Tales of Pirx the Pilot by Stanislaw Lem Read Free Book Online Page A

him? He knew perfectly well there was no door behind him. But even if he’d wanted to, he couldn’t have turned around because of the straps. A streak of light fell across the screens, wiping out the stars still visible on them, and the next thing he heard was the CO’s soft and subdued voice:
    “Cadet Pirx.”
    He made an attempt to get up, was restrained by the straps, and fell back against the seat, convinced that he was hallucinating. Out of nowhere, the CO suddenly appeared in the passage separating the glass shell from the rest of the cabin. He stood before him in his gray uniform, fixed him with his gentle gray eyes', and smiled. Pirx was altogether confused.
    The moment the glass bubble went up, Pirx automatically started undoing his straps, then rose to his feet. The video screens in back of the CO went blank.
    “A good performance, Pirx,” said the CO. “Quite good.”
    Pirx was still dumbfounded. Then, as he was standing at attention in front of the CO, he did something that was strictly against the rules: he turned his head around, twisting it as far as his partially inflated neck collar would let him.
    To his amazement, the entire access tunnel had been dismantled, hatchway and all, making it look as if the rocket ship had split in half. In the evening light he made out the catwalk, where a group of people was now standing—the cable railings, the ceiling girders… Pirx stared at the CO with a gaping mouth.
    “Come along, son,” said the CO, who reached out and shook Pirx’s hand firmly. “On behalf of Flight Command, I commend you—and … offer you my personal apology. Yes, it’s … only right. Now, come along. You can clean up at my place.”
    He started for the exit, with Pirx trailing in his footsteps, still a little stiff and wobbly on his feet. It was chilly outside, a breeze was blowing through the sliding panel in the ceiling. Both ships were parked in the exact same place as before. Attached to the nose of each were several long and thick cables, droopingly suspended in space. They had not been there before.
    His instructor, who was among those waiting on the catwalk, made a remark, which Pirx had trouble hearing through his helmet.
    “What?” he instinctively blurted out.
    “The air! Let the air out of your suit!”
    “Oh, the air…”
    He pressed the valve, and the air made a hissing sound as it was released. From where he stood on the catwalk, he could make out the two men in white smocks waiting behind the railing. His rocket ship looked as if it had a fractured beak. At first he felt only a strange apathy, which turned to amazement, then disillusionment, and finally anger—pure and unmitigated anger.
    They were opening the hatch of the other ship. The CO was standing on the catwalk, listening to something the men in white smocks were telling him.
    A faint banging noise could be heard coming from inside.
    Then, from out of the cabin staggered a writhing hulk of a man in a brown uniform, his helmetless head bobbing around like a blurry blotch, his face contorted in a mute shriek…
    Pirx’s knees buckled.
    It was … Boerst.
    He had crashed into the Moon.

THE
CONDITIONED
REFLEX
    It happened in his fourth year, shortly before the summer break. Pirx, fresh out of basic training, had passed his qualifying tests on the mock-ups, logged two unsimulated flights, and soloed once to the Moon. By now he fancied himself something of a rocket jockey, a space ace, whose real home was among the planets and who had only one set of clothes—his g-suit, much the worse for wear, of course—the first to sound the time-honored meteorite alert and with a brilliantly executed maneuver save his ship, himself, and his less keen-eyed buddies from certain disaster. That was how he liked to think of himself, anyway; and it always pained him, while shaving, to observe how unscathed his manifold experiences had left him: not a single telltale nick! Not even the nastiest of these experiences—the time