The Corianis Disaster

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When the two Corianis had been aground for two weeks, the situation took a very nasty turn. At first, the ordinary citizens of Maninea accepted the problem of the two ships as a sort of sporting event. They assumed that daring and clever crooks had planned a massive imposture, and that they'd been stymied by the appearance of the impersonatees. It seemed still more of a sporting event when the assumed frauds gallantly seemed to try to bluff it out; when they defied the police to unmask them. And when the police failed, the citizens of Maninea admired the impostors more than ever-but they were no longer certain which set of passengers were the frauds. So they waited for the scientists to make their tests and say, with confident certitude, that these persons were who they said they were, and those other persons were impostors.

But the scientists couldn't answer either. That was a shock. It was a disappointment. It was frightening. For example, the news-broadcasters found a man who'd been a schoolmate of the Planetary President when both of them were ten years old. He hadn't spoken to the President since. He would remember things that nobody but the President and himself could possibly know about. He could tell! The newscasters also found a grandmother who-at seven-had made mud pies with the now Speaker of the Senate. Nobody could fool her! The two unimportant persons spoke, respectively, to the two claimants to the Planetary President's identity, and to the two men who claimed to be Speaker of the Senate. They came from their interviews shaking and unable to decide. Both Planetary Presidents remembered everything from the age of ten. They reminded their pre-presidential playmates of things that the playmates had forgotten. The woman who'd made mud pies with the Speaker of the Senate was positive after she'd spoken to only one. He'd reminded her of the spanking she got for using the morning milk to manufacture mud-pie pancakes. Only her old playmate knew about that! But the second copy of the Speaker of the Senate not only remembered it too, but described to her the funeral of a defunct mouse and the decoration of its grave. So he was her former playmate, too.

During the ships' third week aground the citizens of Maninea reacted violently. It seemed as if they suddenly realized that the natural order of things was defied, that something sneakingly suggestive of the supernatural was involved. When science could not reveal the mystery, the mystery might be beyond science. Rumors sprang up and flew about. Some were ominous; some were pure horror.

There was the rumor that devils out of hell had somehow escaped confinement and planned to move in among mankind and ultimately destroy it. Only a few people believed this.

There was the rumor that witches, by compact with the powers of evil, had become able to take forms other than their own. They would rule humanity; they would eventually enslave it. A larger number believed this.

The most popular of the rumors had a touch of scientific imagination in it. One Corianis and the beings on board it, said this rumor, had come from a remote and hidden world where there existed a race of monsters. They were non-human Things which could make even scientists believe them human. They could read human minds; they could take control of human bodies. They had come to Maninea to begin the extermination of humanity. And this rumor declared that the monsters could duplicate human bodies and that humans were being missed, about the space-port. Children had vanished; women had disappeared. The monsters who passed for men were anthropophagi. They devoured human flesh in orgies too horrible to be described, and then went out in the likeness of their victims to allure or seize on other victims.

Very many people accepted this idea and felt a growling, rumbling hatred for the two ships which could not be explained except by some such tale as this. And the fact that this story spread and spread brought denials. There were women who had sons and daughters in government service; they'd made the trip to Kholar and returned, but in duplicate. Some of these women fiercely demanded to see their children. They'd know their flesh and blood!

But they didn't. A woman who'd had one son found that she had two. And she could not have two, but she did. Then there were women whose husbands were aboard the Corianis. They protested that they would know them! And they came to weep horribly because they could not know which of two burning-eyed, frantic men had been their husband before he went to Kholar.

Enmity to the Corianis' passengers became a thing to shudder over. Almost any man would agree that, in all probability, one of the two sets of human beings was human; but one was not. It was something more horrible than death, and it must be destroyed. If it could not be decided which was human and which was not-then, regretfully but remorselessly, all must die…

Kathy no longer made any attempt to mingle with the other passengers. She and Jack Bedell had been two retiring, diffident, self-conscious people who found talk with other people absurdly difficult. Now the confined shipload of diplomats and political appointees was so nerve-racked that Kathy felt aloof rather than retiring; she was defensive instead of shy. And Bedell's manner had taken on a tinge of authority. He'd started to work with the men of the Astrophysical Institute, testing materials from the two ships in extreme conditions to find out some basic difference. Very soon it was unwise for Bedell to try to go from the spaceport to the Institute and back. Shortly after, it became even dangerous for the people at the Institute to come on board the ship. So they worked together with a vision-screen connection in being. As other approaches to the mystery proved hopeless, the research of which Bedell was the driving force came to be the only hope for a truly scientific solution. In self-defense he had to adopt a manner pushing aside hysterical passengers who'd have taken up all his time.

Then there came a day when a delegation from the ship-passengers waited on him. The Planetary President of Maninea headed it; he was accompanied by the Minister of State of Kholar, the Chairman of the Lower House Committee, the Speaker of the Senate, the Minister of Commerce, and others. It was a stately delegation, though now and again muscles twitched in what should have been composed features.

"Mr. Bedell!" said the Planetary President. "The municipal authorities tell me that some scientists believe you know what has caused the monstrous state of affairs in which we find ourselves."

"Together with the Astrophysical Institute," said Bedell mildly, "I've offered some suggestions. We're trying to get experimental evidence for certain ideas. There are a number of things that seem to support the opinion we hold. But it isn't yet proved."

There was a pause. The Planetary President said firmly, "Suppose you tell us, Mr. Bedell! Decisive action must be taken, and soon! Where did that other ship and its company of impostors come from?"

"Where did we come from?" asked Bedell matter-of-factly.

"No hocus-pocus!" rasped the Minister of Commerce. "We're in no mood to be trifled with! Answer the question!"

"There's some resemblance between the two ship's companies," insisted Bedell, "so the question's relevant. We come from Kholar. But more certainly we come from ten days ago and the marriage of our parents. We come from the voyages of the early explorers of space. We come from events more surely than from places. I'm here because by accident I got passage on the Corianis. You are here from a longer but certain series of events. Do you understand? If you want to know where the other ship comes from, I have to name events rather than places!"

"This is nonsense!" fumed the Minister of Commerce.

"It's the fact…"

"Answer the question!" commanded the Planetary President, ominously. "Where did the impostors come from? How have they deceived the police? I warn you that there can be no more delay! These frauds must be unmasked, and at once…"

"The evidence-what there is-" said Bedell angrily, "points to this ship as the abnormal, and you as the impostors! It's very probable that this is the ship which doesn't belong here!"

Anger bubbled over. These were practical men who'd been unable to do anything practical. They were half-mad with nerve-strain and frustration and bewilderment. Every man of them faced the possibility that an impostor might take his name and place and identity, and acquire with them his destiny and all his achievements. It was intolerable even to fear such a thing. These men wanted an answer that would give them something violent and satisfying to do.

"Damned nonsense!" raged the Minister of Commerce. "We know what we've got to do. Let's get it over with!"

And Bedell suddenly roared at them. He astonished himself. But he was no longer the mild and diffident and self-conscious person that previous events had made of him. Recent events had made it necessary for him to act in a new fashion.

"Idiots!" he roared. "Idiots! Your doubles on the other Corianis think the same way you do! Half an hour ago- not having a me to annoy beforehand-they tried to rush the police between these two ships, to get inside here and every man kill his own counterpart! The police gassed them down! That's what you'll try! And the police will gas you down! Try to reach that other ship to do murder! Try it!"

He glared at them and stamped from the room. Kathy followed him. Outside, he turned to glare at her because he thought she was one of the delegation. But he nodded when he recognized her.

"I had to shout at them*" he said morosely. "They aren't actually idiots. They're desperate. They're ready to kill to settle who they are, and who their families will welcome, and who their children will call father. Damn them! They've gotten so worked up that they're willing to commit suicide to get things back to normal! The men at the Astrophysical Institute have worked with me, and that's what has to be done. And there's no danger to it at all! But how can a man argue with men half-crazy with worry? Damn this business!"