Mickey got up and sat down on his bunk. He pressed his large hands against his temples. He looked very much like a little boy who had eaten too many green apples against his mother’s injunction and who feared retribution on both counts. Mason knew what Mickey was thinking. Of that still body with the skull forced in. The image of himself brutally killed in collision. He, Mason, was thinking of the same thing. And, behavior to the contrary, Ross probably was too.
Mason stood by the port looking out at the silent hulk across the meadow. Darkness was falling. The last rays of the planet’s sun glinted off the skin of the crashed rocket ship. Mason turned away. He looked at the outside temperature gauge. Already it was seven degrees and it was still light. Mason moved the thermostat needle with his right forefinger.
Heat being used up, he thought. The energy of our grounded ship being used up faster and faster. The ship drinking its own blood with no possibility of transfusion. Only operation would recharge the ship’s energy system. And they were without motion, trapped and stationary.
“How long can we last?” he asked Ross again, refusing to keep silence in the face of the question. “We can’t live in this ship indefinitely. The food will run out in a couple of months. And a long time before that the charging system will go. The heat will stop. We’ll freeze to death.”
“How do we know the outside temperature will freeze us?” Ross asked, falsely patient.
“It’s only sundown,” Mason said, “and already it’s … minus thirteen degrees.”
Ross looked at him sullenly. Then he pushed up from his chair and began pacing.
“If we go up,” he said, “we risk … duplicating that ship over there.”
“But would we?” Mason wondered. “We can only die once. It seems we already have. In this galaxy. Maybe a person can die once in every galaxy. Maybe that’s afterlife. Maybe…”
“Are you through?” asked Ross coldly.
Mickey looked up.
“Let’s go,” he said. “I don’t want to hang around here.”
He looked at Ross.
Ross said, “Let’s not stick out our necks before we know what we’re doing. Let’s think this out.”
“I have a wife!” Mickey said angrily. “Just because you’re not married—”
“Shut up!” Ross thundered.
Mickey threw himself on the bunk and turned to face the cold bulkhead. Breath shuddered through his heavy frame. He didn’t say anything. His fingers opened and closed on the blanket, twisting it, pulling it out from under his body.
Ross paced the deck, abstractedly punching at his palm with a hard fist. His teeth clicked together, his head shook as one argument after another fell before his bullheaded determination. He stopped, looked at Mason, then started pacing again. Once he turned on the outside spotlight and looked to make sure it was not imagination.
The light illumined the broken ship. It glowed strangely, like a huge, broken tombstone. Ross snapped off the spotlight with a soundless snarl. He turned to face them. His broad chest rose and fell heavily as he breathed.
“All right,” he said. “It’s your lives too. I can’t decide for all of us. We’ll hand vote on it. That thing out there may be something entirely different from what we think. If you two think it’s worth the risk of our lives to go up, we’ll … go up.”
He shrugged. “Vote,” he said. “I say we stay here.”
“I say we go,” Mason said.
They looked at Mickey.
“Carter,” said Ross, “what’s your vote?”
Mickey looked over his shoulder with bleak eyes.
“Vote,” Ross said.
“Up,” Mickey said. “Take us up. I’d rather die than stay here.”
Ross’s throat moved. Then he took a deep breath and squared his shoulders.
“All right,” he said quietly. “We’ll go up.”
“God have mercy on us,” Mickey muttered as Ross went quickly to the control board.
The captain hesitated a moment. Then he threw switches. The great ship began shuddering as gases ignited and began to pour like channeled lightning from the rear vents. The sound was almost soothing to Mason. He didn’t care any more; he was willing, like Mickey, to take a chance. It had only been a few hours. It had seemed like a year. Minutes had dragged, each one weighted with oppressive recollections. Of the bodies they’d seen, of the shattered rocket – even more of the Earth they would never see, of parents and wives and sweethearts and children. Lost to their sight forever. No, it was far better to try to get back. Sitting and waiting was always the hardest thing for a man to do. He was no longer conditioned for it.
Mason sat down at his board. He waited tensely. He heard Mickey jump up and move over to the engine control board.
“I’m going to take us up easy,” Ross said to them. “There’s no reason why we should … have any trouble.”
He paused. They snapped their heads over and looked at him with muscle-tight impatience.
“Are you both ready?” Ross asked.
“Take us up!” Mickey said.
Ross jammed his lips together and shoved over the switch that read: Vertical Rise.
They felt the ship tremble, hesitate. Then it moved off the ground, headed up with increasing velocity. Mason flicked on the rear viewer. He watched the dark earth recede, tried not to look at the white patch in the corner of the screen, the patch that shone metallically under the moonlight.
“Five hundred,” he read. “Seven-fifty … one thousand … fifteen hundred…”
He kept waiting. For explosion. For an engine to give out. For their rise to stop.
They kept moving up.
“Three thousand,” Mason said, his voice beginning to betray the rising sense of elation he felt. The planet was getting farther and farther away. The other ship was only a memory now. He looked across at Mickey. Mickey was staring, open-mouthed, as if he were about ready to shout out “Hurry!” but was afraid to tempt the fates.
“Six thousand … seven thousand!” Mason’s voice was jubilant. “We’re out of it!”
Mickey’s face broke into a great, relieved grin. He ran a hand over his brow and flicked great drops of sweat on the deck.
“God,” he said, gasping, “my God.”
Mason moved over to Ross’s seat. He clapped the captain on the shoulder.
“We made it,” he said. “Nice flying.”
Ross looked irritated.
“We shouldn’t have left,” he said. “It was nothing all the time. Now we have to start looking for another planet.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t a good idea to leave,” he said.
Mason stared at him. He turned away, shaking his head, thinking … you can’t win.
“If I ever see another glitter,” he thought aloud, “I’ll keep my big mouth shut. To hell with alien races anyway.”
Silence. He went back to his seat and picked up his graph chart. He let out a long shaking breath. Let Ross complain, he thought, I can take anything now. Things are normal again. He began to figure casually what might have occurred down there on that planet. Then he happened to glance at Ross.
Ross was thinking. His lips pressed together. He said something to himself. Mason found the captain looking at him. “Mason,” he said.
“What?”
“Alien race, you said.”
Mason felt a chill flood through his body. He saw the big head nod once in decision. Unknown decision. His hands started to shake. A crazy idea came. No, Ross wouldn’t do that, not just to assuage vanity. Would he?
“I don’t…” he started. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Mickey watching the captain too.