He nodded. "Neither do ours. So I immediately bought an Indian
elephant. They're the kind, back on the Home planet, that you can find
tame and easy to handle. They're also the wrong kind. The only reason
I didn't head right back with it is that I was having trouble figuring
out how to carry it in the _Crucis_. Even an Indian elephant weighs
about six tons. At least, mine did. In itself, that's not a very big
load, but the trip back would take a good many months of subjective
time, and of course elephants eat on subjective time. And how they eat!
The food I carried would weigh the same as the elephant.
"I wondered how elephants would like weightlessness, so I took my
Indian elephant up on a little jaunt around Earth's satellite. The
Moon, they call it. Elephants don't like weightlessness at all." He
paused, and signaled the bartender for another drink. "I hope you never
have to clean up after a space-sick elephant," he said darkly.
"That meant that I'd have to put spin on the _Crucis_ for the entire
trip back to Penguin. It's hard enough to try to navigate in hyperspace
with spin on your ship, but that wasn't the worst of it. An elephant is
a tremendous amount of off-center load for a ship with a large fraction
of a one-gee spin on it. Too much load even to think about handling.
Even though I couldn't come up with an answer, right off hand, I went
ahead and turned in my Indian elephant on an African model. Beulah was
her name, and she was a husky girl. She weighed in at just a little
more than eight tons."
I waved my whisky glass at Captain Hannah. "But I don't see your
problem," I said. "If you put the elephant on one side and his food on
the other, there wouldn't be any off-balanced load, would there?"
"Not until the food was eaten, anyway," said the skipper witheringly,
and I subsided with a fresh drink.
* * * * *
"Beulah was kind of cute, for all of her tonnage," said the skipper.
"She had two enormous tusks, and a pair of ears like wings, and a nose
that was longer than her tail. But she was mighty friendly, after she
got to know me. She'd pick me up and carry me around, if I asked her
to. And she'd eat right out of my hand. She turned out to be even tamer
than the Indian elephant. All I had to do was figure out how to carry
her.
"For a starter, I figured like you said, to have Beulah on one side of
the cargo compartment, and her chow on the other. Then I calculated
to have my own supplies on the other two sides of the space, so that
I could move them away from her as her food stocks got smaller, and
hold the balance that way. That wasn't enough, of course, so I built a
couple of water tanks on the opposite side of the ring from Beulah.
"As you know, not much can be done about moving water around in a space
ship--it's got its own cooling chores to perform--but every little
bit helped. Finally, I jockeyed the master computer and the auxiliary
computer down and ran them on tracks, so I could slide them around
to compensate for Beulah's appetite. Some lead slugs brought the
auxiliary's weight up equal to the master's, and they also brought my
total load up to the absolute maximum that I could carry.
"It was almost enough. But a miss is as good as a mile, for a space
ship. I was stuck, and there didn't seem to be a thing I could do about
it. Even if I could have carried more weight it wouldn't have helped.
Any more mass in the cargo compartment would have thrown the c.g. too
far aft." He beckoned for more rhial.
"So what did you do?" I prompted. "You did say that you carried the
elephant, didn't you?"
"Sure. Like I said, a Delta class freighter can do almost anything.
Beulah gave me the answer herself. If you've ever lived with an
elephant, one thing becomes clear mighty fast. They're a mighty
efficient machine for converting fodder into elephant droppings. So I
made a bin on the opposite side of the compartment from Beulah, and
let her gradually fill it while she ate me out of balance. The weight
of the--what's a nice word for it?--was just enough to let me keep the
whole setup in dynamic balance."
"Compost heap?" I suggested dreamily, picturing the arrangement in my
mind. There was poetry in it. Or was it poetic justice that I had in
mind?
* * * * *
"That's it," said Captain Hannah. "Compost heap. Well, I started the
journey with the ship full and Beulah and the compost heap empty. I
finished pretty much the other way around. I suppose it sounds easy,
but it wasn't.
"I started off with Beulah chained down in the middle of the
compartment, and everything stacked around her. She didn't want me
to leave when I went up to the bridge to take off, and hollered
as piteously as you can imagine. But I couldn't have a nurse for
her--mahout, they call them. I couldn't spare the weight. Or the
salary, for that matter. She was chained down, so she couldn't move
around and upset the balance.
"After chemical take off, we slid into parking orbit as sweet as you
please. I hurried down to shift the load around. I didn't want to stay
weightless any longer than I had to, because I remembered that sick
Indian elephant--and Beulah outweighed him by almost two tons, and had
a larger stomach to match. Of course, the Indian elephant had gone into
orbit on a full belly, and I hadn't let Beulah have a bite to eat for
hours. It made a difference, let me tell you.
"Beulah made trouble in her own way, though. As soon as I got within
reach, she grabbed me with that long nose of hers, and wouldn't let
go. She didn't hurt me or anything like that; she just wanted company
in her misery. I couldn't coax her with food. The very thought of food
made her shudder.
"I couldn't reach her chains to cut her loose, and I couldn't reach the
radio to call for help. If it hadn't been for the Ionosphere Guard, I
might have starved to death. I'd hired the parking orbit for twelve
hours, and when I was still in it after that time, Port Control started
to holler. I could hear them on my loud speaker, but I couldn't answer
them. So the Ionosphere Guard finally sent up a small craft with a
lieutenant and a three-man crew in it to see what was wrong.
* * * * *
"Those sailors were good. They didn't even look surprised; they just
went to work as if they handled elephants in space every day. They
drove four lines through the ring bolts I'd welded in the spin-deck,
cast Beulah loose and hauled her over to her new spot as neat as you
please.
"Then, no nonsense, the lieutenant ordered Beulah to let loose of me.
She did, too.
"After that they left, stopping for just one drink of my good bourbon.
I didn't drink rhial then.
"I wirelessed Port Control my penalty fees and another twelve hour's
hire in the orbit, and started shifting the load. I was working on
an empty stomach, and Beulah still didn't feel hungry, so she didn't
remind me that I hadn't eaten. I almost collapsed before I got the job
done.
"Then I put spin on, which made Beulah comfortable at last, and tried
to juggle the ship into a hyper-trajectory, still without stopping for
food or sleep. It didn't take long before Beulah started squalling for
supper. After I fed her I had to adjust balance all over again. By that
time I was pushing my new twelve-hour limit, and I didn't give much
of a damn any more. I just counted to ten and pushed the button. Then
I turned in and slept until Beulah started squalling for breakfast. I
ignored her until I ate about three squares in a row, then I fed her
and adjusted balance. After that I checked my trajectory.
"It was the best I've ever made in twenty-four years of jumping. It was
beautiful.
"So I turned back in again and slept until Beulah woke me for lunch.
I didn't know it at the time, but Beulah was eating for two. That
possibility probably should have occurred to me earlier, what with the
name 'Beulah', but you can't think of everything, and there I was, the
first man to go into hyperspace with an elephant. Anyway, it didn't
even worry me, even when I found out about it. I checked the contract.
Everything seemed to be well covered. And according to my book on
elephants, Beulah should still be only a potential mother when we
reached Penguin. As a matter of fact, the whole idea made me feel just
a little bit proud. Like a father, you know?
"What with having to shift weights after every meal, and Beulah setting
the schedule for meals, I was kept mighty busy. My self-winding
wristwatch overwound itself and stopped, in spite of the advertisements
about it, and I didn't find out for almost two weeks, subjective, that
Beulah's stomach ran fast. What's more, I think she knew it. Because
when I finally woke up to what was going on, and started to run her
schedule by the clock, she didn't fuss a bit. Beulah's a clever girl.
"I was so worn out when we finally reached Penguin that I just slid
into orbit, kept spin on, laid out a couple of extra meals for Beulah
and slept the clock around. The Prinkip was mighty mad about it when
I finally turned on my radio, but I told him I had my cargo ready for
delivery and where did he want me to put it? So he calmed down and gave
me the coordinates.
* * * * *
"Of course, I had to take off the spin and shift Beulah back to the
landing deck, and there wasn't any Ionosphere Guard around to help me
if I got into any kind of trouble. So I was mighty careful. I put the
chains on Beulah again, and then set up trip ropes so I could cut her
loose without getting inside of reach of that nose of hers. Then I ran
lines back to the first set of ring bolts, so I could drag her back,
weightless, without any trouble. Beulah looked a little unhappy, but
didn't make any fuss about it all. I started to take spin off, giving
the orders to the angle jets through the computer right down in the
cargo compartment, so the old girl wouldn't worry about where I was.
"Beulah didn't squall as her weight came off this time. She just
reached down and tripped loose the chains around her ankles. Did I tell
you that she was mighty clever?"