Alan Foster - Dark Star

“No… nothing to love, nothing to be friends with, nothing to even raise to a conscious level. Nothing to even hate decently. A joke, a damned mindless vegetable—that’s what we found. A limp balloon.” His voice rose higher, and both Boiler and Pinback watched him anxiously.

“Fourteen goddamned light-years for a vegetable that goes squawk and lets out a stink if it’s touched! Remember that?”

“All right, I remember, I remember,” confessed Boiler, trying to calm his companion.

Doolittle was aware that he was once again perilously close to going over the edge. He dropped his voice, would have jammed his hands into his pockets if he hadn’t been sitting down. He looked away from the others.

“So anyway, don’t give me any of that ‘intelligent life’ stuff. Find me something I can blow up.”

Once more an uneasy quiet reigned in the control room of the Dark Star . Each man returned to his station, which had the virtue of not yelling, not screaming, not scratching, and not fighting back.

They shot along in silence faster than man had ever traveled before, for the Dark Star was the first of its kind. There had been no experimental predecessor; the Dark Star was, in itself, an experimental ship. An experimental starship would have been prohibitively expensive, so it was combined with this first, vital mission, built with knowledge drawn from the unmanned deep-space probes.

And it had worked out well. Only minor, irritating little things continued to break down. The ship itself continued to operate almost flawlessly—like her crew.

A sudden series of beeps erupted from Pinback’s station. He blinked, leaned forward. A key shut off the noise.

“Hey,” he said after studying the instruments, his expression lighting up, “new star.”

No one reacted. He looked at Boiler, then Doolittle. Maybe they hadn’t heard him. “Hey, guess what,” he repeated a bit louder, “I got a new star on the readout.”

Doolittle had produced a well-worn deck of cards. He was playing solitaire. Doolittle was very good at solitaire. He didn’t lose often because he cheated.

“What kind?” he asked without looking up.

Pinback checked the instruments again. “Red dwarf. It’s a complete unknown, sir, not even listed on the ‘possibles’ charts, from what I can see.”

Doolittle put a black queen on a red king, then a black jack on the queen. “Any planets?”

“Around a red dwarf, sir? Even if there were any the chances of them being inhabi—”

“I asked you if it had any planets, Sergeant.”

“Oh, all right.” Pinback checked the readout again. His expression bulged. “Wow, yeah—it says eight probables here! How about that!”

“Any of ’em good?”

“Well,” Pinback guessed, “it’s kind of hard to tell at this distance, but there might be. Boy, wouldn’t that be something? Around a red dwarf?”

“I mean, are any of ’em bad,” Doolittle corrected, putting an ace up.

“Oh.” Pinback sounded depressed, reluctantly checked his readouts again. “Naw, all stable.”

Doolittle just grunted.

“I suppose that means we aren’t going to map them out?” No reply. “Geez, Lieutenant, a red dwarf with eight possible planets—I mean, we at least ought to make an equatorial survey.”

“Not our job,” Doolittle said quietly.

“But couldn’t we in this case make one teeny weeny little exception?”

“No.” Black ten on red jack.

There was peace in the control room for a while, except for the gentle click-clacking of cards flicking down on the computation board. Pinback stared at Doolittle until he was quite certain that the lieutenant had nothing further to say on the subject of the strange new system.

“Ah,” he said finally, “what are you gonna name it?”

Doolittle hesitated, spoke without looking up again. “What?”

“Ah, you know… that star,” Pinback continued anxiously. “What are you gonna name it?”

“Who cares?” Doolittle responded irritably. “I’m busy, Pinback… don’t bother me, huh?”

“But it’s a whole new star, Lieutenant. With planets. Eight of ’em. Only a handful of human beings ever got to name a tiny, insignificant thing like maybe a river or a mountain or a sea. A few luckier ones got to name features on the surface of the Moon and Mars and the other planets. You can name a whole star system, Lieutenant.”

Doolittle spared him a quick glance. “Look, don’t bother me, please, Pinback? I’ve almost got this game played out. Leave me alone, hmmm?”

“Commander Powell would name it,” Pinback finished, with the ultimate argument. He folded his arms firmly.

“Commander Powell’s dead,” reminded Doolittle for the thousandth time, putting a deuce up on the ace.

“Well then…” Pinback suddenly beamed. “That’s it—‘Don’t Bother Me.’ We’ll name it ‘Don’t Bother Me.’” He hunted hurriedly under his station for the small semi-official log he’d been keeping ever since Doolittle had lost interest in making regular entries in the ship’s printed log.

The pencil that was clipped to it was worn to a stub now, and he had to strain to write neatly with it.

“There,” he said after an hour’s dedicated scribbling. “All nice and official, with coordinates and everything. ‘Don’t Bother Me’… eight planets.” He finished with a flourish. “Congratulations, Lieutenant.”

Doolittle started to shout again, but he turned up the last card he needed to play out and was feeling instantly generous. After all, why pick on poor Pinback just because he was a mite overzealous in his job?

“Thanks, Sergeant. If any intelligent beings do live there, maybe they’ll thank you someday. I know I wouldn’t want myself to be visited by anything like me.”

“Uh, Lieutenant,” Pinback replied, his face twisted in uncertainty, “I’m not sure I know what you mean by—”

Boiler’s deep tones broke in over him. “Hey, Doolittle, I got a goodie. Definitely unstable. Eighty-five-percent probability of an unstable planet in star system P-one-thirty-eight. Indication of habitable planets in same system ninety-six percent. Chances are it will go off its orbit inside the critical period and hit its star.” He looked up from his readouts. “Wanna blow it up?”

He laughed.

Pinback eyed him uneasily. Boiler didn’t laugh very often, and Pinback could have done without even those occasional displays of humor on the corporal’s part. But the information appeared to please Doolittle. He smiled broadly.

“Real good, Boiler. Real good work. That’s what I’m looking for. Chart a course as fast as you can.” His mind was singing, one more planet, one more bomb—and then they could go home, go home, go home… back to warm, comfortable, feeling Earth, back to real grass and real booze and members of the opposite sex. Back to the other aliens, back where they belonged…

Boiler was working feverishly at his console. “Hey, throw me the chart log, Pinback.”

“Name it, then blow it up. Name it, then blow it up—that’s all you guys ever wanna do,” grumbled Pinback. But he reached beneath his seat, brought out the thick-bound volume of star charts, and tossed it into Boiler’s lap.

Boiler glowered at him and just held the book for a second. Conscious of the suddenly charged atmosphere in the tiny control room, Doolittle watched the two men. Even Pinback, he realized, could be pushed past a certain critical point.

Boiler held his stare for a moment longer, then opened the book and started thumbing through pages. Doolittle relaxed. What Pinback might do if pushed beyond that certain hypothetical region was anybody’s guess. Probably go stand in a corner and cry. But you never knew. Sometimes he suspected that Sergeant Pinback had unplumbed depths. Doolittle spent as much time keeping him and Boiler apart as he did running the ship.