The Galaxy Primes | Page 2

Ferber snarled. Pale eyes glared from the fat
face. "That costs you exactly one thousand credits, James."
"How much will this cost me, Fatso?" Garlock asked.
"Five thousand--and, since nobody can call me that deliberately,
demotion three grades and probation for three years. Make a note, Miss
Foster."
"Noted, sir."
"Still sure we aren't going anywhere," Garlock said. "What a brain!"
"Sure I'm sure!" Ferber gloated. "In a couple of hours I'm going to buy
your precious starship in as junk. In the meantime, whether you like it
or not, I'm going to watch your expression while you push all those
pretty buttons and nothing happens."
"The trouble with you, Fatso," Garlock said dispassionately, as he

opened a drawer and took out a pair of cutting pliers, "is that all your
strength is in your glands and none in your alleged brain. There are a
lot of things--including a lot of tests--you know nothing about. How
much will you see after I've cut one wire?"
"You wouldn't dare!" the fat man shouted. "I'd fire you--blacklist you
all over the sys...."
Voice and images died away and Garlock turned to the two women in
the Main. He began to smile, but his mental shield did not weaken.
"You've got a point there, Lola," he said, going on as though Ferber's
interruption had not occurred. "Not that I blame either Belle or myself.
If anything was ever calculated to drive a man nuts, this farce was. As
the only female Prime in the system, Belle should have been in
automatically--she had no competition. And to anybody with three
brain cells working the other place lay between you, Lola, and the other
three female Ops in the age group.
"But no. Ferber and the rest of the Board--stupidity uber alles!--think
all us Ops and Primes are psycho and that the ship will never even lift.
So they made a Grand Circus of it. But they succeeded in one
thing--with such abysmal stupidity so rampant I'm getting more and
more reconciled to the idea of our not getting back--at least, for a long,
long time."
"Why, they said we had a very good chance...." Lola began.
"Yeah, and they said a lot of even bigger damn lies than that one. Have
you read any of my papers?"
"I'm sorry. I'm not a mathematician."
"Our motion will be purely at random. If it isn't, I'll eat this whole ship.
We won't get back until Jim and I work out something to steer us with.
But they must be wondering no end, outside, what the score is, so I'm
willing to call it a draw--temporarily--and let 'em in again. How about
it, Belle?"

"A draw it is--temporarily." Neither, however, even offered to shake
hands.
"Smile pretty, everybody," Garlock said, and pressed a stud.
"... the matter? What's the matter? Oh...." the worried voice of the
System's ace newscaster came in. "Power failure already?"
"No," Garlock replied. "I figured we had a couple of minutes of privacy
coming, if you can understand the meaning of the word. Now all four
of us tell everybody who is watching or listening au revoir or good-bye,
whichever it may turn out to be." He reached for the switch.
"Wait a minute!" the newscaster demanded. "Leave it on until the last
poss...." His voice broke off sharply.
"Turn it back on!" Belle ordered.
"Nix."
"Scared?" she sneered.
"You chirped it, bird-brain. I'm scared purple. So would you be, if you
had three brain cells working in that glory-hound's head of yours. Get
set, everybody, and we'll take off."
"Stop it, both of you!" Lola exclaimed. "Where do you want us to sit,
and do we strap down?"
"You sit here; Belle at that plate beside Jim. Yes, strap down. There
probably won't be any shock, and we should land right side up, but
there's no sense in taking chances. Sure your stuff's all aboard?"
"Yes, it's in our rooms."
The four secured themselves; the two men checked, for the dozenth
time, their instruments. The pilot donned his scanner. The ship lifted
effortlessly, noiselessly. Through the atmosphere; through and far
beyond the stratosphere. It stopped.

"Ready, Clee?" James licked his lips.
"As ready as I ever will be, I guess. Shoot!"
The pilot's right hand, forefinger outstretched, moved
unenthusiastically toward a red button on his panel ... slowed ...
stopped. He stared into his scanner at the Earth so far below.
"Hit it, Jim!" Garlock snapped. "Hit it, for goodness sake, before we all
lose our nerve!"
James stabbed convulsively at the button, and in the very instant of
contact--instantaneously; without a fractional microsecond of
time-lapse--their familiar surroundings disappeared. Or, rather, and
without any sensation of motion, of displacement, or of the passage of
any time whatsoever, the planet beneath them was no longer their