The Frank Belknap Long Science Fiction Novel

by Frank Belknap Long

  Justifiable homicide. There could be no other verdict, if the insignia the Board had given me hadn’t conferred legal immunity when an accidental death stemmed from my right to stay alive and I had been forced to return to Earth and clear myself in court.

  I felt no moral guilt, but still—I was badly shaken. I had been instrumental in causing his death, however unintentionally, and it’s always better if a man can live out his life without experiencing the deep sadness that goes with that kind of knowledge.

  The only difference is—moral guilt never leaves you and grows worse with the years. But there are so many tragic sadnesses in life that they have a way of merging into one big, onrushing stream and when you measure that stream against a brighter one, the joy-stream, the scales seem to stay just about even, with the balance maybe just a little heavier on the joyful side.

  Right at the moment there was another big, onrushing stream running parallel with the sadness. The sober-obligation stream. Or maybe duty-stream would be a better name for it. We spend at least a third of our lives immersed in it up to our necks and swimming against the toughest kind of currents. Sometimes I think we could do without it entirely.

  What was it Baudelaire said about boredom? “But well you know that dainty monster, thou, hypocrite reader, fellow man, my brother.” You could practically say the same thing about duty.

  But the stream is there, and if you just stay on the bank watching the other swimmers you won’t really have the right to plunge into the joy-stream with a clear conscience.

  The first thing I had to do was get her out of the Chart Room before she collapsed. She was close to hysteria and I didn’t even want her to look at the body again. I was careful to stand between her and the robot, and when I guided her gently toward the door I kept my hand on the back of her head and kept her face pressed to my chest.

  It was more difficult than it would have looked on a cinema screen—more awkward and less romantic, and that was the way I wanted it to be, because nothing could have been further from my mind at that moment than the romantic glow I’d felt when I had been sitting across a table from her in a lakeside tavern on Earth, and hadn’t fully realized that Joan was still the only really important woman in my life.

  Oh, all right. You can’t have a head that beautiful nestling in the middle of your chest without feeling a certain…well, a quickening of your pulse, at least. It can happen even in the presence of death, when you’ve just been shaken to the depths in a ghastly way. Perhaps because of that.…

  Sex and death. Don’t be morbid, Ralphie boy. Don’t turn the clock back and let the old Freudian catch-alls of a century ago confuse and mislead you. Half of all that has been made clearer because we know now what Man was like five million years ago when he was a very predatory ape.

  Sure, sex and death are closely linked. Dawn man went hunting and slew a cave bear and threw it down before his mate, all bloody, with pride swelling in him and just the excitement of the hunt, the thrill and danger of it, made him want to make love in just as exciting a way.

  But sex and life are even more closely linked, and in life there are loyalties to consider and one woman becomes more important to you than all the rest and you don’t need that kind of stimulation to enable you to make love to her in the most exciting possible way.

  The old stirring is still there, the death-sex linkage, and it can hit you hard at times and you have to keep a tight grip on yourself to keep from succumbing to it. But you can do it if you try.

  Of course I was being unfair to her. The sex-death linkage had no more relation to the glow I’d felt back in the lakeside tavern than it did now to her as an individual. I’d have felt the same stirring if I’d been guiding Joan out of the Chart Room with her head on my breast—more of a stirring because Joan was the one woman in the world for me.

  What it really meant was that the woman with the hair piled up high on her head filled me with a two-way sense of guilt. The life-sex linkage was better than the death-sex linkage, and the one and only woman feeling better than the promiscuous amorousness which any beautiful woman can arouse in the male. And right at the moment she represented both of the more primitive aspects of sex.

  But the dice had just fallen that way. It wasn’t her fault and now she was close to hysteria and needed reassurance and all the comfort I could give her.

  As soon as we were out in the passageway I asked her to tell me who she was. Her name. So much had happened between us that it seemed unbelievable that I still didn’t know that much about her.

  “I thought I told you right after we left the spaceport,” she said. “I thought you knew. It’s Helen…helen Barclay.”

  So…the old wonder name, the magical name, the Topless Towers of Illium name. How often it seemed to go with her kind of woman. How could she have been Margaret or Janice or Barbara…attractive as those names were. Lilith perhaps…yes. Or Eva…because I’ve often felt that Eve must have been a woman of glamor, red-headed and with a temper a little on the fiery side, because how else could she have come down to us as Earth’s first legendary temptress? But otherwise… Helen, the glamor name that led the list.

  Why was I letting my mind go off at such an absurd tangent, when right ahead of me the stern-obligation stream I’ve mentioned was widening out, filling with rapids, becoming a river which could have swallowed up the sky ship, or wrecked it…if I failed to take up a giant’s stance right in the middle of it. Wade in and thrust the waters aside, Ralphie boy. It’s your duty. Try to think of yourself as a giant.

  What made it tough was…I didn’t feel at all like a giant. But what had just happened in the Chart Room couldn’t be ignored. A lot of questions would have to be asked fast, and if the explanations sounded like lies, if Helen Barclay refused to cooperate, some very drastic action might have to be taken. I hoped she didn’t have anything ugly to conceal. Just the thought was hateful to me, because I believed in her and trusted her. But the way I felt had nothing to do with an obligation I had no right to sidestep for as short a distance as the width of an electron-microscoped virus.

  I was glad that I wouldn’t have to do the questioning. Not straight off, anyway—not until I knew much more than I did, and all of the big, vital questions had been answered with candor and I could go right on feeling the way I did about her with a clear conscience. I hoped to God it would be with candor. If someone is dying and you can do nothing to save him and what he’s done or hasn’t done is of no importance to anyone but himself…you don’t ply him with questions. But what she’d done or hadn’t done could send the sky ship down into the gulfs in flaming ruin, because all of the passengers are encased in a fragile kind of bubble and the slightest pinprick could puncture it.

  The pinprick, for instance, of an Earthside conspirator, traveling along with the bubble out into space and awaiting just the right moment to insert the tiny, darkly gleaming point of the pin under the skin of the bubble.

  And she wasn’t dying, but alive—and could, if she had nothing to conceal, have no trouble in convincing the commander of the sky ship that any such fear was groundless.

  I had to take her straight to the Commander. Otherwise I’d have to take it up with someone of lesser authority and show him the insignia and question her myself in private. I couldn’t see any advantage to be gained by that. It would leave the corpse in the Chart Room entirely unexplained and the Commander would not take kindly to having anything as disturbing as that left lying around in a loose-end way for him to worry about.

  It would mean, of course, that I would have to show him the insignia. That was the bad part, the one thing I wanted most to avoid. But I could see no effective way of avoiding it now, because he was, after all, in command of the sky ship and directly responsible for its safety. He had every right to be the first to question her, unless I chose to supplant that right with what the insignia represented. To do so would not have been wise for a dozen reasons
, the chief one being that when a man is in a firm position to exercise reasonably high authority it’s always a mistake to go over his head unless you’re sure you can make a better job of it than he could, despite his specialized knowledge. I didn’t think for a moment I could come anywhere near equaling Commander Littlefield’s competence in guarding the safety of a Mars’ rocket…so to curtail his authority in a high-handed way would have been worse than inexcusable.

  But I would still have to show him the insignia…or I would not be permitted to sit in on the questioning.

  We were at the end of the passageway now and just by making a sharp left turn I could have taken her into the cabin section and introduced her to Joan. Perhaps, out of compassion, I should have done that…let her relax in a lounge chair and look out at the cool, untroubled stars, and regain a little more of her composure. Some of it was coming back, she wasn’t trembling quite so violently now, and women seem to know better than men how to ease shock-engendered agitation…especially when it’s another woman they have to soothe and sympathize with. I could trust Joan to handle it like an expert. “Of course, you poor darling. I know just how you feel. Ralph will know what to do. Don’t think about it. Just stay right here with us until Ralph comes back.”

  It would have been the kind thing to do, all right and for an instant I hesitated and almost committed an act of madness.

  When you’ve something to conceal, it’s much easier to avoid a thoughtless admission, a damaging slip of the tongue, when you’ve had time to collect your thoughts and decide in advance exactly how much of the truth it’s wise to reveal. She was too agitated now to guard against slips and our chances of getting at the truth would be much better. And like the short-on-brains, over-chivalrous lug I could be on rare occasions—I hoped they were rare—I’d almost torn it.

  8

  Unlike Jonathan Trilling, Commander Littlefield was the kind of man who was what he was in an uncomplicated way. You didn’t have to try to analyze why he impressed you as he did, because it was all there on display, right out in the open. He was big and robust looking, with a granite-firm jaw and the kind of features that take a long time to develop the lines of character that are etched into them, because a man who has his emotions well under control in his youth will pass into middle-age before you can tell from his expression just how much maturity and strength resides in him.

  There are bland-faced lads who seem to have no lines of character at all in their countenances up to about the age of twenty-eight. But when you hear them talk you change your mind very quickly about them, and when they are forty-five the lines are all there, deeply-etched, and the mystery is explained. Commander Littlefield was that kind of man.

  We had several very serious things to discuss, because five hours had passed since I’d sat facing him in the same chair and Helen Barclay had sat in another chair at right angles to a third chair, which he had drawn out from his desk and occupied for a full hour without a coffee break, his eyes searching her face as she talked. His stare was a kind of interrogation in itself, and it must have been hard for her to endure. I think it would have angered me a little, if I hadn’t suspected what was behind it.

  Her story stood up very well and had the ring of truth and her eyes never wavered. But he was hoping they would, then he could detect in her eyes a flicker of hesitation, of evasiveness, which would give her away.

  But he hadn’t. Her story had stood up almost too well…because the truth always has a few flaws and inconsistencies in it. Memory is never a perfect enough mirror to permit anyone to avoid contradictions when they are doing their best to tell nothing but the truth, even under oath.

  But she hadn’t seemed to be lying, and in the end I think she convinced him completely, because toward the end he stopped looking at her as if every word she said was impressing him unfavorably.

  And now she was in the sick bay, recovering from shock, and I was back again for another talk with the Commander.

  He began by saying: “I don’t know just how I should address you, Mr. Graham—sir. That silver hawk gives you a Colonization Board clearance that’s a little on the special side…you’ll have to admit. The first man who wore it got a little angry when anyone addressed him as ‘General’ because that’s a strictly military title, and military titles haven’t been in common use for forty years. There’s not supposed to be any army anymore—on Earth or on Mars. But I’ve always sort of liked ‘General’ and that insignia is practically the equivalent of five stars.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t like ‘General’ at all,” I said. “The title is…Ralph.”

  “Well…suit yourself. Ralph. I’m a simple soldier at heart, I suppose—always will be, even though I hold the rank of Commander. You’re young enough to be my son, so that informal crap doesn’t go too much against the grain, if you’re that serious about it.”

  “I’m serious about it,” I said. “And you’re not old enough to be my father. An older brother, perhaps. You can’t stretch it any further than that.”

  “What do you mean I can’t? I’m an old man of forty-eight. Hair thinning, going a little to fat. My God, a Wendel Atomics or Endicott Fuel top executive couldn’t look any older, and they’ve got a head start on the rest of us. They start burning out at thirty-five.”

  “There’s not an ounce of fat on you, as far as I can see,” I assured him.

  “That’s going to handicap you on Mars, Ralph. Eyesight not what it should be in a five-star general. Look again, look closer. I’ve got a pot belly you’d notice, all right, if I didn’t exercise to keep it down.”

  I’d skipped over his reference to Wendel Atomics and Endicott, maybe subconsciously, but it must have registered belatedly in a very pronounced way, because something in my expression turned him dead serious in an instant. No man ever speaks with complete levity about his age, but what there was of ironic amusement in his gray eyes vanished and his lips tightened.

  “Well…suppose we go over what we’ve got,” he said. “I’ll be grateful for any ideas, any suggestions you may care to make. I’ve found out something that’s going to give you a jolt. It may even rock you back on your heels, depending on how easily you can be rocked. But it will keep…until we’ve discussed what she told us. What do you think of her story?”

  “I believe it,” I said. I didn’t think it was necessary to elaborate.

  “Well…I’m afraid I do too, more’s the pity. If I thought she was lying I’d have more of a lever to pry what we don’t know loose.”

  There was a thin sheet of paper covered with very fine handwriting on his desk. He picked it up and ran his eyes over it.

  “I sort of summarized what she told us,” he said. “But there’s no sense in your reading this. I can summarize it even more briefly by skipping two-thirds of what I have here.”

  “You might as well,” I told him. “She talked and we listened for at least twenty minutes. Then we both questioned her. In a question-and-answer session like that the vital points are apt to get a little blurred.”

  “Well, we know she did something no one has ever done before—stowed away on a Mars’ ship. I’d have said it couldn’t be done…and so would you, I’m sure, because you’re as familiar with the inspection routine as I am. You passed through it. No one could possibly get inside a Mars’ rocket without a Board clearance and a personal, ten-point identification check every step of the way. In other words, you can’t just ascend the launching pad, be whisked up to the passenger section and walk right in. There’s only one way you can get inside without passing the four inspection points, with machines X-raying you from head to toe.”

  “I know,” I said. “It was a damn clever stunt.”

  “It was more than a stunt. It was an achievement on the creative genius level. It took planning and foresight. And…luck. A great deal of luck. But that doesn’t detract from the brilliance of it. She found out that we were installi
ng a new cybernetic robot, to replace one that had developed electronic fatigue and had to be removed for repairs and a long rest. And she knew that we wouldn’t X-ray a robot or subject it to any of the usual tests. It would just be wheeled right in.”

  Littlefield paused an instant, then went on. “She knew there was plenty of room inside a cybernetic robot that large, between the tiers of memory banks and all the other gadgetry, for the carrying out of what she had in mind—a stowaway gamble that was almost sure to succeed. She provided for her comfort during the long trip in half-dozen ingenious ways, as we know, and made sure that the food concentrates she took along were high in essential proteins.

  “She knew, of course, that she couldn’t stay inside the robot without coming out at all. She’d have to emerge occasionally, if only to ease the psychological strain. But she used good judgment and only emerged when she was absolutely sure that it would be safe.”

  “But once she didn’t,” I said.

  “Once she didn’t. Once she felt she couldn’t stand the tensions that were building up in her any longer and she took a chance and came out when she wasn’t sure the Chart Room would be deserted. You told me you thought it was never left unguarded. Well…that isn’t strictly true. There’s a built-in security alert system in all of the robots and we can risk leaving it unguarded for a few minutes, when every member of the crew is needed elsewhere, to take care of some particularly troublesome space headache. That’s what we call the small and seldom very serious emergencies which are always arising in a sky ship this large.”

  “But if she heard someone moving about…she must have been crazy to emerge,” I said.

  “That’s just it. She wasn’t sure she heard anyone. In fact, she was almost sure it would be safe to emerge. She’d learned to trust her instincts, and the silence was almost unbroken. Just once she thought she heard a slight sound, but she put it down to the tension that was building up in her. She felt she had to emerge.”