Collected Short Fiction, page 456
“I don’t know.” O’Banion was doubtful. “Plenty of native asterites have sold out to the Mandate. That’s why I dropped the Free Space Party—there’s nobody you can trust. And you know that the Guard keeps a pretty close watch on all of us.”
“We’ll have to solve those problems when they come up.” Drake’s big roan head lifted confidently. “Now let’s get back to this rock. Are we going to take it for a lab—or give up everything, and report it to the Guard?”
O’Banion rose from the copper chair.
“You win, Jim.” He smiled—a politician’s bland and willing smile. “I’m willing to take the chance that your attempt will keep the Guard from averting the collision in time. I’ll sign the papers, to make you and McGee my agents.”
“Thanks, Bruce.” Drake extended his brown, gigantic hand. “The rock is ours!”
But O’Banion stepped back, with a heavy gesture. The flowing white hair and dense black brows made him a commanding figure. Standing by the thronelike seat, against the giddy gulf of space, he struck an orator’s pose.
“You have my permission, Jim.” His voice was rich with an orator’s eloquence. “But now, before we settle any conclusions, let’s look at the difficulties from your point of view.”
Drake’s hollow eyes went dark with disappointment. Defeat bit into his space-burned cheeks. He remembered that O’Banion had been a politician, and he had never learned to deal with politicians.
“First, there is the question of time.” O’Banion spoke in a ringing public voice, as if that empty metal room had held a hundred men. “You have just eleven days to file notice and show proof. The Guard isn’t likely to be satisfied with any mere proof of ability—you’ll have to show the orbit already changed. That’s mighty little time—and they won’t give you a second more.”
“Time enough,” Drake said. “If we get busy.”
“Second, there’s the question of money.” O’Banion still addressed an imaginary multitude. “Money will be required, for your filing fees, labor, equipment and fuel-uranium. Unfortunately, I am . . . er . . . frankly, all but bankrupt. Have you and McGee any money?”
Drake paused on the threadbare rug, his confident stride interrupted.
“No,” he admitted awkwardly. “It’s true we had hoped to borrow from you, Bruce—on the Good-by fane. This job shouldn’t cost so much—including five thousand for the peegee unit, a fair estimate would be nine thousand Mandate dollars.” His big hands clenched helplessly. “I don’t know where we can get even that.”
Ann O’Banion slipped out of her chair, beside the neglected tea urn. Her tanned hand lifted quickly to her throat. Something held her for a breathless moment before she made a decisive little toss of her dark, lustrous hair.
“I have money, Seetee.” Her voice was low, vibrant. “Nearly ten thousand dollars—mother left it to me, to spend a year on Earth.” The bright voice seemed to catch, but she smiled. “I want you to use it.”
“I couldn’t,” Drake protested. “I know how you’ve been planning on that trip.” His roan head shook wearily. “After all, things might go wrong.”
“Please.” The lightness was back in her voice. “Don’t you believe in your own proposition? You’ve sold me. Can’t I buy a share in your lab?”
“Thanks, Ann.” The giant grew tall again. “We won’t fail.”
O’Banion turned heavily. “Daughter, have you considered—”
“The money’s mine, dad,” she said quietly. “That’s what I want to do with it.” She made a malicious little smile. “Unless you can persuade Seetee to give the whole thing up.”
O’Banion gulped and tried to recover his oratorical stance.
“Jim, I was begging you to reconsider the difficulties of your project.” His tone was somewhat chastened. “Besides the matters of time and money—and the unfriendly attitude of the government—I want you to think of the danger.
“I understand that the asteroid is crossing a drift area. That first collision doubtless made a lot more dust—and there’s no blinker, now, to mark it. Maybe you know a lot more about seetee than anybody else. But even you are not immune to gamma burns.”
Ann saw the pain of memory on his face, and flashed her father a look of silent protest. But Drake’s time-bent shoulders shrugged, with the same weary patience.
“That’s just a chance we’ve got to take.”
Yielding to his daughter’s glance, O’Banion bowed his leonine head. “Then go on.” He offered his hand. “I think you are both reckless fools, but I’ll say no more. What are your plans?”
“We have drilling machinery.” Drake’s voice went deep with relief. “Old, but it will have to do. We’ll round up a crew, and go straight to the rock. I’ll start drilling, while McGee goes on to Pallasport to buy the peegee unit. He can file the notice of intention, before he leaves. Pallas is only eighteen million kilometers, now—lucky it’s so close. He should be back with the unit in six or seven days. We should have it installed and working, with any luck at all, two or three days before the limit. But I must be moving.”
He strode toward the door, purpose once more a lifting, driving force within his gaunt and awkward frame. Ann ran after him, calling eagerly:
“Wait, Seetee! Have you a name for it—our new planet?” Drake’s brain was already full of engineering problems—questions of meters a day, in hard nickel-iron; of liters of expensive water for the drill, and kilograms of precious fuel-uranium; of paragravity thrust, against some five billion tons of mass. His roan head shook vaguely, and Ann cried: “Then I have. Its destiny is to liberate us all from the Mandate. Let’s call it Freedonia!”
Drake nodded absently. He liked the name, but his mind was full of more important things. The problem of averting the collision seemed suddenly overwhelming, now that he was face to face with it. Hastening toward the door, he stumbled awkwardly on his bad left knee. The old gamma burn seemed to cause more frequent twinges, now, than it had for many years. The needle stab of burning pain made him conscious of the burden of his age.
IV.
The frosty black of space struck Drake with a cold impact, when he limped out between the tarnished chromium veranda columns that O’Banion had set up nearly forty years ago. The bleak landscape tumbled dizzily out of sight, so that the world of open space loomed shockingly near—a hostile world, never meant for men.
Drake regarded that spatial world with emotions as complex as its own changing aspects of dark danger and glittering promise. He knew it well. Perhaps he even loved its stark, illimitable freedom, for the safety of any conquered planet was apt to become a weary prison to him. Yet long familiarity had filled its empty gulf with a thousand conditions of invincible hostility. He seldom feared it, but he had learned a deep and patient respect for the laws of its foreign, inexorable nature. After all the triumphs of the spatial engineers, the void’s dark and splendid face still leered with the endless threats of sucking vacuum, probing cold, burning radiation, deadly meteor-drift.
Suddenly, Drake felt too old to meet those familiar and ruthless enemies alone. He wanted to call his son—tall, bronzed Rick Drake, with all the youthful strength that he had lost. A job like this should be no more than play for him, as it once had been for the roan and haggard giant.
It wouldn’t be hard to call. Pallas was eighteen million kilometers away—so far that it was only a point in the ominous sky; but the photophone’s quick finger of modulated light, carrying the small vibrations of the human voice, could span that hostile gulf in something like a minute. Rick himself had called from Pallas, half a dozen times, with cheerful, incoherent greeting. It would be simple enough to call—yet still it was impossible.
Drake’s troubled thoughts dropped for a moment into the past. Back to Earth, with its boundless wealth of air, with its oceans that seemed vast and invincible as space itself; back to the huge, dazzling concrete spaceport at Panama City, just before the war; to palms and hibiscus and incredible sea beaches; to the towering white, air-conditioned city that housed the home offices of Interplanet, then master of all the planets.
His dream was youthful, then, nearly thirty years ago. He was a lank, young, red-haired giant, mighty with its power. He had gone to Earth to interest the directors of Interplanet in contraterrene research, and he was almost successful. He found one influential man, alive enough to see that the corporation’s ancient supremacy was far gone in decay, great enough to sense the greatness of his dream. But the war broke out, with the stunning treachery of the Martian raid on Deimos Station; Director Rogers was ordered to join the fleet, and he died in the Battle of Eros; Drake found himself a suspect alien, threatened with internment.
The daughter of Director Rogers, however, used her influence to help him get passage on the last ship for Pallas, before the asterites were openly involved in the war. And she came with him.
Evadne Rogers believed in the dream. She had lived a saga of her own, not without its splendor. She was brave enough to follow him out of the aristocratic luxury of Interplanet’s capital, out to meet the savage hostility of the frontier against the stars. Rick was born on Obania, forty million kilometers from the nearest doctor. She saw their dream defeated, first by the war’s disasters, and even after victory, again by the greater disaster of peace under the Mandate. Her loyalty never yielded to the letters of her wealthy relatives on Earth, inviting her back to the luxury she had left—though she insisted on sending Rick back to them, when he was ten years old, to be prepared for the great school of spatial engineering at Panama City. Even her death had a hint of the epic. Wearing dirigible space-armor, she was helping Drake survey a bare little rock where they hoped to build the long-delayed contraterrene laboratory, when she was killed by the same seetee meteor that had burned his knee.
It was five years ago that Rick, twenty-one, came back from Earth with his new degree. Drake and Rob McGee met him at Pallasport, with the Good-by Jane. They had planned to take him into their partnership at once.
A dull, throbbing ache came into old Jim Drake’s throat, even now, when he thought of that meeting. The Interplanet liner was a splendid, tapered silver column, standing on the broad busy field at Pallasport. The locks yawned open, in the mighty base of it. The gangways clattered into place, and Rick came bounding down. He was the awkward friendly giant that Drake had longed to see, with a crushing handclasp and a joyous grin. He was thrilled to be returned to the frontier world of his boyhood, and he showed a shy delight in his father and Rob McGee. Nothing marred the reunion—until they came to speak of the future.
McGee had taken them into a little bar, to celebrate with a round of drinks. Rick was impressed to discover that Pallas, capital of all the Mandate, was not yet completely terraformed—although the city and a score of mining centers had their own paragravity units a few miles beneath the surface, there was as yet no peegee installation at the center of gravity.
“That’s the sort of job I want to do!” Rick pushed a big, eager hand through his stiff, bronze hair—it was the same color, Drake noted fondly, as his mother’s had been. “That would open up the whole planet—make room for millions of settlers. I’ll talk to Mr. Vickers about it.”
Vickers, Drake recalled with a faint unease, was the new branch manager of Interplanet. But he was deeply stirred to see his son’s enthusiasm for the science of spatial engineering. Rick could help mightily to forge his old and difficult dream into reality.
With a shy and awkward gesture, the youthful giant was talking on. “Don’t you see what we can do? Build a new world, almost! A modern paragravity cracking plant could supply chemicals for great hydroponic plantations—make the asteroids independent of food imports.”
“Hold on, son—I’m afraid they didn’t teach you much practical politics, to go with your engineering,” Drake told him soberly. “The Mandate commissioners don’t want too many people out here, or too much independence. They do want the food situation like it is, for a club.”
Rick’s face showed a surprised, half-indignant protest. Already a little frightened, Drake decided it was time to speak of the future. He began to lead up to it, anxiously:
“Besides, Rick, it would be too difficult and expensive to open a shaft to the center of Pallas, with present equipment—through two hundred and fifty kilometers of solid nickel-iron.” His voice began to ring. “Now, as soon as we’ve mastered seetee, such things will be easier. With a seetee nitrogen torch—”
Drake stopped himself, painfully. He saw the look oh Rick’s face. No words were necessary. He could see what his tall son thought about the dream. Awkwardly he turned to order another drink, trying to hide the heartbreak on his face.
Rob McGee hadn’t noticed—the complexities of space and time were all transparent to his odd perception, but human beings refused to obey any such beautiful laws as ruled celestial motions, and their stubborn irrationality often baffled him.
“Rick, you remember the Good-by Jane?” McGee spoke gently, obliviously, into that aching pause. “We’ve brought her, to take you back to Obania. From now on, we’re Drake, McGee & Drake.”
Rick didn’t say very much. His untanned face showed trouble, and he fumbled awkwardly with his whiskey-soda glass. “I’m sorry, dad—but I’d better tell you now.” Incoherently, he was trying to be as gentle as he could. “I’ve signed a contract, to go to work for Interplanet.”
Numbed with the hurt of it, Drake spilled his drink and paid no heed. Suddenly he understood many things that his son didn’t say. He could see the pity, on Rick’s troubled face, for two old and futile men. The Good-by Jane, in Rick’s modern expansive scheme of things, was only an antiquated joke. Obania was only a funny little ghost planet; Drake & McGee, spatial engineers, were quaint, unfortunate relics of another era.
Drake could even understand what had happened to his son. Eleven years had made an Earthman of him. Rick felt the Earthman’s pride in the splendid ancient might of Interplanet, and the cultured Earthman’s superiority to the native asterite. His mother’s aristocratic relatives had taught him their belief that Drake had squandered his life, and hers, upon a crazy chimera—Drake knew that Evadne had been happy with him, for all their misfortune, but the relatives had never accepted that.
Nor could Drake blame his son. After all, his influential connections would assure Rick of a successful career in Interplanet, and Drake knew well enough that the road outside was hard. In the end, contraterrene power might turn out to be the chimera the relatives believed it—for forty years of effort had brought the goal no nearer.
Drake made no attempt to persuade Rick to break the contract. He knew it would be futile, and he didn’t want a quarrel. Rick shyly presented a girl he had met on the liner—a pretty redhead, who was somebody’s niece. Drake and McGee took them for a hop around Pallas, in the oh-so-quaint little Good-by Jane, and then went back alone to Obania.
Rick had called several times, in the five years since. He seemed less shy and incoherent. Drake knew, proudly, that he was making good. Awkwardly he had tried to learn if Drake needed money—and Drake managed to conceal the need.
Now, the photophone’s slender ray could carry his voice to Rick in something like a minute—but that call was quite impossible. For Rick was loyal to Interplanet, and the conquest of contraterrene matter was still a crazy dream.
Pausing to rest his aching knee, between those tarnished chromium pillars in front of old Bruce O’Banion’s mansion, Drake tried to square his gaunt and weary shoulders; he lifted his blue, hollow eyes to meet the dark and hostile leer of space, alone.
But he was not alone. Ann O’Banion came out to drive him back to the one-street town under the black metallic cliffs. She didn’t say that she had seen him stumble; she spoke only of the urgency of time.
In Interplanet’s shining new branch office—all rhodium-plate and blue fluorescent glass, it was the only new building in the town—she wrote him a check for nine thousand Mandate dollars. Interplanet, even since the war, was still banker for all the Mandate; slowly the corporation was shaping military defeat into economic victory.
Rob McGee was waiting at the rusty little office. They signed an agreement, making Ann a silent partner in the firm of spatial engineers. McGee found a dusty bottle of synthetic rum, and they drank a toast to the future of Freedonia.
“Now, let’s talk as little as we can,” Drake cautioned. “It may be several days before anybody else finds out about the collision orbit—that’s all that gives us a chance. Say we’re going prospecting—that’s near enough to the truth.”
Ann nodded, asking, “Who are you afraid of?”
“Your friend, von Sudenhorst.” Drake smiled briefly at her grimace. “He’s young, ambitious, and extremely bored with Obania. He’s itching for a chance at a conspicuous bit of duty—that might get him promoted to a bigger post.”
“But we aren’t breaking any laws,” Ann protested.
“Laws have to be interpreted,” Drake reminded her. “And the Guard doesn’t often interpret them in favor of us asterites. If von Sudenhorst finds out about the orbit, he might take over Freedonia before we get the notice filed.”
“He won’t find out from me,” Ann said positively.
They parted then, on separate errands. Ann returned to the gleaming Interplanet building, which was general store as well as bank and shipping office, with Drake’s scrawled list of supplies to be delivered aboard the Good-by Jane.
Rob McGee had been sorting over the ancient mining tools stored in the back room behind the little office. He went down to the secondhand store at the foot of the street, to look for spare cutter-heads for the antique oxyhydrogen drill.
Drake went in search of men. He wanted an experienced foreman, at least three hard-rock drillers and terraformers, and four swampers. Since the mines shut down, however, most of the skilled and the youthful had left Obania. Combing the Meteor Palace Bar, the domino parlor, and the Mandate relief office, Drake collected only five men—two elderly miners, a discharged guardsman, a Venusian-Chinese cook, and a one-legged hard-rock man named Mike Moran.
