Iterations and other stories (collection)

I kicked off the ground, sailing toward the communication station next to the access tube that used to lead to the starship. Tadders managed to turn around without killing herself and she flew there alongside me.

A sizable crowd had already gathered by the time we arrived.

“What does the message say?” I asked the person closest to the computer monitor.

He looked at me in irritation; the ancient computer had displayed the text, naturally enough, in the ancient script, and few besides me could understand that. He moved aside and I consulted the screen, reading aloud for the benefit of everyone.

“It says, ‘Greetings! We have arrived safely at Dirt.’ ”

The crowd broke into cheers and applause. I couldn’t help reading ahead a bit while waiting or them to quiet down, so I was already misty-eyed when I continued. “It goes on to say, ‘Tell Rodal and Delar that they have a grandson; we’ve named him Madar.’ ”

My wife had passed on some time ago—but she would have been delighted at the choice of Madar; that had been her father’s name.

“ ‘Dirt is beautiful, full of plants and huge bodies of water,’ ” I read. “ ‘And there are other human beings living here. It seems those people interested in technology moved to the Dyson sphere, but a small group who preferred a pastoral lifestyle stayed on the homeworld. We’re mastering their language—it’s deviated a fair bit from the one in the ancient texts—and are already great friends with them.’ ”

“Amazing,” said Doc Tadders.

I smiled at her, wiped my eyes, then went on: “ ‘We will send much more information later, but we can clear up at least one enduring mystery right now.’ ” I grinned as I read the next part. “ ‘Chickens can’t fly here. Apparently, just because you have wings doesn’t mean you were meant to fly.’ ”

That was the end of the message. I looked up at the dark sky, wishing I could make out Sol, or any star. “And just because you don’t have wings,” I said, thinking of my son and his wife and my grandchild, far, far away, “doesn’t mean you weren’t.”

Above It All

Winner of the CompuServe SF&F Forum’s HOMer Award for Best Short Story of the Year

Author’s Introduction

The first anthology Edward E. Kramer invited me to write for was Dante’s Disciples, which he co-edited with Peter Crowther; it was a book about literal or figurative encounters with the devil. “Ed,” I’d said upon receiving the invitation, “I’m a hard-SF writer—I don’t know anything about any devil.” But Ed said, “Why not try something set aboard a spaceship?”—and from that suggestion this story was born.

“Above It All” turned out to be a rather controversial tale, since many read it as a condemnation of the space program (although I did get a wonderful fan letter praising it from someone at NASA); if it is a condemnation, I think “The Shoulders of Giants” (the last story in this book) more than makes up for it.

* * *

Rhymes with fear.

The words echoed in Colonel Paul Rackham’s head as he floated in Discovery’s airlock, the bulky Manned Maneuvering Unit clamped to his back. Air was being pumped out; cold vacuum was forming around him.

Rhymes with fear.

He should have said no, should have let McGovern or one of the others take the spacewalk instead. But Houston had suggested that Rackham do it, and to demur he’d have needed to state a reason.

Just a dead body, he told himself. Nothing to be afraid of.

There was a time when a military man couldn’t have avoided seeing death—but Rackham had just been finishing high school during Desert Storm. Sure, as a test pilot, he’d watched colleagues die in crashes, but he’d never actually seen the bodies. And when his mother passed on, she’d had a closed casket. His choice, that, made without hesitation the moment the funeral director had asked him—his father, still in a nursing home, had been in no condition to make the arrangements.

Rackham was wearing liquid-cooling long johns beneath his spacesuit, tubes circulating water around him to remove excess body heat. He shuddered, and the tubes moved in unison, like a hundred serpents writhing.

He checked the barometer, saw that the lock’s pressure had dropped below 0.2 psi—just a trace of atmosphere left. He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to calm himself, then reached out a gloved hand and turned the actuator that opened the outer circular hatch. “I’m leaving the airlock,” he said. He was wearing the standard “Snoopy Ears” communications carrier, which covered most of his head beneath the space helmet. Two thin microphones protruded in front of his mouth.

“Copy that, Paul,” said McGovern, up in the shuttle’s cockpit. “Good luck.”