Kenneth Gantz - Not in Solitude

The colonel’s hands clinched into fists. “There was a time in the past when you pretended to be more informed. When you didn’t know anything at all, you still could nose into it and put together a half-baked story for the headlines.”

Dane said, “It’s ancient history now. Why don’t you let it alone?”

The scar flamed. “What do you know about a command decision, with a hundred factors to bring down to the right answer, and none of them clear? You think they were clear in the middle of the night, with the reports contradicting each other and half of them raw data and the imponderables stacked up in your mind and knowing you had to do something right now and the crews standing by ready to be committed and maybe God help a few million people and maybe your country’s existence if you weren’t right? Exactly right?”

Dane said, “The facts had to be made known. What we were getting at—”

Cragg sneered. “What you were getting at was a sensation. To peddle your newspapers. At the critical moment Colonel Cragg made a wrong move and then lucked into a win because he had misjudged the enemy’s timing and the arc of his main thrust. Pretty easy for you to figure it out. A military genius like you. Six months later with all the intelligence spread out in front of you for as long as you wanted it and a dozen second-guessing, so-called experts prompting you, you write it up like a student’s staff exercise. Okay, smart man Doctor Wiseman! Now we’ve got the makings of another ball on hand. And you don’t even see all the figures in the problem! What’s Tong Asia got to do with it, he wants to know!”

Dane thought of the long midnight at Sahara Air Force Base, with the rocket forces deployed over a thousand miles of sand, alert for the take-off. Speaking of luck, Amalgamated Press had had some good fortune itself to have a man there at the hour of decision, when the word was transmitted that Tong Asia was about to strike. A few hours earlier he had dined with Colonel Anson Cragg, commander of the 3rd Rocket Wing, a good beginning for an assignment to write up the new electro-radiant weather telemeasures installed on the Sahara plateau and in the Atlas Range. It had been apparent that Cragg was amiably willing to assist the mighty Amalgamated. But before bedtime Dane was sweating to put together a story of the alert from the broken sentences that were flung to him outside the operations rooms and the blacked windows of the blazing staff offices. Then it was dawn and Colonel Cragg was back from Lower Space, Hemisphere South, with the news of a great victory.

“But,” Senator Hodge had persisted at the investigation, “you were returning to your bases when you picked up the Asian attack, which we now know came out of altitude orbit and was earth-tracking a thousand miles above the Indian Ocean ready to go into orbital attack against the United States squarely athwart your alert zone. Don’t you agree that certain newspapers are right when they say it was only the flukiest of good luck that you came near them at all, after miscalculating their maneuver? At speeds on the order of three to five miles a second, Colonel, one doesn’t expect or often get a second chance after the attack goes into glide phase, I am informed by competent testimony. Nor do we expect our commanders to make mistakes, however brilliantly redeemed, at the possible cost of Houston or Chicago or St. Louis, quite possibly all three and maybe more.”

So the opposition wire and its five thousand editors chose to make him a martyr and a hero. A persecuted victor. It was good copy, and a good play against Amalgamated. But Cragg did not get his star. After three years he had not yet got it.

“So we’re five years ahead of Tong Asia with the drive,” Cragg went on. “They can’t get anything of any size off Earth. You think maybe they’re not going to do their damnedest to infiltrate this expedition? Two or three five-million-dollar bribes? Chicken feed to know what’s up here. You’re so good at figuring things out. Give that one a thought. No matter how we screen them, we’ve got to consider the possibility they’ve got a man on board. Maybe planted for this years ago.”

Dane said, “Colonel, you should try writing a killer-thriller.” In spite of himself he ran them through his mind. Spivak, the Central European? Vining, fanatic of mechanism? Too obviously obvious? Yudin—weak? Wertz—selfish? It would not have to be the least likely. It didn’t have to be someone beyond suspicion, like Heileman.

“For example,” Cragg said, “why was Pembroke so anxious to get out on the surface? Why did he sneak out again against orders when he was supposed to be confined to bed?” “Now wait a minute!” Dane jumped up.

“You’ve been friendly with him for years, haven’t you?”

Dane said, “If there is any crime against a man that’s vicious and contemptibly cowardly, it’s slandering his loyalty on a damn supposition!”

“I recall that you had some very pressing business yourself out on the surface after Pembroke didn’t come back.”

Dane gave him a succinct four-letter word.

Cragg fell back on his pillow with a sigh. “Dane, you are an able man. In your way. But if you’re on the level, you’ve got a lot to learn. I don’t really much suspect you, but I do suspect Pembroke very much. If I’m right, he had a partner. Obviously, since he is dead. Maybe you, but I don’t much think so. For one thing, I don’t think you’ve got the guts.”

Dane said, “Think what you like about me. I can take care of myself if you get rough. But Dr. Pembroke is a famous American and he’s dead now. You’re not going to yipe at his heels and slander his name.”

“Power of the press, and all that? You get this straight. I’m going to do exactly what I think is best. I was suspicious of Pembroke from the first. Evidently he tumbled to it, when I had his stuff gone through while he was out on the surface. So he puts a knife in me.”

Cragg! An intelligent man! In a position of high authority! “This is one that won’t get far,” Dane threw at him.

“Maybe we can agree on this much,” Cragg said. “I think it’s pretty likely the source of the messages is human. You think they come from Martians. We both can agree that it’s imperative for us to discover their true source before we take off. If you want to prove your point, you’ve got to make visible contact. Get your Martians out in sight. If they exist, we want pictures. We’ve got to reconnaissance their civilization. Especially their capability for hostilities. I want to see these Martians. In the meantime here’s something you can do about your friend Pembroke’s mysterious actions.”

He waited a moment. “This is confidential. Okay?”

Dane hesitated. “Just until we get back to Earth. I reserve nothing that bears on Dr. Pembroke, if any charges are made there against him.”

Cragg nodded. “No one knows this but Major Beloit and Major Noel and myself. Dr. Pembroke didn’t have a pistol on him when he got in the elevator. Somebody stopped the car and shot him and left the pistol to make it look like suicide.”

Cragg spread a downturned palm over the quiet. “So, either he had some confederate who maybe decided his usefulness was over, especially if he would be caught for knifing me, or he had an enemy. He had enough of an enemy to kill. That wouldn’t be too likely, if he wasn’t anything but what he was supposed to be.”

“Tong Asia again, I suppose you mean.” Dane said bitterly.

“It adds up. At least it adds up to a good enough working suspicion for me. You got any better ideas?”

“Why do you tell me this?” Dane demanded. “Why tell me? A civilian and a newspaper civilian, and to add to the unusualness of telling me, one of your prime suspects?”