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IV
JOURNEY'S END

 

Chapter 17

We were in the control room—those of us who had survived.

We had made our rounds, armored against cold and vacuum. We had seen the results of our collision with the meteor swarm, the rending and melting of tough metal and plastic, the effects of sudden decompression on human flesh. We had seen too much. Speaking for myself, it was only the uncanny half-knowledge that this was only an evil dream that enabled me to keep a hold on my sanity.

We were in the control room, the seven of us.

There was Ralph Listowel, acting captain, strapped in his seat before the useless controls. Beside him, anchored to the deck by the magnetic soles of her sandals, stood Sandra, acting mate. And there was David Jenkins, ship's surgeon, and very close to him stood Martha Wayne, ship's chronicler. There was Peggy, ship's plumber. There was Claude Smethwick, always the odd man out. There was myself.

We had survived.

We had made our rounds of the stricken Thermopylae and had found no other survivors. All the accommodation abaft officers' country had been holed, as had been the dormitory, the deep freeze, in which our parents—and their parents, and their parents—had been laid away, in stasis, to await planetfall. But they had never known what had hit them. They were luckier than our generation, for whom there must have been a long second or so of agonised realization, the horror of bursting lungs and viscera, before the end.

"Report," ordered Ralph tiredly.

There was a long silence, which Jenkins was the first to break. He said, "We suited up, and went through the ship. She's like a colander. There are no other survivors."

"None?" asked Ralph.

"No, skipper. Do you wish details?"

"No," said Ralph.

"I made rounds with Doc," said Sandra. "The deep freeze has had it. So has all the accommodation abaft officers' country. So has most of the accommodation forward of the bulkhead. Second mate, third mate, engineers, catering officer—all dead. Very dead . . ."

"And outside?" asked Ralph.

"I saw what I could from the blisters. It's a mess. Spars buckled. Twenty odd square miles of sail in ribbons . . ."

"Report," said Ralph, looking at me.

I told him, "I've been through the farm. We haven't got a farm any more. The tank room and the tissue culture room were both holed. Of course, the deep-frozen, dehydrated tissue cultures will keep us going for some time . . ."

"If we had air and water they would," said Jenkins glumly. "But we haven't."

"There are the cylinders of reserve oxygen," I pointed out.

"And how do we get rid of the carbon dioxide?" asked the doctor.

"Chemicals . . ." suggested Peggy vaguely.

"What chemicals?" he demanded. He went on, "Oh, we can keep alive for a few days, or a few weeks—but we shall merely be postponing the inevitable. Better to end it now, skipper. I've got the drugs for the job. It will be quite painless. Pleasant, even."

Ralph turned to Peggy. "Report."

She said, "The generator room's wrecked. The only power we have at our disposal is from the batteries."

"And their life?"

"If we practice the utmost economy, perhaps two hundred hours. But I may be able to get a jenny repaired—"

"And burn up our oxygen reserve running it," said Ralph. Then, to Smethwick, "Report."

"I've tried," the telepath whispered. "I've tried. But there's no contact anywhere. We are alone, lost and alone. But . . ."

"But?" echoed Ralph.

"I . . . I'm not sure . . ." Then, suddenly, Smethwick seemed to gain stature, to change his personality almost. Always until now the shyest and most retiring of men, he dominated us by his vehemence. "Don't you have the memories—the memories of the lives you've lived elsewhere, elsewhen? Haven't you any recollection of yourself as Captain Listowel of the Rim Runners, as Commander Listowel of the Federation Survey Service? And the rest of you," he went on, "don't you remember? This isn't the only life—or the only death . . ."

"Lorn and Faraway . . ." I said softly.

"Ultimo and Thule . . ." whispered Martha.

"And the planets of the Eastern Circuit," said Sandra flatly.

"You remember," cried Smethwick. "Of course you remember. I'm snooping now. I admit it. You can do what you like to me, but I'm snooping. I'm peeping into your minds. And it all adds up, what I can read of your memories, your half-memories. There's the pattern, the unbreakable pattern. All the time, every time, it's been just the seven of us—aboard Flying Cloud, aboard Aeriel, and now aboard Thermopylae . . .

"There's the pattern . . . we've tried to break free from it, but we've never succeeded. But we have changed it—every time we have changed it—and we can change it again. Whether for better or for worse I cannot say—but it can hardly be for worse now."

Ralph was looking at Sandra—and once, I knew, the way that she was looking back at him would have aroused my intense jealousy. "Yes," he said slowly. "I remember . . . hazily . . . even so, wasn't there some trouble with Peter?"

I was holding Peggy close to me. "There was," I said. "But not anymore."

"And what about you, Martha?" asked Sandra. "Do you remember?"

"I do," she said, "but I'm perfectly happy the way things are now. Both David and I are happy—so happy, in fact, that I don't welcome the idea of euthanasia . . ."

"Go on," urged Smethwick. "Go on. Remember!"

"I made a rocket," muttered Peggy hesitantly. "Didn't I?"

"And I mixed a batch of solid fuel," I supported her.

"No," contradicted Doc. "I did."

"Some bastard did," stated Ralph, looking rather hostile.

"Too right," said Sandra. "And whoever it was put us in the jam that we're in now. I was quite happy as catering-officer-cum-third-mate of Flying Cloud, and quite happy as captain of Aeriel, and I rather resent finding myself chief officer of a dismasted derelict, with only a few days to live."

"You might have been happy," I told her, "but you must admit that the way things were aboard Aeriel did not, repeat not, contribute to my happiness."

"My marriage to you was a big mistake," she said.

"Wasn't it just!" I agreed. "On my part! I should have known better. Give a woman a position of authority and she at once abuses it. 'I'm the captain, and I sleep with whom I bloody well please. See?' "

"I resent that," said Sandra.

"Resent away," I told her, "if it makes you any happier. Resenting seems to be your specialty, darling."

"But you were such a bloody lousy cook," she said.

"Like hell I was!" I flared. "I'm a bloody good cook, and you know it. Aeriel ate a damn sight better than Flying Cloud ever did."

"I suppose," she said, "that you mixed gunpowder in with your curry."

"You wouldn't know the difference," I sneered.

"Who would?" she sneered back.

"I think his curry is good," said Peggy loyally.

"You would," snapped Sandra.

"The rocket!" Claude was screaming. "The rocket!"

I told him what to do with the rocket, tail fins and all. I said to Sandra, "It's high time that we got things sorted out. You behaved very shabbily. Even you must admit that. I've nothing against Ralph—in fact I think that's he's more to be pitied than blamed. But if it hadn't been for the way that you carried on aboard both Flying Cloud and Aeriel there wouldn't have been any rockets. There wouldn't have been any misguided attempts to break the light barrier."

"So it's all my fault," she said sarcastically.

"Of course," I told her.

"And that refugee from a bicycle shop, to whom you happen to be married at the moment, has nothing at all to do with it. Oh, no. And neither has the incompetent pill peddler who mixed the first batch of powder. And neither have you, who mixed the second. But, as far as I'm concerned, what really rankles is this. I don't mind all this switching from one time track to another—after all, variety is the spice of life. What I do object to is being the victim of the blundering machinations of the same bunch of dimwits every bloody time. It's too much. Really, it's too much."

"My heart bleeds for you," I said. "Let me suggest that on the next time track you get you to a nunnery. Preferably a Trappist one. If there are such institutions."

Her face was white with passion. Her hand flashed out and caught me a stinging blow across the mouth. My feet lost their magnetic contact with the deck and I floated backwards, fetching up hard against the bulkhead.

Peggy, her voice bitter, said, "You deserved that."

"No," said Martha. "No. Everything has been Sandra's fault."

"Pipe down," ordered Ralph. "Pipe down, all of you. And you, Malcolm, please refrain from making any more slanderous attacks on my wife."

"My wife," I said.

"Not in this continuum," he corrected me. "But what happened in the alternative Universes has a certain bearing upon our present predicament. Thanks to your otherwise unpardonable outburst, we can remember now—"

"And about bloody well time you did," said Claude.

"We can't all be perfect," stated Ralph, with mild sarcasm. "Even so, we can try. We know the way out now—and, this time, we're all of us involved. All of us. We must break the light barrier once more, and the only way that we can do it is by giving this wagon that extra push. Has anybody any suggestions?"

Martha said slowly, "We must have been close to Lume 1 when the meteors hit us. But the impact was at right angles to our trajectory . . ."

"Work it out by the parallelogram of forces," Ralph told her. "If you really want to, that is. But we have the Doppler log—it's still working—and that gives us the answer without any fooling around with slipsticks. Even though we are a dismasted derelict we're still bowling along at a good rate. But it'll take more than a powder-fuelled rocket to give us the boost."

"There's the reserve oxygen," I said.

"And there's plenty of alcohol," added Jenkins.

"And Peggy's a plumber in this incarnation," said Sandra, rather nastily.

"So . . ." said Ralph.

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Framed