One in 300 (7 page)

 

"Glad to see you, Sammy," I said. "You're elected. You're going to Mars."

 

 

He nodded. He was another who wasn't surprised. "I thought that might
happen," he admitted, "now Mortenson's dead."

 

 

"Dead?" I exclaimed.

 

 

"You didn't know? I thought you'd be watching from the window."

 

 

"Who killed him?"

 

 

"I did. If you didn't see what he was doing at the time, please don't
ask me to describe it. I always had a weak stomach. And Pat?"

 

 

"She goes too."

 

 

He nodded again. But he was still thinking of Mortenson. "You wouldn't
think that even something like this could change people so completely
so quickly," he said.

 

 

Pat laughed, unaffectedly this time. "You should know better than that,
Sammy," she said. "People don't change. Never. They may be changed,
or they may reveal themselves, or we may have seen them wrong the first
time. That's all."

 

 

"Never mind that," I said. "There isn't much time. Listen. You may have
heard a rumor that a plane will pick up the selected people at the park."

 

 

Sammy nodded. "Well, there will be a plane," I said, "but that's only a
blind. The plane is the escort for a helicopter that'll land here in the
square about the same time. Everybody should be at the park. The people
who mean to make trouble, anyway. The other eight who are going with us
will know by now. They just have to get to the square, that's all. They
should be safe so long as they don't give themselves away."

 

 

Sammy began to make objections, but I waved them aside rather petulantly.
"Don't you think I've had time to see what's wrong with the plan in the
last few weeks? It isn't mine. Anyway, what else could have been done?
Nobody has more than a few hundred yards to go anyway, except the Stowes,
and they'll come in their car. I know . . ."

 

 

Faintly but clearly we heard a plane.

 

 

"It's early," said Sammy.

 

 

"No. It's got to fly about and circle so that everyone believes it's the
plane they've heard about, and they've only got to see where it lands --
in the park or anywhere else. There's going to be no trouble, Sammy,
unless too many people are smart and realize they're being fooled."

 

 

"But they've got a pretty good idea where you are."

 

 

"That was always the difficulty. We can't do anything about that --
only hope the plane will be a greater attraction."

 

 

For long, tense minutes we waited. Then -- because there had to be a
little time in reserve -- I got up. "Come on," I said.

 

 

The hotel had had no staff for a long time. The manager had no imagination
at all, and he clung grimly to his job and his duties. There were no
unauthorized people in the hotel.

 

 

We got down to ground level without seeing anyone. Naturally no one would
come into the hotel, where they might miss us, when they only had to watch
the exits.

 

 

The plane was still circling. Once or twice we heard it swoop to land,
then climb again. The pilots of those planes had a big job. They had
to be psychologists as well as heroes -- for, of course, theirs was
liable to be a suicide job. Mobs wherever this plan was adopted would
tear these pilots to pieces when they learned they were just decoys.

 

 

The point was, the people were pretty certain I was at the hotel. Would
anything make them leave? Only the conviction that I had somehow eluded
them. All I could do about that I had done -- have flares lit at the
pavilion, flares that would be visible anywhere in Simsville, and would
surely make people think that I was at the park, signaling to the plane.
The suspense was the cruelest, most effective part of it. People who at
first had been grimly determined to wait in the square in the belief that
I must appear there must have felt that belief waver and diminish as the
plane swooped and flares lit the sky and people hurried past on their way
to the park. The grim watchers must have panicked at the thought:
Some
of these people must be going to Mars. And here we are watching them go!

 

 

We heard the plane actually land. That, I thought, must break the last
resistance of anyone who must now guess he had no chance of life on Mars.

 

 

We stepped boldly into the square. It was getting dark -- deceptively dark.
Even we, expecting it, didn't see the helicopter until it dropped in
the square.

 

 

There were bodies in the square. It settled among them. I saw Mortenson
lying outstretched, his hand straining for a gun he had never reached.
He might have lived fifty years more, on another world.

 

 

Then shadows moved. We rushed for the helicopter, and I saw Harry Phillips
carrying Bessie in his arms, Betty and Morgan running hand in hand.

 

 

Then Pat screamed.

 

 

Whether Mortenson had been all but dead or merely stunned didn't matter.
He wasn't dead, and he had the gun. I saw Sammy go for his to make
another try, and knew he would be just too late. Mortenson knew the
time he had, and took careful aim. He could have had any of us -- Sammy,
who had shot him; or me, without whom no one from Simsville would live,
and all would be brought down with Mortenson, who couldn't go himself.

 

 

But he chose Pat. Something in his twisted mind made him go for the girl
who had loved him.

 

 

Mortenson and Pat died together. They were both good, clean shots. There
were no last-breath speeches. Pat fell and Mortenson lay still.

 

 

I can't explain what I did. I never thought of Pat at all. I merely worked
out that Leslie wouldn't be watching the plane, but at home, and I darted
across to a phone booth. I dialed and got her at once. "The square, quick,"
I said, and slammed the phone down. That was all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

9

 

 

We didn't see much at Detroit. The organization was magńificent. The whole
area was a vast clearing house, the few people who were running things
there handling us like so many cans of beans. We had no gear; someone
else was looking after that. There was a supply organization which took
care of not only the essentials, like the problem of how we were going
to live on Mars, but also the comparative luxuries, like how much of
our literature and history and art we could afford to take along. But
that wasn't our affair.

 

 

We got to Detroit late on Thursday night, were given a meal, and swept
into cots, all in the same room. We were then cheerfully informed that
our meal had been drugged. We saw only two people. Two who would handle
. . . how many lifeships' complements? Presumably the people who were
keeping things running at Detroit would be collected later by a regular
ship.

 

 

We slept until eleven in the morning -- Friday morning. When we awoke,
the world was still the same. We all wondered -- I expect everyone did who
looked at the sun that morning -- whether the whole thing wasn't a mistake
after all and life wouldn't go on the same as ever. But the fact was, of
course, that we were approaching the last second that scientists
knew
was safe. Nothing would happen, if they knew what they were talking about,
for quite a while after that -- minutes, hours, even a day or two. Even
when it did happen at last, on the sun, it would still be eight minutes
before Earth knew anything about it. . . .

 

 

We had breakfast together, and then with no more than a glimpse of
the feverish activity in the hundreds of square miles about us, and
the thousands of tiny, gleaming lifeships in the State Fair grounds,
Palmer Park, and wherever else there was an open space or one could
conveniently be blasted clear, we were aboard. One after another the
ships got the signal.

 

 

At last it was our turn. I grinned at Sammy as we came unstuck,
remembering his fear that the lifeships were a cruel hoax.

 

 

Before we were clear of the atmosphere I knew the truth. Fortunately no
one else did. I knew it by the way the ship handled, by the amount of fuel
I was using, the amount I would still have to use, the amount I had left.

 

 

Sammy, in a way, was right. The governments of the world that was to
die could have given, say, a million people a sixty per cent chance of
life. It was all a question of the time and labor they had. What could
be done in so long? But the multiple wasn't big enough. Not if they
were to keep the multitudes quiet enough for them to have control of
things at places like Detroit to run them as they had, without yelling,
screaming millions fighting for life.

 

 

In the end they'd calculated to give a ridiculously small chance to a
comparatively large number of people. One in 324.7, in fact. Enough to
keep the world almost sane in those last few weeks.

 

 

I had sufficient fuel left, certainly, to shove us past Earth's
gravitational pull, but I needed a lot more than that. Some where,
sometime, I wanted to land. And there aren't any filling stations
in space.

 

 

I thought of Father Clark and Pastor Munch and the Reverend John MacLean,
still alive, still with their flock -- or had their flock, the mob,
found out that they had been running errands for me and torn them to
pieces? They had trusted me, accepted me -- but perhaps they didn't fully
realize that I wasn't Simsville's instrument of God only for the three
weeks of selection, but beyond that along every inch of the millions of
miles of nothing between Earth and Mars.

 

 

But they could still trust me. I had promised Sammy and Leslie and all
the others life, and it wasn't going to be my fault if they didn't get it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One in a Thousand

 

 

 

 

1

 

 

Somewhere between the surface of Earth and Mars, well on the way or just
about to take off, there were seven hundred thousand-odd lifeships. And
believe me, the operative word was "odd." It took about a year to build
a spaceship, and each and every one of these lifeships had been thrown
together in eight weeks.

 

 

Problem: If two thousand skilled men can build a lifeship in a hundred
days, how long will it take a thousand unskilled men to do it? Answer:
56 days. If your math's as good as mine (and mine isn't so hot) you'li get
a pretty good indication of the standard of workmanship in the lifeships.

 

 

I was lying in the pilot's acceleration couch, controlling the ship with my
fingertips, as far as it was being controlled at all, and hearing, seeing,
and feeling the moluone fuel drain away as if it were my lifeblood.
I had a simple enough choice. I could stop the blast now, and crash back
on Earth; or I could let it roar out of the tanks the way it was doing,
and crash somewhere else, if I ever reached anything to crash against.

 

 

When I say "in" the couch I mean just that. The couch was constructed so
that I was half sitting, half lying, knees up to assist the circulation.
That was a better position in which to withstand the acceleration than
lying flat. I was strapped up like a mummy with imprex tape supporting
my muscles. And though the couch wasn't particularly soft -- it felt like
solid rock -- I was almost submerged in it.

 

 

But that was unimportant. What mattered was this -- somehow the lifeship
had to escape from Earth's gravity, and sometime it had to land on Mars.
There wasn't enough fuel to do it. I could see that now, only a matter
of seconds from takeoff. Ten people, lower down in the lifeship, were
depending on me and on the ship for life that the ship and I weren't
going to be able to give them.

 

 

I was thinking like a prairie fire, though I was practically certain
there was no solution. Soon I had a little piece of an answer. My fingers
moved and the blast mounted. Anyone below who had thought nothing could
be worse than 6G found his mistake as the acceleration went up and up.

 

 

The ship was designed for four minutes' blasting, but if I were to save
fuel there was only one way to do it. That was to get off more quickly,
reach escape velocity, and stop blasting sooner, saving the fuel which
would have been needed to hold the ship up during the extra time.

 

 

I refused to think about the jet linings. They were designed for four
minutes' blast, presumably, and now they were being asked to take the
same thrust in less time.

 

 

I nearly blacked out. I screamed and hardly heard myself. You won't
understand how I felt physically unless the same kind of thing has
happened to you -- when you must and do remain conscious but you're so
near unconsciousness that perceptions sent along the nerve channels to
your brain simply don't leave any record there. You have to notice them
as they happen or you've lost them forever.

 

 

I strained my eyes at the dials in front of me, trying to make them
mean that I could cut the drive. They persisted in telling the truth,
which was no good to me. I saw why people sometimes strain to believe
something they know is false. There are times when hopeful fantasy is
much more attractive than hopeless fact.

 

 

At last I was able to cut the drive. It had been on for hours.
The chronometer said it was only three minutes or so, but I knew better.
It didn't stop cleanly, as it should, it eased off gently. The couch
gradually rose, and I floated off, weightless.