First Officer Miller obeyed the command of his captain.
What happened then, only Lesbee, the technician with a thousand bits of
detailed knowledge, expected.
For years it had been observed that when Control Room Below took over
from Bridge, the ship speeded up slightly. And when Bridge took
over from Control Room Below, the ship slowed instantly by the same
amount--in each instance, something less than half a mile an hour.
The two boards were not completely synchronized. The technicians
often joked about it, and Lesbee had once read an obscure technical
explanation for the discrepancy. It had to do with the impossibility
of ever getting two metals refined to the same precision of internal
structure.
It was the age-old story of no two objects in the universe are
alike. But in times past, the differential had meant nothing. It
was a technical curiosity, an interesting phenomenon of the science
of metallurgy, a practical problem that caused machinists to curse
good-naturedly when technicians like Lesbee required them to make a
replacement part.
Unfortunately for Browne, the ship was now traveling near the speed of
light.
His strong hands, reaching towards Lesbee's slighter body, were
actually touching the latter's arm when the momentary deceleration
occurred as Bridge took over. The sudden slow-down was at a much faster
rate than even Lesbee expected. The resistance of space to the forward
movement of the ship must be using up more engine power than he had
realized; it was taking a lot of thrust to maintain a one gravity
acceleration.
The great vessel slowed about 150 miles per hour in the space of a
second.
Lesbee took the blow of that deceleration partly against his back,
partly against one side--for he had half-turned to defend himself from
the bigger man's attack.
Browne, who had nothing to grab on to, was flung forward at the full
150 miles per hour. He struck the control board with an audible thud,
stuck to it as if he were glued there; and then, when the adjustment
was over--when the _Hope of Man_ was again speeding along at one
gravity--his body slid down the face of the board, and crumpled into a
twisted position on the rubberized dais.
His uniform was discolored. As Lesbee watched, blood seeped through and
dripped to the floor.
* * * * *
"Are you going to hold an election?" Tellier asked.
The big ship had turned back under Lesbee's command, and had picked up
his friends. The lifeboat itself, with the remaining Karn still aboard,
was put into an orbit around Alta III and abandoned.
The two young men were sitting now in the Captain's cabin.
After the question was asked, Lesbee leaned back in his chair, and
closed his eyes. He didn't need to examine his total resistance to the
suggestion. He had already savored the feeling that command brought.
Almost from the moment of Browne's death, he had observed himself
having the same thoughts that Browne had voiced--among many others, the
reasons why elections were not advisable aboard a spaceship. He waited
now while Eleesa, one of his three wives--she being the younger of the
two young widows of Browne--poured wine for them, and went softly out.
Then he laughed grimly.
"My good friend," he said, "we're all lucky that time is so compressed
at the speed of light. At 500-times compression, any further
exploration we do will require only a few months, or years at most.
And so I don't think we can afford to take the chance of defeating at
an election the only person who understands the details of the new
acceleration method. Until I decide exactly how much exploration we
shall do, I shall keep our speed capabilities a secret. But I did, and
do, think one other person should know where I have this information
documented. Naturally, I selected First Officer Tellier."
"Thank you, sir," the youth said. But he was visibly thoughtful as he
sipped his wine. He went on finally, "Captain, I think you'd feel a lot
better if you held an election. I'm sure you could win it."
Lesbee laughed tolerantly, shook his head. "I'm afraid you don't
understand the dynamics of government," he said. "There's no record in
history of a person who actually had control, handing it over."
He finished with the casual confidence of absolute power. "I'm not
going to be presumptuous enough to fight a precedent like that!"