Arkady & Boris Strugatsky - Roadside Picnic

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Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. Roadside Picnic

Arkadij i Boris Strugackie "Piknik na obochine"

INTRODUCTION

Good science fiction is good fiction

This assertion is one which must be made again, and over again, until

the general reader and the "serious" critic cease to associate science

fiction solely with girls in brass brassieres being rescued from the

advances of bug-eyed monsters by zap-gun-toting heroes in space armor. There

is as much of a spectrum of excellence in science fiction as there is in any

other field. Mickey Spillane is not Dorothy Sayers or Ngaio Marsh. Hopalong

Cassidy is not Shane or True Grit. And the best of science fiction is quite

as good as the best of any literature.

It happens also to be the most explosively popular genre on the current

scene. American and English science fiction is widely read in France, Italy,

and Scandinavia, increasingly in Spain, Portugal, and Latin America, and is

attaining new peaks in Germany and the Netherlands. New writers are

appearing in Europe, especially in France and Italy, and the translations

are beginning to Bow the other way into the English-speaking world. And the

rise in printed science fiction is reflected in the increasing number of

cinema and television productions in the field

There are several reasons--and a great many more hypotheses-- for this

upsurge, but they are not within the purview of these remarks and can be

left to the dozens of postgraduate theses being written on the subject and

to the teachers of high-school and college courses in science fiction (of

which there are, at this writing, over 1,500 in the U.S.A. alone). Suffice

it to say that there has never been a field of literature so limitless, so

flexible, so able to evoke astonishment and wonder, so free of the

boundaries of time and space and that arbitrary fantasy we call reality, as

science fiction. Not since the invention of poetry.

What is not generally known to the readers of science fiction in

English is that the most widely read science-fiction writer in the world is

not Heinlein or Bradbury or Clarke, but Stanislaw Lem, a Pole; that the

largest science-fiction section of a writers' union is in Hungary; that

excellent science fiction is being produced in East Germany, Czechoslovakia,

and especially in the Soviet Union. Some Of this--far too little--is

beginning to trickle into the English-speak- ing world, and, sad to say, a

certain portion suffers from execrable translation. Some works have had the

hazards of translation more than doubled by passing from the original to a

second language before being rendered from that into English, a process in

which the style and character of even a laundry list could hardly be

expected to survive. Keeping that in mind, however, the discerning reader

will find, even in the most brutalized of translations, a strength and

inventiveness marvelous to behold.

In the highest echelon of Soviet science-fiction writers stand the

names of Boris and Arkady Strugatsky. I first encountered these talented

brothers in a novel called Hard to Be a Cod Remarkable, purely as a novel,

for structure, characterization, pacing, and its perceptive statements of

the human condition, it touches also on almost every single quality most

avidly sought by the science-fiction reader. It has space flight and future

devices; it has that wondrous "what if ... ?" aspect in its investigation

into sociology; by its richly detailed portraiture of an alien culture it

affords a new perspective on the nature of ours and ourselves; it even has

that exciting hand-to- hand conflict so dear to the hearts of that cousin of

science fiction called swords-and-sorcery. And among its highest virtues is

this: though there are battles and fights and blood and death where the

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narrative calls for them, the super-potent protagonist never kills any-

body. Writers everywhere, keeping in mind in these violent times their

responsibility for their influence, should take note. It can be done, and

done well, at no expense to tension and suspense.

And now comes Roadside Picnic. . . . In the so-called Golden Age of

American science fiction, when the late John W. Campbell, editor

extraordinary, gathered around him in a handful of months the great- est

stable of science fiction talent ever seen, he would throw out challenges to

his writers, like: "Write me a story about a man who will die in twenty-four

hours unless he can answer this question: 'How do you know you're sane?' ";

and this one--surely one of the most provocative of all: "Write me a story

about a creature that thinks as well as a man but not like a man." (The

answer "Woman" is disallowed as too obvious a rejoinder.)

The Strugatskys posit that the Earth experiences a brief visit from

extraterrestrials, who leave behind them--well, call it litter, such as

might be left by you and me (in one of our less socially conscious moments)

after a roadside picnic. The nature of these discards, pro- ducts of an

utterly alien technology, defies most earthly logic, to say nothing of

earthly analytical science, and their potential is limitless. Warp these

potentials into all-too-human goals--the quest for pure knowledge for its

own sake, the search for new devices, new techniques, to achieve new heights

in human well-being; the striving for profit, with its associated

competitiveness; and the ravening thirst for new and more terrible

weapons--and you have the framework of this amazing short novel. Add the

Strugatskys' deft and supple handling of loyalty and greed, of friendship

and love, of despair and frustration and loneliness, and you have a truly

superb tale, ending most poignantly in what can only be called a blessing.

You won't forget it.

Tale of a Troika is a very different thing indeed--so different that it

might have been written by quite different authors--which is the highest

possible tribute to the authors' versatility. How much you like it will

depend on your taste for satire and lampoon. It is, in nature, reminiscent

of Lem's Memoirs Found in a Bathtub, with (and here I confess to a highly

subjective evaluation) one important difference: Lem's approach and style

are, in comparison, unleavened, no matter how deeply he plunges into the

surrealistic and the absurd. The cumulative effect is Kafkaesque horror. The

Strugatsky fury--and it is fury: disgust with hypocrisy, with bureaucratic

bumbling, with self-serving, self-saving distortions of logic and of truth

and of initially decent human motivations--their fury is laced with

laughter, rich with scorn, effervescent with the comic spirit. One has to

search back to Alice's tea party to find a scene as mad as the chamber of

the Troika; yet, in retrospect, one realizes that one has experienced a

profoundly serious work, since every bent line illuminates a straight one,

all illogic signifies the purity from which it has departed.

A word of appreciation must be extended to Ms. Antonina W. Bouis, the

translator of these short novels. Russian I do not know; fiction I do; and I

must honor anyone who can so deftly pass emotion, character dimension, even

conversational idiom, through so formidable a barrier. Theodore Sturgeon San

Diego, California 1976

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky Translated from Russian by Antonina W.

Bouis MacMillan Publishing Co., Inc, New York

Roadside Picnic

You have to make the good out of the bad because that is all you have

got to make it out of. * Robert Penn Warren

FROM AN INTERVIEW BY A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT FROM HARMONT RADIO WITH

DOCTOR VALENTINE PILMAN, RECIPIENT OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSICS FOR 19..

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"I suppose that your first serious discovery, Dr. Pilman, should be

considered what is now called the Pilman Radiant?"

"I don't think so. The Pilman Radiant wasn't the first, nor was it

serious, nor was it really a discovery. And it wasn't completely mine,

either."

"Surely you're joking, doctor. The Pilman Radiant is a concept known to

every schoolchild."

"That doesn't surprise me. According to some sources, the Pilman

Radiant was discovered by a schoolboy. Unfortunately, I don't re member his

name. Look it up in Stetson's History of the Visitation --it's described in

full detail there. His version is that the radiant was discovered by a

schoolboy, that a college student published the coordinates, but that for

some unknown reason it was named after me."

"Yes, many amazing things can happen with a discovery. Would you mind

explaining it to our listeners, Dr. Pilman?"

"The Pilman Radiant is simplicity itself. Imagine that you spin a huge

globe and you start firing bullets into it. The bullet holes would lie on

the surface in a smooth curve. The whole point of what you call my first

serious discovery lies in the simple fact that all six Visitation Zones are

situated on the surface of our planet as though someone had taken six shots

at Earth from a pistol located somewhere along the Earth-Deneb line. Deneb

is the alpha star in Cygnus. The Point in the heavens from which, so to

speak, the shots came is the Pilman Radiant."

"Thank you, doctor. My fellow Harmonites! Finally we have heard a clear

explanation of the Pilman Radiant! By the way, the day before yesterday was

the thirtieth anniversary of the Visitation. Dr Pilman, would you care to

say a few words to Your fellow townsmen on the subject?"

"What in particular interests you? Remember, I wasn't in Harmont at the

time."

"That makes it even more interesting to hear what you felt when your

hometown became the site of an Invasion from a supercivilization from

space."

"To tell the truth, I first thought it was a hoax. It was hard to

imagine that anything like that could possibly happen In our little Harmont.

Gobi or Newfoundland seemed more likely than Harmont."

"Nevertheless, you finally had to believe it."

"Finally--yes."

"And then?"

"It suddenly occurred to me that Harmont and the other five Visitation

Zones--sorry, my mistake, there were only four other sites known at the

time-that all of them fit on a very smooth curve. I calculated the

coordinates and sent them to Nature. "

"And you weren't at all concerned with the fate of your hometown?"

"Not really. You see, by then I had come to believe in the Visitation,

but I simply could not force myself to believe the hysterical reports about

burning neighborhoods and monsters that selectively devoured only old men

and children and about bloody battles between the invulnerable invaders and

the highly vulnerable but steadfastly courageous Royal Tank Units."

"You were right. I remember that our reporters really botched the

story. But let's return to science. The discovery of the Pilman Radiant was

the first, but probably not the last, of your contributions to our knowledge

of the Visitation!"

"The first and last."

"But surely you have been carefully following the international

research in the Visitation Zones?"

"Yes. Once in a while I read the Reports. "

"You mean the Reports of the International Institute of

Extraterrestrial Cultures?"

"Yes."

"And what, in your opinion, has been the most important discovery in

these thirty years?"

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"The fact of the Visitation itself."

"I beg your pardon?"

"The fact of the Visitation itself is the most important discovery not

only of the past thirty years but of the entire history of mankind. It's not

so important to know just who these visitors were. It's not important to

know where they came from, why they came, why they spent so little time

here, or where they disappeared to since. The important thing is that

humanity now knows for sure: we are not alone in the universe. I fear that

the Institute of Extraterrestrial Cultures will never be fortunate enough to

make a more fundamental discovery."

"This is very fascinating, Dr Pilman, but actually I was thinking more

of advances and discoveries of a technological nature. Discoveries that our

earth scientists and engineers could use. After all, many very important

scientists have proposed that the discoveries made in the Visitation Zones

are capable of changing the entire course of our history."

"Well, I don't subscribe to that point of view. And as for specific

discoveries--that's not my field."

"Yet for the past two years you've been Canadian consultant to the UN

Commission on Problems of the Visitation."

"Yes. But I have nothing to do with the study of extraterrestrial

cultures. On the commission my colleagues and I represent the inter national

scientific community when questions come up on implementing UN decisions

regarding the internationalization of the Zones. Roughly speaking, we make

sure that the extraterrestrial marvels found in the Zones come into the

hands of the International Institute."

"Is there anyone else after these treasures?"

"Yes."

"You probably mean stalkers!"

"I don't know what they are."

"That's what we in Harmont call the thieves who risk their lives in the

Zone to grab everything they can lay their hands on. It's become a whole new

profession."

"I understand. No, that's not within our competence."

"I should think not. That's police business. But I would be interested

in knowing just what does fall within your competence, Dr. Pilman."

"There is a steady leak of materials from the Visitation Zones into the

hands of irresponsible persons and organizations. We deal with the results

of these leaks."

"Could you be a little more specific, doctor?"

"Can't we talk about the arts instead? Wouldn't the listeners care to

know my opinion of the incomparable Godi Muller?"

"Of course! But I would like to Finish with science first. As a

scientist, aren't you drawn to dealing with the extraterrestrial treasures

yourself?"

"How can I put it? I suppose so."

Then, we can hope that one fine day Harmonites will see their famous

fellow citizen on the streets of his home town?"

"It's not impossible."

1. REDRICK SCHUHART, AGE 23,

BACHELOR, LABORATORY ASSISTANT AT THE HARMONT BRANCH OF THE INTERNATIONAL

INSTITUTE FOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL CULTURES

The night before, he and I were in the repository--it was already

evening, all I had to do was throw off my lab suit and I could head for the

Borscht to put a drop or two of the stiff stuff into my system. I was just

standing there, holding up the wall, my work all done and a cigarette in my

hand. I was dying for a smoke--it was two hours since I'd had one, and he

was still puttering around with his stuff. He had loaded, locked, and sealed

one safe and was loading up the other one--taking the empties from the

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transporter, examining each one from every angle (and they're heavy little

bastards, by the way, fifteen pounds each), and carefully replacing them on

the shelf.

He had been struggling with those empties forever, and the way I see

it, without any benefit to humanity or himself. In his shoes, I would have

said screw it long ago and gone to work on something else for the same

money. Of course, on the other hand, if you think about it, an empty really

is something mysterious and maybe even incomprehensible. I've handled quite

a few of them, but I'm still surprised every time I see one. They're just

two copper disks the size of a saucer, -about a quarter inch thick, with a

space of a foot and a half between

There's nothing else. I mean absolutely nothing, just empty space. You

can stick your hand in them, or even your head, if you're so knocked out by

the whole thing-just emptiness and more emptiness, thin air. And for all

that, of course, there is some force between them, as I understand it,

because you can't press them together, and no one's been able to pull them

apart, either.

No, friends, it's hard to describe them to someone who hasn't seen

them. They're too simple, especially when you look close and finally believe

your eyes. It's like trying to describe a glass to someone: you end up

wriggling your fingers and cursing in frustration. OK, let's say you've got

it, and those of you who haven't get hold of a copy of the institute's

Reports--every issue has an article or. the empties with photos.

Kirill had been beating his brains out over the empties for almost a

year. I'd been with him from the start, but I still wasn't quite sure what

it was he wanted to learn from them, and, to tell the truth, I wasn't trying

very hard to find out. Let him figure it out for himself first, and then

maybe I'd have a listen. For now, I understood only one thing: he had to

figure out, at any cost, what made one of those empties tick--eat through

one with acid, squash it under a press, or melt it in an oven. And then he

would understand everything and be hailed and honored, and world science

would shiver with ecstasy. For now, as I saw it, he had a long way to go. He

hadn't gotten anywhere yet, and he was worn out. He was sort of gray and

silent, and his eyes looked like a sick dog's-they even watered. If it had

been anyone else, I would have gotten him roaring drunk and taken him over

to some hard-working girl to unwind. And in the morning I'd have boozed him

up again and taken him to another broad, and in a week he would have been as

good as new--bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Only that wasn't the medicine for

Kirill. There was no point in even suggesting it--he wasn't the type.

So there we were in the repository. I was watching him and seeing what

had happened to him, how his eyes were sunken, and I felt sorrier for him

than I ever had for anyone. And that's when I decided. I didn't exactly

decide, it was like somebody opened my mouth and made me talk.

"Listen," I said. "Kirill."

And he stood there with his last empty on the scales, looking like he

was ready to climb into it.

"Listen," I said, "Kirill! What if you had a full empty, huh?"

"A full empty?" He looked puzzled.

"Yeah. Your hydromagnetic trap, whatchamacallit . . . Object 77b. It's

got some sort of blue stuff inside."

I could see that it was beginning to penetrate. He looked up at me,

squinted, and a glimmer of reason, as he loved to call it, appeared behind

the dog tears.

"Hold on," he said. "Full? Just like this, but full?"

"Yes, that's what I'm saying."

"Where?"

My Kirill was cured. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

"Let's go have a smoke."

He stuffed the empty into the safe, slammed the door, and locked it

with three and a half turns, and we went back into the lab. Ernest pays 400

in cash for an empty empty, and I could have bled him dry, the son of a

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bitch, for a full one, but believe it or not, I didn't even think about it,

because Kirill came back to life before my eyes and bounded down the steps

four at a time, not even letting me finish my smoke. In short, I told him

everything: what it was like, and where it was, and the best way to get at

it. He pulled out a map, found the garage, put his finger on it, and stared

at me. Of course, he immediately figured it out about me--what was there not

to understand?

"You dog, you," he said and smiled. "Well, let's go for it. First thing

in the morning. I'll order the passes and the boot for nine and we'll set

off at ten and hope for the best. All right?"

"All right," I said. "Who'll be the third?"

"What do we need a third for?"

"Oh no," I said. "This is no picnic with ladies. What if something

happens to you? It's in the Zone," I said. "We have to follow regulations."

He gave a short laugh and shrugged.

"As you wish. You know better."

You bet I did! Of course, he was just trying to humor me. The third

would be in the way as far as he was concerned. We would run down, just the

two of us, and everything would be hunky-dory, no one would suspect anything

about me. Except for the fact that I knew that people from the institute

didn't enter the Zone in two's. The rule is: two do the work and the third

watches, and when they ask him about it later, he tells.

"Personally, I would take Austin," Kirill said. "But you probably don't

want him. Or is it all right?"

"Nope," I said. "Anybody but Austin. You can take Austin an- other

time."

Austin isn't a bad guy, he's got the right mix of courage and

cowardice, but I feel he's doomed. You can't explain it to Kirill, but I can

see it. The man thinks he knows and understands the Zone completely. That

means he's going to kick off soon. He can go right ahead, but without me,

thanks.

"All right, then," Kirill said. "How about Tender?" Tender was his

second lab assistant. An all-right kind of guy, on the quiet side.

"He's a little old," I said. "And he has kids.

"That's all right. He's been in the Zone before."

"Fine," I said. "Let's take Tender.

He stayed to pore over the map and I made a beeline for the Borscht,

because I was starving and my throat was parched.

I got back to the lab in the morning as usual, around nine, and showed

my pass. The guard on duty was the lanky bean pole of a sergeant that I beat

the hell out of last year when he made a drunken pass at Guta.

"Fine thing," he said to me. "They're looking for you all over the

institute, Red." I interrupted him right there, polite-like.

"I'm not Red to you," I said. "Don't try that palsy-walsy stuff on me,

you Swedish dolt."

"God, Red! Everybody calls you that.

I was all wound up before going into the Zone and cold sober to boot. I

hauled him up by his shoulder belt and told him in precise detail just what

he was and what maternal line he was descended from. He spat on the floor,

returned my pass, and said without any of the niceties:

"Redrick Schuhart, your orders are to appear immediately before Chief

of Security Captain Herzog.

"That's better," I said. "That's the ticket. Keep plugging away,

sergeant, you'll make lieutenant yet.

Meanwhile I was thinking, what was this curve coming my way? What did

Captain Herzog need me for during working hours? All right, I went off to

make my appearance. His office was on the third floor, a nice office, with

bars on the windows just like a police station. Willy was sitting at his

desk, puffing on his pipe, and typing some kind of gibberish. Some little

sergeant was digging through the metal file cabinet in the corner. A new guy

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I'd never seen. We have more sergeants at the institute than at division

headquarters. They're all well-built healthy fellows. They don't have to go

into the Zone and they don't give a damn about world issues.

"Hello," I said. "You called for me?" Willy looked right through me,

moved away from the typewriter, laid a hefty file on the desk, and started

leafing through it.

"Redrick Schuhart?"

"The same, I answered, feeling a nervous laugh welling up. I couldn't

help it, it was funny.

"How long have you been with the institute?"

"Two years, starting my third."

"Family?"

"I'm alone," I said. "An orphan."

Then he turned to his little sergeant and gave him an order in a stern

tone.

"Sergeant Lummer, go to the files and bring back case number one-fifty.

The sergeant saluted and disappeared, and Willy slammed the file shut

and asked gloomily:

"Up to your old tricks again?"

"What old tricks?"

"You know what tricks. There's new material on you here."

So, I thought.

"Where from?"

He frowned and banged his pipe against the ashtray in irritation.

"That doesn't concern you," he said. "As an old friend, I'm warning

you. Knock it off, knock it off for good. If they get you a second time, you

won't get off with six months. And they'll kick you out of the institute

once and for all, understand?"

"I understand," I said. "That I can understand. I just don't under

stand what bastard could have squealed.

But he was looking through me again, puffing on his empty pipe and

flipping through the file. That meant that Sergeant Lummer had returned with

case #150.

"Thank you, Schuhart, said Capt. Willy Herzog, also known as the Hog.

"That's all I wanted cleared up. You're Free to go.

So I went to the locker room, pulled on my lab clothes and lit up. All

along I kept thinking where the rumor could have come from. It had to be all

lies if it came from within the institute, because nobody there knew

anything about me and there was no way that anyone could. If it had been a

report From the police--again, what could they know there except for my old

sins? Maybe they had gotten Buzzard? That bastard, he'd drown his own

grandmother to save his skin. But even Buzzard didn't know anything about me

now. I thought and thought and didn't come up with anything very pleasant.

So I decided the hell with it. The last time I had gone into the Zone at

night was three months ago, and I had gotten rid of most of the stuff and

had spent almost all of the money. They hadn't caught me with the goods, and

I was too slippery for them to catch me now.

But then, just as I was heading up the stairs, I suddenly saw the

light, and saw it so well that I had to go back to the locker room, sit

down, and have another cigarette. It meant that I couldn't go into the Zone

today. Nor tomorrow, nor the day after. It meant that those toads had their

eye on me again, that they hadn't forgotten me, or if they had forgotten,

then somebody had reminded them. And now it no longer mattered who had done

the reminding. No stalker, unless he was completely off his rocker, would go

near the Zone even at gunpoint, not if he knew that he was being watched. I

should have been burrowing into the deepest, darkest corner at that very

moment. Zone? What Zone? I hadn't been in any Zone, even with a pass, for

months! What are you harassing an honest lab worker for?

I thought the whole thing through and even felt a sense of relief that

I wouldn't be going into the Zone that day. But what would be the nicest way

of informing Kirill of the fact?

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I told him straight out.

"I'm not going into the Zone. What instructions do you have?"

At first, of course, he just stared at me bug-eyed. Then he seemed to

understand. He led me by the elbow into his little office, sat me down at

his desk, and sat on the windowsill facing me. We lit up. Silence. Then he

asked me, careful-like:

"Has something happened, Red?"

What could I tell him?

"No," I said. "Nothing happened. Yesterday I blew twenty bills at

poker--that Noonan is a great player, the louse."

"Wait a minute," he said. "Have you changed your mind?"

I made a choking noise from the tension.

"I can't," I said to him through clenched teeth. "I can't, do you

understand? Herzog just had me up in his office."

He went limp. He got that pathetic look again and his eyes looked like

they were a sick poodle's again. He shuddered, lit a new cigarette with the

butt of the old one, and spoke softly.

"You can trust me, Red. I didn't breathe a word to anyone."

"Skip it," I said. "Nobody's talking about you."

"I haven't even told Tender yet. I made out a pass in his name, but I

haven't even asked him if he'll go."

I said nothing and went on smoking. It was funny and sad. The man

didn't understand a thing.

"What did Herzog say to you?"

"Nothing in particular," I said. "Someone squealed on me, that's all."

He looked at me kind of strange, hopped off the sill, and started

walking up and down. He ran around his office and I sat blowing smoke rings

in silence. I was sorry for him, of course, and I felt bad that things

hadn't worked out better. Some cure I came up with for his melancholy. And

whose fault was it? My own. I tempted a baby with a cookie, but the cookie

was in a hiding place, and the hiding place was guarded by mean men. . . .

Then he stopped pacing, came up close to me, and looking off to the side

somewhere, asked awkwardly:

"Listen, Red, how much would a full empty cost?"

At first I didn't understand him. I thought at first that he was hoping

to buy one somewhere. Where would you buy one? Maybe it was the only one in

the world and besides he couldn't possibly have enough dough for that. Where

would he get the money from? He was a foreign scientist, and a Russian one

at that. And then the thought struck me. So the bastard thinks that I'm

doing it for the greenbacks? You so and so, I thought to myself, what do you

take me for? I opened my mouth to tell him off. And I shut up. Because,

actually, what else could he take me for? A stalker is a stalker. The more

green stuff the better. He trades his life for greenbacks. And so it looked

to him that yesterday I had cast my line and today I was reeling him in,

trying to raise my price.

The thought made me tongue-tied. And he kept staring at me intently,

without blinking. And in his eyes I saw not contempt but a kind of

understanding, I guess. Then I calmly explained it to him.

"No one with a pass has ever gone to the garage before. They haven't

laid the tracks to it yet. You know that. So here we come back from the Zone

and your Tender brags to everybody how we headed straight for the garage,

picked up what we needed, and came right back. Like we just went down to the

warehouse or something. And it will be perfectly clear to everyone," I said,

"that we knew ahead of time what we wanted there. And that means that

someone set us on to it. And which of us three that could have been--well,

there's no point in spelling it out for you. Do you understand what's in

store for me here?"

I finished my little speech. We sat staring into each other's eyes,

saying nothing. Suddenly he clapped his hands, rubbed his palms together,

and announced in a hearty tone:

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"Well, if you can't, you can't. I understand you, Red, and I can't pass

judgment. I'll go alone. Maybe it'll go fine. It won't be the first time."

He spread out the map on the windowsill, leaned on his hands, and bent

over it. All his heartiness seemed to evaporate before my eyes. I could hear

him muttering.

"Forty yards, maybe forty-one, another three in the garage itself. No,

I won't take Tender along. What do you think, Red? Maybe I shouldn't take

Tender? He does have two kids, after all."

"They won't let you out alone," I said.

"They will," he muttered. "I know all the sergeants and all the

lieutenants. I don't like those trucks! They've been exposed to the elements

for thirty years and they're just like new. There's a gasoline carrier

twenty feet away and it's completely rusted out, but they look like they've

just come off the assembly line. That's the Zone for you!"

He looked up from the map and stared out the window. And I stared out

the window, too. The glass in our windows is thick and leaded. And beyond

the windows--the Zone. There it is, just reach out and you can touch it.

From the thirteenth Boor it looks like it could fit in the palm of your

hand.

When you look at it, it looks like any other piece of land. The sun

shines on it like on any other part of the earth. And it's as though nothing

had particularly changed in it. Like everything was the way it was thirty

years ago. My father, rest his soul, could look at it and not notice

anything out of place at all. Except maybe he'd ask why the plant's

smokestack was still. Was there a strike or something? yellow ore piled up

in cone-shaped mounds, blast furnaces gleaming in the sun, rails, rails, and

more rails, a locomotive with flatcars on the rails. In other words, an

industry town. Only there were no people. Neither living nor dead. You could

see the garage, too: a long gray intestine, its doors wide open. The trucks

were parked on the paved lot next to it. He was right about the trucks--his

brains were functioning God forbid you should stick your head between two

trucks. You have to sidle around them. There's a crack in the asphalt, if it

hasn't been overgrown with bramble yet. Forty yards. Where was he counting

from? Oh, probably from the last pylon. He's right, it wouldn't be further

than that from there. Those egghead scientists were making progress. They've

got the road hung all the way to the dump, and cleverly hung at that!

There's that ditch where Slimy ended up, just two yards from their road.

Knuckles had told Slimy: stay as far away from the ditches as you can, jerk,

or there won't be anything to bury. When I looked down into the water, there

was nothing. This is the way it is with the Zone: if you come back with

swag--it's a miracle; if you come back alive--it's a success; if the patrol

bullets miss you--it's a stroke of luck. And as for anything else --that's

fate.

I looked at Kirill and saw that he was secretly watching me. And the

look on his face made me change my mind. The hell with them all, I thought.

After all, what can those toads do to me? He really didn't have to say

anything, but he did.

"Laboratory Assistant Schuhart," he says. "Official-and I stress

official--sources have led me to believe that an inspection of the garage

could be of great scientific value. I am suggesting that we inspect the

garage. I guarantee a bonus." And he beamed like the June sun.

"What official sources?" I asked, and smiled like a fool myself.

"They are confidential. But I can tell you." He frowned. "Let's say, I

found out from Dr. Douglas."

"Oh," I said. "From Dr. Douglas. What Dr. Douglas?"

"Sam Douglas," he said dryly. "He died last year."

My skin crawled. You so-and-so fool. Who talks about such things before

setting out? You can beat these eggheads over the head with a two-by-four

and they still don't catch on. I stabbed the ashtray with my cigarette butt.

"All right. Where's your Tender? How long do we have to wait for him?"

In other words, we didn't touch on the subject again. Kirill phoned PPS

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and ordered a flying boot. I looked over his map to see what was on it. It

wasn't bad. It was a photographic process--aerial and highly enlarged. You

could even see the ridges on the cover that was lying by the gates to the

garage. If stalkers could get their hands on a map like that ... but it

wouldn't be of great use at night when the stars look down on your ass and

it's so dark you can't even see your own hands.

Tender made his entrance. He was red and out of breath. His daughter

was sick and he had gone for the doctor. Apologized for being late. Well, we

gave him his little present: we're off into the Zone. He even stopped

puffing and wheezing at first, he was so scared. "What do you mean the

Zone?" he asked. "And why me?" However, talk of a double bonus and the fact

that Red Schuhart was going too got him breathing again.

So we went down to the "boudoir" and Kirill went for the passes. We

showed them to another sergeant, who handed us special outfits. Now they are

handy things. Just dye them any other color than their original red, and any

stalker would gladly pay 500 for one without blinking an eye. I swore a long

time ago that one of these days I would figure out a way to swipe one. At

first glance it didn't seem like anything special, just an outfit like a

diving suit with a bubble-top helmet with a visor. Not really like a

diver's--more like a jet pilot's or an astronaut's. It was light,

comfortable, without binding any where, and you didn't sweat in it. In a

little suit like that you could go through fire, and gas couldn't penetrate

it. They say even a bullet can't get through. Of course, fire and mustard

gases and bullets are all earthly human things. Nothing like that exists in

the Zone and there is no need to fear things like that in the Zone. And

anyway, to tell the truth, people drop like flies in the special suits too.

It's another matter that maybe many many more would die without the suits.

The suits are too percent protection against the burning fluff, for example,

and against the spitting devil's cabbage.... All right.

We pulled on the special suits. I poured the nuts and bolts from the

bag into my hip pocket, and we trekked across the institute yard to the Zone

entrance. That's the routine they have here, so that everyone will see the

heroes of science laying down their lives on the altar of humanity,

knowledge, and the holy ghost. Amen. And sure enough--all the way up to the

fifteenth floor sympathetic faces watched us off. All we lacked were waving

hankies and an orchestra.

"Hup two," I said to Tender. "Suck in your gut, you flabby platoon! A

grateful mankind will never forget you!"

He looked at me and I saw that he was in no shape for joking around And

he was right, this was no time for jokes. But when you're going out into the

Zone you can either cry or joke--and I never cried, even as a child. I

looked at Kirill. He was holding up under the strain, but was moving his

lips, like he was praying.

"Praying?" I asked. "Pray on, pray. The further into the Zone the

nearer to Heaven."

"What?"

"Pray!" I shouted. "Stalkers go to the head of the line into Heaven."

He broke out in a smile and patted me on the back, as if to say don't

be afraid, nothing will happen as long as you're with me, and if it does,

well, we only die once. He sure is a funny guy, honest to God.

We turned in our passes to the last sergeant, only this time, for a

change of pace, it was a lieutenant. I know him, his father sells grave

borders in Rexopolis. The flying boot was waiting for us, brought by the

fellows from PPS and left at the passageway. Everyone else was waiting, too.

The emergency first-aid team, and firemen, and our valiant guards, our

fearless rescuers--a bunch of overfed bums with a helicopter. I wish I had

never set eyes on them!

We got up into the boot, and Kirill took the controls and said:

"OK, Red, lead on."

Coolly, I lowered the zipper on my chest, pulled out a flask, took a

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