“Excellent!” Dr. Tenable said. “The two girls and I could have alleviated many hours of boredom if we had had a fourth, but neither of my two associates, Mr. Welling and Mr. Branch, proved themselves capable of learning the game. Once we get our sea legs, I suggest that we make up a game. Where would you suggest, Gina?”
“The cabin Sara and I have would be perfect. Light and airy, Roger.”
“Tomorrow would be about right for me,” Mal said.
He smiled and left them. He spent the next hour or so learning his way around the ship. The radio shade was at the after end of the boat deck, beside the ladderway leading down to the main deck. The only above-decks cargo was the group of four big used bulldozers near the bow, British Army surplus consigned to New Zealand. As he walked around he noted that the cargo winches, life boats, all rigging, were in superb condition. He also learned that, of the crew, only Dolan, Torgeson, Sparks and the one mess boy spoke English. The other crew members, except for the sullen-looking second officer, seemed smiling and amiable.
He went back up onto the boat deck and looked in at Sparks. The man did not look up. He was about fifty, with a gray ravaged face, eyes deeply set. He had a long wave receiver set to a Calcutta station, set softly to a program of Indian music. He was reading a tattered copy of Plutarch’s Lives.
At last he seemed to grow conscious of Mal’s shadow in the doorway. He looked up with nervous jerkiness.
“Passengers not allowed in the radio room,” he said in a rasping voice.
“My error,” Mal said, backing out.
The hooded eyes stared at him. “Error is the great common denominator of mankind, sir. Life itself, once you have studied it, reveals itself to be a structural error generated in the heat of the primal world, in the hot depths of a lifeless sea. History is but the recounting of errors compounded as a result of that first one, the first creation of a uni-cellular animal which divided itself to make two.”
“And so,” said Mal, “you sit in there with that belief and take pleasure in reading what a compounded error has written about other biological errors, eh?”
Sparks stared at him. “Come back in here, sir. Sit down. It was too much to expect that there would be anyone to talk to this trip.” He reached out and cut off the whine and wail of the music. “My name, sir, is Stephen MacLane. I taught philosophy at the University of Glasgow until one sunny morning I found that I did not believe any word which I said. Since then I have made it my habit to break down the beliefs of others to basic and hence meaningless fundamentals. I wish to know what you believe in, sir. And I wish to know your name. Do not be frightened, sir, at the wee blue monkeys that infest my board here. I’ve found that they are harmless despite their evil appearance.”
Mal glanced at the board with a chill feeling at the back of his neck. The man had stated it all so soberly that the idea of tiny blue monkeys seemed feasible.
“My name is Malcolm Atkinson. And I do not know what I believe in.”
“A common state. Less positive than those who follow Sartre, the high priest of believing firmly in nothingness.”
“I may believe that I exist. A year ago I was certain of it. Now I feel as though I were a cleverly created illusion, Mac-Lane.”
One gray eyebrow went up. The man smiled. “A pleasant sourness to find in one so young. Take that fool, Dolan. He believes in himself. He thinks that if the factor of luck could be taken out of his life, he could rule his environment. Paulus believes in nothing but a clean ship and good digestion. Torgeson believes the world is a comic opera devised for his special amusement. He, too, is a determinist. The second officer exists only on the animal level. He is possibly the happiest man aboard.”
Mal did not leave until the mess boy came to the doorway and announced that it was time to eat.
For the mid-day meal he was directed to the main table. The Captain sat at one end, Dolan at the other. Sara Temble was seated at the Captain’s right, Gina Farrow at his left. Dr. Temble sat beside Gina, facing Tom Branch. Mal sat at Dolan’s left beside Branch, facing Welling. Mr. Gopala, considered a second-class citizen, sat smiling and alone at a table for two. The other men entitled to eat there came and went during the meal, wolfing the food and departing hurriedly.
Paulus ate with shocking carelessness, liberally spattering the front of his whites and the table around his plate. As he hastily chewed each mouthful, he stared frankly and with obvious pleasure at the bare brown shoulders and arms of the girls on either side of him.
The food was plain and good. Branch and Welling did not indulge in table talk. Of the two, Tom Branch was the larger, but only by a little. His white shirt bulged across the barrel chest, the buttons pulling the fabric tight. Mal thought that he did not look as alert as Welling, the slightly leaner man. Both of them moved with the coordination of natural athletes and neither of them dropped their poker expressions for a moment. At close range Mal found that they were both older than he had first thought.
Mal was curious about the two of them. As research geologists, they were beautifully miscast. Even if there were a mining engineering tie-in, it still did not make a great deal of sense. The details were wrong. Details of scarred knuckles, of the constant controlled alertness. In fact, Temble’s relationship to them smacked a bit of the relation of trainer to animals.
Mal grinned inwardly as he saw both Gina and Sara pointedly avoiding any glance toward the captain’s lusty eating habits. Dolan gave Mal a solemn wink.
III
Wearing canvas shoes as protection against the searing heat of the deck plates, Mal walked in swimming trunks to the blue canvas cover of the main cargo hatch, raised a foot above the level of the deck. As usual at this time of day, both Sara and Gina were already there, spread lax on their blankets, their honey-tan bodies gleaming with oil, limp under the fist of the brute sun. In their two-piece suits Gina’s body was a token of abundance, Sara’s a more delicate promise.
Gina lifted her head and said sleepily, “Ah! The man who opens with a psychic two bid.”
“Worked, didn’t it?” he asked as he spread his own blanket between them.
“It worked that time. Next time you try it, Roger and I will clobber you and Sara.”
“It kept you two out of slam, didn’t it? And next time you are thinking I’m trying it, we’ll have a fistful, won’t we, Sara?”
“Of course,” Sara said distantly. Ever since that first breakfast aboard a week ago, Sara had had an impenetrable reserve. She smiled willingly enough, but the smiles never reached her eyes. She played competent unemotional bridge. Roger Temble was a plunger. Gina had natural card sense. The way they had divided it off made it a close interesting game.
Mal adjusted his sun glasses and lay face down, his chin on one clenched fist. From the stern came the intermittent snapping of the target rifle, now so familiar that it had become a part of the background. Welling and Branch had devised a game involving the plunking of stoppered beer cans and bottles in the turbulent wake of the Bjornsan Star.
They were one day out of Colombo, heading southeast toward Perth. There was a faint breath of coolness in the air. Soon they would get so far south that sunbathing would be out.
He had been planning this special moment for two days. He said idly, “Girls, have you noticed how much more cordial the good doctor has been these past two days?”
Gina rolled over onto her side and stared at him. “How do you mean?”
He felt Sara looking at him from the other side. “Now I am his buddy-buddy. Before that I was some sort of a menace. Reporters get so they can feel those things.”