Rogue ship, p.5
Rogue Ship, page 5
The developing limpness of the two bodies in his grasp finally brought him out of his passion. When full realization penetrated, he called the scientists into session, and it was then decided to hold an election.
It required a while to make the people understand what was wanted, but finally an executive council was duly elected by secret ballot. And this council recognized the right of John Lesbee IV to succeed his father as captain, when he reached maturity. In the meantime the council offered the temporary captaincy to Browne, for a term of one year.
By the following year, two of the council members had thought over the situation, and offered themselves as candidates for the captaincy. Browne was re-elected.
The former third officer, now Acting Captain Browne, was vaguely annoyed at the opposition that had developed to him,
'Why,' he said in a hurt tone, to his eldest son, 'they don't know anything about the duties of an officer.'
He began to train his two sons in the details of the work. 'You might as well know something about it,' he said. 'Somebody's got to.'
For a while his conscience bothered him, and then he began to hear that there was a campaign of vilification being carried on against him. 'Things never used to be like this,' he complained to the council. 'When donkeys like young Kesser and that middle-aged goat Plauck can call you a fool behind your back, there's something wrong. I think maybe next year you fellows had better appoint me captain until Lesbee is twenty-five years old, and end that kind of nonsense. We can't take the chance of some nut who doesn't understand how this ship works, taking control.'
Councillor Plauck commented dryly that a knowledge of physics was a handy adjunct to any commander in a space cluttered with dangerous energies such as the cosmic rays. Browne's 'recommendation,' as it was called, was refused. But he was re-appointed to the captaincy for another year.
It was shortly after this that one of the councillors, passing through the hydroponic gardens, saw a familiar face among the workers. He reported to the council, and an emergency meeting was called. Browne was suave. 'Why shouldn't young Lesbee limber up his muscles a little? This idea of a separate hierarchy is all wrong. In my opinion, all the young people should work in the gardens for a time every year. I'm going to have that put to a vote. I'll bet the regular garden workers would just love to have you big shots come around and tell them that there are people aboard this ship who are too good to do manual labor.'
Later, when he was asked about the progress of young Lesbee in his officer training, Browne shook his head, with due gravity. 'Frankly, gentlemen, his progress is poor. I have him come up to the bridge every day after he's through at the gardens. And he just doesn't take any interest. I'm coming to the conclusion, reluctantly, that he just isn't very bright. He just can't learn well.'
It was clear to some of the council members at least, that Captain Browne was learning very 'well' indeed.
11
John Lesbee IV did not pause in his picking of the ripened fruit. The nearest wall of the hydroponic gardens was two hundred feet away, but his caution was boundless. He listened with a deliberate casualness as the girl spoke to him: 'Mother says the sparks started two days ago. So we must be near Procyon.'
Lesbee IV said nothing. He accepted the old explanation for the spark phenomenon, that they occurred wherever there were two or more suns to draw huge numbers of high-energy particles from each other's magnetic fields and accelerate them far out into interstellar space.
Although his pretense at leadership was wearing thin, he had 'policies,' one of which was that he did not discuss technical matters with his followers. He had given the girl her instructions the 'night' before. It was now up to her to make a report.
His fingers continued their automatic movements as she went on: 'The others think you should run in this election. Browne is putting his older son up for the council. If we can elect you in his place-' She stopped; then: 'Remember, you're now twenty-nine years old. And the council still has paid no attention to your rights. You'll have to fight for them.'
Lesbee IV made no answer. He felt a weariness at these stupid people who were always urging him to come out into the open. Didn't they realize the danger? And besides, it was important to wait till they had been to Procyon. Then, with Earth as the next destination, the scoundrels who had cheated him out of his rights would begin to think twice.
'If you don't act,' said the girl anxiously, 'the men are going to take things into their own hands. They're tired – we're all tired – of doing all the hard work, and getting the poorest food. Gourdy says' – she paused – 'we'll take the ship.'
She sounded awed. And for the first time Lesbee made a dismissing motion that had nothing to do with fruit picking. 'Aaaaa!' he said, and brought his hand down, contemptuously. These ignorant fools, he thought. They didn't know what they were talking about.
Take the ship indeed – a bunch of working people, who had never even seen space, except on a screen.
'You'd better hurry!' the girl said. 'You'd better hurry and make up your mind -'
The vague reports of the underground resurrection that was developing failed to disturb Captain Browne. 'Those dirty beggars,' he said to Lieutenant George Browne, his younger son and chief officer of the ship, 'haven't enough brains to steal my hat. Besides, just wait until they find out what my plans are when we get into the Procyon system. That'll make them think twice.'
The younger Browne said nothing. He considered his father a fool, and it had already struck him that it would be a long, long time before the burly captain would start to decline seriously. At a hundred and four, the commander looked good for another twenty years.
It was a long time to wait for the captaincy. He'd be an old man himself before it happened. The subject was one that he had already discussed with his elder brother, who was due to run for the council at the elections next month.
Perhaps he should also let the underground group become aware of the tenor of his thoughts. A few vague promises -
Procyon A, with six times the luminosity of Sol, swam in the darkness ahead. A yellow-white sun, it loomed larger and larger, brighter and brighter. In the blackness, billions of miles to one side, Procyon B was a pale husk of a sun, clearly visible only in the telescopes.
Surprisingly, Procyon boasted more planets than had the brilliant, the massively bright Sirius. Twenty-five huge worlds revealed themselves in the telescopes. The ship investigated the two, with diameters of twenty-five thousand miles, found both were inhabited) and both had predominantly chlorine atmospheres.
'These other fellows had good ideas,' said Captain Browne, 'but they never gave these alien civilizations credit for goodwill. The thing we've got to remember is, not once have the inhabitants of these systems made any attempt to harm us. You may say, what about old Captain Lesbee? Nonsense, I say. He looked at something that wasn't for human eyes, it wrecked his brain, and he died. The important thing is, that thing in the shell that looked at him had the ship completely at its mercy, and it made no effort to do damage.
'So!' The big captain looked around the council room. 'Where does that leave us? In the best position we've ever been in. Old man Lesbee didn't dare to force issues at Centaurus because he was dealing with the unknown. At Sirius we got scared and beat it because the unknown showed itself to be absolutely and completely unhuman. But now we know. There seems to be an interstellar civilization here, and it can tell us what we want to know. What do we want to know? Why, which stars have Earth-sized planets with oxygen atmospheres.
'They don't care if we find them. Why should they? Oxygen planets are forever beyond their reach, just as sulfur and chlorine planets are beyond ours.
'All right then, let's tell them what we want to know. How?' He grinned triumphantly at his audience. 'Just leave it to me,' he said. 'Just leave it to me. The first of their ships we can get near will find out.'
Actually, it was the fourth ship that found out. The first three ignored the Hope of Man. The fourth one came to a full stop in the space of a score of miles. It returned to within a hundred yards of the Earth ship, and remained quiet throughout the whole of the show that Browne put on.
The mechanism he used was simple enough. He rigged a huge motion-picture screen inside one of the lifeboats, then sent the lifeboat outside. The projector was mounted inside the bridge, and the series of pictures that followed showed the Hope of Man leaving Earth, arriving first at Alpha Centauri, then at Sirius and the discovery that the inhabited planets were based on chlorine and sulfur atmospheres respectively.
This was shown by the simple method of projecting beside the planets pictures of the atomic structures of chlorine and sulfur. Earth was pictured with oxygen and nitrogen, although it was assumed that these beings would understand that it was the oxygen that made life possible.
Then began the most important phase of the weird showing. A star map was flashed on to the screen. It pictured sixty-odd stars within twenty light-years of Sol. Onto this scene was imposed a triumvirate of atomic structures – chlorine, oxygen, sulfur. The trio was jerked in front of one sun, held for a moment, then moved on to another.
'Let's see,' said Browne, 'how quickly they catch on that we don't know what kind of atmosphere the planets on those stars have.'
They caught on as the camera was moving its three-headed question mark from the sixth to the seventh star. They acted by blotting out the moving trio. Onto the stationary map they imposed a solid rank of atomic structures, one beside each star.
Browne counted four that were shown as having oxygen atmospheres. As he watched, another star map was synchronized with the Earth one. It showed thousands of suns, and beside each one was the revealing atomic symbol that indicated the nature of the atmospheres of the habitable planets.
He saw that the alien ship was moving away; its image on the screen swiftly grew smaller.
'Get the lifeboat in!' Browne commanded. 'I guess we'd better get started, too. I think I'll recommend that we go to Alta. That's the nearest.'
Later, as he reported to the council, there was an almost fatuous smile on his large face. He was proud of himself. His plan had worked, and so an Earth-born vessel had a film record of scores, perhaps hundreds, of planets that might be colonized by human beings.
The feeling of success suffused him, as he let his gaze move from face to face. He wondered if these councillors were thinking what they should: how right they had been to elect him captain at their annual meetings. Perhaps, they would now see the wisdom of dispensing with elections altogether. The election system was really very dangerous and was against the rules by which vessels of the armed forces were administered. The matter should be settled so that there would be no confusion if anything ever happened to him.
It wasn't – he told himself – that he felt old. But he computed that it would take thirty years to reach Alta, and it might well be that he would not survive another three decades. For strictly emotional reasons, he wanted the right to name his successor. He desired the captaincy to go to his second son.
As he had that thought, his moving gaze touched the doorknob across the room. He saw it turn; he had a peculiar, lightning intuition -
And he snatched his blaster...
The promptness of his reaction protected the ship from the hands of the rebels but did not save his own life. Later, when the younger Browne led a group of armed technicians and scientists to the aid of the council, they found all but one member dead and that one seriously injured. Captain Browne and his eldest son were both victims of the rebellion. Plauck and Kesser were hardly recognizable, but they had apparently had time to draw their weapons and to fire at the rebel group led by Gourdy. Lesbee IV, it developed, had refused to participate.
Of the more than twenty young men who had aided Gourdy, seventeen were dead. A trail of blood led along the corridor, first to two severely wounded men, and then to a storeroom where Gourdy had barricaded himself.
Since he would not surrender, they used their greater knowledge of the ship against him. A needle gun was silently pushed through one wall from a secret passageway. He never knew what killed him.
The new Captain Browne, being over seventy years old himself, thoughtfully had the injured councillor carried to the captain's bed. Somewhere, late in the sleep period, the acting captain considered the problem presented by one living survivor of a group of electors and he shook his head, finally and with decision.
'If he lives,' he thought, 'the whole election system may be rehabilitated and that is absolutely ridiculous.'
Presently, he called his son on the intercom. The two men -the son was forty-five years of age at this time – agreed that the father's judgment was correct. At the older man's suggestion, the younger Browne returned to his own room.
But he was not surprised to hear his father report at the end of the sleep period that the wounded councillor was dead.
And that there was no one left aboard entitled to demand an election.
12
One hundred and nine years after leaving Earth, the spaceship, Hope of Man, went into orbit around Alta III, the only inhabited and habitable planet they had found in the system.
The following 'morning,' Captain Browne informed the shipload of fourth– and fifth-generation colonists that a manned lifeboat would be sent to the planet's surface.
'Every member of the crew must consider himself expendable,' he said earnestly. 'This is the day that our great-grandparents, our forefathers, who boldly set out for the new space frontier so long ago, looked forward to with unfaltering courage. We must not fail them.'
He concluded his announcement over the speaker system of the big ship by saying that the names of the crew members of the lifeboat would be given out within the hour, 'And I know that every real man aboard will want to see his name there.'
John Lesbee, the fifth of his line aboard, had a sinking sensation as he heard those words – and he was not mistaken in his sudden premonition.
Even as he tried to decide if he should give the signal for a desperate act of rebellion, Captain Browne made the expected announcement.
The commander said, 'And I know you will all join him in his moment of pride and courage when I tell you that John Lesbee will lead the crew that carries the hopes of man in this remote area of space. And now the others -'
He thereupon named seven of the nine persons with whom Lesbee had been conspiring to seize control of the ship.
Since the lifeboat would only hold eight persons, Lesbee recognized that Browne was dispatching as many of his enemies as he could. He listened with developing dismay, as the commander ordered all persons on the ship to come to the recreation room. 'Here I request that the crew of the lifeboat join me and the other officers. Their instructions are to surrender themselves to any craft which seeks to intercept them. Their scanners will relay all observed events to us here, and enable us to determine the level of scientific attainment of the dominant race on the planet below.'
Lesbee hurried to his room on the technicians' deck, hoping that perhaps Tellier or Cantlin would seek him out there. He felt himself in need of a council of war, however brief. He waited five minutes, but not one member of the conspiratorial group showed.
Nonetheless, he had time to grow calm. Peculiarly, it was the smell of the ship that soothed him most. From the earliest days of his life, the odor of ozone and the scent of metal at high temperature had been perpetual companions. At the moment, with the ship in orbit, there was a letting up of stress. The smell was of old energies rather than new. But the effect was similar.
He sat in the chair he used for reading, eyes closed, breathing in that complex of odors, product of so many titanic energies. He felt the fear leave his mind and body. He grew brave again, and strong.
Lesbee recognized that his plan to seize power had involved risks. Worse, no one would question Browne's choice of him as the leader of the mission. 'I am,' thought Lesbee, 'probably the most highly trained technician ever to be on this ship.' Browne III had taken him when he was ten, and started him on the long grind of learning that led him to master, one after the other, the skills of the various technical departments. And Browne IV had continued his training.
He was taught how to repair control systems. He gradually came to understand the interrelated cybernetic functions. Long ago, the colossal cobweb of electronic circuitry behind the many panels had become almost an extension of his own nervous system.
He never did find time to learn the basic theory of the ship's main drive. This information was contained in a course of study to which Browne had provided access, and so a little knowledge had come through to him and stayed with him. But in these advanced realms, he actually knew less than his father.
His father had made numerous attempts to pass his knowledge on to his son. But it was as hard to teach complexities to a tired and sleepy boy as it had been for the older man to learn those complexities himself under similar circumstances. Lesbee even felt slightly relieved when his parent died. It took the pressure off him. Since then, however, he had come to realize that the Browne family, by forcing a lesser skill on the descendant of the original commander of the ship, had won their greatest victory.
As he finally headed for the recreation room, Lesbee found himself wondering: Had the Brownes trained him with the intention of preparing him for such a mission as this?
His eyes widened. If that were true, then his own conspiracy was merely an excuse. The decision to kill him might actually have been made more than a decade ago, and light-years away...
As the lifeboat rocketed toward Alta III, Lesbee and Tellier sat in the twin control chairs and watched on the forward screen the vast, misty atmosphere of the planet. Dr. Tellier had never understood why spaceships could not attain even a quarter of the speed of light. His records showed that he had hoped to reach velocities greater than light, but his death had occurred too soon for him to train his son to carry on after him. No one since had had the necessary knowledge to continue his work.
