by Various
What follows is a figure in a spacesuit; modern type, but the windows of the hopper are semipolarized and I cannot make out the face inside the bubble top.
He slings the rack upon the bulkhead, takes off the helmet and hangs that up, too. Then he just stands. I am beginning to muster enough sense to wonder why when he comes slowly across the hold.
Reaching the doorway he says: "Oh it's you, Lizzie. You'll have to help me out of this. I'm stuck."
M'Clare.
The outside of the suit is still freezing cold; maybe this is what has jammed the fastening. After a few minutes tugging it suddenly gives away. M'Clare climbs out of the suit, leaving it standing, and says, "Help me count these, will you?"
These are a series of transparent containers from a pouch slung at one side of the suit. I recognize them as the envelopes in which we put what are referred to as Personal Background Sets.
I say, "There ought to be twenty-three."
"No," says M'Clare dreamily, "twenty-two, we're saving one of them."
"What on earth is the use of an extra set of faked documents and oddments--"
He seems to wake up suddenly and says: "What are you doing here, Lizzie?"
I explain and he wanders over to the hopper and starts to explain the controls.
There is something odd about all this. M'Clare is obviously dead tired, but kind of relaxed; seeing that the hour of Danger is only thirty-six hours off I don't understand it. Probably several of his students are going to have to risk their lives--
I am on the point of seeing something important when the speaker announces in the colonel's voice that Professor M'Clare and Miss Lee will report to the Conference Room at once please.
M'Clare looks at me and grins. "Come along, Lizzie. Here's where we take orders for once, you and I."
It is the colonel's Hour. I suppose that having to work with Undergraduates is something he could never quite forget, but from the way he looks at us we might almost be Space Force personnel,--low-grade of course but respectable.
Everything is at last worked out and he has it on paper in front of him; he puts the paper four square on the table, gazes into the middle distance and proceeds to recite.
"One. This ship will go off Mass-Time on 2nd August at 11.27 hours ship's time....
"Thirty-six hours from now.
"... At a point one thousand miles vertically above Co-ordinates 165OE, 7320S, on Planet Incognita, approximately one hour before midnight local time.
"Going on planetary drive as close as that will indicate that something is badly wrong to begin with.
"Two. This ship will descend, coupled to Gilgamesh as at present, to a point seventy miles above the planetary surface. It will then uncouple, discharge one hopper, and go back on Mass-Time. Estimated time for this stage of descent forty minutes.
"Three. The hopper will then descend on its own engines at the maximum speed allowed by the heat-disposal system; estimated at thirty-seven minutes. Gilgamesh will complete descent in thirty-three minutes. Engines of Gilgamesh will not be used except for the heat-disposal and gyro auxiliaries. The following installations have been made to allow for the control of the descent; a ring of eight rockets in peltathene mounts around the tail and, and one outsize antigrav unit inside the nose. "Sympathizer" controls hooked up with a visiscreen and a computer have also been installed in the nose.
"Four. Gilgamesh will carry one man only. The hopper will carry a crew of three. The pilot of Gilgamesh will establish the ship on the edge of the cliff, supported on antigrav a foot or so above the ground and leaning towards the sea at an angle of approximately 20° with the vertical. Except for this landing will be automatic.
"Five."
The colonel's voice has lulled us into passive acceptance; now we are jerked into sharper attention by the faintest possible check in it.
"The greatest danger attaching to the expedition is that the Incognitans may discover that the crash has been faked. This would be inevitable if they were to capture (a) the hopper; (b) any of the new installations in Gilgamesh, especially the antigrav; (c) any member of the crew.
"The function of the hopper is to pick up the pilot of Gilgamesh and also to check that ground appearances are consistent. If not, they will produce a landslip on the cliff edge, using power tools and explosives carried for the purpose. That is why the hopper has a crew of three, but the chance of their having to do this is slight."
So I should think; ground appearances are supposed to show that Gilgamesh landed using emergency rockets and then toppled over the cliff and this will be exactly what happened.
"The pilot will carry a one-frequency low-power transmitter activated by the change in magnetic field on leaving the ship. The hopper will remain at five hundred feet until this signal is received. It will then pick up the pilot, check ground appearances, and rendezvous with this ship at two hundred miles up at 18.27 hours."
The ship and the hopper both being radar-absorbent will not register on alarm systems, and by keeping to planetary nighttime they should be safe from being seen.
"Danger (b) will be dealt with as follows. The rocket-mounts being of peltathene will be destroyed by half an hour's immersion in water. The installations in the nose will be destroyed with Andite."
Andite produces complete colecular disruption in a very short range, hardly any damage outside it; the effect will be as though the nose broke off on impact; I suppose the Incognitans will waste a lot of time looking for it on the bed of the sea.
"Four ten-centimeter cartridges will be inserted within the nose installations. The fuse will have two alternative settings. The first will be timed to act at 12.50 hours, seven minutes after the estimated time of landing. It will not be possible to deactivate it before 12.45 hours. This takes care of the possibility of the pilot's becoming incapacitated during the descent.
"Having switched off the first fuse the pilot will get the ship into position and then activate a second, timed to blow in ten minutes. He will then leave the ship. When the antigrav is destroyed the ship will, of course, fall into the sea.
"Six. The pilot of Gilgamesh will wear a spacesuit of the pattern used by the original crew and will carry Personal Background Set number 23. Should he fail to escape from the ship the crew of the hopper will on no account attempt to rescue him."
The colonel takes up the paper, folds it in half and puts it down one inch further away.
"The hopper's crew," he says, "will give the whole game away should one of them fall into Incognitan hands, alive or dead. Therefore they don't take any risks of it."
He lifts his gaze ceilingwards. "I'm asking for three volunteers."
Silence. Manning the hopper is definitely second best. Then light suddenly bursts on me and I lift my hand and hack B on the ankle.
"I volunteer," I say.
B gives me a most dubious glance and then lifts her hand, too.
Cray on the other side of the table is slowly opening his mouth when there is an outburst of waving on the far side of B.
"Me too, colonel! I volunteer!"
Mr. Yardo proceeds to explain that his special job is over and done, he can be more easily spared than anybody, he may be too old to take charge of Gilgamesh but will back himself as a hopper pilot against anybody.
The colonel cuts this short by accepting all three. He then unfolds his paper again.
"Piloting Gilgamesh," he says. "I'm not asking for volunteers now. You'll go to your cabins in four hours' time and those who want to will volunteer, secretly. To a computer hookup, Computer will select on a random basis and notify the one chosen. Give him his final instructions, too. No one need know who it was till it's all over. He can tell anyone he likes, of course."
A very slight note of triumph creeps into the next remark. "One point. Only men need volunteer."
Instant outcry from Kirsty and Dilly: B turns to me with a look of awe.
"Nothing to do with prejudice," says the colonel testily. "Just facts. The crew of Gi
lgamesh were all men. Can't risk one solitary woman being found on board. Besides--spacesuits, personal background sets--all designed for men."
Kirsty and Dilly turn on me looks designed to shrivel and B whispers "Lizzie how wonderful you are."
* * * * *
The session dissolves. We three get an intensive session course of instruction on our duties and are ordered off to sleep. After breakfast next morning I run into Cray who says, Before I continue about what is evidently pressing business would I care to kick him, hard?
Not right now I reply, what for anyway?
"Miss Lee," says Cray, dragging it out longer than ever, "although I have long realized that your brain functions in a way much superior to logic I had not sense enough yesterday to follow my own instinct and do what you do as soon as you did it; therefore that dessicated meat handler got in first."
I say: "So you weren't picked for pilot? It was only one chance in ten."
"Oh," says Cray, "did you really think so?" He gives me a long look and goes away.
I suppose he noticed that when the colonel came out with his remarks about No women in Gilgamesh I was as surprised as any.
Presently the three of us are issued with protective clothing; we just might have to venture out on the planet's surface and therefore we get white one-piece suits to protect against Cold, heat, moisture, dessication, radioactivity, and mosquitoes, and they are quite becoming, really.
B and I drag out dressing for thirty minutes; then we just sit while Time crawls asymptotically towards the hour.
Then the speaker calls us to go.
We are out of the cabin before it says two words and racing for the hold; so that we are just in time to see a figure out of an Historical movie--padded, jointed, tin bowl for head and blank reflecting glass where the face should be--stepping through the air lock.
The colonel and Mr. Yardo are there already. The colonel packs us into the hopper and personally closes the door, and for once I know what he is thinking; he is wishing he were not the only pilot in this ship who could possibly rely on bringing the ship off and on Mass-Time at one particular defined spot of Space.
Then he leaves us; half an hour to go.
The light in the hold begins to alter. Instead of being softly diffused it separates into sharp-edged beams, reflecting and crisscrossing but leaving cones of shadow between. The air is being pumped into store.
Fifteen minutes.
The hull vibrates and a hatch slides open in the floor so that the black of Space looks through; it closes again.
Mr. Yardo lifts the hopper gently off its mounts and lets it back again.
Testing; five minutes to go.
I am hypnotized by my chronometer; the hands are crawling through glue; I am still staring at it when, at the exact second, we go off Mass-Time.
No weight. I hook my heels under the seat and persuade my esophagus back into place. A new period of waiting has begun. Every so often comes the impression we are falling head-first; the colonel using ship's drive to decelerate the whole system. Then more free fall.
The hopper drifts very slowly out into the hold and hovers over the hatch, and the lights go. There is only the glow from the visiscreen and the instrument board.
One minute thirty seconds to go.
The hatch slides open again. I take a deep breath.
I am still holding it when the colonel's voice comes over the speaker: "Calling Gilgamesh. Calling the hopper. Good-by and Good luck. You're on your own."
The ship is gone.
Yet another stretch of time has been marked off for us. Thirty-seven minutes, the least time allowable if we are not to get overheated by friction with the air. Mr. Yardo is a good pilot; he is concentrating wholly on the visiscreen and the thermometer. B and I are free to look around.
I see nothing and say so.
I did not know or have forgotten that Incognita has many small satellites; from here there are four in sight.
* * * * *
I am still looking at them when B seizes my arm painfully and points below us.
I see nothing and say so.
B whispers it was there a moment ago, it is pretty cloudy down there--Yes Lizzie there it is look.
And I see it. Over to the left, very faint and far below, a pin-prick of light.
Light in the polar wastes of a sparsely inhabited planet, and since we are still five miles up it is a very powerful light too.
No doubt about it, as we descend farther; about fifty miles from our objective there are men, quite a lot of them.
I think it is just then that I understand, really understand, the hazard of what we are doing. This is not an exercise. This is in dead earnest, and if we have missed an essential factor or calculated something wrong the result will be not a bad mark or a failed exam, or even our personal deaths, but incalculable harm and misery to millions of people we never even heard of.
Dead earnest. How in Space did we ever have cheek enough for this?
The lights might be the essential factor we have missed, but there is nothing we can do about them now.
Mr. Yardo suddenly chuckles and points to the screen.
"There you are, girlies! He's down!"
There, grayly dim, is the map the colonel showed us; and right on the faint line of the cliff-edge is a small brilliant dot.
The map is expanding rapidly, great lengths of coastline shooting out of sight at the edge of the screen. Mr. Yardo has the cross-hairs centered on the dot which is Gilgamesh. The dot is changing shape; it is turning into a short ellipse, a longer one. The gyros are leaning her out over the sea.
I look at my chronometer; 12.50 hours exactly. B looks, too, and grips my hand.
Thirty seconds later the Andite has not blown; first fuse safety turned off. Surely she is leaning far enough out by now?
We are hovering at five hundred feet. I can actually see the white edge of the sea beating at the cliff. Mr. Yardo keeps making small corrections; there is a wind out there trying to blow us away. It is cloudy here: I can see neither moons nor stars.
Mr. Yardo checks the radio. Nothing yet.
I stare downwards and fancy I can see a metallic gleam.
Then there is a wordless shout from Mr. Yardo; a bright dot hurtles across the screen and at the same time I see a streak of blue flame tearing diagonally downwards a hundred feet away.
The hopper shudders to a flat concussion in the air, we are all thrown off balance, and when I claw my way back to the screen the moving dot is gone.
So is Gilgamesh.
B says numbly, "But it wasn't a meteor. It can't have been."
"It doesn't matter what it was," I say. "It was some sort of missile, I think. They must be even nearer to war than we thought."
We wait. What for, I don't know. Another missile, perhaps. No more come.
At last Mr. Yardo stirs. His voice sounds creaky.
"I guess," he says, then clears his throat, and tries again. "I guess we have to go back up."
B says, "Lizzie, who was it? Do you know?"
Of course I do. "Do you think M'Clare was going to risk one of us on that job? The volunteering was a fake. He went himself."
B whispers, "You're just guessing."
"Maybe," says Mr. Yardo, "but I happened to see through that face plate of his. It was the professor all right."
He has his hand on the controls when my brain starts working again. I utter a strangled noise and dive for the hatch into the cargo hold. B tries to grab me but I get it open and switch on the light.
Fifty-fifty chance--I've lost.
No, this is the one we came in and the people who put in the new cargo did not clear out my fish-boat, they just clamped it neatly to the wall.
I dive in and start to pass up the package. B shakes her head.
"No, Lizzie. We can't. Don't you remember? If we got caught, it would give everything away. Besides ... there isn't any chance--"
"Take a look at the screen," I tell her.
&
nbsp; Sharp exclamation from Mr. Yardo. B turns to look, then takes the package and helps me back.
* * * * *
Mr. Yardo maneuvers out over the sea till the thing is in the middle of the screen; then drops to a hundred feet. It is sticking out of the water at a fantastic angle and the waves are hardly moving it. The nose of a ship.
"The antigrav," whispers B. "The Andite hasn't blown yet."
"Ten minutes," says Mr. Yardo thoughtfully. He turns to me with sudden briskness. "What's that, Lizzie girl? A fish-boat? Good. We may need it. Let's have a look."
"It's mine," I tell him.
"Now look--"
"Tailor made," I say. "You might get into it, though I doubt it. You couldn't work the controls."
It takes him fifteen seconds to realize there is no way round it; he is six foot three and I am five foot one. Even B would find it hard.
His face goes grayish and he stares at me helplessly. Finally he nods.
"All right, Lizzie. I guess we have to try it. Things certainly can't be much worse than they are. We'll go over to the beach there."
On the beach there is wind and spray and breakers but nothing unmanageable; the cliffs on either side keep off the worst of the force. It is queer to feel moving air after eighteen days in a ship. It takes six minutes to unpack and expand the boat and by that time it is ten minutes since the missile hit and the Andite has not blown.
I crawl into the boat. In my protective clothing it is a fairly tight fit. We agree that I will return to this same point and they will start looking for me in fifty minutes' time and will give up if I have not returned in two hours. I take two Andite cartridges to deal with all eventualities and snap the nose of the boat into place. At first I am very conscious of the two little white cigars in the pouch of my suit, but presently I have other things to think about.
I use the "limbs" to crawl the last few yards of shingle into the water and on across the sea bottom till I am beyond the line of breakers; then I turn on the motor. I have already set the controls to "home" on Gilgamesh and the radar will steer me off any obstructions. This journey in the dark is as safe as my trip around the reefs before all this started--though it doesn't feel that way.