by Ben Bova
Larry was still fidgeting beside his desk when she arrived.
“You sent for me?”
He wanted to reach out and hold her. Instead, he said flatly, “They think I want to kill Dan.”
“Who does?”
Larry saw his hands flutter angrily. “Haller, Estelella, the whole damned crew on the bridge, for all I know.”
Standing uncertainly by the door, Valery said, “Do you want to kill him?”
“No! Of course not! What kind of a question is that?”
“Then why are you afraid of what they think?”
“You don’t understand,” he said quietly. “None of you understands at all.”
“Understands what, Larry?”
“I’m the Chairman. Can’t you see what that means? I have to decide. Me. My decision. Life or death. I have to decide on sending Estelella down there… maybe getting him killed. Or forcing him to stay aboard the ship while we can’t tell for certain what the surface conditions are. And that’ll probably kill Dan, if he isn’t dead already.”
“There’s still no word from him?”
“Nothing. We’ve been scanning the area with every instrument we’ve got. No indication that they survived. Nothing at all.”
“They could be in the shelter.”
“I know.” He pulled out the desk chair and sank into it.
Valery remained standing by the door.
“I have to decide,” Larry repeated.
“Does Estelella want to try a landing?” she asked.
“Yes. But it’s my decision to make, not his.”
“I know. I wish there was some way I could help you.”
“Nobody can help.”
She took an uncertain step into the tiny office. “Larry … what do you want to do?”
He stared at her. The answer was obvious to him. “I want to send Estelella down there and see if they’re still alive. Do you think I want to kill Dan?”
She said, “I think you want to do what’s right, but you’re letting your responsibilities as Chairman get in the way of your best judgment.”
“But suppose he wrecks the shuttle? Suppose he’s killed trying to land? We don’t know very much about the conditions down there—”
“He volunteered to try,” Val answered. “You want to try it. Even if he’s killed, at least you’ll both have tried. It’s better than sitting around and doing nothing, isn’t it? If you don’t try, we know Dan will die. But if you do try…”
He nodded unhappily. “You’re right… they all know…”
“There’s something that I know,” Valery said.
“What is it?”
“I know that no matter what’s happened … or what’s going to happen … you’d never willingly hurt anyone. Not even Dan.”
“He… he was my best friend. We were all friends, once.”
“A million years ago.” Val’s voice was faint and distant.
Larry took a deep breath. Standing, he said, “All right, we’ll try it. But I’m riding down with Estelella myself.”
Valery didn’t seem surprised. “There’s no need for that. You don’t have to prove anything. Not to me or anyone else.”
“No, I want to do it.”
“But you can’t. You’re the Chairman. And besides, you’d only be wasting valuable mass and space aboard the shuttle.
There’s nothing you can do to help… except to make the right decision.”
Dan was standing out on the surface in the protective suit. His face was haggard, with several days’ worth of dark scrubby beard mottling his chin. His mouth was caked and dry.
He was staring at the sea, only a few hundred meters from the wrecked base, where he stood. The waves were lapping up softly, sliding up onto the sandy beach. He could walk out there and be waist-deep in the water…
Can’t drink it, he was telling himself. It’s gat to be purified. The contaminants in it will kill you.
“Another few hours,” he mumbled, his voice thick and raspy, “and it won’t make any difference what’s in the water. We’ll have to try it.”
Cranston was back in the shelter, in his bunk, paralyzed by the fear of dying. Dan found that he couldn’t stand being in the cramped little shelter with him. It was better up here on the surface, even though he had to stay inside the suit. H is own body smell was getting overpowering, though.
He almost smiled. Larry’s going to get his way, after all. lean just see him. Death-planet, he’ll call it. Too dangerous. Got to move on. The smile faded. He’s going to make sure we die.
A distant crack of thunder and its following rumble made him look up. Another storm? No, the sky looked the same as it had for the past three days: gray, completely overcast, but not stormy. The wind was so light that he couldn’t notice it except as a gentle swaying of the grass.
Dan looked up again. And blinked. There was a white streak etching across the clouded sky. A thin white line. A contrail!
If he could have jumped inside the heavy suit, he would have. He wanted to leap up and down, to dance, to shout.
Instead he stood rooted to the spot, watching as the streak swung around overhead. He could make out the tiny arrowhead form of the shuttle rocket now. It grew, took on solidity. The sweetly beautiful roar of the craft’s auxiliary turbo engines came to him, even through the helmet and earphones. The ship banked smoothly, raced low across the water and came up toward him, landing wheels out. It touched down with a puff of dust, rolled past the ruined base.
Dan stood there motionless as the shuttle craft taxied
around, nosed back toward the base and edged slowly “toward him, engines screeching and blowing up a miniature sandstorm of dust and ash behind it.
Then’the roar died away. The bubble canopy popped open and a pressure-suited figure stood up.
In sudden realization, Dan reached for the radio switch on his belt.
“…just stand there, will you? Say something, wave, do something ! What’s the matter, are you frozen?”
“I’m okay,” Dan croaked, his voice sounding strange and harsh, even to himself. “Just… thirsty.”
“You’re alive!” It was Estelella’s voice, and there was no missing the elation in it. “Don’t move… I’ve got plenty of water with me. Be right there.”
If Dan had still had enough moisture in his body, he would have cried for joy.
They celebrated that night.
Nearly everyone on the ship, all those who weren’t absolutely needed on duty, gathered in the cafeteria and ate and drank and sang together. Dan had to fight off the determined medical insistence of the whole infirmary staff, but he made the scene too. In a wheelchair.
“It’s my party, dammit!” he shouted at them.
For the first time in months, Dan, Valery, and Larry found themselves at the same place, even at the same table. And for a few hours, it was almost like old times. No one mentioned Larry’s reluctance to send a ship down to the surface. Old tensions, old fears were forgotten. For a while.
They laughed together, remembered happier times. They sang far into the early hours of the morning.
But then, as the party was finally winding down and people were tiptoeing or staggering or lurching homeward, somebody said loudly enough for everyone to hear:
“I guess this proves that we can’t stay on the surface. Too dangerous. We were lucky to get you guys back alive.”
Dan’s face went deathly grim. “It proves that we need much better equipment and precautions to work on the surface. But if we lived through that storm, we can live through whatever else the planet throws at us.”
“I don’t know…” Larry began.
Valery said, “We still need more deuterium, don’t we? Someone will have to go back to the surface, with more equipment.”
“That’ll be a long, tough job.”
“But it’s got to be done.”
Dan pushed himself out of the wheelchair and got to his feet. He still looked gaunt, eyes dark and haggard.
“We can do what needs to be done. And our children, when they’ve been specially adapted for life on the surface, will make that planet their playground.”
Larry glanced at Val. She was looking up at Dan. And the only thing he felt in his heart was hatred.
(14)
It was the next morning when Dan tracked down Valery in the ship’s library.
She was sitting in one of the small tape-reading booths. There were two viewscreens mounted side by side on the booth wall, and Val was comparing some of the spectrograms she had made with the big telescope against the special analysis charts in the library’s files.
Dan tapped on the glass door of the booth. She turned, smiled, and waved him in.
He slid the door open and squeezed into the booth. There was only one chair, and hardly enough room for him to stand beside her. The door slid shut automatically as soon as he let go of it.
“Cozy in here,” he said, grinning.
“It’s not built for comfort,” Valery agreed, shifting her weight slightly on the stiff metal chair.
“I wanted to know if you’re free for dinner tonight?” His voice rose enough to make it a question.
Val shook her head.
“Lunch?”
“Dan,” she said sadly. “I told you and Larry the same thing. Until the two of you stop fighting each other, I’m not going to have much to do with either of you. I won’t be the bait in a battle between you.
“But you said …”
“I’ve said a lot of things. Now I’m saying that the answer to both of you is no… as long as you’re fighting each other.”
“But Larry is…”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
Dan could feel hot anger rising inside him.
She almost smiled at him. “You don’t have to look so grim.”
“Don’t I?”
“No___Look, here are some of the results of the spectra I’ve
taken with the main telescope. I haven’t shown them to anybody else, but I’ll show them to you.”
He shrugged. “Big thrill.”
“Don’t be fresh. And you’ve got to promise not to tell anyone until I make my report to the Council next week. I don’t want these data leaking out before I’ve had a chance to check everything through thoroughly.”
“I can keep a secret,” Dan said tightly.
“Well…” Val lowered her voice to almost a whisper. “Both stars seem to have Earthlike planets.”
“What?”
Nodding, Val went on, her voice rising with excitement. “Epsilon Indi is the closer of the two stars, so I can resolve its planets more easily. Not that I’ve been able to see anything except a pinpoint of light, even with the best image intensification. But the gravimetric measurements look good, and the spectral data…”
She turned to the twin viewscreens. “Look… here’s a spectrum I made twenty-four hours ago of the innermost planet of Epsilon Indi—the one that’s about Earth’s size and mass. And here, on the other screen, is a spectrum I made of Earth with the same telescope, a few days earlier. We’re just about the same distance from both planets—about four lightyears.”
Dan squinted at the two viewscreens. Each showed a smear of colors, crisscrossed by hundreds of dark lines. The Earth spectrum seemed to be dominated by shades of yellow, while the Epsilon Indi spectrum seemed more orange.
“The background continuum isn’t what’s important,” Valery
explained. “Look at the absorption lines___” She pointed from one viewscreen to the other. “Oxygen here. And here. Nitrogen, on both. Water vapor… carbon dioxide,” her slim hand kept shifting back and forth, “and all at just about the same concentration. It’s fantastic!”
“You mean this planet’s just like Earth?”
“So close to each other that it’s hard to tell where they’re different, from this distance, at least.”
“But…” Dan’s insides were churning now. “But, the Epsilon Indi planet is just as far from us now as Earth and the solar system.”
“Yes, that’s true,” Val admitted.
“We could never make it there.”
Instead of answering, Valery turned back to the keyboard in front of the viewscreens. One of the pictures disappeared, to be replaced by another spectrogram.
“This is the spectrum of Femina… it’s much more intense than the Epsilon Indi planet’s, because we’re right next to it.”
“And the other spectrogram is still Earth’s?”
“Yes,” Val said. “And look at the differences in the atmospheric constituents. Sulfur oxides, big gobs of carbon dioxide and monoxide, other things I haven’t even identified yet.”
Even Dan’s unpracticed eye could see that the two spectrograms were very different from each other.
“Considering what you went through down there on the surface,” Valery said, “I should think you’d want to repair the ship and then push on for Epsilon indi.”
Dan said nothing. He leaned against the acoustically insulated wall of the tiny booth; his face was pale, his eyes troubled.
“Thanks for showing me,” he said quietly. “I… won’t tell anybody until you give your report at the Council meeting.”
And then he pulled the -door open and stepped out of the booth, leaving Valery there alone to watch him walking quickly, through the tape shelves of the library.
Now I’ve told each of them, the exact opposite of what he wants to hear, she thought. Which one will come after me and try to silence me before the Council meeting?
Four days passed.
Larry sat in the main conference room, at his usual chair at the head of the table. But the table was mostly empty. Only Dan, Dr. Polanyi, Mort Campbell, and Guido Estelella were there, all clustered up close to Larry’s seat.
“From everything you’ve been telling me,” Larry was saying, looking at the chart on the viewscreen at the far end of the long, narrow room, “we have no choice but to go down to the surface again and try to repair the refining equipment.”
Polanyi folded his hands over his paunchy middle and agreed. “Whether we eventually decide to stay here or to move on, we still must have enough deuterium for many more years of living aboard the ship.”
“And we’ve got to overhaul just about everything on board,” Campbell added. “Doesn’t make a bit of difference if we’re going to live here or find another planet. The ship’s starting to fall apart. We’ve got to patch her up.”
Larry turned to Estelella. “What about rebuilding the refining equipment? That’ll take a lot of shuttling back and forth to the surface.”
The astronaut tilted his head slightly to one side. “That’s what I’m here for___I’m no use to anyone just sitting around.”
“No, I suppose not,” Larry said seriously. “How many flights will be necessary? Will you have to do all the flying yourself or will some of the other kids you’ve been training be able to help?”
“There are at least three or four who can fly the shuttle almost as well as I can,” Estelella said. It could have sounded like a boast, but he said it as a simple statement of fact. “And we can take the back-up shuttles out of storage and use them, too.”
Larry nodded thoughtfully.
“I think,” Dan said, “it’d be a good idea to have a spare shuttle on the ground next to the camp at all times. That way we’ll always have an escape route, in an emergency.”
“Good idea,” Larry said.
“The only real danger on the surface that we’ve run into are the storms,” Estelella muttered.
Polanyi said, “They appear to be tied in with the volcanic disturbances. If we could revive our full meteorological and geological teams, perhaps we could get accurate predictions of when to expect storms…”
Larry cut him off. “We can’t revive large numbers of people until we’ve made a firm decision to stay here. And that decision won’t be made until we get a full report on the other available planets.”
“We’re still go
ing to be orbiting this planet,” Dan argued, “for a long time. Years, maybe.”
The others nodded agreement.
Dan went on, “I’m going down there with the first
crew… got to see how bad the damage to the refinery really is.”
“You just got back,” Larry said. “And the medics are still…”
“I’m responsible for the equipment,” Dan snapped, his voice rising a notch louder than Larry’s. “It’s my job. I’m going down.”
Larry forced down an urge to shout back at him. “All right,” he said coldly, “then the only question is, when do we start?”
“Sooner the better,” Dan said.
“The campsite is in darkness now,” Estelella said, with a glance at his wristwatch. “It’ll be daylight there again in about… eight hours.”
“That puts it close to midnight, ship time.”
“Right.”
Dan said, “Let’s get a landing group together and get down there as soon as there’s enough light to see.”
“We can take off at midnight,” Estelella said.
“Good. You, me, and enough equipment to get the camp started again. Who else will we need?”
Larry was getting that helpless feeling again. Dan was running things his own way.
“You’d both better get some sleep,” he said. “And I’ll get the maintenance crew to crack the back-up shuttles out of storage, so you can get them into action as soon as possible.”
“Right.”
They got up from their chairs and headed for the door. Larry was the last to reach the doorway. Dan was still there, lingering, waiting for him.
“You’re not fooling me,” Dan said.
Larry frowned at him. “What do you mean?”
“You don’t have any intention of staying here. I know that. You’re going to get the ship overhauled and patched up, and then try to convince everybody we ought to push on.”
To where? Larry almost said. But he wouldn’t give Dan the satisfaction. Instead, he asked, “You enjoyed your trip to the surface so much? You think it’s a fun place to be?”
“It’s better than this ship.”
Larry snorted. “That’s like saying that death is better than life.”
