The Frank Belknap Long Science Fiction Novel Page 9

  The assembled Station was cone-shaped, and it had been a colossal undertaking to keep it from developing stress defects over a third of its bulk during the early constructional stages. Under the guidance of experts, the problem had been solved, but at a tragic price.

  Assembling the Station had cost the lives of fifty-three men, for there is no easy way to bring together, join, seal and make safe tons of metal and plastic, intricate machinery and equipment, plus a thousand-and-one small, incidental contrivances fifteen hundred miles above the emergency-alert systems and hospital facilities of Earth.

  Some of the men who had lost their lives had been blown out of transport rocket tubes by mistake. Some had missed their footing too close to a welding operation that had been halted too late. Some had floated into capsules full of nitric oxygen gas under high pressure and had failed to veer away in time. Still others had tugged too strenuously at heavy girders and the slow, but crushing inertia of an enormous, backward-swinging beam in free fall had ripped their space suits asunder and fractured their spines.

  There were five thousand ways of dying in space. But the sacrifice, the terror, the tragic toll seemed immeasurably remote now, for the roar of the incoming and outgoing ships made the Station a gigantic reality so completely in the present that it seemed to have no past.

  Spinning always on its axis, substituting centrifugal force for the gravity tug of Earth, the Station was a complete world, a self-contained macrocosm so immense that the magnetic-shod mechanics who inspected it in relays, the passenger-carrying shuttle rockets from Earth that came and went, and even the thousand-foot ships that berthed for re-fueling and clearance seemed hardly to encroach at all on its vast central bulk.

  And yet, it was something quite apart from the Station’s bigness which came under worldwide scrutiny when the freighter crashed and was splintered into fragments, channeling a fiery crater in the earth and causing the most disastrous accidental death toll in United States history.

  The news was flashed to the four corners of the earth, and almost simultaneously a flight of United States military jets took off from the Lake Superior airport to explore the wreckage.

  The first message from the flight commander, Lieutenant Colonel Hackett, came five hours later. It was tense, grim and it minced no words. “Wreckage radioactive. Main cargo uranium in a rough ore state. Explosion and subsequent intense radioactivity apparently caused by an auxiliary cargo of highly unstable uranium isotopes. If the freighter had berthed at the Station the dangerous character of its cargo could not have escaped detection. We have every reason to believe that it intended to berth at the Station. Its signals to the Station, before some undeterminable shipboard accident sent it out of control, confirm this. We must therefore assume complicity of a double nature: by the freighter’s commanding officer, Captain James Summerfield, and by someone in a position of high command on the Station.”

  After that, there was no silencing the slow, relentless events on Earth.

  A week after the tragedy, a U. S. Marine corporal stationed at Port Forrestal, Wisconsin, put through a late afternoon phono-view call to his wife. His face on the screen was haggard with strain, and he seemed not to want to meet his wife’s gaze.

  “We’ve been ordered out into space,” he said.

  “You mean they’re sending you out to take over the Station?”

  “They’re sending out five thousand United States Marines,” the corporal said. “We all knew it was coming. We expected it when that Governmental Investigating Committee was turned back.”

  “But it doesn’t make sense. I can’t understand it. Why should the Commander of the Station refuse to permit a Governmental Investigating Committee to land?”

  “We don’t know. He must have something to conceal, and you can be pretty sure it’s an ugly something. When that freighter disaster got into every daily press conference of the high brass I knew this was coming. I felt it in my bones.”

  “But what will happen if the Commander refuses to let even the Marines land? What will happen then?”

  “We may have to open fire on the Station,” the corporal said. “If the Station is in criminal hands we’ll have no alternative.”

  “You talk as if you were in command.”

  “I guess every soldier talks like that when his life is in jeopardy. But I’m glad I’m not a five-star general. If I had to make a decision like that—”

  * * * *

  But it wasn’t a general who made the crucial decision. It was Admiral John Hayes, Commander of the Eighth Spatial Naval Division, acting on behalf of fifty-seven nations.

  He stood in the bridge room of a United States naval cruiser of massive tonnage, staring out through a wide-view observation port at the Station’s glimmering immensity. The cruiser and the Station were moving at almost the same speed, fifteen thousand miles an hour. But now the cruiser was moving just a little faster than the Station, and Admiral Hayes was growing impatient.

  Maneuvering into an orbital position almost directly abreast of the Station had been difficult. Commander Hayes’ nerves were badly frayed; and he was not a man who could endure too much frustration. He had signaled the Station twice and received no reply. During that time, both the Station and the Cruiser had completely encircled the Earth at an interval of just a little under two hours.

  He turned suddenly from the viewport, his lips set in tight lines. He stared for an instant in silence at the young officer at his side, his mind groping for an argument which would completely justify what he had already decided he must do.

  But Lieutenant Commander Kenneth Archer spoke first, saying quietly: “You have no choice, sir.”

  Hayes’ features relaxed a little. It was good to know that he had support from a man whose judgment he respected. For an instant the awful aloneness which went with supreme command weighed less heavily upon him.

  “It’s absolute defiance, open rebellion,” Hayes said. “I’m forced to assume that the Station is in criminal hands. We’ll never know, probably, just what happened on board that freighter. But we do know that accidents occur. For every thirty ships that berth securely, one meets with some kind of navigational mishap. The damage isn’t always irreparable. More often than not, in fact, it’s quite minor. Usually it means only a delay in berthing, a navigational shift, a circling back for another try. But apparently that freighter really had it. So it gave the show away. Commander Clement must be in league, hand in glove, with whoever is interested in smuggling unauthorized uranium shipments through to Earth for his own personal profit. And to hasten his immediate profit that someone apparently found it to his advantage to trigger a little of the shipment into highly fissionable material on Mars.”

  “You know as well as I do who the someone is, sir,” Archer said.

  “I guess we both know. But right now my only concern is with the Station. If they ignore my third order to stand by for boarding I’ll have to open fire. The Station’s stolen property just as long as it remains in criminal hands. You can’t get a desperate criminal to surrender your property unless you convince him his own life is in danger. I’ve got to try my best to convince Commander Clement I mean business without destroying the Station.”

  “You’ll damage it to some extent, sir. How bad do you think it will be?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t intend to launch an atomic warhead. But I can’t stop short of that if he stays stubborn. I’ve no way of knowing what his breaking point will be. But I do know that if he keeps control of the Station he’ll be in a position to wipe out New York or London.”

  “But you’ll make your intentions unmistakably clear before you open fire, sir?”

  “Yes,” Hayes said, wearily. “Yes…of course I will.”

  11

  Corriston took a deep breath and let it out slowly. So far luck had favored him. Now he felt as though he were walking through a deadly jungle where al
l the animals had suddenly turned friendly. The teeth they bared at him were smiling. The grins were their masks. But the commander didn’t pretend at all…whoever the commander really was!

  And then that single question began to gnaw at Corriston like some rat feeding on his flesh: Where was the real Clement now? Was he alive? Was he accessible? Or was he dead?

  Corriston’s mental processes were now governed by the most evanescent of impressions: the depth of the shadows on both sides of the corridor; his own shadow lengthening before him; the drone of machinery deep within the Station; the muffled beating of his own heart. Suddenly he was at the end of the corridor and approaching the main control room, his face as grim as death.

  Violence he had determined upon, but it would be a very brief, a very effective kind of violence. It takes only a second to rip a mask from a man’s face.

  Something was happening just outside the main control room door. The three executive officers guarding the door had moved eight or ten paces down the corridor, and the door itself was standing ajar. The executive officers had their backs turned to Corriston and were making no attempt to conceal their agitation. They were very pale, at least, one of them was. Two had their backs completely turned, but Corriston caught a brief glimpse of the third man’s profile, and it seemed completely drained of color, as if the mask had stopped mirroring emotion artificially and had allowed the wearer’s actual pallor to seep through.

  Corriston glided quickly to the door, passed through it and shut it very quietly behind him.

  The commander had his back turned too. He was standing before the viewport, staring out into space.

  But the commander did seem dazed, did seem stunned. Corriston could tell by his posture, by the way he held his shoulders, by the utter rigidity of his neck.

  Then he saw it, the long cylindrical hull touched by a pale glimmer of starlight, the circular, glowing ports, the massive, atomic-projectile launching turrets at its base. He saw it through the viewport, saw it past the commander’s stiffening shoulders—an American war cruiser of formidable tonnage and armed with sufficient fire power to shatter a small moon.

  All right, let the Big Dark contain it for a moment, poised out there, ready for any contingency. Right at the moment a scoundrel must be unmasked in a very stark way. Whatever trouble he had brought upon himself, he must be made to face it now without the mask.

  Corriston unholstered his gun and walked toward the commander across the deck. He came up behind him and thrust the gun into the small of his back.

  “Turn around,” he ordered. “Don’t make any other move. Just turn slowly and face me. I want to take a good look at your face.”

  If the commander was startled, he didn’t show it. Perhaps the war cruiser had dealt him such a crushing blow that he was no longer capable of experiencing shock. Or his control may have been extraordinary. Corriston had no way of knowing and it didn’t concern him too much.

  He was chiefly interested in the commander’s eyes. He had never before seen eyes quite so piercing in their stare or narrowed in quite such an ugly way.

  The commander spoke almost instantly and his voice had a steel-cold rasp. “Well?” he said.

  Just a few words—just the shortest possible question he could have asked.

  Corriston said: “You’re wearing a mask, aren’t you, commander?”

  The impostor’s expression did not change, but his hand went instinctively to his throat.

  “Remove your tie and unbutton your collar,” Corriston said.

  The man made another quick gesture with his hand in the direction of his throat. But it seemed involuntary, protective, for he did not touch his collar.

  Corriston shifted his weapon a little, moving the barrel upward until it pressed very firmly against the commander’s breastbone. He reached out and unbuttoned the commander’s collar with his free hand, very quickly and expertly.

  He was staring at the tiny hooks at the base of the mask when something happened which made him regret that he had not followed his original intention of instantly ripping the mask from the man’s face.

  The door opened and the three executive officers came into the control room. For an instant they seemed neither to see nor understand the situation. They must have seen Corriston, but the fact that he was wearing a guard’s uniform may have given them the idea that he had every right to be there. The gun was concealed from view and the commander was standing very quietly by the viewport and quite obviously incapable of making any move, simply because the slightest move would have endangered his life.

  So the executive officers went right on talking for an instant, half to themselves and half to the commander, just as if Corriston had not been present at all.

  “If that cruiser lands, Ramsey’s goose is cooked and ours is too,” a tall officer said. “The instant that freighter crashed I knew they’d find out quickly enough how the ships had been carrying smuggled uranium. I knew that under pressure, half of our captains would talk…and the crews, too. All the government would have to do is check and they’d find out that we’re Ramsey’s men, all of us. They might even now know about the masks.”

  “Why not about the masks?” another officer joined in. “Ramsey paid for the research that went into them, didn’t he? Big tycoon…fingers in a dozen pies. When the secret’s out, and he puts them on the market, he’ll make important money out of it. But we’ll be in prison with just our own faces staring back at us from a steel wall.”

  “Don’t worry about that. Ramsey won’t profit from the manufacture of masks. He won’t even profit from the false uranium clearance we gave him. If that cruiser is allowed to land he’ll be in prison with us.”

  “Better think that over, Commander. You refused to let the Governmental Investigating Committee land. If a single soldier sets foot on the Station we’re done for. It’s not too late to do something about it. That cruiser can only berth by overtaking us. If we change our orbit fast and start blasting at them with our rear adjusting rockets they’ll have to keep their distance?”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something? A single atomic warhead could blow the Station apart.”

  “We’ve got to risk that. They’ll think a long time before they’ll go that far. The Station’s not expendible. If we change our orbit we can still make contact with the Mars ship that’s due to berth in an hour. We’ve got to get back to Mars and whatever protection Ramsey can give us. We’ll have his daughter with us. He’ll be so glad to see her he’ll go out on a limb to protect us.”

  “He’d go out on a limb anyway; He’d have to in order to save himself. But sure, we’ll take the girl. No harm in that. He knows she’s here and will be expecting her. He’ll thank us for taking things so quickly in hand. If that crazy lieutenant had made his story public that cruiser would have been out there anyway—perhaps even sooner. They’d have wanted to know on Earth why anyone would want to harm Ramsey’s daughter, something we don’t know ourselves.”

  Corriston decided then that he’d kept silent long enough. He returned his gun to its holster, and walked up to the three executive officers, completely ignoring the commander.

  He heard the commander threaten him in a low tone, heard him say words which would have caused some men to pause in fear. But Corriston did not turn.

  There was stunned disbelief in the eyes of the three men facing him. He spoke quickly, knowing that he had only a moment before the commander would see that he was seized and restrained. He had to make sure that the three would hear him out, that the commander would not be instantly obeyed. Perhaps he couldn’t make sure, but at least he could try.

  “I’ll make a bargain with you,” he said. “I’ve done reckless things but I’m not a complete fool. You’re going to prevent that cruiser from berthing and I won’t be able to interfere. I’m just one man against several hundred. All three of you are armed. If I started shooting I’d
get perhaps two of you—no more. Then you’d kill me. I haven’t even the advantage of surprise. I gave that up because I can’t believe you’re complete fools either.

  “First, I want to see Helen Ramsey. I want you to let me talk to her. And when the Mars’ ship berths, I want to go to Mars with her. I’ve something to offer in return.”

  One of the officers stared at him, tightened his lips and stared harder. “Good God!” he muttered. “Good God! A bargain. You must be out of your mind. What could you possibly offer? If you had a gun trained on us—”

  “A witness in your defense,” Corriston said. “A witness who will stand up in court and swear that you did try to protect Helen Ramsey, that you saved her from a very great danger. You may think that you do not need a witness now, but before the year is out Ramsey will be on trial for his life. His wealth won’t save him. They know too much about him now. That freighter explosion killed too many people. The public outcry will be too great.

  “If you stay on Mars you’ll be hunted down like wild animals. They’ll get you in the end and you know it. You’ll be brought back to Earth; you’ll stand trial.”

  Corriston paused for the barest instant, knowing that the commander too was listening, knowing from the absence of sound and movement behind him that his words were being weighed. “I think you know that I would not break my word. I’ll stand up in court and defend you under oath. I’ll be speaking the simple truth. You did save Helen Ramsey from a very great danger; you probably saved her life. That is sure to weigh in your favor with any impartial judge and jury. You won’t get the death penalty; I can promise you that.”

  It was the commander who spoke first. He said, very quietly. “He’s right, of course. Completely right.”