Code Of The Lifemaker

by Hogan, James

  As the last in a series of prototypes, the Orion was intended primarily to prove

  the feasibility of its scaled-up fusion drive and to test various engineering

  concepts relating to long-range, large-capacity space missions; like the

  experimental Victorian steamships that had preceded the gracious ocean liners of

  later years, its design took little account of luxuries or spaciousness of

  accommodation for its occupants. Its warren of cabins, cramped day rooms,

  machinery compartments, stairwells, and labyrinthine passageways reminded him

  more of a submarine than anything else, Massey thought as he lounged on his bunk

  and contemplated the view of Earth's disk being presented on the screen built

  into the cabin's end bulkhead. He and Vernon would share the cabin with two

  others, both of whom they knew from the training course: Graham Spearman, an

  evolutionary biologist from the University of California at Los Angeles, and

  Malcom Wade, a Canadian psychologist. Spearman and Vernon had left to explore

  the ship and Wade hadn't arrived yet; Massey, therefore, was making the most of

  the opportunity to relax for a few minutes after arriving on board, checking in,

  and unpacking his gear.

  From his perspective in Globe II, the entire planetary surface of

  Earth—continents, oceans, and atmosphere—revealed itself as a single,

  self-sustaining biological organism in which the arbitrary boundaries and

  differences of shading that divided the maps of men were no more meaningful than

  they were visible. It was a truth that astronauts and other venturers into space

  had affirmed repeatedly for over half a century, but it had to be experienced to

  be understood, Massey realized. Only two days earlier he had paid a final visit

  to Walter Conlon in Washington, where on every side the world of human affairs

  scurried and bustled about its urgent business and consumed the output from

  thousands of lives. But already the whole of it had shrunk to a speck of no

  particular significance, barely discernible against the background that had

  remained essentially unchanged since before Washington had existed, and which

  might persist for long after Washington was forgotten.

  The sound of the door being opened interrupted Massey's thoughts, and a moment

  later Malcom Wade pushed his way in, holding two bags and a briefcase in his

  hands and using a foot to shove a suitcase along on the floor. "Well, I guess I

  must have found the right place," he said as he closed the door with his back.

  "Hi, Gerry. I gather the other two are already here."

  "Hello, Malcom. Yes—they've gone exploring. That top bunk's yours. How was the

  flight?"

  Wade took off his topcoat and hung it in the closet space by the door. "Oh,

  fine—apart from taking half a day longer than it was supposed to. We had to

  divert to the European base in Guiana." He sank down with a grateful sigh on the

  bunk opposite Massey. He was a tall, thin-bodied man, with lank hair and pale

  eyes that always seemed to be glinting with some inner fervor.

  "I heard about it," Massey said. "Hey, I think Graham's got a bottle of

  something stowed away over there. Could you use a drink while you're getting

  your breath back?"

  "Mmm . . . later maybe, thanks all the same."

  "Okay. So who else was on the shuttle?"

  "Let me see ... Susan Coulter, the geologist, and that electronics guy from

  Denver that we had breakfast with one morning at Charlotte . . . Dave Crookes."

  "Uh-huh."

  "Karl Zambendorf and his people were on it too." Wade cocked an eyebrow at

  Massey in a way that was partly expectant, partly curious.

  "Oh." Massey did his best to keep his voice neutral. He didn't want to get into

  a long debate just then. Although he hadn't advertised his prime interest in the

  mission, the question of Zambendorf's being included had been a regular

  conversation topic at the training center, and Massey had found himself obliged

  on occasion to express his opinions. Wade described himself as a scientist and

  was apparently an advisor of some kind to a number of government committees, but

  he took Zambendorf quite seriously. Massey wondered exactly what he advised the

  government on.

  "I think I know why he's here," Wade said after a short silence. He paused to

  wait for Massey to ask him why Zambendorf was there. Massey didn't. Wade went on

  anyway, "It's well known that the Soviets have been conducting extensive

  research into paranormal phenomena for years—and getting successful results

  too." Massey swallowed hard but said nothing. There were always anecdotes of

  anecdotes about things that people were supposed to have done, but never

  anything verifiable. Wade took a pipe from his jacket pocket and gestured with

  the stem. "It's been suspected for a while now that they've achieved some kind

  of significant breakthrough, and a lot of experts have been saying that the main

  Soviet center for that kind of work is their Mars Base at Solis Lacus—well away

  from terrestrial interference, you see." Wade paused and began packing tobacco

  into his pipe from a pouch.

  "Well, I guess you know how I feel about all that," Massey said vaguely, while

  wondering uncomfortably to himself if the conversation was an indication of what

  to expect for the next fifty days.

  "But it all fits," Wade said. "I know you're a bit of a skeptic and so on,

  Massey, but I believe in being scientific about things, which means being

  open-minded—in other words, willing to accept that there are things we can't

  explain. Whether we can explain it or not, we have to accept that Zambendorf is

  gifted with some abnormal abilities." He eyed Massey for a moment as if the rest

  should have been too obvious to require spelling out. "Well, I think Zambendorf

  is part of a classified Western research program to match the Soviets in

  harnessing paranormal phenomena ... or maybe even to counter the Soviets. That

  could be why they're sending Zambendorf to Mars." Massey stared at him

  glassy-eyed, but before he could say anything, Wade added triumphantly, "And

  that would explain why the military is here—to secure the project from possible

  interference from the Soviets at Solis Lacus. Have you heard about that yet?"

  Massey nodded. "We were told they're coming with us to do some training under

  extraterrestrial conditions . . . that the Pentagon bought some places on the

  ship at the last moment or something."

  Wade shook his head. "Cover story. Do you know how many there are of them? There

  were three shuttle-loads disembarking when I came aboard—U.S. Special Forces, a

  British commando unit, French paratroopers. That's not a few seats bought at the

  last minute. That was scheduled a long time ago . . . And they're docked at the

  stem, which means they're unloading heavy equipment." He produced a lighter and

  watched Massey over his pipe while he puffed it into life. "In fact it wouldn't

  surprise me if the idea was to provoke a confrontation with the Soviets at Lacus

  in order to take their base out. Maybe our people are onto things that you and I

  haven't even dreamed about."

  Massey slumped back and looked away numbly. Surely nobody at the Pentagon or

  wherever was t
aking the nonsense about the Soviets that seriously . . . But then

  again, large sectors of the government and private bureaucracies were dominated

  by political and economic ideologists incapable of distinguishing sound

  scientific reasoning from pseudo-scientific twaddle, yet commanding authority

  out of all proportion to their competence. If they listened to kooks like Wade,

  they could end up believing anything. Surely the insane rivalry that had

  paralyzed meaningful progress over much of Earth for generations wasn't about to

  be exported to another world over something as ridiculous as the "paranormal."

  Massey stared again at the blue-green image of Earth with its stirred curdling

  of clouds. Somehow the human race had to get it into its collective head that it

  couldn't rely on magical forces or omnipotent guardians to protect it from its

  own stupidity. Man would have to trust in his own intelligence, reason, and

  ability to look after himself. The decision was in his own hands. If he chose to

  eradicate himself, the rest of Earth's biosphere—far more resilient than popular

  mythology acknowledged—would hardly notice the difference, and then not for very

  long. And as for the rest of the cosmos, stretching away for billions of

  light-years behind Earth's rim, the event of man's extinction would be no more

  newsworthy than the demise of a community of microbes caused by the drying up of

  a puddle somewhere in Outer Mongolia.

  9

  "AH, LET ME SEE NOW . . . WHEN I WAS A BOY OF ABOUT SIXTEEN, it must have been.

  'Pat,' me father says to himself. 'With them Americans walking around on the

  Moon itself and flying them hotels up in the sky, that's the place you should be

  for your sons to grow up in.' So we ups and moves the whole family to Brooklyn

  where me uncle Seamus and all was already living, and that's where the rest of

  them still are today." Sgt. Michael O'Flynn of the NASO Surface Vehicle

  Maintenance Unit reversed his feet, which were propped up on the littered metal

  desk in his cubbyhole at the rear of a cavernous cargo bay, and raised his paper

  cup for another sip of the brandy that Zambendorf had produced from a hip flask.

  He had a solid, stocky body that seemed as broad as it was long beneath the

  stained NASO fatigues, and his face was fiery pink and beefy, with clear blue

  eyes half-hidden beneath wiry, unruly eyebrows, and a shock of rebellious hair

  in which yellow and red struggled for dominance, each managing to get the better

  of the other in different places. O'Flynn spoke through pearly white teeth

  clamped around a wooden toothpick, in a husky whisper that had retained more

  than a hint of its original brogue for what must have been thirty or so years.

  "What part of Ireland did you move from?" Zambendorf inquired from his cramped

  perch on a metal seat that folded out from the wall between a tool rack and an

  equipment cabinet—more comfortable than it looked since his weight near the

  ship's axis was barely sufficient to keep him in place.

  "County Cork, in the south, not far from a little place called Glanmire."

  Zambendorf rubbed his beard and looked thoughtful for a few seconds. "That would

  be roughly over in the direction of Watergrasshill, wouldn't it, if I remember

  rightly?" he said.

  O'Flynn looked surprised. "You know it?"

  "I was there a few years ago. We toured all around that area for a few days . .

  . and up to Limerick, back down around Killamey and the lakes." Zambendorf

  laughed as the memories flooded back. "We had a wonderful time."

  "Well I'll be damned," O'Flynn said. "And you like the place, eh?"

  "The villages are as pretty and as friendly as any you'll find in Austria, and I

  found Guinness remarkably good once I'd gotten used to it. Those mountains,

  though, what do you call them? Macgilly-something..."

  "Macgillycuddy's Reeks."

  "Yes—how is anybody supposed to remember something like that? Well they're not

  really mountains at all, are they? You really could use a genuine Alp or two,

  you know. But apart from that . . ." Zambendorf shrugged and sipped his own

  drink.

  "What are your Alps but more of the same?" O'Flynn said. "Ours have everything a

  mountain needs to be called a mountain, except a man doesn't have to waste more

  of the breath he could be using for better things getting to the top."

  "The higher a man rises, the farther he sees," Zambendorf said, throwing out a

  remark that was open for O'Flynn to take any way he pleased. "It's as true of

  life as it is of mountains, wouldn't you agree?"

  O'Flynn's eyes narrowed a fraction further for a moment, and he chewed on his

  toothpick. "Yes, and the farther away he gets, the less he sees, until he can

  make out no part of any of it," he replied. "The world's full of people parading

  their high-and-mightiness, who think they can see everything, but they know

  nothing." It sounded like a general observation and not a veiled reference to

  Zambendorf.

  "I take it that the noble and the worthy don't exactly inspire you to any great

  feelings of awe and reverence."

  "Ah, and who else would they be but those who make it their affair to mind the

  rest of the world's business when the rest of the world is quite able to look

  after itself? It's people whose own business isn't worth minding who mind other

  people's business, I'm after thinking. A man has work enough in one lifetime

  trying to improve himself without thinking that he's fit to be out improving the

  world,"

  A strange garb to find a philosopher in, Zambendorf thought to himself. "Well,

  that's certainly been the old way," he said, stretching and looking around, as

  if for a way of changing the subject. "Who knows? Perhaps Mars will be the

  beginning of something different."

  O'Flynn remained silent for a few seconds and rubbed his nose with a pink, meaty

  knuckle, as if weighing something in his mind. "So, it's convinced you are that

  it's Mars we're going to, is it?" he said at last.

  Although nothing changed on Zambendorf's face, he was instantly alert. "Of

  course," he said, keeping his voice nonchalant. "What are you saying, Mike?

  Where else could we be going?"

  "Well now, aren't you the great clairvoyant who sees into the future?" O'Flynn's

  smile twinkled mockingly for just an instant. "I was hoping that maybe you were

  going to tell me,"

  Zambendorf had ridden out worse in his time. "What are you saying?" he asked

  again. "What makes you think we might be going anywhere else?"

  O'Flynn chewed on his toothpick and watched Zambendorf curiously for a second or

  two, then crumpled the cup and dropped it into a trash disposal inlet. He stood

  and inclined his head to indicate the doorway. "Come on. I'll show you

  something." He cleared the distance to the bay area outside in one of the long,

  slow-motion bounds that was the most economical way to move around in almost

  zero-gravity surroundings. Zambendorf unfolded himself from his seat and

  followed.

  O'Flynn led between rows of packing cases and halted at a larger area where

  three surface vehicles were stacked one above the other in their stowage frames

  to just below the ceiling. At the bottom of the next stack, a co
uple of NASO

  mechanics working at the open hatch of a tracked vehicle, and another who was

  inspecting something from a movable work platform higher up, carried on without

  paying much attention. O'Flynn gestured toward the lowermost vehicle in front of

  them—a personnel carrier about fifteen feet high, painted mainly yellow, with

  six huge wheels. An enclosed cabin with lots of antennas and protrusions made up

  its forward two-thirds, and a clutter of girderwork, pipes, and tanks formed its

  rear.

  "See them wheels," O'Flynn said, pointing. "Them's high-traction, low-friction

  treads—not what you'd need if you wanted to go joy-riding off across a place

  like Mars." He ducked forward and indicated a pair of short, fat nozzles

  projecting from below the vehicle's front end. "Know what they are? Plasma

  torches and blowers—not the best thing in the world if you get bogged down in a

  sand drift now, is it?"

  "What would things like that be better for?" Zambendorf asked, peering more

  closely.

  "Ice," O'Flynn told him. "Lots of ice." He jerked his thumb stemward. "And the

  equipment holds back there are full of things like steam hoses and superheated

  suction tubes, which are also the kinds of things you'd want to take along with

  you if you expected to be bothered by ice. Now, where would all that ice be on a

  place like Mars?" He straightened out from under the vehicle and rapped his

  knuckle on the outside wall of the cab. "Them walls will withstand four

  atmospheres—outside, not inside. Mars has a low-pressure atmosphere."

  Zambendorf searched O'Flynn's face for a second or two and then looked back at

  the personnel carrier. O'Flynn stepped back a pace and pointed up at the

  fuselage of a low-altitude, fifteen-man airbus secured in the top frame of the

  stack. "And do you see that flyer up there? Its wings are detached so you can't

  see them for now, but they're too short and small to be any use at all in thin

  air. Now Mars must have changed quite a bit since I last read anything about it,

  unless I'm very much mistaken."

  "But . . . this is incredible!" Zambendorf injected an appropriate note of

  astonishment into his voice while his mind raced through possible explanations.

  "Have you asked anyone in authority about it?"

  O'Flynn shrugged. "What business is it of mine to be asking people about