Dark Star (15 page)

After all, bringing the alien aboard had been his idea. He had had to fight for it over the objections of the others, who had insisted that alien-gathering wasn't part of the
Dark Star
's mission. But he'd persisted.

So in more than one way, the alien was his responsibility. He almost put the dart back. Almost. Then he grew determined and slipped the innocuous-looking little sliver of metal into the chamber.

Any feelings of concern he might have retained for the Beachball had been effectively negated by its several deliberate—yes, deliberate—attempts to kill him.

It made no difference to Pinback that the alien might have had nothing of the sort in mind, because it didn't have enough room in its mind for something like premeditation. He was going to be revenged—revenged for everything the unmentionable blob of sickening protoplasm had done to him. This time it was going back into a cage for good.

Of course, there was one minor drawback in the use of the emergency tranquilizer. He had no way of knowing whether it would even work on this particular example of otherlife. It might only make it mad.

Pinback checked to make sure the dart was seated in the chamber of the compressed-air pistol and that the air charge was up to power. The dose might also prove fatal. There was only one way to find out.

The alternative was simply to blast it to organic powder with the laser, but Pinback's fury hadn't gone quite that far yet. Better to give it some sort of chance.

Besides, he was afraid of the laser.

Snapping the chamber closed and raising his arm carefully, he took aim at the oscillating spheroid.

"Now it's time to go sleepy-bye, you worthless piece of garbage."

He pulled the trigger. A short puff from the gun and the dart struck square in the center of the alien.

There was an unexpected loud whooshing sound, and the alien shot violently toward him. Pinback ducked frantically, raising his arms to ward off the seemingly vicious charge. Then he straightened uncertainly, aware that the alien had missed him by several meters.

It continued to roar around the room, accompanied by the whooshing sound of escaping gas, bouncing haphazardly off walls and ceiling. Its speed was beginning to decrease rapidly, and the whooshing noise decreased to a faintly obscene snicker. It came to an exhausted stop in a far corner

Pinback stared at it askance, then walked over. He bent over it and touched it. There was no repetition of the burning sensation he had received when he had tried to get the rubber mouse away from it.

He felt the limp object. There was a solid lump around the bottom, consisting of the clawed feet and contracted internal organs. But when he picked it up it hung wrinkled and sagging in one hand. It was, indisputably, dead.

Geez
, he muttered to himself. His anger was now as deflated as the alien. He hadn't really wanted to kill it. Just to knock it out and get it back in its cage.

Now it was pretty pitiful-looking, all collapsed in on itself, like a jellyfish washed up on a beach. Geez, he whispered again.

The worst part of it was, now they would never know how intelligent it might have been, because the specialists back at Earth Base would never have a chance to run their tests on it—and he'd never get his medal.

Nor would it look very good in the official reports. Not that Doolittle or Talby or Boiler would care. It wasn't part of their mission, as Doolittle had insisted. Boiler would probably find the sad state of the dead Beachball hilarious, after his own perverted fashion.

But it definitely wouldn't look good in the report. He could visualize the entry now:

"
Sergeant Pinback, in attempting to recapture one of the alien specimens—which he inadvertently allowed to escape—overdosed it with tranquilizer
."

Aw, nuts . . . dosage had nothing to do with it. It was the deadly hypodermic point that had done the damage. How was he to know that the alien would be so thin-skinned? He was no xenobiologist.

Besides, he could forgive a lot of things, but not that time when the alien had taken the broom away from him and beaten him to the floor with it. That was the last straw.

He pulled the tranquilizer dart out of the now-rough skin and examined it with new respect. It was a good thing the first shot had truck home. He could see the alien imitating this action, too, grabbing the missed dart and jabbing it into Pinback. He grinned slightly. That would have looked a danm sight worse in the reports.

"
Sergeant Pinback, in attempting to recapture one of the alien specimens, was tranquilized by said speciman and placed in a cage
."

Why was he berating himself, then? The alien had brought this on itself. Hadn't it nearly killed him in the elevator shaft? Why was he always tearing himself down?

He'd just done a good—no, a brave thing, going back in after a semi-intelligent alien that had nearly killed him. Yeah, Doolittle would be proud of him, and even Boiler might sit up and treat him with a little more respect.

He started back toward the alien-holding chamber with the dead Beachball in tow. Even so, he didn't think he would mention this little episode to his fellows right away. No sense overawing them with his inordinate courage too soon. He'd slip them the information in small doses.

As for the alien, the arts-and-crafts room was equipped for just about every hobby, and he'd never taken a crack at half of them.

Taxidermy, for example . . .

Boiler was checking out some jury-rigged repairs they had made on the electronic head. It had been damaged when their original living quarters had blown, and now there were subtle hints that it was not recycling their waste products properly.

Since everything on the
Dark Star
was recycled and reused, including all their food and drink, it was vital that this particular piece of equipment work properly.

Slipping his hand deep into the open wail panel, he felt around until he located the slot between the two pressure-activated reconstituters. Gently, he hunted for any hint of a loose connection.

Not all of the crew's "special" pictures decorated one wall in their temporary living quarters. There were a number of the finest on the walls in here. They provided a pleasing backdrop to his current activities.

He found himself thinking more and more often of women lately, despite all the preconditioning the psychometricians had laid on him—despite all the advanced autoerotic devices included on the
Dark Star
. He found himself seeing round shapes and curves where there should have been only sharp corners and flat sides. Found himself actually feeling warmth and blood where there was only plastic and indifferent current.

Found himself thinking of the party . . . that incredible party after they had won the conference championship. Found himself thinking of the last week on Earth, the final week before they entered solitary preparation for the mission, and of Diane . . . especially of Diane.

Tall, quiet, compliant, insecure, affectionate, indifferent Diane.

Wherever she was now, he wished her well.

None of the connections were loose. Maybe the monitors on the tubing linkup . . .

Everything had worked out so fine, so nice, so
natural
, to the point where he had even stopped thinking of going on the mission. They could replace him easily enough.

That beautiful, deep brunette . . . and then she'd gone back to "the older guy," the one she had "no serious relationship with." Just up and disappeared out of his life.

That made it easy for him to score high on the tests, easy to devote himself to becoming part of the
Dark Star
itself. He hadn't thought anything but cold, technological thoughts for a long time.

But lately . . . women. And especially a certain woman. Occasionally a part of him would stir with a violent internal tremor and cry,
Diane, Diane!

"Easy." A hand came down gentle, firm on his shoulder and his head snapped around, upward. "Easy, Boiler." Doolittle said it softly.

Boiler let his emotions simmer, quiet, evaporate. Then he eased his hand carefully out of the slot, began tightening the bolts on the panel.

"I can't find anything wrong with the reconstituters, Lieutenant. And the tubing connections seem firm."

"It's all right, Boiler. It's all right. Maybe it'll clear up. There might just be some accumulated blockage in the system. Let's go get something corrosive to eat and see if we can't clear it out."

Boiler looked up at him and then smiled ever so slightly—as much as he ever smiled. Both Talby and Pinback were certifiably nuts, but what about Doolittle? He couldn't figure the lieutenant out. What did Doolittle think about behind that Assyrian beard and Egyptian stare? What was he thinking about now, looking down at Boiler and not really seeing him?

Were they really on this last bomb run, the last run before they could start the long, lonely journey back to Earth? Or on some journey less profound and more internal—like Boiler's own?

He shook his head once and tightened the last bolt. Leaving the driver carelessly on the floor, he followed Doolittle up the near ladder.

His thoughts shrank to a tiny ball and normal emotions replaced personal ones as Pinback joined them.

"Hey, guys. Guys?" Pinback began brightly. "You know the alien? The Beachball? Well, it attacked me, guys! Twice, and I tried to tranquilize it but I ended up killing it. But not because of the tranquilizer. That's the interesting thing about it, you know?"

Doolittle led them through the door to the combination galley and dining room.

"Hey, yeah, this is a good idea, Lieutenant," he blabbered. "I'm kinda hungry, too. Well, anyhow, I shot it with the tranquilizer gun and it just spewed out gas like crazy and shot around the room like a punctured balloon. I guess its insides were mostly just that, plain old gas. It was just filled with gas."

This information was not met with a barrage of questions on the part of Doolittle and Boiler.

"Hey, guys, how could it live and just be filled with gas?"

"I wonder what we got to eat today?" Boiler grumbled.

"I thought I was gonna die. I was hanging to the bottom of the damned elevator for twenty minutes."

"Probably chicken again," Doolittle theorized. He had long suspected that the menu for the
Dark Star
had been planned by more than one colonel.

"I probably saved the ship," Pinback continued excitedly. "Why, that thing might've . . ."

The kitchen-dining area was not very big. The men were not required to eat their meals there; it was merely suggested, since the area was equipped with powerful suction devices and cleansers that gleaned every drop of spilled food for reconstituting.

There were a couple of seats and three blank walls facing a fourth. That wall contained machinery as complex as anything on the bridge or up in the astronomer's dome. Concentrated food was prepared here, waste products finally recycled into new food and drink.

". . . could have done some real damage!" Pinback finished.

Boiler was down now, really down, after his internal outburst of a few moments ago. "God, I'm really sick of chicken."

It was beginning to dawn on Pinback that his account of an overwhelming victory over the rampaging forces of alien malignancy were generating something less than an ecstatic response on the part of his audience. He folded his arms and retreated into the inevitable pout.

"Well, if that's the way you feel about it, then I just won't talk about it anymore."

"Hey, that sounds like a fine idea, Pinback," Doolittle observed. He moved to the service oven and punched the
DINNER
call switch three times in measured succession. There was a click, a quiet whirr that lasted for several seconds, and then the door slid aside.

Doolittle peered in, wrinkling his nose as he got a whiff of the heated liquids inside.

"Chicken," he muttered. He thumbed another switch and the door closed. Once more he activated the call button thrice. Another buzz, another whirr, a different smell.

"Ah, ham." Either the machine had finally learned to read their discontent or else they had simply gotten a break. Why so much chicken had been programmed into their diet was beyond Doolittle's imagining.

Actually, the only difference between the "chicken" and "ham"—or steak, seafood, or meat loaf they were offered—was in the artificial flavoring, since they were constantly consuming the same basic series of protein-carbohydrate-sugar solids. And since all the liquid concentrates looked the same, the psyche boys no doubt concluded that taste variety was important.

Why, then, this unnatural preponderance of processed fowl? Doolittle suspected that, like everything else on the
Dark Star
, there was a kink in the kitchen computer too. But that was one piece of instrumentation he didn't want to chance fooling with. Not as long as it kept them alive.

Attempts at reprogramming the flavoring in their food might result in even worse offerings. They might get oyster stew for a month, something that had happened several years ago. Doolittle had nearly starved. He did not like the taste of oyster stew, or the look of oyster stew, or the smell of oyster stew.

Unquestionably, Doolittle was afflicted with an anti-oyster bias rooted deep in childhood neuroses.

That didn't increase his fondness for chicken, however.

Thirty years of schooling come to this, he mused. A superbly trained technician and here he was, his mind reduced to debating the demerits of chickens and oysters. God, the workings of a technological society!

Talby was the only one who didn't care. To Talby, food was so much fuel, something that distracted him from his primary task of observing the universe. Something to be gotten over with as fast as possible. A necessary if irritating activity, like going to the john or sleeping.

Juggling the three packages because of the heat, he removed them from the oven and handed one each to Boiler and Pinback.

"Dinner, fellows."

"Chicken again?" Pinback asked, staring doubtfully down at his package.

"Almost, but no—ham for a change."