A. Van Vogt - Rogue Ship

Back at his office, he made a mistake. He called Joan. It was years since they had talked and evidently she was no longer so tense, for she actually came to the phone. Her manner was light. 'And what's on your mind?' she asked.

'Reconciliation.'

'For Pete's sake!' she said, and laughed.

Her voice sounded more strident than when he had last seen her. It struck Hewitt with a pang that the vague reports he had heard, that she was associating not only with one man – which would be normal and to be expected – but with many, were true.

The realization stopped him a little but only a little. He said soberly, 'I don't know why that amuses you. What's happened to the profound and undying love which you used to swear would last for all eternity?'

There was a pause, then: 'You know,' she said, 'I really do believe you are simpleton enough, and that you are calling for a reconciliation. But I'm smart these days, and so I'll just put two and two together and guess that the return of your silly ship is probably connected with this call. Do you want me to get the family together and we all go back with you to Centaurus?'

Hewitt had the feeling that, after such an unfruitful beginning, it would be a mistake to continue the conversation. But he persisted anyway. 'Why not let me have the children?' he urged. 'The trip won't hurt them and at least they'll be out of the way when -'

Joan cut him off at that point. 'You see,' she laughed, 'I figured the whole crazy thing correctly.'

With that, she banged the receiver in his ear.

The evening papers phoned him about it, and then carried a garbled account of her version of his proposal to her. In print, the reference to himself as the 'baby Nova man' made him cringe. Hewitt hid from reporters who thereafter maintained a twenty-four-hour vigil in the lobby of the hotel where he lived.

Two days later, he needed a police escort to take him to the factory to pick up the specially built tank suit, and then on to the field, where he took off once more for the Molly D.

Once there, more than an hour was spent in testing. But at last a magnet drew shut the inner door of the Hope of Man. Then the air pressure in the connecting bulkhead was reduced to one atmosphere. Hewitt, arrayed in his new, motor-driven capsule on wheels, was then lifted out of the salvage ship into the bulkhead by a crane. The door locked tight behind him. Air was again pumped into the space. Hewitt watched the suit's air-pressure gauges carefully as the outside pressure was gradually increased to nine hundred and seventy-three atmospheres. When, after many minutes, the tank suit still showed no signs of buckling, he edged it forward in low gear and gently pushed open the door of the big ship.

A few moments later he was inside the Hope of Man.

DARKNESS!

The change had come at the instant he rolled into the ship. The difference was startling. From outside, the corridor had looked bright and normal. He was in a ghastly gray-dark world. Several seconds went by as he peered into the gloom. His eyes became accustomed to the dim lighting effect. Although years had gone by since he had last been aboard, he was now instantly struck by a sense of smallness.

He was in a corridor which he knew pointed into the heart of the ship. It was narrower than he remembered it. Not only a little narrower; a lot. It had been a broad arterial channel, especially constructed for the passage of large equipment. It was not broad any more.

Precisely how long it was, he couldn't see. Originally, it had run the width of the ship, over a thousand feet. He couldn't see that far. Ahead, the corridor faded into impenetrable shadow.

It seemed not to have shrunk in height. It had been thirty feet high and it still looked thirty.

But it was five feet wide instead of forty. And it didn't look as if it had been torn down and rebuilt. It seemed solid and, besides, rebuilding was all but impossible. The steel framework behind the facade of wall was an integral part of the skeleton of the ship.

He had to make up his mind, then, whether he would continue into the ship. And there was no doubt of that. With his purpose he had to.

He paused to close the airlock door. And there he -received another shock. The door distorted as it moved. No such effect had been visible from outside. As he swung it shut, its normal width of twelve feet narrowed to four.

The change was so monstrous that perspiration broke out on his face. And the first tremendous realization was in his mind: 'But that's the Lorentz-Fitzgerald Contraction Theory effect.'

His mind leaped on to an even more staggering thought: 'Why, that would mean this ship is traveling at near the speed of light.'

He rejected the notion utterly. It seemed a meaningless concept. There must be some other explanation.

Cautiously, he started his machine forward on its rubber wheels. The captain's cabin was his first destination. As he moved ahead, the shadows opened up reluctantly before him. Not till he was ten feet from it was he able to see the ramp that led up to the next level.

The reappearance of things remembered relieved him. What was more important, they seemed to be at about the right distance. First, the airlock, then the ramp, and then many workshops. The corridor opened out at the ramp, then narrowed again. Everything looked eerily cramped because of the abnormal narrowing effect. But the length seemed to be right.

He expected the door of the captain's cabin to be too narrow for his space suit to get into. However, as he came up to it, he saw that its width was as he remembered it. Hewitt nodded to himself, thought, 'Of course, even by the Lorentz-Fitzgerald theory, that would be true. Contraction would be in the direction of flight.' Since the door was at right angles to the flight line, the size of the doorway was not affected. The doorjamb, however, would probably be narrower.

The jamb was narrower. Hewitt had stopped his suit to stare at it. Now, he felt himself pale with tension. 'It doesn't fit,' he told himself. 'Like the hall, it's narrower only by a factor of eight, whereas the air pressure varies 973 to one.

Once more he assured himself that the explanation could not possibly include the famous contradiction theory. Speed was, after all, not an aspect of this situation. The Hope of Man was practically at rest, whatever its velocity might have been in the past.

He stopped that thought with: 'I'm wasting time! I've got to get going!'

Acutely conscious that this was supposed to be a quick, exploratory journey, he shifted the softly spinning motor into gear, and moved forward through the doorway.

The outer room of the captain's apartment was empty. Hewitt rolled forward into the beautiful suite and headed for the master bedroom. Its door was closed but it opened at the touch of one of his power-driven appendages. He entered with embarrassed hesitation; he had a typical attitude about intruding on people in bed. The room held twin beds. A woman lay in the nearer one, but she was covered by a thin sheet and so he could see only a part of one arm and shoulder and her head. She was turned away from him. At first glance, she seemed normal enough and one glance was all he gave her, for at that instant his gaze was caught by the man.

He was curled up against the headboard in a twisted position – the position a man might be in who had been flung out of control by a sudden stop or start. Parts of his body were narrow and other parts were not, an anomaly that seemed to derive from the curled-up state. Hewitt rolled around the bed for another view. Seen from the front, the man looked normal.

But, from the side, his head and body looked like a caricature of a human being, such as might be seen in a badly distorted circus mirror.