by Mark Clifton
committinghim to something....
"This is the final test, Senator. After this one, if it is right, manleaps to the stars!" It was Jennings' plea, his final attempt to catchthe senator up in the fire and the dream.
"And then more yapping colonists wanting statehood," the senator saiddryly. "Upsetting the balance of power. Changing things."
Jennings was silent.
"Beep, four."
"More imports trying to get into our country duty-free," O'Noonan wenton. "Upsetting our economy."
His vision was of lobbyists threatening to cut off contributions iftheir own industries were not kept in a favorable position. Ofgrim-jawed industrialists who could easily put a more tractablecandidate up in his place to be elected by the free and thinking peopleof his state. All the best catch phrases, the semantically-loadedpromises, the advertising appropriations being used by his opponent.
It was a dilemma. Should he jump on the bandwagon of advancement to thestars, hoping to catch the imagination of the voters by it? Were thevoters really in favor of progress? What could this space flight put inthe dinner pails of the Smiths, the Browns, the Johnsons? It was allvery well to talk about the progress of mankind, but that was the onlymeasure to be considered. Any politician knew that. And apparently noscientist knew it. Man advances only when he sees how it will help himstuff his gut.
"Beep, three." For a full minute, the senator had sat lost inspeculation.
And what could he personally gain? A plan, full-formed, sprang into hismind. This whole deal could be taken out of the hands of the militaryon charges of waste and corruption. It could be brought back into thecontrol of private industry, where it belonged. He thought of vasttracts of land in his own state, tracts he could buy cheap, throughdummy companies, places which could be made very suitable for the giantfactories necessary to manufacture spaceships.
As chairman of the appropriations committee, it wouldn't be difficult tosway the choice of site. And all that extra employment for the people ofhis own state. The voters couldn't forget plain, simple, honest O'Noonanafter that!
"Beep, two."
* * * * *
Jennings felt the sweat beads increase on his forehead. His collar wasalready soaking wet. He had been watching the senator through two longminutes, terrible eon-consuming minutes, the impassive face showing onlywhat the senator wanted it to show. He saw the face now soften intosomething approaching benignity, nobility. The head came up, the silveryhair tossed back.
"Son," he said with a ringing thrill in his voice. "Mankind must reachthe stars! We must allow nothing to stop that! No personalconsideration, no personal belief, nothing must stand in the way ofmankind's greatest dream!"
His eyes were shrewdly watching the effect upon Jennings' face,measuring through him the effect such a speech would have upon thevoters. He saw the relief spread over Jennings' face, the glow. Yes, itmight work.
"Now, son," he said with kindly tolerance, "tell me what you want me todo about pressing this key when the time comes."
"Beep, one."
And then the continuous drone while the seconds were being counted offaloud.
"Fifty-nine, fifty-eight, fifty-seven--"
The droning went on while Jennings showed the senator just how to pressthe dummy key down, explaining it in careful detail, and just when.
"Thirty-seven, thirty-six, thirty-five--"
"Major!" Jennings called questioningly.
"Ready, sir."
"Professor!"
"Ready, sir."
"Three, two, one, ZERO!"
"Press it, Senator!" Jennings called frantically.
Already the automatic firing stud had taken over. The bellowing, roaringflames reached down with giant strength, nudging the ship upward,seeming to hang suspended, waiting.
"_Press it!_"
The senator's hand pressed the dummy key. He was committed.
As if the ship had really been waiting, it lifted, faster and faster.
"Major?"
"I have it, sir." The major's hands were flying over his bank ofcontrols, correcting the slight unbalance of thrusts, holding the shipas steady as if he were in it.
Already the ship was beyond visual sight, picking up speed. But the pipon the radar screens was strong and clear. The drone of the IFFreturning signal was equally strong.
The senator sat and waited. He had done his job. He felt it perhapswould have been better to have had the photographers on the spot, butrealized the carefully directed and rehearsed pictures to be taken laterwould make better vote fodder.
"It's already out in space now, Senator," Jennings found a second oftime to call it to the senator.
The pips and the signals were bright and clear, coming through theionosphere, the Heaviside layer as they had been designed to do.Jennings wondered if the senator could ever be made to understand thesimple honesty of scientists who had worked that out so well and true.Bright and strong and clear.
And then there was nothing! The screens were blank. The sounds weregone.
* * * * *
Jennings stood in stupefied silence.
"It shut! It shut off!" Major Eddy's voice was shrill in amazement.
"It cut right out, Colonel. No fade, no dying signal, just out!" It wasthe first time Jennings had ever heard a note of excitement in ProfessorStein's voice.
The phone began to ring, loud and shrill. That would be from theGeneral's observation post, where he, too, must have lost the signal.
The excitement penetrated the senator's rosy dream of vast acreagesbeing sold at a huge profit, giant walls of factories going up under hisremote-control ownership. "What's wrong?" he asked.
Jennings did not answer him. "What was the altitude?" he asked. Thephone continued to ring, but he was not yet ready to answer it.
"Hundred fifty miles, maybe a little more," Major Eddy answered in adull voice. "And then, nothing," he repeated incredulously. "Nothing."
The phone was one long ring now, taken off of automatic signal and rungwith a hand key pressed down and held there. In a daze, Jennings pickedup the phone.
"Yes, General," he answered as though he were no more than a robot. Hehardly listened to the general's questions, did not need the report thatevery radarscope throughout the area had lost contact at the sameinstant. Somehow he had known that would be true, that it wasn't justhis own mechanisms failing. One question did penetrate his stunned mind.
"How is the senator taking it?" the general asked finally.
"Uncomprehending, as yet," Jennings answered cryptically. "But eventhere it will penetrate sooner or later. We'll have to face it then."
"Yes," the general sighed. "What about safety? What if it fell on a bigcity, for example?"
"It had escape velocity," Jennings answered. "It would simply follow itstrajectory indefinitely--which was away from Earth."
"What's happening now?" the senator asked arrogantly. He had been out ofthe limelight long enough, longer than was usual or necessary. He didn'tlike it when people went about their business as if he were notpresent.
"Quiet during the test, Senator," Jennings took his mouth from the phonelong enough to reprove the man gently. Apparently he got away with it,for the senator put his finger to his lips knowingly and sat back again.
"The senator's starting to ask questions?" the general asked into thephone.
"Yes, sir. It won't be long now."
"I hate to contemplate it, Jim," the general said in apprehension."There's only one way he'll translate it. Two billion dollars shot upinto the air and lost." Then sharply. "There must be something you'vedone, Colonel. Some mistake you've made."
* * * * *
The implied accusation struck at Jennings' stomach, a heavy blow.
"That's the way it's going to be?" he stated the question, knowing itsanswer.
"For the good of the service," the general answered with a stock phrase."If it is the fault of one off
icer and his men, we may be given anotherchance. If it is the failure of science itself, we won't."
"I see," the colonel answered.
"You won't be the first soldier, Colonel, to be unjustly punished tomaintain public faith in the service."
"Yes, sir," Jennings answered as formally as if he were already facingcourt martial.
"It's back!" Major Eddy shouted in his excitement. "It's back, Colonel!"
The pip, truly, showed startlingly clear and sharp on the radarscope,the correct signals were coming in sure and strong. As suddenly as theship had cut out, it was back.
"It's back, General," Colonel Jennings shouted into the phone, his eyesfixed upon his own radarscope. He dropped the phone without waiting forthe general's answer.
"Good," exclaimed the senator. "I was getting a little bored withnothing happening."
"Have you got control?" Jennings called to the major.
"Can't tell yet. It's coming in too fast. I'm trying to slow it. We'llknow in a minute."
"You have it now," Professor Stein spoke up quietly. "It's slowing. Itwill be in the atmosphere soon. Slow it as much as you can."
As surely as if he were sitting in its control room, Eddy slowed theship, easing it down into the atmosphere. The instruments recorded theresults of his playing upon the bank of controls, as sound pouring froma musical instrument.
"At the take-off point?" Jennings asked. "Can you land it there?"
"Close to it," Major Eddy answered. "As close as I can."
Now the ship was in visual sight again, and they watched its nose turnin the air, turn from a bullet hurtling earthward to a ship settling tothe ground on its belly. Major Eddy was playing his instrument bank asif he were the soloist in a vast orchestra at the height of a crescendoforte.
Jennings grabbed up the phone again.
"Transportation!" he shouted.
"Already dispatched, sir," the operator at the other end responded.
Through the periscope slit, Jennings watched the ship settle lightlydownward to the ground, as though it were a breezeborne feather insteadof its tons of metal. It seemed to settle itself, still, and becomeinanimate again. Major Eddy dropped his hands away from his instrumentbank, an exhausted virtuoso.
"My congratulations!" the senator included all three men in his sweepingglance. "It was remarkable how you all had control at every instance. Myprogress report will certainly bear that notation."
The three men looked at him, and realized there was no irony in hiswords, no sarcasm, no realization at all of what had truly happened.
"I can see a va-a-ast fleet of no-o-ble ships...." the senator began toorate.
But the roar of the arriving jeep outside took his audience away fromhim. They made a dash for the bunker door, no longer interested in thesenator and his progress report. It was the progress report as revealedby the instruments on the ship which interested them more.
The senator was close behind them as they piled out of the bunker door,and into the jeep, with Jennings unceremoniously pulling the driver fromthe wheel and taking his place.
Over the rough dirt road toward the launching site where the ship hadcome to rest, their minds were bemused and feverish, as they projectedahead, trying to read in advance what the instruments would reveal ofthat blank period.
The senator's mind projected even farther ahead to the fleet of spaceships he would own and control. And he had been worried about someignorant stupid voters! Stupid animals! How he despised them! What wouldhe care about voters when he could be master of the spaceways to thestars?
Jennings swerved the jeep off the dirt road and took out across thehummocks of sagebrush to the ship a few rods away. He hardly slackedspeed, and in a swirl of dust pulled up to the side of the ship. Beforeit had even stopped, the men were piling out of the jeep, running towardthe side of the ship.
And stopped short.
* * * * *
Unable to believe their eyes, to absorb the incredible, they stared atthe swinging open door in the side of the ship. Slowly they realized theiridescent purple glow around the doorframe, the rotted metal,disintegrating and falling to the dirt below. The implications of thetampering with the door held them unmoving. Only the senator had notcaught it yet. Slower than they, now he was chugging up to where theyhad stopped, an elephantine amble.
"Well, well, what's holding us up?" he panted irritably.
Cautiously then, Jennings moved toward the open door. And as cautiously,Major Eddy and Professor Stein followed him. O'Noonan hung behind,sensing the caution, but not knowing the reason behind it.
They entered the ship, wary of what might be lurking inside, what hadburned open the door out there in space, what had been able to capturethe ship, cut it off from its contact with controls, stop it in itsheadlong flight out into space, turn it, return it to their controls atprecisely the same point and altitude. Wary, but they entered.
At first glance, nothing seemed disturbed. The bulkhead leading to thepower plant was still whole. But farther down the passage, the doorleading to the control room where the instruments were housed also swungopen. It, too, showed the iridescent purple disintegration of its metalframe.
They hardly recognized the control room. They had known it intimately,had helped to build and fit it. They knew each weld, each nut and bolt.
"The instruments are gone," the professor gasped in awe.
It was true. As they crowded there in the doorway, they saw the gapingholes along the walls where the instruments had been inserted, one byone, each to tell its own story of conditions in space.
The senator pushed himself into the room and looked about him. Even hecould tell the room had been dismantled.
"What kind of sabotage is this?" he exclaimed, and turned in angertoward Jennings. No one answered him. Jennings did not even bother tomeet the accusing eyes.
They walked down the narrow passage between the twisted frames where theinstruments should have been. They came to the spot where the masterintegrator should have stood, the one which should have co-ordinated allthe results of life-sustenance measurements, the one which was to givethem their progress report.
There, too, was a gaping hole--but not without its message. Etched inthe metal frame, in the same iridescent purple glow, were two words. Twoenigmatic words to reverberate throughout the world, burned in by somewatcher--some keeper--some warden.
"_Not yet._"
THE END
* * * * *
Transcriber Notes
This etext was produced from If Worlds of Science Fiction July 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
Typo was corrected on page 110:
Original text: "Son," he said with a ringing thrill in his voice. "Mankind much reach the stars! We must allow ...
Changed text: "Son," he said with a ringing thrill in his voice. "Mankind must reach the stars! We must allow ...