The faxgram read: REPORT MA IS INSTANTER GRAVIS. The news obelisk just
off the express strip outside Mega Angeles' Galactic Survey Building was
flashing: ONE OF OUR STAR SHIPS IS MISSING!
Going up in the lift, I recalled what I had seen once scrawled upon the
bulkhead of a GS trainer: _Space is kind to those who respect her._ And
underneath, in different handwriting: Fear _is the word, my boy_.
The look given me by the only other passenger, a husky youngster in GS
gray, when I punched Interstel's level, didn't help. It was on the tip
of my tongue to retaliate: _Yes, and I'd turn in my own mother if she
were a star chaser and I caught her doing something stupid._ But I let
it ride; obviously, it was a general-principles reaction; he couldn't
have known the particulars of my last assignment: the seldom kind that
had given Interstel its reputation.
The lumer over the main entrance glowed: INTERSTELLAR SECURITY,
INVESTIGATION, AND SPECIAL SERVICES BRANCH, GALACTIC SURVEY, NORTH
AMERICAN FEDERATION.
At the end of the long corridor between offices was a door labeled:
CHIEF SPECIAL AGENT.
Gravis hadn't changed a bit in the thirty-six hours since I'd last seen
him: a large, rumpled man who showed every year of the twenty he'd spent
in Interstel.
"It's a nasty job, Ivy."
"Always has been," I said, completing the little interchange that had
been reiterated so often that it had become almost a shibboleth.
I took advantage of his momentary silence. I'd had an hour during the
air-taxi hop from Xanadu, the resort two hundred miles off the coast of
California, to prepare my bitter statement. Words come fluently when an
earned leave has been pulled peremptorily out from beneath you; a leave
that still had twenty-nine days to go. But I was brief; the news flasher
had canceled much of the bite of my anger; it took me something under
one hundred and twenty seconds, including repetition of certain words
and phrases.
Gravis lived up to his name; he didn't bat an eye. He handed me a thin
folder; three of its sheets were facsimile extrapolations of probot
reports; the fourth was an evaluation-and-assignment draft; all were
from Galactic Survey Headquarters, NAF, in Montreal. The top three were
identical, excepting probot serial numbers and departure and arrival
times. GSS 231 had been located in its command orbit above a planet that
had not yet been officially named but was well within the explored
limits of the space sector assigned NAFGS by the interfederational body,
had been monitored by three robot probes--described as being in _optimum
mechanical condition_--on three distinctly separate occasions, and all
devices that could be interrogated from outside had triggered _safe and
secure_. But no human contact had been accomplished. The fourth
sheet--which bore the calligraphy on its upper right corner: _Attention
Callum_--assumed that the crew of 231, a survey team and con alternate,
had met with an accident or series of accidents of undetermined origin
and extent in the course of carrying out the duty described as
_follow-up exploration_ on the Earth-type planet, _herein and heretofore
designated Epsilon-Terra_, and must therefore be considered--
"The news is--" I started to say.
"Pure delirium," Gravis interrupted. "Haven't you read Paragraph Six? We
know exactly where the ship is because it's exactly where it should be.
It's the crew that's missing."
Paragraph Seven concluded: _We therefore recommend that an agent of
experience be dispatched soonest to the designated star system._
"Experienced or expendable?" I muttered.
"Ivy, after ten years in Interstel, you should know that experience and
expendability are synonymous."
* * * * *
Inside the GS section of the Lunar Complex, I had the occasion to think
semantically again.
Words like _instanter_ and _soonest_ seldom match their literal meaning
when applied to the physical transport of human beings, but in my job--I
hadn't even had time to get my gee-legs.
I stepped off the glide strip in front of the ramp marked OUTGOING
PERSONNEL, handed the efficient looking redhead my Q-chit and ID, and
said: "Priority one."
"Quarantine, O.K.," she checked, smiling. "Feeling antiseptic?"
I had to admit, privately, that I did not. As applied to her, the term:
_coveralls, regulation, gray_ was strictly a euphemism. Perhaps it was
the combination of low gravity and controlled conditions that made
Lunatics of female persuasion blossom so anatomically. Or maybe she was
a plant, a deliberate psych experiment to put outbound starmen in a
particular frame of mind.
She flashed my identification on the screen, took a long look, and
became coldly efficient. _Callum, Ivor Vincent. Age: 40. Height: 5'8".
Weight: 142. Hair: brown. Eyes: green. Rank: Special Agent, Interstel._
"You look much older, Mr. Callum."
She consulted her assignment list.
"Lock Three."
I snapped the identoflake back in its bracelet, picked up my jump bag
and briefing kit, and headed up the ramp, feeling more eyes than the
redhead's. The anonymity of a GS working uniform hadn't lasted very
long.
* * * * *
By the time I was able to capture enough breath to make coherent sounds,
the shuttler was already approaching parking orbit. The pilot had used
maximum grav boost, and the trip must have crowded the record.
"That wasn't exactly SOP, was it?"
"Priority one, sir," the youngster replied, showing teeth wolfishly.
I was still trying to think up an adequate rebuttal when I came out of
the air lock and into the ship. Then I felt better. P 1 means, among
other things, first available transportation--but this giant was the
newest type, crammed to the buffers with the results of science's
latest efforts to make star _voyageurs_ as safe as express-strip
commuters inside a Terran dome. Even the vibrations of the great
Gatch-Spitzer-Melnikov generators, building toward maximum output, had
been dampened to a level more imaginary than tangible. Internal gravity
was momentarily in operation, as an additional blessing; and, walking
down the blue-lit corridor toward Astrogation, I could feel the
occasional, metallic, thermal thump that meant the IP drive was hot and
critical.
I got a second lift when I saw who was bending over the robopilot
console: Antonio Moya, Mexico City's gift to Galactic Survey some
thirty-five years earlier; a _café-con-leche_ type with shrewd eyes,
nervous hands, silver-streaked hair that showed a defiance of geriatric
injections, a slight, wiry body that couldn't have gone more than one
hundred and twenty pounds at 1.0 gee, and probably the best Master
Spaceman extant. Only discipline kept the grin off my face. But he was
on the horn, getting traffic clearance, so I didn't interrupt.
The others were unknowns, the sort characterized by old spacers as
"pretty boy, recruitment ad types," but they looked competent; I figured
a medic and a spread of ratings; counting Moya, a basic GS unit. I'd
expected both a con crew and a standby. Either this was the total of
available personnel, or the brass had decided not to risk more men than
absolutely necessary. If I'd had illusions about the assignment, they
would have faded at that instant.
It's this way in Interstel: you're taught to be a loner. You're expected
to have absolute confidence in your own abilities and complete
skepticism about the talents of others. You're supposed to be
suspicious, cynical, courageous, and completely trustworthy. And you're
not expected to have friends. Which, obviously, in the light of the
aforementioned and part of what is yet to come, could serve as the
definition of redundancy. You're required to weed out incompetents
wherever you find them without prejudice, mercy, or feeling. The
standing order is survival, yet you are expected to lay down your life
gladly if the sacrifice will save one, pink-cheeked, short-time,
assistant teamer who gives the barest suggestion that he might some day
grow up to be a man and repay the thousands of credits squandered upon
his training in that profound hope. Which, stated another way, has
become the Eleventh Commandment of special agents: _Remember the body
corporeal and keep it inviolate_; and, if the reaction of the
rank-and-file of Galactic Survey to Interstel is used as criterion, is
the best-kept secret in the explored, physical universe. "The agent's
burden," Gravis calls it.
Moya's jaw dropped when he caught sight of me--apparently he had been
told only to expect an agent--but he recovered quickly.
"Hello, Callum," he barked. "I won't say it's a pleasure. Stow your gear
and strap down."
The claxon sounded stridently, and the inflectionless voice of the
robopilot said: "Sixty seconds."
I got into the indicated gee couch and squirmed around seeking some
measure of comfort. It had been designed for a much larger man, and I
gritted my teeth in the expectation of taking a beating.
* * * * *
After a bruising few minutes, we went weightless, then the servos put us
back on internal gravity, and the crew unstrapped.
They ignored me studiously; it wasn't entirely bad manners; there's
plenty to be done in the interval prior to the first hop, and it isn't
all in just checking co-ordinates and programming master con.
The usual space plan calls for several accelerations and a lot of
distance between Terra-Luna proximity and Solar System departure. But
Space Regs are disregarded on Priority One missions. So, for probably
less than an hour, things were going to be busy in Astrogation.