Murray Leinster (Duke Classic SiFi) (14 page)

Cochrane protested:

"I wanted to talk to somebody who knew more than I did! What could I do
but get a man with a reputation?"

Holden shook his head.

"We psychiatrists," he observed, "go around peeping under the corners of
rugs at what people try to hide from themselves. We have a worm's-eye
view of humanity. We know better than to throw a difficult problem at a
man with an established name! They're neurotic about their reputations.
Like Dabney, they get panicky at the idea of anybody catching them in a
mistake. No big name in medicine or biology would dare tell you that of
course it's all right for us to take a walk in the rather pretty
landscape outside."

"Then who will?" demanded Cochrane.

"We'll make what tests we can," said Holden comfortingly, "and decide
for ourselves. We can take a chance. We're only risking our lives!"

Babs brought Cochrane a plate. He put food in his mouth and chewed and
swallowed.

"They say we can't afford to breathe the local air at all until we know
its bacteriology; we can't touch anything until we test it as a possible
allergen; we can't."

Holden grunted.

"What would those same authorities have told your friend Columbus? On a
strange continent he'd be sure to find strange plants and strange
animals. He'd find strange races of men and he ought to find strange
diseases. They'd have warned him not to risk it.
They
wouldn't!"

Cochrane ate with a sort of angry vigor. Then he snapped:

"If you want to know, we've got to land! We're sunk if we don't go
outside and move around! We'll spoil our story-line. This is the
greatest adventure-serial anybody on Earth ever tuned in to follow! If
we back down on exploration, our audience will be disgusted and
resentful and they'll take it out on our sponsors!"

Babs said softly, to Holden:

"That's my boss!"

Cochrane glared at her. He didn't know how to take the comment. He said
to Holden:

"Tomorrow we'll try to figure out some sort of test and try the air.
I'll go out in a space-suit and crack the face-plate! I can close it
again before anything lethal gets in. But there's no use stepping out
into a bed of coals tonight. I'll have to wait till morning."

Holden smiled at him. Babs regarded him with intent, enigmatic eyes.

Neither of them said anything more. Cochrane finished his meal. Then he
found himself without an occupation. Gravity on this planet was very
nearly the same as on Earth. It felt like more, of course, because all
of them had been subject only to moon-gravity for nearly three weeks.
Jones and the pilot had been in one-sixth gravity for a much longer
time. And the absence of gravity had caused their muscles to lose tone
by just about the amount that the same time spent in a hospital bed
would have done. They felt physically worn out.

It was a healthy tiredness, though, and their muscles would come back
to normal as quickly as one recovers strength after illness—rather
faster, in fact. But tonight there would be no night-life on the
space-ship. Johnny Simms disappeared, after symptoms of fretfulness akin
to those of an over-tired small boy. Jamison gave up, and Bell, and Al
the pilot fell asleep while Jones was trying to discuss something
technical with him. Jones himself yawned and yawned and when Al snored
in his face he gave up. They retired to their bunks.

There was no point in standing guard over the ship. If the bed of hot
ashes did not guard it, it was not likely that an individual merely
sitting up and staring out its ports would do much good. There were
extremely minor, practically unnoticeable vibrations of the ship from
time to time. They would be volcanic temblors—to be expected. They were
not alarming, certainly, and the forest outside was guarantee of no
great violence to be anticipated. The trees stood firm and tall. There
was no worry about the ship. It was perfectly practical, and even
necessary simply to turn out the lights and go to sleep.

But Cochrane could not relax. He was annoyed by the soreness of his
muscles. He was irritated by the picture given him of the expedition as
a group of heedless ignoramuses who'd taken off without star-charts or
bacteriological equipment—without even apparatus to test the air of
planets they might land on!—and who now were sternly warned not to make
any use of their achievement. Cochrane was not overwhelmed by the
achievement itself, though less than eighteen hours since the ship and
all its company had been aground on Luna, and now they were landed on a
new world twice as far from Earth as the Pole Star.

It is probable that Cochrane was not awed because he had a
television-producer's point of view. He regarded this entire affair as a
production. He was absorbed in the details of putting it across. He
looked at it from his own, quite narrow, professional viewpoint. It did
not disturb him that he was surrounded by a wilderness. He considered
the wilderness the set on which his production belonged, though he was
as much a city man as anybody else. He went back to the control-room.
With the ship standing on its tail that was the highest point, and as
the embers burned out and the smoke lessened it was possible to look out
into the night.

He stared at the dimly-seen trees beyond the burned area, and at the
dark masses of mountains which blotted out the stars. He estimated them,
without quite realizing it, in view of what they would look like on a
television screen. When light objects in the control-room rattled
slightly, he paid no attention. His rehearsal-studio had been rickety,
back home.

Babs seemed to be sleepless, too. There was next to no light where
Cochrane was—merely the monitor-lights which assured that the Dabney
field still existed, though blocked for use by the substance of a
planet. Babs arrived in the almost-dark room only minutes after
Cochrane. He was moving restlessly from one port to another, staring
out.

"I thought I'd tell you," Babs volunteered, "that Doctor Holden put some
algae from the air-purifier tanks in the airlock, and then opened the
outer door."

"Why?" asked Cochrane.

"Algae's Earth plant-life," explained Babs. "If the air is poisonous, it
will be killed by morning. We can close the outer door of the lock, pump
out the air that came from this planet, and then let air in from the
ship so we can see what happens."

"Oh," said Cochrane.

"And then I couldn't sleep," said Babs guilelessly. "Do you mind if I
stay here? Everybody else has gone to bed."

"Oh, no," said Cochrane. "Stay if you like."

He stared out at the dark. Presently he moved to another port. After a
moment he pointed.

"There's a glow in the sky there," he said curtly.

She looked. There was a vast curving blackness which masked the stars.
Beyond it there was a reddish glare, as if of some monstrous burning.
But the color was not right for a fire. Not exactly.

"A city?" asked Babs breathlessly.

"A volcano," Cochrane told her. "I've staged shows that pretended to
show intellectual creatures on other planets—funny how we've been
dreaming of such things, back on Earth—but it isn't likely. Not since
we've actually reached the stars."

"Why since then?"

"Because," said Cochrane, half ironically, "man was given dominion over
all created things. I don't think we'll find rivals for that dominion. I
can't imagine we'll find another race of creatures who could
be—persons. Heaven knows we try to rob each other of dignity, but I
don't think there's another race to humiliate us when we find them!"

After a moment he added:

"Bad enough that we're here because there are deodorants and cosmetics
and dog-foods and such things that people want to advertise to each
other! We wouldn't be here but for them, and for the fact that some
people are neurotics and some don't like their bosses and some are crazy
in other fashions."

"Some crazinesses aren't bad," argued Babs.

"I've made a living out of them," agreed Cochrane sourly. "But I don't
like them. I have a feeling that I could arrange things better. I know I
couldn't, but I'd like to try. In my own small way, I'm even trying."

Babs chuckled.

"That's because you are a man. Women aren't so foolish. We're realists.
We like creation—even men—the way creation is."

"I don't," Cochrane said irritably. "We've accomplished something
terrific, and I don't get a kick out of it! My head is full of business
details that have to be attended to tomorrow. I ought to be uplifted. I
ought to be gloating! I ought to be happy! But I'm worrying for fear
that this infernal planet is going to disappoint our audience!"

Babs chuckled again. Then she went to the stair leading to the
compartment below.

"What's the matter?" he demanded.

"After all, I'm going to leave you alone," said Babs cheerfully. "You're
always very careful not to talk to me in any personal fashion. I think
you're afraid I'll tell you something for your own good. If I stayed
here, I might. Goodnight!"

She started down the stairs. Cochrane said vexedly:

"Hold on! Confound it, I didn't know I was so transparent! I'm sorry,
Babs. Look! Tell me something for my own good!"

Babs hesitated, and then said very cheerfully:

"You only see things the way a man sees them. This show, this trip—this
whole business doesn't thrill you because you don't see it the way a
woman would."

"Such as how? What does a woman see that I don't?"

"A woman," said Babs, "sees this planet as a place that men and women
will come to live on. To live on! You don't. You miss all the real
implications of people actually living here. But they're the things a
woman sees first of all."

Cochrane frowned.

"I'm not so conceited I can't listen to somebody else. If you've got an
idea—"

"Not an idea," said Babs. "Just a reaction. And you can't explain a
reaction to somebody who hasn't had it. Goodnight!"

She vanished down the stairs. Some time later, Cochrane heard the
extremely minute sound of a door closing on one of the cabins three
decks down in the space-ship.

He went back to his restless inspection of the night outside. He tried
to make sense of what Babs had said. He failed altogether. In the end he
settled in one of the over-elaborately cushioned chairs that had made
this ship so attractive to deluded investors. He intended to think out
what Babs might have meant. She was, after all, the most competent
secretary he'd ever had, and he'd been wryly aware of how helpless he
would be without her. Now he tried painstakingly to imagine what changes
in one's view the inclusion of women among pioneers would involve. He
worked out some seemingly valid points. But it was not a congenial
mental occupation.

He fell asleep without realizing it, and was waked by the sound of
voices all about him. It was morning again, and Johnny Simms was
shouting boyishly at something he saw outside.

"Get at it, boy!" he cried enthusiastically. "Grab him! That's the
way—"

Cochrane opened his eyes. Johnny Simms gazed out and down from a
blister-port, waving his arms. His wife Alicia looked out of the same
port without seeming to share his excited approval. Bell had dragged a
camera across the control-room and was in the act of focussing it
through a particular window.

"What's the matter?" demanded Cochrane.

He struggled out of his chair. And Johnny Simms' pleasure evaporated
abruptly. He swore nastily, viciously, at something outside the ship.
His wife touched his arm and spoke to him in a low tone. He turned
furiously upon her, mouthing foulnesses.

Cochrane was formidably beside him, and Johnny Simms' expression of fury
smoothed out instantly. He looked pleasant and amiable.

"The fight stopped," he explained offhandedly. "It was a good fight. But
one of the creatures wouldn't stay and take his licking."

Alicia said steadily:

"There were some animals there. They looked rather like bears, only they
had enormous ears."

Cochrane looked at Johnny Simms with hot eyes. It was absurd to be so
chivalrous, perhaps, but he was enraged. After an instant he turned away
and went to the port. The burned-over area was now only ashes. At its
edge, charcoal showed. And now he could see trees and brushwood on
beyond. The trees did not seem strange, because no trees would have
seemed familiar. The brush did not impress him as exotic, because his
experience with actual plants was restricted to the artificial plants on
television sets and the artificially arranged plants on rooftops. He
hardly let his eyes dwell on the vegetation at all. He searched for
movement. He saw the moving furry rumps of half a dozen unknown
creatures as they dived into concealment as if they had been frightened.
He looked down and could see the hull of the ship and two of the three
take-off fins on which it rested.

The airlock door was opening out. It swung wide. It swung back against
the hull.

"Holden's making some sort of test of the air," Cochrane said shortly.
"The animals were scared when the outside door swung open. I'll see what
he finds out."

He hurried down. He found Babs standing beside the inner door of the
airlock. She looked somehow pale. There were two saucers of greenish
soup-like stuff on the floor at her feet. That would be, of course, the
algae from the air-purifying-system tanks.

"The algae were alive," said Babs. "Dr. Holden went in the lock to try
the air himself. He said he'd be very careful."

For some obscure reason Cochrane felt ashamed. There was a long, a
desperately long wait. Then sounds of machinery. The outer door closing.
Small whistlings—compressed air.

The inner door opened. Bill Holden came out of the lock, his expression
zestfully surprised.

"Hello, Jed! I tried the air. It's all right! At a guess, maybe a little
high in oxygen. But it feels wonderfully good to breathe! And I can
report that the trees are wood and the green is chlorophyll, and this
is an Earth-type planet. That little smoky smell about is completely
familiar—and I'm taking that as an analysis. I'm going to take a walk."