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Attrition

Wannamaker, Jim

Published: 1961

Type(s): Short Fiction, Science Fiction

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The faxgram read: REPORT MA IS INSTANTER GRAVIS. The news ob-

elisk just off the express strip outside Mega Angeles' Galactic Survey

Building was flashing: ONE OF OUR STAR SHIPS IS MISSING!

Going up in the lift, I recalled what I had seen once scrawled upon the

bulkhead of a GS trainer: Space is kind to those who respect her. And under-

neath, in different handwriting: Fear is the word, my boy .

The look given me by the only other passenger, a husky youngster in

GS gray, when I punched Interstel's level, didn't help. It was on the tip of

my tongue to retaliate: Yes, and I'd turn in my own mother if she were a star

chaser and I caught her doing something stupid. But I let it ride; obviously, it

was a general-principles reaction; he couldn't have known the particulars

of my last assignment: the seldom kind that had given Interstel its

reputation.

The lumer over the main entrance glowed: INTERSTELLAR

SECURITY, INVESTIGATION, AND SPECIAL SERVICES BRANCH,

GALACTIC SURVEY, NORTH AMERICAN FEDERATION.

At the end of the long corridor between offices was a door labeled:

CHIEF SPECIAL AGENT.

Gravis hadn't changed a bit in the thirty-six hours since I'd last seen

him: a large, rumpled man who showed every year of the twenty he'd

spent in Interstel.

"It's a nasty job, Ivy."

"Always has been," I said, completing the little interchange that had

been reiterated so often that it had become almost a shibboleth.

I took advantage of his momentary silence. I'd had an hour during the

air-taxi hop from Xanadu, the resort two hundred miles off the coast of

California, to prepare my bitter statement. Words come fluently when an

earned leave has been pulled peremptorily out from beneath you; a leave

that still had twenty-nine days to go. But I was brief; the news flasher

had canceled much of the bite of my anger; it took me something under

one hundred and twenty seconds, including repetition of certain words

and phrases.

Gravis lived up to his name; he didn't bat an eye. He handed me a thin

folder; three of its sheets were facsimile extrapolations of probot reports;

the fourth was an evaluation-and-assignment draft; all were from

Galactic Survey Headquarters, NAF, in Montreal. The top three were

identical, excepting probot serial numbers and departure and arrival

times. GSS 231 had been located in its command orbit above a planet that

had not yet been officially named but was well within the explored limits

of the space sector assigned NAFGS by the interfederational body, had

been monitored by three robot probes—described as being in optimum

mechanical condition —on three distinctly separate occasions, and all

devices that could be interrogated from outside had triggered safe and se-

cure . But no human contact had been accomplished. The fourth

sheet—which bore the calligraphy on its upper right corner: Attention

Callum —assumed that the crew of 231, a survey team and con alternate,

had met with an accident or series of accidents of undetermined origin

and extent in the course of carrying out the duty described as follow-up

exploration

the

Earth-type

planet,

herein

and

heretofore

designated

Epsilon-Terra , and must therefore be considered—

"The news is—" I started to say.

"Pure delirium," Gravis interrupted. "Haven't you read Paragraph Six?

We know exactly where the ship is because it's exactly where it should

be. It's the crew that's missing."

Paragraph Seven concluded: We therefore recommend that an agent of ex-

perience be dispatched soonest to the designated star system.

"Experienced or expendable?" I muttered.

"Ivy, after ten years in Interstel, you should know that experience and

expendability are synonymous."

Inside the GS section of the Lunar Complex, I had the occasion to think

semantically again.

Words like instanter and soonest seldom match their literal meaning

when applied to the physical transport of human beings, but in my

job—I hadn't even had time to get my gee-legs.

I stepped off the glide strip in front of the ramp marked OUTGOING

PERSONNEL, handed the efficient looking redhead my Q-chit and ID,

and said: "Priority one."

"Quarantine, O.K.," she checked, smiling. "Feeling antiseptic?"

I had to admit, privately, that I did not. As applied to her, the term:

coveralls, regulation, gray was strictly a euphemism. Perhaps it was the

combination of low gravity and controlled conditions that made Lunatics

of female persuasion blossom so anatomically. Or maybe she was a

plant, a deliberate psych experiment to put outbound starmen in a par-

ticular frame of mind.

She flashed my identification on the screen, took a long look, and be-

came coldly efficient. Callum, Ivor Vincent. Age: 40. Height: 5'8". Weight:

142. Hair: brown. Eyes: green. Rank: Special Agent, Interstel. "You look much

older, Mr. Callum."

She consulted her assignment list.

"Lock Three."

I snapped the identoflake back in its bracelet, picked up my jump bag

and briefing kit, and headed up the ramp, feeling more eyes than the

redhead's. The anonymity of a GS working uniform hadn't lasted very

long.

By the time I was able to capture enough breath to make coherent

sounds, the shuttler was already approaching parking orbit. The pilot

had used maximum grav boost, and the trip must have crowded the

record.

"That wasn't exactly SOP, was it?"

"Priority one, sir," the youngster replied, showing teeth wolfishly.

I was still trying to think up an adequate rebuttal when I came out of

the air lock and into the ship. Then I felt better. P 1 means, among other

things, first available transportation—but this giant was the newest type,

crammed to the buffers with the results of science's latest efforts to make

star voyageurs as safe as express-strip commuters inside a Terran dome.

Even the vibrations of the great Gatch-Spitzer-Melnikov generators,

building toward maximum output, had been dampened to a level more

imaginary than tangible. Internal gravity was momentarily in operation,

as an additional blessing; and, walking down the blue-lit corridor to-

ward Astrogation, I could feel the occasional, metallic, thermal thump

that meant the IP drive was hot and critical.

I got a second lift when I saw who was bending over the robopilot

console: Antonio Moya, Mexico City's gift to Galactic Survey some

thirty-five years earlier; a café-con-leche type with shrewd eyes, nervous

hands, silver-streaked hair that showed a defiance of geriatric injections,

a slight, wiry body that couldn't have gone more than one hundred and

twenty pounds at 1.0 gee, and probably the best Master Spaceman ex-

tant. Only discipline kept the grin off my face. But he was on the horn,

getting traffic clearance, so I didn't interrupt.

The others were unknowns, the sort characterized by old spacers as

"pretty boy, recruitment ad types," but they looked competent; I figured

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