Read Ebook: Morley's Weapon by Barefoot D W Emshwiller Ed Illustrator

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Ebook has 1165 lines and 58669 words, and 24 pages

MORLEY'S WEAPON

It was comfortably cool in the functional, little control room, but Morley was sweating, gently and steadily. His palms were wet, and the thin thoughtful face, shining in the glow of the instrument panel light, was wrinkled in an agony of concentration and doubt. He was trying to choose between the Scylla of waking Madsen with a corollary of biting contempt involved, and the Charybdis of attempting to land single handed on Japetus, less than five hundred miles below. Neither course was appealing.

For the hundredth time he pondered miserably over the sad condition of what had been a reasonably well ordered existence. The worst of it was that he had only himself to blame, and he knew it. No one had forced him to leave a comfortable, if poorly paid position with General Plastics, and fill out an employment card at Satellites, Inc.

He could not explain the obscure compulsion that sparked his little personal rebellion.

He didn't know, or need to know that other generations of Morleys had fought in revolutions, or sailed in square riggers, or clawed gold from mountainsides. When he went to the spaceline, the puzzlement of his few friends was profound, but hardly more so than his own. And now, after almost a year of upheaval and change, he was piloting a spaceboat along an involute curve ending on the surface of Saturn's eighth moon. And he was still puzzled.

It was those who fought the compulsion who sometimes turned down dark pathways of the mind.

They blasted off from Chicago Spaceport on a raw March midnight. Just another rocket take-off, routine stuff, now. But have you ever seen it? The night, the wind, the distant city glow in the sky? On the strip squats the massive bulk of the rocket, loading hatches closed, sealed port holes gleaming through the gusts of rain that sweep the field. In the sound proofed spaceport control tower the officials are relaxed over coffee and cigarettes; their part is over; they sit watching.

Somewhere in the mighty shell on the field, chronometer hands reach the calculated second, a circuit closes, relays chatter briefly. The rocket igniters are firing, flame billows over the field, a low rumble from the tubes builds to a throbbing roar. Twenty miles away a housewife looks up, a question on her face. Her husband listens and smiles. "It's the Saturn rocket. It's here in the paper, under Departures."

On the field the roar rises to an insane bellow of sound. Under the mighty jets, the ten feet of concrete and the solid earth beneath it are shaking. In the insulated control tower a water glass dances in its holder. The watchers are not relaxed now; they lean forward.

It's old stuff, routine, precalculated to a fraction of a second, but--watch. There--a stir--movement. Slowly at first, with a deliberate and awful majesty, then faster and faster.

Straight toward the zenith the ship rises, trailing fire. Faster yet, hurling herself upward, under full power, through the last threads of atmosphere. Upward and onward, out past Roches limit, out where gravity dwindles toward zero, into the empyrean where the shades of dead spacemen cruise the cosmos in their phantom craft, spaceborne in the night.

After he had recovered from the pangs of his initial attack of space nausea, Morley enjoyed himself. He had one minor social asset, a retentive mind, well stocked with general information. If the two apprentices got involved in an argument over the identity of the highest peak in America, Morley was the inevitable arbiter. He could with equal facility name the author of a recent best seller, or inform you that a young seal was a cub, a young hare, a leveret, and a young swan, a cygnet.

He was fairly popular with the crew, except for a big Norwegian from New York, named Olaf Madsen. Madsen was a chunky, hard bitten veteran of the spaceways. Round faced, deceptively soft spoken, he had a penchant for practical jokes, and a flair for biting sarcasm which found full expression in the presence of any first tripper. He made the life of any apprentice miserable, and finished the last two weeks of one trip in the brig for panicking an entire crew by painting his face to resemble the onset of Martian blue fever. Morley considered him an oaf, and he considered Morley a human filing cabinet with a weak stomach.

A little notice on the bulletin board was Morley's first inkling that his safe, secure routine was on the verge of mutating into something frighteningly unpredictable.

"All personnel not on duty will report to the recreation room at 1900 hours, Solar time, to draw for side trip partners and destinations," it read.

He buttonholed the crew messman. "What's all this about side trips, Oscar?"

Roly poly Oscar looked at him incredulously. "The lay over trips. The time killer. On the level, don't you know?"

Morley shook his head.

"Well," Oscar told him, "We leave Earth shortly before Saturn is in opposition. They figure on the shortest possible run, which takes three months. If we discharge and start right back, the round trip would take about six months. That's fine, except that the synodic period for Earth and Saturn--Hey, you know what I'm talking about?"

Morley admitted his ignorance, vaguely annoyed at the fact that for once he was the humble seeker for information, and someone else was being professorial.

Oscar grinned. "And you studied astrogation! Well, when Saturn and Earth line up with the Sun, it takes three hundred and seventy eight days before they get in the same position again. So if we got back to Earth's orbit in six months, we'd still have about a hundred and eighty millions of miles to go, because Earth would be on Sol's other side at that time, in superior conjunction to Uranus."

Morley digested this, while Oscar basked in the light of his own knowledge, enjoying himself hugely.

"And the trips, Oscar?"

"We lay over three or four months, 'til opposition time isn't too far away, and we pick partners and destinations by lot, and go out to Saturn's other moons on prospecting trips--ore deposits, jewels, botanical specimens, etc.--half for us, and half for the Company. It's a good deal, a regular vacation, and those two-men craft are sweet stuff. And if you're lucky--"

He went on, but Morley heard no more. The prospect unnerved him. He was terrified at the idea of changing a safe subordinate position for that of an active partner, however temporary the arrangement might be. At the drawing, his hunch of impending misery proved all too real. He wound up facing the prospect of a stay on the frozen hell of Phoebe, scouring the miniature mountains for Japori crystals, with Madsen, MADSEN! for his only companion.

A week later the Solarian teetered down to a landing at Port Ulysses. With various expressions of profane and unbounded delight from her crew, she was turned over to the stevedores and the maintenance gang. Thereafter, at intervals, the thirty foot space boats took off for Mimas, Tethys, Dione, or whatever waystop the lottery had decreed. Madsen and Morley left on the fourth 'night,' with Phoebe hardly a week's run from them at ten miles a second.

Madsen was at the controls. Without a single spoken word on the subject, he was automatically the captain, and Morley, the crew. The situation crystallized twenty-four hours out of Port Ulysses. Morley was poring over the Ephemeris prior to taking his watch at the controls when he became aware that Madsen, red faced and breathing heavily, was peering over his shoulder.

Morley stiffened in alarm. "Is anything--" He quailed under Madsen's glare.

"Not yet, but there's liable to be if you don't smarten up." The Norwegian's blunt forefinger stabbed at the page Morley had been studying. "Phoebe, Mister, happens to be Saturn's NINTH moon. Get it? You can count, can't you?"

Morley flushed, and fumbled miserably for a reasonable excuse. There was a gleam of contempt in Madsen's eyes, but he spoke again more quietly. "I'm going to eat and catch up on some sack time. We'll be right on top of Japetus in short order. It's a known fact that the moon won't move over if you fly at it, so you better wake me up to handle the compensating!" He disappeared into the tiny galley, but his words were still audible. "It's an awful long walk back, chum, if anybody pulls a bull."

Morley swung himself into the pilot's seat, too numb with humiliation to answer. Almost an hour passed before he started the regulation checkup required by the Space Code of any ship passing within one hundred thousand miles of a planet or major satellite. Every guardian needle stood in its normal place with one exception. The craft had been running on the port fuel tanks, depleting them to the point where it seemed wise to trim ship. Morley opened the valve, touched the fuel pump switch and waited, nothing happened. He watched the needles incredulously. The pump--? He jabbed the switch, once, twice. Nothing.

He leaned forward and rapped the starboard gauge with his knuckles, sharply. The needle swung from Full to Empty. Morley felt faint as realization hit him. The starboard gauge had stuck at Full, and had been unreported. The tank had not been serviced in port, owing to the faulty reading and a mechanic's carelessness. They had about two hours fuel. Even to Morley, it was obvious that there was one thing only to do--land on Japetus, looming up larger in the view-plate with each passing moment. He checked the distance rapidly, punched the calculator, and put the ship in the designated orbit. He wanted to handle the landing himself, but the thought of the final few ticklish moments chilled him. So did the thought of waking Madsen, and asking him to take over.

And it was then, at the intersection of two courses formed by an infinity of variables, that two objects arrived in the same millisecond of time. Eight ounces of nickel iron smashed into the stern of Spaceboat 6, ripped a path of ruin through her entire length, and went out through the two inch glass of her bow, before Morley could turn his head. He was aware, in a strange dream-like way, of actuating the midships airtight door, of the hiss of air as the little aneroid automatically opened valves to compensate for the drop in pressure, and of Madsen leaping into the control room and slapping a Johnson patch over the hole in the bow.

Madsen was white but composed. "We can slow her down but we can't land her. Get suits while I take over. We'll ride as far as we can, and walk the rest of the way." He fought with the controls, as Morley, still bemused, obeyed. At twenty-five hundred feet they bailed out, and floating down seconds later, watched Spaceboat 6 crash into a low wooded hill. And when they landed, and inspected the wreckage, it was some minutes before either spoke.

It was obvious at a glance that Spaceboat 6 was ready for the boneyard, had there been one around. The ship, under the few automatic controls that were still functioning, had sliced in at a thirty degree angle, ploughed a short distance through a growth of slim, poplar-like trees, and then crumpled completely against an outcropping granite ledge. Finally Morley gulped audibly, and Madsen laughed.

"Well, Mastermind, any suggestions that might help us? Any little pearls of wisdom from the great brain?"

"Just one," Morley answered. "Head for the Equator, and--"

"And try to find a D.D. Correct. If we last that long. Let's salvage what we can out of this junk and shove off."

Morley cleared his throat diffidently. "There are a few pieces of equipment we should take along, for--er--emergencies--" His voice trailed off miserably under Madsen's basilisk stare.

"Listen, Morley, once and for all. We're lugging essentials and that's all. Any extra weight is out."

"But, listen--"

Madsen ignored the interruption, and cut loose with one last broadside. "Save your breath. It's bad enough being saddled with a useless little squirt like you, without being made into a pack mule unnecessarily."

He climbed into a gaping hole in the bow. Morley followed, humiliated but still thinking hard. Catalogue it, he told himself. Remember everything. The Distress Depots, or D.D.'s, as spacemen called them, were studded on every frontier world, usually on the Equator. They contained two small spacecraft plus ample supplies of food, medicine, and tools. When wrecked, get to a D.D. and live. It was that simple.

They spent an hour worming their way through the shambles that had been the well ordered interior of Spaceboat 6, before emerging to take stock of their loot on the ground outside. Both men knew that they were pitifully equipped to cover several hundred miles, on foot, in a completely hostile environment. Suddenly Madsen looked up from the sextant he was examining.

"How come this gravity, Brain? I weigh about a hundred right now, I figure, and that's too much, by plenty. Japetus isn't a quarter the size of our moon."

"It's supposed to have a core of heavy radioactive metals," said Morley, thoughtfully, "and a corresponding high density. Keeps it warm anyway, instead of a big icicle, like Phoebe."

"Phoebe!" Madsen laughed. "I remember, back in '89--" He stopped abruptly at a rattling from the ledge. A green, little lizard-like creature was scrambling frantically over the granite, while hot in pursuit were three--spiders? Black, they were, a black like living velvet, and incredibly fast as they closed in, beady stalked eyes fastened on their prey. They were deliberately herding the desperate lizard toward a cleft in the rock. As the creature leaped into the opening, another spider dove at it from the recess. The others closed in. There was a hopeless hissing, a vicious clicking of mandibles. The struggle subsided. Once again the day was silent. Madsen holstered the blaster he had drawn and looked whitely at Morley.

"Pleasant pets," he grunted.

"Poisonous and carnivorous, too," said Morley, shakingly. "I remember reading that Valdez dissected one when he first landed here twenty years ago. One of his crew was bitten, and died in less than five minutes."

Madsen was thoughtful. "We could stand a little briefing on the local flora and fauna, but palaver won't get us to the Equator. And that little stock treatise entitled 'Physical Attributes of Phoebe' is worse than useless. Lucky the sextant is O.K., we can at least check our latitude. There's just one flaw."

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