by Ipomoea
"And yet, according to this, he needs you?"
"Well, now." Sam grinned ruefully. "This is old history. Years ago, when I was just feeling my way into the maze of social science, because I have always had this intense curiosity about people as seen from outside, he and I had a ferocious argument. I lost it, as I recall, simply because he didn't want to know, but that is neither here nor there. The point I tried to make to him—and I could make it a little sharper now—was that people as a mass should be regarded as a natural force. We say—and we can prove—that it is technology which changes the world. We quote Henry Ford in transport, Marconi in radio, and so on. It's all true, but it's not the whole truth. It's like"—Hutten scowled as he searched for an analogy—"like the key principle in cybernation. You apply a small controllable energy to take charge of and manipulate a massive one. Amplification. The energy of a finger-movement on a switch can control millions of horsepower. That kind of thing. My point was that technology is not itself the moving force, merely the means of amplification. The real moving force is people-in-the-mass."
"I doubt if any of us here would question that," White murmured. "It happens to be our unenviable task to discover something more specific about that mass-force."
"Exactly. That's what I tried to tell him. 'You,' I said, 'are manipulating people, successfully, it's true, but without really knowing what you are handling. Someday you are going to need me, or someone like me, to get you out of a horrible snarl-up, when the day comes that the raw material you are pushing around backs up and decides not to be pushed any more.' He never forgot that. He didn't accept it for one moment. Rex Hutten couldn't. But he remembered it. I haven't seen him in five years, since the last time he was back on Earth and called in to see me. But he hadn't forgotten. He said it again, as he said it before: 'Anytime, Sam, that I feel I need youy I will say so!' Of course, he intended it to mean that it would never happen. But now . . ."
President White took up the photostat from where he had dropped it, and wrinkled his brow as he studied it.
"That certainly throws a new light on this. From what I know of your father at first hand, and by repute, I would assume that it cost him a great deal, and not just in money, to send this message. It is either an admission of defeat, of failure, or a cry for help. Or possibly all of those combined. And so it is bad news after all. I'm sorry."
"So am I." Sam sighed. "At the very least, it means I have to go out there, and I would much rather not. I've never even been off-planet, much less out into the wide blue, but I can't see what else there is to do!"
"You can't very well ignore it. As I said, Hutten, I shall be sorry to lose you, but you really must respond. After all, you're his only son, his heir. Aren't you?"
"That's the last thing to concern me. The old man gave me a good education, a start in life for which I am eternally grateful, but ever since then I have lived off my own earnings. I want no part of his empire, his millions, and he knows that. It's a point of respect between us. But this—I incline to read it as a call for help. In that sense I must go. The devil of it is, what can I do? Whatever sort of mess he is in, what can I do?"
Hutten continued to worry about what he could hope to do all the way to Kennedy Spaceport. The small practical aspects of packing and traveling bothered him very little. He was above all a practical man. He packed the very minimum, sensibly assuming that money could buy anvthing he might need en route, and just as sensibly arranging to draw cash on the credit that had stood in his name all these years without being touched. After all, he was traveling on Rex Hutten's business, and there was no reason at all why she shouldn't pay for it.
None of the chores was important enoueh to distract him from the main problem. It had been all very well in the first flush of youthful enthusiasm to claim that a social scientist would be needed to put right some manipulative error, but Sam was now twenty-eight and a good deal wiser than he had been when he made the claim. He knew what every honest social scientist knew, that there were dozens of theories but only a pitifully small handful of hard techniques. Certainly nothing solid enough for a man to stand on while repairing a planetary disaster. Already Sam was thinking in terms of disaster. He could imagine nothing less that woud have bent his father's craggy-minded confidence in himself to the point where he would bawl for help. To the other point delicately hinted at by President White he paid little or no attention. Truly he was the old man's heir, but that didn't become effective until the old man was dead. It had to happen some time, of course, but Sam already had arranged a nebulous notion in his mind for that. If and when the moment came he would solicit expert advice, set up a ruling committee to take charge of the enterprise, and he, Sam Hutten, would sit well back, acting like a rubber stamp.
He managed to clarify one thing in his mind by the time the inspecting officials at Kennedy had checked him out as fit to board the ship for Mars. He needed data, a lot more data, all he could get hold of about the Tau-Ceti Colony System. Anyone else, he mused ruefully, would have sent an ethergram blasting back there demanding to know what the trouble was. He didn't, because he knew his father that well. If old Rex had wanted him to know the details they would have been sent. For all the opposition in viewpoint between father and son, there was genuine regard and respect for each other and they had two things in common. One, a solid and abiding respect for hard facts and the courage to look right at them. The other, an avoidance of any kind of emotional blackmail. So Sam knew he was going to have to get his data for himself, and that he would be told more about the situation only when he arrived at his destination.
For a brief while his attention was distracted by the seemingly endless minutiae that had to be gone through before he could take his place on the ship. The physical check was extreme and thorough, yet for all that he was carefully advised that he would be examined again, en route, yet again at Star-Jump Base, Canalopolis; and anywhere in between if and when any medical authority thought it necessary. And, should he fail any of the checks, he was liable to be sent back home without the option.
"Is this special for me because I'm a first-timer?" he asked the attractive young lady who had the task of briefing him on this.
"No, sir," she assured him, and because, for all his homeliness and self-effacement, Sam Hutten had an attraction that he, fortunately, never suspected of himself, she proceeded to explain in some detail. "You see, there are conditions, once you leave Earth, that cannot be duplicated or measured here, so there is no way of telling, for certain, how you will react to them."
"Gravity I know about," he said. "It gets less, or greater, according to the drive-rate. Zero-G. Free fall. But what are the others?"
"Radiation is one. We only know the kind of radiation that manages to get here through the atmosphere in any amount. There are all sorts of others that we know very little about, possibly a whole lot more that we can't even detect yet. And there's danger. Danger in space is utterly different from any kind we are familiar with on Earth, is contrary to all our instincts. In danger the reflex instinct is to run, to hide, or to fight, to resist."
"Adrenaline stimulus."
"That's right." She beamed on him. She was really very attractive. "In space, however, that's fatal. In hazard it is sssential either that you know exactly what to do, and do it, Dr have the sanity to accept expert instructions from those who do know. You see? But the most baffling of all the new conditions is a thing we call space-cafard, an intense depression that seems to be the result, simply, of being away from Earth. It's one of those crazy things, like agoraphobia."
Sam grinned at her, and never knew how she was to remember that big homely grin for months to come. "You make it sound like quite an accomplishment just to get into the ship!"
"It's not that. This is all just routine. We check as far as we can, everything we can. Then, if anything does go wrong, we are in the clear. That's all it is. I'm sure you're going to be all right, Mr. Hutten—I'm sorry, Dr. Hutten!"
"Forget the trimmings
. Just a social scientist, is all. I had better be all right. If I get the screaming jim-jams halfway there and have to be sent back, I'll never live it down!"
It wasn't until after he had started out on the stroll across to the gangway that she came out of her roseate daze long enough to scan his data-card, to see that he had written Rex Hutten. Verdan. Tau-Ceti System as his next of kin.
"That Hutten!" she sighed. "Oh, I hope I'm on duty when he comes back, if he comes back, that is."
Despite his banter Sam really did feel he had achieved something just by getting to sit in the takeoff lounge, until a dear little old lady by his side confided in him that this was her eighteenth trip.
"Only as far as Mars and back, mind you," she admitted. "I go once every six months or so, just for the ride. It beats any sight-seeing tour on Earth that I know of. You'll like it."
Sam thanked her politely, assured her that he would try to enjoy it, and knew himself thoroughly deflated. It left his mind open again for wondering what his father wanted him for, and mild irritation with himself for wasting time on such unprofitable speculations. The routine of takeoff presented him with a small distraction. It was, he soon realized, just that, just routine. It lasted about half an hour. At no time was the thrust excessive, touching three-G only once, and that very briefly. The view from the portholes was spectacular in its way, and he appreciated it, but he had spoken truthfully when he had said he was intensely interested in people. Material events left him unmoved, largely because he didn't understand them very well. With stability and the end of jockeying for course, the intercom system came to life with words of cheer from the captain, who named himself as Bates, and went on:
"Course attitude is now established and passengers are free to leave their seats and move at will about the ship. You will find the number of your reserved cabin clearly marked on the top right-hand corner of your flight-card. During the course of the next two hours the thrust-gravity effect will be reduced by gradual decrements, and will be stabilized at standard one-fourth Earth-normal, which will persist for the remainder of the journey. This will give you ample time to adjust to it. You will also be given ample warning in time to return to your reaction-seats and strap down preparatory to landing, which will be in approximately forty-eight hours.
"Meanwhile there are the bars, observation rooms, teleplays and book-machines for your entertainment and diversion. The are also my two co-pilots, three hostesses—and, of course, myself—always at your service in any way. I wish you a very pleasant journey. Thank you."
Hutten freed himself from his seat, made his excuses to the veteran old lady, and went exploring to find P. thirty-eight, the designation embossed on his card. Now that the flight was actually in progress his trained mind brought back to him a flow of data on the phenomena involved. He could expect quarter-G to be a unique thrill, worth the trip in itself, something you couldn't get on Earth. Indeed, much of the attraction about space-flight was the unique opportunity it offered to escape the cloying omnipresence of convention, although the little old lady would have been shocked had he told her that. Sam smiled to himself. Social scientists could never be popular. They had an unforgivable habit of seeing the real basic urges which drove people, and discounting the euphemistic rationalizations those same people erected in their own minds to cover those same urges.
Mankind was still fighting the one war that had gone on vigorously ever since the cave: the conflict between convention and kicks, the instinctive need for security and the equally instinctive urge for excitement and thrills. Both inherent in the human pattern, both are polar opposites. Now, in a world where work was almost a forgotten word, where you had a profession or nothing, and were little worse off either way, where everything had a price and almost nothing had value any longer, space-flight alone offered two unique thrills. Reduced gravity—the lifting away of age-old weight, the too too solid flesh that Shakespeare's Hamlet had complained of, and the chance, only on a ship in space, to really feel free of the overpowering presence of multi-million-headed society. In a manner exactly analogous to the old-time sea-surface ship-voyages—now no more than a historical footnote—to embark on a small-community trip far away from the madding crowd for an extensive period of time, that in itself was an exciting, daring, romantic thing. And only possible in space. No place on Earth, now, was more than tour hours from any other place.
Sam found his cabin, small but reasonably comfortable, and sat a while to let the thoughts circle and simmer in his mind. All around he could hear the slowly growing babble of voices and movement, the occasional squeal of delight as his fellow passengers began to let their hair down. Fun for them, he thought, and with a sigh remembered that this was hardly a pleasure-jaunt for him. He took charge of his idling thoughts and scanned carefully over what little he knew about the Tau-Ceti System.
It was the first and so far the biggest plum to be pulled out of the pie made possible by the Yashi-Matsu Drive. Seventeen planets in all, and the second, third and fourth out from the primary were all well within living-tolerance limits. But colony ships cost money, a lot of money, so a planet had to be something better than just livable; it had to show returns, to be worth the trouble. Innermost Ophir was hot, arid, mostly sand and rock, with only a tough and tenacious vegetation for life. Water was present as fast-vanishing morning dew, or deep down below if you cared to dig for it. At first blush, not a promising prospect. But Ophir had wealth. Its surface a-bounded in rare-earth ores and oxides, mostly hafnium and the halogen-metal compounds. And sun-stones, which were prized equally as gems and for their rare and unique electronic properties. So Ophir was worth it. * So, too, was Zera, the outermost of the three. Chill and bleak as any Tibetan plateau, and constantly lashed with storms, Zera had set the cosmologists a puzzle they had so far been unable to solve. Athough all the signs indicated that Zera had always been bleak and cold, the manifold layers of its upper mantle were thick and rich in hydrocarbons, oils, gases, tars and petroleum sources. Nowhere on the surface had life progressed any further than moss and lichen. The carboniferous deposits should not have been there. Yet there they were, and while the theoreticians argued with each other, the diggers moved in with the rigs and machinery, and the wealth began to move out in plastics, polymers and power-fuels of all kinds. Both planets were worth it as they stood, but what had made the whole system into a platinum-mine was Verdan, right in the middle.
Here was an Earth-size, Earth-type planet with neither axial tilt nor perturbing satellite. It had lush topsoil, equable climate, and no opposition in the shape of sitting tenants. Life on Verdan, apparently, had gone a parallel trail with Earth, up as far as a minor tarsioid form, but there it had run into some kind of blind alley. Verdan was there for the taking. And the first colonists had taken, with giant-sized grabs. A small, hard-minded group of men masterminded each planet. All were rich in terms that baffled imagination to grasp. Of the three Verdan was richest; of them all, Rex Hutten was the acknowedged top, appropriately named Rex. King of the heap. And he was in some kind of trouble, enough to send a peremptory message to his son for help. Sam Hutten sighed again, and felt inadequate.
He rose from his bunk-bed restlessly and moved about the small cabin, idly reading the notices that were pasted up for his information. More routine, he thought wryly. Precautions against the million-to-one chance. He sensed a slight lessening of weight. It was pleasant, made him feel youthful.
space suit. The heading caught his attention, in bold print above a notice stuck on the door of an upright coffin-like locker. He read halfway down the instructions, then gave way to impulse, opened the door and hauled out the floppy rubberized mass. After studying it for a few moments he thought he had the hang of it, slid his feet in the legs, pulled the rest of it up to his waist, and checked with the guidance again. Arms in there, heave up to shoulders, secure wrist-lock on each wrist then zip up the front all the way to the neck, making sure the zipper-slide is locked at the end position. He did that. He was now total
ly enclosed up to his chin, and peering over the rim of a high collars.
" Take the helmet in both hands,' " he read aloud, " folding it so that the transparent visor is looking toward your left shoulder. Lower over head, press firmly down over collar and then rotate until visor is forward, until you hear contact-click. A small red light will switch on immediately above your eyebrows. This is all you have to do. Automatic devices will seal the helmet and suit, will activate the air-maintenance unit, and activate your talk-and-listen circuits to and from the outside. To the right of your chin is a brush-switch which will put you into radio-contact with other suits. You are now totally self-contained for twenty-four hours.'
"Just like that," he mused. "Everything on a plate." He studied the inside of the helmet, noting the positioning of the indicator lamp and the chin-switch and then holding the whole thing over his head in the proper manner. "What happened to all the high adventure?" He lowered the helmet. It slid smoothly into place, produced the appropriate click, and the red glow. Sound-values altered subtly. The ever-present hum of engine-power was almost inaudible now, but the distant squeal and chatter of the other passengers still came, warped tinnily into higher frequencies. And there was a rubbery smell, reminding him of his few experiences with scuba.
"Wouldn't like to be stuck in this thing for long," he muttered, revolving slowly and clumsily to study the cabin through the face-piece. He was just raising his hands to twist the helmet off again when he noticed a winking red light. It was over there by the bunk, set into what looked like a curved section of separate paneling. He frowned at it. He didn't recall having seen it before. As he stared the light stopped flickering, came on and stayed on. There came the sudden climbing howl of a siren of some kind. Then there was a whip-like crack, a puff-burst of some smoky vapor; the curved panel-piece vanished, became a velvet-black nothingness. The smoky stuff whisked away fast. The cellular-fleece blanket from his bunk gathered itself and shot out through that black hole. He felt the shock-slam as his cabin door crashed shut. The siren wail faded out. For one awful moment an invisible hand seemed to grab him and urge him toward that awful hole. It was gone in a flash, that tugging, but fear remained as he heard his suit squeak and pop.