"Not until I have to," said Alan. "Now please call some one to show me
my cabin."
"Band playing in the lounge, sir. Tea is being served in the Moon Room,
and the Bar is open until just before takeoff."
"Thanks, but I've been ill. I just want to find my cabin."
"Boy!" called Steward Davis. "Show this gentleman to 31Q."
* * * * *
Alan followed the pageboy through a complex of corridors, ascending
spirals of stairs, down a hall, and to the door of Cabin 31Q. The boy
threw open the door and Alan stepped in, then halted in shocked
disbelief at sight of a white-haired old man who was just lifting a
shirt from an opened suitcase.
"I am Dr. Chase. Isn't this Cabin 31Q?"
The old man beamed, his pink skin breaking into a thousand tiny
wrinkles. "That's right. 31Q it is."
"Then what are you doing here?"
"Have you no powers of observation? Unpacking, of course. I was assigned
to this cabin."
Staggering over to a bunk, Alan sagged back against the wall. He lifted
his tired eyelids and stared at the sprightly old gentleman.
"But I was promised a cabin by myself!"
The old man looked distressed. "I'm very sorry, young man. I, too, hoped
to have a cabin to my self. I learned only a few minutes ago that I was
to be quartered with another passenger--evidently you. Somebody made a
mistake, there's no question of that, but the Purser tells me that every
bit of space is occupied, and no other arrangements can be made. Unless
you want to postpone your voyage, and follow in a later ship?"
"No," said Alan. His voice had sunk to a whisper. "No, I can't do that."
"Then we'll have to make the best of it, young man," he said, picking up
a pile of handkerchiefs, and putting them in the drawer he had pulled
out from the wall.
"Let me introduce myself. I am Wilson Larrabee--teacher, or student,
according to the point of view. Some years of my life I've spent being a
professor of this or that at various universities, and the other years
I've spent in travel. Whenever the bank account gets low, I offer my
knowledge to the nearest university, and stay there until I pile up
enough credits so I can travel again."
"Sounds a lonely sort of life, with no roots anywhere."
"Oh, no! My wife loved travelling as much as I do, and wherever she was,
was home." He paused, his hand arrested in the act of hanging up his
last necktie, and for a moment his face was somber. Then he finished
hanging up the tie, gave it a little pat, and continued cheerfully.
"We saw most of the world, in the fifty years we had together. The last
trip she made with me, to the Moon and back, was in some ways the
pleasantest of all. After we returned, we started planning and saving
and dreaming of making one last grand tour outside the solar system. And
then--well, she was more than seventy, and I try to think that she isn't
dead, that she just started the last tour a little ahead of me. That's
why I'm making this jaunt now, the one we planned on the _Star Lord_.
It's lonely, in a way, but she wouldn't have wanted me to give up and
stay home, just because I had to go on alone."
* * * * *
Glancing at Alan's bent head, Professor Larrabee abruptly banged shut
the lid of his empty suitcase and shoved it into the conveyor port in
the wall to shoot it down to Luggage. Then he straightened up and
rumpled his white hair.
"That's done, young man. Will you join me in the Bar for a spacecap?"
"Sorry, sir. I'm very tired. I just want to rest and be quiet."
"But a frothed whiskey would help you to relax. Come along, and let me
buy you a final drink before we take off for eternity."
Alan noticed with distaste the white carnation in the coat lapel of his
companion. "I hardly like to think of this trip as being synonymous with
eternity," he said. "You sound as though you didn't expect to come
back."
"Do I? Perhaps I made an unfortunate choice of words. But do you believe
in premonitions, Dr. Chase?"
"No. All premonitions stem from indigestion."
"No doubt you are right. But from the moment of boarding this ship I
have been haunted by the memory of an extremely vivid story I once
read."
"What kind of a story?"
"Oh, it was a scientific romance, one of those impossible flights of
fancy they used to publish in my boyhood, about the marvels of future
science. This was in the days before we had got outside the solar
system, but I still remember the tale, for it was about a spaceship
which was wrecked on its first voyage."
"But there've been hundreds of other such stories! Why should this
particular one be bothering you now?"
"Well, you see," said the professor apologetically, "it's because of the
name. The coincidence of names. This other ship, the one in the
story--it was called the _Star Lord_."
"I wouldn't let that worry me. Surely it's a logical name for a
spaceship?"
Professor Larrabee laughed. "Logical, and perhaps a trifle presumptuous.
But I'm sure it's a meaningless coincidence, my boy. Now how about that
drink?"
Alan shook his head.
"Come, Dr. Chase. Allow me the liberties of an old man. You're obviously
ill, you want to crawl into a hole and pull the hole in after you, and
enjoy the deadly luxury of feeling sorry for yourself. But we can't do
that sort of thing. Let me prescribe for you."
With an effort, Alan smiled. "All right, Professor. I usually do the
prescribing myself, but right now I'm too tired to argue. I'll accept a
spacecap with pleasure." He swallowed a panedol tablet to ease his pain,
then pulled himself up.
"That's the spirit, my boy! We will drink to the _Star Lord_, that she
may have a happier fate than her namesake."
* * * * *
Five minutes before takeoff. The first signal had sounded. The Bar was
closed by now, the lounges deserted, and in theory the twelve hundred
and fifty passengers were secure in their cabins, waiting for the
instantaneous jump into hyperspace.
At the port, Chief Steward Davis leaned against the wall with his tray
of wilting flowers, while the Second Officer and two crewmen stood by,
waiting for the final signal to close the port.
They were startled by a sudden commotion, a flurry of voices, and turned
to see the elevator doors open on the loading platform. A group of
laughing people surged forward.
"But I'm late again, darlings!" cried a vibrant voice. "You must let me
go now! The ship is waiting just for me, I know. Stop holding me!"
"But we don't want to lose you!" called a man.
"You know I'll be back in the fall."
"But the theater can't get along without you!"
"But it won't be forever, darling!"
Still laughing, Tanya Taganova pulled away from her teasing friends. She
was a tall woman, very slender; very beautiful, with her burnished
auburn hair and warm brown eyes. She walked forward with the swift
precision of a dancer, in her flared gown of stiff green satin, whose
ruff stood out about her slender neck to frame a regal head. In her arms
she carried an enormous sheaf of red roses.
With light steps she entered the port, then turned to wave at her
friends and give them a last challenging smile.
The Second Officer asked sharply, "Are you a passenger, madame? You're
rather late."
"And I tried _so_ hard to be on time for once in my life! I'm very
sorry, lieutenant!"
"Quite all right, madame. You got here in time, and that's what counts.
But you'll have to hurry to get to your cabin before takeoff."
"Wait!" said Steward Davis. His long face had come to life as he looked
at her admiringly and extended his tray of flowers.
"White roses? For me?" she said.
"Yes, madame. Compliments of the Star Line."
Turning her head, she moved away. "Thank you, but I'm not ready to wear
white roses, yet. It's not that they're not lovely, but--" she raised
her arms, burdened with their scented blooms, "you see that I already
have so many flowers, and the red rose is still for the living!"
Davis banged his tray to the floor and shoved it aside with his foot.
"All right, madame. Now we'll have to hurry. We'll have to run!"
* * * * *
A final bell rang, a final light flashed.
On the floor below the ship, the crowds of relatives and wistful
stay-at-homes gazed up; at the beautiful metal creation, poised on its
slender fins, nose pointed towards the opened dome.
A vibration began, a gentle, barely perceptible shuddering of the ground
which increased in frequency. It beat through the floor, into their
feet, until their whole bodies quivered with the racing pulse that grew
faster, faster, as the twenty-four total conversion Piles in the ship
released their power. Then, as the people watched, between one instant
and the next, the ship vanished. In the blink of an eyelid she had
shifted to hyperspace.
The _Star Lord_ had begun her maiden voyage.
* * * * *
By the second day out, most of the passengers felt completely at home.
The ship had become a separate world, and the routines they had left
behind them on earth, and the various routines they would take up again
some six weeks from now on Almazin III seemed equally remote and
improbable. Life on the _Star Lord_ was the only reality.
She moved through the uncharted realms of hyperspace, travelling in one
hour's time as measured by earth watches, more than twenty light years
distance, if measured in the units of real space. The ship itself was
quiet. The vibration of the takeoff had ended in a moment, and now the
passengers could hear no noise and hum of motors, could feel no motion
against swelling waves, no battering against a barrier of uneven air.
The artificial gravity induced a sense of security as absolute as though
the ship were resting on living rock.
Although most of the cabins were small, they were cleverly designed to
provide the maximum of comfort, even the least expensive of them. For
the very wealthy, the rulers of the galaxy's finance, the owners of the
galaxy's industries, the makers of the galaxy's entertainment, there
were the luxury cabins. The floors glowed with the soft reds of oriental
rugs, the lounge chairs were upholstered in fabrics gleaming with gold
thread. Cream-colored satin curtains fluttered in an artificial breeze
at the simulated windows, and on the walls hung tranquil landscapes in
dull gold frames. To those who had engaged them, the ornate cabins
seemed only appropriate to their own eminent positions in life.
Delicious meals were served three times a day in the several dining
rooms, the softly lighted Bar was never closed, and every day three
theaters offered a varied program of stereo-dramas. There was even--the
most marvelous, daring, expensive luxury of all--a swimming pool. The
pool was small, and was open only to the first cabin passengers, but the
fact that a ship travelling to a distant solar system could afford room
enough for a pool, and extra weight for the water needed to fill it,
seemed evidence that man had achieved a complete conquest of the
inconveniences of space travel.
One luxury, however, freely accessible to even the poorest sheep herder
on earth, was denied the passengers of the _Star Lord_.
They could not see the stars. They could not see the sky.
The ship had portholes, of course, and observation rooms which could be
opened if at any time she cruised in normal space, but the ports and
observation windows were closed now, for there was nothing to see. The
ship was surrounded by blackness, the impenetrable, unknowable
blackness, of hyperspace, but this black emptiness did not frighten the
passengers because they never bothered to think about it.
But the builders of the ship had designed it so that even the simple
pleasure of looking at a friendly sky should not be denied its
passengers. An artificial day and night of the appropriate length was
maintained by the dimming and brightening of lights, and the main
lounges were bounded with special walls which looked like windows,
through which could be glimpsed bright summer days, fleecy clouds
drifting over a blue sky, and, in the evenings, soft starlight.
* * * * *
Every passenger should have been soothed into contentment by these
devices, but by the end of the first week, Burl Jasperson was restless.
He hated to sit still, and the hours and the days seemed endless. His
bald head and portly body were a familiar sight as he roamed the ship,
inspecting every detail as though it were his personal responsibility.
Once a day he called on Captain Evans to check on the progress of the
_Star Lord_, once a day he chafed under the cold courtesy of the
Captain's manner, and then wandered on. In his jacket he wore his pocket
recorder, and he was momentarily cheered whenever he found an excuse for
making a memorandum:
"Chairs in lounge should be two centimeters lower. Sell Deutonium
shares. How about monogrammed linens for the first cabins? Install
gymnasium?"
As he walked, he murmured these thoughts to his recorder, and each night
his meek and colorless secretary sat up late to transcribe them into the
locked notebook which was his special charge, after Jasperson had taken
his sleeping pills and crawled into bed.
On the evening of the eighth night out, Burl Jasperson wandered into the
Bar, and drummed his pudgy fingers on the table as he waited to give his
order.
"A glass of ice water, and a Moon Fizz. And be sure you make it with
genuine absinthe. You fellows seem to think you can get away with making
it with _'arak_, and your customers won't know the difference. Well,
just remember I'm one customer that does, and I want _real_ absinthe."
"Yes, sir, Mr. Jasperson," said the Bar steward.
Turning restlessly in his chair, Burl let his eyes stop on the
white-haired old gentleman beside him, happily consuming a brandy and
soda. After a moment's inspection, he stuck out his hand confidently.
"My name's Jasperson. Everything all right? Enjoying the trip?"
The pink skin wrinkled in amusement.
"I am Wilson Larrabee. Everything's fine, thank you, except that the
ship is almost too luxurious for a man of my background. A professor's
salary does not often permit him indulgences of this kind."
"You a professor? Of what?"
"Various things at various times. Philosophy, physics, Elizabethan
drama, history of science--"
"Myself, I never could understand why a sensible man would go into that
business. No money. No prestige. Never doing anything, just reading and
thinking."
"Every man to his taste," said Larrabee.
"Yes, within limits. But the things some of you professors think up!
Most of the ideas do more harm than good, scaring people to death,
hurting business. You'd think they ought to have more sense of
responsibility!"
He tasted his drink, then nodded knowingly at the bartender. "This is
something like! _Real_ absinthe."
Professor Larrabee studied his companion. "I can hardly suppose, Mr.
Jasperson, that you hold professors responsible for all the ills of the
world. And yet you seem disturbed. Did you have something in particular
in mind?"
"Yes. The Thakura Ripples!"
* * * * *