The Best of Henry Kuttner

by Henry Kuttner

  “All right,” he said. “Suit yourself. Go look at the equations. I’ll be in my cabin when you want me. Come on, Dzann.”

  He pulled himself into the companionway, the Canopian gliding behind him as silently as a shadow.

  Hilton met Bruno with coffee as he followed Danvers. The mate grunted, seized the covered cup, and sucked in the liquid with the deftness of long practice under antigravity conditions. Bruno watched him.

  “All right, sir?” the cook-surgeon said.

  “Yeah. Why not?”

  “Well—the men are wondering.”

  “What about?”

  “I dunno, sir. You’ve never—you’ve always commanded the launchings, sir. And that Canopian—the men don’t like him. They think something’s wrong.”

  “Oh, they do, do they?” Hilton said grimly. “I’ll come and hold their hands when they turn in for night watch. They talk too much.”

  He scowled at Bruno and went on toward the control room. Though he had mentioned mutiny to the skipper, he was too old a hand to condone it, except in extremity. And discipline had to be maintained, even though Danvers had apparently gone crazy.

  Ts’ss and Saxon were at the panels. The Selenite slanted a glittering stare at him, but the impassive mask under the audio filter showed no expression. Saxon, however, swung around and began talking excitedly.

  “What’s happened, Mr. Hilton? Something’s haywire. We should be ready for an Earth landing by now. But we’re not. I don’t know enough about these equations to chart back, and Ts’ss won’t tell me a blamed thing.”

  “There’s nothing to tell,” Ts’ss said. Hilton reached past the Selenite and picked up a folder of ciphered figures. He said absently to Saxon:

  “Pipe down. I want to concentrate on this.”

  He studied the equations.

  He read death in them.

  Chapter 4. Gamble With Death

  Logger Hilton went into the skipper’s cabin, put his back against the wall, and started cursing fluently and softly. When he had finished, Danvers grinned at him.

  “Through?” he asked.

  Hilton switched his stare to the Canopian, who was crouched in a corner, furtively loosening the locks of his spacesuit.

  “That applies to you, too, tomcat,” he said.

  “Dzann won’t mind that,” Danvers said. “He isn’t bright enough to resent cussing. And I don’t care, as long as I get what we want. Still going to mutiny and head for Earth?”

  “No, I’m not,” Hilton said. With angry patience he ticked off his points on his fingers. “You can’t switch from one hyperplane to another without dropping into ordinary space first, for the springboard. If we went back into normal space, the impact might tear La Cucaracha into tiny pieces. We’d be in suits, floating free, a hundred million miles from the nearest planet. Right now we’re in a fast hyper flow heading for the edge of the universe, apparendy.”

  “There’s one planet within reach,” Danvers said.

  “Sure. The one that’s thirty thousand miles from a double primary. And nothing else.”

  “Well? Suppose we do crack up? We can make repairs once we land on a planet. We can get the materials we need. You can’t do that in deep space. I know landing on this world will be a job. But it’s that or nothing—now.”

  “What are you after?”

  Danvers began to explain:

  “This Canopian—Dzann—he made a voyage once, six years ago. A tramp hyper ship. The controls froze, and the tub was heading for outside. They made an emergency landing just in time—picked out a planet that had been detected and charted, but never visited. They repaired there, and came back into the trade routes. But there was a guy aboard, an Earthman who was chummy with Dzann. This guy was smart, and he’d been in the drug racket, I think. Not many people know what raw, growing paraine looks like, but this fellow knew. He didn’t tell anybody. He took samples, intending to raise money, charter a ship and pick up a cargo later. But he was knifed in some dive on Callisto. He didn’t die right away, though, and he liked Dzann. So he gave Dzann the information.”

  “That halfwit?” Hilton said. “How could he remember a course?”

  “That’s one thing the Canopians can remember. They may be morons, but they’re fine mathematicians. It’s their one talent.”

  “It was a good way for him to bum a drink and get a free berth,” Hilton said.

  “No. He showed me the samples. I can talk his lingo, a little, and that’s why he was willing to let me in on his secret, back on Fria. Okay. Now. We land on this planet—it hasn’t been named—and load a cargo of paraine. We repair the old lady, if she needs it—”

  “She will!”

  “And then head back.”

  “To Earth?”

  “I think Silenus. It’s an easier landing.”

  “Now you’re worrying about landings,” Hilton said bitterly. “Well, there’s nothing I can do about it, I suppose. I’m stepping out after this voyage. What’s the current market quotation on paraine?”

  “Fifty a pound. At Medical Center, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Big money,” the mate said. “You can buy a new ship with the profits and still have a pile left for happy days.”

  “You’ll get your cut.”

  “I’m still quitting.”

  “Not till this voyage is over,” Danvers said. “You’re mate on La Cucaracha.” He chuckled. “A deep-space man has plenty of tricks up his sleeve—and I’ve been at it longer than you.”

  “Sure,” Hilton said. “You’re smart. But you forgot Saxon. He’ll throw that damage suit against you now, with Transmat behind him.”

  Danvers merely shrugged. “I’ll think of something. It’s your watch. We have about two hundred hours before we come out of hyper. Take it, mister.”

  He was laughing as Hilton went out…

  In two hundred hours a good deal can happen. It was Hilton’s job to see that it didn’t. Luckily, his reappearance had reassured the crew, for when masters fight, the crew will hunt for trouble. But with Hilton moving about La Cucaracha, apparently as casual and assured as ever, even the second mate, Wiggins, felt better. Still, it was evident that they weren’t heading for Earth. It was taking too long.

  The only real trouble came from Saxon, and Hilton was able to handle that. Not easily, however. It had almost come to a showdown, but Hilton was used to commanding men, and finally managed to bluff the Transmat engineer. Dissatisfied but somewhat cowed, Saxon grumblingly subsided.

  Hilton called him back.

  “I’ll do my best for you, Saxon. But we’re in the Big Night now. You’re not in civilized space. Don’t forget that the skipper knows you’re a Transmat man, and he hates your insides. On a hyper ship, the Old Man’s word is law. So—for your own sake—watch your step!”

  Saxon caught the implication. He paled slightly, and after that managed to avoid the captain.

  Hilton kept busy checking and rechecking La Cucaracha. No outside repairs could be done in hyper, for there was no gravity, and ordinary physical laws were inoperative—magnetic shoes, for example, wouldn’t work. Only in the ship itself was there safety. And that safety was illusory for the racking jars of the spatial see-saw might disintegrate La Cucaracha in seconds.

  Hilton called on Saxon. Not only did he want technical aid, but he wanted to keep the man busy. So the pair worked frantically over jury-rigged systems that would provide the strongest possible auxiliary bracing for the ship. Torsion, stress and strain were studied, the design of the craft analyzed, and structural alloys X-ray tested.

  Some flaws were found—La Cucaracha was a very old lady—but fewer than Hilton expected. In the end, it became chiefly a matter of ripping out partitions and bulkheads and using the material for extra bracing.

  But Hilton knew, and Saxon agreed with him, that it would not be enough to cushion the ship’s inevitable crash.

  There was one possible answer.
They sacrificed the after section of the craft. It could be done, though they were racing against time. The working crews mercilessly cut away beams from aft and carried them forward and welded them into position, so that, eventually, the forward half of the ship was tremendously strong and cut off, by tough air-tight partitions, from a skeleton after half. And that half Hilton flooded with manufactured water, to aid in the cushioning effect.

  Danvers, of course, didn’t like it. But he had to give in. After all, Hilton was keeping the ship on the skipper’s course, insanely reckless as that was. If La Cucaracha survived, it would be because of Hilton. But Captain Danvers shut himself in his cabin and was sullenly silent.

  Toward the end, Hilton and Ts’ss were alone in the control room, while Saxon, who had got interested in the work for its own sake, superintended the last-minute jobs of spot bracing. Hilton, trying to find the right hyper space level that would take them back to Earth after they had loaded the paraine cargo, misplaced a decimal point and began to curse in a low, furious undertone.

  He heard Ts’ss laugh softly and whirled on the Selenite.

  “What’s so funny?” he demanded.

  “It’s not really funny, sir,” Ts’ss said. “There have to be people like Captain Danvers, in any big thing.”

  “What are you babbling about now?” he asked curiously.

  Ts’ss shrugged. “The reason I keep shipping on La Cucaracha is because I can be busy and efficient aboard, and planets aren’t for Selenites any more. We’ve lost our own world. It died long ago. But I still remember the old traditions of our Empire. If a tradition ever becomes great, it’s because of the men who dedicate themselves to it. That’s why anything ever became great. And it’s why hyper ships came to mean something, Mr. Hilton. There were men who lived and breathed hyper ships. Men who worshipped hyper ships, as a man worships a god. Gods fall, but a few men will still worship at the old altars. They can’t change. If they were capable of changing, they wouldn’t have been the type of men to make their gods great.”

  “Been burning paraine?” Hilton demanded unpleasantly. His head ached, and he didn’t want to find excuses for the skipper.

  “It’s no drug dream,” Ts’ss said. “What about the chivalric traditions? We had our Chyra Emperor, who fought for—”

  “I’ve read about Chyra,” Hilton said. “He was a Selenite King Arthur.”

  Slowly Ts’ss nodded his head, keeping his great eyes on Hilton.

  “Exactly. A tool who was useful in his time, because he served his cause with a single devotion. But when that cause died, there was nothing for Chyra—or Arthur—to do except die too. But until he did die, he continued to serve his broken god, not believing that it had fallen. Captain Danvers will never believe the hyper ships are passing. He will be a hyper-ship man until he dies. Such men make causes great—but when they outlive their cause, they are tragic figures.”

  “Well, I’m not that crazy,” Hilton growled. “I’m going into some other game. Transmat or something. You’re a technician. Why don’t you come with me after this voyage?”

  “I like the Big Night,” Ts’ss said. “And I have no world of my own—no living world. There is nothing to—to make me want success, Mr. Hilton. On La Cucaracha I can do as I want. But away from the ship, I find that people don’t like Selenites. We are too few to command respect or friendship any more. And I’m quite old, you know.”

  Startled, Hilton stared at the Selenite. There was no way to detect signs of age on the arachnoid beings. But they always knew, infallibly, how long they had to live, and could predict the exact moment of their death.

  Well, he wasn’t old. And he wasn’t a deep-space man as Danvers was. He followed no lost causes. There was nothing to keep him with the hyper ships, after this voyage, if he survived.

  A signal rang. Hilton’s stomach jumped up and turned into ice, though he had been anticipating this for hours. He reached for a mike.

  “Hyper stations! Close helmets! Saxon, report!”

  “All work completed, Mr. Hilton,” said Saxon’s voice, strained but steady.

  “Come up here. May need you. General call: stand by! Grab the braces. We’re coming in.”

  Then they hit the see-saw!

  Chapter 5. Hilton’s Choice

  No doubt about it, she was tough—that old lady. She’d knocked around a thousand worlds and ridden hyper for more miles than a man could count. Something had got into her from the Big Night, something stronger than metal bracing and hard alloys. Call it soul, though there never was a machine that had a soul. But since the first log-craft was launched on steaming seas, men have known that a ship gets a soul—from somewhere.

  She hopped like a flea. She bucked like a mad horse. Struts and columns snapped and buckled, and the echoing companionways were filled with an erratic crackling and groaning as metal, strained beyond its strength, gave way. Far too much energy rushed through the engines. But the battered old lady took it and staggered on, lurching, grunting, holding together somehow.

  The see-saw bridged the gap between two types of space, and La Cucaracha yawed wildly down it, an indignity for an old lady who, at her age, should ride sedately through free void—but she was a hyper ship first and a lady second. She leaped into normal space. The skipper had got his figures right. The double sun wasn’t visible, for it was eclipsed by the single planet, but the pull of that monstrous twin star clamped down like a giant’s titanic fist closing on La Cucaracha and yanking her forward irresistibly.

  There was no time to do anything except stab a few buttons. The powerful rocket-jets blazed from La Cucaracha’s hull. The impact stunned every man aboard. No watcher saw, but the automatic recording charts mapped what happened then.

  La Cucaracha struck what was, in effect, a stone wall. Not even that could stop her. But it slowed her enough for the minimum of safety, and she flipped her stem down and crashed on the unnamed planet with all her after jets firing gallantly, the flooded compartments cushioning the shock, and a part of her never made of plastic or metal holding her together against even that hammer blow struck at her by a world.

  Air hissed out into a thinner atmosphere and dissipated. The hull was half molten. Jet tubes were fused at a dozen spots. The stem was hash.

  But she was still—a ship.

  The loading of cargo was routine. The men had seen too many alien planets to pay much attention to this one. There was no breathable air, so the crew worked in their suits—except for three who had been injured in the crash, and were in sick-bay, in a replenished atmosphere within the sealed compartments of the ship. But only a few compartments were so sealed. La Cucaracha was a sick old lady, and only first aid could be administered here.

  Danvers himself superintended that. La Cucaracha was his own, and he kept half the crew busy opening the heat-sealed jets, doing jury-rig repairs, and making the vessel comparatively spaceworthy. He let Saxon act as straw-boss, using the engineer’s technical knowledge, though his eyes chilled whenever he noticed the Transmat man.

  As for Hilton, he went out with the other half of the crew to gather the paraine crop. They used strong-vacuum harvesters, running long, flexible carrier tubes back to La Cucaracha’s hold, and it took two weeks of hard, driving effort to load a full cargo. But by then the ship was bulging with paraine, the repairs were completed, and Danvers had charted the course to Silenus.

  Hilton sat in the control room with Ts’ss and Saxon. He opened a wall compartment, glanced in, and closed it again. Then he nodded at Saxon.

  “The skipper won’t change his mind,” he said. “Silenus is our next port. I’ve never been there.”

  “I have,” Ts’ss said. “I’ll tell you about it later.”

  Saxon drew an irritated breath. “You know what the gravity pull is, then, Ts’ss. I’ve never been there either, but I’ve looked it up in the books. Giant planets, mostly, and you can’t come from hyper into normal space after you’ve reached the radius. There’
s no plane of the ecliptic in that system. It’s crazy. You have to chart an erratic course toward Silenus, fighting varying gravities from a dozen planets all the way, and then you’ve still got the primary’s pull to consider. You know La Cucaracha won’t do it, Mr. Hilton.”

  “I know she won’t,” Hilton said. “We pushed our luck this far, but any more would be suicide. She simply won’t hold together for another run. We’re stranded here. But the skipper won’t believe that.”

  “He’s insane,” Saxon said. “I know the endurance limits of a machine—that can be found mathematically—and this ship’s only a machine. Or do you agree with Captain Danvers? Maybe you think she’s alive!”

  Saxon was forgetting discipline, but Hilton knew what strain they were all under.

  “No, she’s a machine all right,” he merely said. “And we both know she’s been pushed too far. If we go to Silenus, it’s—” He made a gesture of finality.

  “Captain Danvers says—Silenus,” Ts’ss murmured. “We can’t mutiny, Mr. Hilton.”

  “Here’s the best we can do,” Hilton said. “Get into hyper somehow, ride the flow, and get out again somehow. But then we’re stuck. Any planet or sun with a gravity pull would smash us. The trouble is, the only worlds with facilities to overhaul La Cucaracha are the big ones. And if we don’t get an overhaul fast we’re through. Saxon, there’s one answer, though. Land on an asteroid.”

  “But why?”

  “We could manage that. No gravity to fight, worth mentioning. We certainly can’t radio for help, as the signals would take years to reach anybody. Only hyper will take us fast enough. Now—has Transmat set up any stations on asteroids?”

  Saxon opened his mouth and closed it again.

  “Yes. There’s one that would do, in the Rigel system. Far out from the primary. But I don’t get it. Captain Danvers wouldn’t stand for that.”

  Hilton opened the wall compartment. Gray smoke seeped out.

  “This is paraine,” he said. “The fumes are being blown into the skipper’s cabin through his ventilator. Captain Danvers will be para-happy till we land on that Rigel asteroid, Saxon.”