by Bob Shaw
“I think it went very well, sir,” Griffin commented, returning from the adjutant’s office. “They haven’t forgotten about you.”
“Some people have good memories,” Fortune grunted ungraciously. Within the drawer, almost of its own accord, his hand moved along the top rank of chocolate soldiers, methodically snapping their necks,
At six o’clock Fortune rang his home and was answered by an unfamiliar male voice which stated the number of his phone in precise, neutrally accented English.
Suddenly Fortune felt very tired. “I want to speak to Mrs Fortune.”
“Just a moment, colonel,” the voice replied efficiently. There was a cotton-wool silence, like that caused by a hand blocking a telephone’s mouthpiece, then the sound of Christine laughing.
“Hello, darl,” she said. “What is it? I hope you aren’t going to be late for the party.”
“Purely as a matter of interest—who was that?”
“Don’t be silly, darl,” Christine said. “You remember Pavel very well. You’ve met him at lots of functions. He came early to help me with the preparations for the evening.” Fortune remembered. Pavel Efimov was a Ukrainian who ran the International Hostel which had been set up in Reykjavik for the benefit of UNO personnel associated with the Unit. His willingness to use a free afternoon helping with Christine’s party explained why she had been spending so much time at the Hostel over the last three months. Or was it the other way round?
“Ah, yes,” Fortune said. “I’ll be a little late this evening, Christine—I want to go over to Bill Geissler’s place for a while.”
“Do you have to, darl?”
“Yes, Christine. It’s quite important. Tell Peter I’ll be late and not to wait up for me.”
Christine sniffed audibly and hung up without another word. Fortune shrugged and threaded his way out through the offices of the headquarters block. A cold, dark wind slapped aimlessly at him as he walked past the greenly lit hangars and workshops of the Unit. He switched on the heater as soon as he had closed the bubble of his staff copter, relaxing in the gusts of rubber-smelling warmth until the tower cleared him for takeoff. At eight hundred feet he headed south-west across the trembling lights of Hafnarfjordr and followed the coastline for thirty miles before angling down on the familiar lights of Bill Geissler’s works shining in the rolling blackness like a scimitar.
On the ground he walked towards Geissler’s office, noting that the big gun was out of its housing and probing almost vertically into the sky, which meant Geissler Orbital Deliveries was getting ready to put a package into orbit. Geissler was the only real-life genius Fortune had ever known and he looked nothing like the part. He was a stocky little man with ridged black hair and the hard, swarthy face of a Mexican bandit. Three years before he had bought a section of land on the south-west tip of Iceland, moved in with two common law wives and an ex-naval sixteen-inch gun, set up a workshop and since then had supported his menage a trois by placing instrument capsules in orbit. He specialised in polar and near-polar orbits for a number of universities and new governments scattered across the globe.
Geissler was seated at his glass-topped desk making pencil marks on a dark grey punched tape. “Come in, John. I didn’t expect you. What’s the matter? You getting this 1753?”
“I think so, Bill. It’s a one-in-three shot, but I have a feeling about this one.”
“So have I, pal—and I’m never wrong. You’d better clear a space in your backyard for it.” He snorted and pushed the coils of punched tape away. In the workshop beyond the glass wall of the little office an electric welder briefly drenched its surroundings in needles of violent brilliance.
Fortune unbuttoned his coat and sat down. “Have you had time to … ?”
Geissler thrust out his hand like a traffic cop. “What have you forgotten, John?”
“Nothing. Oh, that! What the hell’s the use of my asking you these things when I don’t know if your answer is right?”
“Ask me anyway. You know I like the practice.”
“All right, all right. What is …’ Fortune began picking numbers at random,‘… 973827 times 426458?”
Geissler’s eyes darkened momentarily. “It’s 415,296,314,766. Try another one.”
“Can you get a message to Mars?” Fortune spoke angrily, feeling the Nesster ship drumming down an invisible wire attached to the top of his head.
Geissler looked dubious. “I could, but I hate to think what it would cost. Private research organisations—that includes me, by the way—can buy time on the Cripple Creek dish but they charge about twenty thousand kroner, say five thousand dollars, a minute at the present orbital positions, and if you want a reply the rate would be about twice that. Are you going to do what I think you’re going to do?”
Fortune nodded. “Yes. It can’t wait. I want them to run a check on our five suspects.”
“Well, even if I condense the orbital data to the limit the transmission is bound to take at least three minutes, that’s sixty thousand kroner. The reply won’t take as long, of course, but I think there will be a minimum charge for a Mars-Earth transmission, possibly another twenty thousand.” Geissler’s brown eyes narrowed in almost physical pain—he was a business man as well as a genius. “That’s big money for squirting a few electrons into the sky. If you could wait another month I think I can eliminate four of the suspects.”
“I can’t wait.”
‘But eighty thousand kroner! I know you made plenty out of the Captain Johnny thing, John, but you’re bound to go broke at this rate. All the work you’re getting me to do, and now this Mars transmission, should be financed by UNO money. I’m going to make some coffee. Think it over.”
Waiting for the coffee, Fortune thought it over. He remembered how he had felt when the theory had first been propounded that the Nesster caravan was homing on Earth by means of signals from a scout satellite. It was easy to visualise the great train of fully automatic ships nearing the Solar System, the leader dispatching an advance probe into orbit around each planet, and the probe circling Earth suddenly emitting the signal which meant, yes—this world will support life. It was exactly what had always been done by tramps who put chalk marks on the gate posts of friendly houses. So, all that was necessary was to rub out this particular chalk mark with an orbital interceptor and the tramps would stop coming to the door.
High-level action had been taken to check the theory, but there were snags—not the least of which was the fact that in 1983 the number of man-made objects tumbling round the Earth was in the region of fifty thousand. Only a fraction of these were useful satellites, the bulk being made up of bits and pieces of the vehicles which had placed them in orbit. Some of the more complicated experiments had been known to release as many as fifty sections of rocket motor casing and ejection mechanisms in one mission, which was why even by the later Sixties the number had risen well past the one thousand mark.
The profusion of sky litter had made it impossible simply to pin-point an alien satellite, so a series of capsules were thrown into distant, minutely precessive orbits to pick up possible transmissions to the Nessters. They had been given the inevitable tag, in this case PULP—for Precessive Unmanned Listening Posts. When these drew a complete blank the scout satellite theory was officially discarded and the main research effort put back into the, as yet unsuccessful, efforts to devise a deep space interceptor which could beat the meteor screens surrounding the Nesster ships.
Fortune’s pre-Army years in the unfashionable field of sub-millimetre tight beam radiation had given him a few private doubts about the efficacy of Project PULP, but there was no arguing with fifty thousand orbiting pieces of scrap metal. Then one night he had met Geissler, the prodigy, in a bar in Reykjavik….
The concept of instinctive mathematics had been new to Fortune, but according to Geissler everybody had the facility to some extent. It showed up in good gamblers as ‘luck’; it showed up in even the most mediocre chess player, who could defeat any co
mputer ever conceived because the machine would have had to spend its time methodically checking out whole regions of moves which are perfectly logical but which the man instinctively knows are not good enough. Geissler claimed the difference between him and anybody else was purely one of degree, but he had guaranteed that with access to the Unit’s computing equipment he could find the Nesster satellite—if it existed—in a year.
And Fortune had hired him on the spot.
“Sorry there’s nothing to eat,” Geissler said, setting the coffee on his desk. “Unless you want to come over to the house and have dinner with us. Jenny and Avis would be glad of an extra man to even up the score.”
“Have one of these.” Fortune pulled out three Captain Johnny bars with sagging heads held in place by foil only.
“No thanks. Why do you eat those things all the time, John? All that weight you carry around….”
“Outside every thin man,” Fortune replied, munching comfortably, ‘there’s a fat man trying to get in. Now about this signal to Mars. We don’t need to explain what’s happening, do we? The Army objects strongly to Unit commanders who go in to research.”
“No, that part is all right. If the scout satellite theory is correct we can make two assumptions—firstly, one of our five suspects is of Nesster origin; secondly, every planet in the Solar System will have an identical satellite; in a predictable orbit corresponding to one of our five. I can send five sets of orbital elements to the Mars observatory and legitimately have them checked out—I could easily be doing some work on one of the dozens of old Mars probes.”
“Will it take long?”
“No reason why it should. The scientific colony has been established for over a year now so they might even have the information on file. No it won’t take long. I’ll call you.”
Fortune drained his coffee and stood up, buttoning his overcoat. “Sorry I can’t stay for dinner. Christine’s having one of her parties.” He laughed briefly. “I think this is Nietzche’s birthday.”
They stood for a moment at the door watching three technicians in parkas wheel a gleaming miniature rocket out of the workshop towards the gun which would blast it up into near-vacuum before its motor was ignited.
“That’s the third-cis-lunar shot this year for the University of Nicaragua,” Geissler said with satisfaction. “It’s costing them plenty too—even with off-the-shelf vehicles. I’d forgotten about Christine and Nietzche, John. It’s funny, isn’t it? You must have been a reasonable facsimile; of a superman when she married you.”
Fortune remembered, too late, that Geissler’s intuitive faculty was not merely some kind of mathematical abstraction. He slammed the smaller man’s back with a vague idea of short-circuiting the mental contact. “You don’t know what you’ve just said, Bill.”
He walked back to his staff copter, aware that more time had passed and the rendezvous with Nesster ship 1753 was closer. A sudden spasm of hunger made him grope for a chocolate bar, but his pocket was empty and the sense of disappointment was so keen that Fortune became alarmed. Let’s get this thing out into the open, he planned. My subconscious mind reasons: children eat candy, so if I eat candy I’ll be a child, and if I’m a child the Nesster problem doesn’t exist. However, my conscious mind isn’t so stupid—it knows I can’t grow down towards babyhood, so I’m going to snap out of it and be a normal adult again. That’s it settled then. I feel better already….
The only trouble was that he was still hungry and in the darkness the staff copter’s bulbous, glassy head and tapering tail suddenly resembled the shape of the primordial tadpole. Fortune accepted that he could not become a helpless, blameless baby again and yet he was strangely satisfied at the prospect of being carried upwards into the receptive convexities of the clouds.
The house was glowing like a Chinese lantern. Fortune walked up through the swarmed cars in his driveway, noticing that one of them had knocked a miniature rowan tree askew. It looked as though Christine’s party would be a success.
Using his key he got into the lobby without being noticed, went upstairs and, grunting with the effort, quickly changed out of his uniform into slacks, open-necked silk shirt and sweater. In his son’s bedroom he tiptoed around putting toys away then crouched beside the bed for a moment, looking closely into the sleeping three-year-old face with a kind of warm astonishment.
There were about twenty people having drinks in the orange-lit living room, filling the place with the aggressive yet slightly shamefaced atmosphere of a party in its early stages. His wife and Pavel Efimov were talking seriously in a corner. Christine Fortune was a tall brunette with a hard, snaky body and a knack of looking, even when fully dressed, as though she was not wearing enough clothes. She brought Fortune a drink.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said, accepting the misty glass.
Christine glanced at his casuals with traces of anger—as far as she was concerned the uniform was just about all that remained of him.
“I see you’ve changed, darl. I didn’t hear you go upstairs.”
“I’ve-still got my ident disc on—if that will help.”
“Don’t try to be funny, darl,” she replied. “You haven’t got the equipment. Now come and meet our guests.” Fortune ambled softly round the room with her, being introduced. The people were much the same as always attended Christine’s little gatherings; writers who never wrote, artists who never painted, unknown celebrities. Most of them were properly impressed at meeting Captain Johnny in the flesh and he felt a responsive change in Christine. She hugged his left arm with both of hers, proudly possessive, and in spite of everything he enjoyed the contact. When they had completed the circuit he stopped by the portable bar and poured another drink.
“Tell me,” he said quietly, ‘is there anybody here, apart from ourselves, who was born on this side of the Curtain?”
Christine laughed delightedly. “Come up to date, van Winkle. The cold war has been over for years. That’s one thing we have to thank the Nessters for—people just don’t think that way any more. How passé can one be?”
Fortune frowned into his glass, feeling himself forced into heavy dourness by her amusement. “Things don’t change so easily. If the landings were to stop tomorrow most of this lot would hop the first East-bound jet.” He took a long drink, staring over the rim at Efimov who was approaching through the orange twilight of the room.
“Good evening, colonel,” Efimov said, positioning himself close to Christine. He was as tall as Fortune, but with the flat, rangy body of a tennis champion.
“Oh, there you are, Pavel,” Christine said, leaning into him slightly. “Johnny’s worried in case I’m going to get him investigated,”
Efimov put an arm round her waist and smiled easily, challengingly. “Surely not! One has only to look at the colonel to see he is not the sort of man to become involved with the cloak and dagger.”
Fortune felt his heart begin a slow, peaceful pounding which
stirred the hair on his temples. Christine had had two previous boyfriends, both of whom had been almost pathetically grateful for Fortune’s disinterest, but this man was of a different type. I Perhaps Christine had deliberately chosen him for that reason.
“Quite right,” Fortune replied calmly, aware of Christine’s eyes. “I never thought much of the dagger as a weapon. If I had to choose from a medieval armoury I think I’d go for something like a mace.”
“Too crude and unwieldy,” Efimov commented predictably. “I’d prefer a …
‘… rapier,” Fortune finished for him. “Yes, I thought you would—it has such connotations of romance. What do you think, Christine? How would Air. Efimov look in a curly wig and wading boots?” He laughed unpleasantly, wondering why he was taking the trouble. Insulting humans was hardly likely to be regarded by Christine as an acceptable substitute for the heroic slaughtering of poison breathing monsters from another world.
Efimov’s face hardened and he changed the subject. “Did you I
hear t
he news about today’s landing, colonel? The ship came down in Loch Ness in Scotland, only a few miles from the position of the original landing. We had another complete victory, of course, but it was quite a coincidence, don’t you think?”
Fortune nodded, suddenly realising it had been over nine hours since his last proper meal. He looked over the array of canapes and impaled savouries on the side table then went in to the comparative silence of the kitchen and made coffee and ham sandwiches. When the coffee was ready he ignored the piles of disposable tableware in the cupboard and lifted his old-fashioned delph cup from its hook, only to have it deposit a furtive little secretion of cold water in his hand. Christine refused to wash or dry the delph properly when perfectly good throw-away dishes were available. Muttering furiously, Fortune cleaned the cup, sat down to eat then decided to check his bank account to see what the Mars transmission would do to it.