CHAPTER I
Last of the Hyper Ships
She came lumbering up out of the ecliptic plane of the planets like a wallowing space-beast, her jet tubes scarred and stained, a molten streak across her middle where Venus’s turgid atmosphere had scarred her, and every ancient spot-weld in her fat body threatened to rip apart the moment she hit stress again.
The skipper was drunk in his cabin, his maudlin voice echoing through the compartments as he bewailed the unsympathetic harshness of the Interplanetary Trade Commission.
There was a mongrel crew from a dozen worlds, half of them shanghaied. Logger Hilton, the mate, was trying to make sense out of the tattered charts, and La Cucaracha, her engines quaking at the suicidal thought, was plunging ahead through space into the Big Night.
In the control room a signal light flared. Hilton grabbed a mike.
“Repair crew!” he yelled. “Get out on the skin and check jet A-six. Move!”
He turned back to his charts, chewing his lip and glancing at the pilot, a tiny, inhuman Selenite, with his arachnoid multiple limbs and fragile-seeming body. Ts’ss—that was his name, or approximated it—was wearing the awkward audio-converter mask that could make his sub-sonic voice audible to human ears, but, unlike Hilton, he wasn’t wearing space-armor. No Lunarian ever needed protection against deep space. In their million years on the Moon, they had got used to airlessness. Nor did the ship’s atmosphere bother Ts’ss. He simply didn’t trouble to breathe it.
“Blast you, take it easy!” Hilton said. “Want to tear off our hide?”
Through the mask the Selenite’s faceted eyes glittered at the mate.
“No, sir. I’m going as slowly as I can on jet fuel. As soon as I know the warp formulae, things’ll ease up a bit.”
“Ride it! Ride it—without jets!”
“We need the acceleration to switch over to warp, sir.”
“Never mind,” Hilton said. “I’ve got it now. Somebody must have been breeding fruit-flies all over these charts. Here’s the dope.” He dictated a few equations that Ts’ss’ photographic memory assimilated at once.
A distant howling came from far off.
“That’s the skipper, I suppose,” Hilton said. “I’ll be back in a minute. Get into hyper as soon as you can, or we’re apt to fold up like an accordion.”
“Yes, sir. Ah—Mr. Hilton?”
“Well?”
“You might look at the fire extinguisher in the Cap’n’s room.”
“What for?” Hilton asked.
Several of the Selenite’s multiple limbs pantomimed the action of drinking. Hilton grimaced, rose, and fought the acceleration down the companionway. He shot a glance at the visio-screens and saw they were past Jupiter already, which was a relief. Going through the giant planet’s gravity-pull wouldn’t have helped La Cucaracha’s aching bones. But they were safely past now. Safely! He grinned wryly as he opened the captain’s door and went in.
Captain Sam Danvers was standing on his bunk, making a speech to an imaginary Interplanetary Trade Commission. He was a big man, or rather he had been once, but now the flesh had shrunk and he was beginning to stoop a little. The skin of his wrinkled face was nearly black with space-tan. A stubble of gray hair stood up angrily.
Somehow, though, he looked like Logger Hilton. Both were deep-space men. Hilton was thirty years younger, but he, too, had the same dark tan and the same look in his blue eyes. There’s an old saying that when you go out into the Big Night, beyond Pluto’s orbit, that enormous emptiness gets into you and looks out through your eyes. Hilton had that. So did Captain Danvers.
Otherwise—Hilton was huge and heavy where Danvers was a little frail now, and the mate’s broad chest bulged his white tunic. He hadn’t had time yet to change from dress uniform, though he knew that even this cellulose fabric couldn’t take the dirt of a space-run without showing it. Not on La Cucaracha, anyway.
But this would be his last trip on the old tub.
Captain Danvers interrupted his speech to ask Hilton what the devil he wanted. The mate saluted.
“Routine inspection, sir,” he observed, and took down a fire extinguisher from the wall. Danvers sprang from the bunk, but Hilton moved too fast. Before the captain reached him, Hilton had emptied the tank down the nearest disposal vent.
“Old juice,” he explained. “I’ll refill her.”
“Listen, Mr. Hilton,” Danvers said, swaying slightly and stabbing a long forefinger at the mate’s nose. “If you think I had whisky in there, you’re crazy.”
“Sure,” Hilton said. “I’m crazy as a loon, skipper. How about some caffeine?”
Danvers weaved to the disposal port and peered down it vaguely.
“Caffeine. Huh? Look, if you haven’t got sense enough to take La Cucaracha into hyper, you ought to resign.”
“Sure, sure. But in hyper it won’t take long to get to Fria. You’ll have to handle the agent there.”
“Christie? I—I guess so.” Danvers sank down on the bunk and held his head. “I guess I just got mad, Logger. ITC—what do they know about it? Why, we opened that trading post on Sirius Thirty.”
“Look, skipper, when you came aboard you were so high you forgot to tell me about it,” Hilton said. “You just said we’d changed our course and to head for Fria. How come?”
“Interplanetary Trade Commission,” Danvers growled. “They had their crew checking over La Cucaracha.”
“I know. Routine inspection.”
“Well, those fat slobs have the brass-bound nerve to tell me my ship’s unsafe! That the gravity-drag from Sirius is too strong—and that we couldn’t go to Sirius Thirty!”
“Could be they’re right,” Hilton said thoughtfully. “We had trouble landing on Venus.”
“She’s old.” Danvers voice was defensive. “But what of it? I’ve taken La Cucaracha around Betelgeuse and plenty closer to Sirius than Sirius Thirty. The old lady’s got what it takes. They built atomic engines in those days.”
“They’re not building them now,” Hilton said, and the skipper turned purple.
“Transmission of matter!” he snarled. “What kind of a crazy set-up is that? You get in a little machine on Earth, pull a switch, and there you are on Venus or Bar Canopus or—or Purgatory, if you like! I shipped on a hyper-ship when I was thirteen, Logger. I grew up on hyper-ships. They’re solid. They’re dependable. They’ll take you where you want to go. Hang it, it isn’t safe to space-travel without an atmosphere around you, even if it’s only in a suit.”
“That reminds me,” Hilton said. “Where’s yours?”
“Ah, I was too hot. The refrigerating unit’s haywire.”
The mate found the lightweight armor in a closet and deftly began to repair the broken switch.
“You don’t need to keep the helmet closed, but you’d better wear the suit,” he said absently. “I’ve issued orders to the crew. All but Ts’ss, and he doesn’t need any protection.”
Danvers looked up. “How’s she running?” he asked quickly.
“Well, she could use an overhaul,” Hilton said. “I want to get into hyper-space fast This straight running is a strain. I’m afraid of landing, too.”
“Uh. Okay, there’ll be an overhaul when we get back—if we make a profit. You know how much we made this last trip. Tell you what—you supervise the job and take a bigger cut for it.”
Hilton’s fingers slowed on the switch. He didn’t look around.
“I’ll be looking for a new berth,” he said. “Sorry, skipper. But I won’t be aboard after this voyage.”
There was silence behind him. Hilton grimaced and began to work again on the spacesuit He heard Danvers say:
“You won’t find many hyper-ships needing mates these days.”
“I know. But I’ve got engineering training. Maybe they would use me on the matter-transmitters. Or as an outposter—a trader.”
“Oh, for the love of Pete! Logger, what are you talking about? A—trader? A filthy outposter? You’re a hyper-ship man!”
“In twenty years there won’t be a hyper-ship running,” Hilton said.
“You’re a liar. There’ll be one.”
“She’ll fall apart in a coupla of months!” Hilton said angrily. “I’m not going to argue. What are we after on Fria, the fungus?”
After a pause Danvers answered.
“What else is there on Fria? Sure, the fungus. It’s pushing the season a little. We’re not due there for three weeks Earth-time, but Christie always keeps a supply on hand. And that big hotel chain will pay us the regular cut. Blamed if I know why people eat that garbage, but they pay twenty bucks a plate for it.”
“It could mean a profit, then,” Hilton said. “Provided we land on Fria without falling apart.” He tossed the repaired suit on the bunk beside Danvers. “There you are, skipper. I’d better get back to controls. We’ll be hitting hyper pretty soon.”
Danvers leaned over and touched a button that opened the deadlight. He stared at the star-screen.
“You won’t get this on a matter-transmitter,” he said slowly. “Look at it, Logger.”
Hilton leaned forward and looked across the Captain’s shoulder. The void blazed. To one side a great arc of Jupiter’s titan bulk glared coldly bright. Several of the moons were riding in the screen’s field, and an asteroid or two caught Jupiter’s light in their tenuous atmospheres and hung like shining veiled miniature worlds against that blazing backdrop. And through and beyond the shining stars and moons and planets showed the Big Night, the black emptiness that beats like an ocean on the rim of the Solar System.
“So it’s pretty,” Hilton said. “But it’s cold, too.”
“Maybe. Maybe it is. But I like it. Well, get a job as a trader, you jackass. I’ll stick to La Cucaracha. I know I can trust the old lady.”
For answer the old lady jumped violently and gave a wallowing lurch.