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Read Ebook: The Measure of a Man by Garrett Randall
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Ebook has 87 lines and 7415 words, and 2 pages
He ate and slept as he felt the need. There was plenty of food in the sick bay kitchen, and there is no need for a bed under gravity-less conditions.
The pseudogravity circuits were hopeless. He'd have to do without gravity.
On the third day, he decided he'd better clean the place up. There were several corpses floating around, and they were beginning to be noticeable. He had to tow them, one by one, to the rear starboard air lock and seal them between the inner and outer doors. He couldn't dump them, since the outer door was partially melted and welded shut.
He took the personal effects from the men. If he ever got back to Earth, their next-of-kin might want the stuff. On the body of the imitation Rat, he found a belt-pouch full of microfilm. The report on the Rats' new weapon? Possibly. He'd have to look it over later.
If Pendray had had any liquor aboard, he would have gotten mildly drunk. Instead, he sat down and read the spools of microfilm, using the projector in the sick bay.
He was not a scientist in the strict sense of the word. He was a navigator and a fairly good engineer. So it didn't surprise him any that he couldn't understand a lot of the report. The mechanics of making a semi-nova out of a normal star were more than a little bit over his head. He'd read a little and then go out and take a look at the stars, checking their movement so that he could make an estimate of his speed. He'd jury-rigged a kind of control on the hull field, so he could aim the hulk easily enough. He'd only have to get within signaling range, anyway. An Earth ship would pick him up.
He forced his mind away from thinking about that.
It was not until he reached the last spool of microfilm that his situation was forcibly brought to focus in his mind. Thus far, he had thought only about saving himself. But the note at the end of the spool made him realize that there were others to save.
That was--let's see....
It took him three days to get the answer accurately. He knew the strength of the field around the ship, and he knew the approximate thrust of the single engine by that time. He had also measured the motions of some of the nearer stars. Thank heaven he was a navigator and not a mechanic or something! At least he knew the direction and distance to Earth, and he knew the distance of the brighter stars from where the ship was.
He had two checks to use, then. Star motion against engine thrust and field strength. He checked them. And rechecked them. And hated the answer.
He would arrive in the vicinity of Sol some time in late July--a full month too late.
What could he do? Increase the output of the engine? No. It was doing the best it could now. Even shutting off the lights wouldn't help anything; they were a microscopic drain on that engine.
He tried to think, tried to reason out a solution, but nothing would come. He found time to curse the fool who had decided the shielding on the lifeboat would have to be removed and repaired. That little craft, with its lighter mass and more powerful field concentration, could make the trip in ten days.
The only trouble was that ten days in that radiation hell would be impossible. He'd be a very well-preserved corpse in half that time, and there'd be no one aboard to guide her.
He went back to the engines again, looking them over carefully. He went over them again. Not a single one could be repaired at all.
Then he rechecked his velocity figures, hoping against hope that he'd made a mistake somewhere, dropped a decimal point or forgotten to divide by two. Anything. Anything!
But there was nothing. His figures had been accurate the first time.
For a while, he just gave up. All he could think of was the terrible blaze of heat that would wipe out Earth when the Rats set off the sun. Man might survive. There were colonies that the Rats didn't know about. But they'd find them eventually. Without Earth, the race would be set back five hundred--maybe five thousand--years. The Rats would would have plenty of time to hunt them out and destroy them.
He had to think. Really think.
He made his report to the ship's captain. "We're within easy range of her, sir," he finished. "Shall we pick her up?"
"Might be a Rat trick," said the captain. "But we'll have to take the chance. Beam a call to Earth, and let's go out there dead slow. If the detectors show anything funny, we turn tail and run. We're in no position to fight a Rat ship."
"You think this might be a Rat trap, sir?"
"Yes, sir," said the signal officer.
"She's cut her engines, sir!" said the observer. "She evidently knows we're coming."
"All right. Pull her in as soon as we're close enough. Put her in Number Two lifeboat rack; it's empty."
"Catch him!" the captain shouted. "He's falling!" But one of the men nearby had already caught him.
In the sick bay, Pendray came to again. The captain's questioning gradually got the story out of Pendray.
"... So I didn't know what to do then," he said, his voice a breathy whisper. "I knew I had to get that stuff home. Somehow."
"Go on," said the captain, frowning.
"Anyway. Two equations. Simple. Work 'em in your head. Big ship takes ten months, little one takes ten days. But can't stay in a little ship ten days. No shielding. Be dead before you got here. See?"
"I see," said the captain patiently.
"Do you mean you exposed yourself to the full leakage radiation from a lifeboat engine for thirty-six hours?"
But there was no answer.
"Let him sleep," said the ship's doctor. "If he wakes up again, I'll let you know. But he might not be very lucid from here on in."
"Is there anything you can do?" the captain asked.
"No. Not after a radiation dosage like that." He looked down at Pendray. "His problem was easy, mathematically. But not psychologically. That took real guts to solve."
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