by James White
There was no shame attached to admitting that one was a coward, he thought cynically, just as long as one did not prove it.
Inside the blister it was deathly quiet. The interference in their suit radios was so bad that they had to switch off and communicate by touching helmets. Hollis' voice came to him with a booming, indistinct quality about it, but McCullough could make it out without too much difficulty.
The physicist said, "I'm assuming that for faster-than-light travel all of the Ship's generators must be in balanced operation, and that one malfunctioning generator will cause the others to cut out and immobilize the vessel. I know enough about the power supply lines -- which inside the blister are not insulated, as you can see -- to blow this generator. But the result might be catastrophic for the Ship and would certainly be fatal for anyone in the immediate vicinity, which is us.
"So instead of shorting the main power supply," Hollis went on, "I propose grounding the relatively much lower control and input balancing system -- those lopsided, figure-of-eight thingummies with the blue ceramic end pieces which are, I'm fairly sure, somewhat analogous to the grid of an old-fashioned radio valve. There is one of the things attached to every major piece of equipment in the blister, and I've picked out what I think are two of the most vital sections of the generator. This is what we must do . . ."
A lopsided, figure-of-eight thingummy, thought McCullough, and wondered whatever had become of the precise and rarified language of science in which Hollis was usually so bewilderingly fluent. He would pull the physicist's leg about it afterward, if there was an afterward.
They planned a simultaneous, double act of sabotage. The generators had been building up to their full operating potential for nearly twenty minutes, and there could not be very much time left to do something. The visual effects from some of the gadgetry around him were becoming quite flamboyant. As McCullough crawled toward his assigned position, sheets of slow pink lightning curled and rippled silently all around him. His spear acquired a pale blue corona and his hair kept rising and discharging against the inside of his helmet. Every few yards magnetic eddies tugged at his weapon or the metal parts of his suit, seeking to dislodge him from the insulated catwalk and draw him into a premature act of sabotage that would certainly kill him and quite possibly wreck the whole Ship.
For reasons which were both selfish and altruistic, McCullough did not want that to happen. He wanted his own skin and the Ship to suffer the minimum of damage. He realized suddenly that although he was terribly afraid for his own immediate safety, he was furiously angry about the things they had done and were doing on the Ship. From the very beginning they had had no control of the situation. It had been a stupid, if well-intentioned muddle, and while they had changed their minds several times when new data became available, they had not really used their brains. They had been panicked into doing things, they had not allowed themselves time to think and when threatened with danger they had thought only of their own survival. All things considered, as a sampling of the species Homo so-called Sapiens, they had not made a good showing.
Suddenly McCullough was in position, looking across at Hollis who was making slow, pushing motions with one hand. The physicist was reminding him that they did not have to throw the weapons, merely launch them slowly and accurately. While he watched, Hollis held up three fingers. The silence was incredible. McCullough was holding his breath, but his pulse was thunderous and he could almost hear himself sweating. Hollis showed two fingers, one finger, then a balled fist. McCullough gently launched his spear at the target that had been assigned to him.
The weapon which had once served as part of P-Two's launcher tube was just long enough to make contact with both the figure-of-eight grid and a nearby metal bulkhead, and for the first few seconds of its travel it looked as if it would do so. But then it wobbled suddenly as one of the magnetic eddies caught it, swinging it off course. One end touched the grid and the other swung toward a fat, coppery spiral with a bright-blue halo flickering around it. McCullough gripped the catwalk tightly and managed to get his eyes closed just in time.
Even with the filtering effects of his tightly closed eyelids the flash was blinding. Every nerve in his body received a jolt that was neither pleasure, pain, pressure, heat nor cold but was much worse than anything he had ever felt before in all his life. He stiffened so violently that he bounced away from the catwalk. He felt something tugging at one boot and the fear of being drawn in and electrocuted overcame his shocked paralysis. He pulled both knees up and made frantic swimming motions in an attempt to get away. But the tugging persisted. McCullough blinked furiously to dissolve the blotches covering his field of vision and saw that Hollis was gripping his boot and was towing him toward the safety of the airlock.
By the time he was through, his eyes were almost back to normal. He could see that the interior of the generator blister was again dull and lifeless. There were no chimes reverberating along the corridors and the alien voices were silent. With the interference gone, Walters was trying to contact them, saying that he had seen a flash or an explosion and were any of them alive. As soon as he had his visor open. Drew began advising him strongly to establish a base in the adjacent lock chamber with a view to discouraging any alien repair crew sent to rebuild the sabotaged generator.
But McCullough's mind was still on an earlier train of thought. Bitterly he said, "We're nothing but a bunch of stupid, well intentioned bunglers! Surely, as intelligent beings, we could have evaluated and entered a strange situation -- even an alien stress situation -- without making it so much worse that -- that . . ."
He left the sentence dangling, then went on furiously, "We know there are intelligent aliens on this ship -- dammit, we've heard them talking! To them we must look like a race of juvenile delinquents or worse. We must get out, leave the Ship at once. I'll request the next supply rocket to carry spacesuits and food only. With the water supply we've discovered, this will mean that we can leave shortly after it arrives."
"And our intelligent, extraterrestrial crew, what about them?" Hollis broke in scathingly. "They haven't shown themselves up to now -- at least, we're fairly sure they haven't. Why not? Are they in some kind of trouble, or are there too few of them to risk it? Are we going to leave them to do the best they can with a Two-infested, crippled Ship?"
"We aren't delinquents and we're not stupid!" Berryman said angrily. "If your e-t's are as intelligent as you say, Doctor, they will realize that everything we did came about as a result of the local situation and scientific curiosity allied to normal survival instincts! If they can't understand anything as simple as that, then they're stupid, too stupid to have built this Ship! But they did build it and so . . ."
"Kill every bloody one of them!" yelled Drew. "Wipe the buggers out!"
It was Walters who had the last word. Deafeningly, apologetically, with the volume of his transmitter turned right up he said, "I was set up to rebroadcast your last words as the Ship carried you out of the solar system to some dire, extraterrestrial fate. This spirited exchange of ideas is being overheard by all the world.
"I don't think the general will approve of some of the language . . ."
chapter sixteen
On Earth there was only one subject which, day by day and hour by hour, merited serious discussion, and that was the War on the Ship.
In this war there were no neutrals and no unaligned powers, even though the people who made up the nations and even the individual families were aligned several different ways at the same time. Everyone knew about the war, of course. There were very few who did not find it interesting, at least, while others found it so all-absorbing and exciting that they were quite willing to argue and demonstrate and burn embassy buildings over it. But the majority of people were simply worried about the safety of the men on the Ship and concerned over the many things they seemed to be doing wrong.
Everything the men said or did was, from someone's point of view, wrong.
Those scientists wh
o thought of their specialties as being 'hard' insisted that more Ship time be devoted to gathering detailed information on structural methods and design philosophy, the operating principles and distribution of the vessel's power sources, and more, much more, data on what everyone so loosely referred to as the hyperdrive generators and the Ship's central control system. Then the scientists who were less hard -- although not quite as soft as the Psychology crowd -- wanted more time spent in gathering information on extraterrestrial biology and metabolism, environmental factors and e-t life-support systems. They wanted autopsies performed on specimens other than the Two. But it was the psychologists and their equally 'soft' relatives in sociology and anthropology who seemed to be the least demanding and at the same time the most positive in their recommendations.
For the psychologists were having a long succession of field days. Not only were minor and major Ship incidents studied and evaluated and discussed at great lenth, every single recorded word and inflection was subjected to a most rigorous analysis. So much so that on one occasion a short, odd-sounding laugh from Walters threw one group of space medics into a near-panic for three days until they discovered that the high, uneven pitch of the pilot's voice, so suggestive of hysteria and imminent crack-up, was due to natural distortion in the incoming signal.
Despite the dropping of an occasional brick, the psychologists' picture of conditions on the Ship, the interaction of the characters involved, the general emotional and moral climate and the unique environmental pressures to which the men were being subjected, was reasonably complete and accurate and their recommendations sound.
At least, the psychologists considered them so . . .
The majority of these psychological discussions were broadcast on radio and TV, of course, as was practically everything pertaining to the Ship. But there was one group whose recommendations, by their very nature, could not be made public -- even, and especially, if their recommendations were to be adopted.
This group suggested that since the emotional situation arising out of the environmental conditions on the Ship was known in broad outline and the psychological makeup of the men currently inhabiting it was available in great detail, it should be possible to devise certain stimuli which would return a large measure of control to the Prometheus authorities instead of allowing it to remain in the hands and ethically confused minds of men who were too close to their problem to have a balanced appreciation of it. They insisted that the problem was basically one of psychological maladjustment and was solely their responsibility, and as they were the people who would have to solve it, they did not think it fair that they should have this responsibility without also being given a measure of control over the situation.
They also mentioned the fact that the position of the sun with respect to Earth and the P-ships would very shortly make direct communication impossible. Outgoing messages, which hitherto had been receivable only by the P-ships, as well as incoming signals, would have to be relayed through the Russian circum-Venus station. The Russians were being very generous with their facilities, but they would know every word that passed in each direction and would undoubtedly use the information gained to their own advantage to complicate an already overcomplicated political situation. For this reason alone a decision on their recommendations should be taken as soon as possible.
For the less emotionally mature, the Ship had replaced all the variations of Cowboys and Indians. Day after day all over the world, Walters had his suit slashed by the first Two, Colonel Morrison met his grisly death, and McCullough, who was a difficult and unsatisfactory character for children to portray, moved around doing nothing, apparently, but change his mind.
Between the children and the eggheads lay the tremendous multitude who were only moderately adult and whose intelligence was average. These were the people who listened avidly to what they referred to as the War News and who greedily absorbed every fact and speculation that came from the more informed commentators on the radio and TV, even though many of them must have been aware that the commentators could not possibly be more informed than their listeners.
They watched closely while the latest photographs and sketches -- tidied up and dramatized a little for TV presentation -- were discussed by panels of scientists from every field of knowledge and every degree of eminence. They listened to so many analyses, theories, and predictions, they were exposed to so many different opinions and viewpoints and ethical yardsticks in so short a space of time that they were forced either to choose sides, or to make up their own minds as to what was right or wrong or politically expedient.
Some of them reacted by breaking windows and overturning cars, or agitated for the Twos to be brought under the protection of the UN or the USPCA, or started funds for sending comforts for the troops, well aware of the utterly fantastic cost of sending even an ounce of comfort to those fifty-million-mile-distant warriors. But there were others, not a great number to begin with, who went through the intensely uncomfortable business of thinking for themselves until the realization came that their world had changed, that it was no longer the world but just a world with all that that implied.
This small but rapidly growing faction was only one of the many pressure groups who felt they had a say in the control of Prometheus.
The original idea in making every phase of the project open to the public had been to arouse interest in space flight generally and to gain the support of the voters for the enormous cost of the hardware -- in short, a large-scale P.R. job. It was a noble project which had, unfortunately, to be paid for by people who were not all noble. But now Prometheus had gone sour, its Ship-side personnel seemed to be devolving into vicious and sadistic killers while back at home nobility was breaking out in some of the most unlikely places.
On Earth as well as on the Ship, Prometheus was getting out of control . . .
". . . While you were hunting for Ship water and hamstringing that generator," General Brady's voice rattled at them, "you had to be rough on the aliens and their equipment. We aren't entirely blaming you for this, but we think you are exercising far too much initiative. Public opinion is hardening against you and against Prometheus as a whole, even though the majority are still being thrilled by the 'war' and the exploits of their scientist heroes. But this is a temporary, unstable, even sick reaction. There is a steadily growing body of opinion which is openly critical of your behavior. It accuses you, and through you us, of behaving like barbarians! It insists that you are doing little more than looting the Ship of its scientific booty.
"This has got to stop!"
A radio from one of the damaged suits floated near the outer wall of the lock chamber, attached to the plating by its antenna lead. The natural distortion caused by the helmet phones being overloaded so as to act as loudspeakers was increased by the anger in General Brady's voice, which carried clearly over fifty million miles.
". . . We have begun the countdown for a multiple launch -- three high-acceleration vehicles containing food and extra spacesuits only. Until they arrive seven weeks from now, you will sit tight and do nothing! Your only activity will be collecting and storing Ship water for the return trip.
"Establish a base in one of the lock chambers close to the P-ships and defend it if necessary, but not by taking the offensive! Try using your ingenuity to avoid killing Twos now, and do not molest them or injure them in any way even if they begin repairing the generator! Quite a few of us here are far from convinced that the Two life-form is in fact the nonintelligent animal you say it is. Exploration of the Ship will cease forthwith and you will cease trying to experiment with its power and control systems. Neither will you endanger yourselves, and quite possibly the future of our society, by attempting to communicate with the intelligent aliens who may he on the Ship . . ."
Berryman reached out quickly and turned the volume down to a whisper. He looked from McCullough to Drew and Hollis and then back again. His smile was all too plainly forced as he said, "Considering all that the general has j
ust said, the action we are contemplating is tantamount to mutiny."
Hollis said, "I agree." They both looked and sounded frightened, as if they were already having second thoughts.
"He doesn't know what he's talking about," said Drew angrily. "Either that or he doesn't believe what we've told him!"
And there is a really uncomfortable idea, thought McCullough, then went on quickly, "These orders are harsh, inflexible and ill-considered. In a short time they will, like the earlier ones, be amended and qualified. We'll still be forbidden to kill Twos -- unless circumstances make it absolutely necessary. Exploration will be allowed -- within certain limits which will not be clearly defined. It will be suggested that we obtain further data on the hyperdrive generators -- if this can be done without upsetting the aliens, or without running too great a risk of upsetting the aliens. Gradually the orders will contain so many qualifiers we will be back in square one, but with our self-confidence reduced and our tempers drastically shortened."
