Sectret of The Marauder Satellite (v1.0)

by Unknown Author

  “Anxiety about what?” I asked.

  “Well, that’s a different question," Bix said sagely.

  We stood near the entrance to the low-ceilinged room, pausing while I collected my nerve, and Bix sorted out the people, looking for those he knew.

  It was a larger than average room. It was big enough so that you could see the curve of the floor, although that took looking for. At one side was the TV screen. At the moment it was mercifully blank. Lightweight chairs of aluminum and plastic were scattered about, and here and there a low table, on which stood empty and half-empty glasses. The bar at the far end was open, and after Bix had gotten the room pegged, we cut across to it.

  We each got a Pepsi.

  Clutching my glass in my hand, I did my best to survey the room in a totally casual manner.

  Bix tugged at my arm. "Fellow I want you to meet," he said, pulling me with him.

  A tall, blond man was standing and listening quietly to a shorter, more volatile man.

  “So look, Dean,” the shorter man was saying, punctuating his words with sharp gestures. “It figures that a goodly number of us semi-perms up here will get first crack at it, when they set up permanent operations on the Moon. The trick is to have experience and training that qualifies you.’’

  Dean nodded. “So?’’

  “Special skills that relate solely to operating this Station are going to keep you here—they’re less than useless elsewhere. You know that. And this Station—I give it ten more years before they abandon operations here.’’

  “I’ve heard the argument before," Dean nodded. “I don’t agree.’’

  “Well, why? Why not?’’

  “Doesn’t make sense," the big man replied tersely. “Sure, lots of things the Moon is better for. I figure we’ll have a lot of heavy industry on the Moon in twenty, thirty years. But why use us? They’ll ship up the men they need, directly from Earth. Men with industrial training. What do you know about smelting, Harlan?”

  The shorter man snorted, and threw up his hands. “I need another drink,” he said, and turned, walking almost directly into me. I stepped back quickly, but not before he’d bumped into me.

  I was braced for another scene. He surprised me.^ “Sorry, fella; didn’t see you,” he said mildly, and cut around me while I was still mumbling my own apologies.

  I felt my face growing hot.

  “Hey, Dean,” Bix said. “I want you to meet a friend of mine, Paul Williams. Paul, this is Dean Grennell.” Grennell stuck out a big hand, and said, “Hyuh, Bix; Paul. Say.. .Williams... You the new space jockey?” “Umm, yeah,” I said. His grip was like iron. “I’ve uhh, gone out a couple of times.” I felt myself starting to blurt, and closed my mouth firmly.

  “Well, now. You’re the man of the hour, aren’tcha?” “Uhh, I am?”

  “You brought in the latest prize—that Russky capsule?”

  “Yeah. Most of the way, anyway.”

  Grennell leaned closer. “Tell me: is it true? Were there people in that thing?”

  “More or less,” I said. “They were well preserved.” “You didn’t have a chance to tell me about that, Paul,” Bix said, his tone curious.

  “They were all dried up,” I said. “They looked pretty awful.”

  “Mummies, I heard,” Grennell said. “Hey, let’s grab some chairs. I want to hear about this.”

  Fifteen minutes later I became aware of the fact that we had an audience. Half a dozen men were standing around, listening to me telling Dean and Bix about the capsule and what it’d looked like, and all of them seemed fascinated.

  Somebody had refilled my glass—still Pepsi—for me, and nobody was paying the slightest attention to the color of my jump suit.

  It’s not that hard, I told myself. It's not nearly as hard as I thought.

  Chapter 10

  WHEN DO you figure they sent that thing up?” somebody was wondering.

  “You said no space suits?”

  “That’s right,” I replied. “So I guess it was after they, were using air locks.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything. All their manned flights were in ships with air locks,” a man behind me said.

  “They sure didn’t worry about weight,” Grennell agreed. “We’re just lucky they didn’t get to the Moon ahead of us.”

  “You can blame the world’s weather for that,” said a new voice. It was Mary. “Hi, Paul, Bix. Daddy says that if the jet streams hadn’t changed and wiped out the Russian wheat crops four years in a row, we’d be the observers up here, and the Russians would be in charge.”

  She smiled at me as though nothing had ever happened—as though I hadn’t been a complete jerk in front of her less than twenty-four hours ago. “Isn’t it exciting?” she said, looking at me. “It’s only the second manned ship we’ve ever found, and it’s a lot more mysterious than the first.”

  “How do you mean?” I asked.

  “What happened to the first?” Bix asked.

  “What’s so mysterious about it?" Dean asked.

  She laughed. “One at a time; I can’t keep up with you all. Well, first they found the one that had just a single man in it. That was three years ago, and that’s when the Russian team came up as observers. That one was very simple. One of the guidance systems failed, and they couldn’t get him down. He died when his air and food ran out." She shook her head. “It sounds pretty horrible, but at least they knew what was happening. They stayed in contact with him until the end.’’

  “What about this one?" the short man, Harlan, asked.

  “They’ve identified it. It went up in 1963.’’

  “That old?” Grennell breathed.

  “It’s one of those they don’t know what happened to. They lost radio contact with it right after it went up.’’

  “What happened to it? Do they know now? Is your father working on it?" I leaned forward, excited by this new information.

  “They—the Russians—looked it over, and they couldn’t figure it out. So they called Daddy and some of the others in on it. I don’t know too much; I tried to hang around, but Daddy told me to scoot. I suppose I’ll find out by the time it comes to the reports and paper work. But of course then’’—she dimpled, “then it’ll all be classified and Top Secret, and I couldn’t tell you boys anything. So I thought I’d better tell you what I knew, now, before it was too late.”

  From the reaction Mary was getting, I realized she knew most of the guys clustered around us pretty well already. That figured. I mean, after all: she’s a reasonably pretty girl, and they’re all healthy, normal men, and the male-female ratio on the Station isn’t all that great. It still bothered me, though. Somehow it didn’t seem right that she should be so friendly with all these guys.

  “Well, hey,” said a voice from behind me. It was familiar, and I tried to place it without craning my head around. I had a feeling it was somebody I disliked. “What’s the story? What’s going on? Hi, Mary.”

  Edwards. It had to be Norm Edwards. I felt myself tensing. Bix glanced up, over my head. Then he winked at me. Keep cool, I told myself. Just stay cool.

  “Hi, Norm," Mary was saying. “Everybody’s all excited about that new ship Paul brought in.’’

  “Yeah?" He didn’t seem to realize he was standing right over my left shoulder.

  She told him about the Russky capsule again, and the strange circumstances under which it had originally been lost. “It was out of their line of sight too," she added. " They had to ask the British at Jodrell Bank to help search for it. But no one ever found out what happened to it. Until today, I mean.”

  “Well,” Edwards sighed, “there’s just one more problem for us.’’

  Grennell looked up. “What do you mean, Norm?’’

  “That Williams kid. If he was a snotty type before, he’ll be totally obnoxious how. Can you see him bragging up his discovery? Boy...” Edwards’ voice trailed off slowly. Everyone had become very quiet.

  I wondered what I was going to do. Eve
ryone seemed to be waiting—waiting for me to say or do something. I felt a sick churning in my stomach.

  Grennell broke the silence. “Now, Norm. Maybe you’ve got the wrong slant on Paul." He directed a depreciating smile over my head.

  I heard my own voice responding from a great distance. “Well, Dean, you know how it is—once a show-off, always a show-off." I half turned in my chair. “Isn’t that right, Edwards? Once a show-off, always a show-off? Isn’t that what you always say?" I was at the wrong end of a telescope, and the world, the people, the room, were all impossibly tiny and far away. “Tell everybody what you think of me, Norm," I said. “Or—can we be buddies? Can I call you Abnorm?’’

  “Paul.” Bix’s voice was low but strong. “Ease off..’’

  Edwards moved around me until we were facing.

  “That’s right, Williams. That’s what I always say.

  You've pegged it. ‘Once a show-off, always a show-off.’ O.K., you’ve had your say, little man. Now, blow.”

  I couldn’t seem to hear anyone else saying anything, but the drumming of my pulse was loud in my ears. I felt very close to doing something wrong—something terribly wrong.

  ‘‘Just a moment,” Grennell’s voice came to me over the roaring in my head. ‘‘You’re out of line, Norm.” Grennell, the Peace Maker, I thought bitterly to myself. Stumbling, I pushed my way to my feet.

  “Edwards,” I said very clearly and distinctly, “it would be a pleasure to cycle you through the air lock, sans suit.” Then I turned my back and pushed through the crowd for the door. I almost tripped on the high door sill as I went through. My eyes were full of salt.

  Bix followed me up to our room. He didn’t say anything until we were both lying in our bunks.

  “Why did you give up, Paul?” he asked. “As long as you kept your temper, you had him cornered. Everyone knew he was wrong. Hey! Remember back down on the Old Sod, when Krassner was trying to bug you, and you turned the tables on him? Why didn’t you do it again?”

  I had a headache. “I have a headache, Bix,” I said. “I don’t much feel like talking.”

  He was silent.

  “You really want to know?” I said after a while.

  “Yeah.”

  “I had to leave, to cut out,” I said. “It was that or do something nasty. What I did to Krassner that day, that was nasty. He’s hated me for it ever since. And we hardly knew each other before. That’s a kid thing to do. I’m supposed to be older than that.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Bix said. “Maybe so. As it was, you left Edwards to face the mob. Maybe it made good sense, tactically.”

  “Oh, tactically—!” I said. “I was ready to punch him one in the face, Bix. I was ready to blow everything, but good. I had to get out.”

  Another silence, while Bix digested that.

  " What you said about Krassner,” he said after a while. “I don’t think he hates you. I think he looks up to you.” “Yeah?” I didn’t believe it.

  " Most of us guys do, one way or the other, you know," Bix said. “You’re the silent, self-reliant type, you know. And you were the first to be promoted out of Instruction. " That took some thinking about.

  Dr. Cramer summoned me a couple of hours later. I found him sitting in a cubicle office all but identical to the commander’s. He was alone, and that was just as well. There was no room for a third person.

  “Sit down, Paul. I wanted to talk to you about this capsule you picked up. I’d like your impressions of it. Oh, I know,” he waved his hand, “you probably didn’t see much of significance. This is a work break for me. I’m curious, and it’s one way to relax and still be on the job.” “Well, sir,” I said slowly, “I can’t think of anything I would’ve seen that you people didn’t.”

  “How’d it look when you first approached it?” “Hard to see, sir. I mean, I’ve gotten used to seeing things better out here. There’s nothing between you and what you’re seeing, so the only thing that has any bearing is distance. But my tug’s radar had a firm fix on the thing before I did. It was painted a nonreflective color, I think.” “Olive drab,” Dr. Cramer remarked dryly.

  “Yes. Well, so anyway, I didn’t see it till I was almost on top of it. Then... well, it looked the way it does now." “Not quite.”

  “Sir?”

  “They’ve been cutting it apart and dissecting it, bit by bit. That’s not my department, so I’m taking a vacation for the moment.”

  “Have they found anything yet?”

  “Not really. Moscow sent up a tight-beamed video broadcast of the specs—not that they’re that secret; the thing is long obsolete—and right now the engineers are

  'it trying to find what went wrong.”

  “What killed the people, sir?”

  “That’s a good question. There’s still oxygen in the tanks, so that couldn’t have been it. At first we thought, with such perfect mummification, there couldn’t have been oxygen—they would’ve decomposed. But current thought has it that decomposition is largely a result of the work of microorganisms and parasites, insects and like that, and most of those were either missing from the environment of the capsule or killed along with the occupants. We do know that whatever killed them was sudden and unexpected, though.”

  “How do you know that, sir?”

  Dr. Cramer flashed me a conspiratorial smile. “We’re not supposed to spread the news yet, but.. .can you keep it to yourself for the time being? Even from my nosy daughter?”

  “Mary?”

  "There’s nothing that girl delights in more than a secret to be shared. It seems to me we owe you something for reporting the find so promptly, and doing a good job of bringing it in, so—will you agree? Mum for now?” “Umm, yessir.”

  “There was a log on board. The captain of the mission, Petrov, left a short, unfinished message. Roughly translated—and I’m quoting from memory anyway—it said, ‘Radio dead, all instruments dead. Getting very cold. Headed on collision course with—’ And there it breaks off. The handwriting was very irregular for the last several words.”

  “A collision course, sir? With what?”

  Dr. Cramer sighed. “I wish I knew. There’s no ambiguity in what the man wrote. Dr.Timkovsky, the head of the Russian group up here, was very certain of that. But that, of course,. is less puzzling than the loss of radio contact, internal power, and heat. He may have been having delusions and hallucinations by then. The handwriting suggests it.”

  My mind remained with the first idea. “But, still—a collision course. He must’ve seen something. If there was something out there that...well, attacked the capsule...?”

  “He had to be wrong at least on that point,” Dr. Cramer said. “There was hardly a collision.”

  “That’s true,” I said. “I crawled all over the thing. There weren’t even the marks of a near miss.”

  “So there we are,” Dr. Cramer said. “All the signs of a genuine mystery. If this were a detective novel, all the clues would be there, and our hero—that’s me, I guess—would come up with a tidy solution. I—”

  A buzzer sounded, cutting him off. He clicked an intercom switch. “Cramer here.”

  “Doctor,” said a voice with only a touch of accented heaviness to it. “It would appear that we are again in need of your presence... ah, your help. We have been checking the instruments, and—”

  “I’ll be right up,” Dr. Cramer said. I guessed he didn’t want to have me hear anymore. He nodded at me. “Thanks for dropping by, Williams. You’ll remember our agreement?”

  “Yessir.” I was being politely dismissed. “Thank you, sir.”

  He looked up and grinned. “Don’t worry. You’ll hear all the rest from Mary or me before it’s all done with.” My next surprise occurred on my return to my room. Bix was lounging around, a cat-ate-the-canary look on his face.

  “Well, Paul, how went it?”

  “O.K. He just wanted to find out how it looked to me, what I thought of the whole bit.”

  “
You’re really rising in the world. Dr. Cramer comes to you for your opinions.. .next thing it’ll be the commander asking you to spell him during his next rotation to Earth.”

  “You look awfully smug about something, Bix. What gives?”

  “Take a look in your drawer, fella. It’s none of my business"

  By now he had me thoroughly puzzled. This wasn’t the Bix I thought I knew. I pulled the drawer open.

  I’d divided the drawer into three sections: various non-clothing oddments, like a magic slate and a stylus; underwear; and my jump suits.

  My green jump suits were gone. In their place were five blue jump suits. I picked up the top one. It was neatly folded, in the same way I’d kept my jump suits folded for the drawer. I shook it out.

  Over the left breast was a small piece of cloth tape. On it was neatly spelled out: “Paul Williams.’’

  I looked up at Bix.

  " You get to keep the green suit you’re wearing now," he said with a grin. " A memento. The others they took away. I folded the new ones up for you. I liked that better than a pile of them on your bunk when you came in. ’ ’

  I shook my head. “They’re really for me, huh?’’

  “Yup. No more greenie, you. You’re In.’’

  I looked up at him, suspicious for a moment of his tone. “Bix? This isn’t another of your Dr. Beiderbecke ploys? You didn’t promote these for me, did you?’’

  “Huh? You kidding? That kind of pull I haven’t got. No, these came to you from the Powers Above. It’s legit, Paul. You’re a crewman now. Go shove that up Edwards* nose.’’

  I sat down on my bunk, and stared at the jump suit in my hands. Blue. A symbol. Forme, a symbol of acceptance. I’d been judged, and accepted. Now I’d not only be doing the work of a crewman—I’d be a crewman, and Cadet Williams no longer.

  It brought tears to my eyes, tears I made no effort to brush away.

  The next morning found me back on active duty, back at work. I had a Titan IIIC unit to pick up, and a tug to check out and service before I could make the pickup.

  Yesterday’s big catch was to be just another day’s piece of work.