Stanislaw Lem: The Test

“AMU-27 to JO-2 ditto JO-2 Terraluna. It is now 2007 hours. Insertion parabolic orbit Terraluna to commence at 2010 hours. Course one hundred eleven…” And he read off the course data from the flight sheet, which, by a feat of acrobatics, he was able to retrieve from overhead. The two JO ships radioed their reply. PAL dropped out of sight, but he could still hear it signaling ever so faintly. Or was that the fly he was hearing?

For a moment the fly seemed to multiply, to be in two different places at once. Pirx rubbed his eyes. Just as he suspected: there was not one, but two of them. Where did the second one come from?!

Now I’m really a goner, he reflected with absolute calm, without a sign of any emotion. He even felt relieved somehow, knowing that it no longer mattered—either way he was sunk. His thoughts were diverted by a glance at the clock: it was 2010 hours, the time he himself had scheduled for the maneuver—and he had yet to even place his hands on the controls!

The daily grind of training exercises must have taken their toll because without a moment’s hesitation he grabbed both control sticks, pressed first the left and then the right one, and all the time kept his eye on the trajectometer. The engine responded with a hollow roar until it gradually tapered off to a whisper. Ouch! Something landed on his forehead, just under his visor, and remained stationary. The navigation book! It was blocking his vision, but he couldn’t brush it aside without taking his hands from the controls. His earphones were alive and astir as the two flies went about pursuing their love life on the computer. If only I had a gun on me, he thought, feeling the navigation book start to flatten his nose with the increase in acceleration. In desperation he began tossing his head around like a madman; he had to be able to see the trajectometer, for crying out loud! Suddenly the book crashed to the floor with a bang—and small wonder: at 4g it must have weighed nearly 3 kilos. He immediately decelerated to the level required by the maneuver, and at 2g put the levers on hold. He threw a glance at the mating flies. They were not the least bit fazed by the deceleration; on the contrary, they looked to be in seventh heaven. Hm, another eighty-three minutes to go. He checked the radarscope: the two JO ships were now trailing him at a distance of 70 kilometers. I must have jumped out in front that time I hit 4g , he thought. Oh well, no sweat.

From now until the end of the accelerated flight he would have a little time to kill. Two g was tolerable, despite his combined weight of 142 kilos. How many times had he spent up to a half hour in the centrifuge at 4g !

But then, it wasn’t exactly a picnic, either, what with your arms and legs weighing like iron, your head completely immobilized by the blinding light…

He verified the position of the two ships, and again thought of Boerst, picturing to himself how very much the movie star he must have looked. What a jaw that guy had! Not to mention that perfectly straight nose, those steely gray eyes… You can bet he didn’t have to rely on any cribsheet! But come to think of it, so far neither had he… Silence reigned in his earphones. Both flies were crawling along the blister’s surface such that their shadows grazed his face, and for the first time he cringed at the sight of them—at their tiny black paws, grotesquely magnified to look like suction disks, at their bodies glittering metallically in the glare of the lights…

“Dasher-8 Aresterra calling Triangle Terraluna, quadrant sixteen, course one-hundred-eleven-point-six. I have you on convergent course eleven minutes thirty-two seconds. Advise you to alter course. Over.”

Just my luck! Pirx mentally grumbled. Always some smart-ass trying to bugger up the works… Can’t he see I’m flying in formation?

“AMU-27 squadron leader Triangle Terraluna JO-2 ditto JO-2, calling Dasher-8 Aresterra. Negative, am flying in formation, proceed to carry out deviation maneuver. Out.”

While he was transmitting, he tried to locate the unwelcome intruder on the radar. There he was—less than 1,500 meters away!

“Dasher-8 to AMU-27 Terraluna, reporting malfunction in gravimeter system, commence immediate deviation maneuver, point of intersection forty-four zero eight, quadrant Luna four, perimeter zone. Over.”

“AMU-27 to Dasher-8 Aresterra, JO-2 ditto JO-2 Terraluna. Will commence deviation maneuver at 2039 hours. Yaw maneuver to commence at ditto hours behind squadron leader at optical range, northern deviation Luna sector one zero point-six. Am firing low-range thrusters. Over.”

Simultaneously he fired both lower yaw jets. The two JO ships responded at once, all three veered off course, and stars glided across the video screens. Dasher thanked him as he flew off to Luna Central, and in a surge of self-confidence, Pirx wished him a happy landing—a touch of class, seeing as the other ship was in distress. He followed his navigation lights for another thousand kilometers or so, then began guiding the two JO ships back onto their original course, which was easier said than done: going off course was one thing, finding your way back onto a parabola was another. Pirx found it next to impossible, what with a different acceleration, a computer so fast he couldn’t keep up with its coordinates, and the flies, which, if they weren’t crawling all over the computer, were playing tag on the radar screen. Where did they get all the energy? he wondered. It was a good twenty minutes before they were back on course.

Boerst probably has smooth sailing all the way, he thought. Him? Get into trouble? Not wonderboy Boerst.

He adjusted the automatic thrust terminator to achieve a zero acceleration after eighty-three minutes, as instructed, and then saw something that turned his sweat-absorbent underwear to ice.

Above the dashboard a white panel had come undamped. Not only that, but it was starting to work its way down, a millimeter at a time. It was probably loose to begin with, he reasoned, and all the vibrating during the recent yaw maneuvers—Pirx’s handling of the ship hadn’t exactly been gentle—had loosened the pressure clamps even more. With the acceleration still running at 1.7g , the panel kept inching its way down as if being pulled by an invisible thread. Finally it sprang loose altogether, slid down the outer side of the glass wall, and settled motionlessly on the deck, exposing a set of four gleaming copper high-voltage wires and fuses at the back.

Why all the panic? he told himself. An electrical panel has come loose—so, big deal. A ship can get along without a panel, can’t it?

Even so, he couldn’t help feeling a trifle nervous; things like that weren’t supposed to happen. If a fuse panel can come loose, what’s to stop the stern from breaking off?

There were still twenty-seven minutes of accelerated flight to go when it hit him that once the engines were shut down, the panel would become weightless. Could it do any damage? he wondered. Not much. It was too light for that, too light even to break glass. Nah, not a chance… What were the flies up to? He followed them with his gaze as they zoomed and buzzed and circled and chased each other around the outside of the blister before landing on the back of the fuse panel. That’s when he lost track of them.

He took a reading of the two JO ships on the radarscope: both were on course. The face of the Moon now loomed so large on the front screen that it took up half of it. He recalled how during a series of selenographic exercises in the Tycho Crater, Boerst, with the help of a portable theodolite… Dammit, what a pro that guy was! Pirx kept an eye out for Luna Base on the outer slope of Archimedes. It was camouflaged so well among the rocks that it was almost invisible from high altitude, all except for the smooth surface of the landing strip with its approach lights—when in the night zone, that is, and not, as presently, when it was illuminated by the Sun. At the moment the Base was straddling the crater’s shadow line, the contrast with the blinding lunar surface being so intense that it overpowered the weaker approach lights.