The Crack in Space (1966) Read online

  A technician nodded to Jim. Time to begin his speech.

  ‘It’s very popular these days,’ Jim Briskin said to the TV camera, ‘to make fun of the old dreams and schemes for planetary colonization. How could people have been so nutty? Trying to live in completely inhuman environments … on worlds never designed for Homo sapiens. And it’s amusing that they tried for decades to alter these hostile environments to meet human needs - and naturally failed.’ He spoke slowly, almost drawlingly; he took his time. He had the attention of the nation, and he meant to make thorough use of it. ‘So now we’re looking for a planet ready-made, another “Venus”, or more accurately what Venus specifically never was. What we had hoped it would be: lush, moist and verdant and productive, a Garden of Eden just waiting for us to show up.’

  Reflectively, Patricia Heim smoked her El Producto alta cigar, never taking her eyes from him.

  ‘Well,’ Jim Briskin said, ‘we’ll never find it. And if we do, it’ll be too late. Too small, too late, too far away. If we want another Venus, a planet we can colonize, we’ll have to manufacture it ourselves. We can laugh ourselves sick at Bruno Mini, but the fact is, he was right.’

  In the control room Sal Heim stared at him in gross anguish. He had done it. Sanctioned Mini’s abandoned scheme of recasting the ecology of another world. Madness revisited.

  The camera clicked off.

  Turning his head, Jim Briskin saw the expression on Sal Heim’s face. He had been cut off there in the control room; Sal had given the order.

  ‘You’re not going to let me finish?’ Jim said.

  Sal’s voice, amplified, boomed, ‘No, goddam it. No!’

  Standing up, Pat called back, ‘You have to. He’s the candidate. If he wants to hang himself, let him.’

  Also on his feet, Danville said hoarsely, ‘If you cut him off again I’ll spill it publicly. I’ll leak the entire thing how you’re working him like a puppet!’ He started at once toward the door of the studio; he was leaving. Evidently he meant what he had said.

  Jim Briskin said, ‘You better turn it back on, Sal. They’re right; you have to let me talk.’ He did not feel angry, only impatient. His desire was to continue, nothing else. ‘Come on, Sal,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m waiting.’

  The party brass and Sal Heim, in the control room, conferred.

  ‘He’ll give in,’ Pat said to Jim Briskin. ‘I know Sal.’ Her face was expressionless; she did not enjoy this, but she intended to endure it.

  ‘Right,’ Jim agreed, nodding.

  ‘But will you watch a playback of the speech, Jim?’ She said, ‘For Sal’s sake. Just to be sure you intend what you say.’

  ‘Sure,’ he said. He had meant to anyhow.

  Sal Heim’s voice boomed from the wall speaker. ‘Damn your black Col hide, Jim!’

  Grinning, Jim Briskin waited, seated at his desk, his arms folded.

  The read light of the central camera clicked back on.

  TWO

  After the speech Jim Briskin’s press secretary, Dorothy Gill, collared him in the corridor. ‘Mr Briskin, you asked me yesterday to find out if Bruno Mini is still alive. He is, after a fashion.’ Miss Gill examined her notes. ‘He’s a buyer for a dried fruit company in Sacramento, California, now. Evidently Mini’s entirely given up his planet-wetting career, but your speech just now will probably bring him back to his old grazing ground.’

  ‘Possibly not,’ Briskin said. ‘Mini may not like the idea of a Col taking up his ideas and propagandizing them. Thanks, Dorothy.’

  Coming up beside him, Sal Heim shook his head and said, ‘Jim, you just don’t have political instinct.’

  Shrugging, Jim Briskin said, ‘Possibly you’re right.’ He was in that sort of mood, now he felt passive and depressed. In any case the damage had been done; the speech was on tape and already being relayed to the R-L satellite. His review of it had been cursory at best.

  ‘I heard what Dotty said,’ Sal said. ‘That Mini character will be showing up here now; we’ll have him to contend with, along with all our other problems. Anyhow, how about a drink?’

  ‘Okay,’ Jim Briskin agreed. ‘Wherever you say. Lead the way.’

  ‘May I join you?’ Patricia said, appearing beside her husband.

  ‘Sure,’ Sal said. He put his arm around her and hugged her. ‘A good big tall one, full of curiously-refreshing tiny little bubbles that last all through the drink. Just what women like.’

  As they stepped out onto the sidewalk, Jim Briskin saw a picket - two of them, in fact - carrying signs.

  KEEP THE

  WHITE HOUSE WHITE

  LET’S KEEP AMERICA CLEAN!

  The two pickets, both young Caucs, stared at him and he and Sal and Patricia stared at them. No one spoke. Several homeopape camera men snapped pics; their flashbulbs lit the static scene starkly for an instant, and then Sal and Patricia, with Jim Briskin following, started on. The two pickets continued to pace back and forth along their little routes.

  ‘The bastards,’ Pat said as the three of them seated themselves at a booth in the cocktail lounge across the street from the TV studio.

  Jim Briskin said, ‘It’s their job. God evidently meant them to do that.’ It did not particularly bother him; in one form or another it had been a part of his life as long as he could remember.

  ‘But Schwarz agreed to keep race and religion out of the election,’ Pat said.

  ‘Bill Schwarz did,’ Jim Briskin said, ‘but Verne Engel didn’t. And it’s Engel who runs CLEAN, not the SRCD Party.’

  ‘I know darn well the SRCD pays the money to keep CLEAN solvent,’ Sal murmured. ‘Without their support it’d fold in a day.’

  ‘I don’t agree with you,’ Briskin said. ‘I think there’ll always be a hate organization like CLEAN, and there’ll always be people to support it.’ After all, CLEAN had a point; they did not want to see a Negro President, and wasn’t it their right to feel like that? Some people did, some people didn’t; that was perfectly natural. And, he thought, why should we pretend that race is not the issue? It is, really. I am a Negro. Verne Engel is factually correct. The real question was: how large a percentage of the electorate supported CLEAN’S views? Certainly, CLEAN did not hurt his feelings; he could not be wounded: he had experienced too much already in his years as a newsclown. In my years, he thought to himself acidly, as an American Negro.

  A small boy, white, appeared at the booth with a pen and tablet of paper. ‘Mr Briskin, can I get your autograph?’

  Jim signed and the boy darted off to join his parents at the door of the tavern. The couple, well-dressed, young, and obviously upper stratum, waved at him cheerily. ‘We’re with you!’ the man called.

  ‘Thanks,’ Jim said, nodding to them and trying - but not successfully - to sound cheery in return.

  ‘You’re in a mood,’ Pat commented.

  He nodded. Mutely.

  ‘Think of all those people with lily-white skins,’ Sal said, ‘who’re going to vote for a Col. My, my. It’s encouraging. Proves not all of us Whites are bad down underneath.’

  ‘Did I ever say you were?’ Jim asked.

  ‘No, but you really think that. You don’t really trust any of us.’

  ‘Where’d you drag that up from?’ Jim demanded, angry now.

  ‘What’re you going to do?’ Sal said. ‘Slash me with your electro-graphic magnetic razor?’

  Pat said sharply, ‘What are you doing, Sal? Why are you talking to Jim like that?’ She peered about nervously. ‘Suppose someone overheard.’

  ‘I’m trying to jerk him out of his depression,’ Sal said. ‘I don’t like to see him give in to them. Those CLEAN pickets upset him, but he doesn’t recognize it or feel it consciously.’ He eyed Jim. ‘I’ve heard you say it many times. “I can’t be hurt.” Hell, you sure can. You were hurt just now. You want everyone to love you, White and Col both. I don’t know how you ever got into politics in the first place. You should have stayed a newsclown, delighting young and old. Espe
cially the very young.’

  Jim said, ‘I want to help the human race.’

  ‘By changing the ecology of the planets? Are you serious?’

  ‘If I’m voted into office I actually intend to appoint Bruno Mini, without even having met him, director of the space program; I’m going to give him the chance they never let him have, even when they—’

  ‘If you get elected,’ Pat said, ‘you can pardon Dr Sands.’

  ‘Pardon him?’ He glanced at her, disconcerted. ‘He’s not being tried; he’s being divorced.’

  ‘You haven’t heard the rumes?’ Pat said. ‘His wife is going to dig up something criminal he’s done so she can dispatch him and obtain their total property. No one knows what it is yet but she’s hinted—’

  ‘I don’t want to hear,’ Jim Briskin said.

  ‘You may be right,’ Pat said thoughtfully. ‘The Sands divorce is turning nasty; it might backfire if you mentioned it, as Sal wants you to. The mistress, Cally Vale, has disappeared, possibly murdered. Maybe you do have an instinct, Jim. Maybe you don’t need us after all.’

  ‘I need you,’ Jim said, ‘but not to embroil me in Dr Sands’ marital problems.’ He sipped his drink.

  Rick Erickson, repairman for Pethel Jiffi-scuttler Sales & Service, lit a cigarette, tipped his stool back by pushing with his bony knees against his work bench. Before him rested the master turret of a defective jiffi-scuttler. The one, in fact, which belonged to Dr Lurton Sands.

  There had always been bugs in the ‘scuttlers. The first one put in use had broken down; years ago, that had been, but the ‘scuttlers remained basically the same now as then.

  Historically, the original defective ‘scuttler had belonged to an employee of Terran Development named Henry Ellis. After the fashion of humans Ellis had not reported the defect to his employers … or so Rick recalled. It had been before his time but myth persisted, an incredible legend, still current among ‘scuttler repairmen, that through the defect in his ‘scuttler Ellis had - it was hard to believe - composed the Holy Bible.

  The principle underlying the operation of the ‘scuttlers was a limited form of time travel. Along the tube of his ‘scuttler - it was said - Ellis had found a weak point, a shimmer, at which another continuum completely had been visible. He had stooped down and witnessed a gathering of tiny persons who yammered in speeded-up voices and scampered about in their world just beyond the wall of the tube.

  Who were these people? Initially, Ellis had not known, but even so he had engaged in commerce with them; he had accepted sheets - astonishingly thin and tiny - of questions, taken the questions to language-decoding equipment at TD, then, once the foreign script of the tiny people had been translated, taking the questions to one of the corporation’s big computers to get them answered. Then back to the Linguistics Department and at last at the end of the day, back up the tube of the Jiffi-scuttler to hand to the tiny people the answers - in their own language - to their questions.

  Evidently, if you believed this, Ellis had been a charitable man.

  However, Ellis had supposed that this was a non-Terran race dwelling on a miniature planet in some other system entirely. He was wrong. According to the legend, the tiny people were from Earth’s own past; the script, of course, had been ancient Hebrew. Whether this had really happened Rick did not pretend to know, but, in any case, for some breach of company rules Ellis had been fired by TD and had long since disappeared. Perhaps he had emigrated; who knew? Who cared? TD’s job was to patch the thin spot in the tube and see that the defect did not reoccur in subsequent ‘scuttlers.

  All at once the intercom at the end of Rick’s workbench blared. ‘Hey, Erickson.’ It was Pethel’s voice. ‘Dr Sands is up here asking about his ‘scuttler. When’ll it be ready?’

  With the handle of a screwdriver Rick Erickson savagely tapped the master turret of Dr Sands’ ‘scuttler. I better go upstairs and talk to Sands, he reflected. I mean, this is driving me crazy. It can’t malfunction the way he claims.

  Two steps at a time, Rick Erickson ascended to the main floor. There, at the front door, a man was just leaving; it was Sands - Erickson recognized him from the homeopape pics. He hurried, reached him outside on the sidewalk.

  ‘Listen, doc - how come you say your ‘scuttler dumps you off in Portland, Oregon and places like that? It just can’t; it isn’t built that way!’

  They stood facing each other. Dr Sands, well-dressed, lean and slightly balding, with deeply tanned skin and a thin, tapered nose, regarded him complexly, cautious about answering. He looked smart, very smart.

  So this is the man they’re all writing about, Erickson said to himself. Carries himself better than the rest of us and has a suit made from Martian mole cricket hide. But - he felt irritation. Dr Sands in general had a helpless manner; good-looking, in his mid-forties, he had an easy-going, bewildered geniality about him, as if unable to deal with or comprehend the forces which had overtaken him. Erickson could see that; Dr Sands had a crushed quality, still stunned.

  And yet Sands remained a gentleman. In a quiet, reasonable tone he said, ‘But that’s what it seems to do. I wish I could tell you more, but I’m not mechanically inclined.’ He smiled, a thoroughly disarming smile that made Erickson ashamed of his own gruffness.

  ‘Aw, hell,’ Erickson said, backtracking. ‘It’s the fault of TD - they could have ironed the bugs out of the ‘scuttlers years ago. Too bad you got a lemon.’ You look like a not too bad guy, he reflected.

  “‘A lemon,” ‘ Dr Sands echoed. ‘Yes, that sums it up.’ His face twisted; he seemed amused. ‘Well, that’s my luck. Everything has been running like this for me, lately.’

  ‘Maybe I could get TD to take it back,’ Erickson said. ‘And swap you another one for it.’

  ‘No.’ Dr Sands shook his head vigorously. ‘I want that particular one.’ His tone had become firm; he meant what he said.

  ‘Why?’ Who would want to keep an admitted lemon? It didn’t make sense. In fact, the entire business had a wrong ring to it, and Erickson’s keen faculties detected this - he had seen many, many customers in his time.

  ‘Because it’s mine,’ Sands said. ‘I picked it out originally.’ He started on, then, down the sidewalk.

  ‘Don’t give me that,’ Erickson said, half to himself.

  Pausing, Sands said, ‘What?’ He moved a step back, his face dark, now. The geniality had departed.

  ‘Sorry. No offense.’ Erickson eyed Dr Sands acutely. And did not like what he saw. Beneath the doctor’s suavity there lay a coldness, something fixed and hard. This was no ordinary person, and Erickson felt uneasy.

  Dr Sands said in a crisp voice, ‘Get it fixed and soon.’ He turned and strode on down the sidewalk, leaving Erickson standing there.

  Jeez, Erickson said to himself, and whistled. My busted back. I wouldn’t want to tangle with him, he thought as he walked into the store.

  Going downstairs a step at a time, hands thrust deep in his pockets, he thought: Maybe I’ll stick it all back together and take a trip through it. He was again thinking of old Henry Ellis, the first man to receive a defective ‘scuttler; he was recalling that Ellis had not wanted to give up his particular one, either. And for good reason.

  Back in the service department basement once more, Rick seated himself at the work bench, picked up Dr Sands’ ‘scuttler-turret and began to reassemble it. Presently, he had expertly restored it to its place and had hooked it back into the circuit.

  Now, he said to himself as he switched on the power field. Let’s see where it gets us. He entered the big gleaming circular hoop which was the entrance of the ‘scuttler, found himself - as usual - within a gray, formless tube which stretched in both directions. Framed in the opening behind him lay his work bench. And in front of him—

  New York City. An unstable view of an industriously-active street comer which bordered Dr Sands’ office. And a wedge, beyond it, of the vast building itself, the high rise skyscraper of plastic - rexeroid compounds
from Jupiter - with its infinitude of floors, endless windows … and, past that, monojets rising and descending from the ramps, along which the footers scurried in swarms so dense as to seem self-destructive. The largest city in the world, four-fifths of which lay subsurface; what he saw was only a meager fraction, a trace of its visible projections. No one in his lifetime, even a jerry, could view it all; the city was simply too extensive.

  See? Erickson grumbled to himself. Your ‘scuttler’s working okay; this isn’t Portland, Oregon - it’s exactly what it’s supposed to be.

  Crouching down, Erickson ran an expert hand over the surface of the tube. Seeking - what? He didn’t know. But something which would justify the doctor’s insistance on retaining this particular ‘scuttler.

  He took his time. He was not in a hurry. And he intended to find what he was searching for.

  THREE

  The planet-wetting speech which Jim Briskin delivered that night - taped earlier during the day and then beamed from the R-L satellite - was too painful for Salisbury Heim to endure. Therefore, he took an hour off and sought relief as many men did: he boarded a jet’ab and shortly was on his way to the Golden Door Moments of Bliss satellite. Let Jim blab away about Bruno Mini’s crackpot engineering program, he said to himself as he rested in the rear seat of the rising ‘ab, grateful for this interval of relaxation. Let him cut his own throat. But at least I don’t have to be dragged down to defeat along with him; I’m tempted, sometime before election day, to cut myself loose and go over to the SRCD party.

  Beyond doubt, Bill Schwarz would take him on. By an intricate route Heim had already sounded the opposition out. Schwarz had, through this careful, indirect linkage, expressed pleasure at the idea of Heim joining forces with him. However, Heim was not really ready to make his move; he had not pursued the topic further.

  At least, not until today. This new, painful bombshell. And at a time when the party had troubles enough already.

  The fact of the matter was - and he knew this from the latest polls - that Jim Briskin was trailing Schwarz. Despite the fact that he had all the Col vote, and that included non-Negro dark races such as Puerto Ricans on the East Coast and the Mexicans on the West. It was not a shoo-in by any means. And why was Briskin trailing? Because all the Whites would be going to the pols, whereas only about sixty per cent of the Cols would show up on election day. Incredibly, they were apathetic toward Jim. Perhaps they believed - and he had heard this said - that Jim had sold out to the White power structure. That he was not authentically a leader of the Col people as such. And in a sense this was true.