L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 35 Page 16

  Ah God, poor Fury, Steve Gailbraith had thought. How rusty and dented, how shabby and forlorn with your guns all worn and your tubes decayed and your very glowflags minus half their lights. Outward bound upon a freighter’s errand, packed with convicts and hate. The ghost of a ship, the ghost of an emperor and the ghost of a man.

  Steve pressed his face more deeply into his bloodstained sleeve. If he could only laugh perhaps this ache of an ideal outraged and betrayed might soften. Why was he not born hard?

  “You,” said a calculating voice, “are Steve Gailbraith.”

  He did not look up for a little while even though it was not an unpleasant voice, a woman’s. And then when he felt she would not go away, he looked at her. He was not startled, for he had nothing left to be startled about. Rather, he felt somehow enlivened, if only very vaguely. There was a vital flash in her gray eyes which spoke of strength and purpose and passion, all belied by the frailty of a lovely woman and the cold contempt of her face. He knew that he had seen her somewhere, but he was too weary to wonder. Still, he felt that he had met her in a dream or a nightmare and that the memory had been before him for some time.

  “I saw you in the court—or that comedy that passes for one.” She was very impersonal about it. “They sentenced me after they sentenced you.”

  He did not much care, but he remembered something about it now. He was a little annoyed, for he wanted no part of anyone, only the death of his own company. The vibrant force in her wearied him.

  “My name is Vicky Stalton,” she continued, scarcely looking at him. “You have not heard of me, for I was a member of the benighted Enlightened People’s Party and I did not sign my pamphlets. I am not a member of your fancy Anarchist Alliance. I was not born good enough for that—or to associate with you, most likely. I come from the gutter and I’ve been thrown back. I was cursed with too many wits and too little nobility—legitimately—in my family. So sit there and ignore me if you will for I’m sure I really don’t care whether you die or not.”

  Steve looked at the bandage which wound a red-black coil around her right hand; the red torch insignia, which still held by a thread to her tunic cuff, was almost as smudged. She had evidently begged enough water to wash her face, for it was quite clean. A gleaming curve of blond hair, smoothly brushed, flowed out from under the peaked fatigue cap which she wore aslant over one eye. Yes, he thought dully, he had heard of her before, had seen her on a poster once; the poster had symbolized the first rush of revolutionaries upon Washington. The lower half of it had been scorched by a raygun, leaving a meaningless collection of syllables and the picture of this girl reaching ecstatically toward a flaming torch. Yes, he remembered. Funny that he should. He wished she would go away.

  Illustration by Brian C. Hailes

  “Now that you have so courteously acknowledged my self-introduction,” she said, “I shall answer your question as to why I came and spoke to you.”

  He moved restively under the sting in her voice. He knew suddenly that she could speak so softly that a man could drown … Why didn’t she go away?

  “You and I are the outcasts,” she said.

  He looked up at her face, scowling a little in lieu of question.

  “We are all outcasts in a way, of course,” she continued. “But you and I are very choice. You are too good for them. I am too bad. You don’t care whether you die or not, and I am sure I don’t care if you do, but I am a foolish sort of person. I want to live.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Well!” Vicky Stalton mocked. “It speaks and everything. The blammon on Venus seeks to protect itself by thrusting its head in the mud and leaving its red and green feathers waving airily in the breeze. And so, blammon, it is I that bring you the news that Dave Blacker is about to blast the Sons of Science into space dust, take command of the Fury, and hi-ho for the freedom of Outer Space. For Dave Blacker has just finished a brilliant piece of calculation. We are being sent to Sereon to eat each other up.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, unlike you, my gaudy officer, there are some of us who dislike the idea of dying, and myself in particular, find it abhorrent. Dave Blacker got it from a crew member that the scientists were to be landed with the weapons and the food and, at some distance, Dave Blacker and his hefties are to be set down, empty-handed. No one knows anything about Sereon except that it has atmosphere and a gravity of seven-eighths. But it is certain that Dave Blacker and his hefties will have to overcome the scientists or freeze and starve. And because there will be very little food, the scientists will resist with everything they have. Seventeen scientists and three hundred hefties just about add up to a final zero. It is a very humorous plan that Guis evolved and Fagar upheld. And so Dave Blacker, not being without resource, does not intend to land on Sereon. He has a few friends in the crew and so he has a few blasticks and he has called a conference with the Sons of Science under a treacherous truce at four bells in the wardroom. And Jean Mauchard has accepted. Exit, my bravo, Jean Mauchard and the Sons of Science. Exit the Fury from the EPG’s fleet. Or am I boring you?”

  “Let them fight,” said Steve with a tired sigh. “It’s all one to me.”

  “Hah! It’s all one to him. And here a beautiful and, I hope, desirable damsel comes seeking his strong arm and he says it’s all one to him! Why, you yellow coward, not only are you afraid to live, but you’re afraid of Dave Blacker! You! What an officer! No wonder they are transporting you!”

  Steve shrugged.

  “You genius!” she said. “Can’t you see that Dave Blacker hates both of us? Because you are of the military caste and because I escaped from his element and was a factor in the EPP? As soon as he has either killed or intimidated the ship’s officers, he’ll finish up the job by killing us. Do you think he’d be such a fool as to leave a military expert and a propagandist director, both in opposition to him, alive? I don’t care if he shoots you, but by those stars, soldier, I’m going to live!”

  Steve looked at her for a little while. The flame of her glance was too violently opposed to his own apathy to do anything but weary him further. Why should he care about dying? Everything he had lived for was slain, and he felt tardy in not following after. It was good news, in truth, that Dave Blacker should aid him in escape with a well-placed shot.

  “I might as well be talking to that scoregun!” she said. “And I thought I knew something about psychology!” She waved her hand as though throwing him away, but it was her right hand and a sudden spasm of agony made her clutch it to her and wince. Her voice was not powerful when she spoke again, though she tried to hide the pain. “No, I’m not so good. I could tell muckers and dimers that white was black and they believed me. But then I’ve never had much chance to practice on the nobility!” And she faced away and vanished down a hatch which led to the wardroom.

  Steve stayed where he was. What was the use? Even if Blacker killed Mauchard and enslaved the ship, Steve would not mention that his own value, having been trained on the Fury, could not be denied. To hell with Blacker and the Fury and that Vicky Stalton. Let them explode in space and whirl with the comets for eternity. It was all one to him.

  A few minutes later, just before four bells were struck, three hefties came lounging along the promenade, their brute faces sly. Everyone had the run of the ship because of the power of the guard weapons and the gifted reasoning of Dave Blacker and so these did not even bother to explain to the marine on guard why they hauled Steve Gailbraith to his feet.

  Steve looked at them with bored eyes, resenting a little that they would put their hands upon him.

  “The boss wants to see you, soldier,” said one to Steve, “and when the boss wants to see people, people generally are seen. Come along.”

  They shoved him ahead of them down the hatchway and Steve only resisted enough to release himself, after which he walked quietly, not caring. Anything was better than this ache
within him. And the newer blasticks were highly efficacious.

  The wardroom was not dissimilar to any other battleship’s except that, on the Fury, it was larger and better appointed as befitted a flag vessel. It had not changed much down the years, though the portrait of the emperor had been crudely cut from its frame and the noble name of the silver service’s donor had been scraped from the dishes.

  It was amidships and occupied the entire beam save for passage room between it and the outer skin. The furniture was, of course, reversible, ceiling and floor being identical so that, on acceleration the after-bulkhead was the floor which, on deceleration became the ceiling. And as they were now accelerating, the furniture was fixed to the wide expanse of the after-bulkhead. It looked poignantly familiar to Steve, for how many times had he leaned back from his dinner to trace the intricate networks of wires and pipes and cables which appeared to have settled around the place like a snare. It was just a battleship wardroom, designed for efficiency and utility and as unlike a passenger ship’s salon as a powerhouse office was unlike a skyhouse.

  It had the effect of deepening Steve’s melancholy. He had begun his battle fleet career here before his transfer to the Air Force. How fitting to finish it in the same place. A ghost of a youngster in white gloves stood reporting to the ghost of a captain at the end of the long table.

  But Dave Blacker was sitting at that board now. And across from him Jean Mauchard had just seated himself. Some of the lesser leaders of the hefties were ranged on Dave’s side of the board and the Sons of Science were taking their places. Dave Blacker and Jean Mauchard were as intent upon one another as a pair of Kilkenny Cats. But other scientists and hefties glanced up when Steve was brought in and their faces registered an almost disinterested dislike. Vicky Stalton, her fatigue cap on the back of her head, was leaning against a transom smoking a cigarette and regarding one and all with aloof disdain. She gave Steve one look and then her face grew even more chill as she turned away.

  “Mauchard,” said Blacker without preamble. “You know me. I don’t monkey around. I brought you down here to arrange a truce. We don’t like you and we don’t trust you and you don’t like us and you don’t trust us and, me being Dave Blacker, things happen my way.”

  “A truce?” said Mauchard with a short, sharp laugh. “With thieves and fools? What of our truce once before, that lost us our power in its breaking? I want no truce with you. If that is why—”

  “No,” said Dave Blacker with a grin like a wolf’s, “that isn’t why we brought you down here. We brought you down here to kill you, Mauchard.”

  The leader of the Sons of Science started to leap up from the board but, in that instant, four blasticks appeared in capable hands. Their hefty holders were completely without expression, only waiting Blacker’s command. The scientists were pale.

  “So it is to be murder,” said Mauchard. “Cold-blooded, calculated.” His sensitive face was twisted with scorn. “Murder and mutiny. You gave your word, Dave Blacker, to the captain of this ship that you would not violate parole if he spared us the discomfort of irons and cells. You brought us here today under a white flag. But then, what else can one expect of a dock rat?”

  “Better a dock rat,” said Dave Blacker, unbothered, “than the illegitimate son of a careless nobleman.”

  Jean Mauchard winced and went pale. The retreating blood left his lips corpse-blue. But there was fire and hatred in his intelligent eyes which even Blacker could not overlook.

  “You are even lower than I had thought,” said Mauchard. “It will be a relief—this death you are delivering. A relief from having to scratch in the crawling company of such vermin. Long ago, when first my friends and I took part in the revolt, I should have known how low we would have to sink to associate with you.”

  “So you still think you did us a favor,” said Blacker. “Why you bigoted bug killer, when you joined our ranks you came with the idea that you was going to run things as soon as the revolt was done. You and your favors! You had it all figured out that we was going to step out and let you figure a slick government run on slide rules and test tubes and to hell with the human beings. You got psychologists and God knows how many more kinds of -ologists, but you ain’t got one single drop of honest human blood in the lot of you. What do you care about pain and sufferin’ so long as you prove that you can make electrons and brains stand to attention and say ‘Yes, sir!’”

  “Our knowledge brought about the revolt!” snapped Mauchard.

  “And you’d let it wreck the government,” said Blacker. “With all your fancy titles and formulas, you ain’t got the slightest idea about human beings. You and your gang was pitched out for proposin’ to make slaves of every man back on Earth and we was fightin’ to keep from bein’ slaves any more. Your science ain’t got any more heart than the Eighty Great Names!”

  “Better science, heart or no heart,” said Mauchard, “than to genuflect to sewer sweepings and to be executed for being too strong. You and your ilk twisted and warped all the principles for which we fought. Well! Why talk to a lump of lard? Once on Sereon we’d die at your hands as you would die at ours. It is quicker here and now, for I’m content you’ll never make this mutiny stick. So shoot, you and your offal, and be damned to you!”

  “The mutiny won’t fail,” said Blacker with a grin, “but you get the idea about yourselves. It’s too bad, Mauchard—”

  Steve, at the beginning, had not even been mildly interested. He would be next after the Sons of Science. Vicky Stalton, calmly finishing her cigarette, would probably go immediately after himself. Two outcasts. Outcasts from the soulless gentlemen of science. Outcasts from the hulks who had been too violent and brutal even for their own kind. But Steve, at first, cared little. His mind wandered away from the words which crackled between Mauchard and Blacker.

  How different it had been in the yesterdays! How different were these men, uncouth and brawling, than others who had been seated at this table.

  For the ghost of a stiffly straight child was reporting to the ghost of a captain at that table’s head. And the child’s braid was brave and his thumbs were precisely lined along his rayrods. How courteous and how formal had this place always been!

  When the defeated Martian, Ralgar, wounded and weak, had been yanked from his determination to go down with his shattered Grrawsly, he had been brought here. And the Fury’s singed captain had stood up at the board’s end to take Ralgar’s hand and congratulate him upon a valiant fight. For the code demanded rigid courtesy even to a vanquished foe whose guns had crammed the Fury’s sick bay with wounded and had scarred the battleship’s armor until it was a matter of speculation whether it could ever return to its base.

  And when Farman had died hurling his vessel against uncountable Venusian odds, choosing suicide rather than retreat, the Fury’s officers had stood in silence a respectful time before they had drunk to the death of a brave man.

  The service! Officers and gentlemen. Proud ships with proud traditions.

  Dead, most of them. Ships and traditions and officers alike. Dead because of a slaughterhouse bully, Fagar, who now ruled supreme in the System. Dead because they had either aided or opposed the effort of a people to be free. Dead. For what? So that Fagar could swagger and swear and trample down all the fineness and intelligence that were left! Dead because they had fought for their ideals and because those very ideals had been besmirched by lies and treachery. And here was the Fury battered and forlorn, rocketing through space on as foul an errand as the warped minds of the EPP could conceive. And there was Blacker, under sentence, but blood brother to the oafs who had succeeded in putting all ideals to the torch. That was what that torch of freedom had turned out to be—a conflagration of everything that was decent in man.

  Murder. Here in the wardroom of the Fury. Murder and then mutiny and the Fury’s helm would be befouled by the hands of this criminal crew. And the Fury’s guns would be tu
rned to the account of piracy.

  The ghost of a child, brave in blue and scarlet, face paled with disgust and rage, leaned back against the bulkhead.

  “It’s too bad,” Blacker was saying. “But we don’t like you, Mauchard.” He turned to his raymen.

  But suddenly all were crushed into their chairs and their faces went pasty as the blood rushed from their heads. Their arms were too heavy to lift and those who had been leaning forward were shoved face-down upon the board. Those who had been standing sank stubbornly to the floor and lay there, gasping. Steve too went down, weighing nearly half a ton. Vicky Stalton had dropped beside her chair.

  Three marines with anti-acceleration belts forced the door mechanism and came floating in, ready to take battle stations. The lieutenant that followed them looked in wonder at the blasticks which were pressed in plain sight upon the table and could not be moved by their wielders. The lieutenant walked down the top of the table and, with his hook, scooped up the weapon.

  Gongs were going through the whole battleship and several more officers and men en route fore or aft, stopped and heard the lieutenant’s comment and then went hurrying on.

  Shortly the terrible pressure ceased and the stricken ones began to breathe once more, flopping weakly and dizzily as they came erect.

  A bull-voiced exec, who in this moment forgot that as an officer he ought to consult the soldiers’ and sailors’ council before deciding anything, came thundering into the wardroom and vented his wrath.

  “What the double-banked haggus are you badgers doing?” he roared. “Blasticks! And on my ship!” He glared all around and was about to resume when a messenger came with a matter of greater concern.

  “Aft lookout says he did not signal, sir. He swears it.”