I had sufficient fuel left, certainly, to shove us past Earth's gravitational pull, but I needed a lot more than that. Some where, sometime, I wanted to land. And there aren't any filling stations in space.

 

 

I thought of Father Clark and Pastor Munch and the Reverend John MacLean, still alive, still with their flock -- or had their flock, the mob, found out that they had been running errands for me and torn them to pieces? They had trusted me, accepted me -- but perhaps they didn't fully realize that I wasn't Simsville's instrument of God only for the three weeks of selection, but beyond that along every inch of the millions of miles of nothing between Earth and Mars.

 

 

But they could still trust me. I had promised Sammy and Leslie and all the others life, and it wasn't going to be my fault if they didn't get it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One in a Thousand

 

 

 

 

1

 

 

Somewhere between the surface of Earth and Mars, well on the way or just about to take off, there were seven hundred thousand-odd lifeships. And believe me, the operative word was "odd." It took about a year to build a spaceship, and each and every one of these lifeships had been thrown together in eight weeks.

 

 

Problem: If two thousand skilled men can build a lifeship in a hundred days, how long will it take a thousand unskilled men to do it? Answer: 56 days. If your math's as good as mine (and mine isn't so hot) you'li get a pretty good indication of the standard of workmanship in the lifeships.

 

 

I was lying in the pilot's acceleration couch, controlling the ship with my fingertips, as far as it was being controlled at all, and hearing, seeing, and feeling the moluone fuel drain away as if it were my lifeblood. I had a simple enough choice. I could stop the blast now, and crash back on Earth; or I could let it roar out of the tanks the way it was doing, and crash somewhere else, if I ever reached anything to crash against.

 

 

When I say "in" the couch I mean just that. The couch was constructed so that I was half sitting, half lying, knees up to assist the circulation. That was a better position in which to withstand the acceleration than lying flat. I was strapped up like a mummy with imprex tape supporting my muscles. And though the couch wasn't particularly soft -- it felt like solid rock -- I was almost submerged in it.

 

 

But that was unimportant. What mattered was this -- somehow the lifeship had to escape from Earth's gravity, and sometime it had to land on Mars. There wasn't enough fuel to do it. I could see that now, only a matter of seconds from takeoff. Ten people, lower down in the lifeship, were depending on me and on the ship for life that the ship and I weren't going to be able to give them.

 

 

I was thinking like a prairie fire, though I was practically certain there was no solution. Soon I had a little piece of an answer. My fingers moved and the blast mounted. Anyone below who had thought nothing could be worse than 6G found his mistake as the acceleration went up and up.

 

 

The ship was designed for four minutes' blasting, but if I were to save fuel there was only one way to do it. That was to get off more quickly, reach escape velocity, and stop blasting sooner, saving the fuel which would have been needed to hold the ship up during the extra time.

 

 

I refused to think about the jet linings. They were designed for four minutes' blast, presumably, and now they were being asked to take the same thrust in less time.

 

 

I nearly blacked out. I screamed and hardly heard myself. You won't understand how I felt physically unless the same kind of thing has happened to you -- when you must and do remain conscious but you're so near unconsciousness that perceptions sent along the nerve channels to your brain simply don't leave any record there. You have to notice them as they happen or you've lost them forever.

 

 

I strained my eyes at the dials in front of me, trying to make them mean that I could cut the drive. They persisted in telling the truth, which was no good to me. I saw why people sometimes strain to believe something they know is false. There are times when hopeful fantasy is much more attractive than hopeless fact.

 

 

At last I was able to cut the drive. It had been on for hours. The chronometer said it was only three minutes or so, but I knew better. It didn't stop cleanly, as it should, it eased off gently. The couch gradually rose, and I floated off, weightless.

 

 

You never quite get used to free fall, no matter how often you experience it. It's a surprise every time when up and down disappear from the environment and the normal way of getting about ceases to be beetlelike and becomes birdlike. It's amusing or frustrating, depending on how you're feeling at the time, when you want to go one way and find yourself going the other, impelled by some tiny movement of air you can't see and normally wouldn't notice at all.

 

 

The body adjusts to the new conditions more quickly than the mind. The lungs and heart and stomach, puzzled for a few minutes by the absence of gravity, soon learn their new job and do it as well as they did the old one. Clothes and hair are inconveniences, though. Practically every garment of civilization except riding breeches and bathing costumes depends to some extent on gravity to hold it in place. Whenever I moved, my jacket began to ride up about me like water wings, and my trousers gradually worked themselves in untidy folds up my legs, showing the imprex tape underneath.

 

 

I found Mars through the tungsten glass ports and began to check on the old space navigators' Irishism -- whether it would be where we were when we got there. But I wasn't allowed much grace. Sammy Hoggan came in, his face grim.

 

 

"Mary Stowe's dead," he said briefly.

 

 

I couldn't understand that at first. Somebody dead -- already? It interfered with my long-term calculation that we were all going to die. It jammed the works for a moment, this curious, irrelevant intimation that someone hadn't waited for the execution that appeared to be planned for us all.

 

 

"Acceleration?" I asked.

 

 

"That and her couch collapsing. It couldn't take the strain. Bill -- didn't you accelerate more than you were supposed to?"

 

 

"Yes," I said.

 

 

"Then that killed her," he said bluntly. "The extra weight came on -- and the couch broke. That was -- "

 

 

I had heard enough about Mary, and it was too late to do anything about her. "Go away," I said.

 

 

Sammy swore. "Dammit, Bill," he said hotly, "you're responsible for all of us. You're the man in charge. Is that all you have to say? If you had to do it -- "

 

 

I turned and looked coldly at him. "I'm responsible for getting this ship to Mars," I said curtly. "I'm not leaving here until I'm satisfied about that -- not if the whole lot of you die. If this room had a door, I'd lock it to keep you all out. Now go and leave me alone. I'm sorry, Sammy, but I haven't time to be civil."

 

 

I went back to my calculations. I didn't notice Sammy going.

 

 

The first check was encouraging, as far as it went. There could be no precision about flying a lifeship -- navigation with mass-produced instruments, and very few of them at that, was little more than an affair of pointing the ship's nose in roughly the right direction and praying.

 

 

And on this basis, it looked as if I could leave the course as it was and not waste any of my precious moluone making corrections. I wasn't too sure of our velocity -- that would take days of checking by the planets -- but it seemed that in about a hundred days the lifeship, in free fall, and Mars, in its orbit round the sun, would have reached about the same spot.

 

 

Then, more carefully, I worked out how much fuel I'd need for a safe landing on Mars, how much I had, and tried to close the gap. Mathematically it couldn't be done. I just couldn't land safely on Mars, according to my quadruple-checked figures.

 

 

I covered sheet after sheet with laborious calculation. The best I could produce, the most favorable extrapolation, crooked, weighted mathematics though it was, was still a very slim chance indeed.

 

 

Drugged with figures, working more and more from sheer obstinacy, stubbornly trying everything I could think of to try, I came up with the conclusion that our chances of getting to Mars, when we left the soil of Earth, had been about a thousand to one against. And they weren't very much better now.

 

 

True, we were clear of Earth and on a good course for Mars. We were over the first hurdle. We had accomplished what, at a guess, only two or three hundred thousand of the seven hundred thousand lifeships had been able to do.

 

 

And of those two or three hundred thousand, many must have used all their fuel in tearing themselves free of Earth. Those ships were utterly helpless. Some of them would be shooting off in all directions, every moment getting farther from Mars, and utterly incapable of doing anything about it. Some of them Would be pointed at the sun, or close enough to the sun to be captured by it. Some would move on and on past the planets into space . . . those ships would go on forever if they weren't captured by some star or planet.

 

 

I didn't swear or curse at anyone. I just doggedly worked out problem after problem, as if I could set everything right by my high school mathematičs.

 

 

On the basis of our own experience I worked out how much fuel the lifeships really needed. Then, since they would have to be so much bigger and stronger, how many lifeships there would have been instead of seven hundred thousand. How many people they could have taken.

 

 

Allowing a very small safety factor, it came out at ninety-seven thousand. A chance of life for a million people instead of nearly eight million. Not one in three hundred of the people of Earth, but one in twenty-two hundred.

 

 

I tried to imagine the job I might have had then, the job of picking out ten people from a town of over twenty thousand. As it was, I knew hardly anything about some of the people I'd chosen from a mere three thousand or so. Sammy, Leslie, Betty, and Morgan were all last-minute choices, because someone else had had to come off the list. On the whole I was prepared to gamble on the first two, but Morgan and Betty could be my best choice or my worst for all I knew. What sort of guess could I have made if I'd been confronted with twenty thousand people and told to pick ten?

 

 

I shook my head wearily. The questions were too big for me. I had juggled too long with figures of life and death -- a little life and a lot of death. They weren't anything but figures to me. Perhaps that was why I had done it -- to reduce humanity's most frightful disaster to a few real figures, like four and seven and three, with a lot of incomprehensible zeroes after them.

 

 

I would come again, no doubt. But meantime I had reached a mental dead stop.

 

 

 

 

 

 

2

 

 

I gave myself a push against the wall, guided myself with my arms, and swam out into the main room of the lifeship, which Sammy had already christened, ironically, "the lounge."

 

 

Lifeships were simply moving barns. There was nothing to be seen in the so-called lounge except white paneling, steel floors, ten couches, and nine people floating about, with something on one of the couches covered by a sheet.

 

 

Little Bessie Phillips, unrepressed by tragedy, was flying about in the air, delighted by the absence of gravity. Jim Stowe, dry-eyed, was sitting with his father, one leg curled around the frame of the couch to hold him down. Betty and Morgan were in a corner, whispering. Sammy, Leslie, Harry Phillips, and Miss Wallace formed another group, holding the edges of a couch to keep themselves still.

 

 

They couldn't help becoming suddenly silent when I came in. They knew, all of them, how I'd been supposed to take off -- I'd told them myself what it would be like -- and it hadn't been like that. It hadn't been as I'd said it would be. Unless something had gone wrong, unless somehow I had been forced into it, I had done something on the spur of the moment and as a result Mary Stowe had died. That was how they were all figuring it.

 

 

Maybe I had tried to be clever, they were thinking. I could see it in their faces. They were waiting for me to explain, hoping I could, pretty sure I couldn't.

 

 

I went over to Mary Stowe's couch. Nobody moved. The sheet was tied at the four corners to the frame. I untied one corner and saw what had happened.

 

 

When Mary's weight went up to half a ton or so, one of the steel supports under the couch had snapped. Then another. The couch became a switchback -- and, quite naturally, Mary's back was broken.

 

 

I averted my eyes from the dead woman's face. She had not died pleasantly, and her face showed it.

 

 

"Someone help me to get the body outside," I said.

 

 

They realized that had to be done. Sammy pushed against the couch he was holding, and floated over to me. We took hold of the limp body and clawed our way to the base of the ship, to the only air lock. The eyes of the others followed us silently.

 

 

I knew I should save the dead woman's clothes, for cloth, trinkets, leather, and particularly the imprex tape which still bound her broken body might be useful in the bare, empty lifeship.

 

 

But any suggestion of stripping the body before throwing it into space would clearly heighten feeling which was already too high. I'd be regarded as a grave ravisher as well as a man who had made a mistake that killed Mary Stowe.

 

 

So Sammy and I left the body in the air lock, just as it was, closed the inside door, and turned the wheel that opened the outer door. There was no sound, but the air in the lock shot out into space, sweeping all that was left of Mary Stowe with it.

 

 

The body had the same velocity as the lifeship and would travel on with it. The small additional thrust imparted by the violently escaping air, however, would carry it off on a tangent. Soon the lifeship and the body of the woman who had left Earth, alive, in it would be miles apart. Then hundreds of miles. Perhaps, eventually, millions of miles.

 

 

We went back silently to the main room of the ship. Nobody seemed to have moved.

 

 

"All right," I said. "Since you're all so concerned about this thing -- let's talk about it."

 

 

Harry Phillips looked up. His eyes were as kindly as ever. "Wouldn't it be better not, son?" he said gently. "You did what you thought was right. We don't doubt that."

 

 

He didn't, perhaps, but Miss Wallace didn't meet my eyes. Leslie seemed to shrink away from me, without actually moving. John Stowe, sunk in his thoughts, probably wasn't even hearing what was going on.

 

 

"Does anyone doubt," I asked, "that I had to do what I did?"

 

 

"Did you?" asked Miss Wallace bluntly, looking at me steadily. "Did you have to? Did you really have to?"

 

 

I cast one swift glance at her. I hadn't thought this out. But it was obvious that I couldn't explain to them all exactly what the fuel situation was. Sammy, perhaps -- I'd have to share it with someone. Not anyone else, for that would mean a voyage of even greater tension, a hopeless voyage, a voyage in the course of which it would be difficult to make anyone do anything hard or unpleasant, since there would seem to be no purpose in it. So I said:

 

 

"Do you believe that I chose ten people from over three thousand and then started off by murdering one of them?"

 

 

"No," said John Stowe, dragging himself into the present with an obvious effort. "There's no question of it being deliberate, Lieutenant Easson. But my wife" -- his voice quivered -- "my wife is dead. Did it have to happen? Or was it . . . unnecessary?"

 

 

I understood perfectly what he meant. It would be easier to bear if it was an accident, something that couldn't have been avoided. What was torturing him was the thought that Mary might have died because of a small, careless miscalculation. My miscalculation.

 

 

"You'll have to take my word for it," I said matter-of-factly, trying to freeze the raw emotion that was in the air, "that it was necessary. It did have to happen. We needed that extra acceleration. If I were doing it again, knowing someone would die, I'd still have to do it."

 

 

No one said anything, but they believed me. Stowe was nodding slowly, the dull anger and suspicion gone from the ache in his heart. The ache was still there, but it was a cleaner ache. And the others, after looking from him to me and back to him, were looking a little ashamed of themselves, ashamed of the ready assumption that because I had changed my plans I was to blame for Mary's death, ashamed that they had been so ready to think the worst.

 

 

"We always knew we had to leave the rest of Simsville behind," I pointed out. "Everyone else had to die if we were to have a chance. We accepted that, didn't we? Then let's try to think of Mary Stowe with the rest -- part of Simsville we couldn't take with us."

 

 

"God damn the man who passed that couch," said Stowe through his teeth.

 

 

"He probably has," I said quietly. "Not many of the people who made the lifeships had a chance to go on one of them."

 

 

That seemed to be that. No one wanted to pursue the matter.

 

 

"Better get that imprex tape off, all of you," I said. "Roll it up carefully. We'll need it for the landing. The women can stay here and the men go down to the air lock."

 

 

Miss Wallace opened her mouth -- to protest, obviously, that there was hardly any screening between the two places I'd mentioned. I waved her silent, rather impatiently.

 

 

"How much privacy do you think any of us is going to get this trip?" I demanded.

 

 

She looked around quickly, and seemed to see the force of that. She made no objection.

 

 

I had to tell someone the truth. If Pat Darrell had been along, it would have been she. As it was, Sammy was the only one I could talk to. I wasn't sure yet about Leslie. The last time she and I had been alone together, back on Earth in those last tense, terrified days, she had tried to buy her passage to Mars, and I had lunged away from her in disgust. If Pat had lived Leslie wouldn't have been there at all.

 

 

I jerked my head at Sammy, not looking at Leslie, and we pushed off and guided ourselves into the control room.

 

 

"Sammy," I said, "I've got my troubles, you know that. Mind if I share them with you?"

 

 

He grinned. "No, Bill," he said. "I may grouse and swear and be bitter about things, but that's just the way I'm made. Sure, I'll help all I can, any time. What's on your mind?"

 

 

Something in the way he said it showed me that he was remembering Pat too.

 

 

"Remember," I said, "how you once thought the lifeships were a cruel hoax? A myth designed to keep a tottering world comparatively sane while the real spaceships were granted peace to get on with their job?"

 

 

He nodded. "But you were right, Bill," he said. "I felt pretty low when I said that. It was just natural pessimism."

 

 

"It was more than that, Sammy," I said quietly.

 

 

He stared at me.

 

 

I told him. I showed him my figures -- all of them.

 

 

Given only eight weeks before the sun stepped up its output enough to make Earth a 25O-5OO° Centigrade world, the governments of the world had had no chance to transfer their people wholesale to another planet. Space travel was too young. There were too few ships. There was too little time.

 

 

No, any way they looked at it, it was a simple proportion sum. Give a few people a good chance of getting to Mars safely, or a lot of people a very slim chance.

 

 

I didn't know whether I was apologizing for them or not. I don't now. But look at it this way.

 

 

Back on Earth, at sea, a liner sinks. Nothing is left but one lifeboat and hundreds of people in the water. The lifeboat sails around and picks up people till the gunwales are nearly in the water. Then what? Others try to clamber aboard. Still more cling to the sides of the boat. What's the answer -- let everyone drown, since everyone can't be saved?

 

 

Sammy was in no doubt. "The swine!" he said, his face white. "What's the use of giving people a chance that isn't a chance? Why didn't they build just as many ships as they knew could get to Mars and land there safely?"

 

 

I grinned without humor. "People will argue over that for the next thousand years," I said, "those who are left to argue about it. Me, I'd take the infinitesimal chance rather than no chance at all. But there's no use talking about it now, Sammy. It's so. What are we going to do about it?"

 

 

"What can we do about it?"

 

 

I let myself float comfortably on the softest cushion imaginable -- air without gravity.

 

 

"A lot, in theory," I said. "The regular ships will get to Mars all right. So will some of the lifeships. There will be variations, of course -- some of them will be a lot luckier than we've been, some a lot less. For some it will be a simple, straightforward trip -- and if they've no fuel left after they land, what does that matter? For others it must have been a hundred per cent impossibility from the word 'go.'

 

 

"All right, there will be plenty of ships on Mars when we get there. They'll send up as many as they can to take people off lifeships that can't land safely, or help others down, or refuel them . . ."

 

 

Sammy brightened.

 

 

"Or," I went on, "little as we have, we certainly have enough fuel to take up some sort of orbit around Mars, and wait for someone to do something about us. There's one space suit on board. Someone could land with that, and sooner or later a ship would come up and take us off."

 

 

Sammy, looking much happier, wanted to speak, but I ignored him and went on.

 

 

"Or again," I said, "if we do nothing at all, using no fuel, we'll find one of three things happening. We may see we're going to miss Mars altogether, and if that's so we'll have to use our fuel to correct the course. We may fall into an orbit naturally, without doing a thing. Or if we see we're going to crash on Mars, we can leave the drive to the last minute and then use what we have to land as soft as we can."

 

 

Sammy began: "But that's -- "

 

 

"Still not much better than a thousand-to-one chance," I told him flatly.

 

 

He stared at me incredulously.

 

 

"I'm sorry, Sammy," I said. "I know I should have kept this to myself, but I'm not big enough. Let's look at those possibilities. How many ships will there he on Mars -- good ships, possible rescue ships? A few score, perhaps. And not too much fuel. How many lifeships? Hundreds of thousands. What are the few score going to be able to do for the hundreds of thousands?"

 

 

"I see," said Sammy bitterly. "Go on.

 

 

"Next, the orbit around Mars. Now it doesn't take much drive to edge a ship into an orbit around a planet. A skillful, experienced pilot could generally do it with a few seconds of blast. But, unfortunately, there are only about forty such pilots in existence, and I'm not one of them. I was a radio officer, remember. I can't do it, Sammy. I'm ready to try, but I'm no more likely to succeed than an untrained marksman is to hit a bull's-eye at five hundred yards with one shot."

 

 

"I see that too," said Sammy, his anger dropping to burning resentment against persons unknown.

 

 

"And as for decelerating safely on the fuel we have -- why we can't do it is kindergarten mathematics. Roughly, ignoring Earth and Mars altogether, we have to do as much deceleration as we did acceleration. And we have only a fraction of the fuel to do it."

 

 

"So what do we do?" demanded Sammy bleakly.

 

 

"I wish I knew. Anyway, we have weeks to think about it. Perhaps we'll be lucky. We may be one of the few lifeships that the regular ships will be able to help. Or we may take up an orbit without even trying. But . . ."

 

 

Sammy nodded gloomily. He had dropped from cheerfulness to blazing anger to black resentment to something very close to despair. "But what?" he asked.

 

 

"But we can only hope for that," I said, "not count on it."I grinned suddenly. "Cheer up, Sammy," I said. "We're not actually dead yet."

 

 

Sammy looked up sharply. "I'm not bothered about that," he said. "I can face the idea of dying as well as most people. I'm thinking of Homo sapiens. Two billion living, breathing human beings waiting on Earth to be fried. And thousands who thought they'd been saved finding now that all they'd been given was a chance to die some other way. Thousands of units of eleven people on lifeships who know now they'll never reach Mars, who know they've been sold -- "

 

 

"Nobody's been sold, Sammy. The lifeships weren't a cruel hoax, as you feared. They were what it was always admitted they were -- just a chance to get to another world. . . ."

 

 

But Sammy wasn't listening. I left him there and went out to make my first check of the lifeship -- my first, and probably last, command.

 

 

 

 

 

 

3

 

 

We found very soon that we had far too much time on our hands. I manufactured as many jobs as I could for the ten of us to do, but there was still too little to occupy us.

 

 

There was the job of looking after the hydroponics plant on which we depended for both food and fresh air. I put Harry Phillips in charge there. He had had little or nothing to do with water-culture methods before, but he knew plants. Forced by artificial sunshine, efficient aeration of the roots, the warmth of the lifeship, and constant care, the tomatoes, potatoes, and roots grew incredibly fast in their compact trays. Starvation was not going to be one of our problems. Harry's main assistant was Leslie; she or Harry was always in the plant, finding something to do. That accounted for two people.

 

 

The water purifier also had to be looked after. From it came all the water we used, and into it all the water went back. Betty and Morgan were in charge of the machine. There wasn't much for them to do, and they seemed happy together doing it. I still didn't know much about Morgan and Betty. Clearly, however, they were very much in love, and wanted no companionship but each other.

 

 

Miss Wallace was in charge of cooking. Little Bessie helped her. Bessie was a lovely, happy child. I never regretted choosing her. She was utterly unspoiled, gay but not destructive. She had consideration and sympathy rare in anyone so young. It was when I thought of Bessie that I was most determined to get to Mars safely. Bessie was going to be a wonderful woman, and not merely a very beautiful one.

 

 

Jim Stowe liked to sit in the control room and pretend to be the pilot of a spaceship. So I made that his job. He was the lookout. We didn't need one, but he liked the idea and it gave him something to do.

 

 

That left John Stowe, Sammy, and me. We helped anyone who needed help, and looked for more things for the others to do.

 

 

We kept Earth time, calling one twelve-hour period day and the next night.

 

 

On the third day two problems emerged. It was hot and stuffy, despite the fact that the hydroponics plant was dealing quite competently with the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Betty had a temperature, Morgan a streaming cold, and most of us had headaches and hot eyes.

 

 

I was in the control room explaining things to Jim when Miss Wallace came in.

 

 

"Run along, Jim," she said. "I want to talk to Lieutenant Easson."

 

 

Reluctantly Jim went. Miss Wallace surveyed me grimly, her cheeks flushed.

 

 

"Lieutenant Easson," she said formally, "something must be done about Smith and Miss Glessor. They are . . ."

 

 

I had thought at first that she was talking about their health. When I saw her expression, however, I guessed what she meant.

 

 

"They're what, Miss Wallace?" I asked.

 

 

She blushed more violently. "Openly!" she said vehemently. "With two children about!"

 

 

I didn't make her put into words what Betty and Morgan were doing.

 

 

"Well, why not, Miss Wallace?" I asked gently.

 

 

"They're not married!" she exclaimed, as if that explained everything. For her, no doubt, it did.

 

 

"Probably," I reflected, "as commander of the ship I could marry them. But we've left the old world, Miss Wallace, and I don't think things like that are going to matter for quite a while."

 

 

"Decency and moral standards always matter," she declared indignantly.

 

 

"I suppose so. But I don't think they're involved in this case. Betty and Morgan love each other, and in normal circumstances they'd be married. It didn't matter until they knew they were coming on this trip, and then it was too late. Anyway . . ."

 

 

I wanted her to see it, for if Miss Wallace saw it everyone else would. She wasn't narrow-minded -- just strict and correct.

 

 

"You don't think an illegitimate child is damned, do you, Miss Wallace?" I asked.

 

 

"No, of course not. But that's not the question."

 

 

"Isn't it? We'll want as many children as possible. Frankly, there're going to be so few people in the new colony that one of the first things we'll have to ensure is that there's a big, healthy second generation -- "

 

 

"Lieutenant Easson," said Miss Wallace warmly, "are you suggesting that we should do away with marriage altogether?"

 

 

"No," I said thoughtfully, "but I don't think we can insist on it. I think what'll happen is informal marriage. People will live together and say they're married. Even if they don't -- if women have children without any sort of husband in the offing -- I don't think we should object."

 

 

Clearly she hadn't thought it out. She didn't refuse to entertain new ideas. It simply had not occurred to her until then that the circumstances had changed so radically that new patterns of behavior might be required, and old ones abandoned.

 

 

"Perhaps you're right," she admitted. "I'll think about it."

 

 

 

 

I talked to Betty and Morgan later. They were quiet, shy, embarrassed by the attention they had caused, but not in the least ashamed about it.

 

 

There were no doors in the ship except the air lock, and the only privacy possible was the shielding provided by the water tanks, the hydroponics plant, and other natural screens. Betty and Morgan had done their love-making as discreetly as possible, but that wasn't very privately.

 

 

"What are we to do?" asked Morgan resentfully. "Go outside into space?"

 

 

"We thought of speaking to everybody about it," said Betty, "but what could we say? It would be nonsense to ask anyone's permission . . ."

 

 

"Of course," I agreed. I told them what I had said to Miss Wallace. They brightened, glad that Authority -- that was me -- didn't think they had done anything wrong.

 

 

"You mean we can just say we're married," said Betty, "and we are?"

 

 

"If you like," I said. I was having a good look at them for the first time. Morgan was tall and thin, very young and immature. He was a nice-looking boy -- too shy, of course, but with a friendly grin nevertheless. Betty was very small and slight, a neat little figure with corn-colored hair and small, very white hands. She wore blue slacks and a yellow sweater.

 

 

At the moment Morgan's nose was red and his eyes watery; Betty was flushed and shivered frequently, her eyes too bright. They had chosen rather unromantic circumstances for their nuptials. But they insisted they felt perfectly well.

 

 

"Congratulations, anyway," I said with a grin, and went looking for Leslie. I was thinking more of Morgan's cold, Betty's temperature, and the headaches of the others than of the question of informal marriage. The marriage problem was already solved, as far as I was concerned. However, something would have to be done about the other one.

 

 

As I swam into the hydroponics plant Leslie grabbed the hem of her frock, which was floating airily somewhere in the region of her fourth rib.

 

 

"Doesn't make the slightest difference," I said. "Take it off altogether -- haven't you ever worn a bathing costume?"

 

 

"Yes," she said, tucking her skirt between her legs, "but only in the appropriate circumstances."

 

 

"These are the appropriate circumstances." I started to explain what I meant. However, her mind was obviously on something else. I sighed, abandoned the subject for the moment, and asked what was worrying her.

 

 

She was breathing hard, obviously nervous. "I want to talk to you, Bill," she said breathlessly.

 

 

I waited. I knew at least part of why she was nervous. The last time we had been together without other people around had been an incident neither of us wanted to remember.

 

 

"I'm not sure you understand why I threw myself at your head," she said, with an effort. "It's true, I suppose, I was trying to bribe you. I wanted to live -- oh, I know I was quite wrong. I've thought since about what you said. I misunderstood you completely. I -- "

 

 

She wasn't getting anywhere. "Must we talk about it, Leslie?" I asked quietly. "I'll forget it ever happened, if you like."

 

 

"I don't want that. I'm trying to explain. . . . You see, I didn't know you. I wanted to live. I wasn't honest, like Pat. What was it she said? 'I just carry on being myself without trying to buy myself a place on the ship by being someone else.' I didn't believe that at the time, but I did later. Anyway, I wasn't like that, and I knew it. I wasn't as honest as Pat, but at least I was honest with myself. I wanted to live more than anything. If you could be bribed, I was ready to bribe you."

 

 

She looked at me steadily, anxiously, trying to make me understand. "I thought it out carefully, and made sure I meant what I was doing. I had only one thing to bribe you with, and when I really thought of it honestly, it didn't seem to matter much to me. I know I was wrong -- the question is, how wrong was I?"

 

 

"Not terribly wrong," I said, smiling faintly. "But I still think the least said about the whole thing the better."

 

 

"No," Leslie insisted. "Because if I meant it then, I should mean it now. Do you want me?"

 

 

I frowned. "That's mad," I said flatly.

 

 

"I don't think so," she said stubbornly. "It couldn't be a question of money, because money won't matter for quite a while now. But suppose it was money. Suppose I offered you a thousand dollars to do something, and you did it without taking the money. I'd still want to give you the thousand dollars. I'd feel you'd have to take it so -- "

 

 

I burst out laughing. Leslie couldn't see the joke at first, but after a while she was laughing too. It was a ridiculous situation.

 

 

At last I said: "Leslie, I'm still turning down your bribe. I don't want you, you owe me nothing, and if you're trying to sell yourself I'm not in the market. Is that clear?"

 

 

"You're making a joke of it," she said, laughing despite herself, "and I was perfectly serious."

 

 

"Are you quite satisfied that you're not under any obligation to me?"

 

 

"Yes, if you say so.

 

 

"Right. Now that that's settled -- Leslie, will you marry me?"

 

 

She stopped smiling abruptly and looked at me in amazement.

 

 

"If you feel you owe me anything," I said, "the answer's no. Or if you don't think you could possibly love me, ever. But don't say no just because you don't love me now."

 

 

"I do love you now," she whispered.

 

 

She couldn't, really; she hadn't had an opportunity. But if she thought she loved me, all the better.

 

 

We kissed, and floated in the air in each other's arms.

 

 

 

 

Later I told her what I'd had in mind when I went looking for her. She thought over what I said, and agreed. We decided to set an example right away.

 

 

I stripped to trunks and Leslie took off her dress, stockings, and shoes. "Do you think this will make enough difference?" she asked.

 

 

"No, we'll have to do other things too."

 

 

We clasped hands, pushed off from a wall, and soared into the lounge together.

 

 

"Hold everything," I said, when everyone looked up, startled, "we're not starting an interplanetary branch of the SunA. I think we should all strip, and if anyone wants to go naked altogether, so much the better."

 

 

They still stared. So I explained. "Why has everyone a headache?" I asked patiently. "Why has Betty a fever? Why has Morgan a cold?"

 

 

Sammy, Miss Wallace, and Leslie knew what I was talking about. No one else. It's amazing sometimes how obvious a thing has to become before people will see it.

 

 

"The air in here," I said, "is kept fresh enough, but the temperature is going up and up." I pointed to the white panels on the walls. "That's neutralex, and it just doesn't conduct heat at all. It's rather too efficient, in fact -- combustion's going on in all of us, we're cooking food, and none of that heat's getting away. So the temperature's going up a degree at a time, and it'll keep going up until we find some way to stop it."

 

 

"Taking off our clothes won't help much," Morgan objected, and sneezed.

 

 

"True," I said, "but it's a start. The unhealthiest conditions occur when the air is warm and motionless. The skin isn't cooled and dried as it should be. In here, the hydroponics plant handles excess carbon dioxide well enough, and the water purifier mops up quite a lot of water vapor from the atmosphere. But the circulation set up by the hydroponics aeration plant is too slow to make much difference, when the temperature's so high. What we must do somehow is step up the circulation, bring down the temperature, and stop wearing clothes that we don't need any more."

 

 

Sammy threw off his sweater and pants. I caught his eye and he came over and joined Leslie and me.

 

 

"Wasn't there any provision for this?" Sammy demanded.

 

 

"Not that I know of. There's nothing we can use as a fan, but we may be able to lower the temperature."

 

 

"How?"

 

 

I swam to the wall and tapped the white paneling. "This neutralex," I said, "is simply a barrier cutting off all heat. There's no chink in it. But if we make one, we'll radiate heat at that spot."

 

 

Leslie frowned. "Space is at absolute zero, isn't it?" she objected. "Seems to me we'll lose too much heat too fast."

 

 

I shook my head. "Behind the panels is the shell of the ship. It's absorbing heat from the sun, more or less equalizing it through its whole volume by conduction, and radiating it again on the side away from the sun. Remember, there's no conduction or convection, only radiation. And balancing any heat we radiate, there's the quite considerable amount of heat radiation we're getting from the sun."

 

 

We set to work unscrewing one of the panels. As I worked, I glanced now and then at the others behind us in the lounge to see how they were reacting.

 

 

Perhaps I gave this too much importance, but as I saw it, though it might not make an enormous difference whether everybody on the ship stripped down or not, this, like the marriage question, was an index of their adaptability. They were being asked to change their behavior and ideas slightly, because circumstances had changed.

 

 

Immediately Sammy and Leslie had seen what I was getting at, they agreed -- they adapted. No argument. Jim Stowe and Bessie too -- Jim looked at his father, received no guidance, and threw off his shirt. Bessie didn't care in the slightest. She had no idea why we were taking off our clothes, but she obliged too, and nobody stopped her. She left only her white panties, and then, after a long, thoughtful stare at Leslie, began gravely to fashion herself a brassiere out of the sash of her frock. To Bessie this was another game.

 

 

But the others whispered together and showed no sign of following our example. Well, if they didn't believe what I said, or really didn't think it mattered, I didn't mind. If, however, they were stubbornly refusing to change their ideas, it didn't augur well for a future in which they might have to do that every day for years.

 

 

 

 

 

 

4

 

 

It was on the eighth day that we found the prophecies had been right and the sun had really stepped up its output.

 

 

We had licked the temperature difficulty, more or less. We removed enough panels to set the balance right, and I tinkered with the hydroponics aeration plant to increase the circulation in the ship generally, watched by an anxious Harry Phillips. The hydroponics plant was his baby, and he didn't quite trust me with it.

 

 

Despite my assurances, Leslie and Sammy remained afraid that we would all freeze if we left the panels off -- until at last, after it had been done, they saw that a nice balance had been achieved, and the temperature went neither up nor down. They also, incidentally, remained convinced for a long time that having cold spots on the walls would set up a strong air circulation and we wouldn't have to bother about that.

 

 

I explained carefully that it wasn't the expansion of heated air, or the contraction of cooled air, that set up circulation. It was a question of density -- and on the lifeship, density just did not exist. Density is mass per unit volume; volume still existed, could still change, but there was no weight. Heat air on a weightless ship and it certainly expands, but it doesn't rise. It expands outward, evenly, and the compressed air around it tries to push it back evenly. There's no draft -- light a match where there's no weight and no air circulation, hold it still, and it promptly goes out.

 

 

When we had achieved our temperature balance, this was clear enough to Sammy and Leslie. We had a slow circulation, without which the measures we took wouldn't have been effective at all. The cooling areas had no effect whatever on the air circulation of the ship. On the mere movement of air they had some, since as the air cooled it contracted and dragged more air in. These, however, were only eddies and had nothing to do with the movement of air round and round the ship.

 

 

On the eighth day our temperature control was functioning and checked. There had been no significant variation in more than twenty-four hours.

 

 

Sammy, Leslie, the two children, and I were still going around wearing as little as possible, and we were still the only ones who were. Morgan's cold, Betty's fever, and the general headaches had all cleared up, so perhaps the other five thought it was now unnecessary to follow our example.

 

 

Then suddenly it was hot. It couldn't have been sudden, really, but it certainly seemed so. The temperature had been adjusted so that while it wasn't cold it was always cool, certainly for those of us who were lightly clad. Leslie was in the hydroponics plant, Sammy and I working on the water purifier, and we didn't notice the change until we found ourselves sweating.

 

 

"The sun!" Sammy exclaimed.

 

 

We knew at once what he meant. Eight days ago had been deadline; the sun's change might have occurred when it was supposed to, for all we knew. It was behind us -- the only way we had of looking at it was to put on the space suit and go out at the air lock to look back.

 

 

The change inside the lifeship, however, was so marked that we knew almost to the minute when the sun entered its new phase. The alloy outer skin of the ship, of course, was absorbing extra heat; the balance we had created was gone, and the temperature went up again.

 

 

That didn't matter much. We could handle that problem as we had handled it before. But something else did matter.

 

 

Earth was beginning to die. Already the extra heat was searing the world we had left. I saw Sammy's eyes cloud and knew what he was thinking.

 

 

The polar icecaps were melting. Elsewhere, clouds of water vapor were rising from every open body of water. Soon lakes would bubble and gurgle; real steam would begin to rise. The ground would crack and leaves would shrivel. There would be earthquakes, as the wave of heat tried to equalize itself through Earth's brittle crust.

 

 

SunAs were ecstatically offering their bodies to the new sun, glorying in the new warmth in cold spots, throwing away furs and heavy coats. In the warmer places the SunAs were arching back luxuriously in the new blinding heat -- and in a few minutes screaming as it blackened their skin.

 

 

Wood houses were catching fire spontaneously, bridges buckling, girders pushing their way through masonry and plaster. Parched winds were rising, sweeping hissing steam along city streets. Lamp standards buckled, water tanks burst, glass cracked and fell in splinters.

 

 

People were running, then tripping as the sidewalks split, screaming as their clothes began to smolder. People were dashing into bathrooms, turning on the cold shower and being scalded by the boiling water and steam that emerged. Others, unthinking, were running for lakes and pools, unaware that the water was already well on the way to being steam. Once more the astonishing thing would be that human beings lived so long, still moving, trying to survive in a world where every tree was blazing. All over one side of the planet people who were dead, their bodies roasted, still moved and shrieked and strove for blessed coolness which no longer existed.

 

 

Now even the polar regions would be hidden under boiling clouds. Down in the depths of the sea there was still coolness, while the waters above boiled and tried to leap bodily into the atmosphere. Some deep-sea fish would still be swimming about unaware of disaster.

 

 

People on the slopes of high mountains were climbing higher and higher, and then finding abruptly that there was no escape. Even the icecaps of high mountains were turning to steam.

 

 

Hurricanes were sweeping the world, for the heat was still uneven. But they weren't cold gales -- they were tearing blasts of hot air that could lift a stream bodily and never let it down.

 

 

Coalpits were burning, grassland was burning, forests were burning, whole streets in towns were ablaze. Yet there would still be freak spots in this mad world where people and animals out in the open were still alive, and water existed as water, not steam.

 

 

Now there would be volcanoes where there never had been volcanoes, the ravaged Earth adding her own contribution to the devastation. Perhaps Atlantis had risen again and was dry as a bone in a matter of minutes.

 

 

The side of Earth where it was night was having a very different, but no less frightening, experience. Tremors, sudden winds, a hot breath from somewhere, no more. Time to prepare, for obviously something was happening, something worse was going to happen; suspense, not actuality. A few minutes, even an hour or two, of reports from the other side of the world, jamming the wires and the ether -- then silence. More tremors, earthquakes; the first tidal waves. And all the time the Earth was spinning, bringing millions of square miles of undevastated land into the glare, tilting seared land and boiling sea into darkness and comparative coolness -- too late.

 

 

Then storms, pouring rain as water-sodden air swept around the world, cooled, and unloaded millions of tons of water on the dark land and sea. Still the world turned, giving more and more of its surface to the killing heat. Hot hurricanes were following the cool monsoons on the dark side. Already, in the night, the quarter of the Earth that remained was feeling the burning breath of the new sun. The moon was strangely bright, reflecting a stronger glare.

 

 

The part of the Earth which had been in the glare of the sun since the beginning was by this time cauterized, sterilized by heat. Nothing remained, not animals, not birds, not reptiles, not insects, not plant life. And there was no liquid for fish to live in. The bodies of the creatures which had died, if not burned, were desiccated.

 

 

But even in this part there was still life, human life. The Trogs lived -- the scientific cavemen, the people who had known what was coming and prepared for it, digging deep and very special holes in the ground.

 

 

This, however, was only the start. Even when the Earth turned and there was not a square inch of ground that had not been seared by the new, more passionate sun, it was no more than a beginning. The mean temperature of the Earth, through all its mass, probably hadn't risen more than one degree yet. . . .

 

 

That was for the future -- the next day, then the next. But no one would be around to see what happened in the later stages.

 

 

 

 

What brought me back to the lifeship, which was my concern, from the doomed Earth, which wasn't, was the prosaic fact that Harry Phillips was taking off his shirt.

 

 

I forced my attention back to the present, the lifeship. Earth was the past -- we had known that since we left it.

 

 

It wasn't unimportant that Harry was taking off his shirt. Given the lead, Morgan Smith started to peel off his clothes too. They had thought in their various ways of the world they had left, and suddenly, perhaps for the first time, they realized they had left it and that its standards, its way of life, and the things it demanded no longer had any real meaning.

 

 

It was hot in the lifeship, stifling hot; Bill Easson was probably right after all. So they stripped, and another part of Earth died. We were no longer men and women of the third planet, the green world.

 

 

As Sammy and I unscrewed more panels on the sides farthest from the sun, there was even laughter and a suggestion of horseplay. Miss Wallace wore sensible underwear, of course. While it didn't positively deny sex, it made it look improbable. John Stowe grinned fleetingly as he looked at her -- the first time he had smiled since Mary died. Morgan was flushed with embarrassment until he realized that there was no need for it, and he grinned too. Old Harry was quite unconcerned. He, at any rate, had held out for so long only because he saw no need to do as I suggested. Betty took off her slacks, but felt it necessary to explain, embarrassed, that she couldn't take off her sweater because she wasn't wearing anything underneath.

 

 

For some reason everyone thought that was very funny. Betty went redder and redder, then impulsively caught hold of her sweater to tear it off. I watched with interest that had nothing to do with sex. If Betty, the shy, nervous, self-conscious Betty, could do that, something had really happened.

 

 

But she didn't, of course.

 

 

 

 

 

 

5

 

 

There was a slightly different attitude among us after that. For one thing, Mary Stowe's death no longer seemed to be hanging over us. We all, even John Stowe, found it easier now to think of her as one of the casualties of the disaster. There had always been a lingering doubt about the truth of the scientists' predictions. We might be making fools of ourselves, and Mary might have died for nothing.

 

 

Now that was gone. We could tell from the conditions in our own little ship that all the scientists had said was justified.

 

 

The casual marriages of Morgan and Betty, and Leslie and me, were now accepted completely. Miss Wallace made a point of telling me that she was satisfied I was right. In fact, she said a little wistfully, if there was any question of the situation arising in her case -- which, of course, there wasn't -- she would gladly marry in the same conditions. Or even, she said stoutly, have children without marrying.

 

 

It was the knowledge of what had happened on Earth that did that. There is a feeling for race survival in every human being, and not only survival, but strong survival. The thought of the tiny proportion of the human race which would be left stimulated this feeling in everyone. The way people casually mentioned having children showed how their thoughts had been directed.

 

 

Morgan and Betty asked me -- rather late, I suspected -- when we would be safely down on Mars at latest, and whether it was all right to start children. I reassured them. Miss Wallace observed in some surprise, after long calculation, that she could still have nine or ten children. I thought that was rather an overestimate, myself. Sammy dropped a remark or two about things he was going to tell his children. Harry Phillips wondered if old people could get together on a one-child basis, so that a woman who might have another child could be partnered by a man who was past his best, and neither could be a drag on the reproduction of the younger folk. John Stowe remarked that Mary wouldn't have been able to have any more children anyway.

 

 

The attitude of the people on the lifeship still wasn't all it might be, however.

 

 

"It will be different on other lifeships," I told Leslie once. "Some crews will be finding their lieutenant turning into a little dictator."

 

 

She grinned. "I can't see you as a dictator. Your way's right, Bill."

 

 

"No, their way's right," I said. "Suppose I had to get everyone to do something in a hurry. Would they do it? Only if it suited them. They'd argue. They'd complain. Some would do it, some wouldn't."

 

 

"And I still think that's right," Leslie declared. "You must too, Bill."

 

 

"How do you work that out?"

 

 

"You picked us. If you wanted slaves you'd have picked slaves."

 

 

I had to admit that.

 

 

But I still had a point, I felt. I didn't want to give the example of the attitude I thought was right, not to Leslie.

 

 

I had married Leslie, but she didn't matter to me. She didn't figure in my calculations. That didn't mean that later, if there was a later, I wouldn't love her and cherish her and build my whole new world about her. Meantime, I was in charge of a spaceship, and having a girl was an irrelevance. If something dangerous had to be done that only Leslie could do, I wouldn't hesitate an instant before telling her to do it.

 

 

It wasn't a question of not having time for her. I had plenty of time. If it hadn't been for the fact that she still spent a lot of time in the hydroponics plant, she'd have been with me twenty-four hours of the day. What I couldn't afford to give her was attention.

 

 

We didn't get the temperature in the ship as low as it had been before, not for a long time. The hull was absorbing more heat, conducting it around, and couldn't radiate away as much from inside.

 

 

I don't know whether suggestion came into it, but apart from that possibility we proved to the hilt how much health depends on air circulation, temperature, and humidity. The water purifier's condensation unit went on strike for a day or two, and by the time we had it working again we were all like limp rags and would have lost pounds in sweat if there had been any way to measure that.

 

 

Morgan drifted all over the ship with the air current as he slept one night. He woke with a headache and fever, and for five days he had the works -- cold, sore throat, headache, cough, fever. There may have been other causes, but the high temperature and absence of air movement (since he went with the air) seemed to cover it.

 

 

It was Jim who suggested something I should have thought of long since. One day as he and I were in the control cabin, companionably silent, he said:

 

 

"Why can't we see any of the other ships, Lieutenant Bill?" He always called me that.

 

 

"The other lifeships, Jim?" I asked.

 

 

"Yes. There's millions of them, aren't there, all going the same way?"

 

 

"Not quite millions, Jim. Why can't we see them? Well, look. Remember all those ships at Detroit? They all took off more or less together, going from the same place to the same place. Yet I'll bet there wasn't one collision. At the end of ten seconds each ship's done about two miles. Even if you point another ship after it then and try to ram it, you can't do it."

 

 

I waited while he worked that out for himself. He was an intelligent kid, more intelligent than any of the adults except Sammy and Leslie. Then I went on: "Between Earth and Mars now there should be hundreds of thousands of lifeships. But the volume of space in which they may be is about -- oh, say fifty million million miles. I'm sure I could make it a lot more if I tried."

 

 

I grinned at him. "So if you think of it," I said, we're not likely to see many of the others, are we?"

 

 

"That's a pity," said Jim thoughtfully. "If there were others close, we might be able to get fuel from them."

 

 

I jerked convulsively. "How do you know we need fuel?" I demanded.

 

 

"Saw it on the meters," he said simply.

 

 

I hadn't thought there was the slightest risk of that. It wasn't a simple story that could be read from the meters at a glance. The boy must have done a lot of thinking and calculation before he could have worked out for himself what I had been careful never to hint to him.

 

 

"Have you told anyone?" I asked quickly.

 

 

"No," said Jim. "I guessed you would tell them if you wanted them to know."

 

 

I nodded. "Jim," I said, "you're going to be a useful man in the colony. When the rest of us are old, you'll be helping to run things. Just keep thinking things out as you've been doing, and you won't find much that'll beat you."

 

 

The boy flushed with pleasure. Naturally enough, I was his hero, and anything I said was worth something.

 

 

"Fuel from other ships," I mused. "I wonder."

 

 

The thought, or a germ of it, had occurred to me before and had been abandoned. Perhaps I had given it up too soon.

 

 

"I did think of that, Jim," I said. "Know why I gave up the idea?"

 

 

"Because we can't see any other ships and there may not be any in millions of miles."

 

 

"That and one or two other things. Even if there was another ship, we'd have to use fuel getting to her. At least, just now, we're not using any."

 

 

Jim nodded seriously.

 

 

"And apart from that, this other ship wouldn't have much fuel either. Certainly none to spare. What would we do, fight for what it had? Take the people in the other ship aboard? If lifeships could hold twenty, there would be twenty in them. Anyway, how would we transship them? Each ship carries only one space suit . . ."

 

 

But as I went on detailing the objections it seemed more and more that we should at least look into the matter.

 

 

"Jim," I said, "go and get Sammy and Leslie."

 

 

He came erect excitedly. "Can I come back with them?" he asked.

 

 

"Sure -- you're the assistant pilot, aren't you?" I stopped him as he was about to dive through the doorway. "Don't let anyone know there's anything going on," I warned. "Be casual."

 

 

He went more slowly.

 

 

Leslie and Sammy were in the control room with us in two minutes.

 

 

I hadn't told Leslie about the fuel situation, but she didn't turn a hair when I did tell her.

 

 

"I guessed it," she said.

 

 

"I wonder if anyone else has?" I said. "Here's four of us who know about it. That only leaves six who don't. Do you think I'm right to try to keep it secret?"

 

 

"As long as you can," said Sammy. "But when you can't, the others may as well know the truth. I don't think things would be as bad as you believe, Bill. They're good people. They wouldn't go to pieces."

 

 

We discussed Jim's suggestion. I asked him to state it himself, and it was obvious how proud he was to be included in our council.

 

 

"That's all very well," said Sammy. "But since we can't see any other ships . . . ?"

 

 

"We haven't tried," I said. "We only have an angle of vision of about 150° here. The first step is for me to go out at the air lock in the space suit and scan space behind us. There may be a ship within a hundred yards."

 

 

"Not you," said Sammy definitely. "Me. There may not be much risk, but if anything should happen to the man who goes out, he'd better not be the one man who can operate this ship."

 

 

I nodded. "No time like the present," I said. "Let's go now."

 

 

The others didn't pay any particular attention to us as we went through the lounge. Sammy and I or Leslie and I were always working on something. There was no indication that there might be anything special about this occasion.

 

 

We started to put the space suit on Sammy. The hydroponics plant was between us and the other six; they might see us, but we couldn't help that.

 

 

"You'd be more comfortable with your clothes on for this," I said. "But you needn't stay out long."

 

 

He had the whole suit on except the helmet when we discovered something that had been missed when we checked the suit.

 

 

The helmet wouldn't fit on the suit -- not with Sammy's head in it. It was flawed, like the acceleration couch that had broken, like hundreds of other things, probably, in thousands of other lifeships. The outside was perfectly machined, the heavy steel base and the tungsten glass face plate were perfect. Everything was perfect, except that inside the dome was a jagged, irregular lump of metal that rested on the top of Sammy's head and wouldn't let the base of the helmet meet the ring on the suit. There was a gap of four and a half inches all the way.

 

 

Sammy, who had been quite even-tempered for a long time, forgot Leslie and Jim and swore long and bitterly.

 

 

We should have tried the helmet on our heads before, of course, instead of deciding it was all right because it looked all right. But there wasn't any more we could have done about it than we could do about it now.

 

 

I tried it on my head. The space between base and ring was even bigger.

 

 

We had hopes of Leslie -- the gap was smaller and it seemed for a moment that if we padded her shoulders so that all the free space was at the top of the suit we could force the ring on it high enough to meet the base of the helmet. The arms were the trouble. Some suits have mechanical arms operated from inside the suit, but not this one. True, we could get the suit on Leslie with her arms pinned at her sides. Then, however, she would be completely helpless, unable to operate even the air lock, and certainly not the propulsion unit. If she went out like that she would fall into space and be lost.

 

 

"I don't know," I said, "whether to laugh or cry."

 

 

"I do," said Sammy gloomily. "You three cry, and I'll laugh."

 

 

Sammy had the misfortune to be a tragedian with all the gestures and expressions of a comedian. Leslie and I grinned, and Jim gave a surprisingly adult chuckle. Both Jim and Bessie always found Sammy a great joke.

 

 

I felt better for a moment, but only a moment. I hadn't taken the matter as seriously as Sammy at first. I was something of a handy man; the thought of a little metalwork didn't disturb me in the slightest. However, as I ran over in my mind everything we had in the empty, naked lifeship, my face changed, and Leslie noticed it.

 

 

"Isn't there anything we can do?" she asked.

 

 

With even a hammer and chisel we might have chipped the flaw away in time. We could improvise a hammer, but what could we use as a chisel?

 

 

"You don't need to do anything," said Jim earnestly. "The suit will go on me. I'm sure of it."

 

 

I looked at him thoughtfully. "That's probably true, Jim," I said slowly. "But you don't mind if we try a few other things first?"

 

 

"Oh, I don't mind," Jim said confidently. "But it'll be me all right. You'll see."

 

 

Sammy and I scouted around the whole lifeship, looking at everything, picking it up and trying it. Practically all the loose metal objects were thin aluminum.

 

 

We abandoned all idea of secrecy. We showed the helmet to the others and asked for ideas. A host of impracticable suggestions were immediately forthcoming. We laughed at some of them -- it was all great fun, a sort of parlor game in which we all joined, not Hunt the Slipper but Who Can Wear the Space Suit? We tried it on everybody, with much hilarity.

 

 

With Betty we nearly made it. The helmet and its fitting actually met. However, that was the limit -- tightening it down could only drive the metal in the dome through the top of her head. We thought of an airtight collar above the ring, but there was no way to make one. We chipped at the metal with all the substitutes for a hammer and chisel we could find, and managed to scratch it, no more.

 

 

Someone suggested acid, and by pooling our knowledge we found that hydrochloric acid was hydrogen and chlorine, that you could make it with salt and sulphuric acid, and that you could make sulphuric acid with sulphur trioxide. Which was very interesting but didn't help, since none of us really knew how to do it, and we couldn't risk tampering with the hydroponics chemicals and the water purifier to get the stuff.

 

 

"It looks," I said at last, after we had tried everything we could think of, "as if you're right, Jim. It's got to be you or little Bessie."

 

 

"What's that?" asked Stowe sharply.

 

 

And it wasn't a joke any more. As Sammy had said, though there wasn't much danger in going outside a ship in a space suit, there was always a risk. A score of things that we couldn't check any other way might turn out to be wrong with the suit. Jim might be blown out with the air. The lock might stick. The little things that might happen would be nothing to a spaceman, but they might well be fatal to a thirteen-year-old boy.

 

 

Theoretically I could give any orders I liked, and they had to be obeyed. But I couldn't let Jim go out unless his father agreed. After all, Stowe had already lost Mary.

 

 

I told them we needed fuel. Though I didn't say how serious it was, I made it clear our chances would be much better if we could get some from somewhere. And we had just demonstrated that any space-suit work that had to be done, Jim Stowe would have to do.

 

 

"No!" exclaimed John Stowe, as I expected. "Mary's dead -- now you want to risk Jim!"

 

 

I waited. I saw Stowe struggling with himself. "I'd go," said Stowe at last. "But not Jim -- please, not Jim."

 

 

"You can't," I told him. "If it were possible, we'd do it ourselves. Only Jim can do it -- or Bessie. Do you want it to be Bessie?"

 

 

It was Jim himself who swayed the balance in the end. "Please, Dad," he begged. "Can't you see I've got to do it? But I won't if you say no."

 

 

I wasn't quite honest about all this. I couldn't afford to be. There was small risk in sending Jim out to have a look back the way we had come. But if he did happen to see another ship, and if we decided to contact it, Jim would have to do it. And that would be very dangerous indeed.

 

 

I knew that if Stowe said yes once he'd have to say it twice. This wasn't just his permission for Jim to do a simple, fairly safe job. It was his agreement for Jim to do any space-suit job that was needed, no matter how dangerous.

 

 

He didn't know that. He said, "Yes." And we began to get Jim ready.

 

 

There was no trouble. Jim was out a long time, but he battered on the hull occasionally, as I'd told him to do, to let us know that all was well and he was just taking his time. I was as impatient as Stowe, asking myself what Jim could be doing all this time, and wondering, unworthily, whether he wasn't just playing, pretending to be a spaceman doing a dangerous repair job on a damaged ship.

 

 

But then I remembered how careful Jim was and realized that he wouldn't come in until he felt absolutely responsible for what he had to say, and could tell us, not "I think," but "I know."

 

 

I said this to Stowe when he spoke anxiously. He seemed comforted.

 

 

"You like Jim, don't you?" he said.

 

 

"I'd rather risk Leslie than him," I told him. Leslie heard that. She smiled at me approvingly, but I saw she didn't believe it. Leslie wasn't an anxious, jealous wife. She wasn't unsure of herself, or of me. I might not love her as some men had loved some women, but there were already strong ties of affection between us, and she knew it.

 

 

What I said was true, nevertheless. I'd rather risk Leslie than Jim. Leslie would play her part in the new colony, if we reached it, and play it well. She would never be, however, the asset Jim might be.

 

 

Jim came in at last. His teeth were chattering as we helped him out of the suit -- the big suit, apparently, absorbed less heat from the sun and radiated more than the hull of the ship.

 

 

"There's a lifeship not more than a few miles behind us," said Jim clearly. "I waited till I was sure it was moving the same way and at the same speed as us. I couldn't see any- thing else anywhere that could be a ship."

 

 

I almost refused to believe him. This had just been something to try, and when it duly failed we'd be no worse off.

 

 

"You're sure?" I asked foolishly -- obviously he was sure. The others began to chatter excitedly, glad to know we weren't as alone in space as we'd thought. I grinned at Sammy. "What has the voice of doom to say now?" I asked.

 

 

"Nothing. It's his day off," said Sammy apologetically.

 

 

"The sun," Jim told us, puzzled, "looks very small and far away. I thought it would be big and bright, Lieutenant Bill. But it's not."

 

 

 

 

 

 

6

 

 

There was really something to think about now. Did we want to contact the other ship? How was it to be done? Should we try to communicate with it first?

 

 

If we were going all out for contact with other lifeships, I could try to turn ours so that it was facing back to Earth but flying on in the same course. Then we could spend hours in the safety of the control room scanning space for other ships. We might easily find some. Space is clear -- vision without the impedance of atmosphere is so sharp and exact that we might see the pinpoint of reflected light that meant a lifeship hundreds of miles away.

 

 

That course of action was almost out of the question, however. The regular ships have gyros and jets that can turn a ship without interfering with its line of flight, but not the lifeships. Anyway, sooner or later I'd probably have to turn it back.

 

 

"Seriously," said Sammy, when he and I were alone, "has Jim much chance of getting to that other ship and back in the space suit?"

 

 

"Oh yes," I said. "That's easy enough. Depends on who's in the suit, of course. If it had been Betty, say, I don't think I'd have let her try it. But though Jim's young, he's got guts and brains. That's not the problem."

 

 

"Then what is?"

 

 

"The other ship. There're people on it, alive or dead. Another lieutenant. People who want to get to Mars. Suppose they have no fuel left at all. Suppose their hydroponics plant isn't working, or their water purifier. Or suppose they have illness aboard. Suppose -- "

 

 

"Don't suppose any more," said Sammy bitterly. "I see. It's like everything else since this impossible trip began. Nothing right, nothing as it should be. Nothing but difficulty, trouble, things going wrong -- "

 

 

"Hold on, Sammy," I said, laughing. "Count ten, and if that's not enough, count a hundred. We've been very lucky indeed. We had a perfect takeoff, so perfect that I didn't have to do any course correction -- it was never wrong. No trouble with the hydroponics plant, nothing we couldn't put right on the water purifier, no leaks, no failures, no illness to speak of, no fights, no quarrels, nothing we couldn't solve except this thing that we may be solving now. Then even when the space suit was wrong for the people who would have used it, we had an excellent spaceman to take over. And whenever we think of contacting another ship, we look out the back door, and there she is!"

 

 

"Maybe," said Sammy morosely, "but you didn't mention Mary Stowe dying and . . ."

 

 

"And what?"

 

 

"Oh hell," said Sammy with a reluctant grin. "Get on with it."

 

 

We discussed the problems painstakingly. Sammy, his pessimism gone for the moment, agreed that despite everything against it we had to contact the other ship.

 

 

Leslie agreed too, when she came into it. "But have you worked out just what you're asking of Jim, Bill?" she asked gravely. "He's got to deal with a whole lifeship complement alone -- speak for us, decide for us. I mean, he'll be there, and we won't. He'll have no one to ask, no one to help him. And if for any reason at all he doesn't come back, we can't do a thing. We haven't another suit. He could get back to the air lock and suffocate there, for all we could do to help him."

 

 

Sammy looked a little ashamed of himself. That was the crux of the matter, not the objections he had made.

 

 

"Let's put it to Jim," I said.

 

 

"No," Leslie objected. "We know what he'll say. He'll do it. But he's only a child, Bill. We have to be careful what we ask him to do. Little Bessie would walk trustingly out of the air lock without a space suit at all if you asked her, but the fact that she did it willingly wouldn't relieve you of any responsibility."

 

 

"I know," I said. "But from the standpoint of pure reason there's only one answer. If Jim doesn't go, we haven't much chance. If he does, the chances of all of us, including him, may go up a lot. We've burned our boats by telling the others we need fuel. As you say, Leslie, we know how Jim himself will feel about it. Let's call Stowe into this, shall we?"

 

 

Poor Stowe was in a terrible state. We couldn't conceal from him any of the dangers. He tried to speak, but didn't know what to say. As I'd known at the time, I'd hamstrung him when I got him to say yes before.

 

 

"I wish there hadn't been a ship near," he muttered at last, not looking at us. "Then we'd have had to make the best of it. But now . . ."

 

 

I knew he felt it too. We had gone too far in this matter to go back. After all, the other ship was there. We could almost feel it behind us, following us; we couldn't forget it or pretend it wasn't there.

 

 

"Look on the other side," I urged, wishing Leslie wasn't watching me, knowing I was raising hopes which might never be realized. "Suppose Jim finds fuel. If he does, if there's enough -- our worries are over. Ships don't crack up in space, you know that. All they ever have to worry about is taking off and landing. More fuel, and we're safe. Jim too."

 

 

"If he was your son," said Stowe with an effort, "would you let him go?"

 

 

"Yes," I said without hesitation.

 

 

"I believe you. We need this fuel?"

 

 

Oh, let it go, I thought. "We have to have it," I told him.

 

 

Stowe squared his shoulders. "Then there's nothing more to say, is there?" he said, trying to smile.

 

 

 

 

We packed Jim up in warm clothes, checked every part of his suit, the tiny propulsion unit, and the air tanks. I made sure that he knew what to do in every emergency I could think of, told him all about the moluone fuel we needed -- what it looked like, how we'd handle it, how much we needed; I impressed on him again and again that he was on his own and that anything he tried he had to manage himself, without help from, us.

 

 

I stopped at last when I saw that, though he was excited, he had a pretty good idea of what he was doing, and any further instructions would only be an encumbrance to him.

 

 

I knew from the way Stowe said good-by to him that he was certain Jim would never come back. He was fighting the idea for all he was worth, but it had taken a firm hold on him.

 

 

I'd never believed there could be so much tension among us as there was when he was gone. Normally our life was easy, lazy. Some of us who didn't want to get out of condition or fat -- Sammy, Leslie, Harry, Miss Wallace, and I -- exercised as much as we could in the absence of weight. But for the most part we relaxed and slept or dreamed or thought or merely drifted about. All of us had found hours passing in the apparent space of minutes. Tension didn't exist as a normal part of existence.

 

 

But whether we were concerned about Jim himself, about what he was trying to do, what he might find, or what might happen to him, the result was some surprising things.

 

 

When Bessie pulled at Leslie to tell her something, Leslie snapped: "Don't bother me just now." Bessie wasn't hurt -- she merely stared at Leslie in wonder. Leslie made a gesture as if to caress the child and tell her it was all right. Then she remembered Jim and frowned anxiously again.

 

 

Sammy, who rarely clowned, was swimming about grotesquely in the air. He pulled faces at Bessie, and she forgot the strange impatience of Leslie and laughed delightedly.

 

 

"I wish I could have gone," said Betty.

 

 

"What could you have done, poppet?" asked Morgan teasingly. "It's not a job for a pretty little baby like you."

 

 

"It's a job for anyone who can do it," said Betty warmly. "That's why Jim's gone."

 

 

"Might have asked him to go on back to Earth while he was at it, and see what it's like there now," said John Stowe, and laughed as if he had made a very good joke and had only just fully appreciated it.

 

 

Sammy swirled around the whole group, his face screwed into a fiendish mask, and Bessie screamed with pleasure.

 

 

"I didn't want one of those hard, capable girls who do things like men, honey," said Morgan affectionately.

 

 

"You wanted someone like me, someone who's no use for anything?" asked Betty with a tinge of resentment.

 

 

"Oh, I wouldn't say you're no use for anything," said Morgan meaningly.

 

 

"That's all you care about me."

 

 

"For heaven's sake! I only said -- "

 

 

"I heard what you only said. And I know what you only meant. I'm just someone to sleep with."

 

 

"Oh, go chase yourself."

 

 

"Hold it, kids," I said wearily.

 

 

"I'm not as useless as you think," Betty said.

 

 

"Well, it seems to me you re being pretty useless at the moment, darling. When you go on about something I never said you're about as useful as a sick headache."

 

 

"It's nice to know what you really think of me, anyway. It's nice to get at the truth. I should be glad I'm useful for something, I suppose."

 

 

"Even at that," said Morgan, "you're not so damned hot."

 

 

I don't know who hit whom first. I wasn't watching them. We stared for a moment -- they were so close, so quiet that we couldn't imagine them fighting, even after the build-up they'd been giving themselves. But they were certainly fighting. Morgan slapped Betty's face with savage force that sent her flying across the lounge and him back against the opposite wall. Betty, instead of bursting into tears as we immediately expected, threw herself at him and struck at his face ineffectually. Morgan hooked his foot in the frame of one of the couches and raised his arm high, a maniacal expression on his face. I dived from the wall and butted him in the midriff with my head as his arm came down. He spun crazily in the air, nursing his ankle, and I bounced back from him.

 

 

Betty burst into tears then. There was an immediate reconciliation, and no one said much about the incident.

 

 

But I looked on Morgan with some suspicion after that. Back on Earth, if a man tried to interfere with a girl and her escort killed him with a bottle he happened to be holding in his hand, he might get off with a light sentence. But if he waited to light a cigarette, then pulled out a gun and shot the other man, it would be a death sentence.

 

 

It seemed to me there was that essential difference in what Morgan had done. If he had thrown himself at Betty and battered her, I could forget it. There was something unpleasant, however, about the way he had anchored his foot so that he could smite the girl with all the power of his body unhampered by weight. I didn't know where he was going to hit her, hut he could have killed her with a blow like that. The presence of mind he had shown in his act made it startlingly sadistic.

 

 

And then Leslie started looking for a fight too. "You shouldn't have let Jim go," she snapped at me. "A child like that . . ."

 

 

So I was the only one responsible. I had thought we all agreed that Jim had to go. "Can it, Leslie," I said as pleasantly as I could. "Suppose -- just suppose -- he's finding us more fuel? Try thinking of that, will you?"

 

 

"Fuel, fuel -- you've got fuel on the brain."

 

 

"So I have. People need it, you know, to fly spaceships. Even me. And that's what I'm trying to do at the moment."

 

 

"The man with one idea. I believe you'd sell me, too, for this precious fuel of yours."

 

 

"Sure I would. Who are you that you shouldn't be sold?"

 

 

"For the love of God!" Stowe shouted, his nerves worn raw.

 

 

"Sorry, John," said Leslie quickly. "Sorry, Bill. Let's all shut up, shall we, before we start wringing each other's necks."

 

 

"Amen," said Sammy, and looped the loop. We fell into an uneasy silence.

 

 

No, it wasn't pleasant waiting. I knew Jim would be gone a long time anyway -- the most economical way to use his little propulsion unit was merely to put himself in a slow drift toward the other ship and wait patiently till he got there. But that didn't prevent us from worrying, long before he could have reached the ship.

 

 

Morgan and Betty went out of the lounge together. I looked after them, frowning -- if they fought again, and no one was around to stop him, Morgan in his wild rage might do something we should all regret. It was unlikely, however, that their reconciliation could last such a short time.

 

 

The first moment when Jim might reasonably have returned came and went. I wished there was something I could have set everyone to do. I thought of Morgan and Betty, and wished I could go away with Leslie and pass the time in her arms. I looked at them, smooth and cool, and ached for her. Leslie wanted it too, I saw. But any moment now Jim should be back. He was approaching the limit of his air supply.

 

 

John Stowe said as much, suddenly admitting his anxiety.

 

 

"You know Jim," I said reassuringly. "He'll wait as long as he can, making sure the job's done."

 

 

"How long are we going to wait, before we admit he isn't coming back?"

 

 

I answered calmly, "We needn't start thinking along those lines for quite a while yet. He doesn't need as much air as an adult, and for the most part he won't be active."

 

 

"But -- "

 

 

"Remember when he was out before? Remember how he took his time, making sure?"

 

 

"I'm going to the air lock," said Stowe abruptly.

 

 

"Oh, all right. I'll come with you."

 

 

I had told everybody to stay away from the air lock because I was afraid someone would do something wild like trying to open it to see if Jim was coming. Some people can never comprehend a vacuum -- they know they can't stick their heads out in space because they've been told, but they never see why. They have some vague idea that if they hold their breath it will be quite safe.

 

 

No one needed to be at the air lock, anyway, because if Jim could reach it he could certainly operate the doors. But inevitably, very soon after Stowe and I went there, we were all crowded in the cramped spaces at the stern of the ship. It was cold there. That was where the air circulation was strongest, and where most of the cooling of the air was done. I realized that it had been quite cool for days. The hull must be absorbing less heat from the sun, allowing more to radiate away, and gradually the temperature was dropping again.

 

 

Morgan and Betty were with us again. Morgan was silent and withdrawn. Betty was shivering. There was something pathetic about Betty; it was partly her youth, partly her helplessness, partly her slightness. She had made herself a bra long since, not to be different from the others by going on wearing her sweater. Clad as she was, her small body was thin and fragile. Her ribs showed plainly, her legs were too thin, and her shoulder blades stood out sharply in her back. She wasn't unattractive, but beside Leslie, who was as slender as a beautiful girl could be and still be called beautiful without reservations, Betty was thin and bony.

 

 

I didn't see how Morgan could possibly lit her. It was like hitting little Bessie. Leslie was different. There could be physical rivalry with a girl like Leslie.

 

 

God, it was time Jim was back.

 

 

I knew that if I had to go through the whole thing again I wouldn't let Jim go. I searched desperately for something to say, anything that wasn't about Jim.

 

 

"I think we could put a couple of the panels back, Sammy," I said. "There and there. The radiation isn't so -- "

 

 

The wheel that closed the outer door began to turn. Stowe jumped to spin it. I grabbed his arm.

 

 

"Let Jim do it himself," I said thankfully. "He may have a leg in the doorway or something."

 

 

When we saw that the outer door was tight shut, however, I threw back the inner lock. Air whistled past us and filled the empty lock.

 

 

There's not much that can change faster than human beings' moods. It took us only about half a second to transfer our concern from Jim back to the fuel question. We saw through the face plate that he was all right; instantly all of us except Stowe forgot our anxiety and began to babble excitedly about what he might have found, while Sammy and I started to unscrew the nuts that secured his helmet.

 

 

"He's back -- it must be all right," said Betty, with baffling logic.

 

 

"I knew he'd do it," said Stowe, wildly distorting the truth in his relief.

 

 

"Maybe we'll have our nineteen children after all," Leslie told me, grinning.

 

 

"But if there is fuel, how are we going to get it here?" asked Harry, seeing that problem for jhe first time.

 

 

"Easy," I said. "It doesn't weigh anything, and in space it hangs together by surface tension. All we have to do is -- "

 

 

"Get on with your job, Easson," grunted Sammy, "and don't count your chickens before you've got any eggs."

 

 

We got the helmet off and looked expectantly at Jim.

 

 

"I'm sorry, Lieutenant Bill," he said. "There's nothing in that ship -- no air, no fuel, no people, no anything. It's empty!"

 

 

We stared at him, the excitement and expectancy slowly disappearing from our faces. It had always been a wild hope, but we had let ourselves believe in it. When I saw Jim back, I too had allowed myself to think, for no reason at all, that he must have been successful.

 

 

I forced myself to say calmly: "Oh well, we'll have to do the best we can." Jim was almost in tears, as if it was his fault -- no wonder, with everyone looking at him in silence, all hope and pleasure in his return wiped off their faces and nothing left but blankness and despair. Somehow we had worked out, as Betty had, that if only Jim came back safely there would be nothing to worry about. "Cheer up, Jim. You did very well. You couldn't find fuel if there wasn't any there."

 

 

Betty, more from strain than anything else, burst into tears and threw herself into Morgan's arms.

 

 

"I always saw myself as a tragic hero," said Sammy, not very helpfully; But he made amends by ruffling Jim's hair and telling him: "Bill's right, Second Lieutenant. It's not your fault the tanks were empty, not fuel."

 

 

Jim, whose sense of humor wasn't as adult as most other things about him, chuckled involuntarily. And if we still felt despair at Jim's report, at least we didn't force it on everyone else. We came to life again, smiled and talked and pretended the whole incident was merely a welcome break in the monotony of our existence.

 

 

But it was our lowest point on the trip so far, worse than when Mary died, worse than when we knew Earth was burning. You never know how black things can look until your hopes have been raised and then dashed again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

7

 

 

I left Jim with his father and the others for a few minutes, to let them all realize that he was safe and had done his job well, even if he hadn't been successful. Then I set Stowe, Harry, and Morgan on the job of refitting two of the neutralex panels and took Jim, Leslie, and Sammy into the control room.

 

 

Jim couldn't understand what had happened to the other ship, and neither could I. He had noticed long before he came to it that there were no lights in the control room, but that wasn't surprising. When we were all in the lounge there were no lights in our control room either.

 

 

The first shock was when he found the outer air-lock doors open. He closed them and opened the inner door. There was no rush of air. Everything was black. He had to shine his torch to find the lights. They went on at once.

 

 

The ship was almost as empty as if there had never been people in it. Not quite; he found a handkerchief and a girl's stocking. The log hadn't been opened -- there wasn't a line in it.

 

 

The plants in the trays were dead; the water purifier seemed to be working. Nothing was broken except one of the meters in the control room. The fuel register was at zero. There was no space suit on the ship.

 

 

"I wondered," said the boy tentatively, "if they hadn't already transferred to another ship. With two suits, theirs and the one in the other ship, they might have ferried people across one at a time

 

 

"It's the only reasonable explanation, Jim," I said, "but I'd like a better one.

 

 

Where was the other ship? Why had they left the ship that was on a perfect course for Mars, when they could have transferred fuel from the other?

 

 

"How about supplies?" I asked.

 

 

"They hadn't been touched," said Jim. "Vitamin tablets, concentrates, synthetic protein . . . I left them, because we have enough, haven't we?"

 

 

"Quite right, Jim." But that made it even more incomprehensible. If they had transferred to another lifeship, they would need their own supplies.

 

 

"Could they have been picked up by a regular ship?" Leslie asked.

 

 

"It's possible. That would explain a lot. But the regular ships would be packed with all the people they could carry."

 

 

We had to leave it at that. Every one of those seven hundred thousand ships had a story, some merry, some tragic. And we had hit on one of the mysteries.. What seemed to me most likely, after considering the possibilities, was that one of the regular spaceships had had to take off in a hurry, half empty. Perhaps, in the center of a riot after the lifeships had gone and the people of the world were one crazed mob left behind to die, a spaceship had had to blast off in a hurry or not at all. Naturally enough, if that was so, it would match velocities with lifeship after lifeship, taking off people who otherwise had a much smaller chance of reaching Mars safely.

 

 

And if so, we had been just one ship too late. With the one Jim had examined the regular ship had reached its limit and blasted on toward Mars. It would probably be there now, safe. It's difficult to imagine the difference between the regular ships and the lifeships if you don't know it. The regular ships could take three hours, if they liked, to reach a thousand miles up from Earth; they could maneuver in space better than an airplane in an atmosphere; they even, some of them, had artificial gravity of one sort or another -- magnetic or centrifugal, mostly -- so that people could go from Earth to Mars as comfortably as from New York to London. Only it had never been necessary to transport more than a few hundred people a year between the planets.