Voyage To Procyon

In the deepest level of the mighty Starship I, Peter Conroy lay hidden in a cornfield. Around him waved the tall stalks of ripening corn; high overhead, near the distant ceiling of the level, blazed the actinic lights that irradiated the broad field.

And nearby, Conroy could hear the stealthy footsteps of Bayliss Kent and his men, searching desperately for him. They had to find him—and Peter Conroy had to keep from being found.

Crouching low, he edged forward between the bending stalks. Kent thought he had Conroy hemmed in, that he had the entrance to the cornfield guarded. Conroy grinned. He had been brought up in the Agronomy section; Kent and his men hadn't. It made a difference.

He looked around carefully, then began moving slowly away from them on his hands and knees. If I can only reach the irrigation tube in time, he thought. If—

It had been over fifty years since the Starship I had left Earth. For more than half a century, the great ship had been headed toward the star Procyon and the planets around it—habitable planets, detected by the Lunar telescope. Fifty years, and there was still a hundred years of flight yet to come before the huge ship reached her destination.

Conroy and all the others of his generation had been born on the ship, as had most of their parents before them. The ship, with its vast farms, its great factories, and its clusters of living centers, was all the world they knew.

But Bayliss Kent and his little party of malcontents wanted to change all that. They wanted to go back to Earth.

Suddenly, something crackled under Conroy's knee, and he froze. A dry leaf—nothing more. But had the others heard it?

He couldn't be sure. The searchers were making quite a bit of noise themselves, and perhaps they might have thought it was one of their own group who had made the sound. He decided to risk it, and moved on.

Just ahead of him was the irrigation tube. Again Conroy called on his special knowledge of the Agronomy section. This particular acreage of corn was in the harvest season—almost ready to cut. There wouldn't be any water in the irrigation tubes now.

The tube was a little over three feet across and dropped down into the sub-levels of the ship, where the water-purifiers were. Conroy peered into the tube's depths for a moment, then lifted up the hinged cover, lowered himself into the tube, and braced his feet against one side and his shoulders against the other.

Closing the cover, then, in total blackness, he began to lower himself down the tube. Hands, shoulders, feet; hands, shoulders, feet. Over and over again, as mountain climbers work their way up and down crevasses.

After several minutes, he was startled by a sudden glow of light from above. He glanced up. The opening of the tube was nearly a hundred feet overhead now. He wondered if they would be able to pick him out in the darkness, this far down the shaft.

"Can you see him?" called a voice that echoed through the steel tube. Conroy could see a head silhouetted against the light.

"It goes straight down, and there's no ladder," came the reply. It was Bayliss Kent's voice. "I don't see him down there."

"What kind of tube is this?" the first voice asked. Hal Lester, Kent's chief henchman.

"Irrigation, I think."

"Well, if he has managed to get down it, he's gotten clean away. Bayliss, I told you we shouldn't have let Conroy know our plans."

"Never mind that now!" Kent snapped coldly. "Search the cornfield! He must be here somewhere—and we've got to find him before the local agronomist comes by on his inspection rounds."

There was the sound of the door being lowered, and darkness came again. Peter Conroy heaved a sigh of relief and continued working his way down the tube.

He knew these tubes well. His father was an Agronomist, and, until Peter had taken up navigation, he had helped his father on the farmlands. The ship was like a sealed world, a hollow metal planet five miles in diameter that was carrying its crew through space on the generations-long voyage to Procyon.

Or would the starship ever get to Procyon? Was Bayliss Kent going to succeed in his plan to force the Commander to reverse the ship and return to Earth?

Not if they depended on Peter Conroy to navigate for them, they wouldn't!

Conroy, working his way down the tube, suddenly felt emptiness as he lowered one foot. He had come to the end of the vertical tube. Twisting himself upright, he dropped the remaining six feet into the huge arterial tube that ran horizontally into this sector of the ship. The escape hatch shouldn't be too far from here. The pipes needed cleaning after the irrigation period was over and the tubes had entrance ports for the purpose. Conroy strode down the tube in total darkness, keeping one hand against the side. He opened the hatch and found himself in one of the pumping rooms.

"Halt right there!" a voice said. "You're under arrest!"

It was one of the pumping room guards, levelling a snub-nosed stun gun at him. "Who are you? You know it's illegal to be in the irrigation tubes without authorization."

"I know," said Conroy. He knew he had no time to make explanations. He had to get to the Ship's Commander.

He stepped forward too quickly for the astonished guard to react. His fist ploughed into the man's chin, and his other arm deflected the snout of the stun gun just enough to send the neutrino stream over his left shoulder. The gun clattered to the floor.

The guard turned, aimed a wild swing. Conroy walked inside the other man's guard and dropped him with a short punch to the stomach. Whirling, he grabbed the stun gun and gave the man a brief, numbing blast.

Opening the entrance to the tube, he dumped the unconscious guard in, saluted the disappearing man with grim irony, and slammed the door closed, jamming the lock. It would be quite some time before the guard found his way out of the tubes.

He put the stun gun in his belt and pulled his tunic down over it. Then he headed for the levitator shaft that would take him up to Officer's Territory.

It was not easy for a young officer to get to see the Captain; the old man held many lives in his hands, and he was busy most of the time. But Peter Conroy didn't dare trust his message to one of the underlings; he had no way of knowing how many of them were already sympathizers with Bayliss Kent. Undoubtedly, many of the younger officers were with him.

Kent's idea was simple. Why should the younger generation spend their entire lives cooped up on the Starship I, he asked? If the ship were turned around now and full power were applied, they could make it back to Earth in a little over ten years. That, of course, would use up all the fuel that would normally be used in the next hundred years—but what would that matter, if they were back on Earth?

And Bayliss Kent had also pointed out that there was no possible danger of a counter-revolution. Once the ship started back, it would have burned so much fuel that it could only continue on to Earth—it couldn't try for Procyon again.

To many of the younger men, it seemed like a good idea.

But they needed a navigator. The logical one, they had thought, was Peter Conroy. But Conroy, shocked at the idea of mutiny against the Captain, had made the mistake of telling Bayliss Kent to his face that he would have nothing to do with the plot.

They had been in a Shopping Center at the time. Kent had simply drawn his gun and marched Conroy to the Agricultural Section. The idea had been to kill him and bury him in the field. The body wouldn't be found for at least a year, possibly never.

Conroy had barely managed to escape with his life.

And now, he had to get word to the Captain before Bayliss Kent did anything desperate.

He walked down the long corridor toward the Captain's Quarters. There were officers bustling around the corridor, moving from one office to another; most of them were administrative officers, doing their job of governing the people of the ship.

The guard at the door of the Administration Office saluted him and said nothing as he went inside. He walked over to the appointment desk.

"I'd like to see the Executive Officer, please," he said.

He had to see the Exec to get permission to speak with the Captain. He expected to have to wait quite a while even for the Exec, and so he was quite surprised when the pretty blonde sergeant told him to go right in.

"He's in conference," she said, "but he wants you there."

"Thanks," Conroy said, puzzled.

He walked into the Exec's mahogany-panelled office—and found himself staring squarely down the muzzle of Bayliss Kent's pistol.

"Well, well—the prodigal returns." Kent's lean face wore an ugly sneer. "Get your hands above your head, Conroy."

"How did you get here?" Conroy demanded. "And where's the Exec?"

Kent shrugged. "How did we get in? Very simple. I told the Exec I had important news of a mutiny—which I did. The Exec has been—ah—disposed of."

"And I suppose you're going to kill me now?"

"No," Kent said surprisingly. "Things have changed." His eyes narrowed. "One of my men got a little over-enthusiastic, I'm afraid. The Chief Navigator has been killed."

"And you think I'll navigate for you?"

"You'll have to," Kent said in blunt tones. "You see, we're going to turn the ship around. If you don't navigate, the ship will never get back to Earth." He smiled coldly. "Surely, an idealist like yourself would never allow a shipload of innocent people to drift through space for all eternity."

Conroy felt a chill at Bayliss Kent's words. He knew that Kent was right. He had to do it—unless he could stop Bayliss Kent first. And it didn't look as though he had much chance. There were five men against him.

"What are you going to do?" Conroy asked. "Lock up the main officers?"

"I'm afraid we'll have to kill them," Kent said flatly.

"But why? Once you turn the ship around and start back, there won't be anything they can do."

"Not to the ship," said Kent. "But they could have us killed anyway. And, after all, the main reason for this mutiny is to make sure that we see Earth before we die."

Kent signalled to two of the men. "Take him back and lock him up in the cell. Watch him while the rest of us finish the job."

He gestured behind himself. The Executive Officer was the law-enforcement officer aboard the ship, and behind his office the detention cells were located.

Conroy felt the two men grab his arms and push him through the open door into a cell.

One of his captors pressed a vibro-key against the locking plate, and the magnetic field came on, clamping the door tight against the frame.

"That ought to hold you," the man said hoarsely, and with his companion returned to the Exec Officer's cabin, leaving Conroy alone.

Conroy sat down heavily on the metal bench along the side of the cell and strained his ears for voices from without. He couldn't hear anything. Evidently Kent and his henchmen had set about their mutinous work.

Conroy scowled. He knew what he was up against personally. They would lock him in the Navigation Observatory for the next ten years, keeping him prisoner while he guided the Starship I back to Earth. In all probability, they would shoot him as soon as he was no longer needed as navigator. It would be, he thought, better to die now. But if he did, there would be no one to navigate the ship—and once the fuel gave out, all people aboard would be forever lost.

Of course, it might be possible to figure a way out in ten years. And even if he didn't, he could leave a message in the navigation log for the officials on Earth to decode. But what good would that do, really? If this expedition failed to reach Procyon, a century of human effort would have been wasted.

Conroy decided he'd have to take his chances now. This was the time to act.

He had one asset: the stun gun. They hadn't bothered to search him, and so he had been left with one weapon, of sorts.

The trouble with a stun gun was that it wasn't deadly. He couldn't simply point it at the guard who had the vibro-key and force his way out. All the guard had to do was to refuse to hand the key over. If Conroy stunned him, he wouldn't be any better off than before. He had to think up some alternate plan.

He doubled over, clutching at his stomach—and still grasping the stun gun in his hand. "Ohhh!"

The guard came over to the door of the cell and peered downward suspiciously. "Don't pull any phony sickness with me, Conroy. I'm not going to come into that cell."

Conroy hadn't expected him to. Only a fool would fall for that ancient gambit—but it served Conroy's purpose to have the guard come close to the door.

With one smooth motion, he pulled out the stunner and fired. The guard looked astonished for a bare instant, then dropped senseless.

Quickly, Conroy ran over, put his arm through the bars, took the key, and applied it to the plate. As the field shut off, he heard a voice.

"Hey! What's going on down there?"

Conroy swore silently. It was the other guard!

He straightened up and surreptitiously pocketed the vibro-key, remaining inside the cell with the door open. He waited for the other guard to approach.

"What happened here?" the guard said, running up with a drawn pistol.

"I didn't do anything," Conroy said. "He just keeled over like that." He shrugged innocently.

The second guard frowned and reholstered his pistol in order to bend over his fallen companion. That was just what Conroy had been waiting for. He jerked up the stun gun and fired.

And nothing happened.

The gun's charge was gone!

"Hey!" At the sound of the click, the second guard snapped his head up and went for his gun.

Conroy hurled the useless stunner straight between the bars of the cell. The butt of the gun struck the guard between the eyes, and he dropped to the floor on top of his companion.

Acting quickly, Conroy threw open the door of the cell and scooped up the ray pistols of the two guards. Then, shoving them both within the cell, he locked them in with the vibro-key. He smiled. So far, so good. He turned to run back toward the Exec's office.

There was no one there. He eased the outer door, gun in hand. Everything looked normal enough, in the outer office. Hiding the ray pistol in his tunic, he strode boldly out.

The blonde at the desk said: "Why, yes, sir. The Captain and the other main officers left here several minutes ago."

"Was anyone with them?"

"Ah—yes, there was," she said. "Lieutenant Bayliss Kent and some other junior officers."

Conroy nodded. That was as expected. "Did they say where they were going?"

"There seems to be something wrong with the atomic furnace at Number Nineteen Thrust Tube. I heard them say they were going down to check it."

"Thanks."

He had no time to call anyone, no time to explain. He had to move fast if he was going to save the Captain and the others. Somehow, the thought of Kent's murdering the Captain was inconceivable. The old man had been on the ship half a century; he was the last survivor of the original crew, and was as much a part of the great starship by now as the drive engines and the navigator's turret.

Conroy could see the whole fiendish plan. Bayliss Kent had forced the ship's officers down to Number Nineteen Thrust Tube, one of the huge projectors that drove the mighty ship through space. All Kent needed to do would be to kill them with ray pistols and claim that something had gone wrong with the atomic furnace. It would be impossible to disprove.

And then Bayliss Kent would be Captain.

Unless Peter Conroy could stop him.

He raced through the gleaming, twisting corridors of the giant ship, running frantically down and down toward Number Nineteen Thrust Tube. He pushed his way past surprised crew members, circled into the lower levels of the ship, made his way through the network of passageways that led to the blast tubes. Finally he reached Power Section.

The guard at the door was one of Kent's men. He looked up, startled, as Conroy appeared.

"Where are you—?"

Before the man could do anything, Conroy cut him down with a shot from his ray pistol. This was war—civil war—and there was no time for subtlety.

He stepped over the body and flung open the door of Number Nineteen.

He took in the situation in a glance. The Staff Officers, including the Captain, were lined up against one wall, and four of Kent's men were aiming their ray pistols.

Kent was saying: "Ready—aim—"

But the last word never was uttered. Kent was beginning to form it when Conroy got both his guns out and started to fire.

His first bolt smashed down the nearest executioner; a fraction of a second later, the man next to him dropped. Their attention deflected from the victims to Conroy, the other two and Kent whirled to face the newcomer.

Two more bolts blasted out—the first dropping one of the remaining gunmen, the second singeing Bayliss Kent's shoulder. Conroy hit the floor as a buzzing blaster bolt from the third man ripped over his head and splattered into the wall behind him.

Firing from the floor, he put a bolt through Kent's remaining man—a moment after the gunman had raked the officers with his blaster. Some of them were dead; Conroy had no way of telling which ones. He had a more urgent problem.

Bayliss Kent was coming toward him—and the blaster needed recharging.

There was no time to perform the operation. He hurled the dead pistol at Kent's midsection and plunged after it. Kent met him head on. Even with a numbed shoulder, Bayliss Kent was a formidable antagonist. His big fists pounded into Conroy's stomach, driving him back against the blaster-seared wall. He felt heat radiating through his uniform, then pushed away and stepped forward.

His fist travelled in a short arc and crashed into the already-singed shoulder of the other man. Kent roared in pain, and Conroy mercilessly drove a fist into his stomach, sending him spinning dizzily backward. Conroy followed with a final punch and Kent cracked heavily against the metal wall of the unit and slumped to the floor.

Conroy looked around. The mopping-up operation was complete.

As for the ship's officers, the wide-beam blaster had done its job well. Three of the men were shapeless corpses leaning against the wall, and two of the others were badly wounded. And one of these two was the age-bent figure of the Captain. The old man was still alive. Conroy knelt at his side.

"Captain! Captain Conroy!" Peter shouted.

The old man opened his eyes. "Hello, son. That was a beautiful job you did."

"But I was too late!"

The old captain shook his head. "No. I didn't have much time, anyway. I'm a very old man now." He raised himself on one elbow. "Who else is left?"

Conroy glanced around. "Supply Officer, Power Officer, Maintenance Officer," he said. "And you."

"I don't count," the dying captain said. "You'll be able to scratch me from the list soon." He frowned. "No Exec? No Navigator?" The Captain leaned back and closed his weary eyes for a moment, then opened them again. "It looks like it's up to you," he said. His veined, aged hand went up to his collar and removed the golden starcluster of his rank. He handed it to Peter.

"Carry on—Captain Conroy."

He closed his eyes in death. Conroy stood up slowly, tears in his eyes, the golden cluster gripped tightly in his hand. The ship would continue on to Procyon now.

"I will, Grandfather. I will."