Let 'Em Breathe Space!

by Lester Del Rey

  Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

  Transcriber's Note:

  This etext was produced from Space Science Fiction July 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

  LET'EM BREATHE SPACE!

  BY LESTER DEL REY

  ILLUSTRATED BY EBERLE

  Eighteen men and two women in the closed world of a space ship for five months can only spell tension and trouble--but in this case, the atmosphere was _literally_ poisoned.

 

  * * * * *

  Five months out from Earth, we were half-way to Saturn andthree-quarters of the way to murder. At least, I was. I was sick ofthe feuding, the worries and the pettiness of the other nineteenaboard. My stomach heaved at the bad food, the eternal smell ofpeople, and the constant sound of nagging and complaints. For ten leadpennies, I'd have gotten out into space and tried walking back toEarth. Sometimes I thought about doing it without the pennies.

  But I knew I wasn't that tough, in spite of what I looked. I'd beenbuilt to play fullback, and my questionable brunet beauty had beenroughed up by the explosion years before as thoroughly as dockfighting on all the planets could have done. But sometimes I figuredall that meant was that there was more of me to hurt, and that I'd hadmore experience screaming when the anodyne ran out.

  Anyhow, whole-wheat pancakes made with sourdough for the ninth"morning" running was too damned much! I felt my stomach heave overagain, took one whiff of the imitation maple syrup, and shoved themess back fast while I got up faster.

  * * * * *

  It was a mistake. Phil Riggs, our scrawny, half-pint meteorologist,grinned nastily and reached for the plate. "'Smatter, Paul? Don't youlike your breakfast? It's good for you--whole wheat contains bran. Thestaff of life. Man, after that diet of bleached paste...."

  * * * * *

  There's one guy like that in every bunch. The cook was mad at us forgriping about his coffee, so our group of scientists on this cockeyedSaturn Expedition were getting whole wheat flour as punishment, whileCaptain Muller probably sat in his cabin chuckling about it. In ouragreement, there was a clause that we could go over Muller's head onsuch things with a unanimous petition--but Riggs had spiked that. Theidiot liked bran in his flour, even for pancakes!

  Or else he was putting on a good act for the fun of watching the restof us suffer.

  "You can take your damned whole wheat and stuff it--" I started. ThenI shrugged and dropped it. There were enough feuds going on aboard thecranky old _Wahoo_! "Seen Jenny this morning, Phil?"

  He studied me insolently. "She told Doc Napier she had some stuffgrowing in hydroponics she wanted to look at. You're wasting your timeon that babe, boy!"

  "Thanks for nothing," I muttered at him, and got out before I reallydecided on murder. Jenny Sanderson was our expedition biologist. Anatural golden blonde, just chin-high on me, and cute enough to earnher way through a Ph. D. doing modelling. She had a laugh that wouldmelt a brass statue and which she used too much on Doc Napier, on ourchief, and even on grumpy old Captain Muller--but sometimes she usedit on me, when she wanted something. And I never did have much use fora girl who was the strong independent type where there was a man to dothe dirty work, so that was okay.

  I suppose it was natural, with only two women among eighteen men formonth after month, but right then I probably liked Doc Napier lessthan the captain, even. I pulled myself away from the corridor tohydroponics, started for observation, and then went on into thecubbyhole they gave me for a cabin. On the _Wahoo_, all a man could dowas sleep or sit around and think about murder.

  Well, I had nobody to blame but myself. I'd asked for the job when Ifirst heard Dr. Pietro had collected funds and priorities for a tripto study Saturn's rings at close hand. And because I'd done sometechnical work for him on the Moon, he figured he might as well takeme as any other good all-around mechanic and technician. He hadn'tasked me, though--that had been my own stupid idea.

  Paul Tremaine, self-cure expert! I'd picked up a nice phobia againstspace when the super-liner _Lauri Ellu_ cracked up with four hundredpassengers on my first watch as second engineer. I'd gotten free andinto a suit, but after they rescued me, it had taken two years on theMoon before I could get up nerve for the shuttle back to Earth. Andafter eight years home, I should have let well enough alone. If I'dknown anything about Pietro's expedition, I'd have wrapped myself inmy phobia and loved it.

  But I didn't know then that he'd done well with priorities and onlyfair with funds. The best he could afford was the rental of the oldEarth-Mars-Venus triangle freighter. Naturally, when the _Wahoo's_crew heard they were slated for what would be at least three years offEarth without fancy bonus rates, they quit. Since nobody else wouldsign on, Pietro had used his priorities to get an injunction thatforced them back aboard. He'd stuffed extra oxygen, water, food andfertilizer on top of her regular supplies, then, filled her holds withsome top level fuel he'd gotten from a government assist, and setout. And by the time I found out about it, my own contract wasiron-bound, and I was stuck.

  As an astrophysicist, Pietro was probably tops. As a man to run theLunar Observatory, he was a fine executive. But as a man to head up anexpedition into deep space, somebody should have given him back histeething ring.

  Not that the _Wahoo_ couldn't make the trip with the new fuel; she'dbeen one of the early survey ships before they turned her into afreighter. But she was meant for a crew of maybe six, on trips of acouple of months. There were no game rooms, no lounges, no bar orlibrary--nothing but what had to be. The only thing left for most ofus aboard was to develop our hatreds of the petty faults of theothers. Even with a homogeneous and willing crew, it was a perfectset-up for cabin fever, and we were as heterogeneous as they came.

  Naturally the crew hated the science boys after being impressed intoduty, and also took it out on the officers. The officers felt the sameabout both other groups. And the scientists hated the officers andcrew for all the inconveniences of the old _Wahoo_. Me? I was inno-man's land--technically in the science group, but without a purescience degree; I had an officer's feelings left over from graduatingas an engineer on the ships; and I looked like a crewman.

  It cured my phobia, all right. After the first month out, I was toodisgusted to go into a fear funk. But I found out it didn't help a bitto like space again and know I'd stay washed up as a spaceman.

  * * * * *

  We'd been jinxed from the start. Two months out, the whole crew ofscientists came down with something Doc Napier finally diagnosed asfood poisoning; maybe he was right, since our group ate in our ownmess hall, and the crew and officers who didn't eat with us didn't getit. Our astronomer, Bill Sanderson, almost died. I'd been lucky, butthen I never did react to things much. There were a lot of other smalltroubles, but the next major trick had been fumes from the nucleargenerators getting up into our quarters--it was always our group thathad the trouble. If Eve Nolan hadn't been puttering with some of hertrick films at the time--she and Walt Harris had the so-called nightshift--and seen them blacken, we'd have been dead before theydiscovered it. And it took us two weeks of bunking with the sullencrew and decontamination before we could pick up life again. EngineerWilcox had been decent about helping with it, blaming himself. But ithad been a mess.

  Naturally, there were dark hints that someone was trying to get us;but I couldn't see any crewman wiping us out just to return to Earth,wher
e our contract, with its completion clause, would mean he wouldn'thave a dime coming to him. Anyhow, the way things were going, we'd allgo berserk before we reached Saturn.

  The lunch gong sounded, but I let it ring. Bullard would be serving uswhole wheat biscuits and soup made out of beans he'd let soak untilthey turned sour. I couldn't take any more of that junk, the way Ifelt then. I heard some of the men going down the corridor, followedby a confused rumble of voices. Then somebody let out a yell. "Hey,_rooob_!"

  That meant something. The old yell spacemen had picked up from carneypeople to rally their kind around against the foe. And I had a goodidea of who was the foe. I heard the yell bounce down the passageagain, and the slam of answering feet.

  Then the gravity field went off. Or rather, was cut off. We may havemissed the boat in getting anti-gravity, if there is such a