Orbitsville

ordeal the Bissendorf’s principal dimensions had altered, in some cases by several metres, but it had gone in with all pressure doors sealed — in effect it had been converted into dozens of separate, self-contained spaceships — and there was no loss of life due to decompression.

The entire crew had donned spacesuits for primary protection. Each person had been injected with metallic salts and the ship’s restraint fields stepped up to overload intensity, creating an environment in which any sudden movement of human tissue would be resisted by a pervasive jelly-like pressure from all sides. This measure, while undoubtedly a major factor in crew survival, also caused an unavoidable number of deaths. In the few sections where severe structural failure occurred some of the occupants had fallen varying distances under multiple gravities, and the heat induced by electromotive interaction had caused their blood to boil. But, for the vast majority, the internal bracing of their organs against immense G-shocks had meant the difference between life and death.

And yet, all the preparation all the frenzied activity, would have amounted to nothing more than a temporary stay of execution had it not been for the exotic nature of Orbitsville itself.

The synthetic gravity of the shell material attenuated much more rapidly than that of a solid mass. Although the Bissendorf’s slanting course was drawn into the shape of a parabola the curve remained flat, and the crew had sufficient time to control their re-entry into the atmosphere from the inner vacuum of Orbitsville. The vessel’s ion tubes and short-term reaction motors were effective against the weak pull of the shell, and it was possible for the Bissendorf to skip along the upper fringes of the air shield, gradually shedding velocity. It was even possible, using the fading reserves of reaction mass, to bring the ship down in one piece, with no further loss of life.

What was manifestly impossible, however, was to make the ship fly again.

All its external sensors had been seared cleanly from the hull, and many of the internal position-fixing devices had been destroyed or confused by the unnatural physics of Orbitsville. But the clocks were still in operation — and they had recorded a time lapse of five days. Five days from the passage through the Beachhead City aperture to the final touchdown on a hillside far into the interior. Starting from that basic fact, and using only a pocket calculator, it took just a few seconds for those on board to realize that they had travelled a distance of more than fifteen million kilometres.

In terms of the overall size of Orbitsville the journey was infinitesimal. A short hop, a stone’s throw, a stroll across sunlit grass and woodlands — but in human terms the distance itself was more of a barrier than mountains or torrents. It was known, for instance, that back on Earth many a country postman had in his lifetime walked a total distance equal to a trip to the Moon, but that was only 385,000 kilometres. Walking back to Beachhead City would have been a task to be carried out by successive generations over a period of a thousand years.

Using the vast resources of the Bissendorf’s workshops it would have been possible to build a fleet of vehicles which might have cut the journey time down to a mere century — except that wheels and other automobile components wear out in a matter of months. It would not be possible to transport the maintenance and manufacturing facilities which might have enabled the caravan to complete its golden journey.

There was also the difficulty that no man or machine knew the exact direction in which to travel. It would have been possible to get a rough bearing from the angle of the day and night ribs across the sky, but a rough bearing would be of no value. At the distances involved, a deviation of only one degree would have caused the train to miss Beachhead City by hundreds of thousands of sun-gleaming kilometres.

By the time the dead had been buried, the day was well advanced, and the remaining men and women of the Bissendorf’s crew were ceasing to be citizens of Earth. They were experiencing the infinity-change, the wistful, still contentment which poured down from the motionless sun of Orbitsville.

…that calm Sunday that goes on and on;
When even lovers find their peace at last,
And Earth is but a star, that once had shone.

fourteen

“We’re going back,” Garamond announced flatly.

He studied the faces of his executive staff, noting how they were reacting. Some looked at him with open amusement, others stared downwards into the grass, seemingly embarrassed. Behind them, further along the hillside, the great scarred hulk of the Bissendorf shocked the eye with its incongruity, and beyond it microscopic figures moved on the plain in the rituals of a ball game. The sun was directly overhead, as always, creating only an occasional flicker of diamond-fire on the dark blue waters of the lakes which banded the middle distance. Garamond began to feel that his words had been absorbed by Orbitsville’s green infinities, sucked up cleanly before they reached the edge of the irregular ring in which the group was sitting, but he resisted the urge to repeat himself.

“It’s a hell of a long way,” Napier said, finally breaking the heavy silence. His statement of the obvious, Garamond knew, constituted a question.

“We’ll build aircraft.”

O’Hagan cleared his throat. “I’ve already thought of that, Vance. We have enough workshop facilities still intact to manufacture a reasonable subsonic aircraft, and the micropedia can give us all the design data, but the distance is just too great. You run into exactly the same problem as with wheeled vehicles. Your aircraft might do the trip in three or four years — except that we haven’t the resources to build a plane which can fly continuously for that length of time. And we couldn’t transport major repair facilities.” O’Hagan glanced solemnly around the rest of the group, reproving them for having left it to him to deal with a wayward non-scientist.

Garamond shook his head. “When I said we are going back, I didn’t mean all of us, in a body. I meant that I am going back, together with any of the crew who are sufficiently determined to make it — even if that means only half-a-dozen of us.”

“But…”

“We’re going to build a fleet of perhaps ten aircraft. We’re going to incorporate as much redundancy as is compatible with good aerodynamics. We’re going to fly our ten machines towards Beachhead City, and each time one of them breaks down we’re going to take the best components out of it and put them in the other machines, and we’re going to fly on.”

“There’s no guarantee you’ll get there, even with the last aircraft.”

“There’s no guarantee I won’t.”

“I’m afraid there is.” O’Hagan’s pained expression had become even more pronounced. “There’s this problem of direction which we have already discussed. Unless you’ve got a really accurate bearing on Beachhead City there’s no point in setting out.”

“I’m not worried about getting a precise bearing,” Garamond said, making a conscious decision to be enigmatic. He was aware that in the very special circumstances of the Bissendorf’s final flight the whole concept of command structure, of the captain-and-crew relationship, could easily lose its validity. It was necessary at this stage to re-establish himself in office without the aid of insignia or outside authority.

“How do you propose to get one?”

“I propose instructing my science staff to attend to that chore for me. There’s an old saying about the pointlessness of owning a dog and doing your own barking.” Garamond fixed a steady challenging gaze on O’Hagan, Sammy Yamoto, Morrison, Schneider and Denise Serra. He noted with satisfaction that they were responding as he had hoped — already there were signs of abstraction, of withdrawal to a plateau of thought upon which they became hunters casting nets for a quarry they had never seen but would recognize at first sight.

“While they’re sorting that one out,” Garamond continued, speaking to Napier before any of the science staff could voice objections, “we’ll convene a separate meeting of the engineering committee. The ship has to be cut up