Gordon R. Dickson's SF Best

by Gordon R. Dickson

  She was pale to the lips; and her eyes had a stunned look.

  "I looked down and saw what you'd done to that child in the cabin below –" Her voice broke off into a whisper: "Oh, Cully –"

  He laughed mournfully.

  "Stop there," he ordered. He had driven them back into a corner near the entrance he had come in. "I've got to have all of you together. Now, one of you is going to tell me where that other man is – and I'm going to pick you off, one at a time, until somebody does."

  "You're a fool," said the captain. A little of his color had come back. "You're all alone. You don't have a chance of controlling this ship by yourself. You know what happens to hilifters, don't you? It's not just a prison sentence. Give up now and we'll all put in a word for you. You might get off without mandatory execution."

  "No thanks," said Cully. He gestured with the end of the riot gun. "We're going into overdrive. Start setting up the course as I give it to you."

  "No," said the captain, looking hard at him.

  "You're a brave man," said Cully. "But I'd like to point out something. I'm going to shoot you if you won't cooperate and then I'm going to work down the line of your officers. Sooner or later somebody's going to preserve his life by doing what I tell you. So getting yourself killed isn't going to save the ship at all. It just means somebody with less courage than you lives. And you die."

  Illustration by RICK BRYANT

  There was a sharp, bitter intake of breath from the direction of Lucy. Cully kept his eyes on the captain.

  "How about it?" Cully asked.

  "No brush-pants of a Colonial," said the captain, slowly and deliberately, "is going to stand in my Control Room and tell me where to take my ship."

  "Did the captain and officers of the Princess of Argyle ever come back?" said Cully, somewhat cryptically.

  "It's nothing to me whether they came or stayed."

  "I take it all back," said Cully. "You're too valuable to lose." The riot gun shifted to come to bear on the First Officer, a tall, thin, younger man whose hair was already receding at the temples. "But you aren't, friend. I'm not even going to tell you what I'm going to do. I'm just going to start counting; and when I decide to stop you've had it. One . . . two . . ."

  "Don't! Don't shoot!" The First Officer jumped across the few steps that separated him from the Main Computer Panel. "What's your course? What do you want me to set up –"

  The captain began to curse the First Officer. He spoke slowly and distinctly and in a manner that completely ignored the presence of Lucy in the Control Room. He went right on as Cully gave the First Officer the course and the First Officer set it up. He stopped only as – abruptly – the lights went out, and the ship overdrove.

  When the lights carne on again – it was a matter of only a fraction of a second of real time – the captain was at last silent. He seemed to have sagged in the brief interval of darkness and his face looked older.

  And then, slamming through the tense silence of the room came the sound of the Contact Alarm Bell.

  "Turn it on," said Cully. The First Officer stepped over and pushed a button below the room's communication screen. It cleared suddenly to show a man in a white jacket.

  "We're alongside, Cully," he said. "We'll take over now. How're you fixed for casualties?"

  "At the moment –" began Cully. But he got no further than that. Behind him, three hard, spaced words in a man's voice cut him off.

  "Drop it, Hilifter!"

  Cully did not move. He cocked his eyebrows a little sadly and grinned his untamable grin for the first time at the ship's officers, and Lucy and the figure in the screen. Then the grin went away.

  "Friend," he said to the man hidden behind him, "your business is running a spaceship. Mine is taking them away from people who run them. Right now you're figuring how you make me give up or shoot me down and this ship dodges back into overdrive, and you become hero for saving it. But it isn't going to work that way."

  He waited for a moment to hear if the off-watch steward behind him – or whoever the officer was – would answer. But there was only silence.

  "You're behind me," said Cully. "But I can turn pretty fast. You may get me coming around, but unless you've got something like a small cannon, you're not going to stop me getting you at this short range, whether you've got me or not. Now, if you think I'm just talking, you better think again. For me, this is one of the risks of the trade."

  He turned. As he did so he went for the floor and heard the first shot go by his ear. As he hit the floor another shot hit the deck beside him and ricocheted into his side. But by that tune he had the heavy riot gun aimed and he pressed the firing button. The stream of darts knocked the man backward out of the entrance to the Control Room to lie, a still and huddled shape, in the corridor outside.

  Cully got to his feet, feeling the single dart in his side. The room was beginning to waver around him, but he felt that he could hold on for the necessary couple of minutes before the people from the ship moving in alongside could breach the lock and come aboard. His jacket was loose and would hide the bleeding underneath. None of those facing him could know he had been hit.

  "All right, folks," he said, managing a grin. "It's all over but the shouting –" And then Lucy broke suddenly from the group and went running across the room toward the entrance through which Cully had come a moment or so earlier.

  "Lucy –" he barked at her. And then he saw her stop and turn by the control table near the entrance, snatching up the little handgun he had left there. "Lucy, do you want to get shot?"

  But she was bringing up the little handgun, held in the grip of both her hands, and aiming it squarely at him. The tears were running down her face.

  "It's better for you, Cully –" she was sobbing. "Better . . ."

  He swung the riot gun to bear on her, but he saw she did not even see it.

  "Lucy, I'll have to kill you!" he cried. But she no more heard him, apparently, than she saw the muzzle-on view of the riot gun in his hands. The wavering golden barrel in her grasp wobbled to bear on him.

  "Oh, Cully!" she wept. "Cully –" And pulled the trigger.

  "Oh, hell!" said Cully in despair. And let her shoot him down.

  When he came back, things were very fuzzy there at first. He heard the voice of the man in the white jacket, arguing with the voice of Lucy.

  "Hallucination –" muttered Cully. The voices broke off.

  "Oh, he said something!" cried the voice of Lucy.

  "Cully?" said the man's voice. Cully felt a two-finger grip on his wrist in the area where his pulse should be – if, that was, he had a pulse. "How're you feeling?"

  "Ship's doctor?" muttered Cully, with great effort. "You got the Star of the North ?"

  "That's right. All under control. How do you feel?"

  "Feel fine," mumbled Cully. The doctor laughed.

  "Sure you do," said the doctor. "Nothing like being shot a couple of times and having a pellet and a dart removed to put a man in good shape."

  "Not Lucy's fault –" muttered Cully. "Not understand." He made another great effort in the interests of explanation. "Stars'n eyes."

  "Oh, what does he mean?" wept Lucy.

  "He means," said the voice of the doctor harshly, "that you're just the sort of fine young idealist who makes the best sort of sucker for the sort of propaganda the Old Worlds Confederation dishes out."

  "Oh, you'd say that!" flared Lucy's voice. "Of course, you'd say that!"

  "Young lady," said the doctor, "how rich do you think our friend Cully, here, is?"

  Cully heard her blow her nose, weakly.

  "He's got millions, I suppose," she said, bitterly. "Hasn't he hilifted dozens of ships?"

  "He's hilifted eight," said the doctor, dryly, "which, incidentally, puts him three ships ahead of any other contender for the title of hilifting champion around the populated stars. The mortality rate among single workers – and you can't get any more than a single 'lifter aboard Confederation sh
ips nowadays – hits ninety per cent with the third ship captured. But I doubt Cully's been able to save millions on a salary of six hundred a month, and a bonus of one tenth of one per cent of salvage value, at Colonial World rates."

  There was a moment of profound silence.

  "What do you mean?" said Lucy, in a voice that wavered a little.

  "I'm trying," said the doctor, "for the sake of my patient – and perhaps for your own – to push aside what Cully calls those stars in your eyes and let a crack of surface daylight through."

  "But why would he work for a salary – like that?" Disbelief was strong in her voice.

  "Possibly," said the doctor, "just possibly because the picture of a bloodstained hilifter with a knife between his teeth, carousing in Colonial bars, shooting down Confederation officers for the fun of it, and dragging women passengers off by the hair, has very little to do with the real facts of a man like Cully."

  "Smart girl," managed Cully. "S'little mixed up, s'all –" He managed to get his vision cleared a bit. The other two were standing facing each other, right beside his bed. The doctor had a slight flush above his cheekbones and looked angry. Lucy, Cully noted anxiously, was looking decidedly pale. "Mixed up –" Cully said again.

  "Mixed up isn't the word for it," said the doctor angrily, without looking down at him. "She and all ninety-nine out of a hundred people on the Old Worlds." He went on to Lucy. "You met Cully Earthside. Evidently you liked him there. He didn't strike you as the scum of the stars, then.

  "But all you have to do is hear him tagged with the name 'hilifter' and immediately your attitude changes."

  Lucy swallowed.

  "No," she said, in a small voice, "it didn't . . . change."

  "Then who do you think's wrong – you or Cully?" The doctor snorted. "If I have to give you reasons, what's the use? If you can't see things straight for yourself, who can help you? That's what's wrong with all the people back on the Old Worlds."

  "I believe Cully," she said. "I just don't know why I should."

  "Who has lots of raw materials – the raw materials to support trade – but hasn't any trade?" asked the doctor. She frowned at him.

  "Why . . . the New Worlds haven't any trade on their own," she said. "But they're too undeveloped yet, too young –"

  "Young? There's three to five generations on most of them!"

  "I mean they haven't got the industry, the commercial organization –" She faltered before the slightly satirical expression on the doctor's face. "All right, then; you tell me! If they've got everything they need for trade, why don't they? The Old Worlds did; why don't you?"

  "In what?"

  She stared at him.

  "But the Confederation of the Old Worlds already has the ships for interworld trade. And they're glad to ship Colonial products. In fact they do," she said.

  "So a load of miniaturized surgical power instruments made on Asterope in the Pleiades has to be shipped to Earth and then shipped clear back out to its destination on Electra, also in the Pleiades. Only by the time they get there they've doubled or tripled in price, and the difference is in the pockets of Earth shippers." She was silent.

  "It seems to me," said the doctor, "that girl who was with you mentioned something about your coming from Boston, back in the United States on Earth. Didn't they have a tea party there once? Followed by a revolution? And didn't it all have something to do with the fact that England at that time would not allow its colonies to own and operate their own ships for trade – so that it all had to be funneled through England in English ships to the advantage of English merchants?"

  "But why can't you build your own ships?" she said. Cully felt it was time he got in on the conversation. He cleared his throat, weakly.

  "Hey –" he managed to say. They both looked at him; but he himself was looking only at Lucy.

  "You see," he said, rolling over and struggling up on one elbow, "the thing is –"

  "Lie down," said the doctor.

  "Go jump out the air lock," said Cully. "The thing is, honey, you can't build spaceships without a lot of expensive equipment and tools, and trained personnel. You need a spaceship-building industry. And you have to get the equipment, tools, and people from somewhere else to start with. You can't get 'em unless you can trade for 'em. And you can't trade freely without ships of your own, which the Confederation, by forcing us to ship through them, makes it impossible for us to have.

  "So you see how it works out," said Cully. "It works out you've got to have shipping before you can build shipping. And if people on the outside refuse to let you have it by proper means, simply because they've got a good thing going and don't want to give it up – then some of us just have to break loose and go after it any way we can."

  "Oh, Cully!"

  Suddenly she was on her knees by the bed and her arms were around him.

  "Of course the Confederation news services have been trying to keep up the illusion we're sort of half jungle-jims, half wild-west characters," said the doctor. "Once a person takes a good look at the situation on the New Worlds; though, with his eyes open –" He stopped. They were not listening.

  "I might mention," he went on, a little more loudly, "while Cully here may not be exactly rich, he does have a rather impressive medal due him, and a commission as Brevet-Admiral in the upcoming New Worlds Space Force. The New Worlds Congress voted him both at their meeting just last week on Asterope, as soon as they'd finished drafting their Statement of Independence –"

  But they were still not listening. It occurred to the doctor then that he had better uses for this time – here on this vessel where he had been ship's doctor ever since she first lifted into space – than to stand around talking to deaf ears.

  He went out, closing the door of the sick bay on the former Princess of Argyle quietly behind him.

  Gordy is so good at creating believably alien characters that once at a convention I tugged on his face to see if it would come off. (It didn't, but I'm not entirely sure that proves anything.) Two of his most fascinatingly unique aliens decorate the following story. If you squint at the plot, you'll notice that it's one of the hoariest cliches in the business – turned around one hundred eighty degrees. The art of diplomacy is a subtle and difficult one . . . especially out there in the field.

  BROTHER CHARLIE

  I

  The matter of her standby burners trembled through the APC9 like the grumbling of an imminent and not entirely unominous storm. In the cramped, lightly grease-smelling cockpit, Chuck Wagnall sat running through the customary preflight check on his instruments and controls. There were a great many to check out – almost too many for the small cockpit space to hold; but then old number 9, like all of her breed, was equipped to operate almost anywhere but underwater. She could even have operated there as well, but she would have needed a little time to prepare herself, before immersion.

  On his left-hand field screen the Tomah envoy escort was to be seen in the process of moving the Tomah envoy aboard. The Lugh, Binichi, was already in his bin. Chuck wasted neither time nor attention on these – but when his ship range screen lit up directly before him, he glanced at it immediately.

  "Hold Seventy-nine," he said automatically to himself, and pressed the acknowledge button.

  The light cleared to reveal the face of Roy Marlie, Advance Unit Supervisor. Roy's brown hair was neatly combed in place, his uniform closure pressed tight, and his blue eyes casual and relaxed – and at these top danger signals, Chuck felt his own spine stiffen.

  "Yo, how's it going, Chuck?" Roy asked.

  "Lift in about five minutes."

  "Any trouble picking up Binichi?"

  "A snap," said Chuck. "He was waiting for me right on the surface of the bay. For two cents' worth of protocol he could have boarded her here with the Tomah."

  Chuck studied the face of his superior in the screen. He wanted very badly to ask Roy what was up; but when and if the supervisor wanted to get to the point of his call, he would do
so on his own initiative.

  "Let's see your flight plan," said Roy.

  Chuck played the fingers of his left hand over the keys of a charter to his right. There appeared superimposed on the face of the screen between himself and Roy an outline of the two continents of this planet that the Tomah called Rant and the Lugh called Vanyinni. A red line that was his projected course crept across a great circle arc from the dot of his present position, over the ocean gap to the dot well inside the coastline of the southern continent. The dot was the human Base camp position.

  "You could take a coastal route," said Roy, studying it.

  "This one doesn't put us more than eight hundred nautical miles from land at the midpoint between the continents."

  "Well, it's your neck," said Roy, with a light-heartedness as ominous as the noise of the standby burners. "Oh, by the way, guess who we've got here? Just landed. Your uncle, Member Wagnall."

  Aha! said Chuck. But he said it to himself. "Tommy?" he said aloud. "Is he handy, there?"

  "Right here," answered Roy, and backed out of the screen to allow a heavy, graying-haired man with a kind, broad face to take his place.

  "Chuck, boy, how are you?" said the man.

  "Never better, Tommy," said Chuck. "How's politicking?"

  "The appropriations committee's got me out on a one-man junket to check up on you lads," said Earth District Member 439 Thomas L. Wagnall. "I promised your mother I'd say hello to you if I got to this Base. What's all this about having this project named after you?"

  "Oh, not after me," said Chuck. "Its full name isn't Project Charlie, it's Project Big Brother Charlie. With us humans as Big Brother."

  "I don't seem to know the reference."

  "Didn't you ever hear that story?" said Chuck. "About three brothers – the youngest were twins and fought all the time. The only thing that stopped them was their big brother Charlie coming on the scene."

  "I see," said Tommy. "With the Tomah and the Lugh as the two twins. Very apt. Let's just hope Big Brother can be as successful in this instance."