“Yes, I did.”
“In spite of the fact you were aware that General Shore was neither a physician, nor a surgeon, nor to your knowledge had any previous experience with such operations?”
“Yes sir.”
That was not good. But later, it was Jameson’s turn.
“Now, Captain Taller, you’ve said that you assisted General Shore in this amputation in spite of the fact that you knew he was not ordinarily qualified to perform such surgery. Can you tell us if there was anyone at all on board who was qualified to operate?”
“No sir, there was nobody.”
“Including yourself?”
“Including myself.”
“In your opinion then as a registered nurse, in the absence of anyone qualified to amputate this leg and in face of the absolute necessity for such an operation, who was the best unqualified person aboard to perform the surgery?”
“General Shore.”
Later yet, it was Coop testifying that he had tried to pull Hans Cogh physically out of the vine clump and make him run for the phase ship on Old Twenty-nine; but that Hans had fought back and to delay would have meant missing the advantage of the path Ben had blown through the herbivores; without which, testified Coop, he and the others could never have reached the ship alive.
“—Then you believe,” asked Jameson, “that if General Shore had not planted the two lanes of explosives earlier, none of you would have been able to reach the ship, safely?”
“Yes sir.”
But a littler later they came to the subject of Walt; and Ben was forced to testify after all.
“You say, General,” said the prosecuting officer, “that this brief conversation you had in Captain Bone’s state-room was the first and only indication you had that Captain Bone did not wish to return to Earth?”
Ben had to admit that it was.
“No questions,” said Jameson.
Tessie Sorenson was next to be questioned.
“I have here,” said Jameson, opening one of the personal log books to a location marked with a slip of paper, “an entry made by you the day the phase ship lifted to return to Earth. I will read a portion of it and you tell me if it’s correct. . . . Walt came into the ship carrying one of the alien weapons just now and took it into his stateroom. He didn’t see me in the Special Stores room here, writing up my log. The way he carried it gave me the shivers—just like one of the Golden People. . . is this entry correct?”
“Yes sir.”
“You saw Captain Bone then with the alien weapon. Weren’t you aware that all alien weapons aboard were supposed to be locked up in the keeping of the ship’s commander, General Shore?”
“Yes sir.”
“But you told no one about Captain Bone’s possession of such a weapon?”
“Well, I thought there must be some good reason for his having it—”
“But you told no one?”
“No sir.”
Finally, after several more bits of testimony by other crew members, there was Lee Ruiz.
“General Shore had left you in command of the phase ship, yet when you ordered Captain Bone to stay at the ship, he ignored you and led an armed party against the aliens?”
“Yes sir.” Lee’s face was pale and his voice monotonous. Ben felt sorry for him.
“That’s all, Captain Ruiz.”
At the adjournment for lunch, which for Ben meant a tray meal for which he had no appetite, served in the lounge while the members of the Court ate elsewhere, Marsh appeared. Marsh was concerned about something to do with Ben’s seeing Sven Holmgren, the bear-like Secretary of Space whom Ben had met briefly before the beginning of the proceedings. But Ben was too concerned with what still lay before him in the trial room to concentrate on what Marsh was saying.
After lunch, Ben was back on the stand again. He answered questions as simply and directly as possible, but he found it hard to give an adequate explanation of his reasons for drawing the revolver from the safe and having it ready, when he called Walt to his office. No, he had had no intimation that Walt might be armed. He ended by comparing the impulse that had caused him to arm himself to the impulse that had led him to plant the two lanes of explosives on Old Twenty-nine. For some reason this comparison seemed to impress the court favorably.
Then the officers of the court withdrew to consider their verdict, and Ben was forced to sit uneasily counting the minutes until they returned. All his disembodied feeling of detachment was gone now. His mind flickered with pictures of foreboding. He remembered as a boy overhearing a physician friend of his father’s telling about the hanging of a murder-rapist during the war, when the physician had been in the army and on duty on that occasion—and how the executed man’s neck had literally stretched when the weight of his body came against the noose. He found himself sweating.
The members of the court were filing back into the room.
“—you will stand,” he was being commanded. He pushed back his chair, which squealed noisily, and got awkwardly to his feet. He was aware of Jameson rising beside him, and felt extraordinarily grateful for the companionship.
The verdict was being read off.
“. . .As to Charge Number One—not guilty. As to the specification of the Charge—not guilty. As to Charge Number Two—not guilty. As to the specification of the Charge. . .”
The reading voice continued. Finally it came to the end. Not guilty to all charges. Not guilty to the specification of any of the charges. Ben’s knees felt weak. He wanted to sit down—but the president of the court had something more to say.
“. . . It is the unanimous opinion of this court that General Shore, during his command of the Phase Ship Mark III, executed his responsibilities not only properly, but in a fashion indicative of the highest courage, determination, intelligence, and gallantry. His conduct is deserving of the greatest praise this court can express, and in so expressing it, the court recommends General Shore to the deepest gratitude of his country and the world.”
Abruptly, there was a sudden upwelling of noise. The orderliness of the room dissolved. Jameson was shaking his hand. Somebody else was pounding on his shoulder. He moved in a crowd of bodies to the door and out into a further crowd where hands were everywhere to shake.
“Come on, come on—” said Marsh, who had appeared out of the press of bodies and was busy dragging Ben clear. “Excuse me, gentlemen—” this to the officers around Ben, “General Shore’s due at the White House right away. You can’t keep the President waiting.”
They broke into the open.
“White House?” said Ben.
“Yes,” said Marsh, almost running down the corridor, “it wasn’t supposed to be until tomorrow, but the press has the White House practically under siege. Word of your court-martial got out. I knew they couldn’t keep that quiet—in here.”
He led Ben into a waiting elevator where an enlisted man was holding the door open to immobilize the cage at that floor. The door closed behind them. They descended.
“I’ll tell you all about it in the car on the way there,” said Marsh.
The elevator stopped at last and let them out into a basement garage. They crossed concrete between thick, low pillars and entered a limousine with closed cars before and behind it. The moment they were inside all the cars started to move.
“Congressional Medal of Honor,” Marsh explained to Ben. They came up a ramp into the sunlight, rolled down a short distance of walled driveway and out into the street. A roar of voices met them, mounting as they emerged. Ben saw that the sidewalks on both sides of the street were choked with people held back by police.
“Nothing planned about this, either,” grunted Marsh.“They’ve been gathering since word got out you were being court-martialed today.” His elbow nudged Ben’s ribs, his voice spoke in Ben’s ear over the noise of the crowd. “Wave—smile at them. It’s you they’re cheering!”
Ben managed to get some sort of smile onto his face and lifted his hand woodenly. I
t was all too fantastic to be real. As they left the Pentagon behind, the crowds thinned out and the policemen were no longer to be seen. Soon the demonstration was left behind, and shortly thereafter they were at the gates of the White House.
But here, there were more people, and the cheering, once Ben was recognized, started all over again. Their cars passed in through the high gates and followed the curve of the drive up to the White House.
There was a swarm of people, half of them with cameras, and some TV equipment, at the north portico, but Marsh hauled Ben through them, brushing aside the clamoring questions with the answer that General Shore could not stop to talk, now. Inside the entrance, they were met by a Major General—Marsh introduced him, but so hurriedly that Ben did not catch the name—who escorted them on through the building and finally into an office room, where a slight, harried-looking man in his fifties rose from behind a large desk and came around it on the plum-colored carpet to face them.
“Mr. President,” said the Major General, “this is General Shore.” —And Ben was suddenly horror-stricken. He had forgotten the name of this new President standing be-fore him. It had not occurred to Marsh to remind him, and for some reason the Vice-Presidential name of nine months before refused to come to Ben’s mind. He knew it as well as he knew his own name—almost. But for the life of him he could not remember it now.
Now, here he was shaking hands with the President of his country and he had not the slightest idea who that was. Luckily the words “Mr. President” could cover the necessities of address—but it was an occasion with the quality of nightmare. The President was talking to him,calling him genially by his own name, revealing an amazing knowledge not only of the phase ship project, but of the names of those who had been with Ben aboard her. Ben stammered woodenly. He thought he saw a hint of exasperation in the Presidential eye at the lack of minimum social ability in this White House guest. He found himself in desperation laughing too loudly at a really mild pleasantry by the Chief Executive.
“Well, perhaps we should go meet the press and get the ceremony over with,” said the President. “The last few days must have been difficult ones for General Shore.”
“Yes, Mr. President,” said Ben.
They returned to the portico, where the President made a short speech into the microphones and TV cameras, before him and then presented the Congressional Medal of Honor to Ben. Then the chief executive excused himself and left Ben to the press representatives who crowded around him, clamoring their questions. He answered each one as briefly and straightforwardly as he could. No, he did not know his immediate plans. Yes, he might take a vacation. No, he did not know if he was going to transfer to the Space Corps (Space Corps, wondered Ben?). No, he did not know where the phase ship had been moved to. . . and so on.
Finally Marsh broke in to make his excuses and strong-arm a way through the still-questioning crowd and into the limousine. They escaped. Once out in the streets again, they drove around until the limousine was no longer attracting attention—Ben noted that the cars escorting them had disappeared.
“We’ll go see Sven, now,” said Marsh, leaning forward to give instructions to the driver in the front seat. He leaned back and rolled down the window on his side of the car with a sigh of satisfaction. Ben rolled down the window on his side. The warm, bright air of the spring day blew in his face. It was still hardly more than early afternoon. He glanced at his wristwatch—twenty minutes to three.
Marsh sat without saying anything, and Ben himself felt no urge to talk. The silence after everything that had been said this day was blissful. He inhaled deeply of the warm air flowing at him through the open car window, and like a small explosion the thought erupted in his mind that he was free.
Not only free—but cheered by crowds and honored by the President Never, at any time from the moment he had first determined to steal the phase ship, had he dreamed of anything like this. Even now, there was an unreal feeling to it all—and, the moment he had admitted that much to himself, a cautious comer of his mind began prophesying woe to come, in compensation for all this current good fortune. There would be that joker in the deck somewhere along the line—perhaps it would be in this coming, interview with Sven Holmgren, the bearish Secretary of Space.
The limousine turned at last off the street into a ramp leading down below an old, granite-sided, office building. They came to a halt in the damp dimness of a basement garage.
“I'll be about an hour," said Marsh to the driver, as they left the limpusine. Marsh took Ben by the elbow and steered him toward the yellow-lit interior of an elevator.
"Oh—before I forget again," Marsh said, as the elevator carried them upward, "I made a reservation for you at the Sheraton under the name of Walter Ben. —The hotel knows it’s you, but they’re good hands at keeping things quiet Register under your own name and you’d be mobbed. And I’ve got your civilian clothes upstairs in Sven’s office. You can change into those before you leave. Nobody much knows your face yet—pictures in the paper don’t always look like the living man—and in that leather jacket and slacks you ought to be able to go anywhere without fuss.”
The elevator stopped and opened its doors. They stepped out into shining hallways with frosted glass windows hiding offices on either side.
They went down the corridor, passing a number of officers in blue Air Force uniforms but with the golden ,circle on the breast pocket of their jackets that Ben had noticed on the Major who had escorted him off the phase ship. Some of these spoke to Marsh familiarly, and Marsh answered.
“This way,” said Marsh at last, ushering Ben into a large and well-furnished reception room. He spoke to the woman behind the small fence-like barricade. “We can go in?”
“Yes,” she smiled past Marsh at Ben. “He’s been waiting.”
They went through an inner door into an office equally large, but somewhat more business-like than the reception room had indicated. Behind the single enormous desk, Holmgren was at work in shirt sleeves. He had just been acknowledging his receptionist’s intercom message of their presence.
“Good, come in!” he said, getting to his feet and prowling around the desk over to a filing cabinet. “How about a drink? You probably need one after all this.” He touched the filing cabinet, which opened up to reveal itself as a disguised liquor cabinet with a small refrigerator section from which Holmgren extracted ice cubes for their glasses. "Bourbon? Naturally—”
“—Here’s what I want to talk to you about, then,” he continued, as soon as they were seated in the comfortable chairs in one corner of the office that served as a small refuge from the efficiency of the rest of it. Ben felt the tall glass cold against his hand. “We’re going to have a Space Corps—that’s what’s behind all this Secretary of Space appointment of mine. Anybody able to think as far,ahead as the day after tomorrow can see it’s got to come.” Ben drank from his glass and found himself liking this Holmgren. Not so much for what he had said so far as for something about his attitude that was a relief after the complexities of the day.
“The President agrees, naturally. But equally naturally, it’s the other services bucking it, and Congress needing to be convinced. On paper, I’ve got it now—that’s the result of the President being Chief of Staff. But in real life—” Holmgren’s heavy arm swept out in a gesture, “you see this retread insurance building we’re in. I’ve got it, a handful of clerical workers, and a few hundred volunteer transplanted officers from the Air Force. Most of them ones who weren’t making it too well in the Air Force and were looking for a new place to light. Your coming back just now’s been a godsend.”
Ben’s painfully-acquired knowledge of his own nature as a lone wolf and outsider pricked its ears and woke abruptly to self-protective awareness.
“Well, I don’t know that I’d want—” he was beginning, when Holmgren surprised him by nodding understandingly before he could finish phrasing his polite refusal to have anything to do with the new Space Corps.
�
�Certainly. Certainly, I understand,” said Holmgren. “I’ve looked at your record. I want you, of course, but if you don’t want us, I can’t blame you. The most I could offer you would be a drop in rank, anyway. We’ll be using navy-type rank when we get organized, and Captain is probably the best I could do for you—which is down to the equivalent of Colonel. But never mind that now.”
“Sorry,” said Ben. He took another drink from his glass.
“The point is, your return with the phase ship is just the sort of publicity I need to blast an appropriation out of Congress, so we can start to grow, here. You’re going to be in the public eye from now on, and you’re going to be talking to reporters and TV audiences. You know how big space is and how big an organization and an armed service we’re going to need eventually to deal with it—the day’s going to come when it’ll be bigger than all the rest. But for now—well, there’s hardly anybody but me who realizes how lucky you were to get back at all in your little unarmed ship.”
It was true, thought Ben with a sudden, cold feeling inside him. The amazing thing was that Holmgren recognized it.
“The point is you brought back information that’s been needed, even if no one understands it yet. —Maybe you don’t understand it yourself—” Holmgren stared penetratingly at Ben for a second. “If we try to go charging out there like conquerors, the way your Golden People did, we’re just inviting someone to clobber us. And we can’t go out there with the idea we can run like your Gray-furs, because for us there’s no place to run to. —That thought probably hadn’t occurred to you.”
It was the first sour note Holmgren had struck. Ben opened his mouth to say that it had occurred to him, along with a number of other things. The the humorof a situation in which Holmgren lectured him about outer space struck through him. He felt himself grinning inwardly, and sat silent
“So I wanted to have a word with you,” said Holmgren. “If you’ll just remember to speak up for the Space Corps, when the chance crops up, I’ll be deeply grateful. And if you decide to come in with us after all, I’d guess you probably wouldn’t need to stay a Captain long. And of course there’ll be other things open, once we’re set up. Military governorships—that sort of thing—on those new worlds. The Democrats will be back in after the next Presidential election, and they’ve always been space-minded.”
Mission to Universe Page 21