Robert Heinlein - Between Planets

"You figure this the same way?"

"Yes-because Commodore Higgins gave it a shove in the right direction. Figured on form, the Venus Republic can't win against the Federation. Mind you, I'm just as patriotic as the next-but I can face facts. Venus hasn't a fraction of the population of the Federation, nor one per cent of its wealth. Venus can't win-unless the Federation is too busy to fight. Which it is, or will be soon."

Don thought about it. "I guess I'm stupid."

"Didn't you grasp the significance of blowing up Circum-Terra? In one raid the Commodore had Earth absolutely helpless. He could have bombed any or all of Terra's cities. But what good would that have done? It would simply have gotten the whole globe sore at us. As it is, we've got two-thirds of the peoples of Earth cheering for us. Not only cheering but feeling frisky and ready to rebel themselves, now that Circum-Terra isn't sitting up there in the sky, ready to launch bombs at the first sign of unrest. It will take the Federation years to pacify the associate nations-if ever. Oh, the Commodore is a sly one!" McMasters glanced up. "'Tenshun!" he called out and got to his feet.

A lieutenant of the High Guard was in the doorway. He said, "That was a very interesting lecture, professor, but you should save it for the classroom."

"Not `professor,' Lieutenant," McMasters said earnestly. " `Sergeant,' if you please."

"Very well, Sergeant-but don't revert to type." He turned to Don. "Who is this and why is he loafing here?"

"Waiting for you, sir." McMasters explained the circumstances.

"I see," answered the duty officer. He said to Don, "Do you waive your right not to testify against yourself?"

Don looked puzzled. "He means," explained McMasters, "do we try the gimmick on you, or would you rather finish the trip in the brig?"

"The gimmick?"

"Lie detector."

"Oh. Go ahead. I've got nothing to hide."

"Wish I could say as much. Sit down over here." Mo-. Masters opened a cupboard, fitted electrodes to Don's head and a bladder gauge to his forearm. "Now," he said, "tell me the real reason why you were skulking around the bomb room!"

Don stuck to his story. McMasters asked more questions while the lieutenant watched a "wiggle" scope back of Don's head. Presently he said, "That's all, Sergeant. Chase him back where he belongs."

"Right, sir. Come along." They left the room together. Once out of earshot McMasters continued: "As I was saying when we were so crudely interrupted, that is why you can expect a long war. The `status' will stay `quo' while the Federation is busy at home with insurrections and civil disorder. From time to time they'll send a boy to do a man's job; we'll give the boy lumps and send him home. After a few years of that the Federation will decide that we are costing more than we are worth and will recognize us as a free nation. In the meantime there will be no ships running to Mars. Too bad!"

"I'll get there," Don insisted.

"You'll have to walk."

They reached "G" deck. Don looked around and said, "I know my way from here. I must have gone down a deck too many."

"Two decks," McMasters corrected, "but I'll go with you until you are back where you belong. There is one way you might get to Mars-probably the only way."

"Huh? How? Tell me how?"

"Figure it out. There won't be any passenger runs, not till the war is over, but it is a dead cinch that both the Federation and the Republic will send task forces to Mars eventually, each trying to pre-empt the facilities there for the home team. If I were you, I'd enlist in the High Guard Not the Middle Guard, not the Ground Forces-but the High Guard."

Don thought about it. "But I wouldn't stand much chance of getting to go along would I?"

"Know anything about barracks politics? Get yourself a job as a clerk. If you've any skill at kissing the proper foot, a clerk's job will keep you around Main Base. You'll be close to the rumor factory and you'll know when they finally get around to sending a ship to Mars. Kiss the proper foot again and put yourself on the roster. That's the only way you are likely to get to Mars. Here's your door. Mind you don't get lost up forward again."

Don turned McMasters' words over in his mind for the next several days. He had clung stubbornly to the idea that, when he got to Venus, he would find some way to wrangle passage to Mars. McMasters forced him to regroup his thoughts. It was all very well to talk about getting in some ship headed for Mars-somehow, legally or illegally, paid passenger, crew member, or stowaway. But suppose there were no ships heading for Mars? A lost dog might beat his way back to his master-but a man could not travel a single mile in empty space without a ship. A total impossibility.

But that notion of joining the High Guard? It seemed a drastic solution even if it would work and-little as Don knew about the workings of military organization-he held a dark suspicion that the sergeant had oversimplified things. Using the High Guard to get to Mars might prove as unsatisfactory as trying to hitch-hike on a Kansas twister.

On the other hand he was at the age at which the idea of military service was glamorous in itself. Had his feelings about Venus been just a touch stronger he could easily have persuaded himself that it was his duty to throw in with the colonists and sign up, whether it got him to Mars or not.

Enlisting held another attraction: it would give pattern to his life. He was beginning to feel the basic, gnawing tragedy of the wartime displaced person, the loss of roots. Man needs freedom, but few men are so strong as to be happy with complete freedom. A man needs to be part of a group, with accepted and respected relationships. Some men join foreign legions for adventure; still more swear on a bit of paper in order to acquire a framework of duties and obligations, customs and taboos, a time to work and a time to loaf, a comrade to dispute with and a sergeant to hate-in short, to belong.

Don was as "displaced" as any wanderer in history; he had not even a planet of his own. He was not conscious of his spiritual need-but he took to staring at the soldiers of the High Guard when he ran across them, imagining what it would be like to wear that uniform.

The Nautilus did not land, nor did she tie up to a space station. Instead her speed was reduced as she approached the planet so that she fell into a 2-hour, pole-to-pole parking orbit only a few hundred miles outside the silvery cloud blanket. The Venus colonies were too young, too poor, to afford the luxury of a great orbiting station in space, but a fast pole-to-pole parking orbit caused a ship to pass over every part of the spinning globe, an "orange slice" at each pass-like winding string on a ball.

A shuttle ship up from the surface could leave any spot on Venus, rendezvous with the ship in orbit, then land on its port of departure or on any other point having expended a theoretical minimum of fuel. As soon as the Nautilus had parked such shuttles began to swarm up to her. They were more airplane than spaceship, for, although each was sealed and pressurized to operate outside the atmosphere while making contact with orbiting spaceships, each was winged and was powered with ramjet atmosphere engines as well as with rocket jets. Like frogs, they were adapted to two media.

A shuttle would be launched to catapult from the surface, her ramjets would take hold and she would climb on her wings, reaching in the thin, cold heights of the upper stratosphere speeds in excess of three thousand miles an hour. There, as her ramjets failed for want of air, her rocket jets would take over and kick her forward to orbiting speed of around twelve thousand miles an hour and permit her to match in with a spaceship.

A nice maneuver! It required both precise mathematical calculation of times, orbits, fuel expenditure, and upper air weather and piloting virtuosity beyond mathematical calculation-but it saved pennies. Once the shuttle was loaded at the spaceship it was necessary only to nudge it with its rockets against the orbital direction whereupon the shuttle would drop into a lower orbit which would eventually intersect the atmosphere and let the pilot take a free ride back to the surface, glider fashion, killing his terrible speed by dipping ever lower into the thickening air. Here again the pilot must be an artist, for he must both kill his momentum and conserve it so that it would take him where he wanted to go. A shuttle, which landed out in the bush, a thousand miles from a port, would never make another trip, even if pilot and passengers walked away from the landing.