Naked to the Stars Read online

  “I’m sorry,” said Harmon.

  “Yes, sir,” said Cal automatically.

  “You see,” said Harmon, speaking a little more slowly, “I’ve no right to risk the men who’d be serving with and under you, by asking the Medical Service to make an exception in your case. ”

  “Yes... I see, sir.”

  “On the other hand . . .” said Harmon. He hit the button below the schema with his fist. The pattern winked out into blank wall once more. Harmon turned back to Cal. “There’s that suggestion of mine the Colonel mentioned to you just now.”

  “Sir?” Cal was hardly listening.

  “General Walt Scoby, who heads the Contacts Service, as I imagine you know, is coming along in person on this Paumons expedition. He was asking me the other day if I knew of any ex-mulebrains who might be interested in the Contacts Service. ”Harmon smiled a little. “He’s having a mite of trouble getting men of that sort of experience himself. Of course, your psych-hold applies only to the Combat outfits. If you signed with General Scoby, you’d be coming along to the Paumons with the rest of us, even if only in a non-combatant slot.”

  “Contacts Service?” Cal lifted his head.

  “I know how you feel, Lieutenant. On the other hand, there’s a need for men like you, no matter in what capacity.” Harmon smiled. “I don’t mind telling you, I myself wouldn’t mind seeing someone with your experience and attitude high on General Scoby’s staff. You might look at it that way: after a fashion you’d still be working for the good of the Combat Units in bridging the gap between the Contacts Service and them.” He paused.“Well, it’s entirely up to you, Lieutenant. I wouldn’t want to talk you into anything you might regret later.”

  He extended his hand and Cal found himself shaking it.

  “And good luck, Lieutenant Truant. Calvin Truant, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good luck, Cal.”

  And then he was striding away from Cal, out of the office.

  * * *

  It was another day that Cal came across the wide, grassy, parklike mall that separated the Recruitment Office and other Combat Services from the converted hospital buildings that housed the ten-year-old Contacts Service.

  He had taken two weeks to face the fact that any kind of Service, for him, was better than none at all. And now, as he came across the mall, the grass underfoot was beginning to turn richly green from its brown tint of winter, and the shadow of the flag before the Contacts Office flashed in his eye like the shadow of a stooping hawk as it whipped in the light spring breeze.

  He went up the stone steps and inside. Behind the front door, the offices were cluttered and overcrowded, with a fair sprinkling of civilian workers among the uniformed personnel at the desks. Cal found the Information and Directory desk and gave his name to the middle-aged civilian woman working behind it.He had sent in his application in routine fashion the day before,and surprisingly, that same evening, had come word that General Scoby himself would like to talk to him if he had no objection to an appointment at 1400 hours the following day.

  Cal had no objection. In fact, it seemed to him to make little difference. He came now to keep the appointment with about the same emotion a man might bring to having his hair cut.

  The woman behind the desk kept him waiting only a minute or two and then took him in herself to see General Scoby.

  Stepping through the. indicated doorway—at the entrance of which she left him—into a sudden glare of sunlight from two tall windows, Cal caught sight simultaneously of an older man at the desk and of a leopard-sized, long-legged feline of a pale, fulvous color. It was black-spotted and wore a light leather harness from which a hoop-shaped leather handle projected stiffly upward at the shoulders. The large cat lay resting in a comer of the room beyond the desk. It raised its head at Cal’s entrance,which brought the eyes momentarily in line with Cal’s. The yellow, guarding, animal stare caught Cal between one footfall and the next, and in that fraction of a second Cal tensed, then relaxed, and moved on into the office.

  “Good reactions,” said the man at the desk, lifting his own untidily gray-haired head. “Sit down, Lieutenant.”

  Seating himself by the desk as the big cat in the comer dropped with boneless gracefulness back into its half-doze against the wall, Cal turned his glance on the man. He saw an aging, slightly overweight three-star general with bushy eyebrows and hair, a pipe in his mouth, and a uniform shirt tieless and open at the throat. Incongruously, the black and white piping of the Ranger Commandos—the Combat Services’ crack behind-enemy-lines units—ran along the edge of his shirt epaulets. His voice rasped on what seemed a deliberate and chronic note of exasperation.

  He took the pipe from his mouth and pointed with it at the cat in the comer.

  “Cheetah,” he said. “Named Limpari. My seeing-eye friend.”

  Cal looked without thinking at the man’s eyes, for they were knowing and full of sight.

  “Oh, just periodic blackouts.” Scoby jerked the pipe stem toward his bushy head of hair. “I’m a silver-skull. Plate on most of this side. What’s your particular purple heart, Lieutenant”—he frowned at the screen of the filmholder on his desk—“Truant. Cal. What kind of disability have you got, Cal?”

  “Sir,” said Cal, and stopped. He took a careful breath.“Psych-hold,” he said shortly.

  “Yeah. That’s right,” muttered Scoby, glancing once more at the filmholder. “I remember—so many things popping at once here.” He looked up at Cal. “In fact, I picked up quite a dossier on you. How come you waited for a battlefield commission?”

  “Sir?” said Cal woodenly.

  “Don’t give me the treatment. I’ve been there and back, too,Lieutenant. You know what I’m asking.” He jabbed the pipe-stem at the film in the filmholder. “You’ve had seven years. You got a general aptitude rating way to hell and gone up there. You got a top record and two or three of your medals actually mean something. How come you never tried for a commission before the Lehaunan Expedition?”

  Cal looked squarely at the other man.

  “I guess I didn’t want the responsibility, General.”

  “A mulebrain isn’t supposed to think. All he’s got to do is obey orders. Is that it?”

  “That’s right, sir.”

  “Commissioned officer might sooner or later have to give orders he didn’t like. Might be required to do things he didn’t agree with?”

  “Something like that, General,” said Cal. “Maybe.”

  “But a mulebrain’s got no choice, so his conscience doesn’t have to bother him? That so? Then how come,” said Scoby, tilting far back in his chair, swinging it around to face Cal and putting the pipe back between his teeth, “how come you took the battlefield commission when it came through for you? What changed your mind after all these years?”

  Cal shrugged. “I don’t know, sir,” he said.

  “No,” said Scoby, his teeth chewing on the bit of his pipe and watching Cal. “No, I guess you don’t. Well, I looked up your civilian past, too, here.” He shuffled about and found some papers on his desk. “I’d heard of your father, matter of fact. In fact, I was on the review board that checked over the court-martial of that Reserve Captain that fouled up in your home town during the Riots. Later on I read some of your father’s writings on the matter of Equal Representation and other things. Interesting.”

  “We didn’t agree,” said Cal monotonously, between lips that were, in spite of himself, stiff.

  “I gather that. Well,” said Scoby, leaning back in his chair once more, “we might as well get down to cases. I need you. I need a man with Combat Service experience. But more than that, I need one man in particular who’s been in the ranks as well as up in officer country. I need a man who can get along with mulebrains as well as regular officers, and double the usual job and take what’s handed out to him as well as I can myself. ”He stopped and leaned forward toward Cal. “He’ll need faith and brains and guts—not necessarily
in that order. You got at least two of them. Want the job?”

  “Sir,” said Cal, and he kept his face as still as water on a windless day. His gaze went impersonally past Scoby’s shoulder. “Would the General advise me to take the job?”

  “Hell, yes!” exploded Scoby. “I invented it, and it saved my soul. It might save yours. That’s a hell of a favor I’m doing you, Cal!”

  “Yes, sir,” said Cal. He hesitated a moment. “I’ll be glad to take the job, General.”

  “Fine,” said Scoby. “Fine. You can start out by ripping off those.” He pointed.

  Cal’s hands made a little instinctive move in spite of himself protectively up towards his lieutenant’s insignia on his epaulets.

  “My tabs, sir?”

  “That’s right,” said Scoby sardonically. “One of the little monkey wrenches thrown in my machinery from time to time happens to be a Government ruling that I can’t use rank as an inducement to sign men up. All Contacts Officers, regardless of their qualifications, must be run through the regular training cycle. Guess what that means? You climb back into issue coveralls and go back through Basic all over again.”

  Cal stared at the older man.

  “Basic?” he said.

  “Kind of a kick, isn’t it, Lieutenant?” said Scoby. “Get you out on the firing range and the obstacle course with all the other wet-eared recruits and teach you how to be a man and a soldier before you go goofing off as a Gudess Wonder. Don’t look at me like that. I know there’s no sense to it. The Combat Units’ General Staff knows there’s no sense to it, with a man like your-self. It wasn’t shoved into the Regulations to make sense, but to make me trouble. Well, how about it, Cal? You figure you can still square-comer the covers on a bunk? Or do you want to back out?”

  There was a faint, sharp glitter in Scoby’s eyes.

  “No, sir,” said Cal.

  “Little slow answering there, weren’t you?”

  “No, sir,” said Cal. “I was merely trying to reconcile this regulation with General Harmon telling me he wouldn’t mind seeing someone like me on your staff.”

  “General Harmon,” said Scoby. “Well, you’re just a little two-bit Lieutenant, Cal; yours not to question why the ways of generals. Or ask generals questions. But next time you’re in the library, you might read up on the siege of Troy.” He turned back to his desk. “That’s all. You can go, Lieutenant. Come see me after you’ve been through Contacts School.”

  Cal stood up. Scoby was pulling papers toward himself. “Troy, General?” he asked.

  “All about a horse,” grunted Scoby, without looking up. “Good day, Lieutenant.”

  Cal stared for a second longer, but Scoby seemed to have forgotten the very existence of any visitor. He was wrist-deep informs and papers, looking like a seedy bookkeeper, behind in his entries. Over in the comer, the cheetah had fallen asleep and slid down the slope of the wall to lie on its side on the floor,legs stiffly outstretched. It looked like some large, stuffed, toy animal. To Cal, suddenly, the very air in the room seemed stale and artificial.

  He turned around and went back to the outer office. The middle-aged woman who had taken him in to Scoby had hi spapers ready to sign. He signed, and was told to report in five days to be sent out for Basic Training, as a trainee private.

  He left the building. As he came down the steps outside, the sun still shone and the wind was still blowing. Only now, under the hawklike shadow of the flag, a pot-bellied Colonel in office pinks was scattering crumbs to a small horde of clamoring sparrows that fought and squabbled, shrieking, over the larger crusts.

  Chapter Six

  Four days later Cal lay once more on the slight slope of the sand of Homos Beach at Acapulco, Mexico, watching Annie swimming out beyond the first crest of breakers. It was late in the morning and they had the beach almost to themselves. Also it was shark season, but the dolphin patrol was guarding the shore waters and Annie was packing a stingaree.

  Nevertheless, Cal kept his eye out for fins, keeping the dolphin whistle handy. Otherwise, he simply lay and watched Annie.She swam strongly, in a straight line, her white arms flashing against the sun-brilliant blue of the sea, parallel to the beach.She’s got guts, thought Cal unexpectedly. Too much guts for her own good, if trouble comes. And then he felt that clumsy expression of his feelings about her followed immediately by a sudden terrible stomach-shrinking sense of pain and helplessness and loss. He reached for the dolphin whistle without looking for it, put it to his lips, and blew one long and two short.

  One of the dolphins on patrol curved aside and slid out of sight under the water to rise a second later beside Annie and nudge her toward the beach. Her arms broke their rhythm; she stopped and looked shoreward. He stood up, waved “no sharks” and beckoned her in. She turned toward him and her arms began to flash again.

  He lay down once more, the sudden emotion he had felt dying within him. After a few moments she came ashore in a flurry of foam, sliding up on the sand. She got to her feet, splashed her-self clean of the sand, and then, shaking her short dark hair clear of the bathing cap, came up the slope toward him, smiling. A loneliness so deep as to be almost anger moved in him. To hell with it, he thought, I love you. He opened his mouth to say it out loud. But she came up to him, and he closed it again without saying anything.

  He stood up. Standing, he could see how small she was.

  “What?” she said, shaking her hair back, looking up at him.

  “Let’s go get a drink” he said.

  "Two mornings later, after tests and outfitting, Gal took a Services transport with four hundred and sixty-eight other recruit-rated enlistees. The transport was an atmosphere rocket with the same sort of body shell that in a commercial flight would have been rated at a maximum of a hundred and fifty passengers.This one, however, locked on an extra motor and filled its interior with two double-rows of gimbal-hung seats on each side of a narrow aisle. Cal managed a seat by one of the small windows and sat there with his view of Stapleton Field, trying to think of Annie and ignore his surroundings. It would be no trouble going through Basic again, he had told himself. Just a matter of keeping his head down and going through the motions.It made no difference one way or another. He was completely neutral, between the Combat and Contact Services. If everyone left him alone, he would leave them alone. If anyone started to step on his toes, he would know how to take care of it.

  He had told Annie, frankly, of his own contempt for the Contact Service and its personnel, the night before. “Maybe you’ll change your mind?” she said. “It won’t be easy working with people if you think that way about them.”

  “You don’t know the Service,” he had answered. “It’s a job to do and so many different bodies and faces to do it with you.”

  For a moment she had looked as if she would say something more. But she had not.

  And now Cal sat in his narrow seat, staring out the window waiting for lift-time, surrounded by men in new forest-green uniforms. The sound of their conversation and the heat of their bodies enclosed him in a shell of unfamiliarity within which he was content. What did he have to do with graduations, girls,relatives, sports. . . .

  “Hey, Dad! Dad!”

  For a moment Cal did not connect the name with himself.“Dad” was what they had called older men in their middle twenties when he had been in Basic. Then he looked up. A grinning, young, sharp-chinned face was peering down at him from between the two seats ahead and in the tier above him.

  “What?” said Cal.

  “Got a light?”

  The transport was still on the ground. The no-smoking sign was lit in the ceiling overhead. But Cal saw no point in wasting his breath after the decision he had made to remain neutral. His lighter was in a side pocket jammed against the wall. He reached into a breast pocket, extracted a self-striking cigaret, and passed it up.

  “Hey, one of the field smokes!” said the sharp-chinned face. “Many thanks, Dad.” Face and cigaret withdrew. A few seconds later smoke f
iltered down between the seats.

  A minute after that there were steps approaching down the aisle. They stopped at the tier of the sharp-chinned recruit.

  “Got a cigaret, soldier?” said an older voice.

  “Sure, Sec,” said the voice that had called Cal. “Not field smokes. But here, help yourself.”

  “I will. That all you got?”

  “Well—hey! What’re you doing? That’s all I got to last me to the Fort. I thought you only wanted one.”

  “Don’t let it worry you, soldier. As far as you’re concerned,you’re through smoking for the next three months, until you get out of Basic. And if I were you I wouldn’t try bumming from your friends after you get to camp. I’ll pass the word along the cadre wires when we get there—maybe your Section Leader can find a little extra something to remind you to believe in signs.”

  The footsteps went off. Cal tried to go back to his thoughts of Annie.

  “That’s kind of extreme, isn’t it?” said a voice in Cal’s right ear. Cal turned to look into the face of the trainee beside him;"a good-looking if rather pale-faced, serious, tall young man in his early twenties. “On commercial ships most of those no-smoking signs have been disconnected long ago.”

  “It’s regulations,” said Cal, shortly. But the other went on talking.

  “You’re Contacts Service, like me, aren’t you?” he said. “I noticed the color code on the A3 file you’re carrying. I’m Harvey Washun.”

  “Cal Truant,” grunted Cal.

  “That’s one of the things we’ll have to watch out for after we

  become officers, isn’t it? Unreal enforcement of regulations like that, just now? There’s a responsibility to the fellow man as well as to the alien—to all living things, in fact.”

  “That’s what I heard,” said Cal. He pulled his dodgecap down over his eyes, slouched down in his seat and pretended to go to sleep. He heard a creak from the seat belt (also abandoned on commercial ships of the present day) as his seatmate shifted position embarrassedly. But there was no more talk.