In fact, it was Sam who had been responsible for his degradation. He had obtained the inside story of a mutiny on one of Garth’s ships and dramatized it for the delectation of billions of listeners. The ensuing wave of indignation had blasted Garth into the command of a humble freighter. Naturally there was no love lost between the two.
The Ellie May took off in a rumble of infolding gases. The vibration penetrated the stout metal sheath and jarred the hapless passengers to an awareness of their position. A child began to cry.
That touched them off. The women wept, and the men swore. Helpless creatures, torn from their surroundings; carried away to an unknown destination.
Through the visor ports Earth fell beneath to gain a swift convexity. The sun side was shielded, and on the other blackness yawned, sprinkled with the glowing dust of innumerable stars.
But soon even that first ebullience of resentment died away. Once more the crowded hold relapsed into the apathy of hopeless despair. The men sat holding their heads and the women swallowed their sobs. Only the children, with the resiliency of youth, began to perk up and take notice. Tears dried, they stared curiously around them, tendered timid friendship toward each other, and began to play.
Sam thought it was time to get busy. Each individual in this mass had a story in him; it was his business to get it out. He got up and fished for his pad.
Just then the communications door that led Jo the working quarters of the ship flung open and Captain Johnny Garth, attended by two hard cases, stalked in.
In the very center of the crowded quarters, built rather for cargo than for human freight, he paused, straddled his solid legs, hooked thumbs in the belt of his trousers, and surveyed the huddled passengers with bright, bold eyes. His look was as arrogant as ever, yet Sam noted that his fingers were close to the vicious little Allertons that studded his belt, and that his guards handled their guns with significant gestures.
“Well,” he demanded finally, “anyone sick yet?”
There was no pity in his tone, no realization that he had in his care a group of hapless people, pariahs through no fault of their own. Sam felt a sharp stab of indignation at his heartless brutality. He almost jerked forward in protest. Then he realized his position, and bent his head under the peaked cap. There was no sense in disclosing his identity now.
No one had answered. Instead, frightened glances sought the faces of their fellows, each searching fearfully for the telltale spots. Suspicion had been sown in their bosoms by the tactless question.
The captain’s face grew heavy with anger. “I’m not talking to myself,” he snapped. “Answer me! Are any of you sick?”
A tall, slender man, white-faced, his puffed chest heaving with unendurable burdens, jerked up from the narrow berth into which he had flung himself. “Go on,” he screamed. “Laugh at us; mock at our misery. I wish to God I had the plague so I could give it to you and all Earthmen who are as heartless as you are. You don’t care what will happen to us. You think only of yourselves. Where are we going? What are you going to do with us?”
His yells awoke his fellows from their apathy. They started up, screaming, shouting, crowding around Garth. The long fear that had held them submissive burst like the weakened wall of a dam.
Captain Garth pulled out a brace of Allertons. Their cone-shaped orifices could spread flaming death over a wideangled area.
“Back, every one of you!” he shouted. “Or, by God, you’ll never reach your destination. If I had my way, I’d dump you all in space to make sure your rotten blood doesn’t infect honest people. But the Council went soft instead. Back, I say!”
They fell back from his threatening weapons, panting with fear and ill-suppressed hatred. Garth grinned. It was the superior grin of a tamer of animals. Sam felt a surge of hot anger. He lost his head.
“You presume too much on your authority, Captain Garth,” he said sharply. “Once before you tamed a mutiny by methods of your own, and look what it got you. The command of a lousy freighter. These poor people have a right to know where you are taking them.”
But even as the hot words poured from his lips, he realized that he had given himself away too soon.
Garth had swung to his voice. There was black wrath on his countenance. Sam dropped his head quickly, shading his face—but it was too late.
“Who dares speak to me like that?” Garth roared. Then he stopped. Wrath turned to bewilderment, and back again to explosive fury.
“Sam White! What the hell are you doing on my ship? There’s a Council order against scum like you on this trip. Who slipped you in?”
Further concealment was useless. Sam lifted his head, stared boldly back at the enraged captain. “No one, Garth. I just walked through your guards.”
Garth whirled on the man to his left. His voice was soft, yet deadly with menace. “Jellins, you watched the entrance port. Speak up, man! How did this blasted snooper get in?”
Jellins cowered. “I didn’t see his face. He had a cap that covered his eyes. And he gave me his identification tag. It checked against the list. The name was Atshir Jones.”
“You nincompoop!” Garth raged. “You let the lousiest damn reporter in the System into the ship. Where is this Atshir Jones?”
“You won’t find him, Garth,” Sam said quietly. “He’s beyond your power forever. He took the easy way out. You saw him yourself, lying on the ground, his head crushed in. As for me, I don’t mind if you do radio a Council patrol ship to take me off. I’ve got enough material already on hand to rip the hide off this rotten mess. Go ahead and put through your call.”
The captain’s eyes narrowed on the brash reporter. Then he smiled. There was something in that smile that made Sam’s heart sink suddenly.
“So you think that I’m going to send you back to Earth, my friend?” Garth said softly. “You are very much mistaken. You have adopted an identity of your own free will. Sam White, reporter for Universal, is not on board. Here we have only Atshir Jones, Martian.” His voice took, on an edge. “You chose to cast your lot with these people, Jones. Very well then; I’m seeing that you go through with it. And remember, Jones, any attempt to stir up trouble on your part, and I’ll shove you through an exit port—without a space suit. Understand?”
The door closed quickly behind his harsh laughter.
Sam sat down on the edge of his berth. He had to think this thing out. Around him the wave of rebellion, the curiosity evolved by his passage with the captain, had already subsided. The exiles had fallen once more into their apathy of fatalistic despair. None of the adults spoke to each other; each sat with drooping head and listless mien, immersed in the vacancy of his private thoughts. There could be no possible revolt among weaklings like these, even if the armament of the crew had not forbade all hope of such an attempt. The Martian strain was gentle, pliable, bending to suffering rather than opposing it.
Slowly, the implications of what Garth had said seeped into Sam’s brain. On board the Ellie May the captain was supreme. His crew was hand-picked—blacklegs, outlaws who would take orders from Garth and from no one else. The radio room was at the other end of the ship. He could never get to it. Even if he could, the radio officer would now refuse to take a message from him. No one on Earth would ever hear of his plight. No one would ever know what had happened to him. Sam had no illusions about the probable fate of these outcasts with whom he had cast his lot on the spur of sudden emotional pity. What planet in the System would accept them, and risk the chance of the plague? Let but a single red spot appear on any one of these foreheads, and all would be callously thrust out into space.
The sweat began to bead on his forehead. Garth had waited for a chance at revenge upon the reporter who had brought about his degradation. And now he, Sam White, had deliberately given him his opportunity. Atshir Jones he was on the ship’s list, and as Atshir Jones he would disappear.
He started up, choked with helpless rage. He didn’t even have an Allerton or a needle gun upon him. He was trapped!<
br />
On the fifth day out they intersected the orbit of Mars. The reddish planet, with its long, streaked valleys, was ominously silent. No messages had come from their sending stations for the past three days; no answers were returned to the deluge of inquiries from the other planets. That much Sam had been able to wheedle from a surly guard; no more.
He stared out of the view port at its fast-receding bulk. The plague had seemingly wiped it clean of life. His eyes burned. That gentle, wavering race, doomed eventually to extinction, had died en masse, in a single holocaust. Perhaps it was better so; perhaps—
Monotonously the door would open, and food be thrust into their midst. Monotonously the ship doctor would inspect them at a safe distance foe signs of the dread spots. Monotonously the Ellie May fled through space to an unknown destination.
For the first few days, Sam had demanded at every opportunity that he be taken to the captain. Every time the door opened, every time a guard or the doctor appeared, he repeated his insistent request. But they only laughed at his protestations that he was Sam White, ace reporter of Universal; and they ignored, as well, both his threats and his attempts at bribes. Garth obviously had his crew well under control.
Then he turned his attention to his fellow exiles. But a few more days convinced him that the job of arousing them was hopeless. The Martian strain, even though they had lived long on Earth, dominated their mental makeup. They looked at him with lackluster eyes and returned to their passive despair. Even the children began to sink to the general level of fatalistic resignation.
Something of the constant example began to sink into Sam himself. Fantastic schemes had revolved in his active mind. He would overpower a guard when he came with food, and seize his weapon. He would storm through the ship until he found Garth; and at pistol point force him to turn the ship around. He would seize the radio room and—
But now he began to sit and mope on the edge of his berth, like the others. The guards kept warily out of reach—they always came in pairs—and Garth had never put foot in the hold since the first day out. In the privacy of his own quarters, Sam thought helplessly, Garth was mocking him; planning his revenge for that single damning newscast which had tumbled him from his arrogant estate.
Then one day, hope suddenly flared. They had left Mars long behind. They had cut through the wide belt of asteroids, and had turned sharply toward Jupiter. The huge planet, with its long, parallel streaks and mysterious Red Spot, loomed slowly to the left. It was a grand sight, majestic, awe-inspiring, the most beautiful of the inhabited universe.
Not that Jupiter itself was habitable. No one had ever dared penetrate its swirling envelope of poisonous ammonia and methane; nor dared risk the incredible storms that raged beneath. But two of its swinging satellites had been colonized. Io and Europa, the closest of the larger satellites. Both Ganymede and Callisto, though larger in size, were mere chunks of frozen ice and carbon-dioxide snow. Their densities were approximately that of water. But Io and Europa had mineral cores, and daring colonists, lured by the store of precious metals that lay close to the surface, had entered the honeycomb of caves with which they were pitted, to establish stations. There they found a curious green folk, not far removed from savagery, who had managed to seal in a sufficiency of air and water to keep life going.
The hope deepened. For the ship swung over to intersect the paths of Jupiter’s moons. Through the view port Sam could see the chunky mass of Europa quite plainly now. There were hundreds of unexplored caverns crisscrossing the inhospitable satellite. This, then, was their destination.
It would be a hard life, doubly difficult for the soft-bodied exiles. Pioneering conditions of the roughest sort on the very edge of the System. Well, it would be temporary at most. As for Sam himself, a journey to the nearest colony would give him access to the radio and communication with Universal back on Earth. He would do his best to ameliorate the condition of these unfortunates; and as soon as the plague waned—
The Ellie May sharp-angled its course. The looming satellite swung in a tight arc to the left. Jupiter rushed across the void, thrusting its great orange disk out of sight.
“Hey!” Sam shouted involuntarily. “What’s that fool Garth doing?”
But no one answered him; no one responded.
Obviously, they were quitting the vicinity of the mighty planet and its moons after coming so close. But why? Why?
The question hammered in Sam’s brain for hours unsatisfied. They had come to the outermost limits of human venturing in the System, to the last colonizable satellites, and now they were turning away. A sudden elation pounded in his veins. Had Garth received a message from the Council to return? Had the plague burned itself out in the three weeks of their journeying? Had Earth repented its harsh decision?
The door opened and a guard thrust in hastily their usual platters of concentrated foods. He was about to close it again when Sam called out:—“Hey there, Soule! I thought we were going to land on Europa.”
Soule hesitated; then growled: “We were supposed to. But that’s a tough crowd down there. They sent us a message that they wanted no part of us. Council order or no Council order, if we tried to land with this bunch, they’d blast us back into space again. And they meant it.”
“How about Io?”
“Same business; only they used worse language.”
Sam tried to still the beating of his heart. “Then we’re returning to Earth?” Soule looked frightened. He averted his head and started to close the door. “Naw. . . that is . . . say,” he began angrily, “I ain’t got no time to answer fool questions.”
Sam sprang across the intervening space in a single leap, caught the startled guard unawares. His fingers gripped on the man’s tunic; his other hand darted down for the swinging gun.
“By God,” he exclaimed fiercely, “there’s something screwy about this! You’ll tell me the truth, Soule, or I’ll—”
“You’ll what, Mr. Jones?”
In back of the struggling guard another figure loomed suddenly. Tall, burly, his granite face sarcastic, Captain Garth stood there, a deadly little Allerton snouting in his hand.
Sam let his hands drop. Soule rubbed his shoulders, began an apology.
“Get back to quarters, scum,” the captain interrupted with a roar. “I’ll tend to you later.” The wretch fled hastily, quaking in anticipation.
“You’d do what, Mr. Jones?” Garth repeated with deadly politeness to Sam.
The reporter faced him boldly. “I demand to know where we are going,” he said in clear, even tones. “We’ve just swung away from the last habitable outpost of the System. Your orders were to land on one of Jupiter’s moons. You’ve let the colonists override the Council orders. What next?”
Garth examined him with glinting eyes. “You’ve managed to pick up a lot of information here in the hold,” he retorted. “That means Jellins and Soule must have talked more than was good for them.” His eyes narrowed. “Now I’ll give you some more information, White. It’s information that you’ll never be able to use. I had additional orders from the Council; sealed ones that none of the crew knew anything about. Io and Europa had a right to send us away. I don’t blame them myself. I’d do the same thing if I were in their boots, Council or no Council.”
Sam did not like the captain’s smile. It boded ill. Yet he pretended not to notice. “Then, of course,” he said with assumed lightness, “we’re going back to Earth—or maybe Venus.”
Garth shook his head. His smile broadened. “No, my fine snooping friend. We’re not turning back. We’re going on.”
Sam started. “You’re crazy,” he protested. “There’s nothing beyond Jupiter but glacial planets that no man has ever attempted to reach.”
“There is always a first time,” Garth pointed out. “We are going to combine business with pleasure. Since the known System won’t take you, we’ll have to find new worlds for you. At the same time, I’ll have a job of exploration to my credit that will bring me a high
er rank even than the one from which your damned newscast dropped me.”
Sam clenched his hands. “You mean you’re going on to Saturn?”
“At least that far,” Garth agreed. “There’s a fuel ship slanting up right now from Europa to restock our supplies.” He fixed the reporter with a malignant glance. “We’ll see how you like a Saturnian moon for what is left of your life, Mr. Atshir Jones.”
Then he was gone; the steel barricade slammed tight in Sam’s face. Sam went back to his bunk; sat down. His fists were still clenched, and the nails dug unheeding into the palms of his hands.
So that was it. The Council, in its panic fear, had determined to rid the System thoroughly of these possible foci of infection. And Garth, in his avid desire for personal rehabilitation and further glory, welcomed the hazardous mission.
Saturn! Approximately twee the distance of Jupiter from the Earth. A planet of mystery and incredible rings. A swirling mass of noxious, frozen gases. A temperature utterly incapable of supporting life. Satellites of which practically nothing was known. Wastes that no man had ever dared venture into before. They might as well, he thought bitterly, have dumped us through the ports into the void. It was murder, one way or another.
For the thousandth time he stared speculatively around at the hapless outcasts. They sat, as always, looking vacantly ahead, crushed by their misfortunes. Speech had died progressively until it was now but an infrequent matter of monosyllables. They ate what food was given them with listless appetite; they lay in their berths and fixed their eyes on the smooth, blank ceiling. Sam had tried again and again to stir them to activity, to resentment over their fate. There was no answering spark in them. They might just as well have been sheep on their submissive way to the abattoir for slaughter. If anything was to be done, Sam would have to do it unaided.
When The Future Dies Page 24