(4/15) The Golden Age of Science Fiction Volume IV: An Anthology of 50 Short Stories

by Various

  "My God," the Captain said finally. "Why did it happen? Why did it have to happen to the Glory of the Galaxy?"

  "What are you going to do, sir?"

  "I can't do anything. I won't take the responsibility. Have the radioman contact the Hub at once."

  "Yes, sir."

  The Glory of the Galaxy, the SOS ship heading on collision course with the sun, was making its maiden run from the assembly satellites of Earth across the inner solar system via the perihelion passage which would bring it within twenty-odd million miles of the sun, to Mars which now was on the opposite side of Sol from Earth. Aboard the gleaming new ship was the President of the Galactic Federation and his entire cabinet.

  * * * * *

  The Fomalhautian freighter's emergency message was received at the Hub of the Galaxy within moments after it had been sent, although the normal space distance was in the neighborhood of one hundred thousand light years. The message was bounced--in amazingly quick time--from office to office at the hub, cutting through the usual red tape because of its top priority. And--since none of the normal agencies at the Hub could handle it--the message finally arrived at an office which very rarely received official messages of any kind. This was the one unofficial, extra-legal office at the Hub of the Galaxy. Lacking official function, the office had no technical existence and was not to be found in any Directory of the Hub. At the moment, two young men were seated inside. Their sole job was to maintain liaison with a man whose very existence was doubted by most of the human inhabitants of the Galaxy but whose importance could not be measured by mere human standards in those early days when the Galactic League was becoming the Galactic Federation.

  The name of the man with whom they maintained contact was Johnny Mayhem.

  "Did you read it?" the blond man asked.

  "I read it."

  "If it got down here, that means they can't handle it anywhere else."

  "Of course they can't. What the hell could normal slobs like them or like us do about it?"

  "Nothing, I guess. But wait a minute! You don't mean you're going to send Mayhem, without asking him, without telling--"

  "We can't ask him now, can we?"

  "Johnny Mayhem's elan is at the moment speeding from Canopus to Deneb, where on the fourth planet of the Denebian system a dead body is waiting for him in cold storage. The turnover from League to Federation status of the Denebian system is causing trouble in Deneb City, so Mayhem--"

  "Deneb City will probably survive without Mayhem. Well, won't it?"

  "I guess so, but--"

  "I know. The deal is we're supposed to tell Mayhem where he's going and what he can expect. The deal also is, every inhabited world has a body waiting for his elan in cold storage. But don't you think if we could talk to Mayhem now--"

  "It isn't possible. He's in transit."

  "Don't you think if we could talk to him now he would agree to board the Glory of the Galaxy?"

  "How should I know? I'm not Johnny Mayhem."

  "If he doesn't board her, it's certain death for all of them."

  "And if he does board her, what the hell can he do about it? Besides, there isn't any dead body awaiting his elan on that ship or any ship. He wouldn't make a very efficacious ghost."

  "But there are live people. Scores of them. Mayhem's elan is quite capable of possessing a living host."

  "Sure. Theoretically it is. But damn it all, what would the results be? We've never tried it. It's liable to damage Mayhem. As for the host--"

  "The host might die. I know it. But he'll die anyway. The whole shipload of them is heading on collision course for the sun."

  "Does the SOS say why?"

  "No. Maybe Mayhem can find out and do something about it."

  * * * * *

  "Yeah, maybe. That's a hell of a way to risk the life of the most important man in the Galaxy. Because if Mayhem boards that ship and can't do anything about it, he'll die with the rest of them."

  "Why? We could always pluck his elan out again."

  "If he were inhabiting a dead one. In a live body, I don't think so. The attraction would be stronger. There would be forces of cohesion--"

  "That's true. Still, Mayhem's our only hope."

  "I'll admit it's a job for Mayhem, but he's too important."

  "Is he? Don't be a fool. What, actually, is Johnny Mayhem's importance? His importance lies in the very fact that he is expendable. His life--for the furtherance of the new Galactic Federation."

  "But--"

  "And the President is aboard that ship. Maybe he can't do as much for the Galaxy in the long run as Mayhem can, but don't you see, man, he's a figurehead. Right now he's the most important man in the Galaxy, and if we could talk to him I'm sure Mayhem would agree. Mayhem would want to board that ship."

  "It's funny, we've been working with Mayhem all these years and we never even met the guy."

  "Would you know him if you saw him?"

  "Umm-mm, I guess not. Do you think we really can halt his elan in subspace and divert it over to the Glory of the Galaxy?"

  "I take it you're beginning to see things my way. And the answer to your question is yes."

  "Poor Mayhem. You know, I actually feel sorry for the guy. He's had more adventures than anyone since Homer wrote the Odyssey and there won't ever be any rest for him."

  "Stop feeling sorry for him and start hoping he succeeds."

  "Yeah."

  "And let's see about getting a bead on his elan."

  The two young men walked to a tri-dim chart which took up much of the room. One of them touched a button and blue light glowed within the chart, pulsing brightly and sharply where space-sectors intersected.

  "He's in C-17 now," one of the men said as a gleaming whiteness was suddenly superimposed at a single point on the blue.

  "Can you bead him?"

  "I think so. But I still feel sorry for Mayhem. He's expecting to wake up in a cold-storage corpse on Deneb IV but instead he'll come to in a living body aboard a spaceship on collision course for the sun."

  "Just hope he--"

  "I know. Succeeds. I don't even want to think of the possibility he might fail."

  In seconds, the gleaming white dot crawled across the surface of the tri-dim chart from sector C-17 to sector S-1.

  * * * * *

  The Glory of the Galaxy was now nineteen million miles out from the sun and rushing through space at a hundred miles per second, normal space drive. The Glory of the Galaxy thus moved a million miles closer to fiery destruction every three hours--but since the sun's gravitational force had to be added to that speed, the ship was slated to plunge into the sun's corona in little more than twenty-four hours.

  Since the ship's refrigeration units would function perfectly until the outer hull reached a temperature of eleven hundred degrees Fahrenheit, none of its passengers knew that anything was wrong. Even the members of the crew went through all the normal motions. Only the Glory of the Galaxy's officers in their bright new uniforms and gold braid knew the grim truth of what awaited the gleaming two-thousand ton spaceship less than twenty-four hours away at the exact center of its perihelion passage.

  Something--unidentified as yet--in all the thousands of intricate things that could go wrong on a spaceship, particularly a new one making its maiden voyage, had gone wrong. The officers were checking their catalogues and their various areas of watch meticulously--and not because their own lives were at stake. In spaceflight, your own life always is at stake. There are too many imponderables: you are, to a certain degree, expendable. The commissioned contingent aboard the Glory of the Galaxy was a dedicated group, hand-picked from all the officers in the solar system.

  * * * * *

  But they could find nothing. And do nothing.

  Within a day, their lives along with the lives of the enlisted men aboard the Glory of the Galaxy and the passengers on its maiden run, would be snuffed out in a brilliant burst of solar heat.

  And the President of the Galactic Fe
deration would die because some unknown factor had locked the controls of the spaceship, making it impossible to turn or use forward rockets against the gravitational pull of the sun.

  Nineteen million miles. In normal space, a considerable distance. A hundred miles a second--a very considerable normal space speed. Increasing....

  * * * * *

  Ever since they had left Earth's assembly satellites, Sheila Kelly had seen a lot of a Secret Serviceman named Larry Grange, who was a member of the President's corps of bodyguards. She liked Larry, although there was nothing serious in their relationship. He was handsome and charming and she was naturally flattered with his attentions. Still, although he was older than Sheila, she sensed that he was a boy rather than a man and had the odd feeling that, faced with a real crisis, he would confirm this tragically.

  It was night aboard the Glory of the Galaxy. Which was to say the blue-green night lights had replaced the white day lights in the companionways and public rooms of the spaceship, since its ports were sealed against the fierce glare of the sun. It was hard to believe, Sheila thought, that they were only nineteen million miles from the sun. Everything was so cool--so comfortably air-conditioned....

  She met Larry in the Sunside Lounge, a cabaret as nice as any terran nightclub she had ever seen. There were stylistic Zodiac drawings on the walls and blue-mirrored columns supporting the roof. Like everything else aboard the Glory of the Galaxy, the Sunside Lounge hardly seemed to belong on a spaceship. For Sheila Kelly, though--herself a third secretary with the department of Galactic Economy--it was all very thrilling.

  "Hello, Larry," she said as the Secret Serviceman joined her at their table. He was a tall young man in his late twenties with crewcut blond hair; but he sat down heavily now and did not offer Sheila his usual smile.

  "Why, what on earth is the matter?" Sheila asked him.

  "Nothing. I need a drink, that's all."

  The drinks came. Larry gulped his and ordered another. His complete silence baffled Sheila, who finally said:

  "Surely it isn't anything I did."

  "You? Don't be silly."

  "Well! After the way you said that I don't know if I should be glad or not."

  "Just forget it. I'm sorry, kid. I--" He reached out and touched her hand. His own hand was damp and cold.

  "Going to tell me, Larry?"

  "Listen. What's a guy supposed to do if he overhears something he's not supposed to overhear, and--"

  "How should I know unless you tell me what you overheard? It is you you're talking about, isn't it?"

  "Yeah. I was going off duty, walking by officer quarters and ... oh, forget it. I better not tell you."

  "I'm a good listener, Larry."

  "Look, Irish. You're a good anything--and that's the truth. You have looks and you have brains and I have a hunch through all that Emerald Isle sauciness you have a heart too. But--"

  "But you don't want to tell me."

  "It isn't I don't want to, but no one's supposed to know, not even the President."

  "You sure make it sound mysterious."

  "Just the officers. Oh, hell. I don't know. What good would it do if I told you?"

  "I guess you'd just get it off your chest, that's all."

  "I can't tell anyone official, Sheila. I'd have my head handed to me. But I've got to think and I've got to tell someone. I'll go crazy, just knowing and not doing anything."

  "It's important, isn't it?"

  * * * * *

  Larry downed another drink quickly. It was his fourth and Sheila had never seen him take more than three or four in the course of a whole evening. "You're damned right it's important." Larry leaned forward across the postage-stamp table. A liquor-haze clouded his eyes as he said: "It's so important that unless someone does something about it, we'll all be dead inside of twenty-four hours. Only trouble is, there isn't anything anyone can do about it."

  "Larry--you're a little drunk."

  "I know it. I know I am. I want to be a lot drunker. What the hell can a guy do?"

  "What do you know, Larry? What have you heard?"

  "I know they have the President of the Galactic Federation aboard this ship and that he ought to be told the truth."

  "No. I mean--"

  "They sent out an SOS, kid. Controls are locked. Lifeboats don't have enough power to get us out of the sun's gravitational pull. We're all going to roast, I tell you!"

  Sheila felt her heart throb wildly. Even though he was well on the way to being thoroughly drunk, Larry was telling the truth. Instinctively, she knew that--was certain of it. "What are you going to do?" she said.

  He shrugged. "I guess because I can't do a damned thing I'm going to get good and drunk. That's what I'm going to do. Or maybe--who the hell knows?--maybe in one minute I'm going to jump up on this table and tell everyone what I overheard. Maybe I ought to do that, huh?"

  "Larry, Larry--if it's as bad as you say, maybe you ought to think before you do anything."

  "Who am I to think? I'm one of the muscle men. That's what they pay me for, isn't it?"

  "Larry. You don't have to shout."

  "Well, isn't it?"

  "If you don't calm down I'll have to leave."

  "You can sit still. You can park here all night. I'm leaving."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "Oh ... that." Larry got up from the table. He looked suddenly green and Sheila thought it was because he had too much to drink. "You don't have to worry about that, Sheila. Not now you don't. I all of a sudden don't feel so good. Headache. Man, I never felt anything like it. Better go to my cabin and lie down. Maybe I'll wake up and find out all this was a dream, huh?"

  "Do you need any help?" Sheila demanded, real concern in her voice.

  "No. 'Sall right. Man, this headache really snuck up on me. Pow! Without any warning."

  "Let me help you."

  "No. Just leave me alone, will you?" Larry staggered off across the crowded dance floor. He drew angry glances and muttered comments as he disturbed the dancers waltzing to Carlotti's Danube in Space.

  Why don't you admit it, Grange, Larry thought as he staggered through the companionway toward his cabin. That's what you always wanted, isn't it--a place of importance?

  A place in the sun, they call it.

  "You're going to get a place in the sun, all right," he mumbled aloud. "Right smack in the middle of the sun with everyone else aboard this ship!"

  The humor of it amused him perversely. He smiled--but it was closer to a leer--and lunged into his cabin. What he said to Sheila was no joke. He really did have a splitting headache. It had come on suddenly and it was like no headache he had ever known. It pulsed and throbbed and beat against his temples and held red hot needles to the backs of his eyeballs, almost blinding him. It sapped all his strength, leaving him physically weak. He was barely able to close the door behind him and stagger to the shower.

  An ice cold shower, he thought would help. He stripped quickly and got under the needle spray. By that time he was so weak he could barely stand.

  A place in the sun, he thought....

  Something grabbed his mind and wrenched it.

  * * * * *

  Johnny Mayhem awoke.

  Awakening came slowly, as it always did. It was a rising through infinite gulfs, a rebirth for a man who had died a hundred times and might die a thousand times more as the years piled up and became centuries. It was a spinning, whirling, flashing ascent from blackness to coruscating colors, brightness, giddiness.

  And suddenly, it was over.

  A needle spray of ice-cold water beat down upon him. He shuddered and reached for the water-taps, shutting them. Dripping, he climbed from the shower.

  And floated up--quite weightless--toward the ceiling.

  Frowning with his new and as yet unseen face, Johnny Mayhem propelled himself to the floor. He looked at his arms. He was naked--at least that much was right.

  But obviously, since he was weightless, he was not on Deneb
IV. During his transmigration he had been briefed for the trouble on Deneb IV. Then had a mistake been made somehow? It was always possible--but it had never happened before.

  Too much precision and careful planning was involved.

  Every world which had an Earthman population and a Galactic League--now, Galactic Federation--post, must have a body in cold storage, waiting for Johnny Mayhem if his services were required. No one knew when Mayhem's services might be required. No one knew exactly under what circumstances the Galactic Federation Council, operating from the Hub of the Galaxy, might summon Mayhem. And only a very few people, including those at the Hub and the Galactic League Firstmen on civilized worlds and Observers on frontier planets, knew the precise mechanics of Mayhem's coming.

  * * * * *

  Johnny Mayhem, a bodiless sentience. Mayhem--Johnny Marlow then--who had been chased from Earth a pariah and a criminal seven years ago, who had been mortally wounded on a wild planet deep within the Sagittarian Swarm, whose life had been saved--after a fashion--by the white magic of that planet. Mayhem, doomed now to possible immortality as a bodiless sentience, an elan, which could occupy and activate a corpse if it had been preserved properly ... an elan doomed to wander eternally because it could not remain in one body for more than a month without body and elan perishing. Mayhem, who had dedicated his strange, lonely life to the services of the Galactic League--now the Galactic Federation--because a normal life and normal social relations were not possible to him....

  It did not seem possible, Mayhem thought now, that a mistake could be made. Then--a sudden change in plans?

  It had never happened before, but it was entirely possible. Something, Mayhem decided, had come up during transmigration. It was terribly important and the people at the Hub had had no opportunity to brief him on it.

  But--what?

  * * * * *

  His first shock came a moment later. He walked to a mirror on the wall and approved of the strong young body which would house his sentience and then scowled. A thought inside his head said: