Time for the Stars

  This brush with the sea devils braced my spine; I decided to see the Captain as Harry had suggested.

  He let me in without keeping me waiting more than five minutes. Then he kept quiet and let me talk as long as I wanted to. I elaborated the whole picture, as I saw it, without attributing anything to Chet or Harry. I couldn’t tell from his face whether I was reaching him or not, so I put it strongly: that Unc and Mei-Ling were both out of the picture and that the chance that I would be of any use after the next peak was so slight that he was risking his ship and his crew on very long odds.

  When I finished I still didn’t know, nor did he make a direct answer. Instead he said, “Bartlett, for fifty-five minutes yesterday evening you had two other members of the crew in your room with your door closed.”

  “Huh? Yes, sir.”

  “Did you speak to them of this?”

  I wanted to lie. “Uh…yes, sir.”

  “After that you looked up another member of the crew and remained with him until quite late…or quite early, I should say. Did you speak to him on the same subject?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Very well I am holding you for investigation on two counts: suspicion of inciting to mutiny and suspicion of intent to mutiny. You are under arrest. Go to your room and remain there. No visitors.”

  I gulped, Then something Uncle Steve had told me came to my aid—Uncle had been a jawbone space-lawyer and loved to talk about it. “Aye, aye, sir. But I insist that I be allowed to see counsel of my choice…and that I be given a public hearing.”

  The Captain nodded as if I had told him that it was raining. “Certainly. Your legal rights will be respected. But those matters will have to wait; we are now preparing to get underway. So place yourself under arrest and get to your quarters.”

  He turned away and left me to confine myself. He didn’t even seem angry.

  So here I sit, alone in my room. I had to tell Unc he couldn’t come in and, later, Chet. I can’t believe what has happened to me.

  CHAPTER XVI

  “JUST A MATHEMATICAL ABSTRACTION”

  That morning seemed a million years long. Vicky checked with me at the usual time, but I told her that the watch list was being switched around again and that I would get in touch with her later. “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  “No, hon, we’re just having a little reorganization aboard ship.”

  “All right. But you sound worried.”

  I not only didn’t tell her that I was in a jam, I didn’t tell her anything about the disaster. Time enough later, after it had aged—unless she found out from official news. Meanwhile there was no reason to get a nice kid upset over something she couldn’t help.

  Twenty minutes later Mr. Eastman showed up. I answered the door when he knocked and told him, “I’m not to have any visitors. Sorry.”

  He didn’t leave. “I’m not a visitor, Tom; I’m here officially, for the Captain.”

  “Oh.” I let him in.

  He had a tool kit with him. He set it down and said, “The regular and special communication departments have been consolidated, now that we are so shorthanded, so it looks like I’m your boss. It won’t make any difference, I’m sure. But I’m to make a reconnection on your recorder, so that you can record directly into the comm office.”

  “Okay. But why?”

  He seemed embarrassed, “Well…you were due to go on watch a half hour ago. We’re going to fix this so that you can stand your watches conveniently from here. The Captain is annoyed that I didn’t arrange it earlier.” He started unscrewing the access plate to the recorder.

  I was speechless. Then I remembered something Uncle Steve had told me. “Hey, wait a minute!”

  “Eh?”

  “Oh, go ahead and rewire it, I don’t care. But I won’t stand any watches.”

  He straightened up and looked worried. “Don’t talk like that, Tom, You’re in enough trouble now; don’t make it worse. Let’s pretend you never said it. Okay?”

  Mr. Eastman was a decent sort and the only one of the electronics people who had never called us freaks. I think he was really concerned about me. But I said, “I don’t see how it can be worse. You tell the Captain that I said he could take his watches and—” I stopped. That wasn’t what Uncle Steve would say. “Sorry. Please tell him this: ‘Communicator Bartlett’s respects to the Captain and he regrets that he cannot perform duty while under arrest’ Got it?”

  “Now look here, Tom, that’s not the proper attitude. Surely, there is something in what you say from a standpoint of regulations. But we are short-handed; everybody has to pitch in and help. You can’t stand on the letter of the law; it isn’t fair to the rest.”

  “Can’t I?” I was breathing hard and exulting in the chance to hit back. “The Captain can’t have his cake and eat it too. A man under arrest doesn’t perform duty. It’s always been that way and it always will be. You just tell him what I said.”

  He silently finished the reconnection with quick precision. “You’re sure that’s what you want me to tell him?”

  “Quite sure.”

  “All right. Hooked the way that thing is now”—he added, pointing a thumb at the recorder—“you can reach me on it if you change your mind. So long.”

  “One more thing—”

  “Eh?”

  “Maybe the Captain hasn’t thought about it, since his cabin has a bathroom, but I’ve been in here some hours. Who takes me down the passageway and when? Even a prisoner is entitled to regular policing.”

  “Oh. I guess I do. Come along.”

  That was the high point of the morning. I expected Captain Urqhardt to show up five minutes after Mr. Eastman had left me at my room—breathing fire and spitting cinders. So I rehearsed a couple of speeches in my head, carefully phrased to keep me inside the law and quite respectful. I knew I had him.

  But nothing happened. The Captain did not show up; nobody showed up. It got to be close to noon. When no word was passed about standing by for boost, I got in my bunk with five minutes to spare and waited.

  It was a long five minutes.

  About a quarter past twelve I gave up and got up. No lunch either. I heard the gong at twelve-thirty, but still nothing and nobody. I finally decided that I would skip one meal before I complained, because I didn’t want to give him the chance to change the subject by pointing out that I had broken arrest. It occurred to me that I could call Unc and tell him about the failure in the beans department, then I decided that the longer I waited, the more wrong the Captain would be.

  About an hour after everybody else had finished eating Mr. Krishnamurti showed up with a tray. The fact that he brought it himself instead of sending whoever had pantry duty convinced me that I must be a Very Important Prisoner—particularly as Kris was unanxious to talk to me and even seemed scared of being near me. He just shoved it in and said, “Put it in the passageway when you are through.”

  “Thanks, Kris.”

  But buried in the food on the tray was a note: “Bully for you! Don’t weaken and we’ll trim this bird’s wings. Everybody is pulling for you.” It was unsigned and I did not recognize the handwriting. It wasn’t Krishnamurti’s; I knew his from the time when I was fouling up his farm. Nor was it either of the Travers’s, and certainly not Harry’s.

  Finally I decided that I didn’t want to guess whose it was and tore it in pieces and chewed it up, just like the Man in the Iron Mask or the Count of Monte Cristo. I don’t really qualify as a romantic hero, however, as I didn’t swallow it; I just chewed it up and spat it out. But I made darn sure that note was destroyed, for I not only did not want to know who had sent it, I didn’t want anybody ever to know.

  Know why? That note didn’t make me feel good; it worried me. Oh, for two minutes it bucked me up; I felt larger than life, the champion of the downtrodden.

  Then I realized what the note meant…

  Mutiny.

  It’s the ugliest word in space. Any other disaster is better.
r />   One of the first things Uncle Steve had told me—told Pat and myself, way back when we were kids—was: “The Captain is right even when he is wrong.” It was years before I understood it; you have to live in a ship to know why it is true. And I didn’t understand it in my heart until I read that encouraging note and realized that somebody was seriously thinking of bucking the Captain’s authority…and that I was the symbol of their resistance.

  A ship is not just a little world; it is more like a human body. You can’t have democracy in it, not democratic consent at least, no matter how pleasant and democratic the Captain’s manner may be. If you’re in a pinch, you don’t take a vote from your arms and legs and stomach and gizzard and find out what the majority wants. Darn well you don’t! Your brain makes a decision and your whole being carries it out.

  A ship in space is like that all the time and has to be. What Uncle Steve meant was that the Captain had better be right, you had better pray that he is right even if you disagree with him…because it won’t save the ship to be right yourself if he is wrong.

  But a ship is not a human body; it is people working together with a degree of selflessness that doesn’t come easy—not to me, at least. The only thing that holds it together is a misty something called its morale, something you hardly know it has until the ship loses it. I realized then that the Elsie had been losing hers for some time. First Doc Devereaux had died and then Mama O’Toole and both of those were body blows. Now we had lost the Captain and most of the rest…and the Elsie was falling to pieces.

  Maybe the new captain wasn’t too bright, but he was trying to stop it. I began to realize that it wasn’t just machinery breaking down or attacks from hostile natives that lost ships; maybe the worst hazard was some bright young idiot deciding that he was smarter than the Captain and convincing enough others that he was right. I wondered how many of the eight ships that were out of contact had died proving that their captains were wrong and that somebody like me was right.

  It wasn’t nearly enough to be right.

  I got so upset that I thought about going to the Captain and telling him I was wrong and what could I do to help? Then I realized that I couldn’t do that, either. He had told me to stay in my room—no ‘if’s’ or ‘maybe’s.’ If it was more important to back up the Captain and respect his authority than anything else, then the only thing was to do as I had been ordered and sit tight.

  So I did.

  Kris brought me dinner, almost on time. Late that evening the speakers blared the usual warning, I lay down and the, Elsie boosted off Elysia. But we didn’t go on, we dropped into an orbit, for we went into free fall right afterwards. I spent a restless night; I don’t sleep well when I’m weightless.

  I was awakened by the ship going into light boost, about a half gravity. Kris brought me breakfast but I didn’t ask what was going on and he didn’t offer to tell me. About the middle of the morning the ship’s system called out: “Communicator Bartlett, report to the Captain.” It was repeated before I realized it meant me…then I jumped up, ran my shaver over my face, decided that my uniform would have to do, and hurried up to the Cabin.

  He looked up when I reported my presence. “Oh, yes. Bartlett, upon investigation I find that there is no reason to prefer charges. You are released from arrest and restored to duty. See Mr. Eastman.”

  He looked back at his desk and I got sore. I had been seesawing between a feeling of consecrated loyalty to the ship and to the Captain as the head thereof, and an equally strong desire to kick Urqhardt in the stomach. One kind word from him and I think I would have been his boy, come what may. As it was, I was sore.

  “Captain!”

  He looked up. “Yes?”

  “I think you owe me an apology.”

  “You do? I do not think so. I acted in the interest of the whole ship. However, I harbor no ill feelings, if that is of any interest to you.” He looked back at his work, dismissing me…as if my hard feelings, if any, were of no possible importance.

  So I got out and reported to Mr. Eastman. There didn’t seem to be anything else to do.

  Mei-Ling was in the comm office, sending code groups. She glanced up and I noticed that she looked tired. Mr. Eastman said, “Hello, Tom. I’m glad you’re here; we need you. Will you raise your telepartner, please?”

  One good thing about having a telepath run the special watch list is that other people don’t seem to realize that the other end of each pair—the Earthside partner—is not a disembodied spirit. They eat and sleep and work and raise families, and they can’t be on call whenever somebody decides to send a message. “Is it an emergency?” I asked, glancing at the Greenwich and then at the ship’s clock, Vicky wouldn’t check with me for another half hour; she might be at home and free, or she might not be.

  “Perhaps not ‘emergency’ but ‘urgent’ certainly.”

  So I called Vicky and she said she did not mind. (“Code groups, Freckle Face,”) I told her. (“So set your recorder on ‘play back.’”)

  “It’s quivering, Uncle Tom. Agitate at will.”

  For three hours we sent code groups, than which there is nothing more tedious. I assumed that it was probably Captain Urqhardt’s report of what had happened to us on Elysia, or more likely his second report after the LRF had jumped him for more details. There was no reason to code it so far as I was concerned; I had been there—so it must be to keep it from our telepartners until LRF decided to release it. This suited me as I would not have relished passing all that blood and slaughter, in clear language, to little Vicky.

  While we were working the Captain came in and sat down with Mr. Eastman; I could see that they were cooking up more code groups; the Captain was dictating and Eastman was working the encoding machine. Mei-Ling had long since gone. Finally Vicky said faintly, “Uncle Tom, how urgent are these anagrams? Mother called me to dinner half an hour ago.”

  (“Hang on and I’ll find out.”) I turned to the Captain and Mr. Eastman, not sure of which one to ask. But I caught Eastman’s eye and said, “Mr. Eastman, how rush is this stuff? We want to—”

  “Don’t interrupt us,” the Captain cut in. “Just keep on transmitting. The priority is not your concern.”

  “Captain, you don’t understand; I’m not speaking for myself. I was about to say—”

  “Carry on with your work.”

  I said to Vicky, (“Hold on a moment, hon.”) Then I sat back and said, “Aye aye, Captain. I’m perfectly willing to keep on spelling eye charts all night. But there is nobody at the other end.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean it is dinner time and way past for my partner. If you want special duty at the Earthside end, you’d better coordinate with the LRF comm office. Seems to me that somebody has the watch list all mixed up.”

  “I see.” As usual he showed no expression. I was beginning to think he was all robot, with wires instead of veins. “Very well, Mr. Eastman, get Mr. McNeil and have him relieve Mr. Bartlett.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “Excuse me, Captain…”

  “Yes, Bartlett?”

  “Possibly you don’t know that Unc’s partner lives in Greenwich zone minus-two. It’s the middle of the night there—and she is an old lady, past seventy-five. I thought maybe you would want to know.”

  “Mmm, is that right, Eastman?”

  “I believe so, sir.”

  “Cancel that last order. Bartlett, is your partner willing to go on again after an hour’s break for chow? Without clearing it with LRF?”

  “I’ll see, sir.” I spoke to Vicky; she hesitated. I said, (“What is it, Freckle Face? A date with George? Say the word and I’ll tell Captain Bligh he can’t have you.”)

  “Oh, it’s all right. I’ll throw the switch on George. I just wish they would give us something besides alphabet soup. Okay, one hour.”

  (“One hour, sugar plum. Run and eat your salad. Mind your waistline.”)

  “My waistline is just fine, thank you.”

>   “Okay, Captain.”

  “Very well. Please thank him for me.”

  He was so indifferent about it that I added a touch of my own. “My partner is a girl, Captain, not a ‘him.’ Her mother has placed a two-hour curfew on it. Otherwise it must be arranged with LRF.”

  “So. Very well.” He turned to Eastman. “Can’t we manage to coordinate these communication watches?”

  “I’m trying, Captain. But it is new to me…and we have only three watchstanders left.”

  “A watch in three should not be too difficult. Yet there always seems to be some reason why we can’t transmit. Comment?”

  “Well, sir, you saw the difficulty just now. It’s a matter of coordinating with Earth. Uh, I believe the special communicators usually arranged that themselves. Or one of them did.”

  “Which one? Mr. McNeil?”

  “I believe Bartlett usually handled it, sir.”

  “So. Bartlett?”

  “I did, sir.”

  “Very well, you have the job again. Arrange a continuous watch.” He started to get up.

  How do you tell the Captain he can’t have his bucket of paint? “Aye aye, sir. But just a minute, Captain—”

  “Yes?”

  “Do I understand you are authorizing me to arrange a continuous watch with LRF? Signed with your release number?”

  “Naturally.”

  “Well, what do I do if they won’t agree to such long hours for the old lady? Ask for still longer hours for the other two? In the case of my partner, you’ll run into parent trouble; she’s a young girl.”

  “So. I can’t see why the home office hired such people.”

  I didn’t say anything. If he didn’t know that you don’t hire telepaths the way you hire butchers I wasn’t going to explain.

  But he persisted. “Comment?”

  “I have no comment, sir. You can’t get more than three or four hours a day out of any of them, except in extreme emergency. Is this one? If it is, I can arrange it without bothering the home office.”

  He did not answer directly. Instead he said, “Arrange the best watch list you can. Consult with Mr. Eastman.” As he turned to leave I caught a look of unutterable weariness on his face and suddenly felt sorry for him. At least I didn’t want to swap jobs with him.