Attitude-Hal Clement

Clifford D. Simak (0:26)

PART I.

Dr. Little woke up abruptly with a distinct sensation of having just stepped over a precipice. His eyes flew open and were greeted by the sight of a copper-colored metal ceiling a few feet above. It took him several seconds to realize that it was keeping its distance, that he was not falling either toward or away from it. When he did, a grimace of disgust flickered across his face. He had lived and slept through enough days and nights in interstellar space to be accustomed to weightlessness. He had no business waking up like a cadet on his first flight, grasping for the nearest support. He had no business waking up at all in these surroundings. He shook his head. His mind seemed to be working on slow time, and his pulse, as he suddenly realized, as the pounding in his temples forced itself on his awareness, must be well over a hundred. This was not his room. The metal of the walls was different, the light was different, an orange glow streaming from slender tubes running along the junction of wall and ceiling. He turned his head to take in the rest of the place, and an agonizing barrage of pins and needles shot the length of his body. An attempt to move his arms and legs met with the same result, but he managed to bend his neck enough to discover that he was enveloped to the shoulders in a sack-like affair bearing all the ear marks of a regulation sleeping-bag. The number stenciled on the canvas was not his own, however.

In a few minutes he found himself able to turn his head freely and proceeded to take advantage of the fact by examining his surroundings. He found himself in a small chamber walled completely with the coppery alloy. It was six-sided, like the cells in a beehive. The only opening was a circular hatchway in what little considered the ceiling, though in a second-order flight it might as well have been a floor or wall. There was no furniture of any description. The walls were smooth, lacking even the rings normally present to accommodate the anchoring straps of a sleeping-bag. There was a light shining through the grill which covered the hatchway, but from where he was little could make out no details through the bars.

He began to wriggle his toes and fingers, ignoring as best he could the resulting sensations, and in a few minutes he found himself able to move with little effort.

He lay still a few minutes longer, and then unsnapped the top fasteners of the bag. The grill interested him, and he was becoming more and more puzzled as to his whereabouts. He had no recollection of any unusual events. He had been checking over the medical stores, he was sure, but he couldn't recall retiring to his room afterward. What had put him to sleep, and where had he awakened?

He grasped the top of the bag and peeled it off, being careful to keep hold of it. He started to roll it up and paused in astonishment. A cloud of dust, fine as smoke, was oozing from the fibres of the cloth with each motion, and hanging about the bag like an atmosphere. He sniffed at it cautiously and started coughing. The stuff was dry and tickled his throat unpleasantly. There could be only one explanation. The bag had been drifting in open space for a length of time sufficient to evaporate every trace of moisture from its fibres. He unrolled it again and looked at the stenciled number. GOA. III. NA12– 422 The first three groups confirmed his original belief that the bag had belonged to the gomesium. The last was a personal number indicating the identity of the former owner, but little could not remember whose number it was. The fact that it had been exposed to the void was not reassuring. Dismissing that phase of the problem for the moment, the doctor rolled the bag into a tight bundle. He was drifting weightless midway between ceiling and floor, almost in the centre of the room. The hatchway was in one of the six corners of the ceiling. Little hurled the bundle in the opposite direction. It struck the far corner and rebounded without much energy. Air-friction brought it to a halt a few feet from the wall. The doctor drifted more slowly in the direction of the grating. His throw had been accurate enough to send him within reach of it. He caught hold of one of the bars and drew himself as close as possible.

Any lingering doubt that might have remained in his still befuddled brain as to whether or not he were still on board the Gomezia was driven away as he caught his first glimpse through the grill. It opened, or would have opened had it been unlocked, on to a corridor which extended in two directions as far as the doctor's limited view could reach. The hallway was about thirty feet square, but there its orthodox characteristics terminated.