R is for Rocket (12 page)

    "Looks like you were right, Lieutenant."

    "Luck."

    "Brother, that puts muscle in me, just seeing it. Come on!" Simmons began to trot. The others automatically fell in with this, gasping, tired, but keeping pace.

    "A big pot of coffee for me," panted Simmons, smiling. "And a pan of cinnamon buns. Boy! And just lie there and let the old sun hit you. The guy that invented the Sun Domes, he should have got a medal!"

    They ran faster. The yellow glow grew brighter.

    "Guess a lot of men went crazy before they figured out the cure. Think it'd be obvious! Right off." Simmons panted the words in cadence to his running. "Rain, rain! Years ago. Found a friend. Of mine. Out in the jungle. Wandering around. In the rain. Saying over and over, 'Don't know enough, to come in, outta the rain. Don't know enough, to come in, outta the rain. Don't know enough — ' On and on. Like that. Poor crazy fool."

    "Save your breath!"

    They ran.

    They all laughed. They reached the door of the Sun Dome, laughing.

    Simmons yanked the door wide. "Hey!" he yelled. "Bring on the coffee!"

    There was no reply.

    They stepped through the door.

    The Sun Dome was empty and dark. There was no synthetic yellow sun floating in a high gaseous whisper at the center of the blue ceiling. There was no food waiting. It was cold as a vault. And through a thousand holes which had been newly punctured in the ceiling water streamed, the rain fell down, soaking into the thick rugs and the heavy modern furniture and splashing on the glass tables. The jungle was growing up like a moss in the room, on top of the bookcases and the divans. The rain slashed through the holes and fell upon the three men's faces.

    Pickard began to laugh quietly.

    "Shut up, Pickard!"

    "Ye gods, look what's here for us — no food, no sun, nothing. The Venusians — they did it! Of course!"

    Simmons nodded, with the rain tunneling down on his face. The water ran in his silvered hair and on his white eyebrows.

    "Every once in a while the Venusians come up out of the sea and attack a Sun Dome. They know if they ruin the Sun Domes they can ruin us."

    "But aren't the Sun Domes protected with guns?"

    "Sure." Simmons stepped aside to a place that was relatively dry. "But it's been five years since the Venusians tried anything. Defense relaxes. They caught this Dome unaware."

    "Where are the bodies?"

    "The Venusians took them all down into the sea. I hear they have a delightful way of drowning you. It takes about eight hours to drown the way they work it. Really delightful."

    "I bet there isn't any food here at all." Pickard laughed.

    The lieutenant frowned at him, nodded at him so Simmons could see. Simmons shook his head and went back to a room at one side of the oval chamber. The kitchen was strewn with soggy loaves of bread, and meat that had grown a faint green fur. Rain came through a hundred holes in the kitchen roof.

    "Brilliant." The lieutenant glanced up at the holes. "I don't suppose we can plug up all those holes and get snug here."

    "Without food, sir?" Simmons snorted. "I notice the sun machine's dismantled. Our best bet is to make our way to the next Sun Dome. How far is that from here?"

    "Not far. As I recall, they built two rather close together here. Perhaps if we waited, a rescue mission from the other might — "

    "It's probably been here and gone already, some days ago. They'll send a crew to repair this place in about six months, when they get the money from Congress. I don't think we'd better wait."

    "All right then, we'll eat what's left of our rations and get on to the next Dome."

    Pickard said, "If only the rain wouldn't hit my head, just for a few minutes. If I could only remember what it's like not to be bothered." He put his hands on his skull and held it tight. "I remember when I was in school a bully used to sit in back of me and pinch me and pinch me and pinch me every five minutes, all day long. He did that for weeks and months. My arms were sore and black and blue all the time. And I thought I'd go crazy from being pinched. One day I must have gone a little mad from being hurt and hurt, and I turned around and took a metal trisquare I used in mechanical drawing and I almost cut his lousy head off. I almost scalped him before they dragged me out of the room, and I kept yelling, 'Why don't he leave me alone? Why don't he leave me alone?' Brother!" His hands clenched the bone of his head, shaking, tightening, his eyes shut. "But what do I do
now
? Who do I hit, who do I tell to lay off, stop bothering me, this damn rain, like the pinching, always
on
you, that's all you hear, that's all you feel!"

    "We'll be at the other Sun Dome by four this afternoon."

    "Sun Dome? Look at this one! What if all the Sun Domes on Venus are gone? What then? What if there are holes in all the ceilings, and the rain coming in!"

    "We'll have to chance it."

    "I'm tired of chancing it. All I want is a roof and some quiet. I want to be alone."

    "That's only eight hours off, if you hold on."

    "Don't worry, I'll hold on all right." And Pickard laughed, not looking at them.

    "Let's eat," said Simmons, watching him.

    They set off down the coast, southward again. After four hours they had to cut inland to go around a river that was a mile wide and so swift it was not navigable by boat. They had to walk inland six miles to a place where the river boiled out of the earth, suddenly, like a mortal wound. In the rain, they walked on solid ground and returned to the sea.

    "I've got to sleep," said Pickard at last. He slumped. "Haven't slept in four weeks. Tried, but couldn't. Sleep here."

    The sky was getting darker. The night of Venus was setting in and it was so completely black that it was dangerous to move. Simmons and the lieutenant fell to their knees also, and the lieutenant said, "All right, we'll see what we can do. We've tried it before, but I don't know. Sleep doesn't seem one of the things you can get in this weather."

    They lay out full, propping their heads so the water wouldn't come to their mouths, and they closed their eyes.

    The lieutenant twitched.

    He did not sleep.

    There were things that crawled on his skin. Things grew upon him in layers. Drops fell and touched other drops and they became streams that trickled over his body, and while these moved down his flesh, the small growths of the forest took root in his clothing. He felt the ivy cling and make a second garment over him; he felt the small flowers bud and open and petal away, and still the rain pattered on his body and on his head. In the luminous night — for the vegetation glowed in the darkness — he could see the other two men outlined, like logs that had fallen and taken upon themselves velvet coverings of grass and flowers. The rain hit his face. He covered his face with his hands. The rain hit his neck. He turned over on his stomach in the mud, on the rubbery plants, and the rain hit his back and hit his legs.

    Suddenly he leaped up and began to brush the water from himself. A thousand hands were touching him and he no longer wanted to be touched. He no longer could stand being touched. He floundered and struck something else and knew that it was Simmons, standing up in the rain, sneezing moisture, coughing and choking. And then Pickard was up, shouting, running about.

    "Wait a minute, Pickard!"

    "Stop it, stop it!" Pickard screamed. He fired off his gun six times at the night sky. In the flashes of powdery illumination they could see armies of raindrops, suspended as in a vast motionless amber, for an instant, hesitating as if shocked by the explosion, fifteen billion droplets, fifteen billion tears, fifteen billion ornaments, jewels standing out against a white velvet viewing board. And then, with the light gone, the drops which had waited to have their pictures taken, which had suspended their downward rush, fell upon them, stinging, in an insect cloud of coldness and pain.

    "Stop it! Stop it!"

    "Pickard!"

    But Pickard was only standing now, alone. When the lieutenant switched on a small hand lamp and played it over Pickard's wet face, the eyes of the man were dilated, and his mouth was open, his face turned up, so the water hit and splashed on his tongue, and hit and drowned the wide eyes, and bubbled in a whispering froth on the nostrils.

    "Pickard!"

    The man would not reply. He simply stood there for a long while with the bubbles of rain breaking out in his whitened hair and manacles of rain jewels dripping from his wrists and his neck.

    "Pickard! We're leaving. We're going on.  Follow us."

    The rain dripped from Pickard's ears.

    "Do you hear me, Pickard!"

    It was like shouting down a well.

    "Pickard!"

    "Leave him alone," said Simmons.

    "We can't go on without him."

    "What'll we do, carry him?" Simmons spat. "He's no good
to
us or himself. You know what he'll do? He'll just stand here and drown."

    "What?"

    "You ought to know that by now. Don't you know the story? He'll just stand here with his head up and let the rain come in his nostrils and his mouth. He'll breathe the water."

    "No."

    "That's how they found General Mendt that time. Sitting on a rock with his head back, breathing the rain. His lungs were full of water."

    The lieutenant turned the light back to the unblinking face. Pickard's nostrils gave off a tiny whispering wet sound.

    "Pickard!" The lieutenant slapped the face.

    "He can't even feel you," said Simmons. "A few days in this rain and you don't have any face or any legs or hands."

    The lieutenant looked at his own hand in horror. He could no longer feel it.

    "But we can't leave Pickard here."

    "I'll show you what we can do." Simmons fired his gun.

    Pickard fell into the raining earth.

    Simmons said, "Don't move, Lieutenant. I've got my gun ready for you too. Think it over; he would only have stood or sat there and drowned. It's quicker this way."

    The lieutenant blinked at the body. "But you killed him."

    "Yes, because he'd have killed us by being a burden. You saw his face. Insane."

    After a moment the lieutenant nodded.

    They walked off into the rain.

    It was dark and their hand lamps threw a beam that pierced the rain for only a few feet. After a half hour they had to stop and sit through the rest of the night, aching with hunger, waiting for the dawn to come; when it did come it was gray and continually raining as before, and they began to walk again.

    "We've miscalculated," said Simmons.

    "No. Another hour."

    "Speak louder. I can't hear you." Simmons stopped and smiled. He touched his ears. "My ears. They've gone out on me. All the rain pouring finally numbed me right down to the bone."

    "Can't you hear anything?" said the lieutenant.

    "What?" Simmons' eyes were puzzled.

    "Nothing. Come on."

    "I think I'll wait here. You go on ahead."

    "You can't do that."

    "I can't hear you. You go on. I'm tired. I don't think the Sun Dome is down this way. And, if it is, it's probably got holes in the roof, like the last one. I think I'll just sit here."

    "Get up from there!"

    "So long. Lieutenant."

    "You can't give up now."

    "I've got a gun here that says I'm staying. I just don't care any more. I'm not crazy yet, but I'm the next thing to it. I don't want to go out that way. As soon as you get out of sight I'm going to use this gun on myself."

    "Simmons!"

    "You said my name. I can read that much off your lips."

    "Simmons."

    "Look, it's a matter of time. Either I die now or in a few hours. Wait'll you get to that next Dome, if you ever get there, and find rain coming in through the roof. Won't that be nice?"

    The lieutenant waited and then splashed off in the rain. He turned and called back once, but Simmons was only sitting there with the gun in his hands, waiting for him to get out of sight. He shook his head and waved the lieutenant on.

    The lieutenant didn't even hear the sound of the gun.

    He began to eat the flowers as he walked. They stayed down for a time, and weren't poisonous; neither were they particularly sustaining, and he vomited them up, sickly, a minute or so later.

    Once he took some leaves and tried to make himself a hat, but he had tried that before; the rain melted the leaves from his head. Once picked, the vegetation rotted quickly and fell away into gray masses in his fingers.

    "Another five minutes," he told himself. "Another five minutes and then I'll walk into the sea and keep walking. We weren't made for this; no Earthman was or ever will be able to take it. Your nerves, your nerves."

    He floundered his way through a sea of slush and foliage and came to a small hill.

    At a distance there was a faint yellow smudge in the cold veils of water.

    The next Sun Dome.

    Through the trees, a long round yellow building, far away. For a moment he only stood, swaying, looking at it.

    He began to run and then he slowed down, for he was afraid. He didn't call out. What if it's the same one? What if it's the dead Sun Dome, with no sun in it? he thought.

    He slipped and fell. Lie here, he thought; it's the wrong one. Lie here. It's no use. Drink all you want.

    But he managed to climb to his feet again and crossed several creeks, and the yellow light grew very bright, and he began to run again, his feet crashing into mirrors and glass, his arms flailing at diamonds and precious stones.

    He stood before the yellow door. The printed letters over it said
the sun dome
.
He put his numb hand up to feel it. Then he twisted the doorknob and stumbled in.