Collected Short Fiction, page 477
No, Ann O’Banion was too fine and proud and brave for prison. And the Drakes, with all their long effort and patient daring—surely they had earned something better than a cell in the cold iron heart of Pallas IV. Suddenly he was afraid he had to yield.
But he couldn’t yield.
Because, somehow, old Drake’s stern, battered face turned into the thinner, gray-eyed face of his own father. His father’s precise quiet voice came back across the years, all the way from their trips to space in his childhood, reminding him:
“Son, you’re going to be an Interplanet engineer. That means you will have to study very hard, to master many fields of science. It means you will have to risk your life many times, because high space just wasn’t meant for men. But there’s only one thing, really, that you must always remember. Don’t forget it, son—Interplanet men just don’t give up.”
Now, remembering, Anders looked squarely into Ann’s breathless face.
“Sorry.” Her look of crushed disappointment set a throb of pain in his throat. He wanted desperately to make her understand, but he knew she never would. “Sorry,” he repeated, “but I can’t.” Her face was white and bleak again.
“You’ll die without a pilot.”
“We’ve got a spaceman’s chance.” He made a stern little grin. “Now, you see, we know about the mines. I’m going to try to run them with the ship’s field dead. That way, we won’t trip the peegee units in the mines. More danger from seetee, but we’ll have a spaceman’s chance.”
Watching the eager spirit flow out of her, he felt a pang of pity. Hopefully, he added: “Unless you want to accept my terms.”
She merely shook her head.
Then Anders realized that the photophone was buzzing with a call signal. He turned away from their defiant, disappointed faces to the communications board. He put on the headset. The signal was very weak, difficult to tune. At last, however, he caught it in the field of the pick-up telescope and brought up the volume.
The call wave ceased. For a moment there was only the hissing roar of stellar interference. Then the voice came in. Anders listened and slowly grinned. He turned back to Ann’s bleak, determined face.
“A call for you, Miss O’Banion.”
She shrank from the extension receiver he offered as if it had been a dangerous thing. He saw Rick’s stunned dismay. Old Drake looked older than ever, broken.
“Yes, it’s McGee. I can recognize his voice. He knew his narrow beam wasn’t likely to be picked up from that direction, except on Freedonia. S’pose he wasn’t expecting you to have visitors here.”
Anders grinned at their consternation. “Needn’t be afraid you’ll give anything away,” he added. “Y’ see, I already know just about where he is. The readings on the pick-up telescope give his direction, and the signal strength is a fair index to distance. Must be five hundred million kilometers south of the ecliptic plane—maybe you know what he’s up to, off out there?” He thrust the extension receiver at Ann again. “Better answer,” he told her. “He seems in a hurry. And he’s so far away your voice will take a long time to reach him.”
With a wrathful glance at him, but visibly frightened, too, the girl took the receiver. Standing with the headset on, he grinned back at her and then began making delicate adjustments to align and focus the ship’s transmitter.
For even the racing ray of modulated light must take something like half an hour to reach that remote point from which Rob McGee was sending—hundreds of millions of kilometers off all the shipping lanes, and even far beyond the limits of the drift survey. The transmitter beam had to be focused to a thin line of light to span such a distance. It must be aimed exactly, not to miss McGee’s receiver. But suddenly he lifted his hand.
“Listen!”
For the high-pitched hum of the call wave had ceased again. Above the stormy roar of starlight they heard the gentle, drawling voice of Rob McGee. It rose and fell on the waves of rushing interference, thinned and distorted. Now and then a word was lost.
“. . . wait any longer . . . chance you heard the call wave, and nobody else. Good trip out, though our old friend Anders nearly caught me, back at Pallasport. Miss Karen helped me get away. But I think he’s on to something . . . new engine’s perfect . . . been here twenty hours.”
Silently, the Drakes came up to Ann and bent their haggard, red-stubbled heads to listen at her receiver. Andy’s had to keep adjusting telescope and amplifier. For it taxed both the receiver and their ears to catch that thin thread of human communication, tossed for nearly half an hour on the storm of interstellar light.
“. . . object’s all we hoped, but I had better not describe it. Anyhow, that would take a book. But you’ll all be glad to know I’ve found the thing we needed most. Yes, a bedplate!”
Anders saw the slow smile on the tired, patient face of old Jim Drake. He saw bright tears well into the giant’s hollow eyes. For a moment the voice of Rob McGee was drowned in the seas of thundering light and then he found it again.
“. . . to risk any specifications. But I’ve cut loose a model for you to take apart. It’s rigid as solid metal. And permanent, so it draws no power. It’s still as good as new after a hundred thousand years—”
Again they lost his voice in the roaring of the stars.
“. . . delay!” It came again, and now Anders could hear the tension of an unfamiliar urgency in the quiet soft voice of Rob McGee. “But a warship followed me here. It’s Martian design, and it hailed me in German . . . salvo, when I didn’t surrender.”
His voice was swept away again on the hurricane of starlight. They waited, listening breathlessly.
“. . . damage, but I’m trapped here. If I don’t come back you had better give somebody a tip on Franz von Falkenberg. But I still have got a spaceman’s chance. When my time runs out—”
Again the tense drawl faded and it didn’t come back. Anders twisted anxiously at the dials. But all he could find was the mighty, untiring tempest of the stars.
VIII.
At last the Earthman stopped the crashing hiss of stellar interference and turned quickly back from the communications board. His black shoulders were straight again, ready for emergency.
“Do I get this right?” His hard steel eyes looked at Ann O’Banion, alert and almost smiling. “McGee has found some seetee machine, built by the Invaders? And there’s a bedplate design that he thinks you can use?”
Ann stood white, frozen.
He looked at the Drakes, haggard, red-bearded giants. Their blue eyes were frosty, and they didn’t speak. Their breathless anxiety, however, was almost answer enough. And Ann, when he looked back at her, unwillingly nodded.
“So now Franz von Falkenberg has got McGee trapped, somewhere about that machine?” His Earthman’s voice had a clipped, metallic ring. “And I s’pose that bedplate would be as useful to the Martians as to you?”
Old Drake nodded bleakly.
“That’s true.” His deep, patient voice seemed tired, too tired for bitterness. “The bedplate is the only actual difficulty. Once you had it you’d have a bridge to seetee. Given the blueprints for a rigid, permanent bedplate, any competent engineer can do the rest. If von Falkenberg gets away with that model the Martians can be bombarding Panama City with seetee shells within six months.”
“Then he won’t get away.” The brown face of Anders was stern with a lean, eager smile. “I’ve got a fighting ship, and I can be out there in less than five days. I’m going out to stop him.”
He turned to Ann with a reckless grin.
“Now, gorgeous, y’ want to pilot me back through your mines? I’ll take the time to land you on Obania. But that’s up to you. I can cut the safety field and take my chance on running through.”
For a moment Ann stood taut and still. Then her smooth tanned throat pulsed as she swallowed uneasily. She looked at the Drakes. Rick’s stubbled face was sternly disapproving. The haggard old man gave her no sign. But she turned back and caught her breath to whisper:
“I’ll go with you.”
“Wait, Ann!” Rick protested swiftly. “Make him promise something.”
“No, she’s right.” The patient elder giant took Rick’s arm. “Franz von Falkenberg has got to be stopped—no matter the cost to us.”
“Thanks, Drake.” Anders’ voice was brisk. “For that, I’ll leave you here to watch your shop. If I get that bedplate for Interplanet p’raps we can make a deal—for we’ll be needing seetee engineers. Now you better get off. Give you five minutes.”
He called Commander Protopopov and rapped swift orders.
Ann shook Rick’s hand. They murmured something, and then the bronze-haired younger giant looked back at Anders with a sudden baffling and somewhat disquieting grin. Old Drake put his arm around the girl as if she were a beloved child and then limped after Rick. But his deep, rusty voice called back cheerfully:
“Good hunting, captain!”
Protopopov, in the after control room, informed him when they were off the ship. Silently, he nodded at Ann. Grave, still a little pale, she thrust her dark head into the periscope hood. The Challenge lifted to the touch of her sure brown hands, away from the dock and up again through the wheeling drift and the blinkers and the field of unseen mines. She turned at last to Anders with a quiet report:
“We’re free.”
“Thank you. Miss O’Banion.” Anders smiled. “I’ll set up the course for Obania.”
“Please, captain.” She gave him a shy, determined little smile. “But I’m not going back. You see, we’re already accelerating toward McGee’s object. I’m going out there with you.”
“Eh!” His face was stern. “You can’t do that. Take only four hours to land you. Owe you that much for service rendered. Give me the controls.”
But she didn’t give up the wheel.
“Four hours might be very important to Rob McGee,” she told him gravely. “Four hours might let von Falkenberg get back to the seetee lab the Martians have built on Phoso III with that bedplate.” Again she made that odd, slight smile. “Besides, I want to come.”
Anders merely looked at her for a long quiet moment.
“You’ve surprised me, Miss O’Banion,” he told her softly. “I don’t know quite what I expected an asterite girl to be. But you . . . you’re fine. I’m sorry that we have to be enemies. And I can appreciate your loyalty to your own world—even if it is a very different world than mine. Really, Ann, I mean—”
Her tanned face looked startled. Something in her gray level eyes made him suddenly as awkward as young Rick Drake. He paused and grinned at himself and went on in a different voice:
“Awf’ly grateful, beautiful, for everything you’ve done. Now I certainly don’t intend to take you into a dangerous operation. ’Nother thing, the presence of unattached female passengers on a ship of war in action isn’t exactly approved of, y’ know.”
For a moment she looked flustered, then:
“You’ll just have to manage, captain,” she told him cheerfully. “I’m sorry if my presence is going to get you into trouble, but you might have thought of that sooner. Anyhow, you have to take me.”
“Eh?” Her cool gray eyes made him flush, and his grin turned sheepish. “Why?”
“You see, I think you’re a much nicer man than Franz von Falkenberg,” she told him demurely. “Even if you do work for Interplanet. I want you to take that bedplate away from him I have some information that you need and you may have it if you’ll let me go along.”
“What information?” he demanded.
She smiled at his curt eagerness, triumphantly.
“You can only guess the distance to McGee’s object from the photophone,” she said. “You don’t know when to begin decelerating. And, if it happened to be in rapid motion, you might miss it altogether. Right, captain?”
He nodded, intently.
“Well, I know the exact position.” Her face had a childish glow of victory. “The orbit, too. I know how Cap’n Rob found it and what he thought it was. Now may I go?”
“Let’s have that position and the orbit.” He grinned at her with an ironic little bow. “And we’ll head straight for McGee’s object at full acceleration. B’lieve you’d be a match for von Falkenberg himself, beautiful.”
She recited the observed position in terms of right ascension, declination and solar distance, waited for Anders to set it up on the keyboard of the pilot-robot, and then glibly added the six elements of the object’s orbit.
The Earthman blinked and had her repeat the figures, reflecting that here was something else that Karen couldn’t do. He punched more keys. The mechanism whirred briefly computing a course. He locked the ship upon it and turned back to Ann.
“I’ll have a cabin cleared out for you.”
“I hope I won’t be too much trouble,” she protested anxiously.
“None at all.” He grinned. “I’ll just move into Protopopov’s, and he’ll take Muratori’s, and Muratori will take Omura’s—and I s’pose the third engineer will have to swing a hammock somewhere.”
“Oh,” she said, “I’m sorry.”
“But you would come along,” he said cheerfully. “Now, about this object?”
Pushing a stool toward her, Anders sat down on the narrow astragation desk. He lit one of his long cigarettes with a jeweled lighter and Ann refused one. She perched on the stool, looked at him and hesitated.
“You know about Rob McGee?” She began with that low-voiced question. “I mean, his mathematical gift? The way he can tell the distance and the mass of a meteor, and all the elements of its orbit, just with a glance?”
Anders nodded. “And always knows the time without a watch. Once I read an article about him, written by a German psychologist who thought he was a human mutation created to fit the environment of space.”
“That article hurt Cap’n Rob,” she said gravely. “It made him feel a sort of outsider. He’s very sensitive about his gift, but it’s really wonderful. He used the gift to discover that object.”
“But how?”
“You see,” she told him eagerly, “it was once when we were all flying from Obania out to Freedonia, aboard the Jane. And Rick had brought this book that some Martian-German professor had written about the Invader and the origin of the drift—trying to fix the date of the Cataclysm by tracing all the orbits of the asteroids and the drift back to the common point where the Invader collided with the fifth planet.”
“I know the book.” Anders grinned. “The author is our friend von Falkenberg.”
“Then Cap’n Rob thinks he isn’t really very clever.”
Anders smiled at her sober tone. He liked her, perched in a childish posture on the tall stool, as if unaware that she was beautiful. Her solemn childish confidence made Franz von Falkenberg seem very far away and altogether harmless. She smiled back, shy and friendly and absorbed. “Anyhow,” she went on eagerly, “Rick happened to mention the book to Cap’n Rob, and the date—that was sometime millions of years ago, according to the professor. Cap’n Rob took his pipe out of his mouth and said the professor was mistaken. Cap’n Rob said he must have failed to take account of all the secondary collisions, between the fragments from the first. Because the actual date of the Cataclysm, he said, was only eighty-seven thousand four hundred sixty-three years ago.
“Rick couldn’t quite believe that—he hasn’t known Cap’n Rob as long as I have. He wanted to see the figures on paper. But Cap’n Rob hasn’t much patience with paper or machine calculations. He says they’re all approximations always a little bit wrong. Anyhow, he just knows things. He told Rick that all the forces and reactions involved were too complicated to be put down on paper. And then I think Rick made some thoughtless crack that hurt him.
“Cap’n Rob didn’t say very much. He never does. But I could see that he was hurt and brooding. All that night, on the way to Freedonia, he kept searching the whole sky with the periscope. Next morning, just before we landed, he lit his pipe again and offered to show Rick he was right.
“Rick wanted to know how. Cap’n Rob said that there was one fragment from the collision that had been thrown into such an unusual orbit that it couldn’t have been affected by any perturbations or secondary collisions. He said he’d never seen it. It was too small and too far away to show in the Jane’s periscope. But he offered to write down the mass and position of it and let Rick check with a telescope.
“Rick just laughed, but I made Cap’n Rob write down the figures. The object was comparatively small, only about eighty million tons. But it had been thrown off during that collision with a velocity Rick couldn’t believe.
“And the orbit was very queer. Extremely elongated, and inclined almost at right angles to the plane of the ecliptic. The body was just about to complete its first revolution, Cap’n Rob said. It was a comet with a period of more than eighty-seven thousand years—just now coming back to the collision point.
“Rick still thought Cap’n Rob was just trying to pull his leg. He said that any such mathematical analysis would take a hundred years, even for a big observatory with a battery of calculating machines. And then it wouldn’t be accurate enough to predict the position of such a small body.
“But Cap’n Rob never jokes. I knew that he was serious and I saw his feelings were hurt. I made Rick promise to go out to the observatory on Pallas I and look for the object through one of the big telescopes there. He and Karen knew some of the young astronomers, so they could manage it.
“And they did, next time Rick and Cap’n Rob were back at Pallasport. I don’t know what they told the astronomers. But they set the big telescope on the position Cap’n Rob had written down and there the thing was!”
“Eh!” Anders smashed out his cigarette and slid off the desk. For a moment, looking into Ann’s wide, guileless eyes, he suspected that she was concocting a monstrous invention for his confusion.
“I’m not lying, captain.” She gave him a staid little smile. “You picked up Cap’n Rob’s call just now, remember, from that same position.”
