Ames said, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”
“You’re reminding me that once I was a woman and knew love; that eyes do more than see and I have none to do it for me.”
With violence, she added matter to the rough-hewn head and said, “Then let them do it” and turned and fled.
And Ames saw and remembered, too, that once he had been a man. The force of his vortex split the head in two and he fled back across the galaxies on the energy-track of Brock-back to the endless doom of life.
And the eyes of the shattered head of Matter still glistened with the moisture that Brock had placed there to represent tears. The head of Matter did that which the energy-beings could do no longer and it wept for all humanity, and for the fragile beauty of the bodies they had once given up, a trillion years ago.
Speaking of reality, or the lack of it, I think part of the reason the Space Race began to make me yawn was the prepackaged imitation-of-life atmosphere surrounding the whole thing—till recently, at least. Between political ploysmanship and scorekeeping, and the deft image-building of the PR people, everything has (or had) acquired a faintly phony air. (I’m still suspicious; I wonder if the PR men didn’t decide the operation needed a bit more “realism”?)
In any case, when Major White’s walk in space was announced, I couldn’t work up enough interest to find a friendly nearby TV set and watch. I knew it could be done; Soviet Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov had done it a week earlier. And I knew what it would look like: I’d already seen Destination Moon.
I thought I knew. But Ed While went out there and did everything they told him to, until they told him to get back in. And his wife— his wonderful, non-cardboard wife—watched him and understood, and threw the world one happy sentence not (I think) on the prepared script: “He’s having a ball!”
Then there were the Mars pictures. That time, I did look for a TV set—and I am here to tell you the day of the TV bar is over, at least in Washington, D.C
Well, I saw the pictures in the paper: MARS POSES LIFELESSLY. EARTH STANDS ALONE. NO LIFE ON MARS.
Of course, I don’t believe it. (There was all that confusion in interpretation.) I’m holding out for life out there. Somewhere out there, anyhow. And, besides, I had Asimov’s article. The September Esquire arrived on my doorstep right on the heels of those first Mars photos, with Asimov’s article on “The Anatomy of a Man from Mars.” Of course, he started off with a disclaimer! If life on Mars exists at all, it probably resembles only the simplest and most primitive terrestrial plant life. But then he explained what it would be, if it were. . . .
And there’s new hope for the moon too, you know: The U.S. Geological Survey found “permafrost”—a “rock-hard layer of ice that never thaws”—9,000 feet up in the High Sierras; the article said there might be such deposits on the moon. And Venus: Sir Bernard Lovell helped there. When the Soviet ship crashed. Sir Bernard was quoted as concerned about contamination of the planet by Earth bacteria. If it didn’t have life, maybe now it does?
Reality can be changed, you know. Sometimes we have to make it (up) as we go along. There’s life out there; or there will be. I believe it. Asimov believes it. And Arthur Clarke believes it too.
MAELSTROM II
ARTHUR C. CLARKE
He was not the first man, Cliff Leyland told himself bitterly, to know the exact second and the precise manner of his death; times beyond number, condemned criminals had waited for their last dawn. Yet until the very end, they could have hoped for a reprieve; human judges can show mercy, but against the laws of nature there was no appeal.
And only six hours ago he had been whistling happily while he packed his ten kilos of personal baggage for the long fall home. He could still remember (even now, after all that had happened) how he had dreamed that Myra was already in his arms, that he was taking Brian and Sue on that promised cruise down the Nile. In a few minutes, as Earth rose above the horizon, he might see the Nile again; but memory alone could bring back the faces of his wife and children. And all because he had tried to save nine hundred fifty sterling dollars by riding home on the freight catapult instead of the rocket shuttle.
He had expected the first twelve seconds of the trip to be rough, as the electric launcher whipped the capsule along its ten-mile track and shot him off the Moon. Even with the protection of the water bath in which he had floated during countdown, he had not looked forward to the twenty g of takeoff. Yet when the acceleration had gripped the capsule, he had been hardly aware of the immense forces acting upon him. The only sound was a faint creaking from the metal walls; to anyone who had experienced the thunder of a rocket launch, the silence was uncanny. When the cabin speaker had announced, “T plus five seconds—speed two thousand miles an hour,” he could scarcely believe it.
Two thousand miles an hour in five seconds from a standing start—with seven seconds still to go as the generators smashed their thunderbolts of power into the launcher. He was riding the lightning across the face of the Moon; and at T plus seven seconds, the lightning failed.
Even in the womblike shelter of the tank, Cliff could sense that something had gone wrong. The water around him, until now frozen almost rigid by its weight, seemed suddenly to become alive. Though the capsule was still hurtling along the track, all acceleration had ceased and it was merely coasting under its own momentum.
He had no time to feel fear, or to wonder what had happened, for the power failure lasted little more than a second. Then, with a jolt that shook the capsule from end to end and set off a series of ominous, tinkling crashes, the field came on again.
When the acceleration faded for the last time, all weight vanished with it. Cliff needed no instrument but his stomach to tell that the capsule had left the end of the track and was rising away from the surface of the Moon. He waited impatiently until the automatic pumps had drained the tank and the hot-air driers had done their work; then he drifted across the control panel and pulled himself down into the bucket seat.
“Launch Control,” he called urgently, as he drew the restraining straps around his waist. “What the devil happened?”
A brisk but worried voice answered at once.
“We’re still checking—call you back in thirty seconds. Glad you’re okay,” it added belatedly.
While he was waiting, Cliff switched to forward vision. There was nothing ahead except stars—which was as it should be. At least he had taken off with most of his planned speed and there was no danger that he would crash back to the Moon’s surface immediately. But he would crash back sooner or later, for he could not possibly have reached escape velocity. He must be rising out into space along a great ellipse—and, in a few hours, he would be back at his starting point.
“Hello, Cliff,” said Launch Control suddenly. “We’ve found what happened. The circuit breakers tripped when you went through section five of the track, so your take-off speed was seven hundred miles an hour low. That will bring you back in just over five hours—but don’t worry; your course-correction jets can boost you into a stable orbit. We’ll tell you when to fire them; then all you have to do is to sit tight until we can send someone to haul you down.”
Slowly, Cliff allowed himself to relax. He had forgotten the capsule’s vernier rockets; low-powered though they were, they could kick him into an orbit that would clear the Moon. Though he might fall back to within a few miles of the lunar surface, skimming over mountains and plains at a breath-taking speed, he would be perfectly safe.