Far Out

by Damon Knight

  For a few moments, incredulously, Roget still tried to move. Then he stopped and lay in the prison of his suit, looking at the greenish-cream surface under his helmet.

  Frances’ voice said abruptly, “Leo, is anything wrong?”

  Roget felt an instant relief that left him shaken and weak.

  His forehead was cold. He said after a moment, “Pulled a damn fool trick, Frances. Come out and help me if you can.”

  He heard a click as her helmet went down. He added anxiously, “But don’t come near the pale part, or you’ll get caught too.”

  After a while she said, “Darling, I can’t think of anything to do.”

  Roget was feeling calmer, somehow not much afraid any more. He wondered how much oxygen was left in his suit, not more than an hour, he thought. He said, “I know. I can’t, either.”

  Later he called, “Frances?”

  “Yes?”

  “Roll the ship once in a while, will you? Might get through to the wiring or something, otherwise.”

  “… All right.”

  After that, they didn’t talk. There was a great deal to be said, but it was too late to say it.

  V

  Tommy was on garbage detail with nine other unfortunates. It was a messy, hard, unpleasant business, fit only for a cabin boy—collecting waste from the compartment and corridor receptacles and pressing it into standard capsule shapes, then hauling it to the nearest polarizer. But Tommy, under the suspicious eye of the petty officer in charge, worked with an apparent total absorption until they had cleaned out their section of the six inmost levels and were well into the seventh.

  This was the best strategic place for Tommy’s departure, since it was about midway from axis to hull, and the field of operations of any pursuit was correspondingly broadened. Also, the volume in which they laboured had expanded wedgewise as they climbed, and the petty officer, though still determined to watch Tommy, could no longer keep him constantly in view.

  Tommy saw the officer disappear around the curve of the corridor, and kept on working busily. He was still at it, with every appearance of innocence and industry, when the officer abruptly popped into sight again about three seconds later.

  The officer stared at him with baffled disapproval and said unreasonably, “Come on, come on, Loy. Don’t slack.”

  “Right,” said Tommy, and scurried faster.

  A moment later Third Mate Adkins hove majestically into view. The petty officer turned respectfully to face him.

  “Keeping young Tom well occupied, I see,” said the Mate.

  “Yes, sir,” said the officer. “Appears to be a reformed character, now, sir. Must have learned a lesson, one way or another.

  “Ha!” said the Mate. “Very good. Oh, Loy, you might he interested in this—the Captain himself has told me that the new metal is perfectly all right. Unusually rich, in fact. I’ve had my first ration already—very good it was, too—and I’m going to get my extras in half an hour or so. Well, good appetite, all.” And, while the lesser crewmen clustered against the walls to give him room, he moved haughtily off down the corridor.

  Tommy kept on working as fast as he could. He was draining energy he might need later, but it was necessary to quiet the petty officer’s suspicions entirely, in order to give himself a decent start. In addition, his artist’s soul demanded it. Tommy, in his own way, was a perfectionist.

  Third Mate Adkins was due to get his extras in about half an hour, and if Tommy knew the Captain’s habits, the Captain would be taking his first meal from the newly replenished reservoir at about the same time. That set the deadline. Before the half hour was up, Tommy would have to cut off the flow of the new metal, so that stomachs which had been gurgling in anticipation would remain desolately void until the next windfall.

  The Mate, in spite of his hypochondria, was a glutton. With any luck, this would make him bitter for a month. And the Old Man—but it was better not to dwell on that.

  The petty officer hung around irresolutely for another ten minutes, then dashed off down the corridor to attend to the rest of his detail. Without wasting a moment, Tommy dropped the capsule he had just collected and shot away in the other direction.

  The rest of the cabin boys, as fearful of Tommy as they were of constituted authority, would not dare to raise an outcry until they spotted the officer coming back. The officer, because of the time he had wasted in watching Tommy, would have to administer a thorough lecture on slackness to the rest of the detail before he returned.

  Tommy had calculated his probable margin to a nicety, and it was enough, barring accidents, to get him safely away. Nevertheless, he turned and twisted from one system of corridors to another, carefully confusing his trail, before he set himself to put as much vertical distance behind him as he could.

  This part of the game had to be accomplished in a fury of action, for he was free to move in the corridors only until the Captain was informed that he was loose again. After that, he had to play hounds and hares with the moving strips through which the Captain could see him.

  When the time he had estimated was three-quarters gone, Tommy slowed and came to a halt. He inspected the corridor wall minutely, and found the almost imperceptible trace that showed where the scanning wave nearest him had stopped. He jockeyed his body clear of it, and then waited. He still had a good distance to cover before he dared play his trump, but it was not safe to move now; he had to wait for the Captain’s move.

  It came soon enough: the scanning waves erupted into simultaneous motion and anger. “Tommy!” they bellowed. “Tommy Loy! Come back, you unmentionable excrescence, or by Spore you’ll regret it! Tommy!”

  Moving between waves, Tommy waited patiently until their motion carried him from one corridor to another. The . Captain’s control over the waves was not complete: in some corridors they moved two steps upward for one down, in others the reverse. When he got into a downward corridor, Tommy scrambled out of it again as soon as he could and started over.

  Gradually, with many false starts, he worked his way up to the thirteenth level, one level short of the hull.

  Now came the hard part. This time he had to enter the fuel lines, not only for sure escape, but to gather the force he needed. And for the first time in his life, Tommy hesitated before something that he had set himself to do.

  Death was a phenomenon that normally touched each member of Tommy’s race only once—only captains died, and they died alone. For lesser members of the crew, there was almost no mortal danger; the ship protected them. But Tommy knew what death was, and as the sealed entrance to the fuel line swung into view, he knew that he faced it.

  He made himself small, as he had under the lash. He broke the seal. Quickly, before the following wave could catch him, he thrust himself through the sphincter.

  The blast of ions gripped him, flung him forward, hurting him like a hundred whips. Desperately he held himself together, thickening his insulating shell against that deadly flux of energy; but still his body absorbed it, till he felt a horrid fullness.

  The walls of the tube fled past him, barely perceptible in the rush of glowing haze. Tommy held in that growing tautness with his last strength, meanwhile looking for an exit. He neither knew nor cared whether he had reached his goal; he had to get out or die.

  He saw a dim oval on the wall ahead, hurled himself at it, clung, and forced his body through.

  He was in a horizontal corridor, just under the hull. He drank the blessed coolness of it for an instant, before moving to the nearest sphincter. Then he was out, under the velvet-black sky and the diamond blaze of stars.

  He looked around. The pain was fading now; he felt only an atrocious bloatedness that tightened his skin and made all his movements halting. Forward of him, up the long shallow curve of the hull, he could see the alien ship, and the two five-pointed creatures beside it. Carefully, keeping a few feet between himself and the hull, he headed toward it.

  One of the creatures was sprawled flat on the polarize
r that had brought its ship down. The other, standing beside it, turned as Tommy came near, and two of its upper three points moved in an insane fashion that made Tommy feel ill. He looked away quickly and moved past them, till he was directly over the centre of the polarizer and only a few inches away.

  Then, with a sob of relief, he released the energy his body had stored. In one thick, white bolt, it sparked to the polarizer’s centre.

  Shaken and spent, Tommy floated upward and surveyed what he had done. The muzzle of the polarizer was contracting, puckering at the centre, the dark corrosive ring following It in. So much energy, applied in one jolt, must have shorted and paralysed it all the way back to the ship’s nerve centre. The Captain, Tommy thought wryly, would be jumping now!

  And he wasn’t done yet. Tommy took one last look at the aliens and their ship: The sprawled one was up, and the two of them had their upper points twined around each other in a nauseating fashion. Then they parted suddenly, and, facing Tommy, wiggled their free points. Tommy moved purposefully off across the width of the ship, heading for the three heavy-duty polarizers.

  He had to go in again through that hell not once more, but twice. Though his nerves shrank from the necessity, there was no way of avoiding it. For the ship could not alter its course, except by allowing itself to be attracted by a sun or other large body—which was unthinkable—but it could rotate at.the Captain’s will. The aliens were free now, but the Captain had only to spin ship in order to snare them again.

  Four miles away, Tommy found the second polarizer. He backed away a carefully calculated distance before he rcentered the hull. At least he could know in advance how far he had to go—and he knew now, too, that the energy he had stored the first time had been adequate twice over. He rested a few moments; then, like a diver plunging into a torrent, he thrust himself into the fuel line.

  He came out again, shuddering with pain, and pushed himself through the exit. He felt as bloated as he had before. The charge of energy was not as great, but Tommy knew that he was weakening. This time, when he discharged over the . polarizer and watched it contract into a tiny, puckered mass, he felt as if he could never move again, let alone expose himself once more to that tunnel of flame.

  The stars, he realized dully, were moving in slow, ponderous arcs over his head. The Captain was spinning ship. Tommy sank to the hull and lay motionless, watching half attentively for a sight of the alien ship.

  There it was, a bright dot haloed by the flame of its exhaust. It swung around slowly, gradually, with the rest of the firmament, growing smaller slowly.

  “He’ll get them before they’re out of range,” Tommy thought. He watched as the bright dot climbed overhead, began to fall on the other side.

  The Captain had one polarizer left. It would be enough.

  Wearily Tommy rose and followed the bright star. It was not a joke any longer. He would willingly have gone inside to the bright, warm, familiar corridors that led downward to safety and deserved punishment. But somehow he could not bear to think of those fascinating creatures—those wonderful playthings—going to fill the Captain’s fat belly.

  Tommy followed the ship until he could see the pale gleam of the functioning polarizer. Then he crawled through the hull once more, and again he found a sealed entrance to the fuel tube. He did not let himself think about it. His mind was numb already, and he pushed himself through uncaring.

  This time it was worse than ever before; he had not dreamed that it could be so bad. His vision dimmed and he could barely see the exit, or feel its pressure when he dragged himself out. Lurching drunkenly, he passed a scanning wave on his way to the hull sphincter, and heard the Captain’s voice explode.

  Outside, ragged black patches obscured his vision of the stars. The pressure inside him pressed painfully outward, again and again, and each time he held it back. Then he felt rather than saw that he was over the pale disk, and, as he let go the bolt, he lost consciousness.

  When his vision cleared, the alien ship was still above him, alarmingly close. The Captain must have had it almost reeled in again, he thought, when he had let go that last charge.

  Flaming, it receded into the Great Deep, and he watched it go until it disappeared.

  He felt a great peace and a great weariness. The tiny blue disk that was a planet had moved its apparent position a little nearer its star. The aliens were going back there, to their unimaginable home, and Tommy’s ship was forging onward into new depths of darkness—toward the edge of the Galaxy and the greatest Deep.

  He moved to the nearest sphincter as the cold bit at him. His spirits lifted suddenly as he thought of those three stabs of energy, equally spaced around the twelve-mile perimeter of the ship. The Captain would be utterly speechless with rage, he thought, like an aged martinet who had had his hands painfully slapped by a small boy.

  For, as we warned you, the Captain was not precisely a captain, nor the ship precisely a ship. Ship and captain were one and the same, hive and queen bee, castle and lord.

  In effect, Tommy had circumnavigated the skipper.

  THE LAST WORD

  The first word, I like to think, was “Ouch.” Some cave man, trying to knock a stone into better shape with another stone, slipped, hit his thumb—and there you are. Language.

  I have an affection for these useless and unverifiable facts. Take the first dog. He, I feel sure, was an unusually clever but cowardly wolf, who managed to terrorize early man into throwing him a scrap. Early man himself was a terrible coward. Man and wolf discovered that they could hunt together, in their cowardly fashion, and there you are again. “Domesticated animals”.

  I admit that I was lax during the first few thousand years. By the time I realized that Man needed closer supervision, many of the crucial events had already taken place. I was then a young—well, let us say a young fallen angel. Had I been older and more experienced, history would have turned out very differently.

  There was that time when I happened across a young Egyptian and his wife sitting on a stone near the bank of the Nile. They looked glum; the water was rising. A hungry jackal was not far away, and it crossed my mind that if I distracted the young people’s attention for a few minutes, the jackal might surprise them.

  “High enough for you?” I asked agreeably, pointing to the water.

  They looked at me rather sharply. I had put on the appearance of a human being, as nearly as possible, but the illusion was no good without a large cloak, which was odd for the time of year.

  The man said, “If it never got any higher, it would suit me.”

  “Why, I’m surprised to hear you say that,” I replied. “If the river didn’t rise, your fields wouldn’t be so fertile—isn’t that right?”

  “True,” said the man, “but also if it didn’t rise, my fields would still be my fields.” He showed me where the water was carrying away his fences. “Every year we argue over the boundaries, after the flood, and this year my neighbour has a cousin living with him. The cousin is a big, unnecessarily muscular man.” Broodingly, he began to draw lines in the dirt with a long stick.

  These lines made me a little nervous. The Sumerians, up north, had recently discovered the art of writing, and I was still suffering from the shock.

  “Well, life is a struggle,” I told the man soothingly. “Eat or be eaten. Let the strong win, and the weak go to the wall.”

  The man did not seem to be listening. “If there was some way,” he said, staring at his marks, “that we could keep tally of the fences, and put them back exactly the way they were before—”

  “Nonsense,” I interrupted. “You’re a wicked boy to suggest such a thing. What would your old dad say? Whatever was good enough for him…”

  All this time, the woman had not spoken. Now she took the long stick out of the man’s hand and examined it curiously. “But why not?” she said, pointing to the lines in the dirt. The man had drawn an outline roughly like that of his fields, with the stone marking one corner.

  It
was at that moment that the jackal charged. He was gaunt and desperate, and his jaws were full of sharp yellow teeth.

  With the stick she was holding, the woman hit him over the snout. The jackal ran away, howling piteously.

  “Tut,” I said, taken aback. “Life is struggle…”

  The woman said a rude word, and the man came at me with a certain light in his eye, so I went away. And do you know, when I came back after the next flood, they were measuring off the field with ropes and poles?

  Cowardice again—that man did not want to argue about the boundaries with his neighbour’s muscular cousin. Another lucky accident, and there you are. Geometry.

  If only I had had the foresight to send a cave bear after the first man who showed that original, lamentable spark of curiosity… Well, it was no use wishing. Not even I could turn the clock back.

  Oh, I gained a few points as time went on. Instead of trying to suppress the inventive habit, I learned to direct it along useful lines. I was instrumental in teaching the Chinese how to make gunpowder. (Seventy-five parts saltpetre, thirteen parts brimstone, twelve parts charcoal, if you’re interested. But the grinding and mixing are terribly difficult; they never would have worked it out by themselves.) When they used it only for fireworks, I didn’t give up; I introduced it again in Europe. Patience was my long suit. I never took offence. When Luther threw an inkwell at me, I was not discouraged. I persevered.

  I did not worry about my occasional setbacks; it was my successes that threatened to overthrow me. After each of my wars, there was an impulse that drew men closer together. Little groups fought each other until they formed bigger groups; then the big groups fought each other until there was only one left.

  I had played this game out over and over, with the Egyptians, the Persians, the Greeks, and, in the end, I had destroyed every one. But I knew the danger. When the last two groups spanned the world between them, the last war might end in universal peace, because there would be no one left to fight.