Gordon Dickson & Harry Harrision - Lifeship

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The explosion drummed and shuddered all through the fabric of the Albenareth

spaceship, just as Giles reached the foot of the ladder leading up from the

baggage area into passenger territory. He grabbed the railing of the spiral

staircase that was the ladder and hung on. But almost on the heels of the

Erst tremor came an unexpected second explosion that tore him loose and threw

him against the further wall of the corridor, smashing him into the metal

surface.

Stunned, he stumbled back to his feet. He began to pull himself up the

staircase as fast as he could, gaining speed as he went. His mind cleared. He

could not have been unconscious for more than a few seconds, he thought. At

the top of the stairs he turned hastily back down an upper corridor toward

the stem and his own stateroom. But this wider, passenger corridor was

already filling with obstacles in the shape of bewildered, small, gray-suited

men and women—arbites indent to Belben; and abruptly the loud and terrible

moaning of an emergency, ship-out-of-control signal erupted into life and

continued without pause. Already the atmosphere of the corridor had the acrid

taste of smoke, and there were cries to him for help from the half-seen

figures of the arbites.

The incredible was happening. Below them and around them all, the great

spaceship had evidently caught fire from the two

explosions, and was now helpless, a brief new star falling through the

endless distances of interstellar space. Spaceships were not supposed to bum,

especially the massive vessels of the Albenareth —but this one was doing so.

A coldness began to form in the pit of Giles' stomach; for the air around him

was already warming and now beginning to haze with the smoke, and the sounds

of arbite terror he heard tore at his conscience like sharp and jagged

icicles.

He fought off his ingrained response toward the frightened indentees around

him, walling it off, surrounding it with his own fury. He had a job to do, a

duty to finish. That came first, before anyone or anything. The arbites

aboard were not his direct responsibility. He began to run, dodging the hands

of the reaching figures that loomed up through the smoke ahead of him,

brushing them aside, now and then hurdling a fallen one who could not be

sidestepped.

And all the while around the cold core in him, his fury grew. He put on

speed. Now there was occasional debris in the corridor;

here and there, panels in the walls, glimpsed through the smoke, sagged away

from him like sheets of melting wax. None of this should be happening. There

was no reason for wholesale disaster. But he had no time now to figure out

what had gone wrong. The moans and cries of the arbite passengers still tore

at him, but he plunged on.

A darker, narrower-than-human figure loomed suddenly out of the smoke before

him. A long, oddly boned hand, a threefingered hand, caught his bright-orange

shipsuit and held him.

"To a lifeshipl" brayed the Albenareth crewman, almost buzzing the human

words. "Turn about. Go forward! Not to the

stern."

Giles checked his instinct to surge against the restraining hand. He was

large and powerful, stronger by far than any arbite, except those bred and

trained to special uses; but he knew better than to try to pull loose from

the apparently skinny fingers holding him.

"My Honor!" he shouted at the alien, using the first words he could think of

to which an Albenareth mind might respond. "Duty —my obligation! I'm Steel—

Giles Steel Ashad, an Adelman! The only Adelman aboard heie. Don't you

recognize me?"

The alien and he were trapped in a moment of motionlessness. The dark,

lipless, narrow face stared into his from inches away. Then the hand of the

Albenareth let go and the alien mouth opened in the dry cackling laughter

that meant many things, but not humor.

"Go!" said the crewman. Giles turned and ran on.

Just a little farther brought him to the door of his suite. The metal handle

burned his fingers and he let go. He kicked the door with a grunt of effort,

and it burst open. Within, the bitter taste of thick smoke took him solidly

by the throat.

He groped his way to his travel bag, jerked it open, and pulled out the metal

box inside it. Coughing, he punched out the combination, and the lock of the

box let go, the lid sprang open. Hastily he pawed through the mass of papers

within. His fingers closed on the warrant for extradition, crammed it into a

suit pocket, and dipped down to rip open the destruct trigger that would

incinerate the box with all the rest of its contents. A whitehot flare shot

up before him and the metal frame of the container collapsed like melting

ice. He turned, hesitated, and pulled tools from inside his shipsuit. He had

meant to hide these carefully, once his job was done; but there was no point

in hiding anything now. Still coughing, he tossed the tools into the heat of

the stillflaring container, turned, and plunged once more into the clearer

air of the corridor, heading back finally toward the bow of the vessel and

the particular lifeship he had been assigned to.

The Albenareth crewman was gone from his post when Giles passed that point

again. Under the ceiling lights, the corridor was misty with smoke, but free

now even of the figures of arbites. A small hope flickered in him. Perhaps

someone else had taken charge of them by this time. He ran on. He was almost

to the lifeship. There were voices in conversation just ahead—then some-

thing large and dark seemed to flicker up in front of him, out of nowhere,

and something else that felt like a giant flyswatter slapped him from his

feet- He was momentarily staggered, but recovering even as he fell backward

to the soft surface of the corridor. His head clearing, he lay for a second

fighting to stay conscious. Now that he was down where the smoke was thinner,

he could see that he had run into a door someone had left standing open. As

he lay there, he heard two arbite voices—one male, one young and female—

talking.

"You heard that? The ship's breaking up," the man said.

"There's no point our waiting out here now. The lifeship's just down that

short hall. Let's go."

"No, Mara. Wait... we were supposed to wait..." The

man's voice trailed off.

"What're you afraid of, Groce?" The girl's voice had an edge to it. "You act

as if you don't dare breathe without permission from her! Do you want to stay

here and choke to death?"

"It's all right for you..." muttered the male voice. "I've never been mixed

up in anything. My record's perfect."

"If you think that matters—"

Giles 'head was clear now. He rolled to his feet in one quick motion, stepped

around the open door, and joined the two smaller

gray-suited figures beyond it.

"All right," he said, crisply. "You're correct, girl. The lifeship's just

down the corridor, here. You—what's your name? Groce? Lead off!"

The male arbite turned without a word and obeyed, responding instinctively to

the note of command he would have heard from Adelbom all the days of his

life. He was a short, round-headed, stocky man in early middle age. For a

second, before following. Giles glanced curiously at the girl arbite. She was

small, as all those of the lower class were, but good-looking for an arbite.

Under her light-brown, close-cropped hair, her pale, narrow face was composed

and unafraid. No doubt some high-caste blood in her ancestry somewhere, Giles

thought.

"Good girl," he said more gently. "You follow me, now. Hang on to my jacket

if the smoke gets too thick to see."

He patted her on the head before stepping out in front of her. He had turned

away and did not see the sudden wild flash of indignation and anger that

twisted her features as his hand touched her head. But the look was gone

almost as soon as it had appeared. She followed him with the normal calmness

of arbite expression on her face.

Giles reached out ahead to close his hand on the right shoulder of Groce. The

man flinched at the touch.

"Steady, there!" snapped Giles. "All you have to do is obey. Move, nowl"

"Yes, Honor," muttered Groce, doubtfully. But his shoulder squared under

Giles' fingers. His step became firmer, and he led the way into the smoky

corridor.

The smoke thickened. They all coughed. Giles felt the hand of the girl, Mara,

grope for the slack of his jacket in back and take hold of it.

"Keep moving!" said Giles, between coughs. "It can't be much further."

Suddenly they came up against a barrier.

"A door," said Groce.

"Open it. Go on through!" snapped Giles, impatiently. The arbite obeyed—and

suddenly they were all in a small area where the smoke was less dense. Mara

pushed closed behind them the door by which they had just entered.

There was another door directly in front of them, also closed. A heavy

airlock door. Stepping past Groce, Giles pushed at it without being able to

open it, then pounded on its activating button with his fist. The door opened

slowly, swinging inward, away from them. Beyond was an airlock space and a

further airlock door, open.

"Go," said Giles briefly to the two arbites, pointing to the other open lock.

Mara obeyed, but Groce hesitated.

"Honor, sir?" he asked. "Please—what happened to the Spacehner?"

"An explosion somewhere aft. I don't know what caused it/' answered Giles,

shortly. "Go ahead, now. The lifeship's through the further lock, there.*'

Groce still hesitated. "What if there's others coming?" he asked. "Anyone

coming will be here soon," Giles said. "With this smoke already in the

corridors, there isn't much time. This lifeship is going to have to be

launched soon." "But what if, when I get inside—"

"When you get inside," Giles said, "there'll be an Albenareth there to tell

you what to do. There's an alien officer in charge of any lifeship. Now,

movel"

Groce went. Giles turned back to make sure that the airlock door behind him

was closed. The smoke was eddying around him, although he could not see the

source of the air current that was moving it, now that the shipside airlock

door was closed. A loudspeaker over the closed door echoed suddenly to the

sound of distant coughing.

"Sir," said the voice of Groce, unexpectedly behind him, "there isn't any

Albenareth in the lifeship yet."

"Get back inside. Wait there!" he snapped at the arbite, without turning his

head. The sound of coughing from the loudspeaker was louder now, echoed by

the clang of stumbling feet approaching. One of those coming, Giles thought,

had better be the Albenareth officer. Giles could pilot his own yacht around

the Solar System, but as for handling an alien lifeship...

He punched the "open" button. The inner lock door swung wide. Dim figures

were stumbling toward him in the smoke. Giles swore. They were all human,

dressed alike in the dusty gray of their arbite shipsuits. There were five of

them, he counted as they came closer, clinging to one another's clothing,

several of them whimpering when they were not coughing. The one in front was

an angular, gray-haired woman who dipped her head briefly in an automatic

gesture of respect when she saw him. He opened the inner door and motioned

them inside, moving aside so they would not brush against him as they went.

Before the last one was in, the

corridor lights flickered, went out, came back on again—then died completely.

Giles closed the door behind the five and touched the glow button on his

watch. Under normal conditions the light from the dial was normally quite

strong, but now it only lit up the rolling smoke, let in from the corridor.

The air holding the smoke was hotter too; the fire could not be far away. He

was coughing again, and could not control it, his head aching from the fumes.

With a sharp clang a section of the airlock wall fell away and Giles turned

in that direction. The air current from a hidden source was suddenly

stronger, and there was an elongated opening in what had appeared to be solid

metal. The smoke was being sucked into it strongly. In the partially clear

air a tall, thin form appeared, stooping with its head to pass through the

opening.

"About timel" Giles said, coughing. The Albenareth did not answer him, moving

quickly in a typical broken-kneed gait to the lock, with Giles close behind.

Once they were both inside, the Albenareth turned and dogged shut the inner

lock door. The action spoke for itself; the clash of the dogged lock echoed

on Giles' ears like the closing of a coffin lid.

The voices of the arbites had dropped into silence as the Albenareth and

Giles entered, and those already there moved warily aside from the alien.

Still silent, the gaunt figure reached down into a slot in the soft flooring

and pulled up a metal frame laced with flexible plastic. It was an

acceleration cot, and a good deal of dust came up with it.

"Open the cots like this," the Albenareth ordered, the human words coming out

at last, high-pitched and buzzing. "Strap down. Motions will be abrupt."

In the continuing silence, he turned and strode to the control console in the

lifeship's nose, and belted himself into one of the two control chairs there.

His three-fingered hands moved swiftly. Lights glowed on the panels and the

two viewscreens before him came to life, showing only the out-of-focus metal

walls of the lifeship capsule. Giles and the arbites aboard had just enough

time to pull up their cots before the launch button was hit. They

clutched at the frames of their cots as the sudden acceleration pounced on

them.

Explosive charges blew away the hull section covering the lifeship capsule.

Gravity forces pressed them hard against the webbing of their cots, as the

lifeship was hurled away from its mother ship, into space. The acceleration

changed direction as the lifeship's drive took over and moved it away from

the dying ship; and a nauseating sensation rippled through their bodies as

they left the gravity field of the larger vessel and the weaker

grav-simulation field of the lifeship came on.

Giles was aware of all this only absently. Automatically his hands were

locked tightly about the metal frame of his cot to keep him from being thrown

off it, but his eyes were fixed on the right of the two viewscreens in the

bow. The screen on the left showed only stars, but the right-hand screen gave

a view directly astern, a view filled with the image of the burning, dying

ship.

There was no relation between the jumble of wreckage seen there and the ship

they had boarded in orbit high above the equator of Earth, twelve days

before. Twisted and torn metal glowed white-hot in the darkness of space.

Some lights still showed in sections of the hull, but most of it was dark.

The glowing wreckage had shrunk to the size of a hot ember as they hurtled

away from it;

now it maintained a constant size and moved from screen to screen as they

orbited about it. The Albenareth that had joined them was speaking into a

grille below one of the screens, in the throbbing buzz of his own tongue. He

or she was pronouncing what were clearly the same words, over and over again,

until there was a scratching hiss from the speaker and another voice

answered. There was a rapid discussion as the burning wreck was centered on

the forward screen, then began to grow in size once more.

"We're going back!" an arbite voice shouted hysterically from the darkness.

"Stop him! We're going back!"

"Be quietl" Giles said, automatically. "All of you—that's an order!" After a

second, he added, "The Albenareth knows what has to be done. No one else can

pilot this ship."

In silence the arbites continued to watch as the image of the

wreckage grew before them, enlarging until it filled the screen— until it

appeared they were driving down into it. But the smooth play of the

Albenareth's six long fingers on the control console keys controlled the

lifeship's motion, sent it drifting inward, slipping past jagged fangs of

steel that swam into view in the lifeship's forward viewscreen. Suddenly,

there was a smooth, unscarred section of hull before them and they clanged

against it. Magnetic clamps thudded as they locked on, and the lifeship was

moved spasmodically, with loud grating sounds, as it was orientated with

something on the hull. Then the alien rose from the controls, turned, and

strode back to undog the airlock. The inner door ground open—then the outer

one.

There was no rush of air, for they were sealed tight to another airlock—one

on the spaceliner. The outer door of this lock, chilled from space and

white-frosted with condensation, opened a crack, then stopped. The Albenareth

wrapped a fold of his smocklike garment around his hands, seized the open

edge, and pulled strongly until it opened all the way. Smoke haze beyond it

cleared briefly to reveal another airlock and the gaunt figures of two more

Albenareth.

There was a rapid conversation between the three aliens. Giles could make out

no expression on the creased and wrinkled dark skin of their faces. Their

eyes were round and unreadable. They punctuated their words with snapping

gestures of their threefingered hands, opening and closing the mutually

opposed fingers. Suddenly, their talk ceased. Both the first Albenareth and

one of the others reached out to touch the fingertips of both their hands,

briefly, with those of the third, who stood deepest within the lock.

The two closer aliens stepped back into the lifeship. The one they left did

not move or try to follow them. Then, as the airlock door began to close, all

three began to laugh at once, together, in their high-pitched, clattering

laughter, until the closing door separated them. Even then, the captain and

the alien beside him continued to laugh as the lifeship moved away from their

shipmate in the spaceliner wreckage. Only slowly did their laughter die,

surrounded by the staring silence of the arbite passengers. Shock at the

sudden disaster fatigue, and smoke inhalation, or perhaps all these things,

combined to numb the watching humans as they stared with reddened eyes at the

image of the burning ship, pictured on the stemview screen in the front of

the lifeship. The image dwindled, until it was no more than a star among all

the other points of light on the screen.

Finally, it winked from sight. When it was gone, the tall alien who had first

entered the lifeship and driven it outward from the spaceliner rose from the

control seat, turned, and came back to face the humans, leaving the other

alien doing some incomprehensible work with part of the control panel. The

first Albenareth halted an arm's length from Giles, and raised one long, dark

finger, the middle of the three on his hand.

"I am Captain Rayumung." The finger moved around to point back at the second

alien. "Engineer Munghanf."

Giles nodded in acknowledgment.

"You are their leader?" demanded the Captain.

*T am an Adelman," said Giles, frigidly. Even allowing for the natural

ignorance of the alien, it was hard to endure an assumption that he might be

merely one of a group of arbites.

The Captain turned away. As if this action were a signal, a number of voices

called out from among the arbites—all of which the Captain ignored. The

voices died away as the tall form returned to the control area and from a

compartment there took out a rectangular object wrapped in golden cloth, and

held it ceremoniously at arm's length for one still moment before putting it

down on a horizontal surface of the control panel. The Engineer moved to

stand alongside, as the Captain put one finger on the surface of the cloth.

Both then bent their heads in silence above it, motionless.

"What is it?" asked the voice of Groce, behind Giles. "What's that they've

got?"

"Be quiet," said Giles, sharply. "It's their sacred book—the Albenareth

astrogational starbook holding their navigation tables and information."

Groce fell silent. But the determined voice of Mara, ignoring his order, took

up the questioning.

"Honor, sir," she said in Giles' ear. "Will you tell us what's happening,

please?"

Giles shook his head, and put his finger to his-lips, refusing to answer

until the two aliens had raised their heads and begun to unwrap the golden

cloth from about their book. Revealed, it was like something out of the human

past—as it was indeed out of the Albenareth past—a thing of animal-skin

binding and pages of a paper made from vegetable pulp.

"All right," said Giles at last, turning around to find the arbite girl right

behind him. He spoke to her and to all the rest as well. "Spacegoing and

religion are one and the same thing to the Albenareth. Everything they do to

navigate this lifeship or any other space vessel is a holy and ritual act.

You should all have been briefed about that when you were sent to board the

spaceliner, back on Earth."

"They told us that much, sir," said Mara. "But they didn't explain how it

worked, or why."

Giles looked at her with a touch of irritation. It was not his duty to be

tutor to a handful of arbites- Then he relented. It would probably be better

if they were informed. They would all be living in close quarters under harsh

conditions for some days, or even weeks. They would adapt better to their

privations if they understood.

"All right. Listen, then, all of you," he said, speaking to them all. "The

Albenareth think of space as if it were heaven. To them, the planets and all

inhabited solid bodies are the abode of the Imperfect. An Albenareth gains

Perfection by going into space. The more trips and the more time spent away

from planetfall, the more Perfection gained. You noticed the Captain

identified himself as *Rayumung' and the Engineer as 'Munghanf.' Those aren't

names. They're ranks, like stair-steps on the climb to a status of

Perfection. They've got nothing to do with the individual's duties aboard a

space vessel, except that the more responsible duties go to those of higher

rank, generally."

"But what do the ranks mean, then?" It was Mara again. Giles gave her a brief

smile.

"The ranks stand for the number of trips they've made into space, and the

time spent in space. There's more to it than that. The rougher the duty they

pull, the greater the count of the time involved toward a higher rank. For

example, this lifeship duty is going to gain a lot of points for this Captain

and Engineer—not because they're saving our lives, though, but because to

save us they had to pass up the chance to die in the spaceliner when it

burned. You see, the last and greatest goal of a spacegoing Albenareth is to

die, finally, in space."

"Then they won't care!" It was an abrupt cry, almost a wail, from someone

else in the crowd, a dark-haired arbite girl as young as Mara, but without

the marks of character on her face. "If anything goes wrong they'll just let

us die, so they can die!"

"Certainly not!" said Giles sharply. "Get that idea out of your heads right

now. Death is the greatest achievement possible to an Albenareth, but only

after one of them has done his best to fulfill his duties in space for as

many years as possible. It's only when there's no place else to turn that the

Albenareth let death take them."

"But what if these two decide suddenly there's no place to turn, or something

like that? They'll just go and die—" "Stop that sort of talk!" snapped Giles.

Suddenly he was tired of explaining, ashamed and disgusted for them all—for

their immediate complaints, their open and unashamed display of fears, their

lack of decent self-restraint and self-control, and their pasty faces which

had obviously spent most of their lives indoors away from the sunlight. All

that was lower-class about them rose in his throat to choke him.

"Be quiet, all of you," he said. "Get busy now and pick out the cot you want,

beside whoever you want for a neighbor while we're in this lifeship. The one

you pick is the one you'll have to stick with for the rest of the time we're

aboard. I'm not going to have arguments and fights over changing places.

After I've looked the lifeship over I'll get your names and tell you how

you're to act until we reach planetfall. Now, get busyi"

They all turned away immediately, without hesitation— except, perhaps, the

girl Mara. It seemed to Giles that she paused for fust a second before moving

to obey, and this puzzled him. It was possible she was one of those

unfortunate arbites who had been unnaturally pampered, petted, and brought up

by some Adelman family to feel almost as if she was one of the upper classes.

Arbites hand-raised—so to speak—in such a manner were always maladjusted in

latter life. They had not acquired proper habits in their early, formative

years and as adults were never able to adapt to social discipline in normal

fashion. If that was the case, it was a pity. She had so much else to

recommend her.

He turned away from the arbites, dismissing them from his mind, and began a

closer examination of the lifeship. It bore little or no similarity to the

luxuriously comfortable and highly automated private spacecraft he, like most

of the Adelbom, had often piloted among the inner worlds of the Solar System.

"Sir..." It was a whisper behind him. "Do you know—are they females?"

Giles turned and saw that the whisperer was Groce. The man's face was white

and sweating. Giles glanced back for a moment at the two aliens. The

Albenareth were almost indistinguishable as far as sex went, and both served

indiscriminately at duties aboard spacecraft—and everywhere else on the alien

worlds, for that matter. But the extra length of the Captain's torso was a

clue and the particular erectness of that officer's stance. She was a female.

The Engineer was a male.

Giles looked back at the sick paleness of fear on Grace's face. Among the

arbites there were a thousand horror stories about the behavior of Albenareth

females under certain glandular conditions, not merely toward their own

"males" but—arbite superstitions had it—toward any other intelligent male

creature. The basis of all the tales was the fact that the Albenareth "female"

—the two sexes of the aliens did not really correspond equivalently to human

male and female—when in estrus, required from the "male" not merely the

specific and minute fertilizing organism he had produced for the egg she

carried, but the total genital area of "his" body. This she took complete

into her egg sac, where it became connected to her own bloodstream, part of

her own body, and a source of nourishment for the embryo during its period of

intrauterine growth.

The acquisition of the "male's" genital area, entirely normal by Albenareth

standards, in human terms represented a rather massive mutilation of the

"male" by the "female." It effectively desexed the male until his genital

area should grow back, which took about two years, roughly, by Earth time—long

enough for the single Albenareth offspring to be bom and learn to travel with

comfort upright on its two legs. Human xenobiologists had theorized that in

prehistoric times the evolutionary principle behind the desexing of the

Albenareth "male" had been to ensure his protection and assistance to the

particular "female" carrying his progeny, during the vulnerable period before

she and it were fully able to take care of themselves.

But such sophisticated understanding of alien instincts, thought Giles, would

be beyond the comprehension of arbites whispering among themselves in dark

corners- Groce, evidently, had the human lower-class horror and fear of what

the alien "female" might do to him, specifically, under certain conditions of

glandular excitation. And probably every other arbite male aboard would react

the same way if any of them suspected the Captain's sex.

"They're officers!" Giles snapped. "Do they look like females to you?"

Relief flooded back into Groce's face.

"No, Honor. No, sir, of course not... thank you, sir. Thank you very much."

He backed away. Giles turned from the man, back to his examination of the

lifeship. As he did so, however, it occurred to him to wonder just what the

effect would be on the arbites if a breeding impulse should take command of

the pair of aliens on board before they made planetfall. Of course, he had no

idea under what conditions such an impulse could be generated; he put worry

about it out of his mind. For the moment things were under control and that

was all he required. He concentrated on examining the lifeship.

1:02 hours

It was little more than a cylinder in space.

The rear half of the cylinder was occupied by the warp drive and the fusion

chamber that powered it. In the cylinder's nose was the control console and

the three viewscreens. The remaining space, like a tube with a flat floor

inside, was a little over twelve meters in length and four in diameter. The

floor was of a purple, spongy material that was clumsy to walk upon but

comfortable for sitting or lying. The collapsible cots they had occupied

while blasting free of the spaceliner were concealed beneath that same spongy

surface.

Overhead, a glaring band of blue-white lights stretched the length of the

lifeship. These, Giles had learned before leaving Earth, in his studies of

the Albenareth and their space vessels, were never turned off, even when the

lifeship was not in use. The continuous light source was needed to assure the

healthy growth of the ib vine that completely covered all the exposed

surfaces from midway in the lifeship's length, right back to the stem. The

vine was life to all the passengers, alien and human alike; for the stoma in

its flat, reddish-green leaves produced oxygen. The golden, globular fruit,

hanging like ornaments from long, thin stems, were the only source of

nourishment available aboard. The trunk of the ib vine, as thick through as a

man's leg, emerged from a coffinlike metal tank in the stem that contained

the nutrient solution to nourish the plant. A dusty metal hatch cover on the

tank covered the opening into which all food scraps and waste were put for

recycling. A simple and workable system for survival, a closed cycle in which

the sanitary conveniences aboard consisted of a basin under a cold-water

faucet and a covered container beside the tank.

The arbite passengers were not yet aware of how these things would

circumscribe their existences aboard this alien craft. As yet, they had

scarcely examined the new environment into which they had been thrust. The

shock of awareness would be profound when it came. They were not Adelmen or

Adelwomen, who under these same conditions would have felt an inner duty to

maintain their self-control and not to give way to unseemly fears or yield in

any way to the situation, no matter how unendurable.

He should start out gently, Giles told himself. He turned and went back to

the others, who had now sorted themselves out, each on the cot he or she had

pulled up and would occupy until they made planetfall.

"All set?" he asked them.

There were nods of agreement. He stood, looking down at them, a head taller

than any except the obvious work-gang laborer individual in the very rear.

The others would tend to ostracize the laborer, he reminded himself

automatically, as being even of lower class than themselves. He must not let

that cause divisions among them while they were aboard here.

The laborer was as tall as Giles and doubtless outweighed him by twenty

kilos. Outside of that, there was no resemblance. Only Giles, of all the

humans there, showed the tanned skin, the handsome regular features, and the

green eyes, with sun-wrinkles showing at the corners of them, that testified

to both breeding and a lifetime of outdoor exercise. These differences alone

would have set him apart from the rest, even without the expensive, gleaming

fabric of the burnt-orange shipsuit he wore, in contrast to the drab,

loose-fitting, gray coveralls that were their garb. Alone, his features were

enough to remind the others that it was his to command, theirs to obey.

"All right," he said. "I am Giles Steel Ashad. Now, one at a time, identify

yourselves." He turned to Mara, who had taken the front cot space on his

left. "You first, Mara."

"Mara 12911. I'm recop, on indent to Belben like the rest"

"All right." He turned to Groce on the right, across from Mara. "Next, we'll

take them in this direction. Speak up, Croce. Give your name and specialty

number."

"Groce 5313, indent for three years, computer control section, Belben Mines

and Manufacture."

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GordonDickson&HarryHarrision-LifeshipTheexplosiondrummedandshudderedallthroughthefabricoftheAlbenarethspaceship,justasGilesreachedthefootoftheladderleadingupfromthebaggageareaintopassengerterritory.Hegrabbedtherailingofthespiralstaircasethatwastheladderandhungon.ButalmostontheheelsoftheErsttremorcam...

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Gordon Dickson & Harry Harrision - Lifeship

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