Bob Shaw - Vertigo

Ten minutes later Hasson saw a layer of thin cloud moving eastwards beneath him, beginning to obscure his view of the land, and he knew the time had come to perform the illegal action which had necessitated his making the flight from such a remote area. He checked his first power pack, saw that it was nearing exhaustion, and switched to the second in line. For one heart-stopping instant, while the electrical circuit was being broken and re-made, he felt himself begin to fall, but the harness renewed its grip on him almost immediately and he knew the ascent was continuing. He unbuckled the expended power unit and, with a transient pang of guilt, released it from his fingers. The heavy pack dwindled out of sight beneath his feet, bombing its way down to an unseen impact with the choppy waters of the Minch.

Hasson’s plan had included shedding the second power unit and perhaps the third, provided conditions had been right, so as to Lighten the load on those remaining as they clawed their way up into regions of weakening gravitic flux. A prime requisite, though, had been perfect visibility below. The chances of a falling unit causing any damage to life or property were virtually non-existent in his present geographical location, but a deep- rooted instinct would not let him consider dropping a dense object through cloud. He would simply have to accept the limitation on his flight.

The realisation came as less of a disappointment than Hasson might have expected an hour earlier. He had already climbed higher than most fliers even cared to think about, and the nameless hunger within him was slowly abating. On the other hand, he had reached a dimensionless zone — once the domain of the big jets — and going on upwards into regions of darker blue seemed just as logical and natural as returning to the ancient kingdoms of men. With his head tilted back, and arms and legs trailing limply, Hasson continued his climb, his posture an unconscious echo of the one in which mediaeval artists depicted human souls ascending to heaven. A single point of light — possibly Venus — appeared in the aching purity above him, beckoning, and Hasson swam towards it. His rate of ascent was decreasing with every minute, in inverse proportion to the drain on his power packs, but a further hour took him to an altitude of twenty-five kilometres. The world curved away beneath him in nacreous splendour. There was no visible movement anywhere, except for the hastening progression of needles across the dials on his chest panel. Hasson flew onwards.

At thirty kilometres above sea level he checked his instruments and saw that his upward movement had all but ceased. His CG field generator, with less and less invisible grist for its mills, was expending stored energy at a prodigious rate simply to keep him from falling. The only way in which he could gain more height would be to discard the dead power packs, but he had ruled that action out, and in any case the result would be of no great significance. He had done what he set out to do.

Hanging motionless in the icy blue solitude, poised on the threshold of space, Hasson gazed all about him and felt… nothing. There was no fear, no elation, no wonder, no sense of achievement, no communion with the cosmos — removed from the context of humanity he had lost his humanity.

He completed a full survey of the heavens, knew himself to be a stranger there, then adjusted a control on his belt and began the long and lonely fall to Earth.

Hasson awoke to a room which was brilliant with diffused sunlight and he knew without looking at his watch that he had slept late. His head was throbbing so powerfully that he could actually hear the squirting pulses in the temple which was pressed into the pillow, and his tongue felt like stiffened chamois leather. There was also a fierce pressure in his bladder as a result of alcoholic enhancement of his body’s diuretic processes.

Not a hangover, he protested to the morning. The last thing I need is a hangover. He lay still for a time, reacquainting himself with the room, wondering what had happened on the previous day to trigger the nervy fluttering of excitement he could feel at the threshold of consciousness. There was pleasure involved — that much he knew — the pleasure of… Hasson closed his eyes momentarily as a picture of May Carpenter came into focus in his mind, quickly followed by all the recriminations and objections appropriate to his age, background and temperament. She was too young; she was mated to his host; he was fantasising like an adolescent boy; she was not his type; it was highly unlikely that she could have any interest in him whatsoever — but, but, she had looked at him in a certain way, and she had said, “That’s lucky for both of us,” and she had said, “Perhaps it’s just as well,” and the fact that he had never actually communicated with her and had no knowledge of her as a person was not very important, because there was an abundance of time in which to…

A sudden renewal of the pressure in his abdomen brought Hasson to his senses, making it dear that he had to face the task of getting himself into an upright attitude after many hours of lying in bed. The first stage in the operation was to transfer himself, still in the horizontal position, from the bed to the floor, because he was tackling an engineering job of Brunelian magnitude and the first requirement was a firm and immovable base. He began by dragging his legs sideways to the edge of the mattress by hand, then he rolled over, grasped the underlying frame and drew himself into a kind of a controlled fall to the floor. The inevitable flexure of his back and the abrupt change of temperature initiated a period of torment which he bore in near-silence, staring at the ceiling through slitted eyes. When the spasms began to subside he rolled again until he was lying in the prone position and could begin the slow process — largely guided by trial and error — of raising his upper body and very carefully, like a mason inserting props to hold an unwieldy mass of stone, bringing more and more of his skeleton under it until he had achieved verticality.

Two minutes after making the decision to rise, Hasson was on his feet — breathing heavily, chastened by what he had just been through, but now capable of movement. He shuffled about the room, putting on a dressing gown and collecting toilet articles, then listened at the bedroom door to satisfy himself that opening it would not precipitate the ordeal of having to speak to strangers. The landing was deserted and the upper part of the house had an empty feel to it, although there were muted sounds of activity from below. In the bathroom he brushed his teeth and made the depressing discovery that two mouth ulcers he had thought to be fading away were more painfully active than before. Returning to the bedroom, he contemplated the idea of getting under the covers again and switching on the television, but the dehydration of his system had given him a powerful yearning for tea or coffee which could not be denied. He dressed and made his way down to the kitchen, wondering how he would react if he found May there alone. He tapped the door gently, went inside and saw Theo Werry seated by himself at the circular table, eating a dish of cereal. The boy was wearing slacks and a red sweater, and there was a pensive expression on his handsome young face.

“Morning, Theo,” Hasson said. “No school today?”

Theo shook his head. “This is Saturday.”

“I’d forgotten. The days don’t seem to mean much to me now that…” Hasson checked himself and glanced around the room. “Where is everybody?”

“Dad’s outside clearing snow. The other two have gone into town.” Theo’s choice of phrase and a certain dryness of tone informed Hasson that he did not care much for May or her mother.