The Randall Garrett MEGAPACK®. Randall Garrett

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СКАЧАТЬ pulled himself up by holding to the man’s arm. The effort made him dizzy and nauseated.

      The other man said: “Take him down to sick bay, Casey. Get some thiamin into him.”

      Clayton didn’t struggle as they led him down to the sick bay. He was trying to clear his head. Where was he? He must have been pretty drunk last night.

      He remembered meeting Parks. And getting thrown out by the bartender. Then what?

      Oh, yeah. He’d gone to the Shark’s for a bottle. From there on, it was mostly gone. He remembered a fight or something, but that was all that registered.

      The medic in the sick bay fired two shots from a hypo-gun into both arms, but Clayton ignored the slight sting.

      “Where am I?”

      “Real original. Here, take these.” He handed Clayton a couple of capsules, and gave him a glass of water to wash them down with.

      When the water hit his stomach, there was an immediate reaction.

      “Oh, Christ!” the medic said. “Get a mop, somebody. Here, bud; heave into this.” He put a basin on the table in front of Clayton.

      It took them the better part of an hour to get Clayton awake enough to realize what was going on and where he was. Even then, he was plenty groggy.

      * * * *

      It was the First Officer of the STS-52 who finally got the story straight. As soon as Clayton was in condition, the medic and the quartermaster officer who had found him took him up to the First Officer’s compartment.

      “I was checking through the stores this morning when I found this man. He was asleep, dead drunk, behind the crates.”

      “He was drunk, all right,” supplied the medic. “I found this in his pocket.” He flipped a booklet to the First Officer.

      The First was a young man, not older than twenty-eight with tough-looking gray eyes. He looked over the booklet.

      “Where did you get Parkinson’s ID booklet? And his uniform?”

      Clayton looked down at his clothes in wonder. “I don’t know.”

      “You don’t know? That’s a hell of an answer.”

      “Well, I was drunk,” Clayton said defensively. “A man doesn’t know what he’s doing when he’s drunk.” He frowned in concentration. He knew he’d have to think up some story.

      “I kind of remember we made a bet. I bet him I could get on the ship. Sure—I remember, now. That’s what happened; I bet him I could get on the ship and we traded clothes.”

      “Where is he now?”

      “At my place, sleeping it off, I guess.”

      “Without his oxy-mask?”

      “Oh, I gave him my oxidation pills for the mask.”

      The First shook his head. “That sounds like the kind of trick Parkinson would pull, all right. I’ll have to write it up and turn you both in to the authorities when we hit Earth.” He eyed Clayton. “What’s your name?”

      “Cartwright. Sam Cartwright,” Clayton said without batting an eye.

      “Volunteer or convicted colonist?”

      “Volunteer.”

      The First looked at him for a long moment, disbelief in his eyes.

      It didn’t matter. Volunteer or convict, there was no place Clayton could go. From the officer’s viewpoint, he was as safely imprisoned in the spaceship as he would be on Mars or a prison on Earth.

      * * * *

      The First wrote in the log book, and then said: “Well, we’re one man short in the kitchen. You wanted to take Parkinson’s place; brother, you’ve got it—without pay.” He paused for a moment.

      “You know, of course,” he said judiciously, “that you’ll be shipped back to Mars immediately. And you’ll have to work out your passage both ways—it will be deducted from your pay.”

      Clayton nodded. “I know.”

      “I don’t know what else will happen. If there’s a conviction, you may lose your volunteer status on Mars. And there may be fines taken out of your pay, too.

      “Well, that’s all, Cartwright. You can report to Kissman in the kitchen.”

      The First pressed a button on his desk and spoke into the intercom. “Who was on duty at the airlock when the crew came aboard last night? Send him up. I want to talk to him.”

      Then the quartermaster officer led Clayton out the door and took him to the kitchen.

      The ship’s driver tubes were pushing it along at a steady five hundred centimeters per second squared acceleration, pushing her steadily closer to Earth with a little more than half a gravity of drive.

      * * * *

      There wasn’t much for Clayton to do, really. He helped to select the foods that went into the automatics, and he cleaned them out after each meal was cooked. Once every day, he had to partially dismantle them for a really thorough going-over.

      And all the time, he was thinking.

      Parkinson must be dead; he knew that. That meant the Chamber. And even if he wasn’t, they’d send Clayton back to Mars. Luckily, there was no way for either planet to communicate with the ship; it was hard enough to keep a beam trained on a planet without trying to hit such a comparatively small thing as a ship.

      But they would know about it on Earth by now. They would pick him up the instant the ship landed. And the best he could hope for was a return to Mars.

      No, by God! He wouldn’t go back to that frozen mud-ball! He’d stay on Earth, where it was warm and comfortable and a man could live where he was meant to live. Where there was plenty of air to breathe and plenty of water to drink. Where the beer tasted like beer and not like slop. Earth. Good green hills, the like of which exists nowhere else.

      Slowly, over the days, he evolved a plan. He watched and waited and checked each little detail to make sure nothing would go wrong. It couldn’t go wrong. He didn’t want to die, and he didn’t want to go back to Mars.

      Nobody on the ship liked him; they couldn’t appreciate his position. He hadn’t done anything to them, but they just didn’t like him. He didn’t know why; he’d tried to get along with them. Well, if they didn’t like him, the hell with them.

      If things worked out the way he figured, they’d be damned sorry.

      He was very clever about the whole plan. When turn-over came, he pretended to get violently spacesick. That gave him an opportunity to steal a bottle of chloral hydrate from the medic’s locker.

      And, while he worked in the kitchen, he spent a great deal of time sharpening a big carving knife.

      Once, СКАЧАТЬ