One Step From Earth

"We must be absolutely sure," Stan said, looking from one to the other. "I'm no scientist, and I'm not qualified to judge the engineering involved. So when you say that you have done the absolute best possible with the MT I have to take your word for it. But I know something about fatigue. We can go on a lot longer than you think—"

"No!" Nissim said.

"Hear me out. We can get more lifting equipment sent through. We can rest for a couple of days before going back on drugs. We can have rewired units sent through so that Aldo won't have to do the work. There are a lot of things that might be done to help."

"None of those things can help corpses," Aldo said, looking at the bulging arteries in his wrist, throbbing with the pressure needed to force the blood through his body under the multiplied gravity. "The human heart can't work forever under these kind of conditions. There is strain, damage — and then the end."

"You would. be surprised just how strong the heart and the entire human Organism can be."

"Yours, perhaps," Nissim said. "You're trained and fit and we, let's face it, are overweight and underexercised. And closer to death than we have ever been before. I know that I can't hold on any longer, and if you're not going through — then I'm going myself."

"And how about you, Aldo?" Stan said.

"Nissim is speaking for me, too. If it comes to a choice I'll take my chances with the screen rather than face the impossibility of surviving here. I think the odds on the screen are much better."

"Well then," Stan said, struggling his legs off the couch. "There doesn't seem to be very much more to say. I'll see you boys back in the station. It's been good working with you both and we'll all sure have some stories to tell our kids."

Aldo switched to transmit. Stan crawled to the edge of the screen. Smiling, he waved goodby and fell, rather than stepped out onto its surface, and vanished.

The tape emerged instants later and Aldo's hands shook as he fed it to the player.

"… yes, there he is, you two help him! Hello, C. Huygens, Major Brandon has come through and he looks awful, but I guess you know that, I mean he really looks all right. The doctors are with him now, talking to him… just a moment…."

The voice faded to a distant mumble as the speaker put his hand over the microphone, and there was a long wait before he spoke again. When he did his voice was changed.

"… I want to tell you… it's a little difficult. Perhaps I had better put on Dr. Kreer." There was a clatter and a different voice spoke. "Dr. Kreer. We have been examining your pilot. He seems unable to talk, to recognize anyone, although he appears uninjured, no signs of physical trauma. I don't know quite how to say this — but it looks very bad for him. If this is related to the delayed responses in the guinea pig there may be some connection with higher brain function. The major's reflexes test out A-one when allowance is made for fatigue. But the higher capacities — speech, intelligence, they seem to be, well, missing. I therefore order you both not to use the screen until complete tests have been made. And I am afraid I must advise you that there is a good chance that you will have to remain a longer period and make further adjustments.

The end of the tape clicked through and the player turned itself off. The two men looked at each other, horrified, then turned away when their eyes met.

"He's dead," Nissim said. "Worse than dead. What a terrible accident. Yet he seemed so calm and sure of himself…. "

"Gagarin flying his craft into the ground to save some others. What else could he have done? Could we have expected him to panic — like us? We as much as told him to commit suicide."

"You can't accuse us of that, Aldo!"

"Yes I can. We agreed that he had to go first. And we assured him that we were incapable of improving the operation of the machine in our present physical condition."

"Well… that's true."

"Is it?" Nissim looked Aldo squarely in the eyes for the first time. "We are going back to work now, aren't we? We won't go through the MT as it is. So we will work on until we have a good chance of making it — alive."

Aldo returned his gaze, steadily. "I imagine we can do that. And if it is true now — were we really speaking the truth when we said we would have gone through the screen first?"

"That is a very hard question to answer."

"Isn't it, though. And the correct answer is going to be very bard to live with. I think that we can truthfully say that we killed Stan Brandon."

"Not deliberately!"

"No. Which is probably worse. We killed him through our inability to cope with the kind of situation that we had never faced before. He was right. He was the professional and we should have listened to him."

"Hindsight is wonderful stuff. But we could have used a little more foresight."

Aldo shook his head. "I can't bear the thought that he died for absolutely no reason."