Lifeboat

by Harry Harrison

  Her steady looked accused him of the bomb he had set aboard the lifeship—the bomb that had resulted in their all becoming castaways between the stars. For a second, grimly, he wondered what they would say if they knew that he had given his word to the Captain—a word he knew he would honor whether the Captain lived or not—to give himself up as the price of getting them all to 20B-40. But of course whatever reaction Mara and the others might have did not matter. He could no more tell them what he had done in an effort to buy their cooperation than he could break the word he had given. He was locked, lonely in the armor of his upbringing.

  “Right or no right” he said, “no one, human or alien, is going to be killed aboard this lifeship while I can stop it Hem, carry the Captain to my cot in the front of the ship, and watch her from now on. If you have to leave her, call me. As for the rest of you—if I find her hurt or dead, the one who did it will lose his own juice ration. If I can’t find out who did it, I promise you on my word as an Adelman that I’ll take the juice she would have gotten, daily, and pour it out on the floor of the lifeship!”

  He paused, waiting for their reaction, but they were silent.

  “All right,” he said. “On the other hand, I know the strain you’re all under. We need to work together, not fight each other. So I also give you my word as Adelman that if we all—including the Captain—come through this alive to 20B-40, I’ll buy up the contract to indent on each one of you and make you a present of it. You’ll all be free to build your own estate and pay for your children’s education or spend your own earnings in making any life you want. That’s a promise, not a bribe. I don’t care what you do, as long as you keep yourselves alive and help to keep everyone else alive with you. You’ve got my word.”

  He turned and went back to the control section, where Groce still sat. It was surprising that the other had not followed him back to see what the excitement was. Looking at the man, Giles guessed that the shock of Giles’ anger had left the little man too frightened to risk doing anything that would push the Adelman over the brink into some action that might destroy Groce completely.

  “Back to work,” said Giles, briefly, reseating himself in the empty command chair.

  They returned to their task. One ship-day went by, then another.... Groce dozed between times when Giles wanted him, but Giles kept himself going out of some well of inner determination he had not known he possessed. He was beyond knowing whether he was or not, now. He hardly knew if he slept or waked. But something kept him moving. Moving slower and slower all the time, but moving ...

  Somehow, they were at last at their goal. A final figure looked up at him from Groce’s compute display.

  “Is that it, then?” Groce was asking. “The correction factor we need?”

  “It could be the correction factor for a course to hell, for all I know.” Giles heard his own hoarse voice answering from someplace far off, as if someone else was speaking, distant at the end of a lightless tunnel. He reached out, slowly and carefully, and with fingers that wobbled like those of a drunken man, he punched the correction factor into the course change that was already set up on the lifeship’s control panel.

  “Now...” he said, and thumbed the drive switch.

  It was done. There was no sensation of movement or change of direction, but it was done. Clumsily, he got to his feet and stepped out past Groce, away from the control panel.

  “You should get some sleep now,” Mara said, coming up quietly behind him. She touched her hand to his shoulder, steadying him as he tottered, and unconsciously he covered her fingers with his own hand. Her skin was soft and strangely cool to his touch.

  “Yes ...” he said, still from a long way off. “I guess I need it.”

  “I’m sorry”—her voice was low in his ear—”I hinted about ... what you know about, when Biset tried to kill the Captain.”

  “That’s all right” he said. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It should,” she said. She was guiding him to a cot. It was his own cot. The long shape of the Captain lay still on Hem’s. He was aware now of Hem standing beside it watching him. Giles dropped heavily on his cot and lay back.

  “A little sleep ...” he said. “Yes. Just a little ...”

  He went away then, off into the same lightlessness of the long distance where his voice had already preceded him, leaving ship, arbites, and Albenareth Captain all behind.

  13

  Thirty-fourth day—11:45 hours

  It was the last fruit on the vine.

  They were all watching as Giles plucked it and cradled it in his hands. It was full, plump, filled with juice, and it had remained on the vine until the absolute last moment The juice container was about three-quarters full—about six days’ supply on half rations. They had come a long way to this moment when the final fruit was plucked, the last liquid extracted. After this ...?

  Hem lifted the handle of the press carefully so Giles could place the fruit into the opening. Then the big arbite pushed down, over and over again, until the last drop had been pressed from the pulp and had dripped into the plastic container. It was a pitifully small amount Giles removed the pulp and divided it into eight equal amounts.

  “Eat it all, right away,” he said. “There’s still water in the pulp, so we’ll skip today’s juice ration. And from tomorrow on well go on half rations until all the juice we have is used up. This is the only way. We have to stretch what we have as long as possible, while there’s still hope.”

  There were no arguments. They choked down the pulp, chewing it to extract every last drop of juice, licking the bowls dry afterward. Giles poured the juice from the last fruit carefully into the tank, then went to make his noon check of their course. He was doing it faster now. Once it had been set into the controls there was little else he could do for six hours. The stars in the screen seemed unchanged, changeless, and he fought hard against a feeling of black despair that threatened to overwhelm him. Mara came up, walking slowly as they all did now, her clothing hanging loose on her thin body. She pointed to the screen.

  “Which one is it?” she said. “I don’t mean 20B-40 itself. I know we can’t see that I mean 2QB-40’s sun.”

  He tapped a spot of light no different in appearance from so many of the others.

  “Shouldn’t it be getting larger, or brighter?”

  “No. Not until we’ve made our last warp shift This screen is for navigation only. In any case a star doesn’t look any brighter until the last day or two of flight.”

  “But we are on the right course?” There was need for reassurance in her voice.

  “I believe so,” he said.

  “If it is the right course, then how much longer will it be?”

  “According to what the Captain told me, we could be there about ten days from now. But that would be on her course, under ideal conditions. I don’t think we can expect that well of my navigation, even if it’s right It could be more than ten days.”

  “You’re not very encouraging,” she said, with a weak attempt at a smile.

  “Sorry …” he said, staring at the controls. His voice ran down and stopped. He could think of nothing more to say.

  The conversation died like most of them lately, ran down without any real point or ending. He dozed in the chair and when he opened his eyes she had left The stars looked very, very cold.

  Forty-first day—12:00 hours

  The last drop of juice dripped from the faucet into the bowl with a small plopping sound. The very last. There was nothing to be said, so they drank their rations in silence. The last.

  There were no buds on the vine, although they kept checking.

  There were no buds anywhere, and no sign of fruit at all. The ib vine seemed healthy enough, covered with a fine crop of glossy, flat leaves. They had tried chewing the leaves, but it was useless, since they were very dry and bitter and seemed to use more saliva than any amount of water they might supply.

  Forty-second day

  Forty-third d
ay

  Forty-fourth day

  Forty-fifth day

  Forty-sixth day

  “Do you still keep checking the course?” Mara asked in a whispered, bitter voice. “You still keep trying?”

  “Yes. Have to ...” Giles whispered back. He was in no better shape than the others. Thirst, he thought, with dull-witted humor, was no respecter of class.

  “We’re going to die, I know that now. Di is in some kind of a coma, hasn’t opened her eyes in a long time. I think she’ll be the first to die. I don’t want to die that way, just giving in. Will you kill me?”

  “No.” He raised his head. “If anyone lives, we all live.”

  “You don’t want to help me. You want me to suffer.” For the first time her voice was petulant, as if she would have cried had there been tears to cry with.

  He sat in his command chair. The others lay on the cots or the floor without energy or desire to move. Someone had turned the recorder on and no one had the strength to turn it off. A girl’s reedy voice sang a repetitious song in which the word “love” seemed to be repeated an unusual number of times. A drum beat a monotonous rhythm in the background, and there was too much percussion. It would have been very annoying to Giles normally; now he was scarcely aware of it. His throat hurt, his eyes burned, his body felt completely desiccated; all desires and sensations fled before the overwhelming thirst. Perhaps Mara was right: This was not a good way to die. The singer shrilled, the percussion clanged and banged. The inner door of the spacelock opened.

  Reality had become detached. Hallucination held him, supplied visions his eyes could not see, swung inward the door that opened on the spacelock and then into empty space, and supplied an image of a spindly-legged Albenareth in a spacesuit, removing the helmet.

  When a voice behind him screeched, then howled again, he realized that the others were seeing this hallucination, too. Perhaps, after all, it was not an hallucination. Gasping, he pushed himself up on his elbows, climbed to his feet, holding to the control panel for support, staring. The helmet came off to reveal the wrinkled, dark, seamed face of an Albenareth, staring at him.

  “You did not answer the communications call,” an alien voice buzzed in awkward Basic.

  “Water ...” rasped Giles, in a voice dry as sandpaper.

  “I have none. It will be supplied. The communications—we called.”

  “Don’t know where the comm, controls are, how it works. Water!”

  “There is trouble with the ib vine?”

  Giles dropped to his cot, laughing voicelessly, laughing uncontrollably, clutching his midriff and rocking back and forth under the incomprehension of the alien gaze. Water. Trouble with the ib vine! Water! All they wanted was water!

  Something clanged heavily against the hull. It was the forty-sixth and last day.

  14

  “An incredible story, Adelman,” murmured the manager of the 20B-40 Mining Complex. He was a small, pink man, a graduate arbite, obviously, who had risen to this position of authority. And authority it was, Giles had to remind himself. Amos Barsey was the closest thing to a representative of Earth government on the mining world. “May I top that drink for you?”

  Giles smiled agreement and extended his tall glass, watching the dark, cold local beer gurgle into it. A beautiful sight His hand was tanned dark from the long ship-days under the ultraviolet of the lifeship’s overhead illumination—tanned, dark, scrawny as a bird’s claw clutched around the beaded glass, by contrast with the healthily fleshed fingers of Barsey.

  “Thank you,” said Giles. “Kind of you.”

  He drank, feeling the coolness run down his throat “It’s still a shock,” he said, almost dreamily, “to realize it’s all over. My navigation was better than I’d hoped. Only, all the time the emergency communications unit was beaming for help in sub-warp, with none of us knowing it.”

  “It wouldn’t have helped, you know,” Barsey answered, “if you hadn’t been able to bring the lifeship close enough to our solar system so the local Albenareth here could pick up your signal.” Barsey chuckled unexpectedly.

  “I’ve never seen the aliens that disturbed,” he said. “They still can’t believe you could manage to navigate the lifeship, when their own Captain couldn’t.”

  “It wasn’t her fault,” said Giles.

  “No, I suppose not.” Barsey cast an oblique loot at Giles from under his plump brows and his tone became somewhat dry and distant. “A page missing ... and all that Another mystery. But I suppose the book could have gotten damaged when the spaceliner was destroyed.”

  “I suppose,” said Giles.

  “Yes ...” Barsey swung his float-chair around in mid-air to pick up a slip from his desk. “There was another mystery. Nothing important, of course. That ib vine. The Albenareth thought it had been poisoned, but the spaceship repair station here doesn’t have the facilities for chemical analysis. They sent a sample of the nutrient fluid over to our lab for analysis. Quite a list of organic compounds in the sludge—none of them anything we’d consider could hurt the plant Of course, maybe their experts will be able to pick out something harmful. Oh ... and there was just a trace of something else.” His gaze flicked to meet Giles’, flickered away again to a far corner of the room. “A human-type drag, filthy stuff called tonk. That could have done the job, our chemist thinks—if there was enough of it or it was in the nutrient fluid long enough. No way of telling when the contamination occurred, of course. It could have been from any human passenger who used that lifeship as a safe place to store his drug supply, on any of the spaceliner’s last fifty trips. And no point in mentioning that to the Albenareth, as I told our chemist. Just cause bad feelings, I should think.”

  His eyes met Giles’. The slip dangled from two of his fingers. “No, I shouldn’t think there’s any point in mentioning it” He dropped the slip into the disposal slot of his desk top. “Merely confuse the issue, since our medical people didn’t find any of your arbites with active sign of any tonk addiction when they were examined after they landed.”

  “No,” murmured Giles, “I don’t believe you’d find any of them presently addicted.”

  “Yes,” said Barsey. “Well, enough of that There’s another matter. You made quite a point of wanting our medics to return the shipsuit you wore. Here it is.”

  He reached back to the desk, opened a drawer, and drew out the tom orange shape of Giles’ shipsuit.

  “Thank you,” said Giles. He felt in the pockets of the suit. There were a few small possessions in them, but the extradition paper he had saved from the blazing spaceliner and guarded so long were not there.

  “Something missing?” Barsey asked. The manager had been watching.

  “Nothing that can’t be done without” Giles said, flatly. It was true. The justicar on 20B-40 who had signed the papers had also been the man who was to be Giles’ Oca Front contact, once Giles arrived here. But he had memorized the man’s name. It was only necessary to contact him and either get a new set of papers, or be directed to Paul’s hiding place so that Giles could take care of the assassination here, on 20B-40. Killing Paul on 20B-40 meant certain capture and condemnation for Giles; but he told himself now, if he was to back off from that now, it would have to be for a better reason than just not wanting to be caught He had brought the arbites safely to planetfall without loss of a single life, so his good name as a Steel in that respect was clean. What happened now, provided it was for the good of the race, should make little difference to him, personally. And the deaths of those who had been trapped in the flaming spaceliner were still a debt on his conscience, waiting to be discharged by the only thing that in decency could do so—an act that would preserve the future for the human race. One that possibly could even aid the future of the Albenareth, as well. The alien crew and officers who had died in the burning ship had died willingly; but still ... Giles roused to hear the manager speaking to him.

  “... this is a somewhat isolated and lonely world,” the manager wa
s saying. “There are no Adelborn here, barring yourself, sir; and the fact that we have to depend on each other a good deal on these Colony Worlds has made us close—even close with the Albenareth who’re similarly stationed here. You’ll find”— Barsey coughed—”we think a little differently from those back on Earth, arbite and—forgive me—Adelborn alike.”

  He checked himself.

  “Well, well, I didn’t mean to rattle on,” he continued. “There’s a ship calling here in two days, headed back for Earth. I understand you wanted passage on it.”

  “That’s right” Giles got to his feet “I just have to look up an old friend. You’d know him, I suppose? He’s one of your justicars—Olaf Undstead?”

  “Olaf—I’m so sorry!” Barsey scrambled to his own feet looking unhappy. “He died—just last week. You say he was an old friend?”

  “I’d come out here to see him,” Giles said.

  “What an unfortunate—but let me give you his address.” Barsey scribbled on a slip with a stylo. “He had a sort of house-keeper-companion. A free man, former arbite. His name was Willo. Arne Willo.”

  He passed the slip to Giles, who took it automatically, a cold feeling settling in his chest.

  “Yes, thanks,” said Giles automatically.

  “Arne can tell you all about him,” said Barsey. “If there’s anything else I can do, come back and see me at once.”

  “Yes,” said Giles. “Yes, I’ll see you again before long....”

  He turned and went out Outside the Mining Complex Headquarters, he took a two-man autocar to the address Barsey had printed on the slip.

  He had expected to find the address within the domed structure of the Complex itself. The atmosphere of 20B-40 was breathable, but arctic in its temperatures for most of the year—though now, which was during its summer months at the latitude of the Complex, it resembled barren, snowless winter in some area of lava fields and shattered rock. But he discovered that in recent years dwellings had sprung up outside the giant dome of the Complex—either singly or in groups, under small domes of their own. He therefore found himself directed to an exit port, where an attendant sealed him up in a thermal suit, transparent helmet included, and seated him at the controls of a rock buggy, a simple electric-powered, three-wheel vehicle, equipped with an autopilot compute that could be set for the address he wanted.