The Cosmic Computer - H. Beam Piper (best black authors txt) 📗

began getting the supplies aboard. Kurt Fawzi, Klem Zareff, Judge Ledue, Franz Veltrin and the others flew over from Force Command. Sylvie Jacquemont came from Litchfield, and so did Wade Lucas, Morgan Gatworth, Lester Dawes, Lorenzo Menardes and a number of others. Neither Conn’s mother nor sister came.

“I don’t know what’s the matter with those two,” Sylvie told him. “They always seem to be scrapping with each other now, and the only thing they can agree on is that you and your father ought to stop whatever you’re doing, right away. Your mother can’t adjust to your father being a big Storisende businessman, and she says he’ll lose every centisol he has and both of you will probably go to jail, and then she’s afraid you will find Merlin, and Flora’s sure you and your father are swindling everybody on the planet.”

“Sylvie, I had no idea things would be like that,” he told her contritely. “I wish I hadn’t suggested that you stay there, now.”

“Oh, it isn’t so bad, so far. Your mother and I get along all right when Flora isn’t there, and Flora and I get along when your mother isn’t around. Mealtimes aren’t much fun, though.”

His father came out from Storisende, looked the ship over, and seemed relieved.

“I’m glad you’re ready to get off,” he said. “You know this hyperspace freighter, the Andromeda? Some private group in Storisende has chartered her. She’s loading supplies now. I have a private detective agency, Barton-Massarra, trying to find out where’s she’s going. I think you’d better get this ship off, right away.”

“We have everything aboard, all the supplies and everything,” Jacquemont told him. “We can lift off tonight.”

XIII

The ship lurched slightly. In the outside screens, the lights around, the crowd that was waving goodbye, and the floor of the crater began receding. The sound pickups were full of cheering, and the boom of a big gun at one of the top batteries, and the recorded and amplified music of a band playing the traditional “Spacemen’s Hymn.”

“It’s been a long time since I heard that played in earnest,” Jacquemont said. “Well, we’re off to see the Wizard.”

The lights dwindled and merged into a tiny circle in the darkness of the crater. The music died away; the cannon shots became a faint throbbing. Finally, there was silence, and only the stars above and the dark land and the starlit sea below. After a long while a sunset glow, six hours past on Barathrum, appeared in the west, behind the now appreciable curvature of the planet.

“Stand by for shift to vertical,” Captain Nichols called, his voice echoing from P.A.-outlets through the ship.

“Ready for shift, Captain Nichols,” Jacquemont reported from the duplicate-control panel.

Conn went to the after bulkhead, leaning his back against it. “Ready here, Captain,” he said.

Other voices took it up. Lights winked on the control panels.

“Shifting over,” Nichols said. “Your ship now, Captain Jacquemont.”

“Thank you, Mr. Nichols.”

The deck began to tilt, and then he was lying on his back, his feet against the side of the control room, which had altered its shape and dimensions. There was a jar as the drive went on in line with the new direction of the lift and the ship began accelerating. He got to his feet, and he and Charley Gatworth went to the astrogational computer and began checking the data and setting the course for the point in space at which Koshchei would be in a hundred and sixty hours.

“Course set, Captain,” he reported to Jacquemont, after a while.

A couple of lights winked on the control panel. There was nothing more to do but watch Poictesme dwindle behind, and listen to the newscasts, and take turns talking to friends on the planet.

They approached the halfway point; the acceleration rate decreased, and the gravity indicator dropped, little by little. Everybody was enjoying the new sense of lightness, romping and skylarking like newly landed tourists on Luna. It was fun, as long as they landed on their feet at each jump, and the food and liquids stayed on plates and in glasses and cups. Yves Jacquemont began posting signs in conspicuous places:

Weight is what you lift,
mass is what hurts when it hits you.
Weight depends on gravity;
mass is always constant.

His father came on-screen from his office in Storisende. By then, there was a 30-second time lag in communication between the ship and Poictesme.

“My private detectives found out about the Andromeda,” he said. “She’s going to Panurge, in the Gamma System. They have a couple of computermen with them, one they hired from the Stock Exchange, and one they practically shanghaied away from the government. And some of the people who chartered the ship are members of a family that were interested in a positronic-equipment plant on Panurge at the time of the War.”

“That’s all right, then; we don’t need to worry about that any more. They’re just hunting for Merlin.”

Some of his companions were looking at him curiously. A little later, Piet Ludvyckson, the electromagnetics engineer, said: “I thought you were looking for Merlin, Conn.”

“Not on Koschchei. We’re looking for something to build a hypership out of. If I had Merlin in my hip pocket right now, I’d trade it for one good ship like the City of Asgard or the City of Nefertiti, and give a keg of brandy and a box of cigars to boot. If we had a ship of our own, we’d be selling lots of both, and not for Storisende Spaceport prices, either.”

“But don’t you think Merlin’s important?” Charley Gatworth, who had overheard him, asked.

“Sure. If we find Merlin, we can run it for President. It would make a better one than Jake Vyckhoven.”

He let it go at that. Plenty of opportunities later to expand the theme.

The gravitation gauge dropped to zero. Now they were in free fall, and it lasted twice as long as Yves Jacquemont had predicted. There were a few misadventures, none serious and most of them comic⁠—for example,