Fugitive of the Stars

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Then Ardric volunteered a piece of information that explained things to Horne.

'My father,” he said abruptly one day, when he saw Horne looking at him curiously, ‘is bitterly against joining the Federation. I think sometimes how he must feel to know that I'm here, helping to pilot Morivenn on his way to Vega.'

The ship plowed her way between the island suns, heading for Arcturus where they would discharge cargo and some people from the Federation consular service, take on more cargo and the returning consular personnel. Then they would lift off for the long home-flight to the heart of the galaxy, to Vega. They came out of FTL drive, into normal space. Arcturus burned larger and brighter in the screens until presently all the other stars were burned away and there was only the single furnace blaze to fill the sky.

'I've been here before,” said Ardric. “I can take her in.'

'I'm sure you could,” said Horne, “but regulations require me to do it.'

Ardric grinned. “Maybe. But don't forget the meteor-swarm. I was with a man who did, and it was…” he made a gesture of sliding one hand past the other, touching. “It was that close.'

The meteor-swarm was periodic, and fully charted. Horne plotted his deceleration pattern to take full account of it, checked the coordinates twice through the computers and set up the combination on the board.

The Vega Queen, stately as a great tarnished carp in a pool of diamonds, swung her nose around and began the business of slowing down. It would take her three and one-half days, Vega Arbitrary Time, of spiraling toward the planetary surface to reach a speed that would enable her to land without setting herself and the surrounding air on fire.

The first day passed.

The second day passed, and it was dinnertime. Horne and Ardric were standing watch, four on and four off, and they ate in the pilot room together at the end of the third trick and the beginning of the fourth. It was Horne's turn to go off.

The steward brought the dinner in and they ate it. They, talked of the wonders of the wider galaxy, and at regular intervals Horne, since he was finishing his trick, rose to check the navigation-board and the all-important tell-tales that monitored planetary drift, the particles of debris attracted randomly by the gravitational field and impossible to chart. The automatic compensators were functioning perfectly.

The steward came again with coffee and the small glass of brandy for Horne. When it was Ardric's turn to go off he would have an equally small amount of the green liquor of Skereth.

Horne rose and checked the board again. He had his coffee and his brandy, formally handed over the pilot room to Ardric by punching the code in the log-tape, and went to his cabin, which was only a dozen steps away and connected to the pilot room with a direct-speaker alarm. He closed the door and began to undress. He was thinking that they should pass well clear of the meteor-swarm at about the mid-point of his next trick, when the dark closed over him with such swift waves of weakness that he barely made it to his bunk before he fell.

The next thing he knew there was a panic of noise, sirens, bells, human voices, shouts and screams, and someone was shaking him. Someone was slapping him, brutally pounding him awake. Even through the sick mists that clogged his brain and clouded his emotions, he could feel the cold and bitter hatred behind those blows and the speaking of his name.

He saw Wasek's face.

He mumbled an attempt at a question, trying desperately to come awake. He heard Wasek answer something about the meteor swarm and he said, “But not yet — next trick, my watch…

Wasek hauled him bodily erect. “This is your watch, you drunken murdering bastard. Get in there and do something if you can.” And he said something more about Ardric, but Horne didn't hear it. All he could hear now were the noises of the ship screaming and the people screaming and the feet running over the metal floors and the lifeboat hatches clanging. He started to walk the twelve steps to the pilot room, his knees giving under him and his belly weighted down with lead, and then something hit the ship again. Again? Had it been hit before? He couldn't remember with his mind but his body seemed to have a memory of jarring agony and wrenching metal. The lights went out and the corridor tilted upward, then slid away at an insane angle, and Horne went with it into the dark again.

CHAPTER IV

He heard the voices long before he opened his eyes. He kept his eyes shut and tried not to listen, hoping that the darkness would claim him again and keep him, this time, forever. But it did not. And there was no escape from the voices.

One was that of a child, crying. One was that of a woman, crying. The rest were those of men, speaking in the dulled and ragged tones of shock, starting sentences and never finishing them, or repeating sometimes one word or a phrase over and over again. I went forward, see, to get this bucket out of Stores, and that was when… Just like a piece of torn paper, that bulkhead, my God, I saw it go out… Nothing left, nothing at all left, not even anything I can bury…

The woman, between her sobs, just said a name over and over again.

Horne had to open his eyes at last.

There were eighteen people in the lifeboat. A woman, a child, and sixteen men.

One of them was Wasek, with an ugly wound across his left cheek and his tunic stained with blood. He looked at Horne. The other fifteen men looked at Horne. So did the woman, but he did not think she saw him, and the child was crying.

Horne said, in a voice he did not recognize as his own, “What happened?'

There was a sound and a movement among the fifteen men. Wasek turned on them.

'I didn't save his life just for that. I'm not through with him yet. I won't be through with him for a long time.'

Then men subsided. They were too exhausted in their emotions to carry any feeling too far, even the feeling of hatred. Wasek grunted and pointed out the port.

'That's what happened.'

Horne had already seen. The lifeboat was moving steadily away, its small jets hammering, but it was within sight of the scattered wreckage. Some parts of the Vega Queen were still recognizable as having once been part of a ship. Most of it was unrecognizable as ever having been anything.

'How many lifeboats got away?'

'This is it. These are all there are. Eighteen survivors. Eighteen, Horne. Figure out for yourself how many lives you took.'

Horne shook his head. His tongue felt like a stick of wood in his mouth. “I took?” he said. “No, I… For God's sake, Captain, tell me what happened!'

The men watched him with cold hating eyes. Cold hate. Yes. He remembered Wasek shaking him, slapping him, saying, You drunken murdering bastard.

Horne began to shake. “I had one glass of brandy. How can a man get drunk on one glass of brandy?” They did not answer him. Wasek's face was like stone. Horne looked again at the wreckage, and for the third time he said, despairing, “What happened?'

'The meteor swarm,” said Wasek. “We ran straight into it.'

Horne stared at him. “'Mat isn't possible. We were chartered to clear that swarm by fifteen thousand miles.'

'You set the course up yourself, Horne. It took no account of the swarm…'

'How can you say that? How do you know? I set the course.'

Wasek went stonily on. “If Ardric had been an experienced pilot, he might have seen it in time, but he wasn't and he didn't, and you were passed out drunk. He was standing your watch for you, taking to cover, and he didn't realize in time.'

'But the course was set! Fifteen thousand miles. We couldn't have got even near the fringe of the swarm!'