Rocket to Limbo

by Alan Edward Nourse

  Wolf the star and Wolf the fourth planet of the star Wolf had been seen by men. A ship had gone there before, and vanished. It had landed and disappeared without a murmur. What the Planetfall had met there no one knew for sure, but there was no way to avoid one simple fact: they had met something. And that was the source of the dread, a cold core of fear that Lars could feel deep in his chest and never quite put down.

  Aliens.

  There was nothing to think of, nothing to refer to, nothing even to fear but the idea itself. In Lars’ mind the concept of alien life was a large gray cloud of nothing, bottomless and featureless. No one had ever contacted aliens before. Small animals and animated plants, yes, even insentient moving things that seemed at first glance to have minds of their own. But a sentient alien being, a thinking, intelligent alien creature, never. The thought was somehow awesome. The knowledge that such a creature might be waiting for them on Wolf IV was both fearful and unbelievable.

  He wished, suddenly, that he could pretend that it was not true, and knew in the same instant that it was. It must be, for the Planetfall had vanished without a word.

  Peter Brigham was in the bunkroom when Lars arrived. “Well!” he said maliciously. “I thought you’d be high-tailing it to the lab to study up on the biochemistry of unknown aliens. Or aren’t there any tapes on that subject up there?”

  “I was just on my way,” said Lars.

  Peter leaned back in the lower bunk, smiling. “Kind of puts a different color on the trip, it seems to me.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I mean we’ve been shanghaied, brother.”

  Lars groped for the meaning of the ancient word. Peter burst out laughing. “You know what it means. Back when they used sailing vessels on Earth, and took years to make simple two-hour voyages, they couldn’t get crews to go willingly, so they got them drunk and sapped them over the head. When the men came around they were a little too far out to sea to swim home again.”

  “It’s not the same thing at all,” Lars protested.

  “I’d like to see you get home from here on your own power. There’s no difference, except that there are laws against this sort of thing, and they’re enforced, and old Foxy has broken every one of them.”

  Lars regarded the dark-haired youth for a moment. “You seem mighty pleased about it.”

  “Me?” Peter grinned unpleasantly. “Not me. Why, I’m just as worked up about it as some of the others. Jeff Salter, for instance.”

  “Salter wouldn’t have said a word if you hadn’t fed him the questions, and you know it.”

  “All right, so what? Who’s going to listen to an OIT on a Star Ship? And it was time somebody had wit enough to ask some questions. Or maybe you’d prefer to stand by and let Walter Fox butcher the lot of us, eh?”

  “Why blame Commander Fox? He’s acting under orders just the way we are.”

  “Sure. So was Millar of the Planetfall Only the Planetfall didn’t have quite the right orders to cover the situation.” Peter started for the hatchway. “After all, the Colonial Service isn’t a military organization. Every one of us signed contracts for this voyage, and the contract I signed didn’t say anything about Wolf IV in it, orders or no orders.”

  Lars chuckled. “What do you think you’re going to do? Ask the Commander to please turn the ship around and go home again?”

  Peter wasn’t smiling any more. “You just keep your eyes open,” he said slowly. “Old Foxy isn’t quite through answering questions yet.”

  Then he was gone, leaving Lars staring at the clanging hatch. He stared for a moment. Then he roused himself and started for the lab.

  There was work to be done.

  Until his first hour in the bio lab with John Lambert, Lars had had no conception of the amount and variety of preparation required by an exploratory run to a new star. And after his first hour he had no time to worry about Peter or the crew or the ships destination or anything else. As Lambert pointed out first off, there was more work to be done than any two mortal humans could hope to accomplish in the time they had.

  So they set about to do it.

  Much of it was chore and drudge work, but it had to be done. Culture media had to be prepared fresh, sterilized, poured into plates and stored. Glassware and instruments had to be minutely calibrated. Fresh reagent solutions had to be prepared with painstaking care, for success or failure of a mission could depend upon a fraction of a pH point, a quarter of a cc miscalculated. Lars spent hours at the microbalances, weighing, measuring, dissolving, distilling, checking volumetric variations and molarity constants.

  But there was other work, which Lambert alone could teach Lars. There were tapes to be studied, but in the field, when all the chips are down, only a man experienced in the fielcjwork can teach. And Lambert was an excellent teacher. Where he might have been impatient, he was tolerant; where he might have skimped, he refused to. “You can’t know too much in advance,” he would say over and over. “On a new planet the crew depends on you for their lives. You have to know what to look for, what to guard against.”

  “But if it’s a new planet, how can you know that?” Lars protested wearily. “I should think you’d have to wait and see.”

  “If you counted on that approach, your first trip would very likely be your last one,” Lambert chuckled. “Naturally, we can’t predict specific problems and dangers until we get there, but we can be prepared to meet broad classes of trouble. What about bacteria and viruses? We can be prepared to nail them quickly, find out which ones are dangerous, and prepare vaccines. What about the atmosphere? We can be ready to test it in ten minutes and know whether it can support us or not. What about plant proteins, animal proteins, the growing quality of the soil?” He slipped off his glasses and ran a hand through his sandy hair. “All were trying to do is reduce the odds against us. You’ll get on to it, but it means digging and digging”

  And digging was what they did. As days passed Lars seldom left the lab except for meals and sleep periods. Doggedly he worked to learn the testing techniques, the analyses, the evaluation procedures. He studied the standard flow-sheet of procedure to be followed, and worked out with Lambert places where their situation differed from standard, special trouble spots, special problems. Lambert set up test problems, based entirely on speculation, then patiently went over them with Lars, pointing out a critical omission here, sure death to the crew there, and slowly Lars learned.

  Yet he never could throw off the sense of dread, of growing danger as the ship moved implacably toward its destination. At the end was Wolf IV, and then —

  What? What then?

  At the beginning of the fourth day-period after the meeting in the lounge, Lambert was gone when Lars reached the lab. A few moments later he came in, puffing on his dead pipe, a worried frown wrinkling his forehead. He went about the lab grumbling under his breath until Lars said, “What’s the trouble?”

  “I don’t know.” Lambert shook his head disgustedly and sank down in a bucket chair. “There’s something going on around this ship, and I don’t like it a bit.”

  Lars put down the slide he had been examining and looked up sharply. “Going on? What?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing I can put my finger on. Maybe it’s nothing at all, but no, by Jupiter, it’s not!” He looked up at Lars angrily. “Talk. Grumbling and griping. Whispers. I know, put twenty-two men together in close quarters for a few weeks and there’ll always be griping, but this is different. It’s got an ugly tone to it.”

  Lars chewed his lip for a moment. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Did you know all along we were going to Wolf IV?”

  Lambert looked startled. “Not by a long way! I knew we were under restricted orders, all right, but I didn’t know why! And I didn’t know we were carrying fusion bombs.”

  “And yet you, of all men on the ship, should have known, it seems to me. I still don’t understand the secrecy.”
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  “They were afraid of leaks.”

  “So the news leaked. So what?”

  Lambert looked at Lars narrowly. “Do you have any idea of the reaction home on Earth if news got out that a hostile alien had been contacted by an Earth ship?”

  “Well—I—I suppose it would scare people a little.”

  “Scare them! My boy, you’d have a panic on your hands like Earth hasn’t seen in centuries! Your colonization program would go up in one big puff of pink smoke. The Colonial Service would be legislated out of existence. Earth would start arming for very dear life, and God alone knows what would become of the colonies already established. The whole system would crumble, and we’d be back where we started three hundred years ago. That’s what would happen.”

  “But why? If nobody has seen an alien, why be so deathly afraid of it?”

  “That’s exactly why.” Lambert sighed and tried to light his pipe again. “Human beings are pretty brave creatures, as long as they know what they’re dealing with. But put them up against something completely unknown, utterly inconceivable to them, and they’ll panic. It doesn’t make sense, but it’s happened over and over. Fear of the unknown. It’s plagued mankind since the year one, and we still aren’t rid of it—”

  Lars blinked at him, and shook his head. “Certainly everybody wouldn’t lose his head.”

  “Enough would to make it disastrous.”

  “But suppose the alien wasn’t hostile at all. Suppose it was friendly.”

  Lambert smiled wearily. “Aliens, by definition, are hostile. Walter Fox has been fighting that idea as long as he’s been in space. It’s common sense that somewhere, sometime, in centuries of exploration, men are going to encounter an alien race in the stars. The aliens might be good, or bad. It would be a fearful gamble to find out which, but if they were good, we could be immensely richer for the contact. Fox believes the gamble is worth it. He believes we will meet aliens, sometime, and that they will be good. But Fox is one man against millions. He talks, but nobody listens, but he goes on hoping that he’ll be the one to make contact. Call him a fanatic, if you want to. I happen to think he’s right.”

  Lambert stood up slowly. “That’s why I don’t like what I’m hearing around the ship. The men are getting panicky in spite of all the psych conditioning they’ve had, and in spite of all the care that went into selecting the crew for this mission. They’re the best possible men in their jobs, and still they’re panicky. To me, that means only one thing.”

  Lars felt the knot in his stomach again. “What?”

  “Somebody on board is deliberately setting off the panic. Somebody who’s smart enough to keep under cover himself and put the words into other peoples’ mouths. I think you know who, too.”

  Lars was silent for a long time. Then he said, “I guess I do. But Why? Why should he want to do it?”

  “You find out that answer in time and you might save this ship a whole lot of trouble,” Lambert said heavily. “Because we’re heading for trouble now faster than we’re heading for Wolf IV.”

  The talking was worse than Lars realized. The tension in the ship had grown tremendously since he had dug into the work in the lab. In small groups lurking in the corridors, in hasty words passed across the eating bar in the galley, in looks, nods, and whispers trouble was spelled out in large letters.

  There was Jeff Salter, talking to the assistant engineer and the radioman down in the lounge, with a wary eye out for intruders, saying, “We’ve been shanghaied, that’s what happened. You know what that means.” And, “Old Foxy hasn’t any legal right to force us into it. We signed contracts, you know.” And, “Guinea pigs! That’s what he’s making us. You guys eager to be heroes? I’m not.”

  And in the corridor outside sleeping quarters, muffled voices, saying, “Fox doesn’t care what happens to the ship or the men. It’s the glory for himself he wants.”

  Or, “—couldn’t get a crew to sign up the regular way, that’s what it means.”

  Or, “Sure he’s Commander, but he’s beyond his rights, I tell you! No court on Earth would back him up if the facts were known.”

  And behind it all, always present here or there, was Peter Brigham, never saying much, only a word here, a malicious

  grin there, a question at the right moment in another place.

  And Tom Lorry, worry heavy on his quizzical face as he went about the ship, showing the strain and trying to hide it, trying to grasp the full meaning of the tension that built up, and not quite succeeding.

  And Paul Morehouse, navigator, his usually affable expression gone, lines of worry on his face too as he checked the bearings and recalculated the course, underscored the day’s progress for his report to the skipper.

  And Walter Fox, his pale blue eyes alert, but always firm, always confident as he moved about the ship, checking preparations, a nod here, a smile there, oblivious to the cold looks, the short answers, the whispers.

  Another day, more whispers, new complaints. Peter Brigham carefully avoiding Lars now, rising before Lars awoke, never in the bunkroom, always in a group in the lounge, never alone.

  Lars found him at last, just turning in as another sleep period began. He snapped the light off quickly as Lars pushed open the hatch, but Lars snapped it on again, and walked slowly to his locker. He started to undress.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked suddenly, turning on Peter. “Come on, you’re not asleep. Answer me! What do you think you’re doing?”

  Peter looked up at him lazily. “Old Eagle-eye! Been watching me, have you?”

  “You bet I have.”

  “All right, then you tell me. What am I doing?”

  “Look, this is no joke,” Lars said. “You’ve got the men on this ship ready to fly apart any minute. Don’t you know what’s happening? Can’t you see what comes next?”

  Peter sat up suddenly, and he wasn’t smiling. His eyes were intent on Lars’ face. “No, tell me what comes next.”

  “Mutiny comes next. And you know it as well as I do.

  You’ve been doing everything in your power to turn this crew against Commander Fox. You’ve put the words in their mouths, the ideas in their heads. And^if you play your cards just right, you’re going to succeed, too.”

  Peter roared with laughter, his arms gripping his sides as he rolled on the bunk. “And you’re just getting the idea now? Where have you been?” He caught his breath, his laughter dying as suddenly as it started. “But that’s all right, that’s all right. It it’s soaked through to your level, it must be working!”

  “Working!”

  “Yes, working. I told you Fox had some questions to answer, didn’t I? Well, I meant it. He hasn’t even started answering yet.”

  “But mutiny—”

  “It’ll make this one thing certain,” said Peter Brigham through his teeth, “that Walter Fox will never lift another Star Ship off Earth, ever. Even if it takes a mutiny to stop him.”

  Chapter Five

  No Place For Cowards

  For a long moment there was silence as Lars stared at Peter. Then, slowly, he sank down on the bench along the bulkhead. “So it’s Fox you’re after,” he said. “Not the place the ship is going, or what we may find there. You’re not concerned about that at all, just about getting Walter Fox.” “Now you’re getting the idea,” said Peter. Lars shook his head. “I don’t get it. Peter, it just doesn’t make sense, what you’re doing. You’re taking the greatest planet-breaker that Earth ever sent to space, and you’re trying to mutiny his crew and break him. Why? Whom could we have in command better than Fox? He’s led crews into unknown territory before, and they’ve trusted him, and he’s brought them back, too. Don’t you know what Fox has done?”

  “Oh, yes, I know all right. You’re the one who doesn’t.” Peter gave Lars a scornful glance. “You’re so sick with hero-worship you wouldn’t recognize the truth about Walter Fox if it walked up and kicked you in the teeth. I don’t know why I even bother talking
to you.”

  “I know that Fox is a great man, if that’s what you mean, and I’m proud to be aboard his ship.”

  “I know, I know,” Peter sighed. “You’ve read his books, and all the nice newspaper reports of his voyages, all singularly favorable to Walter Fox. Big press releases, fancy live 3-V broadcasts, everything. That’s your idea of the man.”

  “And your idea?”

  “That he’s a fanatic and a fool,” Peter snapped. “Why do you think this ship was ever commissioned on this trip in the first place? Because Fox knew about the Planetfall and screamed to high heaven until they gave him a ship and men to go hunt her down. Why was he so eager? Because of the Planetfall, do you think? Fox didn’t care two beans about the Planetfall. But he smelled aliens, and that meant he had to come, no matter how he managed it or whom he brought along. Handing him a ship and sending him to Wolf IV was like handing a knife to a homicidal maniac and turning him loose on the town.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Lars said slowly.

  “How could you? You’ve only looked at one side of the nickel. The news broadcasts don’t tell you the other side: that Fox is so obsessed with this idea of first contact with aliens that he runs his crews into the ground in order to satisfy it. He’s lost more crewmen than any other major explorer, and do you know why? Because he isn’t satisfied with finding good colony sites and then bringing his ship home again to let the ground-breakers take over. He’s got to scour every planet for evidence of intelligent life. If he kills half his crew doing it, that’s just too bad.”

  Lars stared, horrified at the virulence in Peter’s voice. “You really hate him, don’t you?”

  Peter’s mouth twisted. “I hate everything he stands for.”

  “But it’s more than that,” said Lars. “It’s wrong, it doesn’t fit you, somehow. I can remember you back in school, always putting on this show of sarcasm, acting as if you hated everybody and everything, and yet you nearly flunked your finals last year because you spent all cram-week coaching little Barnes, who was on probation and flunking out.”