Collected Short Fiction, page 607
Ryeland said thoughtfully: “Could the two effects be linked?”
“Could they? Of course they could, idiot! But are they? I do not know.” But Gottling was mellowing; treating Ryeland like an idiot had put him in a good humor. He said condescendingly: “It is possible, of course. I have thought that myself. If the reef rat can accelerate its own body without reaction, perhaps it can also accelerate gas molecules centripetally, also without reaction. How can one know? But—“But let us look at the spaceling,” he said abruptly. “Then we can talk more better.”
He led the way through the laboratory and out the other side.
They went through a steel door into a sort of airlock. Racks in the walls held bulky protective suits and red-painted emergency gear. A warning sign glowed on the inner door of the airlock:
DANGER!
LANDING PIT—WAIT
FOR DECONTAMINATION
“It is safe,” Gottling assured him. “The pit was deconned months ago, before the spaceling was brought in.”
He pulled a lever. Motors groaned; the inner door, an enormous lead-lined mass of steel and firebrick, inched slowly aside.
Like a Viking in his radar horns, the colonel stalked into the landing pit, Ryeland following.
The pit was an enormous circular cavern. Floodlights blazed on the blackened concrete floor. Even the decon crews, with all their foamants and air-blasting, had failed to remove the black breath of the jets.
Ryeland recognized it at once. It was the pit of which he had caught a glimpse the night before, with the Togetherness Girl. He lifted his eyes, looking for the sky and a settling rocket instinctively; but the dark armored walls lifted up into shadowy mystery. The cranes and the stages above were dark shapes in the dimness. No light passed the enormous doors, hundreds of feet up, that closed off the sky.
Gottling touched his arm and pointed.
Out in the black concrete stood a room-sized cage. Inside the cage was a pale cloud of greenish light; and in the center of the cloud lying motionless on the bare steel floor—
“The spaceling,” said Gottling proudly.
It had struggled.
At close range, Ryeland could see how frantically fierce that struggle had been. The steel bars of the cage were thicker than his wrist, but some of them were bent. Red blood smeared them, and matted the spaceling’s golden fur. It lay gasping on the stainless steel floor.
“She’s skulking now, but we’ll put her through her paces,” Gottling bragged.
Ryeland said: “Wait, Colonel! The thing’s injured. In the name of heaven, you can’t—”
“Can’t?” blazed the colonel. “Can’t?” His finger reached up and touched the buttons of his radar-field suggestively. Under the triggering radar horns, his skull-like face glowered. “Don’t tell me what I can’t do, fool! Do you want me to expand my field radius? One touch of this and there won’t be enough of you left to salvage!”
Ryeland swallowed. Involuntarily his hand reached toward the collar, with its eighty grams of high explosive.
“That’s better,” grunted Gottling. He clapped his hands and called: “Sergeant, get busy! Goose her!”
A Technicorps sergeant in red came trotting out of the shadows. He carried a long pole tipped with a sharpened blade. Black wires led from it to a battery box on his shoulder.
The spaceling rolled its battered head.
Its eyes opened—large, dark, limpid eyes—a seal’s eyes; and they were terrible, it seemed to Ryeland, with suffering and fear. A shudder rippled along the creature’s smooth, featureless flanks.
“Goose her in the belly!” Gottling shouted. “Mr. Ryeland wants to see her do her tricks!”
The spaceling screamed.
Its cry was thinly edged with terror, like the voice of a hysterical woman. “Stop it,” Ryeland gasped, shaken.
Colonel Gottling blared with laughter. Tears rolled out of his piglike eyes, down the bony cheeks. Finally he got control of himself. “Why, certainly,” he gasped. “You’re next, as I said, eh? And if you believe you can tell us how the creature flies without even seeing her do it—” he shrugged.
Writhing on the floor of the cage as though it had already felt the prod, the spaceling screamed in fright again.
Ryeland said hoarsely: “Just make him take that prod away.”
“As you wish,” the colonel nodded urbanely. “Sergeant! Return to duty. And-you, Ryeland, I will leave you alone with your friend. Perhaps if I am not here to eavesdrop, she will whisper her secret in your ear!” Bellowing with laughter, Colonel Gottling shambled out of the pit.
After an hour, Ryeland began to appreciate the difficulties of the problem.
Back in the file room, he found a summary of the existing knowledge of the spaceling; he took it to the landing pit and read through it, watching the spaceling, trying to allow it to become accustomed to his presence. The creature hardly moved, except to follow Ryeland with its eyes.
The notes on the spaceling showed a fruitless and painful history. The spaceling had been captured by an exploring Plan rocket retracing the steps of Lescure’s Cristobal Colon. A section of notes, showing how the capture had been effected, was missing; the account took up the story with the creature being brought into the hastily converted rocket pit. It had been chained at first, so that the first investigators approached it with impunity. Then the chains had been taken off—and, in quick order, half a dozen investigators had been bashed rather severely against the bars. The spaceling did not seem to have attacked them; they simply were in the way of the thing’s terrified attempts at escape. However, after that the observations had been conducted primarily from outside the cage. And mostly—at least in the last two weeks, since Colonel Gottling had taken over charge of the specimen—with the help of the goad. Or worse.
There were reports of blood tests and tissue samples. Ryeland glanced at them, frowned and put them aside; they meant nothing to him. There were X-ray studies, and reams of learned radiologists’ reports. Also of no value to Ryeland, whatever they might have meant to Colonel Pascal Lescure.
Then there were physical tests. Dynamometers had measured the pull against the chains. Telemetering devices had registered the change in the recorded curves of its vital processes under various conditions—at rest, as it “flew”, and “under extraordinary stimulus,” as the report primly put it. Meaning, Ryeland supposed, under torture.
No radiation of any sort had been detected. And someone had thought to surround the creature with plumb-bobs to test for an incident side thrust; there was none; the plumbs were undisturbed.
No thrust!
Then this nonsense that everyone had been spouting so glibly was not nonsense after all!
For if there was no measurable thrust against its environment to balance its measured dynamometer pull—then the spaceling had, indeed, a true jetless drive.
Ryeland looked up from the notes to stare at the spaceling, slumped in the bottom of its cage, its great eyes fixed on him. Jetless drive!
He suddenly felt very small and, for all the Togetherness and the Teamwork, for all the joint effort embodied in the Plan of Man, very alone. Jetless drive—here in this creature lay the seeds of a fact which would destroy Newton’s Third Law, change the shape of the Solar System. For unquestionably, with such a drive, the scope of the Plan of Man would widen beyond recognition. Out past the useless, frozen methane giants, the Plan would drive to the stars!
Ryeland shook his head, confused. For suddenly he didn’t want the Plan of Man expanded to the stars. That word that Pascal Lescure had used—“Freedom!”
It did not seem to live under the Plan.
Abruptly his reveries were ended; there was a rumble like thunder in the pit.
Ryeland leaped to his feet, astonished, while the spaceling mewed worriedly in its cage. A blade of light split the dark above. He looked up, and a slit of blue sky widened.
There was a confused clattering behind him and someone came running into the pit. The Technicorps sergeant, shouting: “Mr. Ryeland, Mr. Ryeland! Get out of the way. Some crazy fool is coming in for a landing!”
The sergeant raced over to the cage and began frantically trying to unbolt its heavy fastenings, to push it on its tiny wheel to the side of the pit. There was a wild cataract of flame thrusting into the opening gates of the pit overhead, radiotriggered; and a tiny rocket came weaving in, settling on a cushion of bright white fire.
Ryeland thought grimly: “Thank God it’s only a little one!” A big one would have been the end of the spaceling—and of himself and the Technicorps sergeant as well. But this little speedster had plenty of room to land without incinerating it them all. It was a one-man craft, built for looks and play; it dropped to the black concrete on the far side of the pit, a hundred yards away, and though heat washed over them like a benediction, it did them no harm. A sudden gale roared through the floor ducts, sweeping the rocket fumes away.
A ramp fell.
A slim figure in white coveralls ran lightly down the ramp and across the concrete, confusingly half-familiar birds fluttering about its head.
Ryeland was galvanized into action. “Stop it!” he shouted. “Keep away from that cage!”
The intruder ignored him. Swearing, Ryeland raced to intercept the stranger. He took a dozen angry strides, caught a slim arm, swung the intruder around—and gasped. Silvery doves tore fiercely at his face and head.
“Get your hands off me, Risk!” It was a girl—that girl! He could see now that her white coveralls did not disguise her sex. Her eyes were a greenish blue, and very familiar eyes; her voice, though charged with indignation, was a familiar voice.
She gestured, and the Peace Doves fluttered muttering away. “What do you mean?” she demanded, shaking his fingers off her arm.
Ryeland gulped. It was the Planner’s daughter, Donna Creery. “I—” he began. “I—I didn’t know it was you! But what do you want here?”
“Want?” The ocean-water eyes flashed. “I want to know what you people are doing—what you think you’re doing by torturing my spaceling!”
VI
The girl stood staring at Ryeland. She was an entirely different creature from the lovely girl in the bubble bath, almost unrecognizable. The Donna of the Planner’s private subtrain car was a teen-ager in the process of becoming woman, with the sad shyness of youth and its innocence. But this girl was something else. This was the Planner’s daughter, imperious. And not a child.
Ryeland took a deep breath. Planner’s daughter or no, this girl was in his way. The only way he had of getting the collar off his neck lay through the creature in the cage. He said sharply: “Get out of here, Miss Creery. The spaceling is dying. It mustn’t be disturbed.”
“What?” The Peace Dove, settling on her shoulders, whirred and muttered.
“You aren’t allowed here,” he said stubbornly. “Please leave!”
She stared at him incredulously; then, without a word, turned to the cage. “Here, sweet,” she whispered to the great seal-like animal. “Don’t worry. Donna’s here.” The spaceling lifted its head and stared at her with great, limpid eyes.
Ryeland said harshly: “Miss Creery, I asked you to leave.”
She didn’t bother to look at him. “There’s a good girl,” she cooed, like a child with a puppy. “Where’s the damned door?”
Ryeland was angry now. “You can’t go in there!” He caught at her arm. It was like catching a tiger by the tail; there was a quick movement, too fast to follow, and she caught him a stinging blow across the face with her open hand. Sheer astonishment drove him back; and by the time he recovered his balance the Planner’s daughter had found the catch and was inside the door of the cage.
The spaceling came heaving seallike toward her, whimpering.
It was a bad spot for Ryeland. If anything happened to the girl, there was no doubt in the world that he would be held responsible. Gottling would see to that. And then good-by dreams of freedom.
In fact, more likely it would be goodbye head!
Ryeland swore angrily. The Peace Doves squawked and rose into the air, circling around him. He paused, searched around, found a length of heavy chain just outside the cage door. Heaven knew what it had been used for—though the stains on it suggested one possibility. He caught it up and dove into the cage after the girl.
“Stop,” she said calmly. “I don’t want to turn the Doves loose on you.”
“Then get out of here!” he demanded. The floor of the cage was slippery with a kind of odorous slime. Part of it was the spaceling’s blood, undoubtedly, but there was more—decaying small things that Ryeland couldn’t recognize; perhaps they were animals that had come with the spaceling. The stench was powerful and sickening, but Ryeland didn’t let it stop him. If that girl could stand it, that dainty creature who lived in an atmosphere of lilac blossoms and ease, certainly he could!
She was bending over the creature, reaching down to caress its golden fur. “Drop that chain.” she ordered over her shoulder. “It’s afraid of you.”
It flinched from her touch at first. Then it relaxed. It licked at her face with a long black tongue. A sudden rumble filled the cage, like the purr of a giant cat.
There was an eruption of noise from outside. Colonel Gottling, radar-horned, deep eyes blazing fury out of the face like a skull, came racing in with a dozen men in Technicorps scarlet. “Get her out of there, you fool!” he roared, waving the electric prod at Ryeland.
The spaceling saw him and the enormous purr stopped. The creature began to whimper and tremble. “Hold it!” cried Ryeland. “You’re frightening the spaceling. It may attack Miss Creery!”
But Donna Creery needed no help from him just then. On her knees in the bloody slime, she looked up from the torn, blood-crusted fur of the creature and her eyes were a hawk’s eyes. “Colonel Gottling,” she said in a thin voice that cut like knives. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you!”
The skull faced colonel swallowed but stood his ground. “You must get out of there, Miss Creery! The animal is dangerous. It has already wounded half a dozen men!”
“And what were the men doing to the spaceling?” The girl bent to pat the golden battered head. Two or three fat green flies were buzzing through the thinning cloud of light around the wounds on the spaceling’s flanks. “Filthy,” she said with scorn. “I want this cleaned up!” She stood up and gestured Ryeland ahead of her out of the cage. “I want a meeting of the whole Team,” she said coldly, closing the cage door behind her, “and I want it now! Meanwhile, Gottling, have your men clean that cage out. And if I catch any of them using that prod again, I’ll see how they like it used on themselves!”
Gottling turned purple. In a voice stiff with self-control he said: “It is no longer my project, Miss Creery. Mr. Ryeland has taken it over.”
“I give it back,” said the girl. “I have another use for Mr. Ryeland.” Ryeland said, shocked: “But the Machine ordered—”
“I’ll take care of the Machine,” she said calmly. “Get started on this cage, you men! The spaceling needs her symbiotic partners and they’re dying fast.” She turned to the door. “Now let’s have that meeting,” she said grimly. “I want to get a few things straight!”
They were back at Point Crescent Green. The Team was buzzing like flies around the spaceling’s wounds.
Donna Creery dominated the meeting. Major Chatterji tittered shyly and General Fleemer made half a dozen speeches on Teamwork; Colonel Gottling was in an icy rage and Colonel Lescure fluttered objections. But not one of them could stand up against the girl.
She blazed: “If that animal dies, she’s going to take the lot of you with her! I’ve got news for you. There’s a shortage of salvage material at the Body Bank.” She stared around the room appraisingly. “Some of you would make pretty good spare parts. Do I make myself clear?”
“Quite clear,” General Fleemer said humbly. “But, Miss Creery, our Team objective—”
“Shut up,” she said mildly. “Yes? What is it?”
Machine Major Chatterji said with great respect: “There’s a message for you on the teletype.”
“It can wait.” There was an audible gasp but the girl paid no attention. “From this date forward, Mr. Ryeland is in charge of the Team.”
General Fleemer choked and sputtered: “Miss Creery, a Risk can’t be put—”
“Yes, a Risk can,” Donna Creery contradicted. “Oh, all right. Here, I’ll get orders for you.” She walked through them to the teletype, calmly pressed the “Interrupt” switch—another gasp swept through the Team—and began to type. In a moment the Machine’s answer rattled back:
Action. Fleemer Team will comply with directive of Donna Creery
“Anything else bothering you?” she demanded.
“Nothing,” croaked General Fleemer. His toad eyes bulged more than ever.
“All right. Now the rest of you clear out. Ryeland, I want to talk to you.”
Whispering among themselves, but not audibly, the Team filed out of the conference room. Donna Creery stretched and yawned, the Peace Doves fluttering and cooing. “That’s better,” she said drowsily. “What are you doing?”
Ryeland coughed. “There seems to be a message coming in for you, Miss Creery,” he said.
“There always is,” she sighed. She stood behind him, one arm casually on his shoulder, reading:
Information. Planner Creery en route from Mombasa to Capetown. Information. Donna Creery personal rocket refueled and serviced Information. London Philharmonic acknowledges receipt of opening season program instructions. Action. Request choice of soloist Beethoven piano concerto. Information. Moon colony Alpha-Six requests presence Donna Creery 25th anniversary celebration. Information.
“The usual run of thing,” the girl said absently. “It can wait.” She looked around. “This place depresses me. Haven’t you got a room of your own? Let’s go there.” She didn’t wait for an answer; she got up and beckoned Ryeland to follow.
