Read Ebook: Quest to Centaurus by Smith George O George Oliver Morey Leo Illustrator

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 331 lines and 13279 words, and 7 pages

"Is that all you're good for?" asked Weston scornfully.

"Look, Al, I'm a plain captain in this man's Space Corps," returned Larkin. "Anytime I want to sweep up the floor in my office I'll do it, see? One--no one can do it better, and two--no one can say that sweeping floors is my top position in life.

"It isn't a loss of dignity to exhibit your skill in ditch-digging or muck-raking. It makes you more human when people know that, despite your gold braid, you aren't afraid to get your hands as dirty as theirs. At least they didn't plant you in the front office because you'd make a mess of working in the machine shop."

"You'd not like to be ordered to a dirty job," snapped Weston.

"If it had to be done and I was told to do it, I'd do it and do it quick. You can take a bath afterwards and wash off the dirt--and be the gainer for knowing how the Other Half lives!"

Weston turned and walked out. Larkin frowned sorrowfully and apologized to Jeanne and the rest. Tom Brandt shrugged.

"We all agree, Tony," he said. "But drumming at him will do no good. He'll have to find himself on his own time."

Jeanne nodded and went out after Weston.

"Al," she said, pleading, "come back and be the man we used to know."

"I can't," he said. He was utterly dejected.

"But you can. It's in you. Apply yourself. So this is a poor job in your estimation. If it is beneath your ability you should be able to do it with one hand."

"You too?" he said bitterly. "I thought you'd see things my way."

"I do, honestly. But, Al, I can't turn back the clock. I can't give you another chance at the Directive thing. You did not fail. No one thinks you did or they'd not trust you with a high rank and a free commission. You were the victim of sheer chance and none of it was your fault."

"But why did it happen to me?" he cried bitterly. "Why couldn't I have been successful?"

"Someone was bound to get it," she said simply. "You prefer your own skin to someone else's?"

"Wouldn't you--if the chips were down?"

She nodded. "Certainly. But I don't think I'd hate everybody that was successful if I were the unlucky one."

"Then they top it off by giving me this stupid job."

"Maybe you think that unraveling a legend is child's play. Well, Alfred Weston, satisfying the demands or the interest of a few billion people as to the truth of Jordan Green is no small item!

"He who satisfies the public interest is far more admired than a captain of industry or a ruler of people. And if this job is a boy's work why did they send a man to do it, complete with increase in rank and a roving commission?"

"Because Jordan Green was of no importance until they needed a simple job to use in coddling a man they consider a simpleton!" growled Weston.

"And you are the man they selected to join with the Directive Power attack," she said, stepping back and inspecting him carefully. "Well, suppose you complete this simple job first. Then let's see whether you can accomplish something you consider worthy of your stature."

"You're insulting," he said shortly.

"You wouldn't be able to recognize an insult," she said scornfully. She turned and left the place with tears in her eyes. Tony Larkin intercepted her and dried her eyes.

"It's tough," he told her. "But until he shakes the feeling that Fate is against him he'll be poor company. Eventually everybody will dislike him and then he'll have nothing to do but to go ahead and work.

"Whatever initial success comes will break his interest in himself. He'll go at it in desperation, in hatred perhaps, but he'll emerge with a sense of humor again. Until then, Jeanne, you'll have to sit and suffer with the rest of us."

"But was that Jordan Green job wise?"

"I can think of a thousand officers who would tackle it with shouts of glee," he said. "Lady, what a lark! I'd be giving cryptic statements to the press and having a daisy of a time all over the Solar System.

"Weston is one of us. When he regains his perspective he'll view it the same way--as a lark! Right now, though," he said seriously, "it's best that he stay out of the public eye. I'd hate to have the Space Corps judged by his standards."

"I guess we all feel sorry for him," she said.

"Yeah, but it's sorrow for his mental state and not for the cause. Now forget him and enjoy yourself."

Weston strode from the party in an angry frame of mind that left him only as he entered his own ship. His anger simmered down to resentment and a bulldog determination to show them all. So they had sent a man to do a boy's work! Well, he would apply himself and ship them the answer complete down to the last decimal place!

If he had to catalogue every Jordan Green mark as to place and location in a long list and show proof of just which joking officer had scrawled it there, by heaven he'd do it. And if it made every man in the Corps a joker, that was too bad. But he would dig out the writer of each and every scrawl in the Solar System if it took the rest of his life.

He faced the piles of data and set to work with determination born of burning resentment. Morning came, and he was still sorting, filing, deciding. The card-sorter clicked regularly, dropping the tiny cards into piles that were cross-indexed and tabulated on a master card. Reports in lengthy form, mere cards of terse data, incomplete reports--all of them he went after and scanned carefully to make some sort of mad pattern if he could.

He found himself weak from lack of sleep and fought it off with hot coffee and benzedrine until he had succeeded in unraveling the now-dusty pile of data. It was full of erroneous information and false data. If Jordan Green existed he was well-covered by the scrawlings of men who wanted to perpetuate the joke. But, finished, he sat back in amazement.

Of thirty thousand such scrawlings, twenty-seven thousand were written in the same manner!

Top it--they were written with the same chalk!

Top that--they were unmistakably in the same handwriting!

"Now where in Hades did any one man get so much time?" Al Weston asked himself.

He pored over a globe of Terra, stuck pins in it to show the location, then studied it to see if any pattern could be made of the grand scramble. There was apparently none, so he took a Mercator and did the same, standing off in a dim light to see if the pin-points caused any 'lining' of the vision into some recognizable pattern.

He got a chart of Mars and studied it. He tried to make the spatter-pattern of Mars line up to agree with the pin-pattern of Terra. He turned it this way and that to see. He photographed both and laid them on top of one another, and finally gave up. There was no significance.

He went to bed and, the next morning, dropped his ship at Marsport.

"I've a four-mark commission," he said sharply to the office aide at Marsquarters.

"I'll request an audience for you," said the office aide. He should, by all rights, be slightly cowed by the senior captain's rank and the free commission, but he was aide to the High Brass of conquered Mars and larger brass than this had come and gone--unsatisfied.

"See here, I'm on a roving commission and I want aid."

"Yes sir, I'll request you an audience--"

"Blast!" snarled Weston angrily. "I'm not fooling."

"No one fools here," returned the aide.

"Are you being insolent?"

"Not if I can avoid it, sir. But you understand that I am responsible only to Admiral Callahan. I am doing his bidding and those are his wishes."

"You've not spoken to him about them."

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet