Part 1

Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

BLOW THE MAN DOWN

BY CHARLES L. FONTENAY

_Hijacking the_ By Jove! _was quite elementary. Hijacking the crew was something else. And therein lay Captain Vebrug's margin for error...._

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, March 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

When Captain Albrekt Vebrug of the Flanjo intelligence service took over the Mars-Titan freighter _By Jove!_, it was no such terrestrial foolishness as mercy that prevented him from liquidating the ship's three-man crew.

Sure in his own wolfish strength, his attitude was that three peace-loving merchant spacemen could do much to contribute to his personal comfort, if kept under iron control. Besides, with adequate brain-washing to eliminate loyalty to the Solar Council, their technical skills could make them quite valuable to the somewhat undermanned Flanjo base on Rhea.

On the other hand, his concern for the others aboard the ship was so slight that he would not, on his own, have warned them of the impending acceleration, which could have injured or killed them.

He made his move at 10 minutes before zero hour. As a paying passenger from Mars City to Titan, he had the run of the ship, and had been lounging in the control room for half an hour. Migl, the engineer, was on duty and was sorting the blast-pattern tapes, a job Qoqol had started during his shift.

Albrekt simply took a heat gun from the rack, stuck it in Migl's back and ordered him to leave the control room. Migl took it as a joke, at first.

"It's no joke," Albrekt assured him, nudging him with the weapon. "Get below, if you don't want to get burned."

Puzzlement written all over his swarthy face, Migl unstrapped himself from the captain's chair and pushed himself across the room. Albrekt slid into the chair, buckled himself in and pulled two rolls of magnetic tape from the breast pocket of his coveralls. He found the roll marked "No. 1," stuck the other in the rack beside him and inserted the end of his tape in the automatic pilot.

Migl paused at the top of the gangway.

"You're not going to blast?" demanded Migl in amazement.

"I am," retorted Albrekt, holding the heat gun steady.

"_Por Dios_, Carrel's not strapped in!" exclaimed the engineer. "You'll break every bone in his body if you don't give him warning!"

Albrekt glanced at his watch.

"You have five minutes to warn him and strap yourself in," he said. "I can't be bothered."

Migl vanished down the hatch and Albrekt flicked the switch that closed and locked it. A moment later the intercom system erupted with Migl's frantic voice from below:

"General alarm! Prepare for emergency acceleration! General alarm! Hurry, Carrel!"

Albrekt smiled grimly.

The second hand swept around the face of the chronometer, boosting the reluctant minute hand forward in jerks. At exactly 1300 hours, Albrekt pushed the firing button.

The tape chattered through the automatic pilot. Apparently, the makers of the tape had planned on a fast-get-away: the pressure must have approached 5-G, pinning Albrekt painfully back against the cushioned reclining chair.

He was able to move his eyes to watch the outside screens. The other eleven ships of the convoy, coasting in formation in their orbit, dwindled behind them and swung gradually to one side.

In a few moments, everything cut off, and weightlessness returned. Red lights were flashing all over the control board, and distant alarm bells were clanging in the depths of the ship. Albrekt had no idea what they meant. He was no spaceman.

The radio loudspeaker crackled and blared. The convoy had discovered the _By Jove!_'s defection.

"_Themis_ to flagship! _Themis_ to flagship! _By Jove!_ has changed course! Moving away fast. Position, RA 16-2-1/2, D minus 19-40."

After a moment:

"Flagship to _Themis_: acknowledged. Flagship to _By Jove!_ Flagship to _By Jove!_ Carrel, what the hell?"

Albrekt grinned.

"_Themis_ to flagship," called the loudspeaker, when silence greeted the query. "Shall we follow?"

"Flagship to _Themis_ and all vessels. If you're that flush with fuel, how about passing some around? No pursuit authorized. All vessels take readings on _By Jove!_'s new orbit as long as it's in range. We'll alert the patrol to investigate when we're in radio range."

The ship's intercom buzzed.

"Albrekt!" It was the voice of Carrel, the captain.

"Yes?"

"We'll get to the reason for this damn fool stunt later. Right now, do you plan any further acceleration?"

"Later. I'll warn you in time to strap down."

"I should hope so. Those G's nearly killed Qoqol. This ship wasn't built for that sort of acceleration, you idiot. Half the seams are sprung and leaking air."

"Repair them, then," snapped Albrekt. "You'll have time."

During the long silence that ensued, Albrekt sat back and took stock of the situation. So far, everything had worked perfectly. The other tape given him by the Flanjo agent on Mars was to be run through the automatic pilot exactly 200 hours after the first one, when the _By Jove!_'s diverging orbit carried it beyond range of the convoy's meager radar equipment.

The control room would be his headquarters for the next few months, simply because the control room was the only deck of the _By Jove!_ which could be locked against the rest of the ship. All the weapons--the heat guns--were in the control room, so Albrekt expected no trouble on that score.

It was going to be a dull journey from here on out, and Albrekt decided he would do well to learn as much as he could about handling a space ship. He swung the chair around and ran his eyes along the shelves of Carrel's microfilm library. The title _Sailing Space_, by Dr. Russo Alin, caught his attention.

Albrekt inserted the spool in the projector and started it. An intense bearded face appeared on the screen, and the recorder said:

"It is not generally known, except to students of technological history, that the steam powered and electric powered automobile gave the familiar gasoline powered automobile of the last century a close race for preference in early automotive history. The factors that caused the gasoline powered automobile to become predominant are not important here. What is important is that there were alternative methods of automotive propulsion...."

This didn't start off well. Albrekt ran the spool up about half way and tried again. This time, the author was pointing to a well-chalked blackboard.

"The radiation is so much stronger at Venus than farther out, that it is here we find most common use of the principle," he said. "Using our formula, which, you remember, is F equals rA over 2 plus gM, we...."

Disgusted, Albrekt switched it off and took out the spool. He found another, _Survival for Spacemen_, and tried it. It was a primer on conditions to be met in space travel, handled in popular vein. It was the sort of thing Albrekt wanted, and he settled back to listen to it.

It was about nine hours before the last red light on the control board winked out and the clanging of the last alarm bell died out below. Then Carrel's voice demanded an accounting over the intercom.

"I'm in command of the ship now," answered Albrekt, awakened from a light doze by the call. "I intend to remain so. As long as you and the others recognize that, you won't be harmed."

There was a brief silence.

"The only thing I can figure is that you've gone space happy," said Carrel at last. "Albrekt, you're no spaceman. You can't have known what you were doing when you switched on the jets."

Albrekt did not answer.

"Look," said Carrel, "it'll take several days to figure out what sort of orbit that blast threw us into, and I'm not sure we have enough fuel to correct it. You'd better let us in."

"We may as well understand each other," said Albrekt. "I'm no spaceman, but some very good spacemen figured out that blast tape--and the other one I'm going to use later. I'm a captain in the Flanjo military, and I've taken this ship and its cargo over, to deliver them to the Flanjo patrol. None of you will be hurt if you cause no trouble."

"So that's it!" snorted Carrel. "Damned pirate high-jacker! My advice to you, Albrekt, is to come out of there and let me put you under arrest, because if you don't we'll be coming in after you."

"Try it, and I'll burn you," retorted Albrekt.

* * * * *

After sleeping several times, Albrekt was ready to concede it was not going to be as cozy in the control room as he had thought at first. It offered basic comforts of home, but the showers were on the larger navigation deck below. Several months without a bath promised to be uncomfortable. All decks carried plenty of emergency rations in case they were sealed off by a meteor collision, but the rations were not too tasty, Albrekt's mouth was beginning to water at the thought of the frozen meals stored two decks below, available to the crew.

Most of Carrel's book tapes were too technical to interest him, but he spent much of his time listening to those which offered him information in simple terms. The pattern of meaning of all the dials, switches and buttons crowded into the control room became a little clearer to him.

Albrekt did not see how the crew, weaponless and locked below, could challenge his mastery of the ship. He detected the first effort in this direction about 80 hours after the _By Jove!_ had left the convoy.

Albrekt was eating a meal of emergency rations when he glimpsed movement on one of the rear screens. He turned his attention to it at once.

A spacesuited figure was emerging from the airlock, which was in a narrow waist between the vessel's personnel sphere and the huge cargo cylinder beneath it. From the suit, it was either Carrel or Migl.

The figure moved cautiously up on the outside of the airlock, gripping its surface with heavy magnetic shoes. In the hooks of the spacesuit, it carried two sledge hammers.

Albrekt flipped on the switch to the intercom, which was tuned to the spacesuit helmet radios as well as the ship's system.

"I'd advise the man in the spacesuit to forget it, and get back aboard," he said gently. "If he doesn't, I'll sweep the outside surface with machine gun fire in exactly two minutes."

His fingers hovered over the firing buttons of the heavy weapons the _By Jove!_ carried for defense against possible marauders. But in a moment the spacesuited figure reentered the airlock.

"It would take you some time to break into the control room with a sledge hammer," Albrekt said conversationally into the microphone. "At the first blow, I'll blast anyone who tries it. That's fair warning."

It was several days later that Albrekt began to feel sleepy long before his sleeping time. The realization hit him suddenly that for some time he had been yawning and stretching, relaxing more and more in the chair, his eyelids getting heavier and heavier. His head was beginning to ache a little. He slept by the clock and awoke by the clock. He should not be sleepy for hours yet.

Rousing himself with an effort, he swung bleary eyes around the control room, anxiously. He could see nothing out of order. But how would one detect something that made one abnormally sleepy? What could it be?

Illness?

If there were harmful bacteria aboard the ship, they should have struck many days ago. There was no disease in space itself.

Gas?

If such ships as the _By Jove!_ carried any sort of gas, Albrekt didn't know about it. He had been briefed on the weapons he might face. Surely gas would have been mentioned.

Perhaps it was chance, or perhaps some part of his mind was swiftly scanning what he had learned through his reading of the last few days: his eyes fell on a bank of dials ranged side by side on the control board. The hands of all of them were lined up at the same angle--all but one. It had sunk far to the left.

The legend above the bank of dials read: "OXYGEN." The plate below the lagging dial read: "Control Room."

Albrekt unstrapped himself from the chair with nervously fumbling hands. Somehow the crew of the _By Jove!_ was interfering with his oxygen supply.

Albrekt was beginning to feel a little nauseated. His head throbbed. He pushed himself across the control room and grabbed the helmet of the spacesuit that hung there. He did not take time to put on the suit itself, but pulled the helmet down over his head and switched on the suit's oxygen supply.

In a moment his head cleared, leaving only a slight headache.

As well as Albrekt remembered from the reading tapes, the ship's oxygen supply was on one of the lowest decks. The crew evidently had blocked the line to the control room.

"You'd think there'd be some alarm system for that sort of thing," he muttered to himself. But then, of course, the hull had not been punctured. The dials were supposed to be checked frequently.

The question that faced Albrekt now was how to get out of this trap. He couldn't live in the spacesuit indefinitely. His hand brushed the heat gun at his side.

Filling his lungs with deep gulps, he ducked from beneath the helmet and returned to the control board. He unlocked and opened the hatch to the navigation deck below. There was an upward swirl of air, and Albrekt permitted himself to breathe again.

A head poked itself cautiously up the companionway. Carrel. The captain's face was a strong one, lined with years of decision, golden-brown with the tan that one gets only from years in the thin air of Mars. Carrel's dark hair was beginning to gray, but his electric blue eyes were still young.

He stopped when he saw Albrekt at the control board. Albrekt held the heat gun on the captain steadily.

"I'm not anywhere near overcome," said Albrekt. "You'd better turn around and go back down."

Carrel did.

As long as the hatch stayed open, oxygen could not be cut off from the control room. Albrekt decided he could afford to leave it open, since he had possession of the weapons. He would have to lock it while asleep, of course. But, even with the oxygen supply cut off, the control room should contain enough to carry him for eight hours. If not, he could set an alarm to wake him every four hours, or even every two hours, to open the hatch and refresh his air.

The fact that he could leave the hatch open safely gave him another idea. He was hungry for some food besides the dry emergency rations.

Albrekt checked the chronometer. Within the next two hours, he was scheduled to run the other blast tape. He would have time.

Heat gun in hand, he moved quietly to the hatch. The companionway was clear. From below came the murmur of voices. He moved cautiously a few steps down the metal ladder until he could see beneath the ceiling of the navigation deck.

Migl was taking a shower on the other side of the room, while Carrel and Qoqol relaxed in contour chairs beside the dead-reckoning tracer.

"What is Flanjo, Carrel?" asked the booming voice of Qoqol, the navigator.

Qoqol was a Martian. His round body with its huge oxygen storage hump was not quite as big as a human body, but his thin arms and legs, each equipped with half a dozen double joints, were longer than a tall man's height. They were wrapped around him now, out of the way, and his big-eyed, big-eared head peered through them like an urchin's face through a tangle of vines.

"The Flanjos are members of a fanatic sect who believe in human supremacy," answered Carrel soberly. "More than that, they believe in their own supremacy over other humans. They revolted against the Solar Council and have a hidden base our forces haven't been able to locate yet."

"They are _loco_, Qoqol," said Migl from the shower. "Crazy. They'd make all you Martians slaves. Us too, probably."

"Why they want this ship?" asked Qoqol.

"For the ship itself, partly," said Carrel. "But our cargo's pretty strategic, too. It's mostly lithium, which they can use in nuclear weapons and power plants. They can use the plastics, tools and machinery we're carrying to improve conditions at their base. The general opinion I've heard is that their objective is to take over the Mars colonies. They need fusion weapons for that, but it's hard to get light elements on the outer moons, where their base is thought to be. Whatever they have already, 100 tons of lithium will help them immensely."

"Immensely," assented Albrekt, stepping off the ladder to drift to the floor. He held the heat gun lightly in his hand. "I'm afraid I'm going to require all of you to go ahead of me down to the storage deck and remain there while I enjoy a good lunch."

Silently they complied. The living quarters, where the food was, were one deck down, the storage deck below it.

Albrekt ate his meal, keeping a watchful eye on the opening between the living quarters and the storage deck. Then he returned to the control room, locked the hatch and strapped himself down for blasting.

He kept his promise to Carrel and broadcast a warning of the blast over the intercom system. At the appointed moment, he ran the blast tape through the automatic pilot.

The acceleration was not as heavy this time. The ship, safe from the prying of the convoy's radar, swung slowly from its course and into a new prearranged orbit, on which a Flanjo vessel was to intercept it in approximately six months.

* * * * *

Space is a lonely place--lonelier than any place on Earth, lonelier than any place on Mars. No expanse of desert or ocean is so empty as space, for there one at least has something material beneath him and around him.

"An experienced spaceman would rather be burned than left alone in space," said Carrel. "It'll drive most men completely crazy in a pretty short time. I think you've realized that by now, Albrekt. That's why you won't kill us."

Albrekt was eating a meal at the table in the living quarters, his heat gun lying beside his hand. The others were seated on bunks across the room. Since the only necessity was to protect himself and keep the others out of the control room, he had discontinued the practice of making the crew go below while he ate. Despite the atmosphere of enmity, the conversation and companionship filled a need he was beginning to recognize more keenly.

"That's true," answered Albrekt agreeably. "For that and other reasons, I won't kill you unless I'm forced to."

"But there's nothing to prevent our killing you and retaking the ship," reminded Carrel.

"Nothing but this." Albrekt laid his hand on his heat gun.

"As a matter of fact, I don't want to kill you, Albrekt," said Carrel. "I want to capture you alive, and take you back to Mars. I imagine you have some information about Flanjo plans that would be pretty valuable to the council."

Albrekt laughed.

"I admire your courage, Carrel," he said. "But I've been in dangerous positions before, for longer periods than this. I don't intend to let my guard down."

Carrel apparently was blessed with iron self-control and Qoqol, like all Martians, habitually showed emotion in ways no Earthman could interpret. But Albrekt's practiced eye detected Migl's restlessness. When the crew's move came, two days later, Albrekt was ready for it.

As he had anticipated, it happened at mealtime. Albrekt was beginning to spend more time outside the control room, always keeping the others from getting between him and the hatch to higher decks, but mealtime was the logical time for his guard to be lax.

At some signal Albrekt failed to catch, Carrel and Qoqol launched themselves directly at him from opposite sides of the round room. Simultaneously, Migl drove through the air for the hatch to the upper decks.

Albrekt's muscles reacted like steel springs. Scooping up the heat gun, he dove across the table and twisted in the air as he floated swiftly between Carrel and Qoqol. Ignoring them for the moment, he trained the gun on the hatch to the navigation deck above and pressed the trigger. Migl had to grab the ladder frantically to keep from drifting head-on into the sizzling beam that barred his way.

Albrekt anchored himself to a bunk and waved the heat beam in an arc above their heads. The metal ceiling smoked faintly.

"I won't kill you all unless I have to," he said calmly. "I can get along easily without one or two of you, though. Before you try anything like this again, I'd suggest you think seriously about which of you wants to die first."

Silence answered him. Migl still clung to the companionway ladder, about halfway up. Carrel clasped his knees in a sitting position about six inches off the floor near the round table in the center of the room. Qoqol, unable to stand upright anywhere aboard the ship, crouched like a spider against the farther wall.

Albrekt switched off the heat beam and motioned at Migl with the gun. Watching them closely, Albrekt moved to the companionway and pushed himself up through the hatch.

Locking himself in the control room, he devoted himself to serious thought for a while. Despite his warning, this sort of thing was likely to happen often. Eventually it must succeed, if only by the law of averages.

The trouble was, Albrekt was actually at a slight disadvantage. He knew by now that the absolute need for companionship in space was not idle talk. He had no intention of coasting alone, in a silent ship, for five and a half more months, and being shot as hopelessly insane when his Flanjo colleagues picked him up at the rendezvous.

One solution, of course, was to kill two of the crew members. Then neither of the two men left could afford to kill the other. For several reasons, Albrekt preferred to find another solution. He had heard rumors that personality conflicts between two people cooped up together in a spaceship drove them eventually at each other's throats. Another factor was that, as long as there were three of the others, Albrekt could hold the threat of killing one or two of them over them. Besides, their technical knowledge would be valuable to the Flanjos, and Albrekt wanted to face no disciplinary action for destroying any of them unnecessarily.

What was the substance of their threat to him, then? He examined it. Their threat was that they might reach the control room. He could not lock it from the outside, and he must come outside for good food and necessary companionship, so that line of reasoning got him nowhere.

But what was behind the threat of their reaching the control room? They might (a) obtain weapons to match his own; (b) communicate the ship's position to warships of the Solar Council; (c) swing the ship off its prearranged course and avoid the rendezvous with the Flanjo vessel.

Solution? Albrekt laughed shortly. There was a solution to all three problems.

With his heat gun, he reduced the radio transmitter to a molten mess. Now the _By Jove!_ could still receive, but not send.

Piling all the heat guns in the center of the room, he gave them the same treatment. The beam left them almost unrecognizeable in the midst of a shallow crater. He had come very near to burning a hole through into the navigation deck.

The last step was the most daring of all. It meant that he must trust absolutely to the accuracy of the two blast tapes he had run through the automatic pilot. He threw the switches that jettisoned the fuel tanks.

In the screens, he watched the spheres of hydrazine and nitric acid, hurled from the ship by spring action, go drifting slowly away into the void. In effect, the _By Jove!_ was now a voiceless derelict.

Albrekt went below.