Sound Decision

Astounding Oct 1956

(1956)*

Randall Garrett & Robert Silverberg

Usually, Man acts on the basis of “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.” But when crossing it means deliberately ordering the annihilation of 180 human beings, and no policy has been established … who has the courage to cross the bridge first?

-

“There are millions of laws

legislators have spoken;

A handful the Creator sent.

The former are being continually broken;

The latter can’t even be bent.”

—David Gordon

The Ballad of Ways and Means

-

What happened to the space liner Martian Queen was, on the surface of it, highly improbable. For a velocity vector to exactly cancel out an acceleration is something that no one in his right mind would imagine happening accidentally, and certainly no sane gambler would bet on its probability, no matter what the odds.

But yet, if you inspect the picture a bit more closely, it becomes readily apparent that any given incident is highly improbable. The unfertilized egg, after all, has a few hundred million spermatozoa to choose from; what are the odds that you will be you?

It’s futile, however, to compute the probability of an event after the event has already taken place. You might come up with figures that proved it didn’t happen, and in the realm of cause and effect ex post facto legislation is worthless.

The statistics were against it—but it happened.

The Martian Queen was a luxury liner of some five hundred metric tons, belonging to Barr Spaceways. She was, at the time, making a “short-run” orbit from Mars to Earth, carrying a hundred and fifty passengers and a crew of thirty, including stewards.

Just exactly what went wrong with the drivers isn’t known or knowable; the four men who might have known were dead within seconds after it happened. There are several things that could have caused the disaster—an accident which, except for the level-thinking of one man, might have caused the deaths of many more than the mere handful who died in a sudden blaze of light.

-

I

“How much longer?” snapped Mrs. Natalie Ledbetter. She looked round-headed and wattled like a turtle; her words snapped out and were snapped off at the end, as though she begrudged the question mark at the end of an inquiring sentence.

“A few hours yet, Mrs. Ledbetter,” said Parksel with the infinite patience of a man who has borne more than his share and is willing to bear more indefinitely—as long as it pays.

Mrs. Ledbetter pulled a cigarette out of a gleaming platinum case, struck it, and drew in a lungful of pungent smoke. “I hate spaceships,” she said. “It’s not the crowded little cabins; it’s not that there’s nothing to do; it’s not those—”

She scowled at the’ gently sighing air intake which seemed to scoop the tobacco smoke out of the room and carry it out of sight. “No. I have plenty to do; I can keep in touch with my directors on Earth and Mars. No. The thing that bothers me is the feeling that I’m on a roller-coaster. I rode on one of those things once—just once. It’s a penned-in feeling, a knowledge that you can’t get off. That’s what I’d like to do! Get off this thing! Get a breath of fresh air. But there isn’t even any stale air out there!” She waved a hand straight down, toward the outer hull of the ship.

Parksel was a big, heavy man with a look on his face that was neither boredom nor idiocy, but an expression of blank acquiescence, revealing nothing whatever of the workings of the mind behind the face. As a combination bodyguard, and private secretary, he left little to be desired, insofar as Mrs. Ledbetter was concerned. He was well-paid and had been told that he was mentioned in her will—provided she did not die by violence. He wasn’t particularly concerned over that. Even Mrs. Ledbetter s tough old frame didn’t have much longer to go; she was a hundred and nine, and beginning to show it. The gerontologists had her held together like a carefully-articulated and highly valuable fossil.

“Get out the chessmen, Parksel,” she said. “And mind you don’t walk into that queen-knight trap like you did last time.”

“Yes, Mrs. Ledbetter.” He walked across the small cabin and got out the set. After arranging the ivory pieces on the table, he looked up at her. “It’s your move first, I think.”

“Yours,” she said testily. “I took you with white last time.”

He reached out a hand just as the speaker blared:

Your attention please! In three minutes, the gyros will begin to cut down the spin on the ship. We have to stop the spin around the longitudinal axis in order to apply thrust along it for deceleration. Please get into your bunks and fasten your safety belts. You will be warned again in two minutes.

“Damn!” said Natalie Ledbetter.

Without a word, Parksel leaned forward and began scooping up the precious carven antiques and restoring them to their plush-lined niches, inwardly happy. The musty, oppressive smell of the old woman was starting to bother him, and he was glad to get away from the table.

Still, he thought, it’s a living.

-

George MacBride stood listening to the announcement, then grinned down at his wife. “You heard what the man said, honey—back to bed.”

Marian MacBride’s pleasant face assumed an impish look of pseudo-shock. “George!”

MacBride looked innocent. “That’s what the man up there said. It wasn’t my idea. I’m not captain of this tub.” The grin did nothing to soften the angles in his face; his head and features looked as though they had been carved in mahogany by an expert sculptor who, unfortunately, had had to use a lumberman’s axe for the job. He was of average height and built like a wrestler with a slight paunch. At forty-five, he considered the paunch more or less excusable.

Marian MacBride was ten years younger, and could pass for thirty easily, or even twenty-eight. Her face was round, soft, and glowing with vitality where it lacked mere prettiness. “It’s too bad it had to end so soon,” she said gently. “It was such a wonderful trip.”

MacBride walked over and patted her on the shoulder. “We’ll go again. Maybe Venus next time. After all, Breckmann’s Incorporated sends only its best men out. Meaning me, naturally.”

Marian smiled. “Sure. But are they going to let you take me? This is your fifth trip. It’s my first. And probably my last.”

“But, honey—”

She shook her head. “You don’t kid me, Georgie-Porgie. You had to pull every wire you could get your hands on to get the company to pay for my passage to space. They’d never do it twice.”

MacBride looked thoughtful. “Well … we could save the money—”

Marian walked over to the bunk and lay down. “Don’t be silly, George. If you think I’m going to save money for a second trip, you’re crazy. For a first one … well, I might. But I’ve had my fling now, and I’m not going to toss away your salary for fun. If I never go again, I’ll still remember this one.”

MacBride’s face suddenly beamed with pleasure and pride. “Honey, you’re wonderful. And just for that, I’m going to let you in on a little secret. You remember that get-together at Old Man Feld’s place? Yeah? Well, the Old Man said that he thought it was fine that I’d brought you along. Said he thought it was good politics for a sales engineer to bring his wife. He’s going to make a recommendation to Breckmann in Austria.”

Marian sat bolt upright. “George!” She blinked, as if there were a possibility of tears. “That’s what you’ve been working on! Those group-psychology courses! That—”

“That’s right.” He nodded happily. “I—”

Your attention please! In one minute, the gyros will begin to cut down the rotation of the ship. The gravity will drop to zero in twenty-one minutes. Please strap yourselves in your bunks. A steward will check you shortly.

“Comfortable, darling baby?” asked Fred Armbruster, as he looked solicitously at his pretty wife.

Ruby smiled across the space that separated the two bunks. “Uh-huh. I’ll be all right, sweetheart.”

“Sure you will, baby duck. You didn’t feel too bad during the takeoff, did you?”

“No,” she lied. “I’ll be all right.”

Fred Armbruster was lean and tall and rich and in love. Ruby had been deathly sick every time the gravity switched, even though she thought the rest of the trip was simply wonderful. Maybe, Fred thought, I could get her mind on that—

“It’s been a wonderful trip, hasn’t it?” he asked.

“Best honeymoon a girl could ask for,” she said sincerely. “I’d never thought Mars could have been beautiful. I’d always pictured it as a dried-up, nearly airless ball of clay. But the purple sky and the red-and-yellow desert—” Her voice trailed off.

“And remember that one sunset?” Fred hazarded. “The one with the dust storm?”

Ruby smiled at the fond memory. “It was wonderful. All blue and violet and crimson and streaked with—”

The door popped open and a head stuck in. “Everyone secure? Fine.” The door closed.

“Crewman,” Fred said bitterly. “Always a crewman has to stick his head in where it isn’t wanted. If I were running this ship, I’d—”

“Don’t be that way, sweetheart.”

Fred frowned. “I still don’t think every crewman ought to have a copy of that master key. If it were the captain who—”

Your attention please! The gyros will start in three seconds. Please stay in your bunks during the entire time. There will be a five-second interval of weightlessness, after which the gravity will be shifted for deceleration. There was a brief pause, then: Gyros on. Please remain in your bunks.

-

Edouard Descartes Andre blew a cloud of blue cigarette smoke toward the ceiling. “Will I be glad to get home!” he said vehemently, “Mars! Canned air and stinks! Dopey-looking fat beetles that claim to have brains!”

In the next bunk, Jerry Hammermill relaxed, his hands folded behind his head and cradling it. “Don’t yap, Eddie, old mug. You made a shivering good bankroll on that shivering planet. And don’t disparage our Martian friends; they may look pretty shivering ugly, but they’ve lined your pocket for you.”

“I wish you wouldn’t talk so loud, you idiot!” Andre grumbled unhappily. “I still think they could have those cabins wired.”

“Don’t be a shivering fool,” Hammermill said mildly. “In the first place, my instruments don’t lie, and in the second, the taped stuff I’m feeding into these steel walls would foul up any shivering pickups yet invented. And besides, I haven’t given them any details.”

“Yeah,” said Edouard Descartes Andre. “Sure, you’re the smart one—the smart one who’s going to land us in the brig yet.”

“The smart one,” Hammermill pointed out, “who made us a quarter of a million chips apiece. Besides, if we don’t make any direct evidence against ourselves, the World Government can’t touch us. Martians can’t testify in court.”

“I hope you’re right,” said Andre. He leaned back and glared meaningfully at his companion.

They fell silent. And, slowly, as the spin eased off, orientation was lost. “Up” and “down” gently began to merge with each other, until they vanished and became one with every other direction.

Acceleration in five seconds, said the speakers.

-

Captain Bernard L. Deering, a tall, massive man whose iron-gray hair was cropped in a stiff brushcut, and into whose hands the hundred seventy-nine other voyagers aboard the Martian Queen had entrusted their lives during the journey across space, sat in the astrogation dome watching the stars circle around him. Captain Deering had been in the service of Barr Spaceways for some twenty years, after a distinguished career in military service. He knew his ship, and he knew his job.

As the ship’s spin decreased and the gravity dropped, the stars circling the dome slowed to a halt. When they finally stopped altogether, Captain Deering snapped: “Bearing!”

The astrogator, a prune-faced, angular man named Bliven, who had gone into space straight from M.I.T. and who had been part of Deering’s team for eleven years, instantly called out a string of numbers, and the captain smiled. “Dead on,” he said. “Feed in the tape and start her at schedule.”

The automatic landing tape snaked into the computer which fed exactly-timed impulses to the engine room. There was a nearly subsonic hum—the sort heard by the skin rather than the ear. Gradually, gravity returned, this time at right angles to its previous pull. Inside the cabins, the bunks rotated in their frames. While the spin was on, they had been twin beds bolted to the yellow floor, next to a blue wall. Now they became tiered bunks, one above the other, bolted to a yellow wall above a blue floor. The crewmen referred to spin as “yellow gee” and longitudinal thrust as “blue gee,” because of the code coloring of the walls.

The accelerometer climbed swiftly to 980 and held steadily at that. “One of these days,” said the astrogator, “some bright guy is going to have sense enough to define a Standard Gravity as one thousand centimeters per second squared. That’ll relieve us of having to bother with these figures.”

“You want to re-define the centimeters?” Deering asked, grinning.

“Nope. I want to say that the pull at the surface of Earth is point nine eight Standard Gees.”

“I’ll go for that,” agreed the captain.

And that was when it happened. There was a loud thump! that shook the Martian Queen from engine compartment to astrogation dome.

The ship pitched wildly as though she’d been hit by an artillery shell—a big one. The accelerometer needle lurched like a crazy thing and began to climb as though it were going to twist itself around the pin. It reached nine thousand before it suddenly stopped and fell to zero.

The ship was silent. For nearly a minute, no one spoke. The few seconds of exposure to nearly nine gravities had taken the breath out of everyone. Captain Deering coughed and grabbed at the intercom.

“Engines! What happened?”

There was no reply from the engine room.

“Enkers! Olivers! Tance! Punz!” he shouted. “What’s going on back there?”

There was no answer. There couldn’t be. The captain didn’t know it yet, but his engine crew had died in the glare of heat and light, the moment’s flash of radiance, that had wrecked the engine room.

-

II

White Sands Spaceport covered four hundred square miles of New Mexico desert. It was a great, hard, white, smooth blank spot of land, surrounded by clumps of yuccas and cactus and not much else. At the eastern end, a full square mile of the area was devoted entirely to the Administration area—a neatly-arranged group of shining frosty-white buildings whose irradiated polyethylene walls gleamed brilliantly in the sunlight. The sparkling shower of diamond-bright beams that cascaded from the walls directly in the path of the sun’s rays was hard on the eyes, but it made the spaceport remarkably easy to spot from a few hundred miles up, surrounded as it was by the yellow-brown of the desert.

Neil Stanley looked out of the window of his office and winced at the sun’s heat. He had been working since dawn, and hadn’t realized that the sun had shattered the soothing coolness of the desert morning. He touched the polaroid control gently and the window dimmed, reducing the light to a bearable level.

He didn’t object to the desert as such, but he did object to the heat and the sun. Fortunately, a major general of the Space Service rated an office complete with air-conditioning and window controls, and as Base Coordinator for the commercial flights out of White Sands, his duties didn’t call for much work that couldn’t be handled in his office.

Stanley liked his job simply because it was about as un-military as a job could get. Physically big, quick-witted and impressive-looking, Stanley had mastered military routine fully. He had served at the military spaceport in Nevada, but when the chance had come to take on the difficult task of handling the commercial traffic, he had jumped at it.

The military spaceport in Nevada was remarkably smooth in its operation. Routing was simple; a few well-placed orders did the trick, and they were followed—to the letter.

Civilians didn’t listen to orders half as well, even in situations involving the dangerous business of landing spaceships. Their remarkable obstinacy at times increased the headaches, but it was the constant surprises that made the job fun.

Stanley turned from the window and looked up at the schedule on the wall. The top line read MARTIAN QUEEN—1404 : 9 +/- 2. That was the next ship due in. Underneath it was the arrival time of the Aphrodite, due in the next morning.

He checked his watch automatically and computed the time. The radar tower ought to have a fix on the Queen any minute now.

When the phone rang, he grinned. In the matter of predicting what a spaceship is going to do, there’s not much trick in being an honorable prophet. The laws of gravity are as inexorable as the march of time; in order to land a ship in the right place at the right time, there are certain things that have to be done, and certain times to do them.

Stanley picked up the phone. “Stanley here.”

“General, we’ve got the fix on the Martian Queen”,

“What’s the ETA?” Stanley asked.

There was a pause at the other end of the line. “We haven’t computed the ETA, sir,” the voice said hesitantly. “There’s something wrong. The position is off, and the velocity is constant. The—”

“Never mind,” Stanley said, cutting the man off in mid-sentence. “I’ll be right over.” He slammed the receiver down and pushed the phone away.

He left his office on a dead run, his lips clamped together in a grim scowl. When a radar fix can’t compute the Estimated Time of Arrival of a spaceship instantly, there is something wrong—deadly wrong.

He spun down the flight of stairs from his second-story turret, whirled through the swinging glass doors, and vaulted the two steps that Jed down to the ground. The pavement was warm beneath his feet, and the hot, dry air swept parchingly into his lungs.

His jeep was waiting for him a little way off, and the driver was half dozing in the nearby shade. But when he saw the major general coming toward him at better than double time, he vaulted into the driver’s seat and had the engine running by the time Stanley got there.

“Radar Tower One,” Stanley snapped. “And gun it!”

-

The jeep shot off almost instantly. Stanley leaned back, staring at the black tufts of hair on the backs of his fingers, wondering stonily what story was going to be written today, what record of disaster and/or heroism. He didn’t know. He didn’t know what was going to happen. All he knew was the Martian Queen had gone haywire and wasn’t doing what it should be doing, up there in the sky.

The radar tower was a spidery structure whose struts and girders stood outlined sharply against the sky, metallic gray against bright, painful blue. The jeep pulled up short in front of the tower, and Stanley climbed out almost in the same instant. “Stay here,” he called to his driver, as he went inside.

Three bleak-faced men waited for him there.

“Sir, do you think—?” began Sokolow, a thin, sandy-haired technician whose face creased in a perpetual scowl.

“Never mind,” Stanley said crisply. “Time to talk later.” He pushed back his cap and walked past them without bothering to ask questions.

“Chart,” he murmured.

They complied. Stanley looked at the blip on the scope and checked the reading against the chart, frowning worriedly. Something was definitely wrong; the blip wasn’t moving, which indicated a constant velocity. The Queen should have started decelerating long before this.

A bead of sweat trickled down his heavily-tanned forehead, and he brushed it away impatiently. The data was there. The Queen wasn’t decelerating. Why? Who knew? Who cared? All that mattered was the bare fact.

“Get me a direct line to Captain Deering!” Stanley said sharply, without looking up from the charts.

“Yes, sir,” Sokolow said.

Stanley rubbed his chin. The ETA charts were simplicity itself. The readings on the screen could be checked against the charts and the time for landing was right there; the figures had been computed long before. All the radar man needed to know was the ship’s position, velocity, and negative acceleration.

But this ship was off position and had no negative acceleration, and the charts weren’t set up for a situation like that. Preconceived rules are nice things to have, but they simply don” work in an emergency.

While the radio man upstairs tried feverishly to get a direct communication to the Martian Queen, Stanley reached across the desk, pounced on the phone, grabbed it toward him, and dialed Routing.

“Stanley here. I want a computation fast.” He glanced at the screen and rattled off the bearing, velocity, and direction of the blip on the radar. “I want to know when and where she’ll hit if she doesn’t decelerate. Got that?”

When and where she’ll hit. He said the words in a clipped, businesslike manner, concealing the feeling that lay behind them. It was impossible for him to get hysterical over the situation, but he certainly appreciated its ugliness. Spaceships are big, heavy things, traveling at fantastic speeds, and a man who had worked with them half his life knew exactly what potential danger each one carried.

“Got it, general. We’ll feed it into the DIRAC right away.”

“Make it fast. I want that information yesterday, if not sooner.”

He slammed down the phone.

There were footsteps behind him.

“I’ve got Captain Deering, sir,” said the radio man.

-

Attention! There has been a slight change in the landing procedure. Please remain m your bunks until you are given the all-clear. There is nothing to be alarmed about; there will simply be a slight change in landing time. Repeat: there is nothing to be alarmed about.

Captain Deering frowned as he listened to the voice of Lieutenant Bessemer over the speaker. That final repeat, he thought, was unnecessary, even if it was good procedure. Civilians were sure to get suspicious if they were told too earnestly that all is well.

He hoped the words would be effective. A slight change in landing time. It sounded fine, but, chillingly enough, it was perfectly true. If the Queen couldn’t be straightened out, there would not only be a change in landing time, but a different velocity as well. The velocity of the Martian Queen was a long way from being zero with respect to the Earth.

The intercom buzzed loudly. “Captain? Hagerty here. We can’t get into the engine room, sir. The place is hotter than a Roman candle.”

“Radioactivity or thermal?”

“Both. The scintillation counters are fizzing all over the place, and the temperature’s running close to three hundred Fahrenheit. Couldn’t be anyone left alive in there.”

Captain Deering thought fleetingly of his four-man engine crew, and said, “Get out one of the suits and send a man in there for a look around. Don’t overexpose him, but try to get an estimate of the damage. We’ve got to get this bird back under control, and we’ve only got minutes to do it!”

-

Marian MacBride turned her head to smile at her husband. “This gravitylessness isn’t so bad, is it? Once you get used to it, I mean.”

George grinned. ” ‘Gravitylessness’,” he mimicked. “Now, there’s a word I like. Couldn’t we add a few more syllables, just for effect?”

“Don’t tease, George. What I mean is, I think it’s fun.”

“Fun, she says!” MacBride laughed. “If that’s your idea of fun, you can have it, honey. Me, I like to know which way is down. Close your eyes and try to imagine you’re hanging on the ceiling. Or floating around in the air, or—”

“Stop it, George,” she said petulantly. “What are you trying to do? Make me sick?”

“Yup. I figure that if you’re sick, I’ll be so worried about it that I won’t have a chance to be able to think about being sick myself.”

“Fine sentiment!” Then she paused. “What do you suppose is the matter? That was an awful shake we had.”

“Meteor, probably,” George said. “A big rock can do a lot of damage to a ship if it hits it, you know.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well, as long as the ship doesn’t lose its air, we’re all right. I’ve read about meteor collisions. All the air goes out, and everybody smothers, or something. I wouldn’t like to die that way.”

“It does seem a rather stuffy death,” agreed George. “But these new ships can spot anything big a long way off. There’s nothing to worry about. The death rate for spaceships is a lot lower per capita than even aircraft.” He stopped suddenly, realizing that the conversation was frightening both of them a little, and aware that what he was telling her so solemnly was probably scientific hogwash anyway. Their voices were getting tense.

He put his hands behind his head. His fingers were cold.

“It does seem a rather stuffy death,” he said, trying to make his voice sound cheerful the second time. “You recognize the allusion, don’t you, Marian?”

She thought for a moment. “That was that music thing you were in last year, wasn’t it? The Gilbert & Sullivan operetta?”

“Yes,” he said. “Remember, Yum-Yum says it to—”

He glanced at her. She wasn’t at all interested.

“Anyway,” he said, “if we stopped to avoid the meteor, it’s not going to hit us, is it?”

“Do you think—”

“No, sweetheart. I can guarantee we won’t hit it.”

-

Ruby Armbruster was being violently sick. Her face was buried in the mouth of the collapsible plastic emergency bag, and her body seemed to be trying to tear itself apart with the racking convulsions that surged through it.

Fred had unstrapped himself from his own bunk and lowered himself to where his wife lay. Her dry, harsh coughs showed that her stomach was, by now, completely empty; only the automatic nervous reaction kept up the terrible nausea.

“You’ll be all right, dear,” he said soothingly. “You’ll be all right. The gravity will come on pretty soon. You’ll be all right.”

Over and over he repeated it, trying to lull her into relaxation, trying to stop the awful, twisting convulsions of her abdomen.

Finally, the nausea subsided a bit. She turned, looked up, Her face was beaded with sweat, and she was trembling all over. She sighed gently, struggling to regain control over herself.

“Oooohhh … Ohh, Fred—”

“Easy, honey.”

“I feel as though I’d lost everything. I … I … ooohh …” Her voice trailed off.

“Feel bad, honey?”

“Horrible. There’s no up—Hold me, Fred. Hold me. I think … I mean, it feels like I’m falling.” Her voice told of terrible, primitive fear welling up from somewhere in the recesses of her subconscious. “Don’t let me fall, Fred. Please—don’t let me fall!”

Sobs had replaced the retching, but her body still shook.

Fred cradled her in his arms tenderly. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’ll hold you. You aren’t falling, so don’t worry. You aren’t falling. You aren’t falling.”

-

Natalie Ledbetter leaned over the edge of her bunk and looked down. “What’s the matter with you?” she asked, in her dry, deep man’s voice.

“Sick?”

Parksel’s face assumed an expression of stolid imperturbability. “No, ma’am. I’m afraid I have hiccups. Just hiccups, that’s all.” The sentence was punctuated occasionally by a muffled hic.

“Well, stop it!” she said insistently. “There’s no reason to make me feel ill! Parksel, I’ll have to take this up with Barr Spaceways! Imagine letting us lie like this in … ah … what is it? Free fall. That’s it: free fall. I’ll speak to Gregory Barr about it!”

“Yes, ma’am,” Parksel said. “Hic!”

“Stop it, I say! Stop it!”

“Yes, ma’am.” His eyes rolled in pain, revealing the battle going on within him as he struggled to retain the hiccup. “Mmmmph!” he finally said.

-

Jerry Hammermill was unbuckling his safety belt with flying fingers.

His mumbled blasphemies seemed to be more an aid to breathing than an actual attempt at communication.

“What’s eating you?” grumbled Edouard Andre from the bunk below.

Hammermill pushed himself out of the bunk toward the door and paused, while a muscle quivered in his cheek. When he spoke, his voice was tight and dry.

“No deceleration. There’s something wrong. This shivering ship is in trouble, make no mistake. We’re in free fall. Get that? Free fall!”

“Huh?”

“I’ll put it in words of hardly any syllables for you. Unless we’re in an orbit around Earth, we’re headed for the worst crack-up this planet has ever seen.”

Andre grinned with the superb self-confidence of the man who is shrewd and calculating but at the same time a complete idiot. “What are you worried about? They said everything was all right, didn’t they? Didn’t they? Then what are you worried about, huh?”

Jerry Hammermill stopped at the door and glared piercingly at his companion. He was silent for a moment, contempt gathering on his face. “Sure they told us everything was all right, you bird-brained blockhead! What did you expect them to say? Something like: ‘We’re all going to die in a few minutes, so please be patient.’ Is that what you expected?”

He opened the door and was out in the corridor before the white-faced Andre could say anything.

-

Captain Deering’s jaw muscles tightened as he heard the words coming over the intercom.

“Hagerty here. The engine room’s a wreck, captain. I sent Palmer in, but he couldn’t stay long; it’s too hot down there. We didn’t find out much.”

“What about the main converter?” Deering asked anxiously.

“Almost completely gone. It’s a wonder it didn’t blow into fragments when it went. God only knows what happened. The engine crew’s gone—died almost instantly, I’d guess.”

“What’s the converter like?” Deering asked. He’d long ago forgotten about the lamentable but irreparable death of his engine crew; the important thing now was getting the engine room back together, not giving the four men a proper burial. That could come later—if there was any later to come.

“The converter’s a mess,” Hagerty said. “Mostly molten metal, according to Palmer, though it’s beginning to solidify now. The shielding has kept the radiation from the rest of the ship, and it’s slowly dying out now.”

“And the engines?” Deering asked, knowing that only a miracle could have preserved them. “Any chance of starting them?”

“What engines?” Hagerty’s voice told the story without need of further explanation. “There aren’t any engines left to start.”

Deering drummed on his uniform-cuff with the fingertips of his left hand. His mind was racing ahead, trying to figure out the probable courses of action to take. The trouble was that no answer seemed like a workable one.

“What about the—” Captain Deering started to say. But the voice of Lieutenant Bliven interrupted.

“There’s a direct call from General Stanley at White Sands, sir! Can you—”

Deering whirled impatiently, fighting to rein in his self-control. He was staying as cool as possible; this was the first major accident he’d had in twenty years, but he was a levelheaded enough man to know how to behave—he hoped. “Just a second!” he snapped. “Tell Stanley to hold it! Hagerty! Is there any chance of getting the secondary converters going?”

“No, sir,” came the flat reply. “They’ve blown, too, and—”

“The general says it’s urgent, sir,” the astrogator persisted. “Says he must talk to you at once.”

“Damn!” the captain shouted, letting some of his tight control relax. “Tell him to wait!” He turned back to the intercom. “Hagerty?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Listen, do everything you can. Understand? Get this ship operating, if you possibly can.”

-

Deering listened to his own words, heard his own deep voice bouncing around the cabin, knowing as he spoke them that they were utterly futile. Hagerty was a good man, but he was no magician.

He turned away from the intercom and grabbed the radiophone, feeling as if there were cannons to the right and cannons to the left of him. “Deering here!” he barked. “What do you want, Neil?”

“Buddy? Stanley here. What’s going on up there? Man, you’ve got to stop that thing!”

Stanley’s voice held an ominous, imperative ring. Deering grinned sardonically. “Any suggestions? Black magic, maybe?”

“What’s the trouble?”

“Main converter shot all to hell, and so is the secondary. Engines out. I’m just getting moving on the thing. What’s our course?”

Stanley’s voice was harsh. “Never mind now. What happened?”

“God knows!” Deering said. “We’d just stopped spin for deceleration and something blew in the engine room. We’re powerless. Hagerty says there’s nothing but slag down there!”

Stanley was silent for a moment, and Captain Deering stared impatiently at the radiophone in his hand. He felt a little better about things now that he knew Stanley of White Sands was with him. There was something reassuring about contact with the big catlike man, even when you were riding a spaceship straight to hell and he was sitting down there comfortably in an air-conditioned turret.

“O.K., feed me your co-ordinates,” Stanley said at last.

Deering glanced up at Lieutenant Bliven. The prune-faced astrogator was standing by tensely. “Course,” Deering demanded.

The astrogator threw him a sheet of paper, from which Deering read figures. “That’s as close as I can get,” he said, when he was through. “Do you have a fix on us?”

“Checking it now,” said Stanley. “I’ve got some other things to do right now, but keep the line open. Off.”

Deering said nothing. He clenched his fists and stared out the astrogation dome at the diamond-hard stars. They looked back at him from their black-velvet settings, utterly unconcerned.

The captain sat back and let the tenseness drain out of him. The figures were starting to shape up, and the returns were coming in. He turned to the intercom.

“Hagerty?”

“Yes, chief?”

“What’s going on?”

“Nothing, sir. There’s nothing I can do.”

“O.K.” Deering said. “Keep trying.”

The words were futile. The Martian Queen was falling toward Earth—powerless. Deering took the situation in, and he knew there was little sense in ordering Hagerty to work a miracle. There was nothing in space that could save the ship.

-

III

Neil Stanley turned toward the radioman. The air was hot and close in the radar tower, and it seemed to him a dull odor of ozone hung overhead. “Keep that line open,” he ordered. “No matter what happens, keep it open!”

He gripped the phone again and dialed routing, his thick fingers having trouble with the dial in his haste. He heard the click, then a voice.

“What’s happening to that data?” he asked.

“Coming out now, sir,” someone at the other end said. “We fed DIRAC the figures you gave us. They’re not too accurate, but—Wait! Here it is now.”

There was a long silence at the end of the line, while Stanley chafed his fingers impatiently together. “Sir!” came the voice finally. “They aren’t going to miss Earth!”

“What? That checked?”

“Yes, sir. Whatever happened, it threw them off course just enough so that they’ll still crack up on Earth even if they don’t decelerate. It’s a million-to-one fluke that they should be—”

“Can it,” Stanley said. “What’s the intersection point of the two orbits?”

“Somewhere along the East Coast, sir. We can’t get it any closer than that without more precise data. I’d say that it’ll hit somewhere near New York City if it doesn’t slow down!”

“It figures,” said Stanley tightly. “It figures. How long before she hits?”

“A little better than a half hour, sir. Can you get us more accurate data?”

“As soon as possible,” Stanley said.

Near New York City, he thought. Of course. As long as it has to be a wild coincidental thing, it might just as well come down on New York, and not in the Atlantic or out here in New Mexico or up in Alaska.

He turned back to the radioman. “Get me Deering,” he ordered. “I don’t want to talk to him; just tell his astrogator to give me positional and velocital data as soon as possible. Tell him I want it down to the last decimal place he can possibly squeeze out of it, and then a couple more!” He stopped talking, and a frown passed over his face. “Then give the data to Routing,” he said after a pause. “Tell them I want an orbit that’s as close as skin. I’ve got something to do.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And by the way,” he added. “Keep this under your hat. This is not to go out to anyone—not anyone!”

-

He left the radar tower at high speed, bursting out into the open again. The sun was now high overhead, and it was hot.

The driver still had the motor of his jeep going. Stanley vaulted in, and the gears buzzed as the driver released the brake and shoved hard on the accelerator.

“Experimental!” Stanley ordered. “And double quick.” The jeep roared off across the compound toward the Experimental Drive building.

Almost before they had started, they were there. The jeep’s wheels had barely stopped moving when Stanley sprang out of it and toward the building.

Colonel Arthmore jerked his head up in surprise as the major general slammed into the room. The colonel didn’t even have time to give a proper salute before Stanley said:

“Is that XV-19 ready to go? Can we have it in space within the next twenty minutes?”

The colonel blinked and nodded. “I think so, sir, if we rush it. We—”

“Rush it, hell!” Stanley snapped. “I want you to move faster than that ship can. It’s the highest acceleration ship we’ve got, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir. We—”

“I want it ready to leave inside ten minutes. Take that as an order!”

“Yes, sir.” The colonel had fully come to life now; he’d been galvanized into the same sort of quivering perpetual motion that was driving Stanley right now.

“And I don’t want a word of what’s going on to leak out of here,” Stanley said. “Is that understood? If one word leaks, or if that ship isn’t ready to go, I’ll see to it that you’ll never wear those birds on your shoulder again. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir,” said the colonel. “Anything else, general?”

“Nothing. Just stand by for further orders. Keep your phone open to Radar Tower One. This is a double - A - double - prime emergency, and if we don’t work it right a lot of people are going to die. Now move!”

But the colonel was already gone.

Stanley grinned at the retreating officer for a moment, then turned and headed back outside. He stood in front of the Experimental Drive building for a few moments, planning his next steps, wondering, extrapolating.

XV-19, he thought. Arthmore should have it ready to go almost at once. He cracked a knuckle reflectively, enjoying the feeling of knowing that for the next two minutes he could breathe freely. Things were moving, now; plans were under way.

The ship was coming down in New York or vicinity thereof, eh? That was a top-flight emergency—-and called for emergency action.

He looked at his watch. It was hardly more than a few minutes since the whole thing had started, and it seemed like days. The hot New Mexico sun was still climbing toward noon, and the thermometer wasn’t yet at its maximum for the day.

No, he thought. The heat’s yet to come.

“Let’s get back to the radar tower,” he said to his driver.

-

As he plunged into the big room that made up the heart of the tower, two voices hit him at once.

“Captain Deering is yelling for you, general!”

“Data is in on the Queen, general!”

He grabbed the sheet of paper that the second man held out and ran toward the microphone that had been set up for direct contact with the Martian Queen. He grabbed it, started to say something, then covered it with his hand. “Did you say anything to Deering?”

“No, sir.” The sergeant’s smile looked twisted, as though he were worried. Everyone in the room knew pretty much what the situation was by now, and the tenseness was starting to spread through the men like a virulent epidemic. The air seemed to crackle.

“We figured that was your baby,” the sergeant said.

Stanley grinned. “Thanks, sergeant.” He took his palm off the microphone.

“Buddy? Neil here. How are things?” His voice was calm.

There was a moment of silence. Stanley let his eyes flick around the room, and he saw the expression of horror registered on the sergeant’s face. Obviously the sergeant was thinking that Stanley had no right to be so calm in this sort of situation. He must have been even more shocked when he heard Captain Deering’s voice come in after the time-lapse.

“Same old stuff, Neil. No propulsion, no escape. How do we go down there?”

“We’ve got your co-ordinates down pat now,” Stanley said. “We can tell you almost to a hair where you’ll hit.”

A moment of silence. Then: “Hit? You’re sure we’ll hit Earth, then?”

“No doubt about it, buddy,” Stanley said. “If nothing happens between now and—then, you’ll get a hot dunk in the ocean.” He glanced again at the papers the sergeant had handed him. “Give or take a mile or so, you’ll land in Long Island Sound about ten miles southwest of Bridgeport, Connecticut. Right in the drink, buddy—right in the drink.”

There was a silence of a few seconds a third time—and Stanley waited patiently, knowing that the time-lag each time meant long seconds of agonized thought as Deering struggled to say what he had to say. Finally: “We can’t let that happen, can we?”

“Nope.” Stanley’s voice was quiet and controlled. “You don’t want your passengers to have an unexpected bath, do you?”

“No,” said Deering. “Can you get a rocket up here in time?”

“Plenty of time,” said Stanley. In the background, a large wall chronometer stroked off the seconds, ticking with consummate mechanical precision. “Don’t worry about it.”

-

IV

Jerry Hammermill pushed himself unsteadily down the long corridor that led from his cabin to the Common Room of the ship, that large and congenial room in which the passengers of the Martian Queen tried to pretend that they were al-most anywhere but aboard a spaceship.

He pushed open the hatch and swam into the middle of the room, hovering there in midair for a moment, his hands holding to the electrical unit in the ceiling.

He knew the danger he was in. At any moment, the ship could start accelerating, which would throw him to the deck with smashing force. But, somehow, that didn’t worry him. Still, his fingertips were quivering, and his face felt stiff, as though it had been coated-with varnish.

Jerry Hammermill had had a pleasant and profitable existence up to now, and the idea of having it all end through some freak accident didn’t appeal to him at all.

Pushing himself away from the ceiling, he headed toward the bar. There was no bartender on duty during free fall, of course, so Hammermill helped himself. He groped behind the bar until he found a plexiplast globe of Scotch. He broke the seal and squirted the liquid into his mouth in hot, smooth jets.

Then he turned and pushed his way toward the nose of the ship, up where the captain would be. He felt a little better about things—but first he wanted to see Captain Deering and find out, first hand, exactly what was going on.

-

“Hammermill!” the captain shouted as he saw the passenger drift around the corner of the door.

“You heard, I believe, the order confining everyone to cabins.”

Hammermill braced himself against the door and looked coldly at the blue-and-white uniform of the officer. Barr Spaceways wasn’t exactly pretty when it came to uniforms, but it was impressive. He looked at Deering’s tight, drawn face, and the hard eyes told him the answer immediately. His stomach crawled into a cold, hard knot.

“Well? What is it, Mr. Hammermill?” Deering asked angrily.

“Tell me this, captain,” Hammermill said hoarsely, “Why aren’t we decelerating?”

The blunt question echoed around in the captain’s cabin, bouncing from the walls, turning Deering and Astrogator Bliven even paler. Hammermill looked as hard and inflexible as the captain as he waited for an answer.

“Technical difficulties, Mr. Hammermill,” Deering said. “Everything will be taken care of shortly. You don’t want to be caught on your feet if we start to accelerate.” He glanced at Lieutenant Bessemer, standing to one side. “Would you show Mr. Hammermill back to his cabin, lieutenant?”

“You can’t do this to me, Deering! I demand to know exactly what’s happening aboard this ship.”

“Mr. Hammermill, rest assured that everything will be taken care of. Bessemer, show him to his cabin.”

The lieutenant moved forward and damped a hand on Hammermill’s arm.

Hammermill’s lean face became expressionless as he allowed himself to be propelled out of the cabin and pushed into the corridor.

“O.K., lieutenant,” he said as the door to the captain’s cabin shut behind them. “I’ll go quietly. I didn’t really mean to ask any embarrassing questions.”

Bessemer gave Hammermill a shove, and drifted back into the cabin. Hammermill, floating along the corridor, glared bitterly backward and muttered a curse.

Then he frowned and swam on. He had learned absolutely nothing—except that they were in one hell of a mess. Deering had been utterly transparent.

The ship wasn’t decelerating, and Hammermill knew enough about space travel to know that a spaceship an hour or so outside of Earth ought to be slowing down before it came in for a landing.

Were they heading for Earth, ‘ heading for the biggest pyrotechnic display in man’s history, or would they miss the planet and head out on a hyperbolic curve to nowhere? Hammermill didn’t know. But he did know they were in trouble.

-

“Deering didn’t say a thing?” Edouard Andre asked.

“Not a thing,” Hammermill said. “Except that what he accidentally told me between the lines is that the ship’s out of control and going to stay out of control.”

Mrs. Ledbetter glared at Parksel. “Is what this man says true?”

“You heard him yourself, Mrs. Ledbetter,” Parksel said.

“What should we do?” asked someone else.

Hammermill surveyed the group he had hastily assembled in his cabin. There were ten of them, the first ten people he could find. He had gone around knocking on cabin doors, getting passengers to come together, and then he had told them the story, explaining carefully and precisely to them just what it meant not to be decelerating. Their faces registered blank disbelief, horror, shock, anger, dismay—anything but determination.

Determination was what was needed, Hammermill thought.

Out loud he said, “I think there’s a conspiracy on the part of the officers of this ship to keep us from full knowledge of what’s been taking place here.”

“Maybe they’re just trying to prevent a riot,” suggested George MacBride ominously. “Maybe they don’t dare tell us.”

“Probably,” Hammermill admitted. “But at least some of us ought to know—this committee of passengers, at least. A few of us ought to know the score.”

“What good will that do?” Andre demanded.

“I don’t know,” said Hammermill bitterly. “But at least we’ll know what’s coming off. Our lives may be at stake, and we’re not being told anything.”

From the corner of the room came a slow, muffled sobbing. Hammermill frowned. He didn’t want hysteria complicating things.

“Why don’t we all go to the captain?” he said. “He can’t lie to all of us.”

“Good idea,” someone said.

“Let’s go!” said another.

Excitement started to spread through the group—terrible, irrational excitement of people who believed that if they only made enough noise, they would be saved.

-

Captain Deering studied the sweeping red second-hand of the chronometer on his wall. Then he turned to face Bessemer.

“I’m going up to the astrogation dome with Bliven. I expect Hammermill to stir up some trouble, and there’ll probably be more passengers coming down to ask questions.”

“What should I say, sir?”

“Tell them nothing,” Deering said firmly. “There’s no reason why they should find out we’re going to smack into the Sound until the split-second we do it—and we won’t have to worry about that if Stanley can get his rocket up here.”

“You think White Sands can get a rocket up here in time?” Bessemer asked.

Deering nodded. “I don’t doubt it,” he said. He watched the lieutenant’s eyes light up at the thought that the catastrophe off Bridgeport might yet be averted, and turned away. “Keep the paying customers calm and collected, Bessemer. And don’t bother me unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

-

Edouard Descartes Andre, left alone, stared feverishly at the row of shining rivets studding the wall immediately in front of him.

It’s all a trick, he told himself. They’ve found out somehow that Hammermill and I were running that con game with the beetles on Mars, and they know that if they can get us before we reach Earth soil they have us. They must have changed the orbit of the ship somehow in order to drop the two of us off at that Space Station instead of taking us to Earth. That way they can extradite us somehow right back to Mars. Oh, the stinkers. The dirty stinkers, he thought.

He kicked savagely against the wall. The recoil shot him instantly across the cabin, where he fetched up against the other wall with a gentle thump.

The dirty stinkers, he thought.

-

Mrs. Ledbetter’s thoughts were running the same way:

If I don’t get back to Earth, my nephews divide up my money and even Parksel gets some of it and … Oh, no, Parksel won’t get back either … and that deal with Consolidated will fall through, and isn’t General Enterprises going to love that?

Oh, those swine! Could General En be low enough to sabotage this whole ship just to keep that deal from coming off?

Across the cabin from her, Parksel was frowning nervously. He was worried, too.

Even if I get out of this alive and she doesn’t I lose out on the will. I don’t inherit if she dies violently. Damned codicil.

“It’s all right, Ruby, baby,” Fred Armbruster said almost desperately. “We’re going to come through it all right.”

Ruby looked at him sharply. “There’s no sense trying to talk it away, Fred. Hammermill says we’re going to crash, and we’ll all be killed.” Her eyes were red-rimmed from crying, but she wasn’t crying now. She was poised and cool in the face of death, long past the point of hysteria—or so it seemed. In that moment, Fred felt suddenly proud of her.

Then the veneer cracked. “God, I don’t want to die!” she screamed. “Can they get a rescue ship up here? Fred, do something! Do something!”

“There’s nothing I can do, baby,” he said dully.

On the other side of the ship, those same words were being spoken by George MacBride. “There’s nothing I can do, Marian.”

“Do you think Hammermill’s right? We’re not decelerating, he says. We’re still in free fall.”

“The Space Service knows what it’s doing,” MacBride said hopefully. “They’ll get us out of it. You wait. I’ll bet a rescue rocket’s been dispatched from Earth already.”

“Will it get here on time?” Marian asked.

“I hope so,” MacBride said. “It better.”

-

The other passengers were going through much the same thing, as the rumors filtered through the Martian Queen. Word was spreading, now. As the ship plunged onward at twenty miles per second toward Earth, seventy-five pairs of passengers discussed and re-discussed the situation, while Captain Deering remained holed up in the astrogation dome with Bliven, and while, on Earth, Major general Neil Stanley crumpled the memorandum that told him the XV-19 was ready, and dropped the wad of paper into his pocket.

The rocket was ready to go. Good, he thought.

He grabbed the phone and dialed Experimental.

“Colonel? Stanley here. Received memo. Confirmation?”

“Confirmed,” Colonel Arthmore said.

“Fine,” said Stanley. “We’re ready to send the XV-19 up, then.” He-gave the officer full and explicit instructions, and recradled the phone. Nothing further remained to do except talk to Washington.

“How’s that call to the Pentagon coming?” he asked the sergeant.

“No reply yet, sir. They said this was a high-level decision; the staff would have to assemble.”

Stanley glanced at his wrist watch and grinned without humor.

There was still time—not much, but enough. “Sure,” he said. “Well, relay it to my office when it comes through. I want full vision on the phone; this has to be impressive as all blazes.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Meanwhile, let me talk to Deering.”

“Yes, sir.”

The radio was open, but there was a delay of a few seconds before the captain of the Martian Queen spoke.

“We’ve got trouble at this end,” Deering said quickly when he came on. “The passengers know we’re in trouble. I’ve got a hundred and fifty hotheads on my hands now. The situation’s ready to blow.”

“How did it get out?” Stanley demanded.

“We couldn’t keep it secret, Neil; you know that. There was bound to be someone aboard who knew enough to realize we were in trouble, and didn’t know enough to keep his mouth shut.”

“Well, it’ll be easy enough to quiet them down,” Stanley said. “Just tell them that a rocket is on its way. See what I mean?”

There was an odd sort of grim humor in Deering’s voice. “I’ll tell them. Can you send up a teletype to that effect? It’ll look more reassuring on paper.”

“I’ll get it up right away.” Stanley paused and took a deep breath. “When the XV-19 gets up there, you may have to guide her in. Can you do that?”

There ‘was no hesitation at the other end. “Sure. Easy. Good luck, Neil. You’ll need it.”

“I know. And good luck to you.”

There was a faint chuckle in Deering’s voice as he said: “That sounds like Pooh-Bah’s toast to Nanki-Poo. ‘Long life to you—’ “

“I didn’t mean it that way,” Stanley said.

“I know. So long, Neil.”

Stanley nodded wordlessly and stood up. “Sergeant, as soon as that call comes from Washington, relay it to my office.”

He turned and strode out the door.

-

V

Lieutenant Bessemer stood his ground in the Common Room as best he could. He had one hand braced tightly against the wall behind him, and the other doubled up into a fist at his side.

There were over a hundred people in the Common at the time, milling uncertainly in the strange free-fall situation, but Bessemer was addressing his words to Jerry Hammermill.

“You’ve been spreading rumors, Hammermill,” the lieutenant said loudly. “You’ve gotten these people all excited over nothing.”

Hammermill started to say something, but a fat man near the bar bellowed, “I wouldn’t call it nothing! If we’re all in danger, we ought to know about it! We ought to get into the lifeboats!”

Hammermill turned and showed his teeth in a hard grin.

“You’re not on an ocean liner, mister. This is a spaceship. There aren’t any lifeboats on a spaceship.”

A woman was sobbing in the background. No—it was a man.

Mrs. Natalie Ledbetter said quietly, “Will we need parachutes, young man?”

“Parachutes?” Hammermill almost laughed. “Parachutes? At twenty miles a second? No, grandma, no parachutes.”

The old lady flashed a withering glance at Hammermill. “I was talking to the officer, young man. I’ll thank you to shut your silly face; you’ve caused quite enough trouble already.” She looked at the lieutenant again. “Just what is the situation, young man?”

Bessemer clenched and unclenched his fist “We are in some trouble,” he said, trying to keep his voice cool. “I can’t deny that. But the captain has authorized me to tell you that we absolutely will not crash. The ship will not hit Earth.”

Fred Armbruster waved a hand in the air. “That’s a lie!” he shouted. “That’s a dirty lie! Have any of you looked out the viewport? You can see Earth! And we’re falling towards it—directly towards it! It covers half the sky dead astern!”

George MacBride turned to face Armbruster. “Keep your mouth shut! You’re as bad as Hammermill.”

Armbruster’s eyes blazed. “Don’t tell me to … hey, I know you. You work for Breckmann. I can tell you right now, buster, you’re fired!”

Marian MacBride gasped. George’s blocky face assumed a nasty grin. “As long as I’m being fired,” he said slowly, “I might as well be fired for something worthwhile.” His fist came up in a crashing arc and landed on the point of Armbruster’s chin. Armbruster went into a high, curving backflip that brought him up against the farther wall.

MacBride, on the other hand, found himself drifting backwards from the force of the blow. Unable to check his ride, he slammed into Edouard Andre.

“Who ya shovin’?” Andre yelled angrily, throwing a punch in sheer reflex action.

It caught MacBride in the ribs, just under the heart, and the Irishman doubled up as he spun in air. Marian MacBride saw what had happened and grabbed an enameled red-and gold ashtray from the bar. She hurled it with unerring aim at Andre’s head. The plastic bowl bounced off Andre’s skull and hit another man nearby.

Everyone’s nerves were stretched to maximum tension anyway, and at this show of violence, nerves which had been vibrating like violin strings suddenly snapped. Somebody pushed somebody else. Fists began to piston out at faces. There were screams and oaths. Within two seconds, the Common Room was boiling over with a full-fledged riot. A mob of semi—hysterical people was finally getting the action it wanted. Subconsciously, each and every one of them knew that action had to be taken, and this was the only type of action it was possible to take.

-

Mrs. Ledbetter received a foot in the stomach and went flying wildly backwards across the bar. Parksel saw it, and something in his mind clicked. He had thought he hated the old harridan for years—and it wasn’t until that moment that he realized exactly how much affection he actually did have for her. He launched himself across the room, kicking off against the rivet-studded bulkhead, and slammed headfirst into the back of the kicker.

Fighting in free fall is not the easiest thing in the universe to do. A well-placed punch has as much effect on puncher as it docs on punched. The room was full of floating, drifting, moving bodies which were doing their best to inflict violence on every other body in the vicinity. Only a few people had sense enough to hold on to something.

Ruby Armbruster’s stomach was no longer queasy. Her legs were clamped tightly around the cold, streamlined metal of a decorative pillar’, and her eyes were hard and cold as she swung her small fists to keep people away from the unconscious body of her husband.

Lieutenant Bessemer had acted almost immediately. His fist had smashed into Jerry Hammermill’s face, and without waiting for further argument he had turned to get out of the room. Screaming raucously, Edouard Andre launched himself at Bessemer’s back, and the two of them slammed against the nearby door. The lieutenant, however, was a spaceman, used to handling himself in free fall, and Andre was not. Bessemer came out of the scramble with a black eye, but Andre was unconscious, hovering two feet off the floor, dazed by a rabbit punch to the neck.

-

Captain Deering was staring through the transparent dome in the nose of the ship at the bright, hard dots of the unmoving stars outside. It was good, he thought, that the ship was falling tail first; having to look at the green bowl of Earth ballooning up towards them would have been unnerving, even for him.

He turned from the dome just as Bessemer burst into the room.

“I told you not to—”

“Sir,” Bessemer interrupted, “those people have gone nuts down there! They’re tearing up the Common Room—and each other!”

Deering frowned. “You look like you got one in the eye yourself,” he said. “They’re really cutting up, eh?”

Bessemer nodded. His left eye was bruised and blackened. “They’ve lost all control of themselves.”

“Hm-m-m.” Deering handed the lieutenant a sheet of teletype flimsy. “Get on the PA system and read them this. Then take it down there and let them get a look at it. Don’t try to explain anything.”

Bessemer saluted, took the flimsy, and went down the catwalk to the master-control panel for the Public Address network. He flipped the switch and took the microphone from its niche.

“Your attention please! Your attention please! The ship is falling out of control, but there is absolutely no danger of our hitting Earth. A rocket from the spaceport will be here in two minutes. Repeat: a rocket from the spaceport will be here in two minutes. Please wait quietly, and be ready for it when it comes.”

He cut off the PA system and turned to find Deering standing behind him.

“Was that right, sir?”

“That was exactly as it should have been phrased,” Deering said.

“Take the flimsy down now and show it to them. That ought to quiet them down a little.”

Bessemer nodded wordlessly.

-

The lieutenant made his way through the corridor back to the Common Room, grasping the handholds along the ceiling to rush his passage.

The Common Room was strangely quiet when he entered. Everybody who was still conscious was looking at the door as the officer came through it.

He unfolded the teletype flimsy. “Here’s the message,” he said crisply.

George MacBride, who was nearest Bessemer, took it, and read it. A slow smile crossed his face. “Two minutes, eh? Doesn’t give us much time to pack.”

“It’s a minute and forty-five seconds now,” Bessemer said. “You won’t be able to take any personal possessions with you, I’m afraid.”

“But does that mean we have to leave our money and baggage here? Can’t we take anything along on the rocket?” asked Mrs. Ledbetter. She had a fortune in blue-white Mars diamonds along with her, and she didn’t care to lose them without an argument.

“I don’t see how you can take anything with you,” Lieutenant Bessemer said. He glanced at his watch.

His eyes roved around the Common Room. Over against the wall was a broad-shouldered man who had simply kept himself out of the free-for-all.

“Father,” Bessemer said, “the lives of everyone on this ship are in danger. I wonder if you would lead us in prayer.”

The priest nodded gravely.

“Our Father, who art in Heaven—”

-

VI

Major general Neil Stanley lifted his eyes from the screen before him, and glanced wearily at the clock on the wall above it.

Twenty-three minutes! Had it been only twenty-three minutes since the Martian Queen had gone out of control? Had it been only a little more than a quarter of an hour since all hell had broken loose?

Outside, the sun was near its peak height, and blazing down brilliantly on the baked sands of the spaceport. Stanley looked back at the television screen, where the images of five men were pictured—three civilians, and two five-star generals.

Five stars. It would have been nice to get five stars, Stanley thought. Five? It would have been nice to get two. But that would never happen now.

General Hagopian was a short, dark, hawk-nosed man whose chocolate-brown eyes reflected shrewd intelligence. He looked out of the screen and said, “The ship will land in Long Island Sound, then?”

“If it’s not stopped, yes,” Stanley said, for what must have been the twenty-seventh time.

One of the civilians—no one had bothered to tell Stanley exactly which high-level members of the Administration he was dealing with—said, “Is there any way at all to get the drive of that ship going again? Don’t they carry repair technicians, or something like that?”

“I have Captain Deering’s report,” Stanley said. “He states flatly that the main converter and the secondaries are absolutely and completely ruined. It would be, I assure you, impossible to fix them in the next fifteen minutes, even with the best intentions.”

The civilian ignored the sarcasm. “Well, how about a rescue ship? Couldn’t we get one up there in time to take those people off?”

Stanley paused and said, “Sending up a rescue ship is impossible, sir.”

“Why’s that?”

“It would never make it. They would have to accelerate to take off, decelerate to match velocity with the Queen, and then accelerate again to keep from hitting Earth. Counting the time it would take to get all the passengers and the crew off of the Queen, it would require”—he made a rough mental computation—”more than an hour, even if we used all the acceleration the passengers could stand. Em afraid it won’t work.”

General Hagopian said: “Then there’s absolutely no way we can save them?”

“None whatsoever, sir. There just isn’t time.”

Another of the civilians said: “We’re just lucky this time, I suppose.”

“What’s that?” Stanley asked.

“I mean, it’s too bad all those people have to die, but at least they’ll only hit the Sound. It would have been catastrophic if they’d hit a populated area. Only by the merest whisker of fate did that ship aim for the Sound instead of any of the cities on the Eastern Seaboard! Can you imagine what would have happened if the ship had landed in—”

“I’m afraid you don’t understand, sir,” Stanley said. “It isn’t the Sound we have to worry about—it’s the sound.”

The five men blinked.

“What nonsense is this?” asked General Hagopian.

“Just exactly what I said, sir. It doesn’t matter whether that ship lands in the water or not, because it’s never going to land in one piece anyway. That ship is coming into Earth at twenty miles per second. When it hits the atmosphere, it‘s going to go to pieces in a hell of a hurry. It will burn and collapse.

“But its actual impact with Earth’s surface isn’t going to be the thing that will do the damage. It won’t matter whether it comes down in Long Island Sound or in Times Square—it’s the impact with the atmosphere that will cause about twenty million deaths.”

-

No one said anything. The five men in the screen looked at him in blank-faced horror.

“You know what happens when a jet plane goes over a city too low?” Stanley said. “A supersonic jet can break windows. What sort of sound wave do you think a five—hundred-metric-ton spaceship will cause at—seventy-two thousand miles an hour?

“I’ll tell you. It would flatten every structure for miles around. If that ship hits Long Island Sound, New York City will be toppling in ruins before it ever arrives! Every town on Long Island is going to be pancaked. From Newark, New Jersey, to Hartford, Connecticut, that shock wave will knock over everything standing. This isn’t a matter of a few people in a ship dying; it’s a matter of millions!”

The civilian looked at General Hagopian.

“He’s right,” said the general, in a strangled voice.

“How much time do we have left?” the civilian demanded, white-faced.

“Only a few minutes,” Stanley said coldly. He looked at his watch. “Hardly any time at all.”

“Why didn’t you call us before this?”

“I called as soon as I heard,” Stanley said. “It took time to get all you people together. It took time to compute what was going to happen.

In the background of his screen, he saw two of the civilians engaging in some rapid-fire exchange of conversation.

“Can we evacuate?” the third civilian asked.

“In five or six minutes? Don’t be silly.” Stanley seemed utterly cool now, in sharp contrast to the five who faced him. “We couldn’t have gotten all those people out of that area even if we’d started evacuating the moment the Queen had its accident—or half a day before, for that matter.”

The civilian looked angry, but he said nothing.

“What do you suggest, general?” said Hagopian.

“There’s only one thing to do,” Stanley said levelly. “We’ll have to send up a rocket with an atomic warhead and blast that ship into gas before it hits.”

There was a stunned silence. Stanley counted five before anyone spoke. This was the moment he had waited for—the moment when he had to give the brass the only answer to the problem of what to do with the oncoming Queen. The reaction was as expected.

The civilian said: “Are you crazy? Blow up a hundred and eighty innocent people? There must be some other way.”

“But there isn’t,” Stanley said flatly. “There never has been. There is only one thing to do.”

“But we can’t permit that!” the civilian protested. “It’s murder!”

“Murder? Is it murder to kill people who are already doomed? Is it murder to save the lives of twenty million people? Pardon me for being melodramatic, but I don’t like the idea any better than you do. It was difficult for me to convince myself that there was no other way.”

“There must be another way,” said the civilian frantically. “Send up a rescue ship immediately! Hagopian, order him to send up a—”

Stanley’s jaw muscles stood out. Without waiting for the civilian to finish speaking, he said, “Look here, you blockhead. Do you understand that it’s impossible to send up a rescue ship? Do you understand that I can’t pull miracles out of a hat? It’s as impossible to send up a rescue ship as it is to catch the Martian Queen with your bare hands.”

“You can’t talk to me that way, general!”

Stanley glanced at Hagopian. The military man was saying nothing, but there was the faint suggestion of a smile around his thin lips.

“I’m simply trying to get you to understand,” said Stanley. “All of you. There is no other way out! None! Those people are going to die. D-I-E. It would be better if they died without taking a few million people with them. Is that clear?”

-

Stanley waited for a reply, and, sure enough, it was forthcoming. One of the other civilians said, “Couldn’t we divert it from its course somehow?”

“Not without destroying it,” Stanley said. “Which is exactly what I want to get permission to do.”

“I’m afraid that’s impossible, general. The public would never sanction—”

“The public be damned! It’s the public who is going to die! Die! Do you understand that? Twenty million people! Twenty million corpses to dig out from under ten thousand square miles of rubble!”

“That’s ridiculous!” said the third civilian. They were doggedly trying to talk Stanley out of insisting on this thing, it seemed. “How could a shock wave do all that?”

“How could it do it? It’s done it! Didn’t you ever hear of the Great Siberian Meteor that landed around 1908? It only came in at a speed of ten miles a second or so—half the Queen’s—and it laid waste hundreds of square miles of forest. Trees fell like matchsticks. And this ship is going about twice as fast!”

“There must be something else we can do,” said the first civilian stubbornly.

“All right,” Stanley said. “Start making suggestions.”

“Well—”

“Exactly. There is nothing else we can do,” he repeated. He glanced again at the clock. “Do I have your permission to send up an atomic warhead, then?”

“No!” came the answer. The first civilian was doing all the talking now. “That’s out of the question. There must be another way.”

“There isn’t,” Stanley said. “And wishing won’t make it so. You can’t wish away the laws of the universe—you’ve got to obey them. And that’s exactly what the Martian Queen is doing! And that’s exactly what New York is going to do when that shock wave hits!”

He paused and stared at them. “I ask you again: Do I have permission to send up that bomb?”

“I hardly see how we can sanction it, general. We’ll have to find some other way.”

Stanley looked at the clock and sighed.

“It’s too late now anyway,” he said softly. “While we’ve been haggling, the Queen has been falling. It couldn’t wait. Even if you ordered it, I couldn’t get a bomb up there now.”

Two of the men looked fearfully out of the window toward the north. Stanley caught the gesture; he couldn’t see the window on his screen, but he knew what they were looking for. From Washington, such a display would be easily visible.

“Oh, it won’t land,” said Stanley. His voice sounded old and tired. “There won’t be any crash. I sent up an XV-19 under robot control several minutes before you gentlemen got together. It was loaded with a thermo nuclear warhead. Captain Deering will—or I should say has—guided it in. The Martian Queen was vaporized over a minute ago. It was the only thing to do.”

One of the men covered his face with his hands. Stanley wondered who he was.

“I presume you know what this means,” asked General Hagopian quietly.

“I know,” said Stanley. “If I get out of it with a whole skin, I’ll still lose everything I’ve ever worked for. It doesn’t matter. At the court-martial, I can still know that I’ve saved the lives of millions of people.”

General Hagopian nodded. “That will be a point in your favor. But there’s nothing else we can do; you can see that. You’ll have to roast.” Then Hagopian looked steadily at Stanley. “You’re a very brave man, general. It’s too bad that most people will never understand what you did—and why.”

Stanley forced a smile. “The people who matter will understand, general. And they’re the only ones who count.”

The End