Title: Far enough to touch
Author: Bartholomew, Stephen
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Far enough to touch" ***


                          far enough to touch

                        By STEPHEN BARTHOLOMEW

                       Illustrated by SCHELLING

          _Rene Duport was the quiet member of the moonship's
          crew. So quiet that it took several minutes before
         anyone noticed that he jumped overboard--into space._

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                    Amazing Stories December 1962.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


The ship had a crew of six, and Rene Duport was the youngest. The
pilot, who held the rank of lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force
and Master Pilot in the United Nations Space Corps, was one of the two
Americans aboard. The co-pilot was Russian, the navigator a Finn, the
engineer an African, and the research observer was the other American.
Rene Duport was a Belgian, and he was the radioman, and the youngest
ever to go to the Moon.

It had been a routine flight since the ship had lifted from the lunar
surface. In a little less than six hours they were due to enter parking
orbit. Twelve hours later, with a minimum of luck, the ferry ship would
dive to its landing area near the Marianas, and the six crew members
would be once again on Ground. Rather, they would be floating in the
middle of the Pacific Ocean, but that was far more solid than space.
All the Earth was sacred Ground to them, including the sea. Each of
them anticipated the moment when they would scoop salt water up in
their hands and fling their oxygen masks into the depths and raise
their faces to the burning ocean sun, yet they tried not to think of
the moment, they kept it in the backs of their minds, as if thinking of
it consciously could bring bad luck.

All except Rene Duport, who was nineteen years old, and the youngest
ever to enter space. He had loved it out there, on the Moon, and he
loved being here in the ship. He wanted to go back out again, and he
was the only one of the six who was reluctant to return to Ground.
Perhaps if the spacemedics had known of this unnatural--almost
inhuman--state of Rene Duport's mind, they would never have let him go
out. Then again, perhaps he was one of a new breed of men, born under
new signs in the Zodiac, the signs of Gagarin and Glenn, equipped with
a kind of mind and soul never known before. He was the only one of the
six who did not want to go Home.

       *       *       *       *       *

The American pilot turned to mutter something to his Russian co-pilot,
seated next to him at the front of the ship. The Russian nodded and
adjusted a dial. By formal agreement the crew spoke in French between
themselves. But the pilot's accent was bad, and Duport would have
preferred to talk to him in English. He could not help smiling to
himself whenever the American said something. Frowning, Duport moved
his headphone slightly and changed the frequency of his receiver. The
Azores tracking station had begun to fade with the rotation of the
Earth, but he had no trouble picking up Hawaii. He wrote down the
latest fix and passed the slip of paper forward to the navigator. He
switched on his transmitter to give Hawaii an acknowledgement.

Forward, the American pilot heard Duport speaking to Hawaii. _This is
the moonship_ Prospero _acknowledging transmission_.... The American
pilot did not like using French either. He would have preferred
speaking English or Russian. There was something poetic about French.
The phrase _bateau du lune_, moonship, always gave him a quiver. It
made him think of some kind of ghost ship, with a moss-covered hull
and gossamer sails, floating silently in a midnight sky. There was
something--fragile about the language, especially as Duport spoke it in
his smooth, pure accents.

The American glanced into a mirror that gave him a view of the cabin
behind him. Duport sat by himself at the extreme rear of the cabin, the
radio console hiding most of his body. The headphones and mike covered
most of his face, so that only his nose and eyes were visible. His eyes
were light blue and seemed to glisten, unnaturally bright, as if the
boy had been taking some kind of drug. He was only nineteen years old.
The pilot had had misgivings about Duport from the beginning when the
crew was first formed. It wasn't only his youth, he didn't quite know
what it was. There was something about Duport, something deep in his
personality that he did not _trust_. But he did not know how to name it.

Still, Duport had functioned all right so far. And the Selection
Board should know its business. The crew had been chosen, as usual,
by competitive examination, and if there was any flaw in Duport's
character it would have turned up sometime during the six-month
training period. Probably Duport was as good as any of them. He had
been a child prodigy, he'd taken his Master's in physics at the age of
seventeen. He knew as much as any of them, and he had made no mistakes
so far.

Still, the American remembered the first time he had seen Duport. It
had been right after the Selection Board published the crew list. Out
of the two hundred who finished the training program, the Board had
given Duport highest rating. He was not only the youngest ever to enter
space, he was the only crew-member of the _Prospero_ who had never been
in space before, except of course for the ballistic shoots which were
part of training. The American himself had been aboard the _Quixote_
on the first moonshot directed by the U.N. Space Corps. Then they had
built the _Prospero_, and he had piloted it on its shakedown cruise
in orbit. And the Board had chosen him to fly the ship on its first
trip to the Moon. Altogether, it was the fourth shot of the U.N. Space
Corps, and the second time he had been on the Moon. He, the American,
was the veteran, he had spent more hours in space than any other human
being alive.

       *       *       *       *       *

And he remembered the first time he had seen Duport. The veteran and
the kid. He had met him in the briefing room at the launching site at
Christmas Island. The veteran had been studying a thrust table, and the
kid had come into the room, half an hour early for the first briefing.
The American did not hear him come in. He looked up from his desk, and
there he was, Duport, standing at attention in his blue Corps uniform
with the silver sunburst in his lapel, indicating active commission.

"Christ!" the American had burst out, forgetting himself and speaking
in English. "Are you Duport? They told me you were young...." He
already knew each of the other crewmen.

"Yes sir," Duport answered in English. "I'm afraid I am rather young.
Corpsman Duport reports for briefing, sir. I just arrived on the island
an hour ago."

The American recovered himself. He leaned back in his chair to study
the boy. He was blond and had light blue eyes that glittered, and he
looked like a high school kid.

"_Eh bien, parlons francais_," the American said at last. "Sorry,
Duport, I didn't mean to offend you. It's just that it was a shock....
Why are you smiling like that?"

"Nothing, sir." Duport's mouth straightened itself out.

"What do you mean _rien_? No, tell me, Duport. You should know by now
that the Corpsman's first law is that we tell each other what's on our
minds. If we're going to be sealed up together in a tin can for two
weeks...."

"I'm sorry sir, it was your accent. I found it amusing."

"Oh, that. You're not the first one. _Eh bien._ Have you been assigned
quarters yet, Duport?"

"No, sir."

"I'll see to it myself after the briefing. You'll find conditions
are rather primitive on the island, but you won't be here long. The
ferryboat leaves in six days."

"Yes, sir."

The American was fascinated by Duport's eyes, their unnatural, bright
glaze. The boy never seemed to blink. He yet stood at attention,
looking down at the older man with unshifting eyes.

"Stand at ease, Duport. As long as you're early, we might as well start
the briefing now." On an impulse, he went to the projection screen and
touched a switch which flashed on a photomap of the lunar landing area.
He pointed to a particular object which was visible only because of the
long shadow it cast.

"As you are well aware, Duport, the research station is here, near
the center of the Crater of Copernicus. The three trips so far by
the _Quixote_ have been sufficient to set up the dome and to land
enough equipment to keep the colony independent for several months if
necessary. So far, there aren't any men there. That's our job, the
_Prospero's_. We're going to have five passengers with us, research
scientists, I haven't met them yet. All I know about them is that one
is American and one Russian. Our job is to get them into the station,
alive, and then bring back the ship. What they do up there afterward
is none of our business."

"Yes, sir," Duport answered, still at attention. "I have already been
told this."

"Yes, I haven't told you anything that you don't already know. And of
course you also know that the bottom of Copernicus Crater, like all
other flat areas on the Moon, is a kilometer deep with nearly molecular
dust, micrometorite residue. You know that before the first landing by
the _Quixote_, it was necessary to explode a hydrogen bomb in order to
fuse the surface of the dust into a thick crust of glass, in order to
get a stable landing stage." The American paused, turned away from the
photomap, and looked at Duport again.

"Yes sir."

       *       *       *       *       *

"But something you don't know is that certain automatic instruments
left at the station by the _Quixote_ have given an indication that this
landing crust was weakened by the last lift-off. The instruments may be
wrong, or they may be right. We're going to find out."

"I--see."

"Yes." The veteran leaned against the wall and looked at the boy's
eyes. "The _Quixote_ is a heavy ship, and the _Prospero_ is heavier.
We're going to have to set her down easy. _Very_ easy. That crust is
hard, but thin. You know what will happen if the ship breaks through.
The rocket nozzles will clog with dust, and the ship will sink to the
cabin bubble. We'll be stuck on the Moon."

"Yes sir," was all that Duport said.

"Yes _sir_! The point is, Duport, that every member of the crew
is going to have to function as part of the machine, the radioman
included. The slightest error could be crucial on this one. You're
going to have to leave your nerves behind. Once we set her down, we
should be all right. But I hope to God your training program has really
got you ready for this."

"I know it has, sir." Duport stood there, silent, at attention, perhaps
waiting for something else. But the American did not know what else
to tell him. He was trying to figure Duport out. Even then he had
a feeling that there was something about the boy that was _wrong_.
Something he could not understand. He stared at his cold blue eyes.

At last Duport said, "Once the research station really gets going, the
results should be magnificent, sir."

The American moved away. "Yes, but don't be naive, Duport. Don't
believe what you read in the papers. The real reason for the
station--the reason for the U.N. Space Corps--is practical politics.
If the Corps didn't exist, the U.S. and Russia would go to the Moon
separately. And neither side would tell the other what they were doing
there. A joint effort is the only way to make sure that nobody plants
missiles up there. Science is secondary. We're like two gunmen afraid
to turn our backs on each other."

"Yes sir, of course you are right," Duport said. And as the American
moved toward the desk he glanced back at Duport and saw the boy staring
at the lunar photomap, his eyes coldly reflecting light. The muscles
of his jaw were working visibly, slowly tightening and then relaxing
again. It was as if he were trying to memorize every detail of the map.

       *       *       *       *       *

And thinking back on that day, the American pilot wondered if he were
any closer to understanding Duport. Suddenly he thought he was. For the
first time he thought about the way the muscles of Duport's jaw moved.
He had never really considered that before. The brightness of the boy's
eyes had always distracted his attention. He looked into the mirror
again, at Duport seated by himself at the rear of the cabin, bowed over
his console and listening to his headphones. The pilot could see only
part of Duport's left lower jaw. But yes, the muscles were working.
Slowly they contracted until they stood out like knots, then slowly
relaxed again.

_Nerves_, that was the word. Now the pilot knew what name to give it.
Why hadn't he seen it before? Duport seemed cold, efficient, the pilot
thought, always he seemed to function like part of the machine, part of
the ship. But always the muscles of his jaw were working, and the shine
of his eyes kept you from looking at his mouth, kept you from noticing
the one sign that Duport had a nervous system. The pilot saw that under
Duport's cool, steady surface, the boy was wound to nearly the snapping
point, to the uttermost limit of his nervous system's tensile strength.
It was his nerves that gave Duport his machinelike efficiency, his
quick response time, his endurance. As long as he kept them under
control. It was his nerves, too, that made his eyes glitter, like the
eyes of a madman masquerading as sane. Why hadn't the medics ever seen
it? The pilot wondered what would happen if Duport ever, for a moment,
were to forget himself and lose control of his nerves.

Well, the boy had lasted this far. During the tense moments of the
lunar touchdown he hadn't cracked. He had responded to orders as if he
were an electric relay. He had done his job. It had turned out that the
landing crust was not weakened after all, but none of them had known
that then. Duport had passed that test. Perhaps, the pilot thought, he
was wrong about Duport, perhaps he was really what he seemed to be,
cool and nerveless. At any rate, he would tell his suspicions to the
medics, back on Ground. Time enough, he thought, time enough.

       *       *       *       *       *

The research observer, the other American in the crew, had been busy
taking pictures for several hours. He straightened from his camera
sight, rubbed at his eyes, and stretched.

"When we hit that ocean," he said in English, "I'm going to break out
the raft, strip naked, and go for a swim, sharks or no...."

"_Ta geule_," someone said, "shut up."

The observer looked around, embarrassed at what he'd said. It was as if
they were all superstitious, as if talking about Ground, even thinking
about it, would bring bad luck. Each of them would have denied this
hotly. But for a moment the observer looked as if he would have knocked
on wood, had there been a piece of wood in the ship. After a minute the
observer pulled out some processed film plates and began examining them
through a lens.

Rene Duport had looked up from his radio console. There was nothing for
him to do at the moment. He thought that he would have liked to be in
the observer's place, or the navigator's, able to look through one of
the periscopes directly into deep space. He had loved the Moon, he had
loved to suit up and walk out onto the lunar dust and look upward at
the sky, at the stars that did not flicker, at the Magellanic Clouds,
close enough to touch. But even there, on the surface of the Moon, he
had always been standing on something. He thought of the vacuum that
was all around the ship, on every side, just beyond the hull, just
beyond the escape hatch behind his back. He wondered what it would
be like to look directly into space, standing on nothing, to see not
merely a dome of stars, but an entire sphere of them, bright and
unblinking. All his life he had wanted to go into space, and all his
life he had known that he would. Now he did not want to go back, he
wished that he could leave the Earth forever.

The research observer leaned toward the African engineer and began
discussing one of the film plates with him. Rene Duport listened to
them, only half interested. He thought that the African and the Russian
were the only crewmen besides himself who could speak French without
sounding ridiculous.

He saw the pilot abruptly bend over the control panel and make an
adjustment. He said something to the Russian that Duport did not catch,
the Russian co-pilot nodded and began turning a knob slowly, his eyes
on a vernier dial. For several minutes the American and the Russian
worked steadily at the controls, frequently glancing at each other.
Once the Russian rose to open an access plate in the overhead and
inspect some wiring, then he strapped himself in again and continued
working his controls. The engineer left his seat and pulled himself
forward to begin talking to the pilot in low tone. After a minute the
engineer opened a technical manual and began reading off a series of
numbers.

The research observer was watching a dial on the cabin wall.

"She's heating up," he said.

Then Rene Duport noticed it. The cabin temperature had risen during the
last few minutes, already he was beginning to sweat profusely.

"_C'est trop_," the Russian said. It's too much.

The pilot turned to look back at his crew. "Pile's overheating," he
said. "I'm going to blow the cabin pressure so we won't roast. Suit
up."

       *       *       *       *       *

Everyone sealed their helmets and plugged into their air supplies. In a
few seconds they had each pressurized and tested their suits. The pilot
reached for a red lever, and then there was a quick hissing sound that
lasted only for a moment.

Rene Duport waited, wondering what was going to happen. Nothing like
this had ever happened to the _Quixote_. And the _Prospero_ followed
the other ship's general design, so that it shouldn't be happening to
her either. Both ships used water as a reaction mass, superheated by a
nuclear pile, which was separated from the cabin bubble and attached
to it only by steel girders. Duport knew what would happen if the
overheating didn't stop. Either the pile would blow like a bomb, or
those girders would continue conducting heat into the cabin until the
cabin walls turned red hot and then melted. Blowing the cabin pressure
could only keep the crew from roasting for a few minutes. Perhaps some
damping rods had blown out; whatever it was, Duport knew the pile was
heating fast.

Over the intercom, Duport could hear the co-pilot muttering, "_Trop
vite! Trop vite!_" Too fast, too fast.

"She's going to blow," someone else said.

There was a silence that lasted several seconds. Everyone waited.

Then the pilot said, "No good. I'll have to eject."

But Duport did not hear that.

When the temperature was down to normal, the pilot reached for a valve
to begin pressurizing. But a safety device prevented the valve from
operating, and he looked around to see why. "Christ!" his voice came
over the intercom. "He jumped!"

The rest of the crew turned their heads to look toward the rear of the
cabin. The escape hatch behind Duport's seat was open, and Duport was
gone.

       *       *       *       *       *

"But why did he do it?" The research observer lounged against the aft
bulkhead, he had been watching a chess game between the Russian and
the Finn. The _Prospero_ was in orbit, there was little to do now but
wait for the ferry ship to lift off from Christmas Island and make
rendezvous. After the pilot had ejected the nuclear fuel, the ship had
of course simply coasted into orbit. With no power left for course
correction, it was not a good orbit, but it was close enough for the
ferry to reach. There was nothing to do now but wait, and play chess.
The research observer shook his head. "It was stupid, there was no
reason. Why did he go out the hatch like that?"

The pilot was tired. He rubbed his face with both hands. He did not
want to have to think about it. He looked at the other American's face.

"Nerves. He lost his nerve, that's all."

The research observer watched the Finn capture one of the Russian's
rooks with a knight.

"He jumped out of the ship." It was as if he were trying to convince
himself that it had really happened. "Why did he do it? I can't figure
it out."

The pilot covered his eyes. "Call it cowardice if you like. Or panic.
The kid chickened out."

       *       *       *       *       *

Then they were in the ferry ship, waiting for the engineers to finish
inspecting the _Prospero_ before casting off and going into a re-entry
spiral, towards the Pacific landing area. Meanwhile, the medic had
finished his preliminary physical of each of the crew. Most of the men
rested quietly, reading newspapers and waiting. The American pilot
had strapped himself to one of the crash couches and taken a short
nap. Then he got up to look through a periscope at the three engineers
working near the _Prospero's_ power tank.

The ferry ship's radioman, a young Englishman, tapped him on the
shoulder. The pilot turned away from the eyepiece, and his face was
drawn and white.

"They've picked up his track," the radioman said.

"What?"

The radioman handed the pilot a piece of paper. "Just got the news. His
suit transmitter, the beacon's working. The station at Leningrad picked
up the signal, they're going to compute his orbit."

It was a few seconds before the American understood what he was talking
about.

"Duport, you mean? They're tracking him?" He hesitated. "But why? Why
are they computing his orbit?"

The Englishman grinned. "They're going to try to pick him up. Rescue
him, you know."

The American stared.

"Be a few hours before they have an exact plot," the radioman went on.
"The rough estimate is that they'll be ready to launch within forty-six
hours. They're going to send up the _Wabash Cannonball_. If his beacon
keeps operating, there's a fifty-fifty chance they'll catch him. Just
thought you'd want to know, sir. You may not have lost a Corpsman after
all." The Englishman turned to go back to his post, and the American
stared at his back as he moved away.

"Why?" he whispered. "_Why?_" The pilot did some rough calculations in
his head. He remembered the ship's approximate position and velocity
at the time that Duport had jumped. Duport's body would of course have
about the same orbital velocity as that of the ship, though the impetus
of his leap would have been enough to carry him into some completely
different direction. Somewhere out there Duport was swinging around the
Earth in a wide, elliptical orbit. For some reason it had not occurred
to the pilot that he might still be alive. Since the moment that he
had turned and seen the open hatch he had been thinking of Duport as
a casualty, already dead. But in fact, the American realized, Duport
was probably still alive. His suit was equipped for just this kind of
emergency; it had an oxygen regenerating system that could supply him
with air to breathe as long as the photocells kept his battery charged.
The catch was that no one had ever lived in a suit before for more than
twelve hours at a stretch. Six hours was considered the normal safety
limit. In theory the suit would keep Duport alive until he died of
thirst or starvation. In theory.

But why were they going to try to rescue him? It made no sense. The
_Wabash Cannonball_ was the smallest ship in the Space Corps' fleet.
It carried a crew of two, and was used for ferrying small cargoes into
orbit. If she left behind her reserve oxygen tanks and emergency
equipment, it should be possible to reduce her weight load sufficiently
to get her into an orbit as high as Duport was. Then there was perhaps
one chance in ten of getting him down alive. No doubt the Corps Center
had decided to send the _Cannonball_ up because it would involve the
least possible fuel expenditure. But the operation would still cost
close to half a million dollars, to say nothing of the risk to the
ship and crew. Nothing of the kind had ever been done, or attempted,
before. Why had the Corps decided to gamble two lives on a long chance
of saving one?

Suddenly the American felt an intense, irrational hatred of Duport. If
his suit beacon was operating, it could only be because he had turned
it on. Why hadn't he left it off, rather than risk the lives of others
to save his own hide? He had jumped ship. They ought to leave him
there, the pilot thought.

       *       *       *       *       *

The ferry ship broke atmosphere, her heat shield and fins glowing
red. She fell to an altitude of ten thousand feet before her velocity
fell to a little less than two thousand miles per hour. Then the
collapsible wing unfolded like the wing of a moth, it was half wing,
half parachute. The ship glided toward the sea.

It struck the water with an explosion of spray, dived under, bobbed to
the surface again, rolling like a porpoise. Someone opened a hatch and
climbed out onto the hull. Ten minutes later, the helicopter appeared.

Back at Christmas Island, the American pilot was still asking why. He
asked it of Dr. Valdez, a grey-haired man, chief of the spacemedic team.

"You're right," Dr. Valdez said. He was sitting in a chair on the
veranda of the infirmary, hands folded behind his head, looking out to
sea. "The Center did ask my advice on this matter. I told them what I
thought the odds were against a successful rescue operation. I also
told them that, for scientific reasons alone, I thought it was worth
attempting."

"But why?" The American looked down at him.

Dr. Valdez looked at the sea. "It is now just about twenty-four hours
since Duport jumped into space. His beacon is still operating, and
the orbital plot has been completed. The rescue ship will launch in
about thirty hours from now. Estimating six hours between lift-off and
rendezvous, this means that Duport will have been alone in space for a
total of about sixty hours. Two and a half days."

The American said nothing, waiting for him to go on.

"Think of him up there." Dr. Valdez closed his eyes. "Completely alone.
Total silence except for the sound of his own breathing. He sees
nothing but stars, intensely bright, above him, beneath his feet, on
all sides, the silver smear of the Milky Way, the Clouds of Magellan,
the nebulae. The Earth is a great, swollen balloon that swings past
his field of vision now and then, the Moon a smaller bubble. Without
a reference point there is no sense of depth, no perspective. He can
reach out and touch the stars. He swings in space, beyond time and
distance, completely alone."

"So what?" the pilot said at last.

Dr. Valdez straightened in his chair and leaned his elbows on his knees.

"So there are some things we--I--would like to know. I'd like to know
what is happening to him, out there. What he has seen, perhaps heard.
The effects on his body, if any. Above all, the effect on his mind.
No human being has ever experienced anything like it before. There's
something else I'd like to know. We worked with him for nearly a year.
He finished with the highest rating in his class. We never would have
sent him out if we hadn't been sure about him. But somewhere we made a
mistake, there was something we failed to see. I'd like to know what
made him jump."

This time the American looked out to sea. He was silent.

The doctor took out an old briar pipe and began filling it from a
leather pouch. "Strange. His radio beacon is functioning normally.
There's no reason why his transmitter and receiver shouldn't be
working too. Yet we've been trying to contact him by means of voice
communication, and he doesn't answer. Maybe he's dead already. There's
no way to tell."

"Do you think he's worth saving?" the pilot asked after a minute.

"I'd like to know why he jumped."

       *       *       *       *       *

In the briefing room, the American listened intently to the sounds
coming from the speaker. Dr. Valdez and the other members of the
_Prospero's_ crew also listened. Dr. Valdez listened with his eyes
closed, drawing slowly on his pipe.

"Orbital ship _Wabash Cannonball_ acknowledging Azores transmission,"
the voice said. "Our condition is still AOK, repeat, condition is still
normal. We are still tracking survival beacon. Range, 10,000 kilometers
and closing." There was another burst of radio noise that momentarily
drowned out the voice. The men in the briefing room had been listening
for nearly six hours now. Occasionally one of them would go out for
coffee or fresh air, but he always returned within a few minutes. The
American pilot had not moved from his place since lift-off. Outside, it
had begun to rain.

At last, the critical moment came.

"Range is now five hundred kilometers and closing," the voice said. "I
now have a visual sight. Repeat. I have a visual sight. I can see him.
Switching from computer to manual control." Several minutes of silence.
The pilot was jockeying closer to Duport, making delicate adjustments
in his ship's orbital path. He had a small target. A single wrong
judgement could cause him to drift hundreds of kilometers off course,
wasting a critical amount of fuel.

At last the report came, "Range is now five hundred meters. We
are suiting up and blowing cabin pressure. Stand by for further
transmission." Ten minutes passed. The crew was too busy to broadcast
now. The rain drummed softly on the roof of the briefing room and ran
in slow curtains down the windowpanes.

Finally the voice came on the air again.

"Orbital ship _Wabash Cannonball_ resuming transmission. Rescue
operation is successful. Repeat, operation is successful. We have him
aboard. He's alive."

The American pilot looked up at the faces around him. Dr. Valdez was
rubbing his mouth thoughtfully. The other men stared at the speaker
with blank looks. The American noted that no one was cheering.

       *       *       *       *       *

Later, the pilot of the _Cannonball_ described the rescue. When he had
first reported his visual sighting, he had been seeing the sunlight
reflected from the surface of Duport's suit. Duport was a white spark,
shining out among the stars like a meteor or nova. The sight had given
the rescue pilot a peculiar feeling, he mentioned later, seeing this
blue-white star slowly growing in the sky until it was brighter than
Venus, seeing this new star rise, a point of white fire, and knowing
the star was a man.

Then they had suited up and blown the cabin pressure. The co-pilot had
gone out the hatch while the pilot remained at his controls. Watching
through the periscope, he could see Duport spread-eagled against the
sky, the left side of his body a glare of sunlight, the right side in
shadow. Duport had not moved his arms or legs since they had first
seen him, neither did he acknowledge with his suit transmitter. He was
about five hundred meters from the ship and drifting slowly closer.
The co-pilot tethered himself to the hull, then tossed out a line
with a magnetic grapple on its end. He missed, hauled in, and tossed
again. On the third try the end of the line passed within half a meter
of Duport's body. Duport moved his arm, took the end of the line, and
hooked it to his belt. The co-pilot hauled him in.

       *       *       *       *       *

About a month later, the American pilot saw Rene Duport for the first
time since he had jumped from the _Prospero_. It was at the space
medicine laboratories at Walter Reed.

Dr. Valdez stood near the window, looking down at the sunlit lawn. In
the shade of a tall shrub a man was sitting in a lawn chair, his head
back, completely relaxed. He wore a blue denim hospital uniform. His
back was to the window.

"Physically he was in good condition when they brought him down," the
doctor said, "except for a slight case of dehydration."

"Can I talk to him?" the pilot asked.

Dr. Valdez looked at him sharply, as if surprised by the request.

"You can talk to him if you like. But he won't answer you."

The pilot followed the doctor out of the room and down to the lawn.
They came up from behind the lawn chair and stood looking down at the
man sitting in it. His eyes were closed.

The pilot saw that Duport's jaw was slack. He could not tell whether he
was asleep. The flesh in his cheeks was sunken. He looked older.

Dr. Valdez said, "Catatonia, schizophrenia, it's like no condition I've
ever seen before. He is perfectly aware of what is going on around
him, you see. Bring him food and he eats. Stick him with a pin and he
jumps. All his responses are normal. He took the cable and attached it
himself, remember. But he will make no more than the minimum necessary
effort to survive." The doctor chewed his lip, thinking. "If only he
would say something."

"Have you decided why he jumped?" the pilot asked, not realizing that
he was whispering. "What made him panic?"

"No." The doctor shook his head. "Not panic, it wasn't fear alone, I
think. There was something else. We put him through equally critical
moments in training, and he didn't panic then. Fear was part of it, but
there was something else too."

"Well, what then?"

"I don't know the word. It's something new. Maybe Duport is a new kind
of human being. If not fear, call it--love, or desire. He jumped into
space because, I think, he wanted to."

"I don't understand that," the pilot said.

"I don't either--yet." Dr. Valdez moved a step closer to the man in the
chair. "Rene. Rene Duport."

Without moving his head, Duport opened his eyes.

"Stand up."

Duport got up and stood looking at some point half way between the two
men. His eyes no longer glistened.

"It's as if something has gone out of him," the doctor said.

"Do you know who I am?" the pilot asked. Rene Duport turned his head
until the pupils of his eyes were pointed at the American's face. But
his eyes did not seem to focus on him. Rather they were focused at some
point far beyond him.

"Why did you jump?" the pilot said. Moving a step closer, he looked
into the blank, dull eyes, that continued looking through him, focused
on some strange horizon. The eyes no longer seemed blue, but light
grey. The pilot tried to remember where he had seen eyes like that
before. Then he remembered one day, years before, when he had looked
down into the open eyes of a dead man. He shuddered and turned away.

"If only he would talk," the doctor said.

The pilot had turned his back on Duport. "Why? If he could talk, what
would _you_ ask him?"

It was two or three minutes before the doctor answered.

"I would ask him what it feels like to be a star."

And as the two men walked away, Rene Duport remained standing where
they left him. He was watching. The pupils of his eyes never shifted,
but he was always watching. The Earth, a swollen balloon, floated
past his field of vision. Slowly his right arm rose until his arm was
horizontal from his shoulder. Then the corners of his mouth lifted in a
faint smile, as his fingers touched the Clouds of Magellan.


                                THE END




*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Far enough to touch" ***

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