The Solarians

by Norman Spinrad

  “Of course it sounds funny,” Kurowski had said. “We both know that the chances of your ever reaching Dugl are very slim indeed. I’m not trying to kid you, Palmer. But there are at least two very good reasons why we must let them try whatever they’re going to try. First of all, and you as a field officer should certainly appreciate this, we’ve already gained something by all this.”

  “What do you mean, sir”?

  “Think, Palmer, think! The mere fact that the General Staff agreed to let the Solarians try this plan immediately, without consulting the Command Computers first, established a precedent. Even if this mission fails, even if you…ah…don’t come back, this may enable us to go against computation again in the future. It means a possible chance to restore command to those who deserve it…. field officers like you and me, not old fossils like Maizel. And of course, hare-brained as it seems, the Solarian plan might just succeed, in which case, certain defeat becomes victory. What’ve we got to lose?”

  “Just one very junior Fleet Commander,” Palmer sighed resignedly.

  “No sir,…Jay,” Kurowski said solemnly. “I promise you one thing: whatever happens, the rank of General is yours permanently. If you do make it back, it will be made a regular appointment, and if…well, if you don’t make it, the rank will be made permanent posthumously. We owe you at least that much.”

  “Thank you sir,” Palmer said, without displaying any great enthusiasm. “But I still don’t see what the Solarians can really accomplish even if they are able to control the Kor.”

  “I would suppose,” Kurowski said, “that they would make the Kor give orders that would cause the Duglaari to lose as large a portion of their forces as possible. It’s common knowledge that if the Doogs lost, say three or four thousand ships, we’d be on at least an even footing with them. In fact, the odds might very well end up being in our favor. After all, in this kind of war, it’s ships that count. Why, if I could, I’d trade even the Olympia system itself for the destruction of three or four thousand Doog ships. Why do you think the Doogs have never tried an all-out attack on Olympia—or Sol itself for that matter? Because they’re too smart to risk the ships they’d need to succeed.”

  “All that’s true, of course,” Palmer said. “But I still don’t see how the Solarians hope to pull anything like that off, and I’m sure it’s a mistake to trust them.”

  “Trust them?” Kurowski said. “Who said anything about trusting them? Why do you think I’m risking a man as valuable as you on a mission like this? We could just as well have breveted a green lieutenant to General, after all. I want a man along who can make quick judgements. Lingo is in command of this mission, but I’m empowering you to abort it at any time you see fit. If you suspect that a fast one is being pulled, you are empowered to take over the ship and order immediate assistance from any and all Confederal ships in the area. You will use force if you have to, and if all else fails, you must be ready to destroy the ship and sacrifice yourself if the occasion demands it. See to it that you are properly equipped and armed. And since you may be searched, I want you to take a standard bag of your clothing over to the Intelligence Lab. They’ll hide enough weapons and explosives in your kit to meet any emergency.”

  Kurowski stood up and extended his hand. “Good luck, General Palmer,” he said.

  Palmer hitched his clothing bag a bit higher on his shoulder. It contained quite a hidden arsenal: a blaster, a derringerlase, a stungun, even a neonuclear timebomb disguised as a shaver. Smaller weapons, and enough components to duplicate the larger ones were sewn into the cuffs and seams and linings of the spare clothing. The Solarians might discover some of the weapons in a thorough search, but never all of them….

  The Solarian ship looked almost disappointingly normal from just outside the airlock. It was, of course, much smaller than the battlecruisers that Palmer was used to, and it was colored a luminous green, but a cursory inspection showed him the usual Resolution Field Generator projectors and the customary Stasis-Field antennae at nose, tail and midsection.

  The airlock door opened, and Dirk Lingo stepped out. Palmer tensed and tried to make his mind blank as he saw that Max Bergstrom was following Lingo. The Solarians lowered a ladder to the ground.

  Palmer hoisted the clothing bag higher still on his shoulder, and mounted the first rung of the ladder.

  “Just a moment, General Palmer,” Lingo said. “Max…?”

  Palmer willed his mind to go blank. Don’t think of the…he told himself. Don’t think of what’s in the…. Don’t! Don’t!

  Now Bergstrom was fixing him in that calm, even, brown stare, and Palmer could feel probing tendrils skirting the edges of his mind.

  Don’t think of the weapons! he told himself. Don’t even think of not thinking of them…Laaaaaa…. Laaaaa…. Oooooh…. Palmer tried to fill his conscious mind with nonsense syllables, mental static, as he felt Bergstrom probing, gently but irresistibly into his consciousness.

  He seemed to feel a puzzlement in his mind, a puzzlement that he suddenly realized was Bergstrom’s, not his. Laaaa…Oooooh…Eeeee…he thought desperately with the surface of his mind.

  But Bergstrom was not put off by the surface static. If anything, it seemed to pique his curiosity, and Palmer felt him reaching deeper and deeper into his mind, rifling his memories of the past day like a man skimming through an encyclopedia. He felt himself remembering Kurowski’s final briefing, against his own will, and he found himself also forced to remember the instructions of the Intelgence Lab officer….

  Then the ordeal was suddenly over, and he felt that his mind was once again his own.

  Bergstrom turned to Lingo with a little grin. “Everything but the kitchen sink, Dirk,” he said.

  Then he turned to Palmer. “You had better leave that bag here,” he said. “That’s quite a collection of hardware.”

  “What are you talking about?” Palmer said lamely. “I….”

  “Don’t you feel just a little silly trying to lie to a telepath?” Bergstrom said quietly. “I’m referring to the blaster, the stun-gun, the derringerlase, the….”

  “All right, all right,” grunted Palmer. “You win. But at least let me take some of my spare clothing along,” he said quickly, opening the bag.

  “Which uniform did you have in mind?” Bergstrom said with a grin. “The one with the gas pellets sewn into the cuffs, the one with the flamegun parts sewn into the jacket lining, or maybe the one with….?”

  “All right…” sighed Palmer, resignedly. “I think you’ve made your point.” He threw the clothing bag down on the field in disgust, and began to climb up the ladder to the airlock.

  It just wasn’t fair! How in hell could anyone get anything past a telepath? he asked himself angrily.

  Although he did not feel Bergstrom reading this in his mind, the Solarian was grinning broadly.

  “No hard feelings, General,” Lingo said as he closed the airlock door behind him. “Don’t take it so hard. You had every right not to trust us, and therefore every right to try and smuggle weapons aboard. It’s only natural that you don’t trust us….”

  “And also only natural that you don’t trust me?“

  Lingo laughed. “Exactly,” he said. “So you lost this friendly little game. Who knows, maybe you’ll win the next match. No hard feelings?”

  Palmer shrugged. “No hard feelings, Lingo,” he said.

  “Would you like to see how we Solarians con a ship?” Lingo said. “You should find it most interesting. Perhaps a bit frightening, but most interesting. Let’s go to the control room.”

  The control room was like nothing Palmer had ever seen on a ship before. There were four pilot’s chairs in the hemispherical room, but two of them were dummies, strictly for passengers.

  The other two seemed little more than dummies themselves. One had a small panel of dials and gauges in front of it; the other was equipped with switches, levers, pedals, and what looked like an honest-to-God steering wheel off a groundcar!

>   And that was it. No computer panel, no punchboard, no navigation console, no nothing.

  Fran Shannon was sitting in the chair with the dials. She smiled at Palmer absently.

  “Fran’s our Edetic,” said Lingo, which explained exactly nothing. He motioned Palmer to one of the dummy seats and sat down in the chair with the controls.

  “One of my lesser Talents,” said Lingo. “I’m an Absolute Space-Time Sensitive. It’s something like absolute pitch in music. I can sense proper trajectories, accelerations, course deviations, and so forth. Far superior to a computer.”

  Palmer shrunk back into his chair. “You mean you’re actually going to con this thing manually?” he said weakly. “The ship’s computer doesn’t handle lift-off?”

  Lingo laughed resonantly. “Ship’s computer?” he said. “This ship doesn’t have a computer. We have found that what the ancients always said is really true: the human mind is the best computer of all, provided it is properly utilized. If it has the Talent for the particular job. And, as I said, piloting is one of my Talents. As the ancients used to say, I fly this ship by the seat of my pants.”

  Palmer moaned softly.

  “Screen on,” said Lingo, throwing a switch.

  Palmer gasped. The entire hemispherical wall-ceiling of the control room was one huge continuous viewscreen. It was like sitting in a chair on top of a flagpole; bare sky overhead, the field below. It was dizzyingly real.

  “I told you you might find it a bit frightening,” said Lingo good-naturedly. “Grid for lift-off,” he ordered.

  A red line appeared in the “sky” running around the circumference of the room. A yellow line appeared at right angles to it.

  “Artificial horizon and gravity-normal,” Lingo said. “Ready for lift-off.”

  Lingo busied himself with the controls. The Resolution Field was on. The ship began to rise, faster and faster. Now Palmer could see the ground falling away beneath them. It was like being tied to the outside of a ship.

  The ship wobbled, and Palmer knew that a three degree wobble for more than a second would more likely than not send them crashing back onto the field. That was why a computer had to handle lift-off.

  But, incredibly, Lingo was correcting the wobbles as fast as they came. It as an obvious impossibility, but he was doing it. They didn’t crash. Instead, they kept rising and accelerating, and Olympia III became a curve, and then a disc, and they were in orbit.

  The stars were swimming all around them. It was like floating in space in a spacesuit. Palmer closed his eyes, to ease his growing vertigo.

  Despite his better judgment, he opened them a moment later, and to his surprise, the vertigo was gone, and he was enjoying the sight.

  “Grid for this locus,” Lingo said.

  The red and yellow lines were replaced by a gridwork of white, dividing the field up into squares, each of which represented one degree of the hemisphere.

  “Let’s have Dugl,” Lingo said.

  Fran Shannon stared blankly into the field of stars, thousands upon thousands of them, red, green, yellow, blue. Then she threw a red circle of light around a very faint yellow sun near the center of the hemisphere with an indicator on the panel. Lingo pressed a button, and a slightly larger red ring appeared at what Palmer guessed was the geometric center of the hemispherical viewscreen.

  “Close enough for now,” said Lingo. He manipulated the controls and the ship began to accelerate, faster, faster, faster….

  Palmer lost track of time. The vista of stars, the ship’s steady acceleration, were hypnotic…. Hours and hours passed as the Resolution Drive accelerated the ship to near-light velocity. He must’ve dozed off, for the next thing he remembered was being awakened by Lingo’s voice.

  “Okay. We’re beyond Olympia IX. Ready to begin final corrections for entering Stasis-Space.”

  “Wait a minute!” shrieked Palmer. “You can’t just go into Stasis-Space without a computer fix!” It was sheer insanity! Fortunately, it was impossible to come out of Stasis-Space within a solar system—the mass pressure of the star held you inexorably in Stasis-Space until you were a safe distance away. But it was all too possible to turn on a Stasis-Field generator too close to a star-sized mass. Not only would such a generator explode, leaving what was left of the ship stuck in Stasis-Space forever, but the stresses would trigger a nova in the sun itself. That was why all solar systems, Doog and Human alike, were so heavily patrolled—theoretically, one suicide ship could destroy an entire solar system. However, at least at this stage of the War, such a danger was purely theoretical. A ship on such a mission had to approach its victim star on Resolution Drive, and a single ship on Resolution Drive was completely vulnerable to the ubiquitous systemic patrols.

  But now, for no sane reason at all, Lingo was going to expose Olympia itself to the danger of a possible nova. It was madness to take such a pointless chancel to turn on the generator without an accurate fix from the ship’s computer insuring that the ship was far enough away from Olympia….

  “Remember?” laughed Lingo. “This snip has no computer. But it’s really quite simple. All I have to do is center Dugl in the red circle. It represents the line of I flight of the ship.”

  Lingo manipulated his levers and pedals and steering wheel. The small red circle with the yellow star that was Dugl within it began to creep closer to the larger circle in the center of the viewscreen as Lingo adjusted the ship’s attitude in space. Now they were touching….

  And now Dugl was centered in the larger red circle, within the smaller red circle, like the bullseye of a target.

  But if Lingo is wrong, if we’re too close, Palmer thought, then Olympia’s the target.

  “Lock controls!” said Lingo. “Turn on Stasis-Field!”

  Palmer held his breath. Abruptly, the star-studded field that was normal space vanished, and Palmer found himself in the swirling, pulsating formless maze of colors that were what the distorted time of the Stasis-Field made of the visual universe.

  But the generator had not blown. Lingo had done it. They had been far enough out! Olympia was still safe….

  And they were on their way to Duglaar!

  Chapter IV

  “WELL, General Palmer,” said Lingo, “as you can plainly see, the generator hasn’t blown. We’re still here, and so, presumably, is Olympia.”

  “I only hope it wasn’t just dumb luck,” said Palmer grudgingly. “I still say it was a stupid risk to take.”

  Lingo climbed nimbly out of the pilot’s seat. “Had it really been a risk,” he said, “I’d certainly agree with you. Causing a sun to go nova is hardly a joke. But you don’t think it a risk when you entrust such a dreadful responsibility to a computer, to a mere machine. We just happen to place more trust in the human mind than in electronics. After all, when you come right down to it, even the best computer is no more than an extension of the human mind.”

  “That’s a pretty superficial way of looking at…. Palmer began. But Lingo cut him off with a wave of his hand.

  “It’s going to be a long voyage, my friend,” he said. “We’ll have plenty of time to argue later. So let’s not waste this argument right at the beginning. The others are probably already in the common room. I could use a drink. How about you?”

  The common room just did not seem to be on a spaceship. The walls were panelled in pine. The floor was covered with a soft green carpet. The furniture was hefty, mostly made of genuine wood and leather, and incredibly opulent. Along one wall of the large room was a bar that would’ve done the General Officer’s Club back in Pentagon City proud. Another wall was practically all viewscreen. There was a great clutter of equipment in one corner of the room: a hi-fi, a smell-organ, what looked like a therimin, and half that were totally unfamiliar. There with real paper-paged and cloth-bound books

  What looked almost like an elliptical pool-table sat in the center of the room, but in place of pockets there were what looked like canisters of multicolored sand.

  Palmer st
ood there for long momentas drinking it in. This room must’ve cost more than the rest of the ship put together! He thought.

  Dirk Lingo signaled to Raul Ortega, who was standing behind the bar. “How about a Nine Planets for the General?” he said.

  Ortega busied himself with bottles, glasses, tubes and mixing spoons.

  “This is…ah…quite a layout for a spaceship,” Palmer said. “Not exactly what I’m used to.”

  Robin Morel, who was lounging disconcertingly in an overstuf chair, laughed musically. “War is hell, General,” she drawled.

  Ortega had completed the Nine Planets, whatever that was. He handed Palmer a tall frosted glass filled with nine different levels of liquid: ice-blue, brown, purple, aqua, maroon, brickred, green, yellow and orange.

  “One for each planet of the Sol system, Ortega said, giving Lingo a conspiratorial wink.

  Palmer eyed the huge drink dubiously It looked very formidable.

  “Sip it slowly,” suggested Fran Shannon who had entered the room with them. “One level at a time.”

  Palmer lifted the glass to his lips and sipped tentatively. The first level was bitingly cold. Pluto, I suppose, he thougtht, trying to remember his Solar geography The next four levels were also bitingly cold, but in gradually decreasing intensity. The sixth level seemed somehow sandy, old and dry—Mars, he guessed. The seventh level was soothing, warm and mild. It could only be Earth. The eighth level was hot head off.

  The final level nearly took the top of his head off.

  “Wow…” he muttered hoarsely, numbly aware that he had somehow finished the drink.

  All the Solarians were in the room now, and they were grinning and nodding to each other.

  “That Raul is some bartender,” said Max Bergstrom. “If you really feel brave, have him mix you a Supernova sometime.”

  Palmer shook his head slowly. The an impossibly long time. “I think I’ve had quite enough for now,” he said giddily. “What in the Galaxy was in that thing?”