Podkayne of Mars (6 page)

But the floors will not be quite level until we approach Earth, because the inside of the ship had been constructed so that the floors would feel perfectly level when the spin and the boost added up to exactly one standard gravity—or Earth-Normal.

Maybe this isn’t too clear. Well, it wasn’t too clear to me, in school; I didn’t see exactly how it worked out until (later) I had a chance to see the controls used to put spin on the ship and how the centrifugal force was calculated. Just remember that the
Tricorn
—and her sisters, the
Trice
and the
Triad
and the
Tri angulum
and the
Tricolor
are enormous cylinders. The thrust is straight along the main axis; it has to be. Centrifugal force pushes away from the main axis—how else? The two forces add up to make the ship’s “artificial gravity” in passenger country—but, since one force (the boost) is kept constant and the other (the spin) can be varied, there can be only one rate of spin which will add in with the boost to make those floors perfectly level.

For the
Tricorn
the spin that will produce level floors and exactly one Earth gravity in passenger country is 5.42 revolutions per minute—I know because the Captain told me so . . . and I checked his arithmetic and he was right. The floor of our cabin is just over thirty meters from the main axis of the ship, so it all comes out even.

 

 

As soon as they had the floor back under us and had announced the “all clear” I unstrapped me and hurried out. I wanted a quick look at the ship; I didn’t even wait to unpack.

There’s a fortune awaiting the man who invents a really good deodorizer for a spaceship. That’s the one thing you can’t fail to notice.

Oh, they try, I grant them that. The air goes through precipitators each time it is cycled; it is washed, it is perfumed, a precise fraction of ozone is added, and the new oxygen that is put in after the carbon dioxide is distilled out is as pure as a baby’s mind; it has to be, for it is newly released as a byproduct of the photosynthesis of living plants. That air is so pure that it really ought to be voted a medal by the Society for the Suppression of Evil Thoughts.

Besides that, a simply amazing amount of the crew’s time is put into cleaning, polishing, washing, sterilizing—oh, they
try!

But nevertheless, even a new, extra-fare luxury liner like the
Tricorn
simply reeks of human sweat and ancient sin, with undefinable overtones of organic decay and unfortunate accidents and matters best forgotten. Once I was with Daddy when a Martian tomb was being unsealed—and I found out why xenoarchaeologists always have gas masks handy. But a spaceship smells even worse than that tomb.

It does no good to complain to the purser. He’ll listen with professional sympathy and send a crewman around to spray your stateroom with something which (I suspect) merely deadens your nose for a while. But his sympathy is not real, because the poor man simply cannot smell anything wrong himself. He has lived in ships for years; it is literally impossible for him to smell the unmistakable reek of a ship that has been lived in—and, besides, he
knows
that the air is pure; the ship’s instruments show it. None of the professional spacers can smell it.

But the purser and all of them are quite used to having passengers complain about the “unbearable stench”—so they pretend sympathy and go through the motions of correcting the matter.

Not that
I
complained. I was looking forward to having this ship eating out of my hand, and you don’t accomplish that sort of coup by becoming known first thing as a complainer. But other first-timers did, and I certainly understood why—in fact I began to have a glimmer of a doubt about my ambitions to become skipper of an explorer ship.

But—Well, in about two days it seemed to me that they had managed to clean up the ship quite a bit, and shortly thereafter I stopped thinking about it. I began to understand why the ship’s crew can’t smell the things the passengers complain about. Their nervous systems simply cancel out the old familiar stinks—like a cybernetic skywatch canceling out and ignoring any object whose predicted orbit has previously been programmed into the machine.

But the odor is still there. I suspect that it sinks right into polished metal and can never be removed, short of scrapping the ship and melting it down. Thank goodness the human nervous system is endlessly adaptable.

 

 

But my own nervous system didn’t seem too adaptable during that first hasty tour of the
Tricorn;
it is a good thing that I had not eaten much breakfast and had refrained from drinking anything. My stomach did give me a couple of bad moments, but I told it sternly that I was busy—I was very anxious to look over the ship; I simply didn’t have time to cater to the weaknesses to which flesh is heir.

Well, the
Tricorn
is lovely all right—every bit as nice as the travel folders say that she is . . . except for that dreadful ship’s odor. Her ballroom is gorgeous and so big that you can see that the floor curves to match the ship . . . only it is not curved when you walk across it. It is level too—it is the only room in the ship where they jack up the floor to match perfectly with whatever spin is on the ship. There is a lounge with a simulated sky of outer space, or it can be switched to blue sky and fleecy clouds. Some old biddies were already in there, gabbling.

The dining saloon is every bit as fancy, but it seemed hardly big enough—which reminded me of the warning in the travel brochure about first and second tables, so I rushed back to our cabin to urge Uncle Tom to make reservations for us quickly before all the best tables were filled.

He wasn’t there. I took a quick look in all the rooms and didn’t find him—but I found Clark in
my
room, just closing one of my bags!

“What are you doing?” I demanded.

He jumped and then looked perfectly blank. “I was just looking to see if you had any nausea pills,” he said woodenly.

“Well, don’t dig into my things! You know better.” I came up and felt his cheek; he wasn’t feverish. “I don’t have any. But I noticed where the surgeon’s office is. If you are feeling ill, I’ll take you straight there and let him dose you.”

He pulled away. “Aw, I’m all right—now.”

“Clark Fries, you listen to me. If you—” But he wasn’t listening; he slid past me, ducked into his own room and closed the door; I heard the lock click.

I closed the bag he had opened—and noticed something. It was the bag the inspector had been just about to search when Clark had pulled that silly stunt about “happy dust.”

My younger brother never does anything without a reason. Never.

His reasons may be, and often are, inscrutable to others. But if you just dig deeply enough, you will always find that his mind is never a random-choice machine, doing things pointlessly. It is as logical as a calculator—and about as cold.

I now knew why he had made what seemed to be entirely unnecessary trouble for himself at outgoing inspection.

I knew why I had been unexpectedly three kilos over my allowance on the centrifuge.

The only thing I didn’t know was:
What
had he smuggled aboard in my baggage?

And
why?

INTERLUDE

Well,Pod,I am glad to see that you’veresumed
keeping your diary. Not only do I find your girlish viewpoints entertaining but also you sometimes (not often) provide me with useful bits of information.

If I can do anything for you in return, do let me know. Perhaps you would like help in straightening out your grammar? Those incomplete sentences you are so fond of indicate incomplete thinking. You know that, don’t you?

For example, let us consider a purely hypothetical case: a delivery robot with an unbeatable seal. Since the seal is in fact unbeatable, thinking about the seal simply leads to frustration. But a complete analysis of the situation leads one to the obvious fact that any cubical or quasi-cubical object has six sides, and that the seal applies to only one of these six sides.

Pursuing this line of thought one may note that, while the quasi cube may not be moved without cutting its connections, the floor under it may be lowered as much as forty-eight centimeters—if one has all afternoon in which to work.

Were this not a hypothetical case I would now suggest the use of a mirror and light on an extension handle and some around-the-corner tools, plus plenty of patience.

That’s what you lack, Pod—patience.

I hope this may shed some light on the matter of the hypothetical happy dust—and do feel free to come to me with your little problems.

FIVE

Clark kept his stateroom door locked all the time the
first three days we were in the
Tricorn
—I know, because I tried it every time he left the suite.

Then on the fourth day he failed to lock it at a time when it was predictable that he would be gone at least an hour, as he had signed up for a tour of the ship—the parts passengers ordinarily are not allowed in, I mean. I didn’t mind missing it myself, for by then I had worked out my own private “Poddy special” escort service. Nor did I have to worry about Uncle Tom; he wasn’t making the tour, it would have violated his no-exercise rule, but he had acquired new pinochle cronies and he was safely in the smoking room.

Those stateroom door locks are not impossible to pick—not for a girl equipped with a nail file, some bits of this and that, and
free
run of the purser’s office—me, I mean.

But I found I did not have to pick the lock; the catch had not quite caught. I breathed the conventional sigh of relief, as I figured that the happy accident put me at least twenty minutes ahead of schedule.

I shan’t detail the search, but I flatter myself that the Criminal Investigation Bureau could not have done it more logically nor more quickly if limited, as I was, to bare hands and no equipment. It had to be something forbidden by that list they had given us on Deimos—and I had carefully kept and studied my copy. It had to mass slightly over three kilos. It had to bulk so large and be sufficiently fixed in its shape and dimensions that Clark was forced to hide it in baggage—otherwise I am sure he would have concealed it on his person and coldly depended on his youth and “innocence,” plus the chaperonage of Uncle Tom, to breeze him through the outgoing inspection. Otherwise he would never have taken the calculated risk of hiding it in my baggage, since he couldn’t be sure of recovering it without my knowing.

Could he have predicted that I would at once go sightseeing without waiting to unpack? Well, perhaps he could even though I had done so on the spur of the moment, must reluctantly admit that Clark can outguess me with maddening regularity. As an opponent, he is never to be underrated. But still it was for him a “calculated risk,” albeit a small one.

Very well. Largish, rather massy, forbidden—but didn’t know what it looked like and I had to assume that
anything
which met the first two requirements might be disguised to appear innocent.

Ten minutes later I knew that it had to be in one of his three bags, which I had left to the last on purpose as the least likely spots. A stateroom aboard ship has many cover plates, access holes, removable fixtures, and the like, but I had done a careful practice run in my own room; I knew which ones were worth opening, which ones could not be opened without power tools, which ones could not be opened without leaving unmistakable signs of tampering. I checked these all in great haste, then congratulated Clark on having the good sense not to use such obvious hiding places.

Then I checked everything readily accessible—out in the open, in his wardrobe, etc.—using the classic “Purloined Letter” technique, i.e., I never assumed that a book was a book simply because it looked like a book, nor that a jacket on a hanger was simply that and nothing more.

Null, negative, nothing—Reluctantly, I tackled his three pieces of luggage, first noting carefully exactly how they were stacked and in what order.

The first was empty. Oh, the linings could have been tampered with, but the bag was no heavier than it should have been and any false pocket in the linings could not have held anything large enough to meet the specifications.

The second bag was the same—and the bag on the bottom seemed to be the same . . . until I found an envelope in a pocket of it. Oh, nothing nearly mass enough, not gross enough; just an ordinary envelope for a letter—but nevertheless I glanced at it.

And was immediately indignant!

It had printed on it:

Why, the little wretch! He had been intercepting my mail! With fingers trembling with rage so badly that I could hardly do so I opened it—and discovered that it had already been opened and was angrier than ever. But, at least, the note was still inside. Shaking, I pulled it out and read it.

Just six words—

—in Clark’s handwriting.

I stood there, frozen, for a long moment, while I blushed scarlet and chewed the bitter realization that I had been hoaxed to perfection—
again.

There are only three people in the world who can make me feel stupid—and Clark is two of them.

I heard a throat-clearing sound behind me and whirled around. Lounging in the open doorway (I had left it closed) was my brother. He smiled at me and said, “Hello, Sis. Looking for something? Need any help?”

I didn’t waste time pretending that I didn’t have jam all over my face; I simply said, “Clark Fries, what did you smuggle into this ship in my baggage?”

He looked blank—a look of malignant idiocy which has been known to drive well-balanced teachers to their therapists. “What in the world are you talking about, Pod?”