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

For that would have been the way those back on Earth would have made the ship. Simple. Simple beyond belief. So simple that any fool could land it.

Just anyone at all who could punch a button.

For certainly they must have feared or guessed what might happen on the ship after several generations. They must have known how Earth would be forgotten and that there would be a cultural adaptation to the ship.

Feared or guessed—or planned?

Was the culture of the ship a part of the master plan?

Could the Folk have lived through a thousand years if they had known of the purpose and the destination?

And the answer seemed to be that they couldn’t have been able to, for they would have felt robbed and cheated; would have gone mad with the knowledge that they were no more than carriers of life, that their lives and the lives of many generations after them would be canceled out so that after many generations their descendants could arrive at the target planet.

There had been only one way to beat that situation—and that was to forget what it was all about. And that is what had happened and it had been for the best.

The Folk, after the first few generations, had lived their little lives in the little circle of their home-grown culture and that had been enough. After that the thousand years had been as nothing, for no one knew about the thousand years.

And all the time the ship bored on through space, heading for the target, heading straight and true.

Jon Hoff went down to the telescope and centered Planet V and clamped over the radar controls that would hold it centered. He went back to the computator and pushed the stud that said telescope and the other stud that said orbit.

Then he sat down to wait.

There was nothing more to do.

Planet V was death.

The analyzer told the story.

The atmosphere was mostly methane, the gravity thirty times too great, the pressure beneath the boiling clouds of methane close to a thousand atmospheres.

There were other factors, too. But any one of those three would have been enough.

Jon Hoff pulled the ship out of its orbit, headed it sunward. Back at the telescope, he found Planet II, locked it in the sights, tied in the computator and sat down to wait again.

One chance more and that was all they had.

For all of the planets, only two had atmospheres.

It had to be Planet II or none.

And if the second planet turned out to be death as well, what then?

There was one answer. There could be no other.

Head the ship toward another star, build up velocity and hope—hope that in another several generations the Folk could find a planet they could live on.

He was hungry—his belly gaunt and sore. He had found a water cooler with a few cups of liquid still intact, but he’d drunk the last of that two days before.

Joshua had not come back. There had been no sign from the Folk. Twice he had opened the door and gone out into the corridor, ready to make a dash for food and water, then reconsidered and gone back in again.

For he couldn’t take the chance. He couldn’t take the chance that they would sight him and run him down and not let him go back to the control room.

But the time would come before too long when he’d have to take a chance—when he’d have to make the dash. For before another day was gone he might be too weak to make it. And there were many days ahead before they reached Planet II.

The time would come when he’d have no choice. That he could stick it out was impossible. If he did not get food and water, he’d be a useless, crawling hulk with the strength and mind gone out of him by the time they reached the planet.

He went back to the control board and looked things over and it seemed to be all right. The ship was still building up velocity. The monitor on the computator was clocking its blue light and chuckling to itself, saying everything’s all right, everything’s all right.

Then he went back down the steps and to the corner where he’d been sleeping. He lay down and curled himself into a ball, trying to squeeze his belly together so that it wouldn’t nag him so and shut his eyes and tried to go to sleep.

With his ear against the metal he could hear the pulsing of the engines far back in their room—the song of power that ran through all the ship. And he remembered how he had thought a man might have to live with a ship to run her. But it had not turned out that way, although he could see how a man might learn to live with a ship, how a ship might become a part of him.

He dozed off and woke, then dozed off again—and this time there was a voice shouting and someone hammering at the door.

He came to his feet in one lithe motion, scrambled for the door, the key already in his fist, stabbing at the lock.

He jerked the door open and Mary stumbled in. She carried a great square can in one hand, and a huge sack in the other and boiling down the corridor toward the door was a running mob that brandished clubs and screamed.

Jon reached down and hauled Mary clear, then slammed the door and locked it. He heard the running bodies thud against the door and then the clubs pounding at it and the people screaming.

Jon stooped above his wife.

“Mary,” he said, his voice choking and his throat constricting. “Mary.”

“I had to come,” she said and she was crying when she said it.

“I had to come,” she said, “no matter what you did.”

“What I have done,” he said, “has been for the best. It was a part of the Plan, Mary. I am convinced of that. Part of the Master Plan. The people back on Earth had it all planned out. I just happened to be the one who…“

“You are a heretic,” she said. “You’ve destroyed our Belief. You have set the Folk at one another’s throats. You…”

“I knew the truth,” he said. “I know the purpose of the ship.”

She reached up her hands and cupped his face between her palms and pulled his head down and cuddled him.

“I don’t care,” she said. “I don’t care. Not any more, I don’t. I did at first. I was angry with you, Jon. I was ashamed of you. I almost died of shame. But when they killed Joshua…”

“What was that!”

“They killed Joshua. They beat him to death. And he’s not the only one. There were others who wanted to come and help you. Just a few of them. They killed them, too.

“There’s killing in the Ship. And hate. And suspicion. And all sorts of ugly rumors. It never was like that before. Not before you took away Belief.”

A culture shattered, he thought. Shattered in the matter of an hour. A belief twitched away in the breadth of one split second.

There was madness and killing.

Of course there’d be.

“They are afraid,” he said. “Their security is gone.”

“I tried to come earlier,” Mary said. “I knew you must be hungry and I was afraid there’d be no water. But I had to wait until no one was watching…”

He held her tight against him and his eyes were a little dim.

“There’s food,” she said, “and water. I brought all that I could carry.”

“My wife,” he said. “My darling wife…”

“There’s food, Jon. Why don’t you eat?”

He rose and pulled her to her feet.

“In just a minute,” he said. “I’ll eat in just a minute. First I want to show you something. I want to show you Truth.”

He led her up the steps.

“Look out there,” he said. “That is where we’re going. This is where we’ve been. No matter what we might have told ourselves, that out there is Truth.”

Planet II was the Holy Pictures come to life entire. There were Trees and Brooks, Flowers and Grass, Sky and Clouds, Wind and Sunshine.

Mary and Jon stood beside the navigator’s chair and stared out through the vision plate.