by Larry Niven
Do you wish to make such a charge?"
"Captain, you're talking about impeachment— legal grounds for mutiny. We don't have such grounds.
We don't want to impeach you, regardless."
"Well, just what did you think this was, Chanda? An election?"
"We're inviting you to resign."
"Thanx, but I think not."
"We could impeach you, you know." Jimm Farmer was neither angry nor embarrassed; merely interested. "We could charge you with addiction to tabac sticks, try you, and convict you."
"Tabac sticks?"
"Sure, everybody knows they're not addictive. The point is that you can't find a higher court to reverse our decision."
"I guess that's true. Very well, go ahead."
Parliss broke in, in a harsh whisper. "Chanda, what are you doing?" His face, scalp, and ears burned sunset red.
The tall woman said, "Quiet, Parl. We're only doing what needs to be done."
"You're crazy with grief over that damn mechanical moron."
Chanda flashed him a smoking glare. Parliss returned it. She turned away, aloofly ignoring him.
Strac spoke for the first time. "Don't make us use force, Captain."
"Why not? Do you idiots realize what you're asking?" Verd's control was going. He'd been a young man when the Hogan's Goat was built. In nearly two centuries he'd flown her further than the total distance to Andromeda; nursed her and worried about her and lived his life in her lighted, rushing womb. What he felt must have showed in his face, for the girl with the auburn hair raised her left arm and held it innocently bent, pointed right at him. Probably it was the sonic; no doubt he would have been swathed in calming vibrations if her batteries had worked. But all he felt was nausea and a growing rage.
"I do," Strac said quietly. "We're asking you to make it possible for us to give you back your ship after this is over."
Verd jumped at him. A cold corner of his mind wag amazed at himself, but most of him only wanted to get his hands around Strac's bony, fragile throat. He glimpsed Laspia Waitress staring in panic at her forearms, and then a steel band closed around his ankle, and jerked. Verd stopped in midair.
It was Jimm Farmer. He had jumped across the room like a kangaroo. Verd looked back over his shoulder and carefully kicked him under the jaw. Jimm looked surprised and hurt. He squeezed!
"All right!" Verd yelped. More softly, "All right. I'll resign."
The autodoc mended two cracked ankle bones, injected mysterious substances into the badly bruised lower terminal of his Achilles tendon, and ordered a week of bed rest.
Strac's plans were compatible. He had ordered the ship to Earth. Since the Goat was still moving at nearly lightspeed, and had gone well past the solar system, the trip would take about two weeks.
Verd began to enjoy himself. For the first time since the last disastrous Jump, he was able to stop worrying for more than minutes at a time. The pressure was off. The responsibility was no longer his. He even persuaded Lourdi to cooperate with Strac. At first she would have nothing to do with the mutineers, but Verd convinced her that the passengers depended on her. Professional pride was a powerful argument.
After a week on his back Verd started moving around the ship, trying to get an idea of the state of the ship's morale. He did little else. He was perversely determined not to interfere with the new captain.
Once Laspia Waitress stopped him in the hall. "Captain, I've decided to take you into my confidence. I am an ARM, a member of the Central Government Police of Earth. There's a badly wanted man aboard this ship." And before Verd could try to humor her out of it she had produced authentic-looking credentials.
"He's involved in the Free Wunderland conspiracy," she went on. "Yes, it still exists. We had reason to believe he was aboard the Hogan's Goat, but I wasn't sure of it until he found some way to disarm me. I still haven't identified him yet. He could be anyone, even—"
"Easy, easy," Verd soothed her. "I did that. I didn't want anyone wandering around my ship with concealed weapons."
Her voice cracked. "You fool! How am I going to arrest him?"
"Why should you? Who would you turn him over to if you did? What harm can he do now?"
"What harm? He's a revolutionary, a— a seditionist!"
"Sure. He's fanatically determined to free Wunderland from the tyranny of the Central Government of Earth. But Wunderland and the Central Government have been dead for ages, and we haven't a single Earthman on board. Unless you're one."
He left her sputtering helplessly.
When he thought about it later it didn't seem so funny. Many of the passengers must be clinging to such an outmoded cause, unwilling to face the present reality. When that defense gave out, he could expect cases of insanity.
Surprisingly, Strac had talked to nobody, except to ask questions of the crew members. If he had plans, they were all his own. Perhaps he wanted one last look at Earth, ancient grandmother Earth, dead now of old age. Many passengers felt the same.
Verd did not. He and Lourdi had last seen Earth twelve years ago— subjective time— when the Goat was getting her life-support systems rejuvenated. They had spent a wonderful two months in Rio de Janeiro, a hive of multicolored human beings moving among buildings that reached like frustrated spacecraft toward the sky. Once they had even seen two firemanes, natives of l'Elephant, shouldering their way unconcerned among the bigger humans, but shying like fawns at the sight of a swooping car.
Perhaps firemanes still lived somewhere in the smoky arms of this galaxy or another. Perhaps even humans lived, though they must be changed beyond recognition. But Verd did not want to look on the corpse face of Earth. He preferred to keep his memories unspoiled.
He was not asked.
On the tenth day the Goat made turnover. Verd thought of the drive beam sweeping its arc across deserted asteroidal cities. Neutronium converted to a destroying blast of pure light. In civilized space a simple turnover required seconds of calculation on the part of the Brain, just to keep the drive beam pointed safely. Anything that light touched would vanish. But now there was nothing to protect.
On the fifteenth ship's-day morning the Earth was a wide, brilliant crescent, blinding bright where the seas had dried across her sunward face. The Sun shone with eerie greenish-white radiance beyond the polarized windows. Verd and Lourdi were finishing breakfast when Strac appeared outside the one-way transparent door. Lourdi let him in.
"I thought I'd better come personally," said Strac. "I've called for a meeting in the crew common room in an hour. I'd appreciate it if you'd be there, Verd."
"I'd just as soon not," said Verd. "Thanx anyway. Have a roast dove?"
Strac politely declined, and left. He had not repeated his invitation.
"He wasn't just being polite," Lourdi told him. "He needs you."
"Let 'im suffer."
Lourdi took him gently by the ears and turned him to face her— a trick she had developed to get his undivided attention. "Friend, this is the wrong time to play prima donna. You talked me into serving the usurper on grounds that the passengers needed my skills. I'm telling you they need yours."
"Dammit, Lourdi, if they needed me I'd still be captain!"
"They need you as a crewman!"
Verd set his jaw and looked stubborn. Lourdi let go, patted his ears gently, and stepped back. "That's my say. Think it through, Lord and Master."
Six people circled the table. Verd was there, and Lourdi and Parliss and Chanda. Strac occupied the captain's chair, beneath the Brain screen. The sixth man was Jimm Farmer.
"I know what we have to do now," said Strac. His natural dignity had deepened lately, though his shoulders sagged as if ship's gravity were too much for him, and his thin, dark face had lost the ability to smile. "But I want to consider alternatives first. To that end I want you all to hear the answers to questions I've been asking you individually. Lourdi, will you tell us about the Sun?"
Lourdi stood up. She seemed to know exactly w
hat was wanted.
"It's very old," she said. "Terribly old and almost dead. After our Jumper went funny the Sun seems to have followed the main sequence all the way. For awhile it got hotter and brighter and bigger, until it blew up into a red giant. That's probably when Mercury disappeared. Absorbed.
"Sol could have left the main sequence then, by going nova for example, but if it had there wouldn't be any inner planets. So it stayed a red giant until there wasn't enough fuel to bum to maintain the pressure, and then the structure collapsed.
"The Sun contracted to a white dwarf. What with unradiated heat working its way out, and heat of contraction, and fusion reactions still going on inside, it continued to give off light, and still does, even though for all practical purposes there's no fuel left. You can't burn iron. So now the Sun's a greenish dwarf, and in a few million years it'll be a black one."
"Only millions?"
"Yes, Strac. Only millions."
"How much radiation is being put out now?"
Lourdi considered. "About the same as in our time, but it's bluer light. The Sun is much hotter than we knew it, but all its light has to radiate through a smaller surface area. Do you want figures?"
"No thanx, Lourdi. Jimm. Farmer, could you grow foodstuffs under such a star?"
Peculiar question, thought Verd. He sat up straighter, fighting a horrible suspicion.
Jimm looked puzzled, but answered readily. "If the air was right and I had enough water, sure I could. Plants like ultraviolet. The animals might need protection from sunburn."
Strac nodded. "Lourdi, what's the state of the galaxy?"
"Lousy," she said promptly. "Too many dead stars, and most of what's left are blue-white and white giants. Too hot. I'll bet that any planet in this neighborhood that has the right temperature for life will be a gas giant. The young stars are all in the tips of the galactic arms, and they've been scattered by the spin of the galaxy. We can find some young stars in the globular clusters. Do you want to hear about them?"
"We'd never reach them," said Verd. His suspicion was a certainty. He blew orange smoke and waited, silently daring Strac to put his intention into words.
"Right," said Strac. "Chanda, how is the Brain?"
"Very, very sick. It might stop working before the decade's end. It'll never lost out the century, crippled as it is." Chanda wasn't looking so good herself. Her eyes were red, underlined with blue shadows. Verd thought she had lost mass. Her hair hadn't had its usual care. She continued, as if to herself, "Twice I've given it ordinary commands and gotten the Insufficient Data sign. That's very bad. It means the Brain is starting to distrust the data in its own memory banks."
"Just how bad is that?"
"It's a one-way street, with a wiped mind at the end. There's no way to stop it."
"Thanx, Chanda." Strac was carrying it off, but beneath his battered dignity he looked determined and frightened. Verd thought he had reason. "Now you know everything," he told them. "Any comments?"
Parliss said, "If we're going star hunting we should stop on Pluto and shovel up an air reserve. It'd give us a few decades leeway."
"Uh huh. Anything else?"
Nobody answered.
"Well, that's that." Strac drew a deep breath, let it out slowly. "There's too much risk in searching the nearby stars. We'll have to make do with what we've got. Chanda, please order the Brain to set us down on the highest flat point in Earth's noon-equator region."
Chanda didn't move. Nobody moved.
"I knew it," Verd said, very quietly. His voice echoed in the greater quiet. The crew common room was like a museum exhibit. Everyone seemed afraid to move. Everyone but Jimm Farmer, who in careful silence was getting to his feet.
"Didn't you understand, Strac?" Verd paused and tried to make his voice persuasive. "The Brain put you in charge because you had more useful knowledge than the rest of us. You were supposed to find a new home for the human race."
They were all staring at Strac with varying degrees of horror. All but Jimm, who stood patiently waiting for the others to make up their minds.
"You were not supposed to give up and take us home to die!" Verd snapped. But Strac was ignoring him. Strac was glaring at them all in rage and contempt.
Parliss, normally Nordic-pale, was white as moonlight. "Strac, it's dead! Leave it! We can find another world—"
"You mewling litter of blind idiots."
Even Jimm Farmer looked shocked.
"Do you think I'd kill us all for a twinge of homesickness? Verd, you know better than that, even if nobody else does. They were on your back, twenty-seven adults and all their potential children, all waiting for you to tell them how to die. Then came the mutiny. Now you're free! They've all shifted to my back!"
His eyes left Verd's and ranged over his shocked, silent crew. "Idiots blindly taking orders from a damaged mechanical brain. Believing everything you're told. Lourdi!" he snapped. "What does 'one face' mean?"
Lourdi jumped. "It means the body doesn't rotate with respect to its primary."
"It doesn't mean the planet has only one face?"
"Wha-at?"
"The Earth has a back side to it."
"Sure!"
"What does it look like?"
"I don't know." Lourdi thought a moment. "The Brain knows. You remember you asked Chanda to make the Brain use the radar to check the back side. Then she couldn't get the Brain to show us the picture. We can't use the telescope because there's no light, not even infrared. It must be terribly cold.
Colder than Pluto."
"You don't know," said Strac. "But I do. We're going down. Chanda?"
"Tell us about it," said Jimm Farmer.
"No," said Verd.
He had not known that he was going to speak. He had known only that they had given Strac the responsibility without the power to match it. But Strac felt the responsibility; he carried it in his bent shoulders and bleak expression, in his deep, painful breathing, in his previous attempts to pass the buck to someone else. Why would Strac want to land on Earth? Verd didn't know. But Strac must know what he was doing. Otherwise he couldn't have moved at all.
Someone had to back him up.
"No." Verd spoke with all the authority he could muster. "Chanda, take her down."
"Tell us about it," Jimm repeated. The authority backing his flat, menacing tone was his own titanic physical strength.
"No. Shut up, Jimm. Or we'll let you make all the decisions from now on."
Jimin Farmer thought it over, suddenly laughed and sat down. Chanda picked up her stylus and began tapping on the speaker.
***
The Hogan's Goat lay on her side, nearly in the center of a wide, ancient asteroid crater. There, marring the rounded spine with its long stinger, was the ragged, heat-stained hole that marked a meteor strike.
There, along two-thirds of the length of her belly, was the gash a rock had made in the last seconds of the landing. And at the tail, forward of the braking spine, that static explosion of curved metal strips was where the photon drive had been torn free.
A small, fiercely bright Sun burned down from a black sky.
It had been a bad landing. Even at the start the Brain was a fraction of a second slow in adjusting ship's gravity, so that the floor had bucked queasily under them as they dropped. Then, when they were already falling toward the crater, Strac had suddenly added a new order. The photon drive had to be accessible after landing. Chanda had started tappingand the ship had flipped on its side.
The Hogan's Goat had never been built to land on its side. Many of the passengers sported bruises.
Avran Zooman had broken an arm. Without boosterspice the bone would be slow to heal.
A week of grinding labor was nearly over.
Only servomachinery now moved on the crater floor. From Verd's viewpoint most of the activity seemed to center around a gigantic silver tube which was aimed like a cannon at a point ten degrees above the horizon. The drive tube had been towed up against
the crater wall, and a mountain of piled, heat-fused earth now buried its lower end. Cables and fuel pipes joined it higher up.
"Hi! Is that you, Captain?"
Verd winced. "I'm on top of the crater wall," he said, because Strac couldn't locate him from the sound of his voice. The indeterminate voice had to be Strac. Only Strac would bellow into a suit radio. "And I'm not the captain."
Strac floated down beside him. "I thought I'd see the sights."
"Good. Have a seat."
"I find it strange to have to call you Verd," said the astrophysicist. "It used to be just 'Captain.' "
"Serves you right for staging a mutiny— Captain."
"I always knew my thirst for power would get me in trouble."
They watched as a tractor-mounted robot disconnected a fuel pipe from the drive, then rolled back. A moment later a wash of smoky flame burst from the pipe. The flame changed color and intensity a dozen times within a few seconds, then died as abruptly as it had begun. The robot waited for the white heat to leave the pipe, then rolled forward to reconnect it.
Verd asked, "Why are you so calm all of a sudden?"
"My job's over," Strac said with a shrug in his voice. "Now it's in the lap of Kdapt."
"Aren't you taking an awful chance?"
"Oh? You've guessed what I'm trying to do?"
"I hope it wasn't a secret. There's only one thing you could be doing, with the photon drive all laid out and braced like that. You're trying to spin the Earth."
"Why?" Strac baited him.
"You must be hoping there's air and water frozen on the dark side. But it seems like a thin chance. Why were you afraid to explain?"
"You put it that way, then ask why I didn't put it to a vote? Verd, would you have done what I did?"
"No. It's too risky."
"Suppose I tell you that I know the air and water is there. It has to be there. I can tell you what it looks like. It's a great shallow cap of ice, stratified out according to freezing points, with water ice on the bottom, then carbon dioxide, all the way up through a thick nitrogen layer to a few shifting pools of liquid helium. Surely you don't expect a one-face world to have a gaseous atmosphere? It would all freeze out on the night side. It has to!"