Short Fiction · Half Around Pluto (1/2)

Half Around Pluto

Their glassite space helmets fogged, and their metal glove joints stiffened in the incredible surface cold: but the two men who could work finished their job. In the black sky glistened the little arclight of the sun, a sixteen-hundredth of the blaze that fell on Earth. Around them sulked Pluto’s crags and gullies, sheathed with the hard-frozen pallor that had been Pluto’s atmosphere, eons ago.

From the wrecked cylinder of the scout rocket they had dragged two interior girders, ready-curved at the ends. These, clamped side by side with transverse brackets and decked with bulkhead metal, managed to look like a sled.

At the rear they set a salvaged engine unit. For steering, they rigged a boom shaft to warp the runners right or left. For cargo, they piled the sled with full containers, ration boxes, the foil tent, what instruments they could detach and carry, armfuls of heat-tools, a crowbar, a hatchet, a few other items.

Moving back from the finished work, one of them stumbled against the other. Instantly the two puffy, soot-black shapes were crouched, gloved fists up, fierce in the system’s duskiest corner.

Then the moment passed. Warily, helmets turned toward each other, they went back in the half-stripped wreck.

In the still airtight control room, lighted by one bulb, their officer stirred on his bedstrip. His tunic had been pulled off, his broken left arm and collarbone set and splinted. Under a fillet of bandage, his gaunt young face looked pale, but he had his wits back.

“The appropriate question,” he said, “is ‘What happened?’ ”

The two men were removing their helmets. “Conked and crashed, sir,” said Jenks, the smaller one, uncovering a sallow, hollow-cheeked face.

Lieutenant Wofforth sat up, supporting himself on his sound arm. “How long have I been out?”

“Maybe forty hours, sir. Delirious. Corbett and me did the best we could. Take it easy, sir,” he said as Wofforth began to get up. “Lie back. We’ve done what Emergency Plan Six says⁠—bolted a sled together and coupled on a sound engine unit for power.”

“Quite a haul back to base,” said Wofforth, almost cheerfully. His eyes were bright, as though he savored the idea. “About halfway around Pluto. We’d better start now, or they’ll get tired of waiting.”

“They’ve gone, sir,” Corbett growled before Jenks could gesture him to silence. He was beefy, slit-eyed. “We saw the jets going sunward this morning.”

Wofforth winced. “Gone,” he said. “That’s right. I didn’t stop to think. You said forty hours.⁠ ⁠… They couldn’t wait that long. We’re past opposition already, getting farther away all the time. They had to go, or they wouldn’t have made it.”

He stood up uncertainly and reached for his ripped tunic. Corbett stepped over and helped him slide his uninjured arm into the right sleeve, then to fasten and drape the tunic over his splinted left arm and shoulder.

“We’ll just have to get back to Base Camp and wait,” said Wofforth grimly.

“Sir,” said Jenks, “our radio is gone. I tried to patch it up, but it was gone. When they didn’t get a signal, they must have thought⁠—”

“Nonsense!” Wofforth broke in. “They’ll have left us supplies. They couldn’t wait, signal or none. Our job is to get back, and stick it out there until they come for us.”

He sat at the control and began to write in the log book. Corbett and Jenks drifted together at the other end of the room.

“You meat-head,” snarled Jenks under his breath. “You knew he took the berth to Pluto because the first mate was a lady⁠—Lya Stromminger.”

“He had to know they were gone,” protested Corbett, equally fierce.

“Not flat like you gave it. He came here to be with her. Now she’s jetted away without him. How does a man feel when a woman’s done that⁠—”

“Stop blathering, you two, and help me into my suit,” called Wofforth, rising again. “We’re going to rev up that sled engine and get out of here!”

Outside, the sled lay ready under the frigid sky. Wofforth tramped around it, leaned over and poked the load.

“Too much,” said his voice in their radios. “Keep the synthesizer, the tent, these two ration boxes. Wait, keep the crowbar and the hatchet. Dump the rest.”

“We travel that light, sir?” said Jenks doubtfully.

“I’ve been figuring,” said Wofforth. “We’re on the far side of Pluto from Base Camp. That makes ten thousand miles, more or less. Pluto’s day is nineteen hours and a minute or so, Earth time. We can travel only by what they humorously call daylight. And we’d better get there in ten days⁠—a thousand miles every nine and a half hours⁠—or maybe we won’t get there at all.”

“How’s that, sir?” asked Corbett.

“The heaters in these suits,” Wofforth reminded him. “Two hundred and forty hours of efficiency, and that’s all. Well, it’s noon. Let’s take off.”

His voice shook. He was still weak. Jenks helped him sit on the two lashed ration boxes, and slung a mooring strap across his knees. Then Jenks took the steering boom, and Corbett bent to start the engine.

When the arclight sun set in the west, they had traveled more than four hours over country not too rugged to slow them much. Darkness closed in fast while Jenks and Corbett pitched the pyramidal tent of metal foil and clamped it down solidly. They spread and zipped in the ground fabric, set up lights and heater inside, and began to pipe in thawed gases from the drifts outside.

After their scanty meal, Corbett and Jenks sought their bedstrips, on opposite sides of the tent. Wofforth tended the atomic heater for minutes, until the sound of deep breathing told him that his companions were asleep.

Then he put on his spacesuit, clumsy with his single hand to close seams. He picked up sextant and telescope, and slipped out into the Plutonian night.

It was as utterly black as the bottom of a pond of ink. But above Wofforth shone the faithful stars, in the constellations mapped by the first stargazers of long ago. He made observations, checked for time and position. He chuckled inside his helmet, as though congratulating himself. Back in the tent, he opened the log book and wrote:

First day: Course due west. Run 410 mi. To go 9,590 mi. approx. Supplies adeq. Spirits good.

Wriggling out of his space gear, he lay down, asleep almost before his weary limbs relaxed.

Everyone was awake before dawn. They made coffee on the heater, and broke out protein biscuits for breakfast.

As the tiny sun winked into view over the horizon, they loaded the sled. Corbett slouched toward the idling engine at the tail of the sled.

“No, get on amidships,” said Wofforth. “I’ll take over engine.”

“My job⁠—” began Corbett.

“You’re relieved. Strap yourself on the ration boxes. That’s right. Jenks, steer again. Make for the level ahead.”

With his right hand Wofforth ran a length of pliable cable around his waist and through a ring-bolt on the decking. He touched the engine controls, and they pulled away from camp.

The sled coursed over great knoll-like swellings of the terrain, coated with the dull-pale frozen atmosphere. Beyond, it gained speed on a vast flat plain, almost as smooth as a desert of glass.

“What’s this big rink. Lieutenant?” asked Jenks.

“Maybe a sea, or maybe just a sunken area, full of solid gases. Stand by the helm, I’m going to gun a few more M.P.H. out of her.”

“No wind,” grunted Corbett. “Nothing moving except us. The floor of hell.”

“If you was in hell, the rest of us would be better off,” said Jenks sourly.

Wofforth began to sing, though he did not feel like it:

Trim your nails and scrape your face,

They’re all on the Other Side of space!

Tokyo⁠—Baltimore, Maryland⁠—

Hong Kong⁠—Paris⁠—Samarkand⁠—

Tokyo⁠—London⁠—Troy⁠—Fort Worth⁠—

The happy towns of the Planet Earth⁠ ⁠…

At camp that night he wrote in the log book:

Second Day: Course due west. Run 1,014 mi. To go 8,576 mi. approx. Supplies adeq. Spirits fair.⁠ ⁠…

“What’s for supper?” bawled Corbett, entering. “I could eat a horse.”

“That’d be cannibalism,” said Jenks at once.

“Yah, you splinter! Don’t eat any lizards, then.”

Spirits good, Wofforth corrected his entry, and closed the log book. He thought of Lya Stromminger. She was a most efficient officer. Her hair was black as night on Pluto, and her eyes as bright as the faraway sun.

Wofforth wrote in his log book:

Fifth day: Course north, west, then southwest. Curving thru mountainous territory. Run 1,066 mi. but direct progress toward base camp not exceeding 950. To go, 6,260 mi. approx. Supplies short. Spirits fair.

He wrote in his log book:

Seventh day: Course west, southwest, west, northwest, west. Run 1,108 mi. To go 4,090 mi. approx. Supplies low. Spirits fair.

He wrote in his log book:

Ninth day: Course northwest by west, west. Run 1,108 mi. To go 2,030 mi. approx. Supplies low. Spirits low.⁠ ⁠…

“Lieutenant,” said Jenks from across the tent, as Wofforth closed the book.

“Well?”

“We know you’re in command. This party and all of Pluto. But we ask permission to state our case.”

“What case is your case?” demanded Wofforth, rising. “I’m doing my best to get you back to Base Camp.”

“Sure,” said Corbett. “Sure. But why Base Camp?”

“You know why.”

“That’s right, we know why,” agreed Jenks, and Corbett grinned in his ten days’ tussock of beard.

“They’ll have left supplies for us,” Wofforth went on. “Shelter and food and fuel and instruments. They’ll expect us to reach Base Camp and hold it down for the next attempt to reach Pluto.”

“We know why,” repeated Jenks. “And that’s not why, lieutenant. Let me talk, sir. It’s a dead man talking.”

“You won’t die,” snapped Wofforth. “I’ll get you both there alive.”

He stepped to where, in one corner, he had managed a bath⁠—a hollow in the frozen ground, lined by pushing the floor fabric into it. From the heater he ran tepid, clean water into it. He clipped a mirror to the tent foil, searched out an automatic razor, and began to shave his own dark young thatch of beard.

“You’re proving my point, lieutenant,” said Jenks. “Policing up your face to look pretty.”

“Why not?” growled Wofforth, mowing another swath of whiskers.

“No reason why not. Ten, twenty years from now they’ll find your body⁠—whenever the inner orbits get to where they can boom off another expedition. You’ll look young and clean-shaved. You know who’ll weep.”

Wofforth lowered the razor in his good hand and glared at the two. They grinned in the bright light opposite him. They looked as if they hoped he’d see the joke.

“I said it’s a dying man that’s talking,” said Jenks again. “Won’t you let me say my dying say, lieutenant? Let’s all die honest.”

“I’m going to get you there,” Wofforth insisted.

“Ah, now,” said Corbett, as though persuading a naughty child. “You think they’ve left twenty years’ worth of supplies to keep us going? The ship didn’t carry that much, even if they left it all.” He grinned mirthlessly. “I can figure what you’re figuring, lieutenant,” he went on, with a touch of Jenks’ sly manner. “You die, young and brave. You’ll shave up again before you lie down and let go. And when the next shipload arrives there’ll be you, lying like a statue of your good-looking young self, frozen stiff. Am I right?”

Corbett was right, Wofforth admitted to himself. The man was more than a great meaty lump, after all, to see another man’s unspoken thought so clearly.

“Then,” Jenks took it up, “First Mate Lya Stromminger will have a look. She may command the new expedition. She’ll be promoted away up to Admiral or higher⁠—twenty years of brilliant service⁠—gone gray around the edges, but still a lovely lady. There you’ll lie before her eyes, young and brave as you was when she deserted you. She’ll cry, won’t she? And hot tears can’t thaw you out or wake you up⁠—”

“Shut your heads, both of you!” shouted Wofforth, so fierce and loud that the foil tent wall vibrated as with a gale in the airless night.

But they had guessed true. He’d wanted to be found at Base Camp. He’d wanted Lya Stromminger to know, some day, that she’d blasted off and left behind the man most worthy of all men on all worlds.⁠ ⁠…

“Everybody takes a hot bath tonight,” said Wofforth. “We’ll all sleep better for it. Tomorrow’s our last day on the trail.”

“To do two thousand miles?” said Jenks.

“To do all of that. The expedition mapped an area at least that wide around Base Camp, and it’s slick and smooth. We can almost slide in.”

“All slick and smooth but just this side of Base Camp, lieutenant,” said Jenks.

“How do you mean?”

“That string of craters. Don’t you remember? It’s just this side⁠—east of Base Camp. This sled’ll never go over that, sir.”

“Nor around,” Corbett put in. “We’d have to detour maybe three thousand miles. And the heaters in our suits won’t last.”

“I know about the craters,” said Wofforth. “Well take care of them when we reach them.”

Stripping, he lowered his body into the makeshift tub and began to scrub himself one-handed.

He wakened in the morning to the sound of furious argument.

Corbett and Jenks, of course. A trifle⁠—division of the breakfast ration, or of the breakfast chores⁠—had set off their nerves like trains of explosive. Even as Wofforth rose from his bedstrip, Corbett swung a cobble-like fist at Jenks’ gaunt, grimacing face. The nimbler, smaller man ducked and sidled away. Corbett took a lumbering step to close in on his enemy, and Jenks darted a hand to his belt behind, then brought it forward again with an electro-automatic pistol.

“I’ve been keeping this for you!” Jenks shrilled. “I’ll just diminish the population of Pluto by thirty-three and one-third percent!”

“Hold it!” bellowed Wofforth.

He was too late. A stream of bullets chattered through Corbett’s body, folding him over and ripping through the paper-thin wall of the tent. Air whistled out; the tent began to collapse.

Jenks, pinned under Corbett’s body, was squealing like a pig. “Lieutenant, help me⁠—!”

Wofforth saw in an instant that the wall could not be patched in time; the bullets had torn loose an irregular strip, pressure had done the rest: even now, the tent was only a few seconds away from complete collapse. As he stumbled across the floor toward the spacesuits, his heart was laboring and his chest straining for breath. Spots swam in front of his eyes. He found the topmost spacesuit by touch, and fumbled for the helmet. The tent drifted down on his head in soft, murderous folds. He opened the valve, shoved his face into the helmet, and gulped precious oxygen. His dulled awareness brightened again, momentarily; but he knew he was still a dead man unless he could get into the suit before pressure fell completely. Numbed fingers plucked at the suit opening. Somehow he got the awkward garment over his legs, closed and locked the torso, pulled down the helmet.⁠ ⁠…

He was lying in darkness, with a low, steady hiss of oxygen in his ears. He rolled over weakly, got to his feet. He turned on his helmet light. He was propping up a gray cave of metal foil, that fell in stiff creases all around him. At his feet were the bodies of Jenks and Corbett. Both were dead.

After a while, clumsily, painfully, he dragged the two corpses free of the tent. He found the heater and thawed a hole in the frozen surface, big enough for both. He tumbled them in, then undercut the edges of the hole with the heater, so that chunks fell in and covered them. While he watched, the cloud of vapor he had made began to settle, slowly congealing on the broken surface and blurring it over again. In a year, there would be no mark here to show that the surface had been disturbed. In a thousand years, it would still be the same.

In the first ray of dawn he flung all supplies from the sled except the fuel containers. He checked the engine, and started it.