by Jerry
“That’s a good idea.” Johnson was not usually very witty, but this was one he couldn’t resist.
“Never mind, Guns. A patch that big wouldn’t be safe to hold air.”
They were about eighty thousand miles out. He set course for Earth at about five and a half mps, which Johnson calculated to bring them in on the station on the “going away” side of its orbit, and settled back for the tedious two hours of free wheeling. For ten or fifteen minutes, the interphone crackled with the gregariousness born of recent peril, and gradually the ship fell silent as each man returned to his own private thoughts.
Paul was wondering about the men on the other ship—whether any of them were still alive. Eighty thousand miles to fall. That was a little beyond the capacity of an emergency rocket—about 2 G’s for sixty seconds—even if they had them. What a way to go home! He wondered what he’d do if it happened to him. Would he wait out his time, or just unlock his helmet.
Guns’ drawl broke into his reverie. “Say, cap’n, Ah’ve been readin’ in this magazine about a trick they used to use, called skip bombin’. They’d hang a bomb on the bottom of one of these airplanes, and fly along the ground, right at what they wanted to hit. Then they’d let the bomb go and get out of there, and the bomb would sail right on into the target. You s’pose we could fix this buggy up with an A bomb or an H bomb we could let go a few hundred miles out? Stick a proximity fuse on it, and a time fuse, too, in case we missed. Just sittin’ half a mile apart and tradin’ shots like we did on that last mission is kinda hard on mah nerves, and it’s startin’ to happen too often.”
“Nice work if we could get it. I’m not crazy about those broadside battles myself. You’d think they’d have found something better than these thirty caliber popguns by now, but the odds say we’ve got to throw as many different chunks of iron as we can, to have a chance of hitting anything, and even then it’s twenty to one against us. You wouldn’t have one chance in a thousand of scoring a hit with a bomb at that distance, even if they didn’t spot it and take off. What you’d need would be a rocket that could chase them, with the bomb for a head. And there’s no way we could carry that size rocket, or fire it if we could. Some day these crates will come with men’s rooms, and we’ll have a place to carry something like that.”
“How big would a rocket like that be?”
“Five, six feet, by maybe a foot. Weigh at least three hundred pounds.”
It was five minutes before Guns spoke again. “Ah been thinkin’, cap’n. With a little redecoratin’, Ah think Ah could get a rocket that size in here with me. We could weld a rail to one of the gun mounts that would hold it up to five or six G’s. Then after we got away from station, Ah could take it outside and mount it on the rail.”
“Forget it, lad. If they ever caught us pulling a trick like that, they’d have us on hydroponic duty for the next five years. They just don’t want us playing around with bombs, till the experts get all the angles figured out, and build ships to handle them. And besides, who do you think will rig a bomb like that, without anybody finding out? And where do you think we’d get a bomb in the first place? They don’t leave those things lying around. Kovacs watches them like a mother hen. I think he counts them twice a day.”
“Sorry, cap’n. Ah just figured if you could get hold of a bomb, Ah know a few of the boys who could rig the thing up for us and keep their mouths shut.”
“Well, forget about it. It’s not a bad idea, but we haven’t any bomb.”
“Right, cap’n.”
But it was Paul who couldn’t forget about it. All the rest of the way back to station, he kept seeing visions of a panel sliding aside in the nose of a sleek and gleaming ship, while a small rocket pushed its deadly snout forward, and then streaked off at tremendous acceleration.
Interrogation was brief. The mission had turned up nothing new. Their kill made eight against seven for Doc Miller’s crew, and they made sure Miller and the boys heard about it. They were lightheaded with the elation that followed a successful mission, swapping insults with the rest of the squadron, and reveling in the sheer contentment of being back safe.
It wasn’t until he got back to his stall, and started to write his father a long overdue letter, that he remembered he had heard Kovacs say he was going on leave.
When he finished the letter, he opened the copy of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” he had borrowed from Rodriguez’s limited but colorful library. He couldn’t keep his mind on it. He kept thinking of the armament officer.
Kovacs was a quiet, intelligent kid, devoted to his work. Coulter wasn’t too intimate with him. He wasn’t a spaceman, for one thing. One of those illogical but powerful distinctions that sub-divided the men of the station. And he was a little too polite to be easy company.
Paul remembered the time he had walked into the Muroc Base Officer’s Club with Marge Halpern on his arm. The hunger that had lain undisguised on Kovacs’ face the moment he first saw them. Marge was a striking blonde with a direct manner, who liked men, especially orbit station men. He hadn’t thought about the incident since then, but the look in Kovacs’ eyes kept coming back to him as he tried to read.
He wasn’t sure how he got there, or why, when he found himself walking into Colonel Silton’s office to ask for the leave he’d passed up at his fiftieth mission. He’d considered taking it several times, but the thought of leaving the squadron, even for a couple of weeks, had made him feel guilty, as though he were quitting.
Once he had his papers, he started to get excited about it. As he cleaned up his paper work and packed his musette, his hands were fumbling, and his mind was full of Sylvia.
The vastness of Muroc Base was as incredible as ever. Row on uncounted row of neat buildings, each resting at the top of its own hundred-yard deep elevator shaft. A pulsing, throbbing city, dedicated to the long slow struggle to get into space and stay there. The service crew eyed them with studied indifference, as they writhed out of the small hatch and stepped to the ground. They drew a helijet at operations, and headed immediately for Los Angeles.
Kovacs had been impressed when Paul asked if he’d care to room together while they were on leave. He was quiet on the flight, as he had been on the way down, listening contentedly, while Paul talked combat and women with Bob Parandes, another pilot going on leave.
They parked the helijet at Municipal Field and headed for the public PV booths, picking up a coterie of two dogs and five assorted children on the way. The kids followed quietly in their wake, ecstatic at the sight of their uniforms.
Paul squared his shoulders, as befitted a hero, and tousled a couple of uncombed heads as they walked. The kids clustered around the booths, as Kovacs entered one to locate a hotel room, and Paul another, to call Sylvia.
“Honey, I’ve been so scared you weren’t coming back. Where are you? When will I see you? Why didn’t you write? . . .” She sputtered to a stop as he held up both hands in defense.
“Whoa, baby. One thing at a time. I’m at the airport. You’ll see me tonight, and I’ll tell you the rest then. That is, if you’re free tonight. And tomorrow. And the day after, and the day after that. Are you free?”
Her hesitation was only momentary. “Well, I was going out—with a girl friend. But she’ll understand. What’s up?”
He took a deep breath. “I’d like to get out of the city for a few days, where we can take things easy and be away from the crowds. And there is another guy I’d like to bring along.”
“We could take my helijet out to my dad’s cottage at—What did you say?”
It was a ticklish job explaining about Kovacs, but when she understood that he just wanted to do a friend a favor, and she’d still have Paul all to herself, she calmed down. They made their arrangements quickly, and switched off.
He hesitated a minute before he called Marge. She was quite a dish to give up. Once she’d seen him with Sylvia, he’d be strictly persona non grata—that was for sure. It was an unhappy thought. Well, maybe it was in a
good cause. He shrugged and called her.
She nearly cut him off when she first heard his request, but he did some fast talking. The idea of several days at the cottage intrigued her, and when he described how smitten Kovacs had been, she brightened up and agreed to come. He switched off, adjusted the drape of his genuine silk scarf, and stepped out of the booth.
Kovacs and the kids were waiting. The armament officer had apparently been telling them of Paul’s exploits. They glowed with admiration. The oldest boy, about eleven, had true worship in his eyes. He hesitated a moment, then asked gravely: “Would you tell us how you kill a Red, sir?”
Paul eyed the time-honored weapon that dangled from the youngster’s hand. He bent over and tapped it with his finger. His voice was warm and confiding, but his eyes were far away.
“I think next we’re going to try a slingshot,” he said.
1956
BARRIER TO YESTERDAY
Bob Shaw
The catastrophe had destroyed the past for ever. Could it also create a new future?
The Philosophy Sled, running with ponderous speed before the freshening wind, crunched shudderingly into a patch of rough ice. Chandrill jerked into wakefulness as he felt the sled slew to one side.
“Spill it!” he shouted, pointing up at the gluttonous bellies of the sails which were drawing creaks from the masts as the incident direction of the wind changed. In seconds the sails were flapping noisily from their top booms and Chandrill felt the drag as the rudder bit ice, getting the sled under control.
When they had slowed down, Chandrill leapt over the side and saw what he had expected but feared to see. The lugs at the rear of the starboard runner had twisted off along the lines of old cracks in the metal.
Two others climbed down onto the ice beside him and Chandrill recognised the heavy breathing lido Fearthell, the Philosopher, before he looked up at him. Fearthell’s lips were drawn tautly over his broken teeth and there was a gleam in saliva on his chin—it was obvious that he had had a scare. The other person was Sinoon.
“I thought it would be those,” lido Fearthell said. “I thought it would be the lugs.”
“It was a chance we took,” Chandrill said defensively, rising to his feet. “If we hadn’t hit the rough patch or if we had had our new set of runners . . .”
“I don’t like that,” interrupted Fearthell. “I don’t like that a bit. You are implying that I wasn’t firm enough with Minnatose when the last casting was done on the Metallurgy Sled. Remember it was you who said the runner would see us through the Pass. I definitely don’t like that, Chandrill.”
“What made the ice so rough, anyway?” asked Sinoon. Chandrill glanced across the ice, feeling the old discomfort that was only the natural reaction to cessation of motion.
“At least six of the earlier sleds stopped here for some reason,” he replied. “You can see the brake and rudder tracks criss-crossing back there.”
Looking at her as she strained her myopic blue eyes to pick out the tracks in the twilight he wondered hopefully if she was beginning to reconcile herself to the Philosophy Sled.
“Then if we had been at the head of the lines, if the tribe hadn’t been held back this wouldn’t have happened?”
There was the faintest note of triumph in Sinoon’s voice as she spoke. She drew her cap closer around her, narrowing her wide pale lips against the wind.
“That’s right,” Chandrill replied, making his voice as dead as was possible. The six other Lesser Philosophers, all of them nearly as old as Fearthell himself, and the two Novices who looked after the running of the sled were down on the ice by this time. Chandrill could feel the throbbing silence that comes not because there is nothing to say but because there is too much.
“The thing is,” lido Fearthell said, “the thing is—can the iron be fixed or can we not move until a new one is cast?”
Chandrill glanced around the group and then up ahead, towards Day, to where the other sleds of the tribe had either halted or were in the process of stripping their masts. “There are still parts of the broken lugs projecting,” he said. “We could make a housing for it on the timber former. A box shape that would keep it from moving about too much. We might be able to limp along until the new runner is supplied.”
“All right then,” Fearthell said, “We’ll do that.” He told young Mondaquee to bring tools and wood. Chandrill put Sinoon out of his thinking and went to work on the lugs.
He had the outside box completed and was about to get in below the sled when he heard the crackling whisper of blades on ice. He looked Daywards and saw that Minnatose had come back alone from the Royal Trio to see what was wrong. Chandrill climbed inside the framework of the sled and began shaping wood with the small axe.
He heard Minnatose stop at the front of the sled and then a period of near silence broken only by Fearthell’s whistling sibilants. After some minutes had gone by he realised that Fearthell had stopped talking and he felt vaguely ill at ease. He looked around to see if he could find where Minnatose had gone to, then he jumped violently and dropped the axe.
Minnatose had slipped quietly up to where Chandrill was working, knelt down and had been peering in at him from close up for some time. He was grinning at Chandrill’s reaction.
Chandrill cursed himself furiously and picked up the axe to go on working, relapsing into his protective sullenness. Minnatose crouched outside the sled for another few minutes before he spoke. “Hard at work, cousin,” he said, still smiling.
“Yes.”
“You need a new runner for that job.”
“That’s right.”
“Know how to get one?”
“Yes.”
“Well how about it then?” Minnatose slapped his hand against the heavy framework of the sled. “I want this sled for a useful job. I could have it filled with coal at the next deposit and we could run the furnace practically all the time. You could come back to the front of the tribe and no harm will come to the Philosophers. I’ll disperse them over the rest of the sleds.”
“I told you before that I wasn’t going to agree to abolish this sled,” Chandrill said doggedly. “If you need the consent of every member of the royal family before you can tear up its charter you just have to wait until I’m out of the way.”
Minnatose renewed his grin, stood up and walked away, his skates clinking on the ice. Chandrill worked on until he had finished then he climbed out from under, staggering a little as his legs gave way, cramped from the long crouch.
When he walked round to the front of the sled Minnatose was ready to go and there was something wrong. Something in the air. Chandrill glanced round curiously at the two or three Lesser Philosophers who were fixedly watching something in the hills to the north. He walked past Minnatose, who was looking amused, and found Sinoon climbing down from the sled with all her spare clothing in a bundle on her back.
Chandrill sucked in air. “Where to?” he asked her as she reached his level.
She was trembling slightly but her voice sounded casual. “We don’t get on well here, Chan. There’s no other women on this sled and since we fell back in the lines I can’t get across to the other sleds in the same way. There isn’t enough room here either and . . . well, I’m going back to the Royal Trio.”
“You’re leaving—just like that?” Chandrill asked quietly.
“Yes.”
“You’re not. Go back up onto the sled. I’m going to talk to Minna lose about this.”
Sinoon laughed. “You can’t stop me, Chan. And don’t annoy Minnatose—he might lose his temper.” She stepped quickly past him and moved out of sight around the front of the sled.
Go ahead, Chandrill thought, it has happened at last. They’ve gone too far, so let them see the real Chandrill, the smart dangerous invincible Chandrill who has always remained hidden for want of a situation or opponent big enough to test his mettle. That’s what you have always told yourself. Now act!
Somehow he just felt sick and heavy w
ith grief that the split with Sinoon had finally come. He set the tool pouch down and walked forward after Sinoon. He found that he had been standing for longer than he had realised for Minnatose and Sinoon were nearly a quarter of a mile from the sled and moving away fast.
He stared at them until they were only specks. To the north were the ever present foothills of the polar mountains and in the south an uninterrupted waste of ice out to the horizon. Behind the sled the sky tinged down into the darkness of the eternal Night and in the opposite direction grew brighter with the light of the elusive sun just below the horizon.
Chandrill turned back to the sled and noted that, although the sled was not a very big structure, there was nobody in sight. They all knew what had been happening. He raised cupped hands to shout to one of the Novices to come down for the tools, moving and thinking mechanically, when the unbelievable happened.
Behind the sled, towards Night, a point of brilliant light appeared. It was a little above the horizon and, as Chandrill watched, it dipped down into the darker background of the far ice then lifted back into the sky again. Suddenly he realised that the thing was moving at tremendous speed for it had swollen into a ball as it began to ascend. It was much closer.
Paralysed with fear, Chandrill tilted his head back as the hurtling light sped by several miles up. It went straight down the sky and several seconds before it reached the horizon the light seemed to split into two, shedding a much smaller part. Immediately the larger object passed below the horizon there was a bright flare of light that lit up the whole region of sky around the point of disappearance.
Slowly, and of their own accord, Chandrill’s knees buckled and he found himself kneeling on the ice, unable to move due to the pounding elation racing in his chest. He knelt there for a time taking his air in noisy gasps, grinning fiercely and blinking tears out of his eyes. Complete and pure happiness was throwing his nervous system into chaos, then the spasms passed and he stood up.
