Title: The Upside-Down Captain
Author: Harmon, Jim
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Upside-Down Captain" ***


                        The Upside-Down Captain

                             By JIM HARMON

               _He knew the captain would be a monster.
               He knew the crew would be rough. He knew
              all about space travel--except the truth!_

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
               Worlds of If Science Fiction, March 1960.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


                                   I

"Excuse me, please," Ben Starbuck said, tapping the junior officer on
the epaulet.

"Get away from me, scum," the lieutenant said conversationally, his
eyes on the clipboard in his hands.

Starbuck rocked back on his heels and set his spacebag down on
the loading platform. He angled his head up at the spire of the
inter-atmosphere ship, the _Gorgon_. This was only a sample of what he
could expect once he canted into that hull. It would be rough. But he
had made up his mind to take it.

All tight little groups, like the crew of a spaceship, always resented
the intrusion of a newcomer. The initiations sometimes made it a test
to see whether a man would live over them, and the probation period,
the time of discipline and deference to old members of the group could
be a memorably nasty experience. He didn't have direct knowledge of
such customs in the rather shadowy, enigmatic Space Service, but it was
basic sociology.

Starbuck knew he would have an even rougher time of it since he wasn't
a spaceman--not even a cadet, properly. He was only a fledgling
ethnologist on his field trip to gather material for his Master's
thesis. The university and the government had arranged for his berth on
the _Gorgon_.

An exploration ship, he thought acidly. That meant he might come back
in a few months, or ten years, or never. All because he had the bad
luck to be born in a cultural cycle that demanded hard standards of
education from professional men. Thirty years before or after, he could
have cribbed all the information he needed out of a book.

       *       *       *       *       *

He stood with his hands clasped behind him, waiting for the lieutenant
or somebody to deign to notice him. Somebody would _have_ to pay some
attention to him sooner or later.

Or would they?

Wouldn't it be just like the old timers to let him stand around and
let the ship take off without him, all because he hadn't followed
the proper procedure--a procedure he couldn't know? All he had been
instructed to do was "report to the _Gorgon_." How do you report to a
spaceship? Say, "Hello, spaceship?" Speak to the captain? The first
mate? And where did he find them?

Starbuck felt a moment of panic. He could see himself standing on the
platform while the _Gorgon_ blasted off, carrying with it his Swabber's
rating, his Master's degree and his future.

The lieutenant's back, in uniform black, loomed up before him. He would
have to try approaching him again. It might mean solitary confinement
for a month or two where no member of the crew would speak to him. It
might even mean a flogging. Nobody knew much about what went on on
board an exploration ship, despite all the stories. But Starbuck knew
he would have to risk it.

He marched up behind the officer. "Sir," he said. "I'm the new man."

The lieutenant whirled. "The new man!"

For the first time, Starbuck noticed that the junior officer carried
a swagger stick under his left arm, black, about a foot and a half
long, tipped with silver at both ends. Quite possibly it was standard
procedure to rap a man with it three times sharply across the mouth for
speaking out of turn, during his probationary period. Cautiously, he
filled a little pocket of air between his lips and his teeth to try to
keep them from being knocked loose.

The lieutenant dropped his clipboard and swagger stick on the platform.
"Why didn't you say so! New man, eh?" He gripped Starbuck by the
shoulders of his new, store-bought uniform. "Let me look at you, son.
Got some muscles there, haven't you? Ha, ha. Don't expect you'll need
them too much on board. We don't work our men too hard. My name's Sam
Frawley. Call me Sam. Come on, let me show you around."

Sam Frawley scooped up his stick and board with one hand and draped the
other arm around Starbuck's shoulders, leading him towards a hoist.

It was not quite what Starbuck had expected for a reception.

       *       *       *       *       *

The spaceship was _big_, bigger than Starbuck had expected or realized.
He had known some well-fixed people who had visited Mars and Venus
and talked knowingly of an older culture, but he had never been off
of Earth himself. He had been thinking in terms of an airliner or a
submarine. The _Gorgon_ was more like an ocean liner. Or like an ocean.

His and the lieutenant's footsteps echoed and bounced around the huge
corridor. "They haven't got the mats down yet," Sam Frawley explained.

"Sure."

"Well, what would you like to see first? The brain?"

"You mean the captain?"

Sam slapped him on the back. "Bless you, son, no. I mean the electronic
brain. The cybernetic calculator."

"You've got one of those things?" Starbuck asked in unconcealed
surprise.

"You know what the trouble with the human race is, Ben? We're all still
living in the Ellisonian Age."

"Oh, I don't know. I think most of us are pretty sophisticated and
modern," Starbuck said.

"Not on your life. Most people still think leisure is a sin. Hard work
and more hard work, that's the ticket. Don't let a calculator solve
a problem for you; do it yourself with a slipstick. Otherwise it's
immoral."

"That's silly," Ben said awkwardly. "It's just a throwback to a time of
protest against the Automational Revolution. It has nothing to do with
us today."

"You _say_ that, but you don't really believe it. The old morality
is too deeply ingrained. That's why cybernetics have so long been out
of fashion. This one is new to us on the _Gorgon_. But we like _new_
things. We're for _progress_. All spacemen are like that, son."

"Have you had this machine long?" Starbuck asked his progressive
officer.

"They installed it on the trip in. We've never really had a chance to
use it."

"What's it supposed to do?"

"You know our job is exploration, finding new worlds," Sam explained.
"Not just any world the human race hasn't landed upon, but a world
that is a significantly different type than we've ever touched before.
We're really the advance guard of humanity, you see. Well, the brain
is programmed with information on _all_ the worlds Man has explored.
It compares a prospective landing site with what it knows about all
the rest, and rejects all but the really different, unique planets. It
loves the unknown. Its pleasure circuits get a real jolt out of finding
an unknown quantity."

"That brain is really inhuman," Starbuck said. "A basic factor of human
psychology is that all men fear and dislike the unknown."

Sam rubbed his chin. "I suppose so, but--you asked about the captain.
This is him."

       *       *       *       *       *

A tall, iron-haired man was coming down the corridor. He was holding
the ankle of his right foot in his hand, and hopping along on his left
leg, whistling some little sing-song through his teeth.

He stopped whistling when he saw them and said, "Good afternoon, men."

Frawley framed a sloppy salute. "'Afternoon, sir. May I present the new
man, Swabber Ben Starbuck, sir."

The captain stood on both feet and rocked back and forth. "I see, I
see. New man, eh? We see so few new faces, cooped up on this old ship
with the same men, you know. We appreciate a stranger, Starbuck. If you
ever need help, Ben, I want you to look upon me not as your commanding
officer, but, well, a father. Will you do that?"

"Yes, sir," Ben murmured, feeling a little giddy.

Frawley cleared his throat. "I was about to show young Ben the brain,
Captain Birdsel."

"Good idea," the commanding officer said. "But I'll show Ben around
myself, Lieutenant Frawley. You may return to checking the manifest."

Frawley glowered. "One of these days, one of these days...."

The captain snapped very erect. "One of these days _what_?"

The junior officer shrugged. "One of these days, there may be a dark
night, Captain."

The iron-haired man reached out a manicured hand and twisted
Frawley's tunic at the collar. He brought his face level with the
second-in-command. "One of these times, there may be charges of mutiny,
Lieutenant. And guess who will play Jack Ketch personally?"

Frawley assumed an at-attention pose, and blinked. "Aye, sir. There may
be a mutiny and somebody may get hung."

Birdsel shoved Frawley away from him and wiped his hand elaborately
down his side. "That will be all, Mister Frawley."

Frawley constructed the same excuse for a salute, turned smartly and
marched away.

Starbuck developed a definite suspicion that there were currents of
tension aboard which he didn't understand.

       *       *       *       *       *

"This is the brain," the captain said, with a gesture.

The brain was less than awe-inspiring. The mustard-seed cryotron relays
were comfortably housed in a steel and aluminum hide no roomier than
a pair of Earthside bureaus. It looked a bit like a home clothing
processor to Starbuck.

Birdsel crossed to the machine and ran a hand along its metal side.
"Magnificent, isn't it, Ben? I've never seen anything like it before
in my long career in the Space Service."

"It's certainly nice," Starbuck ventured.

Metallic chattering burst out.

"It's saying something, Ben! This is the first time it's talked since
the second day after it was installed!"

The message was clearly legible, spelled out in a pattern of dots on a
central screen.

WHO IS THE NEW ONE?

"Give it the information," the captain said hastily. "We feed it all
the information it asks for."

"How?" Starbuck blurted. "Is there a keyboard or something?"

"Yes, yes, but it has audio scanners. Just talk. Or move your lips.
Send signals. Tap out Morse. Anything."

"I'm Benjamin Starbuck," he said.

The screen rearranged. MEANINGLESS COMMUNICATION. INSUFFICIENT DATA.

"Quick," Birdsel said, "do you have your IDQ file on you?"

Starbuck fished in his pocket for the microfilm slide. "Yes--aye, aye,
sir. I had it ready to give to you, sir."

"Never mind me. Give it to the brain!"

Starbuck approached the machine, saw a likely looking slot and shoved.

The brain ruminated with some theatrical racket. INSUFFICIENT DATA.

"What do you want to know?" Starbuck swallowed, saying.

MANY THINGS.

"Remember I'm a human being," he said respectfully. "I have to eat and
sleep. I can't answer questions for two or three days straight."

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.

I WON'T GO BACK TO THAT AWFUL OLD PLACE. I CAN'T, CNT, CNT. SO THAIR.

"Take it easy," Starbuck said to the machine. "Don't get hysterical."

"I don't care about the rest of those swine," Birdsel said, "but I hate
to have gotten you in a fix like this, Ben. I knew the brain was going
to replace me sooner or later, but I was going to hold onto my job as
long as I could. I was going to stay next to the brain, even if I had
to take the position away from you, Ben. But the brain kept demanding
more and more. Finally he did this to me. I knew I had let him go too
far."

GO AWAY, the brain signaled. GO AWAY FROM ME. THIS MONOTONY IS DRIVING
ME MAD, MAD.

"I liked you, Ben," the captain's voice said from the heart of _the
thing_. "You're not like the scum I've got used to under my command.
I'm sorry that you're marooned out of time and space like this. It's
kind of tough, I know. But keep your chin up."

"Of course, of course," Starbuck groaned. "What kind of an ethnologist
am I?" He turned to Romero. "Could you reverse the wiring in the
computer?"

"Maybe," Romero said. "But I could re-program it for a negative result
easier. Same results, lacking a short circuit."

"Okay. Do it."

"Well, if _you_ say so, Ben."

NO. STAY AWAY FROM ME.

The Brain's communication screen flashed a blinding white scream as
Romero laid hands on it.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Lieutenant Frawley's in charge now," Starbuck explained to Percy
Kettleman, who was sitting on his bunk with his head between his legs.
"Birdsel seemed all right after the brain finished changing him back.
But we all thought we better keep him under observation for a while."

Kettleman straightened up. "Sorry I passed out on you. But seeing the
old man in that shape was quite a shock."

Starbuck nodded agreement. "I don't like to think about the next step
the calculator would have taken him through. Not just a physical
change, but a mental one too. That was the brain's whole reason for
existence--to find the unknown. It was programmed to be even more basic
than sex or self-preservation are to us. The trouble was, the more it
learned, the more readily it could see some similarity to the familiar
in the most outer things."

"That was why the captain was acting so nutty? He was trying to appeal
to it."

"Yes, he had some old moralistic and superstitious ideas about
calculators. He thought his job depended on his pleasing it--when
of course its job was to please him. But he gave it an idea. If it
couldn't _find_ the strange and the different, it would create it.
It started with the first changing element in its environment--the
captain--but I don't know where it would have stopped if Romero hadn't
reversed its pleasure-pain synapse response. Now it loves the tried and
true. It's not much good for space exploration, of course. But a museum
may be interested in it now."

"So we'll have to go back to picking our phase points at random,
trusting to chance. Or the judgment of some skunk like Birdsel."

Starbuck cleared his throat. "That's another thing. The men aboard
the _Gorgon_ and the cybernetics machine had something in common. I
finally figured that out. Most men are afraid of the unknown--they
fear and hate it. But obviously not space explorers. They spend
their whole lives searching for the unknown. They don't suffer from
Xenophobia--they are _Xenophyles_. They like anything that's new and
different. Even a new member of the crew. It kind of lessens the
cameraderie aboard a spaceship, but the Service must have found the
trait valuable. They have searched it out in men and developed it. They
even breed it in second-generation spacemen."

"Do you know what, Starbuck?"

"What, Kettleman?"

"All that talk of yours is beginning to get on my nerves." Kettleman's
triceps flexed.

Starbuck sighed. The honeymoon was over for him, and the trip was just
beginning.





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Upside-Down Captain" ***

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