Rescue Squad Read online

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  _When Mr. O'Hara won the prize story contest recently conducted by THE FANTASY WRITERS' WORKSHOP at the College of the City of New York, in conjunction with FANTASTIC UNIVERSE, it was the unanimous opinion of the judges that a second story by Mr. O'Hara, RESCUE SQUAD, deserved honorable mention. We think you'll agree with that decision when you've read this documentary-type science-fiction yarn, which so excitingly combines realistic characterization with the mystery, suspense and terror of the near future's exploration of space and a lone pilot's struggle to survive._

  rescue squad

  _by ... Thomas J. O'Hara_

  Stark disaster to a brave lad in space may--to the mind that loves--be a tragedy pridefully concealed.

  The mail ship, MR4, spun crazily through space a million miles off hertrajectory. Her black-painted hull resembled a long thermonuclearweapon, and below her and only a scant twenty million miles away burnedthe hungry, flaming maw of the Sun.

  The atomic-powered refrigeration units of the MR4 were working fullblast--and still her internal and external temperatures were slowly andinexorably rising. Her atomic engines had been long sincesilenced--beaten by the inexhaustible, fiery strength of the invincibleopponent waiting patiently a narrowing twenty million miles "below."

  Hal Burnett twisted painfully on the narrow space-bunk, his tormentedbody thrusting desperately against the restraining bands of the safetystraps that lashed him in against the dangers of non-gravity.

  He moaned, and twisted sideways, while his half-asleep mind struggled onan almost instinctive level against a dimly-remembered, utterlyintolerable reality.

  It was a losing battle. He was suddenly wide awake, staring in horror atthe vibrating bulkheads of the deserted little mail ship. For a momenthis conscious barriers against reality were so completely down that hefelt mortally terrified and overwhelmed by the vast emptiness about him.For a moment the mad idea swept into his mind that perhaps the universewas just another illusion, an echo of man's own inner loneliness.

  Realizing his danger, Burnett quickly undid the restraining safetystraps, sat up and propelled himself outward from the edge of his bunk.The sudden surge of physical action swept the cobwebs from his mind.

  He thought of his father--and there was bitterness in his heart andfrustration, and a rebellious, smouldering anger. The old man wouldnever know how close he had come to cracking up.

  For a moment he wondered fearfully if his father's cold and preciseappraisal of his character and courage had been correct. Suppose he_was_ unable to stand the rigid strains and pressures of a realemergency. Suppose-- He tightened his lips in defiant self-justification.What did they expect of a twenty-year-old kid anyway? He was, after all,the youngest and probably the greenest mail pilot in the entireUniversal Run.

  Suddenly the defensive barriers his mind had thrown up against thegrievous flaw in his character, which made him feel uncertain of himselfwhen he should have felt strong and capable, crumbled away completely.He could no longer pretend, no longer deceive himself. He hated hisfather because the elder Burnett had never known a moment of profoundself-distrust in his entire life.

  He remembered his father's favorite line of reasoning with a sudden,overwhelming resentment. "Fear can and must be controlled. If you haveyour objective clearly in mind a new experience, no matter howhazardous, will quickly become merely a routine obstacle to besurmounted, a yardstick by which a man can measure his own maturity andstrength of purpose. You'll find peace of mind in doing your work ablyand well and by ignoring all danger to yourself."

  It was so easy to say, so hard to live up to. How, for instance, could atwenty-year-old kid on his _first_ mail run hope to completely outwitfatigue, or even forget, for a single moment, that it _was_ his firstrun. Fatigue had caused his undoing, but had he been completely fearlesshe might have found a way to save himself, might have managed somehow toprevent the small, navigational errors from piling up until they hadcarried him past the point of no return.

  A constant re-checking of every one of his instruments might have savedhim. But he had been too terrified to think straight, and too ashamedof his "first-run" inexperience to send out a short wave messagerequesting emergency instructions and advice. Now he was hopelessly offhis course and it was too late. Too late!

  He could almost feel the steadily-growing pull of his mindless enemy inthe distant sky. Floating and kicking his way over to the Tele-screen,he quickly switched the instrument on. Rotating the control dials, hebrought the blinding white image of the onrushing solar disk intoperfect focus. Automatically he adjusted the two superimposed polaroidfilters until the proper amount of light was transmitted to his viewingscreen. They really built ships and filters these days, he reflectedwryly. Now if they could only form a rescue squad just as easily--

  Even through the viewing screen he could almost feel the hot blast ofwhite light hit his face with the physical impact of a baseball bat.With what was almost a whimper of suppressed fear he rocked backward onhis heels.

  The Sun's ghastly prominences seemed to reach beckoning fingers towardhim, as its flood of burning, radiant light seared through theincalculable cold of space, and its living corona of free electrons andenergy particles appeared to swell and throb menacingly.

  Fearfully he watched the flaming orb draw closer and closer, and as itspull grew more pronounced he wondered if it were not, in somenightmarishly fantastic fashion becoming malignantly aware of him. Itresembled nothing so much as a great festering sore; an infection of thevery warp-and-woof stuff of space.

  He flipped off the power control on the Tele-screen and watched theimage fade away with a depleted whine of dying energy. That incandescentinferno out there-- Grimly he tried to recall the name of the man whohad said that, philosophically, energy is not actually a real thing atall.

  He knew better than to waste time trying the pilot controls again. Theywere hopelessly jammed by the great magnetic attraction of the Sun. Theyhad been jammed for hours now. He forced his way back to his bunk, andsecurely lashed himself to it again. Sleep was his only hope now, hisonly real escape from the growing, screaming hysteria within him.

  He flung an arm across his tired face. His thin features trembled as heremembered the continuous alterations in his trajectory that had broughthim within range of the Sun's mighty pull. He remembered also everydetail of the last and gravest of the series of miscalculations that hadswept him from the established route of the regular Venus-Mercury mailrun, and threatened him with a violent, flaming end.

  Greatly off course, he had been approaching Mercury, a routinethirty-six million miles from the Sun. On this, the final leg of hislong journey, he had deviated just far enough from the extreme limits ofsafety to find himself and his ship gripped inexorably in the mightymagnetic fields of the Sun's passage....

  He remembered a name-- Josephine.

  There would be no lover's meeting now on the green fields of Earth inthe dusk of a summer evening. There would be no such meeting now. Notunless the prayers and dreams a boy and a girl had shared had followedhim, plunging senselessly into the cold glacial heart of interstellarspace.

  His false bravado began to break and he began to weep quietly. He beganto wish with all his heart that he had never left home.

  The sudden crackling of the almost static-jammed ultra-wave radiosnapped through to his mind. Quickly he began to free himself from thebunk.

  "MR4, come in, MR4."

  An eternity seemed to pass as he floated across the room, deliberatelydisregarding the strategically-placed hand-grips on the walls, floor,and ceiling. It seemed aeons before he reached the narrow little controlcompartment, and got the
ultra-wave radio into action, nearly wreckingit in his clumsy-fingered haste.

  "MR4 to Earth. Over."

  He waited a few moments and then repeated the message as noacknowledgment came through. Then he abruptly remembered the nearbypresence of the Sun and its interference with radio transmission andreception. He was white and shaken by the time his message was receivedand his report requested and given.

  He gave the whole tragic picture in frantic short wave. The amount ofatomic fuel left in the ship, the internal and external temperatures,the distance from the Sun, and the strength of the solar disk's magneticfield and his rate of drift toward it--along with a staggering list ofother pertinent factors.

  At last it was over and he stood by awaiting the decision from Earthheadquarters.

  It came at last.

  "MR4." The growling voice was Donnelly's, the huge space-engineer incharge of the smaller mail-rocket units. "You're in a tough spot butwe've got an expert