“Plus or minus five per cent, sir.”
“Close enough. Your first job will be to build some kind of a brute force, belt-or-gear thing to act as a clock. You
will really work. Any more insubordination or any malingering at all and I’ll put you into a life-craft and launch you
into space, where you can make your own laws and be monarch of all you survey. Dismissed! Now mod”
Newman flitted-fast-and Barbara, turning to her husband, opened her mouth to speak and shut it. No” he would have
killed the man; he would have had to. He still might have to. Wherefore she said instead: “Why’d you let him keep
his pistol? The . . . the slime! And after you actually saved his life, too!”
“With some people what’s past doesn’t count. The other was just a gesture. Psychology. It’ll slow him down, I think.
Besides, he’d have another one as soon as we get back into the Procyon.”
“But you can lock up all their guns” can’t you? Bernice asked.
“I’m afraid not. How about the other three, Herc?” “With thanks to you” Barbara, for the word; slime. If Lopresto is
a financier” I’m an angel, with wings and halo complete. Gangsters; hoodlums; racketeers; you’d have to open every
can of concentrate aboard to find all their spare artillery.”
“Check. The first thing to do is-”
“One word first,” Bernice put in. “I want to thank you, First Off-no, not First Officer, but I could hardly=’ “Sure you
can. I’m ‘Babe’ to us all, and you’re ‘Bun.’ As to the other” forget it. You and I, Herc, will go over and-”
“And I,” Adams put in, definitely. “I must photograph everything, before it is touched; therefore I must be the first
on board. I must do some autopsies and also-”
“Of course. You’re right,” Deston said. “And if I haven’t said it before, I’m tremendously glad to have a Big Brain
along . . . oh, excuse that crack” please, Dr. Adams. It slipped out on me.”
Adams laughed. “In context, I regard that as the highest compliment I have ever received. To you youngsters my
advanced age of fifty-two represents senility. Nevertheless, you men need not ‘Doctor’ me. Either ‘Adams’ or
‘Andy’ will do very nicely. As for you two young women-”
I’m going to call you ‘Uncle Andy,”‘ Barbara said, with a grin. “Now, Uncle Andy, you being a Big Brain the term
being used in its most complimentary sense and the way you talked, one of your eight doctorates is in medicine.”
“Of course.”
“Are you any good at obstetrics?”
“In the present instance I am perfectly safe in saying-” “Wait a minute!” Deston snapped. “Bobby, you are’ not-”
“I am too! That is, I don’t suppose I am yet, since we were married only last Tuesday, but if he’s competent and I’m
sure he is-I’m certainly going to! If we get back to Earth I want to” and if we don’t both Bun and I have got to.
Castaways’ Code, you know. So how about it, Uncle Andy?”
“I know what you two girls are”” Adams said, quietly. “I know what you two men must of necessity be. Therefore I
can say without reservation that none of you need feel any apprehension whatever.”
Deston was about to say something, but Barbara forestalled him. “Well, we can think about it, anyway, and talk it
over. But for right now, I think it’s high time we all got some sleep. Don’t you?”
It was; and they did; and after they had slept and had eaten “breakfast” the three men wafted themselves across a
couple of hundred yards of space to the crippled starship. Powerful floodlights were rigged.
“What . . . a . . . mess.” Deston’s voice was low and wondering. “The whole Top looks as though she’d crash- landed
and spun out for eight miles. But the Middle and Tai! look untouched.”
Inside, however, devastation had gone deep into the Middle. Bulkheads, walls, floors, structural members; were
torn, sheared, twisted into weirdly-distorted shapes impossible to understand or explain. And, much worse, were
the absences: for in dozens of volumes, of as many sizes and of shapes incompatible with any three-dimensional
geometry, every solid thing had vanished-without leaving any clue whatever as to where or how it had gone.
After three long days of hard work, Adams was satisfied. He had taken pictures as fast as both officers could
process the film; he had covered many miles of tape with words only half of which either spaceman could under-
stand. Then, finally, he said:
“Well, that covers the preliminary observations as well as I know how to do it. Thank you, boys, for your for-
bearance and your help. Now, if you’ll help me find my stuff and bring some of it-a computer and so on-up to the
lounge? They did so; the “and so on” proving to be a bewildering miscellany indeed. “Thank you immensely,
gentlemen; now I won’t bother you any more.”
“You’ve learned a lot, Doc, and we haven’t learned much of anything.” Deston grinned ruefully. “That makes you the
director. You’ll have to tell us, in general terms” what to do.”
“Oh? I can offer a few suggestions. It is virtually certain: One, that no subspace equipment will function. Two, that
all normal-space equipment, except for some items you know about, will function normally. Three, that we can’t do
anything about subspace without landing on a planet. Four, that such landing will require extreme – I might almost
say fantastic–precautions.”
Although both officers thought that they understood Item Four, neither of them had any inkling as to what Adams
really meant. They did understand thoroughly” however, Items One, Two, and Three.
“Hell’s jets!” Deston exclaimed. “Do you mean we’ll have to blast normal to a system?”
“It isn’t as bad as you think, Babe,” Jones said. “Stars are much thicker here-we’re in the center somewhere than
around Sol. The probability is point nine plus that any emergence would put us less than point four light-year away
from a star. A couple of them show discs. I haven’t measured any yet; have you, Doc?”
“Yes. Point two two, approximately, to the closest.” “So what?” Deston demanded. “What’s the chance of it having
an Earth-type planet?”
“Any solid planet will do,” Adams said. “Just so it has plenty of mass.”
“That’s still quite a trip.” Deston was coming around. “Especially since we can’t use more than one point-” “One
point zero gravities,” Jones put in, “Over the long pull-and the women-you’re right,” Deston agreed, and took out his
slide rule. “Let’s see . . . one gravity, plus and minus . . . velocity … time . . . it’ll take about eleven months?”
“Just about,” Jones agreed, and Adams nodded. “Well, if that’s what the cards say, there’s no use yowling about it,”
and all nine survivors went to work. Deston, besides working, directed the activities of all the others except Adams;
who worked harder and longer than did anyone else. He barely took time out to eat and to sleep. Nor did either
Deston or Jones ask him what he was doing. Both knew that it would take five years of advanced study before either
of them could understand the simplest material on the doctor’s tapes.
III
The tremendous engines of the Procyon were again putting out their wonted torrents of power. The starship, now a
mere spaceship, was on course at one gravity. The lifecraft were in their slots, but the five and the four still lived in
them rather than in the vast and oppressive’ emptiness that the ship itself now was. And socially, outside of working
hours, the two groups did not mix.
Clean-up was going nicely, at the union rate of six hours on and eighteen hours off. Deston could have set any
hours he pleased, but he didn’t. There was plenty of time. Eleven months in deep space is a fearfully, a tre-
mendously long time.
“Morning”” “afternoon,” “evening,” and “night” were, of course, purely conventional terms. The twenty-four hour
“day” measured off by the brute-force machine that was their masterclock carried no guarantee, expressed or
implied, as to either accuracy or uniformity.
One evening, then, four hard-faced men sat at two small tables in the main room of Lifecraft Three. Two of them”
Ferdy Blaine and Moose Mordan, were playing cards for small stakes. Ferdy was of medium size; compact rather
than slender; built of rawhide and spring steel. Lithe and poised, he was the epitome of leashed and controlled
action. Moose was six-feet-four and weighed a good two forty-stolid, massive, solid. Ferdy and Moose; a tiger and
an elephant; both owned in fee simple by Vincent Lopresto.
The two at the other table had been planning for days. They had had many vitrolic arguments” but neither had made
any motion toward his weapon.
“Play it my way and we’ve got it made, I tell you!” Newman pounded the table with his fist. Seventy million if it’s a