Station in Space Page 12

  “Danton coming through on B with one hundred sixty pounds of witch doctor,” he said into a microphone. To Phillips he added, “Let's get you settled. I'm giving you the cabin next to mine. It's small and uncomfortable, but it's the best we have. And you'll want the privacy, I imagine. Out here that's our scarcest commodity."

  “Not too much privacy,” Phillips said quickly as they pulled themselves along the ladder, their weight increasing as they approached the rim. “I'll want free access to every part of the Wheel. I'll set up a schedule of private interviews for everyone out here, but I want to eat with the men."

  “They've endured a lot of things. I guess they can survive that, too. You're free to go wherever you wish, but the weight control officer has orders to search you if you leave your room. Saboteurs, you know."

  * * * *

  The cabin was small beyond belief. Beside it the third-class quarters of the Big Wheel were models of luxury. Here there was space for a bunk, a table, and a chair; when the bunk was folded against the wall, the table and the chair could be let down. When all of them were out of the way, a man could take two paces if he didn't step too freely.

  If the legend on the door were to be believed, it had housed the missile-control officer.

  For all its privations, it was a room with a view. When an outside viewport cover was lifted, the universe was Phillips’ neighbor, a dark infinity scattered lavishly with friendly, many colored lanterns to light the way, or alternately, as the Wheel turned, the great, beautiful disk of the Earth was before him, close enough to grasp in a man's two hands if there were not thick glass in the way.

  Occasionally, beyond a thin, metal partition, Phillips heard Danton moving softly in what must have been a twin cabin to his. Privacy! Phillips thought wryly and was glad he had an ear mike for his recorder.

  If his cabin was tiny, the crew's quarters were impossible. Like flop-house patrons that rented louse-ridden beds by the hour, the crew slept in “hot” bunks, and when they slid into them their faces were no more than six inches from the bulging canvas of the bunk above.

  There were, at least, no lice.

  The food, chiefly frozen meals to save shipping space, the services of a cook, and the room necessary for a kitchen, was surprisingly good, but even eating in shifts couldn't prevent continual overcrowding of the minute dining hall. It was almost necessary to eat in unison to avoid an inextricable tangling of arms.

  An eternal line waited for a chance at the shower or the sanitary facilities, and recreational opportunities were practically non-existent. Occasionally there were swift games of no-gravity handball in the Hub—against all regulations, but even Danton joined in—and riskier games outside in spacesuits or the two-jet taxis. Inevitably, there were card games, checkers, and chess in the bunks, and probably bull sessions.

  The last was surmise. The men didn't talk when Phillips was around. They glanced at him coldly or ignored him.

  Even when he called them to his carefully prepared cabin—the Rorschach clay on the table, the recorder fastened underneath—they were sullen and monosyllabic. They knew what he was there for, and they resented him violently. Only Danton's explicit orders made them report at all.

  Phillips got it all down on tape. Ashley would love it, he thought. They all sounded like depressives on the verge of becoming manic. None of them realized that the clay they were working in their fingers—since they were all compulsives they picked up whatever was available to keep their hands occupied—revealed them more surely than anything they could have said.

  Alumbaugh, Baker, Chapman, Dean—straight down the roster, Phillips diagnosed them by the blobs they left behind. Psychology had taken giant strides in the last quarter century; Rorschach blots interpreted by the patient had become Rorschach blobs manipulated unconsciously by the patient, and Phillips could classify the crew members with certainty: schizoids, cycloids, paranoids, homosexuals, sadists, incipient homicides psychopaths ... all.

  In a sense, part of it was unfair. Morale was better than it should have been among men working, many of them at manual labor, for twelve to sixteen hours a day and living under conditions that would have been considered cruel and unusual punishment for the most hopeless criminal. On the other hand, it was not as good as it could have been under the guidance of an experienced psychologist.

  Even then Phillips would not have trusted them with decisions involving the safety of a small city. There was no longer any doubt in his mind: they were unstable personalities in an artificial and unnatural environment.

  It was a dilemma: only men with character defects would run away from the daily stresses and decisions of life on Earth, only such men could conquer space because only they would want to, and such men could not be trusted with responsibility for the future of the Earth.

  If there was any powder keg, this was it—waiting for a spark to set it off and blow up the world it was supposed to protect.

  There was only one way out: the conquest of space would have to be sacrificed to the security of the race of man.

  It was Ashley's decision, but Phillips had confirmed it. The problem was how to make it stick.

  The taped interviews, his own notes and observations, the holographic photographs of the blobs—kept under tamperproof lock when he was out of the cabin—were perhaps enough to satisfy the jury that would decide the Wheel's fate, although laymen looked on the blobs with the suspicion illiterates had once had for books.

  Phillips wanted more—the casual conversations of the crew when they thought they were alone, for instance, but he wasn't electrician enough to rig bugs in the sleeping quarters and the mess hall. In any case, they were never clear.

  With Danton's help he could manage it, but before that he had to be sure that his evidence was sufficient to justify the necessary decision. Only then could he take the risk that his analysis of Danton might be incorrect.

  Phillips prowled the Rim with his problem, looking for something overt, for something he could point to and say, “See? Here a man has cracked under the pressure. Here he has done this or forgotten to do that in an unconscious dramatization of his paranoid aggression wish or his suicidal impulse. Here, but for chance, might be the act that destroyed every living thing on Earth."

  But there was nothing to point to.

  As neurotic as the crew members certainly were, as psychopathic as many of them seemed to be, on the job they did only those things they were supposed to do and forgot nothing. The areas of the Little Wheel vital to the welfare of the men within—and what wasn't?—were kept in showroom condition, more immaculate and in better repair than the men who tended them.

  The power room, supplied by solar radiation focused on a mercury boiler by a troughlike solar mirror, was spotless. The air-conditioning system, which extracted moisture and carbon dioxide from the air, fed in fresh oxygen, and maintained pressure throughout the satellite, was tended as solicitously as a baby. The pump room gleamed, and the water recovery plant gurgled contentedly at its job of making wastes potable.

  Then Phillips reached Earth-observation.

  The screens were alive, but the telescope had been allowed to drift off-center. The view of the area beneath the Wheel was blurred and meaningless.

  There was only one crewman on duty, and he was asleep in a chair near the bulkhead that separated Earth-observation from what had once been the weather room and was now sleeping quarters for thirty-two men.

  * * * *

  Phillips grasped the man roughly by one shoulder and shook him awake. As soon as the man's eyes fluttered, Phillips snapped, “Name and rank!"

  Dazedly the man sprang to his feet. “Spaceman First Class Miguel Delgado, s-sir!” he stammered. Then he recognized Phillips. He jerked his shoulder free and settled back into his chair. “Oh, it's the witch doctor,” he said insolently.

  “Are you on duty here?"

  “Yes, Captain."

  “Just you?"

  “You don't see nobody else, do you?"


  “Do you know the penalty for falling asleep on watch?"

  “Whatever the Colonel says."

  “The Colonel has nothing to do with this. The penalty is automatic: courtmartial, followed by whatever penalty the court decides is appropriate, up to and including death."

  “The Colonel will say,” Delgado repeated stubbornly. “Whatever the Colonel says is right."

  “Your loyalty to Colonel Danton is admirable. It's too bad it isn't matched by an equal loyalty to your country and the Air Force."

  “What's the use making a big fuss over a little nap?” Delgado shrugged. “It ain't like it was important."

  “There's nothing more important. What if you didn't see a missile base below because of your little nap? By this time those missiles could be over Washington or your own home town."

  Delgado looked amazed. “Who'd want to do anything like that?"

  Phillips gave, up. “Where's the missile-control officer?"

  “The who?"

  “The missile-control officer. According to your table of organization, he's in charge of Earth observation."

  Delgado shook his head stupidly. “Never heard of him. You better ask the Colonel."

  “I'll do that!” Phillips swung away, trying not to see Delgado's smothered yawn.

  It was time to see Danton.

  Phillips had only a few steps to go. Beyond the next door was the little-used celestial-observation room. Sitting motionless in front of one of the magnifying screens was Danton.

  Phillips closed, the door carefully behind him. “Colonel!” he said sharply.

  Not looking away from the screen, Danton gestured for silence. “Shhhh!"

  Phillips took two quick steps toward him. “Amos! This is important!” He glanced at the screen. On it was a vivid enlargement of a quadrant of Mars, rosy and sharp, the long-disputed canals clearly delineated.

  “Oh, it's you, Lloyd,” Danton said casually. He swung around in his chair. “What can I do for you?"

  Grimly Phillips said, “A better question is: What can I do for you?"

  “Okay,” Danton said agreeably. “What can you do for me?"

  “I can report a disrespect for authority in your command, a deteriorating morale situation, and a possible disaster in the making."

  “Well, now,” Danton said lazily, his eyelid jerking, “I guess that's not new. There never has been much respect for authority on the Little Wheel. Out here a uniform and an insignia isn't enough; a man must earn respect on his own. The morale has always been deteriorating. And there's always a disaster in the making. Anything else?"

  “I just found a crewman asleep on watch.” Phillips watched Danton closely. The reaction, for once, was appropriate.

  Danton came out of the chair in one fluid movement. “Where?"

  “Earth-observation."

  Danton sank down again. “Oh! That's too bad."

  “Is that all you can say—it's too bad?"

  “Who was it?"

  “Miguel Delgado—a resentful, unstable personality who should never have been given such responsibility in the first place."

  “Well, Lloyd, we have to use what we've got. I don't think we should be too hard on him. He's just put in eight hours at hard labor on construction work outside, and he's got a six-hour stretch in a boring, unimportant job—"

  “Unimportant?"

  “Unimportant to him."

  Phillips snapped, “In the Air Force I belong to enlisted men aren't judges of the importance of their jobs."

  “I suppose he knows it's unimportant to me, too."

  Phillips studied the tanned face under the white stubble. It was a face aged beyond its years. Phillips wished he could get behind it, wished he could get Danton into his cabin with the recorder underneath the table and the Rorschach clay on top, wished he could be certain that Danton was as paranoid as he seemed.

  The martinet approach hadn't worked. He would have to proceed on the assumption of paranoia. “I don't understand you, Amos. Out here you've got the toughest job a colonel could hold in the Air Force, maybe the most responsible job anywhere, and you don't seem impressed at all."

  Danton said dryly, “Maybe my values are a little different."

  “The only possible conclusion is that twelve years out here without rest or leave has affected your judgment.” Danton started to speak and Phillips held up a hand as he hurried to fire the thunderbolt he had been saving for this moment. “You needn't be surprised that I know about the standing orders General Pickrell left in your file. But you should know this: those orders have been torn up. You can go home whenever you wish."

  For a moment Danton stared blankly at Phillips, and then he started to laugh. The laughter was not insane; it was not even hysterical. It was the laughter of a man who has just heard something indescribably funny.

  * * * *

  Finally Danton wiped the tears from his eyes and asked weakly, “You think you can buy me, do you? You think for a few lousy weeks on Earth you can get my help to break up the Little Wheel?"

  “That wasn't—” Phillips began, but this time Danton's hand was raised.

  “I listened to you; now you listen to me. Sure the Fish—I beg your pardon—General Pickrell put those orders in my file, and for a good reason, a reason I may tell you some day. Later it became our own personal joke. But he never offered to remove them, and I never asked him to. Why should I want to go home? My mother died two years after I came out—yes, Lloyd, I came from a broken home—and there's nothing left in there I'm interested enough to cross the Wheel for. Go home, Captain? I am home."

  “And for that reason, Amos, you aren't a good risk."

  “Explorers have never been good risks."

  “I'm not talking about insurance risks; I'm talking about the risk to Earth."

  Danton grinned. “Don't go on! I can repeat everything Sackcloth told you. God knows he's sent it to me often enough: ‘Under no conditions will you initiate independent action, no matter what the provocation or the state of communications. You will wait for order from superior authority. I don't need to tell you, Colonel, that I am not satisfied with a situation that includes the possibility of ultimate decision by man qualified for it neither by character nor by training.'” Danton's voice dropped. He stared blindly at the lighted screen in front of him. “Ashley has a nasty way of projecting his own desires and character into his mental concept of his subordinates. Who does he think is going to fire a missile without orders from Inside, and confirmation of those orders, and reconfirmation?"

  “A neurotic man might. Anyone out here might crack under the strain of sitting with his finger eternally on the trigger. Even you, Amos—as certain as you are that space is your home—you might crack. And you have the power here to make yourself the dictator or the destroyer of the world."

  That seemed to cheer Danton up. “Dictator, perhaps—but for how long? There are neuroses and neuroses, Lloyd; some are dangerous, and some are functional. A fear of heights, now, has kept a lot of people from taking the long plunge. I happen to think that our kind of neurosis is only dangerous when it is penned up."

  Carefully Phillips said, “Unfortunately, you aren't a trained psychologist. My own opinion is that the Little Wheel is dangerously close to instability. You take great pains to make every part of the Wheel balance with the part diametrically opposite. It's even more important that the men inside, who must make the decisions, are carefully balanced.

  “In a command distinguished by slovenly watch procedures, insolence, and disrespect for authority, you have managed to inspire great personal loyalty among your men. Perhaps you can keep them under control. But I ask you to consider this: what would happen if you were killed or suddenly recalled?” Phillips suddenly remembered Ashley's haunted eyes as he had muttered, “What if he refused to come?"

  Hastily Phillips went on, “These men are nervous, irritable, and unstable. The Wheel is a powder keg waiting for a spark."

  Danton turned his head to look s
quarely at Phillips, his lips smiling but his flecked eyes hard. “Nervous, sure; irritable, maybe; but unstable, unh-unh! A force released is always stable. It's only a force contained that is unstable, and only that force will explode.

  “Sure we're nervous, but we've got a right to be. We're prey to a dozen hazards men Inside never know. We're eternally conscious of our environment, because we have to bring it all with us. We live in a hollow world two hundred and fifty feet across; its walls are not much more than an inch thick, and most of that is air. We face imminent death from such exotic causes as sunburn, meteoric missiles, asphyxiation, and radiation poisoning.

  “If I don't die violently, Lloyd, I won't live to be sixty years old. To me it doesn't matter. I wouldn't be anywhere else for a lifetime twice as long. This nervousness you speak of—I call it awareness of danger, and as long as we stay nervous, we'll stay alive, most of us.

  “They don't need to be afraid of us, Inside. We're trying too hard to stay alive ourselves."

  The timing was perfect. Too perfect, Phillips found time to think as the alarm went off with a clamor of bells and a blinking of overhead lights.

  Danton stiffened, and Phillips stared with startled eyes at the too-thin walls. By the time he had released his breath, instinctively caught in his lungs, and assured himself that the walls separating him from vacuum and death were still imperforate, Danton was at the wall phone.

  “Where is it?” he snapped. “Okay. I'll be there in two seconds. Get the air pressure up, and release the marker."

  Danton had the door open and was through it before Phillips moved. The next few minutes for Phillips were a kaleidoscope of confusion that somehow achieved swift results.

  The automatic doors of the air-testing lab were closed. The walls within had been pierced by a meteor that had burst through the bumper that stopped 99 percent of those hitting the Wheel. Emergency air blowers were building up air pressure inside the room to give the men within time to adjust emergency oxygen helmets, locate the holes by means of the harmless colored gas that had been released into the section, and plug them.