Pilgrimage to Earth

EARTH, AIR, FIRE AND WATER

No spaceship radio ever worked properly, and Jim Radell’s set on board the Algonquin was no exception. He had been talking with Con Electric, back on Earth. But reception faded, and suddenly the tiny pilot’s compartment was filled with voices.

“Not grapple hooks!” the radio blared. “I wanted candy bars!”

“Isn’t this Mars Station?” someone asked.

“No, this is Luna. Get the hell off my frequency.”

“What am I supposed to do with three gross of grapple hooks?”

“Wear ‘em in your nose. Hello, Luna?”

Radell listened for a while. The radio gave him the reassuring impression that space was filled with people, tremendously alive and vital, crowding the planets for room. He had to remind himself that all the noise was made by less than fifty men, specks of dust in the spaces around Earth.

The radio blared static for a few moments, then hummed steadily. Radell switched to standby and strapped himself down. The Algonquin was in deceleration orbit, slipping toward the cloudy surface of Venus. He could read a book or take a nap until the ship landed itself.

He had two jobs. One concerned itself with an unmanned ship that Con Electric had sent to Venus five years ago. The ship contained automatic recording instruments. One of Radell’s jobs was to return those instruments to Earth.

The Algonquin spiraled toward the cold, storm-swept surface of Venus, homing automatically on the grid location of the robot ship. The hull glowed dull red as the Algonquin cut through Venus’ blanketing atmosphere, slowing, dropping, adjusting itself. Snow flurried around the ship as it turned over, tail jets flaring. Then it settled gently to the ground.

“Sweet landing, baby,” Radell told the ship. He unstrapped himself and switched the radio contact to his spacesuit. His dials showed the robot ship two and a half miles away; not far enough to bother lugging provisions. He would just walk over, pick up the instruments, and then go on home.

“Probably be back in time for the Series,” he said out loud. He gave the suit a final check, and undogged the first hatch.

The spacesuit was Radell’s second, and most important job.

Mankind was pushing out. On a cosmic scale, the race was scarcely born. And yet, yesterday’s cave-dweller and dreamer of the stars was leaving Earth behind. Yesterday he had been naked, pitifully soft, hopelessly vulnerable. Today, encased in steel, propelled on incandescent jets, he had reached Luna, Mars, and Venus.

Spacesuits were a link in the technological chain that spanned the planets.

Prototypes of the suit Radell was wearing had been subjected to every test an ingenious laboratory could devise. They had come through intact. Now the suit was receiving its final test in the field.

“Stay right here, baby,” Radell told the ship. He stepped out the last hatch and climbed down Algonquin’s ladder, wearing the best and most expensive spacesuit that man had ever devised.

He followed his radiocompass, moving easily through a thin layer of snow. Very little of the landscape around him was visible. It was hidden in the gray twilight of Venus. Underfoot were thin, springy plants, sparsely scattered through the snow. They were the only living things in sight.

He adjusted the radio in his suit, hoping that someone would broadcast the major league baseball scores. But all he got was the end of a weather broadcast from Mars.

Snow began to fall again. It was cold; the dial on his wrist showed it, because no chilled air could creep through his suit. And although Venus had an oxygen atmosphere, he didn’t have to breathe it. A plastic helmet sealed him into a tiny, manmade world of his own. Within it, he couldn’t even feel the cold, stiff wind which pushed steadily against him.

As he walked, the snow became deeper. He glanced back. His ship was completely hidden in the gray twilight, and progress was becoming more difficult.

“If they put down a colony here,” he said to himself, “they sure won’t get me to homestead on it!” He turned up more oxygen and shuffled through the drifts.

After a while he picked up the ghost of music on his radio, so faint he couldn’t be sure he was really hearing it. He plodded on for two hours, more than a mile from his ship, humming the song he thought he heard, thinking about anything except Venus.

Suddenly he plunged into loose snow up to his knees.

He stood up and shook himself. He saw that he had been walking in a snowstorm for some time. Encased in the wonderful suit, he hadn’t even noticed it.

But he saw no cause for alarm. Within his spacesuit there was a marvelous security. The screech of the wind was filtered to him only faintly. Bursts of hail rattled harmlessly against his plastic helmet, and the sound made him think of rain on a tin roof.

He plunged on, into the crust that was forming over deep snow.

More snow fell in the next hour. Radell noticed that the wind had increased to almost gale velocity. Drifts were piling up around him, crusting over in the freezing temperature.

He had no intention of turning back.

“To hell with it,” he said. “Nothing gets inside this suit.”

Then he plunged into snow up to his waist.

He grinned and pulled himself out. But his next step sent him through the thin crust again.

He tried to wade through, but the resistance of snow and crust was too great. In ten minutes he was winded, and his suit had to supply him with more oxygen.

Radell was not frightened, however. He knew that there were no real dangers on Venus, no men, no beasts, no poisonous plants. All he had to do was walk through snow for a few miles, wearing the most modern and efficient spacesuit ever devised by man.

He was growing thirsty. And he couldn’t seem to make any progress. The snow was up to his chest now, and it was becoming more and more difficult to climb to the surface, only to plunge through with his first step. Still, he tried doggedly for half an hour.

He stopped. His visibility was completely blocked by the solid wall of softly descending snow, falling from the dull gray sky overhead. In half an hour he had covered no more than ten yards.

He was stuck.

Interplanetary radio was always uncertain. Radell couldn’t seem to get a message through.

“This is Algonquin,” he broadcast. “Calling Con Electric.”

“Right, got the green, I’m coming in.”

“Would I lie? He broke his arm—”

“...And four cases of asparagus. Sign my name to it.”

“Sure we’re in free-fall. He still broke his arm.”

“This is Algonquin calling—”

“Hey, Control, let me in, I’m on the green.”

“Priority,” Radell called. “Calling Con Electric. I’m stuck in snow. Can’t get back to ship. What do I do now?”

The radio blared static.

Radell sat down in the snow to await instructions. He considered the snowfall an imposition. Was he supposed to be an Eskimo or something? Con Electric had gotten him into this. Let them get him out.

The suit maintained its even steady warmth. Radell managed to forget his hunger and thirst. As the drifts grew higher, he dozed off.

He awoke in a few hours, thirstier than ever. The radio hummed emptily. Radell realized that he would have to help himself. If he didn’t get back to his ship soon, he might become too weak to do anything. The wonderful protective qualities of the suit wouldn’t help him then.

He stood up, his throat aching from thirst, and wished that he had packed provisions. But how could he have known he would need them just to walk five miles and wearing such a suit?

He needed a means of locomotion over the thin crust. Snowshoes. What were snowshoes made from on Earth? He knelt and examined one of the thin, pliant plants growing through the snow. This would do as well.

He tried to break one. It was tough and oily. Radell’s gloved hands slid right off.

If only he had a knife. But there was no reason for a knife on a spaceship. It was as useless as a spear, or fishhooks.

He tugged again at the plant, then pulled off his gloves and searched his pockets for some sharp instrument. He found nothing except a dog-eared copy of “Planetary Landing Rules for Commercial Ships of More than 500 Gross Tons.” He shoved it back in his pocket.

Already his hands were numb. He pushed the gloves back on.

He had an idea. Unzipping the front of his suit, Radell leaned forward and used one side of the zipper as a saw. A cut began to form on the plant, and a blast of wind swept through the opened suit. Radell stepped up the suit’s heat output and continued sawing.

By the time he had cut three plants, he found the zipper teeth too dull to use. They should have used a harder alloy, he thought. He opened a zipper in his sleeve and continued sawing.

Finally he had his lengths of plant. He tried to close the zippers, but they were jammed with gum and wood fibers. Radell wrapped the edges as best he could and pushed his heat output to the maximum.

Now to make snowshoes. The plants bent easily, and snapped back easily. He had no way of joining them.

“What a stupid situation,” he said out loud. He had no string, no twine, no rope. Nothing.

“What should I do now?” he asked himself.

“Never saw such reception in my life,” someone on the radio was saying.

“This is Algonquin calling Earth,” Radell said hoarsely, for the thousandth time.

“Hello, Mars?”

“Con Electric calling Algonquin—”

“Maybe it’s the solar corona.”

“Cosmic ray output, more likely. Who’s that?”

“This is Con Electric. Our ship is delayed—”

“Algonquin speaking!” Radell shouted.

“Radell? What are you doing? You’re not an explorer and this is no time for sightseeing. Pick up that stuff and get back here.”

“This is Luna Station Two—”

“Stay out of this, Luna!” Radell shrieked. “Listen, I’m in a jam. Stuck. Stuck in the snow. Need snowshoes. Snowshoes! Do you hear me?”

The radio growled static. Radell turned back to the problem of snowshoes.

The plants had to be lashed together. The only way Radell could find to do it was by using the wires connecting his radio, or his heating unit. Which should he sacrifice?

It was an uncomfortable choice to make. He needed the radio. But he was cold now, even with the steady work of the heating unit. To destroy that would leave him with just the insulated suit against the cold of Venus.

The radio would have to go, he decided.

“...Tell her that, will you?” the radio said abruptly. “And on my next leave—” It faded again.

Radell found he couldn’t part with the radio, and the voices it brought into the lonely, civilized world of his spacesuit. Dizzy, tired, his throat parched with thirst, he felt that as long as he could hear the reassuringly mechanical hum of static, he was not alone.

Besides, if the snowshoes didn’t work, he would really be stuck without the radio to bring help.

Quickly, before he could change his mind, he ripped out the heating unit, stripped off his gloves, and went to work.

It wasn’t as simple as he had thought. He could hardly see, for his plastic helmet fogged with steam, now that the defroster was out of order. The knots he tied in the slippery, plastic-insulated wire pulled out. He tied more complicated knots, and still they pulled out. By trial and error he found one that would hold.

And even then, the plants slipped through the bindings. He had to rough them against the zippers before they would grip.

With one snowshoe partially finished, a wave of dizziness made him stop. He had to have something to drink.

He stripped off his helmet and stuffed a handful of snow into his mouth. It eased his thirst somewhat.

With the helmet off, he could see better. His fingers and toes were dead, and numbness was creeping through his limbs.

It didn’t hurt. As a matter of fact, it was quite comfortable. He was very sleepy, he found. Never had he been so sleepy.

He decided to take a very short nap, and then begin again.

“Emergency priority. Emergency priority, Con Electric, calling Algonquin. Come in, Algonquin. What’s wrong Algonquin?”

“Snowshoes. Can’t get to ship,” Radell muttered, half asleep.

“What happened, Radell? Mechanical breakdown? Something wrong with the ship?”

“Ship’s all right.”

“The suit! Did the suit break down?”

“No—” Radell was very drowsy. He didn’t know how to explain what had happened, because he wasn’t sure himself. Somehow, he had been taken out of civilization and plunged back a million years, to a time when men lived against the elements. Only a little while ago he had been encased in steel, and fires had spurted at his fingertips. Now he lay against the earth, and his battle was with the forces of fire, air and water.

“Can’t explain. Just get me out of here,” Radell said.

It suddenly struck him that in all the time of mankind, nothing had changed. Perhaps the cave was a little bigger, but man himself was no bigger, no tougher, no better fit. Outside, the storm still raged, the elements were supreme.

He shook himself fully awake and staggered to his feet, sure that he had made an important discovery. For the first time, he understood that he was fighting for his life, exactly as billions of his race had fought since the dawn of time, and as they would fight, no matter how well they built their spaceships.

He wasn’t going to die. Not easily, anyhow.

He had to have a fire, at once. There was a book of matches in his pants pocket.

Quickly he stripped off his spacesuit to get at them, and stood in the snow in pants and shirt. Next, he built a windbreak out of snow, scooping a hole down to the ground. He arranged branches carefully, and added leaves from the dog-eared “Planetary Landing Rules.” He touched a match to it.

If it didn’t burn—

But it did burn! The oil in the branches caught at once, and they blazed up, melting the snow around them.

Radell filled his plastic helmet with snow and placed it near the fire. He would have some water now!

He hugged himself close to the blazing branches, scorching his shirt. Already the fire was burning low. He added all the branches he had left.

They weren’t enough. Even with the half-finished snowshoe, his fire could last only a little while.

“Do you know what she said to me? Do you really want to know what she said to me? She said—”

“Priority! Emergency priority. Get off the air, everybody. Listen, Radell, this is Con Electric. A ship is putting out from Luna for you. Can you hear me?”

“1 can hear you. How soon will it be here?” Radell asked.

“Can’t you hear us, Radell? Are you all right’ Answer if you can.”

“I can hear you. How soon will the ship—”

“You’re not coming through. Anyhow, we’re assuming that you’re still alive. The ship will be there in about ten hours. Hang on, Radell.”

Ten hours! His fire was almost gone. Furiously, Radell sawed off more plants. But he couldn’t gather them fast enough to keep the fire going.

His water was melted. He gulped it down and burrowed lower, as close to the earth as he could get. He wrapped the suit around him and leaned close to the fading fire.

Ten hours!

He wanted to tell them that the spacesuit was fine. The only trouble was, Venus had pulled him out of it.

The wind roared over his head, deflected by the windbreak. The fire died to a tiny flame. Radell looked wildly around the white landscape, looking for something, anything to burn.

“Hang on, fella. We’re coming down. Made it in seven and a half hours. Burnt up all our fuel. They’ll have to send a fuel ship out to us. But we got here.”

A bright flame blossomed in Venus’ gray sky, and sank toward the silent hulk of the Algonquin.

“Can you hear us, boy? Are you still alive? We’re almost down.”

The ship landed on its tail within a hundred yards of the Algonquin. Three men climbed out, into the deep snow. A fourth man brought down several pairs of snowshoes.

“He was sure right about those snowshoes, you know?”

They grouped together and examined a dial on one man’s wrist.

“His radio’s still on. This way!”

They pushed over the snow, stumbling over each other in their haste. After a mile they were moving slower, but still homing steadily toward the radio signal.

They found Radell crouched over a small fire. His radio lay a few yards from him, where, apparently, he had thrown it. He looked up as the men approached and tried to grin.

They saw his spacesuit on the ground, ripped open. Radell was feeding his fire with chunks of lining from the best and most expensive spacesuit man had ever devised.