Anderson, Poul Three Worlds to Conquer

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his way starward. He knew only pain. His bleared eyes needed a while to recognize the sight of open
space.Now . . . get her into orbit . . . stay awake till you've established orbit, you've got to, you've
got to . . . you have - He let go all holds and drew the dear oblivion about him.
The first thing he observed on waking was the clock. A dozen hours were gone. He blinked around the
cabin. Free fall embraced his aching body, Jupiter glowed warm amber in the port and forward screens,
the ship brimmed with an unbelievable stillness. Lorraine floated toward him. He saw that she had
cleaned herself up and looked almost rested.
"How are you, Mark?" she asked softly.
He shook arms and legs, twisted his neck, inhaled and exhaled. "Ugh! Uh, I-I don't think anything's
busted. You?"
"Same. I came to a while back. I wondered whether to do anything for you or not-oh, God, I was
worried!-but you seemed better off sleeping." She stopped her flight with a hand on his shoulder. "Now
I'm going to spend a few min-utes simply enjoying the miracle, that we both came through."
They exchanged a long-lived smile. She belied her words by offering him stimulant and analgesic from
the scanty kit they had carried with them. He shoved the pills through the eating valve on his helmet,
followed by a long suck of water from the suit's bottle. Well-being coursed through every cell. "How
about some chow?" he said.
"I haven't touched any myself." Her happiness disap-peared. "We've only got those few standard food
bars."
"And need some now. We've a lot of recuperation to do, girl."
Afterward Fraser followed her example and entered one of the emergency boxes for a wash. It wasn't
much bigger than a coffin, and a man with no other recourse could do lit-tle except lie there, breathing the
few hours' worth of air in its attached bottle and hoping for rescue. Squirming, Fraser swabbed himself
off with alcohol tapped from the inoperative water cycler, and did what little he could to clean the space
outfit crowded and collapsed in the box with him. The stub-ble on his face must perforce remain there.
But it felt so good to get the crusted blood and sweat off that he could tolerate residual discomforts with
ease.
Returning forward, he found Lorraine with eyes on the planet. She glanced at him and back. Her voice
whispered in his earplugs: "I never knew anything could be so ter-rible and so beautiful."
He nodded. "It compensates for a lot, that view."
She turned away and said with quick desperation, "Not for our failure, though. We have failed, haven't
we?"
"Don't say that," he chided her, well aware that he was whistling past a graveyard. "We outran and
outfoxed a space missile, probably the first time an unarmed ship ever has. We're free."
"Free to die of thirst, unless our air gives out beforehand. We can't even leave the Jovian System with
any hope of success." She smote the bulkhead with her fist, and re-bounded. "If we just had navigational
equipment, we could still win, you know. We could put the ship on course for Earth, write our message,
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and deliver it dead. Isn't there some way you could improvise-?"
"No. I don't know whether to be sorry or not, but even given instruments and data, we couldn't use them
to any effect. To arrive in time, we have to travel a hyperbolic velocity. Since theOlympia was never
intended to do that, she hasn't got an autopilot which could make rendezvous at the end of such an orbit
without human assistance."
"If Jupiter were only the least bit like Earth!"
An oath broke from Fraser.
"What's the trouble?" she asked.
"No trouble. I got a sudden idea. Crazy wild, but-" He pondered. "What we need besides pilot stuff is
air and water; we can go without food for the transit time. Well, Jupiter has them."
"What?"
"We've a big cargo space. There's ice down on the surface. Theor's people can load it aboard for us. I
should be able to rig a gadget for electrolyzing oxygen from some of the water. We have a pretty
well-equipped workshop along."
"But the methane, ammonia, all the poisons. We can't get them out of the mixture . . . can we?"
"I don't know. It doesn't seem plausible. Still- And I ought to call Theor anyway." Fraser settled in the
pilot chair and plugged in a radio jack.
The ship carried a small neutrino set, too weak for any but short-range communication. In orbit, though,
he could employ the relay satellites. He hadn't the data tables by which to send a beam, but he must be
close enough for a broadcast to reach the nearest one. He adjusted the dials. "Theor," he called. "Mark
speaking. Are you there?"
"That's a weird language," Lorraine said. After a while: "No answer, eh?"
Fraser sighed. "None. I'll try the frequencies used by the other personal transceivers, but I'm afraid none
will reply. His cause lost out also." He turned his face away from the planet, but even after they should
have adapted, his eyes were too full of tears to see the stars.
"Well-"
"Marhk! Kstorho g'ng korach!"
"Him!-I wish I had a God to thank." Fraser sagged where he floated. "How are you, boy?"
"Sore beset, mind-brother. I have crept away from what may be our last combat. But gladness can yet
touch me that you live."
"Tell me. I'm not far off, as you can guess from the ab-sence of transmission lag. Maybe, even- But tell."
Fraser heard out the story. Numb with dismay, he re-counted his own situation.
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"Strange how our lives intertwine," Theor mused. "I know not what counsel to give you. As for myself, I
must return to the fight. I sit on the ridge above and see my folk die under the axes. Yet we strove well,
you and I. Did we not?"
"If I could help- Wait!" Fraser yelled. "I can!"
"Hurgh? Locked in your vessel as you must be?"
"Look, Theor, I don't want to waste time in arguments. I'm coming down. Stay put. Keep yourself out of
combat. I'll need your help to find you. Can you hold out a few hours yet?"
"Yes . . .yes, surely. I expect the enemy will soon with-draw, to rest a while ere charging again. We had
hopes of playing him for days, a running off-and-on battle- But Mark, you cannot, ill prepared as you
are."
"Stay put, I told you. Wait for my next call. I'm coming!" Fraser snapped off the radio, which would be
useless during atmospheric flight, and turned to Lorraine. "Strap in, girl. I'm sorry to do this to you, but
we survived five gees, so I guess we can stand half that value for a bit."
She made no demurral, went quietly to her chair and got to work on the harness. As he fastened himself
in place, Fraser explained how matters stood.
"At least we'll win his war for him," he finished.
She reached over to touch him. "That's very like you, Mark." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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