The Potter of Firsk and Other Stories (4 page)

“Our greatest danger is ourselves. Boredom, petty irritations—these are our worst enemies. We’re crowded together, tangled in each other’s arms and legs. I can think of no situation so calculated to bring out the best or worst in a man. Now you, Bob, and you, Julius, I’ve shipped with you many a time; I know you well. You, Jay, you represent your father, and I’m sure that, like the rest of us, you’re determined to make the trip as easy on all our nerves as possible.

“There’s not much work to do. I wish there were more. Julius, of course, is in charge of cooking and the galley.” His voice took on a sardonic edge. “Jay has his gyroscopes to attend to, and I understand he’s keeping a detailed record…Well, every man to his own poison.

“I’ll take the first watch, Jay the second, Bob the third. Our main duties will be to lubricate the machinery, to chart what we can see in the vision panels, and keep the destriation field at normal percentage. Each of us will be responsible for the cleanliness of himself, his clothes, his bunk. Everyone must be neat. Nothing is as demoralizing as slovenliness. Shaving and clean clothes are mandatory…That’s all for now.”

He turned, swung himself up on the bridge deck.

The moon was a tremendous silver melon spattered with black frost; it hulked below and off to the left. Directly ahead floated Tuck, the tube, with a cluster of stars shining through the hole.

Chiram nosed the cylinder into the opening, thrust home a switch; the cylinder shivered, jerked as the guide beams excited relays, pulled the ships into rigid alignment.

Dead ahead was Deneb—the line of their way around the universe.

Chiram called by radio to Tuck. “Everything all right in there?”

“Ready to go,” came back Henry’s voice.

Chiram said, “Throw in your field.” He yanked another switch; the gravity unit buzzed, rattled, settled into a drone; the crew was tied to the ship, and, like the ship, free of inertia.

Chiram spun a polished wheel, and the voyage had begun.

An instant passed. Then a flicker at the side port was Tuck, racing ahead. Another flicker was Nip threading Tuck. The flickers became swifter, became a continuous quiver, vanished.

Stars began to move, slide past each other, like shining motes in a drift of sunlit air. They streamed past—now bunched, now sparse, clusters, swarms, flaring clouds of gas, and as they passed aft of amidships they vanished, their light lagging behind the thistledown rush of Nip and Tuck.

Flame, dazzle, flicker—stars in pairs, trios, quartets, stars in hurrying multitudinous companies. Stars in rivers and stars like isolated beacons. Stars approached from far ahead, passing over, around, under, like wind-blown sparks. And presently the stars vanished in front and to the side, and Nip and Tuck were in intergalactic space.

Speed added to speed, built up in constant increments. Ship threaded ship like a needle in a shuttle, each guiding the other down a geometrically straight line. So straight that in a thousand light years the error might be a hundred miles—an error which might or might not average out over longer distances.

Jay checked the course on his gyro-compass. He looked a minute, tapped the case with his finger. “Right on,” he announced. “We’re right on course.”

“Glad to hear it,” said Chiram sardonically. “Watch it close now.”

The great nebula in Andromeda passed under them, a whirling pancake of cold fire. It passed behind, out of sight.

Speed, speed, speed. Acceleration as fast as the relays could shuttle ship back and forth through ship. Speed building up toward instantaneity.

Watches passed, days passed. The galaxies flitted by like luminous bats—straggling watch-springs, hot puddles of gas. At the start and close of every watch Jay checked his gyroscope, then spent two or three hours writing in his journal—minutiae of the voyage, vignettes of personal philosophy, observations on the personalities of his shipmates.

Julius and Bob played cards and chess; occasionally Chiram joined them. Jay played a few games of chess—long enough to find that Julius could beat him as often as he set his mind to it—then gave up. Julius grinned his grin, spoke little; Bob wore his angry parrot’s face, spoke not at all. Chiram kept himself aloof, watched every detail of the voyage with a careful humorless eye, gave what orders were necessary in a carefully modulated voice. And Jay, after a few futile attempts to argue navigational techniques with Chiram, became as taciturn as the others.

The galaxies slid backward. After every watch Jay peered intently at his gyroscope. One day he called Chiram over.

“We’re off course. Look—there’s no doubt about it. A whole degree. I’ve been watching it for several days.”

Chiram looked down a moment, shook his head, half-turned away. “You’ve got a precession somewhere.”

Jay sniffed. “More likely that those spacer beams between the hulls are out of focus.”

Chiram glanced down his nose at the gyroscopes, said stonily, “Hardly possible. They’re automatically compensated, double-checked. Two separate sets of spacers are involved, don’t forget—one correcting on a basis of wave interference, the other by correlation of angle and beam strength. They’re perfectly synchronized; if they weren’t the alarm would go off…Your gyro is out somewhere.”

Grumbling, Jay turned to look at the dial. “One degree,” he mumbled. “That’s a million light years—a hundred million light years—” But Chiram had walked away.

Jay seated himself beside the gyro, watched the face like a cat at a tank of goldfish. If it told the truth they were irretrievably lost. He dropped to his hands and knees, checked every part of the gyro as well as he could; it seemed in perfect order.

Jay slouched to the table, where Bob and Julius played chess, stood looking down with hands clasped behind his back. They took no heed of his presence.

“Well,” said Jay, looking across the room toward the gyro, “we’re goners. We’re done for.”

“Yeah? How’s that?” asked Julius, moving a pawn.

“The gyro doesn’t lie,” said Jay. “We’re a degree off course, according to the gyro.”

Bob Galt darted an unemotional glance up at Jay, returned to the board.

“I told the old man,” Jay said bitterly. “I told him before we took off that his rig was too damn complicated to work.”

“We all got to die sometime, kid,” said Julius. “It might as well be out here…I’m not worryin’. We’re eatin’ good; I got old Galt here on the run…” The grin widened.

Bob sneered. “The hell you say.” He moved a knight to threaten the pawn. “Try that on.”

Julius bent his heavy head over the board. “Relax, kid, watch the scenery…”

Jay hesitated, then turned away, crossed the room, flung himself on his bunk, moving his lips in silent curses. He lay quiet twenty minutes, staring up at the hull. A degree off course…

He rose on his elbow, watched the galaxies flitting past in the vision panels. Stars—millions, billions of stars, curdled into luminous whorls. These out here were nameless, unknown to the astronomers on that far atom, Earth…He considered Earth, so far distant as to be unknowable. How could they ever again locate that precious fleck? Presumably if they returned to the home galaxy Earth could be found. But now—a degree off course! And no one aboard cared a fig either way…Well, by God, thought Jay furiously, these dull animals might not care a nickel for their lives, but he was Jay Banners Junior and he had his whole life to live!…Now then, if he returned the ship to its course, there would still be a chance of hitting the galaxy on the way back. They would thank him for it, Chiram and Bob Galt and Julius, when he finally told them; there would be jocular comment, chaffing—and, of course, that bull-headed Chiram would walk around with his neck stiff. Nevertheless he’d have Jay to thank for bringing them home; he’d have to back down, admit himself wrong…And if the story happened to leak out—Jay’s vision soared. Newspapers, television, cheers from crowded streets…

Jay rose to his feet. Chiram lay in his bunk asleep, his feet in white socks neatly placed one on the other.

Jay glanced across the cabin. It was nominally Galt’s watch; he sat absorbed in his game, with one hand crooked over his queen. Julius, his brow furrowed, was wiping at his mouth with a big yellow hand.

Jay sauntered across the room, climbed the three steps to the bridge deck, nonchalantly leaned across the chart table, watching the view on the forward screen. Black space, the galaxies like luminous jellyfish in a midnight ocean. They floated in from far ahead, drifted effortlessly past, the near ones sliding over the far ones in an implausible shift of perspective.

The sight was soothing, hypnotic, dreamlike in its silent majesty…Behind him Julius laughed. Jay blinked, straightened, came back to himself. He looked cautiously toward the controls, in a railed box to his right. Only Chiram was supposed to enter the box. He peered out the side vision panel. Tuck, the partner ship, was naturally invisible, flitting back and forth across Nip in the constant acceleration. Jay glanced at the computer dial for their speed: already 6,200 l.y.p.s. and steadily mounting. He turned his attention back to the controls. There it was—a bright knurled knob. A mere touch, and the spacer beams would weaken infinitesimally on one side, to twist the axis on which the two ships rode.

He took a casual step toward the control box, darted out his arm, touched the knob…A great blow fell on his shoulder. He reeled back, sank to the deck. He became aware of three pairs of legs, heard a harsh unsympathetic voice: “I’ve been waiting for a trick like this ever since he showed me that fool machine of his.”

“He’s just an addled kid,” came Julius’ voice, light, careless.

Bob Galt’s feet moved abruptly, turned half away.

Chiram said in the same harsh voice, “Pick him up, take him to his bunk, chain his ankle to the stanchion…Julius, you throw a plaster on the bullet-hole. Can’t trust a lunatic like that at large.”

Jay had nothing to complain of. Julius was careful with his wound; his big, taffy-colored hands moved quickly, gently; his grin never vanished.

He was fed from a tray, and released to use the latrine. These were the only attentions he received. What sluggish life there was in the ship flowed on and past him. His presence was ignored, no one spoke, he spoke to no one.

From his bunk he could see the length of the ship and all that happened aboard: Julius and Bob Galt at their interminable chess; Julius facing him, rubbing his big flat face with a hand when puzzled or preoccupied, Galt sitting crouched over the board with only the hard angles of his profile showing. Chiram played no more cards or chess; his sole diversion was a slow pacing up and down the cabin with half an hour’s work at an exerciser morning and night.

The picture became utterly familiar to Jay. It was changeless, uniform. The same colors, the same pattern of shadows, the same pragmatic thud to Chiram’s tread, the same grin on Julius’ face, the same slope to Galt’s shoulders.

The ship had plunged into darkness. There were no more galaxies, no more nebulae. “We’ve evidently passed the outer fringe of the exploding universe,” Jay heard Chiram say ruefully. Jay asked himself, what will it be now? Infinity? He had understood that the exploding universe was like a balloon being inflated, time and space and all—not just the blast of a trillion stars into nothingness…

Was space infinite? Were they flitting like dreams into blackness? To go on and on and on—and then on some more.

The ports showed dead black outside, without spark or flash. They were still accelerating. What was it now? 8,000, 10,000 l.y.p.s.?

Jay turned his back to the cabin, wrote in his journal. He wrote copiously—pages of introspection, fragments of quick-scribbled poetry, which he often returned to, copied, revised. He kept statistical charts: the detailed study of Chiram’s pacing, his average number of steps per square foot of deck, the pattern behind Julius’ menus. He carefully noted his dreams and spent hours trying to trace their genesis from his past. He wrote careful and elaborate excoriations of Chiram—“for the record” he told himself—and equally cogent self-justifications. He made interminable lists—places he had visited, girl-friends, books, colors, songs. He sketched Chiram, Julius, Bob Galt time and time again.

Hours, days, weeks. Conversation dwindled, died. Julius and Bob played chess, and when Bob was at his watch duties Julius played solitaire—unhurriedly, carefully, glancing at each card as if it might be a surprise.

Chess—pacing—food—sleep—the trips to the latrine, with Julius marching placidly at his back. And occasionally Jay considered an attempt to overpower Julius, kill all on the ship. But Julius was stocky and tough. And what good would result in any event?

Darkness outside the port…Were they actually moving? Or was motion a peculiarity of the home space, where there were objects to measure it? Was infinity merely a soft dark trap where no effort could produce meaningful progress? Eternal darkness outside the port. Suppose one were on foot, walking out there…

Jay put down his journal, stared. His eyes bulged. A sound scraped up his throat. Chiram paused in his pacing, turned his head. Jay pointed a long trembling arm toward the port.

“It was a face! I saw it looking in the port!”

Chiram turned startled eyes to the vision panel. Galt, asleep, grumbled, grunted. Julius, playing solitaire, shuffled the cards with imperturbable movements of smooth yellow arms. Chiram looked skeptically back at Jay.