“So it seems. Who’s that he’s talking to?”
“The skinny one? That’s Jeff Salter. Assistant navigator. Morehouse over there is the navigator.”
Lambert pointed to a cheerful-faced young man perspiring over a tape projector he was busy preparing for use.
“Films?”
“Looks like it,” Lambert nodded. Another group of men came in and gradually settled in the bucket seats around the room. The lounge was well appointed for men with occasional lengthy periods of free time and very cramped living quarters. Tables tipped out from slotted storage racks along one wall; several cabinets were filled with playing cards and games. The far wall was packed with reader-tapes and several reading machines. In the corner a 3-V was flickering, poorly transmitted through the Koenig drive, but clearly discernible, a man and two girls building pyramids and spires with gaily colored teleblocks, teetering one unit up on top of another with a great show of difficulty as the structures built up crazily.
The forward hatchway opened and Tom Lorry, the startled-looking second officer came in, followed by a tall, heavily built man dressed in Colonial gray. Lars’ heart jumped. It was the first time he had seen Commander Walter Fox, although the explorer’s heavy features, severe jaw and shock of gray hair above pale blue eyes were as familiar to Lars as his own face in the mirror. Lars probably knew Walter Fox from tapes and films better than anyone on the ship did, for Lars had read every account of every expedition that Walter Fox had ever headed. Yet it was still a shock to see the man himself walk in, a commanding figure, firm and precise in his movements as he smiled and nodded to the men and sat down on the edge of a table in the front part of the room.
Not a man to tangle with, Lars thought to himself. Not a man to have angry at you, indeed, but a good man to have leading the ship any place the ship might be going.
Tom Lorry pounded on the table for order, and counted the men present. There were twenty-two, including Lars and Peter, a full complement for a first class explorer in the Colonial Service. Lorry nodded to Fox, and took a seat near the projector, handing a spool of tape to Morehouse. “Everyone’s here, Commander.”
“Fine, then we can begin.” Fox looked slowly around the room, his eyes stopping for a fraction of a second as they met Lars’ eyes, and again when they rested on Peter. “There’s been a lot of talk going around the ship that there’s something funny about this trip, that we’ve blasted under phoney orders, that we’re not hitting Vega at all but someplace else, that we’re heading for a plague spot someplace where we’ll be quarantined for six months, and so on, and so on. So I think we’d better clear the air before we get into our normal in-transit routines.” He glanced at Lambert. “Anybody have any trouble with reaction this time, by the way?”
“Not to speak of,” said Lambert.
“Fine.” Fox leaned against the table. “These rumors are like any other rumors, they’re false and they’re true. It’s perfectly true that the Ganymede has blasted under restricted orders, and that we are not bound for Vega.” He paused to let that penetrate as a buzz of voices rose and the men shifted their feet uneasily. “Colonial Security regarded the secrecy as necessary, and I think you’ll be able to see why in a minute if you’ll let me go on. As for the rest of the wild stories I’ve been hearing bits of here and there, they’re about as far off the mark as they can get. You men aren’t very imaginative guessers. Let’s have the tape, Paul.”
Across the room Lars could see a malicious glint in Peter Brigham’s eve as he leaned over to whisper in Jeff Salter’s ear. Then the lights dimmed and a wall screen sprang to life. The buzz of voices quieted.
The screen showed an image of a Colonial Service Star Ship, lying in its launching rack in Catskill Rocketport. At first Lars thought it was the Ganymede, but little structural details were different. Two gantries were busily loading the ship as Commander Fox’s voice rose above the click of the projector.
“The ship you see here is the Star Ship Planetfall. She was a first class Colonial Service explorer, commissioned on November 17, 2347—that’s just three and a half years ago. Anybody remember her?”
There was silence. Then someone said, “The Planetfall— yes! She was under Millar, wasn’t she?”
“That’s the one.”
“Took her shakedown out to Sirus I and blew two generators?”
“That was before she was commissioned,” Fox said. “It gave her a reputation as a jinx ship, but she was a good sound planet-breaker just the same. She carried the new modification Koenig engines that we have and a full exploratory crew of twenty-two men. With Millar aboard her, she was equipped to approach any planet of any star system that could be reached in the lifetime of a man, and to bring back all the data Colonial Service would ever need to open colony. You see her loading for a trip here. Good ship, the Planetfall.”
They watched the flickering pictures in silence as the camera moved in close. Gantries rose and fell; all about the ship was an eager bustle of activity. The camera settled on crates of dry-stores being hoisted into the hold, ship’s name and destination stenciled on the sides.
“Wait a minute—” one of the men said suddenly. “That ship was headed out into the Marakov Sector, wasn’t it? A new star or something?”
“There’s a man with a good memory,” Commander Fox said. “Her first commission was for a big jump, out to the planetary system of a star known as Wolf. It’s a long way out there. The near stars with familiar colonies are just around the corner in comparison. Wolf had been identified on photo plates, and that was as close as men had gotten to this star. We’d never had a ship anywhere near there before. But plate analysis said that it was a Sol-type star and that it had planets. Planetfall’s job was to chart those planets and bring back all the information she could about colony prospects there. I don’t need to tell you why. You know why Colonial exists. You know how desperately Earth needs new colonies for its people.”
“I can remember the big hullaballoo when they blasted,” a little man next to Lars said. “Full 3-V coverage and everything. They made a big production of it. That was just about three years ago, not even that long. But there was something I can’t quite nail about it. When did she get back?”
“She didn’t,” said Commander Walter Fox.
There was silence in the room for the space of a long breath. Then a babble of voices arose.
“But I heard—”
“There was some kind of a report—”
“Yes, yes! The Colonial Service said—”
“The Colonial Service damped it out cold,” Fox cut in with a loud voice. “They made a brief report in certain of the official journals that the Planetfall had had a disaster in space—something wrong with her drive—and had been blown to atoms. They buried the story in the” public press for all they were worth, and only a very few speculations ever met the public eye. They had to do it that way. They couldn’t afford a scare breaking loose at home and wrecking the colonization program. But those reports had nothing even remotely to do with what really happened to the Planetfall.”
The talking died as the Commander went on. “We know she blasted for Wolf two years and eight months ago. We know nothing happened to her drive because she was in drive-transmitted communication with the Colonial Service dispatcher on Earth from the moment she blasted on. She went into normal Koenig drive at the appointed time, and she reached the Wolf system. We know that. She reported six planets in orbit around a yellow-white sun, and she chose Wolf IV as the most promising of the six for a preliminary landing and pilot study. We know that, too, but that’s all we know for sure. The Planetfall landed, and vanished. We had some signals from her during the landing processes, then no signals.” Fox snapped off the projector and raised the lights, then looked around at his crew. “Our commission is brief and to the point, gentlemen. We’re going to Wolf IV, and we’re going to find that ship if there’s enough of her still in one piece to find. If there isn’t, our job is to find out what happened to the pieces.”