Chapter II

_The extremes of mysticism and of pragmatism have their own
expressions of worship. Each has its form, and the difference
between them is the difference between deus ex machina and_
deus machina est.
--E. Hunter Waldo

“Of course it will open,” said Hoskins. He strode past the stunned pilot and confidently palmed the control.

The port didn’t open.

Hoskins said, “Hm?” as if he had been asked an inaudible question, and tried again. Nothing happened. “Skipper,” he said over his shoulder, “Have a quick look at the meters behind you there. Are we getting auxiliary power?”

“All well here,” said Anderson after a glance at the board. “And no shorts showing.”

There was a silence punctuated by the soft, useless clicking of the control as Hoskins manipulated it. “Well, what do you know.”

“It won’t work,” said Johnny plaintively.

“Sure it’ll work,” said Paresi swiftly, confidently. “Take it easy, Johnny.”

“It won’t work,” said Johnny. “It won’t work.” He stumbled across the cabin and leaned against the opposite bulkhead, staring at the closed port with his head a little to one side as if he expected it to shriek at him.

“Let me try,” said Ives, going to Hoskins. He put out his hand.

“Don’t!“ Johnny cried.

“Shut up, Johnny,” said Paresi.

“All right, Nick,” said Johnny. He opened his face plate, went to the rear bulkhead, keyed open an acceleration couch, and lay face down on it. Paresi watched him, his lips pursed.

“Can’t say I blame him,” said the Captain softly, catching Paresi’s eye. “It’s something of a shock. This shouldn’t be. The safety factor’s too great--a thousand per cent or better.”

“I know what you mean,” said Hoskins. “I saw it myself, but I don’t believe it.” He pushed the button again.

“I believe it,” said Paresi.

Ives went to his desk, clicked the transmitter and receiver switches on and off, moved a rheostat or two. He reached up to a wall toggle, turned a small air-circulating fan on and off. “Everything else seems to work,” he said absently.

“This is ridiculous!” exploded the Captain. “It’s like having your keys home, or arriving at the theater without your tickets. It isn’t dangerous--it’s just stupid!”

“It’s dangerous,” said Paresi.

“Dangerous how?” Ives demanded.

“For one thing--” Paresi nodded toward Johnny, who lay tensely, his face hidden. “For another, the simple calculation that if nothing inside this ship made that control fail, something outside this ship did it. And that I don’t like.”

“That couldn’t happen,” said the Captain reasonably.

Paresi snorted impatiently. “Which of two mutually exclusive facts are you going to reason from? That the ship can’t fail? Then this failure isn’t a failure; it’s an external control. Or are you going to reason that the ship can fail? Then you don’t have to worry about an external force--but you can’t trust anything about the ship. Do the trick that makes you happy. But do only one. You can’t have both.”

Johnny began to laugh.

Ives went to him. “Hey, boy--”

Johnny rolled over, swung his feet down, and sat up, brushing the fat man aside. “What you guys need,” Johnny chuckled, “is a nice kind policeman to feed you candy and take you home. You’re real lost.”

Ives said, “Johnny, take it easy and be quiet, huh? We’ll figure a way out of this.”

“I already have, scrawny,” said Johnny offensively. He got up, strode to the port. “What a bunch of deadheads,” he growled. He went two steps past the port and grasped the control-wheel which was mounted on the other side of the port from the button.

“Oh my God,” breathed Anderson delightedly, “the manual! Anybody else want to be Captain?”

“Factor of safety,” said Hoskins, smiting himself on the brow. “There’s a manual control for everything on this scow that there can be. And we stand here staring at it--”

“If we don’t win the furlined teacup...” Ives laughed.

Johnny hauled on the wheel.

It wouldn’t budge.

“Here--” Ives began to approach.

“Get away,” said Johnny. He put his hands close together on the rim of the wheel, settled his big shoulders, and hauled. With a sharp crack the wheel broke off in his hands.

Johnny staggered, then stood. He looked at the wheel and then up at the broken end of its shaft, gleaming deep below the surface of the bulkhead.

“Oh, fine...” Ives whispered.

Suddenly Johnny threw back his head and loosened a burst of high, hysterical laughter. It echoed back and forth between the metal walls like a torrent from a burst dam. It went on and on, as if now that the dam was gone, the flood would run forever.

Anderson called out “Johnny!” three times, but the note of command had no effect. Paresi walked to the pilot and with the immemorial practice slapped him sharply across the cheeks. “Johnny! Stop it!”

The laughter broke off as suddenly as it had begun. Johnny’s chest heaved, drawing in breath with great, rasping near-sobs. Slowly they died away. He extended the wheel toward the Captain.

“It broke off,” he said, finally, dully, without emphasis.

Then he leaned back against the hull, slowly slid down until he was sitting on the deck. “Broke right off,” he said.

Ives twined his fat fingers together and bent them until the knuckles cracked. “Now what?”

“I suggest,” said Paresi, in an extremely controlled tone, “that we all sit down and think over the whole thing very carefully.”

Hoskins had been staring hypnotically at the broken shaft deep in the wall. “I wonder,” he said at length, “which way Johnny turned that wheel.”

“Counter-clockwise,” said Ives. “You saw him.”

“I know that,” said Hoskins. “I mean, which way: the right way, or the wrong way?”

“Oh.” There was a short silence. Then Ives said, “I guess we’ll never know, now.”

“Not until we get back to Earth,” said Paresi quickly.

“You say ‘until’, or ‘unless’?” Ives demanded.

“I said ‘until’, Ives,” said Paresi levelly, “and watch your mouth.”

“Sometimes,” said the fat man with a dangerous joviality, “you pick the wrong way to say the right thing, Nick.” Then he clapped the slender doctor on the back. “But I’ll be good. We sow no panic seed, do we?”

“Much better not to,” said the Captain. “It’s being done efficiently enough from outside.”

“You are convinced it’s being done from outside?” asked Hoskins, peering at him owlishly.

“I’m ... convinced of very little,” said the Captain heavily. He went to the acceleration couch and sat down. “I want out,” he said. He waved away the professional comment he could see forming on Paresi’s lips and went on, “Not claustrophobia, Nick. Getting out of the ship’s more important than just relieving our feelings. If the trouble with the port is being caused by some fantastic something outside this ship, we’ll achieve a powerful victory over it, purely by ignoring it.”

“It broke off,” murmured Johnny.

“Ignore that,” snorted Ives.

“You keep talking about this thing being caused by something outside,” said Paresi. His tone was almost complaining.

“Got a better hypothesis?” asked Hoskins.

“Hoskins,” said the Captain, “isn’t there some way we can get out? What about the tubes?”

“Take a shipyard to move those power-plants,” said Hoskins, “and even if it could be done, those radioactive tubes would fry you before you crawled a third of the way.”

“We should have a lifeboat,” said Ives to no one in particular.

“What in time does a ship like the Ambassador need with a lifeboat?” asked Hoskins in genuine amazement.

The Captain frowned. “What about the ventilators?”

“Take us days to remove all the screens and purifiers,” said Hoskins, “and then we’d be up against the intake ports. You could stroll out through any of them about as far as your forearm. And after that it’s hull-metal, skipper. That you don’t cut, not with a piece of the Sun’s core.”

The Captain got up and began pacing, slowly and steadily, as if the problem could be trodden out like ripe grapes. He closed his eyes and said, “I’ve been circling around that idea for thirty minutes now. Look: the hull can’t be cut because it is built so it can’t fail. It doesn’t fail. The port controls were also built so they wouldn’t fail. They do fail. The thing that keeps us in stays in shape. The thing that lets us out goes bad. Effect: we stay inside. Cause: something that wants us to stay inside.”

“Oh,” said Johnny clearly.

They looked at him. He raised his head, stiffened his spine against the bulkhead. Paresi smiled at him. “Sure, Johnny. The machine didn’t fail. It was--controlled. It’s all right.” Then he turned to the Captain and said carefully, “I’m not denying what you say, Skipper. But I don’t like to think of what will happen if you take that tack, reason it through, and don’t get any answers.”

“I’d hate to be a psychologist,” said Ives fervently. “Do you extrapolate your mastications, too, and get frightened of the stink you might get?”