Read Ebook: Counterweight by Sohl Jerry

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Ebook has 137 lines and 7951 words, and 3 pages

COUNTERWEIGHT

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."

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

"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.

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 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.

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.

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."

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