Radar must have been sharp that day, because the drone, a battered B-24, was right on top of us before we picked it up, a mote in the sun"s brazen eye. A flurry of orders relayed to the control ship sent it soaring back into the distance, a mile or so high. Just at the limit of visibility I used the corner of my mouth to Smith.
"Hold your breath and help me out." Maybe he did, at that. "Motors.
I"ll try to get the motors first."
The slapping of the salty waves against the cruiser"s armored hull seemed to pause in midstride. Nothing happened--nothing, until the waves, with a frustrated sigh, gave in and began again their toppling roll and hiss. Then slowly, ever so slowly, so faintly that it was only a speck in the sky, the distant dot tilted and hung suspended on a wingtip, hung, hung, hung.... A jerk, and a warped spiral. My ears rang, and the falling leaf, now swooping and sailing in agonized humpbacked scallops, seemed to double and triple in my tear-swimming eyes. Then I tried--
There was no sound. There was no booming roar, no thunder. But I forgot to yank down those dark filters over the ends of the Zeiss.
They had told me that it would be like looking at the sun. Well, the sun won"t throw you flat on your back, or maybe I fell. Not quite flat; Smith threw a block as I reeled, and held me upright. I tried to tell him that I was all right, that it was just the sudden glare that paralyzed me, and to get his arms off my neck before I strangled. No attention did I get from him at all in that respect, but plenty of other unneeded help. Wriggle and swear as I might, with that helmet scoring a raw groove in my neck, I was toted below and dropped on my bunk with, I suppose, what whoever carried me would call gentleness.
The anxious officer in front of me, when the action was over, had the physician"s harried look. He liked my language not one little bit, and only Smith"s authority kept him from calling corpsmen to muzzle me while he examined my eyes. When my sore eyes had accustomed themselves to the dim light in the cabin, Smith led the officer to the door of the hatch or whatever they call it, explaining that the recalcitrant patient would doubtless be later in a more receptive mood.
"If you think so," I yelled at his indignant ramrod back, "you must try sticking in your head and see what happens." I don"t like anyone to poke anything in my eyes anytime.
Smith shut the door quickly. "Must you bellow like that? He was trying to help you."
I knew that, but I was mad. "I don"t want any help. I could have made it down here under my own power, and you know it."
Smith sat down. "These your cigarettes? Thanks." He lit his own and puffed furiously. "I don"t think you can reasonably expect to be let alone, Peter. After all, you"re a very valuable--"
"--piece of property. Sure. In the meantime I don"t want anyone fooling around me."
He smoked in silence, thinking. That meant trouble.
"Well?"
"Well, what?"
He reached for the ashtray. "Ready to talk now?"
"Sure," I said. "Talk or listen?"
"A little of both."
I talk too much. It would do me no harm to listen. "Shoot."
"This, then, Peter, is the situation; you, without a doubt, are the most remarkable person in the whole wide world. Almost an inst.i.tution in yourself."
I grinned. "Like the Maine farmer; a character."
"Right. As far as I, and anyone else that has had any contact with you at all, can tell or even guess, you are absolutely and perfectly unique."
"You said that before."
"So I did. You know--" and he held my eye steadily--"you"re so completely unique, and so--dangerous, that more than once I have been personally tempted to arrange your--elimination. From behind."
I couldn"t put up more than a weak grin for that. I had wondered about that, myself. A variation, a deadly one, of the old "if you can"t lick "em, join "em" theme. And I hadn"t been too cooperative.
He went on, slowly. "My personal reactions, for obvious reasons, do not enter into this. But I think, Peter, that you should consider those words very seriously before you are tempted to do or say anything rash."
I agreed that he was probably right, and that it might be better if I piped a quiet tune. "But that"s not the way I operate. As far as I"m concerned, I"m responsible to myself, and myself alone. If I wanted to be told what to say and what to think, and when to say it, I would have stayed in when I got my discharge."
He shrugged. "It might be better for all concerned if you were under military discipline, although it might not suit your ego. Take, for example, the two generals you met in Detroit; Generals Hayes and Van Dorf. They both are regarded as brilliant; they are both regarded as too mentally precocious to be risked in physical action. They are two of the most agile minds on the staff."
I took his word for it. "They are still generals to me. And I don"t have to stand at attention, and I don"t have to take their orders."
"Exactly," and he reached for the cigarettes again. "It is not going to do any good by adding more fuel to your mental furnace, but it is only fair to tell you that the ... elimination thing was more or less seriously discussed before you left Detroit."
He didn"t give me a chance to blow up, but raced on. "General Hayes and General Van Dorf are sensible men, dealing in material and sensible things. You are neither practical or sensible, in many ways, this being one. They, as well equipped as they are, are not prepared to cope with such a problem presented with such as you. I might add here, that neither is anyone else. What are you laughing at?"
I couldn"t help it. "The military mind at its best. First cross up the world by getting a weapon with no defense. Then when someone comes up with a defense for any weapon, including the weapon with no defense, they start turning back flips."
"Take that idiotic grin off your face." Just the same, he thought it was rather comic, himself. "Neither of us are in the Armed Forces, so for the present we can talk and plan freely. If you think, Peter, that all this can be solved with prejudice and a smart remark, you"re very, very wrong. The worst is yet to come."
I asked him if I"d had a bed of roses, so far. "I don"t think I could be much worse off than I"ve been so far. How would you like to be penned up--"
"Penned up?" He snorted disgustedly. "You"ve had yourself a holiday, and you can"t see it. Try to see the military, the legal point of view. Here is one person, Peter Ambrose Miller, one man and only one man, with the ability, the power, to cancel at one stroke every scientific advancement that armament has made in the past three thousand years."
"And the big boys don"t like it," I mused.
"The little boys, as you use the word, won"t like it, either," he said. "But, that"s not the point. Not the point at all. The stem of the apple is this--what are we going to do with you?"
"We?" I asked him.
"We," he explained carefully, as to a baby, "is a generic term for the army, the navy, the government, the world in general. As long as you live, as long as you continue to be able to do the things you can do now, a gun or an airplane is so much sc.r.a.p metal. But--only as long as you live!"
That I didn"t like. "You mean that--"
"Exactly what I said. As long as you"re alive a soldier or a sailor might as well be a Zulu; useful for the length he can throw a spear or shoot an arrow, but useless as he now stands. There is no army, apparently, right now that is worth more than its body weight--again, as long as you live."
"Do you have to harp on that?"
"Why not? Do you want to live forever, or do you expect to?"
He had me there. You bet I wanted to live forever. "Well?"
He yanked pensively at his upper lip. "Two solutions; one, announce you to the world with a clang of cymbals and a roll of drums. Two, bury you someplace. Oh, figuratively speaking," he added hastily as he saw my face.
"Solution one sounds good to me," I told him. "I could go home then."
He made it quite clear that Solution One was only theoretical; he was firm about that. "Outside of rewriting all the peace treaties in existence, do you remember how our Congress huddled over the Bomb? Can you see Congress allowing you, can you see the General Staff agreeing to share you with, for example, a United Nations Commission? Can you?"
No, I couldn"t.