The Seed of Evil

The Ship that Sailed the Ocean of Space

Rim is the kind of man who would poke his head into Hell just to see how hot it is there.

He’s thickset, not very tall—but physical features like these don’t count for much when you look at Rim these days. All you see is a dishevelled, bleary layabout who scratches himself all the time because we gave up bathing and washing years ago.

Rim and I have got a pretty cushy number. We’re in this orbiting spaceship out beyond Neptune, and we’re supposed to be researching into the incidence of high-energy particles and all that stuff. Or rather, Rim is, because I don’t know anything about physics. I’m supposed to be his companion, to stop him from feeling lonely.

That’s a laugh. But I’m an old pal of Rim’s, and I never made out too well on Earth as far as jobs are concerned. When he told me about this easy-living deal, well, I was glad to get away from the nomadic life.

Actually, Rim is one of the system’s best physicists, and could do much more valuable research, but this is the only job he can get since he punched the director of Sub-Nuclear Research at London University. Still, I think I prefer it out here.

Actually, it’s quite O.K. Not like Hell—too cold—but we’re snug and warm in our quarters. Occasionally Rim condescends to spend a few hours at his job of tracking down the little wiggly particles and whatnot, the rest of the time we spend lounging around, boozing, quarrelling, sometimes leading to brawls—Rim always wins but I swear I’ll beat the bones out of him before I’m done. We’ve got a lifetime’s supply of brown ale. It takes us about a year to get through it, then we head back to Earth to restock, and make our way out here again.

Last time we were home Rim was told off about his meagre reports; but this period I haven’t noticed him do any work at all.

You can’t blame him. It’s a bit routine for a man like Rim and he was meant for better things.

Sometimes we get tired of the inside of the research ship so we suit up and go and sit outside, squeezing brown ale through our suits’ fluid intakes, and gazing at the universe. Space is a fine sight, especially out here where the sun is hardly more than a very bright star. It’s very dark, but not dim, that is, you can see all right, but there’s nothing nearby to see. It’s cold, and lonely.

Still, Rim and I don’t mind. We’ve both had our fill of human beings, and I hear they’re talking about prohibition down on Earth now.

Anyway, it was as we were sitting out there one day that I suddenly noticed that I could see something.

I pointed it out to Rim. It was a dark object, too small and distant to have any features, but it occluded stars, and light reflected off it.

“Boy,” Rim said wonderingly, “maybe it’s an asteroid.”

This idea pleased him. We’d never before found any asteroids out here, but there were some explosives in the storeroom for blowing them open if we did. Rim loves playing with explosives.

We scrambled through the airlock, took off our helmets and went to the control room. Rim soon got the object on the view-screen and took a few instrument sightings. “She’s moving about thirty miles an hour,” he told me as he started up the manoeuvring jets. “We’ll go and have a look.”

“Thirty miles an hour? That’s not very fast, is it?”

“Relative to us.” Through the matted hair and whiskers that all but covered his face, I discerned a slight frown. “I expect it’s in orbit, same as us.”

“Then why has it got a velocity difference of thirty miles per hour? It ought to have the same velocity.”

Rim didn’t answer. He had a bottle to his lips. But when we got closer to the asteroid, he started tapping the massometer impatiently. Finally he gave it a brutal kick.

“Hey, what’s the matter?” I demanded.

“The massometer,” he mumbled, “it’s not working.”

“What d’you mean? It must be working.”

“Don’t be a damn fool, that thing out there’s got to have some mass! Anyway, we’re close enough now, let’s get outside and have a first-hand view.”

Well, it wasn’t an asteroid.

I supposed it was about half a mile long, and about a seventh of that across the beam. Overlapping strips of a dull substance covered it, running lengthwise. To say there was something funny about it would be a polite underestimation.

For one thing, I couldn’t seem to estimate its shape, except that it was longer than it was broad. Every time I cast my attention at it to make a visual assessment, it seemed to evade me by sliding away without moving. Slippery as a fish, as far as the mind goes. But dammit, every time I looked at that thing I felt I was looking up at it. I kept wanting to climb up it to see what was on top.

In fact, we both tried to. We coasted all round it on our suit jets, trying to work out what was wrong. But it was no good: from every angle it presented the same appearance, the same maddening impression that we were looking at it from below, that there was something else to see on the upper side.

Also, there was another funny thing. In space, you don’t have any sense of up or down. There’s only here and there.

Eventually we gave up and landed on the body itself. Flipping on my intercom, I heard Rim scratching himself inside his suit.

“Well,” he ventured, “it isn’t a natural object. It’s an artifact.”

“Oh, daddy,” I sniggered, “I would never have known if you hadn’t told me.”

“All right, shut up.” Sulkily he moved away, muttering to himself as he bent to examine the strange hull. A minute later his voice sounded again, loud and friendly now that he had found something else to divert him.

“Say, this material is queer stuff,” he said. “I can’t get any sound out of it.”

“Well, what sort of sound do you expect in space?”

“I mean I can’t get any conducted sound when I strike it with my glove. It doesn’t even feel as though it offers resistance to my hand—yet my hand stops short, as it should, when I press against it. Do you know something? I think our massometer was working after all. This thing hasn’t got any mass!”

“Big deal!” I offered sardonically.

He straightened up and came closer. “I’m out of beer,” he told me. “Got a bottle?”

Silently I handed him one and listened to his unsavoury gurglings as he squeezed the ale into his headpiece and straight down his throat.

The excitement must have given him a thirst. He finished the pint in forty seconds, slung the bottle into the void, and blinked, peering with his weak beery gaze at our discovery. I could practically see the stuff oozing out of his eyeballs.

“It’s a ship,” he said. “It can’t be anything else. If it’s a ship it must be hollow. I’d like to take a look inside.”

“I’d rather you stuck to nuclear particles.”

“Aah….” Rim went limp inside his suit, which in the absence of gravity is the equivalent of flinging oneself into an armchair. He gets very depressed at times, and I could see he had a mood coming on.

“Stay here,” he instructed after a while. “I’m going to get my tool kit.”

He nearly blew me into space with a fountain of poorly controlled propellant, and rocketed over to the research ship. I imagined him thumping around inside, cursing and turning the place upside down. Since he hadn’t entered the laboratory for six months he would have forgotten where everything was. However, he appeared twenty minutes later with a tool bag and auxiliary power pack swinging from his neck.

“Yippee, here I come!” he yelled as he came streaking across the ten-mile distance to the alien ship. By the time I got to where he landed he had clamped himself against the side and was fitting together a power drill.

“What are you going to do?” I queried.

“Drill a hole.”

“Are you crazy—” I began. Then I lowered my voice. “Look, if whatever’s inside there wanted to meet us he’d have come out by now. Where’s your tact? Besides, you can’t just go drilling a hole in somebody else’s ship! You might let all the air out.”

“No, they’ll be all right,” he answered casually. “If they’re smart enough for space travel they’re smart enough to take care of a little puncture. Anyway, I’m only drilling to find out what the hull’s made of.”

With that he made a connection, and crouching over the drill, applied it to the side of the ship.

For a few moments I watched the tip slide into the plank-like structure, but then a queasy feeling came over me and I didn’t feel like seeing any more.

I sauntered off and rounded the bend of the ship, idly contemplating its odd, belly-like curve. For some reason I kept looking for a keel—but of course there wasn’t any keel. It was only that strange fancy, the same one that insisted the ship floated upright.

Floated? Well, yes, I thought. I suppose things can be said to float in space.

I was about to go back to see how Rim was getting on, when a movement caught my eye. Something bright and pointed was emerging through the planking….

“Rim!” I squealed in fright. “Your drill’s coming through the other side!”

The drill-tip stopped moving. “How far away are you?” “About fifty yards!”

Rim gave an unbelieving curse, and came zooming round to join me. His eyes bulged when he saw the drill-tip. “That drill’s only eight inches long. How can it penetrate fifty yards? Go and see—no, stay here a minute!”

He put weight on his jets and galloped off round the bend. “I’m moving the drill now,” his voice informed. “Is that tip waggling?”

“Y-Yes,” I bleated, watching the tip move slowly in and out. “You’ve made two holes instead of one!”

“But it’s impossible. Here—grab the tip and move it about a bit, we’ve got to make sure.”

After hesitation, I firmly grasped the metal drill and pushed, then pulled, meeting a resistance I knew came from Rim. His voice yelped in my ears. “The handle! It’s moving in my hand!”

“I’m scared,” I admitted, by my tone of voice as well as by the statement.

“Then come round here with me, I’m scared too!”

I was surprised to hear that anything could frighten Rim, but the thought of that only urged me on the faster. However, when I came upon him he seemed to have regained his control, though he still crouched over the drill and held it in a tetanus grip.

“Do you know what I think?” he whispered, staring up at me. “There’s no space inside there!”

“What, you mean it’s solid all the way through?”

“No, no.” He shook his head with exasperation. “Listen, do you remember how much drill is protruding the other end?”

“About four inches.”

“And do you know how much I inserted this end? Four inches! The tip goes in here and instantly reappears fifty yards away. There’s no distance inside the ship. No distance means no space. The interior of this ship is void of space.”

There was a long pause. “Let’s go back to quarters,” I said feebly.

Rim muttered to himself, shaking his head. But he pulled out the drill, disconnected it and made ready to leave.

And then the drill began to bend and waver, in a way no solid object could. That wasn’t all. The arm and hand with which Rim held the tool began to bend and waver too, to flow, as if it were made of smoke and being distorted by air currents. Rim gave a wild yell when he saw the impossible contortions of his arm.

Now part of his space armour began to behave in the same way. It was as if Rim were being sucked—sucked towards the hole he had drilled.

“Get away, Rim!” I shouted, though I was too terrified to help him myself.

For a moment he stared wonderingly at his body as it elongated and streamed, then he started up his jets and before I knew what was happening we were both hurtling towards the research ship without thought of the other. Almost blind with haste, I scrambled through the airlock to find Rim already waiting for me in the living quarters.

“Rim,” I gasped. “You made it quick. Are you all right?”

“Of course!” he snapped irritably. “Perfectly all right. It wasn’t me that was being malformed, it was just the space I occupied.”

I peered closely at his body but didn’t find one trace of any deformation. He was his usual robust, unhealthy, disgusting self.

He chewed the lid off a beer bottle and commenced to gulp the contents, allowing some of it to dribble down his chest. I helped myself to one, too, and it tasted good enough to bathe in, not that I thought of bathing.

“Don’t you see what happened?” Rim said between gargles, flopping on to a couch. “It was space—pouring through the hole. There wasn’t any space inside. Well, now we know: space behaves like a fluid.”

“I thought space was just nothing,” I replied, also gargling.

“Space has structure,” he asserted seriously. “Direction: north, south, east, west, zenith, nadir. It has distance. Good God!” His over-ripe brown eyes suddenly alive with emotion, Rim leaped from the couch and switched on all the outer view-screens. “Look! All the sidereal universe is contained in space. Everything! Except….” His voice tailed off into mutterings again. He let the empty bottle fall from his fingers and took another from one of the crates we always have piled up all over the place. Slowly he dropped back on to the couch, sullenly thoughtful.

“What I can’t understand,” I remarked conversationally, “is why that thing out there makes me think of a Greek trireme.”

I was glad to be back in our cosy living quarters. We keep the lights low and it’s comfortable, if you don’t mind the rotten food lying about the floor, and the smell. It would have suited me perfectly to forget we ever saw the alien body: all it had done was disturb our routine.

“Never mind,” I said consolingly, “we’ve had a harrowing experience. Come on, drink up and have another.”

But he wouldn’t be cheered, and presently we lapsed into a silent drinking bout. We have had many of these in the course of our career out here beyond Neptune, particularly when we muse on our memories and our misfortunes among the society of our fellow-men back on Earth; but never before had I seen Rim guzzle so solidly, and with such an air of desperation.

Some hours later he struggled to a sitting position, breathing heavily. “Don’t you see?” he uttered hoarsely, the words coming with scant coherence. “Don’t you see what that ship is? It floats on space as an ocean ship floats on water! It’s really right outside space—outside the dimensions. But it floats on them, and we see the part its weight causes to be projected below the water-line… the space-line.”

“But it doesn’t have any weight,” I objected hazily. By this time we were both pretty far gone.

“Their kind of weight, not ours, fool. By God! If they use space for water, what do they use for air? And us, do you know what we are? Fishes in the sea. Never able to reach the surface.”

He came towards me, groping blindly until his hand clapped my shoulder. “Listen. There’ll never be another chance like this.”

“Chance for what?”

“To see what it’s like where there’s no space. I’m going inside that ship.”

“But you can’t do that—”

“What do you mean, I can’t? Are you telling me what I can do? Me, Rim, the Great Rim? Why, if it weren’t for me you wouldn’t have this job at all. You’d still be walking around the gutters on Earth.”

Even in my befuddled state I could see he’d got to the maudlin stage, and that would quickly be followed by the self-pitying stage. I couldn’t do anything to prevent it, and anyway it was a sort of entertainment. But as for any half-mad scheme he might dream up, well, that was different. It was dangerous.

“Look here,” I coaxed, “there isn’t any way you can get inside that ship. There are no openings. Now if you spent more time in the laboratory….”

“Yaah!” Big brownish tears trickled out of Rim’s eyes. “Keeping me out of all the big research! Pushing me out here where they think I won’t be able to achieve anything….”

“Genius is never tolerated,” I consoled.

“But Rim will discover something to amaze them all! Rim will find out about space itself. You watch me.”

“There’s no way inside, old chap.”

“No way? Hah! A few ounces of blasting powder will soon make a way. All I have to do is nip inside before all the space comes washing in, and observe… observe….”

The voice faded into the familiar mutter. I rose to my feet, aghast. He was really drunk! “But what about the people inside?”

Rim looked at me with a mean look I had never seen on his face before. I never knew until that moment just how much he resented the way society had treated him, even though it was his own fault. Now he wanted to assert himself against all the force of moral feeling which society represented.

“People?” he roared. “A bit of space won’t hurt them! This is for science!”

I shook my head with as much firmness as I could muster. “You’re not going.”

“You’re telling Rim what to do?” Rim shook his head shaggily and landed his fist on my nose. I reeled, ignoring the pain and trying to sort out the scenery from the streaks of light flashing across my brain, and stumbled over a chair. Rim came after me. Rolling aside to evade him, I looked desperately around for something to hit him with. A bottle! There was one lying on the floor an arm’s length away, and I grabbed it as I came to my feet.

Rim was in a half crouch, he also had a bottle in his hand. “So it’s bottles, is it?” he spat, and smashed his on the edge of the table. Neither of us had ever done that before.

“Rim!” I cried in amazement. “We’ve known each other all our lives!”

I backed against the wall, letting my own weapon fall in my surprise. Rim edged to me, displaying his jagged glass proudly and making thrusting motions. Then he threw it aside at the last moment and aimed one of his best hammerblows at my jaw.

That was when I temporarily left the scene in the living quarters, for the happier climes of unconsciousness.

When I recovered he’d suited up and left. I didn’t know how long it had been but I guessed it was five or ten minutes.

I felt too groggy to follow, though. I climbed to my feet, groaned a little, felt sorry for myself for a while, then became supine again, this time on the couch. My head felt really bad, and I don’t think it was just the beer.

For the first time in my life I felt a twinge of remorse. Why that should be, I couldn’t make out: Rim should be the one going through all that conscience stuff, not me. Still, I staggered over to a mirror and gazed long, if unsteadily, at the horrifying sight I presented.

“You look wretched,” I accused miserably. “You look as bad as him.”

I took solace in the thought that perhaps I didn’t look quite as bad as Rim, then turned my attention to what he was doing, switching on the main view-screen to show the alien ship. Bringing up the magnification a few degrees, I saw my partner puttering at the vessel’s lower aft part; soon he backed off, and a neat explosion blew a large chunk out of the fabric.

Rim darted forward immediately and slipped inside the hole. Even in those few seconds I saw him twist and waver as if he’d been caught in a swift current, but I lost interest in him in the course of the next minute, because I was so completely fascinated by what was happening to the ship.

When the space rushed in, she began to sink. That is, she took on greater, more meaningful proportions, became more majestic. As more of her bulk was submerged, the enigma of her appearance was resolved, and at last she reached the point where she revealed her real shape to us fishes. There was a keel, now, and a curving bulge of prow, sides and stern. Even a steering oar became visible.

Slowly, the true nature of the vessel heeled over into the sidereal universe as currents of space swirled in and around her. And then, when she was totally submerged, I saw it—the open deck, the drowned crewmen, the great expanse of square sail. Then I saw the nobles which the ship carried: the poet-faced youth, with a golden circlet about his neck, a short dagger of authority at his side, and his arm around a beautiful lady, dressed in a loose flowing robe, her hair gorgeously arrayed, but both their faces relaxed now in the repose of death by drowning. Of course, they were about thirty feet tall….

Within a few minutes the ship began to break up. I saw a tiny figure struggling through the disintegrating bilges, and automatically flicked on the intercom to hear his hoarse gasping breath. Nothing amiss there. He jetted a short distance away and looked up at the lord and lady, a blunt midget against their gracious forms.

Immersed in space, their bodies dissipated, fading away in spinning particles, brief glimmers and spiracles. Even the ship itself had become water-logged—space-logged, and was shredding into fragments which dispersed into non-existence.

“Oh,” quavered Rim, “I’m a murderer.”

Ten minutes later there was only black, empty space on the view-screen. Rim clumped through the airlock and grumpily told me he hadn’t learned a thing about what it was like without space.

So we both returned to the bottle.

All that Rim put on his research report this year was: “Found a sailing ship. Sank it.” I hope we don’t lose our jobs because of that; we’d be pretty lucky to find another easy number like this one. Still, we’ve got beer enough for another three months, so we’ll find out then.

Actually, I think we’ll get through the beer in two months, or even one.

The other day Rim started laughing. “I just can’t get over it,” he said. “Creatures to whom space is a heavy liquid! I’d like to see their aeroplanes.”

“Yeah,” I answered. “What about when they get the idea of submarines?”