Rocket to Limbo

“I don’t know. Nothing I can put my finger on. Maybe it’s nothing at all, but no, by Jupiter, it’s not!” He looked up at Lars angrily. “Talk. Grumbling and griping. Whispers. I know, put twenty-two men together in close quarters for a few weeks and there’ll always be griping, but this is different. It’s got an ugly tone to it.”

Lars chewed his lip for a moment. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you.”

“Shoot.”

“Did you know all along we were going to Wolf IV?”

Lambert looked startled. “Not by a long way! I knew we were under restricted orders, all right, but I didn’t know why! And I didn’t know we were carrying fusion bombs.”

“And yet you, of all men on the ship, should have known, it seems to me. I still don’t understand the secrecy.”

“They were afraid of leaks.”

“So the news leaked. So what?”

Lambert looked at Lars narrowly. “Do you have any idea of the reaction home on Earth if news got out that a hostile alien had been contacted by an Earth ship?”

“Well—I—I suppose it would scare people a little.”

“Scare them! My boy, you’d have a panic on your hands like Earth hasn’t seen in centuries! Your colonization program would go up in one big puff of pink smoke. The Colonial Service would be legislated out of existence. Earth would start arming for very dear life, and God alone knows what would become of the colonies already established. The whole system would crumble, and we’d be back where we started three hundred years ago. That’s what would happen.”

“But why? If nobody has seen an alien, why be so deathly afraid of it?”

“That’s exactly why.” Lambert sighed and tried to light his pipe again. “Human beings are pretty brave creatures, as long as they know what they’re dealing with. But put them up against something completely unknown, utterly inconceivable to them, and they’ll panic. It doesn’t make sense, but it’s happened over and over. Fear of the unknown. It’s plagued mankind since the year one, and we still aren’t rid of it—”

Lars blinked at him, and shook his head. “Certainly everybody wouldn’t lose his head.”

“Enough would to make it disastrous.”

“But suppose the alien wasn’t hostile at all. Suppose it was friendly.”

Lambert smiled wearily. “Aliens, by definition, are hostile. Walter Fox has been fighting that idea as long as he’s been in space. It’s common sense that somewhere, sometime, in centuries of exploration, men are going to encounter an alien race in the stars. The aliens might be good, or bad. It would be a fearful gamble to find out which, but if they were good, we could be immensely richer for the contact. Fox believes the gamble is worth it. He believes we will meet aliens, sometime, and that they will be good. But Fox is one man against millions. He talks, but nobody listens, but he goes on hoping that he’ll be the one to make contact. Call him a fanatic, if you want to. I happen to think he’s right.”

Lambert stood up slowly. “That’s why I don’t like what I’m hearing around the ship. The men are getting panicky in spite of all the psych conditioning they’ve had, and in spite of all the care that went into selecting the crew for this mission. They’re the best possible men in their jobs, and still they’re panicky. To me, that means only one thing.”

Lars felt the knot in his stomach again. “What?”

“Somebody on board is deliberately setting off the panic. Somebody who’s smart enough to keep under cover himself and put the words into other peoples’ mouths. I think you know who, too.”

Lars was silent for a long time. Then he said, “I guess I do. But Why? Why should he want to do it?”

“You find out that answer in time and you might save this ship a whole lot of trouble,” Lambert said heavily. “Because we’re heading for trouble now faster than we’re heading for Wolf IV.”

The talking was worse than Lars realized. The tension in the ship had grown tremendously since he had dug into the work in the lab. In small groups lurking in the corridors, in hasty words passed across the eating bar in the galley, in looks, nods, and whispers trouble was spelled out in large letters.

There was Jeff Salter, talking to the assistant engineer and the radioman down in the lounge, with a wary eye out for intruders, saying, “We’ve been shanghaied, that’s what happened. You know what that means.” And, “Old Foxy hasn’t any legal right to force us into it. We signed contracts, you know.” And, “Guinea pigs! That’s what he’s making us. You guys eager to be heroes? I’m not.”

And in the corridor outside sleeping quarters, muffled voices, saying, “Fox doesn’t care what happens to the ship or the men. It’s the glory for himself he wants.”

Or, “—couldn’t get a crew to sign up the regular way, that’s what it means.”

Or, “Sure he’s Commander, but he’s beyond his rights, I tell you! No court on Earth would back him up if the facts were known.”

And behind it all, always present here or there, was Peter Brigham, never saying much, only a word here, a malicious

grin there, a question at the right moment in another place.