Robert Onopa: The Pleasure Tube

I fly by default another day. I wonder who really knows.

Shift one/neg grav intrudes//

CONT. 1442 CONT CONT CONT

Proper Time: 20:17:53//We have crossed into the lull. Becoming apparent why Maxine’s programs are working slow—Werhner detecting time slip between field of information and control—reading into proper time—how can that be? SciCom meeting again with Committee Pilot. I can’t go.

Shift one/time distor//

CONT. 1443 CONT CONT CONT

Proper Time: SEE CODEX//Dome more brilliant than I have ever seen before along starboard, spectrum yellow-white—yet that acts like the lull—port inky, muddy violet, but that is where the other front is, approaching by grav and mag sensors, otherwise blind. Werhner behaving as if he hadn’t been dead sick for the past week, eating at the console. We have decided that he goes back to SciCom for choice range and decision. As if there were any other choices, I see only two. First: to tangent this front and use it to propel us back and free. Second: to lay on the thrusters and go through. SciCom circuits overloaded, Committee Pilot patching out for more room. I have never seen such a lull. At least our console terminal…

END R,//CODEX??//SEE CODEX SEE CODEX

ALARM ALARM ALARM ALARM ALARM

EVENT INTRUSION EVENT INTRUSION EVENT INTRUSION EVENT ALL AUXILIARY SYSTEMS A & B SEQ ALL AUXILIARY SYSTEMS DAMAGE CONTROL DAMAGE CONTROL DAMAGE CONTROL

ALARM ALARM ALARM ALARM ALARM

EVENT INTRUSION EVENT INTRUSION EVENT INTRUSION EVENT

The Guam sun floods through the dusty window.

“Why can’t I see Cooper?”

“Partly it’s quarantine, standard procedure. Partly it’s because today he’s in Houston. He’s been transferred to Houston.”

Smug bastard; I have been asking to see Cooper for a week. He wrote the report; I cannot imagine what SciCom is after that’s not in the report. Cooper and I avoided one another on the way back—there was the affair with Maxine, and he always seemed to me odd, reclusive, a huge, bearded man who never said what was on his mind—but I never saw him break. Where was he in the ship then? Does it matter?

It has taken me a day to see this information officer. Guam is a morass of requisition systems, authority flows, activity program officers; bad enough before, incredible now. The island landscape—lazy, flapping palms, eroded red hills patched with dusty green scrub, an absolute sun—only fertilizes my growing boredom. Houston. Werhner will sigh and shrug.

///thePleasureTube//thePleasureTube//thePleasureTube///

reserve now

fourteen days and nights

a world of your own

twenty-eight to two-eighty credits

orgo-toto

three separate program classes

LasVenus

suborbitai/deep space

LA SoCal

olde earthe/moonloop

TRIP TO THE SUN

risk venture vector

symphonic synesthetic harmonics

the EnergyWest grand prix

megastars in sidereal concert

NoAm biosphere reserve

SoPac tropical reserve

dial from any codex terminal//106pleasuretube//dial from any codex terminal tubes daily//1.a. trans-port//tubes daily//1.a trans-port//tubes daily////thePleasureTube//thePleasureTube//thePleasureTube/thePleasureTube////

It is Taylor I see one day; his dark, bushy eyebrows never move. He alternates with Knuth, an intense little man who acts as if he were a foot taller—I wonder if his neck hurts sometimes. Today Knuth.

“The exact sequence,” he begins, tapping his pencil. Several times before he has asked the same question, in precisely the same way, with the identical emphasis on exact.

I tell him what he can read in the log, what he has read in the log, everything is there. I remember hearing Werhner saying, seeing the silver-blue ball of earth, how lucky we were to have come back. Lucky?

RETRIEVE//

R/V Daedalus//

Station/Rawley Voorst//

Log Entry 1446//

Flt yr 3/Day 350+//

Codex 292-1446+//

RETRIEVE IN FULL BEGIN BEGIN BEGIN

Proper Time: See Codex//Postevent record.Something terrible has happened, we have blown part of the ship. Three dead, we have lost port pontoon and program, hatch seared at the console room, Damage Control has secured the ship, we are on auxiliary. I don’t think they had a chance. There just wasn’t any warning. SciCom reading data. Committee Pilot reading data, I am holding at powerdown but we are screaming—we are still being propelled by the shock—I am going to use that to ride through this sector and use the vanes for what’s ahead. What instruments we have now read impact event, unanalyzed interstellar material, data on what we hit must have gone in the blow. My recollections: I was holding vane angle in the lull, taping the log and watching Werhner eat. I felt myself become violently ill, I first thought it was from watching him, then focusing on the panel I saw lull figures then everything going red—instantly, don’t know if it was a trick of vision, but the red seemed to sweep the panels right to left along with the first strong jolt I felt even in my bones. I don’t remember anything else. I blacked out quickly, Werhner says that happened to him, too. It happened so incredibly fast, falling, my perceptions seemed to become detached, then a chill, as if I were diving into darkness. When I came to, I had a gash on the heel of my hand—and this is the strangest thing—it had coagulated. I mean almost healed. It must have been a vane trigger key I fell against, or a whole row. I immediately began resetting instruments, we were just getting auxiliary, when I noticed Werhner lying in a pool of vomit, coming around. Then the rescue attempt. There were only small fragments. Trace. The bodies, the debris, must have just been blown away, vaporized. The ship is responding well, under full control, but we still have no program and damn near lost. Repeat, I am going to retain propulsion from the shock to ride through the weather ahead, we are just getting navigation. When we blew there was nothing showing, absolutely nothing, other than that lull, that zero condition. Nothing.

Werhner is lying on his back, staring at the ceiling in the cottage we have been assigned on Guam. The air is heavy, the light trade winds ripe. He is still wearing his bathing suit. Sweat beads on his chest, runs as he raises himself on his elbow.

“Somebody went through my things,” he says. “Somebody went through your things. Nothing missing, but somebody was in here.”

I have just returned from another series of encephalograms, kinesthograms, redundant examinations. My torpor dissipates. I fold through my clothes, my books, my papers…. “What the hell?” The cover of Dean’s Deep Space Transpositions is creased; my clothes are in disarray.

Werhner is sitting on the edge of the cot now, popping a pinkish pill into his mouth, swallowing it without water.

“I’m going to get out of here,” I tell him. “This is too much. We’ve been here three weeks.”

“Cooper’s the only one who’s left the base,” Werhner says flatly. “I don’t know what the hell is going on—these goons spend half their time questioning each other about procedure, the whole dome crew is still here on Guam—Tamashiro, Levsky, Dawes. I think… Look, Rawley, I think they’re trying to set us up, to stick the blow on us. What did your tests show?”