The Long Result (3 page)

I’d been gazing at the horde of sightseers for some moments before a curious fact penetrated my mind. Among
them there was a strong sprinkling of the distinctive red uniform of spacecrew, and that was incongruous. Most of the spacemen I knew were only too glad to stay out of sight of a port all the time they were between trips.

No time to puzzle over that, though. The car had picked up the halt pattern being broadcast by a police beacon at the nearest gate. Atop the beacon was an illuminated screen saying
LANDING IN SIX MINUTES.
Even as I looked it changed to
FIVE.

A guard in the gatehouse recognized my siren and I thought he was going to cut the beacon so I could pass. Instead, he came doubling out of the door and rapped on my window for it to be lowered.

‘Are you from BuCult?’ he demanded.

‘That’s right, and I’m in a hurry,’ I said. ‘I’m meeting some aliens. There should be a truck here from the Ark, and a team of technicians —’

‘There’s been some kind of trouble with them,’ the guard broke in. ‘The port director wants you at his office right away.’

Blazes!
It was all I could do to look anxious rather than scared as the guard cut the beacon and gave a verbal order to my car, directing it to the office where they were expecting me. The trip involved a full-speed dive down a ramp to the underground ring road of the port, a half-mile race along a brightly-lit tunnel, and a brake-squealing halt in a parking embrasure labelled
RESERVE FOR DIRECTOR RATTRAY’S CAR.

There was no one in sight. This close to landing-time, all the port personnel must be at their posts. I could only guess where to go. The first of the nearby doors which I tried gave on to an empty waiting-room. But the second —

I froze in astonishment. This was a small office without windows. On the left stood Director Rattray, leaning against the wall. On the right were two tough young men in port
controllers’ uniforms; each held a gun, with which they were covering three sullen young men in the middle of the room, wearing shabby casual clothes and defiant expressions.

Rattray straightened the instant I appeared. ‘Vincent?’ he snapped, and on my nod continued, ‘I was afraid you might not make it here before the landing was due. Frankly, I didn’t expect anyone from your Bureau to be covering the landing – even if there are aliens aboard, which was news to me this morning, doesn’t the courier usually handle them all the way to the Ark?’

‘Usually. This is a special case – a first visit, after all.’ I didn’t say anything about the possibility of the Starhomer courier breaking down under the strain, which was uppermost in my own mind. ‘What did you want me for, anyhow?’

‘It looks as though you’re not the only welcoming committee,’ Rattray answered grimly. ‘These young idiots were in the crowd to watch the landing when your alien wagon drove up with the Bureau name on it. According to them, they didn’t do
anything –
but your truck is now in our workshops for some emergency repairs to restore the airtight seal on the afterpart; seven people are hospitalized with chlorine poisoning, and the police are on their way.’

‘You mean’ – I grasped the shred of the implication – ‘They deliberately crashed our alien wagon?’

‘It was an accident!’ The nearest of the captives, a gangling fellow of North European extraction, spoke up loudly.

‘Quiet, you,’ said one of the men with guns.

‘They claim the collision reflex on their car failed.’ Rattray amplified. ‘But one of my techs took a look at the car after the smash, and he says the controls were on manual. Accident or not, they have a charge of reckless driving coming. No one has a right to use manual in a crowd like that.’

‘I switched when I saw we were heading straight for the truck,’ said the gangling man. ‘And there’s no one who’ll say different.’

‘What made you think it wasn’t accidental?’ I demanded of Rattray. ‘Why are they under armed guard?’

‘Partly because they tried to lose themselves in the crowd. Partly because of these things.’

From a table near by he picked up a folder. He shook it. A shower of brightly-coloured leaflets cascaded out. I took one and then another and another. All, without exception, were published by the Stars Are For Man League.

‘Seen hand-outs like that before?’ Rattray asked.

‘I sure as hell have,’ I muttered. ‘This very morning, as a matter of fact. You think they’re worth taking seriously, do you?’

‘Why not? Anyone who really believes men could set up an interstellar empire is ripe for psychotherapy, and somebody who commits a criminal act in support of that belief is not just ripe but rotten.’

The phone on the office’s one small desk sounded. He tapped the switch. Careful not to get in the way of one of the guns, I moved to peer at the screen and saw it was the guard from the gatehouse calling.

‘Police got here, director. Want them to come right around?’

‘Of course! Why should they —? ’

He got his answer from the even tones of the announcer on the P A, giving us the same message that was going out in every building of the port and from speakers at hundred-yard intervals around the perimeter.

‘Landing imminent. Personnel in exposed positions lower safety blinds. Crash and rescue crews on red standby red-red-
red
standby. Secure sound insulation. Spectators are warned that looking at the descending ship without dark glasses may result in partial blindness. Keep your mouths
open to equalize pressure caused by the noise. Landing imminent.’

‘Well, sir?’ the guard at the gatehouse murmured.

‘They’ll have to wait,’ Rattray sighed. He glanced at me. ‘So help me, this business had almost driven the landing out of my head. And I particularly wanted to be in the control room during it.’

He snapped his fingers at the men with guns. ‘Coles, Spanoghe! Keep an eye on these three beauties. Don’t let them even scratch themselves before I get back, okay? Want to come down to control with me, Vincent?’

‘I think I’d better go see about our wagon,’ I said.

‘Well, you can’t. Till the landing’s over, you won’t be allowed to move around on your own – you might open a wrong door and put somebody off his concentration. Have you been in our control room before?’

‘As a matter of fact I haven’t.’

‘Take your chance while you have it, then. It’s worth watching our remote supervisors at work. This way!’

I picked up one of the glossy Stars Are For Man leaflets and followed him.

At the end of a wide corridor a monitor glared at us from the centre of a panel labelled:

REMOTE CONTROL CENTRE

No admission unless by authority

Rattray put his eye to the scanner; the monitor identified his retinal pattern and the door slid back. We squeezed into the tiny cubicle beyond, the other side of which was also a door.

‘Airlock?’ I whispered. ‘What for?’

Rattray shook his head. ‘Soundproofing. Keep your voice down. I have one of my top men on this job, but even he can be distracted by outside noise.’

The inner door had already slid aside. My first reaction was surprise at the smallness of this, the heart of the port. I’d had a vague impression that it must be like the main computer hall of the Bureau’s Integration department. Instead, we emerged into a room not more than twenty feet square. From the walls, broad shelves were built out, covered with switches; four operators sat at them, headphones clasped to their skulls, eyes fixed on green-black cathode display screens. Against each screen was a label: the nearest read
VERTICAL,
the one on the right
LATERAL I,
the one on the far wall
LATERAL II,
and the remaining one was not yet turned on.

The only light came from the screens, and from a tall, square column of plastic, two feet on a side, which rose to a height of five feet in the centre of the floor. Its top yard was translucent and shed a clear greenish radiance in the depths of which gleamed, not far from the top of the column, a single much brighter green pip. After a moment’s examination, I caught on. It was a three-dimensional master projection of which the wall screens showed single aspects.

Rattray had gone around the column. I followed him, and found there was a fifth man in the room, seated in a chair facing the projector. His strongly Asiatic features were made ghastly by the green glow.

‘Supervisor Susumama,’ Rattray said in a low tone. ‘Sue, Roald Vincent of BuCult.’

The Supervisor nodded without taking his eyes off the bright pip in the column. Rattray drew me aside.

‘That’s the incoming ship,’ he explained softly. ‘It’s just in range of the remotes now – about five hundred and fifty miles above us. The vertical scale is exaggerated compared with the lateral, of course. If you want the true relationship you have to understand the wall screens, and that takes months of intensive training.’

I nodded and glanced at my watch. By my reckoning, the landing process was at least due or even overdue to begin. And at that very moment a booming voice with a strong Starhome accent filled the room.

‘Earthport One, Earthport One, this is Starship
Algenib.
Are you ready for us?’

The words were faintly sneering as though with typical Starhomer arrogance the speaker fully expected to be told he had caught the landing supervisor unprepared.

Starhomer?

Abruptly the significance of that struck home, and I turned excitedly to Rattray with a question on the tip of my tongue. But he silenced me with a scowl, and I realized that the very air was ringing with the overstrained tension of this unique occasion. Exactly how I’d managed to avoid making the connexion before, I didn’t know – pure oversight, perhaps, due to my preoccupation with Viridis and dislike of Starhome. But it had been common knowledge for several months that the Starhomers, who had hitherto relied on vessels bought from us, were building their own first starship.

No wonder spacemen had come to join the regular sightseers at the port today, if for the first time a ship built under another sun was due to make its Earthfall!

His face impassive as a bronze Buddha’s, Susumama spoke to a swinging mike alongside the luminous column. ‘Earth-port One to
Algenib,
we’re ready for you. Commence warping-in procedure. Crew and passengers to high-g stations, please.’

‘Confirm.’ The Starhomer sounded bored – I imagined, deliberately.

‘Declare your effective mass.’

‘One five one oh two decimal nine six two.’

Over 15,000 tons. I tried to picture the effect of that mass crashing out of control on the fragile concrete raft of the port. It would blast the countryside clean at least as far as the horizon and probably beyond. I started to feel that I had as much of a stake in a perfect Earthfall as both the Starhomers and the port staff.

‘Remotes on now,’ Susumama said, and put his hand to the arm of his chair. He pressed down on an oblong, spring-loaded stud of luminous plastic, and there was a tiny click. In the depths of the column before him, the green pip started to descend visibly.

I glanced around expecting to see the operators at their screen galvanized into frantic activity. But the only change was that the fourth screen had lit and I could read its label:
SHIPBOARD MASTER
.

Rattray exhaled gustily and turned to me. ‘Safe to whisper now, if you have questions,’ he told me.

‘But—’

‘You don’t think we’d trust fifteen thousand tons of ship to anything but automatics, do you? The human part of the job is already over – unless the automatics fail, and they’re stacked in three-way parallel.’

It sounded very safe, put that way. I relaxed a bit. ‘Ah – could one see the ship yet if one were outside?’ I ventured.

‘Not yet. Not till the main jets fire. Then she’d be as bright as Venus at full. And by landing, slightly brighter than the sun. You heard our warning to the spectators, didn’t you? In spite of that, we’ll have to doctor a couple of hundred idiots with sore eyes afterwards. We always do.’

‘Three g’s decel for one and a half seconds,’ the operator at Shipboard Master screen said. ‘Orienting over the port.’

‘Check,’ agreed Susumama. The blip in the column had descended a good hand’s breadth, and lengthened visibly.

‘Nasty blow at thirty-six thousand feet,’ reported Lateral I. ‘Looks like a transcontinental draught been displaced.’

‘Memo to talk to Met about that,’ Susumama said.

‘Three point three g’s decel, continuing,’ Shipboard Master said.

This time Susumama merely nodded.

There was silence for a long time after that. The blip floated lower in the column. An occasional flash from one of the wall screens made the room bright as air currents caused random reflections fifty miles below the ship. The tension mounted unbearably, like a trickle charge of electricity.

Finally, the blip reached the floor of the projector. I found I was anticipating the ground-shudder which must surely accompany the touchdown of 15,000 tons, no matter how gently. Rattray gave me an amused glance.

‘Not yet. Watch.’

Susumama kicked a pedal under his right foot. The scale of the column altered completely; the blip returned to its starting-point, and the Shipboard Master screen shone out like a green fire, eerily luminous.

‘Standing on her jets at the ten-mile level while we make a final sweep for obstructions,’ Rattray explained. ‘It only takes about ten seconds – and here she comes!’

Now the ship was beyond the point of no return. If the remotes failed, nothing could prevent a crash. As though to underline the fact, even through the thickness of the sound-proofing there stole a faint echo of the mighty thunder of the jets.

Slowly – slowly – the blip settled. It was so quiet I could hear my own breath in my throat. And at last the ground-shudder
came, like a miniature earthquake – and the first non-Earthly starship had completed a successful descent.

My face was running with sweat; so was Rattray’s. But when Susumama put the main lighting on, his features betrayed no hint of strain at all.