Homepage
Login
Profile
BookClubs
dmBox
Read Ebook: Ancient Civilizations of Mexico and Central America Third and Revised Edition by Spinden Herbert Joseph
Font size:
Background color:
Text color:
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page
Ebook has 71 lines and 2418 words, and 2 pages
Illustrator: Dick Francis
The Impossible Voyage Home
Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS
"Space life expectancy has been increased to twenty-five months and six days," said Marlowe, the training director. "That's a gain of a full month."
Demarest bent a paperweight ship until it snapped. "It's something. You're gaining on the heredity block. What's the chief factor?"
"Anti-radiation clothing. We just can't make them effective enough."
The planets whirled around the Sun. Earth crept ahead of Mars, Venus gained on Earth. The flow of ships slackened or spurted forth anew, according to what destination could be reached at the moment:
"A month helps," said Demarest. "But where does it end? You can't enclose a man completely, and even if you do, there still is the air he breathes and food he eats. Radiation in space contaminates everything the body needs. And part of the radioactivity finds its way to the reproductive system."
But that was in the future.
"There's a lot you could do," he told Demarest. "Shield the atomics."
"Working on it," commented Demarest. "But every ounce we add cuts down on the payload. The best way is to get the ship from one place to another faster. It's time in space that hurts. Less exposure time, more trips before the crew has to retire. It adds up to the same thing."
In the interval, Earth had drawn ahead. The gap between the two planets was widening.
"That's another fallacy," objected the training director. "The body can stand just so much acceleration. We're near the limit. What good are faster ships?"
"That's your problem," said Demarest. "Get me tougher crewmen. Young, afraid of nothing, able to take it."
It always ended here--younger, tougher, the finest the race produced--and still not good enough. And after years of training, they had twenty-five months to function as spacemen. It was a precious thing, flight time, and each trip was as short as science could make it. Conjunction was the magic moment for those who went between the planets.
It was the heredity block that kept Man squeezed, confined to Earth, Mars and Venus, preventing him from ranging farther. The heredity block was a racial quantity, the germ plasm, but not just that. Crew and passengers were protected as much as possible from radiation encountered in space and that which originated in the ship's drive. The protection wasn't good enough. Prolonged exposure had the usual effects, sterilization or the production of deformed mutations.
Man was the product of evolution on a planet. He didn't step out into space without payment.
The radiation that damaged genes and chromosomes and tinier divisions also struck nerve cells. Any atom might be hit, blazing, into fission and decaying into other elements. The process was complicated. The results were not: the nerve was directly stimulated, producing aural and visual hallucinations.
Normally, the hallucination was blanked out. But as the level of body radioactivity increased, so did the strength of the vision. It dominated consciousness. The outside world ceased to have meaning.
The hallucination took only one form, a beautiful woman outside the ship, unclad and beckoning.
Why this was so hadn't been determined. Psychologists had investigated and learned only that it invariably occurred after too great exposure. There was another thing they learned. No, that had come first. This was the reason they had investigated.
In the Solar System, the greatest single source of radiation, including the hard rays, was the Sun. It was natural that the siren image should seem stronger in that direction, that it should fade or retreat toward its origin. No one had ever returned from compulsive pursuit of the illusionary woman, though in early days radio contact had been made with ships racing toward the Sun.
The heredity block was self-enforcing.
"I think you're on the wrong track," he said. "Shield the ship completely and it won't matter how long the trip takes. The crew can work in safety."
Demarest grunted. "Some day we'll have an inertia-free drive and it won't matter how much mass we use. It does now. Our designs are a compromise. Both of us have to work with what's possible, not what we dream of. I'll build my ship; you find the right crew to man it."
Marlowe went back to his graphs. Machines could be changed, but the human body clung stubbornly to the old patterns. He couldn't select his crews any younger--but was there perhaps a racial type more resistant to radiation? Where? No place that he knew of. Maybe the biologists could produce one, he thought hopefully, and knew he was fooling himself. Human beings weren't fruit flies; by the time enough generations rolled around for the resistant strain to breed true--and leave a surplus to man the ships--he would be long dead and the problem solved.
The best of humanity would be dead, too, wiped out by sterilization.
Or the Solar System would be peopled by mutant monstrosities.
Far away, and not concerned with the problem, Ethan shrugged resignedly. "Guess we'll have to get used to the idea--we just won't see him till he grows up--if we'll still be around."
"You've got years and years ahead of you, and not worth a thing the whole time!" Amantha snapped.
"Damnation," said Ethan wistfully, "I'd like to dandle him."
"Won't be the same when he grows up and comes here," Amantha conceded. "There I go agreein' with you! What's got into me?"
"Maybe we can get on the next slow ship. They run them once in a while for people with weak hearts." He considered. "Don't know whether Retired Citizens' Home will let us go, though."
"Retired Citizens!" She blew her nose scornfully. "They think we don't know it's just a home for the aged!" She threw away the tissue. "Think they'll let us?"
"It won't be them so much that'll stop us. Our hearts ain't too good and we haven't got much space time to use. We shouldn't have gone to Venus."
"We had to see Edith and Ed and their kids and we had to come back to Mars so we could be near John and Pearl and Ray. Let's not regret what we've done." She picked at the chair arm. "We've been here a long time, ain't we?"
Ethan nodded.
"Maybe they've forgotten we've only got a month left," she said eagerly.
"You sure it's a month?"
"Figure it out. It took longer when we went."
"Then it's no use. A slow ship is all we'd be allowed to take--and we wouldn't be allowed because it'd be more than a month."
"They won't remember every last minute we spent in space."
"They will, too," he stated. "They've got records."
"Maybe they lost them."
"Look, we've got kids and grandchildren here. They come around and see us. Do we have to go to Earth, 'specially when it'd be against the law?"
"That's just it," she argued. "We've seen all our other kids' kids. Ain't we going to see the youngest? How do we know his wife can take care of a baby? I can't sleep nights, thinking of it."
"Try catnaps during the day, like I do."
Amantha touched the button and the automatic chair stopped abruptly. "Are you going to try to get tickets or aren't you?"
"I'll think about it. Go ahead and rock."
"I won't," she said obstinately, "not even if it was the kind of chair you can rock yourself. I thought I married a man who'd make me happy."
"I've always done my best. Go ahead and rock."
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page