“Me? Oh, anything that is convenient,”
Ford started to leave, bracing himself heavily against double weight, then he added, “Oh-it might save time if you could tell me where to go.” –
“Brother,” said Lazarus, “if this ship isn’t pretty well crammed with food, we’ve all made a terrible mistake. Scout around. You’ll find some.”
Down, down, down toward the Sun, with speed increasing by sixty-four feet per second for every second elapsed. Down and still down for fifteen endless hours of double weight. During this time they traveled seventeen million miles and reached the inconceivable speed of six hundred and forty miles per second. The figures mean little-think instead of New York to Chicago, a half hour’s journey even by stratomail, done in a single heartbeat.
Barstow had a rough time during heavy weight. For all of the others it was a time to lie down, try hopelessly to sleep, breathe painfully and seek new positions in which to rest from the burdens of their own bodies. But Zaccur Barstow was driven by his sense of responsibility; he kept going though the Old Man of the Sea sat on his neck and raised his weight to three hundred and fifty pounds.
Not that he could do anything for them, except crawl wearily from one compartment to another and ask about their welfare. Nothing could be done, no organization to relieve their misery was possible, while high boost continued. They lay where they could, men, women, and children crowded together like cattle being shipped, without even room to stretch out, in spaces never intended for such extreme overcrowding.
The only good thing about it, Barstow reflected wearily, was that they were all too miserable to worry about anything but the dragging minutes. They were too beaten down to make trouble. Later on there would be doubts raised, he was sure, about the wisdom of fleeing; there would be embarrassing questions asked about Ford’s presence in the ship, about Lazarus’ peculiar and sometimes shady actions, about his own contradictory role. But not yet.
He really must, he decided reluctantly, organize a propaganda campaign before trouble could grow. If it did-and it surely would if he didn’t move to offset it, and . . . well, that would be the last straw. It would be.
He eyed a ladder in front of him, set his teeth, and struggled up to the next deck. Picking his way through the bodies there he almost stepped on a woman who was clutching a baby too tightly to her. Barstow noticed that the infant was wet and soiled and he thought of ordering its mother to take care of the matter, since she seemed to be awake. But he let it go-so far as he knew there was not a clean diaper in millions of miles. Or there might be ten thousand of them on the deck above . . . which seemed almost as far away.
He plodded on without speaking to her. Eleanor Johnson had not been aware of his concern. After the first great relief at realizing that she and her baby were safe inside the ship she had consigned all her worries to her elders and now felt nothing but the apathy of emotional reaction and of inescapable weight. Baby had cried when that awful weight had hit them, then had become quiet, too quiet. She had roused herself enough to listen for its heartbeat; then, sure that he was alive, she had sunk back into stupor.
Fifteen hours out, with the orbit of Venus only four hours away, Libby cut the boost. The ship plunged on, in free fall, her terrific speed still mounting under the steadily increasing pull of the Sun. Lazarus was awakened by no weight. He glanced at the copilot’s couch and said, “On the curve?”
“As plotted.”
Lazarus looked him over. “Okay, I’ve got it. Now get out of here and get some sleep. Boy, you look like a used towel.”
“I’ll just stay here and rest.”
“You will like hell. You haven’t slept even when I had the com; if you stay here, you’ll be watching instruments and figuring. So beat it! Slayton, chuck him out.”
Libby smiled shyly and left. He found the spaces abaft the control room swarming with floating bodies but he managed to find an unused corner, passed his kilt belt through a handihold, and slept at once.