by Andre Norton
“Do you happen to speak Solarian?” Redkirk asked him, having glanced again at the beams focused on screens One and Two.
“Some.”
The answering voice boomed slightly, and Redkirk realized that it was produced by the vibrating membranes of air sacs that swelled out below the wide, blubbery jaws.
“I have never been to Altair in person,” said the Earthman. “Would you have time to show me an outside view near your station?”
“What . . . purpose?”
“Just curiosity,” Redkirk told him. “I want to see what things look like in the light of a white, Class A star. Sol is G, you know, and yellow.”
“Last part slow again?”
Redkirk repeated.
“I’ll show you scenes of Solarian planets, if you like,” he offered in conclusion.
“Would like,” the Altairian assured him.
He faded from the screen and Redkirk took the opportunity to consult his list of filed films for what he needed. While searching for scenes of Mars and Earth, he had the outside scanner pick up the part of the crescent of Mars that showed above the jagged horizon of Phobos, and sent it out through screen Four.
He chose a few representative scenes of Martian deserts and of mountains, oceans, and cities of Earth, and fed them into the series as he watched what the other operator sent back—stealing a second here and there to check on the main business going through.
Even with reception automatically adapted to human vision, the landscape of Altair seemed bright and shadowless. The glare of the white star burned down upon great expanses of flat land covered by low-growing shrubs with pale, fleshy leaves. In the distance, several mountain peaks glittered, some of them smoking with evidence of volcanic action.
Even an ocean scene made Redkirk feel hot, as if he were exposed to the glare of Earthly tropics. He decided that there was good reason for the Altairians he saw swimming to sport such heavy hides.
The distant operator had just switched in a view of one of his system’s satellites, not unlike the scarred face of Luna, when the conference broke up.
Redkirk hastily brought the private showing to an end. Before switching off, he thanked the Altairian.
“Most pleasure,” the other assured him in drumming tones. “If call again, ask for Delki Loori-Kam-Dul.”
“Thank you, I will. I am Redkirk . . . Red-kirk . . . yes, that’s right.”
He punched a button to record the number of the station’s film copy of the transmission for the commercial department or other future reference, and cut the beam. He also made a mental note of a new acquaintance, sixteen light-years away in the constellation Aquila.
He leaned back in his swivel chair for a few moments, thinking about the harsh surface of the planet he had just seen. He was aroused from his reverie when a call beeped in from Luna.
“Say! I’ve been waiting to come in line with you again,” he greeted Oberhof. “I wanted to ask you about that message.”
“The one to the Iris? You wouldn’t want me to give away diplomatic secrets, would you?”
Redkirk’s eyebrows went up.
“Was it that hush-hush?” he demanded, incredulously.
Oberhof put on a knowing expression and shifted his ground. “Later, if I think I’m not being spied on,” he muttered. “Right now, I think you better take this call.”
“Who’s it for?” asked Redkirk.
“A personal for you,” replied the Lunar operator. “From a . . . uh . . . Mrs. Nina Redkirk, of Earth. There’s also a film. Shall I send that on my B band while you talk?”
“Shoot!” said Redkirk.
He cut in his recorder via screen Five, then leaned back to take the personal on his main screen. In a moment, the features of a young woman with reddish hair and a pert nose came in clearly. “Hello, Nina,” said Redkirk.
She smiled, a shade too cheerfully, for he could see concern in her eyes.
“Harry! It’s good to see you! How is everything?”
“Same as ever,” he answered easily. “You know by now what it’s like at a station like Phobos. Tell me about you—that’s what I’m interested in.”
“Oh . . . you know . . . gosh, it’s funny how I can make a call like this and then forget everything I was going to say! Did the man on Luna tell you I’m sending movies I took of Barry?”
“I’m recording them right now. That Oberhof isn’t one to waste time.”
They talked of a few other matters—Barry’s schooling, the new puppy, and the like.
“We’ll have to cut this,” said Redkirk. “I’m getting a signal. Now, don’t forget to call me every so often. And keep those movies of Barry coming; they’re swell!”
Nina said good-by hurriedly, and Redkirk cut the screen. He glanced at Five, saw that the film had been recorded, and keyed off a routine acknowledgment to Luna. Receiving no return call, he assumed that Oberhof was busy.
He had had no incoming signal, but the sight of Nina had made him wonder how long he could keep up the pretense of gaiety. Earth suddenly seemed so far away that he could hardly believe he had been born there.
A real signal made his head snap up. He realized that he had been sitting there staring sightlessly at the controls for several minutes. He brought the call to the main screen and discovered that it was a simple relay from Canalopolis on the red planet inward to Earth.
Oberhof showed his face briefly during the operation.
“I’ll call you back in a little while,” he told Redkirk.
The latter pressed a button that would remove the record of Nina’s film from the file and focus the pictures on his screen. He grinned faintly as he saw Barry romping with a gangling puppy on a lawn of green Earth grass, and felt a pang of loneliness as his six-year-old son sawed off the first slice of a large birthday cake.
When the film had run off, he sat quietly for some minutes before Oberhof’s signal came in.
Redkirk shook himself and answered.
“Now zero-beat that rasping voice of yours and say something!” he ordered Oberhof. “What was the big rumpus?”
The other operator grinned and wagged his head.
“Don’t know as I ought to tell you. Top secret. A real emergency call out to the depths of space!”
“Come on,” demanded Redkirk.
“Well, to give you a quick schematic—Morelli lit off for Procyon without turning in the combination to his office wall safe. Left it with his wife and forgot to tell her it had to be taken in to the department instanter.”
“Yeah—?”
“That’s all.”
“No secret papers? No urgent instructions?”
Oberhof sucked in his lower lip and shrugged.
Redkirk looked around at his communications office, at the dials and switches and instruments. He thought of the powerful generators outside, of the delicate and marvelous mechanisms that could direct a beam across light-years of subspace.
“Might have known,” he murmured. “If Earth were exploding, they’d have put through the message by routine recording.”
“I would like to send him a personal bill for the complete cost of that little chat,” growled Oberhof.
“Take it easy,” said Redkirk, grinning. “Maybe we’ll save the world next time.”
He glanced over his shoulder as the door opened.
“Watch that blood pressure,” he advised. “I’ll have to cut off now; here comes my relief.”
Oberhof waggled a finger at him and faded out. Redkirk looked over his shoulder.
“Ready, Harry?” asked chubby Ed Garnier from the doorway. “As good a time as any,” agreed Redkirk. “Everything looks quiet for a few minutes. Johnny out there?”
“Yeah. We’ll be right in.”
Redkirk ran an eye over his board. The screens were dead and all his traffic for the watch had been cleared. He pulled out the operator’s log and signed it after glancing at the time.
Then he heard Johnny and Garnier coming in, and turned h
is head to watch them maneuvering the wheelchair through the door.
Redkirk put one hand against the edge of the control desk and swiveled himself around as Garnier pushed the conveyance over to him. Johnny prepared to help him from one chair to the other.
“Dunno how you do it,” remarked Garnier, steadying the wheelchair with a broad-fingered hand as he watched Johnny lift his chief effortlessly in the light gravity of Phobos. “Honest, I don’t. After a crack-up like that, I think I’d crawl away an’ let somebody take care of me the rest of my life.”
Redkirk got his hands on the grips of the wheels and pivoted to face Garnier. He looked up at the relief operator with a grin on his lean, tanned face.
“Stop making me a hero!” he jeered. “What would I do in a hospital on Mars or Earth? Anywhere but Phobos, I’d be flat on my back and helpless.”
To demonstrate his present mobility, he rolled around Garnier and pivoted the chair in the doorway to look back at them. In the outer office, Joe Wong, Garnier’s stand-by, clinked a cup as he poured himself coffee.
“How was that?” Redkirk asked Garnier. “The way I’m banged up, it’s only in gravity like this that I can get around at all.”
Garnier nodded sympathetically.
“Yeah, I don’t blame you,” he said. “A guy could go crazy, I guess, just lying in a bed and thinking about how he could never pilot a ship again, never even go any place. Of course, he could see his wife and family and friends, instead of being marooned on a chunk of rock like this.”
Redkirk smiled at him.
“I don’t feel very marooned,” he retorted. “Tonight, for instance, I talked to a man on the moon, watched a test digging being started on Pluto, and arranged a little matter with a stranger on a Wolf 359 planet.”
Behind Garnier’s back, Johnny glanced at the log.
“I also listened to a Solarian ambassador speaking out of space just as if I were at the controls of another ship again,” Redkirk continued. “Then I got me a good look at a planet of Altair that I never saw before. And to top it off, my best girl called me long-distance and I watched my boy grow a year!”
Garnier hitched up his jaw. He and Johnny stared briefly at each other, then back at Redkirk.
“And you call it work?” laughed Redkirk, backing out the door.
3 SPACE SHIP STEWARD: Ben Harlow
Captains and pilots walk wreathed in glory.
Others do drabber duty unnoticed. But sometimes there
are instances when the little man
is of importance, too. Ben Harlow lived
to discover that.
Chore for a Spaceman
BY WALT SHELDON
They came through hatch looking bored, as they always did, and once again Ben Harlow dreaded facing them. They’d seen it all out there in Interplan. They had it.
And now he had to make his silly speech—to them.
Captain Mace pushed by, headed for Control. He clapped Ben’s shoulders. He was hulking, red-headed and mostly grin and muscle. “Fix ’em up good, Ben. Dies aboard this trip.”
“Dies?”
“Damned Interesting Characters.” The captain and his grin disappeared forward.
Ben laughed but his heart wasn’t in it. He turned to the passengers and cleared his throat. “Gentlemen, you are now guests of Military Space Transport. Our destination is Earth and during the time we are headed there . . .”
The stilted words, the wooden words. He’d said them so many times they cloyed his ears now. Ben Harlow—Space Steward, second class—the man who had never seen the swirling poisonous clouds of Venus or the unholy glow of Saturnian rings outside the ports. Never the dark side of the Moon. Just a bare spaceport on Mars, and the New Mexico landing area on Earth.
This was his life while Earth and Jupiter warred and others filled themselves with glory.
“. . . We hope, of course, there’ll be no emergencies. As far as we know the Mars-inferior area is clear of Jovian craft. But in case anything does happen . . .”
The instructions about the liferoids now. Move quickly, stay calm. He was telling them—the men who’d seen the real thing. Them.
There was one over there skirting space madness—eyes too big for his face and he kept swallowing his Adam’s apple over and over again. Spaceman first class Eddington—Ben recalled his name from the Form 6. Then the man from Telenews, leaning forward, staring at nothing and dangling his camera between his knees, the pale, gray little man who had maybe seen too much. Beyond him two space guards—rugged flat-staring weary bulls of men—with their prisoner.
Ben’s gaze stopped on the prisoner. It was the first Jovian he had ever seen at close range. In the artificial gravity which matched Earth’s he had made himself tall and elongated. He had worked his protoplasmic form into the shape of an Earthman. They were the Jovians—the shameless imitators. The color stripes on this one marked him as one of their space pilots.
“. . . so if you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask them. Military Space Transport will try to make your trip to Earth as quick and comfortable as possible.”
The whirring began as the blast-off energy was generated. Ben went down the line, checking the straps of the acceleration cradles. The nose of the ship rose slowly into launching position and when the ship’s gravity was switched on the sensation of tilting disappeared.
Ben came to the Jovian, and began to tighten his straps. He looked up and saw a grin cross the mushy face. The prisoner kept himself in Earthman’s shape by strict order—and by threat of one of the guards’ acid guns.
Only acid from one of the squat hard spiky Jovian plants could hurt a Jovian—that or something violent like an explosion. Bullets or rays passed through their protoplasm harmlessly. Ben looked away from the Jovian’s grin. He tried not to shudder.
“Just relax when the acceleration warning bell rings,” he muttered. His litany. Same trips, same kinds of faces, same words all the time. Combat men—going back. Only the Jovian made this run a little different.
He stole another glance upward. The Jovian was still grinning at him. This time he did shudder. You had to shudder, just thinking about them. Jovians had no bones, no innards. They were just blobs of stuff. Within the tremendous gravity of their own planet they spread themselves flat on the surface or formed hemispheres.
They could take any form they wished within several hours. They could make clever pseudodactyls for fingers and then duplicate almost anything made in the system. They’d copied Earth’s spaceships, Earth’s weapons—and now Earth’s old talent for war.
The Jovian’s pseudo-voice came, sleazy and whispering, to Ben’s ears. He used the manner and jargon of an Earthman space pilot. “Kid, you got no idea what a hot space-rock this little boy is. Me, I’ve pffted more Earth guys than Beethoven has notes.”
Ben didn’t answer and didn’t look up.
The Jovian laughed. “You squares won’t be holding Xyl very long.”
Ben heard one of the beefy guards growl, “Shut up, Xyl.”
Then the warning note sounded and Ben finished his checkup quickly. He hustled forward to the crew compartment and his own acceleration chamber. He ticked on the interviz and saw Captain Mace’s battered mug grinning at him.
He said, “All clear back there, sir.”
“Hang on, kiddo,” said Mace. Then his image vanished.
Mace had had it, too. He’d been in battle-hulls before the Space Surgeon sent him to transports. He had medals he never wore—a spacebag full.
Ben relaxed in the floating web of straps and springs. The starting bell rang hollowly. The usual terrible roar cut into the silence. It became louder and louder until Ben thought—as he always did—that he wouldn’t be able to stand it any longer. Then it drifted away.
He felt himself pressed into the cradle and felt the characteristic stomach tug. His head swam. He knew that the ship was already far into space . . .
Moments later his head cleared again and the cradle swung back
to center. He waited quietly until he heard the clear bell, then extricated himself and went through the door to the waist. He glanced at the passengers, and all were more or less normal.
The little, gray Telenews man was already lighting a cigarette. The two space guards were stretching themselves and Xyl was staring at his straps, wondering how to undo them with his pseudodactyls and probably wishing he could change form instantaneously to get out of them. Most of the others were stirring in one way or another. A bridge game was being started toward the rear.
Wait—Eddington the gaunt Spaceman 1/c was still strapped down. Ben frowned and started toward him. Then he saw that he was perfectly conscious. His eyes were moving. He was staring at the Jovian prisoner. Unmistakable slow burning hate was in his eyes.
Ben went to him. “Feeling all right, fella?”
The starved eyes swung slowly until they fastened on Ben’s. Ben felt worse in moments like this when combat men looked at him and studied him. He knew what they saw—a medium-sized guy in a blue spaceman’s uniform with the vanes of rocket personnel on his chest.
Gray eyes, sandy hair, faintly freckled face. But none of that hardness around the jaw—none of those space wrinkles near the eyes. It was pretty clear what he really was—a spacegoing headwaiter. That was about the size of it.
And this gaunt stringy-cheeked Eddington said to him, “Look, buddy, go take a walk for yourself. I’m busy.” Then he resumed staring at the Jovian.
“You don’t like him, eh?” said Ben.
Eddington spoke softly. “I hate ’em. I hate all of ’em. Like you could never understand. I did two Earth years in one of their prisons. Their slimy arms poking all over me, cutting me open sometimes and—and—” He swallowed his larynx. He looked at Ben again. “Go on, beat it, will ya?”
Ben shrugged and turned, went forward again.
It was very puzzling for a man to know how he should feel. He know about the Jovians—second hand, of course—and he shuddered like everybody else when he heard about the things they did to prisoners. But was it cruelty? They had no conception of pain—no real emotions outside of dim hate and a kind of heavy humor. The only thing they feared was death—and they were never quite articulate enough to explain just exactly why they feared that.