The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s. Brian Aldiss

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СКАЧАТЬ – we’ve had nothing but a diet of facts from him for the last thousand light years. Now he thinks science has failed him. There’s nothing else left. He can no longer face the physical world. So, he comes to this emotional conclusion that he is dead. Classic withdrawal symptoms.’

      Dominguey said, ‘Someone ought to kick your ass, Eddy Sharn. Of all the glib and conceited idiots I ever met. … At least Jim has come out with an idea. It’s not so far-fetched at that, when you consider we know nothing about what happens after death. Think about it a bit, think about the first few moments of death. Try to visualise the period after heart action has ceased, when the body, and particularly the brain inside its skull case, still retains its warmth. What goes on then? Suppose in that period of time everything in the brain drains away into nothing like a bucket of water leaking into sand. Don’t you think some pretty vivid and hallucinatory things would happen inside that head? And, after all, the sort of events happening to us now are typical of the sort that might occur to spacers like us in that dying period. Maybe we ran smack into a big chunk of dead matter on our way into the Crab. Okay, we’re all dead – the strong feeling of helplessness we all have is a token of the fact that we are really strewn over the control cabin with the walls caved in.’

      Lazily clapping his hands, Baron said, ‘You put it even better than I could have put it myself, Billy.’

      ‘Don’t think I believe what I am saying, though,’ Dominguey said grimly. ‘You know me, laddie: ever the funny man, even to death.’

      He stood up and confronted Sharn.

      ‘What I am trying to say, Eddy, is that you are too fond of your own opinions. I know the way your mind works – you’re much happier in any situation if you can make yourself believe that the other people involved are inferior to you. Now then, if you have a theory that helps us tackle this particular section of hell, Jim and I would be pleased to hear it.’

      ‘Give me a mescahale,’ Sharn said. He had heard such outbursts from the captain before, and attributed them to Dominguey’s being less stable than he liked to pretend he was. Dominguey would be dangerous in a crisis. Not that this was less than a crisis. Sharn accepted the yellow cylinder, activated it, stuck it into his mouth, and sat down. Dominguey sat down beside him, regarding him with interest. They both smoked in silence.

      ‘Begin then, Eddy. It’s time we took a quick sleep, the lot of us. We’re all exhausted, and it’s beginning to show.’

      ‘On you maybe, Dominguey.’ He turned to Baron, languidly sunk in his chair.

      ‘Are you listening, Baron?’

      Baron nodded his head.

      ‘Go ahead. Don’t mind me.’

      Things would be so much simpler if one were a robot, Sharn thought. Personalities would not be involved. Any situation has to be situation plus character. It’s bad enough to be burdened with one’s own character; one has to put up with other people’s as well. He pulled out his little notebook to write the thought down, saw Dominguey was eyeing him, and began to speak abruptly.

      ‘What’s your silly fuss about? We’re here to do a job of observation – why not do it? Before Ike and I went outside, you told us to watch for the atmosphere. I did just that, but from the nonsense you talk about being dead I’d say you were the ones who should have watched it. And this peculiar bodily sensation – you let it rattle you. So did Ike – so did I – but it doesn’t take much knowledge to realise that the horrible sensation as if something were climbing about inside the suit with you has a rational and obvious explanation.’

      Baron got up and walked away.

      ‘Come back when I’m talking, Baron,’ Sharn said, angrily.

      ‘I’m going to see how Malravin is getting on, then I’m going to bunk down. If you have anything interesting to say, Billy can give it to me in a nutshell later. Your double talk holds nothing for me. I’m tired of your speeches.’

      ‘Tired? – When you’re dead? Needing to bunk down? – When you’re dead?’

      ‘Leave him, for God’s sake, and get on with what you were saying,’ Dominguey said with a yawn. ‘Look, Eddy, we’re in a nasty spot here – I don’t just mean stuck on Erewhon, though that’s bad enough. But much more getting on each other’s nerves and there will be murder done. I’d say you were turning into a very good candidate for the axe.’

      ‘You toying with the idea of murder, Dominguey? I suppose that could be another refuge from the realities of the position.’

      ‘Knock off that line of talk, Sharn, and that’s an order. You were talking about this strange bodily sensation we felt out on the rock. Don’t be so coy about it. It’s caused by the fact that most of our weight out there comes by courtesy of Big Bertha, not Erewhon. Your mass orients itself partly according to where Bertha is, and not according to the body you are standing on. Of course it causes some odd sensations, particularly with respect to your proprioceptors and the balance in your inner ear. When the sun first rises, your intellect has to fight your body out of its tendency to regard the east as down. When the sun’s overhead, the situation’s not so bad, but your mass will always act as a compass, as it were, tending towards the sun – if Bertha is a sun. Have I taken the words out of your mouth?’

      Sharn nodded.

      ‘Since you’re so smart, Billy, you’ve probably worked out that Bertha is a star – a big star … a star, that is, with an abnormally large mass. And I do mean abnormally – it’s got an unique chance to grow here. It has accumulated bulk from the nebula. Its mass must be something above twenty-five million times the mass of Sol.’

      Dominguey whistled. ‘A pretty tall order! Though I see it is well placed for stellar growth processes. So you think it is just a gigantic accumulation of dead matter?’

      ‘Not at all. There’s no such thing as dead matter in that sense. Baron’s the scientist – he’d tell you if he wasn’t heading for catatonia. You get such a mass of material together and terrific pressures are set up. No, I’m saying Bertha is a tremendous live sun built from dead nebular matter.’

      ‘That’s all nonsense, though, Eddy. We don’t even see it properly except as a shimmering blackness. If your theory were correct, Bertha would be a white giant. We’d all be scorched out of existence, sitting here so close to it.’

      ‘No, you’re forgetting your elementary relativity. I’ve worked this out. This is no fool hypothesis. I said Bertha had twenty-five million times Sol’s mass for a good reason. Because if you have a sun that big, the force of gravity at its surface is so colossal that even light cannot escape off into space.’

      Dominguey put his mescahale down and stared at the nearest bulkhead with his mouth open.

      ‘By the saints … Eddy, could that be so? What follows from that? I mean, is there any proof?’

      ‘There’s the visible distortion of distant starlight by Bertha’s bulk that gives you some idea of the gravitational forces involved. And the interferometer offers some guide. It’s still working. I used it out on the surface before I came back aboard. Why didn’t you try it? I suppose you and Baron panicked out there, as Malravin did? Bertha has an angular diameter of twenty-two degrees of arc. If the mass is as I say, then you can reckon its diameter in miles. Should be 346 times the sun’s, or about some 300 million miles. That’s presuming a lot, I know, but it gives us a rough guide. And from there a spot of trig will tell СКАЧАТЬ