Рэй Брэдбери: Kaleidoscope

The first concussion cut the rocket up the side with a giant can opener. The men were thrown into space like a dozen wriggling silverfish. They were scattered into a dark sea; and the ship, in a million pieces, went on, a meteor swarm seeking a lost sun.

«Barkley, Barkley, where are you?»

The sound of voices calling like lost children on a cold night

«Woode, Woode!»

«Captain!»

«Hollis, Hollis, this is Stone.»

«Stone, this is Hollis. Where are you?»

«I don't know. How can I? Which way is up? I'm falling. Good God, I'm falling.»

They fell. They fell as pebbles fall down wells. They were scattered as jackstones are scattered from a gigantic throw. And now instead of men there were only voices-all kinds of voices, disembodied and impassioned, in varying degrees of terror and resignation.

«We're going away from each other.»

This was true. Hollis, swinging head over heels, knew this was true. He knew it with a vague acceptance. They were parting to go their separate ways, and nothing could bring them back. They were wearing their sealed-tight space suits with the glass tubes over their pale faces, but they hadn't had time to lock on their force units. With them they could be small lifeboats in space, saving themselves, saving others, collecting together, finding each other until they were an island of men with some plan. But without the force units snapped to their shoulders they were meteors, senseless, each going to a separate and irrevocable fate.

A period of perhaps ten minutes elapsed while the first terror died and a metallic calm took its place. Space began to weave its strange voices in and out, on a great dark loom, crossing, recrossing, making a final pattern.

«Stone to Hollis. How long can we talk by phone?»

«It depends on how fast you're going your way and I'm going mine.»

«An hour, I make it.»

«That should do it,» said Hollis, abstracted and quiet.

«What happened?» said Hollis a minute later.

«The rocket blew up, that's all. Rockets do blow up.»

«Which way are you going?»

«It looks like I'll hit the moon.»

«It's Earth for me. Back to old Mother Earth at ten thousand miles per hour. I'll burn like a match.» Hollis thought of it with a queer abstraction of mind. He seemed to be removed from his body, watching it fall down and down through space, as objective as he had been in regard to the first falling snowflakes of a winter season long gone.

The others were silent, thinking of the destiny that had brought them to this, falling, falling, and nothing they could do to change it. Even the captain was quiet, for there was no command or plan he knew that could put things back together again.

«Oh, it's a long way down. Oh, if s a long way down, a long, long, long way down,» said a voice. «I don't want to die, I don't want to die, if s a long way down.»

«Who's that?»

«I don't know.»

«Stimson, I think. Stimson, is that you?»

«It's a long, long way and I don't like it. Oh, God, I don't like it.»

«Stimson, this is Hollis. Stimson, you hear me?»

A pause while they fell separate from one another.

«Stimson?»

«Yes.» He replied at last.

«Stimson, take it easy; we're all in the same fix.»

«I don't want to be here. I want to be somewhere else.»

«There's a chance we'll be found.»

«I must be, I must be,» said Stimson. «I don't believe this; I don't believe any of this is happening.»

«It' s a bad dream,» said someone.

«Shut up!» said Hollis.

«Come and make me,» said the voice. It was Applegate. He laughed easily, with a similar objectivity. «Come and shut me up.»

Hollis for the first time felt the impossibility of his position. A great anger filled him, for he wanted more than anything at this moment to be able to do something to Applegate. He had wanted for many years to do something and now it was too late. Applegate was only a telephonic voice.

Falling, falling, falling…

Now, as if they had discovered the horror, two of the men began to scream. In a nightmare Hollis saw one of them float by, very near, screaming and screaming.

«Stop it!» The man was almost at his fingertips, screaming insanely. He would never stop. He would go on screaming for a million miles, as long as he was in radio range, disturbing all of them, making it impossible for them to talk to one another.

Hollis reached out. It was best this way. He made the extra effort and touched the man. He grasped the man's ankle and pulled himself up along the body until he reached the head. The man screamed and clawed frantically, like a drowning swimmer. The screaming filled the universe.

One way or the other, thought Hollis. The moon or Earth or meteors will kill him, so why not now?

He smashed the man's glass mask with his iron fist. The screaming stopped. He pushed off from the body and let it spin away on its own course, falling.

Falling, falling down space Hollis and the rest of them went in the long, endless dropping and whirling of silence.

«Hollis, you still there?»

Hollis did not speak, but felt the rush of heat in his face.

«This is Applegate again.»

«All right, Applegate.»

«Let's talk. We haven't anything else to do.»

The captain cut in. «That's enough of that. We've got to figure a way out of this.»

«Captain, why don't you shut up?» said Applegate.

«What!»

«You heard me, Captain. Don't pull your rank on me, you're ten thousand miles away by now, and let's s not kid ourselves. As Stimson puts it, it's a long way down.»

«See here, Applegate!»

«Can it. This is a mutiny of one. I haven't a damn thing to lose. Your ship was a bad ship and you were a bad captain and I hope you break when you hit the Moon.»

«I'm ordering you to stop!»

«Go on, order me again.» Applegate smiled across ten thousand miles. The captain was silent. Applegate continued, «Where were we, Hollis? Oh yes, I remember. I hate you too. But you know that. You've known it for a long time.»

Hollis clenched his fists, helplessly.

«I want to tell you something,» said Applegate. «Make you happy. I was the one who blackballed you with the Rocket Company five years ago.»

A meteor flashed by. Hollis looked down and his left hand was gone. Blood spurted. Suddenly there was no air in his suit He had enough air in his lungs to move his right hand over and twist a knob at his left elbow, tightening the joint and sealing the leak. It had happened so quickly that he was not surprised. Nothing surprised him any more. The air in the suit came back to normal in an instant now that the leak was sealed. And the blood that had flowed so swiftly was pressured as he fastened the knob yet tighter, until it made a tourniquet.

All of this took place in a terrible silence on his part. And the other men chatted. That one man, Lespere, went on and on with his talk about his wife on Mars, his wife on Venus, his wife on Jupiter, his money, his wondrous times, his drunkenness, his gambling, his happiness. On and on, while they all fell. Lespere reminisced on the past, happy, while he fell to his death.

It was so very odd. Space, thousands of miles of space, and these voices vibrating in the center of it. No one visible at all, and only the radio waves quivering and trying to quicken other men into emotion.

«Are you angry, Hollis?»

«No.» And he was not. The abstraction has returned and he was a thing of dull concrete, forever falling nowhere.

«You wanted to get to the top all your life, Hollis. You always wondered what happened. I put the black mark on you just before I was tossed out myself.»

«That isn't important,» said Hollis. And it was not. It was gone. When life is over it is like a flicker of bright film, an instant on the screen, all of its prejudices and passions condensed and illumined for an instant on space, and before you could cry out, «There was a happy day, there a bad one, there an evil face, there a good one,» the film burned to a cinder, the screen went dark.