Tales of the Flying Mountains Read online

  Ulysses was a transporteer, heon the common ban dwas, he was.…

  The long-range radio receiver buzzed and flashed a red light. Storrs jerked in his seat. What the hell? That was no distress signal from a sunjammer. A wide-beam call on the common band—He sucked in a breath and snapped the Accept switch.

  … He stopped at Calypso’s isle for beers,

  And didn’t proceed for ten more years.…

  The speaker seethed with cosmic static. A voice cut through. “International Space Control Central calling Beltline Transportation Company maintenance ship number eleven, computed to be in Sector Charlie. Come in, number eleven ….International Space Control—”

  “Here we are.” Storrs recollected his dignity. No Earthling was going to say that a citizen of the Asteroid Republic didn’t know the rituals. “Maintenance ship eleven, Merlin, out of Pallas, Storrs on duty, acknowledging call from International Space Control Central,” he intoned. “My precise position and orbit are …” He read the figures off the autonavigator screen.

  There was no need for him to adjust the transceiver web outside the hull. Its detector antenna had already fixed the direction of the incoming beam, and now the maser swung itself about to face squarely that way. The ship counterrotated a trifle. Storrs touched the controls. The generator purred; power ran into the Emetts; the field dissipated angular momentum into the general mass-energy background of the universe.

  Columbus was a transporteer, he was, he was.

  Columbus was a transporteer, he was, he was.

  They put the royal crown in pawn

  To shut him up and move him on.

  Bravo—

  Golescu must have noticed the motion all at once, to judge from how his singing cut off. Storrs flipped the intercom open. “Got a call from Earth,” he said hurriedly. “I don’t know why, but assume condition red.”

  Feet clattered on the decks. Storrs’s skin began to prickle. What the blazes was going on? Earth’s SCC knew approximately where Merlin was, of course. Every herdship’s orbit went on file in every traffic monitoring station throughout the System. If an orbit was changed, that news was also beamcast between the planets. But it was strictly an in-case precaution. The messages which drew a herdship off her path had always been automatic: beeps from a sailship whose interior sensors had registered trouble.

  Always—until now?

  His signal had leaped forth. Half a dozen seconds later it had reached the relay stations orbiting Earth. The operator stopped chanting, heard Storrs out, and began to talk back.

  “International Space Control Central acknowledging reply from maintenance ship eleven. Stand by, please. I’m going to switch you over to the main office, groundside.”

  A low whistle drifted from the intercom. Golescu, posted at the engine, had heard. West came in the door, puffing from the climb up the companionway. He was a large man, his hair grizzled, face and stomach sagging a bit with middle age. But he was still highly able, Storrs admitted, and decent for an Earthman. To be sure, it helped that he was British. The revolution had been fought mostly against North Americans.

  “Must be something big, eh?” West said. “Headquarters and all that.” He settled himself in the navigator’s chair.

  “Hello, Merlin,” said a new voice on the radio. It was a deep baritone, clipped but heavy with authority. “Evan Bailey speaking, assistant director of ISCC’s Bureau of Safety.” This time it was West who whistled. A message from so high an official of the World Interplanetary Commission, relayed straight from his personal desk—!

  “A serious emergency has come up,” Bailey went on. “There’s no time to lose. Calculate an interception curve for sailship number one hundred twenty-eight, that’s one-two-eight. Assume that you start acceleration at maximum thrust in, well, fifteen minutes. As soon as possible, anyhow. Is there by any chance another craft like yours reasonably near? We have no record of one ourselves, but there might have been some filing error. And you’ll want every piece of help you can get.”

  “No,” Storrs answered. “Nothing. The herdships are few and far between. You’re lucky we happen to be this close to you right now.”

  That was not entirely coincidence. The orbits of the maintenance craft were planned to keep them never too distant from the great vessels of the Beltline. Some of the best mathematicians in the Republic had worked out the formulas for optimization of paths followed by sail and power craft; an intricate, forever changing figure dance across half the Solar System.

  Storrs sat up straight. “So what’s the trouble?” he finished.

  West’s fingers had been playing a tattoo on the keys before him. A tape popped out with the information he wanted. “One-two-eight,” he murmured. “Yes, here we are. Cargo of … I say, this is an odd one. She’s carrying eight hundred metric tons of isonitrate from the Sword’s Jovian-orbit plant. Right now she’s approaching Earth, only about ten thousand kilometers away, in fact. There were no indications of trouble during her passage.”

  “Isonitrate what?” Golescu inquired over the intercom.

  “An important industrial chemical,” West explained. “Alkali complex or 2,4-benzoisopro——”

  “Never mind,” Golescu said. “I’m sorry I asked. Uh, everything’s okay with our engines, if the gauges aren’t liars.”

  Bailey had hesitated a while at the other end. Storrs could visualize the man, plump in a lounger behind several hectares of mahogany desk, sweating with fear that something might happen to interrupt his placid climb through the bureaucracy. His words, when they came, wavered slightly.

  “The sun is going to flare.”

  “What?” Storrs jumped to his feet. An oath from Golescu bounced through the intercom. West paused at his work, hands frozen on the keys. After a second he grunted, like someone struck a body blow, and went back to setting up the computation of thrust vectors.

  “No!” Storrs protested. “Can’t be! This is a clear weather season.” His eyes went past the stars, sought the one blank port, and clung there.

  “My office issues more storm warnings than you perhaps realize,” Bailey told him. “The big flare cycles are predictable far in advance these days, but indications that a small, shortlived one is going to occur are often not observable more than forty-eight hours ahead.” His tone grew patronizing. “‘Clear weather season’ means only a period in which there will be no major flares and the probability of minor ones is low. Still finite, however. You asterites don’t have to worry about solar radiation, out where you are, so perhaps you forget these details. Around Earth, we’re highly conscious of them.”

  You smug planet-hugger! Storrs hung onto politeness with both hands. “I know the details well enough,” he said stiffly. “After all, Mr. Bailey, every man aboard a herdship holds a master’s certificate. I was only shocked. It seemed unbelievable that a cargo of isonitrate would be shipped, if there was any measurable chance of a flare while the vessel was inside the orbit of Mars.”

  The beam went forth. While they waited for reply, West said in a mild voice, “Call it an unmeasurable chance, then, Sam. The chap’s right, you know. Solar meteorology is still not a completed science. It’s either assume the hazard, knowing you’ll lose an occasional ship, or else have no space traffic whatsoever. A coincidence like this one was bound to happen sooner or later.”

  “But for crying in the beer!” exclaimed Golescu from aft. “Why couldn’t it have happened to a cargo of metal?”

  “It does, quite often,” Storrs reminded him. “Metal isn’t hurt by radiation. Remember?” Sarcastically: “I’ve heard you gripe so often about how dull these cruises are most of the time. Well, here’s your chance for some action.”

  Bailey had hung fire again. A rustle, penetrating the dry star-whisper, suggested he had been searching through a report prepared for him. “The flare is expected in about twelve hours,” he said. “Predicted duration is three hours. Estimated peak radiation rate in Earth’s vicinity is four thousand roentgens per hou
r. As you know, that will cause the isonitrate to explode.”

  Storrs exploded himself. “Twelve hours! You must’a known about it at least two days ago! Why didn’t you alert us then? It’ll take us two of those blithering hours just to make rendezvous!”

  “Take it easy there, Sam,” West said sotto voce. “Some of those high-caste officials are even touchier than that isonitrate.”

  As if in confirmation, Bailey’s words turned hard. “Kindly watch your language, Captain. The delay is unfortunate, I admit, but no one is to blame. The prediction was issued in the usual way, and records were checked as per regulations. The nearness of one hundred twenty-eight was noted. However, it is an unmanned craft. You can’t expect an ordinary clerk to know the danger involved in its particular cargo. That was only pointed out when the data reached my office for the routine double check. And then a policy decision had to be reached. We haven’t the lugger capacity to unload so much material in time. It would have been simple for us to send a crew out to bleed off the gas and thereby save the sailship from being destroyed. But a staff physicist showed that this was impossible. I was informed of the dilemma the moment I came back from lunch, and immediately ordered that contact be made with the nearest herdship. What more do you want, man?”

  Storrs choked. Though I should have expected this, he thought in a distant part of himself. There isn’t a government of any importance on Earth these days that isn’t based on some version of “social justice.” So of course independent thinking, conscientiousness, ordinary competence have gone by the board.

  He unpinched his lips, sat down again, and said, “Well, Mr. Bailey, you might as well order that crew of yours to jettison. We can’t do anything more than that ourselves. Or have you some alternative suggestion?”

  Waiting out the transmission lag, he heard Golescu say, “Whoof! Looks as if there’s going to be more excitement than I bargained for.”

  West uttered a small chuckle. “Weren’t you caroling about the mad, merry life of a transporteer?”

  “Shucks, Ed, I was only practicing my act. Those blooming glamour boys from the scoopships and the prospector teams have been latching on to all the girls back home. Something’s got to be done for our kind of spaceman.”

  “That gas must positively not be released so close to Earth,” Bailey stated. “It would contaminate the entire inner region, causing damage estimated at ten billion dollars. You may valve it out when you are no less than one hundred sixty thousand kilometers from Earth sea level and/or basic Lunar surface. That’s a direct order, by my authority under this jurisdiction and the Interplanetary Navigation Agreement. Are you recording? I repeat——”

  “Judas priest!” Golescu yelled. “You expect us to haul away a bomb?”

  A humming silence fell over the ship. Storrs became acutely aware of how the stars glistened, the power plant and ventilators murmured, the deck quivered ever so slightly with energies. He felt the roughness of his coverall on his skin, which had become damp and sharp-smelling. He stared at the meters on the pilot panel, and they stared back like troll eyes, and still the silence waxed.

  Bailey broke it. “Yes. Unless you have some other plan, we do expect you to remove that stuff to a safe distance. Under terms of your company’s franchise for terrestrial operations, it is your responsibility to dispose of this object in a manner not injurious to the public well-being. What’s the problem, anyway? According to your rated thrust, you should be able to get the sailship’s cargo section far enough away in four or five hours.”

  “The hell you say,” Storrs barked. “We can’t use full power on that big an outside load. Too much inertia. We’d rip our hull open. One-third of max’ll be risky enough. And we’ve got to uncouple the sail first, to get proper trim—at least two hours’ work.” Desperately: “You’re giving us no safety margin. You know as well as I do, flare time can’t be predicted much closer than an hour. If it happens sooner than you claim, and the radiation sweeps over us before we can disengage and get clear—and that takes time—the explosion will destroy us. And you’ll still have space contamination. Plus a lot of ship fragments.”

  “Also people fragments,” Golescu chimed in. “We got a legal right to refuse an impossible job, don’t we?”

  “But not an improbable one,” West said. His gaze went to Earth. “I did want to see Blighty again.”

  “You will,” Storrs said. “We’re not going to commit suicide for the benefit of a lot of Earthlings.”

  “Like me, Sam?” West asked softly.

  Bailey came back on: “You are not expected to act without due precautions. You can safely tow at the end of a cable several kilometers long, can’t you?”

  “Know how much mass that adds?” Storrs snapped. “But never mind. The fact is, our class of ship isn’t designed for cable tows. We hook on directly by geegee. A cable ud tear us apart, just like hauling under max thrust.”

  “Wait a bit,” West interrupted. He had skippered a European League ship before he reached compulsory retirement age and Beltline made him an offer. Asterite law based retirement on medical data rather than the calendar. “I know what sort of boat can do a cable tow. Not an ordinary tug—I mean the kind that starts a sailship off. It hasn’t enough power, considering how fast we’ll have to work. But a North American Navy tug of the Hercules class would serve. I should think four of them could be hitched on without their drive fields interfering. Or perhaps you can borrow some Kubilai types from the Asians. With that many engines at work, we can cover the required distance in ample time. Have ’em there when we arrive, will you? We’ll make the attachments and supervise the whole job.”

  Again the wait was longer than transmission lag would account for. At last Bailey’s voice came, so small and shaken that the noise of the universe nearly drowned it. “I … guess you don’t know. Both fleets are out near Venus. Joint maneuvers.”

  After a moment, assuming briskness like a garment: “We’ll do what we can—alert the International Rescue Service; commandeer whatever else we can find that may be of help. I can’t make any promises, with so little time to go through channels. But I’ll do whatever is humanly possible.”

  “Amoebically possible, you mean,” Storrs said. He managed to keep it under his breath. Shaking himself, he answered aloud:

  “We’ll get started now. Have to fold our radio-radar net. Acceleration forces would wreck it otherwise. When we’ve made rendezvous with one hundred twenty-eight, we’ll call you on the short-range ‘caster. Stand by for that.”

  He didn’t wait for a response, but snapped off transmission as if the switch were Evan Bailey’s neck.

  Once the web had been pulled in by the appropriate machinery and acceleration had commenced, there was little for men to do until the end of the run. But doctrine required that Storrs remain on the bridge during his pilot watch—in which time he was also the captain. He roused from a period of angry lip-gnawing and said, “How about fixing us some chow? God only knows when we’ll get our next chance to eat, and He isn’t passing the information on.

  “Right-o.” West heaved his bulk out of the navigator’s chair and started aft.

  His body dragged at him as he went down the companionway and along the passage to the galley. There was, of course, no sensation of the ten gravities under which Merlin hurtled Earthward. The Emetts acted equally on every object inboard, and normally to the internal gyrogravitic field which furnished weight. But sometimes he wished the latter weren’t kept at the standard Earth g. One of the few things he really liked about the asteroids was the sense of buoyancy on a rock where pull generators had not yet been installed. It was almost like being young again.

  Oh, stop kidding yourself. Also stop feeling sorry for yourself. He squeezed into the galley and got to work. Herdships always carried a gourmet assortment of food, as one means of keeping up morale on their long, lonely cruises. West enjoyed exploring the potentialities, whenever his turn came to cook. And he had the honor of his country to defend
as well, against that ancient canard about English cuisine. Usually he built the sandwiches as elaborately as any Dane. But today his mind was elsewhere.

  How much risk are we obliged to run?

  Under the law, a transporteer crew had the right to refuse a task as being too dangerous. Afterward they would have to face a board of inquiry, and Beltline might well decide to fire them. Would I honestly mind that? In this particular instance, though, they’d probably be cleared. Merlin represented a considerable investment. The company’s cost accountants would not be happy if she were lost. In fact, if the isonitrate was simply released into space, a moderately expensive sailship could also be saved.

  However, that might well embroil Beltline in legal action, considering how much economic damage Earth ould suffer. No one could hold anyone responsible for the sun’s picking this day to flare. But a lawyer could argue that Beltline’s agents had made no effort to rescue the situation, and therefore a whopping claim should be paid. Earth’s SCC might be put under pressure to rescind the terrestrial franchise. A protracted court battle, even if won, would doubtless prove more costly than two ships and three men.

  West shook his head. That’s another thing I don’t like about the Republic. They can brag as much as they want about free enterprise, but it still amounts to the rawest, most cold-blooded kind of capitalism. Maybe the welfare states on Earth have gotten stuffy and overbureaucratized—nevertheless, we don’t let the devil take the hindmost!

  He put the food and a pot of coffee on a tray and went forward. Storrs was busy with a slide rule and some bescribbled sheets of paper. He grabbed a sandwich with an automatic “Thanks,” and chewed as he worked on. Rations, to him, were only fuel; West and Golescu never looked forward to his turn in the galley.

  “What’re you doing?” the Englishman asked.

  “Trying to figure if we can’t boil off some of the liquid as we tow, so gradually that it won’t affect space too much, so fast that we’ll shed noticeable mass. But hell and sulfur! I don’t have the thrust parameter. Not knowing what sort of tugs we’ll have available—How about hitching that Bailey character to the load and cracking a whip over him? A big wire whip hooked up to five hundred volts A.C.”