Rocket to Limbo

“Fine.” Fox leaned against the table. “These rumors are like any other rumors, they’re false and they’re true. It’s perfectly true that the Ganymede has blasted under restricted orders, and that we are not bound for Vega.” He paused to let that penetrate as a buzz of voices rose and the men shifted their feet uneasily. “Colonial Security regarded the secrecy as necessary, and I think you’ll be able to see why in a minute if you’ll let me go on. As for the rest of the wild stories I’ve been hearing bits of here and there, they’re about as far off the mark as they can get. You men aren’t very imaginative guessers. Let’s have the tape, Paul.”

Across the room Lars could see a malicious glint in Peter Brigham’s eve as he leaned over to whisper in Jeff Salter’s ear. Then the lights dimmed and a wall screen sprang to life. The buzz of voices quieted.

The screen showed an image of a Colonial Service Star Ship, lying in its launching rack in Catskill Rocketport. At first Lars thought it was the Ganymede, but little structural details were different. Two gantries were busily loading the ship as Commander Fox’s voice rose above the click of the projector.

“The ship you see here is the Star Ship Planetfall. She was a first class Colonial Service explorer, commissioned on November 17, 2347—that’s just three and a half years ago. Anybody remember her?”

There was silence. Then someone said, “The Planetfall— yes! She was under Millar, wasn’t she?”

“That’s the one.”

“Took her shakedown out to Sirus I and blew two generators?”

“That was before she was commissioned,” Fox said. “It gave her a reputation as a jinx ship, but she was a good sound planet-breaker just the same. She carried the new modification Koenig engines that we have and a full exploratory crew of twenty-two men. With Millar aboard her, she was equipped to approach any planet of any star system that could be reached in the lifetime of a man, and to bring back all the data Colonial Service would ever need to open colony. You see her loading for a trip here. Good ship, the Planetfall.”

They watched the flickering pictures in silence as the camera moved in close. Gantries rose and fell; all about the ship was an eager bustle of activity. The camera settled on crates of dry-stores being hoisted into the hold, ship’s name and destination stenciled on the sides.

“Wait a minute—” one of the men said suddenly. “That ship was headed out into the Marakov Sector, wasn’t it? A new star or something?”

“There’s a man with a good memory,” Commander Fox said. “Her first commission was for a big jump, out to the planetary system of a star known as Wolf. It’s a long way out there. The near stars with familiar colonies are just around the corner in comparison. Wolf had been identified on photo plates, and that was as close as men had gotten to this star. We’d never had a ship anywhere near there before. But plate analysis said that it was a Sol-type star and that it had planets. Planetfall’s job was to chart those planets and bring back all the information she could about colony prospects there. I don’t need to tell you why. You know why Colonial exists. You know how desperately Earth needs new colonies for its people.”

“I can remember the big hullaballoo when they blasted,” a little man next to Lars said. “Full 3-V coverage and everything. They made a big production of it. That was just about three years ago, not even that long. But there was something I can’t quite nail about it. When did she get back?”

“She didn’t,” said Commander Walter Fox.

There was silence in the room for the space of a long breath. Then a babble of voices arose.

“But I heard—”

“There was some kind of a report—”

“Yes, yes! The Colonial Service said—”

“The Colonial Service damped it out cold,” Fox cut in with a loud voice. “They made a brief report in certain of the official journals that the Planetfall had had a disaster in space—something wrong with her drive—and had been blown to atoms. They buried the story in the” public press for all they were worth, and only a very few speculations ever met the public eye. They had to do it that way. They couldn’t afford a scare breaking loose at home and wrecking the colonization program. But those reports had nothing even remotely to do with what really happened to the Planetfall.”