The Deep Range

CHAPTER VIII

There were four people in the room, and not one of them was talking now. The chief instructor was biting his lip nervously, Don Burley sat looking stunned, and Indra was trying not to cry. Only Dr. Myers seemed fairly well under control, and was silently cursing the fantastic, the still inexplicable bad luck that had brought this situation upon them. He would have sworn that Franklin was well on the road to recovery, well past any serious crisis. And now this!

“There’s only one thing to do,” said the chief instructor suddenly. “And that’s to send out all our underwater craft on a general search.”

Don Burley stirred himself, slowly and as if carrying a great weight upon his shoulders.

“It’s twelve hours now. In that time he could have covered five hundred miles. And there are only six qualified pilots on the station.”

“I know — it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. But it’s the only thing we can do.”

“Sometimes a few minutes of thought can save a good many hours of random searching,” said Myers. “After half a day, a little extra time will make no difference. With your permission, I’d like to have a private talk with Miss Langenburg.”

“Of course — if she agrees.”

Indra nodded dumbly. She was still blaming herself bitterly for what had happened — for not going to the doctor immediately when they had returned to the island. Her intuition had failed her then; now it told her that there was no possibility of any hope, and she could only pray that it was wrong again.

“Now, Indra,” said Myers kindly when the others had left the room, “if we want to help Franklin we’ve got to keep our heads, and try to guess what he’s done. So stop blaming yourself — this isn’t your fault. I’m not sure if it’s anyone’s fault.”

It might be mine, he added grimly to himself. But who could have guessed? We understand so little about astrophobia, even now… and heaven knows it’s not in my line.

Indra managed a brave smile. Until yesterday, she had thought she was very grown-up and able to take care of herself in any situation. But yesterday was a very, very long time ago.

“Please tell me,” she said, “what is the matter with Walter. I think it would help me to understand.”

It was a sensible and reasonable request; even before Indra had made it, Myers had come to the same conclusion.

“Very well — but remember, this is confidential, for Walter’s own sake. I’m only telling it to you because this is an emergency and you may be able to help him if you know the facts.

“Until a year ago, Walter was a highly qualified spaceman. In fact, he was chief engineer of a liner on the Martian run, which as you know is a very responsible position indeed, and that was certainly merely the beginning of his career.

“Well, there was some kind of emergency in mid-orbit, and the ion drive had to be shut off. Walter went outside in a space suit to fix it — nothing unusual about that, of course. Before he had finished the job, however, his suit failed. No — I don’t mean it leaked. What happened was that the propulsion system jammed on, and he couldn’t shut off the rockets that allowed him to move around in space.

“So there he was, millions of miles from anywhere, building up speed away from his ship. To make matters worse, he’d crashed against some part of the liner when he started, and that had snapped off his radio antenna. So he couldn’t talk or receive messages — couldn’t call for help or find out what his friends were doing for him. He was completely alone, and in a few minutes he couldn’t even see the liner.

“Now, no one who has not been in a situation like that can possibly imagine what it’s like. We can try, but we can’t really picture being absolutely isolated, with stars all around us, not knowing if we’ll ever be rescued. No vertigo that can ever be experienced on Earth can match it — not even seasickness at its worst, and that’s bad enough.

“It was four hours before Walter was rescued. He was actually quite safe, and probably knew it — but that didn’t make any difference. The ship’s radar had tracked him, but until the drive was repaired it couldn’t go after him. When they did get him aboard he was — well, let’s say he was in a pretty bad way.

“It took the best psychologists on Earth almost a year to straighten him out, and as we’ve seen, the job wasn’t finished properly. And there was one factor that the psychologists could do nothing about.”

Myers paused, wondering how Indra was taking all this, how it would affect her feelings toward Franklin. She seemed to have got over her initial shock; she was not, thank God, the hysterical type it was so difficult to do anything with.

“You see, Walter was married. He had a wife and family on Mars, and was very fond of them. His wife was a second-generation colonist, the children, of course, third-generation ones. They had spent all their lives under Martian gravity — had been conceived and born in it. And so they could never come to Earth, where they would be crushed under three times their normal weight.

“At the same time, Walter could never go back into space. We could patch up his mind so that he could function efficiently here on Earth, but that was the best we could do. He could never again face free fall, the knowledge that there was space all around him, all the way out to the stars. And so he was an exile on his own world, unable ever to see his family again.

“We did our best for him, and I still think it was a good best. This work here could use his skills, but there were also profound psychological reasons why we thought it might suit him, and would enable him to rebuild his life. I think you probably know those reasons as well as I do, Indra — if not better. You are a marine biologist and know the links we have with the sea. We have no such links with space, and so we shall never feel at home there — at least as long as we are men.

“I studied Franklin while he was here; he knew I was doing it, and didn’t mind. All the while he was improving, getting to love the work. Don was very pleased with his progress — he was the best pupil he’d ever met. And when I heard — don’t ask me how! — that he was going around with you, I was delighted. For he has to rebuild his life all along the line, you know. I hope you don’t mind me putting it this way, but when I found he was spending his spare time with you, and even making time to do it, I knew he had stopped looking back.

“And now — this breakdown. I don’t mind admitting that I’m completely in the dark. You say that you were looking up at the Space Station, but that doesn’t seem enough cause. Walter had a rather bad fear of heights when he came here, but he’d largely got over that. Besides, he must have seen the station dozens of times in the morning or evening. There must have been some other factor we don’t know.”

Dr. Myers stopped his rapid delivery, then said gently, as if the thought had only just struck him: “Tell me, Indra — had you been making love?”

“No,” she said without hesitation or embarrassment. “There was nothing like that.”

It was a little hard to believe, but he knew it was the truth. He could detect — so clear and unmistakable! — the note of regret in her voice.

“I was wondering if he had any guilty feelings about his wife. Whether he knows it or not, you probably remind him of her, which is why he was attracted to you in the first place. Anyway, that line of reasoning isn’t enough to explain what happened, so let’s forget it.

“All we know is that there was an attack, and a very bad one. Giving him the sedative was the best thing you could have done in the circumstances. You’re quite sure that he never gave any indication of what he intended to do when you got him back to Heron?”

“Quite sure. All he said was, “Don’t tell Dr. Myers.” He said there was nothing you could do.”

That, thought Myers grimly, might well be true, and he did not like the sound of it. There was only one reason why a man might hide from the only person who could help him. That was because he had decided he was now beyond help.

“But he promised,” Indra continued, “to see you in the morning.”

Myers did not reply. By this time they both knew that that promise had been nothing more than a ruse.

Indra still clung desperately to one last hope.

“Surely,” she said, her voice quavering as if she did not really believe her own words, “if he’d intended to do — something drastic — he’d have left a message for somebody.”

Myers looked at her sadly, his mind now completely made up.

“His parents are dead,” he replied. “He said good-bye to his wife long ago. What message was there for him to leave?”

Indra knew, with a sickening certainty, that he spoke the truth. She might well be the only person on Earth for whom Franklin felt any affection. And he had made his farewell with her…

Reluctantly, Myers rose to his feet.

“There’s nothing we can do,” he said, “except to start a general search. There may be a chance that he’s just blowing off steam at full throttle, and will creep in shamefaced some time this morning. It’s happened before.”

He patted Indra’s bowed shoulders, then helped her out of the chair. “Don’t be too upset, my dear. Everyone will do his best.” But in his heart, he knew it was too late. It had been too late hours before, and they were going through the motions of search and rescue because there were times when no one expected logic to be obeyed.

They walked together to the assistant chief instructor’s office, where the C.I. and Burley were waiting for them. Dr. Myers threw open the door — and stood paralyzed on the threshold. For a moment he thought that he had two more patients — or that he had gone insane himself. Don and the chief instructor, all distinctions of rank forgotten, had their arms around each other’s shoulders and were shaking with hysterical laughter. There was no doubt of the hysteria; it was that of relief. And there was equally no doubt about the laughter.

Dr. Myers stared at this improbable scene for perhaps five seconds, then glanced swiftly around the room. At once he saw the message form lying on the floor where one of his temporarily disordered colleagues had dropped it. Without asking their permission, he rushed forward and picked it up.

He had to read it several times before it made any sense; then he, too, began to laugh as he had not done for years.