“No,” Murchison repeated stolidly. “I tried. I can’t do a damned thing.”
“That means we’re finished, doesn’t it?” asked Ramirez, one of our returnees. His voice was a little wild. “We might just as well have stayed on Shaula! At least we’d still be alive!”
“It looks pretty lousy,” Henrichs admitted. The thin-faced navigator was frowning blackly. “We don’t dare try a blind landing. There’s nothing we can do. Nothing at all.”
“There’s one thing,” Murchison said.
All eyes turned to him. “What?” Knight asked.
“Put a man in a spacesuit and anchor him to the skin of the ship. Have him guide us in by verbal instructions. It’s a way, anyway.”
“Pretty farfetched,” Henrichs commented.
“Yes, dammit, but it’s our only hope!” Murchison snapped. “Stick a man up there and let him talk us in.”
“He’d incinerate once we hit Earth’s atmosphere,” I said. “We’d lose a man and still have to land blind.”
Murchison puckered his thick lower lip. “You’ll be able to judge the ship’s height by hull temperature once you’re that close. Besides, once the ship’s inside the ionosphere you can use ordinary radio for the rest of the way down. The trick is to get that far.”
“I think it’s worth a try,” Captain Knight said. “I guess we’ll have to draw lots. Loeb, get some straws from the galley.” His voice was grim.
“Never mind,” Murchison said.
“Huh?”
“I said, never mind. Skip it. Forget about drawing straws. I’ll go.”
“Murchison—”
“Skip it!” he barked. “It’s a failure in my department, so I’m going to go out there. I volunteer, get it? If anyone else wants to volunteer, I’ll match him for it.” He looked around at us. No one moved. “I don’t hear any takers. I’ll assume the job’s mine.” Sweat streamed down his face.
There was a startled silence, broken when Ramirez made the lousiest remark I’ve ever heard mortal man utter. “You’re trying to make it up for hitting that defenseless Shaulan, eh, Murchison? Now you want to be a hero to even things up!”
If Murchison had killed him on the spot, I think we’d all have applauded. But the big man only turned to Ramirez and said quietly, “You’re just as blind as the others. You don’t know how rotten those defenseless Shaulans are, any of you. Or what they did to me.” He spat. “You all make me sick. I’m going out there.”
He turned and walked away…out, to get into his spacesuit and climb into the ship’s skin.
Murchison’s explicit instructions, relayed from the outside of the ship, allowed Henrichs to bring us in. It was quite a feat of teamwork.
At 50,000 feet above Earth, Murchison’s voice suddenly cut out. We were able to pick up ground-to-ship radio by then and we taxied down. Later, they told us it seemed like a blazing candle was riding the ship’s back. A bright, clear flame flared for a moment as we cleaved the atmosphere.
And I remember the look on Murchison’s face as he left us to go out there. It was tense, bitter, strained—as if he were being compelled to go outside. As if he had no choice about volunteering for martyrdom.
I often wonder about that now. No one had ever made Murchison do anything he didn’t want to do—until then.
We think of the Shaulans as gentle, meek, defenseless. Murchison crossed one of them, and he died. Gentle, meek, yes—but defenseless? Murchison didn’t think so.
Maybe they whammied the ship and cursed Murchison with the urge to self-martyrdom, to punish him. Maybe. He never did trust them much.
It sort of tarnishes his glorious halo. But you know, sometimes I think Murchison was right about the Shaulans after all.