One in 300

by J. T. McIntosh

  "You'll have to take my word for it," I said matter-of-factly, trying to freeze the raw emotion that was in the air, "that it was necessary. It did have to happen. We needed that extra acceleration. If I were doing it again, knowing someone would die, I'd still have to do it."

  No one said anything, but they believed me. Stowe was nodding slowly, the dull anger and suspicion gone from the ache in his heart. The ache was still there, but it was a cleaner ache. And the others, after looking from him to me and back to him, were looking a little ashamed of themselves, ashamed of the ready assumption that because I had changed my plans I was to blame for Mary's death, ashamed that they had been so ready to think the worst.

  "We always knew we had to leave the rest of Simsville behind," I pointed out. "Everyone else had to die if we were to have a chance. We accepted that, didn't we? Then let's try to think of Mary Stowe with the rest -- part of Simsville we couldn't take with us."

  "God damn the man who passed that couch," said Stowe through his teeth.

  "He probably has," I said quietly. "Not many of the people who made the lifeships had a chance to go on one of them."

  That seemed to be that. No one wanted to pursue the matter.

  "Better get that imprex tape off, all of you," I said. "Roll it up carefully. We'll need it for the landing. The women can stay here and the men go down to the air lock."

  Miss Wallace opened her mouth -- to protest, obviously, that there was hardly any screening between the two places I'd mentioned. I waved her silent, rather impatiently.

  "How much privacy do you think any of us is going to get this trip?" I demanded.

  She looked around quickly, and seemed to see the force of that. She made no objection.

  I had to tell someone the truth. If Pat Darrell had been along, it would have been she. As it was, Sammy was the only one I could talk to. I wasn't sure yet about Leslie. The last time she and I had been alone together, back on Earth in those last tense, terrified days, she had tried to buy her passage to Mars, and I had lunged away from her in disgust. If Pat had lived Leslie wouldn't have been there at all.

  I jerked my head at Sammy, not looking at Leslie, and we pushed off and guided ourselves into the control room.

  "Sammy," I said, "I've got my troubles, you know that. Mind if I share them with you?"

  He grinned. "No, Bill," he said. "I may grouse and swear and be bitter about things, but that's just the way I'm made. Sure, I'll help all I can, any time. What's on your mind?"

  Something in the way he said it showed me that he was remembering Pat too.

  "Remember," I said, "how you once thought the lifeships were a cruel hoax? A myth designed to keep a tottering world comparatively sane while the real spaceships were granted peace to get on with their job?"

  He nodded. "But you were right, Bill," he said. "I felt pretty low when I said that. It was just natural pessimism."

  "It was more than that, Sammy," I said quietly.

  He stared at me.

  I told him. I showed him my figures -- all of them.

  Given only eight weeks before the sun stepped up its output enough to make Earth a 25O-5OO° Centigrade world, the governments of the world had had no chance to transfer their people wholesale to another planet. Space travel was too young. There were too few ships. There was too little time.

  No, any way they looked at it, it was a simple proportion sum. Give a few people a good chance of getting to Mars safely, or a lot of people a very slim chance.

  I didn't know whether I was apologizing for them or not. I don't now. But look at it this way.

  Back on Earth, at sea, a liner sinks. Nothing is left but one lifeboat and hundreds of people in the water. The lifeboat sails around and picks up people till the gunwales are nearly in the water. Then what? Others try to clamber aboard. Still more cling to the sides of the boat. What's the answer -- let everyone drown, since everyone can't be saved?

  Sammy was in no doubt. "The swine!" he said, his face white. "What's the use of giving people a chance that isn't a chance? Why didn't they build just as many ships as they knew could get to Mars and land there safely?"

  I grinned without humor. "People will argue over that for the next thousand years," I said, "those who are left to argue about it. Me, I'd take the infinitesimal chance rather than no chance at all. But there's no use talking about it now, Sammy. It's so. What are we going to do about it?"

  "What can we do about it?"

  I let myself float comfortably on the softest cushion imaginable -- air without gravity.

  "A lot, in theory," I said. "The regular ships will get to Mars all right. So will some of the lifeships. There will be variations, of course -- some of them will be a lot luckier than we've been, some a lot less. For some it will be a simple, straightforward trip -- and if they've no fuel left after they land, what does that matter? For others it must have been a hundred per cent impossibility from the word 'go.'

  "All right, there will be plenty of ships on Mars when we get there. They'll send up as many as they can to take people off lifeships that can't land safely, or help others down, or refuel them . . ."

  Sammy brightened.

  "Or," I went on, "little as we have, we certainly have enough fuel to take up some sort of orbit around Mars, and wait for someone to do something about us. There's one space suit on board. Someone could land with that, and sooner or later a ship would come up and take us off."

  Sammy, looking much happier, wanted to speak, but I ignored him and went on.

  "Or again," I said, "if we do nothing at all, using no fuel, we'll find one of three things happening. We may see we're going to miss Mars altogether, and if that's so we'll have to use our fuel to correct the course. We may fall into an orbit naturally, without doing a thing. Or if we see we're going to crash on Mars, we can leave the drive to the last minute and then use what we have to land as soft as we can."

  Sammy began: "But that's -- "

  "Still not much better than a thousand-to-one chance," I told him flatly.

  He stared at me incredulously.

  "I'm sorry, Sammy," I said. "I know I should have kept this to myself, but I'm not big enough. Let's look at those possibilities. How many ships will there he on Mars -- good ships, possible rescue ships? A few score, perhaps. And not too much fuel. How many lifeships? Hundreds of thousands. What are the few score going to be able to do for the hundreds of thousands?"

  "I see," said Sammy bitterly. "Go on.

  "Next, the orbit around Mars. Now it doesn't take much drive to edge a ship into an orbit around a planet. A skillful, experienced pilot could generally do it with a few seconds of blast. But, unfortunately, there are only about forty such pilots in existence, and I'm not one of them. I was a radio officer, remember. I can't do it, Sammy. I'm ready to try, but I'm no more likely to succeed than an untrained marksman is to hit a bull's-eye at five hundred yards with one shot."

  "I see that too," said Sammy, his anger dropping to burning resentment against persons unknown.

  "And as for decelerating safely on the fuel we have -- why we can't do it is kindergarten mathematics. Roughly, ignoring Earth and Mars altogether, we have to do as much deceleration as we did acceleration. And we have only a fraction of the fuel to do it."

  "So what do we do?" demanded Sammy bleakly.

  "I wish I knew. Anyway, we have weeks to think about it. Perhaps we'll be lucky. We may be one of the few lifeships that the regular ships will be able to help. Or we may take up an orbit without even trying. But . . ."

  Sammy nodded gloomily. He had dropped from cheerfulness to blazing anger to black resentment to something very close to despair. "But what?" he asked.

  "But we can only hope for that," I said, "not count on it."I grinned suddenly. "Cheer up, Sammy," I said. "We're not actually dead yet."

  Sammy looked up sharply. "I'm not bothered about that," he said. "I can face the idea of dying as well as most people. I'm thinking of Homo sapiens. Two billion living, breathing hu
man beings waiting on Earth to be fried. And thousands who thought they'd been saved finding now that all they'd been given was a chance to die some other way. Thousands of units of eleven people on lifeships who know now they'll never reach Mars, who know they've been sold -- "

  "Nobody's been sold, Sammy. The lifeships weren't a cruel hoax, as you feared. They were what it was always admitted they were -- just a chance to get to another world. . . ."

  But Sammy wasn't listening. I left him there and went out to make my first check of the lifeship -- my first, and probably last, command.

  3

  We found very soon that we had far too much time on our hands. I manufactured as many jobs as I could for the ten of us to do, but there was still too little to occupy us.

  There was the job of looking after the hydroponics plant on which we depended for both food and fresh air. I put Harry Phillips in charge there. He had had little or nothing to do with water-culture methods before, but he knew plants. Forced by artificial sunshine, efficient aeration of the roots, the warmth of the lifeship, and constant care, the tomatoes, potatoes, and roots grew incredibly fast in their compact trays. Starvation was not going to be one of our problems. Harry's main assistant was Leslie; she or Harry was always in the plant, finding something to do. That accounted for two people.

  The water purifier also had to be looked after. From it came all the water we used, and into it all the water went back. Betty and Morgan were in charge of the machine. There wasn't much for them to do, and they seemed happy together doing it. I still didn't know much about Morgan and Betty. Clearly, however, they were very much in love, and wanted no companionship but each other.

  Miss Wallace was in charge of cooking. Little Bessie helped her. Bessie was a lovely, happy child. I never regretted choosing her. She was utterly unspoiled, gay but not destructive. She had consideration and sympathy rare in anyone so young. It was when I thought of Bessie that I was most determined to get to Mars safely. Bessie was going to be a wonderful woman, and not merely a very beautiful one.

  Jim Stowe liked to sit in the control room and pretend to be the pilot of a spaceship. So I made that his job. He was the lookout. We didn't need one, but he liked the idea and it gave him something to do.

  That left John Stowe, Sammy, and me. We helped anyone who needed help, and looked for more things for the others to do.

  We kept Earth time, calling one twelve-hour period day and the next night.

  On the third day two problems emerged. It was hot and stuffy, despite the fact that the hydroponics plant was dealing quite competently with the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Betty had a temperature, Morgan a streaming cold, and most of us had headaches and hot eyes.

  I was in the control room explaining things to Jim when Miss Wallace came in.

  "Run along, Jim," she said. "I want to talk to Lieutenant Easson."

  Reluctantly Jim went. Miss Wallace surveyed me grimly, her cheeks flushed.

  "Lieutenant Easson," she said formally, "something must be done about Smith and Miss Glessor. They are . . ."

  I had thought at first that she was talking about their health. When I saw her expression, however, I guessed what she meant.

  "They're what, Miss Wallace?" I asked.

  She blushed more violently. "Openly!" she said vehemently. "With two children about!"

  I didn't make her put into words what Betty and Morgan were doing.

  "Well, why not, Miss Wallace?" I asked gently.

  "They're not married!" she exclaimed, as if that explained everything. For her, no doubt, it did.

  "Probably," I reflected, "as commander of the ship I could marry them. But we've left the old world, Miss Wallace, and I don't think things like that are going to matter for quite a while."

  "Decency and moral standards always matter," she declared indignantly.

  "I suppose so. But I don't think they're involved in this case. Betty and Morgan love each other, and in normal circumstances they'd be married. It didn't matter until they knew they were coming on this trip, and then it was too late. Anyway . . ."

  I wanted her to see it, for if Miss Wallace saw it everyone else would. She wasn't narrow-minded -- just strict and correct.

  "You don't think an illegitimate child is damned, do you, Miss Wallace?" I asked.

  "No, of course not. But that's not the question."

  "Isn't it? We'll want as many children as possible. Frankly, there're going to be so few people in the new colony that one of the first things we'll have to ensure is that there's a big, healthy second generation -- "

  "Lieutenant Easson," said Miss Wallace warmly, "are you suggesting that we should do away with marriage altogether?"

  "No," I said thoughtfully, "but I don't think we can insist on it. I think what'll happen is informal marriage. People will live together and say they're married. Even if they don't -- if women have children without any sort of husband in the offing -- I don't think we should object."

  Clearly she hadn't thought it out. She didn't refuse to entertain new ideas. It simply had not occurred to her until then that the circumstances had changed so radically that new patterns of behavior might be required, and old ones abandoned.

  "Perhaps you're right," she admitted. "I'll think about it."

  I talked to Betty and Morgan later. They were quiet, shy, embarrassed by the attention they had caused, but not in the least ashamed about it.

  There were no doors in the ship except the air lock, and the only privacy possible was the shielding provided by the water tanks, the hydroponics plant, and other natural screens. Betty and Morgan had done their love-making as discreetly as possible, but that wasn't very privately.

  "What are we to do?" asked Morgan resentfully. "Go outside into space?"

  "We thought of speaking to everybody about it," said Betty, "but what could we say? It would be nonsense to ask anyone's permission . . ."

  "Of course," I agreed. I told them what I had said to Miss Wallace. They brightened, glad that Authority -- that was me -- didn't think they had done anything wrong.

  "You mean we can just say we're married," said Betty, "and we are?"

  "If you like," I said. I was having a good look at them for the first time. Morgan was tall and thin, very young and immature. He was a nice-looking boy -- too shy, of course, but with a friendly grin nevertheless. Betty was very small and slight, a neat little figure with corn-colored hair and small, very white hands. She wore blue slacks and a yellow sweater.

  At the moment Morgan's nose was red and his eyes watery; Betty was flushed and shivered frequently, her eyes too bright. They had chosen rather unromantic circumstances for their nuptials. But they insisted they felt perfectly well.

  "Congratulations, anyway," I said with a grin, and went looking for Leslie. I was thinking more of Morgan's cold, Betty's temperature, and the headaches of the others than of the question of informal marriage. The marriage problem was already solved, as far as I was concerned. However, something would have to be done about the other one.

  As I swam into the hydroponics plant Leslie grabbed the hem of her frock, which was floating airily somewhere in the region of her fourth rib.

  "Doesn't make the slightest difference," I said. "Take it off altogether -- haven't you ever worn a bathing costume?"

  "Yes," she said, tucking her skirt between her legs, "but only in the appropriate circumstances."

  "These are the appropriate circumstances." I started to explain what I meant. However, her mind was obviously on something else. I sighed, abandoned the subject for the moment, and asked what was worrying her.