And the group would break up and wander away, eyes tired, eyes haunted with nostalgia.
“What’re we waiting for?” men shouted at the supervisory staff. “Get some transportation in here. Let’s get rolling.”
Men watched the skies for glider trains or jet transports, but the skies remained empty, and the staff remained close-mouthed. Then a dust column appeared on the horizon to the north, and a day later a convoy of tractor-trucks pulled into camp.
“Start loading aboard, men!” was the crisp command. Surly voices: “You mean we don’t go by air? We gotta ride those kidney bouncers? It’ll take a week to get to Mare Ery! Our contract says—”
“Load aboard! We’re not going to Mare Ery yet!” Grumbling, they loaded their baggage and their weary bodies into the trucks, and the trucks thundered and clattered across the desert, rolling towards the mountains.
The convoy rolled for three days towards the mountains, stopping at night to make camp, and driving on at sunrise. When they reached the first slopes of the foothills, the convoy stopped again. The deserted encampment lay a hundred and fifty miles behind. The going had been slow over the roadless desert.
“Everybody out!” barked the messenger from the lead truck. “Bail out! Assemble at the foot of the hill.”
Voices were growling among themselves as the men moved in small groups from the trucks and collected in a milling tide in a shallow basin, overlooked by a low cliff and a hill. Manue saw the staff climb out of a cab and slowly work their way up the cliff. They carried a portable public address system.
“Gonna get a preaching,” somebody snarled.
“Sit down, please!” barked the loud-speaker. “You men sit down there! Quiet—quiet, please!”
The gathering fell into a sulky silence. Will Kinley stood looking out over them, his eyes nervous, his hand holding the mike close to his mouth so that they could hear his weak troffie voice.
“If you men have questions,” he said, “I’ll answer them now. Do you want to know what you’ve been doing during the past year?”
An affirmative rumble arose from the group.
“You’ve been helping to give Mars a breathable atmosphere.” He glanced briefly at his watch, then looked back at his audience. “In fifty minutes, a controlled chain reaction will start in the tritium ice. The computers will time it and try to control it. Helium and oxygen will come blasting up out of the second hole.”
A rumble of disbelief arose from his audience. Someone shouted: “How can you get air to blanket a planet from one hole?”
“You can’t,” Kinley replied crisply. “A dozen others are going in, just like that one. We plan three hundred, and we’ve already located the ice pockets. Three hundred wells, working for eight centuries, can get the job done.”
“Eight centuries! What good—”
“Wait!” Kinley barked. “In the meantime, we’ll build pressurized cities close to the wells. If everything pans out, we’ll get a lot of colonists here, and gradually condition them to live in a seven or eight psi atmosphere—which is about the best we can hope to get. Colonists from the Andes and the Himalayas—they wouldn’t need much conditioning.”
“What about us?”
There was a long plaintive silence. Kinley’s eyes scanned the group sadly, and wandered towards the Martian horizon, gold and brown in the late afternoon. “Nothing—about us,” he muttered quietly.
“Why did we come out here?”
“Because there’s danger of the reaction getting out of hand. We can’t tell anyone about it, or we’d start a panic.” He looked at the group sadly. “I’m telling you now, because there’s nothing you could do. In thirty minutes—”
There were angry murmurs in the crowd. “You mean there may be an explosion?”
“There will be a limited explosion. And there’s very little danger of anything more. The worst danger is in having ugly rumours start in the cities. Some fool with a slip-stick would hear about it, and calculate what would happen to Mars if five cubic miles of tritium ice detonated in one split second. It would probably start a riot. That’s why we’ve kept it a secret.”
The buzz of voices was like a disturbed beehive. Manue Nanti sat in the midst of it, saying nothing, wearing a dazed and weary face, thoughts jumbled, soul drained of feeling.
Why should men lose their lungs that after eight centuries of tomorrows, other men might breathe the air of Mars as the air of Earth?
Other men around him echoed his thoughts in jealous mutterings. They had been helping to make a world in which they would never live.
An enraged scream arose near where Manue sat. “They’re going to blow us up! They’re going to blow up Mars.”
“Don’t be a fool!” Kinley snapped.
“Fools they call us! We are fools! For ever coming here! We got sucked in! Look at me!” A pale dark-haired man came wildly to his feet and tapped his chest. “Look! I’m losing my lungs! We’re all losing our lungs! Now they take a chance on killing everybody.”
“Including ourselves,” Kinley called coldly.
“We oughta take him apart. We oughta kill everyone who knew about it—and Kinley’s a good place to start!”
The rumble of voices rose higher, calling both agreement and dissent. Some of Kinley’s staff were looking nervously towards the trucks. They were unarmed.
“You men sit down!” Kinley barked.
Rebellious eyes glared at the supervisor. Several men who had come to their feet dropped to their hunches again. Kinley glowered at the pale upriser who called for his scalp.
“Sit down, Handell!”
Handell turned his back on the supervisor and called out to the others. “Don’t be a bunch of cowards! Don’t let him bully you!”
“You men sitting around Handell. Pull him down.”
There was no response. The men, including Manue, stared up at the wild-eyed Handell gloomily, but made no move to quiet him. A pair of burly foremen started through the gathering from its outskirts.
“Stop!” Kinley ordered. “Turpin, Schultz—get back. Let the men handle this themselves.”
Half a dozen others had joined the rebellious Handell. They were speaking in low tense tones among themselves, “For the last time, men! Sit down!”
The group turned and started grimly towards the cliff. Without reasoning why, Manue slid to his feet quietly as Handell came near him. “Come on, fellow, let’s get him,” the leader muttered.
The Peruvian’s fist chopped a short stroke to Handell’s jaw, and the dull thunk echoed across the clearing. The man crumpled, and Manue crouched over him like a hissing panther. “Get back!” he snapped at the others. “Or I’ll jerk his hoses out.”
One of the others cursed him.
“Want to fight, fellow?” the Peruvian wheezed. “I can jerk several hoses out before you drop me!”
They shuffled nervously for a moment.
“The guy’s crazy!” one complained in a high voice. “Get back or he’ll kill Handell!”
They sidled away, moved aimlessly in the crowd, then sat down to escape attention. Manue sat beside the fallen man and gazed at the thinly smiling Kinley.
“Thank you, son. There’s a fool in every crowd.” He looked at his watch again. “Just a few minutes, men. Then you’ll feel the earth-tremor, and the explosion, and the wind. You can be proud of that wind, men. It’s new air for Mars, and you made it.”
“But we can’t breathe it!” hissed a troffie.
Kinley was silent for a long time, as if listening to the distance. “What man ever made his own salvation?” he murmured.
They packed up the public address amplifier and came down the hill to sit in the cab of a truck, waiting.
It came as an orange glow in the south, and the glow was quickly shrouded by an expanding white cloud. Then, minutes later the ground pulsed beneath them, quivered and shook. The quake subsided, but remained as a hint of vibration. Then after a long time, they heard the dull-throated thu
ndering across the Martian desert. The roar continued steadily, grumbling and growling as it would do for several hundred years.
There was only a hushed murmur of awed voices from the crowd. When the wind came, some of them stood up and moved quietly back to the trucks, for now they could go back to a city for reassignment. There were other tasks to accomplish before their contracts were done.
But Manue Nanti still sat on the ground, his head sunk low, desperately trying to gasp a little of the wind he had made, the wind out of the ground, the wind of the future. But his lungs were clogged, and he could not drink of the racing wind. His big calloused hand clutched slowly at the ground, and he choked a brief sound like a sob.
A shadow fell over him. It was Kinley, come to offer his thanks for the quelling of Handell. But he said nothing for a moment as he watched Manue’s desperate Gethsemane.
“Some sow, others reap,” he said.
“Why?” the Peruvian choked.
The supervisor shrugged. “What’s the difference? But if you can’t be both, which would you rather be?”
Nanti looked up into the wind. He imagined a city to the south, a city built on tear-soaked ground, filled with people who had no ends beyond their culture, no goal but within their own society. It was a good sensible question: which would he rather be—sower or reaper?
Pride brought him slowly to his feet, and he eyed Kinley questioningly. The supervisor touched his shoulder. “Go on to the trucks.”
Nanti nodded and shuffled away. He had wanted something to work for, hadn’t he? Something more than the reasons Donnell had given. Well, he could smell a reason, even if he couldn’t breathe it.
Eight hundred years was a long time, but then—long time, big reason. The air smelled good, even with its clouds of boiling dust.
He knew now what Mars was—not a ten-thousand-a-year job, not a garbage can for surplus production. But an eight-century passion of human faith in the destiny of the race of Man. He paused short of the truck. He had wanted to travel, to see the sights of Earth, the handiwork of Nature and of history, the glorious places of his planet.
He stooped, and scooped up a handful of the red-brown soil, letting it sift slowly between his fingers. Here was Mars—his planet now. No more of Earth, not for Manue Nanti. He adjusted his aerator more comfortably and climbed into the waiting truck.
<
* * * *
NOISE LEVEL
by Raymond F. Jones
I
Dr Martin Nagle studied the paint on the ceiling of the outer anteroom of the Office of National Research. After ten minutes he was fairly certain which corner had been painted first, the direction of advance across the ceiling, and approximately how long it had taken.
It was a new building and a new paint job, but these facts were evident in the brush marks and brush hairs left in the paint. On the whole, the job was something of an indication of how things were in general, he thought somewhat sadly.
He studied the rug. Specifications should have been higher. The manufacturer undoubtedly operated on the principle of ‘don’t throw away seconds; you can always sell them to the Government.’
His watch showed twenty-five minutes spent in the study of the anteroom. It was all he was going to give it. He picked up his briefcase and top coat and moved towards the door.
He almost collided with a grey-suited figure, then backed away in pleasant recognition.
‘Berk!’
The face of Dr Kenneth Berkeley lighted as he gripped Martin Nagle’s free hand and clapped him on the shoulder.
‘What are you doing out here in this waiting room. Mart?’
‘I got invited to some conference with all the top dogs and high brass, but the boys in blue wouldn’t let me in. I was just on the way back to California. But you’re one of the last I expected to meet here. What are you doing, Berk?’
‘I work on ONR. I’m on this conference myself. They sent me out to look for you. Everybody else has arrived.’
‘I saw the parade from here. Dykstra of MIT, Collins of Harvard, and Mellon from Cal Tech. A high-powered bunch.’
‘It is. And they’re all waiting on you! Come on. We’ll talk later.’
Mart jerked a thumb towards the office opening off the anteroom. ‘The boys in there seem to have doubts as to whether I can be trusted not to pass things on to the Comrades. I can’t wait around. It’ll probably take six weeks to clear me. I thought all that would have been taken care of. Evidently it wasn’t. Give my regards to everybody, and tell Keyes I’m sorry I hadn’t been cleared for classified projects. I guess he didn’t know it.’
‘No, wait - this is absolutely silly,’ said Berk. ‘We’ve got to have you in there. Sit down and we’ll have this thing cleared in five minutes!’
Mart sat down again. He had never worked on any classified projects. The fingerprinting and sleuthing into the past of his colleagues had always seemed distasteful to him. He knew Berk didn’t have a chance now. He’d seen more than one good man twiddle his thumbs for six months to a year while his dark past was unearthed.
Rising voices from the inner office of the FBI agent became audible. Mart caught snatches of Berk’s baritone roar. ‘Utterly ridiculous ... top-drawer physicist... electro fields ... got to have this man—’
After the FBI office there were still the offices of Military Intelligence and Naval Intelligence to hurdle. It was a fantastic triple barrier they had woven about this conference. On coming in he had chuckled at this further evidence of frantic bureaucrats to button up the secrets of nature which lay visible to the whole world.
In a moment Berk came striding out, red-faced and indignant. ‘You stay right there, Mart,’ he said furiously. ‘I’m going to get Keyes on this thing, and we’ll find out who’s got a right to get into this place besides the janitor!’
‘Look, Berk - I don’t mind. I don’t think you ought to bother Keyes with this—’
‘I’ll be right back. This thing has gone too far.’
Mart felt rather foolish. It was not his fault he couldn’t get by the security officers, but that failure induced a faint sense of guilt.
Berk returned within minutes. With him were two men in uniform, a brigadier general, and a naval captain. With them was Dr Keyes, Director of ONR. Martin knew him only by reputation - which was very top-drawer indeed. Keyes approached with a direct friendly smile and offered his hand.
‘I’m very sorry, Dr Nagle, regarding this delay. I had no idea that you would be stopped at the security desk. I issued instructions in plenty of time for the conference that everyone invited be properly cleared. Somehow this formality was overlooked in your case. But I am sure that we shall be able to make satisfactory emergency arrangements within a few moments. If you will wait here while I confer with all these gentlemen—’
They closed the door of the inner office, but Mart could not help straining his ears at the rumble of sounds that filtered through. He caught a phrase in a voice that belonged to one of the security officers: ‘... Demanded these triple security screens yourself—’
And another from Keyes: ‘... The one man who may be able to crack this thing for us—’
Mart had come reluctantly. His wife had protested, and the two children had set up a tremendous wail that it might mean no summer vacation at all.
He rather wished he had heeded their protests. The moment a man became involved in something so classified it required triple passes from the Army, Navy, and FBI he could say good-bye to freedom. He wondered how Keyes had become involved in such a circuitous business. Keyes had done monumental work on electromagnetic radiation.
And he wondered, too, what Kenneth Berkeley was doing here. It was way out of his field. Berk was a top psychologist in the mechanics of learning, and experimental training procedures.
It looked to Mart as if both of them were wasting their time in security clearance wrangles.
He was not particularly intrigued by the possible magnitude of the pr
oblem under consideration. A man sitting by a mountain stream under an open summer sky had the most ponderous problems of nature before him if he chose to consider them. None couched in hush-hush terms behind closed lab doors could have any greater import.
At last the door opened. Mart arose. Dr Keyes led the procession out of the room. All of the men were a little more strained in their expressions than when they went in, but Keyes took Mart’s arm.
‘It’s all right. You have full clearance now. Your papers will be issued and ready when you come out. But let’s get to the conference at once. We’ve kept the others waiting.’
Spectrum 5 - [Anthology] Page 6