Beyond Beta Hydri: I ought to bring this up to date, or else throw it away. I hardly ever have time to write now, since we are so short handed. Whatever it was we picked up on Constance—or, possibly, caught from improperly fumigated stores—has left us with more than enough to do, especially in my department. There are only six left now to handle all the traffic, Unc, myself, Mei-Ling, Anna, Gloria, and Sam. Dusty lived through it but he is out of touch, apparently permanently. His brother had no kids for a secondary team and they just slipped apart on the last peak and never matched in again.
I am dependent on my great-niece Kathleen and on Molly, her mother. Pat and I can still talk, but only with their help; if we try it alone, it's like trying to make yourself understood in a machine shop. You know the other fellow is saying something but the more you strain the less you hear. Pat is fifty-four, now that we have peaked on this leg; we just don't have anything in common. Since Maude's death he isn't interested in anything but business—and I am not interested in that.
Unc is the only one who doesn't feel his original telepartner slipping away. Celestine is forty-two now; they are coming together instead of separating. I still call her "Sugar Pie," just to hear her chuckle. It is hard to realize that she is twice my age; she ought to have braids and a missing front tooth.
All in all, we lost thirty-two people in the Plague. I had it and got well. Doe Devereaux didn't get well and neither did Prudence nor Rupe. We have to fill in and act as if the others had never been with us. Mei-Ling's baby died and for a while we thought we were going to lose Mei-Ling, but now she takes her watch and does her work and even laughs.
I guess the one we all miss the most is Mama O'Toole.
What else of importance has happened? Well, what can happen in a ship? Nothing. Beta Hydri was a washout. Not only nothing resembling an Earth-type planet, but no oceans
—no water oceans, I mean; it was a choice for fuel between ammonia and methane, and the Chief Engineer and the Captain had long worried conferences before they settled for ammonia. Theoretically the Elsie will burn anything; give her mass-converter something to chew on and the old "e equals mc2" gets to work; the torch spits the mass out as radiation at the speed of light and neutrons at almost the speed of light. But while the converter does not care, all of the torch's auxiliary equipment is built to handle fluid, preferably water.
We had a choice between ammonia, already liquid, and an outer planet that was mostly ice, but ice not much warmer than absolute zero. So they crossed their fingers, put her down in an ocean of ammonia, and filled up the old girl's tanks. The planet we named Inferno and then called it nastier names. We had to sit there four days at two gravities and it was cold, even with the ship's air heaters going full blast.
The Beta Hydri system is one I am not going back to; creatures with other metabolisms can have it and welcome. The only one who was pleased was Harry Gates, because the planetary arrangements followed Bode's Law. I wouldn't care if they had been in Vee formation.
The only other thing that sticks in my mind was (of all things!) political trouble. Our last peak started just as that war broke out between the Afro-European Federation and Estados Unidos de Sud. It shouldn't have meant anything to us—it did not, to most of us, or at least we kept our sympathies to ourselves. But Mr. Roch, our Chief Engineer, is from the Federation and his first assistant was born in Buenos Aires. When Buenos Aires got it, probably including some of Mr. Regato's relatives, he blamed his boss personally. Silly, but what can you expect?
After that, the Captain gave orders that he would check Earthside news before it was printed and he reminded us of the special restrictions on communicators in re security of communications. I think I would have been bright enough to submit that dispatch to the Captain before printing it, but I can't be sure. We'd had always had free press in the Elsie.
The only thing that got us out of that mess was that we peaked right after. When we came out of peak, fourteen years had passed and the latest political line-up had Argentina friends with her former enemies and on the outs with the rest of South America. After a while Mr. Roch and Mr. Regato were back playing chess together, just as if the Captain had never had to restrict them to keep them from each other's throats.
Everything that happens back on Earth is a little unreal to me, even though we continue to get the news when we are not at peak. You get your mind adjusted to a new situation; the Elsie goes through a peak . . . years have passed and everything has changed. They are calling the Planetary League the "United System" now and they say that the new constitution makes war impossible.
It's still the Planetary League to me—and it was supposed to make war impossible, too. I wonder what they changed besides the names?
Half of the news I don't understand. Kathleen tells me that her class has pooled their eveners to buy a Fardie for their school as a graduation present and that they are going to outswing it for the first time at the commencement exercises—then she had to hurry away because she had been co-opted in charge. That was just last watch. Now what is a "Fardie" and what was wrong with it where it was?
The technical news that reaches us I don't understand, either, but at least I know why and usually somebody aboard does understand it. The relativists are excited about stuff coming in which is so technical that it has to be retransmitted and confirmed before it is released—this with Janet Meers standing behind you and trying to snatch spools out of the recorder. Mr. O’Toole gets excited too, only the way he shows it is for the end of his nose to get pink. Dr. Babcock never shows excitement, but he missed coming in for meals two days running after I copied a monograph called "Sumner on Certain Aspects of Irrelevance." At the end of that time I sent one back to LRF which Dr. Babcock had written. It was just as crammed with indigestible mathematics, but I gathered that Dr. Babcock was politely calling Professor Sumner a fool.
Janet Meers tried to explain it to me, but all that I got out of it was that the concept of simultaneity was forcing a complete new look at physics.
"Up to now," she told me, "we've concentrated on the relative aspects of the space-time continuum. But what you m-r people do is irrelevant to space-time. Without time there is no space; without space there can be no time. Without space-time there can be no conservation of energy-mass. Heavens, there's nothing. It has driven some of the old-timers out of their minds. But now we are beginning to see how you people may possibly fit into physics—the new physics, I mean; it's all changed."
I had had enough trouble with the old-style physics; having to learn a new one made my head ache just to think about it. "What use is it?" I asked.
She looked shocked. "Physics doesn't have to have any use. It just is."
"Well, I don't know. The old physics was useful. Take the torch that drives us, for example—"
"Oh, that! That's not physics, that's just engineering"—as if I had mentioned something faintly scandalous.
I will never understand Janet and perhaps it is just as well that she promised to "be a sister to me." She said that she did not mind my being younger than she was, but that she did not think she could look up to a man who could not solve a fourth-degree function in his head. "... and a wife should always look up to her husband, don't you think?"
We were making the boosts at 1.5 gravity now. What with slippage, it cuts each up-boost and each down-boost to about four months, S-time, even though the jumps are longer, During boost I weigh 220 pounds and I've started wearing arch supports, but 50% extra weight is all right and is probably good for us, since it is too easy not to get enough exercise aboard ship.
The LRF has stopped using the drug stuff to help communications at peak, which would have pleased Dr. Devereaux since he disapproved of it so. Now your telepartner patches in with the help of hypnosis and suggestion alone, or you don't patch. Kathleen managed to cross the last peak with me that way, but I can see that we are going to lose communication teams all through the fleet, especially those who have not managed to set up tertiary telepartners. I don't knew where my own team would be without Kathleen. In the soup, I guess. As it is, the Niña and the Henry Hudson are each down to two teams and the other four ships still in contact with Earth are not much better off. We are probably in the best shape, although we don't get much fleet news since Miss Gamma fell out of step with her sisters—or lost them, as the case may be; the Santa Maria is listed as "missing" but the Marco Polo is simply carried as "out of contact" as she was approaching peak when last heard from and won't be out of it for several Greenwich years.
We are headed now for a little G-type star so dim from Earth that it doesn't rate a name, nor even a Greek-letter constellation designation, but just a catalog number. From Earth it lies in Phoenix, between Hydrus the Sea Serpent and Cetus the Whale. ("Hydrus," not "Hydra"—Hydra is six R.A. hours over and farther north.) Unc called it a "Whistle Stop" so that is what we dubbed it, because you can't reel off a Palomar Catalog number each time you speak of where you are going. No doubt it will get an impressive name if it turns out to have a planet half as good as Connie. Incidentally, Connie will he colonized in spite of the epidemic we may have picked up there; the first shiploads are on their way. Whatever the bug was that bit us (and it very possibly may have come from Earth), it is no worse than half a dozen other diseases men have had and have fought back at and licked. At least, that is the official view and the pioneer ships are going on the assumption that they will probably catch it and have to conquer it.
Personally, I figure that one way of dying is as dangerous as another; when you're dead, you're dead—even if you die from "nothing serious." And the Plague, bad as it was, didn't kill me.
"Whistle Stop" wasn't worth a stop. We're on our way to Beta Ceti, sixty-three light-years from Earth.
I wish Dusty were still hooked up to transmit pictures; I would like one of my great-grandniece Vicky. I know what she looks like—carroty red hair, freckles across her nose, green eyes, a big mouth and braces on her teeth. At present she is sporting a black eye as well, picked up at school when somebody called her a freak and she resented it—I would love to have seen that fight! Oh, I know what she looks like but I'd like a picture anyhow.
It is funny how our family has run to girls. No, when I add it up, counting all descendants of my sisters as well as my brother, it comes out about even. But Maude and Pat had two girls and no boys, and I went away and did not get married, so the Bartlett name has died out,
I certainly would like to have a picture of Vicky. I know she is homely, but I'll bet she is cute, too—the kind of tomboy who always has scabs on her knees because she won't play the ladylike games. She generally hangs around for a while after we are through transmitting and we talk. Probably she is just being polite, for she obviously thinks of me as being as old as her great-grandfather Bartlett even though her mother has told her that I am not. I suppose it depends on where you sit. I ought to be in my last year in college now, but she knows that I am Pat's twin.
If she wants to put a long white beard on me, that is all right with me, for the sake of her company. She was in a hurry this morning but nice about it. "Will you excuse me, please, Uncle Tom? I've got to go study for a quiz in algebra."
("Realio trulio?") I said.
"Realio trulio, cross my heart. I'd like to stay."
("Run along, Freckle Face. Say hello to the folks.")
" Bye! I'll call you a little early tomorrow."
She really is a nice child.
Beta Ceti is a big star in the main spectral sequence, almost big enough to be classed as a giant—a small giant, thirty-seven times as bright as the Sun. It looks so bright from Earth that it has a name of its own, Deneb Kaitos, but we never call it that because "Deneb" brings to mind the other Deneb, Alpha Cygni, which is a real giant in a different part of the sky almost sixteen hundred light-years away.
Since Beta Ceti is so much brighter than the Sun, the planet we had been looking for, if it existed at all, had to be nearly six hundred million miles out, farther than Jupiter is from Sol.
We've found one, at five hundred and eighty million miles, which is close enough. Better yet, it is the smallest planet in a system that seems to run to outsizes; the one in the next track beyond is bigger than Jupiter.
I scheduled most of the routine skyside survey of Elysia, under Harry Gates' absentminded supervision. Harry is as eager as a fox terrier to finish his magnum opus before he has to knock off and take charge of the ground survey. He wants to transmit it back Earthside and preserve his name
in science's hall of fame—not that he puts it that way, for Harry isn't stuck up; nevertheless, he thinks he has worked out a cosmogony for solar systems which includes Bode's Law. He says that if he is right, any star in the main spectral sequence will have planets.
Maybe . . . I would not know. But I can't see what use a star is without planets and I don't believe all this complicated universe got here by accident. Planets are meant to be used.
Acting as Harry's Man Friday has not been difficult. All I had to do was to dig the records of the preliminary survey of Connie out of the microfilms and write up similar schedules for Elysia, modified to allow for our loss of personnel. Everybody was eager to help, because (so far as we know) we are the only ship to draw a lucky number twice and only one of four to hit even once. But we are down now, water-borne, and waiting for medicine to okay Elysia for ground survey; I'm not quite so rushed. I tried to get in touch with Vicky and just chat this evening. But it happens to be evening back home, too, and Vicky is out on a date and politely put me off.
Vicky grew up some when we peaked this last jump; she now takes notice of boys and does not have as much time for her ancient uncle. ("Is it George?") I asked when she wanted to know if my call was important.
"Well, if you must know, it is George/" she blurted out.
("Don't get excited, Freckle Face,") I answered. ("I just asked.")
"Well, I told you."
("Sure, sure. Have a good time, hon, and don't stay out too late.")
"You sound just like Daddy."
I suppose I did. The fact is I don't have much use for George, although I have never seen him, never will, and don't know much about him, except that Vicky says that be is "the tenth power" and "first with the worst" in spite of being "ruffily around the round" if I knew what she meant, but she would equalize that.
I didn't know what she meant, but I interpreted it to mean approval slightly qualified and that she expected him to be perfect, or "ricketty all through" when she got through making him over. I suspect him of being the kind of pimply-faced, ignorant young bore that I used to be myself and have always disliked—something about like Dusty Rhodes at the present without Dusty's amazing mind.
This sounds as if I were jealous of a boy I'll never see over a girl I have never seen, but that is ridiculous. My interest is fatherly, or big-brotherly, even though I am effectively no relation to her; i.e., my parents were two of her sixteen great-great-grandparents—a relationship so distant that most people aren't even aware of relatives of that remote degree.
Or maybe Van's wild theory has something to it and we are all getting to be cranky old men—just our bodies are staying young. But that is silly. Even though seventy-odd Greenwich years have passed, it has been less than four for me since we left Earth. My true time is hunger and sleep; I've slept about fourteen hundred times in the Elsie and eaten three meals and a snack or two for each sleep. That is four years, not seventy.
No, I'm just disappointed that on my first free evening in a couple of weeks I have nothing better to do than write in my diary. But, speaking of sleep, I had better get some; the first party will go ashore tomorrow, if medicine approves, and I will be busy. I won't be on it but there is plenty to do to get them off.
We are a sorry mess. I don't know what we can do now.
I had better begin at the beginning. Elysia checked out in all ways on preliminary survey—breathable atmosphere, climate within Earth limits and apparently less extreme; a water, oxygen and carbon dioxide life cycle; no unusual hazards. No signs of intelligent life, of course, or we would have skipped it. It is a watery world even more than Terra is, with over 90% oceans and there was talk of naming it "Aquaria" instead of Elysia, but somebody pointed out that there was no sense in picking a name which might make it unattractive to colonists when there seemed to be nearly as much usable land as Earth had.
So we cuddled up to an island as big as Madagascar—almost a continent for Elysia—with the idea that we could cover the whole island in the detailed survey and be able to report that a colony could settle there as fast as LRF could send a ship—we knew that Connie was already settled and we wanted to get this one settled and make it a clean sweep for the Elsie.
I gave Percy a pat and told him to size up the lay of the land and to let me know if he found any lady pigs. Uncle Lucas took the guard ashore and the science party followed the same day. It was clear that Elysia was going to be no more of a problem than Connie had been and almost as big a prize—except for the remote possibility of exotic infection we could not handle.
That was two weeks ago.
It started out routine as breakfast. Percy and the other experimental animals flourished on an Elysian diet; Van failed to catch anything worse than an itch and presently he was trying Elysian food himself—there were awkward looking four-winged birds which broiled nicely; Van said they reminded him of roast turkey with an overtone of cantaloupe. But Percy the Pig would not touch some fish that were caught and the rats that did eat them died, so sea food was put off until further investigation could be made. The fish did not look like ours; they were flat the wrong way, like a flounder, and they had tendrils something like a catfish which raveled on the ends instead of being spiny. Harry Gates was of the opinion that they were feeling organs and possibly manipulative as well.
The island had nothing like the big-mouthed carnivorous lizards that got Lefty Gomez. However, there was no telling what might be on other islands, since the land masses were so detached that totally different lines of evolution might have been followed in each island group. Our report was going to recommend that Devereaux Island be settled first, then investigate the others cautiously.
I was due to go ashore on third rotation, Unc having taken the first week, then a week of rest, and now would take shipside watch while T linked with him from ashore. But at the last minute I agreed to swap, as Anna was anxious to go.
I did not want to swap, but I had been running the department's watch list since Rupe's death and it would have been awkward to refuse. Gloria was going, too, since her husband was on that rotation, but Gloria did not count as her telepartner was on vacation back Earthside.
When they left, I was on top of the Elsie glumly watching them get into the boats. There was a "monkey island" deck temporarily rigged up there, outside the airlock; it was a good place to watch the boats being loaded at the cargo ports lower down. Engineering had completed inspection and overhaul and had about finished filling the boost-mass tanks; the Elsie was low in the water and the cargo ports were not more than ten feet above waterline. It made loading convenient; at the time we put the first party ashore the tanks were empty and the boats had to be lowered nearly a hundred feet and passengers had to go down rope ladders—not easy for people afraid of heights, as so many are. But it was a cinch that day.
The airlock was only large enough for people; anything bigger had to go through the cargo ports. It was possible to rig the cargo ports as airlocks and we had done so on Inferno around Beta Hydri, but when the air was okay we just used them as doors. They were at the cargo deck, underneath the mess deck and over the auxiliary machinery spaces; our three boats and the two helicopters were carried just inside on that deck. The boats could be swung out on gooseneck davits from where they nested but the helicopters had to be hooked onto boat falls, swung out, then a second set of falls hooked to them from the monkey island above, by which a helicopter could be scooted up the Elsie's curved side and onto the temporary top deck, where her jet rotors would be attached.
Mr. Regato cursed the arrangement every time we used it, "Mechanical buffoonery!" was his name for it. "I've never seen a ship's architect who wasn't happy as soon as he had a pretty picture. He never stops to think that some poor fool is going to have to use his pretty picture."
As may be, the arrangement did let the helis be unloaded with a minimum of special machinery to get out of order—which, I understand, was a prime purpose in refitting the ships for the Project. But that day the helicopters were outside and ready, one of them at camp and the other tied down near me on the monkey island. All we had to do was to load the boats.
The boats were whale boats molded of glass and teflon and made nonsinkable by plastic foam in all dead spaces. They were so tough that, while you might be able to bash one in, you could not puncture it with anything short of a drill or a torch, yet they were so light that four men could lift one that was empty. It did them no harm to drive them up onto a rocky beach, then they could be unloaded and easily dragged higher. They were driven by alcohol jets, just as the helis were, but they had oars and sails as well. We never used the oars although all the men had gone through a dry drill under my Uncle Steve's watchful eye.
The boats had come in the night before loaded with specimens for the research department; now they were going back with people who would replace those ashore. From the monkey island I could see, half a mile away, the people who were coming back, waiting on the beach for the boats. Two of the boats were lying off, waiting for the third; each had about eighteen people in it and a few bundles of things requisitioned by Harry Gates for his scientific uses ashore, as well as a week's supplies for the whole party.
I noticed a movement behind me, turned, and saw that it was the Old Man coming up the airlock hatch. "Good morning, Captain."
"Morning, Bartlett." He looked around. "Nice day." , "Yes, sir.., and a nice place."
"It is indeed." He looked toward the shore. "I'm going to find some excuse to hit dirt before we leave here. I've been on steel too long."
"I don't see why not, sir. This place is friendly as a puppy. Not like Inferno."
"Not a bit." He turned away, so I did too; you don't press conversation on the Captain unless he wants it. The third boat was loaded now and cast loose; all three were about fifty yards away and were forming a column to go in together. I waved to Gloria and Anna.
At each boat, a long, wet rope as thick as my waist came up out of the water, passed across it amidships and back into the water on the other side. I yelled, "Hey, Captain! Look!"
He turned. The boats rolled sideways and sank—they were pulled under. I heard somebody scream and the water was crowded with struggling bodies.
The Captain leaned past me at the raft and looked at the disaster. He said in an ordinary tone, "Can you start that chopper?"
"Uh, I think so, Captain." I was not a helicopter pilot but I knew how it worked.
"Then do it." He leaned far over and yelled, "Get that cargo door closed!" He turned and dived down the hatch. I caught a glimpse of what had made him yell as I turned to climb into the helicopter. It was another of those wet ropes slithering up the Elsie's side toward the cargo port.
Starting the helicopter was more complicated than I had realized, but there was a check-off list printed on the instrument panel. I had fumbled my way down to "step four: start impeller" when I was pushed aside by Ace Wenzel the torchman who was the regular pilot. Ace did something with both hands, the blades started to revolve, making shadows across our faces, and he yelled, "Cast her loose!"
I was shoved out the door as the Surgeon was climbing in; I fell four feet to the deck as the down blast hit me. I picked myself up and looked around.
There was nothing in the water, nothing. Not a body, not a person struggling to keep afloat, no sign of the boats. There was not even floating cargo although some of the packages would float. I knew; I had packed some of them.
Janet was standing next to me, shaking with dry sobs. I said stupidly, "What happened?"
She tried to control herself and said shakily, "I don't know. I saw one of them get Otto. It just... it just—" She started to bawl again and turned away.
There wasn't anything on the water, but now I saw that there was something in the water, under it. From high up you can see down into water if it is fairly smooth; arranged around the ship in orderly ranks were things of some sort. They looked like whales—or what I think a whale would look like in water; I've never seen a whale;
I was just getting it through my confused head that I was looking at the creatures who had destroyed the boats when somebody yelled and pointed. On shore the people who were to return were still on the beach, but they were no longer alone—they were surrounded. The things had come ashore, on each side of them and had flanked them. I could not see well at that distance but I could see the sea creatures because they were so much bigger than we were. They didn't have legs, so far as I could tell, but it did not slow them down—they were last.
And our people were being herded into the water.
There was nothing we could do about it, not anything. Under us we had a ship that was the end product of centuries of technical progress; its torch could destroy a city in the blink of an eye. Ashore the guard had weapons by which one man was equal to an army of older times and there were more such weapons somewhere in the ship. But at the time I did not even know where the armory was, except that it was somewhere in the auxiliary deck—you can live a long time in a ship and never visit all her compartments.
I suppose I should have been down in the auxiliary deck, searching for weapons. But what I did was stand there, frozen, with a dozen others, and watch it happen.
But somebody had been more alert than I had been. Two men came bursting up through the hatch; they threw down two ranger guns and started frantically to plug them in and break open packages of ammunition. They could have saved the effort; by the time they were ready to sight in on the enemy, the beach was as empty as the surface of the water. Our shipmates had been pushed and dragged under. The helicopter was hovering over the spot; its rescue ladder was down but there was no one on it.
The helicopter swung around over the island and across our camp site, then returned to the ship.
While it was moving in to touch down, Chet Travers hurried up the ladder. He looked around, saw me and said, "Tom, where's the Captain?"
"In the chopper."
"Oh." He frowned. "Well, give him this. Urgent. I've got to get back down." He shoved a paper at me and disappeared. I glanced at it, saw that it was a message form, saw who it was from, and grabbed the Captain's arm as he stepped out of the heli.
He shrugged me off. "Out of my way!"
"Captain, you've got to—it's a message from the island—from Major Lucas."
He stopped then and took it from me, then fumbled for his reading glasses, which I could see sticking out of a pocket. He shoved the dispatch form back at me before I could help him and said, "Read it to me, boy."
So I did. " 'From: Commander Ship's Guard—To: Commanding Officer Lewis and Clark—Oh nine three one—at oh nine oh five survey camp was attacked by hostile natives, believed to be amphibious. After suffering initial heavy losses the attack was beaten off and I have withdrawn with seven survivors to the hilltop north of the camp. We were forced to abandon survey craft number two. At time of attack, exchange party was waiting on beach; we are cut off from them and their situation is not known but must be presumed to be desperate.
" 'Discussion: The attack was intelligently organized and was armed. Their principal weapon appears to be a jet of sea water at very high pressure but they use also a personal weapon for stabbing and cutting. It must be assumed that they have other weapons. It must be conditionally assumed that they are as intelligent as we are, as well disciplined, and possibly as well armed for the conditions Their superior numbers give them a present advantage even if they had no better weapons.
""Recommendations: My surviving command can hold out where it is against weapons thus far encountered. It is therefore urgently recommended that immediate measures be limited to rescuing beach party. Ship should then be placed in orbit until a plan can be worked out and weapons improvised to relieve my command without hazard to the ship.—S. Lucas, Commandant, oh nine three six.""
The Captain took the message and turned toward the hatch without speaking. Nobody said anything although there were at least twenty of us crowded up there. I hesitated, then when I saw that others were going down, I pushed in and followed the Captain.
He stopped two decks down and went into the communications office. I didn't follow him, but he left the door open. Chet Travers was in there, bent over the gear he used to talk with the camp, and Commander Frick was leaning over him with a worried look on his face: The Captain said, "Get me Major Lucas."
Commander Frick looked up. "We're trying to, Captain. Transmission cut off while they were sending us a list of casualties."
The Captain chewed his lip and looked frustrated, then he said "Keep trying," and turned. He saw me.
"Bartlett!"
"Yes, sir!"
"You have one of your people over there. Raise him."
I thought rapidly, trying to remember the Greenwich even as I was calling Vicky—if Vicky was home, she could get through on the direct line to LRF and they could hook her with Sam Rojas's telepartner and thence to Sam, and the Captain could talk to Uncle Steve on a four-link relay almost as fast as he could by radio. ("Vicky! Come in, Vicky! Urgent!")
"Yes; Uncle Tom? What is it? I was asleep."
Commander Frick said, "I don't think that will work, Captain. Rojas isn't on the list of survivors. He was scheduled for rotation; he must have been down at the beach."
Of course, of course! Sam would have been down at the beach—I had stood by and must have watched him being herded into the water!
"What is it, Uncle Tom?"
("Just wait, hon. Stay linked.")
"Then get me somebody else," the Captain snapped, "there isn't anyone else, Captain," Frick answered. "Here's the list of survivors. Rojas was the only fr—the only special communicator we had ashore."
The Captain glanced at the list, said, "Pass the word for all hands not on watch to assemble in the mess room on the double." He turned and walked right through me. I jumped out of the way.
"What's the matter, Uncle Tom? You sound worried."
I tried to control my voice. ("It was a mistake, hon. Just forget it and try to get back to sleep. I'm sorry.")
"All right. But you still sound worried."
I hurried after the Captain. Commander Frick's voice was calling out the order over the ship's system as we hurried down the ladders, yet he was only a moment or two behind me in reaching the mess room. In a matter of seconds we were all there . . . just a handful of those who had left Earth—about forty. The Captain looked around and said to Cas Warner, "Is this all?"
"I think so, Captain, aside from the engineering watch."
"I left Travers on watch," added Frick.
"Very well" The Captain turned and faced us. "We are about to rescue the survivors ashore. Volunteers step forward."
We didn't step, we surged, all together. I would like to say that I was a split second ahead, because of Uncle Steve, but it wouldn't be true. Mrs. Gates was carrying young Harry in her arms and she was as fast as I was.
"Thank you," the Captain said stiffly. "Now will the women please go over there by the pantry so that I can pick the men who will go."
"Captain?"
"Yes, Captain Urqhardt?"
"I will lead the party."
"You'll do nothing of the sort, sir. I will lead: You will now take some women and go down and fetch what we need."
Urqhardt barely hesitated, then said, "Aye, aye, sir."
"That rule—our standing rule for risk—will apply to all of you. In doubly-manned jobs the older man will go. In other jobs, if the job can be dispensed with, the man will go; if it cannot be, the man will stay." He looked around.
"Dr. Babcock!"
"Righto, Skipper!"
Mr. O'Toole said, "Just a moment, Captain. I am a widower and Dr. Babcock is much more-"
"Shut up."
"But—"
"Confound it, sir, must I debate every decision with every one of you? Must I remind you that every second counts? Get over there with the women."
Red-faced and angry Mr. O'Toole did as he was told. The Captain went on, "Mr. Warner. Mr. Bach. Dr. Severin—" Quickly he picked those he wanted, then waved the rest of us over toward the pantry.
Uncle Alfred McNeil tried to straighten his stooped shoulders. "Captain, you forgot me. I'm the oldest in my department."
The Captain's face softened just a hair. "No, Mr. McNeil, I didn't forget," he said quietly, "but the capacity of the chopper is limited-and we have seven to bring back. So I must omit you."
Unc's shoulders sagged and I thought he was going to cry, than he shuffled over away from the selected few. Dusty Rhodes caught my eye and looked smug and proud; he was one of the chosen. He still did not look more than sixteen and I don't think he had ever shaved; this was probably the first time in his life that he had ever been treated in all respects as a man.
In spite of the way the others had been shut off short I couldn't let it stand. I stepped forward again and touched the Captain's sleeve. "Captain . . . you've got to let me go! My uncle is over there."
I thought he was going to explode, but he caught himself.
"I see your point. But you arc a special communicator and we haven't any spare. I'll tell Major Lucas that you tried."
"But—"
"Now shut up and do as you are told—before I kick you half across the compartment." He turned away as if I didn't exist.
Five minutes later arms had been issued and we were all crowding up the ladders to see them off. Ace Wenzel started the helicopter at idling speed and jumped out. They filed in, eight of them, with the Captain last. Dusty had a bandolier ever each shoulder and a ranger gun in his hands; he was grinning excitedly. He threw me a wink and said, "I'll send you a postcard."
The Captain paused and said, "Captain Urqhardt."
"Yes, sir." "
The Captain and the reserve captain conferred for a moment; I couldn't hear them and I don't think we were meant to hear. Then Captain Urqhardt said loudly, "Aye, aye, sir. It shall be done."
"Very good, sir." The Captain stepped in, slammed the door, and took the controls himself. I braced myself against the down blast.
Then we waited.
I alternated between monkey island and the comm office. Chet Travers still could not raise Uncle Steve but he was in touch with the heli. Every time I went top side I looked for the sea things but they seemed to have gone away.
Finally I came down again to the comm room and Chet was looking joyful. "They've got 'em!" he announced.
"They're off the ground." I started to ask him about it but he was turning to announce the glad news over the ship's system; I ran up to see if I could spot the heli.
I saw it, near the hilltop, about a mile and a half away. It moved rapidly toward the ship. Soon we could see people inside. As it got closer someone opened a window on the side toward us.
The Captain was not really skilled with a helicopter. He tried to make a landing straight in but his judgment of wind was wrong and be had to swing on past and try again. The maneuver brought the craft so close to the ship that we could see the passengers plainly. I saw Uncle Steve and he saw me and waved; he did not call out, he just waved. Dusty Rhodes was beside him and saw me, too. He grinned and waved and shouted, "Hey, Tom, I rescued your buddy!" He reached back and then Percy's head and cloven forehooves showed above the frame, with Dusty holding the pig with one hand and pointing to him with the other. They were both grinning.
"Thanks!" I yelled back. "Hi, Percy!"
The chopper turned a few hundred feet beyond the ship mad headed back into the wind.
It was coming straight toward the ship and would have touched down soon when something came out of the water right under it. Some said it was a machine—to me it looked like an enormous elephant's trunk. A stream of water so solid, hard, and bright that it looked like steel shot out of the end of it; it struck a rotor tip and the heli staggered.
The Captain leaned the craft over and it slipped out of contact. The stream followed it, smashed against the fuselage and again caught a rotor; the heli tilted violently and began to fall.
I'm not much in an emergency; it is hours later when I figure out what I should have done. This time I acted without thinking. I dived down the ladder without hitting the treads and was on down in the cargo deck almost at once. The port of that side was dosed, as it had been since the Captain ordered it closed earlier; I slapped the switch and it began to grind open. Then I looked around and saw what I needed: the boat falls, coiled loosely on deck, not yet secured. I grabbed a bitter end and was standing on the port as it was still swinging down to horizontal.
The wrecked helicopter was floating right in front of me and there were people struggling in the water. "Uncle Steve!" I yelled "Catch!" I threw the line as far as I could.
I had not even seen him as I yelled. It was just the idea that was in the top of my mind. Then I did see him, far beyond where I had been able to throw the line. I heard him call back, "Coming, Tom!" and he started swimming strongly toward the ship.
I was so much in a daze that I almost pulled the line in to throw it again when I realized that I had managed to throw far enough for some one. I yelled again. "Harry! Right behind you! Grab on!"
Harry Gates rolled ever in the water, snatched at the line and got it. I started to haul him in.
I almost lost him as I got him to the ship's skin. One of his arms seemed almost useless and he nearly lost his grasp. But between us we managed to manhandle him up and into the port; we would not have made it if the Ship had not been so low in the water. He collapsed inside and lay on his face, gasping and sobbing.
I jerked the fall loose from his still clenched hand and turned to throw it to Uncle Steve.
The helicopter was gone, Uncle Steve was gone, again the water was swept clean—except for Percy, who, with his head high out of water, was swimming with grim determination toward the ship.
I made sure that there were no other people anywhere in the water. Then I tried to think what I could do for Percy.
The poor little porkchop could not grab a line, that was sure. Maybe I could lasso him. I fumbled to get a slip knot in the heavy line. I had just managed it when Percy gave a squeal of terror and I jerked my head around just in time to see him pulled under the water.
It wasn't a mouth that got him. I don't think it was a mouth.
I don't know what I expected after the attack by the behemoths. We just wandered around in a daze. Some of us tried to look out from the monkey island deck until that spouter appeared again and almost knocked one of us off, then Captain Urqhardt ordered all hands to stay inside and the hatch was closed.
I certainly did not expect a message that was brought around after supper (if supper had been served; some made themselves sandwiches) telling me to report at once for heads-of-departments conference. "That's you, isn't it, Tom?" Chet Travers asked me. "They tell me Unc Alfred is on the sick list. His door is closed."
"I suppose it's me." Unc had taken it hard and was in bed with a soporific in him, by order of the one remaining medical man, Dr. Pandit.
"Then you had better shag up there."
First I went to Captain Urqhardt's room and found it dark, then I got smart and went to the Captain's cabin. The door was open and some were already around the table with Captain Urqhardt at the head. "Special communications department, sir," I announced myself.
"Sit down, Bartlett."
Harry came in behind me and Urqhardt got up and shut the door and sat down. I looked around, thinking it was a mighty funny heads-of-departments meeting. Harry Gates was the only boss there who had been such when we left Earth. Mr. Eastman was there instead of Commander Frick. Mama O'Toole was long dead but now Cas was gone too; ecology was represented by Mr. Krishnamurti who had merely been in charge of air-conditioning and hydroponics when we had left. Mr. O'Toole was there in place of Dr. Babcock, Mr. Regato instead of Mr. Roch. Sergeant Andreeli, who was also a machinist in engineering, was there in place of Uncle Steve and he was the only member of the ship's guard left alive—because he had been sent back to the ship with a broken arm two days earlier. Dr. Pandit sat where Dr. Devereaux should have been.
And myself of course but I was just fill-in; Unc was still aboard. Worst of all, there was Captain Urqhardt sitting where the Captain should have been.
Captain Urqhardt started in. "There is no need to detail our situation; you all know it. We will dispense with the usual departmental reports, too. In my opinion our survey of this planet is as complete as we can make it with present personnel and equipment... save that an additional report must be made of the hazard encountered today in order that the first colonial party will be prepared to defend itself. Is there disagreement? Dr. Gates, do you wish to make further investigations here?"
Harry looked surprised and answered, "No, Captain. Not under the circumstances."
"Comment?" There was none. "Very well," Urqhardt continued. "I propose to shape course for Alpha Phoenicis. We will hold memorial services at nine tomorrow morning and boost at noon. Comment? Mr. O'Toole."
"Eh? Do you mean can we have the figures ready? I suppose so, if Janet and I get right on it."
"Do so, as soon as we adjourn. Mr. Regato?"
Regato was looking astounded. "I didn't expect this, Captain.
"It is short notice, but can your department be ready? I believe you have boost mass aboard."
"It isn't that,. Captain. Surely, the torch will be ready. But I thought we would make one long jump for Earth."
"What led you to assume that?"
"Why, uh . . ." The new Chief Engineer stuttered and almost slipped out of P-L lingo into Spanish. "The shape we are in, sir. The engineering department will have to go on watch-and-watch, heel and toe. I can't speak for other departments, but they can't be in much better shape."
"No, you can't and I am not asking you to. With respect to your own department, is it mechanically ready?"
Regato swallowed. "Yes, sir. But people break down as well as machinery."
"Wouldn't you have to stand watch-and-watch to shape course for Sol?" Urqhardt did not wait for the obvious answer, but went on, "I should not have to say this. We are not here for our own convenience; we are here on an assigned mission . . . as you all know. Earlier today, just before Captain Swanson left, he said to me, "Take charge of my ship, sir. Carry out her mission." I answered, 'Aye, aye, sir.' Let me remind you of that mission: we were sent out to conduct the survey we have been making, with orders to continue the search as long as we were in communication with Earth—when we fell out of communication, we were free to return to Earth, if possible. Gentlemen, we are still in touch with Earth; our next assigned survey point is Alpha Phoenicis. Could anything be clearer?"
My thoughts were boiling up so that I hardly heard him. I was thinking: who does this guy think he is? Columbus? Or the Flying Dutchman? There were only a little over thirty of us left alive-in a ship that had started with two hundred. The boats were gone, the heli's were—I almost missed his next remark.
"Bartlett?"
"Sir?"
"What about your department?"
It dawned on me that we were the key department—us freaks. When we fell out of touch, he had to turn back. I was tempted to say that we had all gone deaf, but I knew I couldn't get away with it. So I stalled.
"As you pointed out, sir, we are in touch with Earth."
"Very well." His eyes turned toward Dr. Pandit.
"Just a moment, Captain," I insisted. "There's more to it."
"Eh? State it."
"Well, this next jump is about thirty years, isn't it? Greenwich I mean."
"Of that order. Somewhat less."
" 'Of that order.' There are three special communicators left, myself, Unc—I mean Mr. McNeil—and Mei-Ling Travers. I think you ought to count Unc out."
"Why?"
"Because he has his original telepartner and she is now as old as he is. Do you think Unc will live another thirty years?"
"But it won't be thirty years for him—oh, sorry! I see your point. She would be well past a hundred if she lived at all. Possibly senile."
"Probably, sir. Or more likely dead."
"Very well, we won t count McNeil. That leaves two of you. Plenty for essential communication.
"I doubt it, sir. Mei-Ling is a poor bet. She has only a secondary linkage and her partner is over thirty, with no children. Based on other telepairs, I would say that it is most unlikely that they will stay in rapport through another peak ... not a thirty-year one."
"That still leaves yourself."
I thought suddenly that if I had the guts to jump over the side, they could all go home. But it was just a thought; when I die, it won't be suicide. "My own case isn't much better, sir. My telepartner is about—" I had to stop and count up, then the answer did not seem right. "—is about nineteen, sir. No kids. No chance of kids before we peak... and I couldn't link in with a brand-new baby anyhow. She'll be fiftyish when we come out. So far as I know, there hasn't been a case in the whole fleet of bridging that long a period out of rapport."
He waited several moments before be answered. "Have you any reason to believe that it is impossible?"
"Well... no, sir. But it is extremely unlikely."
"Hmm . . . do you consider yourself an authority in theory of telepathy?"
"Huh? No, sir. I am just a telepath, that's all."
"I think he is probably right," put in Dr. Pandit, "are you an authority, Doctor?"
"Me, sir? As you know, my specialty is exotic pathology. But—"
"In that case, we will consult authorities Earthside. Perhaps they can suggest some way to improve our chances. Very probably, under the circumstances, the Foundation will again authorize use of drugs to reduce the possibility that our special communicators might fall out of touch during peak. Or something."
I thought of telling him that Vicky wasn't going to risk dangerous habit-forming drags. Then I thought better of it. Pat bad-and Vicky might.
"That :is all, gentlemen. We will boost at noon tomorrow. Uh, one more thing . . . One of you implied that morale is not too high in the ship. That is correct and I am perhaps more aware of it than you are. But morale will shake down to normal and we will best be able to forget the losses we have suffered if we all get quickly back to work. I want only to add that you all, as senior officers of this ship, have most to do with morale by setting an example. I am sure that you will." He stood up.
I don't know how news travels in a ship but by the time I got down to the mess room everybody knew that we were boosting tomorrow . . . and not for home. It was buzz-buzz and yammer all over. I ducked out because I didn't want to discuss it; my thoughts were mixed. I thought the Captain was insisting on one more jump from which he couldn't possibly report his results, if any—and with a nice fat chance that none of us would ever get home. On the other hand I admired the firm way he faced us up to our obligations and brushed aside panic. He had guts.
So did the Flying Dutchman have guts—but at last report he was still trying to round the Cape and not succeeding.
The Captain-Captain Swenson, I corrected-would not have been that bullheaded.
Or would he? According to Urqhardt, the last thing the Captain had said had been to remind Urqhardt that it was up to him to carry out the mission. All of us had been very carefully chosen (except us freaks) and probably the skipper and the relief skipper of each ship were picked primarily for bulldog stubbornness, the very quality that had kept Columbus going on and on when he was running out of water and his crew was muttering mutiny. I remembered Uncle Steve had once suggested as much.
I decided to go talk to Uncle Steve . . . then I remembered I couldn't and I really felt bad. When my parents had died, two peaks back, I had felt bad because I didn't feel as bad as I knew I should have felt. When it happened—or rather, by the time I knew about it-they were long dead, people I had not seen in a long time and just faces in a photograph. But Uncle Steve I had seen every day—I had seen today.
And I had been in the habit of kicking my troubles around with him whenever they were too much for me.
I felt his loss then, the delayed shock you get when you are hit hard. The hurt doesn't come until you pull yourself together and realize you're hit.
It was just as well that somebody tapped on my door then, or I would have bawled.
It was Mei-Ling and her husband, Chet. I invited them in and they sat down on the bed. Chat got to the point.
"Tom, where do you stand on this?"
"On what?"
"This silly business of trying to go on with a skeleton crew."
"It doesn't matter where I stand," I said slowly. "I'm not running the ship."
"Ah, but you are!"
"Huh?"
"I don't mean quite that, but I do mean you can put a stop to the nonsense. Now, look, Tom, everybody knows what you told the Captain and—"
"Who's been talking?"
"Huh? Never mind. If it didn't leak from you, it probably did from everybody else present; it's common knowledge. What you told him made sense. What it comes down to is that Urqhardt is depending on you and you alone to keep him in touch with the home office. So you're the man with the stick. You can stop him."
"Huh? Now wait. I'm not the only one. Granted that he isn't counting on Unc—how about Mei-Ling?"
Chat shook his head. "Mei-Ling isn't going to 'think-talk' for him."
His wife said, "Now, Chet; I haven't said so."
He looked at her fondly. "Don't be super-stupid, my lovely darling. You know that there is no chance at all that you will be any use to him after peak. If our brave Captain Urqhardt hasn't got that through his head now, he will . . . even if I have to explain to him in words of one syllable."
"But I might stay linked."
"Oh, no, you won't . . . or I'll bash your pretty head in. Our kids are going to grow up on Earth."
She looked soberly at him and patted his hand. The Travers's were not expecting again, but everybody knew they were hoping; I began to see why Chet was adamant... and I became quite sure that Mei-Ling would not link again after peak—not after her husband had argued with her for a while. What Chet wanted was more important to her than what the Captain wanted, or any abstract duty to a Foundation back on Earth.
Chet went on, "Think it over, Tom, and you will see that you can't let your shipmates down. To go on is suicidal and everybody knows it but the Captain. It's up to you."
"Uh, I'll think it over."
"Do that. But don't take too long." They left.
I went to bed but didn't sleep. The deuce of it was that Chet was almost certainly right . . . including the certainty that Mei-Ling would never patch in with her telepair after another peak, for she was beginning to slip even now. I had been transmitting mathematical or technical matter which would have fallen to her ever since last peak, because her linking was becoming erratic. Chet wouldn't have to bash her admittedly-pretty head in; she was falling out of touch.
On the other hand...
When I had reached "On the other hand" about eighteen times, I got up and dressed and went looking for Harry Gates; it occurred to me that since he was a head of department and present at the meeting, it was proper to talk to him about it.
He wasn't in his room; Barbara suggested that I try the laboratory. He was there, alone, unpacking specimens that had been sent over the day before. He looked up. "Well, Tom, how is it going?"
"Not too good."
"I know. Say, I haven't had a proper chance to thank you. Shall I write it out, or will you have it right off my chest?"
"Uh, let's take it for granted." I had not understood him at first, for it is the simple truth that I had forgotten about pulling him out of the water; I hadn't had time to think about it.
"As you say. But I won't forget it. You know that, don't you?"
"Okay. Harry, I need advice."
"You do? Well, I've got it in all sizes. All of it free and all of it worth what it costs, I'm afraid."
"You were at the meeting tonight."
"So were you." He looked worried.
"Yes." I told him all that had been fretting me, then thought about it and told him all that Chet had said. "What am I to do, Harry? Chet is right; the chance of doing any good on another jump isn't worth it. Even if we find a planet worth reporting—a chance that is never good, based on what the fleet has done as a whoIe—even so, we almost certainly won't be able to report it except by going back, two centuries after we left. It's ridiculous and, as Chet says, suicidal, with what we've got left. On the other hand, the Captain is right; this is what we signed up for. The ship's sailing orders say for us to go on."
Harry carefully unpacked a package of specimens before he answered.
"Tommie, you should ask me an easy one. Ask me whether or not to get married and I'll tell you like a shot. Or anything else. But there is one thing no man can tell another man and that is whore his duty lies. That you must decide for yourself."
I thought about it. "Doggone it, Harry, how do you feel about it?"
"Me?" He stopped what he was doing. "Tom, I just don't know. For myself personally . . . well, I've been happier in this ship than I have ever been before in my life. I've got my wife and kids with me and I'm doing just the work I want to do. With others it may be different."
"How about your kids?"
"Aye, there's the rub. A family man—" He frowned. "I can't advise you, Tom. If I even hint that you should not do what you signed up to do, I'd be inciting to mutiny . . . a capital crime, for both of us. If I tell you that you must do what the Captain wants, I'd be on safe legal grounds—but it might mean the death of you and me and my kids and all the rest of us... because Chet has horse sense on his side even if the law is against him." He sighed. "Tom, I just missed checking out today—thanks to you—and my judgment isn't back in shape. I can't advise you; I'd be prejudiced."
I didn't answer. I was wishing that Uncle Steve had made it; he always had an answer for everything.
"All I can do," Harry went on, "is to make a weaselly suggestion."
"Huh? What is it?"
"You might go to the Captain privately and tell him just how worried you are. It might affect his decisions. At least he ought to know."
I said I would think about it and thanked him and left. I went to bed and eventually got to sleep. I was awakened in the middle of the night by the ship shaking. The ship always swayed a little when waterborne, but not this way, nor this much; not on Elysia.
It stopped and then it started again . . , and again it stopped... and started. I was wondering what... when it suddenly quivered in an entirely different way, one that I recognized; it was the way the torch felt when it was just barely critical. The engineers called it "clearing her throat" and was a regular part of overhaul and inspection. I decided that Mr. Regato must be working late, and I quieted down again. The bumping did not start up again.
At breakfast I found out what it was: the behemoths had tried something, nobody knew what, against the ship itself... whereupon the Captain had quite logically ordered Mr. Regato to use the torch against them. Now, although we still did not know much about them, we did know one thing: they were not immune to super-heated steam and intense radioactivity.
This brush with the sea devils braced my spine; I decided to see the Captain as Harry had suggested.
He let me in without keeping me waiting more than five minutes. Then he kept quiet and let me talk as long as I wanted to. I elaborated the whole picture, as I saw it, without attributing anything to Chet or Harry. I couldn't tell from his face whether I was reaching him or not, so I put it strongly: that Unc and Mei-Ling were both out of the picture and that the chance that I would be of any use after the next peak was so slight that he was risking his. ship and his crew on very long odds.
When I finished I still didn't know, nor did he make a direct answer. Instead he said, "Bartlett, for fifty-five minutes yesterday evening you had two other members of the crew in your room with your door closed."
"Huh? Yes, sir."
"Did you speak to them of this?"
I wanted to lie. "Uh... yes, sir."
"After that you looked up another member of the crew and remained with him until quite late... or quite early, I should say. Did you speak to him on the same subject?"
"Yes, sir."
"Very well I am holding you for investigation on two counts: suspicion of inciting to mutiny and suspicion of intent to mutiny. You are under arrest. Go to your room and remain there. No visitors."
I gulped, Then something Uncle Steve had told me came to my aid-Uncle had been a jawbone space-lawyer and loved to talk about it. "Aye, aye, sir. But I insist that I be allowed to see counsel of my choice... and that I be given a public hearing."
The Captain nodded as if I had told him that it was raining. "Certainly. Your legal rights will be respected. But those matters will have to wait; we are now preparing to get underway. So place yourself under arrest and get to your quarters."
He turned away and left me to confine myself. He didn't even seem angry.
So here I sit, alone in my room. I had to tell Unc he couldn't come in and, later, Chet. I can't believe what has happened to me.
That morning seemed a million years long. Vicky checked with me at the usual time, but I told her that the watch list was being switched around again and that I would get in touch with her later. "Is something wrong?" she asked.
"No, hon, we're just having a little reorganization aboard ship."
"All right. But you sound worried."
I not only didn't tell her that I was in a jam, I didn't tell her anything about the disaster. Time enough later, after it had aged—unless she found out from official news. Meanwhile there was no reason to get a nice kid upset over something she couldn't help.
Twenty minutes later Mr. Eastman showed up. I answered the door when he knocked and told him, "I'm not to have any visitors. Sorry."
He didn't leave. "I'm not a visitor, Tom; I'm here officially, for the Captain."
"Oh." I let him in.
He had a tool kit with him. He set it down and said, "The regular and special communication departments have been consolidated, now that we are so shorthanded, so it looks like I'm your boss. It won't make any difference, I'm sure. But I'm to make a reconnection on your recorder, so that you can record directly into the comm office."
"Okay. But why?"
He seemed embarrassed, "Well... you were due to go on watch a half hour ago. We're going to fix this so that you can stand your watches conveniently from here. The Captain is annoyed that I didn't arrange it earlier." He started unscrewing the access plate to the recorder.
I was speechless. Then I remembered something Uncle Steve had told me. "Hey, wait a minute!"
"Eh?"
"Oh, go ahead and rewire it, I don't care. But I won't stand any watches."
He straightened up and looked worried. "Don't talk like that, Tom, You're in enough trouble now; don't make it worse. Let's pretend you never said it. Okay?"
Mr. Eastman was a decent sort and the only one of the electronics people who had never called us freaks. I think he was really concerned about me. But I said, "I don't see how it can be worse. You tell the Captain that I said he could take his watches and—" I stopped. That wasn't what Uncle Steve would say. "Sorry. Please tell him this: 'Communicator Barlett's respects to the Captain and he regrets that he cannot perform duty while under arrest' Got it?"
"Now look here, Tom, that's not the proper attitude. Surely, there is something in what you say from a standpoint of regulations. But we are shorthanded; everybody has to pitch in and help. You can't stand on the letter of the law; it isn't fair to the rest."
"Can't I?" I was breathing hard and exulting in the chance to hit back. "The Captain can't have his cake and eat it too. A man under arrest doesn't perform duty. It's always been that way end it always will be. You just tell him what I said."
He silently finished the reconnection with quick precision.
"You're sure that's what you want me to tell him?"
"Quite sure."
"All right. Hooked the way that thing is now"—he added, pointing a thumb at the recorder—"you can reach me on if you change your mind. So long."
"One more thing—"
"Eh?"
"Maybe the Captain hasn't thought about it, since his cabin has a bathroom, but I've been in here some hours. Who takes me down the passageway and when? Even a prisoner is entitled to regular policing."
"Oh. I guess I do. Come along."
That was the high point of the morning. I expected Captain Urqhardt to show up five minutes after Mr. Eastman had left me at my room—breathing fire and spitting cinders. So I rehearsed a couple of speeches in my head, carefully phrased to keep me inside the law and quite respectful. I knew I had him.
But nothing happened. The Captain did not show up; nobody showed up. It got to be close to noon. When no word was passed about standing by for boost, I got in my bunk with five minutes to spare and waited.
It was a long five minutes.
About a quarter past twelve I gave up and got up. No lunch either. I heard the gong at twelve-thirty, but still nothing and nobody. I finally decided that I would skip one meal before I complained, because I didn't want to give him the chance to change the subject by pointing out that I had broken arrest. It occurred to me that I could call Unc and tell him about the failure in the beans department, then I decided that the longer I waited, the more wrong the Captain would be.
About an hour after everybody else had finished eating Mr. Krishnamurti showed up with a tray. The fact that he brought it himself instead of sending whoever had pantry duty convinced me that I must be a Very Important Prisoner
—particularly as Kris was unanxious to talk to me and even seemed scared of being near me. He just shoved it in and said, "Put it in the passageway when you are through."
"Thanks, Kris."
But buried in the food on the tray was a note: "Bully for you! Don't weaken and we'll trim this bird's wings. Everybody is pulling for you." It was unsigned and I did not recognize the handwriting. It wasn't Krishnamurti's; I knew his from the time when I was fouling up his farm. Nor was it either of the Travers's, and certainly not Harry's.
Finally I decided that I didn't want to guess whose it was and tore it in pieces and chewed it up, just like the Man in the Iron Mask or the Count of Monte Cristo. I don't really qualify as a romantic hero, however, as I didn't swallow it; I just chewed it up and spat it out. But I made darn sure that note was destroyed, for I not only did not want to know who had sent it, I didn't want anybody ever to know.
Know why? That note didn't make me feel good; it worried me. Oh, for two minutes it bucked me up; I felt larger than life, the champion of the downtrodden.
Then I realized what the note meant...
Mutiny.
It's the ugliest word in space. Any other disaster is better.
One of the first things Uncle Steve had told me—told Pat and myself, way back when we were kids—was: "The Captain is right even when he is wrong." It was years before I understood it; you have to live in a ship to know why it is true. And I didn't understand it in my heart until I read that encouraging note and realized that somebody was seriously thinking of bucking the Captain's authority . . . and that I was the symbol of their resistance.
A ship is not just a little world; it is more like a human body. You can't have democracy in it, not democratic consent at least, no matter how pleasant and democratic the Captain's manner may be. If you're in a pinch, you don't take a vote from your arms and legs and stomach and gizzard and find out what the majority wants. Darn well you don't! Your brain makes a decision and your whole being carries it out.
A ship in space is like that all the time and has to be. What Uncle Steve meant was that the Captain had better be right, you had better pray that he is right even if you disagree with him... because it won't save the ship to be right yourself if he is wrong.
But a ship is not a human body; it is people working together with a degree of selflessness that doesn't come easy—not to me, at least. The only thing that holds it together is a misty something called its morale, something you hardly know it has until the ship loses it. I realized then that the Elsie had been losing hers for some time. First Doc Devereaux had died and then Mama O'Toole and both of those were body blows. Now we had lost the Captain and most of the rest... and the Elsie was falling to pieces.
Maybe the new captain wasn't too bright, but he was trying to stop it. I began to realize that it wasn't just machinery breaking down or attacks from hostile natives that lost ships; maybe the worst hazard was some bright young idiot deciding that he was smarter than the Captain and convincing enough others that he was right. I wondered bow many of the eight ships that were out of contact had died proving that their captains were wrong and that somebody like me was right.
It wasn't nearly enough to be right.
I got so upset that I thought about going to the Captain and telling him I was wrong and what could I do to help? Then I realized that I couldn't do that, either. He had told me to stay in my room—no 'if's' or 'maybe's.' If it was more important to back up the Captain and respect his authority than anything else, then the only thing was to do as I had been ordered and sit tight.
So I did.
Kris brought me dinner, almost on time. Late that evening the speakers blared the usual warning, I lay down and the, Elsie boosted off Elysia. But we didn't go on, we dropped into an orbit, for we went into free fall right afterwards. I spent a restless night; I don't sleep well when I'm weightless.
I was awakened by the ship going into light boost, about a half gravity. Kris brought me breakfast but I didn't ask what was going on and he didn't offer to tell me. About the middle of the morning the ship's system called out: "Communicator Bartlett, report to the Captain." It was repeated before I realized it meant me . . . then I jumped up, ran my shaver over my face, decided that my uniform would have to do, and hurried up to the cabin.
He looked up when I reported my presence. "Oh, yes. Bartlett, Upon investigation I find that there is no reason to prefer charges. You are released from arrest and restored to duty. See. Mr. Eastman."
He looked back at his desk and I got sore. I had been seesawing between a feeling of consecrated loyalty to the ship and to the Captain as the head thereof, and an equally strong desire to kick Urqhardt in the stomach. One kind word from him and I think I would have been his boy, come what may. As it was, I was sore.
"Captain!"
He looked up. "Yes?"
"I think you owe me an apology."
"You do? I do not think so. I acted in the interest of the whole ship. However, I harbor no ill feelings, if that is of any interest to you." He looked back at his work, dismissing me . . . as if my hard feelings, if any, were of no possible importance.
So I got out and reported to Mr. Eastman. There didn't seem to be anything else to do.
Mei-Ling was in the comm office, sending code groups. She glanced up and I noticed that she looked tired. Mr. Eastman said, "Hello, Tom. I'm glad you're here; we need you. Will you raise your telepartner, please?"
One good thing about having a telepath run the special watch list is that other people don't seem to realize that the other end of each pair—the Earthside partner—is not a disembodied spirit. They eat and sleep and work and raise families, and they can't be on call whenever somebody decides to send a message. "Is it an emergency?" I asked, glancing at the Greenwich and then at the ship's clock, Vicky wouldn't check with me for another half hour; she might be at home and free, or she might not be.
"Perhaps not 'emergency' but 'urgent' certainly."
So I called Vicky and she said she did not mind. ("Code groups, Freckle Face,") I told her. ("So set your recorder on 'play back.' ")
"It's quivering, Uncle Tom. Agitate at will."
For three hours we sent code groups, than which there is nothing more tedious. I assumed that it was probably Captain Urqhardt's report of what had happened to us on Elysia, or more likely his second report after the LRF had jumped him for more details. There was no reason to code it so far as I was concerned; I had been there—so it must be to keep it from our telepartners until LRF decided to release it. This suited me as I would not have relished passing all that blood and slaughter, in clear language, to little Vicky.
While we were working the Captain came in and sat down with Mr. Eastman; I could see that they were cooking up more code groups; the Captain was dictating and Eastman was working the encoding machine. Mei-Ling had long since gone. Finally Vicky said faintly, "Uncle Tom, how urgent are these anagrams? Mother called me to dinner half an hour ago.
("Hang on and I'll find out.") I turned to the Captain and Mr. Eastman, not sure of which one to ask. But I caught Eastman's eye and said, "Mr. Eastman, how rush is this
stuff? We want to—"
"Don't interrupt us," the Captain cut in. "Just keep on transmitting. The priority is not your concern."
"Captain, you don't understand; I'm not speaking for myself. I was about to say—"
"Carry on with your work."
I said to Vicky, ("Hold on a moment, hon.") Then I sat back and said, "Aye aye, Captain. I'm perfectly willing to keep on spelling eye charts an night. But there is nobody at the other end."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean it is dinner time and way past for my partner. If you want special duty at the Earthside end, you'd better coordinate with the LRF comm office. Seems to me that somebody has the watch list all mixed up."
"I see." As usual he showed no expression. I was beginning to think he was all robot, with wires instead of veins.
"Very well, Mr. Eastman, get Mr. McNeil and have him relieve Mr. Bartlett."
"Yes, Captain."
"Excuse me, Captain..."
"Yes, Bartlett?"
"Possibly you don't know that Unc's partner lives in Greenwich zone minus-two. It's the middle of the night there—and she is an old lady, past seventy-five. I thought maybe you would want to know."
"Mmm, is that right, Eastman?"
"I believe so, sir."
"Cancel that last order. Bartlett, is your partner willing to go on again after an hour's break for chow? Without clearing it with LRF?"
"I'll see, sir." I spoke to Vicky; she hesitated. I said, ("What is it, Freckle Face? A date with George? Say the word and I'll tell Captain Bligh he can't have you.")
"Oh, it's all right. I'll throw the switch on George. I just wish they would give us something besides alphabet soup. Okay, one hour."
("One hour, sugar plum. Run and eat your salad. Mind your waistline.")
"My waistline is just line, thank you."
"Okay, Captain."
"Very well. Please thank him for me."
He was so indifferent about it that I added a touch of my own. "My partner is a girl, Captain, not a "him." Her mother has placed a two-hour curfew on it. Otherwise it must be arranged with LRF."
"So. Very well." He turned to Eastman. "Can't we manage to coordinate these communication watches?"
"I'm trying, Captain. But it is new to me. .. and we have only three watchstanders left."
"A watch in three should not be too difficult. Yet there always seems to be some reason why we can't transmit. Comment?"
"Well, sir, you saw the difficulty just now. It's a matter of coordinating with Earth. Uh, I believe the special communicators usually arranged that themselves. Or one of them did."
"Which one? Mr. McNeil?"
"I believe Bartlett usually handled it, sir."
"So. Bartlett?"
"I did, sir."
"Very well, you have the job again. Arrange a continuous watch." He started to get up.
How do you tell the Captain he can't have his bucket of paint? Aye aye, sir. But just a minute, Captain—"
"Yes?"
"Do I understand you are authorizing me to arrange a continuous watch with LRF? Signed with your release number?"
"Naturally."
"Well, what do I do if they won't agree to such long hours for the old lady? Ask for still longer hours for the other two? In the case of my partner, you'll run into parent trouble; she's a young girl."
"So. I can't see why the home office hired such people."
I didn't say anything. If he didn't know that you don't hire telepaths the way you hire butchers I wasn't going to explain.
But he persisted. "Comment?"
"I have no comment, sir. You can't get more than three or four hours a day out of any of them, except in extreme emergency. Is this one? If it is, I can arrange it without bothering the home office."
He did not answer directly. Instead he said, "Arrange the best watch list you can. Consult with Mr. Eastman." As he turned to leave I caught a look of unutterable weariness on his face and suddenly felt sorry for him. At least I didn't want to swap jobs with him.
Vicky took a trick in the middle of the night, over Kathleen's objections. Kathleen wanted to take it herself, but the truth was that she and I could no longer work easily without Vicky in the circuit, at least not anything as difficult as code groups.
The Captain did not come in to breakfast and I got there late. I looked around and found a place by Janet Meers. We no longer sat by departments—just one big horseshoe table, with the rest of the mess room arranged to look like a lounge, so that it would not seem so empty.
I was just digging into scrambled yeast on toast when Mr. Eastman stood up and tapped a glass for attention. He looked as if he had not slept for days. "Quiet, please. I have a message from the Captain." He pulled out a sheet and started to read:
" 'Notice to All Hands: By direction of the Long Range Foundation the mission of this ship has been modified. We will remain in the neighborhood of Beta Ceti pending rendezvous with Foundation Ship Serendipity. Rendezvous is expected in approximately one month. Immediately thereafter we will shape orbit for Earth.
" 'F. X. Urqhardt, commanding Lewis and Clark.'"
My jaw dropped. Why, the silent creeper! All the time I had been lambasting him in my mind he had been arguing the home office into canceling our orders ... no wonder he had used code; you don't say in clear language that your ship is a mess and your crew has gone to pot. Not if you can help it, you don't. I didn't even resent that he had not trusted us freaks to respect the security of communications; I wouldn't have trusted myself, under the circumstances.
Janet's eyes were shining... like a woman in love, or like a relativistic mathematician who has just found a new way to work a transformation. "So they've done it!" she said in a hushed voice.
"Done what?" I asked. She was certainly taking it in a big way; I hadn't realized she was that anxious to get home.
"Tommie, don't you see? They've done it, they've done it, they've applied irrelevance. Dr. Babcock was right."
"Huh?"
"Why, it's perfectly plain. What kind of a ship can get here in a month? An irrelevant ship, of course. One that is faster than light." She frowned. "But I don't see why it should take even a month. It shouldn't take any time at all.
It wouldn't use time."
I said, "Take it easy, Janet. I'm stupid this morning—I didn't have much sleep last night. Why do you say that ship
. . . uh, the Serendipity . . . is faster than light? That's impossible."
"Tommie, Tommie . . . look, dear, if it was an ordinary ship, in order to rendezvous with us here, it would have had to have left Earth over sixty-three years ago."
"Well, maybe it did."
"Tommie! It couldn't possibly—because that long ago non body knew that we would be here now. How could they?"
I figured back. Sixty-three Greenwich years ago... mama, that would have been sometime during our first peak. Janet seemed to be right; only an incredible optimist or a fortune teller would have sent a ship from Earth at that time to meet us here now. "I don't understand it."
"Don't you see, Tommie? I've explained it to you, I know I have. Irrelevance. Why, you telepaths were the reason the investigation started; you proved that "simultaneity' was an admissible concept , . . and the inevitable logical consequence was that time and space do not exist."
I felt my head begin to ache. "They don't? Then what is that we seem to be having breakfast in?"
"Just a mathematical abstraction, dear. Nothing more." She smiled and looked motherly. "Poor 'Sentimental Tommie.' You worry too much."
I suppose Janet was right, for we made rendezvous with F. S. Serendipity twenty-nine Greenwich days later. We spent the time moseying out at a half gravity to a locus five billion miles Galactic-north of Beta Ceti, for it appeared that the Sarah did not want to come too close to the big star. Still, at sixty-three light-years, five billion miles is close shooting—a very near miss. We also spent the time working like mischief to arrange and prepare specimens and in collating data. Besides that, Captain Urqhardt suddenly discovered, now that .we were expecting visitors, that lots and lots of things had not been cleaned and polished lately. He even inspected staterooms, which I thought was snoopy.
The Sarah had a mind reader aboard, which helped when it came time to close rendezvous. She missed us by nearly two light-hours; then their m-r and myself exchanged coordinates (referred to Beta Ceti) by relay back Earthside and got each other pinpointed in a hurry. By radar and radio alone we could have fiddled around for a week—if we had ever made contact at all.
But once that was done, the Sarah turned out to be a fast ship, lively enough to bug your eyes out. She was in our lap, showing on our short-range radar, as I was reporting the coordinates she had just had to the Captain. An hour later she was made fast and sealed to our lock. And she was a little ship. The Elsie had seemed huge when I first joined her; then after a while she was just the right size, or a little cramped for some purposes. But the Sarah wouldn't have made a decent Earth-Moon shuttle.
Mr. Whipple came aboard first. He was an incredible character to find in space; he even carried a briefcase. But he took charge at once. He had two men with him and they got busy in a small comportment in the cargo deck. They knew just what compartment they wanted; we had to clear potatoes out of it in a hurry. They worked in there half a day, installing something they called a "null-field generator," working in odd clothes made entirely of hair-fine wires, which covered them like mummies. Mr. Whipple stayed in the door, watching while they worked and smoking a cigar—it was the first I had seen in three years and the smell of it made me ill. The relativists stuck close to him, exchanging excited comments, and so did the engineers, except that they looked baffled and slightly disgusted. I heard Mr., Regato say, "Maybe so. But a torch is reliable. You can depend on a torch."
Captain Urqhardt watched it all, Old Stone Face in person.
At last Mr. Whipple put out his cigar and said, "Well, that's that, Captain. Thompson will stay and take you in and Bjorkenson will go on in the Sarah. I'm afraid you will have to put up with me, too, for I am going back with you."
Captain Urqhardt's face was a gray-white. "Do I understand, sir, that you are relieving me of my command?"
"What? Good heavens, Captain, what makes you say that?"
"You seem to have taken charge of my ship... on behalf of the home office. And now you tell me that this man... er, Thompson—will take us in."
"Gracious, no. I'm sorry. I'm not used to the niceties of field work; I've been in the home office too long. But just think of Thompson as a . . . mmm, a sailing master for you. That's it; he'll be your pilot. But no one is displacing you; you'll remain in command until you can return home and turn over your ship. Then she'll be scrapped, of course."
Mr. Regato said in a queer, high voice, "Did you say "scrapped," Mr. Whipple?" I felt my stomach give a twist. Scrap the Elsie? No!
"Eh? I spoke hastily. Nothing has been decided Possibly she will be kept as a museum. In fact, that is a good idea." He took out a notebook and wrote in it. He put it away and said, "And now, Captain, if you will, I'd like to speak to all your people. There isn't much time."
Captain Urqhardt silently led him back to the mess deck.
When we were assembled, Mr. Whipple smiled and said, "I'm not much at speechmaking. I simply want to thank you all, on behalf of the Foundation, and explain what we are doing. I won't go into detail, as I am not a scientist; I am an administrator, busy with the liquidation of Project Lebensraum, of which you are part. Such salvage and rescue operations as this are necessary; nevertheless, the Foundation is anxious to free the Serendipity, and her sister ships, the Irrelevant, the Infinity, and Zero, for their proper work, that is to say, their survey of stars in the surrounding space."
Somebody gasped. "But that's what we were doing!"
"Yes, yes, of course. But times change. One of the null-field ships can visit more stars in a year than a torchship can visit in a century. You'll be happy to know that the Zero working alone has located seven Earth-type planets this past month."
It didn't make me happy.
Uncle Alfred McNeil leaned forward and said in a soft, tragic voice that spoke for all of us, "Just a moment, sir. Are you telling us that what we did . . . wasn't necessary?"
Mr. Whipple looked startled. "No, no, no! I'm terribly sorry if I gave that impression. What you did was utterly necessary, or there would not be any null ships today. Why, that's like saying that what Columbus did wasn't necessary, simply because we jump across oceans as if they were mud puddles nowadays."
"Thank you, sir, " Unc said quietly.
"Perhaps no one has told you just how indispensably necessary Project Lebensraum has been. Very possibly—things have been in a turmoil around the Foundation for some time—I know I've had so little sleep myself that I don't know what I've done and left undone. But you realize, don't you, that without the telepaths among you, all this progress would not have taken place?" Whipple looked around. "Who are they? I'd like to shake hands with them. In any case—I'm not a scientist, mind you; I'm a lawyer—in any case, if we had not had it proved beyond doubt that telepathy is truly instantaneous, proof measured over many light-years, our scientists might still be looking for errors in the sixth decimal place and maintaining that telepathic signals do not propagate instantaneously but simply at a speed so great that its exact order was concealed by instrumental error. So I understand, so I am told. So you see, your great work has produced wondrous results, much greater than expected, even if they are not quite the results you were looking for."
I was thinking that if they had told us just a few days sooner, Uncle Steve would still be alive.
But he never did want to die in bed.
"But the fruition of your efforts," Whipple went on, "did not show at once. Like so many things in science, the new idea had to grow for a long time, among specialists . . . then the stupendous results burst suddenly on the world. For myself, if anyone had told me six months ago that I would be out here among the stars today, giving a popular lecture on the new physics, I wouldn't have believed him. I'm not sure that I believe it now. But here I am. Among other things, I am here to help you get straightened away when we get back home." He smiled and bowed.
"Uh, Mr. Whipple," Chet Travers asked, "just when will we get home?"
"Oh, didn't I tell you? Almost immediately . . . say soon after lunch."
I might as well finish this off and give it a decent burial. I'll never have time to write again.
They held us in quarantine for a week at Rio. If it had not been for the LRF man with us, they might have been holding us yet. But they wore nice to us. Emperor Dom Pedro III of Brazil presented us each with the Richardson Medal on behalf of the United System and made a speech which showed that he was not quite sure who we were or where we had been, but nevertheless our services were appreciated.
But not as much attention was paid to us as I had expected. Oh, I don't mean that the news services ignored us; they did take our pictures and they interviewed each of us. But the only news story I saw was headed: THIRD LOAD OF RIP VAN WINKLES ARRIVE TODAY.
The reporter or whoever it was who wrote the piece had fun with it and I hope he chokes. It seems that our clothes were quaint and our speech was quaint and we were all deliciously old-fashioned and a bit simple-minded. The picture was captioned: "Off Hats, Chuckies! Grandpa Towncomes."
I didn't look at the stories.
It didn't worry Unc; I doubt if he noticed. He was simply eager to see Celestine. "I do hope," he said to me half seriously, "that child can cook the way her mother could."
"You'll be living with her?" I asked.
"Of course. Haven't we always?"
That was so logical that I had no answer. Then we ex changed addresses. That was logical, too, but it seemed odd
—all the address any of us had had was the Elsie. But I exchanged addresses with everybody and made a note to look up Dusty's twin, if he was still alive, and tell him he could be proud of his brother—perhaps I could locate him through the Foundation.
When they turned us loose and Celestine Johnson did show up I did not recognize her. I saw this tall, handsome old lady rush up and put her arms around Unc, almost lifting him off his feet, and I wondered if I should rescue him.
But then she looked up and caught my eye and smiled and I yelled, "Sugar Pie!"
She smiled still more and I felt myself washed through with sweetness and love. "Hello, Tommie. It's good to see you again."
Presently I promised to visit them at my very first chance and left them; they didn't need me for their homecoming. Nobody had come to meet me; Pat was too old and no longer traveled, Vicky was too young to be allowed to travel alone, and as for Molly and Kathleen, I think their husbands didn't see any reason for it. Neither of them liked me, anyhow. I don't blame them, under the circumstances . . . even though it had been a long time (years to them) since I had mind-talked to their wives other than with Vicky's help. But I repeat, I don't blame them. If telepathy ever becomes common, such things could cause a lot of family friction.
Besides, I was in touch with Vicky whenever I wanted to be. I told her to forget it and not make a fuss; I preferred not to be met.
In fact, save for Unc, almost none of us was met other than by agents of LRF. After more than seventy-one years there was simply no one to meet them. But Captain Urqhardt was the one I felt sorriest for. I saw him standing alone while we were all waiting outside quarantine for our courier-interpreters. None of the rest was alone; we were busy, saying good-by. But he didn't have any friends—I suppose he couldn't afford to have any friends aboard ship, even while he was waiting to become Captain.
He looked so bleak and lonely and unhappy that I walked up and stuck out my hand. "I want to say good-by, Captain. It's been an honor to serve with you... and a pleasure." The last was not a lie; right then I meant it.
He looked surprised; then his face broke into a grin that I thought would crack it; his face wasn't used to it. He grabbed my hand and said, "It's been my pleasure, too, Bartlett. I wish you all the luck in the world. Er . . . what are your plans?"
He said it eagerly and I suddenly realized he wanted to chat, just to visit. "I don't have any firm plans, Captain. I’m going home first, then I suppose I'll go to school. I want to go to college, but I suppose I'll have some catching up to do. There have been some changes."
"Yes, there have been changes," he agreed solemnly. "We'll all have catching up to do." Uh, what are your plans, sat?"
"I don't have any. I don't know what I can do."
He said it simply, a statement of fact; with sudden warm pity I realized that it was true. He was a torchship captain, as. specialized a job as ever existed... and now there were no more torchships. It was as if Columbus had come back from his first voyage and found nothing but steamships. Could he go to sea again? He wouldn't even have been able to find the bridge, much less know what to do when he got there.
There was no place for Captain Urqhardt; he was an anachronism. One testimonial dinner and then thank you, good night.
"I suppose I could retire," he went on, looking away.
"I've been figuring my back pay and it comes to a preposterous sum."
"I suppose it would, sir." I hadn't figured my pay; Pat had collected it for me
"Confound it, Bartlett! I'm too young to retire."
I looked at him. I had never thought of him as especially old and he was not, not compared with the Captain—with Captain Swenson. But I decided that he must be around forty, ship's time. "Say, Captain, why don't you go back to school too? You can afford it."
He looked unhappy. "Perhaps I should. I suppose I ought to. Or maybe I should just chuck it and emigrate. They say there are a lot of places to choose from now."
"I'll probably do that myself, eventually. If you ask me, things have become too crowded around here. I've been thinking about Connie, and how pretty Babcock Bay looked." I really had been thinking about it during the week we had spent in quarantine. If Rio was a sample, Earth didn't have room enough to fall down; we were clear down in the Santos District and yet they said it was Rio. "If we went back to Babcock Bay, we'd be the oldest settlers."
"Perhaps I will. Yes, perhaps I will." But he still looked lost.
Our courier-interpreters had instructions to take us all home, or wherever we wanted to go, but I let mine leave once I had my ticket for home. She was awfully nice but she bothered me. She treated me as a cross between grandfather who must be watched over in traffic and a little boy who must be instructed. Not but what I needed instruction But once I had clothes that would not be stared at, I wanted to be on my own. She had taught me enough System Speech in a week so that I could get by in simple matters and I hoped that my mistakes would be charged up to a local accent from somewhere. Actually, I found that System Speech, when it wasn't upgained to tears, was just P-L lingo with more corners knocked off and some words added. English, in other words, trimmed and stretched to make a trade lingo.
So I thanked Senhorita Guerra and told her good-by and waved my ticket at a sleepy gatekeeper. He answered in Portuguese and I looked stupid, so he changed it to, "Outdowngo rightwards. Ask from allone." I was on my way.
Somehow everybody in the ship seemed to know that I was a Rip Van Winkle and the hostess insisted on helping me make the change at White Sands. But they were friendly and did not laugh at me. One chap wanted to know about the colony being opened up on Capella VIII and did not understand why I hadn't been there if I had spaced all that time. I tried to explain that Capella was clear across the sky and more than a hundred light-years from where I had been, but I didn't put the idea across.
But I did begin to see why we had not made a big splash in the news. Colony planets were the rage and there was a new one every day, so why should anyone be excited over one that we had found sixty years back? Or even over one just a few months back which did not compare with ones being turned up now? As for starships—see the latest news for current departures.
We were going to be a short paragraph in history and a footnote in science books; there wasn't room for us in the news. I decided that even a footnote averaged well and forgot it.
Instead I started thinking about my re-education which, I was beginning to realize, was going to have to be extensive; the changes had been more than I had bargained for. Take female styles, for example—look, I'm no Puritan, but they didn't dress, if you want to call it that, this way when I was a kid. Girls running around without a thing on their heads, not even on top . . . heads bare-naked, like an animal It was a good thing that Dad hadn't lived to see it. He never let our sisters come to the table without a hat, even if Pat and I were the only unmarried males present.
Or take the weather. I had known that LRF was working on it, but I never expected them to get anywhere. Don't people find it a little dull to have it rain only at night? Or take trucks. Of course, all you expect of a truck is that it haul things from here to there. But the lack of wheels does make them look unstable.
I wonder how long it will be before there is not a wheel on Earth?
I had decided that I would just have to get used to it all, when the hostess came by and put something in my lap and when I picked it up, it spoke to me. It was just a souvenir of the trip.
Pat's town house was eight times as big as the flat seven of us used to live in; I decided that he had managed to hang onto at least some of the money. His robutler took my cape and boots and ushered me in to see him.
He didn't get up. I wasn't sure he could get up. I had known that he was old, but I hadn't realized that he was old! He was—let me see, eighty-nine. Yes, that was right; we had our ninetieth birthday coming up.
I tried to keep it casual. "Hi, Pat."
"Hi, Tom." He touched the arm of his chair and it rolled toward me. "Don't move. Stand there and let me look at you." He looked me up and down, then said wonderingly, "I knew intellectually that you would not have changed with the years. But to see it, to realize it, is quite another thing, eh? 'The Picture of Dorian Gray.' "
His voice was old.
"Where is the family?" I said uncomfortably.
"I've told the girls to wait. I wanted to see my brother alone at first. If you mean Gregory and Hans as well, no doubt you will meet them at dinner tonight. But never mind them, lad; just let me visit with you, for a while. It's been a long time." I could see tears, the ready tears of old age, in his eyes and it embarrassed me.
"Yes, I guess it has."
He leaned forward and gripped the arms of his chair.
"Tell me just one thing. Was it fun?
I thought about it. Doc Devereaux... Mama O'Toole... poor little Pru who had never lived to grow up, not really. Uncle Steve. Then I switched it off and gave him the answer he wanted. "Yes, it was fun, lots of fun."
He sighed. "That's good. I quit regretting years ago. But if it hadn't been fun, it would have been such a terrible waste."
"It was."
"That's all I wanted to hear you say. I'll call the girls down in a moment. Tomorrow I'll show you around the plant and introduce you to the key men. Not that I expect you to take hold right away. Take a long vacation if you like. But not too long, Tom . . . for I guess I'm getting old. I can't look ahead the way I used to."
I suddenly realized that Pat had everything planned out, just as he always had. "Wait a minute, Pat. I'll be pleased to have you show me around your plant—and honored. But don't count on anything. First I'm going to school. After that—well, we'll see."
"Eh? Don't be silly. And don't call it 'my' plant; it's 'Bartlett Brothers, Incorporated.' It always has been. It's your responsibility as much as mine."
"Now, take it easy, Pat. I was just—"
"Quiet!" His voice was thin and shrill but it still had the sound of command. "I won't have any nonsense out of you, young man. You've had your own way and you've been off on a long picnic—I won't criticize how you managed it. That's bygones. But now you must buckle down and assume your responsibilities in the family business." He stopped and breathed heavily, then went on more softly, almost to himself. "I had no sons, I have no grandsons; I've had to carry the burden alone. To have my brother, to have my own brother..." His voice faded out.
I went up and took him by the shoulder—then I let go; it felt like match sticks. But I decided that I might as well settle it once and for all; I told myself it would be kinder. "Listen to me, Pat. I don't want to seem ungrateful, but you must get this straight. I'm going to live my own life. Understand me. It might include "Bartlett Brothers'; it might not. Probably not. But I will decide. I'll never be told again."
He brushed it aside. "You don't know your own mind; you're just a boy. Never mind, we'll speak of it tomorrow, Today is a day of gladness."
"No, Pat. I am not a boy, I am a man. You'll have to accept that. I'll make my own mistakes and I'll not be told."
He wouldn't look at me. I insisted, "I mean it, Pat. I mean it so much that if you can't accept it and abide by it, I'm walking out right now. Permanently."
Then he looked up. "You wouldn't do that to me."
"I would."
He searched my eyes. "I believe you would. You always were a mean one. You gave me a lot of trouble."
"I'm still mean... if you want to call it that."
"Uh... but you wouldn't do it to the girls? Not to little Vicky?"
"I will if you force my hand."
He held any eyes for a second, then his shoulders sagged and he buried his face in his hands. I thought he was going to cry and I felt like a villain, bullying an old man like that. I patted his shoulders, wishing that I had stalled, rather than forcing the issue.
I remembered that this frail old man had risked his health and his sanity to get in touch with me at first peak, and I thought: if he wants it so badly, maybe I should humor him. After all, he did not have long to live.
No!
It wasn't right for one person to impose his will on another, through strength or even through weakness. I was myself... and I was going out to the stars again. Suddenly I knew it. Oh, college perhaps, first—but I was going. I owed this old man gratitude . . . but I did not owe him the shape of my life. That was mine.
I took his hand and said, "I'm sorry, Pat."
He said without looking up, "All right, Tom. Have it your own way. I'm glad to have you home anyway . . . on your own terms."
We talked inanities for a few moments, then he had the robutler fetch me coffee—he had milk. At last he said, "I'll call the girls." He touched the arm of his chair, a light glowed and he spoke to it.
Molly came down with Kathleen behind her. I would have known either of them anywhere, though I had never seen them. Molly was a woman in her late sixties, still handsome. Kathleen was fortyish and did not look it—no, she looked her age and wore it regally. Molly stood on tiptoe, holding both my hands, and kissed me. "We're glad you are home, Tommie."
"So we are," Kathleen agreed, and her words echoed in my mind. She kissed me, too, then said just with her voice.
"So this is my aged and ageless great-uncle. Tom, you make me wish for a son. You aren't uncle-ish and I'll never call you "uncle" again."
"Well, I don t feel uncle-ish. Except to Molly, maybe."
Molly looked startled, then giggled like a girl. "All right, Uncle Tom. I'll remember your years... and treat you with respect."
"Where's Vicky?"
"I’m here, Uncle Tom. Down in a split."
( "Hurry, hon." )
Kathleen looked sharply at me, then let it pass—I'm sure she did not mean to listen. She answered, "Vicky will be down in a moment, Tom. She had to get her face just so. You know how girls are."
I wondered if I did. But Vicky was down, almost at once.
There were no freckles on her face, no braces on her teeth. Her mouth wasn't large; it was simply perfectly right for her. And the carroty hair that had worried her so was a crown of flame.
She did not kiss me; she simply came straight to me as if we had been alone, took my hands and looked up at me.
"Uncle Tom. Tom."
("Freckle Face.. .")
I don't know how long we played statues. Presently she said, "After we are married, there will he none of this many-light-years-apart stuff . . . Understand me? I go where you go. To Babcock Bay, if that's what you want. But I go."
("Huh? When did you decide to marry me?")
"You seem to forget that I have been reading your mind since I was a baby—and a lot more thoroughly than you think I have! I'm still doing it."
("But how about George?")
"Nothing about George. He was a mere make-do when I thought you would not be back until I was an old lady. Forget him."
("All right.")
Our "courtship" had lasted all of twenty seconds. Without letting go my hands Vicky spoke aloud, "Tom and I are going downtown and get married. We'd like you all to come along."
So we did.
I saw Pat eyeing me after the ceremony, sizing up the new situation and mulling over how he would use it. But Pat doesn't understand the new setup; if I get bossed, it won't be by him. Vicky says that she will soon have me "ricketty all through." I hope not but I suppose she will. If so, I trust I'll be able to adjust to it . . . I've adjusted to stranger things.