Kenneth Gantz - Not in Solitude

The intercom rasped. “Suit at fifty yards. Open entry,” Noel ordered.

Beloit went down to the observation port that looked into the entry lock. The outside hatch hung open and the ladder was out. Automatic weapons in hand, two pressure-suited guards stood over the opening, motionless.

The seconds ticked off, until there was a shifting of posture by both guards. Beloit knew that the suit was below. They could see it. He wouldn’t want to be Pembroke, stepping into sight under that entry. A jumpy finger on the trigger and the shock of seeing the thing all of a sudden, and reflexes might go off, in spite of disciplined control.

They were backing away from the open hatch. Slowly a monstrous head rose above the opening in the curving side. An extraordinary hand reached through and grasped the highest rung. Then the suit was inside and the hatch was closing.

Beloit blinked, straining to see through the hazy transparency of the small port. He took out his handkerchief and wiped at the dust that covered the pane. The suit was turning ponderously from one guard to the other. Finally it raised its corrugated arms and worked at its helmet, passing misshapen paws ineffectually at the collar wing nuts.

It ought to take off the gauntlets, Beloit thought. If it was one of us, it would twist the lock joint of its gauntlets. Pembroke would know to take off the gauntlets first.

Beloit snatched at his microphone. “Can’t you make him out?” he demanded. “Who is it?”

“It’s Dr. Pembroke, sir,” the answer came. The man sounded surprised.

Beloit wondered about it before he recalled that the men would have no reason to expect anything else. They had been told only to be careful. He was now surprised at his own suspense. What else could have been in the suit except Pembroke?

It took a little time, but the suit finally managed to get its neck locks loosened. When it lifted off the heavy helmet, the massed white hair of Dr. Pembroke and the wizened face, small for the large head and hair shock, were plainly revealed. Beloit phoned Noel. As far as he could judge, Pembroke’s actions were normal. Perhaps he had forgotten about the gauntlets until he had managed to get his helmet off and the guards had told him. He pulled off the rest of the suit briskly enough, leaving it in a heap on the floor. One of the guards had his helmet visor open and was motioning to Pembroke to get into the lift. As soon as the panel slid shut on him, Beloit heard the faint grind of the mechanism. The lift was ascending.

That was that. Beloit felt the fatigue hit him and thought of his bunk. Damn, it was a quarter to five. He needed more than the couple of hours’ sleep he was going to get. Maybe Noel would hurry it up with the all-clear so he could go to bed. Officious little squirt—really. But a competent technician. Still not the man for commander. When the phone rang, he picked it up quickly, blowing his breath out against his thrust-up lower lip.

It was Noel all right, but now he wanted Beloit to come up to the command post. Bed? What did Noel care about Beloit’s rest?

Beloit picked a path through the litter of the control panel. It was going to be a hulluva job to put all the stuff together again and check it, not to speak of tracing through the remainder of the generators. The better part of a week. Anyway you looked at it. Hell, he was just tired. Nothing could look good at five o’clock in the morning. After the whiskey faded out, the blonde’s face looked dirty.

No use climbing ladders. He went over and punched at the call button of the lift. The indicator showed the car at 1-high, but no responsive whir came from the mechanism. Somebody had propped the car door open, a favored malpractice. Let the other fellow climb the ladders, I’ve got a can of beans to deliver. Half the crew under military discipline and the other half civilians. What else could you expect? One thing you could say for Colonel Cragg. He had been tough, but he handed it out to them all, and all alike. Military or civilian, he was in command. Whether they liked it or not, you had to have a strong commander on a junket like this. Noel would never cut it. Doctor this and doctor that would drop in their big words here and there until the poor bastard didn’t know which way was which. Not that he would have picked John Dane for a murderer, but it just showed what could happen when things got out of hand in an emergency. Confinement neurosis, the psycho men called it. Everybody on edge and every man for himself or what he thought was the right thing to do.

When he climbed out on to 1-high deck, Noel was waiting for him.

“Come on,” he ordered, “I want to show you something.” He led off around the curving passageway.

Crumpled in the corner of the lift car was the body of Dr. Pembroke. Half the side of his head was blown away. A service pistol lay in the blood on the floor. Captain Spear was standing by.

“What I want to know,” Noel demanded, “is why you would let this man who was obviously out of his mind retain possession of firearms?”

Beloit focused on the image of Pembroke entering the lift. The old man must have had it in his pocket. Maybe a shoulder holster under his garments. “Suicide?” he asked.

“Look to you like he was run over by a truck?” Noel snarled. “Why was he allowed to retain a weapon? Or didn’t you think of it?”

“He didn’t have any visible.” Beloit said. “Your orders were not to come near him.”

“I said you were not to go near him. I said no one was to touch that suit. You had men down there. You should have had them search him after he got out of the suit.”

Beloit swore at himself. What was the use?

“I’ll have to enter that in the record against you,” Noel said with an air of dismissal.

These unpredictable things happened. When they happened, they happened swiftly and out of control of anything but good fortune. This one would dog him the rest of his career. Maybe not neglect of duty, exactly. Under the circumstances no board of officers would pin that on him, even if Noel chose to put a charge against him, but certainly an entry for ineffectiveness in a critical situation, and boom! There went the silver leaves he should have won out of this damned expedition.

“Not that you didn’t make an understandable mistake, especially after the way you’ve been loaded with work,” Noel echoed his thoughts, “but I don’t expect a field-grade officer to make mistakes, particularly when it comes to security. I’m not going to prefer charges, but I am going to give you a reprimand. That’s all,” he added abruptly. “Spear, have the body removed and record what you found when you opened the lift.”

DR. JOSÉ RUIZ CRUZATE smacked the heel of his palm against his forehead. “ Non! C’est impossible! It cannot be!” He snatched up a sprig of the lichen stuff and ran around his lab bench to thrust it under Wertz’s nose. “It is living. Even now this piece, it has the life! Do not talk to me of your chemicals. With the life there are the ways of life. It is not required that we understand, for them to be.”

Cruzate was a little squirrel of a man. Wertz was pleased with the pertinence of the metaphor. Cruzate had the bright darting eyes and the quick pose of a squirrel, as if he were ever ready to scurry out across the lawn for a nut and back up a tree into his hole. Except that a squirrel does not suggest the pedant, and a pedant Cruzate undoubtedly was. An excitable, Frenchified, poetizing pedant, but pedantic as the multiplication tables when it came to his beloved “subject” of botany, as he always referred to it. Not the “discipline” or the “science” of botany or simply “botany,” but always the old-fashioned term, the “subject” of botany.