Arthur C Clarke's Venus Prime Omnibus

by Paul Preuss

  Sparta sensed that Proboda, beside her, was about to pull his rank and clear the mediahounds out of the passage. She gently preempted him. “I want to hear this,” she murmured, touching his arm.

  “…that he doesn’t give a damn about anything else,” the reporter concluded.

  “I’m not so sure I’d want to leave a mate in space so I could get home.”

  “Who would? But you heard the transmission—they talked it over and the loser went out the lock. It was the only sensible way.”

  “Sensible? If you say so—but it’s pretty horrible to let somebody sacrifice himself so you can live…”

  “Don’t act the bloody sentimentalist. If that happened to us you’d shove me out before I’d had a chance to say my prayers.”

  “Unless you did it to me first…”

  Sparta had heard enough. She pushed close to the reporter and said quietly, “Space Control. Move aside, please,” and kept repeating it, “Space Control, move aside please…”—effortlessly opening a path before her. Proboda followed.

  They left the pack behind at the security sector lock. Beyond the sealed collar of the core they reached the Q3 lock, which was almost as crowded with technicians and medical personnel. Through the big plate glass port the bulbous head of Star Queen was nosing into place a few meters away, patiently tugged and shoved by mechanical tractors. Sparta had a few words with the medics and the others as the tube fastened itself over the ship’s main airlock.

  When the pressure popped and Star Queen’s hatch opened, Sparta was standing in front of it, alone.

  The smell from inside the ship was an assault. Nevertheless she inhaled deeply, tasted the air with her tongue. She learned things from the flavor of the air that no subsequent tests could have told her.

  Almost a minute passed before, rising from the depths of the ship, a haggard man drifted into the circle of light. He paused while still inside Star Queen, just shy of the docking tube. He took a deep, shuddering breath—and another—and then he let his watery eyes focus on Sparta.

  “We’re happy to have you safe with us, Mr. McNeil,” she said.

  He watched her for a moment, then nodded.

  “My name’s Ellen Troy. I’m from the Board of Space Control. I’ll be going with you while the medics assist you. I must ask you not to speak to anyone but me, until I give you permission—no matter who asks, or what they ask. Is that acceptable to you, sir?”

  Wearily, McNeil nodded again.

  “If you will move toward me, sir…”

  McNeil did as he was told. When he was clear of the hatch Sparta darted past him and twisted the handle of the exterior lock. The massive outer door slid closed, seating itself with a palpable thud. Sparta pushed her hand into the right thigh pocket of her cargo pants and pulled out a bright red flexible plastic disk, which she slapped over the rim of the hatch—sealing it like a lump of wax over the flap of an envelope. She turned and took McNeil by the arm. “Come with me, please.”

  Viktor Proboda was blocking the tube exit. “Inspector Troy, it is my understanding that this man is to be placed under arrest, and that the ship is to be inspected without delay.”

  “You are mistaken, Inspector Proboda.” Good, she was thinking, he didn’t use the word “orders,” as in “my orders are…”—which meant that she could put off the inevitable confrontation a little longer. “Mr. McNeil is to be extended every courtesy. I’m taking him to the clinic now. When he feels up to it, he and I will talk. Until then, no one—not anyone—is to enter Star Queen.” Her gaze had not left Proboda’s pale blue eyes. “I’m confident you’ll be diligent in carrying out Central’s orders, Viktor.”

  It was an old trick, but he was surprised when she used his first name, as she’d intended. This slender girl was perhaps twenty-five, he was well into his thirties, and he’d struggled a decade to achieve his rank—but her easy assumption of authority was genuine, and Proboda, a good soldier, recognized it. “As you say,” he gruffly conceded.

  Sparta guided engineer McNeil, who seemed on the point of nodding off, to the waiting medics. One of them clamped an oxygen mask over McNeil’s face: McNeil’s expression was that of a man taking a drink of cold water after a week in the tropical sun. Sparta repeated her injunction to the medics about talking to the media; they would disobey her, of course, but not until she had left McNeil’s side.

  The little group emerged from the security lock. McNeil, with an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth, guided by medics, with Sparta and Proboda bringing up the rear, ran the gauntlet of frantic questions…

  But, after another week of waiting, the media had only the arrival of Star Queen and the confirmation of McNeil’s survival to add to the electrifying radio message that had initiated their death watch. The broadcast had been as succinct as it was chilling:

  “This is Star Queen, Commander Peter Grant speaking. Engineering officer Angus McNeil and I have jointly concluded that there is sufficient oxygen now remaining for one man and one man only to live until our ship docks at Port Hesperus. Therefore one of us must die if either of us is to live. We have mutually agreed to decide the matter with a single draw of playing cards. Whoever draws the low card will take his own life.”

  A second voice had spoken: “McNeil here, confirmin’ that I’m in agreement with everything the commander says.”

  The radiolink had been silent then, for several seconds, except for the shuffle and snap of playing cards. Then Grant came back on the air. “This is Grant. I’ve drawn the low card. I want to make it clear that what I’m about to do is the result of my personal decision, freely undertaken. To my wife and children, I should like to affirm my love for them; I’ve left letters for them in my cabin. A final request: I wish to be buried in space. I’m going to put my suit on now, before I do anything else. I’m asking Officer McNeil to put me out the lock when it’s all over and send me away from the ship. Please don’t search for my body.”

  Aside from routine automated telemetry, that was the last anyone had heard from Star Queen until today.

  The Port Hesperus clinic was in the station’s half-gee torus. An hour after his arrival McNeil lay propped up between clean sheets. His color was rosy, although the dark circles under his eyes remained and the once full flesh of his cheeks hung in folds. He was a much thinner man than he had been when he left Earth. There had been more than enough food on Star Queen, but for the last few days under deceleration he’d had hardly enough energy to drag himself to the galley.

  He’d just begun to remedy that lack with a dinner of medium-rare Chateaubriand, accompanied by puff potatoes and garden vegetables, and preceded by a crisp green salad with a light herb vinaigrette and accompanied by a half-bottle of velvety California Zinfandel—all of which had been laid on by the Board of Space Control according to Sparta’s instructions.

  She knocked lightly on the door, and when he said “Come in” she entered the room, followed by the brooding Proboda.

  “I hope everything was all right?” she asked. The salad was gone but the Chateaubriand was only half eaten and many of the vegetables were untouched. Not so the wine; bottle and glass were empty. McNeil was wreathed in tobacco smoke, halfway through a pungent unfiltered cigarette.

  “It was delicious, Inspector, simply delicious, and I’m sorry to let the rest go. But I’m afraid my stomach’s shrunk—that bit just filled me up.”

  “That’s certainly understandable, sir. Well, if you feel rested…”

  McNeil smiled patiently. “Aye, there’ll be lots of questions now, won’t there be?”

  “If you’d rather we came back later…”

  “No point in putting off the inevitable.”

  “We sincerely appreciate your cooperation. Inspector Proboda will record our conversation.”

  When everyone was settled McNeil launched into his tale. He spoke quite calmly and impersonally, as if he were relating some adventure that had happened to another person, or indeed had never happened at all—which, Spar
ta suspected, was to some extent the case, although it would be unfair to suggest that McNeil was lying. He wasn’t making anything up. She would instantly have detected that from the rhythm of his speech, but he was leaving a good deal out of his well-rehearsed narrative.

  When, after several minutes, he’d finished speaking, Sparta sat thoughtfully in silence. Then she said, “That seems to wrap it up, then.” She turned to Proboda. “Are there any points you’d like to explore further, Inspector?”

  Again Proboda was caught by surprise—any points he’d like to explore? He’d already resigned himself to a passive role in the investigation. “One or two,” he said, clearing his throat, “as a matter of fact.”

  McNeil drew on his cigarette. “Have at me,” he said with a cynical grin.

  “Now, you say you lost your grip—I believe those were your words—when the meteoroid or whatever it was struck the ship? What exactly did you do?”

  McNeil’s pale features darkened. “I blubbered—if you want to know the details. Curled up in my cabin like a little boy with a skinned knee and let the tears come. Grant was a better man than I, calm as could be throughout it all. But I hadn’t been a meter away from the oxygen tanks when they exploded, you see—just the other side of the wall in fact—loudest damn noise I’ve heard in my life.”

  “How did you happen to be at just that place at just that moment?” Proboda asked.

  “Well, I’d been down doing the periodic check on the temperature and humidity in Hold A. The top compartment of that hold’s pressurized and temperature-controlled because we’re carrying things like specialty foods, cigars and so forth, organics—whereas in the vacuum holds we’ve got inert stuff, machinery mostly. I’d just come up through the hold airlock and I was in that part of the central corridor that passes through the life support deck, on my way up to the flight deck, when—blam.”

  “The life support deck was also pressurized?”

  “We normally keep it that way so we can get into it from inside the crew module. It’s really a very small space, crammed with tanks and pipes, but you can reach in there if you have to. When it was hit the inside hatches seized up automatically.”

  “Now, this business about the wine crate…”

  McNeil grinned sheepishly. “Yes, I did behave rather badly. I suppose I’m going to have to pay someone a pretty penny for the bottles I managed to down before Grant caught me.”

  “That wine was the personal property of the director of the Hesperian Museum, Mr. Darlington,” Proboda grunted. “I imagine he’ll have something to say about it… But you say Grant put the partial crate back where you got it?”

  “Yes, and then he changed the combination on the airlock so I couldn’t get back in.”

  A feral gleam appeared in Proboda’s pale eye. “You claim the airlock of that hold hasn’t been opened since the day after the accident?”

  “That’s right, sir.”

  “But the top compartment of that hold is pressurized. It’s a vessel almost half the volume of the command module. And it was full of fresh air!”

  “Aye, it was, and if we’d had another like it, Peter Grant would be alive today,” McNeil said quietly. “Originally we were to carry some seedlings. They wouldn’t have saved us, but the extra air that came with ’em might have.” He seemed to notice Proboda’s confusion for the first time. “Oh, I see your problem, sir. And you’re right, about the old ships … but Star Queen and most of the newer freighters are piped to allow any combination of gas exchange through all the airtight compartments, without having to open the airlocks. That allows us to carry cargo that the shipper wouldn’t want us to know about or get into, you see. If they’re willin’ to pay freight on the entire hold. Which is the usual procedure on military contracts.”

  “So you had access to the air in that compartment even though you couldn’t get inside?”

  “Right. If we’d wanted, we could have pumped the air out of that hold and jettisoned the whole thing, got rid of the mass. In fact Grant ran some calculations, but we wouldn’t have saved enough time.”

  Proboda was disappointed, but still he persisted. “But after Grant had, uh, left the ship … you could have found his new combination for the airlock, couldn’t you?”

  “Could be, but I doubt it, even if I’d been interested. I’m no computer whiz, and a man’s private files aren’t easy to crack into. But why would I have wanted to?”

  Proboda glanced significantly at the empty bottle and glass beside McNeil’s half full plate. “Because there were still three and a half crates of wine in there, for one thing. And no one to stop you from drinking it.”

  McNeil studied the blond inspector with an expression that struck Sparta as calculating. “I like a glass as well as the next person, Inspector. Maybe better. Maybe a little too much better. I’ve been called a hedonist and maybe I am that, but I’m not a complete fool.” McNeil ground out the remains of his cigarette.

  “What did you have to fear,” Proboda insisted, “beyond the commission of a felony, of course, if that really did concern you?”

  “Just this,” McNeil said quietly, and the steel edge of his affable personality finally slid out from under the smile, glittering. “Alcohol interferes with the functioning of your lungs and constricts your blood vessels. If you’re going to die anyway, you might not mind that. But if you intend to survive in an oxygen-poor environment, you won’t be taking a drink.”

  “And cigarettes? Do they interfere with the functioning of the lungs?”

  “After two packs a day for twenty years, Inspector, two cigarettes a day are but a crutch for the nerves.”

  Proboda was about to plunge on when Sparta interrupted. “I think we ought to leave Mr. McNeil in peace for now, Viktor. We can continue at a later time.” She had watched the exchange with interest. As a cop, Proboda had his strong points—she liked his bulldog persistence even when he knew he looked foolish—but his shortcomings were numerous. He was easily sidetracked, having here fixated on the trivial issue of destruction of property—Sparta suspected that was due to an excessive concern for powerful interests in the Port Hesperus community—and he hadn’t done his homework, or he would have known about the hold airlocks.

  But his most serious error was that he had already passed moral judgment on McNeil. McNeil was not to be judged so easily. Everything he had said about himself was true. He was not a fool. And he intended to survive.

  Sparta rose and said, “You are free to go wherever you like on the station when the medics release you, Mr. McNeil, although if you prefer to avoid the media this is probably the best place to do it. Star Queen is off limits, of course. I’m sure you understand.”

  “Perfectly, Inspector. Thanks again for arrangin’ this lovely dinner.” He gave her a jaunty salute from the comfort of his bed.

  Before they reached the corridor, Sparta turned to Proboda and smiled. “You and I make a good team, Viktor. Good guy, bad guy, you know. We’re naturals.”

  “Who’s the good guy?” he asked.

  She laughed. “Right. You were hard on McNeil, but I read you as the good guy when it comes to your neighbors. Whereas I intend to show them no mercy.”

  “I don’t follow. How could anybody on Port Hesperus be involved in this?”

  “Viktor, let’s go climb into spacesuits and take a look at that hole in the hull, shall we?”

  “All right.”

  “But first we’ve got to get through the mob.”

  They stepped lightly through the clinic doors, into a crowd of waiting mediahounds. “Inspector Troy!” “Hey, Vik, old buddy…” “Please, Inspector, what have you got for us? You’ve got something for us, right…?”

  14

  They left the howling newspack outside the security sector. “I’ve never seen them like this,” Proboda muttered. “You’d think they’d never had a chance to report a real story before.”

  Sparta had no experience with the media. She’d thought she could use the standard tec
hniques of command and control, the voice and personality tricks, and they did work up to a point, but she had underestimated the mob’s ability to tear at her concentration, to sour her internal functions. “Viktor, excuse me—I’ve got to have a moment.” She paused in a corner of the empty passage, closing her eyes, floating in midair, willing the tension in her neck and shoulders to dissolve. Her mind emptied itself of conscious thought.

  Proboda eyed her curiously, hoping no one would come along and he would have to explain. The formidable young Inspector Troy was suddenly vulnerable, her eyes closed and her head pitched forward, floating with her hands up like a small animal’s paws; he could see the down on the back of her slender white neck, bared where her straight blond hair had fallen clear.

  Seconds later, Sparta allowed her eyes to open fully. “Viktor, I need a spacesuit. I’m a size five and a half,” she said, and just like that her expression was firm again.

  “I’ll see what I can find in the lockers.”

  “And we’ll need some tools. Limpet clamps and suction cups. Grip struts. Inertial wrench with a full set of heads and bits. Bags and tape and stuff.”

  “That’s all in a grade ten mechanic’s kit. Anything special?”

  “No. I’ll meet you at the lock.”

  She moved forward, toward the Star Queen docking tube, and Proboda went off to the tool shed.

  Two patrollers were on duty beside the entrance to the tube, wearing blue spacesuits with helmets on, although unlatched. They were armed with stun-guns—air rifles using rubber bullets that were capable of severely injuring a human, even one in a spacesuit, although not likely to puncture crucial space station systems. Metal cartridges and the weapons that fired them were barred on Port Hesperus.

  Through the double glass windows behind the guards the enormous bulk of Star Queen almost filled the docking bay. Star Queen was of average size as freighters go, but she was much larger than the tenders, launches, and shuttles that normally docked inside Port Hesperus.