"Findin' out where things is goin'," evaded Nibley.
Kroll snapped his gaze at Nibley. The old man hurried on, "Why, I know
where the whole blamed universe is headin'." Everybody looked up from
their eating. "But you wouldn't believe me if I told you," laughed the
old man.
Somebody whistled. Others chuckled. Kroll relaxed. Bruno scowled.
Nibley continued, "It's a feelin'. You can't describe stars to a blind
man, or God to anybody. Why, hell's bells, lads, if I wanted I could
write a formula on paper and if you worked it out in your mind you'd
drop dead of symbol poison."
Again laughter. A bit of wine was poured all around as a bracer for
the hours ahead. Nibley eyed the forbidden stuff and got up. "Well, I
got to go." "Have some wine," said Bruno. "No, thanks," said Nibley.
"Go ahead, have some," said Bruno. "I don't like it," said Nibley,
wetting his lips. "That's a laugh," said Bruno, eyeing him. "I got to
go upstairs. Nice to have ate with you boys. See you later, after we
get through the Swarms--"
Faces became wooden at the mention of the approaching Belt. Fingers
tightened against the table edge. Nibley spidered back up the rungs to
his little room alone.
An hour later, Nibley was drunk as a chromium-plated pirate.
He kept it a secret. He hid the wine-bottle in his shock-hammock,
groggily. Stroke of luck. Oh yes, oh yes, a stroke, a stroke of luck,
yes, yes, yes, finding that lovely fine wonderful wine in the storage
cabinet near the visiport. Why, yes! And since he'd been thirsty for so
long, so long, so long. Well? Gurgle, gurgle!
Nibley was drunk.
He swayed before the visiport, drunkenly deciding the trajectories of
a thousand invisible nothings. Then he began to argue with himself,
drowsily, as he always argued when wine-webs were being spun through
his skull by red, drowsy spiders. His heart beat dully. His little
sharp eyes flickered with sudden flights of anger.
"You're some liar, Mr. Nibley," he told himself. "You point at meteors,
but who's to prove you right or wrong, right or wrong, eh? You sit up
here and wait and wait and wait. Those machines down below spoil it.
You never have a chance to prove your ability! No! The captain won't
use you! He won't need you! None of those men believe in you. Think
you're a liar. Laugh at you. Yes, laugh. Yes, they call you an old, old
liar!"
Nibley's thin nostrils quivered. His thin wrinkled face was crimsoned
and wild. He staggered to his feet, got hold of his favorite
monkey-wrench and waved it slowly back and forth.
* * * * *
For a moment his heart almost stopped in him. In panic he clutched at
his chest, pushing, pulling, pumping at his heart to keep it running.
The wine. The excitement. He dropped the wrench. "No, not yet!" he
looked down at his chest, wildly tearing at it. "Not just yet, oh
please!" he cried. "Not until I _show_ them!"
His heart went on beating, drunkenly, slowly.
He bent, retrieved the wrench and laughed numbly. "I'll show 'em," he
cried, weaving across the deck. "Show them how good I am. Eliminate
competition! I'll run the ship myself!"
He climbed slowly down the rungs to destroy the machines.
It made a lot of noise.
Nibley heard a shout. "Get him!" His hand went down again, again. There
was a scream of whistles, a jarring of flung metal, a minor explosion.
His hand went down again, the wrench in it. He felt himself cursing
and pounding away. Something shattered. Men ran toward him. _This_ was
the computator! He hit upon it once more. Yes! Then he was caught up
like an empty sack, smashed in the face by someone's fist, thrown to
the deck. "Cut acceleration!" a voice cried far away. The ship slowed.
Somebody kicked Nibley in the face. Blackness. Dark. Around and around
down into darkness....
When he opened his eyes again people were talking:
"We're turning back."
"The hell we are. Kroll says we'll go on, anyway."
"That's suicide! We can't hit that Asteroid Belt without radar."
Nibley looked up from the floor. Kroll was there, over him, looking
down at the old man. "I might have known," he said, over and over
again. He wavered in Nibley's sobering vision.
The ship hung motionless, silent. Through the ports, Nibley saw they
were based on the sunward side of a large planetoid, waiting, shielded
from most of the asteroid particles.
"I'm sorry," said Nibley.
"He's sorry." Kroll swore. "The very man we bring along as relief
computator sabotages our machine! Hell!"
Bruno was in the room. Nibley saw Bruno's eyes dilate at Kroll's
exclamation. Bruno knew now.
Nibley tried to get up. "We'll get through the Swarm, anyway. I'll take
you through. That's why I broke that blasted contraption. I don't like
competition. I can clear a path through them asteroids big enough to
lug Luna through on Track Five!"
"Who gave you the wine?"
"I found it, I just found it, that's all."
The crew hated him with their eyes. He felt their hatred like so many
meteors coming in and striking at him. They hated his shriveled,
wrinkled old man guts. They stood around and waited for Kroll to let
them kick him apart with their boots.
Kroll walked around the old man in a circle. "You think I'd chance you
getting us through the Belt!" He snorted. "What if we got half through
and you got potted again!" He stopped, with his back to Nibley. He was
thinking. He kept looking over his shoulder at the old man. "I can't
trust you." He looked out the port at the stars, at where Jupiter shone
in space. "And yet--" He looked at the men. "Do you want to turn back?"
Nobody moved. They didn't have to answer. They didn't want to go back.
They wanted to go ahead.
"We'll keep on going, then," said Kroll.
Bruno spoke. "We crew-members should have some say. I say go back. We
can't make it. We're just wasting our lives."
Kroll glanced at him, coolly. "You seem to be alone." He went back to
the port. He rocked on his heels. "It was no accident Nibley got that
wine. Somebody planted it, knowing Nibley's weakness. Somebody who
was paid off by the Martian Industrials to keep this ship from going
through. This was a clever set-up. The machines were smashed in such
a way as to throw suspicion directly on an innocent, well, almost
innocent, party. Nibley was just a tool. I'd like to know who handled
that tool--"
Nibley got up, the wrench in his gnarled hand. "I'll tell you who
planted that wine. I been thinking and now--"
Darkness. A short-circuit. Feet running on the metal deck. A shout. A
thread of fire across the darkness. Then a whistling as something flew,
hit. Someone grunted.
The lights came on again. Nibley was at the light control.
On the floor, gun in hand, eyes beginning to numb, lay Bruno. He lifted
the gun, fired it. The bullet hit Nibley in the stomach.
Nibley grabbed at the pain. Kroll kicked at Bruno's head. Bruno's head
snapped back. He lay quietly.
The blood pulsed out between Nibley's fingers. He watched it with
interest, grinning with pain. "I knew his orbit," he whispered, sitting
down cross-legged on the deck. "When the lights went out I chose my own
orbit back to the light switch. I knew where Bruno'd be in the dark.
Havin' a wrench handy I let fly, choosin' my arc, naturally. Guess he's
got a hard skull, though...."
* * * * *
They carried Nibley to a bunk. Douglas stood over him, dimly, growing
older every second. Nibley squinted up. All the men tightened in upon
it. Nibley felt their dismay, their dread, their worry, their nervous
anger.
Finally, Kroll exhaled. "Turn the ship around," he said. "Go back to
Mars."
The crew stood with their limp hands at their sides. They were tired.
They didn't want to live any more. They just stood with their feet on
the deck. Then, one by one, they began to walk away like so many cold,
dead men.
"Hold on," cried Nibley, weakening. "I ain't through yet. I got two
orbits to fix. I got one to lay out for this ship to Jupiter. And I got
to finish out my own separate secret personal orbit. You ain't turnin'
back nowhere!"
Kroll grimaced. "Might as well realize it, Grandpa. It takes seven
hours to get through the Swarms, and you haven't another _two_ hours in
you."
The old man laughed. "Think I don't know that? Hell! Who's supposed to
know all these things, me or you?"
"You, Pop."
"Well, then, dammit--bring me a bulger!"
"Now, look--"
"You heard me, by God--a bulger!"
"Why?"
"You ever hear of a thing called triangulation? Well, maybe I won't
live long enough to go with you, but, by all the sizes and shapes of
behemoths--this ship is jumpin' through to Jupiter!"
Kroll looked at him. There was a breathing silence, a heart beating
silence in the ship. Kroll sucked in his breath, hesitated, then smiled
a grey smile.
"You heard him, Douglas. Get him a bulger."
"And get a stretcher! And tote this ninety pounds of bone out on the
biggest asteroid around here! Got that?"
"You heard him, Haines! A stretcher! Stand by for maneuvering!" Kroll
sat down by the old man. "What's it all about, Pop? You're--sober?"
"Clear as a bell!"
"What're you going to do?"
"Redeem myself of my sins, by George! Now get your ugly face away so I
can think! And tell them bucks to hurry!"
Kroll bellowed and men rushed. They brought a space-suit, inserted the
ninety pounds of shrill and wheeze and weakness into it--the doctor had
finished with his probings and fixings--buckled, zipped and welded him
into it. All the while they worked, Nibley talked.
"Remember when I was a kid. Stood up to that there plate poundin' out
baseballs North, South and six ways from Sundays." He chuckled. "Used
to hit 'em, and predict which window in what house they'd break!"
Wheezy laughter. "One day I said to my Dad, 'Hey, Dad, a meteor just
fell on Simpson's Garage over in Jonesville.' 'Jonesville is six miles
from here', said my father, shakin' his finger at me. 'You quit your
lyin', Nibley boy, or I'll trot you to the woodshed!'"
"Save your strength," said Kroll.
"That's all right," said Nibley. "You know the funny thing was always
that I lied like hell and everybody said I lied like hell, but come
to find out, later, I wasn't lyin' at all, it was the truth. I just
_sensed_ things."
The ship maneuvered down on a windless, empty planetoid. Nibley was
carried on a stretcher out onto alien rock.
"Lay me down right here. Prop up my head so I can see Jupiter and the
whole damned Asteroid Belt. Be sure my headphones are tuned neat.
There. Now, give me a piece of paper."
Nibley scribbled a long weak snake of writing on paper, folded it.
"When Bruno comes to, give him this. Maybe he'll believe me when he
reads it. Personal. Don't pry into it yourself."
The old man sank back, feeling pain drilling through his stomach, and a
kind of sad happiness. Somebody was singing somewhere, he didn't know
where. Maybe it was only the stars moving on the sky.
"Well," he said, clearly. "Guess this is it, children. Now get the
hell aboard, leave me alone to think. This is going to be the biggest,
hardest, damnedest job of computatin' I ever latched onto! There'll be
orbits and cross orbits, big balls of fire and little bitty specules,
and, by God, I'll chart 'em all! I'll chart a hundred thousand of the
damned monsters and their offspring, you just wait and see! Get aboard!
I'll tell you what to do from there on."
Douglas looked doubtful.
Nibley caught the look. "What ever happens," he cried. "Will be worth
it, won't it? It's better than turnin' back to Mars, ain't it? Well,
_ain't_ it?"
"It's better," said Douglas. They shook hands.
"Now all of you, get!"
* * * * *
Nibley watched the ship fire away and his eyes saw it and the Asteroid
Swarm and that brilliant point of light that was massive Jupiter. He
could almost feel the hunger and want and waiting up there in that star
flame.
He looked out into space and his eyes widened and space came in, opened
out like a flower, and already, natural as water flowing, Nibley's
mind, tired as it was, began to shiver out calculations. He started
talking.
"Captain? Take the ship straight out now. You hear?"
"_Fine_," answered the captain.
"Look at your dials."
"_Looking._"
"If number seven reads 132:87, okay. Keep 'er there. If she varies a
point, counteract it on Dial Twenty to 56.90. Keep her hard over for
seventy thousand miles, all that is clear so far. Then, after that, a
sharp veer in number two direction, over a thousand miles. There's a
big sweep of meteors coming in on that other path for you to dodge. Let
me see, let me see--" He figured. "Keep your speed at a constant of one
hundred thousand miles. At that rate--check your clocks and watches--in
exactly an hour you'll hit the second part of the Big Belt. Then switch
to a course roughly five thousand miles over to number 3 direction,
veer again five minutes on the dot later and--"
"_Can you see all those asteroids, Nibley. Are you sure?_"
"Sure. Lots of 'em. Every single one going every which way! Keep
straight ahead until two hours from now, after that last direction of
mine--then slide off at an angle toward Jupiter, slow down to ninety
thousand for ten minutes, then up to a hundred ten thousand for fifteen
minutes. After that, one hundred fifty thousand all the way!"
Flame poured out of the rocket jets. It moved swiftly away, growing
small and distant.
"Give me a read on dial 67!"
"_Four._"
"Make it six! And set your automatic pilot to 61 and 14 and 35.
Now--everything's okay. Keep your chronometer reading this way--seven,
nine, twelve. There'll be a few tight scrapes, but you'll hit Jupiter
square on in 24 hours, if you jump your speed to 700,000 six hours from
now and hold it that way."
"_Square on it is, Mr. Nibley._"
Nibley just lay there a moment. His voice was easy and not so high and
shrill any more. "And on the way back to Mars, later, don't try to find
me. I'm going out in the dark on this metal rock. Nothing but dark for
me. Back to perihelion and sun for you. Know--know where _I'm_ going?"
"_Where?_"
"Centaurus!" Nibley laughed. "So help me God I am. No lie!"
He watched the ship going out, then, and he felt the compact, collected
trajectories of all the men in it. It was a good feeling to know that
he was the guiding theme. Like in the old days....
Douglas' voice broke in again.
"_Hey, Pop. Pop, you still there?_"
A little silence. Nibley felt blood pulsing down inside his suit.
"Yep," he said.
"_We just gave Bruno your little note to read. Whatever it was, when he
finished reading it, he went insane._"
Nibley said, quiet-like. "Burn that there paper. Don't let anybody else
read it."