A. Van Vogt: Rogue Ship

'Let them have it!' That was Captain Lesbee, quickly. 'They've obviously discovered it is harmless.'

Lesbee watched as the Earth torpedo was drawn toward the hull of the bigger ship. A door opened in the vessel's side, and the torpedo floated into it.

A minute passed; two; and then the torpedo emerged and slowly approached the Hope of Man.

Lesbee waited, but he didn't actually needs words now. It was not the first time in these past days that something of the enormity of this meeting of the civilizations of different suns struck him. For some weeks now, the trip had had a new meaning for him, and there was also the wonder of his being on the scene. Of the multibillions of Earth-born men, he was here on the frontier of man's universe participating in the greatest event in the history of the human race. Suddenly, it seemed to him that he understood the pride his father took in this voyage.

For a moment, sitting there, his fear gone, Lesbee shared that pride, and felt a joy beyond any emotion he had ever known.

The feeling ended, as Captain Lesbee's voice came curtly: 'I am limiting this call to officers and to the science department. I want, first, Doud, to try to take control of the torpedo. See if they'll let it go. Immediately.'

There was a pause; then: 'Got it, sir.'

'Good.' Captain Lesbee's voice sounded relieved. 'How about the telemetry readout?'

'Loud and clear, both channels.'

'Check the arm/disarm position monitors.'

'Yes, sir. Negative all around. Disarmed.'

'They hardly had time to rig those.' The captain was still cautious. 'Any abnormal readings? Excess radiation?'

'Negative. Radiometers normal.'

The trial of Ganarette began shortly after the breakfast hour on the following sidereal day. The Hope of Man was still in her orbit around Alpha A-4, but the alien machine had disappeared. And so the people of the ship could devote themselves to the trial itself.

The extent of the evidence startled Lesbee II. Hour after hour, records of conversations were reeled off, conversations in which Ganarette's voice came out sharp and clear, but whoever answered was blurred and unrecognizable.

'I have followed this policy,' Captain Lesbee explained to the silent spectators, 'because Ganarette is the leader. No one but I will ever know the identity of the other men, and it is my intention to forget, and act as if they did not participate.'

The records were damning. How they had been recorded, Lesbee could only guess, but they had caught Ganarette when he believed he was absolutely safe. The man had talked wildly on occasion about killing anybody who opposed them, and a dozen times he had advocated the murder of the captain, the two chief officers, and Lesbee's son. 'They'll have to be put out of the way, or they'll make trouble. The sheep on this ship just take it for granted that the Lesbees do the bossing.'

Emile Ganarette laughed at that point, then he stared boldly at the spectators. 'It's the truth, isn't it?' he said. 'You bunch of idiots take it for granted that somebody can be rightfully appointed to boss you for your entire lives. Wake up, fools! You've got only one life. Don't let one man tell you how to live it.'

Ganarette made no effort to deny the charge. 'Sure, it's true. Since when did you become God? I was born on this ship without being asked whether or not I wanted to live here. I recognize no rights of anybody to tell me what to do.'

Several times he expressed puzzlement that was slowly growing in Lesbee II's own mind. 'What is this all about?' he asked. 'This trial is silly, now that we've discovered the Centaurus system is inhabited. I'm fully prepared to go back to Earth like a good little boy. It's bad enough to know that the trip was for nothing, and that I'll be sixty years old when we get back. But the point is, I do recognize the necessity now of going back. And besides, there was no mutiny. You can't try me for shooting off my face when nothing actually, happened.'

Toward the end, Lesbee watched his father's face. There was an expression there that he did not understand, a grimness that chilled him, a purpose that did not actually consider evidence except as a means to a hidden end.

When dinner was less than an hour away, the commander asked the accused a final question: 'Emile Ganarette, have you entered your complete defense?'

The big– boned young man shrugged. 'Yeah. I'm through.'

There was silence, then slowly Captain Lesbee began his judgment. He dwelt on the aspects of naval law involved in the charge of 'incitement to mutiny.' For ten minutes, he read from a document that Lesbee had never seen before, which his father called the 'Articles of Authority on the Hope of Man' a special decree issued by the elected cabinet of the Combined Western Powers a few days before the ship's departure from its orbit around Earth:

'"...It is taken for granted that a spaceship is always an appendage of the civilization from which it derives. Its personnel cannot be considered to have or be permitted to exercise independent sovereignty under any circumstances. The authority of its duly appointed officers and the assigned purposes of its mission are not alterable by elective process on the part of its personnel at large. A spaceship is dispatched by its owners or by a sovereign government... Its officers are appointed. It is governed by rules and regulations set up by the Space Authority.

'"For the record, it is therefore here set down that the owner of the Hope of Man is Averill Hewitt, his heirs, and assignees. Because of its stated destination and purpose, his ship is given sanction to operate as a military vessel, and its duly appointed officers are herewith authorized to represent Earth in any contact with foreign powers of other star systems, and to act in every way as representatives of the armed forces. There are no qualifications to this status -"'

There was much more, but that was the gist. The laws of a remote lifetime-distant planet applied aboard the spaceship.

And still Lesbee had no idea where his father was pointing his words. Or even why the trial was being held, now that the danger of mutiny was over.

The final words fell upon the audience and the prisoner like a thunderbolt:

'By right of the power vested in me by the people of Earth through their lawful government, I am compelled to pass judgment upon this unfortunate young man. The law is fixed. I have no alternative but to sentence him to death in the atomic converter. May God have mercy on his soul.'

Ganarette was on his feet. His face was the color of lead. 'You fool!' he quavered. 'What do you think you're doing?' The deadliness of the sentence must have sunk in deeper, for he shouted: 'There's something wrong. He's got something up his sleeve. He knows something we don't know. He -'

Lesbee had already caught his father's signal. At that point, he and Browne and Carson, and three special MPs, hustled Ganarette out of the room. He was glad of the chance for movement. It made thinking unnecessary.

Ganarette grew bolder as they moved along the corridors, and some of his color came back. 'You won't get away with this!' he said loudly. 'My friends will rescue me. Where are you taking me, anyway?'

It was a wonder that had already struck Lesbee. Once more, the quick-minded Ganarette realized the truth in a flash of insight. 'You monsters!' he gasped. 'You're not going to kill me now?'

The vague thought came to Lesbee that an outsider would have had difficulty distinguishing between prisoner and captors by the amount of color in their cheeks. Everyone was as pale as death. When Captain Lesbee arrived a few minutes later, his leathery face was almost white, but his voice was calm and cold and purposeful. 'Emile Ganarette, you have one minute to make your peace with your God...'