by Jerry
Thorndon laughed cheerfully. “Never mind, and don’t worry about it, Rosen. In fact, it wouldn’t hurt you to try a little of it. Get your mind off your worries.”
Rosen looked at him, shocked. Nothing was more taboo in space than drinking.
“Get on with you,” Doc laughed and shooed him from the room.
After the other was gone, the doctr sank down to the side of the bunk and emptied his lungs in a sigh which touched on despair. Six more months to go.
Kathy put her head in the door and said, “Doctr Thorndon?”
He looked up. “Come on in, Kathy. I’m through for the day and I have some suggestions for you.”
She entered and closed the door behind her. She leaned back against it and looked at him thoughtfully, and once again he reminded himself that she wasn’t attractive—really. It was her aggressive personality, that and her obvious femininity. You seldom saw mammary glands like . . . He pulled his mind away from that trend of thought. Doc was masculine too, and not that old.
“Well, Kathy?” he said wearily.
She said, “I think I’ve finally figured out just what you’re doing.”
“You have? Well, I’m not surprised. You’re not a very stupid person, Kathy.” He didn’t look up as he talked. “How many of them have proposed to you this week?”
“Four. Lieutenant Roland, and three more of the crew members.”
He snorted, amusedly. “I’ll wager you’ll have hooked two thirds of them before the cruise is over.” The amusement left him. “If it’s ever over.”
She said, very softly, “It’s even more than usually important that the ship get back, isn’t it?”
He looked up at her, without speaking.
She said, “I’ve been picking up odds and ends, here and there. I don’t know too much about politics, but from what the crew says, and the officers too, for that matter, Commander Mike Gurloff is pretty big potatoes in reform politics back on Terra.”
Doc rubbed the end of his nose with a thoughtful forefinger and wondered just how much to tell her.
She said, “It’s pretty important that he get back, isn’t it?”
Doc Thorndon said slowly, “More than just get back, Kathy. He’s got to return with his reputation as strong as ever. He’s got to be able to throw into their faces just what tricks the present administration has been pulling on him.”
She sank into the one chair the room boasted. “Are we going to make it?”
Doc pursed his lips. Finally he said, “The odds arc against it, Kathy.”
They sat silently for awhile.
Doc took a deep breath. “By the way, Kathy, I just had Rosen in here, you know, the signalman. He’s in the first stages of cafard. He doesn’t know it yet, but he is.”
Air hissed through her teeth.
He nodded, seriously. “We’ve got to snap him out of it, but quick. One bad case, and it’d spread through this ship like wildfire. Now this is what you’ll have to do . . .
She listened very carefully and nodded. The two of them looked like a pair of conspirators, leaning toward each other, their faces very serious.
COMMANDER GURLOFF looked up and down the corridor, spotted no one and slipped into the ship’s hospital. He closed the door and turned to Doc Thorndon who was lying on the bottom bunk reading.
Doc looked up from his book and said, “Hello, Mike. Have a seat.”
Mike Gurloff scowled at him, but lowered himself into the indicated chair.
He said, “Doc, what the kert are you trying to do with my ship and crew? The whole command is falling apart.”
Doc Thornton put a finger in his place. “Oh?” he said.
“Yeah, oh. Don’t act so innocent.” Gurloff hesitated, then went into the matter that bothered him in some detail. “Doc,” he said, “You’ve always had a lot of leeway on the New Taos. Of course, it’s not just the New Taos, any ship’s doctr on any space craft on a long cruise has lots of leeway—as much as he needs to fight off the threat of space cafard. Maybe you’ve had a bit more than most, but maybe that’s because you’ve accomplished more than most.”
The doctr reminded him softly, “We haven’t had a serious case of cafard since I’ve been aboard, Mike.”
In an earlier age, Commander Gurloff would have knocked on wood. Now he shuddered. “All right,” he said, “I’ll take that. But this time, Doc, I’m afraid you’re going too far. What’s this about stun gun fights between crew members down in the tract-torpedo room? What’s this about gambling going on, more or less openly, and the crew being on the verge of mutiny because of Kathy? What’s this about Mart Bakr and Dick Roland starting a fist fight in the wardroom the other day? And Rosen going on duty soused to the eyeballs?” His voice became more incisive. “Discipline aboard this ship is falling apart, Doc. And, to my surprise, I seem to find your fine meddlesome finger in every case I note that’s adding to this collapse.”
The doctor nodded, “That’s right,” he said agreeably.
“That’s right?” Gurloff blurted. “What do you mean? I come in here expecting you to have some explanations of your actions and here you merely say it’s true, that everything I’ve accused you of is true.”
“It is,” the Doctr said mildly.
“That you’re inciting the crew to mutiny, that you’re encouraging fighting and drink, that—”
“Yes,” the Doctr said.
Gurloff blinked at him. Stared for a moment. Then came to his feet. He stood, looking down at the other, the back of his hands on his hips. He was incredulous.
He snapped, “Doctr, you realize that a crew without discipline is incapable of running a ship?”
“Let us say that it’s incapable of running a. ship indefinitely.”
“And you say that you’re deliberately encouraging a collapse of half the rules in the service?”
Doc sat up, putting his feet on the deck. He said, very seriously, “Mike, how long have we been out thus far?”
The other scowled. “Somewhat over six months.”
“How many cases of space cafard, so far?”
The answer was a growled “None.”
“Without books, without games, without any entertainment, for all practical purposes, we’re through half of this cruise without one case of mental collapse, and that in spite of the fact that the crew had less than two weeks rest after the last trip.”
Mike Gurloff leaned back against the bulkhead and scowled at him. “You mean you’re preventing cafard by—”
Doc Thorndon leveled a finger at his skipper. “I’m preventing the complete collapse of this crew by every method I can devise. I can tell you right now, if we ever get back to Terra, this crew as a unit, will probably never be fit to take a ship out again. It was you, Mike, who said we had to make the cruise; you said that if you could make it you’d be in a position to upset the corrupt bunch of bureaucrats that are running the space service now.
“All right, Mike Gurloff, I believe in you. I’m trying to get this ship back before it turns into an asylum of howling, raving maniacs. It’s taking every dirty deal, every little trick, every bit of double dealing I can think of to keep monotony and boredom, the breeding ground of cafard, from setting in.”
“Including using that girl, Kathy, to keep the men in a continual dither?”
“Definitely! She’s my best weapon.”
Mike Gurloff thrust his hands into his tunic pockets and stared, unseeingly, at the medicine chest. He muttered, “There’s one other thing, Doc, that I hadn’t thought of before.”
“Yes?”
“It’s true that the New Taos has become the most popular craft in the fleet. Why?”
Doc Thorndon said indignantly, “For good reason! In the past two or three years it’s made at least four cruises with outstanding success against the Kradens. Every time the New Taos returns from a cruise, it has a victory to report. Why—”
“Every time but this time, Doc,” Gurloff said wearily. “And how long does a hero
remain in the public eye when he slacks off on his heroism?”
Thorndon frowned.
Gurloff said, “Doc, this time they’ve sent us off on a year’s cruise into empty space. There’s nothing in this direction. No enemy, no galaxy that we’ll reach. No nothing. When we return—after a full year of being out of the news—we’ll have nothing to report.” He thought it over for a minute. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the powers that be so time it that just about when the New Taos berths, some other ship, with a skipper and crew more amenable to the present administration, hits the headlines with some outstanding deed. Just you watch.”
He turned on his heel, mumbled a farewell, and left. Mike Gurloff was beginning to show both his age and the accumulated bitterness of years of having his career thwarted.
Doc Thorndon gazed after him, and rubbed the end of his nose with a thoughtful forefinger. “I hadn’t thought of that angle,” he said out loud.
IT WAS the traditional toast of the officers of a space ship after a successful cruise, held in the ship’s wardroom only moments after landing and immediately before opening the hatches.
Commander Mike Gurloff had brought the bottle of stone age brandy from his quarters and was filling the glasses. He said, spiritlessly, “Where’s Doc Thorndon? If anybody is to be given credit for bringing us through this time, it’s him.”
“Saw him just a few minutes before landing. He was talking with Kathy,” Johnny Norsen said.
“Well, let’s get about it, gentlemen,” Gurloff growled. He took up his glass and eyed them, one by one. “My last cruise, gentlemen,” he said, his mouth a straight line.
They stood there, holding their glasses, their eyes widening.
He said tightly, “Surprised, gentlemen? What could you expect? It’s either that or they’d have this craft out into space in another week or so.—And this time, we wouldn’t come back.”
They said nothing. There was nothing to say. Each took down the drink, stiff wristed. Then they set their glasses down on the small table.
Dick Roland flushed noticeably and said, “As a matter of fact, sir, the same goes for me.”
All eyes went to the second officer.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mike Gurloff rapped. “Your career has just started.”
Dick Roland squared his shoulders and said, “Kathy and I are going to be married and—”
“What!” Johnny Norsen blurted, angrily. “Are you trying to make a fool of—”
“Marry you?” Mart Bakr yelled. “Kathy and I are engaged. I’m the one that’s quitting the space service and—”
Johnny Norsen spun on him, then back to Roland. “Is this supposed to be some stupid joke?” he bit out. “Kathy and I are—”
Gurloff was looking from one to the other of them in utter astonishment.
“Boys, boys,” a voice from behind them said softly. They turned, each still sputtering his indignation. It was Doc Thorndon.
“In the first place,” he said mildly, “polyandry is still illegal on Terra and the latest statistics show that Jackie—that is, Kathy—is engaged to forty-three of this ship’s complement of forty-five officers and men.”
There were four different ejaculations, but he went on. “And, in the second place, in spite of his capable disguise over the past year, Jackie Black is a very masculine character, and I doubt if he’d be interested in marriage—not to anybody of the male sex.”
They were dumb. It was just too much to assimilate.
Doc Thorndon handed an envelope to Commander Gurloff. “Jackie Black thinks you’ll be able to use these documents in your next speech, Mike. You didn’t bring home your usual victory, perhaps, but you’ll draw your usual attention!” He rubbed the end of his nose with a forefinger and grinned, cheerfully. “When he saw what a hornet’s nest he’d awakened when he swiped them, he could figure only one way of avoiding the regiments of police on his trail—he stowed away on a craft scheduled to be off in space for a year’s time. His disguise as a woman went still further in preventing his identity from being guessed.”
Gurloff was thumbing through a sheaf of papers in the envelope.
“You mean, that all along he planned to hand these over to someone who would expose—”
Doc shrugged. “I don’t know, Mike. Maybe not. But I think that little story about Robin Hood rather appealed to him. Besides, I was rather persuasive, just before he left the ship.”
The Doctr turned to go.
“Just a minute,” Gurloff snapped, his face dark. “How long have you known the identity of this—this criminal Jackie Black? Just because these papers are now in our possession doesn’t mean we can brush away his existence on my ship for a year. We have a duty to perform.
Where is he?”
The doctor allowed himself only the faintest of grins. “As to how long I’ve known . . . well, I’ve suspected for some time, really, that our Kathy wasn’t quite as feminine as she’d like to have us all think. I—”
Dick Roland, still in a semi-state of shock, blurted, “But . . . but . . . Kathy . . . I thought she was so womanly. So . . .” he reddened again.
The Doctr cleared his throat. “As a matter of fact, my first clue was based on that very fact. In one of my old books I ran into the slang word, falsies and—”
“The kert with all that,” Gurloff blurted, “Where is this criminal? Our duty is still to apprehend him.”
The Doc said, “I’m afraid that ‘Kathy’ was the first man off the ship, Mike. Must have been ten minutes ago. Seems to me I saw him leave by way of the torpedo hatch.”
Gurloff was weakening, but he grumbled, “Just because he turned these papers over to you doesn’t give him the right to escape the punishment that—” Doc said patiently, “Good grief, Mike, how sadistic are you? After what that poor man’s been through the last twelve months with this ship full of Romeos, you want to punish him further.”
For an instant there was silence; then Mart Bakr grinned ruefully. “I guess you got a point there, Doc.”
THE WAY OF DECISION
M.C. Peason
History records numerous small colonies, based upon unusual ideas of the family unit and social group. Most of these have failed in practice, but usually because they were based upon idealistic notions which had little to do with the economic or social necessities of their times. But what of a new theory of the family and social unit which is designed to conform with actual conditions? And what is such a group likely to face when a new member, a person without any understanding of the actual conditions, has to be accepted as a member?
TOM VORD sat on the porch of his clan’s house with his feet on the railing. Across the valley, he could hear the muted roar of the commuter track that led south to New Haven; but all he could see were the sprawling rows of private houses that strung along the belt. And behind them, more isolated from each other, the larger structures of the homes of other clans. The bright greenness of spring lay over the land, and it was fresh and sparkling. A typical suburban scene in this year of 2013, Tom thought. Even the mixture of private houses and clan was symbolic of the time. And in a way, symbolic also of the problem he had.
Tom’s face was brooding. His was a nature not easily satisfied, or content with half-solutions—and he took the problems of the clan seriously. Partly as a consequence of this, but also because he had the self-control to avoid crises, he was the unacknowledged leader of the clan, and its chief administrator. His age was hard to guess. He was not old; his face was unlined, and his hair both present and dark; his eyes showed an enthusiasm that indicated youth. And yet he was not young; there was a maturity in his glance, an acceptance in his attitude that made him seem older than he was. And so he sat there, relaxed, idly looking out over the countryside, even as he wondered if the present crisis was enough to disrupt the clan.
Below him Ricky Vord came toiling up the steps to the house. Ricky was the opposite of Tom. Young and intense, with a devil-may-care attitude, he was the born salesman.
His enthusiasms came bubbling out, and he had the ability to carry with him anyone who might object. And if he did not have the deepness of thought fully to understand the implications of all that he said or did, he was the better salesman for it.
With a wave, Ricky entered the house. There were muffled sounds from the interior, and it was not for several minutes that the boy appeared on the porch. Then it was with two tall glasses in his hands. “I consider this Tom Collins weather,” he said. “I suspect you do, too, only you’re too lazy to mix your own.” He handed Tom the second drink and sat down beside him.
“Possibly,” Tom said with a smile. “I certainly won’t refuse. What do you know?”
“A lot of things,” Ricky answered. He took a long drink. “Ah, that’s good,” he said. “You know, I been down talking to Graves again. We got that thing in the bag if we want it.” His voice was off-hand, deliberately so, Tom knew.
“We have?” Tom’s voice also was careful. “Do you mean with or without the girl?”
“Well . . . You can’t blame Graves for wanting to see his daughter settled. He figures that if she gets into a clan, maybe she’ll calm down. And he could be right. Maybe she will; who knows? After all, she does want to come in. That must mean something.”
“Sure, it means something,” Tom agreed, his voice slightly sardonic. “It means she wants to collect a whole clan. And as far as I am concerned, she’s welcome to it—as long as it isn’t the Vord one.”
“Look,” Ricky swung up onto the edge of his chair, turning to face Tom and leaning towards him, “you’re only seeing one side of this. You think Marcia’s just looking for a thrill, for something new, and different—and that that’s why she wants to join us. Maybe it is; I won’t deny it. I don’t happen to think that’s the reason, but it could be. But what if it is? Why do we have to rear back and stand on our dignity? Why can’t we take her in, let her have her thrill, and then get out. If a thrill is all she’s looking for, she’ll get out quick enough. Unless she gets converted—that could happen, too. What do we lose?
