Station in Space Page 9

  “He can't starve us,” Kendrix said carelessly. “And to feed us, he'll have to open that door again."

  “He can pipe in anesthetic gas through the air-conditioning system,” I suggested.

  Kendrix shrugged. “What good will that do? He can't make us work, not if we don't want to. He talks about mutiny, but he can't shoot us or kill us, not if we don't attempt violence. Passive resistance, my friends, is the answer to Captain Kovac's ultimatum."

  I lay back in my bunk. “Fine,” I said. “That's just fine. What use is the Wheel, anyway?"

  Kendrix rose lightly to his feet and let his malicious eyes rest on me. “What use? All the use in the world, Patterson. C.I.C. is fulfilling its function."

  “What do you mean by that?"

  “This is the greatest relief project of all time. I thought everybody knew that. We're out here to revive the economy. W.P.A. in the sky!"

  The implications of Kendrix's statements were too much for us. If he was right, all the casualties, all the torment, all the sacrifices had been in vain. It had been nothing but a make-work project!

  “Shut up, Professor!” someone yelled.

  “You're crazy” shouted another one.

  “If I thought that was the truth,” I said slowly, “if I thought everything we'd given up, everything we'd suffered was for nothing but a—"

  “What would you do?” Kendrix asked eagerly, bouncing on the balls of his feet, studying me. Then his lip curled and his face darkened with disappointment. “Nothing. That's what you'd do. What could you do? This is a legitimate enterprise. You knew what you were getting into when you signed your contract, the discomforts, the danger. Eckert knew, too."

  A blond boy with a violent case of sunburn leaned over a top bunk. “You don't know what you're talking about, Professor. There's less than two hundred of us out here. What kind of relief project is that?"

  Kendrix grinned at this new target. “You feel lonely, do you? Why, boy, for every man up here there are fifty thousand men at work below, making the rocketships that carry him, the fuel that powers them, the oxygen he breathes, growing and processing the food he eats, building his suits and his satellite, and all the countless, expensive things necessary to create an Earth-type environment in the hot-and-cold vacuum of space. You're sitting up here on top of a pyramid of human effort. You're the excuse for it all."

  “You got it wrong, Professor,” the boy said quickly. “The Big Wheel—it's the excuse for it all."

  “Of course,” Kendrix agreed readily. “The essential Grail The philosopher's stone. No one found either one of them, but the search was invaluable. The experiments of the alchemists, for instance, led directly to all the miracles of modern chemistry. And now the Big Wheel, the biggest and brightest Grail of all. Grails aren't ends but goals. Men can't be pushed; they must be led. And they must have a real moral excuse for even the most obvious necessity."

  “Aw, shut up!” said a brawny riveter on the edge of his bunk. “Let us get some sleep. There might be action tomorrow."

  “There speaks humanity” Kendrix cried, pointing. “Listen to it snore! Don't disturb it with truths. Like an angry bear, it will smash the man who wakes it. Sleep, my friend. Sleep on. When the world collapses around you, sleep, sleep..."

  “Who said the world was collapsing?” I demanded.

  “I said.” Kendrix turned his dark eyes back to me. “What would you call the Depression of sixty-six, my friend? Human society is unable to harness its own energies, unable to consume its own abundance. It must divert the flood lest it drown in it. And the great tragedy is that the waters always return multiplied. Our fertility has caught up with us. Not the fertility of the neo-Malthusians but the infinitely more dangerous fertility of the human mind."

  I stared at him, not understanding half of what he said. “If they were picking relief projects, they could pick better ones than this,” I said defiantly.

  “Could they? For how many highways can we find the smallest excuse? How many dams can we build before we run out of worth-while rivers and a market for the power? How many schools can we construct, even as far behind as we were? A lot, I grant you. But not enough. What's more, these are construction jobs, and they employ only skilled labor. What about the rest of us? More important: highways pay for themselves, dams return the investment many times, and schools—why, schools are the biggest moneymakers of all"

  “Well, why shouldn't they make money?” I demanded.

  The men who were on their feet had drifted into a ring about Kendrix, their faces intent and serious. The men who had lain down were sitting up again.

  “Isn't that what C.I.C. is for,” I asked, “to invest capital in promising projects, to make profits out of them?"

  “C.I.C., Patterson,” Kendrix said gravely, “is democracy's answer to an uncontrollable economy. When automation caught up with us, when the Doughnut made weather ninety-nine percent predictable and increased farm production by half, when the Doughnut's orbital missiles with their atomic warheads made aggressive war an impossibility, suddenly we were buried in our wealth. C.I.C.? I'll tell you what C.I.C. is. C.I.C. is a shovel for tossing our surpluses out into space."

  From a distant bunk someone shouted, “What are you, mister, a Communist?"

  Kendrix turned and found the man. “The ultimate refutation of the unanswerable! No, my friend, I'm no Communist. As bad as our economy is, it is still far better than the over-controlled economies; they can only produce shortages. If I must choose, I'd rather die from gluttony than from starvation. To produce, man needs an incentive; but give him one, and he will overproduce. The only middle ground is when the economy is passing from one state to the other.

  “Is there an answer?” Kendrix seemed to be asking the question of himself. “Surely there is an answer, some meeting place for control and enterprise—"

  He broke off and looked at us again, sneering. “Technological knowledge has increased at a fantastic geometrical progression during the last sixty years, multiplying productive power ten times every generation. We didn't even recognize the problem. The surpluses flowed down the sewers of two world wars and preparations for a third.

  “The Doughnut closed those sewers, and our surpluses had nowhere to go. We weren't prepared for the flood, and we almost drowned before we could reach air. Now comes C.I.C. with an investment it hopes will dispose of a major part of our surpluses for decades to come: the conquest of space!"

  My hands tightened on the bunk's aluminum frame. “It doesn't add up. If that's C.I.C.'s only purpose, it would be easier and simpler to throw the stuff away, burn it up, plow it under..."

  “Never!” Kendrix said sardonically. “Or, rather, not again. We tried that in the last great depression, and the psychological reaction was disastrous. You heard the gentleman back there! Let him sleep, he said. Don't make him face the fact that he can conquer space but not his own economic system. Don't make him puzzle over the paradox of starving people and burning potatoes. If mankind is to rid itself of its surpluses, it must be for a worthy cause. This time it is a crusade against space itself.

  “The eternal tragedy, as C.I.C. will discover, is that these facilities we are building, even the effort of building the Wheel itself, will lead to new discoveries and better ways of doing things that will intensify the problem. There will be no breathing space in which man can discover the inner workings of his own economy rather than the secrets of space flight or of the universe itself."

  Kendrix turned on us a look of magnificent triumph. “And we poor suckers—why, we're the crusaders, the shock troops of this mighty human army launched against the heavens. We're expected to take a few losses. That's our function. That's why we're paid triple-time."

  “We don't have to stop here,” the boy in the top bunk said stubbornly. “We can keep on going out—to the planets and the stars beyond. That way we'd stay ahead of our surpluses."

  I recognized that the boy had accepted Kendrix's argument as the truth.
/>   “Somehow,” Kendrix said ironically, “man will find a profit even in that."

  Somebody laughed sheepishly.

  Then there was silence, and I realized, suddenly, that the mutiny was over. Kendrix had done it. Why he had done it, I did not know, but I knew that he had done it consciously and that it hurt. He had sacrificed his cherished concept of economic man upon the altar of man's necessity. From this moment forward, he would have to think of whole man, not some easy, fractionated stereotype.

  He had held a mirror up in front of us, he had showed us ourselves as we really were, and the self-righteous foundation of our anger had crumbled away.

  We were going to finish the Big Wheel.

  VIII

  I limped up to the door in the row of plasterboard-and-tarpaper apartments and read the faded number on the door: 313. Walking was a weary thing. I leaned against the door jamb for a moment, gathering strength, and then I knocked.

  The door still stuck. It squealed open after a minute, and a man stood in the doorway, an undershirt sticking sweatily to his chest. He stared at me without friendliness. “Yeah?"

  I winced.

  I knew what he was seeing. A man who limped. A man with a face deeply tanned but with an unhealthy look to it. A man with oddly speckled eyes.

  “A Mrs. Gloria Patterson lived here six months ago,” I said. “Do you know where she is now?"

  “We moved in six months ago,” the man said curtly. “Nobody here then. We never heard of her."

  “She had a baby,” I said. “A boy. She didn't leave a forwarding address?"

  “If she lived here before we did, she didn't even leave a coat hanger.” He started to turn away and hesitated as if humanity still had a claim on him. “Why don't you ask at the business office?"

  “I did."

  “If she had a baby, how about the hospital?"

  “I just came from there."

  He pulled the door toward him. “Well, I guess there ain't anything I can do."

  I turned away. “No, I guess not."

  I limped down the graveled walk. Behind me the man called out, “If you want to leave your name in case we should hear anything—"

  But I didn't turn back. I walked heavily toward the little, covered shack where the bus stopped.

  The ticket seller in the dusty bus station frowned at me impatiently. “A blond-haired woman with a baby? Mister, I get four or five like that every week. How do you expect me to remember a particular one over six months ago? For all you know she may have taken a plane."

  I leaned wearily against the counter ledge and shook my head. “She was always afraid to fly. She'd take the bus. She didn't have a car, and the bus is the only other way."

  The ticket seller grinned suddenly. “Unless you go straight up. They do that from around here, you know."

  “I know."

  “Look, buddy,” the ticket seller said kindly, “take it from me, you'll never get anywhere asking people what happened six months ago. This woman—she must have come from some other town; there's no natives here. She must have folks somewhere or friends. Why don't you try there? A woman with a little baby has it tough. She can't work and care for the baby both."

  “Maybe you're right. When's the next bus out?"

  “Where to?

  I hesitated. “East."

  “An hour and a half. There's a bar across the way, you want to wait."

  “Thanks.” I turned and limped toward the door.

  “And mister,” the ticket seller said, “I hope you find her and she takes you back."

  I didn't answer. Gloria hadn't gone back to her home town, not unless her sister had lied to me. But I'd try it. Maybe her sister had lied. I hobbled slowly into the bar.

  The bartender slid the schooner of beer across the bar. “Here, fellow,” he said sympathetically. “You look like you could use it."

  “Thanks,” I said. The air-conditioned bar was cool and dark after the desert heat. Sweat welled out on my face as I lifted the glass.

  “You look like you been out in the sun lately,” the bartender said idly, making conversation.

  “Yeah.” I took a sip and shuddered. The flavor was too sharp. I set the glass down and made rings in the condensed moisture on the bar. They looked like wheels.

  “As I was saying, thank God for the boys who built the Big Wheel!” It came in a loud, brash salesman's voice on my left.

  I swung around viciously, and the man, in the act of tucking in his zipper, jumped back, surprised.

  “Wh-what's the matter?” he stammered.

  “Sorry,” I muttered. “You came up on my blind side.” He'd been in the men's room.

  “Say! You gave me a start, there. Thought you were going to jump me.” He looked at me, bloodshot eyes half hostile.

  He picked up his highball glass and wandered over to the garish jukebox in the corner. He dropped in a coin and selected a record. As he came back, he said to the bartender, “I guess business has been good around here, what with construction and everything. Well, it's picked up all over. By God, things are almost as good as they ever were."

  The record started playing. The melody was familiar, somehow, but I couldn't quite identify it.

  “It's confidence,” the salesman was saying. “That's what it is. It's faith in the economy. Women are getting pregnant again. I'll tell you frankly, Mac, I was scared there for a while. I sell baby food, see? I was getting afraid I'd have to eat it myself. That's why I say, ‘Thank God for the boys who built the Big Wheel!’ They're the boys who showed this country that there's nothing to be afraid of."

  The song was full of sound effects, swishings and zoomings, but suddenly they faded and a chorus of voices rode clear and strong:

  "... the Big Wheel run by faith

  The Little Wheel run by the grace of God,

  Brave men built the Wheel,

  Wheel in the middle of the air..."

  I hear it wasn't all beer and skittles out there,” the bartender said.

  “It's always tough out in front,” the salesman said briskly. “But they got paid good. And they got something better than that. They can tell their kids and their kids’ kids that they helped build the Big Wheel. If I'd been a few years younger, I'd have been up there myself, I can tell you. Think of being able to say that: I helped build the Big Wheel!’”

  “It took a lot of hard work,” the bartender offered.

  “You bet it did,” the salesman agreed warmly. “Hard work and plenty of it, that's what it takes to do anything worth doing. Yes, sir! My hat's off to those men who had the guts to go out there and make their dreams a reality."

  He leaned confidentially over the bar. “Frankly, though, I think things are slowing down a bit now. The big construction's over, you know. Well, they're talking about trips to Mars and Venus. They can't start too soon. That's how I feel about it."

  I got up and limped toward the door.

  “Hey, mister,” said the bartender, “you didn't finish your beer."

  But I didn't look back. I went through the revolving door into the desert, hearing the juke box singing about inspiration, courage, purpose, and fortitude. When you're discouraged, it said, when the job seems too much for you—

  "Look up and see the Wheel

  Way up in the middle of the air..."

  But that wasn't the way it was. And the funny part was that if someone asked me I couldn't tell them the way it was.

  There were no words for it. If I had to say something about the way we built the Big Wheel, I would say:

  There were four men. One was a dreamer, and he found that dreams weren't enough. One was a construction man; to him it was just another job, but it was his last one. One was an educated man, and he learned that people are more important than theories. And one was afraid, and he discovered that there is no security, no way to be free of fear, nothing worth doing if there is'nt love.

  And there are no reasons for loving.

  We went out to build the Big Whee
l for all the wrong reasons and we found there all the wrong things. But perhaps it didn't matter. I would think about that, and someday I might be able to believe that it didn't matter, that the only thing that mattered was being men.

  On that day, perhaps, I would be glad that I had helped, that I had been a part of it, that I had built the Big Wheel.

  But now I was a man alone, and it hurt.

  The bus was already in front of the station, its paint blistered and sandblasted. People were getting out of it, out of the coolness into the desert heat.

  I hurried, swinging my stiff leg. Suddenly I stopped.

  A woman had climbed down, a baby clutched in her arms. No, not a baby. A boy, his head held up, his eyes curious, less than a year old—six months, perhaps—but a boy still, unmistakably.

  The woman was blonde, and I knew her face. I knew it very well.

  It figured, I guess. She had read about our return, those of us who were left, or she had counted the days, six months of them.

  She had learned something, too, those six months, and she had come back to meet me. This time we would be smarter, I thought, knowing that we would not be, that we would be human and erring and bitter, but knowing, too, that what we had was more important than injured feelings and the things that a man must do and those a woman must do.

  “Gloria!” I yelled.

  She looked up, and I started to run, forgetting my leg, forgetting everything but the need to be with her, to hold her close once more.

  Powder Keg

  Phillips did not like this room. Another man would have shrugged and let it pass, but Phillips, entirely aside from his profession, could not rest until the intuitive response had been isolated and analyzed.

  Besides, he had been neutral, at least, when he had been here once before, when another man sat behind the broad, polished walnut desk.

  It was a big room, even in comparison with rooms above. Here in the sub-Pentagon, it was gigantic, fully thirty feet long and twenty feet wide.

  The three doors, one leading to the anterooms through which he had been ushered quickly, the others in the side walls to Communications and to Plot, were imitation walnut—a good imitation which could be detected only by looking at the deep glow of the polished desk. Phillips had the feeling that if he touched it his fingers would sink in up to the first joint. The doors were two-inch armor plate.