Bright light glared in Gus's face. He was lying on his back on the floor, his hands locked behind him. Across the small room, a tall man in a tan uniform sat at a desk. Gus sat up painfully; at the sound, the man turned. It was the first officer, Leone. He gave Gus a sardonic look. His eyes were red, his chin unshaven.
"I could have had you shot," he said. "But I wanted to learn a few things first. Speak freely and I may be able to do something for you. Now: who was in on the scheme with you? Are those"—he tilted his head to indicate the planet outside—"poor grubbers planning some sort of attack?"
"I'm on my own," Gus said.
"Come on, man, speak up! You're already deep enough: striking an officer, desertion—"
"I'm not in your army," Gus cut him off. "I want to see the captain, if you haven't eaten him for breakfast."
Leone laughed. "To claim your rights, I suppose."
"Something like that."
"There are no rights," Leone said flatly. "Only necessities."
"Like food and shelter. Those people out there came here expecting a decent chance. You plan to abandon them here—with nothing."
"Ah, so that was what was behind your little dash for freedom." Leone nodded as if pleased. "You need to adjust your thinking, Covv—"
"My name's Addison. Calling us Covvs won't take us off your conscience."
"Wrong on two counts. I have no conscience. As for names, they imply family ties, a place in a social structure. You have none—except what you might have made for yourself, out there." Leone shook his head. "No, Covv it is. It's the role you were born for—you and millions like you." He poured himself a drink from a bottle on the desk, tossed it back with a practiced flip of the wrist.
"There was a time when I wondered at the purpose of it all—man's slow climb up to the present mad carnival of spawning that's turned a planet into nothing more than a surface on which nameless, faceless nonentities breed endlessly, in a doomed effort to convert the entire mass of the world into human flesh. It seemed so pointless. But now I understand." Leone smiled crookedly. He was very drunk.
"Ah, you're wondering, but too proud to ask! Proud! Yes, every little unremembered mote of humanity has his share of that fatuous delusion of self-importance! Funny; very funny!" Leone leaned toward Gus, waving the glass in his hand. "Don't you know your function, Covv?" He grinned expectantly. Gus looked at him silently.
"You're a statistic!" Leone poured again, raised the glass in a mock toast. "Nature brings forth millions, that one may survive. And you're one out of the millions."
"Now that you have it all figured out," Gus said, "what are you going to do about us? Those people will freeze out there."
"Perhaps," Leone said carelessly. "Perhaps not. The toughest will survive—if they can. Survive to breed. And in time, devour this world, and jump on to a new star. Meanwhile, it hardly matters what happens to a statistic."
"They were promised an even chance."
"Promises, promises. Death in the end is the only promise, my boy. As for those ciphers out there in the cold—think of them as fish eggs, if that will help you. Spawned by the million so that one or two can live to spawn in turn. Life goes on—as long as you've got plenty of fish eggs."
"They're not fish eggs. They're men, and they deserve simple justice—"
"You call justice simple?" Leone leaned forward, almost rolled from his chair before he caught himself. "The most sophisticated concept with which the mind of man deludes itself—and that's the only place it exists: in men's minds. What does the Universe know about justice, Covv? Suns burn, planets whirl, chemicals react. The fox devours the bunny rabbit with a clear conscience—just the way Alpha Four will devour those poor clots out there." He waved an arm. "And that's as it should be. Nature's way. Survive—or don't survive. It's natural—like an earthquake. It'll kill you without the least ill-will in the world."
"You're not an earthquake," Gus said. "It's you that's holding back the food those men need."
"Don't come whining to me for your lousy justice!" Leone shouted, swaying in his chair. "We were having a well-earned drink in the wardroom when the rock hit. Killed half the officers of this damned tub—killed my friend, my best friend, damn you! After five years, cruise almost over. . . . and all for the sake of a load of caviar. . . ."
Leone gulped the rest of his drink, threw the glass across the room. "Don't chatter to me about what's fair," he muttered. "It's what's real that counts." He put his head down on his arms and snored.
It took Gus five minutes to reach the desk, grope in the drawers until he found the electrokey which unlocked the cuffs on his wrists. There was a crew-type coverall in the closet. Gus donned it, added a small handgun from a wall chest. In the passageway, all was silent. Most of the crew were busy, Gus knew. He made his way down to the lower levels, finally encountered a familiar corridor leading to the Power Section. He passed two men on the way; they hardly glanced at him.
The red-painted door to the Power Control Room stood ajar. Gus slipped past it, closed it silently, dogged it down. The engineering officer yelped when Gus poked the gun into his back.
"Quiet," Gus cautioned. He prodded the man along to a parts locker, motioned him inside.
"What do you hope to gain by this, you madman?" The man's red face blazed almost purple. "You're asking to be shot down—"
"So are you. No noise." Gus shut the door and locked it. He went on to the room that housed the control servos. Three technicians worked over a disassembled chassis. They whirled when Gus snapped an order at them. Their hands went up slowly. Gus herded two of them into a parts locker. The third backed away, trembling and sweating, as Gus pressed the gun to his chest.
"Show me how this setup works," Gus ordered.
The technician began a confused lecture on the theory of cyclic fusion-fission reactors.
"Skip all that," Gus told him. "Tell me about these controls."
The technician explained. Gus listened, asked questions. After fifteen minutes he indicated a red plastic panel cover.
"That's the damper control unit?"
"That's right."
"Open it up."
"Now, just a minute, fellow," the man said quickly. "You don't know what you're getting into—"
"Do as I said."
"You tamper with that, you can throw the whole core out of balance!"
Gus rammed the gun hard into the man's chest.
"OK, OK." He set to work with fingers that shook.
Gus studied the maze of exposed circuitry. "What happens if you cut those conduits?" he pointed. The technician backed away, shaking his head. "Wait a minute, fellow—"
Gus cuffed the side of his head hard enough to send the man sprawling.
"The whole revert circuit will be thrown on the line! You'll get a feed into the interlock system, and—"
"Put it in English!"
"She'd climb past crit and blow! She'd blow the side of the planet out!"
"What if you just cut that one?" Gus indicated another lead.
The technician shook his head. "Nearly as bad," his voice broke. "She'd run away and the core would begin to heat. She'd run red in an hour, and slag down in three. The gamma count—"
"Any way to stop it, once it starts?"
"Not once you let her climb past critical! You red-line her, and we're all finished!"
"Cut that lead," Gus commanded.
"You're out of your mind—" The man launched himself at Gus; he hit him with the gun, sent him reeling. There was a heavy pair of bolt-cutters on the nearby bench. Gus used them to snap through the pencil-thick lead. At once, a bell sounded stridently. Gus tossed the cutters aside, dragged the groaning man to a tool locker; then he went to the wall phone, punched a code from the list beside it.
"Captain, this is one of the fish eggs," he said. "I think we'd better have a talk about a choice you're going to have to make."