Frederik Pohl - O Pioneer!

The opening session of the six-planet meeting wasn’t scheduled to begin for nearly three hours, but a lot of the delegates and their staffs were roaming the town. In the cart to the lakefront Giyt saw clumps of them wandering around like any tourists anywhere, taking pictures, getting souvenirs. Giyt wasn’t paying much attention to them. He was preoccupied with the prospect of making a polar flight under the conditions the Petty-Primes’ generosity made possible, while Rina wasn’t looking at the visitors at all. She was withdrawn and worried. It wasn’t until they were getting into the boat for the ride across to the launchpad on the far side of the lake that she glanced at the other passengers and said in consternation, “They’ve all got heavy coats, Shammy! You don’t even have boots. It’s winter up there!”

Giyt had noticed the same thing, but tried to reassure her. He wouldn’t be out-of-doors at all, he promised. It didn’t satisfy Rina. “No, Shammy,” she announced, “you need somebody to take care of you. I’m going to come along.”

She very nearly did board the ship at the last minute, as a matter of fact. Very likely would have done it, too, in spite of everything, if there had happened to be an available unoccupied seat in the Pole rocket.

But there wasn’t. “No more seats, certainly none at all, definitely not any, no,” the Delt at the door announced morosely. “Two seats remain open now for Earth-human persons, yes, but taken. Persons are late, too! Persons better damn come soon so captain get this vehicle back in time for watching of opening ceremonials, otherwise captain be damn mad!”

“I’ll be taking the Petty-Prime space,” Giyt informed him.

The Delt gave him the benefit of a concentrated stare from both eyes; “You say what?”

“It’s all right. The Responsible One gave his permission for the switch.”

“Ho!” the Delt snarled. “Responsible One? Gave permission? That very sweet, but, tell me, is Responsible One perhaps person who must now have task of to remove Petty-Prime seating structures from vehicle, so as to make physically feasible space for person your volume and mass to occupy? Still more not to be forgiven injustice!” As he turned to enter to do the job he flung over his shoulder, “For female Earth-human person, still no. Not possible at all.”

Giyt turned to Rina. “So you see there’s no room. But I’ll be all right.”

“Maybe so,” she granted dubiously, “but also maybe not. What if these other people don’t show? Then there’ll be room, won’t there?”

But that was a faint hope, quickly dispelled; the sound of a motor from across the lake was what dispelled it. A boat was speeding toward them, and as it was slowing down to touch shore Giyt saw who was in it. There was a driver, and two men huddled in parkas behind him. “Damn!” Giyt muttered. The men were Wili Tschopp and Hoak Hagbarth.

When the driver got out it turned out to be Olse Hagbarth, unctuously friendly. “Came along to see your hubby off?” she asked, chummy enough to make a cow puke. “Me too. Isn’t that always the way for us wives? We stay home with the housework while our men go off—what? You go along with him? Oh, no, hon, you mustn’t think about going along. Even if there was space for you. The acceleration in that rocket is fierce! Not so bad for a healthy man, maybe, but do you have any idea what it might do to that precious little baby inside you?”

Giyt’s big fear was that his wife would punch Olse Hagbarth in the face, but she didn’t. Rina allowed herself to be led morosely away across the charred surface around the pad, and Giyt hoisted himself into the entry door as the Delt mechanic brushed past him. He paused to speak to Giyt, half apologetic, half aggrieved. “Is now as good as can make it, which not in fact specially good, you know? You having nasty ride. Do not later speak didn’t tell you so.”

When Giyt tried to strap himself in he had to agree. The space intended for eight Petty-Primes was, in fact, large enough to hold an adult human male, but only if the human squeezed himself into the fetal position, knees almost touching his chin. As the Slug pilot came by, checking everyone’s fastenings, he made a sound of reproach at Giyt. “Not proper stowage!” he slurped. “Can cause most grave discomfort in delta-vee conditions. Urgently you lie quite still in both ac- and deceleration modes, otherwise potential for snapping of structural members. Not ship’s, yours.”

Giyt prepared himself for the worst, his thoughts on this new development. What was he to do about the presence of Hagbarth and Tschopp on the suborbiter? They could have only one reason for this last-minute decision to come along. That was to keep an eye on him, and that he could not allow. He would have to lose them somehow.

Then there was no more time to think. The Slug pilot extruded himself to the front of the vessel—actually, in its erected takeoff position, to its top. In the surveillance mirror over the pilot station, Giyt could see the Slug taking his place at the controls. He didn’t have a seat, exactly. All the other passengers, except Giyt, had custom-tailored sitting (or perching) places. All the pilot had was a sort of rubbery bowl.

As it turned out, that made good sense. The pilot didn’t bother to warn the passengers when he. started the engines. He didn’t have to. Giyt heard the rolling thunder of the rockets beneath him. The craft began to shake. The noise grew louder until it was all but unbearable, and then the ship slowly began to lift. Then it picked up speed…

That was when Giyt saw the wisdom of the form-fitting chairs. He knew perfectly well what G-forces were supposed to be like, because everybody did. At least he had thought he did, but he had not anticipated how hard the platform he was resting on would become, or that his chest would be compressed until it was hard to breathe, or that the keycard in his hip pocket and the clasp of suspenders at the small of his back would suddenly feel like knives thrusting into his flesh. He could not see how the other passengers were faring, but in the overhead surveillance mirror he could catch glimpses of the Slug, now compressed into a sort of thick pudding in the bowl, his eye stalks pulled back into his body, a few tendrils stretched toward, but not quite reaching, the toggle controls.

Then the noise stopped.

The pressure was gone. The rocket was in the ballistic portion of its flight now, with no thrust at all and no weight. Giyt took a deep breath, savoring the pleasure of breathing freely again. He glanced toward the passengers next to him, the pair of male Delts who were already twisting their heads to check the condition of their mates behind a pair of similarly packed Kalkaboos. Everyone was chattering away—incomprehensibly to Giyt, because somewhere along the acceleration the translation button had been pulled out of his ear by the G-forces.