by Zach Hughes
“How much padding did it take to duplicate the Houston facility here?” Dom asked.
“What would happen to all our ships in space if some Firster got into the Houston facility with a kilo of plastique?” J.J. asked.
“Aside from a few men getting killed,” Art said, “it would kill the program, because Congress would see that as an excellent opportunity to refuse to fund rebuilding the control facility.”
“But, dammit, this is just the kind of stuff the antis yell about,” Dom said. “I have to admit that for the first time I understand a little about the way they feel.”
“Top people know about this place,” J.J. said. “Even our friend from New Mexico knows. Aside from the fact that there’s no way to hide a place which sends out as much communications as we do, it was good politics for our friend, since it was in his home state and put a few million into the economy of New Mexico. He was one of the most sincere supporters of a duplicate facility, but only behind the scenes, of course.”
“Does he know about the hydrogen engine?” Dom asked.
“We hope not. We’ll know within a few days.”
“How?”
“If the senator from New Mexico knows, the Firsters know. If the Firsters know there’ll be a public outcry, at the very least, and at worst an out-and-out assault on DOSEWEX.”
“Are they that strong?” Dom asked.
“They’re strong and growing stronger every day. I’d say it’s fifty-fifty that they’ll try a frontal attack on DOSEWEX. It’s isolated. On the surface it would seem to be an easier target than, say, Houston or Canaveral, but when it comes right down to it it would be easier to take the Pentagon or Fort Knox. We’ve got two divisions of space marines within five minutes’ jump. We’ve got the latest weapons. We can fry and slice and implode and burn and freeze and dope and gas a few thousand Earthfirsters with our own security forces.”
“But you can’t keep them out of the facility,” Dom said, flourishing a bandaged foot.
The busy routine went on around them. The mechanical voice of the test coordinator continued the countdown. Dom finished his coffee. The cadet was on hand to take his empty cup.
Under ideal conditions, every ship in space should be equipped with the hydroplant. If Callisto Explorer had had hydropower it wouldn’t be sitting out there in space, a dead ship with the air going stale. The hydroplant was not absolutely necessary. The old solid-fuel rockets did the job of exploring the system and running the limited commercial traffic between Earth and Mars. Man could no longer afford expensive programs merely for the sake of progress. The offshoots of space were, almost exclusively, luxury items which the world could live without. Teflon, fabrics, micro-electronics, new scientific techniques, the ability to locate planets for the first time around the nearer stars—not one of those things put food on the table, and when a man is hungry he couldn’t care less about a planet orbiting a star so far away that he couldn’t reach it in his lifetime in one of the present-day ships.
The harnessing of hydrogen power had eased a few problems. There was plenty of electricity in the industrial countries, but you couldn’t use a hydroplant to propel a ground vehicle. The best use for portable hydroplants was in space, and not even almost unlimited power would push a ship past the speed of light and make the stars possible for this generation.
As a spacer, he would feel more secure in the future to know that there was a backup control for Houston. He was even pleased that the hydroplant was, at last, going to be tested. With the world in turmoil, covert actions were the only method available in a continued effort to conquer space before it was too late.
The antis would point out that only five men were breathing stale air in the Callisto Explorer as they waited for a rescue ship, while millions were starving. The antis would, if they discovered that billions had been spent to develop a space hydrogen engine, mount war horses and take to the streets to kill the first spacer or cadet they encountered.
Dom didn’t like to have to think about such things. He liked to be left free to do his job aboard a good ship and leave the problems of the planet to the politicians. Before J.J. had called him to DOSEWEX, he’d figured that he’d be able to ride the thunderbirds out into space for the rest of his life, even if it meant only the Mars run for fertilizer. Sometimes he dreamed that somewhere, some hidden lab would break the constant during his lifetime, but he had little hope. It would happen, perhaps. He could not believe that man had been created, or had grown, to be confined to Earth and its immediate family of barren planets. If tiny subatomic particles could travel faster than light, there had to be a way to make a ship travel faster than light.
If that alien ship out there in orbit around Jupiter held a key to sublight travel, any deception was justifiable. Even if the mission failed there would be gain. Power would never again be a problem. There would never be a shortage of hydrogen in the universe.
“Almost time,” J.J. said.
“Igniter system go,” Neil’s voice said, thinned by distance.
“I want Neil,” Dom said. “I want him to fly the thing.”
“He’s already assigned,” J.J. said.
So it all depended on an untested engine so far away from the control room that, if it exploded when Neil ignited it, it would take high-resolution telescopes on the orbiting observatories to see the flash of light.
“Preheater on,” Neil said.
Now it was all Neil. The countdown was in its last seconds and the time lag did not allow for two-way communication.
“Igniter switch on.” The words came calmly, smoothly, space static crackling among them. “Backup igniter switch on.”
Even as the words echoed around the silent control room, it had already happened. Neil, Walters had set off the bomb under the seat of his pants even before his voice counted: “Four, three, two, one, fire.”
Dom could hear the blood pounding in his ears. Fifty people held their breath.
“That is a roger on ignition,” Neil’s voice said, so calmly. A cheer went up in the control room.
“Acceleration factor point-one-oh-five. All systems go. Stand by for cutoff.”
It worked. In spite of strikes in key plants, in spite of demonstrations at space facilities and aerospace plants, in spite of official red tape and the starving millions and social laws against secrecy in government agencies, it worked.
Data was still pouring into the control computers when Dom followed J.J. and Art to a track car which whisked them back to the living complex.
Power was no problem. They would have enough power to jar the earth out of orbit if they wanted to build a plant big enough. With a ship powered by the hydrogen engine there would be more than enough power to grapple on and lift that bogie out of Jupiter’s atmosphere and carry it home.
If the bogie didn’t resist being lifted out.
If they could build a ship to withstand three thousand atmospheres of pressure without imploding.
If the Earthfirsters didn’t mount an attack and do too much damage before the pressure hull could fly.
If they didn’t all go to jail.
Chapter Four
Doris Gomulka arrived while Dom was watching Art Donald run alloy tests. She came into the lab in her travel clothes, a bit rumpled and dusty, her hair damp with her own perspiration. Doris was a tall girl, small-breasted, thin chest, small waist which flowered into nice hips. She was, in Dom’s eyes, one of the more sensuous women of the world, although she made no attempt to exploit it or to enhance her nice face with beauty aids.
Art was about to fire a piece of alloy with a laser. It was an interesting and precise operation which required Dom’s assistance. Keeping his eyes on the meters gave him time to recover from seeing Doris for the first time since the water-hull project.
Art burned the piece of metal, and instruments measured the instant of its disintegration and fed the results into a computer. Doris stood quietly until Art was finished. Dom turned and looked at her. He couldn’t s
mile. He tried and the smile wouldn’t come. He was feeling it all over again and saying to himself, Look, stupid, the gal is married and happy with it.
“I’ve got a few problems for you,” Art said, with no other word of greeting.
“Right,” Doris said. She liked working with Art. He was her kind of scientist. Once a project was under way the rest of the world ceased to exist for Art. He was tops in his field, and she liked that, because she knew, with a quiet and unobtrusive confidence, that she was tops in hers. It had been said that Doris Gomulka could feed random numbers into a computer and make it recite the poetry of Emily Dickinson, if she wanted to waste time on such a project.
Dom had some problems, too. Unlike Art, he could not turn them over to Doris for the solving. His problem was that he was in love, had always been in love, would always be in love with a girl who looked on him as kind of goofy younger brother. And, dammit, he wasn’t even younger than Doris.
“Nice to have you aboard again,” he said.
“Thanks.” She gave him a nice smile. “You’re looking good. What’s with the feet?”
“A Firster gave him a hotfoot,” Art said. “Have you heard from Larry?”
“In this day and time he didn’t take his pills and picked up malaria in India,” Doris said.
“What we want to do,” Art said, having had enough of the civilities, “is take the water-hull formula and run it through with a few alterations.”
“She’ll want to have a rest from the trip,” Dom said.
“With a couple of the new alloys I think we can increase the resistance of the old hull about twenty percent,” Art said.
“Art, at least let her have time to wash up,” Dom said.
“I don’t care if she’s dirty,” Art said. “Just so she puts on a sterile suit.”
“I’m ready to work,” Doris said, smiling at Dom.
“The old design can be nothing more than a jumping-off place,” Art said. “The Flash here thinks he might be inspired if we go over all the figures again and just add in the progress in techniques which are available.”
“It won’t come close to what’s needed,” Doris said.
“We have to start somewhere,” Dom said. “I’ve got a couple of vague ideas. I want to talk them over with Larry before we do anything significant.”
“He’s no more than three days behind me,” Doris said.
“Good,” Dom said. “Meanwhile, well have time to go over the old design.” Doris came to stand beside him as he scribbled on a work pad. Art stood on the other side. Dom gave them a horseback estimate of what an individual hull member would have to stand for a three-thousand-atmosphere hull, using the initials TTA to refer to the hull. Art took his figures and began to run with them, and Doris slipped into a sterile suit and went into the computer room. For them, Dom had ceased to exist and the only reality was the immediate problem. They didn’t even look up when he left the lab. If they needed him, they’d remember him and call him, irritated because he wasn’t available on a second’s notice. He grinned. With that team you never knew who was the boss, and that’s the way he liked it. Each member was the best. Each member knew the other members were the best. There was no clash of egos, only a feeling of anticipation and a will to get on with it.
In his office, he told his secretary that he was available only to members of the team and the chief, meaning J.J. He poured coffee and sat in his deliberately uncomfortable desk chair. Desk work bored him. If he had kept the padded, swiveling, seductive chair which came with the office he’d have spent a lot of time sleeping in it.
The office was in top-security country. It was as well protected as the labs and the main control room. The labs were adjacent. They contained everything needed for the preliminary, mainly theoretical work. He could have a full meal from a varied menu at any time of the day or night, and if he desired, it would be delivered to his office or his quarters, which opened off the other side of the office. The office and the quarters were small, but pleasant. They were so well ventilated and so well lit that it was easy to forget that they were several hundred feet underground. In his room were several bottles of his favorite brand of bourbon, a viewer which was capable of receiving topside broadcasts and also offered a selection of taped dramas, documentaries, and scientific film. The music system had been stocked with his favorites, obviously from his preference list aboard his last ship.
A blockshield contained the entire lab-office complex. Communications out were complicated, except for a private line direct to J.J.’s office. It was a good setup for work.
He looked over the reports from Neil’s engine tests. The powerplant had worked to design specs, and Neil was riding it home to join the construction team out behind the moon, where the hull would be fabricated. The hull was not even designed yet, but the construction crews were in place. Dom had worked under pressure before, but never like this.
He had been over the engine test data a hundred times, and he knew he was reading it again simply to take his mind off the way she looked when she walked into the lab dusty and rumpled from a trip across the desert by ground car. He kept remembering the Cape and how they had walked under a Florida moon arm in arm, both slightly tipsy. And above all he remembered how her lips flattened and then resisted under his.
And there were other memories, because that kiss under the Florida moon had not been the first. He’d kissed her a lot when they were together in the Academy. They’d even plighted a few troths and made a few plans. Yes, a lot of kisses then, and a lot of tears, openly on her part, secretly on his, when he unplighted his troths and grabbed a chance for an immediate berth on a Mars ship. He grabbed it with both hands and let her hand fall limply from his, leaving her behind. She married Larry Gomulka while he was on his second Mars trip, after he’d told her, as kindly as he could, that his first love was space and that she’d have to accept being number two.
Doris was not the sort to be content with being number two, and she was happy, or she seemed to be, with Larry.
Dom could understand why she didn’t want to be the few-weeks-out-of-the-year wife of a spacer, but he could not understand her being happy with Larry. Larry stood two hands shorter than Doris and he tended toward stoutness. He was a small barrel of a man with a protruding stomach and a liking for ordinary beer. He was a smiler. He was everything Dom Gordon wasn’t. He was the most unlikely candidate for being Doris’ husband, and he was, when Dom came home from that second Mars trip. He was, indeed, Doris’ husband.
Well, hell, a good spacer doesn’t kiss anyone but his ship, except when on Earthside R R. He could live with it, or he thought he could until, a little bit drunk, he kissed her under a Florida moon and found her mouth to be as sweet as before, but without the response.
The kiss took place during the early days of the water-hull project. DOSE wanted a vessel to explore the deepest ocean, and Dom was the man. He picked his team, and Doris was the first to arrive. They found themselves with time on their hands. Larry was off, as usual, in some inaccessible place in Africa or Asia. Art Donald was finishing a project in Seattle.
He kissed her, felt a momentary response, then she pushed him away. Marriage was still recognized by some people as an honorable institution. There were people, like Doris, who felt that marriage vows were to be kept. In a world where the vast majority of women took what they wanted when they wanted it, Doris clung to what she laughingly called “middle-class morality.”
Dom had never been a pleader. If a girl said no she simply wasn’t interested at the moment. She’d be interested later, and if she were not, another would be. It was not egoism or chauvinism on his part, it was just the way things were. He should have backed off when she said no, but he was, he realized, still in love with her. He tried gentle force, pulling her to him. She was strong. She resisted silently.
“Hey, this is Dom,” he said. “You know me.”
“That’s the past, Dom,” she said.
“What difference would it make?�
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“It would make a lot of difference to me,” she said.
“You loved me,” he said. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
“It would be the first time since I married Larry,” she said. Hell, he understood, but he had to preserve his pride. He stood there thinking of things to say. He knew what he should have said.
He should have said, “Doris, I understand. That’s the way I thought of you back at the Academy when you were my girl. I admire you for being that way.”
Instead, he let his passions guide him, begged her, became a prideless beggar and saw, in her eyes, her loss of respect for him. That made him angry, and he made the situation worse by saying angry things.
“Dom, you are not going to force me to pull out of this project,” she said. “I’m interested in it and Larry is interested in it.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m being damned unfair. Just put it down to one too many drinks and let’s forget it.”
“I’d like that.”
“It won’t happen again.”
“Thank you, Dom.”
“It wouldn’t have happened this time,” he said, with one last effort to hurt her, “if you hadn’t walked with me.”
“That won’t happen again,” she said.
“Thank you, Doris,” he said.
It would have taken a computer and a good operator to figure the miles he’d covered since Florida. There were always girls for spacers, and then she walks into a lab and it’s all up front again and, goddammit, she wasn’t even beautiful. Her breasts were too small and her hips too wide and she was an intellectual snob and why the hell couldn’t he get her out of his mind?
“My boy,” he said, “it’s a matter of self-control.”
