29

CRAGG PUT down his headset. He nodded at Dane. “All set.”

The minute hand stood at seven minutes before 1100 hours. Dane looked at Major Noel. He was watching Cragg with the intensity Dane had seen on the faces of the roulette players at Golden Beach. The memory of the Gulf Coast smote him, lazing under the cumulous puffs, bright white and high over the sand splashed with girl colors. A new life, he resolved. If we make it okay. A new girl and the rest of the long Gulf summer to look for pleasure. Maybe an hour or two a day to write up the journal and cull out his photographs. Maybe most days to forget Mars as anything but a stained speck in the south-east evening sky. It was impossible to think that the beach would never come for him again.

Cragg was giving Lieutenant McDonald his orders. Pour out the shock waves for ten minutes. Then they would try the take-off.

He turned to Noel. “You will go to fire control and remain there for emergency, all guns and weapons ready. Report when you’re ready at your station.” He snapped his chair around smartly. “Sergeant Peeney, sound the alert. Take-off will be at 1110 hours. All personnel will now remain secure at their stations.”

All at once Dane felt that now or never was the time to say his piece.

“Can you wait just one minute?” he said quickly. “There’s one more thing I ought to tell you and Noel both, while we’re all here together. I’ve got positive proof that Dr. Pembroke couldn’t have knifed Colonel Cragg. Absolute airtight proof.”

Noel swung back. “Yeah. That I’d like to hear. It’d have to be good and airtight.”

Cragg said, “We’ll get on with our present business, gentle-men, if you don’t mind. Time enough later for that.”

“We don’t know what’s going to happen here in the next few minutes,” Dane said. “I’ve got it all written down and sealed in that envelope I told you about. It’s among my papers addressed to Major Noel, to be delivered to him if anything happens to me. It ought to be told first, before we take any more chances. So more than one will know about it.”

“Noel?” Cragg said. “Why Noel?”

Dane said, “Because if I’m right, you’re certainly still on somebody’s list. And I know without any doubt I’m right.”

“You’ve got a lot of envelopes around, haven’t you, son?”

“It’s pretty simple, after it occurred to me,” Dane said. “I should have thought of it a long time ago.”

Cragg moved impatiently. “Skip the preliminaries. Let’s get right down to it.”

“It’s just this,” Dane said. “The assumption has been made all along that Dr. Pembroke left the infirmary when the nurse went to mess from 1730 to 1800.”

“That’s the only time the door was unguarded,” Noel said.

“There had to be at least one other time, and a later one at that, Dane told them. “Because Dr. Pembroke was still in his bed at about 1830. Here’s how I know. We started receiving the first Martian signals that night about 1815. Almost immediately I called Captain Spear and asked him to check to see if anyone was outside the Far Venture. A few minutes later Captain Spear reported everybody present and accounted for. If Dr. Pembroke hadn’t been in bed where he was supposed to be, Spear would have found it out.”

Cragg said, “Sergeant, check the log.”

Peeney flipped the pages, selected one, and ran his finger down the margin. “Yes, sir,” he reported. “It’s here. Just before the entry about the first signals coming in.”

“Read it.”

“Yes, sir.” Peeney frowned at the page and cleared his throat. “‘Checked all personnel for presence inside the spacecraft,’” he read. “‘Requested by Dr. Dane. Dr. Dane reported reason to believe one or more personnel outside contrary to order of the commander. Head count completed at 1831. All present.’”

“There you have it,” Dane said. “The colonel was attacked immediately after 1800 when Captain Spear relieved him at the command post. Dr. Pembroke was not guilty. He couldn’t possibly have been. He was still in his bed at 1830 or very shortly before.”

Noel said, “Unless he slipped out and did his knife act and went back to bed and then slipped out again after the head count.”

Dane said, “After 1800 the nurse was on duty. He couldn’t have got back in. Once maybe, watching for his chance, he might have slipped out when the nurse was in the john or something. But not in and out like it was payday at the bank. Not on that tight schedule. That nurse’s station is right at the entrance and he sits there all the time. You also want to remember that Dr. Pembroke was still unconscious at 1600, when Captain King made his afternoon examination. Huh-uh,” Dane told them. “You’ve lost your candidate.”

Noel said, “Where’s that put you, Dane?”

Dane said, “Right back on the observation deck. At 1800 I was climbing the ladders to get there.”

Cragg said, “That’s enough for now. We get away from here, we’ll have a full-dress investigation. I know one thing. I didn’t put that knife in my own back.”

“One other thing,” Noel said. “Spear’s roll call wasn’t a hundred per cent perfect. If he made it around 1830, he ought to have discovered that the colonel didn’t answer and sent somebody to see why.”

“He wouldn’t check on me,” Cragg said in a tone of affront. “Besides, he had just relieved me at the command post at 1800. He knew I was in the spacecraft. Whatinhell do you think I’d be doing outside!”

Noel said, “It was just a thought.”

“Let’s get on with this jamming idea,” Cragg ruled impatiently. “Sergeant, change the alert. Take-off will now be at 1115.”

Peeney flipped the switches and addressed a low, slow voice to the microphone. Neither Cragg nor McDonald moved when a jumpy buzzer gouged at the hushed command post.

Peeney flipped another switch and listened.

“Major Noel at station, sir. All weapons are ready.”

The tardy minutes counted down. Cragg sat his wheel chair with irreproachable calm. Dane thought of Grant on his log in the evening of Shiloh’s first day. Sergeant Peeney stood at the signal board like an acrobat on edge for his routine. Lieutenant McDonald perched a hip on the chart table, swung a leg to and fro.

At last Cragg moved his eyes, sweeping over them, each one, and said, “Here we go. Have Lieutenant Yudin apply full power to the antennas.”

Peeney pulled a key and spoke into his microphone. After a moment he said, “Full power on now, sir.”

It was anti-climax. Something visible or at least audible should happen. Dane needed events. He knew the unseeable, silent power was surging outward from their human island, but there was no difference now between four men waiting in a sealed, assault-proof chamber and what there had been before Cragg had given the word for action.

While the seconds ticked off, they held their tight tableau. The commander being silent, the others were constrained to silence. Dane felt the oppressive weight of it, heavy on the man who sat comtemplative and outwardly indifferent among them.

Then there was no more suspense. Cragg leaned forward and said, “Start the take-off.”

Peeney chucked a key on the communications panel. McDonald stood briskly up from the chart table and spoke into a microphone, “Commence take-off.”

Cragg said, “Ten per cent power.”

McDonald repeated it in his microphone.

One of the banked speakers came alive, sporting its red pilot light. “Ten per cent power recorded.”

Cragg said, “Work it up to twenty-five.”

McDonald repeated the order into the microphone.

Cragg looked reflectively at Dane. “Fifty-five will do it.”

“Twenty-five per cent,” the speaker interrupted. The voice was excited.

Cragg shot Dane a triumphant look. “It looks like you hit it! That’s the best we’ve reached yet.” His voice took edge. “Push it up to fifty-five. Then give her sixty.”

Dane wondered at the absence of drive noise, before he remembered that the command post was soundproof.

The deck lurched. Dane fell hard against the bulkhead. The floor was dancing, and he was falling and sliding against the other wall. No take-off, he thought dimly, shielding himself against the clattering cascade of things.

The chamber’s box swung once drunkenly and righted itself. A voice said, “Are you all right, sir?”

McDonald was bending over the colonel. Dane saw the frost pinching Cragg’s lips.

“I’d better call Captain King,” McDonald urged.

Cragg caught his breath. “No!” he grunted. He waved the lieutenant back. “Check on the damage. I want to know what happened.” His eyes sought Sergeant Peeney. “Get Major Beloit on the hand phone.”

Dane righted the wheel chair. He got his hands under Cragg’s armpits.

“I can make it,” Cragg protested. He put his palms down against the floor and pushed himself up on his knees. “Maybe,” he gasped.

“Here,” Dane said. He steadied Cragg’s arm and shoulder and got him back in the chair, seeing his lips go white again.

“Major Beloit, sir,” Peeney said.

Cragg took the phone. “What happened?” he demanded.

He listened without interrupting. Finally he said, “Check it over.” He put down the phone. “That was a close one. The drive generators were entering runaway fission when Beloit and Vining managed to stop them. Basic field ratio shot up all at once. Emergency control had no effect on it. It looks like they blew at least two rocket-tube heads. Well?” he acknowledged McDonald.

“Sir, there isn’t any indicated damage to the hull or principal structural members. Only one casualty. One of the civilians thinks his arm is broken.”

Cragg brightened. “We came out of that one pretty lucky. We almost went over on our side.” He shook his head. That would have been it. Anyway, it sure looks like we’re on the right track. We nearly made it that time. We were up to thirty-seven per cent when we went out of control. For a guess I’d say we damn near had your Martians.”

Dane said, “You mean they almost got us. Maybe we shocked them a little, but they were still able to come out of it and upset the balances on the drive.”

“Maybe next time they won’t.” Cragg pointed at the wall charts of the two hemispheres of Mars. “There are millions of square miles in the green areas. That could mean a good many thousands of your colony intelligences. Nations of them maybe, with common interests and objectives. Such as destroying us. Maybe they don’t even know we are trying to leave. They could easily think our take-off radiation is an attack on their life. You don’t know what they think.”

Dane wondered briefly at what had become of Tong Asia.

“Maybe we don’t have the power to jam enough of them,” Cragg went on. “But we’re going to try it again if the drive will still operate. This time we’ll heat ‘em up for an hour before we try our take-off.”

McDonald was holding one of the phones to his ear. He slapped it back on its contact and said, “Sir, Dr. Spivak reports external radiation has gone up rapidly since the explosion. It’s now at twenty-eight per cent penetrations and still climbing. Dr. Spivak says it’s nearing double our estimated critical point. Hull temperature is rising.”

A particularly unattractive death, Dane thought. For all their timageel shell, almost impregnable to a diamond drill, for all their careful insulations, the infinitesimal bullets were tearing through their bodies, smashing their soft organs, enfeebling their brain cells. In a few minutes, perhaps no more than an hour, they would be inseminated with the seed of death. By another day the Far Venture would be tenanted by the walking dead.

Cragg said, “Get me Major Beloit. We’ll attempt another take-off in fifteen minutes. Have Yudin turn full power into the antennas immediately.”

Dane broke in. “Colonel, I’ve been thinking.”

Cragg said, “Later.”

Dane kept on talking. “The messages we have received have always talked about the Martians as ‘one.’ In the singular. Always. Maybe it’s just their idiom, but then again it might mean that there is only one Martian. What would you think,” he pressed on, “if all the lichens of Mars formed one big single plant colony? One enormous unit of intelligence? So that the entire growth of lichens on the surface of Mars is like the cortex of one tremendous brain? That could explain the one business. Maybe the whole planet is one single mind. The local lichens around us would be just a small part of it. Even those in this hemisphere would amount to only about half. Maybe we only jammed a small part of the whole thing!”

“A vital spot!” Cragg exclaimed. “You mean that if there is only one big intelligence, all we have to do is find a vital spot? So how do we find it?”

“Not a vital spot. I wasn’t thinking of a vital spot. It’s a possibility, but I don’t see how we’re going to broadcast enough force to jam a mental activity that spreads over a whole planet.”

Cragg banged down his fist. “We’ll not rot here for lack of trying!”

A buzzer sounded. Dane saw the red light wink on the communications panel. McDonald flicked the key and spoke into his mouthpiece. When he had finished, he turned a serious face to Cragg. “Sir, the foreign radiation has passed three times the critical point. Spivak says maybe we have underestimated the critical point but not so much that we can take a triple dose. He says the hull temperature is already over four degrees higher. After correction.”

Cragg pushed himself to his feet. With effort plain he made the few steps to the wall charts. He took up a grease pencil and made X-marks over the green continents. When he put the pencil down, his black crosses stood at roughly even intervals over all the lichen forests of Mars.

He said, “McDonald, take the co-ordinates of those points. Approximate them. Tell fire control that I want major primary nuclear missiles laid simultaneously on every target point I marked. Tell Major Noel that I will expect him to be ready to fire number one inside of five minutes.”

He nodded at Sergeant Peeney. “Get me Major Beloit on the horn. Then alert all stations for another take-off.”

He grinned crookedly at Dane. “I’ll give you enough radiation to shock hell out of something. We’ll see how your Martian brain can take a fission headache.”

Dane counted the marks on the charts. Twenty-eight. Two dozen and a quarter of atom missiles. It was a grand slam or nothing!

Cragg got back into his chair without the help he disdained. He took the hand phone and said, “Beloit, I want another trial on take-off immediately....That’s what I said,” he repeated. “Immediately. In fifteen minutes, that is...I don’t give a damn about the tubes. She’ll have to climb out of here on what we’ve got left.”

He listened some more. “Vining, I don’t give a damn about the runaway fission either....No, you’re mistaken. You don’t have any responsibility for you to refuse to take. I have the responsibility.”

He handed the instrument back to Sergeant Peeney. “He’s a little nervous, Vining is.”

Dane said, “He’s got company.”

Cragg laughed, “Why not? This isn’t what I’d call a Sunday afternoon drive, myself.” He shrugged. “So she blows, she blows. One thing for certain, we don’t sit here on our rears for your Martian to roast us without trying something.”