The Other Side of Nowhere
- Автор: Лейнстер Мюррей
- Год: 1964
- Язык: английский
- Год: Berkley Medallion
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «The Other Side of Nowhere». Краткое содержание книги:
For centuries space travelers had dreaded a place they called the Other Side of Nowhere — a place in the universe where up was down, where right was wrong, and where all direction was lost...
To save the RIM STAR Braden had to bring the ship to the place of nightmare, the Other Side of Nowhere...
He had the blaster bearing, but he spoke without fury. The crawling man cursed. The blaster moved. The man emptied his ship-bag. Braden picked up a blaster and a knife. He matter-of-factly ordered another man to dump his ship-bag. He obeyed. The fighting at an end, Braden seemed to dismiss it as of no importance. He simply made each man dump his possessions on the floor of the oddly misnamed forecastle. He pocketed the three blasters and four knives revealed by a cursory inspection of the contents of the ship-bags.
"Think over what I told you," he said coldly. "I think you've had ideas I don't like. Change them to ideas I do like, and we'll probably get along. That's all."
When he closed the forecastle door behind him and walked away, he still hadn't mentioned his own missing blaster. But none of the crewmen had it. Besides, consideration of the overall situation implied a pause. But Braden had done all the pausing he intended to do. From now on he proposed to manifest very active officer-like behavior.
Chapter 3
In the corridor outside the forecastle, Braden stopped. The skipper had strictly forbidden him to bother the steward, even though there were good grounds for believing that he'd taken Braden's blaster within minutes after overhearing that he had one. But it was not a good idea to have a blaster loose on a ship that was heaving out on a journey of a hundred and some-odd light-years. It was especially undesirable when the new crew of that ship acted like a tightly knit unit with a definite purpose in mind. It was even more undesirable when there were passengers aboard. When two of them were women, it couldn't be permitted. So something had to be done about it. Legally, if Braden took action the skipper disapproved, the skipper could do nothing but charge him with insubordination when the ship reached port - in practice, at any rate. And it seemed to Braden that worse things could happen, so far as the passengers were concerned. He reached a cabin door marked STEWARD.
He did not knock but opened it quickly and as quickly went inside. He was prepared for almost anything, but he found nothing. The steward's cabin was almost empty. It was a very comfortable snuggery. Stewards usually do themselves well and, unlike other crewmen, they are apt to stay with the same ship for voyage after voyage. So they tend to accumulate more possessions than will go into a shipbag. There were a few books. Braden knew some of them by their bindings. They were books a man might accumulate if he hoped some day to command a spaceship. On the other hand, they were also such books as a man might pick up out of curiosity about the operation of a ship in which normally he would have no part. There was a Practical Astrogator and a fourth-sector Space Directory. There were books on freight stowage and spaceport regulations and other subjects covering areas of activity a steward did not really need to know about. The assortment looked innocent enough, even admirable. But Braden had a prejudice against the steward. He stood just inside the door, surveying the cabin. The bunk was neatly made up, its pillow deftly fluffed and in place. The tidily emptied ashtray was conspicious. Uniforms were hung carefully on hangers instead of pegs. Everything indicated that the steward was a man with a steward's soul - tidy and meticulous and bookish. It might be true, but Braden didn't believe it. His eyes narrowed as he stood looking, thinking hard. If this exaggerated precision were a fake to convince the skipper, nevertheless the steward would have developed the habit of it in two long voyages. And where would a tidy- minded man hide a blaster he'd just taken from another man's ship-bag - which he'd then delicately repacked - when he needed to hurry somewhere else in the ship to establish an alibi? To the passengers' quarters, for example? Braden took three steps forward and reached under the utterly neat pillow on the utterly neat bunk. With gratified astonishment he pulled out his blaster and put it in his pocket. He restored the pillow to its old-maidishly precise arrangement. He went out, closing the door after him. He was still wryly surprised as he made his way back to the ship's control-room.
The door stood open. The skipper was in the act of putting the trip-tape in the instrument which would pass on the astrogational instructions to the astrogating unit itself. The operation of the ship would then become practically automatic between solar systems. The skipper turned his head when Braden entered.
"I said I'd give you ten minutes, Mr. Braden!" he rumbled severely. "You've taken twelve!"
"Yes, sir," said Braden. "I've another report for the log, sir."
The skipper turned his whole body. He blinked at Braden.
"What's that? Let's hear it."
"I found," said Braden curtly, "three blasters and four knives in the crew's ship-bags, sir."
The skipper blinked again.
"Come, come!" he rumbled genially. "You disappoint me, Mr. Braden! I'd no idea you'd go about searching other people's possessions! It's most illegal! Only by my orders, given for good cause, should you invade the privacy of the crew! And you should have had my order in writing before searching a man's ship-bag or his locker!"
"I didn't search them, sir," said Braden grimly. "The men emptied them themselves - all but one. That broke open."
"Ah!" said the skipper, somehow waggishly. "I woudn't mind betting, Mr. Braden, that you applied pressure to make our gallant crewmen do that! It is still probably most illegal!"
"I asked them to, sir," said Braden. "And they did it. Every bag but the one was opened and emptied by its owner. The owner was responsible for the one exception. He got in the way of it, sir."
The skipper's mood suddenly changed. He regarded Braden almost with hostility.
"Now I'm sorry that I signed you on for this voyage, Mr. Braden! You're interfering with a series of events I've looked forward to!"
Braden shrugged.
"I should like to put in the log, sir," he said politely, "that I've informed you that the crewmen had forbidden arms in their possession and that, considering our passengers, in my opinion it is extremely dangerous to proceed with the voyage with the present crew aboard."
"You'd like that in the log, eh?" said the skipper. "And your advice about the action I should take?"
"I advise, sir," said Braden, "that the Rim Star return to port and turn over the crew to the local authorities, and then sign on a new crew without any previous plans for - perhaps I should say insubordination. That's my formal opinion, given you because you asked for it. I'd like to put it in the log."
The skipper glowered at him. Then he turned and pushed a button. Braden made an involuntary movement. He scowled.
A harsh, rasping sound came from a speaker in the ceiling of the control-room. Through the door came resonant repetitions of the din. They seemed like echoes, but they were actually replicas of the original voice, emitted simultaneously by loud-speakers in every corridor and compartment of the ship. The effect was sepulchral.
"Attention!" boomed the speakers. "Prepare for overdrive. Overdrive coming in five seconds. Five-four-three-two-one..."
The universe seemed to reel. The images on the vision screens vanished completely. Braden felt the familiar, intolerable combination of nausea and dizziness and the feeling of falling in a contracting spiral which constitute the sensation of going into overdrive.
He swore. In overdrive, of course, a ship is effectively relieved of many of the hindrances affecting ships in normal space. In an overdrive field the physical constants of space are changed. The change is exactly the opposite of that made by the interatomic, intermolecular force-fields between the particles of transparent substances. In unstressed space, the speed of light is roughly 186,000 miles per second. In the positively stressed space between the atoms and molecules of glass, its speed is roughly only 120,000 miles per second. That is why lenses can do what they do. In the highly positively stressed space between the atoms of crystallized carbon - diamond - the speed of light is only 75,000 miles per second. But an overdrive field stresses space in what might be called the opposite direction. In negatively stressed space - in overdrive - the speed of light increases to incredible figures. In negatively stressed space, mass does not increase with velocity. It diminishes. Therefore the limitation of space travel to the speed of light or less does not apply.