Orphans of the Sky (16 page)

      
"Let him. I'll sign the writing. See that he uses porters from the former muties—but no one goes to the Control Room save those who have been there before." Narby turned and left with an air of dismissal.

      
Hugh watched him leave, then said, "I don't like this, Joe-Jim."

      
"Why not?" Jim asked. "It's reasonable."

      
"Perhaps it is. But—well, damn it! It seems to me, somehow, that truth ought to be free to anyone—any time!" He threw up his hands in a gesture of baffled exasperation.

      
Joe-Jim looked at him oddly. "What a curious idea," said Joe.

      
"Yeah, I know. It's not common sense, but it seems like it ought to be. Oh, well, forget it! That's not what I came to see you about."

      
"What's on your mind, Bud?"

      
"How do we—Look, we finish the Trip; see? We've got the Ship touching a planet, like this—" He brought his two fists together.

      
"Yes. Go on."

      
"Well, when that's done,
how do we get out of the Ship?'

      
The twins looked confused, started to argue between themselves. Finally Joe interrupted his brother. "Wait a bit, Jim. Let's be logical about this. It was intended for us to get out—that implies a door, doesn't it?"

      
"Yeah. Sure."

      
"There's no door up here. It must be down in high-weight."

      
"But it isn't," objected Hugh. "All that country is known. There isn't any door. It has to be up in mutie country."

      
"In that case," Joe continued, "it should be either all the way forward, or all the way aft—otherwise it would not go anywhere. It isn't aft. There's nothing back of Main Drive but solid bulkheads. It would need to be forward."

      
"That's silly," Jim commented. "There's the Control Room and the Captain's veranda. That's all."

      
"Oh, yeah? How about the locked compartments?"

      
"Those aren't doors—not to the Outside anyway. That bulkhead's abaft the Control Room."

      
"No, stupid, but they might lead to doors."

      
"Stupid, eh? Even so, how are you going to open them—answer me that, bright boy?"

      
"What," demanded Hugh,
"are
the 'locked compartments'?"

      
"Don't you know? There are seven doors, spaced around the main shaft in the same bulkhead as the door to the Main Control Room. We've never been able to open them."

      
"Well, maybe that's what we're looking for. Let's go see!"

      
"It's a waste of time," Jim insisted.
 

      
But they went.
 

      
Bobo was taken along to try his monstrous strength on the doors. But even his knotted swollen muscles could not budge the levers which appeared to be intended to actuate the doors. "Well?" Jim sneered to his brother. "You see?"

      
Joe shrugged. "O.K.—you win. Let's go down."

      
"Wait a little," Hugh pleaded. "The second door back—the handle seemed to turn a little. Let's try it again."

      
"I'm afraid it's useless," Jim commented. But Joe said, "Oh, all right, as long as we're here."

      
Bobo tried again, wedging his shoulder under the lever and pushing from his knees. The lever gave suddenly, but the door did not open. "He's broken it," Joe announced.

      
"Yeah," Hugh acknowledged. "I guess that's that." He placed his hand against the door.

      
It swung open easily.

      
The door did not lead to outer space, which was well for the three, for nothing in their experience warned them against the peril of the outer vacuum. Instead a very short and narrow vestibule led them to another door which was just barely ajar. The door stuck on its hinges, but the fact that it was slightly ajar prevented it from binding anywhere else. Perhaps the last man to use it left it so as a precaution against the metal surfaces freezing together—but no one would ever know.

      
Bobo's uncouth strength opened it easily. Another door lay six feet beyond. "I don't understand this," complained Jim, as Bobo strained at the third door. "What's the sense in an endless series of doors?"

      
"Wait and find out," advised his brother.

      
Beyond the third door lay, not another door, but a compartment, a group of compartments, odd ones, small, crowded together and of unusual shapes. Bobo shot on ahead and explored the place, knife in teeth, his ugly body almost graceful in flight. Hugh and Joe-Jim proceeded more slowly, their eyes caught by the strangeness of the place.

      
Bobo returned, killed his momentum skillfully against a bulkhead, took his blade from his teeth, and reported, "No door. No more door any place. Bobo look."

      
"There
has
to be," Hugh insisted, irritated at the dwarf for demolishing his hopes.

      
The moron shrugged. "Bobo look."

      
"We'll look." Hugh and the twins moved off in different directions, splitting the reconnaissance between them.

      
Hugh found no door, but what he did find interested him even more—an impossibility. He was about to shout for Joe-Jim, when he heard his own name called. "Hugh! Come here!"

      
Reluctantly he left his discovery, and sought out the twins. "Come see what I've found," he began. "Never mind," Joe cut him short. "Look at that."

      
Hugh looked. "That" was a Converter. Quite small, but indubitably a Converter. "It doesn't make sense," Jim protested. "An apartment this size doesn't need a Converter. That thing would supply power and light for half the Ship. What do you make of it, Hugh?"

      
Hugh examined it. "I don't know," he admitted, "but if you think this is strange, come see what I've found."

      
"What have you found?"
 

      
"Come see."

      
The twins followed him, and saw a small compartment, one wall of which appeared to be of glass—black, as if the far side were obscured. Facing the wall were two acceleration chairs, side by side. The arms and the lap desks of the chairs were covered with patterns of little shining lights of the same sort as the control lights on the chairs in the Main Control Room.

      
Joe-Jim made no comment at first, save for a low whistle from Jim. He sat down in one of the chairs and started experimenting cautiously with the controls. Hugh sat down beside him. Joe-Jim covered a group of white lights on the right-hand arm of his chair; the lights in the apartment went out. When he lifted his hand the tiny control lights were blue instead of white. Neither Joe-Jim nor Hugh was startled when the lights went out; they had expected it, for the control involved corresponded to similar controls in the Control Room.

      
Joe-Jim fumbled around, trying to find controls which would produce a simulacrum of the heavens on the blank glass before him. There were no such controls and he had no way of knowing that the glass was an actual view port, obscured by the hull of the Ship proper, rather than a view screen.

      
But he did manage to actuate the controls that occupied the corresponding position. These controls were labeled LAUNCHING; Joe-Jim had disregarded the label because he did not understand it. Actuating them produced no very remarkable results, except that a red light blinked rapidly and a transparency below the label came into life. It read: AIR-LOCK OPEN.

      
Which was very lucky for Joe-Jim, Hugh, and Bobo. Had they closed the doors behind them and had the little Converter contained even a few grams of mass available for power, they would have found themselves launched suddenly into space, in a Ship's boat unequipped for a trip and whose controls they understood only by analogy with those in the Control Room. Perhaps they could have maneuvered the boat back into its cradle; more likely they would have crashed attempting it.

      
But Hugh and Joe-Jim were not yet aware that the "apartment" they had entered was a spacecraft; the idea of a Ship's boat was still foreign to them.

      
"Turn on the lights," Hugh requested. Joe-Jim did so.

      
"Well?" Hugh went on. "What do you make of it?"

      
"It seems pretty obvious," answered Jim. "This is another Control Room. We didn't guess it was here because we couldn't open the door."

      
"That doesn't make sense," Joe objected. "Why should there be two Control Rooms for one Ship?"

      
"Why should a man have two heads?" his brother reasoned. "From my point of view, you are obviously a supernumerary."

      
"It's not the same thing; we were born that way. But this didn't just happen—the Ship was
built."

      
"So what?" Jim argued. "We carry two knives, don't we? And we weren't born with 'em. It's a good idea to have a spare."

      
"But you can't control the Ship from here," Joe protested. "You can't
see
anything from here. If you wanted a second set of controls, the place to put them would be the Captain's veranda, where you can see the stars."

      
"How about that?" Jim asked, indicating the wall of glass.

      
"Use your head," his brother advised. "It faces the wrong direction. It looks into the Ship, not out. And it's not an arrangement like the Control Room; there isn't any way to mirror the stars on it."

      
"Maybe we haven't located the controls for it."

      
"Even so, you've forgotten something. How about that little Converter?"

      
"What about it?"

      
"It must have some significance. It's not here by accident. I'll bet you that these controls have something to do with that Converter."

      
"Why?"

      
"Why not? Why are they here together if there isn't some connection?"

      
Hugh broke his puzzled silence. Everything the twins had said seemed to make sense, even the contradictions. It was all very confusing. But the Converter, the little Converter— "Say, look," he burst out.

      
"Look at what?"

      
"Do you suppose— Do you think that maybe this part of the Ship could
move?"

      
"Naturally. The whole Ship moves."

      
"No," said Hugh, "no, no. I don't mean that at all. Suppose it moved by
itself.
These controls and the little Converter—suppose it could
move
right away from the Ship."

      
"That's pretty fantastic."
 

      
"Maybe so—but if it's true,
this is the way out."
 

      
"Huh?" said Joe. "Nonsense. No door to the Outside here either."
 

      
"But there would be if this apartment were moved

away from the Ship—the way we came in!"

      
The two heads snapped simultaneously toward him as if jerked by the same string. Then they looked at each other and fell to arguing. Joe-Jim repeated his experiment with the controls. "See?" Joe pointed out. " 'Launching.' It means to start something, to push something away."

      
"Then why doesn't it?"

      
" 'Air-Lock Open.' The doors we came through—it has to be that. Everything else is closed."

      
"Let's try it."
 

      
"We would have to start the Converter first."
 

      
"O.K."
 

      
"Not so fast. Get out, and maybe you can't come back. We'd starve."
 

      
"Hm-m-m—we'll wait a while."
 

      
Hugh listened to the discussion while snooping around the control panels, trying to figure them out. There was a stowage space under the lap desk of his chair; he fished into it, encountered something, and hauled it out. "See what I've found!"

      
"What is it?" asked Joe. "Oh—a book. Lot of them back in the room next to the Converter." "Let's see it," said Jim.

      
But Hugh had opened it himself. " 'Log, Starship
Vanguard,' "
he spelled out, " '2 June, 2172. Cruising as before—' "

      
"What!" yelled Joe. "Let me see that!"

      
" '3 June. Cruising as before. 4 June. Cruising as before. Captain's mast for rewards and punishments held at 1300. See Administration Log. 5 June. Cruising as before—' "

      
"Gimme that!"

      
"Wait!" said Hugh. "'6 June. Mutiny broke out at 0431. The watch became aware of it by visiplate. Huff, Metalsmith Ordinary, screened the control station and called on the watch to surrender, designating himself as "Captain." The officer of the watch ordered him to consider himself under arrest and signaled the Captain's cabin. No answer.

      
" '0435. Communications failed. The officer of the watch dispatched a party of three to notify the Captain, turn out the chief proctor, and assist in the arrest of Huff.