Assignment in Tomorrow Page 5

  “I got loose,” Mabel Guernsey said, moving in her inspection of the boat. “Kraus came in, and I ran out, and he chased me. I opened the main airlock and ran outside. Kraus didn’t try to close the airlock, he just stood there. Everybody else was asleep with their masks off. They all woke up happy, like Kraus and me.”

  “And then we went away,” Chabot said, “before you came back. We hoped you wouldn’t find us. We were sorry, but after all you’re crazy, you know.

  “Now you can’t come out,” he added, still smiling, “unless you take off your mask too. We’ll kill you if you do!”

  Every gun in the crowd came to bear on the airlock.

  Dodge moved back behind the airlock door where he could watch them through the metaglass port. The port would stop a blaster bolt long enough to permit him to throw himself back out of sight if any shooting actually started.

  So they’d made plans to deal with the event of his arrival. They were on the defensive. This would have been the most frustrating moment of all, had Dodge actually been able to find the madness-remedy he had searched for. But he hadn’t, of course. It might take months of research and experimentation to produce one.

  He couldn’t help them. He couldn’t help himself.

  So here he was.

  And there they were.

  He was hungry. He hadn’t eaten since starting back for the Lance after hopelessly concluding his search—almost four days ago. When he’d left the Lance the crewboat had had its regular stock of food for two days, no more. Now his stomach was twisting into itself with hunger. And he was tired. God, so tired.

  He looked out at the upturned faces, at the tall ruined Lance that would never leave this world, and thought that he must be one of the loneliest men in the Universe.

  “In fact,” said Chabot loudly, “you’d better take off your mask and come out right away. Take off your mask and come out, or we’ll push over the boat and come in and get you!”

  He stood, smiling and waiting. Looking at him, Dodge thought that the madmen must be eating, at any rate; Chabot still had his waistline. He hoped, with a sudden chill, that they weren’t eating each other.

  Behind Chabot, Marian turned away, moving with the grace that had always stirred Dodge so. She walked over and stared at Rupert, who was still being a fountain. He stared back, his iron brows crawling up. She pushed him over. She lay down beside him . . .

  Dodge closed his eyes. Marian, and old Rupert . . . So the woman’s passion he had so often sensed in her had at last, but too soon, found its release. Slow, black moments passed. At last he forced himself to open his eyes and felt a dull, sour relief. Rupert, it appeared, was a little overage. He was back being a fountain, and Marian was sitting up, staring at the boat again.

  The feeling of relief went away, as if it knew it was ridiculous, leaving only a black hole in his mind, and sick futility, and a small, feverish voice chattering that this was good tragicomedy. He leaned tiredly against the airlock door. Behind the mask his face felt hot, was suddenly running perspiration. He found himself trembling violently, tight and clotted inside, his clenched fist pressed hard against the mask, cutting its bit into his lips, and his face was running tears too.

  “We’ll give you three,” said Chabot. “Qn-n-n-ne . . .”

  Dodge could taste blood in his mouth.

  The others took it up like a chant, all smiling, surging forward: “Two-o-o-o . . .”

  Dodge sagged against the airlock and cried like a baby.

  “Three!” Explosive, like “Three!” always is.

  They milled around the boat with Chabot, by furious shouting finally succeeding in getting the effort organized. They shoved and the boat rocked on its fins.

  Wildly Dodge went up the ladder. He sprawled across the twin couches to slap the gyro control. The gyro whined into action and the rocking stopped abruptly. He heard laughter from outside. He went back down the ladder to the airlock, in time to stamp on dirty fingers that clutched the very rim of the lock trying for a solid grasp. The man fell back, hooting. Looking down through the transparent port, Dodge saw that it had been de Silva, boosted on the shoulders of several others.

  De Silva lay on the grass and grinned up at him. “Damn you, Cap, I think you broke my hand.”

  A woman—Susan May Larkin, Nobel physicist—came around the corner of one of the houses. She didn’t walk; she hopped. She had a bouquet of alien flowers in one hand and her face was buried in them, and she hopped. Both feet together—crouch—hop! Both feet together—crouch—hop! A big bearlike man, one of the jetmen, came around the corner after her, grinning. He took her roughly by the arm and led her back out of sight. Still she hopped.

  Sounds—a soft tinny clatter that could only be pots and pans and other kitchenware from the Lance’s galley, beaten upon and together—came from the darkness beyond a rough-hewn, curtained window nearby. A certain periodicity of pitch-change suggested that it was music. Across the village, out of sight behind the crewboat, a female voice began to la-la-la tunelessly, loudly, in the very uppermost register. The singing children stopped singing to listen.

  Dodge said sharply, “Chabot, come up here.”

  Chabot shook his head. “And have you make me crazy? Uh-uh!”

  “I don’t want to make you crazy,” Dodge said patiently. “Remember, Chabot, I’m still captain of the Lance. Come on up. I just want to . . .”

  And his voice trailed off, with no place to go. Just wanted to what? He had no cure for the madness. Chabot down there thought he had and was afraid—but he had none. Use Chabot as hostage, then? Why? On threat of the man’s death, he might force them to bring food to him. But even then the oxygen supply in the tank at his belt and in the boat’s tank wouldn’t last forever. Or even for another week. And they quite possibly might abandon Chabot or simply forget him, and Dodge’s threats would not avail. And Chabot wasn’t going to come up in the first place.

  What could he do?

  “All right,” he said. “Stay there.”

  “I intend to,” Chabot smiled.

  So seemingly rational, thought Dodge. So well-spoken and logical within their framework of lunatic action.

  Deadly’s swift rotation had moved the point of the crewboat’s shadow along the perimeter of the circle-standing crowd, like a giant hand on a giant clock, marking off alien minutes on smiling, mad-eyed numerals.

  His mind rebelled with sudden, almost physical impact. He must do something. Not anything constructive, anything aimed at brightening his incredible position, for there was absolutely nothing of that sort to be done. Just something, something. His mind screamed for action.

  “I’m going to shoot,” he said in a dead voice, “your damned silly village to pieces. With this boat’s proton-buster.”

  “Oh, no, you’re not,” said Chabot. “We were talking about that.” Without turning, he said curtly, “Jones——”

  Ned Jones, steward and cook’s apprentice, ran forward from the crowd. Lithe, slim, young, he sprang to the broad leading edge of the crewboat’s right stabilizer. Poised there, he got a foothold on the radar blister a little higher up. Then, one foot braced on the blister, leaning forward a little against the sleek side of the boat, he leaped a short two feet upward, bringing his head about level with the large oval barrel of the proton-cannon. He would have fallen back, then—but he speared one arm into the cannon’s muzzle. His body sagged. The muzzle moved an inch downward on its bearings, stopped. The arm broke audibly. Jones dangled, laughing with pain.

  “You see,” said Chabot. “You’re not going to do any blasting, Dodge.”

  Not so rational after all, thought Dodge. No, I’m not going to do any blasting. But not because that boy’s being where he is would stop the charge. He’d just vanish—or at least his arm would—if I triggered. But I’m not going to shoot, because I couldn’t do that to him. And because there just isn’t any reason to shoot and destroy. Nothing but a crying, tearing, clawing need to do something.

  Bu
t what could he do?

  So here he was.

  And there they were.

  Big lonely world, thought Dodge, and my oxygen won’t last forever.

  Marian was at the edge of the crowd again, staring up at the boat and at Dodge. Her halter had come off—he saw it back on the grass—and she was standing straight and tall and sunburned. She’d always been proud of her carriage, too.

  The madness, Dodge thought, was like most others; it impaired value judgments, but not so much any logic built on the shaky basis resulting. Each person afflicted—Chabot, Marian, Rupert, whose evident desire to be a fountain might signify a great deal, gun-shy Jansen, whose wearing two hand-blasts might mean as much, de Silva, with his silk stockings—each had become a caricature of himself. The floodgates were down, Dodge thought, and they were living out their unconsciouses, and so they were happy.

  He still felt that he had to do something. A man should be able to act.

  “I’m taking off,” he said loudly to the upturned faces. “Stand back. The jets will burn you if you don’t.”

  Chabot didn’t move. He laughed. “You’re not going anywhere either. If you try to take off the boat will explode and you’ll die.” He stood there, hands on his hips. “Because we put angels in the jets.”

  He laughed again, at the look he thought he saw on Dodge’s oxy-mask. The laughter caught and ran through the crowd.

  Marian spoke for the first time.

  “Angels in the jets,” she echoed queerly.

  And Dodge remembered Marian’s knack with a pencil, her certain skill in doodling.

  Angels. Always angels. Little chubby, winged angels—almost cherubs.

  He watched her as, with that lithe walk and an expression of intense interest, she came forward to pass Chabot and vanish under the stern of the boat. Then he heard her crooning. She sees the angels, he thought. So the madness included a powerful susceptibility to suggestion.

  He looked up. Copper sky, yellow clouds. Giant trees, and a village. And he, almost cowering here in the crewboat—to the villagers, possibly, a kind of village idiot! Big lonely world.

  Take off? To go where on this big lonely world? And why?

  He crouched by the partly open airlock, knees bent, fingertips touching the cold steel. There was a wariness in him, like a beast’s. Behind him the gyro’s whine, the cyclodrive’s hum, were suddenly the song of death.

  What did a man five for? All Dodge’s instincts jostled and shoved forward to point to one answer: that in the last analysis a man lived to live.

  Maybe in ten years or so a rescue ship would come searching Messier 13 for them. But it would be an almost hopeless search. And it probably wouldn’t even happen, for Investigation Teams were presumably self-sufficient, and when not heard from, presumably lost.

  “Yes,” he said. “I guess you’re right, Chabot. If I take off, I die.”

  He pressed the airlock mechanism. The sliding-door whispered the rest of the way open. Dodge reached up and stripped off his oxy-mask—quickly, without giving himself time to think—and breathed deeply once, twice, three-e-e-ee . . .

  He moved numbly to the rim of the lock, teetered there a moment on the edge of the world. His burning eyes caught the small mirror set into the wall over the first-aid cabinet; he saw his own face, looked through its eyes into the eyes of the mind he knew, and said, “Good-bye . . .”

  And even as he watched, they changed.

  Soft tinkling melody from one of the houses touched his ears pleasantly. He turned, started down the metal rungs set into the side of the boat, thinking, But I don’t feel much different! He stopped on the way to reach over and help Jones out of the proton-cannon. Together, they jumped the short distance to the ground.

  The crowd, now that the problem of the lunatic in its midst had been solved, had lost interest. They walked away, singly and in groups, chattering and smiling. Jones smiled and walked away too, clutching his broken arm. Dodge noticed with a start that Jones had two other arms—the broken arm and two others with which he clutched it. It was Jones, without doubt. But it was very strange that Dodge had never noticed those three arms before. Well, no matter . . .

  Marian came out from under the stern of the crewboat, her eyes shining. Dodge wondered again if she knew him. She started to walk past him, hips swaying provocatively. He reached out and took her shoulder, bruising the flesh hard. Suddenly she was in his arms, flowing up against him.

  “I like you too,” she was saying hoarsely, raggedly. “I like you too.”

  They joined hands and began to walk. Marian, probably remembering the hopping woman, began to hop too, and soon it turned into a dance. Dodge joined in, laughing happily.

  He bent over once, walking on all fours, just as they were entering the forest, so he could look back under the crewboat and see the dancing, darting figures of the angels in the jets.

  Angels in the Jets by Jerome Bixby. Copyright, 1952, by Ziff-Davis Publishing Co., Inc.; reprinted by permission of the author.

  C.M. KORNBLUTH

  Praising one’s collaborator is like praising one’s wife: it seldom sounds quite objective. Therefore, forgetting for the moment that C. M. Kornbluth had anything to do with such novels as Search the Sky, The Space Merchants and Gladiator-at-Law, let us only note that all Kornbluth novels (Takeoff, The Syndic) win the hearts of reviewers, and all Kornbluth short stories turn up in science-fiction anthologies . . . as, for instance, herein does——

  The Adventurer

  President Folsom XXIV said petulantly to his Secretary of the Treasury: “Blow me to hell, Bannister, if I understood a single word of that. Why can’t I buy the Nicolaides Collection? And don’t start with the rediscount and the Series W business again. Just tell me why.”

  The Secretary of the Treasury said with an air of apprehension and a thread-like feeling across his throat: “It boils down to—no money, Mr. President.”

  The President was too engrossed in thoughts of the marvelous collection to fly into a rage. “It’s such a bargain,” he said mournfully. “An archaic Henry Moore figure—really too big to finger, but I’m no culture-snob, thank God—and fifteen early Morrisons and I can’t begin to tell you what else.” He looked hopefully at the Secretary of Public Opinion: “Mightn’t I seize it for the public good or something?”

  The Secretary of Public Opinion shook his head. His pose was gruffly professional. “Not a chance, Mr. President. We’d never get away with it. The art-lovers would scream to high Heaven.”

  “I suppose so . . . Why isn’t there any money?” He had swiveled dangerously on the Secretary of the Treasury again.

  “Sir, purchases of the new Series W bond issue have lagged badly because potential buyers have been attracted to——”

  “Stop it, stop it, stop it! You know I can’t make head or tail of that stuff. Where’s the money going?”

  The Director of the Budget said cautiously: “Mr. President, during the biennium just ending, the Department of Defense accounted for 78 per cent of expenditures——”

  The Secretary of Defense growled: “Now wait a minute, Felder! We were voted——”

  The President interrupted, raging weakly: “Oh, you rascals! My father would have known what to do with you! But don’t think I can’t handle it. Don’t think you can hoodwink me.” He punched a button ferociously; his silly face was contorted with rage and there was a certain tension on all the faces around the Cabinet table.

  Panels slid down abruptly in the walls, revealing grim-faced Secret Servicemen. Each Cabinet officer was covered by at least two automatic rifles.

  “Take that—that traitor away!” the President yelled. His finger pointed at the Secretary of Defense, who slumped over the table, sobbing. Two Secret Servicemen half-carried him from the room.

  President Folsom XXIV leaned back, thrusting out his lower lip. He told the Secretary of the Treasury: “Get me the money for the Nicolaides Collection. Do you understand? I don’t care how you do it. Get it.” He gl
ared at the Secretary of Public Opinion. “Have you any comments?”

  “No, Mr. President.”

  “All right, then.” The President unbent and said plaintively: “I don’t see why you can’t all be more reasonable. I’m a very reasonable man. I don’t see why I can’t have a few pleasures along with my responsibilities. Really I don’t. And I’m sensitive. I don’t like these scenes. Very well. That’s all. The Cabinet meeting is adjourned.”

  They rose and left silently in the order of their seniority. The President noticed that the panels were still down and pushed the button that raised them again and hid the granitefaced Secret Servicemen: He took out of his pocket a late Morrison fingering-piece and turned it over in his hand, a smile of relaxation and bliss spreading over his face. Such amusing textural contrast! Such unexpected variations on the classic sequences!

  The Cabinet, less the Secretary of Defense, was holding a rump meeting in an untapped comer of the White House gymnasium.

  “God,” the Secretary of State said, white-faced. “Poor old Willy!”

  The professionally gruff Secretary of Public Opinion said: “We should murder the bastard. I don’t care what happens——”

  The Director of the Budget said dryly: “We all know what would happen. President Folsom XXV would take office. No; we’ve got to keep plugging as before. Nothing short of the invincible can topple the Republic . . .”

  “What about a war?” the Secretary of Commerce demanded fiercely. “We’ve no proof that our program will work. What about a war?”

  State said wearily: “Not while there’s a balance of power, my dear man. The Io-Callisto Question proved that. The Republic and the Soviet fell all over themselves trying to patch things up as soon as it seemed that there would be real shooting. Folsom XXIV and his excellency Premier Yersinsky know at least that much.”

  The Secretary of the Treasury said: “What would you all think of Steiner for Defense?”