Destination: Void

CHAPTER 30

Anthropomorphic assumptions have tended to lead humankind far astray. The universe does not work by our rules.

SOMEWHERE IN HIS own consciousness, Flattery felt, an accumulation of answer-bits had poured out of their storage circuits, fed into an analyzer punched for decode, and produced a terrible answer.

The ship had to be destroyed - and all its occupants with it.

As the lock hatch swung open, that one thought dominated him. He hurled himself through the hatchway and down the tube. The distance illusion that made the tube seem to contract ahead of him, filled him with a sensation that he must be growing smaller and smaller to pass through it. The thought intruded on him and he forced it aside.

He heard Timberlake close behind.

"You see that robox?" Timberlake panted. "What made it open up?"

Flattery sped on without answering.

"That voice," Timberlake said. "Was that Bickel, that voice? Sounded like Bickel."

They were at the Y-branch leading down to Com-central now, then at the hatch.

Flattery opened it, slipped through. His mind raced. Kill the ship now. Destroy this wild genie they had created. Timberlake mustn't suspect and try to stop him. And Bickel - Bickel was in quarters where he could block off that red trigger. But there was another trigger.

I must act normal, Flattery thought. I must wait my moment. Tim could stop me.

Prudence lay on the deck halfway between hatch and couch.

Flattery knelt beside her, becoming totally physician for the necessities of this moment.

Pulse thin, ragged. Lips cyanotic. Liver spots at her neck where it showed within the edge of the helmet seal. He loosed the hinged helmet from the back of her neck, pressed a hand there. Skin clammy.

Did she think she was fooling me? he wondered. She went off the A-S and was experimenting on her own body. Medical stores showed a gradual depletion of serotonin and adrenalin fractions.

Flattery thought of the neuro-regulatory shifts, the psychic aches that would arise from manipulating body chemistry in this fashion. Prue's moods and strange behavior became clearer to him.

He stood up, retrieved the emergency medical pack from its clips on the bulkhead, saw that Timberlake had taken over on the big board.

What difference does it make if I save her? Flattery asked himself. But he returned his attention once more to the comatose woman, began ministering to her. He kept on checking her condition as he worked. No broken bones. No evidence of external injury he could detect through her suit.

Timberlake had ignored Prudence after the first glance. She was Flattery's problem. He had darted across to his action couch, snifted the big board, keyed first for open circuits.

There was a sense of dullness in the equipment. He had to wait while servos hummed slowly about their work, while circuits balked and produced sluggish results.

He could feel his own hairline awareness of every control and instrument, his consciousness keyed up by necessity. The interrelation of every device in this room and throughout the ship was like a complicated ballet, a pattern growing simpler and simpler in his mind even through its slowness.

Timberlake made a delicate adjustment in hull-shield control, saw the resultant temperature change register on his instruments as a power shift in the radiation-cell accumulators, a minuscule shift of weight in the ship-as-a-whole brought about by adjustment in mass-temperature-proton balance.

But how slow it was. And growing slower.

Timberlake swung his computer board to his left side, keyed for diagnosis, got no response.

Telltales were winking out on the big board. With an increasing sense of frenzy, Timberlake fought to find the trouble.

Dead circuits.

No answers.

Keys on the main console began locking. No power in their circuits.

The last light winked out. Every key on the board was locked tight, all the servos silent. There was no whisper of air-circulation fans, no pulse of life to be felt in the ship. Slowly, Timberlake swung his gaze to the right, staring at the hyb-tank repeaters. The lights were dead, but the physical analogue gauges still showed feeder fluids flowing in the gross ducts of the system. Room lights flickered as local battery circuits took over the job of illumination.

The hyb-tank occupants were not dead... yet, Timberlake thought. Whatever the settings had been when the board went dead, that was the balance remaining for each tank - as long as the auxiliary accumulators throughout the ship retained some power... as long as the pump motors kept ru

But the delicate feedback control and adjustment was gone.

Timberlake eased himself out of the action couch, looked around the oddly quiet Com-central. The only sound was Flattery working to revive Prudence.

Her eyelids fluttered and Timberlake thought bitterly: What good does it do to save her? We're dead.

Flattery sat back on his heels. I've done all I can for her, he thought. Now...

He grew conscious of the stillness in the room, looked up at the dead console, shot a questioning stare at Timberlake.

"Bickel's really done it this time," Timberlake said. "No power... computer off. Everything's dead."

All I need do is wait, Flattery thought. Without power, the ship will die.

But the effort of reviving Prudence had softened his determination. Living, after all, held its attractions - even if they were only a ship full of culture-grown flesh, clones, duplicates, expendable units.

"You are human types, never doubt that," Hempstead had insisted. "You were grown from selected cell cultures of select candidates. Clones are merely good common sense. We don't want to lose people if the ship has to be destroyed... as the others were. We can send you out again and again."

But if the ship died this way, it might not leave its capsule record to help the ones who came after... the next try.

"How is she?" Timberlake asked. He nodded toward Prudence.

"I think she will recover."

"To what?" Timberlake asked. "Do you want to go see what's wrong with Bickel?"

"Why bother?"

The question with its tone of utter submission to fate sent anger surging through Timberlake.

"Give up if you want, but if Bickel's alive he may know what he's done... and how to repair it." He pushed himself away from the couch, headed for the hatch to quarters.

"Wait," Flattery said. Timberlake's rejection had stung him and he found this surprising.

Have I acquired a new taste for living? Flattery wondered. God - what is Thy will?

"You keep an eye on Prue," Flattery said. "It was chemical shock. She should stay quiet and warm. I have her suit heaters turned up. Leave them that..."

He broke off as the hatch from quarters slowly opened.

Bickel stumbled through it, would have fallen had he not caught a stanchion. A charred block of plastic slipped from his hands, tumbled to the deck. He ignored it, clung to the stanchion.

Flattery studied him. There were dark smudges beneath Bickel's eyes. His skin was powder white. His cheeks showed skull depressions as though they had wasted away in months of fasting.

"So your white box didn't kill you," Flattery said. "Too bad. All you did was kill the ship."

Bickel shook his head, still unable to speak.

The stillness of the ship had awakened him from a sleep so deep he could still feel the fog of it clinging to his mind. A profound weariness dragged at his muscles. Movement sent odd aches angling through his body, stirring this terrible torpor.

The first thing to catch his attention as he awakened had been the mobius energizer, his clever installation to give the Ox a constant source of energy reference. A fan of gray char crackled from its broken seals and its motors lay silent. The virtually frictionless motors and spools, the thousand-year units, were blobs of fused plastic and metal.