by Zach Hughes
And he was quick. One of the things against him was the fact that he’d never tried to kill a man before.
The human head is a tough nut. It’s built to survive blows which are astonishingly powerful. Dom, knowing this, overdid it. He swung the stock of the rifle with all his strength. Both of the Firsters had entered the bowels of the computer and moved past him. The head of the trailing one burst, making quite a mess which would have to be cleaned up before the computer could be functional again. Dom was moving fast, the backward swing of the rifle taking the second man as he turned, a gout of blood spurting through the nasal holes in the dark hood. Dom’s reaction time, fastest ever recorded at the Academy, was aiming a second blow at the falling face and white teeth flew and there was more blood and the stock squished down to be sure.
He was still crouched. There was no sound of alarm from below.
He was surprised at his lack of reaction to having killed two men. He was panting as he looked for signs of life. The second man jerked a bit and tried to breathe through the pulp which had been his face, but then he was still. Such men lived only to be killed, he thought, and he’d obliged them. The original mistake in handling terrorists was in not recognizing the basic fact that terrorists considered themselves to be expendable and this made them less than human, to be expended by society as forcefully as possible.
But he was not judge and jury. He was not, after all, hardened to killing. Shock came to him as the second man’s legs did a dying tattoo on the padded floor. And there were five more of them down below. Also below were Art, Doris, Larry. All three would die, without mercy, if he weakened, shocked by the quantity of blood in a man’s head.
He stepped over a body and looked out the port. They were waiting below with an alert but stoic patience. One of the terrorists was smoking. Dom calculated the chance of taking all five of them with a blast from the port. No way. The shots would also take one or more of his three friends. He moved back, jerked the mask from the ruptured head of the Firster who had been first to die. He cringed at the wetness, but fortunately the blood was mostly on the back side of the mask. He took a deep, shuddering breath and pulled it over his head. He stuck his masked head out of the port and made a hissing sound. They all looked up at him. He pointed to a hooded man and made a come-up-here motion. The man shouldered his weapon and came scampering up the ladder.
The plan was to have them come up one or two at a time, but it didn’t work. The man on the ladder saw the bodies of his companions and started to yell out. Dom clubbed him. He fell, half in, half out of the port. A burst of explosive rounds shattered the facade of the computer. Dom leaped to the view port and swept the room below with rifle fire, careful not to fire too close to the tight group of Art, Doris, and Larry. The two traitor space marines went down along with two of the Firsters.
Art Donald, moving with surprising swiftness, jerked Doris down, fell atop her behind a subconsole. They were out of the line of fire. Larry was not fast enough. He was seized by one of the two remaining men. The other one moved to stand on the other side of Larry, the three of them up against the control console below Dom and out of his line of fire. One of the terrorists began to shoot up the face of the computer with methodical thoroughness. Both of them stayed close to Larry. Dom was unable to fire. He had to dodge the fire which swept across the facade. The explosive missiles did not penetrate, but they sent small pieces of shrapnel flying.
“You can’t get out of here alive,” Dom yelled. “You can live, if you choose.”
In spite of the fact that terrorists were not executed, but merely confined as if the authorities wanted to keep them healthy until their friends could kidnap an important official to trade for the freedom of the imprisoned ones, they rarely surrendered.
“Put down your weapons,” Dom yelled.
A new burst of fire was the answer. When it died down he looked out the port. There had been a change in strategy. Having failed to destroy the memory banks, they would now try to damage the program by killing three important people. He watched helplessly as one of the surviving terrorists pulled out a grenade and lifted it toward his mouth to pull the pin. The grenade would take out Doris and Art, and they had their hands on Larry. Dom had a choice. By leaning out and pointing his weapon down he could take them, but it would mean sweeping Larry with the deadly explosive bullets.
The situation moved toward a point of no return in slow motion, for Dom could not bring himself, not even to save Doris and Art, to kill the smiling little man who was sandwiched between the two Firsters. He couldn’t do it. There was nothing he could do except cry out a protest.
But Larry Gomulka was a problem solver. It was his specialty. He, too, watched the movement of the grenade upward toward the white teeth of the Firster, and the direction of the man’s gaze revealed his intentions.
“Stay down,” Larry yelled, as he leaned forward and calmly flipped the manual exploder on one of the charges planted on the console. All Firster explosive devices were equipped with manual detonators. Public suicide was a popular hobby among the Firsters, and they liked to take people with them.
Dom felt the face of the computer blow inward, heard the concussion, felt himself falling. He was moving as he fell, scrambling to his feet as the echoes tore at his eardrums. Art was moving, trying to lift a portion of the console off his back. Doris was under him, screaming. Dom could see her face. He dropped the rifle. It struck what was left of a body and rolled to make a solid-sounding thunk on the floor. The body in the hatchway had been blown forward by the blast and was minus a leg. The console was a ruin, and a hole had been blown into the base of the machine. An armless torso rested against the remains of an overturned subconsole. It was not Larry. The chest was too big. The black body suit had been blown away to expose strong, young chest muscles. Dom heaved on the console, and Art was trying to stand up, shaking his head. Doris was swallowing, trying to restore her hearing. Dom helped Art to his feet and left him leaning against the shattered computer face. He lifted Doris.
“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice sounding faint. His ears still roared with the explosion.
“I can’t hear you,” she said. She spoke loudly. “Larry’s dead?”
Dom nodded. “He saved your life,” he mouthed at her.
Her face seemed to melt. There were no tears, just a heaving of her chest and strangled sounds from her throat.
The outer door burst open and space marines dashed in, looking young and impressive and futile. Dom recognized the young cadet officer who had assured him that the marines would handle the situation swiftly.
Now came the reaction. He trembled. He felt as if he was going to vomit. He never wanted to hear the name Folly again. Whatever she was worth, she was not worth the life of one small, slightly overweight, beer-drinking, smiling man. He leaned backward, almost falling before his hips found the edge of the shattered console. Doris put her hand on his arm and looked at him.
“He kept them from destroying the information banks,” she said. For a moment Dom thought she was talking about him, wanted to laugh, but then he realized that she was thinking of Larry. “He saved the project,” she said.
Dom knew that she’d get it straight in her mind later. For the moment, it didn’t matter what she thought. Larry had saved something far more important to him than the information in the computer. He had saved the life of the woman he loved and the life of a friend.
Chapter Six
At one end of the room thick plastic ports gave a view of the stars, bright, undimmed by atmosphere, hard and sharp points of light in a pitch-black sky. Among a small group of people at the far end of the room, so that the stars were not visible to them, Dom stood in full dress uniform. Doris, too, was in the parade dress of the service. Art Donald was, in fact, the only civilian present as a four-star admiral presented Larry’s medal to his widow. The ceremony was being televised live to Earth.
When it was over and the admiral was on his way back to DOSEAST in Washing
ton, Dom watched Doris gulp a full ounce of raw scotch.
“I don’t want it,” she said, looking down at the small gold medallion in her hand.
“I think I know how you feel,” Dom said.
“Larry would have laughed his head off at this,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“He would have said, never was there a more unlikely candidate for the Space Medal of Honor.” She smiled faintly, but there was no joy in the smile.
“No man ever deserved it more,” Dom said.
“Amen,” Art said.
“Is your life worth so much?” Doris asked bitterly. “I don’t value mine that high.”
Art choked on his drink. “I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Oh, Art, I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just that I think it’s all so funny. So very, very f-f-funny.”
“Easy,” Dom said, putting his hand over hers.
“There’s no way Art could have known that we, Larry and I, have talked about this very sort of thing,” Doris said. “He said heroism, especially the sort which entails the ultimate self-sacrifice, is one of our more cherished traditions, beginning with the Spartan boy who let a fox or a rat or something gnaw out his guts for some reason. Then the good soldier throws himself atop the grenade to save the lives of his buddies at the expense of his own. Isn’t it very strange, he would say, how the top medals, the Congressional Medal of Honor and the Space Medal of Honor, are so often awarded posthumously?”
“I think if you’d asked him how he really felt he would have explained that top medals are awarded posthumously to show our great regard for individual life,” Dom said. “When a man gives all he has, his life, for a buddy, or his country—”
“Then let’s give the Congressional Medal of Honor to all of the Earthfirsters who commit suicide,” Doris said.
“It isn’t the same,” Art said, weakly.
“No, it isn’t,” Doris said. “Because they’re not dying for what we happen to believe at this particular time.”
“Do you doubt that Larry died for what he believed?” Dom asked. He knew she was on the narrow edge, and he thought perhaps it was time someone or something pushed her over. She had submerged herself in her work following the attack on DOSEWEX, first in repairing the computer and then in the project.
“But that’s it,” she said, her face puckering as she looked at him. “Don’t you see? That’s it.” She had to swallow and work her mouth before she could continue. “If I could believe that he did it for the project, for the worlds—”
“He had that in mind, too,” Dom said. “You know how fast his mind worked. He measured all of it, the project, the effect on the future. He put all of it into his mind as a problem to be solved and he solved it. The solution called for him to punch a button on a detonator.” He was doing it deliberately. She had not cried, to his knowledge. Not once had he seen her show emotion, not until she was holding a small piece of gold in her hand.
Art, not realizing what Dom was trying to do, looked uncomfortable. He tried to get Dom’s attention, to tell him to be quiet.
“He added it all up,” Dom went on. “He added in the lives of Doris Gomulka and Art Donald, the ship, the alien out there in the atmosphere of Jupiter. He balanced all the factors against the life of Larry Gomulka, and it evened out. And if you try to take out even one element of that decision, the life of Doris Gomulka, then you’re robbing Larry of his last successful problem solution. You’re saying that he failed, because he had it figured wrong and his death is not evened out by your being alive and the project continuing. If your life isn’t worth the value he assigned to it, he gave more than was gained.”
He was still holding her hand. She tried to pull it away. She was breathing hard.
“Larry died so that, among other things, you might live. You have to admit that, Doris. Give that to him. Don’t try to take that away from him.”
It came out of her in an agonized, low-pitched wail, a river of sadness. She made no attempt to cover her face. Her lips distorted, her eyes closed, squeezing out tears. Her face was dramatic in its expression of pain, and the sound of her sobbing was too much for Art. He left the scene. She gulped air and sobbed. Dom led her gently toward the couch and pushed her down. Her hands were clenched at her sides. She wept with great gusto and noise, not neatly, not at all ladylike. There was wetness and huge gulpings and hoarse, grating noises and grunts of pain.
When the worst was over he positioned her on the couch and covered her with a blanket. He left her still weeping, but more quietly.
As he changed in his own quarters and went into the lock to don the heavy suit, he felt a little misty-eyed himself, for Larry would have enjoyed the sight of Folly hanging up there in space. He wondered if he would have been fast enough and decisive enough to do what Larry had done if he’d been in Larry’s place. He didn’t know. But he would never again ask himself if Larry’s death had been worthwhile.
He took a jumper up to the construction site. The plates were going on over the interior skeleton. Monowelding required the near vacuum of space. He could see miniature stars where the welders were at work. It was all done in an eerie silence in the airlessness. The stars were a quiet audience.
A good spacer has a celestial clock of sorts in his head. He knew, as he watched from a short distance, the relative position of the planets in their orbits. Mars there, finely visible. Jupiter was hidden, if he had been at a telescope, behind the bulk of the moon.
But the signals still came. Their strength was undiminished, not quite strong enough to be easily detected from Earth. They were being constantly monitored from the moon and from ships in space.
The new freedom of spending which was the hallmark of the project extended outward from the construction site in an expanding fan of beneficial largess for the entire service. The necessity of monitoring the signals sent ships out, and while they listened, they did useful work which had been planned but unfunded for decades. Once again the gathering of space data was a going industry. Men practiced science for the sake of science, just to scratch that persistent human itch for the knowledge of what lies over the next hill.
A ship monitoring the signal from Jupiter could be taking magnetic measurements or aiming shipboard telescopes out beyond the system or picking up asteroid samples or doing any one of hundreds of small research projects which would add to man’s knowledge. Even the critics were sold on the extra research in order to make the most out of the necessity of having ships in space.
Dom’s presence on the moon was not essential. His work was done. But it would have taken an act of Congress to get him away, even if he did not participate actively in putting together the Tinker-Toy construction which would become the John F. Kennedy. (If he thought of her as Folly, he added the word “Grand” in front of the epithet.) There were ongoing crises and decisions to be made, but he could have made them from DOSEWEX or DOSEAST. On the other hand, Doris was valuable and Art Donald’s team was needed to run a series of tests on construction as it went into place.
She grew rapidly. There wasn’t another building project under way anywhere in the world. The department was concentrating all its manpower and most of its available money on the Kennedy. She was the topic of conversation wherever DOSE people worked, from Earthside to the last picket ship out near the mass of Jupiter.
The grandeur which was a ship took shape in her own element with the pocked moon and the blackness of space as her backdrop. It made for a serene and beautiful picture. Sitting in a jumper five thousand yards from the Kennedy, it was difficult to imagine the conflict going on down there on that blue-and-white ball which was the home planet. There, governments were being changed. Fighting varied from savage and random acts of terror by the Firsters to the highly charged atmosphere of the Senate, where radicals were locked in combat with the outnumbered men who believed in a future for man which did not entail buttoning up and toughing it out on the home planet.
For weeks a debate raged ov
er the battle of DOSEWEX, where thirty-two hundred Earthfirsters died. The ruling party, the Publicrats, received the brunt of an attack from rabid, self-confessed Firsters and Worldsavers. Liberals wept openly on the Senate floor as they bewailed the mass slaughter of humanity at DOSEWEX, and, in their zeal against the death penalty for terrorists, they called loudly for the pitiless execution of all those responsible for the slaughter of innocent terrorists who were merely using their First Amendment rights to express dissatisfaction with space policy.
Only once did a courageous man stand up to remind the Senate that two dozen civilians died at DOSEWEX, along with over a hundred space marines. He was hooted into silence. On the way to his fortified apartment, he was attacked by a teenage Firster girl in a sexy little dress which concealed a bomb in an oversized bra. The bomb ruptured the brave senator’s left eardrum and killed two of his bodyguards. Thus were courageous and commonsense views silenced, without regard for First Amendment freedoms.
It was almost as if the majority of Americans felt guilty for taking the government’s cradle-to-the-grave security at the expense of individual freedom and wanted to be punished by the Firster knife or bomb. Overpeopled, underfed, the country was one teeming warren of interconnected big-city heaps where people suffering the traumas of crowding seemed all too eager to die and saw no promise in tomorrow.
Earthside was such a turmoil that there was no ground leave. The limited facilities of the moon were taxed by the construction crews, and spacers in from Mars or the Jupiter surveillance run sometimes had to spend their ground time aboard ship. Their bitchings were surprisingly good-natured, for they could see the Kennedy as she grew.