Steve Hagen was determined to live his own life,
and he chose the dangerous career of the Guardians.
But was he as free as he imagined himself to be?
There's a subtle difference between rational
and irrational hatred. The latter leads
directly to fanaticism--and one definition
of a fanatic is "a person who redoubles his
efforts after having forgotten his aim".
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Science Fiction Quarterly November 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
1
Twenty years as private secretary to William Wrightwood had prepared
Miss Peters to meet any contretemps except the angry, purposeful
arrival of Steve Hagen, who strode through her outer office with no
more than a nod at her, and opened the door to Wrightwood's private
office.
"Is this another of your tricks--" roared Steve, cutting off his voice
by shutting the door behind him abruptly.
Miss Peters had a quiet nervous breakdown, for Hagen was William
Wrightwood's stepson, who had renounced his rechristening not long
after reaching adulthood. She began to plan an explanation--which would
not hold water since Wrightwood was the kind of executive who gives
orders not to be disturbed and demands that they be observed. Not even
the angry arrival of his estranged stepson was excuse for not having an
appointment.
She wondered what was going on, and slyly opened the key of the desk
phone.
"You're as devious as a scenic railway and you know it."
"Walter, my boy--"
"My name is Steve Hagen and you know it!"
"If you persist; but to me you will always be my son."
"I wouldn't have you for a father as a gift," roared Steve. "Now tell
me how you wrangled this."
"I didn't wrangle anything. Just what makes you think--?"
"This is just too damned trite for accident."
"I've not had any finger in the pie of your little interstellar
fire-department, son."
"No? Then explain why and how a rookie out of training school gets an
appointment to District One Control Base?"
"You were an honor student, were you not?"
"Not that high. Base One is staffed with men of experience, not raw
trainees."
"Never?"
"Not in twenty years, at least. And the last rookie that did it came
from school to Base One because he was Marshall Craig's son."
"You should be gratified."
"I'm mad as hell. I want no interference nor help from you--or the
likes of you."
"That's not a nice thing to say about a foster father."
"Do I owe you allegiance because I was taken into your clutches at the
age of three?" demanded Hagen angrily.
"Your mother--"
"Leave her out of this!" gritted Hagen. "Get back to the subject; just
what do you think you're doing?"
"I'm not doing anything!" roared William Wrightwood. "And no one can
say that I am."
"If you think for one moment that I'm going to do anything for you--"
The smoothness came back into Wrightwood's voice. "I don't have to play
games with new recruits," he said. "Things work out my way in the long
run."
"All but one," sneered Hagen; "you haven't been able to steer me."
"Have I ever tried?"
"Hell, yes."
"Then it is the proper responsibility of any man to try to mold and
direct the character of his son--"
"Like Fagin, training pickpockets?"
"Son, you've yet to learn that villainy is just a point of view."
"So it may be--but this is my view."
"Wal--Steve, if you insist--just why do you want to join the Guardians
instead of taking your place as head of Interstellar?"
"And command a squadron of Large Oak Desks?"
"It takes your kind of brains to run a company as big as Interstellar,
but any idiot can buckle on a sword and play pirate."
"So--you've trained me for better things?" sneered Hagen.
"Yes. I have."
"I don't like it. I--"
"I'm not stopping you," said Wrightwood. "Go on and play your game
of fireman; I'll wait until you come to your senses. Then, as usual,
I'll have my way. But remember--I did not in any way tamper with your
affairs. Go look elsewhere for a reason why you were appointed to First
Base."
Hagen growled in his throat. "You'd not tell me if you had tinkered,"
he said. It was lame and he knew it. He turned on his heel and left the
office in as precipitate a manner as he had arrived.
* * * * *
Hagen was awake when his first alarm came. For three days he had been
wondering just why and how a rookie could be qualified for Base One;
this had cheated him of sleep, and made his waking hours a mad pattern
of hard duty and pointless wondering. But when the gong rang in his
dormitory room at Base One, he reacted eagerly.
Although this was Hagen's first alarm, years of precision drill had
given him the instinctive pattern for action. He dressed in the
required time, caught up his equipment and met the stream of men
pouring out of their rooms; he followed them from the huge building,
out across the spaceport, to the myriad of Guardian spacecraft that
awaited them.
Steve wondered where they were going, then realized that it was more
than probable that the squadron commander himself did not know yet,
and would not know until about one second before the flight took off
for deep space. Somewhere, down in the bowels of the huge building,
computers were digesting information rapidly, spilling out answers that
would have to be summed into an equation before anyone would know the
source of the alarm.
It was, Steve knew with the rest of the men, an imminent alarm. The
machinery had not blown--yet; it might not blow--ever. It might be
stopped by the Guardians before it went--or they might arrive in time
to save everything but the mere hull of the ship that sped through
subspace with the warp generator heading towards failure because of any
one, or two, or a hundred various reasons.
It was Steve's job--with the other Guardians--to save what they
could--if they could--and if not, to stop the spread of raw energy.
He reached his Guardian ship and settled himself into the crash pads.
He pressed the button that told the squadron commander that he was
ready, and his warning lamp winked into life on the broad lamp-board in
the commander's ship; one more light among the rest. Then Hagen waited.
Forty seconds later came the warning bell, and the squadron began to
take off, ship by ship, second by second. With a precision that would
have been impossible without the master control of the commander's
ship, the squadron took off, and reached the speed of light in one
second. Then, second by second, the velocity doubled, re-doubled, and
re-re-redoubled until the stars of the nearby galaxy were flowing past
them like oncoming headlights along a busy highway.
[Illustration: When the warning bell came, the squadron began to take
off, ship by ship, second by second, with a precision that would have
been impossible without the master control of the commander's ship.]
Along with the driving constants that swept them into deep space,
angular vectors were applied that would match their velocity with that
of the doomed spacecraft by the time they reached it. The computers in
the 'constants' building had supplied the master control panel with
all the data during the time between the arrival of the alarm and the
departure of the squadron.
Steve Hagen peered into the utter blackness of subspace, watching
the space-warped cores of stars stream past, watching for the first
sight of the faltering ship. It came before the squadron eventually,
decelerating as hard as it could.
"Made it!" came the exultant cry from the spearhead of the squadron.
* * * * *
The fleet divided. Rescue craft darted around the spaceliner and picked
up tracers left by fleeing life-craft; they followed these to give aid
to crew and passengers fleeing the imminent blowup.
Tractors latched onto the spaceliner and aided the drivers to
decelerate the ship, and the command came: "Goggles!"
Steve snapped dark glasses down over his face just as the intolerably
bright floodlamps flared. This was not to shed light over the scene;
any moment now, there would be a flaring hell of raw energy. The
floodlamps were to cut the total contrast between the streamers of
ultra-incandescence and utter blackness of subspace.
The barriers nosed forward warily, and Steve took the control of his
swamper from the master and edged between two of them. They waited,
waited.
For theirs was not yet; the trick at this point was to slow the
spaceliner down below the velocity of light before the weakened warp
generator went out completely. If the tractors could do this, barriers
and swampers and nullers would have nothing to do.
Steve watched the spherical warp, a faint boundary about the
spaceliner, and tried to measure whether it was collapsing faster than
the speed was diminishing.
And as he watched, it twisted out of its spherical shape. The tractors
hurtled back, their beams skewed out of grasp by the twisting of the
space warp, their straining drivers hurling them with the release of
resistance.