by Ron Hubbard
Then I happened to look out of the ship.
People were pouring into the hangar area! Construction crews were assembling sprawling stages and soaring platforms. Lorries were pouring in with food and drink. Vans were unloading dancing girls and bands!
Heller was throwing a going-away party!
That’s when I found the I. G. Barben bottle and took the Earth-drug called “speed.”
Suddenly, everything was beautiful.
I didn’t care about the thousands of people, the five music bands or the dancing bears. I even enjoyed the fireworks display twenty miles up and the 250 spacefighters that filled the skies. I was even pleased that a Homeview video crew was beaming the festive send-off of our secret mission to billions of people around the Confederacy.
I watched in dreamlike color as a fist fight blossomed into a full-scale riot. Cakes, pastries and canisters flew. Gongs, sirens and blast signals from scores of ships, airbuses and lorries blended with screams, shouts, profanities and snarls (from the dancing bears) while two fifty-man choruses gave a stirring rendition of “Spaceward, Ho.”
I didn’t even care about the assassin that Lombar said was following me to ensure that I didn’t mess up. Besides, I wasn’t messing up. This was a party!
Heller announced it was time to leave and retired to the local pilot seat. I dutifully struggled to shut the airlock but my hands weren’t working. Heller didn’t wait. He lifted us from the pad while I dangled out of the open door until someone pulled me in and slammed it shut.
Suddenly, my euphoria was gone. I realized what had happened.
This was the most UNsecret secret mission anyone had ever heard of!
I had to find Heller and handle this!
Chapter 1
Jettero Heller was perched on the edge of the local pilot seat.
He was still in dress uniform. He had pushed the little red cap to the back of his blond head. With his left hand he was jockeying the throttle to keep the ship moving but no more.
He was holding a microphone in his right hand. He was speaking in the crisp staccato of a Fleet radio officer. “Calling Voltar Interplanetary Traffic Control. This is Exterior Division Tug Prince Caucalsia requesting permission to depart pursuant to Grand Council Order…” He rattled off the numbers and the whole order, right there on open radio band!
I was feeling irritable beyond belief already and this grated on my raw nerves. “For the sake of the Gods, get some notion of security!”
He didn’t seem to hear me. He shifted the mike to his left hand and beckoned at me urgently: “Gris, your identoplate!”
I fumbled in my tunic. Suddenly my fingers connected with an envelope!
There shouldn’t be any envelope in these pockets. All my papers had been put in spaceproof sacks before we left. Where the blazes had this envelope come from? Nobody had handed me any envelope! I felt terribly irritated by it. The thing offended me. It should not have been there!
Heller was frisking me. He found my identoplate and sat back down. He pushed it in the identification slot.
The speaker spat out, “Interplanetary Traffic Control to Exterior Division Tug Prince Caucalsia, Apparatus Officer Soltan Gris in charge. Permission authorized and granted.”
The voyage authority copy slithered out of the radio panel. Heller slid it under a retaining clip and then handed me back my identoplate.
He must have noticed I was still standing there staring at the envelope. He said, “You look bad.” He got up and unsnapped my too tight collar. “I’ll take care of you in a minute. Where’s the captain?”
He didn’t have to look very far. The Antimanco captain had been in the passageway, glaring at Heller. Obviously, the fellow resented Heller’s taking the tug up without a word to him.
“I’ll take over my ship now,” the Antimanco said in a nasty voice.
“Papers, please,” said Heller.
This irritated me. “He is the assigned captain!” I said.
“Papers, please,” said Heller, hand extended to the Antimanco.
The captain must have been expecting this. He hauled out a sheaf of documents in their spaceproof sleeves. They weren’t just his, they were those of the whole crew, five of them. They were stained and crimped and very old.
“Five Fleet subofficers,” said Heller. “Captain, two astropilots, two engineers. Will-be Was engines.” He looked at the seals and endorsements very critically, holding them very close to his eyes. “They seem authentic. But why is there no detaching endorsement from your last ship… three years ago? Yes.”
The captain snatched the documents out of Heller’s hand. There was no endorsement detaching them from their last cruise because they had turned pirate.
The small time-sight was in its slot at the astropilot’s chair. Heller laid a hand on it. “Do you know how to operate this time-sight? It’s obsolete.”
“Yes,” grated the captain and continued in a snarling monotone, “I was serving in the Fleet when they were issued. I was serving in the Fleet when they went obsolete. This whole crew has been serving in the Fleet four times as long as the age of certain Royal officers.” There was real hate in his narrow-set black eyes. Every time he had said “Fleet” he had sort of spat. And when he said “Royal officers” you could hear his teeth snap together at the end of each word.
Heller looked at him closely.
The captain then made what might have been a gracious speech if there hadn’t been so much snarling hatred in it. “As captain, I am of course at your service. It is my duty and that of my crew to see that you arrive safely at your destination.”
“Well, well,” said Heller. “I am very glad to hear that, Captain Stabb. If you need my help, please do not hesitate to call on me.”
“I do not think we will require it,” said Captain Stabb. “And now, if you will please retire to your quarters, I will man this control deck and get this voyage underway.”
“Excellent,” said Heller.
Oh, I didn’t blame the Antimanco for being annoyed. Heller irritated everybody and right now, especially me! All Heller ever did was carp and pick fights!
Heller took me by the arm, “And now we’ll attend to you.”
He lead me down the tilted passageway and into my room. I had not known what he meant. I got a feeling that he was after me and that by the words “attend to you” he must mean he was going to throw me out the airlock. But I didn’t fight very much. I somehow knew that if I moved my arms, the nerves, already stretched to their limit, would snap. And besides, my hands had begun to shake and I couldn’t walk very well.
Very gently, he got me down onto the bed. I was certain he was going to pull out a knife and slash my throat, but all he did was get me out of my tunic. It is a tactic many murderers use — get the victim off guard. I tensed so hard I went into a spasm.
He pulled off my boots and then stripped off my pants. I was certain he was going to lash my ankles together with electric cuffs. He was opening a locker. He must not have been able to find any electric cuffs for he brought out a standard insulation suit and began to wrestle me into it. I would have fought him except that I was beginning to shake too hard.
He got the suit on me and tightened up its pressure around my legs and ankles. I understood now that this was how he was going to shackle me.
“Keep that suit on,” he said. “In case of fast changes in G’s the blood rushes to the legs. Also, you’ll be insulated against stray sparks.”
He began to fasten the straps that hold the body to the bed. Now I knew he had really worked it out how to trap me.
“The quick release is right there by your hand,” he said.
Then he started going around the room, touching things. I knew he was looking for something to torture me with. Didn’t he understand that the way my nerves were tightening up I was being tortured enough?
But it seemed he was only picking up my clothes and loose objects. He had my rank locket in his hand and as he stood considering, I kne
w he was weighing its use in strangling me. He must have decided against it for he put it in the valuables safe in the wall.
He was looking at the remains of a crushed orange tablet that lay on the edged table and then he picked up the I. G. Barben bottle. It was obvious that he was hoping it was a deadly poison he could secretly introduce into a drink. He didn’t know it was amphetamines and I had taken some to make it through that ghastly going-away party a few hours ago.
“If this is what you were taking,” he said, “I wouldn’t! My advice is to leave it alone, whatever it is. You look awful.”
He put loose objects under clamps. He looked around, vividly disappointed that he had found nothing he could use to torture me.
He moved a button rack and fastened it close to my hand. “If you get too bad, you can press the white button — that calls me. The red button calls the captain. I’ll pass the word that you’re bad off and he can have somebody keep an eye on you.”
Then he saw the envelope I had dropped outside in the passageway and he brought it in. I knew now it was secret orders he had gotten to murder me.
He dropped it on my chest and then wedged it under a strap. “Looks like an order envelope. It’s urgent color, so I’d read it if I were you.”
And then he closed the door and was gone. I knew, though, that it was only to go off and plot with the captain on how to do me in. But I couldn’t object. The way my nerves were stretching, it would be the most merciful thing anyone could do — kill me. But not with an amphetamine: no, my Gods! That would be too cruel!
Chapter 2
For all the remainder of that dreadful, awful day, easily the worst day of my life, I lay and shook. My nerves were stretched so tight they felt they would snap and slay me in the recoil!
I shook until I was too exhausted to shake anymore and still I couldn’t stop.
I couldn’t even think. My whole attention was concentrated upon the plain, physical Hells that assailed me.
They sped the ship up smoothly near to the speed of light. I could not miss noting when they shifted over to Will-be Was drives. There were calls and clangs. The warning lights glared on the cabin wall:
FASTEN GRAVITY BELTS!
Then: DO NOT MOVE! SHIFTING TO TIME DRIVE!
Do not move! Oh, if only I could stop moving; if only I could halt this writhing and sudden jerks. A red sign said:
HYPERGRAVITY SYNTHESIZERS UNBALANCED
Weights were wrenching at me.
Then a tremendous flash seemed to go through the ship. We had gone through the light barrier of 186,000 miles a second.
A sign went purple:
HYPERGRAVITY SYNTHESIZERS SHIFTING TO AUTOMATIC
Then a green sign:
HYPERGRAVITY SYNTHESIZERS BALANCED ON AUTOMATIC
It went off. Then an orange sign:
ACCELERATION NOW BALANCED AND COMPENSATED
YOU MAY UNFASTEN BELTS
YOU MAY MOVE FREELY
ALL IS WELL
I didn’t need any permission to move freely! And all was very not well! I was writhing all over the bed!
We were on time drives. The ship, this dangerous bomb they called a ship, might very well blow up. But fleetingly now and then I caught myself wishing that it would. I could not stand much more of this shaking. I was getting more and more fatigued and yet somewhere my nerves and muscles were digging up the means to shake some more!
The star-time clock on the wall had an inner dial that was now retaining Voltar time. Slowly, painfully, the hours advanced while they seemed to stand still.
Finally, taking two hundred years to do so, it indicated it was midnight on Voltar. I had taken that awful pill sixteen hours ago. Yet, still I shook.
One of the Antimancos, an engineer, came in and held a canister tube to my mouth and I drank. I had not realized anyone’s mouth could get that dry.
Then I wished I hadn’t. Maybe it would save my life and the one thing I didn’t want to do was live!
I desperately wanted to sleep as I was totally exhausted. And yet I couldn’t sleep.
As Voltar time crept all too slowly on, I became more and more depressed.
And then, although I couldn’t imagine how that could be, I got worse! My heart began to palpitate. I began to get dizzy so that the room did odd tilts: at first I thought we were maneuvering in some odd way and then discovered it must be me.
And finally I got a crashing headache.
Warp drives are much smoother than time drives. These Will-be Was engines had little jerks in them; and at each jerk, it felt like my head was going to splinter apart.
It was not until that creeping disc that marked Voltar time indicated noon the next day after departure that I began to recover. I was not well by any means. I just knew I didn’t feel quite so awful.
From time to time an engineer had stepped in. From the lack of expression on his swarthy, triangular Antimanco face, I might as well have been some engine part that needed regulating. But he did bring me more water and he brought me some food.
At thirty-six and a half hours from our departure — a bit past midnight on Voltar — just about when I had decided to sit up, there was a new flurry of lights. Glaring red, the sign said:
MIDPOINT VOYAGE
SHIFTING FROM ACCELERATION
TO DECELERATION SECURE LOOSE OBJECTS
Then: FASTEN GRAVITY BELTS
Then: DO NOT MOVE!
Then: HYPERGRAVITY SYNTHESIZERS REVERSING
There was a moment when nothing had any weight. The (bleeped)[1] I. G. Barben pill bottle and the crumbs on the table drifted up.
Then: STAND BY FOR ROOM REVERSE
The gimbaled room turned. It was very disorienting to me. Fixed objects on the walls were in the same place but everything else had reversed. The sign went purple:
HYPERGRAVITY SYNTHESIZERS SHIFTING TO AUTOMATIC
Then a green sign:
HYPERGRAVITY SYNTHESIZERS BALANCED ON AUTOMATIC
The (bleeped) I. G. Barben bottle and the dust of the pill clattered back down on the table. Then a red sign:
TIME DRIVES BEING REVERSED
There was a dreadful wrenching leap. A sort of a howl sounded through the ship. Then an orange sign:
DECELERATION NOW BALANCED AND COMPENSATED
YOU MAY UNFASTEN BELTS
YOU MAY MOVE FREELY
ALL IS WELL
Except me.
I felt like a wreck. And worse. During the brief moments of weightlessness, I had felt nauseated. I hate weightlessness. I probably never will get used to it. It does funny things to your muscles and heart operation and mine were in no condition to be tampered with.
With a feeble hand, I reached up to take the weight of a belt off my stomach and found something blocking my contact.
The envelope! It was still wedged under the gravity straps. I marvelled that my writhing had not dislodged it.
I felt confused anyway and the confusion of the arrival of this envelope hit me again.
Who could have put it in my pocket? Nobody had handed me any envelope at the departure party. Yet, here it was.
It was urgent color so I thought I had better open it.
A medallion fell out. It was one of the religious kind, a five-pointed star. On the back of each star point there was a tiny, almost imperceptible initial.
I opened the letter. It had no heading. But it did have a date-hour which showed it had been written just before departure had taken place.
It said:
Here is your crew control as promised. Each crew member is indicated by a letter on the back of a star point. These points have been matched to your individual left thumbprint and only you can work it. An outward stroke of your thumb on a star point will send an electric shock into the brain of that individual crew member. It will paralyze him temporarily.
By pressing the front of the medallion and at the same time stroking the star point of a crew member, a hypnopulse will be delivered to that individual.
Really, it should have cheered me up. I was in space with a crew of unreformed pirates and I certainly might need to paralyze them or give them a hypnotic command. Oh, I would wear the medallion all right, inside my tunic and close to the skin. Nobody would suspect. But I just wasn’t in any mood to be cheered up.
I looked at the medallion. The S on the top point could only mean Captain Stabb. I would look up the names of the rest.
I turned it over. It bore on the face the God Ahness, the one they pray to to avert underhanded actions. Then I chanced to turn the dispatch over.
There was a note on it! It was written with his left hand to disguise the writing. But it was Lombar Hisst!
It said:
You may have thought of this going-away party as a sarcastic way of showing the Grand Council the mission had actually left. You came within a dagger thickness of going too far. But as Earth has no way of knowing of the mission, the order has been stayed for now.
I felt my head spin in confusion. Lombar had been at the party!
What order had been stayed?
The date-hour showed it had been put in my pocket almost at the instant of departure. But nobody had been near me! He would never trust this to the crew. Never.
What order?
And then I knew what order he was talking about. The order he had given for some unknown person to kill me if Heller got out of hand and messed up by succeeding.
Did we have a stowaway?
My shaking began all over again.
I unfastened my belts. I had to dispose of this dispatch quickly. I made it over to the trash disintegrator. As I reached for the handle, a long blue spark snapped out and stung me.
Even the ship was striking at me!
I collapsed on a bench and wept.
