by Rex Gordon
She would be breaking every rule of the I. O. internal security system by doing that.
“Unless you want me to come to your apartment and drop it later,” I said. I watched her eyes. She knew what I was suggesting, and what it would mean if I called at her place at that hour.
Silently, she took the key out of her bag and laid it on my desk.
For an hour after she had gone, I sat there horrified, looking at that key. It was my chance to reach C. Q. Lankowitz’ desk, and I would never get the chance again.
I could not believe that it was I, an experienced operator, who was nervous as I left my office. Things that I would do anywhere else looked like incredible risks when applied against our own organization. I took elaborate precautions that no one should see me in the corridor. I was afraid they would read my intentions on my face. At the same time, I told myself that it was only superstition, my fear of the electronic eyes that watched me. I was careful to break each ray-beam twice as I went past it. The record-trace in the morning would show that two persons had gone from my office right up to the door of the department.
As I used both keys, I blocked both eye-beams with my back. Inside, the real risk began. I could not close the door and I dare not leave it wide open, so I used a letter file to partly jam it. I opened the Index file first, so that if the alarm went off I had my cover story. Then I turned my attention to the desk. Not often before had I so felt my lack of knowledge of electronic theory. The switches for opening the inner doors are normally controlled by a remote computer. I was sweating when I pushed the slip of rubber between the last set of contacts, and the door swung open.
I had carefully examined C. Q. Lankowitz’ office every time I had been in it. I believed I knew the location of at least fifty percent of the electronic eyes. That was when I needed the time, to advance by inches, using my ray detector. No one could do that kind of work unless they had been trained in it by ourselves. I had to stand motionless when I reached the desk and memorize the exact sequence of switches I had seen Lankowitz use the last time I had stood before it. It was only just in time that I remembered a movement he had made shifting his weight in his chair. I had to work my way around the desk to reach it.
Sitting in his chair, I had to consider every movement of my hands and feet. When I had the rocket plans before me I could hardly read them.
I just sat looking, knowing that it would take me at least a quarter of an hour to get out of that room again. I had always known that our higher leadership sometimes had to do things that would not be understood by the ranks below them. But not that, I thought. Not that.
Looking at the rocket plans, it seemed to me that I was seeing the end of all things.
XXXV
From the diary of J. Adolf Koln:
Aug. 17, 506 A. L.
A man is nothing.
The man is there, his flesh and blood, his sinew and his judgment. It is not what he is. It is what he will do with himself, and whether he will back his judgment, completely, and in a single cast of fortune.
As I am doing in the so-called army games to be held in Central Park on the 7th.
Aug. 21, 506 A. L.
The army has every reason to be there in force. It is the assembly of the people 1 am thinking of, and the fatal confusion if the event were to coincide with disorganization of the morning or lunchtime rush hour. Yet if I am too late the Senate will be in session. 1 must give great thought to timing.
Aug. 25, 506 A. L.
Every possible reaction of the politicians must be thought out in advance. The temptation to disrupt the telephone services is great but must be resisted. How the people will behave when they know the truth is something we must feel by instinct. The army will appear to be present by accident and, from then on, everything must be governed by the press releases. 1 do not think there is one chance in a hundred that the public will not respond with some kind of riot. If possible, the politicians themselves must be persuaded to give the order to bring the troops in. We must be in control, and in a position to act, without any appearance at all of having sought it. I must appear fumbling and dilatory, unwilling to comply with popular demand on the grounds of a reluctance to break legality. Then I must seem abrupt and decisive, and appear on the public screens at the same time as I arrest the Senators.
Aug. 27,506 A. L.
I slept badly last night, and this is bad. It is not the kind of thing an effective general should do on the approaching eve of a major battle.
I have to think and feel my way into the situation, and take account of any little thing that might go wrong. It is right that I should worry about detail, but I must not let it distract me from the main event, from its physical actuality and its visual and emotional impact. The space crew as they emerge, for example, must get a public showing. It is inevitable that they will be bewildered, and that will look like guilt. It will be up to Intelligence whether they present them individually, allow them to be interviewed and have “case histories” presented, or whether they just lump them together as “political and Information Office nominees,” with implications of effeteness, privileged choice, and nepotism.
But the central event, I am quite sure, must be the main thing. As I see it, it will come like a bolt from the blue, literally, in the Arcon sky, bursting upon the peaceful life of the city. Fear is bound to be the first impulse, and that is what I will call the time of disorganization, to be succeeded rapidly by curiosity, relief, amazement, and then, what we must carefully foster, the tide of anger against the politicians. It will not be for what they have done, though the thing will be visible enough and actual enough to cause a surge of outrage. It will be the fact that they, the known people in the Senate, knew about it, planned it, executed it, and that they, the supposed “friends of the people,” kept it entirely to themselves and did not say. Why should, they do that? It is that which will display the hollowness, the mockery, that never, in their public speeches, did they once confide to the public that it was even possible to do it. That then is the psychological moment when our men must go out onto the streets and put it to the crowd that they could go out into space, their own sons and daughters maybe, while we could not.
It will only take a single incident then, a group of Information Office men protecting Senators, from a-round whom we can withdraw our screen at a crucial moment, who can be persuaded to fire into the crowd in their own defense, to turn the outrage, the questions, to a deeper sense of a gross betrayal.
Aug. 31, 506 A. L.
As the time draws nearer, only one week to go now, I find I am more serene. I no longer wonder or worry so much about the details of what will happen, and my mind goes more to afterward, to the sense of national identity and euphoria that always succeeds revolution or any new thing, even if it should be seen, in the immediacy of history, as a great disaster.
That will be the time when we must make it clear that we have not caused the disaster, but have responded to it. We must be seen not as the usurpers of power, but as those who have cleared a way through corrupt power to make room for new things. It will depend on the people's will, we must say in statements of the utmost gravity, whether we turn to space or solve Arcon’s problems. Since we are sure of the answer, knowing the people as we do, I truly believe that we can give them a sense of participation by holding a referendum. In time, when the time comes, though not now for they are rightly concerned with details, 1 must talk to Glasson and Lomax about this, and about how we can give the people a sense of blood-brotherhood, and land, and national purpose.
I think a uniform for everyone, at least for the men, would be a good idea. Nothing unites people more than an identity of dress. To put women into uniform is more difficult, but I think mistakes have been made about that in the past in the way it has been done. Short skirts, and an emphasis on sex beyond the present fashion, would be the way to do it, so that those in uniform would look younger, more daring, the forward-looking kind. But it would be important not to overdo this. Maximum provocation wou
ld be combined with the most rigid moral code. Those who fail to live up to the precepts might be subjected to some kind of public lashing.
Drama, in that way, and the sense of danger, and of the meaning of what people do, could be maintained in public life. The public lashing of a naked woman should not take place more often than once every year or two, at least to any grave extent, while public executions of men should take place more abruptly, never when there is the slightest doubt about the case, and, say, every twelve months. It is vital to make people think that the things they do have meaning, but that the bad things only happen to other people, who are definitely bad, not like themselves, so that the distinction of what we are remains, and we can see ourselves marching, six deep, in a column with flags, into an ordered future.
I am sure that this, the certainty of a fixed system, is the way to bring happiness to our Arcon people, and that to bring the space rocket down, to its startling public landing in Central Bark in Davis City, with all the political questions which that will raise, is the way to expose the corruption of this planet, and so the way to do it.
XXXVI
Correspondence File
Post 43121 R
Space School,
Project J.
North Arcon.
Sept. 1, 506 A. L.
To the Office of the Commandant,
I. O. H. Q.
Davis City.
By I. O. Messenger.
Dear Commandant Lankowttz,
This will probably be my last report on the training of the space crew, as blast-off is now definitely scheduled for five days’ time.
As I told you in my last report, we have had singularly little trouble with the crew since the briefing given to them by Lieutenant Johnstone, and, as 1 forecast, this state of affairs has continued with only minor lapses. The young man Desmond Salford, whom I understand was a substitute, has shown signs of temperament, and this is perhaps understandable. Less understandable has been a lapse by the electronics man, Len Thomas, who caused a short-circuit in the electronics room by an act of inadvertence that would certainly have been fatal to him had it happened in the rocket. A certain amount of equipment was destroyed. The man Duncan has now been officially confirmed as captain, and his behavior has proved exemplary.
1 must compliment whoever thought of sending an outside officer to give the briefing, and an enthusiastic young woman at that. Not only did it prove more impressive than if it had come from any of the regular staff here, but by maintaining our cover as instructors, we have been able to sustain our apparent ignorance of certain matters, and to avoid answering awkward questions.
In answer to your queries, the “genuine" method of selection of the space crew, whereby the officers engaged in the selection were allowed to believe in what they were doing, does not appear to have had any ill effects. It is true that, immediately following Mary Johnstone’s visit, as my report of that time told you, there was a certain recalcitrance. The shock of hearing the Yellow doctrine expounded by such an earnest young woman must have had an effect on them. It is natural, I presume, that they should ask themselves if it was genuine. But you will understand that in view of my position here, I cannot really answer your further questions. I feel inhuman enough as it is, and I cannot allow my feelings to become involved.
Yours respectfully,
W. Pintopler, Captain.
(Chief Instructor)
XXXVII
Military Intelligence Report:
Forwarded from, the
Office of Colonel Glasson.
BQ/TPM/38239 - Z.
For the information of
General Koln exclusively.
Approach to the interior workings of the telecommunications building operating the radio telescope has been extremely difficult. The Information Office screen has been exceptional I attribute the death of 38107 - Z to this cause, though I have found no trace of him. A grave could well be dug in the sand here within yards of the telecommunications building.
I am, however, able to reassure you about certain features.
(1) The rocket, following blast-off, will be under direct control from the building here.
(2) There are, as you are aware, other radio telescopes operating around the planet, which will maintain twenty-four hour coverage, but these are linked electronically through the building, and the space capsule will not be out of control at any time.
(3) There is no way the rocket can escape control until a final signal is sent to it, consisting of a short burst of code, through the most powerful radio telescope, and this will not be done until the capsule is approaching Vista.
(4) I have been assured by the Chief Operator himself, unaware he was talking under the influence of a hypnotic drug, that the rocket can be placed within yards of any prescribed point in our solar system.
38239 - Z.
XXXVIII
From The Jottings of G. Berkeley.
I sat with the plans before me. How could it be? Even then, looking with horror, I could not understand it, though I have seen the things that men can do in my time.
With my finger, I traced the lines of the blueprint inside the outer shell. They would not see it, because of the casing that would conceal the space vehicle and the upper part of the rocket until it was in space. As it stood before blastoff, the space capsule and the upper effective parts would be concealed, by the sheathing and the protective nose cone which would be shed when it left the atmosphere. Only then would they have a chance to learn and know, too late, what kind of vehicle it was in which they were riding.
I did not accept it at once when I checked the blueprints. I went over it again, reading the plans carefully as I mentally checked off each item. There was the first stage, the big chemical rocket that would lift them into the upper atmosphere, and the second stage that would carry diem into space again. The atomic ion-drive stage would come into action then, and above it was the space capsule containing the living quarters. There was nothing between those two items, and I did not have the technical knowledge to check the specifications of the atomic units, or to decide whether they were adequate for the task assigned to them, but I began to suspect a little.
XXXIX
When the day of the blast-off dawned, Len. got out of bed in his room and went to the window. The first sun was just coming up over the eastern hill and the shadows were long across the space school grounds below him, and he thought about their time in the space school, and how long it had seemed while it was happening, and what a short and inadequate training it seemed now that it was finished.
Whatever it had been, it was over now, and this was likely to be the last dawn he would see on Arcon, for today was the day they set off for Vista. He turned to look at the new clothes, comprising a silver, tight-fitting suit, which had been laid out for him, and he thought about it and wondered if they had been right to accept the voyage to Vista the way they had.
It was certain that they would not have accepted it, if all they had heard was the colonel’s story of a spy-flight and a journey that would take them more than a lifetime to go out and back to Vista. He glanced out of the window again, at the space school walls. He did not know how they would have broken out, but he was sure they would have someway. The twenty-four-legged beast was capable of decision, and it was capable of dying. But then the Yellow girl had arrived, to tell them not only what the voyage truly was, but what life was all about He wondered how much their ultimate decision had been affected by Lucinda’s point by the way she had pointed out that even if they did escape, and were free on Arcon, the only life they could expect there was that of fugitives, outlaws in one of the farther swamp-lands.
Better to go to Vista, to perform one heroic act than that. But that had not been it. Standing alone and naked in his room, looking out at the dawn before he dressed, Len thought that it was at the same time the madness, and the beauty and logic of the Yellow dream, that had done it.
They were right, he thought. Whoever selected u
s was right. It is just the mad kind of thing we would do. And a beatific grin broke out on his face, occasioned at least in part by the thought that this was the day when he and Lucinda would at least be free to be alone together in one of the tiny cabins that would be their accommodation in the rocket.
They were right in choosing us, he thought as he turned to dress, because we are just the kind of fools who would believe it. And he added a rider to that as he stood before his window and pulled on his support-suit tights. We are the kind of people who would believe it whether it was true or not, he thought, and, despite the apprehension that was inevitable on a day which was virtually a blast-off and marriage in one, he looked upward, grinning.
Breakfast on that day was one of those awkward times.
“So that is the last time we sleep in our separate rooms,” Penny said, smiling with apparent innocence at Imantha across the table in the space school diner.
Imantha was one of those who was looking with visible apprehension at the prospect of being shot off into space and effectively married off, both on the same day. It had been all right to come to a decision about it some weeks ago, when the alternative had been to encourage Salford to make plans for them to fight their way out across a thousand miles of desert, but that morning was not looking so good to Imantha.
Maybe that was because she was Salford’s girl, Len thought. He too, if he had been faced with the prospect of being shut up with Salford in a spaceship cabin for an indefinite period, would have been apprehensive.