Orphans of the Sky (11 page)

      
Ertz looked him in the eyes. "Don't give me that guff, Narby. You know and I know who puts words in the Captain's mouth—we've planned it often enough. Even if you did think I was dead, it seems to me you could wait longer than the time between two sleeps to pry through my desk."

      
"Now really, old man—when a person is missing after a mutie raid, it's a common-sense assumption that he has made the Trip."

      
"O.K., O.K., skip it. Why didn't Mort Tyler take over in the meantime?"

      
"He's in the Converter."

      
"Killed, eh? But who ordered him put in the Converter? That much mass will make a terrific peak in the load."

      
"I did, in place of Hugh Hoyland. Their masses were nearly the same, and your requisition for the mass of Hugh Hoyland was unfilled."

      
"Nearly the same isn't good enough in handling the Converter. I'll have to check on it." He started to rise.

      
"Don't get excited," said Narby. "I'm not an utter fool in engineering, you know. I ordered his mass to be trimmed according to the same schedule you had laid out for Hoyland."

      
"Well-all right. That will do for now. But I will have to check on it. We can't afford to waste mass."
 

      
"Speaking of waste mass," Narby said sweetly, "I

found a couple of Unnecessary books in your desk."
 

      
"Well?"

      
"They are classed as mass available for power, you know."

      
"So? And who is the custodian of mass allocated for power?"

      
"You are certainly. But what were they doing in your desk?"

      
"Let me point out to you, my dear Captain's Best Boy, that it lies entirely within my discretion where I choose to store mass available for power."

      
"Hm-m-m—I suppose you are right. By the way, if you don't need them for the power schedule at once, would you mind letting me read them?"

      
"Not at all, if you want to be reasonable about it. I'll check them out to you—have to do that; they've already been centrifuged. Just be discreet about it."

      
"Thanks. Some of those ancients had vivid imaginations. Utterly crazy, of course, but amusing for relaxation."

      
Ertz got out the two volumes and prepared a receipt for Narby to sign. He did this absent-mindedly, being preoccupied with the problem of how and when to tackle Narby. Phineas Narby he knew to be a key man in the task he and his blood brothers had undertaken—perhaps
the
key man. If he could be won over—

      
"Fin," he said, when Narby had signed, "I wonder if we followed the wisest policy in Hoyland's case."

      
Narby looked surprised, but said nothing.

      
"Oh, I don't mean that I put any stock in his story," Ertz added hastily, "but I feel that we missed an opportunity. We should have kidded him along. He was a contact with the muties. The worst handicap we work under in trying to bring mutie country under the rule of the Council is the fact that we know very little about them. We don't know how many of them there are, nor how strong they are, or how well organized. Besides that, we will have to carry the fight to them and that's a big disadvantage. We don't really know our way around the upper decks. If we had played along with him and pretended to believe his story, we might have learned a lot of things."

      
"But we couldn't rely on what he told us," Narby pointed out.

      
"We didn't need to. He offered us an opportunity to go all the way to no-weight, and look around."

      
Narby looked astounded. "You surely aren't serious? A member of the Crew that trusted the muties' promise not to harm him wouldn't get up to no-weight; he'd make the Trip—fast!"

      
"I'm not so certain about that," Ertz objected. "Hoyland believed his own story—I'm sure of that. And—"

      
"What! All that utter nonsense about the Ship being capable of
moving.
The solid Ship." He pounded the bulkhead. "No one could believe that."

      
"But I tell you he did. He's a religious fanatic—granted. But he saw something up there, and that was how he interpreted it. We could have gone up to see whatever it was he was raving about and used the chance to scout out the muties."

      
"Utterly foolhardy!"

      
"I don't think so. He must have a great deal of influence among the muties; look at the trouble they went to just to rescue him. If he says he can give us safe passage up to no-weight, I think he can."

      
"Why this sudden change of opinion?"

      
"It was the raid that changed my mind. If anyone had told me that a gang of muties would come clear down to high-weight and risk their necks to save the life of one man I would not have believed him. But it happened. I'm forced to revise my opinions. Quite aside from his story, it's evident that the muties will fight for him and probably take orders from him. If that is true, it would be worth while to pander to his religious convictions if it would enable us to gain control over the muties without having to fight for it."

      
Narby shrugged it off. "Theoretically you may have something there. But why waste time over might-have-beens? If there was such an opportunity, we missed it."

      
"Maybe not. Hoyland is still alive and back with the muties. If I could figure out some way of getting a message to him, we might still be able to arrange it.

      
"But how could you?"

      
"I don't know exactly. I might take a couple of the boys and do some climbing. If we could capture a mutie without killing him, it might work out."

      
"A slim chance."
 

      
"I'm willing to risk it."
 

      
Narby turned the matter over in his mind. The whole plan seemed to him to be filled with long chances and foolish assumptions. Nevertheless if Ertz were willing to take the risk and it
did
work, Narby's dearest ambition would be much nearer realization. Subduing the muties by force would be a long and bloody job, perhaps an impossible job. He was clearly aware of its difficulty.

      
If it did not work, nothing was lost—but Ertz. Now that he thought it over, Ertz would be no loss at this point in the game. Hm-m-m.

      
"Go ahead," he said. "You are a brave man, but it's a worth-while venture."

      
"O.K.," Ertz agreed. "Good eating."

      
Narby took the hint. "Good eating," he answered, gathered up the books, and left. It did not occur to him until later that Ertz had not told him where he had been for so long.

      
And Ertz was aware that Narby had not been entirely frank with him, but, knowing Narby, he was not surprised. He was pleased enough that his extemporaneous groundwork for future action had been so well received. It never did occur to him that it might have been simpler and more effective to tell the truth.

      
Ertz busied himself for a short time in making a routine inspection of the Converter and appointed an acting Senior Watch Officer. Satisfied that his department could then take care of itself during a further absence, he sent for his chief porter and told the servant to fetch Alan Mahoney from his village. He had considered ordering his fitter and meeting Mahoney halfway, but he decided against it as being too conspicuous.

      
Alan greeted him with enthusiasm. To him, still an unmarried cadet and working for more provident men when his contemporaries were all heads of families and solid men of property, the knowledge that he was blood brother to a senior scientist was quite the most important thing that had ever happened to him, even overshadowing his recent adventures, the meaning of which he was hardly qualified to understand anyway.

      
Ertz cut him short, and hastily closed the door to the outer engineering office. "Walls have ears," he said quietly, "and certainly clerks have ears, and tongues as well. Do you want us both to make the Trip?"

      
"Aw, gosh, Bill ... I didn't mean to—"

      
"Never mind. I'll meet you on the same stair trunk we came down by, ten decks above this one. Can you count?"

      
"Sure, I can count that much. I can count twice that much. One and one makes two, and one more makes three, and one more makes four, and one makes five, and—"

      
"That's enough. I see you can. But I'm relying more on your loyalty and your knife than I am on your mathematical ability. Meet me there as soon as you can. Go up somewhere where you won't be noticed."

      
Forty-one was still on watch when they reached the rendezvous. Ertz called him by name while standing out of range of slingshot or thrown knife, a reasonable precaution in dealing with a creature who had grown to man size by being fast with his weapons. Once identification had been established, he directed the guard to find Hugh Hoyland. He and Alan sat down to wait.

      
Forty-one failed to find Hugh Hoyland at Joe-Jim's apartment. Nor was Joe-Jim there. He did find Bobo, but the pinhead was not very helpful. Hugh, Bobo told him, had gone up where-everybody-flies. That meant very little to Forty-one; he had been up to no-weight only once in his life. Since the level of weightlessness extended the entire length of the Ship, being in fact the last concentric cylinder around the Ship's axis—not that Forty-one could conceive it in those terms—the information that Hugh had headed for no-weight was not helpful.

      
Forty-one was puzzled. An order from Joe-Jim was not to be ignored and he had got it through his not overbright mind that an order from Ertz carried the same weight. He woke Bobo up again. "Where is the Two Wise Heads?"

      
"Gone to see knifemaker." Bobo closed his eyes again.

      
That was better. Forty-one knew where the knife-maker lived. Every mutie had dealings with her; she was the indispensable artisan and tradesman of mutie country. Her person was necessarily taboo; her workshop and the adjacent neighborhood were neutral territory for all. He scurried up two decks and hurried thence.

      
A door reading THERMODYNAMIC LABORATORY- KEEP OUT was standing open. Forty-one could not read; neither the name nor the injunction mattered to him. But he could hear voices, one of which he identified as coming from the twins, the other from the knife-maker. He walked in. "Boss—" he began.

      
"Shut up," said Joe. Jim did not look around but continued his argument with the Mother of Blades. "You'll make knives," he said, "and none of your lip."
 

      
She faced him, her four calloused hands set firmly on her broad hips. Her eyes were reddened from staring into the furnace in which she heated her metal; sweat ran down her wrinkled face into the sparse gray mustache which disfigured her upper lip, and dripped onto her bare chest. "Sure I make knives," she snapped. "Honest knives. Not pig-stickers like you want me to make. Knives as long as your arm
—ptui!"
She spat at the cherry-red lip of the furnace.
 

      
"Listen, you old Crew bait," Jim replied evenly, "you'll make knives the way I tell you to, or I'll toast your feet in your own furnace. Hear me?"
 

      
Forty-one was struck speechless. No one
ever
talked back to the Mother of Blades; the Boss was certainly a man of power!
 

      
The knife-maker suddenly cracked. "But that's not the
right
way to make knives," she complained shrilly. "They wouldn't balance right. I'll show you—" She snatched up two braces of knives from her workbench and let fly at a cross-shaped target across the room—not in succession, but all four arms swinging together, all four blades in the air at once. They
spunged
into the target, a blade at the extreme end of each arm of the cross. "See? You couldn't do that with a long knife. It would fight with itself and not go straight."

      
"Boss—" Forty-one tried again. Joe-Jim handed him a mouthful of knuckles without looking around. "I see your point," Jim told the knife-maker, "but we don't want these knives for throwing. We want them for cutting and stabbing up close. Get on with it—I want to see the first one before you eat again."

      
The old woman bit her lip. "Do I get my usuals?" she said sharply.

      
"Certainly you get your usuals," he assured her. "A tithe on every kill till the blades are paid for—and good eating all the time you work."

      
She shrugged her misshapen shoulders. "O.K." She turned, tonged up a long flat fragment of steel with her two left hands and clanged the stock into the furnace. Joe-Jim turned to Forty-one.

      
'What is it?" Joe asked.
 

      
"Boss, Ertz sent me to get Hugh."
 

      
"Well, why didn't you do it?"
 

      
"I don't find him. Bobo says he's gone up to no-weight."
 

      
"Well, go get him. No, that won't do—you wouldn't know where to find him. I'll have to do it myself. Go back to Ertz and tell him to wait."