Time For The Stars

VII 19,900 WAYS

The first thing that happened in the L.C. made me think I was dreaming—I ran into Uncle Steve.

I was walking along the circular passageway that joined the staterooms on my deck and looking for the passage inboard, toward the axis of the ship. As I turned the comer I bumped into someone. I said, "Excuse me," and started to go past when the other person grabbed my arm and clapped me on the shoulder. I looked up and it was Uncle Steve, grinning and shouting at me. "Hi, shipmate! Welcome aboard!"

"Uncle Steve! What are you doing here?"

"Special assignment from the General Staff... to keep you out of trouble."

"Huh?"

There was no mystery when he explained. Uncle Steve had known for a month that his application for special discharge to take service with the LRF for Project Lebensraum had been approved; he had not told the family but had spent the time working a swap to permit him to be in the same ship as Pat—or, as it turned out, the one I was in.

"I thought your mother might take it easier if she knew I was keeping an eye on her boy. You can tell her about it the next time you are hooked in with your twin."

"I'll tell her now," I answered and gave a yell in my mind for Pat. He did not seem terribly interested; I guess a reaction was setting in and he was sore at me for being where he had expected to be. But Mother was there and he said he would tell her. "Okay, she knows."

Uncle Steve looked at me oddly. "Is it as easy as that?"

I explained that it was just like talking... a little faster, maybe, since you can think words faster than you can talk, once you are used to it. But he stopped me. "Never mind. You're trying to explain color to a blind man. I just wanted Sis to know."

"Well, okay." Then I noticed that his uniform was different. The ribbons were the same and it was an LRF company uniform, like my own, which did not surprise me—but his chevrons were gone: "Uncle Steve... you're wearing major's leaves!"

He nodded. "Home town boy makes good. Hard work, clean living, and so on."

"Gee, that's swell!"

"They transferred me at my reserve rank, son, plus one bump for exceptionally neat test papers. Fact is, if I had stayed with the Corps, I would have retired as a ship's sergeant at best—there's no promotion in peacetime. But the Project was looking for certain men, not certain ranks, and I happened to have the right number of hands and feet for the job."

"Just what is your job, Uncle?"

"Commander of the ship's guard."

"Huh? What have you got to guard?"

"That's a good question. Ask me in a year or two and I can give you a better answer. Actually, 'Commander Landing Force' would be a better title. When we locate a likely looking planet—'when and if,' I mean—I'm the laddie who gets to go out and check the lay of the land and whether the natives are friendly while you valuable types stay safe and snug in the ship." He glanced at his wrist. "Let's go to chow."

I wasn't hungry and wanted to look around, but Uncle Steve took me firmly by the arm and headed for the mess room. "When you have soldiered as long as I have, lad, you will learn that you sleep when you get a chance and that you are never late for chow line."

It actually was a chow line, cafeteria style. The L.C. did not run to table waiters nor to personal service of any sort, except for the Captain and people on watch. We went through the line and I found that I was hungry after all. That meal only, Uncle Steve took me ever to the heads-of-departments table. "Ladies and gentlemen, this is my nephew with two heads, Tom Bartlett. He left his other head dirtside—he's a telepair twin. If he does anything he shouldn't, don't tell me, just clobber him." He glanced at me; I was turning red. "Say 'howdy,' son... or just nod if you can't talk."

I nodded and sat down. A sweet old girl with the sort of lap babies like to sit on was next to me. She smiled and said, "Glad to have you with us, Tom." I learned that she was the Chief Ecologist. Her name was Dr. O'Toole, only nobody called her that, and she was married to one of the relativists.

Uncle Steve went around the table, pointing out who was who and what they did: the Chief Engineer. the Relativist (Uncle Steve called him the "Astrogator" as the job would be called in an ordinary ship), Chief Planetologist Harry Gates and the Staff Xenologist, and so forth—I couldn't remember the names at the time—and Reserve Captain Urqhardt. I didn't catch the word "reserve" and was surprised at how young he was. But Uncle Steve corrected me: "No, no! He's not the Captain. He's the man who will be captain if it turns out we need a spare. Across from you is the Surgeon-don't let that fool you, either; he never does surgery himself. Dr. Devereaux is the boss head-shrinker."

I looked puzzled and Uncle Steve went on, "You don't savvy? Psychiatrist. Doc Dev is watching every move we make, trying to decide how quick he will have to be with the straitjacket and the needle. Correct, Doc?"

Dr. Devereaux buttered a roll. "Essentially, Major. But finish your meal; we're not coming for you until later in the day." He was a fat little toad, ugly as could be, and with a placid, unbreakable calm. He went on, "I just had an up setting thought, Major."

"I thought that thoughts never upset you?"

"Consider. Here I am charged with keeping quaint characters like you sane... but they forgot to assign anybody to keep me sane. What should I do?"

"Mmm..." Uncle Steve seemed to study it. "I didn't know that head-shrinkers were supposed to be sane, themselves."

Dr. Devereaux nodded. "You've put your finger on it. As in your profession, Major, being crazy is an asset. Pass the salt, please."

Uncle Steve shut up and pretended to wipe off blood.

A man came in and sat down; Uncle Steve introduced me and said, "Staff Commander Frick, the Communications Officer. Your boss, Tom."

Commander Frick nodded and said, "Aren't you third section, young man?"

"Uh, I don't know, sir."

"I do... and you should have known. Report to the communications office."

"Uh, you mean now, sir?"

"Right away. You are a half hour late."

I said, "Excuse me," and got up in a hurry, feeling silly. I glanced at Uncle Steve but he wasn't looking my way; he seemed not to have heard it.

The communications office was two decks up, right under the control room; I had trouble finding it. Van Houten was there and Mei-Ling and a man whose name was Travers, who was communicator-of-the-watch. Mei-Ling was reading a sheaf of papers and did not look up; I knew that she was telepathing. Van said, "Where the deuce have you been? I'm hungry."

"I didn't know," I protested.

"You're supposed to know."

He left and I turned to Mr. Travers. "What do .you want me to do?"

He was threading a roll of tape into an autotransmitter; he finished before he answered me. "Take that stack of traffic as she finishes it, and do whatever it is you do with it. Not that it matters."

"You mean read it to my twin?"

"That's what I said."

"Do you want him to record?"

"Traffic is always recorded. Didn't they teach you anything?"

I thought about explaining that they really hadn't because there had not been time, when I thought, oh what's the use? He probably thought I was Pat and assumed that I had had the full course. I picked up papers Mei-Ling was through with and sat down.

But Travers went on talking. "I don't know what you freaks are up here for now anyhow. You're not needed; we're still in radio range."

I put the papers down and stood up: "Don't call us 'freaks.' "

He glanced at me and said, "my, how tall you've gown. Sit down and get to work."

We were about the same height but he was ten years older and maybe thirty pounds heavier. I might have passed it by if we had been alone, but not with Mei-Ling present.

"I said not to call us 'freaks.' It's not polite."

He looked tired and not amused but he didn't stand up. I decided he didn't want a fight and felt relieved. "All right, all right," he answered. "Don't be so touchy. Get busy on that traffic."

I sat down and looked over the stuff I had to send, then called Pat and told him to start his recorder; this was not a practice message.

He answered, "Call back in half an hour. I'm eating dinner."

("I was eating lunch but I didn't get to finish. Quit stalling, Pat. Take a look at that contract you were so anxious to sign.")

"You were just as anxious. What's the matter, kid? Cold feet already?"

("Maybe, maybe not. I've got a hunch that this isn't going to be one long happy picnic. But I've learned one thing already; when the Captain sends for a bucket of paint, he wants a full bucket and no excuses. So switch on that recorder and stand by to take down figures.")

Pat muttered and gave in, then announced that he was ready after a delay that was almost certainly caused by Mother insisting that he finish dinner. "Ready."

The traffic was almost entirely figures (concerning the take-off, I suppose) and code. Being such, I had to have Pat repeat back everything. It was not hard, but it was tedious. The only message in clear was one from the Captain, ordering roses sent to a Mrs. Detweiler in Brisbane and charged to his LRF account, with a message: "Thanks for a wonderful farewell dinner."

Nobody else sent personal messages; I guess they had left: no loose ends back on Earth.

I thought about sending some roses to Maudie, but I didn't want to do it through Pat. It occurred to me that I could do it through Mei-Ling, then I remembered that, while I had money in the bank, I had appointed Pat my attorney; if I ordered them, he would have to okay the bill I decided not to cross any bridges I had burned behind me.

Life aboard the L.C., or the Elsie as we called her, settled into a routine. The boost built up another fifteen per cent which made me weigh a hundred and fifty-eight pounds; my legs ached until I got used to it—but I soon did; there are advantages in being kind of skinny. We freaks stood a watch in five, two at a time—Miss Gamma and Cas Warner were not on our list because they hooked sidewise with other ships. At first we had a lot of spare time, but the Captain put a stop to that.

Knowing that the LRF did not really expect us to return, I had not thought much about that clause in the contract which provided for tutoring during the trip but I found out that the Captain did not intend to forget it. There was school for everybody, not just for us telepaths who were still of school age. He appointed Dr. Devereaux, Mrs. O'Toole, and Mr. Krishnamurti a school board and courses were offered in practically everything, from life drawing to ancient history. The Captain himself taught that last one; it turned out he knew Sargon the Second and Socrates like brothers.

Uncle Alfred tried to sign up for everything, which was impossible, even if he didn't eat, sleep, nor stand watch. He had never, he told me, had time for all the schooling he wanted and now at last he was going to get it. Even my real uncle, Steve, signed up for a couple of courses. I guess I showed surprise at this, for he said, "Look, Tom, I found out my first cruise that the only way to make space bearable is to have something to learn and learn it. I used to take correspondence courses. But this bucket has the finest assemblage of really bright minds you are ever likely to see. If you don't take advantage of it, you are an idiot. Mama O'Toole's cooking course, for example: where else can you find a Cordon Bleu graduate willing to teach you her high art free? I ask you!"

I objected that I would never need to know how to cook high cuisine.

"What's that got to do with it? Learning isn't a means to an end; it is an end in itself. Look at Uncle Alf. He's as happy as a boy with a new slingshot. Anyhow, if you don't sign up for a stiff course, old Doc Devereaux will find some way to keep you busy, even if it is counting rivets. Why do you think the Captain made him chairman of the board of education?"

"I hadn't thought about it. "

"Well, think about it. The greatest menace in space is going coffin crazy. You are shut up for a long time in a small space and these is nothing outside but some mighty thin vacuum... no street lights, no bowling alleys. Inside are the same old faces and you start hating them. So a smart captain makes sure you have something to keep you interested and tired—and ours is the smartest you'll find or he wouldn't be on this trip."

I began to realize that a lot of arrangements in the Elsie were simply to see that we stayed healthy and reasonably happy. Not just school, but other things. Take the number we bad aboard, for example—almost two hundred. Uncle Steve told me that the Elsie could function as a ship with about ten: a captain, three control officers, three engineer officers, one communicator, one farmer, and a cook. Shucks, you could cut that to five: two control officers (one in command), two torch watchstanders, and a farmer-cook.

Then why two hundred? .

In the first place there was room enough. The Elsie and the other ships had been rebuilt from the enormous freighters the LRF use to haul supplies out to Pluto and core material back to Earth. In the second place they needed a big scientific staff to investigate the planets we hoped to find. In the third place some were spare parts, like Reserve Captain Urqhardt and, well, me myself. Some of us would die or get killed; the ship had to go on.

But the real point, as I found out, is that no small, isolated social group can be stable. They even have a mathematics for it, with empirical formulas and symbols for "lateral pressures" and "exchange valences" and "exogamic relief." (That last simply means that the young men of a small village should find wives outside the village.)

Or look at it this way. Suppose you had a one-man space ship which could cruise alone for several years. Only a man who was already nutty a certain way could run it—otherwise he would soon go squirrelly some other way and start tearing the controls off the panels. Make it a two-man ship: even if you used a couple as fond of each other as Romeo and Juliet, by the end of the trip even Juliet would start showing black-widow blood.

Three is as bad or worse, particularly if they gang up two against one. Big numbers are much safer. Even with only two hundred people there are exactly nineteen thousand nine hundred ways to pair them off, either as friends or enemies, so you see that the social possibilities shoot up rapidly when you increase the numbers. A bigger group means more chances to find friends and more ways to avoid people you don't like. This is terribly important aboard ship.

Besides elective courses we had required ones called "ship's training"—by which the Captain meant that every body had to learn at least one job he had not signed up for. I stood two watches down in the damping room, whereupon Chief Engineer Roch stated in writing that he did not think that I would ever make a torcher as I seemed to have an innate lack of talent for nuclear physics. As a matter of fact it made me nervous to be that close to an atomic power plant and to realize the unleashed hell that was going on a few feet away from me.

I did not make out much better as a farmer, either. I spent two weeks in the air-conditioning plant and the only thing I did right was to feed the chickens. When they caught me cross-pollinating the wrong way some squash plants which were special pets of Mrs. O'Toole, she let me go, more in sorrow than in anger. "Tom," she said, "what do you do well?"

I thought about it. "Uh, I can wash bottles... and I used to raise hamsters."

So she sent me over to the research department and I washed beakers in the chem lab and fed the experimental animals. The beakers were unbreakable. They wouldn't let me touch the electron microscope. It wasn't bad—I could have been assigned to the laundry.

Out of the 19,900 combinations possible in the Elsie, Dusty Rhodes and I were one of the wrong ones.: I hadn't signed up for the life sketching class because he was teaching it; the little wart really was a fine draftsman. I know, I'm pretty good at it myself and I would have liked to have been in that class. What was worse, he had an offensively high I.Q. genius plus, much higher than mine, and he could argue rings around me. Along with that he had the manners of a pig and the social graces of a skunk—a bad go, any way you looked at it.

"Please" and "Thank you" weren't in his vocabulary. He never made his bed unless someone in authority stood over him, and I was likely as not to come in and find him lying on mine, wrinkling it and getting the cover dirty. He never hung up his clothes, he always left our wash basin filthy, and his best mood was complete silence.

Besides that, he didn't bathe often enough. Aboard ship that is a crime.

First I was nice to him, then I bawled him out, then I threatened him. Finally I told him that the next thing of his I found on my bed was going straight into the mass converter. He just sneered and the next day I found his camera on my bed and his dirty socks on my pillow.

I tossed the socks into the wash basin, which he had left filled with dirty water, and locked his camera in my wardrobe, intending to let him stew before I gave it back.

He didn't squawk. Presently I found his camera gone from my wardrobe, in spite of the fact that it was locked with a combination which Messrs. Yale & Towne had light-heartedly described as "Invulnerable." My clean shirts were gone, too... that is, they weren't clean; somebody had carefully dirtied every one of them.

I had not complained about him. It had become a point of pride to work it out myself; the idea that I could not cope with somebody half my size and years my junior did not appeal to me.

But I looked at the mess he had made of my clothes and I said to myself, "Thomas Paine, you had better admit that you are licked and holler for help—else your only chance will be to plead justifiable homicide."

But I did not have to complain. The Captain sent for me; Dusty had complained about me instead.

"Bartlett, young Rhodes tells me you are picking on him. What's the situation from your point of view?"

I started to swell up and explode. Then I let out my breath and tried to calm down; the Captain really wanted to know.

"I don't think so, sir, though it is true that we have not been getting along."

"Have you laid hands on him?"

"Uh... I haven't smacked him, sir. I've jerked him off my bed more than once—and I wasn't gentle about it."

He sighed. "Maybe you should have smacked him. Out of my sight, of course. Well, tell me about it. Try to tell it straight—and complete."

So I told him. It sounded trivial and I began to be ashamed of myself... the Captain had more important things to worry about than whether or not I had to scrub out a hand basin before I could wash my face. But he listened.

Instead of commenting, maybe telling me that I should be able to handle a younger kid better, the Captain changed the subject.

"Bartlett, you saw that illustration Dusty had in the ship's paper this morning?"

"Yes, sir. A real beauty," I admitted. It was a picture of the big earthquake in Santiago, which had happened after we left Earth.

"Mmm... we have to allow you special-talent people a little leeway. Young Dusty is along because he was the only m-r available who could receive and transmit pictures."

"Uh, is that important, sir?"

"It could be. We won't know until we need it. But it could be crucially important. Otherwise I would never have permitted a spoiled brat to come aboard this ship." He frowned. "However, Dr. Devereaux is of the opinion that Dusty is not a pathological ease."

"Uh, I never said he was, sir."

"Listen, please. He says that the boy has an unbalanced personality—a brain that would do credit to a grown man but with greatly retarded social development. His attitudes and evaluations would suit a boy of five, combined with this clever brain. Furthermore Dr. Devereaux says that he will force the childish part of Dusty's personality to grow up, or he'll turn in his sheepskin."

"So? I mean, "Yes, sir?' "

"So you should have smacked him. The only thing wrong with that boy is that his parents should have walloped him, instead of telling him how bright he was." He sighed again.

"Now I've got to do it. Dr. Devereaux tells me I'm the appropriate father image."

"Yes, sir."

" 'Yes, sir,' my aching head. This isn't a ship; it's a confounded nursery. Are you having any other troubles?"

"No, sir."

"I wondered. Dusty also complained that the regular communicators call you people "freaks.' " He eyed me.

I didn't answer. I felt sheepish about it.

"In any case, they won't again. I once saw a crewman try to knife another one, just because the other persisted in calling him 'skin head.' My people are going to behave like ladies and gentlemen or I'll bang some heads together." He frowned. "I'm moving Dusty into the room across from my cabin. If Dusty will leave you alone, you let him alone. If he won't... well, use your judgment, bearing in mind that you are responsible for your actions—but remember that I don't expect any man to be a doormat. That's all. Good-by."