That’s why he liked these climactic runs. They gave him no time to think. He hit the double switch.
“Fail-safe in lock.”
“We have,” Boiler announced, “eight minutes until drop. Twenty-four minutes until detonation. All systems are go and functioning.”
Words and symbols alternated on separate screens in their confirmation.
“Sidereal time at sunlight velocity,” Pinback confirmed. “Destruction sequence status initiated.” There was a clearing of the screens and then the multiple zeros at the base all changed to twenty-four, Seconds began to tick away.
He sighed, leaned back in his seat—squirming uncomfortably for a moment, as he always did. Sure, Doolittle and Boiler could laugh, but Powell had been sitting next to him when they’d come out of hyperdrive and his seat circuit bad blown. Powell’s blank eyes had been staring him in the face.
Why wouldn’t they understand back at Earth Base, and send him replacement circuitry?
No time for this now, Pinback. You are On Duty.
He flicked the pickup that was set into his headset, heard the echo signifying operational status.
“This is Sergeant Pinback calling bomb number twenty. Sergeant Pinback calling bomb number twenty. Do you read me, bomb?”
“Bomb number twenty to Sergeant Pinback. I read you, Sergeant.”
“How’s it going, bomb?”
“All systems are functioning perfectly, Sergeant Pinback. Everything is going well.”
He’d heard the same answers many times before. Why, he wondered idly, couldn’t they at least give the bombs different voices? The answer occurred to him as soon as the thought was completed.
It wouldn’t do to give a suicidal machine a distinct personality. Not that it would make any difference to the bomb, which was barely conscious of itself as an individual organism, but Pinback could imagine that it might begin to get to the crew.
Why, if you weren’t careful you might start to think of the mechanical thermostellar triggering devices as people, people you were sending to an inevitable fate, people who had no chance to develop their really fine minds, people who…
Easy, Pinback. That’s a no-no. Better think the right thoughts or they’ll take away your teddy bear.
Elsewhere on the ship a different computer voice was reciting information to a suit-enclosed Talby.
“You are now in the emergency airlock. Please remember that in an emergency situation the surface door can be opened instantly without the need of prior depressurization. So be sure to wear your starsuit at all times. Thank you for observing all safety precautions.”
Talby ignored the message. He knew the regulations by heart and didn’t need to be reminded of them by a solicitous machine. All he wanted to do was finish this repair job and get back to his dome and stars.
He was already searching the room before the recorded message concluded. The emergency airlock wasn’t terribly big, so it didn’t take him long to locate the open slot over the communications laser where the protective panel had dropped away.
Even though there was no reason for the mirrors in the laser to be activated, he was cautious as he bent to inspect the interior. A laser was something like a tornado; you could pass within millimeters of the crucial area without being hurt, but cross the ultimate line and you got burned.
In addition to the scorched panel, he saw that the laser itself had been knocked slightly out of alignment. The mounting was loose. Well, that ought to be easy enough to correct. It would be a ticklish bit of work with the laser in operation, but there was nothing complicated or time-consuming about it.
He gave a little smile of satisfaction. This job wouldn’t take more than a few minutes of careful work with a screwdriver. Even if the mounting was broken he could easily readjust the angle of the beam to compensate.
Placing the little toolbox he’d brought along on the floor, he hunted inside for the driver with the proper head, then spoke into his helmet mike.
“Lieutenant Doolittle, sir… Talby here.”
Doolittle heard him, but he was monitoring drop instrumentation, for crissake, and had no time for Talby’s philosophical drivelings.
“Sssh, Talby,” he muttered absently into his own pickup. “We’re in the middle of a very complicated maneuver. Don’t bother me now.”
“I think this is important, sir,” the astronomer insisted. He was inspecting the interior of the laser housing again. “I think I’ve located the malfunction the computer announced. You remember, sir. I’m in the emergency airlock now, and—”
“Not now, Talby!” Doolittle said irritably. Damn the man! Spent all of his time isolated in his little dome, not even sharing a meal with his buddies… hell, not even sleeping with them, and he just wanted Doolittle to drop everything to listen to his personal problems.
“Well, I’m in the airlock, so I’m going to go ahead and—”
Thoroughly annoyed, Doolittle shut off his channel. Talby wouldn’t talk to him when he, Doolittle, needed somebody to talk to, so by God, he wasn’t going to sit here in the middle of a run—the last run—and exchange pleasantries with him.
He had a planet to destroy.
Odd how normal the ultramelodramatic phrase had come to sound. It was true—people could get used to anything. Repetition made playing God seem common place.
“Four minutes to drop, bomb,” Pinback was saying conversationally. He seemed to get along well with the bomb brains—better, in fact, than he did with either Doolittle or Boiler. Maybe it was because he had more in common with them. For example, there were plenty of times when he wished he could self-destruct, too.
“Have you checked your platinum-iridium energy shielding? That’s important, you know. We must remember to check our energy shielding,”
“Geezus,” muttered Boiler, appalled at Pinback’s attitude toward a metallic thing, as usual. And as usual, Pinback ignored him. Boiler couldn’t talk to the bombs. Even Doolittle had trouble sometimes. It was the one area in which Pinback excelled.
“Energy shielding positive function,” the bomb replied happily.
Pinback yawned. “Remember your detonation time?”
“Detonation in twenty minutes.”
“All right,” concurred Pinback. “That checks out here. Okay, bomb, arm yourself.”
Below the Dark Star there was a brief flash of lights on the bomb’s casing, after which it said calmly, “Armed.”
“Hello, Lieutenant Doolittle,” Talby repeated into his suit mike. “Hello, hello, can you read me? Boiler, Pinback—do you read me on the bridge?”
Damn, now what? Another malfunction, or was it just that Doolittle didn’t realize what he was doing back here? Didn’t he understand that Talby’d found the damage and was going to repair it?
Well, it probably didn’t make any difference. They were obviously busy with something forward. At least he wouldn’t be disturbed with silly suggestions. He started to lean into the open slot…
“Communications laser number seventeen,” the computer voice announced sharply, “monitoring the bomb-drop mechanism has now been activated and will switch into a drop mode. If you will look near the surface panel, you will see that the tell-tale light is on, thus indicating that the parallax receptive cell has been engaged.”
Tell-tale light… the surface panel had been knocked off. Talby pulled his head quickly out of the housing, screamed to himself in confusion.
What the hell did Doolittle think he was doing? Was that what their “complicated maneuver” was all about? They couldn’t run a bomb drop with a busted monitoring laser! Not only could something unimaginable go wrong with the drop, Talby could get himself punctured.