Stanisław Lem - Solaris

I sat there, and the girl leaned back against my knees, her hair tickling my motionless hand. We were almost completely still. A couple of times I glanced at my watch. Half an hour had passed and the sleeping tablets ought to have started working. Harey murmured something faintly.

“What was that?” I asked, but she didn’t reply. I took this as a sign she was growing sleepy, though truth be told, deep down I doubted whether the medication would be effective. Why? I don’t know the answer to that question either, probably because my ruse had been only too simple.

Her head, swathed in dark hair, gradually sank onto my lap; she was breathing regularly like a sleeping person. I leaned over to carry her across to the bunk; suddenly, without opening her eyes she took hold of my hair lightly and burst out in a strident laugh.

I froze, while she was in fits of laughter. Through eyes narrowed to slits she studied me with a gaze that was at once naive and cunning. I sat unnaturally stiffly, dazed and helpless; Harey giggled one more time, pressed her face into my arm and fell silent.

“What are you laughing about?” I asked in a hollow voice. The same expression of slightly uneasy puzzlement appeared on her face. I knew she was trying to give a straight answer. She tapped her diminutive nose and finally said with a sigh:

“I couldn’t say myself.”

It sounded like genuine surprise.

“I’m behaving like an idiot, aren’t I?” she continued. “It just kind of suddenly… But you’re no one to talk: you’re sitting there all sulky like… like Pelvis…”

“Like who ?” I asked. I thought I’d misheard.

“Pelvis. You know, the fat guy…”

The thing was, beyond the shadow of a doubt Harey could not have known Pelvis or heard about him from me, for the simple reason that he’d come back from his mission a good three years after she died. I’d never met him up till then, and I didn’t know that when he presided over Institute meetings he had the annoying habit of prolonging them into infinity. In fact his name was Pelle Villis, which had been shortened to Pelvis as a nickname, something I also didn’t know till he returned.

Harey leaned her elbows on my lap and looked into my face. I placed my hands on her shoulders and slid them towards her back till they almost met at the pulsing, bare base of her neck. The gesture could actually have been taken for a caress, and judging from her eyes she hadn’t understood it any other way. In reality I was checking that her body felt like ordinary, soft human flesh, and that beneath her muscles there were bones and joints. As I gazed into her tranquil eyes I had an awful urge to tighten my fingers abruptly.

I was on the point of squeezing when I suddenly remembered Snaut’s bloodied hands, and I let go of her.

“What a strange look you have in your eyes…,” she said evenly.

My heart was pounding so hard I couldn’t say a word. I closed my eyes for a moment.

All at once an entire course of action came to me, from beginning to end, with all the details. Without wasting a moment I stood up from the armchair.

“I have to go now, Harey,” I said. “If you really want, you can come with me.”

“All right.”

She jumped to her feet.

“Why are you barefoot?” I asked, going up to the locker and picking out two pairs of colored overalls for myself and for her.

“I don’t know… I must have kicked my shoes off somewhere…,” she said hesitantly. I let it slide.

“You won’t be able to put this on over your dress — you’ll need to take it off.”

“Overalls? What for?” she asked. She immediately made to remove her dress, but something very odd came to light: it couldn’t be taken off because there was no fastening. The red buttons down the middle were only decoration. There was no zipper or any other kind of fastener. Harey gave an embarrassed smile. Acting as if it were the most natural thing in the world, I picked up a scalpel-like tool from the floor and cut the material in the middle of the neckline at the back. Now she could pull the dress over her head. The overalls were a little too big for her.

“Are we flying somewhere? … But you’re coming too?” she asked as we were leaving the cabin, both in our overalls now. I merely nodded. I was terrified we’d meet Snaut, but the corridor to the docking bay was deserted, and the door to the radio station, which we had to pass, was closed.

A dead calm hung over the Station. Harey watched as I brought a rocket from the middle cubicle on an electric cart and drove it onto a free track. I checked in turn the microreactor, the remote controlled rudders, and the nozzles; then along with the takeoff carriage I wheeled the missile onto the circular roller surface of the launch pad beneath the central funnel of the dome, having first removed the empty capsule that was there.

The rocket was a small vessel that served as a shuttle between the Station and the Satelloid. It was used to transport cargo, not people, barring exceptional circumstances, because it couldn’t be opened from inside. This happened to suit my purpose and was a part of my plan. Of course I had no intention of launching the rocket, but I did everything the way I would if I were preparing it for an actual takeoff. Harey, who had accompanied me so many times on my travels, was somewhat familiar with it all. Once again I checked the air conditioning and the breathing apparatus inside and turned them both on; then when I fired up the main circuit and the control lights came on, I crawled out of the cramped interior and indicated it to Harey, who was standing by the access ladder.

“Get in.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll follow you. I have to close the hatch behind us.”

I didn’t think she could have seen through the deception ahead of time. When she climbed the ladder and entered the vessel, I immediately stuck my head through the hatch and asked if she’d been able to find a comfortable position. When I heard a muffled “yes” from the cramped space, I stepped back and slammed the trapdoor shut. With a flick of the hand I snapped the bolts shut as far as they would go and with a wrench I had ready I started tightening the five reinforcing screws set into wells in the plating.

The sharpened cigar of the rocket stood upright as if it were actually about to fly off into space. I knew nothing bad would happen to the woman locked inside — there was plenty of air, even some food, and besides, I had no intention of imprisoning her in there forever.

I wanted at any price to buy myself a few hours of freedom so I could make plans for the less immediate future, and get in touch with Snaut, now on an equal basis.

As I was tightening the second-to-last screw I felt a slight shake in the metal struts that held the rocket in place, suspended from projections on three sides, but I thought I must have set the steel mass atremble myself as I wielded the large wrench.

Yet when I took a few steps away I saw something I hope never to see again.

The whole rocket was juddering from a series of blows coming from inside. But the strength of those blows… Even if the slim dark-haired girl inside the vessel had been replaced by a steel automat, it wouldn’t have been able to make the entire eight tons convulse in that way!

The reflections of the docking bay lights flickered and flashed in the polished bodywork. In fact I didn’t hear any knocking. Inside the projectile there was undisturbed quiet; but the broadly planted stays of the scaffolding in which the rocket was suspended lost their sharp outline, quivering like violin strings. The frequency of the vibrations was such that I worried about the integrity of the plating. With shaking hands I finished securing the last screw, tossed the wrench aside and jumped down off the ladder. As I stepped slowly backwards I could see the bolts in the shock absorbers, designed only to withstand a constant pressure, bouncing in their mounts. I had the impression the plating of the hull was losing its uniform gleam. Like a madman I rushed to the remote control console and with both hands pushed the lever that started up the reactor and the communications system. At that point, from the loudspeaker now connected to the rocket’s interior there came a half-whimper, half-whistle that was utterly unlike any human voice, despite which I could make out in it a repeated howl: “Kris! Kris! Kris!!”