And Now the News (52 page)

“Snowdrops,” I said, remembering.

“Then I put her in the pod and told her to ride it, that's all. Except I … armed her … like you arm a bomb, you see? I told her what a cold-fusion plant is. She didn't care one way or the other, mind, but she listened while I explained it to her, all the parts. Then I gave her a paper and told her this is exactly what happens. I told her to read it as soon as the red light on the panel went on, which would be when she was clear of the ship.”

“Read what?” somebody asked, after it got too quiet.

It was a long wait, watching that pod leeched to the planetoid and nothing happening but white sticks drifting, rocks, bits of stuff the planetoid had pulled in and hadn't been able to eat …

“Read what?” the captain finally repeated. “The cold-fusion formula, that's all. Written out in words of one cylinder. When Hydrogen One and Hydrogen Two are in the presence of mu mesons, they fuse into Helium Three with an energy yield in electron volts of 5.4 times ten to the fifth power. That's what was on the paper. She knew, piece by each, what the parts were—what mu mesons and Helium Three are and what is meant by that many electron volts. She had all that buried deep in her before we left the Earth Worlds. She'd had no occasion to put them together, that's all.

“And here I come saying (on paper), ‘This gadget does exactly such and such.' Well, she just out and out doesn't believe it. That
would make no never mind to a turbine or a power drill, but when you get into subatomic particles, clouds of them, involved in a catalysis—untouched in the long run, but I imagine pretty edgy … and you slam them with this thing, whatever it is she has …”

Suddenly impatient, he rapped, “Who am I trying to convince? It works, you see?”

I said, “Get off my foot, monk,” and went on watching the screen. I don't think anyone else noticed the utility man. I hardly did myself.

“Hey,” Donato said suddenly, “our generators are out, right? How do we get out of here?”

“When the bomb blows—no more D-field. Simple.”

England barked, just as suddenly, “And what about all those missiles with the damper gone? They shoot off in every—”

“Dry up, clown,” said the skipper. “And keep your panic to yourself. Every one of those missiles is triggered from one place and one place only—that planetoid. How do you think they were kept inside the Barrier and off the Luanae Earths all this time? Who cares if they get their power and explosives again? There'll be nobody in the driver's seat any more. Now shut up. It ought to blow pretty quick.”

“Blow how? If it's right in the middle of the—uh—damping field—”

“I said shut up! That isn't a cold-fusion bomb. It's a hairy old thermonuclear that doesn't give a damn what anybody believes.”

“What is it? What's going to
happen? What's
out there? Where—”

“Go on back to bed, monk,” I said out of the side of my mouth, watching the screen. I meant it to sound kind—he'd had a bad time—but it didn't come out kind. I guess I'll never get used to talking to them.

It let go.

Oh, my God.

Captain Steev was wrong. There was triggering, somewhere, in some part of that split-second of hell. Because all the missiles went, too. They didn't fly; they didn't hunt. The warheads went.

It took a long time for our eyes to come back. The peeper screen was gone for good.

The turbine moaned down and down the scale and stopped. The lights stopped that annoying side-of-the-eye flicker.

“We got to go and get Virginia,” was the first complete sentence anyone said.

Somebody laughed. Not a funny laugh.

England's voice was harsh. “Don't be stupider ‘n you have to be, monkey. Don't you see we're back on our cold-fusion plant?”

“That makes no difference to him,” I told England. “He wasn't around when the skipper explained.”

“Who wasn't around?” barked the captain. “Damn it, Blum, nobody told you to leave your quarters. You're confined, you understand that? You, Palmer, can't I trust you to—”

“Wait!” The scream was almost more than a man could take. It was almost like that flare of light.

The monkey stood there in the middle of the mess hall, going mad again. “Wait, wait,
wait!
I got to know. You all know. I don't. What
happened?
”

“Come on, Blum,” I said quickly. I was afraid of him, but I think I was more afraid of the captain. He had a look on his face I never want to see any more.

He brought the face close to Blum and said, “You want to know, well, okay, and I don't see why I should waste time or pity on a goddam monkey. That bomb knocked off the planetoid and the Barrier, which is what we came here for, and it knocked off your Virginia because that's what she was sent out for. Okay?”

“What you want to kill her for?” Blum whispered.

“You wouldn't happen to know any other way to bring back our power plant, now would you?” snarled the captain.

I tried to explain to the utility monkey. “She didn't believe the plant could work, Blum. So it couldn't work.”

“I could make her believe. I could. I could.”

We looked at him, the big tilted head, the trembling nostrils. He wasn't going to get crazy mad, after all. He was going into something else. It scared me more than his going crazy mad would.

He said, “It was you, wasn't it, fixed it so she wouldn't believe anything?”

“She had a head start,” said the skipper, and turned his back. “Come on, Potter. Donato. You're crew now, like it or not. Let's get this can the hell home. We got news for the people.”

“I never thought human beings could be like that,” Blum said very quietly. “I never believed they could.”

“Get to bed, monk,” I said. And before I could stop myself, I begged him. “Please. Please, Blum—get out of his way.”

He looked up into my face for a long time. Suddenly he said, “All right, Palmer.” Then he just left.

I felt a lot better. Does you good to know you can handle people.

“Bunk in, men. We jump in five minutes.” The captain went forward to check his controls.

“Well, don't stand there!” I barked at them. “Bunk in, men!”

“You know what, Palmer, you're a jerk,” Donato told me. Then we all bunked down.

Four minutes went by. Five. I heard the whir of machinery.

The lights went out. The whir was a moan, then a whine. The lights came on dim, then bright, and flickering at the edges of the eyes.

I didn't figure it was any of my business, so I just lay there and waited. Pretty soon the captain came back. He leaned against my cabin door and looked at me.

“Something the matter?” I wanted to know, trying to sound intelligent.

“Power plant's out, is all.”

“Oh,” I said. “Uh—what's wrong with it?”

He heaved a slow sigh. “Nothing. Only it doesn't work.”

“I guess I better get up,” I said.

“Why?” he asked me, and went away.

I got up anyway and went and told Donato and Potter and England. They stayed where they were. They didn't like this quiet skipper with the quiet voice and no arguments.

“You know, if he can't fix it, we don't go anywhere. The Luanae have no ships and we can't reach any of their planets,” England told me. I'd as soon he hadn't.

I went to see Blum, for something to do.

He had his eyes open without seeing anything and he was mumbling
to himself. I tried to hear.

“… A little kid, they say you have the same chance as everybody else, you believe them. ‘I'll hold your bag,' they say, ‘while you get the tickets. Don't worry, I'll be here when you get back,' and you believe them … ‘Got a great job for you, son. Light work, big tips—' ”

“Monkey,” I said.

He looked up at me. “You know what, Palmer? She said if you don't believe anything at all, you lose nothing when it all comes straight at last. It's all come straight for me now, Virginia. I can be safe now, Virginia, not believing. They can't take anything away from you that way. You're so right.”

He went on talking like that for a long time. I left and walked forward and found the captain. He was in the control room jiggling a handle back and forth and not looking at it.

I said, “Captain, that D-field the girl had—now could a person fall into that by himself—I mean without those Earth World doctors and all?”

“You sure you have to come bother me about it?” he asked in a whisper, not looking at me.

I backed way off and said, “I think I do. I think the monkey's got a case of the same.”

“Now that's crazy! He'd have to have a real shock to get into a state like that. The monkey's okay. Beat it.”

“He's mumbling how he doesn't believe in anything.”

So the captain went aft with me. He watched the utility monkey for a time and then said, “Well, we'll fix it so he doesn't believe one way or another,” and hit the man in the bed on the jaw so he slid up and banged his head on the inboard bulkhead.

I could hear the monkey breathing and I could hear the steam turbine, on and on.

I said, “I guess being unconscious doesn't make any difference to what you believe.”

“You should know,” said the captain. “All right, Palmer, pick him up and bring him along.”

“Where?”

“Shut up.”

He walked out. I guessed I'd better go along with him. I heaved and grunted the monkey up over my shoulder. I almost fell down with him. The captain was waiting in the corridor. He started to walk when I came out, so I followed him. We went down to pod level and forward to the airlock. Captain Steev began to undo the inner lock.

“What you going to do?” I asked him.

“Shut up,” said the captain.

“You fixing to kill this monkey?”

“You want to get home?”

“I don't know,” I said, and thought about it.

The captain flung back the inner door and stood up. He said, “What's your trouble, Palmer?”

I said, “I don't think I'm going to let you do this, Captain. There's some other way. You don't have to kill a little utility man.”

“Put him in, Palmer.”

I stood there with the limp monkey on my shoulder and glared at the captain while he glared back. I don't know how that might have ended—I do, only I'm ashamed to say it—but there was a noise and a voice, and somebody stood up out of the lock.

“Well, it's about time,” Virginia complained. “You had the inner lock dogged and I've been lying in there for an hour. I guess I went to sleep. Who's that? What's the matter with Nils?”

The captain looked like a man with a cup of flour in the face.
“Who told you to leave the pod?”

“The Luanae,” she said calmly. “Inside my head, like. It was funny. Told me how to get into the flight-suit and how to get the gas bottles and strap them all together and use them to jet clear of the pod and that big gold thing. I got a long way away and then they told me to get back of a big piece of rock floating there. There was a lot of light. They told me when to go again, after the pieces stopped flying by. It was easier then. There's a jet unit built right into the suit, did you know that? The Luanae told me how I was supposed to use it.”

I got my jaw working and said, “What made you think you could make it go?”

“Well, it's the same kind of unit that brought us here, isn't it? You can't help believing your own eyes.”

At last the captain moved. Before he could say a word, I slung the monkey down to the deck and pushed him. I bet the captain has been hit in his life, and maybe kicked, but I don't believe anyone just up and pushed him in the chest. He sat right down like a child with his legs spraddled out, looking up at me.

“Now you just stay there and shut up yourself,” I told him. “You're always doing everything with these people the wrong way.”

Virginia was kneeling beside the monkey. “What is it? What happened to him?”

I said, “He got a bump, that's all. Listen, if you don't mind me asking, do you believe he loves you?”

“Oh, yes!” she said immediately.

“Then I tell you what. You stay right here with him and rock him back and forth a little till his eyes open, hear? Then tell him that—tell him you believe him. That's all.”

The captain scrambled to his feet and opened his mouth to bellow. I bellowed first. I don't know where it came from, but I believed I could do it, and it was a time to believe things.

“You! You get up forward and check your controls. This can's going to take off like a scalded eel if you've left the controls open, and I don't want these folks shaken up. Go on, quick! You're the only one here who knows how to do that. I'm the only one who knows how to do this other. Right? Right!” I said and pushed him.

He growled at me, but he went right up the ladder.

I hunkered down beside those two people and looked them over. I felt fine, very fine.

I said, “Virginia, you know what this is? This is the day everything all comes out straight. Right? Right.”

“You're a funny sort of man, Mr. Palmer.”

“A clown, ma'am.”

I made a face at her and went up the ladder. About the time I reached the top, the ship began to move. I fell right back down again, but they didn't think it was funny. They didn't even seem to see me.

I climbed up quietly and went back to my cabin.

by Paul Williams

“Won't You Walk …?”:
first published in
Astounding Science Fiction
, January 1956. Written autumn 1955.

Sturgeon wrote what he liked to call a “rubric” (an explanatory or introductory commentary) introducing this story in an anthology called Writers' Choice put together by
Analog
magazine in 1984. He wrote: