Norton, Andre - Anthology (7 page)

 
          
 
Laska ball was an extremely fast, excellent
exercise. It was a modified form of basket ball, played on an elliptical court,
in which the captains could control the location of their team's basket. It was
a well-adapted sport for the limited recreational space of small ships.

 
          
 
Nord Corbett forced himself to sit through the
first half of the game, but not even the electrical speed of the game, the
rocketing ball flashing through the oscillating, flickering basket, could
remove his vague apprehension.

 
          
 
A cold cloud of worry shadowed his mind until
he fell asleep.

 
          
 
At 0500, an hour before his usual rising time,
Latham, Officer-of-the-Watch, called him.

 
          
 
"Captain, the lattice shows a small cloud
of meteoric dust approximately seventy-five thousand kilosecs in diameter. The
density is point zero zero four. I get a spectral classification of Fe dash
one-three-nine-four dash alpha nine-three delta over six. It is located
seventy-two light-minutes from our course at
one thirty-six
degrees above the axial plane. May I have
your permission to decelerate to chart the cloud?"

 
          
 
"I'll be out in a few minutes."

 
          
 
He dressed himself quickly with smooth fluid
motion. He paused for a moment before opening the panel leading from his flight
quarters to the captain's gallery. Visions of his vessel's sleek, silver sides
and streamlined length washed the background of his mind like a welcome dream.
The Bureau of Ships called it a Dispatch Freighter, but no captain commanding a
mighty thousand-meter exploring battleship would ever experience the soul-satisfying
thrill his ship filled him with. A wave of pure contentment filled him as his
eyes ran over the narrow welded seams of the ivory-dyed bulkhead. He paused
there to listen to his ship: the soft whisper of the muffled air ducts was as
soothing as a muted lullaby. The thin, tiny creak of the outer hull responding
to its airless environment was as thrilling as a triumphant, stellar symphony.
A frown of perplexity flickered between his gray eyes as he sniffed the air.

 
          
 
The atmosphere seemed slightly tainted. It
lacked the heady, tingling, euphoric quality the conditioners normally imparted
to the ship's atmosphere. One of the tubes working the negatron must have blown
during the night. He realized he couldn't depend on Bickford and that he would
have to be watched closely. The thought flashed through his mind of the
consequences if Bickford were to be careless. What if he got
sloppy,
and something did go wrong with their air? He had once seen the results of slow
asphyxiation in an attack transport. He forced the unwelcome memory from his
mind.

 
          
 
He stepped out on the gallery.

 
          
 
"Good morning," Nord said, as the
watch officer snapped to attention.

 
          
 
Three meters below him the helmsmen were bent
over the green-lighted circular telegator screen. The tiny red and amber lights
over the instrument banks imparted a soft, restful gloom to the darkened
bridge.

 
          
 
He walked the length of his gallery. On the
right brushing his sleeve were the telepanels: the spy plates hated alike by
officers and crew. The plates that brought him visual contact with all
compartments of the ship and that he never used except in drills. On his left,
at waist-high level, were the master's meters, duplicates of the instrument
banks on the bridge deck below.

 
          
 
'Midship, in front of his own telegator
screen, he paused, adjusted the magnification of the tiny green light
indicating their course and which speared the exact center of the screen. He
measured the circumference of the dot with a micrometer of sodium light, ran
off the difference in the calibrator.

 
          
 
"Latham," he leaned over the rail.

 
          
 
Latham stepped forward of the steering gang,
looked up. "Yes, Captain."

 
          
 
"Three-millionths of a millimeter in ten
million miles is not very much angulation, but in fourteen light-years it
amounts to several hundred miles of unnecessary travel. You are off your
course," he made it sound like a joke between old friends, "three
point two angstrom units."

 
          
 
He stepped over to the lattice, checked the
dimensions of the nebulous cloud on the screen. A quick glance at the map above
his head showed the cloud had never been charted. Under high magnification he
could see the lazy whirling of its vortex. He set drift spots on the larger
lumps in the periphery, ran up the time scale to see how near it lay on their
course.

 
          
 
"Divert twenty-three angstroms on an
axial plane—"

 
          
 
"But don't you want to decelerate and
study the cloud for the astrographic office?" Latham asked in bewildered
surprise.

 
          
 
Nord smiled indulgently. "It would take
us a full month to decelerate, jockey back. Then we'd have to start
accelerating again, and it would take almost three months to come back to
terminal velocity. The time loss would be almost four months. Just chart the
cloud, and let the office worry about the details."

 
          
 
He looked at the air instruments. He studied
them so long he was aware he was being watched by the men below. He
straightened, checked all the instruments before he leaned over the rail to
clasp his hands in what appeared to be benign unconcern.

 
          
 
Just as the 0600 gong announced the change in
watch, he spoke up. "Mr. Latham, give me your air readings."

 
          
 
"Yes, sir."
Latham stepped to the air board.
"Pressure in the ship,
steady at seven-seventy mm; mean temperature, twenty degrees, three degrees fluctuation
downward at 2300.
Humidity, fifty-two per cent.
Air motion: forty meters per minute with seven-meter variation every fourteen
seconds. Composition of arterial air: oxygen, eighteen point four three per
cent, carbon dioxide, point eight three per cent. Excess negative ions to the
order of—"

 
          
 
"That's enough." Nord turned back
and looked again at his own board. Something was the matter. What had Bick-ford
neglected to do now? His voice took on cold purpose. "Summon Mr. Bickford
for me, please."

 
          
 
Corbett turned abruptly, went into his flight
quarters. The steward had already made up his bunk, and the compartment was now
as neat as that distant day on Earth he had moved into it. He drew a cup of
coffee from a gleaming canister, sipped slowly. It would be
a
good idea to have Hardman check
the entire air system from venous intake
to arterial outflow. On second thought, he resolved to do it himself.

 
          
 
He was reading the master log when his yeoman
entered the office. "Dr. Stacker and Mr. Hardman request permission to
speak to the captain."

 
          
 
"Morning, gentlemen," Nord greeted
them; he waved to the canister and cups. "Help yourself to morning coffee,
then
toss me your mind."

 
          
 
Hardman turned to Dr. Stacker, his face drawn
and cold. "You tell him, Doc."

 
          
 
"A lad playing laska ball last night
fractured a patella. I had a corpsman up all night watching him because
sometimes the bone plastic causes pain. He called me at 2315 that the sick bay
temp had dropped four degrees."

 
          
 
"What of that? You have your own
thermostatic control," Corbett told him.

 
          
 
"That's true," Stacker admitted,
"but I usually maintain ship's temp. When the drop came, I didn't know
whether it came on order from the senior watch officer or . . . or . . ."

 
          
 
Nord understood the hesitation. The doctor did
not want to be an informer. "You mean,"
he
suggested helpfully, "you wondered if the air officer might be
careless."

 
          
 
Stacker nodded. "You saw his act last
night at dinner. That is not the action of a normal man. That anger was a paranoid
reaction to his hatred for all of us and particularly for you. In you, he sees
the authority he hates so much. That scene crystallized in his mind the
determination of what he intended to do to the ship."

 
          
 
Nord felt again as if Pluto's frigid winds were
blowing out from the center of his being. Dread like a black frozen cloud
enveloped his mind. "What did he intend to do?" His voice was voder
cold.

 
          
 
"I don't know." The doctor admitted
his ignorance in a tight, hushed voice.

 
          
 
Nord was aware of the unperceived worry that
flowed over the space surgeon's mind, knew it mirrored his own vague
premonition of impending catastrophe. "Go on," he prodded gently.

 
          
 
"I went down to his cabin to investigate.
You see, I've felt Bickford was a psychopath. No reason, you understand,"
he explained apologetically, "sensed it, an intuitive reaction rather than
something of real diagnostic import. He's always been most affable to me, a bit
eccentric, but his conduct in the mess except for some vulgar characteristics
has been exemplary."

 
          
 
"He seemed O.K. to me," Nord said.
"I've made it a point to look for personality change at dinner. He never
seemed sour like so many officers do when they get space weary. I never trusted
him much," he admitted hesitantly. "I felt that was pure friction
between opposing personalities; it seemed to me he was always trying to impress
me with his influential relatives."

 
          
 
"They are influential," Dr. Stacker
pointed out, "otherwise they could never have gotten him aboard without a
psychosomatic examination. When he reported, I asked him for permission to
contact the Public Health Bureau, which maintains medical files on all
citizens. He refused. I thought he might have something in his record he was
ashamed of and was overly sensitive about it. I asked to examine him myself,
and he said it wasn't necessary. Well," the physician shrugged his
shoulders, "you can't examine a civilian in a military ship against his
wishes. After we left lunar quarantine, I watched him closely, but as he seemed
to adapt to ship's routine, I thought I might be wrong. I knew he was money
mad, feels wealth will give him the security he lacks. Last night he heard
about the wealth on board, and because he felt we were not giving him the honor
and deference he thought his position warranted, he resolved to do something
about it and show us how good his mind was.

 
          
 
"He went down to air treatment and got
drunk."

 
          
 
"Got drunk!"
Nord looked stunned. "Why? How?
On what?"

 
          
 
"He used the alcohol showers in air
treatment as his bar. Entrance to the chlorophyl banks is through an alcohol
bath. The bath is necessary to remove bacteria from the
armor,
otherwise you would infect the chlorophyl, which is about a thousand times more
sensitive to infection than a chick embryo.

 
          
 
"I found Bickford clinically intoxicated;
he passed out in his cabin. I did a blood alcohol on him and found he had four
point three milligrams per cent—that's enough alcohol in the blood to make
anyone dead drunk. I'm afraid, captain, in having his party he must have
infected the chlorophyl. Our oxygen is going down, and C0 2 is rising."