Уолтер Тевис - The Steps of the Sun

Thinking all this out calmed my spirit immensely. With a few minutes left before touchdown, the G forces had leveled off. I got out of my landing seat, grabbed the scissors and finished trimming my beard, steady as a rock this time. By then the touchdown counter had started and a red light was blinking over the mirror in the head where I’d been doing this barbering. I set the scissors down, got back into my chair and belted myself in with about three seconds to spare before the Isabel burned herself into Aynsley’s midfield. I could see nothing through the porthole; rippling heat from our retros crimped the outside air. Suddenly the shudder of the landing began to massage my spine like a demon chiropractor, yet the effect was soothing. I literally felt the Isabel burn her way twenty feet into topsoil and bedrock like a white-hot coin dropped onto butter. She trembled, gave a sigh, settled in, and came to rest back on the planet where she was made—where we were all made.

I undid my belt and lit a cigar. I looked out the stateroom window and son of a bitch if I didn’t see a goalpost! Judging by the distance, Betty must have brought us down right on the fifty-yard line. What an encouraging thing for a first sight on Earth in nine months! What an emblem for my plans! Ben Belson, broken-field runner. I bent over and retied my shoes. Outside, the ground was smoking; there were spotlights bearing down on us and smoke rose foggily into the beams.

The Isabel has two exit hatches. On Belson and Juno, where low gravity and a hard surface had made for less devastating setdowns, we could merely walk out the bottom one, and down a short stairway to the terrain. But for landings like this there was a hatchway thirty feet up, just off the mess hall. And the Isabel , being Chinese, had a special gimmick; I was counting on it to add to the surprise. I’d studied spaceships before buying this one and knew that a U.S. or Russian craft might have to wait eight hours for the ground to cool after Betty’s hot-pilot landing, before anybody tried getting out and walking. But the Isabel had a foldout, magnesium-alloy footbridge that could arch its way over the hot circle of earth the engines had made; it could be sent out thirty feet away from the upper hatch. The only thing was I’d never tested it. On the blueprints it looked flimsy. And I’m no compact Chinese astronaut.

There was no time to sit agonizing about that one. I checked the tapes that held the endolin to my body, made sure I had my billfold, which held exactly forty dollars, some credit cards and a photograph. I patted the pocket of my plaid lumberjack shirt, my basic space-travel shirt; there were three cigars and a lighter. I checked my wristwatch; it was 2:43 A.M., Wednesday, August 23, 2064. I left my cabin, chugging with adrenalin, and scrambled up the ladder to the messroom. The hatchway was just past the dining table.

There was a porthole in the door about a foot across; I had to stoop to look out. There wasn’t much to be seen: white vapor rising from the ground, and searchlights. Near the door-release handle was a switch that controlled the footbridge. I flipped its safety off, took a breath, and pulled it. A servo motor began whirring. I looked out the porthole again but could see nothing. The glass had steamed over. I waited, chomping my cigar and feeling my heart beat like a rubber mallet, until the whirring stopped. I grabbed the lug wheel in both hands and spun it. The hatchway lugs pulled in and there was a hiss as the Belson pressure inside the ship equalized with the 14.7 Earth pressure; I could feel warm Earth air rushing in to mingle. I heaved the hatchway open into the breeze; some papers on the table behind me rippled and swooshed to the deck. I looked out. Searchlights. Warm night air. Earth! I looked down. There was my narrow, shiny bridge, looking as if made of aluminum foil, as if the weight of a teddy bear would collapse it. Up ahead were lights, steam, the shadows of some kind of equipment. I stuck my head out and looked straight down, to one side of the bridge. Heat from molten ground hit my face. A siren was going somewhere in the distance. Right at the base of the ship was the rim of a serious crater; it actually glowed with a muted crimson. Black, acrid smoke was rising from it. It looked like Dante’s hell and smelled like it too. I pulled my head back in the doorway, took a deep breath, and hit the bridge running. It swayed and bobbed sickeningly under my feet. I could hear it creak; a vision of myself being dropped into liquid stone pierced my mind like a spear. I ran on, trying to soften the pounding of my Adidas. Halfway across I looked up ahead. I could see the end of the bridge, swaying from side to side. The fucker had never lowered itself on the turf! It was about fifteen feet above the ground! For a moment I almost turned to go back aboard the Isabel , to wait till everything cooled. But if I did there would be at least four men with adamant-steel handcuffs to hold me till the warrants arrived. To hell with that. I did not want to continue my spiritual growth in a federal prison. I kept on going. At a distance I heard someone shouting, but I could see no one. Past the midmark on that Japanese Garden bridgeway my weight started pushing it down. It fell about three feet and stuck, jarring the teeth in my jaws and vibrating like a drumhead. I could feel heat from the walking surface penetrating the soles of my shoes; if I stood there long my feet would start cooking. Life gets that way at times. The wise man profits from the hot foot. I was thinking like a fortune cookie, but I’ll stick by it still. I ran on to the end of the bridge, stopped, and began to jump up and down, shouting, “Goddamn you, you Chinese puzzle, you fucking aluminum chopstick! Get your ass down . ” Thump, thump! It was like Anna taking off her girdle. That goddamned thing! And hot as blazes by now too. The sirens got louder. The bridge dropped another couple of feet and stuck again. I saw two men in uniform suddenly emerge from the shadows below me, looking up puzzled. A searchlight fanned across my chest and face. What the hell. I jumped.

I landed on what must have been Astroturf, fell forward, and rolled. No pain. The surface felt springy, a little like Belson grass. I sat for a moment and shook my addled brains clear. In front of me was a goalpost! I had landed in the end zone! Six points. From my right the two men were approaching me. They were about ten feet away. Cops. But no guns—or none in sight. They seemed a bit dumbfounded. I stood up, looked quickly around. Lots of bleachers. To one side were a couple of trucks, one of which had headlights pointing toward me. Clearly the Army, since only the Army had trucks. Some women with rifles stood by them. Near them were men in business suits. No one was moving in my direction. They were all just watching the show.

The cops walked up, a little more composed by now. One of them came very close to me and put his face in mine. I suddenly realized I was still smoking my cigar, had held it in my teeth through the whole jump, tumble and roll act. “Are you Mr. Belson?” he said, just a shade impolitely.

I’d never hit anyone before in my life. What I did was just extend my right arm the way you do in the Nautilus pectoral machine; in the back of my head was the memory that I’d increased the drag in that machine to a hundred eighty pounds the Thursday before. I caught him in the neck with my forearm and he fell like a stone. Jesus Christ, I’d no idea it was so easy!

The other cop seemed undissuaded by this display of muscle, or he was too confused by it all to react properly. Maybe he had lost heart when he looked up to see me jumping up and down, with my lumberjack shirtsleeves rolled up and a cigar in my mouth, on the end of that flimsy Chinese cantilever. Strong men could quail at such a sight. Anyway, he was not forewarned by his partner’s sudden drop and I punched him out with a right cross to the jaw. Then I took off running. I doubled back past the Isabel’ s crater, looked around and saw an open place in the grandstand facing the fifty-yard line. There were no people or vehicles that I could see in that direction. I poured it on and ran that way, through a gate that, mirabile dictu , was open, and out onto a sidewalk. I looked up and down an avenue; it was deserted. Down the street was the Washington Monument, big and clean in the moonlight. I ran that way. Back at the stadium I heard trucks moving up, and people shouting. I ran on, took a left at the bottom of the street and a right at the end of the next one, to confuse the trail. I really stretched my legs. I ran like a night wind down those dark Washington streets, past the shells of old slum houses and then down the Mall, where I ran even more gaily on grass. If you could sing while running, with your chest at the bursting, I would have sung a hallelujah chorus of my own devising. Goddamn, it was good to be home!