by Andre Norton
“We haf decited not want all thingss comink. You can ssend big shipss . . . big shiploadss grain foodss?”
“Tell him ‘yes,’ ” advised Fuller from Bormek V.
“It can be arranged,” said Ramsay warily. “What about the projectors?”
“Pro-jek-torss?”
“Powder-makers.”
“Not want; will gif back. But not ssend for mines more workerss.”
“But you are going to pay? We have an agreement!”
“Don’t worry about it,” said a small voice behind Ramsay.
The Delthigans twitched their flappy ears and eyed the spaceman askance. Yil Khoff laboriously attempted to explain.
“We not bound by promiss of former gufferment.”
“Former government!”
Ramsay stepped back to lean one hand on his desk.
“We know . . . iss hard to tell to persson like you. Will maybe not unterstand, but we haf by force new rulerss made.”
“A revolution!” breathed Ramsay.
He saw two wrench-bearing operators coming through Marie’s office, followed by Hane and the girl. He waved them inside.
“They had a revolution,” he announced, and his face felt queer to him until he realized that he was smiling.
“Not know word,” admitted Yil Khoff after a futile consultation with his companions.
“You threw out the old officials?” Ramsay prompted.
“Threw outt?”
“Deposed . . . replaced—?”
“We shot them!” said Yil Khoff firmly. “Was very mad-makink how they from you got such wunderful thingss, but we still starfed. For what? For big promiss! Nothing more behind!”
Ramsay glanced at the desk visor beside his elbow. Fuller blandly returned his smile.
“Mr. Hane,” said Ramsay, “will you see that our friends have a comfortably dry room in which to rest until we can discuss new arrangements?”
“Gladly,” beamed Hane.
“Perhaps you might even scare up some of that frozen corn. I don’t imagine all of it got through to Delthig III.”
One of the communications men winked. He and his friend slipped out hastily. Hane led the visitors in their wake as Ramsay turned to face Fuller.
“This is all very interesting,” said the B.S.T. man, “but it costs a lot of credits. You just don’t get someone in a face-to-face across two light-years and then casually tell them to hold on while you settle another matter.”
“Aw, the B.S.T. can afford it,” retorted Ramsay. “You’ll get it back in this system, if I know you!”
“We expect to,” said Fuller. “I should like to make sure of it, however, by having you and Hane handle the trading—at a good commission, of course.”
Ramsay, seeing his elderly assistant returning through the outer office, relayed the offer, remembering that he had profited enormously the last time he had assisted Fuller and the Bureau.
“I should say . . . ah, grab it!” replied Hane, nodding to the B.S.T. man. “Incidentally, Mr. Ramsay’s other executive assistant seems to be much admired on Delthig III.”
“Me?” asked Marie.
“Yil Khoff says every soul down there is talking about kitchen movies.”
“There’s an idea for you,” Fuller told Ramsay. “Give her a share and let her handle the household gadgets.”
“Thank you, Mr. Fuller,” said Marie. “I thought I was going to have to marry him to get a share of his income.”
“Huh!” grunted Ramsay, grinning at her. “That might be arranged yet. I’ll see how much you cut into my commission.”
He turned back to Fuller.
“Seriously,” he said, “you had me scared there for a while. I’m just as glad they did have an uprising down there, even though I don’t see how they carried it through. Now I won’t have to move my spaceline to another system.”
“No, you can stay as our agent till you own Delthig,” chuckled Fuller. “Honestly, now, Ramsay, what did you think would happen on Delthig III when the poor, oppressed, downtrodden mass of slaves got a glimpse of life via television.”
Ramsay stared.
He reached out, turned the visor to face his chair, and slowly walked around the desk to sit down. Marie and Hane came to stand behind him.
“So you had a hand in it,” murmured Ramsay. “With those telescreens you were so conveniently stuck with! So nice that they only had one channel, so it didn’t even matter if the Delthigans put up a station of their own!”
“The Vozaalians are inclined to be hasty in their designs for mass-produced items,” said Fuller complacently.
“Wasn’t it taking quite a chance, though?” asked Ramsay. “The Delthigans were bound to make trouble sooner or later,” said Fuller, looking so satisfied that Ramsay half-expected him to thrust out a tongue and lick his chops. “A Planetary State has nowhere to go but out. It seemed only prudent to supply the little push that would cause the trouble to fall on their own heads.”
Ramsay sighed and shook his head admiringly.
“No wonder they were so hopping mad about those telecasts of Neuberg’s. Man, but those films must have been more subversive than termites!”
“How does it feel to start a revolution?” asked old Hane.
Fuller smiled and shrugged.
“Oh, I shouldn’t take credit for that,” he said. “It was bound to come. But since Delthig III was so overburdened with that Planetary State that it was due for either an explosion or a collapse, the Bureau naturally preferred to see it imploded.”
“Well, the gates are blown in, all right,” said Ramsay. “Now to rush in with the goods.”
“It will open up quite a market,” admitted Fuller.
Hane chuckled suddenly, envisaging the future.
“It will be like a big sponge for years and years,” he said. “There won’t be anything that won’t sell on Delthig III. You really opened something!”
“I thought for a while he was going to open it with a big bang just outside this dome,” laughed Ramsay. “I won’t feel easy until they return all’those Bormekian projectors you slipped them behind my back.”
“Oh . . . those,” muttered Fuller. “I might as well tell you about those.”
He seemed to experience difficulty in meeting the spaceman’s eye.
“We hoped they would be a surprise to the ruling caste when the serfs swarmed over the palaces. If other artillery had been traded in, the projectors would prevent mass slaughter.”
“You had them rigged to blow up?” Ramsay guessed.
“No . . . as a matter of fact, they won’t do much of anything if they’re not in space or some other vacuum.”
“What!”
Fuller nodded.
“With any air at all to act as an insulator, the effective range is about half an inch!”
Ramsay tried to imagine the expression on the alien face of the first Delthigan gunner ordered to mow down the charging rebels. He sighed.
“If you’ll excuse me,” he said, “I have to go and check our inventory for the big . . . er . . . opening.”
6 SOLAR SYSTEM FRONTIER GUARD: Thomas Jordan
Where there is peace or war there are
guardians standing to protect the helpless. In companies
or alone they must keep an endless and
fearless watch. So did Thomas Jordan
learn to live.
Steel Brother
BY GORDON R. DICKSON
“We stand on guard.”—Motto of the Frontier Force.
“. . . Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow and never continueth in one stay—”
The voice of the chaplain was small and sharp in the thin air, intoning the words of the burial service above the temporary lectern set up just inside the transparent wall of the landing field dome. Through the double transparencies of the dome and the plastic cover of the burial rocket th
e black-clad ranks could see the body of the dead stationman, Ted Waskewicz, lying back comfortably at an angle of forty-five degrees, peaceful in death, waxily perfect from the hands of the embalmers, and immobile. The eyes were closed, the cheerful, heavy features still held their expression of thoughtless dominance, as though death had been a minor incident, easily shrugged off; and the battle star made a single blaze of color on the tunic of the black uniform.
“Amen.” The response was a deep bass utterance from the assembled men, like the single note of an organ. In the front rank of the Cadets, Thomas Jordan’s lips moved stiffly with the others’, his voice joining mechanically in their chorus. For this was the moment of his triumph, but in spite of it, the old, old fear had come back, the old sense of loneliness and loss and terror of his own inadequacy.
He stood at stiff attention, eyes to the front, trying to lose himself in the unanimity of his classmates, to shut out the voice of the chaplain and the memory it evoked of an alien raid on an undefended city and of home and parents swept away from him in a breath. He remembered the mass burial service read over the shattered ruin of the city; and the government agency that had taken him—a ten-year-old orphan—and given him care and training until this day, but could not give him what these others about him had by natural right—the courage of those who had matured in safety.
For he had been lonely and afraid since that day. Untouched by bomb or shell, he had yet been crippled deep inside of him. He had seen the enemy in his strength and run screaming from his space-suited gangs. And what could give Thomas Jordan back his soul after that?
But still he stood rigidly at attention, as a Guardsman should; for he was a soldier now, and this was part of his duty.
The chaplain’s voice droned to a halt. He closed his prayerbook and stepped back from the lectern. The captain of the training ship took his place.
“In accordance with the conventions of the Frontier Force,” he said, crisply, “I now commit the ashes of Station Commandant First Class, Theodore Waskewicz, to the keeping of time and space.”
He pressed a button on the lectern. Beyond the dome, white fire blossomed out from the tail of the burial rocket, heating the asteroid rock to temporary incandescence. For a moment it hung there, spewing flame. Then it rose, at first slowly, then quickly, and was gone, sketching a fiery path out and away, until, at almost the limits of human sight, it vanished in a sudden, silent explosion of brilliant light.
Around Jordan, the black-clad ranks relaxed. Not by any physical movement, but with an indefinable breaking of nervous tension, they settled themselves for the more prosaic conclusion of the ceremony. The relaxation reached even to the captain, for he about-faced with a relieved snap and spoke to the ranks.
“Cadet Thomas Jordan. Front and center.”
The command struck Jordan with an icy shock. As long as the burial service had been in progress, he had had the protection of anonymity among his classmates around him. Now, the captain’s voice was a knife, cutting him off, finally and irrevocably, from the one security his life had known, leaving him naked and exposed. A despairing numbness seized him. His reflexes took over, moving his body like a robot. One step forward, a right face, down to the end of the row of silent men, a left face, three steps forward. Halt. Salute.
“Cadet Thomas Jordan reporting, sir.”
“Cadet Thomas Jordan, I hereby invest you with command of this Frontier Station. You will hold it until relieved. Under no conditions will you enter into communications with an enemy nor allow any creature or vessel to pass through your sector of space from Outside.”
“Yes, sir.”
“In consideration of the duties and responsibilities requisite on assuming command of this Station, you are promoted to the rank and title of Station Commandant Third Class.”
“Thank you, sir.”
From the lectern the captain lifted a cap of silver wire mesh and placed it on his head. It clipped on to the electrodes already buried in his skull, with a snap that sent sound ringing through his skull. For a second, a sheet of lightning flashed in front of his eyes and he seemed to feel the weight of the memory bank already pressing on his mind. Then lightning and pressure vanished together to show him the captain offering his hand.
“My congratulations, commandant.”
“Thank you, sir.”
They shook hands, the captain’s grip quick, nervous and perfunctory. He took one abrupt step backward and transferred his attention to his second in command.
“Lieutenant! Dismiss the formation!”
It was over. The new rank locked itself around Jordan, sealing up the fear and loneliness inside him. Without listening to the barked commands that no longer concerned him, he turned on his heel and strode over to take up his position by the sally port of the training ship. He stood formally at attention beside it, feeling the weight of his new authority like a heavy cloak on his thin shoulders. At one stroke he had become the ranking officer present. The officers—even the captain—were nominally under his authority, so long as their ship remained grounded at his Station. So rigidly he stood at attention that not even the slightest tremor of the trembling inside him escaped to quiver betrayingly in his body.
They came toward him in a loose, dark mass that resolved itself into a single file just beyond saluting distance. Singly, they went past him and up the ladder into the sally port, each saluting him as they passed. He returned the salutes stiffly, mechanically, walled off from these classmates of six years by the barrier of his new command. It was a moment when a smile or a casual handshake would have meant more than a little. But protocol had stripped him of the right to familiarity; and it was a line of black-uniformed strangers that now filed slowly past. His place was already established and theirs was yet to be. They had nothing in common any more.
The last of the men went past him up the ladder and were lost to view through the black circle of the sally port. The heavy steel plug swung slowly to, behind them. He turned and made his way to the unfamiliar but well-known field control panel in the main control room of the Station. A light glowed redly on the communications board. He thumbed a switch and spoke into a grill set in the panel.
“Station to Ship. Go ahead.”
Overhead the loudspeaker answered.
“Ship to Station. Ready for take-off.”
His fingers went swiftly over the panel. Outside, the atmosphere of the field was evacuated and the dome slid back. Tractor mechs scurried out from the pit, under remote control, clamped huge magnetic fists on the ship, swung it into launching position, then retreated.
Jordan spoke again into the grill.
“Station clear. Take-off at will.”
“Thank you, Station.” He recognized the captain’s voice. “And good luck.”
Outside, the ship lifted, at first slowly, then faster on its pillar of flame, and dwindled away into the darkness of space. Automatically, he closed the dome and pumped the air back in.
He was turning away from the control panel, bracing himself against the moment of finding himself completely isolated, when, with a sudden, curious shock, he noticed that there was another, smaller ship yet on the field.
For a moment he stared at it blankly, uncomprehendingly. Then memory returned and he realized that the ship was a small courier vessel from Intelligence, which had been hidden by the huge bulk of the training ship. Its officer would still be below, cutting a record tape of the former commandant’s last memories for the file at Headquarters. The memory lifted him momentarily from the morass of his emotions to attention to duty. He turned from the panel and went below.
In the triply-armored basement of the Station, the man from Intelligence was half in and half out of the memory bank when he arrived, having cut away a portion of the steel casing around the bank so as to connect his recorder direct to the cells. The sight of the heavy mount of steel with the ragged incision in one side, squatting like a wounded monster, struck Jordan unpleasantly; but he smoothed the emotion fro
m his face and walked firmly to the bank. His footsteps rang on the metal floor; and the man from Intelligence, hearing them, brought his head momentarily outside the bank for a quick look.
“Hi!” he said, shortly, returning to his work. His voice continued from the interior of the bank with a friendly, hollow sound. “Congratulations, commandant.”
“Thanks,” answered Jordan, stiffly. He stood, somewhat ill at ease, uncertain of what was expected of him. When he hesitated, the voice from the bank continued.
“How does the cap feel?”
Jordan’s hands went up instinctively to the mesh of silver wire on his head. It pushed back unyieldingly at his fingers, held firmly on the electrodes.
“Tight,” he said.
The Intelligence man came crawling out of the bank, his recorder in one hand and thick loops of glassy tape in the other.
“They all do at first,” he said, squatting down and feeding one end of the tape into a spring rewind spool. “In a couple of days you won’t even be able to feel it up there.”
“I suppose.”
The Intelligence man looked up at him curiously.
“Nothing about it bothering you, is there?” he asked. “You look a little strained.”
“Doesn’t everybody when they first start out?”
“Sometimes,” said the other, non-committally. “Sometimes not. Don’t hear a sort of humming, do you?”
“No.”
“Feel any kind of pressure inside your head?”
“No.”
“How about your eyes? See any spots or flashes in front of them?”
“No!” snapped Jordan.
“Take it easy,” said the man from Intelligence. “This is my business.”
“Sorry.”
“That’s all right. It’s just that if there’s anything wrong with you or the bank I want to know it.” He rose from the rewind spool, which was now industriously gathering in the loose tape; and unclipping a pressure-torch from his belt, began resealing the aperture. “It’s just that occasionally new officers have been hearing too many stories about the banks in training school, and they’re inclined to be jumpy.”