The Other Side of Nowhere

The man in the starlight said drily:

"I've got a blaster in my pocket." He moved on toward the spaceport gate.

Braden went on toward the big ship. As he drew nearer, her huge size became evident. She was 1500 feet long from her blunt bow to her rounded stern. She was 200-odd feet in diameter - as thick as a twenty-story building is tall. Beneath her there was utter and absolute darkness. No glimmer of light came from anywhere on her hull. She was wholly without grace of line or structure. There is nothing in the galaxy that looks more improbable than a spaceship, either aground or in space. The Rim Star was preposterous. She looked clumsy. There was no beauty in her anywhere.

Braden found the exit port - not a cargo door, but a small opening. He signaled his presence. Half a minute later there was a click, and a voice came out of a speaker over his head.

"Well?" the voice asked.

"My name's Braden. I was mate on the Cerberus and others. Paid off a month ago. My certificate's in order. I hear you're shy a mate. If that's right, I'm available."

The voice from the speaker rumbled inarticulately for a moment. Then it said:

"Wait. I'll have the steward let you in."

There was a click, and silence. Braden waited in the total darkness beneath the Rim Star's monstrous shape. He looked out at the stars. They were unfamiliar, but unfamiliar constellations are matters of course to a space officer. Forty light-years of distance changes any pattern of nearby stars to the point where no pattern any longer exists. But there is the Milky Way, and certain bright clusters, and more notably those dark nebulae which blot out the star- systems behind them. Braden could have used such skymarkers and by eye located this world of Nelm within, a reasonable number of light-centuries. It occurred to him that somebody scanning a sky of strange and unnamed stars might very well come to believe in the fabled Other Side of Nowhere, because anything seemed possible when the sky was new. But it was, of course, pure superstition. It attempted to explain the occasional inexplicable disappearance of ships in emptiness. But Braden didn't believe in it. It was a tall tale - absurd.

The port door opened and a man with straw-colored hair peered out. His skin seemed normal enough. He might have tried a rejuv job and it hadn't worked. He looked at Braden.

"Braden?"

"That's right," said Braden.

"I'll take you to the skipper."

Braden stepped inside. The door closed behind him. He saw that the man with the straw- colored hair was the ship's steward. The steward led the way up a short flight of stairs and through an opening into a corridor that led both ways. He went on. The floor of the corridor became a ramp. Presently there were steps, then more ramp, then more steps. There was no sign of life anywhere. The two men went through a long, curving, rising tunnel which went round and round without any apparent doors or other openings. There were, of course, hinged plates here and there in the corridor wall. Naturally! There were monitor-boxes, too. But the corridor obviously circled the huge emptiness which was the cargo space of the ship. This was normal for the Rim Star was a bulk-cargo carrier and her cavernous holds occupied almost all the interior of her structure.

The men climbed and climbed. Once they passed the marked doorway to a lifeboat blister, and once they passed a double door on the corridor's inboard side. This would allow the removal and replacement of the units that combined to form the ship's Lawlor drive, if inspection aground called for substitution. Otherwise there were no openings. The hinged plates, of course, gave access to catwalks among the ship's framing-members. There were no portholes, obviously. And there was no life.

The Rim Star consisted of a group of enormous cargo spaces enclosed in a double skin, with all controls in the bow. The parts of the ship to be used by human beings were minute compared to the volume available for freight. She'd been built to carry grain in bulk to the twin worlds Themis and Thetis when it was impossible to grow grain there for the human population. But some years back a mutant wheat had been developed which throve on the previously inhospitable planets. It had actually pushed back the native vegetation. Wheat was now sown on both planets to crowd out the useless native plants and thus clear ground for human-use crops. In consequence there was no longer any need for the big ship and she couldn't pay her way. In fact, the Rim Star appeared no longer to have any reason for being.

All this was no secret. But the ship did exist. She was designed to be handled by no more than six crewmen, plus steward and skipper and mate. There had seemed no possible use for her, until her skipper invented one. It looked promising to some people, and dubious to others. But Braden hadn't yet reached the point at which he considered disasters as rather more likely to happen than not. The Rim Star needed a mate. She would be heading toward a part of space where he'd never been. He didn't think about abstract probabilities or the dangers of trying new things. He'd come to try to get a berth.

Finally the steward opened a door and said: "The captain's in there."

He closed the door behind Braden, who found himself in a room empty of everything but ordinary furniture. There was another door ahead. Braden went through it. Still another door.