CHAPTER IV
Gamble With Death
Logger Hilton went into the skipper’s cabin, put his back against the wall, and started cursing fluently and softly. When he had finished, Danvers grinned at him.
“Through?” he asked.
Hilton switched his stare to the Canopian, who was crouched in a corner, furtively loosening the locks of his spacesuit.
“That applies to you, too, tomcat,” he said.
“Dzann won’t mind that,” Danvers said. “He isn’t bright enough to resent cussing. And I don’t care, as long as I get what we want. Still going to mutiny and head for Earth?”
“No, I’m not,” Hilton said. With angry patience he ticked off points on his fingers. “You can’t switch from one hyper-plane to another without dropping into ordinary space first, for the springboard. If we went back into normal space, the impact might tear La Cucaracha into tiny pieces. We’d be in suits, floating free, a hundred million miles from the nearest planet. Right now we’re in a fast hyper-flow heading for the edge of the universe, apparently.”
“There’s one planet within reach,” Danvers said.
“Sure. The one that’s thirty thousand miles from a double primary. And nothing else.”
“Well? Suppose we do crack up? We can make repairs once we land on a planet. We can get the materials we need. You can’t do that in deep space. I know landing on this world will be a job. But it’s that or nothing—now.”
“What are you after?”
Danvers began to explain:
“This Canopian—Dzann—he made a voyage once, six years ago. A tramp hyper-ship. The controls froze, and the tub was heading for outside. They made an emergency landing just in time—picked out a planet that had been detected and charted, but never visited. They repaired there, and came back into the trade routes. But there was a guy aboard, an Earthman who was chummy with Dzann. This guy was smart, and he’d been in the drug racket, I think. Not many people know what raw, growing paraine looks like, but this fellow knew. He didn’t tell anybody. He took samples, intending to raise money, charter a ship, and pick up a cargo later. But he was knifed in some dive on Callisto. He didn’t die right away, though, and he liked Dzann. So he gave Dzann the information.”
“That halfwit?” Hilton said. “How could he remember a course?”
“That’s one thing the Canopians can remember. They may be morons, but they’re fine mathematicians. It’s their one talent.”
“It was a good way for him to bum a drink and get a free berth,” Hilton said.
“No. He showed me the samples. I can talk his lingo, a little, and that’s why he was willing to let me in on his secret, back on Fria. Okay. Now. We land on this planet—it hasn’t been named—and load a cargo of paraine. We repair the old lady, if she needs it—”
“She will!”
“And then head back.”
“To Earth?”
“I think Silenus. It’s an easier landing.”
“Now you’re worrying about landings,” Hilton said bitterly. “Well, there’s nothing I can do about it, I suppose. I’m stepping out after this voyage. What’s the current market quotation on paraine?”
“Fifty a pound. At Medical Center, if that’s what you mean.”
“Big money,” the mate said. “You can buy a new ship with the profits and still have a pile left for happy days.”
“You’ll get your cut.”
“I’m still quitting.”
“Not till this voyage is over,” Danvers said. “You’re mate on La Cucaracha.” He chuckled. “A deep-space man has plenty of tricks up his sleeve—and I’ve been at it longer than you.”
“Sure,” Hilton said. “You’re smart. But you forgot Saxon. He’ll throw that damage suit against you now, with Transmat behind him.”
Danvers merely shrugged. “I’ll think of something. It’s your watch. We have about two hundred hours before we come out of hyper. Take it, mister.”
He was laughing as Hilton went out. . . .
In two hundred hours a good deal can happen. It was Hilton’s job to see that it didn’t. Luckily, his reappearance had reassured the crew, for when masters fight, the crew will hunt for trouble. But with Hilton moving about La Cucaracha, apparently as casual and assured as ever, even the second mate, Wiggins, felt better. Still, it was evident that they weren’t heading for Earth. It was taking too long.
The only real trouble came from Saxon, and Hilton was able to handle that. Not easily, however. It had almost come to a showdown, but Hilton was used to commanding men, and finally managed to bluff the Transmat engineer. Dissatisfied but somewhat cowed, Saxon grumblingly subsided.
Hilton called him back.
“I’ll do my best for you, Saxon. But we’re in the Big Night now. You’re not in civilized space. Don’t forget that the skipper knows you’re a Transmat man, and he hates your insides. On a hyper-ship, the Old Man’s word is law. So—for your own sake—watch your step!”
Saxon caught the implication. He paled slightly, and after that managed to avoid the captain.
Hilton kept busy checking and rechecking La Cucaracha. No outside repairs could be done in hyper, for there was no gravity, and ordinary physical laws were inoperative—magnetic shoes, for example, wouldn’t work. Only in the ship itself was there safety. And that safety was illusory for the racking jars of the spatial see-saw might disintegrate La Cucaracha in seconds.
Hilton called on Saxon. Not only did he want technical aid, but he wanted to keep the man busy. So the pair worked frantically over jury-rigged systems that would provide the strongest possible auxiliary bracing for the ship. Torsion, stress and strain were studied, the design of the craft analyzed, and structural alloys X-ray tested.
Some flaws were found—La Cucaracha was a very old lady—but fewer than Hilton expected. In the end, it became chiefly a matter of ripping out partitions and bulkheads and using the material for extra bracing.
But Hilton knew, and Saxon agreed with him, that it would not be enough to cushion the ship’s inevitable crash.
There was one possible answer. They sacrificed the after section of the craft. It could be done, though they were racing against time. The working crews mercilessly cut away beams from aft and carried them forward and welded them into position, so that, eventually, the forward half of the ship was tremendously strong and cut off, by tough air-tight partitions, from a skeleton after-half. And that half Hilton flooded with manufactured water, to aid in the cushioning effect.
Danvers, of course, didn’t like it. But he had to give in. After all, Hilton was keeping the ship on the skipper’s course, insanely reckless as that was. If La Cucaracha survived, it would be because of Hilton. But Captain Danvers shut himself in his cabin and was sullenly silent.
Toward the end, Hilton and Ts’ss were alone in the control room, while Saxon, who had got interested in the work for its own sake, superintended the last-minute jobs of spot-bracing. Hilton, trying to find the right hyper-space level that would take them back to Earth after they had loaded the paraine cargo, misplaced a denial point and began to curse in a low, furious undertone.
He heard Ts’ss laugh softly and whirled on the Selenite.
“What’s so funny?” he demanded.
“It’s not really funny, sir,” Ts’ss said. “There have to be people like Captain Danvers, in any big thing.”
“What are you babbling about now?” he asked curiously.
Ts’ss shrugged. “The reason I keep shipping on La Cucaracha is because I can be busy and efficient aboard, and planets aren’t for Selenites any more. We’ve lost our own world. It died long ago. But I still remember the old traditions of our Empire. If a tradition ever becomes great, it’s because of the men who dedicate themselves to it. That’s why anything ever became great. And it’s why hyper-ships came to mean something, Mr. Hilton. There were men who lived and breathed hyper-ships. Men who worshipped hyper-ships, as a man worships a god. Gods fall, but a few men will still worship at the old altars. They can’t change. If they were capable of changing, they wouldn’t have been the type of men to make their gods great.”
“Been burning paraine?” Hilton demanded unpleasantly. His head ached, and he didn’t want to find excuses for the skipper.
“It’s no drug-dream,” Ts’ss said. “What about the chivalric traditions? We had our Chyra Emperor, who fought for—”
“I’ve read about Chyra,” Hilton said. “He was a Selenite King Arthur.”
Slowly Ts’ss nodded his head, keeping his great eyes on Hilton.
“Exactly. A tool who was useful in his time, because he served his cause with a single devotion. But when that cause died, there was nothing for Chyra—or Arthur—to do except die too. But until he did die, he continued to serve his broken god, not believing that it had fallen. Captain Danvers will never believe the hyper-ships are passing. He will be a hyper-ship man until he dies. Such men make causes great—but when they outlive their cause, they are tragic figures.”
“Well, I’m not that crazy,” Hilton growled. “I’m going into some other game. Transmat or something. You’re a technician. Why don’t you come with me after this voyage?”
“I like the Big Night,” Ts’ss said. “And I have no world of my own—no living world. There is nothing to—to make me want success, Mr. Hilton. On La Cucaracha I can do as I want. But away from the ship, I find that people don’t like Selenites. We are too few to command respect or friendship any more. And I’m quite old, you know.”
Startled, Hilton stared at the Selenite. There was no way to detect signs of age on the arachnoid beings. But they always knew, infallibly, how long they had to live, and could predict the exact moment of their death.
Well, he wasn’t old. And he wasn’t a deep-space man as Danvers was. He followed no lost causes. There was nothing to keep him with the hyper-ships, after this voyage, if he survived.
A signal rang. Hilton’s stomach jumped up and turned into ice, though he had been anticipating this for hours. He reached for a mike.
“Hyper stations! Close helmets! Saxon, report!”
“All work completed, Mr. Hilton,” said Saxon’s voice, strained but steady.
“Come up here. May need you. General call: stand by! Grab the braces. We’re coming in.”
Then they hit the see-saw!