Stories
by Theodore R. Cogswell
Gordon R. Dickson
• H.B. Fyfe
Raymond Z. Gallun
Bernard I. Kahn • C. M. Kornbluth
Walt
Sheldon J. A.
Winter, M.D.
Space
Service
Edited, with an Introduction and Notes, By Andre Norton
Cleveland and New
York THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY
library of
congress catalog card number: 52-13235
first printing
Acknowledgments
The
Publishers wish to acknowledge with thanks permission to use the following
stories contained in this volume:
"command" by Bernard I. Kahn. Copyright January,
1947, by Street
&
Smith Publications, Inc. in the U.S.A. and Great Britain; reprinted from
Astounding
Science-Fiction.
"star-linked" by H. B. Fyfe. Copyright February, 1952, by Street & Smith Publications,
Inc. in the U.S.A. and Great Britain; reprinted from Astounding
Science-Fiction.
"chore for a spaceman" by Walt Sheldon. Copyright 1950 by
Standard Magazines, Inc. Originally published in December, 1950, Thrilling
Wonder Stones. Reprinted by permission of the author.
"the specter general" by Theodore R. Cogswell. Copyright
June, 1952, by Street & Smith Publications, Inc. in the U.S.A. and Great
Britain; reprinted from Astounding Science-Fiction by permission of the author
and the author's agent, Scott Meredith.
"implode and peddle" by H. B. Fyfe. Copyright November, 1951, by Street & Smith Publications,
Inc. in the U.S.A. and Great Britain; reprinted from Astounding Science-Fiction
by permission of the author.
"steel brother" by Gordon R. Dickson. Copyright
February, 1952, by Street & Smith Publications, Inc. in the U.S.A. and
Great Britain; reprinted from Astounding Science-Fiction.
"for the public" by Bernard I. Kahn. Copyright
December, 1946, by Street & Smith Publications, Inc. in the U.S.A. and
Great Britain; reprinted from Astounding Science-Fiction.
"expedition polychrome" by J. A. Winter, M.D. Copyright
January, 1949, by Street & Smith Publications, Inc. in the U.S.A. and Great
Britain; reprinted from Astounding Science-Fiction.
"return of a legend" by Raymond Z. Gallun. Copyright March,
1952, by Love Romances Publishing Co., Inc; reprinted from Planet Stories.
"that share of glory" by C. M. Kornbluth. Copyright January,
1952, by Street & Smith Publications, Inc. in the U.S.A. and Great Britain;
reprinted from Astounding Science-Fiction.
hc153
the special contents of
this edition copyright 1953
by the world publishing company manufactured in the
united states of america
1 space ship commander:
Nord Coibett
COMMAND by bernard i. kahn
2
galactic communications officer:
Harry Redlcirk STAR-LINKED by h. b. fyfe
3
space ship steward:
Ben Harlow
CHORE FOR A SPACEMAN by walt sheldon
4 space marine:
Kurt Dixon
THE SPECTER GENERAL by theodore r. Cogswell
5
galactic trader:
Tom Ramsay IMPLODE AND PEDDLE by h. b. fyfe
6
solar system frontier guard: Thomas Jordan STEEL BROTHER by gordon r. dickson
7
solar system quarantine doctor:
David Munroe FOR THE PUBLIC by Bernard i. kahn
8
galactic scientific explorer: Robert Edwards EXPEDITION POLYCHROME by j. a. winter, m. d.
9
planetary pioneer:
William Terry
RETURN OF A LEGEND by Raymond z. gallun
10 galactic interpreter:
Herald Alen
THAT SHARE OF GLORY by c. m. kornbluth
Introduction
The
future history of man in space will depend in the main upon the conduct and
resourcefulness of individual men—men of diversified character and talents.
One type may bring a space freighter successfully through threatened disaster,
while another very different sort will "sweat out" a commercial deal
involving both human and non-human traders, a deal which will open a new solar
system to galactic trade and, incidentally, cement closer a stellar peace.
The law guardian stationed in the black outer
regions where the stars are cold and small will, in awful loneliness, live up
to a code imposed upon his corps by tradition. And the pioneer will go into
unknown wastelands, driven both by the ancient hunger for new land and a
gripping desire to be the first "man" to walk that way.
To
knowledge and the search for knowledge we have yet found no limit. For every
new job—or old job in a new dress—which the future will open there will rise a
man ready to assume the responsibilities it offers.
Twenty
years ago science-fiction predicted radar, atomic energy, rockets. Now it
offers the stars unlimited. Imagination may be more often right than wrong. Who
can say that in 1990
or 2250 or 4950
there will not be born a
William Terry or a Harry Redkirk or a Herald Alen?
Andre Norton
Space
Service
Space ship commander: Nord
Corbett
Command
makes difficult demands and the man who accepts
its responsibilities fastens no light weight upon his own
shoulders. Nord Corbett was
taking out his first ship—he
was sure of himself, of
his ship, and, he thought, of his crew. It was going to be just another routine
voyage. But blowups
occur and after disaster strikes the future lies in a
captain's hands.
Command
BY BERNARD I.
KAHN
Lieutenant
Nord Corbett adjusted his freshly pressed uniform jacket over his thick, broad
shoulders, checked to see if the jeweled incrusted wings were exactly
horizontal with the first row of spatial exploratory ribbons before entering
the wardroom. He well remembered, when he was a junior officer, how the sight
of a well-dressed, impeccably neat commanding officer, no matter how long they
had been spacing, maintained the enthusiasm, confidence and morale of the
officers and men.
The
wardroom looked like a trimensional pictograph advertising the dining salon of
a billionaire's yacht. Soft light from the curving overhead ricocheted from the
gleaming, satiny pandamus wood lining the bulkhead, glanced on the spotless
linen, flickered on the silverware like liquid flame. In the center of the
elliptical table was his own donation to the officers' mess: a massive stand of
carmeltia; the fabulously valuable, deathless, roselike flower from Dynia.
He enjoyed dinner with his officers. He
refused to pattern himself after other officers of his same class, who as soon
as they were given a command, no matter how small, begin to live a life of
lofty solitude. They felt such eremitic behavior would automatically
make
them revered, feared and admired. The majesty that went with command,
Lieutenant Nord Corbett well knew, came from mutual respect and not from living
in a half-world of distant glory.
He
quickly noted as he sat at the head of the table, there was still no trace of
irking boredom on the alert faces of his ten officers. He looked for evidence
of dullness every night at this time. An officer bored with the monotony of
spacing was a terrible hazard because he could easily infect others with his
own morose discontent.
The steward was at his elbow. From an
intricately carved, large silver bowl he pulled a shining metal can, nested in
ice. "A lettuce and tomato salad, sir?" Then apologetically,
"That's all we have left now."
Nord
Corbett nodded. The salad as it emerged from the can looked garden fresh, even
to tiny beads of moisture on the crisp leaves.
Nord
looked down the table at Ensign Munroe, finance and supply officer.
"Fresh canned stores are about gone now, aren't they?" He ladled
dressing on the bright green and red vegetables.
"Yes,
sir. We'll be on dry stores in about another week," Munroe answered,
"unless, of course, we pass a ship going Earthwards with fresh food."
"Then
we'll be on them for the rest of the trip," Nord announced, "we won't
pass any ships until we approximate Lanvin."
"We'll
only have to eat dry stores for about five or six more months," Ensign
Lesnau, the astrogation officer, prophesied.
Hardman,
the executive officer, chuckled. "Did you hear that, gentlemen? Please
note, Mr. Lesnau announces an ETA for Lanvin plus or minus one month. I'd
suggest, captain," he looked at Nord, "you might have Dr. Stacker
teach him astrogation."
The
laughter that circled the table at the thought of the space surgeon teaching
astrogation was as euphoric as a synthetic comedy. Even after one hundred and
two days of spacing he still couldn't believe it; the warm thought cloaked his
mind these smiling officers were on his first command—Terrestrial Spaceship
FFT-i 36. Their holds were filled with agricultural
supplies from the Colonial Office on Earth to Lanvin: Planet IV, Sun 3, Sirius System. His feeling of responsibility for the safe execution of
this task was like the joy of a father with a new son.
"Captain,"
Hardman interrupted his reverie, "you missed a good story. Just before
dinner, Munroe was telling me about the most original crime on earth."
"You mean in space," Munroe
corrected; he turned to the captain. "My brother tells the story that
when he was junior instrument officer on the Explorer II, some loose-minded spaceman held up the paymaster when they were five
light-years from the nearest planet. He knew he couldn't get off the ship with
the money. He-just thought it would be a good idea."
"Well,
it would be a good idea, if he could get by with it," Nord admitted.
"Think how much currency those big ships carry. It would make a man
fabulously rich."
"Not just big ships. Do you have any
idea how much I have in my safe for the District Base at Lanvin?" Munroe
asked.
Bickford,
the air officer, leaned forward eagerly. "How much do you carry?"
"I've got a million
stellarsl"
"A
million stellars!" Bickford's pale, blue eyes almost extruded. "Why,
that's a hundred million dollars."
Munroe
nodded. "Captain, Mr. Bickford knows elementary finance. Why can't he be
supply officer for a while and let me be air officer?"
"That's
a good idea," Lesnau thought aloud. "I'll be space surgeon, too. A
complete rotation of all officers. I've been worried about how Mr. Bickford
handles the air anyway. He's careless with our chlorophyl. You know air is
rather important to us."
"That
last is a super-nova of understatement," Dr. Stacker announced.
Bickford leaned across the table, his almost
colorless, pale-blue eyes were like tiny, venomous slits. "What do you
mean I don't handle the air properly?" His voice was a rasping growl.
"Now,
Mr. Bickford, don't get spacey," Nord Corbett cautioned softly. "You
know you were only being kidded."
"Don't
like to be kidded about my detail," he answered testily. "Go on with
the story." He jerked his thin head towards Munroe.
"That's about all there was to it. Of
course he was caught and sent to the hospital." He turned to Dr. Stacker.
"What kind of illness is that anyway?"
The
space surgeon put down his fork. "I would diagnose such a case as being a
psychopath."
"Just what is a
psychopath?" Nord asked.
"A
psychopath is a person with a mental defect which prevents him from learning by
experience. Such personalities are usually brilliant, able to learn readily,
but when it comes to living with others they are social failures. They are like
children, mere emotional infants. Their conduct is ruled solely by impulse. They
will think over an idea for a second and then act without considering the consequences
to themselves or others. The professional criminal, the pathological liar, the
billionaire's son who is repeatedly fined for dropping his yacht into a city,
the swindler, kleptomaniac, pyro-maniac and moral degenerate are all
psychopaths."
"What
causes them?" Nord inquired, "and why let them on ships anyway?"
Stacker
sighed. "I wish I could answer it all for you." He pulled a package
of cigarettes from his pocket, touched the stud on the label, pulled out a
lighted cigarette. He inhaled deeply. "The psychopath can only be
explained as a vestigial remnant of man's evolutionary development. It is
normal for an infant to live solely by impulse, but as mentality develops he
leams to make adjustments to life without the origin of too many conflicts. If,
however, we lack the ability to learn how to live with others then we will act
as a very intelligent animal would act." He flicked ashes on the tray.
"Just remember, captain, it is a mental condition which is a stage in
man's phylogenetic development."
"Well,
how can you tell a psychopath from a normal lug?" Hard-man interposed.
"That's easy," Lesnau broke in,
"we're not normal. Those on Earth are. If we were normal, do you think
we'd be out here ten light-years from home?"
"The
files in the Bureau of Spatial Medicine," the space surgeon answered
Hardman's question, "maintain accurate records of all illnesses, arrests,
domestic difficulties and any other symptom of maladjustment. All ships have
physicians aboard who are trained in psychiatry. We make every effort to keep
the Service free from the danger of the psychopath."
"Why
are they so dangerous?" Hardman asked with a laugh. "Seems to me they
are rather absurd."
"I can see the danger," Nord said
slowly. "I wonder how much of an item they are in the
cause of ships that don't return?"
"I
would say they were a tremendous factor," the medical officer answered.
"Think how easily one man could wreck this ship. If he gained access to
the tube banks, he could substitute a worn tube and throw our astrogation out
of kilter. If he got into the chlorophyl banks, he could infect them and cause
asphyxiation; if he could gain access to the bleeder valves he could release
all our air into space. If he kept one suit of armor, he would then control the
ship," he paused, looked around the table, "and be rich for
life."
Hardman
looked at the captain. "I hope you keep all the keys around your
neck." When the laughter subsided he addressed the doctor again. "Are
all men carefully checked?" He indicated Bick-ford with a nod. "I
mean men like political appointees such as Mr. Bickford."
Bickford's
pointed chin quivered angrily. "What's the matter with my mind?" he
snarled with trembling fury. "Just because I'm not a graduate of the
Spatial Academy is no reason to pick on me." He pounded the table angrily.
"My cousin who is manager of Synthetic Air got me this job. I was given a
highly specialized course in air management." His pale-blue eyes glared at
Dr. Stacker. "Just because you silly space surgeons didn't have any reason
to examine me doesn't mean my mind isn't as good as yours. You're all just
jealous because I have rich relatives. Well," he laughed hysterically,
"my mind is just as good as anyone's at this table."
The
officers sat stiffly erect in embarrassed silence as they pretended to ignore
Bickford's uncalled-for, infantile expression of anger. They waited, fumbling
with the silverware, gaze fixed on the waxen roselike flowers in the center of
the table. The wardroom was so quiet that when one of the stewards placed a
serving spoon in the dessert bowl, the click of the silver was startlingly
explosive.
"I don't think there is anything the matter with
your mind; nor does anybody else." Nord eased the gathering tension. But
he felt cold on the inside, as if Pluto's turgid bitter winds were blowing out
from his body and through his clothing. His hands and feet felt cold, even his
brain seemed frozen as he watched Bickford's thin fingers pluck for a
cigarette.
He
turned to Dr. Stacker, who was observing the air officer with clinical
detachment. "You're the ship's athletic officer, who should I put my money
on tonight?"
"I won't commit
myself."
"Gentlemen,
shall we go on the recreation deck and watch the semifinals? Cooks, stewards
and waiters are expected to beat the ship's repair force. It's going to be a
good game of laska ball."
Laska ball was an extremely fast, excellent
exercise. It was a modified form of basket ball, played on an elliptical court
in which the captains could control the location of their team's basket. It was
a well-adapted sport for the limited recreational space of small ships.
Nord
Corbett forced himself to sit through the first half of the game, but not even
the electrical speed of the game, the rocketing ball flashing through the
oscillating, flickering basket could remove his vague apprehension.
A cold cloud of worry
shadowed his mind until he fell asleep.
At 0500, an hour before his usual rising time, Latham, Officer-of-the-Watch,
called him.
"Captain, the lattice shows a small
cloud of meteoric dust approximately seventy-five thousand kilosecs in
diameter. The density is point zero zero four. I get a spectral classification
of Fe dash one-three-nine-four dash alpha nine three delta over six. It is
located seventy-two light-minutes from our course at one thirty-six degrees
above the axial plane. May I have your permission to decelerate to chart the
cloud?"
"I'll be out in a few
minutes."
He
dressed himself quickly with smooth fluid motion. He paused for a moment before
opening the panel leading from his flight quarters to the captain's gallery.
Visions of his vessel's sleek, silver sides and streamlined length washed the
background of his mind like a welcome dream. The Bureau of Ships called it a
Dispatch Freighter, but no captain commanding a mighty thousand-meter exploring
battleship would ever experience the soul-satisfying thrill his ship filled him
with. A wave of pure contentment filled him as his eyes ran over the narrow
welded seams of the ivory-dyed bulkhead. He paused there to listen to his ship:
the soft whisper of the muffled air ducts was as soothing as a muted lullaby.
The thin, tiny creak of the outer hull responding to its airless environment
was as thrilling as a triumphant, stellar symphony. A frown of perplexity
flickered between his gray eyes as he sniffed the air.
The atmosphere seemed slightly tainted. It
lacked the heady, tingling, euphoric quality the conditioners normally imparted
to the ship's atmosphere. One of the tubes working the negatron must have blown
during the night. He realized he couldn't depend on Bickford and that he would
have to be watched closely. The thought flashed through his mind of the consequences
if Bickford were to be careless. What if he got sloppy and something did go
wrong with their air? He had once seen the results of slow asphyxiation in an
attack transport. He forced the unwelcome memory from his mind.
He stepped out on the gallery.
"Good
morning," Nord said as the watch officer snapped to attention.
Three
meters below him the helmsmen were bent over the green-lighted circular
telegator screen. The tiny red and amber lights over the instrument banks
imparted a soft, restful gloom to the darkened bridge.
He
walked the length of his gallery. On the right brushing his sleeve were the
telepanels: the spy plates hated alike by officers and crew. The plates which
brought him visual contact with all compartments of the ship and which he
never used except in drills. On his left at waist-high level were the master's
meters, duplicates of the instrument banks on the bridge deck below.
'Midship,
in front of his own telegator screen, he paused, adjusted the magnification of
the tiny green light indicating their course and which speared the exact center
of the screen. He measured the circumference of the dot with a micrometer of
sodium light, ran off the difference in the calibrator.
"Latham," he leaned over the rail.
Latham stepped forward of the steering gang,
looked up. "Yes, captain."
"Three-millionths of a millimeter in ten
million miles is not very much angulation, but in fourteen light-years it
amounts to several hundred miles of unnecessary travel. You are off your
course," he made it sound like a joke between old friends, "three
point two angstrom units."
He stepped over to the lattice, checked the
dimensions of the nebulous cloud on the screen. A quick glance at the map above
his head showed the cloud had never been charted. Under high magnification he
could see the lazy whirling of its vortex. He set drift spots on the larger
lumps in the periphery, ran up the time scale to see how near it lay on their
course.
"Divert twenty-three
angstroms on an axial plane—"
"But
don't you want to decelerate and study the cloud for the astrographic
office?" Latham asked in bewildered surprise.
Nord
smiled indulgently. "It would take us a full month to decelerate, jockey
back. Then we'd have to start accelerating again and it would take almost three
months to come back to terminal velocity. The time loss would be almost four
months. Just chart the cloud and let the office worry about the details."
He
looked at the air instruments. He studied them so long he was aware he was being
watched by the men below. He straightened, checked all the instruments before
he leaned over the rail to clasp his hands in what appeared to be benign
unconcern.
Just
as the 0600 gong announced the change in watch he spoke
up. "Mr. Latham, give me your air readings."
"Yes,
sir." Latham stepped to the air board. "Pressure in the ship, steady
at seven-seventy mm; mean temperature twenty degrees, three degrees fluctuation
downwards at 2300.
Humidity fifty-two per
cent. Air motion: forty meters per minute with seven-meter variation every
fourteen seconds. Composition of arterial air: oxygen eighteen point four three
per cent, carbon dioxide point eight three per cent. Excess negative ions to
the order of—"
"That's
enough." Nord turned back and looked again at his own board. Something was
the matter. What had Bickford neglected to do now? His voice took on cold
purpose. "Summon Mr. Bickford for me, please."
Corbett
turned abruptly, went into his flight quarters. The steward had already made
up his bunk and the compartment was now as neat as that distant day on Earth he
had moved into it. He drew a cup of coffee from a gleaming canister, sipped
slowly. It would be a good idea to have Hardman check the entire air system
from venous intake to arterial outflow. On second thought, he resolved to do it
himself.
He
was reading the master log when his yeoman entered the office. "Dr.
Stacker and Mr. Hardman request permission to speak to the captain."
"Morning,
gentlemen," Nord greeted them; he waved to the canister and cups, shoved a
cigarette box across his desk. "Help yourself to morning coffee, then toss
me your mind."
Hardman
turned to Dr. Stacker, his face drawn and cold. "You tell him, Doc."
The space surgeon lit a cigarette, watched
the smoke spiral towards the venous duct. "A lad playing laska ball last
night fractured a patella. I had a corpsman up all night watching him because
sometimes the bone plastic causes pain. He called me at 2315 that the sick bay temp had dropped four degrees."
"What
of that? You have your own thermostatic control," Corbett told him.
"That's
true," Stacker admitted, "but I usually maintain ship's temp. When the drop
came I didn't know whether it came on order from the senior watch officer or ... or—"
Nord
understood the hesitation. The doctor did not want to be an informer. "You
mean," he suggested helpfully, "you wondered if the air officer might
be careless."
Stacker
nodded. "You saw his act last night at dinner. That is not the action of a
normal man. That anger was a paranoid reaction to his hatred for all of us and
particularly for you. In you he sees the authority he hates so much. That scene
crystallized in his mind the determination of what he intended to do to the
ship."
Nord
felt again as if Pluto's frigid winds were blowing out from the center of his
being. Dread like a black frozen cloud enveloped his mind. "What did he
intend to do?" His voice was voder cold.
"I
don't know." The doctor admitted his ignorance in a tight, hushed voice.
Nord
was aware of the unperceived worry that flowed over the space surgeon's mind,
knew it mirrored his own vague premonition of impending catastrophe. "Go
on," he prodded gently.
"I
went down to his cabin to investigate. You see I've felt Bickford was a psychopath.
No reason, you understand," he explained apologetically, "sensed it,
an intuitive reaction rather than something of real diagnostic import. He's
always been most affable to me, a bit eccentric, but his conduct in the mess
except for some vulgar characteristics has been exemplary."
"He
seemed O.K. to me," Nord said. "I've made it a point to look for
personality change at dinner. He never seemd sour like so many officers do when
they get space weary. I never trusted him much," he admitted hesitantly.
"I felt that was pure friction between opposing personalities; it seemed
to me he was always trying to impress me with his influential relatives."
"They are influential," Dr. Stacker
pointed out, "otherwise they could never have gotten him aboard without a
psychosomatic examination. When he reported I asked him for permission to
contact the Public Health Bureau which maintains medical files on all citizens.
He refused. I thought he might have something in his record he was ashamed of
and was overly sensitive about it. I asked to examine him myself and he said
it wasn't necessary. Well," the physician shrugged his shoulders,
"you can't examine a civilian in a military ship against his wishes.
After we left lunar quarantine I watched him closely, but as he seemed to adapt
to ship's routine I thought I might be wrong. I knew he was money mad, feels
wealth will give him the security he lacks. Last night he heard about the
wealth on board and because he felt we were not giving him the honor and deference
he thought his position warranted he resolved to do something about it and show
us how good his mind was.
"He went down to air
treatment and got drunk."
"Got drunk!" Nord
looked stunned. "Why? How? On what?"
"He
used the alcohol showers in air treatment as his bar. Entrance to the
chlorophyl banks is through an alcohol bath. The bath is necessary to remove
bacteria from the armor, otherwise you would infect the chlorophyl which is
about a thousand times more sensitive to infection than a chick embryo.
"I
found Bickford clinically intoxicated, he'd passed out in his cabin. I did a
blood alcohol on him and found he had four point three milligrams per
cent—that's enough alcohol in the blood to make anyone dead drunk. I'm afraid,
captain, in having his party he must have infected the chlorophyl. Our oxygen
is going down and C02
is rising."
"That means recharging the tanks."
Hardman slapped the arm of his chair violently.
Infected
chlorophyl! The spaceman's one great dread. It wasn't the danger of
asphyxiation that worried Nord. They had plenty of fresh media to recharge the
tanks. But, until the new stuff grew sufficiently to handle the vitiated air,
they would have to live from stored oxygen. That meant curtailment of
recreational activity and with limited exercise came deterioration of morale.
His mind leaped to the crew.
They
would be forced to lay in their bunks for hours on end looking at the curving
overhead. Corrosion of the spirit from such confinement was the one exciting
cause for that most dreaded of all spatial afflictions: Spaceneuroses; the
overmastering, unreasoning anxiety syndrome. The claustrophobia that destroyed
the very fabric of the mind and that could easily—if long continued—wreck the
ship.
And Bickford did it
Didn't
the fool realize his life, too, depended on air? He looked down at the open log
on his desk. He closed the book with a snap that strained its metal hinges and
wrinkled the sheets of its plastic pages.
He forced his voice to be steady. "Where
is Bickford now?" "He's outside waiting to see you," Hardman
answered. "The doctor sobered him up."
Bickford's almost colorless, pale-blue eyes
darted a quick apprehensive glance at Dr. Stacker before he turned to stare
insolently at the captain. His slack mouth looked as if nature had painted it
on his thin, inmature face. He jerked his head at the scribespeech on the
captain's desk, aimlessly wiped flecks of saliva from his narrow, pointed chin
with a pink silk handkerchief which he quickly thrust into his uniform pocket.
"Mr.
Bickford," Nord's voice was ominously calm, "did you check air this
morning?"
"Why
of course I did," he snapped irritably. He tilted his head, sniffed loudly
through his narrow nose. "Seems O.K. to me."
"Did you go to air
treatment after the game last night?"
Bickford
jerked the handkerchief from his pocket, nervously wiped foamy saliva from his
twitching mouth. "I think I did. I turned down the temp five or six
degrees, thought the ship too hot."
"A
little while later, the medical officer went to your cabin and found that you
had been drinking. Do you deny this?" Nord's voice trembled from manifest
control.
Bickford forced a weak smile to his lips. He
blew a short, explosive whistle of self-congratulation. "I was really
drunk in my cabin last night. I was just really flooded."
"This
is no time for humor, Mr. Bickford. When we planet, I shall charge you with
being drunk on duty, carelessness and incompetence and recommend your
dismissal from the civilian branch of the Spatial Service."
Bickford
shrugged his narrow shoulders. "So what," he answered truculently.
His voice became edged with triumph. "My cousin is general manager of
Synthetic Air. That's the company who installed the conditioner aboard this
ship. He got me assigned to this job over you academy boys. You're jealous of
me. I'll tell him what you've done to me and he'll have the Bureau of Personnel
really burn you up. You all thought I was dumb. Told me last night I was crazy.
I'll show you how smart I was last night." He started to laugh: a harsh,
treble, nerve-chilling laugh. "This is a good joke on you, Corbett. When
the green goo goes sour, what're you going to do?"
Nord felt an icy vortex swirl around his
heart. He leaned forward, damp palms clasping the arms of his chair. He knew
already what the man was going to say.
Bickford
wiped tears of exultant laughter from his pale eyes. Stared derisively at the
officers. "What're you going to do now? We don't have any extra stock or
media aboard. We don't have any more of anything to recharge your tanks."
"Whatl"
Hardman leaped to his feet. Nord placed a restraining hand on his executive
officer's arm.
Bickford
sneered at his startled expression. "I thought that would get you."
He looked down at the captain. "While you were checking the ship at Lunar
Quarantine, I traded all our reserve stock of chlorophyl powder and nutrient
media for a set of bench tools. I made the deal with the captain of Mr.
Brockway's yacht. Do you know who Mr. Brockway is? He's one of the richest men
on the inner planets. You see, I intended to go into business on Lanvin—"
"You?" Hardman
gurgled. "In business?"
"I
was going to make beautiful doll furniture. But now I'm going to be one of the
richest men on Lanvin," he said triumphantly. "When I learned how
much money we had aboard the ship I decided then to show you how brilliant I
really was." He looked at them patronizingly. "I'm going to take the
money designed for the base."
"How
will you do that?" Corbett's voice was so calm it was unreal.
Bickford laughed unpleasantly. "I'm
going to make a chlorine generator. It's easy to make, just electrolysis of
salt water. I'm going to put that into the air system. While you all are being
finished, I'll live in space armor. Then I will land the ship on Dynia, that's
Planet II, and take the shuttle across to Lanvin."
"But
now we know all about it, and we're going to lock you up," Nord said
slowly. "Didn't you realize we would know almost instantly when the air
went bad?"
The
realization of what he had said revealed itself in his widened eyes. His head
shook from side to side as he started to whimper. "I never thought of that
when I spit into the banks last night."
Hardman
came forward, cold deadly purpose etched in the lines about his grim mouth and
bitter eyes. Nord knew what he was about to do, knew it would have to be done.
Hardman was half a meter from Bickford before he spoke. "This is for the
crew," he said and his fist came up like a rocket.
Bickford
took the blow, rocked under it, caught the second on his mouth and then Corbett
and the doctor were between them, shoving them apart.
"The idiot should be
chucked in space," Hardman roared.
Stacker
was wiping Bickford's crimson mouth. Corbett released Hardman's arm. "He's
a sick man," he said heavily. "Go back to your duty. I'll have Dr.
Stacker act as air officer. We'll keep Bickford under armed guard in the sick
bay for the remaining seven months of the voyage."
"Seven
monthsl Without airl" Hardman's voice became high with the tension of
near-hysteria. Then noticing Nord's level cold eyes he apologized. "I'm
sorry, sir. I must have lost my temper."
"I
understand. We'll forget what happened. Now let's see what we can do about the
air." He turned to the doctor. "Take care of the patient. I'll meet
you down in air control." He looked at the chronometer. It was 0640. It seemed like hours. "I'll be there in fifteen minutes," he
finished abruptly.
Corbett glanced down at the glowing tip of
his cigarette. This is what came from having a psychopath aboard. Incidents
like this were never discussed at the academy. Departments were always handled
smoothly by brisk, efficient men always alert to serve the ship. Not even in
fiction were there problems like this unwelcome thing. There, the personalities
were always good, pure men at war against mythical creatures, invidious
planets, self-centered, unpredictable novas or militant civilizations; never
at war against their own personal environment because of the stupidity of
politicians who insisted that unexamined, potentially insane men be made a part
of the ship's company.
Stacker
was sitting, feet propped on the air officer's desk, studying the
"Handbook of Air Management" when Nord walked in. He stood up at
once. "I've got Bickford in the brig ward. He's perfectly safe now. Can't
harm himself or anyone else." He touched buttons on the desk top and as
the drawers slid out pointed at their contents. "Looks like a rat's nest.
He's collected everything in this ship that wasn't welded."
"Never mind Bickford.
What can we do about the air?"
"Not
very much," Stacker said diagnostically. "You know how this ship
handles air?"
"Vaguely.
I don't know too much about it. Air management is so vital it's always handled
by an officer or civilian specializing in clinical industry." There was no
apology for his ignorance. It wasn't his job to know air any more than he was
required to know how to practice planetary epidemiology.
"The
air system in this ship was designed, installed and maintained by Synthetic
Air, Incorporated, of Great Kansas. The system uses a modified form of
rebreather technic; that is, the unused oxygen is returned to the ship.
"Starting
from the venous ducts located in all compartments the air is pulled over a
precipitron which removes all dust, oil and water droplets and other curd. It
then goes into the separator where the excess oxygen is removed; this passes
directly back into the ship's arterial system.
"The remaining atmosphere containing
nitrogen and carbon dioxide is then sterilized by passage over plates heated to
five hundred degrees, the gases are then cooled and sucked into the ship's
lungs.
"These
lungs are chlorophyl banks. They are large glassite cylinders filled with
synthetic chlorophyl. This is a very delicate substance with no immune
property at all and becomes infected readily. Just look at the stuff crosseyed
and it starts to decay. Nature protects her chlorophyl by means of the cell
membrane but here we use it in its pure protoplasmic state.
"In
each tank are actinic generators. As the carbon dioxide trickles up from below,
photosynthesis converts the carbon dioxide into carbohydrates. Oxygen is a
by-product. It's sucked into the negatron, humidified and pushed by blowers
through the arterial system."
"Very
concise, doctor," Nord said. "Let's go in and check your new
detail."
Air
treatment was located on the third deck, just aft the crew's galley in the
central section of the ship. The mechanical part of the system was a miracle of
chromium and gleaming surgical white. Air sucked through snaking ducts sounded
shrilly defiant; the whirring screams of the blowers were the overtones of
thin-edged menace. The ducts were shiny with beady sweat and the compartment's
cold, dry air was icily chilly.
The air crew stood around with tight,
strained faces. Above all the many activities of the ship, they knew how much
the thin thread of life depended on their proper performance of duty. When the
captain and the doctor walked in, worry lifted from their strong faces and they
turned to hide the relief from fear.
"Let's
see the banks." Nord shouted above the keening scream of air. He could not
help but notice the shining confidence they felt in him.
The chlorophyl banks were normally guarded by
locked doors which opened from the alcohol showers. A ten-minute alcohol shower
on the impervious lightweight armor lessened considerably any danger of
infecting the chlorophyl banks. Sterile precautions were now unnecessary
because the two doors were already partly open.
The
space surgeon pointed to a cup by the sump in the deck of the shower. Nord
nodded. "Maybe we're lucky he did get drunk or perhaps we wouldn't have
caught him before he started putting chlorine into the air system."
Stacker
shook his head. "He was too resentful of authority. Long before he would
have gotten to that point he would have told you about it in one way or
another. He would have had to brag about his mind. The chances are, though, he
would have knocked you out some night, taken the keys to the bleeder valves and
released all the air in space."
"Nice
guy to have around the house." Nord forced a smile. He gestured towards
the inner door. "Shall we go in?"
Normally the four meter vats were glistening
green cylinders. Where vitiated air entered from below—because of higher carbon
dioxide content—the thick media was a brilliant, leafy green which shaded to a
faint glaucous yellow at the top. The compartment should have had the sharp,
earthy fragrance of jungle vegetation.
A spasm of despair made Nord wince as he
walked into the compartment. The bottom of the cylinders was covered with a
thick sediment of sepia-colored muck; ocherous splotches and shafts of putrid
yellow matter filled the vats. The surface was a jaundiced froth which bubbled
over the top and lay on the metal deck like careless, yolky splotches of sickly
yellow paint. The warm, humid air was stifling and the odor of decay was a
nauseating stench.
"Whew." Stacker wrinkled his nose in disgust.
Corbett nodded silently, wiped his sweaty
brow. He turned to the air chief who walked into the compartment.
"Did you find
any?" Stacker asked eagerly.
"There
isn't so much as a can of spare stuff left anywhere," the chief said.
Dr.
Stacker turned away and Nord sensed he did not care to discuss a patient's
illness with a crew member. "We didn't expect to find any spare media.
While Mr. Bickford is ill the space surgeon will be acting air officer."
He turned to the physician, waved towards the sick-looking drums. "Can we
do anything with this stuff? Re-sterilize it or something?"
The
doctor shook his head sadly. "Dump it in space," he suggested with a
wan smile.
"Not
yet." Corbett hesitated to dump anything in space except as a last resort.
"It's still converting some air." He led the way into Bickford's
former office, prowled about the office nervously, studied the air instruments,
walked slowly back to the desk, leaned on the corner.
"C02
content has gone up a tenth
of a point in the last hour. Hadn't you better start using the chemical
removers?"
"We
won't use those until the per cent gets much higher. Not until it reaches two
point five or even three."
"I
just noticed we have five thousand kilos of oxygen stored in the
bulkheads." A shade of bitterness crept into his voice. "At least he
left us that."
Dr.
Stacker started figuring with stylus and pad. "The average man," he
calculated, "uses an average of five kilos of oxygen in twenty-four hours.
We have fifty men. That means twenty days of normal oxygen supply."
"Which is what the
bureau says will be normal for all ships."
"Why
not try and make it back to Earth. We're only one hundred and three days
out."
"I've
thought of it," Corbett admitted. "I refused to chart a cloud just a
few hours ago because it would take so long to reach terminal velocity once we
went back to extropic drive. At our present velocity we couldn't divert at
better than a hundred angstroms of angular radius. It would take almost two
months to complete our turn and then we'd have to start decelerating for Earth.
If we slow and turn, we couldn't reach terminal velocity before having to
decelerate again. As far as space time is concerned it's as far one way as it
is the other."
The
doctor shrugged his shoulders. "Might as well keep on, then." His
level voice was so impersonal Nord could not help but feel admiration for him.
"Do
you have any idea how we might augment our air supply? Maybe," he
suggested, "changing the rate of air flow, temp or number of charged ions
might help us. You know," the captain admitted candidly, "I don't
even know why we change the rate of air flow or charge the air. I once did but
I've long since forgotten."
Stacker pulled a plastic cigarette case from
his pocket, touched the stud, offered the lighted cigarette to the captain.
"It'll probably be our last one," he said, taking one for himself.
"In
a general way," he said, answering the question, "it might be said
that moist air is depressing and enervating while dry air is tonic and
stimulating. Metabolism slows in warm air, speeds up in cool air. It is also
known that air motion is a factor of tremendous importance in ventilation in
that it contributes to our sense of well-being and comfort. The pat of a
current of air upon the skin stimulates the cutaneous sensory fibers, acts
directly on metabolism and the vasomotor system.
"Air
currents as low as three-hundredths meter per second will give a perceptible
stimulus to the sensory nerves around the skin and mouth. The variation of air
flow and temperature is stimulating and explains the preference of open windows
over mechanical systerns of air conditioning. This variation is why there is
no sensation of stuffiness in modern ships.
"We treat the air here so that it has an
ionic content of ten to the sixth per cc of negative ions. Positive ions
increase the respiratory rate, B.M.R. and blood pressure. Negative ions produce
a feeling of exhilaration and sublime health." He inhaled deeply, let
smoke trickle slowly from his nose. "I'd recommend we increase our temperature
by five or six degrees, slow down air motion and require all men not actually
needed to remain in their bunks. Of course all exercise, smoking, even loud
talking will have to be forbidden. I'll change the diet so we'll have a low
specific dynamic action, use less oxygen that way. Make the men more groggy,
too. We can string out our oxygen another ten days."
Nord
squeezed out his cigarette in Bickford's ash tray. "And after that?"
" 'Good spacemen never die,' " he
quoted a line from the song of the space corps softly, " 'they just travel
far.'" "Will it be bad towards the end?"
The
doctor looked down at his polished nails. "Very," he whispered,
"We'll gasp out our last breath hating the day we were born. It'll not be
easy because we'll have so long to know it's coming."
"In
fifteen days I'll have the crew write their final letters. I want to write one
to my mother and you'll want to write one to your fiancee. You were going to
marry when we earthed."
"Isn't there a chance
we might cross another ship?"
"There isn't a ship
for another three months at least."
"Well
we won't be around to see it." Stacker forced a thin laugh. "When the
end comes, Bickford will really be happy. But he could have done a lot worse
things if he'd had more time to think about them. But this will be bad
enough."
Nord looked at him
steadily. "You'll spare us a bad finale."
"You
mean, you actually want me to . . . to . . ." He stopped talking abruptly,
looked at the captain with narrowed eyes.
Nord
knew the doctor did not wish to make him commit himself. He lifted his head,
gaze steady, and his voice was like the muffled roll of an organ.
"Mercy," he said, "can only be the gift of the strong."
Stacker stood up, held out his hand.
"Will you tell me when you've set the dead lights?"
Nord
nodded. "I'll turn them on myself and call you." Abruptly they shook hands.
"And
the condemned, thanks to the psychopath, ate a hearty meal."
Nord
realized the inevitableness of their situation. He had an evanescent desire to
go to the brig ward and wreathe Bickford in a flame pistol but he realized even
as he thought it, how stupid an act it would be. It would be like trying to
take revenge on nature. The psychopath was nothing more or less than an
evolutionary attempt to make man learn to use his brain for the benefit of
others and not to live out a life of selfish purpose.
Their
situation was a result of Bickford and he was a result of man's groping
attempts to use his mind. How little all that philosophy would help them now.
Nord projected his mind ahead, saw himself at the last, coughing against the
thin, lifeless air; he saw his crew looking at him with sightless, staring eyes
as they slumped wearily down to die on the cold, metal deck.
He
saw his ship, hurtling through space, taking a course tangent to Lanvin. The
grim dead lights would shine on her bow, telling of their fate. The outer port
would be open to make entrance by the investigating party an easy matter.
Some
distant day, months from now, they would board the ship, study the log, cremate
their remains. They would cradle the ship, open the holds, remove the freight.
New tractors would till Lanvin's fresh, fallow soil and earthly vegetables
would grow there.
Their
names would be engraved on a bronze plaque in company with thousands of other
spacemen who had died, that men might see the stars and beyond. Even though
they did die, they had made their little contribution to the cause of man. New
things would grow in new places: other than that, man could have no object for
his existence. New things to grow in new places.
Lanvin, Planet IV., Sun 3, Sirius System is a terrestrial-like planet. It has three large
continents and well over a million islands dot its shallow seas. It is a
tourist's mecca, a farmer's paradise.
The Space Yard of the Force is located on
Centralia, largest of the land masses. The commercial lines land on Desdrexia;
they claim the climate is better there. Actually it is just as hot on either of
the continents. But Mount Helithon is on Desdrexia. The sight of that
seventy-five-thousand-meter mountain rising from the silky, sanded plain, its
pinnacle shimmering like a crimson diamond, made too beautiful a picture for
the teleposters. The commercial psychologists couldn't afford to pass it up.
Lanvin
has no satellite so the quarantine station was located on Mount Helithon. Dr.
Leland Donaldson was Quarantine Officer for the Public Health Service. Because
he passed pratique on commercial and government vessels he knew all officials
of the big companies and the local brass hats of the service.
He
called Admiral Gates, crusty commandant of the yard, invited him to his lofty
station for some beer. Not Lanvin's synthetic stuff, but real, old-fashioned
beer from Earth.
The
admiral looked over his foamy mug at the quarantine officer. His thick jaws crunched
on a salt stick. His wrinkled eyes held a glitter like freshly cut steel. He
liked Donaldson but sometimes he wondered if he didn't like his beer better.
"Has the 136 left yet?" Donaldson asked after their second stein.
"The
136," the admiral hesitated. "That's young Corbett's ship. They're
Earthing tomorrow."
"Did you go aboard
her?"
"Me?
Go aboard her?" The admiral looked shocked. "Why should I? I have a
staff to do that sort of thing, you know. They brought out a lot of stuff for
the Colonial Office. Tractors, you know, harrowers, things they use to make
things grow in the ground, seeds and well, you know." He waved his stein
about the room, slopping some of the beer on Donaldson's tesselated floor.
"Seeds,"
Donaldson started to laugh.
"Why
laugh," Admiral Gates snorted testily. "One of my lieutenants went
aboard, came back reporting the ship was spotless, decks like polished glass.
Not even so much as a hull scratch. Outer skin a bit burned but perfectly
normal. But perfectly normal, you know. He said he left you one patient, chap
by the name of Bickley or Bikeford or something. Civilian, politician. You know
about that sort of thing. The lieutenant said, Corbett would go places in the
Service, had fertile imagination, fertile, you know."
"Fertile,"
Donaldson chirped. "Then you don't know?"
"Then I don't know what?" Admiral
Gates' eyes grew frosty. "Of course I don't know. How should I know? What
should I know?"
Donaldson
told him. "About a hundred days out from Earth, they were just reaching
terminal velocity and their chlorophyl went sour and started to decay."
"No
trouble there, ships always carry spare stuff. It's electron fever that gets
me. Hate the stuff, you know, high speed, space-free electrons going through
the skin. It's bad." He shivered and rubbed the wrinkled, red skin of his
face. His brows puckered and his lids closed to tiny slits. "Why did their
chlorophyl go bad?"
"They
had a psychopath aboard. A civilian who was placed in charge at the last minute
to manage their air. Had a record of police arrests a mile long, family shipped
him out here hoping he would turn over a new leaf or something." Donaldson
snorted rudely, "As if a psychopath would. This guy got mad at the ship
and all inside it and spit in their chlorophyl. It got infected but
quick!"
"But they had spare
stuff."
"They
didn't though," Donaldson pointed out. "Bickford gave it all away.
Traded it all for some tools or something to gain favor with some rich dodo.
They were really in a spot."
"A
psychopath aboard," the admiral shook his head. "That's bad. They're
dangerous. They crawl into positions of responsibility and then when you need
'em they blow up, tear your ship to little meteors. Happens too often. The
space surgeons should be more careful. They didn't have any spare chlorophyl,
you say. Their own lungs were going bad." He took a big swallow of beer.
Then he exploded. "Then how in the name of Great Space did they get
here?"
"Well,"
Donaldson spoke slowly, as if tasting every word. "Their stuff was
decaying fast. They couldn't recharge their tanks. Asphyxiation was shaking
hands with the boys. The space surgeon was set to make things easy at the end
with poison in the food or something. Then the skipper's fertile imagination
comes through with a roar."
"Don't say 'skipper/" Admiral Gates
interrupted petulantly,
"hate
the word. Makes me think of sail boats, sea and water, things like that, you
know. Go ahead, tell the story," he wagged his finger, "but if
Corbett has done something wrong, I want the report in writing and officially
and not over beer."
"Well,
the captain," Donaldson said in an annoyed tone, "got together with
Stacker, the ship's space surgeon, and they put half their crew to sleep with
narcotol, left them that way for weeks, I guess. Cut down oxygen expenditure,
you see."
"And," Admiral Gates shouted.
"The rest of them turned gardener."
"What! You said gardener!"
"They
turned gardeners but big. They pulled their sewage tanks, dried the stuff in
the ship's ovens, spread the slew over the recreation deck. They rigged actinic
generators over that, shunted their venous air straight through that room and
planted seed in their synthetic ground. They had hydroponic gardens all over
the ship."
"Would it grow fast enough to convert
carbon dioxide to oxygen?"
"Well
it did," the port doctor said succinctly. "They were having fresh,
green vegetables from their own garden by the time they planeted at
quarantine."
The
wrinkles around the admiral's eyes unfolded. "Maybe it's a good thing to
have a psychopath aboard, keeps a guy on his toes, you know. Corbett claimed a
five-hour delay over Central Sea after leaving quarantine wash. Wanted to
empty and clean ship. Makes him a better captain. Yep, it's a good thing—"
"It's
a good thing he did have a fertile imagination, or else you would be writing
letters to his family."
Lieutenant Nord Corbett stood at attention
before the blue-iced eyes of the admiral. Through the port behind the
commandant he could see his cradled ship. The ground crew had finished the hull
polish and in the glare from Lanvin's hot, white sun it glittered like a
platinum flame.
"May I have my
clearance for Earth, sir?"
The
admiral's bushy brows furrowed. "Ready to blow; taking back fifty
passengers, you know. Got plenty of water and air?" He rumbled.
"Checking them all in?"
"Yes, sir." Nord's face crimsoned
under the icy stare of the admiral. "They're all checked. Dr. Stacker, my
space surgeon, is giving them psychophysicals now."
"Civilians,
too," the commandant frowned, "against regulations, you know."
"Purely
caution against infectious disease, sir. The doctor requested it, and I do not
argue with the medical officer of the ship. His duty is to prevent illness
and—"
"Good idea, you know.
Prevents dangerous guys aboard, too."
"I'm
ready to drop my ground tackle, float free and blow," Nord said stiffly.
"Glad
to hear you youngsters like space so well. No hazard at all now. Was a time it
was dangerous. Astrogation was bad, air management poor, crew went crazy being
cooped up so long. Purely routine now, purely routine spacing." His eyes
took on a knowing glitter. "Did you have a good trip out?" he asked.
"Experience any difficulty?"
"No,
sir." He said it very stiffly, eyes directed at the admiral. "Usual
sort of trip. Little trouble with the air about halfway out, but on the whole a
rather boring trip."
galactic communications officer:
Harry Redkirk
As
man travels out—to other worlds—to other stars—
so will spread
his network of communication
and there must be those who live
to tend the links of voice and eye. Such
a man is Harry Redkirk.
Star-Linked
BY H. B. F Y F E
The
walls of the small communications office seemed to have been erected mainly to
hold panels of dials and switches. One end of the cubicle was occupied by the
control desk, banked high with rows of toggle switches and push buttons labeled
with the names and code numbers of stars or planets at which telebeams might be
aimed by automatic mechanisms. There were also more complex controls, for use
by the operator in contacting worlds infrequently called from this interstellar
station on Phobos.
In
the right-hand rear corner was a simpler desk with a microphone and a single
telescreen for a stand-by operator. Of the remaining space, the best part was
taken up by Harry Redkirk's chrome and leather swivel chair.
"Sorry,
Oberhof," Redkirk was saying. "I can't put your man through direct
from Luna to Centauri IV. It's behind its sun."
"Any
relay possible?" asked the dark-haired man watching him— apparently—from
the large screen at Redkirk's eye level beyond the desk.
This screen was flanked by eight smaller ones
arranged in vertical pairs and identified by association with the several
transmitters of the station. Screens One and Two went with "Beam A,"
and so on. At the moment, Six and Eight, to Redkirk's right, were alive with
outgoing, previously transcribed, routine messages. The voices, at super speed,
were high and gabbling.
"I'll try through one
of the Wolf 359
planets," said
Redkirk.
He
switched on the automatic caller and punched the button that would cause the
beam to be aimed at one of Sol's closer neighbors across about eight
light-years of space. There was no need to worry about adjusting for the
position of any planet not hidden by the star; the best beam achieved by man
would spread at that distance to blanket the whole planetary system. Even
subspace waves had their limitations, although Redkirk's job was made possible
by the fact that their time lag at that distance was imperceptible.
Redkirk's
face became intent as the answer bleated in from Wolf 359. He made manually the last fine adjustments to tune out a slight
fuzziness left in the signal by the automatic correctors, and looked up at the
screen from which he had temporarily displaced the Lunar operator.
He
was thin enough to seem tall even while sitting down.*The effect was increased
by a leanness in his features; he had a long, pointed chin, arched nose, and
hollow cheeks. Straight yellow hair was combed back from his high forehead,
along the left side of which ran a long, narrow scar. Except for this white
mark, his face was tanned to the dusty gold shade often seen in blond people
who do not bum red.
Had
it not been for the tan, anyone examining him at the moment would have thought
him a sick man. The lines from nose to the corners of his mouth were deep
grooves. If the wrinkles around his eyes suggested laughter, the frown-creases
between them spoke of pain.
Here
he comes, thought Redkirk, as he brought into perfect focus on his main screen
the image of a nonhuman.
The distant operator was chunky, tentacled,
and rounded, with several hooded eyes. Behind him, the scene was flat and
shadowless, which in this case meant to Redkirk that it was as dim as might be
preferred by beings in the system of an M8 red
star.
He
keyed off a sequence of universal signals. After a moment, the tentacled one
replied with a similar standard message.
"He
can get them," Redkirk told the Lunar operator as soon as he got him back
on the screen. "Get your party onl"
A few minutes later, he had an Earthman on
screen One and another from the Centaurian colonies showing on Two—the beam
picked up by his receiver and the one he was transmitting. He listened a while
to make sure everything meshed, and caught fragments of a conversation about
something or other to be sent back to Sol in the next interstellar ship.
Redkirk
flicked a finger at the Lunar man as the latter withdrew from the main screen
to attend to other affairs. Then he leaned back in the chrome and leather chair,
thinking idly of the years he had spent piloting such ships as the two men were
discussing.
Oh,
well, he thought, I had it for a while and I
shouldn't gripe
at having to stay here spinning around Mars. Many a good man would like nothing better than to have a shift at the main interstellar station of the Solar System.
Demand
for the job did not worry him, however, for he recalled that the company owed
it to him for the rest of his life if he chose to keep it.
He
had been on the desk about an hour of his four-hour shift, during which the
tiny satellite would move around the spaceward side of Mars and back to
intersect the orbit ahead of the planet. In another hour, Johnny would come in
with coffee, and two hours after that, Gamier would relieve him.
"Not
that I'm anxious about it," he murmured. "I'd stay a day at a time,
if they'd let me."
He
switched the main screen to a view through the exterior scanner and focused in
a view of Mars. Half of the mottled red planet showed above the jagged horizon
of Phobos. He knew that if he watched the ruddy disk long enough, it would give
the impression of rotating backward upon its axis. The speed of the tiny moon
was such that it made better than three revolutions in a Martian day. Redkirk
manipulated the controls to scan the sky, and other viewers set along a band
about the satellite came into action. Against the black void, the stars shone
hotly, watching, waiting, drawing his consciousness out of reality toward
them.
A series of beeps signaled a call from the
Lunar station. Redkirk snapped out of his reverie and replied.
"Got
a nice one this time," Oberhof told him. "Mr. Secretary Rawlins of
the Solar State Department, wants to talk to Ambassador Morelli."
"All right," said
Redkirk agreeably. "Where is he?"
"Only
aboard the space liner his,
SL-3-525, which is presumably" —he referred to a
note before him—"about three-quarters of the way to Procyon right
now."
"Oh,
fine!" groaned Redkirk, rolling his eyes upward. "How about sending
the message to be recorded on Procyon V and held for Morelli's arrival?"
Oberhof grimaced.
"That's what I said. No go. He wants him
in person, so they can use a scrambled signal and exchange dope in
private." Redkirk chuckled.
"How
private can you get, shouting for light-years through space in this day and
age? Well, I'll see if I can pick them up."
He
switched beam C to the direction of Procyon, expecting little trouble in
sweeping the volume of space containing the ship. Unless the latter had moved
fantastically off course, the spread of the beam would catch it as well as the
planets of Procyon. The trouble was that a moving ship in subspace drive often
had difficulty in picking up signals sent after it by a process resembling its
own method of propulsion. Any little maladjustment or interference, even a thin
cloud of cosmic dust, was enough to prevent reception.
Redkirk
set a tape to beeping out a repetitive call signal, and glanced up to meet
Oberhof's eye.
"If
it doesn't work," he promised, "I'll get Procyon V to tell them to
call me."
"Fair
enough," said Oberhof. "I'll let you know if His Nibs objects to
doing it that way."
"Any
time," said Redkirk. "I'll be out of touch with you for a couple of
hours soon, but you can pick me up again when we swing around Mars."
The
Lunar operator hesitated, and the other saw his shoulder move as if he had
dropped his hand from the cut-off switch.
"What
kind of shift do you pull?" he asked Redkirk. "I haven't been on the
station long enough to know everybody yet."
"About four hours, once in sixteen. Actually,
it's figured according to the time it takes Phobos to get around its orbit.
Pretty near to what you pull, isn't it?"
"Yeah,"
said Oberhof, "but I heard that you . . . uh, you used to be a pilot,
didn't you?"
Redkirk
grinned, and some of the traces of pain disappeared from his thin face.
"You
mean you've been hearing stories of how I piled up a Martian liner on the Lake
of the Sun?"
Oberhof managed to look
polite and curious at the same time.
"Well
. . . they say you got it pretty bad, and being it was mechanical failure, you
could have a pension."
"So
why do I work at Phobos?" finished Redkirk. "But why not? A man's got
to do something."
The
Lunar operator seemed about to ask further questions, but manners got the
better of interest, and he switched off after a few aimless remarks.
Redkirk tried the ship's code signal at
intervals, but failed to get an answer.
"They wouldn't leave their receiver off
out there," he muttered to himself. "I must be running into some dust
or other interference."
He
had to put the problem aside when a call boomed up from the surface of Mars.
The Solar Exploration Department, in the person of the regional office in Sand
City—now beneath the position of Phobos—wanted to contact its current
expedition on Pluto.
Redkirk
ran his finger down the row of buttons marking beam settings for Solar System
bodies, found "Pluto," and put out an automatically aimed call.
Within the planetary system, the possible
error due to the mechanism's not precisely matching the motion of the planet
was trifling, and he had an answer coming back before he had time to think
about any correction.
"Your headquarters on Mars wants to
talk," he told the square-faced man who appeared on his main screen.
The latter grimaced
slightly, then nodded as if resigned to wasting time that might be better
employed in the long overlooked task of studying the frigid planet.
"Put them through," he said.
"If they're willing to talk to the assistant chief, I'll try to tell them
what they want to hear. Tell them you have Hodges; the boss is out on the
ice."
Redkirk
checked the Martian operator, and presently had a two-way conversation flowing
through Three and Four. Seeing that the relay of the series of routine messages
through Six and Eight had been completed, leaving those screens blank, he
switched off his C and D beams. Except for a few minutes when he had to arrange
film recording of more such messages from some asteroid station to be
re-transmitted to Martian townships as Phobos circled into a favorable position
for it, he listened in to the beam from Pluto.
The
report was weighted with statistics and technical requisitions until the
square-faced Hodges withdrew from the screen in order to show his superiors an
example of the party's boring toward the planet's surface through ice and
frozen gases.
Redkirk
followed with eager interest the process of thermite' drilling a well down
through strata of congealed substances. The film recording of the first blast
revealed an unearthly kaleidoscope of colors on the dark surface of the planet
from whose position Sol was merely a bright star. Then, artificial lights
showed the space-suited figures preparing for further penetration. Subsequent
scenes displayed samples of the walls as the passage probed downward.
Redkirk
was sorry when the directors on Mars were brought up to date with a view of the
bottom of the digging. Switching off after the communciation had been
completed, he realized that for a quarter of an hour he had forgotten where he
was.
"Comfortable little hole, though,"
he murmured, gazing about at his eight-by-ten office. "Lot warmer than
Pluto."
The
quiet sough of the air-conditioning unit had heightened his imagination of
nonexistent, freezing blasts of wind whipping across the chill waste on the
screen. He decided he was just as happy to hear Johnny clattering coffee cups
in the outer office.
A moment later, his young assistant thrust
his head inside. "Got time for coffee, Harry?" he asked.
"Fill 'er up!" called Redkirk.
"I've just been talking to Pluto, and I need something to warm my
bones."
Johnny
brought in the coffee and sat with his on the corner of the stand-by desk after
handing Redkirk a full cup.
"Much doing?" he
asked.
"Nothing special," answered his
chief. "Except one for a spaceship almost to Procyon. I can't pick them
up."
He thought a moment, savoring the hot liquid.
"Johnny,"
he directed, "look up the Iris in the Solarian Register, and see if her
code signal is really . . . uh . . . SL-3-525.
Maybe Luna didn't have it
right."
The
youth took down a volume from the shelf of such reference books and leafed
through it, holding his coffee cup in one hand. When he found the ship on the
list, the call signal was correct.
"Then
I'm just not hitting her," said Redkirk. "Luna won't be on our necks
for a while, till we come out from behind Mars, but I'd like to have something
to tell Oberhof by then."
"Why don't you relay
through some Procyon planet?"
"Oh,
there's some big jet on our end. Oberhof thinks it's diplomatic and
secret."
He
frowned over the problem until Johnny went out to refill their cups. Deciding
that he would contact Procyon only as a last resort, Redkirk pressed the button
that would aim his A beam at Pluto.
"Could
you do me a little favor?" he greeted the square-faced Hodges when the
latter appeared.
"Sure,"
said the explorer woodenly. "Want me to run down to the comer for a beer
or a blonde?"
Redkirk
repressed a grin, realizing vaguely what a lonely life the other was leading at
the moment, and explained his situation.
"Either
they're not able to pick up my signal," he concluded, "or something
is screening me out. Remember last month when you had trouble getting Phobos
because a flock of asteroids distorted your beam?"
"Well, I'll see what I can do,"
promised Hodges. "Don't forget— I haven't the power you have at that big
station."
"If
you can just get them to call me," said Redkirk, "it will tell what
the score is."
The
man on Pluto nodded and faded out. Five or ten minutes went by before he
reappeared. His broad face showed a trace of excitement.
"By golly, I picked up a weak
answer!" he exclaimed. "I can just about focus a blurry image. What
do you want me to tell them?"
"Have them give me a
call," directed Redkirk.
He
waited, scanning the instrument that would report any reception too faint to
appear as sound or picture. One needle, after a while, wavered reluctantly.
That was all.
He
adjusted the same antenna for Pluto, as a check, and Hodges came in clear and
strong.
"I
can't pick them up," said Redkirk. "Now, listen, and tell me if you
can do this—call the Lunar station and let them know you have the his. Then relay if they can't catch her signal. I'm out of it both ways, at
least till Phobos swings further around Mars."
He
sat back after Hodges had faded out, grinning at the feeling of having pulled
strings all around the System. He doubted that Oberhof could pick up the
ship's beam; whatever was damping it before it reached Phobos would probably
take care of Earth also.
In a few minutes, he discovered that he was
not entirely cut off from the operation. Hodges worked manfully to feed the
images through Pluto to Luna at one end and the Iris at the other, and
Redkirk's receiver picked up the beam relayed inward from the frigid planet.
Ambassador
Morelli was a blurry white face with dark blurs for eyes and black hair.
Evidently, however, he was recognizable to his superior, for the conversation
continued quite a while.
"Wish
I could figure out what he's talking about," murmured the Phobos operator.
Morelli,
in stilted, guarded phrases which he chose like a man selecting a life
insurance policy, indicated where the "information" desired might be
found. That is, he seemed to be naming a place— Redkirk did not believe the Department
could employ so many people with such curious cognomens.
Well,
if it is a code, it's
probably none
of my business, he thought regretfully.
He decided that he was getting to be a
busybody, and was relieved when the time came to send some of the transcribed
messages down to the Martian cities. This kept him intermittently busy for
some time.
Shortly after the last message was cleared, a
call came across the System from Venus. Someone had to speak to Altair VII
about certain Altairian microorganisms desired for urgent medical research.
Since it turned out to be a conference hookup with several personages at the
terminal screens, Redkirk and the Altairian operator kept in constant contact
on a companion beam to monitor the transmission.
The
Altairian struck Redkirk as being oddly human in movements and bodily
attitudes despite a strikingly unhuman physique. There was no actual separation
of head from body, and the numerous short, one-sectioned arms ending in
powerful claws suggested that the distant being had evolved from something that
had crawled. His skin gleamed, between areas of warty protuberances, with brown
and golden tints reminiscent of either polished leather or some metallic
substance.
"Do
you happen to speak Solarian?" Redkirk asked him, having glanced again at
the beams focused on screens One and Two.
"Some."
The
answering voice boomed slightly, and Redkirk realized that it was produced by
the vibrating membranes of air sacs that swelled out below the wide, blubbery
jaws.
"I
have never been to Altair in person," said the Earthman. "Would you
have time to show me an outside view near your station?"
"What . . .
purpose?"
"Just
curiosity," Redkirk told him. "I want to see what things look like in
the light of a white, Class A star. Sol is G, you know, and yellow."
"Last part slow
again?"
Redkirk repeated.
"I'll show you scenes of Solarian
planets, if you like," he offered in conclusion. "Would like,"
the Altairian assured him.
He
faded from the screen and Redkirk took the opportunity to consult his list of
filed films for what he needed. While searching for scenes of Mars and Earth,
he had the outside scanner pick up the part of the crescent of Mars that showed
above the jagged horizon of Phobos, and sent it out through screen Four.
He
chose a few representative scenes of Martian deserts and of mountains, oceans,
and cities of Earth, and fed them into the series as he watched what the other
operator sent back—stealing a second here and there to check on the main business
going through.
Even
with reception automatically adapted to human vision, the landscape of Altair
seemed bright and shadowless. The glare of the white star burned down upon
great expanses of flat land covered by low-growing shrubs with pale, fleshy leaves.
In the distance, several mountain peaks glittered, some of them smoking with
evidence of volcanic action.
Even
an ocean scene made Redkirk feel hot, as if he were exposed to the glare of
Earthly tropics. He decided that there was good reason for the Altairians he
saw swimming to sport such heavy hides.
The
distant operator had just switched in a view of one of his system's satellites,
not unlike the scarred face of Luna, when the conference broke up.
Redkirk
hastily brought the private showing to an end. Before switching off, he thanked
the Altairian.
"Most
pleasure," the other assured him in drumming tones. "If call again,
ask for Delki Loori-Kam-Dul."
"Thank
you, I will. I am Redkirk . . . Red-kirk . . . yes, that's right."
He punched a button to record the number of
the station's film copy of the transmission for the commercial department or
other future reference, and cut the beam. He also made a mental note of a new
acquaintance, sixteen light-years away in the constellation Aquila.
He
leaned back in his swivel chair for a few moments, thinking about the harsh
surface of the planet he had just seen. He was aroused from his reverie when a
call beeped in from Luna.
"Sayl I've been waiting to come in line
with you again," he greeted Oberhof. "I wanted to ask you about that
message."
"The
one to the Iris? You wouldn't want me to give away diplomatic secrets, would
you?"
Redkirk's eyebrows went up.
"Was
it that hush-hush?" he demanded, incredulously. Oberhof put on a knowing
expression and shifted his ground. "Later, if I think I'm not being spied
on," he muttered. "Right now, I think you better take this
call." "Who's it for?" asked Redkirk.
"A
personal for you," replied the Lunar operator. "From a . . . uh . . .
Mrs. Nina Redkirk, of Earth. There's also a film. Shall I send that on my B
band while you talk?"
"Shootl" said
Redkirk.
He
cut in his recorder via screen Five, then leaned back to take the personal on
his main screen. In a moment, the features of a young woman with reddish hair
and a pert nose came in clearly.
"Hello, Nina,"
said Redkirk.
She
smiled, a shade too cheerfully, for he could see concern in her eyes.
"Harry! It's good to
see you! How is everything?"
"Same
as ever," he answered easily. "You know by now what it's like at a
station like Phobos. Tell me about you—that's what I'm interested in."
"Oh
. .. you know ... gosh, it's funny how I can make a call like this and then
forget everything I was going to say! Did the man on Luna tell you I'm sending
movies I took of Barry?"
"I'm
recording them right now. That Oberhof isn't one to waste time."
They
talked of a few other matters—Barry's schooling, the new puppy, and the like.
"We'll
have to cut this," said Redkirk. "I'm getting a signal. Now, don't
forget to call me every so often. And keep those movies of Barry coming;
they're swell!"
Nina said good-by hurriedly, and Redkirk cut the
screen. He glanced at Five, saw that the film had been recorded, and keyed off
a routine acknowledgment to Luna. Receiving no return call, he assumed that
Oberhof was busy.
He
had had no incoming signal, but the sight of Nina had made him wonder how long
he could keep up the pretense of gaiety. Earth suddenly seemed so far away that
he could hardly believe he had been bom there.
A
real signal made his head snap up. He realized that he had been sitting there
staring sightlessly at the controls for several minutes. He brought the call to
the main screen and discovered that it was a simple relay from Canalopolis on
the red planet inward to Earth.
Oberhof showed his face briefly during the
operation.
"I'll call you back in a little
while," he told Redkirk.
The
latter pressed a button that would remove the record of Nina's film from the
file and focus the pictures on his screen. He grinned faintly as he saw Barry
romping with a gangling puppy on a lawn of green Earth grass, and felt a pang
of loneliness as his six-year-old son sawed off the first slice of a large
birthday cake.
When
the film had run off, he sat quietly for some minutes before Oberhof's signal
came in.
Redkirk shook himself and answered.
"Now
zero-beat that rasping voice of yours and say something!" he ordered
Oberhof. "What was the big rumpus?"
The other operator grinned and wagged his
head.
"Don't
know as I ought to tell you. Top secret. A real emergency call out to the
depths of space!"
"Come on.'" demanded Redkirk.
"Well, to give you a quick
schematic—Morelli lit off for Procyon without turning in the combination to his
office wall safe. Left it with his wife and forgot to tell her it had to be
taken in to the department instanter."
"Yeah-?"
"That's all."
"No secret papers? No urgent
instructions?" Oberhof sucked in his lower lip and shrugged.
Redkirk
looked around at his communications office, at the dials and switches and
instruments. He thought of the powerful generators outside, of the delicate
and marvelous mechanisms that could direct a beam across light-years of
subspace.
"Might
have known," he murmured. "If Earth were exploding, they'd have put
through the message by routine recording."
"I
would like to send him a personal bill for the complete cost of that little
chat," growled Oberhof.
"Take
it easy," said Redkirk, grinning. "Maybe we'll save the world next
time."
He glanced over his
shoulder as the door opened.
"Watch
that blood pressure," he advised. "I'll have to cut off now; here
comes my relief."
Oberhof
waggled a finger at him and faded out. Redkirk looked over his shoulder.
"Ready, Harry?"
asked chubby Ed Gamier from the doorway.
"As
good a time as any," agreed Redkirk. "Everything looks quiet for a
few minutes. Johnny out there?"
"Yeah. We'll be right
in."
Redkirk ran an eye over his board. The
screens were dead and all his traffic for the watch had been cleared. He pulled
out the operator's log and signed it after glancing at the time.
Then
he heard Johnny and Gamier coming in, and turned his head to watch them
maneuvering the wheelchair through the door.
Redkirk
put one hand against the edge of the control desk and swiveled himself around
as Gamier pushed the conveyance over to him. Johnny prepared to help him from
one chair to the other.
"Dunno
how you do it," remarked Gamier, steadying the wheelchair with a
broad-fingered hand as he watched Johnny lift his chief effortlessly in the
light gravity of Phobos. "Honest, I don't. After a crack-up like that, I
think I'd crawl away an' let somebody take care of me the rest of my
life."
Redkirk
got his hands on the grips of the wheels and pivoted to face Gamier. He looked
up at the relief operator with a grin on his lean, tanned face.
"Stop making me a herol" he jeered. "What would I do in a hospital on Mars or
Earth? Anywhere but Phobos, I'd be flat on my back and helpless."
To
demonstrate his present mobility, he rolled around Gamier and pivoted the chair
in the doorway to look back at them. In the outer office, Joe Wong, Gamier's
stand-by, clinked a cup as he poured himself coffee.
"How
was that?" Redkirk asked Gamier. "The way I'm banged up, it's only in
gravity like this that I can get around at all."
Gamier nodded
sympathetically.
"Yeah,
I don't blame you," he said. "A guy could go crazy, I guess, just
lying in a bed and thinking about how he could never pilot a ship again, never
even go any place. Of course, he could see his wife and family and friends,
instead of being marooned on a chunk of rock like this."
Redkirk smiled at him.
"I
don't feel very marooned," he retorted. "Tonight, for instance, I
talked to a man on the moon, watched a test
digging being started on Pluto, and arranged a little matter with a stranger on
a Wolf 359 planet."
Behind Garnier's back,
Johnny glanced at the log.
"I
also listened to a Solarian ambassador speaking out of space just as if I were
at the controls of another ship again," Redkirk continued. "Then I
got me a good look at a planet of Altair that I never saw before. And to top it
off, my best girl called me longdistance and I watched my boy grow a
year!"
Gamier
hitched up his jaw. He and Johnny stared briefly at each other, then back at
Redkirk.
"And you call it
work?" laughed Redkirk, backing out the door.
space ship steward:
Ben Harlow
Captains and pilots walk wreathed in glory.
Others
do drabber duty unnoticed.
But sometimes there
are instances when the little man
is of importance, too. Ben Harlow lived
to discover that.
Chore
for a Spaceman
BY WALT SHELDON
They
came through hatch looking bored, as they always did, and once again Ben Harlow
dreaded facing them. They'd seen it all out there in Interplan. They had it.
And now he had to make his silly speech—to
them.
Captain
Mace pushed by, headed for Control. He clapped Ben's shoulders. He was hulking,
red-headed and mostly grin and muscle. "Fix 'em up good, Ben. Dies aboard
this trip."
"Dies?"
"Damned
Interesting Characters." The captain and his grin disappeared forward.
Ben
laughed but his heart wasn't in it. He turned to the passengers and cleared his
throat. "Gentlemen, you are now guests of Military Space Transport. Our
destination is Earth and during the time we are headed there ..."
The
stilted words, the wooden words. He'd said them so many times they cloyed his
ears now. Ben Harlow—Space Steward, second class—the man who had never seen the
swirling poisonous clouds of Venus or the unholy glow of Saturnian rings
outside the ports. Never the dark side of the Moon. Just a bare spaceport on
Mars, and the New Mexico landing area on Earth.
Copyright 1950
by Standard Magazines, Inc.
Originally published in December, 1950, Thrilling Wonder Stories.
This
was his lite while Earth and Jupiter warred and others filled themselves with glory.
"... We hope, of course, there'll be no
emergencies. As far as we know the Mars-inferior area is clear of Jovian craft.
But in case anything does happen ..."
The
instructions about the liferoids now. Move quickly, stay calm. He was telling them—the men who'd seen the real thing. Them.
There
was one over there skirting space madness—eyes too big for his face and he kept
swallowing his Adam's apple over and over again. Spaceman first class
Eddington—Ben recalled his name from the Form 6. Then the man from Telenews, leaning forward, staring at nothing and
dangling his camera between his knees, the pale, gray little man who had maybe
seen too much. Beyond him two space guards—rugged flat-staring weary bulls of
men—with their prisoner.
Ben's
gaze stopped on the prisoner. It was the first Jovian he had ever seen at close
range. In the artificial gravity which matched Earth's he had made himself tall
and elongated. He had worked his protoplasmic form into the shape of an Earthman. They were the Jovians—the shameless imitators. The color
stripes on this one marked him as one of their space pilots.
"... so
if you have any questions don't hesitate to ask them. Military Space Transport
will try to make your trip to Earth as quick and comfortable as possible."
The
whirring began as the blast-off energy was generated. Ben went down the line,
checking the straps of the acceleration cradles. The nose of the ship rose
slowly into launching position and when the ship's gravity was switched on the
sensation of tilting-disappeared.
Ben
came to the Jovian, and began to tighten his straps. He looked up and saw a
grin cross the mushy face. The prisoner kept himself in Earthman's shape by
strict order—and by threat of one of the guards' acid guns.
Only
acid from one of the squat hard spiky Jovian plants could hurt a Jovian—that or
something violent like an explosion. Bullets or rays passed through their
protoplasm harmlessly. Ben looked away from the Jovian's grin. He tried not to
shudder.
"Just
relax when the acceleration warning bell rings," he muttered. His litany.
Same trips, same kinds of faces, same words all the time. Combat men—going
back. Only the Jovian made this run a little different.
He
stole another glance upward. The Jovian was still grinning at him. This time he
did shudder. You had to shudder, just thinking about them. Jovians had no
bones, no innards. They were just blobs of stuff. Within the tremendous gravity
of their own planet they spread themselves flat on the surface or formed
hemispheres.
They
could take any form they wished within several hours. They could make clever
pseudodactyls for fingers and then duplicate almost anything made in the
system. They'd copied Earth's spaceships, Earth's weapons—and now Earth's old
talent for war.
The
Jovian's pseudo-voice came, sleazy and whispering, to Ben's ears. He used the
manner and jargon of an Earthman space pilot. "Kid, you got no idea what a
hot space-rock this little boy is. Me, I've pffted more Earth guys than
Beethoven has notes."
Ben didn't answer and
didn't look up.
The
Jovian laughed. "You squares won't be holding Xyl very long."
Ben heard one of the beefy
guards growl, "Shut up, Xyl."
Then
the warning note sounded and Ben finished his checkup quickly. He hustled
forward to the crew compartment and his own acceleration chamber. He ticked on
the interviz and saw Captain Mace's battered mug grinning at him.
He said, "All clear
back there, sir."
"Hang on, kiddo,"
said Mace. Then his image vanished.
Mace
had had it, too. He'd been in battle-hulls before the Space Surgeon sent him to
transports. He had medals he never wore—a spacebag full.
Ben
relaxed in the floating web of straps and springs. The starting bell rang
hollowly. The usual terrible roar cut into the silence. It became louder and
louder until Ben thought—as he always did— that he wouldn't be able to stand it
any longer. Then it drifted away.
He
felt himself pressed into the cradle and felt the characteristic stomach tug.
His head swam. He knew that the ship was already far into space....
Moments later his head cleared again and the
cradle swung back to center. He waited quietly until he heard the clear bell,
then extricated himself and went through the door to the waist. He glanced at
the passengers, and all were more or less normal.
The
little, gray Telenews man was already lighting a cigarette. The two space
guards were stretching themselves and Xyl was staring at his straps, wondering
how to undo them with his pseudodactyls and probably wishing he could change
form instantaneously to get out of them. Most of the others were stirring in
one way or another. A bridge game was being started toward the rear.
Wait—Eddington
the gaunt Spaceman l/c was still strapped down. Ben frowned and started toward
him. Then he saw that he was perfectly conscious. His eyes were moving. He was
staring at the Jovian prisoner. Unmistakable slow burning hate was in his eyes.
Ben went to him.
"Feeling all right, fella?"
The
starved eyes swung slowly until they fastened on Ben's. Ben felt worse in
moments like this when combat men looked at him and studied him. He knew what
they saw—a medium-sized guy in a blue spaceman's uniform with the vanes of
rocket personnel on his chest.
Gray
eyes, sandy hair, faintly freckled face. But none of that hardness around the
jaw—none of those space wrinkles near the eyes. It was pretty clear what he
really was—a spacegoing headwaiter. That was about the size of it.
And
this gaunt stringy-cheeked Eddington said to him, "Look, buddy, go take a
walk for yourself. I'm busy." Then he resumed staring at the Jovian.
"You don't like him,
eh?" said Ben.
Eddington
spoke softly. "I hate 'em. I hate all of 'em. Like you could never
understand. I did two Earth years in one nf their prisons. Their slimy arms
poking all over me, cutting me open sometimes and—and—" He swallowed his
larynx. He looked at Ben again. "Go on, beat it, will ya?"
Ben shrugged and turned,
went forward again.
It
was very puzzling for a man to know how he should feel. He know about the
Jovians—second hand, of course—and he shuddered like everybody else when he
heard about the things they did to prisoners. But was it cruelty? They had no
conception of pain-no real emotions outside of dim hate and a kind of heavy
humor. The only thing they feared was death—and they were never quite
articulate enough to explain just exactly why they feared that.
The
thing was complicated enough for a philosopher, let alone a two-bit space
steward.
He
went into Control and saw Captain Mace and the co-pilot, Lieutenant Washam, at
the panel. He stepped to the galley to make coffee. He couldn't get Eddington
off his mind. The gaunt veteran was up to something, something troublesome, only
Ben didn't know exactly what to do about it.
He glanced through the plastibubble and
looked at all the blackness of space, the pinpoints of stars. Worlds to
conquer—the Jovian war had already brought about the development of
photo-corpuscular power, and there were whispers that Space Force ships had
made it beyond Pluto. A whole Universe to be met and grappled with—
And
here stood Ben Harlow, making coffee. He shook his head bitterly.
"Ben," Captain
Mace called abruptly. "You got a minute?"
"Yes,
sir?" Ben looked up from the hot plate. Mace was beckoning. He went over
to the panel as Lieutenant Washam, who was young and blond and very poised and
correct, took over the controls.
Mace
swiveled around in his chair. He was still grinning but his eyes were serious.
"Ben, I don't want you to worry, or anything like that—but you'd better
know that a Viz came in from patrol headquarters a few minutes ago. So you can
be ready to take care of the passengers, just in case."
"What was the Viz
about, Captain?"
Mace
jerked his thumb at space in general. "Couple of Jovian fighters slipped
in through Mars-inferior. That's the report, anyway. The teledars are
fingering for 'em now."
Ben
smiled dryly. "Be just my luck never even to get a look at a Jovian
fighter."
"You'd like to see a little action,
huh?" Mace's grin almost disappeared and he looked at Ben very steadily.
"It's no fun, Ben. Space-war is no fun at all."
"I know that," Ben said. "I
can figure about how bad it is. Just the same—"
"Don't ever look for it,"
Mace said earnestly. "Don't ever."
Ben
didn't answer. He just looked back. Mace met his stare for a moment or so, then
swung around to the controls again. Ben went back to the galley.
The
transport roared through space. Its rockets flamed and the red disc of Mars
behind it became a spot. Earth and Mars were degrees out of conjunction now and
the ship cross-orbited. The bright, golden blob of the sun was to the left and
had the usual illusory look of moving in a trajectory across the heavens.
After
awhile Ben made supper, filled the first tray and pushed back into the
passenger compartment with it. The group looked quiet enough, content enough.
The four bridge players still sat cross-legged in the after portion. Several
viewed minifilms in their laps. The Telenews man wrote silently on a small
steno-machine. The beefy guards were smoking. Xyl, the Jovian prisoner, had his
leg forms drawn up between his arms and sat with the guards, grinning at
everybody and everything.
Eddington
was on the edge of his bunk—on the very edge. He was glaring across the aisle
at the Jovian. He moved only his fingers, resting them along the lock of his
space-bag and drumming them steadily.
Ben
frowned at him for a moment, then began to pass out the food. A dish and a
knife and a fork to each man. No tasteless concentrates or synthetics on
transport ships—this was a cushy job, a soft job. Out there in Interplan right
now gaunt raw-nerved men were swearing because they had to live on pills.
Ben
glanced back at Eddington every once in awhile. It was an instinct as much as
anything that told Ben something wasn't quite right—maybe it was just long
subconscious understanding of human behavior in these surroundings. Anyway he
felt compelled to do this.
That was how it happened that he saw
Eddington open his space bag, lean forward, crouch and reach into it with his
eyes still on the Jovian across the aisle.
Ben
moved fast. He whirled, knocking his supper tray on a stanchion and spilling
it all over a non-rated colonel with a clipped white mustache. He sprang down
the aisle and across it. He still didn't know exactly what Eddington was up
to—he didn't have to know exactly. The look in the man's smoking eyes was
enough.
He
reached Eddington at about the time Eddington reached the Jovian. The thin
spaceman had moved with hungry animal speed— too fast for the big space guards.
They'd been staring out the ports, paying little attention, keyed only to move
if the prisoner tried something funny. They weren't expecting trouble from
across the aisle, from one of their own guys.
Ben
slammed into Eddington's shoulder and knocked him aside. He remembered that in
that moment a kind of insane laugh came from the Jovian.
Eddington
found his balance again and turned and faced Ben. His eyes were wider. The lids
had peeled back showing the dead-white cornea around the dark pupils. It seemed
that his face was nothing but eyes.
He said to Ben, "Why,
you lousy little rear-line punk!"
Ben looked at him quietly, looked at the
thing in his hand and then back into his eyes again and said, "Take it
easy, Eddington."
One of the space guards
started to get up.
Ben said, "I'll handle
it."
The space guard grunted and sat down again.
"One
of these chicken-livered guys, huh?" Eddington said to Ben. "Love the
Jovians. Love everybody. National be-kind-to-the-enemy week. Yeah, I
know."
"Eddington, you'd
better sit down and take it easy," said Ben.
Eddington
took a step forward. He dropped the thing in his hand, and it clattered on the
floor. He said, "I know your kind, brother."
"Careful,
Eddington," said Ben.
Eddington came at him,
swinging. His left came first in a wide loop and Ben stepped inside of it. Ben
wasn't much of a boxer. He didn't like fighting either. It choked him up inside
and usually made him feel sick afterward.
But
he lashed out just the same. He had to. It was his job. This thing happening
right here, right now, was just an extension of his job. He felt his fist slam
into Eddington's midsection. He felt the force of the blow all the way up to
his elbow.
Eddington
whooshed with pain but his right was already on its way, following the
left-handed swing Ben had caught on his shoulder. The right struck Ben's
cheek. Ben heard a sound—clok.'—in his own head and for just an instant his
vision blurred. But it was surprising how little actual pain there was to the
blow. Maybe later it would hurt. Right now it seemed only annoying.
Meanwhile
Eddington, face twisted with agony, was falling back from the punch to his
middle. Ben swung an uppercut at the man's sharp chin. It missed. Eddington saw
him off balance and jabbed at his face. The jab smashed Ben's lips against his
teeth and his teeth cut the lips on the inside. But it didn't blur things as
the last one had. That midsection punch had taken something out of Eddington.
Ben braced himself and cocked his right fist
as a man cocks a pistol for firing. He fired the fist at Eddington.
He
knew the instant it landed that it would do the trick. There was that kind of a
solid final sound to it. And the pain in his knuckles and up along his forearm
was excruciating.
Eddington,
quietly and without twitch or gesture, fell flat on his face.
Ben stared at his skinned knuckles. He held
his right fist in his left hand and stood there for a moment, breathing hard.
Then he looked around. The other passengers were still silent. They merely sat
and stared at what had happened. No exclamations, no congratulations, no
approval or disapproval, not even a whispered comment. Not much of a fight to
them, Ben supposed. They had seen worse, much worse.
He
heard the deep voice of one of the space guards. Speaking to the prisoner.
"Sit down, you."
He turned and looked and saw that Xyl had
tried to get up. Xyl was staring at Ben. For just a passing instant it seemed
to Ben that there was a kind of gratitude in the Jovian's eyes. But that was impossible,
he guessed. According to all the dope he'd ever heard, Jovians didn't feel
things like gratitude.
Ben
lifted and then dropped his shoulders in something akin to a shrug. He looked
down and saw. that Eddington was stirring, moaning. He stepped past Eddington,
and retrieved the thing he'd dropped. Then he moved forward again and stood
with his legs spread and waited for consciousness to come back to the gaunt
spaceman.
Eddington
finally made it to his hands and knees. He rested like that with his face
toward the floor. He shook his head and spat several times. Then he looked up
and glared at Ben.
Ben
said, "Don't do it again, Eddington—do you hear me? Don't do it again
I"
Eddington
blinked and didn't answer. Ben turned to go forward. He'd need methiolate for
those knuckle scratches and maybe Eddington could use some of the stuff in the
first-aid kit, too.
He
might behave after this or he might not—he was on the edge of a kind of
madness, no question about that. The others, the guards especially, would keep
a close eye on him now. But Ben still worried about it. It was his baby, this
situation, and he worried about it.
He found the first-aid kit in the racks and
tucked away the little souvenir he'd taken from Eddington. He turned and canie
back into the waist again. Eddington was back in his place. He was rubbing his
jaw and looking rueful.
Ben got halfway down the
aisle—
The
space ship lurched suddenly and he was slammed to the left. When it lurched
like that, too quickly for its artificial gravity to follow, something was
wrong—very wrong. His shoulder and arm hit the bulkhead. The protruding knob of
something stabbed him viciously. Hot pain went the length of his arm. And
through it all he heard the sound of an explosion, of tearing metal.
Ben
acted from his spine, not his brain. He didn't stop to wonder exactly what had
happened—in a broad way that was clear. This was an attack of some kind. The
ship had been struck. He heard the air whoosh through the hole in the hull,
disappear forever into space, and he began to feel the terrible cold.
He
caught the screeching sound of the oxy-renewer forward, near the control deck.
That would send enough atmosphere through the compartment to keep a man
conscious a few seconds. The emergency heaters were already glowing, cutting
into the dark cold of space. But they wouldn't last forever either.
Ben
turned and staggered again toward the forward part of the ship. The tremendous
air pressure of the atmosphere from the oxy-renewer tried to shove him back. He
squinted to protect his eyes from it and kept his stare on the plate-mesh switch,
which was on the emergency panel just beside the control deck door.
Once
he reached that switch they'd be safe—for a while, anyway. The hull of the ship
was built in three layers and the middle layer consisted of a series of
magnetic plates which moved automatically, when the switch was thrown to any
aperture in the hull.
"Got
to make it, got to make it!" he kept telling himself desperately,
hypnotically. Sudden weariness bogged his feet, weakened his knees. It was
getting colder. Things swam in his vision.
The
ship was rocking and swerving in space. He could tell that by the way the
artificial gravity lagged each change of direction-giving him a weird,
floating, dreamlike sensation. Once lurching in a complete circle, he was able
to glimpse the other passengers.
Two
of the bridge players near the rear were missing—they'd been blown through the
hole, probably. Now, frozen to the hardness of metal, they'd just keep
traveling in space in their original direction. Forever, probably. Most of the
others had been thrown about considerably. One of the big space guards was flat
on his face, wedged between two piles of baggage.
The
Telenews man had a twisted blood-soaked leg and sat there, staring at it
stupidly. The Jovian prisoner, Xyl, was experiencing the only terror he
knew—the fear of death. He was trying to flatten himself against the bulkhead.
Ben
swung around again, nearly lost balance, recovered, then gave himself one
tremendous push forward. He reached the panel.
His
hand closed on the mesh switch—he lost consciousness just as he closed it.
He
couldn't have been out long. He was on his knees and his face was slumped
against the bulkhead between the waist and control deck when he opened his
eyes. He got up unsteadily. The air was tighter. The wailing of the oxy-renewer
had stopped.
He
turned. He put his shoulder blades and palms to the bulkhead. He stood there,
panting, and his eyes took everything in. The passengers were milling about.
Some were just recovering from anoxia. A few were muttering. Several were
moaning. They were very confused.
"All right, back to your seats
everybody," Ben said.
They stared at him vaguely.
"I said back to your seats/"
He was a little startled at the firmness of
his own voice. He was even more startled at how quickly they moved to obey.
They
went back to their seats and then they sat there, staring at him. He pointed to
the guard on the floor and to the Telenews man. "See what you can do. I'll
be back in a second with plasma."
He
stepped into Control. He stepped once more, forward—and then he stopped short.
His eyebrows rose and without willing it he stepped back again.
Control
was a shambles. Something—probably a nuclear shell-had come through the hull
and exploded. Both Captain Mace and Lieutenant Washam were slumped over the
panel. Mace's red head was twisted at an angle no living head could possibly
assume. The grin was still on it.
Mace's
hand rested on the panel, where it had fallen, on the mesh-switch. That
explained why there was air and warmth in the Control room. Beside Mace,
Lieutenant Washam was slumped back in his seat and his cropped blond head was
split down the middle as though by an axe.
Ben
felt sickness at his palate. He swallowed, and tried not to think about it.
He grabbed plasma from the
racks and stumbled back into the passenger compartment. It seemed to him that
he was now in more of a daze than he had been just before losing consciousness.
In
the waist he took a deep breath and got to work. Some of the others were trying
to move the guard who lay face down on the deck. He stopped that. He pushed
them away and examined the man quickly and thoroughly.
He
set up a plasma bottle, hung it on someone's outstretched hand, inserted the
needle. Then he moved quickly to the Telenews man. More plasma—and plenty of
narcophine, too.
Funny,
Ben thought, most of these combat boys knew first aid— knew it better than he
did. Yet they'd been undecided—even a little stupid about the whole thing.
Maybe it was the shock—maybe the suddenness of everything. Well, he couldn't
worry about that, now. He had something to tell them. This was going to be the
toughest little speech of all.
He
went forward and stood by the door to Control, and said, "May I have your
attention, please."
He
flushed slightly as they all turned blank stares upon him. What a fool
thing—what a stuffy thing to say! Anybody worth his salt, any real leader,
would have used other words, another tone of voice. Ben didn't know just what
words or what tone—but he knew that he had been wrong.
Well, he had their
attention.
He
cleared his throat. He looked around. He was too embroiled within his own
thoughts, his own doubts, really to see anything. He moistened his lips.
"There's been trouble in Control. Both of our pilots have been hit.
They're dead."
Complete silence, still the
blank stares.
Ben
said, "Uh—" and then he couldn't think of anything else to say.
Stoppage. He swallowed hard.
He
said, "We seem to be all right for the time being. An attacking spaceship
can't possibly turn back for another pass before a matter of hours." Sure,
he was telling them. He'd never seen an attacking spaceship, not even the one
that had just attacked. They had. They'd seen it all.
He kept talking with a kind of insane
determination. "The problem is to land—somewhere, if we can't make the
Earth spaceport. We've got to get in somehow."
Another
long silence and then a scarred construction sergeant said in a croaking voice:
"Okay. What do we do?"
The
meaning of it didn't hit Ben right away. The fact that one of the combat men
had asked him what to do. Come to think of it it had sounded almost like
sarcasm. Maybe, maybe not—Ben wasn't sure.
He asked, "Anybody
here know how to land a spaceship?"
They
took their blank stares away from his this time and turned them upon each
other. Several shook their heads. Two nuclear gunners faced each other and
shrugged.
Ben's
eyes swung across the lot of them—and then landed on Xyl, the Jovian.
They stopped.
"You."
Ben pointed at him.
Xyl
had resumed man-shape again. Either he had quieted down by himself or the
remaining guard had threatened him with an acid gun. He sat far back in the
seat. He turned his expressionless eyes on Ben and his mushy voice, cast
incongruously in a breezy space pilot's idiom, sounded.
"What's up? Why give
me the big finger and the boiled eye, kid?"
"You're
a space pilot," Ben said. "You can get us on course. And you can land
this thing."
Xyl threw back the blob of his head and
laughed. When he brought his head down again, he had stopped laughing. His face
was flaccid. "Do you think I'd get you stupid jerks out of a hole? When
did I take out citizenship papers for planet number three? Don't be
silly."
"Okay,"
said Ben. "Suit yourself. Our rations will last maybe a week. You Jovians
need food like anybody else. But even if we had food we're off course and the
chances are maybe a million to one we'll hit Earth or any other planet. We're
in a fair way to be space derelicts. You know that, don't you?"
Xyl thought it over. He gave no sign of
thinking, such as cocking his head or frowning or squinting. But he was silent,
clearly thinking it over. He looked up finally. He rose. The guard rose with
him.
He
said to Ben, "Come on kid, let's take a look at the driver's office."
There
was the messy business first of moving the bodies of Mace and Washam. Ben
called others in to help. He noticed that they sprang pretty quickly when he
called them—even the bird colonel with the clipped white mustache. He noticed
that when they had finished doing something they looked to him for further
instructions.
Xyl
worked at the navigation table until he found the course. He said curtly,
"Okay," out of the side of his mouth, then poured himself into the
seat and began to manipulate the instruments. Ben. and the guard stood behind
him. Once he turned and grinned and then he laughed in a crazy way—more to
himself than to the others.
The
guard was a beefy man with bluish jowls and shortcropped black hair. His voice
was a strident bass. He turned to Ben and said, "I don't like it. I don't
like it one damn bit."
"Me,
either," Ben said. He scratched his cheek. He shifted his stance. Seemed
to him the backs of his knees prickled. He watched and waited.
Hard to tell what was happening. The big
burning eye of the sun was still to the left, so they seemed to be on course.
Xyl, controlling, merely sat most of the time and watched dials and indicators.
Once in awhile he pushed a button, moved a scale. He could be taking them out
into eternal nothing for all Ben knew. He dropped that suspicion only when he
saw the bright oval of Earth begin to grow in the front plates.
Ben said to the guard,
"He's on course."
The guard said, "Yeah."
And
Ben knew by the tone of the guard's voice that they were both thinking the same
thing. Xyl might be going to Earth, all right, but he might just deliberately
forget to decelerate. He might hang the nose on a course to Earth's big fat
bosom—and just keep going. That might appeal to his sense of humor.
Ben said, "There's
nothing we can do about it. We've got to take the chance he'll bring us in.
We've got to stand here and wait." The guard said, "Yeah." Both
shifted their feet again.
They
neared Earth. They could see the continents and the oceans and the night shadow
line moving against the planet's rotation. It was in the Atlantic. The
telesight showed, enlarged, their own target—the state of New Mexico in the
North American continent where the spaceport lay.
"So far so good,"
said Ben.
The guard merely nodded this time.
Once
Xyl turned his face to Ben. That insane grin was still on it. He looked
steadily and impudently at Ben for a moment, then said, "How come you
saved my life from that combat-loony character, boy?"
If Ben had been able to find the words to
explain it he probably wouldn't have liked the sound of them anyway. For an
answer he shrugged.
Xyl said, "I see," and turned back
to the controls.
The
image of Earth filled the front plates before Xyl readied for his orbit turn.
Again he looked at the other two. His wise-cracking manner was gone now. His
dead pan was still there.
"In
the cradles," he said. He reached for the lever that would tilt his own
control seat into a vertical, spring-supported affair. He pressed the warning
bell for the passengers.
Ben
and the guard took two of the cradles in the crew quarters. They could watch
Xyl from there. They could see him manipulate the controls like an organist at
a six-part fugue. They could hear him swear—they could see the times when he
was puzzled and unsure.
Ben called across the aisle to the guard.
"He doesn't know this type of ship. He's running on a prayer."
"Yeah," the guard said. He watched Xyl flatly.
The ship's gravity lagged the change of
direction and the cradles swung gently as it curved to the left to enter a
standard orbit. They heard the faint hiss of the decelerators, still on low.
Then there was a swing over to the right and the ship was on a wide involute
spiral around the earth.
From
his cradle Ben could see the third planet's surface move by. The ship, still at
space-speed, curved around to center lightside. The sun glared in through the
port windows.
Ben
heard the creaking and felt the terrible heat first. He recognized it
immediately. He brought his head up fast. "We've hit atmosphere!" he
yelled at Xyl. "Your coolers! Get 'em on!"
Xyl
pounced on the cooling switch. The hull plates kept creaking—the tech manual
didn't recommend switching the coolers on with more than 250 C. on the outside plates. Ben looked up and eyed the patched shell hole
anxiously.
Then
the roar of the decel jets pounded in his ears. He was jolted. He felt himself
swing in the cradle. He felt the straps bite into his limbs and body. He swore.
A hardened space pilot could decel this fast with a cargo of freight—but not
with passengers. Then he laughed a little crazily. Those passengers back there
would be lucky if they landed alive and here he was worrying about their
comfort.
The roar got louder. It filled everything
everywhere. It became one overwhelming mass of vibration. Ben began to get sick
and dizzy. He tightened his lips. First time he'd had landing or blast-off
sickness in ages. He swore again and forced himself to relax.
Blackness came suddenly and washed over him
like a breaker.
The
roar was still all about him when he awoke. He came to with most of his senses
and the blurred objects in his sight came quickly into focus. He was still in
the cradle. Xyl was still at the fore-plates, hunched over the control console.
Earth loomed beyond him. Earth close and solid—Ben could see the shadow side of
a mountain range, could even make out faintly the greener areas. The whole of
it seemed to slam toward the ship.
Too fast—he's going too fast, Ben thought.
The guard across the way yelled.
"Hey—look out!"
There was a crash.
Ben
didn't go into blackness this time. He fell into a swirling kaleidoscopic
unreality. It was like coming home late at night very drunk, lying on the bed,
closing your eyes and feeling that the room went round and round.
Later
he discovered that he was moving although he wasn't sure how or where and he
didn't remember getting himself out of the cradle. The full use of his senses
came back to him slowly. The first thing he noticed was that he was standing on
ground—good firm ground—Earth ground.
That
was a thrill you never quite lost, no matter how many plan-etfalls you made. He
was outside then. He could smell Earth—he could smell growing things. He breathed
deeply. His vision cleared and he saw the ship, plowed deep and at an angle in
a mountainside. He saw some of the other passengers wandering about, some in a
daze very much like his own.
He
had something in his hand. With mild surprise he looked at it. It was the thing
he had taken away from Eddington during the fight.
And
there was the sound of a step beyond his elbow and he turned and saw Eddington
standing there. Eddington had his palm out. There wasn't any more wild look in
his big eyes. He was grinning faintly.
"You
can give that back to me now, buddy. After this it'll be just a souvenir."
Ben
smiled back and handed him the thing. He said, "Where's Xyl?"
Eddington
jerked his thumb at the ship. "He got in the blast of a decel jet when we
hit. No more Xyl. But even if there was I wouldn't use this." He held up
the object. "A spiky leaf from a Jovian cactus," he said. "The
only thing besides acid that can kill one of those guys. Well—it'll look good
in the living room some day. I'll look at it and remember you, buddy—and
Xyl."
"Sure,"
said Ben. "Sure you will." But he wasn't really listening. He was
looking around at the other passengers, who were beginning to form groups and
come toward him. They were looking at him. They were waiting for him to tell
them what to do—they depended
58 'space service
on
him to get them off the mountainside and back to some kind of civilization.
They'd been depending on him all along.
Ben Harlow smiled and drew his shoulders back
and got ready to give them a little briefing speech. He knew that this one—and
any after it—would finally sound right in his own ears.
Space marine: Kurt Dixon
The traditions of a special force are strong.
They can hold a man or men to duty for
years—or centuries.
Could they keep a forgotten regiment ready
and waiting to serve for generations?
|
Kurt
Dixon of the 427th
Light Maintenance Battalion
of the Imperial Space Marines might answer that.
Specter
General
BY THEODORE R. COGSWELL
I
"Sergeant Dixon I"
Kurt
stiffened. He knew that voice. Dropping the handles of the wooden plow, he gave
a quick "rest" to the private and a polite "by your leave,
sir" to the lieutenant who were yoked together in double harness. They
both sank gratefully to the ground as Kurt advanced to meet the approaching
officer.
Marcus
Harris, the commander of the 427th Light
Maintenance Battalion of the Imperial Space Marines, was an imposing figure.
The three silver eagle feathers of a full colonel rose proudly from his war
bonnet and the bright red of the flaming comet insignia of the Space Marines
that was painted on his chest stood out sharply against his sun-blackened,
leathery skin. As Kurt snapped to attention before him and saluted, the
colonel surveyed the fresh-tumed earth with an experienced eye.
"You
plow a straight furrow, soldier!" His voice was hard and metallic but it
seemed to Kurt that there was a concealed glimmer of approval in his flinty
eyes. Dixon flushed with pleasure and drew his broad shoulders back a little
farther.
The commander's eyes flicked down to the
battle-ax that rested
snugly
in its leather holster at Kurt's side. "You keep a clean side-arm,
too."
Kurt uttered a silent prayer of thanksgiving
that he had worked over his weapon before reveille that morning until there was
a satin gloss to its redwood handle and the sheen of black glass to its obsidian
head.
"In fact," said Colonel Harris,
"you'd be officer material if—" His voice trailed off.
"If what?" asked
Kurt eagerly.
"If,"
said the colonel with a note of paternal fondness in his voice that sent cold
chills dancing down Kurt's spine, "you weren't the most completely
unmanageable, undisciplined, over-muscled and under-brained knucklehead I've
ever had the misfortune to have in my command. This last little unauthorized
jaunt of yours indicates to me that you have as much right to sergeant's
stripes as I have to have kittens. Report to me at ten tomorrow! I personally
guarantee that when I'm through with you—if you live that long—you'll have a
bare forehead!"
Colonel Harris spun on one heel and stalked
back across the dusty plateau toward the walled garrison that stood at one end.
Kurt stared after him for a moment and then turned and let his eyes slip across
the wide belt of lush green jungle that surrounded the high plateau. To the
north rose a great range of snow-capped mountains and his heart filled with
longing as he thought of the strange and beautiful thing he had found behind
them. Finally he plodded slowly back to the plow, his shoulders stooped and his
head sagging. With an effort he recalled himself to the business at hand.
"Up
on your dying feet, soldier!" he barked to the reclining private. "If
you please, sir!" he said to the lieutenant. His calloused hands grasped
the worn plow handles.
"Giddiup!"
The two men strained against their collars and with a creak of harness the
wooden plow started to move slowly across the arid plateau.
Conrad
Krogson, Supreme Commander of War Base Three of Sector Seven of the Galactic
Protectorate stood at quaking attention before the visiscreen of his space
communicator. It was an unusual position for the commander. He was accustomed
to having people quake while he talked.
"The
Lord Protector's got another hot tip that General Carr is still alive!"
said the sector commander. "He's yelling for blood; and if it's a choice
between yours and mine, you know who will do the donating!"
"But,
sir," quavered Krogson to the figure on the screen, "I can't do
anything more than I am doing. I've had double security checks running since
the last time there was an alert, and they haven't turned up a thing. And I'm
so shorthanded now that if I pull another random purge, I won't have enough
techs left to work the base."
"That's
your problem, not mine," said the sector commander coldly. "All that
I know is that rumors have got to the Protector that an organized underground
is being built up and that Carr is behind it. The Protector wants action now.
If he doesn't get it, heads are going to roll!"
"I'll do what I can, sir," promised
Krogson.
"I'm
sure you will," said the sector commander viciously, "because I'm
giving you exactly ten days to produce something that is big enough to take the
heat off me. If you don't, I'll break you,. Krogson. If I'm sent to the mines,
you'll be sweating right alongside me. That's a promise!"
Krogson's face blanched.
"Any questions?" snapped the sector
commander. "Yes," said Krogson.
"Well
don't bother me with them. I've got troubles of my own!" The screen went
dark.
Krogson slumped into his chair and sat
staring dully at the blank screen. Finally he roused himself with an effort and
let out a bellow that rattled the windows of his dusty office.
"Schninkle! Get in here!"
A gnomelike little figure
scuttled in through the door and bobbed obsequiously before him. "Yes,
commander?"
"Switch
on your thinktank," said Krogson. "The Lord Protector has the shakes
again and the heat's onl"
"What is it this
time?" asked Schninkle.
"General
Carr," said the commander gloomily, "the ex-Number Two."
"I thought he'd been
liquidated."
"So
did I," said Krogson, "but he must have slipped out some way. The
Protector thinks he's started up an underground."
"He'd
be a fool if he didn't," said the little man. "The Lord Protector
isn't as young as he once was and his grip is getting a little shaky."
"Maybe
so, but he's still strong enough to get us before General Cart gets him. The
Sector Commander just passed the buck down to me. We produce or elsel"
"We?" said
Schninkle unhappily.
"Of
course," snapped Krogson, "we're in this together. Now let's get to
work! If you were Carr, where would be the logical place for you to hide
out?"
"Well,"
said Schninkle thoughtfully, "if I were as smart as Carr is supposed to
be, I'd find myself a hideout right on Prime Base. Everything's so fouled up
there that they'd never find me."
"That's
out for us," said Krogson. "We can't go rooting around in the Lord
Protector's own backyard. What would Can's next best bet be?"
Schninkle thought for a moment. "He
might go out to one of the deserted systems," he said slowly. "There
must be half a hundred stars in our own base area that haven't been visited
since the old empire broke up. Our ships don't get around the way they used to
and the chances are mighty slim that anybody would stumble on to him
accidentally."
"It's
a possibility," said the commander thoughtfully, "a bare
possibility." His right fist slapped into his left palm in a gesture of
sudden resolution. "But by the PlanetsI At least it's something! Alert all
section heads for a staff meeting in half an hour. I want every scout out on a
quick check of every system in our area!"
"Beg
pardon, commander," said Schninkle, "but half our light ships are
red-lined for essential maintenance and the other half should be. Anyway it
would take months to check every possible hideout in this area even if we used
the whole fleet."
"I
know," said Krogson, "but we'll have to do what we can with what we
have. At least I'll be able to report to sector that we're doing something.'
Tell Astrogation to set up a series of search patterns. We won't have to check
every planet. A single quick sweep through each system will do the trick. Even
Carr can't run a base without power. Where there's power, there's radiation,
and radiation can be detected a long way off. Put all electronic techs on
double shifts and have all detection gear double-checked."
"Can't
do that either," said Schninkle. "There aren't more than a dozen
electronic techs left. Most of them were transferred to Prime Base last
week."
Commander
Krogson blew up. "How in the name of the Bloody Blue Pleiades am I
supposed to keep a war base going without technicians? You tell me, Schninkle,
you always seem to know all the answers."
Schninkle
coughed modestly. "Well, sir," he said, "as long as you have a
situation where technicians are sent to the uranium mines for making mistakes,
it's going to be an unpopular vocation. And, as long as the Lord Protector of
the moment is afraid that Number Two, Number Three, and so on have ideas about
grabbing his job—which they generally do—he's going to keep his fleet as strong
as possible and their fleets so weak they aren't dangerous. The best way to do
that is to grab techs. If most of a base's ships are sitting around waiting
repair, the commander won't be able to do much about any ambitions he may
happen to have. Add that to the obvious fact that our whole technology has
been on a downward spiral for the last three hundred years and you have your
answer."
Krogson nodded gloomy agreement.
"Sometimes I feel as if we were all on a dead ship falling into a dying
sun," he said with rare candor. His voice suddenly altered. "But in
the meantime we have our necks to save. Get going, Schninkle!" Schninkle
bobbed and darted out of the office.
Ill
It was exactly ten o'clock in the morning
when Sergeant Dixon of the Imperial Space Marines snapped to attention before
his commanding officer.
"Sergeant
Dixon reporting as ordered, sirl" His voice cracked a bit in spite of his
best efforts to control it.
The
colonel looked at him coldly. "Nice of you to drop in, Dixon," he
said. "Shall we go ahead with our little chat?"
Kurt
nodded nervously.
"I
have here," said the colonel, shuffling a sheaf of papers, "a report
of an unauthorized expedition made by you into Off Limits territory."
"Which
one do you mean, sir?" asked Kurt without thinking. "Then there has
been more than one?" asked the colonel quietly. Kurt started to stammer.
Colonel
Harris silenced him with a gesture of his hand. "I'm talking about the
country to the north, the tableland back of the Twin Peaks."
"It's
a beautiful place!" burst out Kurt enthusiastically. "It's . . . it's
like Imperial Headquarters must be. Dozens of little streams full of fish,
trees heavy with fruit, small game so slow and stupid that they can be knocked
over with a club. Why, the battalion could live there without hardly lifting a
finger!"
"I've
no doubt that they could," said the colonel.
"Think
of it, sirl" continued the sergeant. "No more plowing details, no
more hunting details, no more nothing but taking it easy!"
"You might add to your list of 'no
mores,' no more tech schools," said Colonel Harris. "I'm quite aware
that the place is all you say it is, sergeant. As a result I'm placing all
information that pertains to it in a 'Top Secret' category. That applies to
what is inside your head as well!"
"But, sirl"
protested Kurt. "If you could only see the place—"
"I have," broke
in the colonel, "thirty years ago."
Kurt looked at him in
amazement. "Then why are we still on the
plateau?"
"Because
my commanding officer did just what I've just done, classified the information
'Top Secret.' Then he gave me thirty days' extra detail on the plows. After he
took my stripes away that is." Colonel Harris rose slowly to his feet.
"Dixon," he said softly, "it's not every man who can be a
noncommissioned officer in the Space Marines. Sometimes we guess wrong. When we
do we do something about itl" There was the hissing crackle of distant summer
lightning in his voice and storm clouds seemed to gather about his head.
"Wipe those chevrons offl" he roared.
Kurt looked at him in mute protest.
"You heard me!"
the colonel thundered.
"Yes-s-s,
sir," stuttered Kurt, reluctantly drawing his forearm across his forehead
and wiping off the three triangles of white grease paint that marked him a
sergeant in the Imperial Space Marines. Quivering with shame, he took a tight
grip on his temper and choked back the angry protests that were trying to force
their way past his lips.
"Maybe,"
suggested the colonel, "you'd like to make a complaint to the I.G. He's
due in a few days and he might reverse my decision. It has happened before, you
know."
"No, sir," said
Kurt woodenly.
"Why not?"
demanded Harris.
"When
I was sent out as a scout for the hunting parties I was given direct orders not
to range farther than twenty kilometers to the north. I went sixty."
Suddenly his forced composure broke. "I couldn't help it, sir," he
said. "There was something behind those peaks that kept pulling me and
pulling me and"—he threw up his hands—"you know the rest."
There
was a sudden change in the colonel's face as a warm human smile swept across
it, and he broke into a peal of laughter. "It's a hell of a feeling, isn't
it, son? You know you shouldn't, but at the same time there's something inside
you that says you've got to know what's behind those peaks or die. When you get
a few more years under your belt you'll find that it isn't just mountains that
make you feel like that. Here, boy, have a seat." He gestured toward a
woven wicker chair that stood by his desk.
Kurt
shifted uneasily from one foot to the other, stunned by the colonel's sudden
change of attitude and embarrassed by his request. "Excuse me, sir,"
he said, "but we aren't out on work detail, and—"
The
colonel laughed. "And enlisted men not on work detail don't sit in the
presence of officers. Doesn't the way we do things ever strike you as odd,
Dixon? On one hand you'd see nothing strange about being yoked to a plow with a
major, and on the other you'd never dream of sitting in his presence off
duty."
Kurt
looked puzzled. "Work details are different," he said. "We all
have to work if we're going to eat. But in the garrison, officers are officers
and enlisted men are enlisted men and that's the way it's always been."
Still smiling, the colonel
reached into his desk drawer, fished out something, and tossed it to Kurt.
"Stick this in your scalp lock," he said.
Kurt
looked at it, stunned. It was a golden feather crossed with a single black bar,
the insignia of rank of a second lieutenant of the Imperial Space Marines. The
room swirled before his eyes.
"Now," said the
older officer, "sit down!"
Kurt
slowly lowered himself into the chair and looked at the colonel through bemused
eyes.
"Stop
gawking!" said Colonel Harris. "You're an officer now! When a man
gets too big for his sandals, we give him a new pair-after we let him sweat a
while!"
He
suddenly grew serious. "Now that you're one of the family you have a right
to know why I'm hushing up the matter of the tableland to the north. What I
have to say won't make much sense at first. Later I'm hoping it will. Tell
me," he said suddenly, "where did the battalion come from?"
"We've
always been here, I guess," said Kurt. "When I was a recruit,
Granddad used to tell me stories about us being brought from some place else a
long time ago by an iron bird, but it stands to reason that something that
heavy can't fly!"
A
faraway look came into the colonel's eyes. "Six generations," he
mused, "and history becomes legend. Another six and the legends themselves
become tales for children. Yes, Kurt," he said softly, "it stands to
reason that something that heavy couldn't fly so we'll forget it for a while.
We did come from some place else though. Once there was a great empire, so
great that all the stars you see at night were only part of it. And then, as
things do when age rests too heavily on them, it began to crumble. Commanders fell
to fighting among themselves and the Emperor grew weak. The battalion was set
down here to operate a forward maintenance station for his ships. We waited but
no ships came. For five hundred years no ships have come," said the
colonel somberly. "Perhaps they tried to relieve us and couldn't, perhaps
the Empire fell with such a crash that we were lost in the wreckage. There are
a thousand perhapses that a man can tick off in his mind when the nights are
long and sleep comes hard! Lost . . . forgotten . . . who knows?"
Kurt
stared at him with a blank expression on his face. Most of what the colonel had
said made no sense at all. Wherever Imperial Headquarters was, it hadn't
forgotten them. The I.G. still made his inspection every year or so.
The
colonel continued as if talking to himself. "But our operational orders
said that we would stand by to give all necessary maintenance to Imperial
warcraft until properly relieved, and stand by we have."
The
old officer's voice seemed to be coming from a place far distant in time and
space.
"I'm
sorry, sir," said Kurt, "but I don't follow you. If all these things
did happen, it was so long ago that they mean nothing to us now."
"But
they do!" said Colonel Harris vigorously. "It's because of them that
things like your rediscovery of the tableland to the north have to be
suppressed for the good of the battalion! Here on the plateau the living is
hard. Our work in the fields and the meat brought in by our hunting parties
give us just enough to get by on. But here we have the garrison and the Tech
Schools—and vague as it has become—a reason for remaining together as the
battalion. Out there where the living is easy we'd lose that. We almost did
once. A wise commander stopped it before it went too far. There are still a few
signs of that time left—left deliberately as reminders of what can happen if
commanding officers forget why we're here!" "What things?" asked
Kurt curiously.
"Well, son," said the colonel,
picking up his great war bonnet from the desk and gazing at it quizzically,
"I don't think you're quite ready for that information yet. Now take off
and strut your feather. I've got work to dol"
IV
At
War Base Three nobody was happy. Ships that were supposed to be light-months
away carrying on the carefully planned search for General Carr's hideout were
fluttering down out of the sky like senile penguins, disabled by blown jets,
jammed computers, and all the other natural ills that worn out and poorly
serviced equipment is heir to. Technical maintenance was quickly going mad.
Commander Krogson was being noisy about it.
"Schninkle!" he
screamed. "Isn't anything happening any place?"
"Nothing yet, sir,"
said the little man.
"Well
make something happen!" He hoisted his battered brogans onto the scarred
top of the desk and chewed savagely on a frayed cigar. "How are the other
sectors doing?"
"No
better than we are," said Schninkle. "Commander Snork of Sector Six
tried to pull a fast one but he didn't get away with it. He sent his STAP into
a plantation planet out at the edge of the Belt and had them hypno the whole
population. By the time they were through there were about fifteen million
greenies running around yelling 'Up with General Card' 'Down with the Lord Protector!'
'Long Live the People's Revolution!' and things like that. Snork even gave them
a few medium vortex blasters to make it look more realistic. Then he sent in
his whole fleet, tipped off the press at Prime Base, and waited. Guess what the
Bureau of Essential Information finally sent him?"
"I'll bite," said
Commander Krogson.
"One
lousy cub reporter. Snork couldn't back out then so he had to go ahead and
blast the planet down to bedrock. This moming he got a three-line notice in
Space and a citation as Third Rate Protector of the People's Space Ways, Eighth
Grade."
"That's
better than the nothing we've got so far!" said the commander gloomily.
"Not
when the press notice is buried on the next to last page right below the column
on 'Our Feathered Comrades'," said Schninkle, "and when the citation
is posthumous. They even misspelled his name; it came out Snark!"
V
As
Kurt turned to go, there was a sharp knock on Colonel Harris' door.
"Come in!" called
the colonel.
Lieutenant
Colonel Blick, the battalion executive officer, entered with an arrogant stride
and threw his commander a slovenly salute. For a moment he didn't notice Kurt
standing at attention beside the door.
"Listen,
Harrisl" he snarled. "What's the idea of pulling that clean-up detail
out of my quarters?"
"There
are no servants in this battalion, Blick," the older man said quietly.
"When the men come in from work detail at night they're tired. They've
earned a rest and as long as I'm CO. they're going to get it. If you have dirty
work that has to be done, do it yourself. You're better able to do it than some
poor devil who's been dragging a plow all day. I suggest you check pertinent
regulations!"
"Regulations!"
growled Blick. "What do you expect me to do, scrub my own floors?"
"I
do," said the colonel dryly, "when my wife is too busy to get to it.
I haven't noticed that either my dignity or my efficiency have suffered
appreciably. I might add," he continued mildly, "that staff officers
are supposed to set a good example for their juniors. I don't think either your
tone or your manner are those that Lieutenant Dixon should be encouraged to
emulate." He gestured toward Kurt and Blick spun on one heel.
"Lieutenant DixonI" he roared in an
incredulous voice. "By whose authority?"
"Mine,"
said the colonel mildly. "In case you've forgotten I am still commanding
officer of this battalion."
"I
protest!" said Blick. "Commissions have always been awarded by
decision of the entire staff."
"Which you now
control," replied the colonel.
Kurt
coughed nervously. "Excuse me, sir," he said, "but I think I'd
better leave."
Colonel Harris shook his head. "You're
one of our official family now, son, and you might as well get used to our
squabbles. This particular one has been going on between Colonel Blick and me
for years. He has no patience with some of our old customs." He turned to
Blick. "Have you, colonel?"
"You're
right, I haven't!" growled Blick. "And that's why I'm going to change
some of them as soon as I get the chance. The sooner we stop this Tech School
nonsense and put the recruits to work in the fields where they belong, the
better off we'll all be. Why should a plowman or a hunter have to know how to
read wiring diagrams or set tubes. It's nonsense, superstitious nonsense.
You!" he said, stabbing his finger into the chest of the startled lieutenant.
"You! DixonI You spent fourteen years in the Tech Schools just like I did
when I was a recruit. What for?"
"To learn maintenance,
of course," said Kurt.
"What's
maintenance?" demanded Blick.
"Taking
stuff apart and putting it back together and polishing jet bores with
microplanes and putting plates in alignment and checking the meters when we're
through to see the job was done right. Then there's class work in Direc
calculus and subelectronics and-"
"That's
enough!" interrupted Blick. "And now that you've learned all that,
what can you do with it?"
Kurt looked at him in surprise. "Do with
it?" he echoed. "You don't do anything with it. You just learn it
because regulations say you should."
"And
this," said Blick, turning to Colonel Harris, "is one of your prize
products. Fourteen of his best years poured down the drain and he doesn't even
know what fori" He paused and then said in an arrogant voice, "I'm
here for a showdown, Harris!" "Yes?" said the colonel mildly.
"I demand that the Tech Schools be
closed at once and the recruits released for work details. If you want to keep
your command, you'll issue that order. The staff is behind me on thisl"
Colonel
Harris rose slowly to his feet. Kurt waited for the thunder to roll, but
strangely enough it didn't. It almost seemed to him that there was an
expression of concealed amusement playing across the colonel's face.
"Some
day, just for once," he said, "I wish somebody around here would do
something that hasn't been done before."
"What do you mean by
that?" demanded Blick.
"Nothing,"
said the colonel. "You know," he continued conversationally, "a
long time ago I walked into my C.O.'s and made the same demands and the same
threats that you're making now. I didn't get very far, though—just as you
aren't going to—because I overlooked the little matter of the Inspector
General's annual visit. He's due in from Imperial Headquarters Saturday night,
isn't he, Blick?"
"You know he is!"
growled the other.
"Aren't
worried, are you? It occurs to me that the I.G. might take a dim view of your new order."
"I don't think he'll mind," said
Blick with a nasty grin. "Now will you issue the order to close the Tech
Schools or won't you?"
"Of course not!"
said the colonel brusquely.
"That's final?"
Colonel Harris just nodded.
"All right,"
barked Blick, "you asked for it!"
There
was an ugly look on his face as he barked, "Kane! Simmons! Arnettl The
rest of you! Get in here!"
The door to Harris' office swung slowly open
and revealed a group of officers standing sheepishly in the anteroom.
"Come in,
gentlemen," said Colonel Harris.
They
came slowly forward and grouped themselves just inside the door.
"I'm taking overl" roared Blick.
"This garrison has needed a house cleaning for a long time and I'm just
the man to do itl"
"How about the rest of
you?" asked the colonel.
"Beg
pardon, sir," said one hesitantly, "but we think Colonel Blick's
probably right. I'm afraid we're going to have to confine you for a few days.
Just until after the I.G.'s visit," he added apologetically.
"And what do you think the I.G. will say
to all this?"
"Colonel
Blick says we don't have to worry about that," said the officer.
"He's going to take care of everything."
A
look of sudden anxiety played across Harris' face and for the first time he
seemed on the verge of losing his composure.
"How?" he
demanded, his voice betraying his concern.
"He didn't say,
sir," the other replied. Harris relaxed visibly.
"All
right," said Blick. "Let's get moving!" He walked behind the
desk and plumped into the colonel's chair. Hoisting his feet on the desk he
gave his first command.
"Take him away!"
There was a sudden roar from the far corner
of the room. "No you don't!" shouted Kurt. His battle-ax leaped into
his hand as he jumped in front of Colonel Harris, his muscular body taut and
his gray eyes flashing defiance.
Blick
jumped to his feet. "Disarm that man!" he commanded. There was a
certain amount of scuffling as the officers in the front of the group by the
door tried to move to the rear and those behind them resolutely defended their
more protected positions.
Blick's
face grew so purple that he seemed on the verge of apoplexy. "Major
Kane," he demanded, "place that man under restraint!"
Kane
advanced toward Kurt with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm. Keeping a cautious
eye on the glittering ax head, he said in what he obviously hoped to be a
placating voice, "Come now, old man. Can't have this sort of thing, you
know." He stretched out his hand hesitantly toward Kurt. "Why don't
you give me your ax and we'll forget that the incident ever occurred."
Kurt's
ax suddenly leaped toward the major's head. Kane stood petrified as death
whizzed toward him. At the last split second Kurt gave a practiced twist to his
wrist and the ax jumped up, cutting the air over the major's head with a
vicious whistle. The top half of his silver staff plume drifted slowly to the floor.
"You
want it," roared Kurt, his ax flicking back and forth like a snake's
tongue, "you come get it. That goes for the rest of you, too!"
The little knot of officers retreated still
farther. Colonel Harris was having the time of his life. "Give it to 'em,
son!" he whooped.
Blick
looked contemptuously at the staff and slowly drew his own ax. Colonel Harris
suddenly stopped laughing.
"Wait
a minute, Blick!" he said. "This has gone far enough." He turned
to Kurt.
"Give them your ax,
son."
Kurt
looked at him with an expression of hurt bewilderment in his eyes, hesitated
for a moment, and then glumly surrendered his weapon to the relieved major.
"Now,"
snarled Blick, "take that insolent puppy out and feed him to the
lizards!"
Kurt
drew himself up in injured dignity. "That is no way to refer to a brother
officer," he said reproachfully.
The
vein in Blick's forehead started to pulse again. "Get him out of here
before I tear him to shreds!" he hissed through clenched teeth. There was
silence for a moment as he fought to regain control of himself. Finally he
succeeded.
"Lock
him up!" he said in an approximation to his normal voice. "Tell the
provost sergeant I'll send down the charges as soon as I can think up
enough."
Kurt was led resentfully
from the room.
"The
rest of you clear out," said Blick. "I want to talk with Colonel
Harris about the I.G."
VI
There
was a saying in the Protectorate that when the Lord Protector was angry, stars
and heads fell. Commander Krogson felt his wabble on his neck. His far-sweeping
scouts were sending back nothing but reports of equipment failure, and the
sector commander had coldly informed him that morning that his name rested
securely at the bottom of the achievement list. It looked as if War Base Three
would shortly have a change of command.
"Look,
Schninkle," he said desperately, "even if we can't give them
anything, couldn't we make a promise that would look good enough to take some
of the heat off us?"
Schninkle looked dubious.
"Maybe a new five-year
plan?" suggested Krogson.
The
little man shook his head. "That's a subject we'd better avoid
entirely," he said. "They're still asking nasty questions about what
happened to the last one. Mainly on the matter of our transport quota. I took
the liberty of passing the buck on down to Logistics. Several of them have been
. . . eh . . . removed as a consequence."
"Serves them right!" snorted
Krogson. "They got me into that mess with their 'if a freighter and a half
flies a light-year and a half in a month and a half, ten freighters can fly ten
light-years in ten months!' I knew there was something fishy about it at the
time but I couldn't put my finger on it."
"It's always darkest before the
storm," said Schninkle helpfully.
VII
"Take
off your war bonnet and make yourself comfortable," said Colonel Harris
hospitably.
Blick
grunted assent. "This thing is sort of heavy," he said. "I think
I'll change uniform regulations while I'm at it."
"There
was something you wanted to tell me?" suggested the colonel.
"Yeah," said Blick. "I figure
that you figure the I.G.'s going to bail you out of this. Right?" "I
wouldn't be surprised."
"I
would," said Blick. "I was up snoopin' around the armory last week.
There was something there that started me doing some heavy thinking. Do you
know what it was?"
"I can guess,"
said the colonel.
"As
I looked at it it suddenly occurred to me what a happy coincidence it is that
the Inspector General always arrives just when you happen to need him."
"It is odd, come to think of it."
"Something
else occurred to me, too. I got to thinking that if I were C.O. and I wanted to
keep the troops whipped into line, the easiest way to do it would be to have a
visible symbol of Imperial Headquarters appear in person once in a while."
"That makes sense," admitted
Harris, "especially since the chaplain has started preaching that
Imperial Headquarters is where good marines go when they die—if they follow
regulations while they're alive. But how would you manage it?"
"Just the way you did. I'd take one of
the old battle suits, wait until it was good and dark, and then slip out the
back way and climb up six or seven thousand feet. Then I'd switch on my landing
lights and drift slowly down to the parade field to review the troops."
Blick grinned triumphantly.
"It
might work," admitted Colonel Harris, "but I was under the impression
that those rigs were so heavy that a man couldn't even walk in one, let alone
fly."
Blick
grinned triumphantly. "Not if the suit was powered. If a man were to go up
into the tower of the arsenal and pick the lock of the little door labeled
'Danger! Absolutely No Admittance,' he might find a whole stack of shiny little
cubes that look suspiciously like the illustrations of power packs in the tech
manuals."
"That he might,"
agreed the colonel.
Blick shifted back in his
chair. "Aren't worried, are you?"
Colonel
Harris shook his head. "I was for a moment when I thought you'd told the
rest of the staff, but I'm not now."
"You should be! When the I.G. arrives
this time I'm going to be inside that suit. There's going to be a new order
around here and he's just what I need to put the stamp of approval on it. When
the Inspector General talks, nobody questions!"
He looked at Harris expectantly, waiting for
a look of consternation to sweep across his face. The colonel just laughed.
"Blick," he said,
"you're in for a big surprise!"
"What do you
mean?" said the other suspiciously.
"Simply
that I know you better than you know yourself. You wouldn't be executive
officer if I didn't. You know, Blick, I've got a hunch that the battalion is
going to change the man more than the man is going to change the battalion. And
now if you'll excuse me—" He started toward the door. Blick moved to
intercept him.
"Don
t trouble yourself," chuckled the colonel, "I can find my own way to
the cell block." There was a broad grin on his face. "Besides, you've
got work to do."
There
was a look of bewilderment in Blick's face as the erect figure went out the
door. "I don't get it," he said to himself. "I just don't get
itl"
VIII
Flight
Officer Ozaki was unhappy. Trouble had started two hours after he lifted his
battered scout off War Base Three and showed no signs of letting up. He sat
glumly at his controls and enumerated his woes. First there was the matter of
the air conditioner which had acquired an odd little hum and discharged into
the cabin oxygen redolent with the rich ripe odor of rotting fish. Secondly,
something had happened in the complex insides of his food synthesizer and no
matter what buttons he punched, all that emerged from the ejector were
quivering slabs of undercooked protein base smeared with a raspberry-flavored
goo.
Not
last, but worst of all, the ship's fuel converter was rapidly becoming more
erratic. Instead of a slow, steady feeding of the pluto-nite ribbon into the
combustion chamber, there were moments when the mechanism would falter and then
leap ahead. The resulting sudden injection of several square millimicrons of
tape would send a sudden tremendous flare of energy spouting out through the
rear jets. The pulse only lasted for a fraction of a second but the sudden
application of several G's meant a momentary blackout and, unless he was strapped
carefully into the pilot seat, several new bruises to add to the old.
What made Ozaki the unhappiest was that there
was nothing he could do about it. Pilots who wanted to stay alive just didn't
tinker with the mechanism of their ships.
Glumly he pulled out another red-bordered
IMMEDIATE MAINTENANCE card from the rack and began to fill it in.
Description
of item requiring maintenance: "Shower thermostat, M7, Small Standard."
Nature of malfunction:
"Shower will deliver only boiling water."
Justification
for immediate maintenance: Slowly in large block letters Ozaki bitterly inked
in "Haven't had a bath since I left base!" and tossed the card into
the already overflowing gripe box with a feeling of helpless anger.
"Kitchen mechanics," he muttered.
"Couldn't do a decent repair job if they wanted to—and most of the time
they don't. I'd like to see one of them three days out on a scout sweep with a
toilet that won't flush!"
IX
It
was a roomy cell as cells go but Kurt wasn't happy there. His continual
striding up and down was making Colonel Harris nervous.
"Relax, son," he
said gently, "you'll just wear yourself out."
Kurt
turned to face the colonel who was stretched out comfortably on his cot.
"Sir," he said in a conspiratorial whisper, "we've got to break
out of here."
"What
for?" asked Harris. "This is the first decent rest I've had in
years."
"You
aren't going to let Blick get away with this?" demanded Kurt in a shocked
voice.
"Why
not?" said the colonel. "He's the exec, isn't he? If something
happened to me, he'd have to take over command anyway. He's just going through
the impatient stage, that's all. A few days behind my desk will settle him
down. In two weeks he'll be so sick of the job he'll be down on his knees
begging me to take over again."
Kurt decided to try a new tack. "But,
sir, he's going to shut down the Tech Schools!"
"A little vacation
won't hurt the kids," said the colonel indulgently. "After a week or
so the wives will get so sick of having them underfoot all day that they'll
turn the heat on him. Blick has six kids himself and I've a hunch his wife
won't be any happier than the rest. She's a very determined woman, Kurt; a very
determined woman I"
Kurt had a feeling he was getting no place
rapidly. "Please, sir," he said earnestly, "I've got a
plan." "Yes?"
"Just
before the guard makes his evening check-in, stretch out on the bed and start
moaning. I'll yell that you're dying and when he comes in to check I'll jump
him!"
"You'll
do no such thing!" said the colonel sternly. "Sergeant Wetzel is an
old friend of mine. Can't you get it through your thick head that I don't want
to escape? When you've held command as long as I have you'll welcome a chance
for a little peace and quiet. I know Blick inside out and I'm not worried
about him. But, if you've got your heart set on escaping, I suppose there's no
particular reason why you shouldn't. Do it the easy way though. Like
this." He walked to the bars that fronted the cell and bellowed,
"Sergeant Wetzel! Sergeant Wetzel!"
"Coming,
sir!" called a voice from down the corridor. There was a
shuffle of running feet and a gray scalp-locked and extremely portly sergeant
puffed into view.
"What will it be,
sir?" he asked.
"Colonel Blick or any
of the staff around?" questioned the colonel.
"No, sir," said
the sergeant. "They're all upstairs celebrating."
"Good!" said
Harris. "Unlock the door, will you?"
"Anything
you say, colonel," said the old man agreeably and produced a large key
from his pouch and fitted it into the lock. There was a slight creaking and the
door swung open.
"Young Dixon here
wants to escape," said the colonel.
"It's
all right by me," replied the sergeant, "though it's going to be
awkward when Colonel Blick asks what happened to him."
"The
lieutenant has a plan," confided the colonel. "He's going to
overpower you and escape."
"There's more to it
than just that!" said Kurt. "I'm figuring on swapping uniforms with
you. That way I can walk right out through the front gate without anybody being
the wiser."
"That,"
said the sergeant, slowly looking down at his sixty-three-inch waist,
"will take a heap of doing. You're welcome to try though."
"Let's get on with it then," said
Kurt, winding up a round-house swing.
"If it's all the same with you,
lieutenant," said the old sergeant, eying Kurt's rocklike fist nervously,
"I'd rather have the colonel do any overpowering that's got to be
done."
Colonel Harris grinned and
walked over to Wetzel.
"Ready?"
"Readyl"
Harris'
fist traveled a bare five inches and tapped Wetzel lightly on the chin.
"Oof!" grunted the sergeant
cooperatively and staggered back to a point where he could collapse on the
softest of the two cots.
The
exchange of clothes was quickly effected. Except for the pants —which persisted
in dropping down to Kurt's ankles—and the war bonnet—which with equal
persistence kept sliding down over his ears—he was ready to go. The pants
problem was solved easily by stuffing a pillow inside them. This Kurt fondly
believed made him look more like the rotund sergeant than ever. The garrison
bonnet presented a more difficult problem but he finally achieved a partial
solution. By holding it up with his left hand and keeping the palm tightly
pressed against his forehead, it should appear to the casual observer that he
was walking engrossed in deep thought.
The
first two hundred yards were easy. The corridor was deserted and he plodded
confidently along, the great war bonnet wabbling sedately on his head in spite
of his best efforts to keep it steady. When he finally reached the exit gate,
he knocked on it firmly and called to the duty sergeant.
"Open up! It's Wetzel."
Unfortunately,
just then he grew careless and let go of his headgear. As the door swung open,
the great war bonnet swooped down over his ears and came to rest on his
shoulders. The result was that where his head normally was there could be seen
only a nest of weaving feathers. The duty sergeant's jaw suddenly dropped as he
got a good look at the strange figure that stood in the darkened corridor. And
then with remarkable presence of mind he slammed the door shut in Kurt's face
and clicked the bolt.
"Sergeant
of the guard!" he bawled. "Sergeant of the guard! There's a thing in
the corridor!"
"What
kind of a thing?" inquired a sleepy voice from the guard room.
"A horrible kind of a thing with
wiggling feathers where its head ought to be," replied the sergeant.
"Get its name, rank,
and serial number," said the sleepy voice.
Kurt
didn't wait to hear any more. Disentangling himself from the headdress with
some difficulty, he hurled it aside and pelted back down the corridor.
Lieutenant Dixon wandered back into the cell
with a crestfallen look on his face. Colonel Harris and the old sergeant were
so deeply engrossed in a game of "rockets high" that they didn't even
see him at first. Kurt coughed and the colonel looked up.
"Change your
mind?"
"No, sir," said
Kurt. "Something slipped."
"What?" asked the
colonel.
"Sergeant
Wetzel's war bonnet. I'd rather not talk about it." He sank down on his
bunk and buried his head in his hands.
"Excuse
me," said the sergeant apologetically, "but if the lieutenant's
through with my pants I'd like to have them back. There's a draft in
here!"
Kurt
silently exchanged clothes and then moodily walked over to the grille that
barred the window and stood looking out.
"Why not go upstairs to officers'
country and out that way?" suggested the sergeant, who hated the idea of
being overpowered for nothing. "If you can get to the front gate without
one of the staff spotting you, you can walk right out. The sentry never notices
faces, he just checks for insignia."
Kurt grabbed Sergeant Wetzel's plump hand and
wrung it warmly. "I don't know how to thank you," he stammered.
"Then
it's about time you learned," said the colonel. "The usual practice
in civilized battalions is to say 'Thank You.'"
"Thank youl" said Kurt.
"Quite all right," said the
sergeant. "Take the first stairway to your left. When you get to the top,
turn left again and the corridor will take you straight to the exit."
Kurt got safely to the top of the stairs and
turned right. Three hundred feet later the corridor ended in a blank wall. A
small passageway angled off to the left and he set off down it. It also came to
a dead end in a small anteroom whose farther wall was occupied by a set of
great bronze doors. He turned and started to retrace his steps. He had almost
reached the main corridor when he heard angry voices sounding from it. He
peeked cautiously around the corridor. His escape route was blocked by two
officers engaged in acrimonious argument. Neither was too sober and the captain
obviously wasn't giving the major the respect that a field officer usually
commanded.
"I don't care what she
said!" the captain shouted. "I saw her first."
The
major grabbed him by the shoulder and pushed him back against the wall.
"It doesn't matter who saw her first. You keep away from her or there's
going to be trouble!"
The captain's face flushed with rage. With a
snarl he tore off the major's breechcloth and struck him in the face with it.
The
major's face grew hard and cold. He stepped back, clicked his calloused heels
together, and bowed slightly.
"Axes or fists?"
"Axes," snapped the captain.
"May
I suggest the armory anteroom?" said the major formally. "We won't be
disturbed there."
"As
you wish, sir," said the captain with equal formality. "Your
breechcloth, sir." The major donned it with dignity and they started down
the hall toward Kurt. He turned and fled back down the corridor.
In a second he was back in the anteroom.
Unless he did something quickly he was trapped. Two flaming torches were set in
brackets on each side of the great bronze door. As flickering pools of shadow
chased each other across the worn stone floor, Kurt searched desperately for
some other way out. There was none. The only possible exit was through the
bronze portals. The voices behind him grew louder. He ran forward, grabbed a
projecting handle, and pulled. One door creaked open slightly and with a sigh
of relief Kurt slipped inside.
There were no torches here. The great hall
stood in half-darkness, its only illumination the pale moonlight that streamed
down through the arching skylight that formed the central ceiling. He stood for
a moment in awe, impressed in spite of himself by the strange unfamiliar shapes
that loomed before him in the half-darkness. He was suddenly brought back to
reality by the sound of voices in the anteroom.
"Hey! The armory door's open!"
"So what? That place is off limits to
everybody but the CO." "Blick won't care. Let's fight in there. There
should be more room."
Kurt
quickly scanned the hall for a safe hiding place. At the far end stood what
looked like a great bronze statue, its burnished surface gleaming dimly in the
moonlight. As the door swung open behind him, he slipped cautiously through the
shadows until he reached it. It looked like a coffin with feet, but to one side
of it there was a dark pool of shadow. He slipped into it and pressed himself
close against the cold metal. As he did so his hipbone pressed against a slight
protrusion and with a slight clicking sound, a hanged middle section of the
metallic figure swung open, exposing a dark cavity. The thing was hollow!
Kurt
had a sudden idea. "Even if they do come down here," he thought,
"they'd never think of looking inside this thing!" With some difficulty
he wiggled inside and pulled the hatch shut after him. There were legs to the
thing—his own fit snugly into them— but no arms.
The two officers strode out of the shadows at
the other end of the hall. They stopped in the center of the armory and faced
each other like fighting cocks. Kurt gave a sigh of relief. It looked as if he
were safe for the moment.
There
was a sudden wicked glitter of moonlight on axheads as their weapons leaped
into their hands. They stood frozen for a moment in a murderous tableau and
then the captain's ax hummed toward his opponent's head in a vicious slash.
There was a shower of sparks as the major parried and then with a quick wrist
twist sent his own weapon looping down toward the captain's midriff. The other
pulled his ax down to ward off the blow but he was only partially successful.
The keen obsidian edge raked his ribs and blood dripped darkly in the
moonlight.
As Kurt watched intently he began to feel the
first faint stirrings of claustrophobia. The Imperial designers had planned
their battle armor for efficiency rather than comfort and Kurt felt as if he
were locked away in a cramped dark closet. His malaise wasn't helped by a
sudden realization that when the men left they might very well lock the door
behind them. His decision to change his hiding place was hastened when a bank
of dark clouds swept across the face of the moon. The flood of light that
poured down through the skylight suddenly dimmed until Kurt could barely make
out the pirouetting forms of the two officers who were fighting in the center
of the hall.
This
was his chance. If he could slip down the darkened side of the hall before the
moon lighted up the hall again, he might be able to slip out of the hall
unobserved. He pushed against the closed hatch through which he entered. It
refused to open. A feeling of trapped panic started to roll over him but he
fought it back. "There must be some way to open this thing from the
inside," he thought.
As
his fingers wandered over the dark interior of the suit looking for a release
lever, they encountered a bank of keys set just below his midriff. He pressed
one experimentally. A quiet hum filled the armor and suddenly a feeling of
weightlessness came over him. He stiffened in fright. As he did so one of his
steel shod feet pushed lightly backwards against the floor. That was enough.
Slowly, like a child's balloon caught in a light draft, he drifted toward the
center of the hall. He struggled violently but since he was now several inches
above the floor and rising slowly it did him no good.
The
fight was progressing splendidly. Both men were master ax-men and in spite of
being slightly drunk were putting on a brilliant exhibition. Each was bleeding
from a dozen minor slashes but neither had been seriously axed as yet. Their
flashing strokes and counters were masterful, so masterful that Kurt slowly
forgot his increasingly awkward situation as he became more and more absorbed
in the fight before him. The blond captain was slightly the better axman but
the major compensated for it by occasionally whistling in cuts that to Kurt's
experienced eye seemed perilously close to fouls. He grew steadily more
partisan in his feelings until one particularly unscrupulous attempt broke down
his restraint altogether.
"Pull
down your guard!" he screamed to the captain. "He's trying to cut you
below the belt!" His voice reverberated within the battle suit and boomed
out with strange metallic overtones.
Both
men whirled in the direction of the
sound. They could see nothing for a moment and then the major caught sight of
the strange menacing figure looming above him in the murky darkness.
Dropping
his ax he dashed frantically toward the exit shrieking: "It's the
Inspector General!"
The
captain's reflexes were a second slower. Before he could take off Kurt poked
his head out of the open face port and shouted down,
"It's only me, Dixon! Get me out of here, will you?"
The
captain stared up at him goggle-eyed. "What kind of a contraption is
that?" he demanded. "And what are you doing in it?"
Kurt
by now was floating a good ten feet off the floor. He had visions of spending
the night on the ceiling and he wasn't happy about it. "Get me down
now," he pleaded. "We can talk after I get out of this thing."
The
captain gave a leap upwards and tried to grab Kurt's ankles. His jump was short
and his outstretched fingers gave the weightless armor a slight shove that sent
it bobbing up another three feet.
He cocked his head back and called up to
Kurt, "Can't reach you now. We'll have to try something else. How did you
get into that thing in the first place?"
"The
middle section is hinged," said Kurt. "When I pulled it shut it
clicked."
"Well, unclick itl"
"I tried that. That's why I'm up here
now."
"Try
again," said the man on the floor. "If you can open the hatch, you
can drop down and I'll catch you."
"Here
I cornel" said Kurt, his fingers selecting a stud at random. He pushed.
There was a terrible blast of flame from the shoulder jets and he screamed
skywards on a pillar of fire. A microsecond later he reached the skylight.
Something had to give. It did!
At fifteen thousand feet the air pressure
dropped to the point where the automatics took over and the face plate clicked
shut. Kurt didn't notice that. He was out like a light. At thirty thousand feet
the heaters cut in. Forty seconds later he was in free space. Things could have
been worse though, he still had air for two hours—
X
Flight
Officer Ozaki was taking a cat nap when the alarm on the radiation detector
went off. Dashing the sleep out of his eyes, he slipped rapidly into the
control seat and cut off the gong. His fingers danced over the controls in a
blur of movement. Swiftly the vision screen shifted until the little green dot
that indicated a source of radiant energy was firmly centered. Next he switched
on the pulse analyzer and watched carefully as it broke down the incoming
signal into components and sent them surging across the scope in the form of
sharp-toothed sine waves. There was an odd peak to them, a strength and
sharpness that he hadn't seen before.
"Doesn't
look familiar," he muttered to himself, "but I'd better check to make
sure."
He
punched the comparison button and while the analyzer methodically began to
check the incoming trace against the known patterns stored up in its compact
little memory bank, he turned back to the vision screen. He switched on high
magnification and the system rushed toward him. It expanded from a single pin
point of light into a distinct planetary system. At its center a giant dying
sun expanded on the plate like a malignant red eye. As he watched, the green
dot moved appreciably, a thin red line stretching out behind it to indicate
its course from point of first detection. Ozaki's fingers moved over the
controls and a broken line of white light came into being on the screen. With
careful adjustments he moved it up toward the green track left by the crawling
red dot. When he had an exact overlay, he carefully moved the line back along
the course that the energy emitter had followed prior to detection.
Ozaki
was tense. It looked as if he might have something. He gave a sudden whoop of
excitement as the broken white line intersected the orange dot of a planetary
mass. A vision of the promised thirty-day leave and six months' extra pay
danced before his eyes as he waited for the pulse analyzer to clear.
"Home!" he thought ecstatically.
"Home and unplugged plumbing!"
With
a final whir of relays the analyzer clucked like a contented chicken and
dropped an identity card out of its emission slot. Ozaki grabbed it and scanned
it eagerly. At the top was printed in red, "Identity Unknown," and
below in smaller letters, "Suggest check of trace pattern on base
analyzer." He gave a sudden whistle as his eyes caught the energy
utilization index. 927!
That was fifty points
higher than it had any right to be. The best tech in the Protectorate
considered himself lucky if he could tune a propulsion unit so that it
delivered a thrust of forty-five per cent of rated maximum. Whatever was out
there was hot! Too hot for one man to handle alone. With quick decision he
punched the transmission key of his space communicator and sent a call winging
back to War Base Three.
XI
Commander
Krogson stormed up and down his office in a frenzy of impatience.
"It shouldn't be more than another
fifteen minutes, sir," said Schninkle.
Krogson snorted. "That's what you said
an hour agol What's the matter with those people down there? I want the
identity of that ship and I want it now."
"It's
not Identification's fault," explained the other. "The big analyzer
is in pretty bad shape and it keeps jamming. They're afraid that if they take
it apart they won't be able to get it back together again."
The
next two hours saw Krogson's blood pressure steadily rising toward the
explosion point. Twice he ordered the whole identification section transferred
to a labor battalion and twice he had to rescind the command when Schninkle
pointed out that scrapings from the bottom of the barrel were better than
nothing at all. His fingernails were chewed down to the quick when word finally
came through.
"Identification,
sir," said a hesitant voice on the intercom. "Well?" demanded
the commander. "The analyzer says—" The voice hesitated again.
"The analyzer says what?" shouted Krogson in a fury of impatience.
"The
analyzer says that the trace pattern is that of one of the old Imperial drive
units."
"That's
impossible!" sputtered the commander. "The last Imperial base was
smashed five hundred years ago. What of their equipment was salvaged has long
since been worn out and tossed on the scrap heap. The machine must be
wrong!"
"Not
this time," said the voice. "We checked the memory bank manually and
there's no mistake. It's an Imperial all right. Nobody can produce a drive unit
like that these days."
Commander
Krogson leaned back in his chair, his eyes veiled in deep thought.
"Schninkle," he said finally, thinking out loud, "I've got a
hunch that maybe we've stumbled on something big. Maybe the Lord Protector is
right about there being a plot to knock him over, but maybe he's wrong about
who's trying to do it. What if all these centuries since the Empire collapsed a
group of Imperials have been hiding out waiting for their chance?"
Schninkle digested the idea for a moment.
"It could be," he said slowly. "If there is such a group, they
couldn't pick a better time than now to strike; the Protectorate is so wobbly
that it wouldn't take much of a shove to topple it over."
The
more he thought about it, the more sense the idea made to Krogson. Once he felt
a fleeting temptation to hush up the whole thing. If there were Imperials and
they did take over, maybe they would put an end to the frenzied rat race that
was slowly ruining the galaxy—a race that sooner or later entangled every
competent man in the great web of intrigue and power politics that stretched
through the Protectorate and forced him in self-defense to keep clawing his way
toward the top of the heap.
Regretfully
he dismissed the idea. This was a matter of his own neck, here and now!
"It's
a big IF, Schninkle," he said, "but if I've guessed right we've
bailed ourselves out. Get hold of that scout and find out his position."
Schninkle scooted out of the door. A few
minutes later he dashed back in. "I've just contacted the scout!" he
said excitedly. "He's closed in on the power source and it isn't a ship
after all. It's a man in space armor! The drive unit is cut off and it's heading
out of the system at fifteen hundred per. The pilot is standing by for
instructions."
"Tell him to intercept and
capture!" Schninkle started out of the office. "Wait a second; what's
the scout's position?" Schninkle's face fell. "He doesn't quite know,
sir." "He what?" demanded the commander.
"He doesn't quite know," repeated
the little man. "His astrocom-puter went haywire six hours out of
base."
"Just
our luck!" swore Krogson. "Well tell him to leave his transmitter
on. We'll ride in on his beam. Better call the sector commander while you're
at it and tell him what's happened."
"Beg
pardon, commander," said Schninkle, "but I wouldn't advise it."
"Why not?" asked
Krogson.
"You're next in line to be sector
commander, aren't you, sir?" "I guess so," said the commander.
"If
this pans out you'll be in a position to knock him over and grab his job, won't
you?" asked Schninkle slyly.
"Could
be," admitted Krogson in a tired voice. "Not because I want to,
though—but because I have to. I'm not as young as I once was and the boys below
are pushing pretty hard. It's either up or out—and out is always feet
first."
"Put
yourself in the sector commander's shoes for a minute," suggested the
little man. "What would you do if a war base commander came through with
news of a possible Imperial base?"
A look of grim comprehension came over
Krogson's face. "Of course! I'd ground the commander's ships and send out
my own fleet. I must be slipping; I should have thought of that at once!"
"On
the other hand," said Schninkle, "you might call him and request
permission to conduct routine maneuvers. He'll approve as a matter of course
and you'll have an excuse for taking out the full fleet. Once in deep space you
can slap on radio silence and set course for the scout. If there is an Imperial
base out there, nobody will know anything about it until it's blasted. I'll
stay back here and keep my eyes on things for you."
Commander
Krogson grinned. "Schninkle, it's a pleasure to have you in my command.
How would you like me to make you Devoted Servant of the Lord Protector, Eighth Chss? It
carries an extra shoe ration coupon!"
"If
it's all the same with you," said Schninkle, "I'd just as soon have
Saturday afternoons off."
XII
As
Kurt struggled up out of the darkness, he could hear a gong sounding in the
faint distance. Bong/ Bong/ BONG.' It grew nearer and louder. He shook his head
painfully and groaned. There was light from some place beating against his
eyelids. Opening them was too much effort. He was in some sort of a bunk. He
could feel that.
But
the gong. He lay there concentrating on it. Slowly he began to realize that the
beat didn't come from outside. It was his head. It felt swollen and sore and
each pulse of his heart sent a hammer thud through it.
One by one his senses began to return to
normal. As his nose re-assumed its normal acuteness it began to quiver. There
was a strange scent in the air, an unpleasant sickening scent as of—he chased
the scent down his aching memory channels until he finally had it
cornered—rotting fish. With that to anchor on he slowly began to reconstruct
reality. He had been floating high above the floor in the armory and the
captain had been trying to get him down. Then he had pushed a button. There had
been a microsecond of tremendous acceleration and then a horrendous crash.
That must have been the skylight. After the crash was darkness, then the gongs,
and now fish—dead and rotting fish.
"I
must be alive," he decided. "Imperial Headquarters would never smell
like this!"
He
groaned and slowly opened one eye. Wherever he was he hadn't been there before.
He opened the other eye. He was in a room. A room with a curved ceiling and
curving walls. Slowly, with infinite care, he hung his head over the side of
the bunk. Below him in a form-fitting chair before a bank of instruments sat a
small man with yellow skin and blue-black hair. Kurt coughed. The man looked
up. Kurt asked the obvious question.
"Where am 17"
"I'm not permitted to give you any
information," said the small man. His speech had an odd slurred quality to
Kurt's ear. "Something stinks!" said Kurt.
"It sure does," said the small man
gloomily. "It must be worse for you. I'm used to it."
Kurt
surveyed the cabin with interest. There were a lot of gadgets tucked away here
and there that looked familiar. They were like the things he had worked on in
Tech School except that they were cruder and simpler. They looked as if they
had been put together by an eight-year-old recruit who was doing his first
trial assembly. He decided to make another stab at establishing some sort of
communication with the little man.
"How come you have everything in one
room? We always used to keep different things in different shops."
"No comment," said Ozaki.
Kurt had a feeling he was butting his head
against a stone wall. He decided to make one more try. "I give up,"
he said, wrinkling his nose, "where'd you hide it?" "Hide
what?" asked the little man. "The fish," said Kurt. "No
comment." "Why not?" asked Kurt.
"Because there isn't anything that can
be done about it," said Ozaki. "It's the air conditioner. Something's
haywire inside." "What's an air conditioner?" asked Kurt.
"That square box over your head."
Kurt looked at it, closed
his eyes, and thought for a moment. The thing did look familiar. Suddenly a
picture of it popped into his mind. Page 318 in
the "Manual of Auxiliary Mechanisms."
"It's fantasticl" he said.
"What is?" said the little man.
"This." Kurt pointed
to the conditioner. "I didn't know they existed in real life. I thought
they were just in books. You got a first echelon kit?"
"Sure," said Ozaki. "It's in
that recess by the head of the bunk. Why?"
Kurt
pulled the kit out of its retaining clips and opened its cover, fishing around
until he found a small screwdriver and a pair of needle-nose pliers.
"I think I'll fix it," he said
conversationally.
"Oh
no you won't!" howled Ozaki. "Air with fish is better than no air at
all." But before he could do anything, Kurt had pulled the cover off the
air conditioner and was probing into the intricate mechanism with his
screwdriver. A slight thumping noise came from inside. Kurt cocked his ear and
thought. Suddenly his screwdriver speared down through the maze of whirring
parts. He gave a slow quarter turn and the internal thumping disappeared.
"See," he said triumphantly,
"no more fish!"
Ozaki stopped shaking long enough to give the
air a tentative sniff. He had got out of the habit of smelling in self-defense
and it took him a minute or two to detect the difference. Suddenly a broad grin
swept across his face.
"It's going awayl I do
believe it's going away!"
Kurt
gave the screwdriver another quarter of a turn and suddenly the sharp spicy
scent of pines swept through the scout. Ozaki took a deep ecstatic breath and
relaxed in his chair. His face lost its pallor.
"How did you do it?" he said
finally. "No comment," said Kurt pleasantly.
There
was silence from below. Ozaki was in the throes of a brain storm. He was more
impressed by Kurt's casual repair of the air conditioner than he liked to
admit.
"Tell
me," he said cautiously, "can you fix other things beside air
conditioners?"
"I
guess so," said Kurt, "if it's just simple stuff like this." He
gestured around the cabin. "Most of the stuff here needs fixing. They've
got it together wrong."
"Maybe
we could make a dicker," said Ozaki. "You fix things, I answer
questions—Some questions that is," he added hastily.
"It's
a deal," said Kurt who was filled with a burning curiosity as to his
whereabouts. Certain things were already clear in his mind. He knew that
wherever he was he'd never been there before. That meant evidently that there
was a garrison on the other side of the mountains whose existence had never
been suspected. What bothered him was how he had got there.
"Check,"
said Ozaki. "First, do you know anything about plumbing?"
"What's
plumbing?" asked Kurt curiously.
"Pipes,"
said Ozaki. "They're plugged. They've been plugged for more time than I
like to think about."
"I can try," said
Kurt.
"Good!"
said the pilot and ushered him into the small cubicle that opened off the rear
bulkhead. "You might tackle the shower while you're at it."
"What's
a shower?"
"That curved dingbat up there," said Ozaki pointing. "The
ermostat's out of whack."
"Thermostats are kid stuff," said
Kurt, shutting the door.
Ten minutes later Kurt came out. "It's
all fixed."
"I
don't believe it," said Ozaki, shouldering his way past Kurt. 2 reached down and pushed a small curved
handle. There was the isfying sound of rushing water. He next reached into the
little ower compartment and turned the knob to the left. With a hiss needle
spray of cold water burst forth. The pilot looked at Kurt th awe in his eyes.
"If
I hadn't seen it, I wouldn't have believed it! That's two swers you've
earned."
Kurt
peered back into the cubicle curiously. "Well, first," he said, iow
that I've fixed them, what
are they for?" Ozaki explained briefly and a look of amazement came over
Kurt's :e. Machinery he knew, but the idea that it could be used for mething
was hard to grasp.
"If
I hadn't seen it, I wouldn't have believed it!" he said slowly, lis would
be something to tell when he got home. Home! The essing question of location
popped back into his mind. "How far are we from the garrison?" he
asked. Ozaki made a quick mental calculation. "Roughly two
light-seconds," he said. "How far's that in kilometers?"
Ozaki
thought again. "Around six hundred thousand. I'll run off e exact figures
if you want them."
Kurt
gulped. No place could be that far away. Not even Imperial eadquarters! He
tried to measure out the distance in his mind in rms of days' marches but he
soon found himself lost. Thinking suldn't do it. He had to see with his own
eyes where he was. "How do you get outside?" he asked.
Ozaki
gestured toward the air lock that opened at the rear of the
"I want to go out for a few minutes to
sort of get my bearings." Ozaki looked at him in disbelief. "What's
your game, anyhow?" he demanded.
It
was Kurt's turn to look bewildered. "I haven't any game. I'm just trying
to find out where I am so I'll know which way to head to get back to the
garrison."
"It'll be a long cold walk." Ozaki
laughed and hit the stud that slid back the ray screens on the vision ports.
"Take a look."
Kurt
looked out into nothingness, a blue-black void marked only by distant pin
points of light. He suddenly felt terribly alone, lost in a blank immensity
that had no boundaries. Down was gone and so was up. There was only this tiny
lighted room with nothing underneath it. The port began to swim in front of his
eyes as a sudden strange vertigo swept over him. He felt that if he looked out
into that terrible space for another moment he would lose his sanity. He
covered his eyes with his hands and staggered back to the center of the cabin.
Ozaki
slid the ray screens back in place. "Kind of gets you first time, doesn't
it?"
Kurt
had always carried a little automatic compass within his head. Wherever he had
gone, no matter how far afield he had wandered, it had always pointed steadily
toward home. Now for the first time in his life the needle was spinning
helplessly. It was an uneasy feeling. He had to get oriented.
"Which way is the garrison?" he
pleaded.
Ozaki
shrugged. "Over there some place. I don't know whereabouts on the planet
you come from. I didn't pick up your track until you were in free space."
"Over where?" asked Kurt.
"Think you can stand another look?"
Kurt
braced himself and nodded. The pilot opened a side port to vision and pointed.
There, seemingly motionless in the black emptiness of space, floated a great
greenish gray globe. It didn't make sense to Kurt. The satellite that hung
somewhat to the left did. Its face was different, the details were sharper than
he'd ever seen them before, but the features he knew as well as his own. Night
after night on scouting detail for the hunting parties while waiting for sleep
he had watched the silver sphere ride through the clouds above him.
He didn't want to believe but he had to!
His
face was white and tense as he turned back to Ozaki. A thousand sharp and
burning questions milled chaotically through his mind.
"Where
am I?" he demanded. "How did I get out here? Who are you? Where did
you come from?"
"You're
in a spaceship," said Ozaki, "a two-man scout. And that's all you're
going to get out of me until you get some more work done. You might as well
start on this microscopic projector. The thing burned out just as the special
investigator was about to reveal who had blown off the commissioner's head by
wiring a bit of plutonite into his autoshave. I've been going nuts ever since
trying to figure out who did it!"
Kurt
took some tools out of the first echelon kit and knelt obediently down beside
the small projector.
Three
hours later they sat down to dinner. Kurt had repaired the food machine and
Ozaki was slowly masticating synthasteak that for the first time in days tasted
like synthasteak. As he ecstatically lifted the last savory morsel to his
mouth, the ship gave a sudden leap that plastered him and what remained of his
supper against the rear bulkhead. There was darkness for a second and then the
ceiling lights flickered on, then off, and then on again. Ozaki picked himself
up and gingerly ran his fingers over the throbbing lump that was beginning to
grow out of the top of his head. His temper wasn't improved when he looked up
and saw Kurt still seated at the table calmly cutting himself another piece of
pie.
"You
should have braced yourself," said Kurt conversationally. "The
converter's out of phase. You can hear her build up for a jump if you listen.
When she does you ought to brace yourself. Maybe you don't hear so good?"
he asked helpfully.
"Don't talk with your mouth full, it
isn't polite," snarled Ozaki.
Late that night the converter cut out
altogether. Ozaki was sleeping the sleep of the innocent and didn't find out
about it for several hours. When he did awake it was to Kurt's gentle shaking.
"Hey!" Ozaki
groaned and buried his face in the pillow.
"Hey!"
This time the voice was louder. The pilot yawned and tried to open his eyes.
"Is
it important if all the lights go out?" the voice queried. The import of
the words suddenly struck home and Ozaki sat bolt upright in his bunk. He
opened his eyes, blinked, and opened them again. The lights were out. There was
a strange unnatural silence about the ship.
"Good
Lord!" he shouted and jumped for the controls. "The power's
off."
He
hit the starter switch but nothing happened. The converter was jammed solid.
Ozaki began to sweat. He fumbled over the control board until he found the
switch that cut the emergency batteries into the lighting circuit. Again
nothing happened.
"If
you're trying to run the lights on the batteries, they won't work," said
Kurt in a conversational tone.
"Why
not?" snapped Ozaki as he punched savagely and futilely at the starter
button.
"They're dead,"
said Kurt. "I used them all up."
"You what?"
yelled the pilot in anguish.
"I
used them all up. You see, when the converter went out I woke up. After a while
the sun started to come up and it began to get awfully hot so I hooked the
batteries into the refrigeration coils. Kept the place nice and cool while they
lasted."
Ozaki
howled. When he swung the shutter of the forward port to let in some light he
howled again. This time in dead earnest. The giant red sun of the system was no
longer perched off to the left at a comfortable distance. Instead before
Ozaki's horrified eyes was a great red mass that stretched fromriorizon to
horizon.
"We're falling into
the sun!" he screamed.
"It's
getting sort of hot," said Kurt. "Hot" was an understatement.
The thermometer needle pointed at a hundred and ten and was climbing steadily.
Ozaki
jerked open the stores compartment door and grabbed a couple of spare
batteries. As quickly as his trembling fingers would work, he connected them to
the emergency power line. A second later the cabin lights flickered on and
Ozaki was warming up the space communicator. He punched the transmitter key and
a call went arcing out through hyper-space. The vision screen flickered and
the bored face of a communication tech, third class, appeared.
"Give me Commander Krogson at
once!" demanded Ozaki.
"Sorry, old man," yawned the other,
"but the commander's having breakfast. Call back in half an hour, will
you?"
"This is an emergency! Put me through at
once!"
"Can't
help it," said the other, "nobody can disturb the Old Man while he's
having breakfast."
"Listen,
you knucklehead," screamed Ozaki, "if you don't get me through to the
commander as of right now, I'll have you in the uranium mines so fast that you
won't know what hit you!"
"You and who else?" drawled the
tech.
"Me
and my cousin Takahashi!" snarled the pilot. "He's Reclassification
Officer for the Base STAP."
The
tech's face went white. "Yes, sir!" he stuttered. "Right away,
sir! No offense meant, sir!" He disappeared from the screen. There was a
moment of darkness and then the interior of Commander Krogson's cabin flashed
on.
The commander was having breakfast. His teeth
rested on the white tablecloth and his mouth was full of mush.
"Commander Krogsonl" said Ozaki
desperately.
The commander looked up with a startled
expression. When he noticed his screen was on he swallowed his mush
convulsively and popped his teeth back into place.
"Who's there?" he demanded in a
neutral voice in case it might be somebody important.
"Flight Officer
Ozaki," said Flight Officer Ozaki.
A
thundercloud rolled across the commander's face. "What do you mean by
disturbing me at breakfast?" he demanded.
"Beg
pardon, sir," said the pilot, "but my ship's falling into a red
sun."
"Too
bad," grunted Commander Krogson and turned back to his mush and milk.
"But,
sir," persisted the other, "you've got to send somebody to pull me
off. My converter's dead!"
"Why tell me about it?" said
Krogson in annoyance. "Call Space Rescue, they're supposed to handle
things like this."
"Listen,
commander," wailed the pilot, "by the time they've assigned me a
priority and routed the paper through proper channels, I'll have gone up in
smoke. The last time I got in a jam it took them two weeks to get to me. I've
only got hours left!"
"Can't
make exceptions," snapped Krogson testily. "If I let you skip the
chain of command, everybody and his brother will think he has a right to."
"Commander,"
howled Ozaki, "we're frying in here!"
"All right. All right!" said the
commander sourly. "I'll send somebody after you. What's your name?"
"Ozaki, sir. Flight
Officer Ozaki."
The
commander was in the process of scooping up another spoonful of mush when
suddenly a thought struck him squarely between the eyes.
"Wait
a second," he said hastily, "you aren't the scout who located the
Imperial base, are you?"
"Yes, sir," said
the pilot in a cracked voice.
"Why
didn't you say so?" roared Krogson. Flipping on his intercom he growled,
"Give me the Exec." There was a moment's silence.
"Yes, sir?"
"How long before we get to that
scout?" "About six hours, sir." "Make it three!"
"Can't be done, sir."
"It
will be done!" snarled Krogson and broke the connection. The temperature needle
in the little scout was now pointing to a hundred and fifteen.
"I don't think we can hold out that
long," said Ozaki. "Nonsense!" said the commander and the screen
went blank.
Ozaki slumped into the pilot chair and buried
his face in his hands. Suddenly he felt a blast of cold air on his neck.
"There's no use in prolonging our misery," he said without looking
up. "Those spare batteries won't last five minutes under this load."
"I knew that," said Kurt
cheerfully, "so while you were doing all the talking I went ahead and
fixed the converter. You sure have mighty hot summers out here!" he
continued, mopping his brow.
"You
what?" yelled the pilot, jumping half out of his seat. "You couldn't
even if you did have the know-how. It takes half a day to get the shielding off
so you can get at the thing!"
"Didn't
need to take the shielding off for a simple job like that," said Kurt. He
pointed to a tiny inspection port about four inches in diameter. "I worked
through there."
"That's
impossible!" interjected the pilot. "You can't even see the injector
through that, let alone get to it to work on!"
"Shucks," said Kurt, "a man
doesn't have to see a little gadget like that to fix it. If your hands are
trained right, you can feel what's wrong and set it to rights right away. She
won't jump on you any more either. The syncromesh thrust baffle was a little
out of phase so I fixed that, too, while I was at it."
Ozaki still didn't believe it but he hit the
controls on faith. The scout bucked under the sudden strong surge of power and
then, its converter humming sweetly, arced away from the giant sun in a long
sweeping curve.
There was silence in the scout. The two men
sat quietly, each immersed in an uneasy welter of troubled speculation.
"That
was closel" said Ozaki finally. "Too close for comfort. Another hour
or so and—!" He snapped his fingers.
Kurt looked puzzled.
"Were we in trouble?"
"Trouble!"
snorted Ozaki. "If you hadn't fixed the converter when you did, we'd be
cinders by now!"
Kurt
digested the news in silence. There was something about this superbeing who
actually made machines work that bothered him. There was a note of bewilderment
in his voice when he asked: "If we were really in danger, why didn't you
fix the converter instead of wasting time talking on that thing?" He
gestured toward the space communicator.
It was Ozaki's turn to be bewildered.
"Fix it?" he said with surprise in his voice. "There aren't a
half a dozen techs on the whole base who know enough about atomics to work on a
propulsion unit.
When
something like that goes out you call Space Rescue and chew your nails until a
wrecker can get to you."
Kurt crawled into his bunk and lay back
staring at the curved ceiling. He had thinking to do, a lot of thinking!
Three hours later the scout flashed up
alongside the great flagship and darted into a landing port. Flight Officer
Ozaki was stricken by a horrible thought as he gazed affectionately around his
smoothly running ship.
"Say,"
he said to Kurt hesitantly, "would you mind not mentioning that you fixed
this crate up for me? If you do, they'll take it away from me sure. Some
captain will get a new gig and I'll be issued another clunk from Base
junkpile."
"Sure thing,"
said Kurt.
A moment later the flashing of a green light
on the control panel signaled that the pressure in the lock had reached normal.
"Back in a
minute," said Ozaki. "You wait here."
There was a muted hum as the exit hatch swung
slowly open. Two guards entered and stood silently beside Kurt as Ozaki left to
report to Commander Krogson.
XIII
The battle fleet of War Base Three of Sector
Seven of the Galactic Protectorate hung motionless in space twenty thousand
kilometers out from Kurt's home planet. A hundred tired detection techs sat
tensely before their screens, sweeping the globe for some sign of energy
radiation. Aside from the occasional light spatters caused by space static,
their scopes remained dark. As their reports filtered in to Commander Krogson
he became more and more exasperated.
"Are you positive this is the right
planet?" he demanded of Ozaki.
"No question about it,
sir."
"Seems
funny there's nothing running down there at all," said Krogson.
"Maybe they spotted us on the way in and cut off power.
I've got a hunch that—" He broke off in
mid sentence as the red top-priority light on the communication panel began to
flash. "Get that," he said. "Maybe they've spotted something at
last."
The
executive officer flipped on the vision screen and the interior of the
flagship's communication room was revealed.
"Sorry to bother you, sir," said
the tech whose image appeared on the screen, "but a message just came
through on the emergency band."
"What
does it say?"
The
tech looked unhappy. "It's coded, sir." "Well, decode it!"
barked the executive.
"We
can't," said the technician diffidently. "Something's gone wrong with
the decoder. The printer is pounding out random groups that don't make any
sense at all."
The executive grunted his disgust. "Any
idea where the call's coming from?"
"Yes, sir; it's coming in on a tight
beam from the direction of Base. Must be from a ship emergency rig, though.
Regular hyper-space transmission isn't directional. Either the ship's regular
rig broke down or the operator is using the beam to keep anybody else from
picking up his signal."
"Get
to work on that decoder. Call back as soon as you get any results." The
tech saluted and the screen went black.
"Whatever
it is, it's probably trouble," said Krogson morosely. "Well, we'd
better get on with this job. Take the fleet into atmosphere. It looks as if we
are going to have to make a visual check."
"Maybe the prisoner can give us a
lead," suggested the executive officer.
"Good
idea. Have him brought in."
A
moment later Kurt was ushered into the master control room. Krogson's eyes
widened at the sight of his scalp lock and paint.
"Where
in the name of the Galactic Spirit," he demanded, "did you get that
rig?"
"Don't
you recognize an Imperial Space Marine when you see one?" Kurt answered
coldly.
The guard that had escorted Kurt in made a
little twirling motion at his temple with one finger. Krogson took another
look and nodded agreement.
"Sit
down, son," he said in a fatherly tone. "We're trying to get you
home, but you're going to have to give us a little help before we can do it.
You see, we're not quite sure just where your base is."
"I'll help all I
can," said Kurt.
"Fine!"
said the commander, rubbing his palms together. "Now just where down there
do you come from?" He pointed out the vision port to the curving globe
that stretched out below.
Kurt
looked down helplessly. "Nothing makes sense, seeing it from up
here," he said apologetically.
Krogson
thought for a moment. "What's the country like around your base?" he
asked.
"Mostly
jungle," said Kurt. "The garrison is on a plateau though, and there
are mountains to the north."
Krogson
turned quickly to his exec. "Did you get that description?"
"Yes, sir!"
"Get
all scouts out for a close sweep. As soon as the base is spotted, move the
fleet in and hover at forty thousand!"
Forty minutes later a scout
came streaking back.
"Found
it, sir!" said the exec. "Plateau with jungle all around and
mountains to the north. There's a settlement at one end. The pilot saw movement
down there but they must have spotted us on our way in. There's still no
evidence of energy radiation. They must have everything shut down."
"That's
not good!" said Krogson. "They've probably got all their heavy stuff
set up waiting for us to sweep over. We'll have to hit them hard and fast. Did
they spot the scout?"
"Can't tell,
sir."
"We'd
better assume that they did. Notify all gunnery officers to switch their
batteries over to central control. If we come in fast and high and hit them
with simultaneous fleet concentration, we can vaporize the whole base before
they can take a crack at us."
"I'll send the order
out at once, sir," said the executive officer.
The
fleet pulled into tight formation and headed toward the Imperial base. They
were halfway there when the fleet gunnery officer entered the control room and
said apologetically to Commander Krogson, "Excuse me, sir, but I'd like to
suggest a trial run. Fleet concentration is a tricky thing and if something
went haywire— we'd be sitting ducks for the ground batteries."
"Good
idea," said Krogson thoughtfully. "There's too much at stake to have
anything go wrong. Select an equivalent target and we'll make a pass."
The fleet was now passing over a towering
mountain chain.
"How
about that bald spot down there?" said the exec, pointing to a rocky
expanse that jutted out from the side of one of the towering peaks.
"Good enough,"
said Krogson.
"All ships on central
control!" reported the gunnery officer.
"On
targetl" reported the tech on the tracking screen. "One. Two. Three.
Four—"
Kurt stood by the front observation port
watching the ground far below sweep by. He had been listening intently but what
had been said didn't make sense. There had been something about batteries—the
term was alien to him—and something about the garrison. He decided to ask the
commander what it was all about but the intentness with which Krogson was
watching the tracking screen deterred him. Instead he gazed moodily down at the
mountains below him.
"Five. Six. Seven.
Ready. FIRE!"
A savage shudder ran through the great ship
as her ground-pointed batteries blasted in unison. Seconds went by and then
suddenly the rocky expanse on the shoulder of the mountain directly below
twinkled as blinding flashes of actinic light danced across it. Then as Kurt
watched, great masses of rock and earth moved slowly skyward from the center
of the spurting nests of tangled flame. Still slowly, as if buoyed up by the
thin mountain air, the debris began to fall back again until it was lost from
sight in quick-rising mushrooms of jet-black smoke. Kurt turned and looked
back toward
Commander Krogson. Batteries must be the
things that had torn the mountains below apart. And garrison—there was only one
garrison!
"I ordered fleet fire," barked
Krogson. "This ship was the only one that cut loose. What happened?"
"Just
a second, sir," said the executive officer, "I'll try and find
out." He was busy for a minute on the intercom system. "The other
ships were ready, sir," he reported finally. "Their guns were all switched
over to our control but no impulse came through. Central fire control must be
on the blink!" He gestured toward a complex bank of equipment that
occupied one entire corner of the control room.
Commander
Krogson said a few appropriate words. When he reached the point where he was
beginning to repeat himself, he paused and stood in frozen silence for a good
thirty seconds.
"Would
you mind getting a fire-control tech in here to fix that obscenity bank?"
he asked in a voice that put everyone's teeth on edge.
The other seemed to have something to say but
he was having trouble getting it out. "Well?" said Krogson.
"Prime
Base grabbed our last one two weeks ago. There isn't another left with the
fleet."
"Doesn't
look like much to me," said Kurt as he strolled over to examine the bank
of equipment.
"Get away from there!" roared the
commander. "We've got enough trouble without you making things
worse."
Kurt ignored him and began
to open inspection ports.
"Guard!" yelled
Krogson. "Throw that man out of here!"
Ozaki
interrupted timidly. "Beg pardon, commander, but he can fix it if anybody
can."
Krogson whirled on the
flight officer. "How do you know?"
Ozaki
caught himself just in time. If he talked too much he was likely to lose the
scout that Kurt had fixed up for him.
"Because he . . . eh .
. . talks like a tech," he concluded lamely.
Krogson looked at Kurt
dubiously. "I guess there's no harm in giving it a trial," he said
finally. "Give him a set of tools and turn him loose. Maybe for once a
miracle will happen."
"First," said
Kurt, "I'll need the wiring diagrams for this thing."
"Get
them!" barked the commander and an orderly scuttled out of the control,
headed aft.
"Next you'll have to give me a general
idea of what it's supposed to do," continued Kurt.
Krogson turned to the
gunnery officer. "You'd better handle this."
When
the orderly returned with the circuit diagrams, they were spread out on the plotting
table and the two men bent over them.
"Got
it!" said Kurt at last and sauntered over to the control bank. Twenty
minutes later he sauntered back again.
"She's all right now," he said
pleasantly.
The
gunnery officer quickly scanned his testing board. Not a single red trouble
light was on. He turned to Commander Krogson in amazement.
"I don't know how he did it, sir, but
the circuits are all clear now."
Krogson
stared at Kurt with a look of new respect in his eyes. "What were you down
there, chief maintenance tech?"
Kurt
laughed. "Me? I was never chief anything. I spent most of my time on
hunting detail."
The
commander digested that in silence for a moment. "Then how did you become
so familiar with fire-control gear?"
"Studied
it in school like everyone else does. There wasn't anything much wrong with
that thing anyway except a couple of sticking relays."
"Excuse me, sir," interrupted the
executive officer, "but should we make another trial run?" "Are
you sure the bank is in working order?" "Positive, sir!"
"Then
we'd better make straight for that base. If this boy here is a fair example of
what they have down there, their defenses may be too tough for us to crack if
we give them a chance to get set up!"
Kurt gave a slight start
which he quickly controlled. Then he had guessed rightl Slowly and casually he
began to sidle toward the semicircular bank of controls that stood before the
great tracking screen.
"Where do you think
you're going!" barked Krogson. Kurt froze. His pulses were pounding within
him but he kept his voice light and casual.
"No
place," he said innocently.
"Get over against the bulkhead and keep
out of the way!" snapped the commander. "We've got a job of work
coming up." Kurt injected a note of bewilderment into his voice.
"What kind of work?"
Krogson's
voice softened and a look approaching pity came into his eyes. "It's just
as well you don't know about it until it's over," he said gruffly.
"There
she is!" sang out the navigator, pointing to a tiny brown projection that
jutted up out of the green jungle in the far distance. "We're about three
minutes out, sir. You can take over at any time now."
The
fleet gunnery officer's fingers moved quickly over the keys that welded the
fleet into a single instrument of destruction, keyed and ready to blast a
barrage of ravening thunderbolts of molecular disruption down at the
defenseless garrison at a single touch on the master fire-control button.
"Whenever
you're ready, sir," he said deferentially to Krogson as he vacated the
controls. A hush fell over the control room as the great tracking screen
brightened and showed the compact bundle of white dots that marked the fleet
crawling slowly toward the green triangle of the target area.
"Get the prisoner out of here,"
said Krogson. "There's no reason why he should have to watch what's about
to happen."
The
guard that stood beside Kurt grabbed his arm and shoved him toward the door.
There
was a sudden explosion of fists as Kurt erupted into action. In a blur of
continuous movement he streaked toward the gunnery control panel. He was
halfway across the control room before the pole-axed guard hit the floor. There
was a second of stunned amazement, and then before anyone could move to stop
him, he stood beside the controls, one hand poised tensely above the master
stud that controlled the combined fire of the fleet.
"Hold
it!" he shouted as the moment of paralysis broke and several of the
officers started toward him menacingly. "One move and I'll blast the whole
fleet into scrap!"
They
stopped in shocked silence, looking to Commander Krogson for guidance.
"Almost on target,
sir," called the tech on the tracking screen.
Krogson stalked menacingly toward Kurt.
"Get away from those controls!" he snarled. "You aren't going to
blow anything to anything. All that you can do is let off a premature blast.
If you are trying to alert your base, it's no use. We can be on a return sweep
before they have time to get ready for us."
Kurt
shook his head calmly. "Wouldn't do you any good," he said.
"Take a look at the gun ports on the other ships. I made a couple of minor
changes while I was working on the control bank."
"Quit bluffing,"
said Krogson.
"I'm not bluffing," said Kurt
quietly. "Take a look. It won't cost you anything." "On
target!" called the tracking tech.
"Order the fleet to circle for another
sweep," snapped Krogson over his shoulder as he stalked toward the forward
observation port. There was something in Kurt's tone that had impressed him
more than he liked to admit. He squinted out toward the nearest ship. Suddenly
his face blanched!
"The gun ports!
They're still closedl"
Kurt
gave a whistle of relief. "I had my fingers crossed," he said
pleasantly. "You didn't give me enough time with the wiring diagrams for
me to be sure that cutting out that circuit would do the trick. Now . . . guess
what the results would be if I should happen to push down on this stud."
Krogson
had a momentary vision of several hundred shells ramming their sensitive noses
against the thick chrome steel of the closed gun ports.
"Don't
bother trying to talk," said Kurt, noticing the violent contractions of
the commander's Adam's apple. "You'd better save your breath for my
colonel."
"Who?" demanded
Kiogson.
"My
colonel," repeated Kurt. "We'd better head back and pick him up. Can
you make these ships hang in one place or do they have to keep moving fast to
stay up?"
The
commander clamped his jaws together sullenly and said nothing.
Kurt made a tentative move toward the firing
stud. "Easy!" yelled the gunnery officer in alarm. "That thing
has hair-trigger action!" "Well?" said Kurt to Krogson. "We
can hover," grunted the other.
"Then
take up a position a little to one side of the plateau." Kurt brushed the
surface of the firing stud with a casual finger. "If you make me push
this, I don't want a lot of scrap iron falling down on the battalion. Somebody
might get hurt."
As the fleet came to rest above the plateau,
the call light on the communication panel began to flash again. "Answer
it," ordered Kurt, "but watch what you say." Krogson walked over
and snapped on the screen. "Communications, sir." "Well?"
"It's that message we
called you about earlier. We've finally got the decoder working—sort of, that
is." His voice faltered and then stopped.
"What does it
say?" demanded Krogson impatiently.
"We
still don't know," admitted the tech miserably. "It's being decoded
all right but it's coming out in a North Vegan dialect that nobody down here
can understand. I guess there's still something wrong with the selector. All
that we can figure out is that the message has something to do with General
Carr and the Lord Protector."
"Want me to go down and fix it?"
interrupted Kurt in an innocent voice.
Krogson
whirled toward him, his hamlike hands clinching and unclinching in impotent
rage. "Anything wrong, sir?" asked the technician on the screen.
Kurt raised a significant eyebrow to the
commander. "Of course not," growled Krogson. "Go find somebody
to translate that message and don't bother me until it's done." A new
face appeared on the screen.
"Excuse
me for interrupting, sir, but translation won't be necessary. We just got a
flash from Detection that they've spotted the ship that sent it. It's a small
scout heading in on emergency drive. She should be here in a matter of
minutes."
Krogson
flipped off the screen impatiently. "Whatever it is, it's sure to be more
trouble," he said to nobody in particular. Suddenly he became aware that
the fleet was no longer in motion. "Well," he said sourly to Kurt,
"we're here. What now?"
"Send a ship down to the garrison and
bring Colonel Harris back up here so that you and he can work this thing out
between you. Tell him that Dixon is up here and has everything under
control."
Krogson
turned to the executive officer. "All right," he said, "do what
he says." The other saluted and started toward the door.
"Just
a second," said Kurt. "If you have any idea of telling the boys
outside to cut the transmission leads from fire control, I wouldn't advise it.
It's a rather lengthy process and the minute a trouble light blinks on that
board, up we go! Now on your way!"
XIV
Lieutenant Colonel Blick, acting commander of
the 427th Light Maintenance Battalion of the Imperial
Space Marines, stood at his office window and scowled down upon the whole
civilized world, all twenty-six square kilometers of it. It had been a hard
day. Three separate delegations of mothers had descended upon him demanding
that he reopen the Tech Schools for the sake of their sanity. The recruits had
been roaming the company streets in bands composed of equal numbers of small
boys and large dogs creating havoc wherever they went. He tried to cheer
himself up by thinking of his forthcoming triumph when he in the guise of the
Inspector General would float magnificently down from the skies and once and for
all put the seal of final authority upon the new order. The only trouble was
that he was beginning to have a sneaking suspicion that maybe that new order
wasn't all that he had planned it to be. As he thought of his own six banshees
screaming through quarters, his suspicion deepened almost to certainty.
He
wandered back to his desk and slumped behind it gloomily. He couldn't backwater
now, his pride was at stake. He glanced at the water clock on his desk, and
then rose reluctantly and started toward the door. It was time to get into
battle armor and get ready for the inspection.
As
he reached the door, there was a sudden slap of running sandals down the hall.
A second later Major Kane burst into the office, his face white and terrified.
"Colonel," he gasped,
"the I.G.'s here!"
"Nonsense," said
Blick. "I'm the I.G. now!"
"Oh yeah?" whimpered Kane. "Go
look out the window. He's here and he's brought the whole Imperial fleet with
him!"
Blick
dashed to the window and looked up. High above, so high that he could seem them
only as silver specks, hung hundreds of ships.
"Headquarters does
exist!" he gasped.
He
stood stunned. What to do . . . what to do . . . what to do— The question
swirled around in his brain until he was dizzy. He looked to Kane for advice
but the other was as bewildered as he was.
"Don't stand there,
man," he stormed. "Do something!"
"Yes, sir," said
Kane. "What?"
Blick thought for a long silent moment. The
answer was obvious but there was a short, fierce inner struggle before he could
bring himself to accept it.
"Get Colonel Harris up here at once.
He'll know what we should do."
A
stubborn look came across Kane's face. "We're running things now," he
said angrily.
Blick's face hardened and he let out a roar
that shook the walls. "Listen, you pup, when you get an order you follow
it. Now get!"
Forty seconds later Colonel Harris stormed
into the office. "What kind of a mess have you got us into this
time?" he demanded.
"Look
up there, sir," said Blick, leading him to the window. Colonel Harris
snapped back into command as if he'd never left
it.
"Major
Kane!" he shouted.
Kane
popped into the ofEce like a frightened rabbit.
"Evacuate
the garrison at once! I want everyone off the plateau and into the jungle
immediately. Get litters for the sick and the veterans who can't walk and take
them to the hunting camps. Start the rest moving north as soon as you
can."
"Really,
sir," protested Kane, looking to Blick for a cue.
"You
heard the colonel," barked Blick. "On your way!" Kane bolted.
Colonel
Harris turned to Blick and said in a frosty voice: "I appreciate your
help, colonel, but I feel perfectly competent to enforce my own orders."
"Sorry,
sir," said the other meekly. "It won't happen again."
Harris
smiled. "O.K., Jimmie," he said, "let's forget it. We've got
work to do!"
XV
It
seemed to Kurt as if time was standing still. His nerves were screwed up to the
breaking point and although he maintained an air of outward composure for the
benefit of those in the control room of the flagship, it took all his will
power to keep the hand that was resting over the firing stud from quivering.
One slip and they'd be on him. Actually it was only a matter of minutes between
the time the scout was dispatched to the garrison below and the time it
returned, but to him it seemed as if hours had passed before the familiar form
of his commanding officer strode briskly into the control room.
Colonel Harris came to a halt just inside the
door and swept the room with a keen penetrating gaze. "What's up,
son?" he asked Kurt.
"I'm
not quite sure. All that I know is that they're here to blast the garrison. As
long as I've got control of this," he indicated the
firing stud, "I'm top dog, but you'd
better work something out in a hurry."
The look of strain on
Kurt's face was enough for the colonel.
"Who's in command
here?" he demanded.
Krogson
stepped forward and bowed stiffly. "Commander Conrad Krogson of War Base
Three of the Galactic Protectorate."
"Colonel
Marcus Harris, 427th
Light Maintenance Battalion
of the Imperial Space Marines," replied the other briskly. "Now that
the formalities are out of the way, let's get to work. Is there some place
where we can talk?"
Krogson gestured toward a small cubicle that
opened off the control room. The two men entered and shut the door behind them.
A
half-hour went by without agreement. "There may be an answer
somewhere," Colonel Harris said finally, "but I can't find it. We
can't surrender to you, and we can't afford to have you surrender to us. We
haven't the food, facilities, or anything else to keep fifty thousand men under
guard. If we turn you loose, there's nothing to keep you from coming back to
blast us—except your word, that is, and since it would obviously be given under
duress, I'm afraid that we couldn't attach much weight to it. It's a nice problem.
I wish we had more time to spend on it but unless you can come up with
something workable during the next few minutes, I'm going to have to give Kurt
orders to blow the fleet."
Krogson's
mind was operating at a furious pace. One by one he snatched at possible
solutions, and one by one he gave them up as he realized that they would never
stand up under the scrutiny of the razor-sharp mind that sat opposite him.
"Look," he burst out finally,
"your empire is dead and our protectorate is about to fall apart. Give us
a chance to come down and join you and we'll chuck the past. We need each other
and you know it!"
"I
know we do," said the colonel soberly, "and I rather think you are
being honest with me. But we just can't take the chance. There are too many of
you for us to digest and if you should change your mind—" He threw up his
hands in a helpless gesture.
"But I wouldn't,"
protested Krogson. "You've told me what your life is like down there and
you know what kind of a rat race I've been caught up in. I'd welcome the chance
to get out of it. All of
us would!"
"You
might to begin with," said Harris, "but then you might start thinking
what your Lord Protector would give to get his hands on several hundred trained
technicians. No, commander," he said, "we just couldn't chance
it." He stretched his hand out to Krogson and the other after a second's
hesitation took it.
Commander Krogson had reached the end of the
road and he knew it. The odd thing about it was that now he found himself
there, he didn't particularly mind. He sat and watched his own reactions with a
sense of vague bewilderment. The strong drive for self-preservation that had
kept him struggling ahead for so long was petering out and there was nothing to
take its place. He was immersed in a strange feeling of emptiness and though a
faint something within him said that he should go out fighting, it seemed
pointless and without reason.
Suddenly
the moment of quiet was broken. From the control room came a muffled sound of
angry voices and scuffling feet. With one quick stride Colonel Harris reached
the door and swung it open. He was almost bowled over by a small disheveled figure who darted past him into the cubicle. Close
behind came several of the ship's officers. As the figure came to a stop before Commander Krogson, one grabbed him and started to drag him
back into the control room.
"Sorry,
sir," another one said to Krogson, "but he came busting in demanding
to see you at once. He wouldn't tell us why and when we tried to stop him, he
broke away."
"Release
him!" ordered the commander. He looked sternly at the little figure.
"Well, Schninkle," he said sternly, "what is it this time?"
"Didn't you get my
message?" quavered the little man.
Krogson
snorted. "So it was you in that scout! I might have known it. We got it
all right but Communication still hasn't got it figured out. What are you doing
out here? You're supposed to be back at base keeping knives out of my
back!"
"It's private,
sir," said Schninkle.
"The rest of you clear out!" ordered
Krogson. A second later, with the exception of Colonel Harris, the cubicle
stood empty. Schninlcle looked questioningly at the oddly uniformed officer.
"Couldn't
put him out if I wanted to," said Krogson. "Now go ahead."
Schninkle closed the door carefully and then
turned to the commander and said in a hushed voice, "There's been a
blowup at Prime Base. General Carr was hiding out there after all. He hit at
noon yesterday. He had two-thirds of the Elite Guard secretly on his side and
the Lord Protector didn't have a chance. He tried to run but they chopped him
down before he got out of atmosphere."
Krogson
digested the news in silence for a moment. "So the Lord Protector is
dead." He laughed bitterly. "Well, long live the Lord
Protector!" He turned slowly to Colonel Harris. "I guess this lets us
both off. Now* that the heat's off me, you're safe. Call off your boy out there
and we'll make ourselves scarce. I've got to get back to the new Lord Protector
to pay my respects. If some of my boys get to Carr first, I'm apt to be out of
a job."
Harris
shook his head. "It isn't as simple as that. Your new leader needs
technicians as much as your old one did. I'm afraid we are still back where we
started."
As
Krogson broke into an impatient denial, Schninkle interrupted him. "You
can't go back, commander. None of us can. Carr has the whole staff down on his
out' list. He's making a clean sweep of all possible competition. We'd all be
under arrest now if he knew where we were!"
Krogson
gave a slow whistle. "Doesn't leave me much choice, does it?" he said
to Colonel Harris. "If you don't turn me loose I get blown up, if you do I
get shot down."
Schninkle looked puzzled.
"What's up, sir?" he asked.
Krogson
gave a bitter laugh. "In case you didn't notice on your way in, there is a
young man sitting at the fire controls out there who can blow up the whole
fleet at the touch of a button. Down below is an ideal base with hundreds of
techs, but the colonel here won't take us in and he's afraid to let us
go."
"I wouldn't," admitted Harris,
"but the last few minutes have rather changed the picture. My empire has
been dead for five hundred years and your protectorate doesn't seem to want
you around any more. It looks like we're both out of a job. Maybe we both ought
to try to find a new one. What do you think?"
"I
don't know what to think," said Krogson. "I can't go back and I can't
stay here, and there isn't any place else. The fleet can't keep going without a
base."
A broad grin came over the face of Colonel
Harris. "You know," he said, "I've got a hunch that maybe we can
do business after all. Come on!" He threw open the cubicle door and strode
briskly into the control room, Krogson and Schninkle following close at his
heels. He walked over to Kurt who was still poised stiffly at the fire-control
board.
"You can relax now, lad. Everything is
under control."
Kurt
gave a sigh of relief and pulling himself to his feet, stretched luxuriantly.
As the other officers saw the firing stud deserted, they tensed and looked to
Commander Krogson questioningly. He frowned for a second and then slowly shook
his head.
"Well?" he said to Colonel Harris.
"It's
obvious," said the other, "you've a fleet, a darn good fleet, but
it's falling apart for lack of decent maintenance. I've got a base down there
with five thousand lads who can think with their fingers. This knucklehead of
mine is a good example." He walked over to Kurt and slapped him
affectionately on the shoulder. "There's nothing on this ship that he
couldn't tear down and put back together blindfolded if he was given a little
time to think about it. I think he'll enjoy having some real work to do for a
change."
"I
may seem dense," said Krogson with a bewildered expression on his face,
"but wasn't that the idea that I was trying to sell you?"
"The
idea is the same," said Harris, "but the context isn't. You're in a
position now where you have to co-operate. That makes a difference. A big
difference!"
"It
sounds good," said Krogson, "but now you're overlooking something.
Carr will be looking for me. We can't stand off the whole galaxy!"
Schninkle
interrupted. "You're overlooking something too, sir. He hasn't the
slightest idea where we are. It will be months before he has things well enough
under control to start an organized search for us. When he does, his chances of
ever spotting the fleet are mighty slim if we take reasonable precautions.
Remember that it was only by a fluke that we ever happened to spot this place
to begin with."
As
he talked a calculating look came into his eyes. "A year of training and
refitting here and there wouldn't be a fleet in the galaxy that could stand
against us." He casually edged over until he occupied a position between
Kurt and the fire-control board. "If things went right, there's no reason
why you couldn't become Lord Protector, commander."
A
flash of the old fire stirred within Krogson and then quickly flickered out.
"No, Schninkle," he said heavily. "That's all past now. I've had
enough. It's time to try something new."
"In
that case," said Colonel Harris, "let's beginl Out there a whole
galaxy is breaking up. Soon the time will come when a strong hand is going to
be needed to piece it back together and put it in running order again. You
know," he continued reflectively, "the name of the old empire still
has a certain magic to it. It might not be a bad idea to use it until we are
ready to move on to something better."
He walked silently to the vision port and
looked down on the lush greenness spreading far below. "But whatever we
call ourselves," he continued slowly, half talking to himself, "we
have something to work for now." A quizzical smile played over his lips
and his wise old eyes seemed to be scanning the years ahead. "You know,
Kurt, there's nothing like a visit from the Inspector General once in a while
to keep things in line. The galaxy is a big place but when the time comes,
we'll make our roundsl"
XVI
On the parade ground behind the low buildings
of the garrison, the 427th
Light Maintenance Battalion
of the Imperial Space Marines stood in rigid formation, the feathers of their
war bonnets moving
slightly in the little breeze that blew in
from the west and their war paint glowing redly in the slanting rays of the
setting sun.
A
quiver ran through the hard surface soil of the plateau as the great mass of
the fleet flagship settled down ponderously to rest. There was a moment of
expectant silence as a great port clanged open and a gangplank extended to the
ground. From somewhere within the ship a fanfare of trumpets sounded. Slowly
and with solemn dignity, surrounded by his staff, Conrad Krogson, Inspector
General of the Imperial Space Marines, advanced to review the troops.
galactic trader:
Tom Ramsay
The life blood of any
civilization is trade.
But what happens in a galaxy-wide
civilization when one
must deal not only with fellow-humans
but with non-human
races as well? There can
be some odd results from
commerce
between two radically different cultures.
|
As Tom Ramsay knew when he was pressured into supervising the exchange with Delthig IV.
Peddle
BY H. B. FYFE
When
his secretary announced the interstellar telecall, Tom Ramsay was on the
balcony outside his office, watching one of his spaceships land. He smiled
proudly as it flared down against the hazy background of Delthig IV's remaining
sea.
Used
to think I was big stuff with one interstellar ship, he
thought. Now I have three, plus ten locals. Guess I ought to find a buyer for
the locals, though, before the Delthigans on III crank up to expand that Planetary State of theirs.
He
glanced with continued satisfaction at his secretary. Tall, willowy, with hair
nearly as black as his own short brush but features far easier to look at,
Marie Furman was another symbol of his progress in this Terran colony. Then she
spoke, and a cold little knot formed in the pit of Ramsay's stomach.
"Telecall
from Bormek V, Mr. Ramsay. A gentleman named J. Gilbert Fuller, of Sol
III."
Ramsay
hastily checked over in his mind all his recent operations. This, somehow, had
become habitual whenever he recalled his one entanglement with the Bureau of
Special Trading, during a stop on Terra two years earlier.
He noticed the girl eyeing the thin scar that
ran back from his left
temple, and realized that it had become more
prominent with the paling of his features.
"Put it on my desk
visor, Marie," he muttered.
Whatever
he wants, he promised himself, Í won't
even splash it with a rocket
blast. That guy is always
one orbit closer to the heat than anybody else!
A
moment later, the subspace waves were relayed to his desk and he saw Fuller
face to face. An almost imperceptible lag after each speech was the only indication
of the empty light-years between their physical locations.
"You're
looking well," Fuller commented genially. "I hear that spaceline of
yours is growing fast."
He
looks ;ust the same, thought Ramsay. As if he just finished licking that
mustache after swallowing the canaiy.
And not one gold-plated hair of his head out of
place.'
Aloud, he remarked on the
excellence of communication.
"Oh,
this is not a relay," said Fuller. "I really am on Bormek V, only two
light-years away. Having a little vacation."
"Hope you're having a
good time," Ramsay ventured warily.
"Well, I was, but
something ... ah, came up."
"Uh-huh/" Ramsay
grunted.
He
pressed both palms against the edge of the shiny black desk and braced his
shoulders against the imitation Cagsan lizard skin of his chair, for the sake
of feeling something at his back.
"Not
exactly business of the Bureau," Fuller went on blithely, "but the
Bormekians asked me to look into it."
"Don't
tell me your Bureau of Slick Tricks doesn't have an agent around Delthigl"
Ramsay
thought he knew of at least four, not counting the elderly gentleman in charge
of the Bureau's local information service. Fuller waved one hand in a broad
gesture, as if to imply that he would hardly make such a bald claim to an
intelligent and sophisticated intimate like Ramsay.
"I
fear I shall require . . . him, for other tasks," he said blandly.
"So, naturally, I thought of you."
"Naturally," said
Ramsay, glumly. "Glad to help if I can."
"Excellent!"
Fuller beamed. "I knew you would be eager to co-
120 •
space service
operate.
You are hardly one to miss noticing that we have been throwing a little
influence behind you occasionally."
The
spaceman's gaze wavered momentarily. He had wondered a few times how he had
managed to expand so rapidly. Hauling refined metals from the mines on Delthig
II was standard, but out-system freighting from the fourth planet competed with
some powerful interstellar companies.
Of course, the B. S. T. had power too,
reflecting that which Terra had acquired by being at a spatial crossroads between
the interior of the galaxy and the stars near the Edge. Ramsay usually thought
of Fuller as lurking beside that crossroads, the biggest highwayman of all the
Bureau.
"Now, then," continued the blond
agent, "what can you tell me about Delthig III and its natives? I want to
check our files."
"Well,"
said Ramsay, "the average Delthigan is half a foot taller than I am,
wasp-waisted, with roundish, heavy shoulders. Arms and legs skinny but knotty,
four each and three sections where we have two. Three mutually opposing digits
for hands."
"Yes, I have the right file,"
agreed Fuller, checking.
"He'd
have a sort of warty skin, gray with greenish tints. Three eyes, air vents like
gills across the front of his face over a big shark mouth. Flappy ears set low
on the side of his head, far back."
"What
I'm interested in," said Fuller, "is political and economic
information."
"Frankly," said Ramsay, "they
won't have much to do with us. They're totalitarians, you know, and they make a
point of resenting our having two planets in the system. Guess they have their
troubles keeping every John Doe at least half-fed and spinning the grindstone
with all four floppy hands."
"Overpopulated?"
"Badly. Local guess is five or six
billion." "Other planets?"
"Nothing
of use to them except ours, the fourth. Delthig II has good mines, but it's
dead rock like the first. V and VI are little ice-balls circling way out back
somewhere."
"So that they might be attracted to our
colony?"
Ramsay hesitated, but decided that Fuller was
quite capable of knowing a rumor from a trend.
"Talk is," he said, "that not
only are they planning to throw us out, but they also are talking about
spreading out-system."
"How much fact is in
it?" asked Fuller, watching intently.
"I'm ready to sell out and leave,"
the spaceman told him simply. "Never saw a fat Delthigan yet; they're all
run ragged keeping their glorious Planetary State in what they call 'readiness
for activity.' "
"The
old, old story," agreed Fuller. "Well, Tom, that does interest me.
Their neighbors in space, Bormek, Ronuil, and other stars, are all good
customers of Terra. The Bureau will have to do something. Letting Delthig
import a few of the necessities of life might save a lot of trouble
later."
Ramsay
judiciously kept his mouth shut. Fuller's alert blue eyes studied him.
"In
fact," said the B. S. T. man, "we are arranging a trade conference.
Since you are practically on the spot, I knew you wouldn't mind hopping over to
Delthig III to represent us—would you?"
"Oh ...
no ... of course not," muttered
Ramsay, unable to think of an excuse that would be good enough to fool Fuller.
That
seemed to settle it. He tried various afterthoughts, stressing the fact the
Delthigans had few manufactures except space cruisers and primitive projectile
weapons, and that they considered themselves short of raw materials. Their
money was a joke and their credit nonexistent, he pointed out, so that a del
could hardly be spent at whatever discount anywhere but on Delthig III.
"They
don't know what they're up against in the galaxy," he said, "but they
have five billion down-trodden 'citizens' to expend in finding out. Not even
the B. S. T. is going to buy them off!"
"No?"
said Fuller. "Well, try it anyway. You never can tell what's for
sale."
Leaving
Ramsay groping for further objections, he smiled genially and cut off.
Six days later, that smile returned to haunt
Ramsay, as he viewed it again on a film recording of further instructions
Fuller had sent to the brand-new spaceport on Chika, the large inner room of
Del-thig Ill's trio.
The spaceman had boarded one of his own ships
a few hours after his talk with Fuller, bag, baggage, and secretary, leaving
word for his general manager to divert all his other ships to Delthig III. In
space, a message had reached him, warning that while the Del-thigans had agreed
to an unofficial discussion, they had forbidden any Terran visit to the surface
of their planet. Hence the hastily erected plastic domes beside a flat plain on
Chika, where Ramsay landed and found the spare, white-haired man formerly of
the B. S. T. information service on IV.
"Hane is the name, Mr. Ramsay. Heard you
were to be in charge here. Your office and our quarters are in this pre-fab
building, and this bubble over it is the main dome."
"What could you get in
the secondary ones?" grunted Ramsay.
"Not
much except barracks and space for storage. We had quite a time getting Terran
workers over here from II in time to get this much laid out. The Delthigan
representative is expected shortly."
Ramsay introduced Marie Furman, who was
togged out in plaid slacks and jacket as if a trip to Chika were a sporting
event. He glanced through the transparent plastic wall at the other domes.
Beyond them were low hills, tinted green by traces of scanty vegetation.
"There is some air out there," Hane
remarked, "but not enough for anything but mosses and a few other growths.
By the way, we recorded a message for you from Mr. Fuller."
The instructions, Ramsay saw when he
projected the film in the office set aside for him, consisted mainly of advice
and a list of exotic exports Fuller was prepared to send to Delthig. Some, Hane
had reported, had already arrived and been stored under the domes.
"So find out," Fuller's image
advised near the end of the film, "what the Delthigans need and what they
can give in return. Be liberal; the Bureau wants to establish cordial
relations."
This won't work, you
know," Ramsay muttered gloomily to himself as the film talked on.
"You can't buy off that bunch. They'll take, but they won't pay. When they
think they're strong enough to make trouble, out they'll come, like a swarm of
bees!"
Fuller was reviewing some
of his "bargains."
". . . And that new energy projector
developed on Bormek V might have a military use that would make them happy. And
don't forget the patents for the plastic pre-fab house, and the automatic
kitchen, or the couple of hundred tons of bright dyes from Fegash —that last
ought to get them if their culture is as dull and routine as you say."
Ramsay
silently agreed as the picture of Fuller peered more closely at his list.
"Oh, yes," said the B. S. T. man,
"I would personally be very happy to unload those twenty million cheap,
one-channel telescreens from Vozaal VII that I had to take for . . .
diplomatic reasons. They're a big bulge on my account, and—"
"Huh!"
snorted Ramsay, turning off the projector with a disgusted flip of his finger.
"Marie!"
His secretary appeared in
the doorway to her small office.
"As
soon as those techs get through to Fuller, remind me to tell him his pet gyp
scheme is no good. The Delthigans have no television yet. Hane did say, didn't
he, that we have a subspace set that will reach Bormek?"
"Yes, Mr. Ramsay. They
promised to—"
A
flare of light seeped in through the window of the one-story building. Ramsay
rose, but found that the window was not designed to be opened. As he was
craning his neck in a vain attempt to see the landing field, Hane entered.
"That
will be the ship from Delthig," he said, rubbing his bristling chin.
"Wish I'd got rid of this stubble, but we'd better see to them
immediately, Mr. Ramsay. Officials of that government down there are apt to be
impatient."
Ramsay
nodded sourly, reminding himself that he was representing someone else and
therefore expected to be prudent about taking personal offense. He followed
Hane to a chamber at the other end of the building in which the air pressure
and moisture content was a compromise between that of Delthig and conditions
favored by Terrans. He found it too dry for comfort.
Presently,
three Delthigans were ushered in, and escorted by Hane to places at the high
table. They did not use chairs, so Ramsay perforce stood facing them.
Not very fair, he thought, seeing that they
have four feet each against my two. Otherwise, though, they're a seedy-looking bunch/
The
Delthigans were dressed in tunics of dull-colored, sleazy material, belted at
their narrow waists with bands of something resembling straw. Their three-toed
feet were wrapped in cloth puttees, but on the middle sections of their arms
all wore several bands of metal enameled in bright colors. The spaceman guessed
these to be insignia of rank.
During Hane's introductions, Marie slipped in
with her notebook. Ramsay stared unhappily at the Delthigans, each of whom examined
him suspiciously, first with one eye, then another, then yet another, turning
his small, roundish head from side to side in the process. Ramsay noticed that
his guests had vestigial crests of thickened skin atop their grayish skulls.
He
breathed a sigh of relief when it developed that one of them, Puag Tukhi by
name, spoke fair Terran, though with a hissing, clicking accent.
Marie
brought Ramsay a list transcribed from Fuller's filmed message. He mentioned
one or two items, but Puag Tukhi was bluntly direct.
"We
see first new powder-maker from Bormek," he stated forth-rightly,
fluttering two or three hands at the list.
"I... uh, described
it, so to speak," murmured old Hane.
"Arrange a
demonstration?" muttered Ramsay behind his hand.
"Oh,
Mr. Fuller gave instructions for that. We have an old emergency rocket wire as
a drone target. The Bormekian ship mounting the thing has been cruising an
orbit around Chika. I . . . ah, alerted them."
"Just what does it
do?" asked Ramsay.
"You'll see. We can
watch on the telescreen over there."
Ramsay passed the invitation on, and they
gathered around the instrument in the corner of the room. He noticed that the
gray-green skin of the Delthigan beside him showed traces of quite hu-manoid
perspiration, although he himself found the air dry enough to foreshadow a sore
throat if he had to talk a great deal. Then Hane had a message sent out to the
cruising ship, and Ramsay forgot personal discomfort for a time.
He
supposed later that the Delthigans must have been fascinated, though they
managed to repress any undue show of interest. As Hane explained it, the field
projected by the new weapon drastically affected the affinity for each other of
the molecules of any substance within its range. Its range, he read from notes
in a small memo book, had not yet been successfully measured. It did not by any
means cause actual disintegration, but any supplementary disturbance—a
projectile or even a sudden acceleration—might produce disorganization.
They
were treated to a clearly focused view of the target rocket as it entered the
field, just as Hane finished remarking that the latter was ineffective if used
too close to a sun.
"Watch,
now!" he added. "They are going to attempt hitting it with a bullet
from a modified rifle."
This,
in space, required some doing. Eventually, however, as the Delthigans began to
shuffle their many feet like a barnful of restless horses, the nose of the
rocket seemed to spread out into a cloud of smoke.
"They
promised, if that worked," said Hane, "that they would signal the
radio controls to change course."
Sure
enough, the stern jets of the little rocket flared briefly a moment later. Briefly,
because the entire hull of faintly gleaming metal expanded into amorphous
swirls of dust, some drifting off in what was to have been the new course but
most continuing along the old curve.
"And
what if it nothing disturpt while field on it?" asked Puag Tukhi.
"Probably be all right," guessed
Ramsay. "Maybe a few air leaks." Hane switched off the telescreen and
they regrouped at the conference table. Ramsay attempted to turn the talk to
his list of possible imports—the thought of such a weapon in the hands of
beings known to be contemplating military adventure gave him a chill.
Puag
Tukhi, however, insistently brought the discussion back at every opportunity to
one point: he was willing to "consider accepting" a number of the
Bormekian "powder-makers" if suitable terms could be arranged.
Suitable terms, he seemed to think, included Delthigan currency.
As time went on, he gradually modified these
offers until they further included supplying Delthigan labor for the Terran
mines on the second planet and the purchase of other items. Ramsay's throat got
drier and drier while he strove to avoid concluding the agreement.
"You
not want gif us only what you wantl" exclaimed the Delthigan finally,
working his toothy shark-mouth unpleasantly.
"Not
at alll" denied the Terran. "I merely wish you to appreciate all the
possibilities."
"Appressshiate? Not
know wordt."
"I
want you to see all the best things. Look—suppose we have a little pause here,
so each side can talk things over! We'll regulate the air in another room for
you to be more comfortable in, and take it up again in half an hour or
so."
After
only two repetitions, the Delthigan got the drift and agreed reluctantly to a
recess. The Terrans retreated to Ramsay's office, Marie pausing at her own
desk.
His
first action was to demand that the station operators get him a face-to-face
call to J. Gilbert Fuller, on Bormek V.
"I don't like it a bit!" he said to
the old man while they waited for the call to go through. "Let them have
enough of those gadgets, and we'll find ourselves in the mines of Delthig II
one fine day, and these squids out to conquer the stars."
"Dear,
dear!" muttered Hane. "I do imagine they have something of the sort
in mind. Still, Mr. Fuller ought to know what he means to do."
"That's
the one thing that keeps me here at all," admitted the spaceman.
"He's sharp, I know. And yet. . . he's never been in this system. Looking
over the data on Bormek V is one thing; but it's another to see that
self-perpetuating clique down there sweat-shopping their whole planet into an
armed camp."
Marie
Furman entered from her office, carrying a drinking glass and a small bottle.
"You'd
better gargle with this, Mr. Ramsay," she said sympathetically.
He accepted gratefully and moved toward the
small lavatory adjoining the office. As soon as he had his mouth full, his
brunette secretary informed him that the operators had reached the Bormek
station, only to learn that J. Gilbert Fuller had gone off on business of his
own with no word except that he would be back presently.
Ramsay
choked, as was doubtless intended, he realized. By the time he was physically
capable of voicing the expressions that rose to his lips, he had regained a
measure of censoring self-control.
"That's fine!" he
groaned. "What'll I tell these squids?"
"Well.. . this is just a personal opinion,
mind," said Hane, "but perhaps it would be best to strike a bargain
with them."
"But those
projectors!" objected the spaceman.
"Projector," Hane
corrected. "Only one has arrived, so far."
"You could promise more, then sort of
forget about them," suggested the girl.
"Too
dishonest," Ramsay vetoed. "Not only that, but I don't want to be
here when they yell 'foul.' Those octopuses are too touchy now. Imagine if they
thought they'd been swindled!"
"True,"
agreed Hane. "I can't think of any excuse to turn them down."
Ramsay
paced the office several laps without locating any inspiration.
"All
right," he sighed finally. "I'll go back in there and try to palm off
on them Fuller's precious telescreens and every other equivalent of glass beads
he's sending. Maybe they'll draw the line at some of the junk. Then I can get
insulted and back out!"
It seemed to Ramsay that the ensuing session
with Puag Tukhi lasted one or two normal lifetimes. Long before the close,
Marie had frankly curled up in a chair by the wall and gone to sleep. Hane
retired to a seat by the telescreen in the corner an hour later, where he
maintained a precarious position by jerking upright from time to time when his
chin touched his chest. Even one of the Delthigans, despite censorious glares
from his chief, rested his round head on the table and kept only one
heavy-lidded eye open.
When
at last Ramsay stumbled into his sleeping quarters, having seen the native
officials off to their ship and called a pair of communications operators on
night watch to carry Hane and Marie out, he was too exhausted to bother
checking either the time or the contract.
It seemed only a few minutes before the
persistent chime of the intercom visor beside his bed bullied him into
wakefulness. He answered groggily, to discover that it was another day and
someone wanted to know what to do with three shiploads of Vozaalian telescreens
and one of scarlet dye from Fegash.
"Any of my
interplanetary ships here?" he croaked.
"Five, Mr. Ramsay,
including the Sprite that you came in."
"Load
them all for Delthig III, and when they come back up, have them stand by in
case the Delthigans bring cargo for IV. And keep a good record; I'm going to
bill the B. S. T. for every bit of this!"
He cut off, then called the building guard
with orders to wake Marie and Hane.
"If
Ramsay can't sleep," he muttered, weaving toward his shower, "nobody
sleeps! Ugh, my throat! I better gargle again."
At
length, dressed in shirt and slacks, the latter tucked into high spaceman's
boots, he went to his office. Hane and Marie, the latter still in slacks,
appeared presently. The girl proved herself the efficient secretary when the
breakfast she had ordered arrived a few minutes later.
"The first thing I want to check,"
said Ramsay, brushing toast crumbs from the handwritten agreement he had copied
down the night before, "is where we wound up. I seem to remember something
about scrap metal for the Delthig IV plants."
"Paug
Tukhi offered to exchange old weapons for the Bormekian projectors," Hane
recalled, "along with other scrap. That was just before his little speech
about how such avaricious bargaining as yours would never be tolerated in his
society."
"I was hoping he'd get
mad and leave," said Ramsay.
It appeared that the Delthigans had even
accepted Fuller's useless telescreens. They were to distribute all twenty
million—if they could—and act as brokers for the Terrans.
Guess
they didn't like that, Ramsay reflected, but it was better than having inieiioi aliens on their sacred planet/
The Delthigans had also contracted for the
building of several hundred spaceships which, as Hane put it, might be
delivered to them. In partial return for these, the thousands of Bormekian
weapons ordered, and certain other items, they were to supply scrap metal and
drafts of workers for Terran projects on II, IV, and Chika.
"I'm not sure I like that," said
Ramsay. "They'll repossess both if they ever clip us; and I don't see how
we'll get the cash balance out of them."
A
few luxury articles such as dyestuffs and automatic household gadgets had been
ordered. Ramsay shrewdly estimated that the amount of these would perhaps be
sufficient to supply the upper crust of the Delthigan regime—certainly no more.
But the main thing was the
projectors.
"They
didn't really fight against the other junk," Ramsay commented. "That
worries me. What in the world would they do with those telescreens? They just
took them to get the weapons."
"If I know them at all," retorted
Hane, "they will distribute the sets as evidence to their people of
progress toward the better life most of them despair of ever seeing."
"And
simply promise telecasts in the future," Marie put in. "They won't be
responsible if it's the very far future."
"Exactly,"
agreed the old man, smiling at her. "And, if you'll pardoning my
mentioning it, Ramsay, that is how they will pay us for the sets—in the far,
far future."
Ramsay nodded.
"Well,"
he sighed, "I'd better send off a message to be filmed for Fuller if he
still isn't back, and tell him about the agreement and their lack of
telecasting. He might enter that on the books as an 'out' against the day they
default. I hate to say so, but he's going to need some excuse this time."
Within a few days—reckoned by Terran
standards because the satellite rotated once in its three-week journey around
its planet— he began to suspect that his customers were leaning over backward
to stay in the right. Ship after ship, Terran and Delthigan, arrived to
discharge scrap metal and shuttle other goods down to Delthig III as fast as
the big interstellar ships could be unloaded. One Delthigan official delivered
a statement showing a staggering balance in dels banked under Ramsay's name,
it being illegal for such a sum to be taken beyond the Planetary State's control.
"Things go so fast around here,"
Ramsay said to Hane, "that I wonder if they're just breaking up the
telescreens and shooting them back as scrap."
"That was a fair theory," admitted
the older man, "up to yesterday when those boys unloading found live shells
to fit one of the junked cannon. Did you see where they were taking potshots at
the hill out there?"
Ramsay snorted.
"The
squids don't seem to care what they send. Have we got barracks up for the
Delthigan labor gangs that arrived?"
"Yes," Hane chuckled. "I faced
them with the alternative of sleeping out, so to speak, and they fell to with a
will."
"Let's keep them
here," suggested the spaceman.
He
eyed the fast-growing settlement in his charge. It required a lot of labor to
keep the spaceport unclogged.
"They
were supposed to go to the mines on II," Hane reminded him, "as soon
as they built barracks for more transients."
"I'd just as soon avoid that as long as
we can. I can picture a horde of so-called 'laborers' running amuck when a
Delthigan fleet approaches that planet. But here, they'd be some use."
"They'll
work hard," Hane agreed. "They look well broken-in for that."
Slaves,
thought Ramsay. That's
what they amount
to. Wish I had nothing to do with handling them.'
He
could see the mottled, brownish face of Delthig III above the low hills of the
moon. He wondered if a telescope would show the fires and lights of hard-driven
factories on the night side. He caught himself imagining that malevolent,
brooding eyes watched him from those shadows.
What's it like to live there? he wondered.
He
tried to picture the hopeless drudgery of building a Planetary State on
inadequate rations under the monotonous bludgeoning of propaganda designed to
dull the senses to the lack of food, or clothing, or freedom, or pleasure, or
the slightest respite from the slavery.
No
wonder they woik so hard on the new domes, he thought. They must
be happy to
he even this far away
from the surface.
"Have
them put up more shelters," he said to Hane, "and quarter incoming
gangs in them to take over the stevedoring. I can't ask our own men to go on
short-handed any longer."
That
noon, he tried to catch a nap in his room, but found himself too restless.
Putting on a spacesuit, he made a tour of inspection out to the end of the
expanding port, where a Delthigan ship was unloading more scrap.
"I
wish I knew why they keep sending the stuff," he said to Marie in the
office upon his return.
"I
guess they call the guns obsolete now. Isn't that what they do when somebody
builds a bigger one?"
"Bigger what?"
"Bigger
anything. That horrid thing from Bormek made their guns obsolete."
"Yeah,"
he said, sitting down slowly, "but they usually don't throw away the old
till they have twice as many of the new. And Fuller hasn't—thank goodness!—sent
us any more of what Puag Tukhi calls 'powder-makers.'"
"Well,
be that as it may," said his secretary, "I found out for you about
the ship that parked here last night. You'll never guess!"
Ramsay
ran the fingers of his left hand through his close-clipped black hair and
looked up at her with an expression of forced patience.
"Oh,
all right, then!" exclaimed Marie, tossing her head slightly. "I'll
tell you before you start demanding again why somebody doesn't at least try to
help you keep track of what goes on around here."
"Please do!" said
Ramsay succinctly.
"It's a television
station!"
He drummed his fingers on the desk.
"Very funny. Do I have
to go find out for myself?"
"You
could; I told them it would be all right to have some Delthigans extend a
plastic tube out to the ship. And it's just what I said!"
"A television
station?"
"Well,
a ship sent direct from Bormek by Mr. Fuller that's outfitted to telecast
programs. The man in charge, Mr. Neuberg, explained how they can send almost
as far as your spaceport communicator, but entertainment, too."
Ramsay
dropped both hands to the desk and slumped back in his chair. He shook his head
slowly, resignedly.
"That's
what I get," he murmured, "for telling him about unloading his
telescreens when I griped about the projectors."
"I
think it was awfully clever of Mr. Fuller to manage it so soon," said his
secretary. "They've already made a local film to telecast to Delthig III.
I'm in it!"
"When
they don't get those projectors, they'll come up here and blow my head
off," said Ramsay gloomily. "And he sends me a telecasting station!
All wrapped up in a spaceship so it can skip out fast when the shooting
starts!"
"They
took pictures of me setting up an automatic stove and putting something in it
to cook," said Marie. "Mr. Neuberg wanted to show things actually
being sent to the Delthigans."
"I'd
like to see it sometime," said Ramsay, when she waited expectantly for
comment.
Marie brightened. She ran out to her desk and
returned in a moment with a small telescreen.
"Where did you get
that cracker box?" demanded Ramsay.
Marie
smiled reminiscently and pushed back her dark hair after turning the set on.
"That's
what we're sending to Delthig. One of the boys snitched one for me out of the
last cargo."
"You leave 'the boys'
alone!" ordered Ramsay severely.
"I couldn't have the boss stealing telescreens, could 1? What would Mr. Hane say? Oh, look! There
I am now. Mr. Neuberg said he's going to repeat it with his other films until
every Delthigan has seen it."
"That
means almost fifteen million already," said Ramsay, glancing at a crude
chart of the spaceport's traffic.
"Mr.
Neuberg says more than that. This thing only receives on one channel, but it
will still be a great novelty on Delthig III. He says there ought to be up to
two hundred watchers to each set, maybe more."
Ramsay
decided not to bother estimating mentally the percentage of the Delthigan
population being titillated by Marie's conquest of an apple pie. He noticed
that she wasted a lot of material, and hoped Neuberg's food locker held more
apples.
"Mr.
Neuberg said," she defended herself, "that I should set the machine
to remove thick cores. It made a better picture, and he could demonstrate the
garbage disposal attachment."
"I
don't suppose you brought a piece of the pie back with you?" asked Ramsay
hopefully. "Oh . . . they ate
it all, huh?"
He
watched the program give place to another film, a description of Terran home
life. The film family's chief problem in life seemed to be whether to travel to
Mars or Venus for Papa's vacation.
Here
I sit half-starved on rations brought from the
mining domes, thought Ramsay, and she doesn't even bring me a slice of the pie/
The
door to his office was thrown open. Old Hane hustled in at an unprecedented
pace. His scanty white hair was disheveled.
"Puag Tukhi is coming
in for a landing!"
"What's the
matter?" asked the spaceman.
"He
didn't say, but he sounded disturbed over the radio. Do you think it might be,
in a nutshell—the projectors?"
"Very likely,"
said Ramsay, groping for a good excuse.
They
went outside the building to watch through the plastic side of the dome as the
Delthigan ship landed. A pressurized truck trundled out to pick up the
official, and trundled back to the dome with maddening deliberation. It halted
to discharge its passenger at the entrance to the inner building.
Puag Tukhi restrained himself with obvious
difficulty until they had gone inside. In Ramsay's office, rapid denunciation
in hissing Delthigan began.
The others looked at each
other helplessly.
Puag Tukhi stuttered into
Terran.
"I stronger orderss
haf to make protests!" he declaimed.
"What's wrong?"
asked Ramsay innocently.
"Wronk! Will show what
iss wronk!"
He
bounded across the office on his four stringy-muscled legs to the telescreen.
He switched it on.
"Thiss
you gif us. But not ssay to
haf picturess on! What trouble you make!"
The
current program, Ramsay saw, was another in home economics starring his
brunette secretary. This time, it featured an automatic vacuum cleaner that
all but thought for itself.
"What's wrong with
that?" he asked.
Puag
Tukhi pulled himself together and wiped perspiration from around his chinless
mouth. His three eyes glared and the greenish tone of his gray skin became more
pronounced.
"Iss
not to matter why iss wronk with it! I haf now my superiorss enough trouble to
worry apout. Musst also explain to you? Instru-mentss were dissplay, not for
use!"
Ramsay
relaxed slightly. This was something he thought he could handle. It might even
be useful in keeping the Delthigans' minds off other matters, such as
nondelivery of Bormekian projectors, or holding laborers on Chika.
I'll
push this as far as it will
go, he decided. Now, how would Fuller do it?
"I do not recall any part of our
agreement dealing with telecasting," he said smoothly.
Puag
Tukhi stared straight at him, then turned his round head from side to side to
examine the Terran through his other eyes. He opened his mouth twice,
displaying numerous pointed teeth, before he succeeded in voicing an answer.
"That iss what I ssay.'" he
complained. "Therefore, you musst not do thiss! Makes for me trouble.
Serious trouble!"
"You admit you did
accept our telescreens," asked Ramsay.
"Yess."
"And, as our agents,
distributed them among your people?"
"Yess,
yessl We musst, understand, gif them some sign of progress. They work . . .
very hard."
"But
television is communication," Ramsay pursued coolly. "That implies
two parties, televiewer and telecaster. The receiver is useless without a
telecast to receive. Correct?"
"Yess, but-"
"Therefore,
your acceptance of our telescreens implied admitting our right to telecast to
theml You see?"
Puag Tukhi hesitated. He gripped two of his
three-fingered hands into a tight knot and ran a third raspingly over the thickened hide of his vestigial crest.
"Of
course, if you like," said Ramsay jauntily, "we can stop the whole
business. Keep the telescreens and I'll cancel the other shipments!"
That'll
fix him/ he thought. He noticed Marie looking at him admiringly, and wished he
had a mustache like Fuller's to stroke.
Then
Puag Tukhi said something that shocked him out of his smugness.
"But
why you do thiss to me? I haf made all things as agreet. For telescreens,
millionss of dels
paid. For fancy thingss to
official class, I haf sent to Chika herdss of wronk-thinkink prisonerss to
work—you not need count what you send backl And for Bormek powder-makerss, haf
sent loadss of scrap gunss. You . . . you . . . they will put me in the mines/
Maybe with no teeth and one eye left! Why you make for me such trouble?"
Ramsay wondered if he
sagged visibly.
They're getting them/ he
thought, licking suddenly dry lips.
"I... uh ...
I don't want to make ... trouble for
you—"
He groped his way around a
corner of his desk and sat down.
That
Fuller/ He's
been sending them the
things direct from Bormek. It can't be anything
else. That's why they're shipping discarded guns for
scrap; otherwise they'd keep them. And ME he sends a telecaster. Does he want to get me killed?
"As I . . . uh, was saying," he
stumbled on, "I'd be glad to hear of a way to take the heat off ... off you, Puag Tukhi, that is. There
must be a way to ... ah, protect your
interests."
Puag Tukhi sighed gustily, blowing out a
little spray of moisture. Ramsay looked to Hane for help, but that gentleman
gazed steadfastly out the window.
"Maybe—" Marie
began in a subdued voice.
"Go on!" urged
her employer.
"Well, back on Terra, they have that
custom of giving equal time to both sides of a question. You know, like
election speeches, and that sort of thing."
"That's
it!" cried Ramsay. "You, Puag Tukhi, go back and tell your government
that if they send us their own films up to Chika, we'll telecast them along
with ours. Fair enough?"
The
Delthigan regained some of his composure, and permitted Hane to escort him to
the truck.
Ramsay
immediately pounced upon the intercom. By good fortune, he learned, a line had
been laid to the mobile television station. He asked for Neuberg.
"I'm
Ramsay, in charge here," he introduced himself to a balding man with dark,
expressive eyes set in a pudgy face.
"Ah,
yes," the other beamed. "Don't worry about a thing, Mr. Ramsay. We're
plastering that planet with pix twenty-four hours a day. Got films to last a
month."
"Yeah ... well, I'm going to get a few more for
you."
Long
before he finished explaining, Neuberg began to shake his head disapprovingly.
Ramsay paused when the man's jowls reached the quivering stage. Mr. Neuberg
pointed out that he had a definite schedule to fill.
"But this is
necessary!" shouted the spaceman.
"I sympathize with you, Mr. Ramsay, but
I have strict orders from Mr. Fuller. He relies upon me to cany them out."
"But... oh, all right.' I'll get him to O.K.
what I want. Will that satisfy you?"
"Entirely,"
answered Mr. Neuberg primly.
Ramsay
flipped the switch and rubbed one hand across his face.
"That's an interstellar ship coming
in," announced Hane, returning.
"Mariel"
snapped Ramsay. "Come away from that window and get me a face-to-face with
Fuller. Right now—before I pop off with apoplexy and cheat the Delthigans of
their revenge!"
She
sped out the door. Hane continued to watch out the window as Ramsay tramped
about the office. He was still pacing ten minutes later, when the girl
returned.
"They can't get
him," she reported.
Ramsay reached her in two
strides.
"What do you mean? Are
communications out?"
"No,
no; they got through to Bormek V for me. Mr. Fuller had stopped back and
received your last message, but he went off again to arrange something else,
and ... and ... the Bormekian operators can't reach him."
"Oh, fine.' Did they say he was doing
anything about those projectors?"
"Yes,
I asked. They said he ordered them sent directly to Delthig III to speed up
delivery as much as possible."
The
silence in the office became so marked that they could hear the working of the
air lock outside as the truck came in off the field.
"I quit!" said
Ramsay.
He turned to Hane.
"What ships of mine
are out there?"
"There were two; but they blasted off
for IV just before Puag Tukhi came." "When are more due in?"
"A fleet of four might be here by
tomorrow night." Ramsay groaned.
"Worse
than I thought! I can't quit before that squid will get back with his story and
maybe even have their films on the way up here. They have cinemas; they must
have something ready."
"Couldn't you explain
to Mr. Neuberg?" asked Marie.
He looked at her.
"You
know," he said thoughtfully, "you're much too pretty a girl to be
just a secretary. I ought to make you an executive assistant."
"Why, thank you, Mr.
Ramsay. I—"
"And the first execution you can go to
will be Neuberg's—unless you can convince him Fuller sent me permission!"
"But-"
"I
tried to tell him, but he has his orders," said Ramsay, urging her toward
the door with a firm grip on her arm. "Now, you try it. All you have to do
is make him forget to ask for a look at the filmed message."
"I could offer to act
in another demonstration."
"Good,
good!" he approved, marching through her small office and easing her into
the corridor.
He started her off down the corridor with a
little shove. A short, sturdy young man wearing a space officer's cap rakishly
slanted atop curly yellow hair stepped politely out of her way in his course up
the hall. He approached Ramsay.
"I'm
Donovan," he said. "Chief pilot of the Silver Comet from Cagsan IX.
You Ramsay?"
"That's right."
"I got fifty million
ears for you."
Ramsay looked at him.
"How's that,
friend?" he queried.
Donovan
stared back curiously. He flipped the pages of the manifest in his hand.
"Frozen
corn. On the cob. Fifty million ears tabbed as a luxury item for ... lemme see here ... 'for government officials of Delthig III.'"
Ramsay shook his head slightly, and Donovan's
face swam back into focus. "Mr. Fuller, of the B.S.T., said-"
Ramsay
wearily turned away, reaching back to point at the office behind him.
"Tell
Mr. Hane all about it," he pleaded. "I'm . . . it's my watch off. I
believe I'll go lie down a little while—"
Just
before he reached his quarters, he heard running footsteps behind him. One of
the communications men caught up, waving a message memo.
"An alert from Delthig III, Mr.
Ramsay." "Whatl"
"That
high mucky-muck that was up here talked to them from his ship, and they sent a
message saying they're shooting some movies up here by mail rocket."
"Oh," said Ramsay. "That will
come under Mr. Neuberg's department. Take them to his ship when they land and
let him figure out what to do with them. Er ... just a minute!"
"Yes, Mr. Ramsay?"
"You
techs... ah, generally have something stowed away for
every emergency. Happen to have anything to ... discourage a headache, if you see what I mean?"
The operator grinned and winked.
"I'll look around. Might be something in
the files."
The
next morning, awakened again by the chiming of the intercom beside his bed,
Ramsay found that he had a real headache. The motion of sitting up in bed
caused him to clutch frantically at his temples.
The
bing-bing-bing persisted. When he reached for the visor, he managed to knock a
large but empty bottle to the floor. He fumbled at the set until he had the
video cut off, then answered the call.
"Ramsay?" demanded Hane's voice.
"Are you there?"
"Mostly. What's up now?"
"We
can't quite tell," said Hane, "but I think you had better get over to
the office."
Ramsay
switched off, wondering if he could get to the shower without dropping his
head.
When
he reached his office, he found Hane and Marie waiting, with a pair of television
operators loitering in the background. Hane waited for Ramsay to ease himself
tenderly into his chair, then gestured for the pair to tell their story.
Ramsay
listened with growing dismay to the account of an audio message just received
from Delthig III.
"And it sounded like Puag Tukhi, you
say? But you're not sure?"
"No
video, Mr. Ramsay," the operator shrugged. "Besides, like I say, he
sort of got off the track after saying something about you making
trouble."
"That," explained Hane, "was
where he lapsed into his own vernacular, so to speak. I listened to the
transcription, and one would have to be well versed in Delthigan to understand
it."
"Why?" asked
Ramsay. "Was he that excited?"
"I think he was
cursing youl"
"What?"
"It
was too fast for me to catch, and some of the words seemed very strange; but I
judged mainly by his tone of voice."
Ramsay absorbed this with a poker face, and
dismissed the operators to monitor the Delthigan communication band. When they
left, he rested his head in his hands a moment before asking, "Either of
you got any idea what we've done this time?"
"Everything seemed
fine," said Marie blankly.
"We
received another shipment of laborers," said Hane thoughtfully.
"Whatever happened must have done so since they left the planet. Then,
too, the Delthigan films for Neuberg came in by radio-controlled rocket."
"That
was last night," Marie told Ramsay. "You . . . er, had that 'Don't
Disturb' sign on your door, so we just took them over to Mr. Neuberg."
"What were they
about?" asked Ramsay absent-mindedly.
"I
don't know. He said he'd start using them right away—after I talked to him
again, for a little while."
"There might be one on
now," suggested Hane.
The
girl walked over to where the cheap, one-channel set rested on a file cabinet.
She turned it on, and in a few seconds Ramsay began to see what was happening.
By
luck, they caught the end of a Delthigan propaganda film which Neuberg's
technicians had evidently managed to project and relay. The language was too
fast for Hane, the only one of them who knew any Delthigan, but the general
import of the speeches was clear,
Those
shots of factories/ thought Ramsay. No real workers
ever looked that happy and dedicated to their jobs. And the farm scenes between
ones of the old squid with the star-maps—looking at the stuff growing isn't
filling any
Delthigan bellies,
but the whole thing
is obviously a shot in the aim to try to convince them they're well off.
"I liked Mr. Neuberg's pictures
better," Marie announced. "He actually had some made of all the
things we're sending down there-telescreens, the gold and silver braid for the
generals, and even a piece of cloth being colored bright red with some of that
dye from Fegash."
Ramsay
thought of the dingy gray loincloths of the laborers sent by Puag Tukhi. Even
that official, he recalled, had worn a tunic of dull and sleazy goods.
What a deadJy parallel/ he
thought.
"And did he show any
projectors?"
"No,"
Marie told him, "there weren't any pictures of those, but he did film a
good one of the old scrap dumps out behind the domes. He wants the Delthigans
to know they're paying for all their imports."
"Paying,
all right," murmured Ramsay, "but who down there is doing the
receiving?"
"I saw some of them," remarked
Hane. "Ones about household gadgets and food. He even had our charming
executive assistant nibble on a couple of ears of corn."
"I don't suppose," commented Ramsay
deliberately, "that anyone explained in the film that the cobs aren't
edible?"
They
looked at him blankly. He tried to imagine how it would feel to be a starved,
overworked Delthigan, in a steel mill, say, and to witness a blithe being from
some fabulous world of plenty toss aside food that had apparently barely been
sampled. He decided that it would drive him frantic.
Hane
ran a hand distractedly through his sparse white hair, comprehension lighting
his old eyes.
"No wonder they are .
. . displeased," he muttered.
"Displeased!"
snorted Ramsay.
That
Fuller and his outfit/ he thought. "Bureau of Slick Tricks" they call
it, huh? Well, he's not as slick as I thought, but he sure got me in a hole/
He switched on his desk visor and demanded
Neuberg. After a slight delay, the pudgy, cheerful face appeared.
"Look herel" Ramsay said sternly.
"I want you to cut it out!" "I beg your pardon!"
"That mixing up Delthigan 'educational
films' with corn on the cob! It makes their government look like chumps. Don't
you realize that's bad for business?"
"Mr.
Ramsay, am I to blame if they are a pack of chumps? I have my orders from Mr.
Fuller, and—"
Something in Ramsay finally snapped. Half
rising behind the desk, he thrust his flushed face close to the scanner.
"Cut
it out, I
tell you.'" he
bellowed. "Or do you want me to come over there with a wrench and fix that
chatterbox toy of yours so's it won't cast a picture past its own shadow?"
Neuberg's
dark eyes widened. Without a word, he faded from the screen.
"Hane!" snapped the spaceman.
"Get hold of the foreman of that Delthigan labor gang! Have them start
searching through the scrap for live shells and pull out a couple of old guns
to matchl"
"What are you going to
do?" gasped Marie.
"If
I were a general from that Planetary State down there," said Ramsay, "I'd
be on my way up here now to censor those telecasts. But being the cat's-paw I
am, I'm at least going to have the satisfaction of popping somebody before
this place gets wiped off the face of Chika!"
Before
Hane could reach the door, a siren somewhere in the dome wailed out in sudden
urgency. The three in the office froze.
"That's an air leak!" exclaimed
Ramsay. "Where's the spacesuit locker?"
He started for the door, but relaxed as the
siren cut off. The visor on his desk emitted a series of bings. "Yeah?"
he barked, flipping the switch.
"Everything
under control, Mr. Ramsay," reported the communications operator who had
found him the bottle "in the files" the previous night. "That
telecasting ship took off without seeing that the connecting tube was sealed.
Murphy's got it air-tight again."
Ramsay muttered something or other in reply
and sprang to the window. He could not see the former position of Neuberg's
ship, but the expressions of several men outside looking at where it had been
confirmed the report.
"Turn that gadget back
onl" he told Marie.
The telecast was still going. It flickered
and faded as they watched, but steadied again. Neuberg was carrying out his
orders—where Ramsay could not interfere.
"Uh
... I shall see about that
ammunition," said Hane after a moment during which the air in the office
seemed to vibrate silently.
He
went out, looking grateful for the opportunity to escape Ramsay's presence.
The
latter realized that he had been scowling across the room for some time when
Marie spoke.
"Can I do
something?" she asked timidly.
"Huh? Well, yeah. Go ride herd on those
operators until they get a radio call through to the planet. If we can get hold
of someone in authority, it might still be smoothed over."
Alone, he paced up and down the office for a
while. When that failed to help, he sat at his desk with his head cradled
carefully between both hands. He realized with surprise that his headache had
disappeared.
The
advantage of a good fright, he reflected. I only wish 1 could see Fuller here too/
He punched viciously at the intercom switch.
Marie answered from the communications room. "Any luck?" he demanded.
"Not yet."
"Then have them see if
they can reach Fuller on Bormek V!"
Time
passed. A report came back from Bormek to the effect that Mr. Fuller was
expected there very soon.
Delthig III radio stations
maintained an ominous silence.
Ramsay
took presently to making short excursions around the outside of the building,
peering through the plastic dome at the space-suited figures of Hane and some
Delthigans out at the heaps of scrap metal, or up into the dark sky.
Finally, Hane returned to report that two
cannon had been loaded and put in charge of Terrans from among the spaceport
personnel.
"The
Delthigans seemed only too willing to help me," he told Ramsay. "One
wonders if they are not somewhat resentful toward their present masters."
"One
wonders what's wrong with them if they're notl" retorted the spaceman.
Bing-bing-bing-bing/
He switched his televisor
on, and saw Marie's pale face.
"The
techs say they've picked up a ship approaching in a landing orbit," she
reported breathlessly.
"How many?" asked
Ramsay, beckoning to Hane.
"Only
one, but it's acting funny, not sticking to a smooth curve, they say."
"Evasive action!" he guessed.
"Hane, tell your men out there to be ready. Marie, you'd better get back
here in case something happens."
He switched off and ran to the window, but
nothing was to be seen. After putting through a brief call, Hane joined him.
"Maybe
we can stall a few hours," said Ramsay. "When my four ships get in
tonight, we can fold our domes and silently run away."
Bing-bing-bing-bing/
"Now
what?" he demanded of the operator whose image he found on the screen.
"We have Mr. Fuller
for you now."
"No!"
exclaimed Ramsay with heavy
sarcasm. "What did he stop flitting around for—to hear me make my will?
Put him on!"
He agonized through several seconds of
coalescing images as the various operators handling the interstellar call
withdrew themselves. Then Fuller's bland face looked out at him.
"Well,
well!" said the B. S. T. agent heartily. "Heard you were trying to
get me. I was rounding up a few things on the next planet. Everything going all
right?"
Ramsay
opened his mouth, closed it, and brought both fists down on the edge of his
desk.
Where should f begin? he
asked himself. Shall f tell him what a mess he's made while I try to think up a good name, or shall I call him the first thing that occurs to me?
Fuller ran one hand over his golden, slightly
wavy hair. Ramsay thought that he looked a little tired, as if he really had
been hustling from one planet to another.
"One little detail seems to have gone
wrong," the spaceman said, biting off his words carefully. "Somehow,
the Delthigans seem to have taken offense."
"To what?" asked
Fuller calmly.
"To
me in particular and Terrans in general. There is a ship maneuvering at us now.
Don't be surprised if this call is cut off suddenly. You sent a gentleman named
Neuberg—"
The door was flung open. Marie ran in.
"It landed!" she shrilled.
"The Delthigan ship. Some of the men took the truck out to it while the
others covered it with the cannon." "Hold on!" Ramsay grunted to
Fuller.
He
bounded across to the window, callously flipped Hane to one side and the girl
to the other, and peered out. The pressurized truck was just coming out of the
air lock. As he watched, five figures alighted. The trio of four-legged ones
marched briskly toward the entrance of the building. They were dressed
plainly, even for Delthigans.
"Those are no ambassadors," said
Ramsay. "Hatchet-men is more like it. Marie, Hane, get out of here!"
"No!" protested the girl.
"Go
get help!" Ramsay rephrased it, which sent her running through the outer
office and into the corridor.
"I'll make sure those guns are
ready," said Hane with unusual verve. "If they make trouble, they'll
never take off!"
Left
alone, Ramsay became aware of a plaintive demand for information emanating
from his desk instrument. Fuller was close to betraying concern as he vainly
attempted to see something besides the wall behind Ramsay's chair.
The
spaceman seized the visor and turned it around, treating Fuller to a clear view
of the doorway as the three Delthigans churned through it.
They clumped to a halt. The one in the
middle, a lean individual with a jagged scar climbing up over his crest from
between his right and center eyes, stepped forward.
"Ramsay, the Terran?" he demanded,
in an accent as bad as that of Puag Tukhi.
If it's the last thing I do, Ramsay promised himself, I'm
going to punch that middle eye right through the back of his skull/ I'm fed up with these squids/
He
moved forward, clenching his fist. The Delthigan apparently misunderstood the
gesture for one of assent.
"I am Yil Khoff,"
he said. "Ssent we are to discuss trade contract."
Ramsay
heard Fuller murmur behind his back, "Find out what they want." He
unclenched his fist and waited.
"We
haf decited not want all thingss comink. You can ssend big shipss . . . big
shiploadss grain foodss?"
"Tell him 'yes,'
" advised Fuller from Bormek V.
"It
can be arranged," said Ramsay warily. "What about the
projectors?"
"Pro-jek-torss?"
"Powder-makers."
"Not
want; will gif back. But not ssend for mines more workerss." "But you
are going to pay? We have an agreement!" "Don't worry about it,"
said a small voice behind Ramsay. The Delthigans twitched their flappy ears and
eyed the spaceman askance. Yil Khoff laboriously attempted to explain. "We
not bound by promiss of former gufferment." "Former government/"
Ramsay
stepped back to lean one hand on his desk. "We know . . . iss hard to tell
to persson like you. Will maybe not unterstand, but we haf by force new rulerss
made." "A revolution!" breathed Ramsay.
He
saw two wrench-bearing operators coming through Marie's office, followed by
Hane and the girl. He waved them inside.
"They
had a revolution," he announced, and his face felt queer to him until he
realized that he was smiling.
"Not
know word," admitted Yil Khoff after a futile consultation with his
companions.
"You threw out the old
officials?" Ramsay prompted.
"Threw outt?"
"Deposed . . .
replaced—?"
"We
shot them!" said Yil Khoff firmly. "Was very mad-makink how they from
you got such wunderful thingss, but we still started. For what? For big
promiss! Nothing more behind!"
Ramsay
glanced at the desk visor beside his elbow. Fuller blandly returned his smile.
"Mr.
Hane," said Ramsay, "will you see that our friends have a comfortably
dry room in which to rest until we can discuss new arrangements?"
"Gladly," beamed
Hane.
"Perhaps
you might even scare up some of that frozen com. I don't imagine all of it got
through to Delthig III."
One
of the communications men winked. He and his friend slipped out hastily. Hane
led the visitors in their wake as Ramsay turned to face Fuller.
"This is all very interesting,"
said the B. S. T. man, "but it costs a lot of credits. You just don't get
someone in a face-to-face across two light-years and then casually tell them to
hold on while you settle another matter."
"Aw, the B. S. T. can afford it,"
retorted Ramsay. "You'll get it back in this system, if I know you!"
"We
expect to," said Fuller. "I should like to make sure of it, however,
by having you and Hane handle the trading—at a good commission, of
course."
Ramsay,
seeing his elderly assistant returning through the outer office, relayed the
offer, remembering that he had profited enormously the last time he had
assisted Fuller and the Bureau.
"I should say . . . ah, grab it!"
replied Hane, nodding to the B. S. T. man. "Incidentally, Mr. Ramsay's
other executive assistant seems to be much admired on Delthig III."
"Me?" asked Marie.
"Yil
Khoff says every soul down there is talking about kitchen movies."
"There's an idea for you," Fuller
told Ramsay. "Give her a share and let her handle the household
gadgets."
"Thank
you, Mr. Fuller," said Marie. "I thought I was going to have to marry
him to get a share of his income."
"Huhl"
grunted Ramsay, grinning at her. "That might be arranged yet. I'll see
how much you cut into my commission."
He turned back to Fuller.
"Seriously," he said, "you had
me scared there for a while. I'm just as glad they did have an uprising down
there, even though I don't see how they carried it through. Now I won't have to
move my spaceline to another system."
"No, you can stay as our agent till you
own Delthig," chuckled Fuller. "Honestly, now, Ramsay, what did you
think would happen on Delthig III when the poor, oppressed, downtrodden mass
of slaves got a glimpse of life via television."
Ramsay stared.
He
reached out, turned the visor to face his chair, and slowly walked around the
desk to sit down. Marie and Hane came to stand behind him.
"So
you had a hand in it," murmured Ramsay. "With those telescreens you
were so conveniently stuck withl So nice that they only had one channel, so it
didn't even matter if the Delthigans put up a station of their own!"
"The
Vozaalians are inclined to be hasty in their designs for mass-produced
items," said Fuller complacently.
"Wasn't it taking
quite a chance, though?" asked Ramsay.
"The
Delthigans were bound to make trouble sooner or later," said Fuller,
looking so satisfied that Ramsay half-expected him to thrust out a tongue and
lick his chops. "A Planetary State has nowhere to go but out. It seemed
only prudent to supply the little push that would cause the trouble to fall on
their own heads."
Ramsay sighed and shook his
head admiringly.
"No
wonder they were so hopping mad about those telecasts of Neuberg's. Man, but
those films must have been more subversive than termites!"
"How does it feel to
start a revolution?" asked old Hane.
Fuller smiled and shrugged.
"Oh, I shouldn't take credit for
that," he said. "It was bound to come. But since Delthig III was so
overburdened with that Planetary State that it was due for either an explosion
or a collapse, the Bureau naturally preferred to see it imploded."
"Well, the gates are blown in, all
right," said Ramsay. "Now to rush in with the goods."
"It will open up quite a market," admitted Fuller.
Hane chuckled suddenly, envisaging the
future.
"It
will be like a big sponge for years and years," he said. "There won't
be anything that won't sell on Delthig III. You really opened something!"
"I
thought for a while he was going to open it with a big bang just outside this
dome," laughed Ramsay. "I won't feel easy until they return all'those
Bormekian projectors you slipped them behind my back."
"Oh ...
those," muttered Fuller. "I might as well tell you about those."
He seemed to experience difficulty in meeting
the spaceman's eye.
"We
hoped they would be a surprise to the ruling caste when the serfs swarmed over
the palaces. If other artillery had been traded in, the projectors would
prevent mass slaughter."
"You had them rigged to blow up?"
Ramsay guessed.
"No
... as a matter of fact, they won't
do much of anything if they're not in space or some other vacuum."
"What!"
Fuller nodded.
"With
any air at all to act as an insulator, the effective range is about half an
inch!"
Ramsay
tried to imagine the expression on the alien face of the first Delthigan gunner
ordered to mow down the charging rebels. He sighed.
"If
you'll excuse me," he said, "I have to go and check our inventory
for the big . . . er. . . opening."
solar System frontier guard: Thomas Jordan
Where
there is peace or war there are
guardians standing to protect the helpless.
In companies
or alone they must keep an endless and
fearless watch. So did Thomas Jordan
learn to live.
Steel
Brother
BY GORDON
R.
DICKSON "We stand on guard."—Motto of the
Frontier Force.
".
. . Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live and is full of
misery. He cometh up and is cut down, like a
flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow and never continueth in one stay—"
The
voice of the chaplain was small and sharp in the thin air, intoning the words
of the burial service above the temporary lectern set up just inside the
transparent wall of the landing field dome. Through the double transparencies
of the dome and the plastic cover of the burial rocket the black-clad ranks
could see the body of the dead stationman, Ted Waskewicz, lying back
comfortably at an angle of forty-five degrees, peaceful in death, waxily
perfect from the hands of the embalmers, and immobile. The eyes were closed,
the cheerful, heavy features still held their expression of thoughtless
dominance, as though death had been a minor incident, easily shrugged off; and
the battle star made a single blaze of color on the tunic of the black uniform.
"Amen."
The response was a deep bass utterance from the assembled men, like the single
note of an organ. In the front rank of the Cadets, Thomas Jordan's lips moved
stiffly with the others', his voice joining mechanically in their chorus. For
this was the moment of his triumph, but in spite of it, the old, old fear had
come back, the old sense of loneliness and loss and terror of his own
inadequacy.
He
stood at stiff attention, eyes to the front, trying to lose him-150 self in the unanimity of his classmates, to shut out the voice of the
chaplain and the memory it evoked of an alien raid on an undefended city and
of home and parents swept away from him in a breath. He remembered the mass burial
service read over the shattered ruin of the city; and the government agency
that had taken him—a ten-year-old orphan—and given him care and training until
this day, but could not give him what these others about him had by natural
right—the courage of those who had matured in safety.
For
he had been lonely and afraid since that day. Untouched by bomb or shell, he
had yet been crippled deep inside of him. He had seen the enemy in his strength
and run screaming from his space-suited gangs. And what could give Thomas
Jordan back his soul after that?
But
still he stood rigidly at attention, as a Guardsman should; for he was a
soldier now, and this was part of his duty.
The
chaplain's voice droned to a halt. He closed his prayerbook and stepped back
from the lectem. The captain of the training ship took his place.
"In
accordance with the conventions of the Frontier Force," he said, crisply,
"I now commit the ashes of Station Commandant First Class, Theodore
Waskewicz, to the keeping of time and space."
He
pressed a button on the lectern. Beyond the dome, white fire blossomed out from
the tail of the burial rocket, heating the asteroid rock to temporary
incandescence. For a moment it hung there, spewing flame. Then it rose, at
first slowly, then quickly, and was gone, sketching a fiery path out and away,
until, at almost the limits of human sight, it vanished in a sudden, silent
explosion of brilliant light.
Around Jordan, the black-clad ranks relaxed.
Not by any physical movement, but with an indefinable breaking of nervous
tension, they settled themselves for the more prosaic conclusion of the ceremony.
The relaxation reached even to the captain, for he about-faced with a relieved
snap and spoke to the ranks.
"Cadet Thomas Jordan.
Front and center."
The command struck Jordan
with an icy shock. As long as the buiial service had been in progress, he had
had the protection of anonymity among his classmates around him. Now, the
captain's voice was a knife, cutting him off, finally and irrevocably, from the
one security his life had known, leaving him naked and exposed. A despairing
numbness seized him. His reflexes took over, moving his body like a robot. One
step forward, a right face, down to the end of the row of silent men, a left
face, three steps forward. Halt. Salute.
"Cadet Thomas Jordan
reporting, sir."
"Cadet
Thomas Jordan, I hereby invest you with command of this Frontier Station. You
will hold it until relieved. Under no conditions will you enter into
communications with an enemy nor allow any creature or vessel to pass through
your sector of space from Outside."
"Yes, sir."
"In
consideration of the duties and responsibilities requisite on assuming command
of this Station, you are promoted to the rank and title of Station Commandant
Third Class."
"Thank you, sir."
From
the lectern the captain lifted a cap of silver wire mesh and placed it on his
head. It clipped on to the electrodes already buried in his skull, with a snap
that sent sound ringing through his skull. For a second, a sheet of lightning
flashed in front of his eyes and he seemed to feel the weight of the memory
bank already pressing on his mind. Then lightning and pressure vanished
together to show him the captain offering his hand.
"My congratulations,
commandant."
"Thank you, sir."
They
shook hands, the captain's grip quick, nervous and perfunctory. He took one
abrupt step backward and transferred his attention to his second in command.
"LieutenantI Dismiss
the formation!"
It
was over. The new rank locked itself around Jordan, sealing up the fear and loneliness
inside him. Without listening to the barked commands that no longer concerned
him, he turned on his heel and strode over to take up his position by the sally
port of the training ship. He stood formally at attention beside it, feeling
the weight of his new authority like a heavy cloak on his thin shoulders. At
one stroke he had become the ranking officer present. The officers— even the
captain—were nominally under his authority, so long as their ship remained
grounded at his Station. So rigidly he stood at attention that not even the
slightest tremor of the trembling inside him escaped to quiver betrayingly in
his body.
They
came toward him in a loose, dark mass that resolved itself into a single file
just beyond saluting distance. Singly, they went past him and up the ladder
into the sally port, each saluting him as they passed. He returned the salutes
stiffly, mechanically, walled off from these classmates of six years by the
barrier of his new command. It was a moment when a smile or a casual handshake
would have meant more than a little. But protocol had stripped him of the right
to familiarity; and it was a line of black-uniformed strangers that now filed
slowly past. His place was already established and theirs was yet to be. They
had nothing in common any more.
The
last of the men went past him up the ladder and were lost to view through the
black circle of the sally port. The heavy steel plug swung slowly to, behind
them. He turned and made his way to the unfamiliar but well-known field control
panel in the main control room of the Station. A light glowed redly on the
communications board. He thumbed a switch and spoke into a grill set in the
panel.
"Station
to Ship. Go ahead." Overhead the loudspeaker answered. "Ship to
Station. Ready for take-off."
His
fingers went swiftly over the panel. Outside, the atmosphere of the field was
evacuated and the dome slid back. Tractor mechs scurried out from the pit,
under remote control, clamped huge magnetic fists on the ship, swung it into
launching position, then retreated.
Jordan spoke again into the grill.
"Station clear.
Take-off at will."
"Thank
you, Station." He recognized the captain's voice. "And good
luck."
Outside, the ship lifted, at first slowly,
then faster on its pillar of flame, and dwindled away into the darkness of
space. Automatically, he closed the dome and pumped the air back in.
He
was turning away from the control panel, bracing himself against the moment of
finding himself completely isolated, when, with a sudden, curious shock, he
noticed that there was another, smaller ship yet on the field.
For
a moment he stared at it blankly, uncomprehendingly. Then memory returned and
he realized that the ship was a small courier vessel from Intelligence, which
had been hidden by the huge bulk of the training ship. Its officer would still
be below, cutting a record tape of the former commandant's last memories for
the file at Headquarters. The memory lifted him momentarily from the morass of
his emotions to attention to duty. He turned from the panel and went below.
In the triply-armored basement of the
Station, the man from Intelligence was half in and half out of the memory bank
when he arrived, having cut away a portion of the steel casing around the bank
so as to connect his recorder direct to the cells. The sight of the heavy mount
of steel with the ragged incision in one side, squatting like a wounded
monster, struck Jordan unpleasantly; but he smoothed the emotion from his face
and walked firmly to the bank. His footsteps rang on the metal floor; and the
man from Intelligence, hearing them, brought his head momentarily outside the
bank for a quick look.
"Hil"
he said, shortly, returning to his work. His voice continued from the interior
of the bank with a friendly, hollow sound. "Congratulations,
commandant."
"Thanks,"
answered Jordan, stiffly. He stood, somewhat ill at ease, uncertain of what was
expected of him. When he hesitated, the voice from the bank continued.
"How does the cap
feel?"
Jordan's
hands went up instinctively to the mesh of silver wire on his head. It pushed
back unyieldingly at his fingers, held firmly on the electrodes.
"Tight," he said.
The
Intelligence man came crawling out of the bank, his recorder in one hand and
thick loops of glassy tape in the other.
"They
all do at first," he said, squatting down and feeding one end of the tape
into a spring rewind spool. "In a couple of days you won't even be able to
feel it up there."
"I suppose."
The Intelligence man looked
up at him curiously.
"Nothing
about it bothering you, is there?" he asked. "You look a little
strained."
"Doesn't everybody
when they first start out?"
"Sometimes,"
said the other, non-committally. "Sometimes not. Don't hear a sort of
humming, do you?"
"No."
"Feel any kind of pressure inside your
head?" "No."
"How
about your eyes? See any spots or flashes in front of them?"
"No!" snapped Jordan.
"Take it easy," said the man from
Intelligence. "This is my business." "Sorry."
"That's
all right. It's just that if there's anything wrong with you or the bank I want
to know it." He rose from the rewind spool, which was now industriously
gathering in the loose tape; and un-clipping a pressure-torch from his belt,
began resealing the aperture. "It's just that occasionally new officers
have been hearing too many stories about the banks in training school, and
they're inclined to be jumpy."
"Stories?" said Jordan.
"Haven't
you heard them?" answered the Intelligence man. "Stories of memory
domination—stationmen driven insane by the memories of the men who had the
Station before them. Catatonics whose minds have got lost in the past history
of the bank, or cases of memory replacement where the stationman has identified
himself with the memories and personality of the man who preceded him."
"Oh, those," said Jordan.
"I've heard them." He paused, and then, when the other did not go on:
"What about them? Are they true?"
The
Intelligence man turned from the half-resealed aperture and faced him squarely,
torch in hand.
"Some,"
he said bluntly. "There's been a few cases like that; although there
didn't have to be. Nobody's trying to sugar-coat the facts. The memory bank's
nothing but a storehouse connected to you through your silver cap—a gadget to
enable you not only to remember everything you ever do at the station, but also
everything anybody else who ever ran the Station did. But there've been a few
impressionable stationmen who've let themselves get the notion that the memory
bank's a sort of a coffin with living dead men crawling around inside it. When
that happens, there's trouble."
He turned away from Jordan,
back to his work.
"And
that's what you thought was the trouble with me," said Jordan, speaking to
his back.
The
man from Intelligence chuckled—it was an amazingly human sound.
"In
my line, fella," he said, "we check all possibilities." He finished
his resealing and turned around.
"No hard
feelings?" he said.
Jordan shook his head.
"Of course not."
"Then
I'll be getting along." He bent over and picked up the spool, which had by
now neatly wound up all the tape, straightened up and headed for the ramp that
led up from the basement to the landing field. Jordan fell into step beside
him.
"You've nothing more
to do, then?" he asked.
"Just
my reports. But I can write those on the way back." They went up the ramp
and out through the lock on to the field.
"They
did a good job of repairing the battle damage," he went on, looking around
the Station.
"I
guess they did," said Jordan. The two men paced soberly to the sally port
of the Intelligence ship. "Well, so long."
"So
long," answered the man from Intelligence, activating the sally port
mechanism. The outer lock swung open and he hopped the few feet up to the
opening without waiting for the little ladder to wind itself out. "See you
in six months."
He
turned to Jordan and gave him a casual, offhand salute with the hand holding
the wind-up spool. Jordan returned it with training school precision. The port
swung closed.
He
went back to the master control room and the ritual of seeing the ship off. He
stood looking out for a long time after it had vanished, then turned from the
panel with a sigh to find himself at last completely alone.
He looked about the Station. For the next six
months this would be his home. Then, for another six months he would be free on
leave while the Station was rotated out of the line in its regular order for repair,
reconditioning, and improvement.
If he lived that long.
The fear, which had been driven a little
distance away by his conversation with the man from Intelligence, came back. If
he lived that long. He stood, bemused.
Back
to his mind with the letter-perfect recall of the memory bank came the words of
the other. Catatonic—cases of memory replacement. Memory domination. Had those
others, too, had more than they could bear of fear and anticipation?
And with that thought came a suggestion that
coiled like a snake in his mind. That would be a way out. What if they came,
the alien invaders, and Thomas Jordan was no longer here to meet them? What if
only the catatonic hulk of a man was left? What if they came and a man was here,
but that man called himself and knew himself only as—
Waskewicz/
"No!"
the cry came involuntarily from his lips; and he came to himself with his face
contorted and his hands half-extended in front of him in the attitude of one
who wards off a ghost. He shook his head to shake the vile suggestion from his
brain; and leaned back, panting, against the control panel.
Not
that. Nof ever that. He had surprised in himself a weakness that turned him
sick with honor. Win or lose; live or die. But as Jordan—not as any other.
He lit a cigarette with trembling fingers.
So—it was over now and he was safe. He had caught it in time. He had his
warning. Unknown to him—all this time—the seeds of memory domination must have
been lying waiting within him. But now he knew they were there, he knew what
measures to take. The danger lay in Was-kewicz's memories. He would shut his
mind off from them—would fight the Station without the benefit of their
experience. The first stationmen on the line had done without the aid of a memory
bank and so could he.
So.
He had settled it. He flicked on the viewing
screens and stood opposite them, very straight and correct in the middle of his
Station, looking out at the dots that were his forty-five doggie mechs spread
out on guard over a million kilometers of space, looking at the controls that
would enable him to throw their blunt, terrible, mechanical bodies into battle
with the enemy, looking and waiting, waiting, for the courage that comes from
having faced squarely a situation to rise within him and take possession of
him, putting an end to all fears and doubtings.
And he waited so for a long
time, but it did not come.
The weeks went swiftly by; and that was as it
should be. He had been told what to expect, during training; and it was as it
should be that these first months should be tense ones, with a part of him
always stiff and waiting for the alarm bell that would mean a doggie signaling
sight of an enemy. It was as it should be that he should pause, suddenly, in
the midst of a meal with his fork halfway to his mouth, waiting and expecting
momentarily to be summoned; that he should wake unexpectedly in the nighttime
and lie rigid and tense, eyes fixed on the shadowy ceiling and listening.
Later—they had said in training—after you have become used to the Station, this
constant tension will relax and you will be left at ease, with only one little
unobtrusive corner of your mind unnoticed but forever alert. This will come
with time, they said.
So
he waited for it, waited for the release of the coiled springs inside him and
the time when the feel of the Station would be comfortable and friendly about
him. When he had first been left alone, he had thought to himself that surely,
in his case, the waiting would not be more than a matter of days; then, as the
days went by and he still lived in a state of hair-trigger sensitivity, he had
given himself, in his own mind, a couple ot weeks—then a month.
But
now a month and more than a month had gone without relaxation coming to him;
and the strain was beginning to show in nervousness of his hands and the dark
circles under his eyes. He found it impossible to sit still either to read, or
to listen to the music that was available in the Station library. He roamed
restlessly, endlessly checking and rechecking the empty space that his
doggies' viewers revealed.
For
the recollection of Waskewicz as he lay in the burial rocket would not go from
him. And that was not as it should be.
He
could, and did, refuse to recall the memories of Waskewicz that he had never
experienced; but his own personal recollections were not easy to control and
slipped into his mind when he was unaware. All else that he could do to lay the
ghost, he had done. He had combed the Station carefully, seeking out the little
adjustments and conveniences that a lonely man will make about his home, and
removed them, even when the removal meant a loss of personal comfort. He had
locked his mind securely to the storehouse of the memory bank, striving to
hold himself isolated from the other's memories until familiarity and
association should bring him to the point where he instinctively felt that the
Station was his and not the other's. And, whenever thoughts of Waskewicz
entered in spite of all these precautions, he had dismissed them sternly,
telling himself that his predecessor was not worth the considering.
But
the other's ghost remained, intangible and invulnerable, as if locked in the
very metal of the walls and floor and ceiling of the Station; and rising to
haunt him with the memories of the training school tales and the ominous words
of the man from Intelligence. At such times, when the ghost had seized him, he
would stand paralyzed, staring in hypnotic fascination at the screens with
their silent mechanical sentinels, or at the cold steel of the memory bank,
crouching like some brooding monster, fear feeding on his thoughts —until, with
a sudden, wrenching effort of the will, he broke free of the mesmerism and flung
himself frantically- into the duties of the Station, checking and rechecking
his instruments and the space they watched, doing anything and everything to
drown his wild emotions in the necessity for attention to duty.
And
eventually he found himself almost hoping for a raid, for the test that would
prove him, would lay the ghost, one way or another, once and for all.
It
came at last, as he had known it would, during one of the rare moments when he
had forgotten the imminence of danger. He had awakened in his bunk, at the
beginning of the arbitrary ten-hour day; and lay there drowsily, comfortably,
his thoughts vague and formless, like shadows in the depths of a lazy
whirlpool, turning slowly, going no place.
Then—the alarm.'
Overhead the shouting bell burst into life,
jerking him from his bed. Its metal clangor poured out on the air, tumbling
from the loudspeakers in every room all over the Station, strident with
urgency, pregnant with disaster. It roared, it vibrated, it thundered, until
the walls themselves threw it back, seeming to echo in sympathy, acquiring a
voice of their own until the room rang—until the Station itself rang like one
monster bell, calling him into battle.
He
leaped to his feet and ran to the master control room. On the telltale high on
the wall above the viewer screens, the red light of number thirty-eight doggie
was flashing ominously. He threw himself onto the operator's seat before it,
slapping one palm hard down on the switch to disconnect the alarm.
The Station is in contact
with the enemy.
The
sudden silence slapped at him, taking his breath away. He gasped and shook his
head like a man who has had a glassful of cold water thrown unexpectedly in his
face; then plunged his fingers at the keys on the master control board in front
of his seat-Up beams. Up detector screen, established now at forty thousand
kilometers distance. Switch on communications to Sector Headquarters.
The transmitter purred. Overhead, the white
light flashed as it began to tick off its automatic signal. "Alert! Alert!
Further data follows. Will report."
Headquarters has been
notified by Station.
Activate viewing screen on doggie number
thirty-eight.
He
looked into the activated screen, into the vast arena of space over which the
mechanical vision of that doggie mech was ranging. Far and far away at top
magnification were five small dots, coming in fast on a course leading ten
points below and at an angle of thirty-two degrees to the Station.
He
flicked a key, releasing thirty-eight on proximity fuse control and sending it
plunging toward the dots. He scanned the Station area map for the positions of
his other mechs. Thirty-nine was missing—in the Station for repair. The rest
were available. He checked numbers forty through forty-five and thirty-seven
through thirty to rendezvous on collision course with enemy at seventy-five
thousand kilometers. Numbers twenty to thirty to rendezvous at fifty thousand
kilometers.
Primary defense has been
inaugurated.
He
turned back to the screen. Number thirty-eight, expendable in the interests of
gaining information, was plunging towards the ships at top acceleration under
strains no living flesh would have been able to endure. But as yet the size and
type of the invaders were still hidden by distance. A white light flashed
abruptly from the communications panel, announcing that Sector Headquarters was
alerted and ready to talk. He cut in audio.
"Contact. Go ahead,
Station J-49C3."
"Five
ships," he said. "Beyond identification range. Coming in through
thirty-eight at ten point thirty-two."
"Acknowledge,"
the voice of Headquarters was level, precise, emotionless. "Five
ships—thirty-eight—ten—thirty-two. Patrol Twenty, passing through your area at four hours
distance, has been notified and will proceed to your station at once, arriving
in four hours, plus or minus twenty minutes. Further assistance follows. Will
stand by here for your future messages."
The
white light went out and he turned away from the communications panel. On the
screen, the five ships had still not grown to identifiable proportions, but for
all practical purposes, the preliminaries were over. He had some fifteen
minutes now during which everything that could be done, had been done. Primary
defense has been completed.
He turned away from the controls and walked
back to the bedroom, where he dressed slowly and meticulously in full black
uniform. He straightened his tunic, looking in the mirror, and stood gazing at
himself for a long moment. Then, hesitantly, almost as if against his will, he
reached out with one hand to a small gray box on a shelf beside the minor,
opened it, and took out the silver battle star that the next few hours would
entitle him to wear.
It
lay in his palm, the bright metal winking softly up at him under the reflection
of the room lights and the small movements of his hand. The little cluster of
diamonds in its center sparked and ran the whole gamut of their flashing
colors. For several minutes he stood looking at it; then slowly, gently, he
shut it back up in its box and went out, back to the control room.
On
the screen, the ships were now large enough to be identified. They were
medium-sized vessels, Jordan noticed, of the type used most by the most common
species of raiders—that same race which had orphaned him. There could be no
doubt about their intentions, as there sometimes was when some odd stranger
chanced upon the Frontier, to be regretfully destroyed by men whose orders were
to take no chances. No, these were the enemy, the strange, suicidal life form
that thrust thousands of attacks yearly against the little human empire, who
blew themselves up when captured and wasted a hundred ships for every one that
broke through the guarding stations to descend on some unprotected city of an
inner planet and loot it of equipment and machinery that the aliens were either
unwilling or unable to build for themselves—a contradictory, little-understood
and savage race. These five ships would make no attempt to parley.
But
now, doggie number thirty-eight had been spotted and the white exhausts of
guided missiles began to streak toward the viewing screen. For a few seconds,
the little mech bucked and tossed, dodging, firing defensively, shooting down
the missiles as they approached. But it was a hopeless fight against those odds
and suddenly one of the streaks expanded to fill the screen with glaring
light.
And the screen went blank. Thirty-eight was
gone.
Suddenly
realizing that he should have been covering with observation from one of the
doggies further back, Jordan jumped to fill his screens. He brought the view
from forty in on the one that thirty-eight had vacated and filled the two
flanking screens with the view from thirty-seven on his left and twenty on his
right. They showed his first line of defense already gathered at the
seventy-five-kilometer rendezvous and the fifty-thousand-kilometer rendezvous
still forming.
The
raiders were decelerating now, and on the wall, the telltale for the enemy's
detectors flushed a sudden deep and angry purple as their invisible beams
reached out and were baffled by the detector screen he had erected at a
distance of forty thousand kilometers in front of the Station. They continued
to decelerate, but the blockage of their detector beams had given them the
approximate area of his Station; and they corrected course, swinging in until
they were no more than two points and ten degrees in error. Jordan, his nervous
fingers trembling slightly on the keys, stretched thirty-seven through thirty
out in depth and sent forty through forty-five forward on a five-degree sweep
to attempt a circling movement.
The
five dark ships of the raiders, recognizing his intention, fell out of their
single-file approach formation to spread out and take a formation in open
echelon. They were already firing on the advancing doggies and tiny streaks of
light tattooed the black of space around numbers forty through forty-five.
Jordan
drew a deep and ragged breath and leaned back in his control seat. For the
moment there was nothing for his busy fingers to do among the control keys. His
thirties must wait until the enemy came to them; since with modern automatic
gunnery the body at rest had an advantage over the body in motion. And it would
be some minutes before the forties would be in attack position. He fumbled for
a cigarette, keeping his eyes on the screens, remembering the caution in the
training manuals against relaxation once contact with the enemy had been made.
But reaction was setting in.
From the first wild ringing command of the
alarm until the present moment, he had reacted automatically, with perfection
and precision, as the drills had schooled him, as the training manuals had
impressed upon him. The enemy had appeared. He had taken measures for defense
against them. All that could have been done had been done; and he knew he had
done it properly. And the enemy had done what he had been told they would do.
He
was struck, suddenly, with the deep quivering realization of the truth in the
manuals' predictions. It was so, then. These inimical others, these alien foes,
were also bound by the physical laws. They as well as he, could move only
within the rules of time and space. They were shorn of their mystery and
brought down to his level. Different and awful, they might be, but their
capabilities were limited, even as his; and in a combat such as the one now
shaping up, their inhumanness was of no account, for the inflexible realities
of the universe weighed impartially on him and them alike.
And
with this realization, for the first time, the old remembered fear began to
fall away like a discarded garment. A tingle ran through him and he found
himself warming to the fight as his forefathers had warmed before him away
back to the days when man was young and the tiger roared in the cool, damp
jungle-dawn of long ago. The blood-instinct was in him; that and something of
the fierce, vengeful joy with which a hunted creature turns at last on its
pursuer. He would win. Of course he would win. And in winning he would at one
stroke pay off the debt of blood and fear which the enemy had held against him
these fifteen years.
Thinking
in this way, he leaned back in his seat and the old memory of the shattered
city and of himself running, running, rose up again around him. But this time
it was no longer a prelude to tenor, but fuel for the kindling of his rage.
These are my fear, he thought, gazing unseeingly at the five ships in the
screens, and I will destroy them.
The phantasms of his memory faded like smoke
around him.
He
dropped his cigarette into a disposal
slot on the arm of his seat, and leaned forward to inspect the enemy positions.
They
had spread out to force his forties to circle wide, and those doggies were now
scattered, safe but ineffective, waiting further directions. What had been an
open echelon formation of the raiders was now a ragged, widely dispersed line,
with far too much space between ships to allow each to cover his neighbor.
For
a moment Jordan was puzzled; and a tiny surge of fear of the inexplicable
rippled across the calm surface of his mind. Then his brow smoothed out. There
was no need to get panicky. The aliens' maneuver was not the mysterious tactic
he had half-expected it to be; but just what it appeared, a rather obvious and
somewhat stupid move to avoid the flanking movement he had been attempting
with his forties. Stupid—because the foolish aliens had now rendered themselves
vulnerable to interspersal by his thirties.
It
was good news, rather than bad, and his spirits leaped another notch.
He
ignored the baffled forties, circling automatically on safety control just
beyond the ships' effective aiming range; and turned to the thirties, sending
them plunging toward the empty areas between ships as you might interlace the
fingers of one hand with another. Between any two ships there would be a dead
spot—a position where a mech could not be fired on
by either vessel without also aiming at its right- or left-hand companion. If
two or more doggies could be brought safely to that spot, they could turn and
pour down the open lanes on proximity control, their fuses primed, their bomb
loads activated, blind bulldogs of destruction.
One-third,
at least, should in this way get through the defensive shelling of the ships
and track their dodging prey to the atomic flare of a grim meeting.
Smiling
now in confidence, Jordan watched his mechs approach the ships. There was
nothing the enemy could do. They could not now tighten up their formation
without merely making themselves a more attractive target; and to disperse
still further would negate any chance in the future of regaining a semblance of
formation.
Carefully, his fingers played over the keys,
gentling his mechs into line so that they would come as close as possible to
hitting their dead spots simultaneously. The ships came on.
Closer
the raiders came, and closer. And then—bare seconds away from contact with the
line of approaching doggies, white fire ravened in unison from their stem
tubes, making each ship suddenly a black nugget in the center of a blossom of
flame. In unison, they spurted forward, in sudden and unexpected movement,
bringing their dead spots to and past the line of seeking doggies, leaving
them behind.
Caught for a second in stunned surprise,
Jordan sat dumb and motionless, staring at the screen. Then, swift in his
anger, his hands flashed out over the keys, blasting his mechs to a cruel,
shuddering halt, straining their metal sinews for the quickest and most abrupt
about face and return. This time he would catch them from behind. This time,
going in the same direction as the ships, the mechs could not be dodged. For
what living thing could endure equal strains with cold metal?
But there was no second attempt on the part
of the thirties, for as each bucked to its savage halt, the rear weapons of the
ships reached out in unison, and each of the blasting mechs, that had leaped
forward so confidently, flared up and died like little candles in the dark.
Numb in the grip of icy failure, Jordan sat
still, a ramrod figure staring at the two screens that spoke so eloquently of
his disaster— and the one dead screen where the view from thirty-seven had
been, that said nothing at all. Like a man in a dream, he reached out his right
hand and cut in the final sentinel, the watchdog, that mech that circled
closest to the Station. In one short breath his strong first line was gone, and
the enemy rode, their strength undiminished, floating in toward his single line
of twenties at fifty thousand with the defensive screen a mere ten thousand
kilometers behind them.
Training
was strong. Without hesitation his hands went out over the keys and the doggies
of the twenties surged forward, trying for contact with the enemy in an area as
far from the screen as possible. But, because they were moving in on an
opponent relatively at rest, their courses were the more predictable on the
enemy's calculators and the disadvantage was theirs. So it was that forty
minutes later three ships of the alien rode clear and unthreat-ened in an area
where two of their mates, the forties and all of the thirties were gone.
The ships were, at this moment, fifteen
thousand kilometers from the detector screen.
Jordan
looked at his handiwork. The situation was obvious and the alternatives
undeniable. He had twenty doggies remaining, but he had neither the time to
move them up beyond the screen, nor the room to maneuver them in front of it.
The only answer was to pull his screen back. But to pull the screen back would
be to indicate, by its shrinkage and the direction of its withdrawal, the position
of his Station clearly enough for the guided missiles of the enemy to seek him
out; and once the Station was knocked out, the doggies were directionless,
impotent.
Yet,
if he did nothing, in a few minutes the ships would touch and penetrate the
detector screen and his Station, the nerve center the aliens were seeking,
would lie naked and revealed in their detectors.
He
had lost. The alternatives totaled to the same answer, to defeat. In the
inattention of a moment, in the smoke of a cigarette, the first blind surge of
self-confidence and the thoughtless halting of his by-passed doggies that had
allowed the ships' calculators to find them stationary for a second in a
predictable area, he had failed. He had given away, in the error of his pride,
the initial advantage. He had lost. Speak it softly, speak it gently, for his
fault was the fault of one young and untried. He was defeated.
And
in the case of defeat, the actions prescribed by the manual were stern and
clear. The memory of the instructions tolled in his mind like the unvarying
notes of a funeral bell.
"When,
in any conflict, the forces of the enemy have obtained a position of advantage
such that it is no longer possible to maintain
the anonymity of the Station's position, the commandant of the Station is
required to perform one final duty. Knowing that the Station will shortly be destroyed and that this will render
all remaining mechs innocuous to enemy forces, the commandant is commanded to
relinquish control of these mechs, and to place them with fuses primed on
proximity control, in order that, even without the Station, they may be enabled
to automatically pursue and attempt to destroy those forces of the enemy that
approach within critical range of their proximity fuse."
Jordan looked at his screens. Out at forty
thousand kilometers, the detector screen was beginning to luminesce slightly as
the detectors of the ships probed it at shorter range. To make the manual's
order effective, it would have to be pulled back to at least half that distance;
and there, while it would still hide the Station, it would give the enemy his
approximate location. They would then fire blindly, but with cunning and
increasing knowledge and it would be only a matter of time before they hit.
After that—only the blind doggies, quivering, turning and trembling through all
points of the stellar compass in their thoughtless hunger for prey. One or two
of these might gain a revenge as the ships tried to slip past them and over the
Line; but Jordan would not be there to know it.
But
there was no alternative—even if duty had left him one. Like
strangers, his hands rose from the board and stretched out over the keys that
would turn the doggies loose. His fingers dropped and rested upon them—light
touch on smooth polished coolness.
But he could not press them
down.
He
sat with his arms outstretched, as if in supplication, like one of his
primitive forebears before some ancient altar of death. For his will had failed
him and there was no denying now his guilt and his failure. For the battle had
turned in his short few moments of inattention, and his underestimation of the
enemy that had seduced him into halting his thirties without thinking. He knew;
and through the memory bank—if that survived—the Force would know. In his
neglect, in his refusal to avail himself of the experience of his predecessors,
he was guilty.
And
yet, he could not press the keys. He could not die properly— in the execution
of his duty—the cold, correct phrase of the official reports. For a wild
rebellion surged through his young body, an instinctive denial of the end that
stared him so undeniably in the face. Through vein and sinew and nerve, it
raced, opposing and blocking the dictates of training, the logical orders of
his upper mind. It was too soon, it was not fair, he had not been given his
chance to profit by experience. One more opportunity was all he needed, one
more try to redeem himself.
But
the rebellion passed and left him shaken, weak. There was no denying reality.
And now, a new shame came to press upon him, for he thought of the three alien
vessels breaking through, of another city in flaming ruins, and another child
that would run screaming from his destroyers. The thought rose up in him, and
he writhed internally, torn by his own indecisions. Why couldn't he act? It
made no difference to him. What would justification and the redeeming of error
mean to him after he was dead?
And
he moaned a little, softly to himself, holding his hands outstretched above
the keys, but could not press them down.
And
then hope came. For suddenly, rising up out of the rubble of his mind came the
memory of the Intelligence man's words once again, and his own near-pursuit of
insanity. He, Jordan, could not bring himself to expose himself to the enemy,
not even if the method of exposure meant possible protection for the Inner
Worlds. But the man who had held this Station before him, who had died as he
was about to die, must have been faced with the same necessity for
self-sacrifice. And those last-minute memories of his decision would be in the
memory bank, waiting for the evocation of Jordan's mind.
Here
was hope at last. He would remember, would embrace the insanity he had shrunk
from. He would remember and be Waske-wicz, not Jordan. He would be Waskewicz
and unafraid; though it was a shameful thing to do. Had there been one person,
one memory among all living humans, whose image he could have evoked to place
in opposition to the images of the three dark ships, he might have managed by
himself. But there had been no one close to him since the day of the city raid.
His
mind reached back into the memory bank, reached back to the last of Waskewicz's
memories. He remembered.
Of
the ten ships attacking, six were down. Their ashes strewed the void and the
remaining four rode warily, spread widely apart for maximum safety, sure of
victory, but wary of this hornet's nest which might still have some stings yet
unexpended. But the detector screen was back to its minimum distance for
effective concealment and only five doggies remained poised like blunt arrows
behind it. He—Waskewicz—sat hunched before the control board, his thick and
hairy hands lying softly on the proximity keys.
"Drift
in," he said, speaking to the ships, which were cautiously approaching the
screen. "Drift in, you. Driftl"
His lips were skinned back over his teeth in
a grin—but he did not mean it. It was an automatic grimace, reflex to the
tenseness of his waiting. He would lure them on until the last moment, draw
them as close as possible to the automatic pursuit mechanisms of the remaining
doggies, before pulling back the screen.
"Drift in," he
said.
They
drifted in. Behind the screen he aimed his doggies, pointing each one of four
at a ship and the remaining one generally at them all. They drifted in.
They touched.
His
fingers slapped the keys. The screen snapped back until it barely covered the
waiting doggies. And the doggies stirred, on proximity, their pursuit mechs
activated, now blind and terrible fully armed, ready to attack in senseless
directness anything that came close enough.
And
the first shells from the advancing ships began to probe the general area of
the Station asteroid.
Waskewicz
sighed, pushed himself back from the controls and stood up, turning away from
the screens. It was over. Done. All finished. For a moment he stood irresolute;
then, walking over to the dispenser on the wall, dialed for coffee and drew it,
hot into a disposable cup. He lit a cigarette and stood waiting, smoking and
drinking the coffee.
The
Station rocked suddenly to the impact of a glancing hit on the asteroid. He
staggered and slopped some coffee on his boots, but kept his feet. He took
another gulp from the cup, another drag on the cigarette. The Station shook
again, and the lights dimmed. He crumpled the cup and dropped it in the
disposal slot. He dropped the cigarette on the steel floor, ground it beneath
his boot sole; and walked back to the screen and leaned over it for a final
look.
The lights went out. And memory ended.
The present returned to Jordan and he stared
about him a trifle wildly. Then he felt hardness beneath his fingers and forced
him-seit to look down.
The keys were depressed. The screen was back.
The doggies were on proximity. He stared at his hand as if he had never known
it before, shocked at its thinness and the lack of soft down on its back. Then,
slowly, fighting reluctant neck muscles, he forced himself to look up and into
the viewing screen.
And the ships were there,
but the ships were drawing away.
He
stared, unable to believe his eyes, and half-ready to believe anything else.
For the invaders had turned and the flames from their tails made it evident
that they were making away into outer space at their maximum bearable
acceleration, leaving him alone and unharmed. He shook his head to clear away
the false vision from the screen before him, but it remained, denying its
falseness. The miracle for which his instincts had held him in check had come
—in the moment in which he had borrowed strength to deny it.
His
eyes searched the screens in wonder. And then, far down in one corner of the
watchdog's screen and so distant still that they showed only as pips on the
wide expanse, he saw the shape of his miracle. Coming up from inside of the
Line under maximum bearable acceleration were six gleaming fish-shapes that
would dwarf his doggies to minnows—the battleships of Patrol Twenty. And he
realized, with the dawning wonder of the reprieved, that the conflict, which
had seemed so momentary while he was fighting it, had actually lasted the four
hours necessary to bring the Patrol up to his aid.
The
realization that he was now safe washed over him like a wave and he was
conscious of a deep thankfulness swelling up within him. It swelled up and out,
pushing aside the lonely fear and desperation of his last few minutes, filling
him instead with a relief so all-encompassing and profound that there was no
anger left in him and no hate—not even for the enemy. It was like being bom
again.
Above him on the communications panel, the
white message light was blinking. He cut in on the speaker with a steady hand
and the dispassionate, official voice of the Patrol sounded over his head.
"Patrol Twenty to Station. Twenty to
Station. Come in Station. Are you all right?" He pressed the transmitter
key.
"Station
to Twenty. Station to Twenty. No damage to report. The Station is
unharmed."
"Glad
to hear it, Station. We will not pursue. We are decelerating now and will drop
all ships on your field in half an hour. That is all."
"Thank you, Twenty. The field will be
clear and ready for you. Land at will. That is all."
His
hand fell away from the key and the message light winked out. In unconscious
imitation of Waskewicz's memory he pushed himself back from the controls, stood
up, turned and walked to the dispenser in the wall, where he dialed for and
received a cup of coffee. He lit a cigarette and stood as the other had stood,
smoking and drinking. He had won.
And reality came back to him with a rush.
For
he looked down at his hand and saw the cup of coffee. He drew in on the
cigarette and felt the hot smoothness of it deep in his lungs. And terror took
him twisting by the throat.
He
had won? He had done nothing. The enemy ships had fled not from him, but from
the Patrol; and it was Waskewicz, Waskewicz, who had taken the controls from
his hands at the crucial moment. It was Waskewicz who had saved the day, not
he. It was the memory bank. The memory bank and Waskewicz!
The control room rocked about him. He had
been betrayed. Nothing was won. Nothing was conquered. It was no friend that
had broken at last through his lonely shell to save him, but the mind-sucking
figment of memory-domination sanity. The memory bank and Waskewicz had seized
him in their grasp.
He
threw the coffee container from him and made himself stand upright. He threw
the cigarette down and ground it beneath his boot. White-hot, from the very
depths of his being, a wild anger blazed and consumed him. Puppet, said the
mocking voice of his conscience, whispering in his ear, Puppeti Dance, Puppet/
Dance to the tune of the twitching strings/ "No!" he yelled. And,
borne on the white-hot tide of his rage, the all-consuming rage that burnt the
last trace of fear from his heart like dross from the molten steel, he turned
to face his tormentor, hurling his mind backward, back into the life of Waskewicz,
prisoned in the memory bank.
Back through the swirling tide of memories he
raced, hunting a point of contact, wanting only to come to grips with his
predecessor, to stand face to face with Waskewicz. Surely, in all his years at
the Station, the other must sometime have devoted a thought to the man who must
come after him. Let Jordan just find that point, there where the influence was
strongest, and settle the matter, for sanity or insanity, for shame or pride,
once and for all.
"Hi, Brotherl"
The
friendly words splashed like cool water on the white blaze of his anger. He—Waskewicz—stood
in front of the bedroom mirror and his face looked out at the man who was
himself, and who yet was also Jordan.
"Hi, Brother!" he
said. "Whoever and wherever you may be. Hi!"
Jordan
looked out through the eyes of Waskewicz, at the reflected face of Waskewicz;
and it was a friendly face, the face of a man like himself.
"This
is what they don't tell you," said Waskewicz. "This is what they
don't teach in training—the message that, sooner or later, every stationman
leaves for the guy who comes after him.
"This
is the creed of the Station. You are not alone. No matter what happens, you are
not alone. Out on the rim of the empire, facing the unknown races and the
endless depths of the universe, this is the one thing that will keep you from
all harm. As long as you remember it, nothing can affect you, neither attack,
nor defeat, nor death. Light a screen on your outermost doggie and turn the
magnification up as far as it will go. Away out at the limits of your vision
you can see the doggie of another Station, of another man
who holds the Line beside you. All along the
Frontier, the Outpost Stations stand, forming a link of steel to guard the
Inner Worlds and the little people there. They have their lives and you have
yours; and yours is to stand on guard.
"It
is not easy to stand on guard; and no man can face the universe alone. But—you
are not alone.' All those who at this moment keep the Line, are with you; and
all that have ever kept the Line, as well. For this is our new immortality, we
who guard the Frontier, that we do not stop with our deaths, but live on in the
Station we have kept. We are in its screens, its controls, in its memory bank,
in the very bone and sinew of its steel body. We are the station, your steel
brother that fights and lives and dies with you and welcomes you at last to our
kinship when for your personal self the light has gone out forever, and what
was individual of you is nothing any more but cold ashes drifting in the
eternity of space. We are with you and
of you, and you are not alone. I, who was once Waskewicz, and am now part of
the Station, leave this message for you, as it was left to me by the man who
kept this guard before me, and as you will leave it in your turn to the man who
follows you, and so on down the centuries until we have become an elder race
and no longer need our shield of brains and steel."
"Hi, Brother.' You are
not alone.'"
And so, when the six ships of Patrol Twenty
came drifting in to their landing at the Station, the man who waited to greet
them had more than the battle star on his chest to show he was a veteran. For
he had done more than win a battle. He had found his soul.
solar system quarantine doctor: David Munroe
Death wears more than one disguise.
What horrors in the form of strange plagues
or
unknown
life forms may unsuspecting ships bring out of
space fiom the worlds
beyond? Between
this menace and the public stand such men
as Dr. David Munroe.
For
the Public
BY BERNARD I. KAHN
The
laughter was thin, sardonic and, to his hypertrophied sense of mental
receptivity of the moment, acutely painful. Dr. David Munroe walked slowly back
to his desk. It was a ritual to laugh, to accept such orders with a scornful grin.
The public demanded an insouciant bravery,
callous indifference, perfect self-abasement in those destined to die for its
own interests. The clerical crew were laughing at him now. They had to, or they
would experience his own mind-chilling fear and know the symptoms of agonizing
frustration.
Dr.
David Munroe sat behind his desk, fingers whitened at their tips as he clasped
and unclasped the elastic plastic arms of his chair; his mind a tight vortex of
numbing, impotent anger. The flow of anger clutching his abdomen was like the
painful waves of a gastric spasm.
He
wanted to scream a defiant refusal at those powers representing the public who
casually changed the order of his life and intended to dispose of its planned
process with such indifference. But he put the heresy of such thoughts into the
inner deeps of his subconscious mind. He had been too well schooled, too
artfully conditioned by these same powers for anything but the most shallow
type of emotional protest. The pain of it was: he knew it. Knew he could do
nothing.
His thin fingers jabbed nervously at the
phone box on his desk. The fatuous face of his blonde-haired secretary appeared
immediately. "Get the Office of Industrial Endocrinology." His mouth
tightened to a narrow ridge of indignant resentment. "This call is not for
the public. Tell the Lunar Operator to put the charges on my bill."
"Yes, sir." The secretary's face
was bovinely expressionless. "You wish to speak to Dr. Roberta
Wallace?"
As she blanketed the phone he could hear the
thin, derisive laughter of the clerks, heard one of them saying: ". . .
the boss won't be alive much longer."
He stared at the various colored phones,
panels and screens which brought him visual, vocal contact with the subsidiary
activities of his quarantine station, as if he had never seen them before. His
fingers caressed the communication tapes emerging from the desk as if touching
them for the last time. The metronomic clicking of the filing cabinet behind
him was now as depressing as a requiem.
By sheer effort of will he channeled his mind
into cortico-thalamic patterns, sought analysis of his emotional chaos. It
wasn't, he realized, the terror that comes with the foreknowledge of impending
death which aroused such high emotivity. Nor was it the anger in protest of
having to go to Exotic for the third time, an order which was in violation of
the mores of the Bureau. He was far too well integrated for such thalamic
emotions. It was the cerebration of the fear of disease before death.
It
was the cold unescapable fact that by all the laws of chance he would be
diseased before he did die; and the lack of the knowledge of what disease it
might be, perhaps a new one, was cause enough for his cortical unrest.
He
leaned back in the softly padded chair, placed sweaty palms together, realized
he had to adjust his affairs. He curtained his cold, black thoughts with reality,
wondered with a wry sense of humor to whom he would will his ski car.
The
gong of the operations vodaphone erupted sharply into his mind. His schizoid
preoccupation vanished instantly as he punched knobs on his phone, brought the
duty officer to focus.
"S. S. Sylvestrus; PF-704: Interglobal Lines is standing off requesting pratique. Senior Medical
Officer is Dr. Guerdian Lilly: Professional 32-56-2134. You will contact the ship and take such
action as is necessary for the public."
Dr.
Munroe swung to the filing cabinet behind his desk, punched name and number of
the ship's doctor. The microcard slid into the viewer, was projected on the
screen. Dr. Munroe scanned the professional qualifications of the medical
officer. He dialed the ship's medical number.
The
face of the gray-haired, alert-eyed physician appeared on the screen instantly.
"This is Lilly, Medical Officer of the Sylvestrus requesting
pratique."
Munroe
transferred the image of the photograph on his card with the picture of the man
on the screen to the analyzer. Automatically the pictures blended. He looked
at the likeness calibrator. The point of feature differential was well within
the margin of error allowed for aging difference. Apparently they had not been
out very long. He waited while a new photograph was made, became a part of the
doctor's master card.
"This
is Munroe, Senior Medical Officer, Ninth Lunar Quarantine Station. Report
point of departure, duration, and nature of voyage. List all patients with
their diseases. This demand is made for the public."
"Earthing
from Ferenzia, Planet II; Albrecht System. Freight has been subjected to
approved routine decontamination procedures. Holds are now under three
atmospheres of chloropoxsine. Ship's company consists of two-twenty officers and
ratings. Passengers twelve hundred and ten. One birth en route. No deaths. One
case of ondecca fever, cured without sequelae. Request clearance."
"Pratique
granted."
He
turned to the other phone announcing the arrival of a freighter from Halseps.
His mind leafed through the pages of memory to recall the planet. He was
forced to go to the planetary index file. It was a small planet of a distant
sun on the very periphery of man's growing empire. Operations could tell him
nothing about the ship or the medical officer.
When he called the ship, the grooved face of
a snarl-haired, black-browed, square-chinned man appeared. An officer's cap was
cocked on the ragged remnant of one ear. His beady, black eyes were venomously
sadistic. "I'm Bill Blackbern, medical officer of the ship," his
voice was angrily resentful, "don't remember my number. We ain't got any
disease aboard. We want to clear for Earth. Is that satisfactory with you
boys?" he finished sarcastically.
Dave
Munroe punched out the name and from more than five million medical cards in
his filing cabinet, two photomicrographs slid into the projector. One of them
was a new graduate. The face of the freighter's medical officer was similar to
the other card but feature correlation was ejected by the analyzer.
"Place your face one inch from the
screen," Dave ordered, "and open your eyes wide." He slid an
ophthalmoscopic camera over his screen, photographed the eye grounds of the
doctor, compared those with the prints he had. They tallied.
"Look,
Doc," Blackbern's voice was a rasping growl, "I said we want to clear
Earthwards. Our ship is clean in and out. Our holds are filled with treated
nalyor skins. Soft beautiful pelts that glow in the dark like each strand was
made of platinum. The finest things ever to come from an animal. The gals will
go wild over them. Give us clearance and I'll see you get one. They're worth a
thousand stellars each. Nice thing for your wife."
At
the mention of wife a sick feeling of anguish followed by a surge of
unreasoning anger swept him. He ignored the bribe. "My records fail to
show me what ship you're in. My last entry is dated seven years ago when you
were expelled from practice on Dynia."
"I
was railroaded by one of the big companies," Blackbern exploded. "I
got a job on this ship and we cruised about the Alde-baran nucleus. We're
Earthing from Halseps. We've got thirty officers and men—"
"How many did you
start with?"
"We started with about
a hundred but—"
"What happened to
them?" Dave asked sharply.
Blackbern
grinned unpleasantly. "You ain't been out among the lesser rocks. Out
there, there ain't no law, no God and the boys play for keeps. If you land on
an airless planet and you got an enemy, you might find he's put metal filings
in your atmosphere regenerator; or if it's a virulent planet why he might burn
a weld in your armor." He laughed rudely. "The Canaberra is a clean
ship, in and out."
"I'm
familiar with conditions at the periphery," Dave said coldly. "Do you
have any disease of any type in your ship?"
"If
we do have, does it mean we can't go to Earth? We've got a fortune in skins.
We'll take care of any spacemen—" He stopped suddenly.
Dave's nimble fingers danced over switches on
his desk. Attention in the Station! Attention Earth Guard! Attention Exotic
Disease Control! The ship to which I'm now talking, the freighter Canaberra,
Earthing from Halseps has been denied pratique. The professional ability and
standards of the medical officer are open to doubt. Cradle ship for
examination; begin routine external hull wash. This is for the public."
Blackbern's
face became dark and ugly. "You and your public. All right you nosy
pig-brain. I've got several guys here with something that acts like malignant
tuberculosis, at least they're coughing their lungs out," he laughed
sadistically, "but in little pieces you understand, just little
pieces."
The
closed phone from the yard office rang and the ground doctor appeared on the
screen. "Dr. Munroe," he said, "I'd like to remind you there is
no epidemiologist at Exotic. Only the pathology crew and the medics from the
Colonial Office." He paused. "Dr. Craig died this morning."
"I know it. I'm taking over control this
afternoon."
"Doctor,
not you again," concern mirrored the physician's face. "That's too
bad."
"It's for the
public," Dave said sharply.
"It's for the
public," the doctor repeated the liturgy.
Dave
pressed the stud turning on his window. He looked out over the quarantine
station. Cupped in Tycho's crag-walled crater the symmetrical buildings were
beautiful in their utilitarian design. The tackle gang expanding the cradle to
receive a Transtellar freighter looked like silver bugs in the harsh, white
sunlight. The ship settled into the ways like a ball floating slowly into a
kitten's claws. An exploring battleship, cradled earlier, was discharging its
crew into the Physicals Building. The ground crew was setting up fire guns
preparing to wrap the hull in a sterilizing flame blanket. Lines hosing out to
the ship from the Chemical Building, from this distance, looked like thin,
golden snakes.
Above
the Lunar surface, the Sylvestrus gathering speed for Earth was like a flaming
mirror. Near her was the Canaberra, Blackbem's freighter.
He
brought it closer on the screen and his lips curled in disgust. Its hull was a
dirty black, mottled with areas of reddened corrosion. One of the port screens
was blanked out by a cracked, plastic disk. The grounding tackle hung to the
ship like shreds of seaweed to a rotten log. Freezing vapor from expanding air,
escaping from a rent in the topside surface, looked like a thin plume of steam
from a tea kettle.
The
sight of the ship with its dread implications of disease was an anchor to his
weary emotions. He realized again the public had to be protected from the
biological catastrophe such a ship would cause.
One extraterrestrial disease, made horribly
contagious by lack of any racial immunity, would sweep Earth's billions; they
would fall before such infection like pillars of steel in a neutrone flame.
He
was a policeman; protecting the health of the public. A wave of pure contentment
swept him, washed away the sodden feeling of morose despair and indignant
anger.
The
gong of the phone and the appearance of an unfamiliar face on the plate brought
him to the screen. "This is the toll operator on Earth. Calling Dr.
Munroe. Dr. Dave Munroe. Is this Dr. Munroe, Ninth Lunar Quarantine,
Tycho?"
"This is Dr. Munroe. My number is
Professional 33-64-1875.
I am ready to speak. This
call is not, I repeat, this call is not for the public."
"This
call is not for the public," the operator repeated. "You will have a
closed channel between you and your party. Vernier adjustment." She read
off the settings for his phone. There was a flash of violet light, she
disappeared and the clear, wide, gold-flecked eyes of Roberta were smiling into
his own.
FOR THE public
• l8l
"When will it be, Davey?" Her voice
held promise of happiness in its lilting richness. "I've never waited so
impatiently."
He
swallowed, hating to see the grinding crash of all their dreams. "It won't
be, might never be, Roberta."
She
leaned closer to her screen. So close she blanked out the details of the
laboratory behind her. "You mean our marriage was forbidden?" Her
lovely eyes widened in bewildered wonder. "But David. Why? Was it you?
Me?"
He
fumbled for a cigarette to hide the terrible burst of frustrated anger filling
his mind. He forced sardonic laughter through his tight mouth. "The
marital division of the bureau gave us a clean pratique. It was the"—he
spit out the words—"the Bureau of Public Health, Epidemiology
Divisionl"
"What! But David," startled
surprise flickered between her level brows.
"They had good reason," he
admitted, forcing himself to put it into words. "You see I'm to go to
Exotic Disease Control." - "Ohhhhh! David no!" She capped her
mouth with a long slender hand as her face became gaunt and pale. "Not
again. Not that—" Her voice trailed off into a clicking whisper.
He
tore a strip of tape from the scribe talk, transliterated the message slowly,
realizing as he did so, he was reciting what might well be his own epitaph.
" 'From: Director General, Public Health. To: All Personnel. Dr. James
Craig, Commander in the Public Health, Senior Medical Officer, Exotic Disease
Control, Lunar Station, died this morning while entering a disease ship. He
willfully entered this ship, well aware of its hazards. His conduct was in
keeping with the highest traditions of the Public Health Service. Signed:
Gumnes, Director General.'
"Now
listen. It's right on the same tape. Saving money," he explained
bitterly. " 'Personal transfer order: Commander David Munroe, Planetary
Epidemiologist, upon reporting to Commander Sigmund Russell, Planetary
Epidemiologist, you will take command of Exotic Disease Control to fill out the
term of the late Dr. James Craig. This transfer is for the public'
'"From: Personnel Division: In
accordance with Directive 43,
Paragraph B of the rules and regulations of
the Public Health Service which states that personnel assigned extra-hazardous
duty as exemplified by Exotic Disease Control may not be married; you, Dr.
David Munroe, are informed that your request for permission to marry Dr.
Roberta Wallace is denied until such time as you have completed your newly
assigned tour of duty. This denial is for the public'"
"How long will you be there?"
Roberta asked in a tight, hushed voice.
"I'll have about four months. I've been
there twice, you know. No one," he said slowly, "has come back a
third time."
She tried to sound matter-of-fact.
"That's what comes from being a good doctor. Mediocrity does have its
compensations." She forced a smile. "Just think, it'll be double pay
with a bonus. Oh! Dave, if only you don't have to go prowling around in some
derelict. That is what gets them all."
"Someone
has to see where the ship came from," he pointed out. "It's for the
public."
"If you do get a derelict showing dead
lights, just take the organisms and never mind trying to clean the ship for
some big company. Don't try and be a hero."
He laughed at her advice. "That's all
you ever do. Just open the ship at the landing room air lock, take a sample of
the organisms. See if they are the lethal cause. If they are, you just turn
them over to the bacteriochemists for classification. You let the pharmacology
crew work out the antigen. Then you pull the log to see where the ship had
been, sterilize it, turn it over to the Colonial Office."
"Promise
me you won't go tramping around inside one of those ships," she insisted.
"That's
sure death; particularly if the cause of the dead lights is bacterial. That's
what killed Craig, I understand. They brought in a ship from the Mycops
nucleus. The bacteria thrived on ultraviolet radiation. They were evolved in an
atmosphere that was intensely ionized and extremely hot. I understand the
planet is extremely rich in radium. He sterilized himself in an acid shower,
covered himself with a flame blanket, but when he bivalved his suit in his
quarters one of them must have still been alive. He was dead within an hour.
They volatilized the ship." He shook his head. "Nope, I can assure
you I won't go exploring into a derelict. Do I look as though I were dropped on
my head as an infant?"
She
ignored his humor. "Let me talk to the Director," she suggested
tenderly. "I'm doing some work for his Bureau; maybe he'll listen to me
and give you new orders."
The
line of his mouth grew hard and chiseled at this threat to his masculine ego.
"Roberta, you'll do no such thing. Look, I have a lot of work to do. I'll
call you before I go over to Exotic."
"No,
don't." She touched the corners of her eyes with a handkerchief.
"I'll be here waiting for you when you return. Just return, that's all I'm
warning you. Besides," she managed a smile, "I've got work to do,
too."
"Once I get to Exotic,
I can't call you, you know."
"That's better, it won't interfere with
what I'm doing. I'm trying to set up a pharmacologic formula for chitinizing
the skin of the beryllium workers in the mines of Nebos. Of course it has to be
reversible so they can come back to their families. Besides," she laughed
reflectively, "we should be saving our money. Just think when you come
back you'll get a year's vacation. Let's settle on Zercan. I hear it's a
gorgeous planet. I'll be a housewife and cook your meals right from cans like a
real twentieth-century wife and you can practice medicine. Oh! David, do be
careful."
He
cut off the phone, hating himself for the emotionalism that made the globus
form in his throat; realized the trajectory of such thoughts was causing mental
trauma sufficient to make him a physical coward.
He
clicked his jaws, drew up a scribe bank, dictated his will. He was removing his
personal effects from the desk when Dr. Russell walked in.
"Personnel
hated to do this to you," Russell informed him after their formal
greeting, "but there was just no one else in the area with youT experience who hadn't already been there twice. You were the
nearest."
"It's for the
public," Dave pointed out.
"Just
don't venture beyond the landing rooms of any dead ships chasing unclassified
bacteria," he cautioned, "and I'm sure you'll come through. Remember,
don't risk your life for nothing."
Dave
thought the warning was excessive. "You want to be briefed on this station?"
"I had a similar duty on Meissner. Fill
out any gaps for me." He clicked details on his fingers. "Lunar
Operations routes the ship to your station. You check the ship's surgeon with
the analyzer and if everything is all right the ship is granted pratique for
Earth."
"If feature correlation is in excess of
aging difference, check eye grounds. Some of these tramp freighters can do
wonders with illegal plastic surgeons. They drag in contraband and all kinds of
organisms."
"I'll remember that. If the ship has a
doubtful itinerary, cradle and your ground crew decontaminate the ship and its
cargo and the junior medics examine the personnel. They report deviants to you
for whatever action you decide."
"Whenever you have a
doubt, send it to Exotic," Dave insisted.
The
blonde-haired secretary appeared on the phone. "Exotic Disease Control on
4; can you take the call?"
Dave
flicked switches on his desk. "Munroe, Ninth Lunar Quarantine. You want
me?"
"This
is Thurman, chief of ratings at Exotic, sir. I called Operations and they
referred me to you. The Canaberra is here, medical officer is a Dr. Blackbem.
We started the routine hull wash but he refuses to let my crew in to
decontaminate the hold areas. Dr. Nissen is examining the crew now. And,
sir," Thurman appeared worried, "the Starry Maid is over us demanding
that we remove some patients at once. Their doctor is most insistent."
"What's the Starry
Maid?"
Russell
leaned forward, blanked the phone. "That's the private yacht of Mr. Latham
Nordheimer."
Dave
whistled. "Where," he whispered, "would he have been to pick up
anything needing Exotic?"
Russell
shrugged. "He's got a socialite playboy for a medical officer. He
couldn't tell the difference between simple acne and malignant space burn.
He's my idea of what a high-grade moron would be with no intelligence. He's
crazy about Nordheimer's daughter but whether it's mutual or not I don't know.
Because he is so intellectually inferior he's like all dim brains; dangerous
when crossed. He loves his power as medical man to one of Solar's richest men.
He'd like nothing better than to turn in a doctor for a missed diagnosis."
"Nice
boy to talk back to," Dave unblanked the phone. "Thurman, tell Dr.
Blackbern I ordered you to enter the ship. If he questions this order further,
call the Duty Officer of the Guard and request the riot Marines. I'll back you
up."
"Shall I remove the
patients from the Starry Maid?"
"No. They might have something
contagious. Let them stew in their own impatience. We're the Public Health
Service not animals to be ordered about."
He
cut off the phone, poured two cups of coffee. "I'm not going to get high
blood pressure for some rich man." Dave grinned at Russell. "Have
you ever noted that a rich man becomes paranoid; starts thinking he is above
the people?"
Russell's
laugh was as soothing as balm on a space boil. "Just the same I admire
your courage telling the mighty Nordheimer to wait. It's always a comfort,
though, to know the Bureau will back us up for the public."
Dave
finished his coffee. He picked up the phone, announced to the station the
transfer of authority. He turned off the phone, locked the tape box, handed
over the keys to Dr. Russell. "It's all yours now. Would you have your
steward pack my clothes and ship them to the Personnel Desk in the Bureau? I'll
pick them up there if I come out of Exotic."
"Will
do." At the panel leading to the mobile ramp Russell placed a comforting
hand on Dave's shoulder. "Good luck, Munroe. Stay out of derelicts and
I'll try not to send you anything green."
Exotic Disease Control is located on the
northern edge of Mare Capsicum. The station is as functional as a lathe and
with just about the same amount of beauty. It consists of a group of hemispherical
buildings arranged concentrically around the metallic cradling table.
It lacks the dynamic architecture that makes
Lunar Quarantine Stations so outstanding. Exotic Control was designed solely for
isolating the new bacteria, viruses, fungi and yeasts with which mankind
infects himself from the distant, biologically unexplored planets.
The little brown house, as the doctors refer
to the isolation hospital, is located here. It is in its wards that passengers
and spacemen, who have become infected, wait until their disease is cured or—!
It is a part of the cost of spatial exploration; man would have it no other
way.
At
Exotic Disease Control are located the esoteric pathologists, the virologists,
bacterio-chemists, pharmacologists. Here, too, are located the planetary
cartographers and ecologists, ceaselessly studying the characteristics of the
better planets so they can be certified for colonization.
When Dave alighted from the lunar car, the
crew about the dirty freighter dropped chemical lines, greeted him with brazen
clanging of metal as they clapped bronzed sheathed hands on the armor of his
metal-covered shoulders.
The
medical division, the landing gangs, the sterile squads and the decontamination
crews followed him into the Administration Building. "It's good to be back
here again," Dave said when he had thrown back his glassite helmet.
At
this palpable lie, all the men let out a whoop of laughter. He stilled it with
raised hand. "I don't need to enlarge on our responsibility to the
public. They trust us to prevent disease reaching Earth.
"We'll work here now just as we did the
last time I was here. I alone will investigate ships from any of the outer
nuclei, or those that have questionable disease in any way. I will make all
primary diagnosis and do autopsies on those remains found in ships. No one is
to risk his life doing something that is my duty. These are my orders."
Dr.
Blackbern shouldered his way through the group about Dave. "Cute talk you
boys make. Very lovely prattle about the care the public gets, but how about
me, us? We're a part of the public, too. I've been here now for three hours and
all I've heard is talk, talk, talk."
His dark face, stained by the tarnish of his
beard, was sarcastically malevolent. "We've got a fortune in skins out
there we want to take to Earth. One of your medics came aboard, jerked about
all of our crew."
"Before
you got here," Nissen, the pathologist, interposed, "I went aboard to
see Blackbem's men. Nordheimer was getting so impatient I began to worry about
what he might do to you."
"I
don't think he can hurt me officially," Dave said easily. "What about
the crew?"
"Orya
fever, ninety-five per cent morbidity rate. Bacterioscope reveals it in their
blood; profound toxemia on the hemospectroscope. They'll all have to stay in
isolation until cure is effected. The inner fittings of the ship will have to
be burned. I checked the pelts but they can be decontaminated in the gas
house."
"You
don't touch that ship or those pelts." Blackbem's face flamed with anger.
"I've got a right to talk, too. I'm telling you I'm going to Earth to sell
those skins—"
"Shut
up!" Dave's voice was suddenly explosive. "I run this station—"
"Why you little test-tube washer."
Blackbem's arm swept out, pushed the men back, away from him. He came forward,
a black, enraged animal, fists like lead ingots whirling madly. Dave saw it,
saw the frustrated hysteria in the man, sidestepped the blow with the ease of a
professional dancer, for all that he was incased in heavy armor. He caught the
raging man's arm, whirled him over his shoulder to fall stunned and helpless
at his feet.
He
winked at the grinning men. "He didn't know that we test-tube washers,
softies that we are, have to exercise at 3-Gs
one hour every day." He looked at Blackbem's stupefied face. "Get
up," he ordered curtly, "we're medical men, not marines."
Blackbern
crawled heavily to his feet. His venomous eyes were more respectful. "You
going to check my ship," he hesitated, added grudgingly, "sir?"
Dave flicked the wrist switch of his armor.
Gears whined in its metallic flanks as it bivalved. He stepped out, shook the
creases out of his uniform. "I'm going to check the spacemen first."
The patients, thin, wasted caricatures of
men, lay in their bunks in the isolation ward, watched him with anxious
expressions in their deeply socketed eyes.
Corpsmen,
clad in contagion-free gowns, were setting up the steri-banks. Nurses were
briskly inserting needles into the veins of the cubital fossa, sterilizing
their blood, adding amino acids to the nutrient to speed recovery.
He stopped by one of the
bunks. "When did you first get sick?"
The
spaceman's voice was a harsh croak. "About six weeks out of Halseps.
Nothing but processed food to eat. Air went foul. Too much work . . . holding
the ship together. No medicines ...
air ducts corroded through ... no
circulation—" The voice trailed off into sleep.
It was the typical story of a tramp
freighter. He continued with his ward rounds: offered the cheering confidence
of an early recovery to the patients; cautioned corpsmen against carelessness.
Before
he was through, a messenger came to him with a note from Thurman:
"Nordheimer has just put through a call to the Chancellor's Office
protesting his needless delay."
Dave
swore softly, balled the note, dropped it in the flame chute of a decontagion
basket. He turned to Dr. Nissen: "Conduct the Guard Office, tell them what
we have here. They may want to hold the captain for improper conduct. When the
skins are clean, call the Finance Division of the Colonial Office so they can
arrange an auction for the skins. I'm going out to check the ship."
The
interior of the Canaberra was a rotten, rusted mess. Eroded hull plates allowed
air seepage so the atmosphere generators were constantly overloaded. In
consequence of the lowered oxygen tension the men had suffered debilitating,
chronic anoxemia. Air ducts were fouled so that circulation of even vitiated
air was impossible. The sewage disposal plant had broken down and filthy sludge
filled the under decks.
He shuddered to think of the social
conditions at the periphery of man's empire. The crew's quarters were a
stifling miasma; it was a wonder any of them lived to make Earth. The holds of
the ship were filled with untreated nalyor skins, which in spite of their
filthy condition radiated the glowing platinum beauty which made them the most
beautiful pelt ever seen in the astrosphere.
Dave summoned Blackbern. "I'm condemning
your ship. It will be taken to the hulk yard and broken up. You may protest
this action before the Domain Board. This condemnation is for the public."
He ignored the vituperative response.
The
ground crew attached cables to the overtop shackles and tugs lifted the
freighter from the cradle.
Instantly,
it seemed, the sleek lines of the Starry Maid appeared over the cradling table.
Its polished hull gleamed like living flame.
The
landing crew grabbed anchoring lines, passed terminal hooks through the ground
eyelets. Winches in the landing compartments of the yacht turned, tightening
the lines, and as power was released from the gravity plates the ship fell
slowly into the bassinet.
The landing lock opened and
two figures came down the ramp.
Dave blinked his eyes.
Never
had he seen such space armor. The helmets were domes of jet; the wearer could
see out through the uni-transparent metal but he couldn't see within the cover.
A red cross of inlaid rubies flamed brilliantly on the chest of one of the
figures. A blaze of diamonds monogramed J. N. flickered on the left breast of
the other armored figure. Scrolls of gold foamed over the arms and shoulders of
the armor.
"I'm
Dr. Mortimer J. Mortimer, Senior Surgeon of Nordheimer & Company and
Medical Officer of the yacht—"
"Which
of you is which?" Dave looked from one dome to the other. How in the name
of deep space could they expect him to know which of the slender figures was
speaking?
The
figure with the jeweled medical cross stepped forward. "I wish to protest
our long delay. A hulk like that freighter should not be seen ahead of Mr.
Nordheimer. I want you to bring up litters and remove our patients at
once."
Dave
listened to the contentious voice with amused incredulity. "Look,
Doc," he said after a long pause, "this is Exotic Disease
Control. If you think you have something
serious enough for isolation, then it must be serious enough to warrant
potential quarantine of the entire ship. Suppose we see the patients
first."
Dave walked up the ramp. As the panels closed
the diamond-monogramed figure disappeared into another compartment. Dave
watched curiously as the other figure stepped into a metal frame which unhinged
the armor. At the sight of its ornate, padded interior he wondered with a
perverse sense of humor if the motors of the suit weren't gold-plated and the
air ducts lined with platinum.
"Whatcha got?" he
asked after introducing himself.
Dr. Mortimer }. Mortimer's arrogant face
puckered into a haughty frown. "Now really. I don't know. I'm not a
planetary epidemiologist. That's your field."
"What're their
symptoms?"
"It's
a loathsome thing; changes their personality." Dr. Mortimer J. Mortimer
delicately touched the waves of his beautiful blond hair. "I'll tell you
about them as we go to their quarters."
He led the way through corridors tesselated
with fabulously beautiful paneling, over carpeting as soft as rubberoid foam.
Intricately engraved doors opened at their approach, whispered softly as they
closed behind them.
"It
had an insidious onset. They became weak; at first we thought it sheer
laziness, so many spacemen are, you see. It's a big problem on many of our
outer nuclei freighters. You'd be surprised at all the difficulty our captains
have with the bums. I have an entire department just—"
"Never
mind the economics of your job," Dave cut in sharply, "how about your
patients now?"
Dr.
Mortimer J. Mortimer turned, stared insolently at Dave. "The malaise I was
speaking of appeared like laziness. I insisted the captain work them harder. I
realized they were ill with some strange malady when they started developing a
rather alarming glossitis. Their mouths and tongues were inflamed; dysphagia
was quite pronounced. They are now having difficulty in even swallowing water.
Then their skins started turning that loathsome green color. I knew it was
serious and of course isolated them at once; had a special air filter rigged,
it's really quite a work of engineering art. I'm thinking of writing a paper on
it for publication in the Journal of Spatial Medicine."
"What?
The air filter or the men's illness?" Dave did not even try to hide the
derision in his voice.
Dr.
Mortimer J. Mortimer ignored the scom in Dave's voice. "Their hair got
brittle and started falling out and their nails became ridged. As you will see
they are wasting rapidly from a profound toxemia. We must have them off at
once. I can assure you none of us have become infected."
They
passed through the crew's quarters, stopped abruptly at its welded door. Some
spacemen wheeled up a portable lock, started fastening it to the paneling.
"How've you been
feeding these men?" Dave wondered.
"I
put a corpsman in with them, gave them processed food. Of course I haven't gone
in there. I couldn't risk infecting Mr. Nord-heimer or Janith with
anything."
Dave
wheeled in the yacht's diagnostic equipment; exquisite medical instruments
which made him writhe with professional envy.
The
warm odor of congestion, like an unaired gymnasium, filled his nostrils. The
bunk rooms were packed to the ceiling with sweating, miserable, palpably ill
men.
He
examined their yellow-green skin carefully; looked long at their reddened,
swollen tongues. All of them were afflicted with the same type of disease. He
examined blood under the bacterioscope. No organism caused their illness; the
toxemia came from the waste of their own bodies. They were weak from sheer
anemia. He raised his head from the hemiglobinometer, dark fury in his eyes.
Dr.
Mortimer J. Mortimer was leaning against the bulkhead, oblivious to the
hostile stares of the men. "Well? What do they have, Munroe?" he
asked indifferently.
"Chlorosis!
Simple spatial anemia. Due to lack of protein in their diet."
"That's what I told him," a
gray-haired spaceman muttered angrily. "Processed food is all they gave
that bunch. We regulars ate good, them got nothing."
Dr. Mortimer J. Mortimer straightened
abruptly. "You don't certainly expect them to eat like Mr. Nordheimer or
the officers."
"By
deep space," the spaceman growled, "they should be fed something
besides bread and vitamin tablets, even if they are working their way back to
Earth." He looked at Dave. "And we could have a doctor on this ship,
too."
Dave knew the spaceman's knowledge of
hematology had not been learned from textbooks. It had been learned the hard
way; from dietary experience in deep, black space. If Dr. Mortimer J. Mortimer
had not been so indifferent to the health of the crew, he would have insisted
that they be fed a more adequate diet; aborted the illness before it ever started.
He recalled what Dr. Russell had said about the moronic mind of the Starry
Maid's medical officer.
"I want to speak to
the owner," Dave said.
"I
hardly believe Mr. Nordheimer would care to speak to you," Dr. Mortimer J.
Mortimer said rudely. "After all, you know he just doesn't see
anybody."
"I'm
not just anybody." Dave's eyes narrowed angrily. "I'm speaking for
the public. I insist on seeing him."
"The
public," Mortimer laughed scornfully. "Mr. Nordheimer is not
interested in the public—"
"But
I am," Dave broke in, fury in his voice. "I'll see him if I have to
tear these bulkheads down with my bare hands."
Dr.
Mortimer stepped back at the sight of Dave's icy, angry face. He darted a quick
look at the smirking spacemen. "You public employees certainly have a
hypertrophied sense of responsibility." He tittered self-consciously at
his clinical analysis. "Very well, I'll take you to see Mr. Nordheimer,
but mind you don't expect a kind reception." There was condescending
mockery in his voice. "At least you'll see the grand salon and that is
more than most people ever do."
Dave followed the slender
doctor to the grand salon of the ship.
He
stopped abruptly as he stepped in. Eyes widened in unashamed, breathless
wonder. Never had he seen such an impressive sight.
He
was looking at the Macro-Mafintic Falls of Zaragahn, Sirius' great planet. He
recognized it from teleposters. Now he was looking at its captured reality. It
was the most magnificent sight he had ever seen; unutterably breath-taking in
its majestic beauty.
Mountains,
glittering with snow, vanished into an illusory horizon, water from a mighty
river burst forth to fall for twenty-five thousand meters into a narrow,
tortuous canyon. But three-quarters of the way down, up-sweeping wind caught
the watery shaft, tore it into mist, whirled it cyclonically upwards.
Electrostatic charges formed on the droplets to be neutralized by vivid
electric discharges, and through the mist jagged lightning flashed ceaselessly
and the deep-throated rumble of thunder echoed in the mountains.
Dave
had heard the sight of the Falls rivaled the splendor of Sirius' incredible,
tumultuous prominences. He could believe that now.
Man
lacked the multiple perceptive ability so necessary to appreciate the
tremendous forces in a solar storm. His sensual comprehension could not grasp
and hold for cerebration the magnitude of the incredible, flaming vortices that
writhed and twisted millions of miles above Sirius' churning surface.
The
Macro-Mafintic Falls can be adequately appreciated for all its majestic worth.
It captures perception through senses that are instinctively familiar. Man has
crawled on the slopes of mountains; felt the vibrating wonder of their
creation. He has seen clouds form, felt the coolness of their mist; been
thrilled by their rain. He has seen and felt and feared the lightning; trembled
with wonder at the crack of thunder. He has built dams; listened with smug
satisfaction as a tamed river roared its spilling protest. This, then, was but
the infinite magnification of an age-old experience.
He
looked on in wonder. The Falls seemed to strike on a churning violet cloud
that billowed and swirled over a foundation of lightning before it fell into
the incredible gorge.
The
room was built on a promontory jutting out over a wide, deep chasm. A
fireplace, burning golden apple wood, crackled behind him and the air was spicy
with the tangy, piny freshness of high mountains.
Dave
walked to the rail, looked up at the snow-capped peaks. Impossible to believe
this sublime scene was but the three-dimensional art of a photographer. It was
too dynamic. The flashing lightning, the rumble of thunder, the roar of the
Falls muted by distance was too real.
It required actual mental effort for him to
realize he was not standing on a real rock on Zaragahn looking at the Falls;
instead he was in the grand salon of a sumptuous yacht, now resting in the
landing cradle of Exotic Disease Control.
"Are you sight-seeing," an
irritable voice snapped, "or did you want to see me?"
Dave
whirled and in a flash was conscious of Mortimer's condescending sneer and the
thin, vulture face of Mr. Nordheimer regarding him with cynical, beady black
eyes.
"I've just examined
your crewmen," Dave announced flatly.
"That's
kind of you," rasped Nordheimer, "now take them off so we can Earth.
I've waited here long enough."
Dave
faced the fabulously wealthy, almost omnipotent Nordheimer with the slightest
trickle of fear welling within him. Stories of his greedy love of power had
seeped into the smallest colonies of Earth's empire.
He
had once hurled the might of his private spatial force on a planet because it
failed to recognize his economic power. It was whispered that on the planets of
the periphery he was worshiped as a god, a devil, an emperor; that one planet
was his arsenal of empire, devoted exclusively to the manufacture of weapons
to keep him in power. That some day he intended to be the master of the world.
"No!"
Dave said, "their illness is not infectious; they do not need to be
removed."
There
was a tormenting moment of intense nervous tension in the room. Lightning from
the Falls tinted the walls vivid violet and the roll of thunder, like an
oncoming storm, was a menacing rumble.
Nordheimer
settled deeply into a low, spun-metal divan. Corrugated lids closed slowly
over his venomous eyes. A cynical smile curled at the corners of his thin,
bloodless lips. "My doctor said their illness was infectious; that is
enough for me. I tell you now. Take those men off and at once. That is an
order."
"Nol"
Dave's voice was curtly emphatic. "Your men suffered from protein
starvation; they became anemic with a disease as old as Earthly immigration
Chlorosis. You picked those men from some planet, brought them back here to
save yourself the cost of a regular crew. I will inform the Immigration
officers of this and they will remove and treat your men."
Nordheimer's
brows met in a satanic V. His thin, irritable face reddened ominously.
"You infer my doctor was wrong."
"Your
doctor," Dave answered, turning to Dr. Mortimer J. Mortimer, "is an
incompetent moron."
"You can't say that about me."
Mortimer started forward.
"Shut
upl" Nordheimer growled. "He's probably right." He looked up at
Dave, slowly, without moving his eyes from those of the doctor, reached out for
a platinum-trimmed glass. A clawlike hand brought the glass to his mouth, he
sipped slowly, hypnotic eyes looking steadily into Dr. Munroe's. "Do you
refuse to take those men off this ship?" The glass was held close to his
mouth.
"I
do," Dave said steadily. "Exotic Disease Control is run for the
public; not for the whims of privileged groups."
'The
public." Nordheimer snorted. "Who cares about them anyway—"
"The Public Health
Service," Dave retorted angrily.
Nordheimer
set the glass down, pulled a wallet from his pocket, extracted a thick sheaf of
hundred stellar notes. "Take this and buy yourself a present. I'll—"
Dave
started towards the door. "I will release you at once, Immigration will
expect you in thirty minutes."
"Come
back here." Nordheimer whirled to Mortimer. "Summon the
captain."
"What's the matter,
Father; found something you can't buy?"
They
turned at the throaty voice. Janith Nordheimer was standing in an open panel.
Dave recognized her from the numerous picture magazines. She stepped out,
walking the length of the compartment with a lazy, free stride. Viewing her
this way, Dave could appreciate the groomed perfection she represented. She
sauntered to a taboret, touched a pedal on the tesselated deck with the toe of
a diamond-encrusted shoe.
"Hate
that view," she said as multiple panels formed to screen the view of the
Falls. She rested her elbows on the back of a chair, regarded Dave, an insolent
expression in her dark, sophisticated eyes.
"Protecting
the insensate mob, watching the helpless public; you must have studied the
manual of the Juvenile Planeteers. I understand they do things like good deeds
and such."
Mortimer
snickered, clapping his hands together happily. "Mun-roe," he
giggled. "Munroe the Noble."
The
captain of the yacht came in at that moment. "You sent for me, sir?"
"Yeah."
Nordheimer jerked his head at Dave. "This bacteria engineer orders me, me
to take my ship over to Immigration and have them put those patients in bed and
I would have to pay for that, besides having all of the hoi polloi on Earth
knowing where I'd been."
"Yes,
sir," the captain said deferentially. "You will remember, sir, I
advised you that landing at Exotic Disease Control, unless we had some really
infectious disease, was dangerous—"
"Who
cares about it being dangerous," Nordheimer sneered. "Toss this germ
mechanic—"
"Germ
mechanic." Dr. Mortimer discharged a bellow of laughter. "That's a
good one, yes sir, that's really a good one, germ mechanic. I'll have to
remember that one—"
"Shut
up when I'm talking," Nordheimer rumbled. He turned back to the captain.
"Toss him off the ship, and I don't bother whether he has armor or
not—"
"We're
too close to Earth for that now, sir," the captain interposed cautiously.
"All he has to do is to raise his hand, speak into his wrist communicator
and we'd be blasted by the Guard before we could raise the Chancellor's
Office."
Janith Nordheimer chuckled.
"But he would be blasted, too."
"That's
right," the captain admitted, "but he is at Exotic Disease Control.
The doctors of the Public Health Service ordered here are conditioned to expect
death. It is part of their duty. I'm sure the doctor would rather die by a
neutron blast than by a disease he is sure to get from some derelict from the
outer nuclei."
The
Nordheimers looked at him with new-formed respect in their widened eyes.
"We'll go to Immigration," Nordheimer said hastily. He whirled on
Dave. "Understand one thing, you mention one word of this conversation
officially and I'll have your job."
"Why,
Mr. Nordheimer," Dave hoped his expression showed astonished wonder,
"I didn't know you needed employment."
The
last thing he heard as he started down the corridor to the lock was Janith's
taunting laugh and her sneering admonition he had better be very, very careful
from now on.
He told the doctors and the chief about the
scene. "The Old Boy is a power," Dr. Nissen pointed out in a worried
voice. "He has lots of rocks in the sky, he can control Planetary Congress
and they dictate to the Chancellor."
"But
they are all afraid of the public." He shrugged his broad shoulders.
"Well, there's nothing to do about it now. Let's go on to Blackbern's
patients." He stopped, placed a hand on Nissen's shoulder. "Of the
two personalities, I admire Blackbern's stupid ruthlessness much more than the
calculating cruelty of the Teutonic-minded Nordheimer."
Dave was in the A & R checking welds in
his armor when Operations summoned him on the phone. "Get on the closed
channel, the Director of the Inner Port wishes to speak to you privately."
Dave
made the contact in his office. "This is Munroe, Exotic Disease Control.
Duty Officer requested I contact you on the closed channel."
"Can your side be seen
or heard in?" the director asked cautiously.
Dave
read off his settings. The director seemed satisfied, for he said at once,
"Nordheimer is mad at you. He put pressure on the Chancellor, the cabinet
met in secret session and is drafting a bill to limit the power of the Public
Health Service. Nordheimer said he'd just be satisfied if they get rid of you.
What happened?"
"I
made him wait while I took care of some sick patients from a freighter."
"He's spreading some nasty tales about
you. Something about accepting a bribe and insulting his daughter and calling
his medical officer an incompetent fool—"
Dave
laughed. "The last part is true. However, when I went aboard I was wearing
an open wrist phone, everything that was said is a matter of record. I sent it
to the Earth Office with my own comments."
"If they can't get you
legally, he'll do it some other way."
"I've
been expecting something," Dave admitted. "But all they can do is
kill me."
"Don't be so
resigned," the director snapped.
Three
days later as the setting Earth was casting long shadows across the crater
floor his dread was crystallized into reality.
He
was standing by the ramp talking with the senior medical officer of an
exploring battleship which had just slid out of the velvety sky to unload a pet
for bacterial evaluation.
He
laughed as the brontosaurus-like creature in its glassite cage was wheeled down
the freight ramp. A thought flashed through his mind, amusing in its
perversity. Nordheimer should have such an animal for his doctor.
The
gong of the phone in his helmet was startlingly explosive. "Duty Officer
on Operations Channel." He muttered a hasty excuse to the doctor, walked
over to the portable screen, plugged his phone jack.
"Duty
Officer speaking. The Marston, a freighter, lost for over two years, has been
found out near Pluto. The ship is owned by Astrosphere, one of the Nordheimer
companies. Nordheimer requests a complete inner examination of the ship.
"The Public Health Service said an
emphatic no. They could see no reason for risking valuable personnel. The
company officials went to the Secretary of Spatial Commerce, stated the Marston
had been sent on a voyage of commercial exploration and it was essential that
not only the log be secured but the condition of the cargo be determined and
the salvage possibilities of the ship. You'd have to go deep inside and make a
determine. This order is for the public."
Dave flicked off the phone
with a wry grin. So this is how Brother
Nordheimer
acts when he's crossed. He realized with cold objectivity this action on
Nordheimer's part was essential if he wished to continue in economic power.
Nordheimer
could not attack him with his secret police; their altercation had been made
public now and the mass of the people would rebel against such a militant
action. He was doing it cleverly, by seeing that he went into a ship with a
high death potential.
He
checked his armor minutely. Ran in new air lines, lights, communication
circuits, even replaced the bearings on the blowers. He remembered Blackbern's
crack about broken welds; never left his armor alone. He charged his own
physiology with every known immune vaccine, serum and bacterin. He spent his
free time studying Pyter's Index of Extraterrestrial Diseases.
When
Operations called, announcing the tugs would cradle the freighter within an
hour, he felt himself as ready for battle against the Unknown as he would ever
be.
Dave
armored himself, summoned the various crews who would help him make primary
entrance, walked blithely out to the landing cradle.
He
was not surprised to see the two armored figures of Dr. Mortimer J. Mortimer
and Janith Nordheimer watching him, taunting smiles on their derisive faces. It
intrigued him that they would leave off blank helmets to be certain he would
see and recognize them; know to the fullness the bitterness of certain defeat
at their hands. He would have felt let down if they had not been there.
He
hid his galling frustration behind a mask of insouciant laughter. "Hail,
Nordheimer. I who am about to die and stuff salute you." There was mockery
in his derisive salute.
"I'll
pull you from this detail if you'll agree to be conditioned to work for
father." Janith directed her voice on a light beam so it could not be
heard by her companion.
"Thanks
for the offer," Dave said quietly. "But you see I'm a
physician."
People from lunar stations were assembling
about the cradle in a vast semicircle; gathering with the morbid fascination
only impending catastrophe or violent death can induce. Dave looked at them in
their varied armor, could not help but laugh at the neuroses which motivated
such behavior.
He turned on the open communication circuit
so all could hear him. "Now hear this." He raised his voice,
realizing as he shouted that he was betraying tension; instantly channeled his
mind into precise, frigid patterns. "Now hear this," he ordered quietly,
as if directing one of his crews. "No one is to cross the limiting lights
set by the tower. This order is for your protection." He looked at Janith
and Mortimer. "This order is for you, too. Get back at once."
He
walked to the landing cradle as tugs appeared overhead holding the Marston in
the grip of unyielding tractors. In the bluish Earth-set the vast, insensate
freighter was ominously menacing. Dave looked up at its corroded, curving sides
and could not help but shudder at the thought of the grisly things he would find
in its black interior.
The
steri-crew was wheeling up vortex guns, tractor banks, flame generators, acid
lines and the tools necessary to make entrance to a derelict. Dave was aware a
hush had settled over the crowd. The thin, distant murmur of noise from a
thousand communicators had become a portentous silence now.
They
were waiting with avid interest for that breathless moment when he opened the
locks and entered the ship. They could hardly wait to hear what he would say
about his findings. He knew some of them were growling impatiently at his
cautious preparations, grumbling at his exterior inspection.
The
chief rolled up the portable bacterial wagon. Dave stood still as the medical
kit's tractors and repellers were balanced, brought to focus on his back. He
took a few steps to test its drag. "Lighten it by fifty kilos," he
directed. "I might have to climb and, chief, set the automatic neutral so
I can step around and back without unfo-cusing. I don't want to chase the thing
over the lunarscape to find a test tube."
He
walked slowly up the ramp, moved along the blackened, rusted keel. In some
distant past the ship had rested on a planet's earthy surface; frozen earth
cracked off at his touch.
Instantly he melted the dirt with a hand
torch. A crumb of dust, loaded with an unknown virus, could settle in a joint
of his metal shoes, infect the station. He took tweezers, teased off a few
clumps, put them in solution, centrifuged, read the organic indicator on the
bacterioscope, sighed with relief. The stuff was sterile. The actinic power of
solar radiation had killed any organisms clinging to the ship. He took a larger
sample for the geologists, turned to the landing room.
He
took hold of the recessed handle, turned and pulled. The door was frozen
closed. "Set up a vortex, center it on the door, pull the door and as the
air explodes out turn to full temp."
He
stepped back, turned on his suit to full reflection so as to avoid external
heating. The crew aimed their whirling flames at the door, tractors penciled at
the handle, the door tore open with a grinding vibration, felt even through his
cushioned shoes. Air expanded out, was caught in the whirling vortex, heated
instantly to its ultimate limit.
Dave
stood on the deck of the entrance lock. He flashed his light on the rusting
bulkheads, on winches oxidized by time, on armor, long since obsolete. He
looked at the ship's design on the wall, studied the passages, corridors,
location of offices and holds. He went back out, picked up a power cable,
plugged it into the ship's emergency line. The ammeter showed a tremendous
drain, but no lights flashed in the compartment, nor did his own circuits break
with overload.
He
pushed the handle of the winch to see if he had power there, but the handle
crumbled to flaky dust in his grip. He took a scalpel from his mobile kit,
scraped at the door and the metal cracked and peeled with brittle weakness.
"The interior metal is about as strong as tin foil." He made the
announcement surprised at his own calmness. "Call for the consulting
metallurgists."
He
found the automatic log, the device which recorded all the captain's orders,
messages and directives to his crew, unfastened it from its niche, dropped it
in a sterilizing bath, handed it out to Thurman. "I noticed their last
entry was they were leaving the Cepheus nucleus. That's a hard white area, so
we can expect a most virulent type of organism. Flame before opening."
"Are you really going
inship?" Thurman asked anxiously.
"I must, it is orders."
He pushed on the door leading inship and the
panel crashed inwards. The metal had the tensile strength of decayed wood.
Curiosity
had not erased his natural fear or conquered his vague apprehension.
As
he walked gingerly up the long corridor he had the spine-tingling sensation
that someone was watching him and that at any moment one of the panels would
slide back and someone would step out and ask what he was doing in their ship.
"I feel crazy,"
he said aloud.
"You all right, sir?" It was
Thurman's voice, it sounded faint, alarmingly faint.
He shivered with expectation as he rounded
the corridor and started up the ramp towards the fifth deck. He felt the tug of
the kit behind him suddenly slacken and he whirled abruptly to see his mobile
unit careening madly back down the ramp. It hit the bulkhead, crashed through
its friable metal, vanished into the cave it created.
At
the same instant he was aware that his light was growing steadily dimmer and
the air in his suit was stifling. He looked at the instruments on his left
wrist. He could feel the pulsating throb of laboring motors in his shoes. They
were pulling current, acting as though they were being shorted out.
That
was what had happened to his kit. The tubes had blown from an unexpected surge.
Every instinct told him he should go back and tell the Director General of the
Public Health Service to shove his activity into deepest space and keep it
there. The discipline that came from years of training was greater than
instinctual protective mental mechanisms.
He
stopped in the center of the corridor to adjust his air machine. He turned off
his laboring motors and set the emergency bellows in his suit's flanks. As long
as he walked they would circulate air, but he couldn't stand still.
Then his lights went out.
He stopped, petrified with
fearful, startled surprise. He started gropingly to retrace his steps, trying
to remember each turn he had made when he became conscious that the bulkheads,
the overhead, even the deck were emitting a faint golden glow and as his eyes
became dark-adapted he discovered that he could see perfectly well. He forced
himself to continue up the ramp and through the corridors. He came to it!
The
panel he dreaded, hoped to reach. The entrance to the crew's quarters.
He pushed through the
friable panel. Stopped! Abruptly!
Sweat
oozed from his brow, dripped down his back. Sweat formed on the palms of his
hands, made them damp in their sheathed gloves. Nausea gripped him. The crew,
all of them, were here!
They
weren't the macabre, decayed sight he had expected to find, actually hoped to
find. They laid in their plastic bunks and their unclothed bodies were
semitransparent and they glowed with a lambent flickering radiance. Their
features were vaguely discernible. He experienced the eerie sensation they were
turning their heads, observing his every action.
He
forced himself to the side of the bunk. Pushed out his sheathed hand, touched
one of the things. Instantly he felt a shock. A shock as though an intense
surge of pure energy had leaped through his entire organism and stultified his
brain. It was painful in its intensity, exquisitely pleasant in its cortical
suggestion.
But
the touch itself had done something of unutterable wonder to the body.
The
light playing through the human remains flickered violently, vibrated with
intense nervous energy as though his touch had disturbed a primal balance.
Then, the body vanished in a flash of coruscating fire and a tiny ball of
flame, almost microscopic in size, burned on the plastic bed frame.
He
touched another body, watched it coalesce into condensed living energy, felt
the same orgiastic sensation ripple through his brain. He started to laugh, was
aware that he was laughing, looked at his hand, giggling at the flame which
leaped from the metal sheathing his fingers.
"The ultimate bacterial form; the pure
electric protein. I've found it," he shouted. "Bacteria of pure
energy." He jumped up and down, clapping his hands in joyous abandon at
the concept of his thought, distantly aware of his euphoric insanity. He knew,
too, that what he had found was a long-anticipated discovery.
It
was a mathematical certainty it would be found. The medical physicists had expected
to find such a life form as soon as they realized the verity of atomic energy.
A life principle that by-passed the usual organic methods of existence, took
their energy, without clumsy digestion, absorption, detoxification and
evacuation, directly from the primal source. It was the ultimate of bacterial
evolution.
He knew in the deep wells of his mind that
his actions now were a result of short circuits in the thalamic synapses, that
the pyramidal cells of his cortex were being subjected to an intense radiation.
Just as it had drained the current from his motors, shorted out the intricate
hookups in his medical kit, it was even now destroying the delicate fabric of
his mind.
The
living neutrons of coalescing flame whirling in semiorganic patterns were
absorbing the energy pouring into the ship. They were multiplying in number,
growing in strength. They would ooze forth through the metal their activity had
decayed, fall on the landing platform and there, subjected to the intense
solar radiation, they would utterly destroy his station and all that it meant.
Through
the cloying mist forming through his mind the basic pattern of normal conduct
was still able to assert itself. He remembered the publicl
Dave
stared down incredulously at the lambent flame eroding the fresh metal of his
armored hands. He experienced a rising fury that a sentient bacterium should so
fog his mind. Thalamic rage, instinctive rather than intuitive, surged through
him.
He pulled the steri-gun from its sheath,
pointed its needle muzzle at the deck, squeezed the grip. Livid flame struck
the deck, splashed about his feet, tore through the friable metal, volatilized
girders weakened by disease, tore through the next deck, fountained on the one
beneath that, bumed out through the ship to volcano on the metal landing
platform, in a burst of energy that lit up the lunarscape.
He
looked down through the gaping hole, turned his tortured vision to the flaming
erosion of his hand. Slowly, deliberately, as though he were drunk and had to
carefully reason out each motion, he transferred the gun, pointed it at the
infected arm and convulsively fisted the hilt.
There
was a long, long moment of unbearable pain, of agony so great it taxed his wavering
sanity to experience the tremendous burst of impulses bombarding his mind. The
dark curtain of shock was shrouding his brain as he leaped into the hole he had
blasted.
He
opened his eyes into instant, alert consciousness. He turned his head, integrating
himself with his surroundings. Dr. Nissen with a corps of nurses were watching
him with that professional detachment which comes from years of practice.
Nissen slowly came over to his bed, withdrew an infusion needle from his leg.
Then
he experienced the impact of memory. He raised his arms, looked down at the
right hand. He had not expected it to be there, was actually surprised to see
it. He flexed the fingers, rubbed their tips across the coverings of the bed.
He
knew then it was a cleverly grafted prosthesis, as good, well almost as good,
as his own arm and hand had been.
"How long?" He was surprised at the
timbre of his voice.
"Three
weeks," Nissen replied. "We did the surgery at once; kept you out
until we were sure the grafts took."
"Grafts?"
"You burned your feet off with your
steri-pistol." "Oh-"
Nissen
sat on the edge of the bed. "We got a classification on the stuff. It's an
organism, lives by synergism, derives energy of existence direct from photonic
energy. It'll live and multiply on anything with a metallic or electrical
structure."
"What did you do with the ship?"
"We sent it into the sun. You made quite
a name for yourself. Hero, you know, trying to destroy yourself for humanity.
Nord
heimer even sent you flowers. Blackbern sent
you a skin. Sorry about your feet, but you know. It's for the public."
"Yes,"
Dave said slowly, feeling the awkward heaviness of his prosthetic extremities.
"I know. It's for the public."
galactic scientific explorer:
Robert Edwards
Unfortunately there can be something
new under the sun—when that sun is not Sol.
As Dr. Robert Edwards was forced to admit
when Expedition If
sat down on the planet Minotaur.
To solve the problem of the man who turned blue
became very important indeed.
Expedition
Polychrome
BY J. A. WINTER, M.D.
"No, Tom, you're making the mistake so
many others do." Dr. Edwards smiled; he was very happy to have the chance
to launch a discourse on his favorite theme. "There can't be any new
diseases. You see, the human organism is capable of acting in only certain
ways. For example, the blood pressure can go up, it can come down or it can
remain the same. The temperature can be elevated, it can be subnormal or it can
be normal. And so it goes for every function of the body—it can change only
within the limits of its own capacity to function."
No
doubt about it—Edwards was feeling quite pleased with himself. And it was well
deserved. The medical expedition under his direction to the planet Minotaur had
just solved a most unusual problem involving the death of all members of
Expedition I.
He
tilted back in his chair in the control room and continued. "When we study
exotic diseases the difficulty, therefore, is to find the causative agent. The
disease itself is probably greatly similar to one with which we have been familiar
on Earth for hundreds of years."
"Oh, I see," said Tom. "The
roads it may travel on might be new, but it's still the same old model that's
doing the traveling." "Exactly," replied Bob. "To give you
another example: the body
208
• SPACE SERVICE
is capable of only certain color changes. The
skin might turn brown, due to the presence of melanin, one of the normally
found pigments. Or it might turn any one of the colors seen in the degradation
of hemoglobin. You know, those fascinating hues which change from dark blue to
green to yellow, which we all saw adorning your left eye last year.
"No,"
he continued, without giving Tom a chance to explain how he got that shiner,
"we could never expect to see a man turn, say, an aquamarine blue. There
just isn't a precursor for that color in the body. So we'll never see an exotic
disease where the skin is aquamarine or we'll never see a disease where a man
reacts outside of the normal limitations of response."
"So
that's it," mused Tom. "Yes, what is it?" He turned around as a
knock came at the door.
It was one of the crew members. "Sorry
to interrupt, sir, but I'd like to have Dr. Edwards take a look at me. My skin
is kind of a funny color."
Edwards turned around. Like the Bay of Naples
on a sunny day, or Lake Superior in July, the man's skin was a beautiful vivid
aquamarine blue.
Bob's jaw dropped. He had just said that such
a color couldn't possibly occur, yet here it was! Tom couldn't help smiling at
Bob's obvious discomfiture. "Dr. Edwards," he asked archly,
"wouldn't you say that Slawson's skin is aquamarine blue?"
"Yes,"
answered Bob—and you could see he hated to admit it— "I guess you could
call it that."
"My,
my," said Tom, "I didn't realize that 'never' was such a short
time!"
Bob wasn't annoyed by Tom's sly digs—he
deserved them; but he was immediately preoccupied with the medical problem
which had just slapped him in his distinguished face. He pondered for a few
minutes, meanwhile making little smacking sounds with his lips. Finally he
reached over and flipped on the switch of the intraship communication system.
"Schultz—come up to
the radio room as fast as you can get here."
"Yes, sire," replied Schultz, with
his usual exaggerated pseudo-deference.
While waiting for Schultz, Bob turned to the
crewman, standing there patiently. "How do you feel, Slawson?"
"Not
too bad, sir," he replied; you could see that he wasn't going to dramatize
his illness. "I noticed that I was a little short of breath when I walked
up, but outside of that I'm O.K."
Dr. Wilhelm Schultz then dashed in. He
checked any questions he might have had at a signal from Edwards, who continued
his questioning.
"When did you first
notice that your skin was this color?"
"Just a few minutes
ago. Just after I got back in the ship."
Three
pairs of eyebrows were immediately elevated; could Minotaur be dangerous, in
spite of the negative laboratory tests?
"Oh,
you were outside?" asked Bob, mildly. He wasn't going to let his anxiety
to get the facts influence the judicious manner of getting a history.
"Yes,
sir," answered Slawson. "When we got the word that we could go
outside, that it was all clear, I just went out and walked around the ship. I... I hope that was all right, sir,"
he added apologetically.
"That
was all right, Slawson," Bob replied. "But it looks as if we doctors
were all wrong. What do you think about this, Schultzie?"
"It
looks pretty obvious that he got his bee-ootiful pigmentation from outside, all
right. Going to take precautions?"
"You're
right, Dutchman. Kelly, please order that the ship be sealed,
immediately." Bob waited a moment until Tom had finished snapping his
brisk, crisp orders into the intercom mike. "Then you'd better have all
the circulating air in the ship triple-filtered; use the emergency bank of
precipitrons, too."
"All
right, Bob," assented Tom, as he stood up. "But what was that you
were saying about it being impossible for a man to turn blue? Boy, are you
going to have some explaining to do!"
"Get out of
here," grinned Bob. "Go take care of your tin can."
When Tom left, Bob, immediately got back to
business. "Sit down, Slawson, and let's go into this a little further. What
did you do when you left the ship? Try to remember everything—no matter how
trivial."
Slawson sat down; he leaned forward, with his
elbows on his knees, knitting his brows in concentration. "Let's see, now.
I was all by myself—I was the only one off duty at the time. I went out through
the air lock, closing the inner door after me and leaving the outer door open.
I took a few steps so I was out of the shadow of the ship and just looked
around. I remember thinking how good it was to see the sun . . . the suns, I
mean . . . after that storm we had." He broke off his narrative
momentarily, to ask, "Is that the sort of stuff you want to hear,
sir?"
"Go ahead, boy; you're
doing fine," Bob assured him.
"Then
I just sort of wandered around the ship, looking at the plants and stuff. My
hobby is botany, sir," he added, shyly. "I squatted down on the
ground to see if there were any insects like ants or earthworms. But a worm
isn't an insect, is it?" he asked confusedly.
"The
earthworm, Lumbricus tenestiis,
is a member of the phylum
Annelida. Get on with your story," snapped Schultz.
"Yes,
sir," answered Slawson meekly; he was, strangely, apparently consoled by
this fact of taxonomy. "Well, I didn't see anything on the ground, so I
walked around a little more. I wasn't more than twenty or twenty-five meters
from the ship at any time. Then I saw some flowers that were just budding out
and went over to look at them. They weren't as pretty as our own flowers... no odor, either—"
This
remark was immediately seized upon by Edwards. "No odor, eh? So you
smelled them? What did these flowers look like?"
"Yes, sir—I just took a little bitty
sniff. And I didn't look at them very closely, so I can't tell you much about
them. There were seven petals with dentate edges, of a sort of chartreuse
color. There were seven stamens with large lobulated anthers. The leaves were
lanceolate, with stipules."
Schultz
looked at Edwards. "So he didn't look at them closely, says he. What kind
of a botanical lecture would he have given us if he had looked at them?"
"Let
him alone, Schultz," said Bob. "He's interested, so he can't help
being observant. What else did you do, Slawson?"
"That's all, sir. I
was sort of cold, so I thought I'd come back to the ship and get a jacket and
see if one of the boys wanted to go out for a walk. When I opened my locker I
noticed the color of my skin, so I reported to you immediately."
Bob
looked at Schultz, inquiringly. "Looks like we have our clue, doesn't it?
Let's go down to the lab and go to work. Come on, Slawson."
The
three men made their way to the laboratory, where they found Thomas, the
pathologist. This was to be expected—he was never far or long away from his
beloved, immaculate laboratory. As the three entered he was looking through a
microscope.
"Gentlemen,"
he greeted them in his precise way. "When I heard the order to seal ship I
thought you might be suspicious of the air, so I began to do another check.
What do you suspect?"
Instead
of answering, Bob merely stepped from in front of Slawson, made that casual
gesture which means, "Look what we have herel"
Thomas'
face was a study in pleasure—the pleasure of being presented with a new,
interesting problem. "Well!" he said. "Most unusual. And you
think that this coloration comes from the air?"
Bob
shrugged. "All we know is that he apparently got it outside. It might be
from a flower—but we can't afford to take any chances." He smiled wryly.
"Seems as how Minotaur is not the safe, peaceful planet we thought."
"What
did you find in the air, Dave?" Schultz asked the pathologist.
"I
found a few granules of what might be pollen, but very few, not over three per
cubic meter. It seems rather doubtful that we could get a reaction like this
from airborne pollen," he answered. "But let's see what we can find
out about Slawson. Any particular tests that you have in mind?"
Bob
pursed his lips thoughtfully. "We'd better have the usual blood count, and
urinalysis. And ... let's see ... you have a spectroscope, as I recall—we'd
better see what that shows. And I'd better get Livingston here to do a skin
biopsy so we can tell where the color is." He stepped to the intercom and
called the surgeon.
By the time Livingston arrived Thomas and his
efficient assistants had the specimens and were beginning the analysis.
Slawson meekly obeyed the order to get undressed and lay down on the operating
table, prepared to submit himself to the tender mercies of the surgeon.
"Do
you want this skin specimen rrom any particular site?" Jack asked.
Bob looked at the recumbent Slawson again.
"Roll over, please," he asked. From scalp to toes, front and back the
crewman was blue, definitely and unequivocally blue. His hair and nails weren't
colored; his pupils looked black, but all the rest was blue, blue, blue.
"Guess
it doesn't make any difference, Jack. Snatch a piece of hide from wherever your
little fiendish heart desires."
"O.K.—we'll
take it off the abdomen, then." Moving with the rapid dexterity which
comes from long practice, Livingston soon had an area of the skin
anaesthetized, a section of the skin snipped out, the wound closed and the
specimen handed to a technician. He turned from the table and bumped into
Mandel, who had quietly wandered in to see what was going on.
"What have we
here?" he asked.
"You
figure it out, chum," the surgeon replied. "Let's see what a hot-shot
diagnostician you can be."
"Hm-m-m,
the differential diagnosis of a blue skin. Let me think." As he looked at
Slawson, who was enjoying all this attention, he whistled softly between his
teeth.
Bob pricked up his ears at the tune.
"What's that you're whistling, Irv?"
The psychiatrist smiled. "That's an old,
old song—one popular in the twentieth century. It was called 'Am I Blue.'
" He looked at Slawson again and said, "Well, there are several
things we'd have to consider here. There's the possibility of methemoglobinemia
or sulfhemoglobinemia. It might be just a cyanosis, but he wouldn't be as
comfortable as he is, if that were the case. And outside of that, the pixies
might have given him some Trypan blue intravenously."
By this time Kelly had completed his duties
with the ship and was lounging in the doorway of the lab. He shook his head.
"That jargon you grave-robbers talk beats me. And what, if my ignorance
isn't hanging out, could Trypan blue be?"
"Trypan
blue? That's one of the so-called vital dyes which used to be used in research.
You could inject it intravenously or intra-peritoneally into a rat and he'd
turn a beautiful blue. It's not effective by mouth, though, so Slawson
couldn't have drunk it. You're sure, Slawson, that you didn't turn blue just to
annoy us doctors?"
Slawson grinned back at the little
psychiatrist. "No, sir!"
Thomas
had been listening to this little by-play. "We don't have any Trypan blue
aboard, anyway. The closest thing we have to it is methylene blue—and that
stains only one of the fluids."
Schultz
sighed. "How well I know that. I took some once in my first year in
medical school."
His
comment was interrupted by a thump and crash. They turned around to see Slawson
lying on the floor. He had apparently tried to sit up on the edge of the table
and had fallen over in a dead faint.
Bob
reached him first. His practiced fingers found the radial pulse. "Wow! His
heart is going better than one forty! We'd better get some oxygen into him
immediately."
In
less time than it takes to tell it, Slawson was in bed in the sick bay, being
given oxygen through a mask.
Bob checked the patient's pulse again.
"It's coming down a little now. He must have had a terrific anoxemia; we
couldn't see it because of h^s color. I wish that he had complained a little
more— but all he said was that he was a little short of breath." He turned
from the bed to speak to the man on duty. "Keep a close eye on him and if
there's any change, call me immediately. If you can't reach me, call Dr.
Schultz."
Bob made his way back to the laboratory,
deeply immersed in his thoughts. What to do about Slawson? Was it necessary to
return to all the precautions taken when they first landed? Was he going to get
the same disease? Why hadn't the others turned blue? And what would the outcome
be? His disciplined mind abruptly cut off these unproductive thoughts. He had a
job to do; he didn't know what his results would be, but he could at least do
something.
He
entered the lab; Thomas and his assistants were still busy with the various
specimens.
"Has he been
cross-matched for transfusion?" Bob asked.
The
pathologist pointed to a 500 cc.
flask of blood standing in a pan of warm water. "That's compatible, if you
want to use it," he answered.
"Guess we'd better," Edwards mused.
"His blood certainly isn't carrying enough oxygen; maybe this will help.
Give it to him as soon as you can, will you? Mr. Kelly," he »aid—the navy
man entered silently, carrying a sheet of paper—"what's this?"
"We got our answer
from Earth. You'll love it."
Tom took the message.
BUIPSH. 0820451735. MERCY MINOTAUR CONGRATS SOLVING PROBLEM
EXPONE. FRING EXPTHREE BLASTF 08204517OO DUE
MINOTAUR 1IXX45XXXX WELDONE STARK COMBUTPSH
Edwards gave an exaggerated shudder and
handed the message back to Kelly. "The way you navy boys can louse up the
language. Translate it, please—I'm afraid I understand what it means."
"O.K.
stupe. 'Bureau of Interplanetary Ships; August 20, 2245; message
sent at 1735
to Ship Mercy on Planet
Minotaur. Congratulations on solving the problem of Expedition I. For your
information and guidance Expedition III blasted off today at 1700 and is due on Minotaur the latter part of November—no specified time.
Well done, our good and faithful servants.' Signed by Bottle Beak Stark,
Commander of the Bureau of Interplanetary Ships."
"That
dumb jerk!" said Schultz. "Does he think that this planet is safe
just because we've solved one problem? Can't he realize what an unnecessary
risk those guys are taking?" He ignored the fact that he was in much
greater danger than those he was worrying about; after all, exposure to exotic
disease was in line of duty for him. "Bob, shouldn't we radio Stark to
call them back?"
Bob turned to Kelly.
"We can't do that, can we?"
"You're
right," he answered. "They'd be way outside the Heavi-side layer by
now and they couldn't either receive or transmit unless the rockets were shut
off. Too much ionization from the blast. We'll just have to wait until they hit
atmosphere here and warn them off."
"No, by God," said Bob grimly,
"we'll just have to get this mess cleaned up before they get here—and hope
that we don't run into any more in the meantime. How're we doing, Davey? Have
you found out what causes blue boys?"
"1 think we're on the track," replied
Thomas. "The oxygen-combining power is way down, though not totally
absent. There are definite changes in the absorption spectrum of the
hemoglobin. There is the typical pattern of methemoglobin plus a band near line
F. I'd say . .. now, mind you, this
is only a guess ... that Slawson had
absorbed a blue chromogen with an unstable radical which splits off to cause
methemoglobinemia."
"Wow," said Tom. "And you docs
were giving the navy hell for talking technicalese. How about you translating
now?"
"Dr.
Schultz—will you teach the kindergarten while I look through the
spectroscope?" requested Bob, in his most formal manner.
"Gladly, my dear Dr. Edwards,"
replied Schultz, equally formally. "Now pay attention, you nauseating lump
of ignorance. Hemoglobin is a complex combination of iron and protein which
acts as the oxygen carrier of the blood. In the presence of oxygen it absorbs
it to form oxyhemoglobin; in the absence of oxygen it gives up the oxygen to
form reduced hemoglobin. The oxygen attaches or detaches itself easily. Is
that clear so far?"
Kelly
inclined his head, reverently. "Your words of wisdom are a blessing to my
ears."
"I'm
glad you appreciate me. To continue: certain chemicals, including the nitrites,
acetanilid and nitrobenzene, cause the formation of a stable hemoglobin
compound called methemoglobin. When this happens, the blood no longer can carry
oxygen."
"So
that's it," said Tom. "In other words, the guy is actually
smothering, even though he can still breathe."
"A most astute observation, my dear
Kelly," said Schultz, condescendingly. "To continue; methemoglobin
makes the blood turn a brownish-red. The patient himself gets a dusky blue
look, due to the lack of oxygen. And then when you get the further addition of
another color, which Death-House Davey has not yet identified, then you get a
lovely color like Slawson did."
Tom
shook his head. "Thank you, no. I'll stick to the same old flesh color—it
sort of runs in the Kelly family. Seriously, Schultzie, what about Slawson's
chances? Is this going to be—serious?" You could see that Kelly meant, but
didn't have the nerve to say, "fatal."
Schultz
shrugged. "No one can say, Tommy. We're going to do our best to see that
it isn't, of course. But we'll just have to wait and see."
Edwards
interrupted. "Tom, would you send one of the crewmen out to get some of
those flowers that Slawson was sniffing on?"
"O.K., Bob. Should he
wear a spacesuit or can he go out raw?"
"I
imagine if he just wore a respirator and put the flowers in a tightly closed
container he'd be all right. Isn't that what you'd say, Thomas?" he
appealed to the pathologist, who nodded his assent.
While Kelly left on this errand, Tom turned
again to Livingston. "Jack, would you see that he gets that blood? And
observe him closely to see how he responds. Better get another blood specimen
before you pull the needle out. And now, Davey, let's see what we can do to
identify this color."
Schultz
and Mandel struck up one of those desultory medical conversations—a mixture of
anecdotes about interesting cases, statements of opinion and defense of those
opinions. Thomas and Edwards worked diligently, goldberging a filtration
apparatus for separation of the color from the blood. They were interrupted,
after a while, by the return of the crew member who had been sent out for the
flowers.
"Well, did you get
them?" asked Bob.
"Sir,
I went out, but I didn't think I ought to try to get them just then. I wasn't
sure about those animals."
"Animals!"
The four doctors uttered the words simultaneously. They looked at each other,
momentarily baffled and indecisive about this new and unexpected exigency.
Edwards
made his mind up first. "Davey, hold the fort; we won't be gone long. The
rest of us will go up to the dome and get a look at these beasties."
They
hurriedly made their way to the observation dome at the top of the ship, adding
Kelly to their number as they passed down the corridors. They entered the
observation room, with Tom closing the airtight door carefully. The hull
plates were open, and the sunlight streamed in, warmly. It took but a moment to
raise the air pressure in the room and to inflate the elastic, transparent
bubblelike dome. There were enough observation chairs for all of them, so the
four of them were quickly elevated to the top of the dome. They each had a pair
of binoculars and eagerly scanned the surrounding terrain.
"Do you see
anything?"
"No, that vegetation
is too dense."
And it was dense. When they first landed on
this little plateau, it was quite barren; but now, since the terrific storm of
a few days ago, the vegetation had sprung up unbelievably fast. The ground as
far as they could see was a lush green. The leaves of the various plants danced
adagio in the gentle breeze. It was almost as if they could see them grow, they
seemed so full of fresh, new life. Some of the plants, which had leaves like a
giant dandelion and a shoot like a huge asparagus stalk, were now shoulder
high. It was from a clump of these that the first-seen Minotauran emerged.
"Look!!
Look!! There's one ... no, two ... of them now!" The navy man's keen
eyes had spotted them first. "Holy dying Dinah! Aren't they a couple of
beauties?"
Picture
a four-legged animal with a body the same size as a St. Bernard dog, with
disproportionately short, bowed legs like a dachshund. Give him a hairless,
wrinkled gray-green skin, and a long, graceful neck like a camel, emerging from
powerful shoulders. Put a head with long jaws on that neck; large yellow eyes,
no external ears and a placid expression, for features. And finally, on the anterior
surface of the long neck, imagine a rugose, lobulated mass of flesh reminiscent
of the wattles of a turkey. There you will have, at first glance, the dominant
inhabitant of the planet Minotaur.
"Wow—I wonder if they're as peaceful as
they look. Look at those jaws! Mandel, you're our biologist—d'you think they're
carnivorous?"
"No,
Bob, I wouldn't say so," Irv answered, judiciously. "On Earth most of
the carnivores, with the exception of the dog family, tend to be short jawed.
Your long-jaws, like the horse and cow, are usually vegetarians."
As
if to confirm this observation, one of the Minotaurans sat down on his haunches,
reached up with his forelimbs and began pulling leaves off the plant and
stuffing them in his capacious mouth. He sat there, quietly and
contemplatively, giving himself over to the joys of mastication.
"Look
at the color changes in that gadget on his neck! What do you suppose that's
for?" asked Schultz.
And
the colors were changing; various shades of red were playing over the surface.
A broad, horizontal band of scarlet, followed by a light pink, would travel
down the length of the colored area. This would be replaced by a vermilion,
which would seem to pulsate, gently, alternately deepening and lightening in
shade.
"Hm-m-m,"
said Mandel, slowly. "That's a puzzler. In most animals a colored organ
is usually a sex character. The comb and wattles of the rooster, and the crest
of those Venusian marsupials are examples. But those are pretty static—they
change with the season, and don't flicker like a sign-painter's nightmare. Look
. . . look there!"
The
seated animal had turned to face the other one, who had come up on it from
behind. And now the colors did start to appear. Bands of purple, splotches of
green, tremulous irregular areas of yellow, tumbled across and up and down the
necks of those weird beasts for several seconds. Then, with one accord, the two
animals faced the ship and began walking slowly toward it.
"It looks like they've just realized
there's something strange here and are coming over to investigate us,"
remarked Kelly. "They don't seem to be particularly afraid."
"That's right," retorted Edwards,
"and they don't seem to be awfully curious either. Placid sort of brutes,
aren't they?"
"Do you think we ought
to go out and meet them?" asked Schultz.
"Should we roll out the red plush carpet
and invite them in for tea?"
"That might not be a bad idea,"
answered Bob. "We might at least try to find out if they're intelligent or
not. Just because they look like the zoo doesn't mean that they can't be smart
people. After all, you don't have to be anthropomorphic to be intelligent."
Bob thought for a few seconds. "Schultz,
would you and Mandel be willing to go out and see what you can do to find out
something about them? We can have a couple of the boys with rocket guns all
ready to let them have it, if they make any hostile moves."
The
internist and the psychiatrist looked at each other, as if trying to read the
other's mind. There was no thought of criticizing Edwards for not offering to
go out with them; it was tacitly understood that in most cases, his job as
synthesist involved letting others collect data for him. Bob was always ready
to run any risk necessary in the line of duty. He wasn't shirking in this case;
he was functioning as he should.
Schultz
was the first to speak. "My mother told me never to volunteer for
anything, but the way you put it—might just as well. O.K. with you, Irv?"
The
little psychiatrist shrugged. "Why not? They can't be any worse than navy
officers or surgeons."
Zip—down
went the observation chairs and the men dashed out as soon as pressure could be
equalized and the door opened. Their precipitous dash toward the air lock was
halted by Livingston, whom they met in the corridor.
"Bob,"
he asked, "could you take a look at Slawson? The blood has just about all
run in and he doesn't seem to be getting any results at all. His color hasn't
improved and he's still pretty dyspneic in spite of the oxygen."
Edwards
hesitated. He didn't want to forego the interesting experience of observing
the inhabitants of Minotaur in their first contact with humans. On the other
hand, he'd probably never see a blue man again—and if Slawson didn't soon make
a change for the better, he wouldn't be seeing this blue man for long.
"O.K., Jack, I'll be right with you.
Tom, will you make arrangemerits to have the boys covered? And you'd better
carry a respirator around your neck; I don't think it'll be necessary to wear
it unless you have the irresistible urge to sniff a posy."
"O.K.,
Bobbie," said Schultz. "If we make out all right with these critters,
we'll try to line up a date for you, too. It wouldn't be any worse than some of
those dogs I've seen you out with." And he fled down the corridor before
Bob could think of a retort.
When Edwards entered the sick bay with the
surgeon at his heels, he was greatly perturbed. Livingston had understated the
seriousness of the patient's condition. A glance at the gauge on the oxygen
tank showed that the gas was flowing as fast as possible—as yet Slawson was
breathing in deep, shuddering, laboring gasps. His skin was still blue, of
course—but underlying that color was the dusky bluish-purple that means
insufficient oxygenation of the blood.
Bob
picked up the stethoscope which lay on the nearby table and set the tips in his
ears. He placed the bell on Slawson's chest, glanced down at his watch and
counted for fifteen seconds. "About 140," he
reported. "I can barely count it; heart sounds are rather muffled,
too."
He slipped the stethoscope around to the
bases of the lungs and listened intently for a few seconds. "He's getting
some moist rales in the bases, too. Did you give him any atropine?"
"No,"
answered Jack, "I thought I'd wait until you saw him. Oh my—if only he had
something simple like a rupture of the middle meningeal artery, I'd know what
to do. But this beats me."
"You're
not the only one," retorted Bob, absently. "Well, it looks as if
we'll just have to fall back on the old-fashioned approach. It's funny, but
when we get stuck on a baffler like this, we have to use the methods of five or
six hundred years ago."
Bob
sat down on a bunk and stroked his chin. "Eliminate, sedate and put the
part at rest," he mused. "He doesn't need sedation-he's practically
knocked out now. And how can we put the blood at rest—that's just foolish. And
so, to eliminate—Jack, how did he act when the blood started to run in?"
"It seemed to do him some good for about
the first five minutes.
His respiration slowed down and I thought his
color lightened up a little. But then he went right back to where he is
now."
"Hm-m-m."
A few moments of silence supervened, while Edwards pulled at his lower lip.
"Jack, how does this sound as a working hypothesis? Slawson inhaled
pollen from a flower. The pollen is a complex protein which is partially broken
down in the body. It breaks down into two parts, one of which causes the blue
coloration, the other which causes the methemoglobinemia."
"D'you
think it's a true methemoglobinemia?" interrupted the surgeon.
"It doesn't make too much difference,"
answered Edwards. "We know that there's a stable hemoglobin compound
formed, and the red blood cells aren't carrying oxygen. Soooo—we take out the
blood that isn't working and replace it with some that will. How does that
sound to you?"
Livingston
considered the matter for a few moments. "What can we lose? He can't last
this way much longer. How much blood do you think we ought to give him?"
"Let's
make it five liters, to start with. I'm sure we have that much in the blood
bank. You get set up to cut down on a vein and we'll bleed him while the
transfusion is running in the other arm."
Just
then the intercom in the hallway outside the sick bay piped up.
"Testing—Mandel testing."
Bob
cocked an ear at the sound. "Tom must have turned the intercom on so we
could all hear what the greeting committee has to say. Good idea. Well, I'll go
up and get the blood while you get going on the phlebotomy."
As Bob walked into the lab he found Thomas
and his assistants still working on their analysis of the mysterious blue
blood. It wasn't with undivided attention, however; you could see that all of
them were also extremely interested in the intercom.
"We're approaching the animals,"
said Mandel's voice. "They apparently have no fear of us. They're both sitting
on their haunches looking at us and occasionally at each other. The color
changes in that organ on the neck are phenomenal, and that's just happened
since they caught sight of us. I wonder if that couldn't be.their means of
communication?"
That's a nice conjecture, thought Edwards. We
communicate by vibrations of one frequency and wave-length range—why can't the
Minotaurans communicate on a different band of vibrations? A little inconvenient on a dark night perhaps—but so is talking and
hearing in a boiler factory.
Mandel's
voice broke into his thoughts again. "One of the animals is wearing a sort
of rope sling over his shoulders and has a stone ax or hammer hanging from it.
They're intelligent, I guess, at least to the stage where they have artifacts."
The
voice of the irrepressible Schultz interrupted. "Irv, I feel silly. What
is the proper procedure in greeting these characters?"
Bob
grinned. That clown Schultz—what a man! Well, this wasn't raking care of
Slawson.
"We're
going to try to replace five liters of blood," he told Thomas, as he took
the blood from the refrigerator. "This is all the same batch, isn't
it?"
"That's
right—that'll be compatible," answered the pathologist. "We have
nothing new to report here. It will probably take hours before we can get this
worked out. How is the patient?"
"Not
so good," answered Bob, as he loaded the flasks of blood on a tray.
"I don't even know if this idea will work, but there's nothing else that I
can see to do. Give me a call if you have anything to report."
As
Bob walked back toward the sick bay he heard tne intercom .again. "One of
the animals has just plucked some leaves off a bush and is holding them out to
us. Is that meant to be a gesture of friendship?"
Why
does everything have to happen at once? thought Bob. Here was an experience which could happen to few men, that of meeting and greeting the
strange inhabitants of a new planet—and at the same time to be caught with one of the screwiest medical conditions ever
seen. But the doctor's conditioning asserted itself—the patient always comes
first. So without further thought about what was going on outside the ship he
and Livingston set about their sanguinary tasks of replacing Slawson's useless
blood.
Withdraw
100 cc., replace 100 cc; observe; repeat. Repeat again and again. They worked rapidly; they
didn't attempt to adhere to the usual rate of two or three drops a second. But
it took time. More than an hour had elapsed by the time the flask had been
emptied of good blood and replaced with the bluish liquid that had been in
Slawson's veins.
This
business of transferring blood was not too difficult, of course. The task was
sufficiently mechanical so they could keep one ear open for the reports of the
men outside the ship. They heard Mandel describe the peculiar hands of the
Minotaurans—ten pairs of opposable thumbs on each forelimb. The medial pair
was the largest, the next pair slightly smaller; each succeeding pair of digits
diminished in size, the most lateral being tiny. The animals walked on the
knuckles of the first three or four pairs of digits, the remainder being kept
clear of the ground. They had, as far as could be determined, no sense of
hearing, although it was possible that they might be conscious of vibrations
in objects which they touched.
They
seemed peculiarly unpugnacious. They were not fearful, either; they seemed
curious about the humans, but in a rather placid sort of way. Mandel inferred
that these animals—or were they people?—had no natural enemies and hence had
little use for the emotion of fear.
The two doctors who were caring for Slawson
knew fear; they were very much afraid that one of the members was going to meet
Death on Minotaur. It wouldn't be the same sort of death that the members of
Expedition I had met. It was going to be quicker, more merciful —but just as
inevitable unless something could be done.
Edwards,
who had been listening to the stricken man's heart action, stood up with a
sigh. "It's just no go. I thought for a while that those transfusions
would do the trick, but he's just as bad as he was before we started. I
wonder—could it be that he got so much pollen into him that he couldn't absorb
it all? Then, maybe, when we gave him the blood we got rid of some of the
pollen but he absorbed some more again."
"It sort of acts like that,"
Livingston confirmed. "If that's the case we might have to give him
transfusions until hell freezes over—and I don't think we have that much blood
available."
"We don't," said Bob. "That
was the last of his type. Of course we might get some donors from the crew, but
type B, Rh negative is quite rare. And besides, if this anoxemia persists for
much longer he's going to have some permanent brain damage. In that case, it
might be kinder if he didn't survive."
"If
we only had more time," muttered Jack. "I'll bet that we could find
some substance which would have a greater affinity for the pollen than the
pollen does for hemoglobin."
"You
mean like the preference that bacteria have for the sulphon-amides instead of
para-amino-benzoic acid?" asked Bob.
"That's
the idea; but those things can't be found out in an hour, even with the
equipment we have aboard. I guess that it means that we just keep pouring the
oxygen into him and hope for the best. Hey, did you hear that?"
It was Mandel's voice. "We have
established some sort of communication with the pictures we've drawn on the
sand. It's hard for them to see directly below them and Schultz and I are both
getting tired squatting. I believe it would be perfectly safe for us to bring
them aboard ship, where we can show them some photographs and maybe movies.
Tom, Bob, what do you think?"
It
was Bob who made the decision and spoke first. "You're in a better
position to decide that than I am. If you think it's O.K., and if they'll
follow you, come ahead. O.K. with you, Kelly?"
"If
you say so, Bob. But just to be on the safe side, I'm going to keep them
covered while they're aboard—unobtrusively, of course."
"All
right. But tell your men not to go trigger-happy on us. No shooting unless
there's a direct order from either you or me. And Irv-"
"Yes, Bob."
"Better
take 'em on a sort of orientation tour of the ship first. I don't know if
they'll understand anything, but it should be impressive. We'll wait here in
the sick bay for you; Slawson has to be watched."
Perhaps
fifteen minutes elapsed before they heard the peculiar slow clicking noise that
they would always associate with the walk of the Minotaurans. Bob and Jack had
filled in that quarter-hour doing useless little things for their patient, all
to no avail. He was getting progressively weaker, and would probably not even
survive the visit of their strange guests. They looked up to see the
Minotaurans entering the room.
The one who carried the stone ax entered
first, followed by his compatriot, then by Schultz and Mandel.
Schultz, as would be expected, performed the
introductions with a flourish. "Boys, meet Tom and Jack. Tom and Jack,
meet the boys."
The Minotaurans were oblivious of this
travesty of courtesy, of course. They grazed at the two doctors with their
large limpid yellow eyes, while their neck-organs turned a pleasing shade of
chartreuse.
Then
their eyes fell on the unconscious blue body of Slawson. With one accord they
moved slowly toward the bed and gazed at him for a long moment. Then the larger
of the two Minotaurans faced the other and began to manifest all possible color
combinations in the mass of tissue which adorned his neck. Reds, greens,
yellows, violets, flashes of orange, bands and flecks, stripes and spots —it
was a veritable pageant of color. It seemed to make sense to the other, for he
swung about on his hind legs and left the room.
"Now, what?"
asked Bob. "What do you suppose got into him?"
"Should I follow him?" asked Kelly,
sticking his head around the edge of the door.
"If you don't mind, let's just wait and
see what happens," counseled Mandel. "I have a sneaking suspicion
that these boys know what's going on here. They seem to have an instinct of
intuition that far surpasses ours. That boy will be back shortly, I'll bet
anything."
So
they waited, impatiently. Stone-Ax sat on his haunches and gazed at them,
placidly. It was rather embarrassing, like trying to be polite to a foreigner
who doesn't speak your language. You couldn't make polite conversation; you
couldn't ask how business conditions were in his country, or how many children
he had.
Mandel had given an excellent description;
one thing he hadn't mentioned, though, was that the Minotauran had a peculiar
and pleasant body odor. Bob had to sniff and think for several minutes before
he could identify the elusive scent. Why, it's lilac, of course, he thought.
Wouldn't you know it would be a color, too?
His thoughts were interrupted by the clicking
pad, pad of the other Minotauran, returning. He wasn't exactly hurrying, but
you could tell that he wasn't loitering by the wayside, either. He entered the
room and everyone was startled to see that he carried a half-dozen nondescript
flowers in his mouth.
"Oh,
oh—more flowers," said Jack, excitedly. "Shall we try to stop
him?"
Bob had a sudden intuition. "No, let's
not. He can't do anything to hurt poor Slawson—I'm afraid he's beyond that
stage. Let's see what they're going to do."
Stone-Ax
took the flowers in one of his polydactyl appendages, then with the other arm
pointed to the oxygen mask strapped to Slawson's face. He then pointed to his
own face and made a gesture which apparently signified removal.
"I
guess he wants us to take the oxygen mask off," said Schultz. "Should
I, Bob?"
"Go ahead; we can put
it back in a few seconds, if necessary."
The mask was removed. The Minotauran extended
his hind legs so his forelimbs were over the level of the bed, then
unhesitatingly thrust the flowers in front of Slawson's nose and mouth. There
was a breathless silence in the room. For a moment nothing happened; then
Slawson's stertorous breathing suddenly halted—and he gave a mighty sneeze! The
flowers were left there for a few seconds longer, then were thrown to the
floor. Then both of these strange beings turned toward the men, gave a curious
little inclination of their necks, and, with unaltered dignity, left the room.
The
men were too thunderstruck by this strange performance to make any move to
delay their departure. With open mouths they looked at each other, at the
patient and back at each other again.
"That's
the strangest thing I've ever seen." Schultz was the first to break the
silence. "What do you suppose that signified—a religious gesture, or
what?"
"I don't think
so," retorted Bob. "Look at Slawson."
They
looked at the still unconscious man. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the blue
color was fading from his skin. And as it faded the labored, gasping
respiration slowed down. He seemed to relax, or sink into a more comfortable
and relaxed state. He no longer had to fight for his oxygen and was now ready
to rest and recuperate.
Tom
felt the patient's pulse. "It's slower," he said simply. "One
hundred twenty—no, one hundred eight." He put the stethoscope in his ears
and listened to the heart, then the lungs. "Heart action is full and
strong and the lungs are practically clear."
"What'll
we do about those animals?" asked Livingston. "Shouldn't we try to
thank them, or . . . or—" He broke off; how can you thank someone you
can't talk to? How can you do a return favor for a person whose needs or likes
are totally beyond your knowledge?
"Just
skip it, for now," said Bob slowly. "I have a hunch that those boys
will be back after a while. And we'll try to do something for them, some
day." And he left the room.
It wasn't until time for the last meal of the
day that Edwards rejoined the group. They were still talking about the
Minotaurans and their miraculous cure of an apparently hopeless disease, when
Bob entered the room.
"You
know, Tom," he began, "I'm afraid that I'm going to have to retract
some of my dogmatic statements. You remember I told you that there couldn't be
any exotic diseases. Well, I was wrong; you all saw how wrong I was. Slawson
wouldn't have lived, either, if it hadn't been for the help of... of...
shall we say, the natives. We were helpless. But it still proves one of the
oldest of medical beliefs— that for every disease there is, somewhere, a cure,
if only we can find it."
He
smiled. "And maybe this also goes to prove that old school of medical
thought, homeopathy, was right when they said 'Similia similibus curantur.' Like cures like; the disease
caused by the pollen of one flower can be cured by the pollen of another
flower.
"Well
anyhow, Expedition III can now land here with the assurance that they won't
run the risk of turning blue. Of course, something else might come up in the
meantime—but let's hope not.
"We've got a lot of work lined up for
ourselves on this planet. We have to find out more about the natives, how they
live, what they die
of—everything. And we have to help them in
some way. We owe them a debt we'll be a long time paying off. Right?"
In
the midst of the murmur of assent that followed, Schultz walked in.
"Slawson is just fine," he reported. "He had a good meal and is
apparently none the worse for his experience."
planetary pioneer:
William Terry
If
adults cannot adapt to the raw life of
an alien world, can a child? Will Terry was willing
to prove his ability to do
what his elders
said could not be done.
Return
of a Legend
BY RAYMOND Z. GALLUN
Port Laribee with its score of Nisson huts,
sealed against the lifeless atmosphere, the red dust and the cold, was a shabby
piece of Earth dropped onto Mars.
There, Dave Kort
was the first wilderness
tramp to be remembered. In warm seasons he'd plod into Port Laribee, burdened
by a pack that only the two-fifths-of-terrestrial gravity put within the range
of human muscles. He was a great, craggy old man, incredibly grimed and
browned, his frostbites bandaged with dry Martian leaves tied on with their own
fiber.
His snag-toothed grin was bemused and secret
through the scratched plastic of his air-hood. He'd trade carven stones, bits
of ancient metal, or oddities of plant and animal life for chewing tobacco,
chocolate, heavily lined clothes, mending supplies, and new parts for his
battered portable air-compressor.
He'd
refuse a bath with disdain. And at last his rusty, monosyllabic speech would
wax eloquent—comparatively.
"So long,
fellas," he'd say. "See yuh around."
The
equinoxial winds, heralding autumn, would moan thinly like the ghosts of the
Martians wiped out in war those ages back. Dust would blur the horizon of that
huge, arid triangle of sea-bottom called Syrtis Major—still the least sterile
land on the Red Planet. At night the dry cold would dip to ninety below zero,
Fahrenheit.
The
specialists of Port Laribee, who watched the spinning wind-gauges, thermometers
and barometers, and devoted monastic years
to learning about Mars, said that they'd
never see Dave Kort again.
But
for three successive summers after he had quit his job as helper among them, he
showed up, tattered, filthy, thinned to a scarecrow, but grinning.
Young
Joe Dayton, fresh from Earth and full of Mars-wonder, asked him a stock
question that third summer. The answer was laconic. "Oh—I know the
country. I get along."
But
at the fourth winter's end, Dave Kort did not return. No one ever saw him
again, nor found among the ruins and the quiet pastel hues of Mars the dried
thing that had been Kort. Somewhere drifting dust had buried it. No one had
quite understood him in life. If any affection had been aimed at him, it was
for a story, not a man. The man died but the story thrived.
Dave
Kort had lived off this wilderness, alone and with sketchy artificial aids, for
three Martian years—almost six by Earth reckoning. It was quite a feat. For
one thing, the open air of Mars has a pressure of only one-ninth of the
terrestrial, and above ground it contains but a trace of oxygen.
How Kort had turned the
trick was not completely inconceivable.
In
making starch from carbon-dioxide and moisture under the action of sunlight,
the green plantlife of Mars produces oxygen just as Earthly vegetation does.
But instead of freezing it lavishly to the air, many of those Martian growths,
hoarding the essentials of life on a dying world, compress their oxygen into
cavities in stem and root and underground capsule, to support later a slow
tissue-combustion like that of warm-blooded animals, thus protecting their
vitals from cold and death.
Despoiling
these stores of oxygen with a pointed metal pipette attached to a greedily
sucking compressor was a known means of emergency survival on Mars. Thus you
could laboriously replenish the oxygen flasks for your air-hood. Simple—yes.
But tedious, grinding, endless, Dayton could imagine.
Food
and shelter were also necessary. But under thickets there is a five-foot depth
of fallen vegetation, dry, felty, slow to decay in this climate, accumulating
autumn after autumn for Martian centuries. In this carpet are those
oxygen-holding capsules and roots, often broken, freeing their contents for the
spongy surrounding material to hold. There, too, grow much green algae—simpler
plants of the same function. There are the fruit and seed-pods of the surface
growths, sheltered from cold. And there, the remaining animal life has
retreated.
Fuzzy,
tawny things that twitter; fat, mammal-like excavators that never care to see
the sky, and many-jointed creatures that resemble Earthly ants only in their
industry and communal skills. Above ground they build their small, transparent
air-domes—bubble-like structures formed of hardened secretion from their jaws.
There they shelter their special gardens and sun their young.
So,
for a man able to borrow methods unlike his human heritage, there were ways to
keep alive in the raw Martian wilds.
Once, Lorring, the physician, said to Joe
Dayton, "Kort must have burrowed, too—like a bear. Is that human? Of course
the tip of the Syrtis Major triangle here at Port Laribee is far north. But
even if he could have gotten all the way to the tropics, the nights are still
bitter. Even so, the big question is not how he lived like he did, but
why?"
Yes,
this was a point which Dayton had often wondered about, frowning with thick,
dark brows, while his wide mouth smiled quizzically above a generous jaw. What
had impelled Kort to a solitude far deeper than that of an old-time hermit or
desert-rat? Had he been a great child lumbering by instinct through the misfit
fogs of his mind to a place where he felt at peace?
Dayton favored another
explanation as the main one.
"Why,
Doc?" he said to Lorring, as they played cards in the rec-hall. "The
answer is in all of us, here. Or we would never have come to Mars. Where was
there ever such a place of history, enigma, weird beauty, fascination to men?
You can't be neutral. Hating Mars, you'd never stay. Half loving it, like most
of us, you would—for a while. Loving it, you'd want a much closer look than is
possible at Port Laribee, from which we sally forth like rubbernecks. Too bad
that Mars is too rough for men, in the long run. Too bad that the Martians are
extinct. Once there were even machines to maintain a better climate."
Other
specialists were within hearing. They laughed, but they knew what Dayton meant.
They'd seen the dun deserts, the great graven monoliths, dust-scoured, the
heaps of rust. Being here had the charm of a quest for ancient treasure, marked
by the mood of death.
Parsons, the metallurgist, said: "Funny,
but I remember Kort's posture—bent, just like the figures in the bas-reliefs.
Though Martian skeletal structure was far different. That sounds as if part of
Mars sneaked into Kort's body, doesn't it? Hell, there's no pseudo-science
here! Plodding through dust, and at low gravity, you just naturally develop
that posture as a habit. Now call me nuts."
"You're nuts,
Parsons," Kettrich, the biologist, obliged.
Not many days later, Frank Terry and his son
came to Port Laribee. Bringing a seven-year-old boy—a bright little guy named
Will-to unlivable Mars, marked the elder Terry at once as a screwball.
Was the mother dead or divorced? Was Terry a
remittance man, exiled by his family? He seemed to have enjoyed the good
things. ... Such curiosity was bad
taste. Forget it.
"We
like the sound of the place," Frank Terry explained. "We thought we'd
take some photographs, really get friendly with the place. ..."
His
listeners foresaw the withering of Terry's familiar enthusiasm, and his
departure within a week. Except maybe Dayton guessed differently. The
intellectual Terry was not much like Dave Kort. Yet perhaps a kinship showed in
a certain expression, as if their natures had the same basis.
During
the next Martian year, Dayton and the observatory crew saw the
sporting-goods-store sheen vanish utterly from these two. They carried less and
less equipment with each succeeding sally into the wilderness. Dried lichen,
stuffed inside their air-tight garments, soon served them as additional
insulation against cold.
From
their lengthening jaunts they brought back the usual relics —golden ornaments,
carvings, bits of apparatus that had not weathered away. And the usual
photographs of blue-green thickets, war-melted cities, domes celled like
honeycombs, suggesting a larval stage in the life-cycle of the ancients, and of
country littered with shattered crystal—much Martian land had once been roofed
with clear quartz, against the harshening climate.
Frank
Terry became bearded and battered. Will ceased to be a talkative, sociable
youngster. Still devoted to his father, he turned shy, sullen, and alert in a
new way.
He
had a pet like an eight-inch caterpillar, though it was not that at all. It was
warm-blooded, golden-furred, intelligent. It had seven beady eyes. It crept
over the boy's shoulders, and down inside his garments, chirping eerily. Except
for his father it was the only companion the boy wanted.
So summer ended, and the dark blue sky was
murked by angry haze. Vitrac, chief scientist, said, "You're not going out
again, are you, Terry?"
The kid gave the real answer, "Let's go,
Dad. I want to. Besides, Digger is homesick."
The next morning, when the equinoxial storm
closed in, the Terrys had vanished.
Joe
Dayton led the search party. He found nothing. Mars is small but still vast.
Its total surface equals all the land on Earth. Since the first men had come,
not one in a thousand of its square miles had been touched by human boots.
Wandering
explorers found Frank Terry's mummy late that spring, in a deep part of Syrtis
Major, with old ocean salt around it. When they brought it to Port Laribee it
was not completely dried out. So Terry must have survived through the winter.
The
boy must surely be dead, too. But stories drifted back to the Port—of holes
found in the felted soil, and of a small, heavily-burdened figure that
scampered away at the sight of a man.
The
general opinion was that this was pure romancing, to intrigue the tourists who
came out that year in their bright, excited crowds, charmed by the Red Planet
yet sheltered from it, equipped from shops recommended by the most debonair of
space wanderers—if such existed. Many were eager to stay, girls among them,
bright-faced, sure, with the thrill in their eyes and voices. Ah, yes—but how
long would they have lasted in this too rich and rough a strangeness?
Joe
Dayton shrugged, sad that his opinion had to be so mean. There were soberer
arrivals, too. Relatives of Port Laribee staffmembers, mostly. Willowby's
wife. Doc Lorring's small daughter, Tillie, sent out for a visit. Among the
tourists there were a few additional kids.
There was also the lost Frank Terry's elder
brother, Dolph Terry, big, but prim beneath an easy smile. Also there was a
Terry girl, Doran by name. She did not seem much like either of her brothers—
the mystical wanderer, Frank Terry, nor the slightly stuffed-shirted Dolph. She
was much younger than either of them, sun-browned, a bit puzzled at being on
another world, not terribly pretty, but quick with good-humored shrugs and
friendly chuckles whenever she could put aside her worry about her nephew.
Dayton had some belief in the tales from the
wilderness. For he'd known young Will Terry. Besides, beneath the ineptness of
kids, he recognized an adaptability beyond that of adults. So his work was cut
out for him.
"After
all, William was Frank's son," Dolph told Dayton. "Frank was—what he
was. But my sister and I are here to see that the boy is located. Perhaps he
can still have a normal childhood."
"We'll
do what we can," Dayton replied, smiling crookedly to dampen the man's
naive and assertive air.
For the last half of the long summer the
search went on, many visitors taking brief part, ranging well beyond the short
tractor lines which encompassed the tourist's usual view of Mars.
Dolph
Terry was dogged, but clumsy and irritable. His sister's rugged cheerfulness
and interest in her surroundings pleased Dayton.
Still, at the end—due as much as anything to
sheer luck—it was Joe Dayton who captured Will Terry single-handed. It was
almost autumn again. Joe flushed the scampering figure from a thicket. The
boy's limp was to Dayton's advantage. He made a flying tackle, and the savage,
grimy thing that was an eleven-year-old human, was fighting in his grasp.
His crooned words, finding their way through
the thin texture of two air-hoods and the tenuous atmosphere between, did not
soften the ferocity of those pale eyes. Such eyes can be like a blank mask,
anyway—not unintelligent, but expressive of a different thought-plane.
"Easy, Will—easy, fella," Dayton
said. "You couldn't last much longer out here. Your compressor must be
nearly worn out."
Reassurance failed. "Lemme gol" the
boy snarled blurredly, his speech rusted by solitude. Helped by his father, he
had learned the tricks of survival, here. His dimmed past was so different from
his present life that perhaps it seemed fearfully alien to him. As he bore the
struggling boy to the tractor-vehicle, Dayton had the odd idea that a Martian,
trapped by a man, might behave like this.
He recalled old yarns of boys raised by
wolves or apes. Here was the same simple loss of human ways—not by
soul-migration, but the plain molding of habit by a bizarre environment.
At the Port Laribee hospital, Will Terry was
at first least disturbed when left alone. But his whimpers at night reminded
Dayton of the mewling of a Martian storm.
Dolph Terry cursed the waiting for an
Earth-liner and the lack of a psychiatrist on Mars. Doran had no luck, either,
at making friends with Will. Meanwhile the tempests began.
But
Doran had an idea. Visitors were still awaiting passage home, among them
children.
"Kids
are kids, Joe," she told Dayton. "They may be able to reach Will. I
talked it over with Doc Lorring."
She
was right. Gradually, then more quickly, the trapped-lynx glare faded from
Will's eyes as he accepted the scared but fascinated companionship of the other
youngsters in the hospital. He still had Digger. At last he let the others pet
the fuzzy creature. The strangeness dimmed on both sides. Kid-brashness
returned. Perhaps in the whimsy and fantasy of children, that could accept even
the humanizing of beast and beetle, Will and his new friends found a common
denominator for his life on Mars. He became a hero. Doran and Joe overheard some
of his bragging.
"Sure
I can work an air-compressor. Dad showed me. He used to say that Mars was home.
I'm going back."
One
morning Will was gone from the hospital. It came out that a hospital orderly
had been diverted from watchfulness for a minute by other children. Two
air-hoods, Mars-costumes, and compressors were gone. Also another boy named
Danny Bryant.
The
complaint of Lorring's own tomboy eight-year-old completed the picture,
"They didn't want me alongl"
That day the savage wind moaned and the dust
trains across the sky were tawny. Danny Bryant's folks were near hysteria. In
all the foolishness of boys, there seemed nothing to equal this. Dolph Terry
seemed to wonder blankly what sort of wily thing his brother had sired and
trained. The visitors who had been charmed by Mars were sullen and tense. The
remaining kids were scared and solemn.
Doran's
eyes were big with guilt and worry. "My idea caused the trouble,
Joe," she told Dayton. "I've got to do something. I've got to follow
Will and bring those boys back. I can live out there if Will can."
Dayton eyed her thoughtfully. It did not seem
like such a tragedy to him, except, of course, for the Bryants. He could
understand this love for the wild Martian desert.
"Marry me, Doran, and
we'll go together," Joe Dayton said.
So
that was how it was. Dolph might think his whole family mad. Vitrac, chief
scientist, who performed the ceremony, might think so too.
Joe
and Doran ranged far ahead of the other searchers. Sometimes, in the hiss of
the tempest, they thought they heard the weeping of a child. So they blundered
through dust-drifts and murk, following what always proved a false lead.
The
first night fell, a shrieking maelstrom of deathly cold, black as a pocket. An
inflatable tent would have been a hardship for chill-stiffened fingers to set
up in such a wind. They had no such burden. They burrowed beneath a thicket
instead, into the layer of dry vegetation. For this there were no better tools
than their heavy gloves. They dug deep, kicking the felty stuff behind them to
plug the entrance, shutting out even the wail of the storm.
"The strangest honeymoon,
ever!" Doran laughed.
Musty air was trapped around them, high in
oxygen-content. To enrich it further they slashed hollow root-capsules with
their knives. A little warmth was being generated in those roots. Above was the
additional insulation and airseal of drifting dust.
Joe could breathe here without an air-hood,
and hold his wife close in savage protection and regret and apology for the
soft, man-made luxuries that should be, especially now, and were not. Instead
they were in darkness, under Martian soil and dead leaves. A grub's paradise.
Ancient beings of the Red Planet might have lived like this when the need
arose, but it was an existence far off the beaten track for humans.
"When
we get back I'll make it all up to you, Doran," Joe kept insisting.
There
was a fear in him—of conforming for too long to the demands of this weird
environment and of somehow losing a human heritage.
"I'm
reading your mind, Joe," Doran laughed. "Don't worry. We both love
the smell of coffee and bacon, too much. And music, and nice furniture, and
walks in the park. We're not like Frank was, or young Will perhaps still is.
No, this will make us want such things more—tie us tighter to Earth."
At
dawn they blundered on. During their third night underground they were raided
while they slept. Some chocolate bars and other food-concentrates disappeared.
And a pencil of Joe's. Their two-way radio would no longer work. The chuckling,
chirping inquisitive creatures of the Martian soil had crept into its case and
broken it.
Thus
the Daytons, out of contact with Port Laribee, did not hear how Danny Bryant
staggered back, dazed, frost-bitten, and half-smothered, to his parents' arms.
The
storm ended after five days. The small sun blazed in the steely sky, which
seemed as brittle as frozen air. There was a sharp lifting of mood. Go back to
Port Laribee? The Daytons were tempted. But they had not yet found the boys.
Besides, they were far afield. And with much of their supplies used up or
stolen, the work of mere survival consumed time and energy and slowed travel.
So it was almost as well to push on, wasn't it?
It
seemed that they were always using pointed pipette and compressor to refill
oxygen flasks from the hollow parts of vegetation. At dawn they collected
hoar-frost crystals, wrung from the arid atmosphere by the nocturnal cold, for
drinking water. They ate underground fruit and the starchy pulps of certain
roots. Wary of poison, they tasted untried things cautiously.
Mars hogs that tunneled in an eternal blind
search for food were fair game in the darkness beneath the thicket
leaf-carpets. Dayton had a tiny ato-stove that served for their meager cooking.
Weeks
passed and a strange life-pattern was set as the Daytons moved south, deeper
into broadening Sytris Major. Maybe it was a bit warmer. Some paper-dry growths
were still blue-green. More were brown from the winter dryness. Necessities
were harder to find.
Sometimes, among the pastel-tinted thickets
and low hills, there were patches of real Martian desert, red and lifeless.
Night
followed exhausting day, and how welcome was the warmth of a burrow where one
could nurse the frostbites acquired in the frigid dawn.
Several times footprints, large-booted but
short-paced, led the Daytons on, only to be lost in rocky ground and lichen.
Twice
Joe and Doran crossed the war-fused wrecks of huge cities. Fallen hothouse
roofs littered the ruins. The piles of rust must have been irrigation pumps,
space-ship ramps, climate-controlled apparatus.
In tower, storehouse, and avenue were the
skeletons, with their odd, vertical ribs to house huge lungs.
Some
devices still worked. Joe found a rod, probably of corrosion-resistant
platinum. He pressed its stud and for an instant, before it became useless, it
flashed fire that melted part of a fanciful wall-carving.
The struggle to survive harshened further.
Once it was bitter water, oozing up from some deep irrigation pipe, that staved
off death by thirst.
Several times oxygen was obtained only by
lying prone over a teeming colony of the chitinous creatures whose instinct was
to roof with a protecting airdome of gluten, anything that promised to be food.
These Mars ants—ordinarily to be avoided—admitted air to the domes they built
from their deepest buried tunnels and chambers.
Often Joe looked at his wife, knowing that
they both had changed. They were tattered, and a little like the bas-relief
figures. They were Dave Kort, and Frank and Will Terry over again. Doran's
teeth were very white in a face browned by sunshine filtered only by the rare
Martian air. She was very thin, but there was an oblique charm in her features.
Or had his very conceptions of beauty altered subtly, conforming to a
now-familiar environment?
Thinking
back to Port Laribee and Earth itself was often like recalling substanceless
dreams, so different were such memories. And was the fading of revulsion for
even the scurrying builders of the air-domes occasion for deeper fear because
it represented the loss of another part of one's natural self?
Joe
often worried. Others had been drawn to Mars too, eager to search out the
mysteries of its past and people—all of this an intriguing fabric—but most
Earthmen had the sense to realize in time that it was a graveyard world, unfit
for humans. For to live the life of Mars you had to stop being human.
Conditioning grimed into you like the red dust.
Nor
was the trap just imaginary. The most frightening part was knowing that Doran
was with child. Damn the pulse-beats of life that had no regard for
circumstances!
Joe
could be glad only that she remained human enough to be pettish and optimistic
by turns.
"We
can't get back, can we, Joe?" she'd say. "But maybe it'll be all
right. It's a long time, yet."
Should
they try to hole up, somewhere? That wasn't much good, either. Even in spring
there wouldn't be enough resources in one place to sustain life for long. They
had to keep moving. So when again they saw those boot-tracks, they felt free to
follow.
Milder
days came. At noon the temperature reached fifty degrees, F. The country
brightened in pastel beauty after the vemal storms. There were gorgeous
flowerlike growths. The tracks would vanish and appear again, seeming to mark
no single trail but a series of excursions from somewhere among the hills to
the south.
Once Doran and Joe heard a
thin halloo or scream of defiance.
One
of their two air-compressors quit beyond repair, making it twice the job to
fill their oxygen flasks. This could be fatal, now.
Soon
after they entered the hill-gorges there was a rock-fall, too close to be a
thing of accident or coincidence. Later there was a swift-dying flicker that
turned a spot of dust incandescent.
Later that afternoon, amid blue-shadows from
towering monoliths, Joe met an attack as sudden and savage as a bobcat's. The
creature sprang down at him from a ledge, clawing, kicking, striking with a
knife. Joe had a bad time until his greater strength won.
Doran helped hold her nephew down. Will Terry
was battered, hardened, scarred —scarcely recognizable with his teeth bared.
But, oddly, Joe knew just
what to say to soothe him.
"Will, you can see that we're like you.
Maybe we don't want to be, but we are, now. We can't drag you back again to
Port Laribee."
The kid relaxed a little.
His pale eyes turned puzzled but wary.
"About the other boy,
Will—Danny Bryant?" Doran asked.
Will's
lip curled. "He was weak and dumb," he said, fumbling with unused
words. "I took him back long ago."
"You
did fine, Will," Joe said. "Now what have you found here in the
hills? You've been camping in one place for a while. Show us."
Joe had to use harsh command against the
sullenness still in the boy. He did so bluntly, driven by grim hope and need.
Thus, before sunset, Doran and he found something they needed. "Dad wanted
such a place," the kid said, half-proudly.
It was less than optimism promised—just a
small, deep valley, pretty as a painting, but quietly forbidding, too. Joe had
seen others almost like it. Martian growths clogged it, sprouting new
blue-green leaves. The ruins were far less damaged than in the cities. There
were countless little domes of the ant-creatures, indicating some underground
water.
Nimbly
Will led the way downward and across the valley to a stout structure. It was
not very unusual, just another relic in a region away from the fiercest path of
war. Here might have been a last refuge, after the death of millions, the
breakdown of machinery, and the rapid worsening of Martian climatic conditions.
Crystal roofs lay shattered around the ornate central massiveness. But one wing
with thick glaze still stood—sealable.
Doran's
eyes lighted as she and Joe and her nephew went into the deserted interior
through the double doors of an airlock which some last, fleeing Martian had not
closed.
Hardy wilderness plants had
intruded into this hothouse but there still were troughs of soil, proving that
this had been a garden sealed against cold, a place of fruit and flower.
"We might try to use this, Joe,"
Doran said, her voice thin in the heavy stillness.
He nodded. But his gratitude was tinged with
scared and bitter overtones. He hurried to explore the central edifice, which
must have been closed before the kid came, for the preservation of things inside
was good. There were odd cyclindrical cells, niches dark and dusty, cubicles
piled with metal boxes. There was even what seemed a kind of machine-shop.
And
there was a valve which, from the footprints in the dust, Will had tried to
turn. Joe accomplished this now with a levering metal bar. Out in the dry
hothouse pool a spout jetted rusty water.
"The
underground storage cisterns are intact," Joe was soon explaining.
"I prayed there'd be some."
Joe Dayton was grateful,
yet not happy.
Grimly he began again the bitter toil of
survival, the others helping. Like bizarre harvesters they tore up great
bundles of roots and stalks and piled them inside the hothouse. Briefly the
blue sunset shadows were long, over that weird, beautiful valley. Then the dusk
came, and the faint frost haze of the always frigid nights.
"We'd
better hurry before we freeze," Joe growled irritably. "When we get a
lot of this stuff inside we'll tramp on it to break the oxygen-capsules. By
morning there should be breathable atmosphere under this roof. Later,
vegetation planted inside will keep it fresh."
Joe
Dayton's mood now had a taint of despair. Forced to try to settle in this
place, he felt more than ever trapped. More than ever he felt as if the souls
of those eon-dead beings depicted on carven walls that Phobos, the nearer moon,
now illuminated, had been crowding into his human flesh and brain to push his
own ego out. No, it was not witchcraft—it was simpler. Mars had shaped its ancient
inhabitants. Now it was working on Earthly material with the same subtle,
ruthless fingers.
When
the task in the hothouse was finished, Joe went with his wife and nephew to
burrow again away from the cold, and to eat and to sleep all in the manner
which Mars compelled.
Joe wanted Doran and his child to keep their
human ways. His child. That was his worst thought, now.
His
mind pictured Will—tattered, wild, strange in thought and feeling. He had lived
his first years on Earth. So how would it be with a child born on Mars? Joe
cursed into his burry beard—cursed the distance to Port Laribee which might as
well not be there at all, so out of reach was it, so ineffectual, and so soon
probably to be left deserted. Though bone weary, Joe did not sleep well that
quiet night.
The
next day, bathed and smiling, Doran still did not look quite Earthly to him.
She was browned by Martian sun but the real difference that had come into her
strong beauty was a thing of multiple detail, like the mark of persons used to
the sea contrasted with those born to the plains—but deeper.
Scrubbed
fairly clean, Will remained an urchin of Mars. Also scrubbed, and shaved, Joe
felt more comfortable. Yet he knew that basically this restored nothing.
A
day later he was wandering around outside the hothouse, trying to plan needed
agricultural projects, when a faint scrape of pebbles made him wheel warily.
"People!
Rescue!" were his first eager thoughts. But then he saw that the three
figures, two large and one small, were creatures attuned to Mars in the same
way as himself, and as helpless.
Yet
when old friends were recognized, in spite of the deep changes, Joe Dayton felt
a joyous lift.
"Doc
Lorring!" he shouted. "Kettrich. And Tillie. Hey! Hey, Doran! Will!
Come here!"
Doc
Lorring's tomboy daughter, a bit younger than Will, showed a grinning dirty
face through a battered air-hood, and said "Hi."
"We
were trying to follow you most of the time, Dayton," Lorring stammered.
"We hoped to find you and Doran, and maybe the Terry boy. But our tractor
broke down, and we had to live off the land. While we still had the vehicle
there didn't seem much reason why Tillie shouldn't come along. We'd begun to
give up hope of finding any of you alive."
Minutes were spent questioning and
explaining. They all went into the sealed hothouse. Kettrich, the biologist,
had even saved a little coffee.
"For
a celebration, if we ever located any of you missing ones," he said to Joe
and Doran.
Kettrich
sighed and went on, "Chief Vitrac, Lorson, and a dozen others are the only
old-timers left at the Port. The others have all gone, with Dolph Terry and the
tourists. Humans are about done with Mars though I suppose a few will trickle
out here from time to time."
With
contemplative relish Doran sipped coffee brewed with crudely filtered water on
an ato-stove. She smiled like any woman who has her man, and has found a place
and a purpose.
"Not
for humans," she mused. "That's one way of putting it. Still, it
doesn't necessarily mean us. Let's face facts," she continued. "A natural selection was going on all the time.
Thousands of people left, disgusted. A very few stayed grimly, or got trapped.
On Earth I never thought much about Mars, but now I've been here so long. We're
different, perhaps proudly so. Oh, we still like the things that Earth-people
like, maybe more than ever. But the Old Ones here also had their comforts. We
have Earth flesh and bone, we'll never be like them that way, and I'm glad. You
can either say that Terrans are supremely adaptable, or that we are no longer
quite human, and that there are Martians again. Because one has to be that to
really live here, doesn't one? Mars won't be left wasted and sad. We're some of
its first new people. Among the explorers there must be others. More and more
will come. Gradually, through the centuries, we'll build Mars back toward what
it was."
Dayton
stared at his wife, then down at the ancient flagging, then at the others.
Tillie tittered. She was as brown as Will Terry and almost as attached to the
Red Planet. Around her mended glove a fuzzy creature twined, chirping. Will and
Tillie were children of Mars.
Doran's assessment of a situation in plain
talk took away its dread for Joe, giving his Mars-love a chance. He began to
feel at home. "Is my wife talking sense?" he asked puzzledly.
Kettrich and Loning had both been fascinated
by this world, too—willing to devote years to it.
"Well,
we can still radio Port Laribee," Loning chuckled. "But in any case
we're stuck here for a long time. Meanwhile, there's food growing wild around
us. There's water. There are tools, machines, and supplies to puzzle out. And a
valley to reclaim as a start. Beyond that, the job gets bigger and more
interesting."
Before
sunset that day, Joe and Doran Dayton walked alone in the valley. The
Earth-star was already silvery in the dark blue west. The hills were dun-hued
and peaceful. The domes of the Mars-ants gleamed. Fantastic spring flowers
wavered in the wind. Small dust-whirls stirred among the ruins.
Joe
Dayton looked forward, gladly now, to the birth of his child on the Red Planet.
"I hope that the Neo-Martians won't become
so separate that they'll forget to be friends with Terrans," Doran mused.
Joe
nodded as his arm crept around her waist. To him legendary history and present
fact had merged. The wind's rustle was no longer the whisper of the dead past.
galactic interpreter:
Herald Alen
A hundred thousand worlds all with their own
speech,
customs, laws. The far trader, the diplomat,
the traveler, cannot hope
to cope
with such semantic, ethical and legal mazes. So came
the heralds, men of peace
and of words. And this
was Herald Alen's first
mission.
That
Share of Glory
BY C. M. KORNBLUTH
Young Alen, one of a thousand in the huge
refectory, ate absent-mindedly as the reader droned into the perfect silence of
the hall. Today's lesson happened to be a word-list of the Thetis VIII planet's
sea-going folk.
"Tlon—a ship," droned the reader.
"Rtlo—some ships, number unknown.
"Long—some ships, number known, always modified by cardinal.
"Ongr—a ship in a collection of ships, always modified by ordinal.
"Ngrt—first ship in a collection of ships; an exception to ongr." A
lay brother tiptoed to Alen's side. "The Rector summons you," he
whispered.
Alen
had no time for panic, though that was the usual reaction to a summons from the
Rector to a novice. He slipped from the refectory, stepped onto the northbound
corridor and stepped off at his cell, a minute later and a quarter-mile farther
on. Hastily, but meticulously, he changed from his drab habit to the heraldic
robes in the cubicle with its simple stool, washstand, desk, and paperweight
or two. Alen, a level-headed young fellow, was not aware that he had broken any
section of the Order's complicated Rule, but he was aware that he could have
done so without knowing it. It might, he thought, be the last time he would see
the cell.
He
cast a glance which he hoped would not be the final one over it; a glance which
lingered a little fondly on the reel rack where
were stowed: "Nicholson on Martian
Verbs," "The New Oxford Venusian Dictionary," the ponderous
six-reeler "Deutsche-Gany-mediche Konversasionslexikon" published
long ago and far away in Leipzig. The later works were there, too: "The
Tongues of the Galaxy—An Essay in Classification," "A Concise Grammar
of Cephean," "The Self-Pronouncing Vegan II Dictionary"—scores
of them, and, of course, the worn reel of old Machiavelli's "The
Prince."
Enough
of that! Alen combed out his small, neat beard and stepped onto the southbound
corridor. He transferred to an east-bound at the next intersection and minutes
later was before the Rector's lay secretary.
"You'd
better review your Lyran irregulars," said the secretary disrespectfully.
"There's a trader in there who's looking for a cheap herald on a swindling
trip to Lyra VI." Thus unceremoniously did Alen learn that he was not to
be ejected from the Order but that he was to be elevated to Journeyman. But as
a herald should, he betrayed no sign of his immense relief. He did, however,
take the secretary's advice and sensibly reviewed his Lyran.
While
he was in the midst of a declension
which applied only to inanimate objects, the voice of the Rector—and what a mellow voice it was!—floated through the secretary's intercom.
"Admit the novice,
Alen," said the Master Herald.
A
final settling of his robes and the youth walked into the Rector's huge
office, with the seal of the Order blazing in diamonds above his desk. There
was a stranger present; presumably the trader —a black-bearded fellow whose
rugged frame didn't carry his Vegan cloak with ease.
Said
the Rector: "Novice, this is to be the crown of your toil if you are
acceptable to—?" He courteously turned to the trader, who shrugged
irritably.
"It's all one to me," growled the
blackbeard. "Somebody cheap, somebody who knows the cant of the thievish
Lyran gem peddlers, above all, somebody at once. Overhead is devouring my flesh
day by day as the ship waits at the field. And when we are space-borne, my
imbecile crew will doubtless waste liter after priceless liter of my fuel. And
when we land the swindling Lyrans will without doubt make my ruin complete by
tricking me even out of the minute profit I hope to realize. Good Master
Herald, let me have the infant cheap and I'll bid you good day."
The
Rector's shaggy eyebrows drew down in a frown. "Trader," he said
sonorously, "our mission of galactic utilitarian culture is not concerned
with your margin of profit. I ask you to test this youth and, if you find him
able, to take him as your Herald on your voyage. He will serve you well, for he
has been taught that commerce and words, its medium, are the unifying bonds
which will one day unite the cosmos into a single humankind. Do not conceive
that the College and Order of Heralds is a mere aid to you in your commercial
adventure."
"Very
well," growled the trader. He addressed Alen in broken Lyran: "Boy,
how you make up Vegan stones of three fires so Lyran women like, come buy, buy
again?"
Alen
smoothly replied: "The Vegan triple-fire gem finds most favor on Lyran and
especially among its women when set in a wide glass anklet if large, and when
arranged in the Lyran 'lucky five' pattern in a glass thumb-ring if
small." He was glad, very glad, he had come across—and as a matter of
course memorized, in the relentless fashion of the Order—a novel which touched
briefly on the Lyran jewel trade.
The trader glowered and switched to
Cephean—apparently his native tongue. "That was well enough said, Herald.
Now tell me whether you've got guts to man a squirt in case we're intercepted
by the thieving so-called Customs collectors of Eyolf's Realm between here and
Lyra?"
Alen
knew the Rector's eyes were on him. "The noble mission of our Order,"
he said, "forbids me to use any weapon but the truth in furthering cosmic
utilitarian civilization. No, master trader, I shall not man one of your
weapons."
The
trader shrugged. "So I must take what I get. Good Master Herald, make me a
price."
The
Rector said casually: "I regard this chiefly as a training mission for
our novice; the fee will be nominal. Let us say twenty-five per cent of your
net as of blastoff from Lyra, to be audited by Journeyman-Herald Alen."
The
trader's howl of rage echoed in the dome of the huge room. "It's not
fair!" he roared. "Who but you thievish villains with your Order and
your catch-'em-young and your years of training can learn the tongues of the
galaxy? What chance has a decent merchant busy with profit and loss got to
learn the cant of every race between Sirius and the Coalsack? It's not fair!
It's not fair and I'll say so until my dying breathl"
"Die outside if you find our terms
unacceptable, then," said the Rector. "The Order does not
haggle."
"Well I know it," sighed the trader
brokenly. "I should have stuck to my own system and my good father's
pump-flange factory. But no! I had to pick up a bargain in gems on Vega! Enough
of this —bring me your contract and I'll sign it."
The
Rector's shaggy eyebrows went up. "There is no contract," he said.
"A mutual trust between Herald and trader is the cornerstone upon which
cosmos-wide amity and understanding will be built."
"At twenty-five per cent of an unlicked
pup," muttered black-beard to himself in Cephean.
None of his instructors had played Polonius
as Alen, with the seal of the Journeyman-Herald on his brow, packed for
blastoff and vacated his cell. He supposed they knew that twenty years of
training either had done their work or had not.
The
trader taking Alen to the field where his ship waited, was less wise. "The
secret of successful negotiation," he weightily told his Herald, "is
to yield willingly. This may strike you as a paradox, but it is the veritable
key to my success in maintaining the profits of my good father's pump-flange
trade. The secret is to yield with rueful admiration of your opponent—but only
in unimportant details. Put up a little battle about delivery date or about
terms of credit and then let him have his way. But you never give way a hair's
breadth on your asking price unless—"
Alen
let him drivel on as they drove through the outer works of the College. He was
glad the car was open. For the first time he was being accorded the doffed hat
that is the due of Heralds from their inferiors in the Order, and the grave nod
of salutation from equals. Five-year-old postulants seeing his brow-seal tugged
off their headgear with comical celerity; fellow-novices, equals a few hours
before, uncovered as though he were the Rector himself.
The ceremonial began to reach the trader.
When, with a final salutation, a lay warder let them through the great gate of
the curtain wall, he said with some irritation: "They appear to hold you
in high regard, boy."
"I am better addressed
as 'Herald,'" said Alen composedly.
"A
plague descend on the College and Order! Do you think I don't know my manners?
Of course, I call a Herald 'Herald,' but we're going to be cooped up together
and you'll be working for me. What'll happen to ship's discipline if I have to
kowtow to you?"
"There will be no
problem," said Alen.
Blackbeard grunted and trod
fiercely on the accelerator.
"That's my ship," he said at
length. "Starsong. Vegan registry-it may help passing through Eyolf's
Realm, though it cost me overmuch in bribes. A crew of eight, lazy,
good-for-nothing wastrels— Agh! Can I believe my eyes?" The car jammed to
a halt before the looming ship and blackbeard was up the ladder and through the
port in a second. Settling his robes, Alen followed.
He
found the trader fiercely denouncing his chief engineer for using space drive
to heat the ship; he had seen the faint haze of a minimum exhaust from the
stern tubes.
"For
that, dolt," screamed blackbeard, "we have a thing known as
electricity. Have you by chance ever heard of it? Are you aware that a chief
engineer's responsibility is the efficient and economical operation of his
ship's drive mechanism?"
The
chief, a cowed-looking Cephean, saw Alen with relief and swept off his battered
cap. The Herald nodded gravely and the trader broke off in irritation. "We
need none of that bowing and scraping for the rest of the voyage," he
declared.
"Of course not, sir," said the
chief. "O'course not. I was just welcoming the Herald aboard. Welcome
aboard, Herald. I'm Chief Elwon, Herald. And I'm glad to have a Herald with
us." A covert glance at the
trader. "I've voyaged with Heralds and without, and I don't mind saying I
feel safer indeed with you aboard."
"May I be taken to my
quarters?" asked Alen.
"Your—?" began
the trader, stupefied.
The
chief broke in: "I'll fix you a cabin, Herald. We've got some bulkheads I
can rig aft for a snug little space, not roomy, but the best a little ship like
this can afford."
The trader collapsed into a bucket seat as
the chief bustled aft and Alen followed.
"Herald," the chief said with some
embarrassment after he had collared two crewmen and set them to work,
"you'll have to excuse our good master trader. He's new to the interstar
lanes and he doesn't exactly know the jets yet. Between us we'll get him
squared away."
Alen
inspected the cubicle run up for him—a satisfactory enclosure affording him
the decent privacy he rated. He dismissed the chief and the crewmen with a nod
and settled himself on the cot.
Beneath
the iron composure in which he had been trained, he felt scared and alone. Not
even old Machiavelli seemed to offer comfort or council: "There is nothing
more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in
its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of
things," said Chapter Six.
But
what said Chapter Twenty-Six? "Where the willingness is great, the
difficulties cannot be great."
Starsong
was not a happy ship. Blackbeard's nagging stinginess hung over the crew like a
thundercloud, but Alen professed not to notice. He walked regularly fore and
aft for two hours a day greeting the crew members in their various native
tongues and then wrapping himself in the reserve the Order demanded—though he
longed to salute them man-to-man, eat with them, gossip about their native
planets, the past misdeeds that had brought them to their berths aboard the
miserly Starsong and their hopes for the future. The Rule of the College and Order
of Heralds decreed otherwise. He accepted the uncoverings of the crew with a
nod and tried to be pleased because they stood in growing awe of him that
ranged from Chief Elwon's lively appreciation of a Herald's skill to Wiper
Jukkl's superstitious reverence. Jukkl was a
low-browed specimen from a planet of the decadent Sirius system. He outdid the
normal slovenliness of an all-male crew on a freighter—a slovenliness in which
Alen could not share. Many of his waking hours were spent in his locked cubicle
burnishing his metal and cleaning and pressing his robes. A Herald was never
supposed to suggest by his appearance that he shared mortal frailties.
Blackbeard
himself yielded a little, to the point of touching his cap sullenly. This
probably was not so much awe at Alen's studied manner as respect for the
incisive, lightning-fast job of auditing the Herald did on the books of the
trading venture—absurdly complicated books with scores of accounts to record a
simple matter of buying gems cheap on Vega and chartering a ship in the hope of
selling them dearly on Lyra. The complicated books and overlapping accounts did
tell the story, but they made it very easy for an auditor to erroneously read a
number of costs as far higher than they actually were. Alen did not fall into
the trap.
On
the fifth day after blastoff, Chief Elwon rapped, respectfully but urgently, on
the door of Alen's cubicle.
"If
you please, Herald," he urged, "could you come to the bridge?"
Alen's
heart bounded in his chest, but he gravely said: "My meditation must not
be interrupted. I shall join you on the bridge in ten minutes." And for
ten minutes he methodically polished a murky link in the massive gold chain
that fastened his boat-cloak— the "meditation." He donned the cloak
before stepping out; the summons sounded like a full-dress affair in the
offing.
The trader was stamping and fuming. Chief
Elwon was riffling through his spec book unhappily. Astrogator Hufner was at
the plot computer running up trajectories and knocking them down again. A quick
glance showed Alen that they were all high-speed trajectories in the
"evasive action" class.
"Herald,"
said the trader grimly, "we have broken somebody's detector bubble."
He jerked his thumb at a red-lit signal. "I expect we'll be overhauled shortly.
Are you ready to earn your twenty-five per cent of the net?"
Alen overlooked the
crudity. "Are you rigged for color video, merchant?" he asked.
"We are."
"Then I am ready to do
what I can for my client."
He
took the communicator's seat, stealing a glance in the still-blank screen. The
reflection of his face was reassuring, though he wished he had thought to comb
his small beard.
Another
light flashed on, and Hufner quit the operator to study the detector board.
"Big, powerful and getting closer," he said tersely. "Scanning
for us with directionals now. Putting out plenty of energy—"
The loud-speaker of the
ship-to-ship audio came to life.
"What
ship are you?" it demanded in Vegan. "We are a Customs cruiser of the
Realm of Eyolf. What ship are you?"
"Have
the crew man the squirts," said the trader softly to the chief.
Elwon
looked at Alen, who shook his head. "Sorry, sir," said the engineer
apologetically. "The Herald—"
"We
are the freighter Starsong, Vegan registry," said Alen into the audio mike
as the trader choked. "We are carrying Vegan gems to Lyra."
"They're on us," said the
astrogator despairingly, reading his instruments. The ship-to-ship video
flashed on, showing an arrogant, square-jawed face topped by a battered naval
cap.
"Lyra
indeed! We have plans of our own for Lyra. You will heave to—" began the
officer in the screen, before he noted Alen. "My pardon, Herald," he
said sardonically. "Herald, will you please request the ship's master to
heave to for boarding and search? We wish to assess and collect Customs duties.
You are aware, of course, that your vessel is passing through the Realm."
The
man's accented Vegan reeked of Algol IV. Alen switched to that obscure language
to say: "We were not aware of that. Are you aware that there is a
reciprocal trade treaty in effect between the Vegan system and the Realm which
specifies that freight in Vegan bottoms is dutiable only when consigned to
ports in the Realm?"
"You
speak Algolian, do you? You Heralds have not been underrated, but don't plan
to lie your way out of this. Yes, I am aware of some such agreement as you
mentioned. We shall board you, as I said, and assess and collect duty in kind.
If, regrettably, there has been any mistake you are, of course, free to apply
to the Realm for reimbursement. Now, heave to!"
"I have no intentions of lying. I speak
the solemn truth when I say that we shall fight to the last man any attempt of
yours to board and loot us."
Alen's mind was racing furiously through the
catalogue of planetary folkways the Rule had decreed that he master. Algol
IV—some ancestor-worship; veneration of mother; hand-to-hand combat with
knives; complimentary greeting, "May you never strike down a weaker
foe"; folk-hero Gaarek unjustly accused of slaying a cripple and exiled
but it was an enemy's plot—
A
disconcerted shadow was crossing the face of the officer as Alen improvised:
"You will, of course, kill us all. But before this happens I shall have
messaged back to the College and Order of Heralds the facts in the case, with a
particular request that your family be informed. Your name, I think, will be
remembered as long as Gaarek's—though not in the same way, of course; the
Algolian whose hundred-man battle cruiser wiped out a virtually unarmed
freighter with a crew of eight."
The
officer's face was dark with rage. "You devil!" he snarled.
"Leave my family out of this! I'll come aboard and fight you man-to-man if
you have the stomach for it!"
Alen
shook his head regretfully. "The Rule of my Order forbids recourse to
violence," he said. "Our only permissible weapon is the truth."
"We're
coming aboard," said the officer grimly. "I'll order my men not to
harm your people. We'll just be collecting customs. If your people shoot first,
my men will be under orders to do nothing more than disable them."
Alen smiled and uttered a
sentence or two in Algolian.
The
officer's jaw dropped and he croaked, after a pause: "I'll cut you to
ribbons. You can't say that about my mother, you—" and he spewed back some of the words Alen had spoken.
^Calm yourself," said the Herald
gravely. "I apologize for my disgusting and unheraldic remarks. But I
wished to prove a point. You would have killed me if you could; I touched off a
reaction which had been planted in you by your culture. I will be able to do
the same with the men of yours who come aboard. For every race of man there is
the intolerable insult that must be avenged in blood.
"Send
your men aboard under orders not to kill if you wish; I shall goad them into a
killing rage. We shall be massacred, yours will be the blame and you will be
disgraced and disowned by your entire planet." Alen hoped desperately that
the naval crews of the Realm were, as reputed, a barbarous and undisciplined
lot-Evidently they were, and the proud Algolian dared not risk it. In his
native language he spat again: "You devil!" and switched back into
Vegan. "Freighter Starsong," he said bleakly, "I find that my
space fix was in error and that you are not in Realm territory. You may
proceed."
The
astrogator said from the detector board, incredulously: "He's disengaging.
He's off us. He's accelerating. Herald, what did you say to him?"
But the reaction from blackbeard was more
gratifying. Speechless, the trader took off his cap. Alen acknowledged the
salute with a grave nod before he started back to his cubicle. It was just as
well, he reflected, that the trader didn't know his life and his ship had been
unconditionally pledged in a finish fight against a hundred-man battle cruiser.
Lyra's principal spaceport was pocked and
broken, but they made a fair enough landing. Alen, in full heraldic robes,
descended from Starsong to greet a handful of port officials.
"Any metals
aboard?" demanded one of them.
"None
for sale," said the Herald. "We have Vegan gems, chiefly
triple-fire." He knew that the dull little planet was short of metals and,
having made a virtue of necessity, was somehow prejudiced against their import.
"Have
your crew transfer the cargo to the Customs shed," said the port official
studying Starsong's papers. "And all of you wait there."
All of them—except Alen—lugged numbered sacks
and boxes of gems to the low brick building designated. The trader was allowed
to pocket a handful for samples before the shed was sealed—a complicated
business. A brick was mortared over the simple ironwood latch that closed the
ironwood door, a pat of clay was slapped over the brick and the port seal
stamped in it. A mechanic with what looked like a pottery blowtorch fed by
powdered coal played a flame on the clay seal until it glowed orange-red and
that was that.
"Herald,"
said the port official, "tell the merchant to sign here and make his
fingerprints."
Alen
studied the document; it was a simple identification form. Blackbeard signed
with the reed pen provided and fingerprinted the document. After two weeks in
space he scarcely needed to ink his fingers first.
"Now tell him that we'll release the
gems on his written fingerprinted order to whatever Lyran citizens he sells
to. And explain that this roundabout system is necessary to avoid metal
smuggling. Please remove all metal from your clothes and stow it on your ship.
Then we will seal that, too, and put it under guard until you are ready to take
off. We regret that we will have to search you before we turn you loose, but we
can't afford to have our economy disrupted by irresponsible introduction of
metals." Alen had not realized it was that bad.
After
the thorough search that extended to the confiscation of forgotten watches and
pins, the port officials changed a sheaf of the trader's uranium-backed Vegan
currency into Lyran legal tender based on man-hours. Blackbeard made a partial
payment to the crew, told them to have a good liberty and check in at the port
at sunset tomorrow for probable take-off.
Alen and the trader were driven to town in an
unlikely vehicle whose power plant was a pottery turbine. The driver, when they
were safely out on the open road, furtively asked whether they had any metal
they wanted to discard.
The
trader asked sharply in his broken Lyran: "What you do you get metal?
Where sell, how use?"
The driver, following a universal tendency,
raised his voice and lapsed into broken Lyran himself to tell the strangers:
"Black market science men pay much, much for little bit metal. Study, use
build. Politicians make law no metal, what I care politicians? But you no tell,
gentlemen?"
"We won't tell,"
said Alen. "But we have no metal for you."
The driver shrugged.
"Herald," said
the trader, "what do you make of it?"
"I
didn't know it was a political issue. We concern ourselves with the basic
patterns of a people's behavior, not the day-to-day expressions of the
patterns. The planet's got no heavy metals, which means there were no metals
available to the primitive Lyrans. The lighter metals don't occur in native
form or in easily-split compounds. They proceeded along the ceramic line
instead of the metallic line and appear to have done quite well for themselves
up to a point. No electricity, of course, no aviation and no space
flight."
"And," said the trader,
"naturally the people who make these buggies and that blowtorch we saw are
scared witless that metals will be imported and put them out of business. So
naturally they have laws passed prohibiting it."
"Naturally,"
said the Herald, looking sharply at the trader. But blackbeard was back in
character a moment later. "An outrage," he growled. "Trying to
tell a man what he can and can't import when he sees a decent chance to make a
bit of profit."
The driver dropped them at a boardinghouse.
It was half-timbered construction, which appeared to be swankier than the more
common brick. The floors were plate glass, roughened for traction. Alen got
them a double room with a view.
"What's that
thing?" demanded the trader, inspecting the view.
The
thing was a structure looming above the slate and tile roofs of the town—a
round brick tower for its first twenty-five meters and then wood for another
fifteen. As they studied it, it pricked up a pair of ears at the top and began
to flop them wildly.
"Semaphore," said
Alen.
A
minute later blackbeard piteously demanded fom the bathroom: "How do you
make water come out of the tap? I touched it all over but nothing
happened."
"You have to turn it," said Alen,
demonstrating. "And that thing —you pull it sharply down, hold it and then
release."
"Barbarous,"
muttered the trader. "Barbarous."
An elderly maid came in to show them how to
string their hammocks and ask if they happened to have a bit of metal to give
her for a souvenir. They sent her away and, rather than face the public dining
room, made a meal from their own stores and turned in for the night.
It's going well, thought Alen drowsily: going
very well indeed.
He awoke abruptly, but made no move. It was
dark in the double room, and there were stealthy, furtive little noises nearby.
A hundred thoughts flashed through his head of Lyran treachery and
double-dealing. He lifted his eyelids a trifle and saw a figure silhouetted
against the faint light of the big window. If a burglar, he was a clumsy one.
There was a stirring from the other hammock,
the trader's. With a subdued roar that sounded like "Thieving
villainsl" blackbeard launched himself from the hammock at the intruder.
But his feet tangled in the hammock cords and he belly-flopped on the floor.
The
burglar, if it was one, didn't dash smoothly and efficiently for the door. He
straightened himself against the window and said resignedly: "You need
not fear. I will make no resistance."
Alen
rolled from the hammock and helped the trader to his feet. "He said he
doesn't want to fight," he told the trader.
Blackbeard seized the intruder and shook him
like a rat. "So the rogue is a coward too!" he boomed. "Give us
a light, Herald."
Alen
uncovered the slow-match, blew it to a flame, squeakily pumped up a pressure
torch until a jet of pulverized coal sprayed from its nozzle and ignited it. A
dozen strokes more and there was enough heat feeding back from the jet to
maintain the pressure cycle.
Through
all of this the trader was demanding in his broken Lyran: "What make
here, thief? What reason thief us room?"
The
Herald brought the hissing pressure lamp to the window. The intruder's face was
not the unhealthy, neurotic face of a criminal. Its thin lines told of
discipline and thought.
"What did you want
here?" asked Alen.
"Metal,"
said the intruder simply. "I thought you might have a bit of iron."
It was the first time a specific metal had
been named by any Lyran. He used, of course, the Vegan word for iron.
"You are
particular," remarked the Herald. "Why iron?"
"I have heard that it possesses certain
properties—perhaps you can tell me before you turn me over to the police. Is it
true, as we hear, that a mass of iron whose crystals have been aligned by a
sharp blow will strongly attract another piece of iron with a force related to
the distance between them?"
"It
is true," said the Herald, studying the man's face. It was lit with
excitement. Deliberately Alen added: "This alignment is more easily and
uniformly effected by placing the mass of iron in an electric field—that is, a
space surrounding the passage of an electron stream through a conductor."
Many of the words he used had to be Vegan; there were no Lyran words for
"electric," "electron" or "conductor."
The
intruder's face fell. "I have tried to master the concept you refer
to," he admitted. "But it is beyond me. I have questioned other
interstar voyagers and they have touched on it, but I cannot grasp it —But
thank you, sir; you have been very courteous. I will trouble you no further
while you summon the watch."
"You give up too easily," said
Alen. "For a scientist, much too easily. If we turn you over to the watch,
there will be hearings and testimony and whatnot. Our time is limited here on
your planet; I doubt that we can spare any for your legal processes."
The
trader let go of the intruder's shoulder and grumbled: "Why you no ask we
have iron, I tell you no. Search, search, take all metal away. We no police
you. I sorry hurted your arms. Here for you." Blackbeard brought out a
palmful of sample gems and picked out a large triple-fire stone. "You not
be angry me," he said, putting it in the Lyran's hand.
"I can't—" said
the scientist.
Blackbeard closed his fingers over the stone
and growled: "I give, you take. Maybe buy iron with, eh?"
"That's
so," said the Lyran. "Thank you both, gentlemen. Thank you-"
"You
go," said the trader. "You go, we sleep again." The scientist
bowed with dignity and left their room.
"Gods of space," swore the trader.
"To think that Jukkl, the Star-song's wiper, knows more about electricity
and magnetism than a brainy fellow like that."
"And
they are the key to physics," mused Alen. "A scientist here is
dead-ended forever, because their materials are all insulators! Glass, clay,
glaze, wood."
"Funny,
all right," yawned blackbeard. "Did you see me collar him once I got
on my feet? Sharp, eh? Good night, Herald." He gruntingly hauled himself
into the hammock again, leaving Alen to turn off the hissing light and cover
the slow-match with its perforated lid.
They had roast fowl of some sort or other for
breakfast in the public dining room. Alen was required by his Rule to refuse
the red wine that went with it. The trader gulped it approvingly. "A sensible,
though backward people," he said. "And now if you'll inquire of the
management where the thievish jewel-buyers congregate, we can get on with our
business and perhaps be off by dawn tomorrow."
"So
quickly?" asked Alen, almost forgetting himself enough to show surprise.
"My
charter on Starsong, good Herald—thirty days to go, but what might not go wrong
in space? And then there would be penalties to mulct me of whatever minute
profit I may realize."
Alen learned that Gromeg's Tavern was the gem
mart and they took another of the turbine-engined cabs through the brick-paved
streets.
Gromeg's
was a dismal, small-windowed brick barn with heavy-set men lounging about, an
open kitchen at one end and tables at the other. A score of smaller,
sharp-faced men were at the tables sipping wine and chatting.
"I am Journeyman-Herald Alen,"
announced Alen clearly, "with Vegan gems to dispose of."
There
was a silence of elaborate unconcern, and then one of the dealers spat and
grunted: "Vegan gems. A drug on the market. Take them away, Herald."
"Come,
master trader," said Alen in the Lyran tongue. "The gem dealers of
Lyra do not want your wares." He started for the door.
One of the dealers called languidly:
"Well, wait a moment. I have nothing better to do; since you've come all
this way I'll have a look at your stuff."
"You honor us," said Alen. He and
blackbeard sat at the man's table. The trader took out a palmful of samples,
counted them meaningfully and laid them on the boards.
"Well,"
said the gem dealer, "I don't know whether to be amused or insulted. I am
Garthkint, the gem dealer—not a retailer of beads. However, I have no hard
feelings. A drink for your frowning friend, Herald? I know you gentry don't
indulge." The drink was already on the table, brought by one of the
hulking guards.
Alen
passed Garthkint's own mug of wine to the trader, explaining politely:
"In my master trader's native Cepheus it is considered honorable for the
guest to sip the drink his host laid down and none other. A charming custom, is
it not?"
"Charming,
though unsanitary," muttered the gem dealer—and he did not touch the drink
he had ordered for blackbeard.
"I
can't understand a word either of you is saying—too flowery. Was this little
rat trying to drug me?" demanded the trader in Cephean.
"No,"
said Alen. "Just trying to get you drunk." To Garthkint in Lyran, he
explained, "The good trader was saying that he wishes to leave at once. I
was agreeing with him."
"Well,"
said Garthkint, "perhaps I can take a couple of your gauds. For some
youngster who wishes a cheap ring."
"He's getting to
it," Alen told the trader.
"High time,"
grunted blackbeard.
"The trader asks me to inform you,"
said Alen, switching back to Lyran, "that he is unable to sell in lots
smaller than five hundred gems."
"A compact language, Cephean," said
Garthkint, narrowing his eyes.
"Is it not?" Alen
blandly agreed.
The
gem dealer's forefinger rolled an especially fine three-fire stone from the
little pool of gems on the table. "I suppose," he said grudgingly,
"that this is what I must call the best of the lot. What, I am curious to
know, is the price you would set for five hundred equal in quality and size to
this poor thing?"
"This,"
said Alen, "is the good trader's first venture to your delightful planet.
He wishes to be remembered and welcomed all of the many times he anticipates
returning. Because of this he has set an absurdly low price, counting good will
as more important than a prosperous voyage. Two thousand Lyran credits."
"Absurd,"
snorted Garthkint. "I cannot do business with you. Either you are insanely
rapacious or you have been pitifully misguided as to the value of your wares.
I am well known for my charity; I will assume that the latter is the case. I
trust you will not be too downcast when I tell you that five hundred of these
muddy, undersized out-of-round objects are worth no more than two hundred
credits."
"If
you are serious," said Alen with marked amazement, "we would not
dream of imposing on you. At the figure you mention, we might as well not sell
at all but return with our wares to Cepheus and give these gems to children in
the streets for marbles. Good gem trader, excuse us for taking up so much of
your time and many thanks for your warm hospitality in the matter of the
wine." He switched to Cephean and said: "We're dickering now. Two
thousand and two hundred. Get up; we're going to start to walk out."
"What
if he lets us go?" grumbled blackbeard, but he did heave himself to his
feet and turn to the door as Alen rose.
"My
trader echoes my regrets," the Herald said in Lyran. "Farewell."
"Well,
stay a moment," said Garthkint. "I am well known for my soft heart
toward strangers. A charitable man might go as high as five hundred and absorb
the inevitable loss. If you should return some day with a passable lot of real
gems, it would be worth my while for you to remember who treated you with such
benevolence and give me fair choice."
"Noble Lyran," said Alen,
apparently almost overcome. "I shall not easily forget your combination of
acumen and charity. It is a lesson to traders. It is a lesson to me. I shall
not insist on two thousand.
I shall cut the throat of my trader's venture
by reducing his price to eighteen hundred credits, though I wonder how I shall
dare tell him of it."
"What's going on now?" demanded
blackbeard. "Five hundred and eighteen hundred," said Alen. "We
can sit down again." "Up, down—up, down," muttered the trader.
They sat, and Alen said in Lyran: "My
trader unexpectedly indorses the reduction. He says, 'Better to lose some than
all'—an old proverb in the Cephean tongue. And he forbids any further reduction."
"Come,
now," wheedled the gem dealer. "Let us be men of the world about
this. One must give a little and take a little. Everybody knows he can't have
his own way forever. I shall offer a good, round eight hundred credits and
we'll close on it, eh? Pilquis, fetch us a pen and ink!" One of the burly
guards was right there with an inkpot and a reed pen. Garthkint had a Customs
forms out of his tunic and was busily filling it in to specify the size, number
and fire of gems to be released to him.
"What's it now?" asked blackbeard.
"Eight hundred."
"Take it!"
"Garthkint,"
said Alen regretfully, "you heard the firmness and decision in my trader's
voice? What can I do? I am only speaking for him. He is a hard man but perhaps
I can talk him around later. I offer you the gems at a ruinous fifteen hundred
credits."
"Split the difference," said
Garthkint resignedly.
"Done at eleven-fifty," said Alen.
That
blackbeard understood. "Well done!" he boomed at Alen and took a swig
from Garthkint's winecup. "Have him fill in 'Sack eighteen' on his paper.
It's five hundred of that grade."
The
gem dealer counted out twenty-three fifty-credit notes and blackbeard signed
and fingerprinted the release.
"Now," said Garthkint, "you
will please remain here while I take a trip to the spaceport for my
property." Three or four of the guards were suddenly quite close.
"You will find," said Alen dryly,
"that our standard of commercial morality is no lower than yours."
The dealer smiled politely and left.
"Who will be the next?" asked Alen
of the room at large.
"I'll look at your
gems," said another dealer, sitting at the table.
With the ice-breaking done, the transactions
went quicker. Alen had disposed of a dozen lots by the time their first buyer
returned.
"It's
all right," he said. "We've been tricked before, but your gems are as
represented. I congratulate you, Herald, on driving a hard, fair bargain."
"That
means," said Alen regretfully, "that I should have asked for
more." The guards were once more lounging in comers and no longer seemed
so menacing.
They
had a mid-day meal and continued to dispose of their wares. At sunset Alen held
a final auction to clean up the odd lots that remained over and was urged to
stay to dinner.
The
trader, counting a huge wad of the Lyran manpower-based notes, shook his head.
"We should be off before dawn, Herald," he told Alen. "Time is
money, time is money."
"They are very
insistent."
"And
I am very stubborn. Thank them and let us be on our way before anything else is
done to increase my overhead."
Something
did turn up—a city watchman with a bloody nose and split lip.
He
demanded of the Herald: "Are you responsible for the Ceph-ean maniac known
as Elwon?"
Garthkint glided up to mutter in Alen's ear:
"Beware how you answerl"
Alen
needed no warning. His grounding included Lyran legal concepts—and on the
backward little planet touched with many relics of feudalism,
"responsible" covered much territory.
"What has Chief Elwon done?" he
parried.
"As you see," the watchman glumly
replied, pointing to his wounds. "And the same to three others before we
got him out of the wrecked wineshop and into the castle. Are you responsible
for him?"
"Let me speak with my trader for a
moment. Will you have some wine meantime?" He signaled and one of the
guards brought a mug.
"Don't mind if I do. I
can use it," sighed the watchman.
"We
are in trouble," said Alen to blackbeard. "Chief Elwon is in the
'castle'—prison—for drunk and disorderly conduct. You as his master are
considered responsible for his conduct under Lyran law. You must pay his fines
or serve his penalties. Or you can 'disown' him, which is considered
dishonorable but sometimes necessary. For paying his fine or serving his time
you have a prior lien on his services, without pay—but of course that's
unenforceable off Lyra."
Blackbeard was sweating a little. "Find
out from the policeman how long all this is likely to take. I don't want to
leave Elwon here and I do want us to get off as soon as possible. Keep him
occupied, now, while I go about some business."
The
trader retreated to a corner of the darkening barnlike tavern, beckoning
Garthkint and a guard with him as Alen returned to the watchman.
"Good
keeper of the peace," he said, "will you have another?" He
would.
"My
trader wishes to know what penalties are likely to be levied against the
unfortunate Chief Elwon."
"Going to leave him in the lurch,
eh?" asked the watchman a little belligerently. "A fine master you
have!"
One
of the dealers at the table indignantly corroborated him. "If you
foreigners aren't prepared to live up to your obligations, why did you come
here in the first place? What happens to business if a master can send his man
to steal and cheat and then say: 'Don't blame me—it was his doing!' "
Alen patiently explained: "On other
planets, good Lyrans, the tie of master and man is not so strong that a man would
obey if he were ordered to go and steal or cheat."
They shook their heads and
muttered. It was unheard-of.
"Good
watchman," pressed the Herald, "my trader does not want to disown
Chief Elwon. Can you tell me what recompense would be necessary—and how long it
would take to manage the business?"
The watchman started on a third cup which
Alen had unostentatiously signaled for. "It's hard to say," he told
the Herald weightily. "For my damages, I would demand a hundred credits at
least. The three other members of the watch battered by your lunatic could ask
no less. The wineshop suffered easily five hundred credits' damage. The owner
of it was beaten, but that doesn't matter, of course." "No
imprisonment?"
"Oh,
a flogging, of course"—Alen started before he recalled that the
"flogging" was a few half-hearted symbolic strokes on the covered
shoulders with a light cane—"but no imprisonment. His Honor, Judge Krarl,
does not sit on the night bench. Judge Krarl is a newfangled reformer,
stranger. He professes to believe that mulcting is unjust—that it makes it
easy for the rich to commit crime and go scot-free."
"But
doesn't it?" asked Alen, drawn off-course in spite of himself. There was
pitying laughter around him.
"Look
you," a dealer explained kindly. "The good watchman suffers battery,
the mad Cephean or his master is mulcted for damages, the watchman is repaid
for his injuries. What kind of justice is it to the watchman if the mad Cephean
is locked away in a cell unfined?"
The watchman nodded approvingly. "Well
said," he told the dealer. "Luckily we have on the night bench a
justice of the old school, His Honor, Judge Treel. Stern, but fair. You should
hear him! 'Fifty credits! A hundred credits and the lashl Robbed a ship, eh?
Two thousand credits!' " He returned to his own voice and said with awe:
"For a murder, he never assesses less than ten thousand credits.'"
And
if the murderer couldn't pay, Alen knew, he became a "public
charge," "responsible to the state"—that is, a slave. If he
could pay, of course, he was turned loose.
"And
His Honor, Judge Treel," he pressed, "is sitting tonight? Can we
possibly appear before him, pay the fines and be off?"
"To
be sure, stranger. I'd be a fool if I waited until morning, wouldn't I?"
The wine had loosened his tongue a little too far and he evidently realized it.
"Enough of this," he said. "Does your master honorably accept
responsibility for the Cephean? If so, come along with me, the two of you, and
we'll get this over with."
"Thanks, good
watchman. We are coming."
He went to blackbeard, now alone in his
corner, and said: "It's all right. We can pay off—about a thousand
credits—and be on our way."
The
trader muttered darkly: "Lyran jurisdiction or not, it's coming out of
Elwon's pay. The bloody fool!"
They rattled through the darkening streets of
the town in one of the turbine-powered wagons, the watchman sitting up front
with the driver and the trader and the Herald behind.
"Something's
burning," said Alen to the trader, sniffing the air.
"This
stinking buggy—" began
blackbeard. "Oops," he said, interrupting himself and slapping at
his cloak.
"Let
me, trader," said Alen. He turned back the cloak, licked his thumb, and
rubbed out a crawling ring of sparks spreading across a few centimeters of the
cloak's silk lining. And he looked fixedly at what had started the little fire.
It was an improperly covered slow-match protruding from a holstered device that
was unquestionably a hand weapon.
"I
bought it from one of their guards while you were parleying with the
policeman," explained blackbeard embarrassedly. "I had a time making
him understand. That Garthkint fellow helped." He fiddled with the
perforated cover of the slow-match, screwing it on more firmly.
"A
pitiful excuse for a weapon," he went on, carefully arranging his cloak
over it. "The trigger isn't a trigger and the thumb-safety isn't a safety.
You pump the trigger a few times to build up pressure, and a little air squirts
out to blow the match to life. Then you uncover the match and pull back the
cocking-piece. This levers a dart into the barrel. Then you push the
thumb-safety which puffs coal-dust into the firing chamber and also swivels
down the slow-match onto a touch-hole. Poof, and away goes the dart if you
didn't forget any of the steps or do them in the wrong order. Luckily, I also
got a knife."
He
patted the nape of his neck and said, "That's where they carry 'em here. A
little sheath between the shoulderblades—wonderful for a fast draw-and-throw,
though it exposes you a little more than I like when you reach. The knife's
black glass. Splendid edge and good balance.
"And
the thieving Lyrans knew they had me where it hurt. Seven thousand, five
hundred credits for the knife and gun—if you can call it that—and the holsters.
By rights I should dock Elwon for them, the bloody fool. Still, it's better to
buy his way out and leave no hard feelings behind us, eh, Herald?"
"Incomparably
better," said Alen. "And I am amazed that you even entertained the
idea of an armed jail-delivery. What if Chief Elwon had to serve a few days in
a prison? Would that be worse than forever barring yourself from the planet and
blackening the names of all traders with Lyra? Trader, do not hope to put down
the credits that your weapons cost you as a legitimate expense of the voyage. I
will not allow it when I audit your books. It was a piece of folly on which you
spent personal funds, as far as the College and Order of Herald is
concerned."
"Look
here," protested blackbeard. "You're supposed to be spreading
utilitarian civilization, aren't you? What's utilitarian about leaving one of
my crewmen here?"
Alen
ignored the childish argument and wrapped himself in angry silence. As to
civilization, he wondered darkly whether such a trading voyage and his part in
it were relevant at all. Were the slanders true? Was the College and Order
simply a collection of dupes headed by cynical oldsters greedy for luxury and
power?
Such
thoughts hadn't crossed his mind in a long time. He'd been too busy to
entertain them, cramming his head with languages, folkways, mores, customs,
underlying patterns of culture, of hundreds of galactic peoples—and for what?
So that this fellow could make a profit and the College and Order take a
quarter of that profit. If civilization was to come to Lyra, it would have to
come in the form of metal. If the Lyrans didn't want metal, make them take it.
What
did Machiavelli say? "The chief foundations of all states-are good laws
and good arms; and as there cannot be good laws where the state is not well
armed, it follows that where they are well armed, they have good laws." It
was odd that the teachers had slurred over such a seminal idea, emphasizing
instead the spiritual integrity of the weaponless College and Order—or was it?
The disenchantment he felt
creeping over him was terrifying.
"The
castle," said the watchman over his shoulder, and their wagon stopped with
a rattle before a large but unimpressive brick structure of five stories.
"You
wait," the trader told the driver after they got out. He handed him two of
his fifty-credit bills. "You wait, you get many, many more money. You
understand, wait?"
"I
wait plenty much," shouted the driver delightedly. "I wait all night,
all day. You wonderful master. You great, great master, I wait—"
"All right,"
growled the trader, shutting him off. "You wait."
The
watchman took them through an entrance hall lit by hissing pressure lamps and
casually guarded by a few liveried men with truncheons. He threw open the door
of a medium-sized, well-lit room with a score of people in it, looked in, and
uttered a despairing groan.
A
personage on a chair that looked like a throne said sharply, "Are those
the star-travelers? Well, don't just stand there. Bring them in!"
"Yes, your honor,
Judge Krarl," said the watchman unhappily.
"It's the wrong judge/" Alen hissed at the trader.
"This one gives out jail sentences!"
"Do what you
can," said blackbeard grimly.
The
watchman guided them to the personage in the chair and indicated a couple of
low stools, bowed to the chair and retired to stand at the back of the room.
"Your
honor," said Alen, "I am Journeyman-Herald Alen, Herald for the
trading voyage—"
"Speak
when you're spoken to," said the judge sharply. "Sir, with the usual
insolence of wealth you have chosen to keep us waiting. I do not take this
personally; it might have happened to Judge Treel, who—to your evident dismay—I
am replacing because of a sudden illness, or to any other member of the bench.
But as an insult to our justice, we cannot overlook it. Sir, consider yourself
reprimanded. Take your seats. Watchman, bring in the Cephean."
"Sit down," Alen murmured to the
trader. "This is going to be bad."
A
watchman brought in Chief Elwon, bleary-eyed, tousled and sporting a few
bruises. He gave Alen and the trader a shamefaced grin as his guard sat him on
a stool beside them. The trader glared back.
Judge
Krarl mumbled perfunctorily: "Letbattlebejoinedamong
theseveralpartiesinthisdisputeletnomanquestionourimpartialaward-ingofthevictoryspeaknowifyouyieldinsteadtoourjudgment.
Well? speak up, you watchmenl"
The
watchman who had brought the Herald and the trader started and said from the
back of the room: "Iyieldinsteadtoyour honorsjudgment."
Three
other watchmen and a battered citizen, the wineshop-keeper, mumbled in turn:
"Iyieldinsteadtoyourhonorsjudgment."
"Herald, speak for the
accused," snapped the judge.
Well,
thought Alen, I can try. "Your Honor," he said, "Chief Elwon's
master does not yield to your honor's judgment. He is ready to battle the other
parties in the dispute or their masters."
"What
insolence is this?" screamed the judge, leaping from his throne. "The
barbarous customs of other worlds do not prevail in this court! Who spoke of
battle—?" He shut his mouth with a snap, evidently abruptly realizing that
he had spoken of battle, in an archaic phrase that harked back to the origins
of justice on the planet. The judge sat down again and told Alen, more calmly:
"You have mistaken a mere formality. The offer was not made in
earnest." Obviously, he didn't like the sound of that himself, but he
proceeded, "Now say 'Iyieldinsteadtoyourhonorsjudgment!' and we can get on
with it. For your information, trial by combat has not been practiced for many
generations on our enlightened planet."
Alen
said politely: "Your Honor, I am a stranger to many of the ways of Lyra,
but our excellent College and Order of Heralds instructed me well in the
underlying principles of your law. I recall that one of your most revered legal
maxims declares: 'The highest crime against man is murder; the highest crime
against man's society is breach of promise.' "
Purpling, the judge snarled: "Are you
presuming to bandy law with me, you slippery-tongued foreigner? Are you
presuming to accuse me of the high crime of breaking my promise? For your
information, a promise consists of an offer to do, or refrain from doing, a
thing in return for a consideration. There must be the five elements of
promiser, promisee, offer, substance, and consideration."
"If
you will forgive a foreigner," said Alen, suddenly feeling the ground
again under his feet, "I maintain that you offered the parties in the
dispute your services in awarding the victory."
"An
empty argument," snorted the judge. "Just as an offer with substance
from somebody to nobody for a consideration is no promise, or an offer without
substance from somebody to somebody for a consideration is no promise, so my
offer was no promise, for there was no consideration involved."
"Your
honor, must the consideration be from the promisee to the promiser?"
"Of course not. A
third party may provide the consideration."
"Then
I respectfully maintain that your offer was a promise, since a third party, the
government, provided you with the considerations of salary and position in
return for you offering your services to the disputants."
"Watchmen,
clear the room of uninterested persons," said the judge hoarsely. While it
was being done, Alen swiftly filled in the trader and Chief Elwon. Blackbeard
grinned at the mention of a five-against-one battle royal, and the engineer
looked alarmed.
When the doors closed, leaving the nine of
them in privacy, the judge said bitterly: "Herald, where did you learn
such devilish tricks?"
Alen
told him: "My College and Order instructed me well. A similar situation
existed on a planet called England during an age known as the Victorious. Trial
by combat had long been obsolete, there as here, but had never been declared
so—there as here. A litigant won a hopeless lawsuit by publishing a challenge
to his opponent and appearing at the
appointed place in full armor. His opponent ignored the challenge and so lost
the suit by default. The
English
dictator, one Disraeli, hastily summoned his parliament to abolish trial by
combat."
"And
so," mused the Judge, "I find myself accused in my own chamber of
high crime if I do not permit you five to slash away at each other and decide
who won."
The wineshop-keeper began to blubber that he
was a peaceable man and didn't intend to be carved up by that black-bearded,
bloodthirsty star-traveler. All he wanted was his money.
"Silence!" snapped the judge.
"Of course there will be no combat. Will you, shopkeeper, and you
watchmen, withdraw if you receive satisfactory financial settlements?"
They would.
"Herald, you may
dicker with them."
The
four watchmen stood fast by their demand for a hundred credits apiece, and got
it. The terrified shopkeeper regained his balance and demanded a thousand.
Alen explained that his black-bearded master from a rude and impetuous world
might be unable to restrain his rage when he, Alen, interpreted the demand and,
ignoring the consequences, might beat him, the shopkeeper, to a pulp. The asking
price plunged to a reasonable five hundred, which was paid over. The shopkeeper
got the judge's permission to leave and backed out, bowing.
"You
see, trader," Alen told blackbeard, "that it was needless to buy
weapons when the spoken word—"
"And
now," said the judge with a sneer, "we are easily out of that
dilemma. Watchmen, arrest the three star-travelers and take them to the
cages."
"Your honor!"
cried Alen, outraged.
"Money won't get you
out of this one. I charge you with treason."
"The
charge is obsolete—" began the Herald hotly, but he broke off as he
realized the vindictive strategy.
"Yes,
it is. And one of its obsolete provisions is that treason charges must be tried
by the parliament at a regular session, which isn't due for two hundred days.
You'll be freed and I may be reprimanded, but by my head, for two hundred days
you'll regret that you made a fool of me. Take them away."
"A trumped-up charge against us. Prison for two
hundred days," said Alen swiftly to the trader as the watchmen closed in.
"Why
buy weapons?" mocked the blackbeard, showing his teeth. His left arm
whipped up and down, there was a black streak through the air—and the judge was
pinned to his throne with a black glass knife through his throat and the sneer
of triumph still on his lips.
The
trader, before the knife struck, had the clumsy pistol out, with the cover off
the glowing match and the cocking piece back. He must have pumped and cocked it
under his cloak, thought Alen numbly as he told the watchmen, without
prompting: "Get back against the wall and turn around." They did.
They wanted to live, and the grinning blackbeard who had made meat of the judge
with a flick of the arm was a terrifying figure.
"Well
done, Alen," said the trader. "Take their clubs, Elwon. Two for you,
two for the Herald. Alen, don't argue! I had to kill the judge before he raised
an alarm—nothing but death will silence his breed. You may have to kill too
before we're out of this. Take the clubs." He passed the clumsy pistol to
Chief Elwon and said: "Keep it on their backs. The thing that looks like a
thumb-safety is a trigger. Put a dart through the first one who tries to make a
break. Alen, tell the fellow on the end to turn around and come to me
slowly."
Alen
did. Blackbeard swiftly stripped him, tore and knotted his clothes into ropes
and bound and gagged him. The others got the same treatment in less than ten
minutes.
The
trader bolstered the gun and rolled the watchmen out of the line of sight from
the door of the chamber. He recovered his knife and wiped it on the judge's
shirt. Alen had to help him prop the body behind the throne's high back.
"Hide those
clubs," blackbeard said. "Straight faces. Here we go."
They
went out, single file, opening the door only enough to pass. Alen, last in
line, told one of the liveried guards nearby: "His honor, Judge Krarl,
does not wish to be disturbed."
"That's
news?" asked the tipstaff sardonically. He put his hand on the Herald's
arm. "Only yesterday he gimme a blast when I brought him a mug of water he
asked me for himself. An outrageous interruption, he called me, and he asked
for the water himself. What do you think of that?"
"Terrible,"
said Alen hastily. He broke away and caught up with the trader and the engineer
at the entrance hall. Idlers and loungers were staring at them as they headed
for the waiting wagon.
"I
wait!" the driver, told them loudly. "I wait long, much. You pay
more, more?"
"We pay more,"
said the trader. "You start."
The
driver brought out a smoldering piece of punk, lit a pressure torch, lifted the
barn-door section of the wagon's floor to expose the pottery turbine and
preheated it with the torch. He pumped squeak-ily for minutes, spinning a
flywheel with his other hand, before the rotor began to turn on its own. Down
went the hatch, up onto the seats went the passengers.
"The
spaceport," said Alen. With a slate-pencil screech the driver engaged his
planetary gear and they were off.
Through
it all, blackbeard had ignored frantic muttered questions from Chief Elwon, who
had wanted nothing to do with murder, especially of a judge. "You sit up
there," growled the trader, "and every so often you look around and
see if we're being followed. Don't alarm the driver. And if we get to the
spaceport and blast off without any trouble, keep your story to yourself."
He settled down in the back seat with Alen and maintained a gloomy silence. The
young Herald was too much in awe of this stranger, so suddenly competent in
assorted forms of violence, to question him.
They did get to the spaceport without
trouble, and found the crew in the Customs shed, emptied of the gems by dealers
with releases. They had built a fire for warmth.
"We wish to leave immediately,"
said the trader, to the port officer. "Can you change my Lyran
currency?"
The
officer began to sputter apologetically that it was late and the vault was
sealed for the night—
"That's all right. We'll change it on
Vega. It'll get back to you. Call off your guards and unseal our ship."
They followed the port
officer to Starsong's dim bulk out on the field. The officer cracked the seal
on her with his club in the light of a flaring pressure lamp held by one of the
guards.
Alen
was sweating hard through it all. As they started across the field he had seen
what looked like two closely spaced green stars low on the horizon towards town
suddenly each jerk up and towards each other in minute arcs. The semaphore!
The
signal officer in the port administration building would be watching too—but
nobody on the field, preoccupied with the routine of departure, seemed to have
noticed.
The
lights flipped this way and that. Alen didn't know the code and bitterly
regretted the lack. After some twenty signals the lights flipped to the
"rest" position again as the port officer was droning out a set of
take-off regulations: bearing, height above settled areas, permissible atomic
fuels while in atmosphere—Alen saw somebody start across the field toward them
from the administration building. The guards were leaning on their long,
competent-looking weapons.
Alen
inconspicuously detached himself from the group around Starsong and headed
across the dark field to meet the approaching figure. Nearing it, he called out
a low greeting in Lyran, using the noncom-to-officer military form.
"Sergeant,"
said the signal officer quietly, "go and draw off the men a few meters
from the star-travelers. Tell them the ship mustn't leave, that they're to
cover the foreigners and shoot if—"
Alen
stood dazedly over the limp body of the signal officer. And then he quickly hid
the bludgeon again and strolled back to the ship, wondering whether he'd
cracked the Lyran's skull.
The
port was open by then and the crew filing in. He was last. "Close it
fast," he told the trader. "I had to—"
"I saw you," grunted blackbeard. "A semaphore message?" He was
working as he spoke, and the metal port closed.
"Astrogator and
engineer, take over," he told them.
"All hands to their bunks," ordered
Astrogator Hufner. "Blast-off immediate."
Alen took to his cubicle and strapped himself
in. Blast-off deafened him, rattled his bones and made him thoroughly sick as
usual.
After what seemed like several wretched
hours, they were definitely space-borne under smooth acceleration, and his
nausea subsided.
Blackbeard knocked, came
in, and unbuckled him.
"Ready to audit the
books of the voyage?" asked the trader.
"No," said Alen
feebly.
"It can wait," said the trader.
"The books are the least important part, anyway. We have headed off a
frightful war." "War? We have?"
"You
wondered why I was in such haste to get off Lyra, and why I wouldn't leave
Elwon there. It is because our Vegan gems were most unusual gems. I am not a
technical man, but I understand they are actual gems which were treated to
produce a certain effect at just about this time."
Blackbeard
glanced at his wrist chronometer and said dreamily: "Lyra is getting
metal. Wherever there is one of our gems, pottery is decomposing into its
constituent aluminum, silicon, and oxygen. Fluxes and glazes are decomposing
into calcium, zinc, barium, potassium, chromium, and iron. Buildings are
crumbling, pants are dropping as ceramic belt-buckles disintegrate—"
"It means chaosl"
protested Alen.
"It
means civilization and peace. An ugly clash was in the making."
Blackbeard paused and added deliberately: "Where neither their property
nor their honor is touched, most men live content."
" 'The Prince,'
Chapter 19.
You are—"
"There
was another important purpose to the voyage," said the trader, grinning.
"You will be interested in this." He handed Alen a document which,
unfolded, had the seal of the College and Order at its head.
Alen
read in a daze: "Examiner 19 to
the Rector—final clearance of Novice—"
He
lingered pridefully over the paragraph that described how he had "with
coolness and great resource" foxed the battle cruiser of the Realm,
"adapting himself readily in a delicate situation requiring not only
physical courage but swift recall, evaluation and application of a minor
planetary culture."
Not so pridefully he read:
"—inclined towards pomposity of manner somewhat ludicrous in one of his
years, though not unsuccessful in dominating the crew by his bearing—"
And: "—highly profitable disposal of our
gems; a feat of no mean importance since the College and Order must, after all,
maintain itself."
And: "—cleared the final and crucial
hurdle with some mental turmoil if I am any judge, but did clear it. After some
twenty years of indoctrination in unrealistic non-violence, the youth was confronted
with a situation where nothing but violence would serve, correctly evaluated
this, and applied violence in the form of a truncheon to the head of a Lyran
signal officer, thereby demonstrating an ability to learn and common sense as
precious as it is rare."
And, finally, simply: "Recommended for
training."
"Training?"
gasped Alen. "You mean there's more?"
"Not
for most, boy. Not for most. The bulk of us are what we seem to be: oily,
gun-shy, indispensable adjuncts to trade who feather our nest with percentages.
We need those percentages and we need gun-shy Heralds."
Alen
recited slowly: "Among other evils which being unarmed brings you, it
causes you to be despised."
"Chapter 14," said blackbeard mechanically. "We leave
such clues lying by their bedsides for twenty years, and they never notice
them. For the few of us who do—more training."
"Will I learn to throw a knife like
you?" asked Alen, repelled and fascinated at once by the idea.
"On
your own time, if you wish. Mostly it's ethics and morals so you'll be able to
weigh the values of such things as knife-throwing."
"Ethics! Morals!"
"We started as missionaries,
you know."
"Everybody knows that.
But the Great Utilitarian Reform—"
"Some of us," said blackbeard
dryly, "think it was neither great, nor utilitarian, nor a reform."
It
was a staggering idea. "But we're spreading utilitarian civilization!"
protested Alen. "Or if we're not, what's the sense of it all?"
Blackbeard
told him: "We have our different motives. One is a sincere utilitarian;
another is a gambler—happy when he's in danger
and his pulses are pounding. Another is proud
and likes to trick people. More than a few conceive themselves as servants of
mankind. I'll let you rest for a bit now." He rose. "But you?"
asked Alen hesitantly.
"Me? You will find me in Chapter
Twenty-Six," grinned blackbeard. "And perhaps you'll find someone
else." He closed the door behind him.
Alen ran through the chapter in his mind, puzzled, until—that was it.
It had a strange and inevitable familiarity
to it as if he had always known that he would be saying it aloud, welcomingly,
in this cramped cubicle aboard a battered starship:
"God is not willing to do everything,
and thus take away our free will and that share of glory which belongs to
us."