Kenneth Gantz: Not in Solitude

“We’ve got to try! We’ve got to stay here and try.” Dane spread out his chart. “Look at this.”

Cragg shoved it away. “You know I’ve already given the order for take-off. Give it up and face facts, man. He’s dead.”

Dane put the chart back. He forced himself to speak evenly. “He is alive. He moved yesterday after he signaled he was entering the lichens. Now I can show he has moved again since last night. Something’s gone wrong, but at least I know where he is.”

“One thing you’ve got right,” Cragg snapped, “is that one about something being wrong. The radiation intensity is up eight per cent over yesterday. At 1400 this afternoon we registered five times the penetrations we did yesterday. Or don’t you know that!”

“It drops off at night,” Dane said. “Way down.”

“You mean it did last night,” Cragg corrected him. “At 1800 tonight we still had as many penetrations as we had at the peak yesterday.”

“Just the same,” Dane said, “we have plenty of time to get out to Dr. Pembroke and back before it gets up to a peak tomorrow.”

“Knock it off.” Cragg made it an order. “I’m not taking any chance on daylight hours tomorrow. That’s final. This radiation comes through the cosmic-ray shield like cheese. What chance do you think a man outside has got? I’m sorry about Pembroke, but I’m not going to risk the whole expedition for four men. If we get an increase in radiation tomorrow like the one today, we could all be sick to death by tomorrow night. Then Expedition Mars vanishes into space and they never hear of it again.”

“A party could make it out and back by noon tomorrow. It’s not over ten miles to go. Twenty altogether at the most.”

Cragg reached for one of his stogies.

“We’ve got to take a chance,” Dane insisted. “I’m sure Dr. Pembroke’s still alive and in serious danger.”

“Pembroke is in danger!” Cragg exploded. “What do you think this whole expedition is in? Where do you think we are? On a picnic in Central Park? We are all in serious danger. And with the radio dead between us and Earth ever since we landed. We take off for home at 0600 tomorrow morning.”

Dane pounded a fist down on the table. “Colonel, will you be kind enough just to listen for one moment!”

Cragg sat ramrod straight. “So now we have the hardboiled newspaperman! Power of the press and all that! How old are you, Dane? Never mind,” he went on. “About thirty. I’m forty-nine. I’ve had time enough, maybe you haven’t, to learn some things are more important than a man. One man, hell. We’ve got millions of men. Probably a few thousand as useful and important as even your Dr. Pembroke.” His voice grated harshly. “One thing that’s more important is this spacecraft and what it stands for. Even if getting off safe doesn’t make as good a story for your papers as a wild eyed rescue party charging out in the night.”

Dane felt the rage to smash the arrogant scarred face. “I am not affronting your eagles, Colonel,” he managed to say reasonably. “After all I’m only a civilian, but I have a duty too. To my friend. The least you can do is listen to me.”

Cragg shrugged. “Okay. But your five minutes is already up.”

Dane smoothed out his chart. He ran a pencil along the line from the spacecraft to the boundary of the lichen beds. “At 1800 hours yesterday Dr. Pembroke radioed from here that he was about to enter the lichens. Now we prolong the line of his course another thirty-five hundred yards inside them and we are at the exact center of last night’s spark fires, if we plot them by their intensity. But the night after we landed, the spark fires were irregularly distributed all along the lichen beds, as far as our equipment could record them. We recorded no concentrations like the ones I plotted last night and tonight. The first night we observed only a few of the big bolts. Last night I pointed out to you that the spark fires were more intense in the zone where Dr. Pembroke went into the lichen beds. Several extremely large bolts were recorded in that region, an obvious concentration.”

“How about you coming to the point?”

At least he was listening. “The concentrations of spark fire are a lot more localized tonight,” Dane went on, refusing to be hurried. “What is significant is that one of the major centers has moved four thousand yards deeper into the lichens, and it has moved exactly along a line prolonged from the course Dr. Pembroke took from the spacecraft to the edge of the lichens. I say it means that he has moved today himself. If he moved today, he was alive today. Radiation or no radiation, he’s alive out there tonight. Whether he signaled us or not.”

Cragg was staring at the chart. “What’s this?” he demanded.

Dane followed the thick finger over a number of plottings fanning in from a broad arc.

“There are lots of concentrations. The significant one is the one I pointed out. It shows the obvious reaction of the spark fires to Dr. Pembroke’s presence.”

Cragg positioned a ruler on the chart to bisect the fan. He drew a pencil along the edge. The line ran like a handle for the fan, straight through the X-mark that plotted the spacecraft on the arid plain. “What about that?”

Dane said, “I hadn’t checked that concentration particularly.”

Cragg scowled. “It’s your business to check it.” He jabbed at the intercom. “This is Colonel Cragg. I want Major Noel. In my office.”

“Look,” Dane said, “we’re wasting time. The main thing this chart shows is that Dr. Pembroke is alive and that for some reason the fires are reacting violently to his presence in the lichen beds. I propose to organize some men and start out at once to find him.”

“Maybe you ought to remember this,” Cragg said crisply. “You have other duties than news reporting for Amalgamated Press and giving general advice. You are also supposed to be a physicist.” He gazed briefly at the door. “I’m going to be very busy. You will return to your post. Please attend to it and leave the command of the Far Venture to me.”

He pushed the panel release. Major Noel’s dark, compressed face came into the opening.

Cragg said, “Noel, I want to move up take-off to 2200. Can you make it?”

“Tonight, sir?” Noel’s eyes flicked at Dane. “Has the Colonel heard from Dr. Pembroke?”

“No,” Cragg told him shortly. “Nor likely to. You didn’t answer my question.”

Noel stepped farther inside. He hesitated.

“Well?”

“If the Colonel orders, the spacecraft can take off at 2200.”

“Wait just one minute,” Dane demanded. “If Major Noel will excuse me, I have something else you ought to know before you make your final decision.”

Cragg started to refuse. Finally he said, “Stand by on the intercom, Noel.”

Dane waited until the door completely closed. “I think you’ve had some previous experience with our Amalgamated’s Mr. Ames. I guess you know he’s still managing editor.”

Cragg shot him a quick look. “Congratulations.”

“He has a way with what he calls a ‘controversial theme,’ meaning something somebody doesn’t like to hear about himself but a lot of people like to read about. The way he jumped on your appointment to command Expedition Mars, for example.”

Cragg swore briefly. “Not to speak of your own mudslinging once upon a time. I haven’t forgotten that either. I suppose you think it wasn’t Amalgamated pull that got you on this flight?”

Dane said, “I doubt that anything else would have got me on after you were appointed. But that’s past history. Ames has already committed himself and the biggest wire service in the world against you. What do you think he’ll do with the story about how you marooned Dr. Pembroke a hundred million miles from Earth and left him to certain death—in the face of good evidence that he was still alive? He’ll make a real story out of that no matter what you say. You can depend on that. It’ll take care of what you’ve got left of your hero’s halo.”