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diff --git a/22958.txt b/22958.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7d29be9 --- /dev/null +++ b/22958.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1011 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of One-Shot, by James Benjamin Blish + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: One-Shot + +Author: James Benjamin Blish + +Illustrator: van Dongen + +Release Date: October 11, 2007 [EBook #22958] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ONE-SHOT *** + + + + +Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + +[Illustration] + + + + +ONE-SHOT + + _You can do a great deal if + you have enough data, and + enough time to compute on it, + by logical methods. But given + the situation that neither data + nor time is adequate, and an + answer must be produced ... + what do you do?_ + +BY JAMES BLISH + +Illustrated by van Dongen + + +On the day that the Polish freighter _Ludmilla_ laid an egg in New York +harbor, Abner Longmans ("One-Shot") Braun was in the city going about +his normal business, which was making another million dollars. As we +found out later, almost nothing else was normal about that particular +week end for Braun. For one thing, he had brought his family with him--a +complete departure from routine--reflecting the unprecedentedly +legitimate nature of the deals he was trying to make. From every point +of view it was a bad week end for the CIA to mix into his affairs, but +nobody had explained that to the master of the _Ludmilla_. + +I had better add here that we knew nothing about this until afterward; +from the point of view of the storyteller, an organization like Civilian +Intelligence Associates gets to all its facts backwards, entering the +tale at the pay-off, working back to the hook, and winding up with a +sheaf of background facts to feed into the computer for Next Time. It's +rough on the various people who've tried to fictionalize what we +do--particularly for the lazy examples of the breed, who come to us +expecting that their plotting has already been done for them--but it's +inherent in the way we operate, and there it is. + +Certainly nobody at CIA so much as thought of Braun when the news first +came through. Harry Anderton, the Harbor Defense chief, called us at +0830 Friday to take on the job of identifying the egg; this was when our +records show us officially entering the affair, but, of course, Anderton +had been keeping the wires to Washington steaming for an hour before +that, getting authorization to spend some of his money on us (our +clearance status was then and is now C&R--clean and routine). + +I was in the central office when the call came through, and had some +difficulty in making out precisely what Anderton wanted of us. "Slow +down, Colonel Anderton, please," I begged him. "Two or three seconds +won't make that much difference. How did you find out about this egg in +the first place?" + +"The automatic compartment bulkheads on the _Ludmilla_ were defective," +he said. "It seems that this egg was buried among a lot of other crates +in the dump-cell of the hold--" + +"What's a dump cell?" + +"It's a sea lock for getting rid of dangerous cargo. The bottom of it +opens right to Davy Jones. Standard fitting for ships carrying +explosives, radioactives, anything that might act up unexpectedly." + +"All right," I said. "Go ahead." + +"Well, there was a timer on the dump-cell floor, set to drop the egg +when the ship came up the river. That worked fine, but the automatic +bulkheads that are supposed to keep the rest of the ship from being +flooded while the cell's open, didn't. At least they didn't do a +thorough job. The _Ludmilla_ began to list and the captain yelled for +help. When the Harbor Patrol found the dump-cell open, they called us +in." + +"I see." I thought about it a moment. "In other words, you don't know +whether the _Ludmilla_ really laid an egg or not." + +"That's what I keep trying to explain to you, Dr. Harris. We don't know +what she dropped and we haven't any way of finding out. It could be a +bomb--it could be anything. We're sweating everybody on board the ship +now, but it's my guess that none of them know anything; the whole +procedure was designed to be automatic." + +"All right, we'll take it," I said. "You've got divers down?" + +"Sure, but--" + +"We'll worry about the buts from here on. Get us a direct line from +your barge to the big board here so we can direct the work. Better get +on over here yourself." + +"Right." He sounded relieved. Official people have a lot of confidence +in CIA; too much, in my estimation. Some day the job will come along +that we can't handle, and then Washington will be kicking itself--or, +more likely, some scapegoat--for having failed to develop a comparable +government department. + +Not that there was much prospect of Washington's doing that. Official +thinking had been running in the other direction for years. The +precedent was the Associated Universities organization which ran +Brookhaven; CIA had been started the same way, by a loose corporation of +universities and industries all of which had wanted to own an ULTIMAC +and no one of which had had the money to buy one for itself. The +Eisenhower administration, with its emphasis on private enterprise and +concomitant reluctance to sink federal funds into projects of such size, +had turned the two examples into a nice fat trend, which ULTIMAC herself +said wasn't going to be reversed within the practicable lifetime of CIA. + + * * * * * + +I buzzed for two staffers, and in five minutes got Clark Cheyney and +Joan Hadamard, CIA's business manager and social science division chief +respectively. The titles were almost solely for the benefit of the +T/O--that is, Clark and Joan do serve in those capacities, but said +service takes about two per cent of their capacities and their time. I +shot them a couple of sentences of explanation, trusting them to pick up +whatever else they needed from the tape, and checked the line to the +divers' barge. + +It was already open; Anderton had gone to work quickly and with decision +once he was sure we were taking on the major question. The television +screen lit, but nothing showed on it but murky light, striped with +streamers of darkness slowly rising and falling. The audio went +_cloonck_ ... _oing_, _oing_ ... _bonk_ ... _oing_ ... Underwater +noises, shapeless and characterless. + +"Hello, out there in the harbor. This is CIA, Harris calling. Come in, +please." + +"Monig here," the audio said. _Boink_ ... _oing_, _oing_ ... + +"Got anything yet?" + +"Not a thing, Dr. Harris," Monig said. "You can't see three inches in +front of your face down here--it's too silty. We've bumped into a couple +of crates, but so far, no egg." + +"Keep trying." + +Cheyney, looking even more like a bulldog than usual, was setting his +stopwatch by one of the eight clocks on ULTIMAC's face. "Want me to take +the divers?" he said. + +"No, Clark, not yet. I'd rather have Joan do it for the moment." I +passed the mike to her. "You'd better run a probability series first." + +"Check." He began feeding tape into the integrator's mouth. "What's your +angle, Peter?" + +"The ship. I want to see how heavily shielded that dump-cell is." + +"It isn't shielded at all," Anderton's voice said behind me. I hadn't +heard him come in. "But that doesn't prove anything. The egg might have +carried sufficient shielding in itself. Or maybe the Commies didn't care +whether the crew was exposed or not. Or maybe there isn't any egg." + +"All that's possible," I admitted. "But I want to see it, anyhow." + +"Have you taken blood tests?" Joan asked Anderton. + +"Yes." + +"Get the reports through to me, then. I want white-cell counts, +differentials, platelet counts, hematocrit and sed rates on every man." + +Anderton picked up the phone and I took a firm hold on the doorknob. + +"Hey," Anderton said, putting the phone down again. "Are you going to +duck out just like that? Remember, Dr. Harris, we've got to evacuate the +city first of all! No matter whether it's a real egg or not--we can't +take the chance on it's _not_ being an egg!" + +"Don't move a man until you get a go-ahead from CIA," I said. "For all +we know now, evacuating the city may be just what the enemy wants us to +do--so they can grab it unharmed. Or they may want to start a panic for +some other reason, any one of fifty possible reasons." + +"You can't take such a gamble," he said grimly. "There are eight and a +half million lives riding on it. I can't let you do it." + +"You passed your authority to us when you hired us," I pointed out. "If +you want to evacuate without our O.K., you'll have to fire us first. +It'll take another hour to get that cleared from Washington--so you +might as well give us the hour." + +He stared at me for a moment, his lips thinned. Then he picked up the +phone again to order Joan's blood count, and I got out the door, fast. + + * * * * * + +A reasonable man would have said that I found nothing useful on the +_Ludmilla_, except negative information. But the fact is that anything I +found would have been a surprise to me; I went down looking for +surprises. I found nothing but a faint trail to Abner Longmans Braun, +most of which was fifteen years cold. + +There'd been a time when I'd known Braun, briefly and to no profit to +either of us. As an undergraduate majoring in social sciences, I'd taken +on a term paper on the old International Longshoreman's Association, a +racket-ridden union now formally extinct--although anyone who knew the +signs could still pick up some traces on the docks. In those days, Braun +had been the business manager of an insurance firm, the sole visible +function of which had been to write policies for the ILA and its +individual dock-wallopers. For some reason, he had been amused by the +brash youngster who'd barged in on him and demanded the lowdown, and had +shown me considerable lengths of ropes not normally in view of the +public--nothing incriminating, but enough to give me a better insight +into how the union operated than I had had any right to expect--or even +suspect. + +Hence I was surprised to hear somebody on the docks remark that Braun +was in the city over the week end. It would never have occurred to me +that he still interested himself in the waterfront, for he'd gone +respectable with a vengeance. He was still a professional gambler, and +according to what he had told the Congressional Investigating Committee +last year, took in thirty to fifty thousand dollars a year at it, but +his gambles were no longer concentrated on horses, the numbers, or shady +insurance deals. Nowadays what he did was called investment--mostly in +real estate; realtors knew him well as the man who had _almost_ bought +the Empire State Building. (The _almost_ in the equation stands for the +moment when the shoestring broke.) + +Joan had been following his career, too, not because she had ever met +him, but because for her he was a type study in the evolution of what +she called "the extra-legal ego." "With personalities like that, +respectability is a disease," she told me. "There's always an +almost-open conflict between the desire to be powerful and the desire to +be accepted; your ordinary criminal is a moral imbecile, but people like +Braun are damned with a conscience, and sooner or later they crack +trying to appease it." + +"I'd sooner try to crack a Timkin bearing," I said. "Braun's ten-point +steel all the way through." + +"Don't you believe it. The symptoms are showing all over him. Now he's +backing Broadway plays, sponsoring beginning actresses, joining +playwrights' groups--he's the only member of Buskin and Brush who's +never written a play, acted in one, or so much as pulled the rope to +raise the curtain." + +"That's investment," I said. "That's his business." + +"Peter, you're only looking at the surface. His real investments almost +never fail. But the plays he backs _always_ do. They have to; he's +sinking money in them to appease his conscience, and if they were to +succeed it would double his guilt instead of salving it. It's the same +way with the young actresses. He's not sexually interested in them--his +type never is, because living a rigidly orthodox family life is part of +the effort towards respectability. He's backing them to 'pay his debt to +society'--in other words, they're talismans to keep him out of jail." + +"It doesn't seem like a very satisfactory substitute." + +"Of course it isn't," Joan had said. "The next thing he'll do is go in +for direct public service--giving money to hospitals or something like +that. You watch." + +She had been right; within the year, Braun had announced the founding of +an association for clearing the Detroit slum area where he had been +born--the plainest kind of symbolic suicide: _Let's not have any more +Abner Longmans Brauns born down here_. It depressed me to see it happen, +for next on Joan's agenda for Braun was an entry into politics as a +fighting liberal--a New Dealer twenty years too late. Since I'm mildly +liberal myself when I'm off duty, I hated to think what Braun's career +might tell me about my own motives, if I'd let it. + + * * * * * + +All of which had nothing to do with why I was prowling around the +_Ludmilla_--or did it? I kept remembering Anderton's challenge: "You +can't take such a gamble. There are eight and a half million lives +riding on it--" That put it up into Braun's normal operating area, all +right. The connection was still hazy, but on the grounds that any link +might be useful, I phoned him. + +He remembered me instantly; like most uneducated, power-driven men, he +had a memory as good as any machine's. + +"You never did send me that paper you was going to write," he said. His +voice seemed absolutely unchanged, although he was in his seventies now. +"You promised you would." + +"Kids don't keep their promises as well as they should," I said. "But +I've still got copies and I'll see to it that you get one, this time. +Right now I need another favor--something right up your alley." + +"CIA business?" + +"Yes. I didn't know you knew I was with CIA." + +Braun chuckled. "I still know a thing or two," he said. "What's the +angle?" + +"That I can't tell you over the phone. But it's the biggest gamble there +ever was, and I think we need an expert. Can you come down to CIA's +central headquarters right away?" + +"Yeah, if it's that big. If it ain't, I got lots of business here, Andy. +And I ain't going to be in town long. You're sure it's top stuff?" + +"My word on it." + +He was silent a moment. Then he said, "Andy, send me your paper." + +"The paper? Sure, but--" Then I got it. I'd given him my word. "You'll +get it," I said. "Thanks, Mr. Braun." + +I called headquarters and sent a messenger to my apartment to look for +one of those long-dusty blue folders with the legal-length sheets inside +them, with orders to scorch it over to Braun without stopping to breathe +more than once. Then I went back myself. + +The atmosphere had changed. Anderton was sitting by the big desk, +clenching his fists and sweating; his whole posture telegraphed his +controlled helplessness. Cheyney was bent over a seismograph, +echo-sounding for the egg through the river bottom. If that even had a +prayer of working, I knew, he'd have had the trains of the Hudson & +Manhattan stopped; their rumbling course through their tubes would have +blanked out any possible echo-pip from the egg. + +"Wild goose chase?" Joan said, scanning my face. + +"Not quite. I've got something, if I can just figure out what it is. +Remember One-Shot Braun?" + +"Yes. What's he got to do with it?" + +[Illustration] + +"Nothing," I said. "But I want to bring him in. I don't think we'll lick +this project before deadline without him." + +"What good is a professional gambler on a job like this? He'll just get +in the way." + +I looked toward the television screen, which now showed an amorphous +black mass, jutting up from a foundation of even deeper black. "Is that +operation getting you anywhere?" + +"Nothing's gotten us anywhere," Anderton interjected harshly. "We don't +even know if that's the egg--the whole area is littered with crates. +Harris, you've got to let me get that alert out!" + +"Clark, how's the time going?" + +Cheyney consulted the stopwatch. "Deadline in twenty-nine minutes," he +said. + +"All right, let's use those minutes. I'm beginning to see this thing a +little clearer. Joan, what we've got here is a one-shot gamble; right?" + +"In effect," she said cautiously. + +"And it's my guess that we're never going to get the answer by diving +for it--not in time, anyhow. Remember when the Navy lost a barge-load of +shells in the harbor, back in '52? They scrabbled for them for a year +and never pulled up a one; they finally had to warn the public that if +it found anything funny-looking along the shore it shouldn't bang said +object, or shake it either. We're better equipped than the Navy was +then--but we're working against a deadline." + +"If you'd admitted that earlier," Anderton said hoarsely, "we'd have +half a million people out of the city by now. Maybe even a million." + +"We haven't given up yet, colonel. The point is this, Joan: what we need +is an inspired guess. Get anything from the prob series, Clark? I +thought not. On a one-shot gamble of this kind, the 'laws' of chance are +no good at all. For that matter, the so-called ESP experiments showed us +long ago that even the way we construct random tables is full of +holes--and that a man with a feeling for the essence of a gamble can +make a monkey out of chance almost at will. + +"And if there ever was such a man, Braun is it. That's why I asked him +to come down here. I want him to look at that lump on the screen +and--play a hunch." + +"You're out of your mind," Anderton said. + + * * * * * + +A decorous knock spared me the trouble of having to deny, affirm or +ignore the judgment. It was Braun; the messenger had been fast, and the +gambler hadn't bothered to read what a college student had thought of +him fifteen years ago. He came forward and held out his hand, while the +others looked him over frankly. + +He was impressive, all right. It would have been hard for a stranger to +believe that he was aiming at respectability; to the eye, he was already +there. He was tall and spare, and walked perfectly erect, not without +spring despite his age. His clothing was as far from that of a gambler +as you could have taken it by design: a black double-breasted suit with +a thin vertical stripe, a gray silk tie with a pearl stickpin just +barely large enough to be visible at all, a black Homburg; all perfectly +fitted, all worn with proper casualness--one might almost say a formal +casualness. It was only when he opened his mouth that One-Shot Braun was +in the suit with him. + +"I come over as soon as your runner got to me," he said. "What's the +pitch, Andy?" + +"Mr. Braun, this is Joan Hadamard, Clark Cheyney, Colonel Anderton. I'll +be quick because we need speed now. A Polish ship has dropped something +out in the harbor. We don't know what it is. It may be a hell-bomb, or +it may be just somebody's old laundry. Obviously we've got to find out +which--and we want you to tell us." + +Braun's aristocratic eyebrows went up. "Me? Hell, Andy, I don't know +nothing about things like that. I'm surprised with you. I thought CIA +had all the brains it needed--ain't you got machines to tell you answers +like that?" + +I pointed silently to Joan, who had gone back to work the moment the +introductions were over. She was still on the mike to the divers. She +was saying: "What does it look like?" + +"It's just a lump of something, Dr. Hadamard. Can't even tell its +shape--it's buried too deeply in the mud." _Cloonk_ ... _Oing_, _oing_ +... + +"Try the Geiger." + +"We did. Nothing but background." + +"Scintillation counter?" + +"Nothing, Dr. Hadamard. Could be it's shielded." + +"Let us do the guessing, Monig. All right, maybe it's got a clockwork +fuse that didn't break with the impact. Or a gyroscopic fuse. Stick a +stethoscope on it and see if you pick up a ticking or anything that +sounds like a motor running." + + * * * * * + +There was a lag and I turned back to Braun. "As you can see, we're +stymied. This is a long shot, Mr. Braun. One throw of the dice--one +show-down hand. We've got to have an expert call it for us--somebody +with a record of hits on long shots. That's why I called you." + +"It's no good," he said. He took off the Homburg, took his handkerchief +from his breast pocket, and wiped the hatband. "I can't do it." + +"Why not?" + +"It ain't my _kind_ of thing," he said. "Look, I never in my life run +odds on anything that made any difference. But this makes a difference. +If I guess wrong--" + +"Then we're all dead ducks. But why should you guess wrong? Your hunches +have been working for sixty years now." + +Braun wiped his face. "No. You don't get it. I wish you'd listen to me. +Look, my wife and my kids are in the city. It ain't only my life, it's +theirs, too. That's what I care about. That's why it's no good. On +things that matter to me, _my hunches don't work_." + +I was stunned, and so, I could see, were Joan and Cheyney. I suppose I +should have guessed it, but it had never occurred to me. + +"Ten minutes," Cheyney said. + +I looked up at Braun. He was frightened, and again I was surprised +without having any right to be. I tried to keep at least my voice calm. + +"Please try it anyhow, Mr. Braun--as a favor. It's already too late to +do it any other way. And if you guess wrong, the outcome won't be any +worse than if you don't try at all." + +"My kids," he whispered. I don't think he knew that he was speaking +aloud. I waited. + +Then his eyes seemed to come back to the present. "All right," he said. +"I told you the truth, Andy. Remember that. So--is it a bomb or ain't +it? That's what's up for grabs, right?" + +I nodded. He closed his eyes. An unexpected stab of pure fright went +down my back. Without the eyes, Braun's face was a death mask. + +The water sounds and the irregular ticking of a Geiger counter seemed to +spring out from the audio speaker, four times as loud as before. I could +even hear the pen of the seismograph scribbling away, until I looked at +the instrument and saw that Clark had stopped it, probably long ago. + +Droplets of sweat began to form along Braun's forehead and his upper +lip. The handkerchief remained crushed in his hand. + +Anderton said, "Of all the fool--" + +"Hush!" Joan said quietly. + + * * * * * + +Slowly, Braun opened his eyes. "All right," he said. "You guys wanted it +this way. _I say it's a bomb._" He stared at us for a moment more--and +then, all at once, the Timkin bearing burst. Words poured out of it. +"Now you guys do something, do your job like I did mine--get my wife and +kids out of there--empty the city--do something, _do something_!" + +Anderton was already grabbing for the phone. "You're right, Mr. Braun. +If it isn't already too late--" + +Cheyney shot out a hand and caught Anderton's telephone arm by the +wrist. "Wait a minute," he said. + +"What d'you mean, 'wait a minute'? Haven't you already shot enough +time?" + +Cheyney did not let go; instead, he looked inquiringly at Joan and said, +"One minute, Joan. You might as well go ahead." + +She nodded and spoke into the mike. "Monig, unscrew the cap." + +"Unscrew the cap?" the audio squawked. "But Dr. Hadamard, if that sets +it off--" + +"It won't go off. That's the one thing you can be sure it won't do." + +"What is this?" Anderton demanded. "And what's this deadline stuff, +anyhow?" + +"The cap's off," Monig reported. "We're getting plenty of radiation now. +Just a minute-- Yeah. Dr. Hadamard, it's a bomb, all right. But it +hasn't got a fuse. Now how could they have made a fool mistake like +that?" + +"In other words, it's a dud," Joan said. + +"That's right, a dud." + +Now, at last, Braun wiped his face, which was quite gray. "I told you +the truth," he said grimly. "My hunches don't work on stuff like this." + +"But they do," I said. "I'm sorry we put you through the wringer--and +you too, colonel--but we couldn't let an opportunity like this slip. It +was too good a chance for us to test how our facilities would stand up +in a real bomb-drop." + +"A real drop?" Anderton said. "Are you trying to say that CIA staged +this? You ought to be shot, the whole pack of you!" + +"No, not exactly," I said. "The enemy's responsible for the drop, all +right. We got word last month from our man in Gdynia that they were +going to do it, and that the bomb would be on board the _Ludmilla_. As I +say, it was too good an opportunity to miss. We wanted to find out just +how long it would take us to figure out the nature of the bomb--which we +didn't know in detail--after it was dropped here. So we had our people +in Gdynia defuse the thing after it was put on board the ship, but +otherwise leave it entirely alone. + +"Actually, you see, your hunch was right on the button as far as it +went. We didn't ask you whether or not that object was a live bomb. We +asked whether it was a bomb or not. You said it was, and you were +right." + +The expression on Braun's face was exactly like the one he had worn +while he had been searching for his decision--except that, since his +eyes were open, I could see that it was directed at me. "If this was the +old days," he said in an ice-cold voice, "I might of made the colonel's +idea come true. I don't go for tricks like this, Andy." + +"It was more than a trick," Clark put in. "You'll remember we had a +deadline on the test, Mr. Braun. Obviously, in a real drop we wouldn't +have all the time in the world to figure out what kind of a thing had +been dropped. If we had still failed to establish that when the deadline +ran out, we would have had to allow evacuation of the city, with all the +attendant risk that that was exactly what the enemy wanted us to do." + +"So?" + +"So we failed the test," I said. "At one minute short of the deadline, +Joan had the divers unscrew the cap. In a real drop that would have +resulted in a detonation, if the bomb was real; we'd never risk it. That +we did do it in the test was a concession of failure--an admission that +our usual methods didn't come through for us in time. + +"And that means that you were the only person who did come through, Mr. +Braun. If a real bomb-drop ever comes, we're going to have to have you +here, as an active part of our investigation. Your intuition for the +one-shot gamble was the one thing that bailed us out this time. Next +time it may save eight million lives." + +There was quite a long silence. All of us, Anderton included, watched +Braun intently, but his impassive face failed to show any trace of how +his thoughts were running. + +When he did speak at last, what he said must have seemed insanely +irrelevant to Anderton, and maybe to Cheyney too. And perhaps it meant +nothing more to Joan than the final clinical note in a case history. + +"It's funny," he said, "I was thinking of running for Congress next year +from my district. But maybe this is more important." + +It was, I believe, the sigh of a man at peace with himself. + + +FIN + + + + +Transcriber's Note + + This etext was produced from _Astounding Science Fiction_ August + 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. + copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and + typographical errors have been corrected without note. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of One-Shot, by James Benjamin Blish + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ONE-SHOT *** + +***** This file should be named 22958.txt or 22958.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/2/9/5/22958/ + +Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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