A sign went purple:
HYPERGRAVITY SYNTHESIZERS SHIFTING TO AUTOMATIC
Then a green sign:
HYPERGRAVITY SYNTHESIZERS BALANCED ON AUTOMATIC
It went off. Then an orange sign:
ACCELERATION NOW BALANCED AND COMPENSATED
YOU MAY UNFASTEN BELTS
YOU MAY MOVE FREELY
ALL IS WELL
I didn’t need any permission to move freely! And all was very not well! I was writhing all over the bed!
We were on time drives. The ship, this dangerous bomb they called a ship, might very well blow up. But fleetingly now and then I caught myself wishing that it would. I could not stand much more of this shaking. I was getting more and more fatigued and yet somewhere my nerves and muscles were digging up the means to shake some more!
The star-time clock on the wall had an inner dial that was now retaining Voltar time. Slowly, painfully, the hours advanced while they seemed to stand still.
Finally, taking two hundred years to do so, it indicated it was midnight on Voltar. I had taken that awful pill sixteen hours ago. Yet, still I shook.
One of the Antimancos, an engineer, came in and held a canister tube to my mouth and I drank. I had not realized anyone’s mouth could get that dry.
Then I wished I hadn’t. Maybe it would save my life and the one thing I didn’t want to do was live!
I desperately wanted to sleep as I was totally exhausted. And yet I couldn’t sleep.
As Voltar time crept all too slowly on, I became more and more depressed.
And then, although I couldn’t imagine how that could be, I got worse! My heart began to palpitate. I began to get dizzy so that the room did odd tilts: at first I thought we were maneuvering in some odd way and then discovered it must be me.
And finally I got a crashing headache.
Warp drives are much smoother than time drives. These Will-be Was engines had little jerks in them; and at each jerk, it felt like my head was going to splinter apart.
It was not until that creeping disc that marked Voltar time indicated noon the next day after departure that I began to recover. I was not well by any means. I just knew I didn’t feel quite so awful.
From time to time an engineer had stepped in. From the lack of expression on his swarthy, triangular Antimanco face, I might as well have been some engine part that needed regulating. But he did bring me more water and he brought me some food.
At thirty-six and a half hours from our departure — a bit past midnight on Voltar — just about when I had decided to sit up, there was a new flurry of lights. Glaring red, the sign said:
MIDPOINT VOYAGE
SHIFTING FROM ACCELERATION
TO DECELERATION SECURE LOOSE OBJECTS
Then: FASTEN GRAVITY BELTS
Then: DO NOT MOVE!
Then: HYPERGRAVITY SYNTHESIZERS REVERSING
There was a moment when nothing had any weight. The (bleeped)[1] I. G. Barben pill bottle and the crumbs on the table drifted up.
Then: STAND BY FOR ROOM REVERSE
The gimbaled room turned. It was very disorienting to me. Fixed objects on the walls were in the same place but everything else had reversed. The sign went purple:
HYPERGRAVITY SYNTHESIZERS SHIFTING TO AUTOMATIC
Then a green sign:
HYPERGRAVITY SYNTHESIZERS BALANCED ON AUTOMATIC
The (bleeped) I. G. Barben bottle and the dust of the pill clattered back down on the table. Then a red sign:
TIME DRIVES BEING REVERSED
There was a dreadful wrenching leap. A sort of a howl sounded through the ship. Then an orange sign:
DECELERATION NOW BALANCED AND COMPENSATED
YOU MAY UNFASTEN BELTS
YOU MAY MOVE FREELY
ALL IS WELL
Except me.
I felt like a wreck. And worse. During the brief moments of weightlessness, I had felt nauseated. I hate weightlessness. I probably never will get used to it. It does funny things to your muscles and heart operation and mine were in no condition to be tampered with.
With a feeble hand, I reached up to take the weight of a belt off my stomach and found something blocking my contact.
The envelope! It was still wedged under the gravity straps. I marvelled that my writhing had not dislodged it.
I felt confused anyway and the confusion of the arrival of this envelope hit me again.
Who could have put it in my pocket? Nobody had handed me any envelope at the departure party. Yet, here it was.
It was urgent color so I thought I had better open it.
A medallion fell out. It was one of the religious kind, a five-pointed star. On the back of each star point there was a tiny, almost imperceptible initial.
I opened the letter. It had no heading. But it did have a date-hour which showed it had been written just before departure had taken place.
It said:
Here is your crew control as promised. Each crew member is indicated by a letter on the back of a star point. These points have been matched to your individual left thumbprint and only you can work it. An outward stroke of your thumb on a star point will send an electric shock into the brain of that individual crew member. It will paralyze him temporarily.
By pressing the front of the medallion and at the same time stroking the star point of a crew member, a hypnopulse will be delivered to that individual.
Really, it should have cheered me up. I was in space with a crew of unreformed pirates and I certainly might need to paralyze them or give them a hypnotic command. Oh, I would wear the medallion all right, inside my tunic and close to the skin. Nobody would suspect. But I just wasn’t in any mood to be cheered up.
I looked at the medallion. The S on the top point could only mean Captain Stabb. I would look up the names of the rest.
I turned it over. It bore on the face the God Ahness, the one they pray to to avert underhanded actions. Then I chanced to turn the dispatch over.
There was a note on it! It was written with his left hand to disguise the writing. But it was Lombar Hisst!
It said:
You may have thought of this going-away party as a sarcastic way of showing the Grand Council the mission had actually left. You came within a dagger thickness of going too far. But as Earth has no way of knowing of the mission, the order has been stayed for now.
I felt my head spin in confusion. Lombar had been at the party!
What order had been stayed?
The date-hour showed it had been put in my pocket almost at the instant of departure. But nobody had been near me! He would never trust this to the crew. Never.
What order?
And then I knew what order he was talking about. The order he had given for some unknown person to kill me if Heller got out of hand and messed up by succeeding.
Did we have a stowaway?
My shaking began all over again.
I unfastened my belts. I had to dispose of this dispatch quickly. I made it over to the trash disintegrator. As I reached for the handle, a long blue spark snapped out and stung me.
Even the ship was striking at me!
I collapsed on a bench and wept.
Chapter 3
About twelve hours later I was not as bad off for I had gotten about eight hours sleep, and although feeling depressed, I had decided I might possibly live.
For an hour or two I had simply lain there and done nothing else but curse I. G. Barben, all I. G. Barben pharmaceutical products, all directors of I. G. Barben. I even committed blasphemy and cursed Delbert John Rockecenter, the true owner — by nominee and hidden controls — of the company!
Although I had read about the cyclic effects of the drug, biochemical words are sort of cold and detached. They do not really carry the message that you get when you meet reality in the flesh. One always has the reservation “that it might happen to others, but it won’t happen to me.” How wrong that reservation was!
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