Part 1

far enough to touch

By STEPHEN BARTHOLOMEW

Illustrated by SCHELLING

_Rene Duport was the quiet member of the moonship's crew. So quiet that it took several minutes before anyone noticed that he jumped overboard--into space._

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Amazing Stories December 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

The ship had a crew of six, and Rene Duport was the youngest. The pilot, who held the rank of lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force and Master Pilot in the United Nations Space Corps, was one of the two Americans aboard. The co-pilot was Russian, the navigator a Finn, the engineer an African, and the research observer was the other American. Rene Duport was a Belgian, and he was the radioman, and the youngest ever to go to the Moon.

It had been a routine flight since the ship had lifted from the lunar surface. In a little less than six hours they were due to enter parking orbit. Twelve hours later, with a minimum of luck, the ferry ship would dive to its landing area near the Marianas, and the six crew members would be once again on Ground. Rather, they would be floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, but that was far more solid than space. All the Earth was sacred Ground to them, including the sea. Each of them anticipated the moment when they would scoop salt water up in their hands and fling their oxygen masks into the depths and raise their faces to the burning ocean sun, yet they tried not to think of the moment, they kept it in the backs of their minds, as if thinking of it consciously could bring bad luck.

All except Rene Duport, who was nineteen years old, and the youngest ever to enter space. He had loved it out there, on the Moon, and he loved being here in the ship. He wanted to go back out again, and he was the only one of the six who was reluctant to return to Ground. Perhaps if the spacemedics had known of this unnatural--almost inhuman--state of Rene Duport's mind, they would never have let him go out. Then again, perhaps he was one of a new breed of men, born under new signs in the Zodiac, the signs of Gagarin and Glenn, equipped with a kind of mind and soul never known before. He was the only one of the six who did not want to go Home.

* * * * *

The American pilot turned to mutter something to his Russian co-pilot, seated next to him at the front of the ship. The Russian nodded and adjusted a dial. By formal agreement the crew spoke in French between themselves. But the pilot's accent was bad, and Duport would have preferred to talk to him in English. He could not help smiling to himself whenever the American said something. Frowning, Duport moved his headphone slightly and changed the frequency of his receiver. The Azores tracking station had begun to fade with the rotation of the Earth, but he had no trouble picking up Hawaii. He wrote down the latest fix and passed the slip of paper forward to the navigator. He switched on his transmitter to give Hawaii an acknowledgement.

Forward, the American pilot heard Duport speaking to Hawaii. _This is the moonship_ Prospero _acknowledging transmission_.... The American pilot did not like using French either. He would have preferred speaking English or Russian. There was something poetic about French. The phrase _bateau du lune_, moonship, always gave him a quiver. It made him think of some kind of ghost ship, with a moss-covered hull and gossamer sails, floating silently in a midnight sky. There was something--fragile about the language, especially as Duport spoke it in his smooth, pure accents.

The American glanced into a mirror that gave him a view of the cabin behind him. Duport sat by himself at the extreme rear of the cabin, the radio console hiding most of his body. The headphones and mike covered most of his face, so that only his nose and eyes were visible. His eyes were light blue and seemed to glisten, unnaturally bright, as if the boy had been taking some kind of drug. He was only nineteen years old. The pilot had had misgivings about Duport from the beginning when the crew was first formed. It wasn't only his youth, he didn't quite know what it was. There was something about Duport, something deep in his personality that he did not _trust_. But he did not know how to name it.

Still, Duport had functioned all right so far. And the Selection Board should know its business. The crew had been chosen, as usual, by competitive examination, and if there was any flaw in Duport's character it would have turned up sometime during the six-month training period. Probably Duport was as good as any of them. He had been a child prodigy, he'd taken his Master's in physics at the age of seventeen. He knew as much as any of them, and he had made no mistakes so far.

Still, the American remembered the first time he had seen Duport. It had been right after the Selection Board published the crew list. Out of the two hundred who finished the training program, the Board had given Duport highest rating. He was not only the youngest ever to enter space, he was the only crew-member of the _Prospero_ who had never been in space before, except of course for the ballistic shoots which were part of training. The American himself had been aboard the _Quixote_ on the first moonshot directed by the U.N. Space Corps. Then they had built the _Prospero_, and he had piloted it on its shakedown cruise in orbit. And the Board had chosen him to fly the ship on its first trip to the Moon. Altogether, it was the fourth shot of the U.N. Space Corps, and the second time he had been on the Moon. He, the American, was the veteran, he had spent more hours in space than any other human being alive.

* * * * *

And he remembered the first time he had seen Duport. The veteran and the kid. He had met him in the briefing room at the launching site at Christmas Island. The veteran had been studying a thrust table, and the kid had come into the room, half an hour early for the first briefing. The American did not hear him come in. He looked up from his desk, and there he was, Duport, standing at attention in his blue Corps uniform with the silver sunburst in his lapel, indicating active commission.

"Christ!" the American had burst out, forgetting himself and speaking in English. "Are you Duport? They told me you were young...." He already knew each of the other crewmen.

"Yes sir," Duport answered in English. "I'm afraid I am rather young. Corpsman Duport reports for briefing, sir. I just arrived on the island an hour ago."

The American recovered himself. He leaned back in his chair to study the boy. He was blond and had light blue eyes that glittered, and he looked like a high school kid.

"_Eh bien, parlons francais_," the American said at last. "Sorry, Duport, I didn't mean to offend you. It's just that it was a shock.... Why are you smiling like that?"

"Nothing, sir." Duport's mouth straightened itself out.

"What do you mean _rien_? No, tell me, Duport. You should know by now that the Corpsman's first law is that we tell each other what's on our minds. If we're going to be sealed up together in a tin can for two weeks...."

"I'm sorry sir, it was your accent. I found it amusing."

"Oh, that. You're not the first one. _Eh bien._ Have you been assigned quarters yet, Duport?"

"No, sir."

"I'll see to it myself after the briefing. You'll find conditions are rather primitive on the island, but you won't be here long. The ferryboat leaves in six days."

"Yes, sir."

The American was fascinated by Duport's eyes, their unnatural, bright glaze. The boy never seemed to blink. He yet stood at attention, looking down at the older man with unshifting eyes.

"Stand at ease, Duport. As long as you're early, we might as well start the briefing now." On an impulse, he went to the projection screen and touched a switch which flashed on a photomap of the lunar landing area. He pointed to a particular object which was visible only because of the long shadow it cast.

"As you are well aware, Duport, the research station is here, near the center of the Crater of Copernicus. The three trips so far by the _Quixote_ have been sufficient to set up the dome and to land enough equipment to keep the colony independent for several months if necessary. So far, there aren't any men there. That's our job, the _Prospero's_. We're going to have five passengers with us, research scientists, I haven't met them yet. All I know about them is that one is American and one Russian. Our job is to get them into the station, alive, and then bring back the ship. What they do up there afterward is none of our business."

"Yes, sir," Duport answered, still at attention. "I have already been told this."

"Yes, I haven't told you anything that you don't already know. And of course you also know that the bottom of Copernicus Crater, like all other flat areas on the Moon, is a kilometer deep with nearly molecular dust, micrometorite residue. You know that before the first landing by the _Quixote_, it was necessary to explode a hydrogen bomb in order to fuse the surface of the dust into a thick crust of glass, in order to get a stable landing stage." The American paused, turned away from the photomap, and looked at Duport again.

"Yes sir."

* * * * *

"But something you don't know is that certain automatic instruments left at the station by the _Quixote_ have given an indication that this landing crust was weakened by the last lift-off. The instruments may be wrong, or they may be right. We're going to find out."

"I--see."

"Yes." The veteran leaned against the wall and looked at the boy's eyes. "The _Quixote_ is a heavy ship, and the _Prospero_ is heavier. We're going to have to set her down easy. _Very_ easy. That crust is hard, but thin. You know what will happen if the ship breaks through. The rocket nozzles will clog with dust, and the ship will sink to the cabin bubble. We'll be stuck on the Moon."

"Yes sir," was all that Duport said.

"Yes _sir_! The point is, Duport, that every member of the crew is going to have to function as part of the machine, the radioman included. The slightest error could be crucial on this one. You're going to have to leave your nerves behind. Once we set her down, we should be all right. But I hope to God your training program has really got you ready for this."

"I know it has, sir." Duport stood there, silent, at attention, perhaps waiting for something else. But the American did not know what else to tell him. He was trying to figure Duport out. Even then he had a feeling that there was something about the boy that was _wrong_. Something he could not understand. He stared at his cold blue eyes.

At last Duport said, "Once the research station really gets going, the results should be magnificent, sir."

The American moved away. "Yes, but don't be naive, Duport. Don't believe what you read in the papers. The real reason for the station--the reason for the U.N. Space Corps--is practical politics. If the Corps didn't exist, the U.S. and Russia would go to the Moon separately. And neither side would tell the other what they were doing there. A joint effort is the only way to make sure that nobody plants missiles up there. Science is secondary. We're like two gunmen afraid to turn our backs on each other."

"Yes sir, of course you are right," Duport said. And as the American moved toward the desk he glanced back at Duport and saw the boy staring at the lunar photomap, his eyes coldly reflecting light. The muscles of his jaw were working visibly, slowly tightening and then relaxing again. It was as if he were trying to memorize every detail of the map.

* * * * *

And thinking back on that day, the American pilot wondered if he were any closer to understanding Duport. Suddenly he thought he was. For the first time he thought about the way the muscles of Duport's jaw moved. He had never really considered that before. The brightness of the boy's eyes had always distracted his attention. He looked into the mirror again, at Duport seated by himself at the rear of the cabin, bowed over his console and listening to his headphones. The pilot could see only part of Duport's left lower jaw. But yes, the muscles were working. Slowly they contracted until they stood out like knots, then slowly relaxed again.

_Nerves_, that was the word. Now the pilot knew what name to give it. Why hadn't he seen it before? Duport seemed cold, efficient, the pilot thought, always he seemed to function like part of the machine, part of the ship. But always the muscles of his jaw were working, and the shine of his eyes kept you from looking at his mouth, kept you from noticing the one sign that Duport had a nervous system. The pilot saw that under Duport's cool, steady surface, the boy was wound to nearly the snapping point, to the uttermost limit of his nervous system's tensile strength. It was his nerves that gave Duport his machinelike efficiency, his quick response time, his endurance. As long as he kept them under control. It was his nerves, too, that made his eyes glitter, like the eyes of a madman masquerading as sane. Why hadn't the medics ever seen it? The pilot wondered what would happen if Duport ever, for a moment, were to forget himself and lose control of his nerves.

Well, the boy had lasted this far. During the tense moments of the lunar touchdown he hadn't cracked. He had responded to orders as if he were an electric relay. He had done his job. It had turned out that the landing crust was not weakened after all, but none of them had known that then. Duport had passed that test. Perhaps, the pilot thought, he was wrong about Duport, perhaps he was really what he seemed to be, cool and nerveless. At any rate, he would tell his suspicions to the medics, back on Ground. Time enough, he thought, time enough.

* * * * *

The research observer, the other American in the crew, had been busy taking pictures for several hours. He straightened from his camera sight, rubbed at his eyes, and stretched.

"When we hit that ocean," he said in English, "I'm going to break out the raft, strip naked, and go for a swim, sharks or no...."

"_Ta geule_," someone said, "shut up."

The observer looked around, embarrassed at what he'd said. It was as if they were all superstitious, as if talking about Ground, even thinking about it, would bring bad luck. Each of them would have denied this hotly. But for a moment the observer looked as if he would have knocked on wood, had there been a piece of wood in the ship. After a minute the observer pulled out some processed film plates and began examining them through a lens.

Rene Duport had looked up from his radio console. There was nothing for him to do at the moment. He thought that he would have liked to be in the observer's place, or the navigator's, able to look through one of the periscopes directly into deep space. He had loved the Moon, he had loved to suit up and walk out onto the lunar dust and look upward at the sky, at the stars that did not flicker, at the Magellanic Clouds, close enough to touch. But even there, on the surface of the Moon, he had always been standing on something. He thought of the vacuum that was all around the ship, on every side, just beyond the hull, just beyond the escape hatch behind his back. He wondered what it would be like to look directly into space, standing on nothing, to see not merely a dome of stars, but an entire sphere of them, bright and unblinking. All his life he had wanted to go into space, and all his life he had known that he would. Now he did not want to go back, he wished that he could leave the Earth forever.

The research observer leaned toward the African engineer and began discussing one of the film plates with him. Rene Duport listened to them, only half interested. He thought that the African and the Russian were the only crewmen besides himself who could speak French without sounding ridiculous.

He saw the pilot abruptly bend over the control panel and make an adjustment. He said something to the Russian that Duport did not catch, the Russian co-pilot nodded and began turning a knob slowly, his eyes on a vernier dial. For several minutes the American and the Russian worked steadily at the controls, frequently glancing at each other. Once the Russian rose to open an access plate in the overhead and inspect some wiring, then he strapped himself in again and continued working his controls. The engineer left his seat and pulled himself forward to begin talking to the pilot in low tone. After a minute the engineer opened a technical manual and began reading off a series of numbers.

The research observer was watching a dial on the cabin wall.

"She's heating up," he said.

Then Rene Duport noticed it. The cabin temperature had risen during the last few minutes, already he was beginning to sweat profusely.

"_C'est trop_," the Russian said. It's too much.

The pilot turned to look back at his crew. "Pile's overheating," he said. "I'm going to blow the cabin pressure so we won't roast. Suit up."

* * * * *

Everyone sealed their helmets and plugged into their air supplies. In a few seconds they had each pressurized and tested their suits. The pilot reached for a red lever, and then there was a quick hissing sound that lasted only for a moment.

Rene Duport waited, wondering what was going to happen. Nothing like this had ever happened to the _Quixote_. And the _Prospero_ followed the other ship's general design, so that it shouldn't be happening to her either. Both ships used water as a reaction mass, superheated by a nuclear pile, which was separated from the cabin bubble and attached to it only by steel girders. Duport knew what would happen if the overheating didn't stop. Either the pile would blow like a bomb, or those girders would continue conducting heat into the cabin until the cabin walls turned red hot and then melted. Blowing the cabin pressure could only keep the crew from roasting for a few minutes. Perhaps some damping rods had blown out; whatever it was, Duport knew the pile was heating fast.

Over the intercom, Duport could hear the co-pilot muttering, "_Trop vite! Trop vite!_" Too fast, too fast.

"She's going to blow," someone else said.

There was a silence that lasted several seconds. Everyone waited.

Then the pilot said, "No good. I'll have to eject."

But Duport did not hear that.

When the temperature was down to normal, the pilot reached for a valve to begin pressurizing. But a safety device prevented the valve from operating, and he looked around to see why. "Christ!" his voice came over the intercom. "He jumped!"

The rest of the crew turned their heads to look toward the rear of the cabin. The escape hatch behind Duport's seat was open, and Duport was gone.

* * * * *

"But why did he do it?" The research observer lounged against the aft bulkhead, he had been watching a chess game between the Russian and the Finn. The _Prospero_ was in orbit, there was little to do now but wait for the ferry ship to lift off from Christmas Island and make rendezvous. After the pilot had ejected the nuclear fuel, the ship had of course simply coasted into orbit. With no power left for course correction, it was not a good orbit, but it was close enough for the ferry to reach. There was nothing to do now but wait, and play chess. The research observer shook his head. "It was stupid, there was no reason. Why did he go out the hatch like that?"

The pilot was tired. He rubbed his face with both hands. He did not want to have to think about it. He looked at the other American's face.

"Nerves. He lost his nerve, that's all."

The research observer watched the Finn capture one of the Russian's rooks with a knight.

"He jumped out of the ship." It was as if he were trying to convince himself that it had really happened. "Why did he do it? I can't figure it out."

The pilot covered his eyes. "Call it cowardice if you like. Or panic. The kid chickened out."

* * * * *

Then they were in the ferry ship, waiting for the engineers to finish inspecting the _Prospero_ before casting off and going into a re-entry spiral, towards the Pacific landing area. Meanwhile, the medic had finished his preliminary physical of each of the crew. Most of the men rested quietly, reading newspapers and waiting. The American pilot had strapped himself to one of the crash couches and taken a short nap. Then he got up to look through a periscope at the three engineers working near the _Prospero's_ power tank.

The ferry ship's radioman, a young Englishman, tapped him on the shoulder. The pilot turned away from the eyepiece, and his face was drawn and white.

"They've picked up his track," the radioman said.

"What?"

The radioman handed the pilot a piece of paper. "Just got the news. His suit transmitter, the beacon's working. The station at Leningrad picked up the signal, they're going to compute his orbit."

It was a few seconds before the American understood what he was talking about.

"Duport, you mean? They're tracking him?" He hesitated. "But why? Why are they computing his orbit?"

The Englishman grinned. "They're going to try to pick him up. Rescue him, you know."

The American stared.

"Be a few hours before they have an exact plot," the radioman went on. "The rough estimate is that they'll be ready to launch within forty-six hours. They're going to send up the _Wabash Cannonball_. If his beacon keeps operating, there's a fifty-fifty chance they'll catch him. Just thought you'd want to know, sir. You may not have lost a Corpsman after all." The Englishman turned to go back to his post, and the American stared at his back as he moved away.

"Why?" he whispered. "_Why?_" The pilot did some rough calculations in his head. He remembered the ship's approximate position and velocity at the time that Duport had jumped. Duport's body would of course have about the same orbital velocity as that of the ship, though the impetus of his leap would have been enough to carry him into some completely different direction. Somewhere out there Duport was swinging around the Earth in a wide, elliptical orbit. For some reason it had not occurred to the pilot that he might still be alive. Since the moment that he had turned and seen the open hatch he had been thinking of Duport as a casualty, already dead. But in fact, the American realized, Duport was probably still alive. His suit was equipped for just this kind of emergency; it had an oxygen regenerating system that could supply him with air to breathe as long as the photocells kept his battery charged. The catch was that no one had ever lived in a suit before for more than twelve hours at a stretch. Six hours was considered the normal safety limit. In theory the suit would keep Duport alive until he died of thirst or starvation. In theory.

But why were they going to try to rescue him? It made no sense. The _Wabash Cannonball_ was the smallest ship in the Space Corps' fleet. It carried a crew of two, and was used for ferrying small cargoes into orbit. If she left behind her reserve oxygen tanks and emergency equipment, it should be possible to reduce her weight load sufficiently to get her into an orbit as high as Duport was. Then there was perhaps one chance in ten of getting him down alive. No doubt the Corps Center had decided to send the _Cannonball_ up because it would involve the least possible fuel expenditure. But the operation would still cost close to half a million dollars, to say nothing of the risk to the ship and crew. Nothing of the kind had ever been done, or attempted, before. Why had the Corps decided to gamble two lives on a long chance of saving one?