"fmorion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Fleming D)
FULL MOON S.F. - ORION'S BELT (D. Fleming-Burke)
ORION'S BELT
D. Fleming-Burke
The tiny ship was like a sliver of silver. It pierced the black veils of space, tearing through
the void at twenty times the speed of light, accelerating fast. Only a few days age, Harbert, the
ship's pilot, remembered the Belt had still been discernible; now he was so close that the three
flaming suns which made it up had become widely separated, mingled with the starry
background. One was off to his right; one was behind him, passed yesterday on his line of
flight, nearer to Earth by a few light years than it's two companions, and hence passed sooner.
But one of the three stars of the Belt was still before him; a yellow speck in his forward
visiscanner, growing ever brighter as he neared it.
From the Winter sky, Harbert thought as he sat immersed in his womb-like cabin at the fore
end of the glistening ship of space, Orion is a striking sight. The Hunter of the Sky,
unmistakable to anyone with even the most rudimentary knowledge of astronomy. To the North,
flaming supergiant Betelgeuse, red and bloated; to the South, searing blue-white Rigel, that
flaming sun that would sear Earth to a smoking cinder if it took the place of Sol. But between
these two giant stars there are three others; three in a line, the stars of Orion's Belt. From a
couple of light years away, Harbert thought, they're not all that impressive. Just like scores of
others.
But he was not bound for any of the Belt's suns. Two of them were planetless, and the
other, although boasting one of the most advanced worlds as a member of it's system, was not
on his schedule this trip. He was bound instead for the Orion meteor belt, that light years long
tract of debris (some say an offshoot of the Great Nebula) that stretches across space to the far
side of the Belt, towards the far Galactic Centre. Only three light years beyond the centre star, it
was now only a few months flight away at his present speed. But Harbert had no intention of
wasting months on a flight he could do in a day at full power; he was decelerating for a
different reason. He had just recently made up his mind.
He wasn't going to the meteor belt.
He didn't know why. He had no idea why the thought of completing his journey should fill
him with such strange dread. He couldn't say what weird obsession had gripped him, so that he
broke out in a cold sweat every time he thought of making landfall on Station 54, that half-mile
chunk of debris that was Earth's largest base in the meteor belt. He didn't know what illogical
reasoning had led him to this conclusion.
All he knew was that he wasn't going there.
He had made his mind up recently; only a few hours before. His hand had crept to the
retarder engines and fired them to slow his velocity. Eventually he would be travelling slowly
enough to turn the ship on it's axis and head back for Earth.
Then the questions would begin.
Why? Why did you do it?
"And I don't know," Harbert muttered to himself in his cocoon of space, his protective
womb. I don't know why I'm trembling with fear at the thought of going near the meteor belt. I
don't know what warped mental patterns my brain went through in arriving at this illogical
decision. I don't know because I can't remember.
He couldn't remember why? That was ridiculous, he told himself. Yet all recollection was
gone. And yet, even though he couldn't remember the reason for his decision, still he couldn't
override it.
And that was senseless.
Around Harbert were the flaming stars of space, reflected as white points on the black
screens. He sat shaking in his tiny cabin, reflecting, trying to remember. Somewhere out there,
right in his line of flight, was his port. It was ridiculous not to continue; pointless to end his
voyage here, with his precious cargo undelivered. His cargo that could mean life or death to the
crew of the meteor belt station. He could be killing hundreds of people by turning around now.
His hand crept towards the booster switch to accelerate his craft to full power again.
And stopped half way.
"Let me consider this thing logically," Harbert mumbled to himself, in his coffin of space,
tearing towards the meteor belt at seven times the speed of light, decelerating. "I have a
valuable cargo to deliver to the crew members of Station 54. They must have my cargo, or it's
doubtful that they can survive until a replacement ship makes it. I want to deliver my load to
them; I know they're depending on me. And yet there's something that won't let me. I know
there's something, but I don't know what it is. I can't remember why I braked the ship, and I
can't bring myself to boost up to full power again.
The switch of the booster engines mocked him. Again his hand snaked towards it, again it
stopped. This time he had got nearer to it maybe if he tried again..and again...
"Maybe I'm insane!" He shouted it to the four walls of his cramped cabin, his metal womb,
and they shouted it right back at him, in reverberating metallic tones. He tried to convince
himself he was mad, but it didn't work. A madman doesn't try to convince himself he's insane.
His speed was down to five times the speed of light when he finally managed to bring his
sweaty hand into contact with the booster switch.
It was repellent to his touch; filthy, slimy, like some horrible thing just dredged up from a
sewer. He almost let go at the first wave of revulsion, but, instead, summoning some new
mental power from a reserve deep in his brain that he didn't know he possessed, he pushed the
booster switch home.
The engines roared to full power, sounding like banshees to Harbert's tortured ears. The
noise cut into his mind, sent waves of searing agony coursing down every nerve channel. He
writhed in his pliable cocoon.
"What is this?" he screamed at the walls as the ship's velocity built up. Twenty times light
speed, fifty, a hundred, the pointer crept up towards maximum. "What is this thing that tortures
me?" he yelled at the black, leering void, implacable and silent, with only the thin walls of the
tiny ship to protect him from instant death.
Harbert began to worry about leaks. He imagined the slow hissing of air from the cabin,
leaving him gasping and helpless in a vacuum. He fancied he could hear the slow murmur of it
as his oxygen bled out into space. He thrust his fingers into his ears in a vain attempt to block
out the sound. It seemed to get worse.
"If it gets worse when I put my fingers in my ears," he told himself, "then it can't be real. It
must be purely psychological." He said it aloud, and the hissing seemed to subside a little. He
began to breath more easily.
The hissing was gone when the pointer of the velocity dial finally bumped against the
'maximum' mark. At the speed the ship was now doing, the meteor belt was less than a day's
flight. "If I can just hold out," Harbert thought, then: "Hold out against what? There's nothing
there."
But he wasn't sure. He couldn't convince himself.
The time dragged by .... The sole remaining Belt sun fled by like a yellow ghost in the
visiscanner. Beyond it lay the meteor belt, and station 54. He'd be safe there, or would he?
What horror was waiting for him. Maybe he was precognitive. Maybe something so terrible was
waiting for him there at his destination that the warning of it had somehow percolated back
through time, to nag at his brain, to warn him to turn back before it was too late. Maybe horrible
death had overcome the crew of the station, and maybe that same death was now waiting for
him, lurking in the silent subterranean corridors of the dead base. Some virulent plague,
perhaps, some slobbering monster from the hidden worlds of the Nebula. Or maybe... the
Ryitha.
The Ryitha! The thought came to him like a douche of cold water, icy quivers ran along his
spine, and he almost screamed. Why hadn't he thought of them before? He battered at his
forehead with demented hands. How could he have overlooked the most terrible danger of all?
For humanity was fighting a war. That was why Station 54 needed his cargo so badly. It
was a war station, one of humanity's outposts at the border of mankind's empire. Beyond the
shattered debris of the meteor belt lay the unknown reaches of untouchable space; the Ryithan
empire.
Empire of a race of aliens horrible and vicious almost beyond comprehension; a race who
killed human beings not out of any rational need to do so, but because to them, humans were
merely vermin, the rats of the gutter. A race that man had never been able to understand; never
been able to communicate with. Humanity had it's back against the wall, out here in the dark
backwaters off space, for if these defences fell, the Ryitha would swarm across mans' suns,
killing without mercy or feeling. It was destroy or be destroyed. And the Ryitha might be
waiting for him at station 54.
"It's a border outpost," Harbert thought wildly. "Maybe they swept in from the Galactic
centre in their dark ships and wiped out the crew. Maybe they've picked up my approach on
their scanners; maybe they're just waiting for me to come within range of their guns, so that
they can blast me from the skies."
But there was a worse alternative. Maybe they wouldn't blast him as soon as he got within
range. Maybe they'd let him land. There had been horrible stories that had filtered back to Earth
about what Ryithans did with human prisoners. He stared at the dark smudge up ahead that was
the meteor belt; he should begin to decelerate now, or he'd overshoot it by light years.
But at least then he'd be safe.
His hand crept towards the rocket switch once again, and once again he halted, undecided.
Horrible images of Ryithans were in his mind, loathsome creatures, with eyes cold and callous,
eyes that held no pity.
Hate welled into Harbert's mind. His hand plunged down and closed the rocket switch. His
ship began the long deceleration manoeuvre necessary to bring it in to a safe landing at Station
54. "Damn the Ryitha," he cursed, there in his tiny capsule, out in the darkness of space, with
the stars peering through the visiscanners. "Damn their alien guts," he shouted out loud so that
the watching suns and planets could hear him. "Damn their filthy bodies and their mindless
brains. I hate them."
He realised then why he was going to Station 54. He hoped vaguely that there were Ryitha
there. He'd go in with guns blasting, and wipe them off the meteor belt. He hated them so much
that it would be a pleasure to die, just as long as he could take a few of them with him.
The meteor belt was dead ahead now, and he was slowing fast, in order to negotiate the
tenuous clouds of gas and dust that permeate the area. Some people claimed that the dimly
glowing belt was the most beautiful sight in the human-occupied Galaxy; at another time
Harbert might have agreed with them, but now hate and rage had taken control of his brain, and
he had eyes only for the minute specks that were the individual rocks of the meteor belt.
Grouped in their hundreds and in their thousands, the twinkling points of light grew
brighter. Each was a tiny asteroid, Harbert knew, the largest twenty miles in diameter, the
smallest a speck of microscopic dust. There were twenty million lumps of debris over a mile in
diameter in the belt; it was a far vaster version of the Solar System's own asteroid belt.
Harbert hunched over has control board as the first few chunks of rock swept by, his ship's
computers maintaining a course clear of the debris. The path down to Station 54 would be
automatic now. It was simple. He watched the chunks of debris flash by on the screens. Then he
froze.
There was something else on the screen; something that wasn't a stray chunk of rock. It was
a ship - a Ryithan!
Harbert chuckled grimly. He swung his ship sideways to line up the interloper in his sights,
evaded quickly as he saw the puff of a missile being launched from it's belly, laughed with
insane glee as his lasers tore one side of it right off. The Ryithan missile detonated harmlessly,
thousands of miles behind him. Harbert laughed joyously, a half demented laughter, as the
autopilot guided him towards Station 54.
Then something, horribly, shockingly impossible happened. The door of his capsule
opened, and he saw a bespectacled face peering in at him. A face peering in, when he was
millions of miles from the nearest planet.
He screamed once and passed out.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Harbert relaxed in the soft chair, and stared into the smiling blue eyes of the Project
Director.
"You'll probably get some sort of a medal in official recognition," the Director said. "But I
want to thank you now for what you've been through. I knew it was tough, but you proved we
can pull through. The Ryithans can't win now. Our victory is only a matter of time."
"It's hard to believe I never left this building," Harbert said, shaking his head. "To think that
whole nightmare voyage was conducted in a test laboratory."
"We have excellent simulators," the Director agreed. "But it had to be done. This new fear
conditioning weapon the Ryitha have developed might have won the war for them. But your
'flight' proved that our antidote is effective. We threw everything at you that the Ryitha could,
and you still pulled through. Now we will give the combat pilots the same psychotherapy we
gave you, and then they can start the job of blasting the Ryitha from the sky."
"Funny, I didn't realise it was simulated."
"Memory control drugs. When the 'mission' began your brain was a blank. Your memory
seeped back bit by bit, it was just returning to normal at the end. You'd've remembered in a few
minutes time, even if we hadn't opened up the hatch."
"But I should have known," Harbert said. "It couldn't have been real." He gazed down at his
two shattered legs, the stumps hidden by the blanket of the wheelchair.
"You can't go out into space any more, I know," the Director said softly, "but you may have
won the war for us, Harbert."
"Orion's belt on a Winter night will never look the same," Harbert muttered, and blinked
back a foolish tear.
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FULL MOON S.F. - ORION'S BELT (D. Fleming-Burke)
ORION'S BELT
D. Fleming-Burke
The tiny ship was like a sliver of silver. It pierced the black veils of space, tearing through
the void at twenty times the speed of light, accelerating fast. Only a few days age, Harbert, the
ship's pilot, remembered the Belt had still been discernible; now he was so close that the three
flaming suns which made it up had become widely separated, mingled with the starry
background. One was off to his right; one was behind him, passed yesterday on his line of
flight, nearer to Earth by a few light years than it's two companions, and hence passed sooner.
But one of the three stars of the Belt was still before him; a yellow speck in his forward
visiscanner, growing ever brighter as he neared it.
From the Winter sky, Harbert thought as he sat immersed in his womb-like cabin at the fore
end of the glistening ship of space, Orion is a striking sight. The Hunter of the Sky,
unmistakable to anyone with even the most rudimentary knowledge of astronomy. To the North,
flaming supergiant Betelgeuse, red and bloated; to the South, searing blue-white Rigel, that
flaming sun that would sear Earth to a smoking cinder if it took the place of Sol. But between
these two giant stars there are three others; three in a line, the stars of Orion's Belt. From a
couple of light years away, Harbert thought, they're not all that impressive. Just like scores of
others.
But he was not bound for any of the Belt's suns. Two of them were planetless, and the
other, although boasting one of the most advanced worlds as a member of it's system, was not
on his schedule this trip. He was bound instead for the Orion meteor belt, that light years long
tract of debris (some say an offshoot of the Great Nebula) that stretches across space to the far
side of the Belt, towards the far Galactic Centre. Only three light years beyond the centre star, it
was now only a few months flight away at his present speed. But Harbert had no intention of
wasting months on a flight he could do in a day at full power; he was decelerating for a
different reason. He had just recently made up his mind.
He wasn't going to the meteor belt.
He didn't know why. He had no idea why the thought of completing his journey should fill
him with such strange dread. He couldn't say what weird obsession had gripped him, so that he
broke out in a cold sweat every time he thought of making landfall on Station 54, that half-mile
chunk of debris that was Earth's largest base in the meteor belt. He didn't know what illogical
reasoning had led him to this conclusion.
All he knew was that he wasn't going there.
He had made his mind up recently; only a few hours before. His hand had crept to the
retarder engines and fired them to slow his velocity. Eventually he would be travelling slowly
enough to turn the ship on it's axis and head back for Earth.
Then the questions would begin.
Why? Why did you do it?
"And I don't know," Harbert muttered to himself in his cocoon of space, his protective
womb. I don't know why I'm trembling with fear at the thought of going near the meteor belt. I
don't know what warped mental patterns my brain went through in arriving at this illogical
decision. I don't know because I can't remember.
He couldn't remember why? That was ridiculous, he told himself. Yet all recollection was
gone. And yet, even though he couldn't remember the reason for his decision, still he couldn't
override it.
And that was senseless.
Around Harbert were the flaming stars of space, reflected as white points on the black
screens. He sat shaking in his tiny cabin, reflecting, trying to remember. Somewhere out there,
right in his line of flight, was his port. It was ridiculous not to continue; pointless to end his
voyage here, with his precious cargo undelivered. His cargo that could mean life or death to the
crew of the meteor belt station. He could be killing hundreds of people by turning around now.
His hand crept towards the booster switch to accelerate his craft to full power again.
And stopped half way.
"Let me consider this thing logically," Harbert mumbled to himself, in his coffin of space,
tearing towards the meteor belt at seven times the speed of light, decelerating. "I have a
valuable cargo to deliver to the crew members of Station 54. They must have my cargo, or it's
doubtful that they can survive until a replacement ship makes it. I want to deliver my load to
them; I know they're depending on me. And yet there's something that won't let me. I know
there's something, but I don't know what it is. I can't remember why I braked the ship, and I
can't bring myself to boost up to full power again.
The switch of the booster engines mocked him. Again his hand snaked towards it, again it
stopped. This time he had got nearer to it maybe if he tried again..and again...
"Maybe I'm insane!" He shouted it to the four walls of his cramped cabin, his metal womb,
and they shouted it right back at him, in reverberating metallic tones. He tried to convince
himself he was mad, but it didn't work. A madman doesn't try to convince himself he's insane.
His speed was down to five times the speed of light when he finally managed to bring his
sweaty hand into contact with the booster switch.
It was repellent to his touch; filthy, slimy, like some horrible thing just dredged up from a
sewer. He almost let go at the first wave of revulsion, but, instead, summoning some new
mental power from a reserve deep in his brain that he didn't know he possessed, he pushed the
booster switch home.
The engines roared to full power, sounding like banshees to Harbert's tortured ears. The
noise cut into his mind, sent waves of searing agony coursing down every nerve channel. He
writhed in his pliable cocoon.
"What is this?" he screamed at the walls as the ship's velocity built up. Twenty times light
speed, fifty, a hundred, the pointer crept up towards maximum. "What is this thing that tortures
me?" he yelled at the black, leering void, implacable and silent, with only the thin walls of the
tiny ship to protect him from instant death.
Harbert began to worry about leaks. He imagined the slow hissing of air from the cabin,
leaving him gasping and helpless in a vacuum. He fancied he could hear the slow murmur of it
as his oxygen bled out into space. He thrust his fingers into his ears in a vain attempt to block
out the sound. It seemed to get worse.
"If it gets worse when I put my fingers in my ears," he told himself, "then it can't be real. It
must be purely psychological." He said it aloud, and the hissing seemed to subside a little. He
began to breath more easily.
The hissing was gone when the pointer of the velocity dial finally bumped against the
'maximum' mark. At the speed the ship was now doing, the meteor belt was less than a day's
flight. "If I can just hold out," Harbert thought, then: "Hold out against what? There's nothing
there."
But he wasn't sure. He couldn't convince himself.
The time dragged by .... The sole remaining Belt sun fled by like a yellow ghost in the
visiscanner. Beyond it lay the meteor belt, and station 54. He'd be safe there, or would he?
What horror was waiting for him. Maybe he was precognitive. Maybe something so terrible was
waiting for him there at his destination that the warning of it had somehow percolated back
through time, to nag at his brain, to warn him to turn back before it was too late. Maybe horrible
death had overcome the crew of the station, and maybe that same death was now waiting for
him, lurking in the silent subterranean corridors of the dead base. Some virulent plague,
perhaps, some slobbering monster from the hidden worlds of the Nebula. Or maybe... the
Ryitha.
The Ryitha! The thought came to him like a douche of cold water, icy quivers ran along his
spine, and he almost screamed. Why hadn't he thought of them before? He battered at his
forehead with demented hands. How could he have overlooked the most terrible danger of all?
For humanity was fighting a war. That was why Station 54 needed his cargo so badly. It
was a war station, one of humanity's outposts at the border of mankind's empire. Beyond the
shattered debris of the meteor belt lay the unknown reaches of untouchable space; the Ryithan
empire.
Empire of a race of aliens horrible and vicious almost beyond comprehension; a race who
killed human beings not out of any rational need to do so, but because to them, humans were
merely vermin, the rats of the gutter. A race that man had never been able to understand; never
been able to communicate with. Humanity had it's back against the wall, out here in the dark
backwaters off space, for if these defences fell, the Ryitha would swarm across mans' suns,
killing without mercy or feeling. It was destroy or be destroyed. And the Ryitha might be
waiting for him at station 54.
"It's a border outpost," Harbert thought wildly. "Maybe they swept in from the Galactic
centre in their dark ships and wiped out the crew. Maybe they've picked up my approach on
their scanners; maybe they're just waiting for me to come within range of their guns, so that
they can blast me from the skies."
But there was a worse alternative. Maybe they wouldn't blast him as soon as he got within
range. Maybe they'd let him land. There had been horrible stories that had filtered back to Earth
about what Ryithans did with human prisoners. He stared at the dark smudge up ahead that was
the meteor belt; he should begin to decelerate now, or he'd overshoot it by light years.
But at least then he'd be safe.
His hand crept towards the rocket switch once again, and once again he halted, undecided.
Horrible images of Ryithans were in his mind, loathsome creatures, with eyes cold and callous,
eyes that held no pity.
Hate welled into Harbert's mind. His hand plunged down and closed the rocket switch. His
ship began the long deceleration manoeuvre necessary to bring it in to a safe landing at Station
54. "Damn the Ryitha," he cursed, there in his tiny capsule, out in the darkness of space, with
the stars peering through the visiscanners. "Damn their alien guts," he shouted out loud so that
the watching suns and planets could hear him. "Damn their filthy bodies and their mindless
brains. I hate them."
He realised then why he was going to Station 54. He hoped vaguely that there were Ryitha
there. He'd go in with guns blasting, and wipe them off the meteor belt. He hated them so much
that it would be a pleasure to die, just as long as he could take a few of them with him.
The meteor belt was dead ahead now, and he was slowing fast, in order to negotiate the
tenuous clouds of gas and dust that permeate the area. Some people claimed that the dimly
glowing belt was the most beautiful sight in the human-occupied Galaxy; at another time
Harbert might have agreed with them, but now hate and rage had taken control of his brain, and
he had eyes only for the minute specks that were the individual rocks of the meteor belt.
Grouped in their hundreds and in their thousands, the twinkling points of light grew
brighter. Each was a tiny asteroid, Harbert knew, the largest twenty miles in diameter, the
smallest a speck of microscopic dust. There were twenty million lumps of debris over a mile in
diameter in the belt; it was a far vaster version of the Solar System's own asteroid belt.
Harbert hunched over has control board as the first few chunks of rock swept by, his ship's
computers maintaining a course clear of the debris. The path down to Station 54 would be
automatic now. It was simple. He watched the chunks of debris flash by on the screens. Then he
froze.
There was something else on the screen; something that wasn't a stray chunk of rock. It was
a ship - a Ryithan!
Harbert chuckled grimly. He swung his ship sideways to line up the interloper in his sights,
evaded quickly as he saw the puff of a missile being launched from it's belly, laughed with
insane glee as his lasers tore one side of it right off. The Ryithan missile detonated harmlessly,
thousands of miles behind him. Harbert laughed joyously, a half demented laughter, as the
autopilot guided him towards Station 54.
Then something, horribly, shockingly impossible happened. The door of his capsule
opened, and he saw a bespectacled face peering in at him. A face peering in, when he was
millions of miles from the nearest planet.
He screamed once and passed out.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Harbert relaxed in the soft chair, and stared into the smiling blue eyes of the Project
Director.
"You'll probably get some sort of a medal in official recognition," the Director said. "But I
want to thank you now for what you've been through. I knew it was tough, but you proved we
can pull through. The Ryithans can't win now. Our victory is only a matter of time."
"It's hard to believe I never left this building," Harbert said, shaking his head. "To think that
whole nightmare voyage was conducted in a test laboratory."
"We have excellent simulators," the Director agreed. "But it had to be done. This new fear
conditioning weapon the Ryitha have developed might have won the war for them. But your
'flight' proved that our antidote is effective. We threw everything at you that the Ryitha could,
and you still pulled through. Now we will give the combat pilots the same psychotherapy we
gave you, and then they can start the job of blasting the Ryitha from the sky."
"Funny, I didn't realise it was simulated."
"Memory control drugs. When the 'mission' began your brain was a blank. Your memory
seeped back bit by bit, it was just returning to normal at the end. You'd've remembered in a few
minutes time, even if we hadn't opened up the hatch."
"But I should have known," Harbert said. "It couldn't have been real." He gazed down at his
two shattered legs, the stumps hidden by the blanket of the wheelchair.
"You can't go out into space any more, I know," the Director said softly, "but you may have
won the war for us, Harbert."
"Orion's belt on a Winter night will never look the same," Harbert muttered, and blinked
back a foolish tear.
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GO TO THE STORY INDEX
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