The Band Played On
by LESTER DEL REY
Illustrated by SCHOENHERR
_The_ Heroes' March _was fitting for
most spacemen. Somehow, though, if just didn't
apply to a space-borne garbage man!_
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Infinity June 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
LESTER DEL REY _says: "I've grown more and more unhappy about the
trend to stories laid a thousand years ahead and a megaparsec away.
So every once in a while, I like to sit down with an idea where I
can be pretty darned honest about probable facts and see if some of
the old, basic, simple ideas can't be twisted." He has a good point
there, and we think you'll agree he has succeeded in his aim in_
The Band Played On.
CHAPTER I
Inside the rocket grounds, the band was playing the inevitable
_Heroes' March_ while the cadets snapped through the final
maneuvers of their drill. Captain Thomas Murdock stopped at the gate
near the visitors' section, waiting until the final blatant notes
blared out and were followed by the usual applause from the town kids
in the stands. The cadets broke ranks and headed for their study halls,
still stepping as if the band played on inside their heads.
Maybe it did, Murdock thought. There had been little parade drill and
less music back on Johnston Island when his group won their rocket
emblems fifteen years before; yet somehow there had been a sense of
destiny, like a drum beating in their brains, to give them the same
spring to their stride. It had sent most of them to their deaths and
a few to command positions on the moon, long before the base was
transferred here to the Florida coast.
Murdock shrugged and glanced upwards. The threatening clouds were
closing in, scudding across the sky in dark blobs and streaks, and
the wind velocity was rising. It was going to be lousy weather for a
take-off, even if things got no worse.
Behind him, a boy's voice called out. "Hey, pilot!"
He glanced about, but there was no other pilot near. He hesitated,
frowning. Then, as the call was repeated, he turned doubtfully toward
the stands. Surprisingly, a boy of about twelve was leaning over the
railing, motioning toward him and waving a notebook emphatically.
"Autograph, pilot?"
Murdock took the book and signed the blank page automatically, while
fifty pairs of eyes watched. No other books were held out, and there
was complete silence from the audience. He handed the pencil and
notebook back, trying to force a friendly smile onto his face. For a
moment, there was a faint ghost of the old pride as he turned back
across the deserted parade ground.
It didn't last. Behind him, an older voice broke the silence in
disgusted tones. "Why'd you do that, Shorty? He ain't no pilot!"
"He is, too. I guess. I know a pilot's uniform," Shorty protested.
"So what? I already told you about him. He's the garbage man!"
There was no vocal answer to that--only the ripping sound of paper
being torn from the notebook.
* * * * *
Murdock refused to look back as the boys left the stands. He went
across the field, past the school buildings, on toward the main
sections of the base--the business part, where the life-line to the
space station and the moon was maintained. A job, he told himself, was
a job. It was a word he would never have used six ships and fifteen
years before.
The storm flag was up on the control tower, he saw. Worse, the guy
cables were all tight, anchoring the three-stage ships firmly down in
their blast deflection pits. There were no tractors or tankers on the
rocket field to service the big ships. He stared through the thickening
gloom toward the bay, but there was no activity there, either. The
stage recovery boats were all in port, with their handling cranes
folded down. Obviously, no flight was scheduled.
It didn't fit with predictions. Hurricane Greta was hustling northward
out to sea, and the low ceiling and high winds were supposed to be
the tag end of that disturbance, due to clear by mid-day. This didn't
look that way; it looked more as if the weather men on the station had
goofed for the first time in ten years.
Murdock stared down the line toward his own ship, set apart from the
others, swaying slightly as the wind hit it. Getting it up through the
weather was going to be hell, even if he got clearance, but he couldn't
wait much longer. Greta had already put him four days behind his
normal schedule, and he'd been counting on making the trip today.
There was a flash bulletin posted outside the weather shack, surrounded
by a group of young majors and colonels from the pilot squad. Murdock
stepped around them and into the building. He was glad to see that the
man on duty was Collins, one of the few technicians left over from the
old days on the Island.
Collins looked up from his scowling study of the maps and saluted
casually without rising. "Hi, Tommy. How's the hog business?"
"Lousy," Murdock told him. "I'm going to have a hungry bunch of pigs
if I don't get another load down. What gives with the storm signals? I
thought Greta blew over."
Collins pawed the last cigarette out of a pack and shook his head as he
lighted up. "This is Hulda, they tell me. Our geniuses on the station
missed it--claimed Hulda was covered by Greta until she grew bigger.
We're just beginning to feel her. No flights for maybe five days more."
"Hell!" It was worse than Murdock had feared. He twisted the weather
maps to study them, unbelievingly. Unlike the newer pilots, he'd spent
enough time in the weather shack to be able to read a map or a radar
screen almost as well as Collins. "The station couldn't have goofed
that much, Bill!"
"Did, though. Something's funny up there. Bailey and the other brass
are holding some pow-wow about it now, over at Communications. It's
boiling up to a first-class mess."
One of the teletypes began chattering, and Collins turned to it.
Murdock moved outside where a thin rain was beginning to fall, whipping
about in the gusts of wind. He headed for the control tower, knowing it
was probably useless. In that, he was right; no clearances for flight
could be given without General Bailey's okay, and Bailey was still tied
up in conference, apparently.
He borrowed a raincape and went out across the field toward his ship.
The rain was getting heavier, and the _Mollyann_ was grunting and
creaking in her pit as he neared her. The guying had been well enough
done, however, and she was in no danger that he could see. He checked
the pit gauges and records. She'd been loaded with a cargo of heavy
machinery, and her stage tanks were fully fueled. At least, if he could
get clearance, she was ready to go. She was the oldest ship on the
field, but her friction-burned skin covered sound construction and he
had supervised her last overhaul himself.
Then he felt the wind picking up again, and his stomach knotted. He
moved around to the more sheltered side of the ship, cursing the
meteorologists on the station. If they'd predicted this correctly, he
could have arranged to take off during the comparative lull between
storms. Even that would have been bad enough, but now....
Abruptly, a ragged klaxon shrieked through the air in a series of
short bursts, sounding assembly for the pilots. Murdock hesitated,
then shrugged and headed out into the rain. He could ignore the signal
if he chose, since he'd been on detached duty for years, except when
actually scheduled for flight; yet it was probably his best chance to
see Bailey. He slogged along while the other pilots trotted across the
field toward Briefing on the double. Even now, covered with slickers
and tramping through mud, they seemed to be on parade drill, as if a
drum were beating out the time for them.
* * * * *
Murdock found a seat at the rear, separate from the others, out of
old habit. Up front, an improvised crap game was going on; elsewhere,
they were huddled in little groups, their young faces too bright and
confident. Nobody noticed him until Colonel Lawrence Hennings glanced
up from the crap game. "Hi, Tommy. Want in?"
Murdock shook his head, smiling briefly. "Can't afford it this week,"
he explained.
A cat could look at royalty; and royalty was free to look at or speak
to anyone--even a man who ferried garbage for the station. At the
moment, Hennings was king, even in this crowd of self-determined
heroes. There was always one man who was the top dog. Hennings' current
position seemed as inevitable as Murdock's own had become.
Damn it, someone had to carry the waste down from the station. The
men up there couldn't just shove it out into space to have it follow
their orbit and pile up around them; shooting it back to burn up in
Earth's atmosphere had been suggested, but that took more fuel in the
long run than bringing it down by ship. With nearly eight hundred men
in the doubly expanded station, there was a lot of garbage, too. The
job was as important as carrying the supplies up, and took just as much
piloting skill. Only there was no band playing when the garbage ship
took off, and there could never be a hero's mantle over the garbage man.
It had simply been his bad luck that he was pilot for the first load
back. The heat of landing leaked through the red-hot skin of the cargo
section, and the wastes boiled and steamed through the whole ship
and plated themselves against the hull when it began to cool, until
no amount of washing could clean it completely; after that, the ship
was considered good for nothing but the carrying of garbage down and
lifting such things as machine parts, where the smell wouldn't matter.
He'd gone on detached duty at once, exiled from the pilot shack; it was
probably only imagination, but the other men swore they couldn't sleep
in the same room with him.
He'd made something of a joke of it at first, while he waited for his
transfer at the end of the year. He'd finally consented to a second
year when they couldn't get anyone else for the job. And by the end
of five years of it, he knew he was stuck; even a transfer wouldn't
erase his reputation as the garbage man, or give him the promotions
and chances for leadership the others got. Oh, there were advantages in
freedom, but if there had been anything outside of the service he could
do....
The side door opened suddenly and General Bailey came in. He looked
older than his forty years, and the expression on his face sobered
the pilots almost at once. He took his time in dropping to the chair
behind the table, giving them a chance to come to order. Murdock braced
himself, watching as the man took out a cigarette. Then, as it was
tapped sharply on the table to pack the end, he nodded. It was going
to be a call for volunteers! The picture of the weather outside raced
through his mind, twisting at his stomach, but he slid forward on his
seat, ready to stand at once.
"At ease, men." Bailey took his time lighting the cigarette, and then
plunged into things. "A lot of you have been cursing the station for
their forecast. Well, you can forget that--we're damned lucky they
could spot Hulda at all. They're in bad shape. Know what acrolein is?
You've all had courses in atmospherics. How about it?"
The answer came out in pieces from several of the pilots. Acrolein was
one of the thirty-odd poisons that had to be filtered from the air in
the station, though it presented no problem in the huge atmosphere of
Earth. It could get into the air from the overcooking of an egg or the
burning of several proteins. "You can get it from some of the plastics,
too," one of the men added.
Bailey nodded. "You can. And that's the way they got it, from an
accident in the shops. They got enough to overload their filters, and
the replacements aren't enough to handle it. They're all being poisoned
up there--just enough to muddle their thinking at first, but getting
worse all the time. They can't wait for Hulda to pass. They've got to
have new filters at once. And that means--"
"Sir!" Hennings was on his feet, standing like a lance in a saddle
boot. "Speaking for my crew, I ask permission to deliver whatever the
station needs."
Murdock had been caught short by Hennings' sudden move, but now he
was up, protesting. His voice sounded as hollow as he felt after the
ringing tones of the younger man. "I'm overdue already on schedule, and
by all rights--"
Bailey cut him off, nodding to Hennings. "Thank you, Colonel. We'll
begin loading at once, while Control works out your tapes. All right,
dismissed!" Then finally he turned to Murdock. "Thanks, Tom. I'll
record your offer, but there's no time for us to unload your ship
first. Afraid you're grounded for the storm."
He went out quickly, with Hennings following jauntily at his heels.
* * * * *
The others were beginning to leave, grumbling with a certain admiration
at Hennings' jumping the gun on them. Murdock trailed along, since
there was no chance for him to change the orders now. He wondered what
excuse would have been used if he'd been first to volunteer and if his
ship had been empty. The choice of pilot had probably been made before
the token request for volunteers, and he was certain that his name
hadn't been considered.
The storm seemed to have let up when he started across the field, but
it was only a lull. Before he could reach the shelter of the weather
shack, it began pelting down again, harder than ever. He stopped
inside the door to shake off some of the wetness. Collins was intently
studying one of the radar screens where a remote pickup was showing
conditions, alternately working a calculator and yelling into a phone.
He looked up, made a desperate motion with his fingers for a cigarette,
and went back to the phone.
Murdock shoved a lighted smoke toward him, then pulled a stool up
to the window where he could watch the field. By rights, he should
be heading back to his farm, to do what he could there; but he had
no intention of leaving before the take-off. Lifting a ship in this
weather was mostly theory. It had been done once on the Island, but the
big ships were still too unstable to make it anything but a desperate
emergency measure. He'd discussed it with the pilot after that trip,
and he'd spent a lot of time trying to work out a method in case he had
to try it, but Hennings had his sympathy now. It took more than courage
and confidence to handle this situation.
He studied the storm, trying to get the feel of it. During his first
two years back here, he'd spent a lot of his free time flying a light
plane, and some of the weather had been fairly bad. It gave him some
idea of what Hennings had to face; he wondered whether the younger
pilot realized what was coming.
Sodium lights were blazing on the field, he saw, clustered about
Hennings' _Jennilee_, and men were slipping and sliding around in
the mud, getting her ready and loading the filter packs. Two men were
being run up on a lift to the crew entrance; Hennings carried both a
co-pilot and a radio man, though many of the pilots now used only a
single crewman.
Collins looked up from the phone. "Fifteen minutes to zero," he
reported.
Murdock grunted in surprise. He'd expected the take-off to be two hours
later, on the next swing of the station. It must mean that orders for
loading the ship had been given before Bailey came into Briefing. It
confirmed his suspicion that the pilot had been picked in advance.
A few minutes later, Hennings appeared, marching across the field
toward the lift in the middle of a small group. Several of them rode up
with him. As the lift began creaking backward, the pilot stood poised
in the lock, grinning for the photographers. Naturally, the press had
been tipped off; the service had learned long before that maximum
publicity helped in getting the fattest possible appropriations.
When the lock was finally sealed and the field cleared, Murdock bent
over the counter to study the radar screens. The storm was apparently
erratic, from the hazy configurations he could see. Zero would be a
poor choice for the take-off, though, from what he could estimate.
Hennings would be smarter to delay and make manual corrections on his
tape.
Then the klaxon went on, signalling the take-off. The last man on the
field was darting for cover. From the blast pit, a dull, sickly red
began to shine as the rockets were started. Murdock swore. The fool was
taking off on schedule, trusting to his tapes!
The smoky red exhaust ran up the spectrum to blue, and the ship
began to tremble faintly. The sound rose to crescendo. Now the
_Jennilee_ started to lift. Wind hit it, throwing it toward the
side of the pit. The wings of the top stage caught most of the force,
and the whole ship was tilting--the worst thing that could happen. They
should have swivelled the ship around to put the wings parallel to most
of the storm, instead of bucking it.
Murdock heard Collins' breath catch harshly, but suddenly the worst
danger was over. A lull for a second or so gave Hennings his chance.
He was at least riding his controls over the automatics. The blast
deflection vanes shot the blue flame sidewise, and the ship shifted its
bottom, righting itself. It was beginning to make its real climb now.
The wings near the top literally vibrated like the arms of a tuning
fork, and the blast trail was ragged. Yet she rose, her blast roar
rising and falling as the wind altered, blowing some of the sound away
from the watchers.
Now the Doppler effect began to be noticeable, and the sound dropped
in pitch as the _Jennilee_ fought her way up. The overcast of
scudding clouds hid all but the bright anger of the exhaust.
Murdock turned with the technician to another radar screen. Unlike
those in Control, it wasn't set properly to catch the ship, but a hazy
figure showed in one edge. "Right into some of the nastiest stuff
blowing!" Collins swore.