hand saw with a circular blade field; it crumbled away the molecular structure of a wall before their eyes. With a shrill grinding sound, the instrument bit out a shaky circle in the metal. They ducked through it, working their way almost by instinct to a known part of the deck. As if the ship had come to life while they were in the air lock, a faint hammering filled everywhere like an irregular heartbeat; Scoyt’s wreckers were busily at work. The air as they walked grew staler, the dark was hazed with smoke — and a familiar voice was calling for Complain.
In another moment, they rounded a bend at a trot, and there were Vyann and Gregg. The girl threw herself into Complain’s arms.
Hurriedly, he gave her his news. She told him of the devastation being wrought on the twenties decks. Even as she spoke, the lights about them glowed suddenly to great brilliance, then died, even the pilot lights fading completely out. At the same time, the gravity blew; they sprawled uncomfortably in mid-air.
Welling, it seemed, from the lungs of a whale, a groan rattled down the confines of the ship. For the very first time, they perceived the vessel to give a lurch.
‘The ship’s doomed!’ Fermour shouted. ‘Those fools are destroying it! You’ve got nothing to fear from the Giants now — by the time they get here, they’ll be a rescue party, picking desiccated bodies out of a wreck.’
‘You’ll never drag Roger Scoyt from the job he’s doing,’ Vyann said grimly.
‘Holy smother!’ Complain said. ‘This whole situation is just hopeless!’
‘The human predicament apart,’ Marapper said, ‘nothing is hopeless. As I see it, we’d be safest in the Control Room. If I can only control my feet, that’s where I’m going.’
‘Good idea, priest,’ Gregg said. ‘I’ve had enough of burning. It would be the safest place for Vyann, too.’
‘The Control Room!’ Fermour said. ‘Yes, of course…’
Complain said nothing, silently abandoning his plan to take Fermour before the Council; the hour was too late. Nor did there seem, in the circumstances, any hope of repelling the Giants.
Clumsily, with agonizing slowness, the party covered the nine decks which lay between them and the blister housing the ruined controls. At last they hauled themselves panting up the spiral stairs and through the hole Vyann and Complain had made earlier.
‘That’s funny,’ Marapper said. ‘Five of us started out from Quarters to reach this place: finally, three of us have done it together!’
‘Much good may it do us,’ Complain said. ‘I never knew why I followed you, priest.’
‘Born leaders need give no reasons,’ Marapper said modestly.
‘No, this is where we should be,’ Fermour said with excitement. He swung a torch round the vast chamber, taking in the fused mass of panels. ‘Behind this wrecked facade, the controls are still sound. Somewhere here is a device for closing off all inter-deck doors; they’re made of hull metal, and it would be a long while before they’d burn. If I can find that device…’
He waved the atomic saw to finish his meaning, searching already for the board he wanted.
‘The ship must be saved!’ he said, ‘and there is a chance we can do it, if we can only separate the decks.’
‘Damn the ship!’ Marapper said. ‘All we want it to do now is hold together until we can get off it.’
‘You can’t get off it,’ Fermour said. ‘You’d better realize the fact. You must none of you reach Earth. The ship is where you belong and stay. This is a non-stop trip: there is no Journey’s End.’
Complain whirled round on him.
‘Why do you say that?’ he asked. His voice was so charged with emotion that it sounded flat.
‘It’s not my doing,’ Fermour said hastily, scenting trouble. ‘It’s just that this situation is too formidable for any of you. The ship is in an orbit round Earth, and there it must stay. That was the edict of the World Government which set up the Little Dog authority to control this ship.’
Complain’s gesture was angry, but Vyann’s was supplicatory.
‘Why?’ she said. ‘Why must the ship stay here? It’s so cruel… We are Earth people. This terrible double journey to Procyon and back — it’s been made, and somehow it now seems we’ve survived it. Shouldn’t — oh, I don’t know what happens on Earth, but shouldn’t people have been glad to have us back, happy, excited…?’
‘When this ship, “Big Dog” — so christened in jocular allusion to the constellation Little Dog for which it set out — was detected in Earth’s telescopes, finally returning from its long journey, everyone on Earth was, as you say — happy, excited, marvelling.’ Fermour paused. This event had taken place before he was born, but the epic had often been retold to him. ‘Signals were sent out to the ship,’ he continued; ‘they were never answered. Yet the ship kept speeding on towards Earth. It seemed inexplicable. We have passed the technological phase of our civilization, but nevertheless factories were speedily built and a fleet of little ships launched towards “Big Dog”. They had to find out what was happening aboard.
‘They matched velocities with this giant vessel, they boarded her. They found — well, they found out about everything; they found that Dark Ages had settled over the whole ship, as the result of an ancient catastrophe.’
‘The Nine Day Ague!’ Vyann breathed.
Fermour nodded, surprised she should know.
‘The ship could not be allowed to go on,’ he said. ‘It would have sped on forever through the galactic night. These controls were discovered as you now see them: ruined — the work, presumably, of some poor madman generations ago. So the Drive was switched off at source, and the ship dragged into an orbit by the little ships which, using gravity for towlines, acted as tugs.’
‘But — why leave us aboard?’ Complain said. ‘Why did you not take us down after the ship was in orbit? As Laur says, it was cruel — inhuman!’
Reluctantly, Fermour shook his head.
‘The inhumanity was in the ship,’ he said. ‘You see, the crew who survived this virus you seem to know about had undergone a slight physiological modification; the new proteins permeating every living cell in the ship increased their metabolic rate. This increase, undetectable at first, has grown with every generation, so that now you are all living at four times the speed you should be.’
He quailed with pity as he told them — but their looks held only disbelief.
‘You’re lying to scare us,’ Gregg said, his eyes glittering amid the wrappings of his face.
‘I’m not,’ Fermour said. ‘Instead of a life expectation for an average human of eighty years, yours is only twenty. The factor does not spread itself evenly over your life: you tend to grow more quickly as children, have a fairly normal adulthood, and then crumble suddenly in old age.’
‘We’d have noticed if this scoundrel scheme were so!’ Marapper howled.
‘No,’ Fermour said. ‘You wouldn’t. Though the signs were all round you, you could not see them, because you have no standards of comparison. For instance, you accepted the fact that one sleep-wake in four was dark. Living at four times the normal rate, naturally four of your days or sleep-wakes only made one ordinary one. When the ship was a going concern — on the voyage out to Procyon — the lights automatically dimmed all over the vessel from midnight to six, partly to give a friendly illusion of night, partly to allow the servicers to work behind scenes, making any necessary repairs. That brief six-hour shift is a whole day to you.’
Now the comprehension was growing on them. It seemed, oddly enough, to soak from the inside to the outside, as if, in some mystical way, the truth had been trapped in them all along. The awful pleasure of making them know the worst — they who had tortured him — filled Fermour. He went on, suddenly keen to make them see how damned they were.
‘That’s why we proper Earthmen call you “dizzies”: you live so fast, it makes us dizzy. But that isn’t all that is wrong with you! Imagine this great ship, still automatically functioning despite the lack of anyone to control it. It supplied everything: except the things which, by its nature, it could not supply, fresh vitamins, fresh air, fresh sunlight. Each of your succeeding generations becomes smaller; Nature survives how she may, and that was her way of doing it, by cutting down on the required materials. Other factors, such as inbreeding, have changed you until — well, it was decided you were virtually a separate race. In fact, you had adapted so well to your environment, it was doubtful if you would be able to survive if transferred down on Earth!’
Now they had it, knowing it right down to the pits of their stomachs. Fermour turned from their sealed faces, ashamed of himself for feeling triumph. Methodically, he resumed prodding about for the particular panel he wanted. He found it, and they were still all standing in choked silence. Using the saw, he began eagerly to work away the seared casing.
‘So we’re not human beings at all…’ Complain exclaimed, as if speaking to himself. ‘That’s what you’re
