Spaceman's Luck and Other Stories

by George O. Smith

  The phone.

  Lindsay picked up the phone and said: “Garrard got it! Where’s the next one?”

  Haynes said: “Take the one in the Ruhr Industrial District. How’d Garrard get it?”

  “We don’t know. He went out unplanned, wondering if utter secrecy mightn’t be the answer.”

  “Too bad,” said Haynes and hung up quickly. The general didn’t like the tone of Lindsay’s voice.

  Lindsay faced them. “What do we know?” he asked. He felt that he’d been asking that question for year upon year, and that there had been no answer save a mystical, omnipotent rumbling that forboded ill—and that threatened dire consequences if asked to repeat.

  “Not a lot,” said Grant. “They go off when we get within a hundred feet or so of them. That’s all we know.”

  “Garrard went out without running his intercom radio. He made no reports, thinking that maybe they listened in on our short-range jobs and fired them somehow by remote control when they feared we might succeed in inerting the things!” Lindsay growled in his throat.

  “Look,” said Grant. “This is urgent. It is also knocking out our nerves. It’s not much of a run from here to Ruhr Industrial, but I’m going to suggest that we all forget the problem completely for a few minutes. Me, I’m going in to take a shower.”

  The value of relaxation did not need pressing. Jenna nodded. “None of us have had much of anything but coffee and toast,” she said. “I’m going down and build a real, seven-course breakfast. Any takers?”

  They all nodded.

  “And Ralph, you come and break eggs for me,” she laughed. “So far as I know, I’m the only one that’s capable of taking your mind off of your troubles momentarily.”

  Lindsay laughed and stood up.

  Lacy said it was a good idea, and then added: “I’m going to write a letter.”

  The rest all looked at one another. If Tom Lacy were writing a letter, it meant that he’d taken some new interest in life. Wordless understanding passed between the other three and they all left Lacy sitting at the desk.

  The autopilot was bringing the ship down toward the ground out of the stratosphere, slanting toward the Ruhr when Jenna snapped the intercom switch. “Breakfast,” she called. Her voice rang out through the ship. Grant came immediately and sat down. Lindsay was already seated. Jenna served up a heaping plate of ham, eggs, fried potatoes, and a small pancake on the side. “This,” she smiled, “is too late for a real breakfast, but I demand a breakfast even if it’s nine o’clock in the evening when I first eat for the day. There’s more if you’re still hungry.”

  “We’ll see,” said Grant. He picked up knife and fork but stopped with them poised. “Where’s Lacy?”

  “I’ll give another call,” said Jenna, repeating her cry.

  They fell to, attacking their plates with vigor. But no Lacy. They finished and still no Lacy. “Come on,” said Jenna. “Maybe he’s still feeling remorse. We’ll find him and then we’ll feed him if we have to hold him down and stuff him. O.K.?”

  “Yeah,” drawled Grant. “Feeding does wonders for my mental attitude. It’ll do Tom good, too! Let’s find him.”

  They headed for the scanning room, but it was empty. The desk where they’d left him was as though he had not been there, except—

  “Letter?” queried Lindsay, puzzled. “Now, what—” his voice trailed away as he slit the envelope and took out the sheet of paper. He cleared his throat and began:

  “Dear Folks:

  “I put no faith in Garrard’s suspicions, but since he was lost without an honest chance to prove them, I am taking this chance.

  “I am taking my skeeter when I finish this and I’m going on ahead, alone. Knowing you as I do, I’ll have plenty of time to inspect that robomb before you read this. I’m explaining my actions because I feel that you may need explanation.

  “I think the world and all of both Jenna and Ralph, and feel that I may have caused suspicion and unhappiness there. Since I’ll have time to take a good look at this thing and also make some motions toward defusing it long before you arrive, or even find this, let my success be a certain statement of the fact that knowledge of my actions by any of you—or even suspicion cast at the presence of the Decontamination Squadron Ship by the enemy—is not the contributing cause. No one will know until I’m all fin—”

  Light filled the scanning room, and the ship rocked as it was buffeted by the blast. The light and the heat and the sound tore at them, and they clung to the stanchions on the scanning room until the ship stopped rocking and then Grant made a quick dash for the autopilot, which was chattering wildly under the impact of atomic by-products. It stabilized itself, however, and the ship continued on down through the billowing dust to the ground.

  “That,” growled Lindsay, “loses us Lacy and proves nothing.”

  “Not entirely,” drawled Grant. “It does prove that whatever agency is directing these things does not require the presence of this ship as a tip-off.”

  “A lot of help that is.”

  “Well, I’m nominated for the next try. Unanimously. I’m the only one voting any more.”

  Jenna gasped.

  “What’s the matter, Jenna?” asked Grant.

  “I just realized that you were all that’s left. Just like that—and in a few hours. Poor Lacy.”

  “Lacy?” said Grant. “He—got his release. It’s what he’s wanted. May we all find what we want as quickly.”

  “I hate to see any one courting death, though,” said Jenna.

  “My only regret for Lacy is that we don’t know whether he—and Garrard, by the way—went in the same way.”

  “Meaning?” asked Grant.

  “The rest got it as they headed out to defuse the things,” said Lindsay. “At about a hundred feet. We can only assume that Garrard and Lacy went in the same way. I’d like better than an assumption.”

  “Why?”

  “A hundred feet is too distant to detect the human body without radiation. It presupposes either a warning of some type or—” Lindsay scowled and stopped. He mumbled something about a conference with General Haynes. He stepped to the autopilot and set it for the next location. Then he left to seek the privacy of his own office from which to call General Haynes. As he left, Jenna lifted a worried face to Jack Grant.

  “Jack,” Jenna said, “he doesn’t trust me any more.”

  “It does look bad,” said Grant. “After all, every one of them came in your presence.”

  “They came in your presence, and his.”

  “Admitted. But—”

  “I know,” she said, with deep feeling. “But I can’t help being Martian. My loyalty is with Ralph.”

  “Jenna,” said Grant softly, “we know that. All of us know it. Yet, there’s some agency that is tipping them off. There’s been robombs at the other sites for hours now, and not one of them has gone off. They’re tying tip production until we arrive, and they’ll continue to tie up the area until we make a false move. Something or someone is giving them the tip-off. I know it isn’t me, you know it isn’t you, and Ralph knows it isn’t him. The areas are completely cleared, but, of course, there may have been watchers. But Garrard would have gone out unlighted, and possibly Lacy would have done the same.”

  “Jack,” she pleaded, “do you suspect me, too?”

  “Jenna, you know I do. I rationalize myself, and tell myself that it isn’t so. But nevertheless, there is that lingering doubt. Evidence, Jenna. Evidence.”

  “Jack, a criminal is considered innocent until proven guilty.”

  “Jenna, that’s for the safety of all who may be accused. But considering a man guiltless does not prevent people from making charges. And there have been many occasions where the accused was forced to go through a strenuous period before proving his innocence. What they really mean is that they will not punish a man against whom no true conviction is brought. Until he is convicted, he can not be punished. And it is up to the authorities to prove
his guilt. It is also up to him to prove his innocence. But considering him innocent permits his own testimony to be considered as valid as that of any witness instead of marking it off of the books as the word of a guilty man.”

  “And I?”

  “Forgive me, Jenna. I think the world of you, and there is in me a rather violent mental storm. One side—the larger side, insists that you are loyal, and above reproach. The other side, that tells me to beware of the woman in you, that if you were really clever and treacherous, you would hurl these doubts out in the open and cause suspicion to fall upon yourself. And, you are Martian. A sort of racial instinct warns me. It’s unfair, and I dislike myself thoroughly for it.”

  Tears welled in Jenna’s deep eyes. “Jack, please. What can I do?”

  “I don’t know,” he told her.

  “I . . . feel miserable,” she sobbed.

  “It’s a tough load to bear,” he said softly, putting a hand on her shoulder.

  “It’s unfair,” she said shakily. “Look, Jack, I know you too well to believe that hard exterior. You put that on because you’re excessively soft inside and people can hurt you too easily if you’re not careful. I am like that, but I’m not as soft as you are.”

  Jack laughed a bit. It was a false laugh, designed to lift her out of the doldrums.

  It failed.

  “For eight long years,” she said earnestly, “I’ve taken from Ralph everything that any woman would find ideal. I’ve had companionship, tenderness, love and affection. Complete compatibility. He’s met my every mood. And not only because it will please me for him to mirror my moods, but because he feels that way too, and his moods change as mine do. He is absolutely happy to follow or lead me into any change of mood and we’re never far apart. I’ve been protected and loved by the man I wanted. That’s perfection.

  “But for four of those years, I’ve been unable to reciprocate.”

  “Now, Jenna, that’s not true.”

  “I love him—even more, now. And I’d do nothing to stand in the way of his happiness. But Jack, remember I’m Martian and he is denied his right to command a battle squadron. Because of me. He’s stuck in this noncombat group—because of my heritage. In all that time, he has never shown it, yet he must know. If anything, he has become more tender, more protecting, more affectionate. More tolerant. Yet what can I’ do to give him release from this? Suicide isn’t the proper answer. That would deprive me of what I want, and his desire is not completely to the service. But he cannot have his cake and eat it too.”

  “That’s quite a load, Jenna,” said Grant tenderly. “I hadn’t realized.”

  “I ignore it, mostly. But there are times when it creeps up and gets me. I wake at night, thinking deeply. I fret, and go sleepness, wishing there were a way out.”

  “I think you’ve well made up for it.”

  “No,” she said with a shake of his head. “He must feel denied of his right to honor by his affiliation—made in the face of public objection to mixed-marriage. I . . . am now worse. An enemy alien.”

  “You are a Terran citizen,” stated Grant.

  “I have papers to prove it,” she said scornfully. “And any doctor that didn’t see the papers but examined me perfunctorily would pronounce me Martian. Ours will always be—a sterile marriage. It cannot be otherwise. Yet until this shadow came, we were both happy.”

  “Poor Jenna,” said Grant, putting her head down on his shoulder and patting the back of it. “And now that the first doubt has crept in, the rest of Pandora’s Troubles all come roaring in through the initial breach.”

  “And now this,” she sobbed. “Grant, it’s worse than torture."

  Grant’s mind whipped back and forth between several types of torture he’d heard about and wondered what she meant.

  “No amount of torture could pry a secret from you, could it?” she asked.

  “I like to think I’m that way,” he said.

  “You think a lot of me,” she said. “Would you talk to save me from torture?”

  A bead of sweat popped out on Jack’s forehead as he thought it over. “That’s a double curse,” he said grimly. “You’d prefer torture to misloyalty and I’d be torn between the two because it is against all natural instincts for a male to harm a female. That’s a forty-thousand-year heritage, Jenna.”

  “Well,” she said, “I’m in that position but I’m without the means to say the word and relieve his torture.”

  “And he,” said Grant, with feeling, “is pretty much in the same boat.”

  “Before this all happened there was enough to outweigh any doubt. But I’m practically accused of treachery.”

  Grant smiled tolerantly. “Most of that is in your own mind,” he said gently. “You’ve kept your fears bottled up too long, and they’re fermenting into all sorts of questionings and worries.”

  “Then I’m not really under suspicion?”

  Grant laughed. “My dear, if they’re reading your mind without your will, that’s not treachery. Frankly, I’ve studied the problem myself, and I know that such is impossible. In no known science has there ever been a situation where a transmitter can be heard without the transmitter aware of its output. By ‘transmitter’ I mean people talking, men holding radioactives, radio, subradio, light, sound, and fury. Furthermore, since unwitting aid is ruled out, if such aid is given, it is given willingly. And that, Jenna, I refuse to believe.”

  “Truly?” she pleaded,

  “I’ll stake my life on it,” he said. “All the evidence may be damning but somehow, it’s too pat. Coincidence may be a little strained, but far from improbable in any sense. Fact of the matter is, Jenna, there’s no sense in going out on the Q-T. I’m going out with all recorders open and working furiously. I’m going to record not only my ideas, but my transient thoughts and my overt acts. I’ll show ’em a bold front. And, by showing a bold front, I’ll win. And if I do not, you’ll all know just what goes on and you’ll know how to act on the next one.”

  Grant laughed and shook the girl gently. He removed a handkerchief from his breast pocket and dabbed her wet eyes with it, and told her to get that elfin chin up again.

  “Thanks,” she whispered, the tears welling up again. “Thanks, Jack . . . for . . . faith!”

  When the door opened to admit Lindsay, her face was once more composed. She put down her cigarette and said: “Any ideas, Ralph?”

  His worried face grew darker. “It seems to get down to the problem of defusing a bomb that explodes when you approach it with that intent.”

  Grant laughed. “As I said before, we can detonate ’em but it’s hard on the personnel.”

  “Oh, Jack!” cried Jenna.

  “Well,” he grinned, “it’s true. And regardless of whether we lose a few fellows who’d prefer death anyway, we are most definitely keeping the production areas uncontaminated. That’s something.”

  Lindsay scowled. “It’s not good enough,” he said. “A man’s life should be worth more than that.”

  Grant shook his head. “It’s more than mere production, Ralph. Production means many lives. And is one man’s life worth more than many men’s?”

  “To me, my life is.”

  Grant laughed, taking the sting out of his matter-of-fact statement, “You’re selfish.”

  Lindsay nodded glumly. “I admit it. How’re you going to tackle that one out there?”

  “Boldly, brashly, and brazenly. Whatever agency is manipulating these things will find me slightly different. I hope I’m confusing enough to make them wonder.”

  “I wish—” said Lindsay.

  “Forget it,” said Jack. “I’ve got to go, and there’s little sense in stewing about it. I’ll be back, and then we can handle the rest of these things with ease. No chin up, fella. You’re in the hot spot of doing a hard job.”

  “I know,” he muttered.

  When he looked up, Grant had left.

  Lindsay passed his hand over his face with the gesture of a completely baff
led and worn-out man. He looked up at his wife. “Jenna,” he pleaded, “is there—?”

  “Don’t you trust me, Ralph?”

  “My whole being cries out to trust you, Jenna. But there is still wonder.”

  “There is nothing I can say that will erase that. Nothing. If I am actress enough to play treachery, I’m also liar enough to swear a false oath.”

  Lindsay nodded.

  “Nothing,” she repeated dully.

  “You think a lot of Grant,” he said flatly.

  “I’ve loved them all,” she said. “Grant more than the rest.”

  “Jack, despite his hard exterior, is an understanding soul.”

  “That may save him,” muttered Lindsay.

  “Ralph!”

  The jocular voice of Jack Grant broke in: “I’m taking off in the battle buggy now.”

  “And then again it may not,” said Lindsay harshly.

  “I’m not a machine, Ralph. I’m a woman.”

  “So was Circe!”

  “Is that what you think of me?”

  The loudspeaker chattered: “This is no road for a human being, folks. They paved it with rubble, I think. My tools are rattling around like mad. If any agency is using anything for detection, they’re listening to the rattle of machinery in this battle buggy.”

  Jenna and Ralph faced the radio panel and both hated it for its flat tones. But they could not turn it off.

  “He’ll go like Roberts, like Harris,” snarled Lindsay. “Like—Lacy.”

  “No!”

  “We’ll see,” he said tritely.

  Silence fell, and then the voice again: “I’m approaching the thing. Y’know, it’s fearfully quiet out here with the area evacuated and all machinery stopped. The wall shields make the landscape unreal, like the ghost-sequence in a horror movie. Terra was never intended to be seen under a greenish light. You know how people look under mercury vapor lights? That’s how Terra looks, sort of.”

  “Jenna?”

  “Yes Ralph.”

  “You’re not . . . you’re not—?”