Time Travel Omnibus, page 394
Until now the distant stars had been left to the hardiest of adventurers: to the professional explorers and the professional exploiters, to the seekers of knowledge and the seekers of power—and to the human riffraff who had to be pressed, even shanghaied, into service.
It wasn’t the danger that had stopped the others, for the ships themselves had approached perfection and any housewife in a gyrojet risked her neck in traffic many times over.
The bugaboo was Time. Time was the enemy and Time was the barrier. Time was the factor in an equation which an ancient named Einstein had turned on the world.
The first leg of their journey, for instance—the jump to Centauri—had been only a matter of days. For them. Back home their waiting relatives and friends had already passed through forgetful years.
The smart young agent who had promoted for Brad had seized on that—while declining himself even to consider the “opportunity.” He had sold the trip partly on the point that the passengers would “gain” an extra span of life.
It was a specious argument, of course—and quite deliberate. It had been used to minimize the real disadvantage—that they would return hopelessly out-of-joint with their time on Earth. That they would come back as ghosts from a forgotten age, to a strange new world and to families and friends who were long since buried.
Escapists. That was the only word for most of the people whom Brad faced now. Escapists who thought of themselves as fleeing the past or jumping the future—but who actually were trying to lose themselves.
There were twenty-two of them. There were women in search of eternal youth—or at least the postponement of death. There was the stout Mrs. Reeves, a wealthy widow, and the harried nurse who was her traveling companion. There was a spinster school teacher who had reached the age of desperation. There was Lola De Lao, an ex-video star whose medium was dead and whose glamour was sagging. There was Fay Fairchild, insatiably restless until she had found her man, and a homely young girl who had lost her sweetheart.
There were men to match, as on any cruise. Owen Crawford, a soldier-of-fortune of dubious past, played the field with an eye to profit. J.R. Jones, stout and obnoxious, boasted about the fortune he’d go back to—with compound interest. Sammy Mund was an amiable gangster who’d come along for reasons of health and income tax.
There was a wild-eyed radical named Myron Hoak, who believed in Interplanetary Government and waited for the world to catch up with him. And Dr. Bowers, slight and gray, who had gained a pension and lost a wife, and had come to see the realities of the theories he had taught so long . . .
These then were the people Brad faced as he made his announcement. He gave it to them straight, because there was no other way. He said, simply and grimly:
“Folks, we’re going to have to abandon ship.”
II
THERE was, at first, a stunned incredulous silence. The concept of actual physical danger was too swift a change from what the bright young promoter had called “the carefree life of a vagabond cruise.”
But Brad went on, hammering it home. “Our main controls have gone haywire from some unknown cause. Our auxiliary tubes have all been blown, to no avail. The Stella is now drifting completely out of control. We’re already caught in the tides of that giant planet you’ve seen ahead.”
Owen Crawford blurted foolishly, “Well, you’re the skipper of this bucket. Do something about it—don’t come weeping to us!”
Crawford had been a source of trouble from the first, ever since their first fruitless prospecting ventures on two small neglected planetoids in Alpha-Centauri. He had insisted then that they return to Earth, but the rest had voted him down, with Brad concurring. He still held a grudge—and in addition his health was failing.
Brad answered him steadily. “I’m not trying to put off the blame or responsibility on anyone else. I got you into this and I’ve tried my best to get you out. Now I’m telling you what we’re up against. We must abandon the Stella immediately.”
Still that blank silence. Brad had half-expected panic, but not this. His eyes traveled over their staring, unbelieving faces. They had all been lulled by that false sense of security, that feeling of a world self-sufficient and invincible, which monotony engenders in any large space cruiser.
Widow Reeves even turned on Miss Kirkland, the schoolteacher, with quavering indignation. “That man at the agency positively assured me this ship was safe!”
“We must leave immediately. Put on your warmest clothes and the space suit which was issued to each of you. Take only such small personal effects as you can carry in your pockets.”
J.R. Jones, the retired manufacturer and a tireless amateur duplicator, fixed Brad with his coldest executive eye. “This is an outrage, young man! I’ve got ten thousand dollars’ worth of reproducing equipment in my cabin!”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Jones, but your life should be worth more than that. We’re out of control. Our only chance is to leave the ship.”
“Captain?” This was little Dr. Bowers, standing quietly in the rear, and Brad nodded respectfully. “I’m not questioning the danger, or your authority, but isn’t it possible we may have swung into a free orbit? In that case—”
“I’m afraid not, Dr. Bowers, We’re not free. We’re still accelerating.”
Dr. Bowers nodded slowly and soberly. Mrs. Reeves turned her indignation on him. “I knew a ship this old couldn’t be safe! Just wait until I get back and—”
“You all knew the whole story when you signed on,” Brad interrupted flatly. “This ship was licensed for only private operation, yes—but the Bureau’s only objection to a full license was the passenger accommodations. She was as safe as the newest and best equipment could make her, and whatever’s gone wrong could have happened to any other ship.” He paused and added quietly, “If she weren’t sound, we wouldn’t still be hanging together at our present speed. We’re already dangerously close to optimum.”
“So what?” Crawford demanded. “You admit yourself she’s taking it.”
“I’ll let Dr. Bowers answer that for you.” Brad turned again to the little professor. “Our velocity when I left the bridge a moment ago was one-eighty-four, and still increasing.” Dr. Bowers’ face blanched, but his voice was as quiet as if he were answering a classroom question. “There isn’t any question, in that case. As we all know, the speed of light is the measure of infinity. As our velocity approaches the speed of light, time approaches zero. Which means. . .” he shrugged. “The Captain is right.”
“Zero time!” snorted the practical Jones. “A mathematical abstraction!”
“Maybe so. But I, personally, would rather take my chances on an unknown planet in finite time.”
CRAWFORD cut in again appealing to the others. “We’ve listened to Captain Hunter all along—and look where it’s got us! If we stay with the ship we know what we’re up against. At least we won’t die from lack of food or oxygen!” There were some murmurs of agreement, and Brad raised his voice impatiently. “Naturally I weighed all that in making my decision. My readings show atmosphere and enough vegetation to indicate some water and oxygen. Not on the large planet itself, but on the small moon beyond it. That’s where we’ll try to land.”
“Yeah?” Sammy Mund’s rugged face was knotted with unaccustomed thought. “But if we’re going this fast, like the prof says, what chance we got kickin’ loose in a lousy little lifeboat?”
“A better chance than we have remaining aboard the Stella. The lifeboat is a 15-G model, the latest and the best. Theoretically, it’s good for any velocity . . .” Brad paused and grinned wryly. “We can only hope it measures up to specifications in actual operation.”
They murmured among themselves, with growing excitement. The discussion had driven it home, but it had also brought them close to the edge of panic. And Owen Crawford was helping it along. Already unstable, wracked by some mysterious ailment which he had refused to have treated, he was working himself and his neighbors toward hysteria.
Fay followed Brad’s troubled look and laid her hand soothingly on the man’s arm, but he shook her off. “We’ll never make it, I tell you! And even if we do, then what? You want to spend the rest of your days on some stinking little desert planet—taking orders from our noble Captain?”
“We may be picked up,” Dr. Bowers said, but his words were empty of conviction.
“I still say we’ve got a better chance staying with the ship!” Crawford turned on his fellow passengers for support. “We’ve all bought shares in this joyride, and we’ve all got a right to the final decision.”
No one backed him up, but the uncertainty was there. Brad checked it savagely. “I’m still in command here! I’m responsible for your safety, not Mr. Crawford. The decision has already been made, whether you like it or not.”
Crawford yelled hotly, “That may go for the rest, but you can’t shove me around!”
Brad’s hand dropped to the flap of his blaster holster. “This goes for all of you. Warm clothes, your lifesuit—and nothing else you can’t get in a pocket. I’ll give you as long as I can, but when the warning signal sounds off you’d better all be aboard the lifeboat on C deck.” His eyes swept over them, one by one. “Anyone who isn’t there will be out of luck.”
Then he turned on his heel and left them. Some were already scurrying frantically away, others moving slowly as if in shock, and Crawford was still expostulating wildly although no one would listen.
As Brad reached the corridor, he felt a hand on his arm. He turned, and Fay was in his arms for a desperate breathless moment.
Then he went up the passageway toward the bridge, and as he went the counter on his wrist purred like an angry rattlesnake. That was the one thing he hadn’t told them. Some inexplicable radiation leak had made the Stella as hot as a two-dollar blaster.
SPIKE had already summoned the rest of the “crew” on his own authority. Beans, the lanky, space-happy kid who had signed on as deckhand, was gawking at the panel with excited fascination. Spike and Gloomy Gus were obviously fortifying themselves against the emergency. Their guilt was plain as they looked around, and Gus hastily concealed the evidence behind his back.
Gloomy Gus was an ape-limbed pessimist who served as steward and general factotum. Of Martian descent, he had an unpronounceable name and a morose disposition, and his nickname had derived from both. He looked close to tears now as Brad grabbed the bottle and sent it shattering to the deck plates.
“Gus, you go help the passengers into their life suits. Spike, you take Beans and check over the lifeboat, and then help round ’em up. Get everybody aboard and snug ’em down—and don’t take any arguments. I’ll expect everything ready to shove when I get there.”
Silence closed in around Brad as they hurried off. Silence—and the weight of the odds he was bucking.
Ahead the planet had grown alarmingly, already crowding the screen. They were going to pass perilously close. If they did miss her, their course would take them between her and the tiny satellite that showed to the right. And that, as his polariscope had already told him, would be their last and only chance.
She looked no more than a tiny rock. But the major planet itself, bare and golden in the reflected light of the brilliant sun behind, was probably as huge as Jupiter. That would make her moon at least two thousand miles in diameter, and as he had told the passengers, there was some indication of atmosphere moisture.
But still . . . it was going to take all his judgment, and a lot more of luck, to gauge the velocity of the Stella against that tiny globe which would pass and be gone forever in a matter of seconds.
Brad re-set the alarm on the speed indicator; set it with as close a margin as he dared, and then went into his office for the last sad rites.
He was numb beyond despair now, almost numb beyond feeling, as he stood over the log on its waist-high ledge. He remembered with what exultation he had printed that first proud page:
LOG OF THE S.S. STELLA
Captain Bradford Hunter
Master & Owner
There had been few entries since then, and fewer pages. He ruffled the great bulk of them, thinking sadly that they now would remain forever blank, and then turned back to his last insertion.
14:21 S.T.—Tubes 3 and 4 exhausted without effect.
He picked up the pen and frowned at the chronometer. It read 14:23 now, and of course that was impossible. But impossible or not, it didn’t matter.
14:23 S.T.—Ordered Abandon Ship.
Under that he drew a final, slashing line and signed his name to the Stella’s death warrant. Not only the Stella’s but his own as well; for she represented everything he had lived for from his earliest boyhood.
Outside the alarm bell once again took up its clamor of warning. He closed the log and left it there—perhaps to be found some day, in the incalculable future, or perhaps to remain frozen forever in Eternity. But this was the tradition where ships lived longer than men.
By the time he had climbed into his space suit, the speed dial had almost run out of numbers. He swung down the mike and barked into it hastily. “Casey! You all set below?”
Spike’s voice came back hollow and uncertain. “Just about, Cap. Yeah . . . here’s the last two now.”
“Stand by for signal! If I don’t make it, shove away!”
“But—”
“That’s an order!”
“But Cap—”
Brad clicked off the mike on Spike’s protest and took one last look through the ’scape. Then he stood watching the speed dial with his heart in his throat. It clicked away with hypnotic regularity and nerve-wracking slowness. Working up through the digits from zero to 9, and then all over again, reaching for that last final click of the last final 9 that would shift the whole bank over to the ultimate Zero . . .
They needed every second they could get, because every thousand miles would count in the limited range of the lifeboat. On the other hand, if he shaved it too close . . .
He stood it almost beyond human endurance. Counting the clicks as a doctor counting the pulse of a dying patient, until finally time had run out to its last feeble whisper. Then he thumbed the alarm setting over to 185,900; yanked the mike down on its flexible arm and shoved it close in front of the bell.
“Stand by to cast off!”
He ran for it with death pounding at his heels. The last glimpse he had of the Stella’s bridge was the broken glass cluttering her deck—and the vagrant regret that he hadn’t cleaned it up!
THEY were waiting, two long rows in the slender arrow of the 15-G. Two dozen shapeless humans in their inflated, segmented suits: strapped and helpless against the pads of the acceleration shocks.
Brad’s eyes went over them as he closed the port of the airlock and put his shoulder to the locking wheel. He was counting them as Spike reached down to help him swing aboard . . . and he was recounting desperately as Spike slammed the hatch and fumbled with the straps which would hold them both.
“I get twenty-five—including me! Somebody’s missing!”
Helmeted heads turned as Brad’s sharp voice rang through their earpieces. Spike gave him one startled look through his visor and swung away. “Gus! Where’s Crawford!”
Ahead an anonymous helmet turned with a deliberate slowness that identified its wearer completely. “I tol’ ya, Spike, but’ya wouldn’t lissen. He said he hadda do som’p’n first, and I couldn’t . . .”
Gus went on, defending himself, but Brad was no longer listening. He was marking the seconds as he struggled to loosen his straps again. Even Fay’s anguished cry reached him only dimly as he pulled himself erect.
“No, Brad, No!”
Spike also tried to stop him, but he pulled loose and opened the hatch. His voice blotted out the protests in harsh command.
“Spike, you’re in charge here. If that alarm goes off you shove! If you don’t, I’ll see you in hell myself . . . and no buts about it!”
III
AS he pounded along the passage-way, clumsy and hampered in his bulky spacesuit, Brad’s mind outstripped his feet.
Crawford must have gone crazy, completely irrational. Sure, he had challenged the wisdom of abandoning ship, and that Brad could understand. But not this. Not this risk of being left behind, of being left alone and deserted on an abandoned ship. No man would face that deliberately—not unless he were already beyond the reach of normal emotion.
Brad realized he was running against the same risk himself, but he didn’t falter. It was a human obligation—and something more. It was an ancient and honorable tradition that still lived whenever ships foundered at sea or in space . . .
The Captain is last to leave his ship.
So he had his duty, but what about Crawford? What had been ailing him all along? Had he finally cracked now, or was there something else?
Brad remembered he had marked trouble after Crawford’s name from the very first. He had been smooth and agreeable but it had been the pose of a gambler staking his last dollar. He had made a play for Fay, but she had turned him down cold. He had charmed Mrs. Reeves—and left her dangling. He had amused himself with Lola De Lao, and cheated at cards with J.R. Jones. All of that had been in character.
The trouble had begun with their second landing, at that little rock in Alpha-Centauri. Crawford had separated from the rest, contrary to orders, and then had sneaked back aboard even while they were out searching. Then he had begun his bitter campaign for an immediate return to Earth, his line of attack being to discredit the Captain . . .
And this was the man for whom Brad was risking himself, but still he didn’t hesitate . . .
The Captain is last to leave the ship . . .
He rounded the last corner and faced the door to Crawford’s cabin.
It was locked. Or rather latched from the inside, for the lock was open! He pounded and yelled, but there was no answer. He thought he caught the sound of movement within, but he couldn’t be sure. He reached for his blaster; then quickly reconsidered. If Crawford were close on the other side, the rays might reach him.
