Earth trembled.
She shook like a palsied animal, and great fissures rent her thick hide
as tidal waves lashed like gigantic hammers at the coastlines of her
continents and mercilessly overran a host of the jewel-like islets that
studded her vast oceans.
Her artificial satellites had long since come crashing down, and her
natural moon teetered threateningly in its age-old course. Great,
jagged chunks broke loose as the barren mass of rock circled perilously
close to de Roche's Limit.
Some of the lower, sturdier buildings in the cities which dotted her
wide continents were yet intact, and in the largest, the capital city
itself, a number of the broad, deep-laid malls and thoroughfares were
still at least partially passable.
But Senator Martin Stine, Conservative Socialist representing the state
of Penn-York, had trouble keeping his temper in check nonetheless.
It was temper aroused as much from the anxiety of deep rooted fear
as from the irritation of trying to guide his pneumo-car through the
debris-littered avenue leading to the capitol, and the thought jittered
again through his mind that he should have taken one of the overheads
even though some of them were sagging dangerously in places.
But he hadn't taken one, and there was less than a quarter-mile to go.
If he hadn't been adding so indiscriminately of late to his normally
195-pound, six-foot two-inch frame he could've parked the damn car and
run the rest of the way. Only a block or so yet.
And at this session, the fur was going to fly for sure if the planet
hung together long enough for it to even get underway. He'd warned them
the last time about the Tinkers. Deaf. Everybody.
His heavy face was red when he at length arrived in front of the
capitol mainramp. He didn't wait for a robotparker to come and take
over, but simply stopped his vehicle in its tracks and abandoned it
where it stood. And despite the extra pounds he'd recently put on, he
moved with an almost feline grace up the broad, inclining ramp, the
anger steadily mounting in him.
He entered the vast chamber and took his seat, just as the muted roar
of private, nervous conversation was broken by the tri-diannouncer.
"Gentlemen, the President-General of the United Earth Republics!"
Silence. Then the crashing noise of a thousand men getting to their
feet. A small, gray-looking man with a prematurely bald head crossed
the front of the great chamber flanked by his Secretaries of State and
Defense, then mounted the podium alone.
And the emergency session of the Senior Congress of the United Earth
Republics was begun.
* * * * *
Senator Martin Stine was the tenth man to be recognized.
He rose quickly and plucked the jeepmike from its recessed spot in his
desktop.
"So far," he began, omitting even to begin his remarks with the
traditional salutation to the President and the group as a whole, "I
have heard ten recommendations for procedure in the present crisis, and
each one has been about as jelly-kneed as the one before it! There's
one solution to this thing and only one. If we don't want this planet
to be scattered to the four corners of Space within the next 72 hours
we must get Project AA underway and damn quick! I've been informed that
there is a Tinker ship within thirty hours' flight of this system. If
we act now, and call them in as we should've, on an ESR, five years
ago, we still might be able to get out of this one with whole skins.
Some of us, anyway. Gentlemen, the casualty lists as of an hour ago
weren't very encouraging."
"Will the Senator from Penn-York yield for a question?"
Stine's cold blue eyes snapped. "Yield for one minute to the Senator
from Texamerica."
"The ITA effected a Project AA for this system about eleven years
ago, did they not? And have answered exactly seven Emergency Service
Requests in the last one hundred twenty years, have they not? In view
of such frequent assistance, it would seem--"
"What the Senator from Texamerica really means is that if the ITA had
to do a double-A for the second time in eleven years, the reflection on
their prestige would make things a little gummy in some quarters--isn't
it?" A gavel rapped sharply. Stine threw a quick glance at the section
reserved for native Earth political representatives of the ITA, and he
saw that one was already on his feet demanding recognition.
"I yield for all the time you need! Go ahead!" Stine sat down, his
youthful looking face mottled with tension.
"I may remind the Senator from Penn-York that the ITA has some one
hundred twelve other worlds in addition to this planet to look after!
And as far as it is concerned, nuisance planets are better off dead! If
our torsion screens were inoperable; if there were no other way to hold
the planet together until the next scheduled visit nine years from
now, then perhaps an ESR would be in order. But since it is obvious
that this system's Gravity-Justifier is only in temporary disorder, and
was designed to be self repairing, an ESR for a double-A is simply out
of the question. I repeat. As far as the ITA is concerned, a nuisance
planet--"
"Yes, and that's just the stranglehold you've got on all of your
hundred and thirteen worlds!" Stine had leapt to his feet, and the
President-General's gavel banged furiously, but he paid it no heed at
all. "'Be good boys and do what we tell you and leave us alone while
we're busy playing God or we'll let you go back to stone axes and
caves'--that's what you're trying to say, isn't it?" The gavel clamored
deafeningly through the President-General's lectern-mike, and the gray,
bald man was now standing himself. But there was a sudden surge of
voices and a scattered applause throughout the entire chamber that had
begun quickly to swell, drowning out even Stine's own voice. Then died
slowly, so that his words could be heard again. "Playing God might be
all right if you can prove all the time to all the people that you've
got all the answers to all the problems! But it might not be so easy if
you begin to lose your touch; lose some of the answers! I hope the ITA
representative isn't trying to tell us that the organization for which
he works is no longer capable of repairing a Gravity-Justifier so that
it will keep the planets in their orbits where they belong! Or am I
right?"
"That is a preposterous accusation and--" The gavel thundered. "--and I
demand its retraction immediately!"
"Friend, I was born on this planet the same as you were but I work for
it. I'm not standing idly by to see it destroyed because your buddies
are afraid to admit they might be slipping a little and don't want
it to show! I--" Thunderous applause. Half the chamber was on its
feet, now, and even without the jeepmikes the cheers would have been
deafening. "I say, Mr. President, if we're to believe the ITA is what
it pretends to be--a technological service organization dedicated to
the galactic welfare--it be called in immediately for a Project AA,
and, if it refuses, that it be publicly denounced by this government
as no longer competent in that capacity!"
When Stine sat down this time, the ovation that followed his words left
the chief executive little choice.
A vote was called, and Stine realized that somehow, his laborious weeks
and months of propagandizing and mass proselytization had at last taken
root.
It had been comforting to know, at least, that had he failed, there was
a well-appointed, powerful space-cruiser waiting for him at a secret
place in the mountains to the north. It was still comforting to know.
Because the Tinkers would have to come, now, if only to save face. And,
of course, they wouldn't be able to deliver.