wax pencils

The capsule was still racing away at over two hundred miles an hour-but at least it was now losing speed, no longer gaining it, as its jet acted as a brake.

"Looks like it," said Whitehead, his voice showiwax pencilsng his immense relief. "I knew Betty wouldn't let me down, if I treated her properly."

Though it seemed ages, it was less than a minute before Bowman could tell, even without the aid of radar, that Whitehead was on the way back. Presently the capsule began to grow in the field of the telescope-slowly at first-then rapidly-then too rapidly.

"Still can't cut the damn thing," said Whitehead. "Hate to waste all this fuel, but I'll just have to swing to and fro until I run out of gas."

It seemed to Bowman that the capsule was now heading straight toward the ship; they were out of the frying pan and into the fire. The risk of losing Whitehead had now been replaced by an even more serious danger.

"Watch your track," he called anxiously. "I think you're on a collision course."

"I know," said Whitehead breathlessly. "Trying to flip her around again."

He was too late. For one hideous moment, the capsule seemed to be heading straight for the observation windows wax pencilsof the Control Deck. Then, barely in time, the steering jets opened up, and the runaway vehicle skimmed above the curving hull of the ship and behind Bowman's field of view.

"Sorry about that," said Whitehead. "Give you a wider berth next-"

The sound of the crash came simultaneously over the radio and through the fabric of the ship. Bowman half rose from his seat, waiting for the alarms to go and for the damage signals to start flashing. But nothing happened; it must have been a glancing impact-no real harm done. To Discovery, at least; but what about the capsule?

"Peter!" he called. "Are you all right? Do you read me?"

There was no reply. Bowman turned the gain of the radio full up, and listened intently. The carrier wave was still coming in, but that proved very little. He had hoped to hear the sound of Whitehead's breathing, even if he had been knocked unconscious. If the capsule had been cracked, of course, there would be no breathing-and no sound, except for the muffled roar of the jet drive, as loud as ever through the metal framework of the runaway.

That roar was still audible over the radio, but there was nothing else. Bowman called again, and again, Whitehead did not reply. At the same time, he swiftly ran through the pictures on the rear- view monitors, and after a quick search located the capsule a few hundred yards away.

To his great relief, it appeared intact-but it was still under power. Whether he was dead or alive, it was carrying Whitehead inexorably away from the ship; and there was nothing whatsoever he could do about it.

"Peter!" he called. "Peter! Can you hear me?"

Still no answer-only that maddening jet roar. It seemed to last forever; and then, suddenly, it stopped. The capsule had at last used up its fuel.

Once more, Bowman strained to detect the sound of breathing over the hiss of the carrier wave. The microphone was only a few inches from Whitehead's mouth; if the space pod still contained air, he should hear something....

He did, and with a sigh of relief he resumed his own breathing. First there were some soft bangings, then a mumbled exclamation like a drunken man talking in his sleep. That was followed by a short blast of well-organized profanity; Whitehead was wholly conscious again.

"Hello, Dave," he said, even before Bowman could call him. "I'm O.K. now-just a bruise on my forehead-no other damage. Will you get a fix?"

A quick glance at the radar showed Bowman that the capsule was still less than five miles away. That was a perfectly trivial distance-but it was increasing rapidly. For despite its periods of braking, the pod was now racing away from Discovery at three hundred and sixty miles an hour.

Every minute it would increase its distance by six miles- and so on, hour after hour, day after day. But before long, of course, this would be of no practical interest to Peter Whitehead.

Bowman reported the facts; then he asked quickly: "What's your oxygen reserve, Pete?"

"About . . . five hours."

"Only five?"

"Yes. It was a single-tank job-so I thought."

Bowman did not say what had flashed through his mind, but he was sure that it had already occurred to Whitehead. No matter how much oxygen the pod carried, it might make no difference now.

For several seconds there was no sound over the radio circuit; then Whitehead said, with a kind of resigned sadness: "Well, I guess that's it, Dave."

"I'm damned if it is. I'm coming out to catch you. Hold on."

There was another pause, before Whitehead replied: "You can't do that-not enough safety time, anyhow. You know you can't leave the ship."

"I bloody well can; Athena can handle things. I'm coming."

"Let's not fool ourselves. What was that velocity vector?"

"Five hundred thirty feet a second."

"Give that sum to Athena, if you like. I know the answer already." So, in hiswax pencils heart, did Bowman. If he risked abandoning the ship and his four sleeping companions, he could eventually catch up with Whitehead. But then they would both be several hundred miles from Discovery-and still moving away from her at that deadly five hundred thirty feet a second. The rescue pod would first have to cancel that speed, and not until then could it start on the return journey. With that extra payload, it could never make it home.

Nevertheless, Bowman fed the figures to Athena. The answer came back instantly: IMPOSSIBLE.

Just for a moment, before his years of training asserted themselves, he was overcome by a sense of blind rage, and wanted to hammer his fists against the cold display panels of the computer. But that would be no help to Whitehead or to himself. It was impossible to argue with the laws of mathematics, and stupid to feel anger at them. If one chose to live by the implacable equations of the Universe, then when the time came one must also die by them.

But he refused to admit defeat; men did not give up as easily as this. He remembered Whitehead's own favorite saying: "Every problem has a technical solution." There must be a solution for this problem, if only he could think of it.

The situation was so absurd, so utterly ironic. Here he was in a ship that could cross half a billion miles of space and travel at thousands of miles an hour-and he could not save a friend drifting slowly to his death a mere ten miles away. If he returned to Earth, who would ever understand his terrible dilemma? Always there would be the unspoken question: "But surely you could have done something?''

But this was no TV space opera, where the hero conjured some brilliant answer out of his hat. This was a problem for which there was no solution.

"Dave," said the loudspeaker suddenly. "Can the ship do anything?"

Though Whitehead was not a propulsion expert, he certainly knew better than this. The very fact that he had asked such a question indicated some loss of self-control, but Bowman could hardly blame him. A desperate man would clutch at any straw.

"I'm sorry, Peter," he answered gently and patiently. "You know the main reactor has been shut down and the thrusters have all been mothballed. It takes over a day to test them and run them up."

And even then, he might have added, it would not have helped. The ship's acceleration was so low that it could never overtake the pod before the five hours were up.

That was going to be the longest five hours in Bowman's life.

FIRST MAN TO JUPITER

And then while Bowman was still considering his next move, Whitehead asked an extraordinary question.

"Dave," he said, in a curiously flat voice, "Are there any asteroids close to us?"

"Not according to the Ephemeris. Why?"

"Unless I'm crazy, there's something else out here- only a few miles away."

Bowman's first reaction was one of surprised disappointment. He had not expected Peter to start cracking up so soon, but perhaps that blow on the head had produced aftereffects. Not for a moment did he credit the report; space was so inconceivably empty that a close passage by any other object was almost a mathematical impossibility. Whitehead could only be suffering from hallucinations; it would be best to humor him.

But that thought had already occurred to Whitehead himself.

"No-I'm not seeing things," he said, almost as if he was reading Bowman's mind. "There it is again-it's flashing every ten or fifteen seconds. And it's definitely moving against the star background-it can't be more than five or ten miles away."

"Can you give me a bearing?"

Bowman still did not believe a word of it, but he started the wide-scan radar-and almost at once his jaw dropped in astonishment.

There was Whitehead's echo, now at twenty-two miles. But thirty degrees away from iwax pencilst, at considerably less range, was a far larger one.

"Christ!" he exclaimed, "you're right! And it's bloody enormous. Let me get a scope on it."

As he fed the radar coordinates to the telescope, and waited for the instrument to swing to the right quarter of the sky, his mind was a tumult of conflicting emotions. Perhaps they were both hallucinating; looked at dispassionately, that was the likeliest explanation.

And then, just for a few comforting seconds, a naive wish-fulfillment fantasy flashed through his mind. They were not alone; there was another ship out here, arriving to rescue Whitehead in the nick of time.... It could not, of course, be a ship from Earth; it could only be-

The star images stabilized. There in the center of the field was, without any question, something large and obviously artificial, glittering metallically as it turned slowly in the sun. With fingers that trembled slightly, Bowman zoomed up the magnification.

Then the fantasy dissolved, and for the first time he realized the full extent of the disaster that had overwhelmed the expedition. He knew now why none of the alarms had sounded when Whitehead's capsule had collided with the ship. In missing the hull, it had hit a target that was almost equally vital.

Receding there behind them, still spinning with the force of the impact, was the entire long- range antenna complex. The big forty-foot-diameter parabola, the smaller dishes clustered around it, the gear designed to aim their radio beams across half a billion miles of space-all were drifting slowly back toward the sun.

The runaway capsule that had doomed Peter Whitehead had also destroyed their only link with Earth.

"Funny thing," said Whitehead, as he passed the six hundred-mile mark, "but there are no messages I want to send, anyhow. I made all my goodbyes back on Earth; I'm glad I don't have to go through that again." He paused, then added; "There was a girl, but she told me she wouldn't be waiting. Just as well."

There was a curious detachment and lack of interest in Whitehead's voice. Already, it seemed, he was drifting away from the human race in spirit as well as in body. Perhaps the defensive mechanisms of the mind were quietly coming into play, extinguishing the fires of emotion, as the engineer of a sinking ship will close down his boilers lest they cause a last-minute explosion.

Presently he said: "I wish I could see Earth; a pity it's lost in the sun. But Jwax pencilsupiter looks beautiful; it seems so close already. I hope you make it-I hope you find what you're looking for."

"We'll do our best," answered Bowman, swallowing hard. "Don't worry about that." He wondered if Whitehead realized that he had said "you," not "we." Consciously or unconsciously, he had already removed himself from the roll call of the expedition.

The leaden minutes ticked slowly away, while Bowman waited with mingled grief and frustration. If Whitehead wished to be left to his own thoughts, so be it; he was not going to engage him in light chatter at moments such as this.

The radio circuit to the capsule was still heartbreakingly dear; there was no sense of distance or separation. Over such a trivial span of miles, the low-power transmitter in the Control Center was perfectly adequate. Though it was designed for communication with space pods working in the immediate vicinity of the ship, it had more than enough range for this task.

Then Whitehead said, quite unexpectedly: "There's one thing I'd like you to do for me, Dave."

"Of course."

"Play some music-something cheerful."

"What would you like?"

"The Pastoral, I think. Yes, that would do nicely."

Midway between Mars and Jupiter, two tiny, and slowly separating, bubbles of warmth and light began to reverberate to the sounds of spring. When the symphony had run its course and ebbed into silence, the pod was more than a thousand miles away.

It was still quite clearly recognizable in the telescope, though its finer details could no longer be seen. Every day, it would draw eight thousand miles further ahead of Discovery, and though its future position could be predicted to the end of time, it would soon be lost against the background of the stars.

"Dave," said Whitehead suddenly, "can you still hear me?" His voice sounded more animated-less remote and detached. It was as if he had made some decision, and was no longer drifting helplessly.

"I read you loud and clear."

"There's a job I still have to do. I want to find what went wrong. It won't make any difference now-but it may help someone else."

That thought had already passed through Bowman's mind, but he wanted the suggestion to come from Whitehead. He felt an absurd impulse to say "Be careful!" and managed to fight it down.

"What do you think happened?" he asked instead.

"I was in shadow for thirty minutes on that last job, and I noticed it was getting very cold; the heater system must have gone on the blink. Nothing really serious-but perhaps the cold cracked one of the pipelines. I guess there was a leak; some propellant may have got out, and then frozen on the controls. I still don't see how it was possible, but it's the only theory that makes sense. Anyway, I'm going out to check it. I have thirty minutes of air in this suit. I'll call you back as soon as I've depressurized the capsule."

"I'll be listening out," said Bowman. He found it very hard to say anything-even to make the simplest responses. The feeling of utter helplessness and inadequacy still overwhelmed him; the sense of loneliness would come later.

He knew exactly what Whitehead was attempting to do. When he had depressurized the capsule, he would open the hatch and work his way, hand over hand, around to the propulsion unit at the rear. It would not be hard for him to take off the protective covers, and perhaps he could see what had gone wrong. It was not very likely, but it was worth trying. And certainly it was better than waiting passively for the end.

One minute-two minutes-went by. Surely he had made the trip by now!

"Peter-have you found anything?" Bowman called at last.

There was no answer. He called again, and again.

Then he began to wonder. Perhaps something had gone wrong-but if so, was it really an accident this time?

Once more he called out into the unreverberant silence, but already he was certain that he would never know the answer.

There were times when the greatest heroism consisted of dying quietly, without making a fuss. This Peter Whitehead had done; no one could ask for more.

And two months from now, a million miles ahead of his comrades, he would be the first of all men to reach Jupiter.

THE SMELL OF DEATH

Hours ago, Bowman knew very well, he should have awakened his back-up. But while Whitehead was still alive, he had not the heart to do so; it would have been too final an admission of hopelessness. Now he would delay it no longer, for his own peace of mind as much as for the safety of the ship. He felt a desperate need to hear a human voice again; never before had he realized so dearly that man was a social animal, and could not long survive in isolation. And no man before, since the beginning of history, had known such isolation as this.

Bowman made his way slowly through the silent passageways; somehow the ship already seemed empty, like a deserted house. He drifted down the axis of the carousel, and when he was gripped by its centrifugal field the sudden return of weight almost made him collapse. Though he wanted to lie down and rest, if he gave way to this impulse he did not know when he would wake again. He was the ship's only human guardian now; he could not sleep while he was still on duty.

Luckily, the revival procedure was automatic, there was nothing he had to do, no stages where he could make an error through tiredness. Once he had given Athena her orders, she would carry them out with superhuman infallibility.

In Kelvin Poole's room all was cold and silent, as it had been for the last five months. The biosensor display was normal; respiration, body temperature, blood pressure, heartbeat were all inside the safety limits. And according to Athena, who alone could interpret it, the EEG was also satisfactory for a hibernating man.

Bowman broke the seal on the REVIVAL switch, pressed the button, and waited. First, the electronarcosis current would be switched off. There was no apparent physical change in the sleeping man, but at once the dancing waves of the EEG display increased in amplitude and became more complex. Slowly, and perhaps reluctantly the brain of Kelvin Poole was turning back from the world of dreams.

Two minutes later, Athena triggered the hypodermic strapped to Poole's forearm; Bowman could hear the tiny hiss as high-pressure gas forced the stimulants through the skin. Now he should see the first reaction, normally it came in about thirty seconds.

He was not worried when nothing happened for well over a minute. Then Poole's eyelids started to flutter, and he gave a slow yawn. His diaphragm began to heave with normal respiration, and he rolled his head slightly to the side.

A minute later, he opened his eyes, and stared vacantly through Bowman, like a newborn baby still unable to focus upon the external world. But presently awareness came into his gaze, and his lips began to move. It was impossible to hear what he was saying, if indeed he had enunciated any words at all

"Take it easy, Kel," said Bowman. "Everything's O.K." He only wished that this were true.

Again Poole's lips moved, and now his voice was just audible as a faint sibilation, producing no intelligible sounds. At the same moment, Athena spoke.

"Poole cardiogram abnormal. Recommend injection H.6."

Bowman grabbed the hypodermic from the emergency medical kit. He fired it into Poole's arm, then anticipating the worst, broke out the autorespiration mask and its attached oxygen cylinder.

But the shot seemed to be working. Poole was obviously quite conscious, though his chest was heaving erratically. He looked straight at Bowman, and his lips began to move again. At last he spoke-only two words, laden with sadness and regret, banishing all hope with their finality.

"Goodbye, Dave."

Bowman's paralysis lasted little more than a second: it was broken when Athena's calm, impersonal voice announced:

"All systems of Poole now No-Go. It will be necessary to replace him with a spare unit."

"Shut up, damn you!" yelled Bowman, as he clamped the mask over Poole's face and switched on the oxygen. The gas began to pulse through the plastic tubes, the noise it made sounding like a horrible parody of human breathing. Though he knew that it was no use, he continued until the oxygen was exhausted, and all the biosensor displays showed flat, featureless lines.

Kelvin Poole lay calm and quiet again; it was impossible to tell that he was no longer in hibernation. But to David Bowman, commander of the only ship beyond the orbit of Mars, it seemed that the gently circulating air around him already carried the smell of Death.

ALONE

Bowman did not remember leaving Poole's spinning tomb in the carousel, but now he was back on the Control Deck, looking out at the unchanging stars. He was in a state of shock, going about his business like a machine, and hardly aware of any emotion. Though he felt unutterably tired, it seemed that he could carry on forever, as sleepless as Athena, while there was still work to be done and decisions to be made.

Tragedy had snowballed into disaster; what had now happened could be far more serious than the loss of Whitehead. Poole's death might be another accident, or a piece of sheer bad luck that would never occur again. But if something was fundamentally wrong with the revival process, his sleeping shipmates were already doomed. And he with them; for he could not handle Discovery alone, when the time came to steer her into her final orbit.

This was not a situation anyone had been pessimistic enough to imagine; no procedure had been laid down to deal with it. When some utterly unexpected problem arose, his orders were to consult with Earth, if time permitted. He had the time; no one had ever dreamed that he would lack the ability. For if any part of the radio equipment failed, it could always be repaired or replaced; the only item that had not been duplicated, because of its size and weight, was the antenna assembly. Who would have imagined that anything could ever demolish that system, short of wrecking the ship itself? It was not, in the jargon of the designers, a credible accident; but it had occurred.

The loss of the antenna had not only made it impossible to obtain medical advice from Earth; it had endangered the whole purpose of the mission. Whatever they might discover when they reached Jupiter, they would have no way of reporting it home.

There was one slim chance of saving the situation. The antenna was not many miles distant and traveling away from the ship at a relatively low speed. He might be able to retrieve it and effect temporary repairs; even if he could not do so, perhaps Kimball and the others would succeed-as long as he recaptured the lost equipment before it was forever out of reach.

He took careful measurements of speed and velocity with the ship's radar, then made estimates of the mass that was now drifting away into space. He fed the information into Athena, set up the problem, and watched the answer flash on the display before he could even lift his finger from the keys.

Yes, a fully fueled and provisioned pod could do it, if he acted now and if everything went smoothly. But time was fast running out; the chance of success diminished with every passing minute. If he did not leave within the next few hours, the operation would be impossible.