Astounding Science Fiction Stories: An Anthology of 350 Scifi Stories Volume 2 (Halcyon Classics)
Page 134
"Who are you people--what are you?" Cameron said with sudden intensity. "You have teleportation--and how many other unknown psychic powers? You have forced us to believe you can tame such a vicious world as the Markovian Nucleus once was.
"But where is there a life of your own? With all your powers you must live at the whim of other cultures. Where is your culture? Where is your own purpose? In spite of all you have, your life is a parasitical one."
Venor smiled gently. "Is not the parent--or the teacher--the servant of the child?" he said. "Has it not always been so if a species is to rise very far in its conquest of the Universe?
"But this does not mean that the parent or teacher has no life of his own. You ask where is our culture? The culture of all worlds is ours. We don't have great cities and vast fleets. The wolf cubs build these for us. They carry us across space and shelter us in their cities.
"Our own energies are expended in a thousand other and more profitable ways. We have sought and learned a few of the secrets of life and mind. With these we can move as you were moved, when we choose to do so. From where I sit I can speak with any of our kind on this planet or any world of the entire Nucleus. And a few of us, united in the effort, can touch those in distant galaxies.
"What culture would you have us acquire, that we do not have?" Venor finished.
* * * * *
Without answer, Cameron arose and strode slowly to the window, his back to the room. He looked out upon the rude wooden huts and the towering forest beyond. He tried to tell himself it was all a lie. Such things couldn't be. But he could feel it now with increasing strength, as if all his senses were quickening--the benign aura, the indefinable wash of power that seemed to lap at the edge of his mind.
Out of the corner of his eye he could see Joyce's face, almost radiant as she, too, sensed it here in the presence of the Ids.
Love, as a genuine power, had been taught by every Terran philosopher of any social worth. But it had never really been tried. Not in the way the Ids understood it. Cameron felt he could only guess at the terrible discipline of mind it required to use it as they did. The analogy of the wolf cubs was all very well, and man had learned to go that far. But there is a difference when your own kind is involved, he thought.
Perhaps it was out of sheer fear of each other that men continued to try to sway with hate, the most primitive of all their weapons.
It's easy to hate, he thought. Love is hard, and because it is, the tough humans who can't achieve it and have the patience to manipulate it must scorn it. The truly weak ones, they're incapable of the stern and brutal self-discipline required of one who loves his enemy.
But men had known how. Back in the caves they had known how to conquer the wolf and the wild horse. Where had they lost it?
The vision of the buildings and the forest with its eternal peace was still in his eyes. What else could you want, with the whole Universe in the palm of your hand?
He turned sharply. "You tricked us into betraying ourselves to Marthasa, and you said that you planned it this way when you first heard of our coming. But you have not yet said why. Why did you want us to see what you had done?"
"You needed to have evidence from the Markovians themselves," said Venor. "That is why I led you to the point where the admission would be forced from them. The problem you came to solve is now answered, is it not? Is there anything to prevent you returning to Earth and writing a successful paper on the mystery of the Markovians?"
"You know very well there is," said Cameron with the sudden sense that Venor was laughing gently at him. "Who on Earth would believe what you have told me--that a handful of meek, subservient Ids had conquered the mighty Markovian Nucleus?"
He paused, looking at Joyce who returned his intense gaze.
"Is that all?" said Venor finally.
"No that is not all. After taking us to the heights and showing us everything that lies beyond, are you simply going to turn us away empty-handed?"
"What would you have us give you?"
"This," said Cameron, gesturing with his hand to include the circle of all of them, and the community beyond the window. "We want what you have discovered. Is your circle a closed one--or can you admit those who would learn of your ways but are not of your race?"
Venor's smile broadened as he arose and stepped toward them, and they felt the warm wave of acceptance from his mind even before he spoke. "This is what we brought you here to receive," he said. "But you had to ask for yourselves. We wanted men of Earth in our ranks. There are many races and many worlds who make up the Idealists. That is why it is said that the Ids do not know the home world from which they originally came. It is true, they do not. We are citizens of the Universe.
"But we have never been represented by a native of Earth, which needs us badly. Will you join us, Terrans?"
* * *
Contents
HUMAN ERROR
By Raymond F. Jones
The government was spending a billion dollars to convince the human race that men ought to be ashamed to be men--instead of errorless, cybernetics machines. But they forgot that an errorless man is a dead man....
During its three years' existence, the first Wheel was probably the subject of more amateur astronomical observations than any other single object in the heavens. Over three hundred reports came in when a call was issued for witnesses to the accident that destroyed the space station.
It was fortunately on the night side of Earth at the time, and in a position of bright illumination by the sun. Two of the observers had movie cameras attached to their ten-inch mirrors. The film in one of these was inadequate, but the other carried a complete record of the incident from the moment of the Griseda's first approach, through the pilot's fumbling attempt to correct course, and the final collision.
The scene was lost for a few seconds as the wreckage drifted out of the field. The observer had been watching through a small pilot scope, however, and had wits enough to pan by hand so that he got most of the remaining fall that was visible above his horizon as the locked remnants of the Wheel and the Griseda began their slow, spiral course to Earth.
By the time this scene was finished, word of the disaster was already flashing to Government centers. Joe McCauley, radio operator aboard the Wheel, had been talking with Ed Harris on the Griseda. As a matter of routine, all their conversation was taped, and some of this was recovered from the crash and played back at the investigation.
"--and get this," Ed was saying, "my kid had his fifth birthday just last week, and I've got him working through quadratic equations already. You've got to go some to beat that one."
"Doesn't mean a thing," said Joe. "You know how these infant brain boxes burn out. Better take him fishing and forget that stuff for a while. Hey--what the devil's going on? You got a truck driver in the control room? I just saw you out the port and it looks like you're right on top of us!"
"Jeez, I dunno. It's been like that ever since we cleared Lunaport. Sometimes I think this guy Cummins trained in a truck the way he--Hell, he's comin' up on the wrong side of the Wheel! I relayed the orders to go to the east turret. Acknowledged them himself--"
"Ed! I can see you outside the port--we're going to hit!"
The words were ripped by the shattering, grinding roar of colliding metal. Then a moment later the blast of an exploding fuel tank.
"Ed!"
"Joe--yeah, I'm here. Lights gone. Emergency power still on. Take the emergency band if you've still got a rig. I'll stand by--"
Joe switched over without comment and called Space Command Base on the emergency channel, which was always monitored. "Wheel just rammed by Griseda," he said. "Possible loss of orbital velocity. Extent of damage unknown."
Lieutenant James, on duty at the Base, had just returned from a three day leave and was scarcely settled in the routine of his post once more. He glanced automatically at the radar tracking screen and his face paled at the sight of the irregular figure there, slightly out of the cente
ring circle. It was no gag.
"You're dropping," he said. "Orbital velocity must be down. Can you correct?"
"I haven't been able to contact the bridge," said Joe. "Alert all Command and have crash point computed. Stand by."
It developed that the bridge was entirely gone, along with a full thirty percent of the station. Captain West had been spared, however, being on inspection in the other sector of the station. He came on at once as Joe McCauley managed to get the communication lines repatched.
"Emergency red!" he called. "All stations report!"
One by one, the surviving crew chiefs reported conditions in their sectors. And when they were finished, they all knew their chance of survival was microscopic. Captain West ordered: "Communicate with Base. Request plotting of crash point."
"Done, sir," Joe answered.
"Command post will be established in the radio room. Emergency steering procedure will be started on command. Man all taxi craft."
It was all on the tapes that were salvaged. Everything was done that desperate men could humanly do.
* * * * *
At Base, its Commander, General Oglethorpe, was in the communications and tracking room by the time Joe McCauley had established contact with Captain West.
He picked up the mike at the table. "Plug me in to the station," he commanded the Lieutenant.
He got Joe first, but the radio operator put Captain West on as soon as he arrived in the radio room. "Hello, Frank," said General Oglethorpe in a quiet voice.
"Yes, Jack--" Captain West answered. "I'm glad you're there. Does it look pretty bad?"
"Orbital velocity is down two percent. You've been falling for eight minutes."
"That's pretty bad. I've got all steering stations manned, but only thirty percent of them are still operable. We're using the taxis to give a push too. But we haven't been able to dislodge the Griseda. Its inertia takes almost half our available energy."
"Couldn't you get a blast from the Griseda's tubes to put you in orbit?"
"Adler's got a crew out there working on it. But his controls are gone, besides his fuel tanks being opened. And even if we could get their rockets operating it's doubtful we could get the right direction of thrust. Our hope is in our own rockets, and in breaking the ship away from the station."
But the closer the massed wreckage dropped toward Earth, the higher were its requirements for orbital velocity. While the crews worked at their desperate tasks General Oglethorpe sat with his eyes on the tracking scope, and the voice of his friend in his ear. He listened to Captain West's measured commands to the men in the station and to those working to free the ship. General Oglethorpe heard the repeated reports of failure to free the Griseda. He listened to West's orders to transfer fuel from the ship to the station as the latter's supply ran low. He watched the continued deviation of the spot on the tracking scope.
Then he turned as a lieutenant came up behind him with a sheet of calculations. "Present rate of fall indicates a crash point in the San Francisco Bay region, sir."
The General gripped the paper, his face tightening. West said, "Did I hear correctly, Jack? The San Francisco area?"
"Yes."
"We'll have to try to keep it from happening there. I'll order the rockets shut off now. We'll save enough fuel to try to do some last minute steering as we approach Earth."
"No!" General Oglethorpe cried. "Use it now! Its effect will be the same as later. Blow the chambers apart! Get back in orbit!"
"We can't make it," West said quietly. "We've gained forward velocity, but I'll bet your computers will show us better than four percent below requirements at this orbit. Spot our crash as accurately as possible on free fall from our present position. We'll save remaining fuel for last minute steering in case we're near a city."
The General was silent then as he heard the responses come back from the men who manned the rockets and who knew that with the closing of their fuel valves their own lives had also come to an end.
"We'll want testimony account for the investigation," Oglethorpe said finally. "Get the responsible officers on the circuit--but you first, Frank--"
There was a moment of silence before Captain Frank West began speaking in changed tones. "What is there to say?" he asked, finally. "You won't need to hold an investigation. I can tell you all you need to know--all you'll ever find out at least,--right now. Your decision will be the same one so many hundreds and thousands of investigating boards have made in the past: Pilot Error.
"Human error! That's what killed the first Wheel, and the Griseda. I don't know why it happened. Adler doesn't. Neither does any other man up here with us. Those who were with Cummins in the control room are dead, but they didn't know any more than we do.
"We spent a million dollars training that man, Cummins. We believed he was the best we could produce. We measured his reflexes and his intelligence and his blood composition until we thought we knew the function and capability of every molecule in his body. And then, in just one split second, he makes the decision of a moron, fumbling when he needed to be precise."
"Just what did he do?" Oglethorpe asked gently.
"Our customary approach is to the west turret. This time he had been ordered to go to the east side because of repairs on the other end of the hub. Cummins had seen and acknowledged the orders. Apparently, they slipped his mind during approach to the Wheel and he came up on the west side. Then he remembered and tried to correct his position.
"Everything must have gone wrong then. The decision was a blunder to begin with. Wrong approach, yes. But it was suicide to attempt such a detailed maneuver that close to the station. He used his side jets and slammed the Griseda into the Wheel at a forty-five degree angle, locking the ship in the wreckage of the rim and in the girders of the spokes."
"Was there any previous indication of instability in the pilot that you know of? We'll get a better answer on that from Adler, but we need to know if you were aware of anything."
"The answer is no! Cummins was checked out before the start of the flight just three days ago. He was all right as far as any of our means of evaluation go. As right as any man will ever be--
"Jack, listen to me. Remember when we were back at White Sands and talked of the days when there would be a Wheel up here, and ships taking off for the Moon and for Mars?"
"I remember," said General Oglethorpe softly.
"Well, we've got a piece of that dream. But there'll never be any more, and what we've got is going to go smash unless we correct the one weakness we've never tackled properly. You'll fail again and again as long as men like Cummins can destroy twenty years' work and billions of dollars worth of engineering construction. One man's stupid, moronic error, and all of this goes to destruction, just as if it had never been.
"On the ground, a plane crashes--the board puts it down as pilot error and planes go on flying. You can't do that out here! The cost is too great. It's a sheer gamble putting this mountain of machinery and effort into the hands of men we can never be sure of. You think you know them; you do everything possible to find out about them. But you just don't know.
"We've solved every other technical problem that has stood in our way. Why haven't we solved this one? We've learned how to make a machine that will perform in a predictable manner, and when it fails to do so we can provide adequate feedback alarms and correctors, and we can find the cause of error.
"With a man, we can do nothing. We have to accept him, in the final analysis, on little more than faith.
"A couple of hundred men are going to die because of a human error. Give us a monument! Find out why men make errors. Produce a means of keeping them from it. Do that, and our deaths will be a small price to pay!"
* * * * *
These were the words of a dead man. They were heard again and again in the committee rooms and investigation chambers. They were printed and broadcast around the world, and they enabled General Oglethorpe to do the thing that became a burning crusade with him.
The wreckage missed the city of San Francisco without the necessity of guidance by the rocket fuel so preciously hoarded by West. The Wheel and the Griseda were doomed the moment the pilot, Cummins, decided to shift the position of the ship with respect to the station.
* * * * *
In the anteroom of the Base Commander's office, Dr. Paul Medick rubbed the palms of his hands against his trouser legs when the secretary wasn't watching, and licked the dryness that burned the membrane of his lips.
The secretary remembered him. She probably had been the one to make out his severance papers and knew all about Oglethorpe's firing him.
Now she was no doubt wondering about the General's calling him back after that bitter occasion--just as Paul himself was wondering.
But he was pretty sure he knew. If he were right it was the opportunity of a lifetime, and he couldn't afford to muff it.
The girl turned at the sound of a buzz on the intercom. She smiled and said, "You may go in now."
"Thanks." He stood up and told his nerves to quit remembering the last time he passed through the door he was now entering. General Oglethorpe was nobody but the Base Commander, and if Paul Medick got thrown out once more he would be no worse off than he now was.
Oglethorpe looked up, a grim trace of a smile at the corners of his mouth. He shook hands and indicated a chair by the desk, resuming his own seat behind it. "You know why I called you--in spite of our past differences."
Paul hesitated. He didn't want to show his anxiety--and hopefulness--He weighed the answers that might be expected of him, and said, "It's this crash thing--and the appeal of Captain West?"
"Would there be anything else?"
"I'm flattered that you thought of me."
"There's nothing personal involved, believe me! I'd a thousand times rather have called somebody else--anybody else--but there's nobody that can do the job you can."