Rogue Ship

10

The atomic bomb that was fired into the atmosphere of Sirius A-l, attained a velocity of thirty miles a minute. And so, in spite of the violently exploding energy flares that soared up to meet it, it penetrated to within forty miles of the planet's dimly visible surface before it was finally exploded by a direct hit.

In one hour, when the entire scene was still concealed by an impenetrable cloud, they had their first reaction. A transparent, glittering shell, not more than eight feet in diameter, was picked up on the scanners. There was something inside it, but whatever it was refused to resolve into focus.

It came nearer and nearer, and still the thing inside would not show clearly to the straining eyes.

Lesbee III stood on the bridge beside the chair in which his grandfather sat. And the sweat broke out on his brow. When the shell was two hundred yards distant, he said: 'Do you think we ought to let it come any nearer?'

The old man's glance was contemptuous. 'Our screens are up, aren't they? If it's a bomb, it can't touch us.'

Lesbee III was silent. He did not share the old man's confidence that Earth's science was equal to anything that might happen in space. He was prepared to admit that he knew very little about Earth's science, but still – that shell.

'It seems to have stopped, sir.' That was Carson, pointedly addressing the aged captain, ignoring the acting captain.

The words relieved Lesbee III, but the first officer's action saddened him. What kind of suicidal impulse made Carson think that the temporary presence of the hundred-year-old retired captain was a good reason for insulting the man who would be commander for thirty years more at least?

He forgot that, for the thing in the shell, whatever it was, was watching them intently. Lesbee III felt a hideous thrill. He said jumpily: 'Somebody get us a clear picture of it.'

The screen blurred, then cleared, but the object in the shell looked as confusing as ever. After a moment longer it moved in an unhuman fashion. Instantly the shell began to approach the spaceship again with a disturbingly steady forward movement. Within seconds, it was less than a hundred yards away, and coming nearer.

'He'll never get through the defenses!' Lesbee III said doubtfully.

He tensely watched the shell. At twenty-five yards it was already through the outer defenses not only of the ship but of Lesbee's mind. He couldn't see it. That was the damnable, mind-destroying part. His eyes kept twisting, as if his brain could not accept the image. The sensation was fantastic. His courage slipped from him like a rotted rag. He made a dive for the stairway and was vaguely surprised to find Carson there ahead of him. He felt the burly Browne crowding his heels.

Lesbee III's final memory of the bridge was of the ancient Captain Lesbee sitting stiffly in the great captain's chair – and the alien shell only a few feet from the outer hull.

In the corridor below, he recovered sufficiently to wave his officers to an elevator. He took them down to the alternative control room. They hastily switched on the viewplates that connected with the bridge. The screen flickered with streamers of light but no picture took form. And a steady roaring sound came from the speakers.

It was a dismaying situation; desperately, Lesbee III said, 'What could affect our eyes, twist them? Does anyone know of a phenomenon of the physics of light that has that effect?'

It seemed that a number of subvisual lasers could stimulate the visual centers painfully.

And certain levels of fear within the body could twist the eyes from inside.

Those were the only suggestions.

Lesbee III commanded: 'Rig something that will reflect the particular lasers you have in mind.' To Dr. Kaspar, he said, 'What would stimulate fear?'

'Certain sounds.'

'There were none.'

'Brain– level waves on the exact band of terror.'

'Wel– ll' -doubtfully – 'we were certainly put to flight, but I didn't actually feel fear. I felt confusion.'

'Some kind of an energy field – I'm speculating wildly!' said the psychologist.

'Use the technical staff!' Lesbee III ordered him. 'Figure out some kind of interference for all of those possibilities. On the double, everybody!'

They were still frantically working in the shops, when the viewplate in the alternative control room suddenly cleared. Simultaneously, the roar in the speakers ceased. The first picture that showed was of the bridge itself. Lesbee III could see the old captain still in his chair, but slumped over. There was nothing else visible in his line of sight. Hopefully, Lesbee III tuned to the space scanners. To his relief, he saw that the shell was withdrawing; it was already a quarter of a mile away. It receded rapidly, became a speck against the great, misty planet below.

Lesbee III did not wait for it to vanish entirely, but raced for the elevator – with Browne and Carson close behind. They found his grandfather still alive, talking nonsense to himself and, it soon developed, stone blind.

As they carried him down the steps, and then wheeled him to his room, Lesbee listened intently to his muttering. The words that made sense were about the old man's childhood long ago on Earth.

In the room, Lesbee III grasped the thin, cold hands in his own. 'Captain! Captain!'

After he had repeated the one word several times, the other's muttering ceased. 'Captain, what happened up there on the bridge?'

The old man started to speak. Lesbee III strained and heard a few words:

'... we forgot the eccentric orbit of Canis Major A with its B. We forgot that B is one of the strange suns of the galaxy... so dense, so monstrously dense... it said it's from the planet of B... It said, get away! They won't deal with anyone who tried to bomb them... Get away! Get away...! It attached something to the hull... pictures, it said...'

Lesbee III had leaped away to the intercom. He shouted orders for astronauts to go outside, remove whatever was attached to the hull, take it off in a lifeboat, and when they had examined it and found it harmless, bring it back to the ship.

As he turned back to the captain, Lesbee III felt a shock. The face which had momentarily showed some semblance of sanity had changed again. The eyes were all wrong, twisted, crossed, as if they had tried to look at something that they could not focus on. As he watched, more interested now than disturbed, they continued to twist sightlessly.

Lesbee III tried to get the old man's attention as before by addressing him repeatedly. But this time there was no response. The lined and bearded face retained its abnormal expression.

A doctor had come. Two assistants undressed the long, scrawny body and laid it in the bed. Lesbee III departed.

By the dinner hour, the astronauts were back with a weird but harmless package. It contained a transparent, peculiarly-shaped beaker with a colorless liquid inside. When Lesbee III first saw the object, he saw that there was a picture on the inside of the bottle. Eagerly, he picked it up – intending to bring it closer to his eyes – and the picture changed. Another scene took form inside.

The picture changed with every move. Not once, while he looked at it, did any scene repeat. And in order to see a specific frame for more than a fraction of a second, he finally had to lay it down and sit up close to it. By maneuvering it gently with his fingers every few seconds, he was able at last to view the strange world of the inhabitants of Sirius A-l, who, apparently, had originally come from the mysterious planet of B.

At first there were only scenes: landscapes and oceans. What the liquid in the oceans was, was not obvious; the water was tinted yellow. But the initial scenes showed a turbulent liquid that had the look of being storm tossed.

One scene after another showed a rapid succession of huge waves.

When the frames finally began to show land, the scene was of rugged, mountainous country that was covered with a grayish-yellow growth; a kind of moss, it seemed to the intent Lesbee III. Here and there, the growth piled up into uneven shapes, some of which were small and others of which were extremely tall. Because of the jagged appearance, the growths were beautiful – much as a design in gold and silver is beautiful.

There were other growths, but they were a tiny proportion of the whole: a touch of red, or green, a different type of foliage; that was all. The yellow-gray 'moss' and the silver-gold 'trees' dominated equally the mountain peaks and plains.

Abruptly, there was a city scene.

Everywhere, in that first look, he saw canals filled with what seemed to be water. Enthralled, Lesbee III remembered motion pictures he had seen of the far-distant Earth city of Venice, Italy. This seemed similar.

Then he saw that the 'canals' were on top of the buildings and that there were different levels of them. The high-rise buildings extended for miles like a continuous cliff, uniform in height. Between the two abutments, made up of the front and back of the buildings, flowed two streams of the yellow-tinted 'water'... in opposite directions.

Each of the three levels of lower-rise buildings also had its two streams. The entire array of buildings periodically crisscrossed with others of their own type, which came in upon them at right angles.

...Square on square mile of each, and thousands of canals... no streets visible anywhere; simply the solid masses of buildings presenting four roof levels, and every roof with water on it.

In the water were dark shapes – that moved. He couldn't see them.

The picture frames that showed these creatures close up had a light effect that twisted Lesbee III's eyes.

He was amazed, interested, intensely disappointed. 'I'll be damned,' he said. 'They don't want us to see what they look like.'

Physicist Plauck, peering over Lesbee's shoulder, said, 'On such a huge planet, it follows that the muscles of a life form would require a buoyant liquid to support the body. If their planet of origin is B-l – which is larger – then, like Earthman on Mars, what we're seeing is the intelligent life form of this system in an environment where its motion is actually freer than on its home planet. Yet they still need additional support. It suggests a very dense physical structure, hard to handle.'

Lesbee III, whose eyes were beginning to hurt, stood up. 'Take this bottle,' he said, 'and film the pictures inside it. We'll have a general showing for everybody later.'

He added, 'After you've made the film, see if you can't figure out their method of putting pictures into bottles. They must know a lot more about the physics and chemistry of liquids than we do.'

With that, he headed back to his grandfather's room. He found the old man in a coma.

Captain John Lesbee, first commander of the Hope of Man, died in the sleep hour that same sidereal day, seventy-seven years, four months, and nine days out from Earth, at the honorable age of one hundred and thirty-one years.

Within six months, no man or woman of his generation remained alive.

It was then that Lesbee III made a major error. He attempted to carry out his purpose of getting rid of a no-longer-needed Atkins.

The death of Lesbee III at the hands of Atkins – who was immediately executed despite his plea of self-defense – created a new crisis aboard the Hope of Man.

John Lesbee IV was only ten years old and, though it was urged by Browne that he be made captain at once, First Officer Carson thought otherwise. 'It is true,' he said sanctimoniously, 'that he will be grown up by the time we reach Procyon, but in the meantime we will establish a captain's council to command for him.'

In this he was supported by Second Officer Luthers. And several weeks went by before Browne discovered the two wives of Lesbee III were now living with Carson and Luthers.

'You old goats!' he said, at the next meeting of the captain's council. 'I demand an immediate election. And if you don't agree right now, I'm going to the scientists, and to the crew.'

He stood up, and towered over the smaller men. The older men shrank back, and then Carson tried to draw a blaster from an inside pocket. When he was in a hurry, Browne did not know his own strength. He grabbed the two men, and bumped their heads together. The power of that bump was too much for human bone and flesh, particularly since Browne's rage did not permit him to stop immediately.

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.