“I can believe it,” Captain Alva told me. “This whole business has me worried — which is the euphemism of the day.”
Fourth entry:
I had been at work in my office for perhaps fifteen minutes when Judge Cartrite sent through a request to see me.
“Come right in,” I said into the intercom, and a moment later the judge entered.
“Good morning, good morning. I just thought I would stop up and check through you before I got busy. There’ll be a lot of changes to be made now, a lot of lax laws will have to be enforced more strictly.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, has it or hasn’t it been adopted as the official explanation of the catastrophe of Epsilon-7?”
I put my fingers together and leaned back. “As far as I know, there has been no vaguely plausible explanation advanced.”
“Oh, come now,” said Judge Cartrite. “You don’t mean you haven’t heard. That’s why I came to see if it was official. It’s all over the City.”
“What’s all over the City?”
“That the One-Eyed sector of Epsilon-7 tried to take over their City, slaughtered the population, and blew up the ship.”
“Nothing of the kind has even been considered.”
“Well then, perhaps you ought to — ”
“And it’s preposterous.”
“Are you sure you can say that?”
“I am. Here, I want you to listen to a transcription of everything that came across from Epsilon-7 the night she went.”
I called Meeker and got him to pipe up the playback on both sound and video. The judge sat through it perfectly still. I’d seen it fifteen times, so I’d forgotten what a shock the first run-through could be. He was silent and his face was drawn. At last he muttered, “Well…”
“Did that sound like a man who had just taken over a ship to you?”
“Well,” he repeated. “Perhaps it…wasn’t real, or was fixed or something. After all, what did take over the ship, then? The green man with the flaming eyes, or whatever that nonsense was?”
After the judge left, Parks gave me a ring. “You know, Captain, the radiation is still pretty high. The mutations that are going to come out of this will set the Norm jumping something awful.”
“I’ll come down and take a look.”
“Not that there’s anything anybody can actually do,” Parks said. Then he added, “But it would make us feel better.”
The Market is bright with fluorescent fixtures, and stall after stall is sided with glittering tubes where infants are brought to term. The front of the Market holds the genealogical files, which have the chromosome pattern of every person in the City.
Parks’s assistant sat at the desk, blond head down, absorbed in his pad. A moment later Parks came up. “Hello,” he said, smiling. He saw me glance at his assistant and made a hopeless gesture. “Ignore him. I’ll show you what I’ve done.”
We went toward the back. “I’ve put lead foil around the early blastulas. They need it most. I don’t think anything over four months will be affected, but it’s still going to be nip and tuck.” One section of the glittering rack was dark where the tubes had been wrapped in lead.
Looking at the dull, crinkled foil, I suddenly felt the heaviness of the responsibility to these born and unborn thousands hurtling between stars, lost somewhere in timelessness, sea and desert, life and catastrophe, spinning around one another like dots on dice.
“Well,” I told Parks, “like you said, there’s not much I can do. This place is depressing. Or maybe it just brings out the mother in me.”
Parks laughed. I left the Market and went back up to my cabin.
Fifth entry:
Captain Alva called this evening from Sigma-9, very upset. “Lee, what’s your situation with the One-Eyes.”
“Cartrite’s been annoying the hell out of them,” I told him.
I heard his breath whistle through the speaker. “It’s worse over here,” he said. “I’m going to ask something strange of you right now.”
“Go ahead,” I said, question mark implied.
“Will you join with me in an official request to the judicial offices of all the Cities not to persecute the One-Eyes. I’m asking all the captains to do the same. The way things are going here, they’ll be extinct in no time, and when their knowledge is gone, so is all humanity.”
“We’re not supposed to meddle with the judicials,” I mused.
“Lee — ”
“Shut up, Alva, I’m just thinking out loud. But we’re not that far away from where you are. If you already had the consent of the other captains, I’d feel better about the whole thing. Oh, hell, what am I, a woman or a mouse? Sure, you’ve got my consent, Captain Alva; just send a wording of the statement to me before you present it.”
“Thanks, Lee.” The gratitude in his voice reflected the relief even I felt. “You’re the third captain who’s gone along with me.”
“I think you’ll get us all,” I told him, “if the condition in this City is any indication.” Then I added, “I hope it does some good.”
I heard Alva sigh. It was a long sigh; I bet it sent the stars outside shaking. “I hope so too, Lee.”
Sixth entry:
They’re gone. Must I cry, rage; the City of Delta-6 is destroyed. This time it took ten hours. It began with a blast of static that wiped out the broadcast of One-Eyed Jack’s trial, which we were all monitoring over in Sigma-9. Faint signals started coming through, panic had broken out on the ship, then a call for help from Communications. Then more static. Apparently the green-eyed being was back. It was fantastic. I don’t know how to take it seriously. It would be easier to think it some cosmic joke. But it’s real, and the lives of all the citizens of the City depend on perceiving that reality correctly. Toward the end, the only communication was from the One-Eyes. Help, help, and help again. Some green-eyed being who stole their sanity as well as their organization marched among the survivors on that ruined ship for ten hours, and at the end, there was destruction. At the end, I relayed to Captain Alva: “Can’t we do something? What if I go over there?”
“Don’t be silly, Lee. What can you do?”
“At least find out…at least…”
Over the intercom someone was screaming.
“If you die, will that do any good, Lee?”
“It will if I can find out what’s killing off the rest of them.”
Then on the vision screen, the ship began to break apart. God, the screaming —
Chapter Nine
“Skip the next couple of pages,” the boy said.
So Joneny turned them over. His eyes caught up the words again at:
…so that when I heard Captain Alva shrieking over the clattering speaker, “Help, oh, for God’s sake, will somebody help us,” what could I do?
I radioed down to Meeker, “Get an intercity ferry ready. I’m going over there to take a look.”
“But, Captain,” Meeker said, “if you get caught — ”
“The last one lasted ten hours. That should give me time enough to get there and back.”
“The one before that lasted sixteen minutes. This one could be longer, shorter, or the same. And what about the sand count — ”
“I’m going, Meeker. Get the shuttle ready.”
When I was swinging out of my office five minutes later, suddenly someone from an adjoining corridor barked, “Captain!”
“What is it, Judge Cartrite?”
“Meeker just informed me you were heading over to Sigma-9.”
“And what the hell business is it of yours?” I snapped.
“Captain, I forbid you to go. And if you do go, I certainly forbid you to come back.”