Spaceman's Luck and Other Stories

by George O. Smith

  “Now,” continued Lindsay, “that one went off within ten to twenty minutes after it landed. The immobilization period for that area is but a couple of days at best. If not touched, the fuse would tick away for weeks while the area stands idle. But not with this new, high-speed job that is also loaded with mercurite. Something—

  “Where was this new job?” he asked, changing the subject abruptly.

  “Headed for the Gary steel mills,” came Haynes’ answer.

  “I’m putting in a call for my crew,” said Lindsay. “We’ll all meet in Chicago-South. There’s something—” He shook the thought away with a violent shake of his head. “We’ll find out in Gary.”

  He went to the general call phone and cut a tape, fed the end into the automatic transmitter, and checked to see that the general call was being transmitted. He wondered. briefly, just which of them would get to Gary first.

  When the decontamination headquarters ship arrived, it was second. The little private strato-speedster that was Jack Grant’s own pride and joy was sitting in the main landing field of the Gary port when Lindsay arrived. Lindsay sort of expected that, for Grant’s little high-powered job placed the owner no more than a couple of hours from any place on Terra, most of which was spent in going up and down through the thicker atmosphere near the surface.

  They landed, and the air lock clanged open. Moments later Jack Grant entered the scanning room with his usual whirlwind manner.

  “What’s cooking, Ralph?” he greeted, extending an eager hand. His free arm he swept around Jenna, giving her a vigorous hug and a kiss on the forehead. “Jenna, I swear you’re more beautiful by the day. Please?”

  “Please what?” she countered, freeing herself and backing off a bit.

  “Please poison him and marry me?”

  “Nope,” she said with finality. “And I won’t stand to see him . . . ah . . . removed, as you indelicately put it.”

  “Ralph, you wouldn’t mind getting bumped off for your wife’s happiness, would you?”

  Lindsay usually lived through Grant’s brash manner; made a mental apology for the man because he himself did not understand the kind of mind that saw little serious in life. And usually Grant’s disregard of the serious side of life gave all a moral uplift, a chance to disregard with Grant all of the problems that hack and tear. But Lindsay had just seen Jim Roberts go up in a sun-hot inferno, and he was slightly side with shock. Now, Grant’s blithe manner seemed banal, crude; insufficiently sensitive. If Grant had no feelings, he should at least consider the sensitivity of others. Lindsay tried to cheer himself, and managed at best a weak, sickly grin that was lost oil Grant completely. Lindsay might have made some biting remark, but he noted with some wonder that Jenna was not bitterly unhappy in the badinage. Jenna, he knew, could and would clutch hysterically at any light point in a crisis to gain just a bit of stability. Lindsay himself was inclined to cling doggedly to a situation, deviating not one bit, until it was finished satisfactorily. Then he would let down.

  So noting Jenna’s whimsical smile, he merely said, and it was with an effort: “Think it would make her happy?”

  Grant laughed and hugged Jenna quickly and said: “Look, you don’t mean she’s actually happy—?”

  Jenna nodded brightly, made a full turn to unwind Grant’s arm from her waist and pirouetted over to her husband. That stopped Grant, and he smiled cheerfully and tried to look downcast.

  “Love, unrequited,” he sang in an off-tone basso, the opening bars of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “ ‘Love unrequited robs me of my rest.’ ” Then he grinned. “Love unrequited and my boss and his best wife who haul me out of a sound and peaceful sleep to go out and pin a baby-blue ribbon on a Martian robomb. O.K., fellers, I’ll pull its teeth and then, Jenna, may we continue where you left me off?”

  “Been watching it?” asked Lindsay.

  Grant nodded. “I’ve been here since it started in. The mills are clean, the force fields are up, and the temperature of the thing is low enough to handle by now. I’m ready.”

  “We’re waiting,” said Lindsay.

  “Waiting?”

  “For the rest of the crew, you know. This is serious.”

  “Well, it is in my district,” laughed Grant. “Let the rest assemble. By the time they get here I’ll have the fuse out and in one hand. Probably semi-disassembled.”

  “Jim Roberts was a good man,” warned Lindsay.

  “He was that.”

  “You’re waiting.”

  “Why?”

  “Because there seems to be more to this than meets the eye.”

  The door opened in time for the entering men to hear Lindsay’s last words. Garrard and Harris came in quietly, sat down, and started to smoke. Garrard puffed his pipe with calm indifference, and Harris smoked furiously on a cigarette that he puffed into a long, hot ember that almost burned his lips. Garrard spoke first.

  “More than meets the eye, huh?”

  Harris nodded, but his mind seemed elsewhere. “Mutants?” he said, giving the inert robomb out there a personality. Harris was pitting himself against a personality when he went to do his job. He had no real hatred for the Martians who engineered them, but he felt and acted as though he were pitting his brain against a wholly alien, inimical sentience.

  Lindsay caught his thought, and though Harris was half solemn, the allegory fitted. For what are engineering improvements but a mechanical mutant?

  Garrard smiled, and shrugged. “I say let’s find out who is more ingenious,” he said. “And let’s do it quick. Grant, are the mills running on the servos?”

  “Uh-huh, but it isn’t good enough. There ought to be a human hand at the place instead of remote controls. I agree, let’s get going before something happens to that load of steel out there. Stalling production is the only reason for robombing in the first place. Let’s lick that fuse before they find out how much mercurite to put in in order to blast the force fields right out of the planet’s crust,” said Grant. “Go on with your lecture,” he told Lindsay.

  “Well, first-off, it’s a new, highspeed job. It’s also loaded with mercurite. They’ve, as usual, packed everything into their Sunday Punch. Their cocksuredness makes me certain that they think this fuse unremovable.”

  Grant turned to Jenna. “Jenna, you’re of Martian stock, part way, anyway. Have any ideas?”

  “Only to agree with Ralph. They wouldn’t pack a robomb with mercurite if they thought for one second that it could be inerted. That would present Terra with a large volume of very valuable material. They have succeeded in one item, they’ve used a new high velocity drive in it. If they weren’t certain of the ability of the high speed drive to escape all detector-driven gear, they wouldn’t use mercurite. Mars is not profligate, Jack. Tossing away a robomb load of mercurite on a space-premature is not economically sensible. When they use mercurite, it must be nearly one hundred per cent effective.”

  “Um . . . interesting thought,” laughed Grant.

  “Like to try it out,” said Garrard. “If they feel that certain, I’d like to know which of us is suitable to survive.”

  Harris blinked. He flipped the cigarette into the receptacle. “Let me at the stinking thing,” he said in a flat voice.

  “Wait for Lacy,” said Lindsay.

  “Lacy may be late,” said Grant. It was one of the very few times that Jack Grant sounded solemn. He was almost pityingly solemn, and it made Lindsay wish for his return to the thick-skinned attitude, for Grant sounding solemn was strictly out of character. “He may be late,” insisted Grant, “because he hates to come here.”

  “He won’t deny a general alarm,” said Lindsay.

  “No, he will not. But I say let’s not hurt the guy more than we have to. I say let’s go out and pull that thing’s teeth and save Lacy the hurt of seeing you and Jenna together.”

  Lindsay frowned. He wouldn’t say it, but Jenna did. “Jack,” she said softly, “is that a soft spot that makes you want to keep Tom Lacy from h
urt, or are you just giving arguments to get out there and try your skill against that bomb?”

  “A little of both,” said Grant cheerfully. “Plus the fact that he makes me uncomfortable, somehow. It always makes me uncomfortable to see any man so tied up in his own past emotions that he cannot see clearly.”

  “Skip it,” said Lindsay firmly. “I admit that he is too bound up in the past, but you, Grant, could stand a little more of his sincerity of emotion just as he could stand less.”

  Harris had been quite alert, and broke in at this point. “All due respects, Grant, but you run this as though you were playing a game. I know why Lacy is that way. His game was for the reward, yours is for the game’s sake. He saw everything he’d spent his life for go up in a flaming volcano. Years of living, of loving, of building; puffed out in a millionth of a second. Puffed out, obliterated, disintegrated beyond all recognition. Grant, have you ever loved anything, deeply?”

  Grant nodded. “All right, fellows, I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I don’t understand Lacy better. I’ve loved, but I’ve never let it be my life. For when I’ve lost, there has always been something—or someone—else. Make off like my chips weren’t in this deal, will you?”

  “Still a game, Grant?” laughed Garrard. “A game where every throw of the dice is forecast is no game.”

  “What am I?” chuckled Jack Grant. “Just the baaaaad boy of the decontamination squadron? Sure it’s a game—the whole thing is a game. And whether you’re playing your brother for marbles or playing the devil for fame, you play to win.”

  “I say—” started Garrard.

  Grant out-talked him. “I say that I am the master of my fate. And if anybody calls me Invictus Grant I shall cut his throat. Or her throat,” he added, turning to Jenna with a grin.

  The door opened again and Lacy entered. “Quite a conference,” he said. “Well, Ralph, where is it and what’s to be done?”

  Lindsay brought him up to date. Then they ran off the recording of Jim Roberts’ unhappy attempt.

  “You may just be overcautious,” said Lacy when the recording had finished. “It may have been a circumstance.”

  “Unlikely. The thing is . . . has too many facets. Jenna herself claims that a new item was expectable. Haynes had his statisticians at work, and their findings were that the quantity of late has been diminishing, which from past experience means that something new is due.”

  Jack Grant looked at Lindsay. “You don’t suppose they’re after the decontamination squadron?”

  “If they were gunning for us,” said Harris in a voice that shook with hatred, “they’d do it this way!” Then he settled back again. “But would they waste mercurite on us?”

  “As a means of keeping production open, we’re worth mercurite,” responded Lindsay. “And it might take something more than the ordinary to go out and eliminate men who have made a business of defusing the things. Assassination is almost impossible.

  “And,” he said reflectively, “we may be barking up the wrong tree. All I know is that we’ve a brand new type, and as usual I’ve called the entire group in to get the initial factors all complete. Are we a bunch of persecution-complexes that we think they’re after us?”

  “No,” grinned Jack Grant, “but remind me to tell that idea to Ordnance. Eliminating the decontamination squadron is like poisoning a city by shutting off its sewage system, perhaps, but it is effective!”

  “We’ll forget the personal angle until we get this one solved,” said Ralph Lindsay.

  “Well, let’s go,” said Grant eagerly.

  “We’ll take this easily,” objected Lindsay.

  “No gambling instinct?” queried Grant with an amused smile.

  “That’s why he’s boss,” said Garrard dryly. “Lindsay has neither an ax to grind nor an ego to build up."

  “Huh?” asked Grant.

  “Admitted . . . and I’m sorry, Tom,” said Garrard to Lacy, “that Lacy has his ax to grind. You, Jack, apparently get an egotistical lift out of this ‘game.’ Lindsay has neither.”

  “O.K., boss man,” smiled Grant. “What do we do?”

  “All the radiation meters we can pack into the battle buggy. Also we set up a radiating system near it. Then come back and we’ll run through the spectrum to see. Now—”

  “It’s still in my district,” reminded Grant.

  “You’re overeager,” objected Garrard.

  “And you’re too complacent,” objected Harris.

  “Trouble with you,” said Lacy, “is that you get too deep-set in pitting your skill against a mechanical puzzle and forget to tell us the moves.”

  Lindsay smiled sourly. “To finish this round robin, may I tell you your faults, Tom? You are inclined to make a false move. Not consciously, but there have been a few times when you came out by the skin of your teeth, having pathologically missed a fine point, and having caught it consciously.”

  Grant reached in a back pocket and rolled a pair of dice on the floor. “Roll for it?” he asked hopefully.

  “Never touch dice,” objected Harris.

  Grant reached inside his jacket and fanned a deck of cards. “Cut?”

  “Games,” said Garrard sourly. “Games of chance in a preordained world—Bah!”

  Jenna hit the table with her small fist. “Stop it, all of you! A finer collection of neurotics I’ve never seen collected under one roof before. And not one of you dare suggest that Ralph pick a man. Haynes would be wild if he knew that Ralph had been put into a psychological hole by being forced to send any man into . . . into . . . into that.” Deigning to name the menace was itself a psychic block, but Jenna did not care. Instead of talking further, she reached for the deck of cards. “The thirteenth card,” she said, starting to deal them off, “One, two, three,” placing them face up before her. “Lacy, hearts; Harris, spades; Grant, diamonds, and Garrard, clubs.—Ten, eleven, twelve, and thirteen!”

  The ace of spades.

  Harris smiled, got up cheerfully, and went to get his trappings ready. Garrard grunted. “Games of chance,” he sneered. “In a—”

  Grant jumped up. “Look, Ed,” he snarled. “In this completely preordained world of yours, how can an inhabitant know the will of the Gods of No-chance? What criterion would you have used to select Harris, huh? So if nothing else, the laws of chance do that much, to at the very least tell us who the Gods select. And so long as we ourselves do not know the answer, who cares if it is preordained?” Having delivered this, Grant looked at Jenna. “Bright girl,” he said. “An instrument, if you admit Ed’s plan, of the Gods.”

  Jenna smiled. “You mean ‘whom the Gods'—select,” she corrected blithely.

  Grant hauled out a flask, unscrewed a one-ounce cap and poured it full. “Here,” he snapped, practically forcing it into her mouth.

  Jenna spluttered. “Thanks,” she said, calming. "I know how Lindsay feels, and it is not up to him to tell us. But I don’t care whether it is predestiny or not, and whether we’re all nongamblers or goody-goody boys. But we’ll use this set of cards for any future guesswork. See? And, we’ll cut, ourselves. See? We’ll not make the mistake of forcing Jenna or Ralph into dealing out a poisoned arrow.”

  “I wish people would stop worrying about my peace of mind,” growled Lindsay. “I admit all that’s been said. I am not to undergo any personal emotional strain. But being psychologically packed in cotton and linseed oil isn’t good for me either.”

  “And all over one problematical bomb,” smiled Jenna. “Why don’t we wait. If the first one was coincidence, certainly the rest, after solution, will make us all feel like overwrought schoolgirls.”

  Harris returned at this point. “Ready,” he said with a smile. His eyes were bright, and he seemed eager. There was an exultation about Harris, a bearing that might have been sheer theatrical effort, yet it seemed as though he were going out to do personal battle with his own personal devil.

  Lindsay nodded briefly. “Give us every single smidgen of information. If
you scrape your feet, tell us. Understand?”

  “I get it. O.K., there’s been enough time wasted. S’long.”

  His voice came clearly, and in the dawning light, the automatic television cameras adjusted the exposure as the dawn came brighter by the moment. The battle wagon headed out across the rough ground where the teeming city of Gary had lived a hundred years ago. A mile or two beyond, the battle wagon entered the parking area, now cleared of its horde of parked ’copters by the fleeing personnel.

  The ship lifted and retreated a few miles, finding level enough ground to continue observation, and Harris went on and on.

  “I’m stopping,” he said, and it was faithfully recorded. “I’m about a hundred feet from the crater, setting up detectors and radiators. Shall I drive back or will you come in and pick me up? Seems to be safe enough. He hasn’t gone off yet.”

  “We’ll pick you up but quick. Ready?”

  “Ready. Everything’s set on the servos.”

  “O.K.”

  They met, immediately whisked into the sky and back to more than a safe distance. Then they went to work, searching etheric space and subetheric space for radiations. They hurled megawatt pulses of radio energy and subradio energy at the ticking thing. They thundered at it with audio, covering all known manner of vibration from a few cycles per minute of varying pressure to several megacycles of sheer air-wave. They mixed radio and audio, modulated the radio with the audio and hurled both continuous waves and pulsed waves, and mixed complex combinations of both. Then they modulated the subradio with radio, which was modulated with audio and they bombarded it with that. Rejecting the radiation bands entirely, they went after it, exploring the quasi-optical region just below the infrared in the same complete manner. They fired at it constantly, climbing up into the heat waves, up into visible light and out into the ultraviolet. They hurled Brentz rays, Roentgen rays, and hard X. They tuned up the betatron and lambasted it with the most brittle of hard X rays. They hurled explosive charges at it, to shock it. Then they sent drone fliers, radio controlled, and waved reflecting masses at it gently and harshly by flying the drones back and forth above it.