Revolt on Alpha C

by Robert Silverberg

  The men of space are a hardy race,

  They’re built of fire and stone

  They roam the stars and know no bars

  In space they find their home.

  It was the familiar, hundred-versed ballad that was the unofficial anthem of the spacemen. Larry joined the chorus in his clear baritone, and Boggs and Grennell followed.

  Heigh-ho! Hear the jets!

  Feel them blast, feel them rip, heigh-ho!

  Feel them blast!

  Feel them rip!

  Oh, heigh-ho!

  O’Hare took up the solo again.

  Oh, I was born on Alpha C

  Among the dinosaurs.

  I’m ten feet high and bold and free—

  But the song was interrupted. The visiphone crackled to life and the announcement filled the jet section.

  All hands back to quarters! Emergency! Emergency!

  In the middle of a note O Hare put down the guitar, leaped up, and ran to his jets; Boggs and Grennell did likewise. Larry suddenly realized he should have been in his cabin long ago, and headed for the corridor. He began to race down the hall, aware that he had broken a regulation.

  There came an abrupt twist and there was the shock of change-over as the Carden burst out of overdrive. Larry grew dizzy and sank to his knees. The corridor wall was racing around his head, coming closer and closer each time around. An immense bulkhead loomed up and grazed past his head.

  Larry fell flat, hardly conscious of what was happening, and began to crawl along the floor toward his cabin. Somewhere in the back of his mind he wondered what his father, resplendent in the uniform of a commander in the Space Patrol, would think if he saw his son creeping along the floor because he had disobeyed an instruction. Then the ship gave another lurch and he sank into unconsciousness.

  CHAPTER 3

  LARRY FELT A stinging slap against his cheek. He waved his arm vaguely, trying to drive away his attacker, and slowly returned to consciousness.

  “Stop that,” he mumbled, as another slap brought him further awake. He looked up to see O’Hare standing over him, preparing to bring down his hand once again.

  “Never mind, I’m awake,” he said, hastily scrambling to his feet and rubbing the side of his face. “What happened? Why are we back in regular drive?”

  “I don’t know, laddy,” O Hare said. He looked worried. “Reinhardt’s called a general meeting in the Central Room to discuss the situation, and we’re late.”

  “I was on my way back when we shifted over,” Larry said as they hurried down the corridor to the Central Room. “The twist caught me and I must have banged my head on a bulkhead.”

  He felt a sudden twinge of pain from the bruise on his head, reminding him of his carelessness in not returning to his cabin when the order came. Dad wouldn’t like this at all, not at all, he thought, remembering the way the sunlight glinted from the gold braid on his father’s uniform.

  They entered the Central Room, O’Hare first, Larry behind. The entire crew was ringed around the room, with Captain Reinhardt standing stiff and erect in the middle. He looked sternly at the two latecomers.

  “Now that the complete crew is here, we can begin. You two may file written excuses for your lateness.” They nodded. The veteran captain seemed to stare hard at Larry, in just the way his father would, and Larry felt like hiding behind O’Hare. The big tubemonkey met the captain’s stare impassively.

  “Now. Here’s what happened.” Captain Reinhardt spoke in short, hard, staccato bursts of sound. “There’s something in the jets. Some kind of obstruction. Could be anything—meteor, dirt accumulation, anything. Probably just a speck of dust that floated in and managed the million-to-one. Something has disturbed the balances of our drive mechanism and shut off the overdrive.”

  He looked around at the crew. “If we don’t get our drive fixed, it’s going to take us four years to reach Alpha C—sometime in 2367. And 2367’s a long time. We only have food for four weeks, not four years.

  “We can only reach the mechanism from outside the ship. O’Hare, it’s your department, so you’re going outside to clear it up. Get yourself into a spacesuit and start moving.”

  O’Hare said nothing, but saluted and left to get into his spacesuit. Larry watched his departure. Going out into space was risky—standing there on the skin of the ship, with the cold of space held away by the thin protection of the spacesuit—but it was absolutely necessary that O’Hare go outside. If the drive stayed off, they would run out of food years before they reached Alpha C. And finding a ship in space was harder than looking for a needle in a haystack, so there was little chance of a rescue.

  “It violates space rules to send a man outside alone,” Captain Reinhardt said. “Cadet Stark, your lateness to this meeting is construed as volunteering to accompany O’Hare. Get a suit on and join him.”

  Larry stared blankly for just a moment, but his control reasserted itself almost immediately. He saluted smartly and left, without saying a word.

  So this was space at first hand, Larry thought as he climbed through the airlock. His suit and helmet was a closed system, ventilated, protected from the biting cold of space. His one contact with humanity was the radio in his helmet. In one space-gloved hand he held a small gun; another was clamped to his suit at the hip. On his feet were magnetic shoes.

  O’Hare was already out there, moving slowly along the ship to the jet section. Larry followed, carefully placing his feet on the steel walking tracks. The magnet clicked and he knew he was held fast. He switched on his helmet-radio with a movement of his chin.

  “Pat! Wait for me.”

  O’Hare twisted around till he could see the face in the space helmet.

  “Larry! You too?”

  “Reinhardt sent me. Thought you’d get lonesome.”

  O’Hare’s curses were vivid. “He’s thought nothing of sending me out here alone before. It’s just that he wanted to give you a bad time of it for coming late to his useless meeting.” O’Hare turned and continued moving. “But what would you expect from him? Or any Patrol officer? They’re all alike—steel bellies.”

  He gestured with his hand. “Let’s go, laddy. You’re safe enough out here. Let’s get this over with. I’d like to flay that captain’s duralumin hide!”

  “Don’t talk like that, Pat,” Larry said. “He is the captain, whether you like him or not.”

  “Sorry, lad. I forget you’re from the Academy. But you’ll learn, someday, I hope. Come on—let’s move.

  Larry puzzled over what O’Hare had said—“you’ll learn, someday.” What would he learn? Not to obey the captain? Impossible. The captain had to be obeyed; otherwise how would society stay preserved? If every man were his own captain there would never be any tubemonkeys.

  He looked around at his view. Space was naked before him. The ship seemed not to move at all; it hung motionless, floating in the void. All around there was blackness, broken by dots of light scattered through and around.

  There was no danger of falling off the hull, Larry knew, but still he was just a bit nervous. Even if the magnetic shoes failed to hold, Newton’s Laws of Motion assured him that he’d continue to drift along in the same direction and at the same speed as the ship. But, all the same, he’d rather do his space traveling within the ship, he decided.

  That was what the small gun was for. It made him a miniature rocket of his own. A spaceship moves by propelling jets; the jets force fuel out, and the balancing reaction forces the ship forward. For every action, an equal and opposite reaction. The same law that provides for the kickback of a revolver allows for the motion of a spaceship. And so with Larry’s gun. In case he started to drift away from the ship, a bullet carefully fired would aim his drift back toward the ship.

  It was O’Hare’s whisper over the helmet-radio that brought him back and made him realize that he had been standing on the skin of the ship as if frozen, staring out into space. Psst, laddy. Work to do. Let’s go!” O’Hare’s deep voice was co
ld and metallic over the helmet-radio.

  Slowly Larry worked his way across the ship’s skin, following the tracks that led to the rear jets. O’Hare was up ahead, leading the way.

  Larry walked gingerly along the steel tracks. The fact that he was Larry Stark, a twenty-year-old human being, had dropped away from him completely; he was Thor, he was Zeus, he was some Olympian god up here in the heavens, walking across his chariot. All around was his domain; here, in the blackness—

  A bright flash and an amazed roar snapped him back to reality for the second time. In his helmet he heard an amazing string of curses.

  “May the devil plague this thing! Going off in my hand! Help me, Larry! Help!”

  O’Hare was drifting slowly away from the ship! Larry realized quickly what had happened. Somehow O’Hare’s gun had gone off in his hand and had blasted him loose from the walking-tracks. The reaction, Newton’s inevitable law, had set him going on a trajectory aimed away from the ship.

  O’Hare was moving slowly, so slowly, drifting just overhead. Larry strained up, trying to reach the massive boot that hung above him, but it was just a few inches from his grasp and drawing further away. A mixture of curses and prayers filled his ears.

  Larry abandoned his attempt at grabbing O’Hare, for he knew that if should lose his own footing on the outside of the ship he would drift off in the same direction as the big Irishman.

  “Use your gun, Pat!”

  O’Hare stopped cursing for a moment. ‘That’s just the trouble,” he said. “I don’t have it. And this old-fashioned suit doesn’t have an extra like yours.”

  O’Hare’s own gun was floating off into space in the opposite direction. The redhead had dropped it in his amazement when it fired, and it had kicked itself out into space. It was headed back toward Earth, while O’Hare gradually drifted out to the stars.

  He was a hundred feet away when Larry thought of the gun he held clutched in his space glove. O’Hare was moving slowly, swimming in space, unable to direct himself back to the ship which steadily moved farther and farther away.

  His bull voice continued to crackle in Larry’s receiver. “I guess it’s fitting for an O’Hare to be dying out here in the stars,” the giant was saying. “Better be it here than in bed like an old man, eh, laddy?”

  “Just a minute, O’Hare,” Larry called into his radio’s transmitter. “I’ve got another gun here, you know.” What? Saints be blessed, lad, can ye throw it straight? If ye can, fling it!”

  “I’ll try, Pat.” Larry knew it would be tough. Not only did the throw have to be accurate—right at O’Hare—but he had to judge the velocity. If he threw too slowly, the gun would never catch up with O’Hare, and he would drift out forever toward the stars with his means of safety trailing just a few yards behind him. Or, if he threw too hard, it might swiftly fly past O’Hare before he could catch it.

  It was the only thing Larry could do, though. He had been a pretty good pitcher, back in the days before he had traded his baseball uniform for his Space Cadet uniform.

  He took careful aim, drew back his arm, and sent the gun flying out into space.

  Tiny, dark, almost invisible, it drifted toward O’Hare. If only the aim were true enough, Larry hoped. The gun followed the inflexible path imparted to it by Larry’s throw, passed an inch or two beyond O’Hare’s desperate grasp, and continued on its way through space.

  O’Hare watched it go, without ceasing his running chatter.

  “If I don’t get back, lad, tell Grennell to give you my guitar, now that you know how to use it. And don’t let that rascal be dragging you into any card games, either! And someday, Larry, when you’re a captain and wear the Grays and can order people around like slaves, think of the tubemonkeys, and a big stupid redheaded Irishman who—”

  “Quiet. There’s one other thing I can do.” And before he had a chance to reflect on what he was doing, he drew the extra gun from its clamp and fired it, throwing himself out into space in the general direction of O’Hare.

  O’Hare gave a roar of surprise and anger, but Larry hardly noticed. Moving in space was something like swimming in ice, he found; space seemed frozen around him. But as he continued to move, he decided it was more like swimming in molasses. The ship lay behind him, an alarming distance away. The silver hull gleamed dully in the dark, Above and below him there was nothing but darkness sprinkled with bright hard stars.

  Now he was approaching O’Hare. He saw he was going to miss the big man by almost ten degrees, and fired again to correct the error. The explosion of the gun made no sound, since there was no atmosphere to carry the sound waves, but the bright flash seemed to light up the galaxy.

  The shot had the required effect. He floated straight at the waiting O’Hare, who extended one powerful arm and gathered him in.

  “You fired two shots, didn’t you?”

  “Right.”

  “We have two left. They’d better be good ones. Give me the gun.”

  Larry very carefully handed the gun to O’Hare, who took it as if he were handling a soap bubble and secured it in his hand, completely hiding it in his great paw. Deftly he fired once, aiming them back, and slowly and surely they drifted back toward the Carden.

  Moving in slow motion, they approached the ship and hovered some fifteen feet above it. There was not a sound in the universe; they might have been frozen in some cosmic photograph instead of moving and breathing and struggling. They stayed fifteen feet above the ship.

  “No good,” O’Hare said. “The ship’s carrying us along now, and we won’t get any closer. Here—hold on to me with your arms outstretched. Feet toward the ship. That’s it.”

  O’Hare took both Larry’s hands in one of his and extended him toward the ship feet-first. Then he fired the final shot.

  They moved forward till Larry’s feet hung in space just a few inches from the ship. Larry stretched until one shoe touched the walking strips and caught with a satisfying click. He reached up and hauled O’Hare down until he, too, was safely anchored to the skin of the ship.

  They looked at each other. Through his helmet Larry saw that O’Hare’s usually florid face had turned pale, and his breath was coming thick and heavy; Larry heard it in his radio.

  Suddenly Larry felt very weak, very tired. He wanted to be back inside, safe and snug.

  O’Hare clapped Larry on the back with a space-gloved hand. “Thanks, lad,” he said. Even with the distortion of the helmet-radio Larry felt the gratitude flowing from the big tubemonkey.

  They said nothing else, but gingerly edged along the ship to the jets in ‘silence. The problem facing them seemed insignificant after the excitement just past, but Larry realized that the fate of the entire crew hung on O’Hare for the moment. If he couldn’t perform the necessary repairs, perhaps no one could. And the Carden would drift on and on, slowly and steadily, while its crew starved within.

  They reached the entrance to the tubes, and O’Hare paused.

  “Wait here, Larry. I’ll take care of it myself.”

  The big man disappeared around the curve and into the maw of the jets like a king striding to his throne room. Larry stood at the entrance and tried to peer into the darkness.

  The stars all around were sharp points of hard light. There was no atmosphere, no dust to make them twinkle. Larry glanced up as if to stare at them as their conqueror; space had tried to get him, but he had overcome it.

  After what must have been ten minutes, O’Hare’s helmet loomed up over the lip of the tube, and the rest of him followed.

  “I’ve fixed the trouble,” O’Hare said. “Freakiest accident I’ve ever seen. We can go back inside now, Spaceman Stark.”

  CHAPTER 4

  LARRY SHED HIS heroism as he entered the Carden. There were no heroes in the Patrol, only spacemen. Spacemen’s ethics held that such a rescue was mere line-of-duty operation, not worth discussing. So Larry proceeded to forget the matter had even taken place, though he knew O’Hare would always remember.
<
br />   The overdrive went back on without snag—O’Hare had done his job well—and the Carden resumed its journey toward Alpha Centauri at faster-than-light velocity.

  Life aboard the Carden swung back to the familiar routine. Classes—by now, he thought, he could navigate a spaceship by himself—and chores, and exams, and visits to the jet section, and long arguments with Harl.

  O’Hare had taught Larry how to play the electronic guitar, and for hours during free time the two of them would sing together, would sing the plaintive ballads and roaring tunes developed during the two and a half centuries of space travel.

  Occasionally O’Hare would sink into a sentimental mood and sing of Earth, its hills and lakes, its towering cities and its pretty girls. But those songs were few and far between: for the most part he sang of space, of the bold pioneers who left their corpses on the Moon in the twentieth century.

  Now and then Larry would stop to think of the planet he had left behind. Not often, for it was hard to wrench himself from space. But he would look back at his home town, and at his friends and playmates, and wonder how he had been able to stand Earthbound life so long. For this, this was the real life, out here next to the stars!

  They moved back out of overdrive on schedule the next day.

  “We ought to hit the monitor station any minute,” Harl said. “Shouldn’t you be up front listening?”

  “The captain said it wasn’t necessary,” Larry replied, looking up from his book. “We won’t be in range of the monitor station for more than an hour”—he looked at his wristchron—“and I’ll be back on duty by then.”

  The monitor station was an artificial satellite revolving around the sun Alpha Centauri. All spaceships bound for any of the planets of Alpha C checked in with the monitor station before landing.

  Harl reached over and turned on his recorder. The sad, weary sounds of his favorite composition, Elsberry’s “Dance by the Martian Sea,” flowed into the room.