Spaceman's Luck and Other Stories

by George O. Smith

  “Today,” said the commander, “the man who leaves his home to migrate is not abandoning squalor and sorrow in the hope of finding something better. He’s leaving luxury, culture, and leisure. For what? For the privilege of scrabbling for a bare existence. Now, Mr. Reed, are you beginning to understand?”

  “I think so, sir.”

  “Good. Then you’ll begin to revise your opinion as to the importance of extending the cruising range of our spacecraft.”

  Reed blinked, “Sir?”

  “Be sensible, young man. A colony is a waste of effort unless it becomes more than self-sufficient. Until Eden, Tau Ceti, has become populated to the point where Eden can support her own highly technical culture, it is an economically unsound proposition.” The commander glared at the young spaceman. “Must I be blunt? Every effort must be spent in raising the culture-level of Eden, Tau Ceti. That means increasing the population, Mr. Reed, until the numbers are high enough to pay for industrialization. Once the cities of Eden, Tau Ceti, offer the culture opportunity of the cities of Earth, then we’ll have migration on a social level instead of the malcontents, rugged individualists, and petty lawbreakers who’ve been given the alternative of migration instead of incarceration.

  “Now, Mr. Reed, do you see what I’m driving at? It would be far wiser of you to spend your time enhancing the aspect of Eden, Tau Ceti, than trying to figure out ways and means of getting to more distant stars and locating other distant planets—to which the human race wouldn’t migrate.”

  “But sir—”

  “Mr. Reed, I recognize in you the admirable spirit of adventure. But we must remember that this same spirit that once drove men to land on Earth’s moon in a multi-stage chemical rocket was not enough to establish a tax-paying colony there. Now, about this project of yours. You say that you have not yet located the flaw in Hansen’s Folly?”

  “No, sir, but—”

  “Mr. Reed, you realize that you’ll stay here on Eden until you do?”

  “Yes, sir, but—”

  “And the longer it takes you, the more ridicule will be directed at you, at me, and the Bureau of Operations?”

  “But, sir—”

  “Mr. Reed, I’ll also point out that there will be no promotion until your assignment is complete.”

  “I’m aware of that sir, but—”

  “But what, Mr. Reed?”

  Reed said, “Sir, may I speak without annoying you?”

  “If you’ve something to say, go ahead. I can hardly promise not to be annoyed before I hear what the subject is.”

  “Thank you, sir. In trying to solve Hansen’s Folly I engaged in some physical experiment and measurement because I couldn’t find any flaw in the mathematical argument on the abstract scale. As you know, sir, one of the ways to find out why something won’t work is to try it. It isn’t often the easiest or the simplest, but it is often the only way.”

  “So go on. What happened?”

  “Sir, my hardware works. So far as I can see, sir, there is no flaw! I was right!”

  “Commander Briggs of Research—”

  “Sir, there must be some mistake.”

  “Silence! I’m not through! Commander Briggs seems to know more about my personnel than I do.”

  “Sir?”

  “First, he offered to bet me a dinner at the Officer’s Club that you wouldn’t locate the flaw in Hansen’s Folly by the time I made this tour of inspection. Knowing that you’d probably have no other ambition than to leave Eden, Tau Ceti, I snapped at this wager like a starving dog latching onto a piece of steak. I have lost, it would appear, which is only one dinner. But, Mr. Reed, when I accepted this wager, Commander Briggs compounded it by offering to bet me a dinner for the whole Bureau of Research that after not finding the flaw by means of the academic analysis, you’d resort to experiment in hardware. Knowing full well that you’d not have the temerity to divert Service Material for your own tinkering, I accepted that wager also. Then to top it off, Briggs added a bet of champagne and corsages for the officers’ wives that you’d complete your hardware and still not locate the flaw, and that when I arrived you’d be firmly convinced that you’d proved your point in theory and practice and that therefore you were right and the rest of the known universe was wrong.”

  The commander took a deep breath under which he swore gently but feelingly. Then he went on: “And so, Mr. Reed, I am going to be ‘Guest of Dishonor’ at the Officers’ Club. I will, according to custom, be served the plate of baked synthetic beans whilst my contemporary officers and their wives partake of a gourmet’s banquet of natural foods.”

  “Sir, I’m sorry.”

  “Being sorry is hardly enough!” The commander pawed through his attache case until he came to a file-folder which he looked through meticulously for several minutes as if justifying a carefully considered opinion. Finally he made a lightly pencilled note on the margin of one page and said, “Lalande 25372!”

  Junior Spaceman Howard Reed gasped and blurted, “Flatbush, sir?”

  Commander Breckenridge nodded curtly. “You will man the perimeter alien-spacecraft detection station and the astrogation beacon distance and direction equipment located on Flatbush, Lalande 25372. And you will stay there until you have Hansen’s Folly completely solved. Do you understand?”

  Junior Spaceman Howard Reed nodded unhappily.

  Lalande 25372 was close to the maximum range, the seventeen-light-year point of no return. Any enjoyment in knowing that he would have to be commissioned one of the finer, more efficient little spacecraft in order to get there in the first place was completely wiped out in the knowledge that once there, it would have to stand inert awaiting his return, because there would be no power to spare on side trips. One did not, with subatomic power, carry a spare can of fuel for emergency.

  VI

  Mrs. Hanford opened the door and saw Scholar Ross. She smiled uncertainly at him as she invited him in. In the Hanford living room, in the presence of Mr. Hanford, the scholar of genetics looked around cautiously and questingly. Hanford said, “Gloria is not here. She’s out.”

  “Then I may speak openly.”

  “Of course. Is there some trouble—again?”

  “Frankly, I’m not certain,” said the scholar of genetics slowly. “I’d like more information if you’d be so good as to help.”

  “Of course we’ll help!” exclaimed Mrs. Hanford. “What’s bothering you?”

  “How is your daughter getting on with Bertram Harrison?”

  “Why, I’d guess they’re getting along about as well as any other young pre-marriage couple. That’s what the engagement period is for, isn’t it? I mean, it’s been that way historically.”

  “Yes, you’re right,” nodded Scholar Ross. “Did they rent the usual pre-marriage apartment?”

  “Oh yes. They were quite the conventional young lovers, Scholar Ross.”

  The man from the Department of Domestic Tranquility smiled. “And you, of course, were the conventional parents of the affianced bride?”

  “Of course. We were so pleased that we could hardly wait for Twelfth Night.”

  “And during that visit, were the appointments of the apartment proper?”

  “Why, Scholar Ross!”

  “No, no, Mrs. Hanford, you misunderstand. I implied no moral question. I really meant to ask if you knew whether Gloria and Bertram each and separately were properly continuing their therapy.”

  Mr. Hanford grunted. “As parents of the affianced bride,” he said, “we’re paying for it!”

  Mrs. Hanford blushed. “I—er—snooped,” she said.

  Scholar Ross looked at Mrs. Hanford with an expression that indicated that snooping was an entirely acceptable form of social behavior. “And what did you find?”

  “Everything entirely right.” Then she looked doubtful and bit her lower lip. “Scholar Ross, I’m no authority in these matters. In Gloria’s bathroom were the same-looking kind of bottles and pills that we got when you prescrib
ed, and when I turned on the speaker in her bedroom it sounded like the same kind of music as I’d heard in her bedroom when she was living at home. It—frankly—depressed me.”

  “And Bertram’s?”

  “I know less of his medication. But I did listen to his music outlet. It removed the feeling of depression I’d gotten from Gloria’s program material.”

  “That’s quite right. It sounds reasonable.”

  She blushed again and looked at her husband. “Only one thing,” she said very slowly.

  “What’s that?”

  “I—er, hardly know how to put it. You see, when Gerald and I were affianced, neither one of us were undergoing any kind of corrective therapy and so I don’t know how these things work out.”

  “What are you driving at?”

  “Why, Scholar Ross, with neither of us undergoing corrective therapy, it didn’t matter which one of the bedrooms we used.”

  Scholar Ross considered for a moment and then nodded. “Of course,” he said with an air of complete finality. “That’s it!”

  “What’s it?” asked Mr. Hanford.

  “The situation becomes a simple matter of reduction to the law of most-active reaction. Look,” he said, “we have one personality that requires an environment of stimulation to bring him up to normal, and another personality that requires a tranquil atmosphere to normal. Place them both in the tranquilizing environment and he is driven deeper into his lethargy, probably to the point of complete physical and intellectual torpor. Place them both in the stimulating atmosphere and he becomes normal while she goes into transports of sensuous excitement. This explains it!”

  “Explains what?” demanded Mr. Hanford.

  “Her recent behavior. Or rather escapade.”

  None of them heard the gentle snick of the lock in the front door.

  “Escapade?” exclaimed Mrs. Hanford.

  “We didn’t know that she was in any trouble,” said Mr. Hanford.

  “That’s just the point,” said Scholar Ross. “Your daughter has the infuriating habit of indulging in outrageous behavior under the name of brilliant intellectual accomplishment.”

  Gloria Hanford said, “Why, thank you, sir!”

  She dropped the scholar a deep curtsey, displaying several inches of slender ankle.

  “Gloria!” demanded her mother. “What have you been up to?”

  Gloria Hanford smiled at her mother in an elfin, yet superior manner. “I am the affianced bride of Bertram Harrison,” she said softly. “Therefore my behavior, whether good, bad, or indifferent, is no longer the problem of my parents.”

  Her father said, “Gloria, I happen to be big enough in both the physical and intellectual departments to overrule both you and your husband-to-be. So you’ll answer your mother.”

  “Why,” said Gloria quietly, “I’ve done nothing wrong.”

  Mr. Hanford said to Scholar Ross: “What’s your side of this?”

  Scholar Ross said, “Last week the Westchester Young People’s Club gave a costume ball. The young ladies were to attend this affair adorned in the authentic fashion of some period in the past, and a prize was to be awarded to the most novel, yet completely authentic costume.”

  “And,” said Gloria with a smile, “I won!”

  “Your daughter won because she has a talent for performing the most shocking deeds under a cloak of intellectual achievement.”

  “Do go on, Scholar Ross. What did Gloria do?”

  The scholar smiled wryly. “Style and fashion ceased to be logical when clothing was designed for sly provocation rather than as a protection against a harsh environment,” he said. “We live in a mixed-up social world. We encourage communal swimming and sun bathing in the nude—and yet after five o’clock it is considered shocking to display more than the bare face and hands.

  “So in order to combine the maximum shock-effect with the cloak of utter authenticity, Miss Hanford researched the styles and fashions until she located a brief period of a few scant months late in the Twentieth Century. Her costume consisted of a many-fold voluminous skirt of semi-transparent material that draped in graceful folds from waist to mid-calf. She was completely nude above the waist! To prove her point, she offered fashion stereos of the period from style magazines.”

  Gloria chuckled. “I might have researched back to the Old Testament,” she said.

  Scholar Ross shook his head. “As I say, her shocking behavior could not be criticized. She could justify it according to the rules.”

  Mr. Hanford shook his head and asked, “Gloria, what did Bertram think of all this?”

  “Bertram carried the style stereos,” said Gloria. “There wasn’t any pocket in my costume.”

  Abruptly, Scholar Ross said, “Miss Hanford, how are you and Bertram getting along?”

  “As well as could be expected.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning that each of us lives our own life. Berty likes his sedentary, torpid existence. In fact, he’d like to be more of a vegetable than he is. It started with his taking my pills and that was all right, I guess. But when he started sleeping in my bedroom so that he could estivate under the tranquilizing music program you prescribed for me, that was too much!”

  Scholar Ross looked unprecedentedly astonished. “So?” he demanded.

  “What do you mean ‘so’? What would any red blooded woman do? I moved out and into his bedroom, naturally.”

  “And then started taking his medication?” asked Scholar Ross curtly.

  “Natch!”

  “Oh, my God!” exploded Scholar Ross. He eyed Gloria intently. “How do you manage to get Bertram awake far enough to attend things like your costume ball?” he asked.

  “Well,” she said with a smile, “I am really strong enough to sling a hundred and eighty-five pounds of loosely-stuffed sausage over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry and tote the inert mass back to its own bedroom so that its own music will rouse it enough to reach for its bedside bottles of medication. Nature then takes its course until the awakening. Then he goes along with my desires—because he knows that if he doesn’t, I won’t let him dive back into his complete inertia. It’s very simple. Of course, it isn’t much fun.”

  Scholar Ross said, “Gloria, do you intend to continue this sort of self-centered, artificial life after you and Bertram are married?”

  “I’ve given the future very little thought.”

  “You always have,” said Scholar Ross unhappily. “That’s been a lot of your trouble.”

  “So what am I supposed to do? Do you really expect me to marry that vegetable? I’ve got a life to lead too, you know. It may suit your overall program of genetics to breed a batch of normal children, but the same Book of Laws grants me the right to seek my own level of happiness.”

  “Granted—”

  “Well, scholar, I can tell you that my idea of happiness is not a husband who comes into my bedroom walking like a somnambulist just barely able to cross the room before collapsing like a loosely-packed sandbag.”

  “What you need,” said Scholar Ross firmly, “is a man who is strong enough to tell you what you’re going to do.”

  “And where are you going to find one?”

  Scholar Ross turned from Gloria to her parents. “Obviously,” he said regretfully, “this proposed marriage between your daughter and Bertram Harrison is not going to culminate in a happy union.”

  “Did you expect it to?” asked Gloria.

  “I had hopes. I can only propose a course of action. Were you willing to embark upon your prescribed program of corrective therapy, and so become a normally active and emotionally stable woman, then the marriage might work out very well indeed.”

  “It’s all my fault, of course?”

  “Yes. Of course. The decision was yours to make.”

  “And how about that lump of lard you’ve foisted off on me?”

  “Bertram Harrison’s willing retreat into total lethargy is, of course, his own decision. But it, to
o, is only another aspect of the usual case. The strong-willed personality makes its own way. The weak one follows.”

  “I see,” sneered Gloria. “It’s all my fault!”

  “Of course it is,” snapped Scholar Ross. “Were you willing to correct yourself, you’d also have been willing to correct Bertram since yours is the stronger personality.”

  “So what’s the next move? Do I get to try another dolt?”

  “Hardly. You’d do the same with any of them.”

  “So what is it? Am I going to be exported to Eden, Tau Ceti as an incorrigible?”

  Scholar Ross was silent.

  Mr. Hanford said, “Certainly there must be another way?”

  Mrs. Hanford said, “Must I lose my daughter?”

  Scholar Ross said regretfully, “There is another way, of course, but either way is essentially a loss of your daughter, Mrs. Hanford.”

  Mr. Hanford said, “And what is this other course, Scholar Ross?”

  “It’s called re-orientation.”

  “Brain-washing!” exclaimed Gloria.

  “That’s a harsh, colloquial term.”

  Mrs. Hanford said, “How does this re-orientation work?”

  Coldly, as if he were discussing the repair of some inanimate engine, Scholar Ross said, “It starts with corrective surgery on the pituitary and thyroid glands. Next comes some very complicated neuro-cerebral surgery, somewhat resembling the crude, primitive process once called ‘Prefrontal Lobotomy’. Nowadays it produces the desired effect without all of the deleterious side-effects. Then, once the patient is completely disoriented, the process of re-education takes place. The patient is extremely docile and highly impressionable. All decisions carry the same weight—”

  “How do you mean that?” asked Mr. Hanford.