Orbit 5 - [Anthology] Read online

  He began pacing up and down the narrow office.

  “What’s more, the radar set we want is here on the campus right now. Graduate student I know working on muscular reactions under extreme physical exertion for his thesis. Lactic acid in your body builds up. Fascinating subject.”

  He grabbed the telephone and dialed a number, but without response. “Probably left now. Catch him on the way home.”

  He resumed his pacing. “Trouble with our track data is we’ve been measuring the wrong thing. We’ve been measuring time instead of velocity. It’s like trying to find which is the richest man in town by measuring how long they’ve been in business, instead of how fast they’ve been making money.

  “Let’s say a fellow runs the hundred in ten flat. That means his average velocity for the race was thirty feet per second. Now suppose he runs it in nine flat. Then his average velocity was...thirty-three point three feet per second.

  “I maintain they don’t run the hundred any faster today than in our time. Reason the time is nine seconds is because they’re only running ninety yards.”

  “But can you prove that?”

  “That’s where science comes to the rescue. *If radar shows the velocity of a nine-second hundred was thirty-three point three feet per second, then there’s no getting around it—it was a full honest old-time hundred yards. But if radar shows the velocity for a nine-second hundred was thirty feet per second, it was a ‘diminished’ or ‘spurious’ present-day hundred.”

  “May I ask just one more question?” said Alyson.

  “Go ahead.”

  “When do I leave for the mountain?”

  * * * *

  Saturday evening.

  Alyson wondered if he could ever get used to working on the Newtonian platform of the big reflector. The trouble with the Newtonian platform was that every time he moved, the platform moved. The sight of the concrete floor fifty feet below was not reassuring. Also, he wished Zinner wouldn’t sit quite so close to the edge of the platform. You had no fail-safe guarantee. You just failed . . .

  Zinner had come up the day before to attach his photometer to the telescope and make sure it was in readiness for the big event tonight. He was doing something at the guiding eyepiece now.

  “Here’s Pluto,” he called over his shoulder. “Want to take a look?”

  Alyson joined him at his precarious perch by the telescope.

  “Here is a print of the star field,” the astronomer said, showing him a photographic negative. “These dark spots are stars. This line I’ve drawn represents the path of Pluto. I’ve marked the planet’s position at intervals of ten minutes. You’ll find it right about here now.”

  Alyson found that identifying Pluto wasn’t so easy even when the planet was staring him in the face.

  “Pluto looks no different from the stars,” he complained, feeling a little let down at his first sight of the distant world.

  “It’s not big enough to show a measurable disk,” Zinner explained. “But it’s got one all right. The stars haven’t. They’re just points.”

  Alyson didn’t know the zero hour except that it was still quite a way off yet. He wandered around the platform while Zinner was checking some connections he had already checked a dozen times.

  “When are we supposed to hear from your radar man?” Alyson inquired.

  “Don’t know,” the astronomer said, frowning. “Thought I’d hear before this.”

  As if on cue the telephone rang at the control desk below.

  “Bet that’s him now!”

  They stood tense, straining to catch any words from below. After a minute the night assistant hung up.

  “That wasn’t for me, was it?” Zinner called down.

  The night assistant returned to his mail-order catalogue. “Nope. Just another crossword-puzzle addict wants to know the name of an asteroid with four letters meaning ‘god of love.’ “

  Zinner used several four-letter words. Alyson wandered over to the eyepiece again for another look at Pluto. He studied the star chart for a while, glanced at his wrist-watch, then returned to the eyepiece.

  “Looks to me as if Pluto’s quite a ways ahead of your position on the chart.”

  Zinner made a quick check.

  “It sure is—way ahead!” He looked troubled; checked again. “Battle stations, everybody!” he yelled. “Bill, get downstairs on that recorder. Al, we’re going in.”

  There was a clatter from below as the night assistant headed for the lower depths. Alyson took up his position by the small auxiliary recorder on the platform. Zinner centred the image and touched the fine motion control. Now the telescope would track without further attention, held rigorously on target by the automatic guiding mechanism. With the touch of another button hours, minutes, and seconds of Universal Time began leaving their imprint on the record.

  Alyson was intent on the wiggles in the tracing as the sensitive instrumentation responded to the signals from the photometer. There were so many irregularities due to atmospheric effects, it was not easy to determine the intensity of the light beam from the star and Pluto.

  “Planet’s awfully close,” Alyson called from the telescope. “Getting anything over there yet?”

  “Not yet,” Alyson told him.

  Now an unmistakable change was setting in. The trend of the curve was definitely downward.

  “We’re reading!” Alyson cried.

  The tracing dropped rather sharply to approximately twenty-five per cent of its former value, after which it remained fairly constant. In about five minutes the curve began to rise and soon regained its pre-occultation value. Zinner continued operating for several minutes more before cutting out the photometer. Suddenly the dome lights came on, revealing two bedraggled but happy men grinning at each other.

  “What I want to see is that time record,” Zinner said, already on his way down the ladder.

  Although Alyson followed as fast as he could, the astronomer already had several yards of Pluto spread around him by the time he reached the main recorder.

  “Not much doubt immersion was here,” Zinner said. “I’d put it at five hours fifteen minutes U.T. We can get the seconds later. Now when was immersion supposed to occur according to my very accurate calculations?”

  He compared the times in his notebook with those imprinted on the record. For such a simple operation it required an extraordinarily long while.

  “Immersion was an hour early,” Zinner said.

  Alyson gasped. “An hour! You’re sure?”

  “Can’t be any doubt. I’d planned to start checking on Pluto at minus forty. Figured that was plenty. But one hour!”

  The astronomer seemed dazed. He picked up the tracing and began running it through his fingers.

  The dome was very still except for the ticking of some device connected with the telescope. Alyson had had no scientific training. Before tonight he had never given the stars more than casual attention. It would not have struck him as remarkable if the stars had gotten off schedule. They might as well be one place as another. Now, for the first time, he was becoming aware of the awful majesty with which the heavenly bodies went through their motions, enacting a drama the minutest detail of which was inevitable from the beginning. Could there have been some slip in the performance? he asked himself. A line dropped or some cue missed?

  “It can’t be true,” Zinner said.

  It struck Alyson as ironic that the astronomer, far from being elated now that observation had confirmed his hypothesis, was behaving as if in deep shock. He decided he would never be able to understand the scientific mind.

  “Why can’t it be true?” Alyson asked.

  “Oh, for all sorts of reasons,” Zinner said impatiently. “It would ball up the whole solar system.”

  “But wasn’t this what you wanted?”

  “Why yes...sure, only I never really believed it. I was just. . . kidding. I never meant for it to happen!”

  The telephone rang.

 
“Doctor Zinner, for you,” the night assistant called from upstairs.

  Zinner took it below. Most of the conversation was from the other end of the line. Occasionally the astronomer scribbled a number on the memo pad. When he finally hung up and turned from the phone, his face was blank.

  “Well. . . how’d it go in the Rose Bowl?”

  “Hundred was a shade under nine seconds.”

  “How’d the radar work?”

  “All right.”

  “Get the velocity?”

  Zinner consulted the memo pad. “Hit thirty-seven at the halfway mark. Average was around thirty-three.”

  “A full honest old-time hundred yards, then?”

  Zinner didn’t answer. He seemed preoccupied with the record. “How about a turn around the dome?” he said suddenly.

  Alyson followed him through the door to the open balcony. There was a gentle breeze in the pines. Far below the lights of the valley shone faintly through the haze. After strolling around the dome, they stood in silence leaning against the railing, contemplating the red lights winking on the television towers.

  Jupiter was the dominating object in the night sky. Gazing at it, Alyson wondered, is that a planet? another world up there? Or is it only part of a stage setting? A bright light shining through a hole in some canvas? Is it millions of miles away? Or so close I can almost reach out and touch it?

  Zinner was the first to speak.

  “Al, what’s real and what isn’t? How do we know when we’ve got something and when we haven’t? You fellows in Humanities know all about philosophy. Where do I go for the answers? Tell me what to do.”

  “Tell you what to do?”

  Alyson was thoughtful as he watched a meteor arch across the sky and fade away. After a moment he spoke.

  “Go and catch a falling star,

  Get with child a mandrake root,

  Tell me where all past years are,

  Or who cleft the Devil’s foot.”

  <>

  * * * *

  Winston

  by Kit Reed

  Edna Waziki was beside herself by the time theirs came. She talked about nothing else for months after they put in the order and she sat by the window for hours, and when the truck finally pulled in to the drive she screamed a scream that brought the entire family on the run. The delivery man came to the door with a little traveling case, with a handle on top and holes poked in the end, and Edna giggled and the kids laughed and danced and jumped around while Edna’s husband Artie paid the driver and they jiggled uncontrollably while Artie fumbled with the catch.

  “It says here his name is Winston,” Edna said, turning the card so Margie and Little Art could read the name. “Now step back, we don’t want to scare him all at once.”

  Artie scowled into the suitcase. “Well where is the little bastard?”

  “Artie, please.” Edna bent down, calling softly. “Tchum on, Winston, tchum on.”

  Margie said, “Daddy, Daddy, I can see him.”

  Little Art was poking a stick into the opening. “Daddy, Daddy, here he comes!”

  “Damn foolishness,” Artie said, but he crowded around with his wife and children and they watched Winston come blinking into the light.

  Margie gasped. “Oh Daddy, he’steeny.”

  “In he cute, oh, Artie, in he cute.”

  Artie snorted. “He sure don’t look like much.”

  “You can’t tell when they’re little like this,” Edna said. “But you just wait till he grows up!”

  Margie was snickering. “Oh look, he made a puddle.”

  “Of course he has, he’s nervous.” Edna swept Winston to her bosom. “Poor thing, you poor little thing.”

  “Runt like that,” Artie said, “he’s never gonna come to anything.”

  “Honey, didn’t you see his pedigree?”

  “Oh Mama, he looks like a monkey.”

  “Shh, you’ll hurt his feelings.”

  “Here Winston, here Winston.” Little Art tried to make Winston take the stick.

  “You leave him alone.” Edna held Winston protectively; Winston was crying.

  “He won’t even take the stick.”

  “Hell take it,” Artie said ominously. “He better take it. Lord knows I paid enough.”

  Edna hugged Winston protectively. “He’s upset. He’ll feel better when I clean him up.”

  Artie accused her: “You said he was guaranteed.”

  “He is guaranteed,” Edna said, taking Winston to the bedroom; in the door she turned and said defensively, “You’ll just have to wait, it all takes time.”

  She spent about an hour on him and when she came out he was calmer, much quieter, and he had stopped crying; he even sat up at the table with them, brought to adult height by a stack of city telephone books. He was about four, small-boned and blond, with a little blue romper suit buttoned fore and aft and large brown eyes which crackled with intelligence. He looked at them all in turn but he wouldn’t touch his dish.

  “See that.” Artie said in exasperation. “Five thousand dollars and he won’t even touch his dish.”

  “He’ll eat.” Edna said. “He just doesn’t know us yet.”

  “Well he better get to know us. Five thousand dollars down the drain.”

  “It’s not down the drain,” Edna said; she was getting too upset to talk. “He’ll make us proud, you just wait.”

  Freddy Kramer came in just then, to pick Artie up for bowling. “So this is it,” he said, giving Winston the onceover.

  “First family on the block to have one,” Artie said, with dawning pride. “I guess you might call it a kind of a status symbol.”

  “Don’t look like much.”

  “You ought to see his pedigree.” Looking at Freddy, who would never be able to afford one, Artie allowed himself to be expansive. “Lady writer and a college professor. Eye Q. a hundred and sixty, guaranteed.”

  Edna stroked Winston’s fine blond hair. “Winston’s going to college.” It pleased her to see that Artie was smiling.

  “Kid’s gonna get his Ph.D.”

  Edna took Artie’s hand under the table, saying in a low voice, “Oh Artie, you are glad. I knew you would be.”

  Freddy Kramer was looking at Winston with a look bordering on naked jealousy. “What gave you the idea?”

  “Edna seen the ad.” Artie went all squashy; Edna was massaging his knee. “And anything my baby wants . . .”

  “You won’t be sorry, Artie. Winston’s gonna major in physics. He might even invent the next atomic bomb.”

  Freddy’s lips were moving; he seemed to be figuring under his breath. “How big of a down payment would they want?”

  “Depends on the product,” Edna said.

  “Now this one,” Artie said, slapping Winston’s shoulder, “this one’s gonna support us in our old age. Ph.D. and one-letter man guaranteed. He might get our name in the papers, according to the ad.”

  Edna said vaguely, “There’s something about a Guggenheim.”

  Winston started crying.

  “Why Winston, what’s the matter?”

  “Little Art kicked him,” Margie said.

  “Well you kids keep off him until you learn to play with him nice.”

  “You can’t get ‘em like this no more,” Artie was saying to Freddy Kramer. “Parents had ten and retired to Europe on the take.”

  Freddy rubbed his nose. “Maybe if Flo and I sold the car . . .”

  Artie proffered a piece of bread to Winston; Winston looked at it distastefully but he took it. “See, he likes me. Hey honey, he likes me.”

  “Of course he does,” Edna said with pride. “He’s our son.”

  Winston gave her a sudden sharp look which embarrassed her for no reason. Then he finished the bread and cleared his throat.

  Artie was saying to Freddy, “. . . and if you can’t get them into Exeter they’re guaranteed for Culver at least.”

  “Shhh, honey, he’s going to say something.”<
br />
  “. . . It ain’t every steamfitter that has a kid in Culver, ya know.”

  “Shh.”

  Winston spoke. “Wiwyiam Buckwey is a weactionary.”

  “Hey Freddy, did ya hear that?”