Collected Short Fiction, page 458
Drake took the whole crew into his confidence, in an effort to speed the work. Standing before them in the mess shelter, a tired and aged giant, he spoke with a patient urgency:
“Men, this is not just an ordinary prospect hole.” He waited for the fat yellow cook to pour hot tea. “I’d better tell you, we’re trying to terraform this rock—to steer it off a collision orbit. We had ten days, from the time we landed, before the legal limit—”
“Bitter swill!” Biggs spat his tea at the cook’s feet, and snarled at Drake: “Are you crazy, mister? This bloody rock ain’t worth terraforming!”
“You’ll get a bonus, if the job is done in time.” Drake said nothing of his dream. “But we’re eight meters behind schedule, already. We’ve got to have the foundation ready, to install that unit at the center of gravity, when McGee gets back with it.” His voice dropped humbly. “Will you help us make up that eight meters?”
The rest all cheerfully pledged their efforts, with the bitter tea. But Biggs had never learned to like that spaceman’s drink, and he sat ominously silent.
Although Drake and Ann cut five sections on their next shift, it proved impossible to make up the missing eight meters. Shift after shift, disaster continued to haunt Mike Moran and his crew. Drake and the girl were unexpectedly called to help with emergency repairs, until they both were drawn with need of sleep.
First, the cutter head stuck. For want of proper adjustment of the oxyhydrogen jets, to burn the iron cleanly from the cut, molten metal congealed about the cutter-head, welding it fast. It required seven hours to cut the stem free, install a spare head, and start the drill again.
The next day Biggs, working as swamper, somehow let a twenty-ton core roll back into the pit. It fell very slowly, to the slight gravitation. The men had time to get out of the way. But its silent impact smashed the section cutter. Repairs again consumed the rest of the shift.
By that time the shaft was twenty meters behind schedule. Drake and Ann managed to gain one section, but the other crew lost it again—because of a fall of contraterrene dust.
The tiny particles fell invisibly, exploding against the black iron with small, instantaneous puffs of blinding blue flame, silent and deadly. None fell into the pit, but Biggs and the other miner, frantic, fled to the rather more dangerous location of the camp.
The fall soon ceased, and Drake went back with Ann and old Galloway to begin the next shift. They found Mike Moran still tending the engine. But the abandoned cutter-head was stuck again, and it took them half the shift to replace it with their last spare.
McGee was overdue.
Seven days were gone, and all this weary shift Drake had anxiously watched the mouth of the pit, looking for the photophone light of the Good-by Jane. He had seen only the ragged patch of stars and nebula, sliding across in remote splendor as the rock turned.
Beneath those glowing fire-hewn walls, Drake and Ann stood beside the little rusty derrick. A winch spun silently, and a thin racing cable hauled up the last section they had cut. At the levers, Drake was glad that the stiff bulk of oversize armor concealed his bitter fatigue. The red head lamp brought Ann’s cheerful voice:
“Just thirteen bites left, to the center of gravity.” She marked a tally on the iron wall, with a blue fluorescent pencil. “That isn’t so far, Seetee!”
“Too far!” His voice was dull. “We should have been done. Rob should have been back with the unit yesterday. I don’t know what—” He checked the words; he didn’t want to break her gay, determined optimism.
“We still have three days,” she reminded him hopefully, “before the Guard can put us off.”
Drake didn’t answer. He knew of nothing they could do, in three days, to move five billion tons of iron. He intended to keep on trying, simply because he wasn’t used to quitting. But he could see no hope.
The heavy core came out of the shaft, fast to the powerful little electromagnet. Ann stepped on the iron cylinder, to ride it out of the pit. The swamper’s task had a pleasant spice of danger and she enjoyed it. Drake hadn’t wanted her to take it, but Ann knew how to get her way.
Mike Moran and his crew came out for the next shift. That turned out to be the last—for old Hale doubled up with a sudden agony of spaceman’s colic, and had to go back to the shelter; and Biggs, taking his place on the drill, somehow let the cutter-head freeze fast again.
The foreman woke Drake with that bad news. Drake went down the shaft to try to free the drill. Hour after hour he labored, his oversize armor too big for that cramped pit. He accomplished nothing. The cutter-head was fused to the living iron, and there were no more spares.
“Seetee—come up!” Ann’s head lamp flashed at the top of the pit; her voice was breathless. “There’s a ship—coming in to land beside the camp.”
He thought the ship would be the Good-by Jane. Rob McGee ought to have repairs for the drill, and even two or three fresh men, to help with the heavy task of installing the drive unit. Perhaps they could still get it in place before their time expired; von Sudenhorst might be generous enough to let them go ahead.
Soaring over cragged iron horizons, they hurried back to camp. Out of frosty, glittering night, they came into the cold, pallid glare of a shrunken sun that struck out of that same dark sky, harshly across the lonely little cluster of white-painted igloos in the iron-walled cup.
The ship had landed near them, but it was not the Good-by Jane. Drake caught a painful gasp of thin oxyhelium, and the hope flowed out of him. The ship standing on a ledge of iron had the lean, tall, torpedo shape of a war cruiser, and its black, tapered hull glowed with the four-quartered flag of the High Space Guard.
VII.
Drake and Ann O’Banion dropped to a ridge of iron, shaken and deflated. A photophone light tipped down, above the cruiser’s ugly nose. The flickering beam brought them the harsh metal voice of Kurt von Sudenhorst.
“Good day, Mr. Drake—and Miss O’Banion.” He could see the names painted on their armor. His greeting held no warmth, not even when he spoke to Ann—nothing else must interfere with the duty of a guardsman. “What’s your business here?”
Drake tried to keep the alarm out of his tired patient voice. “We told you before we left Obania. We’ve been drilling a prospect hole.”
“Perhaps!” Loud and strident on the trembling ray, the Martian-German’s voice carried a triumphant accusation. “Perhaps you didn’t know that this rock is on a collision orbit, with the Guard base at Obania?”
Drake clung to his patient calm.
“As a matter of fact, we did know. Captain McGee left for Pallasport seven days ago, to file legal notice of our intention to avert the collision. We are expecting him now, with our drive unit.”
“Then you lied!” It was a metal rasp. “You are guilty of concealing a danger to the Guard.”
“Legally the danger of collision does not exist until thirty days before the time of predicted impact,” Drake said patiently. “Thirty days is presumed to be ample time for the Guard to avert a collision. And our legal notice, filed in Pallasport, gave sufficient warning.”
The flickering beam brought a harsh, uncertain sound.
“Anyhow, your scheme has failed,” observed von Sudenhorst. “Your notice was duly reported to me, but my observations show that the asteroid is still on a collision orbit. The thirty-day limit is only sixty hours away. We have a work ship en route from Pallas to take over the job.”
“We still have sixty hours.” Drake stood straight in his massive suit. “We still have a chance.”
“A chance, ja!”, Derision made von Sudenhorst careless about his English. Drake waited uneasily through a little silence. The steady ray brought no hint of the officer’s thoughts.
“You have sixty hours,” he agreed abruptly.
“However, I now give you notice that we shall be forced to evacuate all civilians from this asteroid, when that time is up—unless you have successfully altered the orbit.”
“Kurt!” protested Ann. “You wouldn’t!”
“That is for your own safety, Miss O’Banion,” the Martian told her stiffly. “If your ship does not return, we have space for your party aboard the cruiser—including a nice stateroom for you.”
“Thank you, Kurt.” Ann’s voice was tense. “We won’t be needing it.”
“We shall be waiting for you, Miss O’Banion,” returned von Sudenhorst, a hint of mockery behind his formality. “I know that you are not magicians.”
They returned to the little cluster of white igloos. The cruiser loomed above them, ominous as a tall, ebon tombstone. Drake looked hopefully past it, into the dark splendor of space. He found the dim gray point of Pallas, but there was no hint of the returning Good-by Jane.
Ann waited until they were in his shelter before she whispered desperately, “That’s the last straw—I simply can’t give in to von Sudenhorst.” Strong teeth bit her pale lip. “What can we do?”
“Wait for Rob . . . good to know he got there.” Drake sounded incoherent. “Nothing else to do.” He dropped across his cot—he was a stooped and shrunken giant, but still it looked too small. Ann spoke to him anxiously, and then realized that he had gone to sleep. She hadn’t realized how tired he was.
She turned up the electric heater, and spread a blanket over him. Stopping to set the little peegee air machine, that drew fresh oxygen out of exhaled carbon dioxide and water, she saw a photograph propped on the cabinet—a picture in color of Drake’s tall son, smiling a bronze, magnificent smile. Ann made a quick little face of disapproval.
“You ought to be here, Rick,” she gravely advised, “instead of off working for the enemy. I can just remember you, before you left Obania—a nasty little body with grubby fingernails. But your dad tells me you’ve grown up to be a shining paragon of strength and manly virtue. Don’t you know he’s getting too old for jobs like this? If you’re so all-fired splendid, why aren’t you here to lend him a hand?”
The photograph continued to smile—she thought, with disgusting conceit. Impatiently she slipped back into her armor and went to the mess shelter. The men were playing dominoes. Their idleness annoyed her, but she knew there was nothing they could do. She scolded the bland Venusian for the not uncommon sin of his grease-spotted apron, and returned to her own shelter.
She tried to read a novel and found it impossible. She knew that the men would tell her at once if the Good-by Jane came back. Yet she kept getting up, against her will, to peer out through the tiny lead-glass peepholes in the thick, inflated fabric.
Somehow, it was difficult to keep her eyes off the tall black cenotaph of von Sudenhorst’s cruiser, standing its ominous guard above. An appalling idea had come to keep her company. She was afraid she would marry the Martian-German—if they failed to win Freedonia.
The idea surprised her, because she had always privately laughed at his stiff and formal suit. But she would be penniless if they failed; and she thought he would take advantage of such a circumstance. She was astonished to realize that von Sudenhorst, stupid and arrogant as he might be, was yet masculine enough to have a certain unpleasant attraction. She disliked him, and knew she always would. The idea frightened her, but she couldn’t put it out of her mind.
Three hours later there was another sudden fall of seetee dust. Watching anxiously from her shelter, Ann saw the little silent splashes of fire, blue and painful, scattered all across the little iron depression—except in a little circle about the standing cruiser, which was protected by its safety field.
Shrrrap!
At that sudden report behind her, she jumped and choked back a nervous scream. Burned paint made a sharp reek, and she turned up the air machine to clear it out. She listened for a leak, but if the grain of dust had pierced the fabric the hole had already sealed itself.
The red photophone light above the cruiser began blinking furiously again. But she didn’t connect the shelter photophone—no doubt von Sudenhorst was offering her the safety of the cruiser, but she thought she couldn’t endure his metal voice, just now.
After a few minutes, when the fall of dust had slackened, she saw three men leave the mess shelter and plunge furiously into the cruiser’s open lock. Mike Moran followed more deliberately—she recognized his graceful handling of the flying armor—and presently brought back the empty suits. He saw the burn on her shelter, and stopped to see if she had been injured.
“That was Biggs and his two stooges,” he told her. “They’ve quit the job.” He sounded worried. “I tried to call Mr. Drake, ma’am, but he don’t answer.”
“Let him sleep.” The flood of despair came into her voice. “It doesn’t matter about the men—there’s nothing left for them to do.”
At last, after Ann had abandoned all hope, the Good-by Jane returned. The rusty little tug dropped softly between the white igloos and the cruiser. Ann got into her armor and dived eagerly toward its air lock. Drake reached it with her.
They left the armor below and climbed into the little pilothouse. Rob McGee met them, with mute tragedy in his squinted eyes. In the green-mildewed space coat, his weary shoulders made a helpless shrug of failure.
“What happened?” Ann cried urgently. “What kept you?”
“They beat us, that’s all.” McGee shook his tangled yellow head. “I couldn’t buy a new-type terraforming unit—not from Interplanet or anybody else in Pallasport.”
“But why?” Ann gasped.
“Because we are asterites.” McGee’s voice was gentle as ever, but his leather face showed bitter lines. “Because we’re trying to work for ourselves, instead of for a monopoly with a whole independent planet behind it. Because the Mandate government is trying to keep us down.”
“But what did they do?” demanded Aim.
“Nothing.” McGee shrugged. “They didn’t refuse to sell the unit outright—none of them. They just put me off, with red tape and delay. They made me fill out applications, and wait for permits. They didn’t know about the collision orbit, but of course von Sudenhorst had reported our expedition to Guard headquarters, and Interplanet must have been tipped off that we were up to something. I filed the notice of intention, just before I left—though I don’t see how it will do us any good.”
A bitter silence filled the little gray-walled room till Drake broke in with an eager question of his own: “Rick? Did you see my boy?”
Little McGee looked quickly at Drake’s gaunt, tense face, and quickly away; he began to fumble aimlessly with the dials of the pilot robot. “Yes, I went to Rick.” His voice was very soft. “I told him all about it, Jim. He said it was a dirty shame. He promised to see Mr. Vickers, and have Interplanet cut the red tape and get us a terraforming permit and sell us a unit—I saw a dozen crated units, at the Interplanet docks.”
Fidgety and uncomfortable, McGee clicked a switch on and off.
“I waited all day, but Rick couldn’t do anything.” He gulped. “Rick was awfully sorry, Jim. He wanted you to understand that he couldn’t do anything. He told me to explain how it was.”
Drake didn’t speak. He merely sat down on the metal stool and dropped his big roan head in his folded arms on the case of the pilot robot. He wasn’t a giant any longer, Ann thought. He was just a broken old man.
She saw little Rob McGee move nimbly to the ship’s photophone and take up the receiver. Dully, without interest at first, she heard his gentle voice. It sounded far away.
“Yes, von Sudenhorst. McGee speaking. . . . All right, then, Commander von Sudenhorst. . . .
Another beacon? What are its bearings? . . . We’ve been expecting a fire storm. . . . Very well, commander, you can go ahead and evacuate any of our men who wish to go. . . . Miss O’Banion? I’ll see.”
Ann shook her head emphatically.
“No, commander, she doesn’t seem to,” McGee said gently. “No, I think we’ll stay with the Good-by Jane. . . . Well, if it’s suicide, it’s our suicide. . . . No, sir, I don’t believe Miss O’Banion will change her mind. . . . Very well, I’ll speak to Mr. Drake.”
Drake’s grizzled head lifted out of his folded arms. Ann bit her lip, for his face was terrible to see. It was so shrunken and so gray, the wrinkles so terribly bitter and deep. Tears were burning in the dark, hollow eyes. Drake said nothing. He merely shook that dreadful head.
“No, commander,” Rob McGee said very softly, “we won’t evacuate—not till that sixty hours is up.” He replaced the receiver, and added in that same gentle voice, “And verdamnt to you, von Sudenhorst.”
VIII.
Ann’s anxious face spoke a voiceless question.
“Yes, von Sudenhorst says there’s more seetee on the way.” McGee’s over-quiet showed his disturbed emotion. “There’s a swarm-blinker coming down across our orbit. The subaltern is only doing his duty. He wants to evacuate us from the track of the fire storm.”
Silence fell, thick and breathless in the narrow, gray-padded pilothouse. Drake sat with his big, red-gray head on his folded arms. He didn’t move and he made no sound. But Ann felt as if all his being, his old gigantic strength and his old splendid dream, his love for Rick and his very wish to live, all had crumbled and fallen to dust before her eyes. Teeth in her lip, she turned jerkily away from him. This terrible moment was too private for anyone to see. She ached to help him, but there was nothing she could do.
“Let’s have a look for that blinker.” Rob McGee seemed to understand. With a wan, grateful smile, she turned with him toward the periscope. Presently he took his head out of the black hood to let her see.
One greenish star was splendid on the black field. The blinker was hard to find, but at last she discovered its small, hurried signal, red-blue-and-yellow, red-blue-and-yellow. It seemed tiny and remote, its meaning difficult to grasp. Looking back, she saw that McGee was consulting the worn black volume of his “Ephemeris.”
