Dark Benediction

White fury lanced the ground and spread in a white sheet beneath the ship and roiled up in a tumult of dust and expanding gasses. It climbed on a white fan, gathering velocity. Relke could still make it out as a ship when its course began arcing away from the vertical. It was beginning a trajectory in the direction of Copernicus. When it was out of sight, he began trudging back toward the work site. He was nearly an hour overdue.

“Where you been?” Novotny asked him quietly after watching him hobble the last quarter of a mile in stony silence. He was squinting at the lineman with that faintly puzzled look that Relke recognized as a most ominous omen. The squint was lopsided because of a cut under one eye, and it looked like a chip was missing from a tooth.

Relke showed his stiff leg and bounced the heel against the ground a couple of times. “I walked too far, and the c.p. valves got jammed. Sorry, Joe.”

“You don’t have to be sorry. Let’s see.”

The pusher satisfied himself that the suit was malfunctioning. He waved the lineman toward the barrack train. “Go to supply and get it fixed. Get back on the double. You’ve slowed us down.”

Relke paused. “You sore, Joe?”

“We’re on duty. I don’t get sore on duty. I save it up. Now—haul ass!”

Relke hobbled off. “What about… what you went for, Joe?” he called back. “What happened?”

“I told you to keep your nose out of politics!” the pusher snapped. “Never mind what happened.”

Joe, Relke decided, was plenty sore. About something. Maybe about a beating that backfired. Maybe about Relke taking an hour awol. Either way, he was in trouble. He thought it over and decided that paying a bootleg ship ten thousand to take him back to Earth with them hadn’t been such a hysterical whim after all.

But then he met Larkin in the supply wagon. Larkin was stretched out flat on his back, and a medic kept saying, “Who did it to you? Who did it to you?” and Larkin kept telling him to go to hell out of a mouth that looked like a piece of singed stew meat. Kunz was curled up on a blanket and looked even worse. He spat in his sleep and a bit of tooth rattled across the deck.

“Meanest bunch of bastards I ever saw,” the clerk told Relke while he checked in the suit. “They don’t even give you a chance. Here were these two guys sleeping in their bunks and not bothering anybody, and what do you think?”

“I quit thinking. What?”

“Somebody starts working them over. Wham. Don’t even wake them up first. Just wham. You ever see anything like it? Mean, John, just mean. You can’t even get a shift’s sleep anymore. You better go to bed with a knife in your boot, John.”

“It’s Bill.”

“Oh. What do you suppose makes a guy that mean anyway?”

“I don’t know. Everybody’s jumpy, I guess.”

The clerk looked at him wisely. “There you have put your finger on it, John. Looney nerves. The jitters. Everybody’s suit-happy.” He leaned closer and lowered his voice. “You know how I tell when the camp’s getting jittery?”

“Listen, check me out a suit. I’ve got to get back to the line.”

“Now wait, this’ll surprise you. I can tell better than the psych checkers when everybody’s going on a slow panic. It’s the sleeping bag liners.”

“What?”

“The bed wetters, John. You’d be surprised how many grown men turn bed wetters about the middle of a hitch. At first, nobody. Then somebody gets killed on the line. The bag liners start coming in for cleaning. By the end of the hitch, the wash tank smells like a public lavatory, John. Not just the men, either. Some of the engineers. You know what I’m doing?”

“Look, Mack, the suit…”

“Not Mack. Frank. Look, I’ll show you the chart.” He got out a sheet of paper with a crudely drawn graph on it. “See how it goes? The peak? I’ve done ten of them.”

“Why?”

The clerk looked at him blankly. “For the idea box, John. Didn’t you know about the prizes? Doctor Esterhall ought to be glad to get information like this.”

“Christ, they’ll give you a medal, Charley. Now give me my damn suit before I get it myself. I’m due on the line.”

“OK, OK. You got the jitters yourself, haven’t you?” He went to get the suit. “I just happened to think,” he called back. “If you’ve been turning in liners yourself, don’t worry about me. I don’t keep names, and I don’t remember faces.”

“You blab plenty, though,” Relke grumbled to himself. The clerk heard him. “No call to get sore, John.”

“I’m not sore, I’m just in a hurry. If you want to beg for a stomping, it’s nothing to me.”

The clerk came back bristling. “Who’s going to stomp?”

“The bed wetters, I guess.” He started getting into the suit.

“Why? It’s for science, isn’t it?”

“Nobody likes to be watched.”

“There you put your finger on it, John. It’s the watching part that’s worst. If they’d only quit watching us, or come out where we could see them! You know what I think? I think there’s some of them among us. In disguise.” The clerk smirked mysteriously at what-he-knew-but-wouldn’t-tell.

Relke paused with a zipper halfway up. “Who do you mean—watching? Checkers?”