Gordon Dickson & Harry Harrision - Lifeship The explosion drummed and shuddered all through the fabric of the Albenareth spaceship, just as Giles reached the foot of the ladder leading up from the baggage area into passenger territory. He grabbed the railing of the spiral staircase that was the ladder and hung on. But almost on the heels of the Erst tremor came an unexpected second explosion that tore him loose and threw him against the further wall of the corridor, smashing him into the metal surface. Stunned, he stumbled back to his feet. He began to pull himself up the staircase as fast as he could, gaining speed as he went. His mind cleared. He could not have been unconscious for more than a few seconds, he thought. At the top of the stairs he turned hastily back down an upper corridor toward the stem and his own stateroom. But this wider, passenger corridor was already filling with obstacles in the shape of bewildered, small, gray-suited men and women—arbites indent to Belben; and abruptly the loud and terrible moaning of an emergency, ship-out-of-control signal erupted into life and continued without pause. Already the atmosphere of the corridor had the acrid taste of smoke, and there were cries to him for help from the half-seen figures of the arbites. The incredible was happening. Below them and around them all, the great spaceship had evidently caught fire from the two explosions, and was now helpless, a brief new star falling through the endless distances of interstellar space. Spaceships were not supposed to bum, especially the massive vessels of the Albenareth —but this one was doing so. A coldness began to form in the pit of Giles' stomach; for the air around him was already warming and now beginning to haze with the smoke, and the sounds of arbite terror he heard tore at his conscience like sharp and jagged icicles. He fought off his ingrained response toward the frightened indentees around him, walling it off, surrounding it with his own fury. He had a job to do, a duty to finish. That came first, before anyone or anything. The arbites aboard were not his direct responsibility. He began to run, dodging the hands of the reaching figures that loomed up through the smoke ahead of him, brushing them aside, now and then hurdling a fallen one who could not be sidestepped. And all the while around the cold core in him, his fury grew. He put on speed. Now there was occasional debris in the corridor; here and there, panels in the walls, glimpsed through the smoke, sagged away from him like sheets of melting wax. None of this should be happening. There was no reason for wholesale disaster. But he had no time now to figure out what had gone wrong. The moans and cries of the arbite passengers still tore at him, but he plunged on. A darker, narrower-than-human figure loomed suddenly out of the smoke before him. A long, oddly boned hand, a threefingered hand, caught his bright-orange shipsuit and held him. "To a lifeshipl" brayed the Albenareth crewman, almost buzzing the human words. "Turn about. Go forward! Not to the stern." Giles checked his instinct to surge against the restraining hand. He was large and powerful, stronger by far than any arbite, except those bred and trained to special uses; but he knew better than to try to pull loose from the apparently skinny fingers holding him. "My Honor!" he shouted at the alien, using the first words he could think of to which an Albenareth mind might respond. "Duty —my obligation! I'm Steel—Giles Steel Ashad, an Adelman! The only Adelman aboard heie. Don't you recognize me?" The alien and he were trapped in a moment of motionlessness. The dark, lipless, narrow face stared into his from inches away. Then the hand of the Albenareth let go and the alien mouth opened in the dry cackling laughter that meant many things, but not humor. "Go!" said the crewman. Giles turned and ran on. Just a little farther brought him to the door of his suite. The metal handle burned his fingers and he let go. He kicked the door with a grunt of effort, and it burst open. Within, the bitter taste of thick smoke took him solidly by the throat. He groped his way to his travel bag, jerked it open, and pulled out the metal box inside it. Coughing, he punched out the combination, and the lock of the box let go, the lid sprang open. Hastily he pawed through the mass of papers within. His fingers closed on the warrant for extradition, crammed it into a suit pocket, and dipped down to rip open the destruct trigger that would incinerate the box with all the rest of its contents. A whitehot flare shot up before him and the metal frame of the container collapsed like melting ice. He turned, hesitated, and pulled tools from inside his shipsuit. He had meant to hide these carefully, once his job was done; but there was no point in hiding anything now. Still coughing, he tossed the tools into the heat of the stillflaring container, turned, and plunged once more into the clearer air of the corridor, heading back finally toward the bow of the vessel and the particular lifeship he had been assigned to. The Albenareth crewman was gone from his post when Giles passed that point again. Under the ceiling lights, the corridor was misty with smoke, but free now even of the figures of arbites. A small hope flickered in him. Perhaps someone else had taken charge of them by this time. He ran on. He was almost to the lifeship. There were voices in conversation just ahead—then some- thing large and dark seemed to flicker up in front of him, out of nowhere, and something else that felt like a giant flyswatter slapped him from his feet- He was momentarily staggered, but recovering even as he fell backward to the soft surface of the corridor. His head clearing, he lay for a second fighting to stay conscious. Now that he was down where the smoke was thinner, he could see that he had run into a door someone had left standing open. As he lay there, he heard two arbite voices—one male, one young and female—talking. "You heard that? The ship's breaking up," the man said. "There's no point our waiting out here now. The lifeship's just down that short hall. Let's go." "No, Mara. Wait... we were supposed to wait..." The man's voice trailed off. "What're you afraid of, Groce?" The girl's voice had an edge to it. "You act as if you don't dare breathe without permission from her! Do you want to stay here and choke to death?" "It's all right for you..." muttered the male voice. "I've never been mixed up in anything. My record's perfect." "If you think that matters—" Giles 'head was clear now. He rolled to his feet in one quick motion, stepped around the open door, and joined the two smaller gray-suited figures beyond it. "All right," he said, crisply. "You're correct, girl. The lifeship's just down the corridor, here. You—what's your name? Groce? Lead off!" The male arbite turned without a word and obeyed, responding instinctively to the note of command he would have heard from Adelbom all the days of his life. He was a short, round-headed, stocky man in early middle age. For a second, before following. Giles glanced curiously at the girl arbite. She was small, as all those of the lower class were, but good-looking for an arbite. Under her light-brown, close-cropped hair, her pale, narrow face was composed and unafraid. No doubt some high-caste blood in her ancestry somewhere, Giles thought. "Good girl," he said more gently. "You follow me, now. Hang on to my jacket if the smoke gets too thick to see." He patted her on the head before stepping out in front of her. He had turned away and did not see the sudden wild flash of indignation and anger that twisted her features as his hand touched her head. But the look was gone almost as soon as it had appeared. She followed him with the normal calmness of arbite expression on her face. Giles reached out ahead to close his hand on the right shoulder of Groce. The man flinched at the touch. "Steady, there!" snapped Giles. "All you have to do is obey. Move, nowl" "Yes, Honor," muttered Groce, doubtfully. But his shoulder squared under Giles' fingers. His step became firmer, and he led the way into the smoky corridor. The smoke thickened. They all coughed. Giles felt the hand of the girl, Mara, grope for the slack of his jacket in back and take hold of it. "Keep moving!" said Giles, between coughs. "It can't be much further." Suddenly they came up against a barrier. "A door," said Groce. "Open it. Go on through!" snapped Giles, impatiently. The arbite obeyed—and suddenly they were all in a small area where the smoke was less dense. Mara pushed closed behind them the door by which they had just entered. There was another door directly in front of them, also closed. A heavy airlock door. Stepping past Groce, Giles pushed at it without being able to open it, then pounded on its activating button with his fist. The door opened slowly, swinging inward, away from them. Beyond was an airlock space and a further airlock door, open. "Go," said Giles briefly to the two arbites, pointing to the other open lock. Mara obeyed, but Groce hesitated. "Honor, sir?" he asked. "Please—what happened to the Spacehner?" "An explosion somewhere aft. I don't know what caused it/' answered Giles, shortly. "Go ahead, now. The lifeship's through the further lock, there.*' Groce still hesitated. "What if there's others coming?" he asked. "Anyone coming will be here soon," Giles said. "With this smoke already in the corridors, there isn't much time. This lifeship is going to have to be launched soon." "But what if, when I get inside—" "When you get inside," Giles said, "there'll be an Albenareth there to tell you what to do. There's an alien officer in charge of any lifeship. Now, movel" Groce went. Giles turned back to make sure that the airlock door behind him was closed. The smoke was eddying around him, although he could not see the source of the air current that was moving it, now that the shipside airlock door was closed. A loudspeaker over the closed door echoed suddenly to the sound of distant coughing. "Sir," said the voice of Groce, unexpectedly behind him, "there isn't any Albenareth in the lifeship yet." "Get back inside. Wait there!" he snapped at the arbite, without turning his head. The sound of coughing from the loudspeaker was louder now, echoed by the clang of stumbling feet approaching. One of those coming, Giles thought, had better be the Albenareth officer. Giles could pilot his own yacht around the Solar System, but as for handling an alien lifeship... He punched the "open" button. The inner lock door swung wide. Dim figures were stumbling toward him in the smoke. Giles swore. They were all human, dressed alike in the dusty gray of their arbite shipsuits. There were five of them, he counted as they came closer, clinging to one another's clothing, several of them whimpering when they were not coughing. The one in front was an angular, gray-haired woman who dipped her head briefly in an automatic gesture of respect when she saw him. He opened the inner door and motioned them inside, moving aside so they would not brush against him as they went. Before the last one was in, the corridor lights flickered, went out, came back on again—then died completely. Giles closed the door behind the five and touched the glow button on his watch. Under normal conditions the light from the dial was normally quite strong, but now it only lit up the rolling smoke, let in from the corridor. The air holding the smoke was hotter too; the fire could not be far away. He was coughing again, and could not control it, his head aching from the fumes. With a sharp clang a section of the airlock wall fell away and Giles turned in that direction. The air current from a hidden source was suddenly stronger, and there was an elongated opening in what had appeared to be solid metal. The smoke was being sucked into it strongly. In the partially clear air a tall, thin form appeared, stooping with its head to pass through the opening. "About timel" Giles said, coughing. The Albenareth did not answer him, moving quickly in a typical broken-kneed gait to the lock, with Giles close behind. Once they were both inside, the Albenareth turned and dogged shut the inner lock door. The action spoke for itself; the clash of the dogged lock echoed on Giles' ears like the closing of a coffin lid. The voices of the arbites had dropped into silence as the Albenareth and Giles entered, and those already there moved warily aside from the alien. Still silent, the gaunt figure reached down into a slot in the soft flooring and pulled up a metal frame laced with flexible plastic. It was an acceleration cot, and a good deal of dust came up with it. "Open the cots like this," the Albenareth ordered, the human words coming out at last, high-pitched and buzzing. "Strap down. Motions will be abrupt." In the continuing silence, he turned and strode to the control console in the lifeship's nose, and belted himself into one of the two control chairs there. His three-fingered hands moved swiftly. Lights glowed on the panels and the two viewscreens before him came to life, showing only the out-of-focus metal walls of the lifeship capsule. Giles and the arbites aboard had just enough time to pull up their cots before the launch button was hit. They clutched at the frames of their cots as the sudden acceleration pounced on them. Explosive charges blew away the hull section covering the lifeship capsule. Gravity forces pressed them hard against the webbing of their cots, as the lifeship was hurled away from its mother ship, into space. The acceleration changed direction as the lifeship's drive took over and moved it away from the dying ship; and a nauseating sensation rippled through their bodies as they left the gravity field of the larger vessel and the weaker grav-simulation field of the lifeship came on. Giles was aware of all this only absently. Automatically his hands were locked tightly about the metal frame of his cot to keep him from being thrown off it, but his eyes were fixed on the right of the two viewscreens in the bow. The screen on the left showed only stars, but the right-hand screen gave a view directly astern, a view filled with the image of the burning, dying ship. There was no relation between the jumble of wreckage seen there and the ship they had boarded in orbit high above the equator of Earth, twelve days before. Twisted and torn metal glowed white-hot in the darkness of space. Some lights still showed in sections of the hull, but most of it was dark. The glowing wreckage had shrunk to the size of a hot ember as they hurtled away from it; now it maintained a constant size and moved from screen to screen as they orbited about it. The Albenareth that had joined them was speaking into a grille below one of the screens, in the throbbing buzz of his own tongue. He or she was pronouncing what were clearly the same words, over and over again, until there was a scratching hiss from the speaker and another voice answered. There was a rapid discussion as the burning wreck was centered on the forward screen, then began to grow in size once more. "We're going back!" an arbite voice shouted hysterically from the darkness. "Stop him! We're going back!" "Be quietl" Giles said, automatically. "All of you—that's an order!" After a second, he added, "The Albenareth knows what has to be done. No one else can pilot this ship." In silence the arbites continued to watch as the image of the wreckage grew before them, enlarging until it filled the screen— until it appeared they were driving down into it. But the smooth play of the Albenareth's six long fingers on the control console keys controlled the lifeship's motion, sent it drifting inward, slipping past jagged fangs of steel that swam into view in the lifeship's forward viewscreen. Suddenly, there was a smooth, unscarred section of hull before them and they clanged against it. Magnetic clamps thudded as they locked on, and the lifeship was moved spasmodically, with loud grating sounds, as it was orientated with something on the hull. Then the alien rose from the controls, turned, and strode back to undog the airlock. The inner door ground open—then the outer one. There was no rush of air, for they were sealed tight to another airlock—one on the spaceliner. The outer door of this lock, chilled from space and white-frosted with condensation, opened a crack, then stopped. The Albenareth wrapped a fold of his smocklike garment around his hands, seized the open edge, and pulled strongly until it opened all the way. Smoke haze beyond it cleared briefly to reveal another airlock and the gaunt figures of two more Albenareth. There was a rapid conversation between the three aliens. Giles could make out no expression on the creased and wrinkled dark skin of their faces. Their eyes were round and unreadable. They punctuated their words with snapping gestures of their threefingered hands, opening and closing the mutually opposed fingers. Suddenly, their talk ceased. Both the first Albenareth and one of the others reached out to touch the fingertips of both their hands, briefly, with those of the third, who stood deepest within the lock. The two closer aliens stepped back into the lifeship. The one they left did not move or try to follow them. Then, as the airlock door began to close, all three began to laugh at once, together, in their high-pitched, clattering laughter, until the closing door separated them. Even then, the captain and the alien beside him continued to laugh as the lifeship moved away from their shipmate in the spaceliner wreckage. Only slowly did their laughter die, surrounded by the staring silence of the arbite passengers. Shock at the sudden disaster fatigue, and smoke inhalation, or perhaps all these things, combined to numb the watching humans as they stared with reddened eyes at the image of the burning ship, pictured on the stemview screen in the front of the lifeship. The image dwindled, until it was no more than a star among all the other points of light on the screen. Finally, it winked from sight. When it was gone, the tall alien who had first entered the lifeship and driven it outward from the spaceliner rose from the control seat, turned, and came back to face the humans, leaving the other alien doing some incomprehensible work with part of the control panel. The first Albenareth halted an arm's length from Giles, and raised one long, dark finger, the middle of the three on his hand. "I am Captain Rayumung." The finger moved around to point back at the second alien. "Engineer Munghanf." Giles nodded in acknowledgment. "You are their leader?" demanded the Captain. *T am an Adelman," said Giles, frigidly. Even allowing for the natural ignorance of the alien, it was hard to endure an assumption that he might be merely one of a group of arbites. The Captain turned away. As if this action were a signal, a number of voices called out from among the arbites—all of which the Captain ignored. The voices died away as the tall form returned to the control area and from a compartment there took out a rectangular object wrapped in golden cloth, and held it ceremoniously at arm's length for one still moment before putting it down on a horizontal surface of the control panel. The Engineer moved to stand alongside, as the Captain put one finger on the surface of the cloth. Both then bent their heads in silence above it, motionless. "What is it?" asked the voice of Groce, behind Giles. "What's that they've got?" "Be quiet," said Giles, sharply. "It's their sacred book—the Albenareth astrogational starbook holding their navigation tables and information." Groce fell silent. But the determined voice of Mara, ignoring his order, took up the questioning. "Honor, sir," she said in Giles' ear. "Will you tell us what's happening, please?" Giles shook his head, and put his finger to his-lips, refusing to answer until the two aliens had raised their heads and begun to unwrap the golden cloth from about their book. Revealed, it was like something out of the human past—as it was indeed out of the Albenareth past—a thing of animal-skin binding and pages of a paper made from vegetable pulp. "All right," said Giles at last, turning around to find the arbite girl right behind him. He spoke to her and to all the rest as well. "Spacegoing and religion are one and the same thing to the Albenareth. Everything they do to navigate this lifeship or any other space vessel is a holy and ritual act. You should all have been briefed about that when you were sent to board the spaceliner, back on Earth." "They told us that much, sir," said Mara. "But they didn't explain how it worked, or why." Giles looked at her with a touch of irritation. It was not his duty to be tutor to a handful of arbites- Then he relented. It would probably be better if they were informed. They would all be living in close quarters under harsh conditions for some days, or even weeks. They would adapt better to their privations if they understood. "All right. Listen, then, all of you," he said, speaking to them all. "The Albenareth think of space as if it were heaven. To them, the planets and all inhabited solid bodies are the abode of the Imperfect. An Albenareth gains Perfection by going into space. The more trips and the more time spent away from planetfall, the more Perfection gained. You noticed the Captain identified himself as *Rayumung' and the Engineer as 'Munghanf.' Those aren't names. They're ranks, like stair-steps on the climb to a status of Perfection. They've got nothing to do with the individual's duties aboard a space vessel, except that the more responsible duties go to those of higher rank, generally." "But what do the ranks mean, then?" It was Mara again. Giles gave her a brief smile. "The ranks stand for the number of trips they've made into space, and the time spent in space. There's more to it than that. The rougher the duty they pull, the greater the count of the time involved toward a higher rank. For example, this lifeship duty is going to gain a lot of points for this Captain and Engineer—not because they're saving our lives, though, but because to save us they had to pass up the chance to die in the spaceliner when it burned. You see, the last and greatest goal of a spacegoing Albenareth is to die, finally, in space." "Then they won't care!" It was an abrupt cry, almost a wail, from someone else in the crowd, a dark-haired arbite girl as young as Mara, but without the marks of character on her face. "If anything goes wrong they'll just let us die, so they can die!" "Certainly not!" said Giles sharply. "Get that idea out of your heads right now. Death is the greatest achievement possible to an Albenareth, but only after one of them has done his best to fulfill his duties in space for as many years as possible. It's only when there's no place else to turn that the Albenareth let death take them." "But what if these two decide suddenly there's no place to turn, or something like that? They'll just go and die—" "Stop that sort of talk!" snapped Giles. Suddenly he was tired of explaining, ashamed and disgusted for them all—for their immediate complaints, their open and unashamed display of fears, their lack of decent self-restraint and self-control, and their pasty faces which had obviously spent most of their lives indoors away from the sunlight. All that was lower-class about them rose in his throat to choke him. "Be quiet, all of you," he said. "Get busy now and pick out the cot you want, beside whoever you want for a neighbor while we're in this lifeship. The one you pick is the one you'll have to stick with for the rest of the time we're aboard. I'm not going to have arguments and fights over changing places. After I've looked the lifeship over I'll get your names and tell you how you're to act until we reach planetfall. Now, get busyi" They all turned away immediately, without hesitation— except, perhaps, the girl Mara. It seemed to Giles that she paused for fust a second before moving to obey, and this puzzled him. It was possible she was one of those unfortunate arbites who had been unnaturally pampered, petted, and brought up by some Adelman family to feel almost as if she was one of the upper classes. Arbites hand-raised—so to speak—in such a manner were always maladjusted in latter life. They had not acquired proper habits in their early, formative years and as adults were never able to adapt to social discipline in normal fashion. If that was the case, it was a pity. She had so much else to recommend her. He turned away from the arbites, dismissing them from his mind, and began a closer examination of the lifeship. It bore little or no similarity to the luxuriously comfortable and highly automated private spacecraft he, like most of the Adelbom, had often piloted among the inner worlds of the Solar System. "Sir..." It was a whisper behind him. "Do you know—are they females?" Giles turned and saw that the whisperer was Groce. The man's face was white and sweating. Giles glanced back for a moment at the two aliens. The Albenareth were almost indistinguishable as far as sex went, and both served indiscriminately at duties aboard spacecraft—and everywhere else on the alien worlds, for that matter. But the extra length of the Captain's torso was a clue and the particular erectness of that officer's stance. She was a female. The Engineer was a male. Giles looked back at the sick paleness of fear on Grace's face. Among the arbites there were a thousand horror stories about the behavior of Albenareth females under certain glandular conditions, not merely toward their own "males" but—arbite superstitions had it—toward any other intelligent male creature. The basis of all the tales was the fact that the Albenareth "female"—the two sexes of the aliens did not really correspond equivalently to human male and female—when in estrus, required from the "male" not merely the specific and minute fertilizing organism he had produced for the egg she carried, but the total genital area of "his" body. This she took complete into her egg sac, where it became connected to her own bloodstream, part of her own body, and a source of nourishment for the embryo during its period of intrauterine growth. The acquisition of the "male's" genital area, entirely normal by Albenareth standards, in human terms represented a rather massive mutilation of the "male" by the "female." It effectively desexed the male until his genital area should grow back, which took about two years, roughly, by Earth time—long enough for the single Albenareth offspring to be bom and learn to travel with comfort upright on its two legs. Human xenobiologists had theorized that in prehistoric times the evolutionary principle behind the desexing of the Albenareth "male" had been to ensure his protection and assistance to the particular "female" carrying his progeny, during the vulnerable period before she and it were fully able to take care of themselves. But such sophisticated understanding of alien instincts, thought Giles, would be beyond the comprehension of arbites whispering among themselves in dark corners- Groce, evidently, had the human lower-class horror and fear of what the alien "female" might do to him, specifically, under certain conditions of glandular excitation. And probably every other arbite male aboard would react the same way if any of them suspected the Captain's sex. "They're officers!" Giles snapped. "Do they look like females to you?" Relief flooded back into Groce's face. "No, Honor. No, sir, of course not... thank you, sir. Thank you very much." He backed away. Giles turned from the man, back to his examination of the lifeship. As he did so, however, it occurred to him to wonder just what the effect would be on the arbites if a breeding impulse should take command of the pair of aliens on board before they made planetfall. Of course, he had no idea under what conditions such an impulse could be generated; he put worry about it out of his mind. For the moment things were under control and that was all he required. He concentrated on examining the lifeship. 1:02 hours It was little more than a cylinder in space. The rear half of the cylinder was occupied by the warp drive and the fusion chamber that powered it. In the cylinder's nose was the control console and the three viewscreens. The remaining space, like a tube with a flat floor inside, was a little over twelve meters in length and four in diameter. The floor was of a purple, spongy material that was clumsy to walk upon but comfortable for sitting or lying. The collapsible cots they had occupied while blasting free of the spaceliner were concealed beneath that same spongy surface. Overhead, a glaring band of blue-white lights stretched the length of the lifeship. These, Giles had learned before leaving Earth, in his studies of the Albenareth and their space vessels, were never turned off, even when the lifeship was not in use. The continuous light source was needed to assure the healthy growth of the ib vine that completely covered all the exposed surfaces from midway in the lifeship's length, right back to the stem. The vine was life to all the passengers, alien and human alike; for the stoma in its flat, reddish-green leaves produced oxygen. The golden, globular fruit, hanging like ornaments from long, thin stems, were the only source of nourishment available aboard. The trunk of the ib vine, as thick through as a man's leg, emerged from a coffinlike metal tank in the stem that contained the nutrient solution to nourish the plant. A dusty metal hatch cover on the tank covered the opening into which all food scraps and waste were put for recycling. A simple and workable system for survival, a closed cycle in which the sanitary conveniences aboard consisted of a basin under a cold-water faucet and a covered container beside the tank. The arbite passengers were not yet aware of how these things would circumscribe their existences aboard this alien craft. As yet, they had scarcely examined the new environment into which they had been thrust. The shock of awareness would be profound when it came. They were not Adelmen or Adelwomen, who under these same conditions would have felt an inner duty to maintain their self-control and not to give way to unseemly fears or yield in any way to the situation, no matter how unendurable. He should start out gently, Giles told himself. He turned and went back to the others, who had now sorted themselves out, each on the cot he or she had pulled up and would occupy until they made planetfall. "All set?" he asked them. There were nods of agreement. He stood, looking down at them, a head taller than any except the obvious work-gang laborer individual in the very rear. The others would tend to ostracize the laborer, he reminded himself automatically, as being even of lower class than themselves. He must not let that cause divisions among them while they were aboard here. The laborer was as tall as Giles and doubtless outweighed him by twenty kilos. Outside of that, there was no resemblance. Only Giles, of all the humans there, showed the tanned skin, the handsome regular features, and the green eyes, with sun-wrinkles showing at the corners of them, that testified to both breeding and a lifetime of outdoor exercise. These differences alone would have set him apart from the rest, even without the expensive, gleaming fabric of the burnt-orange shipsuit he wore, in contrast to the drab, loose-fitting, gray coveralls that were their garb. Alone, his features were enough to remind the others that it was his to command, theirs to obey. "All right," he said. "I am Giles Steel Ashad. Now, one at a time, identify yourselves." He turned to Mara, who had taken the front cot space on his left. "You first, Mara." "Mara 12911. I'm recop, on indent to Belben like the rest" "All right." He turned to Groce on the right, across from Mara. "Next, we'll take them in this direction. Speak up, Croce. Give your name and specialty number." "Groce 5313, indent for three years, computer control section, Belben Mines and Manufacture." "Very good, Groce. Clad to see you kept your compute by you." "Go no place without it, sir. Feel naked without it." Giles saw several of the others smile at this time-worn joke. Computecoms were always supposed to be unable to think without making a calculation first. This was good; a feeling of order was being restored. The next man behind Groce was thin, blond, and wiry, his fingers nervously tapping out unheard rhythms on his thighs. "Esteven 6786, entertaincom," he said, in a tenor voice. "I'm setting up the broadcast system to Belben, to replace the automated one there now." "Yes. Is that a recorder in your wallet?" "Yes, Honor, sir. Would you like to see it? A multiplex memory store for the music." "Very good—we can use that for a log of this voyage." Giles put out his hand. Esteven stepped forward, but hesitated for an instant before taking out the flat case. "But you won't want to wipe all the music to record, will you, sir? Please? We'll find some entertainment welcome, here in this little ship...." Giles winced internally at the pleading note in the man's voice. Even an arbite should not have to beg like that. "Not all of the music," said Giles, "don't worry. Pick an hour to wipe clear for me. That should be enough. If it's not, I'll ask you for more." "An hour?" Esteven's face lit up. "Of course, sir. A single hour's really no problem, of course. This has a bit of everything. I can wipe some of the jazzpop or early-decade symphonies. Or there are lots of musical commercials..." Esteven smiled hopefully and the others laughed, and the laughter quickly dying away when they saw that Giles was not smiling with them. "Honor, sir, forgive—naturally, I don't mean that. A joke only. Here, an hour from the music; it's all set." He passed the recorder over quickly, his hand shaking ever so slightly. "I'll put everyone's name into this; we'll need to keep records." Giles spoke into a recorder the names and numbers told so far. "Now just you four left." "Biset 9482. Supervise, indent one year." She stood up straight, across from Esteven's space, when she said it—the tall, angular, gray-haired woman who had led the party of survivors to tiie lifeship. She was, thought Giles, obviously used to authority. A lifetime had adjusted her to it—unlike the girl Mara. The two arbites side by side behind her were a dark-haired young man and an equally dark-haired plump girl. They had been holding hands until the others looked at them. The girl blushed; the man spoke for them both. "Frenco 5022. This is my... wife, Di 3579. We're both comserv, indent seven years." "Both just out of school, only on your first indent—and married already?" The laughter of the others—free and open, this time— released a good deal of the tension that had been gripping them all. Frenco nodded and smiled and Di smiled, looking about, seeming to enjoy the sudden attention. She was the girl who had panicked when Giles spoke of the Albemareth seeking death, as a final act in space. Giles spoke their names into the recorder and looked beyond to the big laborer. "Now you, lad." The laborer touched his index and second finger to his forehead just below the cap of short-cut black hair, in a sort of half salute before answering. "Hem 7624, Honor, sir," he said. His face was square and young, unwrinkled, but his voice had the rough and broken hoarseness of an aging person. "Graded manual, no specific skills, sir. But perfect work record." "Good for you," said Giles. "We're lucky to have someone like you aboard. Hem, in case we have something to do that takes someone with strength we can rely on." He ran his gaze deliberately around the faces of the other arbites and saw that they had caught the social implication of his words. A couple of them flushed, and some of the rest looked sourly down at the floor. The girl Mara, however, was not one of them. Clearly they did not like Hem being placed on the same level as themselves, but they would put up with it. Giles held the recorder. Esteven came and took it back. "All right," Giles said. "Now, I'm going to talk to the Captain and see what information I can get. All I know at the moment is that either we ran into something or there was an explosion, and we seem to be the only ones who got out of the ship." "Over two hundreed people—human people—aboard, two hundred and twelve," Groce said hoarsely, tapping the figure into his compute as though to make it more real. Giles shivered internally, feeling again within him the sharp teeth of conscience. "And twelve alien crew members," he said loudly. "So we're the lucky ones. Just remember that. if things go badly. These lifeships are meant for survival and are a little short on comforts. You've seen how to work the cots. Those ib fruit you see on the vines are what we'll be eating, after the water has been pressed out of them. They're three-quarters fluid, so we'll have more than enough to drink. This plant's a mutation, gene-designed for this one function. Plenty of protein, so we're not going to starve." "But, sir, how does it taste?" Di asked. Plainly, she had never eaten anything but prepared commissary food in her life. "Is that... it?" the gray-haired woman named Biset asked, sniffing sternly as she pointed in the general direction of the covered pail. "I'm afraid it is," Giles said. "But there should be folding partitions stored in the floor or walls here somewhere. I'll ask the Captain. We can arrange something for privacy." "Ask him why we went back for that other pruney." Now that the fear was ebbing away, Groce was beginning to show anger. "We could've been killed, all of us!" "The Captain had to have a good reason for acting as he did. I'll ask him what it was. But listen to me, everyone. None of you, obviously, have ever been in space before; but I know you'll have heard dozens of wild stories about the Albenareth. Forget those stories—now! We're all dependent on those two aliens up front, there, for our survival. So the term 'pruney' isn't to be used again by any of you. Is that understood? Now, check those cots of yours to see they're all in working order, and keep your voices down while I go and have a talk with the Captain." Giles had been watching the two Albenareth as he talked. They had taken the starbook from its golden wrapping and placed it in its ritual, jewel-embossed clamp on the control console. Some plates had been removed from the sides of the console and the Engineer was probing delicately in the opening with the whiskerlike prods of an instrument. The Captain sat silently, arms crossed, staring into the emptiness of space. Giles went and stood next to her. "I would like to talk to the Rayumung," he said in buzzing Albenareth. The Captain slowly turned the glistening furrows of her face toward him. "You speak our language." "I am of the Steel sept. I go to space because this is what must be done. For the same reason I have learned your tongue. Please tell me what I need to know." "My ship has been destroyed and I could not die with it. We will soon start and proceed to Belben." "Belben?" echoed Giles. "Belben," repeated the Captain. "But how long will the voyage take?" "I do not yet know exactly. Possibly a hundred ship-days. This small engine lacks efficiency, therefore the Munghanf is unlucky enough to be with us." "It is his sorrow. Is the cause of the accident known?" "There was no accident. My ship was destroyed by a deliberately caused explosion." For the first time the Captain showed some sign of emotion, her voice raised, her fingers shaking. "Ifs not possible,'9 Giles began. "There is no doubt. There were only empty cargo holds at the explosion site. Nor was there anything there that could burn. It would take nothing less than a fusion bomb to ignite the flooring, which burns only at the highest temperature." Giles shifted his weight slightly on his feet. "This is a grave charge," he said. "Why would anyone want to sabotage an Albenareth spacer?" "That I do not know. But a crime has been committed." The dark alien eyes stared directly into Giles'. "A crime one of my race would not commit." "There is no possibility the explosion was only an accident?" said Giles. "Your ship was old, Rayumung. Many of the ships of the Albenareth are very old." "Their age is no matter. It was not an accident." The Captain's voice was unchanged, but her long, three-fingered hands were now tightly clenched—a sign of deep emotion in an Albenareth, as Giles remembered from his studies of the aliens. He changed the subject- "You said it would take possibly a hundred ship-days to reach Belben in this lifeship. Is there no destination closer?" "Our destination was Belben. It is still Belben." "Surely," said Giles, "it would be more sensible to go to the closest point where safe planetfall is possible?" "I and my officers and my crew have fallen far back on the road to Perfection by permitting the loss of our ship." The dark eyes turned away from Giles, dismissing him. "My Engineer and I may not even permit ourselves the redemption of death. To fail to reach our planned destination means a further loss of honor, and that is unthinkable. Farewell, therefore. Our talk is ended." Giles' temper twitched to life. He held it in check, and continued to talk in an even voice. "I have not ended speaking, Rayumung," he said. The Captain turned her head back to face him.