THE REEFS OF SPACE
The major snapped: "Check in, you Risks! What's the matter with you?" His radar horns made him look like Satan—a sleepy young Satan with an underslung jaw, but dangerous.
"Yes, sir," said Steve Ryeland, peering around. This was Reykjavik— a new world to Ryeland, who had just come from a maximum-security labor camp inside the rim of the Arctic Circle. Ryeland blinked at the buildings, a thousand feet high, and at the jets and rockets scattered across the air field. The little man next to Ryeland sneezed and nudged him. "All right," Ryeland said, and went into the bare little Security lounge. On the teletype that stood in the corner of the room—in the corner of every room—he tapped out:
Information. Steven Ryeland, Risk, AWC-38440, and O. B. Oporto, Risk, XYZ-99942, arrived at—
He took the code letters from the identification plate on the machine.
—Station 3-Radius 4-261, Reykjavik, Iceland. Query. What are personal orders?
In a moment the answer came from the Planning Machine, a single typed letter "R." The Machine had received and understood the message and adjusted its records. The orders would follow.
A Togetherness girl glanced into the lounge, saw the collars on Ryeland and the little man. Her lips had started to curve in the smile of her trade, but they clamped into a thin line. Risks. She nodded to the major and turned away.
The teletype bell rang, and the Machine tapped out:
Action. Proceed to Train 667, Track 6, Compartment 93.
Ryeland acknowledged the message. The major, leaning over his shoulder, grinned. "A one-way ticket to the Body Bank if you want my guess."
"Yes, sir." Ryeland was not going to get into a discussion. He couldn't win. No Risk could win an argument with a man who wore the major's radar horns.
"Well, get going," the major grumbled. "Oh, and Ryeland—"
"Yes, sir?"
The major winked. "Thanks for the chess games. I'll be seeing you, I guess. Parts of you!" He laughed raucously as he strode away. "No side trips, remember," he warned.
"I'll remember," said Steve Ryeland softly, touching the collar he wore.
Oporto sneezed again. "Come on," he grumbled.
"All right. What was that number?"
The little dark man grinned. "Train 667, Track 6, Compartment 93. That's an easy one—ahchoof Dabbit," he complained, "I'm catching cold. Let's get out of this draft."
Ryeland led off. They walked unescorted across the pavement to a cab rank and got in. All around them, travelers, air field workers and others glanced at them, saw the iron collars—and at once, on each face a curtain descended. No one spoke to them. Ryeland punched the code number for their destination, and the car raced through broad boulevards to a huge marble structure on the other side of the city.
Over its wide entrance were the carved letters:
THE PLAN OF MAN SUBTRAIN STATION
They made their way through a wide concourse, noisy and crowded; but everyone gave them plenty of room. Ryeland grinned sourly to himself. No side trips! Of course not—and for the same reason. It wasn't healthy for a man who wore the collar to step out of line. And it wasn't healthy for anyone else to be in his immediate neighborhood if he did.
"Track Six, was it?"
"Train 667, Compartment 93. Can't you remember anything?" Oporto demanded.
"There's Track Six." Ryeland led the way. Track Six was a freight platform. They went down a flight of motionless moving stairs and emerged beside the cradle track of the subtrains.
Since the subtrains spanned the world, there was no clue as to where they were going. From Iceland they could be going to Canada, to Brazil, even to South Africa; the monstrous atomic drills of the Plan had burrowed perfectly straight shafts from everywhere to everywhere. The sub-trains rocketed through air-exhausted tunnels, swung between hoops of electrostatic force. Without friction, their speed compared with the velocity of interplanetary travel.
"Where is it?" Oporto grumbled, looking around. A harsh light flooded the grimy platforms, glittering on the huge aluminum balloons that lay in their cradles outside the vacuum locks. Men with trucks and cranes were loading a long row of freightspheres in the platform next to theirs; a little cluster of passengers began to appear down the moving stairs of a platform a hundred yards away. Oporto said abruptly: "I'll give you six to five the next train in is ours."
"No bet." Ryeland knew better than to take him up. But he hoped the little man was right. It was cold on the platform. Chill air roared around them from the ventilators; Oporto, already chilled, sneezed and began to sniffle. Ryeland himself was shivering in his thin maximum-security denims.
At the camp, when their travel orders came through, regulations demanded a thorough medical examination before they left. That was the rule under the Plan, and the examination included a steaming shower. "They want nice clean meat at the Body Bank," the guard guffawed; but Ryeland paid no attention. He couldn't afford to.
A man who wore the iron collar around his neck could only afford a limited look into the future. He could think about the day when the collar came off, and nothing else.
A warning horn shrieked into the pit. Ryeland jumped; Oporto turned more slowly, as though he had been expecting it. Which he had.
Red signals flickered from the enormous gates of the vacuum lock on Track Six. Air valves gasped. The gates swung slowly open and a tractor emerged towing a cradle with the special car they were waiting for. "You would have lost," Oporto commented and Ryeland nodded; of course he would have.
The car stopped. Equalizer valves snorted again, and then its tall door flopped out from the top, forming a ramp to the platform. Escalators began to crawl along it.
Oporto said anxiously: "Steve, I don't like the looks of this!" Out of the opening door of the car two men in uniform came running. They ran up the escalators, raced onto the platform and up the stairs. They didn't look at Ryeland or Oporto; they were in a hurry. They were bearing thick leather dispatch cases the same color as their uniforms.
Bright blue uniforms!
Why, that was the uniform of the special guard of—
Ryeland lifted his eyes to look, unbelieving. At the roof of the shed, amid the ugly web of ducts and pipes and cables, a brilliant light burst forth, shining down on the sphere. And across its top, forty feet above the platform, there was a gleaming blue star and under it, etched in crystalline white, the legend:
THE PLAN OF MAN OFFICE OF THE PLANNER
The special car they had been waiting for was the private car of the Planner himself!
The first thought that crossed Steve Ryeland's mind was: Now I can present my case to the Planner! But the second thought canceled it. The Planner, like every other human on Earth or the planets, was only an instrument of the Planning Machine. If clearance ever came to Ryeland— if the collar came off his neck—it would be because the Machine had considered all the evidence and reached a proper decision. Human argument would not affect it.
With an effort, Ryeland put the thought out of his mind; but all the same, he couldn't help feeling a touch better, a degree stronger. At least it was almost certain that their destination would not be the Body Bank!
"What was that compartment number?"
Oporto sighed. "93. Can't you remember anything? Train 667—the product of the two primes, 23 and 29. Track 6, their difference. Compartment 93, their last digits in reverse order. That's an easy one—" But Ryeland was hardly listening. The intimate acquaintance that Oporto seemed to have with all numbers was no longer news to him, and he had more urgent things on his mind. He led the way up the ramp and into the Planner's subtrain car. A woman in the blue uniform of the guard passed them, glanced at their collars and frowned. Before Ryeland could speak to her she had brushed past them busily and was gone. It said a lot for the efficiency of the collars, he thought wryly, that she didn't bother to find out what two Risks were doing wandering freely around the Planner's private car. There was no cause for worry; if they took a wrong turning, the collars would make it their last.