INSANE SECOND MATE: Well. Let me see. Just let me press this dog’s hind paw here, and adjust this earthworm. There now. Arcturus? I’m not sure; but I do see a dead queen sitting upside down in a chair off the larboard bow.
FIRST MATE: You see? You see?
CAPTAIN: Yes. And I’m not crazy about staying in the galley all the time, either. But we can be patient, Mr. Balls. The alien won’t actually be aboard very long. Less than eight months to go, now. Then, you know, all we have to do is take it in tow for a while, just for a few years.
FIRST MATE: In tow? Tow it?
CAPTAIN: Well, of course. It’s our responsibility now.
CHIEF ENGINEER: An’ ye wouldna abandon the puir wee thing in the near-absolute-zero cold of interstellar space, surely, Mr. Balls?
FIRST MATE: Yes! Out the hatch! Now! Out the hatch! Out the hatch!
INSANE SECOND MATE: Shut the trap, Balls.
FIRST MATE: Captain. Now I’m talking quite quietly now, aren’t I. Now do you mean to say that when we finally get rid of this monster, when it gets too big for the ship and breaks its way out, causing terrible damage to the tubes, perhaps wrecking the whole Engine Room on its way—had you thought of that, “Bolts”?—and quite possibly destructing the entire ship—that, if we survive that ordeal, you intend to turn back, take the mindless, helpless thing in tow, and limp on after the Fleet at half speed for five years, ten years, twenty years (Ship Time)—while it keeps getting bigger, and stronger, and smarter, and wilder? Captain! don’t you realise that this thing is going to be the death of us?
CAPTAIN: Yes, Mr. Balls, I do. But you know, if it wasn’t, something else would be. A meteor, an interstellar plague spore, the irresistible gravity well around an invisible neutron star, an extra-galactic enemy destroyer, a collision with another Ship of the Fleet… One way or another, Mr. Balls, we are going to have had it. Sometime, somewhere in the time-space continuum, there is a point-instant with our name on it. So what can we do but go on?
FIRST MATE: But we don’t have to drag this thing along with us—
CAPTAIN: If we don’t give it a fair start, then who’s to. carry our breadfruit trees on to the Unknown End when we run out of fuel?
CHIEF ENGINEER: I’ve thocht, Captain, that perhaps that cruiser might lend us a hand wi’ the beastie, if it I knew we had one. "
CAPTAIN: It certainly would be a help in the towing. But ,the problem is getting “Sparks” to send a message to the cruiser. If only we had a normal Communications Officer!
COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER: Please be quiet, everybody. I’m receiving.
INSANE SECOND MATE: From the dead upside-down queen out there?
COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER: No; she isn’t saying anything. This is from the alien, I think.
INSANE SECOND MATE: Already? Ha! I always said that a ship could communicate with its alien, if it just listened carefully. What is it saying?
COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER: It still doesn’t speak English.
INSANE SECOND MATE: What’s the message, then?
COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER: Hiccups.
CAPTAIN: Hiccups?
COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER: It has the hiccups. It must have been the tomato rice soup. Here, I’ll put it on the intracom. Listen.
ALIEN: Hic Hic
CHIEF ENGINEER: Captain, there’s a rattling in the forward pipes, and a high pressure area building up amidships. Should I try baking soda?
CAPTAIN: No, no, you never use soda when there’s an alien aboard, haven’t you read the Handbook? Try Maalox.
CHIEF ENGINEER: Aye aye, Captain.
ALIEN: Hic
CHIEF ENGINEER: There, there, puir wee sleekit cowerin’ beastie.
FIRST MATE: Oh, my God, if only I could have shipped aboard a cruiser, where I belong! I’m going mad here! You’re all mad. I’m mad.
INSANE SECOND MATE: Mr. Balls. Listen. Would it make you feel any better if there was another male on board?
FIRST MATE: Another male? Of course it would. Strength! Sanity! Logic! Cleanliness! Godliness! Virility! Yes! Yes!
INSANE SECOND MATE: Even if it was an alien?
FIRST MATE: An alien?
INSANE SECOND MATE: This might, you know, be a male alien.
CAPTAIN: Yes, there’s better than a fifty percent chance of that.
FIRST MATE: My God. It might. You’re right. It might.
CAPTAIN: That was a good thought, “Bats.”
INSANE SECOND MATE: Well, it’s not my own preference, but I thought it might stabilise Mr. Balls.
FIRST MATE: A male alien. A male. By golly. It just might be. Hey. Alien. Are you there?
ALIEN: Hie
FIRST MATE: What are you, alien? Hmm? Are you a little boy alien? Hmm?
CAPTAIN: Please, Mr. Balls, don’t, as it were, go overboard. Keep your duties in mind, and the obscure dignity of your position. We need you. You’d better do some mathematics right now. As for me, I’ll be starting dinner soon. Second Mate, how are things on the Bridge?
INSANE SECOND MATE: Splendid, Captain. Fiery bears and scorpions break like luminous foam and stream backward in glory from our prow. Beneath us, above us, on all sides of us is the abyss, unsounded, full of unimaginable horrors, unpredictable disasters, undeserved beauties, and unexpected death. Like a flying yarrow stalk we shoot forward, if it is forward, through the gulfs of probability.
CAPTAIN: Very good. “Bolts”?
CHIEF ENGINEER: Dandy, Captain. We’re on Warp Five, and the Maalox is working fine.
CAPTAIN : Very good. I shall make dinner now. Something light but nourishing, I think. Chinese Egg Flower Soup, perhaps.
COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER: Please. Will you all be quiet a minute. I’m receiving from Cosmic Sources.
INSANE SECOND MATE: Oh, I hear them sometimes without even a radio. What are they saying?
ALIEN: Hie
COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER: Shh. Well, here’s a message just came in from a sister ship of the fleet. It says: Tsk Tsk.
CAPTAIN: Never mind that. What do the Cosmic Sources say?
COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER: I can’t quite make it out. There’s a lot of star hiss, and the code keeps changing. It might be Congratulations. Or again it might not be that at all. Be quiet, please. I’m listening.
The Eye Altering
Miriam stood at the big window of the infirmary ward and looked out at the view and thought, For twenty-five years I have been standing at this window and looking out at this view. And never once have I seen what I wanted to see.
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem—
The pain was forgotten, yes. The hatred and the fear, forgotten. In exile you don’t remember the grey days and the black years. You remember the sunlight, the orchards, the white cities. Even when you try to forget it you remember that Jerusalem was golden.
The sky outside the ward window was dulled with haze. Over the low ridge called Ararat the sun was setting; setting slowly, for New Zion had a slower spin than Old Earth, and a twenty-eight-hour day; settling, rather than setting, dully down onto the dull horizon. There were no clouds to gather the colors of sunset. There were seldom any clouds. When the haze thickened there might be a misty, smothering rain; when the haze was thin, as now, it hung high and vague, formless. It never quite cleared. You never saw the color of the sky. You never saw the stars. And through the haze the sun, no, not the sun, but NSC 641 (Class G) burned swollen and vaporous, warty as an orange—remember oranges? the sweet juice on the tongue? the orchards of Haifa?—NSC 641 stared, like a bleary eye. You could stare back at it. No glory of gold to blind you. Two imbeciles staring at each other.