[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Astounding Science Fiction September 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I
Hardwick knew the Survey ship had turned end-for-end, because though
there was artificial gravity, it does not affect the semicircular
canals of the human ear. He knew he was turning head-over-heels,
even though his feet stayed firmly on the floor. It was not a normal
sensation, and he felt that queasy, instinctive tightening of the
muscles with which one reacts to the abnormal, whether in things seen
or felt.
But the reason for turning the ship end-for-end was obvious. It had
arrived very near its destination, and was killing its Lawlor-drive
momentum. Just as Hardwick was assured that the turning motion was
finished, young Barnes--the ship's lowest-ranking commissioned
officer--came into the wardroom and beamed at him kindly.
"The ship's not landing, sir," he said gently, like one explaining
something to somebody under ten years old. "Our orders are changed.
You're to go to ground by boat. This way, sir."
Hardwick shrugged. He was a Senior Officer of the Colonial Survey, and
this was a Survey ship, and it had been sent especially to get him
from his last and still unfinished job. It was a top-urgency matter.
This ship had had no other business for some months except to go after
and bring him to Sector Headquarters, down on Canna III which must be
somewhere near. But this young officer was patronizing him!
Hardwick rather regretfully recognized that he didn't know how to be
impressive. He was not a good salesman of his own importance. He didn't
even get the urgent respect due his rank--and when one thought about
it, it was amazing that he'd ever reached a high level in the Survey.
Now the young officer waited, brisk and kindly and blandly alert in
manner. Hardwick reflected wryly that he could pin young Barnes' ears
back easily enough. But he remembered when he'd been a junior Survey
ship's officer. Then he'd felt a serene condescension toward all people
of whatever rank who did not spend their lives in the cramped, skimped
quarters of a Survey patrol-ship. If this young Lieutenant Barnes were
fortunate, he'd always feel that way. Hardwick could not begrudge him
the cockiness which made the tedium and hardships of the Service seem
to him a privilege.
So he quite obediently followed Barnes through the wardroom door. He
ducked his head under a ventilation slot and sidled past a standpipe
with bristling air-valve handles. It almost closed the way. There was
the smell of oil and paint and ozone which all proper Survey ships
maintain in their working sections.
"Here, sir," said Barnes paternally. "This way."
He offered his arm for Hardwick to steady himself by. Hardwick ignored
it. He stepped over a complex of white-painted pipes. He arrived at an
almost clear way to a boat-blister.
"And your luggage, sir," added the young man reassuringly, "will follow
you down immediately, sir. With the mail."
Hardwick nodded. He moved toward the blister door. He practically
edged past constrictions due to new equipment. The Survey ship had been
designed a long time ago, and there were no funds for rebuilding when
improved devices came along. So any Survey ship was apt to be cluttered
up with afterthoughts in metal.
* * * * *
A speaker from the wall said sharply:
"_Hear this! Hold fast! Gravity going off!_"
Hardwick caught at a nearby pipe, and snatched his hand away again--it
was hot--and caught on to another and then put his other hand below. He
applied a trifle of pressure. The young officer said kindly:
"Hold fast, sir. The ship's gravity is going off. If I may suggest--"
The gravity did go off. Hardwick grimaced. There'd been a time when he
was used to such matters. This time the sudden outward surge of his
breath caught him unprepared. His diaphragm contracted as the weight
of organs above it ceased to be. He choked for an instant. He was
irritated. He said evenly:
"I am not likely to go head-over-heels, lieutenant. I served four years
as a junior swot on a ship exactly like this!"
He did not float about. He held onto a pipe in two places, and he
applied expert pressure in a strictly professional manner, and his
feet remained firmly on the floor. He startled young Barnes by the
achievement, which only junior swots think only junior swots know
about.
Barnes said, abashed:
"Yes, sir." He held himself firm in the same fashion.
"I even know," said Hardwick crisply, "that the gravity had to be
cut off because we're approaching another ship on Lawlor-drive. Our
gravity-coils would blow if we got into her field with our drive off,
or if her field pressed ours inboard."
Young Barnes looked extremely uncomfortable. Hardwick felt sorry for
him. To be chewed--however delicately--for patronizing a senior officer
could not be pleasant. So Hardwick added:
"And I also remember that, when I was a junior swot I once tried to
tell a Sector Chief how to top off his suit-tanks. So don't let it
bother you!"
The young officer was embarrassed. But a Sector Chief was so high in
the table of Survey organization that one of his idle thoughts was
popularly supposed to be able to crack a junior officer's skull. If
Hardwick, as a young officer, had really tried to tell a Sector Chief
how to top his suit-tanks.... Why....
"Thank you, sir," said Barnes awkwardly. "I'll try not to be an ass
again, sir."
"I suspect," said Hardwick, "that you'll slip occasionally. I did! What
the devil's another ship doing out here and why aren't we landing?"
"I wouldn't know, sir," said the young officer respectfully. His manner
toward Hardwick was quite changed. "I do know the Skipper came in
expecting to land, sir, by the landing-grid, sir. He was told to stand
off. He's as much surprised as you are, sir."
The wall-speaker said crisply:
"_Hear this! Gravity returning! Gravity returning!_"
And weight came back. Hardwick was ready for it this time and took it
casually. He looked at the speaker and it said nothing more. He nodded
to the young man.
"I suppose I'd better get in the boat. No change in that arrangement,
anyhow!"
He crawled through the blister door and wormed his way into the
landing-boat--designed for a more modern ship, and excessively
inconvenient in such an outmoded launching-device. Barnes crawled in
after him.
"Excuse me, sir. I'm to take you down."
He dogged the blister door from the inside, closed the boatport and
dogged it, and flipped a switch.
"Ready for departure," he said into a microphone.
A dial on the instrument board flicked halfway to zero. It stopped
there. Seconds passed. A green light glowed. The young officer said:
"All tight!"
The needle darted a quarter-way farther over, and then began to descend
slowly. The blister was being pumped empty of air. Presently another
light glowed.
"Ready for launching," said the young officer briskly.
There were clankings. The blister-seal broke, and the two halves of
the boat cover drew back. There were stars. To Hardwick they were
unfamiliarly arranged, but he could have picked out Seton and the Donis
cluster in any case, and half a hundred more markers by taking thought
of the position of the planet Canna III, on which Colonial Survey
Sector Headquarters for this part of the galaxy were established.
The boat moved gently out of its place and the ship's gravity field
ended as abruptly as such fields do.
The Survey ship floated away, as seen from the vision ports of the
boat. It apparently increased its drive, because the boat swirled and
swayed as changing eddy-currents moved it. The ship grew small and
vanished. The boat hung in emptiness, turning slowly. The sun Canna
came into view. It was very large for a Sol-type sun, and its rim was
almost devoid of the prominences and jet streams of flaming gas that
older suns of the type display. But even out at the third orbit it
provided 0-1 climate--optimum: equivalent to Earth--for the planet
below.
That planet now came swinging into view as the ship's boat continued to
turn. It was blue. More than ninety per cent of its surface was water,
and much of the solid land was under the northern ice cap. It had been
chosen as Sector Headquarters because of its unsuitability for a large
population, which might resent the considerable land-area needed for
Survey storage and reserve facilities.
Hardwick regarded it thoughtfully. The boat was, of course, roughly
five planetary diameters out--the conventional distance to which a ship
approached any planet on its own drive. Hardwick could see the ice cap
very clearly, and blue sea beyond it and the twilight-line. There was
one cyclonic storm just dissipating toward the night-side, and the edge
of a similar cloud-system down toward the equator. Hardwick searched
for Headquarters. It was on an island at about forty-five degrees
latitude, which ought to be near the center of the planet's surface as
seen from where the ship's boat floated. But he could not make it out.
There was only the one island of any importance and it was not large.
Nothing happened. The boat's rockets remained silent. The young officer
sat quietly, looking at the instruments before him. He seemed to be
waiting for something to happen.
A needle kicked and stayed just off the pin. It was an external-field
indicator. Some field, somewhere, now included the space in which the
ship's boat floated.
"Hm-m-m," said Hardwick. "You are waiting for orders?"
"Yes, sir," said the young man. "I'm ordered not to land except under
ground instructions, sir. I don't know why."
Hardwick observed detachedly:
"One of the worst wiggings I ever got was in a boat like this. I was
waiting for orders and they didn't come. I acted very Service about
it: stiff upper lip and all that. But I was getting in serious trouble
when it occurred to me that it might be my fault I wasn't getting the
orders."
The young officer glanced quickly at an instrument he had previously
ignored. Then he said relievedly:
"Not this time, sir. The communicator's turned on, all right."
Hardwick said:
"Do you think they might be calling you without shifting from
ship-frequency? They were talking to the ship, you know."
"I'll try, sir."
The young man leaned forward and switched to ship-band adjustment of
the communicator. Different wave bands, naturally, were used between a
ship and shore, and a ship and its own boats. A booming carrier wave
came in instantly. The young officer hastily turned down the volume and
words became distinguishable.
"... _What the devil's the matter with you? Acknowledge!_"
The young officer gulped. Hardwick said mildly:
"Since he ranks you, just say 'Sorry, sir.'"
"S-sorry, sir," said Barnes into the microphone.
"_Sorry?_" snapped the voice from the ground. "_I've been calling for
five minutes! Your skipper will hear about this! I shall_--"
Hardwick pulled the microphone before him.
"My name is Hardwick," he observed, "I am waiting for instructions to
land. My pilot has been listening on boat-frequency, as was proper.
You appear to be calling us on an improper channel. Really--"
There was stricken silence. Then babbled apologies from the speaker.
Hardwick smiled faintly at young Barnes.
"It's quite all right. Let's forget it now. But will you give my pilot
his instructions?"
The voice said strainedly:
"_You're to be brought down by landing-grid, sir. Rocket landings have
been ruled non-permitted by the Sector Chief himself, sir. But we are
already landing one boat, sir. Senior Officer Werner is being brought
in now, sir. His boat is still two diameters out, sir, and it will take
us nearly an hour to get him down without extreme discomfort, sir._"
"Then we'll wait," said Hardwick. "Hm-m-m. Call us again before you
start hunting us with the landing-beam. My pilot has a rather promising
idea. And will you call us on the proper frequency then, please?"
The voice aground said unhappily:
"_Yes, sir. Certainly, sir._"
The carrier-wave hum stopped. Young Barnes said gratefully:
"Thank you, sir! Hell hath no fury like a ranking officer caught in a
blunder! He'd have twisted my tail for his mistake, sir, and it could
have been bad!" Then he paused. He said uneasily, "But ... beg pardon,
sir! I haven't any promising ideas. Not that I know of!"
"You have an hour to develop one," Hardwick told him.
* * * * *
Internally, Hardwick was disturbed. There were few occasions on
which even one Senior Officer was called in to Sector Headquarters.
Interstellar distances being what they were, and thirty light-speeds
being practically the best available, Senior Officers necessarily
acted pretty much as independent authorities. To call one man in meant
all his other work had to go by the board for a matter of months. But
two--And Werner?
Werner was getting to ground first. If there were something serious
ashore, Werner would make a great point of arriving first, even if only
by hours. A keen sort of person in giving the right impression, he'd
risen in the Service faster than Hardwick. That other Lawlor field
would have been his ship getting out of the way.
The young officer at his elbow fidgeted.
"Beg pardon, sir. What sort of idea should I develop, sir? I'm not sure
I understand--"
"It's rather annoying to have to stay parked in free fall," said
Hardwick patiently. "And it's always a good practice to review annoying
situations and see if they can be bettered."
Barnes' forehead wrinkled.
"We could land much quicker on rockets, sir. And ... even when the
landing-grid reaches out for us, since we've no gravity-coils, they'll
have to handle us very cautiously or they'd break our necks!"
Hardwick nodded. Barnes was thinking straight enough, but it takes
young officers a long time to think of thinking straight. They have
to obey so many orders unquestioningly that they tend to stop doing
anything else. Yet at each rise in grade some slight trace of increased
capacity to think is required. In order to reach really high rank,
an officer has to be capable of thinking which simply isn't possible
unless he's kept in practice on the way up.
Young Barnes looked up, startled.
"Look here, sir!" he said, surprised. "If it takes them an hour to let
down Senior Officer Werner from two planetary diameters, it'll take
much longer to let us down from out here!"
"True," said Hardwick.
"And you don't want to spend three hours descending, sir, after waiting
an hour for him!"
"I don't," admitted Hardwick. He could have given orders, of course.
But if a junior officer were spurred to the practice of thinking, it
might mean that some day he'd be a better senior officer. And Hardwick
knew how desperately few men were really adequate for high authority.
Anything that could be done to increase the number--
Young Barnes blinked.
"But it doesn't matter to the landing-grid how far out we are!" he said
in an astonished voice. "They could lock on to us at ten diameters, or
at one! Once they lock the field-focus on us, when they move it they
move us!"
Hardwick nodded again.
"So ... so by the time they've got that other boat landed ... why ... I
can use rockets and get down to one diameter myself, sir! And they can
lock onto us there and let us down a few thousand miles only! So we can
get to ground half an hour after the other boat's down instead of four
hours from now."
"Just so," agreed Hardwick. "At a cost of a little thought and a little
fuel. You do have a promising idea after all, lieutenant. Suppose you
carry it out?"
* * * * *
Young Barnes glanced at Hardwick's safety-strap. He threw over the
fuel-ready lever and conscientiously waited the conventional few
seconds for the first molecules of fuel to be catalyzed cold. Once
firing started, they'd be warmed to detonation-readiness in the last
few millimeters of the injection-gap.
"Firing, sir," he said respectfully.
There was the curious sound of a rocket blasting in emptiness, when
the sound is conveyed only by the rocket-tube's metal. There was the
smooth, pushing sensation of acceleration. The tiny ship's boat swung
and aimed down at the planet. Lieutenant Barnes leaned forward and
punched the ship's computer.
"I hope you'll excuse me, sir," he said awkwardly. "I should have
thought that out myself, sir, without prompting. But problems like
this don't turn up very often, sir. As a rule it's wisest to follow
precedents as if they were orders."
Hardwick said dryly:
"To be sure! But one reason for the existence of junior officers is the
fact that some day there will have to be new senior ones."
Barnes considered. Then he said surprisedly:
"I never thought of it that way, sir. Thank you."
He continued to punch the computer keys, frowning. Hardwick relaxed
in his seat, held there by the gentle acceleration and the belt.
He'd had nothing by which to judge the reason for his summoning to
Headquarters. He had very little now. But there was trouble of some
sort below. Two senior officers dragged from their own work. Werner,
now--Hardwick preferred not to estimate Werner. He disliked the man,
and would be biased. But he was able, though definitely on the make.
And there was himself. They'd been called to Headquarters where no ship
was to be landed by landing-grid, nor any rocket to come to ground. A
landing-grid could pluck a ship out of space ten planet-diameters out,
and draw it with gentle violence shoreward, and land it lightly as a
feather. A landing-grid could take the heaviest, loaded freighter and
stop it in orbit and bring it down at eight gravities. But the one
below wouldn't land even a tiny Survey ship! And a landing-boat was
forbidden to come down on its rockets!
Hardwick arranged those items in his mind. He knew the planet below,
of course. When he got his Senior rating he'd spent six months at
Headquarters learning procedures and practices proper to his increased
authority. There was one inhabitable island, two hundred miles long
and possibly forty wide. There was no other usable ground outside the
Arctic.
The one occupied island had gigantic sheer cliffs on its windward side,
where a great slab of bedrock had split along some submarine fault
and tilted upward above the surface. Those cliffs were four thousand
feet high, but from them the island sloped very, very gently and very
gradually until its leeward shore slipped under the restless sea.
Sector Headquarters had been placed here because it seemed that
civilians would not want to colonize so limited a world. But there were
civilians, because there was Headquarters. And now every inch of ground
was cultivated and there was irrigation and intensive farming and some
hydroponic establishments. But Sector Headquarters included a vast
reserve area on which a space-fleet might be marshaled in case of need.
The overcrowded civilians were bitter because of the great uncultivated
area the Survey needed for storage and possible emergency use. Even
when Hardwick was here, years back, there was bitterness because the
Survey crowded the civilian economy which had been based on it.
Hardwick considered all these items. He came to an uncomfortable
conclusion. Presently he looked up. The planet loomed larger. Much
larger.
* * * * *
"I think you'd better lose all planetward velocity before we hook on,"
he observed. "The landing-grid crew might have trouble focusing on us
so close if we're moving."
"Yes, sir," said the young officer. "I will, sir."
"There's some sort of merry hell below," said Hardwick wryly. "It
looks bad that they won't let a ship come down by grid. It looks worse
that they won't let this one land on its rockets." He paused. "I doubt
they'll risk lifting us off again."
Young Barnes finished his computations. He looked satisfied. He glanced
at the now-gigantic planet below. He deftly adjusted the course of the
tiny boat. Then he jerked his head around.
"Excuse me, sir. Did you say we mightn't be able to lift off again?"
"I could almost predict that we won't," said Hardwick.
"Would you ... could you say why, sir?"
"They don't want landings. The trouble is here. If they don't want
landings, they won't want launchings. Werner and I were sent for, so
presumably we're needed. But apparently there's uneasiness about even
our landing. Surely they won't send us off again. I suspect--"
The loud-speaker said tinnily:
"_Calling boat from landing-grid! Calling boat from landing-grid!_"
"Come in," said Barnes. But he looked uneasily at Hardwick.
"_Correct your course!_" commanded the voice sharply. "_You are not
to land on rockets under any circumstances! This is an order from the
Sector Chief himself! Stand off! We will be ready to lock on and land
you gently in about fifteen minutes. But meanwhile stand off!_"
"Yes, sir," said young Barnes.
Hardwick reached over and took the microphone.
"Hardwick speaking," he said. "I'd like information. What's the trouble
down there that we can't use our rockets?"
"_Rockets are noisy, sir. Even boat-rockets. We have orders to prevent
all physical vibration possible, sir. But I am ordered not to give
details on a transmitter, sir._"
"I'll sign off," said Hardwick, dryly.
He pushed the microphone away. He deplored his own lack of
aggressiveness. Werner, now, would have pulled his rank and insisted on
being informed. But Hardwick couldn't help believing that there was a
reason for orders that over-ruled his own.
The young officer swung the rocket end-for-end. The sensation of
pressure against the back of Hardwick's seat increased.
Minutes later the speaker said:
"_Grid to boat. Prepare for lock-on._"
"Ready, sir," said Barnes.
The small boat shuddered and leaped crazily. It spun. It oscillated
violently through seconds-long arcs in emptiness. Very, very gradually,
the oscillations died. There was a momentary sensation of the faint
tugging of planetary weight, which is somehow subtly different from the
feel of artificial gravity. Then the cosmos turned upside down as the
boat was drawn very swiftly toward the watery planet below it.
Some minutes later, young Barnes spoke apologetically:
"Beg pardon, sir," he said diffidently. "I must be stupid, sir, but
I can't imagine any reason why vibrations or noise should make any
difference on a planet. How could it do harm?"
"This is an ocean-planet," said Hardwick. "It might make people drown."
The young officer flushed. He turned his head away. And Hardwick
reflected ruefully that the young were always sensitive. But he did not
speak again. When they landed in the vast, spidery landing-grid--a vast
metal grid-work a full half-mile high--Barnes would find out whether he
was right or not.
He did. And Hardwick was right. The people on Canna III were anxious to
avoid vibrations because they were afraid of drowning.
Their fears seemed to be rather well-founded.