He buzzed Operations.
"Wyman? Captain Evans speaking. Full speed ahead!"
* * * * *
On the dance floor late that night, a crooner in blue Venusian mask and
wig hummed the melody while the orchestra wailed and zinged behind him.
The lights had been dimmed to a purple midnight, and shadowy couples
flitted about the room, swaying, humming, laughing. Horned devils danced
with angels, pirates and Roman senators guided in their arms lovely
Cleopatras and sinuous mermaids. Hunched over the little tables,
clinking glasses, grotesque silhouettes of Martians, Venusians, and
Apollonians whispered intimately.
The walls of the room displayed the evening stars of late summer, and,
special event for a gala evening, a fat yellow half moon sailed lazily
in the sky.
The _Star Lord_ shuddered, briefly. Briefly the crooner's voice wavered,
the notes of the violins hesitated, but no one noticed. A second quiver
of the ship, and the dancers paused to look at one another
questioningly, then laughed and danced on.
Jasperson had been sitting beside the wall, vainly searching among the
dancers for Tanya. He stood up, his forehead suddenly wet with sweat.
Plowing through the dancers and out of the door, in the corridor he ran
into Steward Davis, gliding along on silent, slippered feet.
"What was that, Davis?"
"Don't know, sir. Nothing serious, or the alarm lights would be on."
"Come with me."
He flung open the door of the Captain's cabin. It was empty. Stacey was
not in the anteroom, and the inner cabin was silent. The water carafe
had been turned over on the desk, and a few papers lay scattered on the
floor.
"They might be in Operations, sir."
"Show me the way!" They raced down the corridors, past the open door of
the room where dancers still swayed and the orchestra still played.
Through a hall, down an escalator, down, down, to the center of the
ship.
Jasperson paused. "You needn't wait, Davis. But I may want you again.
I'll let you know."
Pushing aside the crewmen who stood guard at the door, he rushed into
the room.
"Josiah! What was that shock? I demand to know what's happened!"
Evans threw him a glance of pure, intense hatred, and then resumed his
questioning of Chief Wyman.
"You say Number Ten just let go?"
"Not exactly, sir. For a couple of hours or so after we resumed speed,
it stayed steady. All of a sudden, it started to climb. They called me,
but by the time I got there it was already at critical level. We put in
more dampers, but it kept going up and up, and I thought it might
vaporize any minute. I hadn't any choice, sir. There wasn't time to call
you and get orders. I had to drop it."
"Certainly. I'm not criticizing you. But there's one thing we hadn't
counted on. Chief Thayer says Pile Ten took lifeboat C along with it."
"But how could that happen?"
"Boat C was just above, you remember. The heat triggered the release
mechanism, and the boat launched itself into space."
Jasperson interrupted, trying to speak calmly. "What's happened? Tell me
what's wrong?"
"We've hit the imaginary Thakura Ripples," Evans said savagely, "and
they're tearing us apart!"
The plump soft body of Burl Jasperson seemed to deflate. The truculence
drained from his face, leaving his skin a dirty white as he whispered,
"Then the Thakura Ripples _are_ real? And we're in danger?"
The Captain's laugh was bitter. "What do _you_ think? Don't you want to
give me the benefit of your advice now?"
Again the door burst open, and a crewman ran in.
"Captain Evans, sir. Piles Fourteen and Fifteen have started to heat.
They're already at critical level."
"Dump them!"
The phone buzzed, and Evans listened with a face which was turning a
graveyard gray.
"If you can hold them down, keep them. If they pass the critical point,
shoot them away." Turning, he looked straight into the dilated eyes of
Jasperson, and spoke as if every word were a knife thrusting into the
pudgy body.
"Every one of the Piles is starting to heat. Every last one. One life
boat is lost. That means fifteen hundred people to be crowded into five
little boats!"
"What are you going to do?" croaked the little man.
"I've already reduced speed. I've sent out and am still sending out
calls for help, over phase wave. We'll shift to normal space, and we'll
launch the lifeboats as soon as they can be provisioned and loaded. And
then we'll pray. And now, Burl Jasperson, how do you like the Thakura
Ripples?"
Bracing himself against the desk, Burl tried to smile. "If there's any
way I can help, of course, just let me know." With a feeble attempt at
jauntiness, he staggered out of the cabin.
* * * * *
Opening the long-closed shutter of the observation port, Captain Evans
could see the suns of normal space glittering in the blackness about the
ship, unfamiliar and alien. Before the shift to normal space he had
sent out SOS calls throughout the galaxy, but he had not waited for any
replies before shifting. He could not know whether the calls had been
heard, or even whether there were any ships close enough to send help
after hearing the calls. He hoped, with all his being, that they had
come out in a region of inhabited planet systems, in a regular shipping
lane, so that his passengers could be picked up and taken to port--any
port.
He kept his line open to Operations, and every minute or so Wyman spoke
to him, giving the data on the climbing piles. Ten had been jettisoned
in hyperspace, and so had Fourteen and Fifteen. Since their shift to
normal space, it had been necessary also to detach the entire bank of
Nineteen, Twenty, and Twenty-one, whose index had risen at a terrifying
rate.
Wyman's voice spoke in his ear. "One, Two, and Three are climbing fast,
sir."
"Shoot them away!"
"No good, sir. I've tried. The release mechanism has fused, and those
three Piles are welded to the ship!"
Evans closed his eyes. That meant that the life of the ship was doomed.
There would be no way to save her. But the passengers could still be
saved, if they got away soon enough, before the three Piles vaporized.
"Wyman!" he whispered despairingly, "is there any single Pile that isn't
heating?"
"No, sir."
"Is there any single Pile that's responding to your dampers?"
"No, sir, not one."
"Then, in your experience, they are all bound to go, sooner or later?"
"I've never seen anything like this in my experience, sir. It looks
bad."
The door opened, and Jasperson slunk in. His skin had lost its
cushioning, gray folds sagged under his cheek bones, and black hollows
outlined his glittering blue eyes. The Captain ignored him, and spoke
into the phone.
"Very well. In exactly fifteen minutes I shall sound the alarm and we'll
abandon ship. I can't take a chance on waiting any longer. Keep a
skeleton crew at work on those Piles to hold them down as much as
possible, and have all other crewmen report to their lifeboat stations."
"Right, sir. But Boat C has gone, you remember. When we dumped Pile
Ten."
"Yes. Distribute her passengers among the remaining boats."
He turned to look at Jasperson, who was shivering as though he were
freezing.
"Is there no hope, Josiah? Is this the end?"
"The end of the _Star Lord_, yes. I hope to save the passengers. You
heard me. In fifteen minutes all preparations should be finished, then I
sound the alarm. Don't worry, Burl. There's room enough for everybody,
your skin is safe."
"But won't the lifeboats be horribly crowded?"
"Crowded, yes, but not impossibly so. If they can carry two hundred and
fifty people in fair comfort, they can jam in three hundred by squeezing
a bit."
Jasperson shuddered. "So many people! And so close together! I can't
bear crowds, Josiah, you know that. They make me feel sick and confused.
It will be terrible!"
"Whether you like it or not, there's nothing else to do if we want to
save lives. I'll sound the alarm in a quarter of an hour. Get yourself
ready, but whatever you do, don't tell the others yet. I don't want a
panic on my hands until I'm ready to deal with it."
Biting his lip, Jasperson turned, without a word, and shuffled out of
the cabin.
* * * * *
Once in the corridor, he began to run, a shrivelled old man waddling on
wings of fear down the hall to the dining room where empty tables waited
in the elegant silence of gleaming silver and crisp white linen for the
breakfast hour.
Davis was standing at the sideboard, staring blankly at the flashing red
light above the door.
Jasperson ran up to him and clutched his arm. Looking around cunningly
to see that they were alone, he whispered.
"Davis, I want to talk to you."
"Later, sir. That red light means I'm wanted at the briefing room."
"Yes, but wait a minute!"
"I'm supposed to go at once, sir."
"A thousand credits if you'll listen to me a minute!"
As Davis hesitated, Burl went on. "Listen, Davis, the ship is in
trouble. The Captain is going to launch the lifeboats. You're in charge
of Boat F, aren't you? You know how to operate it?"
"Of course, Mr. Jasperson."
"Then come with me, and we'll take the boat now. I'll pay you well."
"But we can't do that!"
"Why not? The _Star Lord_ is doomed. In fifteen minutes this place will
be a madhouse, and there may not be room for everybody. I want to get
out of here before the mob. We'll take Boat F."
Steward Davis' eyes were thoughtful as he replied. "But sir, we can't
just take a boat for ourselves, like that. There's two hundred and
fifty people assigned to Boat F."
"Worse than that! Three hundred! One lifeboat has been lost already.
It's dangerous to wait--there'll be a stampede and the lifeboats might
even be wrecked. No, we must take her alone, Davis. I'll give you ten
thousand credits if you'll do it, and as long as you live you'll have me
as a friend."
The steward's Little eyes looked sidewise at the pleading man. "But I'd
be found out for sure, Mr. Jasperson, and then what would become of me?
I'd never get another job as long as I lived. I'd have to change my
name, disguise myself, and maybe live on some other planet, and all that
would take money. I'm a poor man, and I don't see how I could afford
it."
"But if I have to squeeze into one of those boats with three hundred
other people crowding against me, I'll go crazy! We'll go to some
out-of-the-way planet, and you can change your identity and be perfectly
safe. Can't you understand, man? My life is at stake, and my sanity.
I'll give you fifteen thousand credits!"
"Well," said Davis. "Could you make it twenty-five?"
"Done! Meet me at Boat F in five minutes."
Jasperson rushed to his cabin. Yanking open the wall safe he dragged out
his brief case and the locked memorandum book, thrust his pistol into
his pocket, and ran to the door.
"Follow me!" he called to his startled secretary, and hurried from the
room.
Running past the library door, he glimpsed Tanya at work, her auburn
head bent over her sketching. On impulse, he stopped and ran back.
Panting from the physical punishment of running, nearly smothered by the
pounding of his terrified heart, he gasped out his invitation.
"Tanya! The ship is going to blow up! Don't tell anyone. Come with me
now, before the crowd, and I'll get you off safely in my lifeboat. I'll
take care of you, Tanya."