Spaceman's Luck and Other Stories

by George O. Smith

  After three hours of this—and three more incoming robombs of the same type had been reported, they gave up.

  “They’re piling up,” grunted Lindsay.

  “Wish we could move it,” said Grant.

  “You always wish that. You tell us how to grapple with three hundred tons of glass-slick, super-hard ovoid with a high diamagnetic surface and a built-in radiation shield. Moving them is the easiest answer—and the one initially avoided.”

  Harris blinked. “Nothing else?”

  “There’s nothing left but to go out and pull its teeth,” said Lindsay. “Nothing we know can detonate the thing.”

  Harris smiled knowingly. “Naturally,” he said. “Their point in life is to immobilize Terra. They must not go off until they are ready. They’re willing to wait. They found out we could detonate them and then return to work in a couple of hours with radiation shields. So they now get a fuse that cannot be extracted and cannot be detonated until they want it to. Give ’em one chance to prove one effective, and all Terra will be immobilized by them, and they’ll drop everywhere. Also, maintaining the force fields takes a lot of valuable power. And if we shut off the fields, it might go up and then we’d lose the whole place.”

  “How I wish we could take pictures.”

  “Photographs?” asked Grant, smiling. “I saw one of them once. A family heirloom. Too bad, of course. But what do you expect when the whole world is living in a sort of bath of neutrons, and silver itself becomes slightly radioactive? After all, photography used to use a silver compound of some sort if my physical history is right.”

  “Silver bromide,” said Lindsay slowly. “Look, Harris,” he said, his interest showing where his mind was really working, “go out there and make a few sketches. Then come back without touching the thing. “Understand?”

  “Right.”

  “I am approaching the thing,” he said from the field of action again. “I’m about two hundred feet from it. Working now with the projection box, sketching on the ground glass. This is a fairly standard model of robomb, of course. They load ’em with anything they think useful after making them at another plant, just as we do. The fuse—too bad they can’t bury it inside. But it must be set, or at least available to the makers. If they should improve on it, it would be serious business to de-load these things to get to a buried fuse. Yep, there he is, right up on top as usual. Fuse-making has reached a fine art, fellows. Think of a gadget made to work at will or by preset, and still capable of taking the landing wallop they get. Well, they used to make fuses to stand twenty thousand times gravity for use in artillery. But this . . . well, Ralph, I’ve about got it sketched. Looks standard. Except for a couple of Martian ideographs on it. Jenna, what’s a sort of sidewise Omicron; three concentric, squashed circles; and a tick-tack-toe mark?”

  “Martian for Mark Six Hundred Fifty, Modification Zero,” answered the girl.

  “Some language when you can cram that into three characters.”

  “Well, I’m through. Ralph, so far as I’m concerned, this drawing will serve no purpose. Use that one of the standard model and have Jenna make the right classification marks across the fuse top. That’s a better drawing anyway. I’m going on out and defu—”

  The flash blinded, even through the almost-black glasses. It was warm, through the leaded glass windows. The eventual roar and the grinding hailstorm of sand and stone and sintered glass tore at the ship. The counters rattled madly and fell behind the driving mechanism with a grinding rattle. A rocketing mushroom of smoke drove toward the stratosphere, cooling down to mere incandescence as it went.

  Miles away a production official watched the meters on his servo panel. They were stable. The buildings held. With the lighter radioactinic shields, work could be resumed in twenty-four hours. He started to make plans, calling his men happily. The bomb was no longer a menace, and the mills could get back to work.

  “Harris,” said Garrard solemnly. “So shall it be! Well, may he rest, now. Hatred such as his—an obsession against an inanimate object. I—”

  “Shut up,” said Lacy quietly. “You’re babbling.”

  “Well,” said Grant in his hard voice, “we can detonate ’em if we can’t defuse ’em. Only it’s hard on the personnel!”

  Lacy looked up and spoke quietly, though his face was bitter. “Jack Grant, you have all the sensitivity and feelings of a pig!”

  “Why . . . you—”

  Lindsay leaped forward, hoping to get between them. Jenna went forward instinctively, putting up a small hand. Garrard looked at them reflectively, half aware of the incident and half convinced that if they were to fight, they would regardless of any act of man.

  It was the strident ringing of the telephone that stopped them in their tracks; staying Grant’s fist in mid swing.

  Jenna breathed out in a husky sound.

  “Who was that at Gary?” asked General Haynes.

  “We lost Harris.”

  “Same as before?”

  Lindsay nodded glumly, forgetting that Haynes couldn’t see him. Then he added: “Didn’t even get close.”

  “What in thunder have they got?” asked Haynes. It was an hypothetical question, the general did not expect an answer. He added, after a moment of thought: “You’ve tried everything?”

  “Not everything. So far as I’ve been able to tell, the things will sit there until we go after ’em. They’ll foul up production areas until we go after ’em, and then when we’re all gone—what then?”

  “Lindsay! Take hold, man. You’re . . . you’re letting it get you.”

  Lindsay nodded again. “I admit it. Oh, I’ll be all right.”

  “Well, keep it up—trying I mean. We’re tinkering with the spotters and predictors and we hope to get ’em up to the point where they’ll act on those lightning fast jobs.”

  “We’ll be getting to Old London,” said Lindsay. “That’s next. Good thing they dispersed cities a century ago, even granting the wall shield.”

  “Good luck, Lindsay. And when you’ve covered all the mechanico-electrical angles, look for other things.”

  He hung up, but Lindsay pondered the last remark. What did he mean?

  The ship was on its way to Old London before Lindsay called for a talk-fest.

  “We don’t know anything about these things excepting that they go off when we approach ’em,” said Lindsay. “Has anybody any ideas?”

  “Only mine,” grunted Jack Grant with a half-smile. “Something triggers ’em off whenever we come close.”

  “Couple of hundred feet,” growled Lacy, “isn’t close enough to permit operation of any detector capable of registering the human body without some sort of radiation output.”

  “Not direct detection,” agreed Lindsay, facing Grant again.

  Grant nodded. Then Garrard said: “I’ve an idea. But I’m mentioning it to no one.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t want to tip my hand.”

  “Thought you weren’t a gambler,” jeered Grant.

  “I’m not. I can’t foresee the future, written though it is. I’ll play it my way, according to my opinion. The fact that I feel this way about it is obviously because it is written so.”

  “Oh Brother!” grunted Jack Grant. “With everything all written in the Book of Acts, you still do things as you please because so long as you desire to do things that way it is obvious that the Gods wrote it?”

  Garrard flushed. And Lindsay said: “Grant, you’re a born troublemaker.”

  “Maybe I should go out and take the next one apart. I’m still willing to bet my life against a bunch of Martians.” Then he looked at Jenna. “I’m sorry, Jenna.”

  “Don’t be,” she said. “I may be Martian, but it’s in ancestry only. I gave up my heritage when I set eyes on Ralph, you know.” Then she stood up. “I’m definitely NOT running out,” she laughed. “I’m going down to put on more coffee. I think this may be a long, cold winter.”

  She left, and Ed Garrard
looked up at Lindsay, sourly.

  “Well?” asked Ralph.

  “Look, Lindsay, I may be speaking out of turn.”

  “Only the Gods know,” chuckled Grant.

  “Shut up, you’re banal and out of line again,” snapped Lindsay. “Look, Ed, no matter what it is, out with it.”

  “Lindsay, what do you know about this rumor about Martian mind-reading?”

  “Very little. It is a very good possibility for the future, I’d say. It’s been said that the ability of certain Martians to mental telepathy is a mutation. After all, the lighter atmosphere of Mars makes bombardment from space more likely to succeed.”

  “Mutation wouldn’t change existing Martians,” mused Grant. “The thing, of course, may either be a mutation that is expected—in which case it may occur severally—or an unexpected dominant mutation in which case its spread will occur as the first guy inseminates the race with the seeds of his own being.”

  “Right.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “No,” said Lindsay. “I don’t know which and furthermore it is unimportant.”

  “Might be,” objected Grant. “How many are there and what is their ability?”

  “There are about seventy Martians known to be able to do mental telepathy under ideal circumstances. Of the seventy-odd, all of them are attuned to only one or two of the others. So we have an aggregation of seventy, in groups of three maximum, that are able to do it.”

  “Is any of Jenna’s family—?”

  “Not that I know of. And besides, Jenna’s loyal.”

  “They might be reading her mind unwittingly,” said Garrard. “Impossible.”

  “Know everything?” said Garrard, instantly regretting the implication.

  “Only that Jenna’s father was a psvchoneural surgeon, and I’ve read plenty of his books on the subject. They’re authoritative.”

  “Were, before the war.”

  Lindsay nodded. “You’re thinking of some sort of amplifier system?”

  Garrard nodded.

  “I doubt it,” said Lindsay.

  Lacy looked up and shook his head. “It would have to be gentle,” he said. “According to what I’ve heard, the guy who’s doing the transmitting is clearly and actually aware of every transmitted thought that is correctly collected by the receiver. Couple a determined will to transmit with certain knowledge of reception, and then tell me how to read a mind that is one, unwilling; and two, unaware.” Lacy snorted. “Seems to me we’re getting thick on this.” He arose and left, slowly.

  Lacy wandered into the galley and spoke to Jenna. “Mind?”

  “Not at all,” she said brightly.

  “I need a bit of relaxation,” he said. “We’ve had too many hours of solid worry over this thing.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “Tom,” she said, “you’re all to bits. Why don’t you quit?”

  “Quit?” he said dully. “Look, Jenna, I quit a long time ago. Fact of the matter is, there’s not one of us but won’t kill ourselves as soon as the need for us is over. Excepting you and Ralph. You—have one another to live for. We—have nothing.”

  “Grant?”

  “Grant will be at loose ends, too. Remember, he has been seeking thrill after thrill, and cutting closer to the line each time. This defusing is the ultimate in nerve thrills to him, pitting himself against a corps of mechanical experts. Going back to rocket-racing and perihelion runs will be too tame. He’s through, too.”

  “You all could get a new interest in life. You shouldn’t quit,” said Jenna softly.

  “That’s the worst of it,” said Tom Lacy looking down at her. “I quit a long time ago. It’s the starting-up that I fear.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “I think of Irene—and Little Fellow—and I know that when that area went up, my life ended. I’ve never had Harris’ psychopathic hatred of the things. I’ve just felt that I’d like death, but want to go out doing my part. I have a lifelong training against suicide per se, but I euphemize it by taunting death with the decontamination squadron.”

  “Yes?” said Jenna. She knew more was to come.

  “Alone I’m all right. Then I see you and Ralph. I feel a resentment—not against you, or Ralph, but against Fate or Kismet or whatever Gods there be that they should deny me and give to you freely. It’s not right that I feel this way. Life is like that.” He quoted bitterly: “ ‘Them as has, gits!’ ”

  “Tom, I swear that if it were mine to do, I’d give you all the things you lost—return them.”

  He nodded. “Giving me wouldn’t do,” he said in self-reflection. “I’d want return—and that is impossible.”

  Jenna knew well enough not to say the trite remark about Time being the Great Healer. “Poor Tom,” she said gently. Maternally, she leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. An inner yearning touched him and opened a brief door of forgetfulness. He tightened his arms about her for a moment and as her face came up, he kissed her with a sudden warmth. In Jenna, mixed feelings, conflicting emotions burned away by his warmth. She responded instinctively and in the brief moment removed some of the torture of the lonely, hating days.

  Then as the mixed thoughts cleared, Lacy found himself able to think more clearly. Though still Hushed, he loosened his tight hold upon her waist, and as he relaxed, Jenna changed from the yielding softness of her to a woman more remote. Her eyes opened, and her arms came down from about his neck and she stepped back, breathing fully.

  “Sorry, Jenna—”

  She laughed. It was not a laugh that meant derision; in fact it was a laugh reassuring to him, as she’d intended it to be. “Don’t be sorry,” she said softly. “You’ve committed no crime, I understand.”

  He nodded. “I was, sort of, kind of—”

  “Tom,” she said seriously, “there’s a lot of good therapy in a kiss. So far as I know, you needed some, and I gave it to you, freely and gladly. I’ll . . . do it again . . . when it’s needed.” Then she looked away, shyly.

  A moment later, she looked up again, her face completely composed. “What do you suppose Garrard has on his mind?” she asked.

  He told her, completely.

  The scanning room was dark when they returned. Out through the viewport the actinic glow of the buildings cast a greenish light over the landscape, creating an eerie impression of the scene. The small buildings, widely scattered, were a far cry from Old London of the nineteen hundreds, with its teeming millions and its houses, cheek by jowl.

  “Where’s Ed?” asked Jenna, fumbling in the dark scanning room with the coffee tray.

  “Gone.”

  “Gone?” she echoed. “How long ago?”

  “Ten minutes or so. He should be there—”

  Out, a few miles from them, hidden in the canyons of the buildings, a burst of flame soared up. A gigantic puffball that ricocheted from the actinic-lighted walls of the buildings and then went soaring skyward. A pillar of fire and smoke headed for the stratosphere as the counters clicked. The wall shields started to die out as the force of the explosion was spent.

  Lindsay snapped on the lights. He faced them, his face white.

  “That,” he said harshly, “was Garrard.”

  Grant nodded. “It wasn’t in his Book,” he said.

  “Neither,” snarled Lindsay, “was it in his Book to keep his action secret.”

  “Meaning?” asked Grant.

  “Who was the bright one that mentioned where he’d gone?”

  “That should have been obvious,” said Grant.

  “Obvious or not—he’s gone.”

  “What you’re saying is that he’s gone because I opened my big trap?”

  Lindsay blinked. “Sorry, Jack. But I’m at wit’s ends. I do wish that he had his chance, perfect, though.” He stared at Lacy.

  Tom, remembering that he had been kissing the man’s wife less than five minutes before, flushed slightly and flustered. He hoped it wouldn’t show—

  “Tom, that’s a new brand of
lipstick you’re wearing, isn’t it?” gritted Lindsay.

  Tom colored.

  Jenna faced her husband. “I kissed him,” she said simply. “I did it as any mother would kiss a little boy—because he needed kissing. Not because—”

  “Forget it,” said Ralph. “Did you know what Garrard was thinking?”

  “Tom told me.”

  “Nice reward,” sneered Ralph, facing Lacy.

  Lacy dropped his eyes, bitterly.

  Jack Grant looked up. “Listen, Lindsay, you’re off beam so far—”

  “You keep out of this,” snarled Lindsay, stepping forward.

  “I’m not staying out of it. It happens to be some of my business, too. Lacy, this may hurt, but it needs explaining. Lindsay, I’m not a softhearted bird. I’m not even softheaded. But if any man ever needed the affection of a woman, Tom Lacy does, did, and will. And if I had mother, wife, or sister that refused to try to straighten Lacy out, I’d cut her throat! I’ve made a lot of crude jokes about the fact that she married you because of your money or friends, but they were just crude jokes that I’d not have made if she hadn’t been so completely Mrs. Ralph Lindsay that mere mention of anything else was funny. And you can scream or you can laugh about it, but whatever she did down in the galley, I say, makes a’ better woman of her!” Then Grant smiled queerly and turned to Lacy. “You lucky dog,” he grinned. “She never tried to kiss me!”

  Ralph Lindsay sat down wearily. “Was that it, Jenna?”

  She nodded; unable to speak.

  “I’m sorry,” said Lindsay.

  “Look, Lindsay—” started Tom Lacy.

  Lindsay interrupted. “Lacy, I’m the one to be sorry. I mean it. Pity—is hard to take, even to give honestly. You don’t want it, yet it is there. Yes,” nodded Lindsay, “if there’s anything, ever, that we can do to see you straightened out, we’ll do it. Now—”