Chapter 9

The clang of the opening port was still ringing in my ears when I walked out of the sky ship with Joan on my arm and looked down over the big metal corkscrew directly beneath me. I knew straight off I’d made a mistake. I should have looked up at the sky instead. I should have squared my shoulders, drawn the crisp, tangy air deep into my hangs and established rapport with Mars more gradually.

A delay of only a moment or two would have spared me the too sudden shock of finding myself three hundred feet in the air, dazzled by an unexpected brightness, and supported by nothing I’d have cared to trust my weight to on Earth.

We were standing on a thin strip of metal, a mere spiderweb tracery, and if I’d lost my balance and gone crashing through the guard rail there would have been no mountaineer’s rope to save me. What was worse, I’d have taken Joan with me.

The danger was illusionary, of course ... solely in my mind. The underwriters go to a great deal of expense and trouble to make sure there will be no tragic accidents when the big risks have been left behind in space.

The guard rail was chest-high and sturdy enough, and no one had ever gone crashing through it. But you can’t reason with a feeling, and for an instant the yawning emptiness beneath me made me feel that I was already past the rail, twisting and turning, flailing the air in a three-hundred-foot plunge.

I was sure that Joan was experiencing the same kind of irrational giddiness, for she drew in her breath sharply and a shiver went through her. A fear of great heights is one phobia that is shared by practically everyone.

The big metal corkscrew beneath us was the landing frame into which the rocket had descended and we were standing high up on that enormous spiral, which curved down and outward like an immense silvery cocoon.

A figure of speech, sure. But not as wide of the mark as most of the images that flash across your mind when you’re keyed up abnormally and a lot of new colors, and sights and sounds rush in on you and upset all of your calculations as to how sober-minded you’re going to stay. Your grasp on reality slips a little, as if you were holding it right before your eyes like a book, and wearing glasses so strong that the print blurs. You’re in a fantasy world of your own creating, seeing things that can’t be blamed on whoever wrote the book. A fussy, unimaginative little guy, perhaps, who has spent most of his life within sight of his own doorstep and has never felt the great winds of space blowing cold upon him.

There’s a big, night-flying Sphinx moth with death-heads on each of its wings, and there were times when I’d thought of the Mars ship as not so different from that kind of moth. And now it was as if the sky ship had turned back into a caterpillar again, and spun a cocoon for itself, and was quietly reposing in the pupa stage, its rust-red end vanes folded back, its long length mottled and space-eroded where the atomic jets had seared it.

There was nothing wrong in giving my imagination carte-blanche to go into free fall like that, because when you’re standing on a dizzy height staring down at a new world forty million miles from Earth you’ve got to let the strangeness and bursting wonder of it ... along with the dire forebodings ... take firm hold of you. Otherwise you won’t feel yourself to be a part of it, won’t be equipped with what it takes to probe beneath the surface of things in a realistic way and feel like a native son even in the presence of the unknown.

Three hundred feet below me more activity was taking place than I had ever seen crowded into an area of equal size on Earth. Just as a guess, I’d have said that the spaceport’s disembarkation section was about six hundred feet square. But right at that moment I had no real stomach for guessing games--only a hollowness where my stomach was supposed to be.

Far below the disembarkation section was in high gear, and the clatter of it, the rushings to and fro, the grinding and screeching of giant cranes, and atomic tractors, and rising platforms crowded to capacity with specialized robots, most of them scissor-thin and all of them operated by remote control ... would have half-deafened me if I’d been standing a hundred feet lower down.

Even from the top of the spiral the clamor had to be heard to be believed. But what astounded me most was the newness, brightness, sharply delineated aspect of everything within range of my vision. I could see clear to the edge of the spaceport, and the four other securely-berthed rockets stood out with a startling clarity, their nose cones gleaming in the bright Martian sunlight. The big lifting cranes stood out just as sharply, and although the zigzagging tractors looked like painted toys, red and blue and yellow, I would have sworn under oath that not one of them cast a shadow.

The twenty-five or thirty human midgets who were moving in all directions across the field, between machines that seemed too formidable to be trusted had the brittle, sheen-bright look of figures cut out of isinglass.

Another illusion, of course. There had to be shadows, because there was nothing on Mars that could have brought about that big a change in the laws of optics. But by the same token the length and density of shadows can be altered a bit by atmospheric conditions, making light interception turn playful. So I didn’t strain my eyes searching for deep purple halos around the human midges.

My only immediate concern was to reassure Joan in a calm and forceful way and escort her safely down to ground level, without letting her suspect that I shared her misgivings as to the stability of the spiral.

It was ridiculous on the face of it. But, as I’ve said, you can’t argue with a feeling that whispers that your remote, dawn age ancestors must have felt the same way when they climbed out on a limb overhanging a precipice, and felt the whole tree begin to sway and shake beneath them.

“Hold tight to the rail and don’t look down,” I cautioned. “There’s no real danger ... because a first-rate welding job was done on this structure. Barring an earthquake, it should be just as safe a century from now.”

I shot a quick, concerned glance at her along with the warning. I guess I must have thought she’d be more shaken than she was, for she smiled when she saw the look of surprise in my eyes. It took me half a minute to realize that my guess as to how she’d be taking it hadn’t gone so wide of the mark. Her pallor gave her away.

“A century would be much too long to wait,” she breathed. “Another five minutes would be too long. If it’s going to collapse, I’d rather find out right now.”

I nodded and we started down. Several other passengers had emerged from the port and were looking up at the sky or downward as I’d done. Three men and a woman had emerged ahead of us and were almost at the base of the spiral. So far nothing had happened to them.

I’ve often toyed with the thought that there may be windows in the mind we can see out of sometimes--at oblique angles and around corners and without turning our heads. I could visualize the passengers who were descending behind us more clearly than you usually can in a mind’s eye picture. Each face was in sharp focus and there was no blurring of their images as they moved. It was as if I was staring straight up at them through a crystal-clear pane of glass.

In that astonishingly bright inner vision--why look up and back when I did not doubt its accuracy?--Commander Littlefield was wasting no time in setting a good example. He’d descended the spiral so many times that great height meant nothing to him. He’d be ascending and descending at least ten more times just in the next few hours. But this was his big moment. I could already picture him striding across the disembarkation section to the Administration Unit with his shoulders held straight, and announcing officially, with a ring of pride in his voice, that the trip had been completed in record time, and the rocket had been berthed successfully. He was descending now with a confident smile on his lips, his Mars’ legs buoyantly supporting him.

Behind him came the small group who had been closest to us in space. They were doing their best to stay calm, but there was a slight flicker of apprehension in their eyes. Our section had been the first to disembark, because Littlefield had agreed with me that it might have seemed a little strange if I’d been accorded that privilege and it had been denied to the others. Why give anyone who might have outwitted every screening precaution the idea that I might be a man apart, with so big a job awaiting me on Mars that getting started on it without delay was damned important to me. It was natural enough for one or two sections to be cleared fast and emerge with the Commander. But others would have to await their turn in line and quarantine checkups could drag along for hours.

“It’s funny how long it takes to get even a little lower when you’re this high up,” Joan said, her fingers tightening on my arm. “We’re not anything like as high as when we started. But nothing down below looks any larger.”

“We’re not a fourth of the way down, and the human eye is a very poor judge of distances,” I said, reassuringly. “It would be better if you let go of my arm and just kept your right hand on the rail. We sway more this way.”

“When you look down from the observation roof of the North-Western University Building you can see all of New Chicago, and practically half of Lake Michigan,” she complained breathlessly. “But it never made me feel as giddy as this.”

“You had a firmer support under you,” I said. “But not a safer one. There’s no danger at all. You can be absolutely sure of that. What could happen to us?”

It was one of those silly questions you sometimes ask when you want to reassure someone you’re a little concerned about. But a silly question can sometimes be answered in a totally unexpected way--suddenly, terribly and with explosive violence. It can be answered by a voice of thunder out of the sky, or a wild, savage cry in the night, or in a quieter way, but with just as terrifying an outcome. There are a hundred cataclysms of nature which can give the lie to what you thought was only a silliness.

No matter where you are or how secure you feel, never ask what could happen in a world where nothing is sure, where no one is ever completely safe. Death is death. From end to end of his big estate may be a lifetime’s journey for some men. But he can cover the distance with the speed of light, because Death is one space traveler--the only one--who knows exactly how to outdistance light.

Even if you’re alone in a steel-walled vault it’s a dangerous question to ask. It’s ten times as dangerous when you’re descending a swaying metal corkscrew forty million miles from Earth and there may be someone eighty feet above you who has failed twice as Death’s emissary and would be covered with shame if it happened again.

I felt hardly anything for an instant when the dart sliced deep into the soft flesh between my shoulder blades. I didn’t even know it was a dart and kept right on walking. It was as if a bee had stung me--a tired bee who couldn’t sting very hard. There was just a little stab of pain, a burning sensation that lasted less than a second.

I felt it, all right. But it didn’t startle me enough to stop me dead in my tracks. A thing like that seldom does, if you’re moving steadily forward. It takes a second or two after you’ve felt the pain for the implications to dawn on you.

When they did the pain was back, and this time it was excruciating. My whole shoulder was laced with fire, as if a red-hot iron had been laid against it. If right at that moment I’d smelled an odor of burning flesh I’d have been sure there could be no other explanation, despite its transparent absurdity.

Even then I kept right on walking. I staggered a little but I bit down hard on my underlip to avoid crying out. I didn’t want to alarm Joan until I was sure. It could still have been just a very severe muscular spasm--the kind of agonizing cramp that can hit you in the leg sometimes in the middle of the night, so that you awake out of a deep sleep bathed in cold sweat, and with your teeth chattering.

That was what seemed to be happening now. My teeth started chattering and I could feel sweat oozing out all over me. There was only one difference. The pain was in my shoulder, not my leg, and it wasn’t easing up the way spasm pain does after a minute or two. It couldn’t have gotten worse, because it had been excruciating from the beginning. But other things started getting worse fast. The burning sensation spread to my lungs and my throat muscles started constricting, so that every breath I drew was an agony.

I couldn’t pretend any longer, and I didn’t try to. I went down on my knees, clutching at my chest and swaying back against the rail. I suppose I must have groaned or made some sort of sound, because Joan swung about and was kneeling beside me in an instant, her face ashen.

I must have looked terrible, or all of the color would not have drained out of her face so fast, or her eyes gone quite so wide with alarm.

I made a half-hearted try at straightening up, but only succeeded in bringing my collapse closer to zero-count by sagging more heavily back against the rail.

“Darling, what is it? Tell me!“ Her voice was demanding, wildly insistent. “Please ... I’ve got to know. If it’s your heart--”

I shook my head. I went through a kind of little death just trying to get a few words out. “Something struck me ... in the back. See ... what it is. Feel around with your hand.”

“All right, darling. Just don’t move. No--you’ll have to lift yourself up a little more. Try, darling. Your back’s right against the rail.”

I did more than try. I helped her by gritting my teeth and flopping over on my stomach. But the pain that lanced through my chest made me almost black out for an instant.

There was a clamor above us now, and I thought I heard Littlefield’s voice raised in a shout, followed by a scream of terror. Possibly someone had seen me slump and jumped to the conclusion that the spiral was collapsing.

There was no chance of that, so I couldn’t have cared less how close to panic the people up above were. Right at the moment it didn’t concern me. I was only concerned with what Joan might find when her fingers started probing. If a bullet had ploughed into me and her fingers came away wetly red I’d know for sure whether it was as bad as I feared. It helps to know, when there’s a tormenting uncertainty in your mind along with the physical pain.

I could feel her hand fumbling with my shirt, getting it loosened. Then they were moving up, down and across my back. Cautiously, gently, with the nurselike competence which women usually manage to summon to their aid in an emergency, no matter how shaken they are.

After a moment her fingers stopped moving and she drew in her breath sharply.

Being in agony and on the verge of blacking out carries with it a penalty. You can’t always hear what someone close to you may be saying, even when it’s of life-and-death importance.