Space Station 1

by Frank Belknap Long

  He was standing by a visual reference mechanism which looked almost exactly like a black stovepipe spiraling up from the deck. There was a speaking tube in his hand, and he was talking into it. He seemed completely unaware that he was no longer alone.

  Had Corriston been less agitated he would have felt a little sorry for the officer who had admitted him. The officer had been so impressed by Corriston's gravity and the earnestness with which he had pleaded his case that he had stepped forward and opened the door without question, assuming, no doubt, that Clement would look up instantly and see Corriston standing just inside the doorway.

  Now the door had closed again, Clement hadn't looked up, and the officer was going to be in trouble. But Corriston had no time and very little inclination to worry about that. What Commander Clement was saying into the speaking tube had a far stronger claim on his attention.

  "It's the worst thing that could have happened," Clement was saying. "We can't just brazen it out. It's going to mean trouble, serious trouble. What's that? How should I know what happened? When you're carrying a certain kind of cargo a thousand things can go wrong. The ship went out of control, that's all. The first radio message didn't tell me anything. The captain was trying to cover up to save himself. He didn't even want me to know.

  "You bet it can happen again. We've got to be prepared for that, too. But right now—"

  Commander Clement saw Corriston then. His expression didn't change, but it seemed to Corriston that he paled slightly.

  "That's all for now," he said, and returned the speaking tube to its cradle.

  He looked steadily at Corriston for a moment. A glint of anger appeared in his eyes, and suddenly they were blazing.

  "What do you mean by coming in here unannounced, Lieutenant?" he demanded. "I gave strict orders that no one was to be admitted. If I didn't know you were suffering from severe space-shock...."

  "I'm sorry, sir," Corriston said quickly. "It's very urgent. I think I can convince you that I am not suffering from space-shock. I've found Miss Ramsey. She's been badly hurt and needs immediate medical attention."

  The Commander looked as if a man he had thought sane was standing before him with a gun in his hand. Not Corriston, but some other, more violent man. For a moment longer he remained rigid and then his hand went out and tightened on Corriston's arm.

  "By heaven, if you're lying to me!"

  "I would have no reason to lie, sir. It proves I'm not a space-shock case. But that's unimportant now. She's safe for the moment. No one can get to her. I bolted the door on the inside. Unless—"

  Corriston went pale. "No, there's no danger. I drew the ladder up and returned it to the Selector compartment. Then I threw the lock on the emergency door."

  "Start at the beginning," Clement said. "If she's in danger well get to her. Take it easy now, and tell me exactly what happened."

  Corriston went over it fast. He said nothing about the mask. Let Clement find that out for himself.

  Commander Clement walked to the door, threw it open and spoke to the executive officer who was stationed outside. The officer came into the control room.

  "Stay with Lieutenant Corriston until I get back," Clement said. "He's not to leave. He understands that."

  He turned back to Corriston. "I'm afraid you'll have to consider yourself still under guard, Lieutenant. I have only your word that you found Miss Ramsey. I believe you, but there are some regulations even I can't waive."

  "It's all right," Corriston said. "I won't attempt to leave. But please hurry, sir."

  Commander Clement hesitated, then said with a smile: "I knew about the guard you knocked out, Lieutenant. You're a very hot-headed young man. That's really a court-martial offense, but perhaps we can smooth it over if you're telling the truth now. You were in the position of a man imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit. If he can prove his innocence, the law is very lenient. He can escape and still get a full pardon, even a pardon with apologies. It's a different matter, of course if he kills a guard to escape. You didn't."

  Corriston was tempted to say, "I think perhaps I tried to, sir," but thought better of it. He'd ask Clement later why the guards who had been sent down into the Selector compartment had failed to find him. It wasn't important enough now to waste a second thought on, but just out of curiosity he would ask.

  He didn't have to. After Clement had departed the executive officer told him. "They made a pretty thorough search for you," he said. "Or so they claimed. But they had been drinking heavily—every one of them. Maintaining discipline can be a terrible headache at times. There's a lot of objectivity about the commander and he doesn't try to crack down too hard. He knows what it means to be out here for months with nothing to break the monotony. Hell, if we could send for our wives more often it wouldn't be so bad."

  Corriston's palms were cold. He stood very still, wondering how long it would take the commander to return with the news he wanted to hear.

  "The question is whether life is really worth living without a woman to talk to," the executive officer went on. "Just to lie relaxed and watch a pretty girl move slowly around a room. It does something for you."

  Corriston wished the man would keep quiet. Under ordinary circumstances he could have sympathized heartily. He couldn't now. There was only one girl he wanted to see walk around a room, and she might just as well have been at the opposite end of space.

  She wasn't walking around a room now. She was lying helplessly sprawled out, waiting for rescue to come. It had to come soon, it had to. The commander wouldn't just go down alone after her. He'd be accompanied by a half-dozen executive officers who would know exactly how to bundle her into a stretcher and carry her to the sick bay.

  But what if a killer just happened to be crouching in one of the corridors, waiting for the stretcher to pass? A killer with a poisoned barb....

  Corriston couldn't stand still. He walked back and forth across the control room while the executive officer continued to talk. He paid no heed at all.

  Corriston heard a footfall as he paced. He turned and saw that Commander Clement had returned. He was standing in the doorway with a strange look on his face.

  Corriston felt bewildered, unable to quite believe that Clement was really back. It was like a dream that had suddenly turned real, a looking glass reversal with a strange quality of distortion about it.

  It was real enough. Clement entered and shut the door behind him, very firmly and carefully, as if he wanted to make sure that Corriston would not attempt to escape.

  He walked slowly forward, looking at the executive officer as if Corriston had no place at all in his thoughts.

  "Everything he told me was a lie," Clement said. "Everything. There was no girl. The compartment was locked; so was the emergency door leading down to the Selector. The ladder was standing against the wall in the Selector compartment. Miss Ramsey could not have been in the compartment—not at any time. There was nothing to indicate it. She just wasn't there."

  Corriston moved toward him, his face white. "That's a lie and you know it. What have you done with her? You'd better tell me. You can have me court-martialed, but you can't stop me from talking. I can prove she was there. The grate—"

  "The grate? What are you talking about? There was no ripped-out grate. The grate was in place. I feel very sorry for you, Lieutenant. But I can't let sympathy stand in the way of my duty. In some respects you're very rational. You can think logically and clearly ... up to a point. But the shock weakness is there. It's very serious when you start having actual hallucinations."

  The executive officer had drawn his gun. He was holding it rather loosely in his hand now, triggered and ready for any dangerous or suspicious move on Corriston's part.

  There was nothing in Clement's gaze as he swung about to refute the dark mistrust that had come into the executive officer's eyes. He seemed intent only on bolstering that mistrust by driving even deeper nails into Corriston's coffin.

  "I'm afraid we'll have to cont
inue to regard Lieutenant Corriston as dangerously unstable," he said. "Keep your gun on him when you take him back to the Ward. Don't relax your vigilance for an instant."

  "I won't," the executive officer promised.

  "Good. You're not going to make any further trouble for us, are you, Lieutenant?"

  The question seemed to call for no answer and Corriston made none. He turned slowly and walked toward the door, despairingly aware that a man he had rather liked had fallen into step behind him and would shoot him dead if he so much as wavered.

  Just as he reached the door Clement spoke again, giving the executive officer final instructions. "He must not be permitted to leave his cell. Make sure of that, Simms. Post a permanent guard at the door. He must be kept under constant surveillance. If he's the self-destructive type, and I'm by no means sure he isn't, he may attempt to kill himself."

  9

  May attempt to kill himself. May attempt.... May attempt.... May attempt to kill himself. Corriston sat up on his cot, his mouth dry, his temples pounding.

  Had Clement implanted the suggestion in his mind deliberately, with infinite cruelty and cunning? Was Clement really hoping that he would commit suicide? If he took his own life Clement would stand to gain a great deal.

  But could Clement be that much of a scoundrel? Was he, in fact, a scoundrel at all?

  Corriston knew that he could not afford to succumb to panic. Only by staying calm, by trying to reason it out logically, could he hope to get anywhere. Not at the truth, perhaps, but anywhere at all.

  Start off with a supposition: The commander was everything that he pretended to be, an honest man with immense responsibilities which he could not delegate to anyone else. A forthright, hot-tempered, but completely sincere man. A little secretive, yes, but only because he took his responsibilities so seriously.

  Start off by assuming that Clement was that kind of a man. What would he stand to gain if Corriston killed himself? The removal of one responsibility, at the very least. It was bad for morale if an officer had hallucinations that vitally concerned the Station itself. But a hallucination about the wealthiest girl on Earth wasn't just run-of-the-mill. It could not only disturb every officer and enlisted man on the Station; it could have political repercussions on Earth.

  Clement was already in trouble because of the freighter. The chances were a Congressional Investigating Committee would be coming out. They'd be sure to hear about Corriston. His story would be all over the Station, on everyone's lips.

  If Corriston took his own life the commander would be spared all that. He'd have nothing to answer for. The entire affair could be hushed up. Or could it?

  Wait a minute, better give the whole problem another twirl. Even if the Commander was a completely honest man, he wouldn't stand to gain too much. He might even find himself in more serious trouble. And look at it in another way: It was hard to believe that a hallucination concerning Helen Ramsey could be much more than a gadfly irritation. If the full truth came out, Clement could clear himself of all blame. Would a man of integrity suggest that a fellow-officer take his own life solely to remove a gadfly irritation? Or any irritation, for that matter?

  It was inconceivable on the face of it. The first supposition was a contradiction in terms. It did not remain valid under close scrutiny and therefore it had to be rejected.

  Supposition number two: Clement was in all respects the exact opposite of an honest man. Clement had something dark and damaging to conceal, was in more serious trouble than he'd allowed anyone to suspect. Clement had some reason for not wanting the truth about Ramsey's daughter to come out.

  What would he stand to gain if Corriston took himself out of the world? Unfortunately there were wide areas where any kind of speculation had to penetrate an almost absolute vacuum to get anywhere at all.

  The situation on Mars? Was there some as yet undemonstratable link between Ramsey's uranium holdings and the Station itself? Was Clement involved with Ramsey in some way? And was Ramsey's daughter a vital link in the chain?

  Had the accident to the freighter put an additional strain on the chain, a strain so great that Clement had been forced to take immediate, drastic action to protect himself?

  Corriston tried to remember exactly what the Commander had said over the speaking tube. He had tried to listen intently, but he had been too agitated to make much sense out of the few brief sentences which he had overheard. Clement had been speaking in anger and not too coherently, and it had been a one-way conversation, with the replying voice completely silent, or, at the very least, inaudible. But one thing about the conversation had made a strong impression on him. Clement had not sounded like an honest man with nothing to conceal. On the contrary, he had sounded like a worried and guilty man.

  Corriston shut his eyes and relaxed for a moment on his cot. It was an uneasy, tormenting kind of relaxation, because another thought had occurred to him.

  What if Clement had not deliberately tried to plant a suicide suggestion in his mind at all? What if he had simply spoken with the malice of a not too kindly man appalled and enraged by a space-shock victim who had not only lied to him, but had given every evidence of being dangerously difficult to control.

  It certainly made sense. There was nothing in the cell which might have enabled Corriston to take his own life, even had he been so inclined. Would not Clement have taken care to introduce into the cell some convenient, readily available weapon—a steel file, perhaps or even a small spool of wire?

  A cold dream had begun to take possession of Corriston. Was it true then, could it possibly be true? Was he hallucinating? He had seen Helen Ramsey go into a ladies' lounge and disappear. He had seen her a second time, and she had worn a mask. The mask was so strange that it would have made four men out of five question their own sanity. But he had knelt beside her and lifted her into his arms. He had felt the pulse at her wrist. Well? If after that she had disappeared again, was it not more of a black mark against him than if he had failed to touch her at all?

  All hallucinations seem real to the insane. The realer they seem the more likely they are to be inescapably damning.

  Could a warped mind hope to escape from such a dilemma? Was there any possible way of making sure? No, not if he had actually cracked up. But supposing he hadn't. Suppose he had just passed for an instant over the borderline, as a result of strain, of abnormal circumstances, and was now completely rational again. In that case, proof would help. Proof could convince him that at least a part of what had happened had been real, that he had not been hallucinating continuously for days.

  If he could prove conclusively that he had not been hallucinating when he had climbed through the grate, Helen Ramsey's presence beyond the grate would be pretty well established. Even an insane man does not abandon all logic when he performs a complicated act. He is not likely to ascend a ten foot wall and climb through a grate in pursuit of a complete illusion.

  Oh, it could happen.... Possibly it had happened many times in hospitals for the incurably insane. But somehow he could not believe that it had happened in his case. Right at this moment he was certainly not in an abnormal state of mind. How could he be when he was able to think so logically and consistently?

  Being sane now, or at least having the firm conviction that he was sane, would enable him to retrace what had happened step by step. What he were to retrace it in reality ... until he came to the grate? If the grate had been ripped out, the torment and uncertainty in his mind would vanish. He would be free then to move against Clement, to unmask and expose him for the scoundrel he was.

  Free? The very thought was a mockery. He was free for twenty feet in either direction, free to shout and summon the guard. But beyond that....

  Corriston sat up straight. Free to summon the guard. Free to summon a man he had dropped to the floor with two quick, decisive and totally unexpected blows. But if he did summon the guard, what then? Could he be doubled up with cramps—the old prisoners' dodge? "Get me to a doctor. I think I'm
dying."

  Hell no, not that. It was mildewed even on the face of it. The guard wouldn't be that much of a fool. He'd whip out a gun, and slash downward with it at the first suspicious move on the part of a man he hated.

  Was there any other way? Perhaps there was ... a quite simple way. Why couldn't he simply ask the guard to step into the cell and request permission to talk to him? He would plead urgency, but do it very casually, arouse the man's curiosity without antagonizing him too much. No need to be crafty, await some unlikely opportunity, or anything of the sort.

  Simply overpower the man—straight off, without any fuss.

  It had happened before, but that very fact would make the guard contemptuous, more than ever convinced that the first time he hadn't really been taken by surprise at all. His pride would make him want to believe that. He was the kind of man who could rationalize a humiliating defeat and blot it completely from his memory.

  It not only worked, it worked better than he could have dared hope. When he spoke a few words through the door, the guard became instantly curious. He unlocked the cell and came in, his eyes narrowed in anger ... anger, but not suspicion. His gun remained on his hip as he walked up to Corriston and stood directly facing him, well within grappling range.

  "Well, what do you want to talk to me about?" he demanded. "Better make it brief. I'm not supposed to talk to you at all."

  "I'm sorry to hear that," Corriston said. "You've got no idea how depressing it is to be locked up in a narrow cell with absolutely no one to talk to."