The Complete Short Stories

For the next two hours he worked away steadily in the centre of the great blue disc, mixing up the cement by hand, carrying it across to the crude wooden forms he had lashed together from the timber, smoothing it down so that it formed a six-inch high wall around the perimeter of the bull. He worked without pause, stirring the cement with a tyre lever, scooping it out with a hub-cap prised off one of the wheels.

By the time he finished and drove off, leaving his equipment where it stood, he had completed a thirty-foot-long section of wall.

Four

June 7: Conscious, for the first time, of the brevity of each day. As long as I was awake for over twelve hours I still orientated my time around the meridian, morning and afternoon set their old rhythms. Now, with just over eleven hours of consciousness left, they form a continuous interval, like a length of tape-measure. I can see exactly how much is left on the spool and can do — little to affect the rate at which it unwinds. Spend the time slowly packing away the library; the crates are too heavy to move and lie where they are filled.

Cell count down to 400,000.

Woke 8-10. To sleep 7-15. (Appear to have lost my watch without realizing it, had to drive into town to buy another.)

June 14: 9/2 hours. Time races, flashing past like an expressway. However, the last week of a holiday always goes faster than the first. At the present rate there should be about 4-5 weeks left. This morning I tried to visualize what the last week or so — the final, 3, 2, 1, out — would be like, had a sudden chilling attack of pure fear, unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. Took me half an hour to steady myself for an intravenous.

Kaldren pursues me like my luminescent shadow, chalked up on the gateway ‘96,688,365,498,702’. Should confuse the mail man.

Woke 9-05. To sleep 6-36.

June 19: 8/4 hours. Anderson rang up this morning. I nearly put the phone down on him, but managed to go through the pretence of making the final arrangements. He congratulated me on my stoicism, even used the word ‘heroic’. Don’t feel it. Despair erodes everything — courage, hope, self-discipline, all the better qualities. It’s so damned difficult to sustain that impersonal attitude of passive acceptance implicit in the scientific tradition. I try to think of Galileo before the Inquisition, Freud surmounting the endless pain of his jaw cancer surgery.

Met Kaldren down town, had a long discussion about the Mercury Seven. He’s convinced that they refused to leave the moon deliberately, after the ‘reception party’ waiting for them had put them in the cosmic picture. They were told by the mysterious emissaries from Orion that the exploration of deep space was pointless, that they were too late as the life of the universe is now virtually over!!! According to K. there are Air Force generals who take this nonsense seriously, but I suspect it’s simply an obscure attempt on K. ‘s part to console me.

Must have the phone disconnected. Some contractor keeps calling me up about payment for 50 bags of cement he claims I collected ten days ago. Says he helped me load them on to a truck himself. I did drive Whitby’s pick-up into town but only to get some lead screening. What does he think I’d do with all that cement? Just the ort of irritating thing you don’t expect to hang over your final exit. (Moral: don’t try too hard to forget Eniwetok.)

Woke 9-40. To sleep 4-15.

June 25: 7/2 hours. Kaldren was snooping around the lab again today. Phoned me there, when I answered a recorded voice he’d rigged up rambled out a long string of numbers, like an insane super-Tim. These practical jokes of his get rather wearing. Fairly soon I’ll have to go over and come to terms with him, much as I hate the prospect. Anyway, Miss Mars is a pleasure to look at.

One meal is enough now, topped up with a glucose shot. Sleep is still ‘black’, completely unrefreshing. Last night I took a 16 mm. film of the first three hours, screened it this morning at the lab. The first true horror movie, I looked like a half-animated corpse. Woke 10-25. To sleep 345.

July 3: 53/4 hours. Little done today. Deepening lethargy, dragged myself over to the lab, nearly left the road twice. Concentrated enough to feed the zoo and get the log up to date. Read through the operating manuals Whitby left for the last time, decided on a delivery rate of 40 rontgens/min., target distance of 350 cm. Everything is ready now.

Woke 11-05. To sleep 3-15.

Powers stretched, shifted his head slowly across the pillow, focusing on the shadows cast on to the ceiling by the blind. Then he looked down at his feet, saw Kaldren sitting on the end of the bed, watching him quietly.

‘Hello, doctor,’ he said, putting out his cigarette. ‘Late night? You look tired.’

Powers heaved himself on to one elbow, glanced at his watch. It was just after eleven. For a moment his brain blurred, and he swung his legs around and sat on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, massaging some life into his face.