“He’s got his own departmental worries, Tom. And for God’s sake, talk Russian. Suppose the captain or one of the Ivans overheard you? You want to start trouble at this late date?”
“I wasn’t being fancy, Pres. I just forgot.”
It was easy to forget, O’Brien knew. Why in the world hadn’t the Indian government been willing to let all seven Americans and seven Russians learn Hindustani so that the expedition could operate under a mutual language, the language of their captain? Although, come to think of it, Ghose’s native language was Bengali… .
He knew why, though, the Indians had insisted on adding these specific languages to the already difficult curriculum of the expedition’s training program. The idea probably was that if the Russians spoke English to each other and to the Americans, while the Americans spoke and replied in Russian, the whole affair might achieve something useful in the ship’s microcosm even if it failed in its larger and political macrocosmic objectives. And then, having returned to Earth and left the ship, each of them would continue to spread in his own country the ideas of amity and cooperation for survival acquired on the journey.
Along that line, anyway. It was pretty—and pathetic. But was it any more pathetic than the state of the world at the present moment? Something had to be done, and done fast. At least the Indians were trying. They didn’t just sit up nights with the magic figure six dancing horrendous patterns before their eyes: six, six bombs, six of the latest cobalt bombs and absolutely no more life on Earth.
It was public knowledge that America had at least nine such bombs stockpiled, that Russia had seven, Britain four, China two, that there were at least five more individual bombs in existence in the armories of five proud and sovereign states. What these bombs could do had been demonstrated conclusively in the new proving grounds that America and Russia used on the dark side of the moon.
Six. Only six bombs could do for the entire planet. Everyone knew that, and knew that if there were a war these bombs would be used, sooner or later, by the side that was going down to defeat, by the side that was looking forward grimly to occupation by the enemy, to war crimes trials for their leaders.
And everyone knew that there was going to be a war.
Decade after decade it had held off, but decade after decade it had crept irresistibly closer. It was like a persistent, lingering disease that the patient battles with ever-diminishing strength, staring at his thermometer with despair, hearing his own labored breathing with growing horror, until it finally overwhelms him and kills him. Every crisis was surmounted somehow—and was followed by a slight change for the worse. International conferences followed by new alliances followed by more international conferences, and ever war came closer, closer.
It was almost here now. It had almost come three years ago, over Madagascar, of all places, but a miracle had staved it off. It had almost come last year, over territorial rights to the dark side of the moon, but a super-miracle, in the form of last-minute arbitration by the government of India, had again prevented it. But now the world was definitely on the verge. Two months, six months, a year—it would come. Everyone knew it. Everyone waited for extinction, wondering jerkily, when they had time, why they did no more than wait, why it had to be. But they knew it had to be.
In the midst of this, with both the Soviet Union and the United States of America going ahead full-blast with rocket research and space travel techniques—to the end that when the time came for the bombs to be delivered, they would be delivered with the maximum efficiency and dispatch—in the midst of this, India made her proposal public. Let the two opposing giants cooperate in a venture which both were projecting, and in which each could use the other’s knowledge. One had a slight edge in already-achieved space travel, the other was known to have developed a slightly better atomic-powered rocket. Let them pool their resources for an expedition to Mars, under an Indian captain and under Indian auspices, in the name of humanity as a whole. And let the world find out once and for all which side refused to cooperate.
It was impossible to refuse, given the nature of the proposition and the peculiarly perfect timing. So here they were, O’Brien decided; they had made it to Mars and would probably make it hack. But, while they might have proven much, they had prevented nothing. The spastic political situation was still the same; the world would still be at war within the year. The men on this ship knew that as well, or better, than anybody.
As they passed the air lock, on the way to the control room, they saw Belov squeezing his way out of his space suit. He hurried over clumsily, hopping out of the lower section as he came. “What a discovery, eh?” he boomed. “The second day and in the middle of the desert. Wait till you see my pictures!”
“I’ll look forward to it,” O’Brien told him. “Meanwhile you better run down to the engine room and report to the captain. He’s afraid that you might have pressed a button that closed a circuit that started up a machine that will blow up all of Mars right out from under us.”
The Russian gave them a wide, slightly gap-toothed smile. “Ghose and his planetary explosions.” He patted the top of his head lightly and shook it uneasily from side to side.
“What’s the matter?” O’Brien asked.
“A little headache. It started a few seconds ago. I must have spent too much time in that space suit.”
“I just spent twice as much time in a space suit as you did,” Smathers said, poking around abstractedly at the gear that Belov had dropped, “and I don’t have a headache. Maybe we make better heads in America.”
“Tom!” O’Brien yelped. “For God’s sake!”
Belov’s lips had come together in whitening union. Then he shrugged. “Chess, O’Brien? After lunch?”
“Sure. And, if you’re interested, I’m willing to walk right into a fried liver. I still insist that black can hold and win.”
“It’s your funeral,” Belov chuckled and went on to the engine room gently massaging his head.
When they were alone in the control room and Smathers had begun to dismantle the computer bank, O’Brien shut the door and said angrily, “That was a damned dangerous, uncalled-for crack you made, Tom! And it was about as funny as a declaration of war!”
“I know. But Belov gets under my skin.”
“Belov? He’s the most decent Russky on board.”
The second assistant engineer unscrewed a side panel and squatted down beside it. “To you maybe. But he’s always taking a cut at me.”
“How?”
“Oh, all sorts of ways. Take this chess business. Whenever I ask him for a game, he says he won’t play me unless I accept odds of a queen. And then he laughs—you know, that slimy laugh of his.”
“Check that connection at the top,” the navigator warned. “Well, look, Tom, Belov is pretty good. He placed seventh in the last Moscow District tournament, playing against a hatful of masters and grandmasters. That’s good going in a country where they feel about chess the way we do about baseball and football combined.”
“Oh, I know he’s good. But I’m not that bad. Not queen odds. A queen!”
“Are you sure it isn’t something else? You seem to dislike him an awful lot, considering your motivations.”
Smathers paused for a moment to examine a tube. “And you,” he said without looking up. “You seem to like him an awful lot, considering your motivations.”
On the verge of anger, O’Brien suddenly remembered something and shut up. After all, it could be anyone. It could be Smathers.
Just before they’d left the United States to join the Russians in Benares they’d had a last, ultra-secret briefing session with Military Intelligence. There had been a review of the delicacy of the situation they were entering and its dangerous potentialities. On the one hand, it was necessary that the United States not be at all backward about the Indian suggestion, that before the eyes of the world it enter upon this joint scientific expedition with at least as much enthusiasm and cooperativeness as the Russians. On the other, it was equally important, possibly even more important, that the future enemy should not use this pooling of knowledge and skills to gain an advantage that might prove conclusive, like taking over the ship, say, on the return trip, and landing it in Baku instead of Benares.
Therefore, they were told, one among them had received training and a commission in the Military Intelligence Corps of the U. S. Army. His identity would remain a secret until such time as he decided that the Russians were about to pull something. Then he would announce himself with a special code sentence and from that time on all Americans on board were to act under his orders and not Ghose’s. Failure to do so would be adjudged prima face evidence of treason.
And the code sentence? Preston O’Brien had to grin as he remembered it. It was: “Fort Sumter has been fired upon.”
But what happened after one of them stood up and uttered that sentence would not be at all funny… .
He was certain that the Russians had such a man, too. As certain as that Ghose suspected both groups of relying on this kind of insurance, to the serious detriment of the captain’s already-difficult sleep.
What kind of a code sentence would the Russians use? “Fort Kronstadt has been fired upon?” No, more likely, “Workers of the world unite!” Yes, no doubt about it, it could get very jolly, if someone made a real wrong move.
The American MI officer could be Smathers. Especially after that last crack of his. O’Brien decided he’d be far better off not replying to it. These days, everyone had to be very careful, and the men in this ship were in a special category.
Although he knew what was eating Smathers. The same thing, in a general sense, that made Belov so eager to play chess with the navigator, a player of a caliber that, back on Earth, wouldn’t have been considered worthy to enter the same tournament with him.
O’Brien had the highest I.Q. on the ship. Nothing special, not one spectacularly above anyone else’s. It was just that in a shipful of brilliant young men chosen from the thick cream of their respective nation’s scientific elite, someone had to have an I.Q. higher than the rest. And that man happened to be Preston O’Brien.
But O’Brien was an American. And everything relative to the preparation for this trip had been worked out in high-level conferences with a degree of diplomatic finagling and behind-the-scenes maneuvering usually associated with the drawing of boundary lines of the greatest strategical significance. So the lowest I.Q. on the ship also had to be an American.
And that was Tom Smathers, second assistant engineer. Again, nothing very bad, only a point or two below that of the next highest man. And really quite a thumpingly high I.Q. in itself.
But they had all lived together for a long time before the ship lifted from Benares. They had learned a lot about each other, both from personal contact and official records, for how did anyone know what piece of information about a shipmate would ward off disaster in the kind of incredible, unforeseeable crises they might be plunging into?
So Nicolai Belov, who had a talent for chess as natural and as massive as the one Sarah Bernhardt had for the theater, got a special and ever-renewing pleasure out of beating a man who had barely made the college team. And Tom Smathers nursed a constant feeling of inferiority that was ready to grow into adult, belligerent status on any pretext it could find.
It was ridiculous, O’Brien felt. But then, he couldn’t know: he had the long end of the stick. It was easy, far him.
Ridiculous? As ridiculous as six cobalt bombs. One, two, three, four, five, six—and boom!
Maybe, he thought, maybe the answer was that they were a ridiculous species. Well. They would soon be gone, gone with the dinosaurs.