Is he George Whitley, a twentieth-century writer of science fiction - or Peter Quinn, Second Officer of the interstellar liner Lode Maiden? An injection of lysergic acid and Whitley finds himself ... where ... who ... and in what age? He is inhabiting the body of Second Officer Quinn but his mind is still that of George Whitley. Aboard the Lode Maiden he can capture only fragments of Quinn's memory and consciousness, until a magnetic storm throws the ship off trajectory into the deep reaches of space. Then, somehow, enough knowledge comes to him to enable him to help land the ship on an unnamed planet on the Galactic Rim. But the forced landing damages the ship and kills the Captain, leaving Quinn - or is it Whitley? - to lead the crew and passengers to safety through the horrors and dangers of the unknown planet.
Release date:
November 26, 2015
Publisher:
Gateway
Print pages:
190
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Peter Quinn stared at the spherical chart tank, at the spiderweb of glowing filaments spun between the bright points of light that were the stars. At least, he thought, the storm is over. Or it’s not where we are. Or we aren’t where it is. His mind shuddered away from the memory of what the chart had looked like when the magnetic storm had hit the ship. He had once read a description of such an appearance—a bowl of luminous spaghetti. He had hoped when he read the description that he would never be subjected to first-hand experience of such a storm. The writer of the book had been lucky; his ship had managed to return to a colonised sector of the Galaxy. Quinn hoped that the people aboard Lode Maiden would be as lucky. He looked at the utterly strange configuration of stars in the chart tank and then out of the big viewports. The real stars were just as strange as their tiny representations in the transparent sphere, strange and sparse.
“Wotcher cock!”
Quinn turned his head at the cheery greeting. He saw that Saunders had come into the control room. The Third Officer, always untidy, was even more so than usual. His cap was missing. His stockings, even in free fall, had contrived to drape themselves around his ankles. His shirt was unbuttoned and one of his epaulettes was coming adrift from its moorings. His shorts were spattered with oil.
“What’s cooking, Bill?”
“Diesel oil—only it’s not cooking yet. Far too many people in the engine-room, Pete. The Old Man and the Chief are going at it hammer and tongs; each of them is convinced that he knows the only way to start a diesel jenny. The Mate and the Second Engineer keep on throwing in their two-bits’ worth. The Fourth Mate and the junior engineers are doing all the fetching and carrying, and the cadets are just standing around with their big, ugly mouths wide open. I was just in the way, so I came along to Control for a little peace and quiet.” He eased himself into one of the other chairs, snapped shut the buckle of the seat belt. “Ah, that’s better. Why should the illusion of sitting down be so restful?” Then, “How’s she going, Pete?”
“She ain’t. We’re stuck, nor breath nor motion. As idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean …”
“Whoever painted this ocean,” complained Saunders, looking out of the viewports, “had far too much black paint at his disposal. That storm must have slung us damn’ nearly out of the Galaxy …” He pulled a cigarette from the crumpled pack in the breast pocket of his shirt, puffed it into ignition. “May as well enjoy two spits and a draw while we can. Once they start the diesels Nosmo King will reign supreme. Oh, by the way, the Old Man told me to take over from you. He wants a responsible officer—and I didn’t like the way that he said responsible—to circulate among the passengers and make reassuring noises. Not that you’ll be much good. You’ll just find a dark corner where you can hold hands with the fair Leonora …”
“You’ve a low mind, Bill,” Quinn told him.
“Realistic, Pete. Realistic—as befits a Founding Father of one of our far-flung Lost Colonies. Looks like we shall all have to start hunting around for Founding Mothers …”
Quinn unsnapped his belt and got to his feet—a little unsteadily as the fluctuating residual field of the ship made the contact of the magnetic soles of his shoes with the deck uncertain—and made his way to the …
The ladder?
No. Companionway, I think … After all, she is a passengership, so I’d better throw in a few fancy trimmings …
… companionway giving access to …
“What was that, dear?”
“For the third time, George, do you want your lunch?”
… body of the vessel. He …
“George!”
“Yes?”
“Please stop pounding that blasted machine and listen to me. Do you want your lunch?”
“Yes. I suppose so.”
… feared that …
Her hand descended on his, hampering their movement on the keyboard. He looked up unwillingly from his typewriter, tearing his attention away from the story, reluctantly focusing it on the here and now. He thought—and was rather shocked by the thought—that Jane was very nice in small doses, but that it was not so good having her in his hair all the time. He thought, I sometimes wish that I were back at sea …
She said, “I sometimes almost wish that you were back at sea, George. At least, I had your company then, when you were home. Not like now. And there were no worries then about paying the bills.”
He said, “It’s hardly my fault that the American pulp magazine market has died on us. There used to be thirty-odd magazines in the field; now there are only eight …”
“Then why don’t you write something that will sell elsewhere? A novel …”
“Damn it all, I’m trying to write a novel.”
“Trying’s not good enough.”
Whitley pushed back the chair from his work table, looked at Jane almost with distaste. The trouble with her was that she was too efficient, too capable. (And if she were not that way, he thought, I should be back at sea.) She had an exaggerated respect for success—and for one to fail in one field meant that one began to fail, as far as she was concerned, in all fields.
He followed her through to the kitchen. He sat at the table, looked without much appetite at the loaf of French bread, the butter, the cheese, the salad. He looked with more interest at the bottle of beer—but stopped Jane when she was about to fill his glass.
“What’s come over you?” she asked.
“You forget. I’m seeing Doc Ferris this afternoon.”
“Oh, yes. I remember now. You could come out to the beach with me, or you could carry on with your stupid novel, but you’re playing at guinea pigs instead. I hope you enjoy it.”
“The experience,” said Whitley, “should be good for me. As a writer. It’s all material. And the doc wants to try the muck on somebody who’s capable of writing an account of it afterwards.”
She said, “I’m not sure that I approve of this messing around with drugs. You might become an addict,” she added, “Not that it would much matter.”
“It’s not habit forming,” said Whitley coldly.
Whitley relaxed in the easy chair in Ferris’ study, looked at his host through the smokescreen that both men were generating—Whitley from his pipe, the doctor from a cigarette. It was good to be able to relax. He and Ferris had been shipmates when the doctor had worked his passage out to Australia as a shilling a month surgeon in the ship of which Whitley was Chief Officer. There is a relationship between shipmates that seldom obtains between friends ashore.
He asked, “How’s trade, Doc?”
“Good, as always. Too good. At times I regret ever having left general practice.”
“That’s what you say. If I had my time again I’d go in for medicine and specialise in psychiatry. It’s a gentleman’s life. You never have to get your hands dirty.” He warmed to his theme. “And there’s never any shortage of customers. You know, if medical science ever produced a safe and sure aphrodisiac all you buggers would be hard put to it to make a living.”
“That was unkind, George.”
“But too, too true.”
“And how’s your trade?”
“Lousy. Haven’t seen a cheque for months. It’s got so bad that I’m seriously thinking of going back to sea. Luckily I didn’t slam the door behind me too hard when I left the United Steam Shipping Company.”
“ ‘I must go down to the sea again,’ ” quoted Ferris.
“ ‘To the lonely sea and the sky,
“ ‘And all I ask is a tall ship
“ ‘And a star to steer her by …’ ”
“Balls,” said Whitley. “I don’t like ships. I didn’t like big ships, and I liked these converted washtubs with sewing machines for engines running round the Australian coast still less. If I go back to sea it’ll be just for one thing—the money. Although, as a matter of fact, Jane and I are getting in each other’s hair a little these days …”
“I’ll be getting you as a customer yet.”
“Not bloody likely.”
“Working on anything now, George?”
“Yeah. A novel. The magazine market is dead, and it’s the paperbacked novels that have helped to kill it. So—if you can’t lick ’em, join ’em.”
“What sort of novel?”
“Science fiction. Space opera of sorts.”
“In other words—the usual Whitley costume sea story. You really do like ships, although you’ll never admit it. But what’s it about?”
“Well, I’ve cooked up a new interstellar drive—the Ehrenhaft Drive, I call it …”
“The name rings a faint bell.”
“So it should. You may recall that there was quite a flap during the war—a Doctor Ehrenhaft, an Austrian refugee scientist in the States, reckoned that he’d proved the existence of a magnetic current, as opposed to a magnetic field. Well, if you have a magnetic current, you must have magnetic particles …”
“Go on.”
“Well, my Ehrenhaft generators generate a magnetic current. The ship in which they are fitted becomes, to all intents and purposes, a huge magnetic particle herself, of desired polarity. She whiffles along the lines of magnetic force, from planetary system to planetary system, at umpteen times the speed of light. Of course the drive has its drawbacks …”
“There wouldn’t be any story if it didn’t. What are they?”
“To begin with, the gaussjammers (as I call them) can land in and take off only from regions with plenty of vertical force—on or around the magnetic poles, that is. Then there are magnetic storms in the vicinities of certain suns. If the ship is caught in one she is thrown away to hell and gone off trajectory and, just to improve matters, her pile is drained of power …”
“What’s the pile for?”
“To supply the heat to boil the water to produce the steam to drive the turbines that keep the Ehrenhaft jennies spinning—and also the jennies that produce electric current for the ship’s auxiliary machinery.”
“So, without a pile they’re well and truly buggered.”
“Not quite. The ships are fitted with emergency diesels. They’re lost in space, as like as not, and the biochemist is making diesel fuel out of the hydrocarbons that should be feeding the ship’s people, but they can carry on, after a fashion, proceeding from star to star, hoping to find a planet capable of supporting our kind of life, and if they do, they start a Lost Colony. And if they don’t …”
“I see. What a horrid mind you have, George. I’m not sure that we should carry on with the experiment.”
“It’d be a pity not to. I’ve been rather looking forward to it. But you might put me in the picture. I’ve been reading about the stuff in Time, but I’ve never seen any really authoritative reports.”
“Have you read Huxley’s The Doors of Perception?”
“No.”
“You should. He goes into it all quite deeply. And he plays around with ideas that should be right up your alley. For example—I know I’m putting it crudely—the mind is part of the Cosmic All, but the brain acts as a reducing valve, allowing only such impressions as will be of use to the owner of the brain in his daily life to filter through. Lysergic acid by-passes the reducing valve …”
“H’m. And the Cosmic All, as you call it, can be said to be a four-dimensional entity … And then, of course, there was old Dunne, and his world lines, and his serial universe … And through one’s ancestors one’s world line extends into the remote past, and through one’s descendants it extends into the remote future. If any.”
“I never did believe in Bridey Murphy,” said the doctor.
“Frankly, neither did I. All the same, the idea’s fascinating …”
“Too fascinating. Now, if you’ll get on the couch …”
“Jet propelled?”
“No.” Ferris pushed up the left sleeve of Whitley’s sports shirt, dabbed the exposed skin with a wad of cotton wool soaked in alcohol. He inserted the needle of his syringe into an ampoule of colourless fluid, drew the liquid up into the instrument. He said, “Intramuscular injection …”
“So I see,” said Whitley. He felt the very slightest of stinging sensations as the sharp needle pierced his skin.
“It will be about fifteen minutes before you start feeling effects,” said Ferris.
“Bring on the pink elephants,” quipped Whitley. “Or the dancing girls.”
“How do you feel?” asked Ferris.
“Faint nausea,” replied Whitley. “Otherwise, okay. Nary a pink elephant in sight.”
“Colours?”
“Normal.”
“Perspective?”
“Likewise.”
“Hearing?”
“I can still hear the traffic in the road outside, but it’s somehow muffled …”
“Do you mind if I leave you to it?” asked the doctor. “Pam said that if I were staying at home this afternoon, I might as well mow the lawn. Yell if you want me.”
“Why should I? What passes between a man and his Subconscious is Top Secret, To Be Destroyed By Fire Before Reading.”
“If that’s the way you feel about it, George …”
“Don’t worry, Doc, I’ll write it all up, as promised. Just so long as you call me Mr. X when you pass the MS on to one of your learned journals.”
“I’ll do that little thing for you. And I’ll be dropping in to see you at intervals.”
Whitley stared at the ceiling, at the white ceiling. The white ce. . .
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