Operation: Outer Space by Murray Leinster (best short novels of all time TXT) 📖

for a much longer time. And the absence of gravity had caused their muscles to lose tone by just about the amount that the same time spent in a hospital bed would have done. They felt physically worn out.

It was a healthy tiredness, though, and their muscles[Pg 88] would come back to normal as quickly as one recovers strength after illness—rather faster, in fact. But tonight there would be no night-life on the space-ship. Johnny Simms disappeared, after symptoms of fretfulness akin to those of an over-tired small boy. Jamison gave up, and Bell, and Al the pilot fell asleep while Jones was trying to discuss something technical with him. Jones himself yawned and yawned and when Al snored in his face he gave up. They retired to their bunks.

There was no point in standing guard over the ship. If the bed of hot ashes did not guard it, it was not likely that an individual merely sitting up and staring out its ports would do much good. There were extremely minor, practically unnoticeable vibrations of the ship from time to time. They would be volcanic temblors—to be expected. They were not alarming, certainly, and the forest outside was guarantee of no great violence to be anticipated. The trees stood firm and tall. There was no worry about the ship. It was perfectly practical, and even necessary simply to turn out the lights and go to sleep.

But Cochrane could not relax. He was annoyed by the soreness of his muscles. He was irritated by the picture given him of the expedition as a group of heedless ignoramuses who'd taken off without star-charts or bacteriological equipment—without even apparatus to test the air of planets they might land on!—and who now were sternly warned not to make any use of their achievement. Cochrane was not overwhelmed by the achievement itself, though less than eighteen hours since the ship and all its company had been aground on Luna, and now they were landed on a new world twice as far from Earth as the Pole Star.

It is probable that Cochrane was not awed because he had a television-producer's point of view. He regarded this entire affair as a production. He was absorbed in the details of putting it across. He looked at it from his own, quite narrow, professional viewpoint. It did not disturb him that he was surrounded by a wilderness. He considered the wilderness the set on which his production belonged, though he was as much a city man as anybody else. He went back to the control-room. With the ship standing on its tail that was the highest point, and as the embers burned out and the smoke lessened it was possible to look out into the night.

He stared at the dimly-seen trees beyond the burned[Pg 89] area, and at the dark masses of mountains which blotted out the stars. He estimated them, without quite realizing it, in view of what they would look like on a television screen. When light objects in the control-room rattled slightly, he paid no attention. His rehearsal-studio had been rickety, back home.

Babs seemed to be sleepless, too. There was next to no light where Cochrane was—merely the monitor-lights which assured that the Dabney field still existed, though blocked for use by the substance of a planet. Babs arrived in the almost-dark room only minutes after Cochrane. He was moving restlessly from one port to another, staring out.

"I thought I'd tell you," Babs volunteered, "that Doctor Holden put some algae from the air-purifier tanks in the airlock, and then opened the outer door."

"Why?" asked Cochrane.

"Algae's Earth plant-life," explained Babs. "If the air is poisonous, it will be killed by morning. We can close the outer door of the lock, pump out the air that came from this planet, and then let air in from the ship so we can see what happens."

"Oh," said Cochrane.

"And then I couldn't sleep," said Babs guilelessly. "Do you mind if I stay here? Everybody else has gone to bed."

"Oh, no," said Cochrane. "Stay if you like."

He stared out at the dark. Presently he moved to another port. After a moment he pointed.

"There's a glow in the sky there," he said curtly.

She looked. There was a vast curving blackness which masked the stars. Beyond it there was a reddish glare, as if of some monstrous burning. But the color was not right for a fire. Not exactly.

"A city?" asked Babs breathlessly.

"A volcano," Cochrane told her. "I've staged shows that pretended to show intellectual creatures on other planets—funny how we've been dreaming of such things, back on Earth—but it isn't likely. Not since we've actually reached the stars."

"Why since then?"

"Because," said Cochrane, half ironically, "man was given dominion over all created things. I don't think we'll find rivals for that dominion. I can't imagine we'll find another race of creatures who could be—persons. Heaven[Pg 90] knows we try to rob each other of dignity, but I don't think there's another race to humiliate us when we find them!"

After a moment he added:

"Bad enough that we're here because there are deodorants and cosmetics and dog-foods and such things that people want to advertise to each other! We wouldn't be here but for them, and for the fact that some people are neurotics and some don't like their bosses and some are crazy in other fashions."

"Some crazinesses aren't bad," argued Babs.

"I've made a living out of them," agreed Cochrane sourly. "But I don't like them. I have a feeling that I could arrange things better. I know I couldn't, but I'd like to try. In my own small way, I'm even trying."

Babs chuckled.

"That's because you are a man. Women aren't so foolish. We're realists. We like creation—even men—the way creation is."

"I don't," Cochrane said irritably. "We've accomplished something terrific, and I don't get a kick out of it! My head is full of business details that have to be attended to tomorrow. I ought to be uplifted. I ought to be gloating! I ought to be happy! But I'm worrying for fear that this infernal planet is going to disappoint our audience!"

Babs chuckled again. Then she went to the stair leading to the compartment below.

"What's the matter?" he demanded.

"After all, I'm going to leave you alone," said Babs cheerfully. "You're always very careful not to talk to me in any personal fashion. I think you're afraid I'll tell you something for your own good. If I stayed here, I might. Goodnight!"

She started down the stairs. Cochrane said vexedly:

"Hold on! Confound it, I didn't know I was so transparent! I'm sorry, Babs. Look! Tell me something for my own good!"

Babs hesitated, and then said very cheerfully:

"You only see things the way a man sees them. This show, this trip—this whole business doesn't thrill you because you don't see it the way a woman would."

"Such as how? What does a woman see that I don't?"

"A woman," said Babs, "sees this planet as a place that men and women will come to live on. To live on! You[Pg 91] don't. You miss all the real implications of people actually living here. But they're the things a woman sees first of all."

Cochrane frowned.

"I'm not so conceited I can't listen to somebody else. If you've got an idea—"

"Not an idea," said Babs. "Just a reaction. And you can't explain a reaction to somebody who hasn't had it. Goodnight!"

She vanished down the stairs. Some time later, Cochrane heard the extremely minute sound of a door closing on one of the cabins three decks down in the space-ship.

He went back to his restless inspection of the night outside. He tried to make sense of what Babs had said. He failed altogether. In the end he settled in one of the over-elaborately cushioned chairs that had made this ship so attractive to deluded investors. He intended to think out what Babs might have meant. She was, after all, the most competent secretary he'd ever had, and he'd been wryly aware of how helpless he would be without her. Now he tried painstakingly to imagine what changes in one's view the inclusion of women among pioneers would involve. He worked out some seemingly valid points. But it was not a congenial mental occupation.

He fell asleep without realizing it, and was waked by the sound of voices all about him. It was morning again, and Johnny Simms was shouting boyishly at something he saw outside.

"Get at it, boy!" he cried enthusiastically. "Grab him! That's the way—"

Cochrane opened his eyes. Johnny Simms gazed out and down from a blister-port, waving his arms. His wife Alicia looked out of the same port without seeming to share his excited approval. Bell had dragged a camera across the control-room and was in the act of focussing it through a particular window.

"What's the matter?" demanded Cochrane.

He struggled out of his chair. And Johnny Simms' pleasure evaporated abruptly. He swore nastily, viciously, at something outside the ship. His wife touched his arm and spoke to him in a low tone. He turned furiously upon her, mouthing foulnesses.

Cochrane was formidably beside him, and Johnny Simms' expression of fury smoothed out instantly. He looked pleasant and amiable.[Pg 92]

"The fight stopped," he explained offhandedly. "It was a good fight. But one of the creatures wouldn't stay and take his licking."

Alicia said steadily:

"There were some animals there. They looked rather like bears, only they had enormous ears."

Cochrane looked at Johnny Simms with hot eyes. It was absurd to be so chivalrous, perhaps, but he was enraged. After an instant he turned away and went to the port. The burned-over area was now only ashes. At its edge, charcoal showed. And now he could see trees and brushwood on beyond. The trees did not seem strange, because no trees would have seemed familiar. The brush did not impress him as exotic, because his experience with actual plants was restricted to the artificial plants on television sets and the artificially arranged plants on rooftops. He hardly let his eyes dwell on the vegetation at all. He searched for movement. He saw the moving furry rumps of half a dozen unknown creatures as they dived into concealment as if they had been frightened. He looked down and could see the hull of the ship and two of the three take-off fins on which it rested.

The airlock door was opening out. It swung wide. It swung back against the hull.

"Holden's making some sort of test of the air," Cochrane said shortly. "The animals were scared when the outside door swung open. I'll see what he finds out."

He hurried down. He found Babs standing beside the inner door of the airlock. She looked somehow pale. There were two saucers of greenish soup-like stuff on the floor at her feet. That would be, of course, the algae from the air-purifying-system tanks.

"The algae were alive," said Babs. "Dr. Holden went in the lock to try the air himself. He said he'd be very careful."

For some obscure reason Cochrane felt ashamed. There was a long, a desperately long wait. Then sounds of machinery. The outer door closing. Small whistlings—compressed air.

The inner door opened. Bill Holden came out of the lock, his expression zestfully surprised.

"Hello, Jed! I tried the air. It's all right! At a guess, maybe a little high in oxygen. But it feels wonderfully good to breathe! And I can report that the trees are wood[Pg 93] and the green is chlorophyll, and this is an Earth-type planet. That little smoky smell about is completely familiar—and I'm taking that as an analysis. I'm going to take a walk."

Cochrane found himself watching Babs' face. She looked enormously relieved, but even Cochrane—who was looking for something of the sort without realizing it—could not read anything but relief in her expression. She did not, for example, look admiring.

"I'll borrow one of Johnny Simms' guns," said Holden, "and take a look around. It's either perfectly safe or we're all dead anyhow. Frankly, I think it's safe. It feels right outside, Jed! It honestly feels right!"

"I'll come with you," said Cochrane, "Jones and the pilot are necessary if the ship's to get back to Earth. But we're expendable."

He went back to the control-room. Johnny Simms zestfully undertook to outfit them with arms. He made no proposal to accompany them. In twenty minutes or so, Cochrane and Holden went into the airlock and the door closed. A light came on automatically, precisely like the light in an electric refrigerator. Cochrane found his lips twitching a little as the analogy came to him. Seconds later the outer door opened, and they gazed down among the branches of tall trees. Cochrane winced. There was no railing and the height bothered him. But Holden swung out the sling. He and Cochrane descended, dangling, down fifty feet of unscarred, shining, metal hull.

The ground was still hot underfoot. Holden cast off the sling and moved toward cooler territory with an undignified haste. Cochrane followed him.

The smells were absolutely