The Potter of Firsk and Other Stories Read online

  Holderlin jerked his lifeboat into the air and dashed away, low to the ground, through the trees. He flew for his life, threading the trees as best he might, crashing through those he could not dodge.

  Nor was he too early, for the Maetho’s armament had opened a savage fire on the jungle, blasting at each square yard. Twice million-watt bolts missed him by feet.

  After rocking minutes he gained clear of the area, and slowing his mad flight, wove a more careful course through the trees.

  When the Maetho was finally finished, the jungle lay torn into craters and tangled rubbish for miles around. Holderlin, gingerly raising the boat so he could peer through the tree tops, saw the great sullen shape of the war-ship winging back across the mountain to its base. Over the clearing towered a black sky-filling cloud.

  He returned to the Perseus, and sat brooding in his quarters. His bolt seemed to be shot, and it would only be a matter of hours before Creed and Donahue found another native to guide them to his ship.

  He sprawled on his bunk, hands behind his head. A nucleus of information Blaine had given him suddenly blossomed to a plan of action. He got up, spooned some more vanzitrol from the can, gathered up a few sacks of salt from the galley, took off in the lifeboat.

  Three or four hours later, with night fast falling across the black forest he returned, and there was a spring in his walk, a triumphant set to his jaw.

  Holderlin went to the teleview and boldly sent forth a call. “Aboard the Maetho! Creed or Donahue, come in! Maetho, come in!” The screen flickered to life at once. There was Donahue, and behind him the black-bearded face of Captain Creed.

  “Well,” said Donahue crisply. “What do you want?”

  Holderlin grinned. “Nothing. In about two minutes I’m blasting your ship to bits. If you enjoy life, you’ll get clear.”

  “What’s this?” Donahue’s voice snapped like breaking wood. “Are you trying to bluff me?”

  “You’ll know in two minutes,” responded Holderlin. “Three of the pots of thame-dust you took aboard today are loaded with vanzitrol. I’ve got a gamma-ray detonator you can’t jam. Now! You’ve got two minutes to get clear.”

  Donahue whirled, cut in the ship’s loud speaker. “Abandon ship! All hands!” he shouted. “Get clear!”

  Then like a cat he whirled about. Holderlin watched in interest. Captain Creed was striding for the door. He met Donahue’s eyes, and saw murder. He stopped in his tracks and slowly turned to face Donahue.

  Donahue began talking, and Holderlin saw he was not sane. Obscenities poured from his lips.

  “You white-faced dog, you’ve ruined me!” screamed Donahue in a high-pitched crazy voice, and his thin body was as tense as an epileptic’s.

  “Let’s leave this ship and argue later,” Creed suggested coolly.

  “You’ll stay here, you fat filth!” cried Donahue, and whipped out his needle-beam.

  Creed fired his sleeve gun, and Donahue fell to the ground, screaming, his shoulder mangled.

  He picked up the needle-beam with his left hand and began throwing wild shots at Creed. Creed crouched behind the radio locker, unable to gain the door. A bolt smashed the teleview feeder lines. The screen went dark.

  Holderlin sat looking at his watch. He held one hand poised over a little black key.

  Twenty seconds, ten seconds, eight seconds, seven, six, five, four, three, two—“I’ll give them five seconds more,” he told himself. One—two—three—four—five! He snapped closed the key, and sat like a statue, waiting for the shock from across the mountain.

  Whoom!

  Holderlin stood up, a grin on his face. He sealed all the ports and sat himself at the controls. Ahead of him lay a busy week, wherein he must do the work of four men. He cracked back the throttle, and took off for Laroknik on Gavnad.

  Dead Ahead

  Chiram came into the room, walked with short, firm steps to the desk, sat down. Only then did he appear to notice the two dozen men and women seated on neat rows of folding chairs.

  “I can give you about twenty minutes,” said Chiram. “Exactly what do you want?”

  “How about a short statement?” suggested Ed Jeff, of All-Planet News-Fax. “Then perhaps you’d answer a few questions.”

  Chiram leaned back, a stocky middle-aged man with an air of decision. He had a leonine ruff of hair the color and texture of steel wool, eyes sharp and monitory, a heavy well-shaped mouth. His clothes were gray and dark blue—conservative but informal, as if Chiram dressed by habit, uninfluenced by either vanity or ostentation.

  “My associates and I,” he said, “financed by Jay Banners, have embarked on a program of research which will ultimately lead to an attempted circumnavigation of the universe.” He stopped; the reporters waited. Chiram said drily, “That is the statement.”

  Voices collided and tumbled getting to Chiram’s ears. He held up his hand. “One at a time…You, sir—what was your question?”

  “You said circumnavigation of the universe? Not merely the galaxy?”

  Chiram nodded. “The universe.”

  “How do you know it’s round?”

  “We don’t,” said Chiram, smiling grimly. “There is no first-hand evidence, very little mathematical indication, one way or another. It’s an assumption on which we’re staking our lives.”

  The reporters made respectful sounds. Chiram relaxed a trifle. “Estimates of the circumference run in the neighborhood of ten to a hundred billion light years. We plan to set out from Earth, assume a course—almost any course. After a sufficient period of flying, at a sufficiently high speed, we hope to return from the opposite direction.”

  “What’re the chances of hitting Earth on the way back?”

  Chiram compressed his lips; the question had been put in what he considered a light tone.

  “In theory,” he replied stiffly, “if we steer a sufficiently exact course we will return automatically. Our research program is concentrating on the mechanics of straight flight. A hundredth of a second error at a hundred billion light years means three hundred thousand light years. If we missed the home galaxy by that margin we’d be lost forever. Our first problem is to guarantee ourselves a mathematically straight course.”

  “Can’t you line up on stars ahead or behind?”

  Chiram shook his head. “The light from behind can’t catch up with us; in fact, we’ll overtake it and add the images of the stars behind to those of the stars ahead.” He clasped his blunt hands on the desk. “That is our second problem: seeing. Our speed will approximate instantaneity. Assuming ninety per cent efficiency in our destriation field, an average speed of six or seven thousand light years a second will take us a hundred billion light years in six months. The impact of radiation on an unshielded object at this speed would be cataclysmic. The weakest infra-red light would be compacted by a kind of Döppler effect to cosmic rays; ordinary visible light would become a thousand times harder, more energetic, and cosmic rays would strike at a frequency of ten to the thirty-first or thirty-second power. I can’t imagine the effect of radiation like that, but I know it would hurt. We are trying to develop a system of vision that can function under this tremendous impact. Longitudinal sight will be normal, of course, with light striking the side of our ship at normal frequencies.”

  “How long will it take to lick these problems?”

  Chiram said in a measured voice, “We are making satisfactory progress.”

  “How will you know for sure when you’ve returned? One galaxy must look a lot like another…”

  Chiram drummed his fingers on the table. “That’s a good question. I’m sorry to say I have no precise answer. We will trust to alertness, and careful examination of any galaxy in our path which shows the proper size and configuration. The fact that our galaxy is roughly double the average size will help us. We shall have to trust a good deal to luck.”

  “Suppose the universe isn’t spherical, but infinite?”

  Chiram fixed the man with a contemptuous stare
. “You’re talking foolishness. How can I answer that question?”

  The reporter hurriedly corrected himself. “What I meant, will you set a limit to the time before you turn around and come back?”

  “We believe the universe is spherical,” said Chiram coolly. “In a fourth-dimensional sense, of course. We will remain under constant acceleration and our speed will increase constantly. If the universe is spherical, we will return; if it is infinite, we will fly on forever.”

  Two ships landed, a slender cylinder and a peculiar impractical-looking hull the shape of a doughnut. Chiram stepped out of the cylinder, marched up the concrete ramp to the glass-walled office.

  Jay Banners, who was putting up the money, and a lank young man were waiting for him. Banners resembled Chiram in outward proportion, but his hair was sparse, the lines of his face were softer. He looked easy, amiable; there was nothing of the spartan or the ascetic in Jay Banners.

  Chiram was associated with the discovery of striatics, the gravitron and the subsequent inertia-negative destriation fields; he had been a member of the original Centauri expedition. Banners had never been into space, but he held majority stock in Star Island Development, and he was director of half a dozen other corporations.

  He waved a pudgy hand at Chiram. “Herb, meet my son, Jay Junior. And now I’ll give you a surprise. Hold your hat. Jay wants to go along on the trip. So I told him we’d see what we could do.” He glanced at Chiram expectantly.

  Chiram pulled up the corners of his mouth, squinted as if he were eating an unexpectedly sour pickle. “Well, now, Banners…I don’t know if it’s advisable…Inexperienced member,” he muttered. “Got a crew pretty well lined out…”

  “Oh come now,” said Banners bluffly. “It isn’t as if Jay was a rank amateur. He’s just out of engineering school; he knows space inside out; studied astrogation and all that stuff, hey, Jay?”

  “That’s right,” said Jay languidly.

  Chiram turned chilly eyes up and down Jay Banners Jr.—a loose-limbed young man with oily black hair worn over-long for Chiram’s taste. He said, “It’s a pretty tough grind, young fellow. Strict discipline. We’re cooped up in a little cabin with no amusements, a very serious proposition. And about one chance in ten of getting back…An old man like me can afford to throw his life away. A lad like you has that all before him.”

  Jay carelessly shrugged, and the older Banners said, “I’ve told him all this, Herb, and he insists that he wants to go. And then I figured that maybe it would be a good thing to have a Banners aboard. Make it the Chiram–Banners Expedition for a fact, eh, Herb?”

  Chiram drummed his fingers savagely on the desk, at a loss for words.

  Jay said, “We’ve learned a lot of new methods at school. Might help you out once in a while if you get stumped.”

  Chiram became red in the face, turned away.

  “Now, Jay,” said Banners, “take it easy on an old man. I know you’re up to snuff on all the latest ideas, but don’t forget that men like Herb Chiram pioneered the whole business.”

  Jay shrugged, moodily puffed a cigarette.

  “It’s settled, then,” said Banners jovially. “And look here, Herb, don’t hold back on him on my account. Treat him like a hired hand. He’s tough—just like his old man. He can stand it. If he gets out of line, give it to him good.”

  Chiram walked to a window, stood looking out.

  Banners said, “We saw you bringing down the ships. How did the test turn out?”

  “Very well,” said Chiram. “From Earth to Pluto we deviated nineteen inches off the true line. That’s on the order of ten to the minus eighth or ninth part of a second. Maybe closer. I haven’t figured it out yet. It’s close enough.”

  Jay flicked ashes to the floor with his little finger. “Probably be best to install gyro-compasses just to be on the safe side.”

  Chiram said in a keen, cold voice, “Gyro-compasses are grossly inaccurate compared to the sleeve and piston principle.”

  “Explain to Jay how it works,” said Banners. “I never could quite get the hang of it. I know that Nip and Tuck alternate the lead—”

  Chiram spoke in a heavy impatient voice. “An object in free flight moves in a true course, when it’s insulated from gravity—as inside a destriation shell. Our problem was to combine free-flight accuracy with acceleration. We decided to use two ships, alternately accelerating and flying free—the ship in free flight correcting the course of the ship under acceleration.

  “Assume one component flying free—say Nip, the cylinder. Tuck, the tube, is ten thousand miles astern. Tuck accelerates; the application of power may or may not cause a slight deviation. As soon as the destriation shells meet, radar beams make contact and any slight deviation in course is corrected. Tuck slides over Nip, the power is shut off, it flies free on ahead. When it has taken a ten-thousand-mile lead, Nip accelerates, plunges through the hole in Tuck. The process is automatic, very rapid, very accurate.”

  Banners said seriously, “Doesn’t that constant start and stop jar you, Herb?”

  Jay looped a leg over the desk. “Nope. Don’t forget, pop, we’ve integrated inertia completely with the ship since your day. Don’t feel a thing any more, except the normal built-in gravity.”

  Banners laughed indulgently, clapped Chiram’s stiff shoulder. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you, Herb. This lad here is pretty far ahead of us old-timers…That’s how it goes—out with the old, in with the new.”

  Jay blew a complacent gust of smoke across the room. Chiram stared at him for several seconds, took two short paces up the room, two back.

  “Banners,” he said crisply, “everything considered, I don’t think it wise for your son to make the trip.”

  Jay raised his eyebrows; his mouth sagged. Banners stared; then his face relaxed. “Now Herb, I know it’s dangerous, I know you don’t like the responsibility. But Jay’s got his mind made up. Some girl’s been after him, I expect. And I’d like to see the lad make the trip. In fact, I’ve been thinking I might even go myself…”

  Chiram said hastily, “Very well, very well…I warn you, young fellow, it’s a tough grind. It’s snap to orders and no back-talk. If that’s understood—I guess I have nothing further to say.”

  “You’ll get along, you’ll get along,” exclaimed Banners. “With your experience, Herb, and your training, Jay—I can’t see how the trip won’t be a great success. Think of it, Herb! The Chiram-Banners Expedition—Commander, Herb Chiram; Navigator, Jay Banners Junior! Doesn’t that sound good, now?”

  “It makes my head swim,” said Chiram.

  Jay dropped his cigarette butt to the floor, said thoughtfully, “You know, that Nip and Tuck idea may be sound—but I’d trust more to a good gyroscope…At least we ought to ship a couple for the corroboratic index.”

  Chiram frowned. “‘Corroboratic index’? What’s that?” he asked contemptuously.

  Jay said, “A rather new concept. One of these days I’ll explain it to you. In rough terms, it’s the average area of the integral under a series of probability curves, each given the proper weighting.”

  Banners nodded heavily. “Young fellow’s got a sound head on him, Herb. Maybe we’d better install a couple gyroscopes. No harm playing safe.”

  Chiram bowed slightly to Jay. “The gyroscopes are in your charge. See that they do not exceed two cubic feet in volume.”

  Jay nodded. “Fine. I can cut it smaller than that. Machinery has become more precise since your time, Mr. Chiram.” He rubbed his upper lip. “In fact—if you like—I’ll take the navigation clean off your hands. I’m pretty good at it—made an A in navigation all during school.”

  Chiram snorted. “You’ll do no such thing, young fellow. And you’ll understand right now, before the day’s a minute older, you’ll do what you’re told, you’ll obey orders, and you’ll keep your school-book ideas to yourself unless they’re asked for!”

  Jay stared in astonishment; he turned and looked at his father, who
wagged his head solemnly. “That’s the way it goes, Jay. Old Herb here is a tough one. You’ve picked a tartar when you try to put it over Herb. What he says, goes; remember it.”

  Chiram, Jay Banners Jr., a taciturn technician named Bob Galt, and Julius Johnson, the cook, a taffy-colored smiling man with a flat face and flat head, made up the crew of Nip the cylinder. Two old-time spacemen, Art Henry and Joe Lavindar, were stationed aboard Tuck the tube.

  The takeoff was recorded by cameras, television, and witnessed by a crowd of four million. The two ships rose separately and left for a rendezvous a million miles past the Moon. Here they would join, orient themselves, and set out toward Deneb in Cygnus, slightly up from the prime plane of the Milky Way.

  Chiram called his crew together in the small saloon below the bridge deck, which would serve as mess hall and recreation room. Bob Galt sat at one end of the bench, a stooped, small-boned man, completely self-possessed and self-sufficient, with a face like an angry parrot’s. Beside him sat Julius, the cook, his wide mouth curved in a perpetual grin. Jay slouched back at the end of the bench with legs crossed, eyes half-closed.

  Chiram faced them, stocky, erect, his ruff of iron-gray hair freshly trimmed.

  “Now, men, as you know, we have a stiff grind ahead of us. If we return, we’re heroes. The chances are we’ll never get back. If space is infinite we’ll fly forever. If our course deviates from a straight line, we’re just as bad off. Then of course you’ve all read the fantastic speculations on the possibility of attack by alien space-vessels or creatures inhabiting space. I do not need to label this as nonsense.

  “Our greatest danger is ourselves. Boredom, petty irritations—these are our worst enemies. We’re crowded together, tangled in each other’s arms and legs. I can think of no situation so calculated to bring out the best or worst in a man. Now you, Bob, and you, Julius, I’ve shipped with you many a time; I know you well. You, Jay, you represent your father, and I’m sure that, like the rest of us, you’re determined to make the trip as easy on all our nerves as possible.