Rand knew what his first two stops would have to be. First, Professor Loder’s cabin. Then, Number Six Hold, where the cargo of anti-virus drugs was stored. Professor Loder and those drugs were the only two really important things aboard this ship. They had to be rescued, if anything at all got rescued.
Rand didn’t have any fancy ideas about his own importance. He was important mainly to himself. He was just a skilled space engineer who had been working for a while in a lab on Rigel IV, and who now was on his way home to Earth.
He wanted very much to get out of this mess alive. But he knew that it wouldn’t be any great loss to anyone else if he didn’t.
Professor David Loder, though, was the great man of anti-virus research. He had spent the last five years on Rigel IV, trying to develop a drug to deal with a deadly virus disease. The disease was plaguing Earth’s colonists on a dozen different planets.
Now Dr. Loder was going home to Earth to test his drug. Once the drug won approval on Earth, it could be shipped to the planets where the virus epidemics were raging.
No other man could have produced that cargo of drugs. Professor Loder and his work spelled the difference between life and death for whole planets. Tom Rand meant to see to it that those years of work hadn’t been wasted.
Choking and gasping, he made his way through the smoke-filled passageway, trying not to breathe very often or very deeply. He could hardly see a thing. Tears were streaming down his cheeks as the smoke went to work on his eyes.
Professor Loder was in Cabin Fifteen. Rand found the right door and banged on it with his fists. No answer came.
He banged again, harder. Still no sound from the other side. After a moment he tried the door. It wasn’t locked. He shoved it open and went in.
“Professor Loder!” he called.
The professor was there, all right. Rand saw the small, white-haired man huddled at his desk. His head was slumped forward. A pencil was tightly clutched in his fingers. He wasn’t moving.
Rand crossed the cabin in three quick steps.
“Professor?” he said hopefully. “Professor Loder?” He shook the little man’s bony arm. Loder’s head wobbled, but he didn’t wake up.
“Professor Loder!” Rand shouted, as though he could call the great scientist back from the dead by yelling at him. “Snap out of it, professor!”
Loder must have been at work when the sudden shift out of special space had come. The jarring shock had been too much for the frail old man.
Rand went through the routine of checking the professor’s pulse, of trying to find some spark of life somewhere. It was useless.
“Is he dead?” a quiet voice asked.
Rand looked around and scowled in disgust. Anthony Leswick stood by the door.
“Yes, he’s dead,” Rand snapped. He felt like adding, “And you’re still alive. There isn’t any justice in the universe, is there?” But he didn’t say it.
Of all the people Rand didn’t feel like meeting right this minute, Leswick led the list. Rand had been bugged by Leswick since the beginning of the voyage. He didn’t like the first thing about the man. He couldn’t stand Leswick’s pale, skinny face or his little shiny eyes or his high-pitched voice. And he really despised the so-called “science” that Leswick claimed to be an expert in. Metaphysical Synthesis. What kind of science was that?
No kind of science at all, Rand thought. Just some big-sounding words, adding up to absolutely nothing. Metaphysical Synthesis! An empty science, a zero science. A phony science.
“Most of the others are dead too,” the thin man in the doorway said. “I’ve been checking all the cabins. It’s a great tragedy, isn’t it? Luckily, when the explosion came I was—”
“Yes,” Rand said tightly. “Suppose you get yourself out of my way now. I want to check on the drug cargo.”
He shouldered past Leswick and out into the passageway, feeling hollow and angry inside. It wasn’t right, he told himself. For a genius like David Loder to be killed, and somebody like Anthony Leswick to survive—
All during the trip Leswick had been talking up Metaphysical Synthesis. He even gave a lecture on it one night. He had a whole string of degrees from colleges and universities on Earth, but Rand wasn’t impressed by that. What counted was what Leswick said, not what degrees he could flash around. And what he said struck Rand as a load of nonsense.
Metaphysical Synthesis, as far as Rand could figure it out, was a mixture of a lot of things. It was a study that tried to tie together history, anthropology, psychology, sociology, and half a dozen other ologies. Everything that went into Metaphysical Synthesis was pretty fuzzy, and what came out was even fuzzier. As an engineer, Rand liked things to have exact rules.
The speed of light was an exact thing. The pull of gravity was an exact thing. The power of a spaceship’s drive unit was an exact thing. You could measure and calculate all those things and know where you were and where you were heading.
But to patch together a bunch of foggy and confused subjects that had no exact rules at all, and claim that you’d found the secrets of the universe—no. Rand couldn’t buy one bit of that. What bugged him most of all was how smug and cocky Leswick was about his so-called “science.” He acted as if he knew it all.
And Leswick was still alive, though David Loder was dead. It wasn’t fair! It wasn’t fair!
Swallowing his anger, Rand stumbled through the smoke to the end of the passageway. In a few moments he came to the hatch that led to the ship’s inner service shaft. His only way of getting to the storage hold and the drugs was down that shaft. Even with Loder dead, the drugs still might save millions of lives.
But the hatch was closed. And it wouldn’t open.
Frowning, Rand tugged on the handle. When that failed to do anything, he pressed the emergency release knob. The hatch still didn’t open.
Instead, a red light went on over it, and the voice of the ship’s computer came from a loudspeaker:
“This hatch is closed for reasons of safety.”
“I know,” said Rand. “But I’ve got to get down there to save those drugs!”
“Dangerous radioactive gases have been released in the lower levels. All connecting hatches have been sealed. This prevents spread of the gases to the upper levels.”
“That makes sense,” Rand told the computer. “But there’s important cargo down there. There may even be some live human beings. Can you tell me if the radon has reached the storage hold?”
“The storage hold is not yet affected by the spread of radon.”
“Okay, then. This shaft will take me straight there, won’t it? If there’s no radon here, and none there, then it won’t do any harm to open the hatch. Right?”
“All connecting hatches must remain sealed.”
Arguing like this with the computer made him angry. “Listen, you dumb machine. I just explained to you why it’s safe to open this hatch! Open it up!”
“Is that a direct order?”
“It sure is,” Rand yelled.
“Direct orders can be accepted only from officers of the ship.”
“All the officers are dead. You told me so yourself.” Rand pounded his fists on the hatch in fury. Then an idea struck him. “Since the officers are dead, command of the ship goes to the civilian who knows most about running a spaceship. That’s me. I’m your new captain. I order you to open this hatch. If you say no once more, it’ll be mutiny!”
The computer’s highly logical mind thought that over for a moment. Then it said, “The order is accepted.”
“Thank you,” Rand said sarcastically, as the hatch swung open.
Chapter 3
There was less smoke in the service shaft than there was in the hall. Rand was glad to breathe some more-or-less fresh air again. He climbed into the shaft and the hatch closed behind him.