The Other Side of Nowhere

Chapter 4

The Rim Star swam on magnificently through space. She was an enormous hollow steel shape. Her holds comprised all but a tiny fraction of her volume. They were packed with cargo intended for Handel's Planet. The invoice would begin with some thousands of tons of fabricated steel, designed to be erected as a landing-grid. But the rest of the cargo was varied. There were hundreds of tons of food and drinkables. There were cranes and jungle plows and bulldozers. Roofing and a smelter and antiseptics. A plastic-making unit and machine tools, and antibiotics expressly prepared for the microscopic flora and fauna of a colony in a new world, and metal billets and explosives. The Rim Star carried all the ten thousand and two different kinds of objects and supplies needed to set up a self-supporting city on a brand new world no less than scores of light-years from its nearest sister-city.

The ship drove on, and nothing happened. Nothing. In overdrive it was necessary only that somebody be in the control-room prepared to meet an unimaginable emergency, plus someone at this place and that, in case an unpredictable event required the kind of decision that any man can make, but no computer can possibly arrive at. The steward prepared the meals and delivered them to the passengers and the forecastle and to the skipper and to Braden. Braden did his work - kept watch in the control room, and checked with the passengers to make sure that nothing in the least out of ordinary had taken place. The members of the crew stood watch in turn, as required. They behaved with exemplary docility. Once, to be sure, the steward reported with extreme deference that there had been some discussion among them. Were they actually being credited with the pay due them because the crew was one man short?

They were.

Two days passed. Four. Six. Seven. The Rim Star would be eighty-two light-years from her port of departure if she broke out of overdrive and viewed the stars that would then surround her. She did not break out. She remained in overdrive. The steward was brightly and cheerfully obsequious. It was impossible to discover from anything in his manner that he had stolen a blaster from Braden's ship-bag and hidden it under his pillow, and that it had been taken away and Braden apparently had it again. Braden observed nothing in the actions of the crewmen to show that they remembered he'd roughed up the lot of them in the forecastle and taken away from them the weapons illegally in their possession. Each of them was liable to a prison term because of the blasters and sheath knives in the ship-bags. They might have been expected to be sullen, or else to be extra alert and attentive to duty in an effort to wipe out the offense.

They didn't. The ship ran smoothly and orders were obeyed with precision, but it was a precision that was almost mocking. The routine and tedium went on for watch after watch and day after day, but in the eyes Braden felt upon him derisive anticipation was the least unpleasant of the emotions they expressed. Face to face, naturally, no man looked other than blank and entirely impersonal. But sometimes Braden noticed far different expressions.

On the eighth day, loud speakers throughout the ship made a warning din, and a booming voice said:

"Attention! Breakout coming! Breakout coming! Prepare to come out of overdrive in five seconds. Five - four - three - two - one..."

The universe seemed to reel, and a person's body and especially the stomach seemed to try to turn inside out. There was an instant's intolerable dizziness. Then the vision screens in the control-room lighted.

There were a thousand million stars, and a close-coupled binary sun off to the starboard. One of its components was a giant yellow sun; a smaller white star circled it so closely that both were visibly distorted. A thin, wavering voice came from an outside receptor speaker.

"Checkpoint Alyx," said the metallic voice. "Checkpoint Alyx. Report. Report." A pause. "Checkpoint Alyx. Report. Report."

The voice wavered rhythmically, from strong to weak and back again. This was a Space Patrol checkpoint at one of the crossroads of space. Ships bound on other than local runs came out of overdrive at such checkpoints to verify their course and position. It was not unlike the practice whereby primitive sailing-ships made landfalls to correct their longitude on voyages over the oceans of ancient Earth. But here there was another purpose.

The log-tape began to run swiftly through its guides. The Rim Star's log began to be broadcast at extremely high speed. In seconds all the technical data of the ship's voyage up to this instant was spreading through emptiness. It would be recorded by the clumsy Space Patrol robot check-ship which orbited this particular sun. It broadcast taped requests for such reports, and it recorded them. In due time - at intervals of standard months - its reels of records would be picked up by a Space Patrol tender-ship and taken to a Space Patrol base. Ultimately somebody would listen to them. Oddities would be noted and if necessary investigated.

The idea was, of course, that any ship could be traced for as much of her journey as the checkpoint robots had recorded. Ships that vanished would be known to have traveled so far - not that the information helped to find them. But any peculiar condition or any possibly dangerous situation could be localized and investigated.

Thus the giant robot which was the Rim Star reported to the other robot which was the checkpoint recorder of ships' logs. Then, on the Rim Star, robot sky-searchers identified the pattern of the stars as they should be seen from this location. They reported to the astrogation robot of the ship. The aiming-point for the next checkpoint would be determined, and the ships' blunt nose would swing and center upon it. There were other spacecraft nearby. Two, or ten, or a hundred ships might pass Checkpoint Alyx in a single standard day. The Rim Star's outside receptors picked up whinings and buzzings, and the metallic voice that continued to say monotonously: "Checkpoint Alyx. Report. Report. Checkpoint Alyx. Report. Report."

Then something clicked, somewhere in the ship. In sealed-off compartments, to be entered only when aground and then only by specially trained technicians, the computers and memory- banks and observation instruments and information-integrating devices had finished their work. This was indicated by that click. The Rim Star had come this far and reported. Now she would proceed to the next place where she should report. The booming voice, resounded throughout the ship:

"Attention! Prepare for overdrive!" Each syllable was repeated at the same fraction of an instant all over the huge freighter. "Overdrive coming in five seconds. Five - four - three - two - one..."

There came the unspeakably unpleasant sensation of going into overdrive. It would be intolerable if it lasted. The vision-screen images vanished. The thin and wavering checkpoint call ceased to arrive. It had been faint when it reached the Rim Star because the Patrol ship was half a light-hour from the spot where the Rim Star had broken out to normal space. But within minutes the Patrol craft was light-weeks behind, and the Rim Star had whisked away in her cocoon of negatively stressed emptiness. With the ship gone, the wavering call continued, but it did not matter to the Rim Star.

It seemed that the breakout and check were of no importance at all. But Braden found himself growing more tense after the ship was back in the unspeakable isolation of overdrive, light-years from any star or world or even other spacecraft. The Rim Star was now a week in time and an illimitable distance from her starting point. Her log was on record. It contained absolutely nothing to indicate anything undesirable about the crew. The skipper had kept Braden from logging the discovery of weapons in the forecastle. Nothing recorded or transmitted to the Space Patrol files indicated anything in the least out of the ordinary on this voyage, other than the ship's destination and her intended method of landing there. If the crew had been on the wrecked Melpomene and had been tricked into shipping on the Rim Star to repeat that crime, there was no evidence outside the ship to hint at it.

This was sound reason for the crew to have been on their best behavior until the first checkpoint was past. If the Rim Star did vanish from space, there would be no reason to suspect her crew unless somebody noticed that the description of her crew matched that of the Melpomene's. Which was unlikely. The crewmen had acquired something on the order of an alibi in advance.

Braden went to his cabin. He found his dinner set out on the cabin's folding table. It was just such a meal as many families throughout the galaxy consider the only ones possible - precooked and carefully planned for quantity production, with the necessary enzymes and amino acids added. The steward had probably eavesdropped on what conversation there'd been in the control-room, and timed the preparation and delivery of the dinner so it would be at its most appetizing best when Braden came off duty and reached his cabin.

But Braden was not in any mood to be pleased by such attention. He'd been unable to speak frankly to the skipper in the control-room because it was bugged. There'd been only the one time since he came aboard when the skipper had talked frankly to him, fully assured that he could not be overheard. Braden had had no chance to argue then, to reason later, or at any other time to protest as the ship's mate that a legitimate voyage shouldn't be used as the means of satisfying a personal vengeance.

He hadn't even been able to arrange a signal by which one or the other could give warning of something suspicious. For eight days they had had to consider that every word might be overheard. It was a strain. And now was the time when piracy or mutiny - they were the same - was really likely, and it was Braden's job to prevent it.

He'd picked up his knife and fork when he really became suspicious. It was because he was thinking of the steward, that neat, brightly smiling, obsequious individual who seemed as unlike a mutineer as any man could be. His manner was solicitous and deferential. But he had picked the crewmen - and they were not mild and law-abiding characters. The man they'd beaten on the spaceport tarmac...

But the dinner smelled good. It was appetizing-looking, and the steward had prepared it with great care. But Braden was suddenly and unreasonably and violently suspicious.

He tasted each dish very gingerly. He could detect nothing out of the way in the first one, or the second, or the third. They were very appetizing indeed. They were almost spicy. But he put only the smallest morsels in his mouth. He took a spoonful of coffee.

It was not right. If he'd drunk it after he'd eaten, as he usually did, the keenness of his sense of taste blunted by a succession of dishes some of which were slightly spiced, then he wouldn't have noticed anything. But he did, now. It had a somewhat musky flavor, infinitely faint, that did not belong in coffee.

Blood drummed in his ears. Then he reached in his pocket, brought out a notebook and wrote something on a page. He stood up suddenly as if remembering something, and went back to the control-room. The skipper himself had just sat down to the dinner brought him by the steward. Duty-watch in the control-room didn't call for continuous attention, it only required that someone be there.

"I thought of something, sir," said Braden. "I think I omitted to make a note about the air- freshener unit, sir."

He stood before the skipper, holding his notebook open. The skipper glanced at it.

"Very well," he rumbled. "I'll check it and attend to it."

"Wouldn't it be better, sir..."

"No!" said the skipper peevishly. "I'm tired of looking at your silly face, Mr. Braden! Get out of the control-room! Go to the devil!"

He returned to his plate. His knife and fork made appropriate noises.

"I'm thinking of the passengers, sir," insisted Braden while he looked at the skipper's hands.

"Then go and ask them if they noticed anything wrong about their air!" snapped the skipper. "Get... out, Mr. Braden!"

Braden still waited. The sound of the knife and fork was perfectly normal, but the skipper was making those sounds without eating at all. His eyes blazed with triumph. He'd read what Braden had written on the page of his notebook: "My coffee drugged. Yours?" He tasted the coffee gingerly, and spat it back into the cup. He nodded to Braden and almost swelled with satisfaction at the knowledge that now at long last he was about to have in his hands both the proof of guilt and the men who would pay for the murder - and worse - of his wife and daughter.

Braden left. Making sure his blaster was handy, he went down the long curving corridor of alternate ramps and stairs. He came to the passengers' quarters, nearly a quarter of a mile from the control-room. He knocked and went in.

Diane smiled at him. He'd made it a point to visit the passenger section at least once each day; but his reception, except from Diane, was growing less and less cordial as time went by and nothing unusual occurred. Duckworth fretted about the waste of opportunity to make the spaceship shots for the epic about the Other Side of Nowhere. He was no longer sure that Braden was telling the truth, but he was not yet doubtful enough to rebel.

The steward, of course, had been with the passengers much more often than Braden. He'd been sympathetic. He'd murmured about the orders that confined them to so small a part of the ship. He'd spoken to Derr Carmody with extreme respect and seeming admiration. And Derr Carmody had been a star, which is an addiction-forming experience. Having once been a personage of very great importance, she found the withdrawal symptoms of lessened fame very severe. She wanted at least to prepare to resume her one-time greatness. Her own group aboard ship was not big enough to supply the adulation she'd once had and almost frantically craved again.

Braden looked worriedly at Diane. The passengers' dinner, most tastefully arranged by the steward, had been placed on the table. Derr Carmody had seated herself. She regarded Braden with some haughtiness.

"Well, Mr. Braden?"

"Good, so far," admitted Braden.

"Mr. Duckworth is becoming impatient." The star of the picture-to-be looked severe. "And I am not satisfied at being delayed like this! There are scenes to be shot before we reach Handel's Planet! You will tell the captain that if he does not take back his ridiculous order..."

Braden blinked.

"You mean, about all of you remaining in your quarters?"

"What else?" she asked with annoyance. "No other ship on any good space-line would treat me - me! - so stupidly!"

Diane shook her head at Braden. Fortescue said quickly, and smoothly:

"We've explained to Miss Carmody that you are working on the captain, to persuade him to change his orders."

Braden blinked again. He'd been concerned with deadly realities. This absorption in taking pictures of imaginary events seemed startlingly unreal. Of course he'd assumed that since his cabin as well as the skipper's and the control-room were wired for tapping, there would be great care about what was said. But he hadn't realized that Derr Carmody couldn't be trusted to grasp a situation. She'd play it dramatically, instead.

"You will tell the captain," said the star imperiously, "that I will not submit to this any longer! I am bored! My art demands that I work! I have instructed Mr. Duckworth to ignore the captain's orders if they are not changed immediately!"

Braden drew a deep breath. Things were in a very bad state, and the lid was about to blow off. But the skipper had prepared for something just like this. He'd planned it for years. He had some trap contrived. To make this known before the trap closed could be catastrophic.

"I'll tell you," said Braden. "Let me look at the cameras and lights. If they won't block a corridor that must be kept open, maybe I can persuade him."

"I'll show you," said Diane quickly. "They're in here."

She led the way into one of the cabins. He put his lips close to her ear and whispered:

"Something's about to break! The coffee is doctored! Maybe some of the other food, but the coffee is, without question!"

She went white. Then she said, her voice astonishingly natural:

"These are the lights, Mt. Braden. You can read off the wattage on them."

She put her finger to her lips and pointed to a spot behind the doorframe. There was something very tiny there. It could have been taken for a hardened drop of paint. She pointed again, and he saw twin raised lines where thread-thin wires had been painted over; they would never have been seen if they hadn't been searched for very, very carefully.

Braden took her hand and pressed it. Aloud he said:

"This stuff isn't bulky. It shouldn't block a corridor. I'll talk to the skipper. I can promise nothing, of course." Then he whispered: "That coffee mustn't be drunk! Nor the food eaten!"

She nodded, watching his face. He showed her the butt of his blaster and looked a question. She nodded, very pale. They went back to the saloon.

"I'll speak to the skipper," Braden said politely.

"Tell him," said Derr Carmody imperially, "that if he does not change his orders I will defy them!"

He went to the door. Diane followed him. Braden was sweating. Outside, he said hurriedly:

"The skipper's determined for some reason. But I don't like it!" Then he added furiously, "The woman's a fool!"

Diane smiled faintly.

"She's my mother. And I'm a cameraman because she wouldn't want to have to compete with her daughter as an actress."

"I'll apologize later," he told her bitterly. "But now I'm trying to keep things lined up for whatever the skipper has planned. Keep watch! And stay armed!"

"We will," she said steadily. "Some of us, anyhow."

He went away. When he looked back, she was still standing in the doorway, watching him. He motioned for her to go inside. She smiled rather shakily and obeyed.

He trudged up toward the bow of the ship again. There would be a pause now. He could see it very clearly. On the Melpomene there'd been fighting, and one of the pirates - or mutineers - had been killed. There'd be no such risk, this time. A meal had been served simultaneously in the control-room, and in Braden's cabin, and to the passengers. The mutineers would be waiting, now, for the hidden microphones to tell them when only they remained conscious on the ship. As long as there was any movement they would make no motion. So he could make his way safely back to the skipper, to get his orders for action consistent with the skipper's plans.

He was deeply disturbed because he was neither with Diane, to take part in defending her, nor acting in combination with the skipper. Had Braden been in the skipper's place, he wouldn't have let matters go this far. Days ago he'd have called the steward into the control-room and taken him prisoner, bound and gagged him. He'd have called the other crewmen in, one by one, in the hope of breaking the mutiny by taking action first. Prisoners could be put in an air lock, with food shoved in to them from time to time; and the ship could be run by just the skipper and himself to the next checkpoint or even to Handel's Planet, where help could be provided by space-boat from the colony itself.

That would have been Braden's answer to the threat, but it would not have satisfied the skipper. Planetary laws were elaborate. Accused criminals were always considered innocent unless proven guilty, and there was no way to prove these men guilty. There were no witnesses against them from the Melpomene, because all of them had been killed. Therefore, if the six men were turned over to the law, they would probably be freed.

Braden thought of Diane, as she stood looking after him in the doorway. He suddenly realized, grimly, that if he had been the skipper, he might have killed the steward when he was first sure of him. But that would have been unwise. He'd have been imprisoned for the steward's death, and the other five men would remain unpunished.

It was no easy problem to solve, and this was no time to be trying to solve it. The skipper had planned his vengeance and he'd have it even if it meant the destruction of the ship. Furthermore, if harm came to the skipper, there would be no more than twenty-four hours of life left for anybody on the Rim Star. There was nothing to be done but work with the skipper, for the passengers' sake. And already that meant Diane.

At this moment, the crew was waiting eagerly for assurance that everyone but themselves - the skipper, and Braden, and all the passengers - were unconscious and completely incapable of offering resistance. It wasn't likely that they intended simply to cut the throats of these others. At least five of the men had reason to dislike Braden, and they'd gleefully anticipated expressing that dislike at some future time. And now was the time. The steward would want, at the very least, to gloat over the skipper's folly in putting himself at the mercy of men who'd shown no mercy to his wife and daughter. And there were the passengers... and the crewmen's glee when they saw that some of the passengers were women...

This piracy would not be a simple case of murder and theft. It would be more - and worse. Braden felt a wave of pure rage sweep over him - rage so monstrous that he seemed entirely calm.

It was just as well. He was about to pass his cabin when he saw that the door was open. He looked inside. The steward was there. He looked up. He'd been regarding the apparently untouched meal.

"Beg pardon, sir," he said unhappily. "You haven't eaten your dinner, sir. Was anything wrong with it?"

Braden considered. It was startling that the steward was acting as if nothing were wrong, as if nothing were known. But... so far, nothing was! And in the icy fury that gripped Braden, it was somehow worth while to let things stay that way for the moment. The steward had doubtless come here expecting to find him unconscious in his chair, ready for a negligent murder or for more diverting activities later.

"There's nothing wrong with the meal," said Braden in a voice so natural that it astonished him. "But going into overdrive always upsets my stomach. I have to skip a meal after it. It doesn't matter."

He entered the cabin and sat down in his armchair.

"By the way," he said conversationally, "things seem to be going along all right. You said you were suspicious of the crew. But you seem to have been mistaken. They have done their work well enough."

The steward smiled brightly.

"So they have, sir. But I'm not satisfied even yet. Of course I've complete confidence in the skipper, sir. I've told him what I thought, and he told me I was a fool. But I'm sure he's taken precautions."

Braden nodded. It was ironic. In an unfunny way it was amusing to talk to the steward like this, when murder was in the air and Braden knew that the steward was debating whether a blaster shot would be premature. He could see a small bulge in the steward's pocket. It would be a blaster. The steward had expected to find Braden unconscious, and now he had to kill him. But he thought Braden didn't know. Braden, though, was sure he could kill the steward first.

"May I ask, sir," said the steward, "if you've ever talked to the passengers about the Other Side of Nowhere? It seems they plan to do a tape play about it, sir."

"I know that much," Braden said. "Sit down. I'm off-watch."

The fact that one of them must presently kill the other at a signal of disturbance from outside, made it fascinating for Braden to watch the steward seat himself a bit deferentially, as if he were happily aware of the honor done him.

"I've been wondering, sir," he said with relish ' "if you've noticed that they have it all wrong. It's actually a sort of fourth dimension, sir, but they have the idea it's simply fantastic - whatever they choose to put into it."

Braden made himself comfortable. His blaster, he decided, was handier than the steward's.

"The story varies," he observed. The fury he felt was so intense that it numbed him. "Some of it's nonsense," he said. "A place where all physical laws operate in reverse... That's hard to believe."

"I don't know, sir," said the steward sagely - and this within minutes of a murder - "I'm not so sure it's nonsense. The scientists, sir, say that there's such stuff as contraterrene matter. They've made atoms of it in cyclotrons and such, sir. It has neutrons and negatrons in the nuclei, and positrons in orbit outside."

Braden nodded. He would have heard any sound anywhere in the ship. His ears had never been so keen.

"You see, sir," said the steward eagerly, "a planet of matter like that couldn't be landed on. It's the opposite of normal matter. It wouldn't attract a ship of normal matter. It would have anti-gravity! It would repel it! And if a ship drove against this anti-gravity to make contact with a world like that... why... when it reached atmosphere the contraterrene air would cancel out the normal matter and the ship would vanish in a monstrous explosion with all its matter- energy freed!"

Braden nodded.

"You should have been a scientist," he said as if admiringly, while he thought that shortly the steward would be a corpse.

"And it would not only have anti-gravity, sir," the steward went on enthusiastically, "but it wouldn't have the same time-direction. What's the future to us, sir, would be the past on a contraterrene planet! On such an anti-world, sir, time would run backward! And it's all so logical! There's matter, sir, here in our space. It's little knobbles of energy, as we know. You might call it plus energy. But if there's plus energy here, sir... why... somewhere there must be minus energy, to make things balance! Every action has its reaction, sir, of equal moment and opposite sign. So every atom must have its anti-atom, of equal charge and opposite sign! There's talk about it, sir, in forecastles. Some men say that a ship of normal matter couldn't be operated in contraterrene space. They say that her controls would all work backward. But I say, sir, that normal matter will always obey normal laws!"

The steward beamed at Braden. Braden was strangely amused at being lectured on the physics of hypothetical anti-matter by a man who intended to murder him at the first convenient and safe moment. But he did not smile.

The steward said apologetically:

"I didn't mean to take up your time, sir. Mayn't I fix you something to eat that would be more to your taste than this, sir?"

He gave every evidence of regret.

"Truly I'm sorry, sir! If your stomach's upset from going into overdrive, perhaps some fruit juice, sir? Or perhaps a really hot cup of coffee?"

Braden heard something. He could not make out what it was, but it seemed like voices. And it was not normal for there to be the sound of voices in the corridors of the Rim Star. She was too big a ship, and there were too few people on board.

He stood up slowly. The steward got to his feet instantly.

"I really think, sir, that a fine cup of coffee..."

"I think not."

Then Braden heard the rasping bellow of a blaster. A voice - a man's voice - shouted. A woman screamed.

Braden whirled and struck out savagely at the steward. He literally did not think of his blaster. Diane was in danger, and he struck out brutally at the man who at that moment stood between him and the door that led to her.

The steward's blaster was halfway out when Braden's fist landed. He crashed against the wall. Braden saw the blaster and snatched it. He should have taken time to incapacitate the steward longer than it would take him to recover from a knockout. There came another blaster rasp. Others. Almost a fusillade. The woman screamed again.

Braden went plunging back to the passenger quarters, a blaster in each hand, his fury taking over from the unnatural calm he'd felt and filling him with a horrible hunger for the life of anybody who tried to harm Diane.