Donald A. Wollheim (ed) (13 page)

Jerry let
Ignatz
out when he came back from shift. He was tired and grouchy, but nothing had
gone wrong in particular.

There
had been two minor accidents, and one of the tenders had his foot smashed by a
loose coupling, but a certain amount of that had to be expected. At least no
one had accused him of causing trouble.

"I found out who the supercargo
is," he told the
zloaht
.
"Nobody but the Old
Man himself.
So
you he low and I'll keep out of his way. The old buzzard has eyes like a hawk,
and nobody ever called his memory bad."

The works of Robert Burns were unknown to
Ignatz
, but he did know the gist of the part that goes:
"The best laid schemes o' mice and men gang aft agley." He waited
results with foreboding, and they came when Jerry's next shift was half
through.

It was the O.M. himself who opened the door
and turned to a pair of brawny wipers. "All right, bring him in here, and
lock the door. I don't know who he is, and I don't care. We can find that out
later; but I do know he isn't the man his card says. That fellow has been
rotten with weed for ten years.

"And Captain
Blane
,"
he addressed the officer as they tossed Jerry on the bunk, "in the future
inspect
your men more carefully.
I
can't make a tour of inspection on every freighter, you know. Maybe
there's no harm in him, but
I
don't want men working for me on fake cards."

As they locked the door and went down the
hall, the captain's voice was placating, the O.M. raving in soft words that
fooled nobody by their mildness.
Ignatz
crawled out
from under the bunk, climbed up the rail, and nuzzled Jerry soothingly.

Jerry spat with disgust. "Oh, he came
down, pottered around the generator room and wanted to see my card; said he
didn't know any oiler with a scar. Then Hades broke loose, and he yelled for
Blane
. Anyway, he didn't recognize me. Thank the Lord Harry,
you had enough sense to duck, or my goose would have been cooked."

Ignatz
rooted around and rubbed the
hom
on his snout
lighdy
against
the Master's chest. Jerry grinned sourly.

"Sure, I know. We haven't sunk yet, and
we're not going to. Go on away, fellow, and let me think. There must be some
way of getting off this thing after we reach Venus."

Ignatz
changed the "after" to
"if" in his mind, but he crawled back dutifully and tried to sleep;
it was useless. In half an hour, Captain
Blane
rattled on the door and stalked in, his face pointing to cold and stormy. There
was an unpleasant suggestion in the way he studied Jerry.

"Young fellow," he barked, "if
the Old Man didn't have plans for you, I'd rip you in three pieces and strew
you all over this cabin. Call that damned
zloaht
of yours out and take off those whiskers, Jerry Lord."

The Master grunted, as a man does after a
blow to the stomach. "What makes you think I'm Lord?"

"Think? There's only one Jonah that big
in the star fleet. Since you came aboard, every blamed thing's been one big
mess. The O.M. comes on board as supercargo, the port sticks, three men get
hurt fitting a new injector,
I
find
Martian sand worms in the chocolate, and the O.M. threatens to yank my stars.
Don't tell me you're anyone else!" He poked under the bunk. "Come out
of there, you blasted
zlodhtl
"

Ignatz
came, with a rueful honk at Jerry, who
pulled his false beard anxiously. "Well, Captain, what if I am? Does the
O.M. know?"

"Of course not, and he better hadn't. If
he found I'd shipped you with the crew, I'd never draw berth again. When we hit
Venus, I'll try to let you out in a 'chute at the mile limit. Or would you
rather stay and let the Old Man figure out ways and means?"

Jerry shook his head. "Let me out on
your 'chute," he agreed hastily. "I don't care how, as long as I get
free to Venus."

Blane
nodded. "I'll catch hell anyway, but I'd rather not have you around when
we land. I never did trust my luck when a ship breaks up." He pointed at
Ignatz
. "Keep that under cover. If the O.M. finds out
who you are, I'll put you off in a lead suit,
without
a
'chute.
Savvy, mister?"

Jerry savvied plenty. He motioned
Ignatz
back under the bunk and moved over to the shelf
where his grub lay.
Blane
turned to go. And then raw
Hades broke loose.

There was
a
sick jarring, and a demon's siren seemed to go off in their ears. The
shelf jumped across the room; Jerry hit the captain with his head. For half a
second, there was complete silence, followed by bedlam, while the ship jerked
crazily under their feet. Acting on instinct, both the captain and Master
dashed for the oxygen helmet, and a private war started before either realized
what had happened.

Jerry straightened up first. "That was
the control engine," he yelled in
Blane's
ear.
The man couldn't hear, but he caught the idea. "Get out of here and find
out what happened."

There was no thought of prisoners. Jerry
pounded along at the captain's heels, and
Ignatz
had
only time to make
a
convulsive
leap and slide down Jerry's neck under his jacket. Men were swarming down the
stairwell and up from the main rocket rooms. A babble of voices blended with
a
shrilling of alarms and a thud of feet on
cuproberyl
decks.

The Old Man was in the engine room before
them. "
Blanel
Blanel
Hey, somebody find that
lunkhead
before these fools
wreck the whole ship!"

Blane
saluted roughly, his mouth open, his eyes
darting about the wreck of the steering engine. "
Wha
-what
happened?"

One quick glance had told Jerry.
"Which one of
you oilers let the main bearings run dry?"

A wiper pointed silently to a shapeless lump
of bones and assorted cold cuts. While eyes turned that way,
Ignatz
slipped out and pushed from sight between
a
post and wall that were still partly whole.

Jerry Lord's mouth was set as he swung to
Blane
. "Got
a
spare engine? No. Well, dismantle one of your gyro-stabilizer engines
and hook it up. Send men to inspect what damage was done to the controls. Get
the doctor up here to look over these men who are still in one piece. Wake up,
man!"

Blane
shut his mouth slowly, wheeled back to the
men and began shouting instructions, until some order came out of the milling
mass of men. In the confusion, the O.M. hadn't noticed Jerry, but he swung to
him now.

"Who let you out? Never mind; you're
here. It's a good thing somebody has some sense, or that yellow-
belly'd
still be dreaming! Captain
Blane
,
get that wreck out of here, put this prisoner to work. We can't waste time or
men now. I'm going back to the control co-
ordinators
to inspect the dam-age."

Now that the shock of his first major accident was over,
Blane
snapped briskly into it. He glared at Jerry, but postponed
it for later.
Ignatz
knew this was to be held against
the Master, as well as the other troubles were, and he mumbled uncomfortably.

With the engine in scattered parts, little dismantling was necessary.
The men were cleaning the parts away, cutting such few bolts as were left in
the base, and preparing the space for the new engine. The stabilizer motor came
in, one part at a time, and Jerry oversaw its placement and assembly, set its
governor, and hooked the controls to it as rapidly as the crew could cut away
the bent rods and weld new ones in their place. In an emergency, no group of
men on Earth can do the work that a space-crew can turn out in a scant
half-hour, and these were all seasoned star-jumpers; to them the lack of
gravity was a help rather than
a
hindrance
in the swift completion of the work.

By
the time the O.M. was back, the walls were being welded over, the new engine
was tuned, the controls hitched, and the captain was sweating and swearing, but
satisfied that the work had been well done. Jerry came back from the stabilizer
hold to report the motors retuned and set for the added load given by the loss
of one of the five engines, with the juice feeding in evenly.

The Old Man motioned
silentiy
,
his face blank and expressionless, and
Blane
gulped
as he turned to follow. Jerry strung along without invitation, tucking
Ignatz
carefully out of sight under his clothes.

Back in the nerve center of the ship, the
control integrators were a hopeless mess. The main thrust rods that coupled
the control turret to the engine were still intact, but the cables and complex
units of gears and eveners that formed the nearly human brain of the ship were
ruined beyond possibility of repair.

The O.M.'s voice was almost purring, but his
eyelids twitched. "Have you repairs, Captain?"

"Some. We might be able to jury-rig part
of it, but not enough to couple the major rockets to the control panel. That
looks to me like a one-way ticket to hell." Under the stress of danger,
the man had relapsed into a numb hopelessness.

"How many hours to
Venus, and where's the danger point?"

"Sixty hours, and we either get control
in ten, or we fall straight into the sun. We're in Orbit C-3 now, and we'll
miss Venus entirely."

"Not a chance to get repairs sent out in
time," the O.M. muttered. "Well, I guess that's that."

Jerry pushed past the captain, saluted the
O.M. quietly. "Beg pardon, sir, but it might be possible to control the
ship manually from here, with observations relayed from the control
turret."

Momentarily their eyes
brightened, but only for a split second. "Not one man in
a
thousand knows the layout of the cables here, and the job would be
physically impossible. I don't know whether this rod should be forced back or
that one forward. When the old manual controls were still in, we had them
arranged logically in banks, but this is uncharted confusion."

"I know the layout," Jerry offered
evenly. "It's simply
a
question of being able to move around fast enough to coordinate the
thrust rods." Yet he looked at the mass of rods, levers, and cables with
doubt large in his heart. It meant covering an eight-foot wall, and keeping the
tangle of even-
ers
clear in his mind every second of
the time, though it might be done.

There was
a
snort from
Blane
, but the O.M. silenced it.
"We have to believe in miracles now. It's our only chance. Are you sure
you can do it, mister?"

"Fairly sure, sir."

"How many helpers?"

Jerry grinned sourly. "None; it's easier
and surer doing it than telling others how to do it, and maybe having them mess
things up.
Has to be a one-man job."

"Right."
There was grudging approval on the scowling
face. "
Blane
, you take orders from him; get the
wrecked parts out, uncouple the remaining automatics. You and the navigators
will take turns relaying the chart data to this room —and it'd better be right.
Get a phone hooked up at once, and put this man to work. If we get to Venus,
he's free, no questions asked, and a good job waiting for him. If we don't, he
won't need the job."