Chapter V: Part 5

So down the ladder they went. Mike hoped there'd be no fighting at all. He had the feeling that everything was all wrong, somehow, and that any use of stun guns or spanners would just make everything worse.

His wasn't the only group looking for Snookums and Mellon. Lieutenant Keku had another group, and Commander Jeffers had a third. Lieutenant Commander von Liegnitz was with Captain Quill on the bridge. Mellon had already attacked von Liegnitz once; the captain didn't want them mixing it up again.

Captain Quill's voice came suddenly from a speaker in the overhead. "Miss Crannon and Dr. Fitzhugh have just spoken to me," he said in his brisk tenor. "Snookums is safe in his own room. I have outlined what has happened, and they're trying to get information from Snookums now. Lieutenant Mellon is still missing."

"One down," said Chief Multhaus. There was relief in his voice.

"Let's see if we can find the other one," said Mike the Angel.

They went down perhaps three more steps, and the speakers came to life again. "Will the Chief Physician's Mate report to Commander Jeffers in the maintenance tool room? Lieutenant Keku, dismiss your men to quarters and report to the bridge. Commander Gabriel, dismiss your men to quarters and report to Commander Jeffers in maintenance. All chief non-coms report to the ordnance room to turn in your weapons. All enlisted men return to your posts or to quarters."

Mike the Angel holstered his stun gun. "That's two down," he said to Chief Multhaus.

"Looks like we missed all the fun," said Multhaus.

"Okay, men," Mike said, "you got the word. Take those spanners back to the tool room in Power Section, and then get back to your quarters. Chief, you go with them and secure everything, then take that stun gun back to ordnance."

"Yessir."

Multhaus threw Mike a salute; Mike returned it and headed toward maintenance. He knew Multhaus and the others were curious, but he was just as curious himself. He had the advantage of being in a position to satisfy his curiosity.

The maintenance tool room was big and lined with tool lockers. One of them was open. Sprawled in front of it was Lieutenant Mellon. Over to one side was Commander Jeffers, standing next to a white-faced Ensign Vaneski. Nearby were a chief non-com and three enlisted men.

"Hullo, Mike," Pete Jeffers said as Mike the Angel came in.

"What happened, Pete?" Mike asked.

Jeffers gestured at the sprawled figure on the floor. "We came in here to search. We found him. Mister Vaneski opened the locker, there, for a look-see, and Mellon jumped out at him. Vaneski fired his stun gun. Mellon collapsed to the deck. He's in bad shape; his pulse is so weak that it's hard to find."

Mike the Angel walked over and looked down at the fallen Medical Officer. His face was waxen, and he looked utterly small and harmless.

"What happened?" asked another voice from the door. It was Chief Physician's Mate Pierre Pasteur. He was a smallish man, well rounded, pleasant-faced, and inordinately proud of his name. He couldn't actually prove that he was really descended from the great Louis, but he didn't allow people to think otherwise. Like most C. Phys. M.'s, he had a doctor of medicine degree but no internship in the Space Service. He was working toward his commission.

"We've got a patient for you," said Jeffers. "Better look him over, Chief."

Chief Pasteur walked over to where Mellon lay and took his stethoscope out of his little black bag. He listened to Mellon's chest for a few seconds. Then he pried open an eyelid and looked closely at an eye. "What happened to him?" he asked, without looking up.

"Got hit with a beam from a stun gun," said Jeffers.

"How did he fall? Did he hit his head?"

"I don't know--maybe." He looked at Ensign Vaneski. "Did he, Mister Vaneski? He was right on top of you; I was across the room."

Vaneski swallowed. "I don't know. He--he just sort of--well, he _fell_."

"You didn't catch him?" asked the chief. He was a physician on a case now and had no time for sirring his superiors.

"No. No. I jumped away from him."

"Why? What's the trouble?" Jeffers asked.

"He's dead," said the Chief Physician's Mate.

17

Leda Crannon was standing outside the cubicle that had been built for Snookums. Her back and the palms of her hands were pressed against the door. Her head was bowed, and her red hair, shining like a hellish flame in the light of the glow panels, fell around her shoulders and cheeks, almost covering her face.

"Leda," said Mike the Angel gently.

She looked up. There were tears in her blue eyes.

"Mike! Oh, Mike!" She ran toward him, put her arms around him, and tried to bury her face in Mike's chest.

"What's the matter, honey? What's happened?" He was certain she couldn't have heard about Mellon's death yet. He held her in his arms, carefully, tenderly, not passionately.

"He's crazy, Mike. He's completely crazy." Her voice had suddenly lost everything that gave it color. It was only dead and choked.

Mike the Angel knew it was an emotional reaction. As a psychologist, she would never have used the word "crazy." But as a woman ... as a human being....

"Fitz is still in there talking to him, but he's--he's--" Her voice choked off again into sobs.

Mike waited patiently, holding her, caressing her hair.

"Eight years," she said after a minute or so. "Eight years I spent. And now he's gone. He's broken."

"How do you know?" Mike asked.

She lifted her head and looked at him. "Mike--did he really hit you? Did he refuse to stop when you ordered him to? What _really_ happened?"

Mike told her what had happened in the darkened companionway just outside his room.

When he finished, she began sobbing again. "He's lying, Mike," she said. "_Lying!_"

Mike nodded silently and slowly. Leda Crannon had spent all of her adult life tending the hurts and bruises and aches of Snookums the Child. She had educated him, cared for him, taken pleasure in his triumphs, worried about his health, and watched him grow mentally.

And now he was sick, broken, ruined. And, like all parents, she was asking herself: "What did I do wrong?"

Mike the Angel didn't give her an answer to that unspoken question, but he knew what the answer was in so many cases:

The grieving parent has not necessarily done anything wrong. It may simply be that there was insufficient or poor-quality material to work with.

With a human child, it is even more humiliating for a parent to admit that he or she has contributed inferior genetic material to a child than it is to admit a failure in upbringing. Leda's case was different.

Leda had lost her child, but Mike hesitated to point out that it wasn't her fault in the first place because the material wasn't up to the task she had given it, and in the second place because she hadn't really lost anything. She was still playing with dolls, not human beings.

"Hell!" said Mike under his breath, not realizing that he was practically whispering in her ear.

"Isn't it?" she said. "Isn't it Hell? I spent eight years trying to make that little mind of his tick properly. I wanted to know what was the right, proper, and logical way to bring up children. I had a theory, and I wanted to test it. And now I'll never know."

"What sort of theory?" Mike asked.

She sniffled, took a handkerchief from her pocket, and began wiping at her tears. Mike took the handkerchief away from her and did the wiping job himself. "What's this theory?" he said.

"Oh, it isn't important now. But I felt--I still feel--that everybody is born with a sort of Three Laws of Robotics in him. You know what I mean--that a person wouldn't kill or harm anyone, or refuse to do what was right, in addition to trying to preserve his own life. I think babies are born that way. But I think that the information they're given when they're growing up can warp them. They still think they're obeying the laws, but they're obeying them wrongly, if you see what I mean."

Mike nodded without saying anything. This was no time to interrupt her.

"For instance," she went on, "if my theory's right, then a child would never disobey his father--unless he was convinced that the man was not really his father, you see. For instance, if he learned, very early, that his father never spanks him, that becomes one of the identifying marks of 'father.' Fine. But the first time his father _does_ spank him, doubt enters. If that sort of thing goes on, he becomes disobedient because he doesn't believe that the man is his father.

"I'm afraid I'm putting it a little crudely, but you get the idea."

"Yeah," said Mike. For all he knew, there might be some merit in the girl's idea; he knew that philosophers had talked of the "basic goodness of mankind" for centuries. But he had a hunch that Leda was going about it wrong. Still, this was no time to argue with her. She seemed calmer now, and he didn't want to upset her any more than he had to.

"That's what you've been working on with Snookums?" he asked.

"That's it."

"For eight years?"

"For eight years."

"Is that the information, the data, that makes Snookums so priceless, aside from his nucleonics work?"

She smiled a little then. "Oh no. Of course not, silly. He's been fed data on everything--physics, subphysics, chemistry, mathematics--all kinds of things. Most of the major research laboratories on Earth have problems of one kind or another that Snookums has been working on. He hasn't been given the problem _I_ was working on at all; it would bias him." Then the tears came back. "And now it doesn't matter. He's insane. He's lying."

"What's he saying?"

"He insists that he's never broken the First Law, that he has never hurt a human being. And he insists that he has followed the orders of human beings, according to the Second Law."

"May I talk to him?" Mike asked.

She shook her head. "Fitz is running him through an analysis. He even made me leave." Then she looked at his face more closely. "You don't just want to confront him and call him a liar, do you? No--that's not like you. You know he's just a machine--better than I do, I guess.... What is it, Mike?"

_No_, he thought, looking at her, _she still thinks he's human. Otherwise, she'd know that a computer can't lie--not in the human sense of the word._

_Most people, if told that a man had said one thing, and that a computer had given a different answer, would rely on the computer._

"What is it, Mike?" she repeated.

"Lew Mellon," he said very quietly, "is dead."

The blood drained from her face, leaving her skin stark against the bright red of her hair. For a moment he thought she was going to faint. Then a little of the color came back.

"Snookums." Her voice was whispery.

He shook his head. "No. Apparently he tried to jump Vaneski and got hit with a stun beam. It shouldn't have killed him--but apparently it did."

"God, God, God," she said softly. "Here I've been crying about a damned machine, and poor Lew has been lying up there dead." She buried her face in her hands, and her voice was muffled when she spoke again. "And I'm all cried out, Mike. I can't cry any more."

Before Mike could make up his mind whether to say anything or not, the door of Snookums' room opened and Dr. Fitzhugh came out, closing the door behind him. There was an odd, stricken look on his face. He looked at Leda and then at Mike, but the expression on his face showed that he really hadn't seen them clearly.

"Did you ever wonder if a robot had a soul, Mike?" he asked in a wondering tone.

"No," Mike admitted.

Leda took her hands from her face and looked at him. Her expression was a bright blank stare.

"He won't answer my questions," Fitzhugh said in a hushed tone. "I can't complete the analysis."

"What's that got to do with his soul?" Mike asked.

"He won't answer my questions," Fitzhugh repeated, looking earnestly at Mike. "He says God won't allow him to."

18

Captain Sir Henry Quill opened the door of the late Lieutenant Mellon's quarters and went in, followed by Mike the Angel. The dead man's gear had to be packed away so that it could be given to his nearest of kin when the officers and crew of the _Brainchild_ returned to Earth. Regulations provided that two officers must inventory his personal effects and those belonging to the Space Service.

"Does Chief Pasteur know what killed him yet, Captain?" Mike asked.

Quill shook his head. "No. He wants my permission to perform an autopsy."

"Are you going to let him?"

"I think not. We'll put the body in the freezer and have the autopsy performed on Earth." He looked around the room, seeing it for the first time.

"If you don't," said Mike, "you've got three suspected killers on your hands."

Quill was unperturbed. "Don't be ridiculous, Golden Wings."

"I'm not," Mike said. "I hit him in the pit of his stomach. Chief Pasteur filled him full of sedative. Mister Vaneski shot him with a stun beam. He died. Which one of us did it?"

"Probably no single one of them, but a combination of all three," said Captain Quill. "Each action was performed in the line of duty and without malice aforethought--without even intent to harm permanently, much less to kill. There will have to be a court-martial, of course--or, at the very least, a board of inquiry will be appointed. But I am certain you'll all come through any such inquiry scatheless." He picked up a book from Mellon's desk. "Let's get about our business, Mister Gabriel. Mark down: Bible, one."

Mike put it down on the list.

"_International Encyclopedia_, English edition. Thirty volumes and index."

Mike put it down.

"_The Oxford-Webster Dictionary of the English Language_--

"_Hallbert's Dictionary of Medical Terms_--

"_The Canterbury Theological Dictionary_--

"_The Christian Religion and Symbolic Logic_, by Bishop K. F. Costin--

"_The Handbook of Space Medicine_--"

As Captain Quill called out the names of the books and put them into the packing case he'd brought, Mike marked them down--while something began ticking in the back of his mind.

"Item," said Captain Quill, "one crucifix." He paused. "Beautifully carved, too." He put it into the packing case.

"Excuse me, Captain," said Mike suddenly. "Let me take a look at something, will you?" Excitedly, he leaned over and took some of the books out, looking at the pages of each one.

"I'll be damned," he said after a moment. "Or I _should_ be--for being such a stupid idiot!"

Captain Quill narrowed his eyes. "What are you talking about, Mister Gabriel?"

"I'm not sure yet, Captain," Mike hedged. "May I borrow these three books?" He held them up in his hands.

"May I be so bold as to ask _why_, Mister Gabriel?"

"I just want to look at them, sir," Mike said. "I'll return them within a few hours."

"Mister Gabriel," Captain Quill said, "after what happened last night, I am suspicious of everything that goes on aboard this ship. But--yes. You may take them. However, I want them returned before we land tomorrow morning."

Mike blinked. Neither he nor anyone else--with the exception of Captain Quill and Lieutenant Commander von Liegnitz, the navigator, knew the destination of the ship. Mike hadn't realized they were that close to their goal. "I'll have them back by then," he promised.

"Very well. Now let's get on about our work."

The job was completed within forty-five minutes. A man can't carry a great deal with him on a spaceship. When they were through, Mike the Angel excused himself and went to his quarters. Two hours after that he went to the officers' wardroom to look up Pete Jeffers. Pete hadn't been in his quarters, and Mike knew he wasn't on duty by that time. Sure enough, Jeffers was drinking coffee all by himself in the wardroom. He looked up when Mike came in.

"Hullo, Mike," he said listlessly. "Come sit. Have some coffee."

There was a faint aroma in the air which indicated that there was more in the cup than just coffee. "No, thanks, Pete. I'll sit this one out. I wanted to talk to you."

"Sit. I am drinking a toast to Mister Lew Mellon." He pointed at the coffee. "Sure you won't have a mite? It's sweetened from the grape."

"No, thanks again." Mike sat down. "It's Mellon I wanted to talk about. Did you know him well, Pete?"

"Purty well," Pete said, nodding. "Yeah, purty well. I always figured him for a great little bloke. Can't figure what got into him."

"Me either. Pete, you told me he was an Anglo-Catholic--a good one, you said."

"'At's right."

"Well, how did you mean that?"

Pete frowned. "Just what I said. He studied his religion, he went to Mass regularly, said his prayers--that sort of thing. And he was, I will say, a Christian gentleman in every sense of the word." There was irritation in his voice, as though Mike had impugned the memory of a friend.

"Don't get huffy, Pete; he struck me as a pretty nice person, too--"

"Until he flipped his lid," said Pete. "But that might happen to anybody."

"Sure. But what I want to know--and don't get sore--is, did he show any kind of--well, _instability_ before this last outbreak?"

"Like what?"

"I mean, was he a religious nut? Did he act 'holier than thou' or--well, was he a fanatic, would you say?"

"No, I wouldn't say so. He didn't talk much about it. I guess you noticed that. I mean, he didn't preach. He smoked some and had his glass of wine now and then--even had a cocktail or two on occasion. His views on sex were orthodox, I reckon--I mean, as far as I know. He'd tell an off-color story, if it wasn't _too_ bad. But he'd get up and leave quietly if the boys started tellin' about the women they'd made. Fornication and adultery just weren't his meat, I'd say."

"I know he wasn't married," Mike said. "Did he date much?"

"Some. He liked to dance. Women seemed to like him."

"How about men?"

"Most of the boys liked him."

"That's not what I meant."

"Oh. Was he queer?" Pete frowned. "I'd damn near stake my life that he wasn't."

"You mean he didn't practice it?"

"I don't believe he even thought about it," Pete said. "Course, you can't tell what's really goin' on in a man's mind, but--" His frown became a scowl. "Damn it, Mike, just because a man isn't married by the time he's thirty-five and practices Christian chastity while he's single don't necessarily mean he's a damn fairy!"

"I didn't say it did. I just wondered if you'd heard anything."

"No more'n I've heard about you--who are in exactly the same position!"

"Exactly," Mike agreed. "That's what I wanted to know. Pete, if you've got it to spare, I'll join you in that toast."

Pete Jeffers grinned. "Comin' right up, buddy-boy."

He poured two more cups of coffee, spiked them from a small flask of brandy, and handed one to Mike. They drank in silence.

Fifteen minutes later, Mike the Angel was in the little office that Leda Crannon shared with Dr. Fitzhugh. She was alone.

"How's the girl today?" he asked.

"Beat," she said with a forced smile.

"You look beautiful," he said. He wasn't lying. She looked drawn and tired, but she still looked beautiful.

"Thanks, Mike. What can I do for you?"

Mike the Angel pulled up a chair and sat down. "Where's Doc Fitz?"

"He's still trying to get information out of Snookums. It's a weird thing, Mike--a robot with a soul."

"You don't mind talking about it?"

"No; go ahead if you want."

"All right, answer me a question," he said. "Can Snookums read English?"

"Certainly. And Russian, and German, French, Chinese, and most of the other major languages of Earth."

"He could read a book, then?"

"Yes. But not unless it was given to him and he was specifically told to use its contents as data."

"Good," said Mike. "Now, suppose Snookums was given complete data on a certain field of knowledge. Suppose further that this field is internally completely logical, completely coherent, completely self-consistent. Suppose it could even be reduced to a series of axioms and theorems in symbolic logic."

"All right," she said. "So?"

"Now, further suppose that this system, this field of knowledge is, right now, in constant use by millions of human beings, even though most of them are unaware of the implications of the entire field. Could Snookums work with such a body of knowledge?"

"Sure," said Leda. "Why not?"

"What if there was absolutely no way for Snookums to experiment with this knowledge? What if he simply did not have the equipment necessary?"

"You mean," she asked, "something like astrophysics?"

"No. That's exactly what I don't mean. I'm perfectly well aware that it isn't possible to test astrophysical theories directly. Nobody has been able to build a star in the lab so far.

"But it _is_ possible to test the theories of astrophysics analogically by extrapolating on data that _can_ be tested in a physics lab.

"What I'm talking about is a system that Snookums, simply because he is what he is, cannot test or experiment upon, in any way whatsoever. A system that has, in short, no connection with the physical world whatsoever."

Leda Crannon thought it over. "Well, assuming all that, I imagine that it would eventually ruin Snookums. He's built to experiment, and if he's kept from experimenting for too long, he'll exceed the optimum randomity of his circuits." She swallowed. "If he hasn't already."

"I thought so. And so did someone else," said Mike thoughtfully.

"Well, for Heaven's sake! What is this system?" Leda asked in sudden exasperation.

"You're close," said Mike the Angel.

"What are you talking about?"

"Theology," said Mike. "He was pumped full of Christian theology, that's all. Good, solid, Catholic theology. Bishop Costin's mathematical symbolization of it is simply a result of the verbal logic that had been smoothed out during the previous two thousand years. Snookums could reduce it to math symbols and equations, anyway, even if we didn't have Bishop Costin's work."

He showed her the book from Mellon's room.

"It doesn't even require the assumption of a soul to make it foul up a robot's works. He doesn't have any emotions, either. And he can't handle something that he can't experiment with. It would have driven him insane, all right. But he _isn't_ insane."

Leda looked puzzled. "But--"

"Do you know why?" Mike interrupted.

"No."

"Because he found something that he could experiment with. He found a material basis for theological experimentation."

She looked still more puzzled. "What could that be?"

"Me," said Mike the Angel. "Me. Michael Raphael Gabriel. I'm an angel--an archangel. As a matter of fact, I'm _three_ archangels. For all I know, Snookums has equated me with the Trinity."

"But--how did he get that idea?"

"Mostly from the Book of Tobit," said Mike. "That's where an archangel takes the form of a human being and travels around with Tobit the Younger, remember? And, too, he probably got more information from the first part of Luke's Gospel, where Gabriel tells the Blessed Virgin that she's about to become a mother."

"But would he have figured that out for himself?"

"Possibly," said Mike, "but I doubt it. He was told that I was an angel--literally."

"Let me see that book," she said, taking _The Christian Religion and Symbolic Logic_ from Mike's hand. She opened it to the center. "I didn't know anyone had done this sort of work," she said.

"Oh, there was a great fuss over the book when it came out. There were those who said that the millennium had arrived because the truth of the Christian faith had been proved mathematically, and therefore all rational people would have to accept it."

She leafed through the book. "I'll bet there are still some who still believe that, just like there are some people who still think Euclidian geometry must necessarily be true because it can be 'proved' mathematically."

Mike nodded. "All Bishop Costin did--all he was _trying_ to do--was to prove that the axioms of the Christian faith are logically self-consistent. That's all he ever claimed to have done, and he did a brilliant job of it."

"But--how do you know this is what Snookums was given?"

"Look at the pages. Snookums' waldo fingers wrinkled the pages that way. Those aren't the marks of human fingers. Only two of Mellon's other books were wrinkled that way."

She jerked her head up from the book, startled. "_What?_ This is Lew Mellon's book?"

"That's right. So are the other two. A Bible and a theological dictionary. They're wrinkled the same way."

Her eyes were wide, bright sapphires. "But _why_? Why would he do such a thing, for goodness' sake?"

"I don't know why it was done," Mike said slowly, "but I doubt if it was for goodness' sake. We haven't gotten to the bottom of this hanky-panky yet, I don't think.

"Leda, if I'm right--if this _is_ what has been causing Snookums' odd behavior--can you cure him?"

She looked at the book again and nodded. "I think so. But it will take a lot of work. I'll have to talk to Fitz about it. We'll have to keep this book--and the other two."

Mike shook his head. "No can do. Can you photocopy them?"

"Certainly. But it'll take--oh, two or three hours per book."

"Then you'd better get busy. We're landing in the morning."

She nodded. "I know. Captain Quill has already told us."

"Fine, then." He stood up. "What will you do? Simply tell Snookums to forget all this stuff?"

"Good Heavens no! It's too thoroughly integrated with every other bit of data he has! You might be able to take one single bit of data out that way, but to jerk out a whole body of knowledge like this would completely randomize his circuits. You can pull out a tooth by yanking with a pair of forceps, but if you try to take out a man's appendix that way, you'll lose a patient."

"I catch," Mike said with a grin. "Okay. I'll get the other two books and you can get to work copying them. Take care."

"Thanks, Mike."

As he walked down the companionway, he cursed himself for being a fool. If he'd let things go on the way they were, Leda might have weaned herself away from Snookums. Now she was interested again. But there could have been no other way, of course.

19

The interstellar ship _Brainchild_ orbited around her destination, waiting during the final checkup before she landed on the planet below.

It was not a nice planet. As far as its size went, it could be classified as "Earth type," but size was almost the only resemblance to Earth. It orbited in space some five hundred and fifty million miles from its Sol-like parent--a little farther away from the primary than Jupiter is from Sol itself. It was cold there--terribly cold. At high noon on the equator, the temperature reached a sweltering 180 deg. absolute; it became somewhat chillier toward the poles.

H_{2}O was, anywhere on the planet, a whitish, crystalline mineral suitable for building material. The atmosphere was similar to that of Jupiter, although the proportions of methane, ammonia, and hydrogen were different because of the lower gravitational potential of the planet. It had managed to retain a great deal more hydrogen in its atmosphere than Earth had because of the fact that the average thermal velocity of the molecules was much lower. Since oxygen-releasing life had never developed on the frigid surface of the planet, there was no oxygen in the atmosphere. It was all tied up in combination with the hydrogen of the ice and the surface rocks of the planet.

The Space Service ship that had discovered the planet, fifteen years before, had given it the name Eisberg, thus commemorating the name of a spaceman second class who happened to have the luck to be (a) named Robert Eisberg, (b) a member of the crew of the ship to discover the planet, and (c) under the command of a fun-loving captain.

Eisberg had been picked as the planet to transfer the potentially dangerous Snookums to for two reasons. In the first place, if Snookums actually did solve the problem of the total-annihilation bomb, the worst he could do was destroy a planet that wasn't much good, anyway. And, in the second place, the same energy requirements applied on Eisberg as did on Chilblains Base. It was easier to cool the helium bath of the brain if it only had to be lowered 175 degrees or so.

It was a great place for cold-work labs, but not worth anything for colonization.

* * * * *

Chief Powerman's Mate Multhaus looked gloomily at the figures on the landing sheet.

Mike the Angel watched the expression on the chief's face and said: "What's the matter, Multhaus? No like?"

Multhaus grimaced. "Well, sir, I don't like it, no. But I can't say I _dis_like it, either."

He stared at the landing sheet, pursing his lips. He looked as though he were valiantly restraining himself from asking questions about the other night's escapade--which he was.

He said: "I just don't like to land without jets, sir; that's all."

"Hell, neither do I," admitted Mike. "But we're not going to get down any other way. We managed to take off without jets; we'll manage to land without them."

"Yessir," said Multhaus, "but we took off _with_ the grain of Earth's magnetic field. We're landing _across_ the grain."

"Sure," said Mike. "So what? If we overlook the motors, that's okay. We may never be able to get off the planet with this ship again, but we aren't supposed to anyway.

"Come on, Multhaus, don't worry about it. I know you hate to burn up a ship, but this one is supposed to be expendable. You may never have another chance like this."

Multhaus tried to keep from grinning, but he couldn't. "Awright, Commander. You have appealed to my baser instincts. My subconscious desire to wreck a spaceship has been brought to the surface. I can't resist it. Am I nutty, maybe?"

"Not now, you're not," Mike said, grinning back.

"We'll have a bitch of a job getting through the plasmasphere, though," said the chief. "That fraction of a second will--"

"It'll jolt us," Mike agreed, interrupting. "But it won't wreck us. Let's get going."

"Aye, sir," said Multhaus.

* * * * *

The seas of Eisberg were liquid methane containing dissolved ammonia. Near the equator, they were liquid; farther north, the seas became slushy with crystallized ammonia.

The site picked for the new labs of the Computer Corporation of Earth was in the northern hemisphere, at 40 deg. north latitude, about the same distance from the equator as New York or Madrid, Spain, would be on Earth. The _Brainchild_ would be dropping through Eisberg's magnetic field at an angle, but it wouldn't be the ninety-degree angle of the equator. It would have been nice if the base could have been built at one of the poles, but that would have put the labs in an uncomfortable position, since there was no solid land at either pole.

Mike the Angel didn't like the idea of having to land on Eisberg without jets any more than Multhaus did, but he was almost certain that the ship would take the strain.

He took the companionway up to the Control Bridge, went in, and handed the landing sheet to Black Bart. The captain scowled at it, shrugged, and put it on his desk.

"Will we make it, sir?" Mike said. "Any word from the _Fireball_?"

Black Bart nodded. "She's orbiting outside the atmosphere. Captain Wurster will send down a ship to pick us up as soon as we've finished our business here."

The _Fireball_, being much faster than the clumsy _Brainchild_, had left Earth later than the slower ship, and had arrived earlier.

"_Now hear this! Now hear this! Third Warning! Landing orbit begins in one minute! Landing begins in one minute!_"

Sixty seconds later the _Brainchild_ began her long, logarithmic drop toward the surface of Eisberg.

Landing a ship on her jets isn't an easy job, but at least an ion rocket is built for the job. Maybe someday the Translation drive will be modified for planetary landings, but so far such a landing has been, as someone put it, "50 per cent raw energy and 50 per cent prayer." The landing was worse than the take-off, a truism which has held since the first glider took off from the surface of Earth in the nineteenth century. What goes up doesn't necessarily have to come down, but when it does, the job is a lot rougher than getting up was.

The plasmasphere of Eisberg differed from that of Earth in two ways. First, the ionizing source of radiation--the primary star--was farther away from Eisberg than Sol was from Earth, which tended to reduce the total ionization. Second, the upper atmosphere of Eisberg was pretty much pure hydrogen, which is somewhat easier to ionize than oxygen or nitrogen. And, since there was no ozonosphere to block out the UV radiation from the primary, the thickness of the ionosphere beneath the plasmasphere was greater.

Not until the _Brainchild_ hit the bare fringes of the upper atmosphere did she act any differently than she had in space.

But when she hit the outer fringes of the ionosphere--that upper layer of rarified protons, the rapidly moving current of high velocity ions known as the plasmasphere--she bucked like a kicked horse. From deep within her vitals, the throb began, a strumming, thrumming sound with a somewhat higher note imposed upon it, making a sound like that of a bass viol being plucked rapidly on its lowest string.

It was not the intensity of the ionosphere that cracked the drive of the _Brainchild_; it was the duration. The layer of ionization was too thick; the ship couldn't make it through the layer fast enough, in spite of her high velocity.

A man can hold a red-hot bit of steel in his hand for a fraction of a second without even feeling it. But if he has to hold a hot baked potato for thirty seconds, he's likely to get a bad burn.

So it was with the _Brainchild_. The passage through Earth's ionosphere during take-off had been measured in fractions of a second. The _Brainchild_ had reacted, but the exposure to the field had been too short to hurt her.

The ionosphere of Eisberg was much deeper and, although the intensity was less, the duration was much longer.

The drumming increased as she fell, a low-frequency, high-energy sine wave that shook the ship more violently than had the out-of-phase beat that had pummeled the ship shortly after her take-off.

Dr. Morris Fitzhugh, the roboticist, screamed imprecations into the intercom, but Captain Sir Henry Quill cut him off before anyone took notice and let the scientist rave into a dead pickup.

"How's she coming?"

The voice came over the intercom to the Power Section, and Mike the Angel knew that the question was meant for him.

"She'll make it, Captain," he said. "She'll make it. I designed this thing for a 500 per cent overload. She'll make it."

"Good," said Black Bart, snapping off the intercom.

Mike exhaled gustily. His eyes were still on the needles that kept creeping higher and higher along the calibrated periphery of the meters. Many of them had long since passed the red lines that marked the allowable overload point. Mike the Angel knew that those points had been set low, but he also knew that they were approaching the real overload point.

He took another deep breath and held it.

* * * * *

Point for point, the continent of Antarctica, Earth, is one of the most deadly areas ever found on a planet that is supposedly non-inimical to man. Earth is a nice, comfortable planet, most of the time, but Antarctica just doesn't cater to Man at all.

Still, it just happens to be the _worst_ spot on the _best_ planet in the known Galaxy.

Eisberg is different. At its best, it has the continent of Antarctica beat four thousand ways from a week ago last Candlemas. At its worst, it is sudden death; at its best, it is somewhat less than sudden.

Not that Eisberg is a really _mean_ planet; Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, or Neptune can kill a man faster and with less pain. No, Eisberg isn't mean--it's torturous. A man without clothes, placed suddenly on the surface of Eisberg--_anywhere_ on the surface--would die. But the trouble is that he'd live long enough for it to hurt.

Man can survive, all right, but it takes equipment and intelligence to do it.

When the interstellar ship _Brainchild_ blew a tube--just one tube--of the external field that fought the ship's mass against the space-strain of the planet's gravitational field, the ship went off orbit. The tube blew when she was some ninety miles above the surface. She dropped too fast, jerked up, dropped again.

When the engines compensated for the lost tube, the descent was more leisurely, and the ship settled gently--well, not exactly _gently_--on the surface of Eisberg.

Captain Quill's voice came over the intercom.

"We are nearly a hundred miles from the base, Mister Gabriel. Any excuse?"

"No excuse, sir," said Mike the Angel.

20

If you ignite a jet of oxygen-nitrogen in an atmosphere of hydrogen-methane, you get a flame that doesn't differ much from the flame from a hydrogen-methane jet in an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere. A flame doesn't particularly care which way the electrons jump, just so long as they jump.

All of which was due to give Mike the Angel more headaches than he already had, which was 100 per cent too many.

Three days after the _Brainchild_ landed, the scout group arrived from the base that had been built on Eisberg to take care of Snookums. The leader, a heavy-set engineer named Treadmore, who had unkempt brownish hair and a sad look in his eyes, informed Captain Quill that there was a great deal of work to be done. And his countenance became even sadder.

Mike, who had, perforce, been called in to take part in the conference, listened in silence while the engineer talked.

The officers' wardroom, of which Mike the Angel was becoming heartily sick, seemed like a tomb which echoed and re-echoed the lugubrious voice of Engineer Treadmore.

"We were warned, of course," he said, in a normally dismal tone, "that it would be extremely difficult to set down the ship which carried Snookums, and that we could expect the final base to be anywhere from ten to thirty miles from the original, temporary base." He looked round at everyone, giving the impression of a collie which had just been kicked by Albert Payson Terhune.

"We understand, naturally, that you could not help landing so far from our original base," he said, giving them absolution with faint damns, "but it will entail a great deal of extra labor. A hundred and nine miles is a great distance to carry equipment, and, actually, the distance is a great deal more, considering the configuration of the terrain. The...."

The upshot of the whole thing was that only part of the crew could possibly be spared to go home on the _Fireball_, which was orbiting high above the atmosphere. And, since there was no point in sending a small load home at extra expense when the _Fireball_ could wait for the others, it meant that nobody could go home at all for four more weeks. The extra help was needed to get the new base established.

It was obviously impossible to try to move the _Brainchild_ a hundred miles. With nothing to power her but the Translation drive, she was as helpless as a submarine on the Sahara. Especially now that her drive was shot.

The Eisberg base had to be built around Snookums, who was, after all, the only reason for the base's existence. And, too, the power plant of the _Brainchild_ had been destined to be the source of power for the permanent base.

It wasn't too bad, really. A little extra time, but not much.

The advance base, commanded by Treadmore, was fairly well equipped. For transportation, they had one jet-powered aircraft, a couple of 'copters, and fifteen ground-crawlers with fat tires, plus all kinds of powered construction machinery. All of them were fueled with liquid HNO_{3}, which makes a pretty good fuel in an atmosphere that is predominantly methane. Like the gasoline-air engines of a century before, they were spark-started reciprocating engines, except for the turbine-powered aircraft.

The only trouble with the whole project was that the materials had to be toted across a hundred miles of exceedingly hostile territory.

Treadmore, looking like a tortured bloodhound, said: "But we'll make it, won't we?"

Everyone nodded dismally.

* * * * *

Mike the Angel had a job he emphatically didn't like. He was supposed to convert the power plant of the _Brainchild_ from a spaceship driver into a stationary generator. The conversion job itself wasn't tedious; in principle, it was similar to taking the engine out of an automobile and converting it to a power plant for an electric generator. In fact, it was somewhat simpler, in theory, since the engines of the _Brainchild_ were already equipped for heavy drainage to run the electrical systems aboard ship, and to power and refrigerate Snookums' gigantic brain, which was no mean task in itself.

But Michael Raphael Gabriel, head of one of the foremost--if not _the_ foremost--power design corporations in the known Galaxy, did not like degrading something. To convert the _Brainchild's_ plant from a spaceship drive to an electric power plant seemed to him to be on the same order as using a turboelectric generator to power a flashlight. A waste.

To make things worse, the small percentage of hydrogen in the atmosphere got sneaky sometimes. It could insinuate itself into places where neither the methane nor the ammonia could get. Someone once called hydrogen the "cockroach element," since, like that antediluvian insect, the molecules of H_{2} can insidiously infiltrate themselves into places where they are not only unwelcome, but shouldn't even be able to go. At red heat, the little molecules can squeeze themselves through the crystalline interstices of quartz and steel.

Granted, the temperature of Eisberg is a long way from red hot, but normal sealing still won't keep out hydrogen. Add to that the fact that hydrogen and methane are both colorless, odorless, and tasteless, and you have the beginnings of an explosive situation.

The only reason that no one died is because the Space Service is what it is.

Unlike the land, sea, and air forces of Earth, the Space Service does not have a long history of fighting other human beings. There has never been a space war, and, the way things stand, there is no likelihood of one in the foreseeable future.

But the Space Service _does_ fight, in its own way. It fights the airlessness of space and the unfriendly atmospheres of exotic planets, using machines, intelligence, knowledge, and human courage as its weapons. Some battles have been lost; others have been won. And the war is still going on. It is an unending war, one which has no victory in sight.

It is, as far as we can tell, the only war in human history in which Mankind is fully justified as the invading aggressor.

It is not a defensive war; neither space nor other planets have attacked Man. Man has invaded space "simply because it is there." It is war of a different sort, true, but it is nonetheless a war.

The Space Service was used to the kind of battle it waged on Eisberg. It was prepared to lose men, but even more prepared to save them.

21

Mike the Angel stepped into the cargo air lock of the _Brainchild_, stood morosely in the center of the cubicle, and watched the outer door close. Eight other men, clad, like himself, in regulation Space Service spacesuits, also looked wearily at the closing door.

Chief Multhaus, one of the eight, turned his head to look at Mike the Angel. "I wish that thing would close as fast as my eyes are going to in about fifteen minutes, Commander." His voice rumbled deeply in Mike's earphones.

"Yeah," said Mike, too tired to make decent conversation.

Eight hours--all of them spent tearing down the spaceship and making it a part of the new base--had not been exactly exhilarating to any of them.

The door closed, and the pumps began to work. The men were wearing Space Service Suit Three. For every environment, for every conceivable emergency, a suit had been built--if, of course, a suit _could_ be built for it. Nobody had yet built a suit for walking about in the middle of a sun, but, then, nobody had ever volunteered to try anything like that.

They were all called "spacesuits" because most of them could be worn in the vacuum of space, but most of them weren't designed for that type of work. Suit One--a light, easily manipulated, almost skin-tight covering, was the real spacesuit. It was perfect for work in interstellar space, where there was a microscopic amount of radiation incident to the suit, no air, and almost nil gravity. For exterior repairs on the outside of a ship in free fall a long way from any star, Spacesuit One was the proper garb.

But, a suit that worked fine in space didn't necessarily work on other planets, unless it worked fine on the planet it was used on.

A Moon Suit isn't a Mars Suit isn't a Venus Suit isn't a Triton Suit isn't a....

Carry it on from there.

Number Three was insulated against a frigid but relatively non-corrosive atmosphere. When the pumps in the air lock began pulling out the methane-laden atmosphere, they began to bulge slightly, but not excessively. Then nitrogen, extracted from the ammonia snow that was so plentiful, filled the room, diluting the remaining inflammable gases to a harmless concentration.

Then that mixture was pumped out, to be replaced by a mixture of approximately 20 per cent oxygen and 80 per cent nitrogen--common, or garden-variety, air.

Mike the Angel cracked his helmet and sniffed. "_Guk_," he said. "If I ever faint and someone gives me smelling salts, I'll flay him alive with a coarse rasp."

"Yessir," said Chief Multhaus, as he began to shuck his suit. "But if I had my druthers, I'd druther you'd figure out some way to get all the ammonia out of the joints of this suit."

The other men, sniffing and coughing, agreed in attitude if not in voice.

It wasn't really as bad as they pretended; indeed, the odor of ammonia was hardly noticeable. But it made a good griping point.

The inner door opened at last, and the men straggled through.

"G'night, Chief," said Mike the Angel.

"Night, sir," said Multhaus. "See you in the morning."

"Yeah. Night." Mike trudged toward the companionway that led toward the wardroom. If Keku or Jeffers happened to be there, he'd have a quick round of _Uma ni to_. Jeffers called the game "double solitaire for three people," and Keku said it meant "horses' two heads," but Mike had simply found it as a new game to play before bedtime.

He looked forward to it.

But he had something else to do first.

Instead of hanging up his suit in the locker provided, he had bunched it under his arm--except for the helmet--and now he headed toward maintenance.

He met Ensign Vaneski just coming out, and gave him a broad smile. "Mister Vaneski, I got troubles."

Vaneski smiled back worriedly. "Yes, sir. I guess we all do. What is it, sir?"

Mike gestured at the bundle under his arm. "I abraded the sleeve of my suit while I was working today. I wish you'd take a look at it. I'm afraid it'll need a patch."

For a moment, Vaneski looked as though he'd suddenly developed a headache.

"I know you're supposed to be off duty now," Mike said soothingly, "but I don't want to get myself killed wearing a leaky suit tomorrow. I'll help you work on it if--"

Vaneski grinned quickly. "Oh no, sir. That'll be all right. I'll give it a test, anyway, to check leaks. If it needs repair, it shouldn't take too long. Bring it in, and we'll take a look at it."

They went back into the Maintenance Section, and Vaneski spread the suit out on the worktable. There was an obvious rough spot on the right sleeve. "Looks bad," said Vaneski. "I'll run a test right away."

"Okay," said Mike. "I'll leave it to you. Can I pick it up in the morning?"

"I think so. If it needs a patch, we'll have to test the patch, of course, but we should be able to finish it pretty quickly." He shrugged. "If we can't, sir, you'll just have to wait. Unless you want us to start altering a suit to your measurements."

"Which would take longer?"

"Altering a suit."

"Okay. Just patch this one, then. What can I do?"

"I'll get it out as fast as possible, sir," said Vaneski with a smile.

"Fine. I'll see you later, then." Mike, like Cleopatra, was not prone to argue. He left maintenance and headed toward the wardroom for a game of _Uma ni to_. But when he met Leda Crannon going up the stairway, all thoughts of card games flitted from his mind with the careless nonchalance of a summer butterfly.

"Hullo," he said, pulling himself up a little straighter. He was tired, but not _that_ tired.

Her smile brushed the cobwebs from his mind. But a second look told him that there was worry behind the smile.

"Hi, Mike," she said softly. "You look beat."

"I am," admitted Mike. "To a frazzle. Have I told you that I love you?"

"Once, I think. Maybe twice." Her eyes seemed to light up somewhere from far back in her head. "But enough of this mad passion," she said. "I want an invitation to have a drink--a stiff one."

"I'll steal Jeffers' bottle," Mike offered. "What's the trouble?"

Her smile faded, and her eyes became grave. "I'm scared, Mike; I want to talk to you."

"Come along, then," Mike said.

* * * * *

Mike the Angel poured two healthy slugs of Pete Jeffers' brandy into a pair of glasses, added ice and water, and handed one to Leda Crannon with a flourish. And all the time, he kept up a steady line of gentle patter.

"It may interest you to know," he said chattily, "that the learned Mister Treadmore has been furnishing me with the most fascinating information." He lifted up his own glass and looked into its amber depths.

They were in his stateroom, and this time the door was closed--at her insistence. She had explained that she didn't want to be overheard, even by passing crew members.

He swizzled the ice around in his glass, still holding it up to the light. "Indeed," he rambled on, "Treadmore babbled for Heaven knows how long on the relative occurrence of parahydrogen and orthohydrogen on Eisberg." He took his eyes from the glass and looked down at the girl who was seated demurely on the edge of his bunk. Her smile was encouraging.

"He said--and I quote"--Mike's voice assumed a gloomy, but stilted tone--"normal hydrogen gas consists of diatomic molecules. The nuclear, or proton, spin of these atoms--ah--that is, of the two atoms that compose the molecule--may be oriented in the same direction or in opposite directions."

He held a finger in the air as if to make a deep philosophical point. "If," he said pontifically, "they are oriented in the same direction, we refer to the substance as _orthohydrogen_. If they are oriented in opposite directions, it is _parahydrogen_. The _ortho_ molecules rotate with _odd_ rotational quantum numbers, while the _para_ molecules rotate with _even_ quantum numbers.

"Since conversion does not normally occur between the two states, normal hydrogen may be considered--"

Leda Crannon, snickering, waved her hand in the air. "Please!" she interrupted. "He can't be that bad! You make him sound like a dirge player at a Hindu funeral. What did he tell you? What did you find out?"

"_Hah!_" said Mike. "What did I find out?" His hand moved in an airy circle as he inscribed a flowing cipher with a graceful Delsarte wave. "Nothing. In the first place, I already knew it, and in the second, it wasn't practical information. There's a slight difference in diffusion between the two forms, but it's nothing to rave about." His expression became suddenly serious. "I hope your information is a bit more revealing."