Chapter 3

"Don't you know," said Goil in an all-too-quiet, ominous voice, "that a jury-rigged contraption like that could never get near Earth with only a one-time course like that plotted for it? That it takes precise computations to get something like that to a destination? _With_ a human navigator? Just how did you figure you could do it? I'm curious."

"Well," said Willy warming up to the subject a little, "I rigged up a timing unit. When it left here, it was on the taped course for Earth. Then it went into sub-space. From the computations I got, I set another timer that will kick it back into normal space at the right time, and in an orbit around Earth."

The room was silent for a time. Finally the silence exploded with:

"You damned fool! You dangerous idiot! You've got just enough knowledge to be able to do something like that, but not enough sense to know it is hopeless and idiotic! I've heard enough. Now, get out of here!"

Willy got out in a stumbling hurry.

* * * * *

I stayed. Goil tried to glare me out of the room, but I would have none of it. I was now ready to go into action. I was by no means certain I would be right, but already deep in this mess, what more could I lose by plunging?

With a lot more bravado than I really felt, I plunked down on Goil's desk top a stack of sheets, a chart, and tapes. Then I put both palms down on his desk and leaned over until I looked him squarely in the face. I said:

"Do you know what is going to happen to that rock of Willy's, Mr. Goil? It's going to come out of sub-space right smack in the path of that freighter. It's going to knock that freighter right off course."

Of course, it sounded like a fantasy, and if I had been in Goil's place, I would have thought it so. But Goil had been worrying over the impending loss of his interests, and even the fantastic was something to clutch at for the moment.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

I nodded to the stuff I had tossed on his desk. "Look at those. The chart particularly. I got the course plotted by Artie Jones. I checked the path and timing of both Willy's asteroid and the freighter. Willy's asteroid is due to come out of sub-space in about six hours at this point."--I pointed to an X I had marked on the chart--"And the freighter will be at the same point at the same time."

Goil said nothing, but examined the chart and the computation figures, and finally the tapes. He shook his head a number of times as if he didn't want to believe but did not dare not to. Finally, he looked up at me and said:

"The course and figures seem to check both ways. But I don't believe it. That the rock and the freighter should meet in the same place at the same time would be more than a coincidence. It would be a miracle."

"More so than the 'coincidence' of the freighter headed straight for Mars's only industrial area?" I asked.

Goil thought it over for a while. Then he said, "Yes. More than I can imagine. We have the rock and the freighter, two moving bodies, meeting in space by pure chance. Space is too vast for that sort of thing. It can't happen."

"Mars and the freighter are two moving bodies in space that are going to meet," I pointed out.

"Yes, but the ship was originally headed on a course to Mars. And Mars is much bigger."

"True," I conceded. "But the asteroid is also on an interception course with the freighter. And it is a lot bigger than the freighter."

Goil sat silent and thoughtful for quite a while. Finally, he said:

"I'm not gullible, Mr. Weston. Nor am I a fool. I have enough interest in Mars to want a miracle to happen, aside from a natural desire to see disaster averted. But what about you; what are you after? What are you trying to prove?"

That was what I had been waiting for.

* * * * *

I told him about the Research Institute of Human Influences, for which I was a field psychologist, and how they located accident prones and safety prones, among other types of odd personalities, and how we observers gathered data in efforts to learn ways to nullify the accident prones' influence, and to learn the whys and hows of the safety prones, as well as ways to expand their fields of influence.

Goil just sat there, his face indicating neither belief nor disbelief.

"Willy has no idea he does what he does, nor why. He's completely unaware of his influence. I can't imagine how his mind works to rationalize for his behavior. I'd do just about anything, Mr. Goil, to keep Willy from learning all I've told you. It would make him aware, and that might sour things, probably even nullify his influence."

Goil said, "I'm not at all convinced that this is not some sort of lunatic hoax. But as long as there is nothing I nor you can do for the time being, I'm going to hold any further action in abeyance. Let's see what happens. Even if by some miraculous coincidence the rock and the ship should meet, that's not proof that your yarn is true."

"No," I said. "But other things have happened before. Nothing this big, though. But always, there is this synergism of Willy's; a compulsion to do some crazy thing, or to build some silly gadget, even if he has to steal to do it. And the inevitable end that sometimes quite obviously prevents injury, and other times leaving the results a mystery. Once the purpose has been accomplished, Willy loses all interest. I have histories, documented cases of Willy's influence. Files of tape recordings of his synergisms in action. And these files all show a definite pattern."

"Let's hear some of your recordings, and read some of your documents," said Goil.

And that was how we spent the next four hours.

* * * * *

Of course, I had juggled the computations I had shown Goil a little bit. And made the course of the asteroid look like it would coincide with that of the freighter. If I hadn't, Goil would never have given me the time I needed.

Art Jones had kept the news of the freighter coming in all day. It was still on course for Mars. About a half-hour before the freighter crew was due to leave the ship, the rec room was crowded with men waiting to watch the escape of the crew.

There hadn't been time enough to get a ship in the area that could blast the freighter off course. And there hadn't been any ship even on Mars equipped for such action, not even an old slightly serviceable derelict that could be placed in the runaway ship's path for deflection.

The long-range scope still had the runaway ship in focus. It looked like a little painted miniature in the trideo, with a very slowly moving spangled background. A faint superimposed image of Mars appeared. The announcer was talking about forces, vectors, and other navigational terminology, plus nonsensical chatter of probability factors. The picture faded and was replaced with an artist's animated conception of the impending tragedy. It showed the present location of the ship, the calculated course and trajectory of the ship through the atmosphere to the point of impact--right in the center of the industrial area. It ended with a big question mark before the image of the ship returned.

During the sequence of the collision course, I was trying in my mind to figure out just how far off Willy's asteroid would be. I could figure it roughly in my head, remembering the original figures I'd gotten from Artie. The asteroid would be no fewer than a million and a half miles from the runaway ship, at its nearest point. Besides, it wouldn't emerge from sub-space until it was near Earth, a good seventy million miles from Mars at that time.

It had taken some belligerent persuasion to get Artie to conjure up the figures and tapes I gave Goil.

I felt a tap on my shoulder and glanced up. Simon, one of the tug pilots, was pointing toward the back of the room. I looked back. Artie was there with a worried look on his face looking at me. His eyes moved quickly toward where Goil sat, and then back at me. His head gave a little backwards jerk.

Feeling real unhappy all of a sudden as premonition nudged my mind, I got up quietly and went back.

Artie had stepped outside in the hall. When he saw me step out of the rec room doorway, he motioned me down the hall farther. Gloom was all over his face, even in his motions. He said:

"Sam, I don't know what's going on around here between Willy, Goil, and you. But I thought you'd like to know Goil was in to see me a little while ago. Before I had much of a chance to think about it, I gave him the figures and tapes for that course I plotted for Willy. I don't know how Goil knew about them, but he asked for them directly."

"Which figures, Art?" I asked anxiously.

"Why, the ones I made for you. Is there something wrong, Sam?"

My alarm must have shown in my face. I said, "No, Art. I thought maybe you might have given him that other course I asked you to plot."

"You mean that false course? Hell, Sam. I didn't know--"

"It's all right, Art. You didn't know." And I left him standing there puzzled. I went back to the rec room.

I wasn't feeling so good by the time I got back. My seat had been taken, so I wriggled myself a place against the back wall.

Goil knew all about the fictitious course I gave him. Right there he had me cold. But he was too worried to want to do anything about it then.

The time seemed to stand still. The crew still had some fifteen minutes before they were due to abandon ship, so I left the rec room to sneak out to the galley for a cup of coffee. When I entered, there was Artie and Elmer already having coffee.

Artie said, "Sit down, Sam, and have a cup."

Elmer poured, and I gulped half the cupful down gratefully, then said, "Aren't you two going to watch the runaway crack into Mars?"

"Sure," said Artie. "I've got a small monitor screen in the com room. Want to join us?"

I did and said so. We all drank another cup of coffee and then went to the communications room. The three of us could sit and comfortably watch the small monitor.

A series of montages suddenly snapped off the screen to be replaced by the lonesome ship. This time there was Mars in the near background. I never could understand how the long-range scope mechanisms managed to bend their energies so that they could literally see behind something directly in front of them, but they could. That was how they could get Mars in the background.

The excited announcer was saying that the crew would abandon ship in four minutes since all hope of a course change was gone. And in another three hours the runaway would enter atmosphere.

"Sure," Elmer said, "the crew will abandon ship. But where can they go after they do? Mars, that's where."

"I guess all you can say about it is that they are going right out of the fire into the frying pan," Artie said morbidly.

"Yeah," Elmer said. "They sure are. About all they can do is land on Mars with the short range of the lifeboats."

"Oh, they got enough range, all right," Artie said. "Only they don't have enough food and water for all the crew to reach some other planet. They have no choice but to try Mars."

"That'll get them there a little while after the crash," Elmer said. "In time to get in on the marsquakes and the dust storms."

"Yeah," said Artie, "if they make it through the atmosphere while it's still being churned."

"Why don't you guys stow the chatter," I said brusquely. "Let us hear what's going on."

The announcer was saying, "... in ninety seconds. All hope of regaining control of the ship is past. The entire crew is now in the four lifeboats ready to leave." Then he started a long countdown, a full sixty seconds.

The scope magnified the ship more.

I found myself holding my breath. The countdown neared an end--ended.

And two lifeboats sprang from each side of the freighter.

The scope lost them for a moment, then picked up one pair. They were almost invisible specks in the background.

In another five minutes they had joined the other pair of lifeboats, and all four were now headed slowly toward Mars, apparently well behind the mother ship.

The scope shifted back to the abandoned ship. The announcer was saying:

"And now take a long last look at this--this compounded missile that in a few hours may very well destroy a world unless a miracle--"

The scene, the words could not have been more perfectly timed even in a class B trideo space thriller. The racing derelict was framed against a background of ruddy Mars, then the next instant the area completely around it seemed to blacken out. Then it started glowing, increasing in intensity, expanding, throwing fiery arms wildly outward. It became a nova of fury. The scope had it centered beautifully. Even the coolest molten blobs could be seen being pushed from the mass until the inner hell caught up with them and turned them into vapor.

A quick-thinking engineer must have thrown a filter somewhere in the scope's innards, for the scene became sort of an X-ray one in which the glare of the light no longer impeded vision. The heart of the fury could easily be seen as it expanded itself, feeding and growing on the solid matter within its reach. The central fury overtook the lagging perimeter forces, engulfed them, then blossomed out, thinned, and became a diaphanous curtain rippling and shimmering in an uncertainty of direction. It waned, leaving a residual flicker that might have been only a product of imagination.

The entire magnificent show lasted ten minutes. For each second of each minute of that time, I'll swear I held my breath! And everyone else in the station at that time would say the same about himself. It was that striking, that breath-taking.

Some seconds after the spectacle was over, there was a near-silence. Then cheers broke loose. Such a confined din I hope never to hear again. The dramatic suspense had been so effectively communicated for so many hours, the miraculous sudden release seemed to demand an over-compensating effect. Everyone seemed suddenly to believe it an excellent reason to celebrate--and they certainly did!

* * * * *

Speculation as to what caused the explosion ran riot. But to me it was plainly Willy's influence reaching out to a company ship's crew and Mars personnel. It might seem that I had gambled a little too much on Willy's influence, but not really. I had observed and recorded that particular synergism and had every confidence in the results. Willy's Rube Goldberg had a combination of built-in errors which produced a series of compensating course alterations that made the asteroid de-energize and materialize right smack in normal space where the freighter was--after the crew escaped.

The blackness that had been noticeable for an instant was, of course, the asteroid coming out of sub-space. And with the runaway trying to co-exist right in the middle of the asteroid, naturally everything vaporized. Mars was saved.

So was Willy.

So was I.

Goil? Well, I nailed him right away; confessed my duplicity in the course figures and tapes, and explained that I needed the time to let things happen the way Willy's influence makes them happen. I don't think Goil was totally convinced. But he must have been partly, at least, for with all the system's experts arguing about just exactly what made the ship explode, and with no two experts agreeing on an explanation, he might have given some benefit of the doubt to Willy. Anyway, he was so relieved that his interests in Mars were saved that he smiled for the next three days, dismissed me as an incurable visionary or some other sort of nut, and chewed Willy out for two hours, then seemed to forget the matter.

Me? An appropriate length of time before the ship was abandoned, I radioed to a stock broker friend of mine on Earth and put every dime plus that I had into the mightily fallen stocks on Mars. Goil and I are now both big holders in the company.

Willy? He never suspected his part in the episode. Last time I heard, he was working on some fabulous government project as fifteenth assistant engineer. I guess the government had heard about him somehow. It seems that the fabulous project has working for it an egghead whose brainpower is such a necessity that he is hired even though he is a notorious accident prone. Willy, of course, neutralizes him so work can progress at normal rate.

THE END

* * * * *