Collected Short Fiction, page 475
“Thanks, but I’ll stay up,” she told him. “It’s only five hours, with the acceleration you’re using, and I’m not sleepy. Besides, you’ll need me for a pilot, coming in. There’s really a good deal of the drift.”
Suzuki, executive officer of the watch, kept politely to the after control room, and Anders enjoyed the flight. While the pilot-robot held the course, he encouraged Ann to talk. It was mostly of her childhood on Obania. She had attended a one-room school that her mother taught for the miner’s children. Her father had a little library, and old Jim Drake taught her mathematics. Rick Drake had been a playmate until he went back to Earth. Of course it seemed lonely when she grew up, with the mines shut down and everybody leaving.
“But things are going to be different now!”
Her gray eyes were shining, and her voice was light and happy. Anders felt elated, too. He had talked more than usual of his own early life, when his time was divided between his mother’s expensive apartment in Panama City and long trips to space with his engineer father.
Presently he had a supper set for them down in the wardroom. He ordered a bottle of wine, but Ann wouldn’t let him open it.
“I feel gay enough, just from talking to you.” She smiled, and her tanned face had a glow of excitement. “Besides, it’s really dangerous, coming in to Freedonia. Remember Captain Erickson. You’ll have to let me pilot you in.”
They returned to the bridge.
The Challenge had none of the broad ports of a liner’s promenade. Enemy fire or the meteor drift might smash them too easily. Anders went to the hooded main periscope, whose narrow tubes penetrated the steel and lead and gray plastifoam lining of the tapered hull.
He spun the vernier wheels and found Freedonia. At first it was a dull, tiny mote, lost in the field of frosty black. He increased the magnification until it became a mighty cube of black, cragged iron, rolling like a giant’s die on black, diamond-dusted velvet.
He was looking for the Drakes’ laboratory when he saw the gleam of danger. A tiny star, above the cube of iron, flashed yellow, and red, and green. Another winked out below. Two more.
“Eh!” His startled voice went back to Ann. “Blinkers all around it. Three—and there’s another! Must be right in the middle of a seetee swarm!”
“It is,” Ann said calmly. “You’ll see another blinker—there are five, in all.”
“Five!” He swung away from the instrument, straight and spare in the black of the Guard. Their warm sense of comradeship was shattered now and his eyes had a glint of steel. “How does that happen?”
“Freedonia passed through a drift area,” she said simply. “The relative velocities were small and our peegee unit picked up seetee satellites. You know, the eccentricity of the orbits—”
“Five’s too many!” Anders thrust an accusing finger at her. “And the orbits are too close. The Drakes have somehow towed that drift into orbital positions around Freedonia. Haven’t they?”
She stepped back, with frightened protest on her face.
“Why, Captain Anders?” She managed a weak, unconvincing laugh. “Why do you think we’d do that?”
“Two reasons.” His voice was hard and brittle. “One is to discourage intruders—no wonder Erickson wouldn’t go back! The other is to give old Drake and his son a convenient reservoir of material for their seetee experiments!”
She tried to answer, but she couldn’t. All the color drained out of her face. She stood gazing at him with black, dilated eyes. She looked terrified. Anders had an uncomfortable picture of her, standing so, at the bars of a cell in the nickel-iron heart of Pallas IV. It made him feel a little ill.
“Please—” he gulped uncertainly. “Ann . . . Miss O’Banion—”
But she didn’t speak or move. Without quite meaning to, he reached out to pat her stiff shoulder. She struck savagely at his hand, and then turned quickly away from him. Still she didn’t make any sound, but he could see that she was sobbing.
V.
Anders offered his handkerchief. Ann O’Banion took it with an angry little snatch. She stopped her silent sobbing and dried her eyes and looked at him again, now with a solemn little smile.
“Sorry.” She gulped. “I’ve been a fool. I thought I could guide you in and out without letting you guess. But now you’ll have to take me back to Obania.”
Anders liked her smile. Her tanned face had no make-up for the tears to ruin, and he saw with approval that her eyes weren’t red. But they had a cold fighting glint. She was still a determined antagonist.
“ ’Fraid not.” He suppressed a brief regret that he hadn’t been free to join the firm of Drake, McGee & Drake. “We’re still going to Freedonia. Don’t blame yourself. I was headed there before I met you.”
“You can’t get through without a pilot.” Her voice was low and taut. “Those blinkers aren’t enough. You’ll be wrecked in the drift.”
“P’raps,” he told her cheerfully. “But the Guard will send a squadron out to look for us.”
Facing him in that silent conical room, whose gray padded walls muffled everything except the muted clicking of the pilot-robot, she stood uncertain and afraid. Her pale tongue wet her full, paintless lips. She gulped and didn’t speak.
“Don’t you worry.” He grinned at her unease. “We’ll get through. Besides the armor, we’ve got the peegee safety field. With that minus field up, you couldn’t hit us with a spatial gun.”
“But you can’t get through.” She was breathlessly intense. Her brown face made a small, wistful smile. “Please, let’s go back.”
But she saw her appeal was futile, for white teeth bit into her quivering lip. Her fine shoulders, in the trim blue sweater, made an eloquent little shrug of defeat. The pain in her eyes made Anders look away.
“You win, captain.” Her voice was small and flat. “No use to let you kill yourself, because there would only be another. Give me the wheel, and I’ll take you safe down to Freedonia.”
“I don’t need a pilot—”
Her face stopped him with a quizzical, bitter little smile. She went slowly to the control wheels. With a confident skill she took the ship off the pilot-robot and turned to the main periscope.
“You see, captain,” her muffled voice came through the black hood, “you aren’t the only one out looking for the easy way to master seetee. Among the others there’s a Martian-German spy named Franz von Falkenberg. Once he held up Mr. Drake and Rob McGee at the office on Obania, and got away with some important plans. Of course we can’t report things like that. We have to try to protect ourselves.”
Her level gray eyes glanced back from the hood.
“So you see. captain,” she went on very quietly, “there happens to be more in the way than just the drift. We laid a field of automatic mines—where those seetee blinkers would keep any honest ship from running into them. They’re equipped with peegee units that Rick designed. Your safety field would only draw them against the ship.”
“Eh!” Anders swallowed hard and whispered, “Thanks!”
“Don’t thank me!” Ann O’Banion told him savagely. “I wish I’d never seen you!”
But she brought the cruiser down a twisting curve through the spinning drift and the flashing beacons and the invisible black mines, to land it safely in a shallow iron depression at the south pole of Freedonia.
“We’ve installed a peegee unit,” her strained low voice came through the hood. “It’s to anchor our equipment and hold the satellites. There’s no atmosphere. So don’t go out without your armor.”
“Naturally.” Anders grinned. “If you’re operating seetee machinery, you have to do it in contraterrene air, or none at all. But thanks for your solicitude.”
The answer was an angry little sniff.
At the auxiliary periscope he had watched their approach to that small black world of cragged iron. Now he saw that she had set the ship down beside a small dock platform. Beyond it stood a long sheet-metal building, so skillfully splotched with black and gray camouflage that he caught his breath to find it.
“The lab?” he asked, but she didn’t answer.
Across the hollow, hidden deep in the shadow of the walling cliffs, he discovered a tiny cluster of dome-shaped fabric tents, also splashed with concealing paint. That rude little camp seemed deserted, and he inquired:
“How many men have you here?”
“Just Rick and his father,” she told him. “Of course we had to have a crew to set up the buildings and the terrene machines, but that’s all finished. Here they are!”
Two bulky suits of silver-painted dirigible armor had soared like miniature spaceships beyond the long building. Keeping in the shadow of the rock, they were hardly visible, until a photophone flashed red. Turning to the communications board, Anders brought in Rick Drake’s voice:
“Cruiser ahoy!”
“H’lo, Drake.” Anders felt a surge of irrational hostility, the reverse of gratitude. “Remember Captain Anders—the officer you rescued from that runaway?”
“Oh—Anders.” Rick sounded equally hostile and also dismayed. “What do you want?”
“Come on aboard and find out.” Anders tried to assume Hood’s invincible heartiness. “Your father, too. I’ll have the lock opened at once. We’ve brought you a little surprise—you can’t guess who!”
“Beast!” hissed Ann O’Banion.
But the two flying suits dropped toward the little dock. Anders took up the ship’s telephone and found Muratori now on duty in the after control room. He ordered the lock made ready for the Drakes, and added:
“Send them up in the elevator. I’ll receive them here on the bridge. And have the shipment of supplies unloaded on the dock.”
“Aye, sir,” rapped the little Martian’s metal voice.
Ann stood bitterly silent.
The two Drakes came up the cruiser’s tiny elevator and mounted the short companion through the bridge deck. Two weary, awkward giants, they climbed heavily into that small gray room and stood staring bleakly at him and Ann O’Banion.
The elder and the younger, they looked queerly alike. Old Jim Drake—Seetee Drake, as Anders knew men called him—was shrunken and stooped. He eased his left knee, painfully. His thinning hair was roan.
But Rick Drake looked equally gaunt and drawn, from sheer fatigue. His hair was stiff and bronze. But they had the same blue resolution in their tired, hollow eyes, and the same red neglected stubble on their chins. They both looked warily at him and questioningly at the tense-faced girl.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered faintly. “We . . . I guess we just played a game, and Captain Anders won.”
Rick Drake turned his cold, accusing eyes at Anders. But the old man’s faded eyes turned warm with sympathy. He limped to the girl and put his mighty arm around her as if she had been a troubled child.
“Don’t mind, Ann,” his deep voice rumbled softly. “I know you couldn’t help it.”
“That’s so,” Anders told him. “I was coming, anyhow, and there was nothing she could do. Of course your mine field might have got the Challenge, but that wouldn’t have done you any good for long.”
Out of a tense little pause, Rick asked flatly:
“Now what do you want?”
“Y’ see, we’ve evidence that you are engaged in seetee research.” Anders found his voice clipped and brittle, as if this scene were somehow painful. “First thing, I’ll want a look at all your shops and equipment.”
Rick’s hard voice said, “We’re breaking no laws.”
“P’raps not.” Anders grinned back at his defiant stare. “But y’ know the laws of today aren’t going to matter very much in the battle for seetee. ’Cause whoever wins will be writing the laws for tomorrow.”
“You mean, if Interplanet wins!” Rick was pale beneath the spaceburn, and his low voice had a snap of savage restraint. “You want to push the planets back into slavery, under your damned empire, for another hundred years. Well, you’ll get no help from us!”
“Aren’t you rather bitter, against a former employer?” Anders looked hopefully at old Drake and the girl, but their set faces were equally hostile. “After all, it was the Interplanet engineers who developed paragravity, and really conquered space. Aren’t we entitled to share the spoil?”
“Your point of view,” sneered Rick Drake, “It’s true I used to be an engineer for Interplanet, at ten thousand a year. But I know plenty of stockholders who don’t know a slip-stick from a sleeve valve, and never risked their precious fat hides ten kilometers over Panama City—drawing millions.”
“So do I.” Anders shrugged his straight black shoulders. “I know Interplanet isn’t perfect. But I’m just an engineer with a job to do. That job is to find out how to work seetee.”
Ann O’Banion’s gray eyes were cool with scorn.
“Why not build a lab of your own,” she inquired, “and figure it out for yourself?”
Anders gave her a slow brown grin and watched her tanned hands ball into angry little fists. He saw smoldering anger, too, in the patient, hollow eyes of old Jim Drake.
“This isn’t just a parlor game,” he said. “The other planets are trying, remember. Seems the Martians have found a seetee artifact—a thing made by the inhabitants of the Invader. S’pose they get the clues they need to handle seetee? Y’ think the Martian Reich would be a better big neighbor than Interplanet?”
Ann didn’t answer, but he saw quick dread spring into her eyes. Old Drake’s great gaunt shoulders sagged a little more, as if they had received another weary burden. Rick, with consternation on his lean, ray-burned face, demanded sharply:
“What artifact? Where is it?”
“That’s the situation.” Ignoring Rick, Anders tried to be persuasive. “Y’ understand why I’ve got to get seetee. But I do have a good deal of discretionary authority. I can promise you a square deal, for Drake, McGee & Drake.”
“You expect us to sell out?” Ann’s face was taut with scorn. “To Interplanet?”
“Why not?” Anders said urgently. “We can’t let you go ahead with this. That mine field alone is evidence enough of your treasonable intentions. But I’ll make a deal in spite of that, if you’ve anything to sell. I’ll even promise one of you a directorship in Interplanet if you can work seetee.”
Ann echoed coldly, “Promise!”
“Anyhow,” rapped Rick Drake, “we can’t.”
“Better sell,” Anders soberly advised. “Or I’ll have to take it.”
Ann’s face was white and set beneath her tan. She had caught her breath, as if for some angry retort. But old Jim Drake took her arm and drew her back with an awkward, weary gentleness.
“No use, Ann.” He shook his roan, shaggy head at Rick’s look of anxious protest. “No use,” he repeated heavily. “Seems Captain Anders has drawn all the aces.”
Unwillingly, the angry younger giant subsided. “We’ve nothing to sell.” The deep, rusty voice of the elder was tired and low, edged with bitterness. “Interplanet has nothing to worry about from us. But I guess the best way of proving that, captain, is to show you through the shop.”
“Thanks, Drake.” Anders felt relieved. “To show that I mean to play fair I’ll come alone. The crew will have orders not to leave the ship for—say four hours, if that’s time enough?”
“Two hours will be enough,” the old engineer said wearily, “to show you that we’ve failed.”
VI.
Anders called Commander Protopopov on the ship’s telephone. The big, hairy exile climbed up the companionway with the heavy, clumsy shamble of a Callistonian bear. His flat, cunning eyes blinked at Ann, and she drew back with a hot flush.
“Take over, commander,” Anders told him curtly. “I’m going off the ship.”
Protopopov was leering at the two Drakes, with his small, opaque, stupid-seeming eyes. He appeared to believe that they were Martian-German agents, and Freedonia a secret invasion base, for his hollow whisper came anxiously:
“But, captain, will your life be safe—”
“If I’m not back in four hours,” Anders told him, “you can send out an armed search party. But keep every man aboard till then. That’s an order.”
“Aye, sir.” His puttylike face held a moronic stare, and he made an awkward, shambling salute.
Two by two, the tiny elevator dropped them to the valve deck. The Drakes climbed back into their outsize space armor. Ann had shipped a suit with her cargo. Anders put on his own. The air lock let them out upon the little dock.
Ann glanced at her pile of crates and drums already unloaded there, neatly covered with a silver-painted tarpaulin against the chill of space. Anders couldn’t see her expression, beyond the face plate of her bucket-shaped helmet, but the red flash of her photophone brought him one curt word:
“Thanks!”
Walking in these cumbersome suits of steel and lead and sealing plastic was laborious and slow. But small paragravity units, battery-driven, could lift them into easy flight. With his left hand Anders held the outside control stick, in front of the chest—although the suit was also equipped with a helmet stick, to be held with the teeth when both hands were occupied. He swam after old Jim Drake into the long dark building beyond the dock.
The interior surprised him.
The lofty walls, of corrugated metal, were painted white. Fluorescent tubes made a flood of light. Half the immense floor was spaced with big machines. The other half was vacant, merely dug with a long, double row of empty pits.
Down the center ran a white-railed catwalk with branches reaching toward each great machine. Old Drake dropped his armored bulk upon it and Anders came alertly down beside him. His helmet light carried a startled question:
“Seetee?”
But he didn’t need the deep-voiced answer because in a moment he had seen the Interplanet trade-mark on the boiler of the huge uranium motor-generator that fed electric power to turret lathes and milling machines and a complete battery of automatic machine tools.
