Mission to Universe

by Gordon R. Dickson

  “No! It’s not all right!” snapped Ben, gathering his wits once again. “There’s only twenty-four of us on this phase ship and that means nobody to spare. I’m not going to risk a single life, let alone two, on anything dangerous unless it’s necessary to keep the ship going and everybody else alive.”

  “There’s no danger out there!” Jay scowled.

  “That’s your assumption,” said Ben. “At any rate you aren’t going. You, Matt, or anyone else. Now, get down to the recycler room and tell Lee I said to find you something to do, to keep you out of trouble.”

  He glared as Jay turned about and went off. Then he returned to his logbook, dismissing the matter.

  The personal logbook was his one confidant on this ship in which he had determined to hold himself separate and aloof. He kept the ship’s official log in the barest of factual, impersonal styles. That official logbook would loom large in any judgment he would face, back on Earth. He did not expect it to excuse him—after all he had stolen (there was no other word for it) the phase ship and kidnaped(no other word for that either) the phase ship crew, with his eyes open.

  It was something that he had believed had to be done. Therefore he had done it—

  His pen leaped suddenly, trailing a streak of blue across the pages of his personal logbook, as a sharp shock rocked the ship, followed by another. By the time the third shook the vessel, he was on his feet, had thrown the personal log-book into its drug compartment and locked the door upon it, and was striding down the hall toward Observation Section.

  He burst into Observation. The Sections had been emptied of their regular teams since the ship was down on the surface, but he found Walt already there before him and a stiff-featured, white-faced Kirk Walish in one of the Section’s two seats before comparison-scopes. The other seat was empty.

  “Where’s Jay?” snapped Ben.

  “I don’t know,” said Kirk—but he did not meet Ben’s eye. However, there was no time to go into that now. Ben swung on Walt, and Walt answered without waiting for the question.

  “Earthquake,” he said. “Evidently, there’s volcanic activity within a few miles of here, and most of the surface here at the equator is unstable. Observation evidently noted this but didn’t want to make a point of it in their report to Lee—and you.”

  Ben looked at Kirk, who met the gaze rather defiantly. Ben remembered that Kirk had not been part of the team on duty under Lee, when the decision to go down to surface had been made.

  “It’s going to continue? Get worse?” Ben demanded, swinging back to face Walt.

  “No way of telling,” said the physicist. “I suppose we ought to expect the worst.”

  “Yes,” said Ben. “Get all Sections back to work in here on calculations and preparations for lift. I’ll go see how close Lee is to having the recycler fixed and back aboard.” He left, without waiting for Walt’s answer.

  Ben found Lee in the inflated dome beyond the airlock, laying out the order in which the parts were to be returned to the recycler room. Already parts were being carried back downstairs.

  “Thought we’d get things back inside as soon as possible,” Lee said to Ben. “I found the trouble. A filter unit supposed to sort out unrecyclable particles from the fluid of the nutrient bath. Somebody put it in backwards, back on Earth. It silted up, stopped, and nutrient production automatically stopped, backing up the whole chain of process.”

  “It’s fixed then?” said Ben. He almost had to shout the words. There was a hissing against the dome surrounding him. The place was gloomy as a tent at night with the portable lights strung under the dark material of which it was made. The hissing increased abruptly, and the whole structure rocked.

  “Will be as soon as I’ve got the cycler together again,” said Lee. “Oh, that’s the sand blown by the wind you hear. Getting windier outside, evidently. —What’re you looking for?”

  Ben had been staring around the dome.

  “Why, yes—” Polly stared back. “Jay said he had your “permission. Matt didn’t think it was a very smart thing to do—just to plant a flag on a hill—but he said Jay ought to have someone with him in case of accidents—” she broke off, staring past Ben, and Ben turned to see that the big figure of Walt had come silently up behind him.

  “Ben,” said Walt, “as near as we can observe, there’s been some large crustal subsidence in this planet’s surface not far from here. There’ll probably be secondary shocks, and there’s a windstorm heading this way with winds probably over a hundred miles an hour. We’d better lift as soon as we can.”

  “I’ll have all this back inside in half an hour,” said Lee. “We can’t leave before then.”

  “Then,” said Walt, “I’ll go after those two—Matt and Jay. If I don’t find them in fifteen minutes, I’ll head back. All right, Ben? —They’re part of my team. It’s my job.”

  Ben opened his mouth to refuse, faced the hard facts of the situation, and saw he could not say no.

  “All right,” he said. “But don’t take chances. I don’t want to throw a third life after two that’re lost already.”

  “Don’t worry, Ben” said Walt, deeply. “I’ve got things to do; and to do them, I have to stay alive. —I’ll go suit up.” He turned and left. As if in a mild daze produced by the lulling hiss of wind-blown sand against the outer plastic shell of the dome, Ben heard Lee arguing with Polly.

  “ . . . that’s too big for you, that piece. Take something smaller!”

  “No,” said Polly stubbornly, and Ben turned to see her avoiding Lee’s attempt to take the panel from her, “we’re short-handed with the Sections manned again. I can carry it.” She went off with it.

  “What do I carry, Lee?” asked Ben, turning to the other man.

  Loaded with a couple of pieces of recycler, he joined the procession carrying other parts in reverse order back into the ship and stacking them as near to the already-filled recycler room as possible. On his third trip, he found Lee stopping everybody in the airlock and making them put on respirators. The dome had cracked and the alien suffocating gases of Achernar One were leaking in.

  “—Not much longer!” Lee shouted—it was now necessary to shout—with his lips at Ben’s ear in the dome. “That wind’ll tear this apparatus right off the airlock in a few minutes. Lucky—we’re almost through—”

  Ben felt a hand tugging at his sleeve. He turned to face a respirator-anonymous face.

  “Observation wants you—sir!” shouted the anonymous face in the British accents of Julian Tyree.

  Ben nodded, turned about, and plunged back through the airlock. Ripping the respirator from his own face as he passed through the air-curtain guarding the inner entrance of the lock, he strode down the corridor and into the Observation Section. —

  Kirk Walish was there, alone in his seat. Standing over him was the lean young figure of Coop—who, Ben suddenly remembered, would be in charge here, now that Walt was gone.

  “Ben—sir,” said Coop. “Look at the screen. No, not the TV screen, the radar—we’ve picked up someone coming in through the sand. It’s too thick to see on the TV screen, but it looks to us like Walt, carrying somebody, by its shape and size. He’s about fifty yards away.”

  Ben looked at the radar. There was a noticeable blip, all right, but he was not experienced enough with it to deduce from that blip the shape of a man carrying someone else. A sudden, hollow sound like an explosion jerked his head around. He turned and stepped swiftly out into the corridor to hear the shout of voices and the sound of running feet

  Julian burst out of the corridor leading to the airlock, saw him, and came running up.

  “Dome blew off—’’ gasped Julian. “Polly Neigh was thrown against the edge of the airlock door. Her leg—they’re taking her to the dispensary. Nora says you must come—”

  “All right” said Ben. “In a moment. Get on back down tot hat airlock. Tell them Walt’s coming in carrying someone. I’ll be there myself in a moment.”

 
He turned and stepped back into Observation.

  “Coop!” he snapped. “The minute you see the outer airlock door is closed, lift this ship into orbit. You hear me? Into orbit!”

  “Yes sir.” Coop turned and ran for the Control Section. Ben hesitated for a single glance at the TV screen. Through the swirling haze of sand and dust, he could now see dimly a spacesuited figure plodding forward, half bent over, with another figure across its shoulders. For a second the unbelievability of it numbed Ben’s mind. For one man in a clumsy, heavy spacesuit to carry another was unbelievable enough—to do so in the greater gravity of Achemar One, in this dust storm, was legendary.

  Walt must be almost to the lock. Ben turned and went out through the door into the corridor and ran for the lock, himself.

  When he got there, Walt was already inside. Even as he reached the standing spacesuited figure, he felt the slight nauseous wave of feeling that told him the phase ship had lifted. Then the head piece came off Walt’s suit, urged by several pairs of hands, and Walt’s face, pale and gaunt, streaming with perspiration, was revealed to him. Walt’s eyes focused on Ben.

  “All I could find—” he gasped, and then the eyes shuttered and the big body fell, almost pulling the others down with it

  Ben knelt beside Walt. There seemed to be nothing wrong with him except exhaustion from his superhuman effort Ben turned to the other spacesuited figure. The headpiece had been taken off that too, and the features revealed were those of Matt dead of suffocation.

  “There a rip in the back of his headpiece that long,” said Hans Clogh, who was kneeling beside the body. His round face puckered. He added, in a strained voice, “Matt must have been dead even before Walt tried to carry him back.”

  All that way, thought Ben, looking at the dead man—all that way through the storm for nothing. A wall intercom buzzed. Somebody answered.

  “—Yes, right away.” Ben turned to look. “Sir, you’re wanted in the dispensary.”

  Polly Neigh. Suddenly remembering, Ben turned and went back fast through the corridor from the airlock and turned right toward the door of the dispensary. When he stepped through the door, he saw a form under white covers on the table and the electrode leads from the electric anesthetizer attached to its head. Nora and a pale-faced Tessie Sorenson stood there, wearing white assistant’s gowns.

  Ben stared. Nora reached out and lifted the covering from the right leg of the figure of Polly Neigh on the table. Ben tightened inside at what he saw.

  “Yes,” he said, “you’re right. It’ll have to come off.” He looked at the tourniquet above the crushed and mangled leg, which looked as if blunt pincers had closed upon it just below the knee. “Help me get ready, Nora.”

  She followed him into the adjoining room. Surprisingly, he was moving coolly and certainly now, washing up, getting into his own gown. But he could sense the danger of slowing down for a minute, of letting himself think that this was something he was not trained to do—something he had neve rdone before.

  To avoid that danger, he threw his mind back to that first year of medical school. He had never amputated a human limb in his life, but he had put a knife to a cadaver in roughly the same area. —It would be wisest to make the amputation as far down as possible, so that later on, someday, a real physician could redo it properly. He headed back into the other room.

  The skin flap would need to be ample, to cover the stump. . . Nora was uncovering the leg again. . . . Then tie off the large blood vessels . . . suture the muscles to the bone. . .

  Then Nora was handing him the heavy, cold shape of the electric knife, and suddenly time and space moved off into a different place than this room, and everything was crystal clear. . .

  Somehow it was over. Tessie had fainted. Somehow he and Nora had done it alone. Polly was sleeping under the electric impulses flowing through the electrodes into her brain—now set at sedation level. Washed up, free of his gown, he stumbled into his own quarters, into his office,and dropped into the chair behind his desk, almost too weary to move.

  Murderer and butcher! If he had not kidnaped this ship and these people, two men would not be dead and young Polly would not be crippled. He rested his head in his hands,elbows on the desk. Easy enough to plead the survival of the whole human race as the necessity for what he did—hard to set the conscience within him at rest by such pleading.

  It was that remark of Kirk’s—the word “blooded” that had brought all this about. The mother cat in the wild brought its kittens face to face with the facts of life—the need to hunt and kill to survive. That word, that understanding had forced it on him. Sooner or later, he had been forced to admit to himself, would come the time when the crew must come face to face with the realities of their situation, alone, in this ship, in a wilderness of stars and space that did not care whether they lived or died or got back home again.

  Like the kitten, they had inevitably to be “blooded” for their own survival’s sake. He looked down at his hands.They had been scrubbed palely white—but that made no difference to Ben, either.

  The crew were not the only ones who had been blooded.

  Chapter 5

  “Ben!—Sir!”

  Ben lifted his head with a start. Somehow, he had managed to doze off with his head in his hands and his elbows on the desk. He looked up and saw the round face of Hans Clogh in the doorway on the men’s side of the ship.

  “Walt,” said Hans. “He’s coming to—or waking up. Maybe you’d better come.”

  “Yes,” said Ben. He pulled himself to his feet, feeling a sharp self-reproach. In his own moment of self-pity, he had forgotten that he had not one, but two patients. He followed Hans, who led him to the stateroom-compartment that was Walt’s.

  Nora was there by the bed, but she stood aside. Walt was muttering to himself, eyes closed. The others drew back.Ben reached under the covers for Walt’s wrist. The pulse was slow and steady. Counting as he held it, Ben glanced around the orderly clutter of the room. Walt’s watch and chain and medal lay on the desk, with a penknife, some change.

  Walt opened his eyes. For a moment he seemed to have trouble focusing them.

  “Ben?” he said.

  “It’s all right,” said Ben. “You’re back on the ship.”

  “Matt?” Walt’s eyes widened. “How’s Matt?”

  “I’m afraid he didn’t make it.”

  “He’s dead?” Shock dulled Walt’s eyes. “He was one of the ones I was counting on.” The eyes closed. Slowly the face relaxed. Ben frowned down at the massive features. It had been an odd thing for Walt to say. But there was no chance to ask him about it now. His face and closed eyes were smoothed out once more in sleep. Ben put the wide, lax wrist gently back under the covers and turned to the doorway.

  “He’ll sleep. We’ll just leave him alone.”

  “Yes,” answered Nora. As he went out through the doorway, he felt her hand unexpectedly on his arm and turned sharply to look at her.

  “You better get some rest, too, Ben.”

  “Rest?” he was suddenly horribly embarrassed. “Yes. Yes, of course I will!” Stiff and self-conscious, he tore himself out of her grasp and went down the corridor into his own quarters.

  —But she was right, he acknowledged with the wave of weakness that overtook him as he shut the door of his office behind him. It was not a physical exhaustion he was feeling, but an emotional shock like that which Walt had evidently suffered. Ben headed for his bedroom and bed. Suddenly it seemed the most desirable place in the universe.

  It was a matter of some weeks following the landing on Achemar One before Lee had the recycler properly working again. The air-recycling system had been put back to work immediately, but the food-base producing part could not be made operative for some time, and in that time twenty healthy appetites had caused the supply of freeze-dried sorted foods aboard to dwindle alarmingly.

  The solar system of Earth lay a good two-thirds of the way out from the center of the spiral galaxy to which it bel
onged, out where stars were few and far between. The phase ship might dodge about from sun to sun out here for the lifetime of its crew and still never find a habitable world.But toward the center of the galaxy, the stellar population became many times more dense. Halfway in toward the center, fifteen thousand light-years from here, the phase ship would find the odds working in her favor instead of against her.

  Ben had made this preliminary survey of the stars close to Earth because he had known his crew was not yet ready to face the larger voyage. Now, the crew was seasoned.

  But the stored provisions were intended to make up only twenty percent of the ship’s diet—the rest being supplied from the foods made of the food base produced by the recycler. The recycler was a chemical factory that reproduced the cycle found in primitive areas of Earth, itself, those basic agricultural areas where human wastes were used to fertilize the soil in which were grown the crops that fed the humans who produced the wastes. As such the recycler was about eighty percent efficient, with the lack being supplied from the stored foods of which the ship had possessed, on leaving Earth, a twelve-month supply. Aboard, they were now thanks to the recycler’s failure down to little more than one month’s supply—and with that, the ship could not venture fifteen thousand light-years home.

  Somehow, thought Ben, grimly rubbing his forehead, that empty space in the Food Stores Room below his office must be refilled. And without returning to Earth.

  But the immediate prospects were not hopeful. Algol, when they shifted within observation distance of it, was planetless. The star Alcyone had two planets—but they were as bare and lifeless as the moon of Earth. After that there were hopes of Betelgeuse, then of Antares, but both proved fruitless. They shifted to Polaris, the Pole Star watched by |the navigators of Earth’s sea-going ships, and Observation began searching the neighborhood of the super-giant yellow star. Forty minutes later, Ben, working in his office, heard a knock at the door to the Control Section.

  “Come in,” he said, and looked up to see Lee smiling broadly in the doorway.