The Science Fiction Megapack

by Bova, Ben; Brown, Frederic

  “Oh, Christ!” the medic said. “Get a mop, somebody. Here, bud; heave into this.” He put a basin on the table in front of Clayton.

  It took them the better part of an hour to get Clayton awake enough to realize what was going on and where he was. Even then, he was plenty groggy.

  * * *

  It was the First Officer of the STS-52 who finally got the story straight. As soon as Clayton was in condition, the medic and the quartermaster officer who had found him took him up to the First Officer’s compartment.

  “I was checking through the stores this morning when I found this man. He was asleep, dead drunk, behind the crates.”

  “He was drunk, all right,” supplied the medic. “I found this in his pocket.” He flipped a booklet to the First Officer.

  The First was a young man, not older than twenty-eight with tough-looking gray eyes. He looked over the booklet.

  “Where did you get Parkinson’s ID booklet? And his uniform?”

  Clayton looked down at his clothes in wonder. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know? That’s a hell of an answer.”

  “Well, I was drunk,” Clayton said defensively. “A man doesn’t know what he’s doing when he’s drunk.” He frowned in concentration. He knew he’d have to think up some story.

  “I kind of remember we made a bet. I bet him I could get on the ship. Sure—I remember, now. That’s what happened; I bet him I could get on the ship and we traded clothes.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “At my place, sleeping it off, I guess.”

  “Without his oxy-mask?”

  “Oh, I gave him my oxidation pills for the mask.”

  The First shook his head. “That sounds like the kind of trick Parkinson would pull, all right. I’ll have to write it up and turn you both in to the authorities when we hit Earth.” He eyed Clayton. “What’s your name?”

  “Cartwright. Sam Cartwright,” Clayton said without batting an eye.

  “Volunteer or convicted colonist?”

  “Volunteer.”

  The First looked at him for a long moment, disbelief in his eyes.

  It didn’t matter. Volunteer or convict, there was no place Clayton could go. From the officer’s viewpoint, he was as safely imprisoned in the spaceship as he would be on Mars or a prison on Earth.

  * * *

  The First wrote in the log book, and then said: “Well, we’re one man short in the kitchen. You wanted to take Parkinson’s place; brother, you’ve got it—without pay.” He paused for a moment.

  “You know, of course,” he said judiciously, “that you’ll be shipped back to Mars immediately. And you’ll have to work out your passage both ways—it will be deducted from your pay.”

  Clayton nodded. “I know.”

  “I don’t know what else will happen. If there’s a conviction, you may lose your volunteer status on Mars. And there may be fines taken out of your pay, too.

  “Well, that’s all, Cartwright. You can report to Kissman in the kitchen.”

  The First pressed a button on his desk and spoke into the intercom. “Who was on duty at the airlock when the crew came aboard last night? Send him up. I want to talk to him.”

  Then the quartermaster officer led Clayton out the door and took him to the kitchen.

  The ship’s driver tubes were pushing it along at a steady five hundred centimeters per second squared acceleration, pushing her steadily closer to Earth with a little more than half a gravity of drive.

  * * *

  There wasn’t much for Clayton to do, really. He helped to select the foods that went into the automatics, and he cleaned them out after each meal was cooked. Once every day, he had to partially dismantle them for a really thorough going-over.

  And all the time, he was thinking.

  Parkinson must be dead; he knew that. That meant the Chamber. And even if he wasn’t, they’d send Clayton back to Mars. Luckily, there was no way for either planet to communicate with the ship; it was hard enough to keep a beam trained on a planet without trying to hit such a comparatively small thing as a ship.

  But they would know about it on Earth by now. They would pick him up the instant the ship landed. And the best he could hope for was a return to Mars.

  No, by God! He wouldn’t go back to that frozen mud-ball! He’d stay on Earth, where it was warm and comfortable and a man could live where he was meant to live. Where there was plenty of air to breathe and plenty of water to drink. Where the beer tasted like beer and not like slop. Earth. Good green hills, the like of which exists nowhere else.

  Slowly, over the days, he evolved a plan. He watched and waited and checked each little detail to make sure nothing would go wrong. It couldn’t go wrong. He didn’t want to die, and he didn’t want to go back to Mars.

  Nobody on the ship liked him; they couldn’t appreciate his position. He hadn’t done anything to them, but they just didn’t like him. He didn’t know why; he’d tried to get along with them. Well, if they didn’t like him, the hell with them.

  If things worked out the way he figured, they’d be damned sorry.

  He was very clever about the whole plan. When turn-over came, he pretended to get violently spacesick. That gave him an opportunity to steal a bottle of chloral hydrate from the medic’s locker.

  And, while he worked in the kitchen, he spent a great deal of time sharpening a big carving knife.

  Once, during his off time, he managed to disable one of the ship’s two lifeboats. He was saving the other for himself.

  The ship was eight hours out from Earth and still decelerating when Clayton pulled his getaway.

  * * *

  It was surprisingly easy. He was supposed to be asleep when he sneaked down to the drive compartment with the knife. He pushed open the door, looked in, and grinned like an ape.

  The Engineer and the two jetmen were out cold from the chloral hydrate in the coffee from the kitchen.

  Moving rapidly, he went to the spares locker and began methodically to smash every replacement part for the drivers. Then he took three of the signal bombs from the emergency kit, set them for five minutes, and placed them around the driver circuits.

  He looked at the three sleeping men. What if they woke up before the bombs went off? He didn’t want to kill them though. He wanted them to know what had happened and who had done it.

  He grinned. There was a way. He simply had to drag them outside and jam the door lock. He took the key from the Engineer, inserted it, turned it, and snapped off the head, leaving the body of the key still in the lock. Nobody would unjam it in the next four minutes.

  Then he began to run up the stairwell toward the good lifeboat.

  He was panting and out of breath when he arrived, but no one had stopped him. No one had even seen him.

  He clambered into the lifeboat, made everything ready, and waited.

  The signal bombs were not heavy charges; their main purposes was to make a flare bright enough to be seen for thousands of miles in space. Fluorine and magnesium made plenty of light—and heat.

  Quite suddenly, there was no gravity. He had felt nothing, but he knew that the bombs had exploded. He punched the LAUNCH switch on the control board of the lifeboat, and the little ship leaped out from the side of the greater one.

  Then he turned on the drive, set it at half a gee, and watched the STS-52 drop behind him. It was no longer decelerating, so it would miss Earth and drift on into space. On the other hand, the lifeship would come down very neatly within a few hundred miles of the spaceport in Utah, the destination of the STS-52.

  Landing the lifeship would be the only difficult part of the maneuver, but they were designed to be handled by beginners. Full instructions were printed on the simplified control board.

  Clayton studied them for a while, then set the alarm to waken him in seven hours and dozed off to sleep.

  He dreamed of Indiana. It was full of nice, green hills and leafy woods, and Parkinson was inviting him over to his
mother’s house for chicken and whiskey. And all for free.

  Beneath the dream was the calm assurance that they would never catch him and send him back. When the STS-52 failed to show up, they would think he had been lost with it. They would never look for him.

  When the alarm rang, Earth was a mottled globe looming hugely beneath the ship. Clayton watched the dials on the board, and began to follow the instructions on the landing sheet.

  He wasn’t too good at it. The accelerometer climbed higher and higher, and he felt as though he could hardly move his hands to the proper switches.

  He was less than fifteen feet off the ground when his hand slipped. The ship, out of control, shifted, spun, and toppled over on its side, smashing a great hole in the cabin.

  Clayton shook his head and tried to stand up in the wreckage. He got to his hands and knees, dizzy but unhurt, and took a deep breath of the fresh air that was blowing in through the hole in the cabin.

  It felt just like home.

  * * *

  Bureau of Criminal Investigation

  Regional Headquarters

  Cheyenne, Wyoming

  20 January 2102

  To: Space Transport Service

  Subject: Lifeship 2, STS-52

  Attention Mr. P. D. Latimer

  Dear Paul,

  I have on hand the copies of your reports on the rescue of the men on the disabled STS-52. It is fortunate that the Lunar radar stations could compute their orbit.

  The detailed official report will follow, but briefly, this is what happened:

  The lifeship landed—or, rather, crashed—several miles west of Cheyenne, as you know, but it was impossible to find the man who was piloting it until yesterday because of the weather.

  He has been identified as Ronald Watkins Clayton, exiled to Mars fifteen years ago.

  Evidently, he didn’t realize that fifteen years of Martian gravity had so weakened his muscles that he could hardly walk under the pull of a full Earth gee.

  As it was, he could only crawl about a hundred yards from the wrecked lifeship before he collapsed.

  Well, I hope this clears up everything.

  I hope you’re not getting the snow storms up there like we’ve been getting them.

  John B. Remley

  Captain, CBI

  NAVY DAY, by Harry Harrison

  General Wingrove looked at the rows of faces without seeing them. His vision went beyond the Congress of the United States, past the balmy June day to another day that was coming. A day when the Army would have its destined place of authority.

  He drew a deep breath and delivered what was perhaps the shortest speech ever heard in the hallowed halls of Congress:

  “The General Staff of the U.S. Army requests Congress to abolish the archaic branch of the armed forces known as the U.S. Navy.”

  The aging Senator from Georgia checked his hearing aid to see if it was in operating order, while the press box emptied itself in one concerted rush and a clatter of running feet that died off in the direction of the telephone room. A buzz of excited comment ran through the giant chamber. One by one the heads turned to face the Naval section where rows of blue figures stirred and buzzed like smoked-out bees. The knot of men around a paunchy figure heavy with gold braid broke up and Admiral Fitzjames climbed slowly to his feet.

  Lesser men have quailed before that piercing stare, but General Wingrove was never the lesser man. The admiral tossed his head with disgust, every line of his body denoting outraged dignity. He turned to his audience, a small pulse beating in his forehead.

  “I cannot comprehend the general’s attitude, nor can I understand why he has attacked the Navy in this unwarranted fashion. The Navy has existed and will always exist as the first barrier of American defense. I ask you, gentlemen, to ignore this request as you would ignore the statements of any person ... er, slightly demented. I should like to offer a recommendation that the general’s sanity be investigated, and an inquiry be made as to the mental health of anyone else connected with this preposterous proposal!”

  The general smiled calmly. “I understand, Admiral, and really don’t blame you for being slightly annoyed. But, please let us not bring this issue of national importance down to a shallow personal level. The Army has facts to back up this request—facts that shall be demonstrated tomorrow morning.”

  Turning his back on the raging admiral, General Wingrove included all the assembled solons in one sweeping gesture.

  “Reserve your judgment until that time, gentlemen, make no hasty judgments until you have seen the force of argument with which we back up our request. It is the end of an era. In the morning the Navy joins its fellow fossils, the dodo and the brontosaurus.”

  The admiral’s blood pressure mounted to a new record and the gentle thud of his unconscious body striking the floor was the only sound to break the shocked silence of the giant hall.

  * * *

  The early morning sun warmed the white marble of the Jefferson Memorial and glinted from the soldiers’ helmets and the roofs of the packed cars that crowded forward in a slow-moving stream. All the gentlemen of Congress were there, the passage of their cars cleared by the screaming sirens of motorcycle policemen. Around and under the wheels of the official cars pressed a solid wave of government workers and common citizens of the capital city. The trucks of the radio and television services pressed close, microphones and cameras extended.

  The stage was set for a great day. Neat rows of olive drab vehicles curved along the water’s edge. Jeeps and half-tracks shouldered close by weapons carriers and six-bys, all of them shrinking to insignificance beside the looming Patton tanks. A speakers’ platform was set up in the center of the line, near the audience.

  At precisely 10 a.m., General Wingrove stepped forward and scowled at the crowd until they settled into an uncomfortable silence. His speech was short and consisted of nothing more than amplifications of his opening statement that actions speak louder than words. He pointed to the first truck in line, a 2½-ton filled with an infantry squad sitting stiffly at attention.

  The driver caught the signal and kicked the engine into life; with a grind of gears it moved forward toward the river’s edge. There was an indrawn gasp from the crowd as the front wheels ground over the marble parapet—then the truck was plunging down toward the muddy waters of the Potomac.

  The wheels touched the water and the surface seemed to sink while taking on a strange glassy character. The truck roared into high gear and rode forward on the surface of the water surrounded by a saucer-shaped depression. It parked two hundred yards off shore and the soldiers, goaded by the sergeant’s bark, leapt out and lined up with a showy present arms.

  The general returned the salute and waved to the remaining vehicles. They moved forward in a series of maneuvers that indicated a great number of rehearsal hours on some hidden pond. The tanks rumbled slowly over the water while the jeeps cut back and forth through their lines in intricate patterns. The trucks backed and turned like puffing ballerinas.

  The audience was rooted in a hushed silence, their eyeballs bulging. They continued to watch the amazing display as General Wingrove spoke again:

  “You see before you a typical example of Army ingenuity, developed in Army laboratories. These motor units are supported on the surface of the water by an intensifying of the surface tension in their immediate area. Their weight is evenly distributed over the surface, causing the shallow depressions you see around them.

  “This remarkable feat has been accomplished by the use of the Dornifier. A remarkable invention that is named after that brilliant scientist, Colonel Robert A. Dorn, Commander of the Brooke Point Experimental Laboratory. It was there that one of the civilian employees discovered the Dorn effect—under the Colonel’s constant guidance, of course.

  “Utilizing this invention the Army now becomes master of the sea as well as the land. Army convoys of trucks and tanks can blanket the world. The surface of the water is our highway, our motor park, our
battleground—the airfield and runway for our planes.”

  Mechanics were pushing a Shooting Star onto the water. They stepped clear as flame gushed from the tail pipe; with the familiar whooshing rumble it sped down the Potomac and hurled itself into the air.

  “When this cheap and simple method of crossing oceans is adopted, it will of course mean the end of that fantastic medieval anachronism, the Navy. No need for billion-dollar aircraft carriers, battleships, drydocks and all the other cumbersome junk that keeps those boats and things afloat. Give the taxpayer back his hard-earned dollar!”

  Teeth grated in the Naval section as carriers and battleships were called “boats” and the rest of America’s sea might lumped under the casual heading of “things.” Lips were curled at the transparent appeal to the taxpayer’s pocketbook. But with leaden hearts they knew that all this justified wrath and contempt would avail them nothing. This was Army Day with a vengeance, and the doom of the Navy seemed inescapable.

  The Army had made elaborate plans for what they called “Operation Sinker.” Even as the general spoke the publicity mills ground into high gear. From coast to coast the citizens absorbed the news with their morning nourishment.

  “... Agnes, you hear what the radio said! The Army’s gonna give a trip around the world in a B-36 as first prize in this limerick contest. All you have to do is fill in the last line, and mail one copy to the Pentagon and the other to the Navy ...”

  The Naval mail room had standing orders to burn all the limericks when they came in, but some of the newer men seemed to think the entire thing was a big joke. Commander Bullman found one in the mess hall:

  The Army will always be there,

  On the land, on the sea, in the air

  .So why should the Navy

  Take all of the gravy ...

  to which a seagoing scribe had added:

  And not give us ensigns our share?

  The newspapers were filled daily with photographs of mighty B-36’s landing on Lake Erie, and grinning soldiers making mock beachhead attacks on Coney Island. Each man wore a buzzing black box at his waist and walked on the bosom of the now quiet Atlantic like a biblical prophet.