INTERPLANETARY PATROL Cadet Matthew Dodson sat in the waiting room of Pikes Peak Catapult Station and watched the clock. He had an hour to wait before boarding the New Moon for Terra Station; meanwhile he was expecting his roommates.
It had been a good leave, he supposed; he had done everything he had planned to do-except joining the others at the Jarman ranch at the end; his mother had kicked up such a fuss at the idea.
Still, it had been a good leave. His space-burned face,
lean and beginning to be lined, looked slightly puzzled. He had confided to no one his tentative intention of resigning while on leave. Now he was trying to remember just when and why it had ceased to be his intention. *
He had been sent on temporary duty to the P.R.S Nobel, as assistant to the astrogator during a routine patrol of cir-cum-Terra bomb-rockets. Matt had joined his ship at Moon Base and, at the conclusion of the patrol when the Nobel had grounded at Terra Base for overhaul, was detached with permission to take leave before reporting back to the Randolph. He had gone straight home.
The entire family met him at the station and copied him home. His mother had cried a little and his father had shaken hands very vigorously. It seemed to Matt that his kid brother had grown almost incredibly. It was good to see them, good to be back in the old family bus. Matt would have piloted the copter himself had not Billie, his brother, gone straight to the controls.
The house had been redecorated throughout. His mother obviously expected favorable comment and Matt had given it-but he hadn't really liked the change. It had not been what he had pictured. Besides that, the rooms seemed smaller. He decided that it must be the effect of redecorating; the house couldn't have shrunk!
His own room was filled with Bill's things, although Bill had been temporarily evicted to his old room, now turned into a hobby room for his toother. The new arrangements were sensible, reasonable-and annoying.
In thinking it over Matt knew that the changes at home had had nothing to do with his decision. Certainly not! Nor his father's remarks about posture, even though they had stuck in his craw-He and his father had been alone in the living room, just before dinner, and Matt had been pacing up and down, giving an animated and, he believed, interesting account of the first time he had soloed. His father had taken advantage of a pause to say, "Stand up, son."
Matt stopped. "Sir?"
"You are all crouched over and seem to be limping. Does your leg still bother you?"
"No, my leg is fine."
"Then straighten up and "square your shoulders. Look proud. Don't they pay any attention to your posture at school?''
"What's wrong with the way I was walking?"
Bill had appeared in the door just as the subject had come up. "I'll show you, Mattie," he had interrupted, and proceeded to slouch across the room in a grotesque exaggeration of a spaceman's relaxed and boneless glide. The boy made it look like the amble of a chimpanzee. "You walk like that."
"The devil I do!"
"The devil you don't."
"Bill!" said his father. "Go wash up and get ready for dinner. And don't talk that way. Go on, now!" When the younger son had left his father turned again to Matt and said, "I thought I was speaking privately, Matt. Honestly, it's not as bad as Bill makes out; it's only about half that bad."
"But- Look, Dad, I walk just like everybody else-among spacemen, I mean. It comes of getting used to free-fall. You carry yourself sort of pulled in, for days on end, ready to bounce a foot off a bulkhead, or grab with your hands. When you're back under weight, after days and weeks of that, you walk the way I do. 'Cat feet' we call it."
"I suppose it would have that effect," his father had answered reasonably, "but wouldn't it be a good idea to practice walking a little every day, just to keep in form?"
"In free-fall? But-" Matt had stopped, suddenly aware that there was no way to bridge the gap.
"Never mind. Let's go in to dinner."
There had been the usual round of family dinners with aunts and uncles. Everyone asked him to tell about school, about what it felt like to go out into space. But, somehow, they had not actually seemed very interested. Take Aunt Dora.
Great-aunt Dora was the current family matriarch. She had been a very active woman, busy with church and social work. Now she was bedfast and had been for three years. Matt called on her because his family obviously expected it. "She often complains to me that you don't write to her, Matt, and- "
"But, Mother, I don't have time to write to everyone!"
"Yes, yes. But she's proud of you, Matt. Shell want to ask you a thousand questions about everything. Be sure to wear your uniform-she'll expect it."
Aunt Dora had not asked a thousand questions; she had asked just one- why had he waited so long to come to see her? Thereafter Matt found himself being informed, in detail, on the shortcomings of the new pastor, the marriage chances of several female relatives and connections, and the states of health of several older women, many of them unknown to him, including details of operations and postoperative developments.
He was a bit dizzy when he escaped, pleading a previous date.
Yes, maybe that was it-it might have been the visit to Aunt Dora that convinced him that he was not ready to resign and remain in Des Moines. It could not have been Marianne.
Marianne was the girl who had made him promise to write regularly-and, in fact, he had, more regularly than had she. But he had let her know that he was coming home and she had organized a picnic to welcome him back. It had been jolly. Matt had renewed old acquaintances and had enjoyed a certain amount of hero worship from the girls present. There had been a young man there, three or four years older than Matt, who seemed unattached. Gradually it dawned on Matt that Marianne treated the newcomer as her property.
It had not worried him. Marianne was the sort of girl who never would get clearly fixed in her mind the distinction between a planet and a star. He had not noticed this before, but it and similar matters had come up on the one date he had had alone with her.
And she had referred to his uniform as "cute."
He began to understand, from Marianne, why most Patrol officers do not marry until their mid-thirties, after retirement.
The clock in Pikes Peak Station showed thirty minutes until up-ship. Matt began to worry that Tex's casual way might have caused the other three to miss connections, when he spotted them in the crowd. He grabbed his jump bag and went toward them.
They had their backs toward him and had not seen him as yet. He sneaked up behind Tex and said in a hoarse voice, "Mister-report to the Commandant's office."
Tex jumped into the air and turned completely around. "Matt! You horse- thief, don't scare me like that!"
"Your guilty conscience. Hi, Pete. Hello, Oscar."
"How's the boy, Matt? Good leave?"
"Swell."
"Here, too." They shook hands all around.
"Let's get aboard."
"Suits." They weighed in, had their passes stamped, and were allowed to proceed on up to where the New Moon stood upright and ready in the catapult cradle, her mighty wings outstretched. A stewardess showed them to their seats.
At the ten-minute warning Matt announced, "I'm going up for some makee-learnee. Anybody with me?"
"I'm going to sleep," denied Tex.
"Me, too," added Pete. "Nobody ever sleeps in Texas. I'm dead."
Oscar decided to come along. They climbed up to the control room and spoke to the captain. "Cadets Dodson and Jensen, sir-request permission to observe."
"I suppose so," the captain grunted. "Strap down." The pilot room of any licensed ship was open to all members of the Patrol, but the skippers on the Terra-to-Station run were understandably bored with the practice.
Oscar took the inspector's chair; Matt had to use deck pads and straps. His position gave him an excellent view of the co-pilot and mate, waiting at the airplane-type controls. If the rocket motor failed to fire, after catapulting, it would be the mate's business to fight the ship into level flight and bring her down to a deadstick landing on the Colorado prairie.
The captain manned the rocket-type controls. He spoke to the catapult control room, then sounded the siren. Shortly thereafter the ship mounted up the face of the mountain, at a bone-clamping six gravities. The acceleration lasted only ten seconds; then the ship was flung straight up at the sky, leaving the catapult at 1300 miles per hour.
They were in free-fall and climbing. The captain appeared to be taking his time about cutting in the jet; for a moment Matt held to the excited hope that an emergency landing was going to be necessary. But the jet roared on time.
When they had settled in their orbit and the jet was again silent, Matt and Oscar thanked the captain and went back to their proper seats. Tex and Pete were both asleep; Oscar followed suit at once. Matt decided that he must have missed quite a bit in letting himself be talked out of finishing his leave in Texas.
His thoughts went back-to the problem he had been considering. Certainly he had not decided to stick simply because his own leave had been fairly quiet; he had never thought of home as being a nightclub, or a fair ground.
One night at dinner his father had asked him to describe just what it was that the Nobel did in circum-Terra patrol. He had tried to oblige. "After we lift from Moon Base we head for Terra on an elliptical orbit. As we approach the Earth we brake gradually and throw her into a tight circular orbit from pole to pole-"
"Why pole to pole? Why not around the equator?"
"Because, you see, the atom-bomb rockets are in pole-to-pole orbits. That's the only way they can cover the whole globe. If they were circling around the equator-"
"I understand that," his father had interrupted, "but your purpose, as I understand it, is to inspect the bomb rockets. If you-your ship-circled around the equator, you could just wait for the bomb rockets to come past."
Tow may understand it," his mother had said to his father, "but Z don't."
Matt looked from one to the other, wondering which one to answer-and how. "One at a time . . . please," he protested. "Dad, we can't just intercept the bombs; we have to sneak up on them, match orbits until you are right alongside it and making exactly the same course and speed. Then you bring the bomb inside and ship and inspect it."
"And of what does that inspection consist?"
"Just a sec, Dad. Mother, look here for a moment." Matt took an orange from the table's centerpiece. "The rocket bombs go round and round, like this, from pole-to-pole, every two hours. In the meantime the Earth is turning on its axis, once every twenty-four hours." Matt turned the orange slowly in his left hand while moving a finger of his right hand rapidly around it from top to bottom to simulate a pole-to-pole bomb. "That means that if a bomb passes over Des Moines on this trip, it will just about pass over the Pacific Coast on its next trip. In twenty-four hours it covers the globe."
"Goodness! Matthew, I wish you wouldn't talk about an atom bomb being over Des Moines, even in fun."
"In fun?" Matt had been puzzled. "As a matter of fact ... let me think; we're about forty-two north and ninety-four west-" He glanced at his watch finger and studied for a few moments. "Jay-three ought to be along in about seven minutes-yes, it will be almost exactly overhead by the time you finish your coffee." Long weeks in the Nobel, plotting, calculating,, and staring in radarscopes had gotten Matt so that he knew the orbits of circum-Terra prowler rockets a bit better than a fanner's wife knows her own chickens; Jay- three was an individual to him, one with fixed habits.
His mother was looking horrified. She spoke directly to her husband as if she expected him to do something about it. "John. ... I don't like this. I don't like it, do you hear me? What if it should fall?"
"Nonsense, Catherine-it can't fall."
Mart's younger brother chortled. "Mom doesn't even know what holds the Moon up!"
Matt turned to his brother. "Who pushed your button squirt? Do you know what holds the Moon up?"
"Sure-gravity."
"Not exactly. Suppose you give me a quick tell, with diagrams."
The boy tried; his effort was hardly successful. Matt shut him off. "You know somewhat less about astronomy than the ancient Egyptians. Don't make fun of your elders. Now, look, Mother-don't get upset. Jay-three can't fall on us. It's in a free orbit that does not intersect the Earth-like smarty-pants here says, it can't fall down any more than the Moon can fall. Anyhow, if the Patrol was to bomb Des Moines tonight, at this time, it wouldn't use Jay-three for the very reason that it is overhead. To bomb a city you start with a rocket heading for your target and a couple of thousand miles away, because you have to signal its robot to start the jet and seek the target. You have to slow it down and bend it down. So it wouldn't be Jay-three; it would be-" He thought again. "-Eye-two, or maybe Ache-one." He smiled wryly. "I got bawled out over Eye-two."
"Why?" demanded his brother.
"Matt, I don't think you have picked the right tack to quiet your mother's fears," his father said dryly. "I suggest we not talk about bombing cities."
"But I didn't- Sorry, Father."
"Catherine, there really is nothing to get worked up over -you might just as well be afraid of the local policeman. Matt, you were going to tell me about inspection. Why do the rockets have to be inspected?"
"I want to know why Mattie got bawled out!"
Matt cocked an eyebrow at his brother. "I might as well start by telling him, Dad-it has to do with inspection. Okay, Bill-I made a poor dive when we started to pick it up and had to come back on my suit jet and try again."
"What do you mean, Matthew?"
"He means-"
"Pipe down, Billie. Dad, you send a man out in a suit to insert the trigger guard and attach a line to the rocket so you can bring her inboard of the ship and work on her. I was the man. I made a bad push-off and missed the rocket entirely. She was about a hundred yards away and I guess I misjudged the distance. I turned over and found I was floating on past her. I had to jet back and try again."
His mother still seemed confused, but did not like what she heard. "Matthew! That sounds dangerous to me."
"Safe as houses, Mother. You can’t fall, any more than the rocket can, or the ship. But it's embarrassing. Anyhow, I finally got a line on her and rode her back into the ship."
"You mean you were riding an atom bomb?"
"Shucks, Mother, it's safe-the tamper around the fission material stops most of the radioactivity. Anyhow, the exposure is short."
"But suppose it went off?"
"It can't go off. To go off it has to either crash into the ground with a speed great enough to slap the sub-critical masses together as fast as its trigger- gun could do it, or you have to fire the trigger-gun by radio. Besides that, I had inserted the trigger guard-that's nothing more nor less than a little crowbar, but when it's in place not even a miracle could set it off, because you can't bring the sub-critical masses together."
"Maybe we had better drop this subject, Matt. It seems to make your mother nervous."
"But, Dad, she asked me."
"I know. But you still haven't told me what you inspect for."
"Well, in the first place, you inspect the bomb itself, but there's never anything wrong with the bomb. Anyhow, I haven't had the course for bomb- officer yet-he has to be a nucleonics engineer. You inspect the rocket motor, especially the fuel tanks. Sometimes you have to replace a little that has escaped through relief valves. But mostly you give her a ballistic check and check her control circuits."
"Ballistic check?"
"Of course, theoretically you ought to be able to predict where a prowler bomb would be every instant for the next thousand years. But it doesn't work out that way. Little things, the effect of the tidal bulges and the fact that the Earth is not a perfect uniform sphere and such, cause them to gradually wander a little away from the predicted orbits. After you find one and service it-they're never very far from where they ought to be-you correct the orbit by putting the whole ship in just precisely the proper trajectory and then put the rocket outside the ship again. Then you go after the next one."
"Clear enough. And these corrections have to be made often enough that a ship is kept busy just inspecting them?"
"Well, no, Dad, we inspect oftener than we really have to-but it keeps the ship and the crew busy. Keeps it from getting monotonous. Anyhow, frequent inspections keep you on the safe side."
"Sounds like a waste of taxpayers' money to inspect too often."
"But you don't understand-we're not there to inspect; we're there to patrol. The inspection ship is the ship that would deliver an attack in case anybody started acting up. We have to stay on patrol until the next ship relieves us, so we might as well inspect. Granted that you can bomb a city from Moon Base, you can do a better, more accurate job, with less chance of hitting the wrong people, from close by."
His mother was looking very upset. His father raised his eyebrows and said, "We've wandered back to the subject of bombing, Matt."
"I was simply answering your questions, sir."
"I'm afraid I asked the wrong question. Your mother is not able to take the answers impersonally. Catherine, there isn't the slightest chance of the North American Union being bombed. Tell her that, Matt-I think she'll believe you."
Matt had remained silent. His father had insisted, "Go ahead, Matt. Catherine, after all, it's our Patrol. For all practical purposes the other nations don't count. A majority of the Patrol officers are from North America, That's true, Matt, isn't it?"
"I've never thought about it I guess so."
"Very well. Now, Catherine, you can't imagine Matt bombing Des Moines, now can you? And that is what it amounts to. Tell, her, Matt."
"But- Dad, you don't know what you are saying!"
"What? What's that, young man!"
"I-" Matt had looked around him, then had gotten up very suddenly and left the room.
His father came into his room some time later. "Matt?"
"Yes, sir?"
"Look, Matt, I let the conversation get out of hand tonight. I'm sorry and I don't blame you for getting upset. Your mother, you know. I try to protect her. Women get worked up so easily."
"It's all right, Dad. I'm sorry I walked out"
"No matter. Let's forget it. There's just one thing I feel we ought to get straight on. I know that you feel loyal to the Patrol and its ideals and it's good that you should, but-well, you are a little young still to see the political realities involved, but you must know that the Patrol could not bomb the North American Union."
"It would in a show down!"
"But there won't be any show down. Even if there were, you couldn't bomb your own people and neither could your shipmates."
Matt thought about it, fiercely. He remembered Commander Rivera-one of the Four, of the proud Tradition-how Rivera, sent down to reason with the official in his own capital, his very native city, had kept the trust. Suspecting that he might be held as hostage, he had left orders to go ahead with the attack unless he returned in person to cancel the orders. Rivera, whose body was decaying radioactive dust but whose name was mustered whenever a unit of the Patrol called the roll.
His father was still talking. "Of course, the Patrol has to patrol this continent just as it patrols all through the
System. It would look bad, otherwise this is no reason to frighten women with an impossibility."
"I'd rather not talk about it, Dad."
Matt glanced at his watch and figured how long it would be until the New Moon reached Terra Station. He wished he could sleep, like the others. He was sure now what it was that had changed his mind about resigning and remaining in Des Moines. It was not a desire to emulate Rivera. No, it was an accumulation of things-all of them adding up to just one idea, that little Mattie didn't live there any more!
For the first few weeks after leave, Matt was too busy to fret. He .had to get back into the treadmill, with more studying to do and less time to do it in. He was on the watch list for cadet officer of the watch now, and had more laboratory periods in electronics and nucleonics as well. Besides this he shared with other oldsters the responsibility for bringing up the youngster cadets. Before; leave his evenings had usually been free for study, now he coached youngsters in astrogation three nights a week.
He was beginning to think that he would have to give up space polo, when he found himself elected captain of the Hog Alley team. Then he was busier than ever. He hardly thought about abstract problems until his next session; with Lieutenant Wong. j
"Good afternoon," his coach greeted him. "How's your class in astrogation?" 1
"Oh, that - It seems funny to be teaching it instead of flunking it." ;
"That's why you're stuck with it-you still remember what it was that used to stump you and why. How about atomics?"
"Well ... I suppose I'll get by, but 111 never be an Einstein."
"I'd be amazed if you were. How are you getting along otherwise?" Wong waited.
"All right, I. guess. Do you know, Mr. Wong-when I went] on leave I didn't intend to come back."
"I rather thought so. That space-marines notion was just your way of dodging around, trying to avoid your real problem."
"Oh. Say, Mr. Wong-tell me straight. Are you a regular Patrol officer, or a psychiatrist?"
Wong almost grinned. "I'm a regular Patrol officer, Matt, but I've had the special training required for this job."
"Uh, I see. What was it I was running away from?"
"I don't know. You tell me."
"I don't know where to start."
"Tell me about your leave, then. We've got all afternoon."
"Yes, sir." Matt meandered along, telling as much as he could remember. "So you see," he concluded, "it was a lot of little things. I was home-but I was a stranger. We didn't talk the same language."
Wong chuckled. "I'm not laughing at you," he apologized. "It isn't funny. We all go through it-the discovery that there's no way to go back. It's part of growing up- but with spacemen it's an especially acute and savage process."
Matt nodded. "I'd already gotten that through my thick head. Whatever happens I won't go back-not to stay. I might go into the merchant service, but I'll stay in space."
"You're not likely to flunk out at this stage, Matt."
"Maybe not, but I don't know yet that the Patrol is the place for me. That's what bothers me."
"Well... can you tell me about it?"
Matt tried. He related the conversation with his fattier and his mother that had gotten them all upset. "It's this: if it comes to a show down, I'm expected to bomb my own home town. I'm not sure it's in me to do it. Maybe I don't belong here."
"Not likely to come up, Matt. Your father was right there."
"That's not the point. If a Patrol officer is loyal to his oath only when, it's no skin off his own nose, then the whole system breaks down."
Wong waited before replying. "If the prospect of bombing your own town, your own family, didn't worry you, I'd have you out of this ship within the hour-you'd be an utterly dangerous man. The Patrol doesn't expect a man to have godlike perfection. Since men are imperfect, the Patrol works on the principle of calculated risk. The chance of a threat to the System coming from your hometown in your lifetime is slight; the chance that you might be called on to carry out the attack is equally slight-you might be away on Mars. Taking the two chances together you have something close to zero.
"But if you did hit the jackpot, your commanding officer would probably lock you up in your room rather than take a chance on you."
Matt still looked troubled. "Not satisfied?" Wong went on. "Matt, you are suffering from a disease of youth-you expect moral problems to have nice, neat, black-and-white answers. Suppose you relax and let me worry about whether or not you have what it takes. Oh, some day you'll be caught in a squeeze and no one around to tell you the right answer. But I have to decide whether or not you can get the right answer when the problem comes along- and I don't, even know what your problem will be how would you like to be in my boots?"
Matt grinned sheepishly. "I wouldn't like it."