Spaceman Go Home

by Milton Lesser

  Turk licked his lips and shifted his weight from left to right foot. “All right. Yes, I knew he was going. I followed him. I wanted to stop him.”

  “You couldn’t?”

  “I wouldn’t, sir. I didn’t intend stopping him by force. I just tried talking him out of it.”

  “And apparently you failed.”

  “Yes, sir. His mind was made up.”

  “Where was he going, Cadet?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “Come now, you can do better than that.”

  “It’s the truth. He didn’t know himself. He just wanted out.”

  “Didn’t he say anything about … Norway?” “Norway? No, sir.”

  “Or about Lambert Strayer?”

  “You mean the ex-Captain in charge of the White Sands Center?”

  “Exactly. But Strayer isn’t in White Sands any longer. You’re sure you can’t tell me where Marlow was going, or why?” l’m sure.

  “Two things can prejudice you here, Cadet. Silence . . and lying. How would you like to be earthbound the rest of your life?”’

  “But sir, I . . “

  “Where did Marlow go?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Had he been in contact with anyone on the outside?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “What is his brother doing in Norway?”

  “You must be mistaken, Captain. His brother is dead.”

  “His brother is in Norway, recruiting Spacemen just as I am. What do you have to say to that?”

  “Just that I wish Andy knew. He thinks his brother’s dead.”

  There were more questions, and more unsatisfactory answers. At last Captain Ballinger said, “Ayoub, if I find out you were lying, you’ll spend the rest of your life on Earth. Don’t you think we are going to succeed here?”

  “I hope so, sir. I want to get back to space.”

  “We will succeed, Ayoub. Make no mistake about that. We are going to ram the Edict down the Star Brain’s mechanical throat. And when we do, after we do, who do you think will be the hero of the day on Earth?”

  “Why, you will.”

  “You know why I’m telling you this?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Because one day soon, if I say so, a man can be earthbound for life. One day soon, if I say so, you’ll spend the rest of your life in your native country without an exit permit.” Ballinger stalked behind the desk again, and once more Turk saw just his silhouette. “You have one more opportunity, Cadet. Did Marlow indicate where he was going? Think before you give me your answer.”

  “There’s nothing to think about, sir. I don’t have the slightest idea where he was going, and I don’t think he did either.”

  “Very well, Cadet. Dismissed.”

  Turk came to attention, saluted, executed a stiff about-face and marched from the office.

  For a long time after he had gone, Reed Ballinger sat behind his desk pondering. His plans were shaping up beautifully. They now had several hundred spaceships scattered at twelve secret fields all over Earth. When the day carne, and it would be soon, three-quarters of them would be manned. The rest would be drones.

  The unmanned drones would be expendable.

  They would he launched first, moments before the manned fleet. The Monitor Satellites would home in on them to destroy them, and Captain Ballinger’s manned fleets would get through to deep space. Once they cut in their subspace drive, there would be no stopping them until they reached Canopus and the Star Brain hundreds of light years across the Galaxy.

  Everything was going beautifully, Ballinger thought again, except for the desertions. War plans that couldn’t miss, except that every day he had fewer and fewer men to man his ships.

  One way to learn about the unknown enemy was to interrogate Cadets like Ayoub. But that had hardly helped. Ballinger had questioned many of them, here and at the other bases. He believed them as he believed Ayoub. They didn’t know where their friends had gone.

  But there was another way, and it had worked.

  Under Ballinger’s orders, Harry Gault had deserted.

  If a Cadet or spaceman fled the Mexican base, Ballinger had reasoned, he’d probably head for the nearby Indian town. Harry Gault had done that, after reluctantly submitting to a pummeling which would convince the contacts he met. An Indian had hid him and then had driven him by bus to Merida. Gault had called the base from Merida, saying that he’d been instructed to visit an ex-Space Captain named Ruy Alvarez living in Mexico City. He had done that and called again from Mexico City after meeting Captain Alvarez.

  Though Harry Gault’s reputation was unsavory, he had been in luck. Ruy Alvarez had never heard of him. Besides, on Gault’s face was the evidence that he had had to fight his way to freedom.

  Alvarez had given Gault instructions to fly to Stavanger, Norway. Before going, he’d been in touch with Captain Ballinger. He’d been nervous and eager, but sure of himself. “Here is one ostrich with one big head in the ground,” he had gloated. “Can you imagine that, he never even heard of me!”

  “What did you learn?” Ballinger had asked.

  “That we’re not the only ones planning to return to space.

  “You’re joking.”

  “Not on your life.”

  “Very well, find out who they are. If they’re ready to orbit out under my orders, there’s no reason why we couldn’t get together. We can use all the recruits we can get.

  “They wouldn’t play ball with you, Captain.”

  “Not? Why not?”

  “Because their leaders are Lambert Strayer and Frank Marlow, that’s why.”

  Strayer and Marlow, Ballinger had thought bitterly, a pair of do-gooders. They wouldn’t touch him with a launching gantry. But what surprised him more than anything was the fact that they, like himself, were going to flaunt the Edict. They were spacemen, of course; they would hate the Edict as much as he did. But whereas he planned to take the law into his own hands, he knew they wouldn’t.

  They were going to space in violation of the law; why?

  Harry Gault had ramjetted to Norway to find out.

  Strayer and Marlow, Ballinger realized, were potentially the enemy. They could be numbered among that group of ex-Space Captains who had blamed Reed Ballinger for the Edict in the first place. It was even possible, since so many of Ballinger’s recruits had fled to them via intermediaries like Ruy Alvarez, that Strayer and Marlow were going to space simply to stop his own fleet. If there were another reason, he had to find out what it was.

  Harry Gault, by now, was in a position to find out for him. And as soon as Gault got his answer, he’d return to Mexico.

  All you needed, Ballinger decided, was a little brains and a little patience.

  All you needed, Turk told himself on the gunnery range, was a good eye and a fair head for figures. He had both. He was becoming a more competent marksman every day.

  But somehow he didn’t feel the elation he should have, and he knew he wasn’t the only one. Charlie Sands and others, after their first flush of enthusiasm over the possibility of blasting off into space again, were beginning to wonder.

  It was one thing to return to space as free and equal partners in the Galactic Confederacy. It was another to shoot your way back to the star trails.

  Would anyone but Reed Ballinger benefit?

  Turk computed a gunnery orbit rapidly and pressed the mock-up firing stud. The little pip of light that flashed on the blank screen in front of him indicated that he’d been on target.

  Scowling, Turk wondered if maybe Andy hadn’t had the right idea after all.

  Fleetingly, he wished that he had fled with his friend. He wondered what Andy was doing now.

  Chapter 11 Treachery!

  NOT EVEN Andy knew what it was all about until he reached the underground bunker that would be the operations room for the “Nobel’s” launching.

  He had spent scores of hours in the Luna Academy operations room, of c
ourse, and the bunker in Norway was familiar to him. A spaceship, he knew, didn’t pass into its crew’s control until escape velocity—more than seven miles a second on Earth and two and a half miles a second on Luna—had been achieved. By then the first-stage rocket, the launching rocket, would have burned out and dropped away. And the launching rocket was guided by the technicians in the operations bunker, not by the crew aboard the spaceship itself.

  All he knew, now, was that while working on the model of Athens’ Acropolis he had been approached by Dr. Seys who said reluctantly:

  “This afternoon history takes a back seat. This afternoon you will report to the operations bunker, my young friend. They cannot decide if it is an archaeologist they want you to be or a spaceman.”

  As it turned out, what they wanted him to be was neither. When Andy reached the bunker and went down the rough-hewn stone stairs, he heard the great door shut behind him. He was the last to arrive. Eleven other ex-Cadets already were waiting, talking quietly. As if the shutting of the door were a signal, they lapsed into silence. Then one of them said:

  “Look, here’s Marlow. His brother’s a bigshot around here. Maybe he can tell us what’s going on.” But Andy couldn’t. He was as much in the dark as any of them.

  The small door to the ready-room at the far end of the bunker opened, and Frank came in. Glancing around, he smiled impartially at the ex-Cadets.

  He said, “As you all know, we’ve asked for volunteers to return to Reed Ballinger’s bases. I think you’ll be pleased to learn, as I was, that the response was terrific. Of seventy-live ex-Ballinger men here in Norway, all but three or four volunteered. For various reasons, you twelve men have been chosen by Captain Strayer and me. Among you, you represent every Ballinger base now in operation. Within the next forty-eight hours, you’ll be going back, and now Captain Strayer is going to tell you how that will be accomplished.”

  Frank moved unobtrusively among the ex-Cadets and took his place beside Andy. The ready-room door opened again, and Captain Strayer’s tall, white-haired figure strode out.

  “Men,” he said in his deep voice, and his eyes roved the bunker as he spoke, locking glances briefly with all the ex-Cadets, “some time within the next seventy-two to ninety-six hours, Reed Ballinger’s fleet will be blasting off from a dozen secret spacefields all over the world. You all know what he’ll be attempting, just as you all know what we are trying to do. Once before, in answer to a decision it reached, Reed Ballinger bombed the Star Brain. The result was the Edict which ruled Earth out of space. Now the Star Brain has been repaired. This time Reed Ballinger intends to finish the job. We, on the other hand, want to show the Star Brain that the rash and unreasoned acts of a Reed Ballinger do not represent the thoughts and desires and hopes of an entire world. We want to show the Star Brain what Earth really is like, with the hope that we 11 be given a second chance in space. Ballinger’s aims and ours are incompatible. If he succeeds, we will fail. If we succeed, it will mean he has failed. I don’t have to tell you the entire future of mankind is in our hands.”

  When Captain Strayer paused, there were no shouts of approval or encouragement. Tensely, anxiously, the dozen ex-Cadets waited for his next words. Andy couldn’t help remembering another speech, a speech Ballinger had made in Mexico to another group of ex-Cadets and spacemen. Then the stage had been set theatrically. Reed Ballinger had seemed a titanic figure in the darkness, with the torchlights glowing all around him. But Captain Strayer eschewed dramatics. He spoke Simply and gravely. Theatrics weren’t necessary; he didn’t have to convince anyone; he was merely stating the facts.

  “We don’t have to guess when Ballinger will he blasting off. We know, for dedicated men like Captain Alvarez in Mexico and Captain Kumar in India have done their work well. Reports have been pouring in to us daily; in three days, or four at the most, Ballinger will be ready.

  “A dozen reports to a dozen police departments in Mexico, India, Japan, Indochina, Patagonia, and so on, and Reed Ballinger’s fleet would never leave the ground. But if his ships remain earthbound, then the ‘Nobel’ does too, and if the ‘Nobel’ does, then mankind does. It is our hope that Ballinger’s fleet will serve us as a decoy, that the ‘Nobel’ will escape into deep space under cover of Reed Ballinger’s ships.

  “If that happens, we have a chance. Because, naturally, we’d still have to convince the Star Brain of our good intentions. We hope the material we have gathered here to represent five thousand years of human achievement will do that.

  “Just as important, since we obviously cannot stop Ballinger on Earth, we must at all costs stop him in space. The ‘Nobel’ is unarmed. And even if it were armed to the teeth, a single ship couldn’t hope to turn back Ballinger’s huge fleet.

  “That is where all of you come in. You are going to serve as agents provocateurs. All our hopes will be riding on your shoulders. I don’t have to tell you that once you return to Ballinger’s bases, you can expect absolutely no help from us. You will be entirely on your own.

  “Once you are in deep space, your task will be to convince Ballinger’s crews to mutiny and come under the command of the ‘Nobel/ According to Alvarez, Kumar, Dinh, and the others, there’s a strong possibility you can do it. Because for every one of you who fled from Ballingers bases, there are perhaps a dozen or more who have been beset by doubt but who have lacked either the courage or the wisdom to make the complete break. It is these men you will have to win over and, with them as a nucleus, Ballinger’s entire fleet.

  “Naturally, we can’t deluge Ballinger with ‘Nobel’ deserters at the last moment. If we assume his average base has thirty or forty ships, that means four hundred ships in all … or more. And it means that each one of you, aboard just one ship, will have to convince an entire fleet to mutiny some time between the moment they enter subspace and the moment they rendezvous near Canopus.

  “As to how you will convince Ballinger’s lieutenants that you really have deserted the ‘Nobel,’ Captain Marlow has developed a cover story for you. The important thing to remember is that Ballinger is impatient with cultural pursuits. He and his men will readily understand the situation if you tell them you joined the ‘Nobel’ with the hope of reaching space again but found yourself bogged down in history and music and philosophy and art.” For the first time Captain Strayer smiled briefly. “If I know Reed Ballinger, he’ll greet that kind of cover story with an I-toId-you-so and maybe even with a chuckle. In any event, you’ll get the details later.

  “As to how you will be able to take over four hundred ships and more—assuming each of you can succeed on even one—that task isn’t as insurmountable as it seems, and I need not tell you how much depends on your success. The classic technique of revolution, or of mutiny, is to gain control of the means of communication and use them to make your point. In this case, that means the ships’ radios and public address systems. If you can get that far, I hope together we can do the rest. And, if you have got that far, it will mean the audience on your ships will be sympathetic. I’ll broadcast to them, or Captain Marlow will, from the ‘Nobel.’ They’ll be given the choice of a return to space for war or for peace.

  “If the option they choose is war, then we will have lost. If they choose peace, the ships you have taken over will leave Ballinger’s fleet and fall into line behind the ‘Nobel.’ Then, from then, you’ll broadcast similar messages to the entire fleet. What we hope for is a chain reaction of desertions. According to Alvarez and the others, it isn’t too much to expect. And, if we get it, then mankind has a chance to convince the Star Brain.”

  Captain Strayer smiled again, almost apologetically, and asked, “Are there any questions?”

  There were scores of them, but Andy was hardly listening. The plan was an audacious one. If they succeeded, the road to space was open again. If they failed, it was forever closed. And, if they failed, Andy didn’t want to think of what would happen to the dozen volunteers, himself included.

  Two questions toward the end
of the session riveted his attention. The first was asked by a freckle-faced ex-Cadet near Andy, who said:

  “Captain, how come you picked Cadets for the job instead of spacemen?”

  “Two reasons, lad. In the first place, you’ll be dealing primarily with your old classmates at Luna Academy. Because Ballinger’s crews are made up mostly of Cadets, not graduated Space Captains. Men like Frank Marlow here tended to take the Edict less … well, less obstreperously than you Cadets did. Perhaps that’s because experienced Space Captains had first crack at the good jobs on Earth and could be absorbed more easily into an earthbound society than you Cadets could. Perhaps it’s also because they have more maturity and patience. A lot of them gravitated here right away, without trying their luck with Ballinger first.” Again Captain Strayer smiled wryly. “As I don’t have to remind you, many of you Cadets had to see Ballinger for what he was first. I’m talking to twelve of you who did.

  “The second reason may be more important. It’s this: Ballinger is shorthanded and needs all the help he can get. But even so, if on the eve of departure a dozen veteran spacemen descended on his bases, he’d be suspicious. For all I know he’ll be suspicious of turncoat Cadets, too. I won’t lie to you; you could be walking into a den of lions. But I think if Ballinger accepts anyone, he’ll accept Cadets who can convince him all this highbrow stuff in Norway’s got them down. As I said before, Captain Marlow will go into detail on the cover story for you. Does that answer your question?”

  It did. But the second question which riveted Andy’s attention was a more difficult one for Captain Strayer to answer. A stocky Cadet standing near the fuel gauges along one wall of the bunker asked:

  “What if some of Ballinger’s ships refuse to join forces with the ‘Nobel/ Captain? What can we do then?”

  For a long moment Captain Strayer didn’t answer. Then he said, “Alvarez and the others assure us there’s discontent at Ballinger’s bases. And, till now, their information has been as reliable as the underground railroad which brought all of you here from scattered bases all over the world. For example, their guesses as to when Ballinger will blast off tally with tire information we received from Harry Gault who, as you know, was Ballinger’s lieutenant before he came here. If they say there is discontent, we can assume there is. Your job is to make it grow.”