“Inhabitable planets were too scarce not to,” said Ben, “But didn’t you read all this in the ship’s log?”
“Some of it,” said Jameson. “Everybody wants to get their hands on that log. But what I read didn’t give me a picture anything like it does hearing it from you. The log reads like a statistical report. You must have ice water in your veins!”
Ben felt a small guilty glow of pride at that. It was not true, of course—but he had hoped from the beginning of the voyage that the crew would think of him as someone with ice water in his veins. By this time the crew knew better, but it was something at least to have this Adjutant General’s Department officer think of him that way. Ben began to entertain kinder thoughts of Major Jameson. He went on with his story.
Major Jameson heard him through without further comment until the end, then proceeded to inform Ben, who had only the smallest notion of such things, how the court-martial would take place. There was a preliminary list of some thirty-seven charges against Ben—Jameson reeled them off—ranging from Ben’s abandonment of the installation in his charge without proper authority, through his taking the phase ship and such diverse charges as those of responsibility for the deaths in the crew and misappropriation and misuse of government equipment. The list might be increased before trial time, but would probably be cut. Jameson went on with matters of court-martial procedure. To Ben, who admittedly was unqualified to judge, it sounded as if his defense counsel was more interested in stage directions than in meeting the charges. The uneasy feeling this gave rise to encouraged Ben when Jameson was done to ask a question he might otherwise not have asked.
“What do you think my chances are?”
Jameson stared at him hard for a moment.
“What do you think your chances are?” he retorted.
“Not good,” confessed Ben.
“Glad to hear it,” said Jameson sharply. “A general court-martial’s not a laughing matter—never a laughing matter. As a matter of fact—” his tone softened somewhat, “I think we’ve got pretty good answers to most of the charges here.” He tapped the list on the coffee table between them. “There’s just one point that has me really worried—”
“My taking the phase ship and the people on her,” said Ben gloomily.
“No, no,” said Jameson, impatiently. “That’s ancient history. They won’t be digging into that again. No, it’s the deaths—and particularly the death of Captain Walter Bone. The other deaths are all justifiable under the circumstances, and anyone would expect a few. But after all, Bone was a Nobel Prize winner, and you shot him down with your own hand. Moreover there’s nothing in the official log of complaint against him before the day you killed him—”
“He wasn’t responsible,” said Ben. The words came out rather grimly. The death of Walt still sat heavily on Ben’s conscience.
“Are you a psychiatrist?” snapped Jameson.
“Of course not,” said Ben.
“Then don’t go venturing an opinion like that in the court-martial or we will be in trouble. I’ll be going over the most important of the possible questions and your answers with you in the next day or so—there’ll be time enough for that.” Jameson gathered up his papers and took off.
The next forty-eight hours were a wild flurry of Jameson and of other officers wanting statements, usually under oath and signed, about some incident or part of the phase ship’s voyage. Ben’s uniform had been finally fitted and delivered and he wore it self-consciously during these interviews, aware of the lone gold star on each shoulder. At the end of this time, Jameson told him that the court-martial was set for 9:00 a.m. of the morning of the next day.
Ben had trouble sleeping that night, dreaming wildly of somehow escaping from a firing squad and stealing the phase ship to take to the stars once more. But after his early breakfast a visitor came who was the last man Ben had expected to see—in fact he had largely forgotten Marsh Otam.
Marsh was still forty pounds overweight, still with his face lined by worry wrinkles, but looking eager and cheerful. He was carrying a light brown-leather briefcase.
“Marsh,” said Ben. Marsh pumped Ben’s hand, sat down with the briefcase in his lap, and suggested that Ben pick up the phone in the kitchen area of the suite and order drinks—something Ben had not realized that he could do.
“Well,” said Marsh, almost shyly, when they were seated with the briefcase between them on the coffee table. “You did it, Ben. It happened, just the way you said it would.”
Ben stared at him sharply. But there was no mistaking the expression of the face before him this time. He knew Marsh too well to misinterpret a gaze of ghoulish interest. It was pure, unadulterated admiration he was observing in the look Marsh was giving him.
“What happened?” said Ben sharply.
“The international tension,” said Marsh. “It collapsed—just as soon as word got out you’d gone. Everybody was scared to death at first—but it made them all sort of huddle together and join ranks. Then, when you didn’t come back, the scaredness leaked out of them.”
“How fast did they expect the phase ship back?” asked Ben, startled.
“Well, when you didn’t come by Christmas . . .” said Marsh, almost apologetically.
“They gave us up for dead. Is that it?”
“Well . . . they were starting to rewrite the U.N. charter about that time," said Marsh, “and then the President’s death—”
“Death?” Sharp on the shock of hearing this, came the revelation to Ben that he had been unconsciously counting on at least a friendly attitude from the White House to help him with his trial. Now, with the former Vice-President in the executive office. . . a man Ben had had no dealings with and whose name he barely knew. . .
“Heart,” Marsh was saying, with a slight uneasy twitch of the fingers toward the heart under his own chest layers of excess fat. He had gone on talking without noticing Ben’s sudden thoughtfulness. “Of course there were changes. —But the point is, when you came back like this, everybody went wild. They’re still going wild for that matter. Look here—”
Eagerly, he unlatched his briefcase and pulled out editions of the News and the Star from late yesterday and this morning’s Post.
“You ought to see the foreign—particularly the English papers,” he said, thrusting the pages of newsprint into Ben’s hands. “But I didn’t have time to pick up anything but the local papers on the way here this morning. Take a look at them.”
Ben took the top paper and stared at it. He was rewarded with a three column cut of a picture of his own face—from a photo taken eight years before. It seemed to him he had looked much younger eight years ago.
Below the picture was a “profile” of him—character and personal history. He winced as he read. According to this he was “enigmatic,” a man “of many talents.” How could they expect their readers to swallow such obvious attempts to talk him up into something larger than human? The front pages of all three papers were full of such stuff. There were also hews stories reporting “the scars of alien weapons” on the hull of the phase ship, and an anonymous but reportedly reliable source was quoted to the effect that only Ben and one other member of the crew had returned alive.
On the other hand, there were some sensible speculations quoted in an interview with qualified scientists, concerning the possible implications of the phase ship’s voyage and return. However, most of it was guess and nonsense. Ben shoved the papers aside.
“There’s some mail here, too, for you,” Marsh was saying eagerly. “Just the cream of the cream of it, so to speak. You’ve got half a mailroom full already and more coming in every hour over at the Pentagon. These were some of the important letters in the first bunch that came in.”
He deposited two bundles of envelopes, each with a rubber band holding it together, on the coffee table. Ben picked up one bundle and saw that the long envelope on top had the name of someone he had never heard of in the return address top comer, and below it were t
he wordsOffice of the President above AdCo Corporation and a New York address. He had never heard of the AdCo Corporation.
“That bunch is business letters,” said Marsh. Ben dropped them back onto the coffee table. “The others are personal.”
Ben removed the rubber band and went through the stack.To his astonishment, they were all from eminent people,personally congratulating him on the trip of the phase ship and the reported fact that he had found habitable worlds. Nearly all were signed by men whose names Ben recognized, although he had never met their owners. Most were from people in the scientific fields, but they included among the exceptions letters from two ex-Presidents of the United States.
This was an entirely different matter from the overblown and momentary publicity of the newspaper front page. Ben realized with a sudden, guilty start that he was actually well on the way to being famous. He could not believe it—even with these letters in front of his eyes he could not believe it was to him they had been addressed and written. General Benjamin Shore: Dear General: I must tell you how deeply I. . . and so forth.
Outside and apparently out of step as he had always been with the people around him, Ben had dreamed of doing something solid for the human race he belonged to, but with which he could not seem to communicate. That was what had been behind the building of the phase ship. It had never occurred to him to foster the wild hope that the something solid he did would be recognized and credit given him for doing it.
Now that it was here before him, he drew back from it in his mind. He distrusted it. There must be a joker in the deck somewhere.
Marsh coughed. Raising his eyes, Ben saw the other man looking literally sly. Marsh was holding one more letter. “And this,” said Marsh, “by special delivery.”
Ben took it suspiciously. It had no stamp, although it was sealed, and he did not recognize the handwriting, although it looked vaguely familiar, as if he had seen it once or twice before, and it was the sort of hand written by a woman—his heart gave an unexpected lurch. He tore the envelope open and unfolded the single sheet of paper within.
Dear Ben:
I didn’t know you weren’t with the rest of us until they had hurried us all away from the ship. Now they say I can’t see you because I am supposed to be one of the witnesses at your court-martial. I can’t even write you without the risk that my letter will be opened and read by someone. But I thought of Marsh Otam and got in touch with him. He says he will give this letter to you personally when he sees you.
You have to know that everyone who was on the ship with you feels the same way about what you did. It was one of the bravest and most wonderful things that history has ever seen, and no one who was in the ship could miss knowing this, any more than they could miss knowing what a great and courageous leader you were for all of us. They will all be testifying to that fact at your court-martial.
Marsh has promised he will help me see you as soon as it’s possible, which he says will probably be tomorrow,some time after your court-martial is over, I will be waiting for you, then.
Nora
Ben automatically refolded the letter, put it into its envelope and the envelope into an inside pocket of his uniform jacket These words of Nora’s, coming on top of the letters from people of reputation, were having a profound effect on him. Long, long ago, he had given up any hope of any escape from his personal loneliness and his position among, men as an outsider. Now, when he least expected it acceptance and even love were being made possible to him.
It was typical of the ironies that had dogged him since he was old enough to recognize the fact that he did not think like most people, that these things should have come to him now, on the eve of his court-martial.
Marsh, apparently raised by the situation to a near-telepathic ability to interpret the expressions that must have passed over Ben’s face on reading Nora’s letter, plunged into the question of the court-martial, himself.
“You know,” he said, lowering his voice evidently without realizing it, “there was a hearing held right after you left with the phase ship. So you shouldn’t have to worry about that part at your trial.”
“Hearing?” echoed Ben, numbly.
“That's why I was able to visit you, like this," said Marsh. "The findings of the hearing will be read into the court-martial record—neither I, not anybody else will have to testify over again. And the findings cleared you com—"
"Wait a minute," said Ben, coming alert. He remembered now how jameson had dismissed the charge of taking the phase ship and the people aboard her, as ancient history.“What hearing?”
“Why, there had to be a hearing after the ship and all of you disappeared,” said Marsh. He looked Ben almost defiantly in the eye. “The word of the takeoff was bound to leak out. In a world ready to blow, our government couldn’t let the mistaken notion get around that you’d taken off under anything less than strict orders to do it. —Particularly since you got away without anyone noticing it on radar. Of course, I couldn’t testify to personal knowledge of your orders, but Sven Holmgren—you recognize the name?”
“No,” said Ben.
“He’d been—” Marsh’s gaze still dared Ben to accuse him of anything, “secretly appointed to a new Cabinet post by he late President. He’d been appointed Secretary of Space, the month before you took off, though no one knew it until the hearing. He was able to testify, and besides that, to show a rough draft in his own handwriting of the order he had coded into the Presidential message I brought you that day—the order that sent you up into space.”
Ben stared at him. But Marsh’s gaze did not waver. “What happened,” asked Ben, “to the copy of the message I sent back with you?”
“Oh, it was produced at the hearing,” said Marsh. “It helped to back up Holmgren’s handwritten draft—anybody could see the two were identical.” He stopped and sat watching Ben.
“Yes. . .” said Ben, deep in thought.
“So you see,” said Marsh, smiling with a smile that invited Ben to smile along with him. “That’s already taken care of. And all the other charges just deal with things that happened on your trip. So, you see there’s no need to worry about the court-martial.”
He was so eager, he was so sure that everything was taken care of, that Ben, sinking into the bleakness of despair, could not bring himself to break the bubble. He could not make himself tell Marsh now that it was not the matter of taking the phase ship, but the matter of Walt’s death that was the charge most likely to condemn him at the trial.
Chapter 13
Shortly after, they were interrupted by the arrival of Jameson, and Marsh had to leave. He left behind the letters, and Ben tucked them absent-mindedly, those he had read and those unread, into a dresser drawer in the bedroom. Jameson barely had time to go over some of the more important points of testimony for the last time.
“I’m hoping not to have to expose you to questioning at all,” Jameson said. “We’ll see how things go.” The armed guard was already at the door—four half-gun-bearing military policemen and a Lieutenant with holstered sidearm. They went back through the same echoing corridors and rode the same underground railcar, then ascended into a corridor where daylight flooded through first-floor windows.
They crossed a narrow courtyard. The morning was cool and bright, but damp-aired from rain that must have fallen recently, to judge by the wet grass alongside the water-darkened sidewalks. They entered a further corridor and went along it to an escalator that took them up three more floors.
It was not yet nine o’clock. They were forced to wait in a large, square-windowed room set up in Spartan fashion as a lounge, with ashtrays and straight-backed folding chairs.
“When can we go in?” Jameson demanded of a passing Captain.
“Soon,” was the answer. “They’re not done setting up all the tables and chairs in there, yet. They cleared it yesterday to wax the floor.” Ben felt a strange twinge of indignation that waxing a floor should take precedence over the court-martial of a
man facing capital among other charges. Standing, with the sunlight coming hot upon him through the window alongside, he half-dozed from a sort of emotional exhaustion.
The room was full of people. He was roused by the approach of a gray-haired bear of a man.
“Secretary of Space. Mr. Sven Holmgren—” Jameson was introducing him, with politeness if no grace.
“I’ll see you later,” said Holmgren, shook hands, and went off.
Eventually they were allowed into the brightly sunlit trial room. Ben took his seat at one of the smaller tables with Jameson and the Captain who was his assistant, facing the long table with the windows behind the eight empty seats where the members of the court would be sitting. Then the members of the court were entering, and they were all rising in the room—except the armed guards back against the wall, behind Ben, who were already on their feet. The court seated itself, the rest of them were seated, and the court-martial commenced.
What took place after that came back to Ben later as a series of flashes—bits of incidents out of the whole proceedings. In the bright room, with the voices droning around him, he drifted into a feeling of unreality, almost a disembodied feeling. To begin with, the charges were read, and after that there was a good deal of reading into the record. For the first time Ben heard the conclusions of the hearing held on the disappearance of the phase ship, but got little more out of it than Marsh had already told him. A number of documents made their appearance, including the log of the phase ship and the personal logs of its crew members.
The testimony of the phase ship’s crew members began,and Ben came to life briefly when Nora was being questioned by the prosecuting officer. She answered in a level, voice but did not look at Ben.
“You are a registered nurse?” demanded the prosecuting officer.
“Yes sir,” answered Nora.
Later, they got on to the subject of Polly Neigh’s accident.
“You assisted General Shore in this amputation, with the help of Lieutenant Sorenson?”
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