Rocket to Limbo

“I’m not voting,” Peter said quietly.

“This is the wrong time to ride the fence.”

“I’m not voting.”

“Mr. Lorry, what’s the count.”

“Eight with Salter, thirteen with you, one abstains.”

Fox turned his eyes to Peter for a long moment; then with a growl of disgust he turned to Salter. “Seems like you’ve been listening to the wrong advice,” he said slowly. “Well now you’re going to face a few facts. This trip to Wolf IV wasn’t my idea. I didn’t volunteer the ship, or the men. Colonial Service picked me, and outfitted me, because there was a job that had to be done. It may be a very dirty job, but it has to be done”

He leaned back against the table, his face grim. “The Colonial Service has its back to the wall. An alien scare back home would be a disaster. It would mean an end to the colonization program that Earth has to have. The Service knew that the Planetfall has to be found, and we’ve got the job of finding her. It doesn’t matter whether we like the job or not, we’ve got to do it with all the resources at our command. That means we can’t carry dead wood. There’s no place for cowards on this ship now. Am I making myself clear?”

Jeff Salter’s face was pale. “You can’t throw us off the ship in deep space!”

“I can, and I will.”

“That’s murder.”

“You can call it anything you like,” Fox said harshly. “Nevertheless, you have a choice, you eight. You’ve attempted a mutiny on this ship. Okay. I’m willing to overlook it because I need men and I need skills on Wolf IV. You can go along with me in landing there and back me up one hundred per cent in the search for the Planetfall, or you can have one lifeboat for the eight of you and two weeks’ food and water, and we’ll break the Koenig field long enough to jettison you. That’s your choice. Think it over. You’ve got ten seconds.”

The men stared at him, and at Salter. Even Lars could hardly believe the harshness of the Commander’s decree.

It was no choice. It was a death sentence.

“All right,” Salter said dully. “We’ll back you.”

“I don’t mean any half-hearted motions. I mean full support. If there’s any break at all, the eight of you pay for it.”

“We’ll back you.”

“All right. Get back to your stations. Mr. Morehouse says we’ll make the Wolf system in record time. There’s plenty of work to be done in the meantime. And if we’re lucky, some of us may even leave the place alive.”

Chapter Six The Gray Planet

Time is amazingly compressible.

Like the hypothetical “perfect gas,” a day can be pressed down into a second, or expanded to last a lifetime. It seemed to Lars Heldrigsson that the few short days since the Ganymede blasted from Earth had lasted for eons; now, even with the artifically designated day periods and sleep periods, the days and weeks sped by with unimaginable speed.

There was work—long hours of study, equipment testing, procedure-rehearsal, conference, preparation and planning. Every man on the ship filled a hole in the fabric; every man had to be prepared for anything that might impinge on his specialized field of knowledge. There would be no time for preparation when the time for landfall arrived. The success of the mission, their very lives, depended upon what they did now, before destination, before the unknown was faced.

The old tradition that the weeks en route on a Star Ship were a leisurely time for the crewmen to while away, get on each other’s nerves and scrap with each other was a snare and a delusion of staggering proportions. Lars woultf have laughed at the thought, if he had had time to think about it, but he didn’t

Not that everything was sweetness and harmony. There was still talking and complaining. No one could really forget that a mutiny had been attempted, nor could they forget the choice that the Commander had laid down for the insurgents. There were bitter feelings, angry words, but even these faded away in the weight of the work that had to be done. There wasn’t time to be bitter, or angry. There wasn’t time to talk. There was a job that took the skill and wit of every man on the crew, and the job had to be done first.

Their lives hung on it. They knew that, to a man.