BY C C. MacAPP
Date: 5 June 1987.
To: Commandant, USSR Hq., Mars. (Personal.)
From: Commandant, USSR Pluto expedition.
Code: TS Perishka C.
Subject: Mad American Spaceman.
Wofka: I am taking the precaution of sending this to you personally, because of the obvious possible booby-traps. Perhaps discreet espionage on Mars or Earth will reveal what sort of shell-game the Americans are up to now, before we involve ourselves in some propaganda debacle.
Twelve hours ago radar picked up a small object in space, moving in an orbit that would intercept us fairly closely but at a slightly lower speed. Knowing that an American ship was already near Pluto, and that they surely knew we were approaching, I at once placed my ship in a state of maximum defense. However, closer approach revealed the object to be not a mine or torpedo, but a space suit with a number of objects attached to it. Of course the suit or other objects could have contained explosives, so I maintained caution.
When we were quite close we picked up a weak radio transmission in English that appeared to be beamed not at us but in the opposite direction. If it was in code we have been unable to break it. Our interpreter, whom possibly we had better investigate again, could tell us only that the voice, a male one, was reciting some sort of nursery rhyme called Mother Goose. The recitation was monotonous and repetitive.
Shortly thereafter telescopic examination revealed the following:
1-space suit, evidently occupied.
2-tanks of approximately 300 litre capacity, fixed to the suit by short rigid rods.
4-bundles, approximately half a metre cubed, lashed to the legs of the suit.
1-cylindrical container, approximately three metres long by zero point seven metres diameter, fixed between the legs of the suit in such a way that the occupant appeared to be riding as you would ride a horse.
1-large bow, with which the occupant of the suit fired or shot arrows in a direction normal to the orbit of Pluto (that is, away from us) at intervals of eight seconds.
The arrows came from the long cylinder he was riding.
* * * *
Upon discovering our approach the occupant of the suit stopped shooting arrows and said in English, “If you can still hear me, fellows, I’ve found Ivan.” (His knowing my first name is significant!). He repeated the transmission several times, then waited with apparent calm for us to pick him up.
Upon examination of his equipment, we found no explosives. The small bundles contained batteries to keep the suit operating. One of the 300-litre tanks was about half full of gruel; the other about half full of body wastes. The gruel was made accessible to the spaceman by a plastic tube which had been sealed through his helmet at the front, so he could draw upon it merely by putting his mouth on the tube and sucking. The removal of body waste was accomplished by a similar but more permanent arrangement which was surprisingly effective, though an obvious indignity and by his testimony uncomfortable. The suit’s maintenance machinery was in good working order, and the air inside was breathable though not as sweet as one might prefer. The long cylindrical tank was about one-third full of arrows, the rest having been expended. The arrows were cut from steel (evidently the hull plates of a ship) by means of a hack saw or some similar springy metal and the string of braided fine wire. Both were alloys that held their flexibility in the cold of space.
Quite obviously the shooting of arrows had provided reaction to slow the spaceman’s orbit to a speed where we would overtake him. Nevertheless the calculation and execution of such a maneuver would be difficult to the point of un-believability. The man’s story is that he was reciting “The House That Jack Built’ as a sort of mnemonic to maintain the proper rate of fire, and that the arrows averaged out to a chosen weight and the bow delivered consistent reaction when drawn to a certain point. He sticks to this story through all interrogation, and says he was sent to ask us to rescue his comrades, who are (he says) floating in a small portion of their ship in an orbit dangerously close to Pluto. Of course I do not swallow his story. Nevertheless I do not see any harm in cautiously approaching a little closer to investigate. I am confident we can handle any trickery the Americans may have in mind.
The entirety of his statement is so ridiculous that I will not attempt to abstract it, but will attach it in full. I’m sure you will exercise caution equal to mine in sending this to you personally. Old comrades must stick together.
Signed, Ivan Dzbrown,
commanding.
* * * *
Statement of mad American spaceman:
Hi. No, I don’t speak Russian. I know a few words of Basque, though, from my mother’s side, if that’ll help any. Oh, you speak English! Jeez, you speak it real good. You say you were born in Massachusetts? Nice place. I was there a while when I took my Ph.D.
Well, here’s the scoop. I guess you heard about us making up our minds to get to Pluto first. It only cost us four hundred billion bucks, ha, ha! You should have heard old ex-President Johnson yell. Well, anyway, we made it off Mars in real good shape, and we were latching onto Pluto good, too, but then we noticed the jets weren’t working right, and after a computer check and all we decided somebody better go outside and take a squint. I got picked because I’ve got the most experience in suits. That’s why I’m here, too.
Well, right away when I got aft I could see that there was something stuck around the jets; it looked like cinders at first. When I got closer I saw that it was more like as if some grapes, the black kind, were clustered around the orifices. While I was bent down looking, something came along and gave me a hell of a whang on the butt. Right away I thought Jeez, a meteor; but it didn’t penetrate the suit and I was all right. Then I began to see more of them coming and I hauled on my line and got away from the jets because that was where they were all headed. I talked to the skipper and he told me to stay out there and watch if I wasn’t in any danger.
They were coming from all directions and collecting around the jets like a swarm of bees. But they were not coming as thick, and pretty soon they stopped coming entirely. Then after a while some of them began to go away. They didn’t all go, though, and enough of them were still around the jets to goof up the action. Once in a while a single one or two would break off and go away, and maybe a couple more would drift in and gather on.
I took one of the tools that we have on the suit, I guess probably you people have got the same kind of thing, and hacked away at them but they were on tight. The only ones I could get loose seemed to be the ones that were letting go anyway.
Well, I got hold of one and let it go right away because I could feel it sort of squirm, even through the mitten, but it wasn’t actually squirming as I found out when I let it go. It was shaped like maybe two-thirds of a marble, one about five-eighths of an inch in diameter. I guess maybe you people work in millimetres, and your kids don’t get to play marbles, huh? Let’s see . . . two hundred and fifty-four times six hundred and twenty-five is . . . carry the two . . . where the hell would I put the decimal place . . . say, like a dull black iron ball-bearing about fifteen point eight seven five millimetres in diameter, with one-third of it sawed off flat. A blue light came off of this flat side and it gave the thing quite a boost of acceleration and that was what I felt. I was worried at first that it was some kind of an ion drive that would burn a hole in my hand or the suit, but it didn’t do anything like that. I watched a few more and I saw that they could turn themselves any way they wanted to by giving out a faint glow on one edge of the flat place, then when they wanted to light out and go they just turned it all on. We did some fooling around with them later and found out they could exert about—but there’s no sense going into all that now. We’ve got the figures in the ship, or what’s left of it; and hell, the least we can do after you rescue us is let you in on them. Scientific cooperation, ha ha!
Well I took a chance because I was pretty excited and the next one that drifted in I grabbed it and held it so the blue light was away from my hand. I could feel the push but it wasn’t strong enough to get away from me. That may be why they stay out there, where they don’t have to deal with fast orbits and stronger gravity close to the sun. They were far enough from Pluto so it wouldn’t pull them in.
When I talked to the skipper again he thought sure as hell I’d flipped and got me in right away, but I had the thing to show them. It turned out I was not so damned smart, because I had to go right back out and watch what happened when they gave the jets a little gentle goose. I wished I’d kept my big mouth shut for a little while.
I’ll tell you, when those jets went on I thought I was going to get it. Those things came flying from all directions like hornets. You know how an orifice heats up, even with a short burst, and how fast it cools off afterward in space? Yeah, I guess you would. Well, every time we gave it even a little goose, those things came flying. I found out the way to do it was to stay a few yards forward of the jets and stand still, and they’d go around me to get at the jets. As soon as the metal got cold, some of them would go away. But some stayed on. Just lazy, I guess.
Well, we were pretty excited and we tried to radio Mars; Earth’s behind the sun right now you know; but the transmission didn’t seem to get through. I suppose you can figure out who had to suit up and go outside finally to see what was wrong with the antenna, after the skipper and the Communications Officer had a hell of a beef. And you know what? Every time we tried to transmit with any power at all those damn sawed-off ball-bearings came gathering around the antenna, just like flies around manure. You people’ve got that, I’m sure; I read somewhere how you were pretty big in ranching and all. It began to look to me like they could soak up any kind of radiant energy, from radio on down to infrared; and that’s the way it turned out. And we found out they could resist heat, too. We couldn’t even faze them until we got them damn near red-hot, and that killed them. The trouble was, even though some of them got themselves incinerated in the jets, by that time they were welded on. The orifices got so clogged we didn’t dare fire them any more.
Of course we tried a lot of things like sawing the jets clear, but it wasn’t any use. Every time we turned on even a little squirt we got those damned things back again.
Well then naturally we didn’t want to go barging in on Pluto out of control, so we used the retros and spinners to slow ourselves down into a stable orbit. I suppose you’ve got what’s left of the ship on your radar by now. We couldn’t go anywhere and we couldn’t transmit, but we could hear incoming messages all right, and we heard how you people were headed out this way and we figured if we could warn you soon enough, you could stay down here and pick us up if we could get down far enough. There don’t seem to be any of those things this far in. The crew can make it down here all right if you’ve got room for us. I see you’ve got a good big ship here.
Well there wasn’t any way we could contact you by radio so we talked over how one of us could get down here, and it figured out that we didn’t have enough air tanks and so on to jet a man in. That wouldn’t have attracted any bugs. We call them bugs, but I suppose some damn scientist will look at one through a magnifying glass and put some silly name on it.
There was plenty of time, we knew you wouldn’t be here for a while yet, so we had a chance to think things over and make a few haywire experiments, and that rig you saw me in was what came out of it. I practiced guiding myself around for about three weeks. When I want to go in a straight line I just shoot arrows the opposite way. You know, for every action there’s a . . . And when I want to put on a little spin I just hold one of the arrows out away from me and give it a flip away in the right direction. I’m pretty good at it now. In fact, I figure I can be the world’s champion. Maybe in the next Olympic games . . .
You saw all the rest of the stuff.
So that’s the scoop, and I don’t mind saying I’m damned glad to see you, even if you are a bunch of—even if I don’t speak your language. From here you can transmit to what’s left of our ship, and the boys’ll start coming. They had enough suits rigged for everybody, and by now they ought to have the whole rear end of her sawed up into arrows.
(Statement ends.)
* * * *
Date: 6 June, 1987.
To: Security Officer, USSR Hq. Mars. (Personal.)
From: Commandant, USSR Hq., Mars.
Code: STS Babushka Y.
Subject: Commandant, USSR Pluto expedition.
Nikolai: Please check subject once again for possible instability or disloyalty. Also find whether he has sent any coded messages to anyone other than me. Also check the security of Code TS Perishka C. I hope your family is well.
Signed, Vladimir Czmith,
commanding.
* * * *
Date: 10 August, 1987
To: Ambassador to USA.
From: Kremlin.
Code: None.
Subject: Capitalist propaganda.
Protest vigorously at once ridiculous and insulting story in American newspapers of Soviet spacemen floating in space singing Volga Boat Song and throwing spears.
Signed, J.