The Sensible Man

Ed Baker Stayed Dumb, though puzzled, to the last -- which was when Randal Wilcox put the last can of microfilm in the suitcase. Randal had to lift up the sheaf of papers to fit it in, and Baker recognized the one on top and he gave a startled squeak. He put out one hand. "The Project Director ----" He said that much before Randal Wilcox shot him.

It was only in fiction, Wilcox thought, as he finished packing, that the man-about-to-kill gave a full resumé of his reasons to the victim-select. But there really wasn't enough time, so poor Ed Baker had to die only partly informed. The glimpse of the top paper, the one on the liquid oxygen gauge, had told him a lot. And he wouldn't have come all the way up here after his lab partner in the Project if he hadn't suspected -- well, something.

"Randy," he'd said, half-arguing, half-pleading, "this is no time for you to go off like this -- fishing? -- you heard the news -- the Russians ----"

Wilcox at first thought to bluff him, tell him he needed at least a short vacation before the satellite program -- Project Moonbeam -- went into accelerated activity, as it was bound to do with the Sputnik beeping away like an alarm bell in the night. Let Ed think that the suitcase open on the bed meant he was still unpacking. But then he realized, with one of the intuitive flashes which so often came to help him in tight places, that there was a better way. He continued packing.

"You haven't even asked the Project Director for a leave of absence," Ed stumbled on. A good scientist, Ed -- but awfully slow about everything else. "Or he'd have asked me."

So Randal said nothing further to his lab partner. He just shot him

• • •

Wilcox got across the border with no difficulty, of course. The Embassy in Ottawa hadn't expected him, but they at once provided a car which took him directly to Halifax, where there was a Russian ship. No tiresome business about passports or anything of that sort. A week later he was in Moscow.

Grisha Ivanov said to him, "Of course you are very welcome, Mr. Baker. But would you mind telling us where your partner, Mr. Wilcox is? The disappearance of both of you has been noted, but it would seem that only you have left the United States."

"That is true -- but I am Wilcox. I thought that if we both vanished and I posed as Baker it would confuse things at that end. Which would help things at this end," Randal said. And he told the Soviet science chief that Ed Baker was in his, Wilcox', car, under the waters of Lake Tippset.

Ivanov didn't even blink. "It is too bad," he said, "that you weren't able to convince Mr. Baker to accompany you. However ----"

"There was no time." Randy was somewhat nettled. "And Ed doesn't -- didn't -- convince so easily."

The Russian nodded. "And what's, ah, 'convinced' you, Mr. Wilcox? You are known to us only as a scientist -- not as a Leninist scientist."

Wilcox smiled on one side of his face. It was a young face -- young and smooth -- but hard. "My politics are those of any sensible man -- of every sensible man. For most of my life the democracies -- pardon me -- the capitalist nations -- were in the lead. So I was with them. Now the lead has passed to you, so I am with you." He smiled again, the same way. "If you'll have me ..."

The Russian smiled, too, this time. A fleeting-swift smile. His face was neither as young nor as smooth as the American's, but it was just as hard. "We are very glad to have you ... I have been able to give the information you brought with you only the most hasty examination, but -- tell me: Can you build a satellite to hold a man -- keep him alive while he circles between Earth and Moon and observes both -- and then return him safely?"

"No," said Wilcox.

"Neither can we ... that is, not until now. Your information, it would seem, supplies the elements missing in mine. Together ... but now let us get to work."

• • •

Wilcox had nothing to complain of (concluded on page 75)Sensible Man(continued from page 55) in his new life. If he asked for personnel, he got personnel. If he requested materials, he received materials. At no time was there any talk of "economy" or "budget" or "making do." As for his private comforts, they were so well provided for that he never asked.

It was only a few months from his arrival in his new homeland -- the homeland of "every sensible man" -- that the Wilcox-Ivanov artificial satellite was ready. He wondered, briefly, how far Project Moonbeam had gotten, with two of its best teammates no longer with it. Still not off the drawing board, probably. He said as much to Grisha Ivanov as they approached the take-off area. The Soviet scientist only grunted.

"Our man will be rather cramped in his moon," Randal observed, looking inside. "How long will he stay up, do you suppose?"

Ivanov shrugged. "Who knows? Two weeks? Six weeks? We shall see."

Wilcox nodded. Cramped ... more cramped than Ed Baker, in his, Randal's, car under Lake Tippset. Poor old foolish Ed. Had they found him yet? Nothing was said about it here ... Suddenly Randal's eyes fell upon a space in the maze of dials and devices. He frowned. "Where is the control to start him back to Earth?" he asked.

"Removed," said Grisha, crisply. "Decided against."

"Who 'decided'?" Wilcox demanded, angry. "I ----"

"You? You have nothing to say." Grisha's voice was cold. Wilcox looked at him, astonished. "You joined us from opportunism only. Yesterday you betrayed your own country. Tomorrow -- and they will very certainly catch up with us, if not tomorrow, then the day after -- in which case you will betray us -- for the same reason. So you are not trusted. You have nothing to say. The man stays up."

Wilcox started to speak, thought better of it. The sensible man never argues. "Very well ... who is the man, by the way?"

"You," said Grisha Ivanov, calmly.

The Red guards seized Wilcox. "We are giving you the chance to test your own work -- the device you enabled us to build. Much of the information will be sent automatically, but some of it you will send. The human brain is by no means obsolete. As long as you send, you will be fed. How long will the food supply last? Who knows how much a man in cislunar space requires? That is part of the experiment ... No, I do not think you will court suicide by refusing to report. You are, after all, a sensible man."

• • •

Randal Wilcox speeds around the Earth faster than any human has ever sped before. It is very cramped in the satellite he helped build, but it is dangerous for him to try to move, anyhow: he is studded with attachments -- needles, tubes, wires, catheters, electrodes, which spring from his flesh. He travels from the southeast in a rapid orbit and sees the planet which was his former home turn and spin beneath him. It is a splendid sight. Meteors dart past him -- none, so far, have hit him -- but every so often he sends in reports about them. About them and about gamma rays and light refraction and sundry other matters. Whenever his report is transmitted, a light flashes and a fresh supply of liquid food is allowed to drip into his veins.

The stars blaze hugely. Cloud masses drift across the face of Earth. But very often he can make out clearly the country he betrayed ... the Gulf, the Rockies, the Great Lakes ... Whenever he passes over it, he sends out a signal of his own, over and over, until the turning planet tilts and turns its other face to him and shows the ice-capped poles, the Urals, the Caucases ...

Everyone hears it. Blip blip blip beep beep beep blip blip blip ... Everyone knows it is Randal Wilcox, sending out his SOS. But of course no one can help him at all.

Even if anyone wanted to.