Progress Report by Alex Apostolides and Mark Clifton (best thriller books to read .TXT) π
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"You mean the army wouldn't know, after the ship got up, whether it was ours or the enemy's?" the senator asked incredulously.
"There are meteors in space, Senator," Jennings said carefully. "Radar contact is all we'll have out there. The IFF mechanism reconverts our beam to a predetermined pulse, and it bounces back to us in a different pattern. That's the only way we'd know if we were still on the ship, or have by chance fastened on to a meteor."
"What has that got to do with the enemy?" O'Noonan asked uncomprehendingly.
Jennings sighed, almost audibly.
"The mechanism was developed during the war, when we didn't know which planes were ours and which the enemy's. We've simply adapted it to this useβto save money, Senator."
"Humph!" the senator expressed his disbelief. "Too complicated. The world has grown too complicated."
"Beep, six."
The senator glanced irritably at the time speaker. It had interrupted his speech. But he chose to ignore the interruption, that was the way to handle heckling.
"I am a simple man. I come from simple parentage. I represent the simple people, the common people, the people with their feet on the ground. And the whole world needs to get back to the simple truths and honesties...."
Jennings headed off the campaign speech which might appeal to the mountaineers of the senator's home state, where a man's accomplishments were judged by how far he could spit tobacco juice; it had little application in this bunker where the final test before the flight of man to the stars was being tried.
"To us, Senator," he said gently, "this ship represents simple truths and honesties. We are, at this moment, testing the truths of all that mankind has ever thought of, theorized about, believed of the space which surrounds the Earth. A farmer may hear about new methods of growing crops, but the only way he knows whether they're practical or not is to try them on his own land."
The senator looked at him impassively.[109] Jennings didn't know whether he was going over or not. But he was trying.
"All that ship, and all the instruments it contains; those represent the utmost honesties of the men who worked on them. Nobody tried to bluff, to get by with shoddy workmanship, cover up ignorance. A farmer does not try to bluff his land, for the crops he gets tells the final story. Scientists, too, have simple honesty. They have to have, Senator, for the results will show them up if they don't."
"Beep, five."
Five more minutes. The sudden thought occurred to O'Noonan: what if he refused to press the dummy key? Refused to take part in this project he called tomfoolery? Perhaps they thought they were being clever in having him take part in the ship's launching, and were by that act committing him to something....
"This is the final test, Senator. After this one, if it is right, man leaps to the stars!" It was Jennings' plea, his final attempt to catch the senator up in the fire and the dream.
"And then more yapping colonists wanting statehood," the senator said dryly. "Upsetting the balance of power. Changing things."
Jennings was silent.
"Beep, four."
"More imports trying to get into our country duty-free," O'Noonan went on. "Upsetting our economy."
His vision was of lobbyists threatening to cut off contributions if their own industries were not kept in a favorable position. Of grim-jawed industrialists who could easily put a more tractable candidate up in his place to be elected by the free and thinking people of his state. All the best catch phrases, the semantically-loaded promises, the advertising appropriations being used by his opponent.
It was a dilemma. Should he jump on the bandwagon of advancement to the stars, hoping to catch the imagination of the voters by it? Were the voters really in favor of progress? What could this space flight put in the dinner pails of the Smiths, the Browns, the Johnsons? It was all very well to talk about the progress of mankind, but that was the only measure to be considered. Any politician knew that. And apparently no scientist knew it. Man advances only when he sees how it will help him stuff his gut.
"Beep, three." For a full minute, the senator had sat lost in speculation.
And what could he personally gain? A plan, full-formed, sprang into his mind. This whole deal could be taken out of the hands of[110] the military on charges of waste and corruption. It could be brought back into the control of private industry, where it belonged. He thought of vast tracts of land in his own state, tracts he could buy cheap, through dummy companies, places which could be made very suitable for the giant factories necessary to manufacture spaceships.
As chairman of the appropriations committee, it wouldn't be difficult to sway the choice of site. And all that extra employment for the people of his own state. The voters couldn't forget plain, simple, honest O'Noonan after that!
"Beep, two."
"Son," he said with a ringing thrill in his voice. "Mankind must reach the stars! We must allow nothing to stop that! No personal consideration, no personal belief, nothing must stand in the way of mankind's greatest dream!"
His eyes were shrewdly watching the effect upon Jennings' face, measuring through him the effect such a speech would have upon the voters. He saw the relief spread over Jennings' face, the glow. Yes, it might work.
"Now, son," he said with kindly tolerance, "tell me what you want me to do about pressing this key when the time comes."
"Beep, one."
And then the continuous drone while the seconds were being counted off aloud.
"Fifty-nine, fifty-eight, fifty-sevenβ"
The droning went on while Jennings showed the senator just how to press the dummy key down, explaining it in careful detail, and just when.
"Thirty-seven, thirty-six, thirty-fiveβ"
"Major!" Jennings called questioningly.
"Ready, sir."
"Professor!"
"Ready, sir."
"Three, two, one, ZERO!"
"Press it, Senator!" Jennings called frantically.
Already the automatic firing stud had taken over. The bellowing, roaring flames reached down with giant strength, nudging the ship upward, seeming to hang suspended, waiting.
"Press it!"
The senator's hand pressed the dummy key. He was committed.
As if the ship had really been waiting, it lifted, faster and faster.
"Major?"
"I have it, sir." The major's hands were flying over his bank of controls, correcting the slight unbalance of thrusts, holding the ship as steady as if he were in it.
Already the ship was beyond visual sight, picking up speed. But the pip on the radar screens was[111] strong and clear. The drone of the IFF returning signal was equally strong.
The senator sat and waited. He had done his job. He felt it perhaps would have been better to have had the photographers on the spot, but realized the carefully directed and rehearsed pictures to be taken later would make better vote fodder.
"It's already out in space now, Senator," Jennings found a second of time to call it to the senator.
The pips and the signals were bright and clear, coming through the ionosphere, the Heaviside layer as they had been designed to do. Jennings wondered if the senator could ever be made to understand the simple honesty of scientists who had worked that out so well and true. Bright and strong and clear.
And then there was nothing! The screens were blank. The sounds were gone.
"It shut! It shut off!" Major Eddy's voice was shrill in amazement.
"It cut right out, Colonel. No fade, no dying signal, just out!" It was the first time Jennings had ever heard a note of excitement in Professor Stein's voice.
The phone began to ring, loud and shrill. That would be from the General's observation post, where he, too, must have lost the signal.
The excitement penetrated the senator's rosy dream of vast acreages being sold at a huge profit, giant walls of factories going up under his remote-control ownership. "What's wrong?" he asked.
Jennings did not answer him. "What was the altitude?" he asked. The phone continued to ring, but he was not yet ready to answer it.
"Hundred fifty miles, maybe a little more," Major Eddy answered in a dull voice. "And then, nothing," he repeated incredulously. "Nothing."
The phone was one long ring now, taken off of automatic signal and rung with a hand key pressed down and held there. In a daze, Jennings picked up the phone.
"Yes, General," he answered as though he were no more than a robot. He hardly listened to the general's questions, did not need the report that every radarscope throughout the area had lost contact at the same instant. Somehow he had known that would be true, that it wasn't just his own mechanisms failing. One question did penetrate his stunned mind.
"How is the senator taking it?" the general asked finally.
"Uncomprehending, as yet," Jennings answered cryptically. "But even there it will penetrate sooner or later. We'll have to face it then."
"Yes," the general sighed. "What about safety? What if it fell on a big city, for example?"
"It had escape velocity," Jennings answered. "It would simply follow its trajectory indefinitelyβwhich was away from Earth."
"What's happening now?" the senator asked arrogantly. He had been out of the limelight long enough, longer than was usual or necessary. He didn't like it when people went about their business as[112] if he were not present.
"Quiet during the test, Senator," Jennings took his mouth from the phone long enough to reprove the man gently. Apparently he got away with it, for the senator put his finger to his lips knowingly and sat back again.
"The senator's starting to ask questions?" the general asked into the phone.
"Yes, sir. It won't be long now."
"I hate to contemplate it, Jim," the general said in apprehension. "There's only one way he'll translate it. Two billion dollars shot up into the air and lost." Then sharply. "There must be something you've done, Colonel. Some mistake you've made."
"That's the way it's going to be?" he stated the question, knowing its answer.
"For the good of the service," the general answered with a stock phrase. "If it is the fault of one officer and his men, we may be given another chance. If it is the failure of science itself, we won't."
"I see," the colonel answered.
"You won't be the first soldier, Colonel, to be unjustly punished to maintain public faith in the service."
"Yes, sir," Jennings answered as formally as if he were already facing court martial.
"It's back!" Major Eddy shouted in his excitement. "It's back, Colonel!"
The pip, truly, showed startlingly clear and sharp on the radarscope, the correct signals were coming in sure and strong. As suddenly as the ship had cut out, it was back.
"It's back, General," Colonel Jennings shouted into the phone, his eyes fixed upon his own radarscope. He dropped the phone without waiting for the general's answer.
"Good," exclaimed the senator. "I was getting a little bored with nothing happening."
"Have you got control?" Jennings called to the major.
"Can't tell yet. It's coming in too fast. I'm trying to slow it. We'll know in a minute."
"You have it now," Professor Stein spoke up quietly. "It's slowing. It will be in the atmosphere soon. Slow it as much as you can."
As surely as if he were sitting in its control room, Eddy slowed the ship, easing it down into the atmosphere. The instruments recorded the results of his playing upon the bank of controls, as sound pouring from a musical instrument.
"At the take-off point?" Jennings asked. "Can you land it there?"
"Close to it," Major Eddy answered. "As close as I can."
Now the ship was in visual sight again, and they watched its nose turn in the air, turn from a bullet hurtling earthward to a ship settling to the ground on its belly. Major Eddy was playing his instrument bank as if he were the soloist in a vast orchestra at the height of a crescendo forte.
Jennings grabbed up the phone again.
"Transportation!" he shouted.[113]
"Already dispatched, sir," the operator at the other end responded.
Through the periscope slit, Jennings watched the ship settle lightly downward to the ground, as though it were a breezeborne feather instead of its tons of metal. It seemed to settle itself, still, and become inanimate again. Major Eddy dropped his hands away from his instrument bank, an exhausted virtuoso.
"My congratulations!" the senator included all three men in his sweeping glance. "It was remarkable how you all had control at every instance. My progress report will certainly bear that notation."
The three men looked at him, and realized there was no irony in his words, no sarcasm, no realization at all of what had truly happened.
"I can see a va-a-ast fleet of no-o-ble ships...." the senator began to orate.
But the roar of the arriving jeep outside took his audience away from him. They made a dash for the bunker door, no longer interested in the senator and his progress report. It was the progress report as revealed by the instruments on the ship which interested them more.
The senator was close behind them as they piled out of the bunker door, and into the jeep, with Jennings unceremoniously pulling the driver from
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