Dr. Pickering took over the mess. That left Sublieutenant Cleary as "George," the man who does everything-an impossibility, since meteor-guard and search watches would have to be kept up. Consequently the two jeep crews riot actually in space had to help out even during their week of rest.
Each Monday the ship placed the jeep rockets on station so that the three vessels would sweep the largest possible volume of space, with their search fields barely overlapping. The placement was made by the mother ship, so that the jeep would be left with full tanks in the unhappy event that she was not picked up-and thereby have enough fuel to shape an orbit toward the inner planets, if need be.
XII P.R.S. PATHFINDER
MATT TOOK ALONG a supply of study spools on his first week of search intending to play them on the jeep's tiny, earphones-type viewer. He did not get much chance; four
hours out of eight he had to keep his eyes glued to the search scopes. During the four hours off watch he had to sleep, eat, attend to chores, and study, if possible.
Besides that, Lieutenant Thurlow liked to talk.
The bomb officer was expecting Earth-side duty in postgraduate study at the end of the cruise. "And then I'll have to make up my mind, Matt. Do I stay in and make physics a part-time specialty, or resign and go in for research?"
"It depends on what you want to do."
"Trite but true. I think I want to be a scientist, full time-but after a few years the Patrol becomes a father and a mother to you. I don't know. That pile of rock is creeping up on us-I can see it through the port now."
"It is, eh?" Matt moved forward until he, too, could see the undersized boulder that Thurlow had been watching by radar. It was of irregular shape, a pattern of sunlight and sharp, dark shadow.
"Mister Thurlow," said Matt, "look-about the middle. Doesn't that look like striation to you?"
"Could be. Some specimens have been picked up that were definitely sedimentary rock. That was the first proof that the asteroids used to be a planet, you know."
"I thought that Goodman's integrations were the first proof?"
"Nope, you're switched around. Goodman wasn't 'able to run his checks until the big ballistic computer at Terra Station was built."
"I knew that-I just had it backwards, I guess." The theory that the asteroids had once been a planet, between Mars and Jupiter, was denied for many years because their orbits showed no interrelation, i.e., if a planet had blown to bits the orbits should intersect at the point of the explosion. Professor Goodman, using the giant, strain-free computer, had shown that the lack of relationship was caused by the perturbations through the ages of the other planets acting on the asteroids.
He had assigned a date to the disaster, nearly half a billion years ago, and had calculated as well that most of the ruined planet had escaped from the System entirely. The debris around them represented about one per cent of the lost planet.
Lieutenant Thurlow measured the angular width of the fragment, noted its distance by radar, and recorded the result as gross size. The rock, large as it was, was too small to merit investigation of its orbit; it was simply included in the space-drift survey. Smaller objects were merely listed while collisions with minute particles were counted by an electronic circuit hooked to the hull of the jeep.
"The thing that bothers me," went on Thurlow, "about getting out is this- Matt, have you noticed the difference between people in the Patrol and people not in the Patrol?"
"Haven't I, though!"
"What is the difference?"
"The difference? Uh, why, we're spacemen and they're not. I guess it's a matter of how big your world is."
"Partly. But don't get carried away by mere size. A hundred million miles of empty space isn't significant-if it's empty. No, Matt, the split goes deeper. We've given the human race a hundred years of peace, and now there is no one left who remembers war. They've come to accept peace and comfort as the normal way of life. But it isn't. The human animal has millions of years of danger and starving and death behind him; the past century is just a flicker of an eyelash in his history. But only the Patrol seems aware of it."
"Would you abolish the Patrol?"
"Oh, my, no, Matt! But I wish there were some way to make people realize by how thin a barrier the jungle has been shut out. And another thing, too-" Thurlow grinned sheepishly. "-I wish they had some understanding of what we are. The taxpayer's hired man, that's what they think of us."
Matt nodded. "They think we're some sort of traffic cop. There is a man back home who sells used copters-asked me why Patrolmen should be pensioned when they retire. He said that he hadn't been able to sit back and take it easy at thirty-five and he didn't see why he should have to support somebody else who did." Matt looked puzzled. "At the same time he sort of glamorized the Patrol-wants his son to be a cadet. I don't understand it."
"That's it. To them we are a kind of expensive, useless prize pet-their property. They don't understand that we ;ire not for hire. The sort of guardian you can hire is worth about as much as the sort of wife you can buy."
The following week Matt found time to look up what the ship's library afforded on the subject of the exploded planet. There was not much-dry statistics on sizes of asteroids, fragments, and particles, distributional and orbital data, Goodman's calculations summarized. Nothing at all about what he wanted to know-how it happened!-nothing but some fine-spun theories.
He took it up with Thurlow the next time they were out on Patrol. The lieutenant shrugged. "What do you expect, Matt?"
"I don't know, but more than I found."
"Our time scale is all wrong for us to learn much. Suppose you pick out one of the spools you've been studying- here, this one." The officer held out one-marked "Social structures of the Martian aborigines." "Now suppose you examine a couple of frames in the middle. Can you reconstruct the thousands and thousands of frames that come before it, just by logic?"
"Naturally not."
"That's the situation. If the race manages to keep from blowing its top for a few million years, maybe we'll begin to find out some things. So far, we don't even know what questions to ask,"
Matt was dissatisfied, but had no answer ready. Thurlow knit his brows. "Maybe we aren't built to ask the right questions. You know the Martian 'double-world' idea-"
"Certainly, but I don't understand it."
"Who does? Let's forget the usual assumption that a Martian is talking in religious symbols when he says that we live just on 'one side' while he lives on’ both sides.' Sup-IKise that what he means is as real as butter and eggs, that lie really does live in two worlds at the same time and that we are in the one he regards as unimportant. If you! accept that, then it accounts for the Martian being un-f willing to waste time talking with us, or trying to explain things to us. He isn't being stuffy, he's being reasonable. Would you waste time trying to explain rainbows to an earthworm?"
"The cases aren't parallel."
"Maybe they are to a Martian. An earthworm can't even see, much less have a color sense. If you accept the 'double world' as real, then to a Martian we just don't have the proper senses to be able to ask the right questions. Why bother with us?" j
The radio squealed for attention. Thurlow glanced toward it and said, "Someone calling, Matt. See who it is and tell 'em we don't want any."
"Okay." Matt flipped the switch and answered, "Jeep] One, Triplex-go ahead."
"Triplex calling," came Sublieutenant deary's familiar voice. "Stand by to be picked up."
"Huh? Cut the comedy-we're only three days out."
"Stand by to be picked up-official. Jeep Two has found the Pathfinder."
"The deuce you say! Did you hear that, Mr. Thurlow? Did you hear that?"
It was true; Peters and Gomez, in the other jeep, had discovered the missing ship, almost by accident. The Pathfinder was found anchored to a smallish asteroid about a mile in greatest dimension. Since it was a listed body, 1987-CD, the crew of the jeep had paid little attention to it, until its rotation brought the Pathfinder into view.