by Various
Fifteen minutes later, both Arnold and Harcraft were out of the air lock, each clutching a new phase unit. Harcraft called instructions to Arnold over his suit's inter-com, but within minutes the smaller man was, if anything, more adept at the business of maneuvering himself through the void than his teacher. They replaced the phase unit in the first sled--the fiftieth from the ship--with Harcraft doing the work and Arnold watching.
"Can you do the next one alone?" Harcraft asked.
"Easy as pie," Arnold said. "Where is it?"
"About two hundred sleds farther back. Numbers on the side. Number two hundred sixty-three. Can you remember?"
"I ain't dumb. Where you gonna be?"
"Back in the ship. We'll be waiting for you."
* * * * *
Back again in the control cabin with Banner, Harcraft was about to congratulate himself on inventing the apprentice system, when a piercing scream brought both men to their feet. "It's Arnold," Banner said. "Arnold, you all right?"
Harcraft pushed Banner away from the speaker. "Arnold, what's wrong, you O.K.?" The speaker remained silent.
"You better suit up," Banner said quietly.
"Yeah," Harcraft said, staring dumbly at the speaker. "Yeah, I better suit up."
"Wait. Better take a look on the viewscreen."
"Hey, he's coming this way! Quick, get ready at the air lock!"
It was fifteen minutes before they could get anything out of him, and then he wasn't too coherent. They gave him an injection of herodine to quiet him down, but his eyes still rolled wildly and all he could manage was: "Big hunk of rock ... big hunk of rock ... rock, quick ... monkey ships."
"Any idea what he's talking about?"
"No," Banner said thoughtfully. "There was a sizable meteorite that came pretty close while you were on your way back to the ship, but I'd already tracked it before either one of you went outside."
"How close?"
"Hm-m-m. Visually, a dozen kilometers, I'd guess. I could run the tape if you--"
"Velocities almost the same?" asked Harcraft, who was now fiddling with the viewscreen controls.
"Yeah. Shouldn't be too hard to find. How about lugging Bean Brain back to his bunk. I'll run the tape, then you can plot it on the screen."
When Harcraft returned to the control cabin, Banner had already plotted it on the screen.
"I'll say it's a big piece of rock! About four kilometers in diameter."
"Yeah, but nothing out of order."
"Uh-huh. Let me turn up the magnification a little and see if--" Banner watched as Harcraft turned control buttons, skillfully increasing magnification without losing the held of view. Suddenly, the object exploded into iridescence. "What--"
"Watch," Harcraft said. He bumped the magnification as much as he dared.
"The Ankorbadian fleet," said Banner between clenched teeth.
They spent the next hour scanning the ship's micro-library for anything at all on Ankorbadian religious practices. There was nothing. Arnold awoke in another hour and seemed remarkably free of hysteria.
"What do you know about our friends' religious holiday?" asked Banner. "We checked the library without any luck."
Arnold scratched the side of his face. "Lemme think. Yeah, I remember. They go home to celebrate spring, like you said."
"They all go home?"
"Uh-huh. They got to. Only time they can mate. Only place, too."
"How long they stay? I've heard it's about one of our months, but we have to know exactly."
"That's all I know. Read it some place a long time ago. Can I go back to sleep now?"
"Go back to sleep," said Banner.
They spent the next three hours maneuvering carefully around the asteroid. They took six thousand feet of movies and stared at the projections for another three hours. One thousand seven hundred and thirty silvery needles flashed reflected starlight into astonished, wild eyes.
"At least," whispered Banner, "there's nobody there."
"A lot of good that does us. They'll be back from their home planet in a few weeks, just as soon as the breeding season is over. Why should they leave anybody here? There's not a map in the galaxy that indicates the position of this piece of rock. And we haven't any weapons."
"I don't suppose the computer--"
"You can't compute an orbit without at least one more reference point. Besides, we're four weeks from any kind of fleet contact."
"Great. In other words, they'll be back here, ready to roll before we can even tell anybody that we don't know how to find it again."
"Right. And since there's not any room left to park another ship of that size, it's a pretty safe assumption that they are ready to roll."
"Armageddon," muttered Harcraft.
"You sure we don't have anything to--"
"Weapons? Yeah. We have a pistol and three small nitro paks in a locker some place. You couldn't even blow your way inside one of those ships. And if you could, you'd spend two weeks and then blow yourself to hell before you'd know anything about the armament."
"O.K., let's land and look around. Go get Arnold."
* * * * *
They cut off the sleds and plunged down, landing between two of the ships. Before putting on suits, Banner sent Arnold to the locker to get the three nitro paks. He hoped it would help him overcome the terrible feeling of nakedness and impotence.
They spent only a little time out of the ship. There was nothing to see that hadn't been seen before, and the heavy artificial gravity generated by the alien ships--coupled with a maze of deep crevices--made walking difficult and dangerous.
Back in the control cabin, Banner turned to Harcraft, "Any ideas?"
"Ideas? You mean for saving Homo sapiens? I'm afraid not. I simply do not feel up to saving six billion sentient organisms today. I feel--"
"You're getting hysterical," said Banner, whose own tight, small voice was barely audible.
"I got an opinion," said Arnold. "You guys stop crying for a minute and I'll tell you."
It took him five minutes to explain the whole thing. When he was through, both Banner and Harcraft turned him down flat. "Not a chance," said Banner. It would take a week to set the thing up, and then it wouldn't work. Our best chance is a long one, but maybe we'll make it. We're four weeks away from any fleet contact, but it's the only sensible course of action."
"That makes it a total of eight weeks, with four weeks to get back here. That's two months," said Arnold. "You think they're gonna wait two months before they shove out of here?"
"Maybe not," Banner said. "But that's the only thing to do. And the sooner we get started the better the chances. Let's get going."
"You look here--" Arnold began.
"No more opinions, Bean Brain. You're not entitled to an opinion. You think we should take your word for everything you told us? Tell me why. You said yourself you never had any training. So you're guessing and hoping. It would take a staff of two dozen highly specialized technicians to even evaluate your idea, much less put it into action. Hell, man, face it. What do you know about geology, chemistry, mining? What do you know about anything?"
Arnold pointed a trembling finger at Banner. "Look, I told you that I know rock. I know plenty of gardening, too. I gave you guys a chance to say O.K. You still say no? Have it your way, but we'll do it my way." Both Banner and Harcraft found themselves staring into the barrel of the ship's only weapon.
Harcraft recovered from his astonishment quicker than Banner. "O.K., Bean Brain, have it your way." Quickly, casually he started for the cabin door. Then, with such speed that Banner hardly saw the movement, he chopped down viciously toward Arnold's wrist with the edge of his hand.
Harcraft recovered consciousness a half hour later. "Don't try that again, little boy," said Arnold with unconcealed hatred. "I'll give you another thirty minutes to catch your breath. Then we all go to work."
It took ten days instead of seven. Under Arnold's close supervision, they made the ship perform like
a tractor, an air hammer, a foundation borer and an angledozer.
Once, when they told him that some particular maneuver couldn't be done, he took the controls himself, and came so close to killing them all that Banner, out of sheer terror, took over and made it do the things Arnold decreed necessary.
Finally it was finished. Two million tons of potato fertilizer, one million tons of tractor fuel combined into a slimy pulp lay jammed into the largest crevice on the asteroid. A few hours later they were a thousand miles out in space.
"Now?" asked Banner.
"Now," said Arnold.
With the viewscreen at maximum magnification, they watched as the asteroid blew itself into a thousand million pieces.
* * * * *
In the control cabin, a short week away from fleet contact, Banner was still gloating over the movies. "Look at these. Before and After. How many medals you think we can carry on our strong, manly chests?"
"I really couldn't care less," answered Harcraft. "While you've been sitting there enriching your fantasy life, I've solved the mystery of mysteries."
"Out with it."
"O.K. While our little friend has been lying on his bunk ruining his beady eyes on the micro-viewer, I've been asking myself significant questions. Question number one: What kind of person does it take to survive the inactivity and boredom of three, four, maybe six months in a space can like this? Answer: It takes a highly trained and conditioned person such as yours truly or yourself. Arnold is obviously not such a person."
"Obviously."
"Question number two: Under what circumstances can a person as obviously intelligent as Arnold manage not to become a highly specialized member of society? And last, what kind of person can be so revoltingly unspecialized as to know, with fanatical certainty, that the main ingredient of a good potato fertilizer is ammonium nitrate; that such a substance is rather ineffective as an explosive unless you mix it with a good oxidizable material, such as Diesel fuel; that a four-square mile chunk of rock is 'brittle'--"
"And don't forget to add another nice facet--that he's a lot cleverer in the manly art of self-defense than you'll ever be."
"I acknowledge my humiliation and at the same time repeat my question: What kind of person can be so unspecialized and at the same time so miserably competent?"
"I give up. Do you really know the answer?"
"I know this. I know that whoever he is, it makes good sense to send somebody like him along with two overspecialized robots like us. Look at us. You couldn't pull a cotter pin with a pair of pliers if you knew what a cotter pin was. As for myself, if I'd of gotten that gun away from Arnold, I'm not even sure I'd have known how to fire it."
"Which still doesn't answer any questions."
"There are still a hundred places on our primitive homeland that provide the answer," said Harcraft thoughtfully. "Places where men spend half the year working with vegetables and fertilizer--"
"And the other half breaking rock with a sledge hammer?"
"Yes. And there's probably no better place than a cell to train for the isolation of space."
"Uh-huh. It also explains a certain familiarity with makeshift explosives and weapons."
"And, brother Bean Brain," summed up Harcraft wistfully. "What better place in the universe to find asylum from specialization."
THE END
* * *
Contents
STAR MOTHER
By ROBERT F. YOUNG
That night her son was the first star.
She stood motionless in the garden, one hand pressed against her heart, watching him rise above the fields where he had played as a boy, where he had worked as a young man; and she wondered whether he was thinking of those fields now, whether he was thinking of her standing alone in the April night with her memories; whether he was thinking of the verandahed house behind her, with its empty rooms and silent halls, that once upon a time had been his birthplace.
Higher still and higher he rose in the southern sky, and then, when he had reached his zenith, he dropped swiftly down past the dark edge of the Earth and disappeared from sight. A boy grown up too soon, riding round and round the world on a celestial carousel, encased in an airtight metal capsule in an airtight metal chariot ...
Why don't they leave the stars alone? she thought. Why don't they leave the stars to God?
* * * * *
The general's second telegram came early the next morning: Explorer XII doing splendidly. Expect to bring your son down sometime tomorrow.
She went about her work as usual, collecting the eggs and allocating them in their cardboard boxes, then setting off in the station wagon on her Tuesday morning run. She had expected a deluge of questions from her customers. She was not disappointed. "Is Terry really way up there all alone, Martha?" "Aren't you scared, Martha?" "I do hope they can get him back down all right, Martha." She supposed it must have given them quite a turn to have their egg woman change into a star mother overnight.
She hadn't expected the TV interview, though, and she would have avoided it if it had been politely possible. But what could she do when the line of cars and trucks pulled into the drive and the technicians got out and started setting up their equipment in the backyard? What could she say when the suave young man came up to her and said, "We want you to know that we're all very proud of your boy up there, ma'am, and we hope you'll do us the honor of answering a few questions."
Most of the questions concerned Terry, as was fitting. From the way the suave young man asked them, though, she got the impression that he was trying to prove that her son was just like any other average American boy, and such just didn't happen to be the case. But whenever she opened her mouth to mention, say, how he used to study till all hours of the night, or how difficult it had been for him to make friends because of his shyness, or the fact that he had never gone out for football--whenever she started to mention any of these things, the suave young man was in great haste to interrupt her and to twist her words, by requestioning, into a different meaning altogether, till Terry's behavior pattern seemed to coincide with the behavior pattern which the suave young man apparently considered the norm, but which, if followed, Martha was sure, would produce not young men bent on exploring space but young men bent on exploring trivia.
A few of the questions concerned herself: Was Terry her only child? ("Yes.") What had happened to her husband? ("He was killed in the Korean War.") What did she think of the new law granting star mothers top priority on any and all information relating to their sons? ("I think it's a fine law ... It's too bad they couldn't have shown similar humanity toward the war mothers of World War II.")
* * * * *
It was late in the afternoon by the time the TV crew got everything repacked into their cars and trucks and made their departure. Martha fixed herself a light supper, then donned an old suede jacket of Terry's and went out into the garden to wait for the sun to go down. According to the time table the general had outlined in his first telegram, Terry's first Tuesday night passage wasn't due to occur till 9:05. But it seemed only right that she should be outside when the stars started to come out. Presently they did, and she watched them wink on, one by one, in the deepening darkness of the sky. She'd never been much of a one for the stars; most of her life she'd been much too busy on Earth to bother with things celestial. She could remember, when she was much younger and Bill was courting her, looking up at the moon sometimes; and once in a while, when a star fell, making a wish. But this was different. It was different because now she had a personal interest in the sky, a new affinity with its myriad inhabitants.
And how bright they became when you kept looking at them! They seemed to come alive, almost, pulsing brilliantly down out of the blackness of the night ... And they were different colors, too, she noticed with a start. Some of them were blue and some were red, others were yellow ... green ... orange ...
It grew cold in the April garden and she could see her breath. There was a strange crispness, a strange c
larity about the night, that she had never known before ... She glanced at her watch, was astonished to see that the hands indicated two minutes after nine. Where had the time gone? Tremulously she faced the southern horizon ... and saw her Terry appear in his shining chariot, riding up the star-pebbled path of his orbit, a star in his own right, dropping swiftly now, down, down, and out of sight beyond the dark wheeling mass of the Earth ... She took a deep, proud breath, realized that she was wildly waving her hand and let it fall slowly to her side. Make a wish! she thought, like a little girl, and she wished him pleasant dreams and a safe return and wrapped the wish in all her love and cast it starward.
* * * * *
Sometime tomorrow, the general's telegram had said--
That meant sometime today!
She rose with the sun and fed the chickens, fixed and ate her breakfast, collected the eggs and put them in their cardboard boxes, then started out on her Wednesday morning run. "My land, Martha, I don't see how you stand it with him way up there! Doesn't it get on your nerves?" ("Yes ... Yes, it does.") "Martha, when are they bringing him back down?" ("Today ... Today!") "It must be wonderful being a star mother, Martha." ("Yes, it is--in a way.")
Wonderful ... and terrible.
If only he can last it out for a few more hours, she thought. If only they can bring him down safe and sound. Then the vigil will be over, and some other mother can take over the awesome responsibility of having a son become a star--
If only ...
* * * * *
The general's third telegram arrived that afternoon: Regret to inform you that meteorite impact on satellite hull severely damaged capsule-detachment mechanism, making ejection impossible. Will make every effort to find another means of accomplishing your son's return.
Terry!--
See the little boy playing beneath the maple tree, moving his tiny cars up and down the tiny streets of his make-believe village; the little boy, his fuzz of hair gold in the sunlight, his cherub-cheeks pink in the summer wind--
