I could hardly believe my ears.
“Like who?”
“Like Pelvis. You know who I mean, that fat man . . . .”
Rheya could not possibly have known Pelvis, or even heard me mention him, for the simple reason that he had returned from an expedition three years after her death. I had not known him previously and was therefore unaware of his inveterate habit, when presiding over meetings at the Institute, of letting sessions drag on indefinitely. Moreover, his name was Pelle Villis and until his return I did not know that he had been nicknamed Pelvis.
Rheya leaned her elbows on my knees and looked me in the eyes. I put out my hand and stroked her arms, her shoulders and the base of her bare neck, which pulsed beneath my fingers. While it looked as though I was caressing her (and indeed, judging by her expression, that was how she interpreted the touch of my hands) in reality I was verifying once again that her body was warm to the touch, an ordinary human body, with muscles, bones, joints. Gazing calmly into her eyes, I felt a hideous desire to tighten my grip.
Suddenly I remembered Snow’s bloodstained hands, and let go.
“How you stare at me,” Rheya said, placidly.
My heart was beating so furiously that I was incapable of speech. I closed my eyes. In that very instant, complete in every detail, a plan of action sprang to my mind. There was not a second to lose. I stood up.
“I must go out, Rheya. If you absolutely insist on coming with me, I’ll take you.”
“Good.”
She jumped to her feet.
I opened the locker and selected a suit for each of us. Then I asked:
“Why are you bare-foot?”
She answered hesitantly:
“I don’t know . . . I must have left my shoes somewhere.”
I did not pursue the matter.
“You’ll have to take your dress off to put this on.”
“Flying-overalls? What for?”
As she tried to take off her dress, an extraordinary fact became apparent: there were no zips, or fastenings of any sort; the red buttons down the front were merely decorative. Rheya smiled, embarrassed.
As though it were the most normal way of going about it, I picked up some kind of scalpel from the floor and slit the dress down the back from neck to waist, so that she could pull it over her head.
When she had put on the flying-overalls (which were slightly too large for her) and we were about to leave, she asked:
“Are we going on a flight?”
I merely nodded. I was afraid of running into Snow. But the dome was empty and the door leading to the radio-cabin was shut.
A deathly silence still hung over the hangar-deck. Rheya followed my movements attentively. I opened a stall and examined the shuttle vehicle inside. I checked, one after another, the micro-reactor, the controls, and the diffusers. Then, having removed the empty capsule from its stand, I aimed the electric trolley towards the sloping runway.
I had chosen a small shuttle used for ferrying stores between the Station and the satellite, one that did not normally carry personnel since it did not open from the inside. The choice was carefully calculated in accordance with my plan. Of course, I had no intention of launching it, but I simulated the preparations for an actual departure. Rheya, who had so often accompanied me on my space-flights, was familiar with the preliminary routine. Inside the cockpit, I checked that the climatization and oxygen-supply systems were functioning. I switched in the main circuit and the indicators on the instrument panel lit up. I climbed out and said to Rheya, who was waiting at the foot of the ladder:
“Get in.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll follow you. I have to close the hatch behind us.”
She gave no sign that she suspected any trickery. When she had disappeared inside, I stuck my head into the opening and asked:
“Are you comfortable?”
I heard a muffled “yes” from inside the confined cockpit. I withdrew my head and slammed the hatch to with all my strength. I slid home the two bolts and tightened the five safety screws with the special spanner I had brought with me. The slender metal cigar stood there, pointing upwards, as though it were really about to take off into space.
Its captive was in no danger: the oxygen-tanks were full and there were food supplies in the cockpit. In any case, I did not intend to keep her prisoner indefinitely. I desperately needed two hours of freedom in order to concentrate on the decisions which had to be taken and to work out a joint plan of action with Snow.
As I was tightening the last screw but one, I felt a vibration in the three-pronged clamp which held the base of the shuttle. I thought I must have loosened the support in my over-eager handling of the heavy spanner, but when I stepped back to take a look, I was greeted by a spectacle which I hope I shall never have to see again.
The whole vehicle trembled, shaken from the inside as though by some superhuman force. Not even a steel robot could have imparted such a convulsive tremor to an 8-ton mass, and yet the cabin contained only a frail, dark-haired girl.
The reflections from the lights quivered on the shuttle’s gleaming sides. I could not hear the blows; there was no sound whatever from inside the vehicle. But the outspread struts vibrated like taut wires. The violence of the shock-waves was such that I was afraid the entire scaffolding would collapse.
I tightened the final screw with a trembling hand, threw down the spanner and jumped off the ladder. As I slowly retreated, I noticed that the shock-absorbers, designed to resist a continuous pressure, were vibrating furiously. It looked to me as though the shuttle’s outer skin was wrinkling.
Frenziedly, I rushed to the control panel and with both hands lifted the starting lever. As I did so the intercom connected to the shuttle’s interior gave out a piercing sound – not a cry, but a sound which bore not the slightest resemblance to the human voice, in which I could nevertheless just make out my name, repeated over and over again: “Kris! Kris! Kris!”
I had attacked the controls so violently, fumbling in my haste, that my fingers were torn and bleeding.
A bluish glimmer, like that of a ghostly dawn, lit up the walls. Swirling clouds of vaporous dust eddied round the launching pad; the dust turned into a column of fierce sparks and the echoes of a thunderous roar drowned all other noise. Three flames, merging instantly into a single pillar of fire, lifted the craft, which rose up through the open hatch in the dome, leaving behind a glowing trail which rippled as it gradually subsided. Shutters slid over the hatch, and the automatic ventilators began to suck in the acrid smoke which billowed round the room.
It was only later that I remembered all these details; at the time, I hardly knew what I was seeing. Clinging to the control-panel, the fierce heat burning my face and singeing my hair, I gulped the acrid air which smelt of a mixture of burning fuel and the ozone given off by ionization. I had instinctively closed my eyes at the moment of lift-off, but the glare had penetrated my eyelids. For some time, I saw nothing but black, red and gold spirals which slowly died away. The ventilators continued to hum; the smoke and the dust were gradually clearing.
The green glow of the radar-screen caught my eye. My hands flew across its controls as I began to search for the shuttle. By the time I had located it, it was already flying above the atmosphere. I had never launched a vehicle in such a blind and unthinking way, with no pre-set speed or direction. I did not even know its range and was afraid of causing some unpredictable disaster. I judged that the easiest thing to do would be to place it in a stationary orbit around Solaris and then cut the engines. I verified from the tables that the required altitude was 725 miles. It was no guarantee, of course, but I could see no other way out.
I did not have the heart to switch on the intercom, which had been disconnected at lift-off. I could not bear to expose myself again to the sound of that horrifying voice, which was no longer even remotely human.
I felt I was justified in thinking that I had defeated the ‘simulacra,’ and that behind the illusion, contrary to all expectation, I had found the real Rheya again – the Rheya of my memories, whom the hypothesis of madness would have destroyed.
At one o’clock, I left the hangar-deck.
6 “THE LITTLE APOCRYPHA”
My face and hands were badly burnt. I remembered noticing a jar of anti-burn ointment when I was looking for sleeping pills for Rheya (I was in no mood to laugh at my naïvete), so I went back to my room.