Desperately, Long struck out for the stabilizers.
The ship lurched. The gun exploded, and a bullet ricocheted from the control panel to imbed itself in the wall. Gedrin screamed. Long wrenched the stabilizers hard, throwing the ship into violent twists. The acceleration jerked him down, then up against the safety belt. Bodies slammed about the cabin. He kicked the drive to four Gs. Then, sagging in his seat he risked a look backward. Denin lay pinned to the floor by his own weight, and a trickle of blood leaked from a gash in his forehead. Gedrin was sprawled in the corner, one leg twisted unnaturally.
The pilot eased the acceleration back to normal, scooped up Denin’s gun, and broke out the first-aid kit. “Cocksure,” he grunted as he taped the engineer’s wrists and tended the gash. “Too cocksure.”
Denin came awake just before the landing. He strained at his bonds for a moment, glared at the pilot, said nothing. Gedrin was resting in a fog of morphine, pawing dumbly at a splinted leg.
“We’re coming in on your transmitter,” the pilot grunted. He switched the signal into the speaker, and for a moment the cabin was alive with the twitter of the Voice that had tricked the world.
“You going to land?”
“Yeah.”
“Why? You mean to spoil it. Why not just turn back?”
“Stop snarling, Den. We’re going down to turn it off. And I want to see how you managed to get it down without shattering the transmitter.”
“It landed,” Denin said tonelessly. “I told you—you just replace some of the automatics.”
“How did you get the stuff aboard without suspicion?”
“The men who made it didn’t know what it was for. The men who loaded the crate thought it was an atomic warhead. And I set it up personally. Two men were bribed. They died since. Naturally, I might add.”
“Who paid?”
“The government. The men bribed were accountants.”
“It must have taken a lot of, juggling.”
“It did. It was worth it, or was.” Denin paused, staring at Long with lusterless eyes. “I hope I get an opportunity to kill you.”
“It was your mistake, Den—telling me too soon.”
Denin glanced toward the viewing screen, now entirely covered by the white face of the Moon—grim, pocked with the crescent-shadows of craters. His voice grew tremulous. “Man’s destiny should lie in space. He may never come again. You’re consigning him to Earth.”
“Why? I don’t see that.”
“The cost, you fool! What reason has he to go? Not for economic returns. That’s been established.
Unless he has another reason, he’ll stay Earthbound. I tried to give him a reason.”
“A phony one. Uh-uh, Dennie—you don’t trick people into their destiny.”
“Why not? Ethics?” Denin’s voice was acid.
Why not indeed, Long thought?
Ninety-nine per cent of humanity would always remain Earthbound, and would derive no profit from space. Yet, that ninety-nine per cent would have to foot the bill. The price of getting a few ships into space—and some day to the stars—the price was sacrifice. Sacrifice of the many for the few. And the many wouldn’t like it—as they had undoubtedly disliked building pyramids, and temples, and Towers of Babel for the amusement of kings.
“Yeah, ethics,” he murmured.
Landing in the faint gravity was an easy job. The strength of the “Voice’s” signal was blocking the set as Long let the ship slip down on the auxiliary combustion-rockets. The transmitter was not in a crater, but on a wide, sun-parched and airless plain. The settling rockets fanned out huge clouds of white dust as they stung the surface. The dust fell rapidly, unsupported by any atmosphere.
Long stood up and reached for a pressure helmet. They had worn the heavy fabric suits while in flight. He started the air-compressors and gathered up a length of hose, then paused to glance down at the colonel, “You can come, Dennie—if you want to. I’ll untie your feet.”
Denin shook his head glumly.
Long shrugged. “O.K.—but I’m making sure you stay away from the detonator.” He dragged the bound man to the bulkhead and taped his feet to a brace. Then he opened the port covers, letting the angry sunlight sweep through the compartment. The pilotless missile lay on its side, fifty yards from the ship. It’s hull was cracked, but sweep-marks in the Lunar dust spoke of a successful landing.
The pilot was gone a long time. Through the port, Denin watched him bounding about the missile in long slow leaps. The colonel strained at his bonds, and tried to saw them on the sharp edge of the brace.
Gedrin was moaning on his cot.
“Gedrin!”
There was no answer. The colonel called again in an angry bellow. Gedrin stirred and looked up.
“Where are we?” he groaned.
“Luna! Now listen to me if you want to live!”
The linguist whimpered in fright.
“Long’s outside,” Denin went on. “You hear that motor running?”
Gedrin’s head wobbled dizzily. It might have been a nod.
“Those are the fuel pumps,” the colonel lied.
“Huh?”
“Long forgot. Left them on. The tubes may fire accidentally.”
Gedrin was ready to believe anything, but he failed to comprehend. Denin grumbled a curse and tried again.
“Just listen to me,” he barked. “Listen! If you want to live, you’ll have to get up and cut the switch.
The switch. You understand?”
“Switch? Which?”
Denin nodded toward a panel. “The red double-toggle with the safety guard around it. You’ve got to get up.”
Gedrin shook his head as if to clear it. He raised himself up a few inches and stared at the colonel.
“You’re tied.”
“Long lost his head! You going to let us die?”
Gedrin wheezed in pain. “My leg. I can’t.”
“You’ve got to. Roll off the cot. Gravity’s faint. You won’t get hurt.”
The linguist shoved against the wall, and yelped as the light push carried him over the edge. He hit the floor with a light thud. The splint shifted. He screamed, then slumped back.
“Gedrin!”
It was useless. The linguist had fainted.
“You’d go to any lengths wouldn’t you, Dennie?”
Denin looked up to see the pilot coming through the crawlway. He scowled and said nothing. Long’s face was white, and his hands were trembling as he removed his helmet. He seemed to be struggling to control some seething emotion. He moved quickly to the panel, fumbled beneath it for a moment, and jerked a wire loose from the red detonator switch. Then he began cutting Denin’s bonds.
The colonel muttered in surprise.
“You’re going outside with me,” Long told him. “Get the camera equipment. We’ve got work to do.”
“What?” Denin snarled. “Take pictures of the Voice? Evidence for my trial?”
The pilot shook his head and paused to light a cigarette. “They’ll probably try you. But I think you’ll get off light.” He eyed Denin grimly. “Ever hear of ducks on the Moon?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Duck tracks, they look like. All around your rocket. And the dust-marks where another ship landed.”
Color drained slowly from the colonel’s face. He came to his feet and pressed his face against the glass, peering outside.
“They’ve gone,” Long went on. “Apparently left just after the missile landed. See that black patch over on the hillside?”
Denin didn’t answer. He was reeling slightly.
“I think it was a mine shaft,” the pilot told him tonelessly.
The man who had tricked humanity into space suddenly slumped. He sat down on the floor and began laughing wildly.
“I — want to go home,” whimpered the awakening Gedrin. “No Moon for me!”
Long eyed the linguist coldly. “You’ve got it, fellow. Like it or not.”
>
TRIP ONE
EDWARD GRENDON
★ ★
Only a handful of people will be able to make the first trip to another world, even if it is a neighboring planet. Maybe the line will form on the right, and everyone will want to go. Maybe; but here is a story about one of the reasons why we Terrans may not want to launch the first interplanetary flight—that is, when we come to think more carefully about it.
The author of this story is not exaggerating the danger. In the Middle Ages, the Black Plague killed from a quarter to over half of all the people in Europe, and at the end of World War I many millions of men, women and children died of what was then called influenza. Both these terrible events came about when the population of Earth was subjected to a “new” disease against which most people had no immunity. Who is to say that there are no diseases on the other planets?
Almost certainly, that will not deter the people whose eyes are fixed on the stars. They will go anyway, and run the risk. But what about the danger of bringing back a plague that may wipe out most of the population of Earth?
★ ★
When she was all ready to go we were afraid to send her. Sometimes it’s like that; you have problems and you worry about them for years. Then they are all solved for you and its the big chance. It’s what you have been waiting for—and then it falls apart. It wouldn’t be so bad except for the letdown. They build you up and knock you down.
The ship was beautiful. A hundred and ten feet long and shaped like a hammerhead shark. She was named The Astra. One problem after another had been settled. Propulsion was the first big one to be put away. Ingeline took care of that. Ingeline was the fuel that Walther developed in Germany just at the end of the war. He developed it so that a submarine could outrun a destroyer. Thank God, the Nazis never had a chance to use it; but plenty of uses were developed later.
The second problem we solved was cosmic rays. We had sent up rocket after rocket carrying sheep and monkeys until we figured out how to protect them. The other problems went fast—oxygen, navigation, landing and the rest. We had the backing of the United Nations Science Foundation, and those boys were good. We had sent the ship around the Moon as a test under gyroscope control, full of chimpanzees and orangutans as test freight. Every one of them came back in perfect condition. The automatic cameras got some photographs of the Moons other side. The photographs looked just like this side of the Moon to everyone but the astronomers, but we didn’t care. We were looking forward to the big one—Mars Trip One. Everything had been checked and set and now it was all off.
When Jerrins over at the Research Council phoned me I had an idea it was bad news. Jerrins and I knew each other pretty well and I knew from the tone of his voice that something was wrong.
I’m coming over, Jake,” he said. “Just hold everything until I get there.”
We were set to pull out for Mars in twenty-nine hours so we were pretty busy. “What do you mean, hold everything?” I asked him. “Hold what?”
“Just that. Hold everything. You might as well stop loading supplies because you ain’t goin’ nowhere. Be over in an hour,” and he hung up on me.
I didn’t get it. Ten years’ work, twenty million bucks spent, and we weren’t going. I figured I’d better not tell the boys and just let them go on loading up. It couldn’t do any harm to wait an hour.
Fifty minutes later Jerrins pulled in. I knew he’d flown from Washington rather than try to explain by phone, but I couldn’t think about anything. I yanked him into the office, slammed the door, opened it and yelled “No visitors or calls” in the general direction of the switchboard, and slammed the door again.
“O.K., Warren, what’s the dope?” I asked.
He sat down, lit a cigarette and said: “The trip’s off for good. It’s final, irrevocable and that’s all there is to it. I’ve been with the U.N. Subcommittee on Interplanetary Travel all afternoon. There is no question about it. Finis. Period. Stop.”
Finally he told me the whole story. “It’s this way, Jake,” he said. “It’s not a question of not wanting to go. Everyone wants the trip to be a success. It’s a question of being afraid to go. And I agree. There’s too much risk.” He stopped for a moment. “You didn’t know it and I didn’t know it until now, but a lot of the biology boys have been worrying themselves sick ever since the planning really got started. We haven’t thought much about their problems and they have one big one. The U.N. has let us go on beating our brains out because they wanted space travel and they hoped a solution would be found. They wanted space travel so bad that they were willing to put all this money and energy into it in the hope that something could be done; some answer would be found at the last minute. But the bio boys report no can do.”
He stopped, lit a cigarette, leaned across the desk and shoved it into my mouth. Then he leaned back, lit himself another and went on.
“They let the Moon trip go because we weren’t landing anywhere. That’s O.K. with them. As long as the ship just stays in space it can come back and land, but once its landed on another planet, it cant ever come back here. That’s final. The U.N. is agreed on it and we work for them. As a matter of fact, I agree with them myself.”
I started to sputter, thought better of it, leaned back and tried to focus my mind. A: Jerrins was a good man and wasn’t crazy. He was sorry for me. Come to think of it, I was sorry for him. This must nearly have killed him. B: Our bosses weren’t crazy. They were bright, trained men whom the U.N. had selected. Space travel was strictly a U.N. proposition. It was too explosive for any single nation to get to Mars first and the U.N. had the power now to take over. Ergo there must be a good reason why we couldn’t go. Also I knew it concerned the microscope and dissection gang. That was all I knew, and I was chief engineer in charge of building and was going to be— would have been—chief engineer and captain on Mars Trip One. So—I relaxed, stamped out my cigarette butt and said to Jerrins: “Well?”
He grinned. “You collected yourself fast. It’s this way. Do you remember what happened to the Incas? They were a pretty big gang until the Spaniards came in with European diseases. The Spaniards had built up a fairly good immunity to them but the Incas died like flies. They had no immunity. By the same token the Spaniards died of yellow fever, dengue and what not, stuff the Incas had some immunity to.” He was speaking very slowly now. “There were diseases in Europe and diseases in South America, and each killed people from the opposite continent. People who hadn’t built up immunities by selective breeding and by little doses of the disease when they were children. If there were diseases on two different continents that were deadly, what about diseases on two different planets? Suppose you can land on Mars. Suppose you can get back. How will you know you’re not carrying something that will kill you six months later? Or sterilize you? Or kill off the whole human race? When can you ever be sure something isn’t incubating inside the crew that will make them ten thousand times worse than Typhoid Mary ever was?”
He stopped and didn’t say anything for three or four minutes. Neither did I. Outside the sounds of loading still went on. What he said made sense. Good sense. You couldn’t come back. Not ever. A trip to Mars was potential death for every human being. You couldn’t risk the human race. I’d always assumed the biologists could handle their end of the job and had left it to them. But I could see now why my medics had seemed worried lately. There didn’t seem to be any answer to this problem.
“So, Jake,” he said finally, “I ain’t goin’ nowhere and it can be conjugated as a regular verb. You ain’t goin’ nowhere, we ain’t goin’ nowhere, and they ain’t goin’ nowhere. It will be on the radio in a little while. You better tell the boys before that. They’ll have their chance at trips later. The U.N. has O.K.’d research trips so long as they just float around. The astronomers will want more photographs of the other face of the Moon, some close-ups of Mars, and so forth. But the ship—she stays on the ground for the present.”
He got up, patted me on the sho
ulder and walked out. Sixty seconds later I heard his helicopter taking off.
After twenty minutes of sitting there silently by myself, I stood up and went over to the mirror. I looked at myself in it and thought, Look here Jake you re a big boy now and can take a disappointment. Call the gang in and get it over with. I walked out to the switchboard and patted the operator on the shoulder.
“Hook me up to the loudspeaker, Evie. Entire plant and grounds. Give it to me in my office and then get me some extra chairs in there. About twelve will do.”
Three minutes later my voice was booming out over the grounds and shops: “Attention, attention. Chief Engineer Weinberg speaking. I want all crew personnel, all chiefs of departments and all chiefs of sections in my office immediately. All other loading personnel take a thirty-minute break. All crew personnel, department and section chiefs in my office immediately. All others take a thirty-minute break. That is all.”
The men who crowded into my office were a widely varying lot. They were all shapes, sizes, ages and colors. They had three major factors in common. Each was intelligent, each was highly trained in his own field, and each wanted the Mars trip to be a success, with a desire that was passionate and devoted. They filed in, tense, joking, worried. They distributed themselves on the chairs, lit cigarettes or pipes, and waited. They knew me and knew that if I called them at this late hour something important was up. It was too early for formal speeches and they all knew I would never dream of making one in any case. It was too late for instructions; they all knew their jobs perfectly by this time. They hoped it was nothing but they knew better.
Twenty minutes later they understood. The medical section had understood as soon as I had started to talk. They had known about this for a long time but were under orders from their U.N. chief to keep their mouths shut and wait. It took the others a little longer to get it. They listened silently, thought, asked a few questions and finally just sat there looking at me. I looked at them for a long minute and suddenly realized something that made me feel wonderful: They were disappointed but not beaten.
Space, Space, Space - Stories about the Time when Men will be Adventuring to the Stars Page 3