A Place in the Sun by Stephen Marlowe (beautiful books to read txt) 📗

The terrible weapon blasted death and carnage through the ship.

The radioman of the Fomalhautian freighter gave the distress signal to the Deck Officer, who looked at it, blinked, and bolted ’bove decks to the captain’s cabin. His face  was very white when he reached the door and his heart pounded with excitement. As the Deck Officer crossed an electronic beam before the door a metallic voice said: “The Captain is asleep and will be disturbed for nothing but emergency priority.”

Nodding, the Deck officer stuck his thumb in the whorl-lock of the door and entered the cabin. “Begging your pardon, sir,” he cried, “but we just received an SOS from—”

The Captain stirred groggily, sat up, switched on a green night light and squinted through it at the Deck Officer. “Well, what is it? Isn’t the Eye working?”

“Yes, sir. An SOS, sir….”

“If we’re close enough to help, subspace or normal space, take the usual steps, lieutenant. Surely you don’t need me to—”

“The usual steps can’t be taken, sir. Far as I can make out, that ship is doomed. She’s bound on collision course for Sol, only twenty million miles out now.”

“That’s too bad, lieutenant,” the Captain said with genuine sympathy in his voice. “I’m sorry to hear that. But what do you want me to do about it?”

“The ship, sir. The ship that sent the SOS—hold on to your hat, sir—”

“Get to the point now, will you, young man?” the Captain growled sleepily.

“The ship which sent the SOS signal, the ship heading on collision course for Sol, is the Glory of the Galaxy!”

For a moment the Captain said nothing. Distantly, you could hear the hum of the subspace drive-unit and the faint whining of the stasis generator. Then the Captain bolted out of bed after unstrapping himself. In his haste he forgot the ship was in weightless deep space and went sailing, arms flailing air, across the room. The lieutenant helped him down and into his magnetic-soled shoes.

“My God,” the Captain said finally. “Why did it happen? Why did it have to happen to the Glory of the Galaxy?”

“What are you going to do, sir?”

“I can’t do anything. I won’t take the responsibility. Have the radioman contact the Hub at once.”

“Yes, sir.”

The Glory of the Galaxy, the SOS ship heading on collision course with the sun, was making its maiden run from the assembly satellites of Earth across the inner solar system via the perihelion passage  which would bring it within twenty-odd million miles of the sun, to Mars which now was on the opposite side of Sol from Earth. Aboard the gleaming new ship was the President of the Galactic Federation and his entire cabinet.

The Fomalhautian freighter’s emergency message was received at the Hub of the Galaxy within moments after it had been sent, although the normal space distance was in the neighborhood of one hundred thousand light years. The message was bounced—in amazingly quick time—from office to office at the hub, cutting through the usual red tape because of its top priority. And—since none of the normal agencies at the Hub could handle it—the message finally arrived at an office which very rarely received official messages of any kind. This was the one unofficial, extra-legal office at the Hub of the Galaxy. Lacking official function, the office had no technical existence and was not to be found in any Directory of the Hub. At the moment, two young men were seated inside. Their sole job was to maintain liaison with a man whose very existence was doubted by most of the human inhabitants of the Galaxy but whose importance could not be measured by mere human standards in those early days when the Galactic League was becoming the Galactic Federation.

The name of the man with whom they maintained contact was Johnny Mayhem.

“Did you read it?” the blond man asked.

“I read it.”

“If it got down here, that means they can’t handle it anywhere else.”

“Of course they can’t. What the hell could normal slobs like them or like us do about it?”

“Nothing, I guess. But wait a minute! You don’t mean you’re going to send Mayhem, without asking him, without telling—”

“We can’t ask him now, can we?”

“Johnny Mayhem’s elan is at the moment speeding from Canopus to Deneb, where on the fourth planet of the Denebian system a dead body is waiting for him in cold storage. The turnover from League to Federation status of the Denebian system is causing trouble in Deneb City, so Mayhem—”

“Deneb City will probably survive without Mayhem. Well, won’t it?”

“I guess so, but—”

 “I know. The deal is we’re supposed to tell Mayhem where he’s going and what he can expect. The deal also is, every inhabited world has a body waiting for his elan in cold storage. But don’t you think if we could talk to Mayhem now—”

“It isn’t possible. He’s in transit.”

“Don’t you think if we could talk to him now he would agree to board the Glory of the Galaxy?”

“How should I know? I’m not Johnny Mayhem.”

“If he doesn’t board her, it’s certain death for all of them.”

“And if he does board her, what the hell can he do about it? Besides, there isn’t any dead body awaiting his elan on that ship or any ship. He wouldn’t make a very efficacious ghost.”

“But there are live people. Scores of them. Mayhem’s elan is quite capable of possessing a living host.”

“Sure. Theoretically it is. But damn it all, what would the results be? We’ve never tried it. It’s liable to damage Mayhem. As for the host—”

“The host might die. I know it. But he’ll die anyway. The whole shipload of them is heading on collision course for the sun.”

“Does the SOS say why?”

“No. Maybe Mayhem can find out and do something about it.”

“Yeah, maybe. That’s a hell of a way to risk the life of the most important man in the Galaxy. Because if Mayhem boards that ship and can’t do anything about it, he’ll die with the rest of them.”

“Why? We could always pluck his elan out again.”

“If he were inhabiting a dead one. In a live body, I don’t think so. The attraction would be stronger. There would be forces of cohesion—”

“That’s true. Still, Mayhem’s our only hope.”

“I’ll admit it’s a job for Mayhem, but he’s too important.”

“Is he? Don’t be a fool. What, actually, is Johnny Mayhem’s importance? His importance lies in the very fact that he is expendable. His life—for the furtherance of the new Galactic Federation.”

“But—”

“And the President is aboard that ship. Maybe he can’t do as much for the Galaxy in the long run as Mayhem can, but don’t you see, man, he’s a figurehead. Right now he’s the most important man in the Galaxy, and if we could talk to him I’m sure  Mayhem would agree. Mayhem would want to board that ship.”

“It’s funny, we’ve been working with Mayhem all these years and we never even met the guy.”

“Would you know him if you saw him?”

“Umm-mm, I guess not. Do you think we really can halt his elan in subspace and divert it over to the Glory of the Galaxy?”

“I take it you’re beginning to see things my way. And the answer to your question is yes.”

“Poor Mayhem. You know, I actually feel sorry for the guy. He’s had more adventures than anyone since Homer wrote the Odyssey and there won’t ever be any rest for him.”

“Stop feeling sorry for him and start hoping he succeeds.”

“Yeah.”

“And let’s see about getting a bead on his elan.”

The two young men walked to a tri-dim chart which took up much of the room. One of them touched a button and blue light glowed within the chart, pulsing brightly and sharply where space-sectors intersected.

“He’s in C-17 now,” one of the men said as a gleaming whiteness was suddenly superimposed at a single point on the blue.

“Can you bead him?”

“I think so. But I still feel sorry for Mayhem. He’s expecting to wake up in a cold-storage corpse on Deneb IV but instead he’ll come to in a living body aboard a spaceship on collision course for the sun.”

“Just hope he—”

“I know. Succeeds. I don’t even want to think of the possibility he might fail.”

In seconds, the gleaming white dot crawled across the surface of the tri-dim chart from sector C-17 to sector S-1.

The Glory of the Galaxy was now nineteen million miles out from the sun and rushing through space at a hundred miles per second, normal space drive. The Glory of the Galaxy thus moved a million miles closer to fiery destruction every three hours—but since the sun’s gravitational force had to be added to that speed, the ship was slated to plunge into the sun’s corona in little more than twenty-four hours.

Since the ship’s refrigeration units would function perfectly until the outer hull reached a temperature of eleven hundred degrees Fahrenheit, none of its passengers  knew that anything was wrong. Even the members of the crew went through all the normal motions. Only the Glory of the Galaxy’s officers in their bright new uniforms and gold braid knew the grim truth of what awaited the gleaming two-thousand ton spaceship less than twenty-four hours away at the exact center of its perihelion passage.

Something—unidentified as yet—in all the thousands of intricate things that could go wrong on a spaceship, particularly a new one making its maiden voyage, had gone wrong. The officers were checking their catalogues and their various areas of watch meticulously—and not because their own lives were at stake. In spaceflight, your own life always is at stake. There are too many imponderables: you are, to a certain degree, expendable. The commissioned contingent aboard the Glory of the Galaxy was a dedicated group, hand-picked from all the officers in the solar system.

But they could find nothing. And do nothing.

Within a day, their lives along with the lives of the enlisted men aboard the Glory of the Galaxy and the passengers on its maiden run, would be snuffed out in a brilliant burst of solar heat.

And the President of the Galactic Federation would die because some unknown factor had locked the controls of the spaceship, making it impossible to turn or use forward rockets against the gravitational pull of the sun.

Nineteen million miles. In normal space, a considerable distance. A hundred miles a second—a very considerable normal space speed. Increasing….

Ever since they had left Earth’s assembly satellites, Sheila Kelly had seen a lot of a Secret Serviceman named Larry Grange, who was a member of the President’s corps of bodyguards. She liked Larry, although there was nothing serious in their relationship. He was handsome and charming and she was naturally flattered with his attentions. Still, although he was older than Sheila, she sensed that he was a boy rather than a man and had the odd feeling that, faced with a real crisis, he would confirm this tragically.

It was night aboard the Glory of the Galaxy. Which was to say the blue-green night lights had replaced the white day lights in the companionways  and public rooms of the spaceship, since its ports were sealed against the fierce glare of the sun. It was hard to believe, Sheila thought, that they were only nineteen million miles from the sun. Everything was so cool—so comfortably air-conditioned….

She met Larry in the Sunside Lounge, a cabaret as nice as any terran nightclub she had ever seen. There were stylistic Zodiac drawings on the walls and blue-mirrored columns supporting the roof. Like everything else aboard the Glory of the Galaxy, the Sunside Lounge hardly seemed to belong on a spaceship. For Sheila Kelly, though—herself a third secretary with the department of Galactic Economy—it was all very thrilling.

“Hello, Larry,” she said as the Secret Serviceman joined her at their table. He was a tall young man in his late twenties with crewcut blond hair; but he sat down heavily now and did not offer Sheila his usual smile.

“Why, what on earth is the matter?” Sheila asked him.

“Nothing. I need a drink, that’s all.”

The drinks came. Larry gulped his and ordered another. His complete silence baffled Sheila, who finally said:

“Surely it isn’t anything I did.”

“You? Don’t be silly.”

“Well! After the way you said that I don’t know if I should be glad or not.”

“Just forget it. I’m sorry, kid. I—” He reached out and touched her hand. His own hand was damp and cold.

“Going to tell me, Larry?”

“Listen. What’s a guy supposed to do if he overhears something he’s not supposed to overhear, and—”

“How should I know unless you tell me what you overheard? It is you you’re talking about, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. I was going off duty, walking by officer quarters and … oh, forget it. I better not tell you.”

“I’m a good listener, Larry.”

“Look, Irish. You’re a good anything—and that’s the truth. You have looks and you have brains and I have a hunch through all that Emerald Isle sauciness you have a heart too. But—”

“But you don’t want to tell me.”

“It isn’t I don’t want to, but no one’s supposed to know, not even the President.”

“You sure make it sound mysterious.”

 “Just the officers. Oh,