"Yes, sir."
"What about Avery, Jack. Can he do it?"
"I think so. You remember how he handled that gyroscope record the
first two weeks out."
"How was that, Jack?"
White was startled, but gave no sign. If Tim Daneshaw's memory was
slipping, he really was in bad shape. "You remember, Captain. We were
only a few thousand miles out when the gyro appeared to be recording a
constant correction, and how Mister Avery," (a term of deference would
show Tim how respected Avery was) "was so thorough and kept the crew
so busy they didn't have time to worry about the real danger of being
off course. He got the engineers doing radionic soundings of the walls
of the big tube in action and some of the crew went practically into
the dead tubes looking for flare action. He had everybody else who knew
about it testing all over the inner skin for an air leak that might be
producing a tiny jet. It was wonderful the way he got the passengers
thinking it was a routine check for the early stages of any space trip.
And he never let down--sat at the calculators eighteen hours a day
until he found out that the recording pen on the gyro must have got
bent in blast-off. We were proud of him, Captain."
"I recall it now. You think he'll make a good executive?" Tim seemed
pitifully eager for assurance.
"Make an executive, Captain? He is an executive. He's the Old Fox of
Avery, Inc. again, since those two weeks. He's taken to coming into the
pilot-room when he's off duty--just coming in and standing and watching
as if he wanted to keep an eye on everything and everybody. And nobody
seems to resent it. And he never needles the rest of us button-pushers
when he finds an error in calculations. We all make them, El too, but
we've quit deviling each other about them since then. He's your man."
"Thanks, Jack. I ... hoped ... you'd ... feel...." Tim's voice trailed
off. "Tired ... get Avery ... tell him Sam Wyckoff...."
Another silence.
"Captain Daneshaw?"
No answer.
"Tim!" White was more insistent.
A gentle rap on the door.
"Tim, are you awake?"
After a moment of silence, Jack White got to his feet and tiptoed out.
Avery was on the other side of the door.
"He's asleep, El," White informed him, "Very sick--heart. Doc Keighley
was here and says he'll be in bed at least till turnover. He told me
that you were to take command--Tim Daneshaw, that is."
The two men moved away from the closed door. Elbert Avery turned to
face White. "What's that about command?" he asked sharply.
"He wants you to take over. Thinks you're the best man for it. Likes
the way you handled the passengers and crew over the gyro business."
"Fine job I'd make of awarding bridge prizes and settling arguments
between second and third cooks on how much salt in the buns." Avery
sounded gruff but pleased.
"Orders are orders," Jack White forced a smile.
"Then I guess I'll have to order you back to my turn of duty in the
pilot-room while I get my bearings."
"El?" Jack was struck with a memory. "The captain said something about
Sam Wyckoff, too. He went to sleep before he finished. You better ask
him about it next time you see him."
"Here he comes now." The frail figure came slowly, deliberately around
the curve of the corridor. "Tim probably wanted him to help me out. I
hear he took him around the ship for some reason last night."
* * * * *
Samuel Wyckoff's eyes regarded the floor of the corridor as he
approached. If the other men had not moved out of his way and spoken,
he would probably have continued his progress to the captain's door
without noticing them.
"Sam ... Sam Wyckoff. It's not that bad. Doc says he'll be up and
around after turnover." Jack White's voice was full of concern.
Wyckoff looked up. "What?" he asked dully.
Avery repeated, "It's not too bad. Doctor Keighley says he has to rest
but he'll be back on his feet in less than three months if we don't get
him worried or tired again. That right, Mr. White?"
"That's it. And the captain said something about you just as he was
dozing off. Mr. Avery here says he thinks he meant for you to help out
in the emergency."
"He took you all over the ship last night, didn't he?" added Avery.
"Well, yes ... but...."
"He must have had some idea of what was coming. I've never been in half
the labs or the kitchen and Ole Sorensen wouldn't let me nearer to his
prize cows than the door of the stable. Not that I'm fond of cows,
anyway. So if I've got to take over command for a while, looks as if
you're the choice of the boss for liaison man. C'mon along up to the
confab room and we'll pow-wow."
"But ... I ... that is ... can't I see the captain? He said ... I mean
I need to see him. He told me to come this morning." Wyckoff looked
from one to the other.
White was definite. "Not today, maybe not this week. Doctor's orders.
You better get along with Mr. Avery. You know the ship. The captain
would want you to keep things running smoothly without a break."
"Well, all right, I'll come." Wyckoff sounded doubtful still, but he
allowed the others to lead him toward the elevator which would take
them up to headquarters.
Just at the elevator door they were met by the floor steward, Loomis.
"Mr. Avery?"
"Yes."
"Who's to be in command, sir?"
"I am."
"Well, Mrs. Jeffries of the laundry just phoned and said when she got
down to the laundry a few minutes ago the place was flooded with water.
One of the taps sprung or something, and she called damage control
and they told her to call water reclamation and I guess the water-rec
squad was all over at hydroponics trying to figure out why the increase
in humidity--anyhow, Mrs. Jeffries is upset because she can't get
the captain and will you go down and smooth her out?" Loomis recited
rapidly.
Avery turned to Samuel Wyckoff. "Guess you get right into harness. This
is for you." Then to Loomis, "Sam's my righthand man for just this sort
of thing. Give him all the help you can," and back to Wyckoff: "We'll
see you up nose-side as soon as you're through. We've got to plan fast
so's not to upset the whole crowd. You take the elevator down: we'll
walk up. We're in no hurry."
As the elevator glided down out of sight past the transplast door, and
Loomis returned along the corridor, Avery and White turned into the
narrow winding stair to climb slowly to the fourth floor above. White
looked up at Avery's back and asked, puzzled, "Do you think this came
on suddenly? And why? I didn't see him too often, but he always seemed
so tough, so ... well ... resilient, if you know what I mean. But he
must have known it was coming if he took Wyckoff around last night.
What do you think happened to him?"
The man ahead shrugged his shoulders and they climbed on and up.
* * * * *
The "New-Side Out Ball and Social Assembly" was in full swing the
night after Turnover, when Jack White edged quickly through the door
into the circular Great Saloon just in time to avoid collision with a
fantastically costumed guest carrying a tray half full of tiny crystal
coffee-glasses, and stood peering through the half-dark of lowered
lights at the little clusters of people in easy chairs and loungettes
which ringed the room and filled it with a confusion of talk and
laughter. He moved a step or two away from the wall, his eyes seeking
more intently through the small throng near the center of the room on
his right where Captain Daneshaw, guarded by a solicitous Sam Wyckoff,
sat in a great raised chair receiving congratulations on his recovery.
Elbert Avery was not in that bunch. Mr. White picked his way to the
left where a few couples were dancing to the slow strains of the xerxia
being played by a small orchestra on a bit of a curtailed stage. So
intent was his search, that he ran into the arm of a chair and almost
fell into the midst of the gay little groups.
Helen Platt's voice was sweet, chiding, "You're quite out of character,
Mister White. You have to give up the absent-minded math professor this
evening. We're all somebody new tonight, you know."
Scattered laughter.
White looked down. The ex-Latin teacher, heavily made up, had hidden
her thinning grey hair under a towering bejewelled turban. "I'm a movie
actress and Phil here is a big game hunter," she added, swinging a
ruby-shod toe toward a lamp-bronzed man wearing a chalk-white nilene
tropojak and encircling crimson commerbund. "Tell us something about
yourself and let us guess what kind of secret you've been hiding the
last century."
White forced a smile. "Not yet," he apologized. "Got to find Elbert
Avery first. Quite urgent. Is he around here?"
Nobody had seen him, and Jack White, promising abstractedly to come
back later and let them "guess him" went on down the room, cautiously
avoiding another accident.
From circle to cluster he repeated his question with no better success.
Several times he was asked why he wanted Avery and twice men of the
group offered to help him hunt. To each question, he mumbled something
about its not being important--he just wanted to find El Avery for
a minute, thanks, and went on toward the orchestra on its stage. As
he made his way carefully around the room, peering at dancers, at
circles on the other side of the party dusk, he failed to notice the
silence behind him. The worried glances which followed him, the half
sentences, "Avery this time?" "Overwork...." "Too much for one man...."
"... collapsed somewhere?" "... do you suppose?" "... something wrong,
definitely...." "Did you see how pale Jack was?" failed to reach him;
but more than a quadrant of the hall was aware of his quickened pace
when he caught sight of the wiry little man standing against the wall
half hidden by the outer edge of one curtain of the stage.
* * * * *
Elbert Avery was regarding the dancers morosely, his full-dress uniform
indicating that he, at least, was sticking to his character as chief
astrogator in preference to some more exotic role. As he had expressed
it to Samuel Wyckoff when both men went to escort Tim Daneshaw
triumphantly to the assembly, "I'm too old to change again. I'm an
astrogator now and a 'gator I'll be to the bitter end."
Jack White reached him now, spoke in low tones; and both men hurried
out a small door at the side of the hall. A sigh seemed to go over
the room and conversation rose to a new pitch of animation in a dozen
places when it was obvious that Avery was in full control of his wind
and limbs.
Out in the curving corridor, White took Avery's arm and fairly
swept him back to the left, to the elevator. He could hardly speak.
"Gyroscope bearings worn on one side ... Powell and North rechecking
porthole readings after turnover ... degrees out of course ... miss
Venus completely as we're headed ..." he almost babbled.
Avery pulled back abruptly against White's arm and stopped dead. "Get
your breath, man," he snapped, "and tell me clearly what's wrong.
Something about the course?"
A paper-tophatted guest with a tray of filled glasses of ebony coffee,
unable to pass them as they stood in the middle of the corridor, waited
behind for them to move on before he could reach the door to the Saloon
twenty feet farther on ... waited listening.
"Preposterous!" shouted Avery, "we've had watchers with accurate charts
peeling their eyes at the sky every foot of the way till now."
"We're going to miss, I tell you," White responded desperately. He
began to tremble as the delayed effects of shock started to tell, and
grabbed Avery's arm to steady himself, then pulled Avery toward the
shaft and into the car. "Come down and see for yourself. We're lost!
Lost!"
The tophatted tray carrier continued to the door of the Saloon. Setting
his tray on the floor just inside, he circled the room, pausing at each
cozy gathering to recount White's frantic statements and passing on to
the next like a man in a dream.
* * * * *
"Nonsense, nonsense," Avery was gently shaking the already trembling
man in the elevator. "Nobody's lost among the inner planets. I'll come
down with you. You'll see ... a little button pushing...." As if to
illustrate, he pushed the button and the car began to descend.
The tophatted figure didn't come to the group containing Dr. Marquith,
the psychiatrist, until it had covered two-thirds of the room. The
doctor questioned him carefully--this could be another breakdown like
several which had occurred early in the trip when port-watchers, eyes
fatigued and brain a-dazzle from watching the heavens, had declared
positively that the ship had left the solar system altogether and
had required days of treatment to convince them that their fears or
concealed desires were of the shadowy substance of dreams. But the
waiter showed none of the symptoms of such a breakdown.
"I think we'd better tell your story to the captain, son," the doctor
suggested quietly to the now haggard looking older man. "There is
certainly nothing you or I can do to help matters and there is no need
to alarm the rest of the passengers now." He led the unprotesting man
toward Daneshaw on his dais.
They watched the group around the captain disperse at some word from
the doctor; their tension mounted as the psychiatrist talked to
Daneshaw and Wyckoff; and the hatted man gestured toward the door
through which he had entered the room.
When Samuel Wyckoff straightened up from leaning over Captain Daneshaw,
absolute quiet preceded the first of his clear confident tones.
"Matt Carey, here, wants me to tell you that he's awfully sorry he
alarmed you. He did overhear Mr. White tell Mr. Avery something which
sounded ... well ... disturbing. But we must all realize that many a
slight accident has seemed disastrous at its first reporting. And we
haven't even had an official report of any kind."
A woman somewhere began to sob.
"Come now," Wyckoff said reproachfully, "we are not children!"
A nervous giggle sounded from another quarter.
Wyckoff continued more forcefully. "Dr. Marquith, Carey and I are
going down to the pilot-room to find out what we can for you, so keep
your shirts (I mean costumes) on, and don't forget to make Captain
Daneshaw's recovery celebration a gay as well as a memorable one." He
patted Tim's shoulder familiarly, beckoned to the two others to precede
him across the floor.
At the door, he saw the tray of glasses and turned. "You fellows better
bring another round of drinks. I could stand one myself." He stooped,
lifted a glass, drank, and followed the others out.
Men rose automatically from the groups, collecting empty and half-ful
glasses alike, and headed in a mass for the door; but the first
few attempts to revive conversation sounded so loud that when the
room finally filled with sound, it was the rustle and sibilance of
whispering.
* * * * *
The self-appointed investigating committee of three stood in the
pilot-room door.
El Avery's crisp voice was snapping at White the new equation to be set
into the B calculator, rattling out the key for the data Powell handed
him to be fed to C by North in the intervals of rest while A calculator
assimilated and digested. The floor of the computation area was
littered with the yards of coils of paper ribbon Avery had ripped from
the roll of gyro record to find the original deviation (minus the bits
which Carruthers, Fifth Astrogator, had taken to the enlargement room
for micro-measurements). At the accepted break for complete clearing of
the A calculator banks, Avery's precision broke to a growl.
"Damned earthbound whelps!" he muttered. "Don't even bother to discover
major factors like light pressure in their measly little tubs!" He
jerked to a stand, stripped off his braidjac and flung it into the
midst of the insubstantial paper snake. He sat down with a thump and
bent back over the calculator keyboard. "Those babies don't care what
they lose or how!"
He set to work again with White's eighth set of solutions forming them
into factors of equations of his own. Powell, passing around the welter
of paper, was the first to notice the observers and yelled at them,
"You boys round up the engine room crew, quick. Get them into the boom
room and tell 'em to stand by for intermittent rocket and main tube
fire! Beat it!"
Jack White looked up from his keyboard, "And get the passengers into
bed for turnover, too!"
"You take Matt, Doc," said Wyckoff, authoritatively. "Don't make an
announcement, just go the rounds and call out engine crew as if it were
a piece of routine. Matt, you stand out in the hall and tell them there
to report to the boom room presto. When you get 'em all out, Doc, go
and tell Tim Daneshaw I'll be down to report in a minute. Jolly 'em up
a bit if you can."
Wyckoff himself advanced a couple of steps into the pilot-room. Powell
passed him again on his way back to the massive data spitter and said,
"Thought we asked you to clear out."
His rudeness seemed not to affect the easy poise of the slim old man.
Wyckoff's voice was conciliatory, "I've got to make some sort of report
on this beehive to the captain. It's the general impression that we're
in the middle of disaster."