The Saboteur
Original Science Fiction Stories – July 1956
(1956)*
Randall Garrett
illustrated by EMSH

One definition of a psionic machine might be: a machine that shouldn't work, but does. Fine. But what do you do when you're depending upon this machine, and it suddenly becomes a machine that should work, but doesn't?

-

	Nearly four thousand million miles from Sol, floating powerless in the vacuum of space, hung the winged, needle-pointed body of the Skyhopper. It had been there for six days, solitary and unmoving against the sparkling backdrop of stars. Far astern, a single star, brighter than the rest, glittered in the blackness.

	Inside, Captain Chester Bell chewed at his knuckles and glared at the great green tube of the Remshaw Drive Unit. He was a big man, six-two and barrel-built, like Bashan's Bull. His face was too broad and chunky to be called handsome, and the scowl that pulled the heavy brows down over his brown eyes made him look more ferocious than he really was.

	"Penson," he said, without looking around at the man behind him, "are you sure you've tested everything?"
 
	The smaller man at his back shrugged. "I've done everything I know how. I'll swear that thing is in perfect working order. Of course, if Remshaw were here..." He let his voice trail off. Remshaw had designed the Unit, and if anyone had ever known why it worked—not how—it had been Remshaw. And Remshaw was dead.

	Captain Bell dropped his hand from his mouth and looked unseeing at the knuckles he had been chewing. "Lilli said it would happen," he said softly.

	"Sir?" said Penson.

	"Never mind." Bell swung around and looked at the electronicist. "Give it another going over—a complete check; I want you to be twice as positive. I'll be in the control room when you've finished."

	He turned and walked out of the drive room.

-

	Penson took a deep breath and exhaled through relaxed lips, making a sound like a muffled outboard engine. "Damn!" he said. Then, after a pause: "I suppose it's about all there is to do."

	A third man was leaning against the metal-encased atomic generator several feet away. He had said nothing while the captain was in the drive room; now that Bell was gone, a sardonic smile moved across his face. " 'Lilli said it would happen'." he quoted.

	Penson was busy checking his instruments. He looked up, grinning. "Wha'd you say, Harry?"

	The lean, dark-haired man pushed himself away from the generator. "Boy, you're a good fellow, but you just don't listen. 'Lilli said it would happen'. That's what the Skipper said. And I'll bet you my next year's pay against what you have in your pocket that that's what's bothering him."

	Penson's face darkened. "Lieutenant Nelder, if you meant that as a crack against Captain Bell or his wife, I'll thank you to keep your mouth shut."

	Harry Nelder's face lost its grin, but the sardonicism still lit his eyes. "I'm sorry, sir; you know I didn't mean it that way."

	Penson went back to his work. "You're a woman-hater, Harry," he said, without looking up. "A dyed-in-the-wool misogynist."

	Nelder's grin came back, but he said nothing to Lieutenant Commander Penson.

	"And no amount of woman-hating," Penson went on, "is going to get us out of a jam like this. We may have to depend on Commander Brumaker."

	Nelder nodded; this time both the grin and the glint it his eyes were gone.

-

	Four men aboard a ship—a ship that shouldn't have worked, but did, and should have worked, but didn't. It shouldn't have worked because psionics can't be explained by physics. Any physicist can tell you that you can't go from here to there instantaneously.

	But the human mind is capable of incredible impossibilities. Harnessed and controlled by the mind, common matter and energy can be forced into impossible configurations, made to do impossible things.

	Forced? Perhaps that's not the right word. Induced? That's a little closer. No human being can force a lion to sit up on a chair, open his mouth, and keep it open while a hand or a head is stuck in it. But the lion can be induced to do so. Fear plays a part, perhaps; but, nevertheless, it can't be done without the co-operation of the lion.

	Matter and energy work the same way for the human mind.

	And thus, the psionic machine. The human mind, plus-the proper electromagnetic equipment, plus—something else?—and you have the miracle.

	That had been the essence of Remshaw's genius. Nervous, enigmatic Edmond Remshaw, the quiet egotist who couldn't make a single one of his machines work, but who had a genius for picking men who could.

	Dowsing rods? Remshaw could pick his dowser and then build a machine that would dowse for that one man—and him alone. Other fantastic gadgets, ditto.

	The Remshaw Space Drive had been his crowning glory. A teleportation machine which, he had claimed, could be mass produced and attuned to the mind of the men who piloted a spacecraft. And thus, after half a century of interplanetary space travel, Man at last had the interstellar drive.

	The first one had been attuned to the mind of Captain Chester Bell, United States Navy, Space Division.

-

	Four men aboard a ship. All of them were worried, and one of them was shocked.

	Captain Bell sat at the controls of the first interstellar ship—the Skyhopper—his control helmet on his head, and stared at the star-studded blackness beyond. Six days. Six days, and nothing had happened. He thought back. What had happened after that first jump? What had happened before it?

	The first extra-solar jump had been aimed for...

-

	"... for Alpha Centauri, naturally. It's the closest, and it's damned near become traditional," said Captain Bell.

	The three other members of the crew (grinned at him there in the briefing room. They'd all known where they'd be going, but they'd had to wait until the top Naval brass had come to their ponderous decision.

	Bell grinned back at the three men before him: Lieutenant Harold Nelder, navigator; Lieutenant Commander James Penson, electronicist and communications officer; " Commander Daniel Brumaker, mathematician and second-in-command. The four of them had been together since the first test of Remshaw's Drive, the first time that Chester Bell had put on the control helmet, looked at Mars, and thought: There! And. with no time lag, no sense of motion, no sensation whatsoever, the ship found itself near the orbit of Phobos. For eight months, the Skyhopper had flashed back and forth across the limits of the Solar System, getting the bugs out of both the electronic part—the huge Remshaw Tube—and the psionic part—the mind of Captain Chester Bell.

	And now they were ready for the Big Jump!

-

	Harry Nelder said solemnly: "Fortunately, I have' the course carefully plotted, having anticipated that it would be one of the nearby stars." He stood up "If m'lord Captain would permit?"

	"You may demonstrate, Sir Harry," Bell said.

	Nelder walked up to the blackboard, his lean, olive-tan face perfectly straight—which was, in itself, suspicious.

	He picked up a piece of chalk and made a dot in the exact center of the board. "Sol," he said smoothly. Then he began to make other dots around it. "Sirius, Altair Goombridge 1830, 61 Cygni, Procyon, Lacaille 9352, Barnard's Star ..." By this time everyone was laughing since the dots were being placed in a haphazard way around the central dot; Nelder was paying no attention to the actual distribution of the stars in Sol's neighborhood. "... Proxima Centauri, Alpha Centauri, and ..." He placed a final, decisive dot. "... S Doradus."

	They, all laughed again; S Doradus is eighty thousand light years from Sol.

	"Now obviously," Nelder continued, without changing his expression, "the straightest line between two points is a short distance. Since we only want to travel a short distance, we must use the straightest line." He drew a line from Sol to Alpha Centauri. "After much calculation, we discover that this is it. As a matter of fact that line is so straight that the distance is so short that we can go from here to there instantaneously, I thank you." He bowed and sat down.

-

	Bell was laughing so hard that it took him a full minute to regain control of his voice. Finally, he said: "I'm sure we all sympathize our colleague. He feels that we have no need of a navigator to get us to our destination—which, of course, is perfectly true."

	Penson stood tm. "He's like the Filalooloo Bird. He doesn't know where we're going, but he can tell where we've been."

	There was another burst of laughter, with Nelder's the loudest of all.

	Penson's remark was close if not absolutely accurate. The navigator's job was to check the stellar configurations after the space-hop, in order to determine the new position of the ship.

	"Well, after telling you something you all knew," Bell continued. "I'll just make a few closing remarks.

	"We are not—repeat: not—to land on any planet of the Centauri system. We're to go, make a survey, and return. No funny business.

	"Penson will send a tight-beam message to Earth in order to time the pickup of the message four years from now. That will help us in determining the exact distance from here to Alpha."

	"In case anything happens to me, Brumaker will pilot the ship."

-

	No one said anything, but they were all thinking the same thing. Presumably, the Remshaw Tube had been designed to respond to Dan Brumaker's mind, too. They could all hear the ghostly voice of Remshaw saying: "Bell and Brumaker are a lot alike topside. If you can't pilot the shop, Bell—that is, if you're killed or knocked out—Dan can take over."

	But it hadn't worked that way. Brumaker's accuracy was off; every time Bell had let him take over, the space-hops were erratic. Dan Brumaker would often undershoot the target by a million miles or so, or overshoot it or come out way off to one side. Every time, Bell had had to take over, in order to get the ship close enough to set her down on her rockets.

	Still, it had to be Commander Brumaker or nobody. No one else could even get a flicker out of the Remshaw Tube. The Navy wanted desperately to find out why, but—Remshaw was dead. Shortly after the first trials of the Skyhopper, the screaming, rending smash of an automobile accident had caved in that lofty-browed skull crushing the brilliant, enigmatic brain within.

	To break the awkward silence, Bell said: "That's all boys. Preparation begins tomorrow. Anybody want coffee?"

-

	They all went down to the Ship's Store and pulled up chairs around a table. Nelder went to the counter, got four cups of coffee, and distributed them around the table. He sat down and glanced at Brumaker.

	The Commander was a heavy-set man; quiet, pleasant, and a fine mathematician. He didn't have the leadership, the hard, driving power of Chester Bell; but he was somehow friendlier and more genial than the Captain.

	"How's Lilli, Chet?" he asked quietly.

	Bell frowned. "Upset," he answered. "She doesn't want me to go; she says it's dangerous out there."

	Penson smiled a little. "Women seem to be that way. You've been in the Navy for—how many years? Twelve?—and all that time, you've been gallivanting all over the Solar System in nuclear powered ships. She accepted that because it was old hat; but now that you're trying something new, she doesn't like it."

	Bell's eyes hardened. "She doesn't like it, no; but she knows I'll come through. Lilli's no weakling."

	Penson said nothing; he looked down at his coffee.

	Bell was the only one of the Skyhopper's crew who was married, but the other three knew Lilli; the Captain had acted as host to a good many get-togethers with his crew. The others lived in the Bachelor Officer's Quarters—small, compact rooms that were fine for living, but not much good for bull sessions or parties.

	They all knew Lilli, a dark-haired, striking woman, with grey-green eyes, high cheekbones, and a wide, generous mouth. And they all liked her—even cynical, misogynistic Harry Nelder. She liked them, too; she was friendly, intelligent, and knew what the men were doing. She could speculate on the potentialities of the Remshaw Drive along with the rest of them.

-

	Not that she approved of it; far from it. The idea of men going to the stars seemed to be vaguely frightening to her, and Remshaw himself had seemed to upset her equilibrium, somehow. Oddly enough, she had cried a little at the news of his death.

	But there was only one man in her life: big, hard-eyed powerful Chester Bell. She not only loved him, she worshiped him. Bell knew it, and worshiped her, too, in his own way.

	Possibly her coolness toward Remshaw had been his detached, analytical way of looking at her. He had an uncanny ability to detect psionic tendencies in others, although he had none himself—unless it was that very ability. But every time Lilli had exercised her "woman's intuition," he had eyed her coolly and nodded a little. She had prescience; she could see into the future, Remshaw claimed. He had been trying to get her to work with him on a machine that would do the job properly, but it was no dice with Lilli. A woman—especially a woman like Lilli—doesn't like to be looked on as a piece of a psionic machine; she wants to be recognized as a woman.

	Nevertheless, everyone—with the possible exception of Harry Nelder—had a healthy respect for Lilli's hunches.

-

	The Skyhopper had blasted off from Earth the next day. That was the way it had to work; nuclear powered rockets to get clear of the atmosphere, and then the Remshaw Drive to reach their destination. The drive simply wouldn't work in an atmosphere.

	"I think there's a good, healthy reason for that," Remshaw had said. "I think it's the reason why teleportation is rare of Earth. Imagine what would happen if that ship just suddenly vanished from the field. It would leave a vacuum behind—a vacuum that would collapse with a hell of a clap of thunder and a hell of a Shockwave.

	'But, even worse, what would happen if it tried to materialize there? There have been a lot of stories written about how catastrophic it would be suddenly to materialize underground, but most of those writers never seemed to understand that air is. a substance, too. Air has weight, mass, inertia, volume; it can't get out of the way; it has no previous warning. And I think the human mind knows that, and knows enough not to pull tricks like that. There's an automatic block against it."

	So the Skyhopper had climbed heavenward on her searing, white hot jets until she reached the hard vacuum of space.

	Once outside, the rockets were cut off. Captain Bell had put on the control helmet, looked at the bright, hard point of light that was the Alpha Centauri system, and thought: There!

	And, seemingly, nothing had happened. Always before, when he had looked at a target and thought that driving thought, the planet had loomed large and bright before him—seeming to appear out of nowhere, as if it had been the target that moved, and not the ship.

	But Alpha Centauri remained a shining pinpoint in the blackness ahead.

-

	It soon became obvious that the ship had moved. Harry Nelder reported that the sun was far behind them, over three and a half billion miles behind. But a little jump like that means nothing in interstellar space; their target was, relatively speaking, no nearer than before.

	Captain Chester Bell had tried again and again, but with no results. The tube refused to even flicker. It wasn't until the third day that someone suggested they try to get back to Sol; and it wasn't until the fourth day that Captain Bell had been willing to try it. But that hadn't worked, either; the Remshaw Tube just sat there glowing greenly and smugly Penson took the drive apart and put it together again. He replaced the main tube with the spare. He checked and re-checked the circuits. There was nothing wrong with the Remshaw Drive Unit—except that it didn't work.

-

	By the time the sixth day rolled around, the tension within the ship was beginning to be almost palpably real.

	Bell did some rough figuring in his head. With the nuclear drive, they could make eight gravities acceleration for ten hours. Final velocity: around seven hundred thousand miles per hour, if they drove for five hours and used the remaining half of the fuel to decelerate as they approached Earth. At that velocity, it would take better than nine months to get back to Earth.

	There was food aboard for two weeks. On quarter rations, that could be extended to two months. One man, on quarter rations, might be able to make it; four men never would.

	Bell could feel the tenseness rise within him as the cold mathematical intractability of the situation became clear in his mind.

-

	The intercom clicked then: "I've checked it again," came Penson's voice. It seemed both weary and apprehensive. "I'm ready to try any time you are."

	"Check," said Bell. He adjusted the control helmet carefully and—There!

	Nothing happened.

	"Gyros," said Bell. "One-eighty degrees. Turn her over." 

	"Check."

	The heavy gyroscopes began to spin, and slowly the ship turned over pointing her nose toward the sun.

	Captain Bell looked at the brilliant, glowing star.

	There!

	The Skyhopper floated serenely in space, nearly four thousand million miles from Sol. Stubbornly, but quietly she refused to move.

	Slowly, Bell pulled off the control helmet. He sat there for a long time, holding the silver and black helmet in his hands, looking, without seeing, at the traceries of metallic silver in the black plastic.

	"Chet."

	Bell blinked as he heard his name, and realized that Commander Brumaker had called his name at least twice.

	"Oh. Yeah, Dan; what is it?"

	"What are we going to do?" Brumaker asked softly. "We can't just stay out here forever."

	Bell carefully put the helmet on the 'control console. Then he looked up at Dan Brumaker. "I'm not sure," he said, his voice strained. "There's something wrong. But what?" There was another pause, then, decisively he punched a finger on the intercom button. "Nelder! Penson! Come on up to the control room!"

-

	Nelder and Penson had been watching the green glow of the Remshaw Tube, that big, intricate four-foot vacuum tube was the sole indication of a space-hop. If you looked to one side of it so that the greenish light hit the rods instead of the cones of the retina, a definite flicker could be seen at the instant of the jump. Both men had held their breath for nearly a minute, watching, hoping.

	Then Penson exhaled slowly. "No dice."

	"Yea-a-a-ah," Nelder said letting out his breath as he spoke. "We're stuck."

	Neither of them said anything more for a few minutes their eyes still hopefully on the tube.

	Then came Bell's voice. "Nelder! Penson! Come on up to the control room!"

	They looked at each other then silently headed up toward the bridge.

	Bell was standing in the middle of the transparent-domed control compartment, looking out at the far-distant brightness of the sun. As the two men entered, he turned slowly around.

	"Do either of you have any suggestions? We've worked at this thing for six days, and so far, it looks hopeless. We can't beam a message home; and even if we could, there's not another ship like this one in existence. Do any of you have any suggestions?"

-

	Nelder opened his mouth to say something, closed it again. Then, as though having finally made up his mind, said: "How about letting Commander Brumaker try it?"

	Bell looked surprised, and the other three could almost read what was going on in his mind; Brumaker? But if I can't do it, how could he? Then the captain nodded.

	"Very well. I should have tried it before." 

	"No reason to," Brumaker said. "If you can't handle this spook buggy, I sure as hell can't."

	"Try it anyway," said Bell. He looked at Penson. "Is the Remshaw Unit still activated?"

	Penson nodded. "You gave no orders to cut it."

	Brumaker looked at Bell, then heaved himself out of his own seat and walked over to the captain's chair.

	No one said a word as he sat down and picked up the control helmet. He stared at it for a few seconds, then adjusted it to his head.

	"Ready?" he asked.

	"Ready," said Bell.

	Brumaker's eyes slitted in concentration.

	And the sun vanished.

-

	Nelder was the first to react, he turned and walked briskly into the navigation dome, while the others were still wondering what had happened. When they finally followed him, he was punching a last operator into the calculator.

	"What is it Harry?" Captain Bell asked.

	The navigation dome faced the rear of the ship. Nelder grinned a little and pointed a finger straight back along the hull, past the rocket tubes. "Recognize that constellation Captain?"

	"It's The Centaur—and look how bright Alpha is!"

	Nelder shook his head. "That's not Alpha Centauri; that's Sol. A few minutes ago, we were between Alpha and Sol; now Sol is between Alpha and us. I've just checked the distance. We've jumped clear across the Solar System; we're now thirty-nine point five AU—on the other side of the Sun!"

	"I sort of overshot the mark again," said Brumaker ruefully.

	Bell made up his mind. "Come on back in the control room, Brumaker. Nelder, you stay here and keep checking, we're going to try this again."

	They did try it again. And again. And again.

	And the results were invariably the same. No matter which direction they went, no matter where they aimed for the ship invariably ended up a little over three and a half billion miles from Sol.

	"Why?" Bell asked. "Why? Is there a shell around the Solar System, or something?"

	"We're at the very limits of the System," Penson pointed out. "We're somewhere near the orbit of Pluto; no one has ever been out this far before."

	Bell rubbed the back of his hand over his brow. "We're not getting anywhere," he said, "but at least we've made some small amount of progress. We can at least move this bucket. What do you say we all get some sleep and try to tackle it in the morning when we're fresh?"

-

	In spite of its size, the Skyhopper was still cramped for four men. The bunkroom itself was eight feet long by eight feet wide by eight feet high. In this little cube were four bunks two on each side, one above the other. Penson and Nelder had the uppers, and Brumaker and Bell the lowers.

	Big, easygoing Brumaker climbed into his bunk and was asleep within minutes. Bell tried to sleep, but after half an hour of tossing, he climbed out of bed and headed for the bridge. Lying awake' in his bunk, Nelder could hear the footsteps of the captain moving up the metal corridors and the opening and closing of the hatch that led to the bridge.

	"Penson?" he called softly.

	"Yeah, Harry?"

	"Something's bothering me."

	"What?"

	Nelder propped himself up on one elbow and looked at the Lieutenant commander in the dim light. "The distance. Why such an arbitrary distance? Why three billion, six hundred and seventy million miles?"

-

	Penson shrugged. "Limits of the Solar System. That's the radius of Pluto's orbit isn't it?"

	"Not exactly," Nelder said. "And that's what gets me. That figure is the mean distance of Pluto from the sun. But Pluto has a hell of an eccentric orbit. Back in 1989, it was at perhelion, and was closer to the sun than Neptune; in fact, it isn't much farther away now. In 2237, it'll be at aphelion, and a lot farther away from Sol than we are. Why consider this the limit of the System?"

	"I'll bite. Why?"

	Nelder lay back again. "I don't know yet; I've got to think about it."

	"I hope you come up with something, Harry. I hope somebody—anybody—comes up with something. Another week of this, and we'll all be in damned bad shape; we'll wish we had a psychiatrist along."

	"Yeah," said Nelder. "Yeah. Maybe that's just what we need."

	Penson said nothing. Fifteen minutes later, he was breathing heavily and evenly.

	Softly, Harry Nelder dropped to the floor from his bunk and padded out into the corridor in his bare feet. He went up to the bridge.

-

	Bell was sitting in the control seat, looking out at the burning spark of Sol in the distance. When the hatch opened he turned and looked at Nelder.

	"Hello, Harry. Couldn't you sleep either?"

	"Not a wink, Skipper."

	"Cigaret?" Bell held out a pack. "Go ahead; it won't strain the conditioners too much."

	Nelder took a cigaret and fired it up. There was a long silence, then: "Skipper?"

	"Yeah, Harry?"

	"Lilli said something would go wrong, didn't she?"

	After a long minute, Bell nodded his big head slowly. "Yeah, Harry she did. She said it was dangerous to leave the Solar System; she said we'd never get back."

	"And you went ahead, anyway?"

	Bell turned savagely. 'What else could I do? Back out? Tell the Navy I wouldn't go because my wife thought it was dangerous? There was no reason to think it was a jinxed ride; there was no way of knowing that there was an invisible wall around Sol that we can't break! What would the Navy think of that?"

	And what would Lilli think? Nelder added mentally.

	Bell turned back to the transparent dome and looked at Sol, so impossibly far away

	"But Lilli said something would happen; she knew."

	'Our Abudah chests' Nelder quoted to himself, 'each containing a patent Hag who comes out and prophesies disasters, with spring complete are strongly recommended.'

	His hand took a firmer grip on the heavy wrench he was holding in the pocket of his robe.

-

	"Penson! Brumaker! Wake up!"

	Jim Penson jerked out of his sleep as he heard Harry Nelder's voice. "What is it?" he asked blurrily.

	Commander Brumaker swung his feet off his bunk. "What's the matter, Harry?"

	"The Skipper," Nelder said "He's hurt himself; come on."

	Brumaker stood up and Penson slid to the deck from his upper bunk. They both followed Nelder on a double-time to the bridge.

	Captain Chester Bell was lying on the deck, his head rear the metal edge of the control panel.

	Brumaker, in spite of his heavy build, got to Bell first. Before moving him he felt of him carefully. Then he looked up. "He's got a knot on the back of his head. How did it happen, Harry?"

	Nelder spread his hands. "I don't know. I was in the navigation room, and I heard him fall; I came out, and there he was."

	Brumaker looked back at the fallen officer. "He must have slipped on the deck and cracked his skull."

	"Cracked it?" Penson said sharply. "Fracture?"

	"Figure of speech," Brumaker said quietly. "I don't think it's busted, but there may be a slight concussion. Let's get him down to the bunk."

	The three men carried the two hundred pound body of their captain down to his bed and put him carefully in it.

	"Whoo!" Penson said. "If we have to carry him again let's shut off the paragravity unit. He's heavy!"

	"That's not too much of a bump on his head," Brumaker said. "He ought to be all right in an hour or so."

	"That puts you in command, Dan," Nelder said quietly.

	"I suppose so," Brumaker said. He rubbed his chin with his hand. "Well, my . first—and probably my last—order as captain is: Let's go get some coffee. Jim, you stay here with the Skipper while Harry and I stir up some Java."

-

	When they came back with the coffee, Penson was looking worried. "Feel his face," he said.

	Brumaker held his coffee in one hand and put the other on Bell's forehead. "Clammy," he said. "Shock, maybe."

	"Or a very bad concussion," Penson countered. "At any rate, he belongs in a hospital."

	"You want to carry him back to Earth piggy-back?" There was no real sarcasm in Brumaker's voice, only a sort of tiredness.

	"You might try getting us back, Dan," Nelder said. "One more try wouldn't hurt anything."

	Brumaker frowned. "I suppose not; we've got to do something. Harry, you stay here with the Skipper. Jim. get down below and warm up the Remshaw Unit; we'll make another stab at it."

	Half an hour later, Commander Brumaker sat down in the control chair and put the helmet on his head. He looked at Sol and formed a mental picture of Earth in front of him.

	There! he thought.

	It was almost a shock to see the great, blue and green and brown globe of Earth looming large and sharp a thousand miles away.

-

	The Skyhopper had barely settled itself to the surface of the Nevada spaceport when Lieutenant Harry Nelder stepped into the control room.

	"Commander Brumaker," he said stiffly, "I'd like to speak to you before we leave the ship, or anyone comes in."

	"It'll be several minutes before the ground cools," Brumaker said. "But why so formal, Harry?"

	"Sir, I wish to place myself under arrest."

	Brumaker blinked. "Arrest? What the hell for?"

	"Striking a superior officer, sir. Maybe mutiny—I don't know."

	Brumaker's eyes narrowed. "Sit down, Lieutenant, and tell me what this is all about. You slugged the Skipper?"

	Nelder sat down. "Yes, sir I did. He's not hurt; I just tapped him gently and then filled him full of sodium amytal from the medical stores."

	"Why, Harry?"

	"So we could get back home. There was no other way."

	"You'd better be a little clearer than that," Brumaker said coldly.

-

	"Well, the first thing that struck me odd was the distance. Limits of the Solar System! Hell, sir, that's a man-made distance. Strictly speaking, there are no limits to the Solar System. Why there are comets which are part of Sol's family that have their aphelion point half a light year away from the sun—but they're still part of the System. As I pointed out to Jim Penson, even Pluto doesn't pay any attention to that phony limit; but people who aren't astronomers tend to think that way—even spacemen. We've never been out that far before, so we usually draw an imaginary line and say: That's the limit.

	"Pluto's the outermost planet—so far as we know; it's mean distance is thirty-nine point five AU. So we tend to think of that as the Edge or something, but it's not.

	"So whatever was stopping us at that point was using purely arbitrary human values. And who could that be but Captain Bell?"

	Brumaker said nothing.

	"Don't you see?" Nelder went on hurriedly. "The Skipper himself was stopping the ship at that point. Why? Because his wife, Lilli, had said something awful would happen if we left the System and the Skipper believed her!

	"So he subconsciously refused to take the ship beyond those limits."

	"That wouldn't have kept him from taking us home again," Brumaker said.

	"He has a block there, too," Nelder said. "If he turned around and went back, he'd be a failure in his wife's eyes—at least, he thinks so. That woman treats him like a god and he doesn't want to break the illusion. He couldn't go back and admit failure. So we were stuck out there while his subconscious had a battle with itself."

-

	Brumaker shook his head. "If that's so, why couldn't I do any better?"

	"That had me stumped for a while, too," Nelder admitted. "But then I remembered something Remshaw once said. 'If you can't pilot the ship, Bell; that 'is if you're killed or knocked out, Dan can take over.'

	"And that's just what he meant! You weren't supposed to control the ship while the Skipper was conscious; he'd throw you off every time, because the Tube was attuned primarily to him. That's why you couldn't do any better than jump us back and forth across the System; that's why you always missed your target. But when he was out cold, you hit Earth perfectly the first time.

	"I had to hit him. There was nothing else I could do."

	Brumaker sat for a long time, looking at his fingernails as though they were actually interesting. At last, he looked up at Nelder and said: "So it was all Lilli's fault?"

	"I think so, sir. That female sabotaged his mind; she put him in a dilemma he couldn't get out of."

	"Did you ever stop to think, Harry, that the accident she foresaw might be that very blow on the head?"

	Nelder's face turned white. "No." The word was almost a whisper.

	"That might have been the right way to handle it, Harry; and then again, maybe it wasn't." He paused. "I'll tell you what I'm going to do Harry. We'll wait until the Skipper comes around again. I won't say a word to anyone until then. When he's awake, you and I will go in and tell him; after that, it's up to him.

	"What do you think, Harry?"

	Lieutenant Nelder nodded slowly. "That's fine, sir. Fine."

	But he wasn't at all sure.

The End