by James Blish
And after all, what could they do to him if they caught him, besides knock him out? The hell with them. Here goes.
Once more, the door opened readily.
IV
The corridor was as eventless as ever; the ramp to the park now closed. He continued along the long smooth curve, which obviously skirted the park closely, just outside the cage doors. Once he stopped to lay his ear to one of the cages. He heard nothing, but he did notice a circle with a pattern of three holes in it, like a diagram of a bowling ball, just where the lock to an ordinary door would be placed for someone of Brand’s height.
That made him think again as he prowled. So the metal people needed handles and locks! Then they couldn’t jump about in space as magically as they wanted you to think they could. Whatever the trick was, it wasn’t teleportation or time-travel. It was an illusion, or something else to do with the mind, as both Carl and Jeanette had guessed: memory blanking, or mind reading. But which?
After he had crept along for what seemed like a mile, the elliptical pathway inflected and began to broaden. Also, there was a difference in the quality of the light up ahead: it seemed brighter, and, somehow, more natural. The ceiling was becoming higher, too. He was coming into a new kind of area; and for some reason he did not stop to examine—perhaps only that the inside curve of the corridor was on his right, which as evidence was good for nothing—he felt that he was coming up on the front of the ship.
He had barely begun to register the changes when the corridor put forth a pseudopod: a narrow, shallow metal stairway which led up to what looked like the beginning of a catwalk, off to the left. He detoured instinctively—in the face of the unknown, hide and peek!
As he went along the outward curving catwalk, the space ahead of him continued to grow bigger and more complicated, and after a few minutes he saw that his sensation that he was going bowwards had been right. The catwalk ran up and around a large chamber, shaped like a fan opened from this end, and ending in an immense picture window through which daylight poured over a cascade of instruments. On the right side of the room was a separate, smaller bank of controls, divided into three ranks of buttons each arranged in an oval, and surmounted by a large clock face like the one Carl had noticed when he first awoke in the ship’s EEG room. The resemblance to the cockpit of a jet liner was unmistakable; this was the ship’s control room.
But there was something much more important to see. Brand—or someone almost exactly like him—was sitting in one of two heavy swivel seats in front of the main instrument board, his silver skin scattering the light from the window into little wavelets all over the walls to either side of him. Occasionally he leaned forward and touched something, but in the main he did not seem to have much to do at the moment. Carl had the impression that he was waiting, which the little flicks of motion only intensified—like a cat watching a rubber mouse.
Carl wondered how long he had been there. From the quality of the light, the time was now either late morning or early afternoon—it was impossible to guess which, since Carl could not read the alien clock.
A movement to the right attracted both men’s attention. It was a black-metaled woman: Lavelle. Of this identification Carl was dead sure, for he had paid much closer attention to her than to her consort. Lifting a hand in greeting, she came forward and sat down in the other her chair, and the two began to talk quietly, their conversation interspersed with occasional bursts of low laughter which made Carl uncomfortable for some reason he did not try to analyze. Though he could catch frequent strings of syllables and an occasional whole sentence, the languagewas not English, Spanish or French, the only ones he was equipped to recognize; but it was quite liquid, unlike a Germanic or Slavic tongue. Ship’s language, he was certain.
Their shadows grew slowly longer on the deck; then it must be afternoon. That: double prowl up the corridor must have taken longer than he had thought. He was just beginning to feel hungry when there was a change that made him forget his stomach completely.
As the metal people talked, their voices had been growing quieter and a little more husky. Now, Brand leaned forward and touched the board again, and instantly, like flowers unfolding in stop-motion photography, the metal suits—aha, they were suits!—unpeeled around them and seemed to dissolve into the chairs, leaving them both entirely nude.
Now would be the time to jump them, except that he was quite certain he couldn’t handle both of them. Instead, he simply watched, grateful for the box seat. There was something about the girl besides her nudity that was disquieting, and after a while Carl realized what it was. Except for her baldness, she bore a strong resemblance to the first girl he had ever made time with by pretending to be a photographer, a similarity emphasized by the way she was sitting in the chair.
Obviously the pose was not lost on Brand, either. He got to his feet with a lithe motion, and seizing her hand, pulled her to her feet. She went to him freely enough, but after a moment struggled away, laughing, and pointed at the smaller control board, the one with the clock. Brand made an explosive remark, and then, grinning, strode over to the board and …
… The room was dark and empty. Blinking amazedly, Carl tried to stir, and found that his muscles were completely cramped, as if he had been lying on the metal ledge in the same position all night.
Just like that, he had the key in his hands.
He began to work out the stiffness slowly, starting with fingers and toes, and surveying the control room while he did so. The room was not really completely dark; there were many little stars gleaming on the control boards, and a very pale dawn was showing through the big window.The large hand on the clock face had jumped a full ninety degrees widdershins.
When he felt ready to take on a fight if he had to—except for his hunger, about which he could do nothing—Carl went back to the stairs and down into the control room, going directly to the smaller of the two boards. There was no doubt in his mind now about what those three ovals of buttons meant. If there was any form of dialogue he understood no matter what the language, it was the dialogue of making out. As plain as plain, the last two lines the denuded metal people had spoken had gone like this:
LAVELLE: But suppose somebody (my husband, the captain, the doctor, the boss) should come in?
BRAND: Oh hell, I’ll (lock the door, take the phone off the hook, put out the lights) fix that!
Blackout.
What Brand had done was to put everyone on board to sleep. Out of the suits, he and Lavelle must have been immune to whatever effect he had let loose, so that they could play their games at leisure. A neat trick; Carl wouldn’t mind learning it—and he thought he was about to.
Because Carl himself was awake now, it was pretty clear that the other prisoners were also; maybe they had been freed automatically by the passage of the clock past a certain point in the morning, and would be put back to sleep just as automatically after supper. It also seemed clear that for the prisoners, the effect didn’t depend upon wearing one of the metal suits or being in the cages, since Carl had been knocked out up on the catwalk, almost surely unsuspected. The suits must be the captain’s way of controlling the crew—-and that meant that Brand (or Brand and Lavelle) must run the shop, since this board was too powerful to allow just anybody to fool with it. Carl rubbed his hands together.
One of these three circles must represent the crew; another, the cages; the third—well, there was no telling who was controlled by those buttons—maybe crew and prisoners at once. But the oval in the middle had the fewest number of buttons, so it was probably a safe bet that it controlled the cages. But how to test that?
Taking a deep breath, Carl systematically pressed eachand every button on the left-hand oval. Nothing happened. Since he himself was not now sprawled upon the deck, unconscious again, he could now assume that the crew was once more fast asleep—with the unavoidable exception of any who had been out of their suits, like the lovers.
Now for the sparser oval. Trying
to remind himself that he now had plenty of time, Carl worked out by painful memory and counting upon his fingers just where the button which represented his cage probably was. Then, starting one button away from it, he again went all around the circle until he was one button on the opposite side of what he thought was his own.
It took him a long time, sweating, to work himself up to touching either of those two bracketing buttons, but at last, holding his breath, he pressed them both at once, watching the clock as he did so.
He did not fall and the clock did not jump.
The ship was his.
He was not in the slightest doubt about what he was going to do with it. He had old scores by the millions to pay off, and was going to have himself one hell of a time doing it, too. With an instrument like this, no power on Earth could stop him.
Of course he’d need help: somebody to figure out the main control board with him, somebody with a scientific mind and some technical know-how, like Jeanette. But he’d pick his help carefully.
The thought of Jeanette made him feel ugly, a sensation he rather enjoyed. She’d been snippy. There might be other women in the cages, too; and the aborted scene of last night in the control room had left him feeling more frustrated than usual. All right; first some new scores, and then he’d get around to the old ones.
V
It was high morning when he got back to the control room, but still it was earlier than he’d expected it to be.There hadn’t been many women in the cages, but either they got less and less attractive as he went along, or the recent excitement and stress had taken more out of him physically than he’d realized. Otherwise he was sure he could have completed such a program handily, maybe even twice around. Oh well, there was plenty of time. Now he needed help.
The first thing to do was to disconnect the clock in some way. That proved to be easy: a red bar under it simply stopped it. Since nobody, obviously, had visited the control room since his last tampering, he now had the whole ship in permanent coma.
Next, he counted down to Jeanette’s button and pushed it. That ought to awaken her. The only remaining problem was to work out how that three-hole lock on her cage worked.
That didn’t turn out to be easy at all. It took an hour of fumbling before it suddenly sank inward under his hand and the door slid back.
Jeanette was dressed, and stared at him with astonishment.
“How did you do that?” she said. “What’s wrong with the phone? Where’s the food? Have you been doing something stupid?”
He was just about to lash back at her when he realized that this was no time to start the breaking-off routine, and instead put on his best master-of-the-situation smile, as if he were just starting up with her.
“Not exactly,” he said. “But I’ve got control of the ship. Mind if I come in?”
“Control of the ship? But … well, all right, come in. You’re in anyhow.”
He came forward and sat down at her version of his desk. She backed away from him, only a little, but quite definitely.
“Explain yourself,” she said.
He didn’t; but he told her the rudiments of the story, in as earnest and forthright a manner as he had ever managed to muster in his life. As he had expected, she asked sharp technical questions, most of which he parried, and her superior manner dissolved gradually into one of intense interest.
All the same, whenever he made the slightest movementto stand up, she stepped slightly away from him, a puzzled expression flitting across her face and then vanishing again as he fed her new details. He was puzzled in turn. Though the enforced ship’s-sleep hadn’t prevented her from being highly responsive—in fact, it was his guess that it had helped—he was sure that she had never awakened even for a second during the morning and hence had nothing to blame him for. Yet it was obvious that she knew, somewhere in the back of her mind, that something had happened to her, and associated it with him. Well, maybe that would be helpful too, in the long run; a cut cake goes stale in a hurry.
When he was through, she said reluctantly: “That was close observation, and quick thinking.”
“Not very quick. It took me all morning to work it out.” Again the flitting, puzzled expression. “You got the right answer in time. That’s as quick as anybody needs to be. Did you wake anybody else?”
“No, just you. I don’t know anybody else here, and I figured you could help me. Besides, I didn’t want a mob of released prisoners running around the ship kicking the crew and fooling with things.”
“Hm-m-m. Also sensible. I must say, you surprise me.” Carl couldn’t resist a grin at this, but took care to make it look bashful. “Well—what do you suggest we do now?”
“We ought to figure out the main control board. See if it’s possible for us to run the ship without anybody from the crew to help—and how many hands from the cages we’d need to do the job.”
“Yes,” she said thoughtfully. “At a guess, the main control board is as rational as the sleep board is. And the two captains—Brand and Lavelle—must be able to run the ship from there all by themselves in a pinch; otherwise the threat of knocking all the rest of the crew out wouldn’t have sufficient force. Interesting social system these people must have. I don’t think I like them.”
“Me either,” Carl said with enthusiasm. “I hate people who whip serfs.”
Jeanette’s eyebrows rose. “The crew can’t be serfs. They wear the metal suits—a powerful tool in any hands—and can take them off whenever they like if they want to duck the sleep-compulsion. But obviously they don’t. They can’t be serfs; they must be something like chattel slaves, who’d never dream of changing status except to other owners. But that is certainly not the most interesting problem.”
“What is, then?”
“How the buttons put us to sleep. We don’t wear the suits.”
Since this was the problem Carl most badly wanted to solve secretly and for himself alone, it was the one he most badly wanted Jeanette not to think about; yet since he had no clues at all, he had to chance at least a tentative sounding before trying to divert her from it. He said: “Any ideas?”
“Not at the moment. Hm-m-m … did you have a headache when you first woke up on board?”
“I’ve got it still,” he said, patting the back of his neck tenderly. “Why? Does that signify anything?”
“Probably not, I’ll just have to look at the board, that’s all. We’d better take a good look around.”
“Sure. This way.”
She was very thorough—exasperatingly so. Long after he would have been sure that he had seen everything, she would return to some small instrument complex she had looked at three or four times before, and go over it again as if she had never seen it before. She volunteered nothing except an occasional small puff of surprise or interest; and to his questions, she replied uniformly, “I don’t know yet.” Except once, when after she had bent over a panel of traveling tapes for what must have been twenty minutes, she had said instead, “Shut up for ten seconds, will you?”
In the meantime the sun was reddening toward afternoon again, and Carl was becoming painfully conscious of the fact that he had had nothing to eat since breakfast the day before. Every minute added without any food shortened his temper, reduced his attention span and cut into his patience. Maybe the girl was getting results, and maybe not, but he was more and more sure that she was putting him on. Didn’t she know who was boss here?
Maybe she thought she could make a dash for the sleep-panel and turn him off. If she tried that, he would knock her down. He had never been that far away from the panel; he was on guard.
Suddenly she straightened up from the main board and sat down in one of the heavy swivel chairs. It promptly began to peel her clothes off. Though he had not told heranything about this trick, she got up so quickly that it left her only slightly shredded around the edges. She eyed the chair thoughtfully, but said nothing. For some reason this was her most galling silenc
e of all.
“Got anything?” he asked harshly.
“Yes, I think so. These controls require an optimum of three people, but two can run them in an emergency. Ordinarily I think they use five, but two of those must be standbys.”
“Could one man handle them?”
“Not a chance. There are really three posts here: pilot, engineer, navigator. The pilot and the navigator can be the same person if it’s absolutely necessary. Nobody can substitute for the engineer. This ship runs off a Nernst-effect generator, a very tricky form of hydrogen fusion. The generators idle very nicely, but when they’re drawing real power they have to be watched—more than that, it takes a real musician’s hand to play them.”
“Could you do it?”
“I’d hate to have to try. Maybe with a month of ant-steps, saying ‘May I’ all the way. But if the thing blew at this altitude it’d take out the whole West coast—at a minimum. There’s an awful lot of hydrogen in the Pacific; I wouldn’t answer for what a Nernst fireball would really start.”
“Good.”
She swung on him, her brows drawing together. “What’s good about it? What are you up to, anyhow?”
“Nothing very awful,” he said, trying to be placating. “I’ll tell you in a minute. First of all, have you figured out how to get the grub moving again? I’m starving.”
“Yes, that’s what the third oval on the sleep-board is—the phone system locks. There’s a potentiometer system on the side of the board that chooses what’s activated—food, phones, doors, and so on. If you’ll move over a minute, I’ll show you.”
“In a minute,” he said. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, Jeanette, but you know how it is—now that I’ve got my mitts on this thing, I hate to let go of it.”