Inward, homeward bound sped the old Quest. Only she and her Master, Grimes, were of actual Terran origin—but humans, no matter where born on any of the Man-colonized worlds of the Galaxy, speak of Earth as Home. Inward, homeward she sped through the warped Continuum, falling down the dark dimensions, deviating now and again from her trajectory to avoid plunging through some sun or planetary system. Once course had been set, however, there was little for the Commodore to do. He would know, Mayhew assured him, when the star directly ahead was Sol. "But how do I know," demanded Grimes, "just how far we have to go before planetfall?"
"You don't," said the telepath. "You can't. Oh, you might feel the strength of the pseudo-magnetic field—I have to use language that you non-telepaths understand—increase, but even that's not certain."
Sonya remarked acidly that she had read somewhere that it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive. Grimes, the acknowledged Rim Worlds authority on Terran maritime history, talked about Columbus. He had known that those islands which, after weeks of voyaging, had loomed on his western horizon were part of the East Indies. And he had been wrong.
Columbus, said Mayhew, wasn't navigating by homing instinct.
"How do you know he wasn't?" asked Grimes. "After all, if he'd kept on going he'd have finished up back where he started from . . ."
"Like hell he would!" scoffed Sonya. "Neither the Suez Canal nor the Panama Canal was in existence then. Even I know that."
"He could have rounded Cape Horn," her husband told her, "just as Magellan and Drake did, only a few years later, historically speaking . . ."
Nonetheless, thought Grimes, he had something in common with Columbus. The Admiral of the Ocean Sea, driving his tiny squadron west and ever west into the Unknown, had been threatened with mutiny. And what, now, was the state of crew morale aboard Faraway Quest?
Mayhew answered the unspoken question. "Not bad, John. Not bad. Most of the boys and girls trust you." He laughed. "But, of course, they don't know you as well as I do."
"Or I," added Sonya.
The Commodore scowled. "You're ganging up on me. Billy Williams should be here, to even the odds."
"He's an extremely conscientious spaceman," said Sonya. "A hull inspection is far more important, in his book, than a few drinks and some social chitchat with his captain before dinner."
"And so it should be," Grimes told her firmly. "All the same, I wanted him here. He's my second-in-command, just as you are supposed to be my intelligence officer . . ."
"Not your intelligence officer, John. I hold my commission from the Federation's Survey Service, not the Navy of the Rim Worlds Confederacy."
"And neither the Federation nor the Confederacy is in existence yet—and won't be for a few million years. But I wanted you to flap your physical ears, just as I wanted Ken to flap his psionic ones."
"Nothing to report, sir," replied Sonya smartly. "The troops are well-fed and happy, Commodore, sir. The last batch of jungle juice that the biochemists cooked up has met with the full approval of all hands and the cook. Even Mr. Hendriks seems to be happy. He's doing something esoteric to the fire-control circuits so that he'll be able to play a symphony, using his full orchestra, using only the little finger of his left hand. He hopes."
"I know. And I'm taking damn' good care that it never gets past the drawing board. And the bold Major?"
"He and his pongoes seem to be monopolizing the gym. I'll not be surprised if they start wearing Black Belts as part of their uniforms."
"Mphm. I could wish that some of the others were as enthusiastic keep-fitters . . . And what is your story, Ken?"
"I've been . . . snooping," admitted the telepath unhappily. "I realize its necessity, although I don't like doing it. Throughout the ship, insofar as I have been able to discover, morale is surprisingly high. After all, it's not as though Kinsolving were a very attractive planet, and we are going somewhere definite. But . . ."
"But what?"
"Hendriks isn't happy."
"My heart fair bleeds for him."
"Let me finish. Hendriks isn't happy. That's why he's shut himself up with his toys, to play by himself in a quiet corner."
"I suppose he's sulking because he wasn't allowed to play at Master Gunner on Kinsolving's Planet."
"That's only one of the reasons. Mainly he's sulking because his fine new friends won't have anything more to do with him."
"You mean Dalzell and his Marines?"
"Yes."
"Interesting. And what about the Major and his bully-boys?"
"I don't know, John."
"You don't know? Don't tell me that your conscience got the better of you."
"No, it's not that. But Dalzell and his people aren't spacemen; they're Marines. Soldiers."
"And so what?"
"Did you ever hear of the Ordonsky Technique?"
"No . . ."
"I have," said Sonya. "If I'd stayed on the Active List of the Intelligence Branch I would have taken the tests to determine whether or not I was a suitable subject." She added a little smugly, "Probably I would not have been."
"I don't think that you would, Sonya," Mayhew said. "As a general rule it works only on people whose I.Q.'s are nothing to write home about. I'm not at all surprised that it was effective on the Marine sergeant and the other ranks, but on Dalzell . . . It all goes to show, I suppose, that it doesn't take all that much intelligence to be a soldier. Do what you're told, and volunteer for nothing . . ."
"At times," remarked the Commodore, "that has been my own philosophy. But this Ordonsky. And his technique . . ."
"A system of mental training that makes the mind impenetrable to the pryings of a telepath. Almost a sort of induced schizophrenia. One part of the mind broadcasts—forgive the use of the term—nonsense rhymes, so powerfully as to mask what the rest of the mind is thinking. The use of the technique was proposed as a means whereby military personnel can be made immune to interrogation of any kind after capture. It involves a long period of training, combined with sessions of deep hypnosis. It does not work at all well, if at all, on people accustomed to thinking independently. I had heard, as a matter of fact, that the top trick cyclists of the Rim Worlds Marine Corps had been playing around with it."
"This is a fine time to tell us. So you just don't know what my brown boys are thinking, is that it?"
"That's it, John. Dalzell's defenses went up as soon as he felt the first light touch of my mental probe. So did those of his men. They're not talking to Hendriks any more, they're just not sharing their childish secrets with him. So . . ."
"So we bug the Marines' mess deck," said Sonya.
"Do we?" asked Grimes. "Do we? Dare we? Would we? Can I order Sparky Daniels to plant bugs all through the bloody ship? Oh, I could—but what would that do to morale?"
"I'm no Bug Queen," Sonya told him, "but I think I could knock up a couple or three with materials to hand. And plant them, without being spotted."
"All right," said Grimes at last. "You can try—as long as you promise me that you can do it with no risk to yourself. But it wouldn't at all surprise me to find out that some bright Marine has done a course in Anti-Bugging."
He was not surprised.