Sci Fiction Classics Volume 4 (11 page)

Moving with the jerkiness of a slightly uncoordinated robot, Burman pawed
a small box fronted with dials, switches, and colored lights. It looked
like a radio ham's idea of a fruit machine. He knocked down a couple of
switches. The lights came on, played around in intriguing combinations.

"This is it, sir," he informed with difficulty.

"Ah!" Cassidy left his chair and moved across for a closer look. "I don't
recall having seen this item before. But there are so many different
models of the same things. Is it still operating efficiently?"

"Yes, sir."

"It's one of the most useful things in the ship," contributed McNaught,
for good measure.

"What does it
do?
" inquired Cassidy, inviting Burman to cast a
pearl of wisdom before him.

Burman paled.

Hastily, McNaught said, "A full explanation would be rather involved and
technical but, to put it as simply as possible, it enables us to strike a
balance between opposing gravitational fields. Variations in lights
indicate the extent and degree of unbalance at any given time."

"It's a clever idea," added Burman, made suddenly reckless by this news,
"based on Finagle's Constant."

"I see," said Cassidy, not seeing at all. He resumed his seat, ticked the
offog and carried on. "Z44.
Switchboard, automatic, forty-line intercom, one of."

"Here it is, sir."

Cassidy glanced at it, returned his gaze to the sheet. The others used his
momentary distraction to mop perspiration from their foreheads.

Victory had been gained.

All was well.

For the third time, hah!

Rear Admiral Vane W. Cassidy departed pleased and complimentary. Within
one hour the crew bolted to town. McNaught took turns with Gregory at
enjoying the gay lights. For the next five days all was peace and
pleasure.

On the sixth day, Burman brought in a signal, dumped it upon McNaught's
desk, and waited for the reaction. He had an air of gratification, the
pleasure of one whose virtue is about to be rewarded.

Terran Headquarters to
Bustler
. Return here immediately for
overhaul and refitting. Improved power plant to be installed. Feldman.
Navy Op. Command. Sirisec.

"Back to Terra," commented McNaught, happily. "And an overhaul will mean
at least one month's leave." He eyed Burman. "Tell all officers on duty to
go to town at once and order the crew aboard. The men will come running
when they know why."

"Yes, sir," said Burman, grinning.

Everyone was still grinning two weeks later when the Siriport had receded
far behind and Sol had grown to a vague speck in the sparkling mist of the
bow starfield. Eleven weeks still to go, but it was worth it. Back to
Terra. Hurrah!

In the captain's cabin, the grins abruptly vanished one evening when
Burman suddenly developed the willies. He marched in, chewed his bottom
lip while waiting for McNaught to finish writing in the log.

Finally, McNaught pushed the book away, glanced up, frowned. "What's the
matter with you? Got a bellyache or something?"

"No, sir. I've been thinking."

"Does it hurt that much?"

"I've been thinking," persisted Burman in funereal tones. "We're going
back for overhaul. You know what that means? We'll walk off the ship and a
horde of experts will walk onto it." He stared tragically at the other.
"Experts, I said."

"Naturally they'll be experts," McNaught agreed. "Equipment cannot be
tested and brought up to scratch by a bunch of dopes."

"It will require more than a mere expert to bring the offog up to
scratch," Burman pointed out. "It'll need a genius.

McNaught rocked back, swapped expressions like changing masks. "Jumping
Judas! I'd forgotten all about that thing. When we get to Terra we won't
blind
those
boys with science."

"No, sir, we won't," endorsed Burman. He did not add "any more," but his
face shouted aloud, "You got me into this. You get me out of it." He
waited a time while McNaught did some intense thinking, then prompted,
"What do you suggest, sir?"

Slowly the satisfied smile returned to McNaught's features as he answered,
"Break up the contraption and feed it into the disintegrator."

"That doesn't solve the problem," said Burman. "We'll still be short an
offog."

"No, we won't. Because I'm going to signal its loss owing to the hazards
of space-service." He closed one eye in an emphatic wink. "We're in free
flight right now." He reached for a message-pad and scribbled on it while
Burman stood by vastly relieved.

Bustler
to Terran Headquarters. Item V1098,
Offog, one, came apart under gravitational stress while passing through
twin-sun field Hector Major-Minor. Material used as fuel. McNaught,
Commander.
Bustler
.

Burman took it to the radio room and beamed it Earthward. All was peace
and progress for another two days. The next time he went to the captain's
cabin he went running and worried.

"General call, sir," he announced breathlessly and thrust the message into
the other's hands.

Terran Headquarters for relay all sectors. Urgent and Important. All
ships grounded forthwith. Vessels in flight under official orders will
make for nearest spaceport pending further instructions. Welling. Alarm
and Rescue Command. Terra.

"Something's gone bust," commented McNaught, undisturbed. He traipsed to
the chart room, Burman following. Consulting the charts, he dialed the
intercom phone, got Pike in the bow and ordered, "There's a panic. All
ships grounded. We've got to make for Zaxtedport, about three days' run
away. Change course at once. Starboard seventeen degrees, declination
ten." Then he cut off, griped, "Bang goes that sweet month on Terra. I
never did like Zaxted, either. It stinks. The crew will feel murderous
about this, and I don't blame them."

"What d'you think has happened, sir?" asked Burman. He looked both uneasy
and annoyed.

"Heaven alone knows. The last general call was seven years ago when the
Starider
exploded halfway along the Mars run. They grounded every ship in existence
while they investigated the cause." He rubbed his chin, pondered, went on,
"And the call before that one was when the entire crew of the
Blowgun
went nuts. Whatever it is this time, you can bet it's serious."

"It wouldn't be the start of a space war?"

"Against whom?" McNaught made a gesture of contempt. "Nobody has the ships
with which to oppose us. No, it's something technical. We'll learn of it
eventually. They'll tell us before we reach Zaxted or soon afterward."

They did tell him. Within six hours. Burman rushed in with face full of
horror.

"What's eating you now?" demanded McNaught, staring at him.

"The offog," stuttered Burman. He made motions as though brushing off
invisible spiders.

"What of it?"

"It's a typographical error. In your copy it should read off. dog."

The commander stared owlishly.

"Off. dog?" echoed McNaught, making it sound like foul language.

"See for yourself." Dumping the signal on the desk, Burman bolted out,
left the door swinging. McNaught scowled after him, picked up the message.

Terran Headquarters to
Bustler
. Your report
V1098, ship's official dog Peaslake. Detail
fully circumstances and manner in which animal came apart under
gravitational stress. Cross-examine crew and signal all coincidental
symptoms experienced by them. Urgent and Important. Welling. Alarm and
Rescue Command. Terra.

In the privacy of his cabin McNaught commenced to eat his nails. Every now
and again he went a little cross-eyed as he examined them for nearness to
the flesh.

The End

© 1955, by Street & Smith Publications, copyright 1983 by Davis
Publications. Originally appeared in
Astounding Science Fiction.

Joan D. Vinge

SATURDAY, THE 7
^TH

I want to know why those pages were missing! How am I supposed to keep up
with my research if they leave out pages—?

(
Long sighing noise.
)

Listen to yourself, Emmylou: You're listening to the sound of fear. It was
an oversight, you know that. Nobody did it to you on purpose. Relax,
you're getting Fortnight Fever. Tomorrow you'll get the pages, and an
apology too, if Harvey Weems knows what's good for him.

But still, five whole pages; and the table of contents. How could you miss
five
pages? And the table of contents.

How do I know there hasn't been a coup? The Northwest's finally taken over
completely, and they're censoring the media—and like the Man without
a Country, everything they send me from now on is going to have holes cut
in it.

In
Science?

Or maybe Weems has decided to drive me insane—?

Oh, my God … it would be a short trip. Look at me. I don't have any
fingernails left.

(
"Arrwk. Hello, beautiful. Hello? Hello?"
)

("Ozymandias! Get out of my hair, you devil."
Laughter.
"Polly want
a cracker? Here … gently! That's a boy.")

It's beautiful when he flies. I never get tired of watching him, or
looking at him, even after twenty years. Twenty years … What did
the Psittacidae do, to win the right to wear a rainbow as their plumage?
Although the way we've hunted them for it, you could say it was a mixed
blessing. Like some other things.

Twenty years. How strange it sounds to hear those words, and know they're
true. There are gray hairs when I look in the mirror. Wrinkles starting.
And Weems is bald! Bald as an egg, and all squinty behind his spectacles.
How did we get that way, without noticing it? Time is both longer and
shorter than you think, and usually all at once.

Twelve days is a long time to wait for somebody to return your call.
Twenty years is a long time gone. But I feel somehow as though it was only
last week that I left home. I keep the circuits clean, going over them and
over them, showing those mental home movies until I could almost step
across, sometimes, into that other reality. But then I always look down,
and there's that tremendous abyss full of space and time, and I realize I
can't, again. You can't go home again.

Especially when you're almost one thousand astronomical units out in
space. Almost there, the first rung of the ladder. Next Thursday is the
day. Oh, that bottle of champagne that's been waiting for so long. Oh, the
parallax view! I have the equal of the best astronomical equipment in all
of near-Earth space at my command, and a view of the universe that no one
has ever had before; and using them has made me the only astrophysicist
ever to win a Ph.D. in deep space. Talk about your fieldwork.

Strange to think that if the Forward Observatory had massed less than its
thousand-plus tons, I would have been replaced by a machine. But because
the installation is so large, I, in my infinite human flexibility, even
with my infinite human appetite, become the most efficient legal tender.
And the farther out I get, the more important my own ability to judge what
happens, and respond to it, becomes. The first—and maybe the last—manned
interstellar probe, on a one-way journey into infinity … into a
universe unobscured by our own system's gases and dust … equipped
with eyes that see everything from gamma to ultra-long wavelengths, and
ears that listen to the music of the spheres.

And Emmylou Stewart, the captive audience. Adrift on a star … if
you hold with the idea that all the bits of inert junk drifting through
space, no matter how small, have star potential. Dark stars, with
brilliance in their secret hearts, only kept back from letting it shine by
Fate, which denied them the critical mass to reach their kindling point.

Speak of kindling: the laser beam just arrived to give me my daily boost,
moving me a little faster, so I'll reach a little deeper into the
universe. Blue sky at bedtime; I always was a night person. I'm sure they
didn't design the solar sail to filter light like the sky … but I'm
glad it happened to work out that way. Sky blue was always my passion—the
color, texture, fluid purity of it. This color isn't exactly right; but it
doesn't matter, because I can't remember how anymore. This sky is a
sun-catcher. A big blue parasol. But so was the original, from where I
used to stand. The sky is a blue parasol … did anyone ever say that
before, I wonder? If anyone knows, speak up—

Is anyone even listening? Will anyone ever be?

("Who cares, anyway? Come on, Ozzie—climb aboard. Let's drop down to
the observation porch while I do my meditation, and try to remember what
days were like.")

Weems, damn it, I want satisfaction!

SUNDAY, THE 8
^TH

That idiot. That intolerable moron—how could he do that to me? After
all this time, wouldn't you think he'd know me better than that? To keep
me waiting for twelve days, wondering and afraid: twelve days of all the
possible stupid paranoias I could weave with my idle hands and mind,
making myself miserable, asking for trouble—

And then giving it to me. God, he must be some kind of sadist. If I could
only reach him, and hurt him the way I've hurt these past hours—

Except that I know the news wasn't his fault, and that he didn't mean to
hurt me … and so I can't even ease my pain by projecting it onto
him.

I don't know what I would have done if his image hadn't been six days
stale when it got here. What would I have done, if he'd been in earshot
when I was listening; what would I have said? Maybe no more than I did
say.

What can you say, when you realize you've thrown your whole life away?

He sat there behind his faded blotter, twiddling his pen, picking up his
souvenir moon rocks and laying them down—looking for all the world
like a man with a time bomb in his desk drawer—and said, "Now don't
worry, Emmylou. There's no problem …" Went on saying it, one way or
another, for five minutes; until I was shouting, "What's
wrong,
damn it?"