Death in Transit
Date: 2022-02-21T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science fiction; Short stories; Widowers -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Space ships -- Fiction; Interstellar travel -- Fiction; Loneliness -- Fiction

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Title: Death in Transit

Author: Jerry Sohl

Illustrator: Ed Emshwiller

Release date: February 21, 2022 [eBook #67457]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Royal Publications, Inc

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEATH IN TRANSIT ***

Death in Transit

By JERRY SOHL

Illustrated by EMSH

There was one, and only one, thing
Clifton could do. Even so, he made
the worst of 100 possible choices!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Infinity Science Fiction, June 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Clifton stood at the bottom of the shaft, his face white, his eyes wide, his stance against the bulkhead that of a man who needed only a slight push to slump to the floor.

"Karen," he murmured. "Karen."

He had been standing there a long time.

He was staring at his dead wife, a heap of broken bones and blood on the floor. But he was not seeing her—at least not as she was now. He was seeing her the way his mind kept bringing her back to him: the white evenness of her teeth when she smiled, the fury of her bright blue eyes when she was angry, the way she had uncomplainingly slept on the wrinkled sheets of the bed he had made when she had been ill ten years before, and the way they had laughed about that when she reminded him of it years later. He moved to stand erect, wondering why he should have thought about that at a time like this, and then, as he looked at her again and saw what the fall had done to her, he clenched his hands in anger.

They had said it couldn't happen! But they had been wrong. Man's wisdom was not infinite after all. All the man-years of thought, all the endless whirring and clicking of the computers and calculators—all of it had not taken into account what might happen to Karen.

His hands fell open. He knew that actually, they had never been wrong. If he had found her right away, he could have put her back together. He could have utilized the synthesizer for anything really bad, like a shattered bone. The needles of the organic analyzer would have told him what else he had to do.

But Karen had been dead for hours when he found her. Too long. The damage was irreparable, permanent. She was beyond recall. He might conceivably have animated her muscles, her glands, got her blood to flowing again. But her brain would have remained a vacuous, inert thing. You had to get reconstruction going in a matter of minutes when the brain, the anatomy's most perishable component, was involved. And in some cases he had known, the memories were never fully restored.

Why couldn't it have been a tumor? A deficiency disease? A nervous breakdown? Insanity.... There was nothing the medocenter couldn't handle. Its machines were right there on the ship, ready to be used—but Karen had to fall down the ventilator shaft, opening the door and walking into it as if it were her bedroom, and falling all the way down and breaking half the bones in her body.

And he had found her too late. Hours too late.

"Too late," he said, and he nodded his head in agreement. And then he was engulfed in sudden pity and remorse and a feeling of loss, as if she had snatched a vital part of him in her going. And hadn't she? Hadn't she taken her laughter with her, the laughter that brightened his days? And the things they had shared.

He glared at her, suddenly angry that she should have done this to him, and he glared at the shaft and blew out his cheeks and clenched his hands again and roared a great cry that echoed deafeningly in the smallness of the shaft.

And then he shouted obscenities at the ship and the stars and the hundred people who lay as if dead in neat rows in the sleep locker and he pounded the walls until blood from his hands left imprints there.

But no one heard. There was no one to hear. Only the sleepers who lived their days with his years.

"Why?" he shouted, while his tears fell. And he thought: I haven't cried since I was a kid. Then, saying her name again and again, he knelt by her side to feel the silkiness of her jet black hair.

There had been no death aboard a Star Transit ship since the very beginning. From the first day of the Great Emigration more than a hundred years before, when the first captain and his wife stepped aboard to pilot the precious cargo of sleeping humans ten or more years across the vast stellar reaches to colonies on planets in a half dozen far-distant star systems, there had been no recorded death.

But now there would always be Karen.

He should have told them she walked in her sleep. But the Medical Examiners would have shrugged as they had with everything else he had told them. The medocenters would take care of it. You couldn't cure sleepwalking with the devices in the medocenter, but they would have taken care of anything that happened as a result—if he had reached her in time. It was unforeseen, this business of her walking into the shaft. No one was to blame. No one, that is, except himself.

Clifton looked up from beside his wife to the circle of light at the top of the shaft. "All right," he called out, "I'm to blame, do you hear? I did it. She could be alive except for me."

There was no answer to his self-indictment.

"And where does it leave me?" he shouted bitterly. "I'm the one who has to live and I've got nine years to go. Nine years to Ostarpa and the small colony there. What am I supposed to do?"

He never remembered later how long he stood in the shaft shouting until he was hoarse, only recalling that at one point the walls seemed to close in on him and the ship seemed filled with an oppressive strangeness, and he was clawing his way up the ladder to the top. And there were blurred images of walls and rooms as he ran about the ship, and he remembered his jerking open the liquor cabinet and the stupor that followed.

It was days later when he sobered and, insulated by the intervening unreality, managed to dispose of her body in a waste chute.

Then he moved to the office and saw that it was the 371st day and looked at the log to see that he had stopped making entries on the 363rd day. He examined the other books. Karen's precise handwriting had recorded her final readings on that day, too. Now he would have to do her work as well as his own.

Clifton sighed, sat at his desk and, in a steady hand, wrote in the log:

Karen rose in her sleep, walked to and fell down the right aft third level ventilating shaft and was killed. Reached her approximately three hours after the incident. She could not be saved.

Clifton West, Captain

Skipping to the 371st day, he wrote:

Sent Karen's body out the ventral waste chute.

He sat studying the words, then added:

Am alone on the ship.

Instantly he wished he had not written that, but was not moved to cross the words out. It was true enough. He was alone. Would be alone nine more years.

Suppose something should happen to him? Who would land the ship? And what would happen to the sleepers?

He did not want to think about it. The medocenter would take care of everything. He didn't walk in his sleep. His duty was to get the hundred humans through to Ostarpa and then they all would become part of the colony there, except of course he'd be ten years older than the sleepers upon awakening. He looked at the day gauge on the wall. Just 3,332 days short of Ostarpa.

Three thousand three hundred and thirty-two days without Karen! An eternity of talking to himself and listening only to the sound of his own feet as he walked about the ship. A lifetime for remembrance, just as he remembered now how eager they both had been to make the trip, how she had shared the rigorous training. It had been a chance of a lifetime: ten years of being together! Time to meditate, to ponder the problems of life, of all humanity, of each other. They had thought soberly of it as an opportunity to make something of themselves—write a great play, solve a great problem. But they had never got around to that. The first year had been only the sheer delight of each other's company. He wondered if it would have ever changed. How fast it had gone!

And now it was over and the nine years ahead loomed like a dark tunnel, large and forbidding.

Clifton slammed the palms of his hands on the desk. Enough of that. He was captain of the ship and he had duties. He could not spend his time in the past. There were things to do. He must keep himself occupied. He must not think of her.

But he did.

Even though the days stretched into weeks he still found his steps faltering every time he walked past rooms where he had often looked for her. For one thing there was the stereo room where Karen loved to spend leisure hours. He never saw much in stereo, but she seemed to enjoy it. And there was the music taperoom, the massage parlor, the baths. She seemed to have a need of them. But all Clifton had ever needed was her.

He passed the jammed clothes locker, filled with enough apparel to last her ten years. He could not force himself to open it, though Karen seldom had opened it herself. She had made most of her own clothes, taking the material out of the huge storage bins.

He found himself one day in her sewing room, a room she had converted from a nursery, storing the nursery stuff until such a time as it was needed and installing her sewing machine and getting to work. They had joked about how, when they landed on Ostarpa, all the clothes in the locker would be still intact because she so enjoyed fashioning her own. Once he had asked her what was to become of them.

"We'll start a dress shop, darling," Karen had said quickly as if she had already thought about it, which is the way she answered everything. "The sleeper women will want several changes right away."

"You know," he replied, "I think I'll be your manager, set you up. Karen West, Ostarpa's great dress designer. You'll have lots of business and we'll make a fortune."

"I'm not that good," she said, but her face glowed with joy.

Even as he stood there he could hear the words as if they were said a moment ago and he felt as if he should at any moment hear the click of her heels across the floor, and when she'd enter the room, she'd say, "Clifton, what in the world are you doing here?"

The Transit Service had been right. No man was an island. A man might be for a day, perhaps, or a week or even longer. But not for ten years. That's why the service had insisted a man and his wife, proven psychologically compatible, serve together as co-captains of each transit liner.

So it wasn't right that he should spend the next nine years a lonely man. Karen was gone, but what about those hundred people in the sleep locker? He needed someone, a companion, someone to talk to, someone to take Karen's place. Not a woman, of course. That would not be right. Especially after Karen. There could be no other woman like Karen. Besides, suppose they didn't like each other?

"No," he said, standing in the sewing room and shaking his head, "it must not be a woman."

And then he brought himself back to reality. No sleeper had ever been awakened before the liner reached its destination. "And no sleeper is going to be awakened on this trip," he said firmly. He had the power to wake any or all of them in an emergency, but his own personal emergency hardly constituted grounds for that.

But suppose something happens to me? he reminded himself again. Who's going to carry on?

And then he set his lips close together, turned on his heel and left the sewing room. "Nothing," he said aloud, "is going to happen to you. That's why they put medocenters on these ships." And he went to the place and spent the afternoon being checked over.

He found himself in perfect health. For some reason he was disappointed.

The weeks passed slowly, but they did pass, and Clifton busied himself with exhaustive checks throughout the entire ship, interested himself in the stereos (they weren't so bad now that he had nothing else to do), music tapes (he weeded out the ones he didn't like), massages (he was pleased to discover they left him with a glow), books (funny how hard it was to read after the ease of stereo), mathematics (how much he'd forgotten), a few languages (German was still his hardest), moods of writing (he just did not have the knack), painting (he was always drawing machinery and wondering why)—and found the image of Karen's laughing blue eyes still there at the edge of his mind, though curiously distant, as if it were one of the stereos he had seen.

Then the hunger started.

He sat for long hours in the chill of the sleep locker and envied the sleepers there, row on row, all of them without a worry, without thought, trustful of him, confident he would get them through, none of them knowing Karen was dead and not caring, and he had an urge to wake them all and throw a furious party to end all parties.

And sometimes he'd have a party there all by himself.

And then he grew to hate them. When he did, he went to the medocenter and this was erased and he was made whole again.

But the hunger got worse.

"Karen, Karen!" And he finally wondered if it was really Karen he wanted. And the medocenter only made his hunger worse and he cursed the efficiency of it.

Then one day he got out the file of the sleepers, went through it from Abelard, Johannes, to Yardley, Greta, and put the pictures in the stereo and saw what the sleepers looked like and wondered which of them would prove the most companionable. Which man, that is, for a woman ... well, it just would not be right to awaken a woman. It would not look right in the log, for one thing, and he was sure all he needed was another person to talk to and it might as well be a man. After all, man is a gregarious animal. If he had someone to talk to....

He turned back through the file for Hedstrom, George, a pleasant looking fellow of thirty—which would make him five years Clifton's junior—and in passing he came upon the picture of Portia Lavester again. He slipped the picture in the stereo and spent a long time looking at it. Quite a girl. Blonde. Unlike Karen in that respect. And she wore her hair longer. Her eyes weren't as blue as Karen's. But her skin was darker. Sun? Karen didn't like the sun. It made her freckled. But this girl must have lived in it. The stereo was inadequate, however. It didn't tell how she laughed. Did she laugh? Was it pleasing?

He put it down and looked at the record. Portia Lavester. Twenty years old. Five-feet-three. Weight 109. He looked at the picture again. The weight was well distributed.

He shuffled the picture back in the pile, tried to concentrate on Hedstrom, George. A logical choice among the single men. Mechanical background. He peeked at the Lavester record again. The girl was a home economics expert. She'd do well on Ostarpa. Or on the ship.

Clifton sighed and shoved the file away. Only then did he realize how much he had missed Karen's cooking. The ship's electronic cookery was all right, but it left much to be desired. It had no personal touch.

But to get back to Hedstrom. How would the fellow act if he awakened him? Immediately he thought of the girl and wondered what she would be like.

"Stop it!" he admonished himself. "She's much too young." And he started going through looking at the other single women. The girl Lavester was clearly the nicest. Again he studied her.

And again he forced himself to go back to the man.

Finally he decided to do nothing at present, left the office and started his rounds, determined to think of other things.

Eventually he found himself in the sleep locker looking for number 33, Portia Lavester's compartment. He saw it and discovered it was no different from number 57, the compartment of George Hedstrom. The same black oblong box with the ribbon of red plastic where it was sealed near the top. It would be easy to activate the rollers, move it out of line and out to the medocenter, rip off the plastic and charge the contents with life. He wiped away a few dust motes and found that to him the box suddenly seemed different from the others.

He was sweating.

Later in the tape room he listened to music and pondered the question. Suppose he awakened her and she proved to be anything but what he wanted? Sure, she was good looking, but what about her age? Her mannerisms? Would his fifteen years turn her against him? There were nine years left to Ostarpa; a lot could happen in nine years and she would eventually discover he was no ogre. She might even learn to love him. Why, she might even take Karen's place!

He clicked off the music with a trembling hand, went to the bar, drew a double shot and ice.

Karen, Karen! Why did it have to happen to you?

Forgive me, darling, for what I am about to do.

Clifton watched the lard-like flesh become suffused with pink, saw the surge of color in the lips, the catch of breath and the resultant swell of breast. Then the eyelids flickered.

A moment later Portia Lavester was staring at him, and even as she did so Clifton could see she did not understand what had happened. But when the vacant eyes came alive, the girl sat up, crossed her hands to her bare, hunched shoulders and looked around frantically.

"Don't be frightened," Clifton said, smiling. "You're still on the ship. You've just been awakened."

"Thanks," she said without gratitude, "but I wasn't frightened. I was looking for something to put on."

"Oh." Clifton had forgotten about that. Now he blushed and opened a nearby drawer and withdrew a white gown. "Take this. It will have to do until I get you something else."

She took it and held it to her nakedness, eying him coldly. He turned, heard her drop quietly to the floor. "Where are the others?" she asked, and he could hear the rustle of the gown as she put it around her. "And where can I pick up my clothes?"

He turned to look at her, found her at the side of the room in front of its only mirror, inspecting her face and pushing her lush hair this way and that and grimacing. "How long ago did we land? What's Ostarpa like?"

She was lovely and not unlike Karen in manner and it was going to be harder for him than he thought.

"Was I the first or the last? Or was I in the middle? Just like me to be in the middle." She laughed a little and he was glad to hear her, though her laughter was a little lower in pitch than Karen's. And then her eyes found his in the mirror and they widened. She turned. "Why don't you say something? Is anything wrong?" Now she was frightened.

She was very young and he was glad to hear her voice and he wanted to tell her so, but he knew she wouldn't understand. So he said only, "I want to talk to you."

"What's happened?" Her eyes were panicky.

"There are no others," he blurted out.

"No others?" Her voice was shrill.

He shook his head. "I awakened you because my wife died and I needed someone." It was blunt, but he wanted to be honest with her. "The others are still asleep out there."

She stared with round eyes and a round, open mouth, and her hands fell away from her face and were lost when the gown's long sleeves fell over them.

"I—I had to hear someone talk again," Clifton said haltingly. "I went through the file. I studied all the sleepers. I decided on you. I'm sorry if—"

"How long?" she murmured, lips hardly moving.

"Long?" he answered. "What do you mean?" And then he understood. "We're a little more than a year from Earth."

Her moan startled and unnerved him. Her eyes closed and she slumped to the floor.

When she did not move, he went to her, lifted her head. At once her eyelids fluttered and she saw him and then her face darkened and she lashed out with tiny fists, scratching and crying.

"It's not as bad as all that!" he cried, half angry with her now, trying to stop her, clutching her flailing arms. He drew away quickly when she bit him.

"You—you beast!" she wailed. "You spoiled everything. Everything. Everything has been so carefully planned."

"I know, I know," he soothed.

"Oh," she quavered, and she fell to the floor again, sobbing.

Clifton got up, surveyed her weeping figure, a mound of white on the floor. Well, he thought, at least this is a change for me. And he felt rather foolish about what he had done. If only it had been a man; he could reason with a man. He turned in disgust and walked from the medocenter. She would change. After all, nine years is a long time. No woman could cry nine years. He smiled a little. Fiery little thing, isn't she? he told himself as he started his tour of the ship.

He didn't find her in the medocenter when he returned. The white gown was not there either. It was a long time before he found her lying atop one of the compartments in the sleep locker. She was still clad in the gown, a gaunt, spiritless figure, her eyes staring at the low ceiling.

"Miss Lavester," he said, "I know it was a shock to wake up this side of Ostarpa, but believe me, I intended no harm. If only you knew the loneliness—" and he could not go on, remembering the emptiness of the days just past.

She said nothing, only blinking her eyes, pale blue eyes in a white face.

"If I'd known how upset you'd be, I'd never have awakened you," Clifton said bitterly. "If I could put you back to sleep now I would." Now her face turned toward his, eyes icy in a withering glance. She rose, a firm press of breast against the white gown as she slid off the compartment. Clifton's heart quickened. But she ignored him and walked away. She looks like Karen sleepwalking, he thought.

The next day he found her in the stereo room, dressed in one of Karen's gowns from the clothes locker, a thin, pale blue dress that accented her small waist and blonde hair. She looked ever so much like Karen. He wondered where she had slept, if she had eaten.

"Portia," he said, sitting in a nearby chair. She only sat, a still figure, staring ahead, her hair brushed back in a long sweep, glossy and smooth, and Clifton thought: My God, but she's a beautiful thing.

"Portia," he repeated, "I want to talk to you." What could he do with this girl? Was there no way to break through to her?

Portia gave him a hateful glance and rose. He watched her and his hunger was more than he could stand.

"Please," he said desperately. "Don't leave."

She turned at the doorway and looked at him coldly.

"You don't know what it means to lose your wife and have no one to talk to and have to decide what to do." He looked down at his hands embarrassedly. Why was he finding it so hard to talk to her? He felt his face coloring. "I think I'd have gone mad if I hadn't awakened you. It wasn't a snap judgment, Portia. I just didn't pull your number out of a hat. You see—" He looked up. She wasn't there.

He saw her in the hallway, her head down, contemplative and walking slowly, and catching up to her and walking beside her he explained, "Suppose I'd have an accident like Karen did? Then none of you would ever land on Ostarpa. Somebody had to be awakened, Portia. Can't you understand that?" She gave no hint she knew he was there.

He watched her in the massage room, unable to take his eyes off her as the soft, flexible arms stroked her flesh, and he said softly, "You say I spoiled everything, but I'd like you to think about that. On Ostarpa you'd have to go to work right away, be given your duty number just like you had on Earth. On the ship you've got nine years to play with, nine years of carefree life. You can do what you want and nobody's going to say or do a thing to tell you to stop, have you thought of that?" The moving arms were silent and smooth and so was Portia.

He followed her to the bath but could not bring himself to enter there. He stayed beyond the filmy curtain and talked to her. "Sure, I know it was a surprise, awakening you like that, and I know you had in mind waking on Ostarpa, but being on the ship, the two of us, with all our wants taken care of—it has its advantages."

And in the bar, with her eyes averted, drinking with her, he explained, "Oh, I'll admit there are records to keep. But I missed a few days after Karen died. Taking the whole ten years into account, that won't make much difference. But suppose I became ill for a few days. Somebody's got to be on hand to see I get treatment at the medocenter. That's why you've got to come around, why you've got to start thinking about this thing."

And finally, in the navigation room, he told her, "You can't go on like this. You've got to learn all about this ship. Why, if something happened to me, who'd awaken the sleepers? You will have to do that, Portia. You'd be the only one left. You've just got to be ready to take over, that's all there is to it. And don't think it's too hard. The ship does most of it. Automatic. Just a lever here, a button there. I'll teach you all about it. Even landing the ship. You won't find it hard, once you put your mind to it."

Through it all she remained aloof and unspeaking, a beautiful, silent thing with two accusing orbs for eyes, a lovely mouth with generous lips much given to a look of disdain.

Until one day.

It was totally unexpected. Portia had taken over Karen's bedroom next to his, closing and locking the intervening door as if forever. He had gone to sleep in his room, with her still distant and uncommunicative in hers.

He awakened to the smell of coffee and a cooking breakfast. He sat up quickly, wondering if Karen's death and the events that followed it had been a bad dream, and when he assured himself they had not, wondering if he had at last lost his mind.

Clifton quickly dressed and entered the kitchen.

Portia was there.

She smiled at him.

She said, "Good morning, Clifton." Just like Karen.

He stood speechless, staring.

"Breakfast is about ready."

"Wh—what's come over you?" he said numbly, both pleased and dumbfounded, his eyes relishing the lovely figure in one of Karen's sheerest nightgowns.

"You were right," she said, tossing her head to bring the blonde hair away from her face and smiling. Her teeth were every bit as even and white as Karen's. "I just realized it. As you said, there are nine years ahead of us. I might as well make the best of it."

"I'm glad," he said warmly, and the memory of what she had been like during the days before was eclipsed by what she was now. "I was hoping you'd come around."

"Come, sit down," she said, indicating the place set for him, the gleaming silver, the neat napkin, the steaming coffee in the cup. "Don't let it get cold."

"Karen used to say that." And then he thought: That's a mistake; I mustn't mention Karen ever again. But Portia seemed not to have noticed. And she seemed so much like her now.

"I got tired of eating by myself," Portia said, sitting opposite him at the table. And she stole a sly look as she said, "And I'm afraid I acted badly."

"Not at all," Clifton said gallantly. "I understand how you felt. It's just taken a little time, that's all." He started eating, but his eyes were on her and the transformation of eyes that were no longer cold, lips that weren't scornful any more.

"Pity the poor sleepers," she said, laughing. "They can't enjoy a breakfast like this."

"Do you suppose," he said, endeavoring to keep the talk in the same vein, "that any might rise up when they smell that coffee?" He inhaled ecstatically. "Hmm. There's nothing like it."

"I hope I never make it that strong." And she giggled.

With a shock he found his knee touching hers. He drew away, wondering if it had been accidental. Later, when he tried to kiss her, she turned away, murmuring, "Not yet, Cliff. Give me time. It's so—so sudden."

He obeyed, turned his attention to other things. He could afford to wait. After all, there were nine years. A day or so—what did it matter?

It was more than a week before he managed to kiss her for the first time. And then it was nothing like Karen's kisses. But immediately he felt he was asking too much of Portia too soon. There'd be time for teaching.

They lost themselves in the intricacies of the ship, covering its complete operation, the records that had to be kept, the functions of each section, the matter of awakening the sleepers—which, Clifton explained, was quite simple, since the medocenter did most of the work, but still demanded certain procedures and precautions and delicate adjustments. He even taught her how to use the communications system that would become operable within a few months of Ostarpa. In all, they spent a good two months studying together every facet of the ship.

"It's so complicated," she said in an awed voice. She squeezed his hand she had taken to holding. "But you're an awfully good teacher, Cliff."

"And you're the loveliest student I ever had," he said, squeezing back and drawing closer to kiss her.

"Cliff!" she said, drawing away and giggling. "You're always joking. I'll bet I'm the only student you ever had."

"Well," he said lamely, "I hate to admit it, but you are."

And then they both laughed.

At length they finished everything he could show her on the ship. Then he brought up what had been on his mind ever since the day he awakened her.

"Portia," he said gravely, "I'm captain of this ship and as such I have invested in me the power to perform marriage."

Portia laughed. "You're always saying things so seriously, Cliff. So—so pontifically. Is that the word?"

"I'm serious, Portia."

"I know." She laughed a little more, then straightened her face. "I didn't mean to offend you."

"You're always laughing at me. Why?"

"I don't mean to."

"I want to marry you, Portia."

"I know." And instantly her eyes were grave. "I've known for a long time."

"I've wanted you since the day you first looked at me."

"I've known that, too."

"It was all I could do to—"

"You've been more than kind, Cliff."

"When, darling? When can I marry you?"

She looked up. "Tomorrow?"

His heart leaped. "Marry you tomorrow?"

She nodded. "Tomorrow."

Was there something odd in her look? He couldn't decide.

When Clifton went to bed that night his heart sang. The years ahead no longer seemed appalling and interminable. How they'd spend them! The sewing room ... it could always be changed back into a nursery. Portia had shown no interest in sewing, so he'd just store Karen's stuff. Perhaps somebody would find use for it when they landed on Ostarpa. It wasn't unusual for captains and their wives to have a half dozen kids during transit.

He went to sleep with the sound of children's feet echoing about the halls and corridors of the ship. And when he dreamed of the marriage it was, oddly, Karen he was marrying.

He awakened with a start. On this morning there was no welcome aroma of coffee. At first he thought perhaps he was too early. But it was time. Portia was probably so excited she was all off schedule.

Clifton was careful on this morning. He took his bath, toweled himself until his skin tingled, used his deodorant sparingly, gave himself a close shave. The part in his hair was never straighter.

Dressing himself in a clean, pressed suit, he strolled from his bedroom. Portia was not in the kitchen. He walked to her bedroom. The bed had been made. But no Portia.

Where the devil had she gone?

He started walking about the ship, searching first here and then there. Of course not in stereo. Not on this day. Massage? No. Bath? Not there. Tape? Same.

She was nowhere to be found. Then he recalled the funny look in her face the previous night. It meant something.

Suicide? Frantic now, he went to both waste chutes. Neither gave evidence of having been opened. Still....

An hour later he returned, a bewildered and disconsolate man, to his office.

Portia was there.

With her was a man.

He was George Hedstrom.

Clifton could only sink back against the wall and look at the two of them, the Portia he had never seen so radiant, George, a dark, handsome fellow who wore a quizzical look. Clifton was shocked to see they were holding hands.

"Captain," George said in a friendly way, rising his full six feet, "Portia tells me—"

"I'm sorry, Cliff," Portia interrupted hastily. "George is my fiance. We were to be married on Ostarpa, but as long as you—"

Tomorrow, she had said....

The two figures blurred before him, the room reeled and Clifton clutched the doorway for support. Karen, Karen! I've been bewitched.... This girl—I thought she was you.... I should have known....

"Let me help you."

Clifton struck out at the dark head of hair, hit it somewhere.

Karen, Karen! Can you hear me?

He stumbled out of the room and down the corridor.

Karen, Karen! Where are you?

He found the ventral waste chute. He was in it, heard the door click behind him. Now they'd never get him out, never take him away from his Karen.

The sides of the chute were closing in. It was hot. But it was cool where Karen was.

"Wait, Karen!" he cried. And as he inched his way down the chute he hoped he wasn't too late, hoped she'd forgive him.

There was the outer door. On the other side was coolness and Karen. Dear, beautiful, lovely Karen. The real Karen.

With a surge of joy he held to the smooth sides of the shaft and raised his foot.

He plunged it down unerringly against the door. It burst open with a deadly whoosh of air.

The door clicked closed.

The chute was empty.

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Table of Contents

- Death in Transit

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