Caviar

by Theodore Sturgeon

  I said, “How do you—feel, cap’n?”

  “Swell,” he said. He frowned. “Why? You feel all right?”

  Not right then, I didn’t. Captain Parks batty? That was just a little bit lousy. If Renn was right—and he was always right—then his board had given Parks the works, as well as the rest of the crew. All but me, that is. I knew I wasn’t crazy. I didn’t feel crazy. “I feel fine,” I said.

  “Well, go ahead then,” said Parks, and turned his back.

  I went over to the control board, disconnected the power leads from the radioscope, and checked the dials. For maybe five minutes I felt the old boy’s eyes drilling into the nape of my neck, but I was too upset to say anything more. It got very quiet in there. Small noises drifted into the control room from other parts of the ship. Finally I heard his shoulder brush the doorpost as he walked out.

  How much did the captain know about this trip? Did he know that he had a bunch of graduates from the laughing academy to man his ship? I tried to picture Renn informing Parks that he was a paranoiac and a manic depressive, and I failed miserably. Parks would probably take a swing at the doctor. Aw, it just didn’t make sense. It occurred to me that “making sense” was a criterion that we put too much faith in. What do you do when you run across something that isn’t even supposed to make sense?

  I slapped the casing back on the radioscope, connected the leads, and called it quits. The speaker over the forward post rasped out, “All hands report to control chamber!” I started, stuck my tools into their clips under the chart table, and headed for the door. Then I remembered I was already in the control room, and subsided against the bulkhead.

  They straggled in. All hands were in the pink, well fed and eager. I nodded to three of them, shook hands with another. The skipper came in without looking at me—I rather thought he avoided my eyes. He went straight forward, faced about and put his hands low enough on the canted control board so he could sit on them. Seabiscuit, the quartermaster, and an old shipmate of mine, came and stood beside me. There was an embarrassed murmur of voices while we all awaited the last two stragglers.

  Seabiscuit whispered to me, “I once said I’d sail clear to Hell if Bill Parks was cap’n of the ship.”

  I said, out of the side of my face, “So?”

  “So it looks like I’m goin’ to,” said the Biscuit.

  The captain called the roll. That crew was microscopically hand picked. I had heard every single one of the names he called in connection with some famous escapade or other. Harry Voight was our chemist. He is the man who kept two hundred passengers alive for a month with little more than a week’s supply of air and water to work with, after the liner crossed bows with a meteorite on the Pleione run. Bort Brecht was the engineer, a man who could do three men’s work with his artificial hand alone. He lost it in the Pretoria disaster. The gunner was Hoch McCoy, the guy who “invented” the bow and arrow and saved his life when he was marooned on an asteroid in the middle of a pack of poison-toothed “Jackrabbits.” The mechanics were Phil and Jo Hartley, twins, whose resemblance enabled them to change places time and again during the Insurrection, thus running bales of vital information to the league high command.

  “Report,” he said to me.

  “All’s well in the control chamber, sir,” I said formally.

  “Brecht?”

  “All’s well back aft, sir.”

  “Quartermaster?”

  “Stores all aboard and stashed away, sir,” said the Biscuit.

  Parks turned to the control board and threw a lever. The air locks slid shut, the thirty second departure signal began to sound from the oscillator on the hull and from signals here and in the engineer’s chamber. Parks raised his voice to be heard over their clamor.

  “I don’t know where we’re goin’,” he said, with an odd smile, “but—” the signals stopped, and that was deafening—“we’re on our way!”

  The master control he had thrown had accomplished all the details of taking off—artificial gravity, “solar” and “planetary” stases, air pumps, humidifiers—everything. Except for the fact that there was suddenly no light streaming in through the portholes any more, there was no slightest change in sensation. Parks reached out and tore the seals off the tape slot on the integrators and from the door of the orders file. He opened the cubbyhole and drew out a thick envelope. There was something in my throat that I couldn’t swallow.

  He tore it open and pulled out eight envelopes and a few folded sheets of paper. He glanced at the envelopes and, with raised eyebrows, handed them to me. I took them. There was one addressed to each member of the crew. At a nod from the skipper I distributed them. Parks unfolded his orders and looked at them.

  “Orders,” he read. “By authority of the Solar League, pertaining to destination and operations of Xantippean Expedition No. 1.”

  Startled glances were batted back and forth. Xantippe! No one had ever been to Xantippe! The weird, cometary planet of Betelgeuse was, and had always been, taboo—and for good reason.

  Parks’s voice was tight. “Orders to be read to crew by the captain immediately upon taking off.” The skipper went to the pilot chair, swiveled it, and sat down. The crew edged closer.

  “The league congratulates itself on its choice of a crew for this most important mission. Out of twenty-seven hundred volunteers, these eight men survived the series of tests and conditioning exercises provided by the league.

  “General orders are to proceed to Xantippe. Captain and crew have been adequately protected against the field. Object of the expedition is to find the cause of the Xantippe field and to remove it.

  “Specific orders for each member of the crew are enclosed under separate sealed covers. The crew is ordered to read these instructions, to memorize them, and to destroy the orders and envelopes. The league desires that these orders be read in strictest secrecy by each member of the crew, and that the individual contents of the envelopes be held as confidential until contrary orders are issued by the league.” Parks drew a deep breath and looked around at his crew.

  They were a steady lot. There was evidence of excitement, of surprise, and in at least one case, of shock. But there was no fear. Predominantly, there was a kind of exultance in the spaceburned, hard-bitten faces. They bore a common glory, a common hatred. “That isn’t sensible,” I told myself. “It isn’t natural, or normal, or sane, for eight men to face madness, years of it, with that joyous light in their eyes. But then—they’re mad already, aren’t they? Aren’t they?”

  It was catching, too. I began to hate Xantippe. Which was, I suppose, silly. Xantippe was a planet, of a sort. Xantippe never killed anybody. It drove men mad, that was all. More than mad—it fused their synapses, reduced them to quivering, mindless hulks, drooling, their useless minds turned supercargo in a useless body. Xantippe had snared ship upon ship in the old days; ships bound for the other planets of the great star. The mad planet used to blanket them in its mantle of vibrations, and they were never heard from again. It was years before the league discovered where the ships had gone, and then they sent patrols to investigate. They lost eighteen ships and thirty thousand men that way.

  And then came the Forfield drive. In the kind of static hyperspace which these ships inhabited, surely they would pass the field unharmed. There were colonists out there on the other planets, depending on supplies from Sol. There were rich sources of radon, uranium, tantalum, copper. Surely a Forfield ship could—

  But they couldn’t. They were the first ships to penetrate the field, to come out on the other side. The ships were intact, but their crews could use their brains for absolutely nothing. Sure, I hated Xantippe. Crazy planet with its cometary orbit and its unpredictable complex ecliptic. Xantippe had an enormous plot afoot. It was stalking us—even now it was ready to pounce on us, take us all and drain our minds—

  I shook myself and snapped out of it. I was dreaming myself into a case of the purple willies. If I couldn’t keep my head on my shoulders ab
oard this spacegoing padded cell, then who would? Who else could?

  The crew filed out, muttering. Parks sat on the pilot’s chair, watching them, his bright gaze flitting from face to face. When they had gone he began to watch me. Not look at me. Watch me. It made me sore.

  “Well?” he said after a time.

  “Well what?” I barked, insubordinately.

  “Aren’t you going to read your bedtime story? I am.”

  “Bed—oh.” I slit the envelope, unfolded my orders. The captain did likewise at the extreme opposite side of the chamber. I read:

  “Orders by authority of the Solar League pertaining to course of action to be taken by Harl Ripley, astromechanic on Xantippean Expedition No. 1.

  “Said Harl Ripley shall follow the rules and regulations as set forth in the naval regulations, up until such time as the ship engages the Xantippean Field. He is then to follow the orders of the master, except in case of the master’s removal from active duty from some unexpected cause. Should such an emergency arise, the command does not necessarily revert to said Harl Ripley, but to the crew member who with the greatest practicability outlines a plan for the following objective: The expedition is to land on Xantippe; if uninhabited, the planet is to be searched until the source of the field is found and destroyed. If inhabited, the procedure of the pro-tem commander must be dictated by events. He is to bear in mind, however, that the primary and only purpose of the expedition is to destroy the Xantippean Field.”

  That ended the orders; but scrawled across the foot of the page was an almost illegible addendum: “Remember your last board meeting, Rip. And good luck!” The penciled initials were C. Renn, M.Ps.S. That would be Doc Renn.

  I was so puzzled that my ears began to buzz. The government had apparently spent a huge pile of money in training us and outfitting the expedition. And yet our orders were as hazy as they could possibly be. And what was the idea of giving separate orders to each crew member? And such orders! “The procedure of the pro-tem commander must be dictated by events.” That’s what you’d call putting us on our own! It wasn’t like the crisp, detailed commands any navy man is used to. It was crazy.

  Well, of course it was crazy, come to think of it. What else could you expect with this crew? I began to wish sincerely that the board had driven me nuts along with the rest of them.

  I was at the chart table, coding up the hundred-hour log entry preparatory to slipping it into the printer, when I sensed someone behind me. The skipper, of course. He stayed there a long time, and I knew he was watching me.

  I sat there until couldn’t stand it any longer. “Come on in,” I said without moving. Nothing happened. I listened carefully until I could hear his careful breathing. It was short, swift. He was trying to breathe in a whisper. I began to be really edgy. I had a nasty suspicion that if I whirled I would be just in time to catch a bolt from a by-by gun.

  Clenching my jaw till my teeth hurt, I rose slowly, and without looking around, went to the power-output telltales and looked at them. I didn’t know what was the matter with me. I’d never been this way before—always expecting attack from somewhere. I used to be a pretty nice guy. As a matter of fact, I used to be the nicest guy I knew. I didn’t feel that way any more.

  Moving to the telltales took me another six or eight feet from the man at the door. Safer for both of us. And this way I had to turn around to get back to the table. I did. It wasn’t the skipper. It was the chemist, Harry Voight. We were old shipmates, and I knew him well.

  “Hello, Harry. Why the dark companion act?”

  He was tense. He was wearing a little mustache of perspiration on his upper lip. His peculiar eyes—the irises were as black as the pupils—were set so far back in his head that I couldn’t see them, for the alleyway light was directly over his head. His bald, bulging forehead threw two deep purple shadows, and out of them he watched me.

  “Hi, Rip. Busy?”

  “Not too busy. Put it in a chair.”

  He came in and sat down. He turned as he passed me, backed into the pilot’s seat. I perched on the chart table. It looked casual, and it kept my weight on one foot. If I had to move in any direction, including up, I was ready to.

  After a time he said, “What do you think of this, Rip?” His gesture took in the ship, Xantippe, the league, the board.

  “I only work here,” I quoted. That was the motto of the navy. Our insignia is the league symbol superimposed on a flaming sun, under which is an ultraradio screen showing the words, “I only work here.” The famous phrase expresses the utmost in unquestioning, devoted duty.

  Harry smiled a very sickly smile. If ever I saw a man with something eating him, it was Harry Voight. “S’matter,” I asked quietly. “Did somebody do you something?”

  He looked furtively about him, edged closer. “Rip, I want to tell you something. Will you close the door?”

  I started to refuse, and then reflected that regulations could stand a little relaxing in a coffin like this one. I went and pressed the panel and it slid closed. “Make it snappy,” I said. “If the skipper comes up here and finds that door closed he’ll slap some wrists around here.”

  As soon as the door closed, Harry visibly slumped. “This is the first time in two days I’ve felt—comfortable,” he said. He looked at me with sudden suspicion. “Rip—when we roomed together in Venus City, what color was that jacket I used to keep my Naval Manual in?”

  I frowned. I’d only seen the thing a couple of times—“Blue,” I said.

  “That’s right.” He wiped his forehead. “You’re O.K.” He made a couple of false starts and then said, “Rip, will you keep everything I say strictly to yourself? Nobody can be trusted here—nobody!” I nodded. “Well,” he went on in a strained voice, “I know that this is a screwy trip. I know that the crew is—has been made—sort of—well, not normal—”

  He said, with conviction, “The league has its own reasons for sending us, and I don’t question them. But something has gone wrong. You think Xantippe is going to get us? Ha! Xantippe is getting us now!” He sat back triumphantly.

  “You don’t say!”

  “But I do! I know she’s countless thousands of light years away. But I don’t have to tell you of the power of Xantippe. For a gigantic power like that, a little project like what they’re doing to us is nothing. Any force that can throw out a field three quarters of a billion miles in diameter can play hell with us at a far greater distance.”

  “Could be,” I said. “Just what are they doing?”

  “They’re studying us,” he hissed. “They’re watching each of us, our every action, our every mental reflex. And one by one they are—taking us away! They’ve got the Hartley twins, and Bort Brecht, and soon they’ll have me. I don’t know about the others, but their turns will come. They are taking away our personalities, and substituting their own. I tell you, those three men—and soon now, I with them—those men are not humans, but Xantippeans!”

  “Now wait,” I said patiently. “Aren’t you going on guesswork? Nobody knows if Xantippe’s inhabited. And I doubt that this substitution you speak of can be done.”

  “You don’t think so? For pity’s sake, Rip—for your own good, try to believe me! The Xantippean Field is a thought force, isn’t it? And listen—I know it if you don’t—this crew was picked for its hatred of Xantippe. Don’t you see why? The board expects that hatred to act as a mental ‘fender’—to partly ward off the field. They think there might be enough left of our minds when we’re inside the field to accomplish our objective. They’re wrong, Rip—wrong! The very existence of our communal hatred is the thing that has given us away. They have been ready for us for days now—and they are already doing their work aboard.”

  He subsided, and I prodded him with a gentle question.

  “How do you know the Xantippeans have taken away those three men?”

  “Because I happened to overhear the Hartley twins talking in the messroom two days ago. They were talking about their orders
. I know I should not have listened, but I was already suspicious.”

  “They were talking about their orders? I understood that the orders were confidential.”

  “They were. But you can’t expect the Hartleys to pay much attention to that. Anyway, Jo confided that a footnote on his orders had intimated that there was only one sane man aboard. Phil laughed that off. He said he knew he was sane, and he knew that Jo was sane. Now, I reason this way. Only a crazy man would question the league; a crazy man or an enemy. Now the Hartleys may be unbalanced, but they are still rational. They are still navy men. Therefore, they must be enemies, because navy men never question the league.”

  I listened to that vague logic spoken in that intense, convincing voice, and I didn’t know what to think. “What about Bort Brecht—and yourself?”

  “Bort! Ahh!” His lips curled. “I can sense an alien ego when I speak to him. It’s overwhelming. I hate Xantippe,” he said wildly, “but I hate Bort Brecht more! The only thing I could possibly hate more than Xantippe would be a Xantippean. That proves my point!” He spread his hands. “As for me—Rip, I’m going mad. I feel it. I see things—and when I do, I will be another of them. And then we will all be lost. For there is only one sane man aboard this ship, and that is me, and when I’m turned into a Xantippean, we will be doomed, and I want you to kill me!” He was half hysterical. I let him simmer down.

  “And do I look crazy?” I asked. “If you are the only sane man—”

  “Not crazy,” he said quickly. “A schizoid—but you’re perfectly rational. You must be, or you wouldn’t have remembered what color my book jacket was.”

  I got up, reached out a hand to help him to his feet. He drew back. “Don’t touch me!” he screamed, and when I recoiled, he tried to smile. “I’m sorry, Rip, but I can’t be sure about anything. You may be a Xantippean by now, and touching me might … I’ll be going now … I—” He went out, his black, burning eyes half closed.