The Seeds of Time (9 page)

‘– would I know? All I know is that the old can's just bowling along head over elbow, and that ain't no kind of way to run a bloody spaceship. If you ask me –'

‘Jevons,' snapped the Captain.

The voice broke off abruptly.

‘Yes, sir?' it said, in a different tone.

‘The laterals aren't firing.'

‘No, sir,' the voice agreed.

‘Wake up, man. I mean they
won't
fire. They've packed up.'

‘What – all of 'em, sir?'

‘The only ones that have responded are the port laterals – and they shouldn't have kicked the way they did. Better send someone outside to look at 'em. I didn't like that kick.'

‘Very good, sir.'

The Captain flipped the communicator switch back, and pulled over the announcement mike.

‘Attention, please. You may release all safety-belts and proceed as normal. Correction of course has been postponed. You will be warned before it is resumed. That is all.'

Captain and navigator looked at one another again. Their faces were grave, and their eyes troubled …

Captain Winters studied his audience. It comprised everyone aboard the
Falcon
. Fourteen men and one woman. Six of the men were his crew; the rest passengers. He watched them as they found themselves places in the ship's small living-room. He would have been happier if his cargo had consisted of more freight and fewer passengers. Passengers, having nothing to occupy them, were always making mischief one way and another. Moreover, it was not a quiet, subservient type of man who recommended himself for a job as a miner, prospector, or general adventurer on Mars.

The woman could have caused a great deal of trouble aboard had she been so minded. Luckily she was diffident, self-effacing. But even though at times she was irritatingly without spirit, he thanked his luck that she had not turned out to be some incendiary blonde who would only add to his troubles.

All the same, he reminded himself, regarding her as she sat beside her husband, she could not be quite as meek as she looked. Carter must have been right when he spoke of a stiffening motive somewhere – without that she could never have started on the journey at all, and she would certainly not be coming through steadfast and uncomplaining so far. He glanced at the woman's husband. Queer creatures, women. Morgan was all right, but there was nothing about him, one would have said, to lead a woman on a trip like this …

He waited until they had finished shuffling around and fitting themselves in. Silence fell. He let his gaze dwell on each face in turn. His own expression was serious.

‘Mrs Morgan and gentlemen,' he began. ‘I have called you here together because it seemed best to me that each of you should have a clear understanding of our present position.

‘It is this. Our lateral tubes have failed. They are, for reasons which we have not yet been able to ascertain, useless. In the case of the port laterals they are burnt out, and irreplaceable.

‘In case some of you do not know what that implies, I should tell you that it is upon the laterals that the navigation of the ship depends. The main drive tubes give us the initial impetus for take-off. After that they are shut off, leaving us in free fall. Any deviations from the course plotted are corrected by suitable bursts from the laterals.

‘But it is not only for steering that we use them. In landing, which is an infinitely more complex job than take-off, they are essential. We brake by reversing the ship and using the main drive to check our speed. But I think you can scarcely fail to realize that it is an operation of the greatest delicacy to keep the huge mass of such a ship as this perfectly balanced upon the thrust of her
drive as she descends. It is the laterals which make such balance possible. Without them it cannot be done.'

A dead silence held the room for some seconds. Then a voice asked, drawling:

‘What you're saying, Captain, is, the way things are, we can neither steer nor land – is that it?'

Captain Winters looked at the speaker. He was a big man. Without exerting himself, and, apparently, without intention, he seemed to possess a natural domination over the rest.

‘That is exactly what I mean,' he replied.

A tenseness came over the room. There was the sound of a quickly drawn breath here and there.

The man with the slow voice nodded, fatalistically. Someone else asked:

‘Does that mean that we might crash on Mars?'

‘No,' said the Captain. ‘If we go on travelling as we are now, slightly off course, we shall miss Mars altogether.'

‘And so go on out to play tag with the asteroids,' another voice suggested.

‘That is what would happen if we did nothing about it. But there is a way we can stop that, if we can manage it.' The Captain paused, aware that he had their absorbed attention. He continued:

‘You must all be well aware from the peculiar behaviour of space as seen from our ports that we are now tumbling along all as – er – head over heels. This is due to the explosion of the port laterals. It is a highly unorthodox method of travelling, but it does mean that by an impulse from our main tubes given at exactly the critical moment we should be able to alter our course approximately as we require.'

‘And how much good is that going to do us if we can't land?' somebody wanted to know. The Captain ignored the interruption. He continued:

‘I have been in touch by radio with both home and Mars, and have reported our state. I have also informed them that I intend
to attempt the one possible course open to me. That is of using the main drive in an attempt to throw the ship into an orbit about Mars.

‘If that is successful we shall avoid two dangers – that of shooting on towards the outer parts of the system, and of crashing on Mars. I think we have a good chance of bringing it off.'

When he stopped speaking he saw alarm in several faces, thoughtful concentration in others. He noticed Mrs Morgan holding tightly to her husband's hand, her face a little paler than usual. It was the man with the drawl who broke the silence.

‘You
think
there is a good chance?' he repeated questioningly.

‘I do. I also think it is the only chance. But I'm not going to try to fool you by pretending complete confidence. It's too serious for that.'

‘And if we do get into this orbit?'

‘They will try to keep a radar fix on us, and send help as soon as possible.'

‘H'm,' said the questioner. ‘And what do you personally think about that, Captain?'

‘I – well, it isn't going to be easy. But we're all in this together, so I'll tell you just what they told me. At the very best we can't expect them to reach us for some months. The ship will have to come from Earth. The two planets are well past conjunction now. I'm afraid it's going to mean quite a wait.'

‘Can we – hold out long enough, Captain?'

‘According to my calculations we should be able to hold out for about seventeen or eighteen weeks.'

‘And that will be long enough?'

‘It'll have to be.'

He broke the thoughtful pause that followed by continuing in a brisker manner.

‘This is not going to be comfortable, or pleasant. But, if we all play our parts, and keep strictly to the necessary measures, it can be done. Now, there are three essentials: air to breathe – well, luckily we shan't have to worry about that. The regeneration
plant and stock of spare cylinders, and cylinders in cargo will look after that for a long time. Water will be rationed. Two pints each every twenty-four hours, for
everything
. Luckily we shall be able to draw water from the fuel tanks, or it would be a great deal less than that. The thing that is going to be our most serious worry is food.'

He explained his proposals further, with patient clarity. At the end he added: ‘And now I expect you have some questions?'

A small, wiry man with a weather-beaten face asked:

‘Is there no hope at all of getting the lateral tubes to work again?'

Captain Winters shook his head.

‘Negligible. The impellent section of a ship is not constructed to be accessible in space. We shall keep on trying, of course, but even if the others could be made to fire, we should still be unable to repair the port laterals.'

He did his best to answer the few more questions that followed in ways that held a balance between easy confidence and despondency. The prospect was by no means good. Before help could possibly reach them they were all going to need all the nerve and resolution they had – and out of sixteen persons some must be weaker than others.

His gaze rested again on Alice Morgan and her husband beside her. Her presence was certainly a possible source of trouble. When it came to the pinch the man would have more strain on account of her – and, most likely, fewer scruples.

Since the woman was here, she must share the consequences equally with the rest. There could be no privilege. In a sharp emergency one could afford a heroic gesture, but preferential treatment of any one person in the long ordeal which they must face would create an impossible situation. Make any allowances for her, and you would be called on to make allowances for others on health or other grounds – with heaven knew what complications to follow.

A fair chance with the rest was the best he could do for her –
not, he felt, looking at her as she clutched her husband's hand and looked at him from wide eyes in a pale face, not a very good best.

He hoped she would not be the first to go under. It would be better for morale if she were not the very first …

She was not the first to go. For nearly three months nobody went.

The
Falcon
, by means of skilfully timed bursts on the main tubes, had succeeded in nudging herself into an orbital relationship with Mars. After that, there was little that the crew could do for her. At the distance of equilibrium she had become a very minor satellite, rolling and tumbling on her circular course, destined, so far as anyone could see, to continue this untidy progress until help reached them, or perhaps for ever …

Inboard, the complexity of her twisting somersaults was not perceptible unless one deliberately uncovered a port. If one did, the crazy cavortings of the universe outside produced such a sense of bewilderment that one gladly shut the cover again to preserve the illusion of stability within. Even Captain Winters and the Navigating Officer took their observations as swiftly as possible and were relieved when they had shut the whizzing constellations off the screen, and could take refuge in relativity.

For all her occupants the
Falcon
had become a small, independent world, very sharply finite in space, and scarcely less so in time.

It was, moreover, a world with a very low standard of living; a community with short tempers, weakening distempers, aching bellies, and ragged nerves. It was a group in which each man watched on a trigger of suspicion for a hairsbreadth difference in the next man's ration, and where the little he ate so avidly was not enough to quiet the rumblings of his stomach. He was ravenous when he went to sleep; more ravenous when he woke from dreams of food.

Men who had started from Earth full-bodied were now gaunt and lean, their faces had hardened from curved contours into
angled planes and changed their healthy colours for a grey pallor in which their eyes glittered unnaturally. They had all grown weaker. The weakest lay on their couches torpidly. The more fortunate looked at them from time to time with a question in their eyes. It was not difficult to read the question: ‘Why do we go on wasting good food on this guy? Looks like he's booked, anyway.' But as yet no one had taken up that booking.

The situation was worse than Captain Winters had foreseen. There had been bad stowage. The cans in several cases of meat had collapsed under the terrific pressure of other cans above them during take-off. The resulting mess was now describing an orbit of its own around the ship. He had had to throw it out secretly. If the men had known of it, they would have eaten it gladly, maggots and all. Another case shown on his inventory had disappeared. He still did not know how. The ship had been searched for it without trace. Much of the emergency stores consisted of dehydrated foods for which he dared not spare sufficient water, so that though edible they were painfully unattractive. They had been intended simply as a supplement in case the estimated time was overrun, and were not extensive. Little in the cargo was edible, and that mostly small cans of luxuries. As a result, he had had to reduce the rations expected to stretch meagrely over seventeen weeks. And even so, they would not last that long.

The first who did go owed it neither to sickness nor malnutrition, but to accident.

Jevons, the chief engineer, maintained that the only way to locate and correct the trouble with the laterals was to effect an entry into the propellent section of the ship. Owing to the tanks which backed up against the bulkhead separating the sections this could not be achieved from within the ship herself.

It had proved impossible with the tools available to cut a slice out of the hull; the temperature of space and the conductivity of the hull caused all their heat to run away and dissipate itself with
out making the least impression on the tough skin. The one way he could see of getting in was to cut away round the burnt-out tubes of the port laterals. It was debatable whether this was worth while since the other laterals would still be unbalanced on the port side, but where he found opposition solidly against him was in the matter of using precious oxygen to operate his cutters. He had to accept that ban, but he refused to relinquish his plan altogether.

‘Very well,' he said, grimly. ‘We're like rats in a trap, but Bowman and I aim to do more than just keep the trap going, and we're going to try, even if we have to cut our way into the damned ship by hand.'

Captain Winters had okayed that; not that he believed that anything useful would come of it, but it would keep Jevons quiet, and do no one else any harm. So for weeks Jevons and Bowman had got into their spacesuits and worked their shifts. Oblivious after a time of the wheeling heavens about them, they kept doggedly on with their sawing and filing. Their progress, pitifully slow at best, had grown even slower as they became weaker.