The Hell Ship Read online

this ship!" said Gene hoarsely.

  * * * * *

  The door of the stateroom opened. A sharp-nosed face peered in, followedby a misshapen body of a man in a dirty blue uniform. Hair grew thickall around his neck and clear up to his ears. It also covered the skinfrom chin to shirt opening. The hair bristled, coarse as an animal's.His voice was thick, his words hissing as though his tongue was tooheavy to move properly.

  "Captain wants you, O'Neil."

  Gene got up, took a step. He went clear across the room, banged againstthe wall. The little man laughed.

  "We're in space," Ann said. "We have a simulated gravity about a quarternormal. Here, let me put on your metal-soled slippers. They'remagnetized to hold you to the floor." She bent and slipped the things onhis feet, while Gene held his throbbing head.

  The little man opened the door and went out. Gene followed, his feetslipping along awkwardly. After a minute his nausea lessened. At the endof the long steel corridor the little man knocked, then opened the doorto a low rumble of command. He didn't enter, just stood aside for Gene.Gene walked in, stood staring.

  The eyes in the face he saw were black pools of nothingness, withoutemotion, yet behind them an active mind was apparent. Gene realized thishairy thing was the Captain--even though he didn't even wear a shirt!

  "You've shanghaied me," said Gene. "I don't like it."

  The voice was huge and cold, like wind from an ice field. "None of uslike it, chum. But the ships have got to sail. You're one of us now,because we're on our way and by the time you get there, there'll be noplace left for you to work, unless it's in a circus as a freak."

  "I didn't ask for it," said Gene.

  "You did. You wanted to know too much about the crew--and if you foundout, you'd spread it. You see, the drives are not what they were cookedup to be--the atomics leak, and it wasn't found out until too late.After they learned, they hid the truth, because the cargo we bring isworth millions. All the shielding they've used so far only seems to makeit worse. But that won't stop the ships--they'll get crews the way theygot you, and nosey people will find out more than they bargain for."

  "I won't take it sitting down!" said Gene angrily.

  The Captain ignored him. "Start saying sir. It's etiquette aboard shipto say sir to the Captain."

  "I'll never say sir to anyone who got me into this...."

  The Captain knocked him down.

  Gene had plenty of time to block the blow. He had put up his arms, butthe big fist went right through and crashed against his chin. Gene satdown hard, staring up at the hairy thing that had once been a man. Hesuddenly realized the Captain was standing there waiting for an excuseto kill him.

  Through split and bleeding lips, while his stomach turned over and hishead seemed on the point of bursting, Gene said: "Yes, sir!"

  The Captain turned his back, sat down again. He shoved aside a mass ofworn charts, battered instruments, cigar butts, ashtrays with statuettesof naked girls in a half-dozen startling poses, comic books, illustratedmagazines with sexy pictures, and made a space on the top. He thrustforward a sheet of paper. He picked up a fountain pen, flirted it sothat ink spattered the tangle of junk on his desk, then handed it toGene. "Sign on the dotted line."

  Gene picked up the document. It was an ordinary kind of form, anapplication for employment as a spacehand, third class. The ship was notnamed, but merely called a cargo boat. This was the paper the Companyneeded to keep the investigators satisfied that no one was forced towork on the ships against their will. Anger blinded him. He didn't takethe pen. He just stood looking at the Captain and wondering how to keephimself from being beaten to death.

  After a long moment of silence the Captain laid the pen down, grinnedhorribly. He gave a snort. "It's just a formality. I'm supposed to turnthese things over to the authorities, but they never bother us anymore.Sign it later, after you've learned. You'll be _glad_ to sign, then."

  "What's my job, Captain?"

  "Captain Jorgens, and don't forget the sir!"

  "Captain Jorgens, sir."

  "I'll put you with the Chief Engineer. He'll find work for you down inthe pile room."

  The Captain laughed a nasty laugh, repeating the last phrase withrelish. "The pile room! There's a place for you, Mr. O'Neil. When youdecide to sign your papers, we'll get you a job in some other part ofthis can!"

  Gene found his way back to the cabin he had just left. The little guywith the hairy neck was there, leering at the girl.

  "Put you in the pile gang didn't he?"

  Gene nodded, sat down wearily. "I want to sleep," he said.

  "Nuts," said the little man. "I'm here to take you to the ChiefEngineer. You go on duty in half an hour. Come on!"

  Gene got up. He was too sick to argue. Ann looked at himsympathetically, noting his split lips. He managed a grin at her, "If Inever see you again, Ann, it's been nice knowing you, very nice."

  "I'll see you, Gene. They'll find us tougher than they bargained for."

  * * * * *

  The engine room looked like some of the atomic power stations he'd seen.Only smaller. There was no heavy concrete shielding, no lead walls.There was shielding around the central pile, and Gene knew that insideit was the hell of atomic chain reaction under the control of the biglevers that moved the cadmium bars. There was a steam turbine at oneend, and a huge boiler at the other. Gene didn't even try to guess howthe pile activated the jets that drove the space ship. Somehow it"burned" the water.

  This pile had been illegal from the first. Obviously some official hadbeen bribed to permit the first use of it on a spaceship. Certainly noone who knew anything about the subject would have allowed human beingsto work around a thing like this.

  Gene's skin crawled and prickled with the energies that saturated theroom. Little sparks leaped here and there, off his fingertips, off hisnose.

  The Chief Engineer was on a metal platform above the machinery level.The face had hair all over it, even on the eyelids. The eyes, poppingweirdly, were double. They looked as if second eyes had started growinginside the original ones. They weren't reasonable; they weren't evensane. The look of them made Gene sick.

  The Engineer shook his head back and forth to focus the awful, mutilatedeyes. His voice was infinitely weary, strangely muffled. "Anothersacrifice to Moloch, an's the pity! So they put you down here, as ifthere was anything to be done? Well, it'll be nice to work with someonewho still has his buttons--as long as they last. Sit down."

  Gene sat down and the metal chair gave him a shock that made him jump."I don't know anything about this kind of work."

  The man shrugged, "Who does? The pile runs itself. Ain't enough of itmoves to need much greasing. You ought to be able to find the greasecups--they're painted red. Fill them, wipe off the dust, and wait. Thendo it over again."

  "What's the score on this bucket?"

  "We're all signed on with a billy to the knob. And _kept_ aboard by aguard system that's pretty near perfect. After awhile the emanations getto our brains and we don't care anymore. Then we're trusted employees.Only reason I don't blow her loose, it wouldn't do any good."

  He got up, a fragile old body clad in dirty overalls. He beckoned Geneto follow him. He led the way to a periscope arrangement over theshielded pile. Gene peered in. It was like a look into boiling Hell. AsGene stared, the old man talked in his ear.

  "Supposed to be perfectly shielded, and maybe they are. But _something_gets out. I think it happens in the jet assembly. A tiny trickle of highpressure steam crosses the atomic beam just above a pinhole that leadsinto the jet tube. It's exploded by the beam, exploded into God knowswhat, and the result is your jet. It's a wonderful drive, with plenty ofpower for the purpose. But I think it forms a strong field of staticover the whole shell of the ship, a kind of sphere of reflection thatthrows the emanations back into the ship from every point. Just mytheory, but it explains why you get these physical changes, because thatprocess of reflection gives a d
ifferent ray than was observed in theordinary shielded jet."

  Gene nodded, asked: "Can I look at the jet assembly?"

  "Ain't no way to look at it! It's sealed up to hold in the expandinggases from that exploded steam. Looking in this periscope is whatchanged my eyes. Only other place the unshielded emanations could escapeis from the jet chamber. Only way they can get back into the ship is byreflection from some ionized layer around the ship. If I could talk tosome of those big-brained birds that developed this drive, I'd sure havethings to say."

  Gene was convinced the