The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s. Brian Aldiss

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      The big old roman said meekly, ‘I am in your hands, Mr Birdlip.’

      ‘Of course you are, but we’ll draw up a contract later. I trust ten percent royalties will be satisfactory?’

      So saying, he stepped out onto the balcony and began the speech that was to change the world.

       The Impossible Star

       When conditions veer away from normal, human reason tends to slip into madness.

      Eddy Sharn looked at the sentence in his notebook and found it good. He sat with the notebook clutched in tight to his chest, so that Malravin could not see what he wrote. ‘Tends to slip into madness’ he particularly liked; the ‘tends’ had a note of scientific detachment about it, the ‘madness’ suggested something altogether more wild than ‘insanity.’ Which was appropriate, since they were a scientific detachment out in the wilds.

      He was still savouring his little joke when the noises began in the hatch.

      Malravin and Sharn exchanged glances. Malravin jerked his head towards the hatch.

      ‘You hear that fool fellow Dominguey? He makes all that noise on purpose, so that we’ll know he’s coming. What a big-headed joker to chose for a captain!’

      ‘You can’t help making a noise in that hatch,’ Sharn said. ‘It was badly designed. They missed out on the soundproofing and the noise carries round in the air circuits. Besides, they’re both in there making a noise. Jim Baron’s with him.’

      He spoke pleasantly enough, but of course Malravin’s had been a loaded remark. The great Siberian oaf knew that among the four antagonisms that had sprung up between the four men on the ship, some sort of an alliance had grown between Sharn and Dominguey.

      The hatch opened, and the other members of the crew of the Wilson entered and began to remove their bulky suits. Neither Malravin nor Sharn moved to help them. Dominguey and Baron helped each other.

      Billy Dominguey was a striking young man, dark and sinewy, with a wonderfully gloomy cavern of a face that could break into laughter when anyone responded to his peculiar sense of fun.

      Jim Baron was another doleful-looking type, a little compact man with a crew-cut and solid cheeks that had turned red from his exertions outside.

      He eyed Sharn and Malravin and said, ‘Well, you’d better get your sacks on and go out and have a look at it. You won’t grasp its full impact until you do.’

      ‘It’s a real little education, Jim, isn’t it?’ Dominguey agreed. ‘A higher education – I just wish they hadn’t “highered” me to get it.’

      Baron put his arms out with his fingers extended and touched the plastic of the bulkheads. He closed his eyes.

      ‘I didn’t think I’d ever make it back into here, Billy. I’m sorry if I went a bit –’

      Quickly, Dominguey said, ‘Yes, it’s good to be back in the ship. With the artificial ½G being maintained in here, and the shutters down, this dump seems less like a cast-off version of hell, doesn’t it?’ He took Baron’s arm and led him to a chair. Sharn watched curiously; he had not seen the stolid and unimaginative Baron so wild-eyed before.

      ‘But the weight business,’ Baron was saying. ‘I thought – well, I don’t know what I thought. There’s no rational way of putting it. I thought my body was disintegrating. I –’

      ‘Jim, you’re over-excited,’ Dominguey said harshly. ‘Keep quiet or get yourself a sedative.’ He turned to the other two men. ‘I want you two to get outside right away. There’s nothing there that can possibly harm you; we’re down on a minor planet, by the looks of things. But before we can evaluate the situation, I want you to be properly aware of what the situation is – as soon as possible.’

      ‘Did you establish the spectroscope? Did you get any readings?’ Sharn asked. He was not keen to go outside.

      ‘They’re still out there. Get your suit on, Eddy, and you, Ike, and go and look at them. Jim and I will get a bite to eat. We set the instruments up and we left ’em out there on the rock, pointing at Big Bertha, but they don’t give any readings. Not any readings that make sense.’

      ‘For God’s sake, you must have got something. We checked all the gear before you carted it outside.’

      ‘If you don’t believe us, you get out there and have a goddamned good look for yourself, Sharn,’ Baron said.

      ‘Don’t shout at me, Baron.’

      ‘Well, take that sick look off your face. Billy and me have done our stint – now you two get outside as Billy says. Take a walk around as we did. Take your time. We’ve got plenty till the drive is mended.’

      Malravin said, ‘I’d prefer to get on straightening out the coil. No point for me to go out there. My job is in the ship.’

      ‘I’m not going out there alone, Ike, so don’t try to worm out of it,’ Sharn said. ‘We agreed that we should go out there when these two came back.’

      ‘If we came back, conquering heroes that we are,’ Dominguey corrected. ‘You might have had a meal ready to celebrate our return, Eddy.’

      ‘We’re on half rations, if you remember.’

      ‘I try never to remember a nasty fact like that,’ Dominguey said good-humouredly.

      A preoccupation with food signifies a childish nature, Eddy thought. He must write it down later.

      After more quarrelling, Sharn and Malravin climbed into their suits and headed for the hatch. They knew roughly what they would see outside – they had seen enough from the ship’s ports before they had agreed to close down all the shutters – but to view it from outside was psychologically a very different matter.

      ‘One thing,’ Baron called to them. ‘Watch out for the atmosphere. It has a way of wandering.’

      ‘There can’t be an atmosphere on a planetoid this size!’ Sharn protested.

      Baron came up to him and peeped through the helmet at him. His cheeks were still hectically flushed, his eyes wild.

      ‘Look, clever dick, get this into your head. We’ve arrived up in some ghastly hole in the universe where the ordinary physical laws don’t apply. This place can’t exist and Big Bertha can’t exist. Yet they do. You’re very fond of paradoxes – well, now one has gobbled you up. Just get out there quickly, and you won’t come back in as cocky as you are now.’

      ‘You love to blow your mouth off, Baron. It didn’t do you much good out there. I thought you were going to die of fright just now.’

      Dominguey said urgently, ‘Hey, you two sweet little fellows, stop bitching. I warn you, Eddy, Jim is right. You’ll see when you get outside that in this bit of heaven the universe is horribly out of joint.’

      ‘So will someone’s nose be,’ Sharn promised.

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