Jeff Jones has established himself among the finest artist-illustrators of our
field and our time-one whose work we are always pleased to publish. Now
he moves into a new area-the written word. And in one thousand precisely
chosen words he tells a remarkably compressed story. This is Jeff's first
fiction sale-but will surely not be his last.
HANG, suspended, swaying beneath my ballute, swinging as if the hangman
had just released the trapdoor. The universe is all around and below now is
brilliant Venus. I had completed three orbits before the explosion hung the
stars on my arms. Three orbits of precious data which now spirals down
ahead of me toward Venus, the virgin.
And I remember back to Earth and to midnight and to when a ten year old
boy had lay frozen in fear in the night with his first realization that the
universe is all there is. But he'd never told anyone. The terrible secret was
his. He'd never told anyone a lot of things.
I remember the awful quiet, layered between the interruptions of the radio.
The stars blazed like ice beyond the window and Venus was a torch in the
night as my module screamed silently toward its goal. My hands moved
across the panel around me, clicking, thumping, adjusting, like dismembered
parts, trained in some unforgotten skill-roll correct, stabilize pressure, radio
too loud, trajectory check, chronometer read. Man and machine, a
june-bug spinning on a string of gravity, sensing and recording.
The boys had run, yelling and laughing toward the creek. "Last one in's a
a rotten egg!"
The boy had always loved caves. On this day he had sat in his secret one,
huddled among secret thoughts and dreams. He heard the laughter of the
other boys floating in on an unseasonal breeze. But in his darkness he could
not be disturbed. Today he wouldn't be the last one chosen when teams
were picked.
To him caves had been places to hide and forget who were-and to dream
of who you might be and what yo u might do. Caves had been places to be
alone, a million miles from humanity.
INCREASED computer orientation gave me the first one-man spacecraft.
I wasn't really aware of the stars until Earth orbit was broken.
millions, billions-an infinity of stars. What was it Ober had said? "Then
why isn't the night sky as bright as the day?" That was all before the
explosion.
The great unexplored planet Venus is now pushing across most of space.
The stars are blinking out as molecules of atmosphere begin to thicken
around me. Am I sorry for myself? No, I am smiling.
Halfway out from Earth the first touches of an incredible sorrow reached
for me. It was one from the past-one of aloneness and of friends never
made.
I laughed to myself. It was a bitter sound. Here I was, out in space in my
cave. Was I always destined to be a rotten egg? I was alone out here, but
many men had come out into space and at this very moment I was the last.
I could talk to the radio, but it only mocked my aloneness in a wash of
solid-state-static. I guess that's when I started talking to myself.
By the age of ten the stars had become a great mystery in his life. He had
stood on clear summer nights in awe and wonder, staring at the perpetual
sky. It had been one night that summer when he'd decided he belonged out
there, that he would find his destiny out there. And someday he had known
he would go. Out there he would be on his own, a million miles from
humanity.
VENUS loomed beneath on my third orbit. My hands dutifully adjusted,
my mouth recorded, the radio blared, crackled...laughed. Suddenly there
the explosion and I hung among the stars, no longe r in orbit but falling in
with my ballute blooming, multifoliate above, not yet able to cope with
atmospheric displacement. I was falling into the arms of Venus.
The atmosphere is thicker now and the first tendrils of the clouds of
hydrochloric acid are licking up at me. My gossamer suit is all that is
between me and the heat which must have climbed to over 300 degrees K.
The boy of ten had stood beneath the stars trying in vain to see into the
future. He had stood with visions of conquest and adventure swimming
before his eyes. Surely he wouldn't be called a rotten egg then.
I SAT in my ship talking with myself, trying to ward off that sadness which
closed about my head. And I stared at my old friends burning outside my
window.
The static and voices from the radio seemed somehow very alarmed. I
laughed and I laughed at my laugh. Suddenly the radio was quiet. I could
see my arm floating in front of me with a heavy wrench clasped in my
fingers, and the other arm hovering above the manual override. The first
man on Venus. Rertro. Eject. Explosive charge.
I guess it was when my cave began to smell like rotten eggs that I decided
to jump.
Down they had tumbled, cheeks flushed, breath quickened, lazurite
and chocolate eyes laughing, into the moss-slick rocks and cold, dancing
water. He had been the rotten egg, as usual. The others had jeered and
splashed him while holding their noses in mock derision.
I HANG here with the universe strung out all around with
my own string of
gravity, with ever increasing speed, inevitably reeling me in. Venus
is much closer now, the pull of 0.82 mass is beginning to draw my
body out.From this proximity Venus is more than a white ball; the many
densities in the cloud layer and their reflective variances give it a swirling,
mottledeffect. It's like some great, fluid marble surging with fantastic
convections, the values swarming, a time-lapse sky.
| from Amazing Stories october 1974 |
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