
Table of Contents

SPACEBIRD
COMMUTER
ASSISTED PASSAGE
CURTAIN CALL
BOARDING PARTY
PATROL
FAST TRIP
QUESTION OF CRUELTY
FALSE ALARM
DYNASTY OF ONE
OUTRIDER
About the Author

James White
Scanned by DMJim
Copyright © 1982 by James White
Cover art by Rich Sternbach
Dedicated to Renee, Genell, Fran, and Jean for their advice and Support
"Spacebird," copyright © 1973 by James White for New Writings in Science Fiction 22, March 1973. "Commuter," copyright © 1972 by E. J. Cornell Literary Agency
for New Writing in Science Fiction 21, November 1972. "Assisted Passage." copyright © 1953 by Nova Publications
Ltd. for New Worlds No. 19, January 1953. "Curtain Call," copyright © 1954 by Crownpoint Publications
Ltd. for Nebula Science Fiction No. 9, August 1954. "Boarding Party," copyright © 1955 by Nova Publications Ltd.
for New Worlds No. 37, July 1955. "Patrol," copyright © 1957 by Nova Publications Ltd. for New
Worlds No. 55, January 1957. "Fast Trip," copyright © 1963 by Mercury Press Inc. for The
Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, August 1963. "Questions of Cruelty," copyright © 1956 by Nova Publications
Ltd. for New Worlds No. 44, February 1956. "False Alarm," copyright © 1957 by Nova Publications Ltd. for
New Worlds No. 61, July 1957. "Dynasty of One," copyright © 1955 by Nova Publications Ltd.
for Science Fantasy No. 15, September 1955. "Outrider," copyright © 1955 by Nova Publications Ltd. for New
Worlds No. 35, May 1955.
One THE Monitor Corps scoutship Torrance was engaged on a mission which was both highly important and deadly dull. Like the other units of its flotilla it had been assigned a relatively tiny volume of space in Sector Nine----one of the many three-dimensional blanks which still appeared in the Federation's charts---to fill in the types and positions of the stars which it contained and the numbers of planets circling them.
Because a ten-man scoutship did not have the facilities for handling a first contact situation, they were forbidden to land or even make a close approach to these planets. They would identify the technologically advanced worlds, if any, by analyzing the radio frequency and other forms of radiation emanating from them. As Major Madden, the vessel's captain, had told them at the start of the mission, (hey were simply going to count lights in the sky and that was all.
Naturally, Fate could not resist a temptation like that...
"Radar, sir," said a voice from the control-room speaker. "We have a blip on the close-approach screen. Distance six miles, closing slowly, non-collision course."
"Lock on the telescope," said the captain, "and let's see it."
"Yes, sir. Repeater screen Two."
On Corps scoutships discipline was strict only when circumstances warranted it, and normally those circumstances did not arise during a mapping mission. As a result the noises coming from the speaker resembled a debate rather than a series of station reports.
"It looks like a ... a bird, sir, with its wings spread."
"A plucked bird."
"Has anyone calculated the chances against materializing this close to an object in interstellar space?"
"I think it's an asteroid, or molten material that congealed by accident into that shape."
"Two light-years from the nearest sun?"
"Quiet, please," said the captain. "Lock on an analyzer and report."
There was a short pause, then: "Estimated size, roughly one-third that of this ship. It's nonreflective, nonmetallic, non-mineral and---" •
"You're doing a fine job of telling me what it isn't," said the captain dryly.
"It is organic, sir, and ..."
"Yes?"
"And alive."
For a few seconds the control-room speaker and the captain held their breath, then Madden said firmly, "Power room, maneuvering thrust in five minutes. Astrogation, match courses and close to five hundred yards. Ordnance, stand by. Surgeon-Lieutenant Brenner will prepare for EVA."
The debate was over.
During the ensuing four hours Lieutenant Brenner examined the creature, initially at a safe distance and later as closely as his suit would allow. He was sure that the analyzer had been a little too optimistic over what was most likely a not quite frigid corpse. Certainly the thing was no threat because it could not move even if it had wanted to. The covering of what looked like large, flat barnacles and the rock-hard cement which held them together saw to that.
Later, when he was ending his report to the captain, he said. "To sum up, sir, it is suffering from a pretty weird skin condition which got out of control and caused it to be dumped---certainly it didn't fly out here. This implies a race with space-travel who are subject to a disease which scares them so badly that they dump the sufferers into space while they are still alive.
"As you know," he continued, "I don't have the qualifications to treat e-t diseases, and the being is too large to fit into our hold. But we could enlarge our hyperspace envelope and tow it to Sector General.
"That would make a nice break in the mapping routine," he added hopefully, "and I've never been to that place. I'm told that not all the nurses there have six legs." The captain was silent for a moment, then he nodded. "I have," he said. "Some of them have more."
Framed in the rescue tender's aft vision screen the tremendous structure that was Sector Twelve General Hospital hung in space like a gigantic cylindrical Christmas tree. Its thousands of viewports were constantly ablaze with light in the dazzling variety of color and intensity necessary for the visual equipment of its patients and staff, while inside its three hundred and eighty-four levels was reproduced the environments of all the intelligent life-forms known to the Galactic Federation---a biological spectrum ranging from the ultra-frigid methane-breathers through the more normal oxygen-and chlorine-breathing types up to the exotic beings who existed by the direct conversion of hard radiation.
In addition to the patients, whose numbers and physiological classifications were a constant variable, there was a medical and maintenance staff comprising sixty-odd differing life-forms with sixty different sets of mannerisms, body odors and ways of looking at life.
The staff of Sector General prided themselves that no case was too big, too small or too hopeless, and their reputation and facilities were second to none. They were an extremely able, dedicated, but not always serious bunch, and Senior Physician Conway could not rid himself of the idea that on this occasion someone was playing a complicated joke on him.
"Now that I see it," he said dryly, "I still can't believe it."
Pathologist Murchison, who occupied the position beside him, stared at the image of Torrance and its tow without comment. On the control-room ceiling, where it clung with six fragile, sucker-tipped legs, Doctor Prilicla trembled slightly and said, "It could prove to be an interesting and exciting professional challenge, friend Conway."
The musical trills and clicks of the Cinrusskin's speech were received by Conway's translator pack, relayed to the translation computer at the center of the hospital and transmitted back to his earpiece as flat, emotionless English. As expected, the reply was pleasant, polite and extremely non-controversial.
Prilicla was insectile, exo-skeletal, six-legged, with a pair of iridescent and not quite atrophied wings and possessing a highly developed empathic faculty. Only on Cinruss, with its one-eighth gravity and dense atmosphere, could a race of insects have grown to such dimensions and in time developed intelligence and an advanced civilization. But in Sector General Prilicla was in deadly danger for most of its working day. It had to wear gravity milliners everywhere outside its own quarters because the gravity pull, which most of its colleagues considered normal, would instantly have crushed it flat, and when Prilicla held a conversation with anyone it kept well out of reach of any thoughtless movement of an arm or tentacle that could easily cave in its fragile body or snap off a leg.
Not that anyone would have wanted to hurt Prilicla---it was too well-liked for that. The Cinrusskin's empathic faculty forced it to be kind and considerate to everyone in order to make the emotional radiation of the people around it as pleasant for itself as possible.
Except when its professional duty exposed it to pain and violent emotion in a patient, and that situation might arise within the next few minutes.
Turning suddenly to Prilicla, Conway said, "Wear your lightweight suit but stay well clear of the being until we tell you that there is no danger of movement, involuntary or otherwise, from it. We shall wear heavy-duty suits, mostly because they have more hooks on which to hang our diagnostic equipment, and I shall ask Torrance's medic to do the same."
Half an hour later Lieutenant Brenner, Murchison and Conway were hanging beside the form of the enormous bird while Prilicla, wearing a transparent plastic bubble through which projected its bony limbs, drifted beside the lock of their tender.
"No detectable emotional radiation, friend Conway," reported the empath.
"I'm not surprised," said Murchison.
"It could be dead," said the lieutenant defensively. "But when we found it the body temperature was measurably above the norm for an object warmed only by a two light-years distant sun."
"There was no criticism intended, Doctor," said Murchison soothingly. "I was simply agreeing with our empathic friend. But did you, before or during the trip here, carry out any examinations, observations or tests on this patient, or reach any tentative conclusions as a result of such tests? And don't be shy, Lieutenant---we may be the acknowledged experts in xenological medicine and physiology here, but we got that way by listening and looking, not by gratuitous displays of our expertise. You were curious, naturally, and ... ?"
"Yes, m'am," said Brenner, his voice registering surprise that there was an Earth-human female inside the bulky suit. "I assumed that, lacking information on its planet of origin, you might want to know if there were any safe atmospheric compositions in which it could be examined---I was assuming that, being a bird, it needed an atmosphere to fly in and that it had been dumped in space because of its diseased condition...."
Listening, Conway could not help admiring the smooth way in which Murchison was getting the Corps medic to tell them about the things he had done wrong. As an e-t pathologist she was used to nonspecialists interfering and complicating her job, and it was necessary that she discover as much as possible about the being's original condition before the changes or additional damage caused by inexpert examination---no matter how well-intentioned--- had been introduced. She was finding out all that she needed to know quietly and without giving offense, as if she was Prilicla in human form.
But as Brenner continued talking it became increasingly clear that he had made few, if any, mistakes, and a fair proportion of Conway's professional admiration was being diverted toward the lieutenant.
". . . After I sent the preliminary report and we were on our way," Brenner was saying, "I discovered two small, rough areas on the black stuff covering the creature ---a small, circular patch at the base of the neck, right here, and an oval patch, a little larger, which you can see on the underside. In both these areas the black stuff is cracked but with the cracks filled, or partly filled, by more of the stuff, and a few of the barnacles in these areas have been damaged as well. This is where I took my specimens."
"Marking the places you took them from, I see," said Murchison. "Go on, Doctor."
"Yes, ma'am," said the lieutenant, and went on. "The black material seems to be a near-perfect insulator---it is highly resistant to heat, including that of a cutting torch at medium power. At very high temperatures the area under test formed a black ash that flaked away but showed no sign of softening or cracking. The chips of shell from the damaged barnacles were not quite so heat-resistant unless they happened to be covered by the black material.
"The black stuff was also resistant to chemical attack," Brenner continued, "but not the pieces of shell. When the chips were exposed to various basic atmosphere types, the results seemed to indicate that they had not originated on one of the exotic environments---methane-or ammonia-or even chlorine-based atmosphere envelopes. Composition of the fragments seems to be basic hydrocarbon material, and they did not react to short-term exposures to an oxygen-rich mixture---"
"Give me the details of the tests you made," said Murchison, suddenly becoming very businesslike and, although the lieutenant did not know it, very complimentary. Conway signaled Prilicla to come closer, leaving the professional and amateur pathologists to get on with it.
"I don't think the patient is capable of movement," he told the Cinrusskin. "I don't even know if it's alive. Is it?"
Prilicla's limbs trembled as it steeled itself to make a negative reply and, by so doing, become just the slightest bit disagreeable. It said, "That is a deceptively simple question, friend Conway. All that I can say is that it doesn't appear to be quite dead."
"But you can detect the emotional emanations from a sleeping or deeply unconscious mind," said Conway incredulously. "Is there no emotional radiation at all?"
"There are traces, friend Conway," said the Cinrusskin, still trembling, "but they are too faint to be identifiable. There is no self-awareness and the traces that are apparent do not, so far as I am able to tell, originate from the being's cranial area---they seem to emanate from the body as a whole. I have never encountered this effect before, so I lack sufficient information or experience even to speculate."
"But you will," said Conway, smiling.
"Of course," said Prilicla. "It is possible that if the being was both deeply unconscious and at the same time was having the nerve endings in its skin constantly stimulated by severe pain, this might explain the effect that I can detect on and for some distance below the skin."
"But that means that you are detecting the peripheral nerve network and not the brain," said Conway. "That is unusual."
"Highly unusual, friend Conway," said the little empath. "The brain in question would have to have had important nerve trunks severed or have suffered major structural damage."
In short, Conway thought grimly, we may have been handed someone's cast-off patient.
Two
MURCHISON and Brenner, using the pathologist's sterile drills, were taking deep samples as well as collecting and labeling chippings of shell and the black material that covered the patient---more accurately, Murchison took the samples while the lieutenant sealed the tiny openings she made. Conway returned to the tender with Prilicla to arrange accommodation for the patient based on their sketchy knowledge---an evacuated chamber large enough to hold the thing, with provision for restraining it and for surrounding it with an oxygen-based atmosphere---and was followed shortly afterward by the others.
It was then that Brenner saw for the first time the contents of the pathologist's spacesuit, and Prilicla began a slow tremble.
Unless covered by a heavy-duty suit fitted with an opaque sun filter, Murchison displayed a combination of physiological features that made it impossible for any male Earth-human member of the staff to regard her with anything approaching clinical detachment. The lieutenant finally managed to drag his eyes away from her and to notice Prilicla.
"Is something wrong, Doctor?" he asked, looking concerned.
"To the contrary, friend Brenner," said the empath, still trembling slowly. "This type of involuntary physical activity is my species' reaction to the close proximity of an intense but pleasurable source of emotional radiation of the kind usually associated with the biological urge to mate .. ."
The Cinrusskin broke off and stopped trembling because the surgeon-lieutenant's suddenly red face was clashing discordantly against his green uniform, and Prilicla was feeling his embarrassment.
Murchison smiled sympathetically and said, "Perhaps I am the cause, Lieutenant Brenner---I have intense feelings of pleasure over the way in which your earlier tests and deductions have saved me nearly four hours work in a very irksome spacesuit. Isn't that so, Prilicla?"
"Most certainly," said the empath, to whom lying was second nature so long as it made someone, especially itself, happy. "Empathy is not nearly as accurate as telepathy, you know, and mistakes of this kind frequently occur."
Conway cleared his throat and said, "I've arranged to see O'Mara just as soon as we have the patient accommodated which, initially, will be in an evacuated dock and storage chamber on Level 103. We will use the tender's tractor beam to transfer the patient to the hospital, so if you are needed on board Torrance, Lieutenant . . . ?"
Brenner shook his head. "The captain would like to spend some time here, if possible, and so would I if I wouldn't be in the way. It's my first time to visit this place. Are there, ah, many other Earth-humans on the medical staff?"
// you mean like Murchison, Conway thought smugly, the answer is no. Aloud, he said, "We would welcome your help, of course. But you do not know what you are letting yourself in for, Lieutenant, and you keep asking about the Earth-humans on the staff. Are you xenophobic, even slightly? Uncomfortable near extra-terrestrials?"
"Certainly not," said Brenner firmly, then added, "of course, I wouldn't want to marry one."
Prilicla began the slow shakes again. The musical trills and clicks of its Cinrusskin speech formed a pleasant background to its translated voice as it said, "From the sudden flood of pleasant emotional radiation, for which I can see no apparent reason in the current situation and recent dialogue, I assume that someone has made what Earth-humans call a joke."
At Level 103 Prilicla left to check on its wards while the others supervised the transfer of the great, stiff-winged bird into the storage chamber. Looking at the swept-back, partially folded wings and stiffly extended neck, Conway was reminded of one of the old-time space shuttles. His mind began to slip off on an interesting, but ridiculous, tangent and he had to remind himself that birds did not fly, in space.
With the patient immobilized under one full G of artificial gravity it still took another three hours before Murchison had everything she wanted in the way of specimens and x-rays. In part the delay was caused by them having to work in pressure suits because, as Murchison put it, there would be little risk in observing the patient for a few more hours in airless conditions until they had worked out its atmospheric requirements with exactness---otherwise they might simply end by observing its processes of decomposition.
But their information on the patient was growing with every minute that passed, and the results of their tests--- transmitted direct from Pathology by the portable communicator beside them---were both interesting and utterly baffling. Conway lost all track of time until the communicator chimed for attention and the face of Major O'Mara glowered out at them.
"Conway, you arranged to see me here seven and one half minutes ago," said the chief psychologist. "No doubt you were just leaving."
"I'm sorry, sir," said Conway, "the preliminary investigation is taking longer than I estimated, and I wanted to have something concrete to report before seeing you."
There was a faint rustling sound as O'Mara breathed heavily through his nose. The chief psychologist's face was about as readable as a piece of weathered basalt, which in some respects it resembled, but the eyes which studied Conway opened into a mind so keenly analytical that it gave the major what amounted to a telepathic faculty.
As chief psychologist of a multi-environment hospital he was responsible for the mental well-being of a staff of several thousand entities belonging to more than sixty different species. Even though his Monitor Corps rank of Major did not place him high in the chain of command, there was no clear limit to his authority. To O'Mara, the medical staff were patients, too, and part of his job was to assign the right kind of doctor---whether Earth-humans or e-t---to a given patient.
Given even the highest qualities of tolerance and mutual respect, potentially dangerous situations could still arise through ignorance or misunderstanding, or a being could develop xenophobia to a degree which threatened to affect its professional competence, mental stability, or both. An Earth-human doctor, for instance, who had a subconscious fear of spiders would not be able to bring to bear on a Cinrusskin patient the proper degree of clinical detachment necessary for its treatment. And if someone like Prilicla were to treat such an Earth-human patient. . . A large part of O'Mara's job was to detect and eradicate such trouble among the medical staff while other members of his department saw to it that the problem did not arise where the patients were concerned. According to O'Mara himself, however, the true reason for the high degree of mental stability among the variegated and often touchy medical staff was that they were all too frightened of him to risk going mad.
Caustically, he said, "Doctor Conway, I freely admit that this patient is unusual even by our standards, but you must have discovered a few simple facts about it and its condition. Is it alive? Is it diseased or injured? Does it possess intelligence? Are you wasting your time on an outsize, space-frozen turkey?"
Conway ignored the rhetoric and tried to answer the questions. He said, "The patient is alive, just barely, and the indications are that it is both diseased---the exact nature of the disease is not yet known---and suffering from gross physical injury, specifically a punctured wound made by a large, high-velocity projectile or a tightly focused heat beam which passed through the base of the neck and the upper chest area. The wound entrance and exit is sealed by the black covering or growth---we still don't know which---encasing the body. Regarding the possibility of intelligence, the cranial capacity is large enough not to rule this out, but again, the head is not disproportionately large for the mass of the being, which is too deeply unconscious to radiate detectable emotion. The manipulatory appendages, whose degree of specialization or otherwise can give a strong indication of the presence or absence of intelligence, have been removed.
"Not by us," Conway added.
O'Mara was silent for a moment then he said, "I see. Another one of your deceptively simple cases. No doubt you will have deceptively simple special requirements. Accommodation? Physiology tapes? Information on planet of origin?"
Conway shook his head. "I don't believe that you have a physiology tape that will cover this patient's type---all the winged species we know are light-gravity beings, and this one has muscles for about four Gs. The present accommodation is fine, although we'll have to be careful in case of contamination of or from the chlorine level above us---the seals to storage compartments like this are not designed for constant traffic, unlike the ward airlocks---"
"I didn't know that, of course."
"Sorry, sir," said Conway. "I was thinking aloud, and partly for the benefit of Surgeon-Lieutenant Brenner, who is visiting this madhouse for the first time. Regarding information on its planet of origin, I would like you to approach Colonel Skempton to ask him if it would be possible for Torrance to return to that area to investigate the two nearer star systems, to look for beings with a similar physiological classification."
"In other words," said O'Mara dryly, "you have a difficult medical problem and think that the best solution is to find the patient's own doctor."
Conway smiled and said, "We don't need full cultural contact---just a quick look, atmosphere samples and specimens of local plant and animal life, if Torrance wouldn't mind soft-landing a probe---"
O'Mara broke the connection at that point with a sound which was untranslatable and Conway, now that they had gone as far as they could with the patient without the path reports, suddenly realized how hungry he was.
Three To reach the dining hall reserved for warm-bodied oxygen breathers they had to travel through two levels, none Of which required protective suits, and a network of corridors crowded with entities which flapped, crawled, undulated and occasionally walked past them. They were met at the entrance by Prilicla who was carrying a folder of green path reports.
As they entered, the last Earth-human table was being taken by a bunch of crab-like Melfans and a Tralthan--- Melfans could adapt themselves to the low stools and the Tralthans did everything including sleep on their six elephantine feet. Prilicla spotted an empty table in the Kelgian area and flew across to claim it before the party of Corps maintenance men could get there. Luckily it was beyond the range of their emotional radiation.
Conway began eagerly leafing through the reports once he saw that the Lieutenant was being shown by Murchison how to balance on the edge of a Kelgian chair within reach of the food he had ordered. But for once Brenner's attention was not on the shapely pathologist. He was staring at Prilicla, his eyebrows almost lost in his hair-line.
"Cinrusskins prefer to eat while hovering---they say it aids the digestion," explained Murchison, and added, "The slipstream helps cool the soup, too."
Prilicla maintained a stable hover while they concentrated on refueling, breaking off only to pass around the reports. Finally Conway, feeling pleasantly distended, turned to the Cinrusskin.
"I don't know how you managed it," he said warmly. "When 2 want a fast report from Thornnastor the most he will let me do is jump two places in the line."
Prilicla trembled at the compliment as it replied, "I insisted, quite truthfully, that our patient was at the point of death."
"But not," said Murchison dryly, "that it has been in that condition for a very long time." "You're sure of that?" asked Conway. "I am now," she answered seriously, tapping one of the reports as she spoke. "The indications are that the large puncture wound was inflicted by a meteorite collision some time after the disease, that is the barnacles and coating material were in position. The coating, which flowed into and across the wound, effectively sealed it.
"As well," she continued, "these tests show that a very complex chemical form of suspended animation---not just hypothermia---was used and that it was applied organ by organ, almost cell by cell, by micro-injections of the required specifics. In a way you could think of it as if the creature had been embalmed before it was quite dead in an effort to prolong its life."
"What about the missing legs or claws?" said Conway, "and the evidence of charring under the coating in the areas behind the wings? And the pieces of what seems to be a different kind of barnacle in those areas?"
"It is possible," Murchison replied, "that the disease initially affected the being's legs or claws, perhaps during its equivalent of nesting. The removal of the limbs and the evidence of charring you mention might have been early and unsuccessful attempts at curing the patient's condition. Remember that virtually all of the creature's body wastes were eliminated before the coating was applied. That is standard procedure before hibernation, anesthesia or major surgery."
The silence which followed was broken by the lieutenant, who said, "Excuse me, I'm getting lost. This disease or growth, what exactly do we know about it?"
"They knew that the outward symptoms of the disease were the barnacle-like growths," Murchison told him, "which covered the patient's tegument so completely that It could have been a suit of chain mail. It was still open to argument whether the barnacles were skin conditions which had sprouted rootlets or a subcutaneous condition with a barnacle-like eruption on the surface, but in either event they were held by a thick pencil's width of fine rootlets extending and subdividing to an unknown depth within the patient. They penetrated not only the subcutaneous (issue and underlying musculature, but practically all of the vital organs and central nervous system. And the rootlets were hungry. There could be no doubt from the condition of the tissue underlying the barnacles that this was n severely wasting disease which was far advanced."
"It seems to me that you should have been called in earlier," said Brenner, "and that the patient was sealed up just before it was due to die."
Conway nodded and said, "But it isn't hopeless. Some Of our e-ts practice microsurgery techniques that would enable them to excise the rootlets, even the ones that are tangled up in the nerve bundles. It is a very slow procedure, however, and there is the danger that when we re-vive the patient the disease will also be revived and that it might progress faster than the microsurgery. I think the answer is to learn as much as we possibly can about the disease before we do anything else."
When they returned to the patient there was a message waiting from O'Mara to say that Torrance had left with the promise of preliminary reports on the two solar systems nearest to the find within three days. During those three days Conway expected to devise procedures that would remove the coating and barnacles from the patient, arrest the diseases and initiate curative surgery so that the scoutship's reports would be needed only to prepare proper accommodation for the patient's convalescence.
During those three days, however, they got precisely nowhere.
The material that encased barnacles and patient alike could be drilled and chipped away with great difficulty and an enormous waste of time---the process resembled that of chipping out a fossil without inflicting damage, and this particular fossil was fifty feet long and over eighty feet from tip to tip of its partially folded wings. When Conway insisted that Pathology produce a faster method of stripping the patient he was told that the coating was a complex organic, that the specifics they had devised for dissolving it would produce large quantities of toxic gases---- toxic to the patient as well as the attending physicians--- and that the shell material of the barnacles would be instantly dissolved by this solvent and that it would not be good for the patient's skin and underlying tissue, either. They went back to drilling and chipping.
Murchison, who was continually withdrawing micro-specimens from the areas affected by the rootlets, was informative but unhelpful.
"I'm not suggesting that you should abandon this one," she said sympathetically, "but you should start thinking about it. In addition to the widespread tissue wastage, there is evidence of structural damage to the wing muscles---damage which may well have been self-inflicted--- and I think the heart has ruptured. This will mean major surgical repairs as well as---"
"This muscle and heart damage," said Conway sharply. "Could it have been caused by the patient trying to get out of its casing?"
"It is possible but not likely," she replied in a voice that reminded him that he was not talking to a junior intern and that past and present relationships could change with very little notice. "That coating is hard, but it is relatively thin and the leverage of the patient's wings is considerable. I would say that the heart and muscle damage occurred before the patient was encased."
"I'm sorry if..." began Conway.
"There is also the fact," she went on coldly, "that the barnacles are clustered thickly about the patient's head and along the spine. Even with our tissue and nerve regeneration techniques, the patient may never be able to think or move itself even if we are successful in returning it to a technically living state."
"I hadn't realized," said Conway dully, "that it was as serious as that. But there must be something we can do . . ." He tried to pull his face muscles into a smile. ". . .if only to preserve Brenner's illusions about the miracle-workers of Sector General."
Brenner had been looking from one to the other, obviously wondering whether this was a spirited professional discussion or the beginning of some kind of family fight. But the lieutenant was tactful as well as observant. He said, "I would have given up a long time ago."
Before either of them could reply the communicator chimed and Chief of Pathology Thornnastor was framed in the screen.
"My department," said the Tralthan, "has worked long and diligently to discover a method of removing the coating material by chemical means, but in vain. The material is, however, affected by intense heat. At high temperatures the surface crumbles, the ashy deposit can be scraped or blown away and heat again applied. The process can be continued safely until the coating is very thin, after which it could be removed in large sections without harm to the patient."
Conway obtained the temperature and thickness figures, (thanked Thornnastor and then used the communicator to call the maintenance section for cutting torches and operators. He had not forgotten Murchison's doubts regarding (he advisability of attempting a cure, but he had to go on trying. He did not know that the great, diseased bird would end as a winged vegetable, and he would not know until they knew everything possible about the disease which was affecting it.
Because the heat treatment was untried they began near the tail, where the vital organs were deeply buried and where the area had already been disturbed, presumably by the efforts of their medical predecessors.
After only half an hour's continuous burning they had their first stroke of luck in three days. They discovered a barnacle that was embedded upside down in the patient ---its bundle of rootlets fanned out to link up with other barnacles, but a few of them curved down and past the rim of its shell to enter the patient. The surface rootlet network was clearly visible as the flame of the torch burned the rootlet material into a fine, incandescent web. One of the briefly incandescent rootlets pointed toward a barnacle that was larger and differently shaped.
Patiently they painted both objects and their immediate surroundings with the cutting torches, brushing away the crumbling layers of coating until it was wafer thin. They cracked it, carefully peeled back the remains of the coating and lifted away two perfect specimens.
"They are dead," asked Conway, "not just dormant?"
"They are dead," said Prilicla.
"And the patient?"
"Life is still present, friend Conway, but the radiation is extremely weak, and diffuse."
Conway studied the area bared by the removal of the two specimens. Beneath the first was a small, deep hollow that followed the contours of the reversed shell. The underlying tissues showed a high degree of compression, and the few rootlets in evidence were much too weak and fine to have held the barnacle so tightly against the patient. Something or somebody had pressed that barnacle into position with considerable force.
The second, and different, specimen had been held only by the coating, apparently it did not possess rootlets. But it did possess wings folded into long slits in its carapace and so, on closer inspection, did the first type.
Prilicla alighted beside them, trembling slightly and erratically in the fashion that denoted excitement. It said, "You will have noticed that these are two entirely different species, friend Conway. Both are large, winged insects of the type which require a low-gravity planet with a thick air envelope---not unlike Cinruss. It is possible that the first type is a predator parasite and that the second is a natural enemy, introduced by a third party in an attempt to cure the patient."
Conway nodded. "It would explain why type one turned on to its back when approached by type two. . . ."
"I hope," said Murchison apologetically, "that your theory is flexible enough to accept another datum." She had been scraping persistently at a piece of coating that was still adhering to a smaller slit in the barnacle. "The coating material was not applied by a third party, it is a body secretion of type one.
"If you don't mind," she added, "I'll take both of these beasties to Pathology for a long, close look."
For several minutes after she left nobody spoke. Prilicla began to tremble again and, judging by the expression of Brenner's face, it was at something the officer was feeling. It was the lieutenant who broke the silence.
"If the parasites are responsible for the coating," he sad sickly, "then there was no earlier attempt to cure the patient. Our heavy-gravity patient was probably attacked on the light-gravity planet of the flying barnacles, they sank in their rootlets or tendrils, paralyzed its muscles and nervous system and encased it in a ... a shell of slowly feeding maggots when it wasn't even dead---"
"A little more clinical detachment, Lieutenant," said Conway sharply. "You're bothering Prilicla. And while something like that may have happened, there are still a few awkward facts which don't fit. That depression under the inverted barnacle still bothers me."
"Maybe it sat on one of them," said Brenner angrily, his feeling of revulsion temporarily overcoming his manners. "And I can understand why its friends dumped the patient into space---there was nothing else they could do."
He hesitated, then said, "I'm sorry, Doctor. But is there anything else that you can do?"
"There is something," said Conway grimly, "that we can try. ..."
Four ACCORDING to Prilicla their patient was, just barely, alive, and now that the barnacles were known to be the attacking organisms and not just surface eruptions, they and their coating must be removed as quickly as possible. Removal of the tendrils would require more delicate and time-consuming work, but the surface condition would respond to heat and, with the barnacles removed, the patient just might recover enough to be able to help Conway to help it. Pathology had already suggested methods for restarting its paralyzed life processes.
He would need at least fifty cutting torches operating simultaneously with high-pressure air hoses to blow the ash away. They would begin burning on the head, neck, breast and wing-muscle areas, freeing the patient of barnacle control of the brain, lungs and heart. If the heart was in a terminal condition emergency surgery would be necessary to bypass it---Murchison had already mapped out the arterial and venous processes in the area. And in case the patient twitched or began napping its wings, they would need the protection of heavy-duty suits.
But no---Prilicla, who would be monitoring the emotional radiation during the op, would need maximum protection. The others would have to dodge until it could be immobilized with pressors. If emergency surgery was necessary, heavy-duty suits were too cumbersome, anyway. As well, the communicator would have to be moved to a side compartment in case it was damaged, because the adjoining levels would have to be alerted and various specialist staff would have to be standing by.
While he gave the necessary orders Conway moved briskly but unhurriedly and his tone was quiet and confident. But all the time he had a vague but persistent feeling that he was saying and doing and, most of all, thinking all the wrong things.
O'Mara did not approve of his proposed line of treatment but, apart from asking whether Conway intended curing or barbecuing the patient, he did not interfere. He added that there was still no report from Torrance.
Finally they were ready to go. The maintenance technicians with cutting torches and air lines hissing---but directed away from the patient---were positioned around the head, neck and leading edges of the wings. Behind them waited the specialist and medical technicians with stimulants, a general purpose heart-lung machine and the bright, sterile tools of their trade. The doors to the side compartments were dogged open in case the patient revived too suddenly and they had to take cover. There was no logical reason for waiting any longer.
Conway gave the signal to begin only seconds before his communicator chimed and Murchison, looking disheveled and very cross, filled the screen.
"There has been a slight accident, an explosion," she said. "Our type two flew across the lab, damaged some test equipment and scared hell out of---"
"But it was dead," protested Conway. "They were both dead---Prilicla said so."
"It still is," said Murchison, "and it didn't fly exactly--- it shot away from us. I'm not yet sure of the mechanics of the process, but apparently the thing produces gases in its intestinal tract which react explosively together, propelling it forward. Used in conjunction with its wings this would help it to escape fast-moving natural enemies like the barnacle. The gases must still have been present when I began work.
"There is a similar species, much smaller," she went on, "which is native to Earth. We studied the more exotic types of Earth fauna in preparation for the e-t courses. It was called a bombardier beetle and it----"
"Doctor Conway!"
He swung away from the screen and ran into the main compartment. He did not need to be an empath to know that something was seriously wrong.
The team leader of the maintenance men was waving frantically and Prilicla, encased in its protective globe and supported by gravity milliners, was drifting above the man's head and trembling.
"Increasing awareness, friend Conway," reported the empath. "Suggesting rapidly returning consciousness. Feelings of fear and confusion."
Some of the confusion, thought Conway, belongs to me. ... The maintenance man simply pointed.
Instead of the hard coating he had expected to see there was a black, oily, semi-liquid that flowed and rippled and dripped slowly on to the floor plating. As he watched the area where the flame was being applied, the stuff rolled away from one of the barnacles, which twitched and unfolded its wings. The wings flapped, slowly at first, and it began pulling free of the patient, drawing its long tendrils out of the bird until it was completely detached and it went blundering into the air.
"Kill the torches," said Conway urgently, "but cool it with the air hose. Try to harden that black stuff."
But the thick, black liquid would not harden. Once initiated by the heat the softening process was self-sustaining. The patient's neck, no longer, supported by solid material, slumped heavily on to the deck followed a few seconds later by the massive wings. The black pool around the patient widened and more and more of the barnacles struggled free to blunder about the compartment on wide, membraneous wings, trailing their tendrils behind them like long, fine plumes.
"Back everybody! Take cover, quickly!"
Their patient lay motionless and almost certainly dead, but there was nothing that Conway could do. Neither the maintenance men nor the medical technicians were protected against those fine, harmless-looking tendrils of the barnacles---only Prilicla in its transparent globe was safe there, and now there seemed to be hundreds of the things filling the air. He knew that he should feel badly about the patient, but somehow he did not. Was it simply delayed reaction or was there another reason?
"Friend Conway," said Prilicla, bumping him gently with its globe, "I suggest that you take your own advice."
The thought of fine, barnacle tendrils probing through his clothing, skin and underlying tissues, paralyzing his muscles and scrambling his brain made him run for the side compartment, closely followed by Brenner and Prilicla. The lieutenant closed the door as soon as the Cinrusskin was inside.
There was a barnacle already there.
For a split second Conway's mind was like a camera, registering everything as it was in the small room: the face of O'Mara on the communicator screen, as expressionless as a slab of rock with only the eyes showing his concern;
Prilicla trembling within its protective globe; the barnacle hovering near the ceiling, its tendrils blowing in a self-generated breeze, and Brenner with one eye closed in a diabolical wink as he pointed his gun---a type which threw explosive pellets---at the hovering barnacle.
There was something wrong.
"Don't shoot," said Conway, quietly but firmly, then asked, "Are you afraid, Lieutenant?"
"I don't normally use this thing," said Brenner, looking puzzled, "but I can. No, I'm not afraid."
"And I'm not afraid because you have that gun," said Conway. "Prilicla is protected and has nothing to fear. So who . . ." He indicated the empath's trembling feelers. "... is afraid?"
"It is, friend Conway," said Prilicla, indicating the barnacle. "It is afraid and confused and intensely curious."
Conway nodded. He could see Prilicla beginning to react to his intense relief. He said, "Nudge it outside, Prilicla, when the lieutenant opens the door---just in case of accidents. But gently."
As soon as it was outside, O'Mara's voice roared from the communicator.
"What the blazes have you done?"
Conway tried to find a simple answer to an apparently simple question. He said, "I suppose you could say that I have prematurely initiated a planetary reentry sequence. ..."
The report from Torrance arrived just before Conway reached O'Mara's office. It said that one of the two stars had a light-gravity planet that was inhabitable while showing no indications of advanced technology, and that the other possessed a large, fast-spinning world that was so flattened at the poles that it resembled two soup bowls joined at the rims. On the latter world the atmosphere was dense and far-reaching, gravity varied between three Gs at the poles to one-quarter G at the equator, and surface metals were nonexistent. Very recently, in astronomical terms, the world had spiraled too close to its sun and planet-wide volcanic activity and steam had rendered the atmosphere opaque. Torrance doubted that it was still habitable.
"That supports my theory," said Conway excitedly when O'Mara had relayed the report to him, "that the bird and the barnacles, and the other insect life-form, originate from the same planet. The barnacles are parasites, of course, with a small individual brain capacity, but intelligent when linked and operating as a gestalt. They must have known that their planet was heading for destruction for centuries, and decided to escape. But just think of what it must have taken to develop a space-travel capability completely without metal...."
Somehow they had learned how to trap the giant birds from the heavy-gravity polar regions and to control them with their tendrils---the barnacles were a physically weak species and their ability to control nonintelligent hosts was the only strength they had. The birds, Conway now knew, were a nonintelligent species, as were the-tendrilless beetles. They had taken control of the birds and had flown them high above the equator, commanding maximum physical effort to achieve the required height and velocity for the linkup with the final propulsion stage---the beetles. They also had been controlled by the barnacles, perhaps fifty to each parasite, and they had attached themselves to the areas behind the wings in a gigantic, narrow cone. Meanwhile the bird had been shaped and paralyzed Into the configuration of a supersonic glider, its claws removed to render it aerodynamically clean, and injected with the secretions which would arrest the process of decomposition. The crew had then sealed it and themselves in position and gone into hibernation for the duration of the voyage using the bird's tissue for life-support.
Once in position the propulsion cone comprising millions of insects, hundreds of thousands of which were the intelligent controllers, had begun firing. They had done so very evenly and gently, so as not to shatter or crush the narrow apex of the cone where it was attached to the bird. The beetles could be made to deliver their tiny modicum of thrust whether they were alive or dead and, even with their ability to seal themselves inside a hard coating, the propulsion controllers had not lived for very long---they also were expendable. But in dying they had helped an organic starship carrying a few hundred of their fellows to achieve escape velocity from their doomed planet and its sun.
"... I don't know how they intended to position the bird for reentry," Conway went on admiringly, "but atmospheric heating was intended to trigger the organic melting process when they had braked sufficiently, allowing the barnacles to pull free of the bird and fly to the surface under their own wing-power. In my hurry to get rid of the coating I applied heat over a wide area of the forward section, which simulated reentry conditions and---"
"Yes, yes," said O'Mara testily. "A masterly exercise in medical deduction and sheer blasted luck! And now, I suppose, you will leave me to clean up after you by devising a method of communicating with these beasties and arranging for their transport to their intended destination. Or was there something else you wanted?"
Conway nodded. "Brenner tells me that his scoutship flotilla, using an extension of the search procedure for overdue ships, could cover the volume of space between the home and destination stars. There are probably other birds, perhaps hundreds of them---"
O'Mara opened his mouth and looked ready to emulate a bombardier beetle. Conway added hastily, "I don't want them brought here, sir. The Corps can take them where they are going, melt them on the surface to avoid reentry casualties, and explain the situation to them.
"They're colonists, after all---not patients."
THE suspect was disheveled and, if he was contused as well, the sergeant had left his marks in places where they did not show. Never a very pleasant man at the best of times, Sergeant Greer was completely lacking in charm when he was angry. One of the things that made him very angry was the kind of crime that this suspect had almost certainly been intending to commit, and another was suspects who tried to be smart when they had been caught trying to commit them.
In this instance Inspector Michaelson agreed with his sergeant.
"This could be a very serious charge," said Michaelson. "Why wouldn't you give the sergeant your name and address?"
Michaelson kept his tone firm but friendly, suggesting that the other's lack of cooperation had been due to an understandable dislike of the arresting officer, which need not, however, include the inspector. If the other did not give his name at once he should at least begin to talk---if only to demand details of the charge he was being held on, or to make formal complaint about his rough handling or to ask for a lawyer. But the suspect remained silent.
Irritated, Michaelson said, "I take it he speaks English?"
"Fluently," said Greer.
"I see."
"No, sir," said the sergeant, "not four-letter fluent. When I was sure he wasn't armed I eased my hold on him ---that was when he became fluent. When he saw that I wasn't believing any of the stories he was trying on me he said that he wasn't carrying much money but that I was welcome to it if I let him go and that he had not intended harming the old lady, just watching her. I told him that attempting to bribe a police officer would get him into worse trouble and since then he hasn't said a word."
"He may not have known that you were a policeman when he offered the money," said Michaelson coldly, "and he stopped doing so as soon as you identified yourself."
Greer, who was long used to the Inspector's unorthodox interrogations during which he sometimes gave the impression that he was giving his subordinates a harder time than the suspects, played his part by looking surly.
"But it isn't very polite," he went on to She suspect, "talking about you as if you weren't there. Sit down, please. Can you tell me your first name, at least?"
The suspect opened his mouth, then closed it again.
"Your age, then?"
"Twenty-three."
Michaelson nodded. "I expect your parents will worry if you're late getting home---"
"They died, a long time ago."
"I see," said Michaelson sympathetically. A good defense counsel with that sort of background to enlarge on and with expert psychiatric support could make a judge react sympathetically as well, but his sympathy would be real. He added, "Both at once, I suppose. Traffic accident?"
"No, they died when . . ." the suspect began, then stopped as if he had almost said too much.
Knowing that it would be useless to continue asking questions until the other had a chance to relax his guard, Michaelson nodded for Greer to make his report. While the sergeant went through the preliminaries of setting the lime and place, Michaelson studied the suspect more closely. There was something about his appearance which bothered him.
Certainly it was not the suspect's clothing, which had been neatly casual before Greer had treated their wearer like an opposing halfback. If anything the man was too conservatively dressed for his age and his hair was too short. That was it---his hair was unusually tidy and short. Not skinhead short but neat, combed and parted. Michaelson began to study the suspect's face, closely.
The play of expression on a face, the lines and contours pulled into it by experience of one kind or another, could loll an awful lot about its owner. But there were occasions, Michaelson knew, when it could tell an awful lot of lies.
If there was any such thing as a criminal face, this certainly was not it. Oh, the man was worried, of course, and hiding something---the bumps of tension along his jaw, the listening look and the sweaty highlights developing on his forehead and around his mouth were clear indications of guilt of some kind. But the overall impression was one of innocence and he looked far too honest and clean-cut to be true.
Michaelson had known high court judges with faces like pickpockets and he himself had steadfastly refused to grow his hair longer or wear colored shirts. But being old-fashioned and neatly trimmed at his age was normal. In the suspect's age group it was rare, perhaps abnormal.
". . . He was seen in the shop and several times in the street since the rumor began going around that Mrs. Timmins had come into money," Greer was saying. "Three times he visited the shop yesterday, buying newspapers on each visit---the same newspaper on two of the occasions. But the old lady hasn't served in the shop since---"
"Did she come into money?" Michaelson preferred facts to rumors, even though a rumor like this was enough to make the vultures gather.
"If she did, it came too late to do much good," said Greer, who obviously was feeling so strongly about it that he had forgotten to answer the question. Michaelson understood why.
Mrs. Timmins had been forced by age and ill health to sell her shop and live in the flat above sixteen years earlier, and she had been virtually bedridden for the past five years. By rights she should have given up trying to work long before then, but she had never been quite right in the head---a condition which, Michaelson had heard, dated from the time her husband had deserted her during the second year of their marriage. And she was old, she had been old even when Michaelson had been a kid at school.
He remembered hanging around the bright window of her shop with some of his classmates, all of them flat broke and their pocket money not due for three days. It would have been very easy to create a diversion or for a few of them to keep her talking while the others loaded up with apples or chocolate or her teeth-destroying peppermint rock, but in those days boys did not often think along those lines.
Instead they had smeared the display window with their dirty faces and even dirtier hands, wearing expressions of distress and projecting hunger for all they were worth. She had been a very soft touch and had nearly always asked them in for a handout, saying that they could pay by doing odd jobs or by tidying up.
But the shop, the old lady herself, was always clean and tidy so that they were never overworked. She had talked to them about their lessons or the running of the shop or her long-absent husband as if they were members of her nonexistent family. When they came away they had laughed and tapped their heads at some of the things she had said, but with less and less frequency. She had be-come a very pleasant and important part of their young lives.
Michaelson had been much older when he overheard his parents discussing the old lady. His mother had wondered why she had not married after the statutory seven years had passed since her husband's desertion and he could be presumed dead by law---she had been a beautiful girl---and his father had replied that her husband must have been a good con man to make her remain faithful to his memory like that.
It had been about that time that Michaelson had decided that the old lady was too good and kind and trusting for people to be allowed to take advantage of her. Later he realized that there were a lot of kindly, vulnerable people needing the same kind of protection, but by then he had already decided what he would do with his life.
She must be nearly ninety, Michaelson thought. When he had visited her three years ago she had looked frighteningly old and shrunken, and he had been kept too busy to visit her since then. She had mistaken him for one of the other boys, but she had called him "son" the way she always had done and had talked about the importance of education if he wanted to get on, the necessity of cleaning his teeth after eating her candy and, inevitably, about her husband.
Michaelson sighed and checked his headlong gallop down memory lane. He repeated, "Did she come into money?"
"Sorry, sir," said Greer, "we won't know until we've had time to ask more questions, but she had a big screen color TV delivered three weeks ago her doctor and nurse visit her every day instead of every week or so and she has a cleaning lady coming three days a week. The man downstairs---the one who bought the shop from her ---says that she did not tell him anything but that all these things began happening at once."
"The point is," said Michaelson, "that everyone in the county thinks she has money and some of them may not want her to keep it." He opened the big envelope containing the suspect's personal possessions and tipped them on to his desk.
There were two soiled handkerchiefs, a bunch of keys and a leather wallet. The usual junk which accumulates in pockets was absent and the wallet was unusually thin. It contained a more than adequate number of banknotes and two small photographs in transparent pockets.
They were a little more than an inch square---too small for the windows---and showed the suspect and a girl of about the same age. The focus was soft and they had been cropped to show only the features.
"Girl friend?" Michaelson asked.
"Wife," said the suspect.
The girl's face showed character, all of it good, and she was beautiful. He had no doubt about that because she was wearing little if any makeup and her face had a freshly-scrubbed look that was almost nunlike. Perhaps she, too, had strict parents.
But he was forgetting that the suspect had no parents. He did have a beautiful young wife, though, so why was he playing Peeping Tom with an old lady if he had not intended committing a crime of some kind? And why had he removed all identification from his clothing and wallet? In short, was the suspect sick, or crazy?
For a few seconds Michaelson tried to think like an expert witness for the defense. It was possible that the loss of this man's parents at an early age had caused serious psychological damage or, despite his prepossessing appearance, outright psychosis. The relatives or friends responsible for bringing him up might have been too strict---his tidy, well-barbered look and conservative dress were symptoms of repression. Perhaps his wife had been chosen by the people who had made him what he now was. Perhaps his condition was aggravated by the fact that his wife was not the angel she appeared to be.
In his profession Michaelson was continually being reminded that devils were fallen angels and that few of them had had time for plastic surgery on the way down.
This suspect did not look crazy nor, so far as Michaelson could see, was he sick, either---but he had to be one or the other. The absence of spoken or documentary identification indicated careful pre-planning. Perhaps he considered the reward worth the risk of a period under psychiatric care should he be caught.
"What," said Michaelson again, "is your name?"
The suspect shook his head.
Michaelson said, "You must realize that we will learn your name sooner or later---much sooner than you expect, believe me---and that your behavior increases our suspicions and reduces any chance of sympathetic treatment when we do discover---"
"I can't tell you anything," the suspect broke in, beginning to sound desperate. "I wasn't going to hurt the old lady. There is no crime that I'm guilty of and so you won't be able to prove that I committed one and eventually, even though I won't give my name, you'll have to let me go."
Michaelson nodded. A tricky one ...
He was thinking of old Mrs. Timmins, bedridden, frail and with a bone structure as fragile as a bird's and her only hold on life an innocent obsession with the blackguard who had deserted her. He thought of her being beaten into disclosing the hiding place of her money or being rolled on the floor while the suspect tore the mattress apart. He thought of the livid, permanent bruising and the broken bones too old ever to knit and of the months or years of pain which resulted from a simple robbery with violence when the victim was senile. Michaelson had worked on too many cases just like that.
"Your property will be returned to you," he said finally, "if I ever let you out."
While the suspect was being returned to his cell Michaelson prodded the bunch of keys with his forefinger. There were no car keys and the five in the bunch, presumably the door, room and garden shed keys, were old in design indicating a dwelling in the older part of the city and the remaining two, which were duplicates, were new and distinctive with a long serial number etched into them. Greer was practically breathing down his neck as he wrote the number on his pad.
"I've seen that type of key before, too," said the sergeant. "There are five or six new office buildings using them. We were notified because the locks are supposed to be thief-proof, but obviously the keys aren't. Or do you think they are his own?"
When Michaelson did not reply he went on, "Those buildings maintain a round-the-clock security guard. I can call them with the serial number right now, and if their key registers are up to date, find out the office and the occupier's name. He may know something about the suspect, and I can call at his office first thing in the morning."
"I'll call at his office," said Michaelson, "as soon as you come off the phone."
"Aren't you a bit senior to be personally investigating I a---"
Michaelson nodded, and said, "This one bothers me." I
Half an hour later he was reading the tasteful cream lettering on the grained door of office 47 in the Dunbar Building while the patrolman on night duty, an ex-policeman called Nesbitt, stood watchfully behind him. The company occupying the office was SMITH PHILATELIC SUPPLIES and the Smith in question, Michaelson had discovered on the way up, answered fully to the description of the suspect.
"I intend having a look around," said Michaelson, "and I shall not remove any of Mr. Smith's property unless a more detailed examination becomes necessary, by which time I shall have a warrant. In the meantime I would appreciate it if you would accompany me while I look around, and, of course, give me as much information as you can about Smith. Last time I saw him he could not even give me his name."
He was not actually lying to Nesbitt, but he had managed to give the other a very strong reason for believing , that the suspect was an amnesia victim.
The suspect---Michaelson could not believe that his I name was really Smith---occupied a small suite of offices. The outer office contained two desks, a few chairs I and even fewer filing cabinets. Dominating the inner of-office was a large desk covered by a thick asbestos board ] on which lay an electric toaster, kettle and frying pan. J The desk lamp was angled to point at the head of the 1 camp bed which was neatly made up behind the desk. Most J of the built-in shelving contained nonperishable groceries, 1 also neatly stacked, while a refrigerator in one corner took I care of the perishable kind. The desk's telephone table I had been removed to another corner where it supported a I color TV. A washroom opened off the smaller office where I shirts and socks were dripping dry into a bath.
"It isn't usual," said Nesbitt in answer to Michael-I son's unspoken question, "but so long as there is no fire 1 hazard, and Smith is very careful that way, there is I nothing in the rules which actually forbids it. Besides, at the prices we charge for these offices we can't afford to be too strict."
Michaelson nodded and began taking a closer look around. The towels looked new---not brand new, but not very old, either---and the shaver and other bits and pieces had also been bought recently. A closer examination of the inner office showed that the suspect was very clean and tidy in his habits. There were books here and there, not enough to be called a library but they all looked as though they had been read several times---cheap editions or paperbacks on pretty heavy, nonfiction subjects for the most part. The exception was a small pile of science-fiction paperbacks. He noted Asimov's The End of Eternity, Heinlein's Door Into Summer, Shaw's The Two-Timers and Tucker's Year of the Quiet Sun ...
The suspect's taste in s-f was good if somewhat restricted, Michaelson decided as he returned to the outer office.
"Has Mr. Smith spoken to you?" Michaelson asked as he lifted the dust cover off what he thought was a typewriter but what turned out to be a small record player.
"Often," Nesbitt replied, then explained, "he isn't very organized about his paperwork and when I suggested that he get himself a secretary, he asked me what exactly would be involved. I told him about medical and unemployment insurance payments and income tax deductions and so on: he seemed to lose interest."
There were sheets of printed music and blank manuscript pages scattered over the top of the desk, which apparently had not been disturbed for some time. On the manuscript pages the same few bars of a melody had been written over and over again. The desk drawers were filled with more manuscript blanks and dozens of records which, like the sheet music on top of the desk, were mainly ballads. A few were familiar---pleasant enough tunes, but too derivative for Michaelson to really approve of them. There were no musical instruments in the room.
The other desk, which seemed to be in current use, was scattered with philatelic magazines and reference books. The drawers contained magnifiers and large sheets of unused stamps in plastic folders with a few singles, also in transparent envelopes, which were even older. Michaelson had never been a stamp collector.
"Are these valuable?"
"They aren't rare," replied Nesbitt, in tones that said that he had been a collector and probably still was. "But in quantities like that, in mint condition, they are worth a considerable sum of money. If I'd known about them I would have advised him to keep them in a fire-proof safe."
"He takes your advice?"
"He listens to it."
Michaelson smiled. "How well do you know him?"
"I call in most nights during my rounds," said Nesbitt. "Being alone he doesn't have to work normal hours, and if he is awake or working late he leaves the door open so I can come in for a cup of coffee, or to watch the wrestling matches if it coincides with my break."
"So his hobbies are drinking coffee and watching wrestling," said Michaelson dryly.
"No, sir. He switches channels for me. I usually find him watching current affairs programs. He is a very serious-minded young man."
"Worried about something, do you think?"
"He hasn't looked very happy recently, but from what I've heard he doesn't have any financial worries."
"Any idea where he stayed before coming here?"
"At a hotel a few blocks away, the Worchester. Some of his mail is still being forwarded from it."
"Why did he move?"
"I think it was red tape again," said Nesbitt. "He had been living there for nearly two years---well, not exactly, he used a room to carry on his business and sometimes he lived in it if it was too late to go home in the evening. The hotel did not mind at first---it is a small place with an easy-going manager. But apparently it contravened regulations for a guest to carry on a business on a permanent basis from his room. Rather than try to sort it out he moved here."
"He confides in you a lot?"
"Not at first. But one night he came in drank, really sick drunk. I think it must have been the first time he had tried alcohol and he had tried everything in sight. While I was helping him to bed he told me that he had a problem, but not what it was, and that he had to talk to somebody here. After that we talked for a few minutes, sometimes longer, every night---but never about his problem. I got the impression that it was a very personal thing."
"Yes," said Michaelson. "Did he go out much at night?"
"Recently, yes," said Nesbitt. "I expect he got himself a girl friend. A good thing, too---he had been very worried about something for the past three weeks. He had told me that his problem was worse than ever and that now there would never be a solution to it. But earlier this week he started going out every night for three or four hours and sometimes staying away all day, so probably there was a solution to it after all."
"Yes," said Michaelson.
He was thinking about Mrs. Timmins and the solution that she represented to the suspect's very personal problem and he could not trust himself to say anything else.
His quick look around was gradually developing into a full-scale search, but so far the night security man had made no objections. He believed that he was helping the suspect and it was obvious that he was so convinced of "Smith's" honesty that the thought that he might be harming the other man had never entered his head. The fact that he was an ex-policeman and Michaelson an inspector would also have something to do with it.
Michaelson wrestled briefly with his conscience, but the process was little more than a token bout.
Looking disinterested, he began sliding open the desk drawers one by one. "Apart from his recent absences, did he have any other hobbies or outside interests?"
"He was keen on local history," said Nesbitt. "He kept a scrapbook of old newspaper clippings, on the shelf behind you."
Michaelson picked up the scrapbook and went through it quickly but thoroughly. There were a few old street maps, plans of urban road systems and developments long since completed and clippings going back over half a century. He was not surprised to find several mentions of the city's moment of stark drama some sixty years earlier when the physics building at the university had blown up, taking the physics professor---a stuffy but very brilliant old gentleman tipped for a Nobel Prize---and a mercifully small number of post-graduate assistants with it. He read the chancellor's statement that, so far as he knew, no explosives had been kept in the building, descriptions of the peculiarly sharp detonation and the theories, based on evidence of fusing in parts of the debris, which ranged from an old-fashioned thunderbolt from on high to a meteor strike or the premature invention of a nuclear device ...
"No other hobbies?"
"Not that I know of," said Nesbitt, then added, "At one time I thought he might be taking up radio as a hobby ---he had read some technical articles and wanted to know if I could tell him anything about a standing wave. He gets suddenly curious about lots of things."
Michaelson had a vague idea of what a standing wave might be, having listened to the engineers talking shop during a course he had taken on TV traffic monitoring systems, but he did not see how it could help his current investigation. He opened another drawer.
And hit the jackpot.
It contained a large desk diary, a day book recording income and expenditure and an address book. As he leafed through them the look of disinterest on his face required an increasingly greater effort to maintain.
There were appointment notes and memos reminding the suspect that he needed stamps for various retail outlets. There was not, so far as Michael could see, a corresponding supplier for the stamps. Other notes, none of which were recent, comprised current song titles with remarks like, "Piano arrangement not too difficult" or, "Very simple melody" or, "Good, but complicated orchestration needed---I can't memorize it." The final entry, dated three weeks earlier, said, "Found another possibility, will investigate the old lady tomorrow."
The last entry in the address book, which otherwise contained only business contacts, was that of Mrs. Timmins. It had been written so heavily that her name and address had been embossed on four of the underlying pages.
An emotional type, thought Michaelson coldly as he began going through the cash book.
The entries were meticulously neat and, possibly because he had forgotten which book he was using, interspersed with reminders. Like the desk diary it showed ample evidence of income from the sale of stamps, but no indication of where he got them. His expenditure seemed to be confined to rent, food, clothing and sheet music. One of the latter items was for a song with "Memories" in the title and he had added, leaning very heavily on his ballpoint, "Memories don't sell as easily as stamps, but they are all I can take." The last four entries, all dated within the past few weeks, showed the expenditure of considerable sums of money to an undisclosed company or person, with a bracketed notation that said, "In used notes by registered mail." Michaelson noted the amounts.
"Can I telephone?" asked the Inspector.
"He has a night line," said Nesbitt.
The night receptionist at the Worchester remembered Smith and, because he was not very busy, did not mind talking about him. Smith had stayed there for nearly a year, conducting a stamp business from nine to five---he lived somewhere else. He kept a very smart if conservative wardrobe in his office room---for impressing customers, he had said---but traveled to and from work in an old, shapeless suit. No, he had not acted in any way suspiciously or oddly, except that sometimes he arrived in the morning without a raincoat when it was pouring wet, and vice versa. But then the weather could change so suddenly. In this morning's forecast they had promised sunny periods ...
During the next pause for breath Michaelson thanked the receptionist and hung up.
A man who avoids red tape and who sells stamps without buying them and buys sheet music and copies it over and over again, apparently to memorize it. Stamps were a peculiar commodity in that they could not be stolen in bulk without the fact showing up---especially when they were over half a century old. And where could freshly plagiarized music be sold? Any country or broadcasting company who bought it would signal the fact to the whole world and if they were pirates they would hardly pay for the music in the first place.
To make any sense at all of this puzzle he would have to look at all the pieces very carefully and move them around to see how or if they fitted. Michaelson considered the suspect's manner, appearance, everything he had found out about him and his oddly run business. Potentially they were all important pieces and he had to try fitting all of them together before he could risk discarding any as belonging to some other puzzle.
"Would you like some coffee?" said the night patrolman. He said it three times before Michael heard him.
"No, thanks," he said absently. The pieces, all of them, were beginning to fit together. "I would like to make another call before I leave."
Doctor Weston had a large local practice. He also had the information on Mrs. Timmins which Michaelson needed and eventually, and with great difficulty, it was coaxed out of him. The details of her physical condition were given much more easily.
". . . And I gave that silly old woman until the middle of last week," said the doctor, in the tone of voice he used when he felt very strongly about a patient but did not want people to think that he was soft-hearted. "When I saw her earlier this evening I told the nurse to stay with her---she won't last the night. In her condition I don't know why she bothers to hang on."
/ do, said Michaelson, but he spoke under his breath.
"One more call, honest," he said to Nesbitt. He had to go arrange with Greer to bring the suspect to Mrs. Timmins' flat, where he would meet them as soon as possible.
They met twenty minutes later in her lounge. The nurse had gone into the adjoining bedroom to prepare her patient to receive visitors, leaving the suspect, Greer and Michaelson alone. The suspect looked as frightened as Michaelson had ever seen a man look, and the sergeant's expression reflected controlled puzzlement.
He could very well be making the worst mistake of his long and fairly successful career, Michaelson thought, but if all the evidence pointed to an impossible conclusion then the impossible wasn't impossible.
"This man has been rather naughty, Sergeant," he said. "His reticence about giving his name was ill-advised, but understandable in the circumstances. I have evidence that he is in fact the old lady's benefactor---he sent the money which she is supposed to have inherited. He hasn't admitted it yet, but I would say that it was conscience money and that he is the son or grandson of the old lady's husband who deserted her and probably married again and who wants the payoff to be anonymous so as to avoid a possible bigamy charge and questions of the legitimacy or otherwise of his children."
Greer nodded, then said, "I'll return to the station, sir." He gave the suspect a pained look, the sort which he reserved for nice but ill-advised people who played games with the overworked constabulary, and left. Professionally the sergeant was completely disinterested in nice people.
If anything the suspect looked even more frightened.
"That isn't the true story," Michaelson told him, "but it will do for the Sergeant. Let's go in---she's dying and there isn't much time."
'No!'" He looked as if he might run if he did not faint first.
"You tried hard enough to see her and now is your chance," Michaelson began angrily. Controlling himself he went on, "I have known this old lady for a very long time. She Was and is a ... a very nice person."
"I know that!"
Michaelson nodded and went on, "When I was a kid she was so good, so stupidly good and generous, that I wanted to do something for her---we all did. But her problem was not susceptible to solution by ten-year-old boys. Now . . . well, I want you to inconvenience yourself just a little by going in to see her. If you don't," he added quietly, "I'll break every bone in your body."
"You don't understand," said the suspect dully, but he began moving toward the bedroom door.
"Maybe I do," said Michaelson. "You have two very nice businesses going---buying stamps at face value there and selling them here at a profit of several thousand per cent. You even speculated in a few rare items, which became even rarer and more valuable. The music business in the other direction---no wonder so many of today's songs sound as if they'd been plagiarized----did not pay so well and you decided to stay where the money was...."
The nurse opened the bedroom door, motioned them inside and then moved into the lounge.
"You know," said the suspect, looking more relieved than frightened. "But I didn't desert her. There was an accident and I couldn't get back."
"Tell me about it," said Michaelson.
The suspect had been working at nights in the university, augmenting his wages as a shop assistant by sweeping and tidying the labs---he had been saving hard to get married. Professor Morrison, one of the most important people at the university, had offered him a lot of money to take part in an experiment which he had said was perfectly safe but which must be kept secret. Professor Morrison had not explained what he was doing in detail, saying that it was too complicated, but from overheard conversations between the professor and his assistants and from his own recent reading, fictional as well as technical, he had a vague idea of how if not why the system worked.
The field of stress which he had entered could be considered as a standing wave in time with an amplitude of exactly sixty-three years and that material objects currently in existence could go forward into the future and come back again to the present, but an object that existed in the future could not be brought back. Once the field had been set up it would remain in existence forever, he had heard the professor say, unless some outside agency or carelessness---such as materializing people or lab animals in a non-empty space---caused it to break down.
Professor Morrison had intended to publish his results but he had first to develop a shorter-range field---as things were he could not prove that his subject had traveled forward in time if he could not bring something back from the future. He had to send someone forward who would materialize in the professor's own lifetime, and Morrison was pushing eighty. As well, his reputation was such that he could not risk being accused of scientific trickery.
The professor's budget did not allow him to go on paying his guinea-pig, so he had devised the idea of memorizing songs of the future and selling them in the past. Memories, after all, were non-material....
"... I thought of the stamp idea myself," the suspect continued. "I was married by then and my wife knew what I was doing. We thought eventually of coming to the future here, where I was making much more money, and I would commute to the past for stamps or anything else I needed. It was like going to work in the morning on a train, except that I commuted through time.
"I had told her not to worry if I didn't come home for a few evenings---if I wasn't home for tea then I had sprained my ankle or something and would be along the next evening, or the next. The time I spent in the future exactly equaled the time I was absent from the past, you see, and I didn't want her to be waiting up for me and worrying.
"I should have realized that the overgrown hollow I always arrived in was an old crater," he concluded, "but it was so big and shallow. All I knew was that the Professor was working on a new, short-duration field which would make his time-travel demonstrable to all, and that one evening I went back to the hollow and couldn't get home. And life here is so complicated, so much more documentation that I don't fully understand---"
"I could help you understand it," said Michaelson quietly. He had been gradually moving the suspect closer to the bed. He added, "But you will have to do something for me."
"Even before I traced the old newspaper references," the other went on, "I knew that I was marooned here. I had a large enough stock of stamps to be able to make enough money to set up a legitimate philatelic business if I could only sort out the red tape. But I wanted to find my wife if she was still alive. We didn't make much money on the songs I had memorized and most of it went on buying stamps, anyway. She must have moved to this place before our house was leveled to make room for the new development, but the new owner changed the name and made it difficult to trace...."
"But you found her," Michaelson broke in softly, "and she'll be glad to see you after all this time."
"No," said the other, beginning to back away, "I can't."
Michaelson gripped him very firmly by the arm and said, "You are going to need help and advice and I'm willing to give it, but if you don't go to that old lady I will make you wish that you'd never been born. With your ridiculous story and lack of documentation I could easily get you in trouble---a charge of espionage, perhaps, or committal to a psychiatric---"
"She's so old!" he burst out in a tortured whisper. "Letting her see me still young would . . . would ... it wouldn't be fair to her!"
"That's a risk we both must take," said Michaelson more gently. "But I talked to her doctor. She is pretty far gone, far enough gone perhaps and senile enough to be living in the past, and you are exactly as she remembers you..."
Michaelson moved toward the bed taking the other man with him. On the bedside table there was a framed wedding picture showing them together. The faces were identical to those in the cropped photographs in the suspect's wallet except that this picture was old and yellowed and had not had the old-fashioned suit and dress and bouquet trimmed away to make period identification difficult. The terribly wrinkled and shrunken and caved-in face on the pillow close by bore no resemblance to the picture at all except for the eyes. They were the same as in the photograph and the same as Michaelson remembered them as a boy.
He stared intently at the suspect's face, looking for the slightest sign of revulsion in the other's expression as he bent over the bed, but could not find it.
As the nurse closed the bedroom door behind him she said, "He's holding her in his arms, sir. Is the young man a relative?"
Michaelson rubbed his eyes and said, "Only by marriage."
HE knew himself to have that rare knack of making friends with everybody, and the corporal, who was also a keen amateur gardener, and himself had become very pally. Now, glancing at the stiffly marching figure beside him, Mathewson wondered if he reached for his pipe whether the corporal would shoot him.
He would have liked to say something, but the grim set of the soldier's jaw, and the hurt, ashamed look in his usually friendly eyes made him keep silent. The major's hut was only three minutes away at this pace, and any explanation he could give would be long, complicated and quite incredible, especially if it was the true one.
The corporal halted at the green-painted door of the Nissen hut and rapped three times. His other hand hovered over the butt of his pistol, and his eyes were grimly watchful, though he never looked any higher than the level Of Mathewson's tie. The orderly who escorted them to the inner office also avoided meeting his eyes, and the little group of civilians inside seemed to be interested only in the design of the linoleum.
Major Turner said, "Very good, Corporal. At ease," and fell silent for the space of two long, interminable minutes, during which he stared fixedly at some papers on his blotter. Ordinary attempts at sabotage he could deal with, that was a security officer's job, as was counterespionage and the screening of technicians, but this. . . .
He didn't quite know what to do. Finally he spoke; his voice was low, but the suppressed anger in it was unmistakable.
"If we were at war, you know what I would do to you." It was a statement rather than a question. "Shoot you."
And Dr. Mathewson knew he would have done just that, too. The major was tough. He kept silent, trying to think of a way of presenting the truth in such a way as to make it appear not completely incredible, because he knew the questions, cold, incisive, deeply-probing questions, would start in a matter of short seconds now, and any story based on a lie wouldn't stand up for more than five minutes. Besides being a martinet, the major had tacked onto his name a few solid degrees in psychology that very few people knew about.
One of the five civilians present stirred restlessly. It was Ellison. The mention of shooting had shaken him. He spoke hesitantly, almost inaudibly, without raising his eyes.
"But the doc isn't a spy. There must be some explanation for what he's done. He isn't the type that would, would---" he broke off, then finished lamely, "He's never---, he doesn't act like a spy."
The major glanced at him and murmured softly, pityingly, "Famous last words." His tone left no doubt in the hearer's mind what he thought of Ellison, which was that he was far too childlike and trusting to be allowed out. "Get conscious," he ended sharply. "D'you think they all look like cloak and dagger desperados?"
Ellison looked as if he was about to tell the major exactly what he thought of him, but Turner had resumed staring at his blotter, so he subsided sullenly, a slow blush creeping over his neck and ears. He was of far too shy and sensitive a nature to win a name-calling contest against the Major, anyway.
Mathewson had of course expected some support from the civilians present, but Ellison's sincere if somewhat incoherent defense of his character had come as a bit of a shock, for Ellison, more than any other individual on the site, had the most reasons to hate his guts. It gave him a warm, grateful feeling to know that he had inspired such loyalty and affection....
His musings were cut short by the major who was talking again. With a start he realized that it was to him.
". . . that lying will be futile and a complete waste of my time and your breath. I'll tell you what happened that night, you can then tell me why it happened, and, the most important piece of information," he nodded slightly toward the two NCO's wearing phones and staring intently at radar screens over in a darkened corner of the room, "what will happen next."
He paused, then continued in a low voice devoid of feeling, like a judge summing up after a murder trial, not wishing to influence the jurymen.
"At approximately 22.40 hours on the night in question you entered the canteen and ordered, very tactfully, of course, that Ellison should go to bed and get as much rest as possible before takeoff at 06.00 the following morning. You accompanied him to his room and doped his hot milk and saw that he drank it all before leaving. At 23.08 you drew a light truck from the M.T. Officer telling him it was required to take some gear to the ship for last-minute tests on the automatic controls. While the people in the canteen were loudly finishing off their farewell party to the, by now, deeply unconscious official pilot, you arrived at the ship with a load of equipment and Allen. Together you made between nine and eleven trips up into the ship. The last time you came down alone and succeeded in making the guard believe that Allen had already left for his hut---" Here he glared coldly at the corporal, "---leaving the truck for you. At 23.40 you drove the truck to the Administration block and entered the building. At approximately 23.52 the corporal on guard heard the ship's gyros start up, followed by the fuel pumps and the automatic fire alarm. After switching the siren to General Emergency he went quickly to the safety trench at the edge of the takeoff apron. It was now 23.58. Two minutes later the ship took off."
The low monologue stopped, and a hint of puzzlement crept into the major's voice when he resumed. The others sat in strained, attentive silence, scarcely moving. The proverbial pin, had it dropped just then, would have made quite a clatter.
"There was a good deal of confusion for several hours after the departure of the ship. You, as director of research and hence the highest-ranking authority on the site, could have got clean away at any time up until the declaration of martial law early this morning. I don't quite understand that. You must be very new to this game or . . ." He looked thoughtful for a moment, then said sharply, "Or did you think the corporal would have died in the blast? If that had happened you could have told any cock and bull story you pleased and been believed, because Allen wasn't with you when the M.T. officer gave you the truck. It very nearly happened that way, too."
He looked straight at the standing doctor and said softly, "A spy and a murderer. You play the game dirty, don't you, Doc?"
This last accusation came as a shock to Mathewson. Allen and himself had made the vital decision a long time ago, and planned the operation in such a way that no foreseeable change in circumstance would find them at a loss. They had discussed, many times and at great lengths, all the possible repercussions taking the spaceship would have on the authorities, and the steps those authorities would take regarding Mathewson, and devised various means of keeping him at least physically unharmed until the second stage of the plan began. A charge of murder was the only thing not allowed for. The whole thing sounded unreal, fantastic; his ears must surely be lying. Spies, in this modern age, were rarely just shot out of hand, he knew. And in the more civilized countries they sometimes weren't shot at all. Murderers were different. Little wonder none of them would look him in the face. But the thing was silly. Stupid. Surely they knew him well enough to realize he could never bring himself to do a thing like that---most of the people present had known him for years. The major was the one he had to convince, however. He glanced sideways at the corporal a little anxiously before replying.
"There was plenty of time for him to reach safety. The only danger was that he might try to break into the ship to restrain the pilot, but he had been made to believe the ship was deserted. Besides, I had told him repeatedly what to do in the event of there being a premature ignition of the fuel or some similar accident. Knowing the thorough safety measures practiced by technicians and the numerous locks and alarms designed to prevent such accidents, he probably thought I was inclined to worry needlessly or that I wasn't quite myself because of the nearness of the takeoff. The point I want to make is that he knew exactly what to do, and he was in no danger at any time. Also---" Mathewson glanced quickly at the corporal again. It made him uncomfortable to be constantly saying "he" when the object of the discussion was barely two feet away, "---You have probably found out by now that we were on very good terms---quite friendly, in fact." He stopped, waiting.
"True?" asked the major, switching his attention to the corporal. His expression conveyed exactly what he thought of soldiers who made friends with people who sabotaged multimillion-pound defense projects.
The corporal's mind had been busy during the doctor's version of the affair and was still a little confused. He badly wanted to give Mathewson the benefit of the doubt, but he needed time to think this out. The sudden question startled him. He nodded foolishly, then seeing the frown of displeasure gathering on the major's brow, clipped out a hasty, "Yes, sir."
After a moment's silence, Turner resumed. He looked slightly disappointed.
"That seems to prove your innocence of attempted murder, but it could also mean you were clever enough to have a good story to fall back on if the plan failed. You see, I still think the corporal was meant to die; otherwise, why are you still on the site? Why aren't you with Allen's friends, safe and sound, back in ..."
He broke off. One of the earphoned N.C.O.'s cleared his throat and said, in that emotionless singsong peculiar to all radio operators, "London reporting in. Seeing nil, still raining. Radar shows objects still in close proximity, no further maneuvering. Ends." During acknowledgment of the message the people in that room who had been straining to catch every word of that brief but meaningful report slowly brought their attention back to Mathewson and the major.
"The taking of a life is of secondary importance compared to the main charge, so we'll forget about that for the moment. You aided in the theft, and probably destruction, of a spaceship that was the culmination of many years of research and cost a truly astronomical amount of the nation's money---money it could ill afford, as you well know. Beside this a human life was only, well . . ." he glanced at the corporal, ". . . of sentimental value. I think it's time we got down to business. I suggest you start at the beginning, and don't forget I can check on almost everything you say. First. When did you meet Allen originally? And, just for the record, what is his real name? What do his friends call him---if you can pronounce it, that is?"
"His real name is Allen. He spells it differently, though. And he hasn't got any friends other than the ones he made here," said Mathewson, and waited for Turner to say something.
The major settled back in his chair, and looked at Mathewson steadily. It was obvious that he didn't believe him, but he kept silent, waiting for the rest of it.
The accused shuffled uncomfortably and shifted his weight onto one foot. Nobody had even thought of giving him a chair, he wasn't quite human any more. He looked at the group of civilians. They seemed a little less hostile, but very puzzled. He knew that the higher technical staff on the site were for the most part shrewd, brilliant, if somewhat erratic men. Perhaps some of the most civilized men on the planet. Moreover, he knew them to be the greatest collection of starry-eyed idealists ever collected in one place, a fact which they all strove desperately to conceal. Surely someone would believe him, and understand his reasons for doing this thing. He started to speak again.
I met him for the first time on that Met expedition to the Antarctic which took rocket soundings above the south magnetic pole. One of the prefabs developed a bad flaw and had to be written off. I was the only person with a hut all to myself, if you didn't count the ton or so of equipment that shared it with me, so naturally one of the displaced persons was dumped on me, together with a couple of cubic yards of his equipment. The D.P. was Allen. The living space became so severely limited that extreme caution had to be observed in getting in and out of bed lest a careless movement of a foot or an elbow damage an irreplaceable piece of apparatus. In cramped quarters like those one either gets to like a roommate or dislike him intensely. We got on very well.
"His job was to see to the cameras and various telemetering devices that went up in the sounding rockets, but I quickly found out that he could do any job almost as well, and sometimes better than the people whose specialty it was. He made good tea, too, so naturally he was well liked. It was everyone's considered opinion that he was a born genius. But he was very shy and hesitant, and when he did say something, especially if it was on a technical subject, you got the impression that he'd given it all the consideration one usually gives only to a move in chess. He had a really brilliant mind, though like most of us on that project he was quite young, so we couldn't understand this shyness of his.
"One night, however, he let his hair down. We had gone out to retrieve the spools and tapes from a rocket that had been blown some distance from the camp. We had quite a job finding it, too. The thing was buried under about ten feet of snow and we had to use a mine detector. When the job was finished we were tired, cold and hungry, and had a mile or more to walk back to our hut. Misfortunes and confidences seem to go together. It happened something like this ..."
The two men shifted their packs higher as they approached a particularly steep snow drift. Their breath drifted behind them, slowly dissipating in the brittle air. There was no moon, but the snowfield was lit softly by the subdued fitful glow of the Aurora, and the sharp, coldly burning stars that crowded thickly in the sable sky. It was a beautiful night. The men plodded wearily to the top of the drift and stopped. Allen said, "I'd better check the direction again. These pint-sized mountain ranges have got me all crossed up." He fished out a compass. Mathewson just grunted, glad of the rest.
Mathewson had been leaning on his ski-stick, regaining his breath, and looking down at his dimly-seen snowshoes, thinking of that badly overworked joke about "Tennis, anyone?" when he suddenly realized that his feat were cold and that Allen hadn't said a word for over ten minutes. He looked up. After a few seconds he coughed deliberately and tried to whistle in an exaggerated attempt to attract attention.
Allen was standing motionless with his head thrown back, looking at that glorious sky. His attention as far as Mathewson could see, was focused in the region of a first-magnitude star which the doctor guessed was Fomalhaut. The compass, held loosely in a clumsy mitten, had slipped and thudded softly into the powdery snow, but the man remained a statue. And he looked as if he would so remain until the next blizzard blew up and covered him. In the dim light his expression couldn't be discerned, but he obviously was in the grip of some strong emotion. His eyes seemed to be wet, but that might have been due to the cold. Seeing him like that made Mathewson feel uncomfortable, as if in some way he was eavesdropping. He shuffled up to Allen, feeling just like a bull on the threshold of a china shop, and shook his elbow gently.
"Penny for your thoughts."
Stammering, Allen came abruptly back to earth. Then he spoke rapidly as if nothing had happened.
"Uh---er---if we follow that star," he pointed, "for about twenty minutes, we'll be home. We should see the lights from the top of that big drift ahead."
"You must have been a boy scout in your young and formative period," bantered Mathewson. If Allen didn't feel like telling him anything he certainly wasn't going to pry. He went on, hamming it strongly, "Sir, I place myself completely in your hands."
"Onward!" said Allen, and humming a rousing fanfare which was horribly off key, led the way down the slope. He was himself again.
They had been trudging for ten minutes and the yellow lights of the camp were well in sight ahead when Allen spoke again. He seemed queerly hesitant.
"I hear you're for Australia when you finish here, Doc?"
"That's right," said Mathewson.
There was no point in denying it, the doctor knew. The fact that he was shortly to take charge of the satellite vehicle project at Woomera was supposed to be top secret, but as half the men on this present job were joining him the secret hadn't been kept very well.
"I like working with rockets," said Allen seriously, then he finished with a rush, "Maybe you could get me a job?"
It seemed a silly request to the doctor, for he knew Allen had the necessary technical qualifications to obtain a post in any rocket research project in the world, judging from the things he'd done here. Why, there was one little gadget he'd thought up in only two hours to get distortion-free signals from high altitudes during magnetic storms. That extremely simple but utterly revolutionary dingus would make him a fortune when he patented it. Since Allen was an American---at least he spoke like an American---it was strange that the White Sands crowd hadn't grabbed him long ago. They spared neither trouble, nor expense to get the best brains, he knew, and it seemed the logical place for Allen to go. But the thing that struck the doctor as being most strange was the manner of his asking, as if hoping for a great favor. He said quietly, not allowing a hint of his puzzlement to show in his voice, "I'd be glad to have you along, you know that. Just send your application through the usual channels and I'll O.K. it. I didn't know unemployment was a problem with you." He paused. "Why you poor starving genius, you." He fumbled with an imaginary wallet in the region of his hip pocket, he was hamming it again. "Would you like a little something . . . not charity, of course ... a loan, or an advance?"
But Allen wasn't entering into the spirit of the thing this time. When he spoke again his voice was still serious, and he was very ill at ease.
"I meant could you, personally, get me a job. You see, Doc, it's that application through channels that is the whole trouble. Doc, I haven't got a single degree."
Before Mathewson could make any reply to this startling bit of information he was talking again.
"And I suppose you've been wondering why I didn't try for White Sands. Well I did, but I couldn't get a look in. Not even as a very junior technician. Security wouldn't pass me," he said bitterly. He was probably thinking of the things they were doing at that heaven of rocket technicians, where they had chucked chemical fuels entirely because, it was whispered, they had an atomic motor a-building that was suitable for use in a spaceship, though its completion and tests would take a few years yet. He hurried on, "But don't think it was anything political. It wasn't, though they thought so. They wanted to trace me back to the cradle to check up. It was unheard of that anyone as well up in technical subjects as I undoubtedly was could be without at least a few degrees. They wanted to know what universities and what colleges I had attended. Science, in this modern age, is a highly complicated and specialized affair. Did I expect them to believe that I got all this knowledge just by reading books? All right then, what primary school had I attended?
"I wouldn't tell them so I got the push."
To give himself time to take this in Mathewson started to rearrange the hood of his parka. Finally he coughed and said, "And did you pick up all your gen from books?"
As soon as he uttered it he knew it was a stupid question, but it was the only one he could think of at the moment.
Allen shook his head. "My education was the same as thousands of others back home, though I knew what I wanted to be and specialized almost from the beginning. But I just can't tell you where I got it." His voice became almost inaudible. It must have cost him an effort to get out the last sentence, "for . . . well . . . strong personal reasons."
Mathewson couldn't see his face, but he could imagine it burning hot with shame and embarrassment, and wondered what tremendous scrape the other could have got himself into to make him act like this. Still, it was none of his business. And, if you looked at it properly, there really wasn't a problem at all. He spoke, choosing the words carefully.
"This is all very unusual. The important thing though is your ability and not your past life. I have a good idea of your character generally, so I think it would be possible to give you a position there." Talking like this made Mathewson feel like a stuffed shirt. He stopped, and then in his more normal tones said, "Buck up, Buster. We'll fiddle it through somehow. It'll be all right."
Allen said, "Thanks, Doc," very softly, and that was all. But into those two words he put something that made the other sure that he'd just done the greatest good deed of his life. It was an altogether pleasant sensation.
At their hut, while they were hanging up the snowshoes, Allen paused and looked up at that glorious sky again. Mathewson joined him. "It's quite a sight, isn't it?" he said softly.
The other could not have heard him. He murmured, "It's a terrible thing to be homesick, Doc," and turned quickly to enter the hut.
As the present job would finish in two days this seemed a strange remark to come off with, but when they had bunked down just before going to sleep, Allen came up with an even stranger one. He said, "Do you remember when I was checking our course on top of that drift, and you said I must have been a boy scout? Doc, what is a boy scout?"
He seemed quite serious about it, too. Mathewson didn't know what to think. He told him to shut up and go to sleep or he'd crown him with something.
Next morning Allen talked about nothing but Woomera.
"All right, all right. So he made a neat contact." The major was growing impatient. "But I don't want a whole history. You wangled him the job---by going over my head when I turned him down---and he settled in. Then what? How did he convert you, or was it money?"
"No. It wasn't money, and he didn't 'convert' me either. It wasn't anything like that at all." Mathewson sighed. The other seemed to have a one-track mind.
"Oh, so he just asked you nicely for the ship and you gave it to/him, just like that." Turner's tone was bitingly sarcastic. "What's a spaceship more or less between friends sort of thing, is that it?"
"Yes, something like that." The doctor waited for the shock wave of the inevitable explosion to hit him.
Turner rose half out of his seat and stiffened in that strained position while his face reddened and a vein in his temple started a measured throbbing. His eyes were pure murder. He opened his mouth, but the explosion didn't come. He eased back into the chair and said dully, "Tell me about the first time he asked for it." Then recovering himself somewhat, "And don't take all day."
"It was one night about three months ago. I had asked him to stay with us over the weekend. The project looked like it would be finished eight months ahead of schedule. Incidentally, this was due to the amazing work put into new engine designs by Allen, and by his ability at bug-suppressing generally, as anyone here will tell you. We were taking it easy. My wife had taken the children to the pictures and we were just loafing around and talking. He began to get more and more nervous and restless, but I didn't mention it. We were discussing the effect of acceleration on some of the more sensitive valves---they are practically foolproof, of course, but we were being morbid. He kept suggesting improvements, and alternative layouts, just as he did when that refrigeration problem came up. And the time when we bogged down on the venturi linings and he ended up by inventing that new alloy that stayed at white heat for two hours before it softened. These suggestions were like the others, wild, unheard of, and impossibly simple---and, when we'd screwed up enough courage to try them, quite workable. I told him to please, please stop. Most of the radio equipment was already installed and it would mean tearing it all out again. He was undoubtedly a genius, but hadn't he improved that ship enough already? Anyone would think he was taking the thing out.
"It was meant to be a joke, but he shut up like a clam for more than ten minutes. Finally he said, "Who is going to take her out, Doc?"
"That," I said, "is information to be divulged to nobody until the day before takeoff, it is classified, it is top secret, but it is too utterly hush-hush for words. It has been entrusted to only two people on the site, the chief security officer and myself. But anyone will tell you it's Ellison." "Ellison." He appeared disappointed somehow. Then, "He's the logical one, I suppose, but . . . Doc, I want to go."
"I think I just gaped at him for a bit. There might have been two, or just possibly three people on the site who wouldn't have sold their souls to be able to take off in that ship, but the job of piloting rockets is a highly specialized one, one for which the final exams have yet to be set. He couldn't even fly a plane. But I thought I knew how he felt.
"Suddenly he started talking, rapidly, his voice was low and deadly in earnest. 'I can do it, Doc, you can believe me. I've experience you don't know about, lots of it, I've got to go out. Why do you think I nearly killed myself to get this job here when White Sands turned me down, and all those gadgets and improvements I "suggested" and had built into the ship, when I could have been pulling in a fat salary? I wanted to impress the high-ups, I wanted to be indispensable, the only person who really knew the ship. But because I never flew a jet I get the brush-off. Don't you think I could have learned easily if I'd known it was necessary? You don't have to be able to ride a bike to drive a car. These last two years that has been my only aim in life, the only aim, to get out into space again . . .' He bit the sentence off and froze, slowly going pale.
" 'I'm awful sorry, old man. I had an inkling how you felt, you know, and I suggested you for the job, but---if you want to hear a very unfunny joke I can tell one. They thought you too valuable to risk in a . . .' Then it penetrated. 'Again!' What do you mean 'again?' "
"He was quiet for a long time. I could see he was trying to make a difficult decision, the sort that one's life depends on. They don't come any harder than that. Then he made up his mind.
" 'I had hoped this would be unnecessary, Doc, but this place . . . security, red tape, restrictions, screening . . . I'm lost. I just can't cope with it all. I thought when I was forced down two years ago in north Ontario everything would be all right. A bit difficult at first maybe, but just a matter of time. I had the language, of course, that was part of my job, and I had a good idea of the high stage of technological development of the place, so things looked rosy. True, my ship was in little pieces, all of them at the bottom of a lake, with all the communicating gear, but with my ability I should be off here in no time, I thought. Well, you can guess what happened. When we met on the South Pole job I'd about given up hope, but now ... listen to that a minute!'
"The radio was turned on low, a request record program. An old disc of that indestructible crooner was spinning. The voice, warm, friendly, and frankly sentimental, was singing,'... winds are the gustiest, the roads the dustiest, the friends the trustiest, way back home . . .' There was a lot more, about green hills and cool streams and long, sweet-smelling grass rippling in a hot summer breeze, and boyhood memories of . . . Oh, that song had practically everything. He went on.
" 'That song puts my feelings across better than I can, but it doesn't say half of the . . . the . . .' He stopped, at a loss for words, then blurted out, 'Oh, Doc, I want to go home."
"Allen confessing he was an extra-terrestrial shook me. But somehow I wasn't really surpri---"
"Stop!" The major's voice was unrecognizable. "That's enough." The others came bolt upright, three of them said, 'Extra-terrestrial!' in perfect unison, and somebody else whispered, 'He's mad.' Controlling himself with difficulty Turner silenced the incipient uproar and continued.
"Now you want us to believe Allen wasn't even human ---a man from Mars or maybe Venus. That's silly. You know as well as I do what conditions are on those planets. And that ship is only an orbital rocket, it couldn't even reach the moon, much less ... But why do I bother wasting my breath, you aren't even trying to be reasonable in your story. Let's have it straight: Where did he come from, and what was his purpose?"
"He didn't tell me where he came from----I don't think he was allowed to." Mathewson could see the major going red again, and hurried on. "But it was definitely an extra-solar planet. He didn't intend going in the rocket. That was to be used merely to take him to the parent ship based on Titan. Small ships can't mount overdrive . . ." One of the technicians muttered, "Anybody knows that," and shook his head dazedly. ". . . or he might possibly have used it to go directly home. His job was a minor one. While the rest of the party did their research on the outer planets he was sent here to look the place over again and find out roughly how soon we would get into space, so that their race would know when to expect contact if the work on Titan took longer than planned. If we already had space travel, no matter how crude and inefficient the method, they would have been bound to contact us and obtain permission to occupy the satellite. But as we hadn't even left the Earth, and their project would take at the very longest only a little over three years, this was unnecessary, and we were left in blissful ignorance.
"He was given eight months to do the job. The first six went in brushing up on the language; even with his training this was a little difficult. He knew it already, of course, but the recordings he'd studied back home had been made and translated during the original survey, and were sixty-odd years out of date. The remaining two months were spent in digging up and relaying to the mother ship as much information as was possible without actually landing. There was some spare time when that chore was finished, so he decided to risk a landing. This was strictly forbidden and very definitely contra-regs, of course, but he liked the look of the place and he wanted to pick up a few souvenirs.
"On the way down he sideswiped a mountaintop, and flopped into a deep freshwater lake. The scoutship and everything in it was converted into finely reduced junk, but he was able to walk away from it, though he had to use a spacesuit as the wreck was one hundred-odd feet under water."
Mathewson paused, thinking of Allen's long, hard struggle to adapt to the customs of a world of aliens, and his almost hopeless resolve to rejoin his friends, and the desperate battle to make sure the Woomera ship would be finished in time. He looked over at the civilians. They were watching him intently, taking it all in. Maybe they weren't believing any of it, but they were definitely interested. Ellison was agog. The major was tapping his slightly yellowish teeth with his pencil, with the air of one waiting not too patiently for somebody to shut up and stop wasting his time. Before he could put the thought into words the doctor continued quickly.
"He had to take the first ship. It would have been easier to wangle a passage on a later ascent, but the mother ship would have left for home by that time. As it was, there was a very close race against time. After he told me all about it that night we began to work on the drive that was to take him to Titan. It is a surprisingly simple affair, a little like the, as yet, theoretical Ion Drive we talk about sometimes, though his model was very inefficient because Terran makeshifts were used instead of the proper equipment. By this time he was the sole authority on everything electrical that went into the ship, so there was no difficulty in installing the thing. But some of the apparatus just couldn't be disguised as normal gear and had to be carried aboard a little before takeoff.
"The plan was to ascend to the group of 'cargo' rockets which contained the basic equipment and skeleton structure for the space station, and join them in their six-hour polar orbit. Then he had to round them up into a tight bunch and, using some of the parts they carried, finish the drive unit. The drive completed, he was to radio the base here and then blow for Titan. The whole business was to be finished in eight hours at most, but five would have been plenty of time." Mathewson looked across at the two N.C.O.'s at their screens, and ended worriedly, "I hope nothing has happened to him."
"Let's make this as simple as possible. You say 'Allen' came from another planet, had an accident, got stranded, and you gave him a spaceship to help him to get home again." Turner was furious. He showed it by being mildly reproving and very, very sarcastic. "That was terribly generous of you. Giving a twelve billion pound spaceship to an almost perfect stranger, and him not even an Earth-man." The major tsk tsk'd and fell silent.
For the first time since the doctor had been brought in, Ellison spoke up. He addressed the major. "You don't get it, sir." Apparently he'd forgotten completely that he was the official pilot; his voice was awed, his eyes shone joyously. "The gift of the ship will make a big impression on Allen's friends. It is a friendly act toward a highly advanced and probably extremely powerful race, one they can't ignore. And, the most important item, it will Drove to them that we are civilized." Then he amended, "At least, some of us are." A technician beside him vigorously nodded agreement.
"Oh, no! Not you, too." From the look on Major Turner's face he obviously thought they should both have been certified long ago, but before h# could give the thought expression the singsong voice of the sergeant at the receiver focused all attention on the incoming message.
"Capetown reporting in. Radar shows two distinct traces, means ship is definitely pulling away from station. Signal indicates separation of about seven five yards, with this distance steadily increasing though at a very slow rate. Seeing nil, sun in the way. Ends."
In the silence that followed the report Doctor Mathewson could be heard whispering, "He's not dead. Did you hear that? He's moving. He's not dead." There was a terrific load off his mind.
The major smiled wolfishly. "No, he's not dead, yet." He had everyone's attention now. When he went on, his tone was neither bitingly sarcastic nor pitched high in anger, it was low, clear and under perfect control. It sounded briskly efficient and very, very tough.
"I know what Allen is, even though I don't know who he is specifically, and by this time you should know, too. I'm beginning to feel a little sorry for all of you. You people, and especially the doctor, were completely taken in by a consummate actor and expert psychologist who sized you up to a 'T' and pulled the principle of the Big Lie on you. It might have been anyone, but you, Mathewson, fell for it. I'll ask one question. Did you build and test any of this Ion Drive equipment yourself?"
The Doctor shook his head. "No, but I've got three notebooks filled with circuit diagrams and equations. Besides, he said it worked only in a vacuum."
"I thought so. There is no Ion Drive, no base on Titan and no extra-solar planet. You should be able to see that now. Another thing. He was to link up with the 'cargo' rockets in the six-hour orbit and remain there for not more than eight hours, ostensibly to complete assembly of the 'drive.' Well, he's now been gone over two days, and I'm afraid to think what damage he has done to our equipment there. If he's smashed it, another five years will be needed to replace it and build the space station and global TV relay we had hoped to have in partial operation early next year. He was to leave that orbit: in fact, the last report shows he has already begun to, but he's not going to Titan. Instead he will return to Earth with a very valuable ship, and he won't land anywhere near here. I can't be absolutely sure of the damage he's done the space station gear, so I'm waiting until the ship is a few miles away from it before I blast him. When he is a safe distance away from it a 'cargo' rocket with its payload replaced by a homing device and an adequate charge of HE on proximity fuse will be sent up on radio control. I can't allow that ship to fall into the wrong hands." He finished grimly, "Mister Allen has had it."
There was a stunned silence, broken by Mathewson, who gasped, "You can't do that. What about . . . ?" But he was drowned in the general hubbub. Somebody was shouting, "What about those gadgets?" at the top of his voice and another, just a little lower in volume was stating loudly, "He did talk funny. Remember that ti---" The rest was noisy but indecipherable. The major hit the desktop a smash with his fist and yelled, "Quiet!"
In easy stages the room grew quiet. Suddenly the sergeant at one of the radar screens leaned forward tensely, then clipped out, "Got her now, sir."
Turner nodded curtly in acknowledgment and addressed the civilians again. "The ship has just been picked up on radar. It is due to pass over this point in roughly fifteen minutes. Eleven minutes before that occurs we will launch the interceptor missile---" He looked at his watch, and outside there was a sudden whistling thunder that climbed and faded and died in the high blue sky. "There it goes."
Mathewson bowed his head. His shoulders sagged and he seemed to have grown suddenly old. The others too, were deathly silent, listening to the dying echoes of the takeoff. What their thoughts were was anybody's guess, but they were sad ones, one could tell that from their faces. On the wall a hitherto unused speaker crackled loudly and burst into life.
"Allen calling base. Hope you can hear me, Doc. Hi, there! Is the major being nasty? On the level, I hope everything went off O.K. I'd have called you sooner but I had to break into the transmitter for parts for the drive. There were breakages on the way up, that's why I've had to hang around so long. But everything's fine now and I'm on my way. Doc, I feel like dancing. . . . Bet Major Turner is having a fit at this moment, but you've got those notebooks so nobody'll mind me swiping this old rowboat of yours. But warn them that the experiment must be carried out in space. The field from the coils in the converter stage, especially in atmos--- but you know all this, Doc, we've been through it before. I have to sign off now, this sender is strictly from breadcrumbs, I've got to keep spitting on one of the terminals to insure a good contact, so you can image what it's like. I'm going now, Doc . . . home." The metallic voice stopped. There was an awkward silence, then it said simply, "Thanks, Doc." The words seemed queerly distorted, due probably to atmospherics, or maybe emotion, then there was a sharp click and silence returned.
The first sergeant cleared his throat and said plaintively, "Sir, the target seems to be radiating strongly on this wavelength, I can't get a fix with this glare covering the..."
He was interrupted by the other N.C.O., who seemed to have forgotten all the strict rules about the use of emotionless singsong when delivering messages. He was almost shouting. "Sir, Melbourne reporting in. Says radar's gone nuts, but seeing's fine. Scope shows ship is traveling in a sharp outward spiral at between four and six G's, fairly belting along, they say. They want to know how the fa . . . Oh, excuse me, sir . . . how can we possibly bit anything going that fast with the makeshift thing we sent after it? And why is the ship trailing what appears to be an incandescent searchlight beam forty-odd miles long? Asks what the bl. . . er, is going on anyway?" Breathless, he waited for the reply.
The civilians were being very rowdy and obstreperous, so he. couldn't hear the reply, which was just as well perhaps. It wasn't very polite.
THE crater was small and typical, just another unnamed pockmark on the wrinkled and pitted face of the Moon in the vicinity of Petavius. But it did give a good view of Earth, Mitchell saw, as he stood among his battery of telescopic cameras and tape recorders; and the ringwall was high enough to shade the sensitive equipment from the solar glare. That was important if he was to get clear, sharp pictures with no fogging.
Or, he amended bitterly, that would be important---if there were people left to look at his pictures.
On the ground a few yards away a thing that resembled a lizard only slightly moved restlessly. Beside it something that looked like a withered prune floating in a spherical gob of syrup began to hop slowly up and down, making little flat dimples in the soft pumice. A completely opaque cube that held something else remained motionless. The slow, awful thoughts that weren't his own began to well up into his mind again: reproach, utter helplessness, and a great wave of pity.
Shut up! Mitchell thought savagely. Leave me alone!
The vast minds withdrew and his thoughts were his own property again. But they would still be listening in, he knew, and watching. And they would listen and watch carefully, so as not to miss a thing. There was going to be quite a show here any minute now, an unparalleled spectacle maybe. Excitement, thrills, sudden death. Like the galactic rubbernecks they were, they wouldn't want to miss any of it.
But he was not being fair, Mitchell knew, calling them that. As he looked again at the beautiful blue crescent Earth hanging up there, he thought that they would be just as pleased if nothing at all happened. He'd got that impression from them somehow.
"Mitch!" said a tinny voice in his ear. "Can you hear me? The wind's changing again, Mitch. This might be it."
A long flex connected the receiver on the ground with the RT socket in his helmet, allowing him to listen while moving about. He felt an unreasoning urge to yank the plug out and stop that voice for good. It had begun to get on his nerves. It had said substantially the same thing three minutes ago. It had been saying it every few minutes for the last two hours.
Mitchell told the voice that he could hear it, and that that was good. His tone was deliberately lacking in warmth, but the voice still wanted to talk.
"Wh-what's it feel like being the only man on the Moon?" the voice asked. Even at a quarter of a million miles it sounded jittery. "Aren't you lonesome up there?"
Mitchell glanced involuntarily at the extra-terrestrial menagerie squatting nearby. He hadn't told Earth about them yet---they had enough on their minds up there already. They wouldn't have believed him anyway.
"It feels," he replied with great fervor, "extremely crowded."
"All right, all right." the voice said angrily. "If you don't want to talk, say so, you sarcastic . . ." It broke off. When it went on it sounded more friendly, but hurt, puzzled. "Sorry, Mitch. I didn't mean that. But I don't understand you. All alone up there, and at a time like this . .." There was a click, and silence.
But he liked being alone, that was the main reason he'd asked for this job. Didn't they know that? And about not understanding him---that was a laugh. He didn't understand himself half the time. He only knew that he didn't like people---close up, that was. They were, in a way, disease spots, just so many wild variables in an otherwise sane and scientifically well-ordered universe. If you got too close to them they infected you with the same variability. They infected you with things like hate and friendship and courage and love, and more often as not they made you very unhappy. Mitchell knew. It was better to keep them at a distance.
Back on Earth people were always telling Mitchell to pull himself out of it, and live a little. They would act very friendly, these people brought into contact with him during his work. They would slap him on the back, tell him to re-lax, that they wouldn't bite him, and ask him out for a drink. The more tactless ones advised him to see a psychiatrist. His reply to them all was usually the same, and they rarely advised him twice. He had a gift for lifting the skin off a person's back with just a few softly spoken sentences, and he found it hard not to use it. Mitchell knew what he was alright. He was simply a hermit. Unfortunately, hermits were out of date.
But he was good at his job. People went for his sound and TV news commentaries in a large way. In them he had things to say about everything, and about practically everybody---rude, libelous, corrosively sarcastic things. But they were true things he talked about; bigotry, graft, injustice. The people lapped up his words and his insults and demanded more. Naturally they didn't believe he meant half the things he said---nobody could dislike people that much.
Now he was the only human being not on Earth. That proved, he thought cynically, just how wrong they were.
"Mitch," said the voice in his earphones suddenly. "We're about ready to go. Get your cameras rolling, Mitch. Chemical and simple atomic weapons first. Watch northeast Asia for the fireworks display." The voice paused. Mitchell had the big telescopic cameras already turning when it continued. "You can start saying your piece now, Mitch. But don't be too smart. Don't make too many cracks. This may not turn out...well, the way we want it."
No, said Mitchell silently. I won't be smart or make cracks. Not this time. This might be my first funeral oration. The death of a world is a serious business.
The star-begotten trio began edging closer, thinking great, sad, reproachful thoughts. Mitchell ignored them. In the airless silence little, multicolored lights told of recording equipment ready and waiting. He cleared his throat and began to speak.
"This is Gregory Mitchell, on the Moon," he said quietly. "From here the Earth is a big, intensely blue crescent hanging in blackness above the jagged ringwall of the crater Petavius. It is blue because, as yet, the atmosphere is unpoisoned by the fission products of A-bombs, B-bombs, or H-bombs. But in a few moments ..."
Mitchell went on talking. Quietly, soberly, he set the scene. Earth as seen by a detached observer, from space. No cracks; no side remarks. Just plain, unemotional reporting. Trouble was he didn't feel detached at all; and a lot of emotions he hadn't known he possessed were beginning to affect his annunciation. Mitchell, for the first time in his life, felt very, very lonely.
That was understandable, of course. He was the only human being off Earth.
The tiny colony on Mars had tidied away their equipment, sealed their domes, and left. The staff of the Lunar Observatory had given their Big Glass a farewell polish, and departed. With them went the men of the refineries at Tycho, Eratosthenes, and Hell, and the scientists at the fuel abstraction plant in the Mare Imbrium. And the two exploratory ships nosing their way among the moons of Jupiter and Saturn had gone back, too. Everybody had gone back. They had just left whatever they had been doing and gone home. Home to Earth. Home for the Fireworks, the Big Show.
They all thought it very important to be in on the finale.
They couldn't make any difference to the final outcome, Mitchell knew. It was stupid, suicidal; but it was also the right thing to do. At the most important moment in human history they had all come home. Propaganda hadn't been responsible---they were too intelligent to be affected by that even if it had been used. They had come back to die, if that should be necessary, on their home planet, for an ideal and a way of living that they at long last knew to be worth dying for---and not worth living without.
Mitchell almost wished that he was up there, too.
On Earth's night side a point of light winked briefly into being and remained as an angry red blotch. The dump at Reinomsk, in the Urals. Talking rapidly, describing everything he saw, Mitchell lined up a telescope with the conflagration that marked the point of the explosion and saw that the monstrous, poisoned mushroom was already spreading and being torn to pieces by stratospheric winds. As he talked there were more winking lights, more angry red fever spots.
Farther south, in Tunisia, another point of pale green light appeared suddenly and died in a fading red stain of airborn radioactives. Almost simultaneously the Aleutians and Central Australia followed suit. Mitchell wondered what the American continent looked like now. But it was out of sight on the day side of the planet---and anyway, probably most of the spectacular stuff would be happening in the Eastern hemisphere. It was going to be quite a show.
Mitchell wondered what the three aliens thought of the performance. They were a very critical audience, he knew, and they hadn't liked it very much up to now. But the show could be saved by a terrific climax, a grand finale. And it could be a smash hit if only the actors lived to take a curtain call.
It was hard to think of it turning out a flop; there was so much action, drama, and sheer talent in it. Maybe there had been too much action recently---too much melodrama, and too much blood and atomic thunder. But there were good things in it, too. With people like Shakespeare, Gandhi, and Lister collaborating on the Book, with decor by Michelangelo, da Vinci, and Wren, and musical arrangements by Beethoven, Gershwin and Sibelius among others, it could not help but be good.
But the trouble was that there was no producer, and by the time enough of the cast became intelligent enough to realize just how the show was supposed to go, it was too late to try producing themselves.
Or almost too late.
Mitchell caught himself sharply; without realizing it he'd been holding forth onto the tape like some cosmic theater critic. He shut up and began moving among his equipment, switching on receivers and moving their dials almost at random. As well as his own commentary, he wanted to record some radio reports from different countries on the Earth. He tried not to let the reports affect him, but it was no good.
When one of them said, ". . . the last load of Beebees is now at the X point, after their arrival from Dakar, where they were landed from the cruiser Unicorn which carried them from the Arctic base in North Canada, Each vial is encased in shock-absorbent layers of cotton and foam rubber, and during the final stages of the journey, in case of accidents, ten men with flame-throwers guarded each tiny container, ready to burn it and themselves out of existence. . . ." Mitchell felt the cold sweat break out on his forehead and his whole body crawl with a sympathetic itch. Viciously he slapped the toggle on his shoulder, switching the suit's phones out of circuit with that particular receiver.
Ten guards with flame-throwers, he thought disgustedly. Flame-throwers! And that was supposed to be protection against the most hellishly efficient engine of mass destruction ever developed---the Mark 17 Bacteriological Bomb.
They'd had flame-throwers at that base in the Arctic Circle which was producing BB17, but that hadn't stopped them from being wiped out to a man when a faulty retort sprung a leak. BB17 was fast-acting, and fantastically heat-resistant, but, being an artificial strain, it died out eventually if it hadn't anything to feed on and was kept isolated. After a few years had elapsed, Mitchell remembered, they had been able to clean out that sealed-up base and use it again---to restart production of BB17.
But BB17 hadn't been the only Weapon Too Terrible To Be Used that had been developed. The number of conventional A-bombs possessed by even the poorest countries came as a great shock to everyone. Russia, too. And Great Britain, who always seemed to prefer their native craftsmanship to mass production, had a few little bombs using a new type of reaction which produced an area of total destruction approximately seventy miles wide. France had come up with some lovely nerve gases, and Egypt had the neo-influenza bugs. None of these weapons was for use, of course; they were all too horrible, too deadly.
But they'd kept on making them anyway. They'd made them until each and every country had enough Beebees to wipe out all life on Earth.
Mitchell laughed softly, then cursed. He looked at the equipment which might soon contain the records of the last words and deeds of a world that had died by its own hand. It was insane, crazy. But it was also wonderful, soul-stirring, and utterly human.
Mitchell wanted to talk again. He had to get this off his chest or he would blow himself apart. He took a deep breath.
The things on the crater floor edged nearer. Their awful alien minds touched his. The thing from Sirius that looked like a withered prune radiated a deep wave of pity and helplessness. The lizard-thing from Canopus and the thing in the cube from he didn't know where sent thoughts of sadness and recrimination, reproaching him that his young and promising race had blindly allowed itself to get into such a tragic predicament.
Mitchell ignored them. At first when he'd realized that these things were from the stars, he'd thought that they could have helped---produced a miracle of superscience maybe, and save the world. But no, they had explained that they had come in small scoutships and that they had no miracles on them, or thoughts to that effect. And even if they could have helped, they wouldn't. It was the Law, they had told him, that each race still bound to one solar system had to solve its problem without outside help. The Earth people would have to work this thing out for themselves.
Mitchell ground his teeth helplessly at the memory of it. Then he began to talk.
It wasn't quiet, unemotional reporting this time, but the almost incoherent eruption of a man complaining bitterly against blind fate, and at the even blinder recent stupidity of his fellow men. Sometimes he spoke angrily and at the top of his voice, sometimes in a whisper that was almost a sob. He started with the small, international fights and worked up to World Wars One and Two and beyond. He accused, he reviled, and he condemned by name the men of the past he thought had contributed to the present mess by word, deed or omission. His tirade included monarchs, dictators, presidents, and the unknown millions of bottle washers and street sweepers who had allowed themselves to be led like sheep, and who hadn't used their brains to think with. He cursed the stupidity that started the Cold War and made every nation an arsenal where eventually the greatest fear had grown to be that of its own weapons getting out of control.
Something irritated Mitchell's ear. He disregarded it. Almost shouting, he went on, ". . . nobody ever wanted a war---nobody who actually had to fight in it, that is. The Toms, Dicks, and Harrys who clean windows or drive trucks or dig potatoes never wanted wars. Neither did the Ivans or the Achmeds or the Mitsuis. And now, when we've at last come to our senses, when we've all agreed that war must stop, we're still threatened with destruction---"
Mitchell broke off as the irritation in his ear returned. In the silence it resolved itself into a voice in his phones.
"Mitch! Ten seconds to go!"
Mitchell looked up at the big blue crescent Earth, then at the little watch fixed inside his helmet, then back again. Funny, he thought, the Earth and the watch looked to be the same size. All at once the awful realization of what was about to happen, and of what might happen afterward, descended on him with crushing, implacable force.
"Oh God," he prayed, "make this turn out... right."
On the darkened eastern hemisphere a point of searing blue light---many times brighter than any that had gone before---flared suddenly. Within a second it grew to a blinding disc a hundred miles across that lit the whole of North Africa like a planet-sized floodlight. Then orange and purple and dirty brown clouds formed, hiding its centre and making it look like a giant, hazy-edged doughnut.
The fiery doughnut continued to expand, but it began to fade. The reaction wasn't self-sustaining after all.
Mitchell stumbled to a telescope, but he couldn't see a thing---his visor kept fogging up just at eye level. Vaguely he saw the lizard and the withered prune-thing scuttling and bouncing away in the direction of their ships; the cube, who had been wearing his, was gone already. The ending of the show had more than pleased them---their parting thoughts to him brought a tightness to his throat and made it even harder for him to see. Mitchell left the useless telescope and went to one of the receivers. Tears didn't affect one's hearing, luckily.
It was a shouting, screaming bedlam.
"Change in wind direction," roared one. "Dust warning for Malta and Italy as far north as Rome. Population will go underground for eighteen hours minimum. Take food and water, especially water...."
"Prenez-garde Marseilles et Lyon . . ." babbled another. "Achtung! Achtung! . . ." screamed somebody else. But at most of the stations they were just yelling their fool heads off.
Mitchell searched the dial feverishly until he got what he wanted.
". .. we are flying eight miles above the northwest coast of Africa, and can see the main cloud like a dull red fog drifting toward us from over the Sahara. Wind velocities, etc., have been calculated so that the main cloud will disperse harmlessly over the north Atlantic, but some of the ragged edges have become detached and are being blown toward Central Europe. Cities in the danger area are being warned to get the people into the shelters prepared for this contingency."
Happily; the voice continued; "The shock wave from the explosion point reached harmless proportions beyond a circle of 150 miles radius. There were no casualties, and there is now no danger of the multiple H-explosion starting a self-sustaining chain reaction in the Earth's crust.
"Operation Last Blast has been a complete success. Everything---chemical explosives, orthodox atomic weapons, the works---went up at once. Sick of war at last, the people of the Earth unanimously decided to disarm, so today we destroyed all our weapons of war, everywhere, and at almost the same time. There is not a bomb or gun left on the whole planet.
"The chemical explosives and simple A-weapons were disposed of harmlessly in specially evacuated areas of the countries concerned. But the Sahara blast was a different matter. As you know, the only way we could be sure of destroying our fantastically heat-resistant and utterly deadly bacteriological bombs---the BB17's---was to collect them all in one place and detonate a circle of H-bombs around them; no bacteria could live through the heat produced by that explosion. But setting off so many H-weapons all together was a terrible risk. There was a chance that the explosion would start a chain reaction in the Earth's crust that would blow the planet into very small pieces. We were lucky; it didn't.
"Now the people who came home from the Moon and planets to be present at the greatest and most dangerous moment in human history, the people who were unable to take our bombs into space because of the shock of takeoff, can go out again. They can go out with a new-found maturity and a sense of complete unity and conquer those planets. Eventually they will spread to the stars. We are a fighting race, but we no longer are a warlike one. There are plenty of natural forces in the universe to fight; we've now outgrown the urge to fight ourselves, or for that matter, any other intelligent and civilized species we might find out there among the stars.
"This is Bryce Paterson signing off and returning you to the studio...."
At the studio: sounds of shouting, cheering, laughing. A voice calling, "Shaddup dammit, we're on the air," and another asking, "But if we aren't going to make gunpowder anymore, what about the Fifth of November ... ?"
Mitchell began slowly storing away his record tapes and film spools. He wondered how long it would be before somebody down there remembered that he was up here.
THE blast ripped away the mouth of number six launching tube, together with a wide area of the ship's hull plating. Part of an underlying longeron torn free by the explosion ---a twisted and ragged-edged I-beam fully twelve feet long---was blown downward into the wrecked tube. Narrowly missing an already primed warhead, and without noticeably slowing speed, it battered its way through the fusing servos and crashed into the control chamber. Like a gargantuan javelin it shot unerringly toward the nerve center of the room, an erect, metal ovoid that was the focus of a hundred brightly-colored cables. The control pod's protective screen checked the hurtling girder abruptly, but could not stop it until the damage had been done.
As the twisted mass of metal was flung heavily away by the twenty gravities repulsion of the screen, a thick, oily, shock-absorbent fluid bubbled from the wound it had made in the pod's side. That, and a little blood.
Captain Cross said, "Grayson."
What, Grayson thought tiredly, do you want me to do about it? Aloud, he said, "Yes, sir. I see it."
The destruction of number six, and the damage to the human-operated control pod showing on the captain's master screen was duplicated on his own panel, and as ship's medical officer he knew his duty. Send a nurse either to patch up or transfer the casualty to sick bay; simple. But the simple answer to this problem was impossible, Dr. Grayson knew as he looked helplessly at nine tiny, yellow lights burning at widely separate intervals on his control panel; there wasn't a nurse available to send.
Nine lights, burning yellow to indicate that all were currently engaged on cases, when there should have been eighty!
There had been eighty just half an hour ago, before the Starcloud met the three Raghman ships, but since then his lights had been steadily going out. Dr. Grayson tried to think of them as lights going out, and not as whole sections of the ship wrecked, cut off from control and communication, or just cut off; it was better for his mental efficiency if he did that. He found it very difficult to accept the fact that this, the invincible, indestructible, and a dozen more similar adjectives, super-battleship Starcloud was ninety percent wreckage, with the percentage increasing every minute. Judging by the stunned expressions on the faces of the three other officers in the control room, they were having the same difficulty.
No one had ever reported three ships acting together before; usually the Raghman globes operated singly. Grayson was sure that the Starcloud wouldn't live to report it either.
One of the lights on his panel---Nurse 53---flickered from yellow to white, indicating that the nurse had almost finished with the current case and would shortly be free for reassignment to another. Grayson forced the overall catastrophe out of his mind quickly, and narrowed its focus to concentrate solely on his job. Fifty-three was working fairly close to the wrecked number six, so it might be possible to help the casualty there after all. He bent forward and flipped the switch that would link the nurse's vision pickup with his main view-screen, and watched the treatment being completed.
The man had suffered fractures in both legs, damage to the lumbar vertebrae, and superficial lacerations on and around the affected areas. He was encased now in a sticky white cocoon from toes to chest, and as Grayson watched carefully, a needle drove into the crewman's arm, injecting antishock and a sedative, and withdrew again too fast for him to see it. A fine spray played briefly over the cast, hardening it, then Nurse 53's light turned green. Treatment concluded.
Using direct control and never taking his eyes off the viewer, Grayson took the nurse immediately into a corridor leading toward the damaged number six---Nurse 53 had the fault common to all mechanisms designed to do more than a few simple, specialized jobs---it was incredibly delicate. There might be obstacles in its path which the robot's built-in responses would not recognize as such, and there were too few nurses left for him to risk this one unnecessarily. He took a little of his attention from the control panel when Cross bent over him, but only briefly.
"Grayson," the captain said quietly, "if that man is alive, I want him brought directly to the control room."
Cross always spoke quietly, and even at the height of the present battle he hadn't uttered a single unnecessary word. If there was a weak point in that tall, spare frame, it was microscopic, and a man would almost die rather than show weakness before him. During the engagement, when shouting and a certain degree of confusion would have been considered normal, he hadn't raised his voice once. And he was most economical with words. Grayson didn't expect an explanation for the completely unprecedented order.
"The man is Stuart," Cross said. "A drive engineer." He turned and began trying to coordinate the ship's four remaining fire points against the nearest, but incredibly agile, Raghman ship.
Why, Grayson asked himself, should a casualty be brought here instead of to sick bay? The fact that he was an overdrive engineer didn't explain anything, at first. But the answer came to him suddenly, and for the first time since joining the ship, Grayson felt a little ashamed of Captain Cross.
The Starcloud carried lifeships, simple, reaction-driven shells that had neither the speed nor fuel-food storage capacity for instellar flight---but for one exception. Nearby, under a section of the hull as yet untouched by the Raghman force eddies, was a six-man lifeship equipped with the overdrive generators which made speeds greater than light possible. Nobody in the control room, Grayson knew, had the necessary specialized knowledge to tune and operate those generators, hence the captain's order to bring Engineer-Gunnery Officer Stuart here.
Cross was going to abandon ship.
Sometimes, Grayson told himself angrily, he thought like some dewy-eyed twelve-year-old. Captain Cross was the most valuable and highly skilled scientist on the ship, otherwise he wouldn't have been its captain. The romantic tradition that masters should perish with their commands had always been a stupid one, and in this present era it was downright criminal. Cross was duty-bound to save himself first, not last. Grayson knew this, but somehow, he still felt disappointed in the other. . . .
The control room seemed to jump as a shock wave passed through it: another force-eddy had successfully penetrated the ship's defensive screen. Grayson bent forward anxiously. The picture being transmitted from Nurse 53 spun wildly as the nearby explosion sent the robot tumbling end over end. He sighed thankfully when the image steadied again and his panel told him that 53 was undamaged. But his relief was short-lived, because the clear, steady picture on his view-screen showed a section of the corridor along which the robot was passing. The farther end of the corridor---terminating in the control chamber of number six launching tube---had turned brown and was slowly caving in. The force-eddy had been very close indeed.
"Get it through! Quickly!" Cross was behind him again, his voice shockingly loud and harsh. "Maybe you can bring it back by a different route...."
"I'm trying," Grayson interrupted, "but it's going to be a tight squeeze. . . ." He didn't have to tell the Captain that the squeeze would need to be a very loose one if the robot was to be of any use when it did get through. Nurse 53 was no bulldozer.
It was like living through one of those nightmares where everything is slowed to quarter speed. Slowly, as the robot's vision pickup relayed it back, the image of the damaged end of the corridor expanded in Grayson's view-screen. Almost imperceptibly, yet far too quickly for the robot's safety, the ceiling and walls slumped and buckled under their own weight. As if the metal plating and bulkheads had been turned into so much soft, brown toffee, the ceiling rippled and bellied downwards and the walls tried to emulate a concertina. The secondary---softening ---effect of the force-eddies produced no heat, but they were deadly enough without it.
The robot's vision pickup was set low: Grayson found it hard to judge how much clearance he had. Four feet, he guessed desperately, which should be just enough to clear 53's antenna. He sent it into the melted section of corridor at its snail-like top speed, praying under Ms breath as the walls---a sugary powdering of metallic crystals making them even more closely resemble candy---slid slowly past. The corridor floor was still solid and intact.
A sigh from Cross gently stirred the fine hair on top of Grayson's scalp as the damaged control pod containing Stuart came into sight, but it ended with a sharply indrawn breath as the transmitted image jerked suddenly and slewed around, showing nothing but a buckled expanse of wall. It stayed that way for perhaps two seconds while Grayson's fingers tapped madly at his panel's control keys, then it went black.
"What. . . ?" Cross began harshly, but Grayon was already answering him.
"Both the power and vision antennae were broken off against the ceiling." Grayson nodded at his panel where the trouble was illustrated by lights which glowed and others which did not. "It can't use the power beamed to it, and it's blind as well."
"Batteries?"
"I used up the emergency batteries trying to get more speed out of the thing. Besides, there may have been other damage. I couldn't allow it to treat anyone now without direct supervision---its diagnostic circuits suffer first if anything goes wrong."
As Grayson stopped talking he deliberately kept his eyes away from the captain's face. There had been a strained, almost strident quality in the other's tone that made him wonder if the rocklike calm of the captain was at last beginning to crack around the edges. There would be no escape in the lifeship without Stuart. Grayson didn't want to see the other's expression in case he would feel even more ashamed of Captain Cross.
All at once the utter hopelessness of the situation fell around his mind in a heavy, suffocating blanket of despair. It wasn't just the desperate plight of the ship, or his own imminent destruction alone that was smashing at what remained of his ego; it was the nagging sense of failure in his job, of things he might have done but hadn't, which could have diverted this latest disaster. If he'd been half the robotics man he was cracked up to be, he would have found some way of getting Stuart to the control room. He hadn't, and now nobody would get out of this.
If the Starcloud's crew only knew what a fake he was. As he had done time and again before, Grayson told himself that as medical officer of the ship he was nothing but a second-rate G.P. with eighty assistants to do all his work ---and ninety percent of his thinking---for him. True, it required a certain aptitude to control and work through his robot nurses, and not many doctors had that ability. But he wasn't really a doctor. Why, he hadn't touched a patient---directly---in over two years.
Without his robots, he probably wouldn't know how to start treating a case of measles.
The crazy humor of the whole business made Grayson smile bitterly to himself. Here he was, likely to pass out at any minute, and he was afraid to look at the captain's face because of the embarrassment a scared expression on it would cause him! Wryly he wondered if the look on his own face was one likely to inspire confidence in a subordinate. He didn't think so.
"We're ready now, sir," said Harper, at the ordnance panel. Cross, who had his mouth open to speak to Grayson, looked indecisive for perhaps a second, then moved quickly beside the gunnery officer.
"Be careful," he said, his eyes flicking across the pitifully meager number of 'In Operation' lights on the panel, and coming to rest on the main viewer. "They mustn't suspect what we're doing." He didn't look or sound particularly scared, just anxious.
Grayson looked at the big screen, too. He had an idea something important was about to happen.
The nearest Raghman ship circled the Starcloud at a distance of roughly two miles; its two companions were five miles out. In the enlarger beside the big screen, it showed as an opaque, milky globe whose outlines shimmered faintly, giving the ship its characteristic appearance of fluidity; a defensive screen, no doubt. As Grayson watched, a hazy bubble swelled rapidly on the enemy ship's hull, broke free, and came undulating toward them like some ghostly electric eel. A force-eddy. But it should be a few minutes before it would hit them---as a rule the eddies moved slowly.
The thought that this might be one of the exceptions to that rule was making Harper's forehead wet and shiny.
Cross said, "Now!"
In a ship that was nine-tenths servomechanism, one became accustomed to seeing reality through a row of dials and a set of indicator lights. Harper's panel told him that launching tubes three, four, seven, and nine---the only four still linked to central control---had each expelled a missile simultaneously. It also told them that twenty "sunlight" flares had been ferried up from the forward magazine and were now awaiting detonation on the outer hull. For a diversion of some sort, Grayson guessed. He watched the main screen closely as three of the missiles curved toward the two farthest Raghman, and the fourth shot at the ship which had so recently closed in.
Harper's finger tensed, and Grayson instinctively shut his eyes. The flares ignited.
If the beings in the ships had eyes, it must have looked as if the Starcloud's magazines had gone up. But whether they had or not, it was hoped that the pyrotechnics would rivet the Raghman attention solely on the Starcloud, and not on what that ship was trying to do.
Instantaneously with the ignition of the flares, the three missiles heading toward the farthest Raghman ships split up, blasting around in a tight semicircle. Together with the one originally aimed at it, they went streaking toward the nearest Raghman ship. Their course and velocities had been precalculated and timed---they hit it from four different directions at once. Grayson shut his eyes again.
"And then," Harper said savagely, "there were two."
The Raghman ship had---gone.
A yell of sheer exultation from the communications officer---and Smith was usually the quiet, retiring type---was abruptly cut off as the temporarily forgotten force-eddy struck. The shock spun the standing Captain Cross to the floor and flung Grayson half out of his chair. He was wriggling back into his seat when the captain, fingering a raw patch where his forehead had met the floor, struggled to his feet.
"They can be destroyed, then," he said, awed at the implications of his own words, and still half afraid to believe them. His disbelief passed and he went on excitedly, "The solution is to englobe them. That way they can't slide away from everything shot at them the way they always do. But for that we've got to lure them into short range, make them careless, get them looking the other way, then . . ." Cross looked at the fading bright spot on the big screen, and for the first time that day, smiled. "... Bingo!"
"However," he went on, thought lines creasing his brow, "the design of the ship is wrong for those tactics. What we need is a formation---or a flotilla of armed lifeships protected by the screens and firepower of a larger mother ship might be better. We were successful this time because of a trick, a trick which might not work a second time."
Harper cleared his throat. "It won't," he said simply, nodding at his panel where two more sets of lights had gone out. The disruption of the last force-eddy had left them with just two launching tubes in operable condition. Another englobing attempt was out of the question.
The captain's shoulders drooped. His long, bony frame seemed to sink in on itself. He turned his face away from the control room's occupants. "If I'd known," he said thickly. "If I'd known this sooner..."
Another concussion shook the ship, but Grayson barely noticed it. He thought he knew the hell that was in Cross's mind; he felt very sorry for the captain.
During the opening minutes of the engagement, while the ship was still a powerful fighting unit, Captain Cross might have destroyed the whole Raghman fleet---and without resorting to trickery, either. But when confronted by the unknown in the shape of three Raghman globes hurling force-eddies, the natural reaction was to keep the unknown at arm's length by firing fast and furiously in return, and definitely not to allow it to approach closely. It wasn't until the Starcloud was a wreck, and no longer capable of keeping the Raghman ships at a distance, that the trick had been thought of. Grayson wasn't blaming the captain for his fatal error in tactics. Nobody was blaming the captain, except the captain.
Cross straightened abruptly. His face and voice when he spoke were utterly devoid of emotion. He said:
"The position is this. We have information which may lead to us winning the Human-Raghman war, or at least holding out until something better is developed. But this data must reach the proper authorities. If it doesn't then this type of ship---the first of the star class super-battleships---will be written off as a failure instead of the potential success that it is.
"We have, for the first time, some analysis data of the Raghman force-eddy, details of the Starcloud's operating efficiency under fire up until it became nine-tenths a wreck, and we have an offensive tactic that has proved effective at least once." Cross's eyes moved quickly from face to face. "Suggestions, gentlemen."
Harper stirred restively. "What's the use?" he said. "No matter what we decide to do, we'll need an overdrive engineer. We haven't got one." He looked angrily toward Grayson's control panel, which was now completely dead, and then directly at the doctor. Grayson felt acutely uncomfortable.
Suddenly the Captain looked across at Grayson, too. "I wonder..." he said thoughtfully, then broke off.
Grayson knew what was coming.
He was afraid of dying. He was, Grayson admitted freely to himself, desperately anxious to prolong his life. And he was far from being among the first five in order of importance on the Starcloud. But the ship's officers had been so drastically thinned out during the battle that, if the overdrive-powered lifeship could be launched, he would be on it. But even more than of dying, Grayson was afraid of dying while making a complete and utter fool of himself.
On the Starcloud an officer's leisure time was his own. But while Harper, Smith, and the rest of the commissioned men used theirs to climb all over the ship, or to play hectic ballgames in gravity-free sections, Grayson had stayed in his cabin, listening to his music tapes or studying up on the latest techniques in handling medical robots. He had never been a good mixer, and he was, he more than suspected, bone lazy. The end result of this was that he knew practically nothing about the geography of the ship, he was as weak as a woman, and he had only a rudimentary knowledge of how to handle himself in a spacesuit. And add to all that the fact that he hadn't had direct contact with a patient in two years. Grayson knew what was coming, all right, and he knew that he wouldn't do what would be asked.
"Dr. Grayson," Cross said evenly, "any hope of escape we have hinges on Second Engineer Stuart. Would you go personally to him, treat him, and bring him back here."
Grayson couldn't speak. His neck muscles seemed to be paralyzed, too, because he couldn't even shake his head. Cross's eyes bored straight through to his soul, stripping away the flimsy layers of camouflage with which he faced the world, and revealing him as the coward and faker that he was. The silence seemed to last hours while he struggled vainly with his vocal cords, but it could only have been a few seconds.
"It's a very unusual job for you," Cross went on. His voice remained emotionless, but there was a brief gleam of sympathy in his usually cold gray eyes---and of understanding and reassurance. "However, I know your ability, Doctor. You'll be able to do it."
Grayson got his voice working enough to croak, "I'll try, sir." He felt surprised, and strangely pleased, that he'd been able to say those words instead of a panicky "No!" As well as his other accomplishments, Cross was quite a psychologist, too.
"Very well," the captain said, still in an almost offhand tone. "Harper will help you into the suit. Connect your phones to a reel of cable and pay it out as you go. That is the safest way to keep contact with us now that the ship's intercom system has fallen apart. When you reach Stuart---"
"Captain!" Smith's warning shout cut him off in mid-sentence. "Force-eddies---six, seven . . . no, nine of them! That ship we blasted must have flung them off just before we got her." His eyes swiveled wildly between Cross and the ghostly, undulating images on the screen. He was sweating.
It must have taken a superhuman effort for Cross to avoid looking at the screen, and to keep his voice at a conversational level as he added, "We haven't a lot of time, Doctor. Be as quick as you can."
Grayson was outside the control room, plugging his suit phones into the socket in its airlock, when the force-eddies struck. From his position flat on the heaving and shuddering floor he saw the section of the corridor leading sternwards twist crazily and bend upwards, so that only about twenty yards of its length was visible. A brief gale whistled through the corridor, subsided, and the fabric of his suit creaked and stretched outwards; the air had gone. He rechecked the control room airlock seals, then began moving quickly toward the ship's prow, and Stuart.
He ran into trouble almost at once.
One moment he was half running along the corridor, the next he was threshing about above the floor, weightless. Eventually he made contact with the wall, and continued on his way by pulling himself along a section of the ship's plumbing. He got about ten yards when a great, invisible hand flattened him viciously against what should have been the ceiling, and held him there. Sheer panic made him shout for help, but then he calmed quickly as he realized what must have happened. Luckily the suit transmitter had been switched off, so nobody knew about Ms bright blue funk. Switching it on, he said: "Grayson to Control..." and rapidly described his predicament.
The radioman's voice sounded, relaying a more technical version of it to Cross, then Smith said: "We're going to cut artificial gravity in this whole section. The captain says it will be safer for you that way. Luck, Doc. Off."
Grayson's stomach heaved as the three G's pinning him to the ceiling disappeared. He continued along the corridor, weightless.
He knew what had happened, of course. The matching grids that supplied an Earth-normal gravity to the human-occupied sections of the ship---the robot-worked sections didn't require it---had suffered whole or partial power failure as damage to the ship increased. The grids needed a lot of power, and were delicately balanced, or the strength of their artificial gravity fields became wildly erratic. Grayson had just had an object lesson of that.
It was a modification of the gravity grid that produced the Starcloud's defensive screen. That screen was impervious to all known forms of radiation, and if attacked by a solid body, it automatically brought to the point of contact a repulsive force of nearly one thousand gravities. If it was attacked at two or more points simultaneously, then the repulsive force was halved or quartered as the case might be. The Raghman ships had been quick to discover this particular weak spot in the Starcloud's, defense; sometimes their force-eddies had come five at a time.
But even if the ship had been able to keep its defense screen intact, Grayson knew that the Starcloud could not have held out for very long. Those screens used power at a fantastic rate---power which was strictly limited despite the ship's size. And Cross, unfortunately, was no Dunstan.
Almost, Grayson forgot his deadly danger as he remembered the excitement that the Dunstan report had caused throughout the Force---excitement which had rashly made him leave his safe and comfortable base hospital and apply for ship service. Captain Dunstan, surveying in Secant 18 when an accident to his main power pile forced him to jettison all atomic fuel, had found his ship being drawn in and not so slowly baked by the powerful gravity pull and unbelievably lethal radiation of a nearby White Dwarf. He had been in a very bad spot until the ship's astronomer found a planet circling that White Dwarf sun---a planet with a most unusual composition, for spectro-analysis showed that its crust was almost covered by deposits of radioactive isotopes similar to one used to power the overdrive generators of Dunstan's ship.
By a miracle of piloting he had been able to land on the planet using his small store of chemical fuel, and while the crew huddled in the deepest and most heavily shielded compartment of the ship, remote-controlled robots had collected enough radioactive fuel for the trip home. Before the planetary and solar radiation had penetrated too deeply into his ship, Dunstan had been able to take off and return with the news.
Immediately everyone wanted to investigate Dunstan's planet, and to search for more like it. But then the Raghman war came, and the patrol and survey ships had been ordered in for refitting. Missile launching tubes and the repulsion-screen grids replaced the telescopic mount-mgs and the forest of search antennae, and fuel could be obtained more easily---though admittedly at greater expense---on planets other than those circling White Dwarf suns.
Grayson came to an intersection and turned into the corridor leading to launching tube six, cautiously using the ruined communications plumbing to pull himself along. With gravity shut off, the danger of ceiling or walls collapsing wasn't so great. But though the metal now had the strength and consistency of soft putty, it retained all its weight and inertia, and could quite easily squash him flat by sheer momentum. He looked sickly at the brown streaks and patches on the once-bright metal walls, and he used the dirtiest word he knew.
The Raghman war.
Nobody knew why they had started the war, or even what a Raghman looked like. A white globular object had appeared suddenly over the planet of Clellane IV, and without warning or provocation had loosed a force-eddy which sent the ship coming to investigate it crashing back to the planetary surface, a softened, shapeless hulk. The globe didn't enter atmosphere, but remained in space viciously and insensately melting every ship which tried to take off. All sorts of weapons were tried against it, but the globe avoided the solid missiles aimed at it with an agility that was unbelievable, and it ignored radiation completely. It had only one offensive weapon, the ghostly, flickering force-eddy. But that one was plenty.
In the Clellanian tongue the word for the Specter of Death was "Raghman." The name had stuck.
Some of the ships fired on by the Raghman globe had fallen into orbits instead of crashing, and investigations carried out after the raider had departed showed that some of them were not completely melted. But their occupants, though outwardly unharmed, were dead. Diagnosis said a burned-out nervous system due to some subtle form of electrocution.
As more and more planets of the civilization that was beginning its spread into the galaxy suffered similar raids, Earth and its colonies---who were the technological arm of that civilization---soon knew that their backs were to the wall. The Raghman seemed completely disinterested in ground targets, but every ship entering or leaving the atmosphere of the planet under their surveillance that they could reach was hit with at least one force-eddy, and that was that. Massed attacks had no success either; before the Raghman globe came within range of Earth weapons that probably would not have worked anyway, the attacking ships became just so many menaces to navigation. Offense was futile, but if a defensive weapon could be found that would give Earth a little time to work something out, then there might be a chance. The scientists were bound to come up with something.
Starcloud was a last, desperate try for the answer. A great torpedo half a mile long and six hundred feet in diameter, only sheer luck had kept the Raghman from finding and destroying it during its fabrication while in orbit around Earth, and such luck was unlikely to hold for the half-completed sister ship if a defense against the force-eddy weapon wasn't found. But the Starcloud had a defense, of sorts.
The repulsion screens which gave protection against meteorite collisions---standard equipment on most ships--- tended, it had been found, to slow attacking force-eddies down to a certain extent. The Starcloud had been designed for the purpose of coming to grips with the enemy, defending itself until an analysis of the force-eddy weapon could be obtained, and then hightailing it home with the news if the going got too tough. Its repulsion screen, and the generators backing it, were on such a gargantuan scale that many of its builders had loudly abhorred such a frightful waste of material, never doubting that it would be a complete success.
But Starcloud had met three Raghman globes. The overdrive engines, its means of running away, had gone during the first minutes of the engagement, and its super-efficient repulsion screen just wasn't.
To Grayson, drifting weightless at its center, the corridor seemed to shudder in annoyance at his invasion of its privacy, and a section of plating came free and drifted slowly away from the wall. He caught at it, pushed backward, and used its reaction to increase his speed along the corridor.
"Three eddies hit us, sir." Harper's voice in his phones sounded puzzled. "The other six are just hanging alongside, not even trying to get through the screen."
Cross's voice in reply seemed almost absentminded. Grayson could imagine him studying those drifting force-eddies, his incisive intelligence backed by all that remained of the ship's analyzing equipment trying to solve the problem that they represented. "They came from the ship we blasted, remember," the captain said. "Possibly they require direction from a mother ship, and may now be harmless."
Harmless!
Grayson didn't agree with that at all. In the control room he had seen the force-eddies come boring in, being flung back by the repulsion screen, only to come boring in again. He had watched the screen, overloaded by similar attacks at several other points, weaken for an instant, and the eddy make contact with the bare hull. Three things happened then. There was a flash of cold, blue light, and an explosion that occurred somehow without the heat or radiation normal with a chemical or atomic reaction, which peeled off an area of hull plating and smashed in the. structure underlying it, then, a few seconds later, the metal around the site of the explosion lost the molecular binding force which gave it strength, and turned brown. The softening penetrated deeply into the ship, but in a seemingly random manner that often left one wall of a room intact while the others were a soft, brown mess.
Ninety percent of the Starcloud was now in that semifluid state, and the consequent unbalance set up by its repulsion screen was slowly pulling the ship apart.
But the overall state of the ship wasn't Grayson's concern at the moment---just the condition of this particular corridor. Corridor, he thought grimly, was scarcely the word for something resembling the digestive tract of some monster reptile, with bulges and convolutions of walls and ceiling that pressed lower with every yard of progress he made. Though weightless, he was forced almost to crawl under that sagging, distorted ceiling, then he was actually wriggling and squeezing his way under it. Grayson was awfully glad that he had never suffered from claustrophobia. ...
Suddenly he was whimpering, and pushing and struggling back the way he had come. The thought of that awful mess of metal above him---hundreds of tons of superheavy jelly ---with only the absence of gravity preventing it from squashing him like a beetle under a steamroller was too much for him. Grayson wanted out. He didn't care what happened to the ship or Cross or anybody, just so as he could be where he could stand up, or even kneel down without drowning in leaden waves of metal.
But he couldn't return. At least, not backward. In an hysterical surge of panic he arched his back, madly trying to lift the whole mass of settling metal by sheer muscle power. But harsh scraping sounds on the fabric of his suit ---warning of the danger of puncture---returned him to a measure of sanity. He wriggled forward again, hoping desperately to find a spot wide enough for him to turn around.
He found it where the disabled Nurse 53 was propping up the corridor ceiling, but beyond the damaged robot he could see the entrance to number six, and Stuart's control pod.
". . . What's happening down there, Grayson? Answer me!" It was Cross's voice in his phones. The captain must have been talking for some time without him realizing it.
"The roof was coming down on me," Grayson replied defensively; then he thought in sudden self-loathing, you're a low, yellow coward, why be a liar, too? He ended awkwardly, "At least, I thought it was."
Cross said, "I see."
Hastily Grayson told of his position near Stuart's pod, adding that it would be impossible to bring the engineer back along the corridor. Had the captain any ideas? -
Cross had a lot of ideas, but they all hinged on Stuart being alive and well enough to run the lifeship. Therefore Grayson had better make sure Stuart was all right before he worried too much about getting him back to the control room. If the engineer was alive, an escape method had been worked out which stood a good chance of success.
As Grayson worked his way around the white enamel and chrome Wreck that had recently been a functioning robot nurse, and kicked out toward Stuart's pod, Cross told him what that method was to be.
The bright-eyed, romantic, hero-worshipping Grayson did not approve of the idea at all. But the Grayson floating in the debris of a wrecked ship, scared silly, and--- melodramatic as it was---with his unpracticed hands and unsure mind possibly the only hope for the survival of his race, thought a little more realistically. The second Grayson, however, didn't completely approve of the idea either.
Briefly, a heavy charge of chemical explosive would be used to blow the stern section of the Starcloud apart, flinging out an expanding sphere of wreckage to the six corners of space. Unknown to the Raghman one of these chunks of debris would be the escaping lifeship. A few seconds later the Starcloud's remaining store of nuclear weapons would fission simultaneously, thus making it impossible for the Raghman to trace the fleeing lifeship even if they had been able to detect it among the wreckage. The Raghman would, it was hoped, be dead.
Grayson tried not to think of the crewmen in the stern section who, though cut off from central control, still managed to launch an occasional missile against the enemy. Or of the hundreds who had been taken to sickbay there. Grayson was, after all, a doctor.
Then why, he asked himself viciously as he bumped gently against the damaged control pod, don't you start proving it?
The wound torn in the leaden walls of the pod by the flying I-beam had scaled itself automatically with a smooth, transparent plug of hardened shock-fluid: as well as giving protection as a shock-absorber it acted as a self-sealing mechanism should the pod be punctured while in a vacuum. But the transparency of the seal was spoiled by cloudy red streaks. Grayson, greatly aided by the absence of gravity, pulled a section of the pod's lead shielding aside, uncovering a clear plastic inspection panel. He looked through it at Stuart.
It was hard to get an accurate idea of the engineer's condition, because the skin-tight suit in which he floated while inside the pod had been torn in the region of the wound, and his body temperature plus dilution by blood had made the fluid a soft red jelly instead of the clear, rock-hard cement it normally became when exposed to cold or vacuum. From what Grayson could see, he thought that the metal beam had struck somewhere below Stuart's right armpit, gouging a small piece of the arm and probably fracturing the humerus. Possibly there were a couple of ribs gone, too, but as there was no blood around the man's mouth, they could not have damaged his lung. His breathing was quick and shallow and he had lost a lot of blood. The case wasn't a complicated one, Grayson knew, nor should it prove fatal provided treatment was given promptly.
He reported his findings to the control room. Cross gave an almost explosive sigh of relief. "Good," he said. "Get him out of that pod, Doctor, then take him through the launching tube directly to the outer hull. About two hundred feet forward of the tube's mouth is the lifeship blister. Take him to it and into the boat. We'll be there then or a few minutes later." The captain paused, then finished urgently, "Get him fixed up quickly, Doctor. But be careful, too, he's our only hope."
It was only as Cross was speaking that Grayson realized the utter hopelessness of trying to treat Stuart. Funny how it was the most obvious things which were overlooked first, he thought; like the simple fact of the control compartment being open to space. To help the engineer he would have to remove the other from his hermetically sealed pod, and take off at least part of his own spacesuit to have his hands free. But doing those things in a vacuum would result only in the rapid demise of both doctor and patient. He ground his teeth in anger and sheer self-disgust at his stupidity---temporarily forgetting the awful responsibility he carried----and again reported to the control room.
Cross said, 'That's bad, Doctor." That's bad, Doctor!
Grayson was suddenly very sick of the captain's cold, emotionless voice and his infuriating habit of understating everything really important. And he was sick to death of officers who contemplated the destruction of their friends with steady hands, impassive faces, and crisp, military voices. He said, "Listen . . ." and with expletives he had heard and some he must have read somewhere, he began to qualify the badness of the situation. He spoke for several minutes.
"I agree," Cross said dryly when he had finished. "But is there nothing you can do?" He hesitated, then went on, "You're the man on the spot, Doctor. You'll be able to think of something, I know you will." His voice had a pleading, almost cajoling note in it which wasn't characteristic of the captain at all. It puzzled Grayson, but not for very long.
Cross and the others were depending on him to patch up Stuart in order to escape, Grayson knew, and now they must be beginning to wonder if they weren't leaning too heavily on a rotten stick. His crying fit back there in the corridor, and now this latest and downright mutinous outburst to the captain had them worried. Suppose Grayson had flipped, or was about to flip his lid, go mad? He'd need very careful handling if they were to make use of his medical ability, and that was the reason for Cross's tone. The captain was trying to humor him!
The idea of that made Grayson very angry. He opened his mouth to loose a second verbal broadside, but then he began to think about the responsibilities that Cross had---chief among them the one of getting the data home which might at last enable mankind to hold out against the Raghman. His anger died and was replaced by a feeling almost of pity. He didn't blame the captain for his attitude; if Grayson had been on the verge of madness, it would have been exactly the right attitude. Cross was all right.
But the problem of getting Stuart to the lifeship was his own. There must be a solution, Grayson knew, because this type of accident must have occurred, and been solved before. If he could only steady his jumping nerves enough to think.
He had solved a similar problem less than half an hour ago, he remembered suddenly, when the forward observation blister had been holed. The man---injured but spacesuited---had been treated on the spot. Grayson had rushed two nurses to the blister and had them spray their quick-setting plaster over the hole in the glassite, sealing it and allowing air pressure to return. The stripping of the casualty's suit and subsequent treatment had been simple. He had felt rather pleased with himself over that one.
Grayson couldn't use that solution now, though, because the hole in the wall of number six was four yards wide, not six inches, and even if Nurse 53 had enough plaster compound to seal it, the robot was jammed tight under several tons of metallic treacle and so couldn't be used. He tried desperately not to think of his surroundings, and only of the problem. The sort of problem, Grayson told himself as calmly as he could, with one of those disgustingly simple answers that might be shot at you during your periodic refresher courses. Not the desperately urgent, life-or-death-for-millions type of problem at all, but just a problem.
Suddenly he had it. Moving quickly to the stoved-in wall of number six's control chamber he looked up along the tangle of wreckage inside the launching tube. Through it Grayson could see a patch of black, star-studded space. He switched his suit radio to "transmit" and began to speak rapidly.
"How long will you need, Doctor?" Cross asked quickly when he'd finished. There was almost hope in his voice.
"About fifteen minutes."
"Right. We'll meet you at the lifeship in fifteen minutes," Cross said briskly; then: "Harper had already left for the lifeship blister, Smith is following now with the data tapes. I'll stay here for a while in case they spring something new."
Grayson grunted acknowledgment, and hurried into the corridor containing the imprisoned Nurse 53. He felt uncomfortably like a cannibal as he ripped into the sleek white-enameled hide of the almost human robot---one of the very few mechanisms, he thought sadly as his eyes passed over the bright red cross painted on its side, that was specifically developed to save lives. The hypos and other instruments that he would need were not designed for human use, of course, but Grayson thought he could manage---Stuart wasn't, after all, a very intricate case. He rifled several of the robot's compartments, then wrapped the loot in some cotton and gauze found in another. He returned to Stuart.
The engineer looked really bad now. Grayson softened a small area of the cement above Stuart's shoulder, inserted a long needle, and deftly hardened it again before the air pressure could blow it out. He fed in glucose and antishock, then withdrew the needle slightly and squirted in coagulant to halt the flow of blood still coming from the wound. Until he got the man into the lifeship it was the best he could do but he was very much afraid that it wasn't enough.
Grayson switched on the self-powered cutter used for freeing injured men from metallic wreckage---also torn from the corpse of Nurse 53---and started slicing through the cables and structural members holding Stuart's pod to the floor.
The pod under Earth-normal gravity would have weighed easily a ton, and though weightless now, it retained all its mass and inertia. Grayson was hot and sticky inside his suit from his exertions, but he finally got it moving toward the gap in the wall. As it drifted ponderously through the breech section and into the tube proper, he bit his lips with sheer impatience. But then he realized that its great mass was really an advantage, because the pod cleared a six-foot tunnel through the loose wreckage which sometimes blocked the tube. Grayson had nothing to do but hold onto a piece of trailing cable and be towed along.
As they neared the end of the tube, Grayson wriggled ahead of the pod and began trying to slow it down. He didn't want it to drift completely off the ship.
A few yards from the tube's mouth he had it almost at a standstill, and began climbing up for a preliminary look at the condition of the ship's hull between him and the lifeship blister. Suddenly something began dragging him upward.
Grayson grabbed desperately for a beam, then jammed a leg between two others and twisted around to lock it in position, bare seconds before his handgrip let go. The suit and his leg, he thought sweating, should hold for a few seconds. He yelled: "Captain! The screen!"
Abruptly the force trying to tear him off the ship vanished.
Stupidly, Grayson had forgotten the Starcloud's repulsion screen. That screen was designed to throw back any material object trying to make contact with the ship's hull, and when Grayson had come too close to the hull it had naturally tried to fling him off the ship, too. Cross had cut the screen now, but that raised another problem. From now until they took off in the lifeship, the Starcloud had no protection whatever against the Raghman.
"I'm leaving now," Cross said suddenly, his voice sounding strangely husky. For the first time Grayson realized how the captain must hate losing his ship. "Everything is rigged for the getaway," he went on, "so there will be no contact between us until we meet you in the lifeship." With bitter formality he ended: "Control to Grayson. Off!"
A few minutes after the final click in his phones, Grayson had Stuart's pod out on the hull. He took another quick look at the engineer, and felt suddenly cold. Stuart's condition frightened him. The man had been in deep shock for far too long.
Despairingly, he dragged his eyes from the engineer and tried to orient himself. Stuart might never live to reach the lifeship, much less take it into sub-space, but while the slightest chance of success remained, he must exert maximum effort to get the man to the boat. He had to find it first, however.
From the indicator panels back in the control room, Grayson knew how badly the ship had been hit. But the actual sight of what the force-eddies had done to the Starcloud's half mile of silvery hull made him feel physically ill. The whole ship was a brown, twisted mess. Its once diamond-hard shell was creased and buckled into folds that were sometimes twenty feet deep. During the battle there had been local failure of the repulsion screen, and the resultant unbalance together with the already well-advanced softening of the hull, had warped the longitudinal axis of the ship into a sharp arc. It was wrong--- horribly, shockingly wrong---that this mighty torpedo of plastic and steel and super-hard alloy should end a soft and shapeless blob. It wasn't a fitting end for such a ship.
There came a flash of blue light as a force-eddy touched the hull a quarter of a mile away. Grayson flinched; but the softness of the intervening hull cut the shock wave down to a faint tremor. A section of the screen flicked into being on the "stricken area---due to short-circuiting by the explosion, probably---and rapidly twisted the hull still further out of true. But there was a force of one hundred gravities pushing against that part of the hull, and no opposing force to balance it. Grayson saw the hull beside the screen twist and writhe and stretch, then the whole section---fully one quarter the mass of the entire ship ---tear free and flick out of sight.
He turned around quickly. Just before it had gone he had been able to identify the overdrive grids, so the departed piece of ship had been the stern section. The lifeship was forward, therefore, in the other direction.
About two hundred feet away a silvery bulge showed above a ridge of softened metal, which he had missed on his first look around. It could only be the lifeship blister. Grayson had to get to it as quickly as possible, and dragging Stuart's pod along as well. But the hull between was an expanse of brown fudge, relieved only occasionally by small bright patches of metal where the secondary, softening effects of the force-eddies had bypassed. His magnetic boots would not work on the soft stuff, and the hard patches were too far apart to serve as stepping stones. And it was a lightweight suit he was wearing, too, a type not fitted with a reaction motor. How were he and the massive pod going to get there?
If he could get something solid enough to prop himself against, Grayson thought suddenly, the trick he had used coming up the launching tube should work. He looked around. A few yards away the gray stump of a girder poked out of the tube's mouth; hard stuff. Though his nerves were jumping with impatience he carefully nudged the pod over to the protruding metal, lay with his back to it and his feet braced against the pod, took careful aim, and pushed.
Stuart's pod drifted slowly toward the lifeship blister. Gently, so as not to divert its course, Grayson launched himself after it and caught one of the trailing cables.
He had a very bad moment as the top of the ridge of soft metal approached, but they shaved over it without touching. If the pod had hit and caromed off, Grayson knew, they would have bounced away from the ship and would have been unable to return for hours, if ever. But his aim---either by luck or good judgment---had been good. They would hit the blister on the nose.
The thought made Grayson laugh nervously. Hitting the blister on the nose, indeed. Suppose the blister objected and hit him back ... A wild, surrealistic crosstalk started in his mind between the blister and himself. He knew it was crazy, but it kept him from thinking of the more realistic and unpleasantly deadly things. But one unpleasant and deadly thing obtruded itself suddenly: A Raghman force-eddy.
A gray, ghost-shape of twisting, luminous foe. it was drifting about twenty feet above him. Then he saw they were all over the ship. With the screen shut off they had been able to approach the ship unhindered, and there were dozens of them. As if wafted by some etheric breeze, they curled and writhed sometimes to within a few feet of the hull. Cold sweat broke on Grayson's spine as he thought of what they could do if they made contact with it. He looked quickly toward the blister, and saw another force-eddy over it.
Probably his last sane thought was that he need not worry about Stuart if the lifeship was going to blow up in his face.
It was a strange feeling, to go insane. He knew why he had gone mad, of course; there were lots of reasons. A personality that wasn't properly adjusted in the first place, and then forcing himself to play the part of a hero---what a horrible piece of miscasting that had been. Then there were those traumatic experiences in the corridor and tube, culminating in this one where he was closely surrounded by things which went very violently bang. But did all madmen, he wondered, have such a sane and objective understanding of the process.
First of all the thoughts began roaring through his brain. Even the small, unimportant half-thoughts shouted and screamed inside his skull---like a sound receiver mistakenly switched on at maximum volume---with such savage power that he expected it to blow itself apart. Then he began seeing things, together. A distorted picture of his father that was a blaze of blinding incandescence, yet simultaneously he saw the dim outline of the blister, made hazy by the force-eddy now drifting ahead of him, growing steadily larger.
Suddenly every muscle in his body began to twitch, then to tie itself in an agonizing knot of cramp. The involuntary muscles were affected, too; all sorts of unpleasant things happened, and he had to force himself to breathe. He felt as though he was being brainwashed, with acid. Through the pain Grayson recalled how some of the Raghman victims looked---their contorted, burned-out bodies, dead by some weird form of electrocution\_\_.
That Raghman force-eddy might not be ahead of him. Maybe he was inside it.
The physical and mental agony was too much. Gray\* son wanted desperately to die. The only thing that kept him hanging on was the sudden realization that the force-eddy was not a Raghman weapon at all, but an entity trying to communicate with him.
The Raghman, a highly sentient and organized life-form composed of pure energy, were waging a preventative war on the Human race. Its cause was the landing of a human ship on a planet circling a certain White Dwarf star which the Raghma used as a "breeding" ground. Such interference could not be tolerated, and the Humans, it had been decided, were to be warned off, blockaded from space, or simply exterminated. Because the Raghma were, in their own fashion, a highly civilized and ethical race, the first of these alternatives was considered preferable. But there was a communications problem.
The globes had been merely a number of Raghma linked together in visible form in order to give the Humans something to focus their minds on. The Humans could not understand this as a means of opening communications, and so individual Raghma---force-eddies---had tried to make direct contact. The results of these Raghman boarding parties had been disastrous for the humans and unsatisfactory for them. They could not judge the power of their thought-probes through the metal hulls with enough accuracy to keep from burning out the nervous systems of the humans, and when they "softened" a way into the ships, decompression or secondary radiation set up in the metal of the men's spacesuits also had fatal effects. The Raghma could not enter a planetary atmosphere, so it was not until Grayson had gone out in a lightweight, practically all-plastic suit that direct telepathic contact had been possible.
But the Raghma were growing impatient. Unless the being Grayson could successfully warn off his race from meddling with the planets circling certain White Dwarf stars, they would use the third alternative. There were ways known to them that could wipe out all life on any planetary body....
Grayson, his mind still quivering under the mental manhandling of the Raghman, thought despairingly of the specialist knowledge necessary to tune overdrive engines, and of the man dying in the pod beside him. ...
It took only three minutes for him to reach the lifeship blister, though he felt he had aged years on the way. Then he was inside taking off his helmet, and Stuart's pod was collecting frost on the floor. Nobody moved toward it; they were staring at him, white-faced. His eyes especially, Grayson knew, were not nice to see.
"The war," he said harshly, "is over."
The wreck of the Starcloud shrank rapidly in the rear-view screen, then dissolved into grayness as the lifeship shot into overdrive. Captain Cross cleared his throat.
"I believe you, Doctor," he said, then went on thoughtfully, "but I don't think we should report it yet. This thing will have to be told---carefully."
Yes, Grayson thought. The human race had at last hit something that was too big for it. But the news that they weren't the dominant life-form among the stars had to be edited a bit, or a racial inferiority complex could well bring all human progress to a halt. Just as Grayson himself had held some of the more soul-destroying facts about the Raghma from Cross and the others. He hadn't wanted to tear the props away from their safe, comfortable philosophies in the way that contact with that Raghman mind had done to his own.
He glanced across to the engineer's panel, where Stuart, his shoulder and arm tightly bandaged, was smoking. The Raghman entity, seeing, as it had put it, that Stuart's life force was practically nonexistent, had, as a friendly gesture, replenished it. The engineer had climbed out of the pod himself.
Grayson knew that no matter what message Cross sent, it would be worded so that no further trespassing would occur. Dunstan's planet and all others like it would be left strictly alone. The war was over. But he wished fervently that he hadn't learned so much from that force-entity---living with that terrible knowledge, his life would be a constant nightmare. Or would it? Some of the more unpleasant items were already becoming fuzzy around the edges. By the time they reached home, he would probably be believing much the same story as he had told to Cross and the others. He laughed.
Humans had a psychological defense mechanism, that of selectively forgetting things which were unpleasant to them.
Either that, or Grayson had met a very kind and thoughtful Raghman.
MACFALL watched the helicopter drop onto the tiny landing area---its downwash threatening to blow over the nearby tents---and a lieutenant jumped to the ground. One look then was enough for him to dislike this unknown lieutenant immediately. The officer's face was smooth, un-marred. He put on face armor despite the battery of perimeter sprays in operation all around the clearing, and as he began moving toward the C.O.'s tent, MacFall saw him looking at the ground as though he had never seen its like before. A new boy, obviously.
It was purely an impersonal dislike, caused by the fact that MacFall was usually given the task of breaking these new boys in. This one was new all right, a mere baby. MacFall hoped that he would not also turn out to be a brat.
The lieutenant disappeared into Colonel Dawson's tent. Shortly afterwards the tent canvas almost bulged to a bellow of "MacFall!"
MacFall went in, saluted and was stood at ease. He saw that close up the lieutenant's right eye had a distinct mouse under it---probably sustained in a fight with some civilian. That type of disfigurement was common these days, too, public opinion being as it was both strong and mixed. MacFall felt himself warming slightly to this lieutenant because of it. He looked away quickly before the other could accuse him of staring and let his eyes wander about the tent's interior. The colonel was still busy with papers.
Apart from a narrow, planked walkway leading to the folding table that the CO. used as his desk, the floor was of the same mud that covered the rest of the clearing-more unpleasant if anything, because outside the hot Madagascar sun was beginning to dry it out. It was peculiar stuff, a mixture of ashes, dirt and chemicals---the result of a chosen section of jungle being rendered sterile by napalm bombs then cooled by various chemical means until it became habitable. It stuck like glue and it stank.
But the mud was not the worst by a long shot. The perimeter sprays which maintained a constant protective curtain around the clearing produced a stench that was beyond words. Clean words, anyway. Inside the C.O.'s tent MacFall felt that he could bite chunks out of it, the smell was so strong. That was because, as an extra safety measure, the tent canvas had been soaked with Deedee as well. Some people held that one could get used to the smell of Deedee. MacFall thought that some people lied through their teeth.
The colonel looked up from the sheet of paper he had been studying. Under a head of close-cropped, steel-gray hair his face was quite hideous but the eyes looking out of it---soft, kindly but "I'll stand no nonsense" sort of eyes ---made the horror of his features seem unimportant. He said briskly, "Sergeant, you know how quickly we were called on to set up this base here. Well, now I know the reason for all the rush." He nodded toward the lieutenant. "You will take a search party and Lieutenant Nolan here to the other side of that hill due west of the base. You will be ready to start in ten minutes. The object of the search---"
Was the old man slipping? MacFall thought, incredulous. He said quickly, "Excuse me, sir, but the Mark Eights haven't arrived yet."
"And they won't be coming," Colonel Dawson said. "With the exception of two, that is, which are for ambulance duty should you get into bad trouble. No, Sergeant, this time you will use your feet. Now, listen carefully ..."
For the first few seconds MacFall was not listening carefully. He was thinking of the Mark Eight, a two-man articulated tank which could crawl through, climb over or float across anything, with mounted optical equipment and Deedee guns capable of detecting and destroying the enemy at anything up to fifty yards. He thought of riding in the relative comfort of a Mark Eight, and then of chipping and pushing a way through the jungle on foot...
". . . The Bug ship landed somewhere in this area," the colonel was saying. He drew a small circle on the map before him. "We are here. You will get there as quickly as possible and without advertising your approach or presence until the last possible moment---the latter being one of the reasons for the absence of Mark Eights. You see, there seems to be something unusual about this particular Bug ship. ..."
The ship had been detected over the Indian Ocean by Cape Town radar, and finding it there had been sheer luck because all attention had been centered on the Central American area where unprecedented numbers of Bug ships had appeared. But the University observers had seen it and reported its unusually slow rate of descent---no evasive action being attempted at all---together with their deductions regarding its behavior. Colonel Dawson's group had been dispatched immediately from their home base in Rhodesia, and Lieutenant Nolan came from the University complete with special instructions.
MacFall's job was to get Nolan to the grounded Bug ship. He was to obey the lieutenant implicitly in everything. The colonel stressed the importance of this point so much that MacFall felt slightly angry about it---he had not been made a sergeant for insubordination, had he? The colonel ended by stating that if this operation was a success it might very well mean the end of the war.
MacFall thought sourly that he had heard that one before. He saluted and left to form the search party, trying to think of men who were both dependable and who had a spot of dirty work coming because of some recent misdemeanor. MacFall liked to think that he was a fair man.
Not quite fifteen minutes later the party passed through the evil-smelling drizzle of the perimeter sprays and into the jungle. Ten men in extended single file, clad from head to toes in tough plastic and hung with machetes, Deedee guns and the special equipment required by Lieutenant Nolan. Corporal Calleria was on point with strict orders to walk silently around rather than hack noisily through obstacles whenever possible, and MacFall and the lieutenant brought up the rear.
MacFall was pondering ways and means of using his superior officer with the greatest efficiency, so that the persons of his men and himself would not be endangered by the ignorance---whether of greater or lesser degree---of their commander. They would run enough risks without adding to them unnecessarily.
The lieutenant was eyeing the two men ahead of them, MacFall saw. Nolan had noticed that their head and face armor was hanging backward over their shoulders instead of being in position, and his mouth was opening to order them sharply to replace it.
MacFall said hastily, "Is this your first time on a jungle patrol, sir?" Tactfully he had refrained from asking was it his, first time out of school, but implied that the lieutenant no doubt had field experience in other theatres.
"Uh? Oh, yes," Nolan said, taking his attention off the offending soldiers. "I've been mainly on lab work."
"There may be a few tips we could give you, then," MacFall said easily. "Stuff not covered in temperate zone training. For instance, sir, take those two men ahead of us . . ." He went on to explain why they and the others who were out of sight at the moment were not wearing head protection, foolhardy as this seemed.
Two minutes later the lieutenant and himself were peeling off their head armor. Free of the sweltering hot, suffocating plastic, Nolan gave a great sigh of relief and knuckled sweat out of his eyes. He looked steadily at MacFall for several seconds, then said, "Thank you, Sergeant."
The lieutenant, MacFall realized, might not have much experience, but he was no fool.
They trudged on toward the rising ground to the west, Nolan slapping at the mosquitoes which hung in a buzzing cloud around his head. MacFall waved his away rather than trying to kill any of them---he was almost kindly disposed toward the little brutes. As he had just explained to the lieutenant, they made it possible for the men to dispense with some of the smothering, heat-retaining armor ---and in the tropics that meant an awful lot---by their mere presence.
In some obscure way the teeming insect life of the jungle could sense the approach or presence of the Bugs, that had been proved many times. MacFall thought that a few mosquito bites was a small enough price to pay for the warning system which the vicious little insects furnished.
MacFall said in disgusted tones, "This is a lousy war!"
It was a stock observation demanding a rejoinder which varied only in the degree of profanity qualifying it. MacFall made it only to start the lieutenant talking so that he could find out what the other had in mind when they found the fallen Bug ship.
Nolan slapped himself on the cheek viciously---completely missing the insect which had just bitten him---and winced. He said pedantically "Not lousy, exactly, Sergeant. The species is greatly dissimilar in physical structure and habits---the little we know of them---from the common . . ." He broke off, then ended in more normal tones, "But it's a ... a frustrating war, I agree."
MacFall nodded silently, thinking of the ten men ahead of them. Men with the horribly disfigured visages which marked them as veterans of this war, men who had no hope of winning it quickly because their enemy would not stand still and fight, and men who---unlike the warriors of previous conflicts---were hated rather than hero-worshipped by the civilians. Oh yes, a most frustrating war.
It was only a year ago that the first Bug ships had landed. They had come down practically everywhere, but seemed to concentrate in tropical and semi-tropical areas. Experts had witnessed many of these landings so that the world knew exactly what was happening to it without the delays which would have caused rumors to grow. MacFall remembered the headlines: WORLD INVADED FROM SPACE! INSECT RACE DESCENDS ON EARTH! they had screamed, playing it up big for laughs. It had been a great joke---at first.
Dealing with this "alien threat" would be no trouble at all, it had been thought. But for the little matter of the Bug ability to cross space the Earth technology was vastly superior. It only remained for the secret of the Bug space drive to be learned and the medical people, who had been uneasy about the danger of possible new infections, could have their way and the aliens be destroyed. The procedure was to have been investigate, learn and destroy, but it had not worked out that way. Before anything of importance had been learned---the investigators in ever-increasing numbers became casualties. Some were killed; others blinded and all were horribly mutilated about the hands and face. Very quickly the order of the day became destroy, and hang the investigation!
But what was thought at first to be a fairly easy mopping-up operation soon turned out to be a long, frustrating and well nigh impossible task. The superb mass destruction weapons of Earth were completely ineffective against an enemy so small, highly mobile and evenly distributed as the Bugs. Quite literally, a fly swatter was of more use than a hydrogen bomb---more effective even than the hotted-up DDT sprayers which had been developed recently.
Taken singly the enemy was not a very terrifying entity. Here in Madagascar he was a silvery-gray, winged insect just under one inch in length. This was not his true coloring, MacFall knew, but that of the protective sheath which the Bugs had developed against the early and milder DDT guns. Nowadays those shells merely slowed the speed with which the Bugs died, because the present Deeded gun shot a spray of insecticide so concentrated that a misdirected burst could blister the skin of the man using it. The Bugs just shriveled up and died. But for the three or four seconds they took to die, they fought.
It was hard to believe that mere insects could evolve firearms, but it was so, and in relation to their size those weapons were very powerful indeed. They shot a tiny projectile which, under favorable circumstances, could penetrate human flesh to a depth of half an inch and there explode. The charge they contained equaled that of only a few grains of gunpowder, but exploding as they did inside solid flesh and muscle a few such projectiles could disable or demoralize any man. Placed right---and the Bugs had quickly learned where to place them---they could kill.
Forcefully MacFall pushed the memory of what those microscopic bullets could do out of his mind. He ducked to avoid a thorny outgrowth that writhed across their path just at shoulder level, and tried to wipe sweat from his face with a hand that was equally sweaty; in the jungle these plastic coveralls were murder. His fingers ran over the ridges, craters and puckers of scar tissue covering his cheek and jaw and the bristles growing through them. Smooth, he thought sourly, remembering razor blade and shaving soap ads he had read in the days when he could use such things; smooth, like a rocky beach! He increased pace to draw abreast of the lieutenant.
Nolan's face was smooth, but not entirely unmarked. There was that technicolored mouse under the lieutenant's eye---a temporary, but still honorable scar of battle.
MacFall felt better with a bit of conversation going on, and anyway it was time the lieutenant began telling them what he intended doing. More to start the other talking than anything else, MacFall said, "I see you ran into a door, sir. A civilian door, I suppose?"
"One of the students," Nolan said shortly. His lips tightened and he did not appear disposed to elucidate.
"But why do they do it?" MacFall asked angrily, ignoring the officer's expression. He felt very strongly on the subject. "Haven't we enough on our hands without civilians picking fights with us, or beating up men on leave, or even throwing rocks at us? Damn it, they're nothing but a pack of lousy quislings who---"
"Keep your voice down, Sergeant."
"Sorry, sir," MacFall said. They were a good mile away from the spot where the Bug ship was thought to have landed, and his voice had not been raised all that much.
"You must understand, Sergeant," Nolan said after they had struggled through some more undergrowth, "that the Bug population on Earth is spread pretty thin. It is only when the army makes an effort to clear a certain sector that their activity increases therein---this is natural, they fight back as much as possible before withdrawing to settle somewhere else. It is also natural that civilians in this sector suffer more than usual because of this, and are inclined to blame the army for bringing on this suffering rather than the Bugs. They dislike anybody who is trying to take warlike action against the Bugs."
"But don't they realize that the Bugs are still coming?" MacFall said in an angry whisper. "Don't they know that they can probably breed like flies, and they'll have to start killing them soon if they don't want to be eating the things with every breath they take?"
Nolan mashed a large green insect on the back of his neck with his palm, studied the remains briefly then wiped his hand on the coveralls. He said, "We know nothing of their mating or breeding habits, Sergeant, and the number of ships arriving seems to have fallen off during the past few months. So it may take several centuries for the situation which you envisage to come about---that is, the Earth completely swamped in Bugs." He paused then, and went on hesitantly, "There is a lot to be said for the civilian point of view."
MacFall looked steadily at the lieutenant, making no attempt to hide his feelings. If Nolan should be that lowest of all forms of life in the army, a civvy sympathizer ...
"I disagree with their idea of just ignoring the Bugs in the hope that they'll go away," MacFall said doggedly. "Or of hoping that the Bugs will ignore us. Somebody has got to wipe somebody else out."
Nolan made a noncommittal noise and looked away.
MacFall went on, "I'm a pretty down-to-earth type, but I know what that space station we put up three years ago means---we're going to look silly doing that when we \* can't even handle a lot of insects on our own planet, plenty silly---"
"Just suppose,'8 Nolan interrupted, "we push out into space and run against somebody who thinks of us as Bugs. They are intelligent, civilized, clean insects. We don't know what made them come here, what drove them to invade . . ." He shook his head and fell silent, his mind obviously miles away.
MacFall was glad because he did not seem to have an answer to the other's question. How would he feel if somebody looked on him and treated him like an insect? But humans were not insects, they had civilization, aircraft, atomic bombs. And what had the Bugs got? Answer: gauzy wings and weapons so puny that they should have only been an irritation. There was no comparison, surely.
But the Bugs had arrived in spaceships, ten-foot-long torpedoes that corroded away to nothing on being vacated by their crews, thus making it impossible for the humans to get even an inkling of their method of propulsion. The small size made it impossible for the Bugs to know anything of atomic energy, which required massive shielding and cumbersome remote control machinery---if they did know of it they probably considered it too crude to be worth bothering about. MacFall began to feel vaguely uncomfortable. For the very first time he was looking at the war from the enemy's point of view.
He grew aware that the lieutenant was watching him closely, with a calculating expression that was tinged with uneasiness, as if unsure of the reception his words would get.
Nolan said, "I have been trying to make this investigation, in this way, for a long time now. Finally I've been allowed to try it." He sounded apologetic but determined. "You won't like this Sergeant, but I mean to---"
He broke off as a sudden commotion sounded from up ahead, noises of rustling and low, excited voices. A message of some sort was coming down the line. MacFall moved forward to get it, then turned back to the lieutenant.
"There's a lion pacing us," he reported. "About twenty yards to the right." He had good control over his voice. It didn't shake a bit.
They were in a really dangerous position. The chief weapons carried by the patrol were the high-pressure insecticide sprayers, and Deedee guns were useless against the big cat. Not much better were the light revolvers which most of the men carried for use against snakes and such. A revolver bullet would simply madden the lion, and would certainly not stop it from mauling somebody to death before it died itself. MacFall swore under his breath. A lion, yet!
"Remember, no noise," Nolan said sharply.
Oh sure, MacFall said witheringly under his breath. I'll strangle it to death with my bare hands, just like the Commandos used to do to people.
But the lieutenant showed suddenly that he could keep cool, and think. He said quickly, "Close the men up, Sergeant. Hurry! It is more likely to attack us strung out like this than if we are in a small, compact group. If it should attack then ten revolvers used together might kill it before it could do any damage. But the guns won't be necessary.
I've read that the bravery of the lion is greatly overrated."
MacFall said, "Yes, sir," and passed the order up for Calleria to halt so that the rest could catch up with him. He was beginning to feel respect for this Lieutenant Nolan.
As they hurried forward to join the group forming at the head of the line, Nolan said warningly, "We must be quiet. Very quiet, so as to get as close to the Bug ship as possible without detection. As well as this . . ." His tone took on a hard edge ". . . the men must not in any circumstances use their Deedee guns should the Bugs attack us. Repeat, they must take no offensive measures whatsoever. Their protective clothing must be their only means of defense until I've found that ship and done what I have to do. Tell them that, Sergeant, and make sure they understand it."
MacFall knew that his jaw was hanging foolishly open, and that his countenance registered shocked protest together with signs of imminent mutiny. "But they won't, I mean, you can't ask them to do that," he burst out. "Listen ..."
The tough, plastic coveralls worn by the men were designed to withstand penetration by the microscopic projectiles of the Bugs. But the Bugs had a habit of concentrating their fire on one point of the transparent---and somewhat weaker---plastic of the face section until it was worn through or placing them with deadly accuracy into the hair-thin joins in the armor.
There was also a tendency toward claustrophobia when inside the broiling hot, tightly-sealed armor. Men panicked easily unless they had the knowledge that the Bugs trying to get at them---through encountering the Deedee curtain ---had only seconds to live. MacFall tried to explain all this.
"I didn't say it would be easy, Sergeant," Nolan cut in sharply. "But it has to be done. If any man shoots off his sprayer, even by accident. I will personally---"
From the jungle on their right came a low, vicious growl which rose abruptly into a full-throated roar of anger. Something strong and heavy made thrashing sounds in the undergrowth. The rustling, snapping, snarling noise came suddenly closer ...
"Sarge!" a man ahead of them shouted. "My mosquitoes have left me!" He was already sealing his face armor.
MacFall had not noticed, the sound of an angry lion at close range having temporarily paralyzed his faculties. But it was true. The insects native to the jungle which had been plaguing them were gone, and that meant just one thing. Even above the racket coming from the nearby brush he could hear a high, shrill angry whining. Bugs!
Nolan shouted, "Listen men! Don't use your Deedee---"
But he was too late. Where the column had bunched together about thirty yards ahead the prescribed drill for this situation was already in operation. Seven men occupied an area roughly four yards square. Two of them were on their backs spraying the air and foliage above them in a tight circle. Three others swung their weapons through an arc of 120 degrees, bathing the upper branches of the surrounding trees while the remainder, in a half-kneeling position, soaked everything at ground level and a little above. In effect the men were protected by a dome-shaped curtain of spray which was lethal to attacking Bugs. The stragglers were hurrying to join them, unlimbering their Deedee sprayers as they went.
MacFall was pleased at the speed with which his men had set up the defensive curtain, but very obviously the lieutenant was not. He stood with his legs apart, slapping his clenched fist into an open palm, and his face was more despairing than angry. He still had not put on his face armor. MacFall grabbed his arm and give it a most disrespectful tug.
"We've got to join the others," he said, pointing into the protective drizzle falling ahead of them. "Quickly!"
Nolan shook his head, pulling backward. Then suddenly he shrugged and allowed MacFall to half push half drag him along.
They had gone barely three yards when there was an outbreak of shouts from up ahead, climaxed by one particularly horrible scream. MacFall swung around. A great cold hand seemed to reach in and twist his insides. The lion had charged from the undergrowth straight into the group putting up the defensive curtain, scattering them like ninepins. The Deedee curtain had abruptly ceased to exist, two men were lying on the ground---one of them not moving---and the others, their sprayers forgotten at their feet, were shouting and floundering about in an effort to both get away from the maddened beast and to bring their revolvers to bear on it without endangering one of themselves. A sharp crack cut through the snarling, shouting bedlam, followed by three more in quick succession.
MacFall saw the lion rear up, saw its forepaw lash out and rip the face armor---and almost the head---from a man trying to empty his gun into its face, and saw another man yelp and clutch at his knee as one of the bullets found the wrong mark. The lion rolled onto its side, leaped again and crashed into a thick tree. It began ripping frenziedly at the bark with pumping hind claws, making strangely pitiful sounds.
Of the four still on their feet, or knees rather, only one had retained his Deedee gun---and he was holding it, not using it, being temporarily in shock. The high-pitched, background whine of Bugs mounted suddenly in intensity and tiny flashes of light crackled on the man's plastic armor, like sequins winking on a dark dress. He came alive suddenly, turning the sprayer on himself in an effort to clear the area of his face armor. But the winking explosions moved immediately to the seals of his gauntlets. He dropped the Deedee gun. The lights crackled along the seam beside his ear seal. There was a sudden blotch of red under the transparent plastic and he went down beating at the side of his head with his fists.
MacFall had never seen such a concentrated, vicious attack. The Bugs were a solid grey cloud around the man's head, those who had been caught in the Deedee drifting heavily to the ground. Similar clouds encircled the heads of the other men. Quickly MacFall brought his own weapon to bear, twisted the nozzle to the long range jet position and let fly. Calling over his shoulder for the lieutenant to follow he played the jet on each of his men in turn. A fine mist of spray blew back onto his face armor so that he could hardly see.
He heard Nolan shout warningly, then there was a shot. Something that felt like a charging tank hit him low in the side. MacFall saw the jungle spin crazily around him. For an instant he was looking down through treetops at the deep blue sky, then something hard hit the back of his head and the jungle grew suddenly dim and out of focus. But before he blacked out completely MacFall was aware that the lion was straddling him and that it was being shot at. He could hear the shots faintly and felt the sharp tug as a bullet passed through his sleeve. But everything was going really black and he didn't seem to care anymore. ...
It was very quiet when MacFall came to. When he sat up he thought that the back of his head had cracked open, and when he wiped at the red streaking his face armor the hand holding the bunch of grass he used to do it was so awkward that he wondered if it was really his own. He felt horribly weak. Going back to sleep seemed like a good idea except that the pain in his head would not let him. MacFall rolled over and pulled himself up the tree trunk which his head had hit until he was standing on his feet. About four yards away he saw part of the lieutenant. He went over to him.
You would start shooting at it, MacFall thought, a peculiar pain growing in his chest. So it left me and jumped you instead. Aloud, he said, "Thank you."
From the waist down the lieutenant's legs were protruding from underneath a very dead lion, everything else being covered by the carcass. MacFall did not particularly want to see the rest of the officer, but he couldn't leave him like that. He gripped Nolan's ankles and began to pull. The legs came suddenly to life.
"The blasted thing just flopped on top of me and died," the lieutenant explained a few minutes later. "Before I got my breath back the Bugs arrived over us and I thought it better to pretend to be dead. They went away a few minutes ago."
MacFall said, "But why didn't they attack me when I saw them giving the other wounded a working over."
Nolan's lips twitched. "They thought you were dead, too. Man, you're covered in blood! It does all belong to the lion, I hope?" he said, showing concern. MacFall nodded.
Nolan looked relieved. "I'll need you to carry some of my equipment. But first, we'd better see if there are any other survivors and get some medics out here. If the walkie-talkie isn't smashed, that is."
Of the ten men in the patrol six were still alive---one who had been mauled as well as Bug-shot, just barely. All were badly holed and bleeding about the face and neck--- the Bugs having early learned that the eyes and jugular vein were vital spots in human beings. MacFall smeared the areas with coagulant cream and did his best to cover them with handkerchiefs against the swarms of flies that had begun to gather again. One man he found sitting up, swaying backward and forward slowly and moaning to himself. His gauntleted hands were pressed tightly against his face, which was otherwise uncovered, and MacFall could not move them to see who the man was. He did what he could, shook the man's shoulder reassuringly and turned to rejoin the lieutenant.
". . . And if you are coming on foot," Nolan was saying into the transmitter, "carry at least one heavy rifle or Sten. The Bugs have started using lions against us--- or at least, if one is anywhere near they may madden it with those explosive particles they use and stampede it into your party as they did to ours. You'll have to watch out for that." He looked up, saw that MacFall had finished and said quickly, "We've been held up here too long. Sergeant MacFall and I are pushing on to the Bug ship. Over and out."
The habit of obedience was strong in MacFall, but he knew that his attitude as he followed Nolan around as the lieutenant hunted among the scattered and trampled packs was protest enough. He did not see what could be accomplished by two men armed with one Deedee gun, a magnifying glass and a box of square, plastic counters with peculiar smudge patterns on one face of them.
"Probably nothing, now," Nolan said shortly. MacFall had not realized that he had been thinking aloud.
The lieutenant went on, "Whatever chance we had of pulling this off has gone, I expect. The men were not to use their anti-Bug sprays, for one thing. But dammit, I wasn't expecting that trick with the lion. I shouldn't have made the men crowd together like that. . . ." He shook his head and swore.
"It was the right thing to do," MacFall said gently, "if it had been an ordinary cat."
The lieutenant's face was white---almost green---and drawn. The casualties had not been a pretty sight, and in the manner of all young officers he was obviously blaming himself largely for causing them. But there was a look in Nolan's eyes that made MacFall uneasy. The lieutenant had not hesitated in continuing with his scheduled operation though the patrol had been practically wiped out. It struck MacFall that Nolan was a bit of a fanatic, and fanatics were not careful about their own or anyone else's lives.
"What are we hoping to do?" MacFall asked some time later. They had climbed almost to the summit of the hill behind which lay the Bug ship. The vegetation had thinned out and they could now walk comfortably abreast. Mosquitoes hung in a cloud about their heads showing that they were in no immediate danger from the Bugs with a capital B.
Nolan sighed. "Nothing elaborate, with most of my gear ruined or left behind because of its weight, but---" He broke off suddenly, then said, "Before I tell you I want to ask you a question. Do you know that we are losing the war?"
MacFall stopped in his tracks. "But we've been given the figures," he protested. "Even now they say there are eight or nine times more humans on Earth than there are Bugs. The Bugs are just insects, and we're slowly wiping them out..."
"They are intelligent insects, Sergeant. There's a difference." After a moment he asked, "What happens when a new landing occurs, or when some district reports what seems to be a fair concentration of Bugs?"
It seemed like a silly question for an officer to ask, but MacFall answered it anyway. When a landing or concentration of Bugs was discovered, planes were immediately rushed to the spot and proceeded to blanket-spray a wide area all around it. A piece of ground nearby was burned sterile and protective sprays set up around it, and from this temporary base the Mark Eights operated to deal with any Bugs still left alive, after which the units involved held themselves ready for notification of the next Bug landing.
"Fair enough," Nolan said. "Now, do you remember the Sahara landing a few months ago? That seemed like a fatal mistake they made, coming down on ground with no vegetation to hide in. There were over seventy ships, each of which contained upwards of one thousand Bugs, and we were onto them in no time.
"Later, because of the bare ground we were able to see the exact extent of our success, to count their dead, in other words. Well, we got less than one shipload altogether. The others escaped." Nolan breathed heavily. "And in wooded areas a much higher percentage must get away. We aren't winning, believe me. Of course, neither are the Bugs\_\_\_"
The lieutenant paused then, obviously expecting the sergeant to make some comment. But MacFall kept his mouth shut and saved his breath for the hill, silently observing to himself that Nolan was certainly taking a long time to answer a simple question.
Nolan continued, "The best brains have arrived at the same conclusion. Our offensive weapons are ineffective and our defensive measures impractical; we can't go through life choking on Deedee or in scaled plastic coveralls, or even in undersea buildings like the Bug research labs--- which aren't, by the way, Bug-proof. One was killed while leaving the Bermuda lab. Nobody knows how it got in, but it was found by a technician going on leave---while she was combing her hair."
MacFall shuddered in spite of himself. He wondered what the poor girl's face looked like now.
Nolan went on, "We've reached about the limit of efficiency with anti-Bug weapons, while they are just beginning to learn ways to harry us. We're terribly vulnerable, you know. I expect you read of that disaster when two three-hundred-seater jetliners collided over London Airport killing the occupants, and thirty-eight officers with falling wreckage. You didn't read that it was caused by three Bugs loose in the control tower. And there are many similar incidents, all hushed up because they show how dangerous the Bugs really are.
"Of course, I don't believe that they could wipe us out completely," Nolan said reassuringly, "but they can certainly make it impossible for us to maintain our present level of civilization."
MacFall had the shocked, angry and embarrassed feeling of one who overhears someone preaching sedition and who is not in a position to do anything about it. But then he began to wonder, Nolan was only a lieutenant, but these professors had ways of knowing things, and could sometimes bypass even a full general if they needed men or equipment for a job. Suppose Nolan was telling the truth?
The thought that the Bug war was really a life or death struggle for his race, but played down for propaganda purposes, made MacFall feel angry, uncomfortable and just a little sick. He forced it grimly from his mind, then stolidly repeated his earlier question.
"What are you going to do when we find the Bug ship?"
"I thought you might have guessed by now," Nolan said impatiently. His eyes said that MacFall was not a very bright specimen.
If it wasn't for the business with the lion, and the fact that you're an officer, MacFall thought angrily, I'd put my boot in your skinny---
"I'm going to examine the ship," Nolan went on suddenly. "We are hoping that it is damaged in some way and may not be able either to discharge all its occupants or destroy itself. If my main job turns out to be a flop then maybe we can learn something from the ship.
"But the chief purpose of this operation is to try to make peace with the Bugs."
MacFall knew that his face was not pretty. Too many Bugs had left their marks on it. But his expression when the lieutenant's words registered could not have helped it any. Nolan moved away from him in involuntary self-defense.
"Be realistic, Sergeant," he said hastily. "Neither side can win, most of the big brass admit that now, and approve of this. And remember, we killed a lot of Bugs before they started attacking us. And they very seldom molest civilians unless there is a lot of anti-Bug activity in the neighborhood. I think we started off on the wrong foot from the beginning---"
"Are you forgetting my men back there?" MacFall burst out despite himself; he did not normally interrupt officers, but this crazy specimen . . . "Look what the Bugs did to them. Look what they did even after the big cat had finished with them---"
"Unpleasant things happen in war," Nolan put in quickly. "On both sides."
MacFall ignored that; he found it impossible to feel that objective about the Bugs. He said, "Look at me, then! Nice, aren't I? I'll have this bogey-man kisser for the rest of my life---the Bug-shots are too deep for plastic surgery. But that doesn't matter so much, there are plenty of others the same. It's what it feels like.
"You've never been attacked by a swarm of Bugs, have you, Lieutenant? You don't know what it feels like when they come at you and their little bullets are exploding on your face armor half an inch away from your eyes, wearing it through. Maybe you're lucky and they get through somewhere else. They start blasting little pieces out of your cheek, neck or ear opening. It hurts, Lieutenant. It hurts horribly."
MacFall knew that his voice was rising in pitch, becoming strident with the intensity of his emotions, but he could not control it. He was not so much describing an incident as being forced to live through it again.
"It's worse in the nose. It hurts and you feel you can't breathe. When you do you bubble blood over the inside of your face armor and then you can't see, or it goes down your throat and you think you're drowning in it. What the head-shrinkers call panic reaction takes over then. You want to quit, you want to run away, you can't stand it anymore. So you start tearing off your face armor."
MacFall shut his eyes and clenched his jaws tight. A few seconds later, in a more normal voice he added, "That's when the Bugs really go to work on you." "I have my orders, Sergeant," Nolan said. The lieutenant's face through his armor looked a peculiar gray color, MacFall thought, suddenly ashamed of himself. Scaring Nolan half to death would help nobody. He fell slightly behind the lieutenant and kept silent, thinking about the unpleasant implications of the news that the big brass were so worried that they were suing the Bugs---mere insects!---for peace!
They found the Bug ship half an hour later. It was a stubby, ten-foot, gray torpedo, not the mass of fluffy rust which the Bugs usually left for human investigators.
But close inspection---it seemed empty of life---revealed a hole which went in about eighteen inches back of its rounded nose and came out amidships on the other side. The lieutenant muttered something about a meteoric collision, and the mass of the Bug ship being so small that it had offered no more resistance to the body than a cobweb, so that it had merely suffered a simple puncture without attendant damage from heat transference. MacFall who had no idea what the lieutenant was talking about, said that he supposed that was so.
Nolan bent closer to study the hole which had been ripped in the ship. It was about six inches in diameter, MacFall saw when Nolan motioned him forward to look at it, and it gave a clear but bewildering view of the construction of the ship. Everything was too small to mean anything.
"Spider webs covered in tinsel paper," MacFall said, feeling disappointed. He did not see how anything could be learned from this ship, and said so.
"I suppose you're right," Nolan said. "But the strength of those spider webs . . . !" He straightened up, sighed, then went on. "Let's not be defeatist about this. I'm an entomologist, not an engineer or physicist. We've got to have experts examine this, and with greater magnification than that of my pocket lens."
MacFall hefted the walkie-talkie transmitter in his hand and looked a question.
"No," the lieutenant said quickly. "We won't send for them yet. First we've got to move this ship as far away from here as possible, then camouflage it with branches. This is the first time one of these has remained whole after landing, probably because its self-destructive mechanism suffered in the collision. But I'm afraid that the Bug swarm which attacked us was not merely abandoning it, they may have been on the way to get help to destroy it and will return. If we hide it they might not be able to find and destroy it before our technicians arrive to do their stuff."
MacFall had not been thinking that far ahead; it sounded like a sensible idea. But as they lifted the large torpedo shape between them---it was incredibly light in weight---MacFall couldn't resist another dig at the lieutenant.
"How about the peace talks?" he said.
A mixture of emotions pulled at the lieutenant's face, but the strongest of them seemed to be disappointment. He really wanted to try that suicidal stunt, MacFall saw with amazement. Nolan was silent for several minutes while they settled the ship onto their shoulders, then he said shortly, "There isn't anyone to talk to."
But he was wrong, very wrong.
On the surface of the torpedo between them a small dark opening had appeared no larger than a postage stamp. From it crawled a Bug at least two inches long.
Nolan gave a warning hiss. "Let it down," he whispered. "Slowly."
They eased the ship gently to the ground. MacFall hastily checked his armor fastenings, then looked up to find Nolan bent over with his face not more than six inches from the still slowly moving Bug.
His face armor was open.
"What a really handsome insect," the lieutenant said in a tone of pleased wonder. It had a shiny brown back with pink spots on it and a yellow underbelly---MacFall thought it loathsome. He tried to tell the lieutenant to cover his face, but he could only mouth silently.
"A species similar to the Hymenoptera, you notice," Nolan went on excitedly, "and like the other Bugs we know." He paused thoughtfully, then went on, "Although the dead Bug specimens which I've examined were badly damaged by the effects of Deedee, I think I can state definitely that this one is a female of the species."
MacFall croaked, "Lieutenant, your face arm---"
"It's all right, Sergeant. It isn't wearing the gray protective membrane used by the males, and I'm positive that it isn't armed, either. We're in luck, Sergeant! Reach me the packet of plastic counters marked 'A' and a roll of tape."
MacFall, still unconvinced that the Bug---the biggest he had yet seen---was harmless, moved to obey.
"Hurry it up!" Nolan said. "And get base on the radio. Tell them to record everything I say, and to re-broadcast it if possible just in case I'm not able to finish this."
It took a few minutes to get the CO. on the set, then Colonel Dawson barked that they would be ready to record and retransmit in ten minutes. Nolan filled the time by taping several of the plastic counters upright onto the hull surface, nudging the Bug in front of them with a gentle forefinger and talking, mostly to himself. MacFall did get some of it, however.
It appeared that in certain species the female insect was little more than an egg-laying machine, and even among this intelligent insect race she would tend to be cowlike, stupid. But not too stupid, Nolan was hoping. He could not understand why the Bug swarm which had attacked them earlier had left her behind. She was equipped with wings and could have traveled with them, and a female would, he was sure, be a very important individual in their culture. Why had she stayed behind?
"We'll be ready for you in three minutes," the base operator's voice said in MacFall's ear. He leaned forward and held the transmitter mouthpiece above the lieutenant's face, relayed the message to him, then asked quickly, "What are those plastic things?"
"There are very small pictures and symbols on them," Nolan answered abstractedly. "I don't know what exactly they show." He grinned suddenly. "That's etymology, a somewhat different field. But if I present them in a certain sequence, and tap my fingers a certain way afterwards, I should get a reaction of some sort . . ." He trailed off into silence.
In the phones a voice said, "We're ready now, Sergeant. But Colonel Dawson says that if this thing goes bad on you for any reason, you're to get a specimen of the unrusted metal of the Bug ship. We'll have that much, at least."
MacFall moved the mike nearer to the lieutenant's mouth and nodded for him to go ahead.
It seemed like a senseless game to MacFall, but despite that he felt the tension mounting within himself as the lieutenant coaxed and edged the Bug in front of one square of plastic after another, then minutely described each movement of its six hairy legs and every twitch of its near-invisible wings. Nolan went over the same sequence seven times, sighed, and began again.
"If it understands the symbology printed on these counters," the lieutenant muttered aside to MacFall, "and if it understands from them that we want peace with the Bugs as a primary step before less simple concepts are attempted, and if the Bugs are peacefully inclined too . . ." He took a deep breath. ". . . then when I go tap, tap-tap, tap-tap-tap with my finger it should move a leg or wriggle quickly four times to show that it understands and is agreeable----if it doesn't happen to be some Bug halfwit who doesn't know what's going on at all."
MacFall found himself grinning. "Try it again," he said. "Dees dames is all stoopid . .."
MacFall could have bitten his tongue out. Unthinkingly he had mimicked Calleria's Bowery accent---the one the corporal had used to tell his most outrageously funny jokes in, because Corporal Calleria had once been a radio actor. MacFall swore under his breath then, thinking of how the corporal had looked a little over half an hour ago after the lion and later the Bugs had finished with him. The two stripes on his arm had been MacFall's only means of identifying him. He felt a sudden surge of sheer hate. His fist clenched and he felt an uncontrollable urge to smash it down on the two-inch long horror crawling about among the bits of plastic, to mash out its stinking life. He didn't want to think of consequences, or weigh pros and cons like the lieutenant. He just wanted to . . .
MacFall's arm moved out, fist upraised. Nolan looked up at him, startled. Then they both froze.
A distant, high-pitched whine filtered through the trees toward them, barely perceptible as yet but growing in volume with every second which passed. Bugs!
Nolan pointed suddenly through a break in the foliage where the curve of the hilltop showed. A dark gray patch of mist writhed in the air above it, and as MacFall watched, began curling down the slope toward them, expanding and already resolving itself into separate gray specks.
"Look!" Nolan cried. "There's thousands of them!"
"At least," MacFall said shakily. There must have been a secret Bug colony in Madagascar---one ship could not have contained one tenth of that sky-darkening swarm. Silently he went to work.
"Quickly," Nolan said, his voice strained. "Get away from the ship. Get well back. They mustn't think that we intend harm to it---Sergeant! What are you doing?"
MacFall had one gauntleted hand gripping the edge of the hole which the meteor had made and was tugging hard. The stuff was unbelievably tough for its weight. Panting slightly, he said, "Colonel Dawson wants a metal specimen before they get a chance to rust it...."
At that moment a two-foot strip of the ship's skin came away with a sound like tearing canvas. Underneath was . . . "Ugh," MacFall said, hastily turning his head away.
"What . . . ?" began Nolan, then, "Grubs! The Bug young! That explains . . ." He broke off again. "Why had you to do that, dammit? We're trying to make peace, and now they'll think we're wrecking the ship---a ship with their young in it. If you'd half the brains God gave a louse ..."
The Bugs were almost on them, MacFall had never known them to sound so loud. He shouted angrily, "I was acting on orders, dammit. And cover your face!"
"To blazes with my face!" Nolan swore. He reached up and tore his head and face armor off and flung it to the ground. "Orders," he spat out. "You stupid, senseless robot. Give me your Deedee gun! I don't trust you. Give it to me!"
Mad, MacFall thought wildly. These professors were all the same. Cracked to begin with ...
"I can handle it better than you," MacFall protested as Nolan literally tore the sprayer and its connected high-pressure tank off his back. It was no use talking. He groped in the long grass for the lieutenant's discarded face armor, found it, then the Bug swarm was all over them.
He saw Nolan holding the Deedee gun high above his head. Heard him shout, "Look! You know what this is!" and hurl the sprayer away from him with all his strength. Then he saw a tiny spurt of red appear on the lieutenant's cheek, and another. Two little red explosions burst on his forehead and another on his ear. He saw Nolan shrug his shoulders desperately as high around his ears as he could, clap a hand to his eyes and try to wrap as much as possible of his other hand and arm around his head for protection. In that particularly contorted position the lieutenant rolled to the ground. He seemed to be trying to wriggle into it like a worm. MacFall turned away quickly. He had troubles of his own.
The Bugs hung so thickly around him that he could barely see the jungle, and the outer surface of his face armor was a continual sparkle as Bug explosive bullets wore at it, pitting it deeply and making it even harder to see. Where the plastic touched his skin, the shocks of the tiny explosions were transmitted through as a succession of tiny, stinging slaps. At this rate MacFall knew that he had about five minutes before he would be in the same position as the lieutenant.
Desperately he lashed out at the almost solid swarm with Nolan's discarded helmet, which was still in his hand. Some of the Bugs dropped spiraling to the ground---but it was nothing, a cupful of water out of an ocean. Never had he known them to attack so viciously, so suicidally and in such numbers.
He felt panic rising in him, and a feeling of choking ---something had happened to his air filter. He was boiling in his own sweat and he couldn't breathe! Grimly MacFall fought these feelings, knowing that they were in his mind only, lies. He had to think, keep his head. He was startled to find that he was repeating a phrase over and over to himself, sometimes whispering it, sometimes shouting it. "Don't take off your face armor. Don't take off your face armor. . . ."
There was a burning stab in the back of his neck, they had broken through from the back. MacFall gritted his teeth as the stab was repeated. He fumbled out a field dressing, slapping it on the puncture, and pressed down on the adhesive. It wouldn't stop the Bug weapons, but it would cut down the penetrative capacity of the bullets ---for a while.
But he had to do something. Nothing that MacFall might do would save him, he knew that now. But he did not want to curl up into a ball and let the Bugs blow little pieces out of him until there was nothing left. No matter how useless, he had to try something. But what?
Hundreds of microscopic bullets were bursting on the armor now---with a sound like the crackling of dry burning twigs---and the plastic in front of his eyes was a deeply-pitted blur. Suddenly he saw the gray shine of metal in the underbrush ten yards away. The Deedee gun? He stumbled toward it.
The Bugs were thick around his head and above the huddled, twitching form of the lieutenant but above the ship with its outsize Queen Bug they were a whining, seething, near-solid mass. Even if the sprayer was damaged, MacFall thought desperately, he could throw it against the ship and burst its pressure tank. That would certainly kill the insects crowding above the ship as well as the mass of pink, wriggling grubs packed inside it.
But now he could not see at all. He felt with his feet for the Deedee gun, then cried out suddenly as his face armor was holed. He took it on the cheek, luckily. With his hand pressed tightly against his eyes---the plastic was worn paper thin in that area---he groped forward. Through the gauntlet protecting his face he felt the attackers concentrating on the back of his hand. There was another stab at his neck. Something tore at his ear. Then his gauntlet was holed and he could not keep his hand against his face anymore.
Where was the Deedee gun? It was only a matter of time now, of seconds ...
The lieutenant's eyes had escaped but the nerve controlling one of his eyelids had been damaged---he wore a perpetual, knowing wink that was almost a leer. That, together with his torn, cream-smeared face and his white, skinny body made MacFall think of an outrageous cross between Chevalier, Frankenstein and . . . well, he didn't know what.
They had stripped to drill shorts and boots, and the breeze which had sprung up at dusk was sheer heaven. Nolan had left his heavy coveralls behind, but MacFall carried his over his arm---they were army issue and he just might be charged for them if they weren't handed in, despite their uselessness now.
"That explains why the ship wasn't destroyed," Nolan said as they retraced their steps to base. "And why that first swarm of Bugs attacked so viciously---they were intent on protecting their young." He still sounded dazed by the whole business. "And Sergeant," he went on enthusiastically, "from close inspection I'm convinced that their first choice of food supply is other, smaller insects, though they can live on any warm-blooded creature as well. Think what this means! They could, for instance, exterminate the tsetse fly for us, and the other insects which keep us from developing large areas of the planet. You'll see, this is going to benefit both sides, eventually."
MacFall grunted, then thinking that perhaps something more enthusiastic was called for, said, "Peace, ain't it wonderful!" Looking over his shoulder he wondered suddenly whether the Bugs engaged in escorting them back to base were naturally luminous or did they carry the Bug equivalent of a flashlight. The effect was pretty, anyway.
"For a while it was touch and go," the lieutenant was babbling on. "After they stopped attacking me suddenly and I sat up, it still seemed to be in the balance. They were clustered around our plastic counters and that female, obviously interested but quite definitely hostile to us even then. What made them change their minds, decide on peace?"
MacFall knew what, but he wasn't telling. He remembered that pause in the Bug attack all too clearly, and he had known somehow that the Bugs were undecided about them. MacFall had taken, off his now useless helmet to see better, and among other things he saw the dozen or so Bugs which he had flailed to the ground with Nolan's discarded helmet. They had been waving their legs weakly and only three of them looked dead. MacFall ---call it hunch, intuition or whatever---had done exactly the right thing. He had taken off his coveralls, rolled up his sleeve, then carefully lifted each weakly struggling Bug between finger and thumb and placed it on his arm.
The bites hadn't hurt at all, and a few drops of human blood had worked wonders for some of them.
If the lieutenant ever discovered what he had done he would probably start agitating for a medal for the sergeant. But MacFall was not going to tell him. A medal was all right, of course, but MacFall did not think that he could ever face his men again if they were to find out that he was blood brother to a swarm of Bugs.
WITH the sounding of the five second warning the clicking, whining bedlam inside Ramsey built suddenly to a climax. The chemical boosters fired, their thunder so deep and vast that it was felt in the bones rather than heard with overloaded ears, and the ship began creeping into the sky. It picked up speed rapidly until airflow over its fins began to assist the gyros in maintaining vertical stability, until it began to outstrip its own thunder and until five gravities of acceleration and a surprisingly few minutes of time had combined to hurl it accurately into space. Then just before the booster stage was due to fall away the ship's reactor cut in smoothly, augmenting the enormous pre-burnout thrust with its modest half-G.
That was when it happened.
The radio unit which was attached to a bulkhead a few feet above the pilot's position tore loose and dropped onto the couch below, then rolled off and snapped through the open well of the passenger compartment as if pulled by a giant elastic band. The passenger lounge was twenty-five-feet long and with our five Gs acting on it the small, metal cabinet gained enough velocity to crash through the transparent panel which looked into the cargo space without even slowing down. Here it was deflected by cargo into the food storage compartment where it left the ship via a large, ragged hole it had torn in the hull plating.
On time to the split second the booster stage dropped away and Ramsey, outwardly unaffected by these internal disturbances, continued along its precalculated flight path. After seventeen minutes at one-half G the reactor shut down and the ship was precisely on the course which would place it in orbit around Mars in a little over sixteen weeks. The fact that something had happened to the radio would not become apparent until the captain failed to make his post takeoff check report and, because it was the radio that had gone, the people on the ground would not know that anything else was amiss. So far as they were concerned, Ramsey was pointed in the right direction and everything was Go.
For a time the ship's passengers had the same comforting idea. All except one....
Herdman knew immediately that they had lost pressure by the change in the sounds which the ship was making--- he was hearing them via the fabric of his couch and helmet rather than through the air of the passenger lounge---• and by the way his spacesuit creaked. A leak was not a very rare occurrence during the period of maximum stress that was takeoff and, provided it was not the product of some more serious malfunction, loss of pressure was nothing to worry about. The ship's air regeneration system would not be activated until after the captain had checked that everything was sealed tight, so that all they had lost was a few cubic meters of the dusty, peroxide-smelling air which had come aboard with the passengers before takeoff. Herdman waited tensely for something more calamitous to happen, and when it didn't he began to relax.
The people on the ground were especially careful with ships making their first trip, he thought sourly, and with a vessel like Ramsey---the first spaceship designed primarily to carry passengers---the care with which they had checked everything must have been blood-curdling to watch. Herdman was reminded of the chilling little tale of the overanxious engineer who had tested the free working of an emergency-jettison control forty-seven times in order to make absolutely sure that it was functioning correctly, only to find on the forty-eighth time that he had tested the mechanism to destruction. ...
As he lay staring at the underside of the acceleration bunk above his own, Herdman let his mental eye travel farther upward, past and through the vertical tier of nine bunks above him---six of which were empty---to Control and to the man who occupied it.
After the reactor shut down there would be a forty-five-minute instrument check, he knew, after which the captain would carry out a visual inspection of his ship to make doubly sure that everything was sealed and secure. During this inspection the captain would trace and seal the leak, and only when pressure was restored would he give permission for the passengers to get out of their tiny bunks and even more constricting spacesuits.
Should anyone dare to leave his bunk before receiving permission to do so they would find themselves in trouble, because captains did not like people cluttering up their ships during that all-important first inspection. Herdman sighed, hoping that Captain Ramsey would not insist on treating him like a passenger, that the pilot might even ask him to help look for the leak. But very likely the hope was a forlorn one. From what he had heard of Ramsey, the captain was the type who leaned over backward and, perversely, Herdman did not want to claim any privileges which were not first offered.
But half an hour later Ramsey still had not appeared, neither had there been any of the faint, irregular sounds and vibrations from the ship's metal which would have indicated the captain moving about. Herdman began to feel anxious, and within a minute his anxiety had grown to the point where he was willing to risk a rebuff for leaving his bunk without permission. The instant he realized that something might be wrong, Herdman slapped the quick-release plate on his harness, twisted out of the bunk and kicked himself toward the cone---all without coming to any conscious decision regarding his actions. It was a matter of conditioning---if there was trouble, Herdman had been trained to do the correct thing automatically, and such conditioning died hard.
Something had torn loose, he saw as soon as he reached the control-room trap. There was a one-foot square gap in the almost solid canopy of control panels and tell-tales which was the nose cone. Four projecting lugs showed in the empty space, to which had been bolted the missing item of equipment, and raw metal gleamed in the empty hole of each lug. Herdman wondered briefly if some over-zealous member of the ground crew had tightened one of those bolts so thoroughly that he had stripped the thread, and the stress and vibration of five Gs had done the rest. But it would be very difficult to bring a negligence charge against a man who was guilty of being too careful.
The equipment had fallen a distance of three feet onto the captain's position, although with an acceleration of five Gs acting on it the object's speed and inertia had been the equivalent of a fall of fifteen feet under normal conditions. It had struck the captain's shoulder and dented the side of his helmet before rolling off to go bulleting through the port at the bottom of the passenger lounge.
Ramsey's suit was badly crushed where the right arm joined the body and inside the visor the pilot's face was white and sweating. The captain wasn't moving although the suit was still airtight. Herdman pulled himself closer and saw that the other's eyes were closed, that he was breathing and that little red beads were floating about inside the helmet, eddying with every breath that he took.
If Ramsey wasn't taken out of his suit quickly, or at least had his helmet removed, there was danger of him breathing in one of those tiny red beads and choking to death on it. But before he removed the helmet, Herdman would have to restore pressure to the ship....
While he was applying a number one patch to the holed port Herdman became aware of three heads looking down at him over the edges of the occupied bunks. None of the passengers made any attempt to leave their places; they probably thought he was the captain, and Herdman ignored them until air was hissing into the compartment and the pressure gauge told him that it was staying there. Then with an atmosphere present to carry his voice he flipped his outside speaker switch and said, "All right, gentlemen, you can take them off now," and dived toward Control again.
There he swung himself over the pilot's couch, locking his legs around it at the level of Ramsey's waist, and began carefully removing the helmet.
The face he uncovered was the same one that had looked out at him from the pages of newspapers and magazines with increasing frequency over the past five years, but the utter relaxation of unconsciousness gave the features an unfamiliar look. There were three deep lacerations above and behind the right ear, caused by the radio earpiece which had practically shattered itself against Ramsey's skull. He swung away and began searching for the ship's log.
During the three minutes it took him to find it he discovered, by a process of elimination, that it was the radio unit which had come adrift. He also found that his hands shook and he was driven close to panic at the sight of all those familiar panels and controls in their subtly unfamiliar positions. But the feeling passed when he had the log to concentrate on.
Herdman quickly found the page giving the names and all-up weights of the passengers. Dr. F. Brett, he read: Dr. J. Forsythe, Dr. M. Wallace and Mr. J. Herdman. . . . He snapped the log shut and replaced it in its clip, wishing he had more detailed knowledge of the qualifications of these three no-doubt eminent doctors. But it was customary to give only minimum information about any passenger, the theory being that during the long, boring trip everything there was to know---but everything---about one's fellow-passengers would come out in conversation, and any prepublished biographical material would spoil the fun of finding out. His only course was to go and ask them, although he was going to feel awfully silly asking three doctors if one of them was a doctor....
When he put the question, it was a tall, rangy individual, who already had his suit off and was performing a weightless adagio dance with it in his efforts to stow it away, who was the first to speak. He said, "If you mean is one of us a real doctor and not just one of these common PhDs, the answer is yes. My name is Forsythe, Captain ..."
"I'm not the captain!" said Herdman sharply, then in a quieter tone: "The captain has been injured, Doctor. A piece of equipment came loose during takeoff. Head and shoulder injuries. I didn't want to risk taking off his suit in case I compounded---"
"Quite right," said Forsythe briskly. He steadied himself against a bunk, then dived awkwardly toward the cone. He reappeared a moment later to remove the medical kit from its rack and returned without speaking. Herdman turned to the other passengers.
"This compartment is tight and there is no immediate danger," he said quietly. "But the rest of the ship has lost pressure and there may be some damage. I'm, uh, familiar with the layout of the ship and will check the damage while the doctor is attending to Captain Ramsey...."
Herdman had never been in a ship like Ramsey before, but he had kept abreast of all the literature as it became available. He knew that the current thinking in the field was that spaceflight was reaching the point where it should no longer be necessary for the various governments to foot the bill completely. There were colonies and projects on the Moon and inner planets which were becoming self-sufficient in that the financial returns from their research paid for the astronomical cost of keeping them supplied, and it was felt that the time had come for spaceflight to be put on a paying basis. Ramsey was the first step in a long journey that would enable space travel to be undertaken by tired businessmen rather than reserving it for the intrepid adventurer types. It was luxurious and, for a spaceship, extraordinarily roomy. It even boasted a swimming pool.
Ramsey was the last word, Herdman thought bitterly as he squeezed through the interior lock; the only trouble was that its designers were already thinking up later ones. But Ramsey was a good man and he had a fine ship---a clean, simple design that might go for eight or nine years without major modifications. In that, Ramsey was lucky. It was a terrible thing to be rendered obsolete at thirty-one.
Herdman severed that line of thought quickly before it dragged him into a morass of self-pity. Maybe the captain wasn't so lucky, or anyone else on board his ship. Herdman wouldn't know until he had finished his check.
The ship's layout was conventional in that Control and its associated instrumentation was housed in the nose cone, which widened from a blunt point to the ten feet which was the maximum diameter of the ship until it tapered slightly below the reactor. The twenty-five-foot cylinder below Control was divided vertically by thin metal plating supported by two of the main structural members, one half forming the passenger lounge and the other containing the air and water recycling gear and the control links to the reactor. A three-way lock built into this compartment connected it with the passenger compartment and the cargo hold, which occupied the next twenty feet below. Then came the storage compartments, the fuel tank/swimming pool and finally the reactor. A hollow pipe two feet wide joined the cargo hold with the reactor room via the center of the tank in case something went wrong.
As he had half expected, the air regeneration section still retained the atmosphere brought aboard before takeoff but in the cargo space pressure was nil. When Herdman saw the extent of the damage he found himself wishing that just this once the radio unit's circuits had not been sealed into a block of rock-hard plastic to protect them against vibration. As it was, that small, dense piece of equipment had wrecked havoc enough to make an armor-piercing shell feel proud.
The missile's path through the cargo space had been deflected by a pressurized crate which had bounced it toward the food storage bin. This it had entered close to deck level, bursting through the tightly packed food containers therein and exiting where the hull joined the deck. The plastic containers held the concentrated liquid and semi-liquid meals designed for weightless conditions, and when the compartment had been opened to space, vapor pressure from the contents of the burst containers had forced most of the undamaged packs out through the opening in the hull. And if that wasn't enough there was a slight but detectable fog in the compartment.
The fuel tank, whose upper wall formed the floor of the food storage bin, had also been opened.
The first job was to rescue what food containers remained in the bin, and these he tossed gently into the main cargo space for collection later, noticing as he did so that there were a few others drifting outside the rent in the hull. They also could be retrieved later. Then he traced and sealed off the puncture in the tank, entering it to make sure that all was tight, and only then did he start work on the damaged hull. He was slowed down at times because certain tools and equipment were racked in unfamiliar places, and it was three hours before pressure was restored to the rest of the ship.
But he didn't go immediately to Ramsey. The things he had been doing would have registered on the control-room tell-tales, and Ramsey had not contacted him on the suit radio. Which meant that either the captain was still unconscious or he approved of what Herdman was doing. Herdman wriggled out of his spacesuit, drank some water and began a careful inventory of the cargo hold and its associated storage spaces.
The cargo consisted of lab equipment, medical supplies, lightweight books and drums of black, white and red paint which, the labels stated, had been developed to withstand both the sand abrasion and the extremes of temperature to be found on Mars. There was nothing edible in the cargo, which was unfortunate. He was beginning to realize the full extent of their predicament.
Unfortunate, he thought grimly, was far too mild a word to describe it.
When he finally returned to the passenger compartment the captain, fully conscious and talking quietly, was surrounded by a weightless shoal of passengers. Ramsey's head was bandaged, the sleeve and part of the shoulder of his tunic had been cut away and his arm was strapped to his side and rendered immobile by a lumpy, irregular mass of sealing compound. Considering the fact that it must be Forsythe's first experience with a casualty in weightless conditions it was a very tidy job. The captain nodded when he saw Herdman, winced as if the movement had hurt his head, and went on speaking.
". . . And I don't want to burden you at this stage with a long list of 'Don'ts'," he was saying. "As you come to know the ship your common sense will tell you what you should do or should not do. The one strict rule, however, is that which forbids entrance to the control-room to everyone but the captain. There are many reasons for this, some of which are psychological.. .."
Ramsey did not dwell on that point but went on quickly to discuss the measures devised to relieve boredom during the long voyage and spoke of the necessity for politeness and consideration between passengers at all times, for control of irritating mannerisms or habits of speech, for personal hygiene....
Herdman was only half-listening to him. He was trying desperately to catch the captain's eye before the other said too much. Before he got onto the subject of food, for instance.
". . . One effect of boredom," Ramsey went on, "is the tendency for some people to try to relieve it by eating. Surprisingly large quantities of popcorn can be shifted during a very boring show, for example. But it is a medical fact that the body requires much less food in the weightless condition than . . . Yes, Mr. Herdman, what is it?"
Ramsey had caught his eye at last and realized that something was wrong. The others were looking at him, too, seeing him for the first time without his suit and putting his name and face together in their minds and coming up with the inevitable answer. Within seconds they all had the expressions of people who had been introduced to royalty twice in the same day. Herdman wondered if there was a polite and considerate way to tell them that they were all going to die. If there was he couldn't find it.
He said, "I've checked the ship, sir. Apart from the loss of the radio unit there is no mechanical or electrical damage. Some minor structural damage to the hull in the region of the food storage bin and fuel tank has been repaired, but we've lost most of our food and a good quantity of fuel...."
"How much?" said Ramsey sharply.
"Counting what was left in the bin together with the few odds and ends drifting outside," said Herdman carefully, "I'd estimate enough for three weeks. Where the fuel is concerned I can't be nearly so accurate. A lot."
The captain was silent. His eyes had grown dull with pain and his features had the smudged, contrasty look of a bad photograph. The others were looking anxious but not frightened. They were probably thinking that Earth still filled half the sky behind them, that it was only a few hours away and that a lot of things could happen in three weeks. All the implications had not sunk in with them yet.
"It looks very bad," Herdman went on, strain making his voice sound harsh even to his own ears. "I can't say how bad exactly until I have an accurate damage report on you." He looked suddenly at Forsythe. "What about it, Doctor?"
It was obvious that Dr. Forsythe was a man who had been polite and considerate all his life and not just be cause it was the thing done during space voyages. At the same time his gentler instincts were offended by Herdman's tone and the manner in which he had referred to the captain's injuries. He looked ready to erupt.
"Go ahead, Doctor," said Ramsey. "As an integral part of the ship's machinery I, too, would like to know the extent of my loss of efficiency and how long it is likely to last."
The doctor looked from Herdman to the captain and back again, then shook his head. He said coldly. "The head injuries comprise lacerations, contusions and possibly a fracture of the left parietal. As for the shoulder and arm, there is a fracture close to the head of the humerus, damage to the coracoid process and indications that the glenoid fossa is---"
"What chance has he of regaining full mobility in time for the landing four months from now?" Herdman broke in roughly.
"Yes, Doctor," Ramsey added in a quieter voice. "We have to know."
Forsythe looked at Herdman with extreme disfavor and at the captain with compassion. He said, "With the facilities available on the ship---no possibility of obtaining X-rays to chart the damage accurately and with only a glorified first aid kit to work with---my only course is to immobilize the limb until proper hospital treatment can be given. Until then you will not be able to use the arm at all. I'm sorry."
For a long time Ramsey stared at, and through, the doctor, until the silence was broken by one of the other passengers, a swarthy, round-faced individual whose plumpness was accentuated into near obesity by the absence of weight, who said sullenly, "I . . . I'm beginning to feel hungry...."
"You will get used to that feeling, Dr. Brett," said Ramsey sharply, and winced again. Suddenly he looked puzzled and a little frightened. He began staring hard at each of them in turn, as if trying to see through a dense fog. His voice, when he went on, had become slurred:
"Mr. Herdman, will you explain what this means to these people. And . . . and try to work something out. . ." The voice faded and his eyes, which were open, turned up to show their whites. His fingers relaxed their hold on the nearby bunk and he, began drifting toward the passengers.
Ramsey had passed out, Herdman saw, and the fact that a man could lose consciousness without his head lolling forward onto his chest or, as sometimes happened in free fall, without his eyelids dropping closed was having a disquieting effect on the other passengers. Not unnaturally it was Forsythe who reacted first.
"He might injure himself against something," the doctor said gruffly. "He's unconscious. We'll have to strap him down somewhere. . . ."
'The control-room couch," said Herdman.
Forsythe shook his head. "One of the passenger bunks would be better. Then I could keep an eye on him. . . ."
"The control-room," said Herdman firmly, and took hold of the captain's good arm and with his fingers gently closed Ramsey's eyes. Then he launched them both toward the cone, judging the dive so that he would arrive first and be able to absorb the shock of contact with his own body.
When he returned a few minutes later the passengers had their heads together and, despite the fact that he could not hear anything of what was being said, Herdman could tell that the doctor was angry because of the apparently high-handed manner in which his advice regarding the captain had been ignored and that the others were merely frightened. They stopped talking suddenly as he approached, obviously because they had been talking about him.
This time it was Wallace, the third doctor on the passenger list, who spoke first. He was a small, thin-faced, nervous man who was trying hard to hide his fear behind a jocular tone. He said, "Uh, Mr. Herdman, the captain said you would explain things to us. Er, what exactly is our problem?"
This was a question which Herdman had been considering since the moment he had realized the full extent of the damage, which meant that he had had nearly three hours to prepare a short, non-technical answer to it. He had considered all the possible angles and permutations and no matter which way he looked at it the situation was bad, so bad that he had neither the ability nor the inclination to match Wallace's tone when he replied.
"It is a three-cornered problem," he said grimly. "First, our captain is physically incapable of handling the approach and landing when we reach Mars. Second, when we reach Mars we will be going too fast because we haven't enough fuel to decelerate into a landing orbit. And third, there isn't enough food to keep us alive until then anyway."
He watched them try to accept the idea that they were all going to die and then reject it, just as he had rejected it himself a few hours ago. Then the objections and counter-suggestions began to come. Herdman answered them all, quietly and always negatively.
No, he told them, they could not jerry-rig a radio and call for help. All communications equipment with the exception of the suit radios and the landing radar had been contained in the lost unit, and letting people know they were in trouble did not mean that they would be automatically rescued---things did not happen that way in space. And no, they could not turn back while they were still close to Earth---they hadn't sufficient fuel for landing on a light-gravity planet like Mars, so they could not decelerate to a stop and go back. The suggestion that they modify course to put them into a circumlunar orbit was a good one, except that the Moon was in the wrong position at present to try it. Even if they checked their velocity away from Earth, and Earth control had been worried enough by their failure to report after takeoff to set one of the big radio scopes to tracking them, there were no spaceships in existence which could take off from Earth, decelerate to match velocities with them and return.
The only possible hope of rescue lay in a ship following the same course to Mars, with surplus fuel aboard for the necessary velocity matching maneuvers. But he had to remind them that even in this age of spaceflight there were rarely more than thirty ships on Earth at any given time, that traffic was considered heavy if more than three of them took off or landed in a month, and that a ship took many days to prepare for flight. During the four or five days required to ready a ship for Mars both Earth and the destination planet would have changed position so that it would require some very fancy computing to make the second ship's path intersect theirs.
So the best bet would be for them to continue toward Mars, except that if they did that, ground control would almost certainly think that all that ailed them was a faulty radio and not bother sending a rescue ship anyway....
"You've got an answer for everything!" Brett raged suddenly. "The same answer, no! Anybody would think that you wanted to starve to death or crash . . . !"
"Or both, concurrently," Forsythe put in dryly, obviously trying to avert a row without actually coming out in support of Herdman.
"Like everyone else," said Herdman grimly, "I'm hoping one of you will ask a question which I can't answer with a 'No.' Personally I think our position is hopeless---"
"Personally," Brett broke in hotly, "I think you're a---"
"B-before I agree with Mr. Herdman," Wallace cut in hastily, "I'd like us to try attacking the problem from a couple of different directions. To begin with let's break it into its three separate parts and consider them one at a time. Take the matter of our injured captain first..."
Here it comes, thought Herdman wearily.
". . . We all know that Mr. Herdman was a pilot," Wallace continued eagerly. "We recognized him as soon as he took his suit off. We also know that he was trained for a ship whose type went obsolete five years ago, which means that he has been uh, retired for five years. But if we assume that we will reach Mars alive and that there will be enough fuel to get there, then that part of the problem is solved.
"I realize, of course," he added quickly, "that Ramsey may be a completely different class of ship from that which Mr. Herdman trained for. But there must be many similarities, and with four months to familiarize himself with the controls . . ."
Herdman shook his head violently. "I couldn't do it! My training was for---"
"You could try," said Forsythe mildly.
"Of course he'll try," Wallace said eagerly. "We don't expect more than that. And with the first part of the problem more or less taken care of we come to the second part, fuel. ..."
Part one of the problem was not solved and the time to tell them so was now. But Herdman was beginning to feel a great respect for this small, nervous, frightened man who was fighting so hard not to die, and a little sympathy, too. It wasn't as if the first part of the problem alone would cause their deaths, he told himself, the end lay in all three corners. So he kept silent, not wanting to spoil Wallace's dreams.
". . . What we need to attack this problem," Wallace was saying, "is information on methods of lightening the ship together with the exact quantity of fuel remaining to us. How much fuel do we have exactly?"
Herdman shook his head again. "I don't know."
"But..."
Patiently and quietly, because he did not want them to think that he was stupid and non-cooperative as well as being something of a wet blanket, Herdman told them why he did not know exactly how much fuel remained in the tanks.
"At the beginning of a trip the capacity of the tank equaled the available working fluid, with a metering device measuring the fuel that passed into the reactor and recording by subtraction the amount that remained. After the accident, however, fuel had been leaking from the tank by another exit so that the meter reading was no longer accurate. And in weightless conditions the liquid hung about inside the tank in a chaotic mass of froth--- and it was impossible to tell whether it was composed of air bubbles in water or gobs of water floating in air, except that it wasn't air but water vapor that caused the bubbles. The simplest way to work it out would be to apply thrust for a few minutes and allow the water to settle to the bottom of the tank, then measure its height and compute the volume from the known measurements of the tank. But applying thrust would waste more of their already scarce fuel as well as cause a deviation from their flight plan, which would require more fuel to correct. . . . ". . . And spinning the ship to make centrifugal force take the place of thrust would not work either," Herdman added as he saw Wallace's mouth open to ask what was the next logical question, "because the ship's center of gravity is somewhere inside the tank, and taking accurate measurements with the ship spinning rapidly around you ..."
Wallace groaned piteously, then said, "There must be a simple way to do this. We have this dirty great tank partly full of water, which we can't measure because the stuff is weightless. It's there, we should be able to tell how much of it there is! D'you think I could go inside and see if something suggests itself when I'm in the tank?"
"Why not," said Herdman. "It's your swimming pool as well as mine."
"That's right," said Wallace, grinning. A few minutes later he was disconnecting the oxygen tanks, air hose and breathing mask from his spacesuit and stripping to his shorts. Herdman wanted to warn him to be careful in the tank, because water could do all sorts of unpredictable things in weightless conditions, but he reminded himself that the passengers had all been given instructions on handling themselves in the swimming pool/ fuel tank together with advice regarding the operation of locks, suits, and air plant and so on, and remained silent.
When Wallace had disappeared sternward, Brett looked at Herdman and said, "I suppose you've no objection to my looking over the cargo to see how much of it we can jettison?"
"Why should I?" said Herdman.
Brett followed Wallace and Forsythe coughed gently. He said, "The third part of the problem is the food supply. It might be a good idea to see exactly where we stand."
"Go ahead," said Herdman.
For the best part of an hour the three men worked in or near the cargo space, the bumps and scuffles of the movements drifting up to Herdman as he hung alone in the passenger lounge. Most of the time their conversation was too subdued for him to hear what they were saying, but occasionally---usually when Wallace got excited about something---he heard it clearly, and sometimes it was directed at himself.
Like the time when Wallace started talking about Boyle's Law and asking if it was possible to seal an empty spacesuit from the outside while keeping the internal pressure high. He also wanted to know if anything cataclysmic would happen to the ship if he unscrewed the pressure gauge from the cargo space bulkhead. Herdman gave him instructions on how best to achieve the former and reassurances regarding the latter and had just finished speaking when Brett shouted up if it was possible for him to see a detailed cargo manifest. Some of the cargo was pressure sealed and he could more easily estimate its weight if he knew exactly what was inside. . ..
The excitement was catching, Herdman found, and so was the hope. Even though he knew that there was no hope, that it was a three-part problem and that one and one did not and never would make three....
There was the time when Wallace returned from the tank with his gear and a storm of vituperation erupted through the open cargo lock. Without seeing it Herdman could picture exactly what had happened. Wallace had been soaking wet and naturally, automatically, he had shaken himself. In the weightless condition the result would have been like a rainstorm down there. But the storm of abuse died on a complaining note with Brett muttering something to the effect that if the water was so blank-blank scarce why was Wallace slopping so much of it around?
Brett did not know or perhaps did not remember that there would be no wastage of water within the ship. Any excess moisture in the air would be extracted when it went through the process of repurification and automatically returned to the tank.
After that one outburst, however, the noises coming from the cargo space diminished to an occasional grunt or rustle of paper. Then suddenly they were all coming into the passenger compartment again; Wallace, still in his wet shorts, holding a damp piece of paper in one hand and grinning all over his face; Brett, radiating truculent confidence and the doctor wearing a carefully neutral expression, each gripping their respective soggy calculations. None of them had the look of men composing themselves to die.
Wallace said, "Mr. Herdman, it was stupid of me not to see it at once. We know the capacity of the tank and the air, I mean vapor, pressure within it could be measured. Making allowances for the combined volume of myself and my gear, then introducing a known volume of air via the empty suit and then finding the difference in pressure enables us to calculate . . . Anyway, I know the amount of fuel remaining in the tank. Not exactly, of course, because the pressure gauge wasn't sensitive enough to give absolutely accurate readings, but my findings taken in conjunction with Brett's calculations regarding the weight he will be able to dispose of before deceleration---"
"Let me see," said Herdman, reaching for the figures. He studied them carefully for several minutes.
"That pressure gauge wasn't sensitive to small variations in pressure," Wallace said hesitantly. "I allowed for a three percent error in either direction. But giving ourselves the benefit of the doubt I think we could just about make it."
"A pretty large doubt," said Herdman dryly. "More wish-fulfillment than mathematics."
"But it's a chance!" Brett said angrily. "We've got to try it! . . ."
Herdman ignored him and turned to face the doctor. He didn't want to commit himself until Forsythe had had his say.
When Forsythe began to speak it was quietly and seriously, as if he was discussing a difficult case before arriving at the diagnosis. He began by laying a considerable amount of verbal groundwork to the effect that the food intake of the human body was greatly reduced in weightless conditions and that the amount which was customarily taken, although a greatly reduced quantity, was in excess of what the body actually needed during free fall. It was customary during a long trip to exercise, using spring-loaded equipment of various types, to avoid atrophication of muscles, and if a person was to remain at rest instead of burning up calories in this fashion the food intake could be further reduced....
". . . Taking all these factors into consideration," the doctor went on carefully, "and providing we adhere to a very strict regimen, we should be alive when we reach Mars."
Wallace's face lit up and Brett growled. "I told you! ..."
Herdman said quietly. "I'd like to check your math, Doctor."
Forsythe, he saw, had listed the total food available--- including some of the medication with food value, glucose and so on, which they were carrying in small quantities--- and divided it five ways into the best balanced diet possible under the circumstances. He then calculated the total calories available to each man and stretched them to cover four months. The amount per person was not large.
"What about our physical condition when we arrive?" Herdman asked suddenly.
"It wouldn't be good," said Forsythe seriously. "Extremely emaciated, severely weakened, impaired sensibilities. Very close to death, in fact."
"Would any of us be capable of landing the ship?" said Herdman gently.
Forsythe hesitated, then said, "No."
Beside him Brett cursed and Wallace looked as though he wanted to. After a few minutes silence they began to talk urgently among themselves, ignoring Herdman as if he was some sort of natural law that they had to find a method of bending to their will---a cold, mechanical presence which didn't really care. Naturally, stupidly, they still refused to give up hope. Again Herdman tried to break it to them gently.
He said, "First off I must remind you that I was not trained for this type of ship, that such training is highly specialized and that the chance you would take letting me try to land on Mars is the greatest of the three. Secondly, during the approach and landing a pilot has to be in tiptop condition, have perfect coordination between eye and muscles and generally be , . ." He broke off, shook his head angrily and went on, "If you want me to try to land you on Mars, I will have to have full rations or very nearly full rations, while the rest of you starve to death!"
While he talked they had watched him closely and when he stopped they went back to talking among themselves. Herdman kicked himself away from them and toward the cone. He went into the pilot's compartment and closed the trap behind him.
Ramsey was awake and although his eyes looked dull he knew and recognized Herdman, but he did not question the other's presence in the holy of holies.
"As a well-informed passenger, Herdman," Ramsey said suddenly, "what do you think of her?" "Nice," said Herdman.
- The captain raised his brows, winced and lowered them again. "Is that all?"
Herdman said a few more complimentary things about the ship, trying to work the conversation around to their present predicament. But Ramsey was talking as if there were no predicament, as if they were two pilots talking ship. Ramsey might sound coherent, Herdman thought, but he had the feeling that the captain was not quite with him.
"Not having been a passenger-ship captain yourself," the pilot went on pleasantly, "I should realize that you weren't programmed for small talk. Not that Ramsey is designed for passenger work only. My reactor can deliver three-quarters G, more in an emergency, which is enough to land or lift off from Mars or any of the moons of Saturn or Jupiter without a chemical assist. And you've seen the lock arrangement---if I set down on any satellite with ice crystals frozen out of its atmosphere, and there are lots of those, I don't have to worry about refueling. Just shovel the stuff into the reactor tank. I think Ramsey, and ships like her, can open up the outer planets. . . ." His voice was still low, but proud, excited. ... "I think we'll be good for five or six years!"
"Nearer ten, I'd say," said Herdman. What difference did it make, he thought, whether he told the captain now or a few moments or hours from now? Ramsey was only half conscious, he was having a nice dream and it would be a pity to spoil it.
At the words a faint tinge of red seeped into the pale, sweating face as the pilot colored with pleasure at the compliment. A little hesitantly, Ramsey said, "What made you decide to come to Mars, Herdman? The government's not footing the bill, I happen to know. So it must have taken everything you had, and they aren't stingy when they pay us off. That is, if you want to talk about it?"
Herdman was silent for a moment, considering that. He had had high hopes of his own, which was very unusual in an obsolete pilot, and now that there was no hope at all he found suddenly that he did want to talk about it. But not to Brett or Wallace or even the doctor, who was the person among the passengers who was most likely to understand how he felt. Passengers, ordinary people, were too soft, too undisciplined, too human. Only another pilot could listen and understand the things he said and the other things which he did not have to say. It was a matter of common background.
Awkwardly, Herdman began: "When my ship went obsolete I had the choice of taking the usual ground job in the service, or outside the service or doing nothing at all, comfortably, for the rest of my life, on the pension. I tried all three for a while, but I couldn't plug in anywhere. There always seemed to be too many people around. Illogical people, nasty people, even nice, ordinary people. You know how it is.\_\_"
Ramsey would know how it was about the people, being conditioned for the solitude of space from a very early age....
Take one twelve-year-old boy, the winner of a series of ruthlessly competitive examinations that have weeded him out from thousands of other twelve-year-olds who likewise had. stars in their eyes. Put him in with a couple of hundred other winners in one of the space academies---all the major countries had one, these days---and do some more weeding out. At the end of five years the number has been cut in half and he has begun to realize what becoming a space captain will entail and, if he accepts what will have to be done to him---no, wants them to do it to him! he goes on for a few more years of weeding out.
But even at this stage he is still human. Ha can smoke, date girls, have a few beers---if he wants to.
He has come to realize, however, that he is to be an integral part, the very heart and brain, of an extremely beautiful and valuable ship---a ship. A ship which he is being psychologically tailored to fit and which will, if he qualifies, bear his name for as long as they both shall be in service. Naturally, in these circumstances, he does not want to impair his efficiency by continuing to introduce nicotine or alcohol into his system, or fog his thought processes with emotional entanglements.
To some people this would appear to be a harsh, almost monastic existence. But there is great happiness to be derived from doing what one wants to do, especially if it is a struggle all the way and one wants to do it very much. By this time he is one of twenty or thirty very special individuals. Already a ship is being built for him and all over the world people are beginning to know his name.
Because the space captains are the world's heroes. Regardless of nationality everyone knows their names, faces, backgrounds, habits. And almost as well known and respected are the obsolete captains and those who are in the final stages of training.
The final stages. ...
Control and guidance systems are such that a ship can be tossed accurately away from Earth on a course which will place it close enough to any chosen destination for the ship's own computer to take over. The ship's computer or captain is a small, delicate but highly dependable fabrication of flesh and blood, which has proved to be much more efficient as well as hundreds of times lighter in weight than any purely electronic counterpart. It has been trained to think and act with lightning speed, to think of controls and mechanisms of the ship as if they were part of itself and generally to be a smoothly functioning part of a machine designed for travel in space. Which also means that it has been conditioned to withstand loneliness and, what is even worse in a thinking, self-aware machine saddled with that indefinable something called a soul, to live and get along with for extended periods the not very pleasant person which is itself. So close is the relationship which has been fostered between captain and ship, both physically and emotionally, that it has been likened to marriage....
But when a ship became obsolete, when the design was replaced by something newer, safer, more sophisticated, so did its captain.
Despite the fantastic generosity of their severance pay and pension, none of the retired captains were happy men. Some of them worked very hard or played very hard or drank very hard, and others did things which, had they not been heroes, would have landed them in jail. And some of them---no, one of them---was stupid enough to want to try doing it all over again.....
". . . Anyhow," Herdman went on, "I got wind of this project---strictly experimental and non-government sponsored---one of the development companies was starting on Mars. They had the idea of recommissioning Wilkinson. ..."
George Wilkinson had been a classmate of Herdman's, which meant that their ships were of a similar basic design. To the similarity between ships was added that of the men. They had been friends, they'd shared much the same views on things and, what was perhaps more important in this case, they were physically alike in vision, reach and reaction time. When George had gone obsolete along with Herdman and the others of their class his ship had been on Mars, and there had been no point in bringing an obsolete ship back to Earth. George had died shortly afterward---a malfunction of his breathing equipment while out walking, it was said---and the Wilkinson had stood for five years before someone began getting ideas about it.
". . . The design was, and is, good," Herdman continued, excited despite himself, "although the quarter-G reactor needed a chemical assist during landing, and that could be downright unsafe at times. But these new reactors will let it take off from Mars or any other low-G body without an assist. It means that the chemical section of the control panel would be dead, that I'd have to forget it was even there. Probably it would feel as if I was flying the ship with one arm tied behind my back, but there are a couple of psychologists up there who think they can rebuild me to handle it. And they're going to rename the ship Herdman 11. . .."
"I don't like it!" said Ramsey violently. "Like taking over control of a dead body...."
"George was a friend of mine," Herdman broke in angrily. "He wouldn't mind my trying to take over his ship!" Ramsey turned his eyes away. In a low voice he said, "I'd hate to think of anyone doing it to my ship. . . ."
The sound of loud but respectful knocking on the control-room trap made the captain break off. Herdman opened the trap quickly, saw Forsythe outside and motioned him back. When he was outside himself and with the trap closed behind him he said, "Talk quietly, Doctor. I haven't told him anything yet."
The doctor nodded but did not speak until they had drifted close to the other passengers, then he said, "It's about the food problem. I think we might be able to manage something after all."
"Go on, Doctor," said Herdman, trying hard to hide his lack of enthusiasm.
Forsythe glared at him, then went on, "As you are the most important person in this operation I've calculated as closely as possible the number of calories per day needed to maintain you at optimum physical efficiency and this number has been omitted from my calculations regarding the other people on the ship. But here I must warn you that the amount of food which I as a doctor know will keep you fit is not enough to keep you from feeling hungry---in effect, you will be just well enough fed to realize that you are dying of starvation.
"Where the others are concerned," he continued, "my first idea was to divide the remaining food four ways and stretch it as far as possible. But that was not a very good idea, for the reason that two of us at least would have died. So in order to give everyone an equal chance of survival the food will have to be distributed unequally. We have discussed this among ourselves and have reached complete agreement...."
Herdman did not say anything, but his face must have said a lot.
". . . We're assuming that Captain Ramsey will go along with the majority," Forsythe went on quickly. "The exact timing and amounts will have to be worked out later, but basically the idea is for rations to be allocated in inverse proportion to the quantity of adipose carried. Take Brett, for instance. His fatty reserve will enable him to go without food for a considerable time...."
At that point Brett scowled and muttered to himself in a way which seemed to indicate that his complete agreement had been gained with some difficulty.
". . . And the same applies to myself to a lesser degree. . . ." Self-consciously Forsythe patted the barely perceptible bulge at his waist, and went on, "Captain Ramsey and Dr. Wallace will thus have the largest allocation next to yourself."
He stopped, looked all round and ended seriously, "Dividing in this way will mean that all of us should be alive---just barely alive, I must add---when the time comes to land on Mars. I suppose we're fortunate in one thing, at least. Mars and Earth are favorably placed at present, and this will be a fast trip as space voyages go."
Fast, thought Herdman grimly, as in hunger.
There was a long silence during which they all stared at Herdman. When he did speak finally he was not thinking about the food problem or even the shortage of fuel, he was seeing himself in the cone of a ship which was not his and with a well-nigh impossible landing to make, and he felt no hope at all. He could not look Forsythe in the eye as he said, "I don't know."
"Naturally it will be a very close thing," the doctor went on, reassuringly, but with a touch of asperity in his voice. "In order to make the food stretch absolute rest will be necessary on our part. No odd jobs about the ship, no weightless exercises or games, no movements of any kind which would use up calories needlessly. I would even advise against talking. I've no doubt we will suffer intense boredom as well as hunger, but we would all prefer to be bored and hungry for four months than to die in a few weeks.
"It also means, Mr. Herdman," Forsythe continued, "that you will have to perform all the duties about the ship normally delegated as make-work for the passengers, in addition to familiarizing yourself with Ramsey's controls. ..."
The doctor's voice trailed off. He hesitated, then ended firmly, "It's the only chance we have. We've got to try it."
While Forsythe had been talking Herdman's mind had gone back to his investigation of the cargo hold and fuel tank. Then and until the doctor had told him the full extent of Ramsey's injuries he himself had had hopes of them being able to make the food and fuel stretch until they reached Mars. But he didn't seem to be able to make these people understand that it wasn't the food or fuel that worried him, that it was the sheer impossibility of one ex-captain being able to fly another and later captain's ship, Admittedly they would know about the conditioning which pilots had to undergo, or they would think that they knew, and now Herdman was tempted to keep them in ignorance.
One reason for this was that he did not want to kill all hope in them even when their cause was hopeless. Another was the fact that he wanted to live as much as they did, and they were offering, insisting, that he keep himself fed while they starved. Both reasons prompted his reply, but one, he felt ashamed to admit, was stronger than the other.
"All right," he said. "We'll try it."
They were all grinning and their eyes shone. Even Brett was looking as if Herdman had just conferred some priceless boon on him. All of which made Herdman feel angry and even more ashamed of himself, although only the anger showed in his voice when he went on.
"Now that you've decided what you want to do," he said harshly, "we will get down to the fine details. For instance, the timing of meals and their distribution. In the present circumstances is it psychologically desirable for us to eat together? And if talking is to be forbidden, should we stay together at all? In weightless conditions you can rest just as comfortably in one part of the ship as another. Also, if rest is vitally necessary, should unnecessary motion be rendered physically impossible rather than merely forbidding it?"
The hours began to slip past while they hammered out these and other points. Sometimes they spoke quietly, but more often not. The smiles left their faces very early in the discussion although the light of hope never quite left their eyes. Brett, in between occasional flare-ups of temper, became sullen. Brett realized that ordinarily his fatness would have increased his chance of survival to a considerable extent, but the chances of the others were being increased at the expense of his own because his fair share of the food was being withheld from him. Logically he knew that the measure equalized all their chances, but emotionally he could not see it. At one point he demanded angrily whether it wouldn't be simpler if they just cut slices off his more well-rounded regions and served them up.
There was a short, pregnant silence then which everyone rushed to fill as they tried to hide the fact that for an instant they had all been thinking about the same thing.
Cannibalism. ...
Wallace said very little. After supplying the initial idea and enthusiasm which had put the plan in motion he had faded into the background so far as talk was concerned. He watched each speaker's face anxiously and trustingly, looking frightened when a serious obstacle was raised and relieved out of all proportion when it was knocked down.
Forsythe did not display emotion beyond occasionally raising his voice, and then it was usually only to make himself heard above Brett. But there was a certain vacancy about his expression, Herdman thought. As a doctor, Forsythe would, in theory, know all about the physiological processes of starvation, but he must be wondering how those processes actually felt.
And all the time at the back of Herdman's mind were the two details which most closely concerned himself. One was the landing, which could be put off for a while. But the other, telling the captain what was being planned, he could not put off for more than a few hours.
How was he going to tell Ramsey?
When he finally told the captain, Herdman did not know whether Ramsey took it well or not, there being no previous incident like this on record to serve as a yardstick The news seemed to affect him with all the pain and shock of a sudden obsolescence, with the added agony that it wasn't obsolescence but. simple injury that was responsible and that another man was going to take over and crash his ship---unlike the passengers, Ramsey had no doubt at all that both were synonymous. So Herdman was prepared when the captain lashed out at him with his good hand, and evaded the first blow,
But reaction sent Ramsey's body twisting backward in his loosened straps and his head hit the metal edge of the acceleration couch. He groaned and swung again, but this time the punch lacked power and direction. Herdman closed in, hoping to restrain the captain while he talked some sense into him, but Ramsey went On fighting. Finally Herdman called the doctor.
While they were both holding onto the weakly struggling captain for the few minutes it took Forsythe's shot to take effect, Herdman tried to explain the reasons behind Ramsey's violent reaction to the sorely puzzled doctor, and the patient was peacefully asleep before he had finished.
At the conclusion Forsythe said thoughtfully, "Now I realize why you insisted that he would be more comfortable in the nose-cone. I hadn't fully realized how, er, attached a captain is to his ship. And I can see now that the landing may be trickier than we thought\_\_\_\_"
"I tried to tell you .. ." began Herdman. "That you did," said Forsythe wryly. "So much so that I thought you had a suicide complex. But you also said that you would try it. . . ." He broke off, hesitated, then in a more authoritative voice went on, "To get back to the captain, I realize that it was kindness which prompted your placing him here. Now, however, I must insist on him being moved to the lounge where I can keep an eye on him. During our tussle with him you must have noticed the weak movements and lack of coordination in the left arm and leg. The indications are that there is a parietal fracture after all, and some cerebral bleeding, which has caused a mild stroke. With rest, especially with the complete rest possible in free fall, the condition may not worsen and may even clear itself, but he will have to be moved from here."
The doctor paused again as if expecting an argument, then continued, "I know that this will cause him mental distress, but I hope to relieve it as much as possible by keeping him under sedation.
"I will move him out now," he ended briskly. "You stay here, Mr. Herdman, and get used to the idea of being a spaceship captain again.. . ."
For nearly an hour Herdman lay strapped loosely to the control couch trying hard to fit himself to the ship. This was the job he had trained fifteen years to do and the environment fitted him like a glove---like a left-hand glove three sizes too large fits the right hand, he thought sickly. When he tried a dry run on the controls his hands were slippery with sweat and his stomach was knotted in panic, he fumbled and he was terribly, lethally slow.
He remembered how the old Herdman had felt, and that made him feel even worse. He had to close his eyes and do nothing for several minutes until he could control his shaking hands again. Suddenly he realized that he didn't want to fly this ship, that his conditioning had been too thorough and narrowly specialized for him to adapt himself to it.
One man and one ship, he thought helplessly, 'til death do us part....
When he left the cone Herdman had accomplished nothing. He wanted to tell the passengers that their voluntary starvation was an utter waste of time. But they were all, with the exception of the doctor, strapped to their bunks. Ramsey was strapped firmly into Forsythe's bunk and the doctor was tethered loosely to it where he could keep the injured man under observation. All eyes went to Herdman as soon as he appeared, but nobody spoke--- they were taking the rest business very seriously, it seemed. Herdman went past them without speaking, pretending that he had something to do in the cargo hold.
At the end of the third week they were still taking it seriously. Herdman had had to adjust the air and water purifying equipment several times because they were using less oxygen than expected and Forsythe had advised them to drink plenty to blunt the pangs of hunger. Herdman suspected that the doctor was conning them in this, but since it was in a good cause he didn't question it. And anyway, they had plenty of water for drinking even if there wasn't enough for landing.
Wallace and Ramsey had grown very thin and Brett appeared fatter and flabbier. But appearances were deceptive---it was simply that his skin was getting a little too large for him and, in the weightless condition, what adipose he had left tended to wobble more. Forsythe had grown positively bony and his practically nonexistent paunch had long since disappeared.
Herdman felt obliged to mention it one day while he was helping the doctor give Ramsey a bath in the fuel tank.
"You should allow yourself a little more food, Doctor," he said. "You seem to be working on a one-inch bulge for a very long time."
"Always was a small eater," said Forsythe shortly.
In addition to the" tanks and breathing masks from their suits they had headsets directly connected by cable. They could speak without being overheard, but even then the sentences were kept short because to speak at all was against the law.
"All the same," Herdman said as another thought occurred to him, "you should bring yourself level with Wallace and the captain here. Unless you're already passing your ration on to Ramsey, because he's---"
"If I had any to spare," the doctor interrupted sharply, "I'd pass them to you. I'm a practical man and you are in a position just now to save more lives than I could."
Which made Herdman remember his continued lack of success in the control room. He changed the subject hastily.
"I'm not an expert on this," he said carefully, "but it seems to me that the physical effort of talking---moving the tongue and so on---is not noticeably greater than the effort of breathing. Do we have to impose this absolute silence?"
"No," said the doctor, then added quickly, "but I think that if we'd talked all the time we'd have done nothing but bellyache all day long, which would have been very detrimental to morale. And anyway, silence is said to be good for the soul. It's a form of mental discipline, and discipline of the mind is something we are going to need badly in the weeks to come.. .."
Herdman could not see the doctor although they were both holding Ramsey and so were only a few feet from each other. The half-liquid, half-gaseous contents of the tank, stirred into slow turbulence by their entry and illuminated by its interior lighting, made a sparkling, opaque curtain between them. Only when Forsythe moved between one of the lights and himself did he see a vague, distorted picture that was like a scene observed through cut glass.
But the water had mass if no weight. As it curled and crawled along and around the tank it tugged and pushed at their bodies like a gentle, irresistible giant. It was an exhilarating experience, Herdman thought, or would have been if the circumstances had been different. He wondered why nobody had thought of using the reactor fuel tank as a swimming pool before now.
". . . In a few days' time," Forsythe resumed suddenly, "I'm going to suggest that a little talking will do us no harm. Say for an hour before and after, uh, lunch. By then I think the novelty of being able to talk again will keep everyone from dwelling too much on the menu--- a case of trying to satisfy our hunger with a gabfest. . . ."
From the fourth until halfway through the eight week Forsythe's idea worked as he had hoped it would, although the first few days the discussions were practically welded onto the subject of food. But the passengers were all above the average in intelligence and they realized quickly when a discussion was totally unproductive, so they moved onto other subjects and gradually the two-hour talking period became almost a game with them.
There were few rules to the game other than the main one which stated that the two-hour period must not be exceeded. For twenty-two out of the twenty-four hours when they were not trying to sleep, the passengers lay silently framing their arguments and polishing their delivery in readiness for those two glorious hours when they would be allowed to talk. And when the verbal flood-gates were opened the result was very often bedlam. But there were occasions when the debates soared and scintillated and other times when, had Herdman not known that they were all strapped into their bunks, he would have been sure that they were tearing each other to pieces.
Although he was no longer under sedation, Captain Ramsey spoke very little. Herdman himself was not invited to join the discussions, but he could not help but hear everything from his position in the cone.
On the second day of the eighth week Ramsey hung midway between a sapphire called Earth and a dull-looking ruby that was Mars, and half of the voyage was over. The rest, the passengers told themselves repeatedly, was all downhill. But soon afterward the talking among each other diminished sharply, became listless and sporadic. When Herdman mentioned it to the doctor he was told that talking constantly for two hours had become too much of an effort for him.
Herdman was ragingly hungry all the time, and Forsythe kept telling him that he was getting just enough food to make him aware all the time that he hadn't nearly enough, while everyone else had reached the stage where their stomachs had begun to shrink so that they felt weak rather than hungry. He said that he felt sorry for Mr. Herdman. But there was no way of telling whether the doctor was sincere or indulging in a little irony because his voice had weakened so much and the skin was so tightly stretched across his face that reading tone or expression were impossible.
Wallace and Brett were terribly weak and emaciated also, and Captain Ramsey had shrunk until the cast around his broken arm and shoulder became useless and had to be cut away. The arm was strapped to his side now, and Ramsey was so thin that Forsythe said he could almost see the damage without benefit of X rays and that the prognosis was very favorable provided the patient received the proper treatment.
Very little effort was needed to move about the ship. The push of a finger was enough to send a body drifting in the direction of the heads or the tank or wherever one wanted to go. But by the tenth week Herdman thought it better to accompany the men when they visited the tank. The daily dunk in the tank was about the only pleasure remaining to them, but they were so weakened physically that there was danger of them not being able to secure their masks properly and drowning.
When he was helping them in and out of the tank lock they rarely spoke to him, with the exception of the doctor, and did not seem to want to look him in the eye. But they always stared at, and seemed to gain reassurance from, the tiny circles tattooed on his neck, chest and back which had been the markers for the space medics' electrodes taped to him during training orbits. And as the days passed more and more often they complained of feeling cold, although the internal temperature of the ship was comfortably high. He increased it several times but still they complained of feeling cold. Finally he wrapped blankets around them and they stopped complaining, even when he lowered the temperature again.
He didn't have to ask Forsythe to know that it had been a psychological thing, that they felt warmer and more secure when wrapped in blankets like children....
And gradually he could see their feelings changing toward him, softening. He was the person, Herdman realized suddenly, who washed them, fed them and wrapped them up warmly for the night. When he was doing these things, or even when he was simply moving through the passenger lounge; their eyes followed him trustingly---he even caught Ramsey doing it.
But their trust was misplaced, Herdman told himself angrily, because he was making very little progress in adapting himself to Ramsey's ship. And he was terribly, agonizingly hungry. When the job of distributing rations fell to him because the doctor had become too weak--- in spirit as well as flesh, Forsythe insisted---the effort to keep from increasing his allowance took everything he had.
But the passengers did not always behave like frightened, trusting children. There was the occasion when Wallace unstrapped himself from his bunk while Herdman was busy in the cone and made himself violently ill by trying to eat the contents of one of the trays of green goo in the air unit---a highly specialized, nauseous but not poisonous species of plant life which was responsible for recycling their air. On that occasion he reminded them all quietly that they could eat the stuff or breathe but not both, that to get any good from the stuff they would need four stomachs like a cow, and that henceforth he would strap them into their bunks in such a way that only he could let them out.
Then there was the time when he was bringing Brett from the tank, and Brett began whispering urgently to him, suggesting a way of saving weight and helping the food situation at the same time. His idea was that they eat somebody and discard the inedible remains. At present it looked as if they were all going to die of starvation with the exception of Herdman, and this way at least three of them would survive for sure. Brett didn't care much who the somebody was, although he expected that it wouldn't be himself because he had suggested the idea...
Later, when he was dunking Forsythe, Herdman told the doctor about it.
Forsythe's lips drew back in a grimace that looked horrible but was probably meant for a smile. He said weakly, "Surprised it wasn't suggested sooner. To be expected ... in the circumstances. Don't see why you're ... so angry about it."
"I'm angry," said Herdman grimly, "because the damn fool made my mouth water."
"Oh," said Forsythe.
Several minutes later he said, "A person who talks about doing these things ... rarely does them."
His tone seemed lacking in confidence.
At fourteen weeks out, Earth was a tiny blue jewel far astern and Mars hung in the blackness ahead like a big orange ball that had been slightly smudged with handling. The passengers and Ramsey were incredibly emaciated. They had no inclination to speak, they scarcely seemed to breathe and only their eyes moved when Herdman passed them. With just their faces showing above the blankets, faces that were little more than skulls covered with skin and hair, it was becoming difficult to tell them apart. He was no medical man, and in the circumstances he couldn't very well ask the doctor but he very much doubted if they could last another two weeks.
He wondered if he could pare down his own rations enough to help them, but reminded himself how thin his own body had become and how he had grayed-out momentarily a couple of days back when he had moved his head suddenly. Then he wondered if it really made any difference, because he wasn't doing well in the control room anyway.
Then ten days out from Mars, when Herdman was running through his fourth simulated landing in a row and trying desperately to coax a fraction more speed and accuracy out of hands which felt like two left feet, he became suddenly aware of Forsythe hanging over him.
"How the blazes did you get out?" he snapped, then at once softened his tone. "Sorry, Doctor. I'm not angry ---at you, that is. And now you're here maybe you can help me. Basically it is a problem of psychology . . ."
"You forgot to strap me in," Forsythe broke in weakly, but with an undercurrent of pleasure or excitement in his voice. His lips made a death's head smile and he added, "Or maybe, considering what you've just said, you used a Freudian slip-knot...,"
Cracks at a time like this ... thought Herdman, ashamed at the comparison with his own manner and feelings.
". . . But you're getting on top of it now, Mr. Herdman," he continued, slowly but enthusiastically. "Piloting Ramsey, I mean. I was watching you. I've never seen anyone's hands move so fast!"
"Slow, Doctor," Herdman said soberly, "for a pilot."
Sighing, Herdman tried to explain what fast meant to a spaceship captain and what an approach and landing entailed. Even captains in charge of their own vessels had to practice constantly to keep their hands in, he explained, and used taped data fed randomly into a panel which was otherwise dead. The dry runs were always difficult, always unexpected in the problems they threw out. And very often the problems had to be solved faster than thought. They had to be solved automatically, instinctively, without thought.
In the old days a bird could be thrown into space and, with all systems Go and an incredible amount of luck all around, it could be soft-landed with a small instrument package on another planetary body. Five hundred tons of rocket and associated electronic gadgetry to land fifty pounds of instruments. But when manned spaceflight arrived, economies of weight, fuel and mechanisms became necessary. The people on the ground were no longer responsible for everything, they merely hoisted the bird aloft and pointed it where it was supposed to go. They didn't load it down with telemetering devices---if anything went wrong there was a pilot to tell them all about it. Neither did they use ninety percent of the available payload fitting automatic, and often fallible, landing equipment. There was a pilot to take care of that, too. A pilot was a hundred times lighter and more dependable than any servomechanism ever built, and his rigorous training and deep-level conditioning enabled him to operate at very nearly the same speed.
As one of his instructors had told him during training, a man was not simply fitted for space, he was physically and psychologically machined to fit both space and his spaceship. Exactly. The way a nut fitted a bolt. . . .
". . . And this nut," said Herdman grimly, tapping himself on the chest and nodding at the panels surrounding him, "does not fit this bolt."
"This nut . . ." began Forsythe, and coughed. He went on, "Your instructor was not without a sense of humor. But can't you force the thread a little? After all, man is the most adaptable machine there is, and you've done very well so far. In another ten days ..."
Again Herdman tried to explain that Ramsey wasn't his ship---it wasn't even his old ship's sister, there was no family resemblance at all. The instruments were in the wrong places, at awkward angles and distances from his hands. She was different in a hundred more subtle ways. Even her paintwork was wrong---a cold, unfriendly combination of white and cool green. Herdman's control room had been warm gray with the main panels done in a deep, rich brown---those colors were keyed to his personality, the psychologists had told him, and were very important to his emotional stability.
The doctor was following every word that he said, and probably thought that he understood. But Herdman knew that he didn't.
"I'll do another run," said Herdman suddenly. "You watch. You'll see that I move fast, but with a certain jerkiness---I'm having to stop and think...."
The forward vision screen remained blank but all the other instruments---approach radar, hull temperature, atmosphere density and turbulence and a dozen others---- were sending him a picture plainer than any screen could show of a planetary surface swooping up to meet him. His controls were not many for a reactor landing---jet deflectors and thrust control, mainly, but it was a matter of anticipation and feel more than anything else. There wasn't time to look at the instruments and then think what to do. So his hands moved fast, faster. Sweat popped on his forehead and hung stubbornly in the air before his eyes. He groaned and tried to move faster still. and suddenly all the instruments were at zero and he joined his shaking hands across his chest in a gesture that was almost one of prayer.
"Well," said Forsythe admiringly, "we're down. That seemed fast, and smooth enough, too. I only saw you fumble once."
Herdman grunted and a few seconds later began questioning the doctor about Ramsey's condition. He didn't have the heart to tell Forsythe that he had still been correcting for wind deflection at twenty thousand feet when the instruments said they were down. They would have been down, all right, in a thirty-foot-deep grave they had just dug for themselves.
Five days out Herdman began preparation for lightening ship, tracking down each item of cargo or movable equipment and carefully estimating its weight. All of the cargo could be jettisoned, also all the personal possessions of everyone aboard, much of the water and air regeneration gear---including all the precious greenery when every last drop of moisture had been squeezed from it and transferred to the fuel tank. That would be one of the last things done, of course, because he would first have to replenish the ship's emergency air tanks and those of the passengers' suits. When he had totaled all the disposable weight he went over Brett's figures again.
There still wasn't enough fuel, but what they had fell so little short of the minimum requirement that he had to try for a landing.
The thought came that he might jettison a passenger ---he had the figures of their respective weights as well as those of their baggage and the cargo. But he thrust the thought firmly out of his mind and began busying himself with lightening ship.
All the small stuff he tossed out of the airlock in different directions. He did this because a ship in distress was supposed to give all possible information regarding the cause of its trouble in the hope that a similar accident could be guarded against. When ground radar on Mars picked him up that debris would have traveled so far that Ramsey would show as a point of light surrounded by a large, fuzzy trace---a clear indication that he was short of fuel. Because they would already have been trying unsuccessfully to raise him, they would know that Ramsey had no radio. It wasn't much data he was giving them, but it was the best he could do. The larger stuff---heavy machinery, the pressure containers which the manifest said contained paint, the spare spacesuits---he let drift outside the ship. They would fall ahead immediately when he applied thrust and there was no point wasting energy in pushing them away.
He was supposed to be saving his strength for the landing.
With two days to go the food ran out. All of the food, including his own. Herdman's allowance had been calculated to last him until the final day of the voyage--- he was supposed to take a meal a few hours before landing, in fact. But Ramsey and Wallace had seemed to be dying a couple of days earlier and he had increased their ration. This had been a very stupid thing to do; but it had been just after a particularly unsuccessful session at the controls and Herdman had felt that it didn't matter much whether he was physically fit during the landing or not when he was going to kill them all anyway.
And now all the passengers looked as if they were dying. Their white, skeletal faces were turned outward from their bunks and their eyes were open, but they didn't seem to see him when he passed. Some of them didn't move even when he disturbed their blankets to feel for the fast, incredibly weak pulse at their wrists.
It was later on the same day that he discovered an error in their flight path. Considering the distance they had come the error was trifling, but it required five seconds' thrust at one-quarter G to correct it and they were already on a negative safety margin of fuel....
One effect of the course correction was that the passengers, feeling the ship under power again, began to show some interest in things again. Herdman used the period of increased awareness to explain the landing drill as it would affect them. How at minus eighteen hours he would perform the prelanding checks and put everyone into spacesuits with the helmets left open. This was so that they would be on ship's air for as long as possible. At minus three hours he would seal them up, blow all the moisture which might be locked in the air purifiers and plumbing into the fuel tank, and dump everything that was movable out the airlock. The fuel and food situation being what it was there would be no stooging around in orbit. They would drop straight in.
All the time he talked loudly and reassuringly, as if it were a simple matter of time before they were down on Mars being cared for.
He wanted them to die as happy as possible. Herdman thought he owed them that much at least.
After dragging its feet for so long, time began suddenly to race by. He practiced dry runs every chance he got, and his chronometer told him that he was doing steadily worse instead of better. Forsythe had said that a human being was the most adaptable machine there was, but Herdman's ability to adapt seemed to have been trained, conditioned, out of him. He had been fitted to operate in a spaceship, Ms own spaceship. The things which the psychologists had done to him were basic and beyond the influence of logical thought processes. He was trying to force himself to fit a ship which was not his own, and he felt that the ship hated what he was doing as much as he hated doing it. But he had to make friends with this cold, hostile, awkward ship. For a few hours he had to make her do what he wanted.
The prelanding checks took longer than he had expected. Herdman felt very weak and he seemed to be fumbling a lot, and it was minus fourteen hours when he started the long, heart-breaking job of putting the passengers into their suits. The first thing he discovered was that he would have to leave off their gauntlets temporarily as well as the helmets---he had forgotten, because the process had been so gradual, how long their fingernails had become. The gauntlets wouldn't fit until he trimmed their nails.
All at once Herdman felt revolted by these brittle, dry, horribly emaciated bodies and the empty, staring eyes-most of them seemed too far gone to know either hope or fear or even hunger. Yet he had had to do much worse things than cut their nails for them. His revulsion changed suddenly to anger and then guilt. It wasn't fair that they should be unknowing and uncaring of what was going to happen to them. He should have told them all long ago, and insisted that they listen and understand. Now his load of guilt was too heavy. He had to unload it on somebody if only to ask forgiveness.
He began to shake Forsythe's suit, hearing and feeling the doctor's body moving loosely inside it, talking softly and earnestly into the open face plate. He wasn't sure what he said exactly except that his guilt and his helplessness and his dilemma with the controls figured largely in the passionate monologue, and that after a long time he stopped because the doctor was trying to say something.
Putting his ear close to Forsythe's lips he said gently, "What was that, Doctor?"
"Maybe you got . . . wrong end ... of the stick." Forsythe whispered in a feeble, unutterably weary voice. The rest of what he said was slurred and unintelligible.
"What did you say?"
The doctor made a supreme effort to control his breath and tongue. "Got to adapt," he whispered carefully. "But adapt... adaptability... works both ways...."
He said nothing coherent after that, but he had said enough. As Herdman kicked himself toward the control room he asked himself viciously if he had been conditioned to have a one-track mind or was he just naturally stupid....
The ship's tool kit had not yet been jettisoned and Herdman attacked the control panels, unbolting or cutting away everything that would move and that was in the wrong place. Some of the gear would not be necessary for a reactor landing and could be moved without regard for connecting wiring. But other pieces he had to move, sometimes only a few inches, with the associated plumbing remaining intact. Sometimes these necessary items did not possess the right type of lugs or brackets to fit their new positions, and Herdman wired them or stuck them in place with sealing compound. The compound might not be strong enough to hold under thrust, but it would do until he could think of something better---if he had time to think of something better.
Less than five hours remained now before landing. There was still a lot of equipment that had to be shifted around in the cone, and he would have to think of a way to mix paint in weightless conditions, fasten everything down properly, do another instrument check and seal the passengers. Every second was precious....
Suddenly Captain Ramsey was with him in the cone, snarling, eyes glaring, no doubt attracted by the noise.
One arm was inside the body of his spacesuit but he kicked out toward Herdman, clawing at his face with the other hand. Herdman tried to fend him off but two of the inch-long talons at the ends of his fingers raked across his face from eye to jaw.
"Damn you!" Ramsey screeched thinly. "My ship! My control room! . . ."
Fury was giving Ramsey the strength to fight as well as speak. In vain Herdman tried to hold that clawed hand away from his face while he explained to the captain what he was trying to do. But Ramsey wasn't listening, the minutes were slipping by and Herdman was in deadly danger of being blinded. Balling his fist he took careful aim and drove it into the open face plate.
The opening was the wrong shape to allow him to hit Ramsey on the chin---all he could do was strike him in the mouth and nose and bounce the captain's head off the inside of his helmet. But he had to hit him five times altogether---carefully, almost timidly, at first because he didn't want to compound the other's head injury, but with gradually increasing force each time. When Ramsey was finally unconscious, Herdman was almost sobbing, and not because of the pain from his bleeding face and knuckles.
He returned to work, frantically trying to make up those lost minutes. Where cabinets and panels could be bolted into their new positions he used bolts, otherwise he used wire or sealing compound. Thrust during deceleration would rise little above three-quarters G and there would be vibration only when they entered atmosphere, but the sealing compound still worried him. It was an adhesive, fast-setting, strong, and should do the job. While he worked he went over in his mind the weights of the panels concerned in relation to their areas of adhesion. It was going to be very risky, he knew; if the control room fell in on him when he was trying to land, the' equipment wouldn't kill him but the resulting crash would. He had to think of a way to cut down the risk, if only by a fraction.
The shade of gray that he mixed and sprayed onto the bulkheads was dirty rather than warm and the rich brown on panels and trim was also on the muddy side. But the place was beginning to look very like the control room of the old Herdman, and it felt right. Logically he knew that this wasn't the Herdman, but it was emotion rather than logic that had made him Captain Herdman of Herdman and it was emotion that was making Herdman out of Ramsey.
The nut couldn't adapt, he thought a little wildly, hut it had the power to adapt the bolt!
He was forced to stop half an hour before they were due to begin deceleration in order to cut fingernails and seal the passengers. It was then that he got the idea for increasing the effectiveness of the sealing compound.
The stuff was an adhesive, which meant that it worked in part by excluding air from the interfaces of the objects which it joined, and air pressure acted everywhere except on the adhering surfaces. By increasing air pressure, he reasoned, he would help to hold them together. But when he pumped all the available air into the cone and cracked the valve on the reserve tanks the pressure gauge wouldn't register the rise. It wasn't built to show increases of such magnitude. Judging roughly by its effect on his suit, however, Herdman put the pressure at four times the normal.
At that pressure, spit would make a good adhesive, he thought Twenty minutes later everything was holding, Herdman was putting the finishing touches to some indicators he had painted on a bulkhead---indicators that would not have to be in detail because they were on the fringe of his vision, but that would make him feel more at home ---and Mars-filled the sky ahead. He had already picked the spot where they were going to land, the vacuum outside was beginning to soften with their entry into the outer fringes of the atmosphere and Herdman was feeling quietly and intensely confident.
Like Gaul, their problem had been divided into three parts. They had gotten around the shortage of food and a proper pilot, and the problem of the fuel had just disappeared. Because Herdman had realized suddenly that he had been basing his weight calculations on wrong information, that one of his constants had been a variable. He had forgotten that while the passengers had been starving they had lost enough weight between them to swing the balance.
Herdman knew now that they were going to make it. . . .
Sand and steam were still rising in clouds from Ramsey's stern when Herdman blew the cone's emergency hatch and raised his suit antenna clear of the shield effect on the ship's hull. As expected, he found that someone at the settlement was calling them on the suit frequency. Herdman explained the position and was told that sand-cats and a pressurized ambulance would be at the ship within twenty minutes.
Herdman returned slowly to the acceleration couch and lay listening to the sound of four sets of breathing coming over the passengers' suit radios, and felt good.
THE great flying wing, its controls sluggish in the high, rarefied air, came slowly out of the dive and pulled its nose up in a forty-five degree climb. Booster units along the trailing edges spewed flame and smoke, adding to a velocity already twice that of sound, and it was shrewdly making use of the rotational spin of the Earth itself. In the instant before its climbing speed began to slacken, fire and fury erupted from the silver torpedo clinging to the wing's broad, triangular back, and the rocket shot free.
Trailing a dazzling white column of vapor---already showing the kinks knicked into it by stratospheric winds, it climbed into the black near-vacuum that was the outer atmosphere, and beyond. Still accelerating, but at a rate which would not quite kill its occupant, its flight path curved smoothly until it paralleled the planetary surface below, and continued until the precalculated velocity was attained. Then the motors shut down.
The first orbital rocket circled Earth, telemetering a constant stream of data to ground control. Everything from cosmic, gamma and solar radiation to the respiration, perspiration and---sometimes---the desperation of the vehicle's occupant. Everything worked perfectly. After a short---or very long, depending on the viewpoint---time, an inconspicuous mechanism connected to the air supply plumbing functioned briefly.
The world nearly ended at that moment.
Protected by its invisibility screen and very little else, the Execution Ship slowly paced the orbiting rocket. It was an incredibly crude and antiquated mechanism, the captain thought; he was surprised that it had been made to work at all. But what surprised him even more was that the equally crude and grossly formed creature strapped in its nose section was capable of building such a device. A biped, hairy, and with five stumpy appendages growing from each of its upper limbs ... the captain thought of the twelve strong, sensitive, and highly flexible manipulatory organs possessed by the Srilla, and his yellow-gray hide puckered in distaste.
In a control cupola near him, the ship's last remaining weapons officer interrupted his thoughts with urgent, whistling speech.
"We've enough energy left to peel them. Why are we wasting time?"
The weapons officer was in pain. Hard radiation had caused tissue breakdown in his four speaking orifices, making it difficult for him to modulate properly. He had to shrug and wrinkle his pelt so as to clarify by signs what some of the slurred phrases meant, which also added considerably to his pain. Obviously the weapons officer's approaching death was making him angry, and very impatient.
The captain was about to reply when the third occupant of the control room saved him the effort.
"Our arrival here was purely by chance," the ship's biologist began evenly, "and the ship was so badly damaged that we lacked both the ability to land and the instruments to make the usual long-range investigation. Yet on little more than a few radiation tests of its atmosphere, we had decided to destroy all life on this world. Then this space vehicle came, allowing close observation of the creature aboard and of an artifact which must be one of the ultimate products of the being's technology." He paused and swung an eye toward the captain. "I think our decision should wait until this new data is properly evaluated. We are, by necessity, merciless. We are also just."
Apparently the coming end had not affected the biologist's personality pattern at all, the captain noted, envy briefly tinging the admiration he felt at the other's composure. And neither of them for an instant thought of just leaving and heading for home. Planets like this were their job, and a subtle blend of hypnotherapy and brain surgery made their job more important to them than things like eating, breathing, or any other actions or evasions likely to prolong life.
With a curt twitch of back muscles he signaled that he agreed with the biologist. He returned his attention to the object in his view-screen.
His ship's scanning beam penetrated the rocket's hull, showing the almost empty fuel tanks, the simple reaction-motor, and the intricate mass of electronic equipment packed solidly into what space remained. The living section was incredibly small and cramped, and the being occupying it was strapped in with only its upper limbs free to move. Pneumatic pads protected various parts of its body against acceleration pressure, and a maze of wires and tubing led from other parts to instruments which telemetered the data received down to the planet below.
The biologist spoke again.
"You will notice that this being is low on the evolutionary scale, with a crude digestive tract, and that no provision for the disposal of body wastes is incorporated in the vehicle's construction. The flight, therefore, will be of fairly short duration. But one thing puzzles me . . ." He indicated what • appeared to be a cylinder and timing device hidden behind the air inlet grill above the creature's head, and fell silent.
More than one thing puzzled the captain. The being's behavior, for instance. Sometimes passive, then for no apparent reason, as it was doing now, flailing its arms about as if in panic. Still, he reasoned, if this was one of the first flights of this race into space, a certain amount of fear would be normal. But what was that dry spongy substance floating about the compartment?
Suddenly, something happened in the being's rocket.
Vapor exploded into the tiny living space. The being's head and arms jerked convulsively, then became still. The captain began, "What . . . ?" but stopped, too sick with shock and disgust to trust himself to speak.
He had no need to be told that the being was dead. Murdered.
The weapons officer spoke first.
"It is obvious what has happened," he said, their present plight making his T told you so' expression seem very childish. "A dominant life-form divided into two or more ideologically opposed groups, each trying for the military advantage of a space platform. One group succeeds in sending up this vehicle as a preliminary, but spies or sympathizers sabotage the attempt by killing the pilot--- which must ultimately cause the destruction of the vehicle. Or possibly it was the work of a being jealous of the fame this ascent would bring the pilot, presupposing this to be the first flight of its kind." His voice rose impatiently. "I repeat, we should exterminate---"
"Please," the biologist broke in. "We must not jump to conclusions." He rolled forward in his cupola, hissing with the effort it cost him, and began setting up a localized attraction field on the control panel before him. "We are not sure that the being was killed deliberately. But there is a way to find out."
So that was it, the captain thought with wry amusement. The biologist was, without doubt, concerned about the fate of these bipeds, but he was primarily a biologist, and biologists, the captain knew, were happy only when they had strange life-forms and processes to dissect and investigate. But let him have his fun. The captain was sure that it would make no difference in the end. Judging by this specimen, that was not a nice race down there.
And it would be in order to take the creature aboard for investigation. A living, intelligent being could not be treated as an experimental animal---that was forbidden by law. But a creature that had died was a different matter. Even if the resuscitation and regrowth techniques of the Srilla brought it back to life, it was still technically a dead specimen.
Looking at the rocket ship pictured on his screen the captain felt suddenly uneasy. It was chemically fueled, and carried a small surplus. His ship's tractor beams could do strange things sometimes, like giving certain metals a high charge of static electricity. Suppose a spark , . . "Wait!" he called urgently. He was too late.
The view-screen flared white. The ship shuddered as it ran through the expanding sphere of vapor and debris. Too bad, the captain thought, no specimen. But the biologist wasn't giving up so easily.
With the scanner they had used watching the orbiting rocket coupled to his tractor beam, the biologist was frantically fishing through the area of the explosion. Twisted and tangled pieces of rocket, large and small, flicked into view on the screen to be discarded as being only metal. Then: something black and shapeless, streaked with red ---the burnt and tattered rag of what once had been a living creature, still held to a length of metal by a wisp of strapping, and there was a single piece of that enigmatic spongy stuff only slightly burned.
The biologist gave a brief "Wheep" of exultation. The image swelled as he drew everything in the area toward them, then it blanked out as the collection passed behind the curve of the ship. The biologist rolled heavily from his cupola and left, without saluting, for the airlock.
Discipline had gone to pieces, the captain thought tiredly, and it was his own fault. Even now he could stiffen them to attention or set them doing anything he wished with just a few sharply spoken words. But he didn't want to make the effort. And there were so few of them left anyway; why not let them take it easy, or amuse themselves like the biologist. Himself, he didn't want to do anything, anything at all. He wished everyone would go away, so he wouldn't have to speak, or listen, or even think....
"This is stupid," the weapons officer burst out, anger making his voice a discordant screech. "While he wastes time satisfying his professional curiosity, we are steadily losing physical efficiency. If this job isn't done at once, we won't be able to do it properly. And you know as well as I do what sort of culture grows from a civilization that has been almost, but not completely, wiped out. A race of killers---"
"Attend!"
The captain was angry, and the pain of speaking made him angrier still. He knew that the weapons officer was right in what he had said, but the captain did not like insubordination---even when nothing much mattered anymore---and suddenly he hated the other for dragging him out of his deep, almost pleasant lethargy back into a pain-wracked state filled with the responsibility of making decisions. He said harshly: "We have been judge and executioner to many planets such as this. Very few have not been found wanting and allowed to survive. This one will be given exactly what it deserves. Now," he softened his tone slightly, "get me a report on the present operating efficiency of the ship."
The weapons officer saluted so carefully that the captain wondered if he was being insulted again, then he turned to the intercom.
Judge and executioner, the captain thought grimly as he sank back into the padding. Many of them had been beautiful worlds, not unlike some of the planets briefly called "home" by the Srilla before they were forced to leave them. All contained intelligent life, usually of the wrong sort, and some of it was of a surprisingly high level. The captain winced at the too recent memory.
In the solar system they had just left---or rather, been blown out of---the natives' technology had been at least the equal of his own. Caught between the fire of an orbiting fortress and a well-placed battle squadron, his ship battered and falling apart, his only chance of survival had been to retreat into the safety of hyperspace. But, in the very instant of his "fading out," one of the enemy's helium torpedos caught him, knocking them off course and lethally irradiating the whole ship.
With the fatalism that had become a part of his race, they accepted what had happened, deciding only to return into normal space for a look at the stars before the end.
But they materialized near an inhabited planet, and found that they still had work to do.
The captain thought of the pitiful condition of his ship and crew, and decided that it was his most difficult job as well as being the last. He looked up as the weapons officer turned to face him.
"Another engineer has .. . has . .." he left the sentence unfinished: the Srilla were an extremely long-lived race, and it was difficult to speak of one dying without showing some emotion. The weapons officer went on, "Otherwise the position is as before, except that the biologist is ready with a preliminary report on the native."
The captain gestured toward the wall speaker, and the biologist's slow, almost pedantic, voice filled the room.
"The specimen has extensive burns," he began, "but its nervous system is reasonably intact. Besides renewing the damaged tissue, this means that we can thought-probe the creature's mind when it is revived. Our judgment will therefore be based on complete and accurate information." He paused, and the captain could imagine the struggle it was for him to keep the mounting excitement and curiosity he felt from showing in his voice. He resumed, "The creature is well-designed physically, but curiously underdeveloped. Taking into consideration the size and composition of this planet I would have expected something larger. Perhaps this is an especially small one because of the necessity of saving weight.
"The fuel," he continued, "which I was able to analyze from its spectrum as it exploded, is a low-powered chemical type, and I'm amazed that the ship reached the altitude which it did. And the being would have died anyway, because there was not enough fuel left in its tanks for the return trip." His voice grew vaguely uneasy. "I don't understand this. There were ways in which the ship could be lightened, mechanisms with overlapping functions and so on, so that a return would be possible. Maybe . . ." He hissed slightly in puzzlement, and ended, "It's been some time since we've had a regrowth. I think you might find it interesting."
With an effort the captain altered his body's center of gravity and rolled onto the floor of the control room. Immediately a wave of pain and weakness sent him sliding against a nearby bulkhead. He hadn't realized he was so far gone. Maybe he shouldn't waste time with the creature, but follow the weapons officer's suggestion of destroying the life on this planet at once. If he delayed, then collapsed before being able to carry out the sentence . . . He compromised by having the weapons officer remain by his panel in the control room while he went to examine the specimen.
It was a pity, the captain thought as he watched the creature in the regrowth tank, that the metabolism of the Srilla was not so simple and straightforward as this. If it had been, then he and his surviving crew would have gone through a similar process and emerged alive and whole, instead of being the radiation rotted near-corpses that they now were. But the Srilla were an old race, and their physical cell-structure was as bewilderingly complex as the tangle of conflicting motivations which drove them into creating such things as the Execution Ships.
The captain looked down at the raw, pink, and still hairless skin forming over the newly grown layers of muscles. Animal! Somehow he knew that this one was going \* to be like the others, a vicious, power-hungry brute.
Why, he groaned despairingly, echoing the half prayer, half curse that rose constantly from every member of his race, did bestiality and intelligence march together? Why did the gift which set a being above the animals succeed only in making him more cruel, sadistic, and predatory?
Think of a race old, wise, and peace-loving, spreading slowly and naturally over the millenia from star to star. Their ways were gentle, and even racial memory held no hint of violence in their past. This was the Srilla. Then imagine them meeting another race---a poisonous, exploding mushroom race, scattering its spore across the galaxy like a corrosive blight, and attacking and destroying every thing in its path. Then shortly afterwards the awful discovery that the Srilla were alone, because every new culture found was, or would certainly develop into, an identical copy of that first accursed race. In short, that almost every being in the galaxy was a potential enemy. At first the enemy had a name, then soon there were too many of them. They were just\_\_the enemy.
Retaliatory action was impossible. The Srilla could not hit back, or even defend themselves, because that would have meant killing, and the philosophy they had held for thousands of years made violence toward any intelligent being unthinkable. That was at first. But the shame of constantly retreating, of fleeing from world to world, from an enemy which they might possibly have beaten began to put cracks in the noble white pillar that was their pacifist philosophy. Some of them were able to fight back.
The Executioners, as they called themselves, were unaffected by the thought of killing---except, the captain amended grimly, when they dreamed at night. Hypnotic conditioning coupled with some very delicate brain surgery removed every trace of the softer emotions as well as the glandular network responsible for them. The treatment, on those able to take it, made it possible to begin a program of extermination that would have horrified even the enemy.
By this time the number of Srilla able to fight was too small to attack the enemy directly---long life in their race was counterbalanced by a very low birthrate---so they were left alone. Over the centuries, it was hoped, the more highly advanced cultures of the enemy would gradually kill each other off. The hope was probably a vain one. Instead, the Srilla searched out planets containing races whose cultural patterns were fixed and---even though their technology was on the bow and arrow level---if those races showed signs of becoming counterparts of the enemy, they were ruthlessly obliterated. The best way to deal with vermin was to make sure that they never reached maturity.
And somewhere, sometime, there would be another race that was good, and kind, and intelligent, and yet be able to stand against the enemy without losing those attributes. ...
"Captain!" the biologist called excitedly, jerking him back to awareness of his surroundings. "The revivification is successful. I will be able to receive thought impressions in a few minutes." Embarrassed then, he brought his tone down to a more sober level and explained that he had been able to analyze the spongy substance retrieved with the specimen, and while it was undoubtedly a food of some sort, he couldn't see the need for it when the creature had proved to be well-fed already.
The captain made a pretense of interest, but he wished suddenly that he had listened to the weapons officer instead of allowing the biologist to talk him into waiting. True, it was his duty to weigh all the available evidence before passing judgment, but he was so very tired. It seemed as though he had traveled for eons, being judge and executioner to a myriad worlds, always hoping to find just one culture that showed the promise of true civilization. He had yearned---secretly---for that discovery since his first captaincy, but the few cultures he had not needed to wipe out were so physically impotent that any hopes he had were long since dead. The galaxy, all of it, was evil.
The captain was tired, and disillusioned. This was, after all, his last job, so nobody would know of his one and only lapse. He turned to call up the weapons officer.
"This is very strange," the biologist said suddenly. He had an induction plate of the thought probe pressed against his brain case and his eyes were closed in concentration. He opened one of them enough to extend a similar plate to his superior. The captain hesitated, then accepted it. A short delay would not matter much.
He wished fervently that he hadn't.
Fear; hatred; cunning. A surly, vicious killer whose mind fairly screamed savage instability, and an all-pervading animal selfishness that was completely without gratitude. Utterly amoral, too, presupposing that it could recognize a code of morals if it saw one, something which the captain doubted very much. In short, a creature without a single saving trait.
How, he asked himself sickly, had these . . . these beasts . . . built a civilization capable of climbing into space? For once his duty would be almost a pleasure.
But the empathy which had grown in the Srilla over the centuries for all forms of intelligent life and which neither surgery nor hypnotic conditioning could completely eradicate, made him pause. Surely they were not all like this. He forced himself to probe deeper.
The brain was not fully restored, and acceleration trauma still blurred everything. But there was remembered pain in the creature's mind, too. Memories of great shining, whirling machines, of crushing, smothering pressure, and of the prick of many needles. Acceleration tolerance tests, the captain guessed. There was anger as well, at what seemed to be its confinement; strict and continual confinement because of some grave offense. It was a life of feeding, testing and detention. A twitch of revulsion sent the probe plate clattering to the floor.
The culture that would use one of its criminals---one of its mentally sick---for the purpose of spaceflight experiments instead of searching for curative therapies, deserved to die. Firmly he pressed the call-up stud for the control room.
"Sir!" the weapons officer said eagerly.'
But the biologist cut in before the captain could speak.
"I agree with your feelings," he said quickly. "But remember that the impressions you received were mostly on the subconscious level. When it is fully restored the thalamic censors will operate, showing up its inhibitions, its moral and ethical values, and allowing us to read the traces left on its brain by the minds of its close associates." The biologist gestured toward the creature, whose skin had now deepened in color and begun to grow hair. "Let me make a full investigation, sir. It won't take very long..."
Angrily the captain waved for silence. He had the feeling that he was about to make a ghastly mistake, but didn't know which of two courses to take to avoid it. The creature's mind had convinced him that its world should be destroyed, and if he didn't act quickly he would be too weak to act effectively if at all. But the ship's biologist kept appealing to his Srillan sense of justice---though the other's motivation there was partly selfish curiosity about a new and unusual life-form. Hurriedly he made a decision.
"Detail all power sources available in the ship," he said briskly, ignoring the biologist. "And your procedure in destroying the planet below."
The ship was woefully short of power, the weapons officer reported, his voice over the intercom sounding even more slurred and discordant. Complete detonation or irradiation of the planet was impractical, but they could "peel" ...
". . . Our tractor beams, reinforced by the hyperdrive generators, will immobilize the whole surface of the planet to a depth of roughly fifty feet for several seconds. The normal rotation of the world under this temporarily immovable "skin" will pulverize and destroy all artifacts and grosser forms of life on it. The effect will be the same as if the planet's spin had been abruptly halted. There will be considerable flooding and volcanic activity, but the flora will not suffer much, nor sea life so long as it is well below the surface." He ended, almost enthusiastically, "Everything else which is larger than an insect will perish at once."
"Very well," the captain said. "Set up the necessary machinery." But silently he wondered if the Srillan therapists had slipped up during his conditioning. He did not like the job, as the others did theirs, and never had. And particularly he did not like this one. Feeling a vague need to justify himself he turned to the biologist.
A sudden wave of sympathy choked off his words.
He hadn't realized that the biologist was so near death. The other had slumped against the regrowth tank, and accelerating tissue breakdown had made his once sleek hide a wrinkled and flaking horror. The thought-probe plate was still in position, though, but held more by gravity than by his grip on it. Urged more by compassion than curiosity, the captain made a query sound.
"I've discovered the effect of the gas used on the creature," he answered, his voice surprisingly strong. "And the reaction of its taste buds to that spongy food substance." He became technical for a brief time, then went on. "And the strong mind traces of his associates leads me to assume that he is not typical, and that---"
"Ship ready for execution!" the intercom speaker blared. "Do you wish me to proceed, sir?"
Caught off balance the captain hesitated. Of course, he told himself savagely, the being was atypical. A luckless, mentally retarded criminal, used for callous experimentation and then discarded. That in itself was a judgment on those capable of such behavior. He swung toward the intercom.
"I repeat," the biologist said gently, "that we must assume the presence of yet another race on this being's planet, one of much higher intelligence...."
The shock of it was like a physical blow. There is no time to go through all this again, he told himself desperately as he limply accepted the proffered probe plate.
It was the same vicious, bad-tempered, murderous brute. After attacking and almost killing three other beings working with or near it---there was a brief but shocking picture filled with blood and pain and killer lust---it was confined and guarded. But the guards . . . ! As the mental image of them developed, the captain almost dropped the probe plate.
Roughly similar to the creature in the tank, but with differently distributed and a more sparse growth of hair--- which they augmented by artificial coverings---they were a taller and more slender race. A stubborn, aggressive race, but ... It was several seconds before he lowered the probe plate and began moving heavily back to the control room.
Because its body chemistry and reactions so closely resembled their own, and because it weighed so much less than they did, the beings of Earth had used a large "monkey" in the first test ascent into space. The frustrating inefficiency of available fuels made it impossible for a "human" to go, though many yearned passionately for the chance. The captain thought of the race that fought a lot, then forgot it and shook hands; the race who found time to laugh while desperately trying to sort out the mess that their nonunified planet was in, and who had progressed to atomic power and space ships even more rapidly than the vicious cultures of the enemy. Mostly he thought of the race who bore no grudge against an experimental animal who had maimed three of their own.
"Hyperdrive ready!" the weapons officer relayed. The stay of execution puzzled him, but obedience was a strong habit. The captain might get around to telling him why.
The race, the captain mused, that could send, an animal into space, using a phenomenal amount of their precious fuel---and then waste that same fuel by including in the payload such unnecessary devices as a heavy timer and tube, which contained a gas that killed instantly and without pain, and several large pieces of cake for the occupant. The captain liked a race that could do that. Very much.
At the moment they were having their growing pains. But soon peace would come to their planet. He didn't think that peace would make them soft, nor make them forget to laugh, or fight---either for fun or ideals---without being needlessly cruel. Someday they would have to meet the enemy.
There was power enough to get his ship home, and the Srilla could use it again---after the radiation had died from it, of course. The captain felt content, and almost happy. It was rarely that the crew-of an execution ship had the chance of going home to die.
As the great blue globe of Earth faded into the gray of hyperspace, the captain thought, Poor enemy!
DAVIES had ceased believing in buried treasure at a very early age and his skepticism had included such related items as Ancient and Forgotten Documents and the Secret and Perilous Voyages in search of it. The realization that he was now at the end of just such a treasure hunt came as a shock to his rather staid personality, but he could not dispute the evidence of his own eyes. There, half a mile away across the "snow" of Titan lay the cluster of pressure domes which the Document had said would be here. There also lay the Treasure---not gold, of course, but something which was incalculably more valuable in this day and age: knowledge.
It was the abandoned base of the aliens which they had come so far and searched so long to find, and above it and around it---like a fabulous setting surrounding a jewel that is dull and cheap---there was the most beautiful sight that Davies had ever seen.
The snow of Titan stretched away to the horizon, broken occasionally by dark brown outcroppings of rock which were also streaked with white and powdered with diamond frost-crystals. Titan's frigid, methane atmosphere was dense enough to give the sky above the horizon a deep, turquoise blue tinge which shaded into star-sprinkled black overhead, and on this band of cold pure color Saturn blazed like some splendid heraldic device. Davies was suddenly glad that he had come here; the view, apart from everything else, was worth coming nine hundred-odd million miles to see.
"H-how soon can we get over there?" said Davies. He had the lamentable habit of stuttering sometimes when in the grip of strong emotion, but at the moment he felt too excited even to feel ashamed of it.
"Not until the slush hardens," said Mercer, the ship's A-Drive engineer and radioman. His face remained glued to the direct vision port as he spoke. He was a small, thick-set man with heavy features whose only vice seemed to be the inability to stop and think before speaking his mind. He asked suddenly, "Now that we've found it, and if it really is an alien base and not some hush-hush installation of our own, what are you going to do?"
Captain Silverman, the other half of the Hannibal's crew who had been busy with his post-landing instrument check, joined them beside the viewport at that moment. He spoke before Davies could begin a proper reply to Mercer's question.
"You will be in charge from here on in, of course," he said seriously. "But try to remember that this isn't the Nile Valley, Professor Davies, where the only protection needed is a pith helmet---assuming that is what the well-dressed archaeologist wears these days. You know, I wish you had more practice handling yourself in a spacesuit ..."
The perpetually worried look on the captain's thin, intense face deepened slightly, and he brushed at a lock of light brown hair which threatened to fall into his right eye.
Silverman's hair had grown long during the trip out here, and Davies knew the reason. The captain would not allow Mercer to cut it because of a tonsorial catastrophe which had occurred while Silverman had been attempting to barber the engineer---he was afraid of Mercer getting his own back and leaving him nearly bald on one side. But with that great brown mane curling softly over his uniform collar, Davies thought he looked more like one of the prophets than a present-day spaceship captain.
". . . Anyway," Silverman went on, "Mercer will go with you the first few times. But keep constant radio contact with each other and the ship at all times---that's the only way I have of knowing if you get into trouble."
Davies nodded. "What about this slush Mercer mentioned?"
"The 'snow' which was liquefied, and partly vaporized, by the flare of our chemical landing motors," he replied. "It will be solid again by the time you are ready to go out."
"Good," said Davies, and moved toward the spacesuit locker.
Ten minutes later Mercer and himself were at the foot of the retractable ladder which joined Hannibal's, stern airlock with the surface. The ship stood in the center of a roughly circular expanse of what looked like blue-gray fused glass, which crunched and tinkled faintly underfoot ---the sound being transmitted through the fabric of their suits. Mercer pointed to the shock-absorber legs on the ship's four great stabilizer fins, and explained that a number of small explosive or incendiary charges would be needed to free the ship for takeoff.
Together they shuffled carefully across the frozen pond which encircled Hannibal and onto the snow, Mercer keeping a steadying hand on Davies' arm until he had accustomed himself to the light gravity. Even then the engineer steered a zigzag toward their objective so as to avoid the danger of his falling or snagging his suit against out-jutting rocks in his temporarily unbalanced condition. But by the time the nearest pressure dome was reached, Davies no longer needed the engineer's helping hand.
"... A rigid-walled pressure tent pierced for airlock and observation windows, and similar to the semi permanent installations used on Luna and Mars," Mercer was saying for the benefit of Silverman back at the ship. "I can see inside. It is empty, and there is a spiral stairway leading down to what must be an underground extension of the structure.
"This thing was never built by an Earth race," he went on, his voice quickening with excitement, "but the entry-lock mechanism seems straightforward enough. We could get inside with very little trouble---"
"No," Davies interrupted at that point. "I'm just as anxious as you are to get into that dome, but you must agree that some idea of the surface layout of the installation is necessary before investigating the interior."
"I suppose so," said Mercer grumpily. He had a last look through the transparent circle of plastic beside the entry-lock, then turned toward the next nearest dome.
They found that the alien base lay in a circle of about two hundred yards diameter surrounding a conical rock formation which resembled a scaled-down volcano. The pressure domes---there were eleven altogether---were merely the surface entry points for an installation which stretched for an unknown, but probably considerable, distance underground. Despite this, Davies was able to glimpse things through their observation windows that made him even more anxious than Mercer to get inside one of them.
In one he saw a desk and a few surprisingly ordinary chairs---though he knew that their ordinariness should not have surprised him, because one of these long-departed aliens had spent nearly two years, living, breathing and passing himself as a human being on Earth. But everything he saw was an indication that the aliens had made an orderly and unhurried withdrawal from their base on Titan, and the things which they had left behind were little more than junk. Here and there were discarded items of furniture or fittings, odd pictures left hanging on walls, and even neat piles of rubbish swept into corners.
It was these floor sweepings that had Davies burning with impatience to get inside.
There was no Rosetta Stone to help him here, Davies knew. It would be a far cry indeed from his deciphering of sand eroded ideographs or the even more difficult parchments unearthed sometimes by his university's archaeological team, but the challenge excited him. And there was, too, a certain amount of amusement to be found in the thought that he had come nine hundred million miles just to rummage in an alien wastepaper basket.
They were on their way back to the Hannibal, and passing close to the rocky pinnacle which dominated the base site, when Mercer halted suddenly and pointed. He said, "I thought I saw something funny at the base of that pinnacle . . ." He backed a few paces, stared hard toward the outcropping, then retraced his steps. "Maybe it was a trick of the light, but I thought I saw---just for a second---the outline of a door. Do you see anything?"
Davies looked carefully at the spot indicated, then said, "No."
Mercer was silent for a moment, then: "We've a good twenty minutes air left. I think I'll have a closer look at that rock. Coming?"
Davies nodded, then realized that it was wasted effort inside his three-quarters opaque helmet and simply followed Mercer toward the outcropping.
"What is it? What have you found?" the captain, back in the ship, called anxiously. They had found something peculiar and had been studying it in silence. Mercer found his voice first.
"I'm not sure," he said. "There's something funny here. To me it looks as if a six-foot by four-foot rectangle of rock at the base of this pinnacle is foreign to its surroundings. Just as though a section of the original rock had been removed and later replaced with similar material from nearby whose cracks and fissures did not match up properly, and somebody had to chisel artificial extensions onto them---the fissures, I mean---to hide the fact. It was only by accident and a trick of the light that I noticed it at all." There was a tinge of uneasiness as well as puzzlement in his voice as he ended, "What was done out here, and why the camouflage?"
For several seconds there was a rustling silence in Davies' headphones, then Silverman said, "Better come back to the ship now. Maybe it is only a freak rock formation. . . ."
"You can't see it," said Mercer, "or you wouldn't say that."
The engineer was silent during their walk back to the ship until they were on the point of mounting the ladder to the stern airlock, then he asked suddenly, "Professor, are you sure this place is deserted?"
The tone of the question made the hairs at the back of Davies' neck prickle. Irritated, he ignored the sensation and replied, "I've told you everything I know. My information was that the base was to be found here, and it was. The same source stated that it was abandoned eighty years ago...."
I have told you everything I know, Davies repeated silently to himself as he began to feel the contagion of Mercer's uneasiness. But that did not mean that he knew everything ...
So far as Davies knew it had all started some eighty years ago when an alien scoutship operating from his base on Titan had cracked up on Earth. The pilot, who had taken the name of "Allen," had succeeded eventually in persuading a certain Dr. Mathewson---then in charge of a rocket experimental station---to give him a two-stage orbital vehicle, his idea being to modify this, to him, crude and antiquated vessel so that he could use it to join his friends on Titan before they left for their home system. Mathewson had been in serious trouble over the business until he had told of the exchange which "Allen" had made ---namely, the theory and drawings for a spaceship power plant that was both cheap and efficient beyond the wildest dreams of the rocket technicians of that time.
The whole affair had been so thickly smothered in security blankets that it had suffocated, died and been forgotten---forgotten, that was, until a colleague of Davies' interested in the Cold War period of recent history had stumbled across the relevant documents. He had mentioned them to Davies, jokingly, because he was of the opinion that they were some form of hoax---a complicated attempt at misdirection similar perhaps, to the classic Man Who Never Was of an earlier period. But Davies had been interested enough to do a little digging.
Dr. Mathewson, the security officials and the technicians who had been attached to the experimental station had all died in the interim, of course, but Davies uncovered two very intriguing facts. One: the present-day method of propulsion in spaceships was called the Allen, or A-Drive. And Two: try as he could, Davies could find no trace of an inventor of this priceless boon to space travel.
It had been quite a struggle then to convince his university of the desirability of searching Titan for traces of an alien base. But eventually, after Davies had made a nuisance of himself about the project for nearly six months, they had grudgingly agreed to finance a small expedition and the tiny Hannibal, together with Davies and its two-man crew had been dispatched. If---a very big "if"---Davies found anything, then a fully-equipped expedition would, of course, follow.
Well, thought Davies as he climbed out of his spacesuit, we found the base. When we return with the news, specialists in all fields will come swarming out to this product of an alien civilization to gather up the crumbs of a vastly superior alien science left by that eighty-years-gone expedition. And who knew but that their work would be substantially assisted by a translation of the alien language performed by one Walter S. Davies, Doctor of Philosophy, etc, etc. ...
Davies pushed that pleasant daydream out of his mind as he grew aware that Captain Silverman was talking to him.
"I've been busy in the galley while you were out," Silverman said as he helped Davies stow away the suit on its special hanger. "After we've eaten I suppose you want to go out again?"
Davies nodded. "This time I intend to effect an entrance," he said, then catching the yearning, almost hungry expression on the captain's thin face he added, "No reason why you can't come, too."
"Sure you can come," said Mercer loudly. "The ship won't run away."
Silverman fought a brief and losing battle with his strong sense of duty. Curiosity won. He said, "Thank you, I'll come."
They entered the alien base with very little trouble to find it contained a residual atmosphere of nearly breathable density---a tribute to the eighty-years-gone builders of the installation. On the way out from the ship Davies had several times stressed the importance of care in handling artifacts and papers, citing instances where priceless manuscripts had been ruined through careless handling by ignorant workers at an excavation site. Nobody, he said, was to touch anything until he had at least photographed it in relation to other objects in the room, or exactly as the aliens had left it. He was, therefore, all ready to tear a lengthy strip off the engineer when Mercer automatically and unthinkingly flipped the toggle on something which looked like a light switch at the entrance to one of the compartments. But the angry word remained unuttered, because it was a light switch and the lights came on!
The investigation proceeded in high excitement and, with more than adequate lighting, at a steadily accelerating rate after that. They found that the base extended far underground and had living quarters for at least three hundred. There were administrative offices, labs and workshops---all stripped of the equipment that might have given them some idea of the work which had been carried out here. But there were clues to be found in the discarded papers and magazines and in the damaged or forgotten gadgets lying here and there, if Davies could unlock the language in which they were printed.
Mercer and Silverman were literally dancing with impatience during the first two hours: they wanted to know how and why the base was powered after all this time. Davies finally gave up the attempt to keep them with him. Their highly technical crosstalk continued to come to him over his suit radio as they tried to trace the base's lighting circuits back to a main power source.
Only one thing drove them back to the ship eventually: hunger.
Between and during mouthfuls the two ship's officers discussed in tones of great awe the power room of the alien base. Apparently power came from storage batteries, but the lines running from these small two-foot cubes of gray metal indicated a storage capacity that was incredible. If Earth science could analyze and duplicate those batteries it would be the equivalent of carrying a power station in a suitcase. The potentialities were vast beyond belief, Mercer and the captain agreed, and it was several minutes before the latter remembered his manners enough to ask Davies how he had made out in his own particular field.
"Well, there is plenty of printed material lying about," Davies replied carefully. "Once I'm able to translate it---"
"But how can you?" Silverman broke in suddenly. "As I see it, in order to translate a hitherto unknown language you must first have a ... a sort of bridge---passages written both in the unknown language and in one already known so that you can compare them, and transpose words or phrases. A sort of Rosetta Stone, in fact. But this is a completely alien language..."
Davies found himself warming to the captain. It was nice to find someone intelligent enough to appreciate another specialist's difficulties. He smiled and said, "But I have a Rosetta Stone, of sorts." He pointed suddenly. "Him!"
Mercer choked, spluttered, then got his breath back enough to exclaim, "Me? But my specialties are electronics and the A-Drive generators---"
"A product, as we now know, of alien science."
"But I don't know anything about languages!"
"That doesn't matter," said Davies, waving the engineer to silence. He spent a moment ordering his thoughts, then went on. "We are trying here to translate a language without a single clue as to its structure, the number of letters in its alphabet, or anything else at all beyond the fact that it belongs to a highly advanced, scientific civilization.
"But the work of the alien expedition seems to have been pretty comprehensive," Davies continued, his eyes still on Mercer's puzzled face, "and there are all sorts of charts and technical literature lying around. Well, I want you to go over those papers with me.
"You can see my idea now, I expect: a natural law or a chemical element is the same no matter what the language used to express or describe it. So if we find, say, a radio circuit diagram with the usual list of component values appended, you may be able to tell me that such-and-such a squiggle is the alien equivalent of a resistor or condenser---I wouldn't expect you to read the whole diagram, naturally---and we would have approximate meanings for a couple of alien words.
"The same applies to the Periodic Table of Elements, which would furnish a clue to their system of numbering ..."
Suddenly excited, Mercer said, "It might work at that. But---"
"But it will be a long, tedious job," Davies said. "The things I've mentioned will only give us a toehold on their language, nothing more. But a beginning is all I ask."
Davies and Mercer rose and began climbing into their spacesuits again, but Captain Silverman made no attempt to follow. He said, "I'm tired. It's been twenty hours or more since I've had any sleep, so I think I'll sling a hammock in the control room---that way I can hear you on the radio if you get into trouble. I'd advise you two to get some rest, too." A sudden, jaw-stretching yawn overtook him and he rubbed his eyes. As a parting shot at Mercer, he added, "The base won't run away, you know."
But the engineer and himself were too excited to think of sleep. In five minutes they were outside again, stepping out confidently toward the base. Davies had begun to get the hang of the long-striding and forward-leaning walk required for efficient movement in Titan's light gravity. But there was one cloud marring his otherwise sunny sky---a very small thing, really, but he might as well dispose of it now so that Mercer and he could get down to the really important work.
"Mr. Mercer," he said lightly, "from overhearing the discussion of the captain and yourself a few minutes ago, I know that you're itching to finish off a little investigation of your own. If you don't mind we'll attend to that first, otherwise you'll be no use to me at all."
Mercer chuckled, then suddenly he became serious. "The big mystery has to do with the power lines radiating from what I call the battery room," he explained. "I'm puzzled, because over half of the power available is not accounted for within the base---several of the power cables just disappear into a wall. The position of this wail, however, is close to that occupied on the surface by the pinnacle of rock I was suspicious about earlier. I can't explain it, but I have the feeling that that pinnacle is the center of this base in more ways than one . . ." He trailed off into silence, then added awkwardly, "But thanks for letting me get this particular bee out of my bonnet, Professor. I'm very curious about this business, but didn't like to ask . . ."
Davies passed the thanks off with an embarrassed grunt. They altered direction to head toward the pinnacle.
At its base Mercer came close to Davies, flicked off the toggles of both their suit radios, then touched his helmet to the professor's. Strangely muffled after the tinny clarity of the suit phones, his voice came through to a rather startled Davies.
"Don't be alarmed," Mercer said. "I'm going to try climbing this thing, and don't want the captain to know about it. He would only worry and spoil his snooze---or maybe even forbid it. So when I switch our suit radios on again, keep all mention of climbing out of the conversation. That way, unless he goes to the viewport, he'll think we're just talking about something inside the base."
With their radios operating again Mercer turned and began heaving himself aloft with the ease of a practiced rock climber. After a moment's hesitation, Davies followed him at a slower pace.
"Well, well," said Mercer, when Davies reached the engineer's position. "What have we here?" Together they stared at something which resembled nothing so much as a nest of copper wires containing a single crystal egg. The nest was about six inches in diameter, the crystal roughly two inches, and though the device occupied the extreme tip of the pinnacle, there was enough shoulder to the outcropping to hide it from an observer at ground level.
"There's something funny about this, too," Mercer went on, indicating the rock surface to which they clung. "I've the feeling it's faked, possibly an extension of the original pinnacle made to hide the leads to this gadget up here..."
All at once Davies was not listening to Mercer anymore. He felt himself sweating. Before his eyes a crooked, black line had appeared in the rocky surface, widening rapidly and sprouting other black lines which likewise widened and sprouted. Cracks! he thought wildly, then suddenly he was falling, Mercer was falling and the surface to which they had been clinging had broken up and was falling with them into darkness. For a fleeting instant he realized that Mercer was right, the tip of the rock pinnacle had been a mere shell of plastic which had disintegrated under their combined weights, then his mouth opened in a cry of fear and astonishment as he plummeted downward.
When he hit, it was with not quite enough force to break his neck or damage his spacesuit. Mercer had been equally lucky; Davies saw the engineer's suit lamp playing around the walls of the circular chamber into which they had fallen as he searched for and found a light switch. With the chamber brightly lit Mercer turned and advanced anxiously on his still recumbent body.
Davies relieved the other's anxiety by climbing painfully to his feet.
Back in the Hannibal's control room Captain Silverman was shouting himself hoarse. "Mercer! Professor!" his voiced dinned in their earphones, "What's wrong? Somebody shouted! What's happening ... ?"
In a sheepish voice Mercer told the captain what had happened, and assured him that they were both unhurt. Captain Silverman then told Mercer a few things, mainly concerning what he thought of supposedly responsible officers who took stupid risks with the safety of others as well as themselves. Davies came in for a couple of backhanders as well---the professor was surely old enough, Silverman insisted, to know better than to join in a foolhardy stunt like this---but it was the engineer who came under the heaviest fire. And not only was the captain's tone cutting, his sarcasm was hooked, barbed and grooved for poison.
While this verbal flaying was going on Mercer was silent, but he had discovered a metal trap door in the floor of the chamber and a ladder leading downwards. He had ignored the torrent of abuse and recrimination to the extent of descending the ladder to explore, and when his head emerged from the opening a few minutes later, Silverman had run dry.
"I'm, er, afraid we can't get out, Captain," he said hesitantly. "When you're coming you'd better bring ropes."
Silverman didn't say anything to that, he had already said it all.
While they were waiting for the captain to arrive with tackle from the ship to haul them out, Mercer and Davies began a close examination of their surroundings. They were in a circular room of roughly five yards diameter which had been hollowed out of the original rock outcropping, then covered by a thin, plastic shell treated to simulate rock on the outside.
In the center of the room stood a tall, enigmatic piece of apparatus which they had narrowly missed in falling. Several of the heavy power lines about which Mercer had been so curious sprouted from the floor and disappeared into this imposing mechanism---which Mercer, after much peering and nosing around it, had guessed to be some form of communicator. Pointing to a silvery rod near its top he said that this was probably the antenna. However, as the rod was totally enclosed by a sphere of copper mesh it was obvious that the signal produced could not go out into the normal ether. Also, the equipment was apparently activated by an impulse which should reach it via the metal bird's nest they had seen just before their fall.
". . . Another thing that puzzles me," Mercer said as they stared at the device, "is the amount of power the thing uses. It must operate for a split second at tremendous overload, then burn out---those power lines go right into it without fuses or safety cutoffs of any kind.
"And," he continued, "when I went down that trap in the floor I discovered that this place originally had an entrance at ground level before it was sealed up---I'd swear it was at the place where we saw the peculiarities in the rock the first time we came by. So here we have a gadget that was built, carefully hidden and sealed up on completion, and its triggered off by an impulse of some sort generated by that copper and crystal thing up top."
Mercer took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. In the phones it sounded like trees rustling in a high wind.
"I'm beginning to suspect," he went on suddenly, "that the alien expedition's chief purpose was the building of this thing. Otherwise, why go to all this trouble to hide it?" Worriedly, he ended, "This business is beginning to scare me."
Despite the engineer's uneasiness Davies was inclined to feel more afraid of the things Silverman might say when he had them back on the ship. Technically he, Professor Davies, was the leader of this expedition, but the captain had been a very exasperated man.
But the expected lecture was not forthcoming, and during the two busy weeks which followed, Silverman scarcely mentioned the incident.
The greater part of those two weeks had been happy for Davies, with the happiness which comes only when a man is gladly flogging himself to death at the work which he loves. He had lost count of the meals he had missed and the sleep which he owed himself. His eyes were bloodshot and felt like hot, gritty pebbles in his head and altogether his face showed all the symptoms of a person on a protracted binge---an intellectual binge, in this case. During the past few days, however, a sour note had crept into this bone-weary but happy existence, and for the life of him Davies could not find the reason for it.
It was not that the two ship's officers had been uncooperative. Far from it, Silverman and Mercer had spent a great many hours with him poring over alien charts and papers. So much so that Davies' progress in the translation of the alien printed language was more than satisfactory. But it had been work that, because of the monotony and sheer mental drudgery involved, was very much un-suited to the temperaments of the two men. It was only natural, therefore, that they spend more and more time inside the pinnacle of rock that housed the only alien device in the base which appeared to be complete.
Davies had a highly intriguing and complex jigsaw puzzle of his own to piece together---the alien language. Why then should he begrudge the other two their fun?
This was the sort of reassuring question Davies had asked himself after first noticing the subtle change in the relations between the two ship's officers and himself. But he had always been sensitive to emotional atmosphere and now could no longer disregard the feeling that Silverman and Mercer were hiding something from him. They were a little too casual when he asked questions, their tones a little too high-pitched. And had they not, of late, initiated a new method of concealment? When out at the pinnacle together were they not being deliberately too technical in their conversation, so that Davies listening to them on the suit radio circuit had no idea at all what they were discussing ... ?
And now they had taken things a stage further. Either they had stopped talking altogether, or good old safety-drill conscious, radio-at-all-times Silverman had taken to switching off his suit radio for long periods. Mercer's, too, because in Davies' phones there had been nothing for the past hour but a humming silence.
"Silverman! Mercer! Come in please!" he shouted suddenly. Silence answered him.
Unconsciously, he had stopped to listen. A long corridor which led toward the base's administration section stretched out in sharply diminishing perspective before him. The lighting was bright but restful. Davies was conscious of other corridors and compartments all around Mm, below him and above him, and he felt suddenly very much alone. He was frightened for some reason---not, he told himself hastily, because of the strangeness of his surroundings, or of any ghosts which the departed aliens might have left behind. If there had been any such, Davies had learned enough about the aliens to know that their ghosts would not have been the terrifying kind. But what was he afraid of?
Maybe I'm just overtired, Davies told himself. When we take off tomorrow I'll sleep all the way back to Earth, and not look at a single one of those alien books that I've packed away. When we're home I'll look back and laugh at these suspicions....
His silent conversation with himself was suddenly interrupted by the voice of Mercer erupting from his phones.
"All set," the engineer said. His voice sounded strained, Davies thought. Then: "Give me two minutes to get clear, then switch on!"
"Right," the voice of Captain Silverman answered. There was silence then except for the regular, tinny rustlings of someone breathing hard.
They had been at the pinnacle, Davies knew, but what were they doing? He called again, "Silverman! Mercer! Answer me! I've been trying to call you up ..."
"And we've been trying to call you," Silverman interrupted. "But don't let it bother you, Professor. Probably it's just a fault in your radio . . ." As if in corroboration of this theory there followed a few seconds of intermittent transmission which chopped whatever Silverman had been saying into gibberish, then silence.
He's lying, Davies told himself silently. Even over the phones he had been able to detect the false note in the captain's voice---Silverman was not a good enough liar. He had not been trying to call Davies, and that intermittent contact that was supposed to simulate a faulty set must have been produced by the rapid switching on and off of the captain's radio. Davies turned quickly and began retracing his steps. He was determined to find out why Silverman was lying, and whatever other funny business was going on, right this minute.
Suddenly there was a short, ear-splitting burst of static in his phones. Simultaneously the corridor lighting dimmed, flickered, then slowly returned to its former brightness. All at once there was a brightness in Davies' mind also, a brightness that revealed in stark detail the answer to the puzzling behavior of Silverman and Mercer. Suddenly he knew what they had done, and more, what they must be intending to do next. He had to stop them!
Davies broke into a run.
Breathing hard as he scrambled awkwardly up the spiral stairways that led to the surface, Davies' mind began jumping from present time here on Titan back to the period of the marooned "Allen" eighty years ago, then back again.
Suppose "Allen" had been unable to rejoin his friends on Titan before they left for home. The way Davies saw it now, the aliens might leave behind them a concealed signaling device which he could use to call someone to pick him up. Something like the carefully hidden apparatus in that hollowed-out rock.
Davies was remembering what Mercer had told him about that peculiar device in the pinnacle: it operated for a split-second at tremendous overload, it was activated by the nest of crystal and copper wire surmounting it, and the signal that it emitted was not propagated through the normal ether. Obviously it was a signaling device left by the aliens for "Allen's" use if he should reach Titan too late. But "Allen" had made it and the alien had not thought it worthwhile to dismantle the transmitter.
Nothing more than a simple position fix could be transmitted on a signal of such short duration, Davies thought, a simple distress signal meaning, "Here I am, pick me up!" But that would be enough for a lifeboat to be dispatched to aid the person in distress, and lifeboats did not as a rule stop to query the origin of a distress call...,
He had to stop them, Davies thought desperately as the spiral brought him into one of the pressure domes and he began wrestling with the lock mechanism. This was the sort of incident which started wars.
Outside, Davies saw that his worst fears were realized in that the alien distress signal was already on its way: the rock outcropping together with the communicating device which it had housed was a heap of fused slag surrounded by a pool of steaming, bubbling snow. Mercer had succeeded in activating the transmitter, and he had been correct in saying that it operated on a ruinous overload. He wondered briefly if the engineer had been caught in that terrific flare of energy. But then he saw a figure running clumsily toward the Hannibal and away from the slagged-down pinnacle. That would be Mercer. And the other figure which he could see in the shadow of one of the ship's stabilizer fins would be Captain Silverman.
The captain was bent over, working at something on the ground. Davies started running toward the ship, too.
He was less than forty yards from the ship when Silverman and Mercer---the engineer had reached it well ahead of him---saw him. They must have decided that it was useless pretending that his suit radio was faulty any longer, for there was a click and the captain's voice came to him. Silverman's tone was one of surprised innocence. The surprise was probably genuine.
"Professor! What are you doing here? You said that you had at least six hours work to do inside the base . .. ?"
A mixture of fear, anger and shortness of breath made it impossible for Davies to say anything coherent at first, but finally he burst out, "You c-can't do it!" He gesticulated at the little red and orange sticks lying at the captain's feet, singly and in small, wired-together bundles. Red was for incendiary and orange for explosive, Davies knew. "You can't do it," he repeated. "It---it's murder!"
Silverman was silent for a moment, then he said carefully, "I don't understand you. These explosive and incendiary pencils are for the purpose of splitting and melting the ice from around our shock-absorber legs, otherwise the splashout from the chemical motors might melt our stem off before the ice was softened enough to allow us to pull free. Surely I explained all this to you before."
"You did," said Davies angrily. "But you also said it was dangerous to set them off too close together. Why, then, have you got them tied together in bundles and with detonators wired to-each of them?"
"I'm afraid, Captain," Mercer broke in at that point, "he knows or has guessed what we intend doing, so we can drop the pretense that these handy little bombs are for melting ice. . . ." He turned and addressed Davies directly.
"To put things bluntly," Mercer said, "we have listened to you talking about the benefits which may eventually come from the investigation of this base, and the captain and I think that you are being far too optimistic. Certainly the things discovered here will give pointers to new lines of research, and the stuff in the battery room alone will be of enormous value. But we have decided to try for something really big. Something that will put Earth and the human race on an equal, or nearly equal footing with the aliens who visited here, something that will---"
"Give us the stars?" asked Davies coldly.
Mercer was taken aback somewhat by Davies' stealing of his punch line. He hesitated, then said, "Exactly."
The engineer had a lot more to say, but it was only the filling-in of details on the plan which Davies had deduced in broad outline already. The distress signal had gone out and now it was only a matter of waiting until the alien equivalent of a lifeboat arrived. Silverman and Mercer would take this unsuspecting vessel by force, using explosives or thermite or both to disable its airlock so that it could not take off again. They would try not to harm the pilot, of course, unless he showed resistance. But the main idea was that they would be in possession of an alien ship equipped with interstellar drive in full working order. With such a model to work from, Earth would soon be in possession of the drive also.
There was no need, Mercer ended, to tell the Professor what that would mean for their race. The motives of the captain and himself in doing this were of the very highest. . . .
Just for a moment Davies found himself caught up by the fanatical enthusiasm of Mercer, the man who was going to hand humanity the stars on a clean plate, then a measure of sanity returned to him. He said, "No! The risk is too great, quite apart from the ethics of the situation which you aren't considering at all. You know full well that the alien pilot will show resistance---you would in his place. And supposing you try to take his ship and fail? You will have made an enemy of a culture which could probably beat us with one hand tied behind its back---" "We have the approach to the ship all worked out," Silverman put in quietly, "and expect very little trouble. And anyway, there is a strong possibility that the lifeboat will be automatically controlled and therefore unmanned---"
"At this distance?" Davies interrupted scornfully; then, "Think, man! You've got so many stars in your eyes they're blinding you! We'll get to the stars soon enough, never fear and when we do we want to have friends out there, not enemies ..."
Captain Silverman interrupted him again at that point. He said that they were not sure of the speed at which the alien star drive operated---it might be instantaneous for all he knew---and suggested that Davies stay in the control room until the alien lifeboat had landed and been dealt with. It was clear that Silverman, in a quieter way, was just as blindly enthusiastic as the engineer. His suggestion was simply a polite order.
The control room illumination had been dimmed for better outside seeing, and radar swept the sky above and around them. Mercer paced restlessly up and down the small cleared area of deck. The captain sat still except for his eyes, which moved regularly from the direct vision port to the radar screen and back, like a man watching a slow-motion tennis match. His forehead was damp.
Suddenly the radar went beep. With hardly a glance at the screen the two officers leapt to the direct vision port. Slowly, Davies followed them. He saw the tiny star which moved against the backdrop of other stars, saw it grow larger as he watched. He felt suddenly too weary to talk to the others, to make a last plea for sanity.
He heard Silverman and Mercer catch their breath.
There were too many stars in the sky, far too many. And more were flickering into existence every minute. Like a great metropolis lighting up after a power failure, great loops and lines and patterns of lights crisscrossed the sky. Some of the stars were close enough for Davies to see that they were not points of light, but slim, shining needles---ships, thousands of them, singly and in vast formations, taking stations around Titan.
They were the biggest things that Davies had ever seen.
It had been a very bad moment for them when the aliens found their wavelength and started whistling and bubbling and chirping at them---Davies had been nearly paralyzed with fear---and worse when an alien with a fair knowledge of English began asking for the positions of Earth's main population centers. Meanwhile, more and more ships had been winking into existence around Titan, so that Saturn was almost hidden by their close packed ranks. But somehow he had forced himself to reply to that alien voice, and had quickly found out that this was not an invasion but something else entirely. The great swarm of ships left very quickly after that, all but the one which carried the alien with the knowledge of English.
This one had some highly pertinent and testy remarks to make before he, too, left for home.
Watching a greatly chastened Silverman and Mercer preparing the Hannibal for takeoff, Davies remembered a few of the alien's remarks and felt his face burning with shame. When he spoke he was simply thinking aloud rather than explaining what had happened to the two officers; they must have a good idea already.
He said: "We were right in assuming that the communicator left by the aliens was meant to send a distress signal. But it was supposed to operate when a certain type of radiation reached its receptor---the radiation emitted by a suddenly unstable sun. It was an automatic fire alarm of a type placed in all inhabited solar systems---with or without the knowledge of the inhabitants---whose purpose was to summon help in the form of transports from all over the galaxy to evacuate the system threatened with destruction. In effect, we broke the glass and pulled the handle without realizing what we were doing...."
Davies fell silent. In his mind's eye he was still seeing that vast array of ships. And the mental picture was mixed up somehow with a dream he had had as a child---and had shared with so many other children of his age at that time. Only now the ambition was not just for himself alone but for his whole race.
Will we ever, he wondered, grow up and drive fire engines like that?
THE throne room was vast, the empty throne itself a golden speck glowing against the somber background drapes. Diminishing perspective made a blood red pyramid of the processional carpet, which seemed to stretch for miles. Tate thought that a moving way would have been easier on his suddenly shaky legs, but that would have been an offense against tradition. Thirty-seven times he'd gone though this, and a lot of traditions had grown in those four hundred odd years which he wanted to uphold. Especially as this time might be his last.
He couldn't win forever.
You're getting old, Tate told himself wryly as he stepped across the threshold, then everything else was driven from his mind as the fanfare crashed out and Harwood went into his eulogy. Tate felt his scalp begin to prickle in spite of himself; the court psychologist was good.
"... Emperor of the Dominions of Myra; the Protectorates, Dependencies, and Mandated Territories of Fomulhaut, of Cregennsil, and of Dubh; Lord of the Magellanic Hosts ..."
Stern and declamatory, the voice reached into the very bones. Subsonics were responsible for that effect, just as the subtle use of thought amplification put the non-humans in the audience chamber into a similar state of suggestion. As a result, the long and imposing catalogue of titles sounded neither flamboyant nor exaggerated, but a true and stirring account of his powers and achievements. According to Harwood, the starclouds of Andromeda were a saintly nimbus around his brow, and in his strong hands he held the life and destiny of every intelligent being in the Empire.
The court psychologist's voice became sterner yet with the implication that those mighty hands could punish as well as protect, then it went on: ". . . Saviour of Helgach; Defender of . .."
Helgach, Tate thought as he paced, outwardly calm and unafraid, between twin rows of beings who bowed low at his passing---or if physically incapable of that form of obeisance, twisted or twitched their respect in some other way. It had happened two hundred years ago, but he still felt guilty about Helgach. And he would feel much worse about it in a few minutes. It was a terrible thing to wipe out a race, to cut the teeming population of a planet down to a mere handful, but he had done just that.
The population of Helgach had been close to four billion. One hundred thousand had survived, thanks to his direct, forceful, and blindly stupid handling of the situation. Now, as befitted the representative of his most fanatically loyal system, Helgach's ambassador occupied a coveted position barely four yards from the throne. Racial memory could be extremely short at times.
The great voice filling the chamber began to quicken, and Tate was aware that he had almost reached the throne. He made the traditional pause to inquire of the Helgachian ambassador the number of that worthy's offspring, then he mounted the low dais and turned.
". . . The Just, the All-powerful, the All-knowing, His Celestial Majesty, Tate the First!"
He sat down.
Nobody moved, anywhere. This was no ordinary function, where he granted audiences or issued the decrees which could alter the destiny of whole stellar systems. This was the time when he had to prove his fitness to rule, or die. In utter silence he pressed one of the two studs set in the arm of his throne, and tried to relax as golden bands of beautifully worked metal closed around his limbs, chest, and head, holding him rigid.
Craig, his Chief Adviser, moved quickly to face him; Craig the ascetic, the intellectual, and almost, the fanatic. The young man's mouth was a stern and silent line, his features carefully neutral, but he was trying to say so much with his eyes that Tate had to look away. Craig was also Heir Apparent.
As he thought of the mass of electronic equipment hid-den by the drapery behind the throne, with its point of focus his rigidly held head, Tate felt vaguely uneasy. It was so sensitive, so delicate; so many things could go wrong. Just how badly did Craig want to be immortal. Could the other be so stupid as to think ... ?
But no---Craig had trained hard for just the merest chance of attaining kingship, and must certainly know that there were no shortcuts. Disgusted with himself, Tate forced the suspicion out of his mind. That sort of thing invariably happened before a treatment. It was a mental stalling for time, and he would have to curb that failing or soon find himself backing out. Not too obtrusively, he pressed the second button on his chair arm. Immediately,, Craig turned.
"The King," he said gravely, "is dead."
Before he'd finished speaking, Tate was fighting for his life.
When given before the age of forty and renewed every twenty years, the Immortality Treatment prevented the disease of senility and death from occurring in life based on the carbon series of compounds---which meant practically all forms of life. There were thousands of dogs, cats, and monkeys to prove that it worked. But in beings of higher intelligence---human or otherwise---it did not work at all, unless the being in question was mentally very, very tough.
The radiation which stimulated the regenerative centers produced other effects as well, some of them good, others quite fatally bad. The treatment increased the I.Q., and gave to the mind a perfect, eidetic memory. It also, for the few seconds duration of the treatment, so intensified the effect of what had come to be called the "area of conscience" that any being having sufficient intelligence to base his actions on a moral code had to take three seconds of the most frightful psychological torture ever known. He had to live with the cruel, debased, and utterly nauseous creature that was himself.
Many preferred to die rather than take three seconds of it. Most had no such choice---their life force was obliterated with the first, savage blast of self-knowledge.
This secondary effect of the treatment was experienced as a complete reliving of the past, with each incident diamond-sharp in visual, auditory, and tactile sense recall. But not only that. The mind was given a terrifying insight into the end results of that being's most trivial-seeming actions. Unthinking words or gestures made over the years and forgotten, when blown up by the triple stimulus of perfect memory, increased I.Q., and a hypersensitive "conscience" became lethal as a suicide's bullets. The mind just could not take such an overwhelming blast of self-guilt, even for the three seconds, so it, and the body containing it, died.
Only one person had successfully undergone the Immortality Treatment.
Tate, though he had lived---with thirty-seven previous treatments---for seven hundred and sixty-eight years, still took only three seconds. And there was no blurring or telescoping of events. Each incident was complete, and though it occupied only microseconds of time, each bore its charge of guilt potential.
Tate had been lucky in his early years. Working constantly with his father on the circum-Pluto biological lab, his life had been one bright, long dream of helping mankind toward its destiny---and he had somehow escaped doing too many of the things which he might have suffered for later. That shining altruism remained after his father had discovered and administered the first Immortality Treatment to him and his increased I.Q. enabled him to coordinate the development of the hyperdrive which gave man the stars. It was dulled considerably when his father and a large number of other eminent men died while undergoing the Treatment, but it grew quickly bright again.
A solitary immortal man was in a peculiarly good position to make his dreams become reality.
Seven Treatments and one hundred and forty-two years later, when the first wave of Earth colonists impinged on a non-human civilization, he was able to avert what looked like certain war. Ten years later the Earth was part of a Federation embracing five solar systems, and he was its chief adviser. When the Federation grew to eight, ten, then fifteen solar systems, he decided that something stronger than a president was needed to keep the unwieldy mass from falling apart. There were surprisingly few objections when he created himself Emperor, and the Federation his Empire.
Then, in his four hundred and second year, had come Helgach.
He had meant it to be a great and magnificent gesture ---a miracle of cooperation and coordination that should bind the Empire even more tightly together. But the denizens of Helgach were subtly different from the octopoids inhabiting similar worlds within the Empire, and he should have realized that. But he'd had to act so fast...
Tate relived that mad dash at the head of the greatest fleet of starships ever known to the Helgach system, the shock tactics which tore the natives from their homes and cities before they half-realized that anything was amiss, and he felt again the almost palpable hatred that struck him because there had been no time to explain. And he felt proud---justifiably, he thought---at thus getting the last of the Helgachians away before their suddenly unstable sun blew itself up. But his too-perfect memory was bringing back things which he should have noticed; small indications which could have averted the disaster to follow. If he hadn't been so busy patting himself on the back he might have suspected that the suspended animation tanks were not perfectly suited to their occupants, and he would not have arrived at New Helgach---after a trip half across the galaxy---with a fleet filled with decomposing corpses.
Little over a hundred thousand Helgachians had survived to repopulate their new plant. It was, therefore, much more than politeness that made Mm inquire the number of the native ambassador's sons.
Tate was sorry about Helgach, desperately sorry. But that did not ease the crushing sense of guilt he felt over it. And each time he went through a treatment, that killing pressure returned in full force. The murdered population of a world rose up and cried for his blood. In previous treatments he had barely held his agony-torn mind together, and his luck, he knew, couldn't last. One of these times---maybe this time---he would prove that he was only a mortal man after all.
To live forever you had to fight for life. Tate had long-term plans and projects that he desperately wanted to see to completion. They, together with the other more or less good things he had already done, kept the ripped and tattered rag that was his mind in one piece. But he was getting tired of the struggle---tired, and terribly, achingly lonely. His constantly increasing I.Q. cut him off from all other beings, though he pretended that it didn't, and made it so frighteningly easy to be cruel through sheer thoughtlessness. And those thoughtless acts had to be paid for at the next Treatment, and with a shocking rate of interest.
There were other things, but Helgach was the worst. Helgach was a white-hot spear that stabbed and gouged at his mind, then returned to stab again. In vain he writhed and screamed in mental agony for it to stop, that it hadn't been his fault and he had been acting for the best. It was always there. Four billion beings dead. Through negligence. His.
Suddenly his thoughts seemed to dissolve and fly apart, then slowly and painlessly to collect themselves and trickle back into his brain. Tate opened his eyes.
"The King is dead," his Chief Adviser was repeating; then triumphantly, "Long live the King!"
Craig turned, beaming widely, but with concern and sympathy in his eyes. The crowd and the royal trumpeters were making it impossible for his voice to be heard; he mouthed, "You'll be told officially later. Two Helgachians have successfully undergone the Immortality Treatment!"
Somehow Tate endured an hour of congratulations and renewed vows of loyalty, but his mind was far away. If two non-humans could become immortal, he told himself, then everyone could do it. He must live on now, because the news meant two things: he was no longer alone, and the dream he had had for centuries looked like it was coming about. He sighed and had to blink his eyes.
The trappings of royalty and empire that were necessary to hold the variegated and often quarrelsome children of the galaxy together would soon become superfluous. The children were slowly growing up. One day their ethical standards would be so high that they would have nothing to fear from the Treatment, and the galaxy would at last be populated with truly civilized beings. Meanwhile, if Tate expected to see that day, he would have to live the life of a saint, and be very very careful not to do any of the petty little things which could so easily kill him during treatment. He had to live now.
He came fully out of his daydream only as he was leaving the great audience chamber. The trumpeters---live on this occasion instead of being recorded---were having a wonderful time, and almost drowning out the din of whistling, chirping, and cheering from the beings in the room. Somewhere, someone began to chant. Quickly others took it up. It became thunderous, ground-shaking. The last great fanfare paled into insignificance.
"Long live the King!"
Tate, the Wise, Merciful, Just, and well-loved Father whose benevolent tyranny forced a galaxy to live together in peace, nodded once gravely in acknowledgment. "You bet," he swore silently to himself, "You bet I will."
IN a glide that was only a few degrees off level flight the ship slid into the tenuous upper reaches of the atmosphere. The thin, practically nonexistent air, made an almost solid thing by its tremendous speed of passage, tore at the gaping holes and ragged-edged projections in the once-streamlined hull, shaking the whole ship with a continuous, bone-jarring vibration. Rapidly the dull red glow of air friction grew along the leading edges of its gliding wings, on its blunted nose, and patchily about the torn and buckled plates that had once concealed the ship's radio, radar, and direct vision periscopic installations. Fearfully, like a great silver fish forced into exploring the depths of some strange and deadly ocean, it lowered itself cautiously into the Earth's atmosphere.
It had to land, and quickly. But its fear and hesitancy was understandable---the ship was deaf, dumb, and blind...
Gregg awoke with the dying echoes of one mighty gonglike note ringing in his ears, and to the sight of the ceiling rushing at him. The ceiling, after approaching to within six inches of his face, receded just as quickly, and the echo was abruptly drowned by sharp, urgent blasts of the multiple puncture signal. For an instant he lay too shocked to move, while the spring cables of his acceleration hammock---super efficient in the absence of gravity ---flung him backwards and forwards across the compartment with a violence that made him sick and dizzy.
This, he thought crazily, is what the business end of a yo-yo feels like. Then the meaning of the signal registered.
Spacesuit!
Frantically he unzipped himself from the madly-oscillating hammock and kicked free. He skidded off one wall and stopped---violently---against another. The compartment's entrance where the spacesuit hung seemed to be miles away.
Five seconds later, as he was struggling with the top half of his suit and sweating because of the time it was taking, the alarm siren changed to the long-short-long pattern that meant No Immediate Danger. An indicator light above the door---placed there in case there should be no air to carry the sound of the hooter---flickered out the same information. Infinitely relieved, Gregg did the suiting-up operation with less haste, biting his lip several times at the pain shooting through his arm and shoulder.
Good thing the ship wasn't losing air fast, Gregg thought, or he'd be a very dead duck by this time. When his hammock had catapulted him against the wall he'd taken a bad crack on the elbow. It had slowed him down at a time when every second might have counted.
Only when he was encased in the suit and at least temporarily safe did he begin to wonder what exactly had happened to the ship. Gregg had an overwhelming urge to head for the control room and find out the worst direct from Captain Ferguson. But doing that, he knew, wouldn't be very bright. In an emergency like this, ship's personnel were required to remain at their posts and report conditions in their vicinity so that the captain could get the overall picture. If Gregg went barging into the control room now, asking questions and offering assistance when the duty officers were up to their ears checking damage reports, he'd no doubt be told where to go---his assistance and himself both. He'd better obey the rules.
Carefully avoiding the still-vibrating hammock, Gregg kicked himself toward the intercom set on the wall. He plugged in his helmet lead and tried to keep his voice steady as he said: "This is Gregg, in Storage Compartment 2, to Control..."
He stopped then, aware by the absence of crackle in his headphones that the set was dead.
Gregg forced down the surge of panic which rose in him. A dead communications set, he told himself reassuringly, didn't necessarily mean that the control room was wrecked; the collision may merely have loosened an already faulty connection in the wiring somewhere, or some other simple explanation like that. . . . With an effort, Gregg made himself stop his wild and senseless speculations, and tried to take stock.
He was traveling on the express passenger liner Wallaby enroute from Mars to Earth. But not for him was the main saloon with its tasteful decor, its soft music, and its almost-constant film shows. As a company employee traveling at a fraction of the fare paid by ordinary passengers, an acceleration hammock rigged in an empty storage compartment was good enough for him. He'd been left to the contemplation of the beautiful symmetry of a rivet-studded bulkhead, and to try, if the constant two and a half G's acceleration would allow him, to sleep."
But there was no acceleration now. The ship was in free fall, weightless, its drive having cut off automatically in the instant of the collision. That was one of the many safety devices built into the ship, Gregg knew; the Wallaby was so crammed with automatic controls and safety devices that one of the station officials had told him that her crew were taking money under false pretences by claiming to operate her. The ship ran herself, he'd been told almost seriously, and the only difference between crewmen and passengers was that the latter were heavily charged for the ride. Gregg, floating beside the dead intercom set, thought that servomechanisms were all very well until something unforeseen happened; then, of course, it was the fragile and inefficient thinking machines of flesh and blood who had to solve the problem.
But where were the crew anyway? Surely one of them should have come around to inspect this section by now?
For all Gregg knew they might be dead. Everybody might be dead, but him. He shivered involuntarily; that was very unlikely. He'd better look around and keep his mind busy or he'd scare himself to death with thoughts like that.
The corridor outside was deserted but well lit. As Gregg pulled himself along the ladder and net arrangement covering one of its walls in the direction of the nearest cabin, the alarm siren shut off suddenly. Small scraping sounds ---made probably by men moving about---grew out of the ensuing silence, and from somewhere came a continuous, insistent clicking noise. Gregg pushed open a door lettered "Engineer---A-Drive" and floated inside. A gauge on the wall had already told him that air pressure was normal so he opened his face-plate to make talking easier;
Peterson, the Wallaby's second engineer, was still wrestling with the bottom half of his spacesuit. There was a large bump growing on his forehead, a lot of blood on his right temple and jaw, and he was muttering steadily to himself. The things he was repeating weren't nursery rhymes. From the way he kept blinking and shaking his head Gregg suspected a touch of concussion.
"Er, Mr. Peterson," Gregg said. "What happened?"
"How the . . ." Peterson didn't know what had happened---his language while telling Gregg so was vivid. Gregg, who tried to keep a one-track mind in important matters, disregarded him as he caught sight of the compartment's intercom. He pushed himself over to it and plugged in.
"Peterson!" a voice crackled at him before he could get out two words. "I thought you were dead or something. Give me the picture down there man, quick!" •
Stammering a little, Gregg told the voice that there was light and air, and no outward sign of damage. He added, ". . . But this isn't Peterson, Captain. Peterson is hurt, though not badly, I think. This is Gregg. Is there anything I can do?"
"Gregg?" There was silence for a moment, then: "Oh yes, the passenger in Storage Two." The voice became hurried. "You can give Mr.- Peterson whatever first aid you can, then tell him to report on the condition of the A-Drive to me as soon as possible. After that you'd better just stay out of the way for a while. We appreciate your offer to help, Mr. Gregg, but you must realize that we require skilled, technical assistance. Anyone without a thorough knowledge of ship operation and construction would only get in the way. Sorry, but thanks anyway."
"Captain," Gregg said quickly. "I've some experience of mining and construction in weightless conditions. I could help patch the hull for you maybe. And . . ." He caught himself just in time. He'd almost told the other that he'd once served on a ship as well---which would, of course, lead to him naming the ship. He didn't want that. He was trying desperately to forget that he'd once been Gregg of the Allendyne.
The set made a hissing sound that might have been a great sigh of relief, then: "In that case we can certainly use your help, Mr. Gregg. Can you put on Mr. Peterson now---and Gregg," the voice added, "you can stop calling me Captain. This is Second Pilot Allerton speaking. The captain is ... ill."
The engineer had joined Gregg and had already plugged in while Allerton was talking. He said: "Peterson here. What happened, or can't you tell yet?"
No, Allerton couldn't tell him anything for sure yet. The second pilot wanted Peterson to check the A-Drive unit and the chemically-fueled landing motors. The panel in the control room said they were O.K., but he wanted an on-the-spot check to make sure. First of all, though, Gregg heard him tell the engineer, he'd better see to the passengers. Nobody else could be spared to do this, it seemed.
But Peterson had an objection, a good one. I banged my face getting off the hammock," the engineer said quickly. "Nothing serious---just bloodied it up a bit---but it isn't what you'd call a sight to inspire confidence in a nervous passenger. Maybe Mr. Gregg here could..."
"Oh, all right," Allerton interrupted testily. "What does he look like?"
"Superficially undamaged," Peterson replied, giving Gregg a careful scrutiny. Dryly he added: "A bit green around the gills, of course, but with" his helmet on they don't show."
"Right." Allerton had no time for levity. "Mr. Gregg will you make that your first job, please. Go to the saloon, help any passengers needing it, and calm them down generally. If anyone is injured call for the medic, but only if you have to, because he's very busy at the moment. Above all, keep them out of the control room until we've sorted this mess out. Understood?"
"Yes sir," Gregg said. "But can you tell me what has happened? They'll want to know---that and what their chances of survival are." He stopped, holding his breath unconsciously. He badly wanted to know the answers to those questions himself.
There was a pause. Gregg could imagine Allerton in the control room, weighing things in his mind, wondering how much he should divulge for general distribution. Then the second pilot spoke a few crisp sentences and Gregg had the picture as the other saw it.
"Is that all?" Gregg almost laughed in relief.
"That, as you put it, is plenty." Something in Allerton's voice made him feel vaguely uneasy again. "Don't, of course, mention the radioactivity to the passengers---it isn't immediately important and would only frighten them. Better get cracking on it now." ---
Gregg left for the passenger salon.
The strains of a slow waltz---played with great feeling by an orchestra that seemed to be all string section---met him as he entered the salon, and, badly out of time with the music, eighteen hammocks swung wildly to and fro. Gregg quickly began moving among the hammock cables, loosening alternate pairs so as to destroy their equilibrium and bring them to rest. He saw at once that there were no casualties. The mere fact of the passengers staying put instead of trying to escape from the acceleration hammocks had saved them the bruises and abrasions suffered by Peterson and himself. A few of them were looking a bit green, Gregg thought. To be on the safe side he gave them some simple instructions and a plastic bag each. He went to the tape-player, turned off the music, and tried to look competent and reassuring.
They were a pretty varied bunch, Gregg saw; not the type to panic easily. Construction and -mining engineers, ecological technicians, and representatives of the Earth-based business concerns that supplied machinery and material to the flourishing Mars colony, were the sort of people that made up the passenger lists of most inter-planetary ships. The occasional tourist had to be extremely wealthy to indulge in space travel purely for sightseeing. Gregg pulled himself across the room to a hammock where a small, frail-seeming woman of about sixty was lying with her eyes closed, apparently unconscious.
This would undoubtedly be a tourist. She probably had the constitution of a plough-horse, he thought bitterly as he reached out to shake the bony shoulder, otherwise she'd never have been allowed to travel at all. But his bitterness, he knew, was born chiefly of envy---envy of a physical condition which, unlike his own, could take normal acceleration indefinitely. He didn't allow the feeling to show in his voice as he began reassuringly: "You're perfectly safe, ma'am. There is no danger---"
He broke off in surprise as the old woman opened her eyes slowly, twinkled them at him, and said: "I'm all right, son. I was just thinking." The voice sounded small and frail like the rest of her. "I was wondering what could have hit us such a wallop way out here." She shook her head in gentle bewilderment, and began talking to herself about cometary orbits and meteorite shoals---all in the highly rarefied language of calculus! Gregg, aware that his mouth was hanging open, shut it and did a mental double take. What sort of tourist was this ...?
His baffled, faintly amused speculation was abruptly cut short as a hand gripped his elbow---the sore one---and pain exploded through his whole arm. Gasping, he squirmed free and faced around. But he choked back the rush of angry words when he saw the passenger clearly.
"Yes?" he asked, trying to keep his voice and features neutral. He didn't think he succeeded very well.
"W-what happened to us?" The voice was low and would have been pleasant but for the discordance of fear and uncertainty running through it. Her hair was long and black, and---due to the absence of gravity---tufts of it stuck out in all directions. It reminded Gregg of a medusa, or maybe a drunken golliwog. He almost forgot the throbbing in his arm. As she brushed a tangle of hair out of her eyes, Gregg saw two things---they were a nice blue color, and there was a glint of anger coming into them. The anger seemed to be directed at him.
Obviously she had misread his expression after grabbing his arm, Gregg thought; she must have thought his grimace denoted barely concealed anger and disgust at her show of cowardice, or something like that. Women! He shook his head; he couldn't let her go on thinking like that. After all he'd been in a worse funk five minutes ago himself.
"I don't know exactly, miss," Gregg began, "but---"
"How bad is it, mister?" a voice cut in roughly. "What chance have we got of---"
"What hit us?" a third voice shouted. In a few seconds everybody was talking at once. Gregg wriggled away from another hand reaching for his mistreated elbow and yelled, "Quiet!" With a little twinge of shame then he remembered that he was supposed to be polite to passengers and added, "Please." The babble of voices died.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, hoping he sounded briskly confident---the way a proper crewman giving reassurance about some very minor mishap should sound. "You are in no immediate danger. As far as we know you are in no danger at all." He smiled, then went on. "But in case some of you may become worried unnecessarily, I'll explain the position as we know it."
As /know it, Gregg amended silently to himself. He was beginning to wonder if Allerton had told him the whole truth. Aloud, he said: "We were struck by a body of unknown size, fortunately moving at a speed relatively slow with respect to ours. The collision caused certain safety devices to go into operation, one of which automatically shut off our A-Drive and leaving us in our present weightless condition.
"The collision may have damaged our outer hull---but as not a single puncture has been discovered inside the ship, the damage, if any, must be slight. We have power, light, and an adequate air supply, so you can see that there is very little to worry about. A meteor either kills you or it just isn't worth bothering about.
"However, we're rather afraid that the premature shutting down of the A-Drive will make course corrections necessary, which will cause a few hours delay in our scheduled time of arrival. . . ." Gregg was ad-libbing a bit, but he knew enough to be pretty sure something like that would happen. Besides, it was sound psychology to be overly apologetic about a small thing; people rarely suspected then that there was anything big to merit apology.
". . . We are sorry about this and hope that it won't inconvenience anyone too much."
Gregg looked quickly at the faces of all the drifting bodies which englobed him. They showed expressions of great relief, and little, if any, fear. There would be no panic, which was something. He said: "I suggest you all remain here and take it easy. The crew are very busy men at a time like this, and you'd probably get in their way if you went wandering about the ship---even though most of you would be anxious only to help us. The customary ten-minute warning will be given before we begin acceleration." "
As Gregg moved toward the salon's exit, somebody said plaintively, "But we're not ^supposed to be hit by meteors. The probability against that happening . . ." The voice trailed off into silence.
"I know," Gregg agreed. "But just think, you all qualify for the Googol Club now." He was trying to catch the dark-haired girl's eyes, but she'd moved toward her hammock again, still angry with him. He shook his head; what difference did it make anyway? And he shouldn't allow himself to be sidetracked at a time like this. He was needed in the control room.
On the way out he restarted the tape player. The soothing strains of that wonderful string orchestra oozed from the matched wall speakers, and was quickly drowned by a rising hubbub of conversation.
"Chess, anyone?"
"Why can't we have modern stuff? This old-fashioned music just puts me to sleep ..."
"What's a googol anyway?"
The panel sliding into position behind him brought silence.
Membership in the very exclusive Googol Club should please them, Gregg thought as he pulled himself toward the nose section. Space was so big, and spaceships so relatively tiny, that in fifteen years of space flight less than sixty people had qualified. A well-known mathematician of a few decades back had coined the word "googol" in order to describe probabilities of an extremely low order ---virtual impossibilities, in fact. A "googol" was the numeral one followed by one million noughts, a very large number indeed, and one that came closest to stating the chances against meteoric collision in space. The Googol Club was an apt name.
The trouble was, Gregg thought grimly, in most cases the candidate died on attaining membership.
The control room was smaller even than he'd expected, and it was crammed with kicking, floundering bodies. It looked, Gregg thought, like an overcrowded goldfish bowl. Then he had another look and saw that there were only six people excluding himself present, and that the confusion was fairly orderly.
Three men were moving rapidly about exchanging dial readings and technicalities among themselves in low, urgent voices. A fourth hung over an acceleration chair containing a fifth, working over him and looking concerned. From the amount of gold braid worn by the figure in the chair Gregg knew that it was Captain Ferguson---and he really did look sick. The sixth man, who occupied the other acceleration chair, looked up as Gregg entered. His voice identified him as the second pilot, Allerton.
"I overheard you with the passengers," he said curtly, nodding at a speaker near him. "Nice work." Allerton's eyes shifted quickly to the recumbent captain then, and there was silence. Gregg, feeling awkward, had his mouth half open to acknowledge the compliment. He shut it again; nobody was looking at him, everybody's eyes were on Allerton.
The second pilot was young, Gregg saw; very young--- and he wasn't enjoying this situation at all. His thin, serious face was a pale, expressionless mask, but something that was very nearly panic was reflected in his frightened eyes. The chief pilot, or captain, was the supreme authority on any spaceship; after him responsibility devolved upon the second pilot. But the overwhelming responsibility that had descended on Allerton was too much for him apparently, he wanted to get out from under it. Gregg understood and felt sorry for him---and considerably more anxious for the safety of himself and the rest of the Wallaby's passengers, if this was what they had to depend on.
Allerton said suddenly: "Mercer, what do you think?" His tone was brisk, none of the emotions he was feeling were allowed to show in it.
The man working over the captain looked up. He wasn't much older than Allerton, but his mouth had a cynical twist to it that made him look as though he was. "I can't tell how serious it is without an X-ray," he said slowly, and shot a meaningful look at the main control panel. "But one thing I can tell you, he isn't fit for duty."
There was another silence, during which the crew continued to stare at Allerton.
Abruptly the second pilot seemed to get a grip on himself. To Gregg the other still looked desperately afraid and unsure of himself underneath those rigidly disciplined features, but now the fear and anxiety were different somehow, as if sealed off in some separate compartment of his mind.
"Right," Allerton said. "You'd better leave him then, and take Gregg here and start checking the outer hull. That is the more important half of your job at the moment." To Gregg he said: "Mercer will show you what needs doing; go with him. And thank you for your assistance up to now, Mr. Gregg. We appreciate it."
The thanks, Gregg thought as he followed Mercer out of the control room, must have been a mere formula of words, a polite afterthought which Gregg's non-crew status made necessary. But Gregg didn't mind Allerton treating him as one of the crew. He hadn't minded it ten years ago ...
Ten years ago.
Gregg had been engineer on the Allendyne, a two-man freighter and one of the first to be powered solely by the Allen Drive. The A-Drive, though a fast and highly-economical method of propulsion, had one serious drawback---it couldn't function within an atmosphere. That drawback didn't apply to the Allendyne however, because she was designed to remain in the vacuum of space until she fell apart through old age. Small, chemically-powered ferry rockets loaded or unloaded her cargoes while she held orbit well out in space. She was a slab-sided, aesthetically repulsive contraption---girders and grapples and cargo netting sprouted all over her---but functionally she was just about perfect. And she was fast.
The Allendyne broke speed and distance records, made new ones, and then broke those the very next trip. And so she continued, winning fame if not fortune for herself and her crew, until that last trip between Luna and Mars Station. ...
In those days there were no automatic controls or emergency cutoffs for the A-Drive. When the delicate balance of the coils that focused and accelerated the tremendous beam of ionized particles which powered the ship went out of alignment, and the defect could not be remedied, then nothing much could be done. The sweat broke on Gregg's back and forehead as he remembered it---the Drive going on the blink and beginning to deliver a wildly variable thrust when they were two-thirds of the way to Mars, the battering they'd taken from acceleration that was five G's one minute, two G's the next, and anything from one to ten G's the minute after that. For days they'd been stuck in wet and stinking spacesuits---the erratic acceleration was shaking the Allendyne apart, it leaked air in every section---navigating by sheer guesswork. If there'd been chemical motors to fall back on they could have limped home on those. But they had to rely on a cranky electronic drive or else drift until they starved to death. The number of spaceships in existence was still too few for there to be any hope of rescue.
Somehow they had managed to kick themselves into an orbit around Mars. But when men from the station came to investigate, the Allendyne's captain was dead from internal injuries, and Gregg had so many organs displaced that his X-rays looked scarcely human.
The medics did a good job on him though, and in the weightlessness of the Mars space station the badly strained heart mended itself and his displaced liver and etceteras worked themselves back into position---at least, so they had told him. But he had never joined another ship, though that was the only sort of life he wanted then---as engineer he felt to blame for the whole Allendyne mess. Instead he'd taken a construction job on Deimos, always being careful to avoid any sort of high-acceleration travel.
The thought of high acceleration, and the memory of those three days of crushing, twisting pressure and the choking nausea, even after ten years, still made him feel like...
"Are you sick or something?" The voice of Mercer beside him brought Gregg back to the present with a jolt. He rubbed sweat off his forehead with a hasty palm, and said quickly: "No, just banged my elbow. It's nothing."
"Maybe I'd better have a look before we go out . . ." Mercer began.
Gregg shook his head. "What happened to Captain Ferguson?" He wanted to change the subject.
"I didn't see it myself," Mercer replied. "Allerton and I were off duty. I think he must have been helping me the way he usually does---you know, running out our retractable radar and communications gear in readiness for turnover. To get at my control panel more easily from his seat he'd undone all but one of his straps, the one around his middle. When the crash flung him against it, it must have cut him in two." He stopped talking as they reached the airlock. Giving Gregg's open helmet a slap he said: "Seal up!"
So that was the aloof and awe-inspiring Captain Ferguson who had briefly shaken hands with him before takeoff, Gregg thought as he closed his face-plate. Not the near-godlike commander of a super ship, but instead a kindly human being who didn't mind doing part of a crewman's work for him. It had been a mistake, but there was an excuse for it.
Due to the interference set up by the ship's A-Drive, radio communication of any sort was impossible while it was in operation. Radio checks and reports were made at turnover time---a period lasting usually half an hour--- when the Drive was shut off and the ship swapped ends preparatory to begin decelerating on the second half of its journey. Turnover was a very busy time for the communications officer, because all the vital equipment that would later be used in landing had to be checked, as well as the routine reports transmitted to his destination. It was the only period during which the communications man worked, and then he worked hard. For the rest of the voyage there was nothing for him to do at all. That was the reason the Wallaby's radioman doubled as ship's medical officer.
And even then, Gregg knew, Mercer's job was absurdly easy, requiring maybe six hours actual work per voyage. But when something like this turned up .. .
"All tight?" Mercer's voice came suddenly through the helmet phones. Gregg nodded, and his suit creaked faintly as Mercer broke the outer seal of the lock and air pressure disappeared. He attached safety lines to Mercer and himself, moved the welder they'd be using into a handier position, and watched the port swing slowly open.
Halfway open it stuck.
Mercer looked at the port as if he couldn't believe his eyes. He pushed at it with his hands, then braced himself and shoved with both feet. Looking suddenly worried he wriggled his head and shoulders through the narrow opening. Over the phones Gregg heard a sharply indrawn breath, then Mercer's waist and legs followed his head and shoulders through the opening.
When nothing had happened for what to Gregg seemed a very long time, he said testily: "I'm still here, you know."
"Uh, I forgot." The voice was barely recognizable as Mercer's. After a pause it went on: "I'll give you a hand out. And you can leave the welder, we don't need it."
When Gregg had his foot magnets anchored firmly on the outer hull and had taken a look around, he saw what Mercer meant about not needing the welder. He found himself giggling suddenly, and shut his jaws with a snap.
What they needed was a new outer hull.
Every inch that he could see was covered with deep jagged-edged scratches, all running in the fore and aft direction. Some of the scratches were nearly an inch deep, and when one of these intersected a join in the hull plating, the metal was wrinkled and buckled like so much tinfoil. A few yards from Gregg, something that had once been a forty-foot retractable antenna system was nothing but a mangled stump that poked like some alien, metallic flower from its recess. Of the sliding panels which had covered it in its retracted position there was no sign at all; Gregg supposed they'd been torn away. But the ship's great, triangular gliding wings with their razor sharp leading edges seemed to have escaped damage completely. The stabilizing fins were in one piece, too.
Gregg gazed about him with the objective curiosity which the dreamer brings to bear on a particularly horrible nightmare---when he is lucky enough to be aware that he is dreaming. This was impossible. No meteorite could damage a hull in this way; nothing he knew of could do it. Gregg swallowed and said as much to Mercer.
"Just under the skin is the most vulnerable spot," the radioman said softly, apparently talking to himself. Gregg wondered briefly whether it was the communications or medical half of the officer doing the talking, and if Mercer as well as Peterson had banged his head in the collision. He didn't like the sound of the radioman's voice, and the look in the other's eyes made him distinctly uneasy.
Mercer straightened. "I'd better check anyway," he said in the same toneless voice, and began sliding his magnetized boots over the hull toward the stern. Gregg followed.
By some miracle the outside extensions of the A-Drive were undamaged, so also was the chemically fueled landing motor. Mercer and himself worked slowly from the stern forwards, examining every bent and buckled plate--- and the wiring under them if it was visible. Mercer said very little, and Gregg didn't feel as if he was being any help at all. What was biting the other anyway?
At the bow, a few strands of steel wire deeply embedded in the plating told them the nature of the "meteor" that had struck the ship. Some unknown ship at a time also unknown had lost its cargo net. The Wallaby had found it.
Mercer became quieter than ever.
In an effort to get a little conversation going Gregg said: "This is going to be a big loss to the company, isn't it? I mean, it would be cheaper to build a new ship than to repair this one. Luckily there's nothing wrong with our Drive or fuel tanks, though, or the controls. They'll be able to salvage those . . ." Gregg's attempt at conversation died and he felt his ears and face getting hot with embarrassment. Then he began to feel angry.
Mercer was looking at him, not saying anything. The look was of such withering scorn that Gregg felt like a child---and he hadn't been very bright as a child. Gregg didn't deserve a look like that from anybody. He was no tourist; he'd been space personnel once himself, the same as Mercer. He gritted his teeth in sheer rage and frustration. If there'd been enough air to support life outside his suit, there would have been a lovely fight under way just about now.
Mercer broke the silence at last.
"Will you please stop yapping about company losses and repair costs---you've no idea just how important I don't consider them. Look around you. Use the thing you call a brain as well as your eyes. Look there!" He indicated the Wallaby's once-sharp prow, now blunted and buckled, and with a tangle of wiring and small components oozing from between the damaged plating. "And there!" Mercer's finger pointed to the direct vision ports, then quickly to another section of the ship. "Can't you see that---"
"We're knocked about a bit, certainly," Gregg broke in angrily. "But that will be easily fixed on Earth. I certainly don't see why you're so blasted sarcastic about it."
"No, you don't see," Mercer said, and cursed. It wasn't a very bad swear-word, but Gregg had never heard any syllable used with such awful intensity. Then the radioman's manner changed abruptly and he went on: "Space accidents are funny things, Mr. Gregg. At the time they happen it isn't always possible to tell how serious they are. Take this case, for instance.
"This ship is a total loss---with all hands."
As he moved toward the half-open airlock, he added self-consciously, "Er, sorry if I was impolite back there, Mr. Gregg ..."
Nine men were packed into the Wallaby's tiny control room---the ship's full crew and Gregg---but the situation was too serious for anyone to see anything humorous in that ludicrous tangle of bodies. Mercer had just finished reporting his findings for the second time. Nobody had anything to say.
"On the face of it this looks hopeless," Allerton said at last. "But if there's a solution, we've got to find it now--- or at least during the next couple of hours. Any ideas, please? Quickly." He was almost pleading with them.
Ever since Mercer had told him that the passengers and crew of the Wallaby were as good as dead, Gregg had been feeling more confused than frightened. At first he had thought Mercer guilty of a joke in rather poor taste, but the grim faces of the crew told him that they took the radioman's report seriously enough. But it seemed so silly. How could a ship be lost when it hadn't a single leak and it was fully powered and manned?
Nobody was talking now, anyway. Gregg cleared his throat and said awkwardly, "I don't understand this. Why are things hopeless, and why are the next couple of hours important? We've light, air, power---"
"But we've no radio!" Mercer interrupted, angry impatience at this seeming stupidity putting a hard edge on his voice.
"I don't see---"
"Listen!" Mercer said. "You know what hit us. You saw the piece of cargo netting embedded in the nose, and the state the outer hull is in. But just so's you'll understand fully what happened, I'll tell you the whole sad story from the beginning---then maybe you'll be able to suggest something helpful..."
Gregg felt his ears beginning to burn again. Why did Mercer always make him feel about six years old? The radioman's words were polite enough, but the way he said them made it very plain that he considered Gregg a hindrance, if anything.
With an effort Gregg forced down his rising anger. Maybe it wasn't Mercer's fault; maybe it was himself who was being too touchy. It was downright stupid of him to expect the niceties of polite conversation from everybody at a time like this; he must look an awful stuffed shirt to them. Gregg tried to absorb the information content of the words, and not their tone, as Mercer continued:
"About an hour ago this ship hit---and ran through---a cargo net belonging to another ship. A cargo net is made of fine steel cable, highly flexible, and is anything up to three hundred square yards in area. It's used for transporting cargo on the outside of a ship's hull when the ship in question doesn't intend landing on a planet where air resistance would make streamlining necessary. A ship doesn't often lose its cargo net, but overloading, a sudden change of acceleration, or faulty fastening has been known to cause one to tear free of its ship. When this happens, the springy net opens out to its full area, forming a rare but very dangerous menace to navigation. So rare that we are the first to find out how deadly a menace it is."
Everyone knew all this, of course; but they listened closely. The simple statement of the problem facing them might suggest some line of attack which would never occur to them through dividing it up into highly technical and specialized pigeonholes. Gregg hoped so anyway.
"Traveling at a velocity relatively small with respect to ours---any greater and we'd not be talking about it now--- this man-made meteor hit us and went past.
"It practically sandpapered us flat."
Mercer took a deep breath and let it out by his nose. As radioman, this was the part which affected him most strongly. He continued: "Our retractable radio gear had been run out at the time, ready for use when the Drive shut down during turnover, and for general testing. It was ripped away. All of it.
"The approach and landing radar, the fore and aft vision pickups, and the radio-altimeter and air-speed indicator---all of which were set more or less flush with the outer skin---are now heavily abraded junk. We can't call for help. We can't see to land. And if we were stupid enough to try landing blind, we can't have a "talk-down" because we've no receiver. We're deaf, dumb, and blind ---completely blind, because the direct vision ports are so badly scratched we can't see through them.
"And don't ask about safety devices and alternative circuits," Mercer anticipated as Gregg opened his mouth to put exactly that question. "The ship has them, all right, but they were under the outer skin, too. You know, this ship could have taken any ordinary collision---it could have as many punctures as a sieve---and still remain fully operable. But this was no ordinary collision. Instead of knocking a hole in us the way a meteor is supposed to, this one peeled us like an orange.
"The circuits which haven't been completely ruined are in such a mess that it would take weeks to salvage anything usable from them, and then building a transmitter while wearing a spacesuit is practically impossible. But we haven't got weeks, we've only a few hours---"
"But why a few hours?" Gregg interrupted. He was beginning to realize the full extent of the disaster, but surely somebody would be able to think of something, given time. The ship was only halfway between Mars and Earth. What was the big rush?
"Our course has been pre-set and timed," Mercer explained patiently. "Two-and-a-half G's acceleration from Mars to turnover point, then half-an-hour for swapping ends and general checking up, followed by two-and-a-half G's deceleration to Earth. Once every five hours, acceleration is cut to one\* G to allow for natural functions, but that has been precalculated, too. That means we have to stick closely to our flight plan if we want to reach Earth in our present blinded state."
Mercer glanced quickly at his watch, then went on: "But the premature shutting down of the Drive when we hit the net upset the calculations---acceleration ceased approximately two hours earlier than expected. Therefore, in order to compensate for this, deceleration must be delayed by exactly the same time. In effect this means that the usual half hour turnover period is extended to a little under six hours, and two of those are gone already.
"A method of landing the ship must be found within the four hours of weightless flight remaining before deceleration begins, because we can't do a thing during it but lie down, and when we arrive there won't be time to think or do anything." Mercer's mouth went through the motions of smiling, but his heart wasn't in it. "Add to that the fact of gradually mounting radioactivity in Storage Four ---caused by the collision scattering the lead shielding bricks around the shipment of Mars-produced synthetic isotopes---which will not rise to fatal intensity if we can land and get away from this ship on time.
"That, Mr. Gregg, is the reason for all the rush."
Gregg wasn't really on a crippled ship, listening to a crew who intended flying her blindfolded into a planet. It was silly, he told himself desperately; things like that didn't happen. But there was an ache in his stomach that wasn't from hunger, and the room temperature had nothing to do with the cold sweat that prickled suddenly on his forehead and back. This was true all right, and he'd just thought of something else ...
The Wallaby might follow its precalculated course, but would the Earth be waiting at the end of it? In six hours Earth would have moved a considerable distance along her orbit, and---Gregg felt his throat go dry at the thought ---supposing the planet's orbital motion was toward them. They'd smash right into it.
Faces became even more white and strained as he relayed that thought to the others in the room. They hadn't thought of that.
Allerton reached for a scratch pad and began doing some hasty calculations. Finished, he looked up and said: "It's all right. We'll be overtaking the Earth in its orbit, so the six-hour delay will mean that we come to rest a couple of thousand miles short. We can use the extra elbow room.
"But," he ended, his voice cutting sharply through the general sigh of relief, "We've still got to land, remember."
"Let's stop trying to fool ourselves," said a voice suddenly. It sounded, Gregg thought, like the engineer, Peterson. "We can't possibly land, and you, as pilot, know that better than any of us. We're dead ducks, the lot of us, and the sooner we admit it to ourselves the better."
Allerton didn't reply, but sat staring down at his hands.. Several others in the room nodded their heads.
They all agreed with him.
"What's the matter with you all?" Gregg burst out, fear as well as anger sending his voice up in pitch. "You can't just give in like this. There must be something ..." An idea hit him suddenly. "What about the suit radios? And ---and couldn't we circle Earth under power? The flare from the A-Drive would certainly be seen, and somebody would want to investigate---"
"But we can't see the Earth to circle it," Mercer interrupted harshly. "And there's the radioactivity, remember. We can't hang around until someone gets curious, we'd be dead by that time. I tell you it's hopeless."
Gregg shut up.
It really was hopeless. Gregg admitted that now. Any hopes he had had stemmed solely from his own ignorance of the workings of the ship. The crew were just as anxious to live as he was, but unlike him, they knew when they were beaten.
This was such a stupid sort of disaster. Ships had crashed, blown up, and sometimes torn themselves apart through uncontrolled acceleration---with the gory demise of all hands. But here nobody---with the exception of Captain Ferguson---had been hurt. No bodies smashed flat by acceleration, or burst open by explosive decompression. All were sound in wind and limb. And all were as good as dead already.
Gregg felt anger growing in him again, rebellious anger. Some crazy fate must have ordained that he perish in a space-wreck, and it was going to the most fantastic lengths to make sure he did just that. When he had barely escaped with his life from the old Allendyne, he'd sworn that he was through with space travel. That insane fate must have gnashed its teeth and frothed at the mouth then ----but not for long. If Gregg---either through injury or sheer yellow cowardice, or both---would have nothing further to do with spaceships, then fate would have to maneuver things so that he would have to take another trip, so that it could take another crack at him.
And the second time it wouldn't miss.
With great cunning it arranged an understanding medical officer on Mars station, a company representative on the planet itself who was a real nice guy, and a construction job on the new Mars station which was to be hollowed out of the rock of Deimos. That last bit hadn't been hard, because a lot of people were needed for construction. But it had gone to a lot of trouble to see that Gregg made a good showing in his job, and gained rapid promotion. After several occasions when Gregg's---or Fate's--- quick thinking saved the company a fair-sized fortune in material when someone miscalculated heights and velocities while moving structural members, he suddenly found himself second-in-charge of the project, and then heading it. He liked the work, he did well at it, and the company liked a man who never seemed to want Earth-leave.
When the new Mars station was completed, Gregg was an important man. So important that other jobs were mentioned. Would Mr. Gregg like to take charge of the proposed new station on Titan? Certainly he would, it was a wonderful opportunity. Would Mr. Gregg then present himself on Earth for a top-level conference on the matter?
Mr. Gregg wouldn't.
But the understanding M.O. and the nice guy who had once been Gregg's boss ganged up on him and told him not to be a fool. He was throwing away the chance of a lifetime over a silly neurosis. Besides, the Wallaby was the safest thing in space. Fate rubbed its hands and beamed with glee. It began twisting and stretching the laws of probability to utterly fantastic lengths. This time it wouldn't miss.
And when Gregg ventured out into space again--- smack!
The eyes of all the crew watching him made Gregg abruptly aware that he was talking to himself, and in a not particularly low undertone. Embarrassed, he wondered how long that had been going on, but Allerton relieved the situation by drawing the attention away from him.
"I suppose," the second pilot said, "we should tell the passengers." He sounded doubtful about it.
An argument started about whether or not to tell the passengers, but it was a dispirited thing. Time dragged by, the way it does when there's nothing whatever to do. Like jail, Gregg thought, or being buried alive, which was a closer simile---buried in a great big complicated coffin that had cost more than a pyramid, with company. It was a great pity about the company, some of them were real nice people.
He thought about the girl with the blue eyes and mussed hair who was still probably mad at him. She didn't deserve this. Or that nice old lady who had spouted higher mathematics at him when he'd expected hysterics . , . Gregg laughed softly in spite of himself.
He had to tell the crewman beside him what he'd found to laugh about.
"Oh, that's Dr. Townsley," the man explained, "the Dr. Townsley. She was chief astronomer at Luna Observatory for a while. A mathematical genius, a quiz kid who kept on getting better as she grew up. She's a very nice sort, personally, though."
"You know," Gregg mused, "if we knew our time of collision, our velocity, mass and so on with complete accuracy, we should be able to land by dead reckoning alone---"
"We do not know those things with fair accuracy," the other interrupted. "But it wouldn't work. You're forgetting stratospheric winds---which are completely unpredictable ---and the surface of the Earth itself. We'd smash into a mountain top, or come to rest a couple of thousand feet above an ocean." He shook his head. "It's hopeless. What you need to land a ship is constant and accurate information on mass, thrust, air resistance, velocity, and distance from the surface, and for that," he ended grimly, "you need a full set of landing instruments. We haven't any."
Velocity, mass, distance. Gregg felt himself sweating again. The other's words were repeating themselves over and over inside his head, louder and louder with each repetition. His skull felt as if it would come apart any second with the sheer, thundering volume of those three words. Desperately he willed himself to stop, to go back to the sharing of the crew's despair and quiet resignation. If he didn't do that, Gregg knew, then the idea lying behind those three words would come fully formed to his mind. He didn't want that to happen. He couldn't go through that again!
It was a solution of sorts, a way out of this mess for himself and everyone else. But he couldn't tell them about it. He'd bite his tongue out first, he'd . . .
He was two people; Gregg, and somebody else. He was fighting with all the power he had to keep his mouth shut tight. But somebody else with a will just a little stronger than his was forcing it open, and forcing his lips into forming words that he did not want to say:
"I... I've got an idea."
Shut up! Gregg screamed silently at that hateful other inhabitant of his mind. Do you want to be stuck in a suit for days on end, with acceleration and your own stink tying your inside into knots? It would kill you. I know it, because I've been through it once....
But the stupid and suicidal other part of his mind would not shut up. Haltingly, he heard his voice begin to tell the men in the control room about his job on Deimos, and the abilities needed for it. And about the time a temporary structure had collapsed and he'd been able to escape from the slowly falling wreckage through his ability to judge distances and rates of fall of the loose pieces. This was different, of course, but not much.
Gregg tried desperately to choke off those words before it would be too late, but it was no good. He might as well give up the struggle, stop trying. But surprisingly, that decision when it came brought a feeling more of relief than of despair---as if it was what he'd been wanting to do all along. He listened to his own voice expanding on his idea, and even trying to sell the idea to the crewmen in the room!
"You," said the man beside him when he'd finished talking, "are mad." But a rising inflection on the last syllable made it more a question than a statement, and there was a growing brightness in the man's eyes.
Mercer said dazedly: "It might work at that. But are you sure you can do it?"
"No," Gregg said, "but is there an alternative?"
There wasn't.
Finally Allerton spoke: "We've no choice but to try it," he said, and he looked peculiarly at Gregg. "But do you know what this means, what you're letting yourself in for?"
"Yes." Gregg knew exactly what he was letting himself in for, stupid fool that he was.
The second pilot hesitated. For a moment it looked as if he might say something uncharacteristic---something warm and human that he would probably be ashamed of later. But the hesitation passed:
"In that case there's no time to waste. Peterson, Williamson, Mercer: Get suited up! And somebody dig me out a plan of the ship, quick! We've less than three hours. .."
There had been disagreement at first whether Gregg or one of the crew should do the job, but that had been settled when Allerton pointed out that any chance they had depended on the crew being at their stations. Then the matter of telling or not telling the passengers came up again. It was decided that they be kept in the dark; it would be kinder that way if the worst should happen. The decisions had been made while Peterson and another man removed a section of hull plating near the stern to make an observation niche, and Mercer ran a communications line from it direct to the control room. Not a second was wasted.
Finally, after the radio-medic had given him an emetic and cautioned him to drink as sparingly as possible, Gregg had been---installed. Three minutes later the ship began deceleration.
The second time wasn't nearly as bad as his memory of the first time had lead him to expect---nothing could be as horrible as that, Gregg realized now, because his fear-neurosis had blown that memory up out of all proportion. It was bad enough, though. He had to take two-and-a-half G's for nearly sixty hours, in an upright, standing position. He was sore and stiff and he could feel his blood being forced through each swollen, distended vein in his legs. He wondered if his two-and a-half times normal weight would cause them to rupture. The thought of bleeding to death from burst varicose veins wasn't pleasant; he tried to forget his legs. Occasionally he managed to sleep, or maybe it was that he simply blacked out. Time was stretched out to its ultimate elastic limit, but it did pass eventually.
When the ship was less than a planetary diameter out from Earth the A-Drive shut down. Gregg ordered several short bursts from the chemical motors to convert their direct approach course into a grazing ellipse, then the gyros nosed the ship over for entry into the atmosphere.
Allerton stammered something then about him being a hero; it made Gregg feel horribly embarrassed. He was, after all, trying to save his own life as well as everyone else's. Peterson, in a bellow that nearly overloaded Gregg's phones, yelled, "Ride 'em, cowboy!" and they slid into air.
Frictional heating began at once. The leading edges of their wings glowed red, then orange, then almost white hot---the vertical stabilizers, too. He could imagine what their anything-but-streamlined hull looked like all too well, though it was outside his angle of vision. The heating would be bad, he knew, because the ship was about as streamlined as a screw-nail. He hoped his suit would stand it.
He said: "Altitude about seventy miles. Speed Mach Five or Six. Heading West Nor'west. New Zealand way over on the right."
The ship dipped lower. The air screaming past became a solid thing that threatened to shake the ship apart. It tore at buckled and weakened plates, peeled them back, and ripped them off. It reached iron-clad fingers of supersonic turbulence into Gregg's observation niche and tried to pluck him out. It tried very hard. But Gregg was lashed ---tightly---with chains and steel cable to one of the main longerons that ran the length of the ship. He stayed put.
His idea had been simply that he, Gregg, should become the ship's eyes, and he had managed to convince Allerton and the others that there was a good chance of landing the ship by "talking it" down. He now lay parallel with the long axis of the ship, just above the stern stabilizers. In the Wallaby's present position he had a good view straight down toward the planetary surface, and a reasonably good one sternwards for the coming tail-down landing. If the ship got anywhere near the surface in one piece, that was. In a landing of this type the Wallaby operated as a supersonic glider, everything depended on it retaining its aerodynamic stability. But if the collision had warped just one of the flying surfaces out of true, they would be flung into a spin that would pull them apart in seconds---with fatal results, naturally, to all concerned.
Abruptly a more immediate problem forced that thought out of his mind. The plates around his observation niche were glowing red. So were the chains binding him. His suit was getting hotter, and hotter\_\_
"The heat will expand---and probably loosen---the chains slightly, but they should hold all right." Allerton's voice was harsh with strain, but he tried to sound reassuring. "It's mostly your imagination about the suit. It will heat up---but it's well insulated and will be livable . . ." the pilot's voice wavered, then went on: ". . . for as long as will be necessary to land the ship. You must have known that, Mr. Gregg."
Gregg grunted. The shoulder piece of his suit---the only part of it that he could see---was turning red. That wasn't imagination. Then it hit him. "You must have known that, Mr. Gregg!" Known what?
Suddenly, Gregg knew what.
They were crossing the sunrise line. The Indian Ocean below them was a deep blue-green shading almost into purple, and stippled with the bright orange spots of highflying alto-cumulus. Madagascar was a dun-colored shadow on the horizon, still lost in the haze of dawn. It was very, Very beautiful. Gregg barely noticed it.
So that was the reason for Allerton's peculiar look when Gregg had first told him about this idea, and the second pilot's asking him whether he knew exactly what he was doing. It explained why the crew started calling him "Mr." as if they really meant it, and their awkwardness toward the end. He'd only thought he had known what he was doing. He was a stupid, blind fool. And because of that utter stupidity, he was really going to be a hero.
The posthumous award sort.
If, or when the ship landed, Gregg now knew, his insulated suit would then be nearly as hot inside as it was outside now, and because that insulation was an extremely bad conductor of heat, it would retain that heat long after landing. He would be roasted in his own personal oven long before the crew---opening the airlock, lowering themselves on ropes, and cutting him free--- could get him out. But on the other hand, if the shock of landing snapped his heat-weakened fastenings and threw him to the ground, the same thing would happen. If the impact with hard-baked earth didn't kill him outright, then the rocket's exhaust would fry him to a crisp. Gregg cursed himself silently. He should have kept his big mouth shut and his ideas to himself. He would at least have died comfortably that way; death from radiation poisoning was an easy way to go, he had heard.
Relatively, of course.
A voice crackled suddenly from his phones, startling him.
"We're banking right, I tell you! I feel it. Straighten up! Straighten up, quick!"
"Flying straight and level," Gregg contradicted. He added viciously: "I can see. You can't."
Allerton's voice sounded, sharply rebuking the offender; then, "Sorry about that, Mr. Gregg."
Gregg understood. The strain of flying a ship with nothing but a voice that said the ship was flying level, and going so fast, and with an altitude of such and such, must be killing to men used to the accurate readings on a panel full of instruments. Gregg felt sorry for them.
But he felt sorrier for himself.
Central Africa slid beneath them, then the outline of the West Coast. They were north of the equator now, almost paralleling it. The Atlantic, cloud-covered, was a sea of dirty gray cotton wool; there was no moon. South America passed below, then their glide took them south again into the Pacific.
After one of his periodic height and velocity reports, Gregg said: "We'll have to land next time round---my suit's getting too hot." There must have been something in his voice, Allerton didn't even try to argue.
"Right. Can we make Woomera or anywhere in Australia? The passengers---"
"No. Changing direction at this speed would pull our wings off. We want a big flat uninhabited spot. The Sahara looks the best bet, it's right in our line of flight and it should be light enough to---"
An involuntary cry of pain cut the sentence off as a scalding jet of steam erupted into his face. The unused water in his suit's canteen, vaporized by the increasing heat, had blown out the valve of his drinking tube. Eyelids pressed tightly shut and choking on a lung-searing mixture of steam and air, Gregg wondered if he was blind. Then he thought, what difference did blindness make to him now? He opened his eyes.
Allerton's voice was a panicky squeaking in his phones, wanting to know what had happened and calling for height and velocity reports. Gregg coughed a couple of times and was surprised when he found that he could talk.
"But can you see?" Allerton asked, his voice harsh with urgency. "Can you see at all?"
"Yes," Gregg lied. He could see all right, but only as far as the face-plate of his helmet. The visor was completely fogged, and the drying chemicals in his helmet--- which were meant only to neutralize the water content of his breath---might not be able to handle it.
The Earth below was a gray, featureless shadow that showed neither shape nor distance.
Continuous transsonic buffeting threatened to shake the ship to pieces, and Gregg didn't know whether they were heading north, south, or straight down. He sensed changes in direction several times but didn't report them; he had to trust the inherent stability of the ship until he could see again. Gradually the sting went out of his scalded face and for a man who was going to die he didn't feel too badly.
The gray mist on his visor became the gray of clouds whipping past close below him----very close below him.
Through gaps he saw ground that wasn't particularly flat, but ahead there seemed to be few if any gaps to see through at all. They'd have to land. Now.
"Height about three miles. Velocity Mach One point Five. Start pulling her up!"
Slowly, heavily, the great ship pointed her nose up in a climb. The climb steepened, became vertical. Speed fell away to nothing as the ship stalled. It began to drop tail first---still held vertical by straining gyros---toward the cloud blanket below.
One gap in the clouds showed a flat, grayish-blue something that could be anything, another the dull brown of sand, and "yet another showed a section of jagged and rock-strewn mountainside. But there were a few houses clinging to that mountainside; they helped him judge his height and rate of fall with more accuracy than was possible with clouds.
"Thirty-five thousand feet. Fire motors!" Gregg kept calling altitude figures as the now pink-tinged clouds rushed up at them. But they were falling too fast.
"Increase to six G's for five seconds, then back to three!"
Deceleration jammed him down into his suit, almost bringing his eyes too low for his visor. There really couldn't have been anything wrong with his insides after all, or this sort of treatment would have killed him long ago. But that was small comfort now. One gap in the clouds showed flat, sandy ground, the other a mountainside that was even more forbidding at close range. The clouds directly below them, he hoped, concealed sand.
At this latitude---if his guess on that was good---cumulus during early morning floated at a height of, let's see . . . Gregg cursed. A low cloud base, practically hugging the ground. No time for corrections after passing through it. Gregg rapidly recited figures. Allerton, because he could do nothing else, treated them as being accurate and worked the ship from them.
In the instant before the clouds engulfed them, a blur of white that exploded into red on the edge of a stabilizer caught the tail of his eye, and for one wild second he felt almost hopeful. Then they hit and a mighty blow tore him free of the chains and flung him into a seething white cauldron that went down forever. Frantically he kicked out with his feet and forced his cracking arm muscles to aid them in impelling him away from the twisted wreckage of his observation post. About twenty feet away from the Wallaby's hull the water was actually cool. Gregg turned over and relaxed, floating slowly upward in the cool, green ocean. He still felt like a half-boiled lobster, but he hadn't any doubt at all that he was going to live. He looked around.
The ship was at rest on the sandy bottom of what looked like a shallow bay somewhere in Morocco. All but thirty feet of her was submerged and the outraged denizens of the sea were fleeing from the bubbles made as the high hull temperature transferred itself to the surrounding water. The cargo hatch, which was below water level, opened and two figures clad in space suits stared downwards. At the sight of Gregg floating slowly toward the surface one raised an arm in greeting---or perhaps in silent farewell, thinking him dead. But he had no intention of dying now. He raised one arm in acknowledgment.
As he broke surface and floated on his back, the tiny waves washing over his cooling suit and rocking him gently in their embrace, he saw a naval cutter flying the tricolor of France come forging around the rocky, cloud-wrapped headland he had mistaken for a mountain. There must be a seaport nearby, he thought. That would be handy; the day after tomorrow he had to see a man about a job, on Titan.
About the Author
JAMES WHITE was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and resides there, though he spent his early years in Canada. His first story was printed in 1953. He has since published well-received short stories, novellas and novels, but he is best known for the Sector General series, which deals with the difficulties involved in running a hospital that caters to many radically different life-forms.

