Part 15 (1/2)
”N-no,” she said unsteadily. ”Not yet.”
More time pa.s.sed. An unbearably long time. Then there was the faintest of clankings. It repeated. Then, abruptly, there were noises in the airlock. They continued. They were fumbling noises.
The outer airlock door closed. The inner door opened. Dense white fog came out of it. There was motion. Calhoun followed the fog out of the lock. He carried objects which had been weightless, but were suddenly heavy in the s.h.i.+p's gravity-field. There were two s.p.a.ce-suits and a curious a.s.sortment of parcels. He spread them out, flipped aside the face-plate, and said briskly;
”This stuff is cold! Turn a heater on it, will you Maril?”
He began to work his way out of his vacuum-suit.
”Item,” he said. ”The s.h.i.+ps are fuelled _and_ provisioned. A practical tribe, the Wealdians! The s.h.i.+ps are ready to take off as soon as they're warmed up inside. A half-degree sun doesn't radiate heat enough to keep a s.h.i.+p warm, when the rest of the cosmos is effectively near zero Kelvin. Here, point the heaters like this.”
He adjusted the radiant-heat dispensers. The fog disappeared where their beams played. But the metal s.p.a.ce-suits glistened and steamed,--and the steam disappeared within inches. They were so completely and utterly cold that they condensed the air about them as a liquid, which reevaporated to make fog, which warmed up and disappeared and was immediately replaced.
”Item,” said Calhoun again, getting his arms out of the vacuum-suit sleeves. ”The controls are pretty nearly standard. Our sleeping friends will be able to astrogate them back to Dara without trouble, provided only that n.o.body comes out here to bother us before they leave.”
He shed the last of the s.p.a.ce-suit, stepping out of its legs.
”And,” he finished wrily, ”I brought back an emergency supply of s.h.i.+p-provisions for everybody concerned, but find that I'm idiot enough to feel that they'll choke me if I eat them while Dara's still starving.”
Maril said;
”But--there isn't any hope for Dara! No real hope!”
He gaped at her.
”What do you think we're here for?”
He set to work to restore his four recent students to consciousness. It was not a difficult task. The dosage, mixed in the coffee he had given them earlier, was a light one. Calhoun took the precaution of disarming them first, but presently four hot-eyed young men glared at him.
”I'm calling,” said Calhoun, holding a blaster negligently in his hand, ”I'm calling for volunteers. There's a famine on Dara. There've been unmanageable crop-surpluses on Weald. On Dara, the government grimly rations every ounce of food. On Weald, the government has been buying up surplus grain to keep the price up. To save storage costs, it's loaded the grain into out-of-date s.p.a.ce-s.h.i.+ps it once used to stand sentry over Dara to keep it out of s.p.a.ce when there was another famine there.
Those s.h.i.+ps have been put out in orbit, where we're hooked on to one of them. It's loaded with half a million bushels of grain. I've brought s.p.a.ce-suits from it, I've turned on the heaters in its interior, and I've set its overdrive unit for a hop to Dara. Now I'm calling for volunteers to take half a million bushels of grain to where it's needed.
Do I get any volunteers?”
He got four. Not immediately, because they were ashamed that he'd made it impossible to carry out their original fanatic plan, and now offered something much better to make up for it. They raged. But half a million bushels of grain meant that people who must otherwise die might live.
Ultimately, truculently, first one and then another angrily agreed.
”Good!” said Calhoun. ”Now, how many of you dare risk the trip alone?
I've got one grain-s.h.i.+p warming up. There are plenty of others around us. Every one of you can take a s.h.i.+p and half a million bushels to Dara, if you have the nerve?”
The atmosphere changed. Suddenly they clamored for the task he offered them. They were still acutely uncomfortable. He'd bossed them and taught them until they felt capable and glamorous and proud. Then he'd pinned their ears back. But if they returned to Dara with four enemy s.h.i.+ps and unimaginable quant.i.ties of food with which to break the famine....
There was work to be done first, of course. Only one s.h.i.+p was so far warming up. Three more had to be entered, in s.p.a.ce-suits, and each had to have its interior warmed so breathable air could exist inside it, and at least part of the stored provisions had to be brought up to reasonable temperature for use on the journey. Then the overdrive unit had to be inspected and set for the length of journey that a direct overdrive hop to Dara would mean, and Calhoun had to make sure again that each of the four could identify Dara's sun under all circ.u.mstances and aim for it with the requisite high precision, both before going into overdrive and after breakout. When all that was accomplished, Calhoun might reasonably hope that they'd arrive. But it wasn't a certainty.
Still, presently his four students shook hands with him, with the fine tolerance of young men intending much greater achievements than their teacher. They wouldn't speak on communicator again, because their messages might be picked up on Weald.
Of course for this action to be successful, it had to be performed with the stealth of sneak-thieves.
What seemed a long time pa.s.sed. Then one s.h.i.+p turned slowly upon some unseen axis. It wavered back and forth, seeking a point of aim. A second twisted in its place. A third put on the barest trace of solar-system drive to get clear of the rest. The fourth ...