DUD

So there I was. Set. The war was over, and the moment the Sunstroke landed on Earth, I would hand my prisoners over to some official of the War Crimes Tribunal and be a full-fledged civilian again. I would be free to drink the wine, sing the song, and--well, you know what I mean--all set.

The communicator on the beautiful pastel ceiling showed the mileage remaining--two million. Why, that was a hop, a skip, and a burp! It had been a fairly pleasant trip--the Sunstroke was a private luxury yacht requisitioned for the needs of the Terran Navy in bringing my peculiar charges to justice. I hoped I'd be able to afford a vessel like her someday. When I had been a civilian for a long, long--

My eyes drooped shut. Jimmie Trokee would be waking me in four hours to take over the watch on the prisoners. And I'd have to be super sharp. I dozed.

"Mr. Butler!" I twitched up to a squat. Captain Scott's huge head was glaring from the communicator. "Report to the bridge on the double. On the double, Mr. Butler!" He faded rosily.

I tilted the bed, got out, and dressed. Five years in the service and you develop certain reflexes toward orders. It was only after I'd walked through the doorap that I remembered to stop and curse.

"What does that spacehound mean by talking to me like that? I'm Army, not Navy. Not even that, I was discharged before we took off. And my only responsibility is to and for the prisoners. I've got to make a couple of fine distinctions for the old boy."

All the same, I started for the bridge. But not before I walked to the end of the corridor to see how our Martians were getting along.

Jimmie Trokee, my junior, was lounging against the doorap of the combination prison-stateroom. He dropped the cigarette quickly and ground it out.

"Sorry, Hank. But honestly, everything's under control. Rafferty and Goldfarb stopped their chess game so I could get a smoke. They won't miss a trick."

"Sure," I said. "I do the same thing, myself. Your lungs get awful dry in that joint. How are our friends feeling? Still taking baths?"

He grinned. "Didangul took five during my watch. His two pals spelled him in the pool. Only a Martian could loll in the water like that with a probable death sentence hanging over his scaly head!" His face tightened. "But when they aren't bathing, they fool around with that converter and whistle at each other."

"I know, I don't like it either. But the white-haired boys at headquarters cleared their request for the gadget. Said they couldn't possibly make anything dangerous with one that size. It's all part of this coddle-them-before-you-kill-them idea. The condemned Martians surrounded a hearty supper."

"Yeah. I don't get it. When I think of what Didangul did to the boys of the Fifteenth Army. Of course, they can't spit a weapon out of the converter. All they've been getting is tiny hunks of neutronium that not even the three of them can lift. Yet--"

"Mr. Butler," a communicator shrilled down the hall, "Captain Scott says if you aren't on the bridge in two minutes, he'll send a detail to drag you up by the short hairs."

Jimmie got angry. "Who does he think he is? You don't take orders from that guy. He's Navy!"

"He's the captain of the ship," I reminded him. "You know, power of life and death in empty space. I better get going."

"Well, don't take any guff from him," Jimmie called after me. He waved his hand at the doorap and walked through.

I adjusted my tunic before walking through the heavy panel leading to the bridge, and straightened the Eagle over Saturn on my chest. The first PX our occupation forces had established on Mars was stale out of civvies; I was wearing my uniform home. And Scott was death on sloppy uniforms.

Then I caressed the panel and started through. Whop! I massaged my nose and blasted the Terran Navy from heck to brunch. Why they had to remove a perfectly good doorap and substitute an old-fashioned hingie, just because of naval tradition--

I felt around for the doorknob and walked in, still aching in the olfactory. Nobody so much as batted a wink of sympathy at me. Everyone but Cummings the quartermaster was clustered around one of the five great visiscreens in the bridge. I sighed.

"Mr. Butler," Captain Scott called over his shoulder, "if your manifold social obligations will permit you to comply with my suggestions, would you care to stroll up to the screen for a moment?"

I glared at the back of his shaggy head and light blue fatigues. Then, very obviously, I strolled up to the screen beside Lieutenant Wisnowski, the astrogator. I heard Scott rub his teeth against each other, and Wisnowski twisted a quick grin at me.

There wasn't much on screen that meant anything to me. A fairly large disc of Earth, the moon approximately the same size, lots and lots of little lights that were stars or meteors or fireflies.

"What do you expect me to--" I began.

"This part," Wisnowski said, whirling a little doohickey with a handle. A section of the screen in front of me seemed to spread out, and the little white lights got thicker.

There was an odd something moving there, a something with an irregular shape and all kinds of protruding edges. Dark brown in color, it seemed to jerk itself along. I'd never seen anything quite like it before.

"Small asteroid? Meteor?"

"Neither," Scott told me. "It's not on any chart, and this area is mapped to twelve decimal places. The speed and movement--jerky movement, you notice--disqualify it as a solar body. Besides, it's been following us."

My mind danced to the Martians below. "Rescue party?"

"Hardly think so." The captain walked to the middle of the room, where Cummings sat alertly before his hundred switches. "Forty, five-nine, forty. The object has no discernible jets."

"Forty, five-nine, forty," Cummings mumbled through his wad of tobaccogum. He flipped three switches toward him, moved two others back. He peered at the slowly revolving "grampus" on the ceiling. "Forty, five-nine, forty. On arc."

"Well, if it has no jets, how can it be following us?" I asked reasonably. "I don't know how far off it is, but--"

"Over three hundred thousand miles." Captain Scott had returned to the visiscreen and was studying it intently. I was amazed at the look of worry on his old, space-pale face. "Much too far away for gravitation to be asserted, if that's what you can't understand, Mr. Butler.

"The Sunstroke may have been a large yacht, but it makes a very small naval vessel, and that thing is too tiny for any real attraction to exist. Yet it moves at approximately our number of gyros, and--see there, now!--it changes course with us."

Sure enough, it did. As the Sunstroke curved into its new arc, the celestial bodies on the screen seemed to slant away. All but our new little friend. One of its great uneven edges came round slowly, and the whole mass moved into relatively the same position on the screen it had held before.

"Lock the magnification, Mr. Wisnowski."

The astrogator pushed on the doohickey, and it clicked into permanent place. He and the captain hurried back to the chart table. The second officer, after an anxious look at the grampus, moved to the door and left the bridge. Not before another sidelong glance at the thing in the visiscreen. "I'll check battle stations, sir."

"Good. And you might sound a secondary alert. I called you to the bridge, Mr. Butler, because I believe this--whatever it is--is definitely related to your distinguished prisoners. Perhaps--"

"In that case, I insist you radio Earth immediately. Or a military base on the moon. They'll send whatever help--"

"Mr. Butler! You insist? You? Until such time as you can carry five red jets on your shoulders, I give all the orders on this ship!" He had whirled to face me angrily, his lips curved into each other. The old boy was mad down to his bottom gyro.

But I still had statements to make for publication. "You're master in all spatial matters," I told him, trying to imitate his bluster, "but I'm directly responsible to the War Crimes Tribunal and, through them, to the Solar Council for the safe delivery of these prisoners. Didungal is the only one of the four peritic tetrarchs we caught--"

"I don't care if he is the chief embezzling field-marshal in the whole blasted Terran Army, I still give all orders on this ship. I can prove that to you, if necessary, by throwing you into the brig, the real brig--not the fancy home away from home those lizards are enjoying.

"You have chosen to become a civilian, Mr. Butler--though you still prefer the uniform--and, as far as I'm concerned, you are merely a civilian employee of the government charged with seeing that three sensitive Martians don't catch colds or commit suicide. You take orders from me and my officers--is that clear?"

Deeply inhaling, I thought of pointing out that all of us "civilian employees" were the most frequently wounded and decorated men in the entire Third Corps, who had elected to take their discharges on Mars, and who had volunteered to guard the most vicious criminals of the Peritic War on their way home because no occupation troops could be spared. But--I grimaced, but didn't unzip.

"Good." Some of the sudden red lines in Scott's face faded to pink, and he picked a book off the chart table. "I won't use the radio--as you call it, in army slang--because of the Jetsam incident. You've heard of it? The Jetsam, a small scout operating off Deimos about a week before the armistice, reported via radarito that it was being followed by a strangely shaped object that matched its speed but seemed to maintain its distance.

"It broke in on its own message to announce that the object had accelerated since transmission started and was now approaching very rapidly. A moment later, the entire Deimos beachhead was shaken by a tremendous spacerip blast. Nothing of the Jetsam or its crew was ever found."

"M-m-m-m. Spacerip yet. Atomic channels aren't bad enough. So you won't use the radio--oops, radarito--because you're afraid it'll help set off this mine, or anyway excite it to increase its speed. But a mine doesn't make sense. If it's anything that new, the Martians haven't had time to plant it. They've cleared from this area since long before the Battle of the Southern Hemisphere."

"Not on this side of the moon," the captain pointed out. "There are still guerilla bands of Martians holding out in forgotten mountain forts on the moon. It may be a loose mine--or a new-fangled sort of proximity shell. It may be practically anything. It's probably a dud, in any case, but that doesn't make it less dangerous. It might be one of our own weapons. The Martians are essentially imitators. They haven't discovered a single scientific principle for themselves."

I smiled at him and shook my head. "Don't go falling for our propaganda, Captain. The Martians are, each and every one of them, better scientists than any five thousand humans. Just because they weren't interested in mechanics until we caressed their scales with all sorts of nasty weapons. Why, the gyrospeed drive your ship is using was copied from a Martian derelict in the war's first stages."

'I wasn't aware that was publicly accepted, Mr. Butler," he said, his thin body very erect in the blue uniform. "Mr. Wisnowski, how many gyros are we turning?"

"Five, I think."

"You think?"

"Five, I know," Wisnowski amended after a hasty glance from the grampus to his charts.

"Raise it to nine. I know it's over our limit, but tell the engine room we'll hold that acceleration only until we've shaken this dud, if it is a dud."

Captain Scott walked swiftly past me to the visiscreen and opened the book in his arms. He turned the metallic pages slowly, staring with desperate intentness first at the illustrations and then at the weird brown object in the magnified portion.

Wisnowski raised the engine room on the communicator and ordered the nine gyros. He closed the switch on their surprised yelps.

"Don't mind the old cometcatcher," he whispered. "He won't take any backtalk from even an ex-Army guy. It's a shame we have to have two separate services in the first place. Crazy jurisdictional squabbles in the middle of a war, whether a battle is deep-space or planet-based. It's silly and positively twentieth-century."

I agreed with him. "But the captain was way off base when he said I had to prevent my Martians from committing suicide. Catching colds yes; committing suicide, no. If a Martian could ever bring himself to voluntarily slither off into the great moist beyond, we'd have lost the war a month after Antarctica was gouged out.

"They've been civilized too long and enjoy life too much for that. They'd have stayed civilized, too, if we hadn't objected to their dreaming in their baths and insisted on showing them the delights of pugnaciousness. How their placidity used to annoy us!"

Wisnowski nodded. "Most soldiers I've talked to feel the same way. I remember how everyone was intrigued when the first two Martians were persuaded to attend an old-fashioned heavyweight fight at Madison Square Garden."

"Sure. We're responsible for changing an attitude a million years old. And then, the people we used to colonize Mars! The supermen philosophers of Germany and Japan we didn't have the nerve to kill after the second atomic war."

"Drop to six gyros," Captain Scott called. "This thing has increased its acceleration to match ours. I hope you're keeping an accurate account of all this in the rough log, Mr. Wisnowski."

"Yes sir, I am. Very accurate." Wisnowski blushed, passed the order down to the engine room and began to write very rapidly. I was glad I'd never served under such a commander. "Almost forgot about it completely," he whispered, after a while, his eyes glued to the log.

"My dad told me how the government sold the idea 'Let those brilliant but misguided men build a new life for themselves on a new world. They will help themselves become better in the struggle with this hostile planet--they will help humanity stretch its empire farther into space.' Empire--phtaaa!"

"Well, the only ones they helped with their muscle-man methods and garish ideas were the peritic Martians, who simply modified super with Martian instead of man. In thirty years, the Perites grew from an obnoxious little cult to a major political party. When Martian scientists began toying with weapons instead of new ways of making water spray off their scales, humanity just--"

"Nine gyros!" Scott yelled. "Get back to nine gyros!"

"Raise it to nine again," Wisnowski flashed into the communicator. "And no argument! What's up, sir?"

He ran to the captain's side; I scuttled after him. Scott pointed a shaking finger at the screen. The brown mass had grown larger. More details of its odd, broken shape could be seen. "Look at that! It increased its acceleration to match our limit, but when we cut to six, it stayed at nine. Now I'm sure it's a dud--some sort of naval proximity shell.

"There's nothing in the naval bulletin about it; just some vague notes like, 'It's believed the Martians have been attempting to develop an improved proximity fuse using a spacerip-type warhead, which will adjust its speed to that of the pursued object, making landing and deceleration impossible.' Of course, we can't think of deceleration if that ungodly pebble will stay at our maximum. But the desk-bound idiot writing the bulletin doesn't mention a countermeasure!"

"Probably had no idea what it was like." Wisnowski made faces at the screen. "Just wanted to let commanders know it might be around sometime. Then they're on their own."

Even Cummings had lifted his eyes from the hundred switches and was chewing his tobaccogum at the deadly missile uneasily. I couldn't understand all this crazy concern and decided to say so.

"The Sunstroke is fitted with atomic channels, isn't it? Why don't you just reach out and bop it one?"

"Mr. Butler," the captain enunciated in slow irritation, "you evidently haven't been out in deep space since the Battle of Deimos, if you think you can blast a late-model proximity shell. They are all adjusted to absorb sufficient power from the blast to reach the ship of origin in a fantastic spurt before they explode. No, we can't blast it; but we can't hold nine gyros for long, either! This has us where the hairs are long, short and middle-sized."

I remembered hearing about that new principle--temporary immunity and total absorption--they'd been building into the latest proximity shells, but I was so deep in underground operations around Grinda City at the time that I'd hardly bothered to file the information.

"But just a moment, Captain; this is a dud, isn't it? And a dud is a shell that hasn't exploded. So how can it--"

"A dud is a shell that hasn't exploded--yet. And in the case of a naval proximity shell, it's one that has failed to be attracted to a target, very possibly because it hasn't encountered one--yet. Mr. Wisnowski, what is your opinion?"

Wisnowski rolled his lower lip under his teeth and jabbed at his chin. I waited, more than a little anxious myself. This total absorption deal--that explained partially why radio couldn't be used, why we couldn't get away in lifeboats.

Any additional expenditure of energy would be used by the missile to increase its speed, already equal to the ship's maximum. It also meant that, since every man-made object in space radiated a certain amount of energy as it streaked through the vacuum, these nasty playthings must eventually catch their targets. But what did they use for jets?

"With your permission, sir," Wisnowski was saying, "I'd like to take a red herring out."

"Was hoping you'd say that, Mr. Wisnowski. We are well into the period for considering desperate measures. But I would never order a man into a red herring. If you hadn't volunteered, I myself--"

"Hold your lanyards," I told both of them. "We had red-herring maneuvering way back in Army basic. I'm supercargo on this wagon, just a valet to the Martians, so why shouldn't I carry the ball? I don't want to do anything that sounds like volunteering, but Wisnowski here has three wives, while I--"

"Haven't even got one. But you will have when you get back to civilian Terran jurisdiction--new law. With all the guys that got knocked off in the war, how do you think there will be a next human generation if people like you hang on to their individuality so hard? Anyway, Butler, you're on your way out of the service, and the captain would want this to be a strictly Navy job." He started out before I could get my formal protest exhaled.

"Send the second officer in to relieve you," Captain Scott called after him. "And have a detail bring up that Martian fellow--Dangdang something."

I whirled on him. "My instructions were to keep Didangul under close guard in the cabin!"

"Under the emergency powers vested in me," the captain barked, "I hereby invalidate your instructions. I'm positive this is a snake trick, and, if anything happens to Mr. Wisnowski, I intend to burn the secret out of them--Terran Justice Code or no Terran Justice Code!"

"Not a chance. Those babies, and especially a character like Didangul, can take more punishment than you can deliver before they'll crack. And they're smart enough to know that if they're hurt too badly, it won't do you any good to get away from that dud, because you'll be blasted by Edict twenty-two, thirty-four of the War Crimes Tribunal as soon as we hit Earth."

The second officer came in and took his position at the screen, his coal-black face twisted with worry. I knew how he felt. Under normal circumstances, a red herring was just a refined way of committing suicide while making certain your dependents received a posthumous medal. You took an open single-seater out and circled the proximity shell until you attracted it.

Then, when it changed its course and barged after the lifeboat, you jetted yourself out of the seat and just floated around in your spacesuit until the ship picked you up. If you were still around, that is. A spacerip covers a prodigious area, atomic channels almost as much.

With this gadget on our trail, it would be a little different. For one thing, the missile was already moving at almost as many gyros as the single-seater could turn; that meant that there wouldn't be much of a time gap between the attraction and the impact. Add to that fact that this new shell was almost certainly using spacerip, and Wisnowski stood a slightly better chance of being picked up by the ship afterwards than I did of getting a royal flush in spades the next time I played a hand of stud poker.

I slapped the second officer's back awkwardly. Wisnowski was evidently one of the more popular characters on the Sunstroke.

Somebody slammed against the door and began cursing in most colorful Afghan. I chuckled--Jimmie Trokee was also being reminded of the naval prejudice against dooraps on ships' bridges.

Then the door opened and Jimmie backed in, his Stifflitz at the ready, followed by nineteen feet of wet, angry, and superbly insolent lizard. Rafferty sauntered in behind the twitching tail with another Stifflitz.

"Goldfarb's keeping an eye on his two pals," Jimmie told me over his shoulder. "Want me to tie him up?"

"Yeah. You'd better."

Jimmie made an adjustment in his weapon and sprayed the Martian with a web of fine, low-power Stifflitz threads. When the former tetrarch was reduced to a mere waggling of the head and jaws, my junior handed the weapon to me and started out with Rafferty. "He's in your hands now, chief," he cracked, with a nod to me. Didangul said something which wouldn't have been printable even if it had been translatable.

"What's he saying?" the captain asked. Didangul had been whistling at the ceiling.

I waited until he repeated it, then I was almost afraid to translate. "He says he has been pulled out of his bath most unceremoniously and is feeling chilled all over. He says he is highly susceptible to colds and will probably catch one now. He wants to know if this is the vaunted democratic justice of Earth."

"And this is the monster who slowly dehydrated fifteen thousand men in his own palace a week before he bothered to make a formal declaration of war! The slimy--When I think of all the water headquarters diverted from their own supplies just so these blisters could be comfortable on their way to trial--Ask him if he knows anything about that lump of whatnot out there."

I whistled Scott's question at the Martian and listened intently to the answer. All I knew was the pidgin, and Didangul was perversely using literary Martian with all of its triple images and expanded noun phrases.

"He says he does. Probably one of his friends on the moon. Says we can't possibly escape it, no matter what we do. Says he will trade information on the only counter-measure for an ironbound opportunity to get away. By ironbound, he says he means give his fellow-prisoners a lifeboat and two hostages. After he's told us the counter-measure, he'll enter the lifeboat, and the hostages will be released. He won't have to worry about pursuit since the ship will be limping after traveling for so long at nine gyros."

"He doesn't, eh? Tell him to go straight to--to the Sahara! I wonder how this snake would stand up under a steady bath of medium power Stifflitz? Or some neurone tickling--Martians are as cowardly as Ionian Skelnicks."

"Even more so," I shrugged. "But only when it involves somehow the voluntary choice of self-destruction. They're fairly hardy--Perites especially--under torture. This individual knows enough about Terran government to understand we run as much risk by killing him as we do by kissing that proximity shell. On the basis of that knowledge, I don't think he'd ever crack, even if I could sanction such persuasion."

"What about psychological prodding? I understand the water needs of so-called civilized Martians are fantastically high. Perhaps some sort of a thirst treatment--"

I considered that. "First, there's the difficulty that Didangul here has just come from a combination bath and drinking party. We don't have nearly enough time for him to generate sufficient thirst--"

There were two flat noises from the nose of the ship. "Mr. Wisnowski has just jetted," the second officer reported.

Captain Scott and I hurried to the blue screen, where a tiny orange dot moved in a straightening arc towards the jagged shell. It curved away after a while and shot off in the direction opposite the Sunstroke's flight.

"The shell isn't following," Scott breathed. "The lifeboat has failed to attract it! Impossible!"

But it hadn't. Wisnowski, evidently noticing the failure of the maneuver, turned back to the shell in a diminishing spiral. The jagged brown mass completely ignored his tiny vessel. It continued following us in obstinate quest of self-destruction.

"The crazy fool! He intends to--he's trying to--Where in blazes is that communicator?"

Scott seized the curving panel with both hands and brought his great head almost inside it.

"Mr. Wisnowski! Are you trying to crash-explode that shell? Answer me, Mr. Wisnowski. This is your commanding officer speaking!" The astrogator's face appeared in the curve of the panel. "It's all that's left, sir. I can't get it to follow the lifeboat. I'll set it off and--"

"I'll break you, Wisnowski, I'll reduce you to third-class messman! I will not have my officers taking it upon themselves to throw their lives away, do you hear? Return to ship immediately. Immediately, Wisnowski! Don't you know that such an advanced weapon as this can't be detonated by a mere crash of an extraneous body? And your lifeboat is obviously irrelevant to the ship's course."

The lifeboat's spiral continued. Two or three more complete curves, and--

"I know there isn't much chance of detonating it, sir, but just the barest possibilities now--"

"Are matters that only I determine," the captain yelled. "We need you as astrogator, Wisnowski. Our only chance of evading impact depends on your presence on the bridge with me. I vitally need your help in formulating decisions. Return to ship, Wisnowski, or I promise by all that's holy to strip your uniform down to underwear!"

There was a moment of silence after this somewhat complicated threat. Then the speck of orange angled sharply away from the oncoming shell. It moved back towards the ship. We all breathed loudly again.

A few moments later, there was another high note and slight thud as the lifeboat entered the Sunstroke.

Captain Scott walked over to the chart table and poured himself a tumbler of water from the carafe.

Hearing a rattle behind me, I turned, bringing the Stifflitz up. Didangul, tightly wrapped in the golden threads, was stretching a yearning claw at the water bottle. Greedy! He'd practically just emerged from a bath, but get a Martian anywhere near water, in sight of wet stuff--

He saw my sneer and straightened. "After this fiasco, are the humans prepared to bargain?" he whistled.

I didn't bother to answer. How he knew what we had been doing puzzled me for a moment. No Martian, peritic or of any other cult, had ever deigned to learn so primitive a language as Universal Terran. Then I remembered he'd seen the whole operation in the screen; these babies were much more than normally intelligent.

"We're worse off than before," Scott was worrying. "The radiation from the lifeboat has increased the shell's acceleration to approximately nine and one-tenth gyros. It won't be long now. Hear that rumbling? The Sunstroke wasn't built to stand up under such strain."

I listened; the strange creaking noise underfoot had been growing in intensity. Sweating, I started for the water myself. Then I stopped.

"What is it?" the captain whispered. "Idea?"

"Sorta kinda. I was just thinking what water means to a Martian, a highly civilized one like Didangul. It represents survival in essence. Water is one of the triple images in the Martian noun for life. It has the connotation of the ultimate in luxury, the reward of the rich, the reason for striving for worldly success. An aristocratic Martian scientist will consider any investigation but the question of the irrigation of their desert lands as demeaning beyond all conception. I was wondering--"

"But you said they weren't thirsty enough!"

"Oh, Didangul isn't thirsty, all right. But water is something more than a physical need. It's an emotional, intellectual requirement. Especially water in their neighborhood that they aren't using. I wonder how much of a need it is! It was enough to make them dehydrate fifteen thousand living humans merely to get at the water imprisoned in their bodies. I'm going to try something."

Carelessly, I walked to the chart table and poured myself a drink. I smacked my lips after I had finished and sighed happily. Then I strolled back to the enormous Martian, sloshing the water in the carafe. I held it up to him silently.

He shuddered and tried to straighten. Then painfully, almost pitifully, he strained both claws against the tight threads in the direction of the water bottle. The well-tended, pointed nails scraped horribly against the glass.

"Very fine water," I whistled. "Very wet. Moist. Very, very wet. Nice water to feel fine against your skin, Didangul. Cool and wet water to slide happily down your throat. You can have it, Didangul, to splash around in, to drink, to give you moist and lovely pleasure. What must we do to avert the explosion?"

His great green tail attempted to curl back upon his head. He opened his long jaws, closed them again. His eyes were fixed fiercely, unwinkingly upon the container I held just out of his reach.

He whistled a few bars, and I leaned forward intently. Just a meaningless babble of yearning--no recognizable words.

Wisnowski came in and stopped near the door as he grasped the scene. He was still wearing part of a spacesuit.

I shook the carafe again, letting the water splash about inside. "Nice wet water for you, all moist and damp for you. How do we stop the shell?"

Another uncommunicative whistle, another convulsive wriggle. Didangul seemed to want that water more than I've ever seen any living thing want anything. "Only trouble," I said aloud, "is that his psychological block against divulging information which will prevent his escape seems as strong and maybe a little stronger than his desire."

"Lots of humans can be forced to give secondary info when the most brutal torture won't extort a particular secret," Wisnowski said suddenly. "Even a Martian has an unconscious. Try asking him something that doesn't seem so obviously important--ask him what kind of shell it is."

I brought the water bottle up to Didangul's reptilian snout. "Plentiful moisture," I trilled. "Delightful wetness. Just tell us how the shell works, and you will bathe and drink deep. We don't want to know how to evade it--just its nature. Tell us its nature, Didangul, for this swirling water you see and may have. Why does it follow us? Why didn't it follow the lifeboat? All this wetness for you alone."

An awkward whistle. Then a few more, his whole being concentrated on the water bottle. "The shell--gravity--artificial gravitation--no power source, no jets--just artificial, magnified attraction to--to neighboring body of greatest mass." He halted, wheezed, writhed and went on, "--greatest mass moving at variable acceleration as all non-celestial bodies--lifeboat's mass smaller than ship's--let have water--let me--need it--need--"

I translated. "Does it help?"

"Yes!" Captain Scott said emphatically. "Artificially magnified gravitation! Must have been one of their last, desperate spurts of scientific development before the end. All we have to do is get a greater mass out of the ship than remains in it--leave, say, only the personnel, the hull and the radarito--attach our gyros in automatic operation to this greater mass and send it off in a different arc than the ship's. Then, after the spacerip, we radarito a lunar base for help--"

"Excuse me, sir," Wisnowski broke in. "We couldn't possibly weld it all together in time. And if we don't weld, the individual pieces we accumulate will spread out in space as fast as they are pushed through the ports. The drive won't affect the entire mass. It'll only send the individual fragment it's attached to in a different arc."

I remembered the gadget that headquarters had cleared at the Martians' request. The converter--neutronium! "They've been fiddling with it ever since the voyage started, Captain! That's the price--the gadget they were going to give us for their freedom. But it's only one small converter. You'd need a skilled industrial mechanic to convert a sufficient quantity of ship's mass into neutronium--"

The second officer had come up. "With your permission, Captain Scott, I believe I could handle it. I specialized in industrial naval techniques at the academy. Converters are my own potatoes."

"Take over, then. Requisition any of the crew to help as you see fit."

The second officer barged out. I leaned a bit too close to Didangul. He seized the carafe. Captain Scott tore over and ripped it out of his claws.

"We'll need all the mass we can spare, Mr. Butler. That water these lizards have been wallowing in will be going into the converter." He chuckled. "Let them drink soup."

Wisnowski made a wry face as the Martian drooped in a corner. "I feel sort of sorry for the guy. After all the grilling he's been through, the least we could do is let him wet his whistle."

"Ship emergency," the captain was declaring into the communicator panel. "Heads of departments will extend every cooperation to the second officer and see that he has all the men and materials he requires to adequately complete his task.

"All personnel whose work is no longer essential will report to the bridge immediately. The prisoners will be bound carefully and also brought up here. We are facing a spacerip, men. We don't know exactly what its effects will be or whether our hull can withstand it. Our only hope for survival is to get everyone into the bridge, which is in the exact center of the ship; this will provide a maximum of bulkhead armor."

--|--

Three hours later, Cummings called abruptly. "Captain Scott, these beetles are trying to walk away with the grampus and the hundred switches!"

Three weary electricians stood near the quartermaster. "Orders," said one of them laconically, brandishing an electronics wrench.

"Just a moment," the captain hurried over. "We've got to set the best possible course first. Uh--thirty-nine, five-eight, thirty."

"Thirty-nine, five-eight, thirty," Cummings repeated. "On arc, you danged blacksmiths!" He skipped off the control dais as the electricians began tearing the equipment out of the floor and ceiling.

The bridge was getting crowded with everybody from the mess detail, their hands still greasy, to the sleepy dog watch. Jimmie Trokee came in and got the other two tightly bound Martians up against a wall with Didangul.

Rafferty and Goldfarb were howling about the loss of their chess-board. The creaking of the ship was now a definite whine as the bulkheads seemed to vibrate in place. I prayed that the second officer would get the necessary mass into the converters before the ship shook itself apart.

"Mr. Wisnowski," the captain was yelling above the din of irritated mumbling as men shoved against each other. "Mr. Wisnowski, I hope you're keeping a record of this in the rough log."

"Sorry, sir," Wisnowski called. "The rough log just went into the converter. And that's the chart table going out now."

Captain Scott stared after the two men pushing their way out through the crowd and shook his head. "Well, give orders then that the visiscreens are to be left in place. If we live through it, this may be man's only chance to describe a spacerip at short range."

Hmmm, I thought. That was so. I jostled through cursing spacemen and got my face up against the quivering screen. Captain Scott was already there. Together, we watched the huge, uneven mass which filled half the screen grow even larger.

"If that second officer doesn't hurry--" the captain began. "I haven't thanked you, as yet, for your assistance, Mr. Butler. I'll forward a complete report to Terran Army Command if and when we land. A complete report." Then he smiled at me. I didn't like that smile.

A terrific thudding boom from somewhere. A thick, palpitating blob of orange which was the ship's gyrospeed drive appeared on the screen behind the tiny coruscating dot that signified neutronium. It arced away and past the proximity shell. Everyone stopped breathing.

Slowly, very slowly, one oddly outlined edge of the shell turned around. The entire evil contraption seemed to revolve on its axis. Then--I noticed it was growing smaller. It was pursuing the neutronium!

Feet pounded in the corridor outside as the second officer came in with the last of the engine room crew.

"Wish we had enough spacesuits to go around," the captain said restlessly. "Of course, the Navy reinforced the Sunstroke to withstand anything short of direct hit on a vital spot with atomic channels. I'd take this ship into practically anything, even--"

Sound abruptly disappeared in the room. A tremendous orange glow spilled across the screen. It was followed by an expanding cone of the ugliest, deepest, most hopelessly depressing black the mind of man ever shudderingly refused to imagine.

I found my muscles were locked in place. I seemed to have jelled into a creature of no time, no movement, and slow, impossibly tortured thought. Then my body slammed against the screen, whipped away from it.

Sound--horrible screaming sound as if the very universe was shrieking--battered my head with the insane force of a mallet in the hands of a lunatic, as every electron in the ship fought to maintain its identity. I crawled abjectly into unconsciousness with a last, frantic impression of men's bodies rolling off the wrinkled screen. The screen held that fantastically blinding spot of white light where space, ripped apart, was pathetically trying to roll back upon itself. Empty space, never meant to be opened...

"Butler's all right," Wisnowski was yelling. My head was on the hard bump of his knee. The screens were hanging in dripping shards of plastic around the bridge. Men crawled to their feet, groaning. The floor had bellied up into an immense, irregular mound.

"Everyone's okay," Wisnowski said as he helped me to my feet. "Couple of broken bones and maybe some internal injuries, but nothing to cry about. Nobody killed. But the ship--the old man's keening over it. Second officer just came back and reported that not one square inch of the hull is left. The bridge and half the center level are intact--rest of the vessel is breathing vacuum."

"The radarito?"

"Oh, we got the auxiliaries functioning. They're raising a lunar base now. The spacerip would have attracted attention in any case. We're all set. Just a matter of time now, before the rescue party gets here."

I saw to my prisoners. They were dry, unhappy, and a little bruised in their golden bonds. But they were in sound enough condition to be executed as soon as the formalities of trial were over. I was all set. I'd even won the approbation of a jet-happy naval character like Captain Scott.

Only I didn't figure just how much of his approbation I'd won. On his recommendation, Terran Army Command revoked my discharge when we reached Earth. Yeah--revoked my discharge! They said I'd proved my value in handling the Martians too much for them to let me go until the trial was over. They said Captain Scott's recommendation showed I was far too useful, a man of far too high caliber. Spacewash!

That was five years ago. Didangul and his scaly friends were convicted all right, but they still have fifty-four of their sixty-one points of appeal to be considered. They're fighting for their lives with the best legal talent available--they're not so dumb themselves. I've been trying to figure--if seven points of appeal are turned down in five years, how long before fifty-four--

I had to go and be clever, I tell myself as I cry over the discharge they gave me on Mars hanging on the barracks wall. A discharge? A dud, brother, a dud.