by Zach Hughes
light-years away, a likely sun, he blinked to it, saw its family, orbited the likely planets and went through his routine. Nowhere did he find
intelligent life. Nowhere did he find life like the slugs of the first planet, which he had come to think of as Plank's World, since it was his first. And he did not know why he worked his way carefully down the stars, searching. He knew only that someday he would blink close to a grouping of stars and recognize the characteristics of Sol or Centauri. Then he would be home and there would be answers. He was alone, but he did not mind. He had the library. He had new sources of information that kept his mind active. He knew secrets about the universe that man had only guessed about; he logged them, sorted them and stored them in the bottomless bank of the computer. He was a creature of space, alive in it, loving it, cataloguing the Orion Arm as he looked for the familiar yellow glow of old Sol. His senses were enormously acute. He could spot and avoid a space traveler the size of a marble. He could see into the heart of a sun and measure the distance to the most remote galaxy. What he could not do, since his senses were blanked in that frequency, was spot the dark-skinned sphere, three times his size, that was always within planetary distance of him, following with endless patience as he continued his odyssey. It was always near, silent, dark, its presence unknown to Plank. When he blinked it blinked, emerging into normal space as he emerged, waiting as he explored still another world, always within easy range of his eyes, his senses, but undetected. CHAPTER TWO Plank's Pride had been listed as overdue at Shepard Terminal for just less than a year when the M. Scott Carpenter orbited and sent down the first crew contingent for medical checks and a bit of rehab in the centrigrav tanks of the moon's largest installation. On the way down Hara used the lighter's eye to check the grounded vehicles, which were, unlike the huge colonizer, capable of entering the moon's weak gravity for landing. An even three dozen ships stood on the ground, but the stubby, familiar shape of the Pride was not among them. She was disappointed, of course. But there could be several
explanations. The Pride could be Earthside for refitting or repair. The trip out and back took much out of a ship. In many ways, it was harder on the equipment than on the human crews, for there were few moments during the long, long blast when power wasn't operating at peak. Inside, many things could go wrong, but redundant life systems made it safer to ride a starship than an Earth-ground vehicle. Casualties had occurred, of course, but the percentage was small, and she never once admitted that Plank had even a million to one chance not to make it back. Plank was too smart, too strong, too stubborn to let space eat him. No, he must be on Earth or out for a test run or down below in one of the Terminal shops. When she felt the weak gravity of the moon she began to hook into LSG. The lighter made a smooth landing and the ramp clamped; air hissed as locks engaged. The ship's monitor gave a clear and she checked her safety switches on the LSG and followed her fellow crew members into the tunnel of the ramp, emerging into the reception room of the center to be probed, handled, questioned, X-rayed and discharged in less than two hours as being in the pink of health. It was the second time she'd gone through the reentry procedure. It seemed familiar, even though ten-plus years had separated the events. She asked doctors and nurses about Plank, and they could give her no information. One of the doctors, a cute woman in her eighties, remembered Plank. «Yes,» she said, «serious young man, nice looking. Went out on a cargo run. Yes, I remember him.» «I'll bet you do,» Hara said, but to herself. «I think he's due,» the doctor said. He was overdue. The Pride had lifted off days before the big colonizer, but Plank's turnaround time on the other end should have been much less. The Carpenter spent months on the other end unloading, acting as home base for the colonists until the temporary shelters could be erected. Plank should have been home months ahead of her. They had timed it that way so that they could spend the time between her missions together on the moon and on Earth. Finished with the formalities, she made her way to Operations. Her service uniform gained her admission, and still not concerned, she made her inquiry of a young junior officer. The young man took his job seriously, checking and rechecking before he pulled the file. «Plank's Pride?» he asked, frowning. «Yes.» «Your interest in the ship, sir?» «Friend,» she said. «I'm sorry, sir,» the young officer said. «I'll have to refer you to Intelligence.» For the first time a doubt entered her mind. She knew, however, that it
would be useless to try to pull rank and force the young officer to give her the file so that she could see for herself why it had been classified. She thanked the young man and hurried to the third level. In an installation where everything was scaled down to conserve space, Intelligence occupied a respectable area. She was asked to wait in a rather roomy two-by-three-meter reception area. She sat nervously, crossing her legs. The enlisted man behind the desk reacted and she frowned at him coldly. She waited ten minutes and then was told she could enter the office of the intelligence officer on duty. She opened the door and saw a big, serious-faced man seated behind a small desk, his eyes downcast at papers. «Matt,» she said. He looked up, smiled. «Hey,» he said, with genuine pleasure. «Sahara.» He stood and came around the desk to take both her hands in his. «Welcome home. How was it this time?» «Routine,» she said. «Always nice to see the best-looking cadet in our class,» Matt Webb said, releasing her hands and stepping back to take in her trim form clad in space blue. «Still the sweet talker,» she said. «Sit down, sit down,» he said. «Take the load off.» «Yes,» she said. «It's not much gravity, but after almost five years in space…» «I know,» he said, returning to his chair. His smile faded and he looked at her, his calm, gray eyes showing concern. «You're here to find out about Plank,» he said. She nodded. «It isn't good, Hara,» Webb said. «All right.» She seized her lower lip between her teeth and waited. «The Star Buster lifted for home two weeks after he left,» Webb said. « Buster landed here after a routine trip. No communication with the Pride en route, although that means nothing, as you know. It's big out there, and even ships traveling the same route with only two weeks between them can be so far apart due to minor variation in trajectory that intership contact is unlikely. But he's way overdue, Hara. I'm sorry.» «That's all you can tell me?» «That's it.» She was silent for a moment. «Then why is his file classified?» Webb shrugged. «Routine. You know the situation down below. Opposition to the space program is reaching new heights. The brass is worried. There's a severe threat to cut the budget again. Now you and I know that the colonization program is Earth's great hope, but the other side has different opinions. They want to use the money to better conditions for those on Earth, not, as they say, pour it down a hole in the stars.» «I know,» she said. «But are you saying that you're keeping quiet about a missing ship because of public opinion on Earth?» «We keep the lid on as long as possible. Sooner or later someone down there will make an inquiry. We keep hoping that he'll come limping in here before someone, his mother, perhaps, gets worried enough to contact Central and demand to know where he is.» «Matt, it doesn't seem right.» «I know. I don't like it, but we have no choice. We're under fire. We're fighting for the life of the colonization program. We think we're justified in playing just a little dirty. And who does it hurt? Because you're concerned, you ask and we tell you. When his mother asks, we'll tell her. We hope she won't ask for a while. We'd like to know a little more about these disappearances.» «You said disappearances, plural,» she said. «Did I?» «Yes.» «All right. I'll have to remind you that this is highly classified information.» He ran his hand through his thick hair. «At any given time, we have perhaps half-a-dozen ships between here and the colonies. Sometimes more. Sometimes as many as 20 or 30 are out there. We've been going out to the Centauri systems for 50 years now. In that time we expected to lose a ship or two. We did not expect to lose a ship every one-point-five years.» She gasped. «So far we've been lucky,» Webb continued. «We haven't lost one of the
big boys. If that happens, we'll have a stink we won't be able to fight. Lose 10,000 colon
ists at once…» He looked toward the ceiling. «One ship every year and a half?» «On the average. No regular time intervals between, of course. And we have to estimate time of disappearance, since here on the moon, we're out of contact for almost ten years. But we're able to determine, of course, whether or not they disappear on the way out or the way back. It works out about equal. Almost half the number disappear going away, and half on the way home. They leave either the moon or one of the Centauri planets and that's the last we hear of them. And there's no rhyme or reason for it. Out of 30-odd ships one should have been able to set the space beacons working. In 50 years, at least one of them should have been spotted in space if they were merely disabled. Communications aren't all that good, but surely one of them should have been able to send out a distress call that, traveling at light speed, would have been picked up either on this end or the other end. But they don't show up by their
beacons and they don't send distress signals. They just vanish. They lift off and that's the last of them.» «Some basic problem in the power?» she asked. «Total explosion?» «We've had every engineer and scientist in the program checking. The hydrogen drive of a spaceship is potentially a huge bomb, but the safety factors are multiplied to such a point that the slide-rule boys figure the odds against total explosion are five million to one. They say the idea of more than 30 ships totally blowing up is inconceivable.» «Some common factor of human failure?» «Some of the ships had crews' of as many as ten. Ten men go nuts at the same time?» He sighed. «Oh, there are theories. Unknown space elements or factors. Everyone on board affected at the same time. Mysterious currents. Things we know nothing about. But, Hara, you know we've been in space a long time. There isn't anything out there we don't know about. It's just a big, fat empty place with nothing between here and Centauri; no black holes. No eerie gas areas, no bug-eyed monsters to swallow our ships whole.» «But there's something,» she said. «There is,» he agreed. «I wish I knew what. I wish I could say that it's as
simple as the blink drive thing. That they simply blink out of this universe into another, or into some other dimension and that's it. But Plank was just using our hydrodrive. We're accelerating as near light speed as the laws of the universe allow, and that's pretty close as you well know. Old Einstein wasn't right in everything. We don't push our way out of the warp and frame of space time like the blink drive does.» She was doing her best to keep her lips from trembling. It was only now beginning to hit her. He was dead. «Hara,» Webb said. «I'm very sorry.» «I know,» she said. She rose. «You'll let me know if you hear anything? I'll be moonside for a few days. Then home.» «Of course.» «I'd like to look at what information you have. Could you get me a clearance?» «With your rank and record I don't think we need expect any difficulty,» he said. «I'm not requesting to see anything you haven't seen,» she said. «You understand that I'm not questioning your work or your abilities.» Sahara meant the words, but she also felt it necessary to say them. Women had come a long, long way, but they were still women. They had basic differences, differences in strength, in viewpoint. There were still men around, some of them in the service, who said that women were the true aliens, that their minds worked on a different plane from the minds of men. In short, remnants of resentment among certain kinds of men still remained. Webb, apparently, was not that kind of man. «Sure,» he said. «I know how you feel, Hara.» «Not being smart with you, Matt, but I doubt that.» She smiled wryly. «Because I'm not even sure I know how I feel.» The human mind is a curious thing. In privacy, it allows itself thoughts that, if known generally, would cause consternation. And, Hara thought, as she walked out of Webb's office, it is true that no one really knows himself. Was there actually a moment of relief when she heard of Plank's disappearance? No. Of course not. Only the quick feeling that a problem was solved. Then the sadness. For there was a conflict. While marriage between spacers was not totally impossible, it was feasible only under certain circumstances. The vast distances, the time involved in traveling, made a woman married to a spacer a widow for years at a stretch. Marriages were common aboard the big colonizer ships; but then the partners traveled together and were not separated while one of them went out to Centauri at what, to the universe, was a snail's pace. If Plank had chosen service instead of free enterprise, the problem would have been solved, but Plank was intent on making his stake. She on the other hand, had spent years preparing herself for her job. Theoretically, a woman had an equal chance to be accepted into the academy, but in practice more qualified women were passed over than qualified men. She had always had to work extra hard to achieve her goal. From primary school on she knew that she wanted to go into space; her competition came from millions of boys who were physically stronger, some of them quicker, some of them more intelligent. She set her goal and worked toward it, doing secondary level work as a primary, entering college two years ahead of schedule. It wasn't easy. She kept her body in shape with athletics and honed her brain constantly, doing without proper sleep to cram for exams she could have passed easily, in her efforts for the top mark, knowing that she had to be the very best to beat thousands of male applicants for each appointment to the academy. Men and women were equal in the eyes of the law, but at the academy it seemed that some instructors had not read the law. There, the female cadets were singled out, and to survive she developed a hardness, a callousness, which allowed her to take anything they could dish out. She excelled in her marks and survived the physical rigors. She graduated with honors and saw the first space berths given to men with lesser qualifications. In spite of all, she was not a man hater. She recognized things as they were, and she would never change them. She tried to keep under her protective, hard exterior a certain femininity, and apparently she succeeded, for she was pursued. From the time she was pubescent, boys noticed her. She developed her figure early and it improved with age. In the academy she was taut-skinned and shapely. Her measurements would have qualified her for any beauty contest, had such antique rites been retained in the society. She had perfect teeth revealed in their lovely whiteness as she smiled. Her hair was heavy in texture, unusual for a natural ash blonde, and she could do anything she wanted with it. Usually she wore it down, brushing over her shoulders, closing in on her face to accent her eyes. Her social life could have been active. She did not lack, invitations. She limited her dating, however, to official events, never letting any boy or man to become close enough to her to arouse her interest. Not until she met Plank. She had seen him during her first years at the academy many times. He was one year ahead of her and, on occasion, was in charge of details of which she was a member. He was, during the early years there, merely another cadet. She was not surprised when Plank asked her to be his date at the graduation ball for Plank's class. His invitation was one of several. She surprised herself by choosing him as her escort. She would have had difficulty explaining it to anyone, even herself. He was not her kind of man. Dark, somewhat stocky, he looked at her from under bushy eyebrows with eyes that seemed to undress her—and she was no man's sex object. But it was Plank who called for her at the girl's dorm and it was Plank who
danced like a perfect gentleman, holding her politely close, thanking her at the end of each dance. It was Plank with whom she walked, in the early hours of a lovely spring morning, and talked of her ambitions. Plank shared her dreams of the stars. Plank was a good listener. Throughout the long evening and night, he did not even attempt to kiss her. He managed to return to the academy for her graduation dance and this time he wore service blue. He had been to Mars. He talked about it and about space with an excitement and an intensity that moved her. Later, when he slowly drew her into his arms, giving her every opportunity to say no, he moved her in another way, in a way she'd never been moved before. And when he called her his love she melted against him and let her kiss speak for her. It was a strange courtship. When he was away, she longed for him, wanted to see those dark eyes under his bushy eyebrows, wanted to feel the touch of his hand. When she was in space, of
f duty, she could remember every detail of his face, could repeat every word he'd ever said to her. She was, indeed, a woman in love. They talked about being assigned to the same colonizer. Plank chose his way, chose to work the Mars jobs and go into free enterprise, begging her to resign her commission and join him, painting nice pictures about the two of them spending months of time in space together. But she had, at last, reached her goal and she was totally incapable of tossing over a lifetime of work (it seemed to be a lifetime then, although, with the life expectancy of her time, she was still very young), not even to marry the man she loved. They saw each other at long intervals and tried to work out their differences. Plank made a run to the Centauri systems, and her feelings did not change during the years of separation. He fared well on the trip and, once again, pleaded with her to leave the service and join him. She was tempted. But she was due for promotion. «My career means as much to me as your work means to you,» she would tell him. «There is still time for us.» So it was, when she learned that Plank had disappeared in deep space,
that she felt a mixture of emotions. First that spontaneous feeling of relief.
There would be no more conflict. Then guilt, for it was after all Plank, her man, who was missing. Then more quick guilt for not having given in to him. If she had married him she would have been with him on the Pride. Then she would at least know. But now her emotions were in conflict as she remembered him, felt in her mind the strength of his arms, the tenderness of his kiss, and she began to be angry. Something would have to be done. She didn't know exactly what, but she would see to it that something was. CHAPTER THREE Anyone, Plank thought, can recite the physical statistics of the galaxy.
