‘That’s right,’ the Captain answered with quiet pride. ‘We are travelling twice as fast as any human beings since the beginning of time.’
That should have been one of my lines, thought Victor; he did not like his subject to get ahead of him. But, good professional that he was, he quickly adapted.
He pretended to consult his famous little memo pad, with its sharply directional screen whose display only he could see.
‘Every twelve seconds, we’re travelling the diameter of Earth. Yet it will still take us another ten days to reach Jupi – ah, Lucifer! That gives some idea of the scale of the Solar System.
‘Now, Captain, this is a delicate subject, but I’ve had a lot of questions about it during the last week.’
Oh no, groaned Smith. Not the zero gravity toilets again!
‘At this very moment, we are passing right through the heart of the asteroid belt -‘
(I wish it was the toilets, thought Smith…)
‘- and though no spaceship has ever been seriously damaged by a collision, aren’t we taking quite a risk? After all, there are literally millions of bodies, down to the size of beachballs, orbiting in this section of space. And only a few thousand have been charted.’
‘More than a few: over ten thousand.’
‘But there are millions we don’t know about.’
‘That’s true; but it wouldn’t help us much if we did.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘There’s nothing we can do about them.’
‘Why not?’
Captain Smith paused for careful thought. Willis was right – this was indeed a delicate subject; Head Office would rap his knuckles smartly, if he said anything to discourage potential customers.
‘First of all, space is so enormous that even here – as you said, right in the heart of the asteroid belt – the chance of collision is – infinitesimal. We’ve been hoping to show you an asteroid – the best we can do is Hanuman, a miserable three hundred metres across – but the nearest we get to it is a quarter of a million kilometres.’
‘But Hanuman is gigantic, compared to all the unknown debris that’s floating around out here. Aren’t you worried about that?’
‘About as worried as you are, at being struck by lightning on Earth.’
‘As a matter of fact, I once had a narrow escape, on Pike’s Peak in Colorado – the flash and the bang were simultaneous. But you admit that the danger does exist – and aren’t we increasing the risk, by the enormous speed at which we’re travelling?’
Willis, of course, knew the answer perfectly well; once again he was putting himself in the place of his legions of unknown listeners on the planet that was getting a thousand kilometres further away with every passing second.
‘It’s hard to explain without mathematics,’ said the Captain (how many times he had used that phrase. Even when it wasn’t true!), ‘but there’s no simple relationship between speed and risk. To hit anything at spacecraft velocities would be catastrophic; if you’re standing next to an atomic bomb when it goes off, it makes no difference whether it’s in the kiloton or megaton class.’
That was not exactly a reassuring statement, but it was the best he could do. Before Willis could press the point further, he continued hastily:
‘And let me remind you that any – er – slight extra risk we may be running is in the best of causes. A single hour may save lives.’
‘Yes, I’m sure we all appreciate that.’ Willis paused; he thought of adding ‘And, of course, I’m in the same boat’, but decided against it. It might sound immodest – not that modesty had ever been his strong suit. And anyway, he could hardly make a virtue of a necessity; he had very little alternative now, unless he decided to walk home.
‘All this,’ he continued, ‘brings me to another point. Do you know what happened just a century and a half ago, on the North Atlantic?’
‘In 1911?’
‘Well, actually 1912 -‘
Captain Smith guessed what was coming, and stubbornly refused to cooperate by pretending ignorance.
‘I suppose you mean the Titanic,’ he said.
‘Precisely,’ answered Willis, gamely concealing his disappointment. ‘I’ve had at least twenty reminders from people who think they’re the only one who’s spotted the parallel.’
‘What parallel? The Titanic was running unacceptable risks, merely trying to break a record.’
He almost added ‘And she didn’t have enough lifeboats’, but luckily checked himself in time, when he recalled that the ship’s one and only shuttle could carry not more than five passengers. If Willis took him up on that, it would involve altogether too many explanations.
‘Well, I grant that the analogy is far-fetched. But there’s another striking parallel which everyone points out. Do you happen to know the name of the Titanic’s first and last Captain?’
‘I haven’t the faintest – ‘ began Captain Smith. Then his jaw dropped.
‘Precisely,’ said Victor Willis, with a smile which it would be charitable to call smug.
Captain Smith would willingly have strangled all those amateur researchers. But he could hardly blame his parents for bequeathing him the commonest of English names.
39
The Captain’s Table
It was a pity that viewers on (and off) Earth could not have enjoyed the less formal discussions aboard Universe. Shipboard life had now settled down to a steady routine, punctuated by a few regular landmarks – of which the most important, and certainly the most long-established, was the traditional ‘Captain’s Table’.
At 18.00 hours exactly, the six passengers, and five of the officers not on duty, would join Captain Smith for dinner. There was, of course, none of the formal dress that had been mandatory aboard the floating palaces of the North Atlantic, but there was usually some attempt at sartorial novelty. Yva could always be relied upon to produce some new brooch, ring, necklace, hair-ribbon, or perfume from an apparently inexhaustible supply.
If the drive was on, the meal would begin with soup; but if the ship was coasting and weightless, there would be a selection of hors-d’oeuvres. In either event, before the main course was served Captain Smith would report the latest news – or try to dispel the latest rumours, usually fuelled by newscasts from Earth or Ganymede.
Accusations and countercharges were flying in all directions, and the most fantastic theories had been proposed to account for Galaxy’s hijacking. A finger had been pointed at every secret organization known to exist, and many that were purely imaginary. All the theories, however, had one thing in common. Not one of them could suggest a plausible motive.
The mystery had been compounded by the one fact which had emerged. Strenuous detective work by ASTROPOL had established the surprising fact that the late ‘Rose McCullen’ was really Ruth Mason, born in North London, recruited to the Metropolitan Police – and then, after a promising start, dismissed for racist activities. She had emigrated to Africa – and vanished. Obviously, she had become involved in that unlucky continent’s political underground. SHAKA was frequently mentioned, and as frequently denied by the USSA.
What all this could possibly have to do with Europa was endlessly, and fruitlessly, debated around the table – especially when Maggie M confessed that at one time she had been planning a novel about Shaka, from the viewpoint of one of his thousand unfortunate wives. But the more she researched the project, the more repellent it became. ‘By the time I abandoned Shaka,’ she wryly admitted, ‘I knew exactly what a modern German feels about Hitler.’
Such personal revelations became more and more common as the voyage proceeded. When the main meal was over, one of the group would be given the floor for thirty minutes. Between them; they had a dozen lifetimes of experience, on as many heavenly bodies, so it would be hard to find a better source of after-dinner tales.
The least effective speaker was, somewhat surprisingly, Victor Willis. He was frank enough to admit it, and to give the reason.
‘I’m so used,’ he said, almost but not quite apologetically, ‘to performing for an audience of millions that I find it hard to interact with a friendly little group like this.’
‘Could you do better if it wasn’t friendly?’ asked Mihailovich, always anxious to be helpful. ‘That could easily be arranged.’
Yva, on the other hand, turned out to be better than expected, even though her memories were confined entirely to the world of entertainment. She was particularly good on the famous – and infamous – directors she had worked with, especially David Griffin.
‘Was it true,’ asked Maggie M, doubtless thinking of Shaka, ‘that he hated women?’
‘Not at all,’ Yva answered promptly. ‘He just hated actors. He didn’t believe they were human beings.’
Mihailovich’s reminiscences also covered a somewhat limited territory – the great orchestras and ballet companies, famous conductors and composers, and their innumerable hangers-on. But he was so full of hilarious stories of backstage intrigues and liaisons, and accounts of sabotaged first nights and mortal feuds among prima donnas, that he kept even his most unmusical listeners convulsed with laughter, and was willingly granted extra time.