The Corianis Disaster

XII

The control-room of the Corianis looked out upon the spaceport. It was night, but both of Maninea's moons floated overhead, and the other Corianis glittered in the pallid light. There were rows of cold-white sparks which were the lights at the spaceport's edges. Lights showed in the ports of the other ship. The skipper of the Corianis looked dully toward the sky-glow which was the reflection of the street-lamps of the capital city.

Bedell forced his way into the control-room. Kathy came close behind him. The skipper turned hopeless eyes toward them.

"I know!" said Bedell testily. "I know passengers aren't allowed in the control-room! But there's a mob headed out from the city. They've got explosives. They've got thermite.

They've got sticks and stones and bombs, and they're going to smash both ships and kill everybody in them-they think!"

The skipper said drearily: "They might as well."

"Don't be an idiot!" snapped Bedell. "You know I've been working with the Astrophysical Institute to get this thing straight! Our calculations are finished-just finished! I can tell you how to handle everything! Get set to lift off!"

The skipper said as slowly as before:

"The police are moving away. I saw 'em go. I was just thinking that with them gone I can lift the Corianis and smash that other ship. Maybe smash the Corianis, too, but at least that other skipper won't go to my family and have my children call him father."

Bedell growled, "He's planning exactly the same thing!" he snapped. "I'm the only factor-of-difference! Otherwise you'll think exactly alike! I'll call him! Where's the intership communicator?"

He found it. He called, impatiently. A suspicious, raging voice replied, it was the voice of the skipper, coming from the other space-craft. Bedell spoke crisply.

There was confusion by the control-room door. The Planetary President of Maninea pushed in. With him were other passengers.

"Captain!" said the President, with fine dignity. "There's a mob on the way here from the city. Either it has to be fought off by the police, costing lives, or this ship must take off to prevent senseless slaughter. As President of this planet, I order you to take off to space and go in orbit until this situation can be adjusted."

Bedell, talking into the intership phone, said harshly, "Yes. The President in this ship just gave the same order! Now listen! If we get out to space, and you destroy us there, there'll be no survivors from this ship. You want that! We want it the other way. But we both want this thing ended! We'll go up ten thousand miles and wait for you! Then we'll settle things!"

Kathy made an exclamation from where she gazed out a port of the control-room. There was a peculiar darkness at the edge of the spaceport. The darkness flowed like water toward the two ships. The ground grew black where it spread.

It was people. It was a mob of humans, desperate beyond measure, frightened past mercy, swarming out to destroy the two ships which seemed to them the most horrible of dangers. There were few who had not heard the explanation Bedell had given Kathy only a little while since, but they had that hysterical terror of the abnormal which made their ancestors kill witches in the past ages. To them, the duplicate humans in the two ships seemed worse than witches. They were impossibilities-unless they were most malignant doom.

So the people of Maninea blackened the ground as they marched to destroy the spaceships. They blackened acres of ground, tens of acres. They were mad with fear and horror. They flowed on…

Bedell used a voice he hadn't known he owned. He rasped at the skipper in a tone of utter, unquestionable authority, "Prepare for take-off!"

The skipper moved convulsively. But he had intended to, anyhow.

"Straight up!" snapped Bedell. "Up to ten thousand miles! The other ship will follow!"

The skipper pressed a button. The Corianis lifted. Jack Bedell could not let anyone else issue orders, or the impetus of his leadership would be lost.

"Full vertical thrust!" he rasped. "You -" He pointed to the Planetary President. "Watch the other ship! It's following. Watch it!" He pointed a finger at the Minister of State for Kholar. "You! Clear that mob away from the door! We want no interference!"

The ship rose and rose. The sky had not been bright. It became black, with specks of stars in it. The vast bulk of the planet underneath lost all its features. The ship rose toward the shining moons. The rim of the planet became visible because it blotted out half the galaxy. Up and up and up…

The sun of Maninea came into view, and automatic shutters dimmed its blinding light.

"Watch for that other ship!" rasped Bedell. He had no authority, but he had a plan. The others knew only fury and despair. "Keep watching!"

The Planetary President said tensely "It's coming! It just rose into sunlight!"

"Off to one side!" snapped Bedell to the skipper. "Set up for overdrive! We're going to hit them from overdrive! There'll not be a particle of that ship left! Aim for it! Line it up! You'll not leave one man aboard it to take your place and your family and your destiny!"

The skipper's fingers fumbled. He leaned back.

"Into overdrive!" rasped Bedell. "Now!"

With a grimace of satisfied hatred, the skipper stabbed home the overdrive button.

The stars went out. Something arced horribly. There was the reek of burned insulation. The arcing ended. The stars came back.

The ship lay dead in space, with the dark mass of the night side of Maninea below and that planet's twin moons shining brightly above. The spare overdrive was burned out, now. But there was no other Corianis.

"Now," said Bedell in a wholly different tone, "now call down to the planet and ask for landing instructions."

There were babblings, but there was no other Corianis. Jack Bedell's orders had been followed, and the other ship was gone. In fact, Bedell was the only man in the control-room who had any clear ideas. The quartermaster made the call, somehow numbly. Because he was bereft of all opinions, he used the form all ships use when coming in from space, to ask for clearance for descent.

Now every man in the control room heard the astounded reply from below.

"Corianis? You're the Corianis? What the hell happened! You're written off as lost in space! Come on down! Your coordinates are-Wait a minute!" They heard the voice calling excitedly, away from the microphone at the spaceport down below. "The Corianis is coming in! She's not lost! She's coming in! She's coming in!"

There was dead silence in the control-room. And Bedell said in an explanatory tone, with something like diffidence, "He's surprised to hear from us. Naturally! This is our original time-track. In this sequence of events, we've been missing in space for almost three weeks. Our being in the other sequence was an unstable condition. We got into it because we ran into a mass of rock and metal out in emptiness. We couldn't skip ahead or aside, but we couldn't stay in contact with it long enough to be destroyed. So we skipped out of that sequence of events. When we hit the other Corianis, just now, it was the same thing in reverse. We didn't belong in that sequence of events. So when we couldn't skip past or to any side of it-why-we came back to our own universe."

He paused, and said painstakingly, "It's very much like the old nursery rhyme, really. 'There was a man in our town and he was wondrous wise. He jumped into a bramble bush, and scratched out both his eyes. And when he found his eyes were out, with all his might and main, he jumped into another bush, and scratched them in again.' I'm explaining to you because they'll have some trouble believing us."