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 went on along the catwalk. Braden followed. His brain nibbled at the skipper's remark about the Other Side of Nowhere. This tall tale had become folklore; nobody knew how it started. But all over the galaxy there were absurd tales of ships blundering into an impossibly wrong sort of space where before was behind and below was above and ships reacted insanely to their controls. One heard it in great detail about certain definite ships, but those ships always denied it. They said they'd heard the same story about other definite ships. But they denied it, too. No man ever claimed to have been on a ship when it happened, but the story persisted like other fabulous tales that can never be run to ground. Authorities on folklore said it was a fragment based on a science-fiction story centuries before - a story called "The Other Side of Nowhere", by a forgotten writer named Leinster. But it was discussed in all forecastles, and a great many crewmen believed it obstinately.
The Rim Star was again driving through emptiness at multiples of the speed of light, and conditions in her interior returned to normal. The incident had been frightening, but harmless. It was not likely to cause the crewmen to reform. The time had passed for that.
The catwalk ended at a second metal panel in the wall of the other corridor between the two ends of the ship. The skipper unlocked the panel from inside and stepped confidently through. It would have been incautious, had the Rim Star not been so huge.
There was no alarm. A taller door, marked as being that of a lifeboat-blister, was almost opposite. The skipper opened it boldly. Braden followed him through it. Another door inside made the entrance into an airlock. They went through that door also. A feeble light glowed here. They were in the blister.
They looked at the space-boat. Its size was proportionate to that of the Rim Star - 60 feet long and 15 feet in diameter; it looked like an even clumsier miniature of the parent ship. At that, it was larger than the ships that first traveled between the planets in the first solar system, and even the first interstellar trips were made in ships that were only a little larger. Perhaps a tenth of its volume was available for human use. The rest held stored food and other supplies, and the disproportionately large drive that was necessary. It was strictly for emergencies. The inspection seal on its port seemed to be intact.
The skipper touched the seal. It gave. He stared at it and then went inside the boat. Braden waited. As of now, the mutineers were better armed than the skipper and himself in the ratio of a riot squad to two peaceful citizens.
There was stillness. The silence of space is absolute. The silence of a huge ship, traveling light-years in hours, is no less absolute. It seemed to Braden that he could hear the beating of his own heart and even the blood rustling in his ears. Once he thought he heard the tiniest of all possible sounds - metal striking on metal somewhere. But it was infinitely faint, and it was very far away, and it was not repeated.
The skipper came out of the space-boat. His hands were empty. His features had lost all their life again. He said in a thin, breathless voice:
"I'm beaten again. The weapons are gone. And... the boat's drive is wrecked. When I saw the weapons gone, I looked. The boat can be launched, but the drive's smashed. It can't be driven anywhere. The passengers can't have even that much chance for their lives."
The dim light of the lifeboat-blister showed that he was raging. And somehow it seemed to Braden that the crewmen's pains to prevent the passengers' escape by lifeboat was a maddening form of mockery, of derision, just as the removal of the weapons was. The skipper was not only outwitted but he was being laughed at! And to be laughed at, in addition to murder and worse that was to be anticipated - it was intolerable!
Braden grimly handed the skipper a pocket blaster. His action was almost derision in itself, considering everything. But the skipper took it.
"Not much, Mr. Braden," he said fiercely. "It's not much! But it's enough to go into business with! The business of killing pirates! Come along with me and we'll wipe them out! Kill them! Move in on them in force! A pity for them to die easily, but..."
Braden interrupted.
"You're forgetting the passengers!" he said sharply.
The skipper was like a man faced with something he couldn't endure. He couldn't admit that he was beaten. He had to pretend what he knew was not true. A man can die in proof of his own incapacity.
"Mr, Braden, I've this!" the skipper said. He tapped the pocket blaster Braden had just given him. "Thanks to you, I've got this! And when I'm finished with those devils, your passengers will be as safe as if they were in their mothers' arms!"
He did not believe it, but he had to pretend that he did, or he was lost. It was better to be killed, believing it, than to admit defeat.
"The odds are bad," snapped Braden. "They're impossible! Only two of us..."
"One, Mr. Braden!" said the skipper fiercely. "I know this ship, Mr. Braden, as I know the chin I shave each morning. I'll take care of the crew alone!"
It was absurd. It was utter folly. And the skipper knew it. But he would let himself be killed rather than admit to himself that he'd been caught in his own trap and that only death remained to him.
"Somebody," said Braden grimly, "has to think of the ship and the passengers. I ask for authority to look after the ship while you go hunting mutineers - if you must."
The skipper rumbled. Braden told him, curtly, what he meant to do about the remotely possible safety of the passengers. He did not so much ask for authority as declare flatly that he was taking it. There comes a point when subordination is pure folly.
"Very well. Mr. Braden," growled the skipper. "Take the watch until relieved. I'll get along better with the ship off my mind. I give you full responsibility for the passengers. Use your best judgment for the ship and for them while I attend to the crew!"
He thrust past Braden and went out into the corridor. There was no sound. Braden followed him a moment later. He'd vanished.
Braden, frowning, opened the door to the catwalk by which they'd come here. He fastened it behind him. To all intents and purposes he vanished, too. He did not expect ever to see the skipper alive again.
One instant after closing the corridor-plate, he had left the catwalk. He was in the maze of struts and girders which, with very occasional catwalks, filled the space between the ship's holds and her outer skin. He saw a gigantic steel precipice which was a cargo hold. There were other holds the size of monster warehouses. Each could contain a large part of what a new colony of thousands of people would need to become self-supporting. Between them there were myriads of braces - weblike labyrinths of steel struts and strength-members.
Together they made the ship firmer and less flexible than a similar mass of solid steel.
Braden began to climb downward through the bewildering masses of metal. There was silence, and only the dimmest twilight in the web-like space. There were only feeble yellow lights. Those nearby were blanked out by girders as he moved on, and those farther away twinkled. He scowled as he descended. This behavior was contrary to all his instincts. If he followed his impulses, he'd join the skipper in a furious attack on the mutineers. A little while ago, that would have been the rational thing to do. But no more. Yet he yearned hungrily for freedom to do battle, whether with fists or blasters, instead of thinking coldly of what was wise and practical and sensible.
He tried to hurry. The crewmen didn't know what had happened to one of their number, and they couldn't have any clear idea of what had become of the skipper, but they couldn't fail to know what Braden must do. He would have to join the passengers and try to do something for their safety. The steward would surely realize that. Unless the crew had panicked - a temporary state, at best - he'd be leading them now to clean out the passenger space before Braden could obtain what added strength the male passengers might give him. It would not be much.