gone wrong somewhere,’ Wantage suggested eagerly. ‘That’s what I always say: something’s terribly wrong.’
‘Well, cease to say it in my presence,’ said Carappa smoothly. ‘There is a more likely explanation: that the driver or captain of this ship is a madman punishing us for some wrong our fore-fathers committed.’
‘Punishing us for a wrong,’ echoed Brandyholm, in whom the words struck a familiar chord. ‘Yes, that is why we are suffering. You make me believe the theory, father, for we all sin.’
‘Now this is my plan, and unfortunately I need your aid,’ continued Carappa, ignoring Brandyholm. ‘We are going to find out this captain, hunt him down. He is concealed somewhere behind a locked door. When we get to him and kill him, we – we will be in control of the ship!’
‘And where shall we go to with it?’ asked Crooner.
For a moment the priest looked blank. ‘We’ll find somewhere,’ he said confidently. ‘Leave that to me.’
He stood up and with a flourish pulled a book from his pocket. He thrust the title under their eyes, but they could hardly read; a few syllables were intelligible, but they were unable to decipher unaccustomed words. Carappa explained condescendingly to them that it was called Manual of Electrical Circuits of Starship. Until two days ago it had reposed in a trunk among other official and unused regalia of the Lieutenancy; happening upon it, the priest had appropriated it. Now it would show them the way they had to go; they were in the rear of the ship and must proceed to the front, to a spot in the nose marked ‘Control’ in the manual.
Feeling rather dazed by this entire concept, Brandyholm muttered, ‘Then we venture into Forwards territory.’
‘Expecting to find Gwenny again?’ Wantage asked laughingly.
‘No, not expecting to see anyone again, if we get among them, Rockface,’ Brandyholm said, using the other’s childhood nickname without consciously feeling the urge to irritate him. Wantage flared up almost automatically in response.
‘I don’t suppose Forwards are as terrible as we make them out to be,’ Crooner interrupted mildly.
‘Of course they aren’t,’ the priest agreed. ‘They are feared because they are unknown. That’s how superstitions are born, through ignorance. That’s how men go mad. That’s how the idea of being in a ship grows strange to us. Deep down in a man’s mind lurks elemental evil; if he forgets about it or does not acknowledge it, it swallows his knowledge and his sense. That is why so many of us become mad – ’
‘Cut the cackle, priest, and let’s move if we must,’ Wantage interrupted. He had no real desire to go on, his desire was merely to interrupt. The hatred of others had constantly to be expressed if a man was to stay healthy: that was a basic tenet of the Teaching. What was more difficult was to express one’s hatred of oneself.
Their progress was slow. The ponics grew thickly. It was difficult to keep moving straight; once or twice they worked themselves into rooms and were finally confronted with black walls. Gradually, spilt miltex covered their bodies, adhered and hardened. At one stage, after their mid-wake snack, the growths mercifully thinned, and they found themselves in a clear corridor with a bend just ahead.
With a whoop of pleasure, Brandyholm bounced round the corner, and then stopped abruptly. A man was just sliding silently down a rope into a wide gash in the floor in front. Dropping onto hands and knees, Brandyholm peered down into a vast room full of partitions with metal frames in. There was no sign of the man: he had already merged into twilight.
A short council was held, after which they went on, carefully skirting the hole. A few yards further on, another hole stopped them, and this one was unbridgeable. An explosion from below had ripped out floor, one wall and bulkhead. The edges of the torn metal were smooth, as if great heat had melted what it sundered. The lighting had also been disrupted.
They looked at each other uncertainly, quick to feel nonplussed.
‘We can’t jump across this gap,’ the priest said. ‘We must push through this hole in the wall and get back onto the corridor as soon as possible.’
This, however, proved impracticable. Some sort of machinery blocked the other side of the hole and sealed it effectively. They were only left with the option of climbing through the overhead bulkhead, and this they did as speedily as possible, frequently glancing back to make sure nobody was creeping up on them. When Crooner, the last and the heaviest, was hauled up, they started slowly forward by the light of Carappa’s torch, the artificial lighting still being defunct.
Gaping doorways of disordered rooms slid threateningly by. Dust stirred beneath their feet. When they saw light again ahead, Carappa flicked off the torch and their approach was wary.
The light came from a side door which bore the legend Dining Hall. Summoned into being by the light, more ponics grew, rooted in the litter dropped by themselves and the tiny insects that crawled among them. Their outer ranks were puny blades which seemed to grow from the deck itself, but they increased so in stature that two yards from the doorway they curled against the ceiling.
Wantage, Crooner, Brandyholm and the priest stared in disgust at the tangle, for it was obvious that their way lay through it. Great doors with the words Panic Valve stencilled on them in yellow sealed off the corridor. Reluctantly, with hardly a word to each other, they moved in and commenced hacking.
The jungle was more than usually impenetrable. Caught among the growth, sometimes on the ground, sometimes chest high, sometimes suspended above their heads, were an almost infinite number of metal tables and chairs. It was like cutting one’s way slowly through a nightmare.
And it grew worse. They came upon clusters of ponics which had collapsed under the extra weight and rotted in slimy bundles, while other plants grew out of them. The air became thick and sickly, and soon every stem about them was attacked by blight and they moved through a stippled wall of disease.
Brandyholm glanced at Wantage, who was next to him hacking in silence. The man’s face was grey, his eyes and nose streaming, and his mouth working. Seeing Brandyholm’s eye upon him, he began to curse monotonously.
Finally they came up against a blank wall. Wantage attacked it wildly with his knife, until Crooner downed him with a blow at the back of his ear.
‘Pity to spoil a good blade,’ Crooner said, pulling a hand across his dark, grimy face. ‘Now what do we do, priest?’
As if in answer to his question, the lights went out. It was dim-sleep, the dark time that came once in every four sleeps and would bring a dim-wake after it. Night came billowing in on them like a hot breath.
‘Nothing is left but self-confession,’ Carappa cried in desperation. He fell to his knees and began to recite the General Belief, the others coming in half-heartedly with the responses. Their voices rose and fell; by the end of it they all felt slightly better.
‘… And by so discharging our morbid impulses we may be freed from inner conflict,’ he intoned.
‘And live in psychosomatic purity,’ they replied.
‘So that this unnatural life may be delivered down to journey’s end.’
‘And sanity propagated.’
‘And
