Noon, 22nd Century Read online

  Falkenstein walked along the wall, examining it. “Strange material,” he said from a distance. “Metaloplast, probably. But I never saw metaloplast like this.”

  “It’s not metaloplast,” said Bader. “Don’t forget where you are. You, Mark, and you, Leonid.”

  “We won’t forget,” said Gorbovsky. “We’ve been on Phobos, and there, it’s an entirely different material, actually.”

  Phobos, a satellite of Mars, had for a long time been considered a natural one. But it had turned out to be a two-and-a-half-mile torus covered with a metal antimeteorite net. The thick net had been eaten away by meteorite corrosion, and torn through in places. But the satellite itself was intact. Its exterior hatches were open, and the gigantic doughnut was just as empty as this one. By the wear on the antimeteorite net they had calculated that the satellite had been placed in orbit around Mars at least ten million years before.

  “Oh, Phobos!” Bader shook his head. “Phobos is one thing, Leonid. Vladislava is something else entirely.”

  “Why?” Falkenstein inquired as he came up. He disagreed.

  “For example, because between the Sun, or Phobos, and Vladislava where we are now, there are two and a half million astronomical units.”

  “We covered that distance in half a year,” Falkenstein argued. “They could do the same. And the satellites of Vladislava and Phobos have much in common.”

  “That remains to be proven,” said Bader.

  Grinning lazily, Gorbovsky said, “That’s just what we’re trying to do.”

  Bader pondered for some time and then announced, “Phobos and Earth’s satellites also have much in common.”

  It was an answer in Bader’s style—very weighty and off target by half a meter.

  “Well, all right,” said Gorbovsky. “What else is there besides the traffic-control room?”

  “On this satellite,” Bader said pompously, “there are one hundred sixty chambers ranging in size from fifteen to five hundred square meters. We can look at them all. But they’re empty.”

  “If they’re empty,” Falkenstein said, “we’d be better off getting back to the Tariel.”

  Bader looked at him and once again turned to Gorbovsky. “We call this satellite Vladya. As you know, Vladislava has another satellite, also artificial, and also of nonterrestrial origin. It is smaller in size. We call it Slava. Do you get it? The planet is called Vladislava. It is only natural to call its two satellites Vladya and Slava. Right?”

  “Yes, of course,” said Gorbovsky. This elegant reasoning was familiar to him. This was the third time he had heard it. “It was very clever of you to suggest that, August. Vladya and Slava. Vladislava. Wonderful.”

  “You people on Earth,” Bader continued unhurriedly, “call these satellites Y-i and Y-2, corresponding respectively to Vladya and Slava. But as for us, we do it differently. We call them Vladya and Slava.”

  He looked sternly at Falkenstein. Falkenstein bit his lip to keep from smiling. As far as Falkenstein knew, “we” was Bader himself, and only Bader.

  “As for the composition of this yellow material, which is by no means metaloplast, and which I call amberine—”

  “A very good name,” Falkenstein put in.

  “Yes, not bad… Well, its composition is as yet unknown. It remains a mystery.”

  A silence set in. Gorbovsky looked absently about the room. He tried to imagine the beings who had built this satellite and then had worked here at a time so long past. They were another race. They had come to the Solar System and had departed, leaving to Mars the abandoned space laboratories and a large city near the northern icecap. The satellites were empty, and the city was empty—there remained only strange buildings which extended for many levels below the ground. Then—or perhaps earlier—they had come to the EN 17 system, had constructed two artificial satellites around Vladislava, and then had left there as well. And here, on Vladislava, there ought to be an abandoned city as well. Where had they come from, and why? Where had they gone and why? The whys were clear. They were of course great explorers—the Assaultmen of another world.

  “Now,” said Bader, “we will go and examine the chamber in which I found the object which I arbitrarily call a button.”

  “Still there?” asked Falkenstein, coming to life.

  “Who?” asked Bader.

  “The object.”

  “The button,” Bader said weightily, “at the present time is to be found on Earth, in the keeping of the Commission for Research of the Evidence of the Activity of Extraterrestrial Intelligence in Outer Space.”

  “Ah,” said Falkenstein. “The Pathfinders have it. But I collected material about Vladislava, and no one showed me this button of yours.”

  Bader tugged his chin. “I sent it with Captain Anton Bykov half a subjective year ago.”

  They had passed Bykov en route. He should be arriving at Earth seven months after the takeoff of the Tariel for EN 17. “So,” Gorbovsky said. “In that case we will have to postpone inspection of the button.”

  “But we can look at the chamber where I found it,” Bader said. “There is a possibility, Leonid, that in the hypothetical city on the surface of the planet Vladislava you will find analogous objects.” He climbed through the hatch.

  Falkenstein said through his teeth, “I’ve had it with him, Leonid.”

  “Patience,” said Gorbovsky.

  The chamber where Bader had found the button turned out to be a third of a mile off. Bader pointed to the place where the button had lain and related in detail how he had found the button. (He had stepped on it and squashed it.) In Bader’s opinion, the button was a battery, which originally had been spherical in shape. It was made of silvery translucent material, very soft. Its diameter was thirty eight point one six millimeters… density… weight… distance from the nearest wall…

  In the room opposite, on the other side of the corridor, two young fellows in blue work jackets sat amid instruments arranged on the floor. As they worked, they glanced over at Gorbovsky and Falkenstein, and conversed in low tones.

  “Assaultmen. Docked yesterday.”

  “Um-hum. The tall one there is Gorbovsky.”

  “I know.”

  “And the other one, with the blond hair?”

  “Mark Falkenstein. Navigator.”

  “Ah. I’ve heard of him.”

  “They’re beginning tomorrow.”

  Bader at last finished his explanations and asked whether they had understood everything. “Everything,” Gorbovsky said, and he heard laughter in the room opposite.

  “Now we will go back home,” Bader said.

  They emerged into the corridor, and Gorbovsky nodded to the fellows in blue. They got up and bowed, smiling. “Good luck,” one said. The other smiled silently, turning a skein of multicolored wiring in his hands.

  “Thanks,” Gorbovsky said.

  Falkenstein also said, “Thanks.”

  After he had gone a hundred paces or so, Gorbovsky turned around. The two fellows in blue jackets were standing in the corridor watching them.

  In the Baderian Empire (as jokers called the whole system of artificial and natural satellites of Vladislava—observatories, workshops, repair stations, chlorella plantations in black tanks, greenhouses, plant nurseries, glassed-in recreational gardens, and the empty tori of nonterrestrial origin), time was calculated in thirty-hour cycles. At the end of the third cycle after the D-ship Tariel, a giant almost four miles in length that from a distance looked like a sparkling flower, had assumed a meridional orbit around Vladislava, Gorbovsky undertook the first search run. D-ships are not suited for landings on massive planets, especially planets with atmospheres, and especially planets with wild atmospheres. The ships are too fragile for this. Auxiliary boats with either atomic-impulse or photon drive, steady, lightweight, intrasystem craft with a variable center of gravity, carry out such landings. A regular starship carries one such boat, but an Assault ship, two to four. The Tariel had two photon boats on board
, and Gorbovsky made the first attempt to sound Vladislava’s atmosphere in one of them. “To see whether it’s worth it,” Gorbovsky said to Bader.

  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.”

  “What is it, exactly?” inquired Falkenstein.

  “I’m hungry,” Gorbovsky declared. He finally got out of the flight suit and headed for the wardroom, dragging the suit along the deck by a sleeve. “Stupid planet!” he snapped.

  Falkenstein took the suit from him and walked alongside.

  “Stupid planet,” repeated Gorbovsky, staring over their heads.

  “It is quite a difficult planet for landings,” Bader affirmed, enunciating distinctly.

  “Let me have something to eat,” said Gorbovsky.

  In the wardroom he collapsed onto the sofa with satisfied moaning. As he entered, Sidorov jumped to his feet.

  “Sit down, sit down,” Gorbovsky said graciously.

  “So what happened?” asked Falkenstein.

  “Nothing in particular,” said Gorbovsky. “Our boats are no good for landing.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. Photon craft are no good for landing. The tuning of the magnetic traps in the reactor is always breaking down.”

  “Atmospheric magnetic fields,” Waseda, the atmosphere physicist, said, and wrung his hands, making an audible rubbing sound.

  “Perhaps,” said Gorbovsky.

  “Ah, well,” Bader said unhurriedly. “I’ll give you an impulse rocket. Or an ion craft.”

  “Do that, August,” sa
id Gorbovsky. “Please give us an ion craft or an impulse rocket. And somebody get me something to eat.”

  “Good lord,” said Falkenstein. “I can’t even remember the last time I flew an impulse rocket.”

  “Never mind,” said Gorbovsky. “It’ll come back. Listen,” he said affectionately. “Are they going to feed me today?”

  “Right away,” said Falkenstein. He excused himself to Sidorov, took the magazines off the table, and covered it with a chlorovinyl tablecloth. Then he placed bread, butter, milk, and kasha on the table.

  “The table is laid, sir,” he said.

  Gorbovsky got up from the sofa reluctantly. “You’ve always got to get up when you have to do something,” he said. He sat down at the table, took a cup of milk with both hands, and drank it in one gulp. Then he drew a plate of kasha toward him with both hands and picked up a fork. Only when he picked up the fork did it become clear why he had used both hands for the cup and the plate. His hands were trembling. His hands were trembling so badly that he missed twice when he tried to take a bit of butter on the end of his knife.

  Craning his neck, Bader looked at Gorbovsky’s hands. “I’ll try to give you my very best impulse rocket, Leonid,” he said in a weak voice. “My very best.”

  “Do that, August,” said Gorbovsky. “Your very best. And who is this young man?”

  “This is Sidorov,” Falkenstein explained. “He wanted to talk with you.”

  Sidorov stood up again. Gorbovsky looked benevolently up at him and said, “Please, sit down.”

  “Oh,” said Bader. “I completely forgot. Forgive me. Leonid, comrades, allow me to introduce—”

  “I’m Sidorov,” said Sidorov, grinning uncomfortably because everyone was looking at him. “Mikhail. Biologist.”

  “Welcome, Mikhail Sidorov,” Percy Dickson said in English.

  “Okay,” said Gorbovsky. “I’ll finish eating in a minute, Comrade Sidorov, and then we’ll go to my cabin. There’s a sofa there. There’s a sofa here too,” he said, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “but Bader is sprawled out all over it, and he’s the director.”