One in 300 (13 page)

 

 

If we were going all out for contact with other lifeships, I could try
to turn ours so that it was facing back to Earth but flying on in the
same course. Then we could spend hours in the safety of the control
room scanning space for other ships. We might easily find some. Space
is clear -- vision without the impedance of atmosphere is so sharp and
exact that we might see the pinpoint of reflected light that meant a
lifeship hundreds of miles away.

 

 

That course of action was almost out of the question, however. The regular
ships have gyros and jets that can turn a ship without interfering with
its line of flight, but not the lifeships. Anyway, sooner or later I'd
probably have to turn it back.

 

 

"Seriously," said Sammy, when he and I were alone, "has Jim much chance
of getting to that other ship and back in the space suit?"

 

 

"Oh yes," I said. "That's easy enough. Depends on who's in the suit,
of course. If it had been Betty, say, I don't think I'd have let her
try it. But though Jim's young, he's got guts and brains. That's not
the problem."

 

 

"Then what is?"

 

 

"The other ship. There're people on it, alive or dead. Another lieutenant.
People who want to get to Mars. Suppose they have no fuel left at all.
Suppose their hydroponics plant isn't working, or their water purifier.
Or suppose they have illness aboard. Suppose -- "

 

 

"Don't suppose any more," said Sammy bitterly. "I see. It's like everything
else since this impossible trip began. Nothing right, nothing as it should
be. Nothing but difficulty, trouble, things going wrong -- "

 

 

"Hold on, Sammy," I said, laughing. "Count ten, and if that's not enough,
count a hundred. We've been very lucky indeed. We had a perfect takeoff,
so perfect that I didn't have to do any course correction -- it was never
wrong. No trouble with the hydroponics plant, nothing we couldn't put
right on the water purifier, no leaks, no failures, no illness to speak
of, no fights, no quarrels, nothing we couldn't solve except this thing
that we may be solving now. Then even when the space suit was wrong for
the people who would have used it, we had an excellent spaceman to take
over. And whenever we think of contacting another ship, we look out the
back door, and there she is!"

 

 

"Maybe," said Sammy morosely, "but you didn't mention Mary Stowe dying and . . ."

 

 

"And what?"

 

 

"Oh hell," said Sammy with a reluctant grin. "Get on with it."

 

 

We discussed the problems painstakingly. Sammy, his pessimism gone for
the moment, agreed that despite everything against it we had to contact
the other ship.

 

 

Leslie agreed too, when she came into it. "But have you worked out
just what you're asking of Jim, Bill?" she asked gravely. "He's got
to deal with a whole lifeship complement alone -- speak for us, decide
for us. I mean, he'll be there, and we won't. He'll have no one to ask,
no one to help him. And if for any reason at all he doesn't come back,
we can't do a thing. We haven't another suit. He could get back to the
air lock and suffocate there, for all we could do to help him."

 

 

Sammy looked a little ashamed of himself. That was the crux of the matter,
not the objections he had made.

 

 

"Let's put it to Jim," I said.

 

 

"No," Leslie objected. "We know what he'll say. He'll do it. But he's
only a child, Bill. We have to be careful what we ask him to do. Little
Bessie would walk trustingly out of the air lock without a space suit
at all if you asked her, but the fact that she did it willingly wouldn't
relieve you of any responsibility."

 

 

"I know," I said. "But from the standpoint of pure reason there's only
one answer. If Jim doesn't go, we haven't much chance. If he does, the
chances of all of us, including him, may go up a lot. We've burned our
boats by telling the others we need fuel. As you say, Leslie, we know
how Jim himself will feel about it. Let's call Stowe into this, shall we?"

 

 

Poor Stowe was in a terrible state. We couldn't conceal from him any
of the dangers. He tried to speak, but didn't know what to say. As I'd
known at the time, I'd hamstrung him when I got him to say yes before.

 

 

"I wish there hadn't been a ship near," he muttered at last, not looking
at us. "Then we'd have had to make the best of it. But now . . ."

 

 

I knew he felt it too. We had gone too far in this matter to go back.
After all, the other ship was there. We could almost feel it behind us,
following us; we couldn't forget it or pretend it wasn't there.

 

 

"Look on the other side," I urged, wishing Leslie wasn't watching me,
knowing I was raising hopes which might never be realized. "Suppose Jim
finds fuel. If he does, if there's enough -- our worries are over. Ships
don't crack up in space, you know that. All they ever have to worry
about is taking off and landing. More fuel, and we're safe. Jim too."

 

 

"If he was your son," said Stowe with an effort, "would you let him go?"

 

 

"Yes," I said without hesitation.

 

 

"I believe you. We need this fuel?"

 

 

Oh, let it go, I thought. "We have to have it," I told him.

 

 

Stowe squared his shoulders. "Then there's nothing more to say, is there?"
he said, trying to smile.

 

 

 

 

We packed Jim up in warm clothes, checked every part of his suit, the tiny
propulsion unit, and the air tanks. I made sure that he knew what to do
in every emergency I could think of, told him all about the moluone fuel
we needed -- what it looked like, how we'd handle it, how much we needed;
I impressed on him again and again that he was on his own and that anything
he tried he had to manage himself, without help from, us.

 

 

I stopped at last when I saw that, though he was excited, he had a pretty
good idea of what he was doing, and any further instructions would only
be an encumbrance to him.

 

 

I knew from the way Stowe said good-by to him that he was certain Jim
would never come back. He was fighting the idea for all he was worth,
but it had taken a firm hold on him.

 

 

I'd never believed there could be so much tension among us as there was
when he was gone. Normally our life was easy, lazy. Some of us who didn't
want to get out of condition or fat -- Sammy, Leslie, Harry, Miss Wallace,
and I -- exercised as much as we could in the absence of weight. But
for the most part we relaxed and slept or dreamed or thought or merely
drifted about. All of us had found hours passing in the apparent space
of minutes. Tension didn't exist as a normal part of existence.

 

 

But whether we were concerned about Jim himself, about what he was trying
to do, what he might find, or what might happen to him, the result was some
surprising things.

 

 

When Bessie pulled at Leslie to tell her something, Leslie snapped:
"Don't bother me just now." Bessie wasn't hurt -- she merely stared at
Leslie in wonder. Leslie made a gesture as if to caress the child and tell
her it was all right. Then she remembered Jim and frowned anxiously again.

 

 

Sammy, who rarely clowned, was swimming about grotesquely in the air.
He pulled faces at Bessie, and she forgot the strange impatience of
Leslie and laughed delightedly.

 

 

"I wish I could have gone," said Betty.

 

 

"What could you have done, poppet?" asked Morgan teasingly. "It's not a job
for a pretty little baby like you."

 

 

"It's a job for anyone who can do it," said Betty warmly. "That's why
Jim's gone."

 

 

"Might have asked him to go on back to Earth while he was at it, and
see what it's like there now," said John Stowe, and laughed as if he
had made a very good joke and had only just fully appreciated it.

 

 

Sammy swirled around the whole group, his face screwed into a fiendish
mask, and Bessie screamed with pleasure.

 

 

"I didn't want one of those hard, capable girls who do things like men,
honey," said Morgan affectionately.

 

 

"You wanted someone like me, someone who's no use for anything?" asked Betty
with a tinge of resentment.

 

 

"Oh, I wouldn't say you're no use for
anything
," said Morgan meaningly.

 

 

"That's all you care about me."

 

 

"For heaven's sake! I only said -- "

 

 

"I heard what you only said. And I know what you only meant. I'm just
someone to sleep with."

 

 

"Oh, go chase yourself."

 

 

"Hold it, kids," I said wearily.

 

 

"I'm not as useless as you think," Betty said.

 

 

"Well, it seems to me you re being pretty useless at the moment, darling.
When you go on about something I never said you're about as useful as
a sick headache."

 

 

"It's nice to know what you really think of me, anyway. It's nice to get at
the truth. I should be glad I'm useful for something, I suppose."

 

 

"Even at that," said Morgan, "you're not so damned hot."

 

 

I don't know who hit whom first. I wasn't watching them. We stared for
a moment -- they were so close, so quiet that we couldn't imagine them
fighting, even after the build-up they'd been giving themselves. But they
were certainly fighting. Morgan slapped Betty's face with savage force
that sent her flying across the lounge and him back against the opposite
wall. Betty, instead of bursting into tears as we immediately expected,
threw herself at him and struck at his face ineffectually. Morgan hooked
his foot in the frame of one of the couches and raised his arm high,
a maniacal expression on his face. I dived from the wall and butted him
in the midriff with my head as his arm came down. He spun crazily in
the air, nursing his ankle, and I bounced back from him.

 

 

Betty burst into tears then. There was an immediate reconciliation,
and no one said much about the incident.

 

 

But I looked on Morgan with some suspicion after that. Back on Earth,
if a man tried to interfere with a girl and her escort killed him with
a bottle he happened to be holding in his hand, he might get off with a
light sentence. But if he waited to light a cigarette, then pulled out
a gun and shot the other man, it would be a death sentence.

 

 

It seemed to me there was that essential difference in what Morgan had
done. If he had thrown himself at Betty and battered her, I could forget
it. There was something unpleasant, however, about the way he had anchored
his foot so that he could smite the girl with all the power of his body
unhampered by weight. I didn't know where he was going to hit her, hut
he could have killed her with a blow like that. The presence of mind he
had shown in his act made it startlingly sadistic.

 

 

And then Leslie started looking for a fight too. "You shouldn't have
let Jim go," she snapped at me. "A child like that . . ."

 

 

So I was the only one responsible. I had thought we all agreed that Jim
had to go. "Can it, Leslie," I said as pleasantly as I could. "Suppose --
just suppose -- he's finding us more fuel? Try thinking of that, will you?"

 

 

"Fuel, fuel -- you've got fuel on the brain."

 

 

"So I have. People need it, you know, to fly spaceships. Even me.
And that's what I'm trying to do at the moment."

 

 

"The man with one idea. I believe you'd sell me, too, for this precious
fuel of yours."

 

 

"Sure I would. Who are you that you shouldn't be sold?"

 

 

"For the love of God!" Stowe shouted, his nerves worn raw.

 

 

"Sorry, John," said Leslie quickly. "Sorry, Bill. Let's all shut up,
shall we, before we start wringing each other's necks."

 

 

"Amen," said Sammy, and looped the loop. We fell into an uneasy silence.

 

 

No, it wasn't pleasant waiting. I knew Jim would be gone a long time
anyway -- the most economical way to use his little propulsion unit was
merely to put himself in a slow drift toward the other ship and wait
patiently till he got there. But that didn't prevent us from worrying,
long before he could have reached the ship.

 

 

Morgan and Betty went out of the lounge together. I looked after them,
frowning -- if they fought again, and no one was around to stop him,
Morgan in his wild rage might do something we should all regret. It was
unlikely, however, that their reconciliation could last such a short time.

 

 

The first moment when Jim might reasonably have returned came and went.
I wished there was something I could have set everyone to do. I thought
of Morgan and Betty, and wished I could go away with Leslie and pass the
time in her arms. I looked at them, smooth and cool, and ached for her.
Leslie wanted it too, I saw. But any moment now Jim should be back.
He was approaching the limit of his air supply.

 

 

John Stowe said as much, suddenly admitting his anxiety.

 

 

"You know Jim," I said reassuringly. "He'll wait as long as he can,
making sure the job's done."

 

 

"How long are we going to wait, before we admit he isn't coming back?"

 

 

I answered calmly, "We needn't start thinking along those lines for quite
a while yet. He doesn't need as much air as an adult, and for the most part
he won't be active."