Forbidden Planet (2 page)

I knew it was the three hundred and fifty-sixth, because I’d counted it off on my homemade calendar while I was shaving. So over my second cup of coffee I remarked on it—with intent.

I said, “The Cook and galley-staff ought to get a medal after this. Three hundred and fifty-six breakfasts—and I’ve never even thought of a complaint.”

I made it very casual, because I was looking for information—and I’d found out early in the trip that one of the strongest taboos in space travel is the one which bans the very natural question, When do we get there?

But I wasn’t casual enough. Not for Jerry Farman, anyway. He looked at me with his big grin, then winked at Adams.

He said, “Time him, Skipper! I can hear the pumps.”

Adams looked at me. As usual, his expression didn’t give him away. He said, “You ought to have tried that on Lonny Quinn, Doc. He falls easier.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I laughed to show I could take it. “And anyway, Quinn’s on watch.”

“And I,” said Adams getting up from the table, “am about to relieve him.” He started out, but looked back at me over his shoulder as he opened the door. “However,” he said, “let’s see what you think about Breakfast Number three sixty.”

The door closed behind him. There’d been no particular inflection in his voice—and I wasn’t sure I’d been told what I wanted to know until I noticed Jerry Farman’s expression. He was staring after Adams in astonishment.

“Hell, Doc!” He was looking at me now. “You must rate high. Never thought he’d open up like that.”

So I’d been told we only had three more days to go! I didn’t waste any time finishing the meal and getting away to my eight-by-six. I had an hour to spare before sick-bay, and I wanted to be by myself. To think.

I bolted the door, and took off my uniform blouse, and sat on the edge of my bunk. I lit a cigarette and started thinking, letting the thoughts come any way they hit. The majority of them, the ones about ending the voyage, were good. The others, about what we’d have to go through before it ended, were bad. I found myself trying to strike a balance between the intense excitement of looking forward to landing on an unknown planet, and my terror at having to go through the ordeal of deceleration before we entered what Quinn and the others called the System’s FI, or Field of Influence.

In their space-crew slang, the period of acceleration was the Jig, and the period of deceleration, the Jag. And when I looked back at what I’d felt like when I went through the first, just thinking about the second seemed to turn my bones into water. Especially since, from what I’d picked up from the others, the
Jag
was reckoned the tougher of the two . . .

The balance was coming out on the wrong side, and I was getting more and more scared every minute. On a sudden impulse, I got up from the bunk and crossed to the other wall and pressed the switch of the exterior viewer . . .

It was only the second time in the year’s journey that I’d done it. After the first time, I’d sworn to myself I’d never do it again. Not voluntarily anyway. Because what had happened to me shouldn’t happen to a Martian. It wasn’t awesome, like the Jig, but it was bad enough. It was nausea, but with a capital N. It was space-sickness—something most of the boys got over early in their careers, but something I didn’t even want to give myself the chance of getting over.

However, now I had a reason to try it again. It might make me so glad to be nearly at the end of the trip and out of Space again that the Jag would seem less frightening.

The screen of the viewer blurred, darkened, began to throb with that inner glow it gets as it warms up . . . The glow faded—and the thing looked like a window, as if the whole double hull behind it had somehow dissolved.

And outside the window was blackness. Not like any blackness on Earth—or on any other planet. But a blackness with the terrifying solidity of Nothing . . . Even worse, it was Nothing in motion. The impression that the ship was stationary grew stronger, because the Nothingness seemed to be spinning, hurtling past at unbelievable speed. I know those words don’t make sense if you analyze them—but that’s the only way I can describe what it was like.

My head began to swim, but I leaned forward, gripping the beveled edges of the screen. I forced myself to keep on staring out—and the swimming sensation faded . . .

But only until the lights began. They were outside the blackness, which was now like a tunnel whose walls had suddenly become transparent. They were impossible lights, shapeless and streaked, scrawling aimless and ugly patterns against the black.

And because I knew they were stars and it was our unthinkable speed, faster than their light rays, which was distorting them to my eyes, I was suddenly wrenched into awareness it was the ship—the ship and therefore I myself—that was moving . . . My head and stomach rebelled. Sick and reeling, only just saving myself from vomiting there and then, I managed to flip off the switch and stagger back to the bunk . . .

Although I still felt shaky, I was all right again in a few minutes. But looking out hadn’t done me any good. I was still terrified of the Jag—in some illogical way even more terrified than before . . .

III

The hours passed—twenty-six of them. I’d just finished my morning stint of work, when the ‘Attention All Hands’ signal came over the communicator, followed by John Adams’ voice.

“Now hear this,” it said in the ancient formula. “Now hear this: A General Order to all hands. Shortly, the Artificial Gravity Field will be inoperative. Secure all gear—secure all gear. Section Chiefs report individually when through. That is all.”

So here it was, H-hour. Which in a little while would be M-minute!

In fifteen of the minutes I’d cleaned up, watched a couple of Hands turn on all the clamping switches in the surgery, and taken myself back to my eight-by-six, hoping I didn’t look as green as I felt.

The cabin door was open—and going in, I found the Bosun there, fixing the magnetic clamp switches. I liked the Bosun, and I’d often wished that instead of being a Warrant Officer, he’d been up with me and Adams and Quinn and Farman. Maybe it was because he was a veteran; he must have been all of thirty-two. Anyway, we’d always gotten along very well, particularly after I’d cured him of what he thought was chronic dyspepsia.

He looked at me and sketched a salute. “Thought I’d see to your cabin m’self, sir,” he said.

I said, “Thanks very much.” I wished he wasn’t there. Cold sweat was beginning to roll off my forehead, and I had to pull out a handkerchief and mop at it. I tried to cover up by pulling out cigarettes and offering him one. I said, “Have a smoke—and don’t be so official.”

He grinned and took a cigarette. He said, “Don’t you worry, Doc. It ain’t pleasant—but it’s soon over.”

I said ruefully, “Do I look as bad as that?”

“I seen worse.” He went past me to the bunk and tilted it into the right position for the Jag, and secured it and pulled out the broad webbing straps. He looked at me again. He wasn’t smiling this time. He said, “One thing, Doc: for a Jag, you gotta strap yourself real tight.”

“I’ll make a note of it,” I said. I tried a smile, but it couldn’t have been very successful, because he suddenly reached out a hand and patted me on the shoulder.

“Take it easy,” he said. “Take it easy.”

He went out, closing the door behind him.

I lit a cigarette and walked up and down the cabin, four steps each way. I thought the time was dragging, but it only seemed a couple of minutes before the shrill whistle of the ‘All Hands’ signal came over my communicator.

“Now hear this,” came Adams’ voice. “All hands to DC stations—all hands to DC stations. Section chiefs report compliance. That is all.”

It wasn’t only my forehead that was sweating now. I was wet all over. I leaned back against the tilted bunk and braced my feet against the rests and started to fasten the leg straps. The soft woven plastic felt cold and slippery in my fingers.

The door opened and the Bosun whipped in. I said, “Hi, there—” and didn’t even try to smile this time.

“Only gotta coupla minutes.” He pushed me back against the bunk. “No time for gab.” He finished strapping my legs—so tight that I began to wonder about circulation. He started on the main body strap, and I groaned and began to complain. And then thought better of it and shut up.

When he’d finished with me I could hardly breathe. “Grab them hand-holds now,” he said. “Grip like you was tryin’ to bend ‘em.” He fished in his pocket and pulled out two little things I couldn’t identify. “These’ll help some,” he said and bent over me and inserted one of them into each of my ears. He looked down at me for a second—and suddenly grinned.

Then he was gone. A few minutes or years or seconds later I heard—faintly because of the ear plugs—the whistle of the communicator. Three blasts this time—with no voice to follow them . . .

There was a lull—and then the Jag began . . .

The first step was a violent, somehow convulsive shuddering which shook the whole fabric of the ship until the thought stabbed through my mind that something was wrong, that some part of the infinitely intricate machine had failed.

Against the cruel tightness of the straps my body was forced forward until I thought the plastic would sink deep into my flesh.

Then came the Noise. In spite of the earplugs it seemed to go right through my head like a white-hot scalpel. A sort of apotheosis of sound, which came from tortured metal strained to the very limit of its endurance.

Then everything—the Noise and the shuddering vibration and the cutting of the straps—it all seemed to merge together and be inside me. I felt as if my whole being—and I mean more than my body—were fighting against a force determined on my utter disintegration . . .

Then—nothingness . . . Until I came back together and felt hands working on the straps around my legs.

It was the Bosun. He was standing normally, and I knew the A.G.F. was on again. As he undid the body straps, I managed to croak some words at him. He probably couldn’t make them out, but he knew what I was trying to say.

He said, “You can quit worryin’, Doc. We’re through—everything’s all terrashape . . .”

IV

It wasn’t long before I’d stripped off my sodden clothes and put on a fresh uniform and made my way to the Mess. Except for a headache, and a weak feeling around my knees, I felt pretty good. But I needed a drink—badly.

I wasn’t the only one, because Farman was there, halfway through a powerful concoction he always called a Spacehound Special. My heart sank when I saw him; I didn’t feel like being ribbed.

But I needn’t have worried. For once, it seemed, Jerry Farman didn’t feel like pulling legs. He said, “Hi, Doc,” and raised his glass. And then he said, “That was one tough Jag, all right!” He pulled out his cheeks. “Thought I was never coming together again.”

That made me feel better. I said, “So did I,” and mixed myself a drink and drained half of it at one gulp. “My legs are the worst,” I said. “They don’t feel right, somehow.”

Farman said, “That’s not you, Doc. That’s the ship. It’s the difference in speed.” He emptied his glass and set it down and started out. But he checked at the door and turned. He said, “Like to come up in the Control Area? Quite a thrill to look in the big peeper now.”

I grabbed at the opportunity eagerly, so eagerly that I left half my drink untasted and in less than a minute was following Farman along to the Control Area. Adams was in the pilot’s chair, but his eyes were on the eight-foot screen of the big viewer. He didn’t move when we came in, but Quinn saw us and jumped up. He said, “Ah!” and licked his lips thirstily. He looked at me and said, “Sit in my place if you like, Doctor,” and brushed past me and was gone.

Adams spoke to Farman, still without looking around. He said, “Give me a fix, Jerry, Right away.”

“Check,” said Farman and slid into his seat in front of the huge astro-globe swinging gently in its transparent case. Quinn’s chair was a little apart from the Pilot’s and the Astrogator’s, beside the two banks of computers. I slipped into it and swung it round and looked across at the screen of the viewer.

And let out a startled exclamation. Gone was all that sensation of being stationary in a moving Cosmos. Now—I could feel it!—the ship was moving, heading like an arrow toward one single blazing star that hung in the blackness ahead . . .

Altair—an impossible, blazing jewel hung on an impossible curtain of the blackest impossible velvet . . .

V

Hours later—about 1800 by our time—I was in the Control Area once more. I’d been in the Surgery, fixing for the mandatory pre-arrival check-up, but I’d sneaked back as soon as I could, to find Quinn had gone to the Relay chamber. So I slid into his chair again . . .

And saw something which made my first view of Altair, which had so impressed me, seem almost insignificant. When I first sat down, the only difference I could see was that the jewel-like star was nearer and therefore larger—but presently, as I watched, other and smaller jewels began to thrust through the black velvet all around the great central stone. And each jewel seemed to my fascinated eyes to be a different color.

They were stars—and it was like watching them being born. The fact that I knew they were other, farther away members of a constellation which had been existing since the beginning of Time made no difference to the exquisite sensation of watching them, for me, come into being . . .

I don’t know how long I sat there, fascinated, but at last Quinn came back and they almost dragged me out of the chair—and Adams and I left the Control room and had some sort of a meal, after which I went to bed.

But not to sleep. Adams had told me that by our morning we’d be in sight of the Altair planets, and I was too excited to do much more than doze sporadically.

During the last of the dozes, I was brought wide awake by a shrill whistle from the communicator, and then Adams’ voice calling all hands to General Assembly.

I pulled on clothes and hurried along to the men’s mess, where all Assemblies were held. I took my place in the front row, with Farman and Quinn. Behind us were the Bosun and the two non-coms. Behind them were the rest of the crew. There were twenty of us. John Adams wasn’t there yet, in accordance with the unwritten protocol which seems to provide that Commanders must always keep everybody waiting.