The Best of Jack Williamson by Jack Williamson

Author:Jack Williamson [Williamson, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Sci-Fi Collection
Publisher: Del Rey / Ballantine
Published: 1978-06-01T23:00:00+00:00

The Equalizer

• • •

I

Interstellar Task Force One was earthward bound, from twenty years at space. Operation Tyler was complete. We had circled Barstow’s Dark Star, nearly a light-year from the Sun. The six enormous cruisers were burdened, now, with a precious and deadly cargo—on the frigid planets of the Dark Star we had toiled eight years, mining raw uranium, building atomic plants, filling the cadmium safety-drums with terrible plutonium.

We had left earth In a blare of hands and party oratory. Heroes of the people, we were selling out to trade our youth for the scarce fuel-metals thnt were the life-blood of the Squaredeal Machine. We were decelerating toward the Dark Star when Jim Cameron happened upon the somehow uncensored fact that both uranium and thorium are actually fairly plentiful on the planets at homo, and concluded that we are not expected to return.

Allowed to test the cadmium safety-drums that we had brought to contain our refined plutonium, he found that some of them were not safe. One in each hundred—plated to look exactly like the rest—was a useless alloy that absorbed no neutrons. Stacked together in our hold, those dummy drums would have made each loaded ship a director-sized atomic bomb, fused with an unshielded critical mass of plutonium.

If Jim had been a Squaredealer, he might have got a medal. As a civilian feather merchant, he was allowed to scrap the deadly drums. Under party supervision, he was permitted to serve as safety inspector until the last tested drum was loaded in our holds. He was even granted limited laboratory privileges, under Squaredeal surveillance, until we were nearly home.

But he and I, aboard the Great Director, spent the last months of our homeward flight in the ship’s prison. Held on charges never clearly stated, we somehow survived that efficient, antiseptic SBI equivalent of torture called “intensive interrogation.” Our release, like the arrest, was stunningly unexpected.

“Okay, you guys.” In the prison hospital, a bored guard shook us out of exhausted sleep. “Come alive, now. You’re sprung. Get yourselves cleaned up—Hudd wants to see you.”

Returning our clean laboratory whites, he unlocked the shower room. The prison barber shaved us. We signed a receipt for our personal belongings and finally stumbled out of the sound-proof cell-block where I had expected to die. There were no explanations and no regrets—the Special Bureau of Investigation was not emotional.

An MP sergeant was waiting.

“Come along, you guys.” He pointed his stick at the officers’ elevator. “Mr. Hudd wants to see you.”

"Surprising,” murmured Cameron.

Mr. Julian Hudd was not an officer. He had no formal connection with either the SBI or the Atomic Service. He was merely a special secretary to the Squaredeal Machine. As such, however, he gave orders to the admiral-generals. Hudd, the rumors said, was the bastard son of Director Tyler, who had sent him out to the Dark Star because he was becoming too dangerous at home. The imitation safety-drums, the rumors added, had been intended to keep him from returning. But Hudd, enjoying himself in a secret harem installed on his private deck, the rumors went on, meant to be hard to kill.

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