Dead Weight E-Book

E. C. Tubb

• Herausgeber: Wildside Press
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 270

Beschreibung

Dead Weight

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

DEAD WEIGHT, by E.C. TUBB

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

DEAD WEIGHT,by E.C. TUBB

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Copyright © 1957, 2006 by E. C. Tubb.

Reprinted with the permission of the Cosmos Literary Agency.

Published by Wildside Press LLC.

wildsidepress.com | bcmystery.com

CHAPTER 1

Trouble at Nations Square

THE trouble started in Nations Square. A corner-prophet had climbed the plinth of Blue’s statue and was haranguing a small crowd. He was a gaunt man with sunken eyes and a straggling beard. He wore a tattered suit that had once been mauve but was now a dark brown with dirt and wear. Sandals covered his bare feet, and his speech was interrupted by bouts of violent coughing. He was about sixty years old and should have had better sense than to stand thinly clad in the open at the beginning of winter. He was also wasting his time.

Sam Falkirk eased his weight from one foot to the other as he stood at the edge of the crowd and listened to the thin, strident voice of the corner-prophet. It was the usual tirade; a plea for the Blues to be allowed civil rights and representation, an attack against society for not permitting them to offer their labour in the open market, and a complaint that, though legally dead, they still had to pay taxes on everything they bought.

Sam had heard it all before and only stayed because he had ten minutes to kill before returning to duty. Behind the statue the soaring bulk of the World Council buildings lifted towards the sky, framing the end of the square and facing on the Hudson. Within the buildings air-conditioning kept the offices at a comfortable temperature, but Sam liked to feel the incipient bite of winter in the fresh air.

Also the speaker amused him. Sam could guess at his exact progress. He would rant and rave, shake his fist and make tremendous demands while all the time the crowd would watch with apathetic contempt. Some might heckle him a little, others might shout personal abuse, but mostly the corner-prophets were tolerated as sort of modern-age clowns. Sam had overlooked the teenagers.

They had joined the crowd so quietly that he wasn’t aware of their presence until they started business. There were about twenty of them, all males, all wearing tight black jerseys, tight black pants, thick-soled shoes and long-peaked caps pulled over their eyes. The jerseys were marked front and back with a white, grinning skull. Each of them carried a long walking stick. Sam had seen similar sticks before. They were lead-loaded and could snap a shin or crush a skull as if the bone were made of eggshell.

Sam was no coward, but he knew his limitations. The crowd would be no help; they wouldn’t want to get hurt. The corner-prophet, the obvious target for the young hooligans, was surrounded. At best he could expect a beating; at worst he could be killed or so crippled that life would be a torment. And Sam, if he tried anything on his own, would receive the same treatment. Gently he eased himself from the crowd.

The nearest videophone booth was occupied. Sam jerked open the door, pulled out a protesting woman, and shut himself in the booth. He pressed the emergency button and identified himself as the screen flashed to life.

“Captain Sam Falkirk of the World Police. Emergency call to local police. Trouble due at Nations Square. Blue’s statue. Teenagers, about twenty of them, on a Blue-hunt.”

“I’ll handle it.” The screen went blank as the operator cut the connection.

Outside the booth the woman was still fuming with outraged dignity. Sam hesitated, about to apologize, then changed his mind as he saw what was happening around the statue. The teenagers had moved in, swinging their sticks against legs and heads to clear a path to where the corner-prophet huddled in helpless terror. Sam reached the plinth just too late. A dozen of the toughs laughed and joked as they poked and prodded at the prophet writhing and screaming on the ground. Sam dodged a stick swinging at his skull, snatched at it and, at the same time, kicked its owner in the stomach. The stick in his hands, he jumped forward to straddle the prostrate man, felt something hit his shoulder and just managed to parry a vicious thrust at his eyes.

The next few seconds were a blur of motion as he lashed desperately at the ring of hooligans. Their clothing was padded and Sam, a grown man, couldn’t bring himself to hit full-strength at the youngsters. They had no such compunction. Sam would have been beaten to a pulp but for the arrival of the police.

They came whining up on their crash bikes, over a dozen of them, and at the sound of their approach the teenagers melted away, running lightly for the substrips where they would be safe.

“You hurt?” A burly sergeant, recognising Sam by his uniform, halted by his side.

“No.” Sam examined himself to make sure. “No, I’m all right. I wouldn’t have been though if you hadn’t arrived so soon.” He looked to where two officers stooped over the prophet. “How is he?”

“He’ll live.” One of the men straightened. “Needs hospitalization, though.”

“Send for the ambulance.” The sergeant returned his attention to Sam. “Did you recognize any of them?”

“The teenagers?” Sam shook his head. “Not personally. They all wore skull-markings though; that should help.”

“It won’t.” The sergeant was pessimistic. “I know that bunch; they’ll cover each other up no matter what.” He shrugged. “Well, it’s just another of those things. Thanks, anyway, captain. No need for you to hang around if you’re busy.”

It was, as the sergeant had said, just another of those things. There was no surprise or horror at the thought of a gang of young hooligans beating a man almost to death for the sheer fun of it. No explanation, either, though the psychologists had tried. They said the Blue-baiting was due to a need for excitement, a desire on the part of the youngsters to assert themselves or a breaking through of the primitive. For private consumption they had a different reason. They said that it was due to a conditioned hatred of all Blues and anything appertaining to them. It was, they said, a natural revolt of youth against age.

Which didn’t really account for the teenagers having chosen the corner-prophet as a victim, though, with his white hair and beard and unhealthy pallor he could have passed for a Blue. None of them, apparently, had bothered to check for the star he should have had tattooed on the back of his left hand.

* * * *

A man was waiting for Sam as he entered the vestibule. He was a plump man, wearing a suit of lime green edged with white piping. His face was round and smooth, but his hair was touched with grey and the skin beneath his eyes was soft and flaccid. He carried a brief case in one hand. He stepped forward with an ingratiating smile.

“Captain Falkirk?”

“Yes?”

“I’d like to speak with you for a moment if I may.” He produced a card. “Frank Perbright, Acme Insurance.”

“Not interested.” Sam brushed past the man and headed for the elevators. Perbright, not to be dissuaded, scurried at his side.

“Please, captain, this is important.” He looked at the humming activity all around them. “If we could go somewhere quiet? Your office, perhaps?”

“Is this official business?” Sam stared at the plump man. “If it is, you’d better come up to my office. If it isn’t, then we can speak down here. Well?”

“It isn’t official business,” admitted Perbright. He didn’t sound happy about it. “But it is important.”

“To whom?” Sam felt that he could guess the answer, but he didn’t feel like arguing. He led the way to a lecture room, peeped inside and gestured to Perbright. The room was occupied by a visiting class of schoolchildren and the lecturer was telling them about the greatest discovery of all time. He was a good speaker, his words clear and distinct, and his command of the students was absolute. He was a good instructor. He was a hundred and twenty years old.

“Doctor Edward Henry Clarence Blue discovered his serum ninety-five years ago now, back in 2016. The serum is a combination of radioactive isotopes, which in some way, wash the body free of age-poisons and arrest the advance of old age. It does more than that. It partially restores youth, in that it allows the body to rebuild itself without hindrance from those poisons. An old man will grow more youthful. His arteries will regain their elasticity, his joints lose their accumulations of uric deposits and his bones become less brittle. And, for some reason, he will also be proof against disease. He will, in effect, be immortal.”

Sam edged his way into the room as the instructor paused, Perbright following him. They sat down at the back of the lecture room. The instructor glanced towards them, then resumed his discourse.

“Just why that should be so no one quite knows. No one knows why, by some freak action of the serum, all melanin is bleached from the body so that Blues, as those who take the treatment are popularly called, are always albinos.” The instructor lifted his left hand and showed the star tattooed on the back, above the fingers. “The second identifying mark is this star.” He didn’t, Sam noticed, explain the purpose of the star. Many Blues had tried to disguise themselves with make-up and dye and so take and hold jobs normally reserved for non-Blues. The compulsory tattoo was a way of preventing such deception. He turned as Perbright called to him.

“Captain Falkirk.”

“What is it?”

“Just this,” the plump man drew coloured folders from his briefcase, “captain, I’d like to explain the details of our new policy. I feel that it is one of the most beneficial ever offered to the public, and is of special interest to those in your position…”

“I thought you said that this was important,” interrupted Sam irritably. “I’m already insured.”

“But only against sickness and the cost of treatment when it becomes necessary,” said Perbright quickly. “But what of the future, captain? Have you ever thought of that?” He riffled the folders. “Now, for just one fifth of your income during the term of your natural life we guarantee to provide you with Restezee facilities after you have taken the treatment.”

“Not interested,” said Sam curtly.

“But, captain!” Perbright sounded desperate. “You just can’t afford not to be interested. “Let me point out that…”

Sam sat back, relaxing and letting the plump man’s words pass over his head. He wasn’t interested in insurance, though, apparently, the insurance companies were in him. They were probably still trying to recoup the money they had lost in paying out annuities and pensions long after they had expected. When Blue had announced his discovery, they had been the ones to immediately suffer. Life policies and endowments had stopped, and everyone had turned to annuities. The tardy legislation that had legally killed all Blues had been engineered by the insurance companies as a matter of sheer self defence. Something Perbright said attracted his attention.

“Now, wait a minute,” said Sam. “This doesn’t make sense. You say that for one fifth of my income I’ll be taken care of for long as I want. Right?”

“That’s perfectly right, captain.”

“Well, how can you do it? Even if I manage to last another thirty years that still only enables you to keep me for six at my accustomed standard. What’s the catch?”

“No catch, captain.” Perbright became more persuasive. “Naturally, you will be expected to help out by doing some work, but that’s to be expected.”

“Is it?” Sam was thoughtful. “I think that I’d better have the department look into this. If your company is thinking of starting a Blue sweat-shop, it had better be investigated.”

“It’s legal,” protested Perbright.

“And what can you lose? The way things are you’ve got no future. You’re unmarried, without children and all on your own.”

“That’s enough.” Sam was annoyed. “I don’t like being investigated by cheapskate operators. You’d better go before I have you thrown out.”

“I’m going.” Perbright grabbed at his briefcase. “But think it over, captain. If you want me you can find me in the book.”

Alone, Sam sat and tried to control his anger. He didn’t like being taken for a fool, and Perbright had pulled something too raw to stomach. That part about children, for example.

Sam blinked as he heard his name. The instructor, smiling from where he stood on the dais, beckoned to him.

“Now for a few words from Captain Falkirk of the World Police. I want you to pay great attention to what he has to say. Captain Falkirk.”

Sam rose, feeling a little foolish beneath the steady stare of sixty pairs of eyes. It wouldn’t have been so bad had he been a heroic character, someone over six feet tall, say, with wide shoulders and the profile of a tv star. But he was just an ordinary, quiet-seeming man with brown hair and brown eyes and a sensitive mouth. His figure, thanks to gymnastics, was good, and he had a certain appeal to women. A cheeky-faced tot winked at him as he climbed the dais, and he felt a lot better.

He knew, too, what he was expected to say; he had done this at odd times before. He rested his hands on the table in unconscious imitation of the instructor, leaned a little towards he microphone, and came straight to the point.

“You have heard your instructor tell you something of the past and how is has affected the present. You may be wondering what I have to say to you. The answer is this. I want to remind you that we all live in one world, that we are one people, and that the youth of today is the old person of tomorrow.”

He paused, staring at them, wondering what impression he was making. Probably none; children have short memories.

“Soon you will be teenagers,” he continued. “You may have heard some of the things which teenagers are supposed to do. Some of them actually do such things, but it isn’t funny or clever to do them. It isn’t funny to go on a Blue-bait, it isn’t clever to gang up against a man old enough to be your great-great-great-grandfather, it isn’t amusing to deride old people for being old. Most of you have Blues living at home. You may have heard your parents, at times, talking about them as if they were a nuisance. Some of you may even feel that life would be much easier if they weren’t around. That is the wrong attitude.”

Wrong, but who could blame them? Unless they had special qualifications, Blues were in a bad way. Some were protected by the government, a few scientists and others of value, but the great majority, able to find only casual work, were mostly objects of charity. Work was found for them, when possible, but no Blue could be legally or morally employed while a non-Blue needed work.

For the young had their own lives to live, families to raise and relations to support. Each new generation had the task of helping to support those who had gone before. A man now raised a large family so that, when he took the treatment, the children he had raised could support him. Some did, others didn’t. Some meekly bore the filial yoke, while others cut free from responsibility and started out fresh on their own. No one could blame them; they committed no crime, but unsupported Blues, crippled by their lack of legal rights, became pitiful objects.

It was better for society if the Family bond remained strong. But the young, at times, are thoughtlessly cruel. At all times they are impatient.

“Be kind,” ended Sam. “Be patient. Be understanding. At all times remember that; one day, you, too, will be a Blue. Always think of that when you are with them. What they are, you will be. Treat them as such.”

The instructor dismissed the class then and thanked Sam for his trouble. “Part of my job,” Sam remembered the incident by the statue. “If we can persuade one of those children to refrain from joining in a Blue-bait, then no trouble is too much. If we can instil in them the concept that all Blues are just as human and just as normal as they are, then any amount of trouble is justified. The time to prevent crime is during the formative years. Punishing them later is an admission that our educational techniques are at fault.”

“I agree.” Absently the instructor rubbed the back of his left hand. “If we had full control of the children for the first fifteen years of their lives, we could build a model society.” He shrugged. “The usual lament. We teach them one thing and their parents, by example, teach them another.” He became thoughtful. “You mentioned Blue-baiting. Is it bad?”

“It’s getting worse, and it’s not only confined to teenagers. There have been reports of lynch-mobs at work.” Sam looked grim. “It’s the same principle, though they aren’t composed of teenagers. Many against one and God help the individual.”

“And the individual is always a Blue.” The instructor shuddered. “Horrible! To think that men could do such things!”

“They do them.” Sam glanced at his watch. “I’m late. You’ll pardon me?”

“Of course.” The instructor held out his hand. “And thank you again for your trouble.”

“It was no trouble,” said Sam. “I like kids.” It was true, too. Perhaps not in the mass, but he would have liked a couple of his own. A boy, say, like the one who had winked at him, and a girl like the one with the pigtails and the candy-striped frock.

Outside in the vestibule Sam paused to stare through the doors to where the statue of Blue dominated the square. The late October sunshine shone on the polished granite and a few pigeons fluttered over the sidewalks on their eternal search for crumbs. Everything looked very peaceful.

Sam didn’t know that trouble was heading towards him at twenty-five hundred miles an hour.

CHAPTER 2

Senator Rayburn

TWO years earlier, on the island of Hainan, south of the province of Kwang-Tung, the first soil had been turned for the construction of a big new Chorella plant now completed and ready for operation. It was a World Council project, naturally; no one else had either the money or the inclination to spend billions of dollars in order to provide a source of cheap, nutritious food for the Orient.

Senator Sucamari conducted the opening ceremony, his clipped Cantonese matching his yellow skin and slanted eyes, his face impassive as he pressed the button that started the primary pumps. Senator Rayburn represented the Occident, but where Rayburn concentrated on smiling into the newsfax cameras that transmitted the scene all over the world, the Japanese knew better. Instead, he terminated the ceremony with a short speech emphasizing the dire need of many more such installations, praised various ancestors and managed, without apparent effort or intention, to make the American appear an ill-mannered schoolboy.

Rayburn was glad when it was all over.

* * * *

From Hainan to New York was a four-hour flight in the big stratoliner, soaring high above the atmosphere in an elliptical curve that would terminate in the Hudson. From there to the World Council buildings on Manhattan would take another hour.

Rayburn didn’t like the journey. Air transport was as safe as could be devised, but there was always the element of risk. He stared down through the window by his seat at the earth below, showing a distinct curvature at this height, and tried to rid himself of the thought of what would happen should anything go wrong. Probably nothing but a little discomfort. The pressurized cabin could be detached from the main structure and would parachute down to safety. It was buoyant, fitted with shock absorbers and contained its own radio-sending equipment, together with emergency rations and crash gear. The worst that could happen was that the passengers would have to wait for rescue.

But it was a long, long way down. And the tanks behind the cabin were awash with highly explosive. And perhaps, if anything did happen, the parachutes wouldn’t open, and they would go falling, falling, falling… Rayburn shook is head to rid himself of morbid thoughts and stared about the cabin.

Across the aisle Nagati sat reading, a fat, diplomatic bag resting between his feet. Ahead of his aide, Sucamari, seemingly relaxed, stared at something invisible before him. Rayburn didn’t like the Japanese; he was too calm, too bland, too polite. It was impossible to tell what went on inside that small, round head, behind that emotionless, eternal smile. Sucamari was always smiling, except when, as now, he stared at something other men couldn’t see. His own thoughts Rayburn imagined; sometimes he did the same thing himself. The Japanese suddenly turned, his smile flicking on as he met Rayburn’s stare.

“Nice opening,” said Rayburn. He was never put out by the unexpected.

“It gave joy to many,” said Sucamari. He spoke better English than the American, and his Cantonese had been equal to that of a native. Rumour had it that he spent long hours with a hypno-tutor in order to perfect his linguistic ability. Rayburn didn’t know about that, and he didn’t care. He himself only spoke one language, his own, and left the interpreters to worry about the translations.

“It may have given joy to those on the receiving end,” he said pointedly. “But I’m not so sure about the rest.”

“Is charity, then, a lost virtue?”

“Charity begins at home.”

“Home?” Sucamari’s smile didn’t alter.

“You know what I mean,” snapped Rayburn. “The World Council levies a toll on each country according to its productivity and natural wealth. The Americas pay more than anyone else. We’ve our own troubles, too, you know, and we can’t be expected to keep paying out vast sums for the benefit of backward peoples.”

“Backward?” Sucamari’s smile became a little strained. “May I remind you that the Orient contains cultures which were old before the Americas were discovered? I would not call them backward.”

“That is your opinion.” Rayburn held out his left hand. Despite the insecticides with which the plant-area had been saturated, the flies had been a nuisance. He pointed to the bites. “Is this an example of progress? Disease-carriers allowed to breed unchecked on deliberately exposed filth?” He was referring to the habit of the natives in using natural waste products to fertilize their land instead of washing it down into sewers for scientific processing.

“Old habits die hard,” said Sucamari quietly. “And what else can they do? The soil is poor, worked out, and the supply of phosphates and artificial fertilizers scarce. They merely do as their ancestors did before them.”

“Ancestors!” Rayburn was about to say more when caution dictated silence. Sucamari was an Oriental, educated in the Occident though he might be. Ancestor worship was a part of his culture, and to speak against it would be to attack his religious beliefs. “At least,” he said mildly, “they could try harder to exterminate the pests.”

“They could, but they won’t,” agreed Sucamari. “Most of them are Buddhists and, to them, all life is sacred, even that of the lowliest insects. There have been unpleasant incidents at the sites of the spray-aircraft and others when extermination teams have tried to wipe out unwanted carnivores and other low-life forms.” He shrugged. “Foolish, perhaps, but there it is.”

“Foolish is right,” said Rayburn. “As I understand it the Buddhists believe in reincarnation of the soul into animals and other creatures. Well, now that there is no natural death they don’t have to worry about reincarnation, do they? So why cling to the old beliefs?”

“Your logic is at fault; that, or your understanding of Buddhism.” Sucamari was very patient. “People still die, you know, and infant mortality in the Orient is quite high. Also, no matter how many people are alive now, they cannot be more than all the people who have lived before them. So, to a Buddhist, there are still a number of souls awaiting rebirth in human form.”

“Foolishness,” repeated Rayburn. “Dangerous foolishness at that. With their unsanitary conditions they are begging for trouble in allowing vermin to exist as they do.”

“Perhaps, but what can we do? Religious freedom must be respected or there can be no freedom.”

It was defeat, as it was always defeat, when he argued with the Japanese. Rayburn slumped back into his seat and stared moodily through the window. Words, always words, and yet words had their uses as he well knew. He could whip an audience into a frenzy with carefully chosen phrases which touched off predictable responses but, when it came to the test, what were words? Only a means to gain control of force, the final argument against which words were useless.

And the final argument was coming.

Rayburn remembered the long, patient lines of coolies back in Hainan. The dense woods which had once covered the island had long since been cleared away so as to make room for tiny farms, little patches of dirt from which the natives tried to scratch a living. But while the productivity of the soil was limited, that of the natives was not.

They bred because they had to breed. They mated and produced children so as to gain more labour to work the worn-out soil, then had to repeat the cycle again and again. And everything was against them—their religion, which forbade the killing of the very lice that sucked their blood and, worst of all, the ancestor worship that had suddenly acquired a new meaning.

Ancestors, in the old days, had done little harm. They had stifled progress, true, but they had also maintained a culture. The living had burned paper symbols of money and food so as to provide for them in the afterworld; symbols which had cost but a fraction of the things they represented. But living ancestors could not be fed on paper loaves or live in paper houses. Legal death, in the Orient, was ignored; the elders were too highly respected for that. So families beggared themselves to support their living ancestors on a steadily declining subsistence level.

But for how long would they be content with that?

Rayburn sighed, glanced towards Sucamari, and then looked away. Still that eternal smile, even when engrossed in his thoughts. It was a mask, Rayburn knew, and a scrap of poorly-remembered prose came to him learned long ago. “I can smile, and murder as Ismile”—Shakespeare? Possibly the old playwright had known more about human nature than most people gave him credit for, and it was the sort of thing he would have written. Gerald would know if he took the trouble to ask, but his aide was asleep, lying back with closed eyes, his parted lips making him look more of a fool than when awake.

He himself couldn’t act as Sucamari did. Not for him the bland, emotionless smile, the iron mask of a facial grimace. Rayburn settled deeper in his seat toying with the scrap of prose, turning and twisting it until it fitted: “I can make others smile, and murder themas they smile.” That was himself, the loud-mouthed extrovert who blustered and stormed and was transparently obvious as to arouse no question as to his motives. A self-seeker, a power-mad, would-be dictator, a local farm boy with mud on his boots and dirt in his mouth. He had been called all that and more during his political rise to the Senate of the World Council. He was still called it and, in part, it was true. But only in part.

The entire truth was known only to himself.

A stewardess came down the aisle, a tall, well-formed negress, trim in her uniform of green and grey. She halted by his side. “Coffee, sir?”

“I think so.” Rayburn stared through the window. It may have been imagination, but it seemed to him that the earth had lost some of its curvature; He said so, and the stewardess nodded.

“We are on the descent,” she explained. “We should land in about an hour. Black or white, sir?”

“White, and with plenty of sugar.” Idly he watched the woman take the rest of the orders, pleased that she had asked him first. It was a little thing, but powers built on little things. He called out as she approached his aide. “He’ll take the same as myself.”

“Yes, sir.” She disappeared into the galley.

Gerald Waterman yawned and opened his eyes. He hadn’t been asleep, despite appearances; he had long since learned that a man asleep is a man ignored. He liked being ignored. He also liked watching people when they thought they were unobserved. He yawned again and sat upright as the stewardess returned with the coffee.

“Thank you, miss.” He smiled as he accepted his cup. “When do we land?”

“In about an hour, sir.”

“Thank you.” Gerald knew quite well when they would land he had asked only to impress on the others the fact that he had been asleep when Rayburn had asked the same thing. He sipped his coffee and stared out of the window at his side. “Did any of you see it?”

“See what?” Rayburn was abrupt.

“Murphy’s rocket. I’ve heard that sometimes, at this height you can see it if you look at just the right place at the right time.”

“I doubt it.” Nagati looked up from his book with a faint air of superiority. “Murphy’s rocket went into an elliptical orbit at four planetary diameters when his engine exploded. It wasn’t a very large ship and would be impossible to see unless the sun happened to reflect off the hull at exactly the right angle. Even then,” he added, “You would probably take it for a satellite of some kind.”

“That’s what I said.” Gerald craned his neck as he stared through the window. “You’ve got to be in the right place at the right time.”

“Murphy was a fool,” said Rayburn. “His flight was a waste of time and money. God alone knows what he was trying to prove.”

“He was testing a new engine,” said Gerald quietly. “He hoped that it would be possible to travel interstellar space.”

“He was looking for new worlds,” said Nagati. “He hoped to find them in the Alpha Centauri system.”

“Rubbish!”

“Not so.” Nagati was insistent. “The Lunar Observatory has discovered there are planets in the Alpha system. Some of them with an atmosphere apparently much like our own. Certainly, man cannot live on the planets of this system. If he is to find new worlds, then they must orbit another star. Murphy hoped to find them.”

“He was still a fool,” snapped Rayburn. “If we couldn’t do it way back in the time of NASA then how could he? Sure, he managed to get hold of an obsolete hull and somehow got the money to fit it up but if his engine was so good why didn’t the Council take over?”

“This was before the days of World Government,” explained Nagati patiently.

“That long ago?” Rayburn shrugged. “That explains it. The guy was a nut. He had to go it alone because he had no option. His engine must have been a load of junk.”

“Prosper didn’t think so,” reminded Gerald. “He used an adaptation of it in his own ship.” He paused. “And it worked. As far as we know it’s still working.”

“Sure,” said Rayburn dismissing the subject. “As far as we know.”

Gerald didn’t argue. Even now, after five years with the senator, he didn’t really know whether he admired the man or not. Rayburn was an enigma.