“Isn’t there more?” Hoppy was saying peevishly.
“Not yet,” Stroud said. “But there will be.” He shot a swift, flickering glance at the others in the delegation. “Your real presents, Hoppy, have to be prepared with care. This is just a beginning.”
“I see,” the phocomelus said. But he did not sound convinced.
“Honest,” Stroud said. “It’s the truth, floppy.”
“I don’t smoke,” Hoppy said, surveying the cigarettes; he picked up a handful and crushed them, letting the bits drop. “It causes cancer.”
“Well,” Gill began, “there’re two sides to that. Now—”
The phocomelus sniggered. “I think that’s all you’re going to give me,” he said.
“No, there will certainly be more,” Stroud said.
The room was silent, except for the static coming from the speaker.
Off in the corner an object, a transmitter tube, rose and sailed through the air, burst loudly against the wall, sprinkling them all with fragments of broken glass.
“‘More,’” Hoppy mimicked, in Stroud’s deep, portentous voice. “‘There will certainly be more.’”
XV
For thirty-six hours Walt Dangerileld had lain on his bunk in a state of semi-consciousness, knowing now that it was not an ulcer; it was cardiac arrest which he was experiencing, and it was probably going to kill him in a very short time. In spite of what Stockstill, the analyst, had said.
The transmitter of the satellite had continued to broadcast a tape of light concert music over and over again; the sound of soothing strings filled his ears in a travesty of unavailing comfort. He did not even have the strength to get up and make his way to the controls to shut it off.
That psychoanalyst, he thought bitterly. Talking about breathing into a paper bag. It had been like a dream… the faint voice, so full of self-confidence. So utterly false in its premises.
Messages were arriving from all over the world as the satellite passed through its orbit again iand again; his recording equipment caught them and retained them, but that was all. Dangerfield could no longer answer.
I guess I have to tell them, he said to himself. I guess the time—the time we’ve been expecting, all of us—has finally come at last.
On his hands and knees he crept until he reached the seat by the microphone, the seat in which for seven years he had broadcast to the world below. After he had sat there for a time resting he turned on one of the many tape recorders, picked up the mike, and began dictating a message which, when it had been completed, would play endlessly, replacing the concert music.
“My friends, this is Walt Dangerfield talking and wanting to thank you all for the times we have had together, speaking back and forth, us all keeping in touch. I’m afraid though that this complaint of mine makes it impossible for me to go on any longer. So with great regret I’ve got to sign off for the last time—” He went on, painfully, picking his words with care, trying to make them, his audience below, as little unhappy as possible. But nevertheless he told them the truth; he told them that it was the end for him and that they would have to find some way to communicate without him, and then he rang off, shut down the microphone, and in a weary reflex, played the tape back.
The tape was blank. There was nothing on it, although he had talked for almost fifteen minutes.
Evidently the equipment had for some reason broken down, but he was too ill to care; he snapped the mike back on, set switches on the control panel, and this time prepared to deliver his message live to the area below. Those people there would just have to pass the word on to the others; there was no other way.
“My friends,” he began once more, “this is Walt Dangerfield. I have some bad news to give you but—” And then he realized that he was talking into a dead mike. The loudspeaker above his head had gone silent; nothing was being transmitted. Otherwise he would have heard his own voice from the monitoring system.
As he sat there, trying to discover what was wrong, he noticed something else, something far stranger and more ominous.
Systems on all sides of him were in motion. Had been in motion for some time, by the looks of them. The highspeed recording and playback decks which he had never used—all at once the drums were spinning, for the first time in seven years. Even as he watched he saw relays click on and off; a drum halted, another one began to turn, this time at slow speed.
I don’t understand, he said to himself. What’s happening?
Evidently the systems were receiving at high speed, recording, and now one of them had started to play back, but what had set all this in motion? Not he. Dials showed him that the satellite’s transmitter was on the air, and even as he realized that, realized that messages which had been picked up and recorded were now being played over the air, he heard the speaker above his head return to life.
“Hoode hoode hoo,” a voice—his voice—chuckled. “This is your old pal, Walt Dangerfield, once more, and forgive that concert music. Won’t be any more of that.”
When did I say that? he asked himself as he sat dully listening. He felt shocked and puzzled. His voice sounded so vital, so full of good spirits; how could I sound like that now? he wondered. That’s the way I used to sound, years ago, when I had my health, and when she was still alive.
“Well,” his voice murmured on, “that bit of indisposition I’ve been suffering from… evidently mice got into the supply cupboards, and you’ll laugh to think of Walt Dangerfield fending off mice up here in the sky, but ‘tis true. Anyhow, part of my stores deteriorated and I didn’t happen to notice… but it sure played havoc with my insides. However– And he heard himself give his familiar chuckle. “I’m okay now. I know you’ll be glad to hear that, all you people down there who were so good as to transmit your get-well messages, and for that I give you thanks.”
Getting from from the seat before the microphone, Walt Dangerfleld made his way unsteadily to his bunk; he lay down, closing his eyes, and then he thought once more of the pain in his chest and what it meant. Angina peetoris, he thought, is supposed to be more like a great fist pressing down; this is more a burning pain. If I could look at the medical data on the microfilm again… maybe there’s some fact I failed to read. For instance, this is directly under the breastbone, not off to the left side. Does that mean anything?
Or maybe there’s nothing wrong with me, he thought to himself as he struggled to get up once more. Maybe Stockstill, that psychiatrist who wanted me to breathe carbon dioxide, was right; maybe it’s just in my mind, from the years of isolation here.
But he did not think so. It felt far too real for that.
There was one other fact about his ifiness that bewildered him. For all his efforts, he could not make a thing out of that fact, and so he had not even bothered to mention it to the several doctors and hospitals below. Now it was too late, because now he was too sick to operate the controls of the transmitter.
The pain seemed always to get worse when his satellite was passing over Northern California.
In the middle of the night the din of Bill Keller’s agitated murmurings woke his sister up. “What is it? Edie said sleepily, trying to make out what he wanted to tell her. She sat up in her bed, now, rubbing her eyes as the murmurings rose to a crescendo.
“Hoppy Harrington!” he was saying, deep down inside her. “He’s taken over the satellite! Hoppy’s taken over Dangerfield’s satellite!” He chattered on and on excitedly, repeating it again and again.