_Well trained actors are taught
the old tradition that the
show must go on. But what's
the point of it all when your
audience is very, very dead?_
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, October 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
From somewhere there was a buzzing sound. It kept repeating. The gentle
throb of it vibrated his eardrums; the vibrations registered somewhere
at the bottom edges of his brain. Buzzzz. Insistently, like a wasp.
Like a trapped wasp.... But there were no wasps in the streamlined
metal shell of Vanguard-I.
_Better answer_, another part of his brain whispered. _Better
answer ... they want to tell you what to do...._
_God!_
Some sweat oozed from the dark bunches of his eyebrows, fogged the
binocular eye-piece of the orbit-synchronized refractor, but he kept
watching, he could not stop watching. _Buzzz! Buzzzz!_
Red gouts of flame, as big as a pin-head, as big as a shirt-button,
as big as--damn the fogging--up! No, no it was the mushrooms, not
the fogging; you could count them, like puffs of gunsmoke along a
firing-line stippling the Atlantic seaboard, now branching, riddling
westward--others drifting eastward from the Pacific as though groping
toward a pre-planned rendezvous.
_Buzzzz! Buzzzz!_
He would answer. There would be the sound of another man's voice and
that would make it all real. If he silenced the buzzer and listened
to the voice it would be real and not a final training-film; the
films would be over, the lectures over, the flight-tests over, the
eliminations over and he and Streeter chosen and Streeter dead and
buried at Space and now he was alone up in Vanguard-I....
Vanguard-I was "up" and Earth was "down" and both were real. Beyond
the buzzing, both would be real.
The strong young voice was an old voice as it answered the buzzing, as
it gave sound to words for the UHF's panel-mike.
"Home Plate, Home Plate, this is Mrs. Grundy, over..."
"Mrs. Grundy this is Home Plate. Are you reading? Are you ready for a
circus or is all your money gone? Over..."
"Ready for a circus. Regret delay in acknowledging. I--was in
Observation, over."
"Mrs. Grundy, your Daddy-o wants to talk to you so bye bye baby...."
General Knight himself. Knight himself to talk to him ... so it was
that bad.
_Of course it was that bad!_
"Mrs. Grundy can you read, over...." Knight's voice. It sounded calm.
It sounded unruffled. You had to know Knight, you had to have heard him
often to know that it was not calm, that it was not at all unruffled....
"Even the small print Daddy-o, over...."
"No words twice so baby make marks--" Thorn's hand flashed to
the card-punch and magnetic-tape unit switches, flicked them to
ON-RECORD. "--been surprised, but not taken completely off balance;
retaliation now in progress as you have probably already observed or
will observe in course of orbital passage. Plan Able Zebra effective
immediately...." The words were coming so fast they were slurred, and
Knight was exaggerating his own Alabama accent. "Expect report once
each turn...."
He would not have needed the recording or even words twice. Each of
Knight's directions was graven into him as it was spoken.
To cease all scientific observation and recording at once; to begin
military observation of the Enemy and his puppet-states, and all
possibly-discernible activities, immediately. To remember that as
the coast of California appeared on his horizon he was to begin
transmitting in code, and that he would finish transmitting before the
Atlantic coast disappeared over the horizon behind him. To remember
that his stores of fuel were for orbit-correction only, to be used for
effecting an Earthside landing only upon explicit and properly-coded
order, or upon threat of otherwise unavoidable destruction. To
calculate present stores of food concentrate and air to the hour if
possible, not forgetting that with Streeter gone the time-lapse between
rendezvous with the supply rocket should be at least doubled. To
remember a thousand things; things he already knew by rote ... but the
tape and card-punch units clicked softly away, recording, recording....
"... and Mrs. Grundy here's a morsel for you--you may have a new
neighbor in your block but not like you at all--there's probably a
world between you--don't take any wooden nickels baby. Say good-bye to
Daddy-o baby, over...."
"Home Plate this is Mrs. Grundy sees all and heard everything, out."
The whole transmission had taken less than two minutes. Now the UHF
was off and there was one break, anyway. If, somehow, the Enemy
had succeeded in getting up a satellite of his own, he had at
least--according to Knight--sacrificed the ability to directly monitor
Thorn's radio for invisibility. Vanguard-I was aloft for geophysical
purposes only, according to the propaganda-pitch back home. But as far
as Big Red knew, it was loaded to the locks with as much armament as a
thing of its comparatively tiny size could carry.
And as far as Thorn himself knew, nobody making geophysical
observations had ever needed to do it through the tubes of
missile-launchers like the ones that were cuddled snugly in
Vanguard-I's blunt forehull....
Such little thoughts whipped quickly through his mind as he tried to
make it regain balance for the immediate tasks besetting him, because
they were little and simple and easy to grasp and discard. They could
keep him from going crazy. It was the bigger thoughts--the bigger ones
that might come later--they were the kind he had to keep out of his
head.
Major Joshua Thorn began his work with the equipment, to modify it for
use as Daddy-o had told him.
He could do it automatically, do it in his sleep, do it blind. Couldn't
watch and do it, though. Watch later. Think of the little things now
that were easy while the equipment got automatically modified. Little
things to keep the big ones like what was happening down there from
tipping him over into the whirlpool of madness that was trying so hard
to pull at him.
Little things....
* * * * *
"Please be seated, Major Thorn."
"Yes sir."
"This will be your Final Security interrogation. To be followed, upon
its favorable completion, by Final Briefing. Before we begin, do you
have any questions, Major?"
The thick lenses of the glasses reflected the interrogation cubicle's
harsh lighting and would not let him see accurately into the pale eyes
that blinked behind them. But it was almost as though he and Brigadier
Robert McQuine, USAF, Intelligence, were old friends. And the sweating
faces of the three G-2 psychiatrists that gleamed at McQuine's left
on the opposite end of the big oval-shaped conference-table--they
were more than familiar. They had never thought he, Thorn, was really
sane. What really sane man who had flown twice too many missions in
one war would volunteer to fly in the next that followed? What sane
man would go begging for military flight-test assignments in weird
ships that had never been flown anywhere but in a wind-tunnel and on
computer-tapes. And what sane man--God help him--what man in his senses
would ask to be fired a thousand miles off the Earth with only the
knowledge that a thing the size of a basketball had circled the planet
successfully for almost a year before it fell back and burned up?
Had the Major ever had thoughts of--well, of doing away with himself?
Had the Major hated his father when he was young? Been afraid of girls?
(Oh, is that a fact, Major? Well! Well, now....)
Only the faces of the three Senate Committee members were different.
But they usually were.
"Yes sir, one question. It was my understanding--and Captain
Streeter's, I'm sure--that Final Security and Briefing had been
scheduled for about nine weeks from now. There has been no acceleration
in the final phases of our program, so--"
"I, ah--" McQuine interrupted smoothly, "think that question might best
be answered by your Final Briefing officers, Major. Now, any other
questions?"
"No sir." So that was it, all right. The rumors, as usual, had a germ
of truth in them. All rumors did. And these had been more persistent
than most. _Cold war not so cold anymore. General Adams transferring.
That last note from Big Red--didn't all get to the papers! Cold war not
so cold anymore...._
"Now, Major, when you were a sophomore in high-school--the book
entitled _A World United_ not on your required English or Political
Science reading lists, was it?"
"No sir, not as I recall, but--"
"Then why did you read it? You have admitted before that you _did_ read
it--"
Pause. All up to him. Every single word, every single inflection, up to
him....
"I took quite an interest in my studies, both in high-school and in
college, sir, as I believe my records will show you. They'll show that
I also read books relating to other courses that weren't a regular part
of the curriculum...."
Nodding. But looking him squarely in the face, hesitating just the
right length of time. Then suddenly "Major Thorn do you swear here and
now in the presence of witnesses that your allegiance to your country
comes first above all with the sole possible exception of Almighty God?"
"I do so swear...."
And on and on....
"... why did you major in the Fine Arts in high-school, switch to
Engineering in college, then switch again to take your degrees in
World History and Political Science ... were you ever heard to say, or
reported to have said, or did you in fact say.... Major, I have here
the records of...."
The Senators had their questions. The psychiatrists had theirs.
"... hesitation, Major, in firing upon an Enemy aircraft, even though
disabled ... guilt-feeling at destroying a city containing almost one
million people.... Major you told us that ... training for five years,
now, and you realize...."
More and more and more, but it was not so difficult to keep his nerves
straightened out as it had been the first time or the next time after
that. He had told the absolute truth as far as he could possibly know
it. So it was just a matter of giving the same answers he had always
given. Let 'em make what they could of the truth....
"Yes, Senator, I readily admit having written my senior essay on the
basis of the book _A World United_. Yes sir, I studied philosophy and
some foreign languages in college.... No sir--no sir, nothing like
that. No. Never...."
And then hardly an hour after it was all over, less than an hour
to relax for Streeter and himself, cooped up in a single room with
cigarettes and magazines and nothing else and nobody else to talk to,
hardly an hour, and then Final Briefing was underway.
General Groton: Typical Orders of Procedure.
General Simms: Technical Details.