Rogue Ship Read online

  With a start he saw that the ship was larger. Closer.

  Sharply, the commander's voice came: 'Torpedo crews, load! But take warning! Any officer firing without orders will be punished. These people may be friendly.'

  Silence reigned on the bridge while the two vessels approached within two miles of each other. Both were now in the same orbit, the alien slightly behind the Earth ship but evidently using power, for it was coming closer still. A mile, then half a mile. Lesbee licked dry lips. Distractedly, he glanced at First Officer Carson and saw that he was rigid in his chair, glaring into the screen. The man's bearded face showed that same stiff tension.

  Again, Captain Lesbee's voice came on the speaker behind them: 'I want all weapons officers to listen carefully. The following order applies only to Torpedo Chamber A, under the command of Technical Gunnery Mate Doud. Doud, I want you to ease out a disarmed torpedo. Understand me! Kick it out with compressed air.'

  Lesbee II saw the torpedo emerge, and heard his father's voice give more directions: 'Ease it out several hundred yards, so they can't miss seeing it. Then keep it under radio control cruising around in a narrow area of about two hundred feet.'

  The commander explained quietly to his unseen audience: 'My hope is that this action will apprise the other ship that we have weapons but are not using them in aggressive action. Their response may indicate whether or not their quiet approach was a friendly or a cunning one. It might also give us some information that we desire, but I won't develop on that at this moment. Do not be alarmed. All our screens are up. These consist of various types of repulsion energy fields. They represent Earth's mightiest science.'

  That was briefly reassuring. But the empty feeling came back to Lesbee II, as a hard, tense voice sounded on the speaker: 'This is Gunnery Mate Doud. Somebody's trying to take the radio control of the torpedo away from me.'

  'Let them have it!' That was Captain Lesbee, quickly. 'They've obviously discovered it is harmless.'

  Lesbee watched as the Earth torpedo was drawn toward the hull of the bigger ship. A door opened in the vessel's side, and the torpedo floated into it.

  A minute passed; two; and then the torpedo emerged and slowly approached the Hope of Man.

  Lesbee waited, but he didn't actually needs words now. It was not the first time in these past days that something of the enormity of this meeting of the civilizations of different suns struck him. For some weeks now, the trip had had a new meaning for him, and there was also the wonder of his being on the scene. Of the multibillions of Earth-born men, he was here on the frontier of man's universe participating in the greatest event in the history of the human race. Suddenly, it seemed to him that he understood the pride his father took in this voyage.

  For a moment, sitting there, his fear gone, Lesbee shared that pride, and felt a joy beyond any emotion he had ever known.

  The feeling ended, as Captain Lesbee's voice came curtly: 'I am limiting this call to officers and to the science department. I want, first, Doud, to try to take control of the torpedo. See if they'll let it go. Immediately.'

  There was a pause; then: 'Got it, sir.'

  'Good.' Captain Lesbee's voice sounded relieved. 'How about the telemetry readout?'

  'Loud and clear, both channels.'

  'Check the arm/disarm position monitors.'

  'Yes, sir. Negative all around. Disarmed.'

  'They hardly had time to rig those.' The captain was still cautious. 'Any abnormal readings? Excess radiation?'

  'Negative. Radiometers normal.'

  7

  The trial of Ganarette began shortly after the breakfast hour on the following sidereal day. The Hope of Man was still in her orbit around Alpha A-4, but the alien machine had disappeared. And so the people of the ship could devote themselves to the trial itself.

  The extent of the evidence startled Lesbee II. Hour after hour, records of conversations were reeled off, conversations in which Ganarette's voice came out sharp and clear, but whoever answered was blurred and unrecognizable.

  'I have followed this policy,' Captain Lesbee explained to the silent spectators, 'because Ganarette is the leader. No one but I will ever know the identity of the other men, and it is my intention to forget, and act as if they did not participate.'

  The records were damning. How they had been recorded, Lesbee could only guess, but they had caught Ganarette when he believed he was absolutely safe. The man had talked wildly on occasion about killing anybody who opposed them, and a dozen times he had advocated the murder of the captain, the two chief officers, and Lesbee's son. 'They'll have to be put out of the way, or they'll make trouble. The sheep on this ship just take it for granted that the Lesbees do the bossing.'

  Emile Ganarette laughed at that point, then he stared boldly at the spectators. 'It's the truth, isn't it?' he said. 'You bunch of idiots take it for granted that somebody can be rightfully appointed to boss you for your entire lives. Wake up, fools! You've got only one life. Don't let one man tell you how to live it.'

  Ganarette made no effort to deny the charge. 'Sure, it's true. Since when did you become God? I was born on this ship without being asked whether or not I wanted to live here. I recognize no rights of anybody to tell me what to do.'

  Several times he expressed puzzlement that was slowly growing in Lesbee II's own mind. 'What is this all about?' he asked. 'This trial is silly, now that we've discovered the Centaurus system is inhabited. I'm fully prepared to go back to Earth like a good little boy. It's bad enough to know that the trip was for nothing, and that I'll be sixty years old when we get back. But the point is, I do recognize the necessity now of going back. And besides, there was no mutiny. You can't try me for shooting off my face when nothing actually, happened.'

  Toward the end, Lesbee watched his father's face. There was an expression there that he did not understand, a grimness that chilled him, a purpose that did not actually consider evidence except as a means to a hidden end.

  When dinner was less than an hour away, the commander asked the accused a final question: 'Emile Ganarette, have you entered your complete defense?'

  The big– boned young man shrugged. 'Yeah. I'm through.'

  There was silence, then slowly Captain Lesbee began his judgment. He dwelt on the aspects of naval law involved in the charge of 'incitement to mutiny.' For ten minutes, he read from a document that Lesbee had never seen before, which his father called the 'Articles of Authority on the Hope of Man' a special decree issued by the elected cabinet of the Combined Western Powers a few days before the ship's departure from its orbit around Earth:

  '"...It is taken for granted that a spaceship is always an appendage of the civilization from which it derives. Its personnel cannot be considered to have or be permitted to exercise independent sovereignty under any circumstances. The authority of its duly appointed officers and the assigned purposes of its mission are not alterable by elective process on the part of its personnel at large. A spaceship is dispatched by its owners or by a sovereign government... Its officers are appointed. It is governed by rules and regulations set up by the Space Authority.

  '"For the record, it is therefore here set down that the owner of the Hope of Man is Averill Hewitt, his heirs, and assignees. Because of its stated destination and purpose, his ship is given sanction to operate as a military vessel, and its duly appointed officers are herewith authorized to represent Earth in any contact with foreign powers of other star systems, and to act in every way as representatives of the armed forces. There are no qualifications to this status -"'

  There was much more, but that was the gist. The laws of a remote lifetime-distant planet applied aboard the spaceship.

  And still Lesbee had no idea where his father was pointing his words. Or even why the trial was being held, now that the danger of mutiny was over.

  The final words fell upon the audience and the prisoner like a thunderbolt:

  'By right of the power vested in me by the people of Earth through their lawful government, I am compelled to pass judgment upon this unfortunate young man. The law is fixed. I have no alternative but to sentence him to death in the atomic converter. May God have mercy on his soul.'

  Ganarette was on his feet. His face was the color of lead. 'You fool!' he quavered. 'What do you think you're doing?' The deadliness of the sentence must have sunk in deeper, for he shouted: 'There's something wrong. He's got something up his sleeve. He knows something we don't know. He -'

  Lesbee had already caught his father's signal. At that point, he and Browne and Carson, and three special MPs, hustled Ganarette out of the room. He was glad of the chance for movement. It made thinking unnecessary.

  Ganarette grew bolder as they moved along the corridors, and some of his color came back. 'You won't get away with this!' he said loudly. 'My friends will rescue me. Where are you taking me, anyway?'

  It was a wonder that had already struck Lesbee. Once more, the quick-minded Ganarette realized the truth in a flash of insight. 'You monsters!' he gasped. 'You're not going to kill me now?'

  The vague thought came to Lesbee that an outsider would have had difficulty distinguishing between prisoner and captors by the amount of color in their cheeks. Everyone was as pale as death. When Captain Lesbee arrived a few minutes later, his leathery face was almost white, but his voice was calm and cold and purposeful. 'Emile Ganarette, you have one minute to make your peace with your God...'

  The execution was announced just before the sleep period, but long enough after dinner to prevent physical upset.

  Lesbee had not eaten dinner. Nor had any of the other executioners.

  8

  Lesbee awakened the following day from his uneasy sleep to the realization that his 'call' alarm was buzzing softly.

  He dressed, and
headed immediately for the bridge.

  As he sank into the seat beside Browne, he noted with surprise that the planet, which had been so close, was nowhere to be seen. A glance at the mighty sun, Alpha A, brought another, more pleasant surprise. It was receding, already much smaller. The three suns A, B, and C were still not a unit, but only one, the dim C, was still ahead; the other two swam like small, bright lights in the blackness behind them.

  'Ah,' said Captain Lesbee's voice from behind them. 'There you are, John. Good morning, gentlemen.'

  They looked around. The commander, looking rested, walked over to a chair and sat down.

  Lesbee acknowledged the greeting diffidently. He was not too pleased at the attempt at friendliness, and was no longer sure that he liked his father. However wildly Ganarette might have talked at times, it was hard to forget that they had grown up together. Besides, Ganarette had been right! Once the threat of mutiny was past, it was hardly the time to execute. The finale had come too quickly, Lesbee thought agonizingly. Given a chance to consider the sentence, he himself might have protested to his father. The unseemly haste of the execution repelled him. The cruelty of it shocked him.

  His father was speaking again: 'While you slept, John, I had a specially equipped torpedo projected into the atmosphere of A-4. I'm sure that everyone here would like to see what happened to it.'

  He did not wait for a reply. The picture on the screen changed. It showed a scene, recorded earlier, with the planet looming quite close, and off to one side a bright gleam where the torpedo was falling toward the haze of atmosphere below.

  What happened then was surprising. The torpedo began to twist and dive in a random fashion; a wisp and then a trail of smoke issued from it.

  'Another minute and we would have lost it altogether,' said Captain Lesbee. 'I'm surprised the recall command got through, but it did.'

  The scene showed the torpedo as it slowly straightened its course, turned, and climbed back toward the ship. Part of the return journey was through a heavy rain flooding down on the eerie land below.

  The torpedo rocketed to the vicinity of the ship, and was snatched by tractor beams and drawn aboard.

  As the picture on the screen faded, Captain Lesbee climbed to his feet and approached a long, canvas-covered object, which Lesbee had noticed when he first entered the bridge.

  Very deliberately, the commander tugged the canvas aside.

  It took a moment for Lesbee to recognize the scarred and battered cigar-shaped thing that lay there, as the once-glistening torpedo.

  Involuntarily, he approached it, and stared down at it in amazement. There were shocked murmurs from some of the other men. He paid no attention. The inch-thick hull of the torpedo was seared through in a dozen places as if by intolerable fire. Behind him, a man said hesitantly:

  'You mean, sir, that... atmosphere... down... there -?'

  'This torpedo,' said Captain Lesbee, as if he had not heard the question, 'and possibly the Centaurus I , ran into a hydrochloric acid and nitric acid rain. A ship made of glass, platinum, or lead, or covered with wax could go down into an atmosphere capable of that kind of precipitation. And we could do it if we had a method of spraying our ship continuously with sodium hydroxide or other equally strong base. But that would take care of only one aspect of the devil's atmosphere down there.'

  He looked around again, gravely now. 'Well, that's about all, gentlemen. There are other details, but I need scarcely point out that this planet is not for human beings. We shall never know if the first Centaurus expedition went down into that atmosphere without proper investigation. If they did, they discovered the truth the hard way.'

  The words lifted young Lesbee out of his tension. He had taken it for granted they would spend several years in exploration. Now instead, they would be going home.

  He would see Earth before he died.

  The excitement of that thought ended, as his father spoke again: 'Whatever the civilization of the aliens, they were not very friendly. They warned us, but that could be because they had no desire for our big ship to come crashing down on one of their towns. The warning transmitted, they departed. Since then, we have seen two ships come up and disappear, apparently heading out to interstellar space. Neither of the ships made any effort to approach us.'

  He broke off, added: 'Now, let me turn to another matter. The inhabitants of this system are evidently psychologists, for they sent along film strips of life on their planet. Their assumption, I presume, was that we would be curious, and so during the next few days we shall show these films. I have taken a peek, and I'll just say that they look like walking snakes, very tall, very graceful, sinuous, and intelligent. It must be a pleasurable and elegant existence that they live, for there is an atmosphere of extreme gentility.'

  He paused, then gravely: 'I hope you are as convinced as I am that there is nothing for us here. However, we are not going home.

  'For two reasons – first, that Earth is no longer a habitable planet was certainly one of my considerations. But I'll say no more about that, in view of my personal involvement. The other reason is, suppose there is an undamaged Earth – then we are bound to continue on. My orders from Averill Hewitt, the owner of this ship, are to proceed to Sirius, then Procyon.

  'You can see why it was necessary to eliminate the troublemaker in our midst. The example made of him will restrain the hotheads.'

  The intensity went out of his voice. He finished quietly: 'Gentlemen, you have all necessary information. You will conduct yourselves with that decorum and confidence which is the mark of an officer, regardless of the situation in which he finds himself.

  'You have my best wishes -'

  9

  John Lesbee III, acting captain, sat in the great captain's chair, which he had rigged up on the bridge, and pondered the problem of the old people.

  There were too many of them. They ate too much. They required constant attention. It was ridiculous having seventy-nine people aboard who were over a hundred years old.

  On the other hand, some of those old scoundrels knew more about science and interstellar navigation than all the younger people put together. And they were aware of it, too, the cunning, senile wretches. Which ones could be killed without danger of destroying valuable knowledge? He began to write down names, mostly of women and non-officers among the men. When it was finished he stared down at it thoughtfully, and mentally selected the first five victims. Then he pressed a button beside his chair.

  Presently, a heavily built young man climbed up the steps from below. 'Yeah,' he said, 'what is it?'

  Lesbee III gazed at the other with carefully concealed distaste. There was a coarseness about Atkins that offended his sensibilities, and in a curious fashion it seemed to him that he could never like the man who had killed his father, John Lesbee II, even though he himself had ordered the killing.

  Lesbee sighed. Life was a constant adaptation to the reality of inorganic and organic matter that made up one's environment. In order to get a man properly murdered, you had to have a capable murderer. From a very early age he had realized that his nonentity of a father would have to be eliminated. Accordingly, he had cultivated Atkins. The man must be kept in his place, of course.

  'Atkins,' said Lesbee with a weary wave of one hand, 'I have some names here for you. Be careful. The deaths must appear natural, or I shall disown you as an inefficient fool.'

  The big man grunted. He was a grandson of one of the original workers in the gardens, and it had caused quite a stir when he had been relieved of his duties as a gardener some years before.

  The resentment died quickly when the officer's son who protested the loudest was put to work in Atkins' place. Lesbee III had thought out things like that long before he acted against his father. His plan was to kill Atkins as soon as the man had served his purpose.

  With an aloof air, he gave the first five names, gave them verbally; then, as Atkins withdrew down the steps, he turned his attention to the screen. He pressed another button, and presently the graying son of the old first officer climbed up to the bridge and came over to him, slowly.