The Randall Garrett Omnibus

by Randall Garrett

  "Nothing's gone wrong yet. I suggest you go take a good look at Forsythe's mind again and really try to understand the old boy. Maybe you'll get more of the fine-grain structure of it if you'll try for more understanding."

  "What do you mean?" she asked, sniffing.

  "Look. Forsythe has made his living being a fraud, right? And yet he sent out those warning free—and anonymously. He had no thought of any reward or recompense, you know that. Why? Because he is basically a kind, decent human being. He wanted to do all he could to stop any injury or loss of life.

  "Why, then, would he send out a fraudulent warning? He wouldn't. He didn't. Every one of those warnings—including the last one—was sent out because he knew that something was going to happen.

  "Evidently, once he gets a flash about a certain event, he can't get any more data on that particular area of the future, or we could get more data on the Moonbase accident. I think, if we can boost his basic understanding up past the critical point, we'll have a man with controlled prescience, and we need that man.

  "But, Donna, the only way we're ever going to do that—the only way we'll ever whip this problem—is for you to increase your understanding of him.

  "You're past the critical point—way past it—in general understanding. But you've got to keep an eye on the little specific instances, too."

  She nodded contritely. "I know. I'm sorry. Sometimes a person can get too near a problem." She smiled. "Thanks for the new perspective, Brian. I'll go back to work and see if I can't look at it a little more clearly."

  * * *

  In the White House, Senator Mikhail Kerotski was facing two men—James Bandeau, the Secretary of Space, and the President of the United States.

  "Mr. President," he said evenly, "I've known you for a long time. I haven't failed you yet."

  "I know that, Mike," the President said smoothly. "Neither has your Society, as far as I know. It's still difficult for me to believe that they get their information the way you say they do, but you've never lied to me about anything so far, so I take your word for it. Your Society is the most efficient espionage and counterespionage group in history, as far as I know. But this is different."

  "Damned right it's different!" snapped Secretary Bandeau. "Your own Society, senator, admits that we've stirred the Soviets up with this space lift thing. They've got ships of their own going out there now. According to reports from Space Force intelligence, Chinese Moon cars have been prowling around Moonbase One, trying to find out what's going on."

  "More than that," added the President, "they've sneaked a small group aboard the old Lunik IX to see what they can see from up there."

  Secretary Bandeau jerked his head around to look at the President. "The old circumlunar satellite? Where did you hear that?"

  The President smiled wanly. "From the S.M.M.R.'s report." He looked at Kerotski. "I doubt that it will do them any good. I don't think they'll be able to see anything now."

  "Not unless they've figured out some way to combine X rays with radar," the senator said. "And I'm quite sure they haven't."

  "Senator," said the Secretary of Space, "a lot of money has been spent and a lot of risks have been taken, just on your say-so. I—"

  "Now, just a minute, Jim," said the President flatly. "Let's not go off half-cocked. It wasn't done on Mike's say-so; it was done on mine. I signed the order because I believed it was the proper, if not the only thing to do." Then he looked at the senator. "But this is the last day, Mike. Nothing has happened.

  "Now, I'm not blaming you. I didn't call you up here to do that. And I think we can quit worrying about explaining away the money angle. But we're going to have to explain why we did it, Mike. And I can't tell the truth."

  "I'll say you can't!" Bandeau exploded. "That would look great, wouldn't it? I can see the headlines now: 'Fortuneteller Gave Me Advice,' President Says. Brother!"

  "Jim," the President said coldly, "I said to let me handle this."

  "What you want, then, Mr. President," Kerotski put in smoothly, "is for me to help you concoct a good cover story."

  "That's about it, Mike," the President admitted.

  Kerotski shook his head slowly. "It won't be necessary."

  Bandeau looked as though he were going to explode, but a glance from the President silenced him.

  "Go on, Mike," he said to the senator.

  "Mr. President, I know it looks bad. It's going to look even worse for a while. But, let me ask you one question. How is the Ch'ien space drive coming along?"

  "Why ... fine. It checked out months ago. The new ship is on her shakedown cruise now. You know that."

  "Right. Now, ask yourself one more question: What is the purpose of Moonbase One?"

  "Why, to—"

  The telephone rang.

  The President scooped it up with one hand. "Yes?"

  Then he listened for a long minute, his expression changing slowly.

  "Yes," he said at last. "Yes, I got it. No; I'll release it to the newsmen. All right. Fine." He hung up.

  "Twelve minutes ago," he said slowly, "the old Lunik IX smashed into Moonbase One and blew it to smithereens. The Soviets say that a meteor hit Lunik IXat just the right angle to slow it down enough to make it hit the base. They send their condolences."

  * * *

  Brian Taggert lay back on the couch in his office and folded his hands complacently on his abdomen. "So Donna's theory held water and so did mine. The accident was due to human intervention. Forsythe saw something from space hitting Moonbase One and assumed it was a meteor. He never dreamed the Soviets would drop old Lunik IX on it."

  Senator Kerotski carefully lit a cigar. "There's going to be an awful lot of fuss in the papers, but the President is going to announce that he accepts the Soviet story. I convinced him that it is best to let the Soviets think they're a long way ahead of us in the space race now. There's nothing like a little complacency to slow someone down."

  "How'd you convince him?"

  "Asked the same question you asked me. Now that we have the Ch'ien space drive, what purpose does a moon base serve? None at all, of course."

  Donna Tadesco leaned forward in her chair. "Did you happen to notice the sequence of events, senator? We were warned that the base would be struck. We decided to abandon it. We organized the biggest space lift in history to evacuate the men and the most valuable instruments. But the Soviets thought we were sending equipment up instead of bringing it down. They didn't know what we were up to, but they decided to put a stop to it, so they dropped an abandoned space satellite on it.

  "If we hadn't decided to evacuate the base, it would never have happened.

  "That is human intervention with a vengeance. We still don't know whether or not Forsythe's predictions will ever do us any good or not. Every time we've taken steps to avoid one of his prophesied catastrophes, we've done the very thing that brought them about."

  The senator puffed his cigar in thoughtful silence.

  "We'll just have to keep working with him," Taggert said. "Maybe we'll eventually make sense out of this precognition thing.

  "At least we've got what we wanted. The Soviets think they've put us back ten years; they figure they've got more time, now, to get their own program a long ways ahead.

  "When they do get to Mars and Venus and the planets of Alpha Centauri and Sirius and Procyon, they'll find us there, waiting for them."

  Senator Kerotski chuckled softly. "You're a pretty good prophet, yourself, Brian. The only difference between you and Forsythe is that he's right half the time.

  "You're right all the time."

  "No," said Taggert. "Not all the time. Only when it's important."

  THE END

  THE MEASURE OF A MAN

  Alfred Pendray pushed himself along the corridor of the battleship Shane, holding the flashlight in one hand and using the other hand and his good leg to guide and propel himself by. The beam of the torch reflected queerly f
rom the pastel green walls of the corridor, giving him the uneasy sensation that he was swimming underwater instead of moving through the blasted hulk of a battleship, a thousand light-years from home.

  He came to the turn in the corridor, and tried to move to the right, but his momentum was greater than he had thought, and he had to grab the corner of the wall to keep from going on by. That swung him around, and his sprained ankle slammed agonizingly against the other side of the passageway.

  Pendray clenched his teeth and kept going. But as he moved down the side passage, he went more slowly, so that the friction of his palm against the wall could be used as a brake.

  He wasn't used to maneuvering without gravity; he'd been taught it in Cadets, of course, but that was years ago and parsecs away. When the pseudograv generators had gone out, he'd retched all over the place, but now his stomach was empty, and the nausea had gone.

  He had automatically oriented himself in the corridors so that the doors of the various compartments were to his left and right, with the ceiling "above" and the deck "below." Otherwise, he might have lost his sense of direction completely in the complex maze of the interstellar battleship.

  Or, he corrected himself, what's left of a battleship.

  And what was left? Just Al Pendray and less than half of the once-mighty Shane.

  The door to the lifeboat hold loomed ahead in the beam of the flashlight, and Pendray braked himself to a stop. He just looked at the dogged port for a few seconds.

  Let there be a boat in there, he thought. Just a boat, that's all I ask. And air, he added as an afterthought. Then his hand went out to the dog handle and turned.

  The door cracked easily. There was air on the other side. Pendray breathed a sigh of relief, braced his good foot against the wall, and pulled the door open.

  The little lifeboat was there, nestled tightly in her cradle. For the first time since the Shane had been hit, Pendray's face broke into a broad smile. The fear that had been within him faded a little, and the darkness of the crippled ship seemed to be lessened.

  Then the beam of his torch caught the little red tag on the air lock of the lifeboat. Repair Work Under Way—Do Not Remove This Tag Without Proper Authority.

  That explained why the lifeboat hadn't been used by the other crewmen.

  Pendray's mind was numb as he opened the air lock of the small craft. He didn't even attempt to think. All he wanted was to see exactly how the vessel had been disabled by the repair crew. He went inside.

  The lights were working in the lifeboat. That showed that its power was still functioning. He glanced over the instrument-and-control panels. No red tags on them, at least. Just to make sure, he opened them up, one by one, and looked inside. Nothing wrong, apparently.

  Maybe it had just been some minor repair—a broken lighting switch or something. But he didn't dare hope yet.

  He went through the door in the tiny cabin that led to the engine compartment, and he saw what the trouble was.

  The shielding had been removed from the atomic motors.

  He just hung there in the air, not moving. His lean, dark face remained expressionless, but tears welled up in his eyes and spilled over, spreading their dampness over his lids.

  The motors would run, all right. The ship could take him to Earth. But the radiation leakage from those motors would kill him long before he made it home. It would take ten days to make it back to base, and twenty-four hours of exposure to the deadly radiation from those engines would be enough to insure his death from radiation sickness.

  His eyes were blurring from the film of tears that covered them; without gravity to move the liquid, it just pooled there, distorting his vision. He blinked the tears away, then wiped his face with his free hand.

  Now what?

  He was the only man left alive on the Shane, and none of the lifeboats had escaped. The Rat cruisers had seen to that.

  * * *

  They weren't really rats, those people. Not literally. They looked humanoid enough to enable plastic surgeons to disguise a human being as one of them, although it meant sacrificing the little fingers and little toes to imitate the four-digited Rats. The Rats were at a disadvantage there; they couldn't add any fingers. But the Rats had other advantages—they bred and fought like, well, like rats.

  Not that human beings couldn't equal them or even surpass them in ferocity, if necessary. But the Rats had nearly a thousand years of progress over Earth. Their Industrial Revolution had occurred while the Angles and the Saxons and the Jutes were pushing the Britons into Wales. They had put their first artificial satellites into orbit while King Alfred the Great was fighting off the Danes.

  They hadn't developed as rapidly as Man had. It took them roughly twice as long to go from one step to the next, so that their actual superiority was only a matter of five hundred years, and Man was catching up rapidly. Unfortunately, Man hadn't caught up yet.

  The first meeting of the two races had taken place in interstellar space, and had seemed friendly enough. Two ships had come within detector distance of each other, and had circled warily. It was almost a perfect example of the Leinster Hypothesis; neither knew where the other's home world was located, and neither could go back home for fear that the other would be able to follow. But the Leinster Hypothesis couldn't be followed to the end. Leinster's solution had been to have the parties trade ships and go home, but that only works when the two civilizations are fairly close in technological development. The Rats certainly weren't going to trade their ship for the inferior craft of the Earthmen.

  The Rats, conscious of their superiority, had a simpler solution. They were certain, after a while, that Earth posed no threat to them, so they invited the Earth ship to follow them home.

  The Earthmen had been taken on a carefully conducted tour of the Rats' home planet, and the captain of the Earth ship—who had gone down in history as "Sucker" Johnston—was convinced that the Rats meant no harm, and agreed to lead a Rat ship back to Earth. If the Rats had struck then, there would never have been a Rat-Human War. It would have been over before it started.

  But the Rats were too proud of their superiority. Earth was too far away to bother them for the moment; it wasn't in their line of conquest just yet. In another fifty years, the planet would be ready for picking off.

  Earth had no idea that the Rats were so widespread. They had taken and colonized over thirty planets, completely destroying the indigenous intelligent races that had existed on five of them.

  It wasn't just pride that had made the Rats decide to wait before hitting Earth; there was a certain amount of prudence, too. None of the other races they had met had developed space travel; the Earthmen might be a little tougher to beat. Not that there was any doubt of the outcome, as far as they were concerned—but why take chances?

  But, while the Rats had fooled "Sucker" Johnston and some of his officers, the majority of the crew knew better. Rat crewmen were little short of slaves, and the Rats made the mistake of assuming that the Earth crewmen were the same. They hadn't tried to impress the crewmen as they had the officers. When the interrogation officers on Earth questioned the crew of the Earth ship, they, too, became suspicious. Johnston's optimistic attitude just didn't jibe with the facts.

  So, while the Rat officers were having the red carpet rolled out for them, Earth Intelligence went to work. Several presumably awe-stricken men were allowed to take a conducted tour of the Rat ship. After all, why not? The Twentieth Century Russians probably wouldn't have minded showing their rocket plants to an American of Captain John Smith's time, either.

  But there's a difference. Earth's government knew Earth was being threatened, and they knew they had to get as many facts as they could. They were also aware of the fact that if you know a thing can be done, then you will eventually find a way to do it.

  During the next fifty years, Earth learned more than it had during the previous hundred. The race expanded, secretly, moving out to other planets in that
sector of the galaxy. And they worked to catch up with the Rats.

  They didn't make it, of course. When, after fifty years of presumably peaceful—but highly limited—contact, the Rats hit Earth, they found out one thing. That the mass and energy of a planet armed with the proper weapons can not be out-classed by any conceivable concentration of spaceships.

  Throwing rocks at an army armed with machine guns may seem futile, but if you hit them with an avalanche, they'll go under. The Rats lost three-quarters of their fleet to planet-based guns and had to go home to bandage their wounds.

  The only trouble was that Earth couldn't counterattack. Their ships were still out-classed by those of the Rats. And the Rats, their racial pride badly stung, were determined to wipe out Man, to erase the stain on their honor wherever Man could be found. Somehow, some way, they must destroy Earth.

  And now, Al Pendray thought bitterly, they would do it.

  * * *

  The Shane had sneaked in past Rat patrols to pick up a spy on one of the outlying Rat planets, a man who'd spent five years playing the part of a Rat slave, trying to get information on their activities there. And he had had one vital bit of knowledge. He'd found it and held on to it for over three years, until the time came for the rendezvous.

  The rendezvous had almost come too late. The Rats had developed a device that could make a star temporarily unstable, and they were ready to use it on Sol.

  The Shane had managed to get off-planet with the spy, but they'd been spotted in spite of the detector nullifiers that Earth had developed. They'd been jumped by Rat cruisers and blasted by the superior Rat weapons. The lifeboats had been picked out of space, one by one, as the crew tried to get away.

  In a way, Alfred Pendray was lucky. He'd been in the sick bay with a sprained ankle when the Rats hit, sitting in the X-ray room. The shot that had knocked out the port engine had knocked him unconscious, but the shielded walls of the X-ray room had saved him from the blast of radiation that had cut down the crew in the rear of the ship. He'd come to in time to see the Rat cruisers cut up the lifeboats before they could get well away from the ship. They'd taken a couple of parting shots at the dead hulk, and then left it to drift in space—and leaving one man alive.