Peter Wayne made use of his extra few inches of height to glance around the briefing room. He saw row on row of tense faces—faces that reflected the same emotions he was feeling. Space exploration was something still new and mostly unknown, and even the experienced men of IES still knew fear occasionally. The galaxy was a big place; unknown terrors lurked on planets unimaginably distant. Every now and then, something like this would come up—something to give you pause, before you ventured into space again.
“We couldn’t find out what had killed them,” Jervis said again. “They were lying scattered every which way, with no clues at all.” The small man’s fingers were trembling from relived fright. “Bellows and I were pretty scared, I’ll have to admit. We couldn’t find a sign of what had killed the men—they’d just—just died.”
There was a quiver in his voice. It was obvious he could never take the story lightly, no matter how many times he had to tell it.
Wayne heard Private Manetti mutter, “There’s always a price for D-N beryllium.”
“The Scout Ship hadn’t been molested,” Jervis went on. “I went inside and checked it over. It was untouched, undisturbed in every way. I checked the control panel, the cabins, everything. All unbothered. The ship was empty and dead. And—outside—
“When I came out, Bellows was dead too.” He took a deep breath. “I’m afraid I panicked then. I locked myself inside the ship, set the autocontrols, and headed back to Earth at top velocity. I set the ship in an orbit around the moon and notified headquarters. I was quarantined immediately, of course, to make sure I wasn’t carrying anything. The medics checked me over carefully. I wasn’t and am not now carrying any virus or bacteria unknown to Terrestrial medicine.
“Since I’m the only one who knows exactly where this valley is, the general has asked me to guide the Lord Nelson to the exact spot. Actually, it could be found eventually with the D-N beryllium as a guide. But the Mavis was in orbit around Fomalhaut V for two weeks before we found the D-N beryllium deposit, and the Service feels that we shouldn’t waste any time.”
The lieutenant sat down, and General Scarborough resumed his place on the platform.
“That’s the situation,” Scarborough said bluntly. “You know the setup, now—and I think some of you see how your specialities are going to fit into the operation. As Lieutenant Jervis pointed out, we don’t know what killed the crew of the Mavis; therefore, we are going to take every possible precaution. As far as we know, there are no inimical life forms on Fomalhaut V—but it’s possible that there are things we don’t know about, such as airborne viruses that kill in a very short time. If so, then Lieutenant Jervis is immune to the virus and is not a transmitter or carrier of it.
“However, to guard against such a possibility, no one will leave the Lord Nelson, once it has landed, without wearing a spacesuit. The air is breathable, but we’re taking no chances. Also, no one will go out alone; scouting parties will always be in pairs, with wide open communication with the ship. And at no time will more than ten percent of the ship’s company be outside at any one time.”
Wayne made a rough mental computation. The Lord Nelson holds sixty. That means no more than six out at any single time. They really must be worried.
“Aside from those orders, which were decided on by the Service Command, you’ll be under the direct orders of Colonel Nels Petersen. Colonel Petersen.”
Petersen was a tall, hard-faced man with a touch of gray at his temples. He stepped forward and stared intently at the assembled crew.
“Our job is to make the preliminary preparations for getting D-N beryllium out of the crust of Fomalhaut V. We’re supposed to stay alive while we do it. Therefore, our secondary job is to find out what it was that killed the scouting expedition of the Mavis. There are sixty of us going aboard the Lord Nelson tomorrow, and I’d like to have sixty aboard when we come back. Got that?”
He leaned forward, stretched upward on his toes, and smiled mechanically. “Fine. Now, you all know your jobs, but we’re going to have to work together as a team. We’re going to have to correlate our work so that we’ll know what we’re doing. So don’t think we won’t have anything to do during the two weeks it will take us to get to Fomalhaut V. We’re going to work it as though it were a shakedown cruise. If anyone doesn’t work out, he’ll be replaced, even if we have to turn around and come back to Earth. On a planet which has wiped out a whole scouting expedition, we can’t afford to have any slip-ups. And that means we can’t afford to have anyone aboard who doesn’t know what he’s doing or doesn’t care. Is that clear?”
It was.
“All right,” said the colonel. “Let’s go out and get acquainted with the Lord Nelson.”
The briefing session broke up well past midnight, and the group that shortly would become the crew of the Lord Nelson filtered out of the building and into the cool spring air. Each man had a fairly good idea of his job and each man knew the dangers involved. No one had backed out.
“What d’ye think of it, Pete?” Sherri James asked, as they left together. “Sounds pretty mean.”
“I wish we knew what the answers were beforehand,” Wayne said. He glanced down at Sherri. The moon was full, and its rays glinted brightly off her golden hair. “It’s a risky deal, as Petersen said. Nine men go out, and eight die—of what? Just dead, that’s all.”
“It’s the way the game goes,” Sherri said. “You knew that when you joined the corps.” They turned down the main road of the IES compound and headed for the snack bar.
Wayne nodded. “I know, kid. It’s a job, and it has to be done. But nobody likes to walk into an empty planet like that knowing that eight of the last nine guys who did didn’t come back.”
He put his arm around her and they entered the snack bar that way. Most of the other crew-members were there already; Wayne sensed the heightening tenseness on their faces.
“Two nuclear fizzes,” he said to the pfc at the bar. “With all the trimmings.”
“What’s the matter, Captain?” said a balding, potbellied major a few stools down, who was nursing a beer. “How come the soft drinks tonight, Wayne?”
Peter grinned. “I’m in training, Major Osborne. Gotta kill the evil green horde from Rigel Seven, and I don’t dare drink anything stronger than sarsaparilla.”
“How about the amazon, then?” Osborne said, gesturing at Sherri. “Her too?”
“Me too,” Sherri said.
Osborne stared at his beer. “You two must be in Scarborough’s new project, then.” He squinted at Peter, who nodded almost imperceptibly.
“You’ll need luck,” Osborne said.
“No we won’t,” Wayne said. “Not luck. We’ll need more than just luck to pull us through.”
The nuclear fizzes arrived. He began to sip it quietly. A few more members of the crew entered the snack bar. Their faces were drawn tensely.
He guzzled the drink and looked up at Sherri, who was sucking down the last of the soda. “Let’s get going, Lieutenant James. The noncoms are coming, and we don’t want them to make nasty remarks about us.”
The Lord Nelson blasted off the next evening, after a frenzied day of hurried preparations. The crew of sixty filed solemnly aboard, Colonel Petersen last, and the great hatch swung closed.
There was the usual routine loudspeaker-business while everyone quickly and efficiently strapped into his acceleration cradle, and then the ship leaped skyward. It climbed rapidly, broke free of Earth’s grasp, and, out past the moon, abruptly winked out of normal space into overdrive. It would spend the next two weeks in hyperspace, short-cutting across the galaxy to Fomalhaut V.