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Mr. Spaceship

“I’m sorry, sir, but now the ship has gotten away. Look down at the board.” <hr class="thoughtbreak" /> Gross stared down, Kramer over his shoulder. The black dot had slipped through the white dots and had moved off at an abrupt angle. The white dots were broken up, dispersing in confusion. “He’s an unusual strategist,” one of the officers said. He traced the line. “It’s an ancient maneuver, an old Prussian device, but it worked.” The white dots were turning back. “Too many yuk ships out that far,” Gross said. “Well, that’s what you get when you don’t act quickly.” He looked up coldly at Kramer. “We should have done it when we had him. Look at him go!” He jabbed a finger at the rapidly moving black dot. The dot came to the edge of the board and stopped. It had reached the limit of the chartered area. “See?” —Now what? Kramer thought, watching. So the Old Man had escaped the cruisers and gotten away. He was alert, all right; there was nothing wrong with his mind. Or with his ability to control his new body. Body—The ship was a new body for him. He had traded in the old dying body, withered and frail, for this hulking frame of metal and plastic, turbines and rocket jets. He was strong, now. Strong and big. The new body was more powerful than a thousand human bodies. But how long would it last him? The average life of a cruiser was only ten years. With careful handling he might get twenty out of it, before some essential part failed and there was no way to replace it. And then, what then? What would he do, when something failed and there was no one to fix it for him? That would be the end. Someplace, far out in the cold darkness of space, the ship would slow down, silent and lifeless, to exhaust its last heat into the eternal timelessness of outer space. Or perhaps it would crash on some barren asteroid, burst into a million fragments. It was only a question of time. “Your wife didn’t remember anything?” Gross said. “I told you. Only that he kept a goat, once.” “A hell of a lot of help that is.” Kramer shrugged. “It’s not my fault.” “I wonder if we’ll ever see him again.” Gross stared down at the indicator dot, still hanging at the edge of the board. “I wonder if he’ll ever move back this way.” “I wonder, too,” Kramer said. <hr class="thoughtbreak" /> That night Kramer lay in bed, tossing from side to side, unable to sleep. The moon gravity, even artificially increased, was unfamiliar to him and it made him uncomfortable. A thousand thoughts wandered loose in his head as he lay, fully awake. What did it all mean? What was the Professor’s plan? Maybe they would never know. Maybe the ship was gone for good; the Old Man had left forever, shooting into outer space. They might never find out why he had done it, what purpose—if any—had been in his mind. Kramer sat up in bed. He turned on the light and lit a cigarette. His quarters were small, a metal-lined bunk room, part of the moon station base. The Old Man had wanted to talk to him. He had wanted to discuss things, hold a conversation, but in the hysteria and confusion all they had been able to think of was getting away. The ship was rushing off with them, carrying them into outer space. Kramer set his jaw. Could they be blamed for jumping? They had no idea where they were being taken, or why. They were helpless, caught in their own ship, and the pursuit ship standing by waiting to pick them up was their only chance. Another half hour and it would have been too late. But what had the Old Man wanted to say? What had he intended to tell him, in those first confusing moments when the ship around them had come alive, each metal strut and wire suddenly animate, the body of a living creature, a vast metal organism? It was weird, unnerving. He could not forget it, even now. He looked around the small room uneasily. What did it signify, the coming to life of metal and plastic? All at once they had found themselves inside a living creature, in its stomach, like Jonah inside the whale. It had been alive, and it had talked to them, talked calmly and rationally, as it rushed them off, faster and faster into outer space. The wall speaker and circuit had become the vocal cords and mouth, the wiring the spinal cord and nerves, the hatches and relays and circuit breakers the muscles. They had been helpless, completely helpless. The ship had, in a brief second, stolen their power away from them and left them defenseless, practically at its mercy. It was not right; it made him uneasy. All his life he had controlled machines, bent nature and the forces of nature to man and man’s needs. The human race had slowly evolved until it was in a position to operate things, run them as it saw fit. Now all at once it had been plunged back down the ladder again, prostrate before a Power against which they were children. Kramer got out of bed. He put on his bathrobe and began to search for a cigarette. While he was searching, the vidphone rang. He snapped the vidphone on. “Yes?” The face of the immediate monitor appeared. “A call from Terra, Mr. Kramer. An emergency call.” “Emergency call? For me? Put it through.” Kramer came awake, brushing his hair back out of his eyes. Alarm plucked at him. From the speaker a strange voice came. “Philip Kramer? Is this Kramer?” “Yes. Go on.” “This is General Hospital, New York City, Terra. Mr. Kramer, your wife is here. She has been critically injured in an accident. Your name was given to us to call. Is it possible for you to—” “How badly?” Kramer gripped the vidphone stand. “Is it serious?” “Yes, it’s serious, Mr. Kramer. Are you able to come here? The quicker you can come the better.” “Yes.” Kramer nodded. “I’ll come. Thanks.” <hr class="thoughtbreak" /> The screen died as the connection was broken. Kramer waited a moment. Then he tapped the button. The screen relit again. “Yes, sir,” the monitor said. “Can I get a ship to Terra at once? It’s an emergency. My wife—” “There’s no ship leaving the moon for eight hours. You’ll have to wait until the next period.” “Isn’t there anything I can do?” “We can broadcast a general request to all ships passing through this area. Sometimes cruisers pass by here returning to Terra for repairs.” “Will you broadcast that for me? I’ll come down to the field.” “Yes sir. But there may be no ship in the area for awhile. It’s a gamble.” The screen died. Kramer dressed quickly. He put on his coat and hurried to the lift. A moment later he was running across the general receiving lobby, past the rows of vacant desks and conference tables. At the door the sentries stepped aside and he went outside, onto the great concrete steps. The face of the moon was in shadow. Below him the field stretched out in total darkness, a black void, endless, without form. He made his way carefully down the steps and along the ramp along the side of the field, to the control tower. A faint row of red lights showed him the way. Two soldiers challenged him at the foot of the tower, standing in the shadows, their guns ready. “Kramer?” “Yes.” A light was flashed in his face. “Your call has been sent out already.” “Any luck?” Kramer asked. “There’s a cruiser nearby that has made contact with us. It has an injured jet and is moving slowly back toward Terra, away from the line.” “Good.” Kramer nodded, a flood of relief rushing through him. He lit a cigarette and gave one to each of the soldiers. The soldiers lit up. “Sir,” one of them asked, “is it true about the experimental ship?” “What do you mean?” “It came to life and ran off?” “No, not exactly,” Kramer said. “It had a new type of control system instead of the Johnson units. It wasn’t properly tested.” “But sir, one of the cruisers that was there got up close to it, and a buddy of mine says this ship acted funny. He never saw anything like it. It was like when he was fishing once on Terra, in Washington State, fishing for bass. The fish were smart, going this way and that—” “Here’s your cruiser,” the other soldier said. “Look!” An enormous vague shape was setting slowly down onto the field. They could make nothing out but its row of tiny green blinkers. Kramer stared at the shape. “Better hurry, sir,” the soldiers said. “They don’t stick around here very long.” “Thanks.” Kramer loped across the field, toward the black shape that rose up above him, extended across the width of the field. The ramp was down from the side of the cruiser and he caught hold of it. The ramp rose, and a moment later Kramer was inside the hold of the ship. The hatch slid shut behind him. As he made his way up the stairs to the main deck the turbines roared up from the moon, out into space. Kramer opened the door to the main deck. He stopped suddenly, staring around him in surprise. There was nobody in sight. The ship was deserted. “Good God,” he said. Realization swept over him, numbing him. He sat down on a bench, his head swimming. “Good God.” The ship roared out into space leaving the moon and Terra farther behind each moment. And there was nothing he could do. <hr class="thoughtbreak" /> “So it was you who put the call through,” he said at last. “It was you who called me on the vidphone, not any hospital on Terra. It was all part of the plan.” He looked up and around him. “And Dolores is really—” “Your wife is fine,” the wall speaker above him said tonelessly. “It was a fraud. I am sorry to trick you that way, Philip, but it was all I could think of. Another day and you would have been back on Terra. I don’t want to remain in this area any longer than necessary. They have been so certain of finding me out in deep space that I have been able to stay here without too much danger. But even the purloined letter was found eventually.” Kramer smoked his cigarette nervously. “What are you going to do? Where are we going?” “First, I want to talk to you. I have many things to discuss. I was very disappointed when you left me, along with the others. I had hoped that you would remain.” The dry voice chuckled. “Remember how we used to talk in the old days, you and I? That was a long time ago.” The ship was gaining speed. It plunged through space at tremendous speed, rushing through the last of the defense zone and out beyond. A rush of nausea made Kramer bend over for a moment. When he straightened up the voice from the wall went on, “I’m sorry to step it up so quickly, but we are still in danger. Another few moments and we’ll be free.” “How about yuk ships? Aren’t they out here?” “I’ve already slipped away from several of them. They’re quite curious about me.” “Curious?” “They sense that I’m different, more like their own organic mines. They don’t like it. I believe they will begin to withdraw from this area, soon. Apparently they don’t want to get involved with me. They’re an odd race, Philip. I would have liked to study them closely, try to learn something about them. I’m of the opinion that they use no inert material. All their equipment and instruments are alive, in some form or other. They don’t construct or build at all. The idea of making is foreign to them. They utilize existing forms. Even their ships—” “Where are we going?” Kramer said. “I want to know where you are taking me.” “Frankly, I’m not certain.” “You’re not certain?” “I haven’t worked some details out. There are a few vague spots in my program, still. But I think that in a short while I’ll have them ironed out.” “What is your program?” Kramer said. “It’s really very simple. But don’t you want to come into the control room and sit? The seats are much more comfortable than that metal bench.” Kramer went into the control room and sat down at the control board. Looking at the useless apparatus made him feel strange. “What’s the matter?” the speaker above the board rasped. <hr class="thoughtbreak" /> Kramer gestured helplessly. “I’m—powerless. I can’t do anything. And I don’t like it. Do you blame me?” “No. No, I don’t blame you. But you’ll get your control back, soon. Don’t worry. This is only a temporary expedient, taking you off this way. It was something I didn’t contemplate. I forgot that orders would be given out to shoot me on sight.” “It was Gross’ idea.” “I don’t doubt that. My conception, my plan, came to me as soon as you began to describe your project, that day at my house. I saw at once that you were wrong; you people have no understanding of the mind at all. I realized that the transfer of a human brain from an organic body to a complex artificial space ship would not involve the loss of the intellectualization faculty of the mind. When a man thinks, he is. “When I realized that, I saw the possibility of an age-old dream becoming real. I was quite elderly when I first met you, Philip. Even then my life-span had come pretty much to its end. I could look ahead to nothing but death, and with it the extinction of all my ideas. I had made no mark on the world, none at all. My students, one by one, passed from me into the world, to take up jobs in the great Research Project, the search for better and bigger weapons of war. “The world has been fighting for a long time, first with itself, then with the Martians, then with these beings from Proxima Centauri, whom we know nothing about. The human society has evolved war as a cultural institution, like the science of astronomy, or mathematics. War is a part of our lives, a career, a respected vocation. Bright, alert young men and women move into it, putting their shoulders to the wheel as they did in the time of Nebuchadnezzar. It has always been so. “But is it innate in mankind? I don’t think so. No social custom is innate. There were many human groups that did not go to war; the Eskimos never grasped the idea at all, and the American Indians never took to it well. “But these dissenters were wiped out, and a cultural pattern was established that became the standard for the whole planet. Now it has become ingrained in us. “But if someplace along the line some other way of settling problems had arisen and taken hold, something different than the massing of men and material to—” “What’s your plan?” Kramer said. “I know the theory. It was part of one of your lectures.” “Yes, buried in a lecture on plant selection, as I recall. When you came to me with this proposition I realized that perhaps my conception could be brought to life, after all. If my theory were right that war is only a habit, not an instinct, a society built up apart from Terra with a minimum of cultural roots might develop differently. If it failed to absorb our outlook, if it could start out on another foot, it might not arrive at the same point to which we have come: a dead end, with nothing but greater and greater wars in sight, until nothing is left but ruin and destruction everywhere. “Of course, there would have to be a Watcher to guide the experiment, at first. A crisis would undoubtedly come very quickly, probably in the second generation. Cain would arise almost at once. “You see, Kramer, I estimate that if I remain at rest most of the time, on some small planet or moon, I may be able to keep functioning for almost a hundred years. That would be time enough, sufficient to see the direction of the new colony. After that—Well, after that it would be up to the colony itself. “Which is just as well, of course. Man must take control eventually, on his own. One hundred years, and after that they will have control of their own destiny. Perhaps I am wrong, perhaps war is more than a habit. Perhaps it is a law of the universe, that things can only survive as groups by group violence. “But I’m going ahead and taking the chance that it is only a habit, that I’m right, that war is something we’re so accustomed to that we don’t realize it is a very unnatural thing. Now as to the place! I’m still a little vague about that. We must find the place, still. “That’s what we’re doing now. You and I are going to inspect a few systems off the beaten path, planets where the trading prospects are low enough to keep Terran ships away. I know of one planet that might be a good place. It was reported by the Fairchild Expedition in their original manual. We may look into that, for a start.” The ship was silent. <hr class="thoughtbreak" /> Kramer sat for a time, staring down at the metal floor under him. The floor throbbed dully with the motion of the turbines. At last he looked up. “You might be right. Maybe our outlook is only a habit.” Kramer got to his feet. “But I wonder if something has occurred to you?” “What is that?” “If it’s such a deeply ingrained habit, going back thousands of years, how are you going to get your colonists to make the break, leave Terra and Terran customs? How about this generation, the first ones, the people who found the colony? I think you’re right that the next generation would be free of all this, if there were an—” He grinned. “—An Old Man Above to teach them something else instead.” Kramer looked up at the wall speaker. “How are you going to get the people to leave Terra and come with you, if by your own theory, this generation can’t be saved, it all has to start with the next?” The wall speaker was silent. Then it made a sound, the faint dry chuckle. “I’m surprised at you, Philip. Settlers can be found. We won’t need many, just a few.” The speaker chuckled again. “I’ll acquaint you with my solution.” At the far end of the corridor a door slid open. There was sound, a hesitant sound. Kramer turned. “Dolores!” Dolores Kramer stood uncertainly, looking into the control room. She blinked in amazement. “Phil! What are you doing here? What’s going on?” They stared at each other. “What’s happening?” Dolores said. “I received a vidcall that you had been hurt in a lunar explosion—” The wall speaker rasped into life. “You see, Philip, that problem is already solved. We don’t really need so many people; even a single couple might do.” Kramer nodded slowly. “I see,” he murmured thickly. “Just one couple. One man and woman.” “They might make it all right, if there were someone to watch and see that things went as they should. There will be quite a few things I can help you with, Philip. Quite a few. We’ll get along very well, I think.” Kramer grinned wryly. “You could even help us name the animals,” he said. “I understand that’s the first step.” “I’ll be glad to,” the toneless, impersonal voice said. “As I recall, my part will be to bring them to you, one by one. Then you can do the actual naming.” “I don’t understand,” Dolores faltered. “What does he mean, Phil? Naming animals. What kind of animals? Where are we going?” Kramer walked slowly over to the port and stood staring silently out, his arms folded. Beyond the ship a myriad fragments of light gleamed, countless coals glowing in the dark void. Stars, suns, systems. Endless, without number. A universe of worlds. An infinity of planets, waiting for them, gleaming and winking from the darkness. He turned back, away from the port. “Where are we going?” He smiled at his wife, standing nervous and frightened, her large eyes full of alarm. “I don’t know where we are going,” he said. “But somehow that doesn’t seem too important right now…. I’m beginning to see the Professor’s point, it’s the result that counts.” And for the first time in many months he put his arm around Dolores. At first she stiffened, the fright and nervousness still in her eyes. But then suddenly she relaxed against him and there were tears wetting her cheeks. “Phil … do you really think we can start over again—you and I?” He kissed her tenderly, then passionately. And the spaceship shot swiftly through the endless, trackless eternity of the void…. <div id="the_end"> </div> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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