by Paul Preuss
“Well… I could heartily recommend lying flat on the floor for ten minutes at ten gees,” came back our engineer Angus McNeil’s drawl, his round face drifting into view on the monitor link from the wardroom, “for anyone whose spine needs straightening.”
“Right. Would have been a very nice rest. Captain,” chimed in the cheerful voice of Tony Groves, our navigator, “had I not been trying to support this damned flowerpot that fell on my midsection.”
“That flowerpot’s your helmet,” said McNeil.
“D’you say so?” said Groves, pretending astonishment.
“What about our guest?” the captain asked.
There was a pause before Groves filled the silence. “Sir Randolph seems to have run out of the necessary hot air to make another speech at the moment. But he is in fact breathing.”
“Pity,” someone said—McNeil?
“Marianne, are you all right?” asked Captain Walsh.
“I… I’m all right,” the young woman replied. Along with Sir Randolph, Marianne Mitchell was the other involuntary guest, and, although she was doing her best not to reveal her fear, she was unable to hide her utter weariness.
“We’re both all right,” volunteered my assistant Bill Hawkins, whose acceleration couch was beside Marianne’s on the crew deck. He had appointed himself her protector, but clearly he was as weary and frightened as she. “What happens now?”
“We’ll get to that when we have more information, Bill.” Walsh looked around the flight deck at the glowing console lights, the flatscreens, the surrounding windows that looked out on the huge lock outside. She ran a hand through her brush-cut bronze hair, A gesture of relief, and then gave me an appraising stare. “You seem to have held up well. Professor.”
“Thank you, Captain,” I said, no doubt with a sigh, making no effort to move from my couch, I was, after all, despite my appearance, the oldest of the group. “But I do hope that sort of acceleration isn’t going to become routine.”
“Same here. I’ve pulled worse in cutters, but they’re built for it,” Walsh said. “Apparently our tug’s no worse for wear, though. Confirm that, computer?”
“All systems standing by and functioning nominally,” said the bland, faintly Chinese-accented voice of the Ventris’s master computer.
“Rather warm in here, wouldn’t you say?” I complained.
“Can’t help that just yet.” The hatches were still open to the outside air, saving onboard oxygen. It was hot inside, and humid.
Blake Redfield, whom I’d hired as my other assistant, had gotten free of his harness in the borrowed engineer’s couch. “I’ll see if there’s anything I can do below.”
“Check on Mays, will you? I don’t want any more trouble with him,” said Walsh.
Redfield grunted. “Best bet would be to put him in deep sleep and store him in the hold.”
“His compartment will have to do for now. Just make sure he hasn’t got a crowbar in there with him.”
Redfield nodded and pulled himself down through the open hatch, into the ship’s main corridor.
“Hello, Ventris. Everyone all right?” It was a woman’s voice on the commlink speakers. Inspector Ellen Troy’s, strangely distorted with hollow echoes. Though we had previously had time to accustom ourselves to the knowledge that she was talking underwater, we were far from taking the sound of her for granted.
“All still alive, Ellen.”
“Good. More news from this end. Ventris is to separate from the world-ship before our next acceleration. You’ll be put on trajectory to a Mainbelt settlement. Better get started on it right now, Jo.”
“What?” That energized me at last. I clawed at my harness. “What was that, Troy?”
“That’s … good news,” said the captain.
“What’s to become of the alien vessel?” I demanded.
“What will become of you, Ellen?” Walsh demanded.
“I don’t know where this thing is headed,” said Troy over the commlink. “But wherever it is. I’m riding with it.”
“I insist upon accompanying you,” I protested.
“I’m not sure that’s possible. Professor.”
“Why not? The air inside the lock is perfectly breathable. The water is drinkable, the foodstuffs edible. Surely the alien can…”
“I’ll ask.”
“I insist upon speaking directly with the alien. You know as well as I that…”
Again she interrupted me. “I’ll convey that request and get back to you as soon as I can, sir. Jo, prepare to launch. You only get one chance.”
Forster looks up from his nest of cushions on the rug opposite Ari and Jozsef, addressing his remark to the commander. “Later, we learned what Nemo was thinking and doing in the minutes that followed. It was hardly the first time we’d disastrously underrated the man…”
Moments after we’d come out of acceleration, McNeil had carried Randolph Mays—still bundled in his spacesuit, limp as a sack of laundry—to his sleeping compartment and locked him in. Redfield told me he tested the door a minute later; otherwise, Mays was alone and forgotten. He struggled out of his suit and pushed it into a corner of what had been designed as a two-person cabin; his spacesuit was bulky enough to make up the difference.
Ducking his head under the negative-pressure hood of the personal hygiene unit, he rubbed water on his face; I picture him letting himself smile with the pleasure of it, then prolonging the luxury by running a chemosonic shaver over the wiry gray whiskers which had sprouted on his chin since our precipitate departure from Jupiter orbit. Not half an hour earlier, he’d been a dead man. He’d been sure of it.
Surely he must have spent a long time studying his face in the mirror. It was a big, square, deeply seamed face, thick-browed, with a wide mouth and bunched muscles at the hinges of the powerful jaws. A predatory face. But a distinguished face. He’d worn this face long enough—well, almost long enough—to get used to it.
When he got tired of staring at himself he lay down on his bunk and stared at the gray metal bulkhead. For Sir Randolph Mays—the name he bore in his current manifestation—had nowhere to go and no reason to go anywhere.
“Randolph Mays,” “Jacques Lequeu,” “William Laird,” just plain “Bill”—he was a plastic man who had appeared repeatedly over the years, revealing himself as a leader in the affairs of the now-defunct Free Spirit, the milleniums-old secret society that had long predicted the reappearance of the aliens. Who was he in reality? No one knew.
He’d plotted to kill us all, every member of our expedition, and he’d come uncomfortably close to succeeding. But he knew that none of us could seriously entertain the notion of doing to him what he’d tried to do to us. That none of us would want to waste time being his jailer. That after some discussion we’d come to the conclusion that since he had no conceivable further motive for killing us and nowhere to ran to if he did, we would simply try to maintain reasonable caution in is presence—probably by telling the computer to keep track of his whereabouts, and by never allowing him outside the crew area alone, and of course by keeping the medicine cabinet with its therapeutic poisons locked up, and so forth and so on—and otherwise we would ignore him.
Coventry has no physical dimensions, but it is a tangible place nonetheless. No one would talk to Mays. When we sat down to eat, there would be no place in our circle for him. If he came into a room, everyone else would leave it—or if that was inconvenient, we would talk and look through him as if he didn’t exist.
Nemo, Troy had called him, A man without a name is no man at all. Before long even that label would seem superfluous, as I’m sure he knew. Persuaded by our self-altered perceptions, the crew of the Ventris would forget about him. We would pretend he didn’t exist, and soon we would believe it.
Advantage his. He’d spent more years of his life in solitary meditation than any of us could imagine.
He meditated now upon the immediate future. Nothing in the Knowledge—which the Free Spirit had worke
d (and often murdered) to preserve—had prepared him for what was happening, much less what was yet to come. Except for an insignificant difference in numbers, he and his enemies were evenly matched.
Only possession of the Michael Ventris gave us an edge. So … how does one disable a spaceship?
Really, the possibilities were endless, although pragmatism imposed a few restraints. Most vulnerable were the engines and fuel tanks—but it was not likely he’d be able to get outside the crew module without alerting his captors. We would ignore him, see through him, only while he was somewhere in sight. Like a rattlesnake on a rock, he’d be camouflaged only so long as he didn’t move. For the same reason the hardware of the ship’s maneuvering systems, life support systems, and radiation shield were protected; getting at them required going outside.
From inside he could blow a hole through the wall of the pressure vessel which was the crew module. He’d have to get his hands on explosives, which were in the equipment bays with the other tools—which still meant going outside. In a pinch he could attack the control consoles barehanded. No doubt we’d be able to stop him before he did much damage.
Which left software. Appropriately named. As it was for all complex systems, software was the soft underbelly of the Michael Ventris.
I see Nemo grinning to himself then, stretching thin lips over voracious square teeth. In the solitude of his sleeping compartment he spoke aloud. “Computer, I’d like to read. Please display the catalogue.”
“Do you have a preferred category?” the computer asked in its politely neutral voice.
“Poetry, I think,” said Nemo. “Epic poetry.”
Then the light on the videoplate monitor in the bulkhead blinked redly, and the freckled face of our pilot gazed in at him coolly. “Mays, we’re preparing for an immediate launch. Put your suit on and strap yourself down.”
“I hear you. Captain Walsh.”
“Do it.”
He put on his suit—all but the gloves. He had work to do on the computer, quietly, without talking, using the keyboard.
The rest of us were at our regular launch stations, Groves in the navigator’s couch on the flight deck beside Walsh, McNeil at his station behind them. Those not needed to direct the ship’s operations were in their couches below, except for me, I stayed where I was, on one side of the deck, nervously eyeing the chronometers. I pulled my portable synthesizing translator from the flap of my suit and began speaking rapidly, filling its memory. I was frantic to get off the Ventris before it left the alien ship, and I had a single chance, at best, to plead my case.
The pre-count began. We were visible to one another on the tiny commlink videoplates. The men’s faces were shadowed with whiskers; all of us were tired and sweat-stained.
Groves stared at his readouts thoughtfully, his dark brows knitting at the bridge of his fine straight nose. “Not to step on any toes, but at first glance it doesn’t seem we’ve got the delta-vees to make it to any of the Mainbelt settlements. My charts show we’re moving at forty kps retrograde.”
“You’re not steppin’ on my toes, if that’s who you’re referrin’ to,” said McNeil, whose brogue tended to thicken when he was in a contrary mood. He tapped the visual display in front of him. “Consumables are just about consistent with regainin’ Ganymede from Amalthea orbit. We’ve drawn down heavily in past days. H-two, LOX—not to mention food, that sort of thing.”
The commlink speaker sounded with the weird ringing of Troy’s underwater voice. “All right, a little better data to give you. Your launch window comes up in just under ten minutes.”
Walsh said, “Some concern here, Ellen. Consensus is that we don’t have the consumables.”
At that moment the Ventris was rocked gently in the cradle of the world-ship’s mechanical tentacles. We could hear the grappling of automatic couplings and the venting of gases.
Troy’s voice continued, “Thowintha assures me that Ventris will be fully supplied before departure with liquid hydrogen and oxygen, food, fresh water … all necessary consumables.”
“That appears to be happening now,” said Walsh, watching the gauges. “We’re taking on fuel.”
“And ver’ nice of him, Ellen,” said McNeil, “…or of it, or whatever … but I’m wonderin’ whether the alien’s notion of food is similar to our own.”
A series of shrieks, whistles, clicks, and booms threatened to overload the speakers. When it subsided, Troy said, “Thowintha says that what is needed will be provided.” She added, amused, “Hope you like sea food.”
“What of my demand. Inspector Troy?” I shouted, addressing my question to the blank videoplate where Troy’s face would have been on a normal transmission. “I must be allowed to speak to Thowintha. Immediately.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but I can get no acknowledgment from Thowintha yet,” the invisible woman replied.
I had done my best to control my temper, but I was losing the battle. I could feel my features reddening. Furiously, I tapped at the keys of my translator. Troy was not the only one who could speak the language of Culture X.
The pilot and navigator and engineer watched the changing graphics on their consoles.
Outside, automatic hoses bulged and writhed.
Walsh said, “Before we launch, I think the professor would agree that what we signed on for, we accomplished.…”
“I didn’t sign on for anything,” said Marianne Mitchell, whose green eyes were bright and unblinking in the pale monitor that showed her face. “I just want to go home.”
“That’s where we’re headed, Marianne,” Walsh said gently.
Hawkins felt the need to come to her defense. “Some people may think there’s a reason to…” The talkative young postdoc stopped himself in midsentence, I think because whatever question he’d been about to answer, nobody had asked. He swiped at the lock of fine blond hair that had floated into his eyes. “Well, I’m coming with Marianne, that’s all.”
Obviously he was; his non sequitur got no reply. Outside the hull, the hoses uncoupled and retracted in unison—we could see them on the videoplate, like an octopus ballet.
“Ellen, do you read me?” Walsh asked, but got no reply.
“Inspector Troy!” I cried out desperately, but the commlink remained silent. “I want Thowintha to hear this.” I held up the translator, which began to emit clicks and spats and booms, a good simulation of the alien speech, I thought, but for the puny resonance of the synthesizer’s tiny speakers,
“Seal all exterior hatches and locks,” Walsh ordered, over the din I was making.
Her magnificent coolness failed to impress me as it should have. “But Captain Walsh…!” I protested—shouting at her, I fear.
“Sorry, Professor. Looks like you’re coming with us. Why don’t you help us out and turn that thing off?”
Troy came back on the commlink. “Your message has been received, Professor.”
I clicked off the synthesizer. “Yes? And?”
“Thowintha says the world-ship is about to undergo accelerations that … mm … make the one we just went through look puny. You couldn’t survive. No unmodified human could. You must go with the others, sir.”
The Ventris’s computer said, “All exterior hatches and locks are secured. Michael Ventris is sealed and pressurized.”
“Our tanks are full, we’re powered up and ready to launch on a one minute count,” said Walsh. “Copy that, Ellen?“
“Copy you’re ready to go,” Troy said.
Then McNeil jerked in his chair as if stung. “Captain, look at that. We’ve a significant mass anomaly!”
“Go ahead,” she said.
“Showing deficit after resupply of … of sixty-seven kilograms. In the crew module.”
“Somebody’s missing,” said Walsh. She searched the monitor screens one by one. Groves, McNeil, and I were on the deck with her; Mitchell and Hawkins were in their couches on the utility deck; Mays was in plain view, having strapped himself to the couch in what had
become his private sleeping compartment. “Where’s Blake?”
To our surprise, it was Inspector Troy who answered. “Blake’s with me.”
The blood raced to my scalp so fast that I could feel my skin blazing under my restored hair. “You deceived me, Troy,” I said, sure that she had conspired to keep me from the crowning achievement of my life. “All of this is intended…”
“Sir, I said no unmodified human could survive the coming course change. It was Thowintha’s assessment that you personally could not have survived the necessary modification—however much you might wish to believe otherwise. I am sincerely sorry, sir.”
I went a little crazy then, and slapped at my harness release. “It’s not too late for me yet, to see…”
Troy said, “Please start your count. Captain Walsh. The pressure lock is opening.”
Displayed on the flight deck flatscreen, the diffuse blue glow which filled the enormous empty space beneath the dome had dimmed; a black well had opened in the center of the dome and was spiraling outward; the pattern of starry lights which decorated the concave ceiling was fading out, to be replaced by other, dimmer lights—the real stars, shining through the vanishing gossamer stuff of the lock.
“Thirty seconds and counting,” said the computer.
There was another light in the sky, its source invisible from the Ventris. But through the flight-deck windows we could see a blazing oval moving like a theatrical spotlight across the filigreed wall of the vault, as the sun sent a slanting bar of what seemed to our dark-adapted eyes like fierce illumination through the lock’s widening aperture.
“The whole world-ship is rolling like crazy,” Walsh said.
Half out of my couch, I struggled to get back into it, knowing I was too late. The others were too busy to notice me or see my hot tears.
“Ten seconds,” said the computer. “Nine. Eight. Seven
The Ventris began to move at an angle to the ship, borne aloft on the same unfurling tentacles that previously had locked it firmly in place. Stretching—seemingly without limit—the delicate metallic tendrils lifted the tug lightly through the hole in the roof into the blazing light of the sun above.