"White Sands," muttered Arkalion. "It looks like s.p.a.ce travel now, doesn"t it, Kit."
Temple shrugged. "Why?"
"White sands was the center of experiments in rocketry decades ago, when people still talked about those things. Then, for a long time, no one heard anything about White Sands. The rockets grew here, Kit."
"I can readily see why. You could look all your life without finding a barren spot like this."
"Precisely. Someone once called this place--or was it some other place like it?--someone once called it a good place to throw old razor blades. If people still used razor blades."
The microphone blared again, after the several hundred men had entered the great hall and milled about among the echoes. Temple could picture other halls like this, other briefings. "Men, whenever you are given instructions, in here or elsewhere, obey them instantly. Our job is a big one, complicated and exacting. Attention to detail will save us trouble."
Someone said, "My old man served a hitch in the army, back in the sixties. That"s what he always said, attention to details. The army is crazy about things like that. Are we in the army or something?"
"This is not the army, but the function is similar," barked the microphone. "Do as you are told and you will get along."
Stirrings in the crowd. Mutterings. Temple gaped. Microphone, yes--but receivers also, placed strategically, all around the hall, to pick up sound. Telio receivers too, perhaps? It made him feel something like a goldfish.
Apparently someone liked the idea of the two-way microphones. "I got a question. When are we coming back?"
Laughter. Hooting. Catcalls.
Blared the microphone: "There is a rotation system in operation, men.
When it is feasible, men will be rotated."
"Yeah, in thirty years it ain"t been whatsiz--feasible--once!"
"That, unfortunately, is correct. When the situation permits, we will rotate you home."
"From where? Where are we going?"
"At least tell us that."
"Where?"
"How about that?"
There was a pause, then the microphone barked: "I don"t know the answer to that question. You won"t believe me, but it is the truth. No one knows where you are going. No one. Except the people who are already there."
More catcalls.
"That doesn"t make sense," Arkalion whispered. "If it"s s.p.a.ce travel, the pilots would know, wouldn"t they?"
"Automatic?" Temple suggested.
"I doubt it. s.p.a.ce travel must still be new, even if it has thirty years under its belt. If that man speaks the truth--if no one knows ... just where in the universe _are_ we going?"
CHAPTER III
"Hey, looka me. I"m flying!"
"Will you get your big fat feet out of my face?"
"Sure. Show me how to swim away through air, I"ll be glad to."
"Leggo that spoon!"
"I ain"t got your spoon."
"Will you look at it float away. Hey spoon, hey!"
"Watch this, Charlie. This will get you. I mean, get you."
"What are you gonna do?"
"Relax, chum."
"Leggo my leg. Help! I"m up in the air. Stop that."
"I said relax. There. Ha-ha, lookit him spin, just like a top. All you got to do is get him started and he spins like a top with arms and legs. Top of the morning to you, Charlie. Ha-ha. I said, top of the...."
"Someone stop me, I"m getting dizzy."
They floated, tumbled, spun around the s.p.a.ceship"s lounge room in simple, childish glee. They cavorted in festive weightlessness.
"They"re happy now," Arkalion observed. "The novelty of free fall, of weighing exactly nothing, strikes them as amusing."
"I think I"m getting the hang of it," said Temple. Clumsily, he made a few tentative swimming motions in the air, propelling himself forward a few yards before he lost his balance and tumbled head over heels against the wall.
Arkalion came to him quickly, in a combination of swimming and pushing with hands and feet against the wall. Arkalion righted him expertly, sat down gingerly beside him. "If you keep sudden motions to a minimum, you"ll get along fine. More than anything else, that"s the secret of it."
Temple nodded. "It"s sort of like the first time you"re on ice skates.
Say, how come you"re so good at it?"
[Ill.u.s.tration]
"I used to read the old, theoretical books on s.p.a.ce-travel." The words poured out effortlessly, smoothly. "I"m merely applying the theories put forward as early as the 1950"s."
"Oh." But it left Temple with some food for thought. Alaric Arkalion was a queer duck, anyway, and of all the men gathered in the s.p.a.ceship"s lounge, he alone had mastered weightlessness with hardly any trouble.
"Take your ice skates," Arkalion went on. "Some people put them on and use them like natural extensions of their feet the first time. Others fall all over themselves. I suppose I am lucky."
"Sure," said Temple. Actually, the only thing odd about Arkalion was his old-young face and--perhaps--his propensity for coming up with the right answers at the right times. Arkalion had seemed so certain of s.p.a.ce-travel. He"d hardly batted an eyelash when they boarded a long, tapering, bullet-shaped ship at White Sands and thundered off into the sky. He took for granted the change-over to a huge round ship at the wheel-shaped station in s.p.a.ce. Moments after leaving the s.p.a.ce station--with a minimum of stress and strain, thanks to the almost-nil gravity--it was Arkalion who first swam through air to the viewport and pointed out the huge crescent earth, green and gray and brown, sparkling with patches of dazzling silver-white. "You will observe it is a crescent," Arkalion had said. "It is closer to the sun than we are, and off at an angle. As I suspected, our destination is Mars."
Then everyone was saying goodbye to earth. Fantastic, it seemed. There were tears, there was laughter, cursing, promises of return, awkward verbal comparisons with the crescent moon, vows of faithfulness to lovers and sweethearts. And there was Arkalion, with an avid expression in the old eyes, Arkalion with his boyish face, not saying goodbye so much as he was calling h.e.l.lo to something Temple could not fathom.