CHAPTER III
Danvers Lays the Course
Two days later the skipper was still drunk.
In the half-dusk of Twilight Hilton went into a huge, cool barn where immense fans kept the hot air in circulation, and found Danvers, as usual, at a back table, a glass in his hand. He was talking to a tiny-headed Canopian, one of that retrovolved race that is only a few degrees above the moron level. The Canopian looked as though he was covered with black plush, and his red eyes glowed startlingly through the fur. He, too, had a glass.
Hilton walked over to the two. “Skipper,” he said.
“Blow,” Danvers said. “I’m talking to this guy.”
Hilton looked hard at the Canopian and jerked his thumb. The red-eyed shadow picked up his glass and moved away quickly. Hilton sat down.
“We’re ready to jet off,” he said.
Danvers blinked at him blearily. “You interrupted me, mister. I’m busy.”
“Buy a case and finish your binge aboard,” Hilton said. “If we don’t jet soon, the crew will jump.”
“Let ’em.”
“Okay. Then who’ll work La Cucaracha back to Earth?”
“If we go back to Earth, the old lady will land on the junk-pile,” Danvers said furiously. “The ITC won’t authorize another voyage without a rebuilding job.”
“You can borrow dough.”
“Ha!”
Hilton let out his breath with a sharp, angry sound. “Are you sober enough to understand me? Then listen. I’ve talked Saxon around.”
“Who’s Saxon?”
“He was shanghaied on Venus. Well—he’s a Transmat engineer.” Hilton went on quickly before the skipper could speak. “That was a mistake. The crimp’s mistake and ours. Transmat stands behind its men. Saxon looked up the Transmat crew on Fria, and their superintendent paid me a visit. We’re in for trouble. A damage suit. But there’s one way out. No hyper-ship’s due to hit Fria for months and the matter-transmitter won’t be finished within two months. And it seems Transmat has a shortage of engineers. If we can get Saxon back to Venus or Earth fast, he’ll cover. There’ll be no suit.”
“Maybe he’ll cover. But what about Transmat?”
“If Saxon won’t sign a complaint, what can they do?” Hilton shrugged. “It’s our only out now.”
Danvers’ brown-splotched fingers played with his glass.
“A Transmat man,” he muttered. “Ah-h. So we go back Earthside. What then? We’re stuck.” He looked under his drooping lids at Hilton. “I mean I’m stuck. I forgot you’re jumping after this voyage.”
“I’m not jumping. I sign for one voyage at a time. What do you want me to do, anyhow?”
“Do what you like. Run out on the old lady. You’re no deep-space man.” Danvers spat.
“I know when I’m licked,” Hilton said. “The smart thing then is to fight in your own weight, when you’re outclassed on points, not wait for the knockout. You’ve had engineering training. You could get on with Transmat, too.”
For a second Hilton thought the skipper was going to throw the glass at him. Then Danvers dropped back in his chair, trying to force a smile.
“I shouldn’t blow my top over that,” he said, with effort. “It’s the truth.”
“Yeah. Well—are you coming?”
“The old lady’s ready to jet off?” Danvers said. “I’ll come, then. Have a drink with me first.”
“We haven’t time.”
With drunken dignity Danvers stood up. “Don’t get too big for your boots, mister. The voyage isn’t over yet. I said have a drink! That’s an order.”
“Okay, okay!” Hilton said. “One drink. Then we go?”
“Sure.”
Hilton gulped the liquor without tasting it. Rather too late, he felt the stinging ache on his tongue. But before he could spring to his feet, the great dim room folded down upon him like a collapsing umbrella, and he lost consciousness with the bitter realization that he had been Mickeyed like the rawest greenhorn. But the skipper had poured that drink. . . .
The dreams were confusing. He was fighting something, but he didn’t know what. Sometimes it changed its shape, and sometimes it wasn’t there at all, but it was always enormous and terribly powerful.
He wasn’t always the same, either. Sometimes he was the wide-eyed kid who had shipped on Starhopper, twenty-five years ago, to take his first jump into the Big Night. Then he was a little older, in a bos’n’s berth, his eye on a master’s ticket, studying, through the white, unchangeable days and nights of hyper-space, the intricate logarithms a skilled pilot must know.
He seemed to walk on a treadmill toward a goal that slid away, never quite within reach. But he didn’t know what that goal was. It shone like success. Maybe it was success. But the treadmill had started moving before he’d really got started. In the Big Night a disembodied voice was crying thinly:
“You’re in the wrong game, Logger. Thirty years ago you’d have a future in hyper-ships. Not any more. There’s a new wave coming up. Get out, or drown.”
A red-eyed shadow leaned over him. Hilton fought out of his dream. Awkwardly he jerked up his arm and knocked away the glass at his lips. The Canopian let out a shrill, harsh cry. The liquid that had been in the glass was coalescing in midair into a shining sphere.
The glass floated—and the Canopian floated too. They were in hyper. A few lightweight straps held Hilton to his bunk, but this was his own cabin, he saw. Dizzy, drugged weakness swept into his brain.
The Canopian struck a wall, pushed strongly, and the recoil shot him toward Hilton. The mate ripped free from the restraining straps. He reached out and gathered in a handful of furry black plush. The Canopian clawed at his eyes.
“Captain!” he screamed. “Captain Danvers!”
Pain gouged Hilton’s cheek as his opponent’s talons drew blood. Hilton roared with fury. He shot a blow at the Canopian’s jaw, but now they were floating free, and the punch did no harm. In midair they grappled, the Canopian incessantly screaming in that thin, insane shrilling.
The door-handle clicked twice. There was a voice outside—Wiggins, the second. A deep thudding came. Hilton, still weak, tried to keep the Canopian away with jolting blows. Then the door crashed open, and Wiggins pulled himself in.
“Dzann!” he said. “Stop it!” He drew a jet-pistol and leveled it at the Canopian.
On the threshold was a little group. Hilton saw Saxon, the Transmat man, gaping there, and other crew-members, hesitating, unsure. Then, suddenly, Captain Danvers’ face appeared behind the others, twisted, strained with tension.
The Canopian had retreated to a corner and was making mewing, frightened noises.
“What happened, Mr. Hilton?” Wiggins said. “Did this tomcat jump you?”
Hilton was so used to wearing deep-space armor that till now he had scarcely realized its presence. His helmet was hooded back, like that of Wiggins and the rest. He pulled a weight from his belt and threw it aside; the reaction pushed him toward a wall where he gripped a brace.
“Does he go in the brig?” Wiggins asked.
“All right, men,” Danvers said quietly. “Let me through.” He propelled himself into Hilton’s cabin. Glances of discomfort and vague distrust were leveled at him. The skipper ignored them.
“Dzann!” he said. “Why aren’t you wearing your armor? Put it on. The rest of you—get to your stations. You too, Mr. Wiggins. I’ll handle this.”
Still Wiggins hesitated. He started to say something.
“What are you waiting for?” Hilton said. “Tell Bruno to bring some coffee. Now beat it.” He maneuvered himself into a sitting position on his bunk. From the tail of his eye he saw Wiggins and the others go out. Dzann, the Canopian, had picked up a suit from the corner and was awkwardly getting into it.
Danvers carefully closed the door, testing the broken lock.
“Got to have that fixed,” he murmured. “It isn’t shipshape this way.” He found a brace and stood opposite the mate, his eyes cool and watchful, the strain still showing on his tired face. Hilton reached for a cigarette.
“Next time your tomcat jumps me, I’ll burn a hole through him,” he promised.
“I stationed him here to guard you, in case there was trouble,” Danvers said. “To take care of you if we cracked up or ran into danger. I showed him how to close your helmet and start the oxygen.”
“Expect a half-witted Canopian to remember that?” Hilton said. “You also told him to keep drugging me.” He reached toward the shining liquid sphere floating near by and pushed a forefinger into it. He tasted the stuff. “Sure. Vakheesh. That’s what you slipped in my drink on Fria. Suppose you start talking, skipper. What’s this Canopian doing aboard?”
“I signed him,” Danvers said.
“For what? Supercargo?”
Danvers answered that emotionlessly, watching Hilton.
“Cabin-boy.”
“Yeah. What did you tell Wiggins? About me, I mean?”
“I said you’d got doped up,” Danvers said, grinning. “You were doped, too.”
“I’m not now.” Hilton’s tone rang hard. “Suppose you tell me where we are? I can find out. I can get the equations from Ts’ss and run chart-lines. Are we on M-Seventy-Five-L?”
“No, we’re not. We’re riding another level.”
“Where to?”
The Canopian shrilled, “I don’t know name. Has no name. Double sun it has.”
“You crazy!” Hilton glared at the skipper. “Are you heading us for a double primary?”
Danvers still grinned. “Yeah. Not only that, but we’re going to land on a planet thirty thousand miles from the suns—roughly.”
Hilton flicked on his deadlight and looked at white emptiness.
“Closer than Mercury is to Sol. You can’t do it. How big are the primaries?”
Danvers told him.
“All right. It’s suicide. You know that. La Cucaracha won’t take it.”
“The old lady will take anything the Big Night can hand out.”
“Not this. Don’t kid yourself. She might have made it back to Earth—with a Lunar landing—but you’re riding into a meat-grinder.”
“I haven’t forgotten my astrogation,” Danvers said. “We’re coming out of hyper with the planet between us and the primaries. The pull will land us.”
“In small pieces,” Hilton agreed. “Too bad you didn’t keep me doped. If you keep your mouth shut, we’ll replot our course to Earth and nobody’ll get hurt. If you want to start something, it’ll be mutiny, and I’ll take my chances at Admiralty.”
The captain made a noise that sounded like laughter.
“All right,” he said, “Suit yourself. Go look at the equations. I’ll be in my cabin when you want me. Come on, Dzann.”
He pulled himself into the companionway, the Canopian gliding behind him as silently as a shadow.
Hilton met Bruno with coffee as he followed Danvers. The mate grunted, seized the covered cup, and sucked in the liquid with the deftness of long practise under anti-gravity conditions. Bruno watched him.
“All right, sir?” the cook-surgeon said.
“Yeah. Why not?”
“Well—the men are wondering.”
“What about?”
“I dunno, sir. You’ve never—you’ve always commanded the launchings, sir. And that Canopian—the men don’t like him. They think something’s wrong.”
“Oh, they do, do they?” Hilton said grimly. “I’ll come and hold their hands when they turn in for night-watch. They talk too much.”
He scowled at Bruno and went on toward the control room. Though he had mentioned mutiny to the skipper, he was too old a hand to condone it, except in extremity. And discipline had to be maintained, even though Danvers had apparently gone crazy.
Ts’ss and Saxon were at the panels. The Selenite slanted a glittering stare at him, but the impassive mask under the audio-filter showed no expression. Saxon, however, swung around and began talking excitedly.
“What’s happened, Mr. Hilton? Something’s haywire. We should be ready for an Earth-landing by now. But we’re not. I don’t know enough about these equations to chart back, and Ts’ss won’t tell me a blamed thing.”
“There’s nothing to tell,” Ts’ss said. Hilton reached past the Selenite and picked up a folder of ciphered figures. He said absently to Saxon:
“Pipe down. I want to concentrate on this.”
He studied the equations.
He read death in them.