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

“Damn face plate.” It was Kaufman. He had scraped the front of his helmet against the outside hatch a week ago. Since then the scratches distracted him every time he wore the helmet.

Morgan waited, and the exultation seethed and bubbled and fumed. “Anything?” he said.

“It’s brighter,” said McNary. “But—wait a minute, I can make it out. They’re outside, the three of them. I can just see them.”

It was time. Morgan turned to face the approaching satellite. He raised a hand to shield his face plate from the sun and carefully opened his eyes. He shifted his hand into the proper position and studied the other satellite.

It was like their own, even to the three men standing on it, except that the three were spaced farther apart.

“Any sign of a rifle or gun?” asked McNary.

“Not that I see,” said Morgan. “They’re not close enough to tell.”

He watched the other satellite grow larger and he tried to judge its course, but it was too far away. Although his eyes were on the satellite, his side vision noted the bright-lit Earth below and the stars beyond. A small part of his mind was amused by his own stubborn egocentricity. Knowing well that he was moving and moving fast, he still felt that he stood motionless while the rest of the universe revolved around him. The great globe seemed to be majestically turning under his rooted feet. The harsh brilliances that were the stars seemed to sweep by overhead. And that oncoming satellite, it seemed not to move so much as merely swell in size as he watched.

One of the tiny figures on the other satellite shifted its position toward the others. Sensitive to the smallest detail, Morgan said, “He didn’t clear a line when he walked. No telephone. They’re on radio. See if we can find the frequency. Mac, take the low. Shorty, the medium. I’ll take the high.”

Morgan reached to his helmet and began turning the channel selector, hunting for the frequency the Russians were using. Kaufman found it. He said, “Got it, I think. One twenty-eight point nine.”

Morgan set his selector, heard nothing at first. Then hard in his ear burst an unintelligible sentence with the characteristic fruity diphthongs of Russian. “I think that’s it,” he said.

He watched, and the satellite increased in size. “No rifle or any other weapon that I see,” said Morgan. “But they are carrying a lot of extra oxygen bottles.”

Kaufman grunted. McNary asked, “Can you tell if it’s a collision course yet? I can’t.”

Morgan stared at the satellite through narrowed eyes, frowning in concentration. “I think not. I think it’ll cross our bow twenty or thirty feet out; close but no collision.”

McNary’s breath sounded loud in the helmet. “Good. Then we’ve nothing but the men to worry about. I wonder how those boys pitch.”

Another burst of Russian came over the radio, and with it Morgan felt himself slip into the relaxed state he knew so well. No longer was the anticipation rising. He was ready now, in a state of calm, a deadly and efficient calm—ready for the test. This was how it always was with him when the time came, and the time was now.

Morgan watched as the other satellite approached. His feet were apart and his head turned sideways over his left shoulder. At a thousand yards, he heard a mutter in Russian and saw the man at the stern start moving rapidly toward the bow. His steps were long. Too long.

Morgan saw the gap appear between the man and the surface of the other ship, saw the legs kicking in a futile attempt to establish contact again. The radio was alive with quick, short sentences, and the two men turned and began to work their way swiftly toward the bit of human jetsam that floated near them.

“I’ll be damned,” said Kaufman. “They’ll never make it.”

Morgan had seen that this was true. The gap between floating man and ship widened faster than the gap between men and floating man diminished. Without conscious thought or plan, Morgan leaned forward and pulled the jack on the telephone line from McNary’s helmet. He leaned back and did the same to Kaufman, straightened and removed his own. He threw a quick knot and gathered the line, forming a coil in his left hand and one in his right, and leaving a large loop floating near the ship in front of him. He stepped forward to clear Kaufman, and twisted his body far around to the right. There he waited, eyes fixed on the other satellite. He crouched slightly and began to lean forward, far forward. At the proper moment he snapped both his arms around to throw the line, the left hand throwing high, the right low. All his sailor’s skill went into that heave. As the other satellite swept past, the line flew true to meet it. The floating man saw it coming and grabbed it and wrapped it around his hand and shouted into the radio. The call was not needed; the lower portion of the line struck one of the walking men. He turned and pulled the line into his arms and hauled it tight. The satellite was barely past when the bit of human jetsam was returning to its metallic haven. The two men became three again, and they turned to face the American satellite. As one man the three raised both arms and waved. Still without thinking, Morgan found himself raising an arm with Kaufman and McNary and waving back.

He dropped his arm and watched the satellite shrink in size. The calmness left him, replaced by a small spot of emptiness that grew inside him, and grew and swelled and threatened to engulf him.

Passage was ended, but the taste in his mouth was of ashes and not of glory.

Ted Thomas’s hero was a sailor turned spacer; Richard McKenna is a sailor turned writer. “Casey Agonistes” was his first published story, and beyond question the brightest new entry in the s-f field last year.

Born in Idaho in 1913, Mr. McKenna reports a “desert and cowboy-type youth. To Navy, 1931. China Station, 1932. Meant to retire and die out there. . . . Double-crossed by history. . . .” He spent the war years in the Naval Transport Service “... all oceans. No decorations”, then found himself in 1949 in a Navy Public Information Office in Chicago. “. . . Liked the journalistic word-carpentry. Decided to write some day. S-f, of course, voracious reader thereof from early age. . . .”

In ‘53, after a cruise to Korea, he was mustered out as Chief Machinist’s Mate: “. . . That’s steam engines, refrigerators, lathes, etc. Felt lack of formal education keenly. Into U. of North Carolina, summer, 1953.” He took a variety of science courses, majored in psychology, and got his B.A. in English Literature in February, 1956. “Married next day. Time out for one year. First dribbles of writing, spring, 1957. Casey first thing sold and published. Age 44 then. ...

“Hope to live to 100 and write something every day of it. . . .”

You can’t just plain die. You got to do it by the book.

That’s how come I’m here in this TB ward with nine other recruits. Basic training to die.

You do it by stages. First a big ward, you walk around and go out and they call you mister. Then, if you got what it takes, a promotion to this isolation ward and they call you charles. You can’t go nowhere, you meet the masks, and you get the feel of being dead.

Being dead is being weak and walled off. You hear car noises, and see little doll-people down on the sidewalks, but when they come to visit you they wear white masks and nightgowns and talk past you in the wrong voices. They’re scared you’ll rub some off on them. You would, too, if you knew how.

Nobody ever visits me. I had practice being dead before I come here. Maybe that’s how I got to be charles so quick.