Exile-and Glory

by Jerry Pournelle

  "I think we'd better stop," she said, after a while.

  "Why?"

  "Because this isn't a very private place, and I am not a monkey in a zoo. The Leones may not mind putting on demonstrations for the other passengers, but I do—"

  "Nobody ever comes here."

  "Yes they do." She pushed away from him and caught a look at her reflection in one of the big Plexiglas algae tanks. "I'm a mess. Ugly—"

  "You're not."

  "Thank you. But I am. So are you, for that matter. Our faces are all swollen up, our lips are chapped, and we're getting pimples."

  "All true but all irrelevant," Kevin said. "We knew that would happen before we signed up for a long trick in zero-gravity."

  "But I didn't think I'd look this awful."

  "You look all right to me." He did a double somersault from his bulkhead and landed just next to her. He grinned and reached for her again.

  "Kevin, please . . ." Finally, she pushed away again. "Please. That's enough."

  "Not for me—"

  "Not for me either, but it's still all we're going to do," she said. "And don't look like a hurt little boy. Kevin, I like you. That's just the trouble. If we—this wouldn't be just a shipboard romance. Kevin, I can't afford emotional involvements. We've both got too much to do when we get to Ceres."

  "So we have work to do. There's more to life than work—"

  "Sometimes. Kevin, once we get to Ceres we may never see each other again. It's not fair to either of us to—to get too attached to each other."

  "I'll take my chances."

  "You say that now because I'm the only girl available. You wouldn't if—if you knew what you'd be getting into. I'm not somebody you ought to know, Kevin. I shouldn't have teased you. I'm sorry. I get lonely too, and I forgot that we'll never just be two people—"

  "What?" Kevin frowned. There was a strange expression on Ellen's face, a strange look in her eyes, and he didn't understand.

  "There's so much you can't know," Ellen said. "Kevin, we're friends. Let's leave it at that." She turned away to stare at pressure and flow gauges. "I think we've got this working again, and I've got some writing to do." She left the compartment hurriedly.

  Kevin wanted to follow her, but she moved too quickly, and there were people in the corridors outside. He came back to stare into the algae tanks.

  Tropical fish swam through the thick plant growth, They had adjusted to lack of gravity and oriented themselves as if the light source were "up." They no longer seemed confused—but Kevin was, and he didn't like it.

  "She said she liked me," he muttered to the fish. "And it's a long way to Ceres." He could comfort himself with that. It was a long way to Ceres . . .

  A week later they were both transferred to other ship's duties, not together. Kevin saw her quite often, but never alone.

  Kevin's new assignment was on the bridge. His partner was Wiley Ralston, and Kevin found himself telling his friend about his problems with Ellen.

  Ralston laughed. "Persistence, old buddy. Persistence and propinquity. Girls aren't any different from guys. They get horny too. Give it time."

  "There doesn't seem to be a lot else to do," Kevin said.

  "Yeah. Well, you'll have more of 'em to go after when we get to the Belt. Not a lot more, maybe, but more than just one. . . ."

  True enough, Kevin thought. But he wasn't sure that was what he wanted. He wasn't sure what love was, or whether he believed in it, but he kept wishing Ellen were around so he could tell her things he'd just thought of, and he made excuses to go find her.

  Eventually they were back in the farms and alone; and this time when he kissed her she didn't run away. A long time later, when they could speak again, she said, very seriously, "Kevin, we don't talk about love or the future. We're together while we're on the ship. Nothing permanent; nothing lasts after we reach the Belt."

  "Sure," he said; but he didn't believe her.

  Kevin and Wiley Ralston had been assigned to the bridge again when the halfway course correction came. Captain Greiner was very casual about it. First he slaved the computer to the high-gain antenna, then took position and velocity readings from both Earth and Ceres. Finally he pointed the main telescope to the bright star Vega.

  The ship's computer digested the information for a minute. Then it flashed ready lights.

  "And this does it," Greiner said. He threw switches giving control of the ship to the computer.

  A recorded voice sounded. "Now hear this. Stand by for thirty seconds of very low gravity. Low thrust for thirty seconds, commencing in one minute. Fifty-nine, Fifty-eight . . ."

  "Almost as if the ship didn't need me at all," Captain Greiner said. "If it weren't for the maintenance, it wouldn't."

  "But you can operate without the computer, while it can't work without you," Kevin said.

  Greiner laughed. "Not hardly. Everything's got to be too precise. If we had plenty of fuel, sure, I could navigate by hand calculations; but not the way we're cutting it."

  "So even out here the machine replaces man," Wiley Ralston said. "Well, the damned machines can't do everything for us. Some things still need people. Though I wonder just how long—"

  Kevin looked at him quizzically. Wiley grinned. "Just so long as they need us a few more years," Ralston said. "Long enough to get rich. Then they can run the whole damned universe by computer."

  The countdown ended, and they felt weight again. Not very much weight, about one percent of Earth's gravity; but it felt strange to have a permanent "up" and "down" again. Kevin had found that he could orient himself to think of any direction "above" his head as "up" in zero-gravity; since he was facing forward, he suddenly found himself lying on his back instead of standing. He found later that everyone in the ship had had the same problem.

  "Ceres has gravity," Jacob Norsedal said after dinner. "Let's see, about forty centimeters a second—four percent Earth gravity."

  "Just enough so you can't jump off," Ellen said.

  "A lot more than that." Norsedal said. His voice was apologetic but firm. He was apologetic for disagreeing; but he was never uncertain about his facts. He took his belt calculator, the small one he always carried, and punched in numbers. "You couldn't jump more than about 125 feet straight up," he said. "Of course, you'd take a while coming down." Click-click. "Not so long, thirteen seconds. Half a minute for the round trip, up and back down again. Of course I've left out the mass of your suit and tanks. I could run it with those—"

  "Never mind," Ellen laughed. She, like everyone in the ship, had found that if you asked Norsedal a question you often learned more than you wanted to know. "It's going to take getting used to all over again," she said. "Having things fall instead of just drifting around the way they do here. And I've gotten used to sleeping in zero-gravity."

  They sat at the entrance to Kevin and Jacob's stateroom. One of the inevitable tumbling contests was going through the central well of the ship. Bill Dykes, the miner Kevin had met on the airplane to Baja, spun past doing somersaults and counting loudly. "Ninety-seven!" he announced with a grin as he went past. He was still centered in the opening, and it looked likely that he'd get all the way to the stern bulkhead. That was no longer unusual; the contest had been won weeks before, and now the passengers were trying to set a record for the number of somersaults before touching walls or decks.

  "Damn!" Hal Leone was in Kevin's stateroom playing a stellar war-game with his wife Jeannine. The game used ballistic calculations, and Hal had managed to get his ship into an unrecoverable situation; no matter what he did, it was going to crash into a star. His wife chuckled. What made it embarrassing was that Hal was a mathematician and his wife a physician—but she always won.

  Others gathered on F deck. It was almost time for another session of Norsedal's monster twelve-sided game, and the players were assembling. Someone produced a bottle of vodka vacuum-distilled from green slime. Despite its evil source it had no unusual taste at all. The bottle passed around. There wa
s more activity in the well; a twirling contest, men and women pirouetting in midair. Then Bill Dykes came tumbling back toward the bow, followed closely by his cabinmate and partner, Carl Lundgren. They were counting loudly.

  "Happy hour," Ellen said.

  Suddenly another man leaped across the opening. He collided heavily with Carl Lundgren.

  "Look where you're going!" Lundgren shouted.

  "Shove it," the other man said. Kevin recognized him: Frank Sales, a loner with a foul temper. Sales was going out to work as a miner. He was a short, almost dwarfish man, who compensated for his small stature with a constant program of exercises. All the passengers were supposed to take their turn with the exercise machines, but Sales was the only one who took extra time on them as a matter of course.

  "Goddamit, I was headed for a record," Lundgren said. "What'd you want to do that for?"

  Sales grunted and turned away.

  "I asked you a question!" Lundgren shouted. "Come back here."

  "Hey, buddy," Bill Dykes said, grabbing Lundgren's arm, "Drop it. He ain't worth it."

  Lundgren shook Dykes off. "Keep out of this, Bill. That sawed-off little bastard never looks where he's going. Who the hell does he think he is?"

  "Are you talking about me?" Sales grasped a stanchion and turned back toward Lundgren. "Are you?"

  "Damn right, you little creep."

  "Hey—" Dykes protested, but it was too late. Sales dived toward Carl Lundgren and knocked him from his perch against the edge of F Deck. The two men became a tangle of arms and legs tumbling in the central well. Lundgren caught Sales by the hair and pulled; the result was that both tumbled out of control.

  Others moved to try to separate them, but only added to the tangle. Someone began to laugh and others joined. Ellen giggled. Then Sales's hand moved to his tool belt.

  "Look out, Carl, the little bastard's got a knife!" Dykes shouted.

  Lundgren turned frantically toward Sales. One of the others trying to separate them grabbed at Lundgren, missed, and caused him to spin violently again. Three other passengers dove toward the fighting men, and there was another wild tangle of bodies. Then bright blood spurted out to hang in large droplets in the air. It was impossibly red, tiny red planets hanging in space.

  Someone screamed, more passengers and a crewman appeared to separate the fighters. When the two were pulled apart they saw that Carl Lundgren spurted blood in rhythmic pulses from a slash across his throat.

  "You've killed my partner!" Dykes roared. He started for Sales, but other passengers held him.

  "He came for me!" Sales shouted. "You saw it, he ran right into me, I never meant to hurt him."

  There was a babble of voices. "Get him to sick bay!" "Hold on to that murdering son of a bitch!" "Jeez, little buddy, you're going to be all right, you gotta be—" "Get a doctor!"

  Jeannine Leone came out of Kevin's cabin and dove to the group holding Lundgren. Her hands worked frantically at the wound. "I can't get a grip," she said. "You, hold him against the deck. One of you hold onto my feet. Not like that! Hold me steady, I have to get pressure on this—"

  Blood continued to stream into the ship. Bright crimson spheres floated toward the air intake grid. "We need weight," Jeannine shouted. "Send for the Captain—"

  "I'm here," Greiner said.

  "We need weight. Not much, just enough to let me do steady work. Can you give us acceleration?"

  "No," Greiner said. "Can't do it."

  "But he'll die—"

  "I hope not, but we can't do it!" The Captain's face was grim. "If we accelerate now we won't get to Ceres at all."

  Jeannine continued working, but finally she straightened and shook her head. "Too late," she said. "He's dead. I don't know if I could have done anything even if we had gravity." She turned to Bill Dykes. "I'm sorry—"

  "Not your fault," the miner said. He looked at his partner's body, then at Frank Sales. "Now we got a murderer to deal with. I say we put him outside now and get it over with."

  Chapter Nine

  "Trial! We gotta have a trial," someone shouted. The Captain agreed. Eventually it was settled. Of course everyone wanted to watch.

  There was no place aboard Wayfarer large enough to assemble the entire ship's company. The wardroom deck could hold about half of them, with people perched around the walls and hanging onto the deck above. The rest had to scatter through the central well. Since it wasn't possible to understand what was said from more than ten feet away, Captain Greiner had everyone put on their helmets and tune to a common channel. Eventually everyone was settled, some scattered all through the ship, others on the wardroom deck. It was not an orderly meeting.

  "There are few precedents," Captain Greiner said, "but this isn't the first murder in space. I am not sure the previous cases apply, however. In the first space murder the satellite commander tried the case himself, and himself executed the murderer. Although the commander—it was Aeneas MacKenzie, by the way—offered to employ the entire satellite crew as jury, there were complications including threats against the families of crew members, and MacKenzie ended by acting alone.

  "However, in that case there was no doubt about the guilt of the murderer, or that the crime was premeditated; the murder was part of a scheme to sabotage the satellite. Few have questioned the justice of Mackenzie's actions."

  Kevin felt Ellen shudder.

  "What's the matter?" he asked.

  "Nothing," she said; but her voice was low and tightly controlled.

  "This is farcical," someone shouted. Kevin couldn't tell who it was; the voice came through his headphones. "You can't even establish that there's been a murder, and there is no impartial jury. Everyone here is prejudiced."

  "Who the hell is that?" Bill Dykes thundered. "Not been a murder? My partner's dead, and this bastard did it, and what's there to talk about? Put him outside and get it over with!"

  Someone else shouted, "I got no use for Sales, but we have to let him tell his story—"

  "Sure," Dykes said. "We listen to him, then we put him outside!"

  Everyone began to talk at once. "It was a goddam accident—"

  "What the hell, fair fight—"

  "Damn murderin' bastard never was any use—"

  "Silence," Greiner said. His voice carried authority. "We are holding this meeting to determine what we shall do. It will not become a shouting match."

  "There's plenty of precedent from sailing ship days," someone said. "You can do anything you think best for the welfare of the ship."

  "I am aware of that," Captain Greiner said. "As most of you know, I am an engineer and aircraft pilot by training. I do not come from a navy tradition and I must say I am reluctant to assume supreme authority—"

  "You have to," someone shouted.

  "But if that is what is needed, I will do so," Greiner finished.

  Someone jumped up through the well to land in front of Captain Greiner. "I'm Martin Pacifico," he said. "I'm a lawyer."

  There was a chorus of boos and hisses. "Who needs him." Bill Dykes shouted.

  It didn't seem to bother Pacifico. "Captain Greiner, the essence of a fair trial is an impartial jury. Obviously there is no possibility of such here. Even if there had been—and most of the passengers were witnesses to the alleged crime and thus were already not competent as jurors—your insistence on discussing this matter before the entire ship's company has contaminated all possible venire men."

  "Oh, shut up!" Dykes yelled. "Captain, get that yo-yo out of here. My partner's dead, and dammit—"

  "Enough," Captain Greiner said. "Mr. Pacifico, are you suggesting we wait until we reach Ceres to hold the trial?"

  "That won't do either," Pacifico said. "Ceres has no jurisdiction—"

  "So we must wait until Sales is returned to Earth?" Greiner asked. "Which could be ten years, or could be never—"

  "Shut that goddam lawyer up," Dykes yelled. There were other shouts of agreement.

  "May I speak?"

  Kevin
didn't recognize the newcomer, but Greiner evidently did. "Yes, Mr. Harwitt?" the Captain said.

  "Harwitt?" Kevin asked.

  "The Westinghouse supervisor," Ellen said. They spoke without using their microphones.

  "Captain," Joe Harwitt said. "My company has an interest in this matter. Lundgren had signed up to work for us in the Ceres refinery and we paid for his passage. But now we have no one to do his work. I think that Sales owes us restitution."

  "That is a civil matter," Pacifico said. "Not under consideration here. I would be glad to represent you, though—"