bear down on the lever with all your strength, and, like an ancient slave, turn the millstones of syllogisms—until you write down, think over everything that happened…
When I boarded the Integral, everybody was already there, each at his post; all the cells in the gigantic glass beehive were full. Through the glass decks—tiny human ants below, near the telegraphs, dynamos, transformers, altimeters, valves, indicators, engines, pumps, tubes. In the lounge—a group of unknown men over schemes and instruments, probably assigned there by the Scientific Bureau. And with them, the Second Builder with two of his assistants.
All three with their heads drawn, turtlelike, into their shoulders, their faces—gray, autumnal, joyless.
“Well?” I asked.
“Oh… A bit nervous…” one of them said with a gray, lusterless smile. “Who knows where we may have to land? And generally, it’s uncertain…
It was unbearable to look at them—at those whom I would in an hour, with my own hands, eject from the comfortable figures of the Table of Hours, tearing them away from the maternal breast of the One State. They reminded me of the tragic figures of the “Three Excused Ones,” whose story is known to every schoolboy. It is a story of how three numbers were, by way of an experiment, excused from work for a month: do what you like, go where you wish.* The wretches loitered near their usual places of work, peering inside with hungry eyes; they stood in the street hour after hour, repeating the motions which had already become necessary to their organisms at the given times of day: they sawed and planed the air, swung invisible hammers, struck invisible blocks. And, finally, on the tenth day, unable to endure it any longer, they linked hands, walked into the water, and to the sounds of the March, went deeper and deeper, until the water put an end to their misery…
I repeat: it was painful for me to look at them; I hurried to leave them.
“I will check the machine compartment,” I said, “and then—we’re off.”
They asked me questions: what voltage was to be used for the starting blast, how much water ballast for the stern tank. There was a phonograph inside me: it answered all questions promptly and precisely, while I continued inwardly without interruption with my own thoughts.
This happened long ago, in the third century after the introduction of the Table.
Suddenly, in a narrow passageway, something reached me, within—and from that moment it all began.
In the narrow passageway gray unifs, gray faces flickered past me, and, for a second, one face: hair low on the forehead, deep-set eyes—that same man. I understood: they were here, and there was no escape from all this anywhere, and only minutes remained—a few dozen minutes… The tiniest molecular shivers ran through my body (they did not stop to the very end)—as though a huge motor had been set up within me, and the structure of my body was too slight for it, and so the walls, the partitions, the cables, the beams, the lights— everything trembled…
I did not know yet whether she was there. But there was no more time now—I was called upstairs, to the command cabin: it was time to go… Where?
Gray, lusterless faces. Tense blue veins below, in the water. Heavy, cast-iron layers of sky. And how hard to lift my cast-iron hand, to pick up the receiver of the command telephone.
“Up-45 degrees!”
A dull blast—a jolt—a frenzied white-green mountain of water aft—the deck slipping away from underfoot— soft, rubbery—and everything below, all of life, forever… For a second we were falling deeper and deeper into some funnel, and everything contracted: the icy-blue relief map of the city, the round bubbles of its cupolas, the solitary leaden finger of the Accumulator Tower. Then a momentary cottonwool curtain of clouds-we plunged through it-sun and blue sky. Seconds, minutes, miles—the blue was rapidly congealing, filling up with darkness, and stars emerged like drops of silvery, cold sweat…
And now—the uncanny, intolerably bright, black, starry, sunny night It was like suddenly becoming deaf: you still see the roaring trumpets, but you only see them: the trumpets are mute, all is silence. The sun was mute.
All this was natural, it was to be expected. We had left the earth’s atmosphere. But everything had happened so quickly, had taken everyone so unawares, that everyone around was cowed, silenced.
And to me—to me it all seemed easier somehow under this mute, fantastic sun: as though, crumpling up for the last time, I had already crossed the inescapable threshold—and my body was somewhere there, below, while I sped through a new world where everything must be so unfamiliar, so upside down…
“Hold the course!” I shouted into the receiver. Or, perhaps, it was not I, but the phonograph in me—and with a mechanical, hinged hand I thrust the command phone into the hands of the Second Builder. And I, shaken from head to foot by the finest molecular trembling, which I alone could feel, ran downstairs, to look for…
The door to the lounge—the one that in an hour would heavily click shut… By the door, someone I did not know—short, with a face like hundreds, thousands of others, a face that would be lost in a crowd. And only his hands were unusual—extraordinarily long, down to his knees, as though taken in a hurry, by mistake, from another human set.
A long arm stretched out, barred the way. “Where to?”
Clearly, he did not know that I knew everything.
Very well: perhaps this was as it should be. And looking down on him, deliberately curt, I said, “I am the Builder of the Integral. I supervise the tests. Understand?”
The arm was gone.
The lounge. Over the instruments and maps-gray, bristly heads, and yellow heads, bald, ripe. Quickly, I swept them with a glance, and back, along the corridor, down the hatch, to the engine room. Heat and din of pipes red-hot from the explosions, cranks gleaming in a desperate, drunken dance, the incessant, faintly visible quiver of arrows on the dials…
And finally, at the tachometer—he, with the low forehead bent over a notebook…
“Listen…” The din made it necessary to shout into his ear. “Is she here? Where is she?”
In the shadow under the forehead, a smile. “She? There, in the radio-telephone room…”
I rushed in. There were three of them, all in winged receiving helmets. She seemed a head taller than ever, winged, gleaming, flying—like the ancient Valkyries. And the huge blue sparks above, over the radio antenna, seemed to come from her, and the faint, lightning smell of ozone, also from her.
“Someone… no—you…” I said to her breathlessly (from running). “I must transmit a message down, to the earth, to the dock… Come, I’ll dictate it---”
Next to the apparatus room there was a tiny boxlike cabin. Side by side, at the table. I found her hand, pressed it hard. “Well? What next?”
“I don’t know. Do you realize how wonderful it is to fly, not knowing where—to fly—no matter where… And soon it will be twelve—and who knows what’s to come? And night… Where shall we be at night, you and I? Perhaps on grass, on dry leaves…”
She emanates blue sparks and smells of lightning, and my trembling grows more violent.
“Write down,” I say loudly, still out of breath (with running). “Time, eleven-thirty. Velocity: sixty-eight hundred…”
She, from under the winged helmet, without taking her eyes from the paper, quietly: “She came to me last night with your note… I know—I know everything, don’t speak. But the child is yours? And I sent her there—she is already safe, beyond the Wall. She’ll live…”
Back in the commander’s cabin. Again—the night, delirious, with a black starry sky and dazzling sun; the clock hand on the wall—limping slowly, from minute to minute; and everything as in a fog, shaken with the finest, scarcely perceptible (perceptible to me alone) trembling.
For some reason, it seemed to me: It would be better if all that was about to follow took place not here, but lower, nearer to the earth.
“Halt engines!” I cried into the receiver.
Still moving by inertia, but slower, slower. Now the Integral caught at some hair-thin second, hung for a moment motionless; then the hair broke, and the Integral plunged like a stone—down, faster, faster. And so, in silence, for minutes, dozens of minutes. I heard my own pulse. The clock hand before my eyes crawled nearer and nearer to twelve. And it was clear to me: I was the stone; I-330 was the earth, and I—a stone, thrown by someone’s, hand. And the stone was irresistibly compelled to fall, to crash against the earth, to smash itself to bits… And what if… Below, the hard blue smoke of clouds was already visible… What if…
But the phonograph inside me picked up the receiver with hingelike precision, gave the command: “Low
