“Visual confirmation,” suggested Boiler. “Maybe its the non-drop pickup that’s malfunctioning.”
Doolittle flipped the necessary lever. The chronometer, still ticking away the seconds, vanished from his screen and was replaced by a camera-view of the bottom of Dark Star.
A long white box occupied much of the picture, resting serenely just below the open bay doors.
One glimpse was more than enough for Doolittle. He switched back to the chronometer, which now assumed a previously unheld importance. Overriding importance.
“It’s there, all right.” He thought rapidly. “Never mind the magnetic grapple. This is the last run. Let’s blow the attachments.” Boiler and Pinback nodded—Boiler once, curtly, Pinback hard enough to shake his hair.
“Rechannel all safety relays,” the corporal said. “Open quantum latches.”
“Open circuit fail-safes,” Pinback put in.
“Cancel thrust-drive fail-safes,” Doolittle added.
“Automatic valves open?” asked Pinback.
Boiler: “Check valves open… all connections severed… all explosive bolt fail-safes removed.”
“And prepare for manual drop,” Doolittle muttered grimly, “and… re-mark.”
“Resetting,” Pinback said quietly while both Doolittle and Boiler watched him. “Mark it… five, four, three, two, one, drop.” He turned the switches and the honking came. That loud, abrasive, hysterical honking.
It sounded damnably like a laugh. They were laughing at him again, Pinback thought emotionally. He wrenched at the switches, staring at the screen above, trying to stop the laughing.
First it was Boiler laughing at him and punching him in the arm when no one was looking and Doolittle had been terse and abrupt with him the whole trip and Talby up in the dome when he wasn’t staring at his idiot universe was probably laughing at him too and now, now the ship itself was laughing at him, at poor, stupid Bill Frug Pinback Frug Bill…
“Drop!” he screamed at the flashing red warning lights. “Drop, drop, drop!”
“Easy, Pinback,” Doolittle said softly. “Take it easy, man.”
Pinback looked wildly over at him, panting hard. Then he stared back down at the two switches he had nearly pulled out of the board.
“He’ll be okay, I think,” Doolittle said in response to Boiler’s glance. “How about the bomb?”
“It’s just sittin’ there,” the corporal told him, turning his attention back to the readouts. “The damned thing’s just sittin’ there. What the hell’s wrong?”
And while they sat and wondered and fumed, above each man a series of numbers set into a box insert at the bottom of his screen, read: SIDEREAL BASE TIME 0014:40.6 DESTRUCTION SEQUENCE IN PROGRESS.
The number changed even as he looked at it, changed while the honking sounded warningly throughout the bridge. It resounded in the bomb bay and in the badly damaged computer room and in the emergency airlock, where an unconscious Talby lay sprawled beneath twin lines of red, hands clasped over his face plate in a frozen attempt to reach his eyes.
“Boiler,” Doolittle said finally, nodding in the direction of the blaring speaker, “kill that thing.”
Boiler reached out and flipped a switch on the small panel marked Audio. The honking stopped. The red warning light stopped with it, but the chronometer insert in the screen did not, nor did the official one set into the main console. All continued to tick off the seconds, splitting the shrinking time period into tiny, manageable bits and pieces.
“Oh, come on, Doolittle,” a voice inside admonished himself. “Don’t just sit there on your ass. Do something, and man, or the bomb’ll do it for you. The bomb is stuck in the bomb bay and it’s primed to go off in about fourteen minutes and if it does, baby, the shock wave you’ll be riding won’t come from that wave breaking tight behind you.”
He fumbled at his headset, spoke haltingly. “This is Lieutenant Doolittle calling bomb number twenty. Acknowledge, bomb number twenty.”
“I’m here, Lieutenant.”
“Sounds sane enough,” Boiler observed.
“Computer, this is Doolittle. Talk to the bomb and order it back to the bay, please.”
Silence.
“Computer, acknowledge. This is Lieutenant Doolittle speaking.”
Quiet.
“You talk to it, Doolittle,” suggested Boiler.
Doolittle nodded, cleared his throat. “There has been a malfunction again, bomb. You’re to disarm yourself and return to the bomb bay immediately. There has been a malfunction. This bomb run is aborted. Return to the bomb bay immediately. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” The bomb’s voice was calm, composed. “I am programmed to detonate in fourteen minutes thirty seconds. Detonation will occur at the programmed time.”
Frantic thoughts ran through Doolittle’s mind. They were unencumbered by solutions. And on top of the bomb, he now had another problem to worry about.
What was the matter with the central computer?
“Bomb,” he finally managed to sputter into the pick up, “this is Doolittle. You are not to detonate. I repeat, you are not to detonate in the bomb bay. Disarm yourself. This is an order. Do you read me, bomb?”
“I read you, Lieutenant Doolittle,” the bomb replied quietly. “Locale of detonation is not a concern of mine. That is always predetermined… and I will detonate in fourteen minutes. Detonation will occur at the programmed time.”
“You already said that,” Doolittle said tightly. The bomb did not venture to argue this point.
“Fourteen minutes to detonation,” Pinback informed them with a touch of desperation. “What the hell’s happening, Lietitenant? What’s going on?”
“I don’t know.” He spread his hands helplessly. “I can’t figure out what—”
“Attention attention,” came a familiar feminine voice—a voice Doolittle had not expected to hear again. He stopped in mid-sentence.
“I have sustained serious damage,” the computer told them. “All fires in the region of the main computer room are now under control.”
“Fires?” exclaimed Pinback, twisting in his seat. “What fires?”
“Shut up,” Boiler whispered warningly. Pinback shut up.
“Please pay close attention. Bomb number twenty has not malfunctioned. I repeat, bomb number twenty has not malfunctioned. The failure to drop on command from a compound malfunction of communication laser number seventeen, which primes and follows through all drop orders via the release mechanism in the grapple shaft.
“All contact with the grapple shaft—and therefore with the bomb itself—is now cut off.
“I have subsequently activated automatic dampers on board ship. With no planetary material to react with, this damping will confine the thermostellar trigger reaction to an annihilation area approximately one kilometer in diameter. This is all I can do at this time.
“I am attempting to circumvent the damaged circuitry to reestablish contact with the grapple shaft and the bomb. I must inform you that prognosis for eventual success is not good. Repeat, not good. Damage can eventually be repaired, with manual human assistance, in twenty-four hours.
“All estimates indicate that even with human assistants operating under drug-stimulated efficiency, these repairs cannot be duplicated in fourteen minutes. It’s all up to you now, fellows.”
There was a moment’s silence while the three crewmen digested this information. Boiler’s voice was unnaturally subdued.
“Did you hear that, Doolittle?”