"It has been an article of faith that Jordan so ordained it, that the children pay with blood for the sins of their ancestors. It was the will of Jordan, we were told.
"I, for one, have never been reconciled to this constant drain on the Ship's mass." He paused.
The old Captain had been having some difficulty in believing his ears. But he found his voice. Pointing, he squealed, "Do you dispute the Teachings?"
"I do not. I maintain that the Teachings do not command us to leave the muties outside the Regulations, and never did. I demand that they be brought under the Regulations!"
"You... you! You are relieved of duty, sir!"
"Not," answered Narby, his insolence now overt, "until I have had my say."
"Arrest that man!" But the Captain's orderlies stood fast, though they shuffled and looked unhappy. Narby himself had selected them.
Narby turned back to the amazed Council, and caught the eye of Ertz. "All right," he said. "Now!" Ertz got up and trotted toward the door. Narby continued, "Many of you think as I do, but we always supposed that we would have to fight for it. With the help of Jordan, I have been able to achieve contact with the muties and propose terms of a truce. Their leaders are coming here to negotiate with us. There!" He pointed dramatically at the door.
Ertz reappeared; following him came Hugh Hoyland, Joe-Jim, and Bobo. Hoyland turned to the right along the wall and circled the company. He was followed single file by a string of muties: Joe-Jim's best butcher boys. Another such column trailed after Joe-Jim and Bobo to the left.
Joe-Jim, Hugh, and half a dozen more in each wing were covered with crude armor which extended below their waists. The armor was topped off with clumsy helms, latticeworks of steel, which protected their heads without greatly interfering with vision. Each of the armored ones, a few of the others, carried unheard-of knives, long as a man's arm!
The startled officers might have stopped the invasion at the bottleneck through which it entered had they been warned and led. But they were disorganized, helpless, and their strongest leaders had invited the invaders in. They shifted in their chairs, reached for their knives, and glanced anxiously from one to another. But no one made the first move which would start a general bloodletting.
Narby turned to the Captain. "What about it? Do you receive this delegation in peace?"
It seemed likely that age and fat living would keep the Captain from answering, from ever answering anything again. But he managed to croak, "Get 'em out of here! Get 'em out! You--You'll make the Trip for this!"
Narby turned back to Joe-Jim and jerked his thumb upward. Jim spoke to Bobo and a knife was buried to the grip in the Captain's fat belly. He squawked, rather than screamed, and a look of utter bewilderment spread over his features. He plucked awkwardly at the hilt as if to assure himself that it was really there. "Mutiny." he stated. "Mutiny--" The word trailed off as he collapsed into his chair, and fell heavily forward to the deck on his face.
Narby shoved it with his foot and spoke to the two orderlies. "Carry it outside," he commanded. They obeyed, seeming relieved at having something to do and someone to tell them to do it. Narby turned back to the silent watching mass. "Does anyone else object to a peace with the muties?"
An elderly officer, one who had dreamed away his life as judge and spiritual adviser to a remote village, stood up and pointed a bony finger at Narby, while his white beard jutted indignantly. "Jordan will punish you for this! Mutiny and sin, the spirit of Huff!"
Narby nodded to Joe-Jim; the old man's words gurgled in his throat, the point of a blade sticking out under one ear. Bobo looked pleased with himself.
"There has been enough talk," Narby announced. "It is better to have a little blood now than much blood later. Let those who stand with me in this matter get up and come forward."
Ertz set the precedent by striding forward and urging his surest personal supporters to come with him. Reaching the front of the room, he pulled out his knife and raised the point. "I salute Phineas Narby, Jordan's Captain!"
His own supporters were left with no choice. "Phineas Narby, Jordan's Captain!"
The hard young men in Narby's clique, the backbone of the dissident rationalist bloc among the scientist priests, joined the swing forward en masse, points raised high and shouting for the new Captain. The undecided and the opportunists hastened to join, as they saw which side of the blade was edged. When the division was complete, there remained a handful only of Ship's officers still hanging back, almost all of whom were either elderly or hyperreligious.
Ertz watched Captain Narby look them over, then pick up Joe-Jim with his eyes. Ertz put a hand on his arm. "There are few of them and practically helpless," he pointed out. "Why not disarm them and let them retire?"
Narby Eave him an unfriendly look. "Let them stay alive and breed mutiny. I am quite capable of making my own decisions, Ertz."
Ertz bit his lip. "Very well, Captain."
"That's better." He signaled to Joe-Jim.
The long knives made short work of it.
Hugh hung back horn the slaughter. His old teacher, Lieutenant Nelson, the village scientist who had seen his ability and selected him for scientisthood, was one of the group. It was a factor be had not anticipated.
World conquest and consolidation. Faith, or the Sword. Joe-Jim's bullies, amplified by hot-blooded young cadets supplied by Captain Narby, combed the middle decks and the upper decks. The muties, individualists by the very nature of their existence and owing no allegiance higher than that to the leaders of their gangs, were no match for the planned generalship of Joe-Jim, nor did their weapons match the strange, long knives that bit before a man was ready.
The rumor spread through mutie country that it was better to surrender quietly to the gang of the Two Wise Heads; good eating for those who surrendered, death inescapable for those who did not.
But it was nevertheless a long slow process. There were so many, many decks, so many miles of gloomy corridors, so many countless compartments in which unsubdued muties might lurk. Furthermore, the process grew slower as it advanced, as Joe-Jim attempted to establish a police patrol, an interior guard, over each sector, deck, and stair way trunk, as fast as his striking groups mopped them up.
To Narby's disappointment, the two-headed man was not killed in his campaigns. Joe-Jim had learned from his own books that a general need not necessarily expose himself to direct combat.
Hugh buried himself in the Control Room. Not only was he more interested in the subtle problems of mastering the how and why of the complex controls and the parallel complexity of starship ballistics, but also the whole matter of the blood purge was distasteful to him because of Lieutenant Nelson. Violence and death he was used to; they were commonplace even on the lower levels, but that incident made him vaguely unhappy, even though his own evaluations were not sufficiently clean-cut for him to feel personal responsibility for the old man's death.
He just wished it had not happened.
But the controls: ahh. There was something a man could put his heart into. He was attempting a task that an Earthman would have rejected as impossible; an Earthmaa would have known that the piloting and operation of an interstellar ship was a task so difficult that the best possible technical education combined with extensive experience in the handling of lesser spacecraft would constitute a barely adequate grounding for the additional intensive highly specialized training necessary for the task.
Hugh Hoyland did not know that. So he went ahead and did it anyhow.
In which attempt he was aided by the genius of the designers. The controls of most machinery may be considered under the head of simple pairs, stop-and-go, push-and-pull, up-and-down, in-and-out, on-and-off, right-and-left, their permutations and combinations. The real difficulties have to do with upkeep and repair, adjustment and replacements.