“All right,” said Crandall, “what if you’re reinstated?”
“Reinstate me,” said Paley, “and I will block you every step of the way.”
Crandall flipped on the intercom.
“Sir?”
“Start canvassing Special Services for a volunteer executioner,” said Crandall. “Also have Special Services form a grave-digger detachment.”
“Yes, sir.”
Crandall switched off the intercom.
Paley stiffened and blinked. “You can’t bluff me.”
Crandall said, “You’re a good judge of human nature, aren’t you, Paley? You know the operators in those suits are going to come up right on schedule. You know the cyberneticists in your own organization are wrong. You know I’m wrong. You know the men who framed Sections 67 and 68 are wrong. Everyone’s wrong but you. You’ve got ability and we badly need it, but why use it? You know you’re right without bothering. You let mannerisms, trivialities, and special cases irritate you so much you won’t see what’s underneath as the principle of the thing. You’ve got all the answers beforehand. All right, so be it. You won’t believe you’re going to die till the trapdoor gives way under you.” Crandall flipped on the intercom. “Send in the guards.”
The door opened. The guards marched in, their boots striking the floor in unison. They halted with a united click of their heels. The bayonets at their sides clinked and rattled.
Paley was standing perfectly still with a glassy look on his face.
Crandall glanced at the sergeant. “Take him out.”
They marched Paley out of the room, and the tramp of feet moved off in the corridor.
Crandall reached for a paper on his desk.
There was a commotion outside.
Crandall got up and opened the door. Paley was struggling with his guards. He saw Crandall.
“All right,” he cried. “I’ll do it—I’ll do it.”
On Paley’s promise to wholeheartedly co-operate, Crandall reinstated him. But before Paley returned to Planetary Development H.Q., Crandall let him sit in at the first run of a nicely-detailed film titled:
HALF-BILLION DOLLAR
PDA MACHINE
GOES WILD
OFF CYGNES VI
Paley went away greenish and shaken.
After Paley’s return, Planetary Development began to show increased activity. Permission was requested, and granted, for extensive tests with some of the twenty-four reserve suits. Friction between Paley’s men and Crandall’s fell away toward normal, and all indications showed a steady rise in P.D.A. morale.
Crandall put in all the thought on the underlying problem that he could. As a result, he sent a series of code messages to G.H.Q., Space Forces, Earth. And he carried out a number of preparations on his own.
A week before the delGrange suits and operators were supposed to come up, Paley came to see him. Paley looked as if he had spent the last few nights staring at the ceiling.
“Matt,” said Paley, “This is hopeless. On the basis of the tests I’ve made, those operators aren’t going to come out.”
“You said delGrange tested the suits personally, beforehand?”
“That’s exactly the trouble. I didn’t see it before, but now it’s obvious. DelGrange knew so much about those suits, inside and out, that his reactions just weren’t the same as the operators’ reactions will be. DelGrange knew, mentally. The operator senses, physically. If delGrange had a blackness and numbness at getting out of the suit, his mind promptly interpreted it as a mere loss of induced sensation from the exterior receptors of the suit. If there was the remote beginning of a sort of terror, his mind could dismiss it as irrational before he was really aware of it. That isn’t true of the operator. It isn’t true after five hours in the suit. I’ve tried it myself. There’s a blackness that comes over you—a numbness and a dizziness. It builds up. It’s like a kind of death to come out of one of those suits. You get terrified. You struggle to get back. That’s how it hit me after five hours. How’s it going to hit the operators after thirty days?”
Crandall nodded thoughtfully. “Can you service the suits without the operators coming out?”
“No, you have to get into the operator’s compartment.”
“Through the air lock?”
“That’s the only way I know.”
“Is there any way to force an entrance?”
“Maybe, if all the limbs and devices were smashed. But the suit feels pain. That is, the operator feels damage to the suit as pain. If we try to force an entrance, we’ll be in about the same spot as the man who goes into the bear cage at the zoo with a pair of pliers and no anesthetic. Maybe the bear really wants that bad tooth out, but—”
“Yeah,” said Crandall. “Wait till the pain hits him. Well—All right, we’ve got two problems. First, they have to come up here. Is that right?”
“Yes,” said Paley. “If they don’t do that, we can’t get them out. The pressure on VI would kill them. To say nothing of what we’d have to go through even to get down there.”
“All right,” said Crandall, “first they have to come up. Then, second, we have to get them out of the suits. And from what we’ve seen, they won’t willingly come out of the suits. If we try to force them, they’ll fight. If they fight, the only way to stop them will be to smash their limbs. And then the suits will be ruined.”
” ‘Yes,” said Paley, “and the operators in a state of shock. Two-hundred and seventy-six of them.” For an instant, Paley’s eyes shut and his face twisted. He sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Well,” he said, “we’ve got alternate operators coming. That isn’t the worst of it. But it’s going to take time to repair or replace those suits. VI was scheduled for heavy ore production. With the suits out of action, it will unhinge the whole schedule. Then there’ll be all kinds of repercussions once the schedule goes. And that, still, isn’t the worst that might happen. The operators might come up and—”
“I know,” said Crandall.
Paley looked at him dully. “All because the suits were too perfect.”
Crandall opened a desk drawer and pulled out a sheaf of papers. “I think there’s one way out of this hole,” he said “if we can act fast and co-operate with each other.”
Paley shuddered and said, “I think we can co-operate with each other.”
Crandall put the sheaf of papers face up on the desk and began to talk. Paley listened earnestly.
* * *
On the day the delGrange suits were due to come up, Crandall and Paley stood near each other on the cruiser Vengeance. Each man had his own viewscreen, his own communications screen, and his own battery of microphones. A glance at the wide-angled viewscreen showed Crandall the dark bulk of the Monitor, and a cloud of small scout spacers far overhead. A number of huge Planetary Development nurse ships waited in the foreground, while, far to one side, the documentary ship moved from place to place, trying for a better view.
Crandall glanced at his watch, and Paley said, “I don’t think they’re coming up.”
The dock-you ship flashed its lights. Crandall leaned forward. On the screen, a speck appeared, swooping up from Cygnes VI. Other specks came rushing up behind it. The specks grew rapidly, and Paley leaned toward a microphone. In a relieved voice, he said:
“Welcome back, men. Leave your ore-carriers up here to be reloaded. Proceed immediately to the nurse ships for deactivation, servicing, and replacement.”
No answer came from the receiver.
Paley scowled. “Welcome back, men—” He repeated his instructions.
The receiver remained silent. On the screen, the specks grew rapidly larger and began to take form. Paley signaled a technician to check the communicator.
Paley repeated, “Welcome back, men. Leave your ore-carriers up here to be reloaded. Proceed immediately to the nurse-ships for deactivation, servicing, and replacement—”
There was still no answer.
Paley glared at the technician, gave the receiver a whack on the side, and again repeated, “Welcome back—”
A flat toneless voice replied, “All humans out of the nurse-ships.”
Paley blinked. “Leave your ore carrier—”
“No ore.”
“Men—”
“We’re going into the nurse-ships two at a time. Any humans in the nurse-ships get killed.”
“Listen to me,” said Paley. “Your suits have to be serviced. Otherwise you won’t last another thirty days.”
“We’ll service ourselves.”
“How?”
“How is none of your business. We’re doing it. Now get out of the way or get hurt.”
“Listen,” said Paley. “I understand. It’s not an easy matter to leave those suits. But the ore has to be brought up, and then you have to leave the suits. Nothing bad is going to happen to you. It just has to be done. You signed for this job. You’ve been trained for it. Now you have to carry it out.”
“No,” said the voice, in a faintly pitying tone, “we didn’t sign for this job. We didn’t know what it was going to be like. We weren’t told till it was too late to do anything about it. We trained in Model C’s. They aren’t anything like these suits, so we weren’t trained for the job, either. Now you are going to tell us what to do?”