The Reefs of Space Read online

  The REEFS of SPACE

  Frederik Pohl

  and

  Jack Williamson

  BALLENTINE BOOKS • • NEW YORK

  The Reefs of Space © 1963

  by Galaxy Publishing Corporation.

  Ballentine Edition Published September 1964

  Cover Jacques Wyrs

  Chapter 1

  The major snapped: "Check in, you Risks! What's the matter with you?" His radar horns made him look like Satan—a sleepy young Satan with an underslung jaw, but dangerous.

  "Yes, sir," said Steve Ryeland, peering around. This was Reykjavik—a new world to Ryeland, who had just come from a maximum-security labor camp inside the rim of the Arctic Circle. Ryeland blinked at the buildings, a thousand feet high, and at the jets and rockets scattered across the air field. The little man next to Ryeland sneezed and nudged him. "All right," Ryeland said, and went into the bare little Security lounge. On the teletype that stood in the corner of the room—in the corner of every room— he tapped out:

  Information: Steven Ryland, Risck, AWC-38440

  and O. B. Oporto. Risk, XYZ-99942, arrived at —

  He took the code letters from the identification plate on the machine.

  — Station3-Radius 4-261, Reykjavik, Iceland

  Query. What are personal orders?

  In a moment the answer came from the Planning Machine, a single typed letter "R." The Machine had received and understood the message and adjusted its records. The orders would follow.

  A Togetherness-girl glanced into the lounge, saw the collars on Ryeland and the little man. Her lips had started to curve in the smile of her trade, but they clamped into a thin line. Risks. She nodded to the major and turned away.

  The teletype bell rang, and the Machine tapped out:

  Action. Proceed to Train 667, Track 6. Compartment 93.

  Ryeland acknowledged the message. The major, leaning over his shoulder, grinned. "A one-way ticket to the Body Bank if you want my guess."

  "Yes, sir." Ryeland was not going to get into a discussion. He couldn't win. No Risk could win an argument with a man who wore the major's radar horns.

  "Well, get going," the major grumbled. "Oh, and Ryeland—"

  "Yes, sir?"

  The major winked. "Thanks for the chess games. I'll be seeing you, I guess. Parts of you!" He laughed raucously as he strode away. "No side trips, remember," he warned.

  "I'll remember," said Steve Ryeland softly, touching the collar he wore.

  Oporto sneezed again. "Come on," he grumbled.

  "All right What was that number?"

  The little dark man grinned. 'Train 667, Track 6, Compartment 93. That's an easy one—ahchoo! Dabbit," he complained, "I'm catching cold. Let's get out of this draft."

  Ryeland led off. They walked unescorted across the pavement to a cab rank and got in. All around them, travelers, air field workers and others glanced at them, saw the iron collars—and at once, on each face a curtain descended. No one spoke to them. Ryeland punched the code number for their destination, and the car raced through broad boulevards to a huge marble structure on the other side of the city.

  Over its wide entrance were the carved letters:

  THE PLAN OF MAN

  SUBTRAIN STATION

  They made their way through a wide concourse, noisy and crowded; but everyone gave them plenty of room. Ryeland grinned sourly to himself. No side trips! Of course not—and for the same reason. It wasn't healthy for a man who wore the collar to step out of line. And it wasn't healthy for anyone else to be in his immediate neighborhood if he did.

  'Track Six, was it?”

  'Train 667, Compartment 93. Can't you remember anything?" Oporto demanded.

  "There's Track Six." Ryeland led the way. Track Six was a freight platform. They went down a flight of motionless moving stairs and emerged beside the cradle track of the subtrains.

  Since the subtrains spanned the world, there was no clue as to where they were going. From Iceland they could be going to Canada, to Brazil, even to South Africa; the monstrous atomic drills of the Plan had burrowed perfectly straight shafts from everywhere to everywhere. The subtrains rocketed through air-exhausted tunnels, swung between hoops of electrostatic force. Without friction, their speed compared with the velocity of interplanetary travel.

  "Where is it?" Oporto grumbled, looking around. A harsh light flooded the grimy platforms, glittering on the huge aluminum balloons that lay in their cradles outside the vacuum locks. Men with trucks and cranes were loading a long row of freightspheres in the platform next to theirs; a little cluster of passengers began to appear down the moving stairs of a platform a hundred yards away. Oporto said abruptly: "I'll give you six to five the next train in is ours."

  "No bet." Ryeland knew better than to take him up. But he hoped the little man was right. It was cold on the platform. Chill air roared around them from the ventilators; Oporto, already chilled, sneezed and began to sniffle. Ryeland himself was shivering in his thin maximum-security denims.

  At the camp, when their travel orders came through, regulations demanded a thorough medical examination before they left. That was the rule under the Plan, and the examination included a steaming shower. "They want nice clean meat at the Body Bank," the guard guffawed; but Ryeland paid no attention. He couldn't afford to.

  A man who wore the iron collar around his neck could only afford a limited look into the future. He could think about the day when the collar came off, and nothing else.

  A warning horn shrieked into the pit. Ryeland jumped; Oporto turned more slowly, as though he had been expecting it. Which he had.

  Red signals flickered from the enormous gates of the vacuum lock on Track Six. Air valves gasped. The gates swung slowly open and a tractor emerged towing a cradle with the special car they were waiting for. "You would have lost," Oporto commented and Ryeland nodded; of course he would have.

  The car stopped. Equalizer valves snorted again, and then its tall door flopped out from the top, forming a ramp to the platform. Escalators began to crawl along it.

  Oporto said anxiously: "Steve, I don't like the looks of this!" Out of the opening door of the car two men in uniform came running. They ran up the escalators, raced onto the platform and up the stairs. They didn't look at Ryeland or Oporto; they were in a hurry. They were bearing thick leather dispatch cases the same color as their uniforms.

  Bright blue uniforms!

  Why, that was the uniform of the special guard of—

  Ryeland lifted his eyes to look, unbelieving. At the roof of the shed, amid the ugly web of ducts and pipes and cables, a brilliant light burst forth, shining down on the sphere. And across its top, forty feet above the platform, there was a gleaming blue star and under it, etched in crystalline white, the legend:

  THE PLAN OF MAN

  OFFICE OF THE PLANNER

  The special car they had been waiting for was the private car of the Planner himself!

  The first thought that crossed Steve Ryeland's mind was: Now I can present my case to the Planner! But the second thought canceled it. The Planner, like every other human on Earth or the planets, was only an instrument of the Planning Machine. If clearance ever came to Ryeland— if the collar came off his neck—it would be because the Machine had considered all the evidence and reached a proper decision. Human argument would not affect it.

  With an effort, Ryeland put the thought out of his mind; but all the same, he couldn't help feeling a touch better, a degree stronger. At least it was almost certain that their destination would not be the Body Bank!

  "What was that compartment number?"

  Oporto sighed. "93. Can't you remember anything? Train 667—the product of the two primes, 23 and 29. Track 6, their d
ifference. Compartment 93, then- last digits hi reverse order. That's an easy one—" But Ryeland was hardly listening. The intimate acquaintance that Oporto seemed to have with all numbers was no longer news to him, and he had more urgent things on his mind. He led the way up the ramp and into the Planner's subtrain car. A woman in the blue uniform of the guard passed them, glanced at their collars and frowned. Before Ryeland could speak to her she had brushed past them busily and was gone. It said a lot for the efficiency of the collars, he thought wryly, that she didn't bother to find out what two Risks were doing wandering freely around the Planner's private car. There was no cause for worry; if they took a wrong turning, the collars would make it their last.

  But by the same token, it was highly dangerous for them to wander around. Ryeland stopped short and waited until someone else came by. "Sir!" he called. "Excuse me!"

  It was a straight, gray-haired man in the blue of the Planner's guard, wearing the silver mushrooms of a Technicorps colonel ."What is it?" he demanded impatiently.

  "We're ordered to Compartment 93," Ryeland explained.

  The colonel looked at him thoughtfully, "Name," he snapped.

  "Ryeland, Steven. And Oporto."

  "Umm." Presently the colonel sighed. "All right," he said grouchily. "Can't have you messing up the Planner's car with your blood. Better get secured. This way." He led them to a tiny room, ushered them in. "Look," he said, flexing the knob of the door. "No lock. But I should warn you that most of the corridors are radar-trapped. Do you understand?" They understood. "All right."

  He hesitated. "By the way. My name's Lescure, Colonel Pascal Lescure. We'll meet again." And he closed the door behind him.

  Ryeland looked quickly around the room, but it wasn't the splendor of its furnishings or the comfort of its appointments that interested him. It was the teletype. Quickly he reported in for himself and Oporto. The answer came:

  R. Action. Await further orders.

  Oporto was beginning to look flushed and to tremble. "Always it's lige this," he said thickly. "I ged a cold and if I don't tage care I'm sick for weegs. I'm feeling lighd-beaded already!" He stood up, tottering.

  Ryeland shook his head. "No, you're not lightheaded. We're moving." The hand at the controls of the subtrain knew whose private car he was driving down the electrostatic tubes. The giant sphere was being given a featherbed ride. They had felt no jar at all on starting, but now they began to feel curiously light.

  That was intrinsic to the way of travel. The subtrain was arrowing along a chord from point to point; on long hauls the tunnels dipped nearly a thousand miles below the earth's surface at the halfway mark. Once the initial acceleration was over, the first half of a trip by subtrain was like dropping in a super-speed express elevator.

  Absently Ryeland reached out an arm to brace Oporto as the little man weaved and shuddered. He frowned. The helical fields which walled the tunnels of the subtrains owed part of their stability to himself. On that Friday night, three years before, when the Plan Police burst in upon him, he had just finished dictating the specifications for a new helical unit that halved hysteresis losses, had a service life at least double the old ones.

  And yet _he could only remember that much and no more.

  Had something been done to his mind? For the thousandth time Ryeland asked himself that question. He could remember the equations of his helical field theory that transformed the crude "magnetic bottles" that had first walled out the fluid rock, as early nucleonicists had walled in the plasma of fusing hydrogen. Yet he could not remember the work that had led him to its design. He could remember his design for ion accelerators to wall the atomic rockets of spaceships, and yet the author of that design— himself—was a stranger. What sort of man had he been? What had he done?

  "Sdeve," Oporto moaned. "You wouldn't have a drink on you?"

  Ryeland turned, brought back to reality. A drink! Oporto was feverish. "I'd better call the machine," he said.

  Oporto nodded weakly. "Yes, call in. I'm sick, Sdeve."

  Ryeland hesitated. The little man did look sick. While he was standing there, Oporto blundered past him. "I'll do id myself," he grumbled. "Get out of my way."

  He reached with fumbling fingers for the keyboard, his face turned angrily toward Ryeland. That was a mistake; he should have been watching. In the unsteady footing he lurched, reached for the keyboard, missed, stumbled and fell heavily against the teletype.

  It toppled with a crash. There was a quick white flash from inside it and a sudden pungent smell of burning.

  Oporto got slowly to his feet.

  Ryeland opened his mouth and then closed it without saying anything. What was the use? Obviously the teletype was out of commission; obviously Oporto hadn't done it on purpose.

  Oporto groaned: "Oh, dabbit. Steve, where'd thad colonel go? Maybe he could ged me something ..."

  'Take it easy," Ryeland said absently. The little man's condition was clearly not good but, in truth, it was not Oporto that was on Ryeland's mind just then. It was the teletype.

  Always, since the first days after school, there had been no move Steve Ryeland made, no action he performed, without checking in with the Machine. Even at the maximum-security camp there had been a teletype on direct linkage with the Machine, standing in one desolate comer of the bare barracks.

  He felt curiously naked, and somehow forlorn.

  "Steve," said Oporto faintly, "could you ged me a' glass of water?"

  That at least was possible; there was a silver carafe and crystal tumblers, fired with gold designs. Ryeland poured the little man a glass and handed it to him. Oporto took it and sank back against a huge, richly upholstered chair, his eyes closed.

  Ryeland roamed around the tittle cubicle. There wasn't much else for him to do. The colonel had warned them against radar-traps in the corridors; it was not to be thought of that they would go out and take the chance of being destroyed by a single wrong move.

  For they were Risks; and the iron collars they wore contained eighty grams of a high explosive. A step into an area proscribed for Risks (and such areas were common all over the world) meant that a triggering radar beam would touch off the explosive. Ryeland had seen that happen once. He didn't want it to happen to him.

  Brig or no brig, this room was part of the Planner's private car and it was furnished in a way that Ryeland had not seen in three years. He fingered the drapes around a mock-window and reached out to touch the polished mirror of a hardwood table top.

  Three years ago Ryeland had lived in a room something like this. No, he admitted, not quite as lavish. But a room that belonged to him, with furniture that no one else used and a place for his clothes, his books, the things he kept around him. But in that life he had been a cleared man, with a place in the Plan of Man and a quota to be met. That life had ended three years ago, on that fatal Friday afternoon.

  Even now, after endless sessions of what was called reconstructive therapy, Ryeland couldn't understand what had happened to him. The vaguely worded charge was "unplanned thinking," but all his merciless therapists had failed to help him recall any thoughts disloyal to-the machine. The only material evidence of unplanned activities was his collection of space literature—the yellowed old copies of books by Ley and Gamow and Hoyle and Einstein that he had saved from his father's library.

  Of course he knew that the books were not on the list approved by the Plan, but he had intended no disloyalty with his hobby. In fact, as he had many times told the therapists, the special equations of the helical field were related to the mathematics of the whole universe. Without knowing the equations for the expansion of the universe and the continuous creation of matter in the space between the galaxies, he could not have improved the helical units for the subtrain tunnels.

  But the therapists had always refused to specify exact charges. Men under the Plan no longer had rights, but merely functions. The purpose of the therapists was not to supply him with information, but to extract information from him. The
sessions had failed, because he couldn't remember whatever it was that the therapists had been attempting to extract.

  There was so much that he could not remember ...

  Oporto said weakly: "Sdeve, ged me a doctor."

  "I can't!" Ryeland said bitterly: "If the Plan wants you sick you'll have to be sick."

  Oporto's face turned a shade paler. "Shut up! Somebody may be listening."

  "I'm not criticizing the Plan. But we have to stay here, you know that."

  "Ryeland," Oporto begged, and went into a coughing fit

  Ryeland looked down at the little man. He seemed to be in serious trouble now. Evidently his system was of an ultra-allergic type. Swept clean of disease organisms in the sterile air that blew down on the isolation camp from the Pole, he had been ripe for infection. He was breathing heavily and raggedly, and heat wafted off his forehead as Ryeland brought his hand near it.

  "Hold on, Oporto," he said. "It'll only be a little while. Maybe a couple of hours." At a thousand miles an hour, there was no place on Earth much farther away than that.

  "I can be dead in a couble of hours," said Oporto. "Can't you ged me a doctor?"

  Ryeland hesitated. There was truth to what the little man said. The Plan provided constant immunization for those who lived in areas exposed to disease; but the hypo-allergic, like Oporto, might well lose that immunity in a few months. And Oporto had been breathing sterile air for three years.

  "All right," said Ryeland wearily, "I'll do what I can. You come with me, Oporto." Booby-trapped the halls might be, dangerous the trip certainly was; but it was life and death to Oporto.

  The door opened easily.