Judith Merril - The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy 4

“Luck,” said Kaufman, and dropped his helmet over his head. The others followed and they all went through the air-sealing check-off. They passed the telephone wire around, and tested the circuit. Morgan handed out extra oxygen flasks, three for each. Kaufman waved, squeezed into the air lock and pulled the hatch closed behind him. McNary went next, then Morgan.

Morgan carefully pulled himself erect alongside the outer hatch and plugged the telephone jack into his helmet. As he straightened, he saw the Earth directly in front of him. It loomed large, visible as a great mass of blackness cutting off the harsh white starshine. The blackness was smudged with irregular patches of orangish light that marked the cities of Earth.

Morgan became aware that McNary, beside him, was pointing toward the center of the Earth. Following the line of his finger Morgan could see a slight flicker of light against the blackness; it was so faint that he had to look above it to see it.

“Storm,” said McNary. “Just below the equator. It must be a pip if we can see the lightning through the clouds from here. I’ve been watching it develop for the last two days.”

Morgan stared, and nodded to himself. He knew what it was like down there. The familiar feeling was building up, stronger now as the time to passage drew closer. First the waiting. The sea, restless in expectancy as the waves tossed their hoary manes. The gathering majesty of the elements, reaching, searching, striving. . . . And if at the height of the contest the screaming wind snatched up and smothered a defiant roar from a mortal throat, there was none to tell of it.

Then the time came when the forces waned. A slight letup at first, then another. Soon the toothed and jagged edge of the waves subsided, the hard side-driven spray and rain assumed a more normal direction.

The man looked after the departing storm, and there was pain in his eyes, longing. Almost, the words rose to his lips, “Come back, I am still here, do not leave me, come back.” But the silent supplication went unanswered, and the man was left with a taste of glory gone, with an emptiness that drained the soul. The encounter had ended, the man had won. But the winning was bitter. The hard fight was not hard enough. Somewhere there must be a test sufficient to try the mettle of this man. Somewhere there was a crucible hot enough to float any dross. But where? The man searched and searched, but could not find it.

Morgan turned his head away from the storm and saw that Kaufman and McNary had walked to the top of the satellite. Carefully he turned his body and began placing one foot in front of the other to join them. Yes, he thought, men must always be on top, even if the top is only a state of mind. Here on the outer surface of the satellite, clinging to the metallic skin with shoes of magnetized alloy, there was no top. One direction was the same as another, as with a fly walking on a chandelier. Yet some primordial impulse drove a man to that position which he considered the top, drove him to stand with his feet pointed toward the Earth and his head toward the outer reaches where the stars moved.

Walking under these conditions was difficult, so Morgan moved with care. The feet could easily tread ahead of the man without his knowing it, or they could lag behind. A slight unthinking motion could detach the shoes from the satellite, leaving the man floating free, unable to return. So Morgan moved with care, keeping the telephone line clear with one hand.

When he reached the others, Morgan stopped and looked around. The sight always gave him pause. It was not pretty; rather, it was harsh and garish like the raucous illumination of a honkytonk saloon. The black was too black, and the stars burned too white. Everything appeared sharp and hard, with none of the softness seen from the Earth.

Morgan stared, and his lips curled back over his teeth. The anticipation inside him grew greater. No sound and fury here; the menace was of a different sort. Looming, quietly foreboding, it was everywhere.

Morgan leaned back to look overhead, and his lips curled further. This was where it might come, this was the place. Raw space, where a man moved and breathed in momentary peril, where cosmic debris formed arrow-swift reefs on which to founder, where star-born particles traveled at unthinkable speeds out of the macrocosm seeking some fragile microcosm to shatter.

“Sun.” Kaufman’s voice echoed tinnily inside the helmet. Morgan brought his head down. There, ahead a tinge of deep red edged a narrow segment of the black Earth. The red brightened rapidly, and broadened. Morgan reached to one side of his helmet and dropped a filter into place; he continued to stare at the sun.

McNary said, “Ten minutes to passage.”

Morgan unhooked one of the oxygen cylinders at his belt and said, “We need some practice. We’d better try throwing one of these now; not much time left. He turned sideways and made several throwing motions with his right hand without releasing the cylinder. “Better lean into it more than you would down below. Well, here goes.” He pushed the telephone line clear of his right side and leaned back, raising his right arm. He began to lean forward. When it seemed that he must topple, he snapped his arm down and threw the cylinder. The recoil straightened him neatly, and he stood securely upright. The cylinder shot out and down in a straight line and was quickly lost to sight. .

“Very nice,” said McNary. “Good timing. I’ll keep mine low too. No sense cluttering the orbits up here with any more junk.” Carefully McNary leaned back, leaned forward, and threw. The second cylinder followed the first, and McNary kept his footing.

Without speaking Kaufman went through the preliminaries and launched his cylinder. Morgan and McNary watched it speed into the distance. “Shooting stars on Earth tonight,” said McNary.

“Quick! I’m off.” It was Kaufman.

Morgan and McNary turned to see Kaufman floating several feet above the satellite, and slowly receding. Morgan stepped toward him and scooped up the telephone wire that ran to Kaufman’s helmet. Kaufman swung an arm in a circle so that it became entangled in the wire. Morgan carefully drew the wire taut and checked Kaufman’s outward motion. Gently, so as not to snap the wire, he slowly reeled him in. McNary grasped Kaufman’s shoulders and turned him so that his feet touched the metal shell of the satellite.

McNary chuckled and said, “Why didn’t you ride an oxygen cylinder down?”

Kaufman grunted and said, “Oh, sure. I’ll leave that to the idiots in the movies; that’s the only place a man can ride a cylinder in space.” He turned to Morgan. “Thanks. Do as much for you some day.”

“Hope you don’t have to,” Morgan answered. “Look, any throwing to be done, you better leave it to Mac and me. We can’t be fishing anyone back if things get hot.”

“Right,” said Kaufman. “I’ll do what I can to fend off anything they throw at us.” He sniffed. “Be simpler if we have a collision.”

Morgan was staring to the left. He lifted a hand and pointed. “That it?”

The others squinted in that direction. After a moment they saw the spot of light moving swiftly up and across the black backdrop of the naked sky. “Must be,” said Kaufman. “Right time, right place. Must be.”

Morgan promptly turned his back on the sun and closed his eyes; he would need his best vision shortly now, and he wanted his pupils dilated as much as possible. “Make anything out yet?” he said.

“No. Little brighter.”

Morgan stood without moving. He could feel the heat on his back as his suit seized the radiant energy from the sun and converted it to heat. He grew warm at the back, yet his front remained cold. The sensation was familiar, and Morgan sought to place it. Yes, that was it—a fireplace. He felt as does a man who stands in a cold room with his back toward a roaring fire. One side toasted, the other side frigid. Funny, the homey sensations, even here.