“That won’t be too easy, sir,” Hao said. “Not here.”
Sven frowned thoughtfully. They were on Discaya II, a small outpost planet in the Southern Star Reaches. Here they had unloaded a cargo of machine parts, and taken on the Company-assigned replacement who was the innocent source of all the trouble. Discaya had plenty of trained men, but they were all specialists in hydraulics, mining, and allied fields. The planet’s single radio operator was happy where he was, had a wife and children on Discaya, owned a house in a pleasant suburb, and would never consider leaving.
“Ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous,” Sven said. “I can’t spare Forbes, and I’ll not leave the new man behind. It wouldn’t be fair. Besides, the Company would probably fire me. And rightly, rightly. A captain should be able to handle trouble aboard his own ship.”
Hao nodded glumly.
“Where is this Forbes from?”
“A farm near an isolated village in the mountain country of the Southern United States. Georgia, sir. Perhaps you’ve heard of it?”
“I think so,” said Sven, who had taken a course in Regional Characteristics at Uppsala, to better fit himself for the job of captain. “Georgia produces peanuts and hogs.”
“And men,” Hao added. “Strong, capable men. You’ll find Georgians working on all frontiers, out of all proportions to their actual numbers. Their reputation is unexcelled.”
“I know all this,” Sven grumbled. “And Forbes is an excellent man. But this racialism—”
“Forbes can’t be considered typical,” Hao said. “He was raised in a small, isolated community, far from the mainstream of American life. Similar communities all over the world develop and cling to strange folkways. I remember a village in Honan where—”
“I still find it hard to believe,” Sven said, interrupting what promised to be a long dissertation on Chinese country life. “And there’s simply no excuse for it. Every community everywhere has a heritage of some sort of racial feeling. But it’s every individual’s responsibility to rid himself of that when he enters the mainstream of Terran life. Others have. Why not Forbes? Why must he inflict his problems on us? Wasn’t he taught anything about the Great Cooperation?”
Hao shrugged his shoulders. “Would you care to speak to him, Captain?”
“Yes. Wait, I’ll speak to Angka first.”
The chief engineer left the bridge. Sven remained deep in thought until he heard a knock at the door.
“Come in.”
Angka entered. He was cargo foreman, a tall, splendidly proportioned man with skin the color of a ripe plum. He was a full-blooded Negro from Ghana, and a first-class guitar player.
“I assume,” Sven said, “you know all about the trouble.”
“It’s unfortunate, sir,” Angka said.
“Unfortunate? It’s downright catastrophic! You know the risk involved in taking the ship up in this condition. I’m supposed to blast off in less than three hours. We can’t sail without a radioman, and we need the replacement, too.”
Angka stood impassively, waiting.
Sven flicked an inch of white ash from his cigar. “Now look, Angka, you must know why I called you here.”
“I can guess, sir,” Angka said, grinning.
“You’re Forbes’s best friend. Can’t you do something with him?”
“I’ve tried, Captain, Lord knows I’ve tried. But you know Georgians.”
“I’m afraid I don’t.”
“Good men, sir, but stubborn as mules. Once they’ve made up their minds, that’s it. I’ve been talking to Forbes for two days about this. I got him drunk last night—strictly in line of duty, sir,” Angka added hastily.
“It’s all right. Go on.”
“And I talked to him like I’d talk to my own son. Reminded him how good the crew got along. All the fun we’d had in all the ports. How good the Cooperation felt. Now look, Jimmy, I said to him, you keep on like this, you kill all that. You don’t want that, do you, I asked him. He bawled like a baby, sir.”
“But he wouldn’t change his mind?”
“Said he couldn’t. Told me I might as well quit trying. There was one and only one race in this galaxy he wouldn’t serve with, and there was no sense talking about it. Said his pappy would spin in his grave if he were to do so.”
“Is there any chance he’ll change his mind?” Sven asked.
“I’ll go on trying, but I don’t think there’s a chance.”
He left. Captain Sven sat, his jaw cradled in one big hand. He glanced again at the ship’s chronometer. Less than three hours before blastoff!
He lifted the receiver of the intercom and asked for a direct line to the spacefield tower. When he was in contact with the officer in charge he said, “I’d like to request permission to stay a few days longer.”
“Wish I could grant it, Captain Sven,” the officer said. “But we need the pit. We can only handle one interstellar ship at a time here. An ore boat from Calayo is due in five hours. They’ll probably be short of fuel.”
“They always are,” Sven said.
“Tell you what we can do. If it’s a serious mechanical difficulty, we could find a couple cranes, lower your ship to horizontal, and drag it off the field. Might be quite a while before we could set it up again, though.”
“Thanks, but never mind. I’ll blast on schedule.” He signed off. He couldn’t allow his ship to become laid up like that. The Company would have his hide, not a doubt about it.
But there was a course of action he could take. An unpleasant one, but necessary. He got to his feet, discarded the dead cigar stump, and marched out of the bridge.
He came to the ship’s infirmary. The doctor, in his white coat, was seated with his feet on a desk, reading a three-month-old German medical journal.
“Welcome, Cap. Care for a shot of strictly medicinal brandy?”
“I could use it,” Sven said.
The young doctor poured out two healthy doses from a bottle marked Swamp Fever Culture.
“Why the label?” Sven asked.
“Discourages the men from sampling. They have to steal the cook’s lemon extract.” The doctor’s name was Yitzhak Vilkin. He was an Israeli, a graduate of the new medical school at Beersheba.
“You know about the Forbes problem?” Sven asked.
“Everybody does.”
“I wanted to ask you, in your capacity as medical officer aboard this ship: Have you ever observed any previous indications of racial hatred in Forbes?”
“Not one,” Vilkin answered promptly.
“Are you sure?”
“Israelis are good at sensing that sort of thing. I assure you, it caught me completely by surprise. I’ve had some lengthy interviews with Forbes since, of course.”
“Any conclusions?”
“He’s honest, capable, straightforward, and slightly simple. He possesses some antiquated attitudes in the form of ancient traditions. The Mountain-Georgians, you know, have a considerable body of such customs. They’ve been much studied by anthropologists from Samoa and Fiji. Haven’t you read Coming of Age in Georgia? Or Folkways of Mountain-Georgia?”
“I don’t have time for such things,” Sven said. “My time is pretty well occupied running this ship without me having to read up on the individual psychology of the entire crew.”
“I suppose so, Cap,” the doctor said. “Well, those books are in the ship’s library, if you’d care to glance at them. I don’t see how I can help you. Re-education takes time. I’m a medical officer anyhow, not a psychologist. The plain fact is this: There is one race that Forbes will not serve with, one race which causes him to enact all his ancient racial hostilities. Your new man, by some mischance, happens to be from that race.”
“I’m leaving Forbes behind,” Sven said abruptly. “The communications officer can learn how to handle the radio. Forbes can take the next ship back to Georgia.”