The Conditioned Reflex ptp-2 Read online

  For a second or so he almost revived, only to surrender to an even blacker, more nullifying ordeal.

  He was not in any physical discomfort. If only it had hurt! If only he could have experienced a twinge of real pain, the kind that bestows limits, presence, confirmation of self… But it was painless, a numbing surge of nothingness. He felt the air rush into him—spasmodically, in snatches, not into his lungs but into that wilderness of shuddering, stunted thought-scraps. Whine, groan—anything to hear your own voice…

  “You can moan without thinking of the stars,” said some intimate yet strangely anonymous voice.

  Whine? Moan? How could he? He was dead. Extinct. Defunct. Look: he was a hole, a sieve, a labyrinth of tortuous caves and passages, transparent, porous… Oh, why hadn’t they told him it would be like this? Cold and clammy streams… they were running through him… freely… without obstruction… The bastards! Why hadn’t they told him?!

  Soon the sensation of airy transparency gave way to raw fear, and it persisted—even after the darkness, convulsed by shimmering spasms, had vanished.

  The worst was yet to come, but it defied description, even clear recollection; there was no vocabulary for it. Yes, the “victims” were the richer for the experience, the hellish nature of which escaped their professors—but it was scarcely an experience to be envied.

  Pirx had to undergo still more punishment. He would vanish for a while, then return to life, not singly but in multiple versions; have his brain eaten completely away, then recover long enough to be plunged into a series of abnormal states too intricate to articulate, whose leitmotif was a conscious and ineradicable terror transcending time and space.

  Pirx had had a bellyful.

  Later Dr. Grotius said: “Your first groan came at the one-hundred-thirty mark, your second at the two hundred twenty-ninth. All told, a loss of three points—but not a single jerk! Fold one leg over the other, please. I’m going to test your reflexes… Tell me, how did you manage to stick it out so long, especially toward the end?”

  Pirx was sitting on a neatly folded towel, the more pleasant for being coarse. He felt like Lazarus himself. Not that it showed on the outside, but inwardly he felt resurrected. He had tested a full seven hours. The highest grade in the class! Never mind that he had died umpteen thousand times during the final three hours; he’d done it without a peep. After they fished him out of the tank, after they dried him off, gave him a body massage, an injection, and a generous swig of cognac, they hustled him off to the examination room, where Dr. Grotius was waiting for him. Along the way he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror: the stunned, comatose, bleary-eyed look of someone just recovered from a bout with malignant fever. He stared into the mirror—not because he expected to see his hair streaked with gray, but on a whim—took one look at his broad-boned pie face, wheeled around, and marched off, trailing wet footprints on the parquet flooring.

  Dr. Grotius labored long and hard to get him to recount his experience. Seven hours was no small feat. He regarded Pirx differently now, less with sympathy than with the fervor of an entomologist on discovering some rare species of moth or insect. Possibly he saw in him the makings of a scholarly article.

  Pirx, it must be said, was not the most obliging of research subjects. He sat the whole time in stunned silence, batting his eyes like a halfwit. Everything seemed flat and two-dimensional, receding or moving closer the moment he tried to grasp it. A typical reaction. But his response to the doctor’s questioning aimed at prying further details out of him was anything but typical.

  “Ever been in there yourself?” He answered a question with a question.

  “No.” Grotius backed off in some astonishment. “Why do you ask?”

  “You should try it sometime,” suggested Pirx. “That way you’d see firsthand what it’s like.”

  By the second day he felt fit enough to joke about the “loony dip.” From then on, it was back and forth to the Main Building, where the summer training missions were posted daily on a glassed-in bulletin board. But when the weekend rolled around, his name was still not on the list.

  On Monday he was told to report to the commandant’s office.

  Pirx, though not immediately fazed, examined his conscience beforehand. Was it for sneaking that mouse aboard Osten’s ship? Nah, that was ancient history by now. Anyway, what was one measly mouse? Big deal. How about the time he hooked up the AC/DC to Maebius’s mattress springs, using an alarm clock for a timer? But that was just a lowerclassman’s prank, a twenty-two-year-old’s idea of a practical joke. The commandant was a bighearted guy; he’d understand. Up to a point. Or was it for Operation Zombie?

  Operation Zombie was Pirx’s own brainstorm. He of course had help from friends—what were friends for, anyway? It was his smoothest, slickest job ever: a little gunpowder in a paper cone, a trail three times around the room, payload under the desk—there he might have overdone it a bit—then back out into the corridor through the slit under the door. And the way Barn had been “primed”: for one whole week Pirx made sure the nightly bull sessions were devoted exclusively to “extraterrestrial beings.” Pirx—nobody’s fool—was shrewd enough to cast people in different roles—some telling horror stories, others acting as skeptics—so Barn wouldn’t be the wiser. Except for occasionally sneering at the partisans of the “beyond,” Barn kept aloof from these metaphysical debates. But, man, what a sight he made, barrel-assing out of his room at midnight, bellowing like a water buffalo with a tiger on its tail! The flame, as planned, had sneaked under the door, snaked three times around the room, and—whamo!—exploded under the table, toppling books and starting a small fire. A couple of buckets of tap water took care of it, but it left a nice hole in the floor, not to mention the lingering stench of cordite. The operation, though technically flawless, proved a flop: Barn still refused to believe in spirits. Yep, Operation Zombie it was. Pirx got up early, slipped on a fresh shirt, took one last peek into his Flight Book and Basic Navigation—just to be on the safe side—and went to face the music.

  The commandant’s office was a dream come true. For Pirx it was, at any rate. Walls totally obscured by celestial maps, constellations like golden-brown drops of honey against a navy-blue field. A small blank Moon globe on the desk; books and degrees galore on the walls; another globe against the wall—only this one bigger, more elaborate. The second one was a real marvel of technological splendor: press the right button and bingo! the orbital path of any artificial satellite was immediately simulated, from the latest to the oldest—those pioneering satellites dating from the fifties.

  Practically any other day Pirx would have been enthralled by such a globe, but not today. The commandant was busy writing when he came in. “Please be seated; I’ll be right with you,” he heard him say. At last, taking off his glasses—until about a year ago he had got along without them—the commandant gave him a good long gander, as if laying eyes on him for the first time. That was his way—not only with Pirx but with everyone. It was a gaze designed to rattle even the saintliest of men. And Pirx was hardly a saint. He couldn’t keep still. Either he found himself sprawled out in the grossly casual manner of a millionaire aboard his own private yacht, or precariously balanced on the edge of his seat. Finally—mercifully—the commandant broke the silence.

  “Well, Pirx, how are things?”

  He’d addressed him informally—a good omen. Pirx said he couldn’t kick.

  “Took a dip, did you?”

  Pirx nodded. Hey, what gives? Pirx kept his guard up. Maybe it was for sassing Dr. Grotius…

  “There’s a trainee’s berth up on Mendeleev. Know where that is?”

  “That’s an astrophysics station on the Far Side,” replied Pirx. He felt a slight letdown. He had been nurturing a quiet hope—so quiet he had been reluctant to admit it to himself, for fear of blowing it—that it would be something else. Like a flight mission. With all the ships and planets in the cosmos, he would have to land a routine station assignment, and on
the Far Side, no less. Once the “in” term for the lunar hemisphere not facing Earth, it was now in common parlance.

  “Right. Do you know what it looks like?” asked the commandant, wearing a facial expression that said he had something up his sleeve. Pirx briefly toyed with the idea of bluffing.

  “No,” he answered.

  “If you sign on, I’ll supply you with all the specs.” The commandant patted a stack of papers.

  “You mean it’s voluntary?” Pirx shot back with undisguised alacrity.

  “Correct. The mission I have in mind is… could turn out to be… very—”

  He deliberately broke off in mid-sentence to measure what effect his words would have on the wide-eyed, incredulous Pirx. Slowly the cadet drew a solemn breath, held it, and sat there as if oblivious of the need to exhale. Blushing like a maiden at the sight of her Prince, he waited for another dose of sweet-sounding phrases. The commandant cleared his throat.

  “Well, well,” he said soberingly, “I may have been exaggerating. Anyway, you’re mistaken.”

  “Beg your pardon?” stammered Pirx.

  “I mean you’re not the world’s only salvation. Not yet, at least.”

  Pirx, red as a beet, squirmed in his seat and fidgeted with his hands. The commandant, a man notorious for his methods, had just finished painting a paradisiacal vision of Pirx the Hero (Pirx already had dreams of returning from his Heroic Exploit and, while being paraded through a packed cosmodrome, hearing awed whispers of “That’s the one! That’s the one!”), and now, unknowingly it seemed, he was beginning to play down the Mission, to trim it down to the size of a routine training assignment.

  “The station is manned by astronomers—they’re sent out there, do their month’s service, and that’s that. The work is routine, requiring no specialized skills. Candidates used to be screened on the basis of the standard first- and second-degree tests. But that was before the accident. Now we need people who have undergone more rigorous testing. Pilots would be ideal, but you can’t very well farm a pilot out to a routine observatory. You can understand that.”

  Pirx could understand. The whole solar system was begging for pilots, astrogators, navigators—always in short supply, even in the best of times. But what “accident” was the commandant referring to? Pirx observed a prudent silence.

  “It’s a small station, situated in the most cockeyed place imaginable—not on the crater floor, as you’d expect, but just below the northern summit. There was a big to-do about the choice of location, international prestige rather than sound selenophysics being the deciding factor—as you’ll see in a moment. Anyhow, last year a section of the wall collapsed and wiped out the only road, making access difficult, and possible only by day. Plans were under way for a cable railway, but work was halted when it was decided to transfer the station down below in a year’s time. At night the station is cut off from the outside world. All radio communication is suspended. Why is that?”

  “Sir?”

  “Why does all radio communication cease?”

  That was the commandant for you. What had begun as a harmless briefing on his Mission had suddenly been turned into an exam! Pirx broke out into a sweat.

  “Since the Moon has no atmosphere or ionosphere, radio communication is maintained by ultrashortwave frequency… A network of relay stations, similar to TV transmitters, was constructed to—”

  The commandant, his elbows propped on the desktop, twiddled his ball-point in a display of forbearance as Pirx went on expounding on things any schoolchild would have known. He was venturing into territories where his limited knowledge left much to be desired.

  “These transmission lines”—he hurtled on, coming upon more familiar waters—“have been installed on both the Far Side and the Near Side. Eight are located on the Far Side, linking up Luna Base with Sinus Medii, Palus Somnii, Mare Imbrium—”

  “You can skip that,” the commandant suddenly interrupted in a fit of magnanimity. “Nor is it necessary to hypothesize on the origin of the Moon. Proceed.”

  Pirx blinked.

  “Radio interference occurs when the relay network enters the terminator… when one half of the network lies in darkness and the other half in light—”

  “I know what a terminator is. There’s no need to explain it,” the commandant said benignly.

  Pirx coughed and blew his nose. Still, he couldn’t go on coughing or blowing his nose forever.

  “In the absence of any lunar atmosphere, the Sun’s corpuscular radiation bombards the Moon’s crust, causing—uh—interference of the radio waves. This interference is what causes inter—”

  He was floundering.

  “The interference interferes—absolutely right!” said the commandant, coming to his aid. “But what causes the interference?”

  “A secondary radiation, known as the No—the No—”

  “Nov—” The commandant prodded gently.

  “The… Novinsky effect!” Pirx finally blurted out. But the interrogation didn’t end there.

  “And what produces the Novinsky effect?”

  This last question had him altogether stumped. There was a time when he’d known the answer, but he had since forgotten. He had gone into the exam with the facts down cold, like a juggler balancing a pyramid of wildly improbable things in his head. But the exam was over now. He was desperately going on about electrons, forced radiation, and resonances when he was cut short by a sympathetic head-shake from the commandant.

  “Uh-uh,” said the stern and uncompromising man. “And Professor Merinus gave you a B for the course… Hm. Do you suppose he might have made a mistake?”

  Pirx’s armchair was slowly being transformed into a live volcano.

  “I wouldn’t wish to cause my colleague any embarrassment, so I think the less said about this the better…”

  Pirx sighed.

  “But during your comprehensive examination I shall see to it that Professor Laab…”

  He left the rest to Pirx’s imagination. Pirx gulped, but not from the concealed threat; the commandant’s hand was slowly scooping up the papers that were to have accompanied his Mission.

  “Why isn’t a cable communications system practicable?”

  “Too costly. At the moment only one concentric cable is in operation—the one connecting Luna Base with Archimedes. There are plans to install a cable network within the next five years,” Pirx fired away.

  Not mollified, the commandant picked up the thread.

  “To resume, then. The Mendeleev station is cut off at night. But communication or no communication, the work went on as usual—until recently, that is. One day last month, when the station failed to respond to any calls following the usual nighttime intermission, the Tsiolkovsky team set out and found the main hatch open, and inside the chamber—a body. The station was being manned by a team of Canadians, Challiers and Savage. The body in the chamber was Savage’s. His helmet was punctured. Death due to asphyxiation. Challiers’s body was found the next day at the foot of the Sun Gap—the victim of a fall. Otherwise the station was in perfect order: the monitoring systems checked out, stores untouched, not a sign of any damage or mechanical malfunction. You probably read about it.”

  “Yes, I did,” said Pirx. “But it was reported in the papers as a double suicide. A case of temporary insanity brought on by a… psychosis of some kind…”

  “Bull!” the commandant suddenly blurted out. “I knew Savage. From our days in the Alps. A guy like that would never have snapped. No, sir. The papers were full of it. You can read the report yourself, the one released by the joint inquiry commission. Listen here, Pirx, you fellas are given the same screening as pilots; the only difference is that you can’t fly until you’re breveted. And like it or not, you’ve got to put in your summer duty. If you sign on, you’ll fly tomorrow.”

  “And my partner?”

  “I don’t know his name. Some astrophysicist. The station can’t function without them. I’m afraid he won’t be exactly
thrilled by your company, but, well, you might just pick up a little astrography in the process. Now you’re sure you understand the nature of your assignment? The commission ruled it was an accident, but certain aspects still remain under a cloud of… let’s call it ambiguity. Something unexplainable happened up there—exactly what, we don’t know. That’s why it was decided the next team should include someone with the psychological qualifications of a pilot. I saw no reason to turn down their request. Chances are, nothing sensational is going to happen. Of course you’ll have to keep your eyes and ears open. But remember, you’re not up there to play detective; no one is expecting any startling new discoveries or breakthroughs in the case. No, that’s not your mission. What’s the matter? Aren’t you feeling well?”

  “Huh? No, no—I feel fine,” answered Pirx.

  “I thought so. Well, think you can behave sensibly? Unless I’m mistaken, it’s already going to your head. Maybe we should call off—”

  “I will behave sensibly,” said Pirx in the most emphatic voice he could muster.

  “I doubt it,” said the commandant. “I’m sending you up there with some reluctance. If it weren’t for the grade—”

  “The dip!” Pirx let it slip.

  The commandant pretended not to have heard this last remark. He gave him the papers first, then his hand.

  “Takeoff tomorrow at zero eight hundred hours. Travel light. You’ve been up there before, so you know what it’s like. Here’s your plane ticket and your reservation on the Transgalactic. You’ll fly straight to Luna Base; from there you’ll be transferred.”

  He added a few more words. To wish him luck? By way of farewell? Pirx couldn’t tell. He was too far away in his thoughts to comprehend. His ears were already full of the roar of boosting rockets, his eyes blinded by the desiccating white glare of rocky lunar terrain, his face wrought with stunned bewilderment—the same look that must have accompanied the two Canadians to their mysterious deaths. He did an about-face and bumped into the large globe by the window; took the front steps in four lunarlike bounds; and was nearly run over by a car, whose screeching brakes brought everyone—excluding Pirx—to a standstill. Luckily the commandant had gone back to his papers and thus was spared this opening display of “sensible behavior.”