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Title: Counterweight

Author: Jerry Sohl

Release Date: November 17, 2019 [EBook #60713]

Language: English

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Sure I'm a Nilly, and I've died seven times, always in the blackness of the outer reaches, and I'm not alone, although there aren't very many of us, never were.

It made sense. Interstellar was new and they wanted him on the ship because he was a trained observer. They wanted facts, not gibberish. But to ask a man to give up two years of his life—well, that was asking a lot. Two years in a sardine can. Still, it had an appeal Keith Ellason knew he couldn't deny, a newsman's joy of the clean beat, a planetary system far afield, a closeup view of the universe, history in the making.

Interstellar Chief Rexroad knocked the dottle from his pipe in a tray, saying, "Transworld Press is willing to let you have a leave of abscence, if you're interested."

He knew Secretary Phipps from years of contacting, and now Phipps said, "Personally, I don't want to see anybody else on the job. You've got a fine record in this sort of thing."

Keith Ellason smiled, but just barely. "You should have called me for the first trip."

Phipps nodded. "I wish we had had you on the Weblor I."

"Crewmen," Rexroad said, "make poor reporters."

The Weblor I had taken off on the first trip to Antheon five years before with a thousand families, reached the planet with less than five hundred surviving colonists. Upon the return to Earth a year later, the crew's report of suffering and chaos during the year's outgoing voyage was twisted, distorted and fragmentary. Ellason remembered it well. The decision of Interstellar was that the colonists started a revolution far out in space, that it was fanned by the ignorance of Captain Sessions in dealing with such matters.

"Space affects men in a peculiar way," Phipps said. "We have conquered the problem of small groups in space—witness the discovery of Antheon, for example—but when there are large groups, control is more difficult."

"Sessions," Rexroad said, "was a bully. The trouble started at about the halfway point. It ended with passengers engaging in open warfare with each other and the crew. Sessions was lucky to escape with his life."

"As I recall," Ellason said, "there was something about stunners."

Phipps rubbed his chin. "No weapons were allowed on the ship, but you must remember the colonists were selected for their intelligence and resourcefulness. They utilized these attributes to set up weapon shops to arm themselves."

"The second trip is history," Rexroad said. "And a puzzle."

Ellason nodded. "The ship disappeared."

"Yes. We gave control to the colonists."

"Assuming no accident in space," Phipps said, "it was a wrong decision. They probably took over the ship."

"And now," Ellason said, "you're going to try again."

Rexroad said very gravely, "We've got the finest captain in Interplanetary. Harvey Branson. No doubt you've heard of him. He's spent his life in our own system, and he's handpicking his own crew. We have also raised prerequisites for applicants. We don't think anything is going to happen, but if it does, we want to get an impersonal, unprejudiced view. That's where you come in. You do the observing, the reporting. We'll evaluate it on your return."

"If I return," said Ellason.

"I suppose that's problematical," Phipps said, "but I think you will. Captain Branson and his fifty crewmen want to return as badly as you do." He grinned. "You can write that novel you're always talking about on your return trip on the Weblor II."

Being a Nilly is important, probably as important as running the ship, and I think it is this thought that keeps us satisfied, willing to be what we are.

The Weblor II had been built in space, as had its predecessor, the Weblor I, at a tremendous cost. Basically, it was an instrument which would open distant vistas to colonization, reducing the shoulder-to-shoulder pressure of a crowded solar system. A gigantic, hollow spike, the ship would never land anywhere, but would circle Antheon as it circled Earth, shuttling its cargo and passengers to the promised land, the new frontier. A space-borne metropolis, it would be the home for three thousand persons outward bound, only the crew on the return trip. It was equipped with every conceivable facility and comfort—dining rooms, assembly hall, individual and family compartments, recreation areas, swimming pool, library, theater. Nothing had been overlooked.

The captain's briefing room was crowded, the air was heavy with the breathing of so many men, and the ventilators could not quite clear the air of tobacco smoke that drifted aimlessly here and there before it was caught and whisked away.

In the tradition of newspaperman and observer, Keith Ellason tried to be as inconspicuous as possible, pressing against a bulkhead, but Captain Branson's eyes sought his several times as Branson listened to final reports from his engineers, record keepers, fuel men, computermen, and all the rest. He grunted his approval or disapproval, made a suggestion here, a restriction there. There was no doubt that Branson was in charge, yet there was a human quality about him that Ellason liked. The captain's was a lean face, well tanned, and his eyes were chunks of blue.

"Gentlemen," Branson said at last, as Ellason knew he would, "I want to introduce Keith Ellason, whose presence Interstellar has impressed upon us. On loan from Transworld, he will have an observer status." He introduced him to the others. All of them seemed friendly; Ellason thought it was a good staff.

Branson detained him after the others had gone. "One thing, Mr. Ellason. To make it easier for you, I suggest you think of this journey strictly from the observer viewpoint. There will be no story for Transworld at the end."

Ellason was startled. While he had considered the possibility, he had not dwelt on it. Now it loomed large in his mind. "I don't understand, Captain Branson. It seems to me—"

"Let me put it differently. Let me say that you will not understand why I say that until the journey ends." He smiled. "Perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned it."

Ellason left the captain's quarters with an odd taste in his mouth. Now why had Branson said that? Why hadn't Rexroad or Phipps said something, if it was important?

He made himself comfortable in his seven-foot-by-seven-foot cubicle, which is to say he dropped on his bed, found it more comfortable than he thought it would be, put his arms behind his head, stared at the ceiling. Metal walls, no windows, one floor vent, one ceiling vent, and a solitary ceiling molding tube-light. This would be his home for a year, just as there were homes like it for three thousand others, except that the family rooms would be larger. His quarters were near the front of the spike near the officers' quarters.

He felt rather than heard the dull rumble. It was a sound he knew would be with him for two years—one year going and one year returning.

He looked at his watch, picked up his notebook and made an entry. The ship right now would be slipping ever so slowly away from Earth. He got up. He'd have to go forward to the observation dome to see that. Last view of Earth for two years.

The penetration of space by large groups is the coming out from under the traditions of thousands of years, and as these planet-orginated rules fall away, the floundering group seeks a new control, for they are humanity adrift, rudderless, for whom the stars are no longer bearings but nonexistent things, and values are altered if they are not shown the way.

The theft of Carver Janssen's attache case occurred on the thirty-first day out. In Ellason's mind the incident, though insignificant from the standpoint of the ship as a whole, could very well be the cause of dissension later on. His notes covering it were therefore very thorough.

Janssen's case contained vegetable and flower seeds—thousands of them, according to the Captain's Bulletin, the ship's daily newsletter which went to all hands and passengers. In the Bulletin the captain appealed to the thief to return the case to Mr. Janssen. He said it was significant that all en route had passed stability tests, and that it was to the ship's discredit that someone with criminal tendencies should have been permitted aboard.

Ellason had to smile at that. What did Captain Branson think of those colonists who killed each other on the Weblor I? They had passed stability tests too. This, then, was what happened when you took three thousand strangers and stuck them in a can for a year.

When Ellason saw Branson about it, the captain said, "Of course I realize it takes only a little thing like this to set things off. I know people get tired of seeing each other, playing the same tapes, looking at the stars from the observation dome, walking down the same corridors, reading the same books, eating the same meals, though God knows we try to vary it as much as we can. Space creates rough edges. But the point is, we know all this, and knowing it, we shouldn't let it happen. We've got to find that thief."

"What would he want seeds for? Have you thought of that?"

"Of course. They'd have real value on Antheon."

Ellason sought out Carver Janssen. He was a middle-aged man with a tired face and sad eyes. He said, "Now what am I going to Antheon for? I could only take along so much baggage and I threw out some comfort items to make room for the seeds. I'm a horticulturist, and Interstellar asked me to go along. But what use am I now? Where am I going to get seeds like those? Do you know how long it took me to collect them? They're not ordinary seeds, Mr. Ellason."

There was an appeal from Janssen in the next day's newsletter describing the seeds, telling of their value, and requesting their return in the interests of the Antheon colony and of humanity.

On the thirty-fourth day a witness turned up who said he had seen a man emerging from Janssen's compartment with the black case. "I didn't think anything of it at the time," Jamieson Dievers said.

Branson asked him to describe the man.

"Oh, he was about six feet tall, stocky build, and he wore a red rubber mask that covered his head completely."

"Didn't you think that was important?" Branson asked in an outraged voice. "A man wearing a red mask?"

Dievers shrugged. "This is a spaceship. How would I know whether a red mask—or a blue or green one—does or doesn't belong on a spaceship?"

Although Dievers' account appeared in the newsletter, it was largely discounted.

"If it is true," Branson told Ellason, "the theft must be the work of a psychotic. But I don't believe Jamieson Dievers. It may well be he's the psychotic." He snorted. "Red rubber mask! I think I'll have Dievers put through psychiatry."

Attendant to taking notes on this incident, Ellason noted a strange thing. Janssen lived in that part of the ship known as the First Quadrant, and those who lived in that quadrant—more than seven hundred men, women and children—felt that the thief must surely live in Quadrant Two or Four. Elias Cromley, who had the compartment next to Janssen's, sounded the consensus when he said, "Surely a man wouldn't steal from his own quadrant, now would he, Mr. Ellason?"

And so, Ellason observed in his notebook, are wars created.

Seen in space, stars are unmoving, silent, sterile bright eyes ever watchful and accusing. To men unused to it, such a sight numbs, compresses, stultifies. He introduces a countermeasure, proof he exists, which is any overt act, sometimes violent.

On the forty-fifth day June Failright, the young wife of one of the passenger meteorologists, ran screaming down one of the long corridors of the Third Quadrant. She told the captain she had been attacked in her compartment while her husband was in the ship's library. She was taken to one of the ship's doctors, who confirmed it.

She said the culprit was a husky man wearing a red rubber mask, and though her description of what he had done did not appear in the story in the newsletter, it lost no time in penetrating every compartment of the ship.

Ellason was present when a delegation from the Third Quadrant called on Captain Branson, demanding action.

Branson remained seated behind his desk, unperturbed, saying, "I have no crewmen to spare for police duty."

The delegation commenced speaking vehemently, to be quieted by Branson's raised hand.

"I sympathize," Branson said, "but it is up to each quadrant to deal with its problems, whatever they may be. My job is to get us to Antheon."

The group left in a surly mood.

"You wonder at my reluctance, Mr. Ellason," Captain Branson said. "But suppose I assign the crew to patrol duties, the culprit isn't caught, and further incidents occur. What then? It soon becomes the crew's fault. And soon the colonists will begin thinking these things might be the crew's doing in the first place."

"Yes," Ellason said, "but what if the intruder is a crewman?"

"I know my men," Branson said flatly.

"You could have a shake-down for the mask and the seed case."

"Do you think it is a member of the crew?" Branson's eyes were bright. "No, I trust my men. I won't violate that trust."

Ellason left, feeling uneasy. If he were Branson, he'd initiate an investigation, if nothing else than to prove the crew guiltless. Why couldn't Branson see the wisdom of setting an example for the colonists?

As a Nilly, I knew that space breeds hate. There is a seed of malevolence in every man. It sometimes blossoms out among the stars. On the Weblor II it was ready for ripening.

Raymond Palugger was killed in the ship's hospital on the sixty-first day. Palugger, a Fourth Quadrant passenger, had complained of feeling ill, had been hospitalized with a diagnosis of ileus. He had put his money belt in the drawer of the small stand beside his bed. A man in a red mask was seen hurrying from the hospital area, and a staff investigation revealed that Palugger had died trying to prevent the theft of the belt.

Captain Branson did not wait for the newsletter. Through the ship's speaker system, he reported that Palugger had a fortune in credits in the belt and had died of a severe beating. He said that since the incident occurred in the staff section of the ship, his crew would be forced to submit to a thorough inspection in an effort to find the mask, the seed case, the money and the man.

"I will not countenance such an act by a crewman," Branson said. "If and when he is found, he will be severely dealt with. But he might not be a member of the crew. I am ordering an assembly of all passengers at nine tomorrow morning in the auditorium. I will speak to you all then."

Faces were angry, tongues were sharp at the meeting, eyes suspicious and tempers short. Above it all was the overpowering presence of Captain Branson speaking to them.

"It is not my desire to interfere in passenger affairs," he said. "Insofar as the ship is concerned, it is my duty to make certain no crewman is guilty. This I am doing. But my crew is not and cannot be a police force for you. It is up to you people to police and protect yourselves."

"How can we protect ourselves without stunners?" one colonist called out.

"Has Red Mask a gun?" Branson retorted. "It seems to me you have a better weapon than any gun."

"What's that?"

"This ship is only so wide, so long and so deep. If every inch is searched, you'll find your man. He has to be somewhere aboard."

The colonists quieted. Benjamin Simpson, one of the older men, was elected president of the newly formed Quadrant Council. One man from each of the quadrants was named to serve under him. Each of these men in turn selected five others from his own group.

Those assembled waited in the hall while each team of six inspected the compartments of the others. These compartments were then locked, everyone returned to his compartment, and the larger search was conducted. It took twenty hours.

No mask was found. No mask, no case, no money, no man.

The captain reported that his search had been equally fruitless. At another assembly the following day it was decided to make the inspection teams permanent, to await further moves on the part of Red Mask. The Quadrant Council held periodic meetings to set up a method of trial for him when he was caught. It was all recorded in the newsletter and by Keith Ellason.

We Nillys know about hate and about violence. We know too that where there is hate there is violence, and where there is violence there is death.

During sleep time on the seventy-ninth day Barbara Stoneman, awakened by a strange sound, sat up in the bed of her compartment to find a man in a red mask in her room. Her cries brought neighbors into the corridor. The flight of the man was witnessed by many, and several men tried to stop him. But the intruder was light on his feet and fast. He escaped.

The Quadrant Council confronted the captain, demanding weapons.

"Are you out of your minds?" Branson exclaimed.

Tom Tilbury, Fourth Quadrant leader, said, "We want to set up a police force, Captain. We want stunners."

"There's no law against it," Branson said, "but it's a rule of mine that no weapons are to be issued en route."

"If we had had a gun, we'd have got Red Mask," Tilbury said.

"And I might have a murder on my conscience."

Tilbury said, "We've also thought of that. Suppose you supply us with half-power stunners? That way we can stun but not kill."

They got their guns. Now there were twenty-four policemen on duty in the corridors—eight on at a time. Ellason observed that for the first time the passengers seemed relaxed.

Let Red Mask move against armed men, they said.

Yeah, let him see what happens now.

Red Mask did.

On the 101st day he was seen in a corridor in Quadrant Four. Emil Pierce, policeman on duty, managed to squeeze off several shots at his retreating figure.

Red Mask was seen again on the 120th day, on the 135th day, and the 157th day. He was seen, shot at, but not hit. He was also unable to commit any crime.

We've got him on the run, the colonists said.

He's afraid to do anything, now that we've got police protection, they said smugly.

The Quadrant Council congratulated itself. The passengers were proud of themselves. A special congratulatory message from Captain Branson appeared one day in the Bulletin newsletter.

The colonists settled down to living out the rest of the voyage until the landing on Antheon.

But on the 170th day calamity struck. Red Mask appropriated one of the stunners, made his way down one whole corridor section in Quadrant Two, put occupants to sleep as he went, taking many articles of value and leaving disorder behind.

Ellason interviewed as many victims as he could, noted it all in his book. The things taken were keepsakes, photographs and items of personal value. It seemed to be the work of a madman. If Red Mask wanted to make everyone furious, he certainly succeeded.

"What does he want that stuff for?" Casey Stromberg, a passenger doctor, asked. "I can see him taking my narcotics, my doctor's kit—but my dead wife's picture? That I don't understand."

It was the same with others. "The man's insane, Mr. Ellason. Positively insane." Many people said it.

The council issued orders that all passengers from now on would be required to lock their compartments at all times. More guns were obtained from the captain. More policemen were appointed.

Ellason was busy noting it all in his book. It became filled with jottings about innocent people being accidentally stunned when trigger-happy policemen thought their movements suspicious, about one man's suspicion of another and the ensuing search of compartments, people who saw Red Mask here, saw him there. Hardly a day went by without some new development.

"Oh, yes, Mr. Ellason, we're going to get him," said Tilbury, now chief of police, cracking his knuckles, his eyes glowing at the thought. "We're bound to get him. We've got things worked out to the finest detail. He won't be able to get through our fingers now. Just let him make so much as a move."

"And what will you do when you get him?"

"Kill him," Tilbury said, licking his lips, his eyes glowing more fiercely than ever.

"Without a trial?"

"Oh, there'll be a trial, Mr. Ellason, but you don't think any jury'd let him live after all the things he's done, do you?"

Red Mask was stunned in Quadrant Four in a corridor by a policeman named Terryl Placer on the 201st day. The criminal was carried to the assembly room surrounded by guards, for he surely would have been mauled, if not killed, by angry colonists who crowded around. In the assembly hall his mask was whipped off. The crowd gasped. Nobody knew him.

Ellason's first thought was that he must be a stowaway, but then he remembered the face, and Captain Branson, who came to have a look at him, unhappily admitted the man was a member of the crew. His name was Harrel Critten and he was a record keeper third class.

"Well, Critten," Branson roared at him, "what have you got to say for yourself?"

"Go to hell," Critten said quietly. As if it were an afterthought, he spat at the captain.

Branson looked as if he were going to kill the man himself right there and then.

It was a long trial—from the 220th to the 241st day—and there didn't seem to be much doubt about the outcome, for Critten didn't help his own cause during any of it.

Lemuel Tarper, who was appointed prosecutor, asked him, "What did you do with the loot, Critten?"

Critten looked him square in the eye and said, "I threw it out one of the escape chutes. Does that answer your question?"

"Threw it away?" Tarper and the crowd were incredulous.

"Sure," Critten said. "You colonists got the easy life as passengers, just sitting around. I had to work my head off keeping records for you lazy bastards."

The verdict was, of course, death.

They executed Harrel Critten on the morning of the 270th day with blasts from six stunners supplied with full power. It was witnessed by a great crowd in the assembly hall. A detail from the ship's crew disposed of his body through a chute.

It was all duly recorded in Keith Ellason's notebooks.

Dying is easy for a Nilly. Especially if it's arranged for beforehand, which it always is.

The Weblor II was only one day out of orbit when Captain Branson sent for Ellason and introduced him to the executed man.

"Hello," Critten said, grinning from ear to ear.

"I figured as much," Ellason said. "I've been doing a lot of thinking."

"You're perhaps a little too good as an observer," Branson said. "Or maybe it was because you really weren't one of the colonists. But no matter, Critten did a good job. He was trained by an old friend of mine for this job, Gelthorpe Nill. Nill used to be in counter-espionage when there were wars."

"You were excellent," Ellason said.

"Can't say I enjoyed the role," said Critten, "but I think it saved lives."

"Let me get this straight. Interstellar thought that it was idleness and boredom that caused the killings on the Weblor I, so they had you trained to be a scapegoat. Is that right?"

Critten nodded. "When great numbers are being transported, they are apt to magnify each little event because so little happens. It was my job to see that they directed none of their venom against each other or the crew, only toward me."

Branson smiled. "It made the time pass quickly and interestingly for the passengers."

"To say nothing of me," Critten said.

"And you, Mr. Ellason, were along to observe it all," Captain Branson put in. "Interstellar wanted an accurate picture of this. If it worked, they told me they'd use it on other trips to Antheon."

Ellason nodded. "No time for brooding, for differences of opinion on small matters. Just time to hate Mr. Critten. Unanimously."

"Probably," Critten said, "you are wondering about the execution."

"Naturally."

"We removed the charges before the guns were used."

"And Carver Janssen's case?"

"He'll get it back when he's shuttled to Antheon. And all the other items will be returned. They're all tagged with their owner's names. Captain Branson will say they were found somewhere on the ship. You see, I was a liar."

"How about that assault on June Failright?"

Critten grinned again. "She played right into our hands. She ran out into the hall claiming I'd attacked her, which I did not. She was certainly amazed when the ship's physicians agreed with her. Of course Captain Branson told them to do that."

"And the murder?"

"Raymond Palugger died in the hospital all right, but he died from his illness on the operating table. We turned it into an advantage by making it look suspicious."

Ellason brightened. "And by that time everybody was seeing Red Mask everywhere and the colonists organized against him."

"Gave them something to do," Branson said.

"Every time things got dull, I livened them up. I got a stunner and robbed along the corridor. That really stirred them. Lucky nobody got hurt during any of it, including that Stoneman woman. I was trying to rob her when she woke up."

Branson cleared his throat. "Ah, Ellason about that story. You understand you can't write it, don't you?"

Ellason said regretfully that he did understand.

"The colonists will never know the truth," Branson went on. "There will be other ships outward bound."

Critten sighed. "And I'll have to be caught again."

Yes, we're anonymous, nameless, we Nillys, for that's what we call each other, and are a theme, with variations, in the endless stretches of deep space, objects of hatred and contempt, professional heels, dying once a trip when the time is ripe, antidote to boredom, and we'll ply our trade, our little tragedies, on a thousand ships bringing humanity to new worlds.

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