Futures Past (10 page)

  
"I meant could you, personally, get me a job. You see, Doc, it's that application through channels that is the whole trouble. Doc, I haven't got a single degree."

  
Before Mathewson could make any reply to this startling bit of information he was talking again.

  
"And I suppose you've been wondering why I didn't try for White Sands. Well I did, but I couldn't get a look in. Not even as a very junior technician. Security wouldn't pass me," he said bitterly. He was probably thinking of the things they were doing at that heaven of rocket technicians, where they had chucked chemical fuels entirely because, it was whispered, they had an atomic motor a-building that was suitable for use in a spaceship, though its completion and tests would take a few years yet. He hurried on, "But don't think it was anything political. It wasn't, though they thought so. They wanted to trace me back to the cradle to check up. It was unheard of that anyone as well up in technical subjects as I undoubtedly was could be without at least a few degrees. They wanted to know what universities and what colleges I had attended. Science, in this modern age, is a highly complicated and specialized affair. Did I expect them to believe that I got all this knowledge just by reading books? All right then, what primary school had I attended?

  
"I wouldn't tell them so I got the push."

  
To give himself time to take this in Mathewson started to rearrange the hood of his parka. Finally he coughed and said, "And did you pick up all your gen from books?"

  
As soon as he uttered it he knew it was a stupid question, but it was the only one he could think of at the moment.

  
Allen shook his head. "My education was the same as thousands of others back home, though I knew what I wanted to be and specialized almost from the beginning. But I just can't tell you where I got it." His voice became almost inaudible. It must have cost him an effort to get out the last sentence, "for . . . well . . . strong personal reasons."

  
Mathewson couldn't see his face, but he could imagine it burning hot with shame and embarrassment, and wondered what tremendous scrape the other could have got himself into to make him act like this. Still, it was none of his business. And, if you looked at it properly, there really wasn't a problem at all. He spoke, choosing the words carefully.

  
"This is all very unusual. The important thing though is your ability and not your past life. I have a good idea of your character generally, so I think it would be possible to give you a position there." Talking like this made Mathewson feel like a stuffed shirt. He stopped, and then in his more normal tones said, "Buck up, Buster. We'll fiddle it through somehow. It'll be all right."

  
Allen said, "Thanks, Doc," very softly, and that was all. But into those two words he put something that made the other sure that he'd just done the greatest good deed of his life. It was an altogether pleasant sensation.

  
At their hut, while they were hanging up the snow-shoes, Allen paused and looked up at that glorious sky again. Mathewson joined him. "It's quite a sight, isn't it?" he said softly.

  
The other could not have heard him. He murmured, "It's a terrible thing to be homesick, Doc," and turned quickly to enter the hut.

  
As the present job would finish in two days this seemed a strange remark to come off with, but when they had bunked down just before going to sleep, Allen came up with an even stranger one. He said, "Do you remember when I was checking our course on top of that drift, and you said I must have been a boy scout? Doc, what is a boy scout?"

  
He seemed quite serious about it, too. Mathewson didn't know what to think. He told him to shut up and go to sleep or he'd crown him with something.

  
Next morning Allen talked about nothing but Woomera.

  
"All right, all right. So he made a neat contact." The major was growing impatient. "But I don't want a whole history. You wangled him the job—by going over my head when I turned him down—and he settled in. Then what? How did he convert you, or was it money?"

  
"No. It wasn't money, and he didn't 'convert' me either. It wasn't anything like that at all." Mathewson sighed. The other seemed to have a one-track mind.

  
"Oh, so he just asked you nicely for the ship and you gave it to/him, just like that." Turner's tone was bitingly sarcastic. "What's a spaceship more or less between friends sort of thing, is that it?"

  
"Yes, something like that." The doctor waited for the shock wave of the inevitable explosion to hit him.

  
Turner rose half out of his seat and stiffened in that strained position while his face reddened and a vein in his temple started a measured throbbing. His eyes were pure murder. He opened his mouth, but the explosion didn't come. He eased back into the chair and said dully, "Tell me about the first time he asked for it." Then recovering himself somewhat, "And don't take all day."

  
"It was one night about three months ago. I had asked him to stay with us over the weekend. The project looked like it would be finished eight months ahead of schedule. Incidentally, this was due to the amazing work put into new engine designs by Allen, and by his ability at bug-suppressing generally, as anyone here will tell you. We were taking it easy. My wife had taken the children to the pictures and we were just loafing around and talking. He began to get more and more nervous and restless, but I didn't mention it. We were discussing the effect of acceleration on some of the more sensitive valves—they are practically foolproof, of course, but we were being morbid. He kept suggesting improvements, and alternative layouts, just as he did when that refrigeration problem came up. And the time when we bogged down on the venturi linings and he ended up by inventing that new alloy that stayed at white heat for two hours before it softened. These suggestions were like the others, wild, unheard of, and impossibly simple—and, when we'd screwed up enough courage to try them, quite workable. I told him to please, please stop. Most of the radio equipment was already installed and it would mean tearing it all out again. He was undoubtedly a genius, but hadn't he improved that ship enough already? Anyone would think he was taking the thing out.

  
"It was meant to be a joke, but he shut up like a clam for more than ten minutes. Finally he said, "Who is going to take her out, Doc?"

  
"That," I said, "is information to be divulged to nobody until the day before takeoff, it is classified, it is top secret, but it is too utterly hush-hush for words. It has been entrusted to only two people on the site, the chief security officer and myself. But anyone will tell you it's Ellison." "Ellison." He appeared disappointed somehow. Then, "He's the logical one, I suppose, but . . . Doc, I want to go."

  
"I think I just gaped at him for a bit. There might have been two, or just possibly three people on the site who wouldn't have sold their souls to be able to take off in that ship, but the job of piloting rockets is a highly specialized one, one for which the final exams have yet to be set. He couldn't even fly a plane. But I thought I knew how he felt.

  
"Suddenly he started talking, rapidly, his voice was low and deadly in earnest. 'I can do it, Doc, you can believe me. I've experience you don't know about, lots of it, I've got to go out. Why do you think I nearly killed myself to get this job here when White Sands turned me down, and all those gadgets and improvements I "suggested" and had built into the ship, when I could have been pulling in a fat salary? I wanted to impress the high-ups, I wanted to be indispensable, the only person who really knew the ship. But because I never flew a jet I get the brush-off. Don't you think I could have learned easily if I'd known it was necessary? You don't have to be able to ride a bike to drive a car. These last two years that has been my only aim in life, the only aim, to get out into space again . . .' He bit the sentence off and froze, slowly going pale.

  
" 'I'm awful sorry, old man. I had an inkling how you felt, you know, and I suggested you for the job, but—if you want to hear a very unfunny joke I can tell one. They thought you too valuable to risk in a . . .' Then it penetrated. 'Again!' What do you mean 'again?' "

  
"He was quiet for a long time. I could see he was trying to make a difficult decision, the sort that one's life depends on. They don't come any harder than that. Then he made up his mind.

  
" 'I had hoped this would be unnecessary, Doc, but this place . . . security, red tape, restrictions, screening . . . I'm lost. I just can't cope with it all. I thought when I was forced down two years ago in north Ontario everything would be all right. A bit difficult at first maybe, but just a matter of time. I had the language, of course, that was part of my job, and I had a good idea of the high stage of technological development of the place, so things looked rosy. True, my ship was in little pieces, all of them at the bottom of a lake, with all the communicating gear, but with my ability I should be off here in no time, I thought. Well, you can guess what happened. When we met on the South Pole job I'd about given up hope, but now ... listen to that a minute!'

  
"The radio was turned on low, a request record program. An old disc of that indestructible crooner was spinning. The voice, warm, friendly, and frankly sentimental, was singing,'... winds are the gustiest, the roads the dustiest, the friends the trustiest, way back home . . .' There was a lot more, about green hills and cool streams and long, sweet-smelling grass rippling in a hot summer breeze, and boyhood memories of . . . Oh, that song had practically everything. He went on.

  
" 'That song puts my feelings across better than I can, but it doesn't say half of the . . . the . . .' He stopped, at a loss for words, then blurted out, 'Oh, Doc, I want to go home."

  
"Allen confessing he was an extra-terrestrial shook me. But somehow I wasn't really surpri—"

  
"Stop!" The major's voice was unrecognizable. "That's enough." The others came bolt upright, three of them said, 'Extra-terrestrial!' in perfect unison, and somebody else whispered, 'He's mad.' Controlling himself with difficulty Turner silenced the incipient uproar and continued.

  
"Now you want us to believe Allen wasn't even human —a man from Mars or maybe Venus. That's silly. You know as well as I do what conditions are on those planets. And that ship is only an orbital rocket, it couldn't even reach the moon, much less ... But why do I bother wasting my breath, you aren't even trying to be reasonable in your story. Let's have it straight: Where did he come from, and what was his purpose?"

  
"He didn't tell me where he came from—-I don't think he was allowed to." Mathewson could see the major going red again, and hurried on. "But it was definitely an extra-solar planet. He didn't intend going in the rocket. That was to be used merely to take him to the parent ship based on Titan. Small ships can't mount overdrive . . ." One of the technicians muttered, "Anybody knows that," and shook his head dazedly. ". . . or he might possibly have used it to go directly home. His job was a minor one. While the rest of the party did their research on the outer planets he was sent here to look the place over again and find out roughly how soon we would get into space, so that their race would know when to expect contact if the work on Titan took longer than planned. If we already had space travel, no matter how crude and inefficient the method, they would have been bound to contact us and obtain permission to occupy the satellite. But as we hadn't even left the Earth, and their project would take at the very longest only a little over three years, this was unnecessary, and we were left in blissful ignorance.

  
"He was given eight months to do the job. The first six went in brushing up on the language; even with his training this was a little difficult. He knew it already, of course, but the recordings he'd studied back home had been made and translated during the original survey, and were sixty-odd years out of date. The remaining two months were spent in digging up and relaying to the mother ship as much information as was possible without actually landing. There was some spare time when that chore was finished, so he decided to risk a landing. This was strictly forbidden and very definitely contra-regs, of course, but he liked the look of the place and he wanted to pick up a few souvenirs.