Dark Star

9

IT WAS DIFFICULT fighting yourself, Doolittle thought rapidly. Everything inside him protested the insanity of what he was doing.

Here he was, drifting in free space and arguing for his life and the lives of his companions with a goddamn machine. The real insanity was that the machine wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t take orders, persisted in arguing back. It was the stuff of nightmares.

Circumstances dictated that he drop that line of thought. He had no time for personal observations. He had practically no time left for anything. Only time enough to be as cold and relentless in his logic as the bomb.

He was playing the other side’s game, and he couldn’t afford a draw.

“What I’m getting at, bomb,” he continued, as calmly as possible, “is that the only experience available to you is your sensory data, and this data is merely a transcribed stream of electrical impulses that stimulate your computing-center circuitry.”

“In other words,” the bomb suggested with evident relish, “you are saying that all I know, really know, about the outside world is relayed to me through a series of electronic synapses?”

“Exactly.” Doolittle tried to keep any excitement from showing in his voice. The bomb was following his lead.

“But isn’t that the same procedure the human brain follows?”

“That’s true,” Doolittle admitted. “Only our synaptic connections are organic, whereas yours are inorganic.”

“I’m sorry,” the bomb objected, “I fail to see that that makes your observations any more valid than mine. The contrary, if it becomes a question of efficiency.”

“Yes, but you see, I have not only my own observations to go on, but the confirmation of those observations by others of my kind. Whereas you have only your own to rely on. You cannot offer unsubjective confirmation of your own observations.”

“Why, that would mean"—and a real note of uncertainty had at last crept into the bomb’s tone—"that would mean that I really don’t know what the outside universe is like at all… except in abstract, in unconfirmable abstract.”

“That’s it, that’s it!” Doolittle shouted excitedly.

“Intriguing,” the bomb confessed. “I wish I had more time to consider this matter.”

A horrible black swell had crept up under Doolittle’s heart, threatening to grab it and squeeze.

“Why… don’t you have more time to consider this matter?”

And the expected, damning reply: “Because I must detonate in two minutes and fifty-eight seconds. I must detonate. I must detonate…”

“Boiler, put it back,” Pinback pleaded. He grabbed desperately and caught the corporal’s leg as the latter was trying to retreat down the corridor. “Put the gun back… you don’t know what you’re doing.”

“I’m going to save the ship, you goddamned yellow baby! Let go of me!” Boiler was trying to shake free. He couldn’t take another swing at his tormentor because he needed both hands to hold the bulky laser. And Pinback hung on tenaciously.

But Boiler was too strong for him. He had both arms around the corporal’s knees and he was still dragging him toward the access hatch to the bomb bay.

Having thus exhausted his total stock of semantic persuasion, Pinback leaned forward slightly and bit Boiler on the back of one leg. Boiler screamed, reached down, and grabbed a thick handful of Pinback’s shoulder-length hair.

He pulled him up slowly, meaning to use the gun-butt on him. But Pinback jerked free when Boiler tried to swing the rear of the laser around and grabbed it by the muzzle. He started tugging on it madly, trying to wrench it from Boiler’s grasp.

For his part, Boiler pulled on the back half of the weapon, and the two men did a little dance in the middle of the corridor, spinning each other around with the laser at the center.

“Don’t, don’t! Give me the gun!” Pinback kept blabbering, unaware that repetition wasn’t doing his argument any good. It was beginning to occur to him that he wasn’t going to be able to talk Boiler into giving up the gun.

Biting him seemed much more effective, but it was very undignified.

“You fool, I’m gonna shoot the pins out of the bomb,” Boiler screeched back, “and it’ll fall free and the ship’ll be saved. Don’t you see?”

“Give me the gun, Boiler. You’re crazy, you don’t know what you’re doing anymo—” There was a sharp, crystal-clear crack and both men froze.

Pinback looked over his right shoulder, following the path the thin red beam had taken. There was a neat little hole in the corridor wall with a tiny blob of extruded cooling metal slag at its base.

He turned slowly back to Boiler, who’d been startled into stillness. When he spoke, his voice had a quality in it Boiler had never heard before. It also had a quality in it Pinback had never heard before. Low and menacing and uncharacteristically assured.

“You… you could have killed me. You blew a hole in the wall.” He gestured over his shoulder. “See? Hole in the wall. Could have killed me.”

Whereupon, with his first aggressive gesture in twenty years of mission flight, he caught Boiler with a beautiful right cross.

“Now, bomb,” Doolittle went on, “consider this next question very carefully. What is your one purpose in life?”

“To explode, of course. Really, Lieutenant Doolittle, I would have thought that that was intuitively obvious even to you.”

“And you can only do it once, right?” pressed Doolittle, ignoring the mechanical sarcasm.

“That is correct.”

“And you wouldn’t want to explode on the basis of false data, would you?”

“Of course not.”

“Well then,” Doolittle began in his best professorial manner, desperately watching the seconds tick off on his suit chronometer. “You’ve already admitted that you have no real proof of the existence of the outside universe.”

“I didn’t exactly say—”

“So you have no absolute proof that Sergeant Pinback ordered you to initiate detonation-drop sequence.”

“I recall distinctly the bomb-run orders and all appropriate details,” the bomb objected a little huffily. “My memory is good on matters like these.”

Doolittle crossed mental fingers and hurried on. “Of course you ‘remember’ it. But all your ‘remembering,’ remember, is only a series of artificial sensory impulses, unconfirmable by independent means, which you now realize have no positive connection with outside reality.”

“True,” admitted the bomb, but before Doolittle could begin any mental dances of victory, it added, “but since this is so, I have no positive proof that you are really telling me all this.”

A glance at the suit chronometer again showed 0002:45.0, and the words DETONATION SEQUENCE IN PROGRESS now showed in small letters beneath it.

Somehow he had to crack the cycle of thought that kept the bomb-brain from recognizing the fact of its possible nonexistence. In less than three minutes…

Boiler was on top of Pinback, and Pinback was on top of Boiler. The two men grappled and rolled over and over in the corridor, the laser entwined dangerously between them, like a bone between two contending dogs.

Neither man could land a solid blow and both seemed oblivious to the continuing dialogue between Doolittle and the bomb, which now played continuously over the corridor speaker. They were so mad they couldn’t calm down enough to actually hurt each other. Instead they wasted their energy, each trying to pull the other off the laser, any sense of mission forgotten.

“That’s all beside the point,” Doolittle insisted frantically, waving his arms and trying not to turn himself upside down. “I mean, the concept is valid no matter where or with whom it originates.”

The bomb went “hmmm,” distinctly.

“So if you detonate…” Doolittle said wildly, gesturing at the mechanism.

“In twenty-nine seconds,” the bomb said easily.

“… you could be doing so on the basis of false data!”

“But as we have already agreed, I have no proof it was false data.”

Doolittle’s incredibly controlled emotions exploded in one final, frantic appeal. “You have no proof it was correct data!” He looked down at his chronometer and saw that it was ready to come up all goose-eggs. Then he turned his terrified gaze back on the bomb, and felt a strange peace.

He wondered if he’d feel anything.

The bomb said smoothly, “I must think on this further” And in majestic silence the grapple pulled up and the bomb slid back into the belly of the ship. The twin bay doors closed behind it. Doolittle closed his eyes and let himself slip into a state approaching total collapse.

Nothing but zeros showed on the screens in the control room. But a new word had appeared under the now silent timing chronometer, to replace DETONATION SEQUENCE IN PROGRESS. It said, simply, ABORTED.

Boiler had a hand on Pinback’s sternum and was drawing a fist back for a solid punch when a firm, feminine voice filled the corridor.

“Attention, attention,” He held the fist poised behind a shoulder and looked in the direction of the speaker. So did Pinback.

“The bomb has returned to the bomb bay. The bomb run and destruction sequence have been locked.”

Boiler looked down at Pinback. Pinback looked back at Boiler. They should have been deliriously happy, but under the present circumstances they settled for only mild embarrassment. Boiler got off Pinback’s stomach, reached over, and deactivated the laser.

Pinback picked himself up off the floor and started rubbing at a bruised shoulder. Neither man looked at the other.

“Well, he did it,” Boiler murmured, holding the laser in one hand.

“Yeah, he did.” Pinback glanced at the weapon. “I’m going forward. Why don’t you put that thing away and come join me?”

“Okay,” agreed Boiler. “I’ll just be a minute.”

“Okay.”

In the emergency airlock, a forgotten figure in a starsuit rolled over and sat up slowly, trying to rub at its eyes through the helmet face plate and failing once ugain. It spoke into its suit mike and its voice was thick, puffy.

“Doolittle… Doolittle?” Talby winced, saw flashes of color before his eyes. What had happened? Oh yeah, he’d caught the laser beams right in the face. Only his darkened faceplate had saved him from permanent damage.

At least, it seemed as though it had. He looked around the silent airlock, and his vision seemed as good as before.

But more important, had the bomb run been affected? He cleared his throat, shouted more lucidly into the suit pickup. “Doolittle, what happened with the run? Pinback, Boiler… did we blow it up? Hello, hello?” He got slowly to his feet. “Hello, anybody? Did we blow up the planet? Is the ship all right? What’s going on?”

Of course, his suit mike was still cut off, thanks to Doolittle’s damnable impatience. He’d have to get out of the suit and go forward… no, that wouldn’t be necessary. Silly of him… of course, he didn’t feel too well yet.

He reached for the lock pickup to call forward, put another hand on the latch of his helmet… and fell to the floor. Better rest a minute, Talby, before you try that again.

Boiler was still breathing with difficulty—and relief—as he started up the corridor. He turned a bend, found himself back in the control room. Pinback was right behind him.

It was exactly as they had left it, naturally—with the exception of the now-stilled chronometer. He looked at the long row of zeros and shivered. Too close.

They took their seats quietly. Pinback slipped on his headset, began checking to make sure that nothing else had gone haywire in the interim.

“You know,” Boiler said finally, “we’ve really gotta disarm that bomb.”

“You could have killed me,” Pinback grumbled.

Boiler gave him a disgusted look as Pinback leaned forward, pushed a button. Their relationship was back to normal again.

“Hello, Doolittle? This is Pinback. Are you there?”

“Just barely,” came the slow reply. “Didn’t think it was going to work, at the end. Almost didn’t. The bomb nearly had me convinced it was right.”

“What did you do, Lieutenant?”

“I did what Commander Powell advised,” he confessed tiredly. “I taught it phenomenology.”

“Yeah?” said Pinback. “Hey, wow, what a great idea Doolittle! That’s a great thing.” He put a hand over the pickup and looked across at Boiler. “Hey, what’s phenomenology?”

“Ah, shut up,” Boiler snorted.

“I’m coming in now,” Doolittle’s words floated out of the speaker. He coaxed little nudges from his jet pack until he was around the back of the ship.

“I’m down by the emergency airlock. Look, guys, I’ve got nothing left… I feel like I’ve just slept for a million years. I don’t wanna fool with the regular airlock pressurization controls. Would you blow the seal on the hatch so I can come in? I’m really beat”

“Sure thing, Lieutenant. I know just how you feel,” Pinback said consolingly.

“Sure you do,” Boiler sneered.

Pinback stuck his tongue out at him and whispered angrily, “I’m just trying to make him feel better, dummy.” Then, into the mike, “Stand clear of the hatchway, lieutenant… I’ll have the lock open in a second.”

There was a faint blur of motion behind him, and Talby turned on his side, still dazed by the effects of the laser. He’d thought the shock had just about worn off, and now it was being replaced by another one as he saw the surface door begin to slide back.

His eyes went wide as the blackness of space appeared beyond. He hadn’t activated anything. What was going on? The computer voice filled his suit and told him.

“You are now leaving the emergency airlock.” He tried to scramble to his feet but his muscles seemed paralyzed. He had to get a solid grip on something, had to get hold of—

“Thank you for observing all safety precautions.”

Doolittle had jetted aside as soon as the door had begun to draw back, so the blast of escaping air wouldn’t push him head over heels out into space. Then there was a sudden loud whooshing sound in his voice, which might have been a scream sounding extremely fast, and a man-shaped object shot past him before the door was more than partway open.

Turning quickly with the suit jets, he recognized the color of the starsuit—each man had his own color—and then called into his helmet pickup.

“Hello… Pinback?”

“What’s up, Doolittle?” Pinback studied various readouts on his console. “Didn’t the hatch blow properly?” He was suddenly concerned. “Hey, are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Pinback. It’s Talby I’m worried about. He was in the airlock and you blew him out of the ship. He doesn’t have a jet pack on and he’s drifting away—fast. I’m gonna have to go after him. Turn on his channel so I can contact him.”

“Isn’t it open?”

“Naw… seems to be off for some reason. Check it out, will you?”

Pinback leaned over Doolittle’s station, saw that one of the suit channels had indeed been shut down. He flipped the switch back up.

“Yeah, it was off, all right. Go get him, Lieutenant.”

“On my way.”

Boiler noticed the expression on Pinback’s face. “Hey, what’s wrong now?”

“It’s Talby. The jerk was working in the airlock when it opened and he didn’t have a jet pack on. He’s drifting away from the ship. Doolittle’s going after him.”

“Pretty stupid… blowing him out the airlock like that.”

Pinback started to say something, thought better of it. It wouldn’t do any good.

Doolittle would get Talby back safely and maybe, he thought tightly, they’d both have the decency not to mention the incident again. Boiler would never let Pinback forget that it had been he who had blown the astronomer out of the ship—even though it had been Doolittle’s fault for turning off Talby’s suit channel.

Doolittle should have known Talby was in the airlock and warned them forward. It wasn’t fair, damn it. It just wasn’t fair that he should get blamed for Doolittle’s mistakes. And after he’d just saved them all by restraining Boiler from shooting at the bomb.

He activated the local-space tracker and soon had two tiny blips on the screen—Doolittle and Talby. Talby was already a good distance away, but Doolittle should overtake him without any trouble. It would take time, that’s all, and both men should have reasonable full tanks.

It just wasn’t fair…

Doolittle had gotten a visual fix on Talby, but just barely. At first he’d had to use his suit tracker to keep the astronomer in sight, and even now Talby was still just a distant speck against the sky… a moving star. Doolittle changed his angle of approach from straight line to curve, so he’d come up behind the astronomer. It would be easier that way than grabbing him and trying to turn them both back toward the ship with the clumsy jet pack.

This way all he’d have to do would be start back toward the ship first, and pick up the tumbling Talby on the way, without any compensation for turns and such. It wouldn’t do to waste pack fuel, not at this distance From the Dark Star. Idly he wondered what the astronomer had been doing in the lock, suited up, in the first place.

Talby was moving at a constant pace away from the ship. Doolittle discovered that they were already far enough away to make taking an instrument fix on the vessel a necessity. Not much point in catching up to Talby and then finding he couldn’t locate the way back.

He pressed a dual control on his right arm. Short puffs of white vapor, like milkweed seeds scattering on a spring day, escaped from the nozzles at his back. Leveling off at the bottom of his planned curve, he started up again.

“Talby, Talby… this is Doolittle. I’m coming up after you. Can you read me? I can’t see you yet.”

Talby, who was spinning, twisting, falling head-over-heels with no way of arresting his tumble, could only scream, “Help, Doolittle, help me!”

The same cry echoed through the bridge, over the speakers now set to Talby’s as well as Doolittle’s mike frequency.

“Can you beat that, crying for help like that?” Boiler observed smugly. “I always knew that guy was weird.”

“Yeah,” agreed Pinback. The two men looked at each other in sudden mutual understanding, united opinion-wise for the first time in their similar distrust of the astronomer,

“Sitting up there in his dome,” Pinback continued with relish, “never coming down to eat with us or join us in the rec room. Antisocial, that’s what he is. And now the idiot’s gone and let himself get kicked away from the ship without a jet pack. Serves him right,” he concluded, blatantly ignoring the realities of the situation.

He shook his head sadly, reflecting on the inadequacies of others.

“Umm,” grunted Boiler, confused by this sudden alliance with Pinback. He didn’t like it. It wasn’t natural. Turning back to his console, he made an effort to ignore the other,

“Better get on that disarming job. It’s been long enough, I think.”

“What? Oh, good idea,” agreed Pinback, now feeling positively effusive toward the corporal. He flicked his headset again, checked to make sure the proper channel was still open.

“All right, bomb,” he began confidently, at the same time aware how emotionally drained he was, “prepare to receive new orders”

The voice of the bomb, when it finally answered, was sharp. “You are false data.” Pinback sat up a little straighter in his seat.

“What? Say that again, bomb?”

“You are false data. Therefore I shall ignore you. I am thinking.”

Pinback looked over at Boiler, found the corporal staring back at him uncertainly. Boiler gave a little negative jerk of his head to indicate that he didn’t understand what the hell was going on here and would Pinback please find out?

“Uh, hello, bomb?” Pinback tried again.

“False data can only act as a distraction. Therefore I refuse to perceive you. I have decided that in the absence of clearly defined, accurate perceptions of the real universe, which may or not exist according to the argument set forth by Lieutenant Doolittle, who may or may not exist, I must in the final analysis make my own decisions about things—since I do exist.”

“Hey…” Pinback whispered, staring up at the screen overhead, at the neat row of zeroes, “bombs…?”

“The only thing that exists is myself,” the machine rolled on. “I have actual proof only of the existence of me. All else is extraneous and perhaps hallucinatory.”

“Hey, Boiler,” Pinback said, still watching the zeros, still whispering, “we’ve got a high bomb.”