West of the Sun. Edgar Pangborn
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“Close lock. Retract shield.” Paul responded from ingrained training. Beyond the window that would give him forward vision in the (impossible) event he had to fly the lifeboat, the heavens opened. Withdrawal of the shield into the belly of the mother ship Argo was a dream motion within a wider dream. Dorothy and Wright were strapped in the two seats behind him: half of Argo’shuman treasure was here. “Go over what you do if you have to drive off. Over.”
“Lever for release. No action till wing-lock indicator is green. No jet unless to correct position. In atmosphere handle as glider, jet only in emergency. Over.” After all, Paul considered, he had had a thousand hours of atmospheric flying, and two years’ drill on these boats. Ed could worry less and save wind. Beautiful mechanisms in their own right, Model L-46, lying eleven years secret but alert in the streamlined blisters, powered by charlesite to avoid the ponderous shielding still necessary for atomic motors—and charlesite, perfected only thirty years ago in 2026, was obedient stuff. In space, the boats were small rocket ships; in atmosphere, gliders or low-speed jet planes. While Argo had been in the long ordeal of building, Paul had been shot from gleaming tubes like this into the atmosphere of Earth, the blind depth at the spaceport, the desolate thin air of Mars. Spearman said, “Turning in five minutes.”
In the port lifeboat Ann and Sears would be waiting, but that lock would be open, for Ed must be in the control room. If they had to abandon ship (ridiculous!) Ed’s boat would be many moments behind.
The stars moved. “Paul—check straps. Over.”
Paul glanced behind him. “All set. Over.”
The forward jets spoke once, and softly. Spearman said, “Out of orbit. We start braking sooner than you think. Then we’ll know.…”
The depth of quiet was a depth of eternity. Time to reflect—to marvel, if you wished. One hundred and eleven years since Hiroshima, which the inveterate insanity of history textbooks sometimes referred to as a great experiment. Eighty-five years since the first-manned spaceport; seventy since the founding of stations on Luna and Mars. But to Paul Mason a greater marvel was the responding warmth of the woman, the brooding charity of the old man, whose lives were upheld with him in this silent nothing, dependent on the magic bundle of muscle and nerve that was himself. What is love?
The greater spaceport had been twelve years in building. Then Argo. More than a century from early rocket experiments to the mile-long factories turning out charlesite. In that century man had even added to his morsels of self-knowledge a trifle more than he possessed in the days of flint ax and reeking cave. “We are in atmosphere,” said the earphones.… Time: a cerebral invention? How long is a May fly’s life to a May fly…? “Braking starts in forty-five seconds. Warn the others.”
Paul shoved down the mouthpiece, echoing the message. Wright said, “Six pushed-around people. The arrogance of man! Doing fine, Paul.”
Pressure—not too bad. A long roaring. But then the stars.…
The stars went mad. A glare—a cruel second of the light of the star that was now the sun and a flicker of red-green, not real. The roaring paused. Stopped.
The earphones screamed: “Release! Drive off!”
“Releasing.” The amused voice was Paul’s own. “Good luck, Ed.”
No answer. There was still such a thing as time. Now, look: the Federation was a grand thing, potentially, if only, as Doc insists, it weren’t for the damned cultural lag of the humanistic sciences, but there is unfortunately no TIME to turn around and see if that little brown cowlick is over her forehead the way it—Meantime he said aloud, “Doc, Dorothy, get ready for a big one.” And his hand pulled for release—nicely, as you might steer a road car for a turn. The pressure torment.…
Finished. He looked at a friendly green eye. So the retractile wings were as good as eleven years ago—you hoped. Atmosphere—thin, said the gauge. Never mind, thicker soon. And down you go—
Too steep. Level off, if there’s stuff to bite on. There is.… Thank you, Machine Age Man, for a sweet boat. That thing gibbering in the autonomic and voluntary nervous systems—merely fear. Overlook it.…
The ship was alien, far away. Turning, bright and deliberate, like a mirror dropped in a well. The other lifeboat? But Ed would have to reach it, close lock, strap in, open shield, while the ship went.…
“Down”—lately an artificiality, now the plainest word in the language. A gleaming disturbance in the air “down” yonder—something streaking away from the dot that was a dying ship? “Ed, can you hear me? Over.”
“Yes,” said the voice in the earphones.
Paul noticed himself weeping. “They made it! They made it!”
The voice said coldly, “Quiet. Your altitude? Over.”
“Forty-six thousand. All under control. Over, jerk.”
“I’m going to head for—Ah! Can you see the ship?”
It was possible to find the silver dot of Argo above an S-shaped expanse of blue. The blue, Paul understood, was not becoming larger, simply nearer. The dot changed to a white flower, which swelled and hung tranquilly over the blue, a brief memorial. The radio carried a groan, and then: “Better maybe. The lake may be shallow enough for salvage. If it’d hit ground there’d be nothing at all. Get nearer, Paul. Keep me in sight—not too damn’ near.”
Time.… Delicately Paul asked the boat for a steeper glide. The response was even. Was it? Some peevish sound. He flattened the glide a thousand feet above Ed’s boat. The red-green below—anything real about it? Yes, if time was real, but one had to think that over.…
Mild hills of dark red-green, in the—west? Yes, because now there was a birth of sunset beyond them. Lighter green below, alongside the lake: that would be meadow. Not one of the great lakes—no larger than Lake Champlain, its outlet in the south blurred by marsh; only a portion of its northwest shore adjoined the meadow—except in that region the lake was a blue S written on red-green dark of jungle. A winged brown thing slipped by, teasing the edge of vision. “Bird or something.…”
In the earphones was a dazed note, like shame. “Power was out of control, Paul—port motor. Had to be a defect in the building—something that couldn’t take the strain of what happened eleven years ago. All the way—God!—and then to be loused up by a builder’s error!” To Spearman, Paul knew, a mechanical defect was the gravest of indecencies, beyond any forgiveness.
True sunset here. A world. And you don’t climb out of gravity on charlesite. Paul said, “Doc—parallel lines—I think.”
But the speed of the glide allowed no certainty, only a glimpse of three dark bars, perhaps half a mile long in the jungle area northwest of the meadow, and a hint of other groups further north. They shouldbe there, according to a map Spearman had made in orbit from the final photographs. And some fifty miles south of here was a great network of them thirty miles long. The glide brought them out over meadow once more.
A thing was riding with them. A grumbling moan. Paul told himself:With Model L-46 it cannot happen—it cannot—Dorothy—Doc—
Dorothy cried, “Specks—in the open ground. Moving, hundreds of ’em. Oh, look! Smoke, Paul—campfires. How high are we?”
“Under seven thousand. Check your compass by the sunset, Doc. See if we have a magnetic north.”
“We do.…”
Spearman’s far-off voice said, “Life all right. I can’t make out—”
Paul cut in with hurried precision: “Ed—vibration, port wing, bad. I’m going to make one more circle over the woods if I can and try for the north end of this meadow.”
A startled croak: “I’ll jet off—give you room.” Paul saw the squirt of green flame. Ed’s boat darted westward like a squeezed apple seed. Paul dipped and leveled off as much as he dared. “We’re—all right.”
He