Дэймон Найт - Orbit 6

They all pause before a long low building. He glances upward at the metallically gleaming object. His glance is confident and familiar, but it holds a little longer than the glances of those around him, who have looked up also in imitation — and his throat moves, as if he had swallowed to remove some constriction there. Then, decisively pushing open the door, he enters the building. Here too the buzz of incessant activity: telephones, typewriters, teletypewriters — chattering, clattering. There is an abrupt rise in the pitch of these sounds as he comes in, the equivalent of an exclamation, “Here he is, folks!” In fact, a sensitive ear might have caught that very phrase spoken into a dozen microphones. Might have caught also a name, “Cargill,” repeated more than once, “Major Ralph Cargill,” and scattered phrases, “most incredible voyage ever. . time difference… to another star and back,” which it might have pieced together into whole sentences: “One hundred years. . plodding by on Earth on heavy feet. . will flash by for him in the twinkling of ten years’ time. Our grandchildren. . their children. . will greet his triumphant return.” But it could not have caught what was being said directly and in a lower tone into Major Cargill’s left ear by a man in a dark business suit. Cargill nods, but looks around the room with a questing eye. He spots a face, out of the way in a far corner, and beckons. The owner of the face comes over and he and Cargill and the man who had spoken to Cargill go out of a door at the side of the room, followed by a hundred curious eyes. But not by the possessors of those eyes.

It is quieter in this room, which has only one man in it. The man who had dropped the hint says, “This is Eastman, the make-up man. I need hardly remind you…”

“I will be ready. Mr. Eastman will see to that, I’m sure.” The hint-dropper consults his watch, and hurries out. “Now, Shel,” says Cargill, “if you will just stand over here where I can see you…”

The man he has brought into the room with him does as he is bid. This man is thin, bespectacled, with sandy ill-combed hair. He is pleasant without being good-looking. He can’t be very observant, his eye is so dull, and he is certainly not very lively. He is not well-dressed, either; and it seems that he is old-fashioned enough to wear a hat, because he carries one in his hand. The name in the hatband is plainly visible. Limbert.

Cargill seats himself in a chair beside the cluttered table and permits the makeup man to dab at his face uninterruptedly for some minutes before he speaks.

“Has Harper’s sent back your novel yet?”

A slight flush (which the makeup man might have tried in vain to imitate) touches the cheek of Limbert. “No. Not yet.”

“Well, of course,” says Cargill, watching and catching himself up short, “they might not. They might decide to take it.” Then, laughing, though somewhat seriously too, as if this were a moment for honesty: “They might want to be different from all those others.”

Limbert smiles; and Cargill, still watching him and still amused and friendly, continues: “We’ve known each other for a long time, haven’t we?”

“Since we were five.”

“Right!” As if it had been a weighted examination question and Limbert had come out rather well on it. “Then you’re the obvious person to write about me, isn’t that so? In fact, with what you already know about me — and who knows me better than you do, Shel? — you might whip up something really fascinating.”

His friend betrays a certain hesitancy. “Yes, I do want to write about you. In my way. But my way, you know, is so very uncongenial to the large public kind of thing you seem to have in mind, which is so out of keeping with what I do and with what seems natural for me to do, that — well, in short, it would look as if I were desperately trying to realize some cash on my friendship with you. It would look quite a bit like, a—”

“Exploitation? Oh, hell, lots of people are doing that, anyway, and who has a better right than you? Listen, now,” getting up from the chair and seeming to brush aside the makeup man, who is imperfectly satisfied, “I’ve already made arrangements with Ed Woods at Life for you to do that long article we spoke about. Here,” extracting a manila envelope from his breast pocket and handing it: “These are a few pages I’ve written about myself. As told to, et cetera. It’ll help you over the rough spots, if you can’t think of anything to say. No — I don’t want any excuses, because I know you can handle it. And,” smartly tapping the envelope in Limbert’s hand with his forefinger, “don’t let the big boys take it away from you, okay?”

An observant person could not fail to see, perhaps merely from the postures of the two men as they stand facing each other, that they like each other; but that is about all he would find in common. Cargill, handsome and well-knit in his Air Force uniform, is very unlike Limbert: he has the build of an athlete, the face of a matinee idol, the presence and address of a popular politician. But there is a momentary touch of resemblance between them in that there is something like pity in the face of each as he looks at the other. This is to be their last meeting and parting. It is as if each were dying. Limbert will survive Cargill in a sense, but when the other returns to Earth a century from now, he might, if he wishes, walk out and visit Limbert’s grave, if such an obscure grave is still identifiable. But it is Cargill’s face which displays the greater sadness. It may be that, in addition to the feeling natural to the moment, he has in reserve a further store of pity for his threadbare friend, an unpublished would-be writer, a failure at twenty-seven, a fellow who could never have made it on his own. But now he won’t have to; he is seeing to that.

“Believe me, Shel, really,” placing a hand on the nondescript shoulder, “it’ll be the making of you.”

Cargill leaves the hand there awhile. Perhaps he is conscious that Limbert will have that ghostly guiding helping hand on his shoulder for a very long time to come. The publicizing of his friendship with Major Ralph Cargill will certainly stand him in good stead. It will bring him into contact with something exciting and alive; it will connect him in the public’s mind with something large and important.

So much for that. Cargill goes out now to face the world; that is, the television cameras. He is very popular. He would be called a hero except that the word has been so emptied of meaning that the newspapers, to give adequate expression to the general admiration, are forced to call him “a hero’s hero.” He is no ordinary astronaut, crewcut, gum chewing, taped and strapped into a capsule, wires trailing from his scalp — the “human factor” in a complicated mechanical-administrative process. Rather, he is himself the pilot, the navigator and the scientist, and that on a flight largely of his own initiating and partly of his own planning. He has fought for it against public ridicule and scientific dissent, and has won. This has made him into a dramatic figure and he is further dignified by the importance of the flight, the scientific value of which is now beyond dispute. It is to provide, among other things, the first extended trial of the newly discovered means of reducing to human scale the experienced-time of such long-distance travel. Further still — and this too casts upon him its flattering light — the purity of the venture is in no way compromised by politics nor, despite his title, by military advantage. It is undertaken only for the achievement, for the love of knowledge and of glory.

He speaks. It is his farewell to the world, simple and moving. Three hundred million persons watch.