William Tenn - The Ghost Standard

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The Ghost Standard

William Tenn

Remember the adage of the old English legal system: "Let justice be done though the heavens fall"?

Well, was justice done in this case?

You have three entities here. An intelligent primate from Sol III—to put it tech-nically, a human. An

equally intelligent crustacean from Procyon VII—in other words, a sapient lobstermorph. And a

computer of the Malcolm Movis omicron beta design, intelligent enough to plot a course from one stellar

system to another and capable of matching most biological minds in games of every sort, from bridge to

chess to double zonyak.

Now—add a shipwreck. A leaky old Cascassian freighter comes apart in deep space. I mean quite

literally comes apart. Half the engine segment explodes off, the hull develops leaks and begins to

collapse, all those who are still alive and manage to make it to lifeboats get away just before the end.

In one such lifeboat you have the human, Juan Kydd, and the lobstermorph, Tuezuzim. And, of

course, the Malcolm Movis computer—the resident pilot, navi-gator and general factotum of the craft.

Kydd and Tuezuzim had known each other for more than two years. Computer programmers of

roughly the same level of skill, they had met on the job and had been laid off together. Together they had

decided to save money by traveling on the sca-brous Cascassian freighter to Sector N-42B5, where

there were rumored to be many job opportunities available.

They were in the dining salon, competing in a tough hand of double zonyak, when the disaster

occurred. They helped each other scramble into the lifeboat. Activating the computer pilot, they put it into

Far Communication Mode to search for rescu-ers. It informed them that rescue was possible no sooner

than twenty days hence, and was quite likely before thirty.

Any problems? The lifeboat had air, fuel, more than enough water. But food...

It was a Cascassian freighter, remember. The Cascassians, of course, are a silicon-based life-form.

For their passengers, the Cascassians had laid in a supply of organic, or carbon-based, food in the galley.

But they had not even thought of restocking the lifeboats. So the two non-Cascassians were now

imprisoned for some three to four weeks with nothing to eat but the equivalent of sand and gravel.

Or each other, as they realized immediately and simultaneously.

Humans, on their home planet, consider tinier, less-sapient crustaceans such as lobsters and crawfish

great delicacies. And back on Procyon VII, as Tuezuzim put it, "We consider it a sign of warm hospitality

to be served a small, succulent primate known as spotted morror."

In other words, each of these programmers could eat the other. And survive. There were cooking

and refrigerating facilities aboard the lifeboat. With careful manage-ment and rationing, meals derived

from a full-size computer programmer would last till rescue.

But who was to eat whom? And how was a decision to be reached?

By fighting? Hardly. These were two highly intellectual types, neither of them good physical

exemplars of their species.

Kydd was round-shouldered, badly nearsighted and slightly anemic. Tuezuzim was somewhat

undersized, half deaf and suffering from one crippled chela. The claw had been twisted at birth and had

never matured normally. With these disabilities, both had avoided participation in athletic sports all their

lives, especially any sport of a belligerent nature.

Yet the realization that there was nothing else available to eat had already made both voyagers very

hungry. What was their almost-friendship compared with the grisly prospect of starvation?

For the record, it was the lobstermorph, Tuezuzim, who suggested a trial by game, with the

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William Tenn - The Ghost Standard

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