Only men need volunteer."
Instant outcry from Kirsty and Dilly: B turns to me with a look of awe.
"Nothing to do with prejudice," says the colonel testily. "Just facts.
The crew of _Gilgamesh_ were all men. Can"t risk one solitary woman being found on board. Besides--s.p.a.cesuits, personal background sets--all designed for men."
Kirsty and Dilly turn on me looks designed to shrivel and B whispers "Lizzie how wonderful you are."
The session dissolves. We three get an intensive session course of instruction on our duties and are ordered off to sleep. After breakfast next morning I run into Cray who says, Before I continue about what is evidently pressing business would I care to kick him, hard?
Not right now I reply, what for anyway?
"Miss Lee," says Cray, dragging it out longer than ever, "although I have long realized that your brain functions in a way much superior to logic I had not sense enough yesterday to follow my own instinct and do what you do as soon as you did it; therefore that dessicated meat handler got in first."
I say: "So you weren"t picked for pilot? It was only one chance in ten."
"Oh," says Cray, "did you really think so?" He gives me a long look and goes away.
I suppose he noticed that when the colonel came out with his remarks about No women in Gilgamesh I was as surprised as any.
Presently the three of us are issued with protective clothing; we just might have to venture out on the planet"s surface and therefore we get white one-piece suits to protect against Cold, heat, moisture, dessication, radioactivity, and mosquitoes, and they are quite becoming, really.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
B and I drag out dressing for thirty minutes; then we just sit while Time crawls asymptotically towards the hour.
Then the speaker calls us to go.
We are out of the cabin before it says two words and racing for the hold; so that we are just in time to see a figure out of an Historical movie--padded, jointed, tin bowl for head and blank reflecting gla.s.s where the face should be--stepping through the air lock.
The colonel and Mr. Yardo are there already. The colonel packs us into the hopper and personally closes the door, and for once I know what he is thinking; he is wishing he were not the only pilot in this ship who could possibly rely on bringing the ship off and on Ma.s.s-Time at one particular defined spot of s.p.a.ce.
Then he leaves us; half an hour to go.
The light in the hold begins to alter. Instead of being softly diffused it separates into sharp-edged beams, reflecting and crisscrossing but leaving cones of shadow between. The air is being pumped into store.
Fifteen minutes.
The hull vibrates and a hatch slides open in the floor so that the black of s.p.a.ce looks through; it closes again.
Mr. Yardo lifts the hopper gently off its mounts and lets it back again.
Testing; five minutes to go.
I am hypnotized by my chronometer; the hands are crawling through glue; I am still staring at it when, at the exact second, we go off Ma.s.s-Time.
No weight. I hook my heels under the seat and persuade my esophagus back into place. A new period of waiting has begun. Every so often comes the impression we are falling head-first; the colonel using ship"s drive to decelerate the whole system. Then more free fall.
The hopper drifts very slowly out into the hold and hovers over the hatch, and the lights go. There is only the glow from the visiscreen and the instrument board.
One minute thirty seconds to go.
The hatch slides open again. I take a deep breath.
I am still holding it when the colonel"s voice comes over the speaker: "Calling _Gilgamesh_. Calling the hopper. Good-by and Good luck.
You"re on your own."
The ship is gone.
Yet another stretch of time has been marked off for us. Thirty-seven minutes, the least time allowable if we are not to get overheated by friction with the air. Mr. Yardo is a good pilot; he is concentrating wholly on the visiscreen and the thermometer. B and I are free to look around.
I see nothing and say so.
I did not know or have forgotten that Incognita has many small satellites; from here there are four in sight.
I am still looking at them when B seizes my arm painfully and points below us.
I see nothing and say so.
B whispers it was there a moment ago, it is pretty cloudy down there--Yes Lizzie there it is _look_.
And I see it. Over to the left, very faint and far below, a pin-p.r.i.c.k of light.
Light in the polar wastes of a spa.r.s.ely inhabited planet, and since we are still five miles up it is a very powerful light too.
No doubt about it, as we descend farther; about fifty miles from our objective there are men, quite a lot of them.
I think it is just then that I understand, _really_ understand, the hazard of what we are doing. This is not an exercise. This is in dead earnest, and if we have missed an essential factor or calculated something wrong the result will be not a bad mark or a failed exam, or even our personal deaths, but incalculable harm and misery to millions of people we never even heard of.
Dead earnest. How in s.p.a.ce did we ever have cheek enough for this?
The lights might be the essential factor we have missed, but there is nothing we can do about them now.
Mr. Yardo suddenly chuckles and points to the screen.
"There you are, girlies! He"s down!"
There, grayly dim, is the map the colonel showed us; and right on the faint line of the cliff-edge is a small brilliant dot.
The map is expanding rapidly, great lengths of coastline shooting out of sight at the edge of the screen. Mr. Yardo has the cross-hairs centered on the dot which is _Gilgamesh_. The dot is changing shape; it is turning into a short ellipse, a longer one. The gyros are leaning her out over the sea.
I look at my chronometer; 12.50 hours exactly. B looks, too, and grips my hand.
Thirty seconds later the Andite has not blown; first fuse safety turned off. Surely she is leaning far enough out by now?