Murray Leinster: The Duplicators

“So,” finished Link, “I’ll play along. Since I’m the astrogator I’ll try to find out where we are. Then you’ll tell me where you want to go. And after that, some evening when there’s nothing special to do, you’ll tell me why. Right?”

“The why,” snapped the whiskery man, “is I promised to make you so rich y’couldn’t spend the interest on y’money! And you a junior partner!”

“Carynths?” suggested Link.

Carynths were the galaxy’s latest and most fabulous status gems. They couldn’t be synthesized—they were said to be the result of meteoric impacts on a special peach-colored ore—and they were as beautiful as they were rare. So far they’d only been found on Glaeth. But if a woman had a carynth ring, she was somebody. If she had a carynth bracelet, she was Somebody. And if she had a carynth necklace, she ruled society on the planet on which she was pleased to reside. But—

“Carynths are garbage,” said Thistlethwaite contemptuously, “alongside of what’s waitin’ for us! For each one of what I’m tradin’ for, to bring it away from where we’re goin’, I’ll get a hundred million credits an’ half the profits after that! An’ I’ll have a shipload of ’em! And it’s all set! Now you do your stuff and I’ll check over the engines.”

He headed down the stairwell. He reached the first landing below. The second. Link heard a faint click and then a mechanical grunting noise. At the sound, the little man howled enragedly. Link jumped.

“What’s the matter?” he asked anxiously.

“We’re leakin’ air!” roared the little man. “Bleedin’ it! You musta started some places, takin’ off at six gees! All the air’s pourin’ out!”

His words became unintelligible, but they were definitely profane. Doors clanged shut, cutting off his voice. He was sealing all compartments.

Link surveyed the control room of the ship. In his younger days he’d aspired to be a spaceman. He’d been a cadet in the Merchant Space Academy on Malibu for two complete terms. Then the faculty let him go. He liked novelty and excitement and on occasion, tumult. The faculty didn’t. His grades were all right but they heaved him out. So he knew a certain amount about astrogation. Not much, but enough to keep from having to go back to Trent.

A door closed below. The little man’s voice could be heard, swearing sulfurously. He got something from somewhere and the door clanged behind him again, cutting off his voice once more.

Link resumed his survey. There was the control board, reasonably easy to understand. There was the computer, simple enough for him to operate. There were reference books. A Galactic Directory for this sector. Alditch’s Practical Astrogator. A luridly bound volume of Space-Commerce Regulations. The Directory was brand new. The others were old and tattered volumes.

Link went carefully over the ship’s log, which contained every course steered, time elapsed, and therefore distance run in parsecs and fractions of them. He could take the Glamorgan back to the last three ports she’d visited by reversing the recorded maneuvers. But that didn’t seem enterprising.

He skimmed through the Astrogator. He’d be somewhere not too many millions of miles from the sun of the planet Trent. He’d take a look at the Trent listing in the Directory, copy out its coordinates and proper motion, check the galactic poles and zero galactic longitude by observation out the ports, and then get at the really tricky stuff when he learned the ship’s destination.

He threw on the heater switch so he could see out the ports and observe the sun which shone on Trent. Instantly an infuriated bellow came up from below.

“Turn off the heat!” raged Thistlethwaite from below. “Turn it off!”

“But the ports are frosted,” Link called back. “I need to see out! We need the heaters!”

“I was sittin’ on one! Turn ’em off!”

A door clanged below. Link shrugged. If Thistlethwaite had to sit on a heater, the heater shouldn’t be on. Delay was indicated.

He wasn’t worried. The mood of tranquility and repose he’d waked with still stayed with him. Naturally! His current situation might have seemed disturbing to somebody else, but to a man who’d just left the planet Glaeth, with its strictly murderous fauna and flora and climatic conditions, to be aboard a merely leaking spaceship of creaking antiquity was restful. That it was only licensed to travel to a junkyard for scrapping seemed no cause for worry. That it was bound on a mysterious errand instead seemed interesting. With no cares whatever, Link was charmed to find himself in a situation where practically anything was more than likely to happen.

He thought restfully of not being on Glaeth. There were animals there which looked like rocks and acted like stones until one got within reach of remarkably extensible hooked claws. There were trees which dripped a corrosive fluid on any moving creature that disturbed them. There were gigantic flying things against which the only defense was concealment, and things which tunneled underground and made traps into which anything heavier than a rabbit would drop as the ground gave way beneath it. And there was the climate. In the area in which the best finds of carynths had been made, there was no record of rain having ever fallen, and noon temperature in the most favorable season hovered around a hundred forty in the shade. But it was the only world on which carynths were to be found. The carynth prospectors who landed there, during the most favorable season, of course, sometimes got rich. Much more often they didn’t. Only forty per cent of those set aground at the beginning of the prospecting season met the buy-boat which came for them at its close. Link had been one of that lucky minority. Naturally he did not feel alarm on the Glamorgan. He’d almost gotten used to Glaeth! So he waited peacefully until Thistlethwaite said it was all right to turn on the heaters and melt the frost off the ports.

He began to set up for astrogation. The coordinates for Trent would go into the computer, and then the coordinates for the ship’s destination. The computer would figure the course between them and its length in parsecs and fractions of parsecs. One would drive on that course. One could, if it was desirable, look for possible ports of call on the way. Link took down the Directory to set up the first figures.

He happened to notice a certain consequence of the Directory’s newness. It was the only un-shabby, un-worn object on the ship. But even it showed a grayish, well-thumbed line on the edge of certain pages which had been often referred to. The grayishness should be a guide to the information about Trent, as the Glamorgan ’s latest port of call. Link opened the grayest page, pleased with himself for his acuteness.

But Trent wasn’t listed on that page. Trent wasn’t even in that part of the book. The heading of this particular chapter of listings was, “ Non-Cluster Planets Between Huyla and Claire.” It described the maverick solar systems not on regular trade routes and requiring long voyages from commercial spaceports if anybody was to reach them. People rarely wanted to.

Link stared. He found signs that this had been repeatedly referred to by somebody with engine oil on his fingers. One page had plainly been read and re-read and re-read. The margin was darkened as if an oily thumb had held a place there while the item was gloated over.

From any normal standpoint it was not easy to understand.

“SORD,” said the Directory. There followed the galactic coordinates to three places of decimals. “ Yel. sol-type approx. 1.4 sols mass, mny faculae all times, spectrum—”