Godspeed

by Charles Sheffield

  In less than half a minute I knew it was going to be all right. I could fly the beetle, no doubt about it.

  I turned in triumph to Mel, who was climbing in through the hatch, wiping her shoes fastidiously at the entrance and slipping off her brown leather backpack. She stared around in disgust at the mess.

  "Don't your robots take care of this for you?" she complained. "It's revolting."

  "No robots here. But never mind that now." She was moving too slowly for my taste. "Come on, Mel, close that door and let's go. We can worry about cleaning up later."

  "No need for hurry, Jay," a deeper voice said.

  I went rigid with surprise and horror, and ran for the hatch.

  It was too late. Danny Shaker, neat as the cabin was messy, was already stepping into the beetle. As I watched, he turned and slammed the hatch shut.

  "There," he said. "I'm sure that's what you were proposing to do anyway. But let's make it with me inside, shall we, and not out?"

  * * *

  It was absolutely typical of Danny Shaker. The other three crew members had been mad with impatience during the long rain storm, and at the end of it had insisted on dashing out to search for me. He had gone outside, too—about twenty steps. There he had made himself comfortable, and waited.

  "It's the old principle, Jay," he said. "If you want to catch a bear, one way is to go and thrash through the woods looking. That's what the lads insisted on doing, they can't bear inaction. But an easier way is to set out a delicacy the bear wants more than anything else in the world, and then sit by it and wait. This cargo beetle was what you wanted most of all, to take you back to the Cuchulain and Doctor Xavier. How could you possibly have resisted it?"

  He smiled at me, then nodded his head toward Mel. "But I must say, it was a real surprise for you to show up with a friend. You found a way to the interior, didn't you? And now I have to ask myself the important question: Is the inside of this worldlet Godspeed Base, and did you find a Godspeed Drive?"

  Shaker was sitting in the pilot's chair, where I had been. Mel and I stood against the beetle wall, farthest from the port. He had told us to do that, and although I saw no sign of a weapon neither Mel nor I made any move to rush him. She didn't know him, and I knew him too well.

  "It's not," I said desperately. "I mean, it's not Godspeed Base, and there's no Godspeed Drive here."

  "Mm." Shaker sat rocking in the swivel seat, fondling his biceps. "Nice to see you so cooperative, but you weren't listening closely. I said, I had to ask myself that question, not you." He pointed a finger at Mel. "What's your name?"

  "Mel—Mel . . . Fury." No cockiness in her expression now.

  "Well, Mel Fury, there's an old technique I've used often in the past to make sure people are telling the truth."

  I gasped, and he glanced at me reprovingly.

  "Now really, Jay, you should know better than to suspect me of barbarism. I'm talking of something quick, and painless, and just about foolproof. I want you, Jay, to go outside for a few minutes. And Mel, you stay here with me. Don't be afraid, all I want from you are answers to a few questions. And you, Jay, you can run away if you want to, but I wouldn't advise it. The others of the crew don't believe in the refined approach. Get outside now, and close the hatch. Be quick. For your sake, we want this all over and done with before anyone else gets back here."

  I looked at Mel. With her backpack and her skinny, muddied legs and short hair, she didn't resemble any girl from Erin. I wanted to tell her, "Make him think you're a boy! Whatever you do, don't let him suspect that you or anyone else here is a female."

  But there was no way to say anything to her at all without Danny Shaker catching every word. I went reluctantly through the hatch and stood outside leaning on the hull of the beetle. Even with my ear pressed against it, I could not hear what was said inside.

  The wait seemed endless, though I know from the changing angle of Maveen in the sky that it was no more than a few minutes until the hatch slid open and Shaker was saying, "All right, Jay, back inside."

  Mel was sitting down now. Shaker nodded his head toward her and said, "See. Good as ever. So it's your turn, Jay. What do you have to tell me about what you learned when you were inside Paddy's Fortune?"

  It was obvious what he was doing. If Mel and I were telling the truth, we would have to be consistent with each other. But what had he asked her, and what had she told him?

  I made the hardest decision of my life. To keep Danny Shaker and his crew away from the inside of this world, I had to offer something better. Doctor Eileen would have fits if she knew what I was going to do, but I had no choice.

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out the navigation aid. "I learned that Paddy's Fortune isn't Godspeed Base. But a Godspeed Base and a Godspeed Drive may still exist, at a place called the Net, which seems to be some kind of hardware storage facility. The instructions to get there are inside this."

  Danny Shaker took the aid from my hand and stared at it, with no trace of expression on his smooth face. "Did you get this from Paddy Enderton?"

  "No." It was a good thing to be able to answer him honestly, because I was never a good liar. "It's like something that Enderton had, but I got this one here."

  "You know how to use it?"

  "I do. But Mel—he knows it better than I do." There. I had slipped in one lie after all.

  "Does he now." Shaker turned his sparkling grey eyes to Mel and inspected her closely, while I wondered if I had made another mistake. What I had just said made Mel less likely to be killed, but more likely to be taken away with Shaker from Paddy's Fortune. But hadn't I made it more likely that I myself would be killed, since I had just stated that Mel was better qualified to use the aid than I was? Surely we would both be useful, even if only as backups to each other.

  "Outside. Both of you, this time." Shaker spoke before I had time to consider further permutations. "I need five minutes solo thinking. Stay right by the hatch, now, or don't hold me responsible for the consequences."

  He didn't bother to suggest what those might be, and I didn't choose to ask. As soon as we were outside again and the hatch was closed, I turned to Mel. We might not have much time to ourselves, and there were things that had to be said.

  "Does he realize you're a girl?"

  "Huh?"

  At last I had managed to surprise her. "No matter what else Danny Shaker learns, he must never know that you are a female. None of the crew must even suspect it. Ever. Understand?"

  "No."

  "You will, but I've no time to explain now. You didn't tell him?"

  "That I'm a girl? No. It never came up. But he asked me if there were females inside Home."

  "What did you tell him?"

  "The truth, the same as you did—except when you called me a he. I said that there are. But I didn't say we're all females. Look, I don't see why you're so terrified of lying to him. I'm not."

  "That's because you don't know him. He's smart."

  "I can see that."

  "Deadly smart."

  "Then why are we standing talking, instead of running away?"

  It was a question without a simple answer. Because I was convinced that Shaker would find a way to track us down? Certainly. Because I felt that Shaker was our only defense against the rest of the Cuchulain's crew? That too. I knew it for a fact in my case, and Mel's sex put her even more at risk. The only place we could run to was the interior of Paddy's Fortune, and that would expose everyone in Home to the risk that we ran now.

  Maybe that was the strongest reason of all, but I had no time to explain any of this to Mel, because the hatch of the beetle was sliding open again. Danny Shaker's head poked out.

  "I have a problem," he said. "Come on in, and let me tell you about it. I think I need your help."

  Mel stared at me. He has a problem? said her look. But she climbed back in through the hatch without a word, and sat down next to me where Danny Shaker indicated.

  He sat down opposite us, and be
gan rubbing the fingers of his right hand over the top of the navaid. "First, let me clear a few things out of the way. I don't know how to work this gadget—I don't even see how to turn it on. But I believe that the two of you understand it, and can make it work. Second, I accept that this world is not Godspeed Base. Actually, I decided that for myself a long time ago. Paddy's Fortune, inside or outside, does not contain a Godspeed Drive. What it does contain I'll come to in a moment, when I tell you my problem.

  "Now, the two of you were told that if we follow the directions provided by this thing I'm holding, we'll be led to the real Godspeed Base. Fair enough. You may be right, and we may find a Godspeed Drive there. I'm not sure I believe it, though I believe you believe it. So we have the classic question: The value of the bird in the hand, this world, against the value of the bird in the bush, Godspeed Base."

  I knew what Danny Shaker was saying, but apparently Mel didn't, because he looked at her and said, "Sorry, I'll try to make it clearer. What I know I will find inside this world has value. What I may find if we go somewhere else in the Maze could have enormously more value—almost infinite value, you might say, because I don't know how I would begin to put a price on it. That means there's a calculation to be done: the value of what we have here, compared with the value of what we may find elsewhere, multiplied by the chance that it's there when we arrive. All right?"

  Mel nodded.

  "Well, I've done that calculation, and the result isn't even close. If it were up to me alone, I'd go for the risk and the big prize. I'd take the coordinates you two feed us, and head for a new destination and the Godspeed Base. But now let me tell you my problem."

  Shaker looked right at me, and smiled as though I was his best friend in the world. "I think Jay recognizes it already. It's my crew. I told them at the start of all this that we were heading out to find wealth. Somehow that got twisted, so all they ever cared about was that we would find women. Wealth to women, see, and nothing I've been able to say has changed that. At the moment they're as mad as hell at me, because after coming all this way there's been not a sign of a female. They're close to mutiny. And now I want them to buckle down to more hard work in space, heading for another unknown destination. That will be uphill work. But I might be able to do it anyway, mixing force and persuasion, so to speak—so long as they never suspect there are women to be found right here." He pointed his index finger directly down. "No more than a few steps, right, if you head in the correct direction? The big job is to find an entry point, but once you know one exists that's just a matter of time. If the lads knew that, they'd go mad. And I'd never get them away from here, except maybe back to Erin with their prizes. I'm quite sure we'd not be making another trip to seek Godspeed Base.

  "So now let me pull it all together, and tell you how you can help. Number one: I need Mel Fury to work with the gadget here, but as far as the crew are concerned Mel Fury mustn't even exist. They have to think that this world is no more than the way it looks from the surface, wild and uninhabited. Certainly with no people."

  "But it's an artificial world," I objected. "Obviously something inside must keep it going."

  "Obvious to you, Jay. But I've told you before, you're an exception."

  I felt ridiculously pleased at the compliment, and wondered why.

  "But most don't think that way," Danny Shaker went on, "so I don't see that as a problem. The existence of Mel Fury is a problem, though, and that means we have a secret to keep. Mel must be hidden here on the cargo beetle before the crew return—no problem there, I can find a dozen hiding places—and stay out of sight until we get to the Cuchulain and are on our way again. All right?"

  Mel nodded. I had the feeling that Danny Shaker had her practically hypnotized, but I didn't blame her for that. I had been there myself.

  He smiled, as though Mel had just done him the biggest favor in the world, rather than having no choice but to do whatever he said. He turned to me. "As for you, Jay, you'll have to say you gave yourself up, voluntary-like, after nearly starving and dying out on the surface in the rain. And you'll say that after talking with me you want in with us, instead of sticking with Eileen Xavier. I'll tell the crew you gave me this"—he held up the navaid—"that Doctor Eileen had, and that used to belong to Paddy Enderton. But now here's the hardest part." His voice became soft, and he looked right into my eyes. "If we're to carry this off, Jay, Doctor Eileen has to think that way, too. She must believe you've betrayed her. Or it won't work. Can you do it?"

  The honest answer was, I didn't know. But I really had no choice, any more than Mel had a choice. What would happen to us if we said no? I had a strong suspicion, but I didn't want to prove I was right.

  "I can do it," I said firmly.

  What he was asking of me would be unpleasant, especially when I had to face Doctor Eileen, but it didn't sound too difficult. And it seemed to me that Mel and I were coming out of this unbelievably better than I could have imagined just half an hour earlier.

  For one thing—the main thing—we were alive. And now we would be operating with the protection of Danny Shaker himself. Not only that, we had kept the girls in the interior of Paddy's Fortune out of the hands of the crew of the Cuchulain. I understood what that meant, even if Mel did not. It was a major achievement.

  As Shaker discussed where to stow Mel safely out of the way in the cargo beetle, in a place where no one was likely to look for her, I felt nothing but relief. And the image of him that I had tried to paint for Mel, as a deadly, heartless killer, was one that I no longer found credible.

  Why didn't I question more closely, at least to myself, Shaker's own motives in all of this?

  I have no excuses, though I know I was ignoring Tom Toole's comment, that the Chief was a deep one. And I had forgotten, or at least managed to push to the back of my mind, Danny Shaker's own words to his crew, back on board the Cuchulain, "I'll take the possible value of a live something over the guaranteed zero value of a dead one."

  Maybe that was it. Maybe I refused to reduce my own self-image to that of a mere live something.

  CHAPTER 21

  The first job was to find a hiding place for Mel Fury. Shaker stowed her away behind a false bulkhead, tucked away among spare parts for the beetle's drive unit. It was crowded and not too comfortable, but he ordered her not to move or make a sound until he came to get her. By that time, he said, we would be on board the Cuchulain.

  She nodded cheerfully enough, but I wasn't too happy. I was beginning to wonder about Mel. She had met her very first male—me—only a day or so earlier. A few hours after that she had seen Sean Wilgus killed. Then she had been explicitly forbidden by the controller that ran Paddy's Fortune to go back to the surface. She had followed me anyway. And now she acted as though everything was part of some big, exciting game. I decided that either young Mel had a few screws loose in her head, or she was at least ten times as tough as me. Maybe both. Would she sit still when she was asked to?

  Then Danny Shaker came up with his own surprise. He wanted me out of the way, as well as Mel, when the crewmen returned.

  "Just listen closely, and you'll find out why," he said, when I asked him. "Nine-tenths of running a ship, or anything else, is psychological advantage. I don't want you hidden, exactly, the way Mel Fury is, but I do want you in a place where you won't be noticed first thing. Aye, and you'd better be given a real job to do, preferably something that everybody hates. This should do fine."

  He showed me a hatch in the floor of the cargo beetle. It led to a cramped lower level, a ring-shaped region with a ceiling only a couple of feet high. "That runs around the cargo beetle drive," Shaker said. "It's supposed to be checked for dirt and leaks and general condition every time the beetle flies. But you can imagine Pat O'Rourke or Tom Toole trying to squeeze in there."

  Or Jay Hara. But Shaker forced me down through the hatch. "Shouldn't be more than a couple of hours," he said cheerfully. "I expect you to do a decent job of it while you're waiting to come up, too.
Otherwise I'll be forced to put you back." He slammed the hatch shut.

  I sat on a hard metal floor. At least there was light. Mel would be sitting in the dark. I didn't feel particularly sorry for her.

  I did nothing for a few minutes, then began to crawl around the inner wall of the ring. I saw no sign of any breaks, but dirt and junk there was, plenty of it, and I collected it in the bag that Danny Shaker had given me.

  I was almost back to where I started when the floor vibrated to footsteps above my head, and I heard voices. I stopped working and sat motionless. I could hear—but if only I had been able to see!

  Because an argument was starting up, no more than a few feet away.

  "Aye, and look at us." That voice belonged to Joseph Munroe, sulky as ever. "Starved and tired out, with nothing to show for it."

  "The galley's on, Joe." Danny Shaker sounded conciliatory. "You'll have hot food in a few minutes."

  "And soaked, every one of us. No more dry clothes, either."

  "Not until you're back on the Cuchulain. I'm sorry, but I didn't expect rain here."

  "Or much else that's happened, far as I can see." Munroe raised his voice, from sulky to angry. "I'm going to say this, Dan Shaker, if no one else will. This trip's been a disaster, botched from start to finish. And you can't say we didn't try to warn you. You ignored us."

  "Never. I listen to everything any crewman wants to tell me. You know that, Joe, if you'll stop and think."

  "What about the woman on board, then? Didn't we all tell you that was asking for bad luck, that nothing good could come of a woman on a ship?" There was a mutter of agreement from the other crewmen, Robert Doonan and Patrick O'Rourke. "And hasn't there been bad luck," Munroe went on, "and more than bad? That scientist fellow dead, and Sean as well."

  "Sean Wilgus didn't have to die. It was from his own actions. He killed Dr. Hamilton, and he would have killed me, too."

  "Maybe. But Sean was a good crewman, you've said so yourself."

  "And I'll say it again, Joe. Sean was first-rate."

  "So what do you call that, if not bad luck? A good man gone, with the Cuchulain ready to fall apart, and every able-bodied crewman needed to hold it together and fly."