Chapter I: Am Aware of Human Limitations, and Their Effects, Swabber Starbuck

"Sorry."

Captain Birdsel looked vaguely distressed. "You should try to co-operate with the brain, my boy."

"I have nothing against cybernetic calculators," Ben said. "After all, we aren't still in the Ellisonian Age. But I'd like to, uh, stow my spacebag and get settled, sir."

NO FURTHER QUESTIONS AT THIS TIME. RETURN HERE AT THIS TIME TOMORROW.

"He's interested in you, Ben," the captain said enthusiastically. "This is the first time he's asked about anybody since the second day. Yes, interested!"

With an excess of enthusiasm, Captain Birdsel clapped his hands, then put them flat on the deck and stood on his head, kicking his heels in the air.

He straightened up with a scarlet face. "Ah. That really gets the kinks out of you, Ben."

Starbuck tried not to stare. "Aye, sir."

The captain took a step and grabbed the small of his back. "Haven't done it in some time, though. Ought to do it more often, eh, Ben?"

"I suppose so, sir."

"Well," Birdsel said, clapping his hands together.

_My God_, Starbuck thought, _he's not going to do it again._

"Well," the captain continued, still on both feet, "I'd better show you to your quarters, my boy. Mind if I lean on your shoulder a bit like this?"

"Not at all, Captain."

"This way, Ben, this way."

II

Starbuck found the array of tridi pin-ups on the bulkheads of the crew's quarters refreshing, as was the supportive babble of conversation about them and other women. He had almost begun to think there was something unnatural about the men aboard the _Gorgon_.

But Starbuck noticed, to his discomfort, the ebbing of the tide of conversation from the bunks as he stepped inside with his spacebag.

For the moment, he wished Captain Birdsel had paced in with him and offered up an introduction. But a look of disgust had creased Birdsel's face as they got near the crew's compartment. He had sent Starbuck on alone, while he limped back towards the bridge.

A forest of eyes shined out at him from the shadowed desks of the bunks. This is it, he thought. These were the crew, not officers. Sometimes the teachers were nice to you on the first day of school but you knew you were going to get it from the other kids.

"Hi," a gruff voice echoed up at him from a lower bunk.

"Hello," Starbuck said, hugging his spacebag like a teddy-bear, the simile crossed his mind.

A lumbering giant with a blue jaw uncoiled from the lower bunk. "Why don't you stow your bag here, buddy? Till you get used to the centrifugal grav, you may have some trouble climbing top-side."

"You've got the seniority," Starbuck said cautiously. "I wouldn't want to cause you any trouble."

"No trouble," Blue Jaw said obligingly.

He chinned himself with one hand on the rim of the upper bunk and swung his torso around a tidy 180° to settle onto the blankets.

Starbuck threw his bag at the foot and sat down on the bed. He looked around at the arena of faces in neutral positions, waiting faces. He cleared his throat experimentally.

"Could I ask you something?" he called upstairs.

A set of big feet swung down into view. "Sure," Blue Jaw said enthusiastically. "Didn't know you wanted to talk. Thought you might want to rest."

Starbuck looked at the hanging feet. They were expressionless.

"Maybe it isn't so much of a question," he said, working one hand into the other palm. "It's just that I'd like to live through this mission. I know I'm not a regular spaceman and I'm intruding and all, but I don't mean to cause anybody any trouble or do anyone out of a job. I'd just like to do everything I can to see that I don't slip and fall into the reactor. Or anything like that...."

"Don't worry," Blue Jaw said heartily. "We'll take care of you, Ben Starbuck."

Somehow Starbuck could find little comfort in those words.

He inhaled deeply. "Come on down here, will you?"

"You want _me_ down there?" Blue Jaw gasped. "Why sure, sure."

The giant dropped to the deck with a catlike grace that nevertheless vibrated Ben's rear teeth.

"You want to talk about something?" the big spaceman inquired. Ben could almost see the paws hanging down and the tail wagging eagerly.

* * * * *

"Yeah," Starbuck said. "I'd like to talk about all of these men staring at me. What's wrong with them? Nobody's said a word to me but you. What are they waiting for? What are they going to do? I can't stand the suspense. Is that it? I get the silent treatment until I go off my rocker, get violent, and then something happens to me--" He stopped and swallowed. He was talking too much. He was working himself up into a state of terror.

"Say, you sure are _friendly_," the ox said with some confusion. "My name's Percy Kettleman."

Starbuck steadied his hand and put it in Percy's grasp. It came out whole.

"Those other fellows," Percy inclined his head.

"What about them?" Starbuck asked edgily.

"They'd probably like to come over and say 'hello' but them and me don't get along so good. They know better than to come around bothering me."

"You're not on their side? You wouldn't be a new man too, Percy?"

"Me? Hell, I've been spacing since I was sixteen. Those guys don't have any side. A bunch of anti-social slobs. They can't stand each other any more than I can stand any of them."

Starbuck decided he had picked a good ally in the midst of a pack of lone wolves. Percy was the biggest man on board, physically. Still he didn't like the idea of all the rest of crew looking daggers at him, or throwing them, for that matter.

"Mind if I say 'hello' to the rest of the men?" he inquired of Percy.

"It's your nickel," gruffly. "Spend it the way you want."

Starbuck flexed an elbow. "Hello there, fellows. Looks to be a taut ship." It sounded a shade inane. Starbuck had barely passed Socializing at the university. But the men replied in good spirits, their faces blooming with teeth, arms waggling, calling out modest insults.

Starbuck recalled that among a certain class of men an insult was a good-natured compliment in negative translation.

"_Pssst._"

"Pssst?" Starbuck asked.

Kettleman passed him down half a roll of white tablet underhand.

Starbuck took it. "Tums?"

"Tranquils. We smuggle them on board. Helps with the blastoff and 'phasing' for the overdrive. Not that those stiffnecked brass will believe it."

"Thanks, Kettleman. You and everybody seems to be pretty helpful to me. I don't know exactly what I've done to deserve it."

"We get tired of looking at the same faces out there month after month. It's a treat to have somebody new on hand."

It sounded reasonable to him, but he felt there was something more to it than that. Well, he was an ethnologist, or almost one. He could figure out group behavior. All he had to do was take time to think about the problem for a little while....

Only he didn't have time to think.

He discovered why everybody was in their bunks.

The spaceship fired its atomic drive.

Starbuck tried to lift a tranquil to his lips. He didn't make it.

Painfully, he found out why a man would prefer to go through a spaceship takeoff in a tranquilized condition.

* * * * *

"Come," the captain said.

Starbuck palmed back the door to the captain's cabin and stepped inside.

Captain Birdsel stood in front of the small wall mirror tattooing a flying dragon on his bared chest. "Yes? What is it, Ben?"

"Sir, you remember that the ship's brain directed me to return at this time today. But I understand I'll have to have your permission to go onto that part of the bridge."

"The brain's directive was quite enough, my boy." He laid down the needle. "But I'll accompany you there if you like."

"Just as you wish, sir."

Birdsel smiled engagingly. "Noticed the dragon, did you?"

"It arrested my attention, yes, sir," Starbuck admitted.

"The hours are long and lonely in the vaults of space, Ben. A man needs a variety of interests to occupy himself. I have recently taken up the ancient art of tattooing."

"Surely not recently, sir. You seem quite advanced."

"You're too kind."

The captain escorted Starbuck to the chamber of the brain, discussing tattooing animatedly. He told how it was popular with ancient mariners on the seas of Earth. He discussed the artistic significance of the basic forms--the Heart and Arrow, the Nude, the Flag. He didn't stop talking and button his shirt even after they entered the cybernetics room.

As the captain grasped for his second wind, Starbuck turned to the machine. "I'm here, Calculator."

The lights patterned words with a speed difficult to follow.

REDUNDANCY. CANCEL. ANALYSIS: SOCIAL MORE. I SEE THAT YOU ARE HERE. IT IS GOOD THAT YOU ARE NOT THERE OR ELSEWHERE, BUT THAT HERE YOU ARE. HERE ARE YOU.

Starbuck shifted his weight to the other foot. "Yes, I'm sure here all right."

WHAT DID YOU DO WHILE YOU WERE NOT HERE?

"I helped lay some walk mats in the corridors. I policed up the latrine. Lost all the money I brought with me in a crap game. Craps, that's where--"

HOYLE'S RULES OF GAMES IS A PART OF MY PROGRAMMING.

"I see."

YOU ARE NOT BLIND. IT IS WELL THAT YOU HAVE VISION. HOW'S THE WEATHER?

"Still under Central's control, I suppose."

WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT TATTOOING?

* * * * *

"Only what Captain Birdsel here told me," Starbuck said. No doubt there was a pattern of fine logic to the calculator's inquiries, but he was too dense to see it. The question sounded to him like the mumblings of a mongoloid.

"I'd be delighted to fill the brain in on the subject," Birdsel said.

The calculator's communication screen remained blank.

"Was there anything else you wanted to know?" Starbuck inquired.

YOU WILL PROCESS THE _GORGON_ THROUGH PHASING, SWABBER STARBUCK.

"The hyperspace jump? But that's the captain's job," he protested.

"Not at all, not at all," Birdsel interrupted. "Whatever the calculator says. Now if you'll excuse me, there is some paint I have to requisition...."

"_Wait_," Starbuck cried desperately. "I don't know anything about the overdrive. You can guide me, can't you, sir? That would be all right with the brain, wouldn't it?"

Birdsel shrugged. "Would it?"

The screen stayed a stubborn neutral gray.

"Stay, sir."

"All right," Birdsel said dubiously.

The overdrive switchbox had been incorporated into the cybernetics system itself as an interlock.

"There isn't much to do," Captain Birdsel explained. "We trigger the jump and come out at a mathematically selected random spot in real-space after phasing through hyperspace. The Brain scans the sun systems in the area for unique planets worthy of exploration. If there is one, we zero in on it via fixed phase until the gravitational field makes it necessary to switch back to standard interplanetary or nuclear drive. We can make suggestions to the Brain or theoretically override one of its decisions. Actually, all we have to do is watch. Thumb the button, Ben. It wants _you_ to do it. It _likes_ you."

"Aye, captain." Starbuck could believe a cybernetic machine could like him. Everybody else on board seemed to, and it unnerved him more than a little. Only a selected few had ever particularly liked Benjamin Starbuck before. The situation reminded him a bit of Melville's _Billy Budd_; only he wasn't a "handsome sailor," just a fairly average-looking spaceman.

Starbuck depressed the button.

The button depressed Starbuck.

* * * * *

Now he knew why tranquils were popular during phasing.

For one instant, Starbuck stopped believing in everything--the spaceship, the captain, Earth, his own identity, the universe. He went completely insane, a cockeyed psychotic. It was over just quick enough to leave him a mind to remember what not having one was like.

"My," the captain said, his head on an angle. He looked as if he were gazing at some classic piece of art, such as a calendar by Marilyn Monroe, the last of the great realists whose work was indistinguishable from color photography.

"That _is_ a dandy," Birdsel said.

Starbuck swiveled his head around to the outer projection portal. There in all its glory was a star system.

There seemed to be four stars all orbiting each other--two red dwarfs, one yellow midget and a white giant. One planet was clearly visible on the side of the system towards the ship, an odd lopsided dumbbell shape in the center of a translucent sphere of tiny satellites--cosmic dust, like the rings of Saturn. Strangest of all, the outer shell of the planet was sending in Interplanetary Morse: CQ, CQ, CQ....

"It," Starbuck ventured with a new-found sophistication, "seems rather unusual. I suppose we'll take a closer look, Captain?"

The calculator's screen replied for the officer. THE SYSTEM IS OF INSUFFICIENT INTEREST TO WARRANT EXPLORATION. WE ARE SEEKING SIGNIFICANTLY UNIQUE PLANETS.

"I have never seen anything like this before...." Birdsel drew himself up to his full height. "However, the machine's knowledge of the history of space exploration is much more extensive than mine."

"You aren't going to suggest that the brain reconsider or override its decision?"

"Certainly not!" Birdsel snapped. "We'll re-phase after the traditional twenty-four hour delay for psychological adjustment."

Starbuck sneaked another popeyed look at the planet on the screen. "If he thinks that's run of the mill, Captain, I wonder what he will have to find to make him think it's unusual?"

III

Whatever it took to satisfy the Brain, it didn't find it in the next few days.

Starbuck reported to the bridge each day to press the Brain's phase button and answer some of its questions.

Then for two days Captain Birdsel wasn't on hand for the little ceremony and the expression of dissatisfaction with the available site for exploration.

Once Starbuck went so far as to suggest a reconsideration of a system that had made the one he had seen on the first day look tame. The calculator had duly noted the reconsideration, and had again refused. Starbuck didn't dare try an out-and-out override, even though he had been theoretically given complete command of the phasing operation.

The following noon, the middle of the twenty-four period, Romero, an engineer, almost tearfully pressed Starbuck's crap game losings back on him, apologizing for keeping the money. Starbuck was about to refuse, not wanting to reverse the state of indebtedness, when the intercom requested his appearance at the captain's quarters. Unable to prolong the argument with Romero, he took the money and shoved it in his pocket, heading for the chief cabin.

Starbuck rapped on the door, heard the "Come" and entered.

Captain Birdsel was hanging naked, upside down, by his knees from a trapeze, in the middle of a deserted compartment painted solid red.

"You sent for me, sir?" Starbuck said.

"Yes, Ben. Yes, I did," Captain Birdsel replied, swinging gently to and fro. "Do you smoke, Ben?"

"Aye aye, sir."

"The 'aye aye' is reserved for acknowledging orders, not answering questions, Ben."

"Yes, sir. I'll remember in the future."

"Every man on board smokes, Ben. Everyone but me. I do not use tobacco."

"Commendable, sir."

"I suppose you drink, all of the rest of the men do."

"Occasionally, Captain."

"I abstain."

"Enviable, sir."

"Have you read any good books lately?"

"Good and bad, sir."

"I notice most of the men read. I haven't time for reading myself. Or shooting craps. You do play that game like the rest?"

"Just once, sir. I lost all my money." Which had been returned to him.

"Ben, I think you don't fully appreciate the nature of the mission of the Space Service," Captain Birdsel said, flexing one knee and performing a difficult one-legged swing on the bar. "It is our duty to go ever onward into the mystery of the Unknown. Ever deeper, ever traveling into the heart of the Secrets of the Universe. Nothing can stop us. Nothing!"

"I'll try to remember, sir. Was that all?"

"One more thing," said the inverted captain. "I think you are to be relieved of the duty of officiating at the phasing."

"_Correct_," said another voice, one Starbuck had never before heard.

"That's all now, Ben."

"Very good, sir."

Starbuck paused at the door. "That's a fine trapeze you have there, sir."

"Thank you, Ben."

* * * * *

"I don't want to jump to conclusions," Ben said to the knot of men gathered around him listening to his story of the interview with the captain, "but I think Captain Birdsel is--is--"

"Psychotic?" suggested Romero.

"Schizoid?" Percy Kettleman ventured.

"'_Nuts_' is the word I was searching for," Starbuck concluded. "I believe he intends to keep phasing and phasing, taking us deeper into space and never returning to Earth or the inhabited universe."

"I guess," Kettleman opined, "that we will just have to convince him that he is wrong in that attitude."

"We can make a formal written complaint and request for an explanation under Section XXIV," Romero said. "Is that what you had in mind, Ben?"

"_I_ had a straitjacket in mind," Starbuck admitted. "But I'm new in the Space Service. I have a selfish motive. I want to get back to Earth sometime and a vine-covered ethnology class."

"We better go take him," Kettleman said heavily.

"As much as I dislike agreeing with an ox like you, Kettleman," Romero said, "I conclude it is best."

There was a general rumble of agreement.

"Wait, wait," a youngish man whose name Starbuck vaguely remembered to be Horne stepped forward, his eyes glittering with contact lenses. "I ask you men to remember Christopher Columbus. I like our captain no more than any of you, but he may be right. Perhaps what he is doing is vital. We shouldn't let our selfish fears...."

Always, Starbuck thought, always some egghead comes along to gum up the works.

Starbuck knew he would need a decisive argument to overcome Horne's objective theory.

Starbuck slugged him.

Horne crumpled after a flashy right cross Starbuck had developed in his extreme youth, and Starbuck took a giant step over him, heading for the bridge.

The other crew members followed him.

Besides, Starbuck thought, he had always considered arguing by analogy to be sloppy thinking.

* * * * *

"Don't come in here!" Captain Birdsel yelled through the partly closed hatch to the bridge. "You'll regret it if you do."

Starbuck swallowed hard, and reached for the door handle.

Percy Kettleman vised his wrist. "I'll go first, little chum."

There wasn't much room for argument with Kettleman when it came to a matter of who could Indian wrestle the best. He stepped back and let Kettleman cross the threshold first.

Percy threw open the door, screamed once and fainted.

The rest of the men tended to pull back following this demonstration.

Starbuck didn't like to do it, but he didn't like the idea of hanging for mutiny as Birdsel had threatened Lieutenant Frawley on the first day. (Starbuck realized he hadn't seen Frawley for several days. Had Birdsel disposed of him as he had threatened?)

He got close enough to the door to see inside. It didn't make him faint, but he did feel a little sick.

"What is it?" Romero demanded urgently.

"_Alien_," Starbuck said, "An unpleasant looking one inside."

"You sometimes pick up 'ghosts' passing a system," one of the men explained.

"I'm not an alien," Birdsel's voice called out. "I'm me. The brain reversed my dimensional polarity. I told you you wouldn't like it."

Starbuck stirred up nerve for a second look.

Captain Birdsel was now a man of many parts. Some of them were only areas of abstract line and hues, but there he could see a redly beating heart, a white dash of thigh-bone, and a compassionate blue eye bracketed by two tattooed dragon's talons. The effect was distracting.

Starbuck stepped over his second man that day. "Captain, we're taking over the ship. We're either going to explore one of these planets we've been passing up or return to Earth."

The apparition groaned. "Don't you think I know I've gone too far? I'd like to go back, but the brain won't let me. It's taken over just the way I knew it would!"

"Nonsense," Starbuck snapped with more authority than he felt. "The brain can't violate the principles it was built to operate upon. Brain, program this ship for Earth."

Starbuck expected the sound of that strange voice he had heard in the captain's cabin; but here it had a communications screen and it evidently thought that was sufficient.