The Big Night by Henry Kuttner - HTML preview

CHAPTER V

Hilton’s Choice

No doubt about it, she was tough—that old lady. She’d knocked around a thousand worlds and ridden hyper for more miles than a man could count. Something had got into her from the Big Night, something stronger than metal bracing and hard alloys. Call it soul, though there never was a machine that had a soul. But since the first log-craft was launched on steaming seas, men have known that a ship gets a soul—from somewhere.

She hopped like a flea. She bucked like a mad horse. Struts and columns snapped and buckled, and the echoing companionways were filled with an erratic crackling and groaning as metal, strained beyond its strength, gave way. Far too much energy rushed through the engines. But the battered old lady took it and staggered on, lurching, grunting, holding together somehow.

The see-saw bridged the gap between two types of space, and La Cucaracha yawed wildly down it, an indignity for an old lady who, at her age, should ride sedately through free void—but she was a hyper-ship first and a lady second. She leaped into normal space. The skipper had got his figures right. The double sun wasn’t visible, for it was eclipsed by the single planet, but the pull of that monstrous twin star clamped down like a giant’s titanic fist closing on La Cucaracha and yanking her forward irresistibly.

There was no time to do anything except stab a few buttons. The powerful rocket-jets blazed from La Cucaracha’s hull. The impact stunned every man aboard. No watcher saw, but the automatic recording charts mapped what happened then.

La Cucaracha struck what was, in effect, a stone wall. Not even that could stop her. But it slowed her enough for the minimum of safety, and she flipped her stern down and crashed on the unnamed planet with all her after jets firing gallantly, the flooded compartments cushioning the shock, and a part of her never made of plastic or metal holding her together against even that hammer-blow struck at her by a world.

Air hissed out into a thinner atmosphere and dissipated. The hull was half molten. Jet-tubes were fused at a dozen spots. The stern was hash.

But she was still—a ship.

The loading of cargo was routine. The men had seen too many alien planets to pay much attention to this one. There was no breathable air, so the crew worked in their suits—except for three who had been injured in the crash, and were in sick-bay, in a replenished atmosphere within the sealed compartments of the ship. But only a few compartments were so sealed. La Cucaracha was a sick old lady, and only first aid could be administered here.

Danvers himself superintended that. La Cucaracha was his own, and he kept half the crew busy opening the heat-sealed jets, doing jury-rig repairs, and making the vessel comparatively spaceworthy. He let Saxon act as straw-boss, using the engineer’s technical knowledge, though his eyes chilled whenever he noticed the Transmat man.

As for Hilton, he went out with the other half of the crew to gather the paraine crop. They used strong-vacuum harvesters, running long, flexible carrier tubes back to La Cucaracha’s hold, and it took two weeks of hard, driving effort to load a full cargo. But by then the ship was bulging with paraine, the repairs were completed, and Danvers had charted the course to Silenus.

Hilton sat in the control room with Ts’ss and Saxon. He opened a wall compartment, glanced in, and closed it again. Then he nodded at Saxon.

“The skipper won’t change his mind,” he said. “Silenus is our next port. I’ve never been there.”

“I have,” Ts’ss said. “I’ll tell you about it later.”

Saxon drew an irritated breath. “You know what the gravity-pull is, then, Ts’ss. I’ve never been there either, but I’ve looked it up in the books. Giant planets, mostly, and you can’t come from hyper into normal space after you’ve reached the radius. There’s no plane of the ecliptic in that system. It’s crazy. You have to chart an erratic course toward Silenus, fighting varying gravities from a dozen planets all the way, and then you’ve still got the primary’s pull to consider. You know La Cucaracha won’t do it, Mr. Hilton.”

“I know she won’t,” Hilton said. “We pushed our luck this far, but any more would be suicide. She simply won’t hold together for another run. We’re stranded here. But the skipper won’t believe that.”

“He’s insane,” Saxon said. “I know the endurance limits of a machine—that can be found mathematically—and this ship’s only a machine. Or do you agree with Captain Danvers? Maybe you think she’s alive!”

Saxon was forgetting discipline, but Hilton knew what strain they were all under.

“No, she’s a machine all right,” he merely said. “And we both know she’s been pushed too far. If we go to Silenus, it’s—” He made a gesture of finality.

“Captain Danvers says—Silenus,” Ts’ss murmured. “We can’t mutiny, Mr. Hilton.”

“Here’s the best we can do,” Hilton said. “Get into hyper somehow, ride the flow, and get out again somehow. But then we’re stuck. Any planet or sun with a gravity pull would smash us. The trouble is, the only worlds with facilities to overhaul La Cucaracha are the big ones. And if we don’t get an overhaul fast we’re through. Saxon, there’s one answer, though. Land on an asteroid.”

“But why?”

“We could manage that. No gravity to fight, worth mentioning. We certainly can’t radio for help, as the signals would take years to reach anybody. Only hyper will take us fast enough. Now—has Transmat set up any stations on asteroids?”

Saxon opened his mouth and closed it again.

“Yes. There’s one that would do, in the Rigel system. Far out from the primary. But I don’t get it. Captain Danvers wouldn’t stand for that.”

Hilton opened the wall compartment. Gray smoke seeped out.

“This is paraine,” he said. “The fumes are being blown into the skipper’s cabin through his ventilator. Captain Danvers will be para-happy till we land on that Rigel asteroid, Saxon.”

There was a little silence. Hilton suddenly slammed the panel shut.

“Let’s do some charting,” he said. “The sooner we reach the Rigel port, the sooner we can get back to Earth—via Transmat.”

Curiously, it was Saxon who hesitated.

“Mr. Hilton. Wait a minute, Transmat—I know I work for the outfit, but they—they’re sharp. Business men. You have to pay plenty to use their matter-transmitters.”

“They can transmit a hyper-ship, can’t they? Or is it too big a job?”

“No, they can expand the field enormously. I don’t mean that. I mean they’ll want payment, and they’ll put on the squeeze. You’ll have to give up at least half of the cargo.”

“There’ll still be enough left to pay for an overhaul job.”

“Except they’ll want to know where the paraine came from. You’ll be over a barrel. You’ll have to tell them, eventually. And that’ll mean a Transmat station will be set up right here, on this world.”

“I suppose so,” Hilton said quietly. “But the old lady will be space worthy again. When the skipper sees her after the overhaul, he’ll know it was the only thing to do. So let’s get busy.”

“Remind me to tell you about Silenus,” Ts’ss said.

The Lunar Refitting Station is enormous. A crater has been roofed with a transparent dome, and under it the hyper-ships rest in their cradles. They come in battered and broken, and leave clean and sleek and strong, ready for the Big Night again. La Cucaracha was down there, no longer the groaning wreck that had settled on the Rigel asteroid, but a lovely lady, shining and beautiful.

Far above, Danvers and Hilton leaned on the railing and watched.

“She’s ready to jet,” Hilton said idly. “And she looks good.”

“No thanks to you, mister.”

“Tush for that!” Hilton said. “If I hadn’t doped you, we’d be dead and La Cucaracha floating around in space in pieces. Now look at her.”

“Yeah. Well, she does look good. But she won’t carry another paraine cargo. That strike was mine. If you hadn’t told Transmat the location, we’d be set.” Danvers grimaced. “Now they’re setting up a Transmat station there; a hyper-ship can’t compete with a matter-transmitter.”

“There’s more than one world in the Galaxy.”

“Sure. Sure.” But Danvers’ eyes brightened as he looked down.

“Where are you heading, Skipper?” Hilton said.

“What’s it to you? You’re taking that Transmat job, aren’t you?”

“You bet. I’m meeting Saxon in five minutes. In fact, we’re going down to sign the contracts. I’m through with deep space. But—where are you heading?”

“I don’t know,” Danvers said. “I thought I might run up around Arcturus and see what’s stirring.”

Hilton did not move for a long time. Then he spoke without looking at the captain.

“You wouldn’t be thinking of a stopover at Canis after that, would you?”

“No.”

“You’re a liar.”

“Go keep your appointment,” Danvers said.

Hilton eyed the great hyper-ship below. “The old lady’s always been a nice, clean craft. She’s never got out of line. She’s always charted a straight course. It’d be too bad if she had to carry slaves from Arcturus to the Canis market. It’s illegal, of course, but that isn’t the point. It’s a rotten, crooked racket.”

“I didn’t ask your advice, mister!” Danvers flared. “Nobody’s talking about slave-running!”

“I suppose you weren’t figuring on unloading the paraine at Silenus? You can get a good price for paraine from Medical Center, but you can get six times the price from the drug ring on Silenus. Yeah, Ts’ss told me. He’s been on Silenus.”

“Oh, shut up,” Danvers said.

Hilton tilted back his head to stare through the dome at the vast darkness above. “Even if you’re losing a fight, it’s better to fight clean,” he said. “Know where it’d end?”

Danvers looked up, too, and apparently saw something in the void that he didn’t like.

“How can you buck Transmat?” he demanded. “You’ve got to make a profit somehow.”

“There’s an easy, dirty way, and there’s a clean, hard way. The old lady had a fine record.”

“You’re not a deep-space man. You never were. Beat it! I’ve got to get a crew together!”

“Listen—” Hilton said. He paused. “Ah, the devil with you. I’m through.”

He turned and walked away through the long steel corridor.

Ts’ss and Saxon were drinking highballs at the Quarter Moon. Through the windows they could see the covered way that led to the Refitting Station, and beyond it the crags of a crater-edge, with the star-shot darkness hanging like a backdrop. Saxon looked at his watch.

“He isn’t coming,” Ts’ss said.

The Transmat man moved his shoulders impatiently. “No. You’re wrong. Of course, I can understand your wanting to stay with La Cucaracha.”

“Yes, I’m old. That’s one reason.”

“But Hilton’s young, and he’s smart. He’s got a big future ahead of him. That guff about sticking to an ideal—well, maybe Captain Danvers is that sort of man, but Hilton isn’t. He isn’t in love with hyper-ships.”

Ts’ss turned his goblet slowly in his curious fingers. “You are wrong about one thing, Saxon. I’m not shipping on La Cucaracha.”

Saxon stared. “But I thought—why not?”

“I will die within a thousand Earth hours,” Ts’ss said softly. “When that time comes, I shall go down into the Selenite caverns. Not many know they exist, and only a few of us know the secret caves, the holy places of our race. But I know. I shall go there to die, Saxon. Every man has one thing that is strongest—and so it is with me. I must die on my own world. As for Captain Danvers, he follows his cause, as our Chyra Emperor did, and as your King Arthur did. Men like Danvers made hyper-ships great. Now the cause is dead, but the type of men who made it great once can’t change their allegiance. If they could, they would never have spanned the Galaxy with their ships. So Danvers will stay with La Cucaracha. And Hilton—”

“He’s not a fanatic! He won’t stay. Why should he?”

“In our legends Chyra Emperor was ruined, and his Empire broken,” Ts’ss said. “But he fought on. There was one who fought on with him, though he did not believe in Chyra’s cause. A Selenite named Jailyra. Wasn’t there—in your legends—a Sir Lancelot? He didn’t believe in Arthur’s cause either, but he was Arthur’s friend. So he stayed. Yes, Saxon, there are the fanatics who fight for what they believe—but there are also the others, who do not believe, and who fight in the name of a lesser cause. Something called friendship.”

Saxon laughed and pointed out the window. “You’re wrong, Ts’ss,” he said triumphantly. “Hilton’s no fool. For here he comes.”

Hilton’s tall form was visible moving quickly along the way. He passed the window and vanished. Saxon turned to the door.

There was a pause.

“Or, perhaps, it isn’t a lesser cause,” Ts’ss said. “For the Selenite Empire passed, and Arthur’s court passed, and the hyper-ships are passing. Always the Big Night takes them, in the end. But this has gone on since the beginning—”

“What?”

This time Ts’ss pointed.

Saxon leaned forward to look. Through the angle of the window he could see Hilton, standing motionless on the ramp. Passersby streamed about him unnoticed. He was jostled, and he did not know it. Hilton was thinking.

They saw the look of deep uncertainty on his face. They saw his face suddenly clear. Hilton grinned wryly to himself. He had made up his mind. He turned and went rapidly back the way he had come.

Saxon stared after the broad, retreating back, going the way it had come, toward the Refitting Station where Danvers and La Cucaracha waited. Hilton—going back where he had come from, back to what he had never really left.

“The crazy fool!” Saxon said. “He can’t be doing this! Nobody turns down jobs with Transmat!”

Ts’ss gave him a wise, impassive glance. “You believe that,” he said. “Transmat means much to you. Transmat needs men like you, to make it great—to keep it growing. You’re a lucky man, Saxon. You’re riding with the tide. A hundred years from now—two hundred—and you might be standing in Hilton’s shoes. Then you’d understand.”

Saxon blinked at him. “What do you mean?”

“Transmat is growing now,” Ts’ss said gently. “It will be very great—thanks to men like you. But for Transmat too, there will come an end.”

He shrugged, looking out beyond the crater’s rim with his inhuman, faceted eyes, at the glittering points of light which, for a little while, seemed to keep the Big Night at bay.

END