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                              The Feeling

                             By ROGER DEE

                        Illustrated by GAUGHAN

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                      Galaxy Magazine April 1961.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]




                   If this story holds true in real
                   practice, it may reveal something
                   about us that we've never known.


"We're just starting on the first one--Walraven, ship's communications
man," Costain said, low-voiced. "Captain Maxon and Vaughn have called
in. There's been no word from Ragan."

Coordinator Erwin took his seat beside the psychologist, his bearing
as militarily authoritative in spite of civilian clothing as the room's
air was medical.

"Maybe Ragan won't turn up," Erwin said. "Maybe we've still got a man
out there to bring the ship back."

Costain made a quieting gesture, his eyes on the three-man psych
team grouped about Walraven's wheeled reclining chair. "They've given
Walraven a light somnolent. Not enough to put him out, just enough to
make him relive the flight in detail. Accurately."

The lead psych man killed the room's lighting to a glow. "Lieutenant
Walraven, the ship is ready. You are at your post, with Captain Maxon
and Lieutenants Vaughn and Ragan. The first Mars flight is about to
blast off. How do you feel?"

Walraven lay utterly relaxed, his face dreaming. His voice had the
waning sound of a tape running down for lack of power.

"Jumpy," he said. "But not really afraid. We're too well conditioned
for that, I guess. This is a big thing, an important thing. Exciting."

       *       *       *       *       *

It had been exciting at first. The long preparation over, training and
study and news interviews and final parties all dreamlike and part of
the past. Outside now, invisible but hearteningly present beyond the
ship's impermeable hull, the essential and privileged people waiting to
see them off. The ship's power plant was humming gently like a giant,
patient cat.

Captain Maxon passed out muscle-relaxant capsules. The total boneless
relaxation that was their defense against acceleration came quickly.

The ship was two hours out, beyond lunar orbit and still accelerating,
when, trained for months against the moment, set each about his task.
Readings occupied Maxon and Vaughn and Ragan while Walraven checked his
communications and telemetering gear.

It was not until the transmitter slot had licked up its first coded
tape--no plain text here, security before even safety--and reported all
well, the predicted borne out, that they became aware of the Feeling.

The four of them sat in their unsqueaking gimbaled seats and looked
at each other, sharing the Feeling and knowing that they shared it,
but not why. Vaughn, who was given to poetry and some degree of
soul-searching, made the first open recognition.

"There's something wrong," he said.

The others agreed and, agreeing, could add nothing of explanation to
the wrongness. Time passed while they sat, seeing within themselves for
the answer--and if not for answer, at least for identification--but
nothing came and nothing changed except that with time the steady
pressure of the Feeling grew stronger.

Vaughn, again, was first to react to the pressure. "We've got to
do something." He twisted out of his seat and wavered in the small
pseudogravity of the ship's continuing acceleration. "I've never in my
life felt so desolate, so--"

He stopped. "There aren't any words," he said helplessly.

Less articulate than Vaughn and knowing it, the others did not try to
help find the words. Only Ragan, professional soldier without family or
close tie anywhere in the world, had a suggestion.

"The ship's power plant is partly psionic," Ragan said. "I don't
understand the principle, but it's been drilled into us that no
other system can give a one-directional thrust without reaction. The
psi-drive is tied into our minds in the same way it's tied into the
atomic and electronic components. It's part of us and we're part of it."

Even Maxon, crew authority on the combination drive, missed his meaning
at first.

"If our atomic shielding fails," Ragan explained, "we're irradiated.
If our psionics bank fails, we may feel anything. Maybe the trouble is
there."

Privately they disagreed, certain that nothing so disquieting as the
Feeling that weighted them down could be induced even by so cryptic a
marriage of dissimilar principles as made up the ship's power plant.
Still it was a possible avenue of relief.

"It's worth trying," Maxon said, and they checked.

And checked, and checked.

       *       *       *       *       *

"We worked for hours," Walraven said, "but nothing came of it. None
of us, even Maxon, knew enough about the psi-drive to be sure, but we
ended up certain that the trouble wasn't there. It was in us."

The drug was wearing thin, leaving him pale and shaken. His face had a
glisten of sweat under the lowered lights.

The lead psych man chose a hypodermic needle, looked to Erwin and
Costain for authority, and administered a second injection.

"You gave up searching," he said. "What then, Lieutenant?"

"We waited," Walraven said.

He relaxed, his face smoothing to impersonal detachment as his mind
slipped back to the ship and its crew. Watching, Costain felt a sudden
deep unease as if the man's mind had really winged back through time
and space and carried a part of his own with it.

"There was only one more possible check," Walraven said. "We had to
wait two days for that."

The check was Maxon's idea, simple of execution and unarguable of
result. At halfway point acceleration must cease, the ship rotate on
its gyros and deceleration set in. There would be a period of waiting
when the power plant must be shut off completely.

If the Feeling stemmed from the psi-drive, it would lift then.

It did not lift. They sat weightless and disoriented while the gyros
precessed and the ship swung end by end and the steady pressure of the
Feeling mounted up and up without relief.

"It gets worse every hour," Vaughn said raggedly.

"It's not a matter of time," Maxon said. "It's the distance. The
Feeling grows stronger as we get farther from home."

They sat for another time without talk, feeling the distance build up
behind them and sensing through the unwindowed hull of the ship what
the emptiness outside must be like. The ship was no longer an armored
projectile bearing them snugly and swiftly to a first planetfall. It
was a walnut shell without strength or direction.

In the end they talked out their problem because there was nothing else
they could do.

"We're men," Maxon said, not as if he must convince himself but as if
it were a premise that had to be made, a starting point for all logic.
"We're reasoning creatures. If the trouble lies in ourselves we can
find its source and its reason for being."

He picked Vaughn first because Vaughn had been first to sense the
wrongness and because the most sensitive link in a chain is also
predictably its weakest.

"Try," Maxon said. "I know there are no words to describe this thing,
but get as close as you can."

       *       *       *       *       *

Vaughn tried. "It isn't home-sickness. It's a different thing
altogether from nostalgia. It's not just fear. I'm afraid--not of any
_thing_, just afraid in the way a child is afraid of falling in his
dreams, when he's really had no experience with falling because he's
never fallen more than a few inches in his life.... When I think of my
wife, it's not the same at all as if I were just in some far corner of
the Earth with only land and water between us. Even if I were marooned
on an uncharted island somewhere with no hope of seeing home again, I
wouldn't feel this way. There wouldn't be this awful _pulling_."

Ragan agreed with Vaughn that the Feeling was essentially a _pull_, but
beyond agreement could add nothing. Ragan had covered the world without
forming a tie to hold him; one place was as good as another and he
felt no loss for any particular spot on Earth.

"I only want to be back there," he said simply. "Anywhere but here."

"I was born on a farm in New England," Walraven said. "Out of the land,
like my father and his people before him. I'm part of that land, no
matter how far from it I go, because everything I am came from it. I
feel uprooted. I don't belong here."

_Uprooted_ was the key for which they had hunted.

Maxon said slowly, "There are wild animals on Earth that can't live
away from their natural homes. Insects--how does a termite feel, cut
off from its hive? Maybe that's our trouble. Something bigger than
individual men made the human race what it is. Maybe we've been a sort
of composite being all along, without knowing it, tied together by the
need of each other and not able to exist apart. Maybe no one knew it
before because no one was ever isolated in the way we are."

Walraven had more to say, almost defiant in his earnestness. "This is
going to sound wild, but I've been fighting inside myself ever since
Vaughn mentioned being pulled toward home. I have the feeling that if
I'd only let go, I'd be back where I belong." He snapped his fingers,
the sound loud in the room. "Like that."

No one laughed because each found in himself the same conviction
waiting to be recognized. Ragan said, "Walraven's right. There's no
place on Earth I care for more than another, but I feel I could be back
there in any one of them"--he snapped his fingers, as Walraven had
done--"as quickly as that."

"I know," Maxon said. "But we can't let go. We were sent out to put
this ship into orbit around Mars. We've got to take her there."

       *       *       *       *       *

Walraven said, "It wasn't easy. The Feeling got worse as we went out
and out. Knowing what it was helped a little, but not enough. We held
onto each other, the four of us, to keep the group together. We _knew_
what would happen if we let go."

The head psych man looked to Costain and put his needle away when
Costain shook his head.

"The ship," Coordinator Erwin said sharply. "Walraven, you did put her
into orbit?"

"Yes," Walraven said. "We put her into orbit and turned on the
telemetering equipment--they'll be picking up her signals by now--and
then we turned our backs on each other and we let go. There wasn't any
feeling of motion or speed, but I felt a fresh breeze on my face and
when I opened my eyes I was standing beside a familiar stone fence on
a hill above the house where I was born. You haven't told me, but the
others came back, too, didn't they?"

"All but Ragan," Erwin said. His tone made Costain think wryly, _Even
the military can snatch at straws_. "Maxon and Vaughn called in. But we
haven't heard from Ragan."

"He wasn't left behind," Walraven said with certainty. "Ragan has no
family, but he has a home. We're standing on it."

An orderly came in with an envelope for Costain, who opened it and
handed the paper to Erwin. To Walraven, Costain said, "It's a cablegram
from North Ireland. Ragan is back."

Erwin was still gripping the paper in his hand when he walked with
Costain out of the hospital into the bright airiness of a spring day.
He glared at the warm, blue sky.

"We'll find a way," Erwin said. "We've proved that we can put men on
Mars. With the right conditioning, we can keep them there."

"You're a dedicated and resolute man, Coordinator," Costain said. "Do
you really suppose that any amount of conditioning could fit you to do
what those boys failed at?"

The long moment of considering that passed before Erwin answered left a
fine sheen of sweat on his face.

"No," Erwin said.