He went around the screen that hid the Captain’s control area. The alien sat as he had seen her last, in the furthest of the two command chairs. Her eyes were closed and she did not move, even when he came up against the other command chair with his knees and the chair rattled.
“Captain,” said Giles, in Albenareth.
There was no response. The long, dark figure did not stir.
“Rayumung,” said Giles, “I must talk with you. We have reached a moment of decision.”
There was still no reaction from the Captain.
“If you do not wish to discuss this matter with me, I will act without discussion,” said Giles.
Slowly, the round, dark eyes opened. Slowly, the head swiveled to face him.
“You will not act in any way, Adelman.” The buzzing alien voice was as expressionless as ever, but now there was something distant about it, as if the Captain spoke to him from a long way off. “I am not yet helpless to control what is done on this lifeship.”
“No,” said Giles. “But each day you give more of your strength to the new life inside you. I believe you are weakening faster than we, who lose strength only because we lack adequate food and drink.”
“No,” said the Captain. “My strength is greater and will remain greater.”
“I will accept that if you say so,” said Giles. “It does not matter. All that matters is that very shortly it will be too late to alter course to 20B-40.”
The dark eyes regarded him without moving for a long moment.
“How do you know this?” the Captain asked.
“I know,” said Giles. “That is all that is important. It is even possible that I could change our course for 20B40 myself—”
“No,” said the Captain. For the first time Giles thought he heard a faint trace of emotion in the Captain’s voice. “That is a lie you tell me. A foolish lie. You are helpless here in space like all your race.”
“Not all our race,” said Giles. “Some of us know how to guide ships between the stars. But you interrupted me. I was about to say that whether I could change the course for 20B-40 or not, I would not, for I respect such decisions as belonging to the officer in charge of any vessel in space.”
“Then respect the course which takes us now to Belben.”
“I cannot,” said Giles. “As you have a responsibility to the single life you carry, I have a responsibility to the seven other human lives aboard.”
“The lives of slaves,” said the Captain, “are of no value “
“They are not slaves.”
“As I count, they are slaves, and worthless.”
“As I count, they are men and women. They must survive. To ensure that they survive, I am ready to give the Captain what she wants.”
“You?” The alien gaze did not move from Giles’ face. “You cannot give me back my honor.”
“Yes,” said Giles, “I can. I can identify for you the one who destroyed your spaceship. I can deliver that individual into your hands.”
“You ...” The Captain surged up from her seat. “You know who did it!”
“Touch me—” said Giles, swiftly, for the long, thin hands were almost at his throat, “touch me and I give you my promise, which is my contract, that you will never know.”
The Captain dropped back into her chair.
“Tell me,” she said. “For the honor of all those who worked my ship with me, for the honor of that which I carry within me— tell me, Adelman!”
“I will tell you,” said Giles. “I will place the individual I name in your hands, and your hands alone, to do with as you will—once all the humans aboard here are safely down on 20B-40.”
“You would have me change course from that destination marked out by honor and duty/” said the Captain. “You would hold back information until I have lost all hope of buying credit of honor for the unborn last of my line, until you are landed among other humans who will protect you, no matter what. You will cheat me, human!”
The last words came out on a high note that was almost a cry.
“I will name and give you that individual I speak of—free from interference, to do with as you will,” said Giles steadily. “That is my promise, my word and my contract. Your people have done business with the Adelborn for some generations, Captain Rayumung. When did ever an Adelborn cheat one of you?”
“It is true,” said the Captain, looking into the front view-screen before her as if she hoped to find some support and assurance there. “The word of such as you has always been good, in my knowledge.”
She stopped speaking. Giles waited. There was no sound, in the small area behind the screen guarding the control consoles and the command chairs, but the sound of Giles’ own breathing. Finally, the Captain stirred.
“I must take you at your word,” said the Captain at last, once more speaking in that distant voice in which she had first answered Giles. “If I did not, and you were honest, I would have compounded the dishonor now upon me and mine, by passing by an opportunity to regain the honor I have lost.”
Giles breathed out, softly. He had not realized that he had been inhaling and exhaling so shallowly—mere cupfuls of air from the upper part of his chest as he waited for the Captain to decide. She turned her head back to look at him now.
“I will make the first course change now, the second course change later,” she said. “The angle is not such that a single change is indicated. After I’ve made the first change we must stay twelve hours on that course before the second and final correction can be made.”
11
Sixteenth day—17:09 hours
“I don’t want,” said Giles, “any of you to think the situation isn’t still serious, because it is. We’ve got twenty-seven days yet, minimum, to survive on board this lifeship; and the ib vine, as you know, has been putting out less and less fruit, for reasons the Captain doesn’t understand any more than we do. Something seems to be poisoning it. I’m not sure but what the Captain thinks that it’s us—we humans—that are the poisonous element. But the important tiling is we’re facing a situation with less and less fruit. Now, we can do with a minimum of food for twenty-seven days if we have to—but that fruit juice is our only source of water. So keep that thought in your minds and try to get used to using as little liquid as possible.”
Giles had gathered the arbites, even including Esteven, who was by now somewhat recovered, into the middle section of the lifeship to brief them. He had just finished telling them the truth about the Captain’s sex and much of what had gone on between the Captain and himself in his efforts to get the course of the ship changed to 20B-40. They had listened in silence, except for a general murmur of excitement when he had explained that they might be getting to planetfall earlier than had been expected. But generally, they had reacted less than he had expected.
He was being forced to the conclusion that they had never really appreciated the danger of the situation they were in. If not, perhaps they did not understand, now. It was a thought that gnawed at Giles as he looked about at them.
“You’ve followed what I said, have you?” he demanded sharply, looking around at them all. “You realize what we’re up against? It’s going to be a real test of will power and physical determination to survive. You’ve got to keep your spirits up and your exertions down. Now, you understand that, and the seriousness of the situation, even with this course change?”
There was a pause and then a mild murmur of agreement from them, interrupted by a small, but curious noise from the front of the lifeship, where the Captain was out of sight behind the control-area screen. It had been a sound almost like that of an Albenareth clearing her throat—almost as if the Captain had been listening to him from the bow, and now was politely signaling her desire to say something.
Giles looked toward the front. So did all the rest, but the noise was not repeated.
“What was that?” asked Mara.
“I don’t know,” Giles said. “It’s about time for the Captain t
o be making the second course change to put us on target for 20B-40. Perhaps something’s come up....”
He got to his feet.
“Stay here,” he said to them and went forward.
He reached the edge of the screen and stepped around it. The Albenareth navigation book had been rotated upon its stand so that its pages faced the closest command chair. In that chair the Captain sat, arms on the arm supports, back stiffly upright against the back of the chair, and her eyes closed.
“Captain Rayumung?” said Giles in Albenareth. “Is there something of consequence—some problem?”
There was no answer from the alien figure. No movement, no response of any kind.
“‘What is it, Captain? What’s wrong?” Giles demanded.
There was still no answer. The Captain’s mouth was slightly open, her breathing light, and her body utterly motionless. Giles reached out and gently lifted one of the dark eyelids. Beneath, the pupil of that eye was rolled up out of sight.
“What is it?” He heard the voice of Mara at his elbow, and turned. Against his order, they had all followed him forward and they stood now in semicircle, gazing at the Captain.
“She’s unconscious,” Giles answered. “I don’t know why. Look at her, Mara. See if you can find any reason.”
Mara pushed past him and felt for a pulse in the Captain’s long wrist. After a moment, she abandoned that effort and lifted an eyelid as Giles had done. Then she ran her hands over the Captain’s body, feeling here and there, until her fingers came to rest at last at the back of the Albenareth’s neck, just below the bone of the round skull.
“I’ve found it,” Mara said. “A pulse. Has anyone got a chrono? No? Groce, can’t you give me a second count, somehow, out of the compute of yours?”
“Of course,” said Groce. He punched controls on the compute and began counting out loud as he watched its display screen. “One ... two ... three ...”
Mara let him count to thirty before she let go of the Captain’s neck.
“All right,” she said. “You can stop. Adelman—” She turned to Giles. “She’s alive. But I can hardly believe it. Her heartbeat’s only about sixteen counts per minute. Do you know if their pulses are naturally that much slower than ours?”
Giles shook his head. “I don’t know. But I doubt they can be that slow. They don’t live any longer than we do, and they’re warmblooded and just as active. Heartbeats that low from a normal resting pulse rate of around. seventy, as in humans ...” He searched his memory but couldn’t come up with any exact comparisons. “At any rate, it sounds like the Captain’s in a coma—or a state of hibernation, or something like that.”
It was Biset who put into words the question that was in all their minds.
“Did the second change in course get made before she folded up?” Biset asked. “What do you think, Honor, sir?”
“I profoundly hope so,” said Giles.
He looked around the control board, but to his human eye it held no information that would answer Biset’s question.
“I’ll study these control consoles,” he said, “and see what I can figure out. There’s no reason for us to assume the worst until we know for sure. The Captain particularly wanted to—” He checked himself. He had not told the arbites, of course, of his offer to give up the one responsible for the bomb, once the lifeship made planetfall on the mining world. “She had her own strong reasons for wanting to get to 20B-40. This coma, or whatever it is, may be a natural state with Albenareth, at a certain period, when one of them is carrying young. She would have known the collapse was coming and made sure she made the second course correction before letting herself fold up like this.”
“And if she couldn’t help it?” Mara asked.
“I’m sure she could,” Giles said, stiffly. “Find a cot for her and put her on it. Go on!” he snapped at them, angered by their hesitation. “She won’t poison you if you touch her.”
Goaded by his voice, Hem, Groce, Mara, and Biset picked up the limp alien body and carried it away. Giles went back to examining the control area.
Ignoring the fact that he did not understand much of the instrumentation, he examined what there was to examine, item by item. It was all alien, but none of it was totally unfamiliar. Many of the items were counterparts of what he had seen in the control area of his own and other space yachts; other instruments were understandable in terms of his limited knowledge concerning interstellar navigation. Still others—like the viewscreen—were obvious appurtenances for this kind of craft. Regardless of how familiar each item was, however, he gave it the same minute examination as if he had never seen anything resembling it before.
He drew a blank.
Not only was there no sign of anything gone amiss—there was no clear evidence whether the Captain had made the second course change or not before lapsing into her present state of unconsciousness.
He was about to turn away and give up for the moment while he attacked the problem from the angle of pure speculation and rationalization, when the navigation book caught his eye.
If he could only understand the information contained in it, he thought, he could probably zero in on the answers he needed. It was impossible for him actually to understand it, of course—not merely because of the alien mathematics involved, but from the viewpoint of the whole system of navigation of which it was a part But he glanced at the pages of the book, anyway. Each page was a double column of short lines of what could best be described as squiggles—the sort of apparently meaningless marks that Arabic seems to be to untutored Western eyes.
Then he saw the raw edge of torn paper between the two open pages in the spread spine of the book.
He stopped and bent his head to look more closely.
There was no doubt of it A page had been tom out of the book. Why would the Captain—
Esteven!
“Esteven!” roared Giles. “Come up here!”
There was a moment and then Esteven appeared, pressed along—hustled along would perhaps be a better term, Giles thought—by the others. Giles let them crowd the man up to him, then he turned and pointed at the book.
“Esteven—” he began.
Esteven burst into tears, falling on his knees. He clutched Giles around the knees and clung to him. He was obviously trying to explain himself, but the explosion of his emotion made him impossible to understand.
Giles looked out over Esteven’s head, at the others.
“I called for Esteven,” he said. “Did I ask for the rest of you?”
Embarrassed, they backed off and disappeared through the opening in the first screen. He kept staring after them until they were all hidden from his gaze, then he reached down and lifted Esteven to his feet.
“Now tell me,” he whispered. “When did you tear a page out of this book? While I was unconscious?”
“No ... no ...” sobbed Esteven. “It was before ... long before. Back before the pru ... the Captain caught me the first time. Believe me ...” Esteven grasped Giles’ arm frantically. “I’m not lying. I wouldn’t lie to you. You saved my life three times. First by not letting the Captain kill me the two times she was going to, and then by helping me kick the tonk. I never believed anyone cared whether I lived or died. But you cared—and you didn’t even know me, except that I was on this lifeship with you. I’d do anything for you. Believe me—I only took one page, a long time ago. Just one page ...”
“All right,” said Giles, embarrassed by the man’s naked display of emotion but moved by him, nonetheless. “I believe you. Now, go back with the others, and don’t tell them what I talked to you about. Don’t tell them you ever took a page. Understand?”
“Thanks ... thank you, Honor, sir.” Esteven backed away, turned, and went.
Giles turned back to the book. There was a cold feeling in him. He thumbed through the pages preceding and following the one that had been tom out, trying to see if he could find any marks that could represent page numbers. There were no such marks, but i
n spite of that, his suspicion grew and grew until they were so close to certainty that he was half prepared when Mara spoke unexpectedly behind him.
“So that’s why the Captain collapsed,” Mara said, quietly, as if the information was not a matter of life or death, but only something out of which casual conversation was made. “She turned to the page needed to make the second course correction and found that Esteven had already eaten it.”
He turned sharply.
“Don’t assume—” he began, but she cut him off. For such a small girl, it was wonderful how she always appeared to be able to meet his eye on a dead level.
“We’re not fools or innocents, Adelman,” she said. “Please don’t try to treat us as if we were.”
He looked at her soberly.
“All right,” he said. “You’re very probably right Esteven stole and used a page from this navigation book sometime before the Captain ever suspected him. And it may be that the page he took and ingested was the specific page that the Captain needed to make the second course change.”
“Which means,” she said, “that the second course change was never made; and, far from being headed for 20B-40, we aren’t even headed for Belben. We’re headed for nowhere.”
“Yes,” he said. “I think that’s likely.”
He stared at her.
“You take the news very well,” he said. “In fact Mara, you amaze me. You’re standing up to most of the disasters of this voyage better than any of the arbite men aboard. The only one who comes close to you in that way is Biset—and she’s a woman, too.”
“Women,” Mara said, “have always been the stronger sex, Adelman. Hadn’t you heard that?”
“Yes, of course,” he said. “But you’re—” He caught himself up short, but she finished the thought out loud for him.
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