More Tales of Pirx the Pilot (23 page)

He puzzled over the incident in the little cubicle that Seyn had put at his disposal the night before, deliberately laying low so as not to intrude, especially since he was scheduled to lift off within the next twenty-four hours; but he couldn’t come up with anything, or at least not with anything he could report to the committee. He wasn’t forgotten, though; a few minutes before one in the afternoon, Seyn paid him a visit. Waiting in the corridor was Romani; Pirx, on his way out, didn’t recognize him at first. The coordinator of the Agathodaemon complex could have passed for one of the mechanics: he wore a pair of sooty, grease-stained overalls, his face was drawn, the left corner of his mouth twitched, and only his voice had a familiar ring. On behalf of the committee, of which he was a member, he asked Pirx to postpone the
Cuivier’s
lift-off.

“Sure thing.” Pirx, a trifle stunned, tried to regain his composure. “I just need clearance from Base.”

“Leave that to us.”

Nothing more was said, and the three of them marched over to the main “bubble,” where, inside the long, squat command HQ, sat some twenty or more experts—a few of whom were based locally, the majority having flown over from Syrtis Major. It was lunchtime, but since every second was precious, they were served a cold meal from the cafeteria. Over tea and paper plates, which lent the proceedings a strangely casual, even festive air, the session got under way. The chairman, Engineer Hoyster, called first on Pirx to describe the abortive landing, and Pirx could easily guess why. Belonging neither to the ground-control team nor to Agathodaemon’s crew, he was the only unbiased witness present. When he reached the point of his own personal intervention, Hoyster interrupted him.

“So you wanted Klyne to shift from automatic to manual override?”

“Yes.”

“Why, may I ask?”

“I figured it was his only chance,” Pirx answered without hesitation.

“Right. And you didn’t foresee that the shift to manual would mean a loss of stability?”

“It was already lost. This can be checked; we
do
have the tapes.”

“Naturally. We just wanted to get a general picture. What’s your own guess?”

“As to the cause?”

“Yes. For the moment we’re just piecing together the facts. Nothing you say will be binding; any hypothesis, however shaky, may prove valuable.”

“I see. My guess is that something went haywire with the computer.
What,
or even
how,
I couldn’t say. I wouldn’t have believed it myself if I hadn’t witnessed it with my own eyes and ears. The computer aborted the maneuver and signaled a meteorite alert. It sounded like ‘Meteorites—attention, full power ahead in the axis.’ But with no meteorites around…” Pirx shrugged.

“The
Ariel
was an advanced AIBM 09,” observed Boulder, an electronics engineer with whom Pirx had rubbed elbows at Syrtis Major.

Pirx nodded.

“I know. That’s why I said I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. But it did happen.”

“Why did Klyne hold back, in your opinion, Commander?” asked Hoyster.

Pirx felt his insides go cold; before answering, he cast a glance around the table. It was a question that had to be asked, though he didn’t relish being the first to face it.

“I don’t know the answer to that.”

“Of course not. But you’re an old-timer; put yourself in his place…”

“I did. I would have done what I tried to make him do.”

“And?”

“No response. A madhouse. Yelling, maybe. The tapes will have to be checked and rechecked, though I’m afraid it won’t do much good.”

“Commander,” said Hoyster, in a soft but painstaking voice, as if struggling to choose his words, “you realize the situation, don’t you? As we’re speaking, there are two more superfreighters, equipped with the exact same guidance system, on the Aresterra line. The
Anabis
isn’t due for another three weeks, but the
Ares
is nine days away. No matter what our obligations to the dead, we owe more to the living. I’m sure in the past five hours you’ve given some thought to the case. I can’t force you, but I’m asking you to speak your mind.”

Pirx blanched. He’d read Hoyster’s mind from his opening words, and a sensation, opaque, born of his nightmare, gripped him: an intense, desperate silence, a faceless enemy, and a double killing—of himself and the other. It came and went. He collected himself and looked Hoyster in the eye.

“I see,” he said. “Klyne and I belong to two different generations. When I was getting my wings, servo-mechanisms were more error-prone. Distrust becomes second nature. My guess is … he trusted in them to the end.”

“He thought the computer was in control, had a better command of the situation?”

“Not so much in control. More like, if the computer couldn’t handle it, a man would be even less likely to do so.”

He sighed. He’d spoken his mind without casting a shadow on his younger, now deceased, colleague.

“Was there any chance of saving that ship, Commander?”

“Hard to say. There was so little time. The
Ariel
dropped to zero velocity.”

“Have you ever soft-landed under such conditions?”

“Yes. But in a ship with a smaller mass, and it was on the Moon. The longer and heavier the ship, the harder it is to regain stability when you’re losing speed, especially if it goes into a list.”

“Did Klyne hear you?”

“I don’t know. He should have.”

“Did he ever override the controls?”

Pirx was about to defer to the tapes, but answered instead:

“No.”

“How do you know?” It was Romani.

“The monitor showed ‘automatic landing’ the whole time. It went off only on impact.”

“Could it not be, sir, that Klyne didn’t have time?” asked Seyn. Why was he “sirring” him when they were buddies? Hm. Keeping his distance, maybe. Out to get him?

“The chances of survival can be mathematically deduced.” Pirx was aiming for objectivity. “I just don’t know offhand.”

“But once the list exceeded forty-five degrees, stability was irretrievably lost,” insisted Seyn. “Right?”

“Not on the
Cuivier
it wouldn’t be. One can increase the thrust beyond the accepted limits.”

“An acceleration over twenty g’s can be fatal.”

“It can be. But a fall from five kilometers up
has
to be.”

That ended their brief exchange. Tobacco smoke hung under the lights, which had been switched on despite the daylight.

“Do you mean that Klyne
could
have manned the controls but didn’t?” This was the chairman, Hoyster, picking up the thread.

“It looks that way.”

“Do you think you might have rattled him when you butted in?” asked Seyn’s assistant, a man from Agathodaemon, a stranger to Pirx. Was the home team against him? He could understand it if they were.

“It’s a possibility. There was a lot of shouting in the cockpit. Or at least that’s what it sounded like.”

“Panic?” asked Hoyster.

“No comment.”

“Why?”

“You can listen to the tape. The voices were too garbled to be hard data. Too easy to misinterpret.”

“In your opinion, could ground control have lent further assistance?” asked a poker-faced Hoyster. The committee was obviously divided; Hoyster was from Syrtis Major.

“No. None.”

“Your own reaction would seem to contradict you.”

“Not really. Control has no right to countermand a skipper in such a situation. Things can look a lot different in the cockpit.”

“So you admit you acted contrary to the rules?” Seyn’s assistant again.

“Yes.”

“Why?” asked Hoyster.

“The rules aren’t sacred. I always do what I think right. I’ve had to answer for it in the past.”

“To whom?”

“The Cosmic Tribunal.”

“But you were cleared of all charges,” intruded Boulder. Syrtis Major versus Agathodaemon: it was blatantly obvious.

Pirx paused.

“Thank you, sir.”

He sat down in an adjacent chair. Seyn was the next to testify, followed by his assistant. They were still at it when the first ground recordings arrived. Telephone reports from the wreckage site confirmed the absence of any survivors, though they had yet to reach the
Ariel’s
cockpit, buried eleven meters below ground. The committee proceeded to audit the tapes and continued taking depositions without a break until seven, then recessed for an hour. Seyn and the Syrtisians drove out to the site of the shipwreck. Romani stopped Pirx in the passageway.

“Commander Pirx…”

“Yes?”

“You haven’t any—uh—”

“Don’t. The stakes are too high,” interrupted Pirx.

Romani nodded. “You have seventy-two hours’ furlough. We’ve worked it out with Base.”

“Earthside?” asked Pirx, astonished. “I don’t see how I can be—”

“Hoyster, Rahaman, and Boulder want to co-opt you onto the committee. You’re not going to let us down, are you?”

All three were Syrtisians.

“I couldn’t even if I wanted to,” he replied, and they let it go at that.

They reconvened at nine. The replay of the tapes was dramatic, but not nearly as much as the film, which recorded each stage of the calamity, from the moment
the Ariel
loomed as a green star in the zenith. Afterward, Hoyster gave a recap of the post-mortem.

“All the evidence points to a computer breakdown. If it didn’t signal a meteorite alarm, it must have projected the
Ariel
on a collision course with something. The tapes show that it was three percent over the limit. Why, we don’t know. Maybe the cockpit will provide a clue.” He was referring to the
Ariel’s
on-board tapes, though Pirx did not share his optimism. “We’ll never know the exact sequence of events during those final moments in the cockpit. We do know that the computer’s Baud rate was perfect: even at the peak of the crisis, it was fully operative. The sub-routines performed flawlessly till the end, too. That much has been established. We’ve uncovered nothing to indicate any external or internal interference with the prescribed landing procedure. From 0703 to 0708 hours, all systems were go. The computer’s decision to abort the landing cannot, at present, be explained. Mr. Boulder?”

“I don’t get it,”

“A programming error?” asked someone.

“Impossible. The
Ariel
had made landing after landing with the very same program—axially, and at every possible angle.”

“But that was on the Moon, under conditions of lesser gravity.”

“Of possible consequence for the thrust modulators, but not for the informational systems. Besides, the power didn’t quit.”

“Mr. Rahaman?”

“I’m not very up-to-date on this program.”

“But you’re familiar with the model?”

“I am.”

“Failing any external cause, what could have interrupted the landing procedure?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“A bomb planted under the computer, maybe…” said Rahaman.

Out in the open at last; Pirx was all ears now. The exhaust fans whirred as smoke clustered around the ceiling vents.

“Sabotage?”

“The computer functioned till the end, though erratically,” observed Kerhoven, the only locally stationed intellectronics engineer on the committee.

“Well, I only mentioned it for what it may be worth,” said Rahaman, backing off. “In the case of a normally functioning computer, the landing and lift-off maneuver can be aborted only by something out of the ordinary. A power failure…”

“Power there was.”

“But, theoretically, can’t a computer abort the procedure?”

The chairman knew well enough that it could. Pirx understood that his question was not addressed to them, but was for the benefit of Earth.

“In theory, yes. In practice, no. Not once in the history of astronautics has a meterorite alarm been sounded during a landing. When a meteorite is sighted, the landing is simply postponed.”

“But none was sighted.”

“No.”

A dead end. There were a few moments of silence. The fans purred. Darkness showed through the round ports. A Martian night.

“What we need are the people who constructed that model, the ones who test-loaded it,” Rahaman said at last.

Hoyster nodded. He was distracted by a message handed him by the telegraph operator. “They’ll be reaching the cockpit in an hour or so,” he said. Then, looking up, he added: “Macross and Van der Voyt will take part in tomorrow’s session.”

There was some commotion. Macross was the chief engineer and Van der Voyt the managing director of the shipyard whence the hundred-thousand-tonners came.

“Tomorrow?” Pirx couldn’t believe his ears.

“Not live, of course—but by video, thanks to a direct relay. Here’s the cable.” He waved the telegram.

“Hold on—what’s the time lag?” asked someone.

“Eight minutes.”

“What’s the big idea? We’ll have to wait a lifetime for every answer,” someone asked, in a clamor of several voices at once.

Hoyster shrugged.

“We’ll have to comply. Granted, it’ll be a nuisance, but we’ll work out something…”

“Does that mean we’re adjourning till tomorrow?” asked Romani.

“Right. We’ll reconvene at 0600 hours. By then we should have the on-board tapes.”

Pirx gladly accepted Romani’s offer to put him up for the night. He wanted no part of Seyn. Though he understood the man’s behavior, he couldn’t condone it. Accommodations were found for the Syrtisians—not without some difficulty—and by midnight Pirx was left all alone in the tiny cubicle that served as the coordinator’s reference library and private study. He lay down, fully dressed, on a cot set up between several theodolites, and, with his arms under his head, stared up at the ceiling, eyes fixed, barely breathing.

It was odd, but, being among strangers, he had been viewing the accident as an outsider, as one of the many witnesses not really involved, even when he had detected the hostility, the irritation in their questions—an unspoken accusation directed at the intruder out to show up the local boys—and when Seyn had turned against him. This was another realm, fixed in the natural dimension of the inevitable: under the circumstances it had had to happen. He would defend what he’d done, on rational grounds; he held himself in no way responsible for the disaster. True, he’d been shaken, but he’d kept his head, always the observer, never entirely overwhelmed by events because of the way they lent themselves to systematic analysis: for all their inexplicability, they could be sifted, categorized, posited according to the method dictated by the solemnity of the investigation.