“Do you know what the project is? I thought you didn’t know.”
Glaring up at the ceiling, Pearson said: “There are two ships ready. I mean real ships, ships capable of space travel. You know what I mean. Interplan, they call them. Stored down in Ordnance somewhere, ready to go. They’re kept on twenty-four-hour alert. Always ready. Always serviced and fueled.” He added: “They’re supposed to be the best. It’s my understanding that they work by automatic beam. Somebody, I forget who, told me once that a pilot station on Venus controls them as soon as they leave Earth. Maybe it isn’t Venus. Maybe it’s Mars.”
“Venus,” Cussick affirmed.
Pearson nodded as he sipped his drink. “You realize, of course, that this is an elaborate little game. Naturally, I know what this project is; I found out the first day. But for the record, I’m talking only about the two ships. They—you understand who I mean—will be divided into two groups, four in one, four in the other. So if one ship fails to arrive, there’ll be the other.”
“On Venus,” Cussick asked, “are there supplies? Some kind of installations?”
“Mountains of supplies. Miles of installations. All we have to do is get the eight of them there.”
Cussick got to his feet. “I’ll notify Rafferty.”
Pearson also rose. “My car’s outside; I’ll drive you to the field. Better yet, I’ll come along.”
Within half an hour they were setting down in San Francisco. Rafferty was asleep; Cussick roused him and delivered the message. Ordnance was notified. The transport Van was activated and the eight Venusians collected into it: seven adults and one baby still in its incubator. Frightened, bewildered, the mutants sat huddled together; timid persons, peering up, blinking rapidly, conversing in low, uncertain whispers.
“Good luck,” Rafferty told them.
Pearson and Cussick rode along with the Van to Ordnance. They supervised the loading of the ships, four mutants in each. The complex safety seals were melted in place and the ships uprighted. As Cussick and Pearson and Rafferty watched from the shadows at the edge of the field, the ships were simultaneously launched. In all, the whole thing took an hour and a half: Jones still had thirty minutes to wait.
“Feel like a drink?” Cussick asked Pearson and Rafferty.
The three of them got thoroughly drunk. In their grim stupor, time and space ceased to have meaning. The world blurred in a chaotic swirl of drifting phantoms, indistinct sounds, shifting colors and shafts of light. Sometime during the process, an event momentarily caught Cussick’s attention.
Four gray-uniformed men stood around them, examining their identification papers with brisk efficiency. Muddled, with a violent effort of will, he focused on them.
“What do you want?” he demanded. But they weren’t interested in him; it was Pearson they were grabbing hold of and carting off. Suddenly horrified, Cussick struggled furiously; in a frenzy he waded in and fought to save Pearson. One of the gray-uniformed figures shoved him down, and another stepped on his face.
Then they were gone. Cussick lay on the floor beside the inert shape of Rafferty, among overturned stools and broken glass. Gradually, reluctantly, the frigid gray of sanity crept back into his mind. Pearson had been arrested. Outside the bar boomed a growing cacophony of sounds: the roar of motors, shrieks, shouts, marching feet, exploding shells.
The remaining half hour had passed. Jones was in office. The day of the Crisis Government, the new world order, had begun.
15
IN THE CRAMPED, low-ceilinged shop cabin, a small figure sat hunched over a workbench; soldering gun gripped in both hands, he moodily pondered a tangled mass of electronic parts and wiring. Except for the hum of the gun’s coils the cabin was silent. Nothing stirred. The metal walls of the cabin were cold, smooth, impersonal. Storage compartments, stenciled with code numbers, covered every flat surface. No space had been wasted; the cabin was a square block of efficiency.
The transistors, relays, and heaps of wiring spread out on the bench formed the steering mechanism of a signal rocket. The signal rocket itself, six feet long and four inches in diameter, stood propped up in the corner, a thin metal skin minus its insides. Pasted on the wall behind the bench dangled greasy, crumpled schematics. Blue-white light flooded down from a flexible snake-lamp. Repair tools of every kind sparkled metallically.
“I can’t do it,” Louis said aloud, for his own benefit. Suddenly he began feverishly tearing wires loose and resoldering them in alternate combinations. For ten minutes, solder steamed and sizzled and activated the mechanism of the rocket. Tubes lit up; electricity moved through the circuit.
Nothing happened. In a flurry of activity, he again jerked leads loose, switched them at random, and resoldered them. Blowing and spitting on the cooling metal, poking at the smoking terminals, he watched anxiously as the circuit carried power one final time.
Still nothing.
He set the time switch for ninety seconds, the interval Dieter had computed. Tik-tok went the mechanism. Tik-tok, tik-tok, tik-tok, tik-tok until he couldn’t stand it; cutting down the interval to five seconds he waited in a controlled hysteria until the relays snapped shut, and the clicking ceased.
His wristwatch told him it was still a second off. In ninety seconds it would be eighteen seconds off. Or worse; maybe it would never trip. Maybe the signal rocket would shoot past the other ship, out into the darkness, without ever releasing its magnetic pick-up grapple. The hell with it. He didn’t know enough about electronics.
“I’m no good,” he said, speaking in general, meaning himself and not merely what he had done. Meaning himself and his whole life. In the small shop cabin his voice squeaked back at him, a thin and brittle sound . . . but a sound, nevertheless. Any sound was welcome.
“You—” he said to the tangled remains on the bench, expressing himself from the bottom of his soul. There was nobody around to hear, so he thought of a few more terms and uttered them aloud. It sounded odd to hear his little voice bleating out obscenities. He was surprised, almost shocked. Rage vanished, and shame took its place.
“Irma could fix it,” he said unhappily. And then he was overcome with fright. Pure, sheer, fright. Very quietly he closed his eyes and screamed. Like a man with something terrible caught in his throat, he sat stiffly at the workbench, fingers curled like talons, skin cold and clammy, tongue extended, shoulders hunched, mouth locked open, shrieking out the fear inside him.
And it wouldn’t help, because they wouldn’t hear him back on Earth anyhow. I’m out here, he was yelling. I’m trillions of miles out here, alone. There’s nothing around me; I’m falling by myself, and nobody knows or gives a damn. Help me! Take me back! I want to go home!
And all the time he realized it was infantile stupidity, because, in fact, he was not alone: Dieter and Vivian and the baby, Laura, were along with him, plus a titanic metal ship as long as four city blocks, weighing thousands of tons, crammed with a billion dollars worth of turbines, safety devices, supplies. So it was all nonsense.
Trembling, he reached out and touched the wall. By God, it seemed real enough. What more could he ask? Could it get any more real? What would it look like if it were more real? His thoughts went around and around, without a flywheel, spinning crazily, faster and faster.
He crossed to the door, yanked it absolutely shut, bolted it, peered through the crack, and was satisfied. He was locked in; even if he went completely berserk, it would be all right: nobody would see him, nobody would know, there was no harm he could do. He could wreck the whole shop cabin, and it wouldn’t make any difference. Not like running amuck outside, where he could get at the delicate automatic pilot.
The metal walls of the shop cabin had a bright, metallic quality. They looked like metalfoil, thin as paper, even thinner. A fragile metal hide between him and the emptiness. He could feel it out there; putting his hand against the wall, suffering incredibly but forcing himself, he stood actually touching the outside emptiness.
He could he
ar it. He could sense it, practically smell it. A cold musty smell, like moldy paper. A deserted trash heap blowing around at night; wind so faint that it was invisible, stirring so slightly that no motion was felt, only the sense of presence. It was always there, outside the ship. It never ceased.
Resentment took the place of fear. Why hadn’t they fixed up communication between the two ships? And why hadn’t they fixed up some sort of sound? There was no sound; the turbines were off—except for occasional shattering split seconds when side jets came on momentarily to correct the course. How did he know the ship was moving? He listened, but he heard nothing; he sniffed, he peered, he reached out his hand, but there wasn’t anything there. Only the metalfoil wall, seemingly thinner than paper, so fragile that he could tear it to shreds.
On and on he pondered. Around and around. And all the time the ship and its invisible companion were getting nearer to Venus.
In the other ship, Frank was in the communications room, bent over the receiver.
“In the first seventy-two hours of the Crisis Government,” the faint, static-laden voice of the Earth announcer stated, “there has already been a marked change in the people’s morale.”
Irma and Frank glanced at each other cynically.
“The previous apathy and futility that characterized life under the Fedgov system has vanished; the man in the street has a new zest, a new purpose in life. He now has confidence in his leaders; he knows that his leaders will act; he knows his leaders are not corrupted by intellectual paralysis.”
“What’s that mean?” Syd asked dryly.
“It means they act first and think second,” Irma said.
The voice raved on. In the corner, the tape recorder was taking it all down. The four people listened avidly, not wanting to miss a word, loathing everything the voice said.
“It’s so—silly,” Irma said. “So sort of stupid and trashy, like bad advertising. But they believe it; they take it seriously.”
“The wheels are rolling,” Garry stuttered. “Grinding it out. Swords sharpened cheap—hey, a new business. If we ever get back to Earth. Swords sharpened, armor polished, horses shod. Our slogan is: Everything in Medieval Equipment. If it’s medieval, we have it.”
Nobody was listening to him; the announcer had finished and the three adults were now sunk in gloomy thought.
“We’re lucky,” Frank said, after awhile. “If we were back there the People’s Crusade Against the Invading Horde would be after us. We’re not a horde, and we’re not invading, but otherwise we fit pretty well.”
“It’s a good thing somebody thought to send us away,” Syd observed. “Was it Rafferty’s idea? That whole business at the end was so confused . . . I’m still not sure what happened.”
“Rafferty was out there,” Garry asserted. “I saw him hurrying around. He yelled something in at us, but I couldn’t hear him.”
“Obviously,” Frank said, “they had all this set up; they didn’t build these ships that morning. Somebody—probably Rafferty—planned to get us off Earth. That much we can assume. The real problem is: what the hell lies at the other end?”
“Maybe they just wanted to get rid of us,” Irma said uneasily. “Sort of dump us out into space. A one-way trip.”
“But,” Syd pointed out, “if they just wanted to get rid of us, they could have done it years ago. Done it cheaply and easily, without going to all the trouble of building the Refuge, and these ships, all the equipment geared to our needs. It doesn’t make sense.”
“What’s Venus like?” Irma asked Garry. “You read books—you know everything.”
The boy flushed. “A barren waste. No air, no life.”
“Are you sure?” Frank demanded, unconvinced.
“Arid wastes. No water. Dry dust blowing around. Deserts.”
“You donkey,” Frank said, disgusted. “That’s Mars.”
“What’s the difference? Mars, Jupiter, Venus, Pluto . . . they’re all the same.”
“Are we going to live in a dome with the scout teams?” Syd wondered. “We can’t; we’ll have to have our own dome. A Refuge inside a Refuge.”
“They should have told us,” Garry complained.
“There wasn’t time,” Syd complained.
“Time, hell,” Frank retorted. “They’ve had thirty years to tell us. All my life, year after year, and not one word.”
“I’m sorry,” Irma said, “but I can’t see that it makes any difference. What’s there to tell? We know where we’re going. There’s nothing we can do about it; we can’t alter the course of the ships.”
“The trouble with us,” Syd said thoughtfully, “is that we’re used to having things decided for us. We’ve never really done anything on our own. We’re like children; we’ve never grown up.”
“Our womb,” Frank agreed. He indicated the ship. “And it’s still around us.”
“We let them think for us, make our plans. We just drift along, like now. We have no conception of responsibility.”
“What else can we do?” Garry demanded.
“Nothing.” Syd considered. “I wonder if it’ll ever end. I wonder if a time will come when we’re on our own, making our own plans.”
Nobody said anything; nobody could imagine what it would be like.
The passage between Earth and Venus took two hundred eighty hours and forty-five minutes. Toward the last stages, when the misty greenish orb had risen and filled up the sky, Frank sat alone in the communications room, hands clenched together, waiting.
The ship was no longer silent. All around him the floor and walls boomed with the din of braking jets. Automatic relays were responding to the planet; a spiraling course was being set that gradually lowered the ship toward the surface. In front of Frank, rows of lights lit up in shifting patterns: robot equipment was engaging itself in answer to the situation.
The audspeaker clicked, sizzled with static, and then spoke. “This is the service dome on Venus.” A human voice, loud and very close, not more than a few thousand miles away. “Who are you? Why are you landing? We don’t have any reports.” The voice sounded hopeful, but skeptical. “Please describe yourselves. Supply ship? Replacements? Troupe of dancers?”
Another voice asked: “You bringing us more equipment? We’re short as hell on food-processing machinery.”
“Books,” the first man said emphatically. “Christ, we’re dying. What’s all this stuff about Jones? Who the hell is Jones? Is all this on the level?”
“You have news?” the other man demanded eagerly. “Is it true they’re sending ships out past Sirius? Whole flocks of them?”
Frank sat helpless; there was nothing he could do to answer. The transmitter, like everything else, was robot-controlled. It was terrible to hear the pleading voices, very close by, and not be able to respond.
And then the response came. At first he couldn’t imagine where it originated. It boomed out deafeningly; the sound washed over his ears in shattering waves.
“This ship,” the voice thundered, “is robot-directed. Its passengers have no control over it. The ship and its companion are under the protection of Fedgov.”
It was Doctor Rafferty’s voice. The voice, taped and incorporated into the automatic equipment of the ship, was issuing from the bank of lights directly above his head. An old tape, prepared when there was still a Fedgov, when the term still meant something.
“This ship,” Rafferty explained, “will guide itself to the restricted installation in the N-area of the planet. The companion ship, also robot-controlled, will follow after an interval of one hour. It is requested that you give the passengers as much cooperation as possible, especially in the event that unforeseen difficulties occur.” He added: “This is a taped explanation by a legal representative of Fedgov. It will be repeated until the landing takes place.”
The weaker voices returned, full of astonishment. “It’s them!” one hollered thinly. “Get the ambulances over to N! They’re coming down on automatic!”
 
; Scrambling sounds, and the Venus transmitter clicked off. Now there was only static until, five minutes later, Rafferty’s statement thunderously repeated itself.
It continued, spaced by five-minute breaks, until the emergency jets screamed it aside, and the ship plunged into the thick lower bands of atmosphere that enclosed the planet.
Stumbling in his haste, Frank made his way out of the communications room, down the corridor to the lounge. The lounge was empty; the others had left it. Terrified, he raced around in a half-circle, yelling into the uproar. The ship was animate with sound, a screeching organic racket, as if every molecule had grown a mouth and was shrieking out its pain.
Garry appeared and grabbed hold of his arm; he was shouting, but nothing came out: only gestures and mouth-motions. Frank followed along; Garry led him to an interior chamber, a reinforced cell at the heart of the ship. Irma and Syd stood mutely together, eyes wide, skins pale with shock. The chamber was the miniature medical ward of the ship. They had retreated here instinctively, pulling as far into safety as possible.
Now the brake jets had cut off. Either the ship was out of fuel, or it was deliberately coasting. Frank wondered about the other ship; he thought about Louis and Vivian and Dieter and the baby. He wished they could be together, all eight of them. He wished—
The impact wiped out his thoughts. And for a long time, how long he never knew, there was simple nothingness; no world and no self, only empty nonexistence. Not even the awareness of pain.
The first sensation that returned was that of weight. He was lying in the corner, and his head was ringing. Clanging like a great church bell, and slowly wheeling around, his head drifted sickeningly. The chamber was a shambles, crumpled in as if some Behemoth had trod on it. At one point, the ceiling and the floor met. Pools of liquid, probably insulating fluid, poured from broken wall-pipes. Somewhere in the half-darkness a mechanical repair car was ludicrously fussing with a rent in the hull as large as a two-story house.