King of the Hill
IT DID Col. Hal Gascoigne no good whatsoever to know that
he was the only man aboard Satellite Vehicle 1. No good
at all. He had stopped reminding himself of the fact some
time back.
And now, as he sat sweating in the perfectly balanced air
in front of the bombardier board, one of the men spoke to
him again:
"Colonel, sir"
Gascoigne swung around in the seat, and the sergeant
Gascoigne could almost remember the man's nameUirew
him a snappy Air Force salute.
"Well?"
"Bomb one is primed, sir. Your orders?"
"My orders?" Gascoigne said wonderingly. But the man
was already gone. Gascoigne couldn't actually see the ser-
geant leave the control cabin, but he was no longer in it.
While he tried to remember, another voice rang in the
cabin, as flat and razzy as all voices sound on an intercom.
"Radar room. On target."
A regular, meaningless peeping. The timing circuit had
cut in.
Or had it? There was nobody in the radar room. There
was nobody in the bomb hold, either. There had never been
anybody on board SV-I but Gascoigne, not since he had
relieved Grinnelland Grinnell had flown the station up
here in the first place.
Then who had that sergeant been? His name was . . .
It was  .  .  .
The hammering of the teletype blanked it out. The noise
was as loud as a pom-pom in the echoing metal cave. He got
up and coasted across the deck to the machine, gliding in the
gravity-free cabin with the ease of a man to whom free fall
is almost second nature.
The teletype was silent by the time he reached it, and at
first the tape looked blank. He wiped the sweat out of his
eyes. There was the message.
MNBVCXZ LKJ HGFDS PYTR AOIU EUIO QPALZM
He got out his copy of The Well-Tempered Pogo and
checked the speeches of Grundoon the Beaver-Chile for the
key letter-sequence on which the code was based. There
weren't very many choices. He had the clear in ten minutes.
BOMB ONE WASHINGTON 1700 HRS TAMMANANY
There it was. That was what he had been priming the
bomb for. But there should have been earlier orders, giving
him the go-ahead to prime. He began to rewind the paper.
It was all blank.
AndWashington? Why would the Joint Chiefs of Staff
order him
"Colonel Gascoigne, sir."
Gascoigne jerked around and returned the salute. "What's
your name?" he snapped.
"Sweeney, sir," the corporal said. Actually it didn't sound
very much like Sweeney, or like anything else; it was just
a noise. Yet the man's face looked familiar. "Ready with
bomb two, sir."
The corporal saluted, turned, took two steps, and faded.
He did not vanish, but he did not go out the door, either.
He simply receded, became darker and harder to distinguish,
and was no longer there. It was as though he and Gascoigne
had disagreed about the effects of perspective in the glowing
Earthlight, and Gascoigne had turned out to be wrong.
Numbly, he finished rewinding the paper. There was no
doubt about it. There the 'order stood, black on yellow, as
plain as plain. Bomb the capital of your own country at
1700 hours. Just incidentally, bomb your own home in the
process, but don't give that a second thought. Be thorough,
drop two bombs; don't worry about missing by a few seconds
of arc and hitting Baltimore instead, or Silver Spring, or
Milford, Del. CIG will give you the coordinates, but plaster
the area anyhow. That's S.O.P.
With rubbery fingers, Gascoigne began to work the keys
of the teletype. Sending on the frequency of Civilian Intel-
ligence Group, he typed:
HELP SHOUT SERIOUS REPEAT SERIOUS PERSONNEL TROUBLE
HERE STOP DON'T KNOW HOW LONG I CAN KEEP IT DOWN STOP
URGENT GASCOIGNE SV ONE STOP
Behind him, the oscillator peeped rhythmically, timing the
drive on the launching rack trunnion.
"Radar room. On target."
Gascoigne did not turn. He sat before the bombardier board
and sweated in the perfectly balanced air. Inside his skull,
his own voice was shouting:
STOP  STOP  STOP
That, as we reconstructed it afterwards, is how the SV-1
affair began.  It was pure luck, I suppose, that Gascoigne
sent his message direct to us. Civilian Intelligence Group
is rarely  called  into  an emergency  when  the  emergency  is
just being born. Usually Washington tries to do the bailing
job first. Then, when Washington discovers that the boat is
still sinking,  it passes  the bailing can to  ususually with  a
demand that we transform it into a centrifugal pump, .on
the double.
We don't mind. Washington's failure to develop a gov-
ernment department similar in function to CIG is the reason
why we're in business. The profits, of course, go to Affiliated
Enterprises, Inc., the loose corporation of universities and
industries which put up the money to build ULTIMAC
and ULTIMAC is, in turn, the reason why Washington
comes running to CIG so often.
This time, however, it did not look like the big computer
was going to be of much use to us. I said as much to Joan
Hadamard, our social sciences division chief, when I handed
her the message.
"Urn," she said. "Personnel trouble? What does he mean?
He hasn't got any personnel on that station."
This was no news to me. CIG provided the figures that
got the SV-I into its orbit in the first place, and it was on
our advice that it carried only one man. The crew of a space
vessel either has to be large or it has to be a lone man; there
is no intermediate  choice.  And SV-I  wasn't big enough to
carry a large crewnot to carry them and keep the men
from flying at each other's throats sooner or later, that is.
"He means himself," I said. "That's why I don't think this
is a job for the computer. It's going to have to be played
person-to-person. It's my bet that the man's responsibility-
happy; that danger was always implicit in the one-man
recommendation."
"The only decent solution is a full complement," Joan
agreed. "Once the Pentagon can get enough money from
Congress to build a big station."
"What puzzles me is, why did he call us instead of his
superiors?"
"That's easy. We process his figures. He trusts us. The
Pentagon thinks we're infallible, and he's caught the disease
from them."
"That's bad," I said.
"I've never denied it."
"No, what I mean is that it's bad that he called us instead
of going through channels. It means that the emergency is at
least as bad as he says it is."
I thought about it another precious moment longer while
Joan did some quick dialing. As everybody on Earthwith
the possible exception of a few Tibetansalready knew, the
man who rode SV-I rode with three hydrogen bombs im-
mediately under his feetbombs which he could drop with
great precision on any spot on the Earth. Gascoigne was, in
effect, the sum total of American foreign policy; he might
as well  have had  "Spatial  Supremacy"  stamped on his
forehead.
"What does the Air Force say?" I asked Joan as she
hung up.
"They say they're a little worried about Gascoigne. He's
a very stable man, but they had to let him run a month over
his normal replacement timewhy, they don't explain. He's
been turning in badly garbled reports over the last week.
They're thinking about giving him a dressing down."
"Thinking! They'd better be careful with that stuff, or
they'll hurt themselves. Joan,  somebody's going to have to
go up there. I'll arrange fast transportation, and tell Gascoigne
that help is coming. Who should go?"
"I don't have a recommendation," Joan said. "Better ask
the computer."
I did soon the double.
ULTIMAC said: Hams.
"Good luck, Peter," Joan said calmly. Too calmly.
"Yeah," I said. "Or good night."
Exactly what I expected to happen as the ferry rocket
approached SV-I, I don't now recall. I had decided that I
couldn't carry a squad with me. If Gascoigne was really far
gone, he wouldn't allow a group of men to disembark; one
man, on the other hand, he might pass. But I suppose I did
expect him to put up an argument first.
Nothing happened. He did not challenge the ferry, and
he didn't answer hails. Contact with the station was made
through the radar automatics, and I was put off on board
as routinely as though I was being let into a moviebut a
lot more rapidly.
The control room was dark and confusing, and at first
I didn't see  Gascoigne  anywhere.  The Earthlight coming
through the observation port was brilliant, but beyond the
edges of its path the darkness was almost absolute, broken
only by the little stars of indicator lenses.
A faint snicking sound turned my eyes in the right direc-
tion. There was Gascoigne. He was hunched over the bom-
bardier board, his back to me. In one hand he held a small
tool resembling a ticket punch. Its jaws were nibbling steadily
at a taut line of tape running between two spools; that had
. been the sound I'd heard. I recognized the device without
any trouble; it was a programmer.
But why hadn't Gascoigne heard me come in? I hadn't
tried to sneak up on him, there is no quiet way to come
through an air lock anyway. But the punch went on snicking
steadily.
"Colonel Gascoigne," I said. There was no answer. I took
a step forward.  "Colonel Gascoigne, I'm Harris of CIG.
What are you doing?"
The additional step did the trick. "Stay away from me,"
Gascoigne growled, from somewhere way down in his chest.
"I'm programming the bomb. Punching in the orders my-
self. Can't depend on my crew. Stay away."
"Give over for a minute. I want to talk to you."
"That's a new one," said Gascoigne, not moving. "Most
of you guys were rushing to set up lauchings before you
even reported to me. Who the hell are you, anyhow? There's
nobody on board, I know that well enough."
"I'm Peter Harris," I said. "From CIGyou called us,
remember? You asked us to send help."
"Doesn't prove a thing. Tell me something I don't know.
Then maybe I'll believe you exist. Otherwisebeat it."
"Nothing doing. Put down that punch."
Gascoigne straightened slowly and turned to look at me.
"Well, you don't vanish, I'll give you that," he said. "What
did you say. your name was?"
"Harris. Here's my ID card."
Gascoigne took the plastic-coated card tentatively, and
then removed his glasses and polished them. The gesture
itself was  perfectly  ordinary,  and  wouldn't have surprised
meexcept that Gascoigne was not wearing glasses.
"It's hard to see in here," he complained. "Everything gets
so steamed up. Hm. All right, you're real. What do you
want?"
His finger touched a journal. Silently, the tape began to
roll from one spool to another.
"Gascoigne, stop that thing. If you drop any bombs
there'll be hell to pay. It's tense enough down below as it is.
And there's no reason to bomb anybody."
"Plenty of reason," Gascoigne muttered. He turned toward
the teletype, exposing to me for the first time a hip holster
cradling a large, black automatic. I didn't doubt that he
could draw it with fabulous rapidity, and put the bullets
just where he wanted them to go. "I've got orders. There
they are. See for yourself."
Cautiously, I sidled over to the teletype and looked. Except
for Gascoigne's own message to CIG, and one from Joan
Hadamard announcing that I was on my way, the paper was
totally blank. There had been no other messages that day
unless Gascoigne had changed the roll, and there was no
reason why he should have. Those rolls last close to forever.
"When did this order come in?"
"This morning some time. I don't know. Sweeney!" he
bawled suddenly, so loud that the paper tore in my hands.
"When did that drop order come through?"
Nobody answered. But Gascoigne said almost at once,
"There, you heard him."
"I didn't hear anything but you," I said, "and I'm going
to stop that tape. Stand aside."
"Not a chance. Mister," Gascoigne said grimly. "The tape
rides."
"Who's getting hit?"
"Washington," Gascoigne said, and passed his hand over
his  face.  He  appeared to  have  forgotten  the  imaginary
spectacles.
"That's where your home is, isn't it?"
"It sure is," Gascoigne said. "It sure as hell is, Mister.
Cute, isn't it?"
It was cute, all right. The Air Force boys at the Pentagon
were going to be given about ten milliseconds to be sorry
they'd refused to send a replacement for Gascoigne along
with me. Replace him with who? We can't send his second.
alternate in anything short of a week. The man has to have
retraining, and the first alternate's  in the hospital with a
ruptured spleen. Besides, Gascoigne's the best man for the
job; he's got to be bailed out somehow.
Sure. With a psychological centrifugal pump, no doubt.
In the meantime the tape kept right on running.
"You might as well stop wiping your face, and turn down
the humidity instead," I said. "You've already smudged your
glasses again."
"Glasses?" Gascoigne muttered. He moved slowly across
the cabin, sailing upright like a sea horse, to the blank glass
of a closed port. I seriously doubted that he could see his
reflection in it, but maybe he didn't really want to see it.
"I messed them up, all right. Thanks." He went through the
polishing routine again.
A man who thinks he is wearing glasses also thinks he
can't see without them. I slid to the programmer and turned
off the tape. I was between the spools and Gascoigne now
but I couldn't stay there forever.
"Let's talk a minute. Colonel," I said. "Surely it can't do ,
any harm."
Gascoigne smiled, with a sort of childish craft. "I'll talk,"
he said. "Just as soon as you start that tape again. I was
watching you in the mirror, before I took my glasses off."
The liar. I hadn't made a move while he'd been looking
into that porthole. His poor pitiful weak old rheumy eyes
had seen every move I made while he was polishing his
"glasses." I shrugged and stepped away from the programmer.
"You start it," I said. "I won't take the responsibiltiy."
"It's orders," Gascoigne said woodenly. He started the tape
running again. "It's their responsibility. What did you want
to talk to me about, anyhow?"
"Colonel Gascoigne, have you ever killed anybody?"
He looked startled. "Yes, once I did," he said, almost
eagerly. "I crashed a plane into a house. Killed the whole
family. Walked away with nothing worse than a burned leg
good as new after a couple of muscle stabilizations. That's
what made me shift from piloting to weapons; that leg's not
quite good enough to fly with any more."
"Tough."
He snickered suddenly, explosively. "And now look at
me," he said. "I'm going to kill my own faftiily in a little
while. And millions of other people. Maybe the whole world."
How long was "a little while"?
"What have you got against it?" I said.
"Against whatthe world? Nothing. Not a damn thing.
Look at me; I'm king of the hill up here. I can't complain."
He paused and licked his lips. "It was different when I
was a kid," he said. "Not so dull, then. In those days you
could get a real newspaper, that you could unfold for the
first time yourself,  and pick out what you wanted to read.
Not like now, when the news comes to you predigested on
a piece of paper out of your radio. That's what's the matter
with it, if you ask me."
"What's the matter with what?"
"With the newsthat's why it's always bad these days.
Everything's had something done to it. The milk is ho-
mogenized, the bread is sliced, the cars steer themselves,
the phonographs will produce sounds no musical instrument
could make. Too much meddling, too many people who can't
keep their hands off things. Ever fire a kiln?"
"Me?" I said, startled.
"No, I didn't think so. Nobody makes pottery these days.
Not by hand. And if they did, who'd buy it? They don't
want something that's been made. They want something
that's been Done To."
The tape kept on traveling. Down below, there was a
heavy rumble, difficult to identify specifically: something
heavy being shifted on tracks, or maybe a freight lock
opening.
"So now you're going to Do Something to the Earth,"
I said slowly.
"Not me. It's orders." '
"Orders from inside, Colonel Gascoigne. There's nothing
on the spools." What else could I do? I didn't have time to
take him through two years of psychoanalysis and bring him
to his own insight. Besides, I'm not licensed to practice medi-
cinenot on Earth. "I didn't want to say so, but I have to
now."
"Say what?" Gascoigne said suspiciously. "That I'm crazy
or something?"
"No. I didn't say that. You did," I pointed out. "But I
will tell you that that stuff about not liking the world these
days is baloney. Or rationalization, if you want a nicer word.
You're carrying a screaming load of guilt, Colonel, whether
you're aware of it or not."
"I don't know what you're talking about. Why don't you
just beat it?"
"No. And you know well enough. You fell all over your-
self to tell me about the family you killed in your flying
accident." I gave him ten seconds of silence, and then shot
the question at him as hard as I could. "What was their
name?"
"How do I know? Sweeney or something. Anything. I
don't remember."
"Sure you do. Do you think that killing your own family
is going to bring the Sweeneys back to life?"
Gascoigne's mouth twisted, but he seemed to be entirely
unaware of the grimace. 'That's all hogwash," he said. "I
never did hold with that psychological claptrap. It's you
that's handing out the baloney, not me."
"Then why are you being so vituperative about it? Hog-
wash, claptrap, baloneyyou are working awfully hard to
knock it down, for a man who doesn't believe in it."
"Go away," he said suUenly. "I've got my orders. I'm
obeying them."
Stalemate. But there was no such thing as stalemate up
here. Defeat was the word.
The tape traveled. I did not know what to do. The last
bomb problem CIG had tackled had been one we had set
up ourselves; we had arranged for a dud to be dropped in
New York harbor, to test our own facilities for speed in
determining the nature of the missile. The situation on board
SV-I was completely different
Whoa. Was it? Maybe I'd hit something there.
"Colonel Gascoigne," I said slowly, "you might as well
know now that it isn't going to work. Not even if you do get
that bomb off."
"Yes, I can. What's to stop me?" He hooked one thumb
in his belt, just above the holster, so that his fingers tips
rested on the breech of the automatic.
"Your bombs. They aren't alive."
Gascoigne laughed harshly and waved at the controls.
"Tell that to the counter in the bomb hold. Go ahead.
There's a meter you can read, right there on the bombardier
board."
"Sure," I said. 'The bombs are radioactive, all right. Have
you ever checked their half life?"
It was a long shot. Gascoigne was a weapons man; if it
were possible to check half life on board the SV-I, he would
 have checked it. But I didn't think it was possible.
"What would I do that for?"
"You wouldn't, being a loyal airman. You believe what
your superiors tell you. But I'm a civilian, Colonel. There's
no element in those bombs that will either fuse or fission.
The half life is too long for tritium or for lithium 6, and
it's  too  short for  uranium  235  or  radio-thorium.  The  stuff
is probably strontium 90in short, nothing but a bluff."
"By the time I finished checking that," Gascoigne said,
"the bomb would be launched anyhow. And you haven't
checked it, either. Try another tack."
"I don't need to. You don't have to believe me. We'll
just sit here and wait for the bomb drop, and then the point
will  prove itself.  After  that,  of  course,  you'll  be  court-
martialed for firing a wild shot without orders. But since
you're prepared to wipe out your own family, you won't
mind a little thing like twenty years in the guardhouse."
Gascoigne looked at the silently rolling tape. "Sure," he
said, "I've got the orders, anyhow. The same thing would
happen if I didn't obey them. If nobody gets hurt, so much
the better."
A sudden spasm of emotion1 took it to be grief, but
I could have been wrongshook his whole frame for a
moment. Again, he did not seem to notice it. I said:
'That's right. Not even your family. Of course the whole
qrorld will know the station's a bluff, but if those are the
orders"
"I don't know," Gascoigne said harshly. "I don't know
whether I even got any orders. I don't remember where I
put them. Maybe they're not real." He looked at me confus-
ediy, and his expression was frighteningly like that of a small
boy making a confession.
"You know something?" he said. "I don't know what's
real any more. I haven't been able to tell, ever since yester-
day. I don't even know if you are real, or your ID card
either. What do you think of that?"
"Nothing," I said.
"Nothing! Nothing! That's my trouble. Nothing! I can't
tell what's nothing and what's something. You say the bombs
are duds. All right. But what if you're the dud, and the
bombs are real? Answer me that!"
His expression was almost triumphant now.
'The bombs are duds," I said. "And you've gone and
steamed up your glasses again. Why don't you turn down
the humidity, so you can see for three minutes hand running?"
Gascoigne leaned far forward, so far that he was per-
ilously close to toppling, and peered directly into my face.
"Don't give me that," he said hoarsely. "Don'tgive
me thatstuff."
I froze right where I was. Gascoigne watched my eyes
for a while. Then, slowly, he put his hand on his forehead
and began to wipe it downward. He smeared it over his face,
in slow motion, all the way down to his chin.
Then he took the hand away and looked at it, as though
it  had just  strangled  him  and he  couldn't  understand why.
And finally he spoke.
"Itisn't true," he said dully. "I'm not wearing any
glasses. Haven't worn glasses since I was ten. Not since I
broke my last pairplaying King of the Hill."
He sat down before the bombardier board and put his
head in his hands.
"You win," he said hoarsely. "I must be crazy as a loon.
I don't know what I'm seeing and what I'm not. You better
take this gun away. If I fired it I might even hit something."
"You're all right," I said. And I meant it; but I didn't
waste any time all the same. The automatic first; then the
tape. In that order, the sequence couldn't be reversed after-
wards.
But the sound of the programmer's journal clicking to
"Off" was as loud in that cabin as any gunshot.
"He'll be all right," I told Joan afterwards. "He pulled
himself through. I wouldn't have dared to throw it at any
other man that fastbut he's got guts."
"Just the same," Joan said, "they'd better start rotating
the station captains faster. The next man may not be so
toughand what if he's a sleepwalker?"
I didn't say anything. I'd had my share of worries for
that week.
"You did a whale of a job yourself, Peter," Joan said.
"I just wish we could bank it in the machine. We might
need the data later."
"Well, why can't we?"
"The Joint Chiefs of Staff say no. They don't say why.
But they don't want any part of it recorded in ULTIMAC
or anywhere else."
I stared at her. At first it didn't seem to make sense. And
then it didand that was worse.
"Wait a minute," I said. "Joandoes that mean what
I think it means? Is 'Spatial Supremacy' just as bankrupt as
'Massive Retaliation' was? Is it possible that the satellite
and the bombs . . . Is it possible that I was telling Gascoigne
the truth about the bombs being duds?"
Joan shrugged.
"He that darkeneth counsel without wisdom," she said,
"isn't earning his salary."