Rogue Ship

25

Aboard the ship, Lesbee V awakened.

He lay quite still, momentarily not remembering what had happened, simply lying there in the darkness like a child, not thinking.

Then memory rushed in on him. He thought, 'Oh, my God!'

For many seconds he felt scared, but suddenly relief came. For he was still alive. Translight-speed was not lethal. The feared instant when the ship was traveling exactly at the speed of light had arrived, been experienced, and was behind them.

Lying there, he wondered how long he had been blacked out. That thought brought a new sense of urgency, the realization that he should be down in the engine room, testing, checking, preparing for the slowdown.

He thought of Gourdy. 'Can he be dead?' he wondered hopefully.

He reached up and turned on the light beside the bunk. It was an automatic action, and it was only as the light flooded his little prison cell that he realized that electric impulses and light waves and antigravity seemed to be functioning as normally as ever.

...Wonder came. Yet that fitted the theory that at light-speed, light still traveled at the speed of light.

Lesbee freed himself from his acceleration belt and sat up.

He heard a noise outside his cell. A key sounded in a lock. The door beyond the metal bars swung open. Gourdy, wearing a bandage on his head, peered in at him. Behind the captain, loomed the larger figure of a former kitchen worker named Harcourt.

As he saw Gourdy, instant disappointment hit Lesbee. He had expected it; his analysis about it was correct; but somehow the reality – that Gourdy had not been fatally injured -violated a basic hope that he had cherished... As quickly as it had come, the disappointment faded.

He remembered that Gourdy's coming here was victory.

Lesbee's spirit lifted. It was true. This was why he had programmed the drives: to force this shrewd, murderous little man to come to him for help.

He spoke quickly, to get in the first word, to guide the thought. 'I was knocked unconscious. I just came to. What happened? Is everybody safe?'

He saw that Gourdy was staring at him with a baffled expression. 'You were caught, too!' the man said.

Lesbee merely stared at him. He had a fear of overdramatizing, was convinced that even a single repetition might be a giveaway.

'Lesbee, you're sure this is not part of some scheme?'

Lesbee was able to say that there was no scheme, and it was true, in that his plan had not carried him beyond this moment. Therefore, the scheme such as it was, was already a thing of the past. From this instant, he and everyone aboard confronted a situation new to man: the phenomena related to supralight-speed.

The denial must have reassured Gourdy. He hesitated, but only for a moment. Then, roughly: 'I'm going to take one more chance on you, Lesbee, so you get down to the engine room! Harcourt'll go with you – and take care! No funny stuff!'

Gourdy must have realized the futility of threats. 'Look, Lesbee,' he pleaded, 'find out what happened, straighten it out and we'll talk. O.K.?'

Lesbee did not trust him; could not. He recognized that Gourdy's situation had not changed, that the new captain still must not go to Earth. But aloud he said, 'O.K. Of course.'

Gourdy managed a facial contortion that was meant to be a friendly smile. 'I'll see you later,' he said.

He departed to interrogate the other prisoners. At this moment, having cleared Lesbee – in his own mind – his suspicion had turned on Miller. Who else could have done it but the only other man who had been in the engine room? He recalled how Miller had examined some of the dials, touched them. That was when it must have happened, Gourdy decided savagely. 'Right there in front of my eyes!' The mere thought enraged him.

Lesbee, with Harcourt trailing him, reached the alternate control room. A quick glance into the viewplates indicated that there was plenty of black space ahead. Quickly, trembling a little in his haste, he programmed the drives for reverse on a twelve g plus eleven artificial-gravity basis. The programming done, he reached for the master switch, grasped it -

And then he stopped.

It seemed to him, in this moment of ultimate decision, that he had several vital things to consider.

The acceleration to translight-speeds had achieved the purpose that he had vaguely anticipated. It had freed him from prison. But it had changed nothing basic in his situation.

No matter what he did, if he failed, or even if he merely failed to act, he was slated to be murdered. That was his certainty, and it must govern what he did now.

...Get Harcourt's gun, and incapacitate the man, somehow, in the process; bind him, hold him, even kill him – if absolutely necessary. But, whatever, put him out of action.

Then rescue Tellier... and the two of them get off the ship exactly as they had planned it.

The decisions made, once more he started to reach for the switch.

But this time he drew back without touching it. There was another factor to consider, less personal, perhaps even more important. He thought, 'Why did I black out at the transition point? That should be explained.'

People were hard to knock out. That had been discovered many times aboard the big ship. Short of being given an anesthetic, people clung to consciousness under conditions of extreme shock and pain with a tenacity that was almost incredible.

Lesbee half-turned to the big man, asked, 'Did you become unconscious, Harcourt?'

'Yeah.'

'Do you remember anything about it?'

'Nope. Just conked out. Came to. Thought to myself: "Boy, I'd better get up to Gourdy!" Found him piled up against the headboard of his bed and -'

Lesbee interrupted. 'No thoughts?' he asked. 'No pictures, no dreams, no odd memories? Just before consciousness, I mean.'

He himself had had only some vague fantasies and memory images in reverse.

'Well– l-l!' Harcourt sounded doubtful. 'Come to think of it, I did have a dream. Kind of vague now.'

Lesbee waited. The expression on the man's fleshy face indicated that he seemed to be straining for the memory, and so there was no point in urging him.

Harcourt said, 'You know, Mr. Lesbee, when it comes right down to it, I guess we human beings have really got truth in us.'

Lesbee groaned inwardly. This man was too slow in thought and tongue. He said hurriedly, 'I'd better reverse the engine, Harcourt. We can talk later.'

Once more he took hold of the relay. This time he gently closed the switch. The job done, Lesbee seated himself in the master chair, picked up an attached microphone, and spoke into the ship's loud-speaker system, announcing that deceleration would begin in less than a minute. Having done this, Lesbee was about to strap himself into his chair when he glanced at Harcourt and saw that the man had already fastened his belt.

The observation electrified him. Should he attack the other man now?

Breathless, Lesbee sank back into his own chair. 'Not now!' he thought. There were too many unknowns. Now, if there was a struggle, it could be interrupted by the deceleration. 'Wait!' Lesbee thought. With trembling fingers, he fastened his own belt.

Uneasily, a little wide-eyed, he watched the dials on the control board.

Abruptly, the needles surged.

Involuntarily, he braced himself. But nothing special happened. He had set up a gap of one g between deceleration thrust and artificial gravity, and that was what it was.

He thought, 'Can we depend on that, even at speeds above light?'

The needles continued to show response as before.

Harcourt spoke. 'You know, Mr. Lesbee, that dream was sure funny. I actually had the picture of every part of my body doing some kind of a flip-flop. I was as big as all space and I could see my insides and all those little, funny, spinning flecks of light, only they weren't small any more, and every single one of 'em stopped spinning and started up in the opposite direction. There was a funny feeling of going backwards. I guess right there is where I blacked out.'

Lesbee had turned as the man was describing his subjective experience. Listening, it seemed to him that he was hearing what a simple, uncluttered mind had observed with a pure inner vision.

'... flip– flop...' What else?

'...as big as all space... ' That was the theory: at light-speed, mass became infinite, though size reduced to zero.

'... fuzzy flecks... ' Electrons, for heaven's sake, whirling in their orbits, suddenly reversing -

Of course. Fantastic, but of course.

And, naturally, that was where the blackout would occur. Exactly at the moment of reversal. The very structure of life and matter must have been wrenched. He felt a sudden awe, thought, 'While we were having these petty squabbles, could it be that the ship was breaking the barriers of time and space?'

He visualized fantasia: the colossal night out there conquered by discovery and utilization of the rules inherent in its structure. Distance defeated totally, even time probably distorted.

Tensely, Lesbee sat, waiting for the ship to cross light-speed, slowing down. Waited for the shock of return to normalcy-

The swift seconds sped by. The needles continued their surging.

Nothing.