Subspace Survivors | Page 5

a rabbi?"
"Even that doesn't make a particle of difference to you."
"Of course not. How could it?"
"A parson, please." Then, with a bright, quick grin: "We have got a lot to learn about each other, haven't we?"
"Some details, of course, but nothing of any importance and we'll have plenty of time to learn them."
"And we'll love every second of it. You'll live down here in the Middle with me, won't you, all the time you aren't actually on duty?"
"I can't imagine doing anything else," and the two set out, arms around each other, to find a minister. And as they strolled along:
"Of course you won't actually need a job, ever, or my money, either. You never even thought of dowsing, did you?"
"Dowsing? Oh, that witch stuff. Of course not."
"Listen, darling. All the time I've been touching you I've been learning about you. And you've been learning about me."
"Yes, but----"
"No buts, buster. You have really tremendous powers, and they aren't latent, either. All you have to do is quit fighting them and use them. You're ever so much stronger and fuller than I am. All I can do at dowsing is find water, oil, coal, and gas. I'm no good at all on metals--I couldn't feel gold if I were perched right on the roof of Fort Knox; I couldn't feel radium if it were frying me to a crisp. But I'm positive that you can tune yourself to anything you want to find."
He didn't believe it, and the argument went on until they reached the "Reverend's" quarters. Then, of course, it was dropped automatically; and the next five days were deliciously, deliriously, ecstatically happy days for them both.
II.
At the time of this chronicle the status of interstellar flight was very similar to that of intercontinental jet-plane flight in the nineteen-sixties. Starships were designed by humanity's best brains; carried every safety device those brains could devise. They were maintained and serviced by ultra-skilled, ultra-trained, ultra-able crews; they were operated by the creme-de-la-creme of manhood. Only a man with an extremely capable mind in an extremely capable body could become an officer of a subspacer.
Statistically, starships were the safest means of transportation ever used by man; so safe that Very Important Persons used them regularly, unthinkingly, and as a matter of course. Statistically, the starships' fatality rate per million passenger-light-years was a small fraction of that of the automobiles' per million passenger-miles. Insurance companies offered odds of tens of thousands to one that any given star-traveler would return unharmed from any given star-trip he cared to make.
Nevertheless, accidents happened. A chillingly large number of lives had, as a total, been lost; and no catastrophe had ever been even partially explained. No message of distress or call for help had ever been received. No single survivor had ever been found; nor any piece of wreckage.
And on the Great Wheel of Fate the Procyon's number came up.
In the middle of the night Carlyle Deston came instantaneously awake--feeling with his every muscle and with his every square inch of skin; listening with all the force he could put into his auditory nerves; while deep down in his mind a huge, terribly silent voice continued to yell: "DANGER! DANGER! DANGER!"
In a very small fraction of a second Carlyle Deston moved--and fast. Seizing Barbara by an arm, he leaped out of bed with her.
"We're abandoning ship--get into this suit--quick!"
"But what ... but I've got to dress!"
"No time! Snap it up!" He practically hurled her into her suit; clamped her helmet tight. Then he leaped into his own. "Skipper!" he snapped into the suit's microphone. "Deston. Emergency! Abandon ship!"
The alarm bells clanged once; the big red lights flashed once; the sirens barely started to growl, then quit. The whole vast fabric of the ship trembled and shuddered and shook as though it were being mauled by a thousand impossibly gigantic hammers. Deston did not know and never did find out whether it was his captain or an automatic that touched off the alarm. Whichever it was, the disaster happened so fast that practically no warning at all was given. And out in the corridor:
"Come on, girl--sprint!" He put his arm under hers and urged her along.
She did her best, but in comparison with his trained performance her best wasn't good. "I've never been checked out on sprinting in spacesuits!" she gasped. "Let go of me and go on ahead. I'll follow----"
Everything went out. Lights, gravity, air-circulation--everything.
"You haven't been checked out on free fall, either. Hang onto this tool-hanger here on my belt and we'll travel."
[Illustration]
"Where to?" she asked, hurtling through the air much faster than she had ever gone on foot.
"Baby Two--that is, Lifecraft Number Two--my crash assignment. Good thing I was down here in the Middle; I'd never have made it from up Top. Next corridor left, I