’Think nothing of it,” O’Brien murmured. “It was my pleasure.”
Ghose smiled, then turned it off abruptly. “I better not let it happen again. As I was saying, I hope Belov has enough sense to control his curiosity and not touch anything.”
“He said he wouldn’t. Don’t worry, captain. Belov is a bright boy. He’s like the rest of us; we’re all bright boys.” “An operating city like that” the tall Indian brooded.
“There might be life there still—he might set off an alarm and start up something unimaginable. For all we know, there might be automatic armament in the place, bombs, anything. Belov could get himself blown up, and us too. There might be enough in that one city to blow up all of Mars.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” O’Brien suggested. “I think that’s going a little too far. I think you have bombs on the brain, Captain.”
Chose stared at him soberly. “I have, Mr. O’Brien. That’s a fact.”
O’Brien felt himself blushing. To change the subject, he said, “I’d like to borrow Smathers for a couple of hours. The computers seem to be working fine, but I want to spot-check a couple of circuits, just for the hell of it.”
“I’ll ask Guranin if he can spare him. You can’t use your assistant?’
The navigator grimaced. “Kolevitch isn’t half the electronics man that Smathers is. He’s a damn good mathematician, but not much more.”
Chose studied him, as if trying to decide whether or not that was the only obstacle. “I suppose so. But that reminds me. I’m going to have to ask you to remain in the ship until we lift for Earth.”
“Oh, no, Captain! I’d like to stretch my legs. And I’ve as much right as anyone to—to walk the surface of another world.” His phraseology made O’Brien a bit self-conscious, but damn it, he reflected, he hadn’t come forty million miles just to look at the place through portholes.
“You can stretch your legs inside the ship. You know and I know that walking around in a space-suit is no particularly pleasant exercise. And as for being on the surface of another world, you’ve already done that, O’Brien, yesterday, in the ceremony where we laid down the marker.”
O’Brien glanced past him to the engine-room porthole. Through it, he could see the small white pyramid they had planted outside. On each of its three sides was the same message in a different language: English, Russian, Hindustani. First Terrestrial Expedition to Mars. In the Name of Human Life.
Cute touch, that. And typically Indian. But pathetic. Like everything else about this expedition, plain pathetic.
“You’re too valuable to risk, O’Brien,” Ghose was explaining. “We found that out on the way here. No human brain can extemporize suddenly necessary course changes with the speed and accuracy of those computers. And, since you helped design them, no one can handle those computers as well as you. So my order stands.”
“Oh, come now, it’s not that bad: you’d always have Kolevitch.”
“As you remarked just a moment ago, Semyon Kolevitch isn’t enough of an electronic technician. If anything went wrong with the computers, we’d have to call in Smathers and use the two of them in tandem—not the most efficient working arrangement there is. And I suspect that Smathers plus Kolevitch still would not quite equal Preston O’Brien. No, I’m sorry, but I’m afraid we can’t take chances: you’re too close to being indispensable.”
“All right,” O’Brien said softly. “The order stands. But allow me a small disagreement, Captain. You know and I know that there’s only one indispensable man aboard this ship. And it isn’t me.”
Ghose grunted and turned away. Guranin and Smathers came in, having shed their space suits in the airlock at the belly of the craft. The captain and the chief engineer had a brief English colloquy, at the end of which, with only the barest resistance, Guranin agreed to lend Smathers to O’Brien.
“But I’ll need him back by three at the latest.”
“You’ll have him,” O’Brien promised in Russian and led Smathers out. Behind him, Guranin began to discuss engine repair problems with the captain.
“I’m surprised he didn’t make you fill out a requisition for me,” Smathers commented. “What the hell does he think I am anyway, a Siberian slave laborer?”
“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.