Starman Jones

  “No, I don’t mind.” Max’s elation at setting foot on his first strange planet was gone—Garson’s Hole was, he had to admit, a sorry sample of the Galaxy.

  “Then let’s get saddled up. I’ve got stuff to carry and I could use help.”

  It turned out to be four fairly large bundles which Sam had cached in public lockers. “What are they?” Max asked curiously.

  “Tea cozies, old son. Thousands of them. I’m going to sell ’em to Procyon pinheads as skull caps.” Somewhat affronted, Max shut up.

  Everything coming into the ship was supposed to be inspected, but the acting master-at-arms on watch at the lock did not insist on examining the items belonging to the Chief Master-at-Arms any more than he would have searched a ship’s officer. Max helped Sam carry the bundles to the stateroom which was the prerogative of the ship’s chief of police.

  11

  “THROUGH THE CARGO HATCH”

  From Garson’s Planet to Halcyon around Nu Pegasi is a double dogleg of three transitions, of 105, 487, and 19 light-years respectively to achieve a “straight line” distance of less than 250 light-years. But neither straight-line distance nor pseudo-distance of transition is important; the Asgard covered less than a light-year between gates. A distance “as the crow flies” is significant only to crows.

  The first transition was barely a month out from Garson’s Planet. On raising from there, Kelly placed Max on a watch in three, assigning him to Kelly’s own watch, which gave Max much more sleep, afforded him as much instruction (since the watch with Simes was worthless instruction-wise), and kept Max out of Simes’ way, to his enormous relief. Whether Kelly had planned that feature of it Max never knew—and did not dare ask.

  Max’s watch was still an instruction watch, he had no one to relieve nor to be relieved by. It became his habit not to leave the control room until Kelly did, unless told to do so. This resulted in him still being thrown into the company of Dr. Hendrix frequently, since the Astrogator relieved the Chief Computerman and Kelly would usually hang around and chat…during which time the Astrogator would sometimes inquire into Max’s progress.

  Occasionally the Captain would show up on Dr. Hendrix’s watch. Shortly after leaving Garson’s Planet, Dr. Hendrix took advantage of one such occasion to have Max demonstrate for Captain Blaine and First Officer Walther his odd talent. Max performed without a mistake although the Captain’s presence made him most self-conscious. The Captain watched closely with an expression of gentle surprise. Afterwards he said, “Thank you, lad. That was amazing. Let me see—what is your name?”

  “Jones, sir.”

  “Jones, yes.” The old man blinked thoughtfully. “It must be terrifying not to be able to forget—especially in the middle of the night. Keep a clear conscience, son.”

  Twelve hours later, Dr. Hendrix said to him, “Jones, don’t go away. I want to see you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The Astrogator spoke with Kelly for a few moments, then again spoke to Max. “The Captain was impressed by your vaudeville act, Jones. He is wondering whether you have any parallel mathematical ability.”

  “Well—no, sir. I’m not a lightning calculator, that is. I saw one in a sideshow once. He could do things I couldn’t.”

  Hendrix brushed it aside. “Not important. I believe you told me that your uncle taught you some mathematical theory?”

  “Just for astrogation, sir.”

  “What do you think I am talking about? Do you know how to compute a transition approach?”

  “Uh, I think so, sir.”

  “Frankly, I doubt it, no matter how much theoretical drill Brother Jones gave you. But go ahead.”

  “Now, sir?”

  “Try it. Pretend you’re the officer of the watch. Kelly will be your assistant. I’ll just be audience. Work the approach we are on. I realize that we aren’t close enough for it to matter—but you are to assume that the safety of the ship depends on it.”

  Max took a deep breath. “Aye aye, sir.” He started to get out fresh plates for the cameras.

  Hendrix said, “No!”

  “Sir?”

  “If you have the watch, where’s your crew? Noguchi, help him.”

  “Aye aye, sir.” Noguchi grinned and came over. While they were bending over the first camera, Noguchi whispered, “Don’t let him rattle you, pal. We’ll give him a good show. Kelly will help you over the humps.”

  But Kelly did not help; he acted as “numbers boy” and nothing else, with no hint to show whether Max was right, or wildly wrong. After Max had his sights and had taken his comparison data between plates and charts he did not put the problem through the computer himself, but let Noguchi man the machine, with Kelly translating. After a long time and much sweat, the lights blinked what he hoped was the answer.

  Dr. Hendrix said nothing but took the same plates to the tank and started to work the problem again, with the same crew. Very quickly the lights blinked on again; the Astrogator took the tables from Kelly and looked up the translation himself. “We differ only in the ninth decimal place. Not bad.”

  “I was wrong only in the ninth place, sir?”

  “I didn’t say that. Perhaps I was more in error.”

  Max started to grin, but Dr. Hendrix frowned. “Why didn’t you take doppler spectra to check?”

  Max felt a cold chill. “I guess I forgot, sir.”

  “I thought you were the man who never forgot?”

  Max thought intuitively—and correctly—that two kinds of memory were involved, but he did not have a psychologist’s jargon with which to explain. One sort was like forgetting one’s hat in a restaurant; that could happen to anyone. The other was being unable to recall what the mind had once known.

  Hendrix went on, “A control room man must not forget things necessary to the safety of the ship. However, as an exercise you solved it very well—except that you have no speed. Had we been pushing close to the speed of light, ready to cross, your ship would have been in Hades and crashed in the River Styx before you got the answer. But it was a good first try.”

  He turned away. Kelly jerked his head toward the hatch and Max went below.

  As he was falling asleep, Max turned over in his mind the notion that Dr. Hendrix might even be thinking of him for—Oh no! He put the thought aside. After all, Kelly could have done it; he had seen him do early approaches many times, and faster, too. Probably Noguchi could have done it.

  Certainly Noguchi could have done it, he corrected. After all, there weren’t any “secrets.”

  As they approached the first anomaly, the easy watch in three for officers and watch in four for the men changed to watch-and-watch, with an astrogator, an assistant, a chartsman, and a computerman on each watch. Max was at last assigned to a regular watch; the first watch was Dr. Hendrix assisted by Chartsman l/c Kovak, Max as chartsman of the watch and Noguchi on the computer; the other watch was Mr. Simes assisted by Chief Kelly, Smythe as chartsman and Lundy as computerman. Max noticed that Dr. Hendrix had assigned his “first team” to Simes and had taken the less experienced technicians himself. He wondered why, but was pleased not to be working for Simes.

  He learned at last why they called it the “Worry Hole.” Dr. Hendrix became a frozen-masked automaton, performing approach correction after correction and demanding quick, accurate, and silent service. During the last twenty hours of the approach, the Astrogator never left the control room, nor did anyone else other than for short periods when nominally off watch. Simes continued to take his regular watch, but Dr. Hendrix hung over him, checking everything that he did. Twice he required the junior astrogator to re-perform portions of his work and once elbowed him aside and did it himself. The first time it happened Max stared—then he noticed that the others were careful to be busy doing something else whenever Dr. Hendrix spoke privately to Simes.

  The tension grew as the critical instant approached. The approach to an anomalous intraspatial transition can hardly be compared to any other form of pil
oting ever performed by human beings, though it might be compared to the impossible trick of taking off in an atmosphere plane, flying a thousand miles blind—while performing dead reckoning so perfectly as to fly through a narrow tunnel at the far end, without ever seeing the tunnel. A Horst congruency cannot be seen, it can only be calculated by abstruse mathematics of effects of mass on space; a “gateway” is merely unmarked empty space in vaster emptiness. In approaching a planet an astrogator can see his destination, directly or by radar, and his speed is just a few miles per second. But in making a Horstian approach the ship’s speed approaches that of light—and reaches it, at the last instant. The nearest landmarks are many billions of miles away, the landmarks themselves are moving with stellar velocities and appear to be crowding together in the exaggerated parallax effects possible only when the observer is moving almost as fast as is his single clue to location and speed—the wave fronts of the electromagnetic spectrum.

  Like searching at midnight in a dark cellar for a black cat that isn’t there.

  Toward the last, Kelly himself was on the computer with Lundy at his ear. Smythe and Kovak were charting, passing new data to Dr. Hendrix, who was programming orally to the computer crew, setting up the problems in his head and feeding them to the electronic brain almost without delay. The power room was under his direct control now; he had a switch led out from the control console in each hand, one to nurse the ship along just below speed of light, the other to give the Asgard the final kick that would cause her to burst through.

  Max was pushed aside, no task remained in which there was not someone more experienced. On a different level, Simes too had been pushed aside; there was place for only one astrogator at the moment of truth.

  Of all those in the Worry Hole, only Captain Blaine seemed to be relaxed. He sat in the chair sacred to him, smoking quietly and watching Hendrix. The Astrogator’s face was gray with fatigue, greasy with unwashed sweat. His uniform was open at the collar and looked slept in, though he certainly had not slept. Max looked at him and wondered why he had ever longed to be an astrogator, ever been foolish enough to wish to bear this undivided and unendurable burden.

  But the doctor’s crisp voice showed no fatigue; the endless procession of numbers marched out, sharp as print, each spoken so that there could be no mistake, no need to repeat, “nine” always sounded as one syllable, “five” always stretched into two. Max listened and learned and wondered.

  He glanced up through the dome, out into space itself, space shown distorted by their unthinkable speed. The stars ahead, or above, had been moving closer together for the past several watches, the huge parallax effect displacing them to the eye so that they seemed to be retreating in the very sector of the sky they were approaching. They were seeing by infrared waves now, ploughing into oncoming wave trains so fast that doppler effect reduced heat wavelengths to visible light.

  The flood of figures stopped. Max looked down, then looked up hastily as he heard Dr. Hendrix say, “Stand by!”

  The stars seemed to crawl together, then instantly they were gone to be replaced without any lapse of time whatever by another, new and totally different starry universe.

  Hendrix straightened up and sighed, then looked up. “There’s the Albert Memorial,” he said quietly. “And there is the Hexagon. Well, Captain, it seems we made it again.” He turned to Simes. “Take it, Mister.” He let the Captain go first, then followed him down the hatch.

  The control gang went back to easy watches; the next transition was many days away. Max continued as chartsman-of-the-watch in place of Kovak, who temporarily replaced Dr. Hendrix while the Astrogator got a week of rest. There was truly not much to do during the early part of a leg and the doctor’s superb skill was not needed. But Max greatly enjoyed the new arrangements; it made him proud to sign the rough log “M. Jones, Chtsmn o/W.” He felt that he had arrived—even though Simes found fault with him and Kelly continued to drill him unmercifully in control room arts.

  He was surprised but not apprehensive when he was told, during an off-watch period, to report to the Astrogator. He put on a fresh uniform, slicked his hair down, and went above “C” deck. “Apprentice Chartsman Jones reporting, sir.”

  Kelly was there, having coffee with the Astrogator. Hendrix acknowledged Max’s salutation but left him standing. “Yes, Jones.” He turned to Kelly. “Suppose you break the news.”

  “If you say so, sir.” Kelly looked uncomfortable. “Well, Jones, it’s like this—you don’t really belong in my guild.”

  Max was so shocked that he could not answer. He was about to say that he had thought—he had understood—he hadn’t known—But he got nothing out; Kelly continued, “The fact is, you ought to buck for astrogator. The Doctor and I have been talking it over.”

  The buzzing in his head got worse. He became aware that Dr. Hendrix was repeating, “Well, Jones? Do you want to try it? Or don’t you?”

  Max managed to say, “Yes. Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Kelly and I have been watching you. He is of the opinion and so am I that you may, just possibly, have the latent ability to develop the skill and speed necessary. The question is: do you think so?”

  “Uh…that is—I hope so, sir!”

  “So do I,” Hendrix answered dryly. “We shall see. If you haven’t, you can revert to your own guild and no harm is done. The experience will make you a better chartsman.” The Astrogator turned to Kelly. “I’ll quiz Jones a bit, Kelly. Then we can make up our minds.”

  “Very good, sir.” Kelly stood up.

  When the Chief Computerman had gone Hendrix turned to his desk, hauled out a crewman’s personal record. To Max he said harshly, “Is this yours?”

  Max looked at it and gulped. “Yes, sir.”

  Dr. Hendrix held his eye. “Well? How good a picture is it of your career thus far? Any comment you want to make?”

  The pause might have been a dozen heart beats, though to Max it was an endless ordeal. Then a catharsis came bursting up out of him and he heard himself answering, “It’s not a good picture at all, sir. It’s phony from one end to the other.”

  Even as he said it, he wondered why. He felt that he had kicked to pieces his one chance to achieve his ambition. Yet, instead of feeling tragic, he felt oddly relaxed.

  Hendrix put the personal record back on his desk. “Good,” he answered. “Very good. If you had given any other answer, I would have run you out of my control room. Now, do you want to tell me about it? Sit down.”

  So Max sat down and told him. All that he held back was Sam’s name and such details as would have identified Sam. Naturally, Dr. Hendrix noticed the omission and asked him point blank.

  “I won’t tell you, sir.”

  Hendrix nodded. “Very well. Let me add that I shall make no attempt to identify this, ah, friend of yours—if by chance he is in this ship.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  There followed a considerable silence. At last Hendrix said, “Son, what led you to attempt this preposterous chicanery? Didn’t you realize you would be caught?”

  Max thought about it. “I guess I knew I would be, sir—eventually. But I wanted to space and there wasn’t any other way to do it.” When Hendrix did not answer Max went on. After the first relief of being able to tell the truth, he felt defensive, anxious to justify himself—and just a little bit irked that Dr. Hendrix did not see that he had simply done what he had to do—so it seemed to Max. “What would you have done, sir?”

  “Me? How can I answer that? What you’re really asking is: do I consider your actions morally wrong, as well as illegal?”

  “Uh, I suppose so, sir.”

  “Is it wrong to lie and fake and bribe to get what you want? It’s worse than wrong, it’s undignified!”

  Dr. Hendrix chewed his lip and continued. “Perhaps that opinion is the sin of the Pharisees…my own weakness. I don’t suppose that a young, penniless tramp, such as you described yourself to be, can afford the luxury of dignity. As for the re
st, human personality is a complex thing, nor am I a judge. Admiral Lord Nelson was a liar, a libertine, and outstandingly undisciplined. President Abraham Lincoln was a vulgarian and nervously unstable. The list is endless. No, Jones, I am not going to pass judgment; you must do that yourself. The authorities having jurisdiction will reckon your offenses; I am concerned only with whether or not you have the qualities I need.”

  Max’s emotions received another shock. He had already resigned himself to the idea that he had lost his chance. “Sir?”

  “Don’t misunderstand me.” Hendrix tapped the forged record. “I don’t like this. I don’t like it at all. But perhaps you can live down your mistake. In the meantime, I badly need another watch officer; if you measure up, I can use you. Part of it is personal, too; your uncle taught me, I shall try to teach you.”

  “Uh, I’ll try, sir. Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me. I’m not even feeling particularly friendly to you, at the moment. Don’t talk with anyone. I’ll ask the Captain to call a guild meeting and he and Mr. Simes and I will vote on you. We’ll make you a probationary apprentice which will permit the Captain to appoint you to the temporary rank of merchant cadet. The legalities are a bit different from those of the usual route as you no doubt know.”

  Max did not know, though he was aware that officers sometimes came up “through the cargo hatch”—but another point hit him. “Mr. Simes, sir?”

  “Certainly. By this procedure, all the astrogators you serve with must pass on you.”

  “Uh, does it have to unanimous, sir?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then—Well, sir, you might as well forget it. I mean, I appreciate your willingness to, uh, but…” His voice trailed off.

  Dr. Hendrix smiled mirthlessly. “Hadn’t you better let me worry about that?”

  “Oh. Sorry, sir.”