sniffed too urgently at a stag-steak cooking on the campfire. Nugget
ambled dolefully behind the protecting form of Bordman and sniveled.
"Huyghens," said Bordman, "we've got to come to a settlement of our
affairs. You're an illegal colonist, and it's my duty to arrest you."
Huyghens regarded him with interest.
"Will you offer me lenience if I tell on my confederates?" he asked,
"or may I plead that I can't be forced to testify against myself?"
Bordman said:
"It's irritating! I've been an honest man all my life, but--I don't
believe in robots as I did, except in their place. And their place
isn't here! Not as the robot-colony was planned, anyhow. The sphexes
are nearly wiped out, but they won't be extinct and robots can't handle
them. Bears and men will have to live here or else the people who do
will have to spend their lives behind sphex-proof fences, accepting
only what robots can give them. And there's much too much on this
planet for people to miss it! To live in a robot-managed environment on
a planet like Loren Two wouldn't--it wouldn't be self-respecting!"
"You wouldn't be getting religious, would you?" asked Huyghens drily.
"That was your term for self-respect before."
"You don't let me finish!" protested Bordman. "It's my job to pass
on the work that's done on a planet before any but the first-landed
colonists may come there to live. And of course to see that
specifications are followed. Now, the robot-colony I was sent to survey
was practically destroyed. As designed, it wouldn't work. It couldn't
survive."
Huyghens grunted. Night was falling. He turned the meat over the fire.
"In emergencies," said Bordman, "colonists have the right to call on
any passing ship for aid. Naturally! So my report will be that the
colony as designed was impractical, and that it was overwhelmed and
destroyed except for three survivors who holed up and signalled for
help. They did, you know!"
"Go on," grunted Huyghens.
"So," said Bordman, "it just happened--just happened, mind you--that
a ship with you and the bears and the eagle on board picked up the
distress-call. So you landed to help the colonists. That's the story.
Therefore it isn't illegal for you to be here. It was only illegal for
you to be here when you were needed. But we'll pretend you weren't."
Huyghens glanced over his shoulder in the deepening night. He said:
"I wouldn't believe that if I told it myself. Do you think the Survey
will?"
"They're not fools," said Bordman tartly. "Of course they won't! But
when my report says that because of this unlikely series of events it
is practical to colonize the planet, whereas before it wasn't, and when
my report proves that a robot-colony alone is stark nonsense, but that
with bears and men from your world added, so many thousand colonists
can be received per year.... And when that much is true, anyhow...."
Huyghens seemed to shake a little as a dark silhouette against the
flames.
"My reports carry weight," insisted Bordman. "The deal will be offered,
anyhow! The robot-colony organizers will have to agree or they'll have
to fold up. And your people can hold them up for nearly what terms they
choose."
Huyghens' shaking became understandable. It was laughter.
"You're a lousy liar, Bordman," he said. "Isn't it unintelligent and
unreasonable to throw away a life-time of honesty just to get me out of
a jam? You're not acting like a rational animal, Bordman. But I thought
you wouldn't, when it came to the point."
Bordman squirmed.
"That's the only solution I can think of," he said. "But it'll work."
"I accept it," said Huyghens, grinning. "With thanks. If only because
it means another few generations of men can live like men on a
planet that is going to take a lot of taming. And--if you want to
know--because it keeps Sourdough and Sitka and Nell and Nugget from
being killed because I brought them here illegally."
Something pressed hard against Bordman. Nugget, the cub, pushed
urgently against him in his desire to get closer to the fragrantly
cooking meat. He edged forward. Bordman toppled from where he squatted
on the ground. He sprawled. Nugget sniffed luxuriously.
"Slap him," said Huyghens. "He'll move back."
"I won't!" said Bordman indignantly from where he lay. "I won't do it.
He's my friend!"
* * * * *
It was ironic that, after all, Bordman found that he couldn't afford to
retire. His pay, of course, had been used to educate his children and
maintain his home. And Lani III was an expensive world to live on. It
was now occupied by a thriving, bustling population with keen business
instincts, and the vapor-curtains about it were commonplaces, now, and
few people remembered a time when they hadn't existed,--when it was a
world below habitability for anybody. So Bordman wasn't a hero. As a
matter of history he had done such and such. As a matter of fact he was
simply a citizen who could be interviewed for visicasts on holidays,
but hadn't much that was new to say.
But he lived on Lani III for three years, and he was restless. His
children were grown and married, now,--and they hadn't known him too
well, anyhow. He'd been away so much! He didn't fit into the world
whose green fields and oceans and rivers he was responsible for. But it
was infinitely good to be with Riki again. There was so much that each
remembered, to be shared with the other, that they had plenty to talk
about.
Three years after his official retirement, he was asked to take on
another Survey job on which there was no other qualified man free to
work on. He talked to his wife. On retirement pay, life was not easy.
In retirement, it wasn't satisfactory. And Riki was free too, now. Her
children were safely on their own. Bordman would always need her. She
advised him for both their sakes. And he went back to Survey duty with
the stipulation that he should have quarters and facilities for his
wife as well as himself on all assignments.
They had five wonderful years. Bordman was near the top of the ladder,
then. His children wrote faithfully. He was busy on Kelmin IV, and his
wife had a garden there, when he was summoned to Sector Headquarters
with first priority urgency.
THE SWAMP WAS UPSIDE DOWN
Bordman 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 Bordman 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.
"The ship's not landing, sir," he said, 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."
Bordman shrugged. He was a Senior Officer of the Colonial Survey, grown
old in the Service, and this was a Survey ship that 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 him and bring him to Sector Headquarters, down on
Canna III, which must be somewhere near. But this young officer was
patronizing him!
Bordman 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 respect due his rank.
Now the young officer waited, brisk and alert. Bordman reflected
wrily 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 bland 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. Bordman could not begrudge him the cockiness
which made the tedium and hardships of the Service seem to him a
privilege.
So he 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. "This way."
He offered his arm for Bordman to steady himself. Bordman ignored it.
He stepped over a complex of white-painted pipes, and 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."
Bordman nodded. He moved toward the blister door. He sidled 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!_"
Bordman 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. If I may suggest--"
The gravity did go off. Bordman grimaced. There'd been a time when he
was used to such matters, but 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 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 in the same fashion.
"I even know," said Bordman, "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. Bordman felt sorry for
him. To be chewed, however delicately, for patronizing a senior officer
could not be pleasant. So Bordman 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. 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
Bordman, 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 Bordman, "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. His manner toward
Bordman was quite changed. "I do know the Skipper came in expecting to
land 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. Bordman 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, one designed for a more modern ship, and excessively inconvenient
in such an outmoded launching-device. Barnes crawled in after him.
He dogged the blister door from the inside, closed the boat port and
dogged it, and flapped a switch.
"Excuse me, sir. I'm to take you down."
"Ready for departure," he said into a microphone.
A dial on the instrument-board flicked half-way to zero. It stopped
there. Seconds passed. A green light glowed. The young officer said:
"All tight!"
The needle darted a quarter-way further 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.
The blister-seal broke with a clank, and, the two halves of the
boat-cover drew back. There were stars. To Bordman 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 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 O-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.
Bordman 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. Bordman could see the ice-cap
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. Bordman 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," said Bordman. "You're 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."
Bordman observed:
"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."
Bordman 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. Bordman 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--_"
Bordman pulled the microphone before him.
"My name is Bordman," 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.
Bordman 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 with strained formality:
"_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 Bordman. "Hm. 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," Bordman told him.
Internally, Bordman was startled. 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 was 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 Bordman. 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
Bordman 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, they'll have to handle us very
cautiously or they'd break our necks, since we've no gravity-coils."
Bordman 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 Bordman.
"And you don't want to spend three hours descending, sir, after waiting
an hour for him!"
"I don't," admitted Bordman. He could have given orders, of course. But
if a junior officer were spurred to the practice of thinking, it meant
that some day he'd be a better senior officer. And Bordman 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."
Bordman nodded again.
"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 Bordman. "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 Bordman's safety-strap. He threw over the
fuel-ready lever and conscientiously waited the 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 millimetres 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. "I should have thought that
out myself 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."
Bordman said drily:
"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. Bordman 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 down below.
Two senior officers dragged from their own work. Werner, now ...
Bordman 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 a 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!