Kenneth Gantz - Not in Solitude

Cragg said earnestly, quietly, “Noel, if you don’t put that weapon down immediately, I’ll give the order to shoot you.”

Noel’s eyebrows twitched. “No,” he said conversationally. “I’m going to kill you. All of you.”

With small movement he diverted the barrel and fired. McDonald cried out. He drove hard back against the bench and slumped to the floor.

The muzzle came squarely around. “That’s one,” Noel remarked. “Peeney, you’re as good a first sergeant as there is in the Air Force, but you’re here and armed too, so I’m afraid you’re next.”

Peeney shouted loud. “Not so damned sure…”

Dane saw Noel’s eyes move away. He dived quickly at him and felt his shoulder hit hard. They went down in a thrashing heap.

The small body was wiry. Stringy strong. Dane swarmed all over it violently, expecting the blast and the tearing slug. When Noel’s shoulder jerked powerfully, he knew where the weapon was. He flung his hand along the escaping arm and got it by the wrist. He felt the arm wrench and heard someone say, “Okay, I’ve got his pistol.”

Noel’s quick upthrusting hands found his throat and the thumbs bit gagging in. Dane fumbled for a finger to snap, felt the body go limp.

“That’ll fix him!” he heard Peeney shout.

Dane got up on his knees over Noel’s crooked sprawl.

Peeney said, “I socked him with his own pistol.”

Dane saw Cragg busy on the microphone. Who’s like a machine? he thought.

Cragg cut on the bank of speakers. “Missiles three, four, and five away,” a voice announced. Then again, “Missiles six and seven away.”

Cragg twisted around. “They’re averaging out the co-ordinates. Is the lieutenant dead?”

They looked at Peeney bending over McDonald.

He nodded. “God damn him!” he said slowly. “I didn’t hit him hard enough!”

Cragg said, “He’s coming out of it. Watch him and have him taken out of here.”

The metallic voice droned on, announcing the flight of the missiles.

“McDonald was a fine young officer,” Cragg said.

Peeney said, “Yes, sir, he was at that.”

“One more now we’ll have to leave here,” Cragg went on. “Even if we get off, we’ll have to commit him to the air over Mars. He suddenly flared at Dane. “So he died at the post of duty. That won’t make much of a story for your newspapers. Maybe you can find room for it, if you ever get there yourself, to say that it’s not a bad end to meet. Even for a very young man.”

“I’m sorry about the lieutenant, sir,” Dane said.

Cragg looked up again. “Yes,” he said, “of course. I don’t always mean to be taking things out on you. You undoubtedly saved our lives. At least for a while.”

“It was quick work,” Peeney said. “I’d never have gotten in a shot. He had me covered.”

Dane said, “Forget it.”

Cragg was no longer listening. Eye on the sweep hand of the big clock, he stretched out his hand for the microphone. “Beloit? Thirty seconds… fifteen seconds… five seconds…”

A bank of red buttons winked simultaneously on the board before him. The missiles had exploded.

“Now!” he cried into the microphone.

All over Mars, Dane thought, the mushrooms were evilly erupting, piling up into the alien-thin air.

Cragg steadily poured on power. When he gave the order to push past twenty-five per cent, Dane took a long breath.

“Take it on to fifty. Easy,” Cragg said into the mouthpiece.

Noel was mumbling now, a drool of words breaking up his harsh breathing. Possible skull fracture, Dane thought. Peeney would hit hard.

“Fifty-five,” Cragg ordered.

Dane felt the deck move. Ever so slightly, yet a move! But his eyes on the radar altimeter still read zero.

“Sixty!” Cragg ordered.

The altimeter needle trembled. Then it shook itself free from the zero peg. Steadily it moved around to five hundred feet.

“Seventy-five!” Cragg demanded.

This I will never forget, not one small detail of this. Dane knew that. Not Peeney hunched and staring at the dials that were scoring their life or their death. Not the little lump of muscle that knotted along Cragg’s scarred jaw. Not McDonald on the floor, dead two minutes too soon for the hope of life. Not the harsh blue coming back from the timageel walls and ceiling. Most of all, not the way one man was willing them off the ground of Mars.

Now he could feel the weight of his body against his leg vessels. The accelerometer trembled aslant from its null.

“Hold it right there,” Cragg ordered Beloit. “Steady on seventy-five.”

The words were scarcely said when the Far Venture lurched. Cragg’s chair rolled hard against the wall. She bucked again and seemed about to lay herself over.

A speaker flared. “Yudin to Colonel Cragg. A message is appearing on the table!”

The Far Venture staggered like a skiff in a heavy tide rip. Dane was unable to stand free or lose his hold on the hand-rail. He thought of the altimeter. The needle was moving counterclockwise. They were losing altitude.

A monitor speaker sputtered again. “Colonel Cragg! Beloit to Colonel Cragg. We’re not gimbaling right. We’re losing the balance. Suggest we attempt a landing.”

The Far Venture was falling in a list of thirty-five degrees. It was impossible to move against it on the canted deck or even to get out of the gutter that had received them, men and bodies, between crazy floor and tilted bulkhead.

“The microphone!” Cragg shouted.

Dane didn’t dare look at the altimeter. He inched hand over hand along the rail toward the dangling instrument.

“Beloit to Command! Beloit to Command! Unless you instruct, I will attempt a landing.”

Dane got his hand on the microphone. Grateful for the long cord on the spring reel, he slid back and gave it over to Cragg.

Cragg snatched it to his lips. For one flashing moment Dane saw his brow furrow and his eyes turn to the instrument panel askew overhead. Then he saw the decision form, the marred face relax, turn impassive.

He spoke impersonally at his mouthpiece. “Beloit. I want full power. Blast us to the hell off of here.”

With some kind of a loud crash the bulkhead came up and smote Dane. Then another crash and they were rolling over floors and walls, pelted and battered by the odds and ends of furniture and each other’s bodies.

Dane heard Beloit come in again on the speaker. “Beloit to Colonel Cragg. She’s leaving us. Index is 117 per cent. She’ll rip herself apart!”

Cragg was sprawled in the stools and topped by his own wheel chair. Triumphantly he held to his phone. “Cut it back till it reads one hundred. Peeney,” he shouted around the mouthpiece, “get to the switches and put me on to fire control.”

Except the danger in the drive room, their flight was smoother. After all, Dane thought, runaway fission is nothing but a chain reaction out of control. Just like a bomb. If it gets away, we’ll never know it. Never know what hits us. Ergo, never feel it. “Christ, I must be radiation nuts!” he said out loud.

“Fire all remaining missiles,” Cragg ordered.

Now the Far Venture entered hurricane seas. She pitched and rolled until only men strapped in their places could pretend to function. Cradling his head and face inside his arm, Dane abandoned himself to the forces that were wrenching the big spacecraft asunder. How the smoothly firing drive, no matter in what fashion disturbed, could produce such gyrations, he could not imagine.

Vaguely later, he caught a glimpse of a multitude of winking red buttons. “Bombs exploded!” he yelled.

Some placated sea god laid hand over the angry waters. Listing far over, the Far Venture hung quietly in whatever space embraced her.