Michael Crichton: Sphere

In his mind he saw Stein raise his bushy eyebrows, give his quizzical smile. So? You’ll die anyway. What have you got to lose?

A plan began to form in Norman’s mind. If he opened the ceiling hatch, he could go outside the habitat. Once outside, perhaps he could make his way down to A Cyl, get back in through the airlock, and put his suit on. Then he would be okay.

If he could make it to the airlock. How long would that take? Thirty seconds? A minute? Could he hold his breath that long? Could he withstand the cold that long?

You’ll die anyway.

And then he thought, You damn fool, you’re holding an oxygen bottle in your hand; you have enough air if you don’t stay here, wasting time worrying. Get on with it.

No, he thought, there’s something else, something I’m forgetting…

Get on with it!

So he stopped thinking, and climbed up to the ceiling hatch at the top of the cylinder. Then he held his breath, braced himself, and spun the wheel, opening the hatch.

“Norman! Norman, what are you doing? Norman! You are insa-” he heard Beth shout, and then the rest was lost in the roar of freezing water pouring like a mighty waterfall into the habitat, filling the room.

The moment he was outside, he realized his mistake. He needed weights. His body was buoyant, tugging him up toward the surface. He sucked a final breath, dropped the oxygen bottle, and desperately gripped the cold pipes on the outside of the habitat, knowing that if he lost his grip, there would be nothing to stop him, nothing to grab onto, all the way to the surface. He would reach the surface and explode like a balloon.

Holding the pipes, he pulled himself down, hand over hand, looking for the next pipe, the next protrusion to grab. It was like mountain-climbing in reverse; if he let go, he would fall upward and die. His hands were long since numb. His body was stiff with cold, slow with cold. His lungs burned.

He had very little time.

He reached the bottom, swung under D Cyl, pulled himself along, felt in the darkness for the airlock. It wasn’t there! The airlock was gone! Then he saw he was beneath B Cyl. He moved over to A, felt the airlock. The airlock was closed. He tugged the wheel. It was shut tight. He pulled on it, but he could not move it.

He was locked out.

The most intense fear gripped him. His body was almost immobile from cold; he knew he had only a few seconds of consciousness remaining. He had to open the hatch. He pounded it, pounded the metal around the rim, feeling nothing in his numb hands.

The wheel began to spin by itself. The hatch popped open. There must have been an emergency button, he must have-He burst above the surface of the water, gasped air, and sank again. He came back up, but he couldn’t climb out into the cylinder. He was too numb, his muscles frozen, his body unresponsive.

You have to do it, he thought. You have to do it. His fingers gripped metal, slipped off, gripped again. One pull , he thought. One last pull. He heaved his chest over the metal rim, flopped onto the deck. He couldn’t feel anything, he was so cold. He twisted his body, trying to pull his legs up, and fell back into the icy water.

No!

He pulled himself up again, one last time-again over the rim, again onto the deck, and he twisted, twisted, one leg up, his balance precarious, then the other leg, he couldn’t really feel it, and then he was out of the water, and lying on the deck.

He was shivering. He tried to stand, and fell over. His whole body was shaking so hard he could not keep his balance.

Across the airlock he saw his suit, hanging on the wall of the cylinder. He saw the helmet, “JOHNSON” stenciled on it. Norman crawled toward the suit, his body shaking violently. He tried to stand, and could not. The boots of his suit were directly in front of his face. He tried to grip them in his hands, but his hands could not close. He tried to bite the suit, to pull himself up with his teeth, but his teeth were chattering uncontrollably.

The intercom crackled.

“Norman! I know what you’re doing, Norman!”

Any minute, Beth would be here. He had to get into the suit. He stared at it, inches from him, but his hands still shook, he could not hold anything. Finally he saw the fabric loops near the waist to clip instruments. He hooked one hand into the loop, managed to hold on. He pulled himself upright. He got one foot into the suit, then the other.

“Norman!”

He reached for the helmet. The helmet drummed in a staccato beat against the wall before he managed to get it free of the peg and drop it over his head. He twisted it, heard the click of the snap-lock.

He was still very cold. Why wasn’t the suit heating up? Then he realized, no power. The power was in the tank pack. Norman backed up against the tank, shrugged it on, staggered under the weight. He had to hook the umbilicus-he reached behind him, felt it-held it-hook it into the suit-at the waist-hook it

He heard a click.

The fan hummed.

He felt long streaks of pain all over his body. The electrical elements were heating, painful against his frozen skin. He felt pins and needles all over. Beth was talking-he heard her through the intercom-but he couldn’t listen to her. He sat heavily on the deck, breathing hard.

But already he knew that he was going to be all right; the pain was lessening, his head was clearing, and he was no longer shaking so badly. He had been chilled, but not long enough for it to be central. He was recovering fast.

The radio crackled.

“You’ll never get to me, Norman!”

He got to his feet, pulled on his weight belt, locked the buckles.

“Norman!”

He said nothing. He felt quite warm now, quite normal. “Norman! I am surrounded by explosives! If you come anywhere near me, I will blow you to pieces! You’ll die, Norman! You’ll never get near me!”

But Norman wasn’t going to Beth. He had another plan entirely. He heard his tank air hiss as the pressure equalized in his suit.

He jumped back into the water.

The sphere gleamed in the light. Norman saw himself reflected in its perfectly polished surface, then saw his image break up, fragmented on the convolutions, as he moved around to the back.

To the door.

It looked like a mouth, he thought. Like the maw of some primitive creature, about to eat him. Confronted by the sphere, seeing once again the alien, unhuman pattern of the convolutions, he felt his intention dissolve. He was suddenly afraid. He didn’t think he could go through with it.

Don’t be silly, he told himself. Harry did it. And Beth did it. They survived.

He examined the convolutions, as if for reassurance. But there wasn’t any reassurance to be obtained. Just curved grooves in the metal, reflecting back the light.

Okay, he thought finally. I’ll do it. I’ve come this far, I’ve survived everything so far. I might as well do it.

Go ahead and open up.

But the sphere did not open. It remained exactly as it was, a gleaming, polished, perfect shape.

What was the purpose of the thing? He wished he understood its purpose.

He thought of Dr. Stein again. What was Stein’s favorite line? “Understanding is a delaying tactic.” Stein used to get angry about that. When the graduate students would intellectualize, going on and on about patients and their problems, he would interrupt in annoyance, “Who cares? Who cares whether we understand the psychodynamics in this case? Do you want to understand how to swim, or do you want to jump in and start swimming? Only people who are afraid of the water want to understand it. Other people jump in and get wet.”

Okay, Norman thought. Let’s get wet.

He turned to face the sphere, and thought, Open up .