Browne counted four that were shown as having oxygen atmospheres. As he watched, another star map was synchronized with the Earth one. It showed thousands of suns, and beside each one was the revealing atomic symbol that indicated the nature of the atmospheres of the habitable planets.
He saw that the alien ship was moving away; its image on the screen swiftly grew smaller.
'Get the lifeboat in!' Browne commanded. 'I guess we'd better get started, too. I think I'll recommend that we go to Alta. That's the nearest.'
Later, as he reported to the council, there was an almost fatuous smile on his large face. He was proud of himself. His plan had worked, and so an Earth-born vessel had a film record of scores, perhaps hundreds, of planets that might be colonized by human beings.
The feeling of success suffused him, as he let his gaze move from face to face. He wondered if these councillors were thinking what they should: how right they had been to elect him captain at their annual meetings. Perhaps, they would now see the wisdom of dispensing with elections altogether. The election system was really very dangerous and was against the rules by which vessels of the armed forces were administered. The matter should be settled so that there would be no confusion if anything ever happened to him.
It wasn't – he told himself – that he felt old. But he computed that it would take thirty years to reach Alta, and it might well be that he would not survive another three decades. For strictly emotional reasons, he wanted the right to name his successor. He desired the captaincy to go to his second son.
As he had that thought, his moving gaze touched the doorknob across the room. He saw it turn; he had a peculiar, lightning intuition -
And he snatched his blaster...
The promptness of his reaction protected the ship from the hands of the rebels but did not save his own life. Later, when the younger Browne led a group of armed technicians and scientists to the aid of the council, they found all but one member dead and that one seriously injured. Captain Browne and his eldest son were both victims of the rebellion. Plauck and Kesser were hardly recognizable, but they had apparently had time to draw their weapons and to fire at the rebel group led by Gourdy. Lesbee IV, it developed, had refused to participate.
Of the more than twenty young men who had aided Gourdy, seventeen were dead. A trail of blood led along the corridor, first to two severely wounded men, and then to a storeroom where Gourdy had barricaded himself.
Since he would not surrender, they used their greater knowledge of the ship against him. A needle gun was silently pushed through one wall from a secret passageway. He never knew what killed him.
The new Captain Browne, being over seventy years old himself, thoughtfully had the injured councillor carried to the captain's bed. Somewhere, late in the sleep period, the acting captain considered the problem presented by one living survivor of a group of electors and he shook his head, finally and with decision.
'If he lives,' he thought, 'the whole election system may be rehabilitated and that is absolutely ridiculous.'
Presently, he called his son on the intercom. The two men -the son was forty-five years of age at this time – agreed that the father's judgment was correct. At the older man's suggestion, the younger Browne returned to his own room.
But he was not surprised to hear his father report at the end of the sleep period that the wounded councillor was dead.
And that there was no one left aboard entitled to demand an election.
12
One hundred and nine years after leaving Earth, the spaceship, Hope of Man, went into orbit around Alta III, the only inhabited and habitable planet they had found in the system.
The following 'morning,' Captain Browne informed the shipload of fourth– and fifth-generation colonists that a manned lifeboat would be sent to the planet's surface.
'Every member of the crew must consider himself expendable,' he said earnestly. 'This is the day that our great-grandparents, our forefathers, who boldly set out for the new space frontier so long ago, looked forward to with unfaltering courage. We must not fail them.'
He concluded his announcement over the speaker system of the big ship by saying that the names of the crew members of the lifeboat would be given out within the hour, 'And I know that every real man aboard will want to see his name there.'
John Lesbee, the fifth of his line aboard, had a sinking sensation as he heard those words – and he was not mistaken in his sudden premonition.
Even as he tried to decide if he should give the signal for a desperate act of rebellion, Captain Browne made the expected announcement.
The commander said, 'And I know you will all join him in his moment of pride and courage when I tell you that John Lesbee will lead the crew that carries the hopes of man in this remote area of space. And now the others -'
He thereupon named seven of the nine persons with whom Lesbee had been conspiring to seize control of the ship.
Since the lifeboat would only hold eight persons, Lesbee recognized that Browne was dispatching as many of his enemies as he could. He listened with developing dismay, as the commander ordered all persons on the ship to come to the recreation room. 'Here I request that the crew of the lifeboat join me and the other officers. Their instructions are to surrender themselves to any craft which seeks to intercept them. Their scanners will relay all observed events to us here, and enable us to determine the level of scientific attainment of the dominant race on the planet below.'
Lesbee hurried to his room on the technicians' deck, hoping that perhaps Tellier or Cantlin would seek him out there. He felt himself in need of a council of war, however brief. He waited five minutes, but not one member of the conspiratorial group showed.
Nonetheless, he had time to grow calm. Peculiarly, it was the smell of the ship that soothed him most. From the earliest days of his life, the odor of ozone and the scent of metal at high temperature had been perpetual companions. At the moment, with the ship in orbit, there was a letting up of stress. The smell was of old energies rather than new. But the effect was similar.
He sat in the chair he used for reading, eyes closed, breathing in that complex of odors, product of so many titanic energies. He felt the fear leave his mind and body. He grew brave again, and strong.
Lesbee recognized that his plan to seize power had involved risks. Worse, no one would question Browne's choice of him as the leader of the mission. 'I am,' thought Lesbee, 'probably the most highly trained technician ever to be on this ship.' Browne III had taken him when he was ten, and started him on the long grind of learning that led him to master, one after the other, the skills of the various technical departments. And Browne IV had continued his training.
He was taught how to repair control systems. He gradually came to understand the interrelated cybernetic functions. Long ago, the colossal cobweb of electronic circuitry behind the many panels had become almost an extension of his own nervous system.
He never did find time to learn the basic theory of the ship's main drive. This information was contained in a course of study to which Browne had provided access, and so a little knowledge had come through to him and stayed with him. But in these advanced realms, he actually knew less than his father.