Dark Star

by Alan Dean Foster

  "Ninety-nine-percent-plus probability," reported Boiler, checking his gauges, "that this world will deviate from its normal orbit within another twelve thousand rotations. It'll spiral in toward its sun and—"

  "Eventual nova," finished Pinback.

  "And this system has a perfectly good Earth-type world." He gestured at the red monster glittering on their screens. "Sounds good. Let's vaporize it."

  Operating in perfect unison, the three men set timing devices, adjusted minute controls, prepared the Dark Star for the drop to come—a unified force operating to produce a momentary orgy of destruction.

  An orgy of which this was to be the final, conclusive orgasm, and then . . . home.

  Pinback was the first, by a split second, to lean back in his seat. "Bomb-bay systems operational."

  There was a familiar hum from deep in the bowels of the ship, and once more the white coffin labeled "20" slid smoothly out of the ventral hatch. Doolittle donned his headset, leaned forward, and worked his console.

  "Lock fail-safe."

  Pinback plugged in the dual jump for the required connection overhead, smiling as he did so. Doolittle, Boiler, Pinback: the names meant nothing now. How significant . . . but he had no time to think about it,

  That's why he liked these climactic runs. They gave him no time to think. He hit the double switch.

  "Fail-safe in lock."

  "We have," Boiler announced, "eight minutes until drop. Twenty-four minutes until detonation. All systems are go and functioning."

  Words and symbols alternated on separate screens in their confirmation.

  "Sidereal time at sunlight velocity," Pinback confirmed. "Destruction sequence status initiated." There was a clearing of the screens and then the multiple zeros at the base all changed to twenty-four, Seconds began to tick away.

  He sighed, leaned back in his seat—squirming uncomfortably for a moment, as he always did. Sure, Doolittle and Boiler could laugh, but Powell had been sitting next to him when they'd come out of hyperdrive and his seat circuit bad blown. Powell's blank eyes had been staring him in the face.

  Why wouldn't they understand back at Earth Base, and send him replacement circuitry?

  No time for this now, Pinback. You are On Duty.

  He flicked the pickup that was set into his headset, heard the echo signifying operational status.

  "This is Sergeant Pinback calling bomb number twenty. Sergeant Pinback calling bomb number twenty. Do you read me, bomb?"

  "Bomb number twenty to Sergeant Pinback. I read you, Sergeant."

  "How's it going, bomb?"

  "All systems are functioning perfectly, Sergeant Pinback. Everything is going well."

  He'd heard the same answers many times before. Why, he wondered idly, couldn't they at least give the bombs different voices? The answer occurred to him as soon as the thought was completed.

  It wouldn't do to give a suicidal machine a distinct personality. Not that it would make any difference to the bomb, which was barely conscious of itself as an individual organism, but Pinback could imagine that it might begin to get to the crew.

  Why, if you weren't careful you might start to think of the mechanical thermostellar triggering devices as people, people you were sending to an inevitable fate, people who had no chance to develop their really fine minds, people who . . .

  Easy, Pinback. That's a no-no. Better think the right thoughts or they'll take away your teddy bear.

  Elsewhere on the ship a different computer voice was reciting information to a suit-enclosed Talby.

  "You are now in the emergency airlock. Please remember that in an emergency situation the surface door can be opened instantly without the need of prior depressurization. So be sure to wear your starsuit at all times. Thank you for observing all safety precautions."

  Talby ignored the message. He knew the regulations by heart and didn't need to be reminded of them by a solicitous machine. All he wanted to do was finish this repair job and get back to his dome and stars.

  He was already searching the room before the recorded message concluded. The emergency airlock wasn't terribly big, so it didn't take him long to locate the open slot over the communications laser where the protective panel had dropped away.

  Even though there was no reason for the mirrors in the laser to be activated, he was cautious as he bent to inspect the interior. A laser was something like a tornado; you could pass within millimeters of the crucial area without being hurt, but cross the ultimate line and you got burned.

  In addition to the scorched panel, he saw that the laser itself had been knocked slightly out of alignment. The mounting was loose. Well, that ought to be easy enough to correct. It would be a ticklish bit of work with the laser in operation, but there was nothing complicated or time-consuming about it.

  He gave a little smile of satisfaction. This job wouldn't take more than a few minutes of careful work with a screwdriver. Even if the mounting was broken he could easily readjust the angle of the beam to compensate.

  Placing the little toolbox he'd brought along on the floor, he hunted inside for the driver with the proper head, then spoke into his helmet mike.

  "Lieutenant Doolittle, sir . . . Talby here."

  Doolittle heard him, but he was monitoring drop instrumentation, for crissake, and had no time for Talby's philosophical drivelings.

  "Sssh, Talby," he muttered absently into his own pickup. "We're in the middle of a very complicated maneuver. Don't bother me now."

  "I think this is important, sir," the astronomer insisted. He was inspecting the interior of the laser housing again. "I think I've located the malfunction the computer announced. You remember, sir. I'm in the emergency airlock now, and—"

  "Not now, Talby!" Doolittle said irritably. Damn the man! Spent all of his time isolated in his little dome, not even sharing a meal with his buddies . . . hell, not even sleeping with them, and he just wanted Doolittle to drop everything to listen to his personal problems.

  "Well, I'm in the airlock, so I'm going to go ahead and—"

  Thoroughly annoyed, Doolittle shut off his channel. Talby wouldn't talk to him when he, Doolittle, needed somebody to talk to, so by God, he wasn't going to sit here in the middle of a run—the last run—and exchange pleasantries with him.

  He had a planet to destroy.

  Odd how normal the ultramelodramatic phrase had come to sound. It was true—people could get used to anything. Repetition made playing God seem common place.

  "Four minutes to drop, bomb," Pinback was saying conversationally. He seemed to get along well with the bomb brains—better, in fact, than he did with either Doolittle or Boiler. Maybe it was because he had more in common with them. For example, there were plenty of times when he wished he could self-destruct, too.

  "Have you checked your platinum-iridium energy shielding? That's important, you know. We must remember to check our energy shielding,"

  "Geezus," muttered Boiler, appalled at Pinback's attitude toward a metallic thing, as usual. And as usual, Pinback ignored him. Boiler couldn't talk to the bombs. Even Doolittle had trouble sometimes. It was the one area in which Pinback excelled.

  "Energy shielding positive function," the bomb replied happily.

  Pinback yawned. "Remember your detonation time?"

  "Detonation in twenty minutes."

  "All right," concurred Pinback. "That checks out here. Okay, bomb, arm yourself."

  Below the Dark Star there was a brief flash of lights on the bomb's casing, after which it said calmly, "Armed."

  "Hello, Lieutenant Doolittle," Talby repeated into his suit mike. "Hello, hello, can you read me? Boiler, Pinback—do you read me on the bridge?"

  Damn, now what? Another malfunction, or was it just that Doolittle didn't realize what he was doing back here? Didn't he understand that Talby'd found the damage and was going to repair it?

  Well, it probably didn't make any difference. They were obviously busy with something forward. At least he wouldn't be di
sturbed with silly suggestions. He started to lean into the open slot . . .

  "Communications laser number seventeen," the computer voice announced sharply, "monitoring the bomb-drop mechanism has now been activated and will switch into a drop mode. If you will look near the surface panel, you will see that the tell-tale light is on, thus indicating that the parallax receptive cell has been engaged."

  Tell-tale light . . . the surface panel had been knocked off. Talby pulled his head quickly out of the housing, screamed to himself in confusion.

  What the hell did Doolittle think he was doing? Was that what their "complicated maneuver" was all about? They couldn't run a bomb drop with a busted monitoring laser! Not only could something unimaginable go wrong with the drop, Talby could get himself punctured.

  He stood there indecisively, debating whether to go ahead with the seconds-long repair or run forward to tell the others. But if it were only a couple of minutes to drop—a short run—he might not make it in time.

  While he remained paralyzed, the computer voice continued. "The laser will now energize. Please stand clear of the path of the beam in the event that the protective panel should fail."

  What panel? . . . the panel was off, you stupid . . .

  He took a hurried step backward.

  "Communications laser number seventeen is now on test."

  There was a dull but distinct crack and two parallel beams of pure red light leaped across the emergency airlock just in front of Talby. They drilled a pair of neat holes in the far wall of the lock, but apparently cut through nothing serious. They were high-intensity, short-focus beams and wouldn't go so far as to hull the ship, but some damage had already been done.

  Worse might happen if he failed to repair the malfunction before the bomb was dropped.

  He had already activated the darkening element in the starsuit helmet, so he could look at the beam without suffering retinal damage.

  "Under no circumstances," the computer continued, "remove the panel and enter the path of the double beam. Thank you for observing all safety precautions."

  "They're actually going through with a bomb run," Talby muttered. What was wrong with Doolittle? Had the lieutenant gone mad, like Pinback and Boiler?

  "Doolittle . . . Lieutenant Doolittle, acknowledge. This is Talby. Emergency call . . . anybody on the bridge, acknowledge . . ."

  Doolittle, Pinback, and Boiler—the anybodies—relaxed in their seats, each submerged in his own pre-drop thoughts. All ran their own obstacle course of emotions prior to a drop.

  Boiler thought about the destruction on an unprecedented scale which they were about to commit, and smiled. Pinback didn't even consider that they were about to obliterate a whole planet, remove an entire world from the scheme of things; his concern was for the unthought-of bomb.

  Doolittle always went back to a book he had once read, an old book about the dropping of the first thermonuclear device on a city in . . . Japan, wasn't it? Went back to the thoughts of the pilot after seeing what he had wrought.

  Of course, this was considerably different, since no lives were involved. And the worlds they smote were unstable, a threat to the lives of future colonizers. But he couldn't escape the nagging feeling that on any of the planets they had destroyed, despite careful pre-surveying, there might have been an indetectable, intelligent race to whom that world was home.

  A race whose collective murder he bore on his conscience.

  Ridiculous, absurd—instruments carefully checked each candidate for oblivion before they made their drop. But the thought persisted, mingled with those of that long-dead bomber pilot, and troubled him . . .

  Pinback glanced at the chronometer and spoke into his headset pickup. "Everything looks fine, bomb. Dropping you off in about seventy-five seconds. Good luck?"

  "Thanks," came the mild reply from bomb number twenty.

  Boiler was checking his readouts. "I get a quantum reading of thirty-five over thirty-five."

  "I read the same here," agreed Doolittle.

  If they didn't abort the run—and there seemed no reason to assume they would—he had to adjust the laser. Talby closed the toolkit and spoke into the pickup at the same time.

  "Doolittle . . . Doolittle. I don't know if you can hear me, but I'm going to try and adjust the mounting under the laser to realign the beams properly. If you can hear me, hold off on the run till I finish. It won't take long."

  Staying as much to the left side of the opening as he could, he balanced the driver in his right hand and controlled the haft of it with his left. Thus carefully balanced part in and part out of the alcove, he slid the driver toward the mounting.

  He hit the proper screw on the first try and smiled to himself. It would all be over with in a minute.

  Turning the driver slowly, he heard the click-click of the screw mechanism as the mounting tightened up, saw the laser housing start to shift on its base. Another couple of turns and he'd be through.

  As the mounting shifted, it contacted a tiny printed circuit that had also been edged ever so slightly out of place. The circuit shorted, the current fed back into something it shouldn't have, and the something exploded.

  The laser wheeled crazily on its mount, the beams shifted, and the darkened face plate of the astronomer caught the full brilliance of the twin beams.

  Talby staggered backward, dropping the driver and grabbing for his eyes and clutching only the smooth glass of his helmet.

  "My God . . . I can't see!"

  Something was calling insistently behind the pain. "Attention, attention. The monitoring laser has malfunctioned. Under no circumstances . . ."

  "Oh my eyes . . . I can't see, I can't . . ."

  ". . . enter the path of the beams. To do so will cause the instrumentation to immediately . . ."

  Staggering blindly about the airlock, Talby fell into the twin lines of crimson. A violent concussion shook the airlock. The ravening feedback traveled back up numerous electronic neurons all the way into the central computer itself.

  Circuits shorted in the hundreds, fluid-state controls shattered. Small fires broke out in the central computer, were immediately snuffed out as automatic fail-safes isolated the injured sections, amputated the outraged portions of the badly damaged network.

  The tell-tale lights on bomb number twenty flashed a second time. They flashed normally—and unexpectedly, because the primary drop sequence had already been engaged. There was no reason for them to flash again.

  The single flare of light at the magnetic grapple was not normal.

  On the bridge, however, all was quiet, all was as it should be.

  "Begin final drop sequence," said Pinback. The three men worked easily at their consoles. Then Pinback, after checking with his fellows, reached out and grasped the two switches which would do the thing.

  "Marking . . . ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one . . . drop," and he turned both switches simultaneously to release the bomb.

  He was rewarded instead with a brash, utterly alien honking that had all three of them looking wildly about the bridge.

  Boiler finally spotted a couple of flashing red gauges, gauges he had never had occasion to observe in operation before. Pinback, meanwhile, had completely lost his aura of command and relaxation, exchanged it for one of more normal hypernervousness.

  He looked around hopelessly, assuming that the end of their private universe was at hand. But neither Doolittle nor Boiler, though obviously worried, had panicked yet. He got a hold of himself and sat up straighter in his seat. They'd been too busy to notice his embarrassing reaction.

  He waited for somebody to tell him what to do.

  "Negative drop," Doolittle finally said, confirming what all the instruments told them. Tiny knots were pulling tighter and tighter inside him.

  "Try it again, Pinback. It's just sitting in the bomb bay."

  All three reset their controls, readjusted all switches for a repeat of previous actions.

  Pinback counted
again, from ten, to five, four, three, two, one . . . drop. Turned the dual switches only to hear the violent honking resume.

  "Negative drop," Doolittle said again, no longer quite as calm of voice.

  The bridge became a flurry of activity. Circuitry was checked and rechecked. Monitors were asked to produce explanations, yet insisted nothing was wrong. Gauges were studied for reasons overlooked; they stared back with blank glass faces and told nothing. As far as their instruments were concerned, the bomb had dropped and the crew of the Dark Star had gone off the deep end.

  "Visual confirmation," suggested Boiler. "Maybe its the non-drop pickup that's malfunctioning."

  Doolittle flipped the necessary lever. The chronometer, still ticking away the seconds, vanished from his screen and was replaced by a camera-view of the bottom of Dark Star.

  A long white box occupied much of the picture, resting serenely just below the open bay doors.

  One glimpse was more than enough for Doolittle. He switched back to the chronometer, which now assumed a previously unheld importance. Overriding importance.

  "It's there, all right." He thought rapidly. "Never mind the magnetic grapple. This is the last run. Let's blow the attachments." Boiler and Pinback nodded—Boiler once, curtly, Pinback hard enough to shake his hair.

  "Rechannel all safety relays," the corporal said. "Open quantum latches."

  "Open circuit fail-safes," Pinback put in.

  "Cancel thrust-drive fail-safes," Doolittle added.

  "Automatic valves open?" asked Pinback.

  Boiler: "Check valves open . . . all connections severed . . . all explosive bolt fail-safes removed."

  "And prepare for manual drop," Doolittle muttered grimly, "and . . . re-mark."

  "Resetting," Pinback said quietly while both Doolittle and Boiler watched him. "Mark it . . . five, four, three, two, one, drop." He turned the switches and the honking came. That loud, abrasive, hysterical honking.

  It sounded damnably like a laugh. They were laughing at him again, Pinback thought emotionally. He wrenched at the switches, staring at the screen above, trying to stop the laughing.

  First it was Boiler laughing at him and punching him in the arm when no one was looking and Doolittle had been terse and abrupt with him the whole trip and Talby up in the dome when he wasn't staring at his idiot universe was probably laughing at him too and now, now the ship itself was laughing at him, at poor, stupid Bill Frug Pinback Frug Bill . . .