Between Planets

  A long dotted line curved from a point on Earth’s orbit to a rendezvous with Mars—their best estimate of the path and arrival date of the Federation task force. The departure date was all they knew with certainty; the trajectory itself and the arrival date were based on the relative positions of the two planets and what was believed to be the maximum performance of any Federation ship, assuming refueling in parking orbit around Earth.

  For a rocket ship some orbits are possible, some are impossible. A military ship in a hurry would not, of course, use the economical doubly-tangent ellipse; such a trip from Earth to Mars would require 258 Earth days. But, even using hyperboloids and wasting fuel, there are severe limits to how quickly a reaction-driven ship can make an interplanetary voyage.

  An Earth calendar hung beside the chart; near it was a clock showing Earth Greenwich time. Posted near these was a figure, changed each time the clock read twenty-four hundred, the number of days till M-day—by their best estimate, now only thirty-nine.

  Don was enjoying a combat soldier’s paradise—hot food sharp on the hour, well cooked and plenty of it, all the sack time he cared to soak up, clean clothes, clean skin, no duties and no hazards. The only trouble was that he soon grew to hate it.

  The intense activity around him shamed him into wanting to help—and try to help he did—until he found out that he was being given make-work to shut him up. Actually there was nothing he could do to help; the sweating specialists, trying their level best to haywire improbable circuits into working, had no time to waste on an untrained assistant. He gave up and went back to loafing, found that he could sleep all right in the afternoons but that the practice kept him awake at night.

  He wondered why he could not enjoy so pleasant a leave. It was not that he was worried about his parents—

  Yes, he was! Though they had grown dim in his memory his conscience was biting him that he was doing nothing helpful for them. That was why he wanted to get out, away from here where he could do no good, back to his outfit, back to his trade—back to where there was nothing to worry about between scrambles—and plenty to worry about then. With the blackness around you and the sound of your mate’s breathing on your right and the same for the man on your left—the slow move forward, trying to feel out what dirty tricks the Greenie techs had thought of this time to guard their sleep…the quick strike—and the pounding drive back to the boat with nothing to guide you through the dark but the supersonics in your head bones

  He wanted to go back.

  He went to see Phipps about it, sought him out in his office. “You, eh? Have a cigarette.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Real tobacco—none of your ‘crazy weed.’”

  “No, thanks, I don’t use ’em.”

  “Well, maybe you’ve got something. The way my mouth tastes these mornings—” Phipps lit up himself, sat back and waited.

  Don said, “Look—you’re the boss around here.”

  Phipps exhaled, then said carefully, “Let’s say I’m the co-ordinator. I certainly don’t try to boss the technical work.”

  Don brushed it aside. “You’re the boss for my purposes. See here, Mr. Phipps, I feel useless around here. Can you arrange to get me back to my outfit?”

  Phipps carefully made a smoke ring. “I’m sorry you feel that way. I could give you work to do. You could be an executive assistant to me.”

  Don shook his head. “I’ve had enough of ‘pick up sticks and lay them straight.’ I want real work—my own work. I’m a soldier and there’s a war going on—that’s where I belong. Now when can I get transportation?”

  “You can’t.”

  “Huh?”

  “Mr. Harvey, I can’t let you go; you know too much. If you had turned over the ring without asking questions, you could have gone back to your outfit the next hour—but you had to know, you had to know everything. Now we don’t dare risk your capture. You know the Greenies put every prisoner through full interrogation; we can’t dare risk that—not yet.”

  “But—Dog take it, sir, I’ll never be captured! I made up my mind about that a long time ago.”

  Phipps shrugged. “If you get yourself killed, that’s all right. But we can’t be sure of that, no matter how resolute you are. We can’t risk it; there’s too much at stake.”

  “You can’t hold me here! You have no authority over me!”

  “No. But you can’t leave.”

  Don opened his mouth, closed it, and walked out.

  He woke up the next morning determined to do something about it. But Dr. Conrad was up before he was and stopped to make a suggestion before he left. “Don?”

  “Yeah, Rog?”

  “If you can tear yourself out of that sack, you might come around to the power lab this morning. There will be something worth looking at—I think.”

  “Huh? What? What time?”

  “Oh, say about nine o’clock.”

  Don showed up, along with apparently every human in the place and about half of Sir Isaac’s numerous family. Roger Conrad was in charge of the demonstration. He was busy at a control console which told the uninstructed observer nothing. He busied himself with adjustments, looked up and said, “Just keep your eyes on the birdie, folks—right over that bench.” He pressed a key.

  There flicked into being over the bench, hanging in the air unsupported, a silvery ball some two feet across. It seemed to be a perfect sphere and a perfect reflector and, more than anything else in the world, it made Don think of a Christmas tree ornament. Conrad grinned triumphantly. “Okay, Tony—give it the ax!”

  Tony Vincente, the most muscular of the laboratory crew, picked up a broad-bladed ax he had ready. “How would you like it split—up and down, or sideways?”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Vincente swung the ax over his head and brought it down hard.

  It bounced off.

  The sphere did not quiver, nor was there any mar on its perfect mirror surface. Conrad’s boyish grin got even wider. “End of act one,” he announced and pressed another button. The sphere disappeared, left nothing to show where it had been.

  Conrad bent over his controls. “Act two,” he announced. “We now cancel out half the locus. Stand clear of the bench.” Shortly he looked up. “Ready! Aim! Fire!” Another shape took being, a perfect sphere otherwise like the last. Its curved outer surface was faced up. “Stick the props in, Tony.”

  “Just a sec, while I light up.” Vincente lit a cigarette, puffed it vigorously, then propped it in an ash tray and slid it under the half globe. Conrad again manipulated his controls; the shape descended, rested on the bench, covering the burning cigarette on its tray. “Anybody want to try the ax on it, or anything else?” asked Conrad.

  Nobody seemed anxious to tamper with the unknown. Conrad again operated his board and the silver bowl lifted. The cigarette still smoldered in the tray, unaffected. “How,” he asked, “would you like to put a lid like that over the Federation’s capital at Bermuda—and leave it in place until they decided to come to terms?”

  The idea quite evidently met with unanimous approval. The members of the Organization present were all, or almost all, citizens of Venus, emotionally involved in the rebellion no matter what else they were doing. Phipps cut through the excited comment with a question. “Dr. Conrad—would you give us a popular explanation of what we have seen? Why it works, I mean; we can guess at its enormous potentials.”

  Conrad’s face got very serious. “Mmm… Chief, perhaps it would be clearest to say that the fasarta modulates the garbab in such a phase relationship that the thrimaleen is forced to bast—or, to put it another way, somebody loosed mice in the washroom. Seriously, there is no popular way to explain it. If you were willing to spend five hard years with me, working up through the math, I could probably bring you to the same level of ignorance and confusion that I enjoy. Some of the tensor equations involved are, to put it mildly, unique. But the instructions were clear enough and we did it.”

  Phip
ps nodded. “Thanks—if that is the word I want. I’ll ask Sir Isaac.”

  “Do, please. I’d like to listen.”

  Despite the proof that the lab crew had been able to jury-rig at least part of the equipment described by the message in the two wires, Don’s jitters got no better. Each day the sign in the mess hall reminded him that time was running out—and that he was sucking his thumb while it did so. He thought no more about trying to get them to send him back to the war zone; instead he began to make plans to get there on his own.

  He had seen maps of the Great South Sea and knew roughly where he was. To the north there was territory uninhabited even by dragons—but not uninhabited by their carnivorous cousins. It was considered impassable. The way to the south around the lower end of the sea was much farther, but it was dragon country all the way right up to outlying human farms. With whistle speech and food enough to last at least a week he might get through to some settler who could pass him along to the next. As for the rest he had his knife and he had his wits and he was much more swampwise than he had been when he had made his escape from Bankfield’s men.

  He began to sneak food out of the mess hall and cache it in his room.

  He was within a day and a night of attempting his break when Phipps sent for him. He considered not showing up but decided that it would be less suspicion-arousing to comply.

  “Sit down,” Phipps began. “Cigarette? No—I forgot. What have you been doing with yourself lately? Keeping busy?”

  “Not a darn thing to do!”

  “Sorry. Mr. Harvey, have you given any thought to what sort of a world we will have when this is over?”

  “Well, no, not exactly.” He had thought about it, but his own imaginings were too poorly worked out for him to care to express them. As for himself, someday the war would be over—he supposed—and then he would carry out his long-postponed intention of seeking out his parents. After that, well—

  “What sort of world would you like it to be?”

  “Uh? Well, I don’t know.” Don pondered. “I guess I’m not what you call ‘politically minded.’ I don’t much care how they run it—except, well, there ought to be a sort of looseness about it. You know—a man ought to be able to do what he wants to, if he can, and not be pushed around.”

  Phipps nodded. “You and I have more in common than you may have thought. I’m not a purist in political theory myself. Any government that gets to be too big and too successful gets to be a nuisance. The Federation got that way—it started out decently enough—and now it has to be trimmed down to size. So that the citizens can enjoy some ‘looseness’.”

  Don said, “Maybe the dragons have the right idea—no organization bigger than a family.”

  Phipps shook his head. “What’s right for dragons is not right for us. Anyhow, families can be just as oppressive as government—take a look at the youngsters around here; five hundred years or so to look forward to before they can sneeze without permission. I asked your opinion because I don’t know the answer myself—and I’ve studied the dynamics of history longer than you’ve been alive. All I know is that we are about to turn loose into the world forces the outcome of which I cannot guess.”

  Don looked startled. “We’ve got space travel now; I don’t see what important difference it will make to make it faster. As for the other gimmick, it seems to me a swell idea to be able to put a lid on a city so that it can’t be atom-bombed.”

  “Granted. But that is just the beginning. I’ve been making a list of some of the things that will come about—I think. In the first place you vastly underestimate the importance of speeding up transportation. As for the other possibilities, I’m stumped. I’m too old and my imagination needs greasing. But here’s one for a starter: we might be able to move water, lots of water, significant amounts, from here to Mars.” His brow wrinkled. “We might even be able to move planets themselves.”

  Don looked up suddenly. Somewhere he had heard almost those same words…the memory evaded him.

  “But never mind,” Phipps went on. “I was just trying to get a younger, fresher viewpoint. You might think about it. Those laboratory laddies won’t, that’s sure. These physicists—they produce wonders but they never know what other wonders their wonders will beget.” He paused and added, “We are resetting the clock, but we don’t know what time it will be.”

  When he added nothing more Don decided with relief that the interview was over and started to get up. “No, no, don’t go,” Phipps put in. “I had another matter on my mind. You’ve been getting ready to leave, haven’t you?”

  Don stuttered and stammered. “What gave you that idea?”

  “I’m right. Some morning we would wake up and find your bed empty. Then I’d be put to a lot of trouble when effort can’t be spared to try to find you and bring you back.”

  Don relaxed. “Conrad snitched to you,” he said bitterly.

  “Conrad? No. I doubt if the good doctor ever notices anything larger than an electron. No, credit me with some sense. My business is people. True, I did badly with you when you first arrived—but I still plead that I was bone weary. Tiredness is a mild insanity. The point is: you’re leaving and I can’t stop you. I know dragons well enough to know that Sir Isaac wouldn’t let me if you wanted to go. You’re ‘his’ confounded ‘egg’! But I can’t let you go; the reasons are just as compelling as before. So—rather than let you go, I’d have to try to kill you.”

  Don leaned forward, shifting his weight onto his feet. “Do you think you could?” he said very softly.

  Phipps grinned. “No, I don’t. That’s why I’ve had to think up another scheme. You know that we are making up the ship’s crew. How would you like to go along?”

  XVIII

  Little David

  DON let his mouth drop open and left it that way. To his credit, while he had thought about it, he had never given it the slightest serious consideration; he was not conceited enough to think that he would be allowed to hitch a ride, just to suit his personal wishes, on this trip.

  Phipps went on, “Frankly, I’m doing it to get rid of you, to put you on ice, safe from the Federation’s inquisitors, until it no longer matters. But I think I can justify it. We want to train as many as the Little David can carry on this trip as cadres for more ships. But my choice is limited—most of our group here are too old, or they are near-sighted, narrow-chested young geniuses suitable only for laboratories. You are young, you are healthy, your reflexes are fast—I know!—and you are space-wise from babyhood. True, you are not a qualified shiphandler, but that won’t matter too much; these ships will be new to everyone. Mr. Harvey, how would you like to go to Mars and return as ‘Captain Harvey,’ master of your own ship—a ship strong enough to strike at these Federation vermin orbiting around Venus?

  “Or executive officer, at least,” Phipps qualified, reflecting that in a two-man ship Don could hardly be less.

  Like it? He’d love it! Don’s tongue got twisted trying to accept too quickly. Then almost at once he was struck by a cold thought; Phipps saw from his expression that something was wrong. “What’s the matter?” Phipps said sharply. “Are you afraid?”

  “Afraid?” Don looked annoyed. “Of course I’ll be afraid—I’ve been afraid so many times that I am no longer scared to be afraid again. That’s not the trouble.”

  “What is it, then? Speak up!”

  “It’s just this—I’m still on active duty. I can’t go gallivanting off a hundred million miles or so. Properly speaking, it would be desertion. Why, when they laid hands on me, they’d probably hang me first and ask questions afterwards.”

  Phipps relaxed. “Oh. Perhaps that can be managed. You let me worry about it.”

  It could be managed. It was only three days later that Don received new orders, written this time, and delivered by devious means that he could only guess at. They read:

  To: Harvey, Donald J., Sergeant-Specialist 1/c

  Via: Channels

  1. You are assigned
to special temporary duty of indefinite duration.

  2. You will travel as necessary to carry out this duty.

  3. This assignment is deemed in the best interests of the Republic. When, in your opinion, your duties are completed, you will report to the nearest competent authority and request transportation to enable you to report in person to the Chief of Staff.

  4. For the duration of this duty you are brevetted to the rank of sublieutenant.

  J. S. Busby, Wing Colonel (brevet)

  For the Commanding General

  First Endorsement:

  1. Delivered (via courier)

  Henry Marsten, Captain (brevet)

  Commanding 16th Gondola Combat Team

  Clipped to the orders was a scrawled note which read:

  P.S. Dear “Lieutenant,”

  These are the silliest orders I have ever had to endorse. What the devil have you been up to? Did you marry one of the dragons? Or did you catch a Big Brass with his finger off his number? Anyway, have fun—and good hunting!

  Marsten

  Don tucked the orders and the note into his pocket. Every now and then he would reach in and touch them.

  The days trickled away; the dotted line got ever closer to Mars: and the whole group got more and more jumpy. Another date was posted on the mess hall wall, a date by which the Little David must be ready—if they were to arrive in time.

  The calendar marked that deadline the day the ship was finally manned. At raise-ship-minus-twenty-minutes Don was still in Sir Isaac’s study, his baggage (such as it was) already aboard. Saying goodbye to Sir Isaac, he discovered, was rather more difficult than he had expected it to be. His head was not cluttered with ideas about “father images” and the like; he was simply aware that this dragon was all the family he had, much more so than that remote pair on the planet where he was headed.

  He was almost relieved when a glance at his watch told him that he was late. “Got to run,” he said. “Nineteen minutes.”