“Welcome aboard the Christine Keeler,” he said, and with a friendly shake splintered most of Bill’s knucklebones. “The grand old lady of this fleet, commissioned almost a week ago. I’m the Reverend Fuse Tender Sixth Class Tembo, and I see by the stencil on your bag that your name is Bill, and since we’re shipmates, Bill, please call me Tembo, and how is the condition of your soul?”
“I haven’t had much chance to think about it lately …”
“I should think not, just coming from recruit training, since attendance of chapel during training is a court-martial offense. But that’s all behind you now and you can be saved. Might I ask if you are of the faith … ?”
“My folks were Fundamentalist Zoroastrian, so I suppose … “
“Superstition, my boy, rank superstition. It was the hand of fate that brought us together in this ship, that your soul would have this one chance to be saved from the fiery pit. You’ve heard of Earth?”
“I like plain food …”
“It’s a planet, my boy-the home of the human race. The home from whence we all sprang, see it, a green and lovely world, a jewel in space.” Tembo had slipped a tiny projector from his pocket while he spoke, and a colored image appeared on the bulkhead, a planet swimming artistically through the void, girdled by white clouds. Suddenly ruddy lightning shot through the clouds, and they twisted and boiled while great wounds appeared on the planet below. From the pinhead speaker came the tiny sound of rolling thunder. “But wars sprang up among the sons of man and they smote each other with the atomic energies until the Earth itself groaned aloud and mighty was the holocaust. And when the final lightnings stilled there was death in the North, death in the West, death in the East, death, death, death. Do you realize what that means?” Tembo’s voice was eloquent with feeling, suspended for an instant in mid-flight, waiting for the answer to the catechistical question.
“I’m not quite sure,” Bill said, rooting aimlessly in his bag, “I come from Phigerinadon II, it’s a quieter place …”
“There was no death in the SOUTH! And why was the South spared, I ask you, and the answer is because it was the will of Samedi that all the false prophets and false religions and false gods be wiped from the face of the Earth so that the only true faith should remain. The First Reformed Voodoo Church …”
General Quarters sounded, a hooting alarm keyed to the resonant frequency of the human skull so that the bone vibrated as though the head were inside a mighty bell, and the eyes blurred out of focus with each stroke. There was a scramble for the passageway, where the hideous sound .was not quite as loud and where non-corns were waiting to herd them to their stations. Bill followed Eager Beager up an oily ladder and out of the hatch in the floor of the fuse room. Great racks of fuses stretched away on all sides of them, while from the tops of the racks sprang arm-thick cables that looped upward and vanished through the ceiling. In front of the racks, evenly spaced, were round openings a foot in diameter.
“My opening remarks will be brief, any trouble from any of you and I will personally myself feed you head first down the nearest fuseway.” A greasy forefinger pointed at one of the holes in the deck, and they recognized the voice of their new master. He was shorter and wider and thicker in the gut than Deathwish, but there was a generic resemblance that was unmistakable. “I am Fuse Tender First Class Spleen. I will take you crumbly, ground-crawling bowbs and will turn you into highly skilled and efficient fuse tenders or else feed you down the nearest fuseway. This is a highly skilled and efficient technical speciality which usually takes a year to train a good man but this is war so you are going to learn to do it now or else. I will now demonstrate. Tembo front and center. Take board 19J-9, it’s out of circuit now.”