Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  I grabbed him by a shoulder and spun him around and looked as hard and serious as I could.

  "Artie," I said, "I know damned well you computed a course for Willy the other day, for an asteroid to orbit just outside Earth. I want you to give me the exact course, where and when. And I want it now. This is official business, Artie."

  * * * * *

  I must have looked extremely convincing, for Artie paled a little and did not try to deny anything.

  "--I can't, Sam," he said. "I gave the original tapes and sheets to Willy. I threw away the duplicates."

  "Dammit, Artie!" I shouted, now really mad. "Then you'd better start remembering pretty good, because you're going to sit right down here and I'm going to sit with you, and you are going to give me as nearly as you can the course of Willy's asteroid."

  This was just about an impossible request. I knew it, and Artie knew it. But he sat down at the console of the computer and said:

  "I'll do the best I can, Sam."

  * * * * *

  I went to Willy's room and banged on the door then threw it open. He wasn't there. For sure then he would be someplace he wasn't supposed to be. So I headed for one likely place.

  Willy was there all right. The chef shuffled around nervously, probably wondering if I'd just chew him out for letting Willy in the galley, or tell Orrin. He offered me ham and eggs. I refused sharply.

  "Elmer," I said, "blast off."

  Elmer did.

  As soon as Willy and I were alone, I said, "Willy, you got me and Mr. Orrin in a pack of trouble. Why don't you tell me where the generator and the converter are. If we can get them back to the stock room, nothing can be proved."

  Willy couldn't look me in the face. He added three too many spoons of sugar to his coffee then stirred it so fast it spilled over the edge of the cup.

  "Come on, Willy. Where?"

  Willy spent the next minute trying to turn inside out. He finally squeaked. "I can't, Sam."

  "Why not, Willy?"

  It was my turn to be silent for a minute. It seemed a lot longer. I said, "I think you better tell me all about it, Willy."

  He did.

  I went back to the recreation room.

  The trideo was on and some narrator's voice was explaining and showing the course of the ship on a chart, and just where it would go.

  The ship was still unaccountably out of control. The plotted course showed that it would intercept Mars. And a map of Mars showed precisely where the ship would strike the surface.

  Of all the barren areas on Mars where the ship could strike and do a little less surface damage, it was headed instead straight for the only densely populated, industrial area.

  I looked at Goil and saw that his morale could be trod on. He probably already had computed his own monetary loss as well as the company losses. But he wasn't saying a word. He was keeping his misery to himself.

  Let him stew until morning, I thought. By then he should be ripe for the little package I was planning to hand him.

  * * * * *

  By morning, the confidence that I had the night before had pretty much dissipated. Nevertheless, I followed Goil from the dining hall to his quarters, giving him only time to complete any personal necessities before knocking on his door.

  Some of my confidence returned when I entered the room. He looked as if he hadn't slept any at all. The impending doom of his Mars holdings had apparently dwelt with him most intimately the past night.

  Goil said, "What's on your mind, Mr. Weston?"

  "I had a talk with Willy last night. He wants to tell you everything."

  Goil brightened slightly. "Fine," he said.

  "I've taken the liberty of asking him to come here," I said.

  Goil nodded.

  This was a good chance for me to needle him a little more, so I said, "The news reports are not good this morning. That freighter will have to be abandoned sometime this evening if they don't get it off the course it's on now."

  Goil dimmed again. He said, "I heard the news."

  "There is no way they can jettison that cargo either. Strange, isn't it. Of all the other points in and around space, that ship has got to pick Mars to smack into, and the only densely populated part of Mars at that. Fate, I guess."

  "Not so strange," said Goil. "It was enroute to Mars."

  "Sure," I said, "but a course usually includes a series of corrections for a haul like that."

  Goil said, "No navigator-computer combination is good enough to plan a one-shot course like that. It's just an unfortunate coincidence that the industrial area is to be hit."

  And those last words were just what I wanted to hear from him.

  Willy knocked on the door and entered at Goil's request. Willy's face was long, and the few steps that carried him into the room seemed to draw on his last reserves of energy. He seemed a little grateful when Goil bade him be seated.

  Goil said, "All right, Willy. Sam says you have something to tell me."

  "Yes, sir," Willy said dolefully, shifting his gaze so that he did not have to look directly at Goil or me. He hesitated for moments, then when the silence was too thick, he continued.

  "I--I took that generator and that energizer as I told you yesterday." Again he paused, patently dreading what more he had to say.

  "What did you do with such monstrous, expensive pieces of equipment?" asked Goil. "Of what possible use could they be to you, especially out here in space?"

  "Willy," I said, "why don't you start right at the beginning so Mr. Goil can get a complete picture?"

  Willy looked behind and around me, gulped a couple of times, then started.

  "OK. Well, Martha's birthday--Martha is my wife, Mr. Goil--her birthday is in a few days. And I missed her last birthday and she never forgave me for that. And I almost missed this one too, except I got an idea. And that was after reading about those private satellites a lot of the rich people have going around Earth.

  * * * * *

  "It was too late for me to send any sort of a birthday present to Martha; besides, what could I get her out here? Anyway, I got the idea that what a wonderful birthday present it would be if I could get Martha a private satellite. Not one of those prefabricated ones, but a natural, real one. The more I thought about it the better the idea sounded. Then I realized that I had everything here; a million asteroids to choose from, and I could slip one of the gravity generators in the middle of it. And I could hitch the drive from the smashed tug to it, and install a sub-space energizer. Except for an atmosphere generator it would be equipped enough for a start. I could finish equipping it later. So I got an asteroid and took a sub-space energizer and a gravity generator from supply--they are expendable--and got the drive off the wrecked tug. I installed them on the rock."

  Willy ended his story abruptly.

  Goil sat looking intently at Willy and drumming his fingers on the desk top. Finally he said:

  "We can recover those major items. Maybe it'll go easier with you, Willy. If you can show us where this rock is--"

  Willy hung his head again. And the silence became solid. Finally Willy squeaked out:

  "I can't. I sent it off yesterday."

  "Just how and when did you determine the rock should be sent?" asked Goil.

  "I--I got a course tape," said Willy. I could almost feel his sense of guilt as he virtually implicated one more of his friends.

  "Don't you know," said Goil in an all-too-quiet, ominous voice, "that a jury-rigged contraption like that could never get near Earth with only a one-time course like that plotted for it? That it takes precise computations to get something like that to a destination? With a human navigator? Just how did you figure you could do it? I'm curious."

  "Well," said Willy warming up to the subject a little, "I rigged up a timing unit. When it left here, it was on the taped course for Earth. Then it went into sub-space. From the computations I got, I set another timer that will kick it back into normal space at the right time, and in an orbit around Earth."


  The room was silent for a time. Finally the silence exploded with:

  "You damned fool! You dangerous idiot! You've got just enough knowledge to be able to do something like that, but not enough sense to know it is hopeless and idiotic! I've heard enough. Now, get out of here!"

  Willy got out in a stumbling hurry.

  * * * * *

  I stayed. Goil tried to glare me out of the room, but I would have none of it. I was now ready to go into action. I was by no means certain I would be right, but already deep in this mess, what more could I lose by plunging?

  With a lot more bravado than I really felt, I plunked down on Goil's desk top a stack of sheets, a chart, and tapes. Then I put both palms down on his desk and leaned over until I looked him squarely in the face. I said:

  "Do you know what is going to happen to that rock of Willy's, Mr. Goil? It's going to come out of sub-space right smack in the path of that freighter. It's going to knock that freighter right off course."

  Of course, it sounded like a fantasy, and if I had been in Goil's place, I would have thought it so. But Goil had been worrying over the impending loss of his interests, and even the fantastic was something to clutch at for the moment.

  "What do you mean?" he asked.

  I nodded to the stuff I had tossed on his desk. "Look at those. The chart particularly. I got the course plotted by Artie Jones. I checked the path and timing of both Willy's asteroid and the freighter. Willy's asteroid is due to come out of sub-space in about six hours at this point."--I pointed to an X I had marked on the chart--"And the freighter will be at the same point at the same time."

  Goil said nothing, but examined the chart and the computation figures, and finally the tapes. He shook his head a number of times as if he didn't want to believe but did not dare not to. Finally, he looked up at me and said:

  "The course and figures seem to check both ways. But I don't believe it. That the rock and the freighter should meet in the same place at the same time would be more than a coincidence. It would be a miracle."

  "More so than the 'coincidence' of the freighter headed straight for Mars's only industrial area?" I asked.

  Goil thought it over for a while. Then he said, "Yes. More than I can imagine. We have the rock and the freighter, two moving bodies, meeting in space by pure chance. Space is too vast for that sort of thing. It can't happen."

  "Mars and the freighter are two moving bodies in space that are going to meet," I pointed out.

  "Yes, but the ship was originally headed on a course to Mars. And Mars is much bigger."

  "True," I conceded. "But the asteroid is also on an interception course with the freighter. And it is a lot bigger than the freighter."

  Goil sat silent and thoughtful for quite a while. Finally, he said:

  "I'm not gullible, Mr. Weston. Nor am I a fool. I have enough interest in Mars to want a miracle to happen, aside from a natural desire to see disaster averted. But what about you; what are you after? What are you trying to prove?"

  That was what I had been waiting for.

  * * * * *

  I told him about the Research Institute of Human Influences, for which I was a field psychologist, and how they located accident prones and safety prones, among other types of odd personalities, and how we observers gathered data in efforts to learn ways to nullify the accident prones' influence, and to learn the whys and hows of the safety prones, as well as ways to expand their fields of influence.

  Goil just sat there, his face indicating neither belief nor disbelief.

  "Willy has no idea he does what he does, nor why. He's completely unaware of his influence. I can't imagine how his mind works to rationalize for his behavior. I'd do just about anything, Mr. Goil, to keep Willy from learning all I've told you. It would make him aware, and that might sour things, probably even nullify his influence."

  Goil said, "I'm not at all convinced that this is not some sort of lunatic hoax. But as long as there is nothing I nor you can do for the time being, I'm going to hold any further action in abeyance. Let's see what happens. Even if by some miraculous coincidence the rock and the ship should meet, that's not proof that your yarn is true."

  "No," I said. "But other things have happened before. Nothing this big, though. But always, there is this synergism of Willy's; a compulsion to do some crazy thing, or to build some silly gadget, even if he has to steal to do it. And the inevitable end that sometimes quite obviously prevents injury, and other times leaving the results a mystery. Once the purpose has been accomplished, Willy loses all interest. I have histories, documented cases of Willy's influence. Files of tape recordings of his synergisms in action. And these files all show a definite pattern."

  "Let's hear some of your recordings, and read some of your documents," said Goil.

  And that was how we spent the next four hours.

  * * * * *

  Of course, I had juggled the computations I had shown Goil a little bit. And made the course of the asteroid look like it would coincide with that of the freighter. If I hadn't, Goil would never have given me the time I needed.

  Art Jones had kept the news of the freighter coming in all day. It was still on course for Mars. About a half-hour before the freighter crew was due to leave the ship, the rec room was crowded with men waiting to watch the escape of the crew.

  There hadn't been time enough to get a ship in the area that could blast the freighter off course. And there hadn't been any ship even on Mars equipped for such action, not even an old slightly serviceable derelict that could be placed in the runaway ship's path for deflection.

  The long-range scope still had the runaway ship in focus. It looked like a little painted miniature in the trideo, with a very slowly moving spangled background. A faint superimposed image of Mars appeared. The announcer was talking about forces, vectors, and other navigational terminology, plus nonsensical chatter of probability factors. The picture faded and was replaced with an artist's animated conception of the impending tragedy. It showed the present location of the ship, the calculated course and trajectory of the ship through the atmosphere to the point of impact--right in the center of the industrial area. It ended with a big question mark before the image of the ship returned.

  During the sequence of the collision course, I was trying in my mind to figure out just how far off Willy's asteroid would be. I could figure it roughly in my head, remembering the original figures I'd gotten from Artie. The asteroid would be no fewer than a million and a half miles from the runaway ship, at its nearest point. Besides, it wouldn't emerge from sub-space until it was near Earth, a good seventy million miles from Mars at that time.

  It had taken some belligerent persuasion to get Artie to conjure up the figures and tapes I gave Goil.

  I felt a tap on my shoulder and glanced up. Simon, one of the tug pilots, was pointing toward the back of the room. I looked back. Artie was there with a worried look on his face looking at me. His eyes moved quickly toward where Goil sat, and then back at me. His head gave a little backwards jerk.

  Feeling real unhappy all of a sudden as premonition nudged my mind, I got up quietly and went back.

  Artie had stepped outside in the hall. When he saw me step out of the rec room doorway, he motioned me down the hall farther. Gloom was all over his face, even in his motions. He said:

  "Sam, I don't know what's going on around here between Willy, Goil, and you. But I thought you'd like to know Goil was in to see me a little while ago. Before I had much of a chance to think about it, I gave him the figures and tapes for that course I plotted for Willy. I don't know how Goil knew about them, but he asked for them directly."

  "Which figures, Art?" I asked anxiously.

  "Why, the ones I made for you. Is there something wrong, Sam?"

  My alarm must have shown in my face. I said, "No, Art. I thought maybe you might have given him that other course I asked you to plot."

  "You mean that false course? Hell, Sam. I didn't know--"

  "It's
all right, Art. You didn't know." And I left him standing there puzzled. I went back to the rec room.

  I wasn't feeling so good by the time I got back. My seat had been taken, so I wriggled myself a place against the back wall.

  Goil knew all about the fictitious course I gave him. Right there he had me cold. But he was too worried to want to do anything about it then.

  The time seemed to stand still. The crew still had some fifteen minutes before they were due to abandon ship, so I left the rec room to sneak out to the galley for a cup of coffee. When I entered, there was Artie and Elmer already having coffee.

  Artie said, "Sit down, Sam, and have a cup."

  Elmer poured, and I gulped half the cupful down gratefully, then said, "Aren't you two going to watch the runaway crack into Mars?"

  "Sure," said Artie. "I've got a small monitor screen in the com room. Want to join us?"

  I did and said so. We all drank another cup of coffee and then went to the communications room. The three of us could sit and comfortably watch the small monitor.

  A series of montages suddenly snapped off the screen to be replaced by the lonesome ship. This time there was Mars in the near background. I never could understand how the long-range scope mechanisms managed to bend their energies so that they could literally see behind something directly in front of them, but they could. That was how they could get Mars in the background.

  The excited announcer was saying that the crew would abandon ship in four minutes since all hope of a course change was gone. And in another three hours the runaway would enter atmosphere.

  "Sure," Elmer said, "the crew will abandon ship. But where can they go after they do? Mars, that's where."

  "I guess all you can say about it is that they are going right out of the fire into the frying pan," Artie said morbidly.

  "Yeah," Elmer said. "They sure are. About all they can do is land on Mars with the short range of the lifeboats."

  "Oh, they got enough range, all right," Artie said. "Only they don't have enough food and water for all the crew to reach some other planet. They have no choice but to try Mars."