Fiction complete, p.6
Fiction Complete, page 6
“This station?” exclaimed Sarli.
“That’s what the radeteks showed, until the crew pulled a pet dog out of the wiring. Then the planet went away.”
“I must inspect the wiring some day,” said Quit. “Meanwhile, if young Weksho will break open one of our crates, I think we should celebrate my election—just as if I hadn’t bought and paid for it!”
“After that,” said Sarli, “I’m going to turn on all the radeteks and throw the empty bottles out the port to see if they register.”
“Your idea of sport?” said Rugay.
“I guess I better get the stuff, huh?” spoke Weksho. “What kind?”
“Think you could find some of the 2300 Marconol?” asked Quil.
“Sure. Label says ‘Radetek M-2369, var-5, tube set A’. They stacked it on the top layer, too.”
“Where on top, Zury?” asked Rugay intently.
“Fourth crate from the left.”
He went out.
“I never get tired of him, Nurald,” said Rugay.
It was several months later—Earth October, 2376—when Nurald Quil ran into a crisis worse than any in his political career.
As in the early days, before throwing small objects out into space had become a bore, he was awakened by alarm bells. Rolling over in bed, and struggling to sit up, he realized that it meant that the first alarms, buzzers and flashing lights, had not been answered.
He sat on the edge of the bed, holding his throbbing head in his hands. He would have preferred to wake up slowly, after having made a night of it.
“Turn them off!” he shouted, hoping someone else might be in better condition.
Rex Sarli, with his vibrant health, usually sobered first. If he could not handle it, Rugay must be awake by now. There were no technicians among them—who needed one at a security station nowadays—but they should remember which of the old radeteks they had turned on.
He scrambled to his feet, forgot his bad right leg, and sprawled across the deeply carpeted deck. Pulling himself, panting, to his feet, he groped for some clothes.
After squirming into a full-cut set of green coveralls without being caught in his zipper more than once, he slipped on a loose white jacket. Going through the door, he swept his dark hair down over his forehead with one hand to hide the lumps. Almost simultaneously, he dapped on a floppy beret with the other hand.
Having rushed through the salon of their living quarters, he reached the corridor leading to the offices.
The bells were still ringing in short, maddening bursts as he galloped toward the central instrument room.
Crashing open the door, he entered the office. The others were already there.
Dark, nervous Sarli, in flaming orange coveralls, was scampering from one bank of master indicators to another. Weksho amiably followed him about. Rugay stood in the center of the room, running his eye around the counters against three of the walls. He looked over his shoulder as Quil entered.
“Maybe you know some way to stop them, Nurald,” he shouted over the clangor of the alarms.
He glanced then at Quil’s hands, and the latter realized he had forgotten his gloves.
“This is just the master indicator room,” he told Rugay. “It shows which of the radeteks are operating in their own compartments. I never found out how to control them from here.”
“Well, this place must be here for a reason. Cut the power somehow, before that crazy Rex breaks something.”
Quil thought swiftly. In his occasional wanderings through the intricacies of the station, he had come across a good many charts of the machinery and wiring. He thought he knew where to cut off the power of this section of the sphere. It would mean, however, that they would have to grope about in the dark. If he could find some way to acknowledge the alarm—
“The first thing is to find out where the detection is being made. Look out, Rex!”
He limped along the counter, scanning the dials and lights of the individual panels. On the side opposite the door, he came to a section of push buttons. Above, on the wall, was a plastic covered chart.
“This must be it,” he said. “Let’s see . . . a small button for every alarm bell in the station . . . a larger switch for each main section . . . and—”
He reached out and pulled the most important looking switch. The bells stopped.
“Now,” he said, facing the others, “who started all this?”
The three gazed at each other in silence.
“I guess they were still turned on from a month ago,” said Sarli finally. “I don’t know why they went off, though.”
“Just to cover everything,” suggested Quil, “somebody better go up to the routine com room. Maybe they sent a special ship out. If they did, and surprise us, it will be on all the telecasts in the System.”
“I’ll go,” said Sarli, moving toward the door.
Quil noticed that several of the lights along the counter were still burning.
“Did you have to turn on all the old radeteks?” he shouted after the departing Sarli. “Jac! Dig out some of the charts. Let’s locate these gadgets that are working.”
Rugay walked deliberately to a drawer and searched through it. By the time he found the necessary records, Quil was irritated into impatience.
He snatched the booklet from the other and took it to the first active panel.
“This is the 2163 model in Compartment 11—note that down, Jac. And this is the 2209 model, variation E, in Compartment 24.”
“Not so fast,” said Rugay.
“That one is quiet . . . and the next . . . this is model 221413, variation O—”
“Variation C,” corrected Rugay, peering over his shoulder.
In half an hour they had them all listed. Most of the active indicators were of the newer types, including all of those so constructed that only absence of power made them inoperative.
Sarli returned just after the alarm bells had begun to ring again, and Quil had shut them off.
“They must start every half hour, unless they are attended to,” said Quil. “See anything on the screen, Rex?”
“Just the stars,” answered Sarli.
“Good. Well, let’s try to close down some of these toys. We might as well make the rounds; it would take us hours to discover how to take over control from there—if it can be done at all. Why didn’t I bring a technician instead of three grafters?”
“Interplanetary diplomat,” corrected Sarli.
“Spaceship agent,” said Rugay.
“Detective,” Weksho said, coming in a poor third.
“Con man, inside contact, and moron with a photoelectric memory,” Quil summed up acidly. “But we made it pay off. However—Jac ami Rex, suppose you go up to routine com and call Earth Central on the radiphone. Say it’s a test, and see if they volunteer anything.”
Rugay nodded. “Sarli can tell them their last automatic telecast came in garbled.”
“Hope they aren’t scared at getting a call from us,” said the shorter man. “I’ve always wondered if we really could contact them.”
Quil turned to Weksho.
“You stay here, Zury. Look over these indicators. Remember which ones are on and tell me when I come back if any have changed.”
Taking Rugay’s list, Quil started for the first compartment on it.
The first of the old models was not too tough. The on-off switch was plainly labeled and easily found. He turned it off. The cessation of its faint humming left a dead silence in the compartment. He scurried along to the next on the list.
By the time he had worked his way up to the models of the past twenty-five years, he could feel himself tiring. His leg was aching with the unaccustomed exercise. He paused to rest in Compartment 39, wishing he bad had some breakfast. He had better finish this, however, rather than have all that pandemonium again.
This was a 2353 model radetek, he verified from his list. Only two decades old, it had a smoother hum than the other antiques. He pulled out the folding seat at the control table and sat down.
Staring at the glowing panel lights, he fumbled in the table drawer for the instruction manual. He had found that was the quickest way for him to discover how to shut the machines off. Just look on page one for the first operation—and then reverse it.
True, there had been one where that method had not worked, and he had blown out a set of tubes instead. There was more than one way to get in office.
The diagram on the manual cover caught his eye. It showed an imaginary example of detecting a foreign body’s approach, including use of an automatic viewer directed by the mechanism itself.
“Why don’t I try it?” Quil asked himself. “Come to think of it, what is cracking all the jets?”
He leafed through the booklet and found a color photo of the control panel. After several years experience with political double talk, he could read almost anything with a fair chance of understanding all that was meant to be understood.
In a few minutes, he thought he had it. The screen at the end of the table must be operating; it was merely set at complete dim.
“Never been used since it left the factory,” he murmured cynically, turning the indicated knob.
The screen brightened. The voice shrank up in his throat. He suddenly felt chilled and, somehow, physically light.
It was a spaceship!
It was a spaceship such as had not been seen in the Solar System for two hundred years. He could not accurately estimate the size, for he did not know the distance. But its existence was enough.
Quil reached over and killed the screen.
Then he sat staring at his hands, breathing heavily.
“What am I going to do?” he whispered.
His first impulse was to get out of there and hide. At least, he could return to the others and pretend that nothing had happened.
He knew he could not.
Aside from the feeling that had come over him of being exposed to the view of the whole universe, there was something he would simply have to do—or at worst, try.
This was what the station was here for. No matter if no one seriously believed it would happen at this late date. No matter if it had degenerated into a political sinecure. If he let this ship past, there would be tragedy—and Earth would know who to blame!
“Why did it have to be me?” he groaned. “Two hundred years it’s been here, and nothing went wrong till I came!”
“What did you say, chief?” asked Sarli.
Quil whirled around on the seat. He had not heard the younger man come down the corridor.
“Earth Central didn’t say anything. They have a cracked jet operating their radiphone anyway. Jac is up there, trying to think of something good to pull on him.”
He looked at Quil rather oddly.
“What’s the matter?” asked Quil, straightening his beret defiantly.
“Oh . . . nothing. It . . . well, for a moment, your eyes looked queer.”
“Look at this screen,” Quil told him, twisting the knob, “and let me see your eyes!”
“Uh!” Sarli gagged.
Quil dimmed the screen again and nervously rubbed the lump on the left side of his jaw.
“What do you think of that, Rex?” he asked.
“It never happened!” said Sarli, edging toward the door.
He did not leave the compartment, however.
“That’s not a playback of some kind, is it?”
Quil shook his head. He indicated his list of active instruments, taken down by Rugay in the other office. Turning the screen on again, he stared moodily at the image.
“We have to stop them,” he said. “Might as well face it.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“We have all sorts of communication stuff.”
“All sorts,” agreed Quil. He began to drum his fingers on the panel.
“There must be some we can operate. Maybe Jac can put something together—”
“What happened,” Quil interrupted sourly, “when you and Jac tried to repair that intercom between your sleeping quarters and the salon?”
“But these are supposed to be in working order.”
“If they’ve been checked in the last hundred years. Besides, they are supposed to be operated by people who know how. I’m no technician. I’m a politician. What are you?”
“Why, I . . . I—Well, I guess just a cousin of the Expediter of Venus,” Sarli admitted miserably.
“Jac might have picked up some of this stuff if he cared; but with his future, why should he. And’ you know Weksho.”
There was a futile silence. Sarli examined the alien ship on the screen and shook his head.
“I can see him passing Luna now,” he mused sadly.
“What?” Quil jumped. “Oh, yon mean—Well, he’s got to pass us first, before he gets to the Solar System.”
“What could be hard about that?”
“Be some help, will you? Go fetch Jac down here. Maybe he can choose a likely radiphone.”
“Shall I see if there’s a description of the Murser ships in the files?”
“That’s what I was thinking, too,” said Quil.
“What could be hard about that?” corridor, he examined the image of the spaceship again. Unless he had jogged the dial regulating the degree of magnification, there had been an appreciable lessening of the vessel’s distance. Something had to be done without delay.
He decided to look at the other radeteks. Leaving the screen on but dimming it as he had found it, he went out.
Making his way along the corridor, he checked six more machines in four different compartments. All were of the fully automatic type which he could not turn off. One of them also had an attached telescreen, but he liked the style of his earlier discovery better. He was more familiar with it.
When he returned to Compartment 39, he found Sarli and Rugay just arriving.
“Rex tells me you found something,” said Rugay calmly.
He had found the folding seat and made himself comfortable.
“A little demonstration,” said Quil, irritated at the other’s calm.
He reached over Rugay’s shoulder to brighten the screen.
“I don’t think I need explain to you.”
Rugay’s calm vanished. For the first time in Quil’s memory, his eyes bulged. His mind, of course, was racing along the same paths of reasoning which had led the others to despair a short time before. Judging from the shocked expression on his face, he was reaching the conclusion just as quickly.
“No ship photos listed in the files,” Sarli told Quil.
After his little moment of superiority, Quil was plunged once more into uncertainty.
“Let’s get out of here and think,” he said.
They went up to the salon, picking Weksho up as they passed the indicator room. Quil waved aside the string of model numbers the latter tried to recite.
He tried to make himself comfortable on a luxurious couch, but found himself sitting on the edge of it. Rugay got out a bottle of choice Marcohol, fumbled with it a while, and finally put it away unopened.
“What did you do?” asked Weksho.
He usually tried to hide the fact that he was really not very bright behind a mask of blond stolidity; which made his feats of memory more remarkable. Quil had returned him loose among the government’s secret files and had found him better than a photostat device. Now, however, he felt something was wrong.
“We found out what rang the bells,” Quil told him.
Weksho raised blond eyebrows.
“There is a spaceship somewhere near enough to show on a screen.”
“Think old Bascomb got sore enough about the licenses to send for us?”
Quil stared at him. In the last hour, he had forgotten how he had come to be here. He found he was too worried to curse at Weksho’s slowness.
“The point is, Zury,” he explained patiently, “this is not an Earth ship. Nor Martian nor Venusian. It’s a stranger.”
“How can that be?”
“How can it be!” Sarli broke in shrilly. “What do you think this station was put here for? The silly fools thought there would be something to look for. They looked for it two hundred years. Then we . . . we had to come out here and find it!”
“Take it easy, Rex,” said Quil.
He turned to Weksho.
“Zury, have you ever seen a picture of a ship from the Murser fleet?”
“I don’t know,” answered Weksho.
“Can’t you remember?”
“No. Show me and I can remember.”
Sarli sprang forward.
“Let’s go!” he cried.
The four of them left the room in a rush, Weksho being hustled along by Sarli’s grip on his arm and Quil bringing up the rear at a limping trot.
They hurried down to Compartment 39. Inside, the others stepped aside with unconscious deference to Quil’s impressive experience in these matters.
He turned the knob to brighten the screen. The strange craft reappeared.
Weksho examined the image, fie nodded slowly.
“Saw one on Page 158 of Modem History in school. There were some little things different. Mostly, it’s the same. Page 158 was about the Murser fleet.”
“That’s it, then,” said Quil. “They’re back.”
Rugay pulled out a handkerchief and coughed into it.
“I never thought,” he said at last, “that I would ever consider doing something for tire public good. It seems to have sneaked up on us.”
“The first time,” admitted Quil, “that I can’t make use of a little pressure or bribery. If I get out of this I’ll never hold a public office again.”
“The telemovies have it all wrong,” Rugay went on. “With no noble emotions at all, I know it’s unthinkable that we do nothing to stop them.”
“I keep thinking of that technician who missed the meteorite in the old days,” said Sarli.
“It’s not just our necks,” said Rugay. “If that ship is what we think, it’s the future of the human race.”
“Come along,” ordered Quil.
He led the way up to the routine communications room, where most of the general information was filed.
There, they searched through several drawers and cabinets. Finally, Quil collected and carried to a desk various likely directories. He began to leaf through them hastily.
