Search the Sky by C. M. Kornbluth and Frederik Pohl (top ebook reader .TXT) 📕

the hulking guard for permission.

“Sure, sonny,” she boomed. “I’ll show you the way. Need any help?”

“No, thanks, ma’am,” he said hastily, and she roared with laughter. So did the members of the construction gang; it must have been an ancient gag. He hurried on his way thinking dark and bloody thoughts.

“Whitker?” he asked a tottering ancient who nodded and drowsed amid the facilities of the head.

The old man looked up blearily and squeaked: “Fresh out. Fresh out. You should’ve saved some from yesterday.”

“That’s all right. I’m a new man here. I want to ask you about your friend Flarney——”

Whitker bowed his head and began to cry noiselessly.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Whitker. I heard. But there’s something we can do about it—maybe. Flarney was a faster-than-light man. He must have told you that. So am I. Ross, from Halsey’s Planet.”

He hadn’t the faintest idea as to whether any of this was getting through to the ancient.

“It seems Flarney and I were both on the same mission, finding out how and why planets were dropping out of communication. You and he used to talk a lot, they tell me. Did he ever tell you anything about that?”

Whitker looked up and squeaked dimly. “Oh, yes. All the time. I humored him. He was an old man, you know. And now he’s dead.” The tears leaked from his rheumy eyes and traced the sad furrows beside his nose.

101Was he getting through? “What did he say, Mr. Whitker? About faster-than-light?”

The old man said, “L-sub-T equals L-sub-zero e to the minus T-over-two-N.”

That damned formula again! “But what does it mean, Mr. Whitker? What did he say it meant?” Ross softly urged.

The old man looked surprised. “Genes?” he asked himself hazily. “Generations? I don’t remember. But you go to Earth, young man. Flarney said they’d know, and know what to do about it, too, which is more than he did. His very words, young man!”

Ross didn’t dare stay longer. Furthermore he suspected that the old man’s attention span had been exhausted. He started from the room with a muttered thanks, and was stopped at the door by Whitker’s hand on his shoulder.

“You’re a good boy,” Whitker squeaked. “Here.”

Ross found himself walking down the corridor with an enormous wad of cellosponge in his hand.

The bunks were hard, but that didn’t matter. Dormitories were the outermost layer of the hulk, pseudogravity varies inversely as the fourth power of the distance, and the field generator was conventionally located near “Minerva’s” center. When your relative weight is one-quarter normal you can sleep deliciously on a gravel driveway. This was the dormitory’s only attractive feature. Otherwise it was too many steel slabs, tiered and spotted too close, too many unwashed males, too much weary snoring. The only things in short supply were headroom and air.

Not everybody slept. Insomniacs turned and grunted; those who had given up the struggle talked from bunk to bunk in considerately low tones.

Bernie muttered from a third-tier bunk facing Ross’s: “I wonder if she made it.”

Ross knew what he meant. “Unlikeliest thing in the world,” he said. “But I think she went fast and never knew what hit her.” He thought of the formula and “They’d know on Earth—and know what to do about it too.” Earth the enigma, from which all planetary peoples were supposed to be derived. Earth—the dot on the traditional master 102charts, Earth—from which and to which no longliners ever seemed to travel. Haarland had told him no F-T-L ship had in recent centuries ever reported again after setting out for Earth. Another world sunk in barbarism? But Flarney had said—no; that was not data. That was the confused recollections of a very old man, possibly based on the confused recollections of another very old man. Perhaps it had got mixed up with the semilegendary origin story.

Poor sweet Helena! He hoped it had happened fast, that she had been thinking of some pleasant prospect on Halsey’s Planet. In her naïve way she’d think it just around the corner, a mere matter of following instructions....

So thought Ross, the pessimist.

In his gloom he had forgotten that this was exactly what it was. In his snobbishness he never realized that he was guilty of the most frightful arrogance in assuming that what he could do, she could not. In his ignorance he was not aware that since navigation began, every new instrument, every technique, has drawn the shuddery warnings of savants that uneducated skippers, working by rote, could not be expected to master these latest fruits of science—or that uneducated skippers since navigation began have cheerfully adopted new instruments and techniques at the drop of a hat and that never once have the shuddery warnings been justified by the facts.

Up the aisle somebody was saying in a low, argumentative tone, “I saw the drum myself. Naturally it was marked Dulsheen Creme, but the guards here never did give a damn whether their noses were dull or bright enough to flag down a freighter and I don’t think they’ve suddenly changed. It was booze, I tell you. Fifty liters of it.”

“Gawd! The hangovers tomorrow.”

“We’ll all have to watch our steps. I hope they don’t do anything worse than getting quietly drunk in their quarters. Those foot-kissing orderlies’ll get a workout, but who cares what happens to an orderly?”

“They haven’t been on a real tear since I’ve been here.”

“Lucky you. Let’s hope they don’t bust loose tonight. It’s 103a break in the monotony, sure—but those girls play rough. Five prisoners died last time.”

“They beat them up?”

“One of them.”

“What about the others? Oh! Oh, Gawd—fifty liters, you said?”

Bernie began to whimper: “Not again! Not those plug-uglies! I swear I’ll throw myself through the spacelock if they make a pass at me. Ross, isn’t there anything we can do?”

“Seems not, Bernie. Maybe they won’t come in. Or if they do, maybe they’ll pass you by. There certainly isn’t any place to hide.”

A raucous female voice roared through the annunciator: “Bed check five minutes, boys. Anybody got any li’l thing to do down the hall, better do it now. See you lay-terrr!” Hiccup and drunken giggle.

For the first time in his life Ross suddenly and spontaneously acted like a tri-di hero, with the exception that he felt like a silly ass through it all.

“Got an idea,” he muttered. “Get out of your bunk.” He pulled the wad of cellosponge, old Whitker’s present, from his pocket and yanked it in half, one for him and one for Bernie.

The Pullover said faintly: “Thanks, but I don’t have to——”

Ross didn’t bother to answer. He was carefully fluffing the stuff out to its maximum dimensions. He unzipped his coveralls and began wadding them with cellosponge.

“I get it,” Bernard said softly. He stepped out of his one-piece garment and followed suit. In less than a minute they had creditable dummies lying on their bunks.

The others watched their activity with emotions ranging between awe and envy. One giant of a man proclaimed grimly to whoever cared to listen: “These are a couple of smart guys. I wish them luck. And I want you guys to know that I will personally break the back of any sneaking rat who tips off a guard about this.”

“Sure, Ox. Sure,” came a muted chorus.

Arranged in a fetal sleeping position, face down, the 104dummies astonished even their creators. It would take a lucky look in a fair light to note that the heads were earless, fibrous globes.

“They’ll do,” Ross snapped. “Come on, Bernie.”

They walked quietly from the dormitory in their singlet underwear toward the dormitory latrine—and past it. Into the corridor. Through a doorless opening into a storeroom piled with crates of rations. “This’ll do,” Ross said quietly. They ducked into a small cavern formed by sloppy issuing of stock and hunched down.

“The dummies will fool the bed check. It’s only a sweep with a hundred-line TV system. If the guards do raid the dormitory tonight we’ll have to count on them ignoring the dummies or thinking they’re a joke or being too busy with other things to care. They’ll be drunk, after all. Then in the morning things’ll be plenty disorganized. We’ll be able to sneak back into formation—and that’ll be that for a matter of years. They can’t often bribe the pilots with enough to guarantee a real ripsnorting drunk. Now try and get some sleep. There’s nothing more we can do.”

They actually did doze off for a couple of hours, and then were awakened by drunken war whoops.

“It’s them!” Bernie wailed.

“Shut up. They’re heading for the dormitory. We’re safe.”

“Safe!” Bernie echoed derisively. “Safe until when?”

Ross threatened him with the side of his hand and Bernie was quiet, though his lips were mumbling soundlessly. The guards lurched giggling past and Ross said:

“We’ll sneak into the lockroom. There won’t be anybody there tonight; at least we’ll get a night’s sleep.”

“Big deal,” grumbled Bernie, but he followed, complaining inarticulately to himself. Ross thought tiredly: All this work for a night’s sleep! And saw, half-formed, the dreadful procession of days and nights and years ahead....

They reached the lockroom and stumbled in breathlessly.

“Dearie!” Two guards, playing a card game on the floor with a ring of empty bottles around them, looked up in drunken delight. “Dearie!” repeated the bigger of the two. “Angela, look what we’ve got!”

105Ross said stupidly. “But you shouldn’t be here——”

The guard made a clumsy pass at fluffing up her back hair and giggled. “Duty comes first, dearie. Angela, just lock that door, will you?” The other guard scrambled unevenly to her feet and weaved over to the door. It was locked before Ross or Bernie could move.

The big guard stood up too, leering at Bernie. “Wow!” she said. “New merchandise. Just be patient, dearie. We’ve got a little something to attend to in a couple of minutes, but we’ll have lots of time after that.”

Then things began to happen rapidly. There was Angela the guard, inarticulate, falling-down drunk; she waved bonelessly at a brightly flickering light on the far side of the lockroom. There was the other guard, reaching out for Bernie with one hand, pawing at a bottle with the other. There was Ross, a paralyzed spectator.

And there was Bernie.

Bernie’s eyes bulged wide as the guard came toward him. He babbled hysterically, “No! Nonononono! I said I’d kill myself and I——”

He stiff-armed the big guard and leaped for the lock door. Ross suddenly came to life. “Bernie!” he bellowed. “Hold it! Don’t jump!”

But it was too late. The one guard sprawling, the other staggering helplessly across the floor, Bernie was clear. He scrabbled at the lockwheels, spun them open. Ross tensed himself for the sudden, awful rush of expanding air; he leaped after Bernie just as Bernie flung the lock door open and jumped.

Ross jumped after.

There was no rush of air. They were not in space. Around them was no ripping, sucking void, no flaming backdrop of stars; around them were six walls and a Wesley board, and Helena peering at them wide-eyed and delighted.

“Well!” she said. “That was fast!”

Ross said, “But——”

Helena, hanging from the acceleration loops, smiled 106maternally. “Oh, it was nothing,” she said. “Ross don’t you think we’re far enough away yet?”

Ross said hopelessly, “All right,” and cut the drive. The starship hung in space in the limbo between stars. Azor, “Minerva,” and the rest were light-years behind, far out of range of challenge.

Helena wriggled free from the loops and rubbed her arms where the retaining straps had gripped them. “After all,” she said demurely, “you told me how to run the ship, and really, Ross, I’m not quite stupid.”

Ross said, “But——”

“But what, Ross? It isn’t as if I were some sort of brainless little thing that had never run a machine in her life. My goodness, Ross——” She wrinkled her nose. “You should remember. All those days in the dye vats? Don’t you think I had to learn a little something about machines there?”

Ross swore incredulously. To compare those clumsy constructs of wheels and rollers with the subtle subelectronic flows of the Wesley force—and to make it work! He said, unbelievingly, “And the ‘Minerva’ helped you vector in? They gave you the co-ordinates and radared your course?”

“Certainly.” Helena turned to Bernie, who was staring dazedly around him. “Are you all right, dear?” she asked.

Ross turned his back on them and faced the Wesley Christmas tree of controls. Don’t question it, he told himself; take a miracle for what it is. God wanted you out of “Minerva”—and God moves in most mysterious ways His wonders to perform.

Anyway, they had to get going. When the