by Bob Mauldin
“Really?” retorted the physician, reaching into his pocket. “I get called into cases like this because sometimes I’m the only doctor people can find without going to the hospital... like you tonight. So I see all kinds of things and pull all kinds of things out of people. And this,” he said, tossing a slug down on the table next to Roland’s drink, “is a 7.62MM NATO slug. I pulled it out of your partner’s thigh. There aren’t very many criminals who use this type of round, although there are some out there. But it’s a military round. And to be perfectly honest with you, the only military action recently has been at Camp David. This morning. This says you two are hotter than a two-dollar pistol.”
“Okay, I’m going to talk to you man-to-man. There’s no FBI agent here, no doctor, no priest. The more you know about this situation, the more trouble you’re in. That is Captain Hawke in the other room. I was on the shuttle, too. I managed to get off just before the craft was destroyed, and I picked him up in the smoke and confusion. As soon as he’s fit to travel, we need to move. How long will that be, by the way?”
“If he’s got the constitution I think he does,” the doctor mused, “and if he doesn’t do anything strenuous, I’d say three days. And he can travel if all he has to do is sit and maybe walk from a car to a motel room. If it’s going to be more strenuous than that, it will be weeks. And the more he moves, the more you’ll need to change his bandages. In three days he should be able to hobble, and please note the stress on the word hobble, on that leg for very short distances. But because of the broken wrist, he can’t use crutches. Just what is it you’re planning to do, mister?”
Roland thought swiftly, took a sip of the scotch in his glass, and said, “Head west.” More silence while the other two men looked at each other. “Back to where it all started. Which is in Montana and Colorado. That’s where a large portion of their recruits come from.”
Father Timothy closed his mouth with an audible snap. “So they truly are Earthmen?”
“Yes, Father. Every one of them. There are almost three thousand of them up there on three bases and three ships. They’re planning one more base, and they want to have dozens of ships, so they’re going to need even more crew.”
“And I’m sure they need guidance, too,” the father said as his eyes focused on a point far beyond the walls that confined the three men.
“Well, everybody has their own interpretation of guidance. I’ve spent the last year living with them, studying them to make a report to my superiors... to the Office of the President. With their knowledge, mind you. My presence on the shuttle and saving Captain Hawke’s life was a purely fortuitous situation. The simple fact of the matter is that the man you just patched up, Doctor, is the head of their organization, and with him ‘dead,’ his wife is in charge. And after this morning, there’s no telling what she’s going to do. I’ve known her for over a year now, and I think she’s a pretty levelheaded woman, but with this shock, who can say what she’ll do to the country that ‘murdered’ her husband.”
“Let me get this straight,” the doctor interjected. “You say this ‘Terran Alliance’ is composed of human beings, and they’re taking recruits?”
“I do. That’s how they’ve gone from the original three who were lucky enough to find the first ship and smart enough to recognize the opportunity, to the thousands who operate three ships and three bases, with plans for drastic expansion in the near future. And there are two more ships just waiting for crew to be assigned. But this little fiasco this morning puts a hell of a crimp in those plans.
“Look, they think they’ve got four dead, and one of them is alive in the next room. And he’s their number one man. I don’t know what they’ll do now, but I know what they had planned. One, take enough people out to the third ship to get it back to Earth orbit and then do it again for the fourth. They also need to get their main ship, the Galileo, back out to the belt and build their fourth base, the big one to make some of the bigger ships. That will put the big ship away from Earth for almost a year. Now, though, it’s anybody’s guess. All I am sure of is that we need to get to Denver where their recruiters are. If we can find them, we can get him back to his people and save something out of this mess.”
The doctor zeroed in on two points. “What do you mean by ‘belt,’ and when does it leave?”
Roland thought for a moment. “They could leave any time. Whether they will or not, well...” He looked at the two men and shrugged. “I know that he knows the recruiters in Denver. Maybe when he’s able to talk, we can make a call and set something in motion. But they—the folks in Denver—have the radio and what they call locator disks that will let them locate and beam Simon back aboard the big ship.’ And by ‘belt,’ I mean asteroid belt.”
“Beam?” the father asked. “Like in Star Trek?“
“I’m afraid so, Father,” Roland said ruefully.
The doctor leaned forward as excitement and animation took years off slumped shoulders and a fatigued expression. “You know, I could do some good out there.”
“What? You have work to do here, Brian Jeffers! You can’t go gallivanting around the solar system or whatever! Besides, you know you don’t have...”
“And you haven’t had the same thoughts, Timmy? What did you just get through saying? ‘I’m sure they need guidance, too,’ wasn’t it?” Doctor Jeffers pointed out. “You and I both grew up on Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, and we both couldn’t wait for the next Amazing Stories. I’ll tell ya now, big brother, I’m for helping these two out and joining up when we get there. You know I only lost my license for writing prescriptions I shouldn’t have because I cared too much.”
The doctor looked at Roland. “So how many doctors do they have? What kind of facilities? General practitioners? Surgeons? Dentists, for God’s sake? Somebody has to look after the sanitation and general health of that many people. Who is it? And how about mental health? Not to mention the fact that you’re spread out all over the solar system, for crying out loud.”
Roland held his hands up. “Whoa there, Doc. I don’t know the answers. I was there studying them as potential adversaries and found out they’d make better allies. But I didn’t look into their health. Everybody seemed healthy. Just the normal sniffles and broken bones. I only saw one real doctor aboard though. Quite a few medics and paramedics. Still not enough to do the job, if I had to make a guess.”
“Well, it’s a profession you need, and there’s another profession you need across the desk there,” the doctor said. “How many priests or rabbis or whatever do you have up there?”
“Again, I have no idea. Are you talking about going to Denver with us?” Roland asked incredulously.
“Can you think of better camouflage than a priest and a doctor?”
“Wait a minute, Brian!” Father Timothy said, panic in his voice.
“You know you can get a replacement here in a couple of days. The Cardinal owes you,” Doctor Jeffers said. “You haven’t had a vacation in eight years, dammit! And I’ll have another drink now that we’ve got that settled, if you please.”
CHAPTER THREE
Lucy sat uncomfortably in the Galileo’s ready room. She could almost feel the captain’s eyes on the back of her neck, and she resisted the impulse to look over her shoulder with difficulty. She felt each of her twenty-five—almost twenty-six—years individually.
Twenty-four hours had now passed since the disaster at Camp David, and the full depth of her position hadn’t revealed itself to her yet, though she had some suspicions. She doodled on another in a long chain of pieces of paper, seeing nothing and accomplishing less. Finally, she picked up her commlink.
“Communications, send messages to Captains Kane and Chapman. Have them meet me in the... my ready room as soon as possible, please.” Captain Jerry Chapman had been her executive officer until she took over command of the Galileo.
As she waited for the two officers to arrive, Lucy tidied up her calculations onto a fresh sheet of
paper.
She waved at the chairs in front of her as the two came in together and began without preamble. “The first thing I see is that if we don’t do something, and do it fast, this whole thing is going to come unraveled. We need to get some momentum back, and we need to show our people that we can do it without Simon. And without Kitty. No one person is necessary to the continued existence of the Terran Alliance. Because I’ll tell you, if any one person truly is necessary, then we should all beam down right now and call it quits.”
Marsha and Jerry started to speak at once, and Lucy held up her hand “One at a time, please.”
Jerry was the first one to get a word in. “Can’t you feel it, Lucy... uh, Captain? We can’t end this. Not now. It’s taken on a life of its own, and if we don’t help it grow, especially now that the whole Earth knows, then we’re doing the whole human race a disservice.”
“This is a Captain’s Call, Jerry. First names are allowed here,” Lucy said. “How about you, Marsha? Let’s have your opinion.”
Marsha looked uncomfortable. “Well, I don’t want to go back now, either. It’s too much fun. And yes, I know it’s going to get considerably less fun in the not-to-distant future, but sacrifices get made in the name of progress all the time. We have very concrete reminders of that with Simon dead and Kitty... whatever. I say keep on.”
Lucy shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “Okay, here’s the deal. I have three communiqués from the base captain and commanders essentially saying they’ll support whatever decision I make. I have you, Marsha, standing right here yesterday asking what you could do to help. And you, Jerry, when I said you were the new captain of the McCaffrey, you said, ‘Yes, ma’am, thank you, ma’am, I’ll do the best I can, ma’am,’ so I’m assuming I have your support as well. Do I, or don’t I?”
Both captains nodded their agreement and Lucy said, “Very well. For the moment, construction of Taurus Base is on hold. We have two ships ready to be crewed now, and that will be our priority. The McCaffrey and the Heinlein will both break orbit carrying as many extra personnel as possible without overtaxing the life support systems. I estimate you can carry an extra fifty people on each ship, especially if you use Marsha’s new trick of short-jumping straight out to your destinations. The Heinlein will rendezvous with Orion and offload a skeleton crew to get the new ship back here to the Galileo. The McCaffrey will proceed to Gemini and do the same. Both ships will return straight here. Trials will come later.
“I want to maintain a one-week trip time back from the belt to get as much training into the new crew as possible. At least they’ll be able to find their stations and quarters when they walk onto the ship. Marsha has worked out the micro-jump parameters, so I want her to download those to you, Jerry. Do that for the new ships when you get there and get back here. We’ll do what we can on this end to have crew ready to fill out your rosters when you arrive.”
She slid two folders across the table to the captains facing her. “These are the rosters for your ships—who you’ll be keeping and who you’ll be transferring to the Arthur C. Clarke and the Andre Norton. Inform your people and have them ready to break orbit right after the funerals day after tomorrow. Any questions?” she asked.
And, of course, there were. The new Captain Chapman was concerned with shipboard minutia.
“That’s what you have an executive officer for. Remember how I’d delegate things to you? You need to learn that you can’t have one-hundred-percent control of your ship, but you do need to have that kind of control over your officers and department heads. Your job is to tell people where to go and what to do, and look competent doing it. You also handle the big decisions, which gives you the big headaches. The best advice I can give you is to delegate as much as possible to people you trust. Simon once told me that if going to the captain with a problem is a traumatic experience, people will do their damnedest to solve it themselves. Let’s keep them thinking like that. But the trick is not overdoing it. We can’t have people doing something stupid because we fostered an image.”
Marsha stopped doodling on the pad in front of her. “Okay, Lucy, I can see the rationale here. Seven days out to train a crew, a couple of days on-station, and micro-jump back. That’s nine days for us. My question is what’s the Galileo going to be doing?”
Lucy had unconsciously adopted one of Simon’s gestures, which was to stare down at the tabletop while someone was speaking. She raised her eyes to Marsha’s and said, “The Galileo is going to sit right here and train as many people as well as we can so we can crew those two ships. As for me, I’m going to carry on Simon’s vision of getting bases for us, and I’m going to find out what happened down there.”
“Are you sure that’s wise, Lucy?” Marsha asked.
Lucy bristled. “Let me ask you something, Marsha. If I punched you in the nose, would it be wise to retaliate or let it go? If you let it go, what do you think I can do to you tomorrow? And the next day? Yes, I think it’s wise. Now, I’ll admit I’m not the most diplomatic person you’ll ever meet. I believe in saying what I mean, and I don’t believe in beating around the bush. I think that’s the root cause of some of the worst things that have happened in human history—specifically, worrying something to death instead of getting the matter resolved.
“I’ve been watching the newscasts. Constant repetition of the same stuff all day long. It gets very boring. What I do get out of it is that the Senate and the House of Representatives are up in arms. Republicans and Democrats are unified on something for just about the first time in history. China, Russia, and Great Britain are screaming for an answer. Everybody is screaming for an answer. Nobody wants to lose their piece of the technological pie, and messages have been beamed at us from every satellite circling the globe, none of which I’ve bothered to answer. I’m gonna let ‘em sit down there and stew for a while. What I see here is a televised funeral beamed down to every television on the planet. Until we do that, there will be no response to any overture from anyone on the surface. Then, and only then, do we begin any kind of negotiations.
“We’re only going to be ‘burying’ eleven coffins. We all understand that. It’s the symbolism I’m looking at here, for us as well as the people down there. I was having a problem deciding whether to launch them into the sun, into permanent orbit, or send them home. Home won out. Besides, it’ll make a bigger spectacle, and Simon taught me that if something could serve two purposes... Anyway,” she continued after a choked pause, “we load the coffins with something pyrotechnic and send them on long, shallow courses so everybody gets a good look. And those who matter won’t miss the message that we can drop something anywhere we want. Anything else?”
With a strange look on her face, Marsha stood up and answered, “No, that just about covers it, I think, which leaves us with things to do. Jerry, why don’t you come with me? I’ll explain micro-jumping and get you a download for the McCaffrey.”
The two captains headed off, discussing the esoterica of micro-jumps and the command of star ships.
Lucy took her own advice and delegated. She delegated Kitty’s care to the doctor and engineers, the day-to-day running of the ship to her new executive officer, and preparations for the trips to Orion and Gemini to Marsha. This left her with time on her hands—time she wished she didn’t have.
She wandered down the Galileo’s corridors until she found herself at the sickbay. Not knowing quite why, she walked over to the... container... holding Kitty’s body and stood there, looking into its cloudy interior.
“I don’t know what you or Simon would do,” she said, with a tinge of agony in her voice. “I only know what I think you would do. I think Simon would fight to get the embassies and get Taurus built, and you would have stood beside him every step of the way. All I can say is that I will continue that fight as long as I have breath in my body. I may not go about it at the same pace or in the same way, but it will get done.
“Now, I’m going to set up a funeral. I hope
you approve.” Lucy called Stephen to meet with her and the Chief Engineer on the projects deck, and with one last look at Kitty, she left the sickbay.
“What I want is a highly visible display,” she said to the two men seated at the small table tucked away in one corner of the immense room. “We’ll start with a ceremony here on the projects deck with as many people as possible, which will be broadcasted live to Earth. Then, the coffins will be launched in such a way that they traverse most of each time zone from north to south so more people get a chance to see it. There are four time zones across the US. Launch a coffin in each zone at ten p.m. local for best visual effect.”
The engineer spoke up. “The launches themselves are no problem. Either move the ship or have Mambas haul them to the right places and release them at the right time. As far as the visual display is concerned, different materials give off different colors and break up differently. I can load each coffin with enough stuff that they’ll burn for a while. We have the entire construction area to help with that. Don’t worry. But you’d better not plan on having pallbearers. These things will be heavy, trust me.”
Stephen had listened quietly to the exchange and finally asked, “Are you sure this is what you want to do?”
Lucy looked at him and said, “Stephen, if you or Gayle or anybody else who knows Simon... knew Simon... thinks that he wouldn’t do this... if even one of you thinks that he wouldn’t, tell me so, and I won’t do it. And he would make the ceremony a live broadcast, just like I intend to do, don’t you think?”
Stephen sat there and let the silence grow uncomfortably long.
“I’m going to take your lack of answer for agreement, Stephen. I have to. Now, there’s something else I have to do, and that’s organize the funeral. And I’m not what you could call good at public speaking. Either of you want my job?”