Startled, Ayres blinked. "Me, sir?"
The captain stood with his strong, small back to Ayres, inspecting the stars as if they were a celestial regiment under his personal say-so. "Yes. I mean religion," he explained.
"Oh." Ayres pulled his right earlobe with finger and thumb, musing. "I was a first class agnostic. Graduated, or should I say demoted? From an Atheist academy."
The captain kept looking at the stars. "You use the word 'was,' Ayres. You emphasize that word."
Ayres half-smiled. "Sure. I mean— yes, sir. But this is my first trip, sir, so that changes things."
"Does it?"
"Yes it does, sir."
The captain rocked casually on his heels. "How's that, Ayres?"
"You know the tale as well as I, sir. It's an old tale. And a good one, I might add. To put it one way: 'A Baptist is an atheist who took a trip to the Moon.' "
"That holds true for Methodists, Episcopalians and Holy Rollers, doesn't it?"
"It does, sir."
The captain made a noise that sounded like laughter. "We're all the same. Every damned one of us, Ayres. Hard-shelled God-fighters, good and true, when we're home in Brooklyn and Waushawkee. Take away land and gravity, though, and we're babes, undiapered and crying in a long dark night. Hell, there's not a man rocketing today who isn't religious, Ayres!"
"Are you religious, Captain?"
Lamb closed his mouth, looked out the port straight ahead. He raised one small-boned hand, spreading it in a measured movement. "It's always the same, Ayres. The first trip converts us. The very first trip. All you have to do is stand here for fifteen minutes or half an hour looking at space, feeling how insignificant you are flying around like a gnat in the middle of it, looking at those damned wonderful stars, and first thing you know you're down on your knees, crying your eyes out, with a hot stomach, a wild head and a humble attitude forever after."
Lamb pulled back from himself suddenly, snapped around, stalked to a down-ladder, grabbed a rung and glared at Ayres. "And so," he pointed out, "you'll notice that I never look at the stars too long! I've a ship to run — no time for it. And in case you believe all I tell you — go to hell! I should demerit you for questioning a superior!"
Lamb dropped down the rungs like a weight.
Ayres sat there a moment, trying to computate. After a while he looked up at the star-port. His eyes dilated very dark and wide. He stood up. He walked across the computation room and stood there, staring out. He looked like he was listening to music. His lips moved.
"What did the Cap say? Stand here fifteen minutes or half an hour? Why, hell—" He bent his knees until they touched the deck. "I got the Cap's time beat all hollow!"
Good blood. Good leucocyte. Good Ayres.
Mars come up ahead, the first really intense gravity I had felt since leaving earth and moon behind. It came up like a ruddy drop of dried blood on the void. Mass is the sexual drive of space, and gravity the intensified yearning of that mass, the gravitic libido of one tremendous body for the love, the following of any and all smaller bodies who transgress its void boundaries. I have heard the simple men within me speak of a planet as one speaks of a queen bee. The ultimate gravity toward which all smaller gravities and bodies yearn. Merciless harlot, mating with all, leading all on to destruction. Queen bee followed by the swarms. And now I was part of a swarm, the first of many yet to follow, answering the urge of one gravity, refusing another.
But still the poison was in me. And no way possible for Captain Lamb's crew to know of it. Time ticked on my console-chronometers and swung by, imperceptibly majestic in the moves of stars.
Captain Lamb went down to the engine rooms, examined my heart and my auxiliaries. Bitingly, he commented and instructed, interspersing that with vituperative barks. Then he hopped up the rungs to the galley for something to eat.
Belloc and Larian stayed below. "First now, Belloc, you checked the life-boats?"
"I did. Number Three boat's ready. I fixed it an hour ago."
"Good. Now…."
The Slop put out a bowl of soup for Captain Lamb. Lamb pursed his lips to a spoon of it, and smacked them in appreciation. "Slop?"
"Yes, sir?" Slop wiped greasy hands on a large towel.
"Did you invent the gravity soup-bowl and gravity spoon?"
Slop looked at his feet. "I did, sir."
"An admirable invention, Slop. I recall the day when all rocket liquids were swilled by suction from a nippled bottle. Made me feel like a god-damned baby doing it."
Slop chuckled deep, as he returned to cleaning the mess-plates. "Ship gravity wasn't strong enough to hold soup down, so I thunk up the gravity spoon in my spare time. It helped."
The captain ate in silence. After a moment he said, "I must be getting old, Slop. I think I'm sick."
"Captain!"
Lamb waved his spoon, irritated. "Oh, nothing as bad as all that. I mean I'm getting soft-headed. Today, I feel — how should I put it? Dammit to hell, it's hard finding words. Why did you come along on this war-rocket, Slop?"
Slop twisted his towel tight. "I had a little job to do with some Martians who killed my parents three years ago."
"Yes," said the captain.
Belloc and Larian were down below.
Slop looked at his chief. At the tight little brown face that could have been thirty-five as easily as forty or fifty.
Lamb glared up at him, quick. Slop gulped. ''Pardon me."
"Uh?"
"I was just wondering…?
"About…?"
Belloc. Larian. Belloc down below. Larian climbing rungs, on his way to get the time-bombs. Mars looming ahead. Time getting shorter, shorter.
In a dozen parts of my body things were going on at an oblivious, unsuspecting norm. Computators, gunners, engineers, pilots performed their duties as Lamb and Slop talked casual talk in the galley. While Larian muscled it up the rungs toward his secreted time-explosives.
Slop said, "About why you became captain on a war-rocket, yourself, sir?"
"Me?" Lamb snorted, filled his mouth half a dozen times before answering very slowly. "Five years ago I was in a Blue Canal liquor dive on Mars. I met a Martian girl there…"
"Oh, yes…"
"Yes, nothing, you biscuit-burner! Damn but she was sweet. With a temper like a very fine cat-animal, and morals to match. Hair like glossy black spider-silk, eyes like that deep cold blue canal water. I wanted to bring her back to Earth with me. The war came, I was recalled and—"
"And someday," finished Slop, "when you've helped get the war over, you'll go looking for her. And being at Deimos-Phobos Base, maybe you can sneak down and kidnap her sometime."
Lamb ate awhile, making motions. "Pretty childish, isn't it?"
"No, I guess it's all right if she's still waiting."
"She is — if I know Yrela, she is." Ayres in Computation.
Mars off in space, blood-red and growing.
Lamb in the galley.
Hillary and Conrad in control room One!
And down below, where all of my power grew and expanded and burst out into space, I felt the vibration of Belloc. And coming up the ladder to the supply room — Larian.
Larian passed through the galley. "Sir."
Lamb nodded without looking up from his meal.
Larian proceeded up to Computation, passed through Computation, whistling, and lingered in Supply AC.
Space vibrated with my message.
My guns were being trimmed, oiled and ready. Ammunition passed up long powered tracks from Locker Five to Blister Fourteen. Scarlet ammunition. Men sweated and showed their teeth and swore. Belloc waited down below, his face twitching its nerves, in the engine room. The captain ate his meal. I drove through space, Ayres computated. Belloc waited. Captain, eating. Space. Larian. Time-bombs. Captain. Belloc. Guns. Waiting. Waiting. Driving.