Dark Star (19 page)

"I read the same here," agreed Doolittle.

If they didn't abort the run—and there seemed no reason to assume they would—he
had
to adjust the laser. Talby closed the toolkit and spoke into the pickup at the same time.

"Doolittle . . . Doolittle. I don't know if you can hear me, but I'm going to try and adjust the mounting under the laser to realign the beams properly. If you can hear me, hold off on the run till I finish. It won't take long."

Staying as much to the left side of the opening as he could, he balanced the driver in his right hand and controlled the haft of it with his left. Thus carefully balanced part in and part out of the alcove, he slid the driver toward the mounting.

He hit the proper screw on the first try and smiled to himself. It would all be over with in a minute.

Turning the driver slowly, he heard the click-click of the screw mechanism as the mounting tightened up, saw the laser housing start to shift on its base. Another couple of turns and he'd be through.

As the mounting shifted, it contacted a tiny printed circuit that had also been edged ever so slightly out of place. The circuit shorted, the current fed back into something it shouldn't have, and the something exploded.

The laser wheeled crazily on its mount, the beams shifted, and the darkened face plate of the astronomer caught the full brilliance of the twin beams.

Talby staggered backward, dropping the driver and grabbing for his eyes and clutching only the smooth glass of his helmet.

"My God . . . I can't see!"

Something was calling insistently behind the pain. "Attention, attention. The monitoring laser has malfunctioned. Under no circumstances . . ."

"Oh my eyes . . . I can't see, I can't . . ."

". . . enter the path of the beams. To do so will cause the instrumentation to immediately . . ."

Staggering blindly about the airlock, Talby fell into the twin lines of crimson. A violent concussion shook the airlock. The ravening feedback traveled back up numerous electronic neurons all the way into the central computer itself.

Circuits shorted in the hundreds, fluid-state controls shattered. Small fires broke out in the central computer, were immediately snuffed out as automatic fail-safes isolated the injured sections, amputated the outraged portions of the badly damaged network.

The tell-tale lights on bomb number twenty flashed a second time. They flashed normally—and unexpectedly, because the primary drop sequence had already been engaged. There was no reason for them to flash again.

The single flare of light at the magnetic grapple was
not
normal.

On the bridge, however, all was quiet, all was as it should be.

"Begin final drop sequence," said Pinback. The three men worked easily at their consoles. Then Pinback, after checking with his fellows, reached out and grasped the two switches which would do the thing.

"Marking . . . ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one . . . drop," and he turned both switches simultaneously to release the bomb.

He was rewarded instead with a brash, utterly alien honking that had all three of them looking wildly about the bridge.

Boiler finally spotted a couple of flashing red gauges, gauges he had never had occasion to observe in operation before. Pinback, meanwhile, had completely lost his aura of command and relaxation, exchanged it for one of more normal hypernervousness.

He looked around hopelessly, assuming that the end of their private universe was at hand. But neither Doolittle nor Boiler, though obviously worried, had panicked yet. He got a hold of himself and sat up straighter in his seat. They'd been too busy to notice his embarrassing reaction.

He waited for somebody to tell him what to do.

"Negative drop," Doolittle finally said, confirming what all the instruments told them. Tiny knots were pulling tighter and tighter inside him.

"Try it again, Pinback. It's just sitting in the bomb bay."

All three reset their controls, readjusted all switches for a repeat of previous actions.

Pinback counted again, from ten, to five, four, three, two, one . . . drop. Turned the dual switches only to hear the violent honking resume.

"Negative drop," Doolittle said again, no longer quite as calm of voice.

The bridge became a flurry of activity. Circuitry was checked and rechecked. Monitors were asked to produce explanations, yet insisted nothing was wrong. Gauges were studied for reasons overlooked; they stared back with blank glass faces and told nothing. As far as their instruments were concerned, the bomb had dropped and the crew of the
Dark Star
had gone off the deep end.

"Visual confirmation," suggested Boiler. "Maybe its the non-drop pickup that's malfunctioning."

Doolittle flipped the necessary lever. The chronometer, still ticking away the seconds, vanished from his screen and was replaced by a camera-view of the bottom of
Dark Star
.

A long white box occupied much of the picture, resting serenely just below the open bay doors.

One glimpse was more than enough for Doolittle. He switched back to the chronometer, which now assumed a previously unheld importance. Overriding importance.

"It's there, all right." He thought rapidly. "Never mind the magnetic grapple. This is the last run. Let's blow the attachments." Boiler and Pinback nodded—Boiler once, curtly, Pinback hard enough to shake his hair.

"Rechannel all safety relays," the corporal said. "Open quantum latches."

"Open circuit fail-safes," Pinback put in.

"Cancel thrust-drive fail-safes," Doolittle added.

"Automatic valves open?" asked Pinback.

Boiler: "Check valves open . . . all connections severed . . . all explosive bolt fail-safes removed."

"And prepare for manual drop," Doolittle muttered grimly, "and . . . re-mark."

"Resetting," Pinback said quietly while both Doolittle and Boiler watched him. "Mark it . . . five, four, three, two, one, drop." He turned the switches and the honking came. That loud, abrasive, hysterical honking.

It sounded damnably like a laugh. They were laughing at him again, Pinback thought emotionally. He wrenched at the switches, staring at the screen above, trying to stop the laughing.

First it was Boiler laughing at him and punching him in the arm when no one was looking and Doolittle had been terse and abrupt with him the whole trip and Talby up in the dome when he wasn't staring at his idiot universe was probably laughing at him too and now, now the ship itself was laughing at him, at poor, stupid Bill Frug Pinback Frug Bill . . .

"Drop!" he screamed at the flashing red warning lights. "Drop, drop, drop!"

"Easy, Pinback," Doolittle said softly. "Take it easy, man."

Pinback looked wildly over at him, panting hard. Then he stared back down at the two switches he had nearly pulled out of the board.

"He'll be okay, I think," Doolittle said in response to Boiler's glance. "How about the bomb?"

"It's just sittin' there," the corporal told him, turning his attention back to the readouts. "The damned thing's just sittin' there. What the hell's wrong?"

And while they sat and wondered and fumed, above each man a series of numbers set into a box insert at the bottom of his screen, read:
SIDEREAL BASE TIME
0014:40.6
DESTRUCTION SEQUENCE IN PROGRESS.

The number changed even as he looked at it, changed while the honking sounded warningly throughout the bridge. It resounded in the bomb bay and in the badly damaged computer room and in the emergency airlock, where an unconscious Talby lay sprawled beneath twin lines of red, hands clasped over his face plate in a frozen attempt to reach his eyes.

"Boiler," Doolittle said finally, nodding in the direction of the blaring speaker, "kill that thing."

Boiler reached out and flipped a switch on the small panel marked
Audio
. The honking stopped. The red warning light stopped with it, but the chronometer insert in the screen did not, nor did the official one set into the main console. All continued to tick off the seconds, splitting the shrinking time period into tiny, manageable bits and pieces.

"Oh, come on, Doolittle," a voice inside admonished himself. "Don't just sit there on your ass.
Do
something, and man, or the bomb'll do it for you. The bomb is stuck in the bomb bay and it's primed to go off in about fourteen minutes and if it does, baby, the shock wave you'll be riding won't come from that wave breaking tight behind you."

He fumbled at his headset, spoke haltingly. "This is Lieutenant Doolittle calling bomb number twenty. Acknowledge, bomb number twenty."

"I'm here, Lieutenant."

"Sounds sane enough," Boiler observed.

"Computer, this is Doolittle. Talk to the bomb and order it back to the bay, please."

Silence.

"Computer, acknowledge. This is Lieutenant Doolittle speaking."

Quiet.

"You talk to it, Doolittle," suggested Boiler.

Doolittle nodded, cleared his throat. "There has been a malfunction again, bomb. You're to disarm yourself and return to the bomb bay immediately. There has been a malfunction. This bomb run is aborted. Return to the bomb bay immediately. Do you understand?"

"Yes." The bomb's voice was calm, composed. "I am programmed to detonate in fourteen minutes thirty seconds. Detonation will occur at the programmed time."

Frantic thoughts ran through Doolittle's mind. They were unencumbered by solutions. And on top of the bomb, he now had another problem to worry about.

What was the matter with the central computer?

"Bomb," he finally managed to sputter into the pick up, "this is
Doolittle
. You are
not
to detonate. I repeat, you are
not
to detonate in the bomb bay. Disarm yourself. This is an order. Do you read me, bomb?"

"I read you, Lieutenant Doolittle," the bomb replied quietly. "Locale of detonation is not a concern of mine. That is always predetermined . . . and I will detonate in fourteen minutes. Detonation will occur at the programmed time."

"You already said that," Doolittle said tightly. The bomb did not venture to argue this point.

"Fourteen minutes to detonation," Pinback informed them with a touch of desperation. "What the hell's happening, Lietitenant? What's going on?"

"I don't know." He spread his hands helplessly. "I can't figure out what—"

"Attention attention," came a familiar feminine voice—a voice Doolittle had not expected to hear again. He stopped in mid-sentence.

"I have sustained serious damage," the computer told them. "All fires in the region of the main computer room are now under control."

"Fires?" exclaimed Pinback, twisting in his seat. "What fires?"

"Shut up," Boiler whispered warningly. Pinback shut up.

"Please pay close attention. Bomb number twenty has not malfunctioned. I repeat, bomb number twenty has not malfunctioned. The failure to drop on command from a compound malfunction of communication laser number seventeen, which primes and follows through all drop orders via the release mechanism in the grapple shaft.

"All contact with the grapple shaft—and therefore with the bomb itself—is now cut off.

"I have subsequently activated automatic dampers on board ship. With no planetary material to react with, this damping will confine the thermostellar trigger reaction to an annihilation area approximately one kilometer in diameter. This is all I can do at this time.

"I am attempting to circumvent the damaged circuitry to reestablish contact with the grapple shaft and the bomb. I must inform you that prognosis for eventual success is not good. Repeat, not good. Damage
can
eventually be repaired, with manual human assistance, in twenty-four hours.

"All estimates indicate that even with human assistants operating under drug-stimulated efficiency, these repairs cannot be duplicated in fourteen minutes. It's all up to you now, fellows."

There was a moment's silence while the three crewmen digested this information. Boiler's voice was unnaturally subdued.

"Did you hear that, Doolittle?"

"Yeah, Doolittle," Pinback added pleadingly. "What are we gonna do? I mean, it's great that the automatic dampers will confine the explosion to an area only one kilometer in diameter, but if we and the ship are included in that kilometer, it's not gonna make a whole helluva lot of difference."

"Don't just sit there and stare, Lieutenant," Boiler said anxiously. "Give us some orders. What do we do?"

Why me? Why did he have to be the only officer left aboard when Powell died? Why couldn't he have been a simple underclassman like Boiler, or an indifferent loner like Talby, or even a posturing imposter like Pinback? Poor, well-meaning Pinback. Poor, ulcerous Boiler, Poor, distant Talby.

Poor Doolittle.

"I don't know," he said finally, honestly. "I don't know what we're going to do."

And Pinback said, almost predictably, "Commander Powell would have known what to do."

"Pinback," Doolittle said quietly, "if you say that one more time—if you even whisper it under your breath and I hear you—I'm going to kill you."

Pinback sat back in his chair and crossed his arms indifferently. "Won't make any difference. We're all gonna be dead in"—he squinted upward—"thirteen minutes twenty-five and a half seconds, anyway." He sniffled. "Commander Powell would already have—"

"That's it!" Doolittle screamed.

Pinback gave a little jump and cowered in his seat, but Doolittle wasn't heading for him. Instead, he looked almost relieved.

"That's the only thing left to do. I'll have to ask Commander Powell. I'll have to ask him what to do." Doolittle was unstrapping himself from the chair.

"I don't mean to be a downer, Lieutenant," Boiler put in, "but Commander Powell's dead. He's been dead for a long time now. We put him—"

"His body's dead, yes," admitted Doolittle, "but we've kept him iced and wired. We got to him right after the accident. You know I've been able to get through to him a couple of times since."

Boiler was shaking his head disparagingly. "Freak shots . . . chance. There've been lots of times I've tried to talk to him and I get nothing but static . . . background noises from a half-dead mind."