by Ron Miller
“It’s a bad business,” said Birdwhistle, unhappily. “I’ve no particular love for the man, but it seems unsporting to railroad a man out of his sanity. Well, I’m becoming a cold-blooded egoist myself. Sometimes I fear for myself. How about you? Still see red?”
“No,” she answered. “At least I’m getting that much good out of all this.”
-XIII-
It was the last dog-watch, the only time in twenty-four hours when both watches were at leisure and Judikha and Lieutenant Birdwhistle could dare to converse openly.
They were pacing the deck beneath the great, thrumming fuel conduits. Elsewhere, the watches were gathered in groups, their voices coming in disconnected murmurs over the sounds of the turbines and pumps. As usual, the engine room was lit only as much as necessary; since the crew were at leisure, only every fifth lamp was illuminated.
The tall figure of the engineer came out of the shadows and peered into their faces.
“Hist, lassie,” he said to Judikha. “Come awa’. Come wi’ me a bit.”
She glanced at Birdwhistle who gave her a barely perceptible nod and allowed the engineer to lead her to a shadowy alcove under the pumps. He brought his mouth close to her ear and whispered: “Tonight’s the night.”
“Tonight?” repeated Judikha. “The night for what?”
“Tonight’s the night,” hissed MacHinery. “It’s been a-telling me all the day. Tonight, at eight bells in the last dog-watch, he’ll have his knife sharp enough to suit him.”
“What? Who’s been telling you? What are you talking about?”
“The voice! The wee voice in my ear, lassie. Don’t you hear it yourself? Hear it now? ‘Eight bells in the last dog-watch.’ He’s at it now. Hear him—a-grinding and a-scraping with his butcher’s stone? And he’s getting nothing but a wire edge—nothing but a wire edge. And he don’t know, the loon! He don’t know!”
The engineer chuckled. Judikha listened closely, but couldn’t hear the sound of a knife being sharpened. Only the bass grumble of the engines.
“He don’t know,” the engineer continued. “But you do, lassie. Have you ever seen the like of such an edge as I’ve put on the broadaxe? And he’s nothing but a wire edge on his bit of pot metal.” Again the engineer chuckled shrilly before slipping back into the darkness. Thoughtfully, Judikha returned to the lieutenant.
“He’s hearing a voice,” she told him, “and he hears the cook sharpening his knife. For myself, I couldn’t hear a thing either way. He’s gone crazy. The cook hasn’t sharpened a knife for any reason since I got scalded.”
“I agree. I suspect you discouraged that. No doubt he’d gleefully skewer you if he had the chance, and dared, but as I told you before, the creature is a craven. MacHinery is perfectly safe, if he only knew it.”
“He must have been a little off before I started on him. I wonder that I’m not hearing voices myself. We’re all in the same boat.”
“Difference of age, temperament and brand of lunacy—to say nothing of breeding. You were a little touched yourself, at first, and I’m catching it. What kills one man cures another. There goes eight bells.”
The honking of the klaxon had sounded. It had just quieted when a hoarse, bloodcurdling shriek rang from the galley door, shortly followed by the engineer crying, “Help! Help! Murder!”
Glom ran to the catwalk railing. “Shut up that noise down there! What the hell’s the matter?”
The engineer had just appeared in the only open area of the engine room, surrounded by the men and women of the watch, attracted by his wild cries and appearance: his arms were waving over his head, his eyes were rolled back into his head exposing the bloodshot, yellowish sclera, his lips were drawn back over his stained teeth in a rictus while incoherent growls burbled from his throat.
“Hold him!” he screamed. “Hold the scaley cutthroat. Take away the knife! The knife! The knife! It has a wire edge!”
“It’s all right, MacHinery,” said Judikha, advancing toward him. “The cook isn’t here.”
The engineer turned, glaring at her, and shrank back.
“Back you murdering devil!” he shrieked. “Back with you! Haven’t you done enough?”
He suddenly leaped into the circling crew, scattering them left and right. He ran aft, shrieking continuously, until he ran into Glom, who had just descended from the catwalk. He pivoted around the bulky figure, who was too surprised and slow-witted to respond quickly, and ran up the steps and onto the overhead runways. Judikha saw him for a moment before, with a pitiful wail, he disappeared through a hatch, slamming it shut behind him.
Glom’s wits finally reacted to the events, but was much too late to stop the berserk engineer; the hatch was already closed when his toaster popped a shower of sparks from the heavy steel door. He ran to the hatch and twisted the wheel, but it wouldn’t open.
“He’s dogged it,” the first mate called out.
“Where’s he gone?” asked Wopple, joining him. “The starboard ports?”
He was answered not by the mate, but by the distant thud of an airlock being vented into space.
The helmsman gave the immediate order to cut thrust and Judikha felt the sudden surge of power as the ship was slowed. At the rapidly barked orders of the second mate, the crew scattered to their stations. Already the great ship began the ponderous effort of changing its trajectory and velocity. Judikha was on her way to the valve-array when a thundering voice stopped her. The captain had appeared.
His voice overwhelmed the noise around him, as he attempted to not only countermand Glom’s ill-conceived orders, but to correct the damage they caused. The giant ship groaned under the stress.
“Oh, you damned fool! You blistering idiot! Look what you’ve done to my ship! Look at her! Get forward out of this, you infernal amateur! Get out of my sight!”
Glom, not daring to reply, headed the men in restoring power and control, but it was too late. The patched-together engines could not stand the shaking they were receiving. Valves exploded like spiked cannon, sending five-pound brass fittings shooting across the room with the speed and deadliness of cannonballs. Seams opened in the turbines, blowing out packing and letting escape the superheated gasses within. Half a dozen of the crew were immediately killed as whirling valve handles tore through their bodies like scythes, or when they were burnt to cinders by the breached machinery.
Judikha overheard Glom try to explain to the incredulous captain why he had tried to stop the ship.
“Stop the ship?” Captain Krill shouted. “Stop the ship for a man crazy enough to space himself? Not for the best man aboard!”
Both watches worked through the following twelve hours repairing the damage wrought by hapless Glom’s ill-conceived order. It was when crews were dispatched to search out further injuries that the body of the cook was discovered with the blade of the engineer’s broadaxe buried in his skull.
Investigation showed that the cook’s knife was in its expected place on the wall along with its fellow implements. It was no sharper than it ought to have been.
-XIV-
Judikha was at the helm from six to eight the next morning. On her way she saw that the body of the cook had been stretched out on the deck, with one of the crew sewing the last stitches in its canvas shroud. Good riddance to that, she thought.
Captain Krill came out onto the catwalk while the crew mustered in the engine room at Wopple’s order. Judikha, from her place at the helm, could see little except the back of the captain’s tall figure and could hear little except his strident voice. The captain laid a dog-eared Book of Musrum on the railing.
“Men,” he said solemnly, “you’re mustered here to give the cook a send off according to rule—not that I can see how it’s going to do him any good—if praying could have helped him, it should of been done a long time ago. Same goes for the engineer, who’s some significant fraction of a light year astern by now. Jus the same, I’ll read the service for them both and whichever of them it fits best will ge
t the benefit of it, I guess. First thing, though, before we get rid of the cook, we’ll fill his place.” Judikha looked up sharply at this last statement.
“Now, you there,” bawled the captain, “you big-mouthed, fat-headed, tick-brained ox, that thinks he’s a second mate, you get down to that cabin of yours and get your duds outta there and into the cook’s room. Not a word outta you, hear? You’re ship’s cook now or you go in irons and that’s that. What d’you say now?”
Since the captain had just taken one of his massive toasters from his pocket and lain it atop the Book, there wasn’t much that Glom could say. “That’s sensible,” complimented the captain, pleased with Glom’s silence. “Let’s see if you can keep it up. One of you go with him and give him a hand with his duff.”
While this was being done, the captain did not wait but went ahead with the ceremony, which amounted to nothing more than opening the Book randomly and reading the first passage that caught his eye.
“Well, that oughta be enough for any man,” he said, slamming the book shut and putting his cap back on. “Out with him.”
The sack containing the cook was manhandled into a circular hole in the deck, a heavy cover was dropped over it and dogged shut. A valve was closed while another was opened. A lever was pulled, there was a hiss and a dull thump and the cook was gone.
The captain was quiet for a moment then, as he turned from the railing, murmured, “Well, down the hatch.”
No one except Judikha, apparently, heard the comment and she began to laugh. It had not been a particularly funny remark; undoubtedly her laughter was the result of a sort of hysteria brought on by fatigue—she herself had no idea. But she began to laugh and the more she tried to repress it, the more uncontrollable it became. The captain turned toward her with a glare.
“What’s the matter with you?” he asked.
“N-nothing, sir.”
“Yes there is, I tell you. You’ve got something up your sleeve,” the captain stormed. “I’m dead onto you. You’re slick, but I’m slicker. Grin in my face, will you? I’ll see if my mate ain’t right after all. Mr. Queel,” he shouted, “call all hands again.”
He then turned his back to Judikha, who had become instantly sober.
Meanwhile, the two watches—one with its breakfast interrupted—joined in the engine room. The captain glared down upon them.
“I’ve given you men plenty of time to turn out the man what busted Mr. Queel’s arm,” he said. “Time’s up. Give him over and give him over this very instant or back you go to your old grub.”
A voice answered him from the crowd, but Judikha couldn’t see who it was.
“Get up here, man” demanded the captain, and Judikha saw Bob separate himself from the rest and mount the steps to the catwalk. “All right,” said the captain, “out with it. You the man?”
“No sir!” replied Bob. “We’ve all talked it over, sir, amongst ourselves, and we can’t prove it, one way or another, sir, but most of us thinks it’s the man what you took from us as an officer. He was quick enough to deny it was hisself, but he was just as quick to swear it wasn’t Veronica, when the mate thought it was. He knew all along who it was, sir. It was hisself and all the hands thinks so too, sir.”
“That will do, you sniveling rat. Mr. Wopple, will you step up here, please.”
Bob scuttled down the stairs, passing, with averted eyes, Mr. Wopple as the latter mounted the steps.
“Mr. Wopple,” demanded the captain, “the men accuse you of being the man what broke into the mate’s room first night out and broke the poor man’s arm. I’ve made you second mate and so far I’ve found no fault with you. But I want this settled. Did you? Or was it this gerl here? I want the truth now.”
Wopple looked at Judikha and, with a kind of horror, saw him wink at her. Then the mate looked the captain squarely in the face and said, “It was me, cap’n.”
“You, was it? And why didn’t you own up to it before?”
“Didn’t want to get beaten or killed, naturally. I was just a spaceman then, cap’n. You’ve made me an officer and I’m much obliged to you, but it makes a heap of difference if anything happens to me. As one officer to another I ain’t afraid of Queel now.”
“But what were you after? What did you want in his room?”
“Haven’t the slightest idea, cap’n. I was blind drunk, but not so far gone as to have the fight outa me. He struck at me and I jest give ‘is arm a twist. That’s all. Now, cap’n, you can put me back with the men and take back Mr. Glom, or anyone else. But, remember, if anything happens to me, I’m an officer.”
“Can you square things with Mr. Queel?”
“Don’t matter to me if I do or don’t. I’m second mate and he’s only first. He ran afoul of me on deck that first night and I figger things are square as they are.”
The captain turned away for a moment, frowning blackly. Judikha was about to speak when Wopple caught her eye; his murderous scowl shut her up. The captain turned back to his second mate and said: “All right. Settle it with the mate. I’ll talk it over with him myself. Tell the watch they can get back to breakfast.”
Mr. Wopple clambered down the stairs and the captain turned now to Judikha.
“What the hell were you laughing at?”
“At what you said, sir, when the cook was spaced.”
Captain Krill looked her over slowly from head to foot, then, with a grunt, went down to his own breakfast.
-XV-
Beyond that incomprehensible wink, Wopple never offered Judikha any further explanation for his vicarious confession. All that she could imagine was that, secure in his position as an officer, he had done her the favor out of friendship. That, and to secure better grub for the men. Whether or not Captain Krill no longer suspected her of the crime, the latter goal at least was achieved. The order was given for the steward to provide the crew with “full and plenty”—which really only meant that the government allowance was augmented by a few substitutes and an extra quart of water each day.
What difference, if any, Wopple’s confession made so far as his relation with Mr. Queel was concerned, she never learned. They seemed to work together smoothly enough, without apparent friction. Indeed, Queel seemed strangely subdued after the death of the engineer and the cook. His language was no less vitriolic, but he seldom had recourse to his toaster, which remained tucked into his belt. As for Monkfish, the full measure of his humiliation had yet to dawn upon him. As cook, he could secure for himself the best food served in the cabins; his berth was private and comfortable; his duties were simple. He moped around for the first few days, surly and morose, but quickly enough settled into an apathetic, porcine indifference. His only raised himself from this lethargy when Judikha would pass by the open door to the galley, when he would throw a few half-hearted curses after her. She mentioned to the lieutenant the possibility of taking advantage of Monkfish’s new position to silence him, for the entertainment value if for no other reason.
“No, don’t do it,” Birdwhistle ordered. “I want you to keep out of trouble. Great Musrum!” he cried, pressing both hands to his temples. “What have I done to be compelled to suffer like this?” He had been assigned the officers’ laundry; he’d been at it all day and his knuckles were white and shriveled. Caustic soap ran down his bare forearms and the sides of his face.
“Why bear it at all?” Judikha asked. “There are only two officers aft now—for I think we could count on Wopple if things came down to cases—and one is still crippled. Why don’t we sneak down during my watch, floor the mate, gag him, fix the skipper and get his weapons. We’d be in charge then.”
“Yes, you’re right, we might. You’ve been right all along. And yet...I suppose you’ll think it cowardice, but, you see, someone might get killed. Some of the men, perhaps, who wouldn’t understand. I know that as a Patrol officer I would be exonerated, but I still find myself hesitating at bloodshed. If there were a war, I shouldn’t hold back. War excuses killing. I had hoped t
hat in case of a vacancy in the galley that I would be made cabin flunky or something of that sort, while the steward cooked. Now I’m stalled again.”
Judikha’s thoughts were angry and disgusted. She said, “I’ve a good mind to take things into my own hands. Perhaps it’s a difference in our training, perhaps it’s a difference in our temperament, but I just don’t have your scruples in this matter. I could overcome both the mate and the skipper in two minutes. I could arm myself in two more. Five minutes altogether, at the most.”
“And you’d be condemned.”
“But why? I’m a Patrolman. The Patrol has trained me to fight. I’ve been taken forcibly from my job and I want to fight back as I’ve been taught, to get back to my rightful place. Why should the Patrol condemn me?”
“Because the lawyers would consider it their duty to do so,” replied Birdwhistle, wearily. “We’ve argued this before. If you insist on falling back on your relationship with the Patrol, then I will do the same. As your superior officer I forbid you to assault anyone aboard this spacecraft, until I direct you to do so. I also order you to report to me in twenty-four hours any plan you may conceive that will put me in possession of the arms without violence. I will also be thinking. My present duties, however unpleasant, are light and conducive to thought. I have washed shirts today, tomorrow I am on socks.”
All through the middle watch, Judikha pondered the lieutenant’s attitude, but it was not until she rolled into her berth at four in the morning did she arrive at any kind of solution that satisfied her.
Birdwhistle’s a gentleman, and as such he considers fighting and rough stuff as ungentlemanly unless on behalf of others, or for some principle removed from his own personal interests. Yet, I can tell that deep inside he feels like murder, at least sometimes. Perhaps not as often as I do. But he’s on that side of the fence—and I’m on the other. He can take it and turn the other cheek and know that he’s none the less for it. Could I ever do that? Could I bring myself to forgive Monkfish? Could I do it for the sake of—him?