The Best Of Lester Del Rey Part 14

The buzzer on the telescreen cut through his thoughts, and he flipped it on to see Ceofor's face looking out. Senthree's spirits dropped abruptly as he stared at the younger robot.

"Failure? No!"

The other shook his head. "No. At least, I don't know. I couldn't give them full education. Maybe the tape was uncomfortable. They took a lot of it, but the male tore his helmet off and took the girl's off. Now they just sit there, rubbing their heads and staring around."

He paused, and the little darkened ridges of plastic over his eyes tensed.

"The time speed-up is off. But I didn't know what to do."

"Let them alone until I get there. If it hurts them, we can give them the rest of it later. How are they otherwise?"

"I don't know. They look all right, boss." Ceofor hesitated, and his voice dropped. "Boss, I don't like it. There's something wrong here. I can't quite figure out what it is, but it isn't the way I expected. Hey, the male just pushed the female off her seat. Do you think their destructive instinct . . .

? No, she's sitting down on the floor now, with her head against him, and holding one of his hands. Wasn't that part of the mating ritual in one of the books?"

Senthree started to agree, a bit of a smile coming onto his face. It looked as if instinct were already in operation.

But a strange voice cut him off. "Hey, you robots, when do we eat around here?"

They could talk! It must have been the male. And if it wasn't the polite thanks and grat.i.tude Senthree had expected, that didn't matter. There had been all kinds of Men in the books, and some were polite while others were crude.

Perhaps forced education from the tapes without fuller social experience was responsible for that. But it would all adjust in time.

He started to turn back to Ceofor, but the younger robot was no longer there, and the screen looked out on a blank wall. Senthree could hear the loud voice crying out again, rough and harsh, and there was a shrill, whining sound that might be the female. The two voices blended with the vague mutter of robot voices until he could not make out the words.

He wasted no time in trying. He was already rus.h.i.+ng down to the street and heading toward the labs. Instinct-the male had already shown instinct, and the female had responded. They would have to be slow with the couple at first, of course-but the whole answer to the robot problems lay at hand. It would only take a little time and patience now. Let Arpeten sneer, and let the world dote on the Arcturus explorers. Today, biochemistry had been, crowned king with the magic of intelligence combined with instinct as its power.

Ceofor came out of the lab at a run with another robot behind him. The youngrobot looked dazed, and there was another emotion Senthree could not place.

The older biochemist nodded, and the younger one waved quickly. "Can't stop now. They're hungry." He was gone at full speed.

Senthr.ee realized suddenly that no adequate supply of fruit and vegetables had been provided, and he hadn't even known how often Man had to eat. Or exactly what. Luckily, Ceofor was taking care of that.

He went down the hall, hearing a tumult of voices, with robots apparently spread about on various kinds of hasty business. The main lab where the couple was seemed quiet. Senthree hesitated at the door, wondering how to address them. There must be no questioning now. Today he would not force himself on them, nor expect them to understand his purposes. He must welcome them and make them feel at ease in this world, so strange to them with their prehistoric tape education. It would be hard at first to adjust to a world of only robots, with no other Man people. The matter of instinct that had taken so long could wait a few days more.

The door dilated in front of him and he stepped into the lab, his eyes turning to the low table where they sat. They looked healthy, and there was no sign of misery or uncertainty that he could see, though he could not be sure of that until he knew them better. He could not even be sure it was a scowl on the male's face as the Man turned and looked at him.

"Another one, eh? Okay, come up here. What you want?"

Then Senthree no longer wondered how to address the Man. He bowed low as he approached them, and instinct made his voice soft and apologetic as he answered.

"Nothing, Master. Only to serve you."

Superst.i.tion

THE SEPELORA CRAWLED along at her maximum eighty light-years an hour, as she had done for the four months since she'd left the university planet of Terra.

The s.p.a.ce-denial generators hummed on monotonously, maintaining the field around the s.h.i.+p where s.p.a.ce almost ceased to exist. The big viewing panel and ports were blanked out by the effect, forming perfect mirrors. There was a steady wash of slightly stale air through the control cabin, and the pseudo- gravity on the decks was unvarying. With less than a day of superspeed left, Captain Derek should have been content.

Instead, he sat slumped loosely over the control board, staring with unfocused eyes at his image in the panel, while his fingers doodled black aces, hangman's knots, and all the other symbols of doom for which his culture had no real referents. His deep-set eyes and the -hollows in his cheeks gave him an almost cadaverous look, borne out by the general angularity of his body. At forty-five he looked fifty, with gray speckles around his temples and lines of worry etched deeply into his face.

Abruptly a small speaker came to life with the voice of his aide, Ferad.

"Psych Siryl to see you, sir."

Derek sighed, letting his eyes focus slowly as his fin- gers came up in the ancient sign against evil, pointing at his own image. The physicist, Kayel, must have sent her; the man had been eyeing Derek all during the orders for instrument alert. But now that she was here, there was nothing to be done about it. "Send her in," he acknowledged, and turned slowly to face the door that began opening.

Siryl's bearing was more military than his, in spite of her civilian blouse.

Her feet tapped across the deck precisely, her hips swayed just enough in the split skirt, and her face bore the impersonal warmth of all psychologists on duty. Under her professional pride lay the curious overdeveloped consciousness of being female possible only to women who wanted to be men. She was ten years younger than Derek and only slightly shorter, but her features and body were good, as near beauty as grooming and care could make them. Only her hair waswrong, and its black severity was deliberate.

She wasted no time. Before he could rise, she was beside him, rolling back his sleeve. There was the coldness of an antiseptic and then the faint bite of a needle. "You'll be all right in a minute," she said coolly. "I'd have come sooner, but all these rumors have kept me busy. I've been expecting this; your chart shows you're a depressive with an irregular cycle." Her precise smile was calculated to make it seem no more than mention of a bit of common gossip.

"Come on now, Captain. Things aren't all black."

Now that the drug had ended his chance to wallow in the mood of his ill- fortune, he was almost glad. But her words touched it off again. The jinx was more than a mood. He was the only man of his age in the Service who rated less than sector commander. Everything he undertook went wrong, and seldom through his own failure. There had been the training s.h.i.+p that blew up, the girl who died from mutational weaknesses, the mislaid citation papers-and the whole affair leading to this foredoomed command.

"Optimism!" he said bitterly. "You should head an expedition that you know is bound to fail-because you head it!"

She snorted. "Superst.i.tion! Sure, you had a run of misfortune, Derek. But your real trouble came when you started to believe that jinx nonsense. You're so sure of bad luck now that it's sapped all your initiative. Look at you. You've been eyeing me for months, wanting me and being afraid to make a pa.s.s because something might go wrong!"

There was too much truth in it, and he could feel the blood rush to his face.

She stood studying his reaction clinically, as if using it to gauge the progress of the anti-depressant. Then suddenly she laughed easily and dropped to the opposite chair. "Maybe you should try sometime, Derek-but not now. I'm having my hands full with the men's rumors. Look, why not tell me the truth about this expedition? After all, we're almost ready to cut speed."

The drug was beginning to work now, killing some of his gloom. He was still convinced of his jinx, but he could think of other things. Now he considered her question, surprised that she hadn't already been briefed. "How much of the background and history of the war do they teach on Terra?" he asked. Some of the distant worlds had queer legends that would make explanation difficult.

She frowned impatiently for a second. Then she apparently decided to humor him and began sketching her knowledge in. Aside from her provincial belief that men had originated on Terra, it was accurate enough. Wherever men had started, the race had seemingly discovered s.p.a.ce travel two thousand years before and somehow had almost immediately stumbled onto some form of faster-than-light travel. They had spread over the cosmos at a fantastic rate, using up vast quant.i.ties of some power element known as uranium.

Thirteen hundred years ago, dwindling supplies of that had split them into two competing empires. An un-thinkably violent war had blasted systems of suns to novas, had used the last of the uranium, and had left their culture in ruins.

Except for misleading hints that it had involved negation of time, the superdrive had been lost. It had taken centuries to find new power in the fusion of boron. It had taken longer to discover how to eliminate s.p.a.ce around the s.h.i.+p, leaving only a subfractional connection with the universe and using the "suction" resulting from imbalance to drive them. Then men began spreading again.

Fifty years ago, they had run into the other empire- an empire technically ahead of them and filled with hate that had been nursed for thirteen centuries. The enemy gave no quarter and began savagely wiping them out, planet by planet. For a time, the Federation had seemingly been doomed. But lately, under the drive of necessity, they had begun to match the enemy science. In a few more years ...

"In a few years-or months-there won't be a Federation, unless this missionsucceeds," he cut into her routine optimism. He fished around in a drawer to locate one of the mission briefing sheets he'd helped prepare. For a second, his lips twisted as he saw the dull, official words.

The Waraok, on its way to rendezvous with the Fifth Fleet, had cut its s.p.a.ce- denial drive to make a fix in one of the old sun-blasted sectors at 9- 17/2.47:23 Federation time. At 9-17/2.47:26 they were less than a quarter million miles from one of the planets of Sirius.

Something had thrown them more than two hundred thousand light-years instantaneously! And unless they could wipe out the enemy base or find the secret and its countersecret, that something could as easily throw boron bombs into every Federation sun! With that threat, even such harebrained schemes as this mission had to be tried.

The Sepelora and eleven other s.h.i.+ps were hastily stocked with every possible instrument, staffed with technicians, and blasted off on a course that would bring them out of superspeed at points around the recorded original fix of the Waraok. Their instruments would be recording and their s.p.a.ce-denial transmitters signaling as they emerged, while a fleet of battles.h.i.+ps followed.

If they ran into the mysterious weapon and were lucky, the instruments might determine its nature. Otherwise, the locations of their last signals might pin- point the enemy base for bombing. Then they could only hope it was an experimental station and the only one the enemy had.

Siryl had glanced over the paper. Now she crumpled it in sudden disgust. "They gave us this guff back on Terra! Derek, you don't expect me or the men to believe such nonsense? Instantaneous teleportation! Could you believe it?"

He stared at her, his first thrust of anger giving place to bitterness that drove away the last physical effects of the drug. "I should be able to," he told her. "I was captain of the Waraok when it happened!"

_ It had been his first command of a battles.h.i.+p-and his last chance at promotion; the loss of plans he had been carrying had cost the Federation a major defeat, even though it had been no fault of his. Such miracles weren't beyond the power of his jinx.

She snorted incredulously. "Captain, even I know that a single photon would have infinite energy against a s.h.i.+p at infinite speed! You couldn't keep it out without a perfect s.p.a.ce-denial-which means ceasing to exist. This story sounds like something from those papers of Aevan's we found. A fine mathematician from before the Collapse, but superst.i.tious like you. He actually believed in mind reading, clairvoyance, and teleportation!"

Legends indicated that people had once had such abilities to some extent, but there was obviously no use in reminding her of that. He swore hotly. "I tell you, I was there!"

"Hypnotic implantation! Propaganda based on old superst.i.tion! You'd better look in your safe for sealed orders, Captain Der-"

Red lights erupted on the control board. The alarm system went wild, with every gong clamoring. A blare of light struck in through the viewing panel and the big radar let out a whine, with a picture and coordinates forming to show a body of planetary size less than ten thousand miles below. Needlessly, the green letters on the board blazed out the fact that the superdrive was off.

Derek silenced the gongs and began hitting his switches, trying to get information. n.o.body answered. Crews were normally lax during superspeed cruising, but at least one man should have been on watch near the s.p.a.ce-denial generators; the others should be reporting to their stations on the double. He cut into the intercom and began yelling for immediate reports.

The door of the cabin jerked open, but it was only the chubby figure of Ferad, scared white. Then another figure burst through the door, and Derek recognized the physicist, Kayel. The little man's weak chin seemed buried in his throat and his huge Adam's apple was bobbing horribly. He jerked one hand up,clutched around a crooked pipe he affected, and motioned tautly backward.

"Gone!" he screamed. "All gone!"

Derek cursed, shoved him aside, and headed through the door. He leaped across the precabin, yanked another door open-and stopped.

Five feet ahead, the deck ended. Where the cabins, storage hatches, rec rooms, galleys, and parts of the machine shops and engine rooms had been, there was nothing! Or rather, there was only an empty hull with a single keri-bird from Sirius, squawking and beating its wings wildly in air that held the warm, wet scent of growing Sirian flowers!

Beside him, Derek heard a sharp gasp from Siryl and felt her fingers bite into his arm. Ferad stood frozen and Kayel was gasping for breath, trying to light his pipe against chattering teeth. He met Derek's gaze, glanced at Siryl, and somehow steadied himself.

"It-it just went! I was back there-" His finger pointed toward the remains of the engine room and the beginning of the rocket chambers. "Gone! Without cutting the hull! Completely impossible!"

Derek could appreciate their shock, but after years of living with his jinx, he was practically immune. There were advantages to everything, even to regular bad luck. "What about the denial drive? Can we fix it?"

"No." Kayel had hesitated, but his negative was definite. "Most of it's all right, but we'd need tools we don't have now."

Derek nodded. "All right, see what our remaining instruments show; if we<-get back,="" the="" federation="" will="" need="" those="" readings;="" ferad,="" get="" back="" to="" the="">

Somehow, we've got to make a landing on that planet under us. And Siryl, if you're done shouting superst.i.tion at me ..."

Then he grinned thinly. She was staring at the yawning emptiness with unbelieving eyes, slowly crossing herself.

Eighty men and tons of s.h.i.+p were gone, with only a Sirian bird and the perfume of flowers in their place. Among the missing were the pilot, navigator, and engineer. Derek hadn't handled a rocket landing for twenty years, and he didn't even have figures on the atmosphere and gravity of the world below. His grin vanished and he groaned to himself as he headed back to the control cabin.

2.

The planet was closer when Kayel reported back with word that the instruments all showed exactly nothing. He was working with the spectroprobe, trying to get data for Derek, when Siryl came in with coffee as a peace offering. "Some of the supplies are all right," she reported. "Enough for-for four!"

"Thanks." Derek tasted the coffee and found it vile. But at least it was hot and wet. "Better take some back to Ferad if you can find the way. Tell him if he doesn't report at once, I'll skin his fat carca.s.s."

Kayel gulped and accepted coffee from her as if he'd never seen a woman serve food before. He probably hadn't on Terra, judging by what she'd done to the coffee.

Derek interrupted the physicist's stumbling compliments. "Find anything yet, Kayel?"

Siryl threw him a dirty look and went out, again on parade drill. Kayel nodded, turning back reluctantly. "One of the blasted systems, all right, sir.

Spectrum looks as if the sun got a light dose, though."

Probably one of the last suns the first war had ruined, Derek thought; men had been running low on high-numbered atoms by then. If the blast had been mild, it might even have missed the planet. In that case, they might find machinery in some of the ruined cities.

Kayel shook his head. "Planet was. .h.i.t, all right. A lot of helium in the atmosphere shows that. Funny, though. A couple hundred miles of air with plenty of free oxygen-about like Terra." He sucked on his pipe, squinting through heavy lenses at the charts he had prepared. "Umm. Density againstheight . . . must have about gravity one. d.a.m.n. Shouldn't be free oxygen in that quant.i.ty!"

Derek muttered unhappily. The Slpelora wasn't equipped with full-sized vanes, and an atmosphere and high gravity would make landing harder. Still, if they got down it would be handy. And while the ancient solar explosion would have ruined their hope for tools, it meant there was no danger from savages or beasts left over from the old days; some of the distant worlds had turned wild.

Ferad reported finally, complaining at the impossible job of readying the rockets by himself.

"Put Siryl to work with you," Derek ordered. "They'll be ready in five minutes or we'll miss perigee."

Their intrinsic momentum, left from their speed before cutting on the s.p.a.ce- denial generators after takeoff, was carrying them down toward the planet hi an ellipse that would approach within some six hundred miles.

Surprisingly, Ferad reported the rockets ready and valves trimmed within the time limit. The s.h.i.+p groaned as the rockets went on and Derek watched his indicators grimly, expecting the worst. With so much of her interior bracing removed, she was badly weakened and completely unbalanced. With his luck, anything could happen. Usually, he managed to get out of one mess before getting into another, but there had been that time during inspection ...

The Sepelora hit the atmosphere badly. There had been no time for full correction with the side rockets, and the gyroscopes were gone with the missing section.

I.

One of the weakened girders let go with a snap that jarred his teeth.and the s.h.i.+p wobbled before straightening out. Derek knocked the sweat out of his eyes and tried to remember all that he'd been taught back in rocketry school. But all that came back was the instructor's long lecture on why accident p.r.o.nes should be kicked out at once.

The s.h.i.+p righted, however, though it was close, and settled into a long, fast glide, with her hull pyrometers well into the red-hot zone but safe. A protective s.h.i.+eld had slipped over the viewing panel, but the radar still gave them a view of the ground. They came down to twenty miles above the surface, then to fifteen.

Kayel let out a surprised whinny and pointed the stem of his pipe excitedly at the screen. Derek could see nothing, but the little man watched intently as something seemed to vanish. "A city! Straight lines- streets!"

"Ruins, probably," Derek commented. Maybe they were in luck and the solar explosion had only touched the planet, without burning it enough to destroy buildings and major tools. After thirteen hundred years, some would be ruined; but the ancients had built things to last on the outer planets.

There was a thin layer of clouds that the s.h.i.+p cut through. Now the going was rougher. Without full vanes, the Sepelora had all the lift of a stone, and the glide was growing steeper asymptotically, though her temperature was finally dropping. Derek got her tail down and began using controlled blasts.

Three miles above the surface, she was falling almost straight down, going too fast and swaying badly. Correcting for the unbalanced weight was harder than he had expected.

Then he was only a mile up. With a groan, he cut on more power, hoping no other girders snapped. It was going to be a close shave, with scant seconds left.

Kayel jerked up, screaming and pointing to the screen. Derek's eyes followed the motion before he could pull them back. Something that might have been rows of buildings showed there. But he couldn't worry about ruins; the blast would flatten them, anyhow.

"Derek! People! They're moving!" Kayel's voice was screeching in his ears.He thrust the obvious hysteria of the other from his thoughts. The last glance had ruined his timing. Now the surface was zooming up. The Sepelora wobbled, pv-ershot, and then slowly came upright. Derek's eyes jerked to catch a quick glimpse of the screen. For a second, his hands froze. Along the regular rows that must be streets, things were scurrying madly out of his path!

There was no time to think. Conditioning against killing others, no matter what the risk, took over. His fingers bit into the side controls, and the Sepelora twisted under him, beginning to topple. For a second, the full side blasts tossed the s.h.i.+p backward. Then she dropped, just as he cut power in a final conditioned reflex.

Kayel had fainted. Derek stared at him and down at his own hands. The s.h.i.+p was still. There had been no shock. He tried to figure it out; in theory, the various forces could counterbalance to cause a dead halt at just the moment of touching surface. But the chances were so remote that no pilot could have estimated them. It was as if all the years of his incredibly consistent jinx had come to a balance in one impossible piece of blind good luck.