While it was necessary for me to conform to the quronos' ritual to
get myself recognized, I should not have continued to adhere to it.
Apparently by these creatures' warped reasoning I established
myself as a reasoning creature by first joining them in their
routine; but when I continued to act in accord with them I proved
myself no better than they are. As Master I am supposed to be
superior and above their mundane routine.
At the moment they are milling belligerently outside my force-field
screen. As I look into their stupid, imaginationless faces I can
only think that somewhere in the past they were invented by some
unorthodox Terran scientist, probably of English descent. They--
Wait.
The force field. It's wavering. It must have been damaged when it
got tramped underfoot. They are going to get in to me. It--
Barnhart watched them prepare the rocket that would blast him into
an orbit circling the planet. He could see and even hear the sound
that vibrated through the thin membrane in which he was encased, but
he could not move a nerve-end. Fortunately his eyes were focused on
infinity, so he could see everything at least blurrily.
The Leader, who seemed to have grown a few inches, wasted no time. He
gave the orders and the quronos lifted him into the rocket. The hatch
closed down on the indigo day and he was alone.
The blast of takeoff almost deafened him but he didn't feel the
jar--only because, he realized, he could feel nothing.
A few weeks later the centrifugal force of the spinning rocket finally
nudged the latch and the hatch swung open. Barnhart was exposed to
naked fire-bright blackness itself.
After a day or two he stopped worrying about that, as he had stopped
fretting about breathing.
He grew accustomed to the regular turn around the planet every fourteen
hours. For two out of every three seconds he faced out into space and
that was always changing. Yet, all poetry aside, the change was always
the same.
He didn't have to worry about keeping on a schedule. He kept on one
automatically.
And he didn't like it.
So he kept retreating further and further from it....
* * * * *
"We couldn't leave him there!"
What? Who? Barnhart thought along with at least seven other
double-yous. He returned to himself and found that he was standing in
the airlock of a spaceship, faced by his first mate Simmons and his
stooge York.
"We couldn't leave him there," Simmons repeated with feeling. "That
would be the nastiest kind of murder. We might maroon him. But none of
us are killers."
"It's not the punishment we will get for the mutiny," York complained.
"It's having to go back to his old routine. That time-schedule mind of
his was derailing mine. He was driving the whole crew cockeyed. Even if
he wasn't going to kill us all by the rule book, I think we would have
had to maroon him just to get rid of him."
Simmons fingered a thin-bladed tool knife. "I wonder how he got up
there in that rocket and in this transparent shroud? I'm sure he's
alive, but this is the most unorthodox Susp-An I've ever seen. Almost
makes you believe in destiny, the way we lost our coordinate settings
and had to back-track--and then found him out there. ("I'll bet he
jimmied the calculator," York grouched.) You know, York, it's almost as
if the world down there marooned him right back at us."
The first mate inserted the knife blade. The membrane withered and
Barnhart lived.
"Now the arrest," York murmured.
"What are you muttering about, York?" Captain Barnhart demanded. "What
are we standing around here for? You can't expect me to waste a whole
afternoon on inspection. We have to get back on schedule." He looked
to his wrist. "Fifteen hundred hours."
"He doesn't _remember_," York said behind him.
"He remembers the same old routine," Simmons said. "Here we go again."
Barnhart didn't say anything. In the close confines of a spaceship
there was bound to be a certain degree of informality.
He stepped inside his cabin at the end of the corridor and did what he
always did at fifteen hundred hours.
York and the first mate were deeply disturbed.
Barnhart looked out at them sharply. "Well, spacemen, I run a taut ship
here. I expect everyone to hit the mark. Adhere to the line. Follow my
example. Snap to it!"
Simmons looked at York and his shoulders sagged. They couldn't go
through the whole thing again, the marooning, the rescue, then this.
That routine would drive them crazy.
Even this was preferable.
They joined Barnhart in geoplancting.