Clifford Simak - A Death in the House - And Other Stories

“You may be right,” the old man said. “I’ll go and get the food.”

Two hours later Jon knew that the ship would not crash the sun. It would come close, almost too close for comfort—only a million miles or so away—but the ship’s velocity would be such that it would skim past the sun and climb out into space again, pulled to one side by the attraction of the sun, fighting outward against the pull of the flaming star, dropping off its speed on the upward, outward haul.

With its flight path curved inward by the sun, it would establish an orbit—a highly dangerous orbit, for on the next swing around, left to its own devices, the ship would crash the sun.

Between the time that it passed the sun and curved inward once again he must establish control over it, but the important thing was that he had bought some time. Without the added two notches of velocity he had gained by the shoving of the lever, he was sure, the ship either would have plunged into the sun or would have established a tightening orbit about it from which even the fantastic power of the mighty engines could not have pulled it free.

He had time and he had some knowledge, and Joshua had gone to bring some food. He had time and he had to use the time. He had the knowledge, lying somewhere in his brain, planted there, and he must dig it up and put it to the job for which it was intended.

He was calmer now and a little surer of himself.

And he wondered, in his own awkwardness, how the men who had launched the ship from Earth, the men who had watched and tended it before the Ignorance, could have shot so closely. Chance, perhaps, for it would have been impossible to shoot a thousand-year-long missile at a tiny target and have it hold its course…or would it have been possible?

Automatic—automatic—automatic. The word thrummed in his brain. The single word over and over again. The ship was automatic. It ran itself, it repaired itself, it serviced itself, it held true to the target. It needed only the hand and brain of Man to tell it what to do. Do this, the hand and brain of Man would say, and the ship would do it. That was all that was needed—the simple telling of instructions.

The problem was how to tell the ship. What and how to tell it.

And there were certain facts that haunted him about the telling of the ship.

He got down from the navigator’s chair and prowled about the room. There was a thin fine dust on everything, but when he rubbed his sleeve along the metal, the metal shone as brightly as on that day it had been installed.

He found things, and some of them he knew and recognized and some of them he didn’t. But, most important, he found the telescope, and after some trials and errors, he remembered how to operate it.

And now he knew how to find the planets—if this were the target star and there were any planets.

Three hours gone and Joshua had not returned.

It was too long to be gone just to get some food.

He paced up and down the room, fighting down his fears.

Something had happened, something must have happened to the old man.

He went back to the telescope and began the work of running down the planets. It was hard work and purposeless at first, but bit by bit, with the handling of the instruments, the facts started drifting up into his consciousness.

He found one planet—and there was a knock upon the door.

He left the telescope and strode across the room.

The corridor was full of people and all at once they were shouting at him, shouting hateful words, and the roaring of their voices was a blast of anger and of condemnation that sent him back a step.

In front were Herb and George and behind them all the others—men and women both, and he looked for Mary, but he didn’t see her.

The crowd surged forward and there was hatred and a loathing on their faces, and the fog of fear came out of them and struck deep into Jon Hoff.

His hand went down to his waistband and closed upon the gun butt and he dragged the weapon free.

He tilted the gun downward and stabbed at the button, just one quick, light stab. Light bloomed out and filled the doorway, and the crowd went reeling back.

The door itself was blackened and there was the smell of blistered paint.

Jon Hoff spoke evenly: “This is a gun,” he said. “With it I can kill you. With it I will kill you if you interfere. Stand back. Go back where you came.”

Herb took a forward step and stopped.

“You are the one who is interfering,” he declared.

Herb took another step.

Jon brought the gun up and lined its sights on him.

“I’ve killed one man,” he said, “and I’ll kill another.”

And he thought: So easy to talk of killing. Of taking human life. So ready to do it, now that I’ve killed once.

“Joe is missing,” said Herb. “We have been hunting for him.”

“You need to hunt no more,” said Jon.

“But Joe was your friend.”

“And so are you,” said Jon. “But the purpose is too big for friendship. You’re with me or against me. There is no middle ground.”

“We’ll read you out of chapel.”

“You’ll read me out of chapel,” said Jon, mocking him.

“We’ll exile you to the central ship.”

“We’ve been exiled all our lives,” said Jon. “For many generations. And we didn’t even know it. We didn’t know, I tell you. And because we didn’t know, we fixed up a pretty story. We fixed up a pretty story and we convinced ourselves of it and we lived by it. And when I come along and show you it was no more than a pretty story, dreamed up because we had to have a story— had to have, I say—you are ready to read me out of chapel and to exile me. You’ll have to do better than that, Herb. Much better than that.”

He patted the gun.

“I can do better than that,” he said.

“Jon, you are mad.”

“And you are a fool,” said Jon.

At first he had been afraid, then he had been angry, and now there was only contempt—only contempt for them, huddled in the corridor, voicing feeble threats.

“What did you do with Joshua?” he asked.

“We tied him up,” said Herb.

“Go back and untie him and send me up some food,” he said.

They wavered. He made a threatening motion with the gun.

“Go,” he said.

They ran.

He slammed the door and went back to the telescope.

He found six planets and two had atmospheres, No. 2 and No. 5. He looked at his watch, and many hours had gone. Joshua had still not appeared.

There had been no rap at the door. There was no food and water.

He climbed the steps to the navigator’s chair again.

The star was far astern.

The velocity had slid way off, but was still too fast.

He pulled the lever back and watched the velocity indicator drop.

It was safe to do that—he hoped it was safe to do it. The ship was thirty million out and it should be safe to cut velocity.

He studied the board and it was clearer now—more understandable, more things he knew about.

It was not so hard, he thought. It would not be too hard. You had time. You had plenty of time. You had to plan ahead, but you had time to do it.

He studied the board and he found the computator he had missed before, the little metal brain—and that was how you told the ship. That was what he had missed before—that was what he had wondered about—how to tell the ship.

And this was the way you told it. You told the little brain.

And the one word— automatic —kept on hounding him. He found the stud that was labeled telescope and the one that was labeled orbit and still another that was labeled landing.

That was it, he thought.

After all the worry, after all the fears, it was as simple as all that.