VINING HAD come down to his post at the main reactor control heavy with interrupted sleep. Major Beloit watched him narrowly now that the grotesque pressure suit trudged very near, trailing a cloud of dust from its awkward steps back to the edge of the spotlight cast upon it. Earlier they had taken down the big panel of controls, for the third time in fact, seeking some disorder in its dense vinery of tubes and wires, and there was little point in Vining watching his post at the dismantled mess. Except that the emergency standing operating procedure stipulated his being there.
The telephone gong jangled sharply.
It was Major Noel. “Beloit, under no circumstances are you to come personally close to Pembroke. You are to stay out of the entry lock. Pembroke is to be brought up to the command post on the hoist, and you are to stay out of that too. I don’t intend to risk my chief engineer. That’s all.”
Beloit acknowledged and stood back to the port. The suit was at a hundred yards, walking very slowly. His mind flashed back to Earth and thirty years ago. It was New Year’s Day, 1991. He stood on a fishing pier on Dauphin Island and watched the tide roll out of Mobile Bay into the Gulf. There was a blond girl with a long surf rod, casting her line gracefully and far out into the water. A year or two older than he was, he guessed, nineteen or twenty maybe, and her figure was full and good against a yellow sweater. He wanted her pretty bad, but she had only looked at him once, quickly unseeing after perception of his squat, stocky figure and coarse face. Acutely aware, he reeled in his line and went back to the cottage, where he was master of a slide rule and the sophomore engineering problems in his texts. She would be fat and fifty now, wherever she was, smug over a couple of grown offspring. He himself had no particular trouble in getting plenty of girls younger than her own children. Funny if he had run on to a daughter of hers sometime around Mobile and never known it. Not any odder than standing in a spacecraft on the planet Mars and looking out on the sight of a grotesque, humanish object come up over a bizarre red plain to the mouths of their guns.
The intercom rasped. “Suit at fifty yards. Open entry,” Noel ordered.
Beloit went down to the observation port that looked into the entry lock. The outside hatch hung open and the ladder was out. Automatic weapons in hand, two pressure-suited guards stood over the opening, motionless.
The seconds ticked off, until there was a shifting of posture by both guards. Beloit knew that the suit was below. They could see it. He wouldn’t want to be Pembroke, stepping into sight under that entry. A jumpy finger on the trigger and the shock of seeing the thing all of a sudden, and reflexes might go off, in spite of disciplined control.
They were backing away from the open hatch. Slowly a monstrous head rose above the opening in the curving side. An extraordinary hand reached through and grasped the highest rung. Then the suit was inside and the hatch was closing.
Beloit blinked, straining to see through the hazy transparency of the small port. He took out his handkerchief and wiped at the dust that covered the pane. The suit was turning ponderously from one guard to the other. Finally it raised its corrugated arms and worked at its helmet, passing misshapen paws ineffectually at the collar wing nuts.
It ought to take off the gauntlets, Beloit thought. If it was one of us, it would twist the lock joint of its gauntlets. Pembroke would know to take off the gauntlets first.
Beloit snatched at his microphone. “Can’t you make him out?” he demanded. “Who is it?”
“It’s Dr. Pembroke, sir,” the answer came. The man sounded surprised.
Beloit wondered about it before he recalled that the men would have no reason to expect anything else. They had been told only to be careful. He was now surprised at his own suspense. What else could have been in the suit except Pembroke?
It took a little time, but the suit finally managed to get its neck locks loosened. When it lifted off the heavy helmet, the massed white hair of Dr. Pembroke and the wizened face, small for the large head and hair shock, were plainly revealed. Beloit phoned Noel. As far as he could judge, Pembroke’s actions were normal. Perhaps he had forgotten about the gauntlets until he had managed to get his helmet off and the guards had told him. He pulled off the rest of the suit briskly enough, leaving it in a heap on the floor. One of the guards had his helmet visor open and was motioning to Pembroke to get into the lift. As soon as the panel slid shut on him, Beloit heard the faint grind of the mechanism. The lift was ascending.
That was that. Beloit felt the fatigue hit him and thought of his bunk. Damn, it was a quarter to five. He needed more than the couple of hours’ sleep he was going to get. Maybe Noel would hurry it up with the all-clear so he could go to bed. Officious little squirt—really. But a competent technician. Still not the man for commander. When the phone rang, he picked it up quickly, blowing his breath out against his thrust-up lower lip.
It was Noel all right, but now he wanted Beloit to come up to the command post. Bed? What did Noel care about Beloit’s rest?
Beloit picked a path through the litter of the control panel. It was going to be a hulluva job to put all the stuff together again and check it, not to speak of tracing through the remainder of the generators. The better part of a week. Anyway you looked at it. Hell, he was just tired. Nothing could look good at five o’clock in the morning. After the whiskey faded out, the blonde’s face looked dirty.
No use climbing ladders. He went over and punched at the call button of the lift. The indicator showed the car at 1-high, but no responsive whir came from the mechanism. Somebody had propped the car door open, a favored malpractice. Let the other fellow climb the ladders, I’ve got a can of beans to deliver. Half the crew under military discipline and the other half civilians. What else could you expect? One thing you could say for Colonel Cragg. He had been tough, but he handed it out to them all, and all alike. Military or civilian, he was in command. Whether they liked it or not, you had to have a strong commander on a junket like this. Noel would never cut it. Doctor this and doctor that would drop in their big words here and there until the poor bastard didn’t know which way was which. Not that he would have picked John Dane for a murderer, but it just showed what could happen when things got out of hand in an emergency. Confinement neurosis, the psycho men called it. Everybody on edge and every man for himself or what he thought was the right thing to do.
When he climbed out on to 1-high deck, Noel was waiting for him.
“Come on,” he ordered, “I want to show you something.” He led off around the curving passageway.
Crumpled in the corner of the lift car was the body of Dr. Pembroke. Half the side of his head was blown away. A service pistol lay in the blood on the floor. Captain Spear was standing by.
“What I want to know,” Noel demanded, “is why you would let this man who was obviously out of his mind retain possession of firearms?”
Beloit focused on the image of Pembroke entering the lift. The old man must have had it in his pocket. Maybe a shoulder holster under his garments. “Suicide?” he asked.
“Look to you like he was run over by a truck?” Noel snarled. “Why was he allowed to retain a weapon? Or didn’t you think of it?”
“He didn’t have any visible.” Beloit said. “Your orders were not to come near him.”
“I said you were not to go near him. I said no one was to touch that suit. You had men down there. You should have had them search him after he got out of the suit.”
Beloit swore at himself. What was the use?
“I’ll have to enter that in the record against you,” Noel said with an air of dismissal.
These unpredictable things happened. When they happened, they happened swiftly and out of control of anything but good fortune. This one would dog him the rest of his career. Maybe not neglect of duty, exactly. Under the circumstances no board of officers would pin that on him, even if Noel chose to put a charge against him, but certainly an entry for ineffectiveness in a critical situation, and boom! There went the silver leaves he should have won out of this damned expedition.
“Not that you didn’t make an understandable mistake, especially after the way you’ve been loaded with work,” Noel echoed his thoughts, “but I don’t expect a field-grade officer to make mistakes, particularly when it comes to security. I’m not going to prefer charges, but I am going to give you a reprimand. That’s all,” he added abruptly. “Spear, have the body removed and record what you found when you opened the lift.”