Kenneth Gantz - Not in Solitude

“Okay,” Spear said, “you go to it. You trying to give me a headache?”

Beloit laughed. “Oh, it’s not that bad. What man can build, man can take apart and put back together again.”

“Yeah?” Spear said. “You ever try that on one of your alibis to your wife?”

“Not married,” Beloit answered shortly. “Women and engines don’t mix. Both of them want all your time.”

Spear laughed comfortably, thinking that Alice was really a good old girl, about the Air Force and everything.

They talked on for a while until the phone rang. Spear said, “It’s probably mine.” He went over and lifted the instrument.

Spear identified himself.

“There’s something moving out on the dust!” The words tumbled out of the receiver.

Spear tingled with a quick clarity, the diverse complexity of the spacecraft and its defenses falling into precise order for him, ready for his commands. “Range? Bearing? Character?” he snapped. If it were Pembroke, even Yudin would have told him so at once.

Yudin gulped audibly for breath. “About three miles. Radar bearing, 47 degrees. On surface. Range 4950 yards.”

“What is its character?” Spear demanded. “Come on. Give!”

“Yes, sir,” Yudin said with better control of his breathing. “Small object. We have both the search beam and the telescope on its location, but we can’t make it out. On radar it shows slow approach toward the spacecraft.”

“It’s likely Pembroke,” Spear decided. “He’s been back out to the lichens. Stand by. I’m coming up.” He switched to the command post. “Sergeant Purley,” he ordered, “sound off battle stations.” He switched to Major Noel’s quarters. “Sir, Yudin has blipped an unidentified small object approaching on the surface at 4950 yards, coming in slow. It’s possibly Pembroke. They’ve got it in the light and the telescope on it, but they can’t resolve it.”

“Stay at the command post,” Noel ordered. “I’m going up there.”

Spear swore against the strident buzzers sounding battle stations all over the Far Venture. He would! He tossed a word of explanation at Major Beloit and pulled himself up the ladder to the command post. He pushed Purley out of the way with a friendly elbow and sat down on the stool before the control banks. He listened to the familiar chatter of the turret guns clearing and took on the rush of “ready” reports. The Far Venture was adequately armed to take on one small blip, whatever it was. Settling back easily, he noticed Purley’s tense face. “Take it easy, man,” he advised. “It’s probably only Dr. Pembroke trying to get back to us.”

Purley said, “Yes, sir.” Hesitantly he added, “Captain?”

Malassignment to put him on this crew, Spear decided. “What is it?”

“About those signals Dr. Dane picked up. Do you think there’s something else out there? I mean besides Dr. Pembroke?”

“Where’d you get that?” Humphries, of course. “Never mind,” Spear added, not unkindly. “It was likely only a mal-function of the equipment.”

“They say he got a message that made sense,” Purley objected.

“Dr. Dane is also now in confinement. Maybe he just pretended to get a message.” He saw that the man was not satisfied. “Whatever might be out there, we’ve got the fire power to take care of it. We ought to have. We mount six machinegun turrets, four recoiless 140’s, a couple of dozen missile tubes, a ring of flame nozzles, and four bins of guided thermal and nuclear missiles. We can wipe out that blip in a couple of seconds any time we want to. Anything living we can kill. They couldn’t get near us.”

“Excuse me, sir, but that’s the point,” Purley said. “Sup-posing it wasn’t something alive?”

Now there was one for you. An Air Force sergeant who believed in spirits. “Come off that,” Spear told him firmly. “If there’s anything on this planet that wants to send messages, it’s nothing that can’t be blown up or burned up, not to speak of a dose of fission bomb.”

“Yes, sir,” Purley said.

The blip came in slowly. At 0245 it was 3700 yards out, still on 47 degrees. It was making about two miles an hour straight for the Far Venture.

At 0253 Major Noel called. “It looks like it’s Dr. Pembroke. At least we can make out the pressure suit plainly now. I’m not taking any chances. I want that thing covered with all arms you can bring to bear until we identify Dr. Pembroke and get him inside.”

“Wonder why he won’t answer?” Spear asked.

“No calls answered. Maybe his radio’s bad again, but radar is very clear. I want Major Beloit to cover the entry lock with automatic weapons and fire grenades. Get him in and don’t take any chances. Get him out of that suit and have him brought up to your post.”

Spear acknowledged the order. “Supposing he doesn’t make it all the way. I mean not answering and all of that. I suppose he’s off his mind again.”

“That’s his bad luck,” Noel said. “We’re not risking anybody outside. Spear,” he added, “this may sound silly, but we’ve got to remember where we are and all we don’t know about this place. I want you to pass this on to Major Beloit too. Confidentially. Tell him to be careful. We don’t know for sure what’s in that suit. Maybe it’s Pembroke and maybe it’s something else.”

“Migod, you don’t think that!” Spear couldn’t believe he was hearing it. Not Major Noel!

“I’m not taking any chances,” Noel repeated emphatically. “I don’t want you to take any, or especially Major Beloit to take any. Impress on him that he’s to find out what’s in that suit before he lets it through the lock. He’s not to risk anything himself. Not with the drive out. Tell him to get a look inside that helmet before he opens the lock. Get me?”

“I get you,” Spear said. “Christ!”

VINING HAD come down to his post at the main reactor control heavy with interrupted sleep. Major Beloit watched him narrowly now that the grotesque pressure suit trudged very near, trailing a cloud of dust from its awkward steps back to the edge of the spotlight cast upon it. Earlier they had taken down the big panel of controls, for the third time in fact, seeking some disorder in its dense vinery of tubes and wires, and there was little point in Vining watching his post at the dismantled mess. Except that the emergency standing operating procedure stipulated his being there.

The telephone gong jangled sharply.

It was Major Noel. “Beloit, under no circumstances are you to come personally close to Pembroke. You are to stay out of the entry lock. Pembroke is to be brought up to the command post on the hoist, and you are to stay out of that too. I don’t intend to risk my chief engineer. That’s all.”

Beloit acknowledged and stood back to the port. The suit was at a hundred yards, walking very slowly. His mind flashed back to Earth and thirty years ago. It was New Year’s Day, 1991. He stood on a fishing pier on Dauphin Island and watched the tide roll out of Mobile Bay into the Gulf. There was a blond girl with a long surf rod, casting her line gracefully and far out into the water. A year or two older than he was, he guessed, nineteen or twenty maybe, and her figure was full and good against a yellow sweater. He wanted her pretty bad, but she had only looked at him once, quickly unseeing after perception of his squat, stocky figure and coarse face. Acutely aware, he reeled in his line and went back to the cottage, where he was master of a slide rule and the sophomore engineering problems in his texts. She would be fat and fifty now, wherever she was, smug over a couple of grown offspring. He himself had no particular trouble in getting plenty of girls younger than her own children. Funny if he had run on to a daughter of hers sometime around Mobile and never known it. Not any odder than standing in a spacecraft on the planet Mars and looking out on the sight of a grotesque, humanish object come up over a bizarre red plain to the mouths of their guns.