Part 2

Suddenly the American felt an intense, irrational hatred of Duport. If his suit beacon was operating, it could only be because he had turned it on. Why hadn't he left it off, rather than risk the lives of others to save his own hide? He had jumped ship. They ought to leave him there, the pilot thought.

* * * * *

The ferry ship broke atmosphere, her heat shield and fins glowing red. She fell to an altitude of ten thousand feet before her velocity fell to a little less than two thousand miles per hour. Then the collapsible wing unfolded like the wing of a moth, it was half wing, half parachute. The ship glided toward the sea.

It struck the water with an explosion of spray, dived under, bobbed to the surface again, rolling like a porpoise. Someone opened a hatch and climbed out onto the hull. Ten minutes later, the helicopter appeared.

Back at Christmas Island, the American pilot was still asking why. He asked it of Dr. Valdez, a grey-haired man, chief of the spacemedic team.

"You're right," Dr. Valdez said. He was sitting in a chair on the veranda of the infirmary, hands folded behind his head, looking out to sea. "The Center did ask my advice on this matter. I told them what I thought the odds were against a successful rescue operation. I also told them that, for scientific reasons alone, I thought it was worth attempting."

"But why?" The American looked down at him.

Dr. Valdez looked at the sea. "It is now just about twenty-four hours since Duport jumped into space. His beacon is still operating, and the orbital plot has been completed. The rescue ship will launch in about thirty hours from now. Estimating six hours between lift-off and rendezvous, this means that Duport will have been alone in space for a total of about sixty hours. Two and a half days."

The American said nothing, waiting for him to go on.

"Think of him up there." Dr. Valdez closed his eyes. "Completely alone. Total silence except for the sound of his own breathing. He sees nothing but stars, intensely bright, above him, beneath his feet, on all sides, the silver smear of the Milky Way, the Clouds of Magellan, the nebulae. The Earth is a great, swollen balloon that swings past his field of vision now and then, the Moon a smaller bubble. Without a reference point there is no sense of depth, no perspective. He can reach out and touch the stars. He swings in space, beyond time and distance, completely alone."

"So what?" the pilot said at last.

Dr. Valdez straightened in his chair and leaned his elbows on his knees.

"So there are some things we--I--would like to know. I'd like to know what is happening to him, out there. What he has seen, perhaps heard. The effects on his body, if any. Above all, the effect on his mind. No human being has ever experienced anything like it before. There's something else I'd like to know. We worked with him for nearly a year. He finished with the highest rating in his class. We never would have sent him out if we hadn't been sure about him. But somewhere we made a mistake, there was something we failed to see. I'd like to know what made him jump."

This time the American looked out to sea. He was silent.

The doctor took out an old briar pipe and began filling it from a leather pouch. "Strange. His radio beacon is functioning normally. There's no reason why his transmitter and receiver shouldn't be working too. Yet we've been trying to contact him by means of voice communication, and he doesn't answer. Maybe he's dead already. There's no way to tell."

"Do you think he's worth saving?" the pilot asked after a minute.

"I'd like to know why he jumped."

* * * * *

In the briefing room, the American listened intently to the sounds coming from the speaker. Dr. Valdez and the other members of the _Prospero's_ crew also listened. Dr. Valdez listened with his eyes closed, drawing slowly on his pipe.

"Orbital ship _Wabash Cannonball_ acknowledging Azores transmission," the voice said. "Our condition is still AOK, repeat, condition is still normal. We are still tracking survival beacon. Range, 10,000 kilometers and closing." There was another burst of radio noise that momentarily drowned out the voice. The men in the briefing room had been listening for nearly six hours now. Occasionally one of them would go out for coffee or fresh air, but he always returned within a few minutes. The American pilot had not moved from his place since lift-off. Outside, it had begun to rain.

At last, the critical moment came.

"Range is now five hundred kilometers and closing," the voice said. "I now have a visual sight. Repeat. I have a visual sight. I can see him. Switching from computer to manual control." Several minutes of silence. The pilot was jockeying closer to Duport, making delicate adjustments in his ship's orbital path. He had a small target. A single wrong judgement could cause him to drift hundreds of kilometers off course, wasting a critical amount of fuel.

At last the report came, "Range is now five hundred meters. We are suiting up and blowing cabin pressure. Stand by for further transmission." Ten minutes passed. The crew was too busy to broadcast now. The rain drummed softly on the roof of the briefing room and ran in slow curtains down the windowpanes.

Finally the voice came on the air again.

"Orbital ship _Wabash Cannonball_ resuming transmission. Rescue operation is successful. Repeat, operation is successful. We have him aboard. He's alive."

The American pilot looked up at the faces around him. Dr. Valdez was rubbing his mouth thoughtfully. The other men stared at the speaker with blank looks. The American noted that no one was cheering.

* * * * *

Later, the pilot of the _Cannonball_ described the rescue. When he had first reported his visual sighting, he had been seeing the sunlight reflected from the surface of Duport's suit. Duport was a white spark, shining out among the stars like a meteor or nova. The sight had given the rescue pilot a peculiar feeling, he mentioned later, seeing this blue-white star slowly growing in the sky until it was brighter than Venus, seeing this new star rise, a point of white fire, and knowing the star was a man.

Then they had suited up and blown the cabin pressure. The co-pilot had gone out the hatch while the pilot remained at his controls. Watching through the periscope, he could see Duport spread-eagled against the sky, the left side of his body a glare of sunlight, the right side in shadow. Duport had not moved his arms or legs since they had first seen him, neither did he acknowledge with his suit transmitter. He was about five hundred meters from the ship and drifting slowly closer. The co-pilot tethered himself to the hull, then tossed out a line with a magnetic grapple on its end. He missed, hauled in, and tossed again. On the third try the end of the line passed within half a meter of Duport's body. Duport moved his arm, took the end of the line, and hooked it to his belt. The co-pilot hauled him in.

* * * * *

About a month later, the American pilot saw Rene Duport for the first time since he had jumped from the _Prospero_. It was at the space medicine laboratories at Walter Reed.

Dr. Valdez stood near the window, looking down at the sunlit lawn. In the shade of a tall shrub a man was sitting in a lawn chair, his head back, completely relaxed. He wore a blue denim hospital uniform. His back was to the window.

"Physically he was in good condition when they brought him down," the doctor said, "except for a slight case of dehydration."

"Can I talk to him?" the pilot asked.

Dr. Valdez looked at him sharply, as if surprised by the request.

"You can talk to him if you like. But he won't answer you."

The pilot followed the doctor out of the room and down to the lawn. They came up from behind the lawn chair and stood looking down at the man sitting in it. His eyes were closed.

The pilot saw that Duport's jaw was slack. He could not tell whether he was asleep. The flesh in his cheeks was sunken. He looked older.

Dr. Valdez said, "Catatonia, schizophrenia, it's like no condition I've ever seen before. He is perfectly aware of what is going on around him, you see. Bring him food and he eats. Stick him with a pin and he jumps. All his responses are normal. He took the cable and attached it himself, remember. But he will make no more than the minimum necessary effort to survive." The doctor chewed his lip, thinking. "If only he would say something."

"Have you decided why he jumped?" the pilot asked, not realizing that he was whispering. "What made him panic?"

"No." The doctor shook his head. "Not panic, it wasn't fear alone, I think. There was something else. We put him through equally critical moments in training, and he didn't panic then. Fear was part of it, but there was something else too."

"Well, what then?"

"I don't know the word. It's something new. Maybe Duport is a new kind of human being. If not fear, call it--love, or desire. He jumped into space because, I think, he wanted to."

"I don't understand that," the pilot said.

"I don't either--yet." Dr. Valdez moved a step closer to the man in the chair. "Rene. Rene Duport."

Without moving his head, Duport opened his eyes.

"Stand up."

Duport got up and stood looking at some point half way between the two men. His eyes no longer glistened.

"It's as if something has gone out of him," the doctor said.

"Do you know who I am?" the pilot asked. Rene Duport turned his head until the pupils of his eyes were pointed at the American's face. But his eyes did not seem to focus on him. Rather they were focused at some point far beyond him.

"Why did you jump?" the pilot said. Moving a step closer, he looked into the blank, dull eyes, that continued looking through him, focused on some strange horizon. The eyes no longer seemed blue, but light grey. The pilot tried to remember where he had seen eyes like that before. Then he remembered one day, years before, when he had looked down into the open eyes of a dead man. He shuddered and turned away.

"If only he would talk," the doctor said.

The pilot had turned his back on Duport. "Why? If he could talk, what would _you_ ask him?"

It was two or three minutes before the doctor answered.

"I would ask him what it feels like to be a star."

And as the two men walked away, Rene Duport remained standing where they left him. He was watching. The pupils of his eyes never shifted, but he was always watching. The Earth, a swollen balloon, floated past his field of vision. Slowly his right arm rose until his arm was horizontal from his shoulder. Then the corners of his mouth lifted in a faint smile, as his fingers touched the Clouds of Magellan.

THE END