Fifth Planet by Sir Fred Hoyle

Author:Sir Fred Hoyle [Hoyle, Sir Fred]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B00005VWFZ
Publisher: Harper & Row
Published: 1963-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN: The Return

The ship lifted itself swiftly and smoothly out of the atmosphere of Achilles. They made ten orbits around the planet. Without telling the others, Tom Fiske and Ilyana looked for the gleaming translucent sheets, but none could be seen. Pitoyan obtained the data for the first crude setting of their orbit and Tom set the controls and opened up the motors. The ship seemed lighter and easier to handle than on the outward journey but this was probably just an illusion.

A day later they were almost a million miles out from Achilles. It was still a remarkable sight, the green areas looked just the same as they had on the way in. Two days ago Fiske had cursed the endless grass slopes, but now as he looked at them for almost the last time there was a strange tightening in his throat. He remembered what Reinbach had said about the fish off ’Frisco Bay and he had a feeling that that’s what they’d been – a lot of fish that didn’t know what was going on around them.

The cabin had been laid out for a crew of four, which meant that either they’d got to improvise or that two of them had to share the same bunk. Tom Fiske and Ilyana shared the same bunk and made no bones about doing so over the whole of the long trip back home. Pitoyan, furious at first, realized that even without a damaged arm he wouldn’t be a match for Tom. He thought about taking his revenge by refusing to calculate the orbits. That would have been fine if he’d been in another ship, but any disaster to this ship was a disaster to himself. So he calculated the orbits and with equal correctness reckoned that he would have no difficulty in finding girls back home. He had achieved something worth talking about and had every intention of taking complete advantage of it.

The sick men caused them a lot of trouble. It wasn’t just the careful nursing they needed at times, it was the way they seemed to become queer when they recovered for a while. A lunatic was the last thing you wanted to have on your hands in a space-ship. And they seemed to have two lunatics. Luckily they never seemed to be at their best at the same moment.

When the fever went out of them they behaved as if they were somehow vacant. Both of them would climb about the rocket asking questions as if they’d never seen a ship before. It was as if they were back in childhood, although when you looked them straight in the eye they didn’t look at all like kids. Their eyes looked more like deep pools, and it was a bit uncanny the way each of them seemed to know what was wrong with the other. When one of them was more or less all right and the other was in a high fever the one who was all right would sit around endlessly just looking down at the other fellow.

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