It was like trying to dry a piece of ice with a towel.
He ran to the water cooler, wrung out the bloody handkerchief and ran back to her. He bathed her face carefully, the pale right side, the flushed left side. The handkerchief reddened again, this time with cosmetics, and then her face was pale all over, with great blue shadows under the eyes. While he watched, blood appeared on her left cheek.
“There must be somebody—” He fled to the door.
“Pete!”
Running, turning at the sound of her voice, he hit the doorpost stunningly, caromed oft, flailed for his balance, and then was back at her side. “Starr! Hang on, now! I’ll get a doctor as quick as—”
Her hand strayed over her left cheek. “You found out. Nobody else knew, but Feldman. It got hard to cover properly.” Her hand went up to her hair.
“Starr, I’ll get a—”
“Pete, darling, promise me something?”
“Why, sure; certainly, Starr.”
“Don’t disturb my hair. It isn’t—all mine, you see.” She sounded like a seven-year-old, playing a game. “It all came out on this side. I don’t want you to see me that way.”
He was on his knees beside her again. “What is it? What happened to you?” he asked hoarsely.
“Philadelphia,” she murmured. “Right at the beginning. The mushroom went up a half-mile away. The studio caved in. I came to the next day. I didn’t know I was burned, then. It didn’t show. My left side. It doesn’t matter, Pete. It doesn’t hurt at all, now.”
He sprang to his feet again. “I’m going for a doctor.”
“Don’t go away. Please don’t go away and leave me. Please don’t.” There were tears in her eyes. “Wait just a little while. Not very long, Pete.”
He sank to his knees again. She gathered both his hands in hers and held them tightly. She smiled happily. “You’re good, Pete. You’re so good.”
(She couldn’t hear the blood in his ears, the roar of the whirlpool of hate and fear and anguish that spun inside of him.)
She talked to him in a low voice, and then in whispers. Sometimes he hated himself because he couldn’t quite follow her. She talked about school, and her first audition. “I was so scared that I got a vibrato in my voice. I’d never had one before. I always let myself get a little scared when I sing now. It’s easy.” There was something about a window-box when she was four years old. “Two real live tulips and a pitcher-plant. I used to be sorry for the flies.”
There was a long period of silence after that, during which his muscles throbbed with cramp and stiffness, and gradually became numb. He must have dozed; he awoke with a violent start, feeling her fingers on his face. She was propped up on one elbow. She said clearly, “I just wanted to tell you, darling. Let me go first, and get everything ready for you. It’s going to be wonderful. I’ll fix you a special tossed salad. I’ll make you a steamed chocolate pudding and keep it hot for you.”
Too muddled to understand what she was saying, he smiled and pressed her back on the settee. She took his hands again.
The next time he awoke it was broad daylight, and she was dead.
Sonny Weisefreund was sitting on his cot when he got back to the barracks. He handed over the recording he had picked up from the parade-ground on the way back. “Dew on it. Dry it off. Good boy,” he croaked, and fell face downward on the cot Bonze had used.
Sonny stared at him. “Pete! Where you been? What happened? Are you all right?”
Pete shifted a little and grunted. Sonny shrugged and took the audiovid disc out of its wet envelope. Moisture would not harm it particularly, though it could not be played while wet. It was made of a fine spiral of plastic, insulated between laminations. Electrostatic pickups above and below the turntable would fluctuate with changes in the dielectric constant which had been impressed by the recording, and these changes were amplified for the scanners. The audio was a conventional hill-and-dale needle. Sonny began to wipe it down carefully.
Pete fought upward out of a vast, green-lit place full of flickering cold fires. Starr was calling him. Something was punching him, too. He fought it weakly, trying to hear what she was saying. But someone else was jabbering too loud for him to hear.
He opened his eyes. Sonny was shaking him, his round face pink with excitement. The Audiovid was running. Starr was talking. Sonny got up impatiently and turned down the volume. “Pete! Pete! Wake up, will you? I got to tell you something. Listen to me! Wake up, will yuh?”
“Huh?”
“That’s better. Now listen. I’ve just been listening to Starr Anthim—”
“She’s dead,” said Pete.
Sonny didn’t hear. He went on, explosively, “I’ve figured it out. Starr was sent out here, and all over, to beg someone not to fire any more atom bombs. If the government was sure they wouldn’t strike back, they wouldn’t’ve taken the trouble. Somewhere, Pete, there’s some way to launch bombs at those murdering cowards—and I’ve got a pret-ty shrewd idea of how to do it.”
Pete strained groggily toward the faint sound of Starr’s voice. Sonny talked on. “Now, s’posing there was a master radio key—an automatic code device something like the alarm signal they have on ships, that rings a bell on any ship within radio range when the operator sends four long dashes. Suppose there’s an automatic code machine to launch bombs, with repeaters, maybe, buried all over the country. What would it be? Just a little lever to pull; that’s all. How would the thing be hidden? In the middle of a lot of other equipment, that’s where; in some place where you’d expect to find crazy-looking secret stuff. Like an experiment station. Like right here. You beginning to get the idea?”
“Shut up, I can’t hear her.”
“The hell with her! You can listen to her some other time. You didn’t hear a thing I said!”
“She’s dead.”
“Yeah. Well, I figure I’ll pull that handle. What can I lose? It’ll give those murderin’—what?”
“She’s dead.”
“Dead? Starr Anthim?” His young face twisted, Sonny sank down to the cot. “You’re half asleep. You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“She’s dead,” Pete said hoarsely. “She got burned by one of the first bombs. I was with her when she—she—Shut up now and get out of here and let me listen!” he bellowed hoarsely.
Sonny stood up slowly. “They killed her, too. They killed her! That does it. That just fixes it up.” His face was white. He went out.
Pete got up. His legs weren’t working right. He almost fell. He brought up against the console with a crash, his outflung arm sending the pickup skittering across the record. He put it on again and turned up the volume, then lay down to listen.
His head was all mixed up. Sonny talked too much. Bomb launchers, automatic code machines—
“You gave me your heart,” sang Starr. “You gave me your heart. You gave me your heart. You…”
Pete heaved himself up again and moved the pickup arm. Anger, not at himself, but at Sonny for causing him to cut the disc that way, welled up.
Starr was talking, stupidly, her face going through the same expression over and over again. “Struck from the east and from the struck from the east and from the…”
He got up again wearily and moved the pickup.
“You gave me your heart you gave me…”
Pete made an agonized sound that was not a word at all, bent, lifted, and sent the console crashing over. In the bludgeoning silence he said, “I did, too.”
Then, “Sonny.” He waited.
“Sonny!”
His eyes went wide then, and he cursed and bolted for the corridor.
The panel was closed when he reached it. He kicked at it. It flew open, discovering darkness.
“Hey!” bellowed Sonny. “Shut it! You turned off the lights!”
Pete shut it behind them. The lights blazed.
“Pete! What’s the matter?”
“Nothing’s the matter, Son,” croaked Pete.
> “What are you looking at?” said Sonny uneasily.
“I’m sorry,” said Pete as gently as he could. “I just wanted to find something out, is all. Did you tell anyone else about this?” He pointed to the lever.
“Why, no. I only just figured it out while you were sleeping, just now.”
Pete looked around carefully, while Sonny shifted his weight. Pete moved toward a tool-rack. “Something you haven’t noticed yet, Sonny,” he said softly, and pointed. “Up there, on the wall behind you. High up. See?”
Sonny turned. In one fluid movement Pete plucked off a fourteen-inch box wrench and hit Sonny with it as hard as he could.
Afterward he went to work systematically on the power supplies. He pulled the plugs on the gas-engines and cracked their cylinders with a maul. He knocked off the tubing of the diesel starters—the tanks let go explosively—and he cut all the cables with bolt-cutters. Then he broke up the relay rack and its lever. When he was quite finished, he put away his tools and bent and stroked Sonny’s tousled hair.
He went out and closed the partition carefully. It certainly was a wonderful piece of camouflage. He sat down heavily on a workbench nearby.
“You’ll have your chance,” he said into the far future. “And, by Heaven, you’d better make good.”
After that he just waited.
LATE NIGHT FINAL
by Eric Frank Russell
COMMANDER CRUIN WENT DOWN THE EXTENDING METAL LADDER, PAUSED a rung from the bottom, placed one important foot on the new territory, and then the other. That made him the first of his kind on an unknown world.
He posed there in the sunlight, a big bull of a man meticulously attired for the occasion. Not a spot marred his faultlessly cut uniform of gray-green on which jeweled orders of merit sparkled and flashed. His jack boots glistened as they had never done since the day of launching from the home planet. The golden bells of his rank tinkled on his heel-hooks as he shifted his feet slightly. In the deep shadow beneath the visor of his ornate helmet his hard eyes held a glow of self-satisfaction.
A microphone came swinging down to him from the air lock he’d just left. Taking it in a huge left hand, he looked straight ahead with the blank intentness of one who sees long visions of the past and longer visions of the future. Indeed, this was as visionary a moment as any there had been in his world’s history.
“In the name of Huld and the people of Huld,” he enunciated officiously, “I take this planet.” Then he saluted swiftly, slickly, like an automaton.
Facing him, twenty-two long, black spaceships simultaneously thrust from their forward ports their glorypoles ringed with the red-black-gold colors of Huld. Inside the vessels twenty-two crews of seventy men apiece stood rigidly erect, saluted, broke into well-drilled song, “Oh, heavenly fatherland of Huld.”
When they had finished, Commander Cruin saluted again. The crews repeated their salute. The glorypoles were drawn in. Cruin mounted the ladder, entered his flagship. All locks were closed. Along the valley the twenty-two invaders lay in military formation, spaced equidistantly, noses and tails dead in line.
On a low hill a mile to the east a fire sent up a column of thick smoke. It spat and blazed amid the remnants of what had been the twenty-third vessel—and the eighth successive loss since the fleet had set forth three years ago. Thirty then. Twenty-two now.
The price of empire.
Reaching his cabin, Commander Cruin lowered his bulk into the seat behind his desk, took off his heavy helmet, adjusted an order of merit which was hiding modestly behind its neighbor.
“Step four,” he commented with satisfaction.
Second Commander Jusik nodded respectfully. He handed the other a book. Opening it, Cruin meditated aloud.
“Step one: Check planet’s certain suitability for our form of life.” He rubbed his big jowls. “We know it’s suitable.”
“Yes, sir. This is a great triumph for you.”
“Thank you, Jusik.” A craggy smile played momentarily on one side of Cruin’s broad face. “Step two: Remain in planetary shadow at distance of not less than one diameter while scout boats survey world for evidence of superior life forms. Three: Select landing place far from largest sources of possible resistance but adjacent to a source small enough to be mastered. Four: Declare Huld’s claim ceremoniously, as prescribed in manual on procedure and discipline.” He worked his jowls again. “We’ve done all that.”
The smile returned, and he glanced with satisfaction out of the small port near his chair. The port framed the smoke column on the hill. His expression changed to a scowl, and his jaw muscles lumped.
“Fully trained and completely qualified,” he growled sardonically. “Yet he had to smash up. Another ship and crew lost in the very moment we reach our goal. The eighth such loss. There will be a purge in the astronautical training center when I return.”
“Yes, sir,” approved Jusik, dutifully. “There is no excuse for it.”
“There are no excuses for anything,” Cruin retorted.
“No, sir.”
Snorting his contempt, Cruin looked at his book. “Step five: Make all protective preparations as detailed in defense manual.” He glanced up into Jusik’s lean, clearcut features. “Every captain has been issued with a defense manual. Are they carrying out its orders?”
“Yes, sir. They have started already.’’
“They better had! I shall arrange a demotion of the slowest.” Wetting a large thumb, he flipped a page over. “Step six: If planet does hold life forms of suspected intelligence, obtain specimens.” Lying back in his seat he mused a moment, then barked: “Well, for what are you waiting?”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“Get some examples,” roared Cruin.
“Very well, sir.” Without blinking, Jusik saluted, marched out.
The self-closer swung the door behind him. Cruin surveyed it with a jaundiced eye.
“Curse the training center,” he rumbled. “It has deteriorated since I was there.”
Putting his feet on the desk, he waggled his heels to make the bells tinkle while he waited for the examples.
Three specimens turned up of their own accord. They were seen standing wide-eyed in a row near the prow of number twenty-two, the endmost ship of the line. Captain Somir brought them along personally.
“Step six calls for specimens, sir,” he explained to Commander Cruin. “I know that you require ones better than these, but I found these under our nose.”
“Under your nose? You land and within short time other life forms are sightseeing around your vessel? What about your protective precautions?”
“They are not completed yet, sir. They take some time.”
“What were your lookouts doing—sleeping?”
“No, sir,” assured Somir desperately. “They did not think it necessary to sound a general alarm for such as these.”
Reluctantly, Cruin granted the point. His gaze ran contemptuously over the trio. Three kids. One was a boy, knee-high, snubnosed, chewing at a chubby fist. The next, a skinny-legged, pigtailed girl obviously older than the boy. The third was another girl almost as tall as Somir, somewhat skinny, but with a hint of coming shapeliness hiding in her thin attire. All three were freckled, all had violently red hair.
The tall girl said to Cruin: “I’m Marva—Marva Meredith.” She indicated her companions. “This is Sue and this is Sam. We live over there, in Williamsville.” She smiled at him and suddenly he noticed that her eyes were a rich and startling green. “We were looking for blueberries when we saw you come down.”
Cruin grunted, rested his hands on his paunch. The fact that this planet’s life manifestly was of his own shape and form impressed him not at all. It had never occurred to him that it could have proved otherwise. In Huldian thought, all superior life must be humanoid and no exploration had yet provided evidence to the contrary.
“I don’t understand her alien gabble and she doesn’t understand Huldian,” he complained to Somir.
“She must be dull-witted to waste her breath thus.”
“Yes, sir,” agreed Somir. “Do you wish me to hand them over to the tutors?”
“No. They’re not worth it.” He eyed the small boy’s freckles with distaste, never having seen such a phenomenon before. “They are badly spotted and may be diseased. Pfaugh!” He grimaced with disgust. “Did they pass through the ray-sterilizing chamber as they came in?”
“Certainly, sir. I was most careful about that.”
“Be equally careful about any more you may encounter.” Slowly, his authoritative stare went from the boy to the pigtailed girl and finally to the tall one. He didn’t want to look at her, yet knew that he was going to. Her cool green eyes held something that made him vaguely uncomfortable. Unwillingly he met those eyes. She smiled again, with little dimples. “Kick ‘em out!” he rapped at Somir.
“As you order, sir.”
Nudging them, Somir gestured toward the door. The three took hold of each other’s hands, filed out.
“Bye!” chirped the boy, solemnly.
“Bye!” said pigtails, shyly.
The tall girl turned in the doorway. “Good-by!”
Gazing at her uncomprehendingly, Cruin fidgeted in his chair. She dimpled at him, then the door swung to.
“Good-by.” He mouthed the strange word to himself. Considering the circumstances in which it had been uttered, evidently it meant farewell. Already he had picked up one word of their language.
“Step seven: Gain communication by tutoring specimens until they are proficient in Huldian.”
Teach them. Do not let them teach you—teach them. The slaves must learn from the masters, not the masters from the slaves.
“Good-by.” He repeated it with savage self-accusation. A minor matter, but still an infringement of the book of rules. There are no excuses for anything.
Teach them.
The slaves—
Rockets rumbled and blasted deafeningly as ships maneuvered themselves into the positions laid down in the manual of defense. Several hours of careful belly-edging were required for this. In the end, the line had reshaped itself into two groups of eleven-pointed stars, noses at the centers, tails outward. Ash of blast-destroyed grasses, shrubs and trees covered a wide area beyond the two menacing rings of main propulsion tubes which could incinerate anything within one mile.
The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology Page 50
