"All right, Poppa, if that's the way you want it," he said at length. "Just one thing—I hope you've told that ape Wernher to keep out of my way."
"My dear Robert, there's no reason whatever for you to have any fears on that score," Niebohr said, smiling. "I've made it quite clear to him that he, the scout ship, and the men aboard it are strictly cargo as far as you are concerned. They have instructions to keep themselves entirely to themselves. And I might suggest that you do the same. There's no point in lousing up an operation like this by harking back to past quarrels. Do I make myself clear?"
"Completely," said Prince. "Any further instructions?"
"No—your construction experts and geologists have already been fully briefed on what is required," Niebohr said. "All you need to do is act as bus driver for them."
"In that case I'll bid you goodnight," Prince said stiffly. He placed his still-half-full glass of brandy on a table and began to walk towards the door of the room. He was almost there when he heard Niebohr's voice call his name.
"Robert!"
He turned to see the old man standing, enormous and gargoyle-like, in the flickering light of the open fireplace.
"Yes?"
"Don't take it out on Elsa," said Niebohr. "I wouldn't like that."
Chapter Thirteen
... at 90% of his full salary at the time of retirement, plus the usual yearly cost-of-living increments. However, should the said officer be convicted of any misconduct or neglect of his proper duties, the amount of the above-mentioned pension may be reduced at the discretion of the Board. In such cases it is recommended that...
Extract from EXCELSIOR COLONIZATION CORPORATION STANDARD CONTRACT FOR OFFICERS
Charles Coogan, first officer of the Medusa, cursed his luck as the ramrod-straight figure of Robert Prince appeared through the door at the other end of the ship's control section. A heavily-built man, with a decided paunch and the bulbous reddish features of a steady drinker, Chuck Coogan was looking forward to his retirement in six months' time. His illusions about the romance of merchant-spacing had died early, and for the past fifteen years he had cherished a simple dream involving a place in the sun, a beach, and plenty of cheap booze. A woman? Maybe. . .a very big maybe. He had tried the marriage bit a couple of times, but the life of a spacer was tough on togetherness—no reasonably attractive woman was going to spend maybe nine tenths of her life sleeping alone, even if she did have the consolation of a comfortable monthly check. No—the bottle was better. On that a guy could rely.
Provided nothing happened to stop the flow of that steady fifteen thousand credits a year, plus increments. . . Nothing like a bad report to the Board from that cocky young ex-Corps whiz kid, who was right now walking along past the ratings at the control consoles, his goddamned hawk-eyes -checking everything from sewage disposal to drive frequency. Coogan bent over the tri-di tank, star-map simulator, an expression of concentration on his heavy features. At his age, after a lifetime of hard service and little reward, surely a guy deserved a better break than to be saddled with a niggling young bastard like Prince on what would probably be Coogan's last trip?
The small white hairs at the back of his neck seemed to act as antennae, sensing the approach; but even so, the voice when it came made him start nervously.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Coogan. Your report, please."
Chuck wheeled, throwing up a sloppy salute. Hell!
Merchant commanders didn't usually bother with that kind of thing, but this young upstart with his fancy Corps ideas insisted on all the trimmings. All the more galling when you considered that he'd got the job of Fleet Director more on the strength of his screwing ability than anything else.
"Mr. Coogan?" The expression in Prince's alert blue eyes made Chuck suddenly aware of the sloppiness of his own crumpled uniform and the perfunctory nature of the shave he had taken that morning.
"All's well, sir. We're two hours ahead of schedule as of the last course check. ETA in the Orphelin system 16.00 hours Earth Standard tomorrow."
"Very good, Mr. Coogan. Carry on with your duties." The salute was returned with Sandpoint precision and Prince turned away to continue his inspection.
Coogan watched him move away down the line, relaxing slightly in the growing assurance that he had survived yet another encounter. He glanced at the master clock. Only fifty more minutes to go of this watch before he could head for the security of his cabin and the consolation of a shot—no, several shots —of good bourbon. He turned back to his study of the star map.
"Mr. Coogan!" The voice called—this time with an unmistakable edge.
Hell! What now? He looked up to see Prince standing some three meters away, one hand pointing to a bank of dials.
"Sir?" He shambled forward.
"Are you aware of the state of the radioactivity count in the main aft hold?" demanded Prince.
Chuck, who wasn't so aware, craned forward to look and saw that the dial was ten points up on normal. Momentary panic was soothed by a sudden fortunate inspiration.
"Yes, sir," he said. "If you will recall, that is where the scout ship bound for the Orphelin system is stowed."
"I'm well aware of that, Mr. Coogan," Prince said coldly. "But I fail to see how it accounts for the situation."
"Well, sir, I figured that there was maybe a slight residual leak from the scout's secondaries," improvised Coogan plausibly.
"Then there shouldn't be," Prince said indignantly. "A scout ship carried as hold cargo should be on full shut-down, with no leakages. That is clearly laid down in regulations. Apart from anything else, have you considered the possible radiation hazard to any crew members working in that hold?"
"There's nobody down there, sir," Coogan said. "If you recall, your instructions were quite specific that the hold should remain sealed throughout the voyage."
"I'm well aware of my instructions," Prince said with an air of tired patience that implied he was talking to an idiot. "But what about the party aboard the scout ship? Is their safety not to be considered?"
"Well, sir, I. . ." Chuck's voice trailed away hopelessly. Didn't matter what effort a guy made, you couldn't win with a punctilious bastard like Prince. "You want I should go down there and check it out?"
"No, Mr. Coogan. Your place, as you very well know, is here on the bridge," Prince said. "I will attend to this matter personally."
Chuck Coogan stood by the incorruptible radiation indicator, swearing with quiet, concentrated venom as the tall figure in the immaculate uniform marched briskly away and disappeared through the doorway.
"Why the fancy dress, Bobbie?" asked Kurt Wernher, who had stood in the open main airlock of the scout ship watching Prince's progress across the deck of the hold with a derisive grin on his face.
"I see nothing humorous in the idea of my taking precautionary measures," said Robert Prince, who was wearing a radiation suit and carrying a portable counter. "The ship's monitoring system shows radioactivity in this hold as ten points above normal"
"You don't say," said Wernher contemptuously. "So what happens now, we all start sprouting extra heads or something?"
This witticism was received appreciatively by the audience—half a dozen tough-looking characters in black coveralls, who had stopped their game of craps to watch the encounter. Unlikely as it seemed, Prince assumed that they must be members of Wernher's team of engineers and geologists.
"What happens now," he said firmly, "is that I come aboard that ship and pinpoint the radiation source, after which I shall take steps to remove the hazard."
"Sorry, Bobbie, I'm afraid I can't let you do that." Wernher shook his dark, close-cropped head from side to side as he remained stationary, effectively blocking Prince's passage.
"You can't stop me," Prince said. "As captain of this ship I am responsible for the safety of her cargo and personnel. I have the authority to carry out any inspection I consider necessary to this purpose."
"You do? Well that's really interesting," Wernher said,
still grinning. "But you're not coming aboard this scout ship."
"I warn you that you will be contravening Merchant Spacer regulations if you try to prevent me," Prince said.
"Yes, and I bet you know the bloody page-number and paragraph involved," Wernher said contemptuously. "Come off it, Bobbie! You're not in the Corps now, so you can stop giving me the old stiff-upper-lip treatment. In case you'd forgotten, we're both working for Excelsior, and I am under direct orders from Niebohr. You want to make any inspection of this ship, you get permission from the Old Man himself."
Prince took a firm grip on his rising anger. "I can't understand why you're being so unreasonable about this, Wernher. It's in the interests of everyone aboard —and particularly these men of yours—that this radiation should be stopped."
"The way I hear it, ten points is still way below the danger level," Wernher said. "So why all the panic? If you were wearing a couple of luminous wrist watches you'd be in about the same amount of hazard."
"Any radiation is a potential source of danger until it has been assessed and fully inspected to ensure that there is no chance of a sudden increase in its intensity—"
"Boy! I bet that was right out of the book, word for word, wasn't it?" Wernher said. "Well let me tell you this, Bobbie—then maybe you'll stop peeing in your drawers—there just ain't no way that radiation source could step itself up, unless we wanted it to. We're going down to Orphelin Four to make a survey of the possibilities of building an underground base, right? Now you may be big stuff as a space captain, but you obviously don't know a damned thing about geological and seismological investigations of this kind, otherwise you'd realize that we have, to carry a certain amount of blasting equipment."
"Assuming that to be the case," Prince said stubbornly, "there is clearly some fault in the shielding of this equipment, and I must still insist that you respect my authority—"
"You just don't listen, do you?" said Wernher. Slipping his right hand into the side pocket of his coveralls with apparent casualness, he brought it out again immediately carrying a small deadly needier.
"What do you think you're doing?" demanded Prince.
"I am showing you my authority," Wernher said. The grin was gone from his face now, and his voice was flat and deadly. "And don't you think it wouldn't give me a great deal of pleasure to use it. Now piss off! Before I tell the boys here to rough you up a little."
White-faced and quivering with rage, Prince turned abruptly on his heel and walked out of the hold. Wernher would pay for his insolence when they eventually got back to Earth, he was determined on that, but for the time being he was forced to recognize that he could do nothing. They were under Niebohr's orders. Prince tried to swallow the bitter truth that, even though he was millions of miles away, his father-in-law was still in command.
Chapter Fourteen
Man is a creature of extremes, capable of godlike acts of self-sacrifice or devilish cruelties of self-interest. In either of these roles he is likely to be motivated by completely subjective reasoning. THE WIT AND WISDOM OF HENRY FONG (p. 234)
Angus MacGuinness stood on the grassy bank in the bright sunlight looking down into the broken mirror of the swift-flowing, gravel-bottomed shallows. The water was boiling with fish—the males, hump-backed with great enlarged jaws and doglike teeth, escorting the females heavy with spawn as they scooped out saucer-like depressions with flapping movements of body and tail, and engaging occasionally in formalized combats with other males who approached too close to the redds. The cruel joy of the reproductive process was one that never failed to impress him with its special mystery, with its implication of forces that Man, for all his apparent civilization and knowledge, was only partially capable of comprehending.
On this occasion the solemn impression went even
deeper into MacGuinness's consciousness because of his recent reminder that those same forces were at work on Man, shaping his destiny, the very stuff of his life, in unguessable ways. The two stocky, grey-haired men who stood one on either side of him were each in his own way victims—or playthings—of those forces, although at this time neither had any knowledge of the fact. MacGuinness, warm in his regard for these men who had begun as mere hired helpers and were now two valued and respected friends, had not yet found the courage to tell them what he had discovered, to explain to them that the planet they both loved as their home was in fact a beautiful trap. The discovery had been his, but the responsibility for what must be done about it must lie—he thanked his Agnostic God—in other hands.
"You all right, Professor?"
MacGuinness jerked out of his self-examination to find himself staring into the weatherbeaten, middle-aged face of the twenty-two-year-old Alan Emery.
"I'm just fine, Alan," he said, the others concern kindling yet another twinge of guilt at his own inadequacy in the situation.
"You're sure?" The wrinkles on Alan's face deepened in concern. "We've both been kind of worried about you lately. You don't seem to talk quite so much as you used."
"Och! We're a black lot, we MacGuinnesses, with moods that change like the highland winds," said MacGuinness, forcing a smile. "You must not make too much notice of my funny ways."
"Bill and I were wondering if it might not be a good idea to take a few days off," Alan said. "We could all go over to the mainland for a while—Josiah-town, perhaps. There's plenty to do and see there that you must have missed when you arrived and left in such a hurry to see your fishes."
Josiahtown was a bustling, brash, prosperous new city with a population of over a quarter-million happy, hard-working people, people who carried in their loins the seed that would condemn their descendants to the creeping doom of a gradually decreasing life-expectancy. All those as yet unknown faces, those eyes to be looked into—and he carrying the burden of this knowledge...
"No, I think I'd best stay here for a while yet," said MacGuinness. "At least until this breeding run is finished."
Alan Emery shrugged. "All right, Professor—you're the boss. I was—" He stopped in mid-sentence, looking down at the ground. "Did you feel that?"
"I did," said Bill. "It was as if the island trembled beneath my feet"
MacGuinness had felt it too—a deep, shuddering vibration that went on for maybe five seconds, boring frighteningly into the depths of his body.
"Earthquake?" he said. "Or volcanic activity of some land?"
Bill Emery frowned. "Not in my experience," he said; "According to the experts, the planetary crust settled finally more than half a million years before we came on the scene."
"Nevertheless, I think well take a look," said MacGuinness, turning his back on the spawning beds and striding through the lush grass towards their camp.
Inside the hut he stared at the instruments. "This is stupid," MacGuinness said. "I've got a mess of P, L and S waves all at once. According to this, the earthquake started at ground level and then went down to—good God!"
Fear of the unknown touched the faces of Mac-Guinness's helpers. "What's that mean?" Bill asked.
It was possibly only imagination that made the biologist's whiskers seem to bristle. "Nought to sixty kilometers is normal, sixty to two hundred is intermediate, two hundred and fifty is deep. But the isoseismal lines say this penetrated to five hundred and eighty kilometers below ground level."
The sound of the waves came distantly; the cry of seabirds seemed to echo the waves.
"What's this dial?" Alan asked.
"The Richter magnitude register," MacGuinness said, disbelief showing in his concentration and alarm. "It's stuck at ten, which is two more strengths than theoretically possible without partial break-up of the planet." He glared at another dial. "And the bloody Marcalli scale there agrees with it. And that's not all. Focus and epicenter seem to be one and the same thing. Some earthquake!"
"You mean it's not an earthquake?" Bill Emery was clenching and unclenching his fists.
"Oh no, I won't say that. But this quiet little planet of y
ours seems to have its own special brand of upheaval."
"Will we have tidal waves?"
"No. If I'm any judge—and this certainly is not my field—the great ocean and the island chains will be in the shadow zone. Around the Tantaron continent, it may not be so. Your seismologists are going to have to revise their ideas, that's certain."
Bill Emery's face was deadly serious. "It's the buildings I'm more concerned with right now," he said. "Some of those high-rise apartment buildings in Josiahtown are pretty flimsy to take that kind of treatment."
"Anne Marie and the kids!" exclaimed Alan.
"That's who I was thinking about," Bill said. "I think we'd better check on just what has happened." He hurried out of the instrument hut at a run, with Alan following close behind.
By the time MacGuinness reached the flycar, Bill was in the pilot seat, the radio mike in his hand, repeating: "Josiahtown Central, Josiahtown Central, do you read me? Josiahtown Central..."
Five minutes later Bill abandoned the fruitless effort. He looked up at MacGuinness, fear peering out of his eyes.
"Nothing—not a damned thing," he said. "Not even any of the commercial stations on the air. Surely an earthquake couldn't be that bad?"
MacGuinness felt a dreadful premonition of disaster moving in on his mind like a dark cloud. "I think we'd better go and take a look," he said quietly.
The completeness of the devastation became obvious as soon as they crossed the continental coastline, but it seemed to increase in its intensity as they moved inland toward Josiahtown. After their initial expressions of surprise they flew on in grim silence over the blackened, carbonized ruins of once-fertile farmlands and forests, searching in vain for any signs of life, either animal or human.
For a long time the only sound apart from the hum of the flycar's engine was the wild chattering of the radiation counter on the control panel. At last MacGuinness found the courage to speak of what he knew must be in the minds of the others.
The Neutral Stars Page 9