Takeoff! (24 page)

The duck had died instantly, and had carbonized an instant later. The arc established had blazed its way back to the generator, destroying everything in its path. Carried by the ionized metal between the leads, the arc had not stopped until it reached the point where the leads were separated by a high-test ceramic insulator.

“And the worst of it,” MacDonald said, “is that we can’t replace it. We’re not equipped to repair a burned out generator and all that other stuff. We don’t carry that many spares. Things like this just don’t happen on board a spaceship.”

“I’ll say they don’t!” Dumbrowski bellowed. “ And if it hadn’t been for this duck doctor here, it wouldn’t have happened at all!”

Drake clenched his teeth and said nothing.

“Do you know what this means?” Dumbrowski asked in a subdued roar. “It means we will have to call all the way back to Earth and tell them we’re marooned here, two days’ time from our destination. And that means we’ll have to sit here and wait for eighteen weeks for the ship to get here with the necessary parts!”

“Couldn’t we get a ship here from Okeefenokee?” Drake asked, forcing his voice to keep calm.

Dumbrowski sneered. “Hardly. That’s a Class C colony; it isn’t really a colony yet. It isn’t self-supporting. There isn’t a ship any closer than Earth.”

He stood there for a moment, and evidently his anger subsided a little. “ All right; it’s happened. We’ll have to make the best of it. We’ve got enough food on board, and the paragravity units didn’t go—thank Heaven.”

MacDonald, rummaging around in the smouldering mass of fused equipment, said: “The only thing gone is the control system of the mass-time converters and the drive thrust.” He scrabbled around a bit more, then: “And all the leads to the cryogenics section.”

It took a full two seconds for that to hit Drake. “You mean the refrigerator? The one my eggs are in?”

“Yeah,” said MacDonald, his voice muffled by the cabinet.

“Five thousand rotten eggs on our hands!” bellowed Dumbrowski. He turned to Drake. “We might as well start dumping them now.”

It was all Drake could do to hold his temper. Part of him wanted to throw a punch straight into Durnbrowski’s teeth; part of him whispered that it might not be too sensible. Dumbrowski outmassed him by fifteen kilos.

Discretion won by a narrow margin. “I’m afraid I can’t let you do that, captain,” he said stiffly. “At least not until we check with the Interstellar Commission. They might frown on our dumping those eggs without doing everything in our power to save them.”

“Look, Doc,” Dumbrowski said coldly, “I’ve dumped cargo before if it was going to spoil. I once dumped five tons of powdered eggs because a leaky water pipe damped them down. When eggs begin to stink, they really stink. Hydrogen sulfide isn’t too congenial an aroma.

“If I ask the Commission, they’ll just tell me to dump ‘em. So why bother?”

“Now you look, Dumbrowski.” Drake’s voice was rapidly becoming brittle. “In the first place, those aren’t ordinary eggs. They are fertile, mutant duck eggs. In the second place, I am quite sure that the Commission won’t tell you to dump five thousand eggs worth two thousand dollars each!”

Dumbrowski’s heavy brows shot up. “Two thou—You mean those eggs are worth
ten million dollars?”

“Exactly.”

“But what else can we do? MacDonald!” He swung around to the engineer, who was still probing in the ruins. “Is there any chance we can get the refrigerator going again?”

“None, skipper. Everything in here is gone.”

Dumbrowski turned back to Drake. “See? What else can we do?”

“What do you normally do with fertile eggs?”

“You mean—?”

“I mean we incubate them. Check with the Commission.” And Drake turned on his heel and walked out.

Drake blamed himself for the escape of the duck. He’d forgotten to tell Devris that they were stronger than an average duck because of the high gravity they lived under. Devris had wrapped the duck securely in a blanket and left it on Drake’s bed. The door to the doctor’s cabin had been left open a crack, and after the duck had wriggled herself loose from the blanket, she had gone out for a stroll.

Well, he had to agree with Dumbrowski on one thing: there was nothing to be done about it now; they’d just have to make the best of it.

He went down to Section Twenty, where the refrigerators were. The egg cases would have to be removed and thawed properly, at just the right rate. Then they’d have to go into the incubator. He figuratively spat on his hands and got to work.

When Lieutenant Devris came down an hour or so later, the eggs were in the slow warmer. Drake looked up as the sound of boots echoed along the corridor and into the room.

“Hi, Pete. What’s up?”

Devris grinned lopsidedly. “The captain told me to bring this to you. He’s too furious to bring it himself.” He handed Drake a flimsy.

Drake looked at it and grinned. It read: “Okeefenokee duck eggs must not be allowed to perish. Incubate and hatch. Every effort short of actual danger to crew must be expended to save ducks. Crew of the
Constanza
is instructed to give Dr. Rouen Drake full co-operation.”

Devris said: “I’m sorry about that duck, Doc.”

“Forget it. It could have happened to anyone. What are the chances that it would walk into the control blister? Pretty small, I’d think.”

“Yeah. Pretty small. But it happened.”

“I’ll say it did. What a mess.” He paused and looked up at the navigator. “Pete?”

“Yeah?”

“Pete, why does Dumbrowski have it in for me?”

Devris looked uncomfortable. “I don’t know, Doc. It’s just his way. He yells at everybody. Don’t ask me why he picked you to rib. You can’t always explain the queer quirks in a guy’s mind.” Then he turned and went out.

Drake looked at the door for a long time. Then he shrugged and went on with his work.

The eggs went into the big automatic incubator. Normal duck eggs are incubated at 101° to 103° Fahrenheit for twenty-eight days, but the Okeefenokee duck eggs required 129° F. for only twenty-one days.

Every ten hours, the incubator automatically turned the eggs; the atmosphere inside was kept properly humid and warm. On the sixth day, Drake candled the eggs to see if any were infertile.

Thirty-two of them showed no sign of life; they went into the disposal unit. The others went on incubating.

Dumbrowski calmed down quite a bit during the next couple of weeks. Drake didn’t go out of his way to avoid the man, but he didn’t seek the captain out, either. The feeling seemed mutual.

Still, Drake dreaded the day when’ he would have to tell Dumbrowski the whole truth. He had spent his time getting the exact measurements of the ship—and the ship wasn’t quite big enough.

Eighteen weeks until help would come from Earth. Eighteen weeks of floating in emptiness, fifty-four light-years from their destination, thirty-four hundred light-years from Earth, and nine light-years from the nearest star.

The eighteen weeks became seventeen, then sixteen, and then fifteen. And the duck eggs were ready to hatch.

Two days before the hatch was ready, Drake went to Captain Dumbrowski. For over a week, things had looked calm on the surface, but underneath, the situation was about as touchy as dry nitrogen iodide in a sandstorm.

Dumbrowski was playing cribbage with MacDonald. “Fifteen-two, fifteen-four, pair six, pair eight,” he said, pegging his hand. He looked up as Drake entered. “Hello, Doc. How’re the eggs?” His voice was carefully modulated.

“They hatch day after tomorrow, captain. I’ll need some room for the brooders. They’re all knocked down for shipment, and I’ll have to put them together.”

“I see.” Dumbrowski shuffled the cards slowly. “About how much room will you need?”

“There’s fifty of ‘em,” Drake said. “They’re square, two meters on a side.”

“I see.” He tamped the cards on the table, cut the deck, and shuffled again—slowly. “That’s two hundred square meters of floor space.”

“A little more,” Drake said. “They can’t be crowded together too much.”

Dumbrowski sighed gustily. “Well, I reckon we can find space here and there in different sections. It’ll take a little moving around, but I guess it can be done.”

“I’m afraid that won’t do, captain. You see, those ducks have to be raised under one point five gees, at high pressure and high temperature and high humidity—just like the rest of the ducks.”

Dumbrowski stopped shuffling. “I see,” he said at last. “They’re going to hatch in two days and we have to shift the cargo around so that you can have another section. Then we have to reset the paragravity units under the floor. And set up the heaters and the humidifiers and the pressurizers. I see.” He put the cards down carefully on the table and looked up at Drake. “All right, Doc. MacDonald and I will tend to it. Meanwhile, I’d appreciate it if you’d stay out of my sight for a while.”

Drake swallowed and said nothing for a moment. Then: “You hate my guts, don’t you, Dumbrowski?”

“I would if you had any,” the captain said evenly. “You get ‘em; I’ll hate ‘em.”

That evening, Drake went up to the navigation dome. Devris was punching figures into a small computer, so the doctor sat down and waited quietly until he was through.

After several minutes, a relay clicked, a typer rattled a little, and a white sheet covered with figures slid out. Devris took it, stared at it, and snarled four words.

“Is that what’s known as a ‘deep space oath’?” Drake asked mildly.

“Huh? Oh, hello, Doc. Didn’t see you come in.” He looked back at the paper. “If you mean an oath directed towards space, yes. So far, I can’t pin our exact position down without an error of plus or minus one light-month. That’s a little over four minutes’ flight time.”

“That sounds pretty good.”

“Oh, it is; but I want it better. My ambition is to be able to get it down plus or minus an inch, but I think the noise level is a bit too high.”

“Hm-m-m. Where’s Dumbrowski and MacDonald?”

Devris looked up from his paper. “Didn’t you know? They’re working on Section Six.”

“Oh?” Drake blinked. “I’d have thought they’d have that cleared out hours ago.”

Devris let his mouth hang open for a second, then snapped it shut. “Oh, joy, joy. What you know about a spaceship could be printed in newsface headline print on half-inch osmium plate and it would consist entirely of the fifteenth letter of the alphabet.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that the paragravity units under the floor have to be completely reblocked. You don’t just wave your hand to get an extra half gee out of ‘em.”

Drake swallowed-hard. “Why...why, I thought all you had to do was turn a dial or something, like a thermostat.”

“You did? Is that why you waited until two days before the hatching to tell Dumbrowski? He’ll be up all night and all day tomorrow, he and MacDonald. I’d be down there herping them, except there isn’t room between the deck plates for three men.”

Drake buried his face in his hands. “This is horrible! No. Nonono
no!
”

Devris looked a little alarmed. “Oh, now, Doc, it isn’t as bad as all that. You didn’t know.”

The doctor looked up. “It’s worse than that! I need that little bitty space for ducklings—
ducklings
, mind you! But do you realize that those birds will be adult ducks by the time the rescue ship gets here? An adult duck needs eight thousand square centimeters of space; those ducks will need four thousand square meters of floor area by the time they grow up!”

“Four thousand square meters,” Devris said in a thoughtful tone. “That’s pretty nearly the whole deck area of the ship. Interesting.” He got up and went over to the bottle marked “Lens Cleaner” and began mixing a stiff drink.

He was humming to himself, and it took Drake a second or two to recognize the tune.

I heard one day

A gentleman say

That criminals who

Are cut in two

Can hardly feel

The fatal steel

And so are slain

Without much pain.

If this is true,

It’s jolly for you;

Your courage screw

To bid us adieu—

Devris stirred the drink vigorously and handed it to the doctor. “You’d better go down and tell Dumbrowski now, before he gets too much more done on that section. Drink that—you’ll need it.”

Drake finished the glass in short order and headed for Section Six.

The stairway to Section Six was closed, and a big sign glowed on its surface.

DANGER! THE P-G UNIT IN THIS SECTION IS OFF! USE EXTREME CAUTION!

Drake opened the door carefully and peered down the stairway. The lights were on, and everything looked normal. He started down the stairs.

Halfway down, something tugged at his insides and sudden nausea hit him. He stumbled down two more steps, and the ship seemed to do a prodigious loop. There seemed to be a pull from above. He was falling up the stairs! He lurched out and grabbed at the railing. He missed, and the ship whirled about him. He did a queer somersault, while his stomach flipped in the opposite direction. He twisted frantically, trying to regain his balance and his sense of orientation. His stomach flipped back in place, twisted around, joggled, gave up in despair, and emptied itself of its contents in one titanic upheaval.