ULTIMAC said: _Harris_.
"Good luck, Peter," Joan said calmly. Too calmly.
"Yeah," I said. "Or good night."
* * * * *
Exactly what I expected to happen as the ferry rocket approached SV-1,
I don't now recall. I had decided that I couldn't carry a squad with
me. If Gascoigne was really far gone, he wouldn't allow a group of men
to disembark; one man, on the other hand, he might pass. But I suppose
I did expect him to put up an argument first.
Nothing happened. He did not challenge the ferry, and he didn't answer
hails. Contact with the station was made through the radar automatics,
and I was put off on board as routinely as though I was being let into
a movie--but a lot more rapidly.
The control room was dark and confusing, and at first I didn't see
Gascoigne anywhere. The Earthlight coming through the observation port
was brilliant, but beyond the edges of its path the darkness was almost
absolute, broken only by the little stars of indicator lenses.
A faint snicking sound turned my eyes in the right direction. There was
Gascoigne. He was hunched over the bombardier board, his back to me. In
one hand he held a small tool resembling a ticket-punch. Its jaws were
nibbling steadily at a taut line of tape running between two spools;
that had been the sound I'd heard. I recognized the device without any
trouble; it was a programmer.
But why hadn't Gascoigne heard me come in? I hadn't tried to sneak up
on him, there is no quiet way to come through an airlock anyway. But
the punch went on snicking steadily.
"Col. Gascoigne," I said. There was no answer. I took a step forward.
"Col. Gascoigne, I'm Harris of CIG. What are you doing?"
The additional step did the trick. "Stay away from me," Gascoigne
growled, from somewhere way down in his chest. "I'm programming the
bomb. Punching in the orders myself. Can't depend on my crew. Stay
away."
"Give over for a minute, I want to talk to you."
"That's a new one," said Gascoigne, not moving. "Most of you guys
were rushing to set up launchings before you even reported to me. Who
the hell are you, anyhow? There's nobody on board, I know _that_ well
enough."
"I'm Peter Harris," I said. "From CIG--you called us, remember? You
asked us to send help."
"Doesn't prove a thing. Tell me something I _don't_ know. Then maybe
I'll believe you exist. Otherwise--beat it."
"Nothing doing. Put down that punch."
Gascoigne straightened slowly and turned to look at me. "Well, you
don't vanish, I'll give you that," he said. "What did you say your name
was?"
"Harris. Here's my ID card."
Gascoigne took the plastic-coated card tentatively, and then removed
his glasses and polished them. The gesture itself was perfectly
ordinary, and wouldn't have surprised me--except that Gascoigne was not
wearing glasses.
"It's hard to see in here," he complained. "Everything gets so steamed
up. Hm. All right, you're real. What do you want?"
His finger touched a journal. Silently, the tape began to roll from one
spool to another.
"Gascoigne, stop that thing. If you drop any bombs there'll be hell to
pay. It's tense enough down below as it is. And there's no reason to
bomb anybody."
"Plenty of reason," Gascoigne muttered. He turned toward the teletype,
exposing to me for the first time a hip holster cradling a large, black
automatic. I didn't doubt that he could draw it with fabulous rapidity,
and put the bullets just where he wanted them to go. "I've got orders.
There they are. See for yourself."
Cautiously, I sidled over to the teletype and looked. Except for
Gascoigne's own message to CIG, and one from Joan Hadamard announcing
that I was on my way, the paper was totally blank. There had been no
other messages that day unless Gascoigne had changed the roll, and
there was no reason why he should have. Those rolls last close to
forever.
"When did this order come in?"
"This morning some time. I don't know. Sweeney!" he bawled suddenly, so
loud that the paper tore in my hands. "When did that drop order come
through?"
Nobody answered. But Gascoigne said almost at once, "There, you heard
him."
"I didn't hear anything but you," I said, "and I'm going to stop that
tape. Stand aside."
"Not a chance, Mister," Gascoigne said grimly. "The tape rides."
"Who's getting hit?"
"Washington," Gascoigne said, and passed his hand over his face. He
appeared to have forgotten the imaginary spectacles.
"That's where your home is, isn't it?"
"It sure is," Gascoigne said. "It sure as hell is, Mister. Cute, isn't
it?"
It was cute, all right. The Air Force boys at the Pentagon were going
to be given about ten milliseconds to be sorry they'd refused to send
a replacement for Gascoigne along with me. _Replace him with who? We
can't send his second alternate in anything short of a week. The man
has to have retraining, and the first alternate's in the hospital with
a ruptured spleen. Besides, Gascoigne's the best man for the job; he's
got to be bailed out somehow._
Sure. With a psychological centrifugal pump, no doubt. In the meantime
the tape kept right on running.
* * * * *
"You might as well stop wiping your face, and turn down the humidity
instead," I said. "You've already smudged your glasses again."
"Glasses?" Gascoigne muttered. He moved slowly across the cabin,
sailing upright like a sea-horse, to the blank glass of a closed port.
I seriously doubted that he could see his reflection in it, but maybe
he didn't really want to see it. "I messed them up, all right. Thanks."
He went through the polishing routine again.
A man who thinks he is wearing glasses also thinks he can't see without
them. I slid to the programmer and turned off the tape. I was between
the spools and Gascoigne now--but I couldn't stay there forever.
"Let's talk a minute, Colonel," I said. "Surely it can't do any harm."
Gascoigne smiled, with a sort of childish craft. "I'll talk," he said.
"Just as soon as you start that tape again. I was watching you in the
mirror, _before_ I took my glasses off."
The liar. I hadn't made a move while he'd been looking into that
porthole. His poor pitiful weak old rheumy eyes had seen every move I
made while he was polishing his "glasses." I shrugged and stepped away
from the programmer.
"You start it," I said. "I won't take the responsibility."
"It's orders," Gascoigne said woodenly. He started the tape running
again. "It's their responsibility. What did you want to talk to me
about, anyhow?"
"Col. Gascoigne, have you ever killed anybody?"
He looked startled. "Yes, once I did," he said, almost eagerly. "I
crashed a plane into a house. Killed the whole family. Walked away with
nothing worse than a burned leg--good as new after a couple of muscle
stabilizations. That's what made me shift from piloting to weapons;
that leg's not quite good enough to fly with any more."
"Tough."
He snickered suddenly, explosively. "And now look at me," he said. "I'm
going to kill my _own_ family in a little while. And millions of other
people. Maybe the whole world."
How long was "a little while"?
"What have you got against it?" I said.
"Against what--the world? Nothing. Not a damn thing. Look at me: I'm
king of the hill up here. I can't complain."
He paused and licked his lips. "It was different when I was a kid,"
he said. "Not so dull, then. In those days you could get a real
newspaper, that you could unfold for the first time yourself, and pick
out what you wanted to read. Not like now, when the news comes to you
predigested on a piece of paper out of your radio. That's what's the
matter with it, if you ask me."
"What's the matter with what?"
"With the news--that's why it's always bad these days. Everything's had
something done to it. The milk is homogenized, the bread is sliced, the
cars steer themselves, the phonographs will produce sounds no musical
instrument could make. Too much meddling, too many people who can't
keep their hands off things. Ever fire a kiln?"
"Me?" I said, startled.
"No, I didn't think so. Nobody makes pottery these days. Not by hand.
And if they did, who'd buy it? They don't want something that's been
made. They want something that's been Done To."
The tape kept on traveling. Down below, there was a heavy rumble,
difficult to identify specifically: something heavy being shifted on
tracks, or maybe a freight lock opening.
"So now you're going to Do Something to the Earth," I said slowly.
"Not me. It's orders."
"Orders from inside, Col. Gascoigne. There's nothing on the spools."
What else could I do? I didn't have time to take him through two years
of psychoanalysis and bring him to his own insight. Besides, I'm not
licensed to practice medicine--not on Earth. "I didn't want to say so,
but I have to now."
"Say what?" Gascoigne said suspiciously. "That I'm crazy or something?"
"No. I didn't say that. You did," I pointed out. "But I will tell you
that that stuff about not liking the world these days is baloney. Or
rationalization, if you want a nicer word. You're carrying a screaming
load of guilt, Colonel, whether you're aware of it or not."
"I don't know what you're talking about. Why don't you just beat it?"
"No. And you know well enough. You fell all over yourself to tell me
about the family you killed in your flying accident." I gave him ten
seconds of silence, and then shot the question at him as hard as I
could. "_What was their name?_"
"How do I know? Sweeney or something. Anything. I don't remember."
"Sure you do. Do you think that killing your own family is going to
bring the Sweeneys back to life?"
Gascoigne's mouth twisted, but he seemed to be entirely unaware of the
grimace. "That's all hogwash," he said. "I never did hold with that
psychological claptrap. It's you that's handing out the baloney, not
me."
"Then why are you being so vituperative about it? Hogwash, claptrap,
baloney--you are working awfully hard to knock it down, for a man who
doesn't believe in it."
"Go away," he said sullenly. "I've got my orders. I'm obeying them."
Stalemate. But there was no such thing as stalemate up here. Defeat was
the word.
* * * * *
The tape traveled. I did not know what to do. The last bomb problem CIG
had tackled had been one we had set up ourselves; we had arranged for a
dud to be dropped in New York harbor, to test our own facilities for
speed in determining the nature of the missile. The situation on board
SV-1 was completely different--
Whoa. Was it? Maybe I'd hit something there.
"Col. Gascoigne," I said slowly, "you might as well know now that it
isn't going to work. Not even if you do get that bomb off."
"Yes, I can. What's to stop me?" He hooked one thumb in his belt, just
above the holster, so that his fingertips rested on the breech of the
automatic.
"Your bombs. They aren't alive."
Gascoigne laughed harshly and waved at the controls. "Tell that to the
counter in the bomb hold. Go ahead. There's a meter you can read, right
there on the bombardier board."
"Sure," I said. "The bombs are radioactive, all right. Have you ever
checked their half-life?"
It was a long shot. Gascoigne was a weapons man; if it were possible
to check half-life on board the SV-1, he would have checked it. But I
didn't think it was possible.
"What would I do that for?"
"You wouldn't, being a loyal airman. You believe what your superiors
tell you. But I'm a civilian, Colonel. There's no element in those
bombs that will either fuse or fission. The half-life is too long for
tritium or for lithium^6, and it's too short for uranium^{235} or
radio-thorium. The stuff is probably strontium^{90}--in short, nothing
but a bluff."
"By the time I finished checking that," Gascoigne said, "the bomb would
be launched anyhow. And you haven't checked it, either. Try another
tack."
"I don't need to. You don't have to believe me. We'll just sit here and
wait for the bomb drop, and then the point will prove itself. After
that, of course, you'll be court-martialed for firing a wild shot
without orders. But since you're prepared to wipe out your own family,
you won't mind a little thing like twenty years in the guardhouse."
Gascoigne looked at the silently rolling tape. "Sure," he said. "I've
got the orders, anyhow. The same thing would happen if I didn't obey
them. If nobody gets hurt, so much the better."
A sudden spasm of emotion--I took it to be grief, but I could have been
wrong--shook his whole frame for a moment. Again, he did not seem to
notice it. I said:
"That's right. Not even your family. Of course the whole world will
know the station's a bluff, but if those are the orders--"
"I don't know," Gascoigne said harshly. "I don't know whether I even
got any orders. I don't remember where I put them. Maybe they're not
real." He looked at me confusedly, and his expression was frighteningly
like that of a small boy making a confession.
"You know something?" he said. "I don't know what's real any more. I
haven't been able to tell, ever since yesterday. I don't even know if
you are real, or your ID card either. What do you think of that?"
"Nothing," I said.
"Nothing? Nothing! That's my trouble. Nothing! I can't tell what's
nothing and what's something. You say the bombs are duds. All right.
But what if _you're_ the dud, and the bombs are real? Answer me that!"
His expression was almost triumphant now.
"The bombs are duds," I said. "And you've gone and steamed up your
glasses again. Why don't you turn down the humidity, so you can see for
three minutes and running?"
Gascoigne leaned far forward, so far that he was perilously close to
toppling, and peered directly into my face.
"Don't give me that," he said hoarsely. "Don't--give--me--that--stuff."
I froze right where I was. Gascoigne watched my eyes for a while. Then,
slowly, he put his hand on his forehead and began to wipe it downward.
He smeared it over his face, in slow motion, all the way down to his
chin.
Then he took the hand away and looked at it, as though it had just
strangled him and he couldn't understand why. And finally he spoke.
"It--isn't true," he said dully. "I'm not wearing any glasses. Haven't
worn glasses since I was ten. Not since I broke my last pair--playing
King of the Hill."
He sat down before the bombardier board and put his head in his hands.
"You win," he said hoarsely. "I must be crazy as a loon. I don't know
what I'm seeing and what I'm not. You better take this gun away. If I
fired it I might even hit something."
"You're all right," I said. And I meant it; but I didn't waste any time
all the same. The automatic first; then the tape. In that order, the
sequence couldn't be reversed afterwards.
But the sound of the programmer's journal clicking to "Off" was as loud
in that cabin as any gunshot.
* * * * *
"He'll be all right," I told Joan afterwards. "He pulled himself
through. I wouldn't have dared to throw it at any other man that
fast--but he's got guts."
"Just the same," Joan said, "they'd better start rotating the station
captains faster. The next man may not be so tough--and what if _he's_ a
sleepwalker?"