"You will. I'm not absolutely sure I'm right, but I know a little more
about it than you."
"What's your name?"
"They call me Queenie Brant. A name that fits this business. My real
name is Ann O'Donnell."
"Queenie's a horse's name--I'll call you Ann. Me, I'm Gene O'Neil."
"That makes us both Irish," she said. He lifted the compress and saw the
first really natural smile on her face. It was a sweet smile,
introspective, dewy, young.
"You were only a dancer." He said it flatly.
For a long instant she looked at him, "Thanks. You got inside the gate
on that one."
"It's in your eyes. I'm glad to know you, Ann. And I'd like to know you
better."
"You will. There'll be plenty of time; we're bound for Io."
"Where's Io?"
"One of Jupiter's moons, you Irish ignoramus. It has quite a colony
around the mines. Also it has a strange race of people. But Ann
O'Donnell is going to live there if she can get off this ship. I don't
want fingernails growing on _my_ chin."
O'Neil sat up. "I get it now! It's something about the atomic drive that
changes the crew!"
"What else?"
Gene looked at Ann, let his eyes rove over her figure.
"Take a good look," she said bitterly. "Maybe it won't stay like this
very long!"
"We've _got_ to get off this ship!" said Gene hoarsely.
* * * * *
The door of the stateroom opened. A sharp-nosed face peered in, followed
by a misshapen body of a man in a dirty blue uniform. Hair grew thick
all around his neck and clear up to his ears. It also covered the skin
from chin to shirt opening. The hair bristled, coarse as an animal's.
His voice was thick, his words hissing as though his tongue was too
heavy to move properly.
"Captain wants you, O'Neil."
Gene got up, took a step. He went clear across the room, banged against
the wall. The little man laughed.
"We're in space," Ann said. "We have a simulated gravity about a quarter
normal. Here, let me put on your metal-soled slippers. They're
magnetized to hold you to the floor." She bent and slipped the things on
his feet, while Gene held his throbbing head.
The little man opened the door and went out. Gene followed, his feet
slipping along awkwardly. After a minute his nausea lessened. At the end
of the long steel corridor the little man knocked, then opened the door
to a low rumble of command. He didn't enter, just stood aside for Gene.
Gene walked in, stood staring.
The eyes in the face he saw were black pools of nothingness, without
emotion, yet behind them an active mind was apparent. Gene realized this
hairy thing was the Captain--even though he didn't even wear a shirt!
"You've shanghaied me," said Gene. "I don't like it."
The voice was huge and cold, like wind from an ice field. "None of us
like it, chum. But the ships have got to sail. You're one of us now,
because we're on our way and by the time you get there, there'll be no
place left for you to work, unless it's in a circus as a freak."
"I didn't ask for it," said Gene.
"You did. You wanted to know too much about the crew--and if you found
out, you'd spread it. You see, the drives are not what they were cooked
up to be--the atomics leak, and it wasn't found out until too late.
After they learned, they hid the truth, because the cargo we bring is
worth millions. All the shielding they've used so far only seems to make
it worse. But that won't stop the ships--they'll get crews the way they
got you, and nosey people will find out more than they bargain for."
"I won't take it sitting down!" said Gene angrily.
The Captain ignored him. "Start saying sir. It's etiquette aboard ship
to say sir to the Captain."
"I'll never say sir to anyone who got me into this...."
The Captain knocked him down.
Gene had plenty of time to block the blow. He had put up his arms, but
the big fist went right through and crashed against his chin. Gene sat
down hard, staring up at the hairy thing that had once been a man. He
suddenly realized the Captain was standing there waiting for an excuse
to kill him.
Through split and bleeding lips, while his stomach turned over and his
head seemed on the point of bursting, Gene said: "Yes, sir!"
The Captain turned his back, sat down again. He shoved aside a mass of
worn charts, battered instruments, cigar butts, ashtrays with statuettes
of naked girls in a half-dozen startling poses, comic books, illustrated
magazines with sexy pictures, and made a space on the top. He thrust
forward a sheet of paper. He picked up a fountain pen, flirted it so
that ink spattered the tangle of junk on his desk, then handed it to
Gene. "Sign on the dotted line."
Gene picked up the document. It was an ordinary kind of form, an
application for employment as a spacehand, third class. The ship was not
named, but merely called a cargo boat. This was the paper the Company
needed to keep the investigators satisfied that no one was forced to
work on the ships against their will. Anger blinded him. He didn't take
the pen. He just stood looking at the Captain and wondering how to keep
himself from being beaten to death.
After a long moment of silence the Captain laid the pen down, grinned
horribly. He gave a snort. "It's just a formality. I'm supposed to turn
these things over to the authorities, but they never bother us anymore.
Sign it later, after you've learned. You'll be _glad_ to sign, then."
"What's my job, Captain?"
"Captain Jorgens, and don't forget the sir!"
"Captain Jorgens, sir."
"I'll put you with the Chief Engineer. He'll find work for you down in
the pile room."
The Captain laughed a nasty laugh, repeating the last phrase with
relish. "The pile room! There's a place for you, Mr. O'Neil. When you
decide to sign your papers, we'll get you a job in some other part of
this can!"
Gene found his way back to the cabin he had just left. The little guy
with the hairy neck was there, leering at the girl.
"Put you in the pile gang didn't he?"
Gene nodded, sat down wearily. "I want to sleep," he said.
"Nuts," said the little man. "I'm here to take you to the Chief
Engineer. You go on duty in half an hour. Come on!"
Gene got up. He was too sick to argue. Ann looked at him
sympathetically, noting his split lips. He managed a grin at her, "If I
never see you again, Ann, it's been nice knowing you, very nice."
"I'll see you, Gene. They'll find us tougher than they bargained for."
* * * * *
The engine room looked like some of the atomic power stations he'd seen.
Only smaller. There was no heavy concrete shielding, no lead walls.
There was shielding around the central pile, and Gene knew that inside
it was the hell of atomic chain reaction under the control of the big
levers that moved the cadmium bars. There was a steam turbine at one
end, and a huge boiler at the other. Gene didn't even try to guess how
the pile activated the jets that drove the space ship. Somehow it
"burned" the water.
This pile had been illegal from the first. Obviously some official had
been bribed to permit the first use of it on a spaceship. Certainly no
one who knew anything about the subject would have allowed human beings
to work around a thing like this.
Gene's skin crawled and prickled with the energies that saturated the
room. Little sparks leaped here and there, off his fingertips, off his
nose.
The Chief Engineer was on a metal platform above the machinery level.
The face had hair all over it, even on the eyelids. The eyes, popping
weirdly, were double. They looked as if second eyes had started growing
inside the original ones. They weren't reasonable; they weren't even
sane. The look of them made Gene sick.
The Engineer shook his head back and forth to focus the awful, mutilated
eyes. His voice was infinitely weary, strangely muffled. "Another
sacrifice to Moloch, an's the pity! So they put you down here, as if
there was anything to be done? Well, it'll be nice to work with someone
who still has his buttons--as long as they last. Sit down."
Gene sat down and the metal chair gave him a shock that made him jump.
"I don't know anything about this kind of work."
The man shrugged, "Who does? The pile runs itself. Ain't enough of it
moves to need much greasing. You ought to be able to find the grease
cups--they're painted red. Fill them, wipe off the dust, and wait. Then
do it over again."
"What's the score on this bucket?"
"We're all signed on with a billy to the knob. And _kept_ aboard by a
guard system that's pretty near perfect. After awhile the emanations get
to our brains and we don't care anymore. Then we're trusted employees.
Only reason I don't blow her loose, it wouldn't do any good."
He got up, a fragile old body clad in dirty overalls. He beckoned Gene
to follow him. He led the way to a periscope arrangement over the
shielded pile. Gene peered in. It was like a look into boiling Hell. As
Gene stared, the old man talked in his ear.
"Supposed to be perfectly shielded, and maybe they are. But _something_
gets out. I think it happens in the jet assembly. A tiny trickle of high
pressure steam crosses the atomic beam just above a pinhole that leads
into the jet tube. It's exploded by the beam, exploded into God knows
what, and the result is your jet. It's a wonderful drive, with plenty of
power for the purpose. But I think it forms a strong field of static
over the whole shell of the ship, a kind of sphere of reflection that
throws the emanations back into the ship from every point. Just my
theory, but it explains why you get these physical changes, because that
process of reflection gives a different ray than was observed in the
ordinary shielded jet."