Title: Sequel
Author: Smith, Ben
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Sequel" ***


                                SEQUEL

                             BY BEN SMITH

                         ILLUSTRATED BY BERWIN

           Jubil had had his chance. But he'd washed out of
        the Academy while his friends went on to greatness--and
             to death. He'd missed the boat at every turn.
           But now there were no turns left, with raw space
         around him and death waiting on a lonely asteroid....

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                      Rocket Stories, July 1953.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


Jubil drifted slowly, alone except for the phosphorescent star shine
that filtered through the face-plate of his suit. He was resting,
conserving the oxygen that hissed steadily and quietly through the
valve near his neck. It was time for peace; there had been too much
violence already.

Once, as his body continued its involuntary and aimless turning, Jubil
saw the dark hull of the _Mercury II_, the outer access door firmly
closed now and the stern beginning to fluoresce with the secondary
radiation that betokened the firing of the drives. Still, Jubil could
feel no anger at Radik.

When the crew had conspired to mutiny, when Radik, Olgan and the rest
had decided to take over the operation of the _Mercury II_, at that
time had been the need for honest anger. Jubil had hesitated weakly
instead, had chosen to be a bystander and had suffered the fate of the
average non-participant; he had been outcast from the closed circle
of both friend and enemy. Kane, once Captain of the _Mercury II_, was
now dead and his _dis_-charred body drifting somewhere in the spatial
wilderness.

"Have you changed your thinking, Jubil?" It was Radik's voice in the
helmet phones and Jubil could almost see the heavy face with its
fringe of space-black beard. Jubil rested, listening to the cosmic
interference in his R-link equipment.

"Jubil! Jubil Marken! Have you changed your mind?"

"Radik--" Jubil formed the words slowly, using his lips only and
breathing shallowly. "Piracy suits you, Radik. You are one of the
ruthless...."

Jubil could hear Radik's throaty chuckle. "A dead man of honor is still
dead, Jubil." The communication circuit went silent except for the buzz
of voices in the background. Jubil drifted on, conscious of the fact
that he was moving but so full of the lethargy of the moment that he
neglected it. What would it be like, this bit of time that was left? It
had been an hour since Jubil had been forcibly ejected from the access
door of the _Mercury II_; the flask at his back carried oxygen for
four. Three hours of life--while around his slowly turning body was the
agelessness of endless space. Jubil smiled, just a little, conscious
of the fact that he felt no fear. The die was cast now; he had made his
decision finally, and he did not regret it.

"There is space-craft in Sector 180, Jubil," it was Radik again, "Racon
has just reported it. But they'll miss you by at least ten parsecs.
Have you changed your mind?"

"No."

"Very well." Jubil could see the pulsing of the _Mercury's_ drives,
now. Radik was taking no chances on the strange ship still light years
away from his stern being patrol. "Good news for you, Jubil. You are
in the gravitational field of an asteroid. You can't see it, yet; it's
directly above you. But you'll drift to it and cling like a snail on a
stone for as long as time itself. Good-bye, Jubil."

Strange, Jubil thought, that there was no anger in him now. There
should be oxygen enough for a good two hours yet, so this eerie ennui
could not be the prelude to a rising carbon dioxide quotient. A normal
man would be bitter, perhaps even hysterical in his anger and his
fear of death. Yet there was only this peaceful drifting toward the
still-invisible asteroid that hung in space above his own head. Jubil
closed his eyes, shutting out the phosphorescence of the velvet that
was space. The exhaust of the _Mercury II_ might still be in sight.
If so, it was not visible through the restriction of the plastic
face-plate of Jubil's suit.

Jubil found himself wondering where Kane could have drifted since the
captain's inert body had been shoved out of the _Mercury II's_ access
door. Perhaps, even now, it was bound, like a rudderless ship, toward
the selfsame asteroid that would be Jubil's last and permanent home.

Thinking of Kane, Jubil remembered also Schoenbirk, the erratic
genius whose mathematical theorizing was used in the design of the
Schoenbirk-Halsted De-Fouling Gear. Had it been years, or lifetimes
ago, when the three of them had been undergraduates together at the
Academy?

Schoenbirk, working with the high electrostatic potentials necessary
to insure the exhaust of opposite-sign waste from the complex guts of
the atomic drive had been blown to pieces by the accumulation of the
very thing his device was designed to prevent. Random electrical forces
gathering around the discharge ring until their workable mass became
great enough to enter and initiate a chain reaction in the fuel storage
tank. Along with Schoenbirk had gone even the tremendously heavy
concrete walls of the laboratory. All that, however, had been after
Jubil had washed out of the Academy and gone into the space-freighters
as a Drive-Engineer. In the intervening years, Jubil had become
thoroughly familiar with the perfected Schoenbirk-Halsted....

Kane! There was a man who had made the Academy his own playground.
Kane had passed with the greatest of ease, worked his way through
astro-navigation, the Allen Drives, space-time computations....

       *       *       *       *       *

Jubil grimaced wryly. It had been the latter with its advanced
mathematics that had been his own downfall. So Kane had gone on to the
first officer berth in a gilded passenger liner while Jubil developed
radiation scars on his hands from "in the hole" engineering on decrepit
freighters.

And the great leveller had met and conquered them all....

Schoenbirk, even in the explosion that took his life had accomplished
a great thing: the discovery of the final flaw in the De-Fouling
Gear that had lived after him. For without proper removal of the
ionized waste from its drive engines, the largest freighter became an
ever-accumulating and treacherously unstable fissionable pile.

Kane--one of the legendary figures of the history of astro-navigation.
Kane with his Academy background and his proud but personable air had
become one of the most talked-of Space captains who had ever lived.
Jubil could still, in memory, see Kane, standing spread-kneed on the
bridge of the _Comet_, one of the first; later the _Wanderer_, the
first of the luxury space liners. The _Mercury_, and the _Mercury II_,
the super-ships that made week-end excursion flights that spanned from
galaxy to galaxy.

A misplaced decimal point and a misplaced trust and the greatness
of Schoenbirk and Kane lay behind them. Even as his drifting body,
cumbersome in the space-suit, touched the asteroid, Jubil was aware of
a strange weariness that invaded every part of him except his mind. At
least, the waning oxygen would leave him his thoughts.

He rested, conserving his strength. For what reason? The thing that was
to happen was as certain as Fate and as unavoidable by the machinations
of man. Was it, after all, because Jubil was prey to anger? No. He was
now too near death for anger to seem important.

The face of the asteroid was cold and Jubil lay against it, held as
lightly as a maiden's kiss by the ounce or so of gravity.

He was smiling as the darkness of space was suddenly brilliantly
lighted. Spears of bluish flame, each with its tip of crimson, spread
across the warp of time, and subconsciously Jubil found himself waiting
for the shock wave. Then he laughed. In space there was no atmosphere;
he would never be buffeted by the blast that had destroyed the _Mercury
II_ and the mutineer Radik.

Jubil thought again of the hellish radiation to which he had exposed
himself. There was no other way. To destroy the delicate regulating
linkage of the Schoenbirk-Halsted, a man must enter the combustion
chamber where the pilot-piles idled. There had been just time enough
for that, before Radik had sent for him.

Had there been ample oxygen, Jubil Marken knew that he would only have
lived until his radiation-seared heart painfully failed to function.
But, thanks to Radik, Jubil had been spared both the disintegration of
the _Mercury II_ and an agonizing death from slow radiation burn.

He was, Jubil reflected, as effective in his own way as was Schoenbirk
and Kane. In the end, he was still an Academy man with them. He
was peacefully smiling as he twisted tight the oxygen valve at his
throat....



*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Sequel" ***

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