A. Betram Chandler - Navel Engagement

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NAVEL ENGAGEMENT

A. BERTRAM CHANDLER

When the gaussjammer LODE TRADER was wrecked on the planet later - much later - irreverently

named Nirvana by Commodore Ferson of the Survey Service, there was only one survivor. Only one

human survivor, that is.

LODE TRADER - one of the Interstellar Transport Commission’s tramps - carried only a small crew,

consisting of Master, three mates, three engineers and a catering officer. She had accomodation for

twelve passengers which, sometimes, was fully booked - but which, this voyage, wasn’t. The sole

occupant of the compartment packed with cramped dogboxes was a priest, a missionary, bound from

Terra to the newly established colony on Hamal V. When the magnetic storm hit LODE TRADER,

throwing her light years off trajectory, the Captain, a confirmed agnostic, sneeringly suggested that his

passenger get down on his knees and start praying. The priest, somewhat acidly, retorted that in his

religion the practice of pleading for divine intervention in times of stress was somewhat frowned upon and

made a counter suggestion, this being that the Master and his officers should carry out their duties as ably

as possible, as by so doing it was likely that they would acquire merit.

Spacemen do not need to be told to do their jobs as well as possible - a spaceman who needed to be

told would not last very long; neither, in many cases, would his ship - and so relations became somewhat

strained. The priest - Lee Chang was his name .. retired to his cramped quarters to spend the remainder

of the voyage in meditation; the crew started the emergency diesel generators- the Pile having been

drained of power by the storm - restarted the Ehrenhaft generators, and set the ship to falling along a line

of magnetic force that would lead them to a likely-looking sun which might, just possibly, run to one

Earth-type planet. An alternative would have been to try to navigate back to the colonized sector of the

Galaxy, but the ship was hopelessly lost, the supply of diesel fuel was limited and the Catering Officer

(Bio-Chemist, Acting, Unpaid) doubted her own ability to distil fresh supplies of fuel from the available

hydrocarbons.

Colonies had been founded, as all LODE TRADER’s people were aware, by castaway spacemen,

spacewomen and passengers. But all such Lost Colonies so far discovered by the Survey Service had

been established by the crews and passengers of relatively large vessels. LODE TRADER had only one

woman aboard - the Catering Officer. She was not yet past child bearing age, but she had never shown

any inclination towards either marriage or motherhood. She viewed the prospect of becoming a Founding

Mother — the Founding Mother - with increasing alarm and despondency.

The others tried to cheer her up.

“After all,” said the Captain, “it will all be perfectly legal. I can marry you…”

“I wouldn’t marry you,” she flared, “if you were the last man in the Universe!”

“I meant,” said the shipmaster, rather stiffly, “that I could marry you to somebody else.”

“But just suppose that you did want to marry her, sir,” asked the Mate, who was something of a

spacelawyer, “what would be the legal situation?.” He added hopefully, “Of course, you could formally

resign and I could supersede you as Master...”

“We could all turn Buddhist,” proposed the Chief Engineer, “so that old Lee Chang could officiate.”

“Do Buddhists practice polygamy?” asked the Second Mate.

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A. Betram Chandler - Navel Engagement

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