The Wanderer

The Wanderer Page 10

Sally Harris and Jake Lesher were on one of the subway trains to be halted and emptied at 42nd Street. The traffic jams had been hopeless and Jake's car was parked in Flatbush. Police helped the guards clear the subway cars and hurry the passengers topside.

"Buy why, but why?" Jake was demanding. "It looks bad."

"No, good," Sally told him. "Bombs, and they'd be herding us down. Besides, here we're near Hugo's penthouse. This is exciting, Jake!"

Emerging, they found Times Square more packed than they'd ever known it to be at three a.m.

Looking west on 42nd Street, they could see the Wanderer still quite high in the sky, with the moon so close they almost touched. On the south side of the street the shadow edge made a swath of motionless yellow people and on their side a swath of purple ones. The electric ads were all going full blast, but paled way down by the supermoon-light.

The Square was quieter than they'd ever known, too, except that just now a man emerged from behind them crying: "Extra! Read all about it! Read all about the new planet!"

Jake traded two bits for a Daily Orbit. Its tabloid front page was a pic of the Wanderer in wet, acrid red and yellow inks and six lines of information anyone could have got by looking at the sky and his watch. The headline was: STRANGE ORB BAFFLES MAN.

"Doesn't baffle me," Sally said in the highest spirits and then, grinning at Jake, "I created it. I put it up there."

"Don't be blasphemous, young woman," a lantern-jawed man admonished her sourly.

"Ha, you think I didn't do it, huh?" she demanded. "I'll show you!" She cleared a place around her with her elbows and tossed Jake her jacket. Then, stabbing a finger successively at Lantern Jaw and at the Wanderer, and next snapping her fingers as she swayed provocatively, she began to sing, in an electrifying contralto and a melody borrowed half-and-half from "Green Door" and "Strange Fruit":

Strange orb!...in the western sky...

Strange light!...streaming from on high...

Don Merriam had ignited the Baba Yaga's jet before he'd strapped down and when the aniline and nitric pumps had barely started to spin. The reason was simple enough: he'd felt the jouncing ship step off the edge.

He'd done everything he could to cut time. He'd blown the ship, letting its air escape in a great puff to clear a direct entry for himself, rather than waiting for the airlock between the fuel and oxidizer tanks to empty and fill. He'd barely dogged the hatches behind him and made only the most perfunctory swipe at the oxygen release lever although he knew his suit oxy was running out  -  and he'd been almost too late at that.

The cold jet fired strongly, however. Lemon-hot molecules streamed out of the Baba Yaga's tail at almost two miles a second, and after a sticky moment she lifted, but sideways rather than up  -  like an old airplane taking off.

Perhaps Don's mistake was in trying to correct at all  -  his present vector would likely have got him into some sort of orbit, perhaps quite efficiently. But he was flying by eye and he didn't like the way white moon crossed by cracks kept bulking so large in the spacescreen, and he knew that the sooner you corrected the less power it took, and he wasn't sure how much fuel and oxidizer he had  -  in fact, he still wasn't quite sure which of the three sister ships he was in  -  and, besides all that, he was probably already quite giddy and illogical from oxygen-lack.

So, careless of the gravity and a half dragging at him, he reached out sideways  -  it was quite a reach: normally it would have been a robot's or copilot's job  -  and slapped the keys to fire three solid-fuel rockets on the side of the ship toward the moon.

The sudden extra, jolt they gave the Baba Yaga was enough to unseat him. Inexorably, but with agonizing slowness, the stick slipped out of his hand and he fell heavily  -  a lot more heavily than he would have on the moon  -  to the floor a dozen feet below, and his helmet smashed against the back of his head, knocking him out.

Ten seconds later, the aniline-nitric jet died, as was the automatic way in these ships when you let go the stick. The solid-fuel rockets had burnt out a fractional second earlier. The correction had been calculated with remarkable accuracy, under the circumstances. The Baba Yaga was mounting almost straight up from Luna with nearly enough kinetic energy to kick free. But, now, Luna's mild gravity was slowing the ship second by second, although the ship was still rising swiftly in free fall and would continue to do so for some time.

Don's helmet lay across the lightly-dogged hatch. A tiny flat jet of white vapor about the size and shape of a calling card was escaping through a fine slit in the view window. Frost formed along the crack.

Barbara Katz said to Knolls Kettering III: "Less than a minute now until contact, Dad." She meant by "contact" the moment the Wanderer would overlap the moon, or the moon the Wanderer, or -

"Excuse me, suh," came a soft deep voice from behind them, "but what's going to happen when they hit?"

Barbara turned. Some light was on at the back of the big house now. It silhouetted a big man in a chauffeur's uniform and two women grouped tightly together. They must have come out very quietly.

From beside her Mr. Kettering said with thin exasperation: "I told you people to go to bed hours ago. You know I don't want you fussing over me."

"Excuse me, suh," the voice persisted, "but everybody's up and outside watching it. Everybody in Palm Beach. Please, suh, what's going to happen when it hit the moon?"

Barbara wanted to speak up and tell the chauffeur and maids many things: that it was the moon that was moving toward the Wanderer, because the telescope's electrically-driven mounting had been set to track the moon across the sky and the moon was now running five diameters ahead of its normal course; that they still didn't know the distance of the Wanderer  -  for one thing, its surface showed no sharp details except its rim, just a velvety yellow or maroon under all magnifications; that bodies in the heavens mostly didn't hit but went into orbit around each other.

But she knew that men  -  even millionaires, presumably  -  like to do the scientific talking; and, besides that, she disliked having to fool around with Palm Beach interracial etiquette.

Then she looked up and saw that the problem had solved itself.

"They're not hitting," she said. "The moon is passing in front of the Wanderer." She added impulsively: "Oh, Dad, I didn't believe it was really out there until now."

There were little gasps from the women.

"The Wanderer?" the chauffeur asked softly.

Knolls Kettering III took over. He said, a bit primly: "The Wanderer is the name Miss Katz and I have selected for the strange planet. Now please go to bed."

Arab Jones called across the roof to Pepe Martinez and High Bundy, who were waltzing together free-style: "Hey, man, look, they mating now! Old Moon going into her like a sperm into a purple egg."

The three interracial weed-brothers had smoked four more prime reefers to celebrate the master-kick of the Wanderer's appearance and they were now high as kites  -  high as orbital radar beacons! But not so high, if one ever is, as to be utterly devoid of reasoning powers, for Pepe exclaimed: "How those square Mexicans must be crossing themselves south of the border, and the brownies dancing down Rio way," while High summed it up with: "Like this, man: kicks has come into the world to stay."

Arab said, his brown face gleaming in the Wanderer's glow: "Let us fold our tent and descend, my sons, and mingle with the terrified populace."

Hunter said to Doc: "The moon has sure thumbtacked it down out there," referring to the plaster-white round standing in front of the Wanderer. "In fact, I'm beginning to wonder  -  remembering the similar triangles, Rudy  -  whether it mayn't be two and a half million miles away and eighty thousand miles across."

"Jupiter come to call, hey?" Doc replied with a chuckle and then immediately demanded of the others: "Well, can anyone point out Jupiter to me elsewhere in the sky right now? Though," he added, "I've got to admit I never heard of a purple aspect for Jupiter or a yellow spot in the form of a giant duck."

"A penguin!" Ann called from behind them.

The two men were part of the little cortege plodding through sand and sea-grass toward the beach gate of Vandenberg Two. The cortege was led by Paul, Margo with Miaow, and Doc. Then came Hunter, the Ramrod, and two other men lugging by its four corners an aluminum cot with folded legs, on which Wanda  -  the fat woman  -  reposed, groaning a little now and then. Beside the cot walked the thin woman, but without her radio, which had been lost in the slide. She talked soothingly to Wanda. The rear guard consisted of Rama Joan, Ann, and Clarence Dodd  -  the Little Man  -  with Ragnarok on leash and nervous.

The aluminum cot was another you-name-it-we-got-it item from the Little Man's station wagon. (Margo had asked him if he had a primus stove and fuel. He had replied, without batting an eyelash: "Yes, I do, but I see no point in taking it with us this time.")

Just after Doc had made his not entirely frivolous suggestion about Jupiter, Rama Joan called out for them all to look at the Wanderer again. They had already noticed considerable changes in the past forty minutes. The duck (or dinosaur) had all its body on the lefthand side of the disk, its head sticking out to the right as if part of a north pole gold-cap. In the new purple area swinging into view there had appeared a large central yellow patch, in shape halfway between an equilateral triangle and a solid capital D.

"See, just after the D," Rama Joan called, "there's a thin black crescent coming. The moon almost hides it."

"That's the shadow of the moon on the new planet!". Doc yelled excitedly after a few freezing seconds. "And if it's any smaller than Luna I can't see the difference. Ross, they can't be more than a few thousand miles apart! Now we know that planet is Earth-size, almost exactly."

"Mommy, does that mean they almost hit each other?" Ann whispered. "Why's Mr. Brecht so happy? Because they missed?"

"Not exactly, dear. He'd probably have enjoyed the spectacle. Mr. Brecht is happy because he likes to know exactly where things are, so he can put his hands on them in the dark."

"Mr. Brecht can't put his hands on the new planet, Mommy."

"No, dear, but now he can put his thoughts there."

Oxyhelium mix gradually filled the cabin of the Baba Yaga from the tank Don Merriam had valved open. Its pressure sealed the inner hatch and opened two doors in Don's helmet. Little fans went on around the cabin, keeping the new air moving in spite of it being in free fall. It pushed into Don's helmet, replacing the foul air there. His features twitched and he shuddered a little. His breathing strengthened and he went into a deep, healthy sleep.

The Baba Yaga reached the top of its trajectory, poised there, then began to fall back toward the moon. As it fell, it tumbled slowly. Every thirty seconds, about, its spacescreen looked at the moon, and fifteen seconds later at Earth. As it tumbled, the dust-filmed spacesuit with Don inside began to move across the floor, rolling very slowly.

The Little Man called ahead to Paul: "I don't mean to impugn your veracity, Mr. Hagbolt, but the Vandenberg Two beach gate seems to be a lot farther away than you led us to believe. Easy, Ragnarok!"

"It's right in front of the blinking red light," Paul told him, wishing he were inwardly as sure of that as he tried to make his voice sound. He added, "I have to admit I underestimated the distance of the light"

"Don't worry, Doddsy. Paul will get us there," Doc pronounced confidently.

The three of them were preparing to relieve Hunter, the Ramrod, and one of the two other men at the three corners of the fat woman's stretcher.

"How are you feeling, Wanda?" the thin woman asked, kneeling by the cot in the sand. "You can have another digitalis."

"A little better," the fat woman murmured, fluttering her eyes open. They rested on the Wanderer. "Oh, my God," she groaned, turning her head away.

The strange orb, inexorably rotating, presented a new aspect. The remains of the dinosaur, or penguin, made a huge yellow C around the lefthand rim of the planet, while the solid yellow D had swung to the center, so that the effect was of D-in-C. The Little Man did another quick sketch, labeling it simply, "Two Hours."

The Wanderer

Ann said, "I think the C is a straw basket on its side and the D a piece of cake with lemon frosting. And the moon is a honeydew melon!"

"I know who's hungry," her mother said.

"Or you can think of the D as the eye of a giant purple needle," Ann quickly pointed out.

The Golden Serpent coils around the Broken Egg, the Ramrod thought. Chaos is hatched.

The moon and its shadow had moved all the way across the planet. There was a feeling of relief when a thread of night-sky appeared between the two orbs.

The man at the fourth corner of the cot, a heavy-faced welder named Ignace Wojtowicz, perhaps just wanting to prolong the rest period, said: "There's one thing I don't get at all. If that's a real planet out there big as Earth, how come we don't feel its gravity pulling at us  -  sort of making us feel lighter, at least."

"For the same reason we don't feel the gravity of the moon or the sun," Hunter answered quickly. "Then, too, although we know the size of the new planet, we have no idea of its mass. Of course," he added, "if it did appear out of hyperspace, there must have been an instant when its gravity field didn't exist for us and then an instant when it did  -  I'm assuming the front of a newly-created gravity field moves out at the speed of light  -  but apparently there were no transition effects."

"That we noticed," Doc amended. "Incidentally, Ross, what's this casting doubt on my emergence-from-hyperspace theory? Where else could the thing have come from?"

"It might have approached the solar system camouflaged or somehow blacked-out," Hunter asserted. "We should consider all the improbabilities. Your own philosophy back at you, Rudy."

"Humph," Doc commented. "No, I think what Paul told us about twist fields in the star photos tips the scales toward Brecht's Hyperspace Hypothesis. And it would have had to have its gravity blacked out too, I'd think, by your theory. Incidentally, I imagine we already can deduce something about the planet's mass. It's now seven minutes past one, Pacific Standard Time," he said, glancing at his wrist "About two hours since the new planet appeared."

'Two hours and five minutes," the Little Man inserted.

"You're a pearl, Doddsy. Everybody engrave that eleven-oh-two P.S.T. on their memories  -  some day your grandchildren may ask you to tell them the exact time you saw Mrs. Monster pop out of hyperspace. But anyway, at one a.m. the full moon ought to be past her highest in the sky, an hour toward setting. I judge she's definitely east of that point, still near her highest. About three or four degrees east, I'd say  -  six or eight moon diameters. Which would mean that the gravitational pull of the emergent planet has speeded up the moon in her orbit Ergo, the newcomer is no lightweight."

"Wow," Wojtowicz said appreciatively. "Just how much speed-up is that, Doc, figuring like the moon's a rocket?"

"Why, from two-thirds of a mile to a second to..." Doc hesitated, then said, as if incredulous of his own figures: "to four or more miles a second."

He and Hunter looked at each other.

"Wow," Wojtowicz repeated. "But now I take it, Doc, the moon keeps on in her old orbit, just speeded up a lot? Maybe a month every week, huh?" The black isthmus between moon and planet had widened a little while they'd been speaking.

"I think we'd better be getting a move on, ourselves," Doc said in an oddly distant way, stooping for his corner of the cot.

"Right," Hunter seconded brusquely.

Great rotary pumps surged, moving water to the port side of the "Prince Charles" to compensate for the weight of the passengers and crewmen lining the starboard rails and crowding the starboard portholes to watch the Wanderer and the moon set in the Atlantic, while dawn paled the sky behind them unnoticed. The thickness of Earth's atmosphere had turned the purple of the planet red and its gold orange. Its wake across the calm sea was spectacular.

The radio engineer of the atom-liner reported to Captain Sithwise a very unusual and growing amount of static.

Don Guillermo Walker managed to land his airplane on the south end of Lake Nicaragua near the mouth of the San Juan River, despite the broken left aileron and the half-dozen holes struck or burnt through the wings by chunks of red-hot pumice. What the devil, the big rock had missed him!

The volcano on Ometepe was now joined by its brother peak, Madera, and they were sending twin ruddy pillars skyward almost fifty miles northwest. And now, passing all expectation on such a crazy opening night, he saw wink on, scarcely a mile away, the twin red flares the Araiza brothers had promised would guide him to the launch. Caramba, que fidelidadl He'd never accuse another Latin American of frivolity or faithlessness.

Suddenly the reflection of the Wanderer in the black lake shattered toward him. He saw the sinister water formations, like low wide steps, approaching him. Barely in time, he headed the plane around into them. The old Seabee mounted the first successfully, though with a great heave and splash. Earthquake or landslide waves!