Kenneth Gantz - Not in Solitude

Yudin contemplated him with surprise. “I don’t know. How come you give a damn?”

“I don’t,” Dane told him. “I’m willing to assume he did. I haven’t had mine yet. You’re an hour late. Supposing I enjoy mine first. Then Cragg can order me all he wants.”

Yudin was pained. “Dane, you’re a smart fellow. Why don’t you act smart? So you don’t like the man. So he’s a hard man for anyone to like. Right now he couldn’t care less about you and your newspapers. That guy’s got the decisions to make. Right down to the final yes or no that can make him or break him, and maybe save us or lose all our lives. Sure he’s a cinch for a star if he keeps saying the right word. If we ever get back to where they hand out stars. Right now he’s got the sweat. I can’t say I like him too well either, but then I don’t know him—really. No one ever really knows the commander. You always got to remember he sits in a damn hot and lonely seat.”

Dane viewed the lieutenant with new interest. Misfitting uniform, comic-opera face, voice that suggested anything but leadership, not before had he revealed the consciousness of worth that characterized his fellows. Now he was actually insulted that anyone could suggest his commander’s word was less than law. Dane thought a little wistfully of the absence of this hedgehog loyalty from his own life patterns, like the Amalgamated Press.

“Okay, Yudin,” he said. “You talked me into it. Even if I starve, let’s have it.”

“It’s only an order,” Yudin said. “If you’d listened, you’d already be in the mess hall.” He fished out a folded sheet.

Dane read, “Dr. John Dane. Under no circumstances will you send any messages to the Martians without my prior approval. Colonel Anson Cragg, USAF, Commanding Far Venture.”

“The deal is this,” Yudin volunteered. “We expect to have the drive ready for a trial take-off tomorrow. We play possum until we’re fully operative. Then we resume contact with the Martians.”

“Well, at least he admits we’ve got Martians. That’s something.”

At 1330 Dane left the messroom, pleased with his bellyful of German-grilled knackwurst, baked beans, and home-fried potatoes. Now he had the story of the electrical attack to write up for his thickening sheaf of untransmitted dispatches. He decided to go back up to the observation-deck typewriter.

On 3-high the fire-control center stood full alert. Dane looked in through the glassite panel at the eight men manning its electronic finders and gunsights. They swung in their seats, each half encircled by banks of dials and switches, the flowing scopes and lighted red alert buttons casting up their faces in the darkened cubicles. In the middle of the shadows the fire-control officer sat at his big radar plane table, waiting for the commander to whisper release into his phone for ordnance ranging from caliber .50 machine guns to fire rockets and nuclear missiles powerful enough to blast across a metropolis.

At 1450 Lieutenant Yudin interrupted his clacking concentration. “Come here and take a look at this, will you?”

Airman Humphries had his finger pressed against the opaque surface of the radar photo plane table. Dane followed it to the image of the lichen peninsula.

“It looks longer to me,” Humphries said.

Dane got out last night’s scope pictures. He put a pair of dividers on a print taken at 0400 and measured off the peninsula. When he laid the dividers against the scale, he whistled. ‘It’s grown about 500 yards closer today.”

Humphries’ jaw lengthened seriously. “It’s done it since noon. I’d of noticed it when I came on duty.”

Dane said, “That would be mighty fast growing.” He thought of the explosive generation of the lichens inside the spacecraft. “It doesn’t make too much of a projection on the table face. Maybe you just didn’t notice it.”

“I always notice that strip,” Humphries insisted. “I always look at it. When I came on duty, it wasn’t past that.” He poked a pencil at one of the engraved grid lines. “That’s for sure.”

“You’d better report it,” Dane told Yudin. He sharpened a grease pencil to a fine point and drew it across the opaque glass athwart the tip of the peninsula.

Major Noel came up at once. He studied the image on the oscilloscope. Then he took up the dividers and repeated Dane’s measurement of the 0400 photograph. He called the cartographer for a chart of the region drawn up from the aerial photographs taken of the landing site before the Far Venture had settled down on the sand. When he was satisfied with his data, he carefully plotted the new extension of the growth.

Dane watched him sketch in the line connecting the plotted positions. It was no mere, prosaic pencil line that grew on the paper to show official concern. The precise marking on the chart brought it close, like the sweep of an invading army overlaid on an operations map.

“Keep a man on it,” Noel told Yudin. “It hasn’t extended any in the last fifteen minutes, but it may take another spurt. I want to know immediately about any detectable growth.”

Yudin nodded at Humphries. After Noel had got through the hatch, he said, “Here. Like this.” He took the dividers and set them to span from the tip of the peninsula to the first grid line behind it. “Now you can check it exactly.”

No observable extension occurred until 1547. Dane was staring through glasses at the dirty line of the main lichen beds against the reddish flat. Humphries’ startled shout was like a blow. One he had been waiting for. He turned slowly and went over to the table, breathing deeply and thinking that wearing the gravity boots was like limping, a tired man’s limp.

“It’s moving,” Humphries gasped. “It’s moving so fast you can see it move.”

Minutely but perceptibly the luminous line crept forward from the point of the dividers he held to mark its tip.

Yudin went to the phone and spoke into the mouthpiece. He broke the connection and dialed another number. “Yudin calling Major Noel,” he repeated. After a moment he said, “Sir, Yudin. It’s creeping closer. Yes, sir. About one hundred yards.” He listened a minute and put up the instrument.

“He already knew it,” he said. “They’ve been watching the monitors at fire control or command. It was enough to show up there.” He seemed disappointed. Even affronted. As if his big table had been slighted.

Rapidly now, the fingery apparition on the face of the oscilloscope lengthened toward the Far Venture, obviously pointing out to it even though it was yet three and a half miles away.

The loudspeaker sounded the alert. Major Noel’s voice came on. “I am about to fire a small nuclear missile at the tip of the lichen peninsula. Range 6100 yards. There is no danger for us except from flash. All ports will now be covered. Repeat. All ports will now be covered and will remain covered until the all-clear is announced.”

Humphries exhaled. “He’s going to blow hell out of it!” He twisted the control switch for the panels, and the metal lids grated shut over the observation ports.

The speaker said, “Stand by for firing. Three minutes till firing.”

Dane visualized the thing streaking on the course over which fire control would guide it to the precise destination. A short comet tail of blue fire would trail it. It would arch high and fall to the searing, blinding fission that would dispatch and disperse the target decreed for it by its master’s invisible finger.

Three minutes was a long time. Dane stood woodenly as the sweep second hand slipped around the dial of the switchboard clock. For a nuclear missile, even a small one, 6100 yards range was close for comfort. Maybe they had decided to fire it now before the range shortened, though the object wasn’t plain. The explosion should scorch and sear off the entire tip of the lichen peninsula, but hadn’t it occurred to them that the lichen beds could sprout another peninsula? Especially if the present one was really the result of attraction by the metal of the Far Venture?