THE FIVE HELLS OF ORION-6
505 Words
IIIBEFORE STAGE TWO BEGAN, or before Herrell McCray realized it had begun, he had an inspiration.
The dark was absolute, but he remembered where the spacesuit had been and groped his way to it and, yes, it had what all spacesuits had to have. It had a light. He found the toggle that turned it on and pressed it.
Light. White, flaring, Earthly light, that showed everything—even himself.
“God bless,” he said, almost beside himself with joy. Whatever that pinkish, dancing halo had been, it had thrown him into a panic; now that he could see his own hand again, he could blame the weird effects on some strange property of the light.
At the moment he heard the click that was the beginning of Stage Two.
He switched off the light and stood for a moment, listening.
For a second he thought he heard the far-off voice, quiet, calm and almost hopeless, that he had sensed hours before; but then that was gone. Something else was gone. Some faint mechanical sound that had hardly registered at the time, but was not missing. And there was, perhaps, a nice new sound that had not been there before; a very faint, an almost inaudible elfin hiss.
McCray switched the light on and looked around. There seemed to be no change.
And yet, surely, it was warmer in here.
He could see no difference; but perhaps, he thought, he could smell one. The unpleasant halogen odor from the grating was surely stronger now. He stood there, perplexed.
A tinny little voice from the helmet of the space suit said sharply, amazement in its tone, “McCray, is that you? Where the devil are you calling from?”
He forgot smell, sound and temperature and leaped for the suit. “This is Herrell McCray,” he cried. “I’m in a room of some sort, apparently on a planet of approximate Earth mass. I don’t know—”
“McCray!” cried the tiny voice in his ear. “Where are you? This is Jodrell Bank calling. Answer, please!”
“I am answering, damn it,” he roared. “What took you so long?”
“Herrell McCray,” droned the tiny voice in his ear, “Herrell McCray, Herrell McCray, this is Jodrell Bank responding to your message, acknowledge please. Herrell McCray, Herrell McCray....”
It kept on, and on.
McCray took a deep breath and thought. Something was wrong. Either they didn’t hear him, which meant the radio wasn’t transmitting, or—no. That was not it; they had heard him, because they were responding. But it seemed to take them so long....
Abruptly his face went white. Took them so long! He cast back in his mind, questing for a fact, unable to face its implications. When was it he called them? Two hours ago? Three?
Did that mean—did it possibly mean—that there was a lag of an hour or two each way? Did it, for example, mean that at the speed of his suit’s pararadio, millions of times faster than light, it took hours to get a message to the ship and back?
And if so ... where in the name of heaven was he?
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- Writer
