Part 4

The slender man bristled, looked less frail. "They don't like the way I peel wathros. Mrs. Kaplan says I peel all the vitamins off. She says you can't trust a man with a peeler anyhow," he added fiercely. "And I hate wathros no matter how you peel them!"

Tim sighed.

"You're in a rut, Sam. You've worn out that job. And you and Mrs. Kaplan are evidently wearing out each other. Do you want to change jobs?"

"Oh, I don't know. I don't mean anything against Mrs. Kaplan. She does a good piece of work."

"So should you, and wathro peeling's not necessarily it." Tim mused for a moment. "Are you sure the doc didn't say anything about your staying in bed?"

"No. I'm sure he didn't even mention it."

"It probably never occurred to him you'd do anything else. Anyhow I think this would be a good time for a little excursion. Have you been all over the ship?"

"Not since the big tour before blast-off."

"Get your shirt and shoes on. We'll go the rounds and you can have your pick of the jobs. You look them all over tonight and make up your mind tomorrow which one you would like."

Wyckoff sat up and Tim slung him the shirt from the back of the chair. He had to help him with the snaps on the shirt and the shoes, but in a few moments they were out in the corridor.

"You shouldn't spend all this time on me, Mr. Daneshaw. You just pick out a job and I'll take it."

"Spending time _is_ my job and you need a job you'll like. You know, Sam, emotional conflicts can wear a man to a frazzle twenty times faster than hard labor. And don't call me Mister. I'm Tim to everybody unless they want to bawl me out for something, and Captain only when they want me to bawl somebody else out."

"All right, Tim. Let's go."

Tim grasped Sam's arm and hit his long stride. He'd get more from him on the way. Emotional responses sure could knock hell out of a man.

* * * * *

Hell or something seemed knocked out with the insistent "Ting, ting-ting" of the rising chime in the captain's cabin at seven the next morning.

First waking. Waking itself seemed a great exertion this time. Then the long, long pause of gentle thought, of mustering of energies before opening his eyes and making a physical move to rise. Tim Daneshaw's first thought was of sinking to sleep again, of overwhelming fatigue. The bunk was firmer than usual--seemed to thrust up against his body, and to thrust up again, wearyingly, like a wave. The association brought words....

... Is there any peace In ever climbing up the climbing wave? All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave In silence; ripen, fall and ceases Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease.

Full consciousness came like a blow. Death, dark death meant Wyckoff, of course; and Wyckoff would be coming this morning, or, if he didn't, he, Tim Daneshaw must go in search ... must fight ... poor Sam Wyckoff deserved work.... Tim felt his thought grow dizzy and the lift and lift under him gave way to a fall and fall. He opened his eyes.

The room was steady. Only the feeling of falling a little, then stopping, then falling a little continued. Tim brought his eyes down to the desk top again and again, each time to see the glowing desk lamp, pencils, papers, opened book lie quiet, steady, without tremor. The motion must be in his dizzying head. The cabin beyond the desk was in shadow, but the shadow retreated and advanced in rhythm with the falling.

By a tremendous effort, Tim raised his hand to the wall button and pushed. The hand fell back limp on the covers.

_Why are we weighed upon with heaviness?_

His mind revolved dully, waiting for an answer, waiting for the steward, waiting and turning and almost dozing.

To answer the gentle knock on the door was too hard. He could turn his head a little. After a sharper knock, the door opened and Steward Loomis looked in. "Everything all right, Captain?" No answer.

Loomis came over to the bunk quickly. "Tim, what's the matter?"

"Hello, Loo. Weak, I guess." Words came easier now. "Better get Doc Keighley."

"You bet I will," and the steward was already hurrying out the door. "You stay right there," he added firmly and unnecessarily.

Tim stayed right there. The bed stopped falling, but he didn't move. He knew how to relax from years of practice in the hospital and years of habit before that.

Keighley walked in, bag in hand, without knocking and came and sat on the edge of the bunk. "Tim?"

"Hello, Doc. I feel done in. Air supply all right?"

"Air's OK," Doc's hand felt Tim's forehead, reached for his wrist, his eye recording the sweep of the second hand on the desk chrono. A few moments later his stethoscope pressed against Tim's chest.

* * * * *

In answer to Keighley's probing questions, Tim described his symptoms. The doctor rummaged in his bag for a hypo-pak and ampule. After the shot, he took out a bottle of capsules, closed his bag and drew up the chair from the desk.

"You know, Tim," he began softly, "we're both _old_ men. We can keep going indefinitely as long as the rate is slow and steady. Acceleration is mighty dangerous. Now you're going to rest."

"... could stand a few days of taking it easy...."

"Not a few days--months. Flat in bed."

"But the ship ... the people...." The vision of Samuel Wyckoff rose again.

"The crew and the Lord can take care of the ship; we people will have to take care of ourselves. We'll need you more the last few months of flight and after we land. If you've got to see anybody, I'll get them right now before that sedative takes effect."

Tim's hand rose and fell. "All right, Doc," the thin, exhausted voice fell too. "Even Moses didn't make the Promised Land."

"You'll make it, you fuddleheaded old Moses, if you obey Doc Keighley's commandments. Even Moses had more sense than to try to be captain and master of ceremonies and life of the party and general trouble shooter all at once."

Daneshaw smiled wanly. "I'll be good. Better have El Avery come up before I go to sleep. He'll have to take on some of my duties or figure out somebody else. He knows as much about the ship as anybody. Don't worry him, though, Frank. He's a nervous old dog.... By the way, can I read?"

"You can't even hold a book for a couple of weeks at least. If you want to hear something, I'll send you a reader or you can have a player and a bunch of wires if we carry anything but treatises on farming. I wouldn't be surprised if Avery'd make a good top man--more autocratic, less tolerant than you, but there are more ways of killing a cat ... and I'll assign you nurses in six hour shifts. It'll keep some of the girls out of mischief."

"Frank ... have a heart!"

"You have one--and hang onto it." Doc Keighley gathered up his bag and left the cabin.

Outside the door he almost bumped into Jack White, Second Astrogator, and Steward Loomis. "Loo, get El Avery up here right away before the hypo hits him. Jack, you go in and sit with him till Avery gets here. He's all right, boys. Just worn out. Let everybody know he'll be back on deck after turnover--_if_ you all stay out of his way till then. Don't let anybody but Avery or the nurse in, Jack," and the little doctor bustled off and out of sight around the curve of the corridor.

* * * * *

To Jack White, entering the tiny cabin lit only by the desk lamp, Tim Daneshaw looked near gone. He went over and sat silent on the chair the doctor had turned to the bunk. Tim's eyes were shut, but he spoke weakly.

"El? El Avery?"

"No Captain, it's Jack White. Avery will be here as soon as he can."

A long silence.

Daneshaw spoke again. "Got to shift command, Jack."

"Yes, sir."

"What about Avery, Jack. Can he do it?"

"I think so. You remember how he handled that gyroscope record the first two weeks out."

"How was that, Jack?"

White was startled, but gave no sign. If Tim Daneshaw's memory was slipping, he really was in bad shape. "You remember, Captain. We were only a few thousand miles out when the gyro appeared to be recording a constant correction, and how Mister Avery," (a term of deference would show Tim how respected Avery was) "was so thorough and kept the crew so busy they didn't have time to worry about the real danger of being off course. He got the engineers doing radionic soundings of the walls of the big tube in action and some of the crew went practically into the dead tubes looking for flare action. He had everybody else who knew about it testing all over the inner skin for an air leak that might be producing a tiny jet. It was wonderful the way he got the passengers thinking it was a routine check for the early stages of any space trip. And he never let down--sat at the calculators eighteen hours a day until he found out that the recording pen on the gyro must have got bent in blast-off. We were proud of him, Captain."

"I recall it now. You think he'll make a good executive?" Tim seemed pitifully eager for assurance.

"Make an executive, Captain? He is an executive. He's the Old Fox of Avery, Inc. again, since those two weeks. He's taken to coming into the pilot-room when he's off duty--just coming in and standing and watching as if he wanted to keep an eye on everything and everybody. And nobody seems to resent it. And he never needles the rest of us button-pushers when he finds an error in calculations. We all make them, El too, but we've quit deviling each other about them since then. He's your man."

"Thanks, Jack. I ... hoped ... you'd ... feel...." Tim's voice trailed off. "Tired ... get Avery ... tell him Sam Wyckoff...."

Another silence.

"Captain Daneshaw?"

No answer.

"Tim!" White was more insistent.

A gentle rap on the door.

"Tim, are you awake?"

After a moment of silence, Jack White got to his feet and tiptoed out.

Avery was on the other side of the door.

"He's asleep, El," White informed him, "Very sick--heart. Doc Keighley was here and says he'll be in bed at least till turnover. He told me that you were to take command--Tim Daneshaw, that is."

The two men moved away from the closed door. Elbert Avery turned to face White. "What's that about command?" he asked sharply.

"He wants you to take over. Thinks you're the best man for it. Likes the way you handled the passengers and crew over the gyro business."

"Fine job I'd make of awarding bridge prizes and settling arguments between second and third cooks on how much salt in the buns." Avery sounded gruff but pleased.

"Orders are orders," Jack White forced a smile.

"Then I guess I'll have to order you back to my turn of duty in the pilot-room while I get my bearings."

"El?" Jack was struck with a memory. "The captain said something about Sam Wyckoff, too. He went to sleep before he finished. You better ask him about it next time you see him."

"Here he comes now." The frail figure came slowly, deliberately around the curve of the corridor. "Tim probably wanted him to help me out. I hear he took him around the ship for some reason last night."

* * * * *

Samuel Wyckoff's eyes regarded the floor of the corridor as he approached. If the other men had not moved out of his way and spoken, he would probably have continued his progress to the captain's door without noticing them.

"Sam ... Sam Wyckoff. It's not that bad. Doc says he'll be up and around after turnover." Jack White's voice was full of concern.

Wyckoff looked up. "What?" he asked dully.

Avery repeated, "It's not too bad. Doctor Keighley says he has to rest but he'll be back on his feet in less than three months if we don't get him worried or tired again. That right, Mr. White?"

"That's it. And the captain said something about you just as he was dozing off. Mr. Avery here says he thinks he meant for you to help out in the emergency."

"He took you all over the ship last night, didn't he?" added Avery.

"Well, yes ... but...."

"He must have had some idea of what was coming. I've never been in half the labs or the kitchen and Ole Sorensen wouldn't let me nearer to his prize cows than the door of the stable. Not that I'm fond of cows, anyway. So if I've got to take over command for a while, looks as if you're the choice of the boss for liaison man. C'mon along up to the confab room and we'll pow-wow."

"But ... I ... that is ... can't I see the captain? He said ... I mean I need to see him. He told me to come this morning." Wyckoff looked from one to the other.

White was definite. "Not today, maybe not this week. Doctor's orders. You better get along with Mr. Avery. You know the ship. The captain would want you to keep things running smoothly without a break."

"Well, all right, I'll come." Wyckoff sounded doubtful still, but he allowed the others to lead him toward the elevator which would take them up to headquarters.

Just at the elevator door they were met by the floor steward, Loomis.

"Mr. Avery?"

"Yes."

"Who's to be in command, sir?"

"I am."

"Well, Mrs. Jeffries of the laundry just phoned and said when she got down to the laundry a few minutes ago the place was flooded with water. One of the taps sprung or something, and she called damage control and they told her to call water reclamation and I guess the water-rec squad was all over at hydroponics trying to figure out why the increase in humidity--anyhow, Mrs. Jeffries is upset because she can't get the captain and will you go down and smooth her out?" Loomis recited rapidly.

Avery turned to Samuel Wyckoff. "Guess you get right into harness. This is for you." Then to Loomis, "Sam's my righthand man for just this sort of thing. Give him all the help you can," and back to Wyckoff: "We'll see you up nose-side as soon as you're through. We've got to plan fast so's not to upset the whole crowd. You take the elevator down: we'll walk up. We're in no hurry."

As the elevator glided down out of sight past the transplast door, and Loomis returned along the corridor, Avery and White turned into the narrow winding stair to climb slowly to the fourth floor above. White looked up at Avery's back and asked, puzzled, "Do you think this came on suddenly? And why? I didn't see him too often, but he always seemed so tough, so ... well ... resilient, if you know what I mean. But he must have known it was coming if he took Wyckoff around last night. What do you think happened to him?"

The man ahead shrugged his shoulders and they climbed on and up.

* * * * *

The "New-Side Out Ball and Social Assembly" was in full swing the night after Turnover, when Jack White edged quickly through the door into the circular Great Saloon just in time to avoid collision with a fantastically costumed guest carrying a tray half full of tiny crystal coffee-glasses, and stood peering through the half-dark of lowered lights at the little clusters of people in easy chairs and loungettes which ringed the room and filled it with a confusion of talk and laughter. He moved a step or two away from the wall, his eyes seeking more intently through the small throng near the center of the room on his right where Captain Daneshaw, guarded by a solicitous Sam Wyckoff, sat in a great raised chair receiving congratulations on his recovery. Elbert Avery was not in that bunch. Mr. White picked his way to the left where a few couples were dancing to the slow strains of the xerxia being played by a small orchestra on a bit of a curtailed stage. So intent was his search, that he ran into the arm of a chair and almost fell into the midst of the gay little groups.

Helen Platt's voice was sweet, chiding, "You're quite out of character, Mister White. You have to give up the absent-minded math professor this evening. We're all somebody new tonight, you know."

Scattered laughter.

White looked down. The ex-Latin teacher, heavily made up, had hidden her thinning grey hair under a towering bejewelled turban. "I'm a movie actress and Phil here is a big game hunter," she added, swinging a ruby-shod toe toward a lamp-bronzed man wearing a chalk-white nilene tropojak and encircling crimson commerbund. "Tell us something about yourself and let us guess what kind of secret you've been hiding the last century."

White forced a smile. "Not yet," he apologized. "Got to find Elbert Avery first. Quite urgent. Is he around here?"

Nobody had seen him, and Jack White, promising abstractedly to come back later and let them "guess him" went on down the room, cautiously avoiding another accident.

From circle to cluster he repeated his question with no better success. Several times he was asked why he wanted Avery and twice men of the group offered to help him hunt. To each question, he mumbled something about its not being important--he just wanted to find El Avery for a minute, thanks, and went on toward the orchestra on its stage. As he made his way carefully around the room, peering at dancers, at circles on the other side of the party dusk, he failed to notice the silence behind him. The worried glances which followed him, the half sentences, "Avery this time?" "Overwork...." "Too much for one man...." "... collapsed somewhere?" "... do you suppose?" "... something wrong, definitely...." "Did you see how pale Jack was?" failed to reach him; but more than a quadrant of the hall was aware of his quickened pace when he caught sight of the wiry little man standing against the wall half hidden by the outer edge of one curtain of the stage.

* * * * *

Elbert Avery was regarding the dancers morosely, his full-dress uniform indicating that he, at least, was sticking to his character as chief astrogator in preference to some more exotic role. As he had expressed it to Samuel Wyckoff when both men went to escort Tim Daneshaw triumphantly to the assembly, "I'm too old to change again. I'm an astrogator now and a 'gator I'll be to the bitter end."

Jack White reached him now, spoke in low tones; and both men hurried out a small door at the side of the hall. A sigh seemed to go over the room and conversation rose to a new pitch of animation in a dozen places when it was obvious that Avery was in full control of his wind and limbs.

Out in the curving corridor, White took Avery's arm and fairly swept him back to the left, to the elevator. He could hardly speak. "Gyroscope bearings worn on one side ... Powell and North rechecking porthole readings after turnover ... degrees out of course ... miss Venus completely as we're headed ..." he almost babbled.

Avery pulled back abruptly against White's arm and stopped dead. "Get your breath, man," he snapped, "and tell me clearly what's wrong. Something about the course?"

A paper-tophatted guest with a tray of filled glasses of ebony coffee, unable to pass them as they stood in the middle of the corridor, waited behind for them to move on before he could reach the door to the Saloon twenty feet farther on ... waited listening.

"Preposterous!" shouted Avery, "we've had watchers with accurate charts peeling their eyes at the sky every foot of the way till now."

"We're going to miss, I tell you," White responded desperately. He began to tremble as the delayed effects of shock started to tell, and grabbed Avery's arm to steady himself, then pulled Avery toward the shaft and into the car. "Come down and see for yourself. We're lost! Lost!"

The tophatted tray carrier continued to the door of the Saloon. Setting his tray on the floor just inside, he circled the room, pausing at each cozy gathering to recount White's frantic statements and passing on to the next like a man in a dream.

* * * * *

"Nonsense, nonsense," Avery was gently shaking the already trembling man in the elevator. "Nobody's lost among the inner planets. I'll come down with you. You'll see ... a little button pushing...." As if to illustrate, he pushed the button and the car began to descend.

The tophatted figure didn't come to the group containing Dr. Marquith, the psychiatrist, until it had covered two-thirds of the room. The doctor questioned him carefully--this could be another breakdown like several which had occurred early in the trip when port-watchers, eyes fatigued and brain a-dazzle from watching the heavens, had declared positively that the ship had left the solar system altogether and had required days of treatment to convince them that their fears or concealed desires were of the shadowy substance of dreams. But the waiter showed none of the symptoms of such a breakdown.

"I think we'd better tell your story to the captain, son," the doctor suggested quietly to the now haggard looking older man. "There is certainly nothing you or I can do to help matters and there is no need to alarm the rest of the passengers now." He led the unprotesting man toward Daneshaw on his dais.

They watched the group around the captain disperse at some word from the doctor; their tension mounted as the psychiatrist talked to Daneshaw and Wyckoff; and the hatted man gestured toward the door through which he had entered the room.

When Samuel Wyckoff straightened up from leaning over Captain Daneshaw, absolute quiet preceded the first of his clear confident tones.

"Matt Carey, here, wants me to tell you that he's awfully sorry he alarmed you. He did overhear Mr. White tell Mr. Avery something which sounded ... well ... disturbing. But we must all realize that many a slight accident has seemed disastrous at its first reporting. And we haven't even had an official report of any kind."

A woman somewhere began to sob.

"Come now," Wyckoff said reproachfully, "we are not children!"

A nervous giggle sounded from another quarter.

Wyckoff continued more forcefully. "Dr. Marquith, Carey and I are going down to the pilot-room to find out what we can for you, so keep your shirts (I mean costumes) on, and don't forget to make Captain Daneshaw's recovery celebration a gay as well as a memorable one." He patted Tim's shoulder familiarly, beckoned to the two others to precede him across the floor.

At the door, he saw the tray of glasses and turned. "You fellows better bring another round of drinks. I could stand one myself." He stooped, lifted a glass, drank, and followed the others out.

Men rose automatically from the groups, collecting empty and half-ful glasses alike, and headed in a mass for the door; but the first few attempts to revive conversation sounded so loud that when the room finally filled with sound, it was the rustle and sibilance of whispering.

* * * * *

The self-appointed investigating committee of three stood in the pilot-room door.

El Avery's crisp voice was snapping at White the new equation to be set into the B calculator, rattling out the key for the data Powell handed him to be fed to C by North in the intervals of rest while A calculator assimilated and digested. The floor of the computation area was littered with the yards of coils of paper ribbon Avery had ripped from the roll of gyro record to find the original deviation (minus the bits which Carruthers, Fifth Astrogator, had taken to the enlargement room for micro-measurements). At the accepted break for complete clearing of the A calculator banks, Avery's precision broke to a growl.

"Damned earthbound whelps!" he muttered. "Don't even bother to discover major factors like light pressure in their measly little tubs!" He jerked to a stand, stripped off his braidjac and flung it into the midst of the insubstantial paper snake. He sat down with a thump and bent back over the calculator keyboard. "Those babies don't care what they lose or how!"

He set to work again with White's eighth set of solutions forming them into factors of equations of his own. Powell, passing around the welter of paper, was the first to notice the observers and yelled at them, "You boys round up the engine room crew, quick. Get them into the boom room and tell 'em to stand by for intermittent rocket and main tube fire! Beat it!"