Scanned by Highroller. Proofed by the best elf proofer. Made prettier by use of EBook Design Group Stylesheet. Tiger in the Stars by Zach Hughes CHAPTER ONE I, John Plank, being of sound mind and having telescopes for eyes and electronic sensors for fingertips, must be going mad. I am alive. I think. I see. I feel. But I can't move my arms or my legs. Where are my arms and my legs? I am a man, have been a man for years, and a man does not see the stars as if looking through telescopes. The stars crowded him. They were impossibly huge, improbably near.
Stars are, unless you're close to a system, a sprinkle of light, tiny things. They are not huge, individual suns seen everywhere as if you were looking at old Sol from the Earth. He could see a galaxy shaped like a small-crowned, wide-brimmed hat. Near that galaxy was a double whorl of merged galaxies, their bright hearts aglow. He was dazed by the richness, the brightness of the colors. Hot, population-one stars were rich blue. A cool, red giant, the nearest
star, sported a family of planets: four gas giants, a distant icy midget of a planet, two planets near or in the life zone, which he could see, feel. The gas giants sent out snarls of radio waves. One emanated more heat than it received from its sun and he could make it out, could measure that heat output. No man could do that. His senses were acute. They covered the known spectrum. He saw long and short light waves, radiation; he detected the force of the star's gravitational field, could see the huge gouts of flame shooting upward in a solar flare, could measure the solar wind. No man could, with his own senses, see so much, hear so much. He flexed his hands and felt the working of wondrous mechanisms spreading over a huge area, connected by thousands of intricate electrical circuits. His attention was caught by a glowing nebula. Vivid colors pleased his senses and he realized that he was seeing the nebula not with human eyes but as if he were looking through a series of filters. He sensed movement. He looked into eternity through Hercules. He knew the configuration, could look past identifiable stars into the distant reaches of space to the
cluster of galaxies there, spiral, globular, doubled. For a moment he forgot his confusion and admired the technical achievement as he looked through what must have been the equivalent of a 16-meter instrument of amazing sophistication. His was a giant of an eye, all seeing, the field of view all encompassing. It was, he knew, impossible. He could not be seeing what he saw. He moved his head and the galaxy rotated around him. He felt a massive surge of vertigo and withdrew, closing himself off. He moaned and clutched at himself and found nothing. He felt smoothly functioning power, muted hummings, clicking relays, lighted corridors and snug cabins, circuits making and breaking with calibrated precision. The inhumanness of it caused him to scream. His voice filled empty corridors and cabins and the big compartment up front, which was empty of all save the muted click and hum of a living ship. To preserve his sanity he explored his own mind and remembered. He remembered walking laboriously, clad in life system gear, in the sub-Earth gravity of a dim, cold world. He saw Plank's Pride as she sat atop her fins on the fused stone of the pad, her hatch open. He could see the white dwarf star rising to begin a 73 Earth-hour day. Before the day was one quarter old, the Pride would lift. Earth was four-point-two-eight light-years away, invisible. It would have taken a power instrument to even locate old Sol, but it was there, waiting for him to come home. Thinking of home gave him strength. He ceased his musings and trained his powerful eye on the stars around him, looking, searching. He had never seen space as he was seeing it now. All the reference points were changed. All the colors were different. Ordinarily, space was a vast emptiness sprinkled with white. Space was black velvet and salt. But with his new vision space was a study in living blues and reds. More in control of himself now, he set about trying to solve the problem of what had happened to him. He studied the surroundings. There was air in the ship and it was rich and sweet. He did not, however, breath it. Again he felt the threat of shock, forced himself to close his eyes and try to sense the movement of the ship. A near star was closing at a speed that amazed him. «Light minus ten,» he said aloud. The sound of his own voice was comforting. He heard it within his head
and on the speakers throughout the ship, a harsh rasp of a voice, the result of damage suffered when a line ruptured on the Pride halfway out from home on the first trip, forcing him to breathe acrid fumes before he could take protective measures. He continued his study of himself. He was small and compact and his brain was expanded, linked into the finest set of computers and instruments he'd ever seen. Someone had advanced science to the ultimate. The life support system was a dream, operating with 100 percent efficiency. And then there was the power. The power was a mass of overlapping fields without heavy shielding. Inside the fields was the heat of a sun. The fields shimmered and writhed even in rest. They spoke of power, which once again sent him into a daze. One thing for sure, he was not on the old Pride. This ship, of which he was a part, was bigger. Not as big as one of the colonizer starships, but bigger than Pride. And because her power was so compact, there was room for a large cargo hold, extravagantly aired, rich in oxygen. He would need no suit to work that hold. It was time to look outside again. He scanned the area. He found the Crab, but it was not in its proper position. He searched for other landmarks. Everything indicated that he was a great distance from the last point he remembered. But the familiar guide stars were there, identified by their spectrum. All the points of reference told him that he was in the home arm, the Orion Arm, but exactly where was the question. All the power of his eyes did not find any of the home neighborhood stars. An hour of scanning gave him no clue as to the whereabouts of his own
star, old Sol. It was puzzling. He could remember all of it. But he couldn't remember important details of direction and reference. He could not place Sol in relationship with any of the known points. His memory held all the data needed to seek and find Cassiopeia and to identify her, but when he tried to place Sol in relation to Cassiopeia, or any of the other known points, his mind went blank. He explored the extensions of his mind represented by the complicated mechanics of his ship and found extraordinary charts that were more complete and more detailed than any he'd ever seen. He discovered more familiar stars, Sirius, Vulpecula. But Sol, as far as the charts were concerned, did not exist. He began to take stock of himself. His brain was of soft living flesh and connected with materials other than flesh; but it lived. He could trace his own synapses, feel the power of his thought waves. In his mind he was a complete man, an expanded man, but in body he was nothing more than a small mass of cells encased in a container. There had to be an explanation. He must find it. He would go home and there he'd learn the answer. He had fantastic ability. He could measure the distance to the nearest and the most remote stars. He could shoot a bearing on a distant body and know its mass. He had known points. Triangulate and there was Sol and home. The point ended in open space, in the area among the vast emptiness between the spiral arms. There was nothing. Drifting molecules. The debris of the universe. Simply put, he was lost. He realized that, although he could remember home, names—Sol, Centauri Proxima and Alpha—the distances, the times of travel, the ponderous weight of the old Pride being pushed by brute force against the old Einsteinian laws, he could not place the grouping of stars in reference to his own position or to any known star. Plank rested, although there was no need for it. Rest was merely withdrawal. He shut off the thousands of impulses feeding into his brain and looked back. He could remember a fishing trip on Armstrong, an Earth-type planet of Alpha Centauri named after the first man to set foot on the moon. He could feel the near-bass hitting the artificial lure with a pleasing ferocity, could taste the almost-fish cooked over an open fire. He saw Jake there, sober, since his supply had run out. Looking further back, he could remember his childhood, his mother. She was a mature woman of almost 150 with a beauty that still gave him pleasure. Remarried, happy, soft-spoken. She'd been present to wish him «good luck» as the Pride lifted for the second trip. He remembered shooting fast-flying small birds on New America, of feeling somewhat bloodthirsty and primitive, but rewarded in atavism by a taste beyond compare. He remembered school and the academy and the Mars tour, all dry wind and endless hours in lsg. That tour had earned the down payment on the Pride. And the first trip. Pulling Jake out of the bar
just in time for scheduled lift-off. The first cargo. Laser-quality rubies. The long months between Earth and the Centauri stars. The loneliness of it. The companionship of only one man and months in space with an old, lovely ship doing her best to fall apart, keeping them both busy with maintenance. He could see the Earth, blue and beautiful from near space; the moon, sere and sterile with its labs and pads and stations. The components of his own sun, its physical characteristics, recognizable from light-years away with ship instruments. He sent his eyes searching inward. Endless time stretched ahead of him. He could sense that. No need to hurry. There was time to know himself. He was John Plank. 52 years old, a bit short by modern standards at 178 centimeters, trim, not unhandsome. He had space-grayed hair, dark eyes and agile hands. And he was missing. No hair, no hands, no legs, no lungs. His heart was a machine containing powerful magnetic and electrical fields and his nervous system was a complex of circuits covering every meter of a ship that astounded him with its perfection. Down in the cargo hold was a small runabout. He was linked to it by radio and he sent it moving, easing outward through a smoothly functioning air lock. Via the drifting runabout, he could look back to see the gleaming reflection of the red sun on the hull. He lighted himself. From the runabout, he saw himself glowing in the darkness of space, nearly spherical, skin made of an alloy unfamiliar to him, ports brighter, weapon pods protruding. He moved the runabout, seeing from all angles. On the bow, near the large port, the words, in English—Plank's Pride. He directed the return of the small vehicle and left it to tuck itself away as he traced circuits. His interest was caught by the weapons. Deadly. Power beamed to incredible distances and capable of cutting through a hull with one touch. And hidden away inside the pods the sleek and fatal missiles, planet killers. Compacted nuclear heads with the potential to
split an Earth-sized planet at the equator, shatter it into fragmented, torn pieces. He investigated the navigational equipment. The 16-meter eyes were part of it, along with the integrated and complicated star charts and a system of detection gear that could spot space debris the size of a pebble at incredible distances. The memory bank of the computer contained familiar material, the
library of the old Pride intact, film, books, records. He seized upon it and traced the history of the Pride from its log. The first trip complete. The second trip outward bound. Names and distances. Earth to Centauri. Times and speeds and fuel consumption. His mind raced. He had records of Earth, the solar system, the nearby stars whose planets were being colonized and mined by people from Earth ships. He had a ship so capable of travel that the travels of the Earth starships seemed like local traffic. Finding home, then, should be simple. Except that all references to exact location of the Sol-Centauri neighborhood were missing. Except that, assuming Sol and Centauri to be located in the Orion Arm, there were millions of stars in that arm alone. The why of it puzzled him as much as the how. He knew, could accept it now, that he was no longer John Plank, man of Earth. He was Plank, starship. He contained advances that could not have been of Earth. How? He did not know. Why? Why could he not remember how to go home?
Why was his brain, a tiny, soft, living entity buried behind shielding at the
center of his metallic body, so devoid of any clue as to the location of his home planet? He searched his brain for signs of alteration. As far as he could tell he was complete, all his memories intact. He searched himself for clues; then she hit him with a force that moved him inward, lost him in pain. Laughing, dressed in white swimwear, skin golden, hair long, tousled and light as the sands of the deserts of Earth. «Sahara,» he said. She was younger than he was, but mature. He had met her at the academy. «Call me Hara,» she had said at their first meeting. He called her Hara, and later, he called her love. He considered giving
up his private enterprise plans to join her in the Service. He begged her to join him aboard the Pride, dreaming of the long, lovely months with her.
But, by then she was first navigation officer on a fleet colonizer, proud of her achievement, impossibly lovely in uniform and utterly dedicated to her job. «Soon,» she'd told him when he'd last seen her, after his first successful venture into space. «We have time, John. We have lots of time.» Now she was light-years away in an unknown direction, lost to him
forever, for he himself was lost, altered, no longer a man, merely a mass of gray, spongy cells nestled in the bulk of a fantastic starship. He felt a vast and white-hot anger. He luxuriated in it, growling into the ship's sound system with it, yelling his hate for whoever or whatever had done this thing to him. The sensors brought him away from his lovely hate and anger and showed him the planet, blue with life-giving water that was green underneath, a belt of clouds over a wide ocean. There, perhaps, lay the answer. He unshipped the small runabout and powered it down toward the surface of the planet. He used the hours of approach to make distant readings: he found Earth-type atmosphere, a stable system of weather, gravity just under Earth-normal, size just smaller than Earth, all the favorable conditions of a life-zone planet. Although the ship's atomic clocks kept Earth time, time had no meaning to him. He used it to best advantage without being aware of its passing. When the scout entered atmosphere and its sensitive sensors confirmed his readings regarding oxygen content and minor element makeup, he merely went ahead with the task at hand, seeing through the eyes of the scout. There were four major land masses, balanced against the planet's spin atop the fluid core. A relatively quick fly-around showed temperate, tropical and arctic zones, the usual makeup of a life-zone planet. Vegetation followed the usual pattern formed by the spin-induced weather systems. There were no artificial emanations from the surface. Subsurface masses of radioactive ores made their presence known, deposits typical of Earth-type planets. There was no sign of intelligent life. At slower speeds and lower altitudes, the scout made calibrated grids of the landmasses. Plank saw huge, green forests and open grasslands, mountains and streams, lakes and seas. There was life on each of the landmasses, confined largely to tropical and subtropical areas. That was normal. Armstrong, the one Earth-type planet of the Centauri system, had several species of rodentlike animals, varied vegetation, marine life of a more complex nature. Satisfied that no advanced life was present. Plank dipped the scout to land, examined the predominant life form close up. In the inhabited areas,
the animals were plentiful. They were somewhat like large, shell-less slugs, moving by body convolutions to feed on the abundant vegetation. They
seemed to be unselective in their choice of foodstuff, eating any plant that came within reach of their blunt-toothed maws. The runabout had a hatch, but efforts to entice one of the animals into the vehicle were fruitless. Plank considered his resources. He discovered his mobile form in a storage area inside the cargo hold, called back the runabout and sent the armored, bipedal machine down. He stood on good earth, the grass thick under metallic feet, eye-sensors mounted atop the body in a manlike head. Ears heard the grinding, monotonous sound of the eating animals, the call of a dull, primitive bird thing from the high trees, the sigh of the wind. He was there, on the
planet, hearing, smelling, seeing. The feeling of being alive distracted him from his purpose. He wandered, exploring, admiring the variety of finely formed vegetation. He stood on the overgrown margin of a forest stream and watched fish swim, extended a hand to feel the water, cool and clear. It was a perfect planet for man. He would record its location, present his claim. Such thinking sobered him, reminded him that he was a mass of brain cells encased in a remarkable starship; that he was not actually standing on the surface, but encased, confined, far above this manlike extension, which was sending him his impressions of the planet. He captured one of the animals easily. The feel of it was fleshy, warm, soft. A thick skin protected the boneless body. It had low-grade eyes and rudimentary hearing organs. There were no protective mechanisms, the creature apparently having no natural enemies. It was not necessary to kill the animal. Probing and checking, shipboard instruments found surprisingly human cells, blood close enough to Earth-type to be an astounding coincidence, a primitive brain, a simple digestive system and an enlarged heart. It was as if a great blob of humanoid cells had been grown, as cells were being grown in test tubes back on Earth, and had formed into the simplest functioning animal imaginable. Examination of other specimens provided no surprises. There were few variations from animal to animal. The only unusual discovery was the method of reproduction: asexual, by division, like some huge and bloated one cell animal. The creature simply divided its small brain, sliced itself down the middle, with cells spontaneously forming into heart and digestive organs in the new creature. Aside from some rather primitive insect forms, the slug was the only ground life on the planet. The bird things were few, living on fruits and berries. The highest form of the primitive marine life was about as far advanced as Cambrian forms in Earth history. Plank recalled his extensions, mulled over his information and recorded it. He had been directed toward that planet for a reason, and he could not understand the reason. In the months ahead, he found that planets seemed to hold a vast attraction for him. He could not resist checking out an Earth-type world. Not that there were many of them. Many stars had planets, but the predominant form was the gas giant. Only one in 20 suns had life-bearing planets and many of those life forms were non-terran in type, living in poisoned atmospheres unsuitable for human existence. Still, in the timeless months, he checked and recorded and searched, working his way outward through the stars, crossing the vast distances instantly with the aid of his heart—his drive that blinked the Pride in and out of existence with an ease that ceased to amaze him after he had read, pointed and blinked from star to star 100, 200 times. There were moments when he had the urge to skip the near stars, to leap far, far away, and continue leaping until he found the small yellow glow of Sol. But when he looked through his outer eyes and saw, only
light-years away, a likely sun, he blinked to it, saw its family, orbited the likely planets and went through his routine. Nowhere did he find
intelligent life. Nowhere did he find life like the slugs of the first planet, which he had come to think of as Plank's World, since it was his first. And he did not know why he worked his way carefully down the stars, searching. He knew only that someday he would blink close to a grouping of stars and recognize the characteristics of Sol or Centauri. Then he would be home and there would be answers. He was alone, but he did not mind. He had the library. He had new sources of information that kept his mind active. He knew secrets about the universe that man had only guessed about; he logged them, sorted them and stored them in the bottomless bank of the computer. He was a creature of space, alive in it, loving it, cataloguing the Orion Arm as he looked for the familiar yellow glow of old Sol. His senses were enormously acute. He could spot and avoid a space traveler the size of a marble. He could see into the heart of a sun and measure the distance to the most remote galaxy. What he could not do, since his senses were blanked in that frequency, was spot the dark-skinned sphere, three times his size, that was always within planetary distance of him, following with endless patience as he continued his odyssey. It was always near, silent, dark, its presence unknown to Plank. When he blinked it blinked, emerging into normal space as he emerged, waiting as he explored still another world, always within easy range of his eyes, his senses, but undetected. CHAPTER TWO Plank's Pride had been listed as overdue at Shepard Terminal for just less than a year when the M. Scott Carpenter orbited and sent down the first crew contingent for medical checks and a bit of rehab in the centrigrav tanks of the moon's largest installation. On the way down Hara used the lighter's eye to check the grounded vehicles, which were, unlike the huge colonizer, capable of entering the moon's weak gravity for landing. An even three dozen ships stood on the ground, but the stubby, familiar shape of the Pride was not among them. She was disappointed, of course. But there could be several
explanations. The Pride could be Earthside for refitting or repair. The trip out and back took much out of a ship. In many ways, it was harder on the equipment than on the human crews, for there were few moments during the long, long blast when power wasn't operating at peak. Inside, many things could go wrong, but redundant life systems made it safer to ride a starship than an Earth-ground vehicle. Casualties had occurred, of course, but the percentage was small, and she never once admitted that Plank had even a million to one chance not to make it back. Plank was too smart, too strong, too stubborn to let space eat him. No, he must be on Earth or out for a test run or down below in one of the Terminal shops. When she felt the weak gravity of the moon she began to hook into LSG. The lighter made a smooth landing and the ramp clamped; air hissed as locks engaged. The ship's monitor gave a clear and she checked her safety switches on the LSG and followed her fellow crew members into the tunnel of the ramp, emerging into the reception room of the center to be probed, handled, questioned, X-rayed and discharged in less than two hours as being in the pink of health. It was the second time she'd gone through the reentry procedure. It seemed familiar, even though ten-plus years had separated the events. She asked doctors and nurses about Plank, and they could give her no information. One of the doctors, a cute woman in her eighties, remembered Plank. «Yes,» she said, «serious young man, nice looking. Went out on a cargo run. Yes, I remember him.» «I'll bet you do,» Hara said, but to herself. «I think he's due,» the doctor said. He was overdue. The Pride had lifted off days before the big colonizer, but Plank's turnaround time on the other end should have been much less. The Carpenter spent months on the other end unloading, acting as home base for the colonists until the temporary shelters could be erected. Plank should have been home months ahead of her. They had timed it that way so that they could spend the time between her missions together on the moon and on Earth. Finished with the formalities, she made her way to Operations. Her service uniform gained her admission, and still not concerned, she made her inquiry of a young junior officer. The young man took his job seriously, checking and rechecking before he pulled the file. «Plank's Pride?» he asked, frowning. «Yes.» «Your interest in the ship, sir?» «Friend,» she said. «I'm sorry, sir,» the young officer said. «I'll have to refer you to Intelligence.» For the first time a doubt entered her mind. She knew, however, that it
would be useless to try to pull rank and force the young officer to give her the file so that she could see for herself why it had been classified. She thanked the young man and hurried to the third level. In an installation where everything was scaled down to conserve space, Intelligence occupied a respectable area. She was asked to wait in a rather roomy two-by-three-meter reception area. She sat nervously, crossing her legs. The enlisted man behind the desk reacted and she frowned at him coldly. She waited ten minutes and then was told she could enter the office of the intelligence officer on duty. She opened the door and saw a big, serious-faced man seated behind a small desk, his eyes downcast at papers. «Matt,» she said. He looked up, smiled. «Hey,» he said, with genuine pleasure. «Sahara.» He stood and came around the desk to take both her hands in his. «Welcome home. How was it this time?» «Routine,» she said. «Always nice to see the best-looking cadet in our class,» Matt Webb said, releasing her hands and stepping back to take in her trim form clad in space blue. «Still the sweet talker,» she said. «Sit down, sit down,» he said. «Take the load off.» «Yes,» she said. «It's not much gravity, but after almost five years in space…» «I know,» he said, returning to his chair. His smile faded and he looked at her, his calm, gray eyes showing concern. «You're here to find out about Plank,» he said. She nodded. «It isn't good, Hara,» Webb said. «All right.» She seized her lower lip between her teeth and waited. «The Star Buster lifted for home two weeks after he left,» Webb said. « Buster landed here after a routine trip. No communication with the Pride en route, although that means nothing, as you know. It's big out there, and even ships traveling the same route with only two weeks between them can be so far apart due to minor variation in trajectory that intership contact is unlikely. But he's way overdue, Hara. I'm sorry.» «That's all you can tell me?» «That's it.» She was silent for a moment. «Then why is his file classified?» Webb shrugged. «Routine. You know the situation down below. Opposition to the space program is reaching new heights. The brass is worried. There's a severe threat to cut the budget again. Now you and I know that the colonization program is Earth's great hope, but the other side has different opinions. They want to use the money to better conditions for those on Earth, not, as they say, pour it down a hole in the stars.» «I know,» she said. «But are you saying that you're keeping quiet about a missing ship because of public opinion on Earth?» «We keep the lid on as long as possible. Sooner or later someone down there will make an inquiry. We keep hoping that he'll come limping in here before someone, his mother, perhaps, gets worried enough to contact Central and demand to know where he is.» «Matt, it doesn't seem right.» «I know. I don't like it, but we have no choice. We're under fire. We're fighting for the life of the colonization program. We think we're justified in playing just a little dirty. And who does it hurt? Because you're concerned, you ask and we tell you. When his mother asks, we'll tell her. We hope she won't ask for a while. We'd like to know a little more about these disappearances.» «You said disappearances, plural,» she said. «Did I?» «Yes.» «All right. I'll have to remind you that this is highly classified information.» He ran his hand through his thick hair. «At any given time, we have perhaps half-a-dozen ships between here and the colonies. Sometimes more. Sometimes as many as 20 or 30 are out there. We've been going out to the Centauri systems for 50 years now. In that time we expected to lose a ship or two. We did not expect to lose a ship every one-point-five years.» She gasped. «So far we've been lucky,» Webb continued. «We haven't lost one of the
big boys. If that happens, we'll have a stink we won't be able to fight. Lose 10,000 colonists at once…» He looked toward the ceiling. «One ship every year and a half?» «On the average. No regular time intervals between, of course. And we have to estimate time of disappearance, since here on the moon, we're out of contact for almost ten years. But we're able to determine, of course, whether or not they disappear on the way out or the way back. It works out about equal. Almost half the number disappear going away, and half on the way home. They leave either the moon or one of the Centauri planets and that's the last we hear of them. And there's no rhyme or reason for it. Out of 30-odd ships one should have been able to set the space beacons working. In 50 years, at least one of them should have been spotted in space if they were merely disabled. Communications aren't all that good, but surely one of them should have been able to send out a distress call that, traveling at light speed, would have been picked up either on this end or the other end. But they don't show up by their
beacons and they don't send distress signals. They just vanish. They lift off and that's the last of them.» «Some basic problem in the power?» she asked. «Total explosion?» «We've had every engineer and scientist in the program checking. The hydrogen drive of a spaceship is potentially a huge bomb, but the safety factors are multiplied to such a point that the slide-rule boys figure the odds against total explosion are five million to one. They say the idea of more than 30 ships totally blowing up is inconceivable.» «Some common factor of human failure?» «Some of the ships had crews' of as many as ten. Ten men go nuts at the same time?» He sighed. «Oh, there are theories. Unknown space elements or factors. Everyone on board affected at the same time. Mysterious currents. Things we know nothing about. But, Hara, you know we've been in space a long time. There isn't anything out there we don't know about. It's just a big, fat empty place with nothing between here and Centauri; no black holes. No eerie gas areas, no bug-eyed monsters to swallow our ships whole.» «But there's something,» she said. «There is,» he agreed. «I wish I knew what. I wish I could say that it's as
simple as the blink drive thing. That they simply blink out of this universe into another, or into some other dimension and that's it. But Plank was just using our hydrodrive. We're accelerating as near light speed as the laws of the universe allow, and that's pretty close as you well know. Old Einstein wasn't right in everything. We don't push our way out of the warp and frame of space time like the blink drive does.» She was doing her best to keep her lips from trembling. It was only now beginning to hit her. He was dead. «Hara,» Webb said. «I'm very sorry.» «I know,» she said. She rose. «You'll let me know if you hear anything? I'll be moonside for a few days. Then home.» «Of course.» «I'd like to look at what information you have. Could you get me a clearance?» «With your rank and record I don't think we need expect any difficulty,» he said. «I'm not requesting to see anything you haven't seen,» she said. «You understand that I'm not questioning your work or your abilities.» Sahara meant the words, but she also felt it necessary to say them. Women had come a long, long way, but they were still women. They had basic differences, differences in strength, in viewpoint. There were still men around, some of them in the service, who said that women were the true aliens, that their minds worked on a different plane from the minds of men. In short, remnants of resentment among certain kinds of men still remained. Webb, apparently, was not that kind of man. «Sure,» he said. «I know how you feel, Hara.» «Not being smart with you, Matt, but I doubt that.» She smiled wryly. «Because I'm not even sure I know how I feel.» The human mind is a curious thing. In privacy, it allows itself thoughts that, if known generally, would cause consternation. And, Hara thought, as she walked out of Webb's office, it is true that no one really knows himself. Was there actually a moment of relief when she heard of Plank's disappearance? No. Of course not. Only the quick feeling that a problem was solved. Then the sadness. For there was a conflict. While marriage between spacers was not totally impossible, it was feasible only under certain circumstances. The vast distances, the time involved in traveling, made a woman married to a spacer a widow for years at a stretch. Marriages were common aboard the big colonizer ships; but then the partners traveled together and were not separated while one of them went out to Centauri at what, to the universe, was a snail's pace. If Plank had chosen service instead of free enterprise, the problem would have been solved, but Plank was intent on making his stake. She on the other hand, had spent years preparing herself for her job. Theoretically, a woman had an equal chance to be accepted into the academy, but in practice more qualified women were passed over than qualified men. She had always had to work extra hard to achieve her goal. From primary school on she knew that she wanted to go into space; her competition came from millions of boys who were physically stronger, some of them quicker, some of them more intelligent. She set her goal and worked toward it, doing secondary level work as a primary, entering college two years ahead of schedule. It wasn't easy. She kept her body in shape with athletics and honed her brain constantly, doing without proper sleep to cram for exams she could have passed easily, in her efforts for the top mark, knowing that she had to be the very best to beat thousands of male applicants for each appointment to the academy. Men and women were equal in the eyes of the law, but at the academy it seemed that some instructors had not read the law. There, the female cadets were singled out, and to survive she developed a hardness, a callousness, which allowed her to take anything they could dish out. She excelled in her marks and survived the physical rigors. She graduated with honors and saw the first space berths given to men with lesser qualifications. In spite of all, she was not a man hater. She recognized things as they were, and she would never change them. She tried to keep under her protective, hard exterior a certain femininity, and apparently she succeeded, for she was pursued. From the time she was pubescent, boys noticed her. She developed her figure early and it improved with age. In the academy she was taut-skinned and shapely. Her measurements would have qualified her for any beauty contest, had such antique rites been retained in the society. She had perfect teeth revealed in their lovely whiteness as she smiled. Her hair was heavy in texture, unusual for a natural ash blonde, and she could do anything she wanted with it. Usually she wore it down, brushing over her shoulders, closing in on her face to accent her eyes. Her social life could have been active. She did not lack, invitations. She limited her dating, however, to official events, never letting any boy or man to become close enough to her to arouse her interest. Not until she met Plank. She had seen him during her first years at the academy many times. He was one year ahead of her and, on occasion, was in charge of details of which she was a member. He was, during the early years there, merely another cadet. She was not surprised when Plank asked her to be his date at the graduation ball for Plank's class. His invitation was one of several. She surprised herself by choosing him as her escort. She would have had difficulty explaining it to anyone, even herself. He was not her kind of man. Dark, somewhat stocky, he looked at her from under bushy eyebrows with eyes that seemed to undress her—and she was no man's sex object. But it was Plank who called for her at the girl's dorm and it was Plank who
danced like a perfect gentleman, holding her politely close, thanking her at the end of each dance. It was Plank with whom she walked, in the early hours of a lovely spring morning, and talked of her ambitions. Plank shared her dreams of the stars. Plank was a good listener. Throughout the long evening and night, he did not even attempt to kiss her. He managed to return to the academy for her graduation dance and this time he wore service blue. He had been to Mars. He talked about it and about space with an excitement and an intensity that moved her. Later, when he slowly drew her into his arms, giving her every opportunity to say no, he moved her in another way, in a way she'd never been moved before. And when he called her his love she melted against him and let her kiss speak for her. It was a strange courtship. When he was away, she longed for him, wanted to see those dark eyes under his bushy eyebrows, wanted to feel the touch of his hand. When she was in space, off duty, she could remember every detail of his face, could repeat every word he'd ever said to her. She was, indeed, a woman in love. They talked about being assigned to the same colonizer. Plank chose his way, chose to work the Mars jobs and go into free enterprise, begging her to resign her commission and join him, painting nice pictures about the two of them spending months of time in space together. But she had, at last, reached her goal and she was totally incapable of tossing over a lifetime of work (it seemed to be a lifetime then, although, with the life expectancy of her time, she was still very young), not even to marry the man she loved. They saw each other at long intervals and tried to work out their differences. Plank made a run to the Centauri systems, and her feelings did not change during the years of separation. He fared well on the trip and, once again, pleaded with her to leave the service and join him. She was tempted. But she was due for promotion. «My career means as much to me as your work means to you,» she would tell him. «There is still time for us.» So it was, when she learned that Plank had disappeared in deep space,
that she felt a mixture of emotions. First that spontaneous feeling of relief.
There would be no more conflict. Then guilt, for it was after all Plank, her man, who was missing. Then more quick guilt for not having given in to him. If she had married him she would have been with him on the Pride. Then she would at least know. But now her emotions were in conflict as she remembered him, felt in her mind the strength of his arms, the tenderness of his kiss, and she began to be angry. Something would have to be done. She didn't know exactly what, but she would see to it that something was. CHAPTER THREE Anyone, Plank thought, can recite the physical statistics of the galaxy.
It is simple to say that our galaxy is a highly flattened discoidal system of stars with a radius in the order of 2,000 parsecs. Elementary school
children could tell you that a parsec equals 3.26 light-years or 3.1 X 10 to the 13th power, kilometers. Most Earthlings older than two had seen a model of the galaxy, a slowly rotating wheel with a white core of dense stars, which have a central bulge when viewed head on. Seen from the top, the model shows the effects of the slow rotation. Groupings of stars trail into spiraling arms. On the model, Earth is an insignificant speck toward the inner end of the Orion arm, 30,000 parsecs outward from the center. The Orion Arm is 400 parsecs wide. Four hundred parsecs equal 1,304 light-years. Compared with the galactic core, the Orion Arm is thinly populated. Distances between stars are vast. Yet Plank, looking into the arm with the eyes of his starship body, saw a number of stars which, on occasion, awed him. Glowing salt on a black platter. By the millions. And he was among them. He could place his position, roughly. He was, however, denied that overall view, as if seeing the galaxy as a model. He knew that he was in the area of the inner extension of the arm. He could position the galactic core to his right and take into account the known and distant star markers. He knew where he was. He was in the ball park. But
it was a ball park of such vast dimensions that finding his way to first base
was, he had decided, going to be a long process of trial, search and failure. Still, it should have been simple. His mind contained the knowledge of the heavens as seen from both the Earth and the Centauri systems. He should have been able to relate those positions, zero in, find the characteristic glow of either Sol or the two Centauri stars and return home in one jump. He made the calculations again and again. Time after time the position was the relatively open areas of space outside the arm. He could only arrive at several conclusions. One, something had happened to his head. Something either accidental or deliberate to knock the sure knowledge of home from his brain. His present condition would have a bearing there. Some minute trauma resulting from his brain being taken from his body and being encapsulated as the driving force of a most impressive starship? Some deliberate alteration making it impossible for him to go home? Two, it was obvious that he had run afoul of some intelligence not from the old Earth. Earth science was not yet prepared to build a ship like the new Plank's Pride. Certainly a race capable of making Plank a starship was capable of making minute alterations in his head to prevent him from finding his way home. The question was, why? Why put him into a ship capable of leaping unlimited distances in an instant and then send him zigzagging down the Orion Arm toward Perseus, star-hopping, planet-checking. Plank knew that, for all practical purposes, he was immortal. Oh, he could die. If he were careless enough to dive into a star the ship would burn and he would no longer exist. But, as he discovered more and more about his new state, he realized that he was self-repairing, that nothing ever went wrong with the marvelous machinery anyway, and that he had nutrients to last 1,000 years. Time, then, was meaningless. It was inevitable that he would find home. He'd find it if it meant checking every star in the arm. He'd find it if it took 1,000 years. There were times when he questioned himself. Why was it so important that he find home. If he spent 100 years, Hara would be as old as his mother and would have, long since, forgotten him. If he found it in ten years, she'd be in her sixties, still a young woman, but what good would that do him, a blob of brain cells inside a casing of starship? His singleminded search was senseless. He had the capacity to explore the universe as no one of his race had ever explored. He drew his power from the stars themselves. He could
travel any distance in an instant, as long as the straight line route was free
of star bodies. In a few jumps he could be outside the galaxy, covering vast distance, shooting toward the globular clusters, the far galaxies, the remote extensions of the universe. It was as easy for him to travel intergalactic distances as to jump the few light-years between stars. But as he thought about it, a massive and heavy loneliness saddened him and he continued his star by star search, checking planets, finding a few life-zone worlds and duly recording their statistics and locations. In spite of everything, he was a man and he sought the company of man. He told himself that he would present himself as a gift to mankind, opening up the universe to them. He was deceptively simple in his workings, and he could be copied. In ten years, a fleet of starships could be flashing outward from Earth, solving the problems once and for all. And if it took him 500 years, well, the Earth would be there. Man had, at least, grown past the threat of self-extinction. He had not outgrown his urge to multiply, and he crowded every available corner of the Earth and tried, in slow, sublight ships, to transfer himself to other worlds. His population was limited by law but still crowded, straining the dwindling resources of the old planet. Hara would, in 500 years, be dead. That was a
sadness. Still he pressed on, stargazing, plotting, leaping zigzag, covering the stars in a 400-parsec arc and swinging back, slowly, methodically, blinking in and out of time and space, using more time to approach a planet than in the travel from star to star. He was driven. He realized it. He believed the urge came from within himself, his need to find human company, to fill his empty cabins and corridors with laughing, warm, human forms. Behind him, blanked from his sensors, the dark ship followed with infinite patience. CHAPTER FOUR Commander Walker Heath was not happy on the moon, nor was he happy in his job. He felt that he'd been shafted when he was pulled off the blink project and he felt even more strongly that the service and the whole world had been shafted when Congress cut the funds of the project and, in effect, put it in eternal mothballs. Heath felt that he was being wasted, putting the same old information into the computer and coming out with the same old answers. He thought the work of Section X was a waste of time and he did not hesitate to tell anyone who would listen exactly how he felt. He'd always been that way and that explained, he knew, why he was only a commander after 80 years in the service. A tall, perpetually rumpled man. Heath had a shock of iron gray hair the consistency of small wire, a strong hooked nose, dark unhappy eyes and a mouth that smiled, his subordinates said, once every 50 years. He was brilliant, one of the three top drive engineers in the world. He was vocal. He was a man with an extremely short fuse. He believed in space and he believed that the salvation of mankind lay in space and he believed in the blink drive. He knew the hydrodrive inside out, had been mostly responsible for some improvements through the years, and he'd been on the first Centauri expedition. He had tried his best to convince the brass
to let him ride one of the blink test vehicles. He had been at the console for
each of the eleven blink tests. He knew the blink drive worked. He, himself, had pushed the button that sent the first blink vehicle a full light-year from Earth and he himself had pushed the button that sent the last ten off into nowhere. The first returned with proof she'd been out there, salt and Stardust on her tail. He had been a witness to the worth of old John Blink's wild-eyed idea of drawing power from the stars, from the sun. He
had seen the test vehicle blink out one full light-year and he'd seen it blink back, all in the period of five minutes, with almost all of that time spent beyond, farther from Earth than any man-made object had ever ventured. Walker Heath had watched man open up the universe and he'd seen the universe shoot back and close itself, swallowing ten blink vehicles without a clue. They left and they didn't return. He knew they went out, because he could follow them with his instruments. A blinking ship sent a signal ahead of itself through time and space and made subtle disturbances of the very warp of the universe. All that could be measured. The first time
the ship blinked out, rested, blinked back, there was jubilation at the blink base on the dark side. He wanted to ride the second one and they wouldn't allow him. And it didn't come back. Heath had smelled the far stars and he'd had to settle for a plodding, sublight drive to Centauri. He had that, at least. They couldn't take that away from him. He'd been to the stars, even though it was a near star. He knew that man would, eventually, discover the flaw in the blink drive and—shooting outward in millions—populate the planets of a thousand, a million stars. But at the moment he was facing a worried young first nav. officer across a cluttered desk, explaining why it would be useless for her to run the same information through his computer that he'd run 100 times. «Think you're going to find something the old man didn't?» he demanded crossly. «No,» Hara said. «I just want to know all there is to know about it.»
«All there is to know,» Heath said, «is that they lift off at one end or the other and they don't land.» «You must have some ideas,» Hara said. «I have the idea that something happens to them,» Heath said. «But what?» she insisted. «They disappear.» «Why?» «They are eaten by a space dragon.» «Now we're getting somewhere,» Hara said with a smile. «At least that's a working theory.» Heath used his smile for that 50 years. «I like that,» he said. «Tell me about it,» Hara said. «Let's start from the beginning.» In the beginning, five ships went out toward the Centauri systems. They left at one-week intervals from the relatively new moon base and they stayed in contact for a few weeks and then they were simply out there on their own. Then, ten years later, they began to return. Ships one, two, three and four. That was it. Number five didn't come back. Five was lost in space, and memorial services were held on Earth and on the moon. But everyone was excited by man's first trip to a star, a trip that discovered two life-zone planets and several planets with raw materials greatly needed on Earth. The first colony ship went out and traffic became relatively dense between Earth and the Centauri systems, moving slightly less than light speed, taking ten years to complete the round trip. In 30 years a good sized colony was formed on each of the two habitable planets, and government ships were bringing back cargoes. Then the government opened up space to free enterprise making it possible for a venturesome man to buy his own ship and make the Centauri run. Three runs would take 30-plus years out of a man's life, but if they were successful runs he could spend the rest of his years any way he wanted. With life expectancy up to almost 200, most of it healthy and active, 30 years didn't seem a long time to men like Plank, who worked the planetary system to earn the down payment on a starship and then went winging outward to achieve their goals. There were casualties. Power failed on an incoming freighter, and she crashed into a crater and pulverized. But casualties were to be expected. A crash into the moon was something people could understand. The dead
were given funeral rites suitable to space heroes, and other ships went out. «In the first 30 years, the unexplained disappearances were few,» Hara said. She was getting the facts verbally from Heath and from the computer readouts. «You'll notice that their frequency increases by a geometric ratio.» Heath said. «And, as they increased, the service began to make efforts to hush them up,» Hara said. «Had to,» Heath said testily. «The nuts were on to it. They were talking about how it was wrong to push into God's universe, and that God was warning us to stay home.» «According to this printout, a full two-thirds of all the disappearances have not been made public,» Hara said. «Aren't we risking the reputation
of the service? There's enough opposition to space spending as it is. If the not-so-loyal opposition should find out we've covered up some rather serious information…» «They'd have the secretary's head for lunch,» Heath said. «And they'd push a 50 percent cut in funds through Congress.» He leaned back in his chair and put his feet on the desk. «But we've painted ourselves into a corner. At first we held back on giving out information about a ship here, a ship there. Then the total was so high that we couldn't release it all at once. Total shock if we suddenly announced that, instead of nine or ten ships, more than 30 have just vanished in space.» «Forty counting the blink test vehicles,» Hara said. «Not the same thing,» Heath said. «We're dealing with the true unknown, in the case of the blinks. We're entering a new ball game with a
different set of rules. With the blink, it's just a matter of insufficient data.» «I don't see the difference,» Hara insisted. «Both types of ship disappear.» «But the manned ships do so in time and space,» Heath said with some irritation. «Are you sure that the blink ships don't?» When Heath looked at her blankly, she continued. «Could your instruments see or detect the blink ships at the other end of the jump?» «I like that,» Heath said. «No.» «So you're not sure that the ships didn't blink back into normal space and then disappear.» «It could have happened that way,» Heath admitted. «Yes, I like that.» He scratched his left knee musingly. «I see what you're getting at, young
lady. Yes, you're right. Forty-plus ships have disappeared. All, presumably, at a considerable distance from the Earth. For example, the shortest jump we programed into a blink test ship was a quarter light-year. We were going to program some shorter jumps, but the program was stopped. At first, since we were dealing with something totally new, it was decided not to allow a ship to blink back into space too near Earth. We didn't know what happened when a ship came back in, you see. We had no idea what disturbance it would make. We knew what happened at the start of a blink, because old John Blink had sent small generators off into nowhere; so did we in the beginning of the program. The effects of reentry into normal space—» «If your blink ships went out for a quarter light-year, they'd be in the
approximate position of turnover and the initial blast of deceleration for a homecoming ship,» Hara said. «A sudden and spectacular burst of power,» Heath mused. «Yes. However, we have to assume that the manned ships disappeared at turnover to gather any valid assumptions of correlation.» «If anything could go wrong, it would be at turnover,» Hara said. «You're moving at just under light, still pushing to maintain speed against the resistance of the constant. You cut power for a period of hours, turn the ship on her gyros, then build the drive to full power in a matter of minutes.» «It's all assumption,» Heath said. «And I must say that I resent highly your walking in here and coming up with an assumption I should have made years ago.» «Sorry about that,» smiled Hara. «We know what happens when a ship turns and builds power to decelerate,» Heath said. He let his feet drop to the floor and squinted at Hara. «How much do you care about this Plank of yours?» «Quite a lot,» she said. «Enough to stick your pretty neck out?» «That depends on the possibility of it doing any good,» she said. «There is a completed blink test vehicle in mothballs over on the dark side,» Heath said. «It could be made operational within weeks. In the meantime, we could mount the control console aboard a hydrodrive ship. Take both of them out. Move the blink ship in short jumps. Find out what happens when she comes back into normal space.» «I like that,» Hara said, smiling. «It won't be simple,» Heath said. «But the secretary is coming in a few days. Annual inspection. He knows me and thinks I'm a pest. He wouldn't give me two minutes of his time. But a pretty first nav. officer just back from her second Centauri run…» «What do you expect me to do,» she asked, «vamp him?» «If all else fails,» Heath said, «I expect you to blackmail him.» «I don't like that,» Hara said. «Do you want to be an admiral or find out what happened to Plank?» «Both,» Hara said. «Forget it.» CHAPTER FIVE Secretary Maxwell Seagle was not a run-of-the-mill politician. He had
the look of a spacer about him. In the last years of his reasonably expected vigor, as he faced retirement and the brief downhill plunge of old age, he stood tall and straight. As a young man he'd made Mars flights on the old solid fuel rockets and he had fought for space from the time he was an adult. He had tightly curled gray hair that had once been blond; his skin, although showing the effects of his age, was still bronzed and tight on his well-formed face. He had been Space Secretary for three decades. On his rare inspection trips Seagle wore the uniform of a fleet admiral. He enjoyed the trips, looked forward to them. He was always trying to get away from his office, and the pressure of his position was always preventing it. During the trip out on the moon ferry he had scant time to look out a viewer to see Earth behind him, blue and beautiful, because he was on the radio with various congressmen and senators lobbying against still another attempt to cut space's budget. But as the ferry neared and began preparations for landing, he cut off his political activity and concentrated on the sensation, always new, of landing on a surface other than Earth's. He found the moon base to be functioning perfectly, the service ships to be in gleaming condition, the men and women of the service sharp and eager. He donned LSG for his self-promised excursion outside, hopped and grinned like a small boy, ate a huge meal and toasted the future of the
service to a gathering of officers and civilian workers. He slept the sleep of the happy man and dreaded the return to office routine. He talked personally with the last ship's captain to make the Centauri run and smiled when he shook hands with a pretty first nav. officer named Sahara. Sahara returned his smile and held onto his hand for long seconds. She was standing in a reception line and had little time to make her request.
«Sir,» she said, holding the secretary's hand in her strong grip, «I request an appointment.» «You'll have to see my secretary.» Seagle moved on down the line, but not before nodding at his secretary and gesturing toward Sahara. She saw the secretary, was told that the chiefs time was severely limited, but that she might be squeezed in for two minutes just before the ferry lifted off for the trip home. She presented herself at the ferry dock an hour ahead of time, waited, saw Seagle board, reminded the secretary's secretary that she had an appointment, and boarded the ferry while the ground crew was making last-minute checks. Seagle was seated in the lounge. He rose when Sahara entered, looking very smart in her best uniform. «Sir,» she said, «I would not ask you to see me if I didn't feel it necessary. I know your time is limited.» «We have very little of it,» said Seagle. «So, Sir, I will not go into too much preliminary,» Hara said. «I have been cleared to know the number of ships that have disappeared on the Centauri run.» Seagle frowned. «May I ask why?» «Because the last ship to disappear was captained by…» She paused, wondering how to phrase it. She decided to be slightly sticky about it. «… the man I love and intend to marry.» «I see,» Seagle said. «I have been talking with Commander Heath—» Seagle made a motion with one hand, a motion of complete disgust. «—and we've come to a conclusion,» Hara continued. «We feel that there is a correlation between the disappearance of manned ships and the disappearance of the blink test vehicles.» «Nonsense,» Seagle said. He was angered. He had been expecting some simple request from the pretty nav. officer, a request that he could grant with a smile, thus enhancing his image with the service. «Our theory is that both types of ships disappear in the same general
area, the area of turnabout. We propose to use the last blink test vehicle—» «No,» Seagle said. «—to run a series of tests in the turnabout zone, far enough from the moon so that any accident would have no effect on—» «If Congress thought I was wasting money on the blink drive they'd cut me to the bone,» interrupted Seagle. «Sir, do they have to know? The ship is built. It couldn't cost much to make it operational.» «A dollar would be too much. No. I must say no. And you can tell Commander Heath that this latest gambit of his was ill advised. As for you, my dear, I advise you to choose your companions more carefully if you are looking forward to a future in the service.» «Sir,» Hara said, taking a deep breath. «I must tell you that if something is not done with existing equipment to try to solve the disappearances, I will be forced to go to the press.» Seagle's face hardened. «Do I understand what you're saying?» «I'm afraid you do, Sir,» Hara said. «To put it plainly, I'm going to blow the whistle. I'll tell the press that 30-plus ships have disappeared.» «Do you realize what you're doing?» Seagle asked. «I've looked at your record. It's a very good one. It's a shame that you've just tossed away 25 years of work.» «And it's a shame that Congress will know, within a few days, that the service has been concealing most important information.» Seagle opened his mouth. She could see that he was making a effort to control himself. Calmed, he said, «You're quite serious, aren't you?» She nodded. «You're blackmailing me.» «Yes.» «Let me get this straight. Heath wants to take out the last blink ship, jump it out in open space. Observing from a nearby ship?» «Yes, Sir. Short jumps. You see, we don't know what happens when a blink ship comes back. We think that there may be some relation between the blink end and the buildup of power after a ship does the turn and starts deceleration. More than 40 ships have disappeared, Sir, when you count the blink test vehicles. We could gain valuable information through these tests. And, I assure you, they can be done in secrecy. We've hidden some facts from the public, why not hide one more test?» «And you're absolutely sure you want to pursue this course of threat and coercion?» «Yes, Sir.» «I could have you busted, thrown out of the service.» «I've thought about that, sir. That wouldn't stop me from releasing the facts.» «I will not authorize use of the blink test ship,» Seagle said. «On the other hand, I am not going to do anything to stop its use. You may tell Heath that this is his last caper as a member of the service. You may tell him that he can obtain, through channels, permission to run ground tests on the blink ship. Ground tests. You and Heath seem intent on ruining yourselves, so I will allow you to do so. I will not stop you. Do you understand?» «I understand,» Hara said. «Thank you. Sir.» «I don't think you'll thank me when you are court-martialed,» Seagle
said. «And I foresee only one possibility of your avoiding it. That is, if you come up with some concrete results from the tests you're going to run when you take the blink ship into space without official authorization.» He stood. «If word leaks out, my official position is that the service knew nothing of Heath's plans to take out the ship.» Standing in a viewport, Hara watched the ferry lift off. She mused as the drive stirred moon dust and the ship dwindled as it shot upward. She felt an almost overwhelming sadness. She was due for promotion. Her life had been built around the service, and now she could measure her service
life in very small amounts of time. At best she could look forward to a long career as a first officer pushing papers on the moon Base or down below on Earth. She stood, watching the dust settle on the now empty pad. Then she lifted her eyes to the stars, to the great emptiness. Plank was out there somewhere, dead perhaps, but there. «Plank,» she said, her lips moving but the words forming inaudibly. «You're not worth it, you know.» But she knew, even as she said it, that if she were out there and Plank were down here on the moon, he'd be doing exactly what she was doing. Plank was that way. He'd risk everything for her and she, knowing that, could do no less. CHAPTER SIX Earth is never visible from the dark side of the moon. Space is more impressive from the dark side, made to seem larger, more empty by the absence of any near neighbor. The main bulk of moon installations were built in areas situated so that Earthrise and Earthset added dimension. The friendly, glowing ball of home was behind one's shoulder, comforting, endlessly beautiful. On the dark side one looked into infinity and felt the distances. The psychological reassurance of being able to look up and see the home planet was in evidence on the charts. More spare-time explorations had taken place on the Earth side than on the dark side. The working