The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 05

by Anthology

  But Mellon was paying no attention. "You! I'll kill you! Lecher! Dirty-minded, filthy...."

  He went on.

  Suddenly, unexpectedly, he smashed his heel down on Mike's toe. At least, he tried to; he'd have done it if the toe had been there when his heel came down. But Mike moved it just two inches and avoided the blow.

  At the same time, though, Mellon twisted, and Mike's forced shift of position lessened his leverage on the man's shoulders and arms. Mellon almost got away. One hand grabbed the wrench from von Liegnitz, whose grip had been weakened by the paralyzing pressure of Keku's fingers.

  Mike had no choice but to slam a hard left into the man's solar plexus. Mellon collapsed like an unoccupied overcoat.

  By this time, von Liegnitz had quieted down. "Let go, Keku," he said. "I'm all right." He looked down at the motionless figure on the deck. "What the hell do you suppose was eating him?" he asked quietly.

  "How's your shoulder?" Mike asked.

  "Hurts like the devil, but I don't think it's busted. But why did he do it?" he repeated.

  "Sounds to me," said Keku dryly, "that he was nutty jealous of you. He didn't like the times you took Leda Crannon to the base movies while we were at Chilblains."

  Jakob von Liegnitz continued to look down at the smaller man in wonder. "Lieber Gott" he said finally. "I only took her out a couple of times. I knew he liked her, but--" He stopped. "The guy must be off his bearings."

  "I smelled liquor on his breath," said Mike. "Let's get him down to his stateroom and lock him in until he sobers up. I'll have to report this to the captain. Can you carry him, Keku?"

  Keku nodded and reached down. He put his hands under Mellon's armpits, lifted him to his feet, and threw him over his shoulder.

  "Good," said Mike the Angel. "I'll walk behind you and clop him one if he wakes up and gets wise."

  Vaneski was standing to one side, his face pale, his expression blank.

  Mike said: "Jake, you and Vaneski go up and make the report to the captain. Tell him we'll be up as soon as we've taken care of Mellon."

  "Right," said von Liegnitz, massaging his bruised shoulder.

  "Okay, Keku," said Mike, "forward march."

  * * * * *

  Lieutenant Keku thumbed the opener to Mellon's stateroom, shoved the door aside, stepped in, and slapped at the switch plaque. The plates lighted up, bathing the room in sunshiny brightness.

  "Dump him on his sack," said Mike.

  While Keku put the unconscious Mellon on his bed, Mike let his gaze wander around the room. It was neat--almost too neat, implying overfussiness. The medical reference books were on one shelf, all in alphabetical order. Another shelf contained a copy of the International Encyclopedia, English edition, plus several dictionaries, including one on medical terms and another on theological ones.

  On the desk lay a copy of the Bible, York translation, opened to the Book of Tobit. Next to it were several sheets of blank paper and a small traveling clock sat on them as a paperweight.

  His clothing was hung neatly, in the approved regulation manner, with his shoes in their proper places and his caps all lined up in a row.

  Mike walked around the room, looking at everything.

  "What's the matter? What're you looking for?" asked Keku.

  "His liquor," said Mike the Angel.

  "In his desk, lower left-hand drawer. You won't find anything but a bottle of ruby port; Mellon was never a drinker."

  Mike opened the drawer. "I probably won't find that, drunk as he is."

  Surprisingly enough, the bottle of wine was almost half full. "Did he have more than one bottle?" Mike asked.

  "Not so far as I know. Like I said, he didn't drink much. One slug of port before bedtime was about his limit."

  Mike frowned. "How does his breath smell to you?"

  "Not bad. Two or three drinks, maybe."

  "Mmmm." Mike put the bottle on top of the desk, then walked over to the small case that was standing near one wall. He lifted it and flipped it open. It was the standard medical kit for Space Service physicians.

  The intercom speaker squeaked once before Captain Quill's voice came over it. "Mister Gabriel?"

  "Yes, sir?" said Mike without turning around. There were no eyes in the private quarters of the officers and crew.

  "How is Mister Mellon?" A Space Service physician's doctorate is never used as a form of address; three out of four Space Service officers have a doctor's degree of some kind, and there's no point in calling 75 per cent of the officers "doctor."

  Mike glanced across the room. Keku had finished stripping the little physician to his underclothes and had put a cover over him.

  "He's still unconscious, sir, but his breathing sounds all right."

  "How's his pulse?"

  Keku picked up Mellon's left wrist and applied his fingers to the artery while he looked at his wrist watch.

  Mike said: "We'll check it, sir. Wait a few seconds."

  Fifteen seconds later, Keku multiplied by four and said: "One-oh-four and rather weak."

  "You'd better get hold of the Physician's Mate," Mike told Quill. "He's not in good condition, either mentally or physically."

  "Very well. As soon as the mate takes over, you and Mister Keku get up here. I want to know what the devil has been going on aboard my ship."

  "You are bloody well not the only one," said Mike the Angel.

  15

  Midnight, ship time.

  And, as far as the laws of simultaneity would allow, it was midnight in Greenwich, England. At least, when a ship returned from an interstellar trip, the ship's chronometer was within a second or two, plus or minus, of Greenwich time. Theoretically, the molecular vibration clocks shouldn't vary at all. The fact that they did hadn't yet been satisfactorily accounted for.

  Mike the Angel tried to make himself think of clocks or the variations in space time or anything else equally dull, in the hope that it would put him to sleep.

  He began to try to work out the derivation of the Beale equations, the equations which had solved the principle of the no-space drive. The ship didn't move through space; space moved through the ship, which, of course, might account for the variation in time, because--

  --the time is out of joint.

  The time is out of joint: O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right!

  Hamlet, thought Mike. Act One, the end of scene five.

  But why had he been born to set it right? Besides, exactly what was wrong? There was something wrong, all right.

  And why from the end of the act? Another act to come? Something more to happen? The clock will go round till another time comes. Watch the clock, the absolutely cuckoo clock, which ticked as things happened that made almost no sense and yet had sense hidden in their works.

  The good old Keku clock. Somewhere is icumen in, lewdly sing Keku. The Mellon is ripe and climbing Jakob's ladder. And both of them playing Follow the Leda.

  And where were they heading? Toward some destination in the general direction of the constellation Cygnus. The transformation equations work fine on an interstellar ship. Would they work on a man? Wouldn't it be nice to be able to transform yourself into a swan? Cygnus the Swan.

  And we'll all play Follow the Leda....

  Somewhere in there, Mike the Angel managed to doze off.

  * * * * *

  He awoke suddenly, and his dream of being a huge black swan vanished, shattered into nothingness.

  This time it had not been a sound that had awakened him. It had been something else, something more like a cessation of sound. A dying sigh.

  He reached out and touched the switch plaque.

  Nothing happened.

  The room remained dark.

  The room was strangely silent. The almost soundless vibration of the engines was still there, but....

  The air conditioners!

  The air in the stateroom was unmoving, static. There was none of the faint breeze of moving air. Something had gone wrong wit
h the low-power circuits!

  Now how the hell could that happen? Not by accident, unless the accident were a big one. It would take a tremendous amount of coincidence to put all three of the interacting systems out of order at once. And they all had to go at once to cut the power from the low-load circuits.

  The standard tap and the first and second stand-by taps were no longer tapping power from the main generators. The intercom was gone, too, along with the air conditioners, the lights, and half a dozen other sub-circuits.

  Mike the Angel scrambled out of bed and felt for his clothing, wishing he had something as prosaic as an old-fashioned match, or even a flame-type cigarette lighter. He found his lighter in his belt pocket as he pulled on his uniform. He jerked it out and thumbed it. In the utter darkness, the orange-red glow gave more illumination than he had supposed. If a man's eyes are adjusted to darkness, he can read print by the glow of a cigarette, and the lighter's glow was brighter than that.

  Still, it wasn't much. If only he had a flashlight!

  From a distance, far down the companionway, he could hear voices. The muffled sound that had awakened him had been the soft susurration of the door as it had slid open when the power died. Without the electrolocks to hold it closed, it had opened automatically. The doors in a spaceship are built that way, to make sure no one will be trapped in case of a power failure.

  Mike dressed in a matter of seconds and headed toward the door.

  And stopped just before he stepped out.

  Someone was outside. Someone, or--something.

  He didn't know how he knew, but he knew. He was as certain as if the lights had been on bright.

  And whoever was waiting out there didn't want Mike the Angel to know that he was there.

  Mike stood silent for a full second. That was long enough for him to get angry. Not the hot anger of hatred, but the cold anger of a man who has had too many attempts on his life, who has escaped narrowly from an unseen plotter twice because of pure luck and does not intend to fall victim to the dictum that "the third time's a charm."

  He realized that he was still holding the glowing cigarette lighter in his hand.

  "Damn!" he muttered, as though to himself. "I'd forget my ears if they weren't sewed down." Then he turned, heading back toward his bed, hoping that whoever was waiting outside would assume he would be back immediately. At the same time, he lifted his thumb off the lighter's contact.

  Then he sat down on the edge of his bed and quickly pulled off his boots. Holding them both in his hands, he moved silently back to the door. When he reached it, he tossed both boots to the rear of the room. When they landed clatteringly, he stepped quietly through the door. In three steps he was on the opposite side of the corridor. He hugged the wall and moved back away from the spot where the watcher would be expecting him.

  Then he waited.

  He was on one side of the door to his stateroom, and the--what or whoever it was--was on the other. Until that other made a move, Mike the Angel would wait.

  The wait seemed many minutes long, although Mike knew it couldn't have been more than forty-five seconds or so. From other parts of the ship he could hear voices shouting as the crewmen and officers who had been sleeping were awakened by the men on duty. The ship could not sustain life long if the air conditioners were dead.

  Then, quite suddenly, the waiting was over. Behind Mike there was a bend in the corridor, and from around that bend came the sound of running footsteps, followed by a bellowing voice: "I'll get the Commander; you go down and get the other boys started!"

  Multhaus.

  And then there was a glow of light. The Chief Powerman's Mate was carrying a light, which reflected from the walls of the corridor.

  And Mike the Angel knew perfectly well that he was silhouetted against that glow. Whoever it was who was waiting for him could see him plainly.

  Multhaus' footsteps rang in the corridor while Mike strained his eyes to see what was before him in the darkness. And all the time, the glow became brighter as Multhaus approached.

  Then, from out of the darkness, came something that moved on a whir of caterpillar treads. Something hard and metallic slammed against Mike's shoulder, spinning him against the wall.

  At that moment, Multhaus came around the corner, and Mike could see Snookums scurrying on down the corridor toward the approaching Powerman's Mate.

  "Multhaus! Look out!" Mike yelled.

  The beam from the chief's hand torch gleamed on the metallic body of the little robot as it headed toward him.

  "Snookums! Stop!" Mike ordered.

  Snookums paid no attention. He swerved adroitly around the astonished Multhaus, spun around the corner, and was gone into the darkness.

  "What was all that, sir?" Multhaus asked, looking more than somewhat confused.

  "A course of instruction on the First and Second Laws of Robotics as applied by the Computer Corporation of Earth," said Mike, rubbing his bruised side. "But never mind that now. What's wrong with the low-power circuits?"

  "I don't know, sir. Breckwell is on duty in that section."

  "Let's go," said Mike the Angel. "We have to get this cleared up before we all suffocate."

  "Someone's going to get galloping claustrophobia before it's over, anyway," said Multhaus morosely as he followed Mike down the hallway in the direction from which Snookums had come. "Darkness and stuffy air touch off that sort of thing."

  "Who's Officer of the Watch tonight?" Mike wanted to know.

  "Ensign Vaneski, I think. His name was on the roster, as I remember."

  "I hope he reported to the bridge. Commander Jeffers will be getting frantic, but he can't leave the bridge unless he's relieved. Come on, let's move."

  They sprinted down the companionway.

  * * * * *

  The lights had been out less than five minutes when Mike the Angel and Chief Powerman's Mate Multhaus reached the low-power center of the Power Section. The door was open, and a torch was spearing its beam on two men--one kneeling over the prone figure of the other. The kneeling man jerked his head around as Mike and the chief came in the door.

  The kneeling man was Powerman First Class Fleck. Mike recognized the man on the floor as Powerman Third Class Breckwell.

  "What happened?" he snapped at Fleck.

  "Don't know, sir. I was in the head when the lights went. It took me a little time to get a torch and get in here, and I found Breckwell gone. At least, I thought he was gone, but then I heard a noise from the tool cabinet and I opened it and he fell out." The words seemed to come out all in a rush.

  "Dead?" asked Mike sharply.

  "Nossir, I don't think so, sir. Looks like somebody clonked him on the head, but he's breathin' all right."

  Mike knelt over the man and took his pulse. The heartbeat was regular and steady, if a trifle weak. Mike ran a hand over Breckwell's head.

  "There's a knot there the size of a golf ball, but I don't think anything's broken," he said.

  Footsteps came running down the hall, and six men of the power crew came pouring in the door. They slowed to a halt when they saw their commanding officer was already there.

  "A couple of you take care of Breckwell--Leister, Knox--move him to one side. Bathe his face with water. No, wait; you can't do that till we get the pumps moving again. Just watch him."

  One of the men coughed a little. "What he needs is a good slug of hooch."

  "I agree," said Mike evenly. "Too bad there isn't any aboard. But do what you think is best; I'm going to be too busy to keep an eye on you. I won't be able to watch you at all, so you'll be on your own."

  "Yessir," said the man who had spoken. He hid his grin and took out at a run, heading for wherever it was he kept his bottle hidden.

  "Dunstan, you and Ghihara get out and watch the halls. If any other officer comes this way, sing out."

  "Yessir!" came the twin chorus.

  More footsteps pounded toward them, and the remaining men of the power crew arrived.

&n
bsp; "All right, now let's take a look at these circuits," said Mike.

  Chief Multhaus had already flipped open all the panels and was peering inside. The men lined the torches up on the desk in the corner, in order to shed as much light as possible over the banks of low-power wiring, and went over to where Multhaus and Mike the Angel were standing.