The Stoker and the Stars Read online

instructions in the Order Book?" he asked.

  "Just the usual. Keep a tight watch and proceed cautiously."

  "That new stoker," Mac said.

  "Yeah?"

  "I knew there was something wrong with him. He's got an old Marineuniform in his duffel."

  I didn't say anything. Mac glanced over at me. "Well?"

  "I don't know." I didn't.

  I couldn't say I was surprised. It had to be something like that, aboutthe stoker. The mark was on him, as I've said.

  It was the Marines that did Earth's best dying. It had to be. They weretrained to be the best we had, and they believed in their training. Theywere the ones who slashed back the deepest when the other side hit us.They were the ones who sallied out into the doomed spaces between thestars and took the war to the other side as well as any human forcecould ever hope to. They were always the last to leave an abandonedposition. If Earth had been giving medals to members of her forces inthe war, every man in the Corps would have had the Medal of Honor twoand three times over. Posthumously. I don't believe there were ten ofthem left alive when Cope was shot. Cope was one of them. They were akind of human being neither MacReidie nor I could hope to understand.

  "You don't know," Mac said. "It's there. In his duffel. Damn it, we'regoing out to trade with his sworn enemies! Why do you suppose he wantedto sign on? Why do you suppose he's so eager to go!"

  "You think he's going to try to start something?"

  "Think! That's exactly what he's going for. One last big alley fight.One last brawl. When they cut him down--do you suppose they'll stop withhim? They'll kill us, and then they'll go in and stamp Earth flat! Youknow it as well as I do."

  "I don't know, Mac," I said. "Go easy." I could feel the knots in mystomach. I didn't want any trouble. Not from the stoker, not from Mac.None of us wanted trouble--not even Mac, but he'd cause it to get rid ofit, if you follow what I mean about his kind of man.

  Mac hit the viewport with his fist. "Easy! Easy--nothing's easy. I hatethis life," he said in a murderous voice. "I don't know why I keepsigning on. Mars to Centaurus and back, back and forth, in an old rusttub that's going to blow herself up one of these--"

  * * * * *

  Daniels called me on the phone from Communications. "Turn up yourIntercom volume," he said. "The stoker's jamming the circuit."

  I kicked the selector switch over, and this is what I got:

  "_--so there we were at a million per, and the air was gettin' thick.The Skipper says 'Cheer up, brave boys, we'll--'_"

  He was singing. He had a terrible voice, but he could carry a tune, andhe was hammering it out at the top of his lungs.

  "_Twas the last cruise of the_ Venus, _by God you should of seen us! Thepipes were full of whisky, and just to make things risky, the jets were..._"

  The crew were chuckling into their own chest phones. I could hearDaniels trying to cut him off. But he kept going. I started laughingmyself. No one's supposed to jam an intercom, but it made the crew feelgood. When the crew feels good, the ship runs right, and it had been along time since they'd been happy.

  He went on for another twenty minutes. Then his voice thinned out, and Iheard him cough a little. "Daniels," he said, "get a relief down herefor me. _Jump to it!_" He said the last part in a Master's voice.Daniels didn't ask questions. He sent a man on his way down.

  He'd been singing, the stoker had. He'd been singing while he workedwith one arm dead, one sleeve ripped open and badly patched because thefabric was slippery with blood. There'd been a flashover in the drivers.By the time his relief got down there, he had the insulation back on,and the drive was purring along the way it should have been. It hadn'teven missed a beat.

  He went down to sick bay, got the arm wrapped, and would have gone backon shift if Daniels'd let him.

  Those of us who were going off shift found him toying with the thereminin the mess compartment. He didn't know how to play it, and it soundedlike a dog howling.

  "Sing, will you!" somebody yelled. He grinned and went back to the "GoodShip _Venus_." It wasn't good, but it was loud. From that, we went to"Starways, Farways, and Barways," and "The Freefall Song." Somebodystarted "I Left Her Behind For You," and that got us off intosentimental things, the way these sessions would sometimes wind up whenspacemen were far from home. But not since the war, we all seemed torealize together. We stopped, and looked at each other, and we all begandrifting out of the mess compartment.

  And maybe it got to him, too. It may explain something. He and I werethe last to leave. We went to the bunkroom, and he stopped in the middleof taking off his shirt. He stood there, looking out the porthole, andforgot I was there. I heard him reciting something, softly, under hisbreath, and I stepped a little closer. This is what it was:

  "_The rockets rise against the skies, Slowly; in sunlight gleaming With silver hue upon the blue. And the universe waits, dreaming._

  "_For men must go where the flame-winds blow, The gas clouds softly plaiting; Where stars are spun and worlds begun, And men will find them waiting._

  "_The song that roars where the rocket soars Is the song of the stellar flame; The dreams of Man and galactic span Are equal and much the same._"

  What was he thinking of? Make your own choice. I think I came close toknowing him, at that moment, but until human beings turn telepath, noman can be sure of another.

  He shook himself like a dog out of cold water, and got into his bunk. Igot into mine, and after a while I fell asleep.

  * * * * *

  I don't know what MacReidie may have told the skipper about the stoker,or if he tried to tell him anything. The captain was the senior ticketholder in the Merchant Service, and a good man, in his day. He keptmostly to his cabin. And there was nothing MacReidie could do on his ownauthority--nothing simple, that is. And the stoker had saved the ship,and ...

  I think what kept anything from happening between MacReidie and thestoker, or anyone else and the stoker, was that it would have meanttrouble in the ship. Trouble, confined to our little percentage of theship's volume, could seem like something much more important than thefate of the human race. It may not seem that way to you. But as long asno one began anything, we could all get along. We could have a goodtrip.

  MacReidie worried, I'm sure. I worried, sometimes. But nothing happened.

  When we reached Alpha Centaurus, and set down at the trading field onthe second planet, it was the same as the other trips we'd made, and thesame kind of landfall. The Lud factor came out of his post after we'dwaited for a while, and gave us our permit to disembark. There was a Jekship at the other end of the field, loaded with the cargo we would getin exchange for our holdful of goods. We had the usual things; wine,music tapes, furs, and the like. The Jeks had been giving us lightmachinery lately--probably we'd get two or three more loads, and thenthey'd begin giving us something else.

  But I found that this trip wasn't quite the same. I found myself lookingat the factor's post, and I realized for the first time that the Ludhadn't built it. It was a leftover from the old colonial humangovernment. And the city on the horizon--men had built it; the touch ofour architecture was on every building. I wondered why it had neveroccurred to me that this was so. It made the landfall different from allthe others, somehow. It gave a new face to the entire planet.

  * * * * *

  Mac and I and some of the other crewmen went down on the field to handlethe unloading. Jeks on self-propelled cargo lifts jockeyed among us,scooping up the loads as we unhooked the slings, bringing cases ofmachinery from their own ship. They sat atop their vehicles, lean andaloof, dashing in, whirling, shooting across the field to their shipand back like wild horsemen on the plains of Earth, paying us no notice.

  We were almost through when Mac suddenly grabbed my arm. "Look!"

  The stoker was coming down on one of the cargo slings. He stood upright,his booted feet planted wide, one arm
curled up over his head and aroundthe hoist cable. He was in his dusty brown Marine uniform, the scarletcollar tabs bright as blood at his throat, his major's insigniaglittering at his shoulders, the battle stripes on his sleeves.

  The Jeks stopped their lifts. They knew that uniform. They sat up intheir saddles and watched him come down. When the sling touched theground, he jumped off quietly and walked toward the nearest Jek. Theyall followed him with their eyes.

  "We've got to stop him," Mac said, and both of us started toward him.His hands were both in plain sight, one holding his duffelbag, which wasswelled out with the bulk of his airsuit. He