Photo courtesy of cobalt123 on Flickr.
The Face of the Deep
By Fred Saberhagen, first published in If: Worlds of Science Fiction, September, 1966.
part 4
Karlsen opened his eyes. In his belief a single human was more important to the Creator than any sun of whatever size. He made himself watch the scenery. He determined to master this almost superstitious awe.
But he had to brace himself again when he noticed for the first time how the stars were behaving. They were all blue-white needles , the wave-fronts of their light jammed together in a stampede over the cliff of gravity. And his speed was such that he saw some stars moving slightly in parallax shifts. He could have depth perception in light-years, if his mind could stretch that far.
He stepped back to his chair, sat down and fastened himself in. He wanted to dig himself a tunnel, down into the very core of a huge planet, where he could hide… but what were even the biggest planets? Poor lost specks, hardly bigger than thin bubble.
Here he faced to ordinary spaceman’s view of infinity. Here there was a terrible perspective, starting with rocks just outside the glass and drawing the mind on and out, rock by rock and line by line, step by inescapable step, on and on on —
All right. At least this was something to fight against, and fighting something was better than sitting here and rotting. To begin with, a little routine. He drank some water, which tasted very good, and made himself eat a bit of food. He was going to be around for a while yet.
Now for the little job of getting used to the scenery without going mad. He faced in the firection of his bubble’s flight.
Half a dozen meters ahead of him the first large rock, massive as the bodies of a dozen men, hung steadily in the orbit-line of force. With his mind he weighed this rock and measured it and then moved on to the next notable chunk, a pebble’s throw further. The rocks were each smaller than his bubble, and he could follow the string of them on and on, until it was swallowed in the converging patter of forfcelines that at last bent around the hypermass, defininf the full terror of distance.
His mind hanging by its fingertips swayed out along the intervals of grandeur… like a baby monkey blinking in jungle sunlight, he thought. Like an infant clumber who had been terrified by the size of trees and vines, who now saw them for the first time as a network of roats that could be mastered.
Noe he dared to let his eyes grab hard at that buzzsaw rim of the next inner circle of hiurtling rocks, to let his mind ride it out and away. Now he dared to watch the stars shifting with his movement, to see the depth perception of a plant.
In this Sunday series of posts I will be “re-publishing” pulp science fiction short stories that have long since gone out of print. When possible I will seek out author’s and estates for permission.
