Not in Solitude [Revised Edition]

by Kenneth F. Gantz

  Less than an hour left before his duty. He decided to go down and see how the engineers were making out. The drive would not start tonight. You could bet on that. Nor any time until Vining was ready for it to start. Vining and Dane and Pembroke. They were in it together.

  He went down through the high decks, past the main deck to 2-low deck, where the great truncated sphere of the space-craft’s body sat on the squat truncated cone of its base. Most of the 2200-odd feet of 2-low deck was occupied by the square bulk of the nuclear drive that rose from the base deck below and thrust on up against the floor of 1-low deck. Nesting over the 41 take-off blast tubes that thrust down in the base cone like a bundle of giant dynamite sticks, the monster battery of generators was more like a windowless blockhouse than the live thing in a moving vehicle. For all its unfunctional design and the knowledge that it was dead, Yudin shuddered when he stepped into its opened passages and sought out its internal chambers.

  It way something of a bank vault and something of a rectangular labyrinth. Narrow passages branched off at right angles. Lighted here and there, they plunged darkly into non-human bylands. Open manholes went down into pitch black, and ladders climbed into obscured recesses overhead.

  The central chamber was deserted. Yudin strained quietly to hear. If anyone was working, it was a cerebral labor. His watch’s ticking made him think of a Geiger counter. He turned around and hastened out of the thing.

  Vining was just coming up from the tube deck. He glanced curiously at Yudin. “They have down here already searched.”

  Yudin nodded at the big generator housing. “Gives me the creeps. You making any headway with it?”

  Vining swept his hand torch at the blind, black wall. “Here is nothing wrong, but the power. The power is weak. The power will to the take-off ratio not develop.”

  “That’s what Major Beloit said yesterday,” Yudin told him.

  “It is also the truth tonight.” Vining thrust up closer. “You think I do this?” he shouted.

  Yudin saw the fatigue lines and the bloodshot eyes. “Take it easy. Your job is to tend to this baby. You built it. Why can’t you fix it?”

  Vining grabbed the lapel of his uniform and shook him.

  “Take it easy, I said.” He pushed away the man’s hand. “I just asked you what’s the matter you can’t fix it.”

  “Ja, ja. So you do.” Vining kicked a bench around and sat down heavily. “All you want is me the drive to fix. So I build it. So I know to fix it. Here are all the parts. Here are all the quantities and correct. But here is not the power. Here is fission. Ten per cent critical we get. Sometimes twenty per cent. That is all. Here is no take-off power.”

  “But why?”

  “Why! You ask me why! Why grows all at once the healthy body cancer? My drive has cancer. But to cut the cancer away, the surgeon must first find the cancer.”

  He got up. “Now I sleep. Tomorrow I recalculate the quantities, but it is no good. You want to know what I think?” The words came hoarsely, like a loud rough whisper. “I tell your colonel, but he swears and orders me to get the power. He orders me to fix my drive that he says I have destroyed. Then I work more hours and I tell him again. We are in some force field caught. An unknown force field. It has to be. A force field that destroys the balance of the drive!” He was shouting again now. “A force field, I tell you. It has to be. So he laughs at me and says, ‘Who is the fool, you think?’”

  Yudin said, “He’s just about dead now, you know.”

  “Ja, I know. A force field. Does Major Noel believe? Nein! Major Beloit? Nein! Ich? Ja! I must believe it. Here we die. On Mars we die. I must have years to solve new quantities for the unknown force. Else it gives one big explosion. Today I come maybe many times close to one big end for us all. Who knows it, the unknown force?”

  Yudin had not heard Vining spill out so many words during the entire flight to Mars. Everybody on the spacecraft would end up crazy. No, that wasn’t what he was thinking. He was getting afraid. These high-powered civilians were getting on his nerves. Was it really possible the planet might exert a field that would merge with forces aborning in the generators and cumulate with them to bring about freak mutations? God, they were sitting on a huge bomb! It could let go, like this crazy Dutchman said in his crazy accent, any time he altered the firing piles.

  He gave Vining a short good night.

  “Life? What is a life?” Vining detained him. “Life can go. There is to a life no urgency. That you live, it is not urgent. It is death that is urgent. Who says ‘no’ to death? You have urgent business for living? Who says ‘yes’? More lives are coming. What is strange about your going? You do not like that thought, Herr Leutnant? You come to me about the drive to see? No, Herr Leutnant, you come about life. And I tell you I have not life for you. So you think I am crazy, when I am only sleepy.”

  12

  AT 2400 Captain Spear went to the command post to take over from Major Noel. He began the watch with a check of all guard and alert positions. As he bent his lean body to the ladders, he felt an alert kinesthetic pleasure in the movements, tingeing it consciously with regret that he had now aged to thirty-four years. Not much longer would his muscles take on a fine tone, in spite of exercise. Likely enough, some decline had already set in, hidden from him now but next year or a year or two later to emerge in sagging abdominal bands and slacking stamina in thighs and calves. He rapped on his hard gut, dismissing his rapidly retracting hairline. As long as the old body was in condition, a man looked young and felt young.

  He went over the log with the major and got the “good nights” said without more than the usual catalog of admonition the guy always dished out—just like they both didn’t know it all by heart. Noel gone, he ran through the intercom positions and settled down to wait for 0600 hours. Once or twice he thought about home, wondering idly what Alice was doing. What time was it on Earth? In the time zone of the apartment, that is, he corrected himself. Brother, would she be having a running duck if she knew they were stalled on Mars, even if there wasn’t any danger of not getting the thing fixed. Radiation permitting.

  Anyway, the thing was reliable. It had had hundreds of tests, and there were enough engineers and rocket boys along to build another one out of the bins full of parts and such junk if they had to. So it took time to find the trouble. Eventually it would be found. The Far Venture was provisioned for at least six months’ good eating. Any major sabotage would have been spotted right away. Like Beloit said, something was out of adjustment and it wasn’t always easy to find. Let him worry about it. That’s what he got paid for. Hell, if they had to take the thing down to bare wire and metal or anything else it had been put together from, they could do it. Still Beloit and his boys had better get their damn drive to frying while the radiation was behaving itself.

  At 0200 Major Beloit came up from below for some chow. Spear put an airman at the command-post intercom and went along with him. Beloit sat for a long time on the bench, sipping at his mug of coffee. He looked plain tired. After he had eaten the two sandwiches he had fixed, he stretched out his legs and sighed. “That hit the spot.”

  “You getting anywhere yet?” Spear asked him.

  Beloit was willing to talk now. “We’re still getting less than twenty per cent power. That means that fission is way down from what it ought to be. We’re checking the generators now, one by one, but we haven’t found anything yet.”

  Spear wanted to ask him about Vining, but he didn’t think that it would be a proper question. Colonel Cragg had shown his own suspicions all right, but Beloit was peculiar. Like most of the technicians. Besides, he was outside the command channel. Maybe he hadn’t been briefed on Vining. You couldn’t deny, though, that he gave you a feeling of confidence in him. You didn’t have much doubt that he would eventually find the trouble and repair it. In a way it was a shame that a guy like Beloit, with everything he knew about his specialty and all his experience, couldn’t expect very rapid advancement. He was buried in hi
s rocket drives. Out-side the command line. Forty-five at least and over fifteen years’ service, well known in the Air Force, and only a major. Best he could ever hope for was colonel. Probably he would retire as lieutenant colonel.

  “About all I know about a rocket drive is that it works,” Spear said.

  “It isn’t very complicated,” Beloit protested amiably. “Maybe the underlying concepts are a little difficult, unless you’re up on atomic theory, but the main idea is pretty simple. It’s a nuclear-fission drive, and in a way it’s like the old internal combustion engine, except that the nuclear explosions exert their energy directly in a battery of rocket exhaust tubes instead of driving pistons down and turning a crankshaft. Fundamentally the drive works from an extremely rapid series of small explosive fissions in each of the forty-one rocket tubes, one at a time and in practically instantaneous rotation. We control the thrust by directing a precise quantum of atoms of one of the radioactive isotopes of iodine into each of the rocket chambers for each explosion. These fission quanta are like the charge of powder in a cartridge, regulated for what the tube can tolerate.”

  Spear grinned at him. “You’ve got me a practically full charge already. Or should I say, ‘Whatinhell did you say?’”

  “The idea is simple enough. It’s the engineering that really took the doing. For example, the fission explosion is not a critical-mass-type chain reaction but the fission of each nucleus, or practically every nucleus in the quantum, caused by the impact of neutrons in an extremely large and dense beam, which we pass into each explosion chamber simultaneously with the quantum of nuclei it envelops. It’s like turning a fire hose on a teaspoonful of sugar. The neutrons also bear a negative rider charge. The neutron beam is so large and so dense with slow neutrons that a very high percentage of the nuclei, which bear a positive rider, are struck and split. We develop immense thrust in each rocket tube in rapid succession. More important, we control it exactly.”

  “It’s as clear as the mud the hop frog jumped into,” Spear told him. “So why don’t you fix whatever needs fixing?” He wished the guy would just say in so many words that everything was okay. Still it was encouraging that he was so cheerful. If he were worried, it would probably show up plain enough.

  “That’s what we’re going to do.” Beloit smiled. “But not until we find it. There are hundreds of transistors and relays in the feed devices. Really several complex and synchronized electronic calculators. There’s the extremely critical device for diverting the nuclei and the neutron beams into the successive firing chambers. There are the enervators and the energizers and the accelerators that create the two meson fields. There are the moderators that slow down the neutrons. There are the tubes and the fields that strip the nuclei from the radioactive isotope. And last but not least, there are the 943 neutron generators, each one of which is as delicately balanced a little gadget as you would want to tear into. It takes 943 of them to make a dense beam of neutrons for the fission chambers. We might be looking for a week yet. Maybe it’s even a combination of things and won’t show up right away in any particular one of the components.”

  “Okay,” Spear said, “you go to it. You trying to give me a headache?”

  Beloit laughed. “Oh, it’s not that bad. What man can build, man can take apart and put back together again.”

  “Yeah?” Spear said. “You ever try that on one of your alibis to your wife?”

  “Not married,” Beloit answered shortly. “Women and engines don’t mix. Both of them want all your time.”

  Spear laughed comfortably, thinking that Alice was really a good old girl, about the Air Force and everything.

  They talked on for a while until the phone rang. Spear said, “It’s probably mine.” He went over and lifted the instrument.

  Spear identified himself.

  “There’s something moving out on the dust!” The words tumbled out of the receiver.

  Spear tingled with a quick clarity, the diverse complexity of the spacecraft and its defenses falling into precise order for him, ready for his commands. “Range? Bearing? Character?” he snapped. If it were Pembroke, even Yudin would have told him so at once.

  Yudin gulped audibly for breath. “About three miles. Radar bearing, 47 degrees. On surface. Range 4950 yards.”

  “What is its character?” Spear demanded. “Come on. Give!”

  “Yes, sir,” Yudin said with better control of his breathing. “Small object. We have both the search beam and the telescope on its location, but we can’t make it out. On radar it shows slow approach toward the spacecraft.”

  “It’s likely Pembroke,” Spear decided. “He’s been back out to the lichens. Stand by. I’m coming up.” He switched to the command post. “Sergeant Purley,” he ordered, “sound off battle stations.” He switched to Major Noel’s quarters. “Sir, Yudin has blipped an unidentified small object approaching on the surface at 4950 yards, coming in slow. It’s possibly Pembroke. They’ve got it in the light and the telescope on it, but they can’t resolve it.”

  “Stay at the command post,” Noel ordered. “I’m going up there.”

  Spear swore against the strident buzzers sounding battle stations all over the Far Venture. He would! He tossed a word of explanation at Major Beloit and pulled himself up the ladder to the command post. He pushed Purley out of the way with a friendly elbow and sat down on the stool before the control banks. He listened to the familiar chatter of the turret guns clearing and took on the rush of “ready” reports. The Far Venture was adequately armed to take on one small blip, whatever it was. Settling back easily, he noticed Purley’s tense face. “Take it easy, man,” he advised. “It’s probably only Dr. Pembroke trying to get back to us.”

  Purley said, “Yes, sir.” Hesitantly he added, “Captain?”

  Malassignment to put him on this crew, Spear decided. “What is it?”

  “About those signals Dr. Dane picked up. Do you think there’s something else out there? I mean besides Dr. Pembroke?”

  “Where’d you get that?” Humphries, of course. “Never mind,” Spear added, not unkindly. “It was likely only a mal-function of the equipment.”

  “They say he got a message that made sense,” Purley objected.

  “Dr. Dane is also now in confinement. Maybe he just pretended to get a message.” He saw that the man was not satisfied. “Whatever might be out there, we’ve got the fire power to take care of it. We ought to have. We mount six machinegun turrets, four recoiless 140’s, a couple of dozen missile tubes, a ring of flame nozzles, and four bins of guided thermal and nuclear missiles. We can wipe out that blip in a couple of seconds any time we want to. Anything living we can kill. They couldn’t get near us.”

  “Excuse me, sir, but that’s the point,” Purley said. “Sup-posing it wasn’t something alive?”

  Now there was one for you. An Air Force sergeant who believed in spirits. “Come off that,” Spear told him firmly. “If there’s anything on this planet that wants to send messages, it’s nothing that can’t be blown up or burned up, not to speak of a dose of fission bomb.”

  “Yes, sir,” Purley said.

  The blip came in slowly. At 0245 it was 3700 yards out, still on 47 degrees. It was making about two miles an hour straight for the Far Venture.

  At 0253 Major Noel called. “It looks like it’s Dr. Pembroke. At least we can make out the pressure suit plainly now. I’m not taking any chances. I want that thing covered with all arms you can bring to bear until we identify Dr. Pembroke and get him inside.”

  “Wonder why he won’t answer?” Spear asked.

  “No calls answered. Maybe his radio’s bad again, but radar is very clear. I want Major Beloit to cover the entry lock with automatic weapons and fire grenades. Get him in and don’t take any chances. Get him out of that suit and have him brought up to your post.”

  Spear acknowledged the order. “Supposing he doesn’t make it all the way. I mean not answering and all of that. I suppose he’s off his mind again.”r />
  “That’s his bad luck,” Noel said. “We’re not risking anybody outside. Spear,” he added, “this may sound silly, but we’ve got to remember where we are and all we don’t know about this place. I want you to pass this on to Major Beloit too. Confidentially. Tell him to be careful. We don’t know for sure what’s in that suit. Maybe it’s Pembroke and maybe it’s something else.”

  “Migod, you don’t think that!” Spear couldn’t believe he was hearing it. Not Major Noel!

  “I’m not taking any chances,” Noel repeated emphatically. “I don’t want you to take any, or especially Major Beloit to take any. Impress on him that he’s to find out what’s in that suit before he lets it through the lock. He’s not to risk anything himself. Not with the drive out. Tell him to get a look inside that helmet before he opens the lock. Get me?”

  “I get you,” Spear said. “Christ!”

  13

  VINING HAD come down to his post at the main reactor control heavy with interrupted sleep. Major Beloit watched him narrowly now that the grotesque pressure suit trudged very near, trailing a cloud of dust from its awkward steps back to the edge of the spotlight cast upon it. Earlier they had taken down the big panel of controls, for the third time in fact, seeking some disorder in its dense vinery of tubes and wires, and there was little point in Vining watching his post at the dismantled mess. Except that the emergency standing operating procedure stipulated his being there.

  The telephone gong jangled sharply.

  It was Major Noel. “Beloit, under no circumstances are you to come personally close to Pembroke. You are to stay out of the entry lock. Pembroke is to be brought up to the command post on the hoist, and you are to stay out of that too. I don’t intend to risk my chief engineer. That’s all.”