Гарри Гаррисон - To The Stars

The beer was tasteless but cold, and he limited himself to one bottle. This was not a day to have a thick head. He was alone with the Egyptian bartender who solemnly polished glass after glass in silence. There was apparently little traffic through Cairo airport. Nor was there any sign of the occupation troops that featured so largely in President Mahant’s speech. Had it all been a ruse? There was no way of telling. But his position was real enough and he was not looking forward to the coming encounters with any great enthusiasm. Events were rushing past him, getting ahead of him so that it was growing more and more difficult to keep up with the accelerating changes. The boring years he had spent on Halvmork seemed almost attractive by comparison. When he returned — if he returned — life would be quiet and satisfactory. He would have a family there, his wife, a child on the way, more children. The future of the planet to worry about. Alzbeta; she had scarcely been in his thoughts at all of late. Too little time. He saw her now in his mind’s eye, smiling, her arms out to him. But it was hard to hold this image; it melted away, was overlaid with the far stronger one of Dvora, naked and close, the musky smell of her body in his nostrils.

Damn! He drained his glass and signaled for a second one. Life was very complex. As dangerous as it had been since his arrival back on Earth it also had been… what? Fun? No, he couldn’t call it that. Interesting, it was surely that, and damn exciting once he knew that he was going to live for at least a little bit longer. He shouldn’t be thinking about the future now, not until he was sure that he was going to have one. Wait and see, that was all that he could do.

“Technician Halliday,” the PA system said. “Technician Halliday to Gate Three.”

Jan heard the message twice before it penetrated that it was for him. His new identity. He put down his glass and headed for Gate Three. The same Security officer was waiting for him there.

“If you’ll come with me, sir. The plane’s been refueled and is ready to go. Your bag’s aboard already.”

Jan nodded and followed the man out into the heat of the day, the sun reflected the glaring from the white concrete. They came to a supersonic two-place fighter marked with the white star of the United States Air Force; travel in style indeed. The mechanics held the stairs as Jan climbed aboard, one of them following him up to close and seal the hatch. The pilot turned and waved his hand over his shoulder in greeting.

“Someone sure in a hurry to get your ass out of here. Pulled me out of a poker game, never even let me play my hand. Strap in.”

The jets roared and vibrated beneath them and they were airborne almost as soon as they turned into the runway.

“Where are we going?” Jan asked, as soon as the gear was up and they were in a steady climb up to cruising altitude. “Mojave?”

“Shit no. I wish we were. I been out in a desert field here so long I’m beginning to grow a hump like a camel. And hump, real hump, that’s what I’d be getting if I were flying into Mojave. No, we’re vectored right into Baikonur, soon as I get above the commercial lanes. Them Russkies don’t like no one, even themselves. Lock you in a little room, guards with guns everywheres. Sign eight thousand goddamn forms for the fuel. Get crabs from the furniture, I swear I know an old boy lay over there and got crabs. Says they jump further than Texas crabs and they jump fourteen feet…”

It took no large effort to tune out the pilot’s reminiscences. Apparently his voice worked separately from his mind because he flew the plane with great precision, instrument and navigation checks and all. Without shutting up for a second.

Baikonur. Somewhere in southern Russia, that’s all Jan remembered. Not an important base, too small for anything other than orbital lifters. Probably just there to prove that the Soviets were members of the big-nation club. He was undoubtedly going to be put into space from there. With no idea yet of his final destination.

Wartime had intensified the traditional Russian paranoia and the tower at Baikonur was in continual radio contact with the pilot as soon as they had started across the Black Sea.

“This is a security warning, Air Force four three niner, and must be obeyed exactly. Any deviation will cause automatic reprisal. Do you read me?”

“Read you? For Christ’s sake, Baikonur, I told you I did, about seventeen goddamned times now! My autopilot’s locked on your frequency, I am steady at your specified height of twenty thousand. I’m just a passenger in this plane, so you bring it in and talk to your machinery if you want to issue any more orders.”

Unmoved, the deep voice carried on insistently.

“No deviation will be allowed. Do you read me, Air Force four three niner?”

“I read you, I read you,” the pilot said wearily, defeated by Slavic stolidity.

It was night when they crossed the Soviet shore and began their approach to the space complex. The lights of towns and cities swept by beneath them, but Baikonur itself was completely blacked out because of the hostilities. It was disconcerting to see that the plane was dropping lower and lower toward the ground while still completely under airport control. It is one thing to know abstractly that radar and electronic communications need no light, that they work just as well in complete darkness; still another to hear the wing flaps grinding into position, the landing gear locking down — when there is nothing visible in any direction. All of this was controlled by the computer on the ground — the ground which was still totally invisible in the darkness ahead. The aircraft’s landing lights stayed off, as did the runway lights. Jan found that he was holding his breath as the engine throttled back and they dropped.

To make a perfect landing on the still invisible runway. Only when they had come to a complete stop at the end of the taxiway was control returned to the pilot.

“Feel like a goddamned passenger,” he muttered to himself, settling his infrared goggles firmly into place. The FOLLOW ME car finally arrived and they taxied after it into a blacked-out hangar; the lights came on only after the door was closed. Jan blinked in the sudden glare as he unbuckled his straps. An officer, wearing the same black uniform as his, was waiting at the foot of the steps.

“Technician Halliday?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get your bag and come with me. There’s a supply shuttle on line now with a window coming up in about twenty minutes. We can make it if we hurry. Let’s go.”

After this, Jan was just a passenger. The chemical-fueled rocket boosted into a low orbit that was barely outside the atmosphere. A deep space fusion shuttle locked to them and the passengers, all military personnel, transferred to this. Every one of them was at home in null-G. Jan was thankful that he had worked in space before, or his clumsiness would have given him away instantly. Once in their seats they had to wait while the cargo was transferred as well; in the interval they enjoyed the dubious pleasure of a Russian squeezepak meal. It had a soapy texture and tasted vaguely of fish. Afterward Jan read the instructions on the free fall toilet very carefully before he used it. There were as many disaster stories about its use as there were about the equivalent bit of sanitary engineering that was fitted into submarines.

Boredom very quickly replaced tension, since there was little to do other than look at recordings or catch up on sleep. The space colony of Lagrange 5 was unluckily almost at its maximum distance from Earth, nearly 200,000 miles, so the trip was a long one. While pretending to doze, Jan eavesdropped shamelessly on his fellow spacemen. The colony was being used as a base for the Space Force and headquarters for the Earth defense fleet, he discovered. Most of the conversation seemed to be a mixture of rumor and gossip and he memorized the best bits to be used as part of his cover.