An Earth calendar hung beside the chart; near it was a clock showing Earth Greenwich time. Posted near these was a figure, changed each time the clock read twenty-four hundred, the number of days till M-day—by their best estimate, now only thirty-nine.
Don was enjoying a combat soldier’s paradise-hot food sharp on the hour, well cooked and plenty of it, all the sack time he cared to soak up, clean clothes, clean skin, no duties and no hazards. The only trouble was that he soon grew to hate it.
The intense activity around him shamed him into wanting to help—and try to help he did—until he found out that he was being given make-work to shut him up. Actually there was nothing he could do to help; the sweating specialists, trying their level best to haywire improbable circuits into working, had no time to waste on an untrained assistant. He gave up and went back to loafing, found that he could sleep all right in the afternoons but that the practice kept him awake at night.
He wondered why he could not enjoy so pleasant a leave. It was not that—he was worried about his parents.
Yes, he was! Though they had grown dim in his memory his conscience was biting him that he was doing nothing helpful for them. That was why he wanted to get out, away from here where he could do no good, back to his outfit, back to his trade-back to where there was nothing to worry about between scrambles—and plenty to worry about then. With the blackness around you and the sound of your mate’s breathing on your right and the same for the man on your left-the slow move forward, trying to feel out what dirty tricks the Greenie techs had thought of this time to guard their sleep… the quick strike—and the pounding drive back to the boat with nothing to guide you through the dark but the supersonics in your head bones
He wanted to go back.
He went to see Phipps about it, sought him out in his office. “You, eh? Have a cigarette.”
“No, thanks.”
“Real tobacco—none of your ‘crazy weed.'”
“No, thanks, I don’t use ’em.”
“Well, maybe you’ve got something. The way my mouth tastes these mornings—” Phipps lit up himself, sat back and waited.
Don said, “Look—you’re the boss around here.”
Phipps exhaled, then said carefully, “Let’s say I’m the coordinator. I certainly don’t try to boss the technical work.”
Don brushed it aside. “You’re the boss for my purposes. See here, Mr. Phipps, I feel useless around here. Can you arrange to get me back to my outfit?”
Phipps carefully made a smoke ring. “I’m sorry you feel that way. I could give you work to do. You could be an executive assistant to me.”
Don shook his head. “I’ve had enough of ‘pick up sticks and lay them straight. I want real work-my own work. I’m a soldier and there’s a war going on—that’s where I belong. Now when can I get transportation?”
“You can’t.”
“Huh?”
“Mr. Harvey, I can’t let you go; you know too much. If you had turned over the ring without asking questions, you could have gone back to your outfit the next hour—but you had to know, you had to know everything. Now we don’t dare risk your capture. You know the Greenies put every prisoner through full interrogation; we can’t dare risk that—not yet.”
“But—Dog take it, sir, I’ll never be captured! I made up my mind about that a long time ago.”
Phipps shrugged. “If you get yourself killed, that’s all right. But we can’t be sure of that, no matter how resolute you are. We can’t risk it; there’s too much at stake.”
“You can’t hold me here! You have no authority over me!”
“No. But you can’t leave.”
Don opened his mouth, closed it, and walked out.
He woke up the next morning determined to do something about it. But Dr. Conrad was up before he was and stopped to make a suggestion before he left. “Don?”
“Yeah, Rog?”
“If you can tear yourself out of that sack, you might come around to the power lab this morning. There will be something worth looking at—I think.”