“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.
CHAPTER IX
Captain Bert Darryl was looking forward to a quiet trip; if there was any justice in this world, he was certainly due for one. Last time there had been that awkward affair with the cops at Mackay; the time before there had been that uncharted rock off Lizard Island; and before that, by crikey, there’d been that trigger-happy young fool who had used a nondetachable harpoon on a fifteen-foot tiger and had been towed all over the seabed.
As far as one could tell by appearances, his customers seemed a reasonable lot this time. Of course, the Sports Agency always guaranteed their reliability as well as their credit — but all the same it was surprising what he sometimes got saddled with. Still, a man had to earn a living, and it cost a lot to keep this old bucket waterproof.
By an odd coincidence, his customers always had the same names — Mr. Jones, Mr. Robinson, Mr. Brown, Mr. Smith. Captain Bert thought it was a crazy idea, but that was just another of the agency’s little ways. It certainly made life interesting, trying to figure out who they really were. Some of them were so cautious that they wore rubber face masks the whole trip — yes, even under their diving masks. They would be the important boys who were scared of being recognized. Think of the scandal, for instance, if a supreme court judge or chief secretary of the Space Department was found poaching on a World Food reservation! Captain Bert thought of it, and chuckled.