confidential, but he couldn't make it. So he said harshly: "I'm going
to tell you something. My name's Fallon, but I'm not the Fallon you
think I am. I've got a brother. He was slated to come on this trip.
I was in the pen. I broke out. They were close after me. I went to
my brother for money and help. He's tried to help me before, tried to
make me stay out of trouble. This time was the worst, but this time he
wouldn't help me any more. It was too serious. So I ... slugged him and
took his papers and his orders and reported for duty instead of him.
I ... I guess he couldn't bring himself to turn me in, but he figured
I'd be caught before take-off. But I bluffed it through!" Here a trace
of pride came into his voice. "I bluffed it through, and I came on the
trip in his place because there wouldn't be anybody hunting me out
here."
McCauley did not display any feeling at all. That Fallon had committed
a crime or crimes back on Earth--forty million miles away--meant
nothing here. Not if he did his work. But....
"Well?" said McCauley.
"I'm telling you," said Fallon urgently. "You didn't tell the others
that I'd lifted their stuff. You had to have a reason. Then Hathaway
almost got it when that rocket blew. And Soames came close to frying
in a rocket blast. There are too many queer things happening! You not
telling the others on me, and then...."
McCauley sat perfectly still, staring at Fallon.
"It adds up," said Fallon defiantly. "There's millions in atom fuel
here. If things happen to the others, you can get back to Earth and
land anywhere, and if you've got contacts so you can sell the atom
stuff...."
McCauley waited ominously. Fallon tried to go on, and could not. But
his meaning was clear. In some twisted fashion he had worked out what
he believed a logical explanation for McCauley's behavior to him. It
implied that McCauley did not see the Mars expedition as a normal man
would see it, but as an opportunity for the first space robbery in
history and perhaps the most stupendous criminal coup since time began.
It was true that the atomic fuel for the Mars reactor had a money value
in the tens of millions. To McCauley, that fact would mean that it
was something to be guarded and taken care of. But to Fallon, it was
something to be stolen. And he thought McCauley saw it the same way.
"I suppose," said McCauley evenly, "that you've guessed that I plan to
kill off the others and go back to Earth alone. Is that it?"
Fallon twitched nervously.
"It figures," he said desperately. "But you need another man to help!
I told you who I am. I couldn't afford to double-cross you! I couldn't
land this ship. But I could help a lot!"
"Yes," agreed McCauley with irony, "you could. So you want to throw in
with me, eh?"
"Y-yes."
"All right," said McCauley. "You're in. You share in everything I do
and everything I get out of it. It's a bargain."
"F-fine," said Fallon in a voice like a croak.
He'd try to believe it, but he wouldn't be able to be sure. He left.
McCauley knew that he would quake and be terrified, and he would not
believe in McCauley's intention to make him a partner in crime. But in
his own view he couldn't do anything but try to bargain for his own
life if--but he thought of it as when--McCauley murdered or abandoned
the others in emptiness.
McCauley told Randy the whole business, of course. As second-in-command
Randy needed to know everything.
"He's a swine," Randy said distastefully. "But it took nerve to try to
bluff through our training period, with the voyage out here to follow
it."
"He's in bad shape," said McCauley. "However he got started that way,
he chose to be a crook at some time or another. He probably thought
it was smart. It wasn't, but now he can't think the way a non-crook
thinks."
Randy frowned, thinking.
"I believe," Randy said slowly, "that I'll explain to the others. He's
with us and the way he thinks has to be allowed for. They won't let him
know they're on to him.... I feel sorry for the poor devil. You will,
too, when you think it over. They'll feel the same way."
McCauley nodded. Space is no place for the self-righteous or the
intolerant. Charity is a requisite for the endurance of journey in
emptiness, in closed tin cans with re-breathed air and enforced
exasperating contact with other persons. The Mars Expedition members
had been chosen for personality traits as well as technical
competence. It was remarkable that Fallon had been able to imitate his
brother's character well enough to avoid unmasking before take-off.
The work of the Expedition went on. In the half-hour day, the rockets
for Mars were loaded and set up for firing. Immediately after darkness
fell, they went streaking away from the small, misshapen asteroid.
McCauley or Randy at the control board picked up their monitor signals
one by one, verified their course and speed, and made such adjustments
as would be needed to get them to the planet which men now ought to
reach a good twenty years ahead of schedule. Near Mars, they'd be swung
into orbit and landed one by one.
It became routine. But it was a hair-raising routine. There was a
tissue-thin difference between the success and failure that meant
life or death. What rest they took was in snatches. But things went
along. Curiously enough, when Hathaway and Brett and Soames were told
in confidence of Fallon's self-produced predicament, it amounted to
easing the tension their continuous labor might have produced. They had
something to think about besides the nerve-racking need for absolute
accuracy and absolute care in all they did out of the ship. Crawling
about under the cargo nets was harrowing. There were the stars. There
was the feeling of absolute emptiness, into which their sensations
assured them that they were falling unendingly.
But Fallon had no relief as the others did. He didn't have their
purpose. They were risking their lives to accomplish something they
wanted to do. That was why they were here. But Fallon was with them in
flight from the law. He had only fear to sustain him.
Three-fourths of the rockets had been released. Nine-tenths. There were
more than forty rockets aground on Mars and the ship was refueled, and
already it would be possible to leave Eros and land on Mars and set up
the base and do the work the Expedition was expected to do. They could
do all this and then return to Earth. The rockets still in space and on
Eros amounted to a margin beyond necessity, and every extra one that
landed would increase the surplus of equipment and supplies.
And then Fallon got lost. He was never out of sight of the others, but
he got lost. It was the rule, of course, for every man to have his own
life line securely fastened to solidity. They were long life lines to
permit movement about the cargo cache and the much-diminished heaps of
stores. They were inconvenient, but they were starkly necessary. It was
strictly forbidden for any man at any time not to be safely tethered.
And....
A rocket was to be made ready for firing. Its cargo was brought to
it, item by item. Fallon had worked with the others. He was treated
with singular forbearance by his shipmates. There came a moment when
somebody had to shift his space-rope anchorage. It happened to be
Fallon who needed to do this. Soames took hold of Fallon's space rope
in the middle and held it firmly while Fallon shifted the end to
another anchorage. Fallon was nervous, worried. He finished the task
quickly and went on toward the cargo items he was to move.
McCauley, prowling on his perpetual task of inspection, saw the knot
Fallon had made. He said sharply:
"Fallon, stop moving and hold on to something solid."
Fallon swung about and stared apprehensively. He clung to an anchor
rod sunk in the metal of the asteroid. McCauley made sure he was safe,
untied the space-rope knot, and tied it more securely.
"It was a bad knot," said McCauley. "You're safe now."
McCauley went on. This was outside the cargo-netted space and near
where the rockets went up. Fallon clung fast to the drill rod. The
others went about their business. Stars blazed in the daylight sky. The
sun flamed far, far away. Fallon stayed motionless, gripping the rod
that was securely set into the metal of Eros.
Presently he stirred stealthily and tugged at the rope with the new
knot in the end. It was firm. He tugged more strongly. It held. Then,
with the gentlest and most fearful of tuggings, he drew himself to
where McCauley had fastened his space rope. He examined McCauley's
knot. Fallon was afraid of McCauley, because he had made a bargain he
did not believe McCauley would keep. He believed that McCauley meant
to be the sole survivor of the Mars Expedition, returning secretly to
Earth with tens of millions in stolen atomic fuel.
And Fallon believed that McCauley had planned the near-tragedies of
Hathaway and Soames. Therefore he believed that McCauley would be
arranging more successful accidents for those two and the rest, and
that because Fallon knew of McCauley's plans, he, Fallon, would be the
first to be destroyed.
He could see nothing the matter with the knot, but he distrusted it
with a despairing terror.
He untied it so he could retie it himself. And McCauley's voice roared
in the headphones in his helmet:
"Fallon! What are you doing?"
Fallon started violently. He jumped. His space rope was not anchored,
and Eros has no measurable gravity. Fallon went up and away from the
asteroid, toward a thousand million light-years of emptiness. His space
rope rose with him, not trailing behind but writhing and twisting
weightlessly, more like a tendril of smoke than anything else. Horror
filled him. He could not cry out.
"Get him!" roared McCauley.
Space-suited figures turned in the stark white sunlight, and inky black
shadows followed their movements in strict synchrony. Fallon was twenty
feet high.... Forty. A space-suited figure jerked at his space rope
for assurance and then leaped up toward Fallon. It was a miss. The
glittering metallic space suit swung in a wide arc and then down to
ground again. A second man leaped. A third. They swept past the line of
his flight. The space rope of one of the men touched Fallon's. Had it
struck near the middle, it might have brought his rope down captive.
But the end of Fallon's rope flicked free and he went on toward the
stars.
Now there were babblings. Space-armored figures moved swiftly toward
a single spot, pulling themselves by their ropes.... Fallon was sixty
feet high.... Seventy.
Then a man came soaring straight upward. He missed Fallon, but he
flailed a rope and it tangled in Fallon's. The bobbing, rope-held
figure hauled in, and had Fallon's rope fast. He wrapped it swiftly
about his arm. When the jerk came it was not severe.
Then a single figure on the asteroid pulled down and down and down,
and Fallon was towed to solidity. He touched before he could utter a
sound.
McCauley was the man who'd hauled him back. The others crouched or
squatted down, holding fast to the metallic projections from the
surface of Eros. They'd given up their ropes to make a rope long enough
for his rescue. While one went after him and McCauley stood erect to
draw him back, the others held fast by their fingertips to keep from
sharing his predicament. They'd risked floating away as helplessly as
he himself, in order that their life lines might be used to save him.
McCauley did not reprimand Fallon, but he pointedly thanked the others
for the promptness with which they'd acted.
Later, Randy asked vexedly:
"What was the matter with Fallon? He knew he shouldn't have unfastened
his rope!"
"His knot wasn't good, and I retied it," said McCauley dryly. "But
he thinks I intend to kill everybody, probably him first. So when I
meddled with his life rope he thought I was arranging his death. He
meant to retie the knot to defeat my evil intention."
"He's a fool!" snapped Randy. "We'd better have it out with him, or
there's no telling what he'll do next!"
"I'm afraid I have to," McCauley said distastefully. "He'll be
humiliated when he finds out I was humoring him. But get him, anyhow."
There was a clanking sound somewhere in the ship. The inner air-lock
door closed. There were noises that told of the sealing dogs being
tightened. Then, immediately, the outside lock door opened. Randy went
to find Fallon. He came back, disturbed.
"Fallon just went outside. He's supposed to be off-duty, too."
McCauley frowned. Then he flipped the outside-communicator switch.
As a matter-of-fact precaution, there was two-way communication with
emptiness whenever anybody was outside the ship. Anything that came
in was immediately heard from speakers all over the ship, so that the
control room did not have to be manned all the time work was proceeding
on the planetoid's surface. If an emergency arose, everybody anywhere
in the ship would know immediately.
"Fallon," said McCauley curtly into the outside transmitter, "you're
wanted. Come back, please."
Silence. No answer. There was only darkness outside the ship now. Stars
moved steadily up from the blackness that was one nearby horizon, and
down to the blackness that was the other. The red disk of Mars--very
near, now--was the brightest object in the heavens.
"Fallon!" snapped McCauley. "You're wanted! Return to the ship
immediately!"
A clanking sound came from all the loud-speakers inside the ship. Then
Fallon's voice.
"Wait a minute." He panted as if doing some heavy labor where there was
no weight. "Ah-h-h! Right! What do you want?"
"I want you back in the ship," said McCauley sternly.
More clankings. They were the type of sound that might be heard inside
an air-filled space suit and picked up by its helmet microphone.
"What are you doing?" demanded McCauley.
"I'm fixing ... uh!..." The last was a grunt. "I'm fixing a way to
settle something.... I'm set now."
"Fallon!" barked McCauley. "Come to the ship immediately! That's an
order!"
"I'm busy," said Fallon's voice, defiantly. "But I'll tell you
something! I'm not going back to Earth with the rest of you. I was on
the run when I passed myself off as somebody else and got on the ship.
I was on the run from Death Row in the pen. They had me ready for the
hot seat in two days more, and I got away. Why should I go back to
Earth?"
He paused. And then he said, his tone indescribable:
"Everybody is hearing me. I fixed that! I doctored the aerial switch so
when it's turned on it can't be turned off again! McCauley can't keep
you from hearing me now, because he called me! And McCauley's going to
squirm now! I joined up with him to wipe out every one of you, so we
could go back to Earth with the atom fuel to sell to contacts he's got!
He tried to kill Soames and he tried to kill Hathaway! He tried to kill
me today, by getting me lost, but the rest of you jumped to help me and
he had to join in so you wouldn't know what he'd tried!"
McCauley winced.
"Poor fool!" Randy said.
"Now listen," said Fallon's voice fiercely. "I've told you the truth.
If I'd told you before you wouldn't've believed me. But you're going to
believe me now, because I've scrapped my chance of living--it wasn't
good anyhow--to tell you! You watch McCauley! Send word back to Earth
of what I've told you. He'll not dare to do a thing when a dying man's
accused him--and that's what I am!"
"Fallon!" barked McCauley again. "It's a mistake! You thought I planned
that stuff, and I was just playing along with you! The others knew all
about it! They knew everything you just told them! It's a lie! I'm not
planning anything. I just played along with you...."
"Yes?" jeered Fallon. "Tell that to the aviators! The spacemen don't
believe you!" Then he said: "So what? I'll be the first man on Mars!
I'm Joe Fallon, 4272365, Walla Walla Penitentiary, and I'll go down in
the history books. I'm taking off for Mars. Want to race?"
There was a sudden roaring. It was the sound of a rocket blast,
conducted by metal to a space suit and picked up by the microphone
inside.
"T-taking off," gasped Fallon, outside. "You get this story back to
Earth and he won't dare do anything! He won't dare! But I didn't rat on
him! Only on what he was going to do."
After that, there was only the roar of the rocket blast.
They poured out of the ship in space suits as fast as the air lock
would let them. Perhaps some of them had a faint, faint hope that it
was merely a joke. But it wasn't. There were boxes and bales floating
heavily, soggily, in the emptiness about Eros. They had been thrust
aside when Fallon took the rocket for himself. And he was gone.
McCauley made an irresolute movement back toward the ship, and Randy
said quickly, via space phone:
"No use, Ed! We can't make more than six gees acceleration in the ship,
and in a loadless rocket he'll make twelve! We can't catch him!"
And there'd be nothing they could do if they did catch him. McCauley
ground his teeth, staring at the star-filled sky.
"I did something wrong," he said bitterly. "Something wrong! But what
would have been the right thing?"
Hathaway said enviously:
"He'll be the first man on Mars, at that! But his air won't last all
the way. He'll coast in and crash and never know it. But he'll be the
first man on Mars!"
"Yes," said Randy wryly, "he'll have that.... Let's get these last
rockets off and land at a respectful distance behind him."
And they did.
Of course, as everyone knows, the First Martian Expedition was a
great success. Of the six men who left on it, five came back. They
had maps and photographs and petrological samples, and a complete and
surprisingly reasonable explanation of the canals and oases about
which astronomers had argued for the best part of a century. They even
brought back a sluggish, naked, squirming creature which initiated an
entirely new line of biological research.
McCauley began a battle behind closed doors, and Randy helped him,
and in time a curious error in the public records appeared. It is
officially stated in all the books that one Joe Fallon was the first
man to land on Mars, though the first records of the Expedition gave
his name as Andrew--at least Fallon the crewman was not named Joe.
There is a strange lethargy in official quarters. Nobody bothers to
correct the records.
"Of course," said McCauley to Randy, "he stole our watches, but he was
a pretty decent character at that, considering. He'd have no part in
taking your lives."
"What was he sentenced for?" asked Randy suddenly.
"First-degree murder," said McCauley shortly. "I was curious too. I
asked." Then he said, "They're talking about trying to make Jupiter,
Randy. It seems to me that if we try, we can get to go on that job.
What do you say?"
Randy grinned. He put out his hand and they shook on it.
* * * * *
(When Ed McCauley was a very young officer--in fact a new-made first
lieutenant, space travel was only for robots. Nobody'd ever ridden
out of the atmosphere in a rocket, and nobody'd ever piloted a ship
into orbital flight and landed it again; there wasn't a Space
Platform, and the moon bases hadn't been built. There was constant
danger from cosmic rays and flare particles, and nobody dreamed of
trying to reach either Venus or Mars.
By the time McCauley was a colonel, all those things had been done.
But oddly enough, it didn't seem that the job was finished. The more
that was done, the more remained to be done. And McCauley found
that things never got any more settled down. There was Venus to be
explored, right next door, and Mercury just beyond that. And Titan
looked promising, and of course there were the asteroids, of which
one or two urgently required examination. And even when there were
settlements on Saturn and Uranus and Neptune, there were rumors of
a planet beyond Pluto.... And after that, the stars.
There'd never be any end to the journeyings of men into space.)
* * * * *
TODAY: SATELLITES
TOMORROW: THE OUTER GALAXIES
MEN INTO SPACE is the thrilling story of man's gradual conquest of
outer space. Starting with the rockets of today, the story moves on
to trace the development of the Space Platform and spaceships. It
concludes with the first successful attempts to land on the Moon ...
Mars ... and points beyond....
The entire story is seen through the eyes of young Ed McCauley, whose
adventures in outer space will excite you with the sheer wonder of
man's daring in the Space Age.
MEN INTO SPACE is based on the popular television series starring
William Lundigan.