He didn't delude himself that a one-man D-ship was a hammock, or that space was a tropical beach. But the sinecure element was there and the ships were solicitous cocoons, each with a climate designed precisely for the lone occupant.
That each pilot carried the prison's bars in his mind had taken Beirut a long time to understand. Out here aimed into the void beyond Capella Base, he could feel the bars where they had been dug into his psyche, cemented and welded there. He blamed the operators of Bu-psych and the deep-sleep hypnotic debriefing after each search trip. He told himself that Bu-psych did something to the helpless pilots then installed this compulsion they called the Push.
Some young pilots managed to escape it for a while - tougher psyches, probably, but sooner or later, Bu-psych got them all. It was a common compulsion that limited the time a D-ship pilot could stay out before he turned tail and fled for home.
'This time I'll break away,' Beirut told himself. He knew he was talking aloud, but he had his computer's vocoders turned off and his absent mumblings would be ignored.
The gas cloud of Grand Nuage loomed ahead of him, clearly defined on his instruments like a piece of torn fabric thrown across the stars. He'd come out of subspace dangerously close, but that was the gamble he'd taken.
Bingaling Benar, fellow pilot and sometime friend, had called him nuts when Beirut had said he was going to tackle the cloud.
'Didn't you do that once before?' Bingaling asked.
'I was going to once, but I changed my mind,' Beirut had said.
'You gotta slow down, practically crawl in there,' Bingaling had said. 'I stood it in eighty-one days, man. I had the push for real - couldn't take any more and I came home. Anyway, it's nothing but cloud all the way through.'
Bingaling's endless cloud was growing larger in the ship's instruments now. But the cloud enclosed a mass of space that could hide a thousand suns.
Eighty-one days, he thought.
'Eighty, ninety days, that's all anyone can take out there,' Bingaling had said. 'And I'm telling you, in that cloud it's worse. You get the push practically the minute you go in.'
Beirut had his ship down to a safe speed now, nosing into the first tenuous layers. There was no mystery about the cloud's composition, he reminded himself. It was hydrogen, but in a concentration that made swift flight suicidal.
'They got this theory,' Bingaling had said, 'that it's an embryo star like. One day it's just going to go fwoosh and compress down into one star mass.'
Beirut eased the controls. He could sense his ship around him like an extension of his own nerves. She was a pinnacle class for which he and his fellow pilots had a simple and obscene nickname - two hundred and fifty meters long, crowded from nose to tubes with the equipment for determining if a planet could support human life. In the sleep-freeze compartment directly behind him were the double-checks - two pairs of rhesus monkeys and ten pairs of white mice.
D-ship pilots contended they'd seeded more planets with rhesus monkeys and white mice than they had with humans.
Beirut switched to his stern instruments. One hour into the cloud and already the familiar stars behind him were beginning to fuzz off. He felt the first stirrings of unease; not the push ... but disquiet.
He crossed his arms, touching the question-mark insignia at his left shoulder. He could feel the ripe green film of corrosion on the brass threads. I should polish up, he thought. But he knew he wouldn't. He looked around him at the pilot compartment, seeing unracked food cannisters, a grease smear across the computer console, dirty fatigues wadded under a dolly seat.
It was a sloppy ship.
Beirut knew what was said about him and his fellow pilots back in the top echelons of the D-Service.
'Rogues make the best searchers.'
It was an axiom, but the rogues had their drawbacks. They flouted rules, sneered at protocol, ignored timetables, laughed at vector search plans ... and kept sloppy ships. And when they disappeared - as they often did - the Service could never be sure what had happened or where.
Except that the man had been prevented from returning ... because there was always the push.
Beirut shook his head. Every thought seemed to come back to the push. He didn't have it yet, he assured himself. Too soon. But the thought was there, aroused. It was the fault of that cloud.
He re-activated the rear scanners. The familiar stars were gone, swallowed in a blanket of nothingness. Angrily, he turned off the scanner switch.
I've got to keep busy, he thought.
For a time he set himself to composing and refining a new stanza for the endless D-ship ballad: 'I Left My Love On Lyra In The Hands Of Gentle Friends.' But his mind kept returning to the fact that the stanza might never be heard ... if his plans succeeded. He wondered then how many such stanzas had been composed never to be heard.
* * * *
The days went by with an ever-slowing, dragging monotony.
Eighty-one days, he reminded himself time and again. Bingaling turned back at eighty-one days.
By the seventy-ninth day he could see why. There was no doubt then that he was feeling the first ungentle suasions of the push. His mind kept searching for logical reasons.
You've done your best. No shame in turning back now. Bingaling's undoubtedly right - it's nothing but cloud all the way through. No stars in here ... no planets.
But he was certain what the Bu-psych people had done to him and this helped. He watched the forward scanners for the first sign of a glow. And this helped, too. He was still going some place.
The eighty-first day passed.
The eighty-second.
On the eighty-sixth day he began to see a triple glow ahead - like lights through fog; only the fog was black and otherwise empty.
By this time it was taking a conscious effort to keep his hands from straying toward the flip-flop controls that would turn the ship one hundred eighty degrees onto its return track.
Three lights in the emptiness.
Ninety-four days - two days longer than he'd ever withstood the push before - and his ship swam free of the cloud into open space with three stars lined out at a one o'clock angle ahead of him - a distant white-blue giant, a nearby orange dwarf and in the center ... a lovely golden sol-type to the fifth decimal of comparison.
Feverishly, Beirut activated his mass-anomaly scanners, probing space around the golden-yellow sun.
The push was terrible now, insisting that he turn around. But this was the final convincer for Beirut . If the thing Bu-psych had done to him insisted he go back now, right after discovering three new suns - then there could be only one answer to the question 'Why?' They didn't want a B-Service rogue settling down on his own world. The push was a built-in safeguard to make sure the scout returned.
Beirut forced himself to study his instruments.
Presently, the golden star gave up its secret - a single planet with a single moon. He punched for first approximation, watched the results stutter off the feedout tape: planetary mass .998421 of Earth norm ... rotation forty plus standard hours ... mean orbital distance 243 million kilometers ... perturbation nine degrees ... orbital variation thirty-eight plus.
Beirut sat bolt upright with surprise.
* * * *
Thirty-eight plus! A variation percentage in that range could only mean the mother star had another companion - and a big one. He searched space around the star.
Nothing.
Then he saw it.
At first he thought he'd spotted the drive flare of another ship - an alien. He swallowed, the push momentarily subdued, and did a quick mental review of the alien-space contact routine worked out by Earth's bigdomes and which, so far as anyone knew, had never been put to the test.
The flare grew until it resolved itself into the gaseous glow of another astronomical body circling the golden sun.
Again, Beirut bent to his instruments. My God, how the thing moved! More than forty kilometers per second. Tape began spewing from the feedout: Mass 32
1.64 ... rotation nine standard hours ... mean orbital distance 58 million kilometers ... perturbation blank (insufficient data) ...
Beirut shifted to the filtered visual scanners, watched the companion sweep across the face of its star and curve out of sight around the other side. The thing looked oddly familiar, but he knew he could never have seen it before. He wondered if he should activate the computer's vocoder system and talk to it through the speaker embedded in his neck, but the computer annoyed him with its obscene logic.
The astronomical data went into the banks, though, for the experts to whistle and marvel over later.
Beirut shifted his scanners back to the planet. Shadowline measurement gave it an atmosphere that reached fade-off at an altitude of about a hundred and twenty-five kilometers. The radiation index indicated a whopping tropical belt, almost sixty degrees.
With a shock of awareness, Beirut found his hands groping toward the flip-flop controls. He jerked back, trembling. If he once turned the ship over, he knew he wouldn't have the strength of purpose to bring her back around. The push had reached terrifying intensity.
Beirut forced his attention onto the landing problem, began feeding data into the computer for the shortest possible space-to-ground course. The computer offered a few objections 'for his own good,' but he insisted. Presently, a landing tape appeared and he fed it into the control console, strapped down, kicked the ship onto automatic and sat back perspiring. His hands held a death grip on the sides of his crash-pad.
The B-ship began to buck with the first skipping-flat entrance into the planet's atmosphere. The bucking stopped, returned, stopped - was repeated many times. The B-ship's cooling system whined. Hull plates creaked. Darkside, lightside, darkside - they repeated themselves in his viewer. The automatic equipment began reeling out atmospheric data: oxygen 23.9, nitrogen 74.8, argon 0.8, carbon dioxide 0.04 ... By the time it got into the trace elements, Beirut was gasping with the similarity to the atmosphere of Mother Earth.
The spectrum analyzer produced the datum that the atmosphere was essentially transparent from 3,000 angstroms to 6 X 104 angstroms. It was a confirmation and he ignored the instruments when they began producing hydromagnetic data and water vapor impingements. There was only one important fact here: he could breathe the stuff out there.
Instead of filling him with a sense of joyful discovery - as it might have thirty or forty days earlier - this turned on a new spasm of the push. He had to consciously restrain himself from clawing at the instrument panel.
Beirut's teeth began to chatter.
The viewer showed him an island appearing over the horizon. The B-ship swept over it. Beirut gasped at sight of an alabaster ring of tall buildings hugging the curve of a bay. Bots on the water resolved into sailboats as he neared. How oddly familiar it all looked.
Then he was past and headed for a mainland with a low range of hills - more buildings, roads, the patchwork of fenced lands. Then he was over a wide range of prairie with herds of moving animals on it.
Beirut's fingers curled into claws. His skin trembled.
The landing jets cut in and his seat reversed itself. The ship nosed up and the seat adjusted to the new attitude. There came a roaring as the ship lowered itself on its tail jets. The proximity cut-off killed all engines.
The B-ship settled with a slight jolt.
* * * *
Blue smoke and clouds of whirling ashes lifted past Beirut's scanners from the scorched landing circle. Orange flames swept through dry forage on his right, but the chemical automatics from the ship's nose sent a borate shower onto the fire and extinguished it. Beirut saw the backs of animals fleeing through the smoke haze beyond the fire. Amplification showed them to be four-legged, furred and with tiny flat heads. They ran like bouncing balls. A light band of fear cinched on Beirut's chest. This place was too earthlike. His teeth chattered with the unconscious demands of the push.
His instruments informed him they were picking up modulated radio signals - FM and AM. A light showing that the Probe-Test-Watch circuits were activated came alive. Computer response circuit telltales began flickering. Abruptly, the P-T-W bell rang, telling him: 'Something approaches!'
The viewer showed a self-propelled vehicle rolling over a low hill to the north supported by what appeared to be five monstrous pneumatic bladders. It headed directly toward the B-ship belching pale white smoke from a rear stack with the rhythm of steam power. External microphones picked up the confirming 'chuff-chuff-chuff' an' his computer announced that it was a double-action engine with sounds that indicated five opposed pairs of pistons.
A five-sided dun brown cab with dark blue-violet windows overhung the front of the thing.
In his fascination with the machine, Beirut almost forgot the wild urge pushing at him from within. The machine pulled up about fifty meters beyond the charred landing circle, extruded a muzzle that belched a puff of smoke at him. The external microphones picked up a loud explosion and the D-ship rocked on its extended tripods.
Beirut clutched the arms of his chair then sprang to the controls of the ship's automatic defenses, poised a hand over the disconnect switch.
The crawling device outside whirled away, headed east toward a herd of the bouncing animals.
Beirut punched the 'Warning-Only' button.
A giant gout of earth leaped up ahead of the crawler, brought it to a lurching halt at the brink of a smoking hole. Another gout of earth bounced skyward at the left of the machine; another at the right.
Beirut punched 'Standby' on the defense mechanisms, turned to assess the damage. Any new threat from the machine out there and the B-ship's formidable arsenal would blast it out of existence. That was always a step to be avoided, though, and he kept one eye on the screen showing the thing out there. It sat unmoving but still chuffing on the small patch of earth left by the three blast-shots from the ship.
* * * *
Less than ten seconds later, the computer out-chewed a strip of tape that said the ship's nose section had been blasted open, all proximity detectors destroyed. Beirut was down on this planet until he could make repairs.
Oddly, this eased the pressures of the push within him. It was still there and he could sense it, but the compulsive drive lay temporarily idle as though it, top, had a standby switch.
Beirut returned his attention to the crawler.
The damage had been done, and there was no helping it. A ship could land with its arsenal set on 'Destroy,' but deciding what needed destruction was a delicate proposition. Wise counsel said you let the other side get in a first shot if their technology appeared sufficiently primitive. Otherwise, you might make yourself decidedly unwelcome.
Who'd have thought they'd have a cannon and fire the thing without warning? he asked himself. And the reply stood there accusingly in his mind: You should've thought of it, stupid. Gunpowder and steam-power are almost always concurrent.
Well, I was too upset by the push, he thought. Besides, why'd they fire without warning?
* * * *
Again, the crawler's cab extruded the cannon muzzle and the cab started to turn to bring the weapon to bear on the ship. A warning blast sent earth cascading into the hole at the left of the crawler. The cab stopped turning.
'That's-a-baby,' Beirut said. 'Easy does it, fellows. Let's be friends.' He nicked a blue switch at the left side of his board. His external microphones damped out as a klaxon sent its bull roar toward the crawler. It was a special sound capable of intimidating almost any creature that heard it. The sound had an astonishing effect on the crawler. A hatch in the middle of the cab popped open and five creatures boiled out of it to stand on the deck of their machine.
Beirut keyed the microphone beside him into the central computer, raised amplification on his view of the five creatures from the machine. He began reading off his own reactions. The human assessment always helped the computer's sensors.
'Humanoid,' he said. 'Upright tubular bodies about a meter and a half tall with two legs encased
in some kind of boot. Sack-like garments belted at the waist. Each has five pouches dangling from the belt. Number five is significant here. Flesh color is pale blue-violet. Two arms; articulation - humanoid, but very long forearm. Wide hands with six fingers; looks like two opposable thumbs, one to each side of the hand. Heads - squarish, domed, covered with what appears to be a dark blue-violet beret. Eyes semi-stalked, yellow and just inside the front corners of the head. Those heads are very blocky. I suspect the eyes can be twisted to look behind without turning the head.'
The creatures began climbing down off their machine. Beirut went on with his description: 'Large mouth orifice centered beneath the eyes. There appears to be a chin articulation on a short hinge. Orifice lipless, ovoid, no apparent teeth ... correction: there's a dark line inside that may be the local equivalent. Separate small orifices below each eye stalk - possibly for breathing. One just turned its head. I see a slight indentation centered on the side of the head - purpose unknown. It doesn't appear to be an ear.'