Stanislaw Lem: The Conditioned Reflex

Pirx’s armchair was slowly being transformed into a live volcano.

“I wouldn’t wish to cause my colleague any embarrassment, so I think the less said about this the better…”

Pirx sighed.

“But during your comprehensive examination I shall see to it that Professor Laab…”

He left the rest to Pirx’s imagination. Pirx gulped, but not from the concealed threat; the commandant’s hand was slowly scooping up the papers that were to have accompanied his Mission.

“Why isn’t a cable communications system practicable?”

“Too costly. At the moment only one concentric cable is in operation—the one connecting Luna Base with Archimedes. There are plans to install a cable network within the next five years,” Pirx fired away.

Not mollified, the commandant picked up the thread.

“To resume, then. The Mendeleev station is cut off at night. But communication or no communication, the work went on as usual—until recently, that is. One day last month, when the station failed to respond to any calls following the usual nighttime intermission, the Tsiolkovsky team set out and found the main hatch open, and inside the chamber—a body. The station was being manned by a team of Canadians, Challiers and Savage. The body in the chamber was Savage’s. His helmet was punctured. Death due to asphyxiation. Challiers’s body was found the next day at the foot of the Sun Gap—the victim of a fall. Otherwise the station was in perfect order: the monitoring systems checked out, stores untouched, not a sign of any damage or mechanical malfunction. You probably read about it.”

“Yes, I did,” said Pirx. “But it was reported in the papers as a double suicide. A case of temporary insanity brought on by a… psychosis of some kind…”

“Bull!” the commandant suddenly blurted out. “I knew Savage. From our days in the Alps. A guy like that would never have snapped. No, sir. The papers were full of it. You can read the report yourself, the one released by the joint inquiry commission. Listen here, Pirx, you fellas are given the same screening as pilots; the only difference is that you can’t fly until you’re breveted. And like it or not, you’ve got to put in your summer duty. If you sign on, you’ll fly tomorrow.”

“And my partner?”

“I don’t know his name. Some astrophysicist. The station can’t function without them. I’m afraid he won’t be exactly thrilled by your company, but, well, you might just pick up a little astrography in the process. Now you’re sure you understand the nature of your assignment? The commission ruled it was an accident, but certain aspects still remain under a cloud of… let’s call it ambiguity. Something unexplainable happened up there—exactly what, we don’t know. That’s why it was decided the next team should include someone with the psychological qualifications of a pilot. I saw no reason to turn down their request. Chances are, nothing sensational is going to happen. Of course you’ll have to keep your eyes and ears open. But remember, you’re not up there to play detective; no one is expecting any startling new discoveries or breakthroughs in the case. No, that’s not your mission. What’s the matter? Aren’t you feeling well?”

“Huh? No, no—I feel fine,” answered Pirx.

“I thought so. Well, think you can behave sensibly? Unless I’m mistaken, it’s already going to your head. Maybe we should call off—”

“I will behave sensibly,” said Pirx in the most emphatic voice he could muster.

“I doubt it,” said the commandant. “I’m sending you up there with some reluctance. If it weren’t for the grade—”

“The dip!” Pirx let it slip.

The commandant pretended not to have heard this last remark. He gave him the papers first, then his hand.

“Takeoff tomorrow at zero eight hundred hours. Travel light. You’ve been up there before, so you know what it’s like. Here’s your plane ticket and your reservation on the Transgalactic. You’ll fly straight to Luna Base; from there you’ll be transferred.”

He added a few more words. To wish him luck? By way of farewell? Pirx couldn’t tell. He was too far away in his thoughts to comprehend. His ears were already full of the roar of boosting rockets, his eyes blinded by the desiccating white glare of rocky lunar terrain, his face wrought with stunned bewilderment—the same look that must have accompanied the two Canadians to their mysterious deaths. He did an about-face and bumped into the large globe by the window; took the front steps in four lunarlike bounds; and was nearly run over by a car, whose screeching brakes brought everyone—excluding Pirx—to a standstill. Luckily the commandant had gone back to his papers and thus was spared this opening display of “sensible behavior.”

In the course of the next twenty-four hours, there was such a bustle of activity around, for the sake of, on behalf of, and with a view to Pirx, that at times he almost pined after the salty, lukewarm bath where nothing happened.

A person can be adversely affected as much by a lack of as by a surfeit of impressions. But Pirx was in no frame of mind to formulate such insights. All the commandant’s efforts to soft-pedal, reduce, and even dismiss the Mendeleev mission had been, to put it mildly, in vain. Pirx boarded the plane with a facial expression that made the comely stewardess recoil instinctively—though she was guilty of a gross injustice, for as far as Pirx was concerned she might just as well not have existed. Marching up the aisle like the commander of an armed legion, he took his seat; he, this William the Conqueror of the Space Age, this Cosmic Crusader, this Lunar Benefactor, this Explorer of Awesome Mysteries, this Monster Tamer of the Far Side (speaking potentially, of course, and hypothetically, which made his present bliss no less delectable; on the contrary, it made him profoundly benevolent toward his fellow passengers, who never suspected who was traveling with them in the belly of the big jetliner). He looked on them with the same amused detachment as Einstein, in the waning years of his life, must have felt watching children at play in a sandbox.

The Selene , a new vessel from the Transgalactic fleet, lifted from a Nubian cosmodrome deep in the heart of Africa. Pirx felt deeply satisfied. He didn’t exactly have visions of a plaque being installed here in his honor—that much of a dreamer he was not; but he was not very far from it. All the more bitter, then, were the drops of gall that began to creep into his cup of self-contentment as he boarded the Selene. That nobody aboard the jet had recognized him—well, that was bad enough. But aboard the spaceship? He took his seat on the lower deck—in tourist class, no less—and found himself surrounded by a bunch of wildly garrulous, camera-toting, jibber-jabbering Frenchmen. Pirx—sandwiched among a lot of loudmouthed tourists!

No one doted or fussed over him. No one offered to help him into his suit or to inflate it; no one asked how he was feeling or strapped on his oxygen bottles. For a while he consoled himself with the thought that it was to avoid recognition. Tourist class was like the seating compartment of any jet, except that the seats were bigger, roomier, and the NO SMOKING—NO STANDING sign stared one right in the face. Pirx tried to dissociate himself from this crowd of astronautical neophytes by adopting a more professional pose, folding one leg over the other, deliberately neglecting to fasten his safety belt—but to no avail. The only time he was noticed by the crew was when he was told to buckle up—this coming not from the pretty stewardess but from one of the copilots. Finally one of the Frenchmen—quite unintentionally, it seemed—offered him a jelly bean, which he took and chewed on until the gooey filling gummed up his teeth, then sank back resignedly into his cushioned seat and surrendered himself to his reveries. Gradually he renewed his faith in the perilousness of the Mission, savoring the impending danger in peace, without haste, looking forward to his upcoming trial like a confirmed wino being handed a moss-covered bottle of wine dating from the Napoleonic Wars.