Half Life Read Free Page B

something really different? And don’t tell me it’s against the advance plans; we’re here to find things out, and you know it. To quote the poetic characters who wrote our mission plan, ‘There’s no telling in advance which piece of a jigsaw puzzle will prove to be the key to the big picture.’ ”
    Goodall, in legal charge of the project, could have given all this as a set of orders, but the many decades’ intrusion of military discipline into basic research was not yet that deep.
    “It’s not a matter of set policy,” Belvew replied as mildly as he could—he had his own troubles, even if they didn’t include SAS; but Goodall was his commander, in a rather shaky way. “Dodging risk to the jets before the seismic and weather gear are all deployed is common sense, not just policy, and you know it. Once they’re in action, long-term studies can go on even if we lose transport for a while. We’ve made one landing already to deploy a factory, and a couple of others to restock from it, after all.”
    “I know. Sorry.” Goodall didn’t sound very sorry, actually, but courtesy also had higher priority than mere discipline. Without it, discipline would quickly evaporate even among adults, as most of surviving humanity had eventually learned the hard way. “It’d be nice to be around when some of the results crystallize, though. And you can’t count the later landings because they were in the same place and we knew what to expect.”
    “Not exactly. The original shelf was gone.”
    “The area was plain Titanian dirt, mixed tar-dust and ice we guess, with no cliff to fall down this time. Even I could probably have set down safely.” No one contradicted this blatant exaggeration. “The old saw about dead heroes—”
    “Doesn’t apply, Arthur.” Maria Collos, somehow, was the only one of the group who could manage to interrupt people without sounding rude. Perhaps it was because her own ailments, a pancreatic cancer and consequent diabetes, were being handled by Status and gave her little pain or inconvenience; she merely knew she was dying. “We’re already dead heroes. We’ve been told so.” There might or might not have been sarcasm in her tone. No one else, even Goodall, spoke for a moment. Then Belvew referred back to the landing question.
    “I’ll be glad to do a ground check after finishing the Four line, if Maria’s radar and my own eyes can find me landing and takeoff surface. We can start getting seismic info without Line Five. Actually, we’re all as curious as Art about the smooth stuff, and it’s good tactics to eliminate possibilities as early as opportunity lets us. Let me top off these tanks just to play safe, and then you can put me back where I left the Four leg, Maria. After that’s done we’ll scout your new patch for landing risk, if you’re not doing that already.”
    No one commented, much less objected, and Gene made his remaining passes through the thunderhead with no stalls. Oceanus was struck more than once by lightning, but this risk had been foreseen. Strips of conducting polyacetylene—no one had expected to find a convenient source of copper or silver near any of the ice bodies orbiting Saturn—extended from wingtip to wingtip and from nose to tail, preventing any large potential difference in the basic structure. The discovery after the factory had matured of silicate dust containing a reasonable amount of aluminum had been a pleasant surprise, and gave hope for more jets eventually than had been planned.
    There were no remarks about Belvew’s near stall, either; nearly all had flown the ramjets at one time or another. The exceptions were Goodall, whose own senses were drowned in pain too much of the time to let him use a body waldo safely; Pete Martucci, whose reflexes, though he was one of the very few of the staff not known to be dying of something, had never been good enough to trust during landings; and the doctor, Lieutenant Colonel Sam Donabed, who had