Lesbee said, staggered, 'We can get back to the solar system in a few weeks – my God!' He broke off, said urgently, 'Look, I accept you as commander. We don't need an election. The status quo is good enough for any short period of time. Do you agree?'
'Of course,' said Browne. 'That's the point I've been trying to make.'
As he spoke, his face was utterly guileless.
Lesbee gazed at that mask of innocence and he thought hopelessly, 'What's wrong? Why isn't he really agreeing? Is it because he doesn't want to lose his command so quickly?'
Sitting there, unhappily fighting for the other's life, he tried to place himself mentally in the position of the commander of a vessel, tried to look at the prospect of a return to Earth from the other's point of view. It was hard to picture. But presently it seemed to him that he understood.
He said gently, feeling his way, 'It would be kind of a shame to return without having made a successful landing anywhere. With this new speed, we could visit a dozen sun systems, and still get home in a year.'
The look that came into Browne's face for a fleeting moment told Lesbee that he had penetrated to the thought in the man's mind.
The next instant Browne was shaking his head vigorously. 'This is no time for side excursions,' he said. 'We'll leave explorations of new star systems to future expeditions. The people of this ship have served their term. We go straight home.'
Browne's face was now completely relaxed. His blue eyes shone with truth and sincerity.
There was nothing further that Lesbee could say. The gulf between Browne and himself could not be bridged.
The commander had to kill his rival so that he might finally return to Earth and report that the mission of the Hope of Man had been accomplished.
18
Lesbee used the tractor beam to push Browne about six feet from him. There he set him down, and released him from the beam. With the same deliberateness, he drew his hand away from the tractor controls, and swung his chair around so that his back was to the board. Thus he rendered himself completely defenseless.
It was the moment of vulnerability.
Browne leaped at him, yelling: 'Miller – pre-empt!'
First Officer Miller obeyed the command of his captain.
As the bridge control board took over, a sequence of control exchanges was set in motion.
The alternate control board was removed from the circuit.
The rerouted electric current opened and closed relays, in accordance with the physics of current flow.
The two control boards were so perfectly synchronized that the one which took over always continued what the other had had set up on it. Normally, therefore, nothing could go wrong during pre-emption.
But in this instance, the alternate control board had one of its controls subordinated to the tiny device in Lesbee's pocket. At the moment, that powerful little gadget was holding in check twelve g's of drive and eight g's of artificial gravity... in reverse, exactly as Lesbee had reprogrammed them when he pressed the Stage Two Button.
When the bridge took over, the drive and the artificial gravity resumed their function instantly.
The Hope of Man – instantly – decelerated at a four-g gap speed.
Lesbee took the blow of that abrupt slowdown, partly against his back and partly against his right side, with the sturdy rear of the chair as his principal support.
It was a wholly adequate support.
But Browne was caught off balance. He had been coming at Lesbee from an angle. The enormous impact of the deceleration flung him at this angle straight at the control board. He struck it with an audible thud and stuck to it as if he were glued there.
A cut– off relay, which Lesbee had also preprogrammed through the alternate control board, now shut off the engines as suddenly as they had started. During the weightlessness that followed, Browne's body worked itself free and slid down to the dais.
There was discoloration at a dozen spots on the uniform. As Lesbee stared, fascinated, blood seeped through.
19
'Are you going to hold an election?' Tellier asked.
The big ship, under Lesbee's command, had turned back and had picked up his friends. The lifeboat itself, with the remaining Karn still aboard, was put into orbit around Alta III and abandoned.
The two young men were sitting now in the captain's cabin.
After the question had been asked, Lesbee leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He didn't need to examine his total resistance to the suggestion. He had already savored the feeling that command brought.
Almost from the moment of Browne's death, he had observed himself having the same thoughts that Browne had voiced – among many others, the reasons why elections were not advisable aboard a spaceship. He waited now while Ilsa, one of his three wives – she being the younger of the two widows of Browne – poured wine for them and went softly out. Then he laughed grimly.
'My good friend,' he said, 'we're all lucky that time is so compressed at the speed of light. At a time ratio of five hundred to one, any further exploration we do will require only a few months or years at most. And so, I don't think we can afford to take the chance of defeating at an election the only person who understands the details of the new acceleration method. Till I decide exactly how much exploration we shall do, I shall keep our speed capabilities a secret. But I did, and do, think one other person should know where I have this information documented. Naturally, I am selecting First Officer Armand Tellier.'
He raised his glass. 'As soon as I have the full account written, you shall have a copy.'
'Thank you, Captain,' the young man said. But he was thoughtful as he sipped his wine. He went on finally, 'Captain, I think you'd feel a lot better if you held an election. I'm sure you could win it.'
Lesbee laughed tolerantly, shook his head. 'I'm afraid you don't understand the dynamics of government,' he said. 'There's no record in history of a person, who actually had control, handing it over.'
He finished with the casual confidence of absolute power: 'I'm not going to be presumptuous enough to fight a precedent like that.'
He was sitting there, smiling cynically, when the buzzer of the front door of the captain's cabin sounded in the adjoining room. Lesbee was aware of one of his wives going to the door and opening it. Surprisingly, then, there was not another sound. No greeting, no acknowledgment; total silence.
Lesbee thought, 'Whoever it is, has handed her a note.'
The instant analysis ended a feeling of uneasiness. He was about to settle back in his chair, when a man's rough voice came quietly from behind him.
'All right, Mr. Lesbee, your take-over is ended and ours is beginning.'
Lesbee froze. Then, turning, stared with an awful sinking sensation at the armed men who were crowding in behind the man who had spoken. He didn't know any of the men but he saw that they were laborers, garden men, and kitchen help. People of whose existence he had never been more than vaguely aware.
The leader of the group spoke again.
'Gourdy is my name, Mr. Lesbee, and we're taking over -these men and I – because we want to go home, back to Earth... Be careful, and you and your friends won't be hurt -'
Lesbee sighed with relief as those final words were spoken. All was not lost.