John D. MacDonald

Final Mission

(From Act II, Scene 3 — SYNOPSIS for Cynthia)

CYNTHIA: (Distraught, pacing) Then what are we to do for them? They were here when we needed them. Are they to be surfeited with high honor, served like roasted duck at a billion banquets? Tell me, Roger, have we, the living, nothing but boredom to offer those who made this living possible?

ROGER: (Sullenly) They are old heroes, my dear. The world no longer has need for the heroic impulse. And what is wrong with roast duck?

CYNTHIA: (violently) Everything! (She crosses to the bed, sits, posture expressing deep dejection. When she speaks her voice is soft.) You see, Roger, I am incredibly old. I saw him, you know, that last time we needed them. Oh, what a desperate bold look about him! Space had put its mark of flame on his hard cheek.

ROGER: (Distantly) Him? Him, indeed! I hadn’t realized that we’d narrowed it to a specific and particular hero. I thought you were bleeding for the whole lot of them.

CYNTHIA: (Fondly) My poor jealous darling Roger! Was I to remain suspended and unaware until you came into my life?

ROGER: (Dryly) More of this hero please.

CYNTHIA: Oh, the look of him! That careful balanced walk of the spaceman! His eyes were deepest blue, Roger. We thought everything was lost then. He and-those like him were our last hope, and such a forlorn one, too!

ROGER: You are turning into a professional sentimentalist, darling. All of them from those days are fat-haunched wheezing old men, with long and impossibly boring yarns of the space wars. I see them at the club, you know.

CYNTHIA: (Teasingly) Poor Roger! Let me see. When they left that last time to come back a year later bringing victory you must have been all of four years old. And I was seventeen. Seventeen! You should have known me when I was seventeen.

ROGER: Come now! Of which puffy old hero are we speaking?

CYNTHIA: (Arching her back, speaking boldly) Can’t you tell, you stupid man? Which one looks most like my son?

Editorial from the “Tampa Times,” entitled ODE TO THE MALADJUSTED:

“We look with dubious eye on the psyching programs which are now applied to us early enough to result in a balanced adjustment to the world as we know it.

“The other day we wondered what we might be doing were it not for the psyching which has made us such a complacent scribbler of these immortal words.

“For a moment we thought, with horror, of a neurotic, maladjusted little man, full of sighs and dreams and imagery. And then it struck us that many of the men who have come forward in times of stress have been drawn from just such groups. During the space wars which ended a bare twenty years ago we would have lost, it is certain, were it not for men so maladjusted that violence was their creed, brutality their way of life, danger a necessary drug. Their very lustiness was our margin of victory. Their names are a heady drumbeat. Crewson, Hallison, Holt, Tane, Cryler, Stake.

“We know that the possibility of another space war is so remote as to be purest fantasy. With ten thousand planets open to us, mankind will spend a thousand generations before there is enough surplus energy for war, or industrial capacity to divert to armament.

“Yet, should it happen, we psyched ones are as unsuited for war as is a steer for the bullring.

“And who will there be to save the scalp of this scribbler next time?”

From the minutes of the annual meeting of the Tamarack Club:

TREASURER: When the heroes of space were given honorary memberships in the Tamarack Club twenty years ago, I do not believe that the members of that period realized that the recipients would make this club their headquarters. And... ah... I do not believe that they realized the troublemaking abilities of the group. Our dues are sufficiently high so that we are composed of top executives from industry in this area. All, of course, except those spacemen. The situation constantly grows more serious. During the past month our losses in club equipment destroyed and damaged were heavy. Mr. I. L. Intermann, after being thrown out onto the sidewalk by two of the... ah... spacemen, tendered his resignation. There must be an end to this brawling in the Tamarack Club, and an end to those interminable lies they tell in the bar every afternoon. This is a decent club for decent law-abiding members. It is within our power to rescind their honorary memberships. I doubt whether any one of them has saved the money from his pension in sufficient quantity to pay the initiation fee. Thus, I move that...

CHAIRMAN: You have a list of the ones we want to get rid of? There’s a couple of them that seem all right to me.

TREASURER: To make any exceptions would defeat the plan. I move that the honorary memberships given twenty years ago to the following men be rescinded: Crewson, Hallison, Holt, Tane, Cryler, Stake, Guthrie, Sterndees, Baranak, Schota, Mendez, Antonelli and McGuire.

SECRETARY: Second!

CHAIRMAN: All in favor... Motion (Carried and it is so ordered.

TREASURER: Who is going to tell them?

CHAIRMAN: I’ll appoint you.

TREASURER: Oh, no, you don’t! Not me, brother.

CHAIRMAN: You have a suggestion?

TREASURER: See what you think of it. We’ll just post a notice on the bulletin board and underneath it can say ‘By order of the Executive Committee’.

CHAIRMAN: Yes. Please handle it that way. What’s the next order of business?

MEMORANDUM TO: Chief, Psyching SubSection, Federal Bureau of Adult Adjustment, Department of Interior, Septagon Building, New Washington, Nevada, Easthemi.

SUBJECT: Disposition of File 8.211j (Retired Commanders of Military Fleet)

FROM: Field Director, Special Problem Team Twelve

1. Reference subject file number, the undersigned has taken into Adjustment Custody the following listed men. The receptivity quotient appears after each name.

2. It should be noted that receptively ranges from a low point forty-one to a high of point eighty-three, with the two highest still short point ought seven of the minimum quotient necessary for the application of mechanical methods of correction.

3. Attention is respectfully directed to the fact that each of the above men draws from the federal government the full pay and allowances of a retired fleet admiral, and thus the problem of handling the situation appears delicate.

4. The attitude of the entire group is consistently scornful, facetious and uncooperative. It is only with the utmost difficulty that they are persuaded to refrain from giving nonsense answers to the test questions.

5. SubSection procedure in the past, when faced with less important citizens with the same problem, has been to revert to that period in personal history of each person when they were closest to achieving a true and valid adjustment, then re-create the environmental factors. As the period of true adjustment of these men was the time of the last space war, the problems of such environmental re-creation become evident. However, as no other approach seems feasible, it is recommended that permission from higher authority be sought so that this case may be taken out of active files of the SubSection.

And so it was done.

The “Tampa Bay” was one of the cruisers, taken out from under wraps, her hull polished and shining, her drives keyed to the maximum efficiency.

They boarded her, those thirteen old men, wheezing at the steepness of the ramp, straining the plastic seams of faded uniforms, while the decorations of nations long dead were brave spots of color against flaccid chests. They boarded her while the cold eyes of the video cameras followed every step, and, as far as the eye could see, the people of earth, adjusted and content, cheered and waved and wept.

“See, Angel? That one with the scars? That’s Sandy Stake, who won at Rigel. And there’s Crosscut Louis Baranak. He smashed their main fleet off Betelgeux. Lord, look at them trying to keep those bellies sucked in and look stern and heroic. Sure, I know. So are dinosaurs.”

The warning drift of green smoke shows from the blockhouse. The people of the world count slowly. “Goodby, goodby.” WHOOOOM! Adios, muchachos.

On the ship popular vote has put Red Mike Hallison in charge. He sets the constant at fifty lights, makes an assignment list, calls a meeting in the main lounge in officer’s country, on this ship where every man is an officer.

Thirteen pairs of somber eyes, unsteady hands. Stolid dejection.

“Damn every neat, tidy, well-washed little soul of the universe,” Irish McGuire says.

“Like old shoes,” says Spick Mendez, picking his teeth with a thick thumbnail.

Mike Hallison sits and waits. There is no hot sharp anger. Anger is dulled, heavy, hopeless.

Then Red Mike speaks. “Remember the little fracas on the near side of Antares?”

“Sure,” says Manny Schota. “You were ready to run when I came into range.”

“The reason I bring it up,” says Red Mike, “is because I still think I saw a stranger over there. A ship that was a perfect sphere, red gold when it picked up the reflection of the jolts we sent at them. After we licked ’em, the, stranger wasn’t around. I’ve always had a notion to go beyond Antares and see what I could find.”

A dim awakening in dulled eyes.

“Maybe they’d give us a scrap,” Tane says with a glimmer of hope.

“We can do one of two things,” says Red Mike. “We can go along at this speed until there’s nobody left to give the last man space burial. Or we can go a-hunting.”

A lift of heavy heads and a narrowing of the eyes.

“Hunting? How’d you like to hear a volley off the forward jolt stations again, Sandy? Now you’re saying something. Maybe this is a break, after all.”

Red Mike cuts through the babble. “Okay, lads. We’ll step up the speed and go hunting. Check the armament. See what we’ll have to clear away for battle stations, if we ever find them out in that haystack of stars. Hop to it.”

They go out into the corridors leading fore and aft from the lounge. There is a high note of excitement in their voices. Red Mike smiles. At a distance their voices sound... young. That’s it. Young.

Still smiling he selects a red apple from one of the big baskets of fruit thoughtfully provided by the membership of the Tamarack Club.

He hums at first; then, his voice muffled by a large bite of apple, he sings hoarsely, “Never die, never die. They only blow away.”

Content

John D. MacDonald
Final Mission