More Things in Heaven

by John Brunner

Genres: Science Fiction; Hard Science Fiction; Space Opera

Synopsis

A revised version of THE ASTRONAUTS MUST NOT LAND (1963). It isn't every day that the impossible happens. But when it does, and you're a witness, you have to start looking for answers. The authorities won't talk. So you decide to find out for yourself. That's what Drummond did. And when he found out. it changed the universe!

Release date: September 29, 2011

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 137

Sample

I WAS STILL shaking as I walked into Chambord’s office a good ten minutes afterwards. Ramona, the pretty local girl who served as barrier between Chambord and the outside world, put her hand up to her open mouth as I went past her. Her eyes enormously wide, she said, “Madre de Dios!” Then she crossed herself rapidly. I looked as though I’d seen a ghost.

As far as I could tell, I had seen a ghost.

Chambord glanced up from his desk when I opened his door without knocking. Behind him on the wall he had a giant blowup of the Andromeda Nebula—one of the famous series taken at the Lunar Observatory—so sited that when he sat upright it framed his head like a halo. I think he had fixed it that way on purpose.

He was so proud of the fact that he recognised me after two years that he got right through his first sentence before he noticed the ghastly expression I was wearing. He said, “If anyone had asked me to bet who would be first in here when it was time, I’d have said, ‘David Drummond, of course’. And … and in the name of the good God, David, what is wrong?”

I let myself fall into the visitor’s chair and took my dark glasses off so I could wipe my sweating face. The sweat was not from heat; Quito is on the equator, but it’s nine thousand feet up. I could feel my heart hammering my ribs fit to break them apart.

I said, “Henri, I just saw my brother. I saw Leon—right here in Quito!”

Chambord stared at me. Being French-born, he was too polite to tell me in so many words that I was insane, but he had a tough job.

“Calm yourself, David!” he instructed solicitously. “A glass of water? A cigarette? You are all worked up.”

“You’re goddamn right,” I said harshly. I leaned on the edge of the desk and repeated my first statement, slowly and clearly. “I just saw my brother Leon, here in Quito!”

“It must have been someone else, David.”

I said, “Hell! My own brother! I saw him right there on the Calle Gagarin, no more than ten minutes back!”

“At a distance, perhaps. You may have been thinking about your brother, and fancied a resemblance.”

I drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. My heart went back obediently to something nearer normal tempo. I said, “Have you any brothers, yourself?”

“Ah … yes, I have two brothers.”

“Do you think you could mistake someone else for your brother if you were no farther from him than the width of the Calle Gagarin?”

“My brothers are in France; I have not seen them for many years. So—”

“It’s only two years since I saw-Leon,” I snapped. “We grew up in one another’s pockets. I’m saying it isn’t possible for me to be mistaken.”

But by this time I was having trouble convincing myself. Chambord sensed this, and produced his ace of trumps.

“It is more than, possible,” he said. “It’s certain. For your brother is aboard Starventure, and Starventure is crossing the orbit of Jupiter.”

At that point my reflexes took over. I forgot the ridiculous idea that I’d seen Leon in Quito. I’d known all along it was impossible. My mind jerked back to what Chambord had said when I came in: “Who would be first here when it was time?”

I had my crystal recorder—flat, the size of two packs of cigarettes—out of my pocket on the instant. I said, “Since I when? How long ago did they pick up her signal?”

|“Only a little over an hour ago. I was working on the | press release as you came in.”

“Give me the bare facts. I’ll be back for more later.”

He smiled, plainly relieved to see me acting more like my | normal self, and held out an official UN teletype form. I’d learned to read space-code in the cradle, more or less: One glance was enough.

Starventure returned to normal space; fifteen degrees above the plane of the ecliptic; direction of sublight travel normal to Alpha Centauri; signals coming in strong and clear; crew well; mission successful.

“The biggest story since Columbus,” I said, handing back the form and getting to my feet. “And I’m ahead of the crowd. I hadn’t the slightest intention of calling here until I saw leon—thought I saw,” I corrected myself as I noticed a disapproving curl of Chambord’s lip. “Maybe I should have myself tested for psi ability. When do they expect to make actual contact?”

“I haven’t heard yet,” Chambord said. “It all depends, of course, on the resultant speed with which she re-entered normal space. Assuming it’s of the order of thousands of miles a second, enough to bring her into orbit around Earth under her own power, then—forty hours. If they have to send tugs out to her, somewhat longer.”

“Fine! I’ll be back.”

I went out in such a hurry I slammed the door, and the green United Nations shield on the outer side almost fell off its peg with the bang. Ramona jerked on her chair and| glanced around, preparing to cross herself again; I gave her the most reassuring grin I could manage and headed for the pay-phone booths in the foyer.

I was probably the first man to profit directly from the launching of Starventure. At that time—two years before—I’d had a science-news column syndicated in about thirty countries through Solar Press and its associated agencies. It was pure luck that owing to my inside position and having Leon for a brother I made a fortune out of my coverage of the launching, or at least enough to turn freelance and concentrate on books instead of a grinding weekly schedule.

I remembered, as I waited in the phone booth for my call to Solar Press’s New York office to go through, how Hank Sandler had received the news that I’d decided to leave his staff. I told him he ought to be glad to see me go, because he was always complaining that my phone credit-card was the most expensive the agency had ever guaranteed, being good for sound and vision Al priority calls from any place on Earth to New York. (Once I’d tried to get them to extend it to Luna, but with tight-beam satellite relay calls running at twenty bucks a second, they refused.)

I put the card in front of him, expecting him to try and talk me out of my decision. He did no such thing—just picked up the card and handed it back and said, “Compliments of Solar Press.”

I’d never used it since, but I’d never gone anywhere without it. Now I was using it.

The face of one of the New York staff went up on the screen, gray-white and black: Jimmy Weston, that was the name. He said, “Thank goodness we reached you, Mr. Drummond. Mr. Sandler’s been going half crazy.”

I blinked. I said, “You didn’t reach me. What do you mean?”

“Aren’t you in Venezuela? We’re paging you there.”

“Haven’t been there since yesterday afternoon. Look, whatever it is it can wait. Give me the copy desk—I have a clear beat, but it’ll only last a few minutes.”

“I … I guess I’d better put you through to Mr. Sandler.”

And before I could say “any more, he did. Sandler’s face came up on the screen just as he was breathing out a huge cloud of cigar smoke, and it hung frozen around his head until the next picture-melt was due.

I said, “Hank, it’s great to see you, but I didn’t call for a social chat. I’ve been trying to tell Jimmy Weston I have a beat. Starventure is back!”

His voice was absolutely level as he answered. “Maybe that accounts for it.”

I was completely taken aback.

“Accounts for what?” I said foolishly, and then recovered myself. “No, don’t waste time answering that! Will you get me put through to the copy desk now?”

“What have you got?” I heard the rustle of paper; then the picture-melt caught him with an open pad of paper and a stylo.

I told him baldly, heard his message-tube click and knew that the information was safely on the way to the telefaxes. Stage one was over. The second stage would be to write the real story, but I’d been writing it in my head ever since the launching, and it would come out automatically.

“Thanks, David,” Sandler said after a pause. “It’s the biggest. How far ahead of the competition are you?”

“Not much more than minutes, I guess. Henri Chambord is too strict for that. But it so happened that I came in to the UN press office here in Quito because I—”

I hesitated. Should I say, “I saw my brother”? Or, “I thought I saw my brother”?

I backed down. Half of me was still sure that was Leon I had seen large as life in the bright noon sunlight. Half of me was perfectly aware that he was out near Jupiter’s orbit.

“Well, the reason doesn’t matter,” I concluded. “It so happened I called just as Henri was drafting the press release. How come you were trying to contact me, by the way? Have you turned psychic?”

“Not exactly.” Sandler sounded puzzled. “David, have you heard anything about the appearance of a monster in the sky over Southern Chile? Panic in a fishing-village down there?”

“Was that what you wanted me about? I’m afraid mass hallucination isn’t in my line.”

“That’s just it, David. This doesn’t … doesn’t smell like a silly-season story.”

I didn’t say anything. Hank Sandler might not know a nucleotron from an ergolyser, but news he did know, with an almost supernatural instinct for what mattered.

He went on, “Since you happened to be in Latin America, I thought of asking you to check on it. Still, forget it now.”

I said, “Did you think there might be a connection between this and the return of Starventure?”

“That was off the top of the head, and on reflection it obviously won’t hold water. Starventure got back not much more than an hour ago, and this thing happened last night. If you’re interested, though, I’ll ‘fax you the story care of the UN press office. I’ll put in one or two other puzzling items as well, which have the same feel about them.”

Another picture shift caught him leaning back with a lugubrious expression, which didn’t match his warm voice as he concluded, “Well, that’s irrelevant. What I ought to be saying is thanks for remembering Solar, I guess. But I don’t have enough words.”

“Save ’em,” I said. “I have plenty. Get me the copy desk and I’ll write your main release over the phone.”

The picture wiped, and a sign came on saying, “Please start speaking at the third tone.” I closed my eyes. I didn’t have to fumble. I knew how it was going to be, and it was good.

I said, “A dream as old as civilization has come true. Man has thrown down his challenge to the stars. …”

I WAS STILL talking when the door of the wire-room across the foyer opened and a messenger headed towards Chambord’s office. He came back at a dead run, shouting and waving a sheet of paper. In the sound-proof booth I couldn’t hear what he was saying, and my Spanish, though reliable, was slow anyway. But I didn’t have to be told that inside half an hour probably every reporter in Quito from the agency men to the frowsiest legman off the locals would be cramming themselves in here the way they used to two years ago.

Two years ago …

I finished my story. Sandler came back on to say that the bundle of material he had promised was on the ’faxes, and to thank me again. I decided I might as well hang-around for what he was sending me, since it interested him so much, so I came out of the booth and sat down on one of the comfortable padded benches around the walls of the foyer to smoke a thoughtful cigarette. And to worry again at the mistake that had brought me in here.

Damn it, in two years I couldn’t not know my own brother–not in bright sunlight from one side of the street to the other. Yet all logic said I had done just that. I’d seen Leon go aboard the ferry with my own eyes, and that ferry had gone out to Starventure, orbiting at three thousand miles, and had snicked into the after-hold—because it was going to serve as one of the landing-boats if Alpha Centauri turned out to have planets men could walk on.

Then the tugs had dragged the starship’s vast hull out of orbit. I’d seen that too—all of Earth had, on the planet-wide TV linkup covering the departure. Beyond Mars’s orbit and slanting Centaurusward, the tugs had dropped off. Captain Rukeyser had called a nervous-sounding good-bye, and all the news commentators the following day had said how his nervousness was a wonderful reminder that after all it was ordinary men who were going to the stars.

And they went.

Where? How? Even to me—and I’ve spent my working life making science and technology comprehensible to the man in the street—it was a hell of a job putting the thinking behind that stardrive into everyday language. Liu Chen, who developed it, spoke nothing but his native Mandarin, and expounded his theories in symbology so abstruse that more than one doctorate was awarded for theses clarifying it. I was once told by a linguistics expert I interviewed that Liu Chen’s nationality probably had a great deal to do with this difficulty; Chinese thinking, even after a century of writing with letters, was heavily conditioned by the structure of the Chinese language, he told me.

As simply as possible, though: Liu Chen developed a systern for identifying individual particles by describing their relationship to o. . .