Dickson, Gordon - The Lifeship

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Gordon R. Dickson & Harry Harrison

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 him-

self 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 atmo-

sphere 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 re-

sponsibility. 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 three-

fingered 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 motionless-

ness. 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 white-

hot 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 still-

flaring 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 life-

ship's just down the corridor, here. You-what's your name?

Groce? Lead off!"

The male arbite turned without a word and obeyed, respond-

ing 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 ap-

peared. She followed him with the normal calmness of arbite ex-

pression on her face.

Giles reached out ahead to close his hand on the right shoul-

der 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 ar-

bite 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 but-

ton 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 loud-

speaker 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, with-

out turning his head. The sound of coughing from the loudspeaker

was louder now, echoed by the clang of stumbling feet approach-

ing. One of those coming, Giles thought, had better be the Al-

benareth 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 war-

ily 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 web-

bing of their cots, as the lifeship was hurled away from its mother

ship, into space. The acceleration changed direction as the life-

ship'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 equa-

tor 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, slip-

ping past jagged fangs of steel that swam into view in the lifeship's

forward viewscreen. Suddenly, there was a smooth, unscarred sec-

tion 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 three-

fingered 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 sep-

arated them. Even then, the captain and the alien beside him con-

tinued to laugh as the lifeship moved away from their shipmate in

the spaceliner wreckage. Only slowly did their laughter die, sur-

rounded 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 hu-

mans 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 incompre-

hensible 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 as-

sumption 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 re-

turned to the control area and from a compartment there took out

a rectangular object wrapped in golden cloth, and held it cere-

moniously 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 space-

liner, 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 under-

stood.

"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 Al-

benareth 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 im-

mediate 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 auto-

mated 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 mo-

ment at the two aliens. The Albenareth were almost indistinguish-

able 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

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摘要：

GordonR.Dickson&HarryHarrison1TheexplosiondrummedandshudderedallthroughthefabricoftheAlbenarethspaceship,justasGilesreachedthefootoftheladderleadingupfromthebaggageareaintopassengerterritory.Hegrabbedtherailingofthespiralstaircasethatwastheladderandhungon.ButalmostontheheelsoftheErsttremorcameanunex...

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