05-A Gift From Earth (28 page)

“—calling Douglas Hooker. Douglas Hooker, will you please answer? Do you need help? The United Nations claims you are flying a stolen ship. Is this true? You will need reentry craft to land. Are you able to establish an orbit so that they can find you? Douglas Hook—”

Hooker frowned down at the silver field in his scope screen. That was where Mount Lookitthat ought to be, according to his directional finder. So where was it?

Overcast, of course. By water vapor. There must be fog there or rain.

Hooker smiled and moved in.

He dropped fast into the mist beyond the void edge. If there were finders on him, he was caught; but what could they do about him? They couldn’t approach him with anything manned. His ramscoop field was as deadly as earlier models, save for that “dead pocket.” All he had to do was turn it on.

He heard nothing on the radio. They weren’t sending in his direction. Good. And he was somewhere off the void edge of Mount Lookitthat.

He’d passed through Loeffler’s laser message just about a year ago, ship’s time. It was mealymouthed friendliness, all of it, obviously designed to lull Hooker’s suspicions. All the same, it was a bad mistake on Loeffler’s part. It included pictures of his house and environs.

Loeffler’s house resembled his old home on Earth. It was large, almost ostentatiously large; and it seemed designed to fit its surroundings, as if it had grown from the land. Loeffler no longer lived on a cliff. He had chosen a spot in hilly country, set a few hundred feet back from the void edge in one direction and from a river in another. The river had etched itself a canyon over the millennia, and that canyon led to the void edge.

Hooker kept his ship submerged in the mist. His drive must be giving off a hellish glow, but he hoped he was far enough down for the mist to hide it. He angled his ship toward the invisible Mount Lookitthat and moved slowly in that direction. Look for a waterfall.

It might not show at this level. It might turn to spray and evaporate high above.

Something black and formless loomed in the lesser blackness. Simultaneously, Hooker’s radar beeped. Something black and huge, indefinitely huge… Hooker backed ship and raised the thrust. The ship shot up. Up and up. The mist began to thin… and Hooker had his first look at the side of Mount Lookitthat. It seemed infinite. It went on and on, up and down and sideways, like the surface of a world tilted from horizontal to vertical.

(After four hours of hopeless searching, the pilot of Plateau’s first colony slowboat had seen Mount Lookitthat rising suddenly out of an endless white furry plain. “
Lookitthat!
” he’d said, four hundred years ago, in the voice of one punched in the stomach.)

Hooker took his ship straight up the fluted side. Mist boiled and churned below him. Now he got his first look at Plateau’s big soft sun. Tau Ceti was smaller and cooler than Sol, so that Plateau had to huddle closer for warmth, making the star look bigger from Plateau’s surface. But Hooker had been travelling for more than four years of ship’s time. He’d all but forgotten what a sun looked like.

Above and to the left, a waterfall. He angled that way.

The ship shot past the void edge. Suddenly most of Plateau was below him. Doug cut his thrust and looked around.

He snarled. He’d picked the wrong waterfall.

There were no spacecraft; but he could see cars all across the land, all colors, most of them staying near the ground. There were houses, and all were large. Loeffler’s house must be about average in size.
Sure
, Hooker rebuked himself.
They’ve got more room. Did he plan that too? Hiding from me!

Could that be it?

Hooker dropped. It was a great rounded house, like an enormous boulder with picture windows built into it. There was a river… and it was close to the void edge.

That was it. But was Loeffler there?

It didn’t matter. Hooker back-angled his ship and came to a stop over the house. His drive licked down. The house erupted in flame.

Hooker laughed. He shouted, “You won’t use
that
as a hiding place! Are you dead, Greg? If you’re not, I’ll find you wherever you hide!” Still laughing, he increased thrust and rose into the sky. Below him was a boiling lava pit.

He needed a city. A city would have records. He could search them to find where Loeffler was now.

But he’d have to be careful. Loeffler had taken over Earth. Hooker didn’t know how long it had taken him, but he’d been on Plateau more than twelve years; he must have made some progress here.

Hooker’s radio sounded.

It was a sound Hooker had never heard before. It was very loud and very terrible. Hooker reached to turn off the radio. His arms stopped halfway. He couldn’t move them. He settled back in his seat. A strange, peaceful expression spread across his face. Presently a voice began to give orders, and Hooker obeyed.

“Lucky he had his radio on.”

The second man nodded. “He could have wiped out this whole world. I hate these fusion drives. Land him, will you? I’ll call the Hospital.”

“Whose house was that?”

“I don’t know. Let’s hope nobody was in it. Will you
please
get him down? If it wears off, he’ll turn off the radio; and then where will we be?”

They quit work at five o’clock. Hooker was exhausted. The chain gang had been planting trees where a generation of special mold had made sufficient soil to support them. Machines did some of the work, but mainly the chain gang used their hands.

Planting trees gave Hooker a feeling of accomplishment. Even as president of Skyhook he had never felt so useful.

He was bone tired until dinner arrived, and then he was ravenous. By the time he finished dinner, he was no longer tired. He went to his room and read until eight o’clock. Psychotherapy was at eight.

“What I’ve been thinking about…” he told the doctor. “I want to know if I killed anyone.”

“Why?”

Words formed a bottleneck in Hooker’s throat. It had stopped him before during other psychotherapy sessions. He never knew how to answer that particular question. This time he forced out some kind of an answer.

“I want to know how guilty I am!”

“You know what you were trying to do. Whatever you did is done. How will feeling guilty help anything?”

“I don’t
know
. But if I’m not supposed to feel guilty, why am I in prison? And don’t tell me it’s a hospital. I know it’s a hospital. It’s also a prison.”

“Of course it is.”

He’d killed four people. He’d killed Joanna Loeffler and her daughter and son-in-law and grandson. Greg Loeffler had been elsewhere. They waited a year to tell Hooker.

“Doug!”

Hooker jumped.

The radio yelled, “Doug, this is Greg. Answer me!”

Hooker hesitated only a moment. This was what he had dreaded. Loeffler must have a com laser on him with a directional signal in it. Hooker told the autopilot to follow it back.

The radio didn’t wait. “Answer me, damn you! You know what I want!”

What was with Greg? How could he possibly expect Hooker to answer immediately? It would take hours for Hooker’s com laser to cross the gap to Plateau. Hooker shifted nervously. The autopilot beeped, and he said, “I’m here, Greg. I didn’t want to talk to you. I left Plateau because I couldn’t face you. You must know how sorry I am for what happened.”

Greg’s voice didn’t wait. “Doug! Why don’t you answer? Is it because you think I’m going to kill you?”

Hooker came bolt upright in his chair.
Oh!

Suddenly it was appallingly clear. Loeffler, shouting into a com laser, forgetting the lightspeed gap, was not a sane Loeffler.

Tau Ceti was a white flare in the stern scope. Wunderland’s sun was too dim to see from here. Hooker turned on his ramscoop field: a complex process, most of which would be handled by the autopilot. Then he got up and began to pace.

“You cowardly, murdering…” Loeffler’s speech turned profane. His accusations, justified at first, became wildly imaginative. Hooker listened, trying to gauge the depth of Greg’s insanity. It was one more item on his burden of guilt.

Why didn’t somebody stop him? A com laser was too powerful not to leak. Plateau radios must be picking this up.

And where had he gotten a com laser? The Plateau station was closed to all but qualified personnel. But Greg owned a ship with a com laser.

A ship just like this one.

Almost calmly, Hooker sat down at the control board. He connected the autopilot screen to the stern scope. Tau Ceti glowed brightly off center. Hooker centered it, then began to enlarge it. The screen turned yellowish-white, with a blue point moving off screen near the top. Hooker centered that, enlarged it.

A deep-blue flare with a black dot in the center.

Loeffler was coming after him.

Loeffler’s hoarse voice stopped suddenly. Then, it giggled. “Tricked you,” it said, suddenly calm.

The stern scope turned deep red.

Damn
, thought Hooker.
He did trick me.
The scope screen would not transmit more light than human eyes could bear, but there was a dial to register the light falling on the scope. That dial registered maximum. Loeffler was using his com laser as a weapon. At maximum power it could easily have blanketed Earth’s solar system with a clearly read signal, but Loeffler was firing it at an object only lighthours distant.

He could kill me,
Hooker thought.
He could do it.

It wouldn’t be fast. Loeffler was firing from behind at that part of Hooker’s ship which was built to stand fusion flame applied for years. But eventually things would melt.

Greg was jubilant. “I’m going to burn you, Doug! Just like you burned Joanna and Marcia and Torn and little Greg! But slower! Slower, you…” And there was more profanity.

Needles were rising. Hull-temperature indicators, power-consumption meters, climbed toward pink zones nobody had ever expected them to touch.

Doug Hooker rubbed his eyes. He waited for an inspiration, and none came. Needles touched their pink zones. Bells rang, and Doug turned them off. After a bit he left the control room and went downstairs and lay down on the masseur couch.

He’s going to kill me.
The thought seemed far away, drowned in the groaning comfort of the massage.

All I wanted was a new life. I wanted to go away and start over.
The couch was a hard, enveloping caress.

He won’t let me. He wants to kill me. And who has a better right?

Let him kill me.

No.

It was difficult to struggle out of the couch, for the couch was not finished with him. During a massage one must be in a defeatist frame of mind. Otherwise one tenses; one’s automatic defenses take over. But somehow Doug pulled himself free of the gentle, grasping embrace, and somehow he got upstairs to the control room. He was still covered with massage oil.

A man attacked has the right to defend himself. I paid for my crime.

Doug sat down in the control chair, used a key to unlock a panel. There were override switches underneath. One turned off the ship’s alarm bells; one allowed excess power in the ship’s circuitry; three others set up the sequence that would blow the ship apart if the drive or the ramscoop failed. Everything under the panel was an override switch for the ship’s automatic safety precautions. Doug flipped one switch and closed the panel. Then he twisted a dial hard over, as far as it would go.

His com laser was already fixed on Loeffler’s ship. Now it would burn.

Hooker turned off his fusion drive to reduce the heat pouring in at the ship’s stern. Now he had a good chance. He was firing his laser at Loeffler’s nose, where there was less protection. The massive, almost invulnerable bulk of the ramscoop would absorb most of the beam; but the lifesystem was wider than the ramscoop, and it would catch a lot of light. Eventually its walls would melt.

Hooker would kill Loeffler before Loeffler could kill Hooker.

Doug went back to the masseur couch. He felt very tired.

The lifesystem became hot—unbearably hot. When Doug felt he could stand it no longer, he went upstairs to throw, another override switch. When he had done that, the cooling equipment would get more power, and his lifesystem would be cool until relays or busbars burned out.

At the control panel he found that it wasn’t necessary. The ruby glow was gone from the rear scope screen. Loeffler’s laser had burned out or lost its target.

Loeffler’s ship was still there, still following. Hooker started his drive and turned off his laser. He was on his way to Wunderland, with Loeffler following.

Turnover. Loeffler was still behind him. Hooker had long been convinced that Loeffler’s com laser was burned out. He had used his own com laser, but Loeffler never answered.

And now he used it again.

“Greg,” he said, “you’ve been following me for three and a half years. I assume that you want justice on Wunderland. You’re entitled to state your case there. But now it’s turnover time, in case you hadn’t noticed, and I’m turning around. Please do the same.”

He used the gyros to swing the ship.

He was as nearly sane as a 'doc could make him. In three and a half years he had almost forgotten about Loeffler or at least had learned to accept him as an endurable evil. And there was this: Loeffler had a 'doc. He must have used it. A 'doc would not keep a man sane under undue stress, but Hooker could at least hope that Loeffler would use the law instead of weapons. The law might punish Hooker, despite double jeopardy laws, but it would also protect him.

He fell tail first toward Wunderland.

Now a point of light showed in the front scope. Hooker watched for it to turn. It was small, that dot of light; for Loeffler had fallen far behind in the race toward Wunderland. Hooker’s ramscoop was taking part of Loeffler’s fuel, since Loeffler was in his shadow.

Hours after turnover the point of light moved. Loeffler had gotten his message… or seen him turn. The point of light became a line of light, then swung back to a point.