Lifeboat Read online

  The two closer aliens stepped back into the lifeship. The one they left did not move or try to follow them. Then, as the airlock door began to close, all three began to laugh at once, together, in their high-pitched, clattering laughter, until the closing door separated them. Even then, the captain and the alien beside him continued to laugh as the lifeship moved away from their shipmate in the spaceliner wreckage. Only slowly did their laughter die, surrounded by the staring silence of the arbite passengers.

  2

  Shock at the sudden disaster, fatigue, and smoke inhalation, or perhaps all these things, combined to numb the watching humans as they stared with reddened eyes at the image of the burning ship, pictured on the sternview screen in the front of the lifeship. The image dwindled, until it was no more than a star among all the other points of light on the screen.

  Finally, it winked from sight. When it was gone, the tall alien who had first entered the lifeship and driven it outward from the spaceliner rose from the control seat, turned, and came back to face the humans, leaving the other alien doing some incomprehensible work with part of the control panel. The first Albenareth halted an arm’s length from Giles, and raised one long, dark finger, the middle of the three on his hand.

  “I am Captain Rayumung.” The finger moved around to point back at the second alien. “Engineer Munghanf.”

  Giles nodded in acknowledgment.

  “You are their leader?” demanded the Captain.

  “I am an Adelman,” said Giles, frigidly. Even allowing for the natural ignorance of the alien, it was hard to endure an assumption that he might be merely one of a group of arbites.

  The Captain turned away. As if this action were a signal, a number of voices called out from among the arbites—all of which the Captain ignored. The voices died away as the tall form returned to the control area and from a compartment there took out a rectangular object wrapped in golden cloth, and held it ceremoniously at arm’s length for one still moment before putting it down on a horizontal surface of the control panel. The Engineer moved to stand alongside, as the Captain put one finger on the surface of the cloth. Both then bent their heads in silence above it, motionless.

  “What is it?” asked the voice of Groce, behind Giles. “What’s that they’ve got?”

  “Be quiet,” said Giles, sharply. “It’s their sacred book—the Albenareth astrogational starbook holding their navigation tables and information.”

  Groce fell silent. But the determined voice of Mara, ignoring his order, took up the questioning.

  “Honor, sir,” she said in Giles’ ear. “Will you tell us what’s happening, please?”

  Giles shook his head, and put his finger to his lips, refusing to answer until the two aliens had raised their heads and begun to unwrap the golden cloth from about their book. Revealed, it was like something out of the human past—as it was indeed out of the Albenareth past—a thing of animal-skin binding and pages of a paper made from vegetable pulp.

  “All right,” said Giles at last, turning around to find the arbite girl right behind him. He spoke to her and to all the rest as well. “Spacegoing and religion are one and the same thing to the Albenareth. Everything they do to navigate this lifeship or any other space vessel is a holy and ritual act You should all have been briefed about that when you were sent to board the spaceliner, back on Earth.”

  “They told us that much, sir,” said Mara. “But they didn’t explain how it worked, or why.”

  Giles looked at her with a touch of irritation. It was not his duty to be tutor to a handful of arbites. Then he relented. It would probably be better if they were informed. They would all be living in close quarters under harsh conditions for some days, or even weeks. They would adapt better to their privations if they understood.

  “All right. Listen, then, all of you,” he said, speaking to them all. “The Albenareth think of space as if it were heaven. To them, the planets and all inhabited solid bodies are the abode of the Imperfect An Albenareth gains Perfection by going into space. The more trips and the more time spent away from planetfall, the more Perfection gained. You noticed the Captain identified himself as ‘Rayumung’ and the Engineer as ‘Munghanf.’ Those aren’t names. They’re ranks, like stair-steps on the climb to a status of Perfection. They’ve got nothing to do with the individual’s duties aboard a space vessel, except that the more responsible duties go to those of higher rank, generally.”

  “But what do the ranks mean, then?” It was Mara again. Giles gave her a brief smile.

  “The ranks stand for the number of trips they’ve made into space, and the time spent in space. There’s more to it than that The rougher the duty they pull, the greater the count of the time involved toward a higher rank. For example, this lifeship duty is going to gain a lot of points for this Captain and Engineer—not because they’re saving our lives, though, but because to save us they had to pass up the chance to die in the spaceliner when it burned. You see, the last and greatest goal of a spacegoing Albenareth is to die, finally, in space.”

  “Then they won’t care!” It was an abrupt cry, almost a wail, from someone else in the crowd, a dark-haired arbite girl as young as Mara, but without the marks of character on her face. “If anything goes wrong they’ll just let us die, so they can die!”

  “Certainly not!” said Giles sharply. “Get that idea out of your heads right now. Death is the greatest achievement possible to an Albenareth, but only after one of them has done his best to fulfill his duties in space for as many years as possible. It’s only when there’s no place else to turn that the Albenareth let death take them.”

  “But what if these two decide suddenly there’s no place to turn, or something like that? They’ll just go and die—”

  “Stop that sort of talk!” snapped Giles. Suddenly he was tiled of explaining, ashamed and disgusted for them all—for their immediate complaints, their open and unashamed display of fears, their lack of decent self-restraint and self-control, and their pasty faces which had obviously spent most of their lives indoors away from the sunlight All that was lower-class about them rose in his throat to choke him.

  “Be quiet all of you,” he said. “Get busy now and pick out the cot you want, beside whoever you want for a neighbor while we’re in this lifeship. The one you pick is the one you’ll have to stick with for the rest of the time we’re aboard. I’m not going to have arguments and fights over changing places. After I’ve looked the lifeship over I’ll get your names and tell you how you’re to act until we reach planetfall. Now, get busy!”

  They all turned away immediately, without hesitation— except, perhaps, the girl Mara. It seemed to Giles that she paused for just a second before moving to obey, and this puzzled him. It was possible she was one of those unfortunate arbites who had been unnaturally pampered, petted, and brought up by some Adelman family to feel almost as if she was one of the upper classes. Arbites hand-raised—so to speak—in such a manner were always maladjusted in latter life. They had not acquired proper habits in their early, formative years and as adults were never able to adapt to social discipline in normal fashion. If that was the case, it was a pity. She had so much else to recommend her.

  He turned away from the arbites, dismissing them from his mind, and began a closer examination of the lifeship. It bore little or no similarity to the luxuriously comfortable and highly automated private spacecraft he, like most of the Adelborn, had often piloted among the inner worlds of the Solar System.

  “Sir ...” It was a whisper behind him. “Do you know—are they females?”

  Giles turned and saw that the whisperer was Groce. The man’s face was white and sweating. Giles glanced back for a moment at the two aliens. The Albenareth were almost indistinguishable as far as sex went and both served indiscriminately at duties aboard spacecraft—and everywhere else on the alien worlds, for that matter. But the extra length of the Captain’s torso was a clue and the particular erectness of that officer’s stance. She was a female. The E
ngineer was a male.

  Giles looked back at the sick paleness of fear on Groce’s face. Among the arbites there were a thousand horror stories about the behavior of Albenareth females under certain glandular conditions, not merely toward their own “males” but—arbite superstitions had it—toward any other intelligent male creature. The basis of all the tales was the fact that the Albenareth “female”—the two sexes of the aliens did not really correspond equivalently to human male and female—when in estrus, required from the “male” not merely the specific and minute fertilizing organism he had produced for the egg she carried, but the total genital area of “his” body. This she took complete into her egg sac, where it became connected to her own bloodstream, part of her own body, and a source of nourishment for the embryo during its period of intrauterine growth.

  The acquisition of the “male’s” genital area, entirely normal by Albenareth standards, in human terms represented a rather massive mutilation of the “male” by the “female.” It effectively desexed the male until his genital area should grow back, which took about two years, roughly, by Earth time—long enough for the single Albenareth offspring to be born and learn to travel with comfort upright on its two legs. Human xenobiologists had theorized that in prehistoric times the evolutionary principle behind the desexing of the Albenareth “male” had been to ensure his protection and assistance to the particular “female” carrying his progeny, during the vulnerable period before she and it were fully able to take care of themselves.

  But such sophisticated understanding of alien instincts, thought Giles, would be beyond the comprehension of arbites whispering among themselves in dark corners. Groce, evidently, had the human lower-class horror and fear of what the alien “female” might do to him, specifically, under certain conditions of glandular excitation. And probably every other arbite male aboard would react thesame way if any of them suspected the Captain’s sex.

  “They’re officers!” Giles snapped. “Do they look like females to you?”

  Relief flooded back into Groce’s face.

  “No, Honor. No, sir, of course not ... thank you, sir. Thank you very much.”

  He backed away. Giles turned from the man, back to his examination of the lifeship. As he did so, however, it occurred to him to wonder just what the effect would be on the arbites if a breeding impulse should take command of the pair of aliens on board before they made planetfall. Of course, he had no idea under what conditions such an impulse could be generated; he put worry about it out of his mind. For the moment things were under control and that was all he required. He concentrated on examining the lifeship.

  3

  1:02 hours

  It was little more than a cylinder in space.

  The rear half of the cylinder was occupied by the warp drive and the fusion chamber that powered it. In the cylinder’s nose was the control console and the three viewscreens. The remaining space, like a tube with a flat floor inside, was a little over twelve meters in length and four in diameter. The floor was of a purple, spongy material that was clumsy to walk upon but comfortable for sitting or lying. The collapsible cots they had occupied while blasting free of the spaceliner were concealed beneath that same spongy surface.

  Overhead, a glaring band of blue-white lights stretched the length of the lifeship. These, Giles had learned before leaving Earth, in his studies of the Albenareth and their space vessels, were never turned off, even when the lifeship was not in use. The continuous light source was needed to assure the healthy growth of the ib vine that completely covered all the exposed surfaces from midway in the lifeship’s length, right back to the stem. The vine was life to all the passengers, alien and human alike; for the stoma in its flat, reddish-green leaves produced oxygen. The golden, globular fruit, hanging like ornaments from long, thin stems, were the only source of nourishment available aboard. The trunk of the ib vine, as thick through as a man’s leg, emerged from a coffinlike metal tank in the stem that contained the nutrient solution to nourish the plant. A dusty metal hatch cover on the tank covered the opening into which all food scraps and waste were put for recycling. A simple and workable system for survival, a closed cycle in which the sanitary conveniences aboard consisted of a basin under a cold-water faucet and a covered container beside the tank.

  The arbite passengers were not yet aware of how these things would circumscribe their existences aboard this alien craft. As yet, they had scarcely examined the new environment into which they had been thrust. The shock of awareness would be profound when it came. They were not Adelmen or Adelwomen, who under these same conditions would have felt an inner duty to maintain their self-control and not to give way to unseemly fears or yield in any way to the situation, no matter how unendurable.

  He should start out gently, Giles told himself. He turned and went back to the others, who had now sorted themselves out, each on the cot he or she had pulled up and would occupy until they made planetfall.

  “All set?” he asked them.

  There were nods of agreement He stood, looking down at them, a head taller than any except the obvious work-gang laborer individual in the very rear. The others would tend to ostracize thelaborer, he reminded himself automatically, as being even of lower class than themselves. He must not let that cause divisions among them while they were aboard here.

  The laborer was as tall as Giles and doubtless outweighed him by twenty kilos. Outside of that, there was no resemblance. Only Giles, of all the humans there, showed the tanned skin, the handsome regular features, and the green eyes, with sun-wrinkles showing at the corners of them, that testified to both breeding and a lifetime of outdoor exercise. These differences alone would have set him apart from the rest even without the expensive, gleaming fabric of the burnt-orange shipsuit he wore, in contrast to the drab, loose-fitting, gray coveralls that were their garb. Alone, his features were enough to remind the others that it was his to command, theirs to obey.

  “All right,” he said. “I am Giles Steel Ashad. Now, one at a time, identify yourselves.” He turned to Mara, who had taken the front cot space on his left. “You first, Mara.”

  “Mara 12911. I’m recop, on indent to Belben like the rest.”

  “All right.” He turned to Groce on the right, across from Mara. “Next we’ll take them in this direction. Speak up, Groce. Give your name and specialty number.”

  “Groce 5313, indent for three years, computer control section, Belben Mines and Manufacture.”

  “Very good, Groce. Glad to see you kept your compute by you.”

  “Go no place without it sir. Feel naked without it.”

  Giles saw several of the others smile at this time-worn joke. Computecoms were always supposed to be unable to think without making a calculation first. This was good; a feeling of order was being restored. The next man behind Groce was thin, blond, and wiry, his fingers nervously tapping out unheard rhythms on his thighs.

  “Esteven 6786, entertaincom,” he said, in a tenor voice. “I’m setting up the broadcast system to Belben, to replace the automated one there now.”

  “Yes. Is that a recorder in your wallet?”

  “Yes, Honor, sir. Would you like to see it? A multiplex memory store for the music.”

  “Very good—we can use that for a log of this voyage.”

  Giles put out his hand. Esteven stepped forward, but hesitated for an instant before taking out the flat case.

  “But you won’t want to wipe all the music to record, will you, sir? Please? We’ll find some entertainment welcome, here in this little ship....”

  Giles winced internally at the pleading note in the man’s voice. Even an arbite should not have to beg like that.

  “Not all of the music,” said Giles, “don’t worry. Pick an hour to wipe clear for me. That should be enough. If it’s not, I’ll ask you for more.”

  “An hour?” Esteven’s face lit up. “Of course, sir. A single hour’s really no problem, of course. This has a bit of everything. I can wipe some of t
he jazzpop or early-decade symphonies. Or there are lots of musical commercials ...” Esteven smiled hopefully and the others laughed, and the laughter quickly dying away when they saw that Giles was not smiling with them. “Honor, sir, forgive—naturally, I don’t mean that. A joke only. Here, an hour from the music; it’s all set.” He passed the recorder over quickly, his hand shaking ever so slightly.

  “I’ll put everyone’s name into this; we’ll need to keep records.” Giles spoke into a recorder the names and numbers told so far.

  “Now just you four left.”

  “Biset 9482. Supervise, indent one year.” She stood up straight across from Esteven’s space, when she said it—the tall, angular, gray-haired woman who had led the party of survivors to the lifeship. She was, thought Giles, obviously used to authority. A lifetime had adjusted her to it—unlike the girl Mara. The two arbites side by side behind her were a dark-haired young man and an equally dark-haired plump girl. They had been holding hands until the others looked at them. The girl blushed; the man spoke for them both.

  “Frenco 5022. This is my ... wife, Di 3579. We’re both comserv, indent seven years.”

  “Both just out of school, only on your first indent—and married already?”

  The laughter of the others—free and open, this time— released a good deal of the tension that had been gripping them all Frenco nodded and smiled and Di smiled, looking about, seeming to enjoy the sudden attention. She was thegirl who had panicked when Giles spoke of the Albenareth seeking death, as a final act in space. Giles spoke their names into the recorder and looked beyond to the big laborer.

  “Now you, lad.”

  The laborer touched his index and second finger to his fore-head just below the cap of short-cut black hair, in a sort of half salute before answering.

  “Hem 7624, Honor, sir,” he said. His face was square and young, unwrinkled, but his voice had the rough and broken hoarseness of an aging person. “Graded manual, no specific skills, sir. But perfect work record.”