Spaceman Go Home

by Milton Lesser

  “It depends on what you have to do,” Turk insisted. “Andy was studying to be an astrogator, but right before they shut down the Academy he was thinking of switching to the School of Interstellar Sociology.” Turk looked more and more uncomfortable. His face was red now, and as he spoke he averted his eyes. “Not that I have anything against that kind of stuff. But this is the point: we don’t need a sociologist now or a bunch of historians like you say they have in Norway. We need a leader of men. We need the toughest leader of men we can get. We need what we have … Reed Ballinger.”

  “Then you won’t help us?” Charlie Sands asked. “No. I’m sorry. Andy’s my best friend, and I wish I could. But I can’t. I’m sorry,” Turk said again.

  “That puts us in a nice bind,” Charlie said. “You know what we’re planning to do.”

  “I wouldn’t lift a finger to stop you. I’ll just keep out of it,” Turk said disconsolately. “I just wish J could make you change your minds.” Turk shook his head slowly. “No, I’m not even sure of that. I don’t mow. I plain don’t know what to think. Don’t get the idea I like war any more than the rest of you. But maybe Captain Ballinger is right; maybe war is the only way.”

  “We’re exiles from earth,” Charles Sands pointed out. “If Ballinger has his way and bombs the Star Brain a second time, there isn’t a world that would let us land.”

  For a long time Turk did not answer. “Go on,” he said finally, “do what you have to do. I’ll keep out of it. I just wish I knew what we should do. But I don’t know. That’s the whole thing. I don’t know.”

  “I didn’t know,” Harry Gault said at precisely the same moment, “that Marlow wasn’t the only turncoat aboard the ‘Goddard.’ ’’ Captain Ballinger said, “You heard it yourself.”

  “I know, but Sands wasn’t in Norway. I’m sure of it.”

  “Of course he wasn’t,” Reed Ballinger said. “He never left Mexico until we blasted off. But he left the spacefield a dozen times and more, and at least three or four times I had him followed. Alvarez used to fly down from Mexico City to visit him in the Indian village. Even though he never went to Norway, Sands was a Project Nobel man from the beginning, and, as you just now heard, still is.”

  “So that’s why you had a pickup unit planted in his cabin.”

  “That’s why.” Ballinger gazed at the small TV screen on the wall. “Listen.”

  “What we’ve got to do,” the tiny image of Charlie Sands was saying on the TV screen, “is get Andy free.

  And just as you men are willing to follow me, you’ll have to be willing to follow Andy as soon as we get him out of there.”

  “But what’s he going to do, if he gets out?” one of the Cadets asked.

  “First, take over the ‘Goddard,’ by force if he has to. Then… .”

  “We could do that ourselves if he could.”

  “It’s the next part that’s important. Andy’ll have to contact the ‘Nobel.’ He’ll know how to do that. I don’t.”

  Harry Gault smirked. “Take over the ‘Goddard,’” he said, sarcastically. “That’s a good one. That’s rich, it is”

  “Shut up and listen to what they’re saying,” Captain Ballinger ordered. “Don’t you have eyes? Don’t you have ears? After what happened with the Monitors, there isn’t a man aboard who hasn’t toyed with the idea of mutinying. I couldn’t help it. We had to get through, even if it meant losing fifty ships and their crews. Listen.”

  . . where they took him,” Charlie Sands was saying. “Our best chance ought to come when the watch is changed.”

  The tiny image of Turk on the TV screen said, “I’m getting out of here. The less I know about your plans, the better it will be for all of us.”

  Some of the Cadets looked at him challengingly. Two of them moved between him and the door of the cabin.

  “Hold your rockets,” Charlie Sands ordered. “Turk’s been frank with us. I think we can trust him.” To Turk he said, “Go on, get out of here.”

  Turk left the screen. “I think you could be making a mistake, Charlie,” one of the Cadets said.

  “We ought to be able to free Andy without Turk’s help. But eventually we’re going to need the help of every man we can get. I don’t want to make an enemy of Ayoub. Now, when the watch changes … .”

  “When the watch changes,” Captain Ballinger told Harry Gault, “you and a dozen picked men will be waiting for them, armed to the teeth.”

  What Turk needed, more than anything, was a confidant. He’d never felt so confused and undecided in his life. Maybe, he kept on thinking, Charlie Sands was right. Maybe Andy had been right in leaving the secret spacefield in the first place. And maybe, if Turk had gone with him that night to Norway, things would have been diferent. Then maybe Turk would understand what Andy understood and believe what he believed.

  Maybe. He didn’t know.

  He found Lieutenant Odet on the gunnery deck, where the young officer was supervising the loading of new atomic warheads in the rocket tubes.

  “They took Andy prisoner,” Turk said.

  “Don’t you see I’m busy?” Lieutenant Odet snapped at him.

  Turk, his broad shoulders slumped still further, was about to trudge away.

  “Wait a minute, Ayoub. I’m sorry for blasting at you like that. My rating’s in astrogation, with a subrating in gunnery, and they have me doing this.”

  “This whole business isn’t our fault, is it, sir?” Turk asked.

  Lieutenant Odet gave him a searching glance. “Who am I to say? I’m a spaceman. I’ve been trained to do what I’m told, and Captain Ballinger gives the orders aboard the ‘Goddard.’ ”

  “I guess so. I guess he does. But… .” “Something’s on your mind, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know. … I. …”

  “Come on, boy. Out with it.”

  “Well,” Turk stammered, “I … uh … that is , . . you’ve got to promise to keep it under a tarp no matter what you think.”

  “You won’t get any commotion out of me,” Lieutenant Odet promised, and Turk, talking compulsively, began to pour out the whole story.

  There was a dumb-waiter chute in the storeroom where Andy was locked up, and the green light over the sliding door of the chute had just glowed for the third time. Each time he had found a tray of food and drink waiting for him. If he hadn’t been so concerned about being a prisoner, he might have read something encouraging into this gesture. With the “Goddard” streaking through space, passing light years like mileposts, Captain Ballinger probably had lost part of his hold on the crew. He could blame the battle with the Monitors for that, Andy knew, and thc terrible losses Ballinger’s combined fleet had sustained. As a result Andy was being fed mechanically because Reed Ballinger didn’t want any of the crew contaminated by his ideas or what he could tell them about Project Nobel.

  Ballinger was afraid of what might happen otherwise.

  The conjecture was disheartening. If he were free, perhaps Andy could take over the “Goddard.” But he wasn’t free, and at the moment he didn’t even know if the “Nobel” had come through the battle with the Monitors unscathed or if it had been blasted out of space.

  As a prisoner he could do nothing, not even find out.

  Free, if Ballinger had lost some part of his control over the ex-Space Captains and Cadets who served under him, Andy might have been able to take over the “Goddard” and try to contact the “Nobel.”

  But he wasn’t free.

  After he had eaten for the third time and replaced the tray in the dumb-waiter, Andy heard a disturbance in the corridor outside. There were shouts, and something heavy thudded against the bulkhead, then more shouts; then, astounded, Andy saw the door irising open.

  Led by Charlie Sands, five Cadets stumbled into the small room. Behind them, as the door began to shut again, Andy caught a glimpse of Harry Gault’s face.

  Then they were all locked in together.

  “We could have done it,” one of the Cadets sa
id bitterly.

  “We were going to free you,” said another.

  “Charlie explained about Project Nobel,” a third said.

  Charlie Sands was panting. A large bluish bruise discolored his right temple and cheek. “We were betrayed,” he told Andy. “We wanted to help you, Marlow. But they were waiting for us when we got here.”

  “We were betrayed,” one of the Cadets said, “by your own best friend.”

  “What are you talking about?” Andy demanded.

  “Turk Ayoub. He heard our plans,” Charlie explained. “He said he didn’t want any part of them, but he promised to keep his mouth shout. He didn’t. He must have run straight to Ballinger.”

  Chapter 16 Mutiny!

  Radio messages can be sent through subspace. In fact, if they couldn’t be, radio communication between interstellar planets would be impossible, for in normal space radio travels at the speed of light, far too slow to span the gap between the stars as a means of rapid communication.

  But, though it can be sent through subspace, radio cannot be received in subspace. Thus, communication between ships traveling in subspace was impossible. This fact bothered Reed Ballinger.

  “Twelve of them,” he was telling Harry Gault. “You said twelve Project Nobel Cadets joined the fleet before blast-off, and we have no way of telling what happened on any ship except the ‘Goddard.’

  Gault shrugged. “We’ll have to wait and find out when we reach Canopus, Captain. But what are you worrying about? If we took care of Marlow so easily, what makes you think the other turncoats had a better time of it?”

  “Because you’re here,” Ballinger pointed out. “Because you warned me against Marlow. Nobody warned the other ships. Nobody warned the rest of the fleet.” “They swore an oath to take their orders from Reed Ballinger, didn’t they?”

  “That was before the battle with the Monitors. If the reaction to the battle aboard the ‘Goddard’ is any sample, a determined nucleus of turncoats on any other ship might succeed. You saw what happened with Cadet Sands. If we hadn’t planted a scanner in his cabin, you and I might be the ones locked up now.” Harry Gault couldn’t debate the logic of that. But he pointed out, “It’s almost twenty-four hours since Sands’s mutiny. There hasn’t been a peep out of anyone else. You’ve got a loyal crew, Captain.”

  “I wonder,” Ballinger said. Then his moment of indecisiveness was gone. “In a little over ten hours we’re due to clear back into normal space in the orbit of Canopus’ one planet.”

  “The Star Brain’s planet, sir?”

  “Right. The Star Brain’s planet. As soon as we clear, I want every ship in the fleet contacted. If there’s been a successful mutiny on any one of them, there’s only one thing we can do, and it must be done decisively.” “Blast them out of space?” Gault offered. “Correct. Blast them out of space.”

  During the transit through subspace, the rest of the universe ceases to exist for the crew of a star-bound ship. There are no stars to see, no patterns of constellations either familiar or unfamiliar, no radio contact either with a planet or another ship in transit. There is not even the remote possibility of a collision, for the physical law of normal space which says that two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time no longer applies. Scientists could explain that only by analogy, but they had proof on several occasions that an orbit had been plotted and executed for a ship in transit right through what would have been the normal space location of a star.

  The analogy they used was this. Normal space is to subspace as a flat world of two dimensions is to the normal world of three. On a flat world of length and breadth but no height, two objects could not occupy the same point at the same time. But if one of them were lifted in the third dimension, that of height, but was otherwise at precisely the same point in terms of the two dimensions of the flat world, then from the viewpoint of any flat-worlders the physical law would seem to be violated. Similarly, if two objects occupied what would have been the identical space at the identical time in normal space, but if one of them were lifted into the fourth dimension of the subspace contiuuum, the physical law would seem to be violated if you were oriented to the three dimensions of normal space.

  The result of all this was that no isolation was more complete than the isolation of subspace. Physical laws that gave the normal world familiarity were violated; communication with the normal world was impossible; the only thing you could see outside the ship in transit itself was the gray, featureless murk of subspace.

  Lieutenant Odet was explaining all this patiently to Turk. “So you see,” he concluded, “we’re all alone here. We’re as alone as men can be.”

  “I know all that,” Turk said. “We had a course in subspace orientation on Luna.”

  “True, but you didn’t know that someday you’d have to make a decision in subspace that might determine whether the Galaxy went to war or entered a new era of mutual understanding.”

  “Are you trying to tell me you want to help Andy?” Turk gasped.

  “You guessed it, Cadet. I’ve been a fool to believe in Reed Ballinger this long. He’s not interested in Earth’s returning to space … unless it returns with Captain Reed Ballinger leading the way.”

  “And you actually think that stuff Andy told me and Charlie Sands about Project Nobel can… .”

  “It gives us a chance, Turk. Not just us. Not just Earthmen. Don’t you see? Whether the Star Brain accepts a record of Earth’s greatest achievements as a reason to give Earth a second chance in space is one thing and it’s mighty important. But it can lead to something even more important. Do you know anything of the history of the Denebians?”

  “The Denebians? No, I don’t,” Turk said, puzzled. “Or the Antareans? The Formalhautians? The Sirians? The Centaurians?”

  “N0, but… .”

  “Well, they don’t know anything about us either.

  We’ve had interstellar contact for the purposes of trade, but if one single worth-while idea has been exchanged among the Galactic races, I’m not aware of it. Do you think, if the Star Brain accepts Earth’s record, the other races will just stand by and watch? You can bet your life they won’t. They’d all want to get into the act, Turk. To get back on even cultural terms with Earth, they’ll all prepare their own histories. First for the Star Brain, then for each other.” “Aren’t you forgetting something, sir? There was a pooling of ideas to build the Star Brain.”

  “Sure there was. But can you tell me its purpose?” “To keep the peace,” Turk said promptly.

  “Right, to keep the peace. Instead of trying to understand each other, the intelligent races of a hundred star-worlds and more got together and built the most complex electronic brain ever devised on any world, as a kind of glorified mechanical watchman to slap the hand of any race incautious enough to be caught in the cookie jar. But that’s the whole point I’m trying to make. Peace by arbitration of a mechanical brain, of an electronic thinking machine, is one thing. Peace through mutual understanding is another. We’ve all depended on the Star Brain too much, and because we have, humans have become a little less human, Centaurians a little less … well, whatever word passes for human in their language, and so on. As a result, a ruthless man like Captain Ballinger is on his way to bomb the Star Brain. And if that happens, if there’s no understanding among the interstellar civilizations to take the place of the glorified gadget that’s kept them from each other’s throats… .”

  “Once you were loyal to Captain Ballinger. Now you want to help Andy? Why?”

  “I’ve got to. When we fought the Monitors I saw Reed Ballinger’s way. I don’t want any part of it. I like to think, from what you’ve told me and from some talks I had with Charlie Sands in Mexico, I like to think that Captain Strayer’s way is better. Helping Andy will be helping Strayer and his Project Nobel.” “What are you going to do?”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Turk didn’t answer right away. Then he said slowly, “Andy was my best f
riend. He still is. I … I let him down once, when Charlie Sands tried to free him. Maybe if I hadn’t… .”

  “If you hadn’t, you’d be imprisoned with the rest of them right now.”

  Turk said, “I’m just a Cadet. A guy my age hates to admit it, but I’m still … uh, wet behind the ears. Maybe if there was somebody around like you when Charlie Sands first made his proposition, somebody who could explain things because subspace and interstellar worlds aren’t a novelty to him. …”

  “You’ll join me?”

  ‘‘I’m for freeing them. Yes, sir.”

  They were off duty in Lieutenant Odet’s cabin. Turk headed for the door.

  “Keep your jumper on,” Lieutenant Odet said, and smiled. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Why, to get Andy free. I told you.”

  “Fine. But how would you like to succeed?”

  Turk returned shamefacedly to his seat. “Sorry, Lieutenant. You do the planning; I’ll do the listening.” , „

  “When a ship’s in normal space,” Lieutenant Odet said, “there’s plenty for everyone to do. But once it changes over into sub-space on a predetermined orbit, you’ve got an entire crew mostly sitting on its hands. Or, in this case, edgy and more than eager to obey any orders Captain Ballinger gives on the care and feeding of would-be mutineers. The situation alters again when you change over back into normal space. Then we’re all technicians again. Then Ballinger will hardly have a man to spare to put down a mutiny.”

  “You mean we wait… .”

  “We wait until change-over, Turk. And then… .” Lieutenant Odet outlined his plan. Turk clung to every word, grimly determined to do his part this time.