Harry Harrison - One Step From Earth

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A HUMAN LOVE MACHINEwho becomes the Madonna of Outer Space...

A PLAGUE THAT ENGULFS A GALAXY...

A NIGHTMARE BATTLE AMONG THE STARS...

THE MATTER TRANSPORTERcapable of carrying man and his artifacts from one end of the universe

to the other in a fraction of a second.

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ONE STEP FROM EARTH

'Do not leave,' the man called out in intergalact.

He had a breath mask clipped over his nose and he held a second one out to Jagen, who quickly slipped

it on. The warmed, richer air stayed his flight, as did the presence of the man who bad obviously been

expecting him. He saw not that he was on the bridge of a derelict spacer of ancient vintage. The controls

had been torn out and the screens were blank. Moisture was condensing on the metal walls and forming

pools upon the floor. The man saw his curious gaze.

'This ship is in orbit. It has been for centuries. An atmosphere and gravity plant were placed aboard

while this transmatter is operating. When we leave an atomic explosion will destroy everything. If you are

tracked this far the trail will end here.'

Also in Arrow by Harry Harrison

In Our Hands, The Stars

Harry Harrison

ONE STEP FROM EARTH

ARROW BOOKS

ARROW BOOKS LTD

3 Fitzroy Square,LondonWI

An imprint of the Hutchinson Publishing Group

London Melbourne Sydney Auckland Wellington Johannesburg Cape Town and agencies throughout

the world

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First published in theUnited Kingdom by

Faber & Faber Ltd 1972

Arrow edition 1975

This book is published at a net price and supplied subject to the Publishers Association Standard

Condition of Sale registered under the Restrictive Trade Practices Act 1956

Made and printed inGreat Britain

by The Anchor Press Ltd

Tiptree, Essex

ISBN 0 09 910460 1

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION —The Matter Transmitter

One Step From Earth

Pressure

No War, or Battle's Sound

Wife to the Lord

Waiting Place

The Life Preservers

From Fanaticism, or for Reward

Heavy Duty

A Tale of the Ending

INTRODUCTION —The Matter Transmitter

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THE HISTORY OF TRANSPORTATION is the history of mankind. This may sound like too broad a

statement, but it is certainly more accurate than the accepted history as measured by wars, rulers, and

politics.

In the beginning there was walking, and mankind walked around the world. On foot, generation after

generation, homo sapiens spread out from his homeland, usually considered to be in centralAfrica , and

crossed the land bridges to the other continents. Later, after sailing craft had been perfected, isolated

places like the Pacific islands were settled — but the foot came first. Nor was it — nor is it — an inferior

form of transportation by any test. The Roman roads were used by chariots and carts, but were built

primarily to enable the foot soldiers to reach their objectives quickly and easily, sometimes at the other

end of the continent.

The parallels can be easily drawn. When only the tiny minority traveled, society was fixed at a simple

agrarian level. The life of the seventeenth-century European peasant differed very little from the life of the

eleventh-century European peasant. Stuck in the mud. Destined to be born and to live and die in the

same place.

But not the seafarers. As soon as men could build ships to sail long distances-they did. The Myceneans

visitedEngland in the fifteenth century B.C. The Vikings went toNorth America in the eleventh century. A

few hundred years later the Spanish pioneered regular routes to the Americans and the world was

changed. For the worse, as far as the Amerinds were concerned, but certainly changed. Yet once the

Europeans had covered the globe and grabbed what they could, things settled down rapidly to a

condition pretty much like that which had gone before. Ships were improved, but they were essentially

more of the same thing, and the world still dozed at home with little thought of the future. The industrial

revolution was struggling to get started inEngland but was not making much progress. What is the use of

having machines to make more products if the products just pile up in an empty lot next to the factory?

They have to be moved away, and fast. Canals helped a bit and a lot were dug, but this was just a variant

form of water transport and in essence added more ports to the world trade routes. People still walked

or rode horseback or had the horses pull slow carts just as they had for a good number of centuries.

What was needed was a radical change.

The railroads. In a few years everything was different. Raw materials streamed into the factories and

manufactured materials spread out all over the world. Life would never be the same again. Everything

changed. Apparently for the worse, if the slum-living factory workers were any judges. They must have

felt like the Amerinds who saw the white-winged ships sail into the bay. And just about the time the

world was beginning to settle down to the new way of life brought about by the railroads the automobile

was invented.

Not only the buggywhip manufacturers went to the wall when the first cars chugged and backfired down

the dirt roads. Entire cities were to be made unlivable within fifty years. Warm and happy Los Angles

was turned into a poison-gas-filled, deteriorating community completely surrounded by concrete

freeways and hurtling machines. Things were really moving faster by this time, and even while the cars

were pushing out the trains and taking over the world, the airplanes were catching up and passing them

by.New York City is now closer toLondon by plane than the rest ofNew YorkState is by car or train,

closer than the state capital,Albany , is by ship, closer than its city limits are by foot.

That is where we stand now. Every facet of every part of our lives changed by the continuing

transportation revolution of the past century. But what lies ahead? Rockets for one thing, and improved

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means of space travel that might be a little more practical and not quite as expensive. A good bit of

modern science fiction has been involved with an investigation into the effects of space travel; nor is this

well of speculation exhausted yet. Strange devices have been used to postulate space exploration across

the light-year gaps between suns — space warps, subspace drives, and such — and distant, yet

unknown worlds have become story material. Is this all?

Of course not. Time travel is really a form of transportation, and has its own literature. And then there is

the matter transmitter.

This is a good solid theme that has not really received too much attention. And what attention it has

received has been, for the most part, only about how you build the thing and make it work and what

happens when it breaks down. Sort of like early science fiction where the story ended when the rocket

took off. Basically, matter transmitters deal with solid objects in much the same way television deals with

light waves. An image is received by a TV camera where it is broken down into a signal which is then

transmitted to a receiver that converts the signal back into a visible image. MT — derived from matter

transmitter in the same way TV comes from television — has usually been visualized as a breaking up of

the original substance by scanning the molecules and atoms one at a time, then blasting out this scanning

signal to be rebuilt at the receiving end. Sometimes the signal is stored rather than being broadcast which

leads to much fun and games when the same person is rebuilt over and over again from his recordings.

Most MT stories have been of this fun-and-games variety, all involved with building the machine and

seeing what it does to the first victims who are fed therein. All of which can be very interesting, but is by

no means a complete picture of the possibilities of MT. Let us think ahead a bit. If we can imagine an

operating MT we can certainly consider the possibility of the widespread use of MTs. If the machine

works it can be made to work cheaper and better and soon we might be using MTs the same way we

use telephones now. Possible? Of course.

But what is the effect on man and his institutions when this happens?

That is the basic question. From it come the secondary questions. Every facet of life poses a new

problem: food and clothes, marriage and business, work and war. Certainly war; the military latches onto

every invention no matter how innocuous and uses it to keep the war machines clanking. Positively

medicine; look how ships have spread disease and how airplanes could do it even better — then

consider the MT plague carriers. Language, social customs, everything will be affected by this new form

of transportation.

In these stories I have attempted to speculate about the answers to some of these questions. I have

started at the beginning, when MT is first used, and have gone on to the end, as I think all good stories

should. I do not pretend that any of the things I predict will happen, though they certainly might if we ever

have operating MT. This is one of the possible histories of the future that could come about under certain

circumstances.

But that is one of the pleasures of science fiction. It gives people a chance to fly in rocket ships before

they are invented, use strange devices still undiscovered, meet fascinating people yet unborn.

A matter transmitter is very easy to use. Just dial your number, there, as simple as a telephone, and wait

until the ready light comes on. Then step forward, you won't feel a thing, just walk through the MT screen

as though it were a door....

HARRY HARRISON

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[ -: CONTENTS :-]

One Step From Earth

THIS LANDSCAPE WAS DEAD. It had never lived. It had been born dead when the planets first

formed, a planetary stillbirth of boulders, coarse sand, jagged rock. The air was thin and so cold that it

was closer to the vacuum of space than to any habitable atmosphere. Though it was nearlynoon and the

pallid, tiny disc of the sun was high overhead, the sky was dark, the wan light shining on the uneven plain

that was unmarked by any footprint. Silent, lonely, empty.

Only the shadows moved. The sun paced its way slowly across the horizon until it set. Night came and

with it an ever greater cold. Silently the dark hours passed, the stars arched by overhead, until on the

opposite horizon the sun appeared once again.

Then something changed. High above there was a tiny flicker of movement as the sun glanced from some

shining surface, a motion where none had existed ever before. It grew to a spot of light that blossomed

suddenly into a long tongue of flame. The flame continued, even brighter as it came close to the surface,

dropped, hovering. Dust billowed out and the rocks melted and then the flame was gone.

The squat cylinder dropped the last few feet and landed on wide-stretched legs. Shock absorbers took

up the impact, giving way, then slowly leveling out the body of the device. It bobbed slightly for a few

seconds and was still.

Minutes passed and nothing more happened. The dust had long settled and the molten slag hardened

and cracked in the cold.

With sudden, sharp explosions the side of the cylinder blew away and landed on the ground some yards

distant. The capsule bobbed slightly in reaction to this but quickly came to rest. In the area uncovered by

the discarded plate were a number of small devices, all ringed about a gray plate, some two feet in

diameter, that resembled an obscured porthole.

Nothing else happened for quite a while, as though some hidden internal device were marking time. It

reached a decision because, with a distant humming, an antenna began to emerge from its opening. At

first it projected straight out from the side of the capsule, until a curved section emerged, then it began to

slowly rise until it towered into the air. Even as it was erecting itself a compact television camera moved

jerkily into view on the end of a jointed arm. It hesitantly changed directions until it was above the circular

plate and angled down toward it and the patch of ground below. Apparently satisfied it locked into this

position.

With a loudping the circular plate changed color and character. It was now a deep black and it seemed

to shift without moving. A moment later a transparent plastic container appeared, coming from the

surface of the plate as though emerging from a door, dropping forward and hitting the ground, rolling

over.

The white rat inside the container was terrified at first, knocked off its feet and dropped onto its side as

the tube struck the ground. The rat rolled onto its feet and scurried about trying to get a grip with its

claws on the slippery walls, climbing up then sliding back to the bottom again. In a few moments it settled

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down, blinking its pink eyes at the gray wastes outside. There was nothing moving, nothing to see. It sat

and began to smooth its long whiskers with its paws. The cold had not yet penetrated the thick walls.

* *

The picture on the television screen was very blurred, but considering the fact that it had been broadcast

from the surface of Mars to a satellite in orbit, had then been relayed to the Lunar station and from there

sent to Earth, it wasn't really a bad picture. Through the interference and the snow the container could be

clearly seen, with the rat moving about inside of it.

"Success?" Ben Duncan asked. He was a wiry, compact man with close-cropped hair and tanned,

leathery skin. There were networks of wrinkles in the corners of his eyes as though he had squinted a lot

in very cold weather or before a glaring sun. He had done both. His complexion was in direct contrast to

that of the technicians and scientists manning the banks of instruments. Other than the few Negroes and

one Puerto Rican, all of them were the fishbelly white of city dwellers.

"It looks good so far," Dr. Thurmond said. His degree was in physics from MIT. He was quite proud of

it and insisted on its being used at all times. "Wave form fine, no attenuation, flat response, the trial

subject went through with a one point three on the co-ord which can't be bettered."

"When can we go through?"

"In about an hour, maybe a little more: If biology gives the okay. They'll want to examine this

transmission on the first subject, maybe send another one through. If everything is in the green you and

Thasler will go through at once while conditions are optimum."

"Yes, of course, shouldn't wait," Otto Thasler said. Then, "Excuse me." He hurried away. A small man

who wore thick-rimmed glasses. His hair was sandy and thin and he had a slouch from many hours over

a laboratory bench so that he looked older than he was. And he was nervous. There was a fine beading

of sweat on his face and this was the third time he had gone to the toilet in less than an hour. Dr.

Thurmond had noticed it, too.

"Otto is jumpy," he said. "But I don't think he will he any trouble."

"He'll he all right once we get there. It is the waiting that bothers people," Ben Duncan said.

"It doesn't bother you?" Dr. Thurmond was curious, but there was also a thin edge of malice to his

words.

"Of course it does. But let's say that I have been over this waiting part many times before. I've never

gone to Mars through a matter transmitter before but I have been in some strange positions."

"I'm sure you have. Professional adventurer or some such." The malice was clear now; the distrust of the

man who was used to giving orders toward the man who did not take them.

"Not quite. I'm a geologist and a petrologist. Some of the rare earths you use in this lab come from lodes

I found. They are not always in the most accessible places."

"Well that's fine." Dr. Thurmond's flat tone of voice did not reflect his words. "You have had plenty of

experience taking care of yourself so you will be able to help Otto Thasler. He's the man in charge, the

one who has to do the work, and you will assist him."

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"Of course," Ben said and turned and walked away.

They were a clannish bunch and made no secret of the fact that he was an outsider. They would never

have hired him if there had been one of their own people who could do the job. Transmatter Ltd. was

richer than many governments, stronger than some as well. But they knew the value of the right man in the

right job. A matter transmitter engineer for the trip was easy enough to find; just pick a suitable man from

the staff and ask him to volunteer. Otto, a lifetime employee, had had very little choice. But who would

take care of him? In this overpopulated world of 1993 there were few frontiers left and even fewer men

who knew their way around them. Ben had been in theHimalayas when the copter had come for him. His

prospecting expedition was canceled, pressure was put on from Transmatter, and a far better contract

offered. He had been pressured into signing on, but that did not matter. Transmatter did not realize, and

he had never told them, that he would have gone for one-tenth the preposterous salary they offered — or

even for free. These indoor types just could not realize that hewanted to make this trip.

There was a door nearby that opened onto a balcony and he went out to look over the city. He tamped

tobacco into his pipe but did not light it. There would be no smoking soon and he might as well begin to

get used to it. The air was fairly fresh at this height, but the smog and haze closed in below. Mile after

mile of buildings and streets stretched to the horizon, jammed, packed, and turbulent with people. It

could have been any city on Earth. They were all like this — or worse. He had come out throughCalcutta

and he still had nightmares about it.

"Mr. Duncan, come quickly, they are waiting for you."

The technician shifted from one foot to the other and wrung his hands worriedly, holding the door open

with his foot. Ben smiled at him, in no hurry, then handed over his pipe.

"Hold that until I get back, will you."

The dressers had almost finished with Otto by the time Ben appeared, and his own team rushed

forward. They pulled off his coverall, then dressed him from the skin out in layer after layer of protective

fabrics. Thermal underwear, a skintight silk cover over that, an electrically heated suit next, electric

socks. It was done quickly. Dr. Thurmond came in while their outer suits were being closed and looked

on approvingly.

"Leave the outer suit seals open until you get into the chamber," he said. "Let's go."

Like a mother hen with a parade of chicks, he led the way across the cluttered transmission room,

between the banks of instruments and under the high busbars. The technicians and engineers turned to

watch when they passed and there was even one cheer that was quickly stifled when Dr. Thurmond

looked coldly toward the man. Two dispatchers were waiting for them in the pressure chamber and they

closed and sealed the door behind Dr. Thurmond and the two heavily garbed men. They were beginning

to sweat. Dr. Thurmond pulled on a heavy coat as the cold air was pumped in.

"This is the final countdown," he said. "I'll repeat your instructions just one more time." Ben could have

recited them equally well but he remained silent. "We are now lowering the air temperature and pressure

until it matches the Martian atmosphere.Readings just taken there show the temperature at twenty

degrees below zero fahrenheit and holding steady. Air pressure is ten millimeters of mercury. We are

dropping to that pressure now. There is no measurable amount of oxygen in the air. Masks at all time,

that is never to be forgotten. We are breathing almost pure oxygen in this chamber, but you will put on

your masks before you leave...." He stopped and yawned and his ears popped, trying to equalize the

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pressure in his inner ear. "I will now go into the airlock."

He went and finished his lecture from there, watching them through the inset window. Ben ignored the

drone of his voice and Otto seemed too paralyzed to listen. A thermostat closed in the battery case in the

small of his back and Ben felt the heating elements grow warm inside his suit. The oxygen tank was slung

onto his back and his face mask with built-in goggles was buckled into place. He automatically bit onto

the oxygen tube and inhaled.

"Ready for the first man," Dr. Thurmond said, his voice squeaky and distant in the thin atmosphere.

For the first time Ben looked at the shining black disc of the matter transmitter set into the far wall. One

of the dressers tossed a test cube into it as Ben lay face down on the table. While they were rolling the

table forward the report came in. Everything in the green.

"Hold it," Ben said, and the table stopped. He turned to look at Otto Thasler who was sitting rigid,

facing the opposite wall. Ben could imagine the terrified expression on the hidden face. "Relax, Otto, it's a

piece of cake. I'll he waiting for you at the other end. Relax and enjoy it, man, we're making history."

There was no answer, nor had he expected one. The quicker this part was over the better. They had

been practicing the maneuver for weeks and he automatically took the position. Right arm straight

forward ahead of him, left arm tight at his side. The matter transmitter screen grew like a great dark eye

as the table rolled forward, until it was all he could see in front of him.

"Do it," he ordered, and they pushed smoothly against his feet.

Sliding. Hand wrist arm vanishing. Feeling nothing. A moment of recoil, of twisting pain, as his head went

through, then he was looking at the coarse pebbles on the ground. He pushed aside the test cube and put

his hand flat to break his fall. Then his other arm was through and his legs. Falling sideways in an easy roll

his hip struck something hard.

Ben sat up, rubbing the sore spot and looked at the plastic container that he had landed on. Inside was a

dead rat, rigid, wide-eyed, and frozen. A nice omen. He turned quickly away and went through the rest

of the drill. The microphone was hanging in the same spot as on the mockup and he switched it on.

"Ben Duncan to control. Arrived okay. No problems." He should say more than that on this historical

moment but his brain was empty of inspiration. He looked around at the low, dark hills, the crater

nearby, the tiny, bright sun. There was nothing that really could be said.

"Send Otto through. Over and out."

He stood, brushing some dust from his side, and looked at the shining plate. Minutes passed before the

loudspeaker rasped, the voice so distorted he had to strain for the meaning.

"We read you. Stand by for transmission. Thasler coming through."

Otto's hand appeared even before the voice ended. It took the radio waves nearly four minutes to reach

Mars, but the matter transmission was almost instantaneous since it went through Bhattacharya space

where time, as it is normally constituted, does not exist. Otto's arm dropped limply and Ben took him by

the shoulders, a dead weight that he eased to the ground. Rolling him over Ben saw that his eyes were

closed. But he seemed to be breathing regularly. He was probably unconscious. Transmission shock they

called it. It wasn't uncommon. He should come to in a few minutes. Ben dragged him to one side and

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went back to the radio.

"Otto is here. Out cold but he okay. Send the junk through."

Then he waited. The wind made a thin whistling noise as it blew against his mask, and he felt the cold of

it touching his cheeks. He did not mind: there was something almost reassuring that the wind could blow,

the hard ground push against his feet, that the sun still shone. For all the evidence of his senses he could

still he on Earth, perhaps on one of the high plateaus inAssam that he had so recently left. Consciously he

knew that the sunshine here was half as strong as back on Earth. But he could remember cloudy, misty

days with far less sun. Gravity? With all the equipment he was burdened with he was aware of no

difference. Rounded, red hills in the distance, thin bluish clouds drifting across the sun. A remote corner

of Earth, that's all it was. He could not grip the reality of Mars. If he had crossed space in a ship, taken

weeks or months, he would have believed it. But a few minutes before he had been standing on Earth.

He scuffed at the gravel with his boot and saw the second plastic tube that had been sent through with the

struggling rat inside.

It was cold, freezing to death. It would scratch pathetically at the containing walls, then huddle up and

shiver. And it had its mouth open, gasping. It appeared to have an even chance of running out of air or

freezing. Just a laboratory animal; thousands like it died every day in the cause of science. On Earth. But

this one was here, perhaps the only other living thing on the planet. Ben knelt and twisted the lid off the

tube.

The end was quicker than he had thought possible. The rat took one breath of the Martian air, gave a

convulsive contraction of its entire body — and died. Ben had not thought it would be like that. Of

course he had been told on Earth that the great danger of the Martian atmosphere was its complete

dryness, containing only an unmeasurable trace of water vapor. They had said that inhaling it would

scorch the mucous membranes in the nose, throat, and lungs so fiercely that it would be the same as

breathing concentrated sulphuric acid. This had seemed a little preposterous. Then. The rat's staring dark

eye filmed as it froze. Ben straightened up and pushed his face mask tighter against his face. Then went to

check Otto, still unconscious, to make sure his was correctly in place, too.

No, this was not Earth. He could believe it now.

"Attention please," the loudspeaker chattered. "Will you he able to handle equipment yourself? Is Thasler

still unconscious? Loads were estimated for two-man manipulation. Report."

Ben grabbed the microphone.

"God damn you — send that stuff through! By the time you get this message twelve minutes will have

been shot. Send it! If anything gets broken you can send replacements. We're alone here, can you

understand that, with just the oxygen we have and nothing else, stuck at the other end of a one-way door

a couple of hundred million miles from Earth. Send everything —now! Send it! "

Ben paced up and down, hammering his fist into his palm, kicking the test blocks and the rat

sarcophagus to one side. The fools! He looked at Otto who seemed to be enjoying his rest. A wonderful

beginning. He dragged the man to one side where he wouldn't get stepped on. He came back to the

screen just as the end of a canister began to emerge.

"And about time!"

Grabbing the end he ran forward until the other end appeared and clanged to the ground. OXYGEN —

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Harry Harrison - One Step From Earth

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