fourteen
“We’re going back,” Garamond announced flatly.
He studied the faces of his executive staff, noting how they were reacting. Some looked at him with open amusement, others stared downwards into the grass, seemingly embarrassed. Behind them, further along the hillside, the great scarred hulk of the Bissendorf shocked the eye with its incongruity, and beyond it microscopic figures moved on the plain in the rituals of a ball game. The sun was directly overhead, as always, creating only an occasional flicker of diamond-fire on the dark blue waters of the lakes which banded the middle distance. Garamond began to feel that his words had been absorbed by Orbitsville’s green infinities, sucked up cleanly before they reached the edge of the irregular ring in which the group was sitting, but he resisted the urge to repeat himself.
“It’s a hell of a long way,” Napier said, finally breaking the heavy silence. His statement of the obvious, Garamond knew, constituted a question.
“We’ll build aircraft.”
O’Hagan cleared his throat. “I’ve already thought of that, Vance. We have enough workshop facilities still intact to manufacture a reasonable subsonic aircraft, and the micropedia can give us all the design data, but the distance is just too great. You run into exactly the same problem as with wheeled vehicles. Your aircraft might do the trip in three or four years — except that we haven’t the resources to build a plane which can fly continuously for that length of time. And we couldn’t transport major repair facilities.” O’Hagan glanced solemnly around the rest of the group, reproving them for having left it to him to deal with a wayward non-scientist.
Garamond shook his head. “When I said we are going back, I didn’t mean all of us, in a body. I meant that I am going back, together with any of the crew who are sufficiently determined to make it — even if that means only half-a-dozen of us.”
“But…”
“We’re going to build a fleet of perhaps ten aircraft. We’re going to incorporate as much redundancy as is compatible with good aerodynamics. We’re going to fly our ten machines towards Beachhead City, and each time one of them breaks down we’re going to take the best components out of it and put them in the other machines, and we’re going to fly on.”
“There’s no guarantee you’ll get there, even with the last aircraft.”
“There’s no guarantee I won’t.”
“I’m afraid there is.” O’Hagan’s pained expression had become even more pronounced. “There’s this problem of direction which we have already discussed. Unless you’ve got a really accurate bearing on Beachhead City there’s no point in setting out.”
“I’m not worried about getting a precise bearing,” Garamond said, making a conscious decision to be enigmatic. He was aware that in the very special circumstances of the Bissendorf’s final flight the whole concept of command structure, of the captain-and-crew relationship, could easily lose its validity. It was necessary at this stage to re-establish himself in office without the aid of insignia or outside authority.
“How do you propose to get one?”
“I propose instructing my science staff to attend to that chore for me. There’s an old saying about the pointlessness of owning a dog and doing your own barking.” Garamond fixed a steady challenging gaze on O’Hagan, Sammy Yamoto, Morrison, Schneider and Denise Serra. He noted with satisfaction that they were responding as he had hoped — already there were signs of abstraction, of withdrawal to a plateau of thought upon which they became hunters casting nets for a quarry they had never seen but would recognize at first sight.
“While they’re sorting that one out,” Garamond continued, speaking to Napier before any of the science staff could voice objections, “we’ll convene a separate meeting of the engineering committee. The ship has to be cut up to get the workshop floors level, but in the meantime I want the design definition drawn up for the aircraft and the first production tapes prepared.” He got to his feet and walked towards the improvised plastic hut he was using as an office. Napier, walking beside him, gave a dry cough which was out of place issuing from the barrel of his chest.
“TB again?” Garamond said with mock sympathy.
“I think you’re going too fast, Vance. Concentrating too much on the nuts and bolts, and not thinking enough about the human element.”
“Be more specific, Cliff.”
“A lot of the crew have got the Orbitsville syndrome already. They don’t see any prospect of getting back to Beachhead City, and many of them don’t even want to get back. They see no reason why they shouldn’t set up a community right here, using the Bissendorf as a mine for essential materials.”
Garamond stopped, shielded his eyes and looked beyond the ship towards the plot of land, marked with a silver cross, where forty men and women had been buried. “I can understand their feelings, and I’m not proposing to ride herd on those who want to stay. We’ll use volunteers only.”
“There could be less than you expect.”
“Surely some of them, a lot of them, have reasons for getting back.”
“The point is that you aren’t proposing to take them back, Vance. The planes won’t make it all the way, so you’re asking them to choose between staying here in a strong sizeable community with resources of power, materials and food — or being dropped somewhere between here and Beachhead City in groups of ten or less with very little to get them started as independent communities.”
“Each plane will have to carry an iron cow and a small plastics plant.”
“It’s still a hell of a lot to ask.”
“I’ll also guarantee that a rescue mission will set out as soon as I get back.”
“If you get back.”
A dark thought crossed Garamond’s mind. “How about you, Cliff? Are you coming with me?”
“I’m coming with you. All I’m trying to do is make you realize there’s more to this than finding the right engineering approach.”
“I realize that already, but right now I’ve got all the human problems I can handle.”
“Others have wives and families they want to get back to.”
“That’s the point — I haven’t.”
“But…” “How long do you think Aileen and Chris will survive after I’m presumed dead? A week? A day?” Garamond forced himself to speak steadily, despite the grief which kept up a steady thundering inside his head. “The only reason I’m going back is that I have to kill Liz Lindstrom.”
Although it had been equipped and powered to carry out one emergency landing on the surface of a planet, the Bissendorf was in a supremely unnatural condition when beached with its longitudinal axis at right angles to the pull of gravity. The interior layout was based on the assumption that, except during short spells of weightlessness, there would be acceleration or retardation which would enable the crew to regard the prow as pointing ‘upwards’ and to walk normally on all its levels. Now the multitudinous floors of the vessel had become vertical walls to which were attached, in surrealistic attitudes, clusters of consoles, pedestals, desks, chairs, lockers, beds, tables and several hundred machines of varying types and capabilities. Because design allowance had been made for periods of free-fall — most small items, including paperwork, were magnetically or physically clamped in position — very little material had fallen to the lowermost side of the hull, but many of the ship’s resources could not be tapped until key areas were properly orientated to the ground.
Teams of forcemasters using valency cutters and custom-built derricks began slicing the Bissendorf’s structure into manageable sections and rotating them to horizontal positions. The work was slowed down by the need to sever and reconnect power channels, but within a week the cylinder of the central hull had been largely converted into a cluster of low circular or wedge-shaped buildings. Each was roofed with a plastic diaphragm and linked by cable to power sources on the ground or within the butchered ship. The entire complex was surrounded by an umbra of tents and extemporized plastic sheds which gave it the appearance of an army encampment.