Blind Play. Chan Davis.

Chan Davis

Nick Pappas, hired-killer from Callisto, was strictly out for Pappas—out for Number One, as they used to say. And now those fools in the vanishing spaceship thought that number was up!

Planet Stories May 1951.

Nick Pappas had just crossed to the instrument panel of the Tang Chuh-Chih's lifeboat when he heard a sound behind him. He turned quickly.

He had left the airlock between the lifeboat and the ship open. That had been stupid, he realized, but it was too late to correct it now. One of the Tang's two other crew members was approaching down the corridor just beyond the airlock; if he saw the doors slide shut now he'd be immediately suspicious. That would leave Pappas inside the lifeboat, and before he could drain enough fuel from the ship's tanks into the lifeboat's, the other two could have the airlock cut open.

He still had a chance to hide—but before he could propel himself to the other end of the lifeboat, out of sight, Arne Birkerod appeared at the other side of the open airlock.

Birkerod smiled. Pappas stood still, gripping the pilot's seat in front of him.

"Hello, Arne," said Pappas. "I was just checking over the—"

"Good morning, Nick—or good evening, if you like. Let's go up to the control cabin and see Garcia."

For a very brief moment, Pappas considered. Although the Tang was in free fall, he was very conscious of the weight of the gun concealed inside his jacket. He might use it now, but the sound would bring Garcia. Better to bluff it through. The other two might not be suspicious yet, and in a pinch he had the advantage that they weren't armed. "Sure," he said, and pushed himself across to where Birkerod stood.

"After you," said Birkerod, much more politely than usual.

***

Pappas smiled uncertainly. He planted both feet against the side of the airlock opening, then jumped off. He floated down the ship's corridor to where it took a sharp bend; there he grabbed a rung of a ladder bolted to the corridor wall.

Birkerod had pushed off harder than Pappas had; he arrived at the ladder at the same time. "After you," he said again.

Pappas saw, at the end of the long corridor ahead, the open door to the control cabin. He pushed off in that direction.

Yusuf Garcia was in the ship's pilot's seat. Garcia was half Brazilian and half Malagasy. His eyes had a strong green tint which looked strange against the deep brown-black of his face. Pappas had always been a little afraid of him and the present situation didn't help that any; there was a gun in Garcia's hand.

Birkerod followed Pappas in, taking a seat facing Garcia. "What did you find, Yusuf?" he asked casually.

"Well, Arne, I haven't finished checking up on our little conjecture; the calculator over there is still working on it. But while I was waiting I looked through our friend Pappas's locker. You may already have noticed what I found." He waved the gun. "Where did you find our friend, by the way?"

Birkerod smiled. "First place I looked."

"The lifeboat?"

"Yeah."

"What was he doing?"

"Nothing. I think I know how our little conjecture's going to turn out, though." He turned to Pappas, who had followed the exchange tensely. "You know, Nick, my father was a fellow-countryman of yours back on Earth."

"Countryman?"

"That's right. He lived just north of Winnipeg. My mother was a Canadian, too. Both of them were in the second batch of colonists that left for Callisto. But it doesn't mean much to call you a Canadian any more, does it? Garcia and you and I, we're all Callistans now."

"Sure," said Pappas, wondering.

***

Callisto: A cold world. A small new world, and a cold world, and incredibly distant from the planet that had evolved its settlers.

In the thirty years since the exploration of Jupiter's satellites had begun, Callisto had had a very different history from the rest. On Ganymede, a hundred or so engineers had been working all that time on the tremendous task of raising the satellite's mean temperature to the point where an atmosphere could be provided and open-air cities and farms built in which Earthmen could live. The smaller satellites had been largely ignored. But it had been found that Callisto had large deposits of ore of such quality that, in spite of the tremendously long haul required to carry anything from there to the inner planets, it was worthwhile beginning mining operations. Up went the insulated, airtight domes, out came the colonists, down went the mine shafts.

It was a hard life. Crystalline rock was cut by machines at the mine-faces, and by the time other machines had brought it up the shafts to the surface-level in the domes, it had become amorphous and powdery, its crystalline structure destroyed by being heated to twenty degrees below zero Centigrade. When you repaired machinery below the surface, you wore sixty kilograms of spacesuit (Earth weight), and a failure of any item of equipment or a fumble by any member of your crew might mean sudden death. The walls of the dome shut you in from the sky, for the vacuum out there was death too; when you did get up to the observatory to see the sky, you saw Jupiter, weirdly streaked with brilliant color—if your dome was on the side of Callisto toward Jupiter. Otherwise, you looked across twenty million kilometers of vacuum to the nearest star.

It was a hard life, and no life for a lone wolf. There were no homestead farms to be settled by lonely pioneer families. Callisto was a sterile place, and to keep life going there at all men had to work together. Cooperation was a lesson Earth civilization had learned only after thousands of years of oppression and war; a lesson that had to be learned before men could cross space; and a lesson that was very difficult to forget on Callisto. At least for most people.

Rita and Cliff Belden had control of the trade between Callisto and the inner planets. It didn't start as control, though; the way it began was this: Once the colony had been well established, its operation was left completely up to the Callistans, who shipped as much of their goods to Earth as they could manage, and requisitioned as much food and supplies from Earth as they needed—which was really the best way. The inner planets could not very well take part in the planning of Callisto's activities, since there was no radio contact and the trip took over two months by freighter even when the relative positions of the planets in their orbits was most favorable. One freighter shuttled back and forth between No. 2 Dome on Callisto at one end and any of several inner-planet ports at the other. Rita and Cliff Belden were the two Callistans whose job it was to run that freighter.

The little colony was absolutely dependent on the supplies they brought. This fact was obvious to everybody, but the Beldens made a deduction from it which was unprecedented on Callisto: they could threaten to withhold the supplies and thereby force the rest of the colonists to agree to whatever they asked—provided they could make the threat stick. They made the attempt. On one of their trips back from Earth, they put the ship into an orbit around Callisto instead of landing, and announced they would not land until their henchmen on Callisto were in control.

And the henchmen did a thorough job of taking control. All the details were taken care of: They quickly seized the radio transmitters that maintained contact with Ganymede, they confiscated all the reserves of spaceship fuel they could find, they clamped down as tightly as they could on communication between the domes; then they started keeping a close check on every tool that could be used as a weapon. There was just one place they slipped up. Their search for fuel wasn't good enough.

The people of No. 4 Dome pooled the fuel they had hidden from the Beldens; they seized from the Beldens' guards the Dome's tiny spaceship, which had been assembled on Callisto and which had never been intended to leave the Jupiter system; and they sent the ship off for Venus, with Garcia and Birkerod aboard. Venus was the only possible destination, with the planets' positions in their orbits as they were then: to reach Earth or Mars would have taken either more fuel than they had, or much more time than they could spare.

As it was, the trip took eight months.

On Venus there was no hitch. Garcia and Birkerod went to the Liaison Office in Kreingrad, as planned, and were provided with the Tang Chuh-Chih, with a load of supplies—and with Nick Pappas, a former Callistan who wanted to return there. They followed the Liaison Office's suggestion and took Pappas aboard.

***

"We're all Callistans now," Birkerod repeated. "I wonder, Nick. How did you happen to leave Callisto in the first place? Just felt like visiting good old Saskatchewan? I doubt it. Let's see—you left before that business started with the Beldens, didn't you?"

Pappas licked his lips nervously. Garcia answered for him: "Yes, about ten months before, according to what they told us on Venus."

"Yeah," Birkerod mused. "You know the Beldens, of course."

"Yes," said Pappas, "of course. I came to Earth on their freighter."

"Not their freighter," Garcia put in. "Callisto's freighter, which they were operating. It's only more recently that it's become their freighter."

Birkerod smiled and went on, "It's interesting, Mr. Pappas, that you left Callisto about the time the Beldens' plans must have been taking shape. I wonder why you did?"

Pappas ignored the question. A moment before, the red signal light had flashed on above the calculator set in the opposite bulkhead. The computations had been finished on Garcia and Birkerod's "little conjecture."

Garcia, who was closest to the machine, filled in the silence. "Let's find out what the calculator has to say. It may clear things up a little."

There was a row of spring-clamps set in the bulkhead next to him for holding objects stationary while the ship was in free fall. Garcia put his gun in one of these, slipped out of the "safety belt" that had held him in the pilot's seat in spite of the lack of gravity, and turned to the calculator.

Pappas sprang. Not toward Garcia—but toward the side of the cabin that would have been the ceiling if there had been an "up." He snatched his gun from his jacket.

Something crashed into Pappas, spun him around. Birkerod had jumped too, hitting him hard in midair.

***

The cabin whirled about them. He felt Birkerod's powerful grip around the hand which held the gun. Simultaneously they reached the ceiling; Pappas's head hit metal with a crack. The gun fell free. Weightless, the two of them wrestled desperately.

***

Suddenly Birkerod pulled loose and jumped away. Pappas found himself alone in the middle of the cabin, drifting slowly from the pilot's seat.

In the pilot's seat Garcia was again sitting calmly, his gun leveled. Birkerod had the other gun. There was silence while Pappas reached the bulkhead, pushed back to his seat, and belted himself in.

Garcia said, "Suppose I try answering some of these questions. When Arne and I left Callisto, the Beldens learned our orbit and high-tailed in to the inner planets. With plenty of fuel, they arrived before us, and got you, their agent, on the job. You got yourself included in our return trip on the Tang. Then you calculated an orbit for us that would run us smack into Earth at a relative velocity of thirty-odd kilometers a second!

"The next thing was to divert the fuel from the Tang's tanks to the lifeboat's, and take off yourself in the lifeboat. That would have left us in a collision orbit, with no fuel to pull ourselves out of it.

"Not such a good plan, Nick. You should have planned just to kill us both as soon as the Tang was in space; you'd have had a better chance that way. Your over-eagerness to compute our orbit just didn't look natural."

"No, listen," Pappas protested feebly. "I didn't calculate a collision orbit. I—"

"Sorry," said Garcia. "That's what the machine just finished checking for us. The orbit we're on meets Earth dead center, and it wouldn't take us to Callisto even if Earth wasn't there. Arne—what'll we do with this character?"

Birkerod smiled. "I like the suggestion you made when we discussed it before."

"I was just joking!"

"No, I think it's the best idea." He turned to Pappas, who flinched in spite of himself. "Look, Nick, the Beldens have no chance of winning on Callisto. No chance. Men had to learn to cooperate before they could get to the planets at all, and by this time they've learned good and thoroughly. The individual who's out for himself is an anachronism. You and the Beldens—a hundred years ago you'd have felt right at home. Then everybody was 'out for a fast buck,' as they used to say. In this century everybody works together, and darn near everybody likes it that way.

"But, Nick, the Beldens are still dangerous. They can't win; but they can hold up the development of Callisto for years, and make the Callistans plenty miserable in the process. The inner planets won't interfere. Their policy for years has been this: Callisto is so far away that it's their concern how they run things; we'll send them supplies, they'll send us minerals, and that's that.

"So the people of Callisto have got to lick the Beldens. This ship is absolutely essential, because it's the means of breaking the Beldens' monopoly. We have to get to Callisto, and when we get there we'll be in the middle of a pretty critical situation; the Tang will be just as essential to the Beldens as to us, for the opposite reason."

"Therefore," Garcia put in, "we can't afford to have you around."

"What are you going to do?" Pappas murmured.

"To you?" said Birkerod. "Well, we can't take you with us; we don't want to kill you if we can help it; we can't turn you loose in the lifeboat, even if we keep most of the fuel, because we may need the lifeboat on Callisto. There's one thing left.

"If it's all right with Yusuf, we're going to put you altogether, completely on your own. You're not going to be working for anybody else, not even for stinkers like the Beldens. You're going to be all by yourself, and you're going to have to do a good job of looking out for yourself. Not for anyone else, just for Nick Pappas—'Number One,' as people used to say. We're not going to give you a word of advice, either. If we did, you wouldn't be independent enough. How does it sound, Yusuf? Appropriate?"

Garcia smiled. "Sounds about right, Arne. Maybe I'm too angry at the Beldens to think straight, but it sounds like a pretty appropriate way to handle Mr. Pappas. He'll be all on his own, and if he doesn't work things out just right—he'll get the most spectacular finish any individualist could ask for!"

***

Nick Pappas hung weightless in interplanetary space.

Ten meters away floated the Tang Chuh-Chih. One side of it glared white in the sunlight, the other side was jet black, visible only as a shadow across the stars. It floated there motionless, very close to him, but he knew he didn't dare to try to reach it, because it was going to start accelerating any second.

The faceplate of Pappas's spacesuit fogged slightly; he moved a hand inside the suit, adjusted the humidity control. When the faceplate had cleared, he saw that the Tang's rockets were already firing.

The ship still floated there, within shouting distance if there had been an atmosphere; but now from its jets there extended long, perfectly straight streaks of shimmering blue-violet. It seemed to Pappas as though he was drifting slowly parallel to the ship, in the direction of the jets. He shook his head to get rid of the illusion. He was remaining perfectly still, the ship's hull was sliding past him. When the jets were abreast of him, they cut off. He watched the ship receding, rapidly now. A minute or so later there were two short blasts on the steering jets; Pappas realized they were swinging the ship around so he wouldn't be caught in the rocket blast. Then the main jets started up again.

Pappas followed the ship with his eyes as long as he could distinguish it—which wasn't long. Then, he was alone.

Not only were there no walls around him, there wasn't even anything under his feet. There was nothing, anywhere.

"So this was what all that talk added up to," Pappas thought. "They simply set me out here in the middle of the vacuum to stay until the suit's food and air give out."

He thought he might as well make himself at home. He checked over the suit. It was nicely equipped. In addition to standard items, there were several things strapped onto the back of the suit on the outside which pleased him until he realized how little difference they made: There was a reel of light, strong cable with magnetic grapples which could be clamped onto it. There was a hand reaction motor the size of a Stillson wrench, and ten containers of fuel, each the size of a fountain pen. There was a large mirror, for signaling. Also for the same purpose, there was a powerful, highly directional searchlight. He checked the cells which powered it; they were low, but he knew they were charging at that moment from the sunlight falling on them. The searchlight would work. For what that was worth.

So much for his suit. Next, where was he? His position couldn't be given in latitude and longitude, because there wasn't anything for it to be latitude and longitude on. He was somewhere between the orbits of Venus and Earth. The direction of the Sun he could tell by glancing at the arm of his spacesuit and seeing where the sunlight fell—the Sun was behind him and to the right, and a little "downward."

As for the Earth, that would be the next brightest body in his sky. He craned his head in all directions, searching. Then he took out the hand reaction motor and gave a blast to start himself spinning, so he could search in the directions he hadn't been able to see in before. Even the short blast he used made the motor tug at his hand and started the universe whirling around him frighteningly. He turned the control on the motor down as low as it would go, then pressed the button several more times. Finally he had canceled out most of his rotation, and the Milky Way was wheeling calmly about him. He got himself oriented again and after a short time had identified Earth, which was close enough to appear as a blue-green disk.

***

Earth! A thought suddenly struck him. The Tang had been heading straight for Earth when it had let him off; he was still going exactly in the Tang's former orbit. He would reach Earth! There was one more thing he should check—yes, he had a parachute. It was on the back of his spacesuit, underneath the gear he'd investigated before. Now if he could land safely he was all set! Birkerod and Garcia must not have thought of this.

One thing still bothered him: He had been headed for Earth when he was put off the Tang, but had anything happened since to put him off course? How about those times he'd used the reaction motor to set himself spinning? Well, the several small blasts would probably not have had any net effect on his direction of motion, and if they had there wasn't anything to be done about it. But the single strong blast at the beginning—he could remember which constellation he'd been facing at the time, where he'd held the reaction motor, and how strong a blast he'd given. That meant he could give an approximately equal blast now in the opposite direction. This he did, being careful to aim directly away from his center of gravity, so as not to start spinning again.

Now he should be back on course, he figured. Assuming, that is, that he'd ever been off. The small thrust of his reaction motor, applied for such a short time, might not be enough to make any appreciable difference as to where he ended up. He didn't bother trying to calculate it.

Nothing to do now but wait. He spent the time thinking about what he'd do when he got to Earth. It was hard to figure. He'd had a racket on Earth for the year-and-a-half after the Beldens brought him there; everyone had assumed he was doing something important to Callisto's welfare, and all he'd had to do was go through the motions. Now, he didn't know. It was probably true that the Beldens were through; with the Tang Chuh-Chih arriving on Callisto, the odds were against them.

He'd have to find something else, Pappas decided. This whole Belden business was pretty provincial, anyway. And as for Birkerod, Garcia, and those people—! Pappas dismissed Callisto from his thoughts completely. There would have to be some angle on the inner planets.

After several hours of thought on the subject, he took stock of his situation again. The disk of Earth was a little larger, he thought, but not enough so you'd notice it. He pulled the semi-opaque visor over his faceplate and went to sleep.

***

He slept for ten days.

Not Earth days, however. When Pappas went to sleep the Sun was behind him. He thought he had eliminated his rotation, but actually he was tumbling head over heels, extremely slowly. Thus, for him, the Sun rose between his feet and set directly "above" him.

The eleventh of these "sunrises" woke him. He stayed awake, because as soon as he flipped his visor up and looked around him the Earth caught his eye. It was much closer. He did not know how to measure its angular diameter, so he couldn't calculate his distance from it even approximately, but it looked enormous.

How long had his nap lasted? The spacesuit's chronometer was running. Its minute hand indicated 37; its hour hand, 15; its day hand, 3. That would have told him how long he'd slept, if he'd read the chronometer before he went to sleep; but he hadn't. All he knew was that he'd slept much longer than he'd expected, and long enough to get painfully stiff.

In any case, he'd covered a lot of distance. As much as the Tang would have covered in the same time, he realized. He was approaching Earth pretty fast.

"Too fast," he added aloud, nervously. He'd have to decelerate before he got there or the parachute wouldn't do him any good. Now, was it time yet to start decelerating? If he directed the hand reaction motor in the wrong direction now, could it cause him to miss Earth? He guessed not: the planet looked so close, any small "sidewise" push he gave himself could hardly hurt. Once he killed his speed, Earth's gravitational field would gather him in.

Pappas took out the reaction motor. Using low power, he turned himself till he faced Earth. The planet seemed to have swelled just in the time since he'd waked up. He set the reaction motor to full power, grasped it with both hands, held it in front of his chest, and pointed it straight at Earth. Then he pressed the button and held it down.

The force of the hand jet pushed in at his midriff, made his legs and head swing forward. Well, that was okay as long as they didn't get into the exhaust. He stopped blasting a moment to get a better grip on the reaction motor, then fired continuously. Occasionally he would find he'd started himself spinning; then he'd shift the motor just a trifle to keep himself facing the planet. He kept the button firmly pressed down, and the cylinder in his hands sent a continuous jet of intense blue toward Earth. When the first fuel cartridge was exhausted, he put in the second and kept it up.

Twice he stopped for a food pellet and a little water. The rests were welcome: his arms and chest were stiff and aching. But he didn't rest long, because he was getting really scared now. He was sure he was dangerously close to his destination, and his speed hadn't been cut enough. The continents and oceans of Earth's day side were clearly visible, and grew noticeably larger as he looked at them.

He now thought of the direction he was going as down; he thought of himself as falling.

Something bothered him: America had not been in sight a while ago, but now he could see a corner of Brazil appearing at the edge of the disk of Earth. Did that mean he was passing by Earth instead of falling straight at it? No, he realized in a moment, it just meant Earth was rotating; for he could see that the sunset line, the line between night side and day side, had not changed its apparent position on the disk.

No, he was still falling. And he was falling too fast.

A suspicion began to form that Birkerod and Garcia had anticipated this. And suddenly, terrifyingly, he thought of what Garcia's last remark might have meant!

Still, they'd said there was a way he could save himself. And the only way he could think of was to break his fall. He had a certain quantity of fuel to do it with, and he was using it. He was using it for all it was worth, no matter how much his body ached with fatigue. If those two on the Tang had figured this all out ahead of time, then they must have left him enough fuel to avoid being killed. Otherwise they might as well have shot him on the Tang. Okay, if he had enough fuel he'd use it all.

***

One after another the fuel cartridges burned out. Pappas longed for another rest, but he didn't dare take one now. He kept firing, and still the Earth kept growing larger and brighter below him. Finally, there was no more fuel.

After a short breather, Pappas took the reaction motor, detached it from the cord which bound it to his spacesuit, and flung it downward with all his strength. Then he did the same with the mirror, the searchlight, and the reel of cable. It was all he could do.

Then there was an instant when he saw where he had gone wrong. He had not had enough fuel to do what he'd tried to do. That was clear by one look at Earth's face, which still grew alarmingly fast below him; and he could probably have figured it out before. But there had been a way which would have given him some chance. He should have used his fuel, not in a hopeless attempt to decelerate, but in deflecting himself so he would miss Earth! He would have passed by Earth, relatively close. He'd have passed fast, but not too fast to signal with his mirror to Earth's several satellites, natural and artificial. The spaceports on those satellites kept twenty-four-hour watches for signals of distress; when they saw a faint blinking light they would send out a ship which would try to locate its source. They were good at it, too, and if he'd kept his mirror spinning they might have picked him up.

But he hadn't thought of it. It had never occurred to him that even when he was alone, as thoroughly alone as anyone can ever be, his life could depend on dozens of other people. He'd thought only of reaching safety by himself. And, seeing only the one possibility, he'd played it blindly.

There was that instant of sickening realization, then a little later came an instant when Earth ballooned out grotesquely below him, suddenly filling most of his field of vision, and he saw lakes, islands, deserts. He felt all over him an abrupt, final flash of heat, and Nick Pappas became a meteor.

END

Louis Shalako has books and stories available from Barnes & Noble.

Grab yourself a free ebook, for example, The Handbag’s Tale, the short story that inspired The Inspector Gilles Maintenon Series.

He has this other blog over here.

More on Chan Davis, hopefully we have the right guy here. (Wiki)

Thank you for reading, and listening.