Terry Pratchett: Tama Princes of Mercury

Guy sat speechless, turning grim and white, regarding me with an eagerness almost pathetic. Only once, he spoke.

"Jack! I'm going with youl Dr. Grenfell, if he goes. I'm going." And Toh protested the same.

We ignored them. When I finished, there was a tense silence.

Then Dr. Grenfell said, "That's all. Jack?" .

"Yes... Wait, Guy" I gripped his arm. "Take it easy! Let's talk this out. Dr. Grenfell" He interrupted me with his slow quiet voice. "I think you could get there. The way you reason it, the thing is rational. But Jack, you could not do anything."

"Except yield myself up. But I don't think they'll kill me, and just being there with RowenaDr. Grenfell, she's my wife, don't you realize that? She" His gesture checked my outburst. "You could not take any weapons, or it would result only in arming our enemy."

"I know it. I don't want any. One, perhapsa little revolver or a knife which I might hide. I just want to be there. It's when they land on Mercuryinstead of Jimmy alone, it will be Jimmy and me to try and guard the girls and find some way of escape. Well succeed, 1m sure." I tried to be calm. "Dr. Grenfell, you can spare me?"

"Yes, I can spare you. But it may be suicide." He gazed down at his eyeglass ribbon; and then he looked up with sudden decision.

"I can imagine your emotion, Jack. I won't keep you, won't try to influence you."

"I'm going," Guy insisted. "Two of us-" He stopped Toh from speaking. "You keep out of this. They'd kill you the moment they got hold of you, and you know it." Grenfell shook his head at them both. "I wont spare more than one of you."

"But, Dr. Grenfell-" Guy began.

"And you, most emphatically, I cannot spare. When we reach Mercury, trying to plan what to do, whom do you think well depend on most? You, Guyl Isn't that obvious? There will be only eight of us here on the Cube, and of us all, only you and Toh have been to Mercury before. You think I'm going to let you try this mad thing? Lose you and your knowledge of Mercury? I'm not!" He leaned forward with his hands on Guy's shoulders.

"Get it out of your head. The very thing you want, the safety of Tama, would be jeopardized... . Jack, if you insist on trying it, well start your preparations now. Toh, please you're only a lad. I won't let you try this mad thing. ...

Your Moon-suit, Jack; we'll get it ready, test it out in the air lock. We'll overtake Roc's vehicle presently." So it was decided that I alone was to undertake the adventure. Fantastic, suicidal attempt! I prepared for it with outward calmness. But he who Sayg he is incapable of fear is a liar. \ Our vehicle was a cube fifty feet in each of its three dimensions. Outwardly it suggested a great sugar-lump, ornate with little windows, a doorway, a bulge around the middle which was the enclosed balcony deck. On top there was a observatory dome set like a tiny conical hat.

The Cube inside was a maze of softly blue-lit apartments of metallic walls, floors and ceilings, draped and furnished into a fair semblance of comfort. There were three tiers, and a balcony deck surrounded the four vertical sides of the middle tier. Of these four deck-lengths of the balcony, one was different from the others. D-face, it was termed. Along this fifty foot length there were pressure .portsair locks pro)'ecting outward from the deck. Our single long-range gun was mounted at one of them. Others were for the firing of hand weapons, so that from the normal air pressure of the deck a bullet might be fired into the vacuum of space.

Grenfell added, "I've had the telescope on them. Not a show of anything at the windows. They must be avoiding each window as it turns toward us." On the deck, three of our men were waiting to launch me off. Gibbons was in the dome at our telescope; Baker was in the main control room. They had all been alert as we overhauled the ball. Roc might have been able to fire upon us. D-Face was kept now fronting the ball, and one of our men stood alert at the long-range gun. Roc's shot, had it come, would have been promptly answered. I thanked God that such a thing had not been necessary.

Guy touched me. "Well, good-byegood luckl" They all chorused it as, with hands that shook in spite of myself, I bolted on the helmet, started my tiny motors, felt the suit bloating with its interior pressure. Through my visor pane I could see Grenfell's face as he stared at me. His lips framed, "Good luckl" Someone pushed me into the pressure lock. The door slid closed after me. I sat awkwardly on the floor in the center of the little metal room. Through the transparent slide I could see the men's faces peering; and beyond the outer slide, which was also closed, was a vista of stars and the round gloaming shape of Roc's vehicle.

The exhaust pumps were sucking the air from the lock.

Currents plucking at me.

A few minutes later I was in a vacuum. I stood up, swaying unsteadily. There was a glimpse of Guy's white, anxious face. I turned away from it, faced the outer door panel.

It moved silently aside. The last swirl of rarified air in the lock pushed at me as it rushed out. I clutched the doorway, poised at the sill. At my feet a brinka million million miles of black void and blazing worlds down there.

Once before I had found myself in a situation similar to thisa human projectile in space, detached, a world of myself. Yet now, for all my anticipation, the shock of it numbed me. A vague amazement of thought.

I did not fall. There was no sensation of falling. No movement. A suspension, as though with my body hanging poised in the void, my thoughts were also poised. A shockbut in a moment it passed, leaving only confusion.

The heavens slowly, soundlessly shifted, and stopped. The Earth hung level, unmoving. I turned my head. The fiery ball of the Sun was steady to my right. A firmament of blazing, unmoving worlds. And I now was one of them.

Subject now, not to human movement, but to the laws qt celestial mechanics. The finding of my orbit would be the result of all the complicated forces now acting upon me. Perhaps I could take the open trajectory of a comet; or the closed ellipse of a planet, or become only a satellite, forever to revolve about one of these greater astronomical bodies near me.

Time was lost with movement. I was a world which could exist a few years or hours or minutes, and then die, disintegrate. Poised in the infinity of Time and Space. Hung chained as a satellite to something.

I shook myself free from the confusion. How long it lasted I cannot say. I lay helpless, floating weightless in a weightless void. I could kick and flounder but could not change my position. I had left the air lock with a carefully planned forward dive. It had carried me, like a log floating in water, a hundred feet or so away from the Cube. My outward velocity had retarded.

Of all the myriad forces pulling at me, the attraction of the Cube was the greatest. Dr. Grenfell held D-face of the Cube with neutral gravity plates. The Cube's nearness checked me, held me. I sensed only the movement of my slow, outward dive; yet at that instant I was plunging forward with the Cub6 at half a million miles an hour I The Mercurian vehicle hung before me, seemingly unmoving, some ten miles away. I wondered if Rowena had seen me leapif she could guess it was 1.

Then the heavens were shifting, slowly oscillating with pendulum swing as I picked up a rolling motion. I became aware that I was lagging behind the Cube, the beginning of a small velocity of my ownthe making of an orbit.

Soon, with these forces, I would be a satellite of the Cube with the lesser attraction of. the Roc vehicle retarding me at each revolution.

Again my blurred thoughts clarified. The air lock door at D-face was closed. I could see Grenfell in the lock peering out at me. I raised my bloated arm with our agreed upon signal that I was all right.