by Jerry
“Yes, sir, I would.”
“All right, Doctor.” But now Colonel Brownleigh was sitting stiff as a ramrod in his chair. So were the other four.
And as Dr. Wilson read on, they leaned forward so as not to miss a single word. He had come to the part just where Habel had shot Buddy. He lifted his eyes from the pages. “Before continuing,” he said, “perhaps, gentlemen, I better tell you a little about this man Habel. He was an ex-convict, a man whom Judge Holmhurst had paroled in his personal custody. But that’s not the point here. The crux of the matter is not what happened in the clearing where Habel forced me to leave Charneel with Buddy; the crux of the matter is what happened at the edge of the woods. For that’s where Habel tried to kill me.”
Doctor Wilson paused a moment to let that sink in. “And, gentlemen, he certainly would have but for the dog that sprang from the bushes. In the darkness even I myself was fooled. I thought it was Charneel. And I tried to call him off. I shouted, ‘Charneel! Back! Back!’ trying to get him to release his hold on Habel’s throat.”
That’s when I forgot myself. I was upon my feet. “It was Tolei!” I broke in. “Tolei! Read it, Doctor; read it. Tolei’s the one who leaped at Habel’s throat, not Charneel. For you know, you yourself had put Charneel on guard back by Buddy. Tolei, Charneel’s sister—”
Suddenly I stopped, aware of what I had done. I had no right to be talking out this way; none of these officers had called on me.
Colonel Brownleigh overlooked my outburst. He turned to Dr. Wilson. “Doctor, was that your first knowledge of Tolei?”
“It was.”
“Let me see those pages, please.”
Dr. Wilson stepped up and handed them over. Colonel Brownleigh accepted them, lifted off the last page and studied it briefly, then quietly handed it to the officer next to him. One by one, each man read it, and when the last had finished, it was passed back to the colonel. Everything got quiet in the room.
The colonel sat thinking; finally he spoke. “Collusion?” he shook his head. “No, I’ll have to rule that out. It couldn’t possibly be collusion. Coincidence? No, this isn’t coincidence.” He sat back heavily. “Gentlemen,” he said to his fellow officers, “I’d be glad to hear any comment you might care to make at this point.”
The major at his right shifted his chair slightly. “Colonel, if the captain could talk to one dog, certainly he could talk to another.”
“That’s exactly what I was thinking.” Abruptly Colonel Brownleigh stood up, strode across the room. At the door he turned. “Dr. Wilson, the hearing is not over yet.”
When he came back, he had with him a Great Dane. The colonel took his place at the table again, then turned to me. “Captain, this dog was with me yesterday. Suppose you have him tell you what we were doing.” I looked at Colonel Brownleigh, at the four other officers behind that table, at the two nurses and the private and the sergeant standing by the door, at Doctor Wilson. Every eye was upon me. I hadn’t forgotten the difficulty I had had with Charneel.
“Will you grant permission, sir,” I said, “for me to take your dog to the far end of the room?”
A quick nod was the colonel’s reply. So we walked the length of that room, to the farthest corner. At that distance no one would overhear. It was the next best thing to our being alone, and purposely I placed the dog so that his back was to the room, and started in.
In a moment or two, Colonel Brownleigh raised his voice and called, a bit sharply, “Hadn’t you better get going, Captain?”
“I have, sir,” I called back. “You were not here at the hospital yesterday. You went fishing; got up before dawn.” There was a stir in the room.
To the dog I said, “Where did he fish?”
The dog answered, but all I got was a word or two. The rest seemed to fade out, and suddenly I could feel a cold sweat on my forehead.
“Say that again,” I said, and leaned closer.
He said it again.
“Again!”
And now I was on my knees beside him, my ear almost against his snout. Three separate times he had repeated it, and not once had I got it. I was afraid.
The dog shifted slightly. “The woman,” he said, and a few words were trickling through . . . out on the rocks. She was a golden tan.”
In my excitement I fairly shouted it out to the colonel. “The woman,” I called, “came out on the rocks! She was a golden tan!”
The effect was electric. Colonel Brownleigh was up out of his chair like a flash. “That will do, Captain!” he cut in, and called his dog to him.
Officially I am still crazy, for the colonel said it would be Friday before the papers would come through. I have Dr. Wilson and Charneel to thank—and the colonel too. For it was a damn lucky break the colonel cutting in the way he did, and snapping me off with “That will do!” For had my life depended on it, I don’t believe I could have understood another word from that dog; it seemed as if a curtain had suddenly been drawn between us, and he was a dog and I was just a man.
Meanwhile, I am a guest in Dr. Wilson’s home. But when those papers do come through, I’m sticking that discharge into my pocket and the doctor and I are heading straight to one place—the Lambert County Courthouse. Charneel is not going to be shot.
So tonight I am not at Green Mills, and I can’t sleep. I guess, now, you understand why. THE END
DOUGHNUT JOCKEY
Erik Fennel
FAINTLY THE UNMISTAKABLE howl of a driver rocket drifted across the ten-mile-wide safety strip surrounding Mukilteo Spaceport. The new guard heard it, and frowned inquiringly.
Mike Kelly cocked one ear, yanked the lever opening the main gate, then jerked the new man bodily into the low pillbox-like gatehouse. He kicked the heavy door shut.
“That’s Doughnut Merrill turning off the highway,” he lectured. “If the gate ain’t open, he’d as soon drive that hell-wagon automobile right through it. He’s got a miniature Haskell driver bolted into the back deck of that roadster. Fixed it himself. The cops would throw away the keys if they caught him using it on the roads, so he plays out here like he’s flying low. Wild as a coot, that fellow.”
“But won’t he stop to check in?” The new man took his duties seriously.
Kelly snorted. “He never does. And this morning he has a good excuse, for once.”
“What’s it all about, anyhow?”
Kelly looked serious. “Must be something bad wrong. Interplanet don’t break schedule for fun.”
Walter Merrill glanced toward the blast pits as he passed the perimeter fence. The squatty, ludicrous shape of Doughnut II was already on the supports. Fireball lay beside it in the retrieving cradle on which it had been dragged from Puget Sound after its last run, sleek and slender and, to anyone with an engineering brain, breathtakingly beautiful.
The three tall cranes were in position, their boom tips interlocked to form the stable tripod needed to set a Fire-class ship upright. They always made Merrill think of gawky long-necked geese whispering secrets.
Soon Fireball would be positioned in the hole of Doughnut, ready to go out. The scene was perfectly familiar, but this time it carried a special thrill. Merrill smiled happily. This was his big day.
He cut the jet, tromped brakes, and from sheer exuberance made it a spectacular squealing stop—one that streaked hot rubber across the parking lot beside the administration building. He felt eager and well disposed toward all mankind as he headed for Jerry Slidell’s office.
The operations manager of Interplanet started to jump up, then remembered what long accelerations in the pre-Gravinol days had done to his heart valves, and rose more sedately. He was in his thirties, but his hair was white from radiation leakage, and his face was deeply lined.
“How long to blast-off?” Merrill began. “Tape ready? What’s wrong at Mars Colony to need a special hop?” Slidell eased himself back into his chair.
“A pneumonia carrier—one of those people who have it in their systems without showing any
symptoms—must have got through the medical check-up. And you know what high-level meson stuff and Rho shower-effect discharges from the hull plates do to viruses. This mutation is so damnably virulent it stands to wipe out the Colony.”
Merrill whistled in dismay.
“Benson and his relief pilot were both coming down with it when they splashed Firefly in last night. But the doctors say this new serum should hold even a mutant virus—if we get it out there in time. We found a supply in Seattle—pure luck—and it’s being loaded now to stand acceleration and shock.
“So Fireball goes out light, no load but the serum, no relief pilot even, and it’ll be full boost, open throttle, and jets all the way.”
“But—”
“I know, I know! She’ll get in without enough fuel to come back, and there she sits out of action until the Marsport plant starts producing. It messes up the whole schedule, but there’s nothing else to do.”
Merrill leaned forward, his hands gripping the edge of Slidell’s desk.
“Jerry, I’ll set you a speed record that will stand a long time,” he declared.
He had a disturbing thought then, but before he could put it into words, the operations manager looked him in the eye.
“Walter!” He avoided the nickname he knew Merrill detested. “Just a minute. Don’t you think—”
Instantly the smile was gone from Merrill’s lean face. “Again?” he barked.
Slidell sighed. “All right, I promised,” he said resignedly. “You can take Fireball if you insist.”
“But you want me to—”
“Use your head, Walter. We need all the boost Doughnut II will put out. Not bare escape velocity. And you know there hasn’t been time to check her properly since you boosted Firestreak out last Thursday. You’re the one who—”
“How about Bob Ord?”
“He could, under normal conditions. But this won’t be standard pattern. Besides, we haven’t been able to find him yet. This would happen between schedules, when everybody’s scattered to hell and gone!”
“Now, listen here, Jerry. I don’t intend to get pushed—”
“Walter, I’m doing my best. I caught Wraxton vacationing in Los Angeles, and he should be here in a couple hours to see what he can do.”
Merrill grimaced. Wraxton of Chesapeake Spaceport was supposed to be a good boosterman, but Doughnut was touchy and Chesapeake used a different control system. The pleasant feeling of a few minutes earlier had evaporated completely.
Slidell’s voice was suddenly crisp with authority. “Go get your shots. Thomas will take care of you. We’ll settle later who takes what.”
Merrill didn’t argue, but if the door panel had been glass instead of plastic, it would have shattered as he slammed it. As he stomped toward the locker-room he had a rebellious suspicion that he was being had—again.
Haskell-Jenkins nuclear shift drivers had taken spaceflight out of the over-Niagara-in-a-barrel category, but they had the intrinsic drawback of critical mass limitation. Too much fuel, and a ship exploded spontaneously. Enough to stay under the e.c.m. and it could reach Mars—but on the return voyage it would run out of fuel before completing deceleration, and hit Earth’s atmosphere fast enough to burn itself to powder.
The intricate equipment necessary made step-rockets, in which sections were jettisoned in space, fantastically uneconomical. So the great brains of Interplanet had conceived the Doughnut to boost its ships through the power-hogging lift from Earth.
Walter Merrill had been picked off the Luna experimental work for his uncanny power sense and delicate kinesthetic perceptions, for no auto-control had been devised capable of coping with all the variables of blast-off. He had become Interplanet’s first and only boosterman.
In many ways it was a dream job. One boost-out a month, with the rest of the time almost entirely his own. A salary rating of Senior Pilot “A,” which easily financed such financed such impractical hobbies as putting jets on an automobile, as well as a house and sailboat and all the trimmings. A sense of importance, too, for the fate of each spaceship was in the hands of the boosterman during the most critical interval.
But dissatisfaction had set in. Boosting lacked the glamour of deep space. The line pilots and their relief men talked endlessly of the strange floating landings through the low .38 gravity of Mars, and of the remains of a vanished civilization there, and of the Colony that was beginning to grow at Marsport—and all he could do was keep his mouth shut.
He was a glorified elevator operator, missing out on the high adventure that lay out there, never getting much beyond Luna’s orbit, and ending each flight with a hissing drop into Puget Sound beside the Mukilteo beacon, while his friends one after another had been given command of full-fledged space vessels.
Recently even men he had been forced to downcheck as potential boostermen had been taking ships through to the Colony. Here he was, stuck in a rut, and every time he had been promised a line run, something had gone sour!
He stripped and put on the buttonless one-piece knit garment he would wear beneath his circulation suit, then kicked his feet savagely into a pair of slippers and shuffled down the hall to the medical department. In the empty treatment-room he stuck two fingers into his mouth and whistled shrilly.
Bubsy Thomas emerged from the dispensary. She had auburn hair and green eyes; and her white stockings and starched nurse’s uniform could not hide the fact she carried deluxe equipment throughout; but for once he was too disturbed to open the conversation with his customary suggestion of Matrimony.
“Limit dose,” he told her. “And Neogravinol too. This hop will get rough.”
She looked at him questioningly. The boosterman ordinarily did not need the more prolonged action of Neogravinol in addition to the regular Gravinol shot.
“You had breakfast before the office caught you,” she accused.
“Coffee and toast,” he hedged.
“—and three eggs and a pound of bacon. I’ve seen you eat. Now get your teeth out.”
“Aw, honey!” he protested.
Impatiently she tapped a toe against the waxed flooring.
His front uppers had been removable ever since one of the Luna experimentals had set in with a smash that broke his shock chair straps, but still he felt there was something comical and faintly disreputable about wearing falsies. Too much like those females who wore padding to remedy natural deficiencies—which Bubsy definitely did not.
Grimly she watched him, and finally he took them out.
She measured a brownish liquid into a small glass while he cursed the medical records for telling her about his teeth. They hardly helped make him a romantic figure.
“The basin is over there,” she directed. “Now drink this.”
Two minutes later he had no further worries about gravity cramps from a full stomach. It was full no longer.
“Sometime you’ll blast with that bridgework in, and get it knocked down your throat,” she warned as she had often before.
“A lot you’d care,” he growled, still retching.
“But I would,” she declared sweetly. “You might wreck a ship.”
Before he could think of a suitable rejoinder, she had the hypos ready.
“I shot your left arm last time,” she remembered, and he rolled back his right sleeve.
Deftly she found the vein and pressed the plunger. Then, changing syringes, she began to inject the Neogravinol. “If you take—sit still, darn it!—who’ll handle—”
His skin was prickling and itching, and a distinct rainbow aura was forming around every object in the room as the drugs took effect.
“Ord, maybe. Or Wraxton from Chesapeake. But I’m taking Fireball.”
For a moment her hands were unsteady.
“And why not?” he asked sharply. “I can straighten out any trajectory error they hand me.”
“If it’s not too bad,” she corrected. “But what about Mars Colony if Fireball gets a sour boost and has to abort?”
Merrill didn’t want to think about that. “But I don’t intend to keep on—”
Jerry Slidell banged through the door. His face was streaky pale from moving too violently, but his tongue was unimpaired.
“Wraxton was flying his own plane up,” he told them at last with forced calmness. “At Medford some lard-headed student cut in on him during landing. He’s got a fractured leg and concussion. Now what the hell?”
“Call Ord,” Merrill snapped. He was in the depressive-irritant phase that followed a Gravinol injection. He started to get up, but the nurse pushed him back. He had to take it easy until the shots “settled in.”
Slidell glared. “Been trying, and still am. You think I got holes in my head?”
“Yes, if you think I’m going to—” Merrill growled sullenly.
“Shut up, both of you!” Bubsy interrupted. “Barking at each other won’t help.”
Slidell’s shoulders slumped, and his manner was almost pleading.
“You’ll stay on call, Walter?”
“Yeah. I’ll be around until you get me a boosterman.”
A circulation suit was too heavy to put on until the last minute, so he had nothing to do but wait. It should have been pleasant, but the nurse ignored him while she cleaned up and put the hypodermics in the sterilizer. The few glances which she did cast his way were troubled, almost angry. He used her phone to get preliminary flight data from Calculations. Then he fidgeted.
“What’s the idea of giving me the busy signal so much lately?” he asked at length. “You sore at me? Or is it that Fred Morgan off Firesprite?”
The girl turned quickly, as though she had been waiting for that question.
“I’ve been afraid.”
“Huh?”
“Not of you. Of myself. Afraid moonlight and biochemistry would gang up on me.”
“And that would be wrong, because I’m a boosterman instead of a line pilot?” he demanded belligerently.
Her eyes misted unexpectedly. “You and I both know there’s something real under all our kidding. But Walter, I want a husband who’s emotionally mature, who understands responsibilities and accepts them instead of acting like a brat in a temper tantrum.”