One in 300 (8 page)

 

 

You never quite get used to free fall, no matter how often you experience
it. It's a surprise every time when up and down disappear from the
environment and the normal way of getting about ceases to be beetlelike
and becomes birdlike. It's amusing or frustrating, depending on how
you're feeling at the time, when you want to go one way and find yourself
going the other, impelled by some tiny movement of air you can't see
and normally wouldn't notice at all.

 

 

The body adjusts to the new conditions more quickly than the mind.
The lungs and heart and stomach, puzzled for a few minutes by the absence
of gravity, soon learn their new job and do it as well as they did the
old one. Clothes and hair are inconveniences, though. Practically every
garment of civilization except riding breeches and bathing costumes
depends to some extent on gravity to hold it in place. Whenever I moved,
my jacket began to ride up about me like water wings, and my trousers
gradually worked themselves in untidy folds up my legs, showing the
imprex tape underneath.

 

 

I found Mars through the tungsten glass ports and began to check on the
old space navigators' Irishism -- whether it would be where we were when
we got there. But I wasn't allowed much grace. Sammy Hoggan came in,
his face grim.

 

 

"Mary Stowe's dead," he said briefly.

 

 

I couldn't understand that at first. Somebody dead -- already? It interfered
with my long-term calculation that we were all going to die. It jammed the
works for a moment, this curious, irrelevant intimation that someone hadn't
waited for the execution that appeared to be planned for us all.

 

 

"Acceleration?" I asked.

 

 

"That and her couch collapsing. It couldn't take the strain.
Bill -- didn't you accelerate more than you were supposed to?"

 

 

"Yes," I said.

 

 

"Then that killed her," he said bluntly. "The extra weight came on --
and the couch broke. That was -- "

 

 

I had heard enough about Mary, and it was too late to do anything about
her. "Go away," I said.

 

 

Sammy swore. "Dammit, Bill," he said hotly, "you're responsible for all
of us. You're the man in charge. Is that all you have to say? If you had
to do it -- "

 

 

I turned and looked coldly at him. "I'm responsible for getting this
ship to Mars," I said curtly. "I'm not leaving here until I'm satisfied
about that -- not if the whole lot of you die. If this room had a door,
I'd lock it to keep you all out. Now go and leave me alone. I'm sorry,
Sammy, but I haven't time to be civil."

 

 

I went back to my calculations. I didn't notice Sammy going.

 

 

The first check was encouraging, as far as it went. There could be no
precision about flying a lifeship -- navigation with mass-produced
instruments, and very few of them at that, was little more than an affair
of pointing the ship's nose in roughly the right direction and praying.

 

 

And on this basis, it looked as if I could leave the course as it was
and not waste any of my precious moluone making corrections. I wasn't too
sure of our velocity -- that would take days of checking by the planets --
but it seemed that in about a hundred days the lifeship, in free fall, and
Mars, in its orbit round the sun, would have reached about the same spot.

 

 

Then, more carefully, I worked out how much fuel I'd need for a safe
landing on Mars, how much I had, and tried to close the gap. Mathematically
it couldn't be done. I just couldn't land safely on Mars, according to my
quadruple-checked figures.

 

 

I covered sheet after sheet with laborious calculation. The best I could
produce, the most favorable extrapolation, crooked, weighted mathematics
though it was, was still a very slim chance indeed.

 

 

Drugged with figures, working more and more from sheer obstinacy,
stubbornly trying everything I could think of to try, I came up with the
conclusion that our chances of getting to Mars, when we left the soil
of Earth, had been about a thousand to one against. And they weren't
very much better now.

 

 

True, we were clear of Earth and on a good course for Mars. We
were
over the first hurdle. We had accomplished what, at a guess, only two
or three hundred thousand of the seven hundred thousand lifeships had
been able to do.

 

 

And of those two or three hundred thousand, many must have used all their
fuel in tearing themselves free of Earth. Those ships were utterly helpless.
Some of them would be shooting off in all directions, every moment getting
farther from Mars, and utterly incapable of doing anything about it. Some
of them Would be pointed at the sun, or close enough to the sun to be
captured by it. Some would move on and on past the planets into space
. . . those ships would go on forever if they weren't captured by some
star or planet.

 

 

I didn't swear or curse at anyone. I just doggedly worked out problem
after problem, as if I could set everything right by my high school
mathematičs.

 

 

On the basis of our own experience I worked out how much fuel the lifeships
really needed. Then, since they would have to be so much bigger and stronger,
how many lifeships there would have been instead of seven hundred thousand.
How many people they could have taken.

 

 

Allowing a very small safety factor, it came out at ninety-seven thousand.
A chance of life for a million people instead of nearly eight million. Not
one in three hundred of the people of Earth, but one in twenty-two hundred.

 

 

I tried to imagine the job I might have had then, the job of picking out
ten people from a town of over twenty thousand. As it was, I knew hardly
anything about some of the people I'd chosen from a mere three thousand
or so. Sammy, Leslie, Betty, and Morgan were all last-minute choices,
because someone else had had to come off the list. On the whole I was
prepared to gamble on the first two, but Morgan and Betty could be my best
choice or my worst for all I knew. What sort of guess could I have made
if I'd been confronted with twenty thousand people and told to pick ten?

 

 

I shook my head wearily. The questions were too big for me. I had juggled
too long with figures of life and death -- a little life and a lot of death.
They weren't anything but figures to me. Perhaps that was why I had done it
-- to reduce humanity's most frightful disaster to a few real figures,
like four and seven and three, with a lot of incomprehensible zeroes
after them.

 

 

I would come again, no doubt. But meantime I had reached a mental
dead stop.

 

 

 

 

 

 

2

 

 

I gave myself a push against the wall, guided myself with my arms, and
swam out into the main room of the lifeship, which Sammy had already
christened, ironically, "the lounge."

 

 

Lifeships were simply moving barns. There was nothing to be seen in
the so-called lounge except white paneling, steel floors, ten couches,
and nine people floating about, with something on one of the couches
covered by a sheet.

 

 

Little Bessie Phillips, unrepressed by tragedy, was flying about in the air,
delighted by the absence of gravity. Jim Stowe, dry-eyed, was sitting with
his father, one leg curled around the frame of the couch to hold him down.
Betty and Morgan were in a corner, whispering. Sammy, Leslie, Harry Phillips,
and Miss Wallace formed another group, holding the edges of a couch to keep
themselves still.

 

 

They couldn't help becoming suddenly silent when I came in. They knew, all
of them, how I'd been supposed to take off -- I'd told them myself what
it would be like -- and it hadn't been like that. It hadn't been as I'd
said it would be. Unless something had gone wrong, unless somehow I had
been forced into it, I had done something on the spur of the moment and
as a result Mary Stowe had died. That was how they were all figuring it.

 

 

Maybe I had tried to be clever, they were thinking. I could see it in their
faces. They were waiting for me to explain, hoping I could, pretty sure
I couldn't.

 

 

I went over to Mary Stowe's couch. Nobody moved. The sheet was tied at the
four corners to the frame. I untied one corner and saw what had happened.

 

 

When Mary's weight went up to half a ton or so, one of the steel supports
under the couch had snapped. Then another. The couch became a switchback
-- and, quite naturally, Mary's back was broken.

 

 

I averted my eyes from the dead woman's face. She had not died pleasantly,
and her face showed it.

 

 

"Someone help me to get the body outside," I said.

 

 

They realized that had to be done. Sammy pushed against the couch he was
holding, and floated over to me. We took hold of the limp body and clawed
our way to the base of the ship, to the only air lock. The eyes of the
others followed us silently.

 

 

I knew I should save the dead woman's clothes, for cloth, trinkets, leather,
and particularly the imprex tape which still bound her broken body might be
useful in the bare, empty lifeship.

 

 

But any suggestion of stripping the body before throwing it into space
would clearly heighten feeling which was already too high. I'd be regarded
as a grave ravisher as well as a man who had made a mistake that killed
Mary Stowe.

 

 

So Sammy and I left the body in the air lock, just as it was, closed the
inside door, and turned the wheel that opened the outer door. There was
no sound, but the air in the lock shot out into space, sweeping all that
was left of Mary Stowe with it.

 

 

The body had the same velocity as the lifeship and would travel on with it.
The small additional thrust imparted by the violently escaping air, however,
would carry it off on a tangent. Soon the lifeship and the body of the
woman who had left Earth, alive, in it would be miles apart. Then hundreds
of miles. Perhaps, eventually, millions of miles.

 

 

We went back silently to the main room of the ship. Nobody seemed to
have moved.

 

 

"All right," I said. "Since you're all so concerned about this thing --
let's talk about it."

 

 

Harry Phillips looked up. His eyes were as kindly as ever. "Wouldn't it
be better not, son?" he said gently. "You did what you thought was right.
We don't doubt that."

 

 

He didn't, perhaps, but Miss Wallace didn't meet my eyes. Leslie seemed to
shrink away from me, without actually moving. John Stowe, sunk in his
thoughts, probably wasn't even hearing what was going on.

 

 

"Does anyone doubt," I asked, "that I had to do what I did?"

 

 

"Did you?" asked Miss Wallace bluntly, looking at me steadily. "Did you
have to? Did you
really
have to?"

 

 

I cast one swift glance at her. I hadn't thought this out. But it was
obvious that I couldn't explain to them all exactly what the fuel situation
was. Sammy, perhaps -- I'd have to share it with someone. Not anyone else,
for that would mean a voyage of even greater tension, a hopeless voyage,
a voyage in the course of which it would be difficult to make anyone do
anything hard or unpleasant, since there would seem to be no purpose in
it. So I said:

 

 

"Do you believe that I chose ten people from over three thousand and
then started off by murdering one of them?"

 

 

"No," said John Stowe, dragging himself into the present with an obvious
effort. "There's no question of it being deliberate, Lieutenant Easson.
But my wife" -- his voice quivered -- "my wife is dead. Did it have to
happen? Or was it . . . unnecessary?"

 

 

I understood perfectly what he meant. It would be easier to bear if it
was an accident, something that couldn't have been avoided. What was
torturing him was the thought that Mary might have died because of a
small, careless miscalculation.
My
miscalculation.

 

 

"You'll have to take my word for it," I said matter-of-factly, trying to
freeze the raw emotion that was in the air, "that it was necessary. It did
have to happen. We needed that extra acceleration. If I were doing it again,
knowing someone would die, I'd still have to do it."

 

 

No one said anything, but they believed me. Stowe was nodding slowly,
the dull anger and suspicion gone from the ache in his heart. The ache was
still there, but it was a cleaner ache. And the others, after looking from
him to me and back to him, were looking a little ashamed of themselves,
ashamed of the ready assumption that because I had changed my plans I
was to blame for Mary's death, ashamed that they had been so ready to
think the worst.

 

 

"We always knew we had to leave the rest of Simsville behind," I pointed
out. "Everyone else had to die if we were to have a chance. We accepted
that, didn't we? Then let's try to think of Mary Stowe with the rest --
part of Simsville we couldn't take with us."

 

 

"God damn the man who passed that couch," said Stowe through his teeth.

 

 

"He probably has," I said quietly. "Not many of the people who made the
lifeships had a chance to go on one of them."

 

 

That seemed to be that. No one wanted to pursue the matter.

 

 

"Better get that imprex tape off, all of you," I said. "Roll it up carefully.
We'll need it for the landing. The women can stay here and the men go down
to the air lock."