The Other Side of Nowhere

Then something clicked, somewhere in the ship. In sealed-off compartments, to be entered only when aground and then only by specially trained technicians, the computers and memory- banks and observation instruments and information-integrating devices had finished their work. This was indicated by that click. The Rim Star had come this far and reported. Now she would proceed to the next place where she should report. The booming voice, resounded throughout the ship:

"Attention! Prepare for overdrive!" Each syllable was repeated at the same fraction of an instant all over the huge freighter. "Overdrive coming in five seconds. Five - four - three - two - one..."

There came the unspeakably unpleasant sensation of going into overdrive. It would be intolerable if it lasted. The vision-screen images vanished. The thin and wavering checkpoint call ceased to arrive. It had been faint when it reached the Rim Star because the Patrol ship was half a light-hour from the spot where the Rim Star had broken out to normal space. But within minutes the Patrol craft was light-weeks behind, and the Rim Star had whisked away in her cocoon of negatively stressed emptiness. With the ship gone, the wavering call continued, but it did not matter to the Rim Star.

It seemed that the breakout and check were of no importance at all. But Braden found himself growing more tense after the ship was back in the unspeakable isolation of overdrive, light-years from any star or world or even other spacecraft. The Rim Star was now a week in time and an illimitable distance from her starting point. Her log was on record. It contained absolutely nothing to indicate anything undesirable about the crew. The skipper had kept Braden from logging the discovery of weapons in the forecastle. Nothing recorded or transmitted to the Space Patrol files indicated anything in the least out of the ordinary on this voyage, other than the ship's destination and her intended method of landing there. If the crew had been on the wrecked Melpomene and had been tricked into shipping on the Rim Star to repeat that crime, there was no evidence outside the ship to hint at it.

This was sound reason for the crew to have been on their best behavior until the first checkpoint was past. If the Rim Star did vanish from space, there would be no reason to suspect her crew unless somebody noticed that the description of her crew matched that of the Melpomene's. Which was unlikely. The crewmen had acquired something on the order of an alibi in advance.

Braden went to his cabin. He found his dinner set out on the cabin's folding table. It was just such a meal as many families throughout the galaxy consider the only ones possible - precooked and carefully planned for quantity production, with the necessary enzymes and amino acids added. The steward had probably eavesdropped on what conversation there'd been in the control-room, and timed the preparation and delivery of the dinner so it would be at its most appetizing best when Braden came off duty and reached his cabin.

But Braden was not in any mood to be pleased by such attention. He'd been unable to speak frankly to the skipper in the control-room because it was bugged. There'd been only the one time since he came aboard when the skipper had talked frankly to him, fully assured that he could not be overheard. Braden had had no chance to argue then, to reason later, or at any other time to protest as the ship's mate that a legitimate voyage shouldn't be used as the means of satisfying a personal vengeance.

He hadn't even been able to arrange a signal by which one or the other could give warning of something suspicious. For eight days they had had to consider that every word might be overheard. It was a strain. And now was the time when piracy or mutiny - they were the same - was really likely, and it was Braden's job to prevent it.

He'd picked up his knife and fork when he really became suspicious. It was because he was thinking of the steward, that neat, brightly smiling, obsequious individual who seemed as unlike a mutineer as any man could be. His manner was solicitous and deferential. But he had picked the crewmen - and they were not mild and law-abiding characters. The man they'd beaten on the spaceport tarmac...

But the dinner smelled good. It was appetizing-looking, and the steward had prepared it with great care. But Braden was suddenly and unreasonably and violently suspicious.

He tasted each dish very gingerly. He could detect nothing out of the way in the first one, or the second, or the third. They were very appetizing indeed. They were almost spicy. But he put only the smallest morsels in his mouth. He took a spoonful of coffee.

It was not right. If he'd drunk it after he'd eaten, as he usually did, the keenness of his sense of taste blunted by a succession of dishes some of which were slightly spiced, then he wouldn't have noticed anything. But he did, now. It had a somewhat musky flavor, infinitely faint, that did not belong in coffee.

Blood drummed in his ears. Then he reached in his pocket, brought out a notebook and wrote something on a page. He stood up suddenly as if remembering something, and went back to the control-room. The skipper himself had just sat down to the dinner brought him by the steward. Duty-watch in the control-room didn't call for continuous attention, it only required that someone be there.

"I thought of something, sir," said Braden. "I think I omitted to make a note about the air- freshener unit, sir."