Kenneth Gantz - Not in Solitude

Mars rapidly fell away, shrinking until it disappeared behind the Far Venture’s flaring tail. When they neared the 600,000-miles-out mark, they passed into radio communication with Earth. Colonel Cragg sent out the momentous message of success. Thousands of words of reports began feeding into the coding and transmitting machines, and Dane plunged into the writing of bulletins and dispatches for official release on Earth by the Air Force. Not too heavily slashed, he hoped, by security review.

A few minutes after first radio contact Colonel Cragg posted a message of commendation from the White House, personal from the President of the United States. Dane could imagine the milling pressrooms at Amalgamated. Ames would have taken over personally. No doubt about that. Already television and radio bulletins and the banners of extras had spread the opening lines of the greatest news story of all time. Dane idly penciled the head on his copy paper. The inevitable head. LIFE ON MARS! You could bet on that one. With it the unique Earth, stubbornly held by millions as the only possible abode of life, was gone forever.

On the second day, early, they passed the quarter-way point and had attained a speed of over 575 miles per second. Earth was bright, dominant among the stars off the right nose. The spectacular sun sealed out on the left rear shot its prominences visibly higher on the observoscope, crimson tongues licking at its black panoply. In the afternoon Dane had word that Major Noel wanted to talk to him.

The room was stripped down to the built-in bed. The nurse brought Dane a light plastic stool. The insignia missing from the blue coveralls hadn’t changed Noel’s appearance. To Dane his mixed-up dark face looked the same as ever. His voice was normal, like his manner, when he said hello.

“How are you feeling?” Dane couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Noel darted his eyes about for a moment, then got up and closed the door the nurse had left ajar. At once it reopened, and the nurse stuck his head in.

“Shut the door, man,” Noel snapped in his familiar manner of command.

The nurse looked at Dane. Dane nodded, and the door drew quietly shut.

“I want to talk to you,” Noel announced.

“You know I’m a newspaper type,” Dane said.

“That’s why I picked you. There’ll be a lot of crap printed over this and I want to make one thing plain to you. If I can do it. I’m no goddamn traitor.”

Dane said nothing.

“I want you to believe me. “You’ve been along with us. You know why I want you to believe that. I don’t want that on my name.” He picked at the blue coveralls. “Or on this. I don’t want it even mentioned on this.”

Dane decided there was nothing to say to that either.

“I’ve committed a sin,” Noel said. “It’s an obsolete word, but the act is not obsolete.”

It was going to be an uncomfortable session. “I don’t get you,” Dane said. He couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“I’ve committed a crime too. Murder. But I’m no goddamn traitor. Murder I can pay for. The sin I can’t ever pay for. Call this a confession if you like. In the old meaning of the word.”

“Look,” Dane said, “like I told you, I’m a newspaper guy. Don’t tell me anything. You’re going to need a lawyer before you do any talking.”

For a minute he thought he had lost the man. The tight little face squeezed into its wrinkles. The eyes suddenly reminded him of acorns. Why that? he wondered. You couldn’t write a thing like that. Every damn reader would think howinhell can eyes look like acrons? But they did.

Noel grabbed up a stogie that looked exactly like the ones Cragg preferred.

“God damn him, he sends me these. So God damn him, I’ll smoke them. At least I’ll break even for once with the bastard. I put a knife in him and he sends me a box of cigars. For good services rendered—up to now. I know how the guy thinks. What do I get if I hit the jackpot! He whips me even with his back turned. I couldn’t even kill the sonofabitch with a wide-open invitation. That old woman King thinks I’m a nut; so Colonel Cragg thinks I’m a nut and puts me in the hospital and sends me cigars. I want you to put that straight too. I’m a nut all right, but not the way King thinks. If he thinks. I’ve got to add up my own score. No hospital, no prison, no damn box of cigars is going to help a damn bit.”

Noel hitched closer on the edge of his bed. “That’s why I called you in. You’re right in my book. I also owe you a big one, even if I do wish to hell you’d left me out there. But you had to drag me in. So now you owe me too. I’m your baby, boy.”

Here it comes. Dane thought. “What do you expect?” he said.

“It’s a sin. The worst one of all. My goddamn vanity. Vanitas vanitatem , crieth the preacher. For once he was right. The unseemly vanity of vanity. It’s the sin of command. First you think it’s you. Then you think it ought to be you. Then you think it’s got to be you. I wanted the power, okay. Then I coveted the name. Not okay. So I tried to kill him for his name. Commander of the Far Venture. First flight to Mars. My spectrum beacon or he wouldn’t even have been here. I would have brought the spacecraft home just as well as Colonel Cragg. Christ, what a cockeyed idea. The guy’s got it. He’s got it. He was born with it. That’s why I put the knife in him. He’s got it and I don’t have it. And he and I both know it.”

“Pembroke?” Dane interrupted him. He was embarrassed. Men like Noel shouldn’t break down.

“How do you think he got out of the spacecraft? Sure the lock works automatically. He leaves the outside trap open, the next push on the inside entrance button, it closes before the upper hatch can be opened. I saw him go. I let him go. You think all that goes on and I don’t know? He thinks he’s after Beemis and Jackson. He’s on the goof. So I help him. He’s a good murderer. But he comes back. Somehow he comes back. Pembroke was just a cover-up. I can pay for that. The law provides a payment for that.”

“Beemis and Jackson?” Dane wanted to know.

Noel shook his head. “I don’t know. It was a good idea at the time. Foul it up for Cragg. Work him into it. Make him look bad. Call it whatever you want to call it. I can pay for Beemis and Jackson too. But the sin. How do I pay for that! I might just as well have been a goddamn traitor. I betrayed the uniform, you dope! Not to Tong Asia. Here!” he pounded his heart. “Here I betrayed it! For the damn lousy sake of vanity!”

He got up and opened the door. “That’s it. Think about it yourself a little, before you write about me.”

Captain King was in the flight surgeon’s office. He shook his head. “He’s caught now. It’s a defense mechanism. It won’t play in tune with the facts. Besides, it’s characteristic.”

Dane said, “I don’t know. Maybe yes.”

“Dane, it’s typical. For days he would go along level, and he doesn’t like what he’s thinking. Then blip, he goes haywire for a while. Once he goes too far haywire. Then he’s got a load to carry, and that doesn’t help him any. Probably he’s had a latent paranoia for a long time. Aggravated maybe by the situation. That rap he had on the head once wouldn’t help any. Brain’s a funny thing. Hurt it—who knows how it heals? Confinement in the spacecraft. Worry. Responsibility. Looking back, you can see he was different after he took over. Then Cragg comes back. He’s depressed again. But it’s always been there. Probably from adolescence. He shrugged a quod erat demonstrandum .

Dane said, “No, I don’t go along with that at all. Noel’s probably as sane as you or me or any of us. We all straddle the rail. We covet our neighbor’s ox and his wife too, maybe. One man takes one more drink and there’s hell to pay. One way or another. Maybe he doesn’t get caught. But he has to pay for hell just the same. The rest of us just keep on lusting. Noel’s sound as a dollar on that one. It’s not the punishment that’s worrying him. He cracked his own idol. His own idea of himself. It wasn’t the overt act. It’s the idea that led to it that’s eating him.”