Starclimber (8 page)

He grimaced. “Can’t wait.”

I was good at the land dives, but my confidence quickly evaporated on the obstacle course. The Airship Academy had us all on a regular exercise regimen, and I’d thought I was fairly fit, but I was no match for some of the other fellows. They left me in their dust as I jumped hurdles, scrambled over piles of logs, and scaled brick walls. Tobias and I kept pace through most of the course, but toward the end he pulled ahead. By the time I crossed the finish in ninth place, I was drenched, my chest and throat burning. I staggered about, hunched and gasping. I watched Eriksson check his stopwatch and silently jot notes on his clipboard.

“Don’t worry, gents,” said Eriksson when everyone was done, “you’ve got time for a nice shower before lunch.”

What Eriksson meant by a shower was cringing naked in a wooden tub as icy water poured down on us. The water slowly filled the tub until it was at our knees. At first it was almost blindingly painful, like a vise around my legs, but after a few minutes a seeping numbness took over and I started shivering violently. A rubber-coated assistant kept shoving a thermometer between my teeth and checking my temperature, writing on his clipboard.

“Can you feel your fingers?” my assistant asked.

“Yes,” I said, teeth chattering.

“Toes?”

I looked down at my submerged feet. “Think so,” I gasped.

Beside me, in his own tub, Tobias shuddered, arms tight across his chest.

“Can you feel your toes?” his assistant asked.

“No!” he shouted. “No, I bloody well can’t! I haven’t felt my toes in ages!”

“Some blueness around the lips,” his assistant noted.

“Yes, I’m blue!” said Tobias. “You’d be blue too if you were in here!”

After lunch, Eriksson led our group down to a large hall in the basement.

“Welcome to Centrifuge Training,” he said.

Crouched in the middle of the room like an enormous tarantula was a fascinating piece of machinery. Radiating from its circular hub were ten many-jointed wooden arms, each of which ended with a single-seat open cockpit.

“It looks like a fairground ride,” said Tobias warily.

“That’s exactly right,” said Eriksson. “Just a kiddie ride—called Buzzy Bee if I’m not mistaken. Pick a cockpit and strap yourselves in, please.”

I hopped into my seat and was a bit surprised to see both a lap belt and shoulder restraints. I buckled up. In front of me was a panel with a row of colored buttons.

“This one’s a piece of cake, gents,” said Eriksson. “Just sit back and enjoy the ride. The colored buttons will flash in various sequences. Red, green, blue, or what have you. Then, when it pauses, you just press the buttons in the same order. Simple, yes? Let’s get to it.”

“What are all those buckets along the wall?” one of the trainees asked.

“The ride used to be called Buzzy Bee,” Eriksson said with a wolfish grin, “but we’ve made some modifications. We call it the Scrambler now.”

Tobias and I exchanged a glance. I tightened my belts. Eriksson disappeared inside a little control booth. Through the smoked window I saw him turning a large crank. A motor spluttered to life.

Gently the machine began to turn. A peppy carousel tune crackled over hidden speakers, and I couldn’t help smiling. A couple of the men laughed. My father had once taken us to the Summer Exhibition, and I had a sudden and very clear image of him watching me, smiling, from the sidelines as I whirled on a merry-go-round.

The Scrambler picked up speed and my lights flashed blue, red, blue. This was too easy. But within seconds the sequences grew longer and more complicated. Purple, yellow, yellow, red, purple. Green, red, yellow, red, purple, blue.

We were going at quite a clip now, and suddenly my cockpit was yanked out of its circular orbit into a jerky figure eight. I looked up and saw that all the Scrambler’s jointed wooden arms were flexing and extending, hurtling everyone’s cockpits toward each other, veering clear at the very last moment. Faster and faster we careened about. I hoped that whoever had made the modifications knew what they were doing.

Yellow, purple, green, green, yellow, red, blue…

The lights gave you less and less time to respond, and then launched right into the next sequence.

We weren’t just spinning now but rising jerkily up and plunging down. The carousel music became faster and more desperate.

Red, green, green, purple, yellow, yellow, green, red, white, orange, yellow.

Was it purple after the first green, or yellow?

Without any warning, my cockpit twisted upside down. I gave a shout and heard it echoed by the other fellows as we whirled crazily about each other. Now I understood the shoulder straps. My buttons flashed away, heedless of my discomfort. The Scrambler’s music was all but drowned out by the shrieking of its wood and metal joints. We whirled so fast that my body was pressed hard against the side of the cockpit. My cheeks felt like they were flapping.

I was having trouble focusing on the lights. They smeared together into a rainbow. My body felt terribly heavy, my hands clumsy as anvils as they struggled to hit the right buttons.

Just when I thought I might black out, my cockpit abruptly spun right side up, and the Scrambler began to slow. When the machine had been going full tilt, I hadn’t felt sick, but now, as its movements became deliberate and sluggish, my stomach gave its first queasy lurch. I wasn’t sure if closing my eyes made it better or worse. Some of the men didn’t even wait for the machine to come to a complete stop before jumping out and rushing to the metal buckets along the wall. There they retched miserably, in between their curses.

I stayed seated, breathing slow and deep, and gradually my stomach unclenched. I glanced over at Tobias, and though he looked a bit green around the gills, he gave me the thumbs-up sign.

“How’d you do with the lights?” he asked.

“I missed a lot toward the end,” I said.

“I could barely
see
by the end,” he said. “But at least we didn’t throw up.”

“All right, gents, everyone out,” Eriksson said. “The next group wants its turn.”

They worked us right up to dinner, and after that we were left to ourselves. The dormitory had a rooftop terrace, and Tobias and I joined a large group of the other trainees, who were smoking and chatting as the sun sank into the west. My legs ached pleasantly from all the running. I felt good about my land dives, but knew I’d have to get better at the obstacle courses. As for the icy shower and the Scrambler, I had no idea how I’d done. Our assistants never told us anything.

Tobias and I found a place near the balustrade, a bit on the fringe of things. I think both of us still felt self-conscious about being the youngest.

He offered me a cigarette, and I shook my head.

“Don’t know about you,” he said, lighting up, “but I could use a drink.” He gazed longingly in the direction of downtown. “Course, that’s impossible since they’ve got us all locked up like chimps.”

Mr. Lunardi didn’t want any of us leaving the facility, except on Sundays. I think he was worried we’d blab about the space program. And the city seemed already alive with rumors. This morning’s paper had a story about the Canadian space race, and suggested there might even be secret goings-on in Lionsgate City.

“Will it be like this every day, you think?” Tobias said. “Jumping and spinning?”

“Scares off the weak ones,” said a fellow to my right. “Standard first-day tactics. It’s the same in the Aeroforce.”

He wasn’t in our group, but I recognized him as one of the military types I’d spotted earlier. He was in his early twenties, a strapping tall fellow with a big, slightly aggressive smile.

“You’re a pilot, are you?” I asked.

“First Lieutenant Joshua Bronfman,” he said, extending his hand. “And this is Captain Chuck Shepherd right here.”

Shepherd was leaning against the balustrade, staring out over the city. He had a thick mustache and high forehead. He turned his cool, appraising eyes on us and gave the smallest of nods. I put him at no more than twenty-five. And already a captain. Confidence wafted off him like heat from a tar roof.

“We’re both test pilots,” said Bronfman smugly.

I was impressed, but Bronfman already seemed so impressed with himself I refused to show it. Test pilots were usually considered the best of the best. Any new ornithopter design the Aeroforce came up with, these fellows put it through its paces.

“Have you flown the new Avro class machines?” I asked, for I wanted to show them I was a sky sailor myself.

Bronfman grinned and nodded over at Shepherd. “Sure, we’ve taken them up for a few spins. We’ve got ’em working pretty good, eh, captain?”

“We have indeed,” Shepherd said laconically.

“The Avro is one fast machine,” said Bronfman. “Some people said she wouldn’t even stay up, but she stays up just fine. I worked her so hard once, I thought her wings would come off, but she’s built strong. And no one’s taken her faster than the captain.”

“She’s got a bit more speed in her,” Shepherd said, and looked back out over the city.

He was a man of few words, Captain Shepherd. But Bronfman more than made up for him.

“You hear eight people dropped out today?” he said with a smirk. “The land dives and Scrambler finished ’em off.”

“Maybe I’ve got a shot after all,” said Tobias, looking cheered up.

“Of course you do,” I said.

“How many astralnauts you figure they’ll pick?” Tobias asked. “I heard six.”

“I heard nine,” I said.

“They’re not telling,” said Shepherd.

“Well, you better hope it’s more than two,” Bronfman said smugly, “’cause that’d be Bronfman and Shepherd.”

He looked over at the captain, as if for approval. Shepherd didn’t laugh, but his right eyebrow lifted ever so slightly in amusement.

“I’m planning on being on that ship,” I said, hoping I sounded cockier than I felt.

Bronfman clapped me on the shoulder. “That’s the spirit, kid, but the competition’s pretty stiff. I wouldn’t get your hopes up.”

My shoulder stiffened. I hated being called a kid.

Bronfman looked over at Tobias. “And you’d have a better shot if you knocked off smoking.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” said Tobias, lighting another cigarette off his last.

“Good luck,” said Shepherd, walking off across the terrace. I guess he figured he’d spent enough time talking to kids.

“Nice meeting you two,” said Bronfman, following his captain. “See you tomorrow—if you’re still around.”

“They’re quite a pair,” I said to Tobias after they’d gone.

He shook his head in disgust. “I don’t know which one I hate more. No, I do. Bronfman.”

“He’s just full of hot air,” I said. “Shepherd’s the scary one. The way he just stares at you, like you’re a waste of space.”

“I heard he got almost perfect on the Scrambler.”

“How would anyone know?” I said irritably.

“He probably didn’t even turn blue in the shower,” said Tobias.

I grinned. “He probably just stared straight ahead and said, ‘That’s mighty refreshing.’”

We had a good laugh over that.

“You think I should quit smoking?” Tobias asked.

“They say it’s bad for your lungs,” I said. “Didn’t stop you from beating me in the obstacle course, though. Maybe I should take it up.”

We wandered over and sat down with some fellows from our own group. Most everyone seemed tired, but as the stars brightened, they got more talkative, their voices rising up into the darkness. Reg Perry said he wanted to see the canals of Mars. Tim Douglas said he was bored with being a fireman and wanted a new challenge. One fellow, a surgeon, said he’d seen a picture when he was a kid of a train leaving the station on a track that tilted right up to the moon—and he’d never forgotten it. Still another trainee said he wanted to see his name in the history books.

“What about you, Captain Shepherd?” someone asked the test pilot as he passed by on his way inside. “What brought you here?”

He shrugged. “They asked. And it’s my job. To fly the farthest, the fastest. Someone’s got to do it.”

I actually felt a bit sorry for him then, as irritating as he was. It didn’t seem like being an astralnaut held any romance for him. He wasn’t curious; he wasn’t an explorer; he was just a pilot, and he saw this as a chance to fly a new ship. I wondered if he even cared what was beyond the cockpit. I liked the idea of the ship well enough, but it was where it might go that excited me.

From earth, from this very terrace, the view of the stars was wondrous enough. Imagine how much more you could see thousands of miles beyond it. I tilted my head back and looked at them, now shining in full force. I found the tail of Draco, and with a smile my eyes settled on Kate de Vries.

T
he sign on the door said
ROOM F
.

Normally the signs were a bit more helpful and gave us at least some idea what we might expect inside.

“Room F,” said Tobias. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

It was day three of training, and last I heard, we were down to eighty-three candidates. My name hadn’t appeared on the board yet, and neither had Tobias’s. It was the first thing you did every morning: check the board, sigh with relief, send a sympathetic glance to the fellows who got chopped. Then hit the showers. Maybe I should’ve felt proud of myself, but some of the tests were so strange, it was hard to know how well I was making out. So far I’d managed to hold on, but it was early days yet, and now we had Room F to reckon with.

I took a deep breath, stepped inside, and stopped short.

Room F was a lecture hall, with a chalkboard at the front and rows of little desks with astralnaut trainees squeezed inside. It seemed as if all the groups were being brought together for this session. Some of the other fellows looked as confused as I felt. We were used to diabolical machines and endurance tests. Standing down at the front were Captain Walken and a small, dejected-looking man with spectacles, leaning on a cane.

“It’s just like school,” said Tobias with terror in his voice. “I think I’d rather do another land dive.”

We found two desks at the back, each of which held a notebook and two sharpened pencils.

“Let’s begin, please,” said Captain Walken. “Ah, welcome, ladies.”

I turned around in surprise to see Kate and Miss Simpkins entering the classroom.

“Gentlemen,” said Captain Walken, “allow me to introduce Miss Kate de Vries and Miss Marjorie Simpkins. Miss de Vries is an expert on high-altitude zoology, and I’m very pleased to tell you she’ll be joining our expedition.”

So Kate’s plan had worked! Her parents had given their consent. I can’t say I was surprised. Kate was almost supernaturally skilled at getting what she wanted.

“Good morning, everyone,” said Kate, sitting at the desk beside mine without giving me a glance. “Mr. Lunardi has very kindly allowed me to sit in on some of your sessions.”

The other fellows didn’t seem to mind at all. They were smiling and sitting up straighter at their desks. But I was surprised by my own contrary mix of feelings. I was always hungry to see more of Kate, but I didn’t want her
here
. This was my testing grounds, and I didn’t want her to see me if I looked foolish or too young, or if I failed. It was bad enough that she got to be part of the expedition without lifting a finger to prove herself. Why did she have to come and gawk at us like a tourist?

“Now, to business,” said Captain Walken. “Without the know-how of this gentleman beside me, we wouldn’t be going to outer space. This is Dr. Sergei Turgenev, and he’ll be the chief science officer aboard ship. Our expedition will take us into a new world, and Dr. Turgenev has a great deal to share with you.”

After all my months at the Academy, I felt quite at home behind my desk. But I could see that some of the other fellows were ill at ease.

Dr. Turgenev limped forward, leaning on his cane. He wasn’t old—no more than forty—but he gave the impression of being crumpled. His long face was made even longer by his goatee. He sighed deeply. His spectacles were flecked with dandruff.

“I am very excited to be among you,” he said in mournful, heavily accented English. “So I am here to tell you about outer space.”

He turned his back on us and went to the chalkboard. Splinters of chalk exploded from his hand as long strings of numbers and symbols scrolled across the board.

I glanced over at Kate and saw her eagerly copying everything down in her notebook. The other candidates stared at the board in horror. I knew how they felt. I’d never seen some of the symbols that appeared there like malevolent hieroglyphs.

“Now, someone complete equation for me, if you please,” said Dr. Turgenev, turning to face the class. “I am sorry this is insultingly simple. I promise we get more challenging. Anyone?”

I glanced over at Kate, but even she wasn’t going to take a whack at it.

“No one,” said Dr. Turgenev. “I am very disappointed.” He stared at us dolefully. Then something strange happened to his face. At first I thought he was having some kind of seizure, but then I realized he was trying to smile. “I am just kidding. This is
joke
, what I have written on board. Is meaningless. Complete gibberish.”

We all looked around at one another uncertainly.

“Captain Walken told me it is good idea to begin with joke. So that is my
joke
. And now I think we are all more relaxed, and I begin to tell you about outer space.”

He wiped the chalkboard clean with his brush and drew a circle.

“Here is our planet. Around it we have sky. And above sky we have outer space. Where does it begin? We must find out. What is this outer space? What is it made of? Is it liquid? Is it gas? Now, thirty-five thousand feet is highest humans have gone. At this height, air pressure is much lower. I calculate it gets even lower, higher we go. Is possible that in outer space there is no pressure at all. But we will see.”

When Kate and I salvaged the
Hyperion
last year, we’d been as high as twenty thousand feet—and I knew what a hostile place it was: almost airless and extremely cold. I could scarcely imagine what it would be like beyond that.

“Ship will be pressurized,” Dr. Turgenev continued, “and supplied with heat and air, but when you venture outside ship—”

“We’re going
outside
the ship?” Reg Perry asked in alarm.

“Yes, certainly. Not me, of course, I have weak lungs. But astralnauts will be first men in space. And so we create special suits for you. They bring one up now….”

There was a knock at the door.

“Ah, here it is,” said Dr. Turgenev. He opened the door. “Front of class, please,” he told the assistant. We all watched as a wooden mannequin, wearing an enormous puffy silver suit, was wheeled into the room. It was extremely shiny and reminded me of an oversize Christmas tree ornament. The mannequin beamed at us, obviously very pleased with his space suit.

“I’m not wearing that,” said Bronfman, and some of the other fellows laughed.

“I am very sorry to hear this,” said Dr. Turgenev. “Because without suit you die. First, lungs explode. Then, gases in your tissue expand and you swell to twice normal size. Water on your eyes and tongue boils and then mouth and nostrils freeze. After that you lose consciousness and die within seconds. Oh,” he added with a yawn, “there is also possibility blood boils.”

There was a moment of heavy silence.

“That is one fine-looking suit,” said Bronfman. “And I have a feeling it comes in just my size.”

I glanced at Tobias and rolled my eyes.

“Outside ship,” Dr. Turgenev continued, “we get extreme temperatures. Very hot in sunlight; very cold in shade. Suit is your astral skin. It keeps body at right pressure and gives you oxygen.”

“Excuse me,” said Chuck Shepherd. “But when do we see the ship?”

Dr. Turgenev gave a weary sigh. “Oh, yes, yes. Ship. Everyone is curious about spaceship.”

“I think we’d all like to have a look at it,” Shepherd said.

Mutters of agreement rose from the audience. The other trainees, I’d noticed, paid close attention when Shepherd spoke. He was a man of few words, but already, even on the third day, everyone looked to him as the standard we were all trying to achieve.

“You do not need to see ship yet,” said Dr. Turgenev, glancing a bit nervously at Captain Walken, who stood off to one side, listening.

“So far,” Shepherd said, polite but persistent, “I’ve been dropped, spun, iced, poked, and prodded. But I thought I was here to fly.”

“We know you can fly, Mr. Shepherd,” said Captain Walken. “The purpose of this training is to determine your overall fitness for outer space.”

“Yes, sir,” said Shepherd respectfully. “It just seems funny we can’t see the actual ship.”

“We’re hankering to take her for a little spin,” said Bronfman.

Captain Walken nodded patiently. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, gentlemen, but the ship isn’t here. She’s undergoing final preparations at the launch site, which, for obvious reasons, is being kept secret. Now, please listen to what Dr. Turgenev has to tell you.”

The gloomy scientist continued his lecture, relating each fact like a great tragedy. All the same, he gave us plenty of information about gravity, and atmospheric composition, and pressure and vacuums, and orbital velocity. I can’t say I understood all of it, but I got the gist of most of it—or so I hoped. Whenever I glanced over at Kate, she was listening intently, her busy little pen whisking across her notebook.

I started to wonder if the lecture was actually just another test—this time to see who could stay awake longest. The sunshine poured through the windows and the room became awfully warm. Some of the men, I noticed, were propping their heads on their hands and kept lurching forward.

A little paper ornithopter touched down on my desk, and I looked over to see Kate staring innocently straight ahead. Luckily Miss Simpkins was dozing, and we were both in the last row of seats, so I didn’t think anyone else saw. I glimpsed some handwriting on the ornithopter and quietly unfolded it. In Kate’s neat penmanship was a short message:

I’m coming! Told you my plan would work! Aren’t you pleased?

I gave her a quick nod and wink, then pushed her note under my book and turned back to Dr. Turgenev’s drone. But I was aware of Kate’s eyes boring into the side of my skull. I couldn’t believe it—she wanted a message back! Maybe she could listen to the lecture, take notes, and chat all at the same time, but I knew I couldn’t.

I dragged out her bit of paper and quickly wrote:

Very pleased! Let’s hope I’m coming too.

I didn’t bother refolding the ornithopter, just crumpled up the paper a bit and tossed it onto her desk when no one was looking. She wrote back:

Paying attention in class would be a good start.

I looked at her in annoyance, and she smiled sweetly.

I sat up straighter and focused on Dr. Turgenev. Down near the front one large fellow was flamboyantly asleep on his desk, and as I watched, he began to slide out of his seat. Just before he spilled out onto the floor, he woke with a shout.

“Hell’s bells!” he said.

“I know, I know,” said Dr. Turgenev, turning from the chalkboard, “these equations are very exciting for me also. But I am done for moment. Now I think some of you go for swim.”

I’d thought Dr. Turgenev was joking—until Grendel Eriksson appeared at the door of the lecture hall and told us we were going to the pool. Dread settled over me.

“Enjoy your swim, Mr. Cruse,” Kate said.

“Thank you, Miss de Vries. Good day.”

“You know her, then?” Tobias asked as we headed off with our group.

I grunted. “I met her a couple years ago aboard the
Aurora
. What happens in the pool, have you heard?”

He shook his head, then looked at me closely. “Are you all right?”

In a low voice I said, “I can’t swim.”

“Not at all?”

“I can thrash about for a while before I drown.”

“Just stick close to me,” Tobias said.

I felt awfully grateful to him, but I didn’t want to spoil his chances of doing well, and if we had to do laps or some kind of endurance test, I didn’t really see how he could help me.

In the changing room they handed us swimming gear, and we stripped off our clothes.

“What’re they doing here?” Tobias muttered.

I followed his gaze and my spirits sank even lower. Bronfman and Shepherd must have joined our group. Every day, as the number of trainees shrank, the groups were evened out. I’d be competing directly against these two every day now. I sighed. At least Kate wasn’t here to see me humiliate myself in the pool.

Captain Walken and a team of assistants were waiting for us on the deck. I was tall, and I’d started to fill out, but I still felt boyish beside all the other, bigger men in their swim gear.

“One thing you’ll experience in outer space,” the captain said, “is reduced gravity. Dr. Turgenev predicts complete weightlessness beyond a certain altitude. Moving about inside the ship will be one challenge; moving around outside will be quite another. Here on earth we can’t perfectly simulate weightlessness, but we can come close underwater. So suit up, gentlemen, and let’s take a walk in outer space.”

Eleven space suits hung from the wall like the skins of silver giants. Resting on a shelf above each suit was a helmet with a mirrored visor.

I didn’t like the idea of getting inside one of those, but I was hugely relieved we weren’t actually swimming. Maybe I wouldn’t end up making a fool of myself after all.

Though the suit was flexible at the joints, it had a rigid layer of rubber insulation inside, and getting it on was a struggle. Last year, while working aboard the
Hyperion
at twenty thousand feet, I’d donned a snow leopard sky suit that felt as comfortable as a second skin. But in this space suit I was heavy and clumsy—and uncomfortably hot. An assistant had to help me pull on my boots and gauntlets and lock the airtight metal collar into place. All that remained was the helmet.

On the edge of the deck was a huge machine sprouting lengths of narrow hosing. Captain Walken took hold of one and held it up.

“This is your umbilicus,” he told us. “One end’s connected to the ship, the other to the back of your suit. It supplies you with oxygen and carries away the carbon dioxide you exhale. It also keeps your suit pressurized.”

The assistants led us over to the air pump and starting attaching our umbilicuses.

“Once your helmets are on,” Captain Walken said, “we’ll be lowering you into the pool. Your boots have metal soles, so you’ll sink quickly. When you touch down, we’ll inflate your suits a bit to make you as near weightless as possible. You each have three very simple tasks to complete.”