The Cold Equations (53 page)

"Not yet," Clarke answered. "We've given the Computer the job of devising a safety gadget that will prevent the operation of the ray projectors whenever the ship is within an atmosphere dense enough to produce a feedback of the rays."

"Although the situation is looking less and less like war, you can never tell," the general said. "The disintegrators would serve as a terrible threat of retaliation. However, rather than having the rays as a strictly offensive weapon used from a spaceship, it would be more desirable to have ray projectors mounted along the borders of this country. They would make the perfect defense weapon—no force by air, land or water could get past them."

"Except for the feedback," Clarke said.

"Except for the feedback—and I know without asking that you haven't been able to do anything about it."

"This chain-reaction feedback is a tough problem. We haven't solved it yet. The projector actually projects two rays, which you might call A and B. They merge at a point about twenty feet in front of the projector and disassociate the atomic structure of any material in their path from there on. The maximum range is controllable, however. In empty space, A and B are harmless—until they unite. But there's the chain-reaction feedback within an atmosphere and the disassociating effects of combined A and B follows the ununited A and B rays to their source—the ray generator. The result is that the ship, and any material within a radius of one hundred feet, is transformed suddenly into a cloud of disassociated atoms. It was designed for protection against meteors in space, where there would be no feedback."

"I hope we never have to use it against anything but meteors," the general said. "I'm a military man and the competent military leader wants a permanent victory. Should war ever come, we must avert defeat at all costs but a victory won with the disintegrator rays, projected from a ship in space, would only sow the hatred for another war."

"Why do you say that?" Knight asked.

"It's a human characteristic to say of defeat at the hands of an enemy no better armed than you—and with greatly varying degrees of philosophical acceptance—'The fortunes of war.' But Russo-Asia's defeat by a disintegrator ray, projected from an invulnerable ship in space, would arouse the reaction: 'It wasn't a fair fight—we never had a chance.' Victory would be ours, but victory by such a means would create a resentment and hatred that would be long in dying."

"I can see your point, general," Knight said. "But you do intend to use the disintegrator if necessary, don't you?"

"We don't want to have to use it, but we certainly shall if we're forced to," the general answered. He smiled faintly and added: "There's an old saying, and a true one: 'The very worst peace is better than the very best war.' To that should be added an equally true fact: 'The very worst victory is better than the very best defeat.' "

He looked at his watch, then at Clarke. "I'm afraid my time is running short, and I'd like to look through the ship before I go."

"Of course," Clarke said. He turned to Knight. "I'm sorry this came up to spoil your day, but we have to make up for the time George lost us. If you'll make the check of the SD-FA blueprints, with Miss Martin's assistance, we'll have the lost time made up by night. By the way"—he looked toward the ASSEMBLY 1 door—"where did Miss Martin go?"

"She's in with George, I think," Knight said.

"Probably already checking her share of the work," Clarke said with an approving nod. "You have a superb assistant in Miss Martin."

* * *

The four of them went into the ship and Knight walked across the concrete floor to the door of the assembly room, smiling at Clarke's statement. June was a superb assistant, despite her youth, but she was hardly the type to exercise her abilities when less important and more interesting things could be found to do.

He opened the door to find her, as he had expected, busily pestering the stoic George. "Don't you understand that one, either?" she was asking. "Tell me what the point is."

George answered her without pausing in his deft assembly of the work on the bench before him. "I understand it. It can be interpreted in either of two ways; as an expression of a feeling of pleasure or as a factual statement of the loss of the ability to phosphoresce."

"What goes on?" Knight asked.

"I've been trying to develop a sense of humor in George," she said, making a face at the unmoved robot. "I told him jokes and explained the points, but it's a waste of time. He just can't see the funny side of
anything
."

"You ought to know better than to even try. What kind of jokes did you tell him, anyway? What was this one about not being able to phosphoresce?"

"What the firefly said when he got his tail cut off—'I'm delighted!' "

"Oh." Knight pulled his mouth down and shuddered. "No wonder George refused to laugh at
that
. Not even the most genial human-being could see anything funny about such a stup—"

"Never mind!" she interrupted him. "
I
think it's funny." She looked toward the doorway. "Where did the brass go?"

"Up into the ship. You and I are to check these blueprints. You can check the electronic circuits of the initial and restraining stages and I'll take the rest."

"Well—" she sighed philosophically, "at least I know what I'll be doing the rest of the day—and it's all the fault of that humorless pile of tin."

"Speaking of jokes"—Knight spilled the blueprints out of the brown envelope and spread them on the table—"did I ever tell you about the traveling salesman who asked the farmer's daughter if—"

"Never mind that, either!" she interrupted him firmly. "Do you want to shock George?"

Silence. 

There had been utter silence from the first; the silence enclosing him and the dark eyes watching him. Why did the doctor move so quietly? Was it because he was dying; was it because people always walk softly in the presence of the dying? 

Of course! His doctor was showing him the respect that is due the dead—and the soon-to-be-dead. 

For a moment the tide of insanity almost broke through the bulwark built around his mind by the antihysteria drugs; the insanity he so desperately longed for; the insanity that would let him die in mindless, unfrightened madness. 

The words above the pilot's communication panel now read:
OBSERVER HAS A LIFE EXPECTANCY OF TWENTY HOURS AT PRESENT ACCELERATION. DEATH FOR OBSERVER WILL RESULT UNLESS ACCELERATION IS REDUCED WITHIN THAT PERIOD.

The urge to laugh came to him. It was funny! The doctor wouldn't reduce the acceleration until he gave the order and he couldn't give the order until the doctor reduced the acceleration. 

Funny! The butterscotchmen couldn't run unless they were hot and couldn't get hot unless they ran . . .  Couldn't run unless they were hot—Couldn't get hot unless they ran . . .  Couldn't run—Couldn't hot . . . run . . . hot . . . run . . . hot . . . vicious circles and circles vicious, spinning around and around . . . spin around and around and around and around till your mind flies off into the darkness where someone is laughing . . .  How pleasant to go laughing and spinning into the darkness, around and around . . . laughing and spinning and spinning and laughing . . .  around and around and . . .  

Sanity jolted into his mind with all its cold, grim reality and the comfort of the brief delirium vanished. The doctor was standing over him, injecting the antihysteria drug into his bloodstream. 

The desperate fear ran through him again, terrible in its helpless impotency. It was always the same; the doctor watched him ceaselessly, ready to move forward and deny him the solace of madness at the first sign of its coming. 

The doctor didn't hate him—
WHY MUST THE DOCTOR TORTURE HIM SO?

* * *

It was a year later, with the ship six days from the morning of its test flight, that Russo-Asia completed the about-face in its foreign policy and promised the freedom of Western representatives to inspect their "greatly reduced military strength." It was not, to Knight, a surprising or mysterious thing. Russo-Asia had been built on false promises and deceit; this last action, he feared, could have but one reason behind it.

It was the other, happening five days later, that sent the chill certainty, too late, into his mind—the discovery that a tentacle of Cullin's presumably dead espionage system was in the very heart of Center . . . 

* * *

It was with relief that Knight led General Gordon and his five-star superior, General Marker, to the control room of the ship. He had shown them the ship from bottom to top, explaining its workings and answering questions until he was beginning to feel like a tourist's guide. Furthermore, it was late in the night—or early in the morning, rather—and he would have little sleep before returning to be on hand for the ship's first take-off.

"And this is the control room," he said. "The first seat, with its control and instrument board over there, is for the pilot. This one is for the observer." He indicated the seat and instrument board immediately behind the pilot's. "You'll notice the observer has only a few instruments, but several viewscreens. The pilot can control the ship manually, with those buttons on his control board, or by voice command to the robot drive control—a D-Twenty-three. In an emergency, the observer can control the ship by voice command to the drive control, but his panel is not equipped with manual control buttons. The observer's duties are to observe and record, as well as to maintain constant contact with Earth."

He pointed to a small viewscreen in the center of the observer's panel. "This is his contact with the auxiliary control station. You both saw it—that little steel building two hundred feet west of this one. A man will be on duty at all times in it." He flipped a switch and the screen came to life, to show the back of an empty chair and a steel door beyond. "No one on duty right now, of course, but there will be when the ship takes off."

"What is the purpose of this ground-control station?" General Marker asked. "I know, of course, that it's an auxiliary means of controlling the ship, but why?"

"It's a safety measure we hope we won't have any need for. We're convinced that the ship has no bugs, but we don't want to take any chances with men's lives. So we have the constant communication with the observer plus the auxiliary control of the ship's drive. Should something go wrong, such as both pilot and observer becoming unconscious, we can bring the ship safely back to Earth from our ground-control station."

"Which method of controlling the ship takes precedence, the pilot's manual control, his oral orders to the drive control, or the means of controlling the ship from the ground-control station?"

"The control from the ground overrides all forms of control from within the ship. It might possibly be that a man would crack, and if he did he might give any kind of orders to the robot drive control—even such a one as ordering the disintegrators turned on Earth. We don't expect anything like that to happen, you understand—Miles and Vickson were selected for their mental stability—but we like to play safe."

"Will the crew include a doctor?"

"The very best, so far as technical skill goes. But circumstances might arise where more than technical skill would be needed, so that's why we have the auxiliary control station."

General Gordon tentatively touched a red knob on the observer's panel. "Does this turn the disintegrators on?" he asked.

Knight nodded. "It turns them on, and also controls the maximum range. The Computer gave us that safety gadget I spoke of when you were here a year ago, so now we don't have to worry about them being turned on accidentally and destroying the ship." He spun the red knob to the right and the generals exchanged nervous glances. "It's on full intensity, right now. This safety gadget prevents the closing of the circuit so long as the ship is within an atmosphere dense enough to produce a feedback of the rays."

He turned it off again and General Marker remarked, "You certainly go all the way in trusting your gadgets here."

"A soundly built gadget
can
be trusted."

"Then why your five-word slogan—the same as you have on the Master Computer—in big letters here on the observer's panel?"

"It's different when a gadget has an intelligence. The observer, in an emergency, would have to control the ship through a robotic brain. That five-word sentence, which is actually a sound philosophy to keep in mind when dealing with machines, is to remind the observer that he is not giving orders to a human pilot."

"Although it's six hours until take-off, I suppose the ship is ready to go right now?" General Gordon asked.

"Ready to go, and Miles and Vickson are now getting their last hours of sleep—
the
last hour, to be exact. They'll be back down here in less than two hours, together with myself, Dr. Clarke, and about a platoon of technicians to make the last-minute check of all the other checking. We have something too big in space flight to chance any errors on the first attempt."

"I'm glad this ship's first flight will not be as a weapon of war," General Marker said, "but I trust it's well guarded—just to play safe, as you said of your ground-control station."

"You saw the guards outside," Knight answered. "And there are guards outside the door of the ground-control station—this ship can't lift while enclosed in this steel building and the controls that lower the roof and walls into recesses in the ground are inside that station. We still have the machine-gun towers that we erected seven years ago when war seemed just around the corner. The antiaircraft artillery is still stationed in a wide circle around Computer Center—no one ever got around to ordering their removal and the guns were still manned twenty-four hours a day, the last I heard."

"Well, if Russo-Asia has any plans for this ship, they've certainly kept them well concealed," General Marker said. "Our Intelligence reports no indications whatever of any such thing. And now, I think we had all better get out of here and take advantage of that less-than-two-hours sleep we'll get before the preliminaries start."