Silent Running (8 page)

Lowell stared at them in outrage, then at Dewey.

“What’re you doing? You just threw down three kings!”

He swallowed and burst out, “You’re nuts—do you know that?”

Dewey did not let on, did not even bleep. “Well, your hand is obviously dead. Huey, let’s see what you’ve got here.”

Lowell looked at Huey’s hand.

“Well, he’s got trash,” he went on. “So—obviously, I’m the winner with three sevens.”

Lowell reached to gather in the pot.

“I’m sorry! Thank you, boys. You’ve got to be quicker than that. You’ve got to get up early in the morning to beat old Freeman. Let me tell you—” He flashed a cocky smile at them. “Very early in the morning.”

He gathered up the cards.

“Now, we’ll play another hand and I don’t want any mistakes.” He stared hard at the drones. “It’s up to you, you know. We’re not playing for any old three-in-one oil here, you know.”

He dealt the cards, then leaned back.

“Okay—now Dewey, you take two.”

The drones bleeped to one another.

“Hey, just a minute,” Lowell protested. “What’d I say about talking between you guys? Come on, that’s not fair.”

The drones bleeped again.

“I’m here all by myself,” Lowell went on. “And you guys talking between yourselves. Now stop it. That’s a house rule—no more talking!”

He demanded, “How many cards do you want? Huey, you just saw what the man did that last hand and you don’t want any cards?”

Huey took no cards, and remained quiet.

“You don’t want any cards? Dealer takes two.” Lowell faced the little drone. “All right, Huey—what have you got?”

Huey put down a full house.

In the dead silence of the careening
Valley Forge,
Lowell stared at Huey’s hand. Suddenly a terrible loneliness engulfed him. He saw the body of Wolf being rolled into his grave. He felt the coldness of the button that he’d pressed, sending Barker and Keenan to their doom.

Suddenly, wild laughter burbled from Lowell’s lips. It was the maniacal laughter of a man in deep trouble with himself.

“How about that?” he shouted, and choked, and laughed again. “That man has a full house and he knew it.” Lowell rocked in his seat and stared up. “Huey didn’t need any cards—he had a full house and he knew it—!”

Lowell’s laughter went on and on. It was uncontrolled and hysterical amidst his loneliness with only the companionship of the unfeeling drones. His eyes watered and his lips trembled and his laughter filled the recreation room and spilled out over the bronzed hull of
Valley Forge,
drifting through space under a sea of stars.

At last Lowell fled from the recreation room to the corridor and then to his room. He flopped on his cot . . .

Above his bed, on a shelf, a calendar clock read:

04:02 Tuesday 8 April

 NINE 

W
hen Lowell awakened the next morning, he was restless and grumpy. He had slept in his suit and it was wrinkled and soiled. The memory of the card game lingered like a nauseous fog in his mind, and the loneliness seemed intensified.

The drones whirred to life, and stood waiting.

Lowell, unshaven and without his shower, groped into the corridor with the drones’ feet making funny squeaky noises along the floor.

Following the corridor, Lowell made it to Main Control, with Huey and Dewey close behind.

For a moment, Lowell stared at the radio switch then seated himself before it. Hesitating an instant, he finally flicked it on.

Static instantly filled the room, and then wave on wave of empty roaring. But, as Lowell worked the tuner, he heard something else.

He turned the volume up higher, then higher still. He was sweating now and straining to hear. But whatever the sound, it remained elusive, uncertain. It might have been a voice, two voices, even three, or none.

Leaving the radio on, Lowell rose to go to the kitchen seeking fruit, but there was none.

He hesitated a moment, then took a prepared tray of synthetic food from the dispenser, deciding to eat it in Main Control.

The drones who had come ambling in, turned to follow.

Lowell walked into the room packed with communication equipment and sat down to eat and listen. Though he paid close attention, nothing but static came through. It got to him. In disgust, he rose. He was tired of sounds—the wrong kind of sounds—and tired of the food he’d picked from the dispenser.

With a sweep of his arm, he brushed it to the floor, and swung to the drones. “I’ve actually been eating this junk,” he exclaimed. “Come on, let’s go to the forest and get some real food.”

Leaving the radio on, he lead the way toward the tunnel.

Entering the forest, followed by Huey and Dewey, he ran a hand over his stubbly face. “Need a shave and some sleep,” he managed, trying to explain away the depression that dogged him.

But suddenly Lowell stopped in his tracks, signaling Huey and Dewey to do likewise. “Stop—don’t move,” he cautioned.

Something was wrong. He took several tentative cautious steps away from Huey and Dewey, listening carefully.

Forest noises could still be heard, along with the falling of water. Birds chirped and flapped their wings. Insects buzzed, but somehow everything was different. The noises were muffled as though the malaise that gripped Lowell might have been passed on to them and the other life of the forest.

Lowell became suddenly aware of deep trouble. He stared about him, almost in disbelief, at the once-beautiful, wildly colored flowers.

“They’re dying!” he exclaimed. “The colors are fading, their leaves stiffening and turning brown!”

He rushed to look more closely, expertly checking the wilting plants. A panic seized him. After all he’d gone through, to have the forest go this way!

He plunged his hand into the dirt and sifted it through his fingers. It told him nothing.

Lowell ran on into the garden, calling, “Dewey, follow me.”

All around him the fruits and vegetables lay dead or dying. Apples shriveled on their branches. Cantaloupes withered at his feet. Lowell surveyed the area with mounting despair.

Suddenly in a fit of anger he began tearing plants from the ground, throwing great chunks of earth skyward.

At last, exhausted, he rose to stagger back to his room. In front of him stood his microscope and other equipment. To his left and right, in wild disorder, lay specimens of plant life he had brought in. Some were well, some sickly.

Behind him, Huey and Dewey whirred quietly.

Lowell made some slides of his withering garden plants, working deftly, quickly, but with an eroding despair seeping through him.

He put a slide in place and bent to the eyepiece of the microscope. Magnified thousands of times, he saw many amoebalike organisms swimming on his field of vision. There was much extremely interesting and beautiful cellular activity.

Lowell studied the slide carefully, and that dirgelike drumbeat came again. There seemed to be nothing identifiable.

“Huey,” he said, without looking up, “go get me that gray book.”

Taking the book from Huey’s manipulator arm, Lowell quickly leafed through the pages until he came to the section he was looking for. Finally, he came to a section of the book with large color photographs.

Quickly he read the accompanying text, then rose to pace the room.

“I never—” He shook his head. “I just cannot figure out what’s wrong.”

He turned back to his lab desk and expertly prepared another slide from a segment of plant root. He clipped it under the microscope.

Once again the extreme magnification revealed the fascinating patterns of cellular activity.

Finally, Lowell pulled away from the microscope. Frowning and perplexed, he picked up the book and again began to read.

Hours later, his head dropped to his desk. He slept but the problem remained unsolved.

Lowell slept through the night, with Huey and Dewey standing by, their motors whirring quietly.

At length, he stirred, then awakened. It took a moment for him to remember, then it all came flooding back.

Lowell pushed the book he’d been studying the night before aside and rose to face the drones.

“ ’Morning, boys . . .” He shook the cobwebs from his head. “Huey,” he said, “go to the dome entrance and wait for further instructions.”

Huey turned to waddle from the room, his feet making that same squeaky noise along the floor.

“Dewey,” Lowell said, “go to the kitchen and bring me something to eat—anything. And bring it to me in Main Control.”

Dewey turned to follow Huey.

Lowell swung around and for the first time in days began to clean himself up.

At length, clean-shaven and in a fresh suit, he entered Main Control. Going to the radio he turned the volume up. Static again filled the room—the same as yesterday’s, crackly with only the faintest sound of what might have been human voices. It was impossible to tell. It irritated Lowell.

He walked out of Main Control into Drone Control, just off the big room.

Huey’s screen showed empty. Lowell sat down, frowning. He’d told him to await orders at Dome One entrance.

Then suddenly Huey’s image came on his screen.

It irritated Lowell, but he let it go by, as Dewey came in with his breakfast of a tube of coffee and several cookielike cubes.

Lowell took the tray and set it on the console, then gingerly tried the coffee. With a grimace he put it down, and turned to the microphone.

“All right, Huey, you can explain later where you’ve been. Now, I want you to enter the dome and make a slow . . . complete . . . three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn.”

Huey’s image on the screen complied.

“That’s a boy . . . Now hold it . . . stop, right there.”

Huey obeyed.

“That’s good, now just . . . now take a sample there.” Lowell paused a moment and said, “Dewey and I are coming to the dome. Wait right there!”

Before Lowell could turn from the screen, he saw again the desolation of the forest. Trees stood bare-branched and dying. On the ground, two small animals fought for a morsel of food.

Lowell sprang to his feet.

“C’mon Dewey,” he said. “Looks like we’re going to have to find something to feed them.”

He led the way down to the cargo hold and to one of the cars. He put Dewey in, and slid behind the wheel.

Suddenly, on impulse, and with that same uptight feeling gnawing at him, Lowell jammed the throttle to the floorboard. They raced through the cargo hold and to the tunnel entrance.

With a wild screeching of tires, they shot into it, and there stood Huey!

“Huey!” Lowell slammed on his brakes, but it was too late.

The car plowed into the little bronze-colored drone, knocking the cap off his manipulator, and sending him tumbling backward to the floor.

Crackling fragments flew in every direction. His body continued to whir crazily.

“Huey!” Lowell leaped from his car. “I thought I told you to stay in the forest.”

Huey gave a feeble bleep.

Lowell tenderly gathered the broken fragments of Huey’s body into his arms. Weeping, he placed them in the car beside Dewey.

Dewey tried to help. Lowell, breathing heavily, pushed him aside. “Okay, Dewey, I got it. I got it.” He deposited the little drone in the car.

“Maybe you’ll rest a little easier.” He got behind the wheel. “Now for a little ride.”

It seemed ages to Lowell before they could get to surgery. But finally, he carried the shattered drone with all his pieces into the room and placed him on the operating table.

For a moment, while Lowell began collecting his tools, things clicked into focus for him. He became acutely aware of his ship floundering through space, and of his buddies dead by his hand. Now, he’d crippled one of his two remaining “friends.”

He brought a black bag with his tools back and stood beside Huey. He laid them on the side table, and a tight smile crossed his anxious face.

Had it all been worth it? He wondered: the killing of three men, and now smashing Huey. Did Earth really care? Would they even want the trees and plants? Wolf’s words came back: “They don’t care any more, Lowell.”

But suddenly Lowell recalled his dying garden, depending on him and him alone for help.

He picked up a wrench and swung toward Huey. He collected the pieces of broken drone in a pile.

“It’s okay, Huey,” he said. “Hold steady—now.”

Lowell soldered some pieces on and tightened some bolts.

To Dewey, helping, he said, “Hit that again—there! Now, let’s look.”

Huey tried to move, but only bleeped softly.

Lowell shook his head.

“Dewey,” he said. “Go get me that L arm circuit wrench.”

Lowell bent down to tighten a hidden burr.

Huey flinched. A part of his mechanism sagged against his tin body.

“I understand,” Lowell said gently. He grasped a soldering iron and fastened some screws. He tightened more bolts, the wrench making a whirring noise that filled the little room.

At length, he stepped back.

“Try your arm, Huey. Try it, hard.”

Huey tried, but his manipulator arm dangled beside him. He could not raise it effectively.

Lowell looked at him. “I’m sorry, Huey,” he managed. “But that’s the best that I can do.”

He began to put his tools away, then turned to the little green drone. “I tried, but that’s all I can do for him, Dewey.”

He turned again to Huey, and made another adjustment.

“Now, Huey, try again.” But it was no better.

“Now, it’s just not, just not working,” Lowell sighed. “Just not able to grasp anything, or rise.”

Dewey’s bleep was deep and concerned.

“Again, Huey?” Lowell asked. “If it works this time . . .” The arm still would not come up. Lowell shook his head in sorrow.

“I have tried . . . everything.” His voice dropped to a whisper of despair. “Everything, and I just don’t know what the trouble is!”

For moments, there was dead silence, while the
Valley Forge
slipped on and on.

Huey just stood there, whirring crazily.

Dewey hadn’t moved, but his motor idled smoothly.