Star Quest Page 6

  "If we ever locate suitable radioactive materials and can build up a processing system, it's at least conceivable that we might one day come up with some fuel cores."

  Tallullah smiled cynically. "As long as we're dreaming, Alonso, can you also come up with an S-link?"

  "That's not impossible, either," said Danny, and he caught Frederica's look of hopeful wonderment.

  "Come on, Danny," said Pike. "That thing's a high-speed molecular synthesizer. Probably a dozen different sciences and industries went into manufacturing it!"

  "I don't know," said Danny. "We have a lot of equipment and brains, and if we're going to be mining and processing radioactive ore, we'll have plenty of time. In the brain department, you know, there's Torky – I mean Torquato Verga. He's a top expert on that kind of gear."

  "That's very reassuring to know," said Tallullah. She turned to Lyshenko. "Maybe you do need that committee, Alex. We're getting somewhere already."

  "I'm listening, and it's some of the most hopeful horse sense I've heard around here for months. This kind of thinking should be our policy from here on in."

  "Now what about the second leg of the staff meeting?" Cyrus said. "Isn't taking a vote a mere formality?"

  "I wonder how much voting we're going to be doing on our bright new world," interjected Pike sarcastically. "If we're going to survive and get things done, we'll need something more effective than your muddled-up People's Congress and a lot of other paper-mill idiocy."

  Frederica's tawny eyes blazed at him. "What would you suggest, Adolf?"

  "That's enough!" snapped Lyshenko. "The vote on a landing is a formality by law. But speaking of formalities." He turned to Bates. "P.Q., take an entry."

  As Philo nervously picked up the transcorder, he continued while keeping a baleful eye on all present. "Notation on mode-one riot provisions. In case of crisis call, per paragraph eight forty-seven and emergency override, item sub-ten, First Officer Major Adophus Pike will have direct command of all security."

  Pike struggled to prevent his smug expression from being a sneer of triumph as he glared at Frederica. Danny knew what it meant, if she didn't. In case of a riot of any nature, it threw in the works, including the roborgs.

  Lyshenko said, "That's a backup for what I said in the staff meeting. This isn't a country club, and it isn't an asylum. When I make the landing decision announcement, there will be no allowances for any so-called psycho-phasing!"

  Before Tallullah or Alonso could stop her, Frederica pushed her chair back and stood up, stiff-necked and rapier straight again. "If you will excuse me!"

  She started to leave, but stopped when the Major called out to her. "But what about the Forum, Freddie? Are you dropping your complaints?"

  "That's an excellent idea," said Lyshenko emphatically. "We have other things–"

  "Why don't you beat up a few more wounded civilians, Major?" Frederica retorted. "Just to inaugurate your new order?"

  Pike smiled viciously. "Only the yellow-bellies who can stand around and let a companion die."

  "Hey, Dolph!" Danny couldn't hold it back. "Do you mean, like viewing the stars in an open manlock?"

  There was silence. It was a deliberate reference to Pike's frozen moment eighteen months before when Ernst Hahnemann had drifted away in a ruptured spacesuit and needlessly died. Frederica glanced quickly at Danny, searching his eyes as though for a very cryptic meaning. Then she turned and left the room.

  "I think that does it for now," declared Lyshenko pointedly. "This meeting is adjourned!"

  * * * *

  A few minutes later, Danny was on his way back to sick bay, wondering when he could get released to return to duty. He had taken a shortcut down a maintenance access ladder to a deserted meter room on deck D when it happened. He heard someone behind him but didn't turn quickly enough. Pike's heavy fist landed on his jaw and sent a burst of colors spraying through the momentary darkness in his head. He felt razors of pain in his chest and shoulder as he rolled over on the deck and struggled to rise.

  "That'll teach you to go over my head again, buddy!" shouted Adolf the Pike.

  Danny saw the tall brawny figure looming over him in a kind of hazy silhouette. He shook his head and slowly got up, gingerly rubbing his jaw.

  "That's off-the-cuff, Danny Boy. You have a smart lip. Now keep it buttoned!"

  He could see the long-jawed, leathery face and brooding dark eyes of the man before him. Off-the-cuff was spaceman patois for a silent agreement. The silence part was as much of a sacrament as paying a poker debt. Danny shrugged and grinned sheepishly, starting to turn away. But in the next instant he swung his good right arm and felt his fist come close to the backbone by way of the Major's solar plexus. Up came his left to the chin, followed by the right again, almost in a single motion.

  Pike went sprawling back on the deck like a collapsing scaffold. Danny walked over and stood looking down at him, trying to seem casual in spite of the pain of his burns.

  "As long as we're playing buddy games," he said, "there's one off-the-cuff for Jerry. Now knock it off, will you?"

  Pike sprang to his feet as if to continue the fight but then reverted to a more subtle weapon. "Or was that maybe for hot Sachs Freddie?" he sneered through bloodied lips. "Just the smell of that Stone Age planet and you're getting your tiger skin ready, is that it? Back to the Id, and all that."

  Danny thought of several volumes of retort, each one of which led into subjects more abstruse and unanswerable. The old roles that people played were hollow phonies. "What am I supposed to do, Major," he retorted, "stand here and prove something, or kiss your ass?" He walked away and was not followed.

  Later, back in his quarters, he checked his jaw in the mirror and saw a dark blue lump where Pike's fist had struck him. As he looked at his reflection he paused to stare at a seeming stranger. The dark brown unruly mop of hair, the steady gray-blue eyes and the straight-lined face, and fairly generous mouth were all familiar enough, yet it seemed that he was glimpsing himself for the first time. Why? Was this the double-think again? Was he seeing things intuitively that he hadn't seen before? He also thought he was beginning to understand Pike's brooding, defensive-aggressiveness. Perhaps it was a shield of some kind. Maybe he felt responsible for Hahnemann's death. It had probably weighed heavily on his conscience ever since. Pike and Jerry Fontaine could be sharing the same bed of nails. He realized that he was suddenly looking at himself and others as persons. But the unanswered question was, instead of what?

  Packaged people. The Mad Monk had said they were zippered up and turned off, the cyborg armies of the blind. "Until we know what we don't know," the holy man had said. Danny swore aloud and turned away. Was he psycho-phasing into the flips? He wasn't sure what was happening inside himself, and if that was the case, then what would happen to the lunatic fringe of real flippies when the final announcement came that they were faced with a forced landing?

  No wonder Freddie was graphing curves, and they weren't the kind that went with leotards and picture-collar jumpers.

  CHAPTER VI

  Minutes after the landing decision, tab tech Eddie Ingraham deliberately walked out a manlock in his shorts. Promising signs of a possible life-support environment were still no garden of roses. If the fourth planet of the alien system didn't offer a foothold for survival, it would indeed be Boozie's end of the line. There had been a sudden flurry of religious turnings, but sporadic prayers had been cut off by the curt countdown warning.

  The great star ship thundered and trembled under the new retro-thrust of the multiple engine clusters. Danny lay in his inertial rack and knew that more than the bulkheads were shaking. This was the real commitment. The inevitable that everybody had secretly known for over a year was out in the open now.

  His awakening double-think told him that the world manifesto package was slowly ripping at the seams. The astral cord to Mother had been snipped by the Barrier Wall. There was no planned ideology for the advent of unplanned people, no more than
there had been for the Earth dreams except to let them die. A metamorphosis was happening to their exported communal structure.

  He had seen it in everyone's faces and attitudes. There was Freddie when her shield was down in that one split second revealing her undefined fear, and Boozie and his growing spaces of silence and blue-eyed contemplation. There was also poor Jerry and his searching, confused dejection, and stubble-haired Homer Fox and his unwonted nervous pallor, not to mention Fitz and his disgruntled absence of shallow satire, or Adolphus Pike, sullenly building his battlements. For what?

  Was this, too, an awakening new-old instinct, a dark wisdom of nature like the lemming syndrome? A life-support environment was one thing, but what was the biophysical feasibility of survival when human nature lost its crutches? He lay there tensely and recalled his own reflection of a stranger in the mirror. What the hell was happening?

  After the third retro-phase and the actual turnaround, the lasers were fired up again and the Sirius III was finally on course for its new home or its grave. The alien solar system lay a hundred million miles ahead. It would be two months yet before the ship would begin its maneuvers for an orbital entry. The bald fact of having a definite short-range goal, good or bad, seemed to have a settling influence on the majority, although an unpredictable restlessness was discernable among the minority. In the broadest analysis it was, as the Duke expressed it, "an emotional detente, a period of unique readjustment. We may have to make a total transition in our sense of values."

  "Translated," said Fitz to his peers, "that means the end is going to justify the means."

  There were apparently various levels to the readjustment or grouping patterns, as Freddie called them, ranging from the official and communal to the individual and secretive. There were isolationists who secluded themselves in their quarters, or elsewhere, refusing to talk to anyone.

  On the immaculate bridge, for example, there was an atmosphere of unchanged order and purpose. As the Skipper had emphasized, the star ship was still an extension of World Authority under law, and Lyshenko carried on exactly to the letter of his word. P. Q. Bates was still making his punctual entries into the sacred log; the deck watches were still logging their instrument readings and daily navigational data. Also, Flight Command still worked in precise coordination with Project, cooperating as necessary with Alonso and with Poyntner's astrophysical lab and the observatory. The only slight change was that Boozie had taken over some of Fritters's work in telemetry. His electronic genius was being called upon to see if their photographic probe could be brought back to life in time. By now the instrumentation package was approaching its planned orbit around the fourth planet. It was vitally important to activate the probe if possible and get some close-range pictures.

  In the mess hall and rec rooms were the communal groups and their two main topics of discussion: the colony potentials and the question of religion. So far, then, the bridge and the labs were providing for the government arm of the survival colony. The communal groups were working out the elements of community and the church. Down in steerage, in the power and machinery rooms, and maintenance areas and locker rooms, the talk was also drifting into the expected channels of survival, wild imagination, and sex. Although the latter subject was subdued and strictly under cover, it was no secret among the crew that a big question was rising: to hell with the Pits. What about the Lily and hot Sachs Freddie? A comment by machinist Burt Henshaw took the wraps off.

  "Hell, if we don't find any native poontang, I'd even settle for the Big M!"

  In spite of Tallullah's formidable professional posture, some had noted in her a human side that was in a way pathetic. In physiological age she had been labeled by Boozie as a caught-between. She was over her prime but not too old to dream. She obviously was proud of her figure and sought to preserve herself with her diets and regular health baths under her private sunlamps. By accident Danny knew the Big M was still a contender in the mating department. He had entered her quarters once in response to her request for a favor to pick up some projection slides. Although she was scheduled for lab work at the time, he had found her naked under the lamps. She was startled but graciously self-possessed enough to apologize. He had often secretly grinned about Tallullah and her buxom splendor, but now as they approached a survival world it was more grim than funny. The devil's mark was on the wall. What about the women?

  Aside from such locker-room pundits as Henshaw, there were also emotional borderliners like Foxy, sometimes pitiably reduced to a state of neurotic anxiety. And there was old "Crotchy" Whitehead who was preaching fanaticisms. "There is only one preparation for us now, my son. We must seek our salvation under God!" His watery old eyeballs were as pinned back as Foxy's and as lost in the fog.

  On the lofty upper decks was ordered structure and reasoned purpose, Danny thought. But was it all a hollow phoney with everybody really knowing the mess they were heading into? Sometimes it was almost reassuring to come across a towering roborg on sentry duty.

  * * * *

  There came a day when Tallullah Marsh had a tea party, but no one needed to read tea leaves to perceive the auguries of things to come. She was on the Colonial Charter team and her little gathering had actually been staged in the interests of some shrewd and delicate groundwork. The small group had assembled on the observation deck where the lounges and coffee tables came closest to the requirements of a social drawing room. With the steel safety shutters hermetically closed over the double-paned viewing panels, they could forget the immensities of the unknown starry void around them and almost pretend they were back on Earth. The one item of luxury was the tea itself, since water was now on a tightly controlled rationing system. It was a tribute to the Big M's clout with the Top Deck.

  Seated next to her was one of the featured guests, Dr. Wilfred Odell of the Cultural Sciences group which Tallullah headed. It was Odell who had struck an optimistic note for the gathering.

  "With any potential at all for mining and processing nuclear materials, we should be able to think of the colony as only an interim expedient. Someday we might be able to return to Earth."

  "Particularly," said Tallullah, "since Captain Troy tells us we have an expert on board who might be able to build another S-link. What did you say his name was, Danny?"

  "Torky – Torquato Verga. Given time, maybe."

  "There's another possibility," said Jerry Fontaine who sat pensively beside Lalille.

  His head was no longer bandaged, and with his wavy beard neatly trimmed he looked presentable or even simpatico, Danny noted, in an elfin sort of way, considering his primeval long blond hair and overly generous ears. His wide, soft brown eyes were somehow fawnlike, giving the appearance of always looking somewhere just beyond reality.

  "Communication," he said, after a cautious pause.

  Danny exchanged glances with Fitz, whose big Irish face tensed.

  "What do you mean, communication?" Gogarty asked.

  Then the secret came out. Frans Mabuse and Jerry Fontaine had been discussing a new theory of interstellar communication, one that might bypass the barriers of the space-time continuum and work on an instantaneous basis.

  "Of course," he smiled almost apologetically, "it's just a wild idea at present."

  Tallullah studied him intently with her sharp gray eyes.

  "Have you reported this to Project or Flight Command?" Her tone was slightly officious, yet her mannerism toward Jerry was strangely protective, almost proprietary.

  Jerry waved his hands defensively. He avoided her eyes, having lately developed a shy uneasiness in her presence. "No, I, ah, maybe I shouldn't have mentioned it at all. Frans is the expert on it, anyway."

  "But it would be a boon to Earth. Even if we should never return, we could transmit our findings." This comment was from a dark-haired man with the lean and hungry look of a political prelate, which he was in a way. Dr. Auguste Saussure was the Project's expert in comparative theology and primitive religions. He was formerly a bishop in
the World Church Ecumenical Congress.

  "Perhaps someday other ships would be able to locate us, wouldn't you say?" Tallullah had a peculiar habit of tacking questions onto her conjectures.

  Since Mabuse wasn't present and Jerry preferred to forget the subject the tea party drifted back to colony talk. The three women of the star ship company exerted a subtle influence on the overall perspectives of future planning. Just the primordial element of womanhood lent a protective and "rootsy" aspect to the subject of colony building. In this respect, Frederica and Lalille were seemingly self-conscious, showing a tendency to orient themselves to Tallullah whose bosomy, matriarchal presence offered a kind of mother-hen protection.

  When getting into religion, Tallullah chuckled as if to conceal a hint of queasiness. "Don't misunderstand me. I'm neither a fundamentalist nor a New World religionist. Historically speaking, in such social structures as you have in the traditional community the church has always been a sort of central hub of the wheel. From the standpoint of the ethical focus, there you have your whole simplistic structure of basic values."

  Danny looked askance at Fitz and Jerry. Maybe Mother Marsh was mentally building a convent for her girls? This might explain why he and Fitz and Jerry had been invited to the tea. Perhaps Tallullah regarded them as representative young blades who would be most likely to defend the honor of the two (or three?) nubile women of the future camp, or at least be eligible preferences should all else fail. Here was that "total transition in our sense of values" Alonso had mentioned. Adolf wasn't the only one at work on the battlements.

  This opened up a genteel-sounding discussion of the kind of religious structure the colony might have, and Dr. Saussure was pleased to lead this part of the conversation. He was interrupted, however, by the late arrival of the swami.

  Holy Sam had been invited, no doubt on Lalille's insistence, but he had been delayed. When he came into the observation lounge, his swarthy East Indian features seemed to be shadowed by concern. His deep brown eyes darted a signal of urgency to Danny when he sat down.