"I am Captain Rinker, in command of this ship," said the man. "Dr. Ferranti tells me that you are fully stable and adapted to S-space. Is that so?"
"I don't know. I feel no pain, but I certainly don't feel normal."
"That will pass. Anything else?"
"Someone seems to want to starve me to death."
"Your own fault. When you awoke you could have called for food. Instead you chose to pry." Rinker gestured at a wall display that was showing the room where Peron had returned to consciousness. "You were observed. It would serve you right if we did not feed you for a while. But you are lucky. Regulations would not permit us to starve you. Command: Bring food and drink, suitable for the awakening."
A tray appeared instantly, resting on Peron's knees. The clear carafe held the same liquid as he had drunk before, but the plates of food were unfamiliar. There were brown patties with a coarse granular texture, orange-red jelly, and white slabs of smooth creamy consistency. Rinker gestured to them.
"Carry on. You may eat while we talk."
Peron looked around him. There was no other person in the room, and no sign that the door had opened or closed. "How are you able to do that?"
"It is not appropriate that I tell you. Such information will be given to you at Headquartersif it is given at all." Rinker waved his hand at the display. "Your efforts to use the service system were already noted. To save you further wasted time, I will point out that any more efforts on your part will be just as unsuccessful. Let me also point out that I am under no official obligation to talk to you, or to deal with you in any way except to provide safe transfer to Headquarters. But I want you to know how much trouble you have caused, you and that fool Wilmer."
Peron could not resist the food in front of him. His body insisted that it had been weeks since it had received nourishment. He ate ravenously. The patties had a reasonable resemblance to bread, and although the white material tasted nothing like the cheese that Peron had expected, it tasted good. He stared across the desk at Captain Rinker, swallowed, and spoke.
"I can't speak for Wilmer, but any trouble I caused was not my doing. I would have died on Whirlygig without his help. I don't see why you assign blame to me."
Rinker gave an impatient wave of his hand. "You were marked as a troublemaker before you left the planet. So were your companions on Whirlygig. You were all scheduled for special indoctrination on the ship Eleanora, to be kept apart from the other contestants. As for Wilmer, he was supposed to be there as an observernot as a participant. I have warned several times of the danger of using local recruits as observers. They have too many ties to your planet and its people. But my advice was ignored."
"Is Wilmer an Immortal?"
Rinker leaned back in his chair, frowning. His voice rose in pitch. "That stupid term! It is one I never use. Wilmer was recruited to our group, yes. And he shares our extended life span. But he has never left the Cass system, and he certainly knows nothing of our larger mission. Now I must suffer the consequences of his dabbling. For three hundred and sixty of your years, I have visited Pentecost and the Cass system. This is my nineteenth trip. And never has anything gone wrong. I have developed a perfect record in my work. Success is expected of me, and I demand it of myself. But now, thanks to what Wilmer did on Whirlygig, all that has gone. This visit has turned into a disaster. The materials I should be carrying back from the group on Eleanora have been left behind; final selection and indoctrination of recruits has been delayed; and I am carrying six additional and unwanted passengers with me to Headquarters, all of whom are tagged as potential trouble. Do you think I should be happy?"
As Peron's hunger and thirst lessened, he felt an increasing curiosity at his surroundings. It was also matched by a growing annoyance. He had done nothing to justify Rinker's tirade. What did the foolish man expect him to do? Ask to be taken back to die on Whirlygig?
He lifted the tray and placed it on the desk on front of him. "I don't say you should be happy. But you shouldn't blame me for what happened. Why won't you tell me what's going on here?"
"So you can cause more trouble?"
"I'm not going to cause trouble. But naturally I have many questions. I don't ask for your time, but let me at least have access to a terminal and the data banks. And you say that some of the other contestants are here on this ship. I would certainly like to see them."
Rinker stared angrily at the messy tray lying on his clean and polished desk. He gave Peron an unpleasant smile. "I cannot allow you access to the data banks. As I told you, this situation is unprecedented. No one has ever joined our group here without indoctrination. What happens to you can be decided only after we reach Headquarters, and until we arrive there you must do exactly as you are told. You want to see your companions? Very well. Command: Remove this tray."
It vanished instantly.
"Command: Take us both to the suspense room." This time Peron had a dizzying image of a long corridor and gray walls.
It lasted for a fraction of a second. Then the world steadied, and he and Rinker were standing together in front of a bank of waist-high metal doors. Each one formed the entrance to a long, deep container like an outsize coffin. Monitors sat on the transparent top of each box, and all the outputs were collected into a thick optic bundle that ran to a computer terminal. The room was freezingly cold.
"Perhaps this will give you an idea of how seriously I regard this situation." Rinker stepped forward to one of the boxes. "Your companions are here."
"What have you done to them?" Peron felt a sense of horror. Was Rinker telling him that Elissa and the others were imprisoned in those black, icy caskets?
"They are in cold sleep, and will remain there." Rinker's voice was as chilly as the room. It offered no possibility of discussion. "They are of course in no danger. I run a well-regulated ship, and all the equipment is checked constantly. They will be awakeneda simple procedurewhen we reach Headquarters. Then this matter will move to other hands than mine. I will be very glad to see the last of it."
Peron stepped forward to peer in through the top of the nearest chest. Kallen lay inside, swathed up to his neck in soft white material. He looked dead. His eyes were deep-set in his head, his face gray and drained of all color. Peron stepped to the next container. That one held Elissa. He shuddered to see what she had become. Without its usual animation, her face was like a wax model.
"Are you sure that they are all right?" Peron had to ask. "They look"
"I have no time to waste in repeating myself. They are all right. I have already told you and shown you more than I intended. You will eat your meals with the rest of us, and I will see you then. If you need food before that, use the terminal. Command: Take him to his living quarters."
There was no chance to protest. Rinker and the room with Elissa and the others suddenly vanished. Peron found himself alone with his worry, perplexity and frustration, in a room that held only a bed, a desk, and a terminal.
The Planetfest games had provided periods of terror, exhaustion, suspense and near-despair. But there had been nothing to match the sheer frustration of the next twelve hours. By the end of it, Peron had reached an unvoiced decision: if he was to be branded as a troublemaker, he was going to earn his label.
He had started out simply wishing to know more about the ship and his environment. That had proved to be far more difficult than he expected. The room he had been assigned opened to a narrow corridor, which soon branched in both directions to larger rooms and other passageways. He had tried each one in turn, making mental notes of any changes of direction.
A pattern quickly emerged. If he went off along the left corridor, he was free to wander as he pleased. He had found a dining area and a library whose terminals ignored his requests for information, but readily provided food or drink. It appeared instantly and mysteriously in front of him the moment that his order was placed through the terminal, and was removed just as promptly when he requested that. He had also met some of the other ship's complement, all much more friendly than Captain Rinker. There were only three of them. It seemed to Peron a preposterously low number to control such a large structure. But as Olivia Ferranti pointed out to him when his wandering took him past her living quarters, it was more people than were needed. Everything was under automatic control; Captain Rinker alone could handle everything. In fact, the rest of them were making their first trip, and had come from Headquarters to the Cass system for their own reasons (which she refused to discuss). She had even offered something like an apology for Rinker's behavior.
"He's unusually valuable. There are not many people who like making these long trips, often with no companions. It takes a special temperament. Captain Rinker likes things neat. He can't stand the idea that you've disturbed the pattern of his life."
"But Wilmer did that, not me."
"Maybe. But Wilmer isn't here, and you are. So you're getting it."
"And he's allowed to keep my friends unconscious?"
"He's the captain. He is in control until we reach Headquarters. Then he'll have to explain his actions, but he'll have no trouble doing thathe's following regulations. And honestly, he's not harming your friends at all. Now, I have to go. We can talk a little more if you like at the next meal period. Command: Take me to the forward exercise facility."
And she was gone.
Peron found that he could get as far as the door of the suspense room, but it refused to open for him. And he could issue as many commands as he chose, in any tone of voice, for anything he liked, but they were all ignored.
When he left his room and went off along the right-hand corridor, affairs were even less satisfactory. The left corridor led him to the upper part of the ship, in terms of the effective gravity. The right corridor should then have taken him to the lower part, and it certainly started out that way. But no matter which branch he followed, when he had progressed a certain distance there would be a dizzying flickerand he would be back in his room, sitting at the desk. Some whole section of the ship, of indeterminate size, was inaccessible to him.
After a dozen fruitless attempts, Peron lay on the bed in his room, thinking hard. It was twelve hours since his meeting with Rinker, but he didn't feel at all tired. Olivia Ferranti had told him to expect little need for sleep.
"One fringe benefit of S-space," she had said. "You'll find you sleep maybe one hour in twenty."
He continued to feel physically peculiar, but she had been right on that, too. After a while he simply adjusted to it. He still had the impression that he was moving his body in a world where the laws of mechanics had been slightly modified, but it was a feeling that faded.
"Do you want to join us for dinner?" The voice came suddenly from the terminal next to his bed. It was Garao, another of the ship's company that he had encountered in his travels around the forward section.
"I don't think so." Then he sat up quickly. "No, wait a minute. Yes, I do. I'll come over." He didn't feel hungryexcept for more information. And the only way to get that seemed to be from other people. Direct exploration of the ship had been totally unrewarding.
"No need for that," said Garao. "Hold tight."
There was the now-familiar moment of disorientation. He found he was sitting in the dining area with three others. Captain Rinker was not present. As Ferranti had told him, the captain much preferred his own company and often dined alone.
Everyone seemed to take it for granted that Peron would now eat and drink the same things as the rest of them. When he arrived there were already five or six different dishes on the tableall of them unfamiliar. He found something that looked like a fish fillet, but clearly wasn't. And there were several pseudo-meat products, each flanked by some kind of vegetable. Nothing tasted quite the way he expectedand all the food was cold.
The others seemed surprised when he mentioned that. Ferranti looked at Garao and at the linguist, Atiyah, then shrugged.
"I should have mentioned that to you before. You won't get hot food in S-space. Better become used to it cold."
"But why?"
"Wait until we get to HQ, and ask there." Ferranti was clearly uncomfortable with her non-answer. She was sitting next to Peron, so he was faced only with her profile. But her voice showed her discomfort. "I would tell you, but it's against captain's orders. If you like hot food, I can make what we're eating more acceptable. It's easy enough to order spices. Command: Bring more of these dishes for Peron Turca, but with added hot spice."
There was a delay of about fifteen seconds, then additional dishes appeared on the table in front of Peron. He was preparing to help himself to them, when he noticed the expression on Garao and Atiyah's faces, across the table from him.
"What's wrong? Isn't it all right for me to eat these?"
"That's not the problem." Garao picked up an empty plate. "Command: Take this away."
Again there was a delay of a few seconds, then the plate suddenly vanished.
"See?" Garao looked gleeful. "It's the same trouble we had on the trip out from Headquarters. Seems even worse."
"It is," said Ferranti. "This time it took twice as long."
"What took twice as long?" Peron felt as though they were speaking in riddles just to confuse him.
"Service," said Atiyah. He was a man of few words. "It should be instantaneous. Let's time the delay. Command: Bring me a glass of water."
They sat in silence, until after about ten seconds a filled glass of clear liquid appeared in front of Atiyah.
Garao nodded. "We'd better notify Rinker at once. He'll have to leave S-space to correct this. Serves the stiff-necked bastard righthim and his 'perfectly run ship.' "
"And won't that make him pleased," said Ferranti. "Already he's complaining what a disaster this trip has been."
"Leave S-space? But where will he go?"
The others looked at Peron for a moment. "Sorry," said Garao sympathetically. "But this is captain's orders again. We can't include you on this. Command: Take Peron back to his room."
"Wait a minute." Peron was frantic. "Look, to hell with captain's orders. If something is wrong I have a right to know it, too. I'm on the ship as well as you. I want to stay here and find out what's happening."
But the last sentence was wasted. Peron added a string of curses to it. The service delay might worry the others, but it was still too short. He was back in his room again, talking to the empty walls.