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The instructions were understandably vague. He was to try anything and everything to make contact with a drastically changed State, up to and including flashing his attitude jets in binary code. He was to start these procedures a good distance out. It was not impossible that the State would be at war with... something. He should be signaling: NOT A WARSHIP.
He found that he would not be utterly dependent on rescue ships. He could slow the ramship by braking directly into the solar wind until the proton flux was too slow to help him. Then, whip around Sol and back out, slowing on attitude jets, using whatever hydrogen was left in the inboard tank. That was emergency fuel. Given no previous emergencies, a nearly full tank would actually get him to the Moon and land him there.
The State would be through with him once he dropped his last probe. It was good of the State to provide for his return, Corbell thought-and then he shook himself. The State was not altruistic. It wanted the ship back.
Now, more than ever, Corbell wanted a chance at the autopilot computer.
He found one last opportunity to talk to the checker.
"A three-hundred-year round trip-maybe two hundred, ship's time," Corbell said. "I get some advantage from relativity. But, Pierce, you don't really expect me to live two hundred years, do you? With nobody to talk to?"
"The cold-sleep treatment-"
"Even so."
Pierce frowned. "You've been briefed on the cold-sleep procedure, but you haven't studied medicine. I'm told that cold sleep has a rejuvenating effect over long periods. You'll spend perhaps twenty years awake and the rest in cold sleep. The medical facilities are automatic; you've been instructed how to use them. Do you think we'd risk your dying out there between the stars, where it would be impossible to replace you?"
"Was there anything else you wanted to see me about?"
"Yes." He had decided not to broach the subject. Now he changed his mind. "I'd like to take a woman with me. The life-support system would hold two of us. I worked it out. We'd need another cold-sleep chamber, of course."
For two weeks this had been the only man Corbell could talk to. At first he had found Pierce unfathomable, unreadable, almost inhuman. Since then he had learned to read the checker's face to some extent.
Pierce was deciding whether to terminate Jerome Corbell and start over.
It was a close thing. But the State had spent considerable time and effort on Jerome Corbell. It was worth a try. And so Pierce said, "That would take up some space. You would have to share the rest between you. I do not think you would survive."
"But-"
"What we can do is this. We can put the mind of a woman in your computer. The computer is voice-controlled, and her voice would be that of a woman, any type of woman you choose. A subplot enclosing the personality of a woman would leave plenty of circuitry for the computer's vital functions."
"I don't think you quite get the point of-"
"Look here, Corbell. We know you don't need a woman. If you did you would have taken one by now and we would have wiped you and started over. You've lived in the dormitory for two weeks and you have not used the mating facilities once."
"Damn it, Pierce, do you expect me to make love in public? I can't!"
"Exactly."
"But-"
"Corbell, you learned to use the toilet, didn't you? Because you had to. You know what to do with a woman but you are one of those men fortunate enough not to need one. Otherwise you could not be a rammer."
If Corbell had hit the checker then he would have done it knowing that it meant his death. And knowing that, he would have killed Pierce for forcing him to it.
Something like ten seconds elapsed. Pierce watched him in frank curiosity. When he saw Corbell relax he said, "You leave tomorrow. Your training is finished. Good-bye."
Corbell walked away clenching and unclenching his fists.
The dormitory had been a test. He knew it now. Could he cross a narrow bridge with no handrails? Then he was not pathologically afraid of falling. Could he spend two hundred years alone in the cabin of a starship? Then the silent people around him, five above his head, hundreds to either side, must make him markedly uncomfortable. Could he live twenty waking years without a woman? Surely he must be impotent.
He returned to the dorm after di
He stood between two walls of occupied bunks, looking around him. Then he did a stupid thing.
He had already refrained from killing the checker. He must have decided to live. What he did, then, was stupid. He knew it.
He looked about him until he found the slender dark-haired girl with the elfin face watching him curiously from near the ceiling. He climbed the rungs between the bunks until his face was level with hers.
The gesture he needed was a quick, formalized one; but he didn't know it. In English he asked, "Come with me?"
She nodded brightly and followed him down the ladder. By then it seemed to Corbell that the dorm was alive with barely audible voices.
The odd one, the rammer trainee.
Certainly a number of the wakeful turned on their sides to watch.
He felt their eyes on the back of his neck as he zipped open his gray jumpsuit and stepped out of it. The dormitory had been a series of tests. At least two of those eyes would record his doings for Pierce. But to Corbell they were just like all the others, all the eyes curiously watching to see how the speechless one would make out.
And sure enough, he was impotent. It was the eyes, and he was naked. The girl was at first concerned, then pitying. She stroked his cheek in apology or sympathy and then she went away and found someone else.
Corbell lay listening to them, gazing at the bunk above him.
He waited for eight hours. Finally a guard came to take him away. By then he didn't care what they did with him.
V
He didn't start to care until the guard's floating jeep pulled up beneath an enormous .22 cartridge standing on end. Then he began to wonder. It was too small to be a rocket ship.
But it was. They strapped him into a contour couch, one of three in a cabin with a single window. There were the guard, and Corbell, and a man who might have been Pierce's second cousin once removed: the pilot. He had the window.
Corbel's heartbeat quickened. He wondered how it would be.
It was as if he had suddenly become very heavy. He heard no noise except right at the begi
He was heavy and he hadn't slept last night. He went to sleep.
When he woke he was in free-fall. Nobody had tried to tell him anything about free-fall. The guard and pilot were watching.
"Screw you," said Corbell.
It was another test. He got the straps open and pushed himself over to the window. The pilot laughed, caught him and held him while he closed a protective cover over the instruments. Then he let go and Corbell drifted in front of the window.
His belly was revolving eccentrically. His i
Corbell snarled within his mind and tried to concentrate on the window. But the Earth was not visible. Neither was the Moon. Just a lot of stars, bright enough-quite bright, in fact-even more brilliant than they had been above a small boat anchored off Catalina Island on many nights long ago. He watched them for some time.