"Yes, sir. I got the energizer and the generator."
Goil sat back with a self-satisfied look on his face.
I shot Willy a scolding glance and said, "Willy, you don't have to say
another thing--"
Before I could get out any more words, Goil snapped out, "Weston, one
more word from you unless I ask for it, and you will find yourself
under station arrest for insubordination--do you understand?"
I clamped my mouth shut. The more I defended Willy, the more Willy
would talk in order to protect his uninvolved friends.
Goil said to me in a low, ominous voice, "I am invested with certain
Company powers out here, and I intend to use them fully. I intend to
continue with this investigation in spite of any opposition you give
me. Pending on the outcome, Mr. Orrin and Mr. Weston, you are both
relieved of your positions as of now--say for mismanagement of
personnel and company property.
"Mr. Maloon, I am placing you under station arrest by authority of my
position, and because of your admission of theft. Pay and allowances
for all of you are suspended as of today.
"That's all. Please leave."
* * * * *
Willy was the first to leave, with his head hanging low in shame.
Orrin left next, with fury shining plainly from his eyes. I lingered
until Willy had left. Then I closed the door and swung around to face
Goil.
Goil was looking at me peculiarly. He said, "I told you to go,
Weston."
"I will," I said. "But first I want to tell you something."
"When I want to hear your side of the story, I'll ask you for it,"
Goil said nastily.
"It won't wait," I said in a new voice that caused Goil to look at me
closely. "I want to tell you now while we are alone."
Goil's eyes narrowed. "Weston, anything you have to say one way or the
other I'll use against you later. Anything you want to say to save
your own skin just won't do any good."
I became suddenly infuriated. I stepped forward and slammed my fist on
the desk top and said in a low, poisonous voice, "Goil, you've shoved
your prying nose into something you know very little about. You're
jumping to conclusions about something you know only part of. Now I'm
forced to reveal certain facts which you shouldn't be knowing. And I'm
going to tell you here and now whether you want to listen or not!"
Goil had reddened and risen from his chair. But I towered over him
threateningly and he dropped back in his chair in quiet incense.
"That's better," I said, somewhat cooled off. "Now listen. What I have
to say may seem incredible to you. Hear me out, then speak your piece.
And I think I can prove what I say to your satisfaction. In any event,
I hope I can trust your confidence on this. You'll understand what I
mean by the time I'm finished.
"First, Willy did take the energizer and the generator. 'Steal,' if
you wish to say so. I knew it. Orrin, nor anyone else knows it though.
Second, those are not the only things he has taken. Third, his taking
things like that has been happening all the time he has been here. It
happened before he got here, wherever he was.
"He is not a kleptomaniac. He steals, not because he has a compulsion
to do so, nor for economic gain, but for a more important reason."
Goil said, "Stop beating around the bush. If you think you have
something to say, go ahead and say it."
"I'm trying to," I said. "But it's not something easily explained.
"Willy is nothing but a great big rabbit's foot."
"_What?_"
"Mr. Goil, Willy is the exact opposite of an accident prone. Willy is
a safety prone. No accidents involving personal injury ever happen
when he is around. Not even minor ones."
* * * * *
Goil looked hostilely skeptical at me. "I seem to recall some accident
reports you sent in. You signed them yourself, I believe, as safety
officer."
"That's right," I said feeling foolish. "But they were falsified
reports. And I've requisitioned medical supplies too, that were never
needed."
"Now why would you want to do a thing like that?" asked Goil in a tone
cold with obvious disbelief, and the tenor of humoring a madman.
"To keep reports and consumption statistics where they belong," I
answered.
"I'm more than just an employee of the Company. I'm also a research
psychologist. And I'm studying Willy. I'll admit that through
influence and other ways I got Willy and me a job out here isolated
with a relatively small group doing rather dangerous work, normally.
That was planned. It's easier to study him this way. I can prove this,
of course."
"How do you know for certain Willy is a safety prone?"
"Through non-accident statistics where he has worked."
* * * * *
Goil removed a small pen knife from his pocket, opened the blade, and
drew it across the back of his hand. The cut bled. He said, "Look. I'm
injured."
I shook my head. "You are injured, but it's not the same thing. It was
not an accident."
Goil stood up. "I've heard enough of your gibberish. Willy is a thief
and you are a pathological liar. What you have just told me is pure
fantasy, a yarn concocted to try to protect you and Willy. I have
little doubt but what you really believe it yourself. Mr. Weston, you
are a sick man."
"I told you it would sound incredible.
"Willy only steals or alters the normal sequence of events so that
accidents involving human injury won't happen. Sometimes his behavior
patterns are simple, sometimes complex. But always--always the
synergism, syndrome, or whatever you want to call it, is the same. I
have a file of tape recordings I can let you hear, and incident
histories--"
"Which may very well be considered part of _your_ syndrome," said
Goil. "Mr. Weston, you are either the system's boldest liar, or you
are sick. You can't really expect me to believe all that garbage, now
can you?"
"With that unimaginative type mind you seem to have, Mr. Goil, no, I
don't expect you to believe. But it was worth a try. Willy is up to
something big right now, and if you interrupt it, there is no telling
what will happen."
"We'll find out," Goil said, "for I expect to find out what this is
all about. Now if you'll leave--"
I spun on my heel, angry at Goil's intolerant stupidity. I whipped
open the door and slammed it shut behind me. Then I stormed to my
quarters where I broke open a fresh bottle of Scotch. I downed a
couple of quick shots then nursed a third, thinking about the time out
near Jupiter when Willy had rigged up a still and brewed some powerful
concoction. He had insisted that we all sample it, and everyone had,
just to please Willy (they thought!) and had all gotten roaring drunk.
And had safely passed through one of those plague areas that come up
once in a century out of who knows where to decimate any population
that happens to be in the way.
We had made an emergency landing at another mining station. We had
walked through the corridors and rooms looking for desperately needed
parts and supplies, and had tried to count the dead until the task
became too sickening, exposed in every possible way to the voracious
microorganisms that had killed every being aboard. But none of us had
gotten even a headache. We found our parts and took off again.
Willy never made any more of that brew.
I wondered often what could have been in that stuff to make it such a
powerful antibiotic.
I had been early in the process of studying Willy then and had not had
foresight enough to keep a sample of that brew. I had lost one chance
right then to add materially to the medical knowledge of humanity. And
now that stupid Gar Goil was on the point of interrupting all further
research.
* * * * *
For the next ten minutes I considered ways I could get Goil near an
airlock so I could shove him through, sans suit, and with enough
velocity so that he would end up somewhere in the Coal-sack region.
But I gave up the idea, conceding that it would be impossible;
somewhere along the line Willy would prevent it.
I took one more Scotch and went to bed. All night long I crossed and
recrossed the threshold of sleep, my mind filled with methods of
studying and analyzing the intricacies of Willy's behavior; trying to
discover any common factors so that others of his genre could easily
be discovered and put to work and their by-products salvaged.
The following day was dismal to me. I avoided everybody possible so I
wouldn't take my troubles out on them. And I avoided Goil in
particular, for another reason. I even ate late so I could eat alone.
Just about the time I finished, Artie's voice came over the system,
saying:
"Attention, everyone. Flash news item just received. There is a
freighter out of control enroute from Ganymede to Mars. Unless the
freighter can be brought under control, it will have to be abandoned."
So what, I thought. It's happened before. So some company loses a
freighter. They're insured.
Artie's voice went right on uninterrupted by my sour thoughts. "The
present course of the ship is interception of Mars. Unless the course
can be changed, the ship might plunge into Mars."
So what again? They're still insured. The crew can abandon ship in the
lifeboats. So the ship makes a microscopic dent in Mars. It's better
than 99% wasteland.
"The exact point at which impact with Mars will be made is being
computed right now. What makes the whole thing terrible is that the
freighter is loaded with fissionable material exported from Ganymede.
If the ship is not stopped or diverted before it reaches Mars, the
impact will bring all the units of fissionable material into super
critical proximity."
And that, I realized, will not be good for Mars because the thin
atmosphere of the planet will let the ship get right through to the
surface before the tough skin could get much more than cherry red. And
the ship would bury itself in the soft red soil (how deep?) before the
impact sandwiched the containers of fissionable material enough for
detonation proximity.
Whew! My interest began to increase.
That was Artie Jones giving the news. He was like that, and it was not
part of his regular job. He did it because he wanted to keep people up
with the latest. He was Computers and Communications engineer.
He finished off by saying, "Long-range scopes are looking for the ship
now. As soon as it is located and magnifiers thrown into the circuit,
it will be 'vised. I'll have the signals relayed to the rec room
trideo.
"It is, by the way, one of our own company freighters."
* * * * *
Alarms clanged in my head. Yowee!
I raced for the rec room. Nearly everybody else was doing the same.
Orrin was playing a half-hearted game of cribbage with Gus. Goil sat
by himself in a corner reading. Willy was not there.
Randy and Manuel were already arguing about how much fissionable a
freighter like that could carry. I settled the argument by telling
them exactly how much. They both whistled and shook their heads. Randy
said:
"If that ship buries itself deeply enough in the surface and explodes,
it'll make a neat hole in Mars."
I looked askance at Goil and saw that he was not reading. I said,
"Hole, hell! With the tonnage they have on that ship, it'll take a
chunk out of the surface the size of Australia. If it goes deep
enough, it might even crack the planet wide open. It couldn't be any
worse."
I wasn't at all certain anything like cracking the planet would
happen. Nobody could know just what sort of blast that tonnage could
make. But I wanted it to sound really bad. I sneaked a quick look at
Goil. He was looking pretty worried.
Now, I knew our company had some real estate on Mars. A few mines, a
number of atmosphere generator factories and several gravity generator
plants. And just about this time I strongly suspected that Goil had
some stock and other holdings in the Mars territory.
"That's only part of it," I said. "Think of what will happen to Mars's
atmosphere if that much planet is scattered around."
"Yeah," said Manuel. "Dust. Red dust. And how about all that
undetonated radioactive material?"
"Which will be dust also," I said, "thoroughly mixed in with all the
rest of the dust."
Gus had finished his game of cribbage with Orrin and had come over. He
said, "The dust will shut out what dim sunlight there is and the whole
planet will be in for a deep freeze."
"What's the half-life of that stuff in the freighter?" I asked Orrin.
I knew, but I wanted Goil to know too. Orrin told me.
The alarm that had clattered in my brain had settled down to a
soothing purr. I began to add three and three hoping to get nine.
Right now I needed a gestalt of something whose whole would be a lot
greater than the sum of its parts. The parts I believe I had, and the
sum I think was due to come up soon.
I went out and headed for the computer room. Artie was in there trying
to listen to a dozen news reports at one time. He wouldn't miss any of
them, for a flock of recorders were going all at once.
I grabbed him by a shoulder and spun him around and looked as hard and
serious as I could.
"Artie," I said, "I know damned well you computed a course for Willy
the other day, for an asteroid to orbit just outside Earth. I want you
to give me the exact course, where and when. And I want it now. This
is official business, Artie."
* * * * *
I must have looked extremely convincing, for Artie paled a little and
did not try to deny anything.
"--I can't, Sam," he said. "I gave the original tapes and sheets to
Willy. I threw away the duplicates."
"Dammit, Artie!" I shouted, now really mad. "Then you'd better start
remembering pretty good, because you're going to sit right down here
and I'm going to sit with you, and you are going to give me as nearly
as you can the course of Willy's asteroid."
This was just about an impossible request. I knew it, and Artie knew
it. But he sat down at the console of the computer and said:
"I'll do the best I can, Sam."
* * * * *
I went to Willy's room and banged on the door then threw it open. He
wasn't there. For sure then he would be someplace he wasn't supposed
to be. So I headed for one likely place.
Willy was there all right. The chef shuffled around nervously,
probably wondering if I'd just chew him out for letting Willy in the
galley, or tell Orrin. He offered me ham and eggs. I refused sharply.
"Elmer," I said, "blast off."
Elmer did.
As soon as Willy and I were alone, I said, "Willy, you got me and Mr.
Orrin in a pack of trouble. Why don't you tell me where the generator
and the converter are. If we can get them back to the stock room,
nothing can be proved."
Willy couldn't look me in the face. He added three too many spoons of
sugar to his coffee then stirred it so fast it spilled over the edge
of the cup.
"Come on, Willy. Where?"
Willy spent the next minute trying to turn inside out. He finally
squeaked. "I can't, Sam."
"Why not, Willy?"
It was my turn to be silent for a minute. It seemed a lot longer. I
said, "I think you better tell me all about it, Willy."
He did.