One in 300 (9 page)

 

 

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.