Birnam Wood

"Nice landing."

The man who said this was no longer looking at the pilot in the spacesuit with the helmet under his arm. In the circular control room — horseshoe console in the middle — he went to the wall of glass and looked out at the ship, a large even though distant cylinder, charred around its jets. A blackish fluid still spilled from the jets onto the concrete. The second controller, big in the shoulders, a beret tight on his bald skull, put the tapes on rewind and, like an unblinking bird, regarded the newcomer out of the corner of his eye. He wore headphones, and in front of him was a bank of flickering monitors.

"We managed," said the pilot. Pretending that he needed support to remove his heavy, double-buckled gloves, he leaned slightly against the jutting edge of the console. After that landing he was wobbly in the knees.

"What was it?"

The smaller one, by the glass, in a worn leather jacket, with a mousy, unshaven face, clapped his pockets until he found his cigarettes.

"Deflection in the thrust," murmured the pilot, a little surprised by the coolness of the welcome.

The man by the glass, a cigarette already in his mouth, inhaled and asked through the smoke:

"But why? You don't know?"

"No," the pilot wanted to reply — but he remained silent, because it seemed to him that he ought to have known. The tape ended. It fluttered on the reel. The larger man got up, took off the headphones, only now nodded to him, and said hoarsely:

"I'm London. And that's Goss. Welcome to Titan. What would you like to drink? We have coffee and whiskey."

The young pilot was flustered. He knew the names of these men but had not met them before. He had assumed, for no reason, that the larger would be the chief, Goss, but it was the other way around. Getting this straight in his head, he chose coffee.

"What's the cargo? Carborundum bits?" asked London when all three of them were seated at the little table that came out of the wall. The steaming coffee was in glasses that resembled laboratory beakers.

Goss took a yellow pill with his coffee, sighed, coughed, and blew his nose until tears came to his eyes.

"And you brought radiators, too, right?" he asked the pilot.

The pilot, again surprised, expecting greater interest in his feat, only nodded. It was not every day that an engine stalled in the middle of a landing. He was full of words not about freight but about how, instead of attempting to blow out the jets or increase the main power, he had immediately cut the auto and went down on only the boosters, a trick that he had never tried outside the simulator. And that had been ages ago. So he had to collect his thoughts again.

"I brought radiators, too," he said finally, and was even pleased at how it sounded: the laconic type, emerging from danger.

"But not to the right place," smiled the smaller man, Goss.

The pilot didn't know whether or not this was a joke.

"What do you mean? You received me — you called me," he corrected himself.

"We had to."

"I don't understand."

"You were supposed to land at Grail."

"Then why did you pull me off course?" He felt hot. The call had sounded imperative. True, while losing speed he had caught a radio announcement from Grail about some accident, but couldn't make out much through all the static. He had been flying to Titan via Saturn, using the planet's gravity to decelerate and thus save fuel, so his ship had brushed the giant's magnetosphere until there was crackling on all the wavelengths. Immediately afterward he received the call from this spaceport. A navigator had to do what flight control said. And here, before he was out of his suit, they were cross-examining him, Mentally he was still at the helm, with the straps digging into his shoulders and chest as the rocket hit the concrete with its arms spread. The boosters, still firing and rumbling, made the whole hull shudder.

"Where was I supposed to put down?"

"Your cargo belongs to Grail," explained the smaller man, wiping his red nose. He had a cold. "But we intercepted you above orbit and called you here, because we need Killian. Your passenger."

"Killian?" the young pilot said with surprise. "He's not on board. Besides me there's only Sinko, the copilot."

The others were dumbfounded.

"Where is Killian?"

"By now, in Montreal. His wife is having a baby. He left before me, on a shuttle. Before I took off."

"From Mars?"

"Of course, from where else? What's all this about?"

"The mess that obtains in space equals that on Earth," remarked London. He stuffed tobacco in his pipe as if he wanted to break it. He was angry. The pilot, too.

"You should have asked."

"We were positive he was with you. That's what the last radiogram said." Goss blew his nose again and sighed. "You can't take off now in any case," he said finally. "And Marlin couldn't wait to get the radiators. Now he'll put all the blame on me."

"But they're there." The pilot indicated with his head. In the mist stood the dark, slender spindle of his ship. "Six of them, I think. And two in gigajoules. They'll disperse any mist or cloud."

"I can't very well put them on my back and carry them to Marlin," returned Goss, in worse and worse humor.

The carelessness, the irresponsibility of the subordinate spaceport, which, as its chief admitted, had intercepted him after three weeks of flight without verifying that he had the passenger they expected, shocked the pilot. He did not say to them that the cargo was their problem now. Until the damage was repaired, he could do nothing, even if he wanted to. He kept silent.

"You'll stay with us, of course." With these words London finished his coffee and rose from the aluminum chair. He was huge, like a heavyweight wrestler. He went over to the glass wall. The Titan landscape, a lifeless fury of mountains of unearthly color in the rusty dimness, with clouds of bronze thick at their peaks, made a perfect background for his figure. The floor of the tower vibrated slightly. An old transformer, thought the pilot. He also got up, to look at his ship. Like an ocean lighthouse it stood vertically out of the low, rushing mist. A gust blew away the wisps, but the marks of overheating on the jets were no longer visible, perhaps because of the distance and the half-light. Or else they had simply cooled.

"You have gamma defect scopes here?"

The ship mattered more to him than their trouble. They had brought the trouble on themselves.

"We do, but I won't permit anyone to approach the rocket in an ordinary suit," replied Goss.

"You think it's the pile?" the pilot blurted.

"You don't?"

The small chief got up and walked over. From the floor registers along the convex glass came a pleasant warmth.

"The temperature did jump above normal during the descent, but the Geigers were quiet. It was probably only a jet. A ceramic might have been flushed from the combustion...