by Ларри Нивен
Smoky's voice was ripe with scorn. "Would I? Why not suppress the fusion tube while you're at it? No, don't interrupt me, Luke, this is important. They don't use fusion only in ships. Half Earth's drinking water comes from seawater distilleries, and they all use fusion heat. Most of Earth's electricity is fusion, and all of the Belt's. There's fusion flame in crematoriums and garbage disposal plants. Look at all the uranium you have to import, just to squirt into fusion tubes as primer! And there are hundreds of thousands of fusion ships, every last one of which-"
"— turns into a hydrogen bomb at the flip of a switch."
"Too right. So why doesn't the Arms suppress fusion?"
"First, because the Arms was formed too late. Fusion was already here. Second, because we need fusion. The fusion tube is human civilization, the way the electrical generator used to be. Thirdly, because we won't interfere with anything that helps space travel. But I'm glad-"
"You're begging the…"
"MY TURN, Smoky. I'm glad you brought up fusion, because that's the whole point. The purpose of the Arms is to keep the balance wheel on civilization. Knock that balance wheel off kilter, and the first thing that would happen would be war. It always is. This time it'd be the last. Can you imagine a full-scale war, with that many hydrogen bombs just waiting to be used? Flip of a switch, I think you said."
"You said. Do you have to stamp on human ingenuity to keep the balance wheel straight? That's a blistering condemnation of Earth, if true."
"Smoky, if it weren't top secret I could show you a suppressed projector that can damp a fusion shield from ten miles away. Chick Watson got to be my boss by spotting an invention that would have forced us to make murder legal. There was-"
"Don't tell me about evidence you can't produce."
"All right, dammit, what about this amplifier we're all chasing? Suppose some bright boy came up with an amplifier for telepathic hypnosis? Would you suppress it?"
"You produce it and I'll answer."
Masney said, "Oh, for Christ's sake, you two!"
"Dead right," Anderson's voice answered. "Give us innocent bystanders an hour's rest."
The man in the lead ship opened his eyes. Afterimages like pastel amoebae blocked his vision; but the screen was dark and flat. "All ships," he said. "We can't shoot yet. We'll have to wait 'til they turn around."
Nobody questioned him. They had all watched through the camera in its nose as Mabe Doolin's test missile approached the Golden Circle. They had watched the glare of the honeymooner's drive become blinding, even with the camera picture turned all the way down. Then the screens had gone blank. The fusing hydrogen turned missiles to molten slag before they could get close.
The honeymooner was safe for another day.
Kzanol/Greenberg reached a decision. "Hold the fort," he said. "I'll be right back."
Kzanol watched him get up and pull on his space suit. "What are you doing?"
"Slowing down the opposition, if I'm lucky." The near-ptavv went up the ladder into the airlock.
Kzanol sighed, pocketed the one-man matchsticks of the ante, and shuffled for solitaire. He knew that the slave with the ptavv mind was making a tremendous fuss over nothing. Perhaps it had brooded too long on the hypothetical tnuctip revolt, until all slaves looked dangerous.
Kzanol/Greenberg emerged on the dorsal surface of the hull. There were a number of good reasons for putting the airlock there, the best being that men could walk on the hull while the drive was on. He put his magnetic sandals on, because it would be a long fall if he slipped, and walked quickly aft to the tail. A switch buried in the vertical fin released a line of steps leading down the curve of the hull to the wing. He climbed down. The hydrogen light was terribly bright; even with his eyes covered he could feel the heat on his face. When he knelt on the trailing edge the wing shielded him from the light.
He peered over the edge. If he leaned too far he would be blinded, but he had to go far enough to see… Yes, there they were. Five points of light, equally bright, all the same color. Kzanol/Greenberg dropped the nose of the disintegrator over the edge and pulled the trigger.
If the disintegrator had had a maser type of beam, it could have done some real damage. But then, he could never have hit any of those tiny targets with such a narrow beam. Still, the cone spread too rapidly. Kzanol/Greenberg couldn't see any effect. He hadn't really expected to. He held the digger pointed as best he could the five clustered stars. Minutes ticked by.
"What the hell… Lew! Are we in a dust cloud?"
"No." The man in the lead ship looked anxiously at frosted quartz of his windshield. "Not that our instruments can tell. This may be the weapon Garner told about. Does everyone have a messed-up windshield?" A chorus of affirmatives.
"Huh! Okay. We don't know how much power there is that machine, but it may have a limit. Here's what do. First, we let the instruments carry us for a while. Second, we're eventually going to break our windshields so we can see out, so we'll be going the rest of the in closed suits. But we can't do that yet! Otherwise our faceplates will frost up. Third point." He glared round for emphasis, though nobody saw him. "Nobody outside for any reason! For all we know, that gun can peel our suits right off our backs in ten seconds. Any other suggestions?"
There were.
"Call Garner and ask him for ideas." Mabel Doolin in Two did that.
"Withdraw our radar antennae for a few hours. Otherwise they'll disappear." They did. The ships flew on, blind.
"We need something to tell us how far this gun has dug into our ships." But nobody could think of anything better than "Go look later."
Every minute someone tested the barrage with a piece of quartz. The barrage stopped fifteen minutes after it had started. Two minutes later it started again, and Tartov, who was out inspecting the damage, scrambled into his ship with his faceplate opaqued along the right side.
Kzanol looked up to see his «partner» climbing wearily down through the airlock. "Very good," he said. "Has it occurred to you that we may need the disintegrator to dig up the spacesuit?"
"Yeah, it has. That's why I didn't use it any longer than I did." In fact he'd quit because he was tired, but he knew Kzanol was right. Twenty-five minutes of a most continuous operation was a heavy drain on the battery. "I thought I could do them some damage. I don't know whether I did or not."
"Will you relax? If they get too close I'll take them get us some extra ships and body servants."
"I'm sure of that. But they don't have to get that close."
The gap between the Golden Circle and the Belt fleet closed slowly. They would reach Pluto at about the same time, eleven days after the honeymooner left Neptune.
"There she goes," said somebody.
"Right," said Lew. "Everyone ready to fire?"
Nobody answered. The flame of the honeymooner's drive stretched miles into space, a long, thin line of bluish white in a faint conical envelope. Slowly it began contract.
"Fire," said Lew, and pushed a red button. It had a tiny protective hatch over it, now unlocked. With a key.
Five missiles streaked away, dwindling match flames. The honeymooner's fire had contracted to a point.
Minutes passed. An hour. Two.
The radio beeped. "Garner calling. You haven't called. Hasn't anything happened yet?"
"No," said Lew into the separate maser mike. "They should have hit by now."
Minutes dragging by. The white star of the honeymoon special burned serenely.
"Then something's wrong." Garner's voice had crossed the light-minutes between him and the fleet. "Maybe the disintegrator burned off the radar antennae on your missiles."
"Son of a bitch! Sure, that's exactly what happened. Now what?"
Minutes.
"Our missiles are okay. If we can get close enough we can use them. But that gives them three days to find the Amplifier. Can you think of a way to hold them off for three days?"
"Yeah." Lew was grim. "I've an idea they won't be landing on Pluto
." He gnawed his lip, wondering if he could avoid giving Garner this information. Well, it wasn't exactly top secret, and the Arm would probably find out anyway. "The Belt has made trips to Pluto, but we ever tried to land there. Not after the first ship took a close-up spectroscopic reading…"
They played at a table just outside the pilot room door. Kzanol/Greenberg had insisted. He played with one ear cocked at the radio. Which was all right with Kzanol, since it affected the other's playing.
Garner's voice came, scratchy and slightly distorted, after minutes of silence. "It sounds to me as if it all depends on where they land. We can't control that. We'd better think of something else, just in case. What have you got besides missiles?"
The radio buzzed gently with star static.
"I wish we could hear both sides," Kzanol growled. "Can you make any sense of that?"
Kzanol/Greenberg shook his head. "We won't, either. They must know we're in Garner's maser beam. But it sounds like they know something we don't."
"Four."
"I'm taking two. Anyway, it's nice to know they can't shoot at us."
"Yes. Well done." Kzanol spoke with absent-minded authority, using the conventional overspeak phrase to congratulate a slave who shows proper initiative. His eye was on his cards. He never saw the killing rage in his partner's face. He never sensed the battle that raged across the table, as Kzanol/Greenberg's intelligence fought his fury until it turned cold. Kzanol might have died that day, howling as the disintegrator stripped away suit and skin and muscle, without ever knowing why.
Ten days, twenty-one hours since takeoff. The icy planet hung overhead, huge and dirty white, with the glaring highlight which had fooled early astronomers. From Earth, only that bright highlight is visible, actually evidence of Pluto's flat, almost polished surface, making the planet look very small and very dense.
"Pretty puny," said Kzanol.
"What did you expect of a moon?"
"There was F-28. Too heavy even for whitefoods."
"True. Mmph. Look at that big circle. Looks like a tremendous meteor crater, doesn't it?"
"Where? Oh, I see it." Kzanol listened. "That's it! Radar's got it cold. Powerloss," he added, looking at the radar telescope through the pilot's eyes, "you can almost see the shape of it. But we'll have to wait for the next circuit before we can land."
Slowly the big ship turned until its motor faced forward in its orbit.
The Belt fleet stayed a respectful distance away- very respectful, four million miles respectful. Without the telescopes Pluto barely showed a disc.
"Everybody guess a number," said Lew. "Between one and one hundred. When I get yours I'll tell you mine. Then we call Garner and let him pick. Whoever gets closest to Garner's number is It."
"Three." "Twenty-eight." "Seventy."
"Fifty. Okay, I'll call Garner." Lew changed to maser. "One calling Garner. One calling Garner. Garner, we've about decided what to do if he doesn't go down. None of our ship radars are damaged, so we'll just program one ship to aim at the honeymooner at top speed. We watch through the telescopes. When our ship gets close enough we blow the drive. We want you to pick a number between one and one hundred."
Seconds passing. Garner's fleet was closer now, nearing the end of its trip.
"This is Tartov in Number Three. He's going down."
"Garner here. I suggest we wait and use the radar proof, if we can. It sounds like you're planning for one man to ride in somebody's airlock until he can reach to Belt. If so, wait for us; we may have room for an extra in one of the Earth ships. You still want a number? Fifty-five."
Lew swallowed. "Thanks, Garner." He turned off his maser-finder.
"Three again. You're saved by the bell, Lew. He's going down on the night side. In the predawn area. Couldn't be better. He may even land in the Crescent!"
Lew watched, his face pale, as the tiny light burned above Pluto's dim white surface. Garner must have forgotten that a singleship's control bubble was its own airlock; that it had to be evacuated whenever the pilot wanted to get out. Lew was glad the flatlander fleet had followed. He did not relish the idea of spending several weeks riding on the outside of a spaceship.
Kzanol/Greenberg swallowed, swallowed again. The low acceleration bothered him. He blamed it on his human body. He sat in a window seat with the crash web tightly fastened, looking out and down.
There was little to see. The ship had circled half the world, falling ever tower, but the only feature on an unchanging cue-bali surface had been the slow creep of the planetary shadow. Now the ship flew over the night side, and the only light was the dim light of the drive- dim at least when reflected from this height. And there was nothing to see at all… until now.
Something was rising on the eastern horizon, something a shade lighter than the black plain. An irregular line against the stars. Kzanol/Greenberg leaned forward as he began to realize just how big the range was, for it couldn't be anything but a mountain range. "What's that?" he wondered aloud.
"One hundredth diltun." Kzanol probed the pilot's mind. The pilot said, "Cott's Crescent. Frozen hydrogen piled up along the dawn side of the planet. As it rotates into daylight the hydrogen boils off and then refreezes on the night side. Eventually it rotates back to here."
"Oh. Thanks."
Evanescent mountains of hydrogen snow, smooth and low, like a tray of differently sized snowballs dropped from a height. They rose gently before the slowing ship, rank behind rank, showing the tremendous breadth of the range. But they couldn't show its length. Kzanol/Greenberg could see only that the mountains stretched half around the horizon; but he could imagine them marching from pole to pole around the curve of the world. As they must. As they did.
The ship was almost down, hovering motionless a few miles west of the beginning rise of the Crescent. A pillar of fire licked a mile down to touch the surface. Where it touched, the surface disappeared. A channel like the bed of a river followed below the ship, fading into the darkness beyond the reach of the light.
The ship rode with nose tilted high; the fusion flame reached slightly forward. Gently, gently, one mile up, the Golden Circle slowed and stopped.
Where the flame touched, the surface disappeared. A wide, shallow crater formed below the descending ship. It deepened rapidly. A ring of fog formed, soft and white and opaque, thickening in the cold and the dark, closing in on the ship. Then there was nothing but the lighted fog and the crater and the licking fusion fire.
This was the most alien place. He had been wasting his life searching out the inhabited worlds of the galaxy; for never had they given him such a flavor of strangeness as came from this icy world, colder than… than the bottom of Dante's Hell.
"We'll be landing on the water ice layer," the pilot explained, just as if he'd been asked. He had. "The gas layers wouldn't hold us. But first we have to dig down."
Had he been searching for strangeness? Wasn't that a Greenberg thought slipping into his conscious mind? Yes. This soul-satisfaction was the old Greenberg starlust; he had searched for wealth, only wealth.
The crater looked like an open pit mine now, with a sloping ring wall and then an almost flat rim and then another, deeper ring wall and… Kzanol/Greenberg looked down, grinning and squinting against the glare, trying to guess which layer was which gas. They had been drilling through a very thick blanket of ice, hundreds or thousands of feet thick. Perhaps it was nitrogen? Then the next layer, appearing now, would be oxygen.
The plain and the space above it exploded in flame.
"She blows!" Lew crowed, like a felon reprieved. A towering, twisting pillar of yellow and blue flame roared straight up out of the telescope, out of the pale plain where there had been the small white star of the Golden Circle. For a moment the star shone brightly through the flames. Then it was swamped, and the whole scope was fire. Lew dropped the magnification by a ten-factor to watch the fire spread. Then he had to drop it again. And again.
Pluto was on fire. For billions of years a th
ick blanket of relatively inert nitrogen ice had protected the highly reactive layers below. Meteors, as scarce out here as sperm whales in a goldfish bowl, inevitably buried themselves in the nitrogen layer. There had been no combustion on Pluto since Kzanol's spaceship smashed down from the stars. But now hydrogen vapor mixed with oxygen vapor, and they burned. Other elements burned too.
The fire spread outward in a circle. A strong, hot wind blew out and up into vacuum, fanning great sheets of flame over the boiling ices until raw oxygen was exposed. Then the fire dug deeper. There were raw metals below the thin sheet of water ice; and it was thin, nonexistent in places, for it had all formed when, the spaceship struck, untold eons ago, when food yeast still ruled Earth. Sodium and calcium veins; even iron burns furiously in the presence of enough oxygen and enough heat. Or chlorine, or fluorine; both halogens were present, blowing off the top of Pluto's frozen atmosphere, some burning with hydrogen in the first sheets of flame. Raise the temperature enough and even oxygen and nitrogen will unite.
Lew watched his screen in single-minded concentration. He thought of his future great-great-grandchildren and wondered how he could possibly make them see this as he saw it now. Old and leathery and hairless and sedentary, he would tell those children: "I saw a world burning when I was young…" He would never see anything as strange.
Pluto was a black disc almost covering his scope screen, with a cold highlight near the sunward arm. In that disc the broad ring of fire had almost become a great circle, with one arc crawling over the edge of the world. When it contracted on the other side of the world there would be an explosion such as could only be imagined. But in the center the ring was darkening to black, its fuel nearly burned out.
The coldest spot within the ring was the point where the fire had started.
The Golden Circle had gone straight up, ringing and shivering from the blast, with sheets of fire roaring past the wing and hull. Kzanol/Greenberg had the wind knocked out of him. Kzanol was just now recovering consciousness. The ship was not yet harmed. It certainly hadn't been harmed by the heat of combustion. The ship's underbelly was built to withstand fusion heat for weeks.
