Alfred Bester - The Stars My Destination

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THE STARS MY DESTINATION
by Alfred Bester
PARTi
Tiger! Tiger! burning bright
In the foTests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
Blake
PROLOGUE
THIS WAS A GOLDEN ACE, a time of high adventure, rich living, and hard dying .
. . but nobody thought so. This was a future of fortune and theft, pillage and
rapine, culture and vice . . . but nobody admitted it. This was an age of
extremes, a fascinating century of freaks . . . but nobody loved it.
All the habitable worlds of the solar system were occupied. Three planets and
eight satellites and eleven million million people swarmed in one of the most
exciting ages ever known, yet minds still yearned for other times, as always.
The solar system seethed with activity . . . fighting, feeding, and breeding,
learning the new technologies that spewed forth almost before the old had been
mastered, girding itself for the first exploration of the far stars in deep
space; but- "Where are the new frontiers?" the Romantics cried, unaware that
the
frontier of the mind had opened in a laboratory on Callisto at the turn of the
twenty-fourth century. A researcher named Jaunte set fire to his bench and
himself (accidentally) and let out a yell for help with particular reference
to a fire extinguisher. Who so surprised as Jaunte and his colleagues when he
found himself standing alongside said extinguisher, seventy feet removed from
his lab bench.
Copyright (c) Galaxy Publishing Corporation, 1956.
Reprinted by permission of MCA Artists, Ltd.
They put Jaunte out and went into the whys and wherefores of his
instantaneous seventy-foot journey. Teleportation . . . the transportation of
oneself through space by an effort of the mind alone. . . had long been a
theoretic concept, and there were a few hundred badly documented proofs that
it had happened in the past. This was the first time that it had ever taken
place before professional observers.
They investigated the Jaunte Effect savagely. This was something too
earth-shaking to handle with kid gloves, and Jaunte was anxious to make his
name immortal. He made his will and said farewell to his friends. Jaunte knew
he was going to die because his fellow researchers were determined to kill
him, if necessary. There was no doubt about that.
Twelve psychologists, parapsychologists and neurometrists of varying
specialization were called in as observers. The experimenters sealed Jaunte
into an unbreakable crystal tank. They opened a water valve, feeding water
into the tank, and let Jaunte watch them smash the valve handle. It was
impossible to open the tank; it was impossible to stop the flow of water.
The theory was that if it had required the threat of death to goad
Jaunte into teleporting himself in the first place, they'd damned well
threaten him with death again. The tank filled quickly. The observers
collected data with the tense precision of an eclipse camera crew. Jaunte
began to drown. Then he was outside the tank, dripping and coughing
explosively. He'd teleported again.
The experts examined and questioned him. They studied graphs and X-rays,
neural patterns and body chemistry. They began to get an inkling of how Jaunte
had teleported. On the technical grapevine (this had to be kept secret) they
sent out a call for suicide volunteers. They were still in the primitive stage
of teleportation; death was the only spur they knew.
They briefed the volunteers thoroughly. Jaunte lectured on what he had
done and how he thought he had done it. Then they proceeded to murder the
volunteers. They drowned them, hanged them, burned them; they invented new
forms of slow and controlled death. There was never any doubt in any of the
subjects that death was the object.
Eighty per cent of the volunteers died, and the agonies and remorse of
their murderers would make a fascinating and horrible study, but that has no
place in this history except to highlight the monstrosity of the times. Eighty
per cent of the volunteers died, but 20 per cent jaunted. (The name became a
word almost immediately.)
"Bring back the romantic age," the Romantics pleaded, "when men could
risk their lives in high adventure."
The body of knowledge grew rapidly. By the first decade of the
twentyfourth century the principles of jaunting were established and the first
school was opened by Charles Fort Jaunte himself, then fifty-seven,
immortalized, and ashamed to admit that he had never dared jaunte again. But
the primitive days were past; it was no longer necessary to threaten a man
with death to make him teleport. They had learned how to teach man to
recognize, discipline, and exploit yet another resource of his limitless mind.
How, exactly, did man teleport? One of the most unsatisfactory explana
tions was provided by Spencer Thompson, publicity representative of the Jaunte
Schools, in a press interview.
THOMPSON: Jaunting is like seeing; it is a natural aptitude of almost every
human organism, but it can only be developed by training and experience.
REPORTER: You mean we couldn't see without practice?
THOMPSON: Obviously you're either unmarried or have no children preferably
both.
(Laughter)
REPORTER: I don't understand.
THOMPSON: Anyone who's observed an infant learning to use its eyes, would.
REPORTER: But what is teleportation?
THOMPSON: The transportation of oneself from one locality to another by an
effort of the mind alone.
REPORTER: You mean we can think ourselves from . . say . . . New York to
Chicago?
THOMPSON: Precisely; provided one thing is clearly understood. In jaunting
from New York to Chicago it is necessary for the person teleporting himself to
know exactly where he is when he starts and where he's going.
REPORTER: How's that?
THOMPSON: If you were in a dark room and unaware of where you were, it would
be impossible to jaunte anywhere with safety. And if you knew where you were
but intended to jaunte to a place you had never seen, you would never arrive
alive. One cannot jaunte from an unknown departure point to an unknown
destination. Both must be known, memorized and visualized.
REPORTER: But if we know where we are and where we're going. . . P
THOMPSON: We can be pretty sure we'll jaunte and arrive.
REPORTER: Would we arrive naked?
THOMPSON: If you started naked. (Laughter)
REPORTER: I mean, would our clothes teleport with us?
THOMPSON: When people teleport, they also teleport the clothes they wear and
whatever they are strong enough to carry. I hate to disappoint you, but even
ladies' clothes would arrive with them.
(Laughter)
REPORTER: But how do we do it?
THOMPSON: How do we think?
REPORTER: With our minds.
THOMPSON: And how does the mind think? What is the thinking process? Exactly
how do we remember, imagine, deduce, create? Exactly how do the brain cells
operate?
REPORTER: I don't know. Nobody knows.
THOMPSON: And nobody knows exactly how we teleport either, but we know we
can do it-just as we know that we can think. Have you ever heard of Descartes?
He said: Cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I am. We say:
Cogito argo jaunteo. I think, therefore I jaunte.
If it is thought that Thompson's explanation is exasperating, inspect
this report of Sir John Kelvin to the Royal Society on the mechanism of
jaunting:
We have established that the teleportative ability is associated with the
Nissl bodies, or Tigroid Substance in nerve cells. The Tigroid Substance is
easiest demonstrated by Nissl's method using 3.7~ g. of methylen blue and i
.'~ g. of Venetian soap dissolved in 1,000 CC. of water.
Where the Tigroid Substance does not appear, jaunting is impossible.
Teleportation is a Tigroid Function.
(Applause)
Any man was capable of jaunting provided he developed two faculties,
visualization and concentration. He had to visualize, completely and
precisely, the spot to which he desired to teleport himself; and he had to
concentrate the latent energy of his mind into a single thrust to geE him
there. Above all, he had to have faith . . . the faith that Charles Fort
Jaunte never recovered. He had to believe he would jaunte. The slightest doubt
would block the mind-thrust necessary for teleportation.
The limitations with which every man is born necessarily limited the
ability to jaunte. Some could visualize magnificently and set the co-ordinates
of their destination with precision, but lacked the power to get there. Others
had the power but could not, so to speak, see where they were jaunting. And
space set a final limitation, for no man had ever jaunted further than a
thousand miles. He could work his way in jaunting jumps over land and water
from Nome to Mexico, but no jump could exceed a thousand miles.
By the 2420's, this form of employment application blank had become a
commonplace:
This space
reserved for
retina pattern ( )
identification
WAME (Capital Lettera)~
Last Middle First
RESIDENCE (Lagal)~
Continent Country County
JAUNTE CLASS (Official Rating: Check one Only):
M (1.000 miles)~ L (50 milee)
D (500 miles): X (10 mi1es)~
C (100 miles): . V(5 mUes)~
The old Bureau of Motor Vehicles took over the new job and regularly
tested and classed jaunte applicants, and the old American Automobile
Association changed its initials to AJA.
Despite all efforts, no man had ever jaunted across the voids of space,
although many experts and fools had tried. Helmut Grant, for one, who spent a
month memorizing the co-ordinates of a jaunte stage on the moon and visualized
every mile of the two hundred and forty thousand-mile trajectory from Times
Square to Kepler City. Grant jaunted and disappeared. They never found him.
They never found Enzio~ Dandridge, a Los Angeles revivalist looking for
Heaven; Jacob Maria Freundlich, a paraphysicist who should have known better
than to jaunte into deep space searching for metadimensions; Shipwreck Cogan,
a professional seeker after notoriety; and hundreds of others, lunatic-
fringers, neurotics, escapists and suicides. Space was closed to
teleportation. Jaunting was restricted to the surfaces of the planets of the
solar system.
But within three generations the entire solar system was on the jaunte.
The transition was more spectacular than the change-over from horse and buggy
to gasoline age four centuries before. On three planets and eight satellites,
social, legal, and economic structures crashed while the new customs and laws
demanded by universal jaunting mushroomed in their place.
There were land riots as the jaunting poor deserted slums to squat in
plains and forests, raiding the livestock and wildlife. There was a revolution
in home and office building: labyrinths and masking devices had to be
introduced to prevent unlawful entry by jaunting. There were crashes and
panics and strikes and famines as pre-jaunte industries failed.
Plagues and pandemics raged as jaunting vagrants carried disease and
vermin into defenseless countries. Malaria, elephantiasis, and the breakbone
fever came north to Greenland; rabies returned to England after an absence of
three hundred years. The Japanese beetle, the citrous scale, the chestnut
blight, and the elm borer spread to every corner of the world, and from one
forgotten pesthole in Borneo, leprosy, long imagined extinct, reappeared.
Crime waves swept the planets and satellites as their underworids took
to jaunting with the night around the clock, and there were brutalities as the
police fought them without quarter. There came a hideous return to the worst
prudery of Victorianism as society fought the sexual and moral dangers of
jaunting with protocol and taboo. A cruel and vicious war broke out between
the Inner Planets-Venus, Terra and Mars-and the Outer Satellites . . . a war
brought on by the economic and political pressures of teleportation.
Until the Jaunte Age dawned, the three Inner Planets (and the Moon) had
lived in delicate economic balance with the seven inhabited Outer Satellites:
To, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto of Jupiter; Rhea and Titan of Saturn; and
Lassell of Neptune. The United Outer Satellites supplied raw materials for the
Inner Planets' manufactories, and a market for their finished goods. Within a
decade this 'balance was destroyed by jaunting.
The Outer Satellites, raw young worlds in the making, had bought 70 per
cent of the I.P. transportation production. Jaunting ended that. They had
bought 90 per cent of the I.P. communications production. Jaunting ended that
too. In consequence I.P. purchase of O.S. raw materials fell off.
With trade exchange destroyed it was inevitable that the economic war
would degenerate into a shooting war. Inner Planets' cartels refused to ship
manufacturing equipment to the Outer Satellites, attempting to protect
themselves against competition. The O.S. confiscated the planets already in
operation on their worlds, broke patent agreements, ignored royalty
obligations . . . and the war was on.
It was an age of freaks, monsters, and grotesques. All the world was
misshapen in marvelous and malevolent ways. The Classicists and Romantics who
hated it were unaware of the potential greatness of the twenty-fifth century.
They were blind to a cold fact of evolution . . . that progress stems from the
clashing merger of antagonistic extremes, out of the marriage of pinnacle
freaks. Classicists and Romantics alike were unaware that the Solar System was
trembling on the verge of a human explosion that would transform man and make
him the master of the universe. -
It is against this seething background of the twenty-fif,th century that
the vengeful history of Gulliver Foyle begins.
CHAPTER ONE
Hn WAS ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY DAYS DYING and not yet dead. He fought for
survival with the passion of a beast in a trap. He was delirious and rotting,
but occasionally his primitive mind emerged from the burning nightmare of
survival into something resembling sanity. Then he lifted his mute face to
Eternity and muttered: "What's a matter, me? Help, you goddamn gods! Help, is
all."
Blasphemy came easily to him: it was half his speech, all his life. He
had been raised in the gutter school of the twenty-fifth century and spoke
nothing but the gutter tongue. Of all brutes in the world he was among the
least valuable alive and most likely to survive. So he struggled and prayed in
blasphemy; but occasionally his raveling mind leaped backward thirty years to
his childhood and remembered a nursery jingle:
Gully Foyle is my name
And Terra is my nation.
Deep space is my dwelling place
And death's my destination.
He was Gulliver Foyle, Mechanic's Mate 3rd Class, thirty years old, big
boned and rough . . and one hundred and seventy days adrift in space. He was
Gully Foyle, the oiler, wiper, bunkerman; too easy for trouble, too slow for
fun, too empty for friendship, too lazy for love. The lethargic outlines of
his character showed in the official Merchant Marine records:
)'OYLE, GULLIVER ---- AS-128/127:006
EDUCATION: NONE
SKILLS: NONE
MERITS: NONE
RECOMMENDATIONS: NONE
(PERSONNEL COMMENTS)
A man of physical strength and intellectual potential stunted by lack of
ambition. Energiaes at minimuro. The stereotype Common Man. Some unexpected
shock might possibly awaken him, but Psych cannot find the key. Not
recommendedfor promotion. Has reached a dead end.
He had reached a dead end. He had been content to drift from moment to
moment of existence for thirty years like some heavily armored creature,
sluggish and indifferent-Gully Foyle, the stereotype Common Man-but now he was
adrift in space for one hundred and seventy days, and the key to his awakening
was in the lock. Presently it would turn and open the door to holocaust.
The spaceship "Nomad" drifted halfway between Mars and Jupiter. Whatever
war catastrophe had wrecked it had taken a sleek steel rocket, one hundred
yards long and one hundred feet broad, and mangled it into a skeleton on which
was mounted the remains of cabins, holds, decks and bulkheads. Great rents in
the hull were blazes of light on the sunside and frosty blotches of stars on
the darkside. The S.S. "Nomad" was a weightless emptiness of blinding sun and
jet shadow, frozen and silent.
The wreck was filled with a floating conglomerate of frozen debris that
hung within the destroyed vessel like an instantaneous photograph of an
explosion. The minute gravitational attraction of the bits of rubble for each
other was slowly drawing them into clusters which were periodically torn apart
by the passage through them of the one survivor still alive on the wreck,
Gulliver Foyle, AS-i z8/i 27 :oo6.
He lived in the only airtight room left intact in the wreck, a tool
locker off the main-deck corridor. The locker was four feet wide, four feet
deep and nine feet high. It was the size of a giant's coffin. Six hundred
years before, it had been judged the most exquisite Oriental torture to
imprison a man in a cage that size for a few weeks. Yet Foyle had existed in
this lightless coffin for five months, twenty days, and four hours.
"Who are you?"
"Gully Foyle is my name."
"Where are you from?"
"Terra is my nation."
"Where are you now?"
"Deep space is my dwelling place."
"Where are you bound?"
"Death's my destination."
On the one hundred and seventy-first day of his fight for survival,
Foyle answered these questions and awoke. His heart hammered and his throat
burned. He groped in the dark for the air tank which shared his coffin with
him and checked it. The tank was empty. Another would have to be moved in at
once. So this day would commence with an extra skirmish with death which Foyle
accepted with mute endurance.
He felt through the locker shelves and located a torn spacesuit. It was
the only one aboard "Nomad" and Foyle no longer remembered where or how he had
found it. He had sealed the tear with emergency spray, but had no way of
refilling or replacing the empty oxygen cartridges on the back. Foyle got into
the suit. It would hold enough air from the locker to allow him five minutes
in vacuum . . . no more.
Foyle opened the locker door and plunged out into the black frost of
space. The air in the locker puffed out with him and its moisture congealed
into a tiny snow cloud that drifted down the torn main-deck corridor. Foyle
heaved at the exhausted air tank, floated it out of the locker and abandoned
it. One minute was gone.
He turned and propelled himself through the floating debris toward the
hatch to the ballast hold. He did not run: his gait was the unique locomotion
of free-fall and weightlessness . . . thrusts with foot, elbow and hand
against deck, wall and corner, a slow-motion darting through space like a bat
flying under water. Foyle shot through the hatch into the darkside ballast
hold. Two minutes were gone.
Like all spaceships, "Nomad" was ballasted and stiffened with the mass
of her gas tanks laid down the length of her keel like a long lumber raft
tapped at the sides by a labyrinth of pipe fittings. Foyle took a minute
disconnecting an air tank. He had no way of knowing whether it was full or
already exhausted; whether he would fight it back to his locker only to
discover that it was empty and his life was ended. Once a week he endured this
game of space roulette.
There was a roaring in his ears; the air in his spacesuit was rapidly
going foul. He yanked the massy cylinder toward the ballast hatch, ducked to
let it sail over his head, then thrust himself after it. He swung the tank
through the hatch. Four minutes had elapsed and he was shaking and blacking
out. He guided the tank down the main-deck corridor and bulled it into the
tool locker.
He slammed the locker door, dogged it, found a hammer on a shelf and
swung it thrice against the frozen tank to loosen the valve. Foyle twisted the
handle grimly. With the last of his strength he uissealed the helmet of his
spacesuit, lest he suffocate within the suit while the locker filled with air
if this tank contained air. He fainted, as he had fainted so often
before, never knowing whether this was death.
"Who are you?"
"Gully Foyle."
"Where are you from?"
"Terra." -
"Where are you now?"
"Space."
"Where are you bound?"
He awoke. He was alive. He wasted no time on prayer or thanks but
continued the business of survival. In the darkness he explored the locker
shelves where he kept his rations. There were only a few packets left. Since
he was already wearing the patched spacesuit he might just as well run the
gantlet of vacuum again and replenish his supplies.
He flooded his spacesuit with air from the tank, resealed his helmet and
sailed out into the frost and light again. He squirmed down the main-deck
corridor and ascended the remains of a stairway, to the control deck which was
no more than a roofed corridor in space. Most of the walls were destroyed.
With the sun on his right and the stars on his left, Foyle shot aft
toward the galley storeroom. Halfway down the corridor he passed a door frame
still standing foursquare between deck and roof. The leaf still hung on its
hinges, half-open, a door to nowhere. Behind it was all space and the steady
stars.
As Foyle passed the door he had a quick view of himself reflected in the
polished chrome of the leaf. . . Gully Foyle, a giant black creature, bearded,
crusted with dried blood and filth, emaciated, with sick, patient eyes .
and followed always by a stream of floating debris, the raffle disturbed by
his motion and following him through space like the tail of a festering comet.
Foyle turned into the galley storeroom and began looting with the
methodical speed of five months' habit. Most of the bottled goods were frozen
solid and exploded. Much of the canned goods had lost their containers, for
tin crumbles to dust in the absolute zero of space. Foyle gathered up ration
packets, concentrates, and a chunk of ice from the burst water tank. He threw
everything into a large copper cauldron, turned and darted out of the
storeroom, carrying the cauldron.
At the door to nowhere Foyle glanced at himself again, reflected in the
chrome leaf framed in the stars. Then he stopped his motion in bewilderment.
He stared at the stars behind the door which had become familiar friends after
five months. There was an intruder among them; a comet, it seemed, with an
invisible head and a short, spurting tail. Then Foyle realized he was staring
at a spaceship, stern rockets flaring as it accelerated on a sunward course
that must pass him.
"No," he muttered. "No, man. No."
He was continually suffering from hallucinations. He turned to resume
the journey back to his coffin. Then he looked again. It was still a
spaceship, stern rockets flaring as it accelerated on a sunward course which
must pass him. He discussed the illusion with Eternity.
"Six months already," he said in his gutter tongue. "Is it now? You
listen a me, lousy gods. I talkin' a deal, is all. I look again, sweet prayer-
men. If it's a ship, I'm your's. You own me. But if it's a gaff, man . . . if
it's no ship
I unseal right now and blow my guts. We both ballast level, us. Now
reach me the sign, yes or no, is all."
He looked for a third time. For the third time he saw a spaceship, stern
rockets flaring as it accelerated on a sunward course which must pass him. It
was the sign. He believed. He was saved.
Foyle shoved off and went hurtling down control-deck corridor toward the
bridge. But at the companionway stairs he restrained himself. He could not
remain conscious for more than a few more moments without refilling his
spacesuit. He gave the approaching spaceship one pleading look, then shot down
to the tool locker and pumped his suit full.
He mounted to the control bridge. Through the starboard observation port
he saw the spaceship, stern rockets still flaring, evidently making a major
alteration in course, for it wasp bearing down on him very slowly.
On a panel marked FLARES, Foyle pressed the DISTRESS button. There was a
three-second pause during which he suffered. Then white radiance blinded him
as the distress signal went off in three triple bursts, nine prayers for help.
Foyle pressed the button twice again, and twice more the flares flashed in
space while the radioactives incorporated in their combustion set up a static
howl that must register on any waveband of any receiver.
The stranger's jets cut off. He had been seen. He would be saved. He was
reborn. He exulted.
Foyle darted back to his locker and replenished his spacesuit again. He
began to weep. He started to gather his possessions-a faceless clock which he
kept wound just to listen to the ticking, a lug wrench with a hand-shaped
handle which he would hold in lonely moments, an egg slicer upon whose wires
he would pluck primitive tunes. . . . He dropped them in his excitement,
hunted for them in the dark, then began to laugh at himself.
He filled his spacesuit with air once more and capered back to the
bridge. He punched a flare button labelled: RESCUE. From the hull of the
"Nomad" shot a sunlet that burst and hung, flooding miles of space with harsh
white light.
"Come on, baby you," Foyle crooned. "Hurry up, man. Come on, baby baby
you."
Like a ghost torpedo, the stranger slid into the outermost rim of light,
approaching slowly, looking him over. For a moment Foyle's heart constricted;
the ship was behaving so cautiously that he feared she was an enemy vessel
from the Outer Satellites. Then he saw the famous red and blue emblem on her
side, the trademark of the mighty industrial clan of Presteign; Presteign of
Terra, powerful, munificent, beneficent. And he knew this was a sister ship,
for the "Nomad" was also Presteign-owned. He knew this was an angel from space
hovering over him.
"Sweet sister," Foyle crooned. "Baby angel, fly away home with me."
The ship came abreast of Foyle, illuminated ports along its side glowing
with friendly light, its name and registry number clearly visible in
illuminated figures on the hull: Vorga-T:i339. The ship was alongside him in a
moment, passing him in a second, disappearing in a third.
The sister had spurned him; the angel had abandoned him.
Foyle stopped dancing and crooning. He stared in dismay. He leaped to
the flare panel and slapped buttons. Distress signals, landing, take-off, and
quarantine flares burst from the hull of the "Nomad" in a madness of white,
red and green light, pulsing, pleading . . . and "Vorga-T:i 339" passed
silently and implacably, stern jets flaring again as it accelerated on a
sunward course.
So, in five seconds, he was born, he lived, and he died. After thirty
years of existence and six months of torture, Gully Foyle, the stereotype
Common Man, was no more. The key turned in the lock of his soul and the door
was opened. What emerged expunged the Common Man forever.
"You pass me by," he said with slow mounting fury. "You leave me rot
like a dog. You leave me die, 'Vorga' . . . 'Vorga-T:i 339.' No. I get out of
here, me. I follow you, 'Vorga.' I find you, 'Vorga.' I pay you back, me. I
rot you. I kill you, 'Vorga.' I kill you filthy."
The acid of fury ran through him, eating away the brute patience and
sluggishness that had made a cipher of Gully Foyle, precipitating a chain of
reactions that would make an infernal machine of Gully Foyle. He was
dedicated.
"'Vorga,' I kill you filthy."
He did what the cipher could not do; he rescued himself.
For two days he combed the wreckage in five-minute forays, and devised a
harness for his shoulders. He attached an air tank to the harness and
connected the tank to his spacesuit helmet with an improvised hose. He
wriggled through space like an ant dragging a log, but he had the freedom of
the "Nomad" for all time.
He thought.
In the control bridge he taught himself to use the few navigation
instruments that were still unbroken, studying the standard manuals that
littered the wrecked navigation room. In the ten years of his service in space
he had never dreamed of attempting such a thing, despite the rewards of
promotion and pay; but now he had "Vorga-T:1339" to reward him.
He took sights. The "Nomad" was drifting in space on the ecliptic,
~three hundred million miles from the sun. Before him were spread the
constellations Perséus, Andromeda and Pisces. Hanging almost in the foreground
was a dusty orange spot that was Jupiter, distinctly a planetary disc to the
naked eye. With any luck he could make a course for Jupiter and rescue.
Jupiter was not, could never be habitable. Like all the outer planets
beyond the asteroid orbits, it was a frozen mass of methane and ammonia; but
its four largest satellites swarmed with cities and populations now at war
with the Inner Planets. He would be a war prisoner, but he had to stay alive
to settle accounts with "Vorga-T:1339."
Foyle inspected the engine room of the "Nomad." There was Hi-Thrust fuel
remaining in the tanks and one of the four tail jets was still in operative
condition. Foyle found the engine room manuals and studied them. He repaired
the connection between fuel tanks and the one jet chamber. The tanks were on
the sunside of the wreck and warmed above freezing point.
The Hi-Thrust was still liquid, but it would not flow. In free-fall there was
no gravity to draw the fuel down the pipes.
Foyle studied a space manual and learned something about theoretical
gravity. If he could put the "Nomad" into a spin, centrifugal force would
impart enough gravitation to the ship to draw fuel down into the combustion
chamber of the jet. If he could fire the combustion chamber, the unequal
thrust of the one jet would impart a spin to the "Nomad."
But he couldn't fire the jet without first having the spin; and he
couldn't get the spin without first firing the jet.
He thought his way out of the deadlock; he was inspired by "Vorga."
Foyle opened the drainage petcock in the combustion chamber of the jet and
tortuously filled the chamber with fuel by hand. He had primed the pump. Now,
if he ignited the fuel, it would fire long enough to impart the spin and start
gravity. Then the flow from the tanks would commence and the rocketing would
continue.
He tried matches.
Matches will not burn in the vacuum of space.
He tried flint and steel.
Sparks will not glow in the absolute zero of space.
He thought of red-hot filaments.
He had no electric power of any description aboard the "Nomad" to make a
filament red hot.
He found texts and read. Although he was blacking out frequently and
close to complete collapse, he thought and planned. He was inspired to
greatness by "Vorga."
Foyle brought ice from the frozen galley tanks, melted it with his own
body heat, and added water to the jet combustion chamber. The fuel and the
water were nonmiscible, they did not mix. The water floated in a thin layer
over the fuel.
From the chemical stores Foyle brought a silvery bit of wire, pure
sodium metal. He poked the wire through the open petcock. The sodium ignited
when it touched the water and flared with high heat. The heat touched off the
Hi-Thrust which burst in a needle flame from the petcock. Foyle closed the
petcock with a wrench. The ignition held in the chamber and the lone aft jet
slammed out flame with a soundless vibration that shook the ship.
The off-center thrust of the jet twisted the "Nomad" into a slow spin.
The torque imparted a slight gravity. Weight returned. The floating debris
that cluttered the hull fell to decks, walls and ceilings; and the gravity
kept the fuel feeding from tanks to combustion chamber.
Foyle wasted no time on cheers. He left the engine room and struggled
forward in desperate haste for a final, fatal observation from the control
bridge. This would tell him whether the "Nomad" was committed to a wild plunge
out into the no-return of deep space, or a course for Jupiter and rescue.
The slight gravity made his air tank almost impossible to drag. The
sudden forward surge of acceleration shook loose masses of debris which flew
backward through the "Nomad." As Foyle struggled up the companionway
stairs to the control deck, the rubble from the bridge came hurtling back down
the corridor and smashed into him. He was caught up in this tumbleweed in
space, rolled back the length of the empty corridor, and brought up against
the galley bulkhead with an impact that shattered his last hold on
consciousness. He lay pinned in the center of half a ton of wreckage,
helpless, barely alive, but still raging for vengeance. -
"Who are you?"
"Where are you from?"
"Where are you now?"
"Where are you bound?"
CHAPTER TWO
摘要：

THESTARSMYDESTINATIONbyAlfredBesterPARTiTiger!Tiger!burningbrightInthefoTestsofthenight,WhatimmortalhandoreyeCouldframethyfearfulsymmetry?BlakePROLOGUETHISWASAGOLDENACE,atimeofhighadventure,richliving,andharddying...butnobodythoughtso.Thiswasafutureoffortuneandtheft,pillageandrapine,cultureandvice.....

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