Subspace Survivors | Page 5

one, you know."
"But I'm not big; I'm just a little squirt. You've probably heard what
they call me?"
"Yes, and I'm going to call you 'Babe', too, and mean it the same way
they do. Besides, who wants a man a foot taller than she is and twice as
big? You're just exactly the right size!"
"That's spreading the good old oil, Bobby, but I'll never tangle with you
if I can help it. Buzz-saws are small, too, and sticks of dynamite. Shall
we go hunt up the parson--or should it be a priest? Or 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