"Then he asked what I did. I told him a little about our work in
The Company and that set him off! The man's a menace. He knows more
about The Company than I do." Brill's suavity was quite gone. "And
what a rugged tyrant he must have been. Positively treasonable in
his attacks on governmental regulation. He believes in business for
the businessman--thinks only people with capacity for handling high
finance ought to run the country for the country's good. It was
heresy--appalling!"
"I was rather of the opinion," commented the doctor, "that the views of
your company ran something along the same line."
"Not at all, _not at all_! We believe firmly in the committee system
and systematic regulation by elected agencies. There can be no
grand-scale despotism in The Company! Why, our officers receive
psychotesting every six months to assure the policy-holders that they
have no personal power ambitions. I tell you, Doctor, that such men as
Elbert Avery are a threat to our national democracy. He seems perfectly
capable of going back into business at the drop of a hat. The Company
may have to send a man to Washington to work out some sort of control
to prevent such men from re-entering business."
Dr. Farrar looked thoughtful. "The control would be easy enough, but
expensive," he remarked doubtfully.
"The good of the country is always expensive."
"What would you think of sending this whole group of social misfits out
of the country?" Dr. Farrar could be cagey.
"Force, Doctor? We couldn't do that."
"But you'd like to see 'em go?"
"Frankly, yes."
"And if the government would take over the annuities, you'd feel even
better?"
"That is too much for The Company to ask." Brill was resigned now,
almost wistful.
Dr. Farrar settled himself back in his chair. "I have a plan, Mr.
Brill; and perhaps you might be able to help me." (Brill sat forward.)
"I would like to see Block Nineteen emptied completely--I would like
to see its present occupants migrate to Venus on the _Colonia_. I don't
think they'd ever come back. That would give your company several
years to work out its new policy scheme and would remove what you call
a dangerous menace to a safe distance. The next generation of Old
Ones will be better schooled in ridding themselves of 'personal power
ambition.' Do you think it could be done?"
"Perhaps," Brill was slow to hope. "The Company certainly has the
organization to put it through. But you'd never get them to go. Why,
Avery thinks the whole _Colonia_ enterprise is financially unsound. He
says it's the duty of every thinking man to do all he can to stop such
ruinous nonsense. Colonization _is_ expensive, but it is undoubtedly
best for the people of the world!... But that old Avery doesn't give a
hang for the Assembly's making a gift of Venus to the people."
"Avery would go like a shot rather than be left behind. And he's only
one out of a thousand. You'd be willing to help?"
* * * * *
Brill hitched his chair even closer to the desk. "Just tell me first
why you are so anxious to get rid of your entire observational group?
Naturally The Company doesn't want to get mixed up in any personal
animosities or anything unethical. Why do _you_ want to get rid of
them, Doctor?"
"If I can trust you to keep this as quiet as your company's interest in
moving them out?"
"Yes."
"To be quite frank, then, the subjects in Block Nineteen are getting
restless. I don't think we could keep them here more than ten
years longer, no matter how many diversions we tried. They want
to do something, be something. And yet I don't believe they could
be any more miserable than back in a world which has been growing
away from them for a hundred years, a world which doesn't want or
understand them any more than you want Avery in your company. So I'd
naturally rather see them go all at once, wanting to go, than one at
a time, confused and hopeless. None of them want to go back to their
great-great-grandchildren to die. I'd like to see them stay together.
As for my research, I'm only up to the Hundred-and-Ten group. Those in
Block Nineteen are all over a hundred and fifty. Do you want to
help ... or would you rather go to Washington to lobby for a bill to
control Avery and others with even more ancient ideas before they get
loose?"
"But old people are set in their ways, as you know, Doctor." Jeremy
Brill had memorized the salesman's book. "The Company would naturally
have to have some assurance that the old ones are willing to go before
we put a lot of time and money into pushing their acceptance as
colonists."
"I can let you know by midnight tonight," Dr. Farrar stated positively.
"They're holding their monthly meeting and I can see that the matter is
given full consideration."
Somewhere inside Dr. Farrar, the conspiratorial feeling was joined by
a great jubilation. He wanted to shout aloud, but instead he added,
"The officers of The Company will naturally want time to consider this
fully, with care and deliberation. It is fortunate that you will have
a good many hours in which to prepare a sound and compelling statement
about the benefit to all humanity which will accrue to a project which
will settle at once the great problem of a goal for old age as well as
end the bitter wrangling among national and political groups for first
passage on the _Colonia_.
"You are right. I must get back to the home office at once." Brill
scribbled on a card. "Here is my private phone. Let me know at once
what is decided at the meeting."
He rose, extending his hand. "You are a great man, Doctor, a truly
great and kind man." He wheeled and walked abruptly from the office,
the weight of a noble enterprise sitting comfortably on his shoulders.
Miss Herrington caught a few of his departing words and the admiring
tone. "One stone ... so many birds."
* * * * *
Jules Farrar's call to Jeremy Brill at 10:57 that night was necessarily
brief. Mr. Daneshaw told him nothing of the wrangle with Avery
and several others about the inevitable failure of any scheme so
economically unsound as extraterrestrial colonization, nor did he tell
the doctor that the number who wanted to go for the sake of going was
considerably smaller than the number of those who would do anything
that he, Tim Daneshaw, urged them to do. He reported only two things
from the meeting: first, that they were willing to go on one condition;
second, that the condition was that they were to be taught to man
the _Colonia_ and that no younger "snippets" of officers, crew, and
particularly medical and nursing staff should go along to hamper them.
That was Avery's one victory.
In the three hours' talk about Daneshaw's trip to U. A. headquarters
that followed the phone call, the excited doctor almost forgot to ask
how the Block Association had taken the morning's deaths.
The old professor ran his hand through his white mane. "You know,
Jules, I told them we'd discuss it after the other business and they
never got around to it. Even if the trip doesn't come off, the crisis
has been smoothed over for now. It's really rather shocking, isn't it?"
And yet, finally, incredibly, the trip really was to "come off." No
one man knew more than a fraction of the details, though Jeremy Brill
and his beloved Company turned out to be more of a force than even Dr.
Farrar visioned in his most facetious dreams.
The doctor did have to be present at the U. A. loyalty tests, however,
and would remember the rocking yet silent mirth of the entire
commission to his dying day. The old people had been so outspoken,
so set in their ways, but what a multitude of ways, that no bloc
could be very seriously offended with them as a group. When little
old Miss Severinghouse stated firmly, "I can't say as I trust anybody
particularly, but President Wilson was a fine man," open-armed
affectionate acceptance was assured. Laughter freshened the air; world
tensions eased.
* * * * *
The months that followed were packed with unusual activity. Dr. Farrar,
still at the helm of the Riston Physiological Observing Hospital, saw
and heard little of it, beyond what he inferred from the questions of
the newsreporters who were constantly trying to get beyond his office
into the guarded privacy of Block Nineteen. He knew what assignments
had been given to which of the "post-adults" (a newspaper phrase which
had become universal). He knew, for instance, that Tim Daneshaw was at
Annapolis with a number of others receiving advanced officer-training
to prepare him for command. But he knew no details. He did not know
how....
... Dr. Francis Keighley registered under an alias for a refresher
course in the hospital that had borne his name for thirty-odd years.
He smilingly declined special work in obstetrics and put down his name
for epidemiology, parasitology and degenerative diseases as well as the
usual surgery and internal medicine....
... Thorsten Veere, the pilot of the first moon-rocket, and Arthur
Fisher, the designer of the _Colonia_, entered a formal objection to
the United Assembly that the slower reflexes of the "post-adults"
would make safe landing on Venus an improbability. They were told that
they had exactly eleven months and three days to design and install a
safe-and-sane mechanical-plus-radar landing device....
... Maeva McGaughey titrated deftly, dipping the straw-tinted flask
behind the mask of the colorimeter and back with smiling approval. The
old skill that had made her a master beautician was returning rapidly
as she became a Pharmacist's Mate. She hummed softly, abstractedly,
unaware of the absence of Miss Phillips' brisk voice saying, "Please
stop that buzzing, Mrs. McGaughey. I'm sure I don't know how you expect
the other ladies to get any rest with that noise going on...."
... Alice Kaplan was having two new dentures made at the clinic. The
fluorine shortage in Stowe reservoir had not been known when she was a
girl and the town had been too small for a dentist of its own. These
would be good teeth with which to eat her own cooking. She had already
helped the dietician of the hospital work out a more tasty substitute
for the eternal creamed spinach for breakfast, though it was rather
hampering to try to work up interesting meals with no carbohydrates and
practically no animal fats. But she would use these new teeth on good
beef-flour muffins and sharp cheese....
... Ole Sorensen put down the peck measure of mixed concentrates and
began to toss forkfuls of fragrant alfalfa hay into the racks before
the prize hospital herd. The muscles of his back and shoulders rippled
as the fork swung and he moved rapidly down the line of gleaming white
mangers. Between the windows behind him hung the placard filched from
the Block Nineteen lobby, HASTE WASTES LIFE. Beneath this profound
message was scrawled in black crayon, "Life without haste may be
waste"....
... Joe Kolensky, second astrogator of the _Per Aspera_, whistled
admiringly over the pages of calculations on the desk before him. That
old gheez Avery had come up with another shortcut in Advanced Orbit
Plotting. It was a legitimate shortcut, all right, but Joe had only
come across it himself after two years of course work. Avery was almost
twice as quick as that old Mr. White who used to teach math at Dayton
Tech.
"Say, Bill," Joe raised his gaze from the paper and turned to his
office-mate who was also checking classwork, "you know what Avery said
today? When I tried to compliment him on yesterday's quadrangulations
he glowered as if I'd insulted him and said, 'Young man, I was managing
billions before jets were invented. Get on with orbits.' What a
character...."
... Elbert Avery worked feverishly over the pile of papers before him.
Today's lesson had included a few facts necessary for his calculations.
To make room for new pages, he shoved aside Harling and Bame's
_Astrogation Handbook_. "Matches for irresponsible brats to play with,"
he sneered at the book, "and the sooner they get their tootsies burned
the sooner they'll learn to leave this stuff alone." He clenched a
fist. "Damned if they're going to bankrupt one planet they can't run to
settle another one they don't need." He picked up a stilo and plunged
back into the determination of the exact point on the course, the
precise moment after turnover, at which, with the slightest increase
in deceleration he could send the _Colonia_ streaking irrevocably into
the sun....
* * * * *
The Quarter-Way Party, three months and four days out in space, was
an unqualified failure, according to Arnold Forsberg, the _Colonia's_
recreation director. Closeted with Captain Daneshaw in the conference
room the following evening, he confessed, "Only about eighty people
showed at all. They wouldn't dance, they wouldn't sing; only about
three tables of bridge and one of eincheesistein, and those were the
champions who play every day anyhow. They wouldn't even eat--just
picked at the special non-diet refreshments we thought would be such a
hit. Most of them didn't bother to dress formally. They just wandered
around. Honestly Tim, with ten more months to go I don't know what
we're going to do."
"Maybe they have other things on their minds," Tim placated. "First
Night Out Party was as gay as they come. A lot of the women have been
studying pretty hard, you know; and we've all been conditioned to
taking things calmly for the last fifty years at least."
"You think maybe we'd better cut out the Turnover's Over Ball and the
Three Quarters Party? I'll be hanged if I can stand a couple more
flops. It's bad for general morale."
"You're taking this too seriously. Why not start working on the next
shindig right now--you know--contests and such to have final playoffs
at the party and such. Get them to start thinking about it. After all,
you don't even know why there were so few...." The ping-ping-ping of a
tiny bell indicated pilot-room intercom and Tim flipped a switch.
A plasticoid box on the wall spoke in Elbert Avery's dry tones. "Off
duty now, Tim. You want to see me?"
Daneshaw spoke to the box on his desk, "Forsberg's here," he said. "You
might come up and give us your opinion on the party. Were you there?"
"No, I was here. What happened, Arnie? The little ladies and gentlemen
get rough over their grog?"
The recreation director twisted guiltily in his chair and muttered,
"Wish they had!"
"No, El. Party seems to have been rather unpopular. You might canvass a
bit on your way up and see if you can get a line on it. We'll have to
cheer up Forsberg here if he's going to get back to keeping us gay."
The wall-box returned rather grumpily, "I trained for astrogator, not
public relations. See you," and went dead.
* * * * *
Elbert Avery cleared his communicator, glanced once more at the
position-calc dials, rotated his chair and stood up. Slipping on his
officer's braidjac, he nodded curtly to the Second Astrogator and went
out into the corridor.
Twenty feet up the dark passage was the first of the eight rearward
porthole stations. Avery slipped into the niche beside the observer's
chair, and the watcher, sensing the astrogator's presence, shook his
head vigorously against the hypnotic glitter of the stars and looked
up. "How's it go?" from Avery.
"Go? Who's going anyplace? Stars sit still, we sit still just looking."
Watcher Peters' voice was flat. "You sure anybody's going somewhere?"