonel had not reminded him that the satellite might be booby-trapped. Old Mother Murdock hardly forgot such items. He simply had decided not to make the choice of aborting the mission too attractive.
Gimmicked or not, the satellite was too near and too enticing to turn back now. Kinsman quickly checked out his pressure suit, pumped the air out of his cabin and into storage tanks, and then opened the airlock hatch over his head.
Out of the womb and into the world.
He climbed out and teetered on the lip of the airlock, balancing weightlessly. The real world. No matter how many times he saw it, it always caught his breath. The vast sweep of the multi-hued Earth, hanging at an impossible angle, decked with dazzling clouds, immense and beautiful beyond imagining. The unending black of space, sprinkled with countless, gleaming jewels of stars that shone steadily, solemnly, the unblinking eyes of infinity.
I’ll bet this is all there is to heaven, he said to himself. You don’t need anything more than this.
Then he turned, with the careful deliberate motions of a deep-sea diver, and looked at the fat crescent of the nearby satellite. Only ten minutes now. Even less.
He pushed off from his capsule and sailed effortlessly, arms outstretched. Behind him trailed the umbilical cord that carried his air and electrical power for heating/cooling. As he approached the satellite, the sun rose over the humped curve of its hull and nearly blinded him, despite the automatic darkening of the photochromic plastic in his faceplate visor. He kicked downward and ducked behind the satellite’s protective shadow again.
Still half-blind from the sudden glare, he bumped into the satellite’s massive body and rebounded gently. With an effort, he twisted about, pushed back to the satellite, and planted his magnetized boots on the metal hull.
I claim this island for Isabella of Spain, he muttered foolishly. Now where the hell’s the hatch?
The hatch was over on the sunlit side, he found, at last. It wasn’t too hard to figure out how to operate it, even though there were absolutely no printed words in any language anywhere on the hull. Kinsman knelt down and turned the locking mechanism. He felt it click open.
For a moment he hesitated. It might be booby-trapped, he heard the colonel warn.
The hell with it.
Kinsman yanked the hatch open. No explosion, no sound at all. A dim light came from within the satellite. Carefully he slid down inside. A trio of faint emergency lights were on; there were other lights in place, he saw, but not operating.
«Saving the juice,» he muttered to himself.
It took a moment for his eyes to accustom themselves to the dimness. Then he began to appreciate what he saw. The satellite was packed with equipment. He couldn’t understand what most of it was, but it was clearly not a bomb. Surveillance equipment, he guessed. Cameras, recording instruments, small telescopes. Three contoured couches lay side by side beneath the hatch. He was standing on one of them. Up forward of the couches was a gallery of compact cabinets.
«All very cozy.»
He stepped off the couch and onto the main deck, crouching to avoid bumping his head on the instrument rack, above. He opened a few of the cabinets. Murdock’ll probably want a few samples to play with. He found a set of small hand wrenches, unfastened them from their setting.
With the wrenches in one hand, Kinsman tried the center couch. By lying all the way back on it, he could see through the satellite’s only observation port. He scanned the instrument paneclass="underline"
Cyrillic letters and Arabic numerals on all the gauges.
Made in the USSR. Kinsman put the wrenches down on the armrest of the couch. They stuck, magnetically. Then he reached for the miniature camera at his belt. He took four snaps of the instrument panel.
Something flashed in the corner of his eye.
He tucked the camera back in its belt holster and looked at the observation port. Nothing but the stars: beautiful, impersonal. Then another flash, and this time his eye caught and held the slim crescent of another ship gliding toward him. Most of the ship was in impenetrable shadow; he would have never found it without the telltale burst of the retrorockets.
She’s damned close! Kinsman grabbed his tiny horde of stolen wrenches and got up from the couch. In his haste, he stumbled over his trailing umbilical cord and nearly went sprawling. A weightless fall might not hurt you, but it could keep you bouncing around for precious minutes before you regained your equilibrium.
Kinsman hoisted himself out of the satellite’s hatch just as the second ship make its final rendezvous maneuver. A final flare of its retrorockets, and the ship seemed to come to a stop alongside the satellite.
Kinsman ducked across the satellite’s hull and crouched in the shadows of the dark side. Squatting in utter blackness, safely invisible, he watched the second ship.
She was considerably smaller than the satellite, but built along the same general lines. Abruptly, a hatch popped open. A strange-looking figure emerged and hovered, dreamlike, for a long moment.
The figure looked like a tapered canister, with flexible arms and legs and a plastic bubble over the head. Kinsman could see no umbilical cord. There were bulging packs of equipment attached all around the canister.