Part 3
"My God," Banning whispered, "you'd think he'd eaten this way all his life."
"Apathetic," Colin said shortly. "He refuses to admit anything unusual."
"How the hell could he rationalize losing consciousness and waking up in a windowless room?"
Colin shrugged. "Brain's a funny thing," was his only comment. His eyes were fixed intently on the screen. Suddenly Harkins noticed the slip of paper tucked under the corner of one of the dishes.
Colin leaned forward, took his pipe out of his mouth.
Harkins withdrew the paper and looked at it. Even on the screen, Colin could see the writing, almost make out the words.
Harkins stared briefly at the paper, turned it over and looked at the other side in puzzlement. He rubbed the back of his neck and frowned.
Finally he gave a little shrug, put the message back on the tray and resumed eating.
Colin sat heavily back in his chair. He sighed.
"He didn't even see it," Banning said disgustedly.
"He saw the paper, not the message."
"Why?"
"Personal communication. It implies the existence of another communicating--entity. He won't admit it." Colin re-lit his pipe.
"Ah, hell!"
"I guess we'll have to take the direct approach," Colin said thoughtfully.
* * * * *
He lay relaxed on the bed in the little room, his eyes closed, his face calm and quiet. Pulse normal, temperature normal. Above and in the walls recorders and cameras purred almost silently with the bland indifference of omniscience.
_Harkins._
_Yes._
_Can you hear me?_
... _no_ ... The strain of the question twisted the man's face into a grimace of pain.
Pause. Then:
_You are Richard Harkins._
_Yes._
_Colonel...._
_Yes._
_Can you hear me?_
_I.... No._ Anxious contortion. _All right. It's all right._
The man's face returned to relaxation.
_How old are you?_
_Thirty-two._
_Have you always been thirty-two?_
...
_Have you always been thirty-two?_
... _no_ ... Hesitantly.
_You were once younger._
_Yes._
_You were once a child and grew to be a young man and grew to be thirty-two._
... _yes_ ...
_Why do you hesitate?_
_I don't understand all the words you say._
_What words don't you understand?_
_Well--Man._ The expression of pain and anxiety flitted across his relaxed features.
_I will explain the words later. Don't worry about them now._
_All right._
_Richard Harkins, we are going to move back to a time when you were nineteen. You are nineteen years old. You are nineteen._
_How old are you?_
_Nineteen._
_What are you doing?_
_I--I'm a cadet, I--_
_What kind of cadet?_
... _SpaServ_ ...
_All right, now we'll move ahead two years. You are twenty-one years old. Twenty-one. How old are you?_
* * * * *
Gradually Colin brought Harkins forward in time, carefully, feeling his way gingerly along the dark corridors of his mind. He brought him through cadets, graduation, his marriage to Martha (touchy: gently, gently)--his service in the planetary fleet.
Then: a mysterious phrase; rumors--Phoenix Project.
--_nobody seems to know. Something secret, but no telling. Everything's secret this year. Testing officers right and left and up and down. But nobody knows what for...._
... _card waiting for me at breakfast_ ...
Months of testing. Still nobody knows, but the rumors are running fast and heavy. Whole base preoccupied with the misty Phoenix Project. Secret construction hangar, security precautions to the point of absurdity....
... _I'm it!_ ...
... _it's faster-than-light drive, that's what Phoenix Project is. Faster-than-light. The big dream, the dream of the stars_ ...
Training. Slower through the two years of intensive training. This may be a critical phase. Two years, endless repetitive drill, drill practice drill drill drill.... Colin's forehead feels cool as he sits beside the bed. Perspiration. A glance at his watch shows him two hours since they began.
_How did you take to this intensive training?_
_All right. It was all right. Dull, you know, but it was all right generally. After the first year it was pretty automatic. Conditioned response, I didn't have to think. If and when such and such happens, press this button, throw that switch. Automatic._
Automatic, Colin thought. That's why he came back then. Without volition, responding to given signals according to training.
... _walking toward the ship. She's big and bulky, but we're friends by now. Now I'm climbing the ladder up to the lock_ ...
... _listening to the count down ... two ... one ... fire!_ ...
Harkins grunted as the re-lived acceleration slammed him back in the control chair with a relentless and unabating pressure. He was silent for thirty seconds.
... _blacked out, not long. Report in to Gila Base, launching successful. They acknowledge, give me course. I'm moving "up", at right angles to the plane of the ecliptic. Fastest way to get away from large mass bodies_ ...
Time then on atomic rockets, almost a full day. Colin brushed over this phase, which was routine. As far as he could tell, Harkins' duties had been designed principally to keep him from getting bored before it was time to cut in the Skipdrive, and this corresponded with what General Banning had told him.
As he approached the time of the Skip, he moved more slowly, taking in detail.
... _three minute bell. The bell is a pretty sound. I am checking the controls again. Everything is fine. I am sitting down in the control chair with my hands relaxed over the ends of the arms. When my fingers brush against the buttons, they tingle, or seem to. We're all ready. There's the two minute bell_ ...
Pause.
_One minute bell_ ...
Suddenly Harkins sat stiffly upright on the bed. His eyes snapped open, staring with fear and disbelief at something Colin could not see.
_Oh, my God_, he whispered.
_What is it?_
But there was no direct answer. Harkins repeated:
_Oh, my God, my God, my God_ ...
_What do you see? What is there?_
_Oh Jesus the stars the stars the stars God in heaven I can't Jesus make them go make them go make them go_ ...
His voice had risen almost to a scream, his eyes open wide and staring, his body rigid.
With a whimper, he clenched his eyes shut and fell back on the bed. He drew his knees slowly and jerkily up to his chest, as if resisting the movement, clasped his arms around his legs tightly.
He began to rock back and forth, gently, gently, as if immersed in water, his breath making an involuntary whining sound as it passed his constricted throat.
_Move forward in time. Move ahead. You are coming out of the Skip. You are coming out of the Skip. You are returning to normal space._
Colin's voice was steady and calm over the high-pitched whines coming from the throat of the man on the bed. Suddenly his face relaxed. The eyes remained closed, but closed as if in sleep, rather than anguish. His arms and shoulder released their clenched grip around his knees.
Evenly, smoothly, his legs straightened on the bed, his feet digging into the covers and pushing them into a roll at the bottom. He finally lay as he had begun, stretched straight with his hands beside his thighs and his face relaxed. When he spoke, it was in a normal, almost conversational tone.
... _belled out. I like the sound of that bell, it is relaxing. It's a good signal and I'm glad it happens that way. I stand up from the control chair and stretch. I have the strong notion something very pleasant has happened._
_How do you feel? Do you feel strange?_
_No, I feel fine. Everything is fine. I check the instruments, and they show that a Skip has been completed. That's good. I don't--I don't--somehow I can't remember why I wanted to_ ...
His voice broke off, puzzled. Colin waited, and in a minute Harkins began to speak again.
... _hear the sound of the Skipdrive. It comforts me. Funny, I don't remember ever hearing it before_ ...
_Go back before. Go back. You hear the one minute bell. You can hear the one minute bell and you are ready to make your Skip. You are getting ready to make your Skip._
Harkins snapped upright again and repeated his actions. He shouted and screamed, his body was forced into the foetal position jerkily....
_OH GOD THE STARS THE STARS THE STARS_
Whimpering.
_Go forward. You are returning to normal space...._
_I feel fine, everything is fine. I check the instruments_ ...
_Go back...._
There was no lessening.
Colin's shirt was slick on his body with sweat, his face looked old, older, his breath came in almost imperceptible quaverings, but his voice remained calm and assured, in violent and distinct contrast to the strain that showed plainly as age in his face--
_Move ahead...._
_Move back...._
Twenty-three minutes later, Colin closed his eyes and said:
_In ten minutes from this time you will waken feeling refreshed and relaxed, as after a good sleep. You will be alert and fresh when you waken. You will feel as if you have just had a pleasant nap. You will remember nothing of what has happened while you were asleep, but you will feel fresh and relaxed when you waken ten minutes from this time._
He finished the waking-formula mechanically and left the little room. He walked slowly and deliberately to his quarters on the base, as though holding himself rigidly in control. He did not answer Banning's excited questions except to say, "I can't talk about it now."
Reaching his room he fell full length on the bed and was asleep nearly before the swaying of the bed had quieted.
5.
Several hours later he was again in General Banning's office.
"Look," Banning said, "I'm sorry to press this, and I know you took a hell of a beating in there. But we've got to know."
Colin nodded morosely. "I know. I'm sorry about the delay."
"You looked more dead than alive when you came out."
"I'm afraid I'm too long on empathy and too short on objectivity to fool with that kind of thing. One of the reasons I don't often trigger these big discharges in my own practice. I get--inside, I guess, somehow. No detachment, or not enough."
"What was there? Inside, if that's the way you want to put it."
Colin sighed, absently pulled his pipe from his jacket pocket. "Specifically, I don't think I can tell you. He saw--or experienced as seeing--something when he went into the Skip. It was something so damned big it stripped him of his orientation as a human being."
"The films show him assuming a foetal position. That what you mean?"
"Well--basically this kind of regression is a denial of responsibility. 'I'm not a man,' he says. 'I'm just an unborn child. Take care of me.' The individual wants no part of the problems and responsibilities of adulthood. Harkins came out of that, or he never could have got the ship back. But he couldn't face being a man. The only way he could carry out his responsibilities, and survive, was to abolish the category, man."
Colin leaned back and sighed. "You know," he said thoughtfully, "Harkins must be the loneliest human being that ever lived. God!"
After a moment he looked up. "Ever read any Emerson?"
"The philosopher Emerson? No, not much. Some maybe, when I was in college. Why?"
"Nothing in particular. I was just thinking of an essay of his on Nature."
"No, haven't read it. Well," he continued, standing, "where do we go from here?"
"More of the same, I'm afraid. We have to find out what he saw. What was so--immense, that it could make a man deny the existence of other men."
* * * * *
Night came to Gila Base IV; the second night after the _Phoenix I_'s landing. Darkness climbed out of the eastern hills and spread itself upward into the sky and across the plane of the desert. _Phoenix I_ was still on the landing pad, but its sides were hidden by a webwork of gantries and scaffolding as base technicians clambered over it, testing, checking, examining.
Colin insisted on leaving the base, making the twenty-mile drive into town and his home. Banning was too tired to argue about it. He gave the psychiatrist a security gate-pass and went to bed in his own office.
Colin's car buzzed down the wide concrete toward the little cluster of lights that marked Gila City. He slowed when he reached the outskirts, watching the blue glare of the overhead sodium lamps slide along the hood and up over the windshield.
Reaching his apartment, he flicked on the lights and went in. It was a single room, two walls covered with floor-to-ceiling bookcases; there was a desk, one overstuffed chair. Automatically his eyes swept the room with the questioning glance of a man returning home; they lingered apprehensively on the neat stack of unopened mail the cleaning woman had put on the exact corner of the desk. He sighed. No matter how preoccupied a man got, the rest of the world went on just the same.
He went into the little kitchenette and made himself a cup of instant coffee, returned to the main room stirring it absently. He seated himself heavily in the overstuffed chair.
Struck by a sudden thought, he put the coffee down on the edge of his desk and went over to one book-wall. He scanned the multi-colored spines until he found the thin paperback he was looking for. He took it down and went back to the chair. "Nature," the cover said, "by Ralph Waldo Emerson."
Laying the little pamphlet open in his lap, he pulled pipe and tobacco out of his jacket pocket, tamped the bowl full and lit it. He shifted himself easily in the chair, settling himself.
_Our Age is retrospective_, the introduction began. _It builds the sepulchers of the fathers...._
He read on, gliding over the familiar words with a pleasant sense of acquaintanceship, the sense of sharing an idea with a respected friend.
_To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me._
The next line of the essay made him sit up straight in the chair. He read it over twice, then closed the pamphlet and carefully put it back in the bookcase with a vague feeling of having been either betrayed or helped, he couldn't tell which.
As he was turning out the lights to go to bed, his com buzzed. Answering it, he recognized the voice of Banning's secretary.
"Mr. Meany, can you get back to the base right away? Something's happened."
"What is it?" Colin snapped.
"The Colonel has gotten back into _Phoenix I_."
* * * * *
"... understand exactly _how_ it happened," Banning said. "He seemed to be sleeping peacefully, and one of the men went in the room to take out his garbage, for Christ's sake. When the door opened, he made a dash for it."
The two men stood in the control room before the wide window-wall looking out on the landing pad. _Phoenix I_, still surrounded by scaffolding, was brightly lit in the glaring beams of a dozen searchlights playing from the Gila Base buildings and trucks on the field.
"Can he take it off?" Colin asked.
"I don't think so," Banning said. "Sergeant, is there fuel in those tanks?"
"Yes, sir," said one of the men in the group that crowded in front of the window. "But the feed valve is off. It can't get into the firing chambers."
"What would happen if he tried?" Colin asked.
"Nothing," Banning said. "It wouldn't fire. Unless--unless he didn't pay any attention to the board, and left his hotpoints on after he saw it wouldn't fire."
"What are hotpoints?"
"The ignition elements. They'd melt down under continuous heating and--well, then we wouldn't have any more problem. The tanks would go."
"You'd better clear the field," Colin said quietly after a minute. "Sergeant," he said to the radioman, "would you give the _Phoenix_ a 'message coming' beep?"
The radioman did, then said to Colin, "Go ahead."
"Is he receiving?"
"Yes, sir."
"Colonel Harkins," Colin said. "Colonel Harkins, can you hear me?"
The loudspeakers buzzed.
"Colonel Harkins, please reply."
The speakers snapped once. The sound of Harkins' whistle came over, loud at first, then drifting away. He was whistling the same tune as before.
"... _had a true wife but I left her, oh, oh, oh, oh_ ..."
"Do you want her back again?" Banning asked, recognizing the melody.
"Colonel Harkins, please reply," Colin said. Switching the mike off, he turned to Banning. "Better get her," he said. "We may have to go through the whole thing again."
* * * * *
It took twelve minutes by the control clock before they heard the door of the room open, and the light tapping of Martha Harkins' feet. Banning and Colin turned away from the window to greet her.
Suddenly their shadows were thrown violently ahead of them, leaping across the floor and up the opposite wall like frightened animals trying to escape.
They swung back to the window, their words of greeting still unspoken. For perhaps a half second they could make out the upper part of _Phoenix I_, standing above the ugly glare like the nose of a whale thrusting up through a sea of boiling flame. Then it disappeared, and the fire-ball climbed suddenly into the night sky, rolling and twisting in on itself. A gantry tipped and fell out of the flame with ponderous slowness, twisted and melted before it crashed to the pad. Then the unbearable glare died, and the searchlights played on an opaque black column of smoke, redly lit from within, standing where _Phoenix I_ had stood.
The roar that shook the building seemed to come much too late.
* * * * *
Colin slumped disconsolately in the control room, staring blankly out at the clusters of beetle-like trucks clustered around the landing pad, with their feathery antennae caressing the stack of still-burning wreckage. Washed down by the foam trucks, the fire would soon be out. But there would be little advantage to it, except to clear the pad.
"How's Mrs. Harkins?" he asked without turning as he heard footsteps behind him.
"Under sedation," General Banning said. He came to stand beside the psychiatrist, looked with him at the firecrew's activity, so disorganized and insect-like at a distance.
"They'll have it out pretty soon," he said unnecessarily.
"Mm."
Both men were silent. After a while, Colin tamped in fresh tobacco and lit his pipe, sending up cottony puffs of smoke.
"What do we do now?" he said absently.
General Banning sighed.
"See that hangar?" he asked, gesturing to a tall building perhaps a quarter mile away down the edge of the field.
Colin nodded.
"_Phoenix II_," the General said, and his voice was flat and expressionless.
"Send another man into it, knowing no more than we know?"
"We have to know," Banning said. "Men have died before without as good reason."
"I'm going home. Call me if you need me."
Colin stood, and the general made a silent gesture of helplessness. They wouldn't need him. Not until _Phoenix II_ came home. Then they would need him.
Colin spoke, quietly, as if thinking of something else.
"I didn't hear you," Banning said.
"Quoting Emerson. The essay on Nature I mentioned."
"What did he say?"
"'But if a man would be alone,'" Colin quoted, "'let him look at the stars.' Good night, General."
"Good night."
Colin walked outside into the cold desert air. The night was clear and crisp, and the Milky Way hurled itself like a mass of vapor across the sky.
... _if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars_ ...
He looked up, and was alone in the night.