The Golden Age of Science Fiction Volume VI: An Anthology of 50 Short Stories

by Various

  "One call," the checker said. He handed St. Simon a message slip.

  It was unimportant. Just a note from a girl on Vesta. He promised himself that he'd make his next break at Vesta, come what may. He stuck the flimsy in his pocket, and waited while the checker went through the routine of recording his log and making out a pay voucher.

  There was no small talk between himself and the checker. Mr. Murtaugh had not elected to take the schooling necessary to qualify for other than a small desk job. He had no space experience. Unless and until he did, there would be an invisible, but nonetheless real barrier between himself and any spaceman. It was not that St. Simon looked down on the man, exactly; it was simply that Murtaugh had not proved himself, and, therefore, there was no way of knowing whether he could be trusted or not. And since trust is a positive quality, lack of it can only mean mistrust.

  Murtaugh handed Captain St. Simon an envelope. "That's it, captain. Thank you."

  St. Simon opened the envelope, took out his check--and a blue ticket.

  Kerry Brand broke into a guffaw.

  * * * * *

  When the phone on his desk rang, Georges Alhamid scooped it up and identified himself.

  "This is Larry, George," said the governor's voice. "How are things so far?"

  "So far, so good," Alhamid said. "For the past week, Mr. Peter Danley has been working his head off, under the tutelage of two of the toughest, smartest anchor men in the business. But you should have seen the looks on their faces when I told them they were going to have an Earthman for a pupil."

  The governor laughed. "I'll bet! How's he coming along?"

  "He's learning. How are you doing with your pet?"

  "I think I'm softening him, George. I found out what it was that got his goat three years ago."

  "Yeah?"

  "Sure. On Ceres, where he went three years ago, he was treated as if he weren't as good as a Belt man."

  Alhamid frowned. "Someone was disrespectful?"

  "No--that is, not exactly. But he was treated as if we didn't trust his judgment, as though we were a little bit afraid of him."

  "Oh-ho! I see what you mean."

  "Sure. We treated him just as we would anyone who hasn't proved himself. And that meant we were treating him the same way we treated our own 'lower classes', as he thought of them. I had Governor Holger get his Ceres detectives to trace down everything that happened. You can read the transcript if you want. There's nothing particularly exciting in it, but you can see the pattern if you know what to look for.

  "I'm not even certain it was fully conscious on his part; I'm not sure he knew why he disliked us. All he was convinced of was that we were arrogant and thought we were better than he is. It's kind of hard for us to see that a person would be that deeply hurt by seeing the plain truth that someone else is obviously better at something than he is, but you've got to remember that an Earthman is brought up to believe that every person is just exactly as good as every other--and no better. A man may have a skill that you don't have, but that doesn't make him superior--oh, my, no!

  "Anyway, I started out by apologizing for our habit of standing up all the time. I managed to plant the idea in his mind that the only thing that made him think we felt superior was that habit. I've even got him to the point where he's standing up all the time, too. Makes him feel very superior. He's learned the native customs."

  "I get you," Alhamid said. "I probably contributed to that inferiority feeling of his myself."

  "Didn't we all? Anyway, the next step was to take him around and introduce him to some of the execs in the government and in a couple of the Companies--I briefed 'em beforehand. Friendly chats--that sort of thing. I think we're going to have to learn the ancient art of diplomacy out here if we're going to survive, George.

  "The crowning glory came this afternoon. You should have been there."

  "I was up to here in work, Larry. I just couldn't take the time off to attend a club luncheon. Did the great man give his speech?"

  "Did he? I should hope to crack my helmet he did! We must all pull together, George, did you know that? We must care for the widow and the orphan--and the needy, George, the needy. We must be sure to provide the fools, the idiots, the malingerers, the moral degenerates, and such useful, lovable beings as that with the necessities and the luxuries of life. We must see to it that they are respected and permitted to have their dignity. We must see to it that the dear little things are permitted the rights of a human being to hold his head up and spit in your eye if he wishes. We must see to it that they be fruitful, multiply, and replenish the Earth."

  "They've already done that," Alhamid said caustically. "And they can have it. Let's just see that they don't replenish the Belt. So what happened?"

  "Why, George, you'll never realize how much we appreciated that speech. We gave him a three-minute rising ovation. I think he was surprised to see that we could stand for three minutes under a one-gee pull in the centrifuge. And you should have seen the smiles on our faces, George."

  "I hope nobody broke out laughing."

  "We managed to restrain ourselves," the governor said.

  "What's next on the agenda?"

  "Well, it'll be tricky, but I think I can pull it off. I'm going to take him around and show him that we do take care of the widow and the orphan, and hope that he assumes we are as solicitous toward the rest of his motley crew. Wish me luck."

  "Good luck. You may need it."

  "Same to you. Take care of Danley."

  "Don't worry. He's in good hands. See you, Larry."

  "Right."

  * * * * *

  There were three space-suited men on the bleak rocky ground near the north pole of Pallas, a training area of several square miles known as the North Forty. Their helmets gleamed in the bright, hard light from a sun that looked uncomfortably small to an Earthman's eyes. Two of the men were standing, facing each other some fifteen feet apart. The third, attached to them by safety lines, was hanging face down above the surface, rising slowly, like a balloon that has almost more weight than it can lift.

  "No, no, no, Mr. Danley! You are not crawling, Mr. Danley, you are climbing! Do you understand that? Climbing! You have to climb an asteroid, just as you would climb a cliff on Earth. You have to hold on every second of the time, or you will fall off!" St. Simon's voice sounded harsh in Danley's earphones, and he felt irritatingly helpless poised floatingly above the ground that way.

  His instructors were well anchored by metal eyes set into the rocky surface for just that purpose. Although Pallas was mostly nickel-iron, this end of it was stony, which was why it had been selected as a training ground.

  "Well?" snapped St. Simon. "What do you do now? If this were a small rock, you'd be drifting a long ways away by now. Think, Mr. Danley, think."

  "Then shut up and let me think!" Danley snarled.

  "If small things distract you from thinking about the vital necessity of saving your own life, Mr. Danley, you would not live long in the Belt."

  Danley reached out an arm to see if he could touch the ground. When he had pushed himself upwards with a thrust of his knee, he hadn't given himself too hard a shove. He had reached the apex of his slow flight, and was drifting downward again. He grasped a jutting rock and pulled himself back to the surface.

  "Very good, Mr. Danley--but that wouldn't work on a small rock. You took too long. What would you have done on a rock with a millionth of a gee of pull?"

  Danley was silent.

  "Well?" St. Simon barked. "What would you do?"

  "I ... I don't know," Danley admitted.

  "Ye gods and little fishhooks!" This was Kerry Brand's voice. It was supposed to be St. Simon's turn to give the verbal instructions, but Brand allowed himself an occasional remark when it was appropriate.

  St. Simon's voice was bitingly sweet. "What do you think those safety lines are for, Mr. Danley? Do you think they are for decorative purposes?"

  "Well ... I thought I was supposed to t
hink of some other way. I mean, that's so obvious--"

  "Mr. Danley," St. Simon said with sudden patience, "we are not here to give you riddles to solve. We're here to teach you how to stay alive in the Belt. And one of the first rules you must learn is that you will never leave your boat without a safety line. Never!

  "An anchor man, Mr. Danley, is called that for more than one reason. You cannot anchor your boat to a rock unless there is an eye-bolt set in it. And if it already has an eye-bolt, you would have no purpose on that rock. In a way, you will be the anchor of your boat, since you will be tied to it by your safety line. If the boat drifts too far from your rock while you are working, it will pull you off the surface, since it has more mass than you do. That shouldn't be allowed to happen, but, if it does, you are still with your boat, rather than deserted on a rock for the rest of your life--which wouldn't be very long. When the power unit in your suit ran out of energy, it would stop breaking your exhaled carbon dioxide down into carbon and oxygen, and you would suffocate. Even with emergency tanks of oxygen, you would soon find yourself freezing to death. That sun up there isn't very warm, Mr. Danley."

  Peter Danley was silent, but it was an effort to remain so. He wanted to remind St. Simon that he, Danley, had been a spaceman for nearly fifteen years. But he was also aware that he was learning things that weren't taught at Earthside schools. Most of his professional life had been spent aboard big, comfortable ships that made the short Earth-Luna hop. He could probably count the total hours he had spent in a spacesuit on the fingers of his two hands.

  "All right, Mr. Danley; let's begin again. Climb along the surface. Use toeholds, handholds, and fingerholds. Feel your way along. Find those little crevices that will give you a grip. It doesn't take much. You're a lot better off than a mountain climber on Earth because you don't have to fight your weight. You have only your mass to worry about. That's it. Fine. Very good, Mr. Danley."

  * * * * *

  And, later:

  "Now, Mr. Danley," said Captain Brand, "you are at the end of your tether, so to speak."

  The three men were in a space boat, several hundred miles from Pallas. Or, rather, two of them were in the boat, standing at the open door. Peter Danley was far out from it, at the end of his safety line.

  "How far are you from us, Mr. Danley?" Brand asked.

  "Three hundred meters, Captain Brand," Danley said promptly.

  "Very good. How do you know?"

  "I am at the end of my safety line, which is three hundred meters long when fully extended."

  "Your memory is excellent, Mr. Danley. Now, how will you get back to the boat?"

  "Pull myself hand over hand along the line."

  "Think, Mr. Danley! Think!"

  "Uh. Oh. Well, I wouldn't keep pulling. I'd just give myself a tug and then coast in, taking up the line slowly as I went."

  "Excellent! What would happen if you, as you put it, pulled yourself in hand over hand, as if you were climbing a rope on Earth?"

  "I would accelerate too much," Danley said. "I'd gain too much momentum and probably bash my brains out against the boat. And I'd have no way to stop myself."

  "Bully for you, Mr. Danley! Now see if you can put into action that which you have so succinctly put into words. Come back to the boat. Gently the first time. We'll have plenty of practice, so that you can get the feel of the muscle pull that will give you a maximum of velocity with a minimum of impact at this end. Gently, now."

  * * * * *

  Still later:

  "Judgment, Mr. Danley!" St. Simon cautioned. "You have to use judgment! A space boat is not an automobile. There is no friction out here to slow it to a stop. Your accelerator is just exactly that--an accelerator. Taking your foot off it won't slow you down a bit; you've got to use your reverse."

  Peter Danley was at the controls of the boat. There were tiny beads of perspiration on his forehead. Over a kilometer away was a good-sized hunk of rock; his instructors wouldn't let him get any closer. They wanted to be sure that they could take over before the boat struck the rock, just in case Danley should freeze to the accelerator a little too long.

  He wasn't used to this sort of thing. He was used to a taped acceleration-deceleration program which lifted a big ship, aimed it, and went through the trip all automatically. All he had ever had to do was drop it the last few hundred feet to a landing field.

  "Keep your eyes moving," St. Simon said. "Your radar can give you data that you need, just remember that it can't think for you."

  Your right foot controls your forward acceleration.

  Your left foot controls your reverse acceleration.

  They can't be pushed down together; when one goes down, the other goes up. Balance one against the other.

  Turning your wheel controls the roll of the boat.

  Pulling your wheel toward you, or pushing it away, controls the pitch.

  Shifting the wheel left, or right, controls the yaw.

  The instructions had been pounded into his head until each one seemed to ring like a separate little bell. The problem was coordinating his body to act on those instructions.

  One of the radar dials told him how far he was from the rock. Another told him his radial velocity relative to it. A third told him his angular velocity.

  "Come to a dead stop exactly one thousand meters from the surface, Mr. Danley," St. Simon ordered.

  Danley worked the controls until both his velocity meters read zero, and the distance meter read exactly one kilometer.

  "Very good, Mr. Danley. Now assume that the surface of your rock is at nine hundred ninety-five meters. Bring your boat to a dead stop exactly fifty centimeters from that surface."

  Danley worked the controls again. He grinned with satisfaction when the distance meter showed nine nine five point five on the nose.

  Captain St. Simon sighed deeply. "Mr. Danley, do you feel a little shaken up? Banged around a little? Do you feel as though you'd just gotten a bone-rattling shock?"

  "Uh ... no."

  "You should. You slammed this boat a good two feet into the surface of that rock before you backed out again." His voice changed tone. "Dammit, Mr. Danley, when I say 'surface at nine nine five', I mean surface!"

  * * * * *

  Edway Tarnhorst had been dictating notes for his reports into his recorder, and was rather tired, so when he asked Peter Danley what he had learned, he was rather irritated when the blond man closed his blue eyes and repeated, parrotlike:

  "Due to the lack of a water-oxygen atmosphere, many minerals are found in the asteroids which are unknown on Earth. Among the more important of these are: Oldhamite (CaS); Daubréelite (FECr{2}S{4}); Schreibersite and Rhabdite (Fe{3}Ni{3}P); Lawrencite (FeCl{2}); and Taenite, an alloy of iron containing--"

  "That's not precisely the sort of thing I meant," Tarnhorst interrupted testily.

  Danley smiled. "I know. I'm sorry. That's my lesson for tomorrow."

  "So I gathered. May I sit down?" There were only two chairs in the room. Danley was occupying one, and a pile of books was occupying the other.

  Danley quickly got to his feet and began putting the books on his desk. "Certainly, Mr. Tarnhorst. Sit down."

  Tarnhorst lowered himself into the newly emptied chair. "I apologize for interrupting your studies," he said. "I realize how important they are. But there are a few points I'd like to discuss with you."

  "Certainly." Danley seated himself and looked at the older man expectantly. "The nullifiers are on," he said.

  "Of course," Tarnhorst said absently. Then, changing his manner, he said abruptly: "Have you found anything yet?"

  Danley shook his head. "No. It looks to me as though they've done everything possible to make sure that these men get the best equipment and the best training. The training instructors have been through the whole affair themselves--they know the ropes. The equipment, as far as I can tell, is top grade stuff. From what I have seen so far, the Company isn't stinting on the equipment or the training."


  Tarnhorst nodded. "After nearly three months of investigation, I have come to the same conclusion myself. The records show that expenditures on equipment has been steadily increasing. The equipment they have now, I understand, is almost failure-proof?" He looked questioningly at Danley.

  Danley nodded. "Apparently. Certainly no one is killed because of equipment failure. It's the finest stuff I've ever seen."

  "And yet," Tarnhorst said, "their books show that they are constantly seeking to improve it."

  "I don't suppose there is any chance of juggling the books on you, is there?"

  Tarnhorst smiled a superior smile. "Hardly. In the first place, I know bookkeeping. In the second, it would be impossible to whip up a complete set of balancing books--covering a period of nearly eighty years--overnight.

  "I agree," Danley said. "I don't think they set up a special training course just for me overnight, either. I've seen classes on Vesta, Juno, and Eros--and they're all the same. There aren't any fancy false fronts to fool us, Mr. Tarnhorst: I've looked very closely."

  "Have you talked to the men?"

  "Yes. They have no complaints."

  Again Tarnhorst nodded. "I have found the same thing. They all insist that if a man gets killed in space, it's not the fault of anyone but himself. Or, as it may be, an act of God."

  "One of my instructors ran into an act of God some years ago," Danley said. "You've met him. Brand--the one with the scarred face." He explained to Tarnhorst what had caused Brand's disfigurement. "But he survived," he finished, "because he kept his wits about him even after he was hit."

  "Commendable; very commendable," Tarnhorst said. "If he'd been an excitable fool, he'd have died."

  "True. But what I was trying to point out was that it wasn't equipment failure that caused the accident."

  "No. You're quite right." Tarnhorst was silent for a moment, then he looked into Danley's eyes. "Do you think you could take on a job as anchor man now?"

  "I don't know," said Danley evenly. "But I'm going to find out tomorrow."

  * * * * *

  Peter Danley took his final examination the following day. All by himself, he went through the procedure of positioning his ship, setting up a rocket drill, firing it, and setting in an anchor. It was only a small rock, nine meters through, but the job was almost the same as with the big ones. Not far away, Captain St. Simon watched the Earthman's procedure through a pair of high-powered field glasses. He breathed a deep sigh of relief when the job was done.