Unsung Hero

by Willie Smith

Table of Contents
Part 1 appears
in this issue.

conclusion

“No.”

“I didn’t think so,” the dot winked and grew a trifle bigger and less brilliant. “But allow me to anticipate the interrogative bent behind your pokerface: What in the fuck is a detacher-capsule? Okay, Mr. Gray, let’s break it down and start at the beginning.

“A little over nine months ago the reds, with the cooperation of pink scientists operating out of the white areas that the reds conquered during the last war, managed to launch into space and erect between the earth and the sun a vast shield comprised of an extremely thin-milled alloy of lead, osmium and cadmium. This so-called intersolar tinfoil is responsible for what is referred to down in the shelters as the disappearance of the sun.

“Over the past six months the Allies have been mounting a steady offensive to remove this curtain of infamy from the confines of our solar system. Your job, as a detacher-capsule pilot, will be to assist in the massive Gray Allied effort to peel back this life-threatening shield...”

Desperately Bob struggled to think. He forced his synapses to sweat neurotransmitters. He was bound and determined to come up with the most perfect wording of the absolute last word in third questions to ask a clairvoyant. As long as he had volunteered for a death mission in the Army to Find the Sun, he figured he may as well at least do this one last thing in life with consummate propriety. Very, very deeply, Bob wanted to do the right thing.

“...once you arrive at the intersolar tinfoil in your one-man capsule, you will fire retro-rockets to decelerate at such a rate as to make contact with the tinfoil at, optimally, zero velocity. We don’t want the foil ripped. All we want is for it to be peeled back so we can as soon as possible let the full glory of sunshine return to the surface of the earth. This is your sworn duty as a volunteer detacher-capsule pilot.”

Bob had it — the answer to how to word the question! Perspiration sprang from his groin. He was ebullient at the thought of bursting out with it. He dropped his jaw; was on the verge of mouthing what he feared might turn out to be his last utterance in life; when the dot shrank, brightened and screamed, “The shield must be repealed! Give us back our sun! Rescue, resuscitate and return!”

“Why!” Bob howled above the clairvoyant’s scream. “Why do I have to commit suicide?”

“...and your mission will result in your irrevocable death, but your spirit will be filed eternally in the spiritual memory bank so that, at your command, you may playback the miraculous performance of your glorious duty as you wish... what? Did your most recent exclamation constitute a third and final query, Mr. Gray?”

“Why...,” Bob mumbled, giving himself a pause to gather his leaden wits and plumb his brain as thoroughly as possible, bearing in mind it was an illegal place after dark and he was perspiring, “...in the fuck... do I have to die?”

The dot swelled to the bulk of a medicine ball; dimmed. The night fell silent. Even the lasers out in the street stopped crackling, as they moved on more toward the center of town.

During this interlude Bob noticed for sure what he had intuited all along: the dot really didn’t throw out any light. The huge burned-out empty room had remained coal black throughout the interview, despite the dot’s various changes in brilliance. Bob began to smell a rat. Was he being trapped in here by colored forces?

“Whose side are you on?” Bob said without thinking. “Red? White? Gray? Black?”

“Blue-white,” hummed the dot. “Blue-white — there are certain trade-offs.”

“That's it?” Bob responded, aghast at his own foolishness at being unable to stop asking questions.

The dot grew purple. Crescented into a condescending grin. “Nah. We’ll let that last outburst go by the boards. The mumbling you were doing back there a while ago, too. One more question, Mr. Gray. Make it fast, please. The eventual return of the sun to earth hinges on your action. The reds, blacks and whites are poised at our borders. Will you enter a last query and get on with your duty, Mr. Gray? Destiny catches on the barb of your hesitation.”

Bob plunged himself into dark thought. He knew the fate of the free world depended on... no, that was propaganda. He knew he had to find the answer to this crisis... no, that was neurosis. He knew darkness was mastering the planet, could see the night settling everywhere, putting a premature end to all this indecisive gray...

From the well of his profoundest introspection, Bob drew up a bucket of sand. Was there nothing better to ask?

He would have to rely on intuition. Bob opened his eyes wide and leaped out into the void.

By this time the burned-out bait and tackle shop had heated up quite a bit. Bob was a fleshpot of sweat. He pulled at his collar. Cleared his throat. But even tossing himself over the cliff of intuition, he saw only one thing to say: “Why,” he said, “do I have to die?”

Again the dot filled out into a fat gray ball. Silence reigned. Although, far off out over the water Bob could just barely detect the sound of another neutron bomb coming in. He glanced down at the plumbometer strapped to his wrist. The chartreuse numerals on the display read: point two-one. Not enough lead in the blood to sustain another high-radiation attack of any consequence within a fifty-mile radius. The incoming bomb whooshed like one of the Big Ones. Probably another of the notorious sixty-thousand meg Red Fryers. If he didn’t get to a shelter and receive a lead-inject within the next five minutes, Bob was dead.

“We are taking you away now to join your new unit, Mr. Gray. You will awaken inside your detacher-capsule fully refreshed and ready to perform your mission. The query you have entered will unfortunately require a good deal of research in the spiritual memory banks. The answer will be radioed to you while you are travelling in space en route to your destination. Our hurry in this matter is due to the impending high-radiation attack and the current low lead-count in your blood. You will be given a series of lead-injects while your anaesthetized body is being installed into your detacher-capsule.

“Won’t you please be seated, Mr. Gray?”

The edge of a chair nudged Bob at the back of his knees. He sat down in the dark. There came a pinprick at his right elbow. Suddenly his drunkenness returned, intensified; finally overwhelmed him, as the dim gray light dissipated into the night like the smile of a used-car salesman.

Bob awoke inside a one-man detacher-capsule hurtling through space. He blinked, rubbed matter out of his eyes; stared through the view window out into the blackness. He glanced into the rearview and saw the bright round earth receding. As his eyes swept back across inky space, he then noticed hundreds and hundreds of other capsules travelling along with him. Here and there, now and then, a few of those off in the distance ahead switcheded on their retro-rockets and glowed like tiny blue fireflies.

Something was drastically different. He had only been up in space a few times before — on tourist shuttles, the last one well over two years before the outbreak of the war. In fact, those brief tourist shuttles were the only excursions he had ever taken above the smog-level. But he knew some vital effect was lacking. There should not be total blackness.

The stars were missing!

Dimly he remembered glimpsing the web of lights scattered like jewels on the vast black velvet backdrop of space. The shuttle pilot had even pointed out a few that had been given famous names in ancient times, before the smog-level became too thick for stars to be visible from the surface of the earth.

A sudden thought hit Bob’s gray matter like a lead brick: the tinfoil wasn’t in the form of a sheet or a curtain, but of a ball, with the earth revolving and rotating at the hollow center. All of the heavens were shielded from view! The earth was like a b-b suspended inside an opaque hot-air balloon.

Then Bob spotted an infinitesimal yellow spark isolated in the center of his view window. The intensity was growing rapidly, but the light itself remained a point source. He realized his capsule was speeding toward the nick of yellow light. Of course, that was his destination — a minuscule rip in the tinfoil caused by an interplanetary dust particle or a thousand-molecule clump of methane ice stripped off a passing comet; and the light eking through the molecular pinprick was radiation from none other than that age-old tried and tested natural hydrogen bomb: the sun.

“Okay, Gray,” crackled a voice in his earplugs, a voice sounding more masculine and demanding than that of the clairvoyant, and yet sounding very much the same. “This is AFS groundcontrol. Initiate retro-rocket ignition. You are nearing the goal of your mission.”

Bob looked down at the control panel. There were only five buttons. One was labelled retro-ignition. He pushed it. Obviously, this was a job any idiot could do. No wonder there hadn’t been any training other than what the dot had told him back in the bait and tackle shop. He noticed, also, that none of the buttons said anything about ever getting back home again.

As his capsule homed in on the yellow pinprick, he felt the growing desire to exclaim upon the rich beauty of the sunlight squirting in through the rip he was... the thought formed slowly... being sent... to repair; sent to his death. Beauty and doom — the moment operas are made of.

He made the effort of swearing out loud. Angrily his brain ordered his vocal cords to swear. A strangled mutter seeping into his space helmet. The rumor was true! What people whispered down in the shelters late at night was gospel: men of the AFS have their jaws wired shut. Nobody knew for sure, of course, because all AFS outfits always suffer 100% casualties. There is no such thing as an AFS veteran.

Deprived of the crutch of being able to talk to himself, all but heroic logic failed to make any sense. He took one last look up at his determined lead-gray face in the rearview, then thought to himself inside his decaying head about the mission. He knew it was just as well the jaw was wired. That way, if by some fluke he came out of this alive, he’d never have to suffer the disgrace of accidentally disillusioning a citizen by blurting out one of the awful secrets of outer space warfare.

“Because it is your duty to die,” purred the dot’s voice from inside the earplugs. “You must do your duty and return your elements to the nation, for the sake of our race’s continued existence. The spirits advise you to do your duty. Rescue, resuscitate and return. Rescue the hole, resuscitate the night and give our nation a return on its investment in you, Mr. Gray.”

“Cut back on those retros!” ground control yelled.

He pushed the button labelled cut back retro. As long as this was going to be his last act in life, he may as well do it right. From deep in the recesses of his poisoned brain, he thanked the unsettling urge that had made him seek out the clairvoyant. He knew now the answer to his problem. He must do his duty. His one little bit was helping make the earth that much safer for the entire nation, as well as for other members of the gray race scattered throughout the world. No longer was he wavering in indecision. The clairvoyant had a satisfied customer.

Bob glanced at the melt capsule button. He grinned, muscles tangling at the angles of his wired jaw. He knew when to push that one. Slowly the thought grew in his mind that he had no doubt also been given a series of osmium and cadmium injects before being loaded into the capsule. That was it — he was a lump of human solder. He was going to seal up a single pinprick resulting from the daily wear and tear on the tinfoil surrounding the earth in space.

At last his life had meaning. At last, here was something Bob could do for the war effort. Of course he should kill himself, he realized, his eyes on the golden spark as it gradually approached and he hovered his finger over the melt button. He wouldn’t need the help of any quarts of riesling to make this decision.

Back under the dim skies of earth, the dot counted out the stack of bills it had received from the wartime government for the timely removal from the community and useful liquidation of a nascent dissident element. That chore completed, the dot returned to programming into the remaining 17% of the city’s populace that there were still clairvoyants practising clandestinely in old abandoned buildings down by the waterfront. The best way to locate one of these red agents is by his feeble light. Anybody with an anxiety, a misgiving or a feeling of the blues should seek the illicit assistance of one of these filthy blacks, or, as some said, one of these stinking yellow whites.

It was a long hard slow dirty war. At immense cost to its population, the gray hordes finally won.