Perfect Control

by Richard Stockham

  Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

  Transcriber's Note:

  This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction January 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

  PERFECT CONTROL

  By RICHARD STOCKHAM

  Illustrated by MEL HUNTER

  Why can't you go home again after years in space? There had to be an answer ... could he find it in time, though?

  * * * * *

  Sitting at his desk, Colonel Halter brought the images on thetelescreen into focus. Four booster tugs were fastening, likesky-barnacles, onto the hull of the ancient derelict, _Alpha_.

  He watched as they swung her around, stern down, and sank with herthrough the blackness, toward the bluish-white, moon-lighted arc ofEarth a thousand miles below.

  He pressed a button. The image of tugs and hull faded and the controlroom of the old ship swam onto the screen.

  Colonel Halter saw the crew, sitting in a half circle, before thecontrol panel.

  The telescreen in the control room of old _Alpha_ was yet dark. Thefaces watching it held no care lines or laugh lines, only a vagueexpression of kindness. They could be faces of wax or those of peopledying pleasantly.

  Colonel Halter shook his head. Brilliant--the finest space people inthe field seventy-five years back--and now he was to get them to comeout of that old hull. God almighty, how could you pull people out ofan environment they were perfectly adjusted to? Logic? Force? Reason?Humoring? How could you know?

  Talk to them, he told himself. He dreaded it, but the problem had tobe faced.

  He flipped a switch on his desk; saw light jump into their screen andhis own face take shape there; saw their faces on his own screen, setnow, like the faces of stone idols.

  He turned another dial. The picture swung around so that he waslooking into their eyes and they into his.

  Halter said, "Captain McClelland?"

  One of the old men nodded. "Yes."

  McClelland was clean-shaven. His uniform, treated againstdeterioration, was immaculate, but his body showed frail and bonythrough it. His face was long and hollow-cheeked, the eyes deep-setand bright. The head was like a skull, the nose an eagle's beak.

  "I'm Colonel Halter. I'm a psychotherapist."

  * * * * *

  None of them answered. There was only the faint thrumming of therockets lowering the old ship to Earth.

  "Let me be sure I have your identities right," went on Colonel Halter.

  He then looked at the man on the captain's right. "You, I believe, areLieutenant James Brady."

  Brady nodded, his pale, eroded face expressionless.

  Colonel Halter saw the neat black uniform, identical with thecaptain's; saw the cropped gray hair and meticulously trimmed goatee.

  "And you," he said to the woman sitting beside the lieutenant, "areDr. Anna Mueller."

  The same nod and thin, expressionless face. The same paleness. Fadedhazel eyes; hair white and trimmed close to her head; body emaciated.

  "Daniel Carlyle, astrogator."

  The nod.

  Like the doctor's brother, thought Colonel Halter, and yet like thelieutenant with his cropped hair and with an identical goatee.

  "Caroline Gordon, dietician and televisor. John Crowley, rocketman."

  Each nodded, expressionless, their faces like white, weathered statuesin a desert.

  Colonel Halter turned to the captain. The rocket thrum of the tugs hadbecome a roar as the gravity pulled against the antique hull.

  "We understand," said Colonel Halter, "that you demand repairs foryour ship and fuel enough to take you back into deep space."

  "That is right." The voice was low, slightly harsh.

  "You're all close to a hundred years old. You'd die out there. Here,with medical aid, you'd easily live to a hundred and twenty-five."

  Dr. Anna Mueller's head moved slightly. "We're aware of that,Colonel."

  "It'd be pointless," said the colonel, "and a shameful waste. You'restill the only crew that ever made it out beyond the Solar System.You've kept records of your personal experience, how you survived.They're valuable."

  Dr. Mueller caught her breath. "Our adjustment to space is our privateconcern. I don't think you could understand."

  "Maybe not, but we could try. To _us_, of course, complete adjustmentis a living death."

  "To us, it was a matter of staying alive."

  Halter turned aside from disagreement, searching for common ground."You'd be protected here, you know. You deserve that."

  "Who'd protect us from you?" asked the captain. "Life in the SolarSystem is destructive."

  * * * * *

  Brady, the lieutenant, leaned forward. "You've failed--all through thewhole System."

  "We haven't finished living in it," said Halter. "Who can pin a labelon us of success or failure?"

  Miss Gordon, dietician and televisor, said quietly, "There are somerecords I'd like to show you. We compiled them while the _Alpha_ wasdrifting back into the System."

  Halter watched the frail arm reach out and turn a dial.

  A point of light grew on the screen in Colonel Halter's office.

  "Pluto," said her quiet voice.

  Halter watched the lightspot focus on a mountain of ice. Men in suitsof steel were crawling up its frozen side. Other men on the mountain'stop were sighting guns. The men below were sighting guns. Yellow firespurted from the top and the sides of the mountain, blending into alake of fire. There was a great hissing and a rushing torrent ofboiling water and rolling, twisting steel-clad bodies. The mountain ofice melted like a lump of lard in a hot frying pan. Only the steelbodies glinted, motionless, in the pale wash of sunlight.

  Halter watched the brightness die and another lightspot grow one moon.The focus shifted in close to a fleet of shining silver ships.

  Then another fleet dropped from close above, hanging still, and therewere blinding flashes engulfing each ship below, one after the other,until there were only the shining ships above, climbing into the duskglow of the Sun.

  The glowing circle of bright-ringed Saturn was already rushing towardColonel Halter from far back in the depth of screen. The focus shiftedonto the planet's glaring surface. Men in the uniform of Earthsoldiers were rushing out of transparent shell houses and staring inpanic as the missiles plummeted through the shells and erupted cloudsof steam which spouted up from mile-deep craters and there was nothingbut the steam and the holes and the white cold.

  Jupiter made a hole in the blackness, with eleven tiny holes scatteredall around her, like droplets of fire. Ships streaked up, one for eachdroplet, circling each, spraying fire, until each droplet flared likea tiny sun.

  Yellow Mars, holding closely its two speedy rocks of moons, spun intothe screen.

  A straggling line of men moved across a desert that whipped them withsheets of yellow dust. A single ship dived from out of the Sun,swooped along the line, licking it with the tongue of flame thatstreaked behind. As the ship flashed beyond the horizon, a line ofsmoking rag bundles lay still upon the yellow sand.

  * * * * *

  Darkness closed in upon the television screen in Colonel Halter'soffice. In the long moment of silence that followed, he thought, _Oh,God, after this awful picture, how can I convince them to come out ofthe womb of that ship and live again? What reason can I give?_

  Immobilizing his face, he saw the half circle of the six old peopleagain in the control
room of the old, old ship.

  He said, "You'll set down in approximately twenty minutes."

  "Yes," agreed the captain, "from where we jumped into spaceseventy-five years ago. The people of Earth were talking about theirproblems, not killing each other about them. There was hope. We feltthat by the time we'd finished our mission and come back from thatother solar system, where a healthy colony could be born, most ofthose problems would be solved." A pause. "But now there's thisterrible killing all through the System. We won't face it."

  The roaring of the rockets now as they plunged flame against theconcrete slab of the landing field. The bug bodies of the tugs gentlyeasing old _Alpha_ to Earth.

  Colonel Halter was saying, "How about this other solar system? Youhaven't let us know whether or not you reached it."

  "We saw it." There was a