“Holy Jesus …
Charlie whispered, sinking deeper in the seat. Brinkley stamped into the bar, hand resting on his gun butt, squinting around in the darkness. No one answered him.
“Anybody try to hide him gonna be in trouble! he shouted angrily. “I’m gonna find that black granny dodger!
He started toward the rear of the room and Charlie, with his airline bag in one hand, vaulted the back of the booth and crashed against the rear door.
“Come back here, you son of a bitch!
The table rocked when Charlie’s flying heel caught it and the cigar box slid off to the floor. Heavy boots thundered and the door squealed open and Charlie pushed out through it. Sam bent over to retrieve the box.
“I’ll kill yuh, so help me!
The circuit hadn’t been damaged; Sam sighed in relief and stood, the tinny music between his fingers.
He may have heard the first shot but he could not have heard the second because the .38 slug caught him in the back of the head and killed him instantly. He crumpled to the floor.
Patrolman Marger ran in from the patrol car outside, his gun ready, and saw Brinkley come back into the room through the door in the rear.
“He got away, damn it, got clear away.
“What happened here?
Marger asked, slipping his gun back into the holster and looking down at the slight, crumpled body at his feet.
“I dunno. He must have jumped up in the way when I let fly at the other one what was running away. Must be another one of them commonists anyway, he was sittin’ at the same table.
“There’s gonna be trouble about this … .
“Why trouble?
Brinkley asked indignantly. “It’s just anutha of dead nigger ….
One of his boots was on the cigar box and it crumpled and fractured when he turned away.
9:
SIMULATED TRAINER
Mars was a dusty, frigid hell. Bone dry and blood red. They trudged single file through the ankle deep sand; in a monotonous duet cursed the nameless engineer who had designed the faulty reconditioners in their pressure suits. The bug hadn’t shown during testing of the new suits. It appeared only after they had been using them steadily for a few weeks. The water-absorbers became overloaded and broke down. The Martian atmosphere stood at a frigid sixty degrees centigrade. Inside the suits, they tried to blink the unevaporated sweat from their eyes and slowly cooked in the high humidity.
Morley shook his head viciously to dislodge an itching droplet from his nose. At the same moment, something rust colored and furry darted across his path. It was the first Martian life they had seen. Instead of scientific curiosity, he felt only anger. A sudden kick sent the animal flying high into the air.
The suddenness of the movement threw him off balance. He fell sideways slowly, dragging his rubberized suit along an upright rock fragment of sharp obsidian.
Tony Bannerman heard the other man’s hoarse shout in his earphones and whirled. Morley was down, thrashing on the sand with both hands pressed against the ragged tear in the suit leg. Moisture-laden air was pouring out in a steaming jet that turned instantly to scintillating ice crystals. Tony jumped over to him, trying to seal the tear with his own ineffectual gloves. Their faceplates close, he could see the look of terror on Morley’s face-as well as the blue tinge of cyanosis.
“Help me-help me!
The words were shouted so loud they rasped the tiny helmet earphones. But there was no help. They had taken no emergency patches with them. All the patches were in the ship at least a quarter of a mile away. Before he could get there and back, Morley would be dead.
Tony straightened up slowly and sighed. Just the two of them in the ship, there was no one else on Mars who could help. Morley saw the look in Tony’s eyes and stopped struggling.
“No hope at all, Tony-I’m dead.
“Just as soon as all the oxygen is gone; thirty seconds at the most. There’s nothing I can do.
Morley grated the shortest, vilest word he knew and pressed the red EMERGENCY button set into his glove above the wrist. The ground opened up next to him in the same instant, sand sifting down around the edges of the gap. Tony stepped back as two men in white pressure suits came up out of the hole. They had red crosses on the fronts of their helmets and carried a stretcher. They rolled Morley onto it and were gone back into the opening in an instant.
Tony stood looking sourly at the hole for about a minute waiting until Morley’s suit was pushed back through the opening. Then the sand-covered trapdoor closed and the desert was unbroken once more.
The dummy in the suit weighed as much as Morley and its plastic features even resembled him a bit. Some wag had painted black X’s on the eyes. Very funny, Tony thought, as he struggled to get the clumsy thing onto his back. On the way back the now-quiet Martian animal was lying in his path. He kicked it aside and it rained a fine shower of springs and gears.
The too-small sun was touching the peaks of the saw-tooth red mountains when he reached the ship. Too late for burial today, it would have to wait until morning. Leaving the thing in the airlock, he stamped into the cabin and peeled off his dripping pressure suit.
It was dark by that time and the things they had called the night-owls began clicking and scratching against the hull of the ship. They had never managed to catch sight of night-owls; that made the sound doubly annoying. He clattered the pans noisily to drown the sound of them out while he prepared the hot evening rations. When the meal was finished and the dishes cleared away, he began to feel the loneliness for the first time. Even the chew of tobacco didn’t help; tonight it only reminded him of the humidor of green Havana cigars waiting for him back on Earth.
His single kick upset the slim leg of the mess table, sending metal dishes, pans and silverware flying in every direction.
They made a satisfactory noise and he exacted even greater pleasure by leaving the mess just that way and going to bed.
They had been so close this time, if only Morley had kept his eyes open! He forced the thought out of his mind and went to sleep.
In the morning he buried Morley. Then, grimly and carefully, he passed the remaining two days until blast off time. Most of the geological samples were sealed away, while the air sampling and radiation recording meters were fully automatic.
On the final day, he removed the recording tapes from the instruments, then carried the instruments themselves away from the ship where they couldn’t be caught in the takeoff blast. Next to the instruments he piled all the extra supplies, machinery and unneeded equipment. Shuffling through the rusty sand for the last time, he gave Morley’s grave an ironical salute as he passed. There was nothing to do in the ship and not as much as a pamphlet left to read. Tony passed the two remaining hours on his bunk counting the rivets in the ceiling.
A sharp click from the control clock broke the silence and behind the thick partition he could hear the engines begin the warm-up cycle. At the same time, the padded arms slipped across his bunk, pinning him down securely. He watched the panel slip back in the wall next to him and the hypo arm slide through, moving erratically like a snake as its metal fingers sought him out. They touched his ankle and the serpent’s tooth of the needle snapped free. The last thing he saw was the needle slipping into his vein, then the drug blacked him out.
As soon as he was under, a hatch opened in the rear bulkhead and two orderlies brought in a stretcher. They wore no suits or masks and the blue sky of Earth was visible behind them.
Coming to was the same as it always had been. The gentle glow from the stimulants that brought him up out of it, the first sight of the white ceiling of the operating room on Earth.
Only this time the ceiling wasn’t visible, it was obscured by the red face and thundercloud brow of Colonel Stegham. Tony tried to remember if you saluted while in bed, then decided that the best thing to do was lie quietly.
“Damn it, Bannerman,” the colonel growled. “Welcome back on Earth. And why the hell did y
ou bother coming back? With Morley dead the expedition has to be counted a failure-and that means not one completely successful expedition to date.
“The team in number two, sir, how did they do… ?
Tony tried to sound cheerful.
“Terrible. If anything, worse than your team. Both dead on the second day after landing. A meteor puncture in their oxygen tank and they were too busy discovering a new flora to bother looking at any readouts.
“Anyway, that’s not why I’m here. Get on some clothes and come into my office.
He slammed out and Tony scrambled off the bed, ignoring the touch of dizziness from the drugs. When colonels speak lieutenants hurry to obey.
Colonel Stegham was scowling out of his window when Tony came in. He returned the salute and proved that he had a shard of humanity left in his military soul by offering Tony one of his cigars. Only when they had both lit up did he wave Tony’s attention to the field outside the window.
“Do you see that? Know what it is?
“Yes, sir, the Mars rocket.
“It’s going to be the Mars rocket. Right now, it’s only a half-completed hull. The motors and instruments are being assembled in plants all over the country. Working on a crash basis the earliest estimate of completion is six months from now.
“The ship will be ready - only we aren’t going to have any men to go in her. At the present rate of washout there won’t be a single man qualified. Yourself included.
Tony shifted uncomfortably under his gaze as the colonel continued.
“This training program has always been my baby. Dreamed it up and kept bugging the Pentagon until it was finally adopted. We knew we could build a ship that would get to Mars and back, operated by fully automated controls that would fly her under any degree of gravity or free fall. But we needed men who could walk out on the surface of the planet and explore it - or the whole thing would be so much wasted effort.
“The ship and the robot pilot could be tested under simulated flight condition, and the bugs worked out. It was my suggestion, which was adopted, that the men who are to go in the ship should be shaken down in the same way. Two pressure chambers were built, simulated trainers that duplicated Mars in every detail we could imagine. We have been running two-man teams through these chambers for eighteen months now, trying to train them to man the real ship out there.
“I’m not going to tell you how many men we started with, or how many have been casualties because of the necessary realism of the chambers. I’ll tell you this much though-we haven’t had one successful simulated expedition in all that time. And every man who has broken down or `died,’ like your partner Morley, has been eliminated.
“There are only four possible men left, yourself included. If we don’t get one successful two-man team out of you four, the entire program is a washout.
Tony sat frozen, the dead cigar between his fingers. He knew that the pressure had been on for some months now, that Colonel Stegham had been growling around like a gut-shot bear. The colonel’s voice cut through his thoughts.
“Psych division has been after me for what they think is a basic weakness of the program. Their feeling is that because it is a training program the men always have it in the back of their minds that it’s not for real. They can always be pulled out of a tight hole. Like Morley was, at the last moment. After the results we have had I am beginning to agree with Psych.
“There are four men left and I am going to run one more exercise for each two-man group. This final exercise will be a full dress rehearsal - this time we’re playing for keeps.
“I don’t understand, Colonel … .
“It’s simple. Stegham accented his words with a bang of his fist on the desk. “We’re not going to help or pull anyone out no matter how much they need it. This is battle training with live ammunition. We’re going to throw everything at you that we can think of - and you are going to have to take it. If you tear your suit this time, why you are going to die in the Martian vacuum just a few feet from all the air in the world.
His voice softened just a bit when he dismissed Tony.
“I wish there was some other way to do it, but we have no choice now. We have to get a crew for that ship next month and this is the only way to be sure.
Tony had a three-day pass. He was drunk the first day, hungover sick the second-and boiling mad on the third. Every man on the project was a volunteer so adding deadly realism was carrying the thing too far. He could get out any time he wanted, though he knew what he would look like then. There was only one thing to do: go along with the whole stupid idea. He would do what they wanted and go through with it. And when he had finished the exercise, he looked forward to hitting the colonel right on the end of his big bulbous nose.
He joined his new partner, Hal Mendoza, when he went for his medical. They had met casually at the training lecture before the simulated training began. They shook hands reservedly now, each eyeing the other with a view to future possibilities. It took two men to make a team and either one could be the cause of death for the other.
Mendoza was almost the physical opposite of Tony, tall and wiry, while Tony was as squat and solid as a tank. Tony’s relaxed, almost casual manner was matched by the other man’s seemingly tense nerves. Hal chewed nicotine continuously and would obviously have preferred to go back to chain-smoking. His eyes were never still. Tony forgot his momentary worry with an effort. Hal would have to be good to get this far in the program. He would probably calm down once the exercise was under way.
The medic took Tony next and began the detailed examination.
“What’s this? the medical officer asked Tony as he probed with a swab at his cheek.
“Ouch,” Tony said. “Razor cut, my hand slipped while I was shaving.
The doctor scowled and painted on antiseptic, then slapped on a square of gauze.
“Watch all skin openings,” he warned. “They make ideal entry routes for bacteria. Never know what you might find on Mars.
Tony started to protest, then let it die in his throat. What was the use of explaining that the real trip - if and when it ever came off - would take 260 days. Any cuts would be well healed in that time, even in frozen sleep.
As always after the medical, they climbed into their flight suits and walked over to the testing building. On the way Tony stopped at the barracks and dug out his chess set and well thumbed deck of cards. The access door was open in the thick wall of Building Two and they stepped through into the dummy Mars ship. After the medics had strapped them to the bunks the simulated frozen-sleep shots put them under.
Coming to was accompanied by the usual nausea and weakness. No realism spared. On a sudden impulse Tony staggered to the latrine mirror and blinked at his red-eyed, smooth-shaven reflection. He tore the bandage off his cheek and his fingers touched the open cut with the still congealed drop of blood at the bottom. A relaxed sigh slipped out. He had the recurrent bad dream that some day one of these training trips would really be a flight to Mars. Logic told him that the bureaucrats would never forgo the pleasure and publicity of a big send-off. Yet the doubt, like all illogical ones, persisted. At the beginning of each training flight, he had to abolish it again.
The nausea came back with a swoop and he forced it down. This was one exercise where he couldn’t waste time. The ship had to be checked. Hal was sitting up on his bunk waving a limp hand. Tony waved back.
At that moment, the emergency communication speaker crackled into life. At first, there was just the rustle of activity in the control office, then the training officer’s voice cut through the background noise.
“Lieutenant Bannerman - you awake yet?
Tony fumbled the mike out of its clip and reported. “Here, sir.
Then the endless seconds of waiting as the radio signal crossed the depths of space to Earth, was received and answered.
“Just a second, Tony,” the officer said. He mumbled to someone at one side of the mike, then came back on. “There’s been som
e trouble with one of the bleeder valves in the chamber; the pressure is above Mars norm. Hold the exercise until we pump her back down.
“Yes, sir,” Tony said, then killed the mike so he and Hal could groan about the so-called efficiency of the training squad. It was only a few minutes before the speaker came back to life.
“Okay, pressure on the button. Carry on as before.
Tony made an obscene gesture at the unseen man behind the voice and walked over to the single port. He cranked at the handle that moved the crash shield out of the way.
“Well, at least it’s a quiet Mars for a change,” he said after the ruddy light had streamed in. Hal came up and looked over his shoulder.
“Praise Stegham for that,” he said. “The last one, where I lost my partner, was wind all the time. From the shape of those dunes it looks like the atmosphere never moves at all.
They stared glumly at the familiar red landscape and dark sky for a long moment, then Tony turned to the controls while Hal cracked out the atmosphere suits.
“Over here-quickly!
Hal didn’t have to be called twice, he was at the board in a single jump. He followed Tony’s pointing finger.
“The water meter - it shows the tank’s only about half-full!
They struggled to take off the plate that gave access to the tank compartment. When they laid it aside a small trickle of rusty water ran across the deck at their feet. Tony crawled in with a flashlight and moved it up and down the tubular tanks. His muffled voice echoed inside the small compartment.
“Damn Stegham and his tricks-another `shock of landing failure.
Connecting pipe split and the water that leaked out has soaked down into the insulating layer; we’ll never get it out without tearing the ship apart. Hand me the gunk. I’ll plug the leak until we can repair it.
“It’s going to be an awfully dry month,” Hal said grimly while he checked the rest of the control board.
The first few days were like every other trip. They planted the flag and unloaded the equipment. The observing and recording instruments were set up by the third day; they unshipped the automatic theodolite and started it making maps. By the fourth day they were ready to begin their sample collection.
Galactic Dreams Page 11