The Measure of a Man - Randall Garrett

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Measure of a Man by Randal Garrett. What is
desirable is not always necessary, while that which is necessary
may be most undesirable. Perhaps the measure of a man
is the ability to tell one from the other and

(00:20):
act on it. Alfred Pendrey pushed himself along the corridor
of the battleship's shine, holding the flashlight in one hand
and using the other hand and his good leg to
guide and propel himself by the beam of the torch

(00:40):
reflected queerly from the pastel green walls of the corridor,
giving him the uneasy sensation that he was swimming under
water instead of moving through the blasted hulk of a
battleship a thousand light years from home. He came to
the turn in the corridor and tried to move to
the right, but his momentum was greater than he had thought,

(01:00):
and he had to grab the corner of the wall
to keep from going on by that swung him around,
and his sprained ankle slammed agonizingly against the other side
of the passageway. Pendre clenched his teeth and kept going,
but as he moved down the side passage he went
more slowly, so that the friction of his palm against

(01:22):
the wall could be used as a brake. He wasn't
used to maneuvering without gravity. He'd been taught it in cadets,
of course, but that was years ago and parsecs away.
When the pseudograb generators had gone out, he'd wretched all
over the place. But now his stomach was empty and
the nausea had gone. He had automatically oriented himself in

(01:46):
the corridors so that the doors of the various compartments
were to his left and right, with the ceiling above
and the deck below. Otherwise he might have lost his
sense of direction completely in the common plex maze of
the interstellar battleship. Or he corrected himself. What's left of
a battleship, and what was left just al Pendry and

(02:13):
less than half of the once mighty Shain. The door
to the lifeboat hole loomed ahead in the beam of
the flashlight, and Pendrey braked himself to a stop. He
just looked at the dogged port for a few seconds.
Let there be a boat in there, he thought, Just

(02:36):
a boat, that's all I ask for. And air, he
added as an afterthought. Then his hand went out to
the dog handle and turned. The door cracked easily. There
was air on the other side. Pendry breathed a sigh
of relief, braced his good foot against the wall, and

(02:57):
pulled the door open. The little lifeboat was there, nestled
tightly in air cradle. For the first time since the
shain had been hit, Pendry's face broke into a broad smile.
The fear that had been within him faded a little,
and the darkness of the crippled ship seemed to be lessened.

(03:20):
Then the beam of his torch caught the little red
tag on the air lock of the lifeboat. Repair work
under way. Do not remove this tag without proper authority.
That explained why the lifeboat hadn't been used by the
other crewmen. Pendrey's mind was numb as he opened the
airlock of the small craft. He didn't even attempt to think.

(03:45):
All he wanted was to see exactly how the vessel
had been disabled by the repair crew. He went inside.
The lights were working in the lifeboat. That showed that
its power was still functioning. He glanced over the instrument
and control panels, no red tags on them, at least

(04:07):
just to make sure. He opened them up. One by
one and looked inside. Nothing wrong apparently, maybe it had
been just some minor repair, a broken lighting switch or something.
But he didn't dare hope yet. He went through the
door in the tiny cabin that led to the engine compartment,

(04:29):
and he saw what the trouble was. The shielding had
been removed from the atomic motors. He just hung there
in the air, not moving. His lean, dark face remained expressionless,
but tears welled up in his eyes and spilled over,
spreading their dampness over his lids. The motors would run

(04:53):
all right, the ship could take him to Earth, but
the radiation leakage from those motors would kill him long
before he made it home. It would take ten days
to make it back to base, and twenty four hours
of exposure to the deadly radiation from those engines would
be enough to insure his death from radiation sickness. His

(05:17):
eyes were blurring from the film of tears that covered them.
Without gravity to move the liquid, it just pooled there,
distorting his vision. He blinked the tears away, then wiped
his face with his free hand. Now what he was
the only man left alive on the shine, and none

(05:39):
of the lifeboats had escaped. The rat cruisers had seen
to that they weren't really rats those people, not literally.
They looked humanoid enough to enable plastic surgeons to disguise
a human being as one of them, although it meant

(06:00):
sacrificing the little fingers and little toes to imitate the
four digited rats. The rats were at a disadvantage there.
They couldn't add any fingers. But the rats had other advantages.
They bred and fought like well rats, not that human

(06:21):
beings couldn't equal them, or even surpass them in ferocity
if necessary. But the rats had nearly a thousand years
of progress over Earth. Their industrial revolution had occurred while
the Angles and Saxons and the Jutes were pushing the
Britons into whales. They had put their first artificial satellites

(06:42):
into orbit while King Alfred the Great was fighting off
the Danes. They hadn't developed as rapidly as Man had.
It took them roughly twice as long to go from
one step to the next, so that their actual superiority
was only a matter of five hundred years, and Man
was catching up rapidly. Unfortunately, Man hadn't caught up yet.

(07:10):
The first meeting of the two races had taken place
in interstellar space and had seemed friendly enough. Two ships
had come within detector distance of each other and had
circled warily. It was almost a perfect example of the
Leinster hypothesis. Neither knew where the other's home world was located,

(07:30):
and neither could go back home for fear that the
other would be able to follow. But the Leinster hypothesis
couldn't be followed to the end. Leinster's solution had been
to have the party's trade ships and go home, but
that only works when the two civilizations are fairly close
in technological development. The Rats certainly weren't going to trade

(07:53):
their ship for the inferior craft of the Earthmen. The Rats,
conscious of their superiority, had a simpler solution. They were
certain after a while that Earth posed no threat to them,
so they invited the earthship to follow them home. The

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Earthmen had been taken on a carefully conducted tour of
the Rat's home planet, and the captain of the Earthship,
who had gone down in history as Succor Johnston, was
convinced that the Rats meant no harm and agreed to
lead a Rat ship back to Earth if the rats
had struck, then there would never have been a rat

(08:36):
human war. It would have been over before it started.
But the rats were too proud of their superiority. Earth
was too far away to bother them for the moment.
It wasn't in their line of conquest just yet. In
another fifty years, the planet would be ready for picking off.

(08:57):
Earth had no idea that the rats were so spread.
They had taken and colonized over thirty planets, completely destroying
the indigenous intelligent races that had existed on five of them.
It wasn't just pride that made the Rats decide to
wait before hitting Earth. There was a certain amount of
prudence too. None of the other races they had met

(09:20):
had developed space travel. The Earthmen might be a little
tougher to beat, not that there was any doubt of
the outcome as far as they were concerned, but why
take chances. But while the Rats had fooled Sucker Johnston
and some of his officers, the majority of the crew
knew better. Rat crewmen were a little short of slaves,

(09:45):
and the Rats made the mistake of assuming that the
Earth crewmen were the same. They hadn't tried to impress
the crewmen as they had the officers. When the interrogation
officers on Earth questioned the crew of the Earthship, they
too became s auspicious. Johnston's optimistic attitude just didn't jibe
with the facts. So while the Rat officers were having

(10:10):
the red carpet rolled out for them, Earth intelligence went
to work. Several presumably awe stricken men were allowed to
take a conducted tour of the Rat ship. After all,
why not The twentieth century Russians probably wouldn't have minded
showing their rocket plans to an American of Captain John
Smith's time, either, But there's a difference. Earth's government knew

(10:35):
Earth was being threatened, and they knew they had to
get as many facts as they could. They were also
aware of the fact that if you know a thing
can be done, then you will eventually find a way
to do it. During the next fifty years, Earth learned
more than it had during the previous hundred. The race expanded,

(10:57):
secretly moving out to other planets that sector of the galaxy,
and they worked to catch up with the Rats. They
didn't make it, of course, When after fifty years of
presumably peaceful but highly limited contact, the Rats hit Earth.
They found out one thing that the mass and energy

(11:21):
of a planet armed with the proper weapons cannot be
outclassed by any conceivable concentration of spaceships, throwing rocks and
an army armed with machine guns may seem futile, but
if you hit them with an avalanche, they'll go under.
The Rats lost three quarters of their fleet to planet

(11:42):
based guns and had to go home to bandage their wounds.
The only trouble was that Earth couldn't counter attack. Their
ships were still outclassed by those of the Rats, and
the Rats, their racial pride badly stung, were determined to
wipe out man, to erase the stain on their honor.

(12:04):
Wherever a man could be found. Somehow, some way, they
must destroy Earth, and now al Pendre thought bitterly they
would do it. The Shaine had sneaked in past Rat
patrols to pick up a spy on one of the
outlying Rat planets, a man who'd spent five years playing

(12:27):
the part of a Rat slave trying to get information
on their activities there, and he had had one vital
bit of knowledge. He'd found it and held on to
it for over three years until the time came for
the rendezvous. The rendezvous had almost come too late. The
Rats had developed a device that could make a star

(12:49):
temporarily unstable, and they were ready to use it on Soul.
The Shain had managed to get off planet with a spy,
but they'd been spotted. In spite of the detector nullifiers
that Earth had developed. They'd been jumped by Rat cruisers
and blasted by the superior Rat weapons. The lifeboats had

(13:10):
been picked out of space one by one as the
crew tried to get away in a way. Alfred Pendrey
was lucky he'd been in the sick bay with a
sprained ankle when the Rats hit, sitting in the X
ray room. The shot that had knocked out the port
engine had knocked him unconscious, but the shielded walls of
the X ray room had saved him from the blast

(13:32):
of radiation that had cut down the crew in the
rear of the ship. He'd come too in time to
see the Rat cruisers cut up the lifeboats before they
could get well away from the ship. They'd taken a
couple of parting shots of the dead hulk and then
left it to drift in space, and leaving one man
alive in the small section near the rear of the ship.

(13:58):
There were still compartments that were ere time at least.
Pendre decided there was enough air to keep him alive
for a while. If only he could get a little
power into the ship, he could get the rear air
purifiers to working. He left the lifeboat and closed the
door behind him. There was no point in worrying about

(14:20):
a boat he couldn't use. He made his way back
toward the engine room. Maybe there was something salvageable there.
Swimming through the corridors was becoming easier with practice. His
cadet training was coming back to him. Then he got
a shock that almost made him faint. The beam of

(14:40):
his light had fallen full on the face of a rat.
It took him several seconds to realize that the rat
was dead, and several more to realize that it wasn't
a rat at all. It was the spy they had
been sent to pick up. He had been in the
sick bay for treatments of the ulcers on his back,
gained from five years of frequent lashings as a rat slave.

(15:04):
Pendre went closer and looked him over. He was still
wearing the clothing he had had on when the shain
picked him up. Poor guy Pentrey thought all that hell
for nothing. Then he went around the corpse and continued
toward the engine room. The place was still hot, but

(15:26):
it was thermal heat, not radioactivity. A dead atomic engine
doesn't leave any residual effects. Five out of the six
engines were utterly ruined, but the sixth seemed to be
in working condition. Even the shielding was intact. Again, hope
rose in Alfred Pendray's mind. If only there were tools.

(15:52):
A half hour's search killed that idea. There were no
tools aboard capable of cutting through the hard shielding. He
couldn't use it to shield the engine on the lifeboat,
and the shielding that had been in the other five
engines had melted and run. It was worthless. Then another
idea hit him. Would the remaining engine work at all?

(16:15):
Could it be fixed? It was the only hope he
had left. Apparently the only thing wrong with it was
the exciter circuit leads, which had been sheared off by
a bit of flying metal. The engine had simply stopped
instead of exploding. That ought to be fixable. He could try.
It was something to do anyway. It took him the

(16:40):
better part of two days. According to his watch. There
were plenty of smaller tools around for the job, although
many of them were scattered and some had been ruined
by the explosions. Replacement parts were harder to find, but
he managed to pirate some of them from the ruined engines.
He ate and slept as he felt the need. There

(17:02):
was plenty of food in the sick bay kitchen, and
there was no need for a bed under gravityless conditions.
After the engine was repaired, he set about getting the
rest of the ship ready to move if it would move.
The hull was still solid, so the infrast brace field
should function. The air purifiers had to be reconnected and

(17:25):
repaired in a couple of places. The lights ditto. The
biggest job was checking all the broken leads to make
sure there weren't any short circuits anywhere. The pseudo gravity
circuits were hopeless. He'd have to do without gravity. On
the third day, he decided he'd better clean the place up.

(17:46):
There were several corpses floating around, and they were beginning
to be noticeable. He had to tow them one by
one to the rear starboard air lock and seal them
between the inner and outer doors. He couldn't dump them,
since the outer door was partially melted and welded shut.

(18:07):
He took the personal effects from the men. If he
ever got back to Earth, their next of kin might
want the stuff. On the body of the imitation rat,
he found a belt pouch full of microfilm the report
on the rat's new weapon. Possibly he'd have to look
it over later. On the morning of the fourth day,

(18:29):
he started the single remaining engine. The infraspace field came
on and the ship began moving a multiples of the
speed of light. Pendre grinned half gone, we'll travel, he thought, gleefully.
If Pendre had had any liquor aboard, he would have

(18:49):
gotten mildly drunk. Instead, he sat down and read the
spools of microfilm using the projector in the sick bay.
He was not a scientist in the strict sense of
the word. He was a navigator and a fairly good engineer,
so it didn't surprise him that he couldn't understand a
lot of the report. The mechanics of making a semi

(19:13):
nova out of a normal star were more than a
little bit over his head. He'd read a little, then
go out and take a look at the stars, checking
their movement so that he could make an estimate of
his speed. He'd jerry rigged a kind of control on
the hull field so he could aim the hulk easily enough.

(19:34):
He'd only have to get within signaling range anyway, an
earthship would pick him up if there was any Earth
left by the time he got there. He forced his
mind away from thinking about that. It was not until
he reached the last spool of microfilm that his situation
was forcibly brought to focus in his mind. Thus far,

(19:56):
he had thought only about saving himself, but the note
at the end of the spool made him realize that
there were others to save. The note said these reports
must reach Earth before twenty second June twenty two eighty seven.
After that it will be too late. June twenty second.

(20:19):
That was Let's see, this is the eighteenth of September,
he thought. June of next year is nine months away.
Surely I can make it in that time. I've got
to The only question was how fast was the hulk
of the Shane moving. It took him three days to

(20:40):
get the answer accurately. He knew the strength of the
field around the ship, and he knew the approximate thrust
of the single engine. By that time, he had also
measured the motions of some of the nearest stars. Thank Heaven,
he was a navigator and not a mechanic or something.
At least he knew the direction and distance to Earth,

(21:00):
and he knew the distance of the brighter stars from
where the ship was. He had two checks to use then,
star motion against engine thrust and field strength. He checked
them and rechecked them, and hated the answer. He would
arise in the vicinity of Soul some time in late July,

(21:23):
a full month too late. What could he do increase
the output of the engine. No, it was doing the
best it could. Now. Even shutting off the lights wouldn't
help anything. They were a microscopic drain on that engine.
He tried to think, tried to reason out a solution,
but nothing would come. He found time to curse the

(21:46):
fool who had decided the shielding on the lifeboat would
have to be removed and repaired. That little craft, with
its lighter mass and more powerful field concentration, could make
the trip in ten days. The only problem was that
ten days in that radiation hell would be impossible. He'd
be a very well preserved corpse in half that time,

(22:09):
and there'd be no one aboard to guide her. Maybe
he could get one of the other engines going. Sure,
he must be able to get one more going somehow,
anything to cut down that time. He went back to
the engines again, looking them over carefully. He went over
them again. Not a single one could be repaired at all.

(22:35):
Then he rechecked his velocity figures, hoping against hope that
he'd made a mistake somewhere, dropped a decimal point, or
forgotten to divide by two, anything, anything, But there was nothing.
His figures had been accurate the first time. For a while,
he just gave up. All he could think of was

(22:55):
the terrible blaze of heat that would wipe out Earth
when the rats set off. The sun Man might survive.
There were colonies that the rats didn't know about, but
they'd find them eventually. Without Earth, the race would be
set back five hundred, maybe five thousand years. The rats

(23:17):
would have plenty of time to hunt them out and
destroy them. And then he forced his mind away from
that train of thought. There had to be a way
to get there on time. Something in the back of
his mind told him that there was a way he
had to think, really think. On June seventh, twenty two

(23:45):
eighty seven, a signal officer and the Earth destroyer Muldoon
picked up a faint signal coming from the general direction
of the constellation of Sagittarius. It was the standard emergency
signal for distress. Podcaster only had a very short range,
so the source couldn't be too far away. He made

(24:06):
his report to the ship's captain. We're with an easy
range of her, sir, he finished, Shall we pick her up?
Might be a rat trick, said the captain, but we'll
have to take the chance. Be m call to Earth
and let's go out there dead slow. If the detectors
show anything funny, we turn tail and run. We're in

(24:28):
no position to fight a rat ship. You think this
might be a rat trap, sir, the captain grinned. If
you are referring to the Muldoon as a rat trap,
mister Blake, you're both disrespectful and correct. That's why we're
going to run if we see anything funny. This ship
is already obsolete by our standards. You can imagine what

(24:49):
it is by theirs, he paused, Get that call into Earth,
tell him this ship is using a distress signal that
was obsolete six months ago, and tell him we're going out. Yes, sir,
said the signal officer. It wasn't a trap. As the
Muldoon approached the source of the signal, their detectors picked

(25:12):
up the ship itself. It was a standard lifeboat from
a battleship of the Shannon class. You don't suppose that's
from the Shane, do you, the captain said softly as
he looked at the plate. She's the only ship of
that class that's missing. But if that's a Shane lifeboat,
what took her so long to get here? She's cut

(25:35):
her engines, Sir, said the observer. She evidently knows we're coming,
all right. Pull her in as soon as we're close enough.
Put her a number two lifeboat rack. It's empty. When
the door of the lifeboat opened, the captain of the
Muldoon was waiting outside the lifeboat rack. He didn't know

(25:55):
exactly what he had expected to see, but it somehow
seemed fitting that a lean, bearded man in a badly
worn uniform and a haggard look about him should step out.
The specter saluted Lieutenant Alfred Pendry of the Shaine, he said,
in a voice that had almost no strength. He held

(26:16):
up a pouch microfilm. He said, must get to Earth immediately,
no delay. Hurry catch him, the captain shattered, He's falling,
but one of the men near by had already caught him.
In the sick bay, Pendry came to again. The captain's
questioning gradually got the story out of Pendry. So I

(26:41):
didn't know what to do. Then, he said, his voice
a breath whisper. I knew I had to get that
stuff home somehow. Go on, said the captain, frowning. Simple matter,
said Pendry, nothing to it. Two equations. Little ship goes

(27:03):
thirty times as fast as the big ship. Big hulk
had to get here before twenty second June had to
only way out. Ye understand anyway, Two equations. Simple recommend
your head. Big ship takes ten months, little one takes

(27:24):
ten days. But can't stay in a little ship ten
days no shielding be dead before you got here. See
I see, said the captain patiently. But and here's important point.
If you stay on the big ship for eight and
a half months, then you only got to be in

(27:45):
the little ship for a day and a half to
get here, man can live that long, even under that radiation.
See and with that he closed his eyes. Do you
mean your expose yourself to the full leakage radiation from
a lifeboat engine for thirty six hours? But there was

(28:06):
no answer. Let him sleep, said the ship's doctor. If
he wakes up again, I'll let you know, but he
might not be very lucid from here on in. Is
there anything you can do? The captain asked, no, not
after a radiation dosage like that. He looked down at Pendry.

(28:28):
His problem was easy mathematically, but not psychologically. That took
real guts to solve. Yeah, said the captain gently. All
he had to do was get here alive. The problem
said nothing about his staying that way. And of the

(28:52):
measure of a man by Randall Garrett