Between Planets (11 page)

Don bunked in a third-class compartment with three dozen men and a few boys. Some passengers who had paid for better accommodations complained. Don himself had had first-class passage booked—for the
Valkyrie
and Mars—but he was glad that he had not been silly enough to object when he saw the disgruntled returning with their tails between their legs. First-class accommodations, up forward, were occupied by the High Guard.

His couch was comfortable enough and a space voyage, dull under any circumstances, is less dull in the noise and gossip of a bunkroom than it is in the quiet of a first-class stateroom. During the first week out the senior surgeon announced that any who wished could avail themselves of cold-sleep. Within a day or two the bunkroom was half deserted, the missing passengers having been drugged and chilled and stowed in sleep tanks aft, there to dream away the long weeks ahead.

Don did not take cold-sleep. He listened to a bunkroom discussion, full of half facts, as to whether or not cold-sleep counted against a man’s lifetime. “Look at it this way,” one passenger pontificated. “You’ve got so long to live—right? It’s built into your genes; barring accidents, you live just that long. But when they put you in the freezer, your body slows down. Your clock stops, so to speak. That time doesn’t count against you. If you had eighty years coming to you, now you’ve got eighty years plus three months, or whatever. So I’m taking it.”

“You couldn’t be wronger,” he was answered. “More wrong, I mean. What you’ve done is chop three months right out of your life. Not for me!”

“You’re crazy. I’m taking it.”

“Suit yourself. And another thing—” The passenger who opposed it leaned forward and spoke confidentially, so that only the entire bunkroom could hear. “They say that the boys with the bars up front question you while you are going under. You know why? Because the Commodore thinks that
spies
slipped aboard at Circum-Terra.”

Don did not care which one was right. He was too much alive to relish deliberately “dying” for a time simply to save the boredom of a long trip. But the last comment startled him. Spies? Was it possible that the I.B.I. had agents right under the noses of the High Guard? Yet the I.B.I. was supposed to be able to slip in anywhere. He looked around at his fellow passengers, wondering which one might be traveling under a false identity.

He put it out of his mind—at least the I.B.I. was no longer interested in
him
.

Had Don not known that he was in the
Nautilus
headed for Venus he might well have imagined himself in the
Valkyrie
headed for Mars. The ships were of the same class and one piece of empty space looks like another. The Sun grew daily a little larger rather than smaller—but one does not look directly at the Sun, not even from Mars. The ship’s routine followed the same Greenwich day kept by any liner in space; breakfast came sharp on the bell; the ship’s position was announced each “noon”; the lights were dimmed at “night.”

Even the presence of soldiers in the ship was not conspicuous. They kept to their own quarters forward and civilians were not allowed there except on business. The ship was forty-two days out before Don again had any reason to go forward—to get a cut finger dressed in sick bay. On his way aft he felt a hand on his shoulder and turned.

He recognized Sergeant McMasters. The sergeant was wearing the star of a master-at-arms, a ship’s policeman. “What are you doing,” he demanded, “skulking around here?”

Don held up his damaged digit. “I wasn’t skulking; I was getting this attended to.”

McMasters looked at it. “Mashed your finger, eh? Well, you’re in the wrong passageway. This leads to the bomb room, not to passengers’ quarters. Say, I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?”

“Sure.”

“I remember. You’re the lad who thought he was going to Mars.”

“I’m still going to Mars.”

“So? You seem to favor the long way around—by about a hundred million miles. Speaking of the long way around, you haven’t explained why I find you headed toward the bomb room.”

Don felt himself getting red. “I don’t know where the bomb room is. If I’m in the wrong passage, show me the right one.”

“Come with me.” The sergeant led him down two decks where the spin of the ship made them slightly heavier and conducted Don into an office. “Sit down. The duty officer will be along.”

Don remained standing. “I don’t want to see the duty officer. I want to go back to my bunkroom.”

“Sit down, I said. I remember your case. Maybe you were just turned around but could be you took the wrong turn on purpose.”

Don swallowed his annoyance and sat. “No offense,” said McMasters. “How about a slug of solvent?” He went to a coffee warmer and poured two cups.

Don hesitated, then accepted one. It was the Venerian bean, black and bitter and very strong. Don found himself beginning to like McMasters. The sergeant sipped his, grimaced, then said, “You must be born lucky. You ought to be a corpse by now.”

“Huh?”

“You were scheduled to go back in the
Glory Road
, weren’t you? Well?”

“I don’t track you.”

“Didn’t the news filter aft? The
Glory
didn’t make it.”

“Huh? Crashed?”

“Hardly! The Federation groundhogs got jumpy and blasted her out of the sky. Couldn’t raise her and figured she was booby-trapped, I guess. Anyhow they blasted her.”

“Oh—”

“Which is why I say you were born lucky, seeing as how you were supposed to go back in her.”

“But I wasn’t. I’m headed for Mars.”

McMasters stared at him, then laughed. “Boy, have you got a one-track mind! You’re as bad as a ‘move-over.’”

“Maybe so, but I’m still going to Mars.”

The sergeant put down his cup. “Why don’t you wise up? This war is going to last maybe ten or fifteen years. Chances are there won’t be a scheduled ship to Mars in that whole time.”

“Well… I’ll make it, somehow. But why do you figure it will last so long?”

McMasters stopped to light up. “Studied any history?”

“Some.”

“Remember how the American colonies got loose from England? They piddled along for eight years, fighting just now and then—yet England was so strong that she should have been able to lick the colonies any weekend. Why didn’t she?”

Don did not know. “Well,” McMasters answered, “you may not be a student of history, but Commodore Higgins is. He planned this strike. Ask him about any rebellion that ever happened; he’ll tell you why it succeeded, or why it failed. England didn’t lick the colonies because she was up to her ears in bigger wars elsewhere. The American rebellion was just a ‘police action’—not important. But she couldn’t give proper attention to it; after a while it got to be just too expensive and too much trouble, so England gave up and recognized their independence.”

“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.” McMasters 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 by 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.