Dark Star (6 page)

Pinback leaned over and whispered again, a mite more urgently this time.

"The storage . . . what is it now, Pinback?"

He paused, listened to the whisper. "Oh. And because he is sitting next to Commander Powell's seat, Pinback is continually bothered by the faulty circuit. He is possessed of this unreasonable fear that his rear seat panel will be the next to short circuit.

I've pointed out to Sergeant Pinback that this attitude is both irrational and asinine, and he—"

"Is not," muttered Pinback from off-screen.

"—he persists in reminding me of it." Then the thought he had first been hunting for finally came to him. "Oh, yeah. Storage Area Nine, Subsection B self destructed last week following a circuit malfunction, thus destroying the ship's entire supply of toilet paper. I would request of the folks down at McMurdo that we be immediately resupplied with this important commodity. But am afraid, logistics being what they seem to be at Earth Base these days, that they would ship us the toilet paper in lieu of our desperately needed radiation shielding.

"As the two materials are not interchangeable in function, I am therefore delaying the request that we be resupplied with the former commodity, although," and he looked over at Pinback, "there are those among the crew who feel that in the long run, the toilet paper is the more vitally needed of the two."

He stared back up into the screen. "And if anyone ever reading this log finds the present situation amusing, I can only hope that they someday find themselves in a situation where they have to opt for radiation shielding over toilet paper. I think that's all."

He reached up and switched off the screen recorder, feeling pleased with himself. It was a good log entry, a substantial log entry. It would never get him promoted, of course, but it was sobering to think that someday what he had just recorded might be broadcast to reverent billions all over Earth.

The music was beginning to grate in its familiarity, both of sound and conjured-up image. He swiveled around to glance at the silent corporal. "Put something else on, Boiler. Something less descriptive. Something more . . . abstract."

Boiler mumbled something unintelligible, nudged the dial a fraction. Immediately, responsive electric guitars, drums, trumpets, and theremin filled the tiny control cabin, swamped it in an orgy of amplified rhythm.

Pinback and Boiler began to move in their seats, drawn together by their single, common point of interest—jumping, rocking, snapping their fingers, shaking in time to the music.

Doolittle tried to join them, to complete the triumvirate. He tried to force himself, but for all his will to subsume himself in the music, all that moved was his head, slightly. Inside, he wondered that he could respond to the music at all.

Something made him different from even Boiler and Pinback. Yet again, he wondered what it was that he was missing.

The music reached Talby over the open intercom. He frowned slightly until he identified the source of the interruption and turned it down. It would be unprofessional as well as potentially dangerous to switch the intercom off entirely. He hardly heard the music anyway.

That music.

T
HEY CONTINUED ON
that way through space—the
Dark Star
's drive engines eating up the light-years, each man occupied in his own thoughts. So no one monitored the detection instruments, no one saw the thing appear.

Talby was intent on the stars behind them, and his three fellow crewmembers concentrated on the music inside them. So they didn't see the initially faint, still incredibly distant luminosity that had appeared in the path of the ship. Didn't see the twister of free energy that danced and leaped and frolicked among a million-kilometer-long cluster of uneven fragments. Fragments of a long-dead world in a long-forgotten system, perhaps even a system set in a galaxy other than this one.

Some of these fragments carried a strong negative charge, others positive. Some were neutral, and some possessed electrical properties that would have driven an energy engineer to hysterics. Gigantic discharges of brilliantly colored energy played about the millions of solid components that formed the vortex.

It was the sixth member of the
Dark Star
's crew, the one immune both to astrophysical daydreaming and to electric rock mesmerism, who finally noticed the rapidly approaching threat. And it was this sixth member who cut off the music to the control room.

Pinback, Boiler, and Doolittle slowed, stopped their in-place dancing. At first Doolittle thought that it was just another of the seemingly endless series of mechanical malfunctions. A soft female voice corrected him moments later.

"Attention, attention, ship's computer calling all personnel. I have been required to disengage your recreational music. Repeat. Ship's computer to all personnel, this is an emergency override. All systems must stand by for emergency directive. Information for procedure will follow."

"What the hell?" muttered Doolittle.

Pinback looked over at him wide-eyed, questioning. Boiler just sat and muttered. "Better be something damned important to break into my music."

"Extrasolar concatenation of solid matter of uncertain properties is approaching at point nine-five light-speed on collision course. Predictions indicate that the body of matter is fairly dense, yet still spread too widely for us to avoid it without risking permanent structural damage to all noninorganic personnel on board."

"Why can't you call it an asteroid storm like I asked you to?" Doolittle complained.

"For the same reason," the computer voice shot back, a little peevishly, "that I cannot refer to you as Grand Admiral Doolittle of His Majesty's Terran Imperial Fleet Forces, Lieutenant. Both are nonscientific, inaccurate, imaginary references concocted by you while acting under the influence of juvenile literary material and—"

"Call it an asteroid storm," Doolittle warned, having totally forgotten that something important was about to happen, "or I'll see your primary circuit disconnected."

"You cannot do that, Lieutenant," said Pinback, shocked.

"You cannot do that, Lieutenant," confirmed the computer. "My primary circuit cannot be disengaged while outside of Earth Base's broadcast influence, and only under the direct supervision of . . ." There was a pause while hidden instruments monitored the lieutenant's internal configuration of the moment.

"However, I will take your current mental state into account. The . . .
asteroid storm
. . ."

"That's better," grinned a satisfied Doolittle.

". . . is approaching the ship on collision course."

"Doesn't mean a thing," Doolittle said smugly to the others. "We'll slip through even the densest storm without meeting anything bigger than a pebble, and our deflectors will handle any oddball-sized chunks."

"Very true, Lieutenant," the computer continued dryly. "However,
this
particular storm appears to be bound together by an electromagnetic energy vortex like the one we ran into two years ago. Is that sufficiently descriptive, Lieutenant Doolittle?"

But Doolittle had become momentarily speechless with shock, as had Pinback and Boiler. All remembered that first encounter, and what it had almost done to them.

"I see that it is," the computer went on. "Normally I wouldn't bother you boys with this problem, but as you recall, my defensive circuits controlling our prime external force screens were destroyed in that other storm. Therefore, you now have left approximately thirty—"

"Move," some voice was screaming inside Doolittle, "move, move," but he was frozen helpless in his seat, unable to reach for a single control, unable even to question the computer.

"— -five seconds left in which to manually activate all defensive systems. I would urge some speed at this point, gentlemen, as you now have only . . ."

Time, or rather the lack of it, finally shocked Doolittle into action. Pinback and Boiler came out of stasis a split second later.

"Lock gravity systems!" an urgent, nervous voice—his—was saying.

"Artificial gravity locked," came Pinback's efficient response. The three men were extensions of the ship now, each working at maximum capability.

"Activate HR-three," Doolittle continued.

"Activated." This from Boiler, as he smoothly checked gauges and adjusted controls.

"Lock air pressure."

"Air-pressure lock activated," responded Pinback.

"Four. All systems activated. All screens powered up," Doolittle told them.

"Roger . . . count four," agreed Pinback.

"Lock all defensive systems," finished Doolittle. "And pray," he added under his breath. He'd have to hope Boiler and Pinback picked up on that thought by themselves—he had no time to lead them in a formal service.

Another duty he had somehow lost track of over the months, years. He was also supposed to serve as ship's minister. Maybe he could get Talby to take that over

The
Dark Star
took on a pale red aura as the defensive screens came up to full readiness.

"Defensive systems locked in!" Pinback shouted as the chronometer ticked off the last seconds. Doolittle took a second to admire him. The sergeant would make a good officer some day if . . . if . . .

It seemed to Doolittle that there was some important, critical reason why Pinback would never be able to make a good officer someday, and it had nothing to do with his ability. It was something else, something more basic. It escaped him at the moment, but . . .

"Lock final force field," he instructed the others.

Again he felt the familiar tingle, the sensation of having his whole body fall lightly asleep, as the internal force field took hold. Not to protect them this time from a jump through hyperspace, but from any damage the storm might inflict.

Of course, if it was as severe as the last one of its kind they had ridden out, there was always the chance that the ship wouldn't survive in one piece. In that case the three men would remain in-field until the generating machinery broke down or was destroyed. If the machinery and engines remained intact, they would stay in the force field forever, unable to move, slowly aging away, helpless to repair the damaged circuitry.

The vortex was on the screen now, visible to the naked eye. It looked bigger than the first one Doolittle remembered. A writhing, spinning mass of energy, leaping from particle to solid particle in gigantic discharges.

Of the solid material itself nothing could be seen at such a distance. Instrumentation revealed it to be a typical mixture, from microscopic dust to occasional chunks larger than the
Dark Star
itself. Now and then one of the larger pieces of cosmic debris came close enough to impact on the ship's defensive screens and was gently jostled aside.

The danger was from the billions of volts of free energy playing haphazardly in free space, not from any loose hunk of rock, however impressive it might look on the screens. Doolittle winced every time the field light over the screen flared, indicating that the defensive screens were drawing energy.

Not everyone viewed the approaching storm with alarm. Up in the observation dome, Talby was ecstatic. The iridescent holocaust was overwhelmingly beautiful. The dazzling discharges of energy exploded across his field of vision in complex patterns of their own, only slightly distorted by the protective shielding of dome.

He'd swung his observation chair 180 degrees so that the storm was pouring directly at him and past. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion—an effect of the force field, which concurrent with protecting them also dropped body function time to the minimum necessary to support life.

In normal time the eruptions of color would have flowed past in a blur of unrecognizable shapes. But in the slowed-down universe of the force field, the colossal bolts took on definite shape and form, reduced them to visions his dazed mind could comprehend.

Magnificent, glorious, incomparable—the astronomer was drunk on the beauty. That it might at any moment shred the ship and himself like foil bothered him not a whit.

The load on the screens was tremendous, but they held . . . held while the storm passed over and around the enveloped
Dark Star
, held till it was safely past—almost.

A huge chunk of charged material drifted close in the rear of the storm. The
Dark Star
was the nearest body of comparable mass, and the bolt that leaped the distance between matter and ship was of truly prodigious size.

It penetrated the force screen and struck the ship lightly, almost caressingly, at the lowest point of the craft, just below the emergency airlock. Although the untiring screens still absorbed most of the blow, events followed which were not normal.

A tiny, insignificant portion of the energy that had impacted on the ship traveled through the outer, then inner walls, and reached a particular circuit. A particularly vital circuit. Several internal fluid-state controls were activated, and a sign appeared unexpectedly on the main screen in the computer room:

BOMB BAY SYSTEMS ACTIVATED

As the last of the storm passed the ship, the huge doors in its belly separated and a rectangular object moved smoothly downward. A large number 20 was inscribed on its side.

Within the computer itself, cross-references were rapidly checked, the cause of the malfunction traced, and results, if any, compared. The conclusion that something had happened which shouldn't have was quickly reached.

"Computer to bomb number twenty," the computer said, using human speech since it was impossible for numbers to be misinterpreted in verbal form. "Return to the bomb bay immediately." The last solid particles, final residue of the storm, bounced off the still-activated force field, extended now to encompass the bomb as well as the ship.

There was a pause, then the bomb objected mildly, "But I have received the operational signal. It came through normal channels and was processed accordingly.

Not expecting an argument, the central computer hesitated briefly. It finally decided on direct contradiction as the most effective—and safest—method of remonstration.