07-Beowulf Shaeffer Read online

  Elephant crossed his arms and glared forward. I shut up and waited.

  By and by he said, "Can we get home?"

  "I don't know. The hyperdrive motor will work, and we can use the gravity drag to slow us down to something like normal. Physically we should be able to do it."

  "Okay. Let's go. But I'll tell you this, Bey. If I were alone, I'd go down, and damn the hull."

  So we turned tail and ran, under protest from Elephant. In four hours we were far enough from Cannonball Express's gravity well to enter hyperspace.

  I turned on the hyperdrive, gasped, and turned it off just as fast as I could. We sat there shaking, and Elephant said, "We can inflate the bubble."

  "But can we get in?"

  "It doesn't have an air lock."

  We worked it, though. There was a pressure-control dial in the cabin, and we set it for zero; the electromagnetic field that folded the bubble would now inflate it without pressure. We went inside, pressurized it, and took off our helmets.

  "We're out of the radiation field," said Elephant. "I looked."

  "Good." You can go pretty far in even a couple of seconds of hyperdrive. "Now, there's one thing I've got to know. Can you take that again?"

  Elephant shuddered. "Can you?"

  "I think so. I can do all the navigating if I have to."

  "Anything you can take, I can take."

  "Can you take it and stay sane?"

  "Yes."

  "Then we can trade off. But if you change your mind, let me know that instant. A lot of good men have left their marbles in the Blind Spot, and all they had were a couple of windows."

  "I believe you. Indeed I do, sir. How do we work it?"

  "We'll have to chart a course through the least dense part of space. The nearest inhabited world is Kzin. I hate to risk asking help from the kzinti, but we may have to."

  "Tell you what, Bey. Let's at least try to reach Jinx. I want to use that number of yours to give the puppeteers hell."

  "Sure. We can always turn off to something closer."

  I spent an hour or so working out a course. When I'd finished, I was pretty sure we could navigate it without either of us having to leave the bubble more than once every twenty-four hours to look at the mass indicator. We threw fingers for who got the first watch, and I lost.

  We put on our suits and depressurized the bubble. As I crawled through the manhole, I saw Elephant opaqueing the bubble wall.

  I squeezed into the crash couch, all alone among the stars. They were blue ahead and red behind when I finished turning the ship. I couldn't find the protosun.

  More than half the view was empty space. I found myself looking thoughtfully at the air lock. It was behind and to the left, a metal oblong standing alone at the edge of the deck, with both doors tightly closed. The inner door had slammed when the pressure dropped, and now the air lock mechanisms guarded the pressure inside against the vacuum outside in both directions. Nobody inside to use the air, but how do you explain that to a pressure sensor?

  I was procrastinating. The ship was aimed; I clenched my teeth and sent the ship into hyperspace.

  The Blind Spot, they call it. It fits.

  There are ways to find the blind spot in your eye. Close one eye, put two dots on a piece of paper, and bring the paper toward you, focusing on one of the dots. If you hold the paper just right, the other dot will suddenly vanish.

  Let a ship enter hyperspace with the windows transparent, and the windows will seem to vanish. So will the space enclosing them. Objects on either side stretch and draw closer together to fill the missing space. If you look long enough, the Blind Spot starts to spread; the walls and the things against the walls draw even closer to the missing space until they are engulfed.

  It's all in your mind, they tell me. So?

  I turned the key, and half my view was Blind Spot. The control board stretched and flowed. The mass-indicator sphere tried to wrap itself around me. I reached for it, and my hands were distorted, too. With considerable effort I put them back at my sides and got a grip on myself.

  There was one fuzzy green line in the plastic distortion that had been a mass indicator. It was behind and to the side. The ship could fly itself until Elephant's turn came. I fumbled my way to the manhole and crawled through.

  Hyperspace was only half the problem.

  It was a big problem. Every twenty-four hours one of us had to go out there, see if there were any dangerous masses around, drop back to normal space to take a fix and adjust course. I found myself getting unbearably tense during the few hours before each turn. So did Elephant. At these times we didn't dare talk to each other.

  On my third trip I had the bad sense to look up -- and went more than blind. Looking up, there was nothing at all in my field of vision, nothing but the Blind Spot.

  It was more than blindness. A blind man, a man whose eyes have lost their function, at least remembers what things looked like. A man whose optic brain center has been damaged doesn't. I could remember what I'd come out here for -- to find out if there were masses near enough to harm us -- but I couldn't remember how to do it. I touched a curved glass surface and knew that this was the machine that would tell me, if only I knew its secret.

  Eventually my neck got sore, so I moved my head. That brought my eyes back into existence.

  When we got the bubble pressurized, Elephant said, "Where were you? You've been gone half an hour."

  "And lucky at that. When you go out there, don't look up."

  "Oh."

  That was the other half of the problem. Elephant and I had stopped communicating. He was not interested in saying anything, and he was not interested in anything I had to say.

  It took me a good week to figure out why. Then I braced him with it.

  "Elephant, there's a word missing from our language."

  He looked up from the reading screen. If there hadn't been a reading screen in the bubble, I don't think we'd have made it. "More than one word," he said. "Things have been pretty silent."

  "One word. You're so afraid of using that word, you're afraid to talk at all."

  "So tell me."

  "Coward."

  Elephant wrinkled his brows, then snapped off the screen. "All right, Bey, we'll talk about it. First of all, you said it, I didn't. Right?"

  "Right. Have you been thinking it?"

  "No. I've been thinking euphemisms like 'overcautious' and 'reluctance to risk bodily harm.' But since we're on the subject, why were you so eager to turn back?"

  "I was scared." I let that word soak into him, then went on. "The people who trained me made certain that I'd be scared in certain situations. With all due respect, Elephant, I've had more training for space than you have. I think your wanting to land was the result of ignorance."

  Elephant sighed. "I think it would have been safe to land. You don't. We're not going to get anywhere arguing about it, are we?"

  We weren't. One of us was right, one wrong. And if I was wrong, then a pretty good friendship had gone out the air lock.

  It was a silent trip.

  We came out of hyperspace near the two Sirius suns. But that wasn't the end of it, because we still faced a universe squashed by relativity. It took us almost two weeks to brake ourselves. The gravity drag's radiator fin glowed orange-white for most of that time. I have no idea how many times we circled around through hyperspace for another run through the system.

  Finally we were moving in on Jinx with the fusion drive.

  I broke a silence of hours. "Now what, Elephant?"

  "As soon as we get in range, I'm going to call that number of yours."

  "Then?"

  "Drop you off at Sirius Mater with enough money to get you home. I'd take it kindly if you'd use my house as your own until I come back from Cannonball Express. I'll buy a ship here and go back."

  "You don't want me along."

  "With all due respect, Bey, I don't. I'm going to land. Wouldn't you feel like a damn fool if you died then?"

/>   "I've spent about three months in a small extension bubble because of that silly planet. If you conquered it alone, I would feel like a damn fool."

  Elephant looked excruciatingly unhappy. He started to speak, caught his breath --

  If ever I picked the right time to shut a man up, that was it.

  "Hold it. Let's call the puppeteers first. Plenty of time to decide."

  Elephant nodded. In a moment he'd have told me he didn't want me along because I was overcautious. Instead, he picked up the ship phone.

  Jinx was a banded Easter egg ahead of us. To the side was Binary, the primary to which Jinx is a moon. We should be close enough to talk...and the puppeteers' transfer-booth number would also be their phone number.

  Elephant dialed.

  A sweet contralto voice answered. There was no picture, but I could tell: no woman's voice is quite that good. The puppeteer said, "Eight eight three two six seven seven oh."

  "My General Products hull just failed." Elephant was wasting no time at all.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "My name is Gregory Pelton. Twelve years ago I bought a No. 2 hull from General Products. A month and a half ago it failed. We've spent the intervening time limping home. May I speak to a puppeteer?"

  The screen came on. Two flat, brainless heads looked out at us. "This is quite serious," said the puppeteer. "Naturally we will pay the indemnity in full. Would you mind detailing the circumstances?"

  Elephant didn't mind at all. He was quite vehement. It was a pleasure to listen to him. The puppeteer's silly expressions never wavered, but he was blinking rapidly when Elephant finished.

  "I see," he said. "Our apologies are insufficient, of course, but you will understand that it was a natural mistake. We did not think that antimatter was available anywhere in the galaxy, especially in such quantity."

  It was as if he'd screamed. I could hear that word echoing from side to side in my skull.

  Elephant's booming voice was curiously soft. "Antimatter?"

  "Of course. We have no excuse, of course, but you should have realized it at once. Interstellar gas of normal matter had polished the planet's surface with minuscule explosions, had raised the temperature of the protosun beyond any rational estimate, and was causing a truly incredible radiation hazard. Did you not even wonder about these things? You knew that the system was from beyond the galaxy. Humans are supposed to be highly curious, are they not?"

  "The hull," said Elephant.

  "A General Products hull is an artificially generated molecule with interatomic bonds artificially strengthened by a small power plant. The strengthened molecular bonds are proof against any kind of impact and heat into the hundreds of thousands of degrees. But when enough of the atoms had been obliterated by antimatter explosions, the molecule naturally fell apart."

  Elephant nodded. I wondered if his voice was gone for good.

  "When may we expect you to collect your indemnity? I gather no human was killed; this is fortunate, since our funds are low."

  Elephant turned off the phone. He gulped once or twice, then turned to look me in the eye. I think it took all his strength, and if I'd waited for him to speak, I don't know what he would have said.

  "I gloat," I said. "I gloat. I was right; you were wrong. If we'd landed on your forsaken planet, we'd have gone up in pure light. At this time it gives me great pleasure to say, I Told You So."

  He smiled weakly. "You told me so."

  "Oh, I did, I did. Time after time I said, Don't Go Near That Haunted Planet! It's Worth Your Life And Your Soul, I said. There Have Been Signs in the Heavens, I said, To Warn Us from This Place -- "

  "All right, don't overdo it, you bastard. You were dead right all the way. Let's leave it at that."

  "Okay. But there's one thing I want you to remember."

  "If you don't understand it, it's dangerous."

  "That's the one thing I want you to remember besides I Told You So."

  And that should have ended it.

  But it doesn't. Elephant's going back. He's got a little flag with a UN insignia, about two feet by two feet, with spring wires to make it look like it's flapping in the breeze, and a solid rocket in the handle so it'll go straight when the flag is furled. He's going to drop it on the antimatter planet from a great height, as great as I can talk him into.

  It should make quite a bang.

  And I'm going along. I've got a solidly mounted tridee camera and a contract with the biggest broadcasting company in known space. This time I've got a reason for going!

  GRENDEL

  There were the sounds of a passenger starship.

  You learn those sounds, and you don't forget, even after four years. They are never loud enough to distract, except during takeoff, and most are too low to hear anyway, but you don't forget, and you wake knowing where you are.

  There were the sensations of being alone.

  A sleeper field is not a straight no-gee field; there's an imbalance that keeps you more or less centered so you don't float out the edge and fall to the floor. When your field holds two, you set two imbalances for the distance you want, and somehow you feel that in your muscles. You touch from time to time, you and your love, twisting in sleep. There are rustlings and the sounds of breathing.

  Nobody had touched me this night. Nothing breathed here but me. I was dead center in the sleeping field. I woke knowing I was alone, in a tiny sleeping cabin of the Argos, bound from Down to Gummidgy.

  And where was Sharrol?

  Sharrol was on Earth. She couldn't travel; some people can't take space. That was half our problem, but it did narrow it down, and if I wanted her, I need only go to Earth and hunt her up in a transfer-booth directory.

  I didn't want to find her. Not now. Our bargain had been clear, and also inevitable; and there are advantages to sleeping alone. I'll think of them in a moment.

  I found the field control switch. The sleeper field collapsed, letting me down easy. I climbed into a navy-blue falling jumper, moving carefully in the narrow sleeping cabin, statted my hair, and went out.

  Margo hailed me in the hall, looking refreshingly trim and lovely in a clinging pilot's uniform. Her long, dark hair streamed behind her, rippling, as if underwater or in freefall. "You're just in time. I was about to wake everyone up."

  "It's only nine-thirty. You want to get lynched?"

  She laughed. "I'll tell them it was your idea. No, I'm serious, Bey. A month ago a starseed went through the Gummidgy system. I'm going to drop the ship out a light-month away and let everybody watch."

  "Oh. That'll be nice," I said, trying for enthusiasm. "I've never seen a starseed set sail."

  "I'll give you time to grab a good seat."

  "Right. Thanks." I waved and went on, marveling at myself. Since when have I had to work up enthusiasm? For anything?

  Margo was Captain M. Tellefsen, in charge of getting the Argos to Gummidgy sometime this evening. We'd spent many of her off-duty hours talking shop, since the Argos resembled the liners I used to fly seven years ago, before my boss, Nakamura Lines, collapsed. Margo was a bright girl, as good a spacer as I'd been once. Her salary must have been good, too. That free-fall effect is the most difficult trick a hairdresser can attempt. No machine can imitate it.

  Expensive tastes...I wondered why she'd left Earth. By flatlander standards she was lovely enough to make a fast fortune on tridee.

  Maybe she just liked space. Many do. Their eyes hold a dreamy, distant look, a look I'd caught once in Margo's green eyes.

  This early the lounge held only six passengers out of the twenty-eight. One was a big biped alien, a Kdatlyno touch sculptor named Lloobee. The chairs were too short for him. He sat on a table, with his great flat feet brushing the floor, his huge arms resting on horn-capped knees.

  The other nonhumans aboard would have to stay in their rooms. Rooms 14-16-18 were joined and half-full of water, occupied by a dolphin. His name was Pszzzz, or Bra-a-ack, or some such unpolite sound. Human ears couldn't c
atch the ultrasonic overtones of that name, nor could a human throat pronounce it, so he answered to Moby Dick. He was on his way to Wunderland, the Argos's next stop. Then there were two sessile grogs in 22 and a flock of jumpin' jeepers in 24, with the connecting door open so the Grogs could get at the jumpin' jeepers, which were their food supply. Lloobee, the Kdatlyno touch sculptor, had room 20.

  I found Emil at the bar. He raised a thumb in greeting, dialed me a Bloody Marriage, and waited in silence for my first sip. The drink tasted good, though I'd been thinking in terms of tuna and eggs.

  The other four passengers, eating breakfast at a nearby table, all wore the false glow of health one carries out of an autodoc tank. Probably they'd been curing hangovers. But Emil always looked healthy, and he couldn't get drunk no matter how hard he tried. He was a Jinxian, short and wide and bull-strong, a top-flight computer programmer with an intuitive knack for asking the right questions when everyone else has been asking the wrong ones and blowing expensive circuits in their iron idiots.

  "So," he said.

  "So," I responded, "I'll do you a favor. Let's go sit by the window."

  He looked puzzled but went.

  The Argos lounge had one picture window. It was turned off in hyperspace, so that it looked like part of the wall, but we found it from memory and sat down. Emil asked, "What's the favor?"

  "This is it. Now we've got the best seats in the house. In a few minutes everyone will be fighting for a view because Margo's stopping the ship to show us a starseed setting sail."

  "Oh? Okay, I owe you one."

  "We're even. You bought me a drink."

  Emil looked puzzled, and I realized I'd put an edge in my voice. As if I didn't want anyone owing me favors. Which I didn't. But it was no excuse for being a boor.

  I dialed a breakfast to go with the drink: tuna fillet, eggs Florentine, and double-strength tea. The kitchen had finished delivering it when Margo spoke over the intercom, as follows: "Ladies and gentlemen and other guests, we are dropping out some distance from CY Aquarii so that you may watch a starseed which set sail in the system of Gummidgy last month. I will raise the lounge screen in ten minutes." Click.