Operation: Outer Space by Murray Leinster (ebook reader computer txt) 📗

It will be cheaper to buy food from independent farmers than to raise it with hired help. So the farmers will be independent. There will have to be stores to supply them with what they need, and tourists with what they don't need but want. From the minute the glacier planet starts up as a tourist resort, there will be jobs for hundreds of people. It won't be long before there are jobs for thousands. There'll be a man-shortage there. Anybody who wants to can go there to work, and if he doesn't go there expecting a certified, psychologically conditioned environment, but just a good job with possible or probable advancement ... That's the environment we humans want! Presently the hotels won't even be tourist hotels. They'll just be the normal hotels that exist everywhere that there are cities and people moving about among them! Then it won't be a tourist-planet, and tourists will be a nuisance. It'll be home for one hell of a lot of people! And they'll have made every bit of it themselves!"

Holden said uncomfortably:

"It'll be slow ..."

"It'll be sure!" snapped Cochrane. "The first settlements in America were failures until the people started to work for themselves! Look at this planet we're leaving! How many people will come to work that silly diamond mine! How many will hunt to supply them with meat? How many will farm to supply the hunters and the miners with other food? And how many others will be along to run stores and manufacture things ..." He made an impatient gesture. "You're thinking of encouraging people to move to the stars to make more room on Earth. You'd get nice passive colonists who'd obediently move because the long-hairs said it was wise and the government paid for it. I'm thinking of colonists who'll fight and quite possibly cheat[Pg 153] and lie a little to get jobs where they can take care of their families the way they want to! I want people to move to get what they want in spite of any discouragement anybody throws at them. Now shoo! I'm busy!"

Jones asked mildly:

"At what?"

"The latest proposed deal," said Cochrane impatiently, "is for rights to bore for oil. The uranium concessions are farmed out. Water-power is pending—not for cash, but a cut—and—."

Holden said uneasily:

"There's one other thing, Jed. All your plans and all your scheming could still be blocked if back on Earth they think we might bring plagues back to Earth. Remember Dabney suggested that? And some biologist or other agreed with him?"

Cochrane grinned.

"There's a diamond-mine. There are herds of what people will call cattle. There's food and riches. There's scenery and adventure. There's room to do things! Nobody could keep political office if he tried to keep his constituents from food and cash and adventure—even by proxy when they send expendable Cousin Albert out to see if he can make a living there. We've got to take reasonable precautions against germs, of course. We'll have trouble enforcing them. But we'll manage!"

Al called down from the control-room. The ship was sufficiently aligned, he thought, for their next stopping-place. He wanted Jones to charge the booster-circuit and flash it over. Jones went.

A little later there was the peculiar sensation of a sound that was not a sound, but was felt all through one. The result was not satisfactory. The ship was still in empty space, and the nearest star was still a star. There was a repetition of the booster-jump. Still not too good. Thereafter the ship drove, and jumped, and jumped, and drove.

Jamison came down to where Cochrane conducted business via communicator. He waited. Cochrane said:

"Dammit, I won't agree! I want twelve per cent or I take up another offer!—What?"

The last was to Jamison. Jamison said uneasily:

"We found another planet. About Earth-size. Ice-caps. Clouds. Oceans. Seas. Even rivers! But there's no green on it! It's all bare rocks!"[Pg 154]

Cochrane thought concentratedly. Then he said impatiently:

"The whiskered people back home said that life couldn't have gotten started on all the planets suited for it. They said there must be planets where life hasn't reached, though they're perfectly suited for it. Make a landing and try the air with algae like we did on the first planet."

He turned back to the communicator.

"You reason," he snapped to a man on far-away Earth, "that all this is only on paper. But that's the only reason you're getting a chance at it! I'll guarantee that Jones will install drives on ships that meet our requirements of space-worthiness—or government standards, whichever are strictest—for ten per cent of your company stock plus twelve per cent cash of the cost of each ship. Nothing less!"

He heard the rockets make the louder sound that was the symptom of descent against gravity.

The world was lifeless. The ship had landed on bare stone, when Cochrane looked out the control-room ports. There had been trouble finding a flat space on which the three landing-fins would find a suitable foundation. It had taken half an hour of maneuvering to locate such a place and to settle solidly on it. Then the look of things was appalling.

The landing-spot was a naked mass of what seemed to be basalt polygons, similar to the Giants' Causeway of Ireland back on Earth. There was no softness anywhere. The stone which on other planets underlay soil, here showed harshly. There was no soil. There was no microscopic life to nibble at rocks and make soil in which less minute life could live. The nudity of the stones led to glaring colors everywhere. The colors were brilliant as nowhere else but on Earth's moon. There was no vegetation at all.

That was somehow shocking. The ship's company stared and stared, but there could be no comment. There was a vast, dark sea to the left of the landing-place. Inland there were mountains and valleys. But the mountains were not sloped. There were heaps of detritus at the bases of their cliffs, but it was simply detritus. No tiniest patch of lichen grew anywhere. No blade of grass. No moss. No leaf. Nothing.

The air was empty. Nothing flew. There were clouds, to be sure. The sky was even blue, though a darker blue than Earth's, because there was no vegetation to break stone down to dust, or to form dust by its own decay.[Pg 155]

The sea was violently active. Great waves flung themselves toward the harsh coastline and beat upon it with insensate violence. They shattered into masses of foam. But the foam broke—too quickly—and left the surging water dark again. Far down the line of foam there were dark clouds, and rain fell in masses, and lightning flashed. But it was a scene of desolation which was somehow more horrible even than the scarred and battered moon of Earth.

Cochrane looked out very carefully. Alicia came to him, a trifle hesitant.

"Johnny's asleep now. He didn't sleep at first, and while we were out of gravity he was unhappy. But he went off to sleep the instant we landed. He needs rest. Could we—just stay landed here until he catches up on sleep?"

Cochrane nodded. Alicia smiled at him and went away. There was still the mark of a bruise on her cheek. She went down to where her husband needed her. Holden said dourly:

"This world's useless. So is her husband."

"Wait till we check the air," said Cochrane absently.

"I've checked it," Holden told him indifferently. "I went in the port and sniffed at the cracked outer door. I didn't die, so I opened the door. There is a smell of stone. That's all. The air's perfectly breathable. The ocean's probably absorbed all soluble gases, and poisonous gases are soluble. If they weren't, they couldn't be poisonous."

"Mmmmmm," said Cochrane thoughtfully.

Jamison came over to him.

"We're not going to stay here, are we?" he asked. "I don't like to look at it. The moon's bad enough, but at least nothing could live there! Anything could live here. But it doesn't! I don't like it!"

"We'll stay here at least while Johnny has a nap. I do want Bell to take all the pictures he can, though. Probably not for broadcast, but for business reasons. I'll need pictures to back up a deal."

Jamison went away. Holden said without interest:

"You'll make no deals with this planet! This is one you can do what you like with! I don't want any part of it!"

Cochrane shrugged.

"Speaking of things you don't want any part of—what about Johnny Simms? Speaking as a psychiatrist, what effect will that business of being in the dark all night and nearly being pecked to death—what will it do to him?[Pg 156] Are psychopaths the way they are because they can't face reality, or because they've never had to?"

Holden stared away down the incredible, lifeless coastline at the distant storm. There was darkness under many layers of cloud. The sea foamed and lashed and instantly was free of foam again. Because there were no plankton, no animalcules, no tiny, gluey, organic beings in it to give the water the property of making foam which endured. There was thunder, yonder in the storm, and no ear heard it. Over a vast world there was sunshine which no eyes saw. There was night in which nothing rested, and somewhere dawn was breaking now, and nothing sang.

"Look at that, Jed," said Holden heavily. "There's a reality none of us wants to face! We're all more or less fugitives from what we are afraid is reality. That is real, and it makes me feel small and futile. So I don't like to look at it. Johnny Simms didn't want to face what one does grow up to face. It made him feel futile. So he picked a pleasanter role than realist."

Cochrane nodded.

"But his unrealism of last night put him into a very realistic mess that he couldn't dodge! Will it change him?"

"Probably," said Holden without any expression at all in his voice. "They used to put lunatics in snake-pits. When they were people who'd taken to lunacy for escape from reality, it made them go back to reality to escape from the snakes. Shock-treatments used to be used, later, for the same effect. We're too soft to use either treatment now. But Johnny gave himself the works. The odds are that from now on he will never want to be alone even for an instant, and he will never again quite dare to be angry with anybody or make anybody angry. You choked him and he ran away, and it was bad! So from now on I'd guess that Johnny will be a very well-behaved little boy in a grown man's body." He said very wryly indeed, "Alicia will be very happy, taking care of him."

A moment later he added:

"I look at that set-up the way I look at the landscape yonder."

Cochrane said nothing. Holden liked Alicia. Too much. It would not make any difference at all. After a moment, though, he changed the subject.

"I think this is a pretty good bet, this planet. You think it's no good. I'm going to talk to the chlorella companies. They grow edible yeast in tanks, and chlorella in vats, and[Pg 157] they produce an important amount of food. But they have to grow the stuff indoors and they have a ghastly job keeping everything sterile. Here's a place where they can sow chlorella in the oceans! They can grow yeast in lakes, out-of-doors! Suppose they use this world to grow monstrous quantities of unattractive but useful foodstuff—in a way—wild? It will be good return-cargo material for ships taking colonists out to our other planets.—I suppose," he added meditatively, "they'll ship it back in bulk, dried."

Holden blinked. He was jolted out of even his depression.

"Jed!" he said warmly. "Tell that to the world—prove that—and—people will stop being afraid! They won't be afraid of starving before they can get to the stars! Jed—Jed! This is the thing the world needs most of all!"

But Cochrane grimaced.

"Maybe," he admitted it. "But I've tasted the stuff. I think it's foul! Still, if people want it ..."

He went back down to the communicator to contact the chlorella companies of Earth, to find out if there was any special data they would need to pass on the proposal.

And so presently the ship took off for home. It landed on the moon first, and Johnny Simms was loaded into a space-suit and transferred to Lunar City, where he could live without being extradited back to Earth. He wouldn't stay there. Alicia guaranteed that. They'd move to the glacier planet as soon as hotels were built. Maybe some day they'd travel to the planet of the shaggy beasts. Johnny would never be troublesome again. He was pathetically anxious, now, to have people like him, and stay with him, and not under any circumstances be angry with him or shut him away from them. Alicia would now have a full-time occupation keeping people from taking advantage of him.

But the ship went back to Earth. And on Earth Jamison became the leading television personality