officers. The officers felt the same about both other groups. And the scientists hated the officers and crew for all the inconveniences of the old Wahoo. Me? I was in no-man’s land—technically in the science group, but without a pure science degree; I had an officer’s feelings left over from graduating as an engineer on the ships; and I looked like a crewman.
It cured my phobia, all right. After the first month out, I was too disgusted to go into a fear funk. But I found out it didn’t help a bit to like space again and know I’d stay washed up as a spaceman.
We’d been jinxed from the start. Two months out, the whole crew of scientists came down with something Doc Napier finally diagnosed as food poisoning; maybe he was right, since our group ate in our own mess hall, and the crew and officers who didn’t eat with us didn’t get it. Our astronomer, Bill Sanderson, almost died. I’d been lucky, but then I never did react to things much. There were a lot of other small troubles, but the next major trick had been fumes from the nuclear generators getting up into our quarters—it was always our group that had the trouble. If Eve Nolan hadn’t been puttering with some of her trick films at the time—she and Walt Harris had the so-called night shift—and seen them blacken, we’d have been dead before they discovered it. And it took us two weeks of bunking with the sullen crew and decontamination before we could pick up life again. Engineer Wilcox had been decent about helping with it, blaming himself. But it had been a mess.
Naturally, there were dark hints that someone was trying to get us; but I couldn’t see any crewman wiping us out just to return to Earth, where our contract, with its completion clause, would mean he wouldn’t have a dime coming to him. Anyhow, the way things were going, we’d all go berserk before we reached Saturn.
The lunch gong sounded, but I let it ring. Bullard would be serving us whole wheat biscuits and soup made out of beans he’d let soak until they turned sour. I couldn’t take any more of that junk, the way I felt then. I heard some of the men going down the corridor, followed by a confused rumble of voices. Then somebody let out a yell. “Hey, rooob!”
That meant something. The old yell spacemen had picked up from carney people to rally their kind around against the foe. And I had a good idea of who was the foe. I heard the yell bounce down the passage again, and the slam of answering feet.
Then the gravity field went off. Or rather, was cut off. We may have missed the boat in getting anti-gravity, if there is such a thing, but our artificial gravity is darned near foolproof.
It was ten years since I’d moved in free fall, but Space Tech had done a good job of training good habits. I got out of my bunk, hit the corridor with a hand out, bounced, kicked, and dove toward the mess hall without a falter. The crewmen weren’t doing so well—but they were coming up the corridor fast enough.
I could have wrung Muller’s neck. Normally, in case of trouble, cutting gravity is smart. But not here, where the crew already wanted a chance to commit mayhem, and had more experience than the scientists.
Yet, surprisingly, when I hit the mess hall ten feet ahead of the deckhands, most of the scientists were doing all right. Hell, I should have known Pietro, Sanderson and a couple others would be used to no-grav; in astronomical work, you cut your eye teeth on that. They were braced around the cook, who huddled back in a corner, while our purser-steward, Sam, was still singing for help.
The fat face of the cook was dead white. Bill Sanderson, looking like a slim, blond ballet dancer and muscled like an apache expert, had him in one hand and was stuffing the latest batch of whole wheat biscuits down his throat. Bill’s sister, Jenny, was giggling excitedly and holding more biscuits.
The deckhands and Grundy, the mate, were almost at the door, and I had just time enough to slam it shut and lock it in their faces. I meant to enjoy seeing the cook taken down without any interruption.
Sam let out a final yell, and Bullard broke free, making a mess of it without weight. He was sputtering out bits of the biscuit. Hal Lomax reached out a big hand, stained with the chemicals that had been his life’s work, and pushed the cook back.
And suddenly fat little Bullard switched from quaking fear to a blind rage. The last of the biscuit sailed from his mouth and he spat at Hal. “You damned hi-faluting black devil. You—you sneering at my cooking. I’m a white man, I am—I don’t have to work for no black ni….”
I reached him first, though even Sam started for him then. You can deliver a good blow in free-fall, if you know how. His teeth against my knuckles stopped my leap, and the back of his head bounced off the wall. He was unconscious as he drifted by us, moving upwards. My knuckles stung, but it had been worth it. Anyhow, Jenny’s look more than paid for the trouble.
The door shattered then, and the big hulk of Mate Grundy tumbled in, with the two deckhands and the pair from the engine room behind him. Sam let out a yell that sounded like protest, and they headed for us—just as gravity came on.
I pulled myself off the floor and out from under Bullard to see the stout, oldish figure of Captain Muller standing in the doorway, with Engineer Wilcox slouched easily beside him, looking like the typical natty space officer you see on television. Both held gas guns.
“All right, break it up!” Muller ordered. “You men get back to your work. And you, Dr. Pietro—my contract calls for me to deliver you to Saturn’s moon, but it doesn’t forbid me to haul you the rest of the way in irons. I won’t have this aboard my ship!”
Pietro nodded, his little gray goatee bobbing, his lean body coming upright smoothly. “Quite right, Captain. Nor does it forbid me to let you and your men spend the sixteen months on the moon—where I command—in irons. Why don’t you ask Sam what happened before you make a complete fool of yourself, Captain Muller?”
Sam gulped and looked at the crew, but apparently Pietro was right; the little guy had been completely disgusted by Bullard. He shrugged apologetically. “Bullard insulted Dr. Lomax, sir. I yelled for someone to help me get him out of here, and I guess everybody got all mixed up when gravity went off, and Bullard cracked his head on the floor. Just a misunderstanding, sir.”
Muller stood there, glowering at the cut on my knuckles, and I could feel him aching for a good excuse to make his threat a reality. But finally, he grunted and swung on his heel, ordering the crew with him. Grundy threw us a final grimace and skulked off behind him. Finally there was only Wilcox, who grinned, shrugged, and shut the door quietly behind him. And we were left with the mess free-fall had made of the place.
I spotted Jenny heading across the room, carefully not seeing the fatuous glances Pietro was throwing her way, and I swung in behind. She nodded back at me, but headed straight for Lomax, with an odd look on her face. When she reached him, her voice was low and businesslike.
“Hal, what did those samples of Hendrix’s show up?”
Hendrix was the Farmer, in charge of the hydroponics that turned the carbon dioxide we breathed out back to oxygen, and also gave us a bit of fresh vegetables now and then. Technically, he was a crewman, just as I was a scientist; but actually, he felt more like one of us.
Lomax looked surprised. “What samples, Jenny? I haven’t seen Hendrix for two weeks.”
“You—” She stopped, bit her lip, and frowned. She swung on me. “Paul, have you seen him?”
I shook my head. “Not since last night. He was asking Eve and Walt to wake him up early, then.”
“That’s funny. He was worried about the plants yesterday and wanted Hal to test the water and chemical fertilizer. I looked for him this morning, but when he didn’t show up, I thought he was with you, Hal. And—the plants are dying!”
“All of them?” The half smile wiped off Hal’s face, and I could feel my stomach hit my insteps. When anything happens to the plants in a ship, it isn’t funny.
She shook her head again. “No—about a quarter of them. I was coming for help when the fight started. They’re all bleached out. And it looks like—like chromazone!”
That really hit me. They developed the stuff to fight off fungus on Venus, where one part in a billion did the trick. But it was tricky stuff; one part in ten-million would destroy the chlorophyll in plants in about twenty hours, or the hemoglobin in blood in about fifteen minutes. It was practically a universal poison.
Hal started for the door, then stopped. He glanced around the room, turned back to me, and suddenly let out a healthy bellow of seeming amusement. Jenny’s laugh was right in harmony. I caught the drift, and tried to look as if we were up to some monkey business as we slipped out of the room. Nobody seemed suspicious.
Then we made a dash for hydroponics, toward the rear of the ship. We scrambled into the big chamber together, and stopped. Everything looked normal among the rows of plant-filled tanks, pipes and equipment. Jenny led us down one of the rows and around a bend.
