Complete Fiction (Jerry eBooks)

by Fox B. Holden

  And as the two huge sections between the White Whale’s slender atmosphere fins opened like hungry steel mouths, disgorging flat, thick-bodied machines with their grim burdens of armed men and destroyer-artillery. Ship’s Guard would be taking up defense positions, manning gun stations which commanded an energy potential sufficient to destroy a minor planet in a single, searing second of blue-white heat.

  All this was automatic. A dispatch-unit request for task mission was an order, momentarily transcending even Command authority. It worked that way because the men who travelled space had learned that with the first foot they rose off the surface of Earth, theirs was no longer the privilege of living, but the task of survival. Space was emergency. And if you regarded it otherwise, it would kill you.

  Joel waited. He watched only the sweep second hand on his desk chronometer; he did not need his screens, for he knew too well what was transpiring three hundred and twelve feet below him. He had seen it too many times. And too many times had he waited the necessary two minutes, listened to the taut silence of the waiting communicator.

  “Command to Southard. Task mission dispatched and advancing. Now describe your situation.”

  “As follows—” The young lieutenant’s voice was still taut, but it was not at the edge of panic. Of that Joel was certain. It was just that this was the first time, and it wasn’t a field exercise, and it hadn’t just been learned the night before from an Academy manual . . .

  “Servounit 4, sample tapping with four facilities at two hundred feet. Metal encountered; processed. Object depth-screened; fabricated. Extends from minus two zero zero to minus five two seven. Diameter three zero feet. Further investigation withheld pending arrival of task mission. Over for Command.”

  Over for Command, the young voice said. So many, many times . . .

  He was not exactly the same Nicholas Joel, now. He was Command . . .

  “All right, boy, sit easy and try to relax. What the hell is it you’ve got holed up out there?”

  “It’s a—a space ship, sir.”

  “What class?”

  “I don’t know, sir. It isn’t Terrestrial.”

  “All right, what do the counters tell you?”

  “It’s about a thousand years old, sir. That’s as close as the counters can come, working off a screen. Perhaps, sir, you’d—”

  “Well I don’t want to look at pictures! Inform task mission when they show up that I’m coming out for a look around—and I’ll have their hides if they go unnailing things before I get there. You got any Bond with you, Southard?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “All right, you get my point? Don’t drink it all! This is Command, Whale, out!”

  Joel broke the circuit just as the admittance buzzer went off; he thumbed a stud and the narrow bulkhead door slid back, admitting Carruthers and Dobermann.

  “Was wondering when you two were going to report. Sent a T-M to Southard—says he’s found a space ship two hundred feet under the desert. Sometimes I think that kid works too hard. All right, got the ’copter ready?”

  “Warming up on the waist ramp now,” Dobermann said.

  Joel stood up, reached for his guns and belt and strapped them around his thick middle. He gave Carruthers a quick look. The thin face was taut, almost expressionless, but there was an excitement smouldering in the dark eyes; the old excitement Joel had seen in them so many times before.

  “No objections to the artillery this time, I take it, Sam?” Joel grunted as he clasped the big buckle, let the weight of the blasters sag their holsters down into position on his thighs. “Damn good of you! And I’m glad you understand these people so well—while we’re on our way maybe you can tell me why they bury space ships.”

  “Maybe we ought to ask them, Skipper,” Sam said with a halfsmile on his thin lips.

  “I get your point. But maybe they should’ve told us! Come on.”

  ON JOEL’S order, the task mission’s guns had been reversed; drawn about the area where Southard’s servounits were noisily sucking up sand, they no longer were concentrated on the excavation site, but instead defended it, slender snouts commanding an immense circular field of fire.

  “You don’t trust them at that, do you, Nicholas?” Carruthers said above the racket of the servounits. “Lord, you could slaughter an army—”

  “This is what it says to do in the goddamn books!” Joel snapped. “You’re the guys who were so glad to make a strike.”

  The heavy, tracked machinery with its towering drill-housings and down-thrust vacuum-scoops whined and growled in a nerve-wrenching discord of power. Men sweated under the mild sun with a silent hurry, with a disciplined excitement.

  Southard was fast and efficient.

  Dobermann was silent, watching, analyzing.

  Carruthers had the hungry look in his eyes that Joel did not understand.

  And Joel was impatient. It was a tableau of men and machines that he had watched before, and always, at the end of it, there was something big for him to handle—frustrating if not dangerous, a mind and bone-wearying struggle if not an outright battle. They never came smooth, never.

  “Forehull clear, sir!” It was Southard, calling from the lip of the immense hole his machines had excavated.

  “Cut your servos!”

  Southard signalled to his units, and they muttered slowly into silence, and then the silence hung over them all like a heavy thing, and Captain Nicholas Joel knew that what happened next was up to him.

  With a motion of one gauntleted hand he brought Dobermann and Carruthers in next to him, and then the three of them walked with a disciplined haste to the sandy lip, past Southard, and looked down.

  A pitted forehull jutted up out of the moist sand two hundred feet below them, its plates glittering darkly in the rays of the powerful illumination units which had already been lowered.

  Dobermann’s quick eyes took in each detail in seconds, and then they darted up to Joel’s face. Carruthers was silent, and his face was white.

  “All right, let’s get some winch-lifts over here!” Joel bellowed. “Torches, can-openers, let’s get with it!”

  And within minutes, Joel was on his way down in a bucket, big boots planted solidly on a small mountain of heavy tools.

  Dobermann was following, and Carruthers was in the third bucket.

  Joel’s bare hands were exploring the gnurled lip of the fore-hull lock-hatch before either of them hit bottom. Dobermann was first up beside him, a heavy torch cradled in his short, thick arms.

  “Ready?”

  “Won’t need that thing,” Joel grunted. “Nobody locked up when they left. Give me a hand.”

  The hatch, like the rest of the hull, was pitted, but despite the moistness of the sand in which the ship was imbedded, there were no indications of corrosion. Joel made a mental note to have the lubricants in which the hinge-gymbals were packed analyzed later; they were still as good as new; the hatch was giving almost easily.

  Carruthers, with an arc lantern, lit their way inside.

  They walked into what was obviously a pilots’ compartment. Instruments, control panels, ack-seats, notations on metal-leaf note-pads which they did not understand;

  Dobermann copied them.

  They descended ladder-walks into the fore-waist; crew compartment. Functional, compact, reflecting the same efficient engineering which they had encountered in the previous compartment.

  Through a second bulkhead opening; supply compartment. Through another; cargo hold. It was not empty, and loading gear was in evidence, although neatly stowed in its locks.

  “Mneurium-4,” Carruthers said. The words made a hollow sound in the emptiness behind them.

  They kept going. Armory. All units still in place. Engine room. Dobermann’s counter ticked slowly in the stillness. Still a little kick left in the piles. Machine-shop; lab. Spotless, perfect order. Finally, tubes. The smooth metal gleamed in the light of Carruthers’ lamp.

  And that was all.

  J
oel turned wordlessly and started back up the ladder-walks. Dobermann and Carruthers clanged hollowly after him, scrambling to keep up.

  Joel didn’t stop until he had climbed back into one of the buckets, and then he waved impatiently. Machinery whined above him, and his bucket swung clear.

  At the lip, he motioned for Southard.

  “All right, I want ten of your people with technical research rates. Leave them with Dobermann and Carruthers. Issue return orders to your T-M, and then get these units out of here and digging up what we came after.”

  “But—yes sir.”

  Dobermann and Carruthers were at the lip, climbing out of their buckets. There was a puzzled look, even on Dobermann’s usually taciturn face.

  “You two,” Joel snapped, “will have a crew of researchers. Ten men. Take twenty-four hours and scrape the insides of this thing. Carruthers will report directly to me when you’re finished. Dobermann, you’ll nail K’hall-i-k’hall to a wall somewhere and don’t let him down until you find out what became of whoever flew this tank.”

  He turned and walked away before anyone could protest.

  CAPTAIN Nicholas Joel drained the flagon. He looked again at the faded image in the small, rectangular frame, finally returned it to the breast pocket of his tunic. Then he looked up across the mahogany desk at Carruthers and Dobermann.

  “So,” he said slowly, “so he told you he didn’t know, did he?”

  “Yes, Captain, that is what he told me. He was surprised about the space ship. He called the others in. There was the same reaction. They—”

  Joel leaped to his feet. “Don’t give me that!” he thundered. He grabbed at the bottle of Bond; spilled it as he poured. “You know he knows!”

  “Captain, I was quite convinced.”

  “Quite convinced, quite convinced, were you . . . All right, Dobermann, get out of here. You find out anything, let me know. Sam, I want to talk to you. Go on Dobermann, git!”

  Joel slumped back behind the desk as his first officer pivoted, left.

  He tried a swallow from the flagon; fumbled at his tunic pocket for the small frame, extracted it; looked at it again. Then put it back a second time.

  Carruthers sat down opposite him.

  “You going to talk to me, Nicholas, or pass out before you get the chance?”

  “All right, Sam.” Joel got up, put the Bond back in its cabinet; emptied the flagon and put it in too. “I get your point. Only you listen. The crew of that ship was deliberately murdered. Cold-bloodedly murdered, and it isn’t going to happen to us.”

  “I see.” The ship’s surgeon eyed the tips of his fingernails, then slowly looked up into Joel’s red, swollen face. “Naturally, there wouldn’t be any bodies around to prove your theory, would there, skipper? And no signs of struggle. We didn’t see any. Of course, their guns were racked up pretty neatly—But it’s all there in the report—” he waved a slender hand toward a roll of tape on the desk.

  “Never mind your sarcastic technicalities! They were—”

  “Nicholas, sit down. And listen.”

  “All right. But I don’t get your point! And I don’t want any of your double-talk! The trouble with you guys—”

  “First of all, Nicholas, you know that crew wasn’t murdered or anything of the kind. And you know, and Dobermann realizes that you know he knows, that K’hall-i-k’hall was lying in his teeth. And K’hall-i-k’hall knows we know it.”

  Joel lowered his eyes. “All right, Sam,” he said. No, there hadn’t been any use in trying to drum up a bunch of tripe—no use in trying to fool Sam. He had known that from the start. But sometimes—sometimes, even when a man knew he was fooling himself, he had to give it a try, just to see—“They went native, didn’t they, Sam?” he said.

  “Yes, Skipper. They did. Somebody back where they came from needed that mneurium-4 real bad. Somebody had guts and sweat and brains enough to get ships into space looking for it. And in their own way, somebody had faith enough to think they’d get it if it was to be found. Only, as you say—”

  “Liked it here, I suppose. Liked it better than anything they’d ever seen before—and that can of theirs had a thumping set of drives, so they’d seen plenty.”

  There was silence for a moment. And then Sam said, “Well, Nicholas, there it is. The psychology of the thing is obvious enough, isn’t it?” Carruthers gave him a meaningful look, and Joel’s nerves rebelled at it.

  “All right, I get your point!” A big fist slammed down on the desktop. “So somebody didn’t get their mneurium-4! Somebody probably ornery enough to keep on living anyway. What do you want to bet they’re still going strong, who or wherever they are out in that black hell up there? What do you want to bet, Sam?”

  The surgeon’s thin lips smiled gently. “I’d bet right along with you, Nicholas. They’re probably still going strong. I imagine they made out.”

  “But K’hall-i-k’hall—”

  “Is proprietor of a very pleasant world. A world of very nice people, Nicholas, who enjoy living in, their way, and get a kick out of seeing other people enjoy it. They think a little differently than a lot of folks.”

  “That makes ’em bad, I suppose?”

  “No.”

  Joel looked into the thin face, the intent, dark eyes. The look was in them.

  And Joel guessed he was finally letting himself realize what the look really meant.

  It was a look that meant a hunger for all that Joel hated, and more . . .

  It was a look that meant, even now after all these years, that Sam still hurt inside, and hurt badly.

  “Why—why couldn’t it have been the other way around, Sam,” Joel said hoarsely.

  The other looked up at him. “You do hate it that much, don’t you.”

  “Look Sam, you’ve gotta get my point! I don’t think that crew did anything wrong! They didn’t. They just decided to stop being hunks of machinery.”

  Carruthers smiled. “I get your point, Skipper. And I’m going to let you figure this one out all by yourself. But I’d like to tell you something first, just sort of as a point of information; maybe it’ll help. Skipper, I had a girl once, too.”

  Joel stood still. Then he turned, opened his mouth to speak, then clamped it hard shut.

  “They told me I couldn’t pilot. But I could help, and my help was needed—everybody’s was, because this wasn’t a matter of a government project. This was a matter of a race of people who were building a ladder—a big, tall ladder, Nicholas. Sometimes it was a killer. Sometimes a heartbreaker. Sometimes a laughingstock. But it belonged to men, and they lived and died for it; they built it, and it’s theirs to climb, Nicholas.”

  Joel watched the other’s worn face, and now the hurt was naked in it.

  “She said, Nicholas, that it was all off if I decided to go up to space. I loved her, Skipper. And I loved the tall ladder”

  Joel whirled. “Sure, and what’s it got us, Sam? A bellyful of cold, aching loneliness—our guts twisted and squeezed until the life’s dried up in ’em—and what do we get? What do those wrangling, yapping, bellyaching rotters back home give us for it? Pension us off when we can’t see our blast-off studs anymore and forget about us.

  “They take the stuff we bring ’em—just as if it grew on trees, just as if it grew into a neat, pretty package somewhere all by itself! With money they can buy it—with enough money they can buy all of it! Even if we had to get it with the air sucked out of us, with our brains boiled out of us, with our crazy heads busted in.

  “And you know what, Sam? There was even a time when they said we couldn’t do it at all! A hundred years ago, they laughed at us for trying to get to the moon! They laughed, Sam—and those who didn’t laugh didn’t even give a damn at all!

  “So I was to tell the girl I’d marry her later, but that right now they thought I ought to be a pilot!

  I was to say to my life: I’ll live you later, but right now I’ve got to be a pilot . . . And I was to freeze my insides for twenty
years showing ’em they were wrong to laugh, and that it was time they gave a damn, that what I could bring home was going to mean a lot to the world they live on!

  “And like a fool I did!

  “And Sam—Sam, they’re still yapping like little dogs for a piece of meat—not just a good piece of meat, but all wrapped up nice and fancy, no mistakes allowed, every time they whistle! And the whistling gets so easy, Sam—so easy. You can even do it while you’re stabbing your neighbor in the back, while you’re selling his kids down the river—even while you’re taking your next breath to yap some more!

  “They can go to hell, Sam! They can go to hell.”

  Joel slumped down in the chair behind the mahogany desk.

  The surgeon looked at him, looked away.

  “You’ve made up your mind, then.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I suppose Dobermann and I can get the ship back somehow.”

  “You’ll make it.”

  “I guess we will. Unless the rest feel the way you do—and I know half the crew thinks this is quite a place. In which case, of course, I suppose they’ll survive, back home, even without the mneurium-4—they have for a long time. But there is one thing.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “These people are fine people, as you’ve—found out. You couldn’t even replace that dhennah”

  “How did you—”

  “They’re swell folks, Nicholas, and always will be,” the surgeon said softly, “and they’ve never built a thing, and never will.

  “They don’t know greed, because no one has ever achieved anything worth another’s wanting.

  “They don’t know jealousy, because no one has ever obtained anything that another couldn’t.

  “They don’t know hate, because no one has ever discovered a thing for which to fight that another thinks of sufficient value to fight for.