The Winds of Change and Other Stories Page 8

  He stretched his other arm and each foot was suddenly outlined by a flipper - each elbow by another.

  These', he said, 'offer the propulsive force. You needn't flap the arms. Gentle motions will suffice for everything, but you have to bend your body and arch your neck in order to make turns and veers. You have to twist and alter the angle of your arms and legs. The whole body is engaged, but smoothly and nonviolently. - Which is all the better, for every muscle in your body is involved and you can keep it up for hours without tiring.'

  He could feel himself moving more surely and gracefully - and faster. Up, up, he was suddenly going, with the air rushing past him until he was almost in a panic for fear he would not be able to slow up. But he turned his heels and elbows almost instinctively and felt himself curve and slow.

  Dimly, through the pounding of his heart, he could hear the applause.

  Baranova said, admiringly, 'How did you see this when our technicians couldn't?'

  'The technicians started with the inevitable assumption of wings, thanks to birds and airplanes, and designed the most efficient ones possible. That's a technician's job. The job of a fashion designer is to see things as an artistic whole. I could see that the wings didn't fit the conditions of the space settlement. Just my job.'

  Baranova said, 'We'll make these dolphins suits and get the population out into the air. I'm sure we can now. And then we can lay our plans to begin to slow Five's rotation.'

  'Or stop it altogether,' said Modine. 'I suspect that everyone will want to swim all the time instead of walking.' He laughed. 'They may not ever want to walk again. I may not.'

  For the Birds They made out the large cheque they had promised and Modine, smiling at the figure, said, 'Wings are for the birds.'

  Introduction to FOUND!

  In 1978, the Penthouse people were planning to put out a magazine that would feature futurism and science fiction. The magazine was to be called Omni They asked me for a story for the first issue and offered me generous payment. I was in a quandary. By the terms of my agreement with Joel Davis, the genial publisher of Asimov's, I had to give that magazine the refusal on any of my science fiction, which is, after all, only right. So I put it up to Joel, asking if I might have permission to do a science fiction story for Omni this one time, and explaining that if he said 'No,' it was 'No,' and there would be no argument. As it happens, however, Joel never tries to get in the way of my earning a living. He suggested that Omni give him favourable terms for a one-shot advertisement of Asimov's in the magazine and Omni was perfectly willing. Therefore, with co-operation and good-humour all around, I wrote 'Found!' and it appeared in the very first issue (November 1978) of Omni, which has since gone on to score a considerable success. (No, I don't think that was because of my story, either.)

  7

  Found!

  Computer-Two, like the other three that chased each other's tails in orbit round the Earth, was much larger than it had to be.

  It might have been one-tenth its diameter and yet contained all the volume it needed to store the accumulated and accumulating data needed to control space flight.

  They needed the extra space, however, so that Joe and I could get inside, if we had to.

  And we had to.

  Computer-Two was perfectly capable of taking care of itself. Ordinarily, that is. It was redundant. It worked everything out three times in parallel and all three programmes had to mesh perfectly; all three answers had to match. If they did not, the answer was delayed for nanoseconds while Computer-Two checked itself, found the malfunctioning part and replaced it.

  There was no sure way in which ordinary people would know how many times it caught itself. Perhaps never. Perhaps twice a day. Only Computer-Central could measure the time delay induced by error and only Computer-Central knew how many of the component spares had been used as replacements. And Computer-Central never talked about it. The only good public image is perfection.

  And for all practical purposes, it's been perfection, for there was never any call for Joe and me.

  We're the trouble-shooters. We go up there when something really goes wrong and Computer-Two or one of the others can't correct itself. It's never happened in the five years we've been on the job. It did happen now and again in the early days of their existence, but that was before our time.

  We keep in practice. Don't get me wrong. There isn't a computer made that Joe and I can't diagnose. Show us the error and we'll show you the malfunction. Or Joe will, anyway. I'm not the kind who sings one's own praises.

  Anyway, this time, neither of us could make the diagnosis.

  The first thing that happened was that Computer-Two lost internal pressure. That's not unprecedented and it's certainly not fatal. Computer-Two can work in a vacuum after all. An internal atmosphere was established in the old days when it was expected there would be a steady flow of repairmen fiddling with it. And it's been kept up out of tradition. Who told you scientists aren't chained by tradition? In their spare time from being scientists, they're human, too.

  From the rate of pressure loss, it was deduced that a gravel-sized meteoroid had hit Computer-Two. Its exact radius, mass and energy was reported by Computer-Two itself, using that rate of pressure loss, and a few other things, as data.

  The second thing that happened was that the break was not sealed and the atmosphere was not regenerated. After that came the errors and they called us in.

  It made no sense. Joe let a look of pain cross his homely face and said, 'There must be a dozen things out of whack.'

  Someone at Computer-Central said, 'The hunk of gravel ricocheted, very likely.'

  Joe said, 'With that energy of entry, it would have passed right through the other side. No ricochets. Besides, even with ricochets, I figure it would have had to take some very unlikely strikes.'

  'Well, then, what do we do?'

  Joe looked uncomfortable. I think that it was at this point that he realized what was coming. He had made it sound peculiar enough to require the trouble-shooters on the spot - and Joe had never been up in space. If he had told me once that his chief reason for taking the job was that he knew it meant he would never have to go up in space, he had told it to me 2* times, with X a pretty high number.

  So I said it for him. I said, 'We'll have to go up there.' Joe's only way out would have been to say he didn't think he could handle the job, and I watched his pride slowly come out ahead of his cowardice. Not by much, you understand - by a nose, let's say.

  To those of you who haven't been on a spaceship in the last fifteen years - and I suppose Joe can't be the only one - let me emphasize that the initial acceleration is the only troublesome thing. You can't get away from that, of course.

  After that it's nothing, unless you want to count possible boredom. You're just a spectator. The whole thing is automated and computerized. The old romantic days of space pilots are gone totally. I imagine they'll return briefly when our space settlements make the shift to the asteroid belt as they constantly threaten to do - but then only until additional Computers are placed in orbit to set up the necessary additional capacity.

  Joe held his breath throughout the acceleration, or at least he seemed to. (I must admit that I wasn't very comfortable myself. It was only my third trip. I've taken a couple of vacations on Settlement-Rho with my husband, but I'm not exactly a seasoned hand.) After that, he was relieved for a while, but only for a while. He got despondent.

  'I hope this thing knows where it's going,' he said, pettishly.

  I extended my arms forwards, palms up, and felt the rest of me sway backwards a bit in the zero-gravity field. 'You', I said, 'are a computer specialist. Don't you know it knows?'

  'Sure, but Computer-Two is off.'

  'We're not hooked into Computer-Two,' I said. 'There are three others. And even if only one were left functional, it could handle all the space flights undertaken on an average day.'

  'All four might go off. If Computer-Two is wrong, what's to stop the rest?' />
  'Then we'll run this thing manually.'

  'You'll do it, I suppose? You know how - I think not?'

  'So they'll talk me in.'

  'For the love of Eniac,' he groaned.

  There was no problem, actually. We moved out to Computer-Two as smooth as vacuum and less than two days after takeoff, we were placed into a parking orbit not ten metres behind it.

  What was not so smooth was that, about twenty hours out, we got the news from Earth that Computer-Three was losing internal pressure. Whatever had hit Computer-Two was going to get the rest, and when all four were out, space flight would grind to a halt. It could be reorganized on a manual basis, surely, but that would take months as a minimum, possibly years, and there would be serious economic dislocation on Earth. Worse yet, several thousand people now out in space would surely die.

  It wouldn't bear thinking of and neither Joe nor I talked about it, but it didn't make Joe's disposition sweeter and, let's face it, it didn't make me any happier.

  Earth hung over 200,000 kilometres below us, but Joe didn't seem to be bothered by that. He was concentrating on his tether and was checking the cartridge in his reaction-gun. He wanted to make sure he could get to Computer-Two and back again.

  You'd be surprised - if you've never tried it - how you can get your space legs if you absolutely have to. I wouldn't say there was nothing to it and we did waste half the fuel we used, but we finally reached Computer-Two. We hardly made any bump at all when we struck Computer-Two. (You hear it, of course, even in vacuum, because the vibration travels through the metalloid fabric of your space suits - but there was hardly any bump, just a whisper.) Of course, our contact and the addition of our momentum altered the orbit of Computer-Two slightly, but tiny expenditures of fuel compensated for that and we didn't have to worry about it. Computer-Two took care of it, for nothing had gone wrong with it, as far as we could tell, that affected any of its external workings.

  We went over the outside first, naturally. The chances were pretty overwhelming that a small piece of gravel had whizzed through Computer-Two and that would leave an unmistakable ragged hole. Two of them in all probability; one going in and one coming out.

  Chances of that happening are one in two million on any given day - even money that it will happen at least once in six thousand years. It's not likely, but it can, you know. The chances are one in not more than ten billion that, on any one day, it will be struck by a meteoroid large enough to demolish it.

  I didn't mention that because Joe might realize that we were exposed to similar odds ourselves. In fact, any given strike on us would do far more damage to our soft and tender bodies than to the stoical and much-enduring machinery of the computer, and I didn't want Joe more nervous than he was.

  The thing is, though, it wasn't a meteoroid.

  'What's this?' said Joe, finally.

  It was a small cylinder stuck to the outer wall of Computer-Two, the first abnormality we had found in its outward appearance. It was about half a centimetre in diameter and perhaps six centimetres long. Just about cigarette-sized for any of you who've been caught up in the antique fad of smoking.

  We brought our small flashlights into play.

  I said, 'That's not one of the external components.'

  'It sure isn't,' muttered Joe.

  There was a faint spiral marking running round the cylinder from one end to the other. Nothing else. For the rest, it was clearly metal, but of an odd, grainy texture - at least to the eye.

  Joe said, 'It's not tight.'

  He touched it gently with a fat and gauntleted finger and it gave. Where it had made contact with the surface of Computer-Two, it lifted and our flashes shone down on a visible gap.

  'There's the reason gas pressure inside declined to zero,' I said.

  Joe grunted. He pushed a little harder and the cylinder dropped away and began to drift. We managed to snare it after a little trouble. Left behind was a perfectly round hole in the skin of Computer-Two, half a centimetre across.

  Joe said, 'This thing, whatever it is, isn't much more than foil.'

  It gave easily under his fingers, thin but springy. A little extra pressure and it dented. He put it inside his pouch, which he snapped shut, and said, 'Go over the outside and see if there are any other items like that anywhere on it. I'll go inside.'

  It didn't take me very long. Then I went in. 'It's clean,' I said. 'That's the only thing there is. The only hole.'

  'One is enough,' said Joe, gloomily. He looked at the smooth aluminium of the wall and, in the light of the flash, the perfect circle of black was beautifully evident.

  It wasn't difficult to place a seal over the hole. It was a little more difficult to reconstitute the atmosphere. Computer-Two's reserve gas-forming supplies were low and the controls required manual adjustment. The solar generator was limping but we managed to get the lights on.

  Eventually, we removed our gauntlets and helmets, but Joe carefully placed the gauntlets inside his helmet and secured them both to one of his suit-loops.

  'I want these handy if the air pressure begins to drop,' he said, sourly.

  So I did the same. No use being devil-may-care.

  There was a mark on the wall just next to the hole. I had noted it in the light of my flash when I was adjusting the seal. When the lights came on, it was obvious.

  'You notice that, Joe?' I said.

  'I notice.'

  There was a slight, narrow depression in the wall, not very noticeable at all, but it was there beyond doubt if you ran your finger over it and it continued for nearly a metre. It was as though someone had scooped out a very shallow sampling of the metal and the surface where that had taken place was distinctly less smooth than elsewhere.

  I said, 'We'd better call Computer-Central downstairs.'

  'If you mean back on Earth, say so,' said Joe. 'I hate that phony space-talk. In fact, I hate everything about space. That's why I took an Earth-side job - I mean a job on Earth - or what was supposed to be one.'

  I said patiently, 'We'd better call Computer-Central back on Earth.'

  'What for?'

  'To tell them we've found the trouble.'

  'Oh? What did we find?'

  'The hole. Remember?'

  'Oddly enough, I do. And what caused the hole? It wasn't a meteoroid. I never saw one that would leave a perfectly circular hole with no signs of buckling or melting. And I never saw one that left a cylinder behind.' He took the cylinder out of his suit pocket and smoothed the dent out of its thin metal, thoughtfully. 'Well, what caused the hole?'

  I didn't hesitate. I said, 'I don't know.'

  'If we report to Computer-Central, they'll ask the question and we'll say we don't know and what will we have gained? Except hassle?'

  'They'll call us, Joe, if we don't call them.'

  'Sure. And we won't answer, will we?'

  'They'll assume something killed us, Joe, and they'll send up a relief party.'

  'You know Computer-Central. It will take them at least two days to decide on that. We'll have something before then and once we have something, we'll call them.'

  The internal structure of Computer-Two was not really designed for human occupancy. What was foreseen and allowed for was the occasional and temporary presence of trouble-shooters. That meant there was room for manoeuvring and there were tools and supplies.

  There weren't any armchairs, though. For that matter, there was no gravitational field, either, nor any centrifugal imitation of one.

  We both floated in midair, drifting very slowly this way or that. Occasionally, one of us touched the wall and rebounded very slowly. Or else part of one of us overlapped part of the other.

  'Keep your foot out of my mouth,' said Joe, and pushed it away violently. It was a mistake because we both began to turn. Of course, that's not how it looked to us. To us, it was the interior of Computer-Two that was turning, which was most unpleasant, and it took us a while to get relatively motionless again.

  We had
the theory perfectly worked out in our Earth-side training, but we were short on practice. A lot short.

  By the time we had steadied ourselves, I felt unpleasantly nauseated. You can call it nausea, or astronausea, or space sickness, but whatever you call it, it's the heaves and it's worse in space than anywhere else, because there's nothing to pull the stuff down. It floats around in a cloud of globules and you don't want to be floating around with it. - So I held it back, and so did Joe.

  I said, 'Joe, it's clearly the computer that's at fault. Let's get at its insides.' Anything to get my mind off my insides and let them quiet down. Besides, things weren't moving fast enough. I kept thinking of Computer-Three on its way down the tube; maybe Computers-One and -Four by now, too; and thousands of people in space with their lives hanging on what we could do.

  Joe looked a little greenish, too, but he said, 'First I've got to think. Something got in. It wasn't a meteoroid, because whatever it was chewed a neat hole out of the hull. It wasn't cut out because I didn't find a circle of metal anywhere inside here. Did you?'

  'No. But it hadn't occurred to me to look.'

  'I looked, and it's nowhere in here.'

  'It may have fallen outside.'

  'With the cylinder covering the hole till I pulled it away? A likely thing. Did you see anything come flying out?'

  'No.'

  Joe said, 'We may still find it in here, of course, but I doubt it. It was somehow dissolved and something got in.'

  'What something? Whose is it?'

  Joe's grin was remarkably ill-natured. 'Why do you bother asking questions to which there is no answer? If this was last century, I'd say the Russians had somehow stuck that device on to the outside of Computer-Two. - No offence. If it were last century, you'd say it was the Americans.'

  I decided to be offended. I said, coldly, 'We're trying to say something that makes sense this century, Iosif,' giving it an exaggerated Russian pronunciation.' 'We'll have to assume some dissident group.' 'If so,' I said, 'we'll have to assume one with a capacity for space flight and with the ability to come up with an unusual device.'