Know why? That note didn’t make me feel good; it worried me. Oh, for two minutes it bucked me up; I felt larger than life, the champion of the downtrodden.
Then I realized what the note meant…
Mutiny.
It’s the ugliest word in space. Any other disaster is better.
One of the first things Uncle Steve had told me-told Pat and myself, way back when we were kids-was: “The Captain is right even when he is wrong.” It was years before I understood it; you have to live in a ship to know why it is true. And I didn’t understand it in my heart until I read that encouraging note and realized that somebody was seriously thinking of bucking the Captain’s authority … and that I was the symbol of their resistance.
A ship is not just a little world; it is more like a human body. You can’t have democracy in it, not democratic consent at least, no matter how pleasant and democratic the Captain’s manner may be. If you’re in a pinch, you don’t take a vote from your arms and legs and stomach and gizzard and find out what the majority wants. Darn well you don’t! Your brain makes a decision and your whole being carries it out.
A ship in space is like that all the time and has to be. What Uncle Steve meant was that the Captain had better be right, you had better pray that he is right even if you disagree with him… because it won’t save the ship to be right yourself if he is wrong.
But a ship is not a human body; it is people working together with a degree of selflessness that doesn’t come easy-not to me, at least. The only thing that holds it together is a misty something called its morale, something you hardly know it has until the ship loses it. I realized then that the Elsie had been losing hers for some time. First Doc Devereaux had died and then Mama O’Toole and both of those were body blows. Now we had lost the Captain and most of the rest… and the Elsie was falling to pieces.
Maybe the new captain wasn’t too bright, but he was trying to stop it. I began to realize that it wasn’t just machinery breaking down or attacks from hostile natives that lost ships; maybe the worst hazard was some bright young idiot deciding that he was smarter than the Captain and convincing enough others that he was right. I wondered how many of the eight ships that were out of contact had died proving that their captains were wrong and that somebody like me was right.
It wasn’t nearly enough to be right.
I got so upset that I thought about going to the Captain and telling him I was wrong and what could I do to help? Then I realized that I couldn’t do that, either. He had told me to stay in my room-no ‘if’s’ or ‘maybe’s.’ If it was more important to back up the Captain and respect his authority than anything else, then the only thing was to do as I had been ordered and sit tight.
So I did.
Kris brought me dinner, almost on time. Late that evening the speakers blared the usual warning, I lay down and the, Elsie boosted off Elysia. But we didn’t go on, we dropped into an orbit, for we went into free fall right afterwards. I spent a restless night; I don’t sleep well when I’m weightless.
I was awakened by the ship going into light boost, about a half gravity. Kris brought me breakfast but I didn’t ask what was going on and he didn’t offer to tell me. About the middle of the morning the ship’s system called out: “Communicator Bartlett, report to the Captain.” It was repeated before I realized it meant me … then I jumped up, ran my shaver over my face, decided that my uniform would have to do, and hurried up to the cabin.
He looked up when I reported my presence. “Oh, yes. Bartlett, Upon investigation I find that there is no reason to prefer charges. You are released from arrest and restored to duty. See Mr. Eastman.”