Zach Hughes - Pressure Man

“You can’t get out of here alive,” Dom yelled. “You can live, if you choose.”

In spite of the fact that terrorists were not executed, but merely confined as if the authorities wanted to keep them healthy until their friends could kidnap an important official to trade for the freedom of the imprisoned ones, they rarely surrendered.

“Put down your weapons,” Dom yelled.

A new burst of fire was the answer. When it died down he looked out the port. There had been a change in strategy. Having failed to destroy the memory banks, they would now try to damage the program by killing three important people. He watched helplessly as one of the surviving terrorists pulled out a grenade and lifted it toward his mouth to pull the pin. The grenade would take out Doris and Art, and they had their hands on Larry. Dom had a choice. By leaning out and pointing his weapon down he could take them, but it would mean sweeping Larry with the deadly explosive bullets.

The situation moved toward a point of no return in slow motion, for Dom could not bring himself, not even to save Doris and Art, to kill the smiling little man who was sandwiched between the two Firsters. He couldn’t do it. There was nothing he could do except cry out a protest.

But Larry Gomulka was a problem solver. It was his specialty. He, too, watched the movement of the grenade upward toward the white teeth of the Firster, and the direction of the man’s gaze revealed his intentions.

“Stay down,” Larry yelled, as he leaned forward and calmly flipped the manual exploder on one of the charges planted on the console. All Firster explosive devices were equipped with manual detonators. Public suicide was a popular hobby among the Firsters, and they liked to take people with them.

Dom felt the face of the computer blow inward, heard the concussion, felt himself falling. He was moving as he fell, scrambling to his feet as the echoes tore at his eardrums. Art was moving, trying to lift a portion of the console off his back. Doris was under him, screaming. Dom could see her face. He dropped the rifle. It struck what was left of a body and rolled to make a solid-sounding thunk on the floor. The body in the hatchway had been blown forward by the blast and was minus a leg. The console was a ruin, and a hole had been blown into the base of the machine. An armless torso rested against the remains of an overturned subconsole. It was not Larry. The chest was too big. The black body suit had been blown away to expose strong, young chest muscles. Dom heaved on the console, and Art was trying to stand up, shaking his head. Doris was swallowing, trying to restore her hearing. Dom helped Art to his feet and left him leaning against the shattered computer face. He lifted Doris.

“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice sounding faint. His ears still roared with the explosion.

“I can’t hear you,” she said. She spoke loudly. “Larry’s dead?”

Dom nodded. “He saved your life,” he mouthed at her.

Her face seemed to melt. There were no tears, just a heaving of her chest and strangled sounds from her throat.

The outer door burst open and space marines dashed in, looking young and impressive and futile. Dom recognized the young cadet officer who had assured him that the marines would handle the situation swiftly.

Now came the reaction. He trembled. He felt as if he was going to vomit. He never wanted to hear the name Folly again. Whatever she was worth, she was not worth the life of one small, slightly overweight, beer-drinking, smiling man. He leaned backward, almost falling before his hips found the edge of the shattered console. Doris put her hand on his arm and looked at him.

“He kept them from destroying the information banks,” she said. For a moment Dom thought she was talking about him, wanted to laugh, but then he realized that she was thinking of Larry. “He saved the project,” she said.

Dom knew that she’d get it straight in her mind later. For the moment, it didn’t matter what she thought. Larry had saved something far more important to him than the information in the computer. He had saved the life of the woman he loved and the life of a friend.

At one end of the room thick plastic ports gave a view of the stars, bright, undimmed by atmosphere, hard and sharp points of light in a pitch-black sky. Among a small group of people at the far end of the room, so that the stars were not visible to them, Dom stood in full dress uniform. Doris, too, was in the parade dress of the service. Art Donald was, in fact, the only civilian present as a four-star admiral presented Larry’s medal to his widow. The ceremony was being televised live to Earth.

When it was over and the admiral was on his way back to DOSEAST in Washington, Dom watched Doris gulp a full ounce of raw scotch.

“I don’t want it,” she said, looking down at the small gold medallion in her hand.

“I think I know how you feel,” Dom said.

“Larry would have laughed his head off at this,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“He would have said, never was there a more unlikely candidate for the Space Medal of Honor.” She smiled faintly, but there was no joy in the smile.

“No man ever deserved it more,” Dom said.

“Amen,” Art said.

“Is your life worth so much?” Doris asked bitterly. “I don’t value mine that high.”

Art choked on his drink. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

“Oh, Art, I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just that I think it’s all so funny. So very, very f-f-funny.”

“Easy,” Dom said, putting his hand over hers.

“There’s no way Art could have known that we, Larry and I, have talked about this very sort of thing,” Doris said. “He said heroism, especially the sort which entails the ultimate self-sacrifice, is one of our more cherished traditions, beginning with the Spartan boy who let a fox or a rat or something gnaw out his guts for some reason. Then the good soldier throws himself atop the grenade to save the lives of his buddies at the expense of his own. Isn’t it very strange, he would say, how the top medals, the Congressional Medal of Honor and the Space Medal of Honor, are so often awarded posthumously?”

“I think if you’d asked him how he really felt he would have explained that top medals are awarded posthumously to show our great regard for individual life,” Dom said. “When a man gives all he has, his life, for a buddy, or his country—”

“Then let’s give the Congressional Medal of Honor to all of the Earthfirsters who commit suicide,” Doris said.

“It isn’t the same,” Art said, weakly.

“No, it isn’t,” Doris said. “Because they’re not dying for what we happen to believe at this particular time.”

“Do you doubt that Larry died for what he believed?” Dom asked. He knew she was on the narrow edge, and he thought perhaps it was time someone or something pushed her over. She had submerged herself in her work following the attack on DOSEWEX, first in repairing the computer and then in the project.

“But that’s it,” she said, her face puckering as she looked at him. “Don’t you see? That’s it.” She had to swallow and work her mouth before she could continue. “If I could believe that he did it for the project, for the worlds—”

“He had that in mind, too,” Dom said. “You know how fast his mind worked. He measured all of it, the project, the effect on the future. He put all of it into his mind as a problem to be solved and he solved it. The solution called for him to punch a button on a detonator.” He was doing it deliberately. She had not cried, to his knowledge. Not once had he seen her show emotion, not until she was holding a small piece of gold in her hand.