Spaceman's Luck and Other Stories

by George O. Smith

  He eyed the ceiling thoughtfully, then consulted his notebook. “Come to think of it, I’ll also give you a prescription for Program X-870 which you can use or not as you desire. Have this one piped into your bedroom, Mrs. Hanford, and try to strike a somewhat reasonable balance. Say no greater imbalance than about two of one to one of the other and if you, Mr. Hanford, spend any time listening to your daughter’s program material, you should also counteract its effect by listening to an equal time of the program prescribed for Mrs. Hanford.”

  He turned back to Gloria and shook his head.

  She smiled archly at him and asked, “Now what’s wrong?”

  “You,” he told her bluntly. “If this delinquency weren’t a mental disorder, I’d prescribe a ten milligram dose of micrograine to be taken at the first quickening of the pulse prior to excitement. I don’t suppose you really regret your wildness, though, do you, Miss Hanford?”

  * * * *

  She shook her head. “No, and I don’t really enjoy the whole program you’ve laid out for me.”

  “I’d hardly expect anybody to approve of a program that is calculated to change their entire personality and character,” said Scholar Ross. “But a bit of common logic will convince you that it is the better thing. Miss Hanford, you’ve simply got to conform.”

  “Why?” she demanded.

  “We live in a free world, Miss Hanford, but it is a freedom diluted by our responsibility to our fellow-man. The density of population here on Earth is too high to permit rowdy behavior. Laws are not passed simply to curtail a man’s freedom. They are passed to protect the innocent bystander—who is minding his own business—from the unruly, headstrong character who doesn’t see anything wrong in disposing of empty beer bottles by dropping them out of his apartment window, and justifying his behavior by pointing out that it is a hundred-yard walk down the corridor to the trash chute. When we live so close together that no one can raise his voice in anger without disturbing his neighbor, then we have the right to pass laws against such a display of temper. It works both ways, Miss Hanford. By requiring people to behave themselves, we ultimately arrive at a social culture in which no one conducts himself in such a way as to anger his neighbor into violence. Have I made myself clear?”

  “In other words,” said Gloria, “if it’s fun, hurry up and pass a law against it!”

  “Well, hardly that—” the scholar began.

  “Tell me,” she interrupted. “How long am I going to be on this pill-and-lullaby diet?”

  “It may be for a long time. In severe cases, it is for the rest of the patient’s life. On the other hand, we have quite a bit of evidence that your urge to excitement may dwindle with maturity. Oh, we do not propose to make a pariah out of you. Marriage and motherhood have settling effects, too.”

  “My baby—!” cried Mrs. Hanford.

  “Your baby,” commented Paul Hanford in a very dry voice, “is a college graduate, twenty years old.”

  “Nobody’s asked my opinion,” complained Gloria, swinging her leg and hiking the hem of her skirt another half-inch above the slender ankle.

  “Nobody will. However, Miss Hanford, I shall place your card in the ‘eligible’ file and have your characteristics checked. I’m sure that we can find a man who will be acceptable to you—and also to the department of Domestic Tranquility.”

  “Humph!”

  “Sneer if you will, Miss Hanford. But marriage and motherhood have taken the ‘hell’ out of a lot of hell-raisers in the past.”

  II

  Junior Spaceman Howard Reed entered the commandant’s office eagerly and briskly. His salute was snappy as he announced himself.

  Commander Breckenridge looked up at the young spaceman without expression, nodded curtly, and then looked down at the pile of papers neatly stacked in the center of his desk. Without saying a word, the commander fingered down through the pile until he came to a thin sheaf of papers stapled together. This file he withdrew, placed atop the stack, and then he proceeded to read every word of every page as if he were refreshing his memory about some minor incident that had become important only because of the upper-level annoyance it had caused.

  When he finished, he looked up and said coldly, “I presume you know why you’re here, Mr. Reed?”

  “I can guess, sir—because of my technical suggestion.”

  “You are correct.”

  “And it’s been accepted?” cried the junior spaceman eagerly.

  “It has not!” snapped the superior officer. “In fact—”

  “But, sir, I don’t understand—”

  “Silence!” said Commander Breckenridge. Almost automatically, his right hand slipped the top drawer open to expose the vial of tri-colored capsules. His hand stopped short of them, dangling into the drawer from the wrist resting on the edge. He looked down at the pills and seemed to be debating whether it would be better to conduct this painful interview as gentlemen should, or to let his righteous anger show.

  “Mr. Reed,” he said heavily, “your aptitudes and qualifications were reviewed most carefully by the Bureau of Personnel, and their considered judgment caused your replacement here, in the Bureau of Operations. You were not—and I repeat, not—placed in the Bureau of Research. Is this clear?”

  “Yes, sir. But—”

  “Mr. Reed, I cannot object to the provisions in the Regulations whereby encouragement is given both the officers and men to proffer suggestions for the betterment of the Service. However, a shoe-maker should stick to his last. The benefit of this program becomes a detriment when any officer or man tries to invade other departments. This works both ways, Mr. Reed. There is not an officer in the whole Bureau of Research who can tell me a single thing about organizing my Bureau of Operations. Conversely, I would be completely stunned if any Operations officer were to come up with something that hasn’t been known to the Bureau of Research for years.”

  “Yes, sir. I see your point, sir. But if the Bureau of Research has known about my suggestion for years, why isn’t it being used?”

  “Because, Mr. Reed, it will not work!”

  “But, sir, it’s got to work!”

  “And you feel so firmly convinced of this that you had the temerity to bypass my office?”

  “Sir, you yourself make a point of professing to know absolutely nothing about scientific matters.”

  “All right, we’ll table this angle for a few minutes. Just what makes this notion of yours so important, Mr. Reed?”

  * * * *

  “Sir,” said Reed, “the maximum range for our most efficient spacecraft is only a bit over seventeen light-years to the point of no return. My suggestion deals with a means of extending that range a hundred times. Perhaps more. If it were my decision, sir, anything that even hinted at extending the cruising range would receive a maximum-urgency priority.”

  “In other words, you feel that anything we can do to extend our operations is the most important thing in the whole Space Service?”

  “Well, sir, perhaps not the most important, but—”

  “Your modesty is gratifying. I presume this modesty would prevent you from accepting any more than the Letter of Commendation from the Office of the Secretary?”

  “I don’t understand, sir.”

  “You don’t? Mr. Reed, was your desire to improve the efficiency of Operations a simple desire to improve the Service—or did you hope that this brilliant suggestion would, perhaps, provide you with a better assignment?”

  “I still do not understand.”

  “Oh, you don’t? Mr. Reed, why did you join the Space Service in the first place?”

  “Because, sir, I hoped that I could be instrumental in helping mankind to spread across the Galaxy.”

  “Mr. Reed, have you sand in your shoes?”

  “Sir?”

  The commander sighed. “You hoped to go along on the voyage, didn’t you?”

  “Well, sir, I did have a hope that I’d become a real spaceman.”

  “A
nd you’re disappointed?”

  Howard Reed’s face was wistful, torn between a desire to confide in his commanding officer and the fear of saying what he knew to be a sharp criticism of the Space Service.

  Then Reed realized that he was in a bad pinch anyway, and so he said, “Sir, I’m commissioned as a junior spaceman, but in three years I’ve only made one short test flight—and only to Luna! I am competent to pilot—or at least that’s what the flight simulators say in my checkout tests. I’m a junior spaceman—yet every time I apply for active space duty, I’m refused! Three years I’ve spent in the Service, sir, solving theoretical and hypothetical problems in space operations. But aside from one test flight to the Moon, I have yet to set a foot inside of a spacecraft, let alone stand on the soil of another world!”

  “You must learn patience, Mr. Reed.”

  “Patience, sir? Look, sir, I took this sedentary duty until I’d had it up to here, and then I began to pry into the question of why we have a Space Force, complete with spacecraft, and still do so little space traveling. I found out. We’re limited to a maximum range of seventeen light-years to the point of no return. Even a trip to Eden, Tau Ceti, our nearest colony, is eleven-point-eight light-years, and that takes prodigious power.”

  “Granted,” said the commander.

  “But now, sir, if we could increase our range by one hundred times, this does not necessarily mean that we must actually power the spacecraft for that point of no return. It also means that we could charge the ship with one one-hundredth of its former banks for the short trip to Eden, Tau Ceti—which would leave a fantastic amount of storage and cargo and passenger space. Sir, we could start real commerce!”

  Commander Breckenridge gave no reaction.

  “And you hoped to be among them.”

  “Yes, sir! As a kid, I read about mankind’s first exploration of space two hundred years ago, sir. Of course, I couldn’t hope to set foot on a new planet, since every possible planet within the seventeen-light-year range has been looked over. But I wanted to see space myself, sir—and I did hope that I might extend Man’s frontier beyond our rather small limit.”

  “Yes, I can understand the impatience of youth,” said Commander Breckenridge. “For that, I can forgive you. But for trying to do the other man’s job, I cannot.”

  “Sir, you’re as much as saying that no one can have a good technical idea but the technical people at the Bureau of Research.”

  In answer, the commander flipped over several pages of the file. He said: “Mister Reed, this is what resulted in your abortive attempt to gain a scientific ear instead of forwarding your suggestion through the standard channels. I’m going to quote some pertinent parts of a letter from Commander Briggs, head of the Bureau of Research. Listen:

  “—young genius has rediscovered the line of mathematical argument known here at Research as ‘Hansen’s Folly’ because it was first exploited by young Spaceman Hansen about a hundred and fifty years ago. Hansen’s Folly is probably to be expected of a young, ambitious young officer with stars in his eyes. I’d be inclined to congratulate him—if it weren’t for the fact that Hansen’s Folly turns up with such regularity that we here at Research hold a regular pool against its next rediscovery. You’ll be happy to know that you, your young genius, and your department have ‘won’ for me the great honor (?) of buying dinner for the crew at the Officers Club on Saturday next.

  “Don’t be too hard on young Reed; the rediscovery of Hansen’s Folly takes a rather bright mind. However, Breck, I will congratulate your bright young man if he can—without any further clue—go back over his own mathematics and locate the flaw. I’ll—”

  “There’s more of this, but it isn’t germane,” said Breckenridge quietly. “This is enough.”

  “Enough, sir?” repeated Reed blankly.

  “Enough to let you know what goes on. Now, Mr. Reed, you’ve committed nothing but a brash act of bad taste in bypassing the standard channels. Such an indiscretion demands some form of punishment, but if I were to attempt to outline punishment officially, it would be unfortunately easy for some legal eagle to point out that your behavior was, to the best of your knowledge, intended for the betterment of the Service. And furthermore that I was wreaking vengeance upon your hapless soul for having made my name the brunt of jokes at the Officers Club.”

  “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “Being sorry is not enough, Mr. Reed. But I have a plan that will gratify everybody concerned. You want to become an active spaceman? Very well, your next tour of duty will be at the Space Force Station on the planet Eden, Tau Ceti. It will terminate when you have finally succeeded in locating the flaw in Hansen’s Folly and can show the error to the satisfaction of Commander Briggs. Have I made myself clear, Mr. Reed?”

  “Yes, sir, and thank you, sir. You’re really doing me a favor, sir.”

  “Mr. Reed, despite the age-old platitude, it is wise to look the gift horse in the mouth, at least before saying thanks.”

  III

  Scholar Norman Ross smiled at his host’s statement. “Yes, indeed, Mr. Harrison! Arranging these things so that we can maintain the Norm is often a delicate and arduous task. There are restrictions, and there are many variables involved, the most sensitive of which are the feelings of the people involved.”

  “Your job must call for the ultimate in diplomacy,” said Mrs. Harrison.

  To his host’s wife, Scholar Ross nodded. “Yet,” he said as an afterthought, “of even greater value is a high regard for the perfect truth. This includes the self-discipline of admitting it when one has been wrong, and being able to state precisely how, where, why, and, most important, to what degree.”

  “I don’t understand,” said his hostess.

  “Mrs. Harrison, let’s consider Bertram.”

  She cast a glance at her son. In an earlier age, he would have been called “indolent.” During dinner, Bertram had employed the correct fork, plied his knife properly, conversed with his partners on both sides—yet she knew something was wrong.

  “Bertram,” she said, “haven’t you been forgetting your pills?”

  “Sorry, Mother,” replied the young man tonelessly.

  Bertram arose and left, and Scholar Ross said, “This is what I mean, Mrs. Harrison. Genetics is not a precise science; it is statistical. We can consider highly favorable the mating of two well-balanced people, and we can predict that this union will produce well-balanced children. Unfortunately we cannot guarantee the desired results. Hence we have anomalies such as Bertram, whose problem is simply a lack of drive. Now this is no fault of yours, Mrs. Harrison, nor of yours, Mr. Harrison. It may be the fault of Genetics, but if it is our ‘fault,’ then the fault lies in the lack of total knowledge; but not in the misuse, or lack of use, of what knowledge we do already have.”

  “I see what you mean, Scholar Ross.”

  “You’ll also see the opposite when the Hanfords arrive. Here we have parents as stable as you two. You’ll pardon me if I say that if all four of your characteristic cards were dropped at once and I had been expected to render a considered opinion as to their most favorable mating combination, I could render no preference, so equal are you. However, your union has produced Bertram. Conversely, their mating has produced a girl who is wild, headstrong, willful.”

  * * * *

  Bertram returned, seated himself quietly, and when Scholar Ross stopped talking, Bertram said apologetically, “I took a double dose, Mother.”

  “Is that all right?” she asked Scholar Ross.

  “Probably won’t do any harm,” he said.

  Mr. Harrison cleared his throat. “I’m not sure that I approve of Bertram marrying a headstrong girl, Scholar Ross.”

  Mrs. Harrison said, “William, you know it’s best.”

  “For Bertram?”

  “Now here,” said Scholar Ross, “we must cease considering the welfare of the individual alone and start thinking of him as a part of an integrated society. No man is an island,
Mr. Harrison. In a less advanced culture, Bertram would have been permitted to meet contemporary personalities. Perhaps might have met someone who—as he does—lacks drive and initiative, and the result would have been a family of dull children. Had he been unlucky enough to marry a woman with drive and ambition, their children might have been normal, but the entire home life would have been an emotional battlefield. And that—”

  “Isn’t that what you’re about to achieve?” asked Mr. Harrison.

  “Not at all. We shall achieve the normal, happy children who will undoubtedly grow into fine, stable adults. To gain this end, of course, their home life must be happy and tranquil. We’ll prescribe for them—allowing for the emotional change that results from marriage and—”

  The doorbell interrupted the scholar’s explanation. “Allow me,” he said, rising and heading for the apartment door. The Harrisons followed him at a slight distance. It was the Hanfords.

  There was the full round robin of introductions and small talk: “You had no trouble?” “No, the intercity beacon was running clear—” “Lovely apartment, Mrs. Harrison.” “Mrs. Hanford, here in Philadelphia we feel that we’re almost in the suburbs.” “Got a treat for you, Hanford—been saving a bottle of natural bourbon!” “That’ll be a treat, all right!” “This is a real event. Scholar Ross.” “You know, Mrs. Hanford, the vidphone hardly does you justice!” “Why, thank you!”

  “Miss Hanford, may I present Bertram Harrison?” “How do you do?” “I do as I please. What’s your excuse?” “Huh?” “Now, Gloria!” “Bertram, show Gloria the flower room. Go on, now!”

  Scholar Ross watched the young couple walk through a French door to an outside terrace. He turned to Harrison and said, “Everything set?”