by Rex Gordon
XLIX
From the diary:
September 7,506 A.L.
Dawn.
“The reports are coming in, General. The desert group has changed its position in the night and is moving toward the city. The Swamp Corps is lying beyond the islands. Around the park, the military police have been posted inconspicuously, prepared to control the traffic.”
This is it, the day of destiny, the day of triumph.
From my bed in the Hexagon, I rise and go to the window to look out to the southward, across the rooftops and toward the swamplands. There is a haze in the morning light, not mist but soft and luminous. I have the window opened, so I can smell the morning smells. Is there blood in the air? The city still sleeps, unknowing. The aroma is that of our Arcon dust, and men.
“What of Glasson? You have a report from the colonel'?”
“Yes, sir. It reads, "The building below the bowl has been taken and we hold the hill’”
We have it! We are committed! My mind moves quickly.
It is there, in the desert, that the operation’s heart is beating, while I, looking out across the city here to pick out the Senate’s dome, am just the brain.
I remember the walls of that space school building when last 1 saw it, and the skeleton of the rocket gantry that was rising at that time in the desert valley. Men moving on those barren hills on the rock and in the Arcon sand, good men, not knowing what they did or why they did it, except that they had my orders.
Did they wonder last night, when the shadows stretched out across the valley, and they were told to spend the night in the open, with the rocket gone?
“Alert.” The word must have been passed down the ranks. As though I were there, I know it. “No lights, no movement until one a.m. You will be required to attack at that time.” I wish I had been there, in the desert night, to hear or give those orders.
Attack.
The silent movement of men in darkness. The cutting of the telephone wires. The occupation and blocking of all the desert tracks that out there they call the roads. The occupation of the Information Office, the space school, and then suddenly the entry of armed men into the building on the hill, coming out of the night, from nowhere.
The radio telescope bowls still pointing at the sky and holding on the rocket, but under new orders now.
The Information Office must know of it, but what can they do? “Communication has gone dead to the space project and the radio telescopes, sir.” But it will not be a very important man who is on duty there at this hour, “Try to establish communication by other routes.” He will be sleepy and unwilling to take responsibility. “See to it that the engineers are warned, but tell them not to dispatch anyone until they get their orders from the day-shift,”
These people, waking and rising in the city, do not know what day this is.
The rocket should be turning over in the sky now. I
visualize it, checking its momentum and preparing to swoop down on Arcon, much quicker to fall than it was to go up and leave us. And the city waits, unknowing.
L
The Jottings'.
“Come,” he said, looking to where the dawn was rising. “You and I must go back to the office. We must control the situation. Even though the General does not get the rocket, he may still make some move.”
It was true that, seen from the rooftop, the city lights were paler. When I tinned my head, I could see the light In the eastern sky.
“You expect me to put my gun away and trust you?”
“Come, Berkeley. Even you must see that your life is of little account in all this.”
I still thought he might find time to touch a button and call his guard and .rave me arrested.
I put my gun away and got up and walked away from him, to the eastern parapet where I could watch the dawn arising along the swamp shore. I did not look at what he was doing. He would be armed, I thought, and I might fall forward. He came to stand beside me.
So he had not killed me.
“This night’s events have confirmed my view that you will be my successor, Berkeley. You will be surprised to hear how few men I know who are prepared to put anything above their own lives, or, something I have never been able to understand, above the lives of other people.”
I wondered.
I wondered if it would not have been better if I had killed him or he had killed me when we had the chance.
“It is not whether we kill or let innocents suffer,” he said while we looked out over the still dark swamp-groves to the dawning sky. “The question for our kind is whether we wish to wrap some illusory sanctity around ourselves, and pretend we would not hurt a fly, while we let the generals kill them.”
LI
In the space dome, Salford looked at the company, got up and walked to the edge of the deck, from where, standing against the dome, he could look out and downward at Arcon’s blazing suns. He could not see Arcon down there, for Arcon was so far beneath them as to be seen only in the retro-mirrors, but for a moment, as he looked around again at the star field, they must have seemed to be lost in a sky of blackness.
“What are you talking about, ‘alternating Arcon?” he asked them. “Changing a world?” For once, Salford looked at them as though making an appeal to reason. “Wouldn’t we all have liked to do it while we were in Arcon, change the world around us? And now we are not even on it.”
Len looked in the retro-mirror and saw the blue iridescent disk of Arcon that swam in the bowl of stars below them. That was how their ancestors must have seen it, he thought, at the time of landing.
“I agree,” he said deliberately. “It’s a tall order at any time, to change a world.”
But, unlike Salford, he did not say it was impossible. And Salford did not look at him as though what he said was an agreement.
“We have left it. We aren’t on it, and now we can’t affect it.” Salford waved a hand at the space that they inhabited. “We can’t affect it in any way!”
There was a silence as there always was when Salford raised his voice a little.
Eliza Teen moved and sat forward from the edge of the deck where she had been resting her back against the rim of the metal wall that supported the dome above them. She sounded thoughtful.
“Besides, if they did build another ship, if we so changed them that they built another ship for us, it would take them years. How many years would we have to wait for it?”
There was that too, but Duncan did not like it. He looked obstinate, as though he did not like anyone carping at any positive suggestion. “If the way to deal with things is to alter Arcon, then we must alter Arcon.’’
“How?” said Salford.
No one expected little Penny to tell them. Penny was the kind of girl who had one idea in her life, and then it was completely obvious, and she looked at Duncan with big, round eyes.
But Penny was there, with them.
"We could send out an S.O.S.,” she said.
LII
The Shopping Lists:
Important.
To Whom It May Concern.
This note will probably be seen first by whoever eventually breaks into this flat. It is" a suicide note. It should be reported to the police. Or preferably it should be left where it is, and the police told where to find my body.
LII
The Jottings:
We went to the Information Office building, and through the day of the sixth and the morning of the seventh we tried to deal with contingencies that were imponderable and events we did not know because they had not happened yet.
That was Lankowitz and I working, he with intensity and I unwillingly.
He came into my office in the afternoon of the sixth on his way to the Senate. I noticed then that he was a little disturbed. What he was about to do was visit the leader of the Senate to warn him that the army was likely to revolt the following day. He had to do it with such tact and discretion as not to reveal his lack of evidence for what I still regarded as his
guess or gross assumption.
“It has occurred to me, Berkeley, that if the General brings the rocket back, he’ll find it impossible to stop it, so it will come down like a fireball and explode on landing.
I looked at him bitterly, knowing the truth of that.
“You can just say that? You’re telling me it will be a merciful death for those inside the rocket?”
He looked at me with dry patience, as though I were being awkward too, as well as other people.
“What is important is that the atomic drive units are not detachable from the living quarters. We had to leave that out too. Do you think there will be an atomic fallout?”
I stared at him and the papers on the desk before me.
“Do you know what the army is doing? Look at this. The army has arranged its major show right here, in Central Park in Davis City. Do you know what you are saying?”
His eyes watched me in their narrow way. “You suggest I convey that in a minor aside to the Senate leader?” He turned to the door, thoughtfully looking back at me again.
“You are so concerned with the youngsters in the rocket that you haven’t thought of the city and the hundred thousand or two million people, with ourselves among them?” He went out, leaving me to envisage the explosion of the rocket fireball.
It seemed unreal, a nightmare. The papers before me told of the Army Day celebrations, which always called out a crowd, and which were arranged for a time that it was easy to calculate as the right one, in Central Park. I had to try to believe that I was expected to plan for such contingencies.
As though the human mind could encompass it, in terms of mere statistics. It felt like theory, not actuality. To satisfy him, I thought of what he would do, if he were dealing with the practical Capital District work instead of me. I saw that he would consider security first, and so I gave orders to move our headquarters temporarily to the emergency building we kept for the purpose at the place called Parker’s Knoll, outside the city.
I was accepting it and conniving at the death of Len Thomas, on Lankowitz’ instructions.
LIV
The diary:
September 7, 506 A. L.
1:55 P.M.
Everything should go perfectly, but does it ever?
2:00 p.m.
From my window 1 watch the sky. This is the hour the rocket should be landing. The troops are assembled in Central Park. This is it. The military policemen are assembled at the crossroads. The light-armored troops are pouring in from the desert, and working their way into the city.
2:01 P.M.
What anguished fate is this?
Something has gone wrong. I have just had a belated message from Colonel Glasson. The rocket, which had turned over in the sky, in response to signals from the telescope, has suddenly veered off. It seems impossible. Glasson reports his technicians are working on it. He was delayed in calling by having to have a group of I. O. technicians taken out and shot.
First the rocket varied its course. Then it appeared that it was going into an orbit. It is since then that it has changed course again, and now it is heading again for Vista.
I must have Glasson shot. How can the rocket possibly be carrying on to Vista? Only the radio telescope could make it do that. It is impossible to understand the situation in the desert there.
2:05 P.M.
What am I to do now? I have my troops pouring into the city. I have crowds assembled in Central Park on the promise that the Army Spectacular this year will really be a show. Worse than that, two more disturbing reports have just come in to me. Our unit surrounding the Information Office, ready to go in and take over the moment the rocket landed, apparently became suspicious. They sent men in, who have reported that there is only a skeleton staff present and the building is virtually deserted. And the Senate, which had decided to sit at this hour, has apparently suspended its sitting and retired into the basement.
This is the moment of destiny, when a man who is a man must decide either to go back or forward.
There is a tide in the affairs of men. Having assembled my forces for this moment, I know with sudden certainty that I will not have this chance again. For other men at other times a chance will come, but my time is now.
2:10 p.m.
I have done it. I have ordered our men-in contact with the broadcasting services to stand by for a grave announcement of planetwide importance, that will be made in five minutes. We have the facilities laid on, and I propose to use them. AU channels will carry the statement I will make from this office, through the microphones and cameras trained on my desk here.
I have also caused an announcement to be made in Central Park. Crowds of that kind always have their portable and pocket radios with them, and the request has been made over the public address system that they turn them on. They must feel that they are connected directly to me by personal coverage. This is the crowd I intend to use to march on the Senate building— where their Senators are cowering in the basement! And 1 will use them. It is up to me now.
LV
Communications File:
Official Text of the Plain Language
Distress Messages from Arcon One:
First Message, timed 2:13:
S,O,S, S.O.S. S.O.S. From the Spaceship Arcon One. Attacked.
This message was repeated several times on frequencies audible through popular broadcast stations. From the first, the transmission had the nature of a public appeal, and the location of the transmitting station could be established by tilting a portable radio upward. Later, the indication was given, “Listen on 1000 kilocycles.”
Second Message, timed 2:14:
S. O. S. From the Arcon Spaceship Arcon One. Attacked by three unknown space vessels at distance of five thousand miles from Arcon. Have received hit and damage to stem.
Third Message, timed 2:30:
S.O.S. S.O.S. S.O.S. From spaceship Arcon One. Enemy vessels are closing with us. Fear this is the end. Warn the Arcon people of their peril. Goodbye.
Fourth Message, timed 2:45:
Arcon One. Enemy vessels have examined our damage and departed. We are out of control, under low power, and drifting away in the direction of the star Vista, toward which enemy last seen departing. Six girls on board. Vital that we receive help.
LVI
The star dome was less crowded since Lucinda had established her script-writing team on the cabin-deck; and since the ground-control signals from the radio telescope had been jammed by the low-power spark transmitter in Salford’s charge, Arcon had appeared like the disk of a rising moon on the edge of the star field of the dome.
“Go back and tell them this is pure com,” Duncan said, reading the text of the latest message that the script team of Lucinda, Vera and Eliza had produced from their artistic workshop on the deck below. He looked at Penny, who had brought the message, as though she were responsible for the production of the literary masterminds. “They aren’t even pretending to use international distress procedure any more.”
“Lucinda says it has to be corny,” Penny said, defending her department. “It’s for popular appeal. It’s a kind of psycho-social principle.”
“Let’s only hope they can hear it at all,” Susan said, struggling with a technical and mathematical problem Len had set her on a computer that was not designed for it.
Len was on the phone to Sorensen and the engineering team on the machine-deck of the ship. “Another message coming up. Look, give us real power this time. It doesn’t matter if you stop the air-pumps and Ropotsky’s bio-tank lights and heaters for a little time.”
Looking out of the dome at the long wire antennae which now trailed away from the ship, and which sometimes showed a tendency to tangle since they were mostly stripped from the lighting circuits, Imantha performed her technical function by saying, “Now.”
“Stand by,” said Duncan, and put on the expression he used when he tried to sound like a golden-voiced hero, which was the way Lucinda had depicted the character he had
to assume for their transmissions.
The lights went dim inside the ship as Len. threw the switch that had once been part of the pilots’ control system. Outside the ship, and around the metal hull, a faint blue glow appeared, for Len, faced with the problem of constructing a giant transmitter tube, had decided to use space itself as the vacuum. From below decks, over the phone, came a sound of exclamations, and an electronic hiss and spitting. The insulated plugs through which the electrodes had been pushed outside the hull were not quite as perfect as they might have been.
“Emergency, emergency, emergency,” Duncan said, reading the script Penny had given him into the microphone she held before him. “From the captain of Arcon One . .
“Increase the modulation,” Len said, looking at his instruments and speaking to his electronic team. “It will sound more realistic if there’s some distortion.”
The operation for changing Arcon, based on an idea by Penny, psycho-social direction by Lucinda, script supervised by Vera, with Duncan playing the lead part and engineered by everyone, was on the air.