The Other Side of Nowhere

"Yes, sir," said Braden. "I think I could have done it."

"This is a report for the ship's log, Mr. Braden!" said the skipper reprovingly. "You did, though the crewmen who were still active were reduced to three by that time. You did very well. In fact, in capturing these desperate characters unharmed - or let us say nearly unharmed - your action was praiseworthy in the extreme."

Braden looked sharply at the skipper. His face was impassive to an improbable degree, but his tone was definitely ironic.

There were sounds. Duckworth and Diane and Fortescue appeared, Duckworth still worried and cautious, Diane infinitely relieved. The skipper nodded to them.

"How do you do?" he asked, with elaborate politeness. "We have not met before. I will ask you, though" ... he fixed Fortescue with his eyes... "to get handcuffs and such things and shackle these three men on the floor here. You will find them..."

He gave instructions. Fortescue, more or less awed by the skipper's air, went away. Duckworth regarded the mutineers doubtfully.

"If they stir," rumbled the skipper, "you may take measures. I insist, though, that they not be killed. Mr. Braden would not approve."

The irony in his tone was acid. Braden stirred uneasily. The skipper went on with painstaking precision.

"When they are suitably shackled - there's another man among you passengers, I believe - when they are cuffed and he arrives, I should like them to be put in the No. 1 lifeboat blister. Mr. Braden will show you where it is. He has a broken hand, which forces us to request this favor of you, and I have an ankle which prevents me from helping."

Two vision screens had gone out and come back on some time before. Two others had now been out for minutes. First one and then the other came back on. The last two went out. Hardy was restoring the vision-screen connections to their places. The stars, and the sun of Handel's Planet, looked perfectly normal in the screens that were now working, but Hardy's task was not quite complete. He'd come up presently, with Derr Carmody.

"All this," said the skipper, "is being recorded for the ship's log. I shall add that we will now drive for Handel's Planet. We cannot land, because the steward used all our rocket-fuel in an attempt to escape a phantom danger. But we will orbit our actual destination and try to get you passengers aground. Then Mr. Braden and myself will take the ship to where we can replenish her rockets. After that we will return to deliver her cargo."

Again the impression of irony was overwhelming. The skipper threw the log-recorder switch. The log-tape ceased to run. Then he said in an entirely changed voice:

"My daughter - my surviving daughter - will be pleased when she hears that. She does not believe in vengeance. But we will see what we will see!"

Fortescue came back with handcuffs and leg-irons which would be both comfortable and escape-proof. The skipper tested a blast-rifle for its value as a crutch. With it he limped ponderously to his cabin.

Braden supervised the transfer of the prisoners, duly cuffed, to the lifeboat blister, where they were fastened to small welded braces. Duckworth and Fortescue were joined by Hardy, and they took both Sharkey and the chubby man, still moaning, to the other crewmen imprisoned in the blister.

Presently Braden was alone in the control-room.

Diane came in. He nodded to her and said dourly:

"I wish things had worked out better."

He was not pleased with himself. He'd contrived to give the effect of being on the Other Side of Nowhere because otherwise he'd have had no chance at all to recover the ship. But it had worked too well. Braden was deeply suspicious of schemes and contrived achievements. He felt that he hadn't acted in a properly forthright, self-respecting manner.

Diane smiled at him. Tolerantly. She acted as if she disagreed with him but wouldn't say so. He was embarrassed.

"There's Handel's Planet," he said, pointing to a bright dot on the screen. He turned up the magnification. "We'll land you there by a space-boat from the ground. Then we'll go get more rocket-fuel, taking the prisoners with us..."

"I suspect," said Diane, "you'll have trouble getting them there."

Braden frowned and nodded. He would have trouble. He knew that if he were in the skipper's shoes, no man who'd boasted as the steward had, or shared in the atrocities he'd boasted of... no such man would live long. Life would be intolerable until such men were dead. Even then...

The image of Handel's Planet magnified. The planet had seas and green continents, and the snowcaps that are guarantees of the absence of poisonous gases and extremes of temperature in an Earth-type world.

"I think that you should try to land somehow," Diane said. "You've always been able to think of something to do."

He shook his head.

"Rockets will burn out fifty or sixty acres, at worst, even letting down the Rim Star; but a space-drive in atmosphere is something else. Even a space-boat creates a small but deadly hurricane when it takes off or lands in atmosphere. Trees blow down and houses explode and generally the effect is calamitous. But a ship the size of the Rim Star would create a full-scale typhoon. Everything within a hundred miles of where she landed would be wrecked. So we'll have to go on to some spaceport where our rockets can be refueled, and then come back for our landing. But we may have to go to several spaceports to get enough rocket-fuel."