Dark Star

1

TALBY WAS COUNTING stars again.

He didn’t remember exactly when he’d lost count. Probably they were all noted down somewhere neat and official in the astronomer’s records—or had he disconnected the tracker? It was hard to recall. There seemed to be something about uncoupling all the scientific instruments a while back, uncoupling them because it seemed blasphemous for such splendor to be reduced to a mere listing in a book.

Anyhow, the number didn’t matter, did it? There were plenty of stars to go around, and if the muddlers back on Earth wanted records of them, let them come out here for themselves and do their own tracking. Talby didn’t see how anyone could appreciate a star by using mere mathematical charts.

But he kept counting. It was easy. It was natural. It made a man free—one star, two stars, and baby makes three.

With only the naked eye, most navigators could distinguish only a few degrees, magnitude, but Talby had had more practice than most navigators. And he lived his work.

To get really good at it, you had to spend long stretches in practice, sharpening your perception and senses until eyes and mind operated instinctively. Ho could a man take the measure of a sun if he had to stop and think about it? Talby smiled.

He leaned back in the pneumatic astronomer’s lounge, a pale bean in a pod of smooth maroon, and stared up through the dome. He’d buffed down the inside and outside so many times that the dome was almost impossible to see. Every imperfection had been scrubbed out of it, till now there seemed to be no dome. Only Talby and his seat, floating in a hole on the top of the ship.

Now and then the soft touch of a finger initiated a muted hum of precision machinery. The chair would, swivel 90, 180, 270 degrees, and another section of the cosmos would come under Talby-scrutiny.

Five, six, pick up sticks.

Talby could distinguish almost every order of magnitude now. Of course, when the stars were your best friends, you didn’t have to work very hard to find out about them. You didn’t even have to ask. They told you and were happy to, confessed all their secrets without prodding, without coercion, without being violated by clumsy, poking, grabby machines.

That was the trouble with man’s first extended explorations of deep space. He’d gone at it as he had gone at everything else throughout his history—hacking and clubbing and chopping, an ax in one hand and a scythe in the other. Never a moment to listen, to look, to try to see and understand. It was sad.

And it was so easy not to make the same old mistakes over again! If only they would try it his way, if only he could make them see. Talby shook his head, though there were none but the stars to see it. Useless. They wouldn’t listen. They never listened.

Better to do it this way. At least he offended no one. At least one man had succeeded in blending with the universe without inflicting himself on it. And the universe repaid him in kind.

The others looked on his special relationship rather differently, of course. Poor middling souls—his greatest regret was that he couldn’t share his pleasure with them.

Of them all, Doolittle came the closest to understanding, and even he insisted that the astronomer spent too much time up here in the dome, too much time alone, too much time staring into naked, empty space.

Empty space—poor, sad Lieutenant Doolittle! It was only empty inside the ship. They’d never understand that, either.

It had been only a few days, a few months, a few years. No doubt one day Doolittle might insist it had been too many centuries. It made no difference to Talby. He had accomplished the neat feat of dividing the universe into three parts: himself, the rest of the cosmos, and his fellow crewmembers. Doolittle, Pinback, Boiler and Commander Powell.

No—no, that didn’t sound right. There was something—oh, yes. Commander Powell had died. It occurred to him, as it sometimes did, that he should be forcing himself to make more of a contribution to ship life, to be more of a friend to the others.

He had trouble relating to them, though. Every day it grew harder. He tried comparing them to his real friends.

Let’s see—Doolittle. Doolittle was an angry red giant, full of passion and fire and anger that blazed uncontrolled at unpredictable, unguarded moments. But he held the ship together, had done so ever since Powell had been eclipsed.

Boiler was a white dwarf, no reflection on his size. He was the largest of them, and the smallest. The most intense and the least demonstrative. The likeliest to collapse or go nova. His name fitted.

And there was Pinback—Pinback, the average, ordinary, down-home G-type lightbulb. Cheerfully pathetic Pinback, always joking, never laughing, barely noticed. And, like a sol-type star, he supported more life than the rest of them put together.

His mind shifted to muse on another G-type star, one he remembered fairly well, with a certain inconsequential world sputtering lazily around it.

He remembered that at one time he had lived on that world, that he probably (though it could not be verified without records) had been born on it.

A finger touched and made a hum—forty-five degrees more of infinity filled his gaze. This old man, he played seven, he played seven’s and’s gone to Heave—

There, in the upper quadrant of the Deeps—that looked like a binary. Of course, at this distance and using only the unaided eye it was quite impossible to tell a true double star from two stars that looked close together but were actually a thousand light-years apart.

Talby smiled slightly again. He knew.

For a moment he considered notifying Doolittle and the others of his discovery. They liked binaries.

No, they wouldn’t be pleased. The rest of the crew was only interested in planets. At least, Boiler and Doolittle were. Pinback was interested in everything without being interested in anything.

But the other two—they liked planets well enough. Habitable ones first of all and then unstable ones that might make the others uninhabitable at some unseen future time. Lately he felt that Doolittle in particular was growing more and more fond of the unstable ones, and that bothered Talby for reasons he couldn’t pin down.

Insignificant, germ-ridden dust specks—planets. Inconsequential motes, fungi on the skin of the galaxy. He tilted the chair more steeply and stared smugly outward.

Let Doolittle and Boiler and Pinback have their moldy little worlds. He, Talby, existed in perfect oneness with the stars themselves. How could he bring himself to notice anything as minute as a mere planet?

Oh, there were other things big enough to interest him. Occasional nebulae—delicate, pretty, but insubstantial. The infrequent aberrations, like black holes, were unaesthetic.

Let Doolittle and the others think what they might about him; he wasn’t troubled. He would stay civil no matter what dark thoughts they voiced. Let them think anything they liked so long as they kept the ship running efficiently for him.

For that was how the head astronomer of the Dark Star had come to think of it. He was no longer a component of the ship—rather, the ship existed to support him. He sighed in perfect contentment

As long as the others left him alone to commune with his friends, the stars, he was happy. The motionless myriad suns were companions enough for him. The suns, and perhaps, someday, the Phoenix.

Nine, ten… begin again.

Sergeant Steel held on to his guts in he stared at the approaching Goering Panzer. The ring of the grenade was clamped bitterly in his sweating teeth. He had one chance for the platoon. Get up and ram that egg down the Panzer’s open hatch before her 88mm. and twin machine guns could spit death among his trapped men. He steeled himself for the leap—

The communicator buzzed for attention. Pinback reluctantly put down the tattered issue of Real War Stories—Action Comics and stared at the switch set in the wall. For a moment he thought the buzzing had stopped. He returned to the busy Sergeant Steel, but the nasty instrument interrupted again.

He was forced to acknowledge.

Doolittle’s voice was mildly peeved. “Pinback, if you can tear yourself away from improving your mind, we could use you forward. We’re getting close.”

“Aw, I’m just getting to the good part, Doolittle.”

“You’ve read every one of those comics at least thirty times, Pinback,” responded the lieutenant tiredly. “Get your ass forward.”

“Oh, all right!” Pinback snapped off the intercom and lovingly marked his place in the magazine.

Darn Doolittle anyhow, he muttered to himself as he ambled forward. So they had another sun to blow, so what? It wouldn’t have hurt to let him finish the book. Sometimes Doolittle really got on his nerves.

As usual, no one said anything to him when he walked into the narrow bridge-control room. Slipping mutely into his seat between Doolittle and Boiler, he made a casual check of the readouts, nodded to himself.

Uh-huh, sure enough. They had lots of time before coming in drop range of the target luminary. Doolittle just wanted to irritate him by bringing him forward early. Well, he wasn’t going to let it show.

Then he noticed the tell-tale flashing idly at the base of his communications grid. It was the deep-space receive. He looked right at Boiler, then left at Doolittle. Their tell-tales were flashing too, yet neither man seemed to notice, or care. No telling how long they’d been flashing.

He activated the grid and the computer voice promptly announced, “Attention, attention. Incoming communication from Earth Base, Mission Control, McMurdo Sound, Antarctica. To Scout Ship Dark Star.”

Dazed, Pinback stole another glance at his companions. Still, no one seemed the least bit interested. Well, they weren’t going to get a rise out of him. So he ignored the computer also, while the message continued to repeat.

One man was a crowd on the narrow bridge. With the three of them it was intolerably close, and highly efficient.

But there were other reasons why the bridge was so small. One was that many sections of the ship, now empty, had once been packed with compressed acres of food, spare parts, and living material—most of which was now gone.

And there had to be lots of room for the bombs. It bothered Pinback that Doolittle and Boiler persisted in calling them bombs. He always tried to get them to refer to them by their proper names—thermostellar triggering devices.

But Doolittle persisted in calling them bombs. The term seemed inadequate to Pinback for such a godlike and overwhelming concatenation of modern technology. Once in a while Boiler would call them something else, usually unmentionable, because the bombs were the main reason they were on this unmentionable mission.

Talby didn’t call them bombs, but then Talby didn’t refer to them at all, Of course, Talby was crazy anyway, so it didn’t much matter. But that bothered Pinback too, beause Talby didn’t look crazy, or sound crazy. The alternative was that Talby was sane and the rest of them were crazy. Pinback found this line of thought unpleasant, and he dropped it.

Now Commander Powell, he’d always called them thermostellar triggering devices, but Commander Powell was—

“Attention, attention. Incoming communication from Earth Base, Mission Control, McMurd—”

The tension was too much for Pinback. Phooey on Boiler.

“Hey, guys,” he said finally, his voice the usual combination of half pleading, half whine. “It’s a message from Earth. All the way from Earth. Isn’t anybody going to acknowledge it?”

Boiler’s reaction was predictable. He just lay back in his chair, punching alternating buttons. The buttons didn’t do anything. Nobody could remember what the buttons used to do. But punching them didn’t affect the ship, so Boiler kept doing it. One on, one off. One on, one off.

Boiler was always punching things lately, not always inanimate things, either. Pinback liked Boiler even though the big sandy-haired gentleman hated the sergeant’s guts. Pinback liked everybody. It was the best thing about him, really.

So he kept trying to make friends with Boiler. When Boiler made it particularly hard on him, Pinback rationalized that it was his contribution to maintenance of the ship’s morale. The task was necessary, then, for the good of the ship as well as for the good of Pinback. Secretly, deep down, what he really wanted to do was see Boiler reduced to his component atoms. And he kept it deep down, because he was afraid of Boiler. He had no question in his mind, no question at all, that Boiler could beat him to a pulp anytime he felt like it.

Pinback returned his attention to Doolittle, tried to put a mite more grit into his voice, and failed miserably. “Lieutenant Doolittle, sir, aren’t we going to accept the message? Sir?”

Doolittle looked back at him with that faintly contemptuous air he seemed to reserve for Pinback alone. “Message? Why bother? They wouldn’t have anything important to say. And they never have anything nice to say. So why bother?

“Besides, we’ve got an unstable world coming up, Pinback. Or have you forgotten already? You could have, you know. You’re particularly good at forgetting things, Pinback.”

There! Now why did he have to go and say a thing like that? Pinback tried to ignore it.

“I know that, sir. I know we’ve got another unstable world to blow. And I’m ready for it, sir, ready as always—but a message from Earth! We haven’t had a message from Earth in, well, in days, sir.”

“Months,” mumbled Boiler.

“Years,” corrected Doolittle.

Pinback was discouraged. He badly wanted to hear that message. But should he acknowledge it by himself? Wasn’t that kind of a bold step?

Why should it be? He outranked everyone on the ship now except Doolittle. That is, he would have outranked everybody on the ship except Doolittle if he were Sergeant Elmer Pinback, Deep Space Exploration Forces. But he wasn’t Sergeant Elmer Pinback—or was he?

If he wasn’t Sergeant Elmer Pinback, then, who was he? What was it Doolittle had said about forgetting? No, no!

He looked down at his uniform and sighed with relief. The name sewn into his jersey definitely said Pinback. And that was the only name he could think of for himself, though there was a tiny door opening in his mind, just a crack, that—

He slammed it shut. He was Sergeant Elmer Pinback, Deep Space Exploration Forces, and that was about enough nonsense!

As it developed, he was spared the need to make a decision, which pleased him greatly. He didn’t like making decisions. He wasn’t very good at it and he never would be very good at it.

Doolittle didn’t like making decisions either, but it seemed to come naturally to him. Oh, the lieutenant didn’t have any flair for it, and he didn’t do it with much conviction—not like Commander Powell, say. But Pinback didn’t care so long as he didn’t have to do it.

Doolittle reached out a hand and lazily flipped the Receive switch.

The main screen over their heads started to clear. Pinback looked up at it anxiously, hopefully. Maybe, maybe it was even a recall order. He chided himself. That was a damn silly thought. There would be no recall order until they had finished their mission.

But it didn’t hurt to hope.

Doolittle’s eyes inclined easily upward, and after a while so did Boiler’s—out of boredom, no doubt. A pause while the computer untangled, realigned, and enhanced the last of the high-beam, extreme-long-range communiqué. Then the screen cleared and an alien appeared in the middle of it.

The alien had a wide pink face with unbearable pale pink skin. The rest of it was clad in a snug-fitting, freshly pressed uniform. It had two blue eyes, a divided nose, a mouth with the normal complement of teeth—now broadened into a wide smile—and was no older then anyone on board the Dark Star. This made it look no less impossibly young, and innocent. It was also clean-shaven and closely cropped on top, which made its face look obscenely naked. The alien was a human being.

The crew of the Dark Star had all been human beings once upon a time. Exemplary human beings. A quintet of the most accomplished young human beings in existence. But they had all changed somewhat since that last, glowing evaluation had been made.

They’d been chosen partly because of their youth. Because of it—for although they might be away from Earth for only five or ten years shiptime, a century or so would pass back on their home world.

It was felt that young men returning still young from such an ordeal would be better able to adapt to whatever new society and civilization they found than would middle-aged men returning old. Also, the younger the man, the more resilient his emotions, the faster his reflexes—and the less he would have to remember and be sad about. Or so the psychometricians had argued.

They were partly right, and partly wrong. The men of the Dark Star did have less to remember than older men would have. But they remembered it that much more strongly.

So they looked into the mirror that was the communications screen and watched while this pale alien organism jabbered meaninglessly at them and they hated it and all that it now represented.

It was harder for Doolittle. Talby had his stars, and Pinback his almost-memories and his comic books, and Boiler his silent anger—but Doolittle had only memories, held stronger than most. So he hated it most of all.

Hated the hot bath the man had clearly enjoyed not too long ago. Hated his pleasant smile and honest good nature. Hated his clean clothes and polished epaulets and fresh air, and most especially he hated the girl the man was probably going to meet that night after they finished preparing this broadcast, hated the smooth thighs and fine soft belly and geometrically luscious…

He hated the computers he could see whirring mindlessly behind the man, and the men who ran those computers, and the computers who ran those men and their wives and their wive’s friends, and the friends of the wive’s friends and the buddies they played golf with on Sunday, and the kids of the buddies they played golf with on Sunday, and the outings they all went on to the beach…

To the beach, the beacon of the world, the olive green light that burned in the back of his pounding skull.

He hated them all—the taxpayers of the world who had heeded the fatuous exhortations of the scientists and politicians to make the habitable worlds of the galaxy safe for human colonization. Make them safe by funding the Dark Star project.

Make them safe by removing any unstable planetary bodies or oddball worlds that coexisted in a system with them. An. eccentricity of orbit, an internal rumble of molten indigestion—that was enough to send the Dark Star homing in on a planet to plant a thermostellar trigger in its lower intestine, set off a chain reaction, and remove from it forever a chance to interfere with future human settlements. Most of all Doolittle hated them because they had been the ones ultimately responsible for putting him out here. And because they wouldn’t let him return home until this run was finished.

Not that the crew of the Dark Star was untrustworthy, or not among the most stable of the race, no. But there was always the outside chance—just a hint, the psychometricians said—that even the best men could go bonkers on a trip of this length. So, to be on the safe side the Dark Star itself had built into its structure explosive material that could he rendered inert only when the last thermostellar device had been successfully dropped, as recorded by the computer. Then they would he permitted to return home to full honors and acclaim and due process.

But they couldn’t chance letting one of those planet-busters back into Old Sol’s backyard.

Still, they were almost finished. What had begun as a leisurely journey had turned into a frenzied search for yet another unstable world, and another. Eighteen unstable planets destroyed in three years, shiptime. Three years—twenty years back on Earth.

They were far ahead of the best estimates, but certain things even the psychometricians hadn’t imagined could drive men to superhuman effort.

And now only two bombs were left, numbers nineteen and twenty; and once they were successfully launched on their suicidal way, the Dark Star could go home. Home… back to and among the aliens he hated.

Doolittle didn’t remember exactly when he had started hating the pink-faced aliens. But then it struck him that he didn’t remember a lot of things lately—ever since Commander Powell had died. He activated the start switch.

The alien coughed lightly, cleared its throat, and began smoothly, with only the slightest tinge of self-consciousness.

“Hi, guys,” it said brightly. “Glad we got your message finally. You’ll be interested to hear it was broadcast live over the whole Earth—in prime time. You should have seen the ratings, guys. I mean, it was phenomenal. Knocked the top-rated…”

The alien hesitated, as if he was listening to someone speaking out of hearing range. He nodded imperceptibly and spoke again, rather more solemnly now.

“About the first of the colony ships. Everyone in the U.N. had been haggling over it for months, but that message from you guys threw it all over to the pro-colonization forces. Nothing like some honest emotion to sway recalcitrant politicos. The brass here at Mission Control are real proud of the way you fellas conveyed real anguish and tears and all.

“They should be getting started on the actual construction of the first ships any day now. There are just a few last details to be ironed out. Like, the Soviets claim the deep-space drive is their invention so they should have the largest number of colonists, while the Chin… Chinese think that it should be loaded according to the percentage of world population.

“The Israelis are pushing for an extra-large allotment on their claim of having designed the computer; and we, of course, feel that since we paid for most of the hardware so far and supplied the crew, that we ought to have a few more than the Wops and the…”

Again the alien looked nonplussed, listening to someone off-mike. His smile reappeared easily a moment later.

“But that’s all internal politics and needn’t concern you guys and the wonderful job you’re doing.” He hesitated and looked slightly concerned. “The time lag on these messages is getting longer… even longer than the boys here in relativity computation had expected. We gather from the ten-year delay that you are approximately eighteen parsecs out. We anticipated originally, as you will recall, that you would work more of a circular course closer in to Earth. But I guess systems with habitable worlds and unstable ones in combination are farther apart than the boys here predicted, right?

“The upshot of what I’m trying to say is that some people here get nervous when we don’t hear from you as frequently as scheduled. We know you guys have lots of things to do, but"—Boiler made a growling sound—"try and drop us a line a little more often, okay? Just to say hiya.” His grin broadened weakly and he looked down at a cuesheet out of camera view.

“As to the specifics of your message—sorry to hear about the radiation leaks on the ship, but equally glad to hear they’ve only affected minor mechanisms and haven’t touched anything basic to your mission. Really sorry to hear about the death of Commander Powell. I was personally all broke up. Of course, I never had the honor of actually meeting him, but I remember how we used to read about him and the rest of you wonderful guys in school. There was a week of mourning here on Earth. The flags were at half mast, and a Congressional inquiry has been launched to investigate the firm that made the defective seat circuitry.

“We are informed, though, that the seat circuit shorting out like that was a one-in-a-million chance, so the rest of you should have no compunctions about sitting down on the job, hah, hah.” He smiled again.

“We’re all behind you wonderful guys a hundred percent. The job you’re doing now will be remembered by billions of successful colonists thousands of years in the future, when all those systems you’ve cleared are filled with flourishing new populations—all operating under democratic principles, we expect.” He winked.

“Now, about your two requests…” His eyes strayed to the hidden sheet again.

“I hate him,” Doolittle whispered under his breath.

“Gee, what a nice fella,” Pinback grinned inanely.

Boiler growled and punched buttons.

“First, about your request for portable radiation shielding and weld mechanism to replace the apparently defective plating.” He shook his head. “Sorry to have to report that this request has been denied. I hate to send bad news when you guys are doing such a wonderful job, but I think you’ll take it in the proper spirit.” He heaved a theatrical sigh. “You know how politicians are when money is mentioned.

“There have been some cutbacks in the U.N. appropriations, and what with the cash for the colony ships and all having such a rough time getting through committee, we just can’t afford to send a hyperspeed cargo shuttle out there to you. I’ve got to confess it didn’t help our case when we had to admit that we didn’t know exactly where you were, but have you ever tried explaining to a minister from Malaysia how big a parsec is?

“But I know you guys will make do. You’ve been doing amazing things so far. Lourdes—he’s our project chief now, and a nicer, sweeter guy you couldn’t find anywhere—says he doesn’t know how you and Boiler got the shielding redistributed near the drive without getting a lethal dose of radiation. He doesn’t think it made you sterile, since you should have died in the first place, but you guys shouldn’t worry about that.

“About your other request.” He leaned forward and looked right and left in a conspiratorial way. “Frankly, if it was up to me and the regulars here at Deep Space Mission Control, we’d cryostate the six girls and shoot ’em out to you. Only trouble was, some idiot leaked the request to the press, and they blew it up out of all proportion. But don’t worry.” He sat back and winked again. “We covered for you guys… made out how it was all a big joke on your part to show how well you’re doing, right?”

Boiler was punching buttons faster now.

“Gee, what a nice fella,” Pinback repeated, his smile a little less broad now.

I wish it were him up here and me down there smiling idiotically up at him, Doolittle thought desperately.

“So I’m really afraid,” the alien continued, “that the request has been declared inoperative. But at least you know that we down here sympathize with you guys. It’s the higher-ups who’re making things tough.”

“It’ll bet he’s queer as a two-dollar bill,” Boiler said suddenly. “Flaming queen.” Growl.

“He looks like a queer—look at his nails.”

“That might be the current style on Earth,” countered Pinback. “Anyway, you can’t see his nails. They’re below the vision pickup.”

“Well, I saw ’em,” Boiler insisted, his voice rising dangerously. He glared at the sergeant. “Wanna make something of it?”

“Well, gee, no,” Pinback admitted. “I mean, it didn’t seem to me it meant that much to you… I mean…”

“Goddamn faggots,” Boiler rumbled.

“Quiet, Boiler,” Doolittle said softly. He had his finger on the Hold button. “We’ve started it… we may as well hear all of it.” As he lifted his finger off the control, Boiler lavished a last predatory glare on the subdued Pinback and returned to his button pushing. It didn’t seem quite as much fun now. Damn queer had broken his concentration. Who needed their stupid messages anyhow?

“So anyway, that’s how it is down here on Earth. Or up here on Earth, depending on which way you guys are heading, hah, hah. I wish there was something more I could say,” and for a moment a flicker of humanity seemed to appear in the alien’s face. Again he seemed to acknowledge the words of an off-screen presence, and the flicker disappeared.

“Well, as you know, these deep space calls cost a lot of money, so all I can say for all of us here at McMurdo is, keep up the good work and drop us a line more often, huh?”

Fizzle… pop… the words END COMMUNICATION appeared on the screen. Doolittle switched it off.

“Surprised he didn’t blow us a goodbye kiss,” muttered Boiler. The other two ignored him.

“Nice to know they’re thinking about us so warmly, isn’t it, guys?” Pinback ventured cautiously, looking from Doolittle to Boiler and back to Doolittle. “Isn’t it?”

“Quiet, Pinback,” said Doolittle, working controls. “We’re almost there. We’ve got a planet to blow.”

“Ah, gee, you guys never wanna talk anymore.” Pinback folded his arms and sat back, pouting. “Blow it up, blow it up—that’s all you think about anymore. We do that all the time. When was the last time we all just sat around and talked, huh? About nothing in particular?”

“You do that all the time, Pinback,” Doolittle commented.

“Yeah, but it’s pretty dull just talking to you guys if you don’t chat back. I might as well talk to a blank wall.”

“You do that all the time, Pinback.”

Oh, you think you’re so smart, Doolittle, Pinback muttered silently. Always ready with the snappy comeback, aren’t you? Well, we’ll see who comes out of this mission with a clean bill of health! Wait till the psyche boys get a look inside your head. Then you’ll be sorry you didn’t talk to me when you had the chance.

I tried to help you, Doolittle, but you don’t want to be helped, so don’t blame me when they lock you in solitary for observation, with doctors poking and monitoring and prodding and digging into your brain, digging, digging…

Pinback was glad when Doolittle switched the overhead screen from communications to fore visual pickup. He was beginning to drown in the sweat of his own thoughts.

A world sprang into sharp focus. It was sterile, empty, deserted. No animals moved on its surface, no fish swam in its seas. Nothing grew and nothing moved. It was no different from a thousand other worlds they had encountered, but it had one thing in common with eighteen others—eighteen others they had encountered and destroyed.

They had found two habitable worlds in this system. One planet was very Earthlike, the other marginally so. Some day each might support a population as great as that of Earth’s today.

But as things stood there would be no point in planting an incipient civilization on either of them because this world, according to computer predictions, sat in an unstable orbit. In not more than two hundred thousand nor less than five thousand years it would spiral inward to intercept its own sun.

There was the chance that nothing serious would happen—the world might be turned instantly to ashes. However, if conditions were right, it could be enough, just enough, to alter the position of the star in relation to its habitable planets. Or worse yet, set it on the path to nova.

Waste it, and want not, Doolittle thought—the motto of the scientists who had proposed and organized the Dark Star mission and its objectives.

So now they would commence operations to quietly eliminate a world in a soundless, overwhelming explosion bigger than any ever seen on Earth, thereby rendering the system safe for Mom, Apple Pie, and another four or five billion of the social insect called man. A voice sounded in his earphones.

“What’d you say, Pinback?” he mumbled in reply.

“Goggle, freep, tweep.”

He spoke into the mike again. “What was that? I still can’t understand you.” Might as well be nice to poor Pinback. After all, he tried his best to do a sergeant’s job.

Pinback was always trying. That was one of his problems. At times he reminded Doolittle just a bit too much of the unctuous young officer who had delivered the message from Earth base.

One of these days Corporal Boiler was going to…

Pinback shoved the mike aside and leaned over. “I said, I’m trying to reach Talby. Something’s wrong with the damned intercom. If you’re not going to talk to me, then I’m going to work, I need a last-minute diameter approximation. Do you expect me to figure that my self?”

“Calm down, Pinback. There’s something wrong with everything on this ship.” He flicked a fingertip on his own mike. “Talby, Talby, this is Dooiittle, do you read me? Answer me, Talby… wake up, man.”

Eleven, twelve, thirteen, wonder what I’ve seen…

Three blue-white suns, just above the plane of the ecliptic. He jotted them down in his mental catalog. Odd to see three of the same magnitude grouped so closely together. Another interesting surprise.

Exactly how many stars were now included in his private collection he didn’t know. There were at least several thousand. He would know better if he entered them formally in the ship’s scientific records—something he adamantly refused to do.

Doolittle had bugged him about it when be found out what the astronomer was doing—or rather, wasn’t doing. But Talby’s smile had defeated him. You couldn’t reduce a star to an abstract figure, Talby had patiently tried to explain. It was demeaning, both to the man and to the star. Doolittle gave up after a while.

Talby touched controls, and the observation chair swerved another ninety degrees, tilted forward. Maybe he could convince Doolittle to rotate the ship again, so that he could see the other half of the heavens for a while. Doolittle never understood these requests. He insisted that after a while all stars looked the same: uniform, ugly little fireflies glaring in the night-space. Talby couldn’t make him see. Poor Doolittle.

Poor Talby.

Something buzzed insistently in his head. At first he thought it might be another of his headaches. In a way, it was.

“Talby, Talby, this is Doolittle. Can you read me? Acknowledge, Talby.”

The corporal blinked, forced himself out of the real universe and back into the irritating dreamworld of reality… the triangular dreamworld of the Dark Star.

“Oh, yes, Doolittle. Yes, I read you. What is it?”

Doolittle continued to manipulate the instruments in front of him as he spoke to Talby. The astronomer was beginning to worry him. No, no… that wasn’t quite right. Talby had been worrying him for some time now. He always meant to do something about it, but there were so many other things to worry about, so many other tasks he was responsible for now.

Not that Talby had ever done anything to threaten the safety of the ship—quite the contrary. He was efficient in his duties to the point of abnormality. But it bothered Doolittle that the astronomer spent so much time in the observation dome. It bothered Doolittle that Talby didn’t eat his meals with the rest of them. It bothered Doolittle that Talby never joined them for their admittedly deadly dull group recreation periods.

But mostly it bothered Doolittle because Talby seemed so friggin’ happy

“Uh, Lieutenant Doolittle?” He blinked, glanced irritably at Pinback.

“I’m okay, Pinback. Hello, Talby? We need a diameter approximation here.”

“Roger, Doolittle,” responded Talby, prompt, efficient. “Have it in a minute.”

“Talby, were you counting again?”

“I’m always counting, Lieutenant You know that.” A pause. Then, “Point zero niner five—no special setting required. Too bad it’s a bummer.”

“Yeah,” said Doolittle curtly. “Thanks, Talby.”

Doolittle would have liked to hate Talby. For his happiness, for his easy efficiency, for the way he stood the agony of the voyage. But he couldn’t. Talby was one of them. Talby was human in a way the frog-faced messager from Earth never could be.

Pinback again. “I need a GHF reading on the gravity correction.”

“I’ll check it,” Doolittle replied.

“I’ll have a By SA plus one, Boiler.”

Doolittle almost smiled. They were operating loose, easy now. The supersmooth crew of the Dark Star was doing what it had been trained for. Each man became an integral part of the unit, each subordinating his personal opinions, desires, and feelings to the overriding demands of the mission.

It was rather like making love. They could even think about that now without breaking down, when functioning as a team. Even think about se— No, no, that was one thought he still had to suppress. The psychometricians had felt they’d compensated adequately for that, but ever since the auto-erogenizer had broken down…

He checked a gauge

“Yeah, Doolittle.”

“Your GHF reading is minus fifteen.”

“Okay.” Pinback did things with the controls at his station, frowned slightly.

“Doolittle?”

“Yeah.”

“I need a,” he hesitated, checked the readout, “a computer indication on a fail-safe mark.”

“Roger, Pinback.”

“Boiler, can you set me up with some overdrive figures?”

“Ninety-seven million less eight corrected for expected time critical mass.”

“That checks out here.” The sergeant nodded. “I have a drive reading of seven thou.”

“No conflict. Systematization keyed and ready,” Boiler replied easily.

Odd, Doolittle reflected, how harmonious Pinback and Boiler could be when operating together for the good of the mission. Maybe if all mankind could be involved in some similar, single project, where each needed the aid of his neighbor, they could function together like the sergeant and corporal.

It was only in the off moments—which meant all the time they weren’t actively engaged in running the ship—that animosity flared between the two.

And himself, he was forced to add. Pinback could put him off his mettle any time he opened his mouth. It wasn’t that the sergeant was trying to be obnoxious; he just couldn’t help himself.

Strange how the psyche boys could place Pinback in the crew with him and Boiler and Powell. That produced a click in his mind and brought back unpleasant thoughts which he quickly shoved aside. It bothered him that he’d forgotten again.

All the more reason to drive themselves, loose the last of the bombs, and start on their way home.

“I read that quantum increase of seven,” Pinback was saying.

“Pinback, I have that computer reading. It’s, nine-five-seven-seven. Repeat, nine-five-seven-seven.”

“Time to start talking,” Boiler observed. The three men leaned back in their lounges. There was a hum in the control room. “Bomb-bay systems operation confirmed.”

Two panels slid apart in the belly of the white arrow head that was the Dark Star. A long tube lowered from it. Attached to its end was a thick disk holding a long, rectangular box-shape. The box-shape had the number 19 painted on its sides

It was born out of a computer relay from the Dark Star’s brain and would die soon in funereal conflagration unknown in this part of the galaxy till now. The rectangular box-shape with the number 19 painted on its sides was, as Pinback insisted, a thermostellar device—or, as Boiler and Doolittle persisted, a bomb.

The sergeant reached up and flipped an overhead switch. The words LOCK FAIL-SAFE appeared on the screen in front of him.

“Fail-safe engaged.” He tapped the end of his microphone and blew into it once. “Sergeant Pinback calling bomb.”

Doolittle gave him a look, but Pinback ignored it. He couldn’t see any harm in being convivial, even with a bomb.

“Bomb number nineteen, do you read me, bomb?” The voice that replied was muted, relaxed, and not at all concerned about its impending suicide. “Bomb number nineteen to Sergeant Pinback. I read you, Sergeant. What’s up?”

“Well, bomb,” Pinback continued conversationally, examining his nails, “not much.” There, that was pleasant enough. He tried to be this way with each bomb before it was dropped. After all, they didn’t live very long. And no matter what Doolittle and Boiler thought, he felt bombs were pretty nice people—for planet-destroying machines, that is.

To be perfectly honest about it, he’d rather talk to one of the bombs than to Boiler any day.

“Well, bomb, it’s just about sixty seconds to drop. Just wondering if everything is all right.” He adjusted another set of controls. “How are you feeling?”

“As well as can be expected. I’m looking forward to carrying out the mission for which I was designed.”

“Atta boy, bomb. Checked your platinum-iridium energy grid? And your shielding?”

“Grid and shielding positive function,” the bomb replied good-naturedly.

“Swell,” said Pinback. “Tell you what, bomb. Let’s go ahead a sychronize detonation time. Ah, you wouldn’t happen to know when you’re due to go off, would you?”

“Detonation in six minutes, twenty seconds.”

“Good, good. Just let me double-check that.”

“Very well, Sergeant Pinback.”

“All set here, bomb. We match up. Arm yourself.”

A few small red lights flashed briefly from the back of the thermostellar device. That was all there was to indicate that the inert construct of metal and plastic was now the most dangerous single object within a hundred parsecs.

“Armed,” it said sharply.

“Well then…” Pinback sighed, looked around for something else to do. “Everything looks good, bomb. Dropping you off in about thirty-five seconds. Good luck.”

“Thanks,” said the bomb. Its diagramatic targeting computer had already locked on to the world below.

The interior of the control room now became a flurry of controlled activity as final preparations were made. Then Boiler and Doolittle sat back as Pinback gripped a pair of opposing knobs and stared at the small chronometer set into the panel above his station.

“Beginning primary sequence.”

Doolittle flipped a last switch, watched a red light wink on in front of him.

“Sequence activated. Commence countdown.”

“Roger. Mark it: ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.” Both switches were turned simultaneously. “Drop.”

There was a bright flare of light from the point where the bomb contacted its release disk. The thremostellar trigger dropped away from the ship. The disk and tube were drawn rapidly up into its belly.

“Hyperdrive sequence begun,” Doolittle noted. “Hit it, Pinback.”

The sergeant hit a pair of buttons in rapid succession. “Force field activated… sequence engaged.” He sat back in his chair. A slight tingle started to come over his whole body, as if his leg and everything else were suddenly going to sleep. Then the field locked in, and he saw everything through a haze of red cellophane. This field would enable them to survive the short run at hyperdrive.

There was a second’s pause, and then the Dark Star vanished from the region of the unstable world, thrown away at incredible speed to a precalculated point in free space—a point far removed from the debris of a shattered planet to come.

Behind them, the bomb, quiet and alone now, continued down toward the planet’s surface.

Though the force field fogged his vision, Talby could still see the stars. Only now they were rushing to greet him—all sizes and all degrees of magnitude, rushing toward him. But the distorting blur of hyperdrive allowed him to greet only a few in return. They fell at him like horizontal rain, pelting him with color as they rushed past and disappeared.

Supposedly it wasn’t safe for a man to stay up in the observation dome while the ship was in hyperdrive. The shielding provided by the transparent hemisphere was minimal, and it was theorized that in hyperdrive a person might be subjected to a dangerously concentrated burst of radiation.

Talby, however, had disproved this particular theory, as he had disproved so many others. He’d survived eighteen such fights now, and his body was a healthy as ever. Healthier than that of anyone else on board, which, considering that he spent no time in the exercise room, Doolittle was at a loss to explain.

Talbly told him it was due to peace of mind, but Doolittle insisted there had to be something more than that. Perhaps the hypothesizers were right, but wrong. Perhaps anyone who remained in the dome during hyperdrive did receive a concentrated dose of radiation. Radiation that was not dangerous, but benign. Radiation that supplied something special to a man. Because there was no denying that Talby defied a large number of accepted rules for interstellar travel and came out of it in peculiarly good shape.

No one saw the bomb reach its predetermined detonation point just above the planet’s surface. They were already too far away for that. But behind them, a blinding ball of white light appeared where the unstable world had once drifted. It turned pink, then crimson—a monstrous, blood-colored blossom blooming in uncaring night.

Then it faded rapidly and was gone. A world had vanished from the galaxy. Its convulsive death had given life to several new clusters of asteroids and meteors. These would now take their place among the other cosmic debris roaming the starpaths.

The universe came to an abrupt halt. The Dark Star stopped, its hyperdrive sequence concluded.

The red haze of the field faded from his eyes, drawn back into its electronic cage. Talby blinked.

He made a quick check of his instruments. They were safely out of hyperdrive. All navigational equipment was functioning properly, and they were on course. His hand moved toward the intercom switch. He intended to relay this information to Doolittle but, as so often happened, something more important caught his eye, dragged him away from human concerns.

Just to the lower right of their present course lay a particularly handsome purple and red nebula. They would pass quite close to it if they continued on their present path. He should have ample time to enjoy and study the new miracle.

His hand continued to hover halfway between the intercom activator and the arm of his chair-lounge. Then he relaxed in the seat. As astronomer it was still his job to make manual verification of the bomb run. But suppose he didn’t? Suppose he didn’t, and the bomb had malfunctioned? The scenario was simple to imagine. The world in the system they had just left would be explored and settled. Eventually it might grow to support a population larger than Earth’s.

Then, one distant day, a planet thought safe would go spinning off its orbit into the sun, perhaps turning it in a few days into a churning nova which would sear the settled world clean of billions of lives. And no one could do more than rant and curse at the long-dead Talby He would have returned a blow for the natural, unmanipulated universe. But he couldn’t do it.

After all, they’d blame the entire crew of the Dark Star, and Talby couldn’t drag the others down to an ignominious future no matter what he saw as fit for himself.

So he swung about in the chair, touched several buttons, and prepared to do his duty—for Doolittle, Pinback, Boiler, and Powell, and not for some faraway abstracted humanity.

The eyepiece to the deep-space telescope dipped neatly down in front of him. He edged close to it, and took a visual sighting. A rapidly diminishing bright spot was all that showed in the now considerable distance. Quick cross-check of charts revealed it was indeed something in the vicinity of the star they had just left. He addressed the intercom.

“Lieutenant Doolittle, it just exploded. Ah, the planet just exploded, sir. Lieutenant?”

Well, if Doolittle didn’t even care… Talby flipped the intercom off, morosely contemplated the heavens.

But it wasn’t Doolittle’s fault. The intercom, like so many things on the Dark Star lately, was merely malfunctioning again.

Down in the control room, with the bomb run no doubt successful and the destruction sequence completed, Pinback, Doolittle, and Boiler were taking a stretch, shifting about in their seats like so many old cats.

“Computer’s late again,” observed Boiler. “That computer’s beginning to worry me, Doolittle. Sometimes I think I hear it singing to itself.”

“I know it’s late, Boiler,” the lieutenant replied. “Don’t let that bother you. It’s about the only instrument on this ship that’s still performing up to par.” There was a cessation of the muted hum that always came over the speakers, and Doolittle smiled slightly. “See, there it is now.”

“Attention, attention,” the mechanical, mildly feminine machine voice said. “Ship’s computer to all personnel. The hyperdrive sequence is now terminated, and I am happy to report that the target planet is destroyed.”

“Whoopee,” muttered Boiler, making a little circle in the air with one finger.

“You may now relax and take a stretch if you so desire, gentlemen.”

“Unlock fail-safe,” ordered Doolittle, ignoring the voice. It didn’t do to listen too long to those mildly erotic tones.

Pinback was doing something at an overhead panel. “Fail-safe unlocked.”

“The sector just visited,” the computer continued, “is now cleared for colonization. You have successfully eliminated the only unstable world in the system. Congratulations on another successful bomb run, boys.”

“Gosharootie, thanks, computer,” Doolittle said sardonically. “Tell me, honey, what are you doing after the cataclysm tonight?’

“Operating the ship, as usual, Lieutenant Doolittle.” There was a pause, then the voice continued in a slightly reproving fashion, “I must remind you again, Lieutenant, that these mental conceptualizations you have of me as a smooth-skinned, pliant, and heavy-breathing female humanoid are neither healthy nor conducive to the smooth operation of the ship. I must ask you to discontinue them.”

“Oh, go discontinue yourself,” Doolittle blurted curtly. “Stop panting, Pinback… you’re fogging up your instruments.” Pinbadc looked abashed and started to pout again.

The computer didn’t reply to Doollttle’s advice, recognizing either the frustration in the lieutenant’s voice or else the impossibility of complying with the suggestion—or maybe both.

The thought left a sour taste in Doolittle’s mind. He always got like this when a bomb run had been completed and they were faced once more with long days of nothing to do. Post-coital letdown, he thought disgustedly.

Irritated, nervous—he felt they had to hurry and find another system with habitable worlds and an unstable companion. And it was getting worse. The glow of satisfaction, the smooth aura of accomplishment that usually came over him after a successful run had grown shorter and shorter with each successive drop. Now it was practically nonexistent. He could remember when the pleasure of seeing an unstable world dissolved to its component elements had left him feeling good for weeks.

Now, he was empty again.

’What now, Boiler?” he found himself asking. “What have you got for us now?”

“So soon, Lieutenant?” wondered Pinback. “We only just finished a run.” Doolittle ignored the sergeant.

Boiler, quiet and responsive to Doolittle’s moods, was already hard at work with the predictors. “Not much here, Lieutenant. I don’t see any possibilities at all in this sector. Tough.”

Responsive, yes, but insensitive. Damn the man’s insensitivity. Damn his uncommunicativeness and his in ability to enjoy extended, intelligent conversation. Doolittle wondered at himself. He never would figure out why he preferred talking to Boiler instead of Pinback. Maybe it was because the corporal, at least, required nothing of him in return. Doolittle had never been a person to give much of himself. He expected too much from Boiler, and got too much from Pinback. If only Talby were more willing to chat. If only Powell were still around, to give the orders.

“Well, find me something,” he ordered nervously. “I don’t care where it is. Something interesting, anything… we’ve only got one lousy bomb left and then we can go home—I think.”

“Something interesting,” Boiler echoed. “Okay.” He bent to his instrumentation, consulted the charts from under his panel.

“Well, we’re close to the Horsehead Nebula sector. We had reports before we left that there was as much as a ninety-five-percent probability of intelligent life in the southern quadrant of the nebula. Long-distance locators found at least two sol-type stars there showing measure perturbations in their paths, indicative of planets at distances which would place them in the so-called life zones.”

“Don’t give me that kind of bull,” Doolittle complained. “Intelligent life my ass! You oughta know by now, Boiler, that there’s no intelligent life in this universe. None at all.”

Including ourselves, of course, he added to himself. But this was no revelation. They had known that for years, when prediction after prediction had failed to be borne out. They’d visited and mapped dozens of worlds where life should have sprung up independently and flowered, and they’d found nothing but lower forms of plants and animals, the highest being Pinback’s pet amorph, which they’d called the Beachball. A poor response to all their desperate hopes of finding intelligent life.

No, they were alone—alone in a mocking infinity. Only Talby seemed not to be alone

“I know it’s a long shot,” Boiler responded quietly, “but…” He watched the lieutenant carefully, but his guarded optimism had no effect on Doolittle.

“Damned wild goose chase is what it is,” the lieutenant finally commented. He grinned a little. “Remember when Commander Powell found that ‘ninety-nine-plus’ probability of intelligent life in a little system on line with the Magellanic Cloud and for a couple of minutes we all thought he meant we were going there?”

The corporal shook his head. He didn’t remember. A hand indicated a particular readout.

“But there is a possibility this time, according to…” Doolittle ignored him, still reminiscing.

What a shame! What a sad memory! And what a colossal disappointment. It nearly broke Powell’s heart.

“Remember what we found when we did get to that world, Boiler? Remember? Was it a race of giant humanoids waiting to welcome us as members of a world-spanning intergalactic civilization? Or a planet of quiet thinkers waiting for a new, vigorous people like ourselves to unload all the secrets of the universe on? Or even a race of intelligent insects? Or revolting giant slugs?

“No… nothing to love, nothing to be friends with, nothing to even raise to a conscious level. Nothing to even hate decently. A joke, a damned mindless vegetable—that’s what we found. A limp balloon.” His voice rose higher, and both Boiler and Pinback watched him anxiously.

“Fourteen goddamned light-years for a vegetable that goes squawk and lets out a stink if it’s touched! Remember that?”

“All right, I remember, I remember,” confessed Boiler, trying to calm his companion.

Doolittle was aware that he was once again perilously close to going over the edge. He dropped his voice, would have jammed his hands into his pockets if he hadn’t been sitting down. He looked away from the others.

“So anyway, don’t give me any of that ‘intelligent life’ stuff. Find me something I can blow up.”

Once more an uneasy quiet reigned in the control room of the Dark Star. Each man returned to his station, which had the virtue of not yelling, not screaming, not scratching, and not fighting back.

They shot along in silence faster than man had ever traveled before, for the Dark Star was the first of its kind. There had been no experimental predecessor; the Dark Star was, in itself, an experimental ship. An experimental starship would have been prohibitively expensive, so it was combined with this first, vital mission, built with knowledge drawn from the unmanned deep-space probes.

And it had worked out well. Only minor, irritating little things continued to break down. The ship itself continued to operate almost flawlessly—like her crew.

A sudden series of beeps erupted from Pinback’s station. He blinked, leaned forward. A key shut off the noise.

“Hey,” he said after studying the instruments, his expression lighting up, “new star.”

No one reacted. He looked at Boiler, then Doolittle. Maybe they hadn’t heard him. “Hey, guess what,” he repeated a bit louder, “I got a new star on the readout.”

Doolittle had produced a well-worn deck of cards. He was playing solitaire. Doolittle was very good at solitaire. He didn’t lose often because he cheated.

“What kind?” he asked without looking up.

Pinback checked the instruments again. “Red dwarf. It’s a complete unknown, sir, not even listed on the ‘possibles’ charts, from what I can see.”

Doolittle put a black queen on a red king, then a black jack on the queen. “Any planets?”

“Around a red dwarf, sir? Even if there were any the chances of them being inhabi—”

“I asked you if it had any planets, Sergeant.”

“Oh, all right.” Pinback checked the readout again. His expression bulged. “Wow, yeah—it says eight probables here! How about that!”

“Any of ’em good?”

“Well,” Pinback guessed, “it’s kind of hard to tell at this distance, but there might be. Boy, wouldn’t that be something? Around a red dwarf?”

“I mean, are any of ’em bad,” Doolittle corrected, putting an ace up.

“Oh.” Pinback sounded depressed, reluctantly checked his readouts again. “Naw, all stable.”

Doolittle just grunted.

“I suppose that means we aren’t going to map them out?” No reply. “Geez, Lieutenant, a red dwarf with eight possible planets—I mean, we at least ought to make an equatorial survey.”

“Not our job,” Doolittle said quietly.

“But couldn’t we in this case make one teeny weeny little exception?”

“No.” Black ten on red jack.

There was peace in the control room for a while, except for the gentle click-clacking of cards flicking down on the computation board. Pinback stared at Doolittle until he was quite certain that the lieutenant had nothing further to say on the subject of the strange new system.

“Ah,” he said finally, “what are you gonna name it?”

Doolittle hesitated, spoke without looking up again. “What?”

“Ah, you know… that star,” Pinback continued anxiously. “What are you gonna name it?”

“Who cares?” Doolittle responded irritably. “I’m busy, Pinback… don’t bother me, huh?”

“But it’s a whole new star, Lieutenant. With planets. Eight of ’em. Only a handful of human beings ever got to name a tiny, insignificant thing like maybe a river or a mountain or a sea. A few luckier ones got to name features on the surface of the Moon and Mars and the other planets. You can name a whole star system, Lieutenant.”

Doolittle spared him a quick glance. “Look, don’t bother me, please, Pinback? I’ve almost got this game played out. Leave me alone, hmmm?”

“Commander Powell would name it,” Pinback finished, with the ultimate argument. He folded his arms firmly.

“Commander Powell’s dead,” reminded Doolittle for the thousandth time, putting a deuce up on the ace.

“Well then…” Pinback suddenly beamed. “That’s it—‘Don’t Bother Me.’ We’ll name it ‘Don’t Bother Me.’” He hunted hurriedly under his station for the small semi-official log he’d been keeping ever since Doolittle had lost interest in making regular entries in the ship’s printed log.

The pencil that was clipped to it was worn to a stub now, and he had to strain to write neatly with it.

“There,” he said after an hour’s dedicated scribbling. “All nice and official, with coordinates and everything. ‘Don’t Bother Me’… eight planets.” He finished with a flourish. “Congratulations, Lieutenant.”

Doolittle started to shout again, but he turned up the last card he needed to play out and was feeling instantly generous. After all, why pick on poor Pinback just because he was a mite overzealous in his job?

“Thanks, Sergeant. If any intelligent beings do live there, maybe they’ll thank you someday. I know I wouldn’t want myself to be visited by anything like me.”

“Uh, Lieutenant,” Pinback replied, his face twisted in uncertainty, “I’m not sure I know what you mean by—”

Boiler’s deep tones broke in over him. “Hey, Doolittle, I got a goodie. Definitely unstable. Eighty-five-percent probability of an unstable planet in star system P-one-thirty-eight. Indication of habitable planets in same system ninety-six percent. Chances are it will go off its orbit inside the critical period and hit its star.” He looked up from his readouts. “Wanna blow it up?”

He laughed.

Pinback eyed him uneasily. Boiler didn’t laugh very often, and Pinback could have done without even those occasional displays of humor on the corporal’s part. But the information appeared to please Doolittle. He smiled broadly.

“Real good, Boiler. Real good work. That’s what I’m looking for. Chart a course as fast as you can.” His mind was singing, one more planet, one more bomb—and then they could go home, go home, go home… back to warm, comfortable, feeling Earth, back to real grass and real booze and members of the opposite sex. Back to the other aliens, back where they belonged…

Boiler was working feverishly at his console. “Hey, throw me the chart log, Pinback.”

“Name it, then blow it up. Name it, then blow it up—that’s all you guys ever wanna do,” grumbled Pinback. But he reached beneath his seat, brought out the thick-bound volume of star charts, and tossed it into Boiler’s lap.

Boiler glowered at him and just held the book for a second. Conscious of the suddenly charged atmosphere in the tiny control room, Doolittle watched the two men. Even Pinback, he realized, could be pushed past a certain critical point.

Boiler held his stare for a moment longer, then opened the book and started thumbing through pages. Doolittle relaxed. What Pinback might do if pushed beyond that certain hypothetical region was anybody’s guess. Probably go stand in a corner and cry. But you never knew. Sometimes he suspected that Sergeant Pinback had unplumbed depths. Doolittle spent as much time keeping him and Boiler apart as he did running the ship.

There had never been as much trouble between the two when Commander Powell was alive. But that was all in the past. So much was all in the past, had been lost in Powell’s death. You remove one corner of the pentagram, and the mystic symbol seemed to lose all of its power.

“Let’s have some music in here, Boiler,” he said carefully.

“Sure thing.” Boiler, showing no signs of recent aggravation, reached for an upper panel. Strains of the song “Benson, Arizona” immediatly floated through the control room.

Doolittle relaxed. He loved this particular tune almost as much as he hated it. Loved it for the memories it brought back to him, and hated it for reminding him of what he no longer had.

Pinback spoke up a moment later—his usual obnoxious and cheerful self again. It didn’t take Pinback long to break out of one of his pouts. He was incapable, it seemed to Doolittle, of getting really angry at anything.

“Hey, don’t you think it’s time to make an entry in the log, Lieutenant? You know, bring the records up to date, record officially the new star, tell about our little amusing troubles, and all that.”

Doolittle turned over three cards, found himself stuck with the last jack buried on the bottom. He switched the jack with the top card, then put it up on the queen and played out the last two cards and the rest of the game. That made 342 straight games he’d played out—an impressive string he had no intention of breaking.

“What, Pinback?”

“I said, don’t you think it’s time for a log entry?” When Doolittle didn’t exactly leap to his feet to race to the recorder, Pinback continued pleading. “Aw, come on, Lieutenant. You haven’t made a log entry in a long time. One of these days that log’ll be history. Little kids will study, it and gasp, and their great-grandparents will say, ‘I remember when the Dark Star first did this or that.’ The folks back home will—”

“The folks back home,” Doolittle started to say angrily, “won’t give a flying…!”

He stopped. It was impossible to get mad at Pinback. The sergeant was a terrible audience. He wouldn’t do the decent thing and howl back at you. No, Pinback would either retreat into a heady pout or else try to make a joke out of your most heartfelt furies.

He could lay it on Boiler, but Boiler would just sit there and ignore him completely. At least Pinback reacted. And Talby, he could talk and yell and complain to Talby, but something in him always rejected the thought of disturbing the astronomer’s period of endless contemplation.

He could always talk to Commander Powell. Even though Powell was technically deceased, his occasionally functioning mind was still capable of random conversation. Sometimes Doolittle found himself closer in feeling to Powell than anyone else. Both men’s minds existed in a kind of suspended animation.

Well, might as well make Pinback happy. And it was part of his duty. And he’d promised himself, once upon a time, that he’d carry out the duties of acting commander to the best of his ability, etc., etc., blah-blah.

Besides, if he didn’t do it, Pinback might, and that would be disastrous if they ever did get back in one piece.

He reached up and activated the overhead screen. When the READY sign had cleared, he spoke toward the directional microphone. “Ship’s Log, entry number one thousand nine hundred and forty-three. Lieutenant Doolittle, acting commander of Dark Star, informing.

“Ship is presently cruising through sector Theta nine ninety at light-speed multiple enroute to area Veil Nebula for destruction of unstable planet. Our ETA is seventeen hours. Our ability to locate unstable worlds in systems with habitable planets seems to have increased markedly with practice. It almost seems as if they are presenting themselves to us on request. I can only assume that our increased proficiency is due to greater vigilance and familiarity with the necessary instrumentation. In any case it appears that we shall be returning home sooner than expected, ah, and we…”

He hesitated. There was something else, he thought, but he couldn’t think of what… oh yes. “Ship’s internal systems continue to deteriorate. We are compensating, but as the number of malfunctions multiplies, we find it increasingly difficult to improvise from our rapidly decreasing ship’s stores.”

Pinback leaned over and whispered to him.

He nodded, spoke to the screen. “Oh yeah… the short circuit in the rear seat panel which killed Commander Powell is still faulty. After much deliberation and thorough analysis of the situation, I have given explicit instructions that no one is to sit in that seat or he will be severely reprimanded.”

Pinback leaned over and whispered again, a mite more urgently this time.

“The storage… what is it now, Pinback?”

He paused, listened to the whisper. “Oh. And because he is sitting next to Commander Powell’s seat, Pinback is continually bothered by the faulty circuit. He is possessed of this unreasonable fear that his rear seat panel will be the next to short circuit.

I’ve pointed out to Sergeant Pinback that this attitude is both irrational and asinine, and he—”

“Is not,” muttered Pinback from off-screen.

“—he persists in reminding me of it.” Then the thought he had first been hunting for finally came to him. “Oh, yeah. Storage Area Nine, Subsection B self destructed last week following a circuit malfunction, thus destroying the ship’s entire supply of toilet paper. I would request of the folks down at McMurdo that we be immediately resupplied with this important commodity. But am afraid, logistics being what they seem to be at Earth Base these days, that they would ship us the toilet paper in lieu of our desperately needed radiation shielding.

“As the two materials are not interchangeable in function, I am therefore delaying the request that we be resupplied with the former commodity, although,” and he looked over at Pinback, “there are those among the crew who feel that in the long run, the toilet paper is the more vitally needed of the two.”

He stared back up into the screen. “And if anyone ever reading this log finds the present situation amusing, I can only hope that they someday find themselves in a situation where they have to opt for radiation shielding over toilet paper. I think that’s all.”

He reached up and switched off the screen recorder, feeling pleased with himself. It was a good log entry, a substantial log entry. It would never get him promoted, of course, but it was sobering to think that someday what he had just recorded might be broadcast to reverent billions all over Earth.

The music was beginning to grate in its familiarity, both of sound and conjured-up image. He swiveled around to glance at the silent corporal. “Put something else on, Boiler. Something less descriptive. Something more… abstract.”

Boiler mumbled something unintelligible, nudged the dial a fraction. Immediately, responsive electric guitars, drums, trumpets, and theremin filled the tiny control cabin, swamped it in an orgy of amplified rhythm.

Pinback and Boiler began to move in their seats, drawn together by their single, common point of interest—jumping, rocking, snapping their fingers, shaking in time to the music.

Doolittle tried to join them, to complete the triumvirate. He tried to force himself, but for all his will to subsume himself in the music, all that moved was his head, slightly. Inside, he wondered that he could respond to the music at all.

Something made him different from even Boiler and Pinback. Yet again, he wondered what it was that he was missing.

The music reached Talby over the open intercom. He frowned slightly until he identified the source of the interruption and turned it down. It would be unprofessional as well as potentially dangerous to switch the intercom off entirely. He hardly heard the music anyway.

That music.