Pressure Man

Chapter Seven

Dom was having dinner with Doris the night J.J. called from DOSEWEX to order him to report to DOSEAST to testify in the matter of Larry Gomulka’s death.

It had been a nice evening. For once, Doris had no pressing problems involving the Kennedy. The shipboard computers were being installed and the components which were already in place were working beautifully. She was relaxed. She was ten pounds lighter than she’d been when she walked into the lab at DOSEWEX with travel dust still on her clothing. She was slim and elegant in her uniform. The lines around her eyes, which had appeared after Larry’s death, were fading. She looked younger.

The evening came about by accident. Dom happened to be walking past the lab when Doris decided to call it a day. Dom offered to buy her a drink and she accepted. They sat in the canteen and listened to music which was more for background than for listening, both of them comfortable without talking. When they did speak it was shop talk.

Dom suggested that they call Art and have a threesome for dinner. Doris agreed, and went to make the call.

“He’s tied up,” she said. “Have to be just the two of us.”

“I’m hungry enough to eat Art’s dinner, too,” Dom said. “Where? Here? The food’s not bad.”

“I’d like to be able to hear myself chew, or think, or talk, or whatever,” Doris said.

“That rules out the cafeteria as well,” Dom said.

“I’ll make the supreme sacrifice,” Doris said. “I have just two steaks left from the last ration. Real steaks.”

“Greater love hath no woman,” Dom said, rolling his eyes.

“I believe in buttering up my boss,” she said.

“I’ll pay you back, swear.” He held aloft a Boy Scout sign.

“Put it in writing.”

“You question the honor of an officer and a gentleman?”

“I learned to question the honor of officers, male officers, when I discovered that the chief engineer on my first ship had altered the combination to the palm lock on my cabin door,” she said.

Dom grabbed a napkin and wrote: “I owe Doris Gomulka one real steak.” He gave her the napkin.

“You didn’t sign,” she said.

He jerked the napkin back and scrawled his signature. “You are a person with very little trust.”

“Not where steaks are concerned.”

Doris’ quarters were on the frontside. Earth was almost full, low on the horizon. The richness of her, blue and white, made her a jewel in the sky.

“My God,” Doris said, halting as they entered to see the great living globe hanging there in the window.

“It’s always new, seeing it like that.”

“So beautiful,” she said. “You know, I’d like for all of them to be able to see that, to see how small and goddamned vulnerable she is, hanging out there. Maybe they’d think a little more clearly. Show them a closeup view of Mars, or Mercury, worlds totally inhospitable to man, and then show them that. How can anyone fight over anything so beautiful?”

“Actually, I guess, in a way, we’re the new nobility, so few of us have seen that.”

“Thank God you can’t see what we’ve done to her from up here,” Doris said. “Strip mines and underground nuclear tests and radioactivity in the air and sewage in the oceans. And she still manages to support all of us, after a fashion.”

“And only now and then strikes back with an earthquake or a drought,” Dom said, grinning.

“OK, cynic, you make the salad.”

The salad greens were grown hydroponically on the moon and were plentiful. The steaks were great treasures and were strictly rationed.

Doris put on a couple of antique music tapes, the sound turned low. They talked small talk, working side by side in the kitchen, having a pre-dinner drink. The steaks were cooked very, very carefully.

Doris ate with an eagerness which was fun to watch. She ate like a hungry man, no talk, no nonsense. Finished, she wiped her lips on her napkin and breathed a deep sigh of contentment. The few dishes were handled quickly, the washer turned on, recycled water doing the job. Doris poured brandy.

Earth was thirty degrees high, and to see all of her they sat side by side, facing the viewport, silent, the music soft and nostalgic. Dom had never felt better. The ship was coming along. The steak had been delicious. The brandy was one of the better synthetics. Doris leaned back, the long line of her throat a delicate curve. Her hair fell into sort of a frame for her face. She was wearing the short uniform. Her long legs were tanned by hours in the exercise room. She swung her crossed leg in time with the music.

There was something about the music which was very familiar, and they both noticed it at once. She had been humming quietly, now and then voicing a phrase, and he was aware of her as a woman. He had to clear his throat and look away.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve heard that one,” she said, as the song ended. It had been their song. They’d danced to it many times during the Academy days.

He stood. He had to move or he’d do something which they’d both regret. He stood beside the port, and Doris came to him. As she passed the player she turned the volume up slightly. Another old, familiar song was playing. He sensed her nearness, felt her brush against him.

“We danced a lot to that one, too,” she said musingly.

He looked down at her. Was it possible that she felt the same thing he felt? She was humming again, swaying her body to the music, looking up and out to peaceful-looking old Earth up there in the sky.

The music changed to upbeat. “Hey. I can’t stand that,” she said putting down her glass. She took Dom’s glass and put it down and lifted her arms. He took her hand and began to dance. He got the feel of it after a few steps and they reminded each other of the old steps, laughing as it came back. Fads in music and dancing changed so fast that Dom couldn’t always remember which type of dance went with which, but Doris was an authority.

The music went soft and slow. Dom felt the warning bells go off as she came into his arms, put her cheek to his, and began to dance, close, dreamy. She was a perfect fit, almost as tall as he, a size to cuddle in his arms. He had to remind himself that women looked on dancing as something almost impersonal. To Dom, slow dancing was hugging set to music. Women seemed to attach less sexual significance to dancing, but to Dom body to body while swaying with the music was just as thrilling as body to body under any other circumstance. Ah, she was good in his arms, and he didn’t turn loose as one song ended and another began. He turned his head slightly and kissed the smooth, soft curve of her neck. She sighed.

It seemed to happen naturally. Lips to lips, they stopped dancing and the kiss went on for eternity and there was promise in her response. He had wanted that kiss for so long, dreaming of it for all of the long years since he said goodbye to her and went off on his first trip to Mars.

“Stay down,” Larry yelled, bending quickly to trigger the detonator.

Dom broke the kiss, pushing her away. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Earth got in my eyes.”

“I know,” she whispered, leaning toward him. “I wanted you to kiss me.”

His heart leaped. He moved toward her. She put her hands on his chest. He looked into her eyes in question.

“I’m not saying no,” she said. She looked away, biting the corner of her lower lip in thought. “I want to be sure to say this right. First, it’s been a long, long time since you kissed me like that, and I liked it very much.”

“I hated it.” He grinned.

“But I think you were feeling the same thing I can’t help feeling when you pushed me away,” she said.

“I was thinking about Larry,” he admitted.

“Yes,” she said.

He turned to face the port and watched a surface crawler moving across his field of vision. He was still thinking about Larry. He tried to view the situation from Larry’s viewpoint, thinking of him as being out there, somewhere, able to look back and see what was happening. Problem: a young widow. Solution: a man, but not just any man, a man who would love her and cherish her. He turned to look down at Doris’ profile.

“Would you think I was being silly as hell if I said I think Larry would approve?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “He knew about you. If he was ever jealous of my, uh, having given myself to you first, he never said so.”

“I’d like to know what you think,” he said.

“I’ve been intimate with two men in my life,” Doris said. “And I loved you with a big love once, damn you.”

“I’ve loved you since the first time I saw you,” he said.

“But you loved space more.”

“Guilty, I suppose. I’m older now. We’re together.”

“There’s that to think about,” she said. “We’ve got a job ahead of us. We’re going to be in crowded quarters for months with others.”

“There is that,” he said.

“The lady is not saying no,” she said.

“Just wait a while,” he said. “We could get married.”

“We could.”

“But you’re not so sure?” he asked.

She sighed. “I feel like a silly and indecisive teenager.”

“Can you love me, again?”

“Oh, I’ve always loved you, too. As a young girl loves in the deepness of first love, as a sister loves, as a friend loves.”

“That wasn’t a friend or a sister kissing me a few minutes ago,” Dom said.

She laughed. “Dom, if you want to make love to me you’ll find a most willing participant.” She looked him straight in the eyes. “Do you want to?”

“Yes.” He shrugged. “All right, dammit, you must have infused me with your middle-class morality and your sense of responsibility. You are infuriatingly right and I hate you, you smart-assed female.”

“There will be time,” she said. “When we get back from Jupiter.”

“Years and years,” he said, kissing her lightly and pushing her away as she went molten in his arms.

Within twenty-four hours he was on a shuttle. He carried with him sworn depositions from Art and Doris, who could not be spared from the Kennedy project. Neil was supervising in-place static tests of electrical systems and the power plant. He resented being pulled away, leaving the team working, but he went down, roaring into the muggy atmosphere, noting double security at the Cape. He flew a carefully guarded jet to Washington.

The hearing was held deep inside the main DOSE installation outside the city. Dom made his statement and answered questions. Nothing new came out of the piles of paper which were the result of the hearing. However, Dom was reminded of the ability of the Firsters to penetrate the most secure installations.

Since all of the inside team of terrorists had been killed, there were unanswered questions. No one could suggest how the explosives were smuggled into DOSEWEX. It was possible that the traitor space marines could have done it, or one or more of the technicians who were Firsters.

J.J. expressed the doubt. “We are reluctant to admit that there might be high-level traitors among us. You and I, Dom, are more or less sensible men. We can think that it took someone with more clout than techs or marines to place so many Firsters on your lab team.”

“It was your office which cleared each one of them,” Dom said. They were having a meal in a secure hotel while Dom waited for a flight back to the Cape.

“My office,” J.J. said, “consists of more than just a room. It involves a couple of hundred people. They’ve all been investigated backward and forward, and I wouldn’t bet my life on the loyalty of more than a handful of them. Some minor clerk somewhere could influence a screening with a deft shuffling of papers. Someone in higher authority could bring pressure on people elsewhere to get a particular man into DOSEWEX. Personally, I don’t think the raid on the computer could have been planned without someone of at least administrative rank pulling strings, and that opens such a vast array of possibilities that I don’t dare start an investigation. One thing for damned sure, we’re going to have to be one hundred percent sure of every person aboard the Kennedy.”

“I should hope,” Dom said.

“We’re sure of so few,” J.J. said.

“Me, you, Art, Doris, Neil,” Dom said.

“Are we sure of all of them?”

“If we’re not, we’re in so much trouble we might as well give up,” Dom said. “I’ve been thinking a lot about the crew list, J.J. In addition to the basic five, it calls for a cook, a powerplant engineer, a survival-systems specialist, and a medical tech. I think we can weed the list down. We can take turns with the cooking. We can risk going without a medical tech. We’ve all been around enough to have learned basic medicine, first aid, treatment of minor ailments. If something major comes up a medical tech might save a life, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take. That would leave us needing only two people in addition to our hard core of five, an engineer and a survival-systems specialist.”

“I’ve been thinking along the same lines,” J.J. said. “Any suggestions for the two we need?”

“Paul Jensen and Ellen Overman,” Dom said.

“You’ve worked with both of them, I think.”

“I’ve been on two tours with Paul. He’s a damned fine engineer and he hates radicals of all sorts. The last time I was in touch with him he was going to ground on Mars to supervise the installation of a new generator. He said he was doing it because he got so goddam mad each time he came back home and saw what the world was coming to.”

“He’s still there,” J.J. said.

“Ellen was with me on the Saturn expedition and on one Mars run. She’s good at her job.”

“I’ll start the checks on them,” J.J. said. “What about Ellen? I know Jensen, but I know her only from her service record.”

“She’s the independent type, the complete woman. I don’t know a lot about her politics, because I wasn’t that close to her.”

“Would you personally vouch for both of them?”

“For Jensen, yes. I’d like to know more about Ellen. And I’ll qualify my vote for Jensen by saying that I’ll vouch for him as much as you can vouch for anyone these days. As far as his abilities go, I’d put my life in his hands in space.”

“You’ll be doing that if he’s chosen,” J.J. said. “Anyone aboard could abort the project or destroy it completely. You know how many ways there are aboard ship to do damage.”

Dom nodded. “Still, you have to have crew.”

“Have you had a briefing lately on the world situation?” He continued without waiting for an answer. “The Worldsavers are in complete control in China. They’re training an army. Japan is pulling out of space to avoid invasion from China. The government fell in the U.K. and the new prime minister has put both Worldsavers and Earthfirsters in his cabinet. France is tottering. Germany is going through the throes of repression of individual rights in an effort to wipe out the Firsters there. It’s civil war for all practical purposes. The Russians are compromising with their own Firsters. They’ve pulled five exploration ships out of space and are refitting them to carry phosphates.”

“And here?” Dom asked.

“It’s strangely quiet,” J.J. said. “There hasn’t been a major incident in months, not since the battle of DOSEWEX. It’s as if they’re mustering their strength. There’s the usual claptrap in the media and in Congress, but the killers are being quiet. A lot of people, including the FBI, are worried. Hedges reports to me from over there that several FBI plants have been exposed and killed in the last month. He thinks he has a top-level traitor right in the Washington office, and he’s working desperately to find out what’s going on. His private theory is that there’ll be one major push before we can take off for Jupiter.”

“Any guesses as to what kind of push?”

“Maybe revolution,” J.J. said.

“It’s that bad?”

“Take one small unit,” J.J. said, “that squad of space marines at DOSEWEX. It was fifty percent infiltrated. How many Firsters are in a company of the army? A dozen men could wipe out a company if they hit a barracks in the middle of the night, killing men who thought they were buddies.”

“You think armed revolution would succeed?”

“I don’t know. No one does, because we don’t know their strength. There are times when I feel that ninety percent of the population must be radical or radical in sympathy, but the great and unwashed masses are still a question mark. Would they support a radical armed revolution? In spite of what’s been done to democracy in the name of equality of opportunity and freedom from want, there just might be a strong, hard core of democracy in the masses. It’s impossible to guess how the public would turn. They hear political promises day after day, and day after day their food gets worse. They might buy the Firsters’ propaganda. Get the world out of space and the milk and honey will flow.”

“But, damnit, phosphates from Mars fertilize the fields which feed them,” Dom said.

“We know that. Tell it to a welfare bum in Detroit who wants real steak every day instead of once a month. The Firsters tell him they’ll develop better agricultural methods with the money now wasted in space.”

“Is anyone thinking of a preemptive strike against them?” Dom asked.

“We think about it, but they’re spread all over the country. They mass only for specific attacks, such as on DOSEWEX. They have no strong, individual leaders. They’re splintered. That’s the thing which has saved us so far. There’s almost as much blood shed in fighting between radical groups jockeying for power as in their attacks on the government. If they ever form a united front, it will be big trouble, and that’s one thing they might be doing now. If they were having internal consolidation meetings, that would account for the quiet.”

“I’ve got a flight to catch,” Dom said.

“There’s time,” J.J. said, looking at his watch. “Dom, when you get back, I want you to take charge of the security forces on the moon. Start a system of rotating teams, the membership changing each day at random. If they’re planning something there it might help break up their organization.”

“Will do.”

J.J. looked thoughtful. “You know, if we could just feed the world we’d break the radicals in five years. There’s a certain strength in what has often been called the average man. All he wants to do is live a peaceful and good life with enough food on the table to feed his family, good programs on the tube, a few luxuries. You know when this mess really started? It started when the shortage of petroleum took the citizen’s automobile away from him. That is the dominant factor in our current troubles. The automobile gave a man freedom. When he was at the wheel of his own vehicle, he could feel that he was in control of his own fate. He had freedom of movement. In his car, he was isolated from the world, freed of his worries. That’s when the discontent began, when the oil ran out. That left room for the nuts, the people who have such overwhelming egos that they think they’re more capable of running things than anyone else. They don’t care how many people starve, how many are killed. They just want to give orders. They want to instill fear in others. We’ve had them on Earth since the earliest recorded history, since Sargon the Conqueror, of old Ur. The power types. A kid reads two books and thinks he knows how to run the world. The idealists, the nuts, the sadists, the out-and-out psychos. They’re joined by shiftless malcontents who are interested only in loot and plunder. If we could feed the world there’d be support against them. We could use the common decency of mankind to overcome the Sargon complex and then man would be unstoppable.”

Dom arrived on the moon hours after two Earthfirsters died in a soundless explosion while trying to smuggle explosives into the shuttle area. He put J.J.’s orders into effect. Things were quiet for days. Kennedy was nearing completion.

The big boom came on a Sunday morning. It came in the form of a small freighter which had been Earthside for repairs. The incident demonstrated the most frightening penetration to date, for the small nuclear bomb aboard the freighter must have been placed there at Canaveral base.

The ship approached the lunar base on schedule, in contact with control, and veered off at the last minute to accelerate into a suicidal collision course with the Kennedy as she orbited, huge and vulnerable. A missile from the surface got the freighter while she was still far enough away so that the explosion did no damage to Kennedy. The flash lit the surface of the moon and blinded a few workers who happened to be watching the freighter.

The near miss inspired Dom. He knew that it was going to give J.J. a bad moment, for he did not want to risk compromising his plan through communications which could be intercepted. He stopped all flights from the moon to Earth and sent down the news that radical terrorists had destroyed an experimental ship, the John F. Kennedy. The news was greeted with public cheers and private gloom on Earth, and it brought J.J. on the next ship. He looked ten years older.

“How bad is it?” he asked, when Dom met him at the landing pad.

“J.J., I hated to do it to you,” Dom said. “She’s all right and untouched.”

J.J. used choice parts of a vocabulary built from years of service and, having let off steam, took a drink and whooped in relief. He had to admit that it was a good idea. Now there would be no further attempts on the Kennedy from Earthside and they merely had to control the underground members on the moon. He delayed sending down a one-man courier ship to give the correct story to top DOSE brass.

No calls were allowed to go out to Earth. Travel was frozen. Marine guards stood watch over all communications facilities, their individual members shifted in random patterns.

A ship carrying the two remaining crew members was allowed to land. Dom’s first choices had checked out. The engineer, Paul Jensen, was short, dark, a silent man in his fifties. Ellen Overman, life-systems specialist, was in her thirties, a tiny woman, small in every respect, but perfectly proportioned, dark-haired, brown eyes, a beautiful woman; she was talkative and thrilled at being a part of the project.

J.J. sent down word that the Firsters had destroyed the moon’s water supplies, built up over a period of many years and constantly recycled. A fleet of tankers began to arrive, supposedly to replenish the moon’s water supply, but actually to fill the Kennedy’s hold with water. It was against all common sense to take an untested ship into space with a full cargo, but as Dom continued to point out, she would work or she wouldn’t, and if she couldn’t carry a load of water she couldn’t go down into Jupiter’s atmosphere. The water would be a valuable bonus in the operation. Taking it to Mars would add only a few days to the trip, since the planets were in the proper configuration, and it would be a boon to dry Mars. The Kennedy’s cargo would represent a year’s supply of water for the planet.

Neil Walters pronounced the Kennedy as ready as she’d ever be without extensive in-flight testing. He, too, disliked carrying a full cargo, but he shrugged and said, “What the hell?” If she could fly at all the weight of the water was insignificant. She had enough power to lift a hundred times the weight without strain. If she failed, it would not be for lack of power.

J.J. called a briefing in his quarters. He was in field uniform. He had two comets on his collar.

Dom saw the new insignia. “Congratulations, admiral.”

“Just a belated recognition of ability, Flash,” J.J. said. “When we bring home the bacon I’m going to see to it that you get one of these little doodads.” He tapped a comet insignia.

“You’re all heart,” Dom said, remembering that it was J.J. who had refused his last chance at promotion because he’d happened to take a swing at a stupid and inefficient one-comet admiral.

“Meantime, you’re promoted to captain,” J.J. said. “You deserve it and the Kennedy deserves it. I wouldn’t want her to be commanded by a mere commander.”

The others arrived one by one. J.J. went through the chain of command aboard ship, although all were familiar with it already. Dom was in overall command. Neil was flying captain. J.J. was third in command, second to Neil in flying matters, to Dom in matters of ship’s operation and safety. When the briefing was completed, J.J. made a little speech. He concluded by saying that things looked good.

“We’ll announce the truth when we’re in space,” he said. “Right now the rads think their lousy suicides blew up the Kennedy. We’ve announced major cutbacks in the space program to give them another victory and, we hope, keep them quiet until we get back. We turned a billion and a half dollars back into the general fund. That made a big splash.”

“So we’re burning our bridges behind us,” Doris said.

“Exactly,” J.J. said grimly. “We bring home the bacon or we forget the space program. If we come back without it we’ll be cut down to the Mars fertilizer run, and that won’t last long before we’ll be forced to pull all the ships home and close down the Mars base. But it had to be done. We think they were on the verge of armed revolt, and we weren’t sure we could win. Now we’ve poured some oil on the troubled waters. They’ll think they have unlimited time now. And well come back with something which will knock them on their asses and have the whole world on our side.”

“I wish I could be as confident as you,” Dom said.

“I have to be confident, Flash,” J. J. said. “If I didn’t feel that way I’d strap on as much plastique as I could carry and walk into an Earthfirster rally and pull the pin.”