Spaceman Go Home

by Milton Lesser

  “Tomorrow?”

  “How much could you pay me, old friend?”

  Gault told him, and Daniel Shea whistled softly. “It must be pretty important to you. I think it can be arranged for tomorrow. I could switch runs with one of our other pilots.”

  “There’s only one thing,” Gault said. “I can’t go through customs. You’ll have to get me on and off the ramjet unseen. Can you do it?”

  “Harry, Harry!” Shea laughed. “Up to your old tricks again, 1 see. What are you smuggling out of Norway?”

  “Myself,” Gault said simply.

  “Are you serious? I didn’t know you were contraband, old friend.”

  “Can you do it?”

  “How much did you say you’d pay?”

  Gault told him again.

  “Old friend,” said Shea, “I can do it.”

  After he parted from his companions in Stavanger, Andy was shuttled in reverse along the underground railroad that had brought him to Norway. He flew by ramjet to New York, remembering the parting dinner in Stavanger. All twelve ex-Cadets vowed that the next time they met would be in deep space where, after all, they belonged. Andy’s ramjet was the third to leave.

  He flew from New York to Mexico City and contacted Captain Alvarez. There was nothing Alvarez could tell him, except what Frank had mentioned at

  Project Nobel: Charlie Sands, at the Ballinger spaceport, would be an ally. As far as Alvarez knew, Harry Gault wasn’t in Mexico.

  Andy flew south to Merida, where he took the bus to the little Indian village near the spaceport. It was night when he got there, and after the Land of the Midnight Sun the darkness seemed strange.

  Skirting the village, Andy struck out on the final leg of his return on foot. The sounds of the jungle were all around him.

  His first surprise was the ease with which he followed the track through the jungle. It seemed to have been widened, and in the soft earth underfoot were the deep gouges of tire tracks.

  When he had covered about half the distance to the secret spacefield, he heard the drone of a truck behind him. The drone became a roar that drowned the chirping and rasping of the insects.

  Headlights impaled Andy. He ^turned directly in their path and raised his hands, waving them. The truck bore down on him and braked to a stop. Its engine idled noisily in the night.

  “What are you doing out here?” a voice shouted.

  “My name’s Marlow,” Andy shouted back. Tm re^turning to camp.”

  “Returning from where?” Suddenly the curiosity in the voice became suspicion. “Did you say Marlow?”

  “That’s right.”

  Andy heard a door slam. A man’s silhouette appeared in front of the headlights. When he came closer, Andy recognized Lieutenant Odet.

  “Where in space have you been, Cadet?”

  “It’s a long story,” Andy said, and waited wondering if the story Frank had prepared for him and the other volunteers would be accepted.

  “Save it,” Lieutenant Odet said at last, neither friendly nor unfriendly. “Climb in, Marlow. I think Captain Ballinger will want a word with you.” “That’s just what I was thinking,” Andy agreed, and climbed onto the canvas-covered truck bed with Lieutenant Odet. Seconds later, the truck began to move.

  “Just tell me this much,” Lieutenant Odet said. “Where did you go?”

  “Norway,” Andy said.

  Chapter 13 Return to Space

  “Norway,” he said again to Captain Ballinger an hour later.

  From the window of Ballinger’s office he could see bright floodlights blazing all over the spacefield. Their launching pads elevated to ground level, spaceships and gantries stood ready. A steady stream of trucks flowed in from the Indian village, and there were shouts and the creaks of winches as supplies were raised on the gantries and loaded aboard the ships.

  “What made you go there?” Captain Ballinger asked.

  Though Reed Ballinger and his plans had dominated so much of Andy’s thinking since his return from Luna Academy, this was only the second time he’d seen the renegade ex-Space Captain. Whatever else he was, Reed Ballinger was not a man you could forget. He was taller than Frank, broad-shouldered and powerfully built. The dark, intent eyes dominated his handsome face. Even discounting the uniform of a Senior Space Captain, which he was wearing, he had spaceman written all over ^him. And, if first impressions meant anything, he was more obviously a leader of men than Lambert Strayer. Andy wondered if an ex-Cadet who still hadn’t seen his nineteenth birthday would be able to deceive a man like Reed Ballinger.

  “There was a spaceman in Mexico City,” Andy said, “named Ruy Alvarez. He sent me there.” “Why’d you go to Alvarez?”

  “An Indian told me to.”

  Ballinger’s eyes held his. “Why?”

  “You mean why did he tell me to, or why did I leave in the first place?”

  “Let’s start with you.”

  “Well, it was after you made a speech here, Captain. I … I guess I wasn’t ready to accept the inevitability of a war in space. I wanted to find out if there was another way. So I left.”

  “And did you find out?” Ballinger asked. “Is there another way?”

  “They think so in Norway.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I’m back, Captain,” Andy said. “I came back.” “Tell me about Norway.”

  “Well,” said Andy,” the first thing you ought to know is that Captain Gault is there.”

  “Gault?” Ballinger said blandly. “He is?”

  Andy let that pass. There was no doubt that Harry Gault had joined Project Nobel on Ballinger’s instructions. But there was still doubt as to whether Gault had found a way to leave Norway. If he did, and if he reported that Andy tried to stop him or that Andy was one of a dozen volunteers who’d been sent back to the Ballinger bases by Lambert Strayer… . Andy felt his heart pounding. If that happened, they were lost. “Yes, sir. I guess he had the same idea I had.”

  “But you don’t have it any longer?”

  “I came back,” Andy said again. Then he began to tell Captain Ballinger about Project Nobel. He spoke admiringly of Lambert Strayer but disdainfully of the “Nobel’s” peace plans, of the scores of scientists who had answered Strayer’s call and put together in the bleak tundra country above the Arctic Circle a capsule history of humanity’s achievements, of the naive hope that the Star Brain could be persuaded by a shipload of artifacts and ideas.

  “That’s what opened my eyes, Captain,” he said. “While I was here the hope of a peaceful return to space kept growing on me. There had to be a way other than war, I kept thinking. At the Academy they always taught us… .”

  “I know what they taught you at the Academy. I put in four years on Luna, too, Cadet.”

  “Anyway, Project Nobel convinced me that there wasn’t any other way. Don’t get the wrong idea, Captain. I was grateful for the chance to work with men like Dr. Seys and his colleagues, but… .” “Intellectual piddlers,” scoffed Ballinger.

  “… but now what we need is boldness, not brilliance; brawn, not brains. The ‘Nobel’ opened my eyes, Captain. That’s why 1 came back here.”

  Andy was surprised at how easily the lies came to his lips. But as the words poured glibly forth, one thought alone filled his brain: he had to convince Captain Ballinger. No matter what, he had to blast off with the fleet. He could almost picture the same scene taking place at the other spacefields, with Ballinger lieutenants playing Ballinger’s role.

  “Then, after you made up your mind you just walked out of Project Nobel?”

  “Not just me,” Andy said. “There were 1 think a dozen of us. We …1 guess you’d call it mutinied. We all decided to return to our original bases. We had to, because there was talk of more ex-Cadets deserting you every day, Captain, and we wanted to come back with the real story of Project Nobel. They mean well, Captain. You’ve got to understand that. But what does Earth’s history matter to the Star Brain? Every world has
its own history, and I guess every world’s people think themselves unique. But the Star Brain functions for the present and the future, not the past.”

  “Then you think your Dr. Seys and the others are fools?”

  “No, sir,” Andy said promptly, “I don’t. I think they’re very brave men. I just think they’re mistaken. I told you I was proud of the chance to work for them, and that still goes. At any other tune”—Andy shrugged—“I would have considered it an honor.”

  “But you think what we need now is incisive action and decisive leadership?”

  Andy nodded. “That’s about the size of it.”

  “And so you came back,” Ballinger said softly. Then all at once his voice was hard. “Give me one reason why I should trust you.”

  “I can’t make you trust me. All I want is a chance … with the fleet.”

  Captain Ballinger went to the window and gazed out at the floodlights and scurrying figures, the rumbling trucks and groaning winches. He said slowly:

  “We’ve advanced our schedule a full thirty-six hours, Cadet. I’ll be frank with you: we had to. We’re painfully shorthanded. We’ve posted guards around the clock, but our bases are too big, and if men want to leave they can leave. We’ve averaged it out. Every six hours we delay means another desertion. Already we’re operating at only three-quarter strength.” Ballinger sighed. “We leave inside of three hours. From here, from the other bases, the entire fleet is blasting off simultaneously. In three hours we’ll be back in space again.”

  Ballinger turned to the window again. His voice seemed far away as he went on, “Do you wonder why I bother to tell you this? If I accept you back in the fleet, that would be an act of monumental stupidity on my part, wouldn’t it?”

  Andy waited. Ballinger said finally:

  “But I’m going to. I’ve got to. We need every recruit we can get, Marlow. Even t^^coats. Even, to coin a word, re-turncoats. We’re undermanned. But just so we understand each other, Marlow: I don’t trust you. I won’t trust you until you prove to me I can. I’m going to take you aboard the ‘Goddard,’ my flagship. You were in training as an astrogator, weren’t you?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Then you’ll be in the astrogation room, under Lieutenant Odet who, as you may have noticed,” Ballinger said dryly, “has been doubling as a truckman.” His voice and his mood changed without warning. “If you make one wrong move, you’ll be put under arrest. Two, and you’ll find yourself going out the disposal chute without a spacesuit. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes,” Andy said softly.

  “Good. The quartermaster will issue you a fresh jumper. After that, return to your old barracks. We’ll be assembling soon. That’s all, Cadet. I’ll see you aboard the ‘Goddard’ … in deep space.”

  Andy came to attention, saluted smartly, executed an about-face, and left.

  They’d blast off in three hours, Reed Ballinger had told ^him, not just here in Mexico, but from all the secret spacefields scattered over the face of the Earth. And, with just three hours to go, how many of the Project Nobel volunteers would fail to reach their destinations in time?

  “Oh, no!” Turk cried. “It’s a mirage. Tell me I’m seeing things.”

  Stocky, pugnacious, but trying to smile and glower at the same time, he led the friendly assault on Andy. The ex-Cadets clustered excitedly around him seconds after he’d come through the door. In discordant concert, they hurled questions at him.

  Turk’s voice was loudest. “Where did you blow in from? I know,” he bellowed, pretending belligerence. “Here is one shrewd Cay-det. He waits off on the beach some place, like in Acapulco or Mazatlan, while we barely survive the training and spit-and-polish; he waits while we make like packmules to do the loading, and then he ups and walks in and says, quote: ‘Men, take me to space.’ ’’ Turk snorted and made a wry face.

  The others picked up his raillery, and Andy was grateful for it. He knew he couldn’t reveal his mission until they were spacebound. Whatever happened, he had to be aboard the “Goddard.” Only then would he try to discover which Cadets he could trust.

  Now, waiting in the dorm, he encouraged the joking and used it himself to parry serious questions. He had been east of the sun and west of the moon, had returned on a flying carpet, was Reed Ballinger’s secret weapon.

  After a while, when it became apparent that Andy wasn’t going to reveal anything he didn’t want to reveal, Turk said, “It took us a while, but we get the message. Top-secret stuff, huh?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Andy said.

  “You don’t say anything.”

  Andy shrugged, and then Turk was grinning at him and pounding him on the back and pumping his hand almost hard enough to dislocate his shoulder. “Okay, we wait,” he said resignedly, but he was still grinning from ear to ear. “I don’t care if you blew in from Ultima Thule, Andy. It’s good to have you back.”

  Soon Andy was no longer the center of attention. The ex-Cadets returned to their bunks and sat on them, or stretched out stiffly, hands clasped behind their heads. A few of them paced in the narrow aisle. Their faces were drawn and tense. Andy didn’t have to be told that they knew they’d be blasting off soon, in defiance of the Star Brain and the Monitor Satellites.

  Charlie Sands came over to him. He was a thin, small Cadet with reddish-blond hair and freckles. “Come outside with me a minute, Andy?” he asked.

  “Suits me.”

  They stood looking at the floodlit gantries.

  “Gets dark around here nights,” Charlie Sands observed.

  Andy said nothing.

  “Stays light all summer in Norway, doesn’t it?”

  “So I’ve heard,” Andy said.

  “So you’ve seen, firsthand.”

  “All right, so I’ve seen,” Andy said.

  “Captain Alvarez told me to expect someone. We’ve lost about fifteen Cadets since you were gone, but not all of them went to Norway. I was wondering who it would be. What do we do?”

  “You’ve been in touch with Alvarez?”

  “Constantly. Few times a week.”

  “I see.”

  “Listen, Marlow. Maybe you see and maybe you don’t. But just get this clear; you’re not the only one who didn’t want any part of an interstellar war. Stop playing it cagey with me, will you? Fifteen of you ran out on it, and that’s one way and I have nothing against it. But me, I’ve been on and off the base maybe twenty times, risking my neck each time, and risking it again to return. I’ve just got back from contacting Alvarez about the new blast-off time. So will you stop acting as if you can’t trust me?”

  ‘‘I’m sorry,” Andy said.

  “Okay. What do we do?”

  “We mutiny,” Andy said, and then he told Charlie Sands what Captain Strayer and Frank had said in the operations bunker.

  “Harry Gault’s the biggest problem to start with,” Andy explained after he’d outlined the mutiny plans. “If he shows up before blast-off… .”

  “He doesn’t have much time.”

  “I know, but if he does I’ll be exposed. If that happens, I’d like to know you’d take over for me. He doesn’t suspect you, does he?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “If we do get into space without Gault, the second problem is recruiting. Is there anybody you can trust, anybody you think is ready to come over to us?”

  Charlie Sands frowned. “Most of them took off, like you did. I can think of a few, your friend Ayoub, for one. He needs a little gentle prodding, I’d say, but we’ll be able to rely on him. We could… .”

  The public address amplifier on the outer wall of the dorm squawked and interrupted him. Andy recognized Captain Ballinger’s voice:

  “Attention, spacemen! Attention! Spacemen, board your ships. Board your ships and prepare for blastoff!”

  Andy barely had time to learn that both Charlie Sands and Turk would be aboard the “Goddard,” the largest ship in the fleet, when the dorm door ope
ned and two score Cadets burst out of it and sprinted across the tarmac toward their waiting ships.

  The next few moments were ones Andy had thought he’d never experience again. In the glare of floodlights he climbed the gantry steps behind Charlie Sands and heard once more the clanging tramp of spaceboots on metal. He boarded the “Goddard” from the gantry catwalk and was aware of that instant of disorientation which a spaceman never loses; what were now the starboard walls of the “Goddard” would, after blast-off, become the decks of the various compartments; what were the port walls, the ceilings. The pre-blast-off decks and ceilings would become the starboard and port bulkheads or walls.

  With the other ex-Cadets, Andy hurried aloft, scaling the grapple-ladders which would be removed after blast-off. The acceleration hammocks were temporary, too, to help cushion the enormous pressure of nine gravities. In the big hammock room, which would become dining deck after blast-off and burnout, Lieutenant Odet was checking Cadets off on a clipboard and assigning them to hammocks.

  “Marlow,” Andy said when he reached the Lieutenant.

  “You’re not listed,” Odet informed him.

  “Captain Ballinger assigned me to the ‘Goddard,’ sir.”

  Lieutenant Odet scrawled his name at the bottom of the last sheet on the clipboard and assigned Andy a spare hammock. He strapped in and listened to the other Cadets calling their names, watched them strapping in, saw the look of expectancy and awe on all their faces.

  Only moments were left now, Andy thought, excitement mounting in him. He heard the last ring of boots on the ladders, heard the metallic sound of bulkhead doors slamming, saw Lieutenant Odet approaching an empty hammock. In scant seconds, the firing crew in the operations bunker would send the “Goddard” and the other ships of the fleet hurtling into space.

  But first Andy heard boots ringing again, and Lieutenant Odet went back to his clipboard. Strapped in, Andy craned his neck to see the latecomer. All at once he felt a pulse beating in his throat.

  The man was Harry Gault.

  “We didn’t think you’d make it,” Lieutenant Odet said.

  “I’m here, Lieutenant. 1’m here.” Gault was grinning.