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paying but dangerous SeekServ branch of the Navy. He was a Lieutenant, with
the opinion that rank was unimportant, only drive was essential.
The second was Dembois, who was a bigot.
He came from Louisiana wealth, and his background was one of idleness,
dissipation and revelry. A serious affair with a lovely quadroon girl had
forced his father to order the boy out of the city, and into the Navy.
Authority and wealth and position had saved Dembois from a prison sentence,
but for him the Navy was sentence enough. He despised the SeekServ, and it was
for that reason he had joined it. Self-punishment, in the adolescent  Look how
I m suffering, aren t you sorry you threw me out of the house! tradition had
prompted his signing-on. He loathed the furry and tracked and tentacled and
finned and feathered aliens he discovered on the worlds of space.
He hated Negros and Jews, Catholics and Orientals. He was uncomfortable in the
presence of poor people, sick people, crippled people or hungry people. Yet
there was a fierce determination in him, also. What he wanted to do, he did
thoroughly and well; what he did not want to do, but knew he must do, he did
in a similar fashion. He was an Ensign II.
The third was the Captain of the
Circe.
His past was the reflective, mysterious face of a mirror; any man might look,
but all he would see was the image of himself. No more. His past was silent in
its shell, but its form was there to be seen in the man. His name was Calk.
His personality dominated the
Circe, held the other two in check. Calk was strong, perhaps too strong for
his own good. The bickering was beginning to tell on him.
 What the hell was it all about this time?
Dembois and Kradter spoke together, their voices rising automatically in anger
as they found competition.
Calk was forced to shut them up again. Then he motioned to Kradter.  Okay. You
first. What was it this time?
Kradter looked disgruntled, and yanked his pipe from where it was thrust
pistol-like in his belt. He dug a finger into the blackened bowl and growled
something unintelligible.
 Well, now look, Kradter, if you want to say something, say it. If you don t,
there isn t an argument, nothing to settle, and I can go the blazes back to my
plot-tank.
Kradter looked up, as though ready to throw a string of cursewords, but merely
said, instead,  We were arguing the nobility of Man. 
Calk s eyebrows went up. They were thick and black, and struck the impression
of two slanted caterpillars inching up his forehead.
Kradter explained hurriedly, expecting Dembois to burst in momentarily.  I was
saying that the poor slobs we find on these worlds deserve human care. It s
our obligation to these lesser creatures to provide them with the comforts a
greater race can offer.
Dembois snorted, and Calk looked over sharply.  Now, what was your beef, that
you wanted to start a brawl?
Dembois looked angrily at Kradter.  And I say it s not our place to do
anything for these stinking savages.
The only thing we owe them is conquest. They d overrun us in a month if we
gave them the chance. Kill the bloody bastards, that s the answer to colonial
expansion out here.
 Put them away for good, the first thing we see them. It s the only way we can
be sure we re protected. This ass-- he stopped at Kradter s bleat of anger,
and tensed as the other man took a half-step forward.
Calk stopped them.  Okay, knock it off. So one of you thinks we should play
Big Daddy to the poor natives, and the other thinks we should mow  em down on
sight. Okay. Fine. Good. Now shut your traps and let me get our plot set, or
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we ll wind up frying inside some sun when we popout.
He gave them both a strange look, and murmured,  Homo superior,
and walked out of the lounge.
The other two sat staring at points between them. Neither spoke. No crossbow
bolts were loosed.
The
Circe moved out.
A green fog in the ever-changing pattern of Inverspace. Green, roiling, oily
dark fog.
A speck of crimson that flickered and steadied and exploded into sharp golden
fragments.
A lurch, a twist, the guts heaving and the puke-masks: filling, and the
eyeballs burning without heat. The roots of the hair straining, and the arches
of the cheekbones stretching the skin tight as a corpse s. Then a grey-out, a
black-out, a white-and-black-out and the ship was traveling in the normal
universe again.
They were in sight of the cold, chiselled stars and the steady multi-colored
stars. They were a Catalog Ship and there was work to be done. The
constellation firmed out in the plot-tank, superimposing itself almost exactly
over Calk s lined-in course. The CourseComp chattered eerily and the few
discrepancies in course variation were merged, so that the wing-shaped
constellation was directly on the Captain s pattern.
Dembois and Kradter knocked politely on the door to the control cabin, and
slid it open when Calk said absently,  Come.
 How s it set? Dembois asked.
 About three points off, but we ve corrected already, Calk replied,
indicating the plot-tank. He slipped the infrared goggles off and stuck them
on their pad.  You start undogging the gear yet?
Kradter nodded, addressing the nod totally to Calk, and Dembois s lips pursed
in annoyance that the conversation had been stolen away from him. He thrust
back into it with,  I hope we don t run up against any eetees.
The last batch was enough to turn my stomach for quite a while.
Kradter whirled on him again.  I thought we had this out once and for all,
man. I thought you understood our job is to befriend and aid these
unfortunate--
 Bull! Dembois snarled.  Show me in the Regs where it says that? Show me, or
shut your Heinie trap--
eetee lover.
Kradter had swung before Calk could stop him. He caught Dembois along the
cheekbone and spun the
smaller man. The Ensign II staggered backward, crashed into the bulkhead and
slid to one knee, shaking his head.
Kradter was moving forward when Calk caught him, slipping his hands under the
Prussian s armpits and up behind his neck, where they locked. He dragged
Kradter half off the floor in a full-nelson and shook him solidly, taking the
Lieutenant s breath away.
 Now...knock...off...that...stuff! Calk whispered loudly in Kradter s ear. He
held the man completely paralyzed, his feet dangling a quarter inch off the
floor. Tremendous muscles stood out on Calk s arms, beneath the sleeves of his
T-shirt, and a blue pulse of nerve throbbed at his right temple.
Dembois staggered erect, clutching his face, and made a few idle stepping [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]