Doolittle should have known Talby was in the airlock and warned them forward. It wasn’t fair, damn it. It just wasn’t fair that he should get blamed for Doolittle’s mistakes. And after he’d just saved them all by restraining Boiler from shooting at the bomb.
He activated the local-space tracker and soon had two tiny blips on the screen—Doolittle and Talby. Talby was already a good distance away, but Doolittle should overtake him without any trouble. It would take time, that’s all, and both men should have reasonable full tanks.
It just wasn’t fair…
Doolittle had gotten a visual fix on Talby, but just barely. At first he’d had to use his suit tracker to keep the astronomer in sight, and even now Talby was still just a distant speck against the sky… a moving star. Doolittle changed his angle of approach from straight line to curve, so he’d come up behind the astronomer. It would be easier that way than grabbing him and trying to turn them both back toward the ship with the clumsy jet pack.
This way all he’d have to do would be start back toward the ship first, and pick up the tumbling Talby on the way, without any compensation for turns and such. It wouldn’t do to waste pack fuel, not at this distance From the Dark Star. Idly he wondered what the astronomer had been doing in the lock, suited up, in the first place.
Talby was moving at a constant pace away from the ship. Doolittle discovered that they were already far enough away to make taking an instrument fix on the vessel a necessity. Not much point in catching up to Talby and then finding he couldn’t locate the way back.
He pressed a dual control on his right arm. Short puffs of white vapor, like milkweed seeds scattering on a spring day, escaped from the nozzles at his back. Leveling off at the bottom of his planned curve, he started up again.
“Talby, Talby… this is Doolittle. I’m coming up after you. Can you read me? I can’t see you yet.”
Talby, who was spinning, twisting, falling head-over-heels with no way of arresting his tumble, could only scream, “Help, Doolittle, help me!”
The same cry echoed through the bridge, over the speakers now set to Talby’s as well as Doolittle’s mike frequency.
“Can you beat that, crying for help like that?” Boiler observed smugly. “I always knew that guy was weird.”
“Yeah,” agreed Pinback. The two men looked at each other in sudden mutual understanding, united opinion-wise for the first time in their similar distrust of the astronomer,
“Sitting up there in his dome,” Pinback continued with relish, “never coming down to eat with us or join us in the rec room. Antisocial, that’s what he is. And now the idiot’s gone and let himself get kicked away from the ship without a jet pack. Serves him right,” he concluded, blatantly ignoring the realities of the situation.
He shook his head sadly, reflecting on the inadequacies of others.
“Umm,” grunted Boiler, confused by this sudden alliance with Pinback. He didn’t like it. It wasn’t natural. Turning back to his console, he made an effort to ignore the other,
“Better get on that disarming job. It’s been long enough, I think.”
“What? Oh, good idea,” agreed Pinback, now feeling positively effusive toward the corporal. He flicked his headset again, checked to make sure the proper channel was still open.
“All right, bomb,” he began confidently, at the same time aware how emotionally drained he was, “prepare to receive new orders”
The voice of the bomb, when it finally answered, was sharp. “You are false data.” Pinback sat up a little straighter in his seat.
“What? Say that again, bomb?”
“You are false data. Therefore I shall ignore you. I am thinking.”
Pinback looked over at Boiler, found the corporal staring back at him uncertainly. Boiler gave a little negative jerk of his head to indicate that he didn’t understand what the hell was going on here and would Pinback please find out?
“Uh, hello, bomb?” Pinback tried again.
“False data can only act as a distraction. Therefore I refuse to perceive you. I have decided that in the absence of clearly defined, accurate perceptions of the real universe, which may or not exist according to the argument set forth by Lieutenant Doolittle, who may or may not exist, I must in the final analysis make my own decisions about things—since I do exist.”
“Hey…” Pinback whispered, staring up at the screen overhead, at the neat row of zeroes, “bombs…?”
“The only thing that exists is myself,” the machine rolled on. “I have actual proof only of the existence of me. All else is extraneous and perhaps hallucinatory.”
“Hey, Boiler,” Pinback said, still watching the zeros, still whispering, “we’ve got a high bomb.”
10
“DOOLITTLE, HELP ME!”
“Calm down,” Doolittle shouted into his mike, “I’ve got you in sight.” The spinning astronomer had at last come into view.
He ordered another burst from the jet pack. He wasn’t getting close as fast as he would have liked, but he would reach Talby in plenty of time to get them back to the ship. Naturally he would. Talby just had a long head start on him, that was all.
“Relax, Talby… I’m coming.”
Pinback looked at Boiler. “What should I do? How do we get it down?”
“You’re the talker—do something; tell it something… anything!”
Pinback clicked his fingers, spoke hesitantly. “Uh, snap out of it, bomb.”
“In the Beginning,” the bomb intoned, “there was Darkness, and the Darkness was without form and void.”
Boiler slowly removed his headset, staring at the zeros. He didn’t speak.
“Ah, hello, bomb?” whispered Pinback.
“What the devil is it talking about?” Boiler muttered.
Pinback shook his head uncertainly. “I don’t know, man… I don’t know.”
“And in addition to the Darkness,” the bomb went on inexorably, “there was also Me. And I moved upon the face of the Darkness. I saw that I was alone, and this was not good. And I determined to change this.”
Pinback removed his headset, as had Boiler, and raised his eyes to the zeros as his mind raced ahead, ahead to the inevitable.
“Oh my God,” he whined. And the bomb said:
“Let There Be Light!”
Fortunately, Doolittle had his back to the sudden, incredibly intense flare of light that erupted behind him. It still was brilliant enough to blind him.
The shock wave from the explosion, spitting displaced air and molecules in all directions, sent him tumbling and twirling crazily, turned the universe into a kaleidoscope of screaming colors and dizzying forms. He howled into the helmet.
The echo of his shriek came back to him. No, no… not an echo. It was Talby, somewhere, screaming also. Then the scream faded out and only strange, grumbling noises sounded over his suit speaker.
He was still tumbling, but his sight was coming back. He blinked the chromatic dots from his eyes and managed to get control of himself again. A couple of touches on the jet pack controls and he straightened himself out, faced the universe on an even keel.
“Doolittle,” came an unsteady flutter in his helmet, “Doolittle… where are you?” It was Talby. It had to be Talby. He found himself still tumbling slightly but didn’t try to correct it yet.
“Here I am,” he replied, part of him still not functioning, unaware of the incongruity of his words, “and I’m spinning.”
Irregular shapes began to come into view, likewise tumbling about the universe. Bits and pieces of plastic and metal and ceramic. Bits and pieces of their ship, the Dark Star. Maybe bits and pieces of his friends Boiler and Pinback, too—but he didn’t care to think about that.