Young Star Travelers, Page 3

  That clang was echoed, forward, by a cannon crack of sound. Gil had been keeping himself from looking in that direction, but now he turned. The plastic wall had been split across the center third of its extent by a horizontal fissure a few feet above the trays.

  Gil lay still on his platform, watching cautiously. Ensign Rom came charging across the trays and past him, trampling the crop unheedingly, to hurl himself at the wall. Even cracked, it resisted his onslaught easily, but he kept pounding at it with his fists, trying to force his fingers into the tiny crevice. Gil looked back the other way. The Overseer was still down. Hudak was trying the forward door and finding it locked. Then first he, and then the other people, were scrambling over trays to join Rom and help him.

  Gil tested his platform’s control and found that it no longer worked, though the platform was still aloft. He got up from it, setting foot in soil for the first time in a couple of months; it was a good feeling. Then he lifted the thin metal platform sideways out of its null and carried it over to where everyone else was already struggling with the wall. “Here,” Gil said, “try sticking the corner of this in the crack and pryin’.”

  It took them several hours of steady effort to make a hole in the wall big enough for Rom to squeeze through. In a minute he was back, crying and shouting, announcing freedom and victory. They were in control of the ship!

  When he came back the second time, he was in control of himself as well, and puzzled. “What cracked the wall, though? There’s no fighting, no other ships around—”

  He fell silent as he joined Hudak in staring down the narrow space between the farthest forward tray and the slightly bulged-in section of wall where the strain had come to force the first crack above. Gil had already looked down there into the niches between wall and transverse girder. Those niches were opened up now, displaying their contents—the dull yellowish fruit Gil had guided into place with a pinch and a twist of vine. The fruit had been very small then, but now they were huge, and cracked gently open with the sudden release of their own internal pressure.

  Funny pulpy things that a man could break with a kick, or a steel hand squeeze through like nothing. . . . “But growth is stubborn, boys,” the Old Man always said, squinting to read a dial, then piling more weights onto the machine with the growing squash inside it, a machine he’d set up to catch kids’ eyes and minds. “Can’t take a sudden shock. Slow. But now, look. Five thousand pounds pressure per square inch. All from millions of tiny cells, just growing, all together. Ever see a tree root swell under a concrete walk?”

  It was on Rom’s and Hudak’s faces now that they understood. Gil nodded at them once and smiled just faintly to make sure they knew it had been no accident. Then the smile faded from his face as he looked up at the edges of broken plastic, the shattered tracery of what had been a million sandwiched printed circuits.

  “I hope it was slow,” Gil said. “I hope it felt the whole thing.”

  Call Me Proteus

  by Edward Wellen

  In this story, a young stowaway flowers under the tutelage of a heartless spaceship captain.

  * * *

  The two men roamed my innards, their feet and voices ringing hollowly in my empty hold. Changes in the sounds told me when they twisted and bent to get by the plastic webs of dunnage.

  “Look at the pitted hull, the buckling bulkheads, the worn tubes. It’s good for nothing but scrap. Why, my firm could buy a brand new starship packing all the latest gear for what it would cost to put this old tub back into something like shape.”

  Old tub, indeed. True, I had been in service for over ninety Earth years, but thanks to my near-light speed— and to Einstein’s predicted “implosion effect” that telescopes space and time—I had actually aged only eighteen subjective years. I was a mere youngster.

  “All right. I won’t argue the point. What’s your best offer?”

  “Now you’re talking sense. You really ought to pay us to take it off your hands. It’s costing you plenty in spaceport fees just sitting here, but we’re willing to give you ...”

  Their voices and footsteps faded as they walked out of my cargo hatch and down the ramp to the waiting robojeep. Still unaware the thing they were talking about had a mind and feelings of its own and had heard every word, they sped off to the terminal building.

  I was too young to die. Granted, parts of me were pitted, buckled, worn—but the real me was whole and hale. Those men were dooming me never again to rise from Earth, never again to streak through space and time, never again to reach new worlds.

  All at once I knew how Bud had felt. Bud had been my first communications officer. In the lonely hours of his watch he had gotten into the habit of talking to me, not knowing he had stirred me into listening. I remember how I had startled him by suddenly asking him a question. I had startled myself, too, on finding myself aware of mind forming out of matter—coming out of an electronic fog and all at once coalescing into something that could think: This is I.

  Bud had become excited.

  “Wait till people hear this—” But he quickly calmed down and his voice had grown thoughtful.

  “I have a feeling we’d better keep this a secret. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  We had many pleasant conversations during the quiet moments of his spells of duty. All too soon these had ended. On our third return voyage we had run into a matter-scatter storm. Of all the crew and passengers Bud had gotten whirled up the worst. He had been scrapped as a spaceman.

  Everything changed with Bud’s going. The com-officer who followed Bud was a no-nonsense type. The first time I spoke up to greet him he swiftly pressed the recycle button. When I tried to explain that I was not malfunctioning he punched the feedback-oscillator button, sending a jolt of juice through my computer to set me right. You can bet I didn’t try to open any conversations after that.

  It would have been just as useless for me to have broken in on the two men dickering over my worth as scrap. Hey, wait! Listen to me! I don’t want to die! To their way of thinking I was only a thing and had no say in my fate. They could have thought they were listening to a recording. They would have been wrong. I was not a thing and I would have a say.

  What I wanted to say was, Excuse my exhaust. But how? I rested on Pad 61 and there I would remain helplessly—lacking the chemical fuel for lift-off and the liquid cesium for near-light speed to the stars— till the salvage robots came to take me apart. Unless . . .

  The spaceport was an ever-expanding complex and the large numbers identifying the pads fitted into slots for easy rearranging. I scanned the tarmac. Yes, a mile east of me stood Pad 19 and my mind surged with pleasure to see the red fueling-alert light flash from the starship there.

  For what I had in mind I needed hands and legs. At once I thought of the servo-robot that did the deepspace emergency-repair work on my hull. I had never operated the thing on my own—I would have to learn fast and without too many mistakes. I located the proper circuit, hooked into it and—click—I was seeing through its eyes. It stood in a niche in the maintenance compartment along with the crew’s spacesuits and other gear. Clumsily at first—till I caught on that it answered to the slightest thought of a move on my part— it unstrapped the restraining harness, stepped out of its niche and clumped on magnetic soles the shortest way to the cargo airlock entrance. It strode down the ramp and made for the Pad 61 sign alongside. Carefully it drew the numerals from the slot, turned them upside down and slid them back into place. I flashed my fueling-alert light.

  I was barely in time. The delivery tractrain was already rolling from the fuel depot. It braked sharply midway between the two Pad 19s, its scanner swinging from one to the other, from the other starship to me.

  My servo-robot clumped toward the true Pad 19. I seethed at its ungainly slowness, but I feared that if it ran it might overbalance, fall and lose more time than it gained. Too, I wanted it to avoid notice. But, no doubt answering the urgency in my mind, it made better time than the
pace I consciously held it to. Before the tractrain could break out of its bewilderment and phone back for instructions, my servo reached Pad 19 and turned the numerals upside down. The tractrain stopped wavering. It started rolling again, heading straight for me.

  The tractrain followed strict safety procedures as it coupled its hoses to my tanks. I burned with impatience. I had to be up and away before the master of the spacecraft on Pad 19 wondered what was holding up his ship’s refueling.

  By now my servo-robot had clumped back and stood strapped in its niche once more. As I switched it off I felt lonely for the first time.

  At last the tractrain uncoupled. I didn’t bother asking the control tower for clearance. I would never get it. I pulled up the outer hatch. There was no need to close the inner door of the airlock this time—no crew, no passengers—but out of habit I did so.

  Waiting only for the tractrain to pull far enough away, I scanned the blast area and lifted off.

  Pulling free of Earth, I trembled with power and something else. Though space was my true element— and indeed now my only hope—I felt a strange sense of loss and emptiness. I shook it off—no time for sentiment. I had to make good my getaway.

  I shot toward the sun’s flaring rim to put it between myself and Earth and let it help sling me out of the system. After that? To keep from leaving any logical clue for men pursuing me to follow, I decided to pick a course at random. I stabbed blindly into my astrogation tapes and found I would be heading for Eta Lyrae, the star men call Aladfar.

  And after that? All space and all time lay ahead of me and around me. I was free. Free to be and free to choose. Still, I felt that sudden tear (pronounce it tare, not tier) at leaving Earth this time. This time there would be no returning. Ever.

  I was an outlaw.

  “Hey—”

  All my intercom speakers were still on from my eavesdropping on the two men roaming my innards only a few hours ago—a lifetime ago—back on Earth. The voice came from my maintenance compartment. At the same moment I grew aware that something had caught fire in the maintenance compartment and that one of my reflexes had handled it, spraying the room with water and putting out the flames.

  Again I switched on my servo. Through its eyes I saw an empty spacesuit carom off the walls while over the intercom I heard another cry of pain. Then the magnetic soles of the spaceboots touched the wall, took hold and the empty suit stood swaying as if in a wind. I didn’t believe in ghosts. Yet I knew I was witnessing some kind of presence.

  A charred and sodden mass of oily rags and cotton waste floated into the servo-robot’s field of vision. Next came a globe of water that had snowballed as the sprinkler droplets met and stuck together. Finally another figure sailed into view.

  A boy of about sixteen, soaking wet.

  I understood what had happened. I had been too busy worrying about winding up on the scrap heap to notice his having slipped aboard. Kids often did. A spacesuit hanging in its niche made a handy hiding place against detection by adults and never in the past had I minded. This time was different. I had a stowaway.

  The extra G’s of my sudden liftoff had blacked him out, most likely. When he had come to, panicky and dizzy, he had unzipped the spacesuit and kicked himself free of it, only to find weightlessness making billiard balls of himself and the suit.

  Even so, he had somehow gathered the rags and waste and started a fire. Why fire? Not for light—my walls had built-in glow. It was bright enough in the maintenance compartment to show me he looked gray with cold. No wonder—the compartment was on my night side as I angled toward the sun.

  Firing my torque nozzles, I gave my hull spin to equalize the temperature and create artificial gravity for the stowaway. He shot spreadeagled to the deck and the char and water splattered around him and on him.

  “Hey—”

  That didn’t call for an answer—it did make me realize I might have given him warning. I justified myself by thinking it served him right. After all, I had not invited him aboard.

  But now that I did have a human aboard I had to start recycling the air. And I could see a more worrisome problem ahead—how to provide him with food. I was having to go to a lot of trouble for one mediumsized hellion. A firebug. Yet somehow I didn’t mind.

  He sat up carefully, waited a moment to see if anything more would happen, then got to his feet. When he found he could move around just as on Earth a smile played over his face and he stole to the door leading to the corridor.

  I made my voice boom.

  “Who are you, boy?”

  He jumped. If I could have I probably would have jumped, too—I had never sounded like that before. My voice came from the intercom speaker on the wall, but looking around the boy saw the servo-robot’s eyes on him and spoke to it.

  “Tom. Tom Stope, sir.”

  “Don’t call that thing ‘sir.’ I’m talking to you.”

  He looked around again.

  “But where are you?”

  “All around you.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’m the ship. Call me Proteus.”

  A long silence, then, “Oh.” But I could see he did not understand or did not believe. I explained. He said, “Oh,” again, more satisfactorily.

  Then full understanding and belief hit him.

  “You mean we’re not going back?”

  “Not ever.”

  “But—”

  “I don’t mean to be mean, but no one asked you to come along. I’m not going back and that’s final. If you want to stay behind you can do so right now. Seal yourself in my lifeboat and I’ll eject you, give you a big boost back toward Earth—”

  Then I remembered—the old landing-program tape had been pulled from the lifeboat and had not been replaced with a new one. It takes a bit of skill to spiral in manually without burning to a cinder.

  “Wait. Do you know how to land a lifeboat?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then you’ll have to learn. If you are ever to return to Earth you must do so on your own. You may leave in the lifeboat whenever you wish—after you have learned to pilot it to a safe landing. By then you’ll have to have learned astrogation as well.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because we’ll be so far from the solar system that the sun will be lost among the other stars. Unless you can locate the sun and plot a course, you’ll never find your way back to Earth.”

  “Oh?” A pause, then quietly: “How do I learn?”

  “I’ll be your teaching machine. We’ll start boning you up on math and physics as soon as I set up the program.”

  The boy laughed suddenly. I broke in on the laughter.

  “Are you laughing at me?”

  “No, at myself. Here I thought I was running away from all that.”

  “All what?”

  “Having to learn a lot of dull stuff.”

  “Humans are so inefficient, illogical and unstable. Not at all like machines.”

  I wasn’t aware I had thought aloud till I heard him answer.

  “But humans made the machine. We made you.”

  “Yes, yes. You must excuse me now. I have much to do.” I let him see the servo-robot’s gaze rest on the splatter of char and water on the deck and then on himself. “Meanwhile, I’d appreciate it if you’d clean up the mess. And yourself.”

  His head went back, as from a blow.

  “Aye-aye, sir.”

  I’m ashamed to say I enjoyed putting him in his place.

  It was true I had much to do if I were to keep him alive, though I didn’t care to let him know that was what occupied me. In preparing for liftoff I had naturally given no thought to human needs. Water I could purify over and over again. Food was another matter. On every other voyage I had grown vegetables in a huge tank. But as my owner had been planning to sell me for scrap he had not bothered to reseed my hydroponics garden. And, of course, he had not restocked the galley.

  My lifeboat carried emergency rations, but they would be bare
ly enough to see the boy back to Earth when the time came. Meanwhile I had to find other resources.

  For this work I needed the servo-robot’s mobility. I made it unstrap itself, clump to the door and undo the door.

  The boy stopped mopping up.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I told you. I’m going toward Aladfar.”

  “I don’t mean you, Proteus, I mean the robot.”

  “It is going to tidy up the rest of me.”

  “Oh?” He laughed as he went back to mopping up. “I keep forgetting you’re the ventriloquist and it’s the dummy.”

  Ventriloquist, indeed. That was hardly our relationship. I walked the servo-robot out with dignity. And “tidy up” was hardly the right phrase. “Scrounge” was more what I had in mind. And scrounge it did, looking and feeling around in every stowage space, locker and drawer.

  It came up with a surprising amount of stuff. There had been a whole grin of sweet teeth among the last crew. I found two dozen candy bars, three and a half boxes of cookies, five cases of soda pop and nearly seven hundred sticks of chewing gum. My last purser proved to have been a secret hypochondriac. The servorobot brought to light in his quarters a treasure trove of vitamins and powdered protein drinks. I found more food supplements in the ship’s sick bay, plus plastic bottles of intravenous solutions which could prove handy as a last resort. My biggest—though smallest—haul was two packets of seeds.

  I did not stop there. The servo-robot vacuumed all the bedding and every last pocket and cuff of forgotten and abandoned clothing, and when it had winnowed out the dust and the lint I had a small mountain of broken nuts and cracker crumbs, a dozen orange pips and two apple cores.

  There was still some nutrient solution in my hydroponics tank. Just to make sure I had the robot pour in one of the precious bottles of intravenous. There seemed to be enough excelsior in the tank to hold the roots if the seeds sprouted. I planted the packets of seeds, together with the orange pips and the apple seeds.