Stanislaw Lem: The Test

So Pirx stood on the metal catwalk and waited for the CO to show up in the company of both instructors. What was keeping them? he wondered. Lift-off was scheduled for 1940 hours, and it was already 1927. Then it dawned on him that he might have taped the cribsheet under his arm, the way little Yerkes did. The story went that as soon as the flight instructor went to frisk him, Yerkes started squealing he was ticklish, and got away with it. But Pirx had no illusions; he didn’t look like the ticklish type. And so, not having any adhesive tape with him, he went on holding the pony in his right hand, in the most casual way possible, and only when he realized that he would have to shake hands with all three did he switch, shifting the pony from his right to his left hand and the navigation book from left to right. While he was juggling things around, he managed to make the catwalk sway up and down like a diving board. Suddenly he heard footsteps approaching from the other end, but in the dark under the hangar ceiling it took him a while to make out who it was.

All three were looking very spiffy—as was customary on such occasions, they were decked out in full uniform—especially the CO. Even uninflated, however, Pirx’s space suit looked as graceful as twenty football uniforms stuck together, not to mention the long intercom and radiophone terminals dangling from either side of his neck ring disconnect, the respirator hose bobbing up and down in the region of his throat, and the reserve oxygen bottle strapped tightly to his back—so tightly that it pinched. He felt hotter than blazes in his sweat-absorbent underwear, but most bothersome of all was the gadget making it unnecessary for him to get up to relieve himself—which, considering the sort of single-stage rockets used on such trial flights, would have posed something of a problem.

Suddenly the whole catwalk began to undulate as someone came up from behind. It was Boerst, suited up in the same, identical space suit, who gave him a stiff salute, mammoth glove and all, and who went on standing in this position as if just aching to knock Pirx overboard.

When the others had gone ahead, Pirx asked, somewhat bewilderedly:

“What’re you doing here? Your name wasn’t on the flight list.”

“Brendan got sick. I’m taking his place.”

Pirx was momentarily flustered. This was the one area—the one and only area—in which he was able to climb just a millimeter higher, to those empyreal realms that Boerst seemed to inhabit so effortlessly. Not only was he the brightest in the program, for which Pirx could fairly easily have forgiven him—he could even muster some respect for the man’s mathematical genius, ever since the time he had watched Boerst take on the computer, faltering only when it came to roots of the fourth power—not only were his parents sufficiently well-heeled that he didn’t have to bother dreaming about two-crown pieces lying tucked away in the pocket of his civvies, but he was also a top scorer in gymnastics, a crackerjack of a jumper, a terrific dancer, and, like it or not, he was handsome to boot—very handsome in fact, something that could not exactly be said of Pirx.

They walked the distance of the catwalk, threading their way between the girders, filing past the rockets parked next to each other in a row, before emerging in the shaft of light that fell vertically through a 200-meter sliding panel in the ceiling. Two cone-shaped giants—somehow they always reminded Pirx of giants—each measuring 48 meters in height and 11 meters in diameter, in the first-stage booster section, stood side by side on an assembly of concrete exhaust deflectors.

The hatch covers were open and the gangways already in place for boarding. At about the midway point, the gangways were blocked by a lead stand, planted with a little red pennon on a flexible staff. He knew the ritual. Question: “Pilot, are you ready to carry out your mission?” Answer: “Yes, sir, I am”—and then, for the first time in his life, he would proceed to move aside the pennon. Suddenly he had a premonition: during the boarding ceremony he saw himself tripping over the railing and taking a nose dive all the way to the bottom—accidents like that happened. And if such accidents happened to anyone, they were bound to happen to Pirx. In fact, there were times when he was apt to think of himself as a born loser, though his instructors were of a different opinion. To them he was just a moron and a bumbler, whose mind was never on the right thing at the right moment. Granted, he had no easy time of it when it came to words; between his thoughts and his deeds there yawned… well, if not an abyss, then at least an obstruction, some obstacle that was forever making life difficult for him. It never occurred to Pirx’s instructors—or to anyone else, for that matter—that he was a dreamer, since he was judged to be a man without a brain or a thought in his head. Which wasn’t true at all.

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that Boerst had stationed himself in the prescribed place, a step away from the gangway, and that he was standing at attention, his hands pressed flat against the rubber air pouches of his space suit.

On him that wacky costume looks tailor-made, thought Pirx, and on me it looks like a bunch of soccer balls. How come Boerst’s looked uninflated and his own all puffy in places? Maybe that’s why he had so much trouble moving around, why he had to keep his feet spread apart all the time. He tried bringing them together, but his heels refused to cooperate. Why were Boerst’s so cooperative and not his own? But if it weren’t for Boerst, it would have slipped his mind completely that he was supposed to stand at attention, with his back to the rocket, facing the three men in uniform. Boerst was the first to be approached. Maybe it was a fluke, and maybe it wasn’t, or maybe it was simply because his name began with a B . But even if accidental, it was sure to be at Pirx’s expense. He was always having to sweat out his turn, which made him nervous, because anything was better than waiting. The quicker the better—that was his motto.

He caught only snatches of what was said to Boerst, and, ramrod-stiff, Boerst fired off his answers so quickly that Pirx didn’t stand a chance. Then it was his turn. No sooner had the CO started addressing him than he suddenly remembered something: there were supposed to be three of them flying. Where was the third? Luckily for him, he caught the CO’s last words and managed to blurt out, just in the nick of time:

“Cadet Pirx, ready for lift-off.”

“Hm… I see,” said the CO. “And do you declare that you are fit, both physically and mentally… ahem… within the limits of your capabilities?”

The CO was fond of lacing routine questions with such flourishes, something he could allow himself as the CO.

Pirx declared that he was fit.

“Then I hereby designate you as pilot for the duration of the flight,” said the CO, repeating the sacred formula, and he went on.

“Mission: vertical launch at half booster power. Ascent to ellipsis B68. Correction to stable orbital path, with orbital period of four hours and twenty-six minutes. Proceed to rendezvous with shuttlecraft vehicles of the JO-2 type. Probable zone of radar contact: sector III, satellite PAL, with possible deviation of six arc seconds. Establish radio contact for the purpose of maneuver coordination. The maneuver: escape orbit at sixty degrees twenty-four minutes north latitude, one hundred fifteen degrees three minutes eleven seconds east longitude. Initial acceleration: 2.2g. Terminal acceleration: zero. Without losing radio contact, escort both JO-2 ships in tri-formation to Moon, commence lunar insertion for temporary equatorial orbit as per LUNA PATHFINDER, verify orbital injection of both piloted ships, then escape orbit at acceleration and course of your own discretion, and return to stationary orbit in the radius of satellite PAL. There await further instructions.”