“Here is original en-aitch space force, us little boats. We been on these boats long time. Long, long time. We been patrol since was no sector, eh Syll? When Humans come with us, is only individual Humans. One here, one there. Pom know. But we not integrated with you.
You
is integrated with
us.”
“Bravo!” cried Sylla.
“Hear, hear,” said Svensk gravely.
“But, what—” said Quent.
“The captain means,” Pomeroy told him, “that
he’s
not about to get integrated with the Space Force. None of us are. We do our job. They can stow their sociological programs. Their directives. Channels. Personnel fitness profiles. Rotation and uptraining tours. Pisgah! If this integration trail business goes green, we’ve had it. And—” he poked his finger at Quent—“you are a prime test case, Lieutenant.”
“Even Morgan they try steal,” Imray rumbled angrily.
Quent opened his mouth, closed it.
“We were so confident,” said Svensk. “It did seem ideal, when you turned out to be Admiral Quent’s son. We felt it would be simple to impress you as being, as it were, quite unintegrable.” He sighed. “I may say that your determined optimism has been a positive nightmare.”
“Let me get this straight.” Quent scowled. “You wanted me to yell so hard for reassignment that the program would be shelved?”
“Correct.” Sylla slapped his console. The others nodded.
“What about this flimflam here in Sopwith?”
“Too fancy,” grunted Imray.
“We were getting desperate,” said Pomeroy. “You just wouldn’t discourage. So we thought maybe we could work it the other way, build up a case that would convince the Gal Eq crowd that Humans weren’t ready to, ah—” He looked away. “Well, you figured it.”
“I knew you were out to clobber me,” Quent said grimly. “Only I thought it was my father.”
“It was in no way personal, Quent,” Sylla assured him heartily. “Believe me, we would do the same for anyone,
non?”
“But this is insane!” Quent protested. “How can you? I mean, do you realize my father got me assigned here? He’s sure I’ll come around to his way of thinking and furnish him with political ammunition to use against integration.”
“That rather optimises things, doesn’t it?” Svensk rattled his neck-plates. “Increased familial solidarity is a plus value for primates.”
Quent snorted.
“What were you supposed to be, Mr. Spock? I knew damn well you’re a Gal Tech graduate. You should have taken the course on oedi-pal conflicts. Also the one on ethics,” he added acidly. “Some primates set quite a value on truth.”
“But you’ve got to help us, Lieutenant,” Pomeroy said urgently.
Quent was preoccupied. “How many languages
do
you speak, anyway? There was a Pomeroy who wrote some text—”
“Lieutenant! Look, we’ll all help fix up a tale of woe you can give them—”
“Are you serious?” He looked at them, appalled. “You expect me to falsify my official duty report? Lie about you and the ship?”
“What one little lie?” Imray’s voice sank to the crooning tone he used on Morgan. “Son, you good spacer. Save ship,
vernt?
You say this integration nonsense okay, we finish. You not let Space Force mess up old
Rosy,
son.”
“But goddammit,” Quent exploded. “It’s not just one lie. It’d go on and on—investigations, appeals—my father smirking around with the Humanity Firsters trumpeting every word I said on one side—and the Gal Eq people reaming me from the other. I’d never be free of it. Never. How could I function as a space officer?” He rubbed his head wearily,
“I’m sorry. I’ll say as little as possible, believe me. But I will not put on any act.” He turned to go below.
“So stubborn, the Humans,” Sylla snarled. Quent continued down the ladder.
“Wait, Quent,” said Svensk. “This publicity you dread can’t be escaped, you know. Suppose you say nothing. The facts speak for themselves. Gal Eq will be delirious:
Arch-racist’s Son Leads Non-Human Attack on Human Pirates,
for starters. Prolonged cheers. All-Gal network showing the hero and his en-aitch pals. I daresay they’ll nominate you for the next Amity award. Really, you’re just as well off doing it our way.”
Quent stared at him in horror.
“Oh, no. No.” He began to pound his forehead on the ladder. “It’s not fair.” His voice cracked. “I thought when I got to space they’d forget me. It’s been bad enough being Rathborne Quent Junior, but this—spending the rest of my life as a—a ventriloquist’s dummy for Integration politics. Everywhere I go! Every post, my whole career. How can I be a spacer?”
Imray was shaking his head. “You natural victim social situation, son, looks like. Too bad.” He exhaled noisily, and licked a piece of jam off his fist. “So, is settled. You going help us,
vernt?”
Quent lifted his head. His jaw set.
“No, I told you. That’s out,” he said bleakly. “I didn’t come into the service to play games.” His voice trailed off. “Call me next watch, right? We’re all pretty weary.”
“Sure, sure,” said Imray. “Syll, Svenka, you boys go. We got time think something.”
“Forget it,” Quent told him. “There’s no way out of this one. Caristo!” He sighed, hauling down the shaft. “I wish I could just disappear.”
He stopped dead and looked up thoughtfully.
“Ah-ah,” he said.
He climbed back up and retrieved the lasers. The last thing he remembered was leaning back on his hammock fully dressed with a laser in his hand.
Gal newsmen yelled at him, crowds jostled him. The bridge of the
Adas-tra
swarmed with kavrots. Quent came groggily awake, sure that he had heard a lock open. But the ship seemed to be normal. He sank back and dreamed that he was wearing a clangorous glass uniform. When the cocoon grabbed at him Quent struggled to consciousness. The
Rosenkrantz
was going into full star drive.
He plunged into the shaft and found himself nose to nose with an unknown girl.
“Gah!”
“Hello, Lieutenant,” she said. “Want some breakfast?”
She was a dark girl in silver coveralls.
“Who—who’re you?”
Tm Campbell, your new log off.” She smiled.
“Drakes.” He hurled himself headlong for the bridge. “Where are they? What’s happened?”
“Hi, there,” said Pomeroy. The others looked up from their consoles. They seemed to be drinking coffee.
“Where are we headed? Where did she come from?”
“Sit, son,” said Imray genially.
The dark girl bobbed up to place a bulb of coffee on his console.
“Is she a Drake?”
“Good heavens, no,” she laughed. Quent blinked; the conformation under the coverall was interesting.
“I’m a duck.” She vanished.
Dazedly Quent gulped some coffee.
“How long was I asleep? Farbase—they’ve come and gone, right?”
“Not likely.” Pomeroy snorted. “They won’t get to Sopwith for thirty hours yet.”
“But who’s watching the Drakes?”
“The
Rosenkrantz,
who else?” said Sylla, deadpan.
“What? Captain Imray, what is going on?”
Imray waved his paw.
“Problem finish, son.” He belched comfortably. “We fix, eh, boys?”
“Oh, God.” Quent squinted at them. He gulped some more coffee. “Mr. Pomeroy, you will explain yourself.”
“Well, you can forget about that newsman and all that,” Pomeroy told him. “When he gets to Sopwith he’ll find the
Rosenkrantz
and he’ll find Miss Appleby all right—but he won’t find you. Nobody‘11 find you.”
“Why not?” Quent glared around nervously.
“Because you are no longer on the
Rosenkrantz,”
said Svensk.
“Brilliant, really, your notion of disappearing. Since we could scarcely remove you from the
Rosenkrantz,
we simply removed the
Rosenkrantz
from you.” He stretched pleasurably. “Solves everything.”
“What have you done now?”
“Observe!” Sylla pointed to the sealed log certificates.
Quent pulled himself over, eyes wary.
“P-B 640T J-B,” he read. “But’s that’s wrong. That’s not—”
“Peebee
Jasper Banks,
that is.” Pomeroy chuckled. “We’re the
Jasper Banks
now, see?”
“What?” Quent pawed at the case. “Those are official seals. You—”
“Not to worry, it’s just temporary.
Jasper
owed us a couple of favors. They were glad to oblige. Fact, they wanted to head back to Central anyway. So we just traded registry and log officers and gave them our mail. They took over the Drakes, see?”
“But that’s—”
“Beautiful.” Pomeroy nodded.
“Gal News
can pull the
Jasper
apart, they never heard of you. No one ever actually saw you on
Rosy,
did they? He’ll figure it’s some garble. Has to—there’s Appleby, all as advertised. And the Drakes. He’ll have to be satisfied with that.”
Quent took some more coffee. He felt like a man trying to shake off a bad dream.
“And the beauty part,” Pomeroy went on,
“Jasper’s
an all-Human peebee. That’ll really befuddle them.”
“No integration aspect left,” said Svensk. “Gal Eq will be dashed.”
“It can’t work. It’s—what about Appleby?”
“I hope this one so good cook,” muttered Imray.
“Appleby’s fine—she never heard of you,” Pomeroy assured him. “Morgan let her have these crystals she’s always wanted, see?”
“Uh. But—they’re going back to Central as us? What happens there? Personnel. My father,” Quent yelped.
“Personnel,” Pomeroy scoffed. “They’re dingled up half the time. They won’t get their circuits flushed till we’ve swapped back.”
“But my father—when do we trade back?”
“When we intersect,
bien sure,”
said Sylla.
“When’s that? Hold it. Wasn’t the
Jasper
headed on some job way out?”
“That’s right,” said Pomeroy. “The wild sector. Thirteen-zed, they
call it. Wasn’t due to start patrol there for a while but they got this emergency call. So they sent out the
Jasper.
That’s us, now.”
“Quite remote and unexplored, really,” said Svensk, stretching. “Challenging.”
“New patrol good job,” Imray grunted. “You want be spacer, son,
vernt?
Nobody mess your career out there.” He scratched his broad chest contentedly. “Integration program? Pfoo! Never catch.”
“You mean we start patrolling out there? And they take our old one. When do we trade back with
Jasper?”
“Assuming our circuit is, say, twice the length of theirs,” Svensk ruminated, “and assuming they keep near schedule, the perinode should precess around—”
“Spare me.”
Quent’s big jaw began to grind and he breathed forcefully. The reaction pushed him slowly out of his console. He hooked one leg around his seat back and hung over them scowling.
“My career,” he said tensely. “Your unspeakable solicitude… Sixty days on my first duty, I find myself involved in an actionable conspiracy. First officer of a vessel under fraudulent certification, on an illegal course in defiance of orders—without one clobbing prayer of ever getting back into anything resembling legal status. My career. Who’d believe me? What happens when—gentlemen, did it never cross your conniving minds that this is a general courts offense?” He reached out and laid his hand on the emergency starcall cradled between him and Imray. “My only sane course is to bring this to a halt right now—regardless.”
He yanked the caller from its cradle.
They gaped at him. Sylla’s ears folded back.
“Lieutenant, no,” said Pomeroy.
Quent fingered the starcall. His solemn face was corded.
“What’s the nature of this emergency, Mr. Pomeroy?”
“Some en-aitch trouble.” Pomeroy spread his hands. “Signal split before they got much. They gave the
Jasper
some stuff—”
“Three argon cylinders, one case of mudbinds, one pan-venom kit,” said Miss Campbell from the shaftway. “And an incubator.”
She placed a breakfast server on Quent’s console and departed.
“You figure it, sir,” Pomeroy chuckled hopefully.
Quent’s face did not soften. He tapped a square nail on the starcall, slowly, desperately. Nobody moved. Sylla’s leg muscles bunched; Quent’s free hand drifted to the laser. There was a faint slithering sound. Quent’s jaw jerked around to Svensk.
The big saurian’s fingers came away from his vest and he stretched ostentatiously, jogging the computer.
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!
Ten thousand fleets—
Quent slapped it silent with the laser. He lifted the starcall.
“No, son, no,” Imray protested.
Quent drew a deep breath. For a moment the
Jasper Banks
nee
Rosenkrantz
fled on through the abyss in humming silence. The aroma of bacon drifted through her bridge. Quent’s strained face began to work convulsively.
“Kavrots,”
he muttered.
He let out an inarticulate howl.
Sylla’s reflexes carried him into the bow grips and Pomeroy dived under his board. They goggled at Quent. He was making a wild whooping noise which they could not at first identify.
Then Pomeroy crawled out, grinning, and Imray’s shoulders started to quake.
Quent roared on. His face was astounded, like a man who hasn’t heard himself guffawing wholeheartedly in years. Invisible around him, ghosts of the
Adastra, Crux, Sirian
shriveled and whirled away.
“All right,” he gasped, sobering. He pushed the starcall and the laser back in place and reached for his breakfast.
“Kavrots. So be it. Who’s on watch in this fugnest?”
One night in 1967 or 1968, during the second season of
Star Trek,
Alice Sheldon happened to see an episode. She quickly became a fan and supporter of the show, writing letters to NBC and the sponsors thanking them for its existence (and later, taking them to task for its cancellation). As Tiptree, she wrote to Gene Roddenberry and Leonard Nimoy (praising Nimoy for his depiction of an alien, “the first
real
alien ever”).
Tiptree even decided to try and write for
Star Trek,
and sent a story entitled “The Nowhere People” to Roddenberry on August 28, 1968. It was returned unread on September 20, with a letter stating that the studio could not “read or consider unsolicited literary material.” Tiptree wrote to Fred Pohl, Harry Harrison, and David Gerrold asking for advice on getting the story on the show.