He realized that he had preparations to make quickly, before Browne got suspicious of his delay.

  He turned to the board and switched on the intercom. 'People,' he said, 'strap yourselves in again. Help those who were injured to do the same. We may have another emergency. You all have about a minute, I think, but don't waste any of it.'

  He cut off that intercom, and activated the closed-circuit intercom of the technical stations. He said: 'Special instructions to technical personnel. Listen carefully. Did any of you hear an explosion about ten minutes ago?'

  He had an answer to that within moments after he had finished speaking. A man's twangy voice came: 'This is Dan. There was an explosion in the corridor near me – seems longer ago than ten minutes.'

  Lesbee restrained his excitement. 'Where?' he asked.

  'D– four-nineteen.'

  Lesbee pressed the viewer buttons, and a moment later found himself gazing along a corridor that looked stove in. Wall, ceiling, floor – everything – was a mass of twisted metal.

  No question, Dzing had been blown apart. There was no other possible explanation for such destruction.

  Relieved, but aware again that his greatest personal danger remained, Lesbee set up Stage Two of the little device in his pocket in relation to the alternate control board. Then he turned and faced Browne.

  The older man seemed uncertain as to what had happened.

  'What was all that?' he asked.

  Lesbee explained that Dzing was destroyed.

  'Oh!' Browne seemed to consider that. 'That was clever of you not to reveal it,' he said finally.

  'I wasn't sure,' Lesbee said. 'This ship is really soundproofed. The explosion didn't reach us here.'

  Browne seemed to accept that.

  Lesbee said, 'If you'll wait a moment while I put away this gun, I'll carry out my part of the bargain.'

  But when he had put the blaster away, he paused out of pity.

  He had been thinking about what Browne had said, earlier: that the trip to earth might require only a few months. The officer had backed away from that statement, but it had been bothering Lesbee ever since.

  If it were true, then, indeed, nobody needed to die.

  He said quickly, 'What was your reason for saying that the journey home would only take – well – less than a year?'

  'It's the tremendous time compression near light-speed,' Browne explained eagerly. 'The distance, as you pointed out, is over twelve light-years. But with this new principle of acceleration, we can work up a time ratio of 300, 400, or 500 to one, and we'll actually make the trip in less than a month. When I first started to say that, I could see that the figures were incomprehensible to you in your tense mood. In fact, I could scarcely believe them myself.'

  Lesbee said, staggered, 'We can get back to the solar system in a few weeks – my God!' He broke off, said urgently, 'Look, I accept you as commander. We don't need an election. The status quo is good enough for any short period of time. Do you agree?'

  'Of course,' said Browne. 'That's the point I've been trying to make.'

  As he spoke, his face was utterly guileless.

  Lesbee gazed at that mask of innocence and he thought hopelessly, 'What's wrong? Why isn't he really agreeing? Is it because he doesn't want to lose his command so quickly?'

  Sitting there, unhappily fighting for the other's life, he tried to place himself mentally in the position of the commander of a vessel, tried to look at the prospect of a return to Earth from the other's point of view. It was hard to picture. But presently it seemed to him that he understood.

  He said gently, feeling his way, 'It would be kind of a shame to return without having made a successful landing anywhere. With this new speed, we could visit a dozen sun systems, and still get home in a year.'

  The look that came into Browne's face for a fleeting moment told Lesbee that he had penetrated to the thought in the man's mind.

  The next instant Browne was shaking his head vigorously. 'This is no time for side excursions,' he said. 'We'll leave explorations of new star systems to future expeditions. The people of this ship have served their term. We go straight home.'

  Browne's face was now completely relaxed. His blue eyes shone with truth and sincerity.

  There was nothing further that Lesbee could say. The gulf between Browne and himself could not be bridged.

  The commander had to kill his rival so that he might finally return to Earth and report that the mission of the Hope of Man had been accomplished.

  18

  Lesbee used the tractor beam to push Browne about six feet from him. There he set him down, and released him from the beam. With the same deliberateness, he drew his hand away from the tractor controls, and swung his chair around so that his back was to the board. Thus he rendered himself completely defenseless.

  It was the moment of vulnerability.

  Browne leaped at him, yelling: 'Miller – pre-empt!'

  First Officer Miller obeyed the command of his captain.

  As the bridge control board took over, a sequence of control exchanges was set in motion.

  The alternate control board was removed from the circuit.

  The rerouted electric current opened and closed relays, in accordance with the physics of current flow.

  The two control boards were so perfectly synchronized that the one which took over always continued what the other had had set up on it. Normally, therefore, nothing could go wrong during pre-emption.

  But in this instance, the alternate control board had one of its controls subordinated to the tiny device in Lesbee's pocket. At the moment, that powerful little gadget was holding in check twelve g's of drive and eight g's of artificial gravity... in reverse, exactly as Lesbee had reprogrammed them when he pressed the Stage Two Button.

  When the bridge took over, the drive and the artificial gravity resumed their function instantly.

  The Hope of Man – instantly – decelerated at a four-g gap speed.

  Lesbee took the blow of that abrupt slowdown, partly against his back and partly against his right side, with the sturdy rear of the chair as his principal support.

  It was a wholly adequate support.

  But Browne was caught off balance. He had been coming at Lesbee from an angle. The enormous impact of the deceleration flung him at this angle straight at the control board. He struck it with an audible thud and stuck to it as if he were glued there.

  A cut– off relay, which Lesbee had also preprogrammed through the alternate control board, now shut off the engines as suddenly as they had started. During the weightlessness that followed, Browne's body worked itself free and slid down to the dais.

  There was discoloration at a dozen spots on the uniform. As Lesbee stared, fascinated, blood seeped through.

  19

  'Are you going to hold an election?' Tellier asked.

  The big ship, under Lesbee's command, had turned back and had picked up his friends. The lifeboat itself, with the remaining Karn still aboard, was put into orbit around Alta III and abandoned.

  The two young men were sitting now in the captain's cabin.

  After the question had been asked, Lesbee leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He didn't need to examine his total resistance to the suggestion. He had already savored the feeling that command brought.

  Almost from the moment of Browne's death, he had observed himself having the same thoughts that Browne had voiced – among many others, the reasons why elections were not advisable aboard a spaceship. He waited now while Ilsa, one of his three wives – she being the younger of the two widows of Browne – poured wine for them and went softly out. Then he laughed grimly.

  'My good friend,' he said, 'we're all lucky that time is so compressed at the speed of light. At a time ratio of five hundred to one, any further exploration we do will require only a few months or years at most. And so, I don't think we can afford to take the chance of defeating at an election the only person who understands the details of the new acceleration method. Till I decide exactly how much exploration we shall do, I shall keep our speed capabilities a secret. But I did, and do, think one other person should know where I have this information documented. Naturally, I am selecting First Officer Armand Tellier.'

  He raised his glass. 'As soon as I have the full account written, you shall have a copy.'

  'Thank you, Captain,' the young man said. But he was thoughtful as he sipped his wine. He went on finally, 'Captain, I think you'd feel a lot better if you held an election. I'm sure you could win it.'

  Lesbee laughed tolerantly, shook his head. 'I'm afraid you don't understand the dynamics of government,' he said. 'There's no record in history of a person, who actually had control, handing it over.'

  He finished with the casual confidence of absolute power: 'I'm not going to be presumptuous enough to fight a precedent like that.'

  He was sitting there, smiling cynically, when the buzzer of the front door of the captain's cabin sounded in the adjoining room. Lesbee was aware of one of his wives going to the door and opening it. Surprisingly, then, there was not another sound. No greeting, no acknowledgment; total silence.

  Lesbee thought, 'Whoever it is, has handed her a note.'

  The instant analysis ended a feeling of uneasiness. He was about to settle back in his chair, when a man's rough voice came quietly from behind him.

  'All right, Mr. Lesbee, your take-over is ended and ours is beginning.'

  Lesbee froze. Then, turning, stared with an awful sinking sensation at the armed men who were crowding in behind the man who had spoken. He didn't know any of the men but he saw that they were laborers, garden men, and kitchen help. People of whose existence he had never been more than vaguely aware.

  The leader of the group spoke again.

  'Gourdy is my name, Mr. Lesbee, and we're taking over -these men and I – because we want to go home, back to Earth... Be careful, and you and your friends won't be hurt -'

  Lesbee sighed with relief as those final words were spoken. All was not lost.

  20

  Gourdy was thirty-four when he led the revolt that overthrew Lesbee V. He was a thick-built, small man with very black eyes, and he had been brought up with the daily memory that his father had led an abortive rebellion. Long ago, he had determined that he would carry out his father's ideals to the death, if necessary. He had a courage that derived from hatred and a shrewdness that had gradually developed from his skeptical attitude toward any and every bit of information that had ever come down to the lower decks from above. He had instantly spotted as false the apparent friendship of Browne and Lesbee, and recognized it as a struggle and not a collaboration. Far more important, he had seen that this was the opportunity for which he himself had been waiting.

  He moved into the captain's cabin, and because it was all new to him he took nothing for granted. What was visible to his keen, wondering gaze merely served as an inducement to explore what was not visible. Thus, in raising the metal floor to make sure there was nothing under it that could be used against him, he discovered the detectaphone system by which it was possible to listen in to every room of the big ship. And when he had some of the walls broken open, he found the labyrinth of passageways by which technicians like Lesbee had kept track of tens of thousands of miles of wiring.

  For the first time, he was able to reconstruct how his father had been killed – from such a passageway – while apparently safe behind the barred doors of a storeroom. The finding of these and other hidden chambers took some of the magic out of the scientific realities of the ship. Gourdy reasoned that a leader need not himself be a scientist to run the ship, but he had a strong feeling that he would probably have to kill a few people, before the scientific community would accept him and his untrained helpers.

  From the beginning, his extreme suspicion and rage motivated him to act with the exact rationality required for a people's revolution to be successful. He had every doubtful person put down in the laboring quarters and barred from the upper floors till further notice. He reasoned that all decisions relating to key men would have far-reaching consequences. Although a large number of persons was involved, he personally interviewed each man.

  Most of the scientists seemed resigned to working with him. Many of them expressed relief that someone was finally in command of the ship who really would set course for Earth. All of these Gourdy listed to return to their regular duties under the system he had worked out, whereby never more than one third of any staff would be admitted to the laboratories at one time.

  About a score of men made him uneasy in some way: their manner, something they said, the kind of work they did. These he classified in a special category. It would be some time before they were allowed to the upper levels, for any reason.

  All of Browne's and Lesbee's officers he told bluntly that he planned to make use of their knowledge but that, until further notice, they would not be admitted 'upstairs,' except one at a time and then under guard.

  Of the entire group of nearly two hundred persons, only one technician and two minor scientists proved resistant. They were openly contemptuous of the new government of the Hope of Man. All three offered Gourdy direct insults as he questioned them. They sneered at his clothes, at his way of speaking, and swore at him.

  Gourdy parried the invective thoughtfully. He was not suspicious or afraid that the three were part of a conspiracy; they were too obvious. He surmised extreme unawareness, but he had a hardness of purpose that rejected sympathy or understanding. He saw with grim satisfaction that here were his examples.

  He killed all three men and announced the killings over the public-address system, about an hour before the next sleep period.

  That done – all the preliminaries done – he ordered Lesbee to be brought up to him. And so, a few minutes later, for the first time since the take-over, the two men faced each other. In a cool, incisive voice, Gourdy told his prisoner, 'I thought I'd keep you to the last -'

  He didn't explain why, and for Lesbee, now that the executions had taken place, it didn't matter. It was too late. Sitting there, with the other's intense black eyes staring at him, Lesbee silently cursed himself. He had actually had the fleeting thought earlier that this man might do something drastic, had actually thought of sending a message to Gourdy asking him not to do anything irrevocable without a discussion. But the new captain might have insisted on knowing why, and so he had held back.

  The sad truth was, he had welcomed the delay over his own interrogation, wanted the time to make up his own mind. In the end he had decided that no one, least of all himself, had anything to gain from a prolonged voyage with Gourdy in command. And so he had planned to tell about the light-speed effect.

  The murder of the three men changed that purpose. Now, he dared not tell, for, obviously, Gourdy would be unwilling to return to Earth, where a court might take a dim view of the killings.

  As a cover-up for his genuine state of shock, Lesbee adopted the scientific pose. Complete control by non-scientists was a terrible mistake; that was his argument. He thereupon proposed that his forces and Gourdy's work together to achieve the journey to Earth. He suggested a captain's board consisting of Gourdy, two of Gourdy's henchmen, Tellier, and himself.

  'That,' he said, 'will give you a three-to-two voting majority, but will provide a stable communication line with two persons who know how the ship works and who were also victims of the previous hierarchy.'

  Lesbee had no real expectation that Gourdy would accept such a compromise. He did hope it would create a softening attitude in the man.

  If so, there was no immediate sign of it. Gourdy did not believe in boards, or councils, or split commands, and he proceeded to make this clear. The ship had one commander, himself. All persons aboard would either co-operate with him to the best of their ability or they would be punished according to their dereliction. Death would be the penalty for any kind of severe disloyalty or sabotage.

  The statement of policy was so harshly uttered that Lesbee felt abrupt fear for his own safety. Recovering, he quietly promised to obey Gourdy's orders.

  The small man stared at him for many seconds after he had spoken. Then his manner changed to a kind of surly cordiality. 'Let's drink on that, hey!' he said.

  He poured wine into two glasses, handed one to Lesbee, and raised the other in a toast. What he said was, 'Mr. Lesbee, I kept your interview to the last because the fact is you're probably the only expert aboard I can trust – in spite of you being the one I took over from.'

  They sipped the wine, Lesbee uneasy but as convinced as ever that he couldn't tell the other man about the nearness of Earth, Gourdy a little puzzled by something in Lesbee's manner but satisfied that his selection of Lesbee was logical.

  He grew expansive, said slyly, 'In a couple of weeks, if you behave, I'll bring you up to a cabin and send your real wife to live with you.' He added, 'Although I haven't done anything about it yet, I'm probably gonna have to keep those other two women. My own wife – believe it or not – insists on it. Startled me, because she used to be so damned jealous down below. Not here. I guess' – he frowned – 'being on a ship like this is not good for a woman. Makes her feel empty inside. She's already blasted me with a kind of crazy hysteria about it. I think she has some kind of feeling that I won't really be captain till I take over the captain's wives. But don't worry, it won't include yours.'

  Lesbee remained silent. He sat considering the possibilities that the emotional instability of the women aboard might be due to voyage conditions. Then he realized it was of little consequence.

  Gourdy was continuing unhappily: 'Makes it kind of awkward. Down below, we were against all this multiple-wife stuff. We'll sure look like phonies if we just grab for women the moment we're in control.' Once more, he frowned. Then he straightened, raised his glass. 'I'll think about the other ladies later. Here's to your wife.'

  After they had drunk the wine, his manner changed again. He put his glass down. He said curtly, 'Let's get this ship headed for home.'

 

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