The COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works, page 336
That's where their ingenuity fell short. One man. A man is not a gadget. He cannot be assessed as a gadget, be treated like one, be made to function like one.
Somewhat belatedly they'd recognized the fact after the third lunatic had been removed from his post. Three mental breakdowns in an organization numbering four hundred isolated stations is not a large proportion—less than one per cent. But it was three too many. And the number might grow larger as time caught up with those slower to break. They'd cogitated the problem. Ah, they'd exclaimed, preconditioning is the answer.
So the next candidates had been put through a scientifically designed mill, a formidable long-term course calculated to break the breakable and leave a tough residue suitable for service. It hadn't worked out. The need for men was too great, the number of candidates too few, and they'd broken too many.
After that they'd tried half a dozen other theories with no better luck. Precept and practice don't always accord. The boot fits ill when fastened on the other foot. The bigbrains could have done with a taste of reality themselves.
Their latest fad was the tieline theory. Man, they asserted, is born of Earth and needs a tieline to Earth. Give him that and he's fastened to sanity. He can hang on through ten years of solitary confinement.
What's a tieline?
Cherchez la femme, suggested one, looking worldly-wise over his spectacles. They'd discussed it, dismissed it on a dozen counts. Imaginable complications ranged all the way from murder to babies. Besides, it would mean the periodic haul of supplies doubled in mass for the sake of a nontechnical entity.
A dog, then? All right for those few worlds on which a dog can fend for itself. But what about other worlds, such as Bunda? Space-loads are estimated in ounces, not tons, and the time is not yet for shipping loads of dog food around the cosmos for the benefit of single, widely-scattered mutts.
The first attempted tieline was makeshift and wholly mechanical and did have the virtue of countering the silence that was the curse of Bunda. The annual supply ship dropped its load of food along with a recorder and a dozen tapes.
FOR THE next month he had noise, not only words and music, but also characteristic Earth-sounds: the roar of holiday traffic along a turnpike, the rumble of trains, the chimes of Sunday morning bells, the high-pitched chatter of children pouring out of school. The aural evidence of life far, far away. At the first hearing he was delighted. At the twentieth he was bored. There was no thirtieth time.
The output needle jumped, wiggled, fell back. The recorder stood abandoned in a corner. Out there in the star-mists were his lonely brothers. He could not talk even to them, or listen to them. They were out of radio-reach and their worlds turned like his. He sat and watched the needle and felt Bunda's awful hush.
Eight months ago, Earth-time, the supply ship had brought evidence that they were still fooling with the tieline theory. It had dropped the annual stores along with a little box and a small book before flaring away into the chasm.
Detaching the box from its small 'chute, he'd opened it, found himself confronted by a bug-eyed monster. The thing had turned its triangular head and stared at him with horrid coldness. Then it had moved long, awkward limbs to clamber out. He'd shut the box hurriedly and consulted the book.
This informed him that the new arrival's name was Jason, that it was a praying mantis, tame, harmless and fully capable of looking after itself on Bunda. Jason, they said, had been diet-tested on several species of Bunda insects and had eaten them avidly. In some parts of Earth the mantis was a pet of children.
That showed how their stubbornly objective minds worked. They'd now decided that the tieline must be a living creature, a natural-born Terran. Also that it must be capable of sustaining itself on an alien planet. But, being in armchairs and not lost in the starfield, they'd overlooked the essential quality of familiarity. They'd have done better to have sent him an alley cat. He didn't like cats and there was no milk, but at least the seas were full of fish. Moreover, cats make noises. They purr and yowl. The thing in the box was menacing and silent.
Who in the Western Isles had ever encountered a praying mantis? He'd never seen one in his life before. It resembled the nightmare idea of a Martian.
He never handled it once. He kept it in its box where it stood on long legs, eerily turning its head, watching him icy-eyed and never uttering a sound. The first day he gave it a Bunda hopper caught among the lichens, was sickened by the way it bit off the victim's head and chewed. A couple of times he dreamed of a gigantic Jason towering over him, mouth opening like a big, hungry trap.
After a couple of weeks he'd had enough. Taking the box six miles to the north, he opened it, tilted it, watched Jason scuttle into the shrubs and lichens. It favored him with one basilisk stare before he went away. There were two Terrans on Bunda and they were lost to each other.
"Bunda One. Eep-eep-bop!"
Jump, wiggle, fall. No word of acknowledgment from an assisted ship fleeing through the distant dark. No sounds of life save those impressed on a magnetic tape. No reality within an alien reality daily growing more dreamlike and elusive.
Might be worth sabotaging the station for the sake of repairing it and getting it back into action, thus creating pretended justification for one's own existence. But a thousand life-forms on one ship might pay for it with death. The price of monotony-busting amusement was too dear.
Or he could spend off-duty hours making a northward search for the tiny monster, calling, calling and hoping not to find it.
"Jason! Jason!"
And somewhere among the crags and crevices a pointed, bulgy-eyed head turning toward his voice—and no reply coming back. If Jason had been capable of chirruping like a cricket maybe he could have endured the creature, grown to love it knowing that the squeaks were mantis-talk. But Jason was as grim and silent as the hushed, forbidding world of Bunda.
He made final check of the transmitter, monitored its eight slaves calling in the distance, went to bed, lay there wondering for the thousandth time whether he would see the ten years through or whether he was doomed to crack before the end.
If ever he did go nuts the scientists on Earth would promptly use him as a guinea pig, a test-piece for them to work upon in an effort to determine cause and cure. Yes, they were clever, very clever. But there were some things about which they weren't so hot. With that thought he fell into uneasy sleep.
SEEMING stupidity sometimes proves to be cleverness compelled to take its time. All problems can be worked out given weeks, months or years instead of seconds or minutes. The time for this one was now.
The tramp ship Henderson rolled out of the starfield, descended on wheezy antigravs, hung momentarily two thousand feet above the beacon. It lacked power reserves to land, take off and still make its appointed rounds. It merely paused, dropped the latest tieline thought up by the bigbrains and beat it back into the dark. The cargo swirled down into the Bunda-night like a flurry of big gray snowflakes.
At dawn he awoke unconscious of the visit. The supply ship was not due for another four months. He glanced bleary-eyed at his clock, frowned with bafflement over what had caused him to wake so early. Something, a vague something that had intruded in his dreams. Annoying, when dreams are your chief enjoyment.
What was it?
A sound. A noise!
He sat up, listened. There again, outside, muffled by distance. The wail of an abandoned cat. No, not that. More like the cry of a lost baby.
Imagination. The cracking process must be starting already. He'd lasted four years. Some other hermit would put in the remaining six. He was hearing things and that's a sure sign of mental unbalance.
Again the sound.
Getting out of bed, he dressed himself, examined himself in the mirror. It wasn't an idiot face that looked back at him. A little strained, perhaps, but otherwise normal. He went to the control room, studied the instrument board. Jump, wiggle, fall.
"Bunda One. Eep-eep-bop!"
Everything all right there. He returned to his own room, stretched his ears, listened. Somebody—some thing—was out there wailing in the dawnlight by the swelling waters. What?
Unfastening the door with nervous fingers, he looked out. The sound boosted, poured around him, all over him, flooded through his soul. He stood there a long time, hands trembling. Then gathering himself together he raced to the storeroom, stuffed his pockets with biscuits, filled both hands.
He stumbled with sheer speed as he bolted out the door. He ran headlong down to the shingly beach, loaded hands held out, his breath coming in glad gasps.
And there at the lazy ocean's edge he stood with shining eyes, arms held wide as seven hundred seagulls swirled around him, took biscuit from his fingers, strutted between his feet.
All the time they screamed the hymn of the islands, the song of the everlasting sea, the wild, wild music that was truly Earth's.
The End
Call Him Dead
Astounding – August, September, October 1955
(revised to "Three to Conquer" 1956)
PART ONE
Astounding – April 1953
Chapter One
HE WAS a squat man with immense breadth of shoulder, hairy hands, bushy eyebrows. He maintained constant, unblinking attention on the road as he drove into trouble at sixty miles an hour.
It was April 1, 1980. All Fools' Day, he thought wryly. They had two or three moving roadways in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York. Also six air-tight stations up there on the Moon. But, except for rear engines and doped-alcohol fuel, motor cars were little different from those of thirty years ago. Helicopters remained beyond reach of the average pocket. Taxpayers still skinned themselves month after month—and brooded over it every All Fools' Day.
For the past ten years there had been talk of mass-produced helicopters at two thousand dollars apiece. Nothing had ever come of it. Maybe it was just as well considering the likely death-roll when drunks, halfwits and hot-rod enthusiasts took to the skies.
For the same ten years the scientific write-up boys had been forecasting a landing upon Mars within the next five. Nothing had come of that either. Sometimes he doubted whether anything ever would come of it. A minimum of sixty million miles is a terrible distance to cover for a gadget that squirts itself along.
His train of thought snapped when an unknown voice sounded within his peculiar mind saying, "It hurts! Oh, God, it ... hurts!"
The road was wide and straight and thickly wooded on both sides. The only other vehicle in sight was a lumbering tanker mounting a slight slope two miles ahead. A glance in the rearview mirror confirmed that there was nothing behind. Despite this, the squat man registered no surprise.
"Hurts!" repeated the voice, weakening rapidly. "Didn't give me a chance."
The squat man slowed until his speedometer needle trembled under twenty. He made a dexterous U-turn, drove back to a rutted dirt road leading into the woods. He nosed the car up the road knowing full well that the voice had come from that direction.
In the first five hundred yards there were two sharp bends, one to the right, one to the left. Around the second bend a car stood squarely in the middle of the road, effectively blocking it to all comers. The squat man braked hard, slewed his bonnet over the grass verge to avoid a collision.
He got out, leaving his door open. Speculatively he eyed the other car while he stood still and listened with his mind rather than with his ears.
"Betty—" whispered the eerie voice. "Three fellows and a pain in the guts. Darkness. Can't get up. Ought to tell Forst. Where are you, Forst?"
Turning, the squat man ran heavily along the verge, clambered down a short bank, found the man in the ditch. He did not look long, not more than two seconds. Mounting the bank with furious haste, he dug a flask out of his car-pocket, took it down the ditch.
Raising the other's head he poured a thin trickle of spirit between pale lips. He did not say anything, asked no questions, uttered no words of comfort and encouragement. Cradling the head on his forearm he tried only to maintain the fading spark of life. And while he did it, he listened. Not with his ears.
"Tall, blond guy," murmured the other's mind, coming from a vast distance. "Blasted at me ... others got out ... slung me off the road. Betty, I'm—"
The mental stream cut off. The squat man dropped his flask, lowered the other's head, examined him without touching. Dead beyond doubt. He made note of the number on the badge fixed to the uniform jacket.
LEAVING the body in the ditch he went to the stalled car, sat in the driver's seat, found a hand-microphone, held it while he fiddled tentatively with switches. He was far from sure how the thing operated but intended to find out.
"Hello!" he called, working a likely lever. "Hello!"
Immediately a voice responded, "State police barracks. Sergeant Forst."
"My name is Wade Harper. Can you hear me?"
"Barracks," repeated the voice, a trifle impatiently. "Forst speaking."
Evidently he couldn't hear. Harper tried again, got something adjusted. "Hello! Can you hear me?"
"Yes. What goes on there?"
"I'm calling from Car Seventeen. One of your officers is dead in a ditch nearby." He gave the badge number.
There sounded a quick intake of breath, then, "That's Bob Alderson. Where are you now?"
Harper gave it in detail, added, "He's been shot twice, once in the belly and once through the neck. It must have happened recently because he was still living when I got to him. He died in my arms."
"Did he tell anything?"
"Yes, a tall, fair-haired fellow did it. There were others with him, no number stated, no descriptions."
"Were they in a car?"
"He didn't say but you can bet on that."
"Stay where you are, Mr. Harper. We'll be right out."
There sounded a sharp click and a new voice broke in with, "Car Nine, Lee and Bates. We picked that up, sarge, and are on our way. We're two miles off."
Replacing the microphone and switching off, Harper returned to the top of the bank, gazed moodily down upon the body. Somebody named Betty was going to know heartbreak this night.
Within a few minutes heavy tires squealed on the main artery, a car came into the dirt road. Harper raced round the bend, signaled it down lest it hit the block. Two state troopers piled out. They had the bitter air of men who owed somebody plenty and intended to pay it with interest.
They went down into the ditch, came up, said, "He's gone all right. Someone is going to be sorry."
"I hope so," said Harper.
The taller of the two surveyed him curiously and asked, "How did you happen to find him way up here?"
Harper was prepared for that. He had practiced the art of concealment since childhood. At the ripe age of nine he had learned that knowledge can be resented, that the means of acquiring it can be feared.
"I wanted to pay dog-respects to a tree. Found this car planted in the road. First thing I thought was that somebody else had the same idea. Then I heard him moan in the ditch."
"Five hundred yards is a heck of a long way to come just for that," observed the tall one, sharp-eyed and shrewd. "Fifty would have been enough, wouldn't it?"
"Maybe."
"How much farther would you have gone if the road hadn't been blocked?"
"Couldn't say." He shrugged indifferently. "A fellow just looks for a spot that strikes his fancy and stops there, doesn't he?"
"I wouldn't know," said the trooper.
"You ought to," said Harper. "Unless you are physically unique."
"What d'you mean by that?" asked the trooper, showing sudden toughness.
The second trooper chipped in with, "Lay off, Bert. Ledsom will be here any minute. Let him handle this. It's what he's paid for."
Bert grunted, went silent. The pair started hunting around for evidence. In short time they found fresh tire tracks across a soft patch twenty yards higher up the road. Soon afterward they discovered a shell in the grass. They were examining the shell when three more cars arrived.
A MAN with a bag got down into the ditch, came up after a while, said wearily, "Two bullets about .32 caliber. Either could have caused death. No burn marks. Fired from range of a few yards. The slugs aren't in him."
Another with captain's chevrons spoke to the two nearest troopers. "Here's the ambulance—lift him out of there." To several others, "You boys look for those slugs. We've got to find them." To Lee and Bates he said, "Put a plank over those tracks. We'll make moulage casts of them. See if you can pick up the other shell. Work up the road for the gun as well: the punk may have thrown it away."
He joined Harper, informed, "I'm Captain Ledsom. It was smart of you to use Alderson's radio to get us."
"Seemed the sensible thing to do."
"People don't always do the sensible thing, especially if they're anxious not to be involved." Ledsom surveyed him with cool authority. "How did you find Alderson?"
"I trundled up here to answer the call of nature. And there he was."
"Came up quite a piece, didn't you?
"You know how it is. On a narrow track like this you tend to look for a spot where you can turn the car to go back."
"Yes, I guess so. You wouldn't want to park on a bend either." He appeared satisfied with the explanation but Harper could see with complete clarity that his mind suspected everyone within fifty miles radius. "Exactly what did Alderson say before he passed out?"
"He mumbled about Betty and—"
"His wife," interjected Ledsom frowning. "I hate having to tell her about this."
"He mentioned a big, blond fellow blasting at him. Also that there were others who tossed him into the ditch. He gave no more details unfortunately. He was on his last lap and his mind was rambling."
