by John Wyndham
‘And what can I do for you, Mrs Morgan?’
Alice’s fingers twined and intertwined. She watched them doing it. She looked up, opened her mouth to speak, closed it again.
‘It isn’t very easy,’ she murmured apologetically.
Trying to help her, he said:
‘No need to be nervous, Mrs Morgan. Just tell me what’s on your mind. Has one of them been – bothering you?’
She shook her head.
‘Oh, no, Captain Winters. It’s nothing like that at all.’
‘What is it, then?’
‘It’s – it’s the rations, Captain. I’m not getting enough food.’
The kindly concern froze out of his face.
‘None of us is,’ he told her, shortly.
‘I know,’ she said, hurriedly. ‘I know, but –’
‘But what?’ he inquired in a chill tone.
She drew a breath.
‘There’s the man who died yesterday. Bowman. I thought if I could have his rations –’
The sentence trailed away as she saw the expression on the Captain’s face.
He was not acting. He was feeling just as shocked as he looked. Of all the impudent suggestions that ever had come his way, none had astounded him more. He gazed dumbfounded at the source of the outrageous proposition. Her eyes met his, but, oddly, with less timidity than before. There was no sign of shame in them.
‘I’ve got to have more food,’ she said, intensely.
Captain Winters’ anger mounted.
‘So you thought you’d just snatch a dead man’s share as well as your own! I’d better not tell you in words just where I class that suggestion, young woman. But you can understand this: we share, and we share equally. What Bowman’s death means to us is that we can keep on having the same ration for a little longer – that, and only that. And now I think you had better go.’
But Alice Morgan made no move to go. She sat there with her lips pressed together, her eyes a little narrowed, quite still save that her hands trembled. Even through his indignation the Captain felt surprise, as though he had watched a hearth cat suddenly become a hunter. She said stubbornly:
‘I haven’t asked for any privilege until now, Captain. I wouldn’t ask you now if it weren’t absolutely necessary. But that man’s death gives us a margin now. And I must have more food.’
The Captain controlled himself with an effort.
‘Bowman’s death has not given us a margin, or a windfall – all it has done is to extend by a day or two the chance of our survival. Do you think that every one of us doesn’t ache just as much as you do for more food? In all my considerable experience of effrontery –’
She raised her thin hand to stop him. The hardness of her eyes made him wonder why he had ever thought her timid.
‘Captain. Look at me!’ she said, in a harsh tone.
He looked. Presently his expression of anger faded into shocked astonishment. A faint tinge of pink stole into her pale cheeks.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You see, you’ve got to give me more food. My baby must have the chance to live.’
The Captain continued to stare at her as if mesmerized. Presently he shut his eyes, and passed his hand over his brow.
‘God in heaven. This is terrible,’ he murmured.
Alice Morgan said seriously, as if she had already considered that very point:
‘No. It isn’t terrible – not if my baby lives.’ He looked at her helplessly, without speaking. She went on:
‘It wouldn’t be robbing anyone, you see. Bowman doesn’t need his rations any more – but my baby does. It’s quite simple, really.’ She looked questioningly at the Captain. He had no comment ready. She continued: ‘So you couldn’t call it unfair. After all, I’m two people now, really, aren’t I? I need more food. If you don’t let me have it you will be murdering my baby. So you must … must … My baby has got to live – he’s got to …’
When she had gone Captain Winters mopped his forehead, unlocked his private drawer, and took out one of his carefully hoarded bottles of whisky. He had the self-restraint to take only a small pull on the drinking-tube and then put it back. It revived him a little, but his eyes were still shocked and worried.
Would it not have been kinder in the end to tell the woman that her baby had no chance at all of being born? That would have been honest; but he doubted whether the coiner of the phrase about honesty being the best policy had known a great deal about group-morale. Had he told her that, it would have been impossible to avoid telling her why, and once she knew why it would have been impossible for her not to confide it, if only to her husband. And then it would be too late.
The Captain opened the top drawer, and regarded the pistol within. There was always that. He was tempted to take hold of it now and use it. There wasn’t much use in playing the silly game out. Sooner or later it would have to come to that, anyway.
He frowned at it, hesitating. Then he put out his right hand and gave the thing a flip with his finger, sending it floating to the back of the drawer, out of sight. He closed the drawer. Not yet …
But perhaps he had better begin to carry it soon. So far, his authority had held. There had been nothing worse than safety-valve grumbling. But a time would come when he was going to need the pistol either for them or for himself.
If they should begin to suspect that the encouraging bulletins that he pinned up on the board from time to time were fakes: if they should somehow find out that the rescue ship which they believed to be hurtling through space towards them had not, in fact, even yet been able to take off from Earth – that was when hell would start breaking loose.
It might be safer if there were to be an accident with the radio equipment before long …
‘Taken your time, haven’t you?’ Captain Winters asked. He spoke shortly because he was irritable, not because it mattered in the least how long anyone took over anything now.
The Navigating Officer made no reply. His boots clicked across the floor. A key and an identity bracelet drifted towards the Captain, an inch or so above the surface of his desk. He put out a hand to check them.
‘I –’ he began. Then he caught sight of the other’s face. ‘Good God, man, what’s the matter with you?’
He felt some compunction. He wanted Bowman’s identity bracelet for the record, but there had been no real need to send Carter for it. A man who had died Bowman’s death would be a piteous sight. That was why they had left him still in his spacesuit instead of undressing him. All the same, he had thought that Carter was tougher stuff. He brought out a bottle. The last bottle.
‘Better have a shot of this,’ he said.
The navigator did, and put his head in his hands. The Captain carefully rescued the bottle from its mid-air drift, and put it away. Presently the Navigating Officer said, without looking up:
‘I’m sorry, sir.’
‘That’s okay, Carter. Nasty job. Should have done it myself.’
The other shuddered slightly. A minute passed in silence while he got a grip on himself. Then he looked up and met the Captain’s eyes.
‘It – it wasn’t just that, sir.’
The Captain looked puzzled.
‘How do you mean?’ he asked.
The officer’s lips trembled. He did not form his words properly, and he stammered.
‘Pull yourself together. What are you trying to say?’ The Captain spoke sharply to stiffen him.
Carter jerked his head slightly. His lips stopped trembling.
‘He – he –’ he floundered; then he tried again, in a rush. ‘He – hasn’t any legs, sir.’
‘Who? What is this? You mean Bowman hasn’t any legs?’
‘Y – yes, sir.’
‘Nonsense, man. I was there when he was brought in. So were you. He had legs, all right.’
‘Yes, sir. He did have legs then – but he hasn’t now!’
The Captain sat very still. For some seconds there was no sound in the control-room but the click
ing of the chronometer. Then he spoke with difficulty, getting no further than two words:
‘You mean – ?’
‘What else could it be, sir?’
‘God in heaven!’ gasped the Captain.
He sat staring with eyes that had taken on the horror that lay in the other man’s …
Two men moved silently, with socks over their magnetic soles. They stopped opposite the door of one of the refrigeration compartments. One of them produced a slender key. He slipped it into the lock, felt delicately with it among the wards for a moment, and then turned it with a click. As the door swung open a pistol fired twice from within the refrigerator. The man who was pulling the door sagged at the knees, and hung in mid-air.
The other man was still behind the half-opened door. He snatched a pistol from his pocket and slid it swiftly round the corner of the door, pointing into the refrigerator. He pulled the trigger twice.
A figure in a spacesuit launched itself out of the refrigerator, sailing uncannily across the room. The other man shot at it as it swept past him. The spacesuited figure collided with the opposite wall, recoiled slightly, and hung there. Before it could turn and use the pistol in its hand, the other man fired again. The figure jerked, and floated back against the wall. The man kept his pistol trained, but the spacesuit swayed there, flaccid and inert.
The door by which the men had entered opened with a sudden clang. The Navigating Officer on the threshold did not hesitate. He fired slightly after the other, but he kept on firing …
When his pistol was empty the man in front of him swayed queerly, anchored by his boots; there was no other movement in him. The Navigating Officer put out a hand and steadied himself by the doorframe. Then, slowly and painfully, he made his way across to the figure in the space-suit. There were gashes in the suit. He managed to unlock the helmet and pull it away.
The Captain’s face looked somewhat greyer than undernourishment had made it. His eyes opened slowly. He said in a whisper:
‘Your job now, Carter. Good luck!’
The Navigating Officer tried to answer, but there were no words, only a bubbling of blood in his throat. His hands relaxed. There was a dark stain still spreading on his uniform. Presently his body hung listlessly swaying beside his Captain’s.
‘I figured they were going to last a lot longer than this,’ said the small man with the sandy moustache.
The man with the drawl looked at him steadily.
‘Oh, you did, did you? And do you reckon your figuring’s reliable?’
The smaller man shifted awkwardly. He ran the tip of his tongue along his lips.
‘Well, there was Bowman. Then those four. Then the two that died. That’s seven.’
‘Sure. That’s seven. Well?’ inquired the big man softly. He was not as big as he had been, but he still had a large frame. Under his intent regard the emaciated small man seemed to shrivel a little more.
‘Er – nothing. Maybe my figuring was kind of hopeful,’ he said.
‘Maybe. My advice to you is to quit figuring and keep on hoping. Huh?’
The small man wilted. ‘Er – yes. I guess so.’
The big man looked round the living-room, counting heads.
‘Okay. Let’s start,’ he said.
A silence fell on the rest. They gazed at him with uneasy fascination. They fidgeted. One or two nibbled at their fingernails. The big man leaned forward. He put a space-helmet, inverted, on the table. In his customary leisurely fashion he said:
‘We shall draw for it. Each of us will take a paper and hold it up unopened until I give the word. Unopened. Got that?’
They nodded. Every eye was fixed intently upon his face.
‘Good. Now one of those pieces of paper in the helmet is marked with a cross. Ray, I want you to count the pieces there and make sure that there are nine –’
‘Eight!’ said Alice Morgan’s voice sharply.
All the heads turned towards her as if pulled by strings. The faces looked startled, as though the owners might have heard a turtle-dove roar. Alice sat embarrassed under the combined gaze, but she held herself steady and her mouth was set in a straight line. The man in charge of the proceedings studied her.
‘Well, well,’ he drawled. ‘So you don’t want to take a hand in our little game!’
‘No,’ said Alice.
‘You’ve shared equally with us so far – but now we have reached this regrettable stage you don’t want to?’
‘No,’ agreed Alice again.
He raised his eyebrows.
‘You are appealing to our chivalry, perhaps?’
‘No,’ said Alice once more. ‘I’m denying the equity of what you call your game. The one who draws the cross dies – isn’t that the plan?’
‘Pro bono publico,’ said the big man. ‘Deplorable, of course, but unfortunately necessary.’
‘But if I draw it, two must die. Do you call that equitable?’ Alice asked.
The group looked taken aback. Alice waited.
The big man fumbled it. For once he was at a loss.
‘Well,’ said Alice, ‘isn’t that so?’
One of the others broke the silence to observe: ‘The question of the exact stage when the personality, the soul of the individual, takes form is still highly debatable. Some have held that until there is separate existence –’
The drawling voice of the big man cut him short. ‘I think we can leave that point to the theologians, Sam. This is more in the Wisdom of Solomon class. The point would seem to be that Mrs Morgan claims exemption on account of her condition.’
‘My baby has a right to live,’ Alice said doggedly.
‘We all have a right to live. We all want to live,’ someone put in.
‘Why should you – ?’ another began; but the drawling voice dominated again:
‘Very well, gentlemen. Let us be formal. Let us be democratic. We will vote on it. The question is put: do you consider Mrs Morgan’s claim to be valid – or should she take her chance with the rest of us? Those in –’
‘Just a minute,’ said Alice, in a firmer voice than any of them had heard her use. ‘Before you start voting on that you’d better listen to me a bit.’ She looked round, making sure she had the attention of all of them. She had; and their astonishment as well.
‘Now the first thing is that I am a lot more important than any of you,’ she told them simply. ‘No, you needn’t smile. I am – and I’ll tell you why.
‘Before the radio broke down –’
‘Before the Captain wrecked it, you mean,’ someone corrected her.
‘Well, before it became useless,’ she compromised. ‘Captain Winters was in regular touch with home. He gave them news of us. The news that the Press wanted most was about me. Women, particularly women in unusual situations, are always news. He told me I was in the headlines: GIRL-WIFE IN DOOM ROCKET, WOMAN’S SPACE WRECK ORDEAL, that sort of thing. And if you haven’t forgotten how newspapers look, you can imagine the leads, too: “Trapped in their living space tomb, a girl and fifteen men now wheel helplessly around the planet Mars …”
‘All of you are just men – hulks, like the ship, I am a woman, therefore my position is romantic, so I am young, glamorous, beautiful …’ Her thin face showed for a moment the trace of a wry smile. ‘I am a heroine …’
She paused, letting the idea sink in. Then she went on:
‘I was a heroine even before Captain Winters told them that I was pregnant. But after that I became a phenomenon. There were demands for interviews, I wrote one, and Captain Winters transmitted it for me. There have been interviews with my parents and my friends, anyone who knew me. And now an enormous number of people know a great deal about me. They are intensely interested in me. They are even more interested in my baby – which is likely to be the first baby ever born in a spaceship …
‘Now do you begin to see? You have a fine tale ready. Bowman, my husband, Captain Winters, and the rest were heroically struggling to repair the port laterals.
There was an explosion. It blew them all away out into space.
‘You may get away with that. But if there is no trace of me and my baby – or of our bodies – then what are you going to say? How will you explain that?’
She looked round the faces again.
‘Well, what are you going to say? That I, too, was outside repairing the port laterals? That I committed suicide by shooting myself out into space with a rocket?
‘Just think it over. The whole world’s press is wanting to know about me – with all the details. It’ll have to be a mighty good story to stand up to that. And if it doesn’t stand up – well, the rescue won’t have done you much good.
‘You’ll not have a chance in hell. You’ll hang, or you’ll fry, every one of you – unless it happens they lynch you first …’
There was silence in the room as she finished speaking. Most of the faces showed the astonishment of men ferociously attacked by a Pekinese, and at a loss for suitable comment.
The big man sat sunk in reflection for a minute or more. Then he looked up, rubbing the stubble on his sharp-boned chin thoughtfully. He glanced round the others and then let his eyes rest on Alice. For a moment there was a twitch at the corner of his mouth.
‘Madam,’ he drawled, ‘you are probably a great loss to the legal profession.’ He turned away. ‘We shall have to reconsider this matter before our next meeting. But, for the present, Ray, eight pieces of paper as the lady said …’
‘It’s her!’ said the Second, over the Skipper’s shoulder.
The Skipper moved irritably. ‘Of course it’s her. What else’d you expect to find whirling through space like a sozzled owl?’ He studied the screen for a moment. ‘Not a sign. Every port covered.’
‘Do you think there’s a chance, Skipper?’
‘What, after all this time! No, Tommy, not a ghost of it. We’re – just the morticians, I guess.’
‘How’ll we get aboard her, Skip?’
The Skipper watched the gyrations of the Falcon with a calculating eye.
‘Well, there aren’t any rules, but I reckon if we can get a cable on her we might be able to play her gently, like a big fish. It’ll be tricky, though.’