Collected short fiction, p.637
Collected Short Fiction, page 637
Less drunk than he had seemed, the soldier picked the lock and came out to join the fight. Though he had been disarmed, he and the girl fought five able spacemen. Two had finally fled. The other three, Captain Scabbard believed, had been killed.
“But we couldn’t find the bodies.” His eyes flickered uneasily back toward the lock, where his passengers were waiting to come aboard the station. “I ain’t makin’ no formal charges. They ain’t makin’ none. The soldier told me to just forget the incident. But the mate and two more are gone, and we couldn’t find the bodies.”
He shivered apprehensively.
“Maybe you never stopped to think how hard it is to get rid of a dead body in a stateroom on a sealed space flyer. It ain’t just hard—it’s impossible! In my time around Nowhere I’ve seen a lot of funny things, but I ain’t never seen nothing to match that soldier and his girl!”
That’s part of what made the story queer.
I thanked Captain Scabbard and told him that I would interview his passengers before I let them come aboard the station. He grew angry. He was afraid of them, I soon realized. He wanted to get them off his ship, but I stood firm.
We had troubles enough already. Nowhere Near had an ugly name in the Legion, for good cause. Duty there was both dull and dangerous.
A third of our thirty-man crew was normally rotated each year, but the last relief complement had been aboard that lost ship. An unwise search had cost us twelve more lives. The station commander, cracking under the strain, had committed a strange suicide by steering a rescue rocket into the heart of the space called Nowhere.
His death had left me the acting commander, although my actual promotion had only now arrived in Captain Scabbard’s green-sealed pouch. I was still very young, very conscious of my peculiar duty. With only sixteen men and two free companions, I was standing guard against a danger that none of us understood.
Old enough to be cynical, most of the men under me had a bitter feeling that Nowhere Near was a forgotten stepchild of the Legion. They had been cruelly jolted when they learned that the Erewhon had brought us no replacements for the missing men or relief for those who had already served long beyond their normal tour of duty. I was prepared for trouble—but not asking for it.
“You are under charter to the Legion,” I reminded Captain Scabbard. “That means your port and flying orders come from me. This is no place for tourists, and I don’t want the sort of problem you have just reported. Your passengers will have to convince me that they have some legitimate business here.”
Grumbling sullenly, he agreed to let me interview them in the station lock. When he sent them to meet me there, the first thing I saw was the old soldier’s shocking sloppiness. Out of uniform, he wore a flaming yellow civilian sweater and shapeless old fatigue pants, one leg tucked inside his oversize spaceboots and the other dropping outside. He was short and thick and flabby—scarcely fit for his heroic role in Captain Scabbard’s tale. Yet he came waddling through the great steel valves as confidently as if he had come to take command of the station.
The nurse followed him, immaculate in white. A glowing, bronze-eyed, athletic girl, she looked too young and fresh and lovely to be so far from the stars men had mastered. A gasp of admiration came from the lock sergeant behind me. My own pulse was quickening—until I saw her ring.
The ring was a heavy platinum band set with an odd black stone. An unpleasant gem, the dull black stone was carved into a grinning skull with hot ruby eyes that glowed like live coals. That ugly death’s-head struck me with a puzzling shock of evil, because it seemed to deny her clean, strong vitality.
“Captain Ulnar?” Neglecting to salute, the old soldier stopped to stare at me with eyes like flat wet pebbles. “Captain Lars Ulnar? You want to talk to us?”
“If you want to come aboard the station.”
“Why else do you think we’ve come forty trillion miles on Scabbard’s miserable bucket of rust?” His round face was baby-smooth and baby-soft, and it reddened now like an angry infant’s. “We were expecting a warmer welcome. My name’s Habibula. Corporal Giles Habibula.”
His bald pink head nodded toward the girl.
“Nurse Lilith Adams. We’re here as guests of the blessed Legion. You have orders to supply us rations and quarters in the station.”
“I’ve received no such orders.”
“Our visit was arranged through Legion channels.” His indignant voice was nasal and high, oddly irritating. “Orders to expect us were sent you a year ago.”
“The ship last year was lost.”
“We’re well aware of that.” He grimaced pinkly. “We’ve been sweating for a miserable month at your sector headquarters, waiting for a brass-capped fool to arrange our passage on the Erewhon. We were warned that our papers had been on that unlucky ship. We had duplicates sent you more recently, in care of Commander Star.”
“Commander Star?”
“Ken Star, commander of the Legion survey ship Quasar Quest.” Indignation buzzed in his high nasal voice. “He’d taken off before we got to sector base. He must have left our papers here.”
“Commander Star has not been here.” My first astonishment was changing to irritated disbelief. “Not for years, anyhow. I’ve seen his name in the station records. He was the first commanding officer, years before I got here. I’ve never seen him.”
“Life’s precious sake!” The old man’s mud-colored eyes rolled apprehensively toward the silent girl. “I’m afraid poor Ken has blundered into mortal trouble.” He lurched forward as if he meant to pass me. “Well, Captain, it looks as if you’ll have to take my precious word about those orders.”
“Hold it, soldier!”
The riddle was growing queerer. No Legion survey ship had been expected at the station. The old soldier’s tale of lost orders was a bit too pat. He looked too clever. Besides, with his improper uniform and his failure to salute and his irritating insolence, he had ruffled my sense of military fitness.
“If you are a soldier!” I stepped in front of him. “Have you ever been taught Legion courtesy and discipline?”
“Mortal well, Captain.” He stopped, but still did not salute. “For most of a mortal century, I’ve been offering Legion courtesy to officers who deserved it. I’ve gladly saluted Commander Kalam and Admiral-General Samdu and the great John Star. But I’m not saluting you.”
He blinked shrewdly at me, as if daring me to react.
“Giles!” The girl spoke for the first time. Her low voice was lovely as her face, gentle in cool reproof. “Don’t be a fool!”
“I mean no disrespect, sir,” the old man wheezed. “If you had read those orders, you would know that I am honorably discharged. We are here as special guests of the Legion—as civilians.”
“Nowhere Near has several missions.” Now more annoyed than puzzled, I spoke stiffly. “Our first mission is simply to warn shipping away from a dangerous and mysterious anomaly in space. Our second is to observe and report every fact was can discover about the nature and the cause of that anomaly. We have no facilities to entertain civilian guests.”
“Captain Ulnar—please!” The girl stepped forward urgently. “I’m sure Commander Star will arrive with our orders soon. At least you must let us wait for him.”
I hesitated, because she troubled me. She belonged somewhere else, I thought—perhaps in some fortress like the Purple Hall, along with old masters and old ivory and all the proud creations of man’s great past. She looked too thrillingly alive, certainly, for this deadly exile at the brink of Nowhere.
“You’ll have to answer some questions,” I said. “Captain Scabbard gave me a very brief account of an incident on the Erewhon. He says the two of you killed three able spacemen. He couldn’t learn how you disposed of the bodies.”
Old Habibula’s stone-colored eyes squinted blankly out of his pink baby-face. The girl stiffened slightly, lovely and lean and grave, her eyes darkening.
“What happened?” I demanded. “What happened to those three men?”
“Three pirates!” gasped old Habibula. “They got what they mortal well deserved.”
“That may be,” I agreed. “But I am responsible for the safety of this station. I want to know exactly how they got it. Nurse Adams, what have you to say?”
“A dreadful experience.” Her head lifted proudly in her stiff white cap. Her tawny eyes met mine—alert, searching, somehow tragic. “I can’t talk about it.”
The desperation in her voice touched my heart—but I was young enough to feel that my new duty at Nowhere Near required the same kind of desperation. I looked at old Habibula to recover my severity.
“You’d better talk about it,” I said, “if you want to come aboard.”
Neither spoke.
“Then I suppose that ends our interview.”
I turned to leave them in the lock.
“Wait!” old Habibula whined angrily behind me. “We’ve got our rights, even as mortal civilians. The Green Hall guarantees our democratic freedoms. You can’t make us say anything you might take to be incriminating.”
“True enough.” I paused at the inner valve. “But I can’t afford to let strangers with incriminating secrets inside Nowhere Near.”
“Strangers?” His gasp was almost a sob. “Captain, don’t you know the history of the precious Legion? Have you never heard of poor old Giles Habibula, who fought in the war against the wicked Medusae, and fought against the invisible Cometeers, and fought against the fearful human monster who called himself the Basalisk?”
“What if I do?” Reviewing dusty memories of history lectures back at the Legion academy on old Earth, I made a rapid calculation. “Don’t try to tell me you are that Giles Habibula. He’d be dead of old age by now.”
“I am—almost!” he gasped. “Life knows I’m mortal old—and waging a war to save my precious life!” Sadly, he shook his pink and hairless baby-head. “Perhaps it’s true there’s an evil stain across my past. I must confess that I once picked locks for a living. But all that has been atoned for—a million times atoned for, to the living glory of the Legion, with my precious sweat and blood and brains.”
He stopped to catch a sobbing breath, his dull-colored eyes squinting at me cunningly.
“When Ken Star arrives, he’ll tell you who we are,” he whined. “Ken Star will vouch that we are not the miserable criminals you seem to take us for.”
“Please—C-Captain!”
The girl’s voice had an anxious little catch. When I looked at her, her young loveliness became an aching throb in my throat and wild magic in my imagination.
“Commander Star’s—our friend.” She hesitated oddly. “I know he’ll soon be here to assure you that we aren’t criminals of any sort—that we do have legitimate business here.”
Her bronze eyes were wide and warm, bright as if with tears.
“Captain, you can’t send us back to Scabbard and his gangster crew.” The quiver in her voice dissolved my resolution. “At least you’ve got to let Giles tell you why we’re here. You’ve just got to, Captain!”
Frowning to conceal unsoldierly feelings, I came slowly back to them. The riddles around them had begun to tease my curiosity. I knew that old Habibula was deliberately baiting me, but I couldn’t guess why. I was still convinced I didn’t want them on the station, yet the girl had lit a glowing coal of longing in me.
“All right.” I swung as coldly as I could to old Habibula. “Why are you here?”
“Because I like machines.”
2 NORTH OF NOWHERE
THE OLD SOLDIER moved toward me across the lock. His rolling, cautious gait, in the low G-force here near the axis of the spinning station, convinced me that he was at least a veteran spaceman. His pale eyes measured the shining steel valves, caressed the red-painted pumps, read the winking lights of the lock monitor.
“What machines!” His nasal voice lifted happily. “What divine machines.” He gave the girl a pink baby-grin. “Look at ’em, Lil! Such machines are food and precious drink to me.”
I too admired fine machines. I had spent three years polishing and tuning and loving the great space machine that was the station. For a moment I wanted to like Giles Habibula.
“Very well.” I tried to be gruff. “But this is no mechanical museum. If you have any honest reason for visiting Nowhere Near, what is it?”
“We’re conducting an experiment.” His flat, shallow eyes flickered evasively from me to the girl. “A mortal important experiment! Though I told you I’m retired, the Legion has asked another desperate service of me. The Legion medics have made me a miserable human guinea pig, for a research that’s likely to end in my death.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere.” I thought I saw a glimmer of light. “What is that research?”
“You know I’m old.” His baby-head shook sadly. “Dreadful death is crowding close upon me—a poor reward for all the hardship and danger I’ve endured to help defend the precious human race. But still I’ve not forgot the spirit of the Legion. I’ve volunteered to give my few last years to this rare and desperate experiment.”
“Yes?”
“Lilith Adams is my very special nurse.” He gave her a fond pink smile. “I’m her guinea pig for a new serum the Legion medics have invented. The hazards are unknown, for the serum has never been tested. I fear the research will end in my death.”
Hunching his thick shoulders in the flame-yellow sweater, he shivered.
“That’s why I’ve come to Nowhere Near,” he wheezed. “To sweat out these fearful final years among the machines I love. Perhaps to perish here—a precious human sacrifice for the glory of the Legion and the welfare of mankind.”
“What’s the serum for?”
“Age!” he gasped. “It’s supposed to immunize me to what the medics call the cumulative biochemicals of senescence. We’ve come to wait here till we discover whether it works. If it does, the medics promise I’ll be immortal. But it’s a frightful gamble!”
“So you want to live forever?”
“I’ll do my best, sir.” He shot a murky glance at me. “I’m a veteran of the Legion, and I’ve not forgot our magnificent tradition. I’ve come to devote myself to this desperate experiment, to the brink of death itself—even if it takes a thousand mortal years!”
I stood for a moment just admiring his bluff.
Cool and tall and curiously sure in her clean white garb, Lilith Adams looked gravely at him and seriously back at me. I was almost smiling, but her lean and lovely face showed no hint of amusement.
“I’m afraid you’ve picked an unfortunate spot for this kind of research,” I told them. “No miracle serum is likely to protect either one of you against the hazards of Nowhere. I’ll respect your orders, of course—if Commander Star does bring any orders about you before the Erewhon leaves. But surely you can see that Nowhere Near is no old folks’ home. There’s not a man of us here who wouldn’t give a month’s pay for half an hour of sun and wind and sea and sky, back on Earth. Why can’t you test your serum there?”
Stubbornly, the old man shook his pink and hairless head.
“I’ve seen too much of Earth.” His pale eyes fluttered uneasily. “I’ve seen too many human beings—too mortal much of their yelling and crowding and fretting and scheming and lying and killing and stinking. That’s why we’ve come to Nowhere Near.”
“There are new planets enough,” I argued patiently, “if you really don’t like Earth. Virgin worlds, where you can really get back to nature. Seas that men have never sailed, plains that men have never plowed, creatures never hunted, mountains never climbed. When Nowhere gets on my nerves, I like to dream of those new worlds—”
“I’ve seen new planets.” The old man blinked. “I’ve met raw nature, on the fearful world of the Runaway Star. Monsters in the sea and monsters in the jungle and monsters in the air—dreadful death in every breath we took!”
He gave me a pink, solemn scowl.
“I’m looking for my lost youth. If I do find it here, with Lilith’s precious aid, I’ll owe all my thanks to the computers that designed her new serum and the automated factories that made it. I’ll owe no thanks to nature—natural death would have killed me years ago!”
Shuddering massively, he paused to gasp for air.
“I don’t like nature and I don’t trust people.” His clay-colored eyes shifted belligerently. “Look at the wicked natural mystery you call Nowhere. Look at Captain Scabbard and his brutal crew. Nature and men—fearful nature and monstrous men!
“Give me machines—like your great station here.
“Machines I understand. Take nature. This natural space called Nowhere—so I gather from the miserable men who infest the fringes of it—is a dreadful riddle that the best brains in the Legion have failed to unlock, after endless years of trying. Take men. I’ve seen how even the precious innocence of Lilith Adams can awaken unsuspected evil in the worst or best of men. You take nature and men. I’ll take machines!”
He dropped his smooth baby-hand on the sleek black case of the lock monitor, with an air of familiar affection.
“Machines I know and trust. I can see how they work and fix ’em when they don’t. Machines I love, because they exist to work for men. Left to herself, nature always kills us—unless our wicked fellow men are quicker to the death. But I think machines can save my poor old life, with Lil’s precious serum.”
Staring at the two of them, I had to shake my head. The riddle was growing queerer. Though I had been amused by old Habibula’s agile loquacity, I couldn’t decide what to believe of his story. The pink glow of his skin and the vigor of his fight on the Erewhon seemed to argue for a real rejuvenation.
Yet he seemed too cunning, too bold, too eloquent. I couldn’t believe that any normal man would hate his natural world as heartily as he claimed to, or love machines as much. Certainly I couldn’t believe that any sane veteran of the Legion would willingly retire to Nowhere Near.
