Space, Space, Space - Stories about the Time when Men will be Adventuring to the Stars

by William Sloane

  Most of them had been on this job between three and ten years. They had worked, talked, eaten and slept Mars Trip One. But when they were told it was off they weren’t in shock, they weren’t in tears, they weren’t licked. And this wasn’t the refusal of a bunch of fanatics to face the facts. This was a team of highly trained specialists who had faith in their brains and ability and in the knowledge of their sciences. This was the cream of humanity and they knew where they were going. I remembered Don Byrne saying: “There is a wisdom beyond wisdom and a faith beyond faith.”

  The men were determined. They believed that Man could not be permanently stopped by anything in the universe. And it wasn’t conceit or intellectual snobbishness. Man was heading for the stars and they knew it. They had conquered other obstacles; here was one more. Each had seen apparently insuperable barriers appear in his respective science time and time again but none had halted progress for long. Man had kept expanding intellectually, emotionally and morally in spite of real and imagined hurdles. He was also going to expand and settle the planets and then the stars, and these men knew it. They were hardheaded, scientifically trained dreamers, and that’s an unbeatable combination.

  I felt myself relaxing and grinned at them. “Here are your instructions: All perishable supplies are to be battened down. Those supplies on board are to be left there, those in the warehouses left where they are. Put everything on the loading ramps away, either in the ship or back in storage. Use your own judgment. Tell the work crews to report for instructions each morning. They’ll get paid for eight hours so long as they report in, whether or not there’s a job for them. Then you make any phone calls you want to. But every mother’s son of you is to be back here in one hour. Maybe the U.N. is licked, but we’ve got a lot of thinking to do before we are.”

  They filed out and I sat back and tried to think. My thoughts went round and round.

  Ten minutes later I realized I was defeating my own purpose. There had been attempts to think this through from the top down before. This was a job for teamwork. I went out to the switchboard again. Evie was still there but her ear was glued to the radio. As I came in she flicked it off and looked at me and started to cry.

  “Relax, Evie,” I told her. “Don’t believe everything you hear on the radio. Those broadcasters are a bunch of defeatists.”

  She looked up startled, stopped crying and eyed me questioningly. She had mascara all over her cheeks and looked adorable. I patted her on the shoulder and said: “I want a big conference table moved into my office. More chairs and try to get comfortable ones this time. Leave the other chairs in there. Put them against the wall or something. Then phone all the alternates and tell them I want them as quick as they can get here. Phone Jerrins at the U.N. Research Council and tell him I’d like him to fly back here as soon as he can make it. Then get the kitchen on the phone and tell them I want plenty of hot coffee and sandwiches and I want good sandwiches—not just bread and a thin slice of ham. On second thought, just get coffee from them. Call a delicatessen in town and get the sandwiches there. We’re going to have us a conference. There will be all the crew, the chiefs and the alternates, so figure out how much food we’ll need and get twice as much. Then phone supply and tell them I want a small portable air conditioner in my office inside of fifteen minutes. And you’ll probably be needed all night, so make any phone calls you need to get yourself a relief at the switchboard, grab some notebooks and pencils and come inside when you’re finished. And tell the relief that she will probably be needed out here all night, too.”

  Evie is a dependable gal as well as being ornamental, so I knew she’d get everything done. I walked down to the snack bar and bought a few cartons of cigarettes. On the way back I stole ash trays and pads of blank paper from all the empty offices. When I got back the conference table and chairs were in and the boys from supply were plugging in the air conditioner. I scattered my armload of supplies around the table and waited. I was glad I’d thought of the air conditioner. These boys could no more hold a conference without smoking than they could think without doodling, but I’d never believed in the efficacy of a low oxygen content to increase efficiency.

  And the alternates were a good idea, too. Every crew member including myself had an alternate. The alternates were just as involved as we were and just as highly trained. If one of us couldn’t go, the alternate was all ready to take his place. Having them would double our number and should increase the probability of our finding a way out of this. Jerrins, too, would help. He had a razor-sharp mind and we had worked together enough to know we complemented each other. Also, if we developed anything good, he was the man to sell it to the U.N. I was glad I’d asked him to come.

  Five hours later we were still at it. The room was as jammed as the ash trays. We had batted around a dozen ideas—like big tanks of acid on the Moon into which we’d dunk the ship on the way back to cleanse her; and an observation ward into which we’d dunk the crew. Or small boats and suits to be worn on Mars when the landing parties went out while the big ship floated in space. Later the small boats and suits would be jettisoned on Mars. Every plan went haywire on one major count. You couldn’t guess at the characteristics of possible bacteria, viruses, fungi and whatnot, that you might encounter. Jerrins and the four committee members he’d brought back kept pointing out that there was no way of guessing at the staying or spreading powers of these hypothetical critters. The U.N. Medical Commissioner in charge of Interplanetary Travel kept hammering at it. And you couldn’t take chances.

  One thing that struck me about these boys was that no one ever suggested we use an idea in spite of possible risks. They didn’t mind risking their necks, but if there was the slightest chance of bringing back infection, they dropped the idea like a hot potato. They were going to get the trip off somehow but not one of them was a sloppy thinker. A good bunch.

  No one figured out the final idea. It came gradually to us all at about the same time. Carruthers, the biologist, said something or other and that was all. We stopped talking for awhile and thought it through. We looked from one to the other, from Jamieson, our physicist and atmosphere expert, who nodded “yes” to LaRoux, our agronomist, to Seivers, our psychologist, and then to the U.N. medic. All nodded “yes.” No one said anything until Evie put down her pencil and notebook, stood up very deliberately and came over and kissed me on the cheek. Then the uproar began.

  We have a nice little community here on Mars. We’ve been here twelve years now. We moved out of The Astra four years back. The air is still a bit thin but our big atomic plants are constantly working reconverting the iron oxide this planet is covered with. Plants are growing, we have a truck farm that’s not doing badly and a nursery school that’s doing even better.

  The U.N. psychologists and medics finally selected a hundred and twelve of us to come. Those psychologists were really rough. Every test and interview technique they could figure out. We are now nearer one hundred and fifty. Evie and I have two kids of our own and the older has all the makings of a good engineer.

  Of course we can never go back, nor can our children—but, if their children are O.K., they can go back to Earth. We figure that if no bad diseases emerge in three generations, things are pretty safe here. Then we’ll set up regular travel. We’ll never see that ourselves but it will happen. A ship floats around Mars every three years and we communicate by heliograph. They drop supplies and mail and we blink back messages. Each time they come they drop a lifeboat with one couple on it. That way they check if any new diseases have emerged and the rest of us have gradually built up immunity to it. We’ve had our dis-eases, especially the first year, and some of them were weirdies all right, but our medical staff dealt with them quickly and effectively, thank God.

  There is the same quality of teamwork here that we so clearly had back in those first planning days. It’s a good little culture we have here and it’s part of a dream—a good dream. The last papers we had two years ago said a party planned to try for Venus
soon. And someday the stars.

  TOOLS OF THE TRADE

  RAYMOND F. JONES

  ★ ★

  There are a lot of tools in any good garage. But what if the garage were for spaceships, and if the ships came in for repair from every corner of the universe? And suppose that they had been built by hundreds of different races, each with its own set of living requirements, its own special kind of intelligence, and its own sciences never developed on Earth. Running that kind of garage will be an art.

  Politics, too, is an art. We Terrans have not developed it very highly as yet. Our sciences are far ahead of our political institutions, and it’s a favorite game to assign the responsibility for what goes wrong with the machinery of our government to politicians. When men have made their contacts with the races of other planets they may discover chat for all Earth’s skills and knowledge the inhabitants of other worlds are wiser in certain respects than Man.

  Anyway, here is a story with something to think about in it. It starts with a super garage, but it is up to the reader to decide just where it ends. That depends, in part, on what he thinks of those dopes in City Hall and the muddleheads in Washington. Or are they?

  ★ ★

  The desert sun was slowly lighting the sleek, lazy backs of the ships on the field of “Joes Service and Repair.” It lit the distant hills, too, promising a day of greater splendor than it could possibly deliver in this barren land. But Joe didn’t mind. He liked big plans.

  From the window of his second-story office he watched. His normal working day began at dawn, and in the outer office he heard the entrance of his secretary, Mary Barnes. She was devoted to him, but her quick heel taps registered the irritation of having to rise so early.

  Joe stoked the big cigar in his mouth with long, pleasurable draughts. The field was getting too small. Time for another expansion, almost, but he wondered if this time he should set up a separate location somewhere else. Concentration meant efficiency but the bureaucrats who had to keep tabs on him worried about “Joe’s Service and Repair” becoming too big. Steadily, however, they were becoming smaller and smaller fry. Soon they wouldn’t matter at all—he hoped.

  He marveled at the colors of the hulls. At midday most would be dingy, space-pocked gray, but now they seemed to glow with bright yellow and pink and hues of shining steel.

  There was the big Nadian. She was having a new drive, atomic, Class Six, he recalled. Beside her was the much smaller Iban with new atmosphere pumps to be installed—half the crew had died getting her into the repair depot. Most of them represented tragedy, but that tragedy was less because of him.

  He looked beyond the Nadian to the fine, golden hull that loomed even bigger a little way beyond. He squinted for recognition, bending forward until his cigar almost touched the windowpane. Then he recognized it.

  “Mary! How did that royal barge get on our field? Mary—!”

  She came from the outer office at her own pace, but with her morning coiffure adjustments only half completed. “I have the entry slip on the Martremant, if that’s what you’re worrying about,” she said. “It was in the hopper this morning—came in during the night. It is a very big job. She was rammed by a freighter that got out of control at Capitol Field just as the First Administrator was about to take off.’’

  “I can refuse service to anyone, and I refuse to have anything to do with those junketing politicians. Goodwill tour—bah!”

  The Martremant was the personal ship of the Ga-lactic Unions First Administrator. With two hundred of his commissioners, he was making a goodwill tour through member galaxies. Since it was, of course, impossible to visit all, the party had honored Earth greatly, her galaxy being one of the most remote from Administration Central.

  Joe looked up sharply as he became aware of Mary’s silence. “Well, I can, cant I—?”

  “I’m afraid not, Joe.” Her brown eyes watched him seriously. “Your charter forbids discrimination, except by government ban or permission. I’m sure there will be neither in this instance. The job carries a special government contract straight from the Capitol.”

  “Not only do I have to fix this barge, but, as a taxpayer, I have to foot my own bill?”

  “Stripped to its bare essentials, that’s about it. The government is half panicky about the accident. Up to now the junket went off as rehearsed. It looked as if the support of the First Administrator had been assured for Earth’s candidate when the Administrator’s term expires in six months.”

  “Now the political plums have all turned sour because some chowderhead rams the royal barge, is that it?”

  “That’s it. You can bet nobody slept on Capitol Hill last night.”

  Joe chuckled suddenly. “Tough, isn’t it? The VIPs will have to wait for repairs or a new ship. Wouldn’t it be tough if we couldn’t find or make one essential part? Of course, it would take a long time to find that out. I think I’ll like this job after all.”

  “Why don’t you just get it fixed as quickly as you can,” said Mary crossly, “and get it off your mind? You breed ulcers this way.”

  Joe’s face sobered. “All right, Mary. We’ll do it your way. I think the efficiency of this office has picked up thirty percent since you came—but I wonder if we have as much fun—”

  “It’s not fun to hate anything as much as you do politicians.”

  “A person can’t be sweet all the time. I don’t know of more suitable use to be made of the pompous windbags.”

  “If I remember elementary history correctly there was a time of technological government.”

  “A bunch of plumbers’ apprentices,” growled Joe. “The gang that got in was worse than the politicians.”

  “That’s what everybody else thought, too.”

  “Look, you’re changing the subject.” He took her arm with fatherly gentleness and led her closer to the window. “That hulk out there cost a billion, at least. Its operating expenses on this hundred-day junket are a quarter-million a day. Who pays it? Little guys like me and you. A tax on this, a tax on that—half our life and substance are dribbled away supporting those … those junketeers!”

  “Little guys like me and you—! That calls for an increase next Thursday. Here comes Mr. Litchfield. He looks as if he has troubles on his mind. Ten to one it’s Martremant trouble.”

  She retreated to her own office as the chief repair engineer parked his scooter outside the building and started up the stairs.

  Howard Litchfield looked more like a professional wrestler than a crack engineer. He carried his elbows slightly away from his body as if perpetually waiting for someone to photograph his strong-man pose.

  “You’ve seen, I suppose,” he said.

  “The Martremant?”

  “Were going to have trouble on this job.”

  “Why—what is it?”

  “This is one of the eight third-order ships in existence. We’ve never had a third-order job in here before.”

  “So what? There are twenty other jobs out there that are the first we’ve seen of their exact kind. The crew of the Martremant can give enough of their cerebral analogues to pin it down.”

  “They could—if they were alive.”

  Joe slowly removed his cigar. “What happened to them?”

  “The freighter that knocked the ship out drove through the side of the officers’ quarters, and ended by almost splitting the drive chambers in two. Only twenty percent of the machinery is good. All crewmen with technical knowledge are dead. The only ones left are cooks and stewards, and they’re not Radalians, who built the vessel.”

  “And politicians—” added Joe.

  “Who won’t move out.”

  “What?”

  “That’s right. The First and his commissioners are still aboard.”

  “What about the atmosphere machinery?”

  “That’s the twenty percent that’s left. Each state suite is self-contained and independent. None of them got damaged.”

  “Well, why doesn’t th
e government just give them a new ship and junk the old one? It would be cheaper. Don’t forget who pays this bill.”

  Litchfield shook his head and sat down on the polished desk. “There was some mention of it, I gather, but the First wants his personal barge back in Grade A shape with not a scratch showing, so that’s what he was promised. We have to deliver.”

  “It’s not his ship, anyway. It belongs to the Galactic Commission.”

  “Sure—but who’s going to remind him? He’s the F. A.”

  “I’d like to remind him! I’d—” Joe sensed the uselessness of another tirade. He recalled Mary’s advice—get the ship fixed.

  “I’ll help you,” he announced decisively. “Let’s get that thing off the field by the end of the week.”

  “This is already Monday!”

  “A man could breed a pretty good-sized ulcer in six days.”

  On the small scooters used for transportation about the vast field, they sped towards the hulk of the Martremant. It was a squat tube of a hull about twenty stories high and three times as long. Joe gasped at the great gash in the rear third of it.

  “It would have been easier to take the tools to the job than bring that piece of junk here. The freighter must have rammed clear inside and then turned and come out sidewise.”

  “It exploded. That’s why nobody will know for sure what happened.”

  Lights had been placed and Litchfield’s analysis crew were already deep in the process of photographing and carefully dismantling the wreckage.

  As Joe looked about, he became aware that there were others present who had no business to be—but he knew who they were.

  You could tell them by the crease of their clothes, the glistening shine upon their shoes, the dainty way they reached down every so often to dust imaginary specks from their knees.