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Title: The Shipshape Miracle
Author: Clifford D. Simak
Release Date: February 6, 2020 [EBook #61333]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SHIPSHAPE MIRACLE ***
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THE SHIPSHAPE MIRACLE
BY CLIFFORD D. SIMAK
The castaway was a wanted man--but he
didn't know how badly he was wanted!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, January 1963.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
If Cheviot Sherwood ever had believed in miracles, he believed in them
no longer. He had no illusions now. He knew exactly what he faced.
His life would come to an end on this uninhabited backwoods planet and
there'd be none to mourn him, none to know. Not, he thought, that there
would be any mourners, under any circumstance. Although there were
those who would be glad to see him, who would come running if they knew
where he might be found.
These were people, very definitely, that Sherwood had no desire to see.
His great, one might say his overwhelming, desire not to see them
could account in part for his present situation, since he had taken off
from the last planet of record without filing flight plans and lacking
clearance.
Since no one knew where he might have headed and since his radio was
junk, there was no likelihood at all that anyone would find him--even
if they looked, which would be a matter of some doubt. Probably the
most that anyone would do would be to send out messages to other
planets to place authorities on the alert for him.
And since his spaceship, for the lack of a certain valve for which he
had no replacement, was not going anywhere, he was stuck here on this
planet.
If that had been all there had been to it, it might not have been so
bad. But there was a final irony that under other circumstances (if
it had been happening to someone else, let's say), would have kept
Sherwood in stitches of forthright merriment for hours on end at the
very thought of it. But since he was the one involved, there was no
merriment.
For now, when he could gain no benefit, he was potentially rich beyond
even his own most greedy and most lurid dreams.
On the ridge above the camp he'd get up beside his crippled spaceship
lay a strip of clay-cemented conglomerate that fairly reeked with
diamonds. They lay scattered on the hillside, washed out by the
weather; they were mixed liberally in the gravel of the tiny stream
that wended through the valley. They could be picked up by the basket.
They were of high quality; there were several, the size of human
skulls, that probably were priceless.
Sherwood was of a hardy, rough and tumble breed. Once he became
convinced of his situation he made the best of it. He made his camp
into a home and laid in supplies--digging roots, gathering nuts,
drying fish and making pemmican. If he was to be cast in the role of a
Robinson Crusoe, he proposed to be at least comfortably well fed.
In his spare time he gathered diamonds, dumping them in a pile outside
his shack. And in the idle afternoons or the long evenings, he sat
beside his campfire and sorted them out--washing them free of clinging
dirt and grading them according to their size and brilliance. The very
best of them he put into a sack, designed for easy grabbing if the
time should ever come when he might depart the planet.
Not that he had any hope this would come about.
Even so, he was a man who planned against contingencies. He always
tried to have some sort of loop-hole. Had this not been the case, his
career would have ended long before, at any one of a dozen times or
places. That it apparently had come to an end now could be attributed
to a certain lack of foresight in not carrying a full complement of
spare parts. Although perhaps this was understandable, since never
before in the history of space flight had that particular valve which
now spelled out Sherwood's doom ever misbehaved.
Perhaps it was well for him that he was not an introspective man. If he
had been given to much searching thought, he might have found himself
living with his past, and there were places in his past that were far
from pretty.
He was lucky in many other ways, of course. The planet was not a bad
one, a sort of New England planet with a rocky, tumbled terrain,
forested by scrubby trees and distinctly terrestrial. He might just
as easily have been marooned upon a jungle planet or one of the icy
planets or any of another dozen different kinds that were not tolerant
of life.
So he settled in and made the best of it and didn't even bother to
count off the days. For he knew what he was in for.
He counted on no miracle.
* * * * *
The miracle he had not counted on came late one afternoon as he sat,
cross-legged, sorting out his latest haul of priceless diamonds.
The great black ship came in from the east across the rolling hills.
It whistled down across the ridges and settled to the ground a short
distance from Sherwood's crippled ship and his patched-together shack.
It was no patrol vessel, although in his position, Sherwood would have
welcomed even one of these. It was a kind of ship he'd never seen
before. It was globular and black and it had no identifying marks on it.
He leaped to his feet and ran toward the ship. He waved his arms in
welcome and whooped with his delight. He stopped a hundred feet away
when he felt the first whiff of the heat that had been picked up by the
vessel's hull in its plunge through atmosphere.
"Hey, in there!" he yelled.
And the Ship spoke to him. "You need not yell," it told him. "I can
hear you very well."
"Who are you?" asked Sherwood.
"I am the Ship," the voice told him.
"Quit fooling around," yelled Sherwood, "and tell me who you are."
For the sort of answer it had given was foolishness. Of course it was
the ship. It was someone in the ship, talking to him through a speaker
in the hull.
"I have told you," said the Ship. "I am the Ship."
"But there is someone speaking to me."
"The ship is speaking to you."
"All right, then," said Sherwood. "If you want it that way, it's okay
with me. Can you take me out of here? My radio is broken and my ship
disabled."
"Perhaps I can," said the Ship. "Tell me who you are."
Sherwood hesitated for a moment, and then he told who he was, quite
truthfully. For it suddenly had occurred to him that this ship was as
much an outlaw as he was himself. It had no markings and all ships must
have markings.
"You say you left your last port without proper clearance?"
"Yes," said Sherwood. "There were certain circumstances."
"And no one knows where you are? No one's looking for you?"
"How could they?" Sherwood asked.
"Where do you want to go?"
"Just anywhere," said Sherwood. "I have no preference."
* * * * *
For even if they should land him somewhere where he had no wish to be,
he still would have a running chance. On this planet he had no chance
at all.
"All right," said the ship. "You can come aboard."
A hatch came open in the hull and a ladder began running out.
"Just a second," Sherwood shouted. "I'll be right there."
He sprinted to the shack and grabbed his sack of the finest diamonds,
then legged it for the ship. He got there almost as soon as the ladder
touched the ground.
The hull still was crackling with warmth, but Sherwood swarmed up the
ladder, paying no attention.
He was set for life, he thought. Unless--
And then the thought struck him that they might take the diamonds from
him. They could pretend it was payment for his passage. Or they could
simply take them without an excuse of any sort at all.
But it was too late now. He was almost in the hatch. To drop the sack
of diamonds now would do no more than arouse suspicion and would gain
him nothing.
It came of greediness, he thought. He did not need this many diamonds.
Just a half dozen of the finest dropped into his pockets would have
been enough. Enough to buy him another ship so he could return and get
a load of them.
But he was committed now. There was nothing he could do except to see
it through.
He reached the hatch and tumbled through it. There was no one waiting.
The inner lock stood open and there was no one there.
He stopped to stare at the emptiness and behind him the retracting
ladder rumbled softly and the hatch hissed to a close.
"Hey," he shouted, "where is everyone?"
"There is no one here," the voice said, "but me."
"All right," said Sherwood. "Where do I go to find you?"
"You have found me," said the Ship. "You are standing in me."
"You mean...."
"I told you," said the Ship. "I said I was the Ship. That is what I am."
"But no one...."
"You do not understand," said the Ship. "There is no need of anyone.
I am myself. I am intelligent. I am part machine, part human. Rather,
perhaps, at one time I was. I have thought, in recent years, the two of
us have merged so we're neither human nor machine, but something new
entirely."
"You're kidding me," said Sherwood, beginning to get frightened.
"There can't be such a thing."
"Consider," said the Ship, "a certain human who had worked for years to
build me and who, as he finished me, found death was closing in...."
"Let me out!" yelled Sherwood. "Let me out of here! I don't want to be
rescued. I don't want...."
"I'm afraid, Mr. Sherwood, it is rather late for that. We're already
out in space."
"Out in space! We can't be! It isn't possible!"
"Of course it is," the Ship told him. "You expected thrust. There was
no thrust. We simply lifted."
* * * * *
"No ship," insisted Sherwood, "can get off a planet...."
"You're thinking, Mr. Sherwood, of the ships built by human hands. Not
of a living ship. Not of an intelligent machine. Not of what becomes
possible with the merging of a man and a machine."
"You mean you built yourself?"
"Of course not. Not to start with. I was built by human hands to start
with. But I've redesigned myself and rebuilt myself, not once, but
many times. I knew my capabilities. I knew my dreams and wishes. I
made myself the kind of thing I was capable of being--not the halfway,
makeshift thing that was the best the human race could do."
"The man you spoke of," Sherwood said. "The one who was about to
die...."
"He is part of me," said the Ship. "If you must think of him as a
separate entity, he, then, is talking to you. For when I say 'I', I
mean both of us, for we've become as one."
"I don't get it," Sherwood told the Ship, feeling the panic coming
back again.
"He built me, long ago, as a ship which would respond, not to the
pushing of a lever or the pressing of a button, but to the mental
commands of the man who drove me. I was to become, in effect, an
extension of that man. There was a helmet that the man would wear and
he'd think into the helmet."
"I understand," said Sherwood.
"He'd think into the helmet and I was so programmed that I'd obey his
thoughts. I became, in effect, a man, and the man became in effect the
ship he operated."
"Nice deal," Sherwood said enthusiastically, never being one upon whom
the niceties of certain advantages were ever lost.
"He finished me and he was about to die and it was a pity that such
a one should die--one who had worked so hard to do what he had done.
Who'd given up so much. Who never had seen space. Who had gone nowhere."
"No," said Sherwood, in revulsion, knowing what was coming. "No, he'd
not done that."
"It was a kindness," said the ship. "It was what he wanted. He managed
it himself. He simply gave up his body. His body was a worthless hulk
that was about to die. The modifications to accommodate a human brain
rather than a human skull were quite elementary. And he has been happy.
We have both of us been happy."
Sherwood stood without saying anything. In the silence he was listening
for some sound, for any kind of tiny rattle or hum, for anything at
all to tell him the ship was operating. But there was no sound and no
sense of motion of any sort.
"Happy," he said. "Where would you have found happiness? What's the
point of all this?"
"That," the Ship said solemnly, "is a bit hard to explain."
Sherwood stood and thought about it--the endless voyaging through space
without a body--with all the desires, all the advantages, all the
capabilities of a body gone forever.
"There is nothing for you to fear," said the Ship. "You need not
concern yourself. We have a cabin for you. Just down the corridor, the
first door to your left."
"I thank you," Sherwood said, although he was nervous still.
If he had had a choice, he told himself, he'd stayed back on the
planet. But since he was here, he'd have to make the best of it. And
there were, he admitted to himself, certain advantages and certain
possibilities that needed further thought.
* * * * *
He went down the corridor and pushed on the door. It opened on the
cabin. For a spaceship it looked comfortable enough. A little cramped,
of course, but then all cabins were. Space is at a premium on any sort
of ship.
He went in and placed his sack of diamonds on the bunk that hinged out
from the wall. He sat down in the single metal chair that stood beside
the bunk.
"Are you comfortable, Mr. Sherwood?"
"Very comfortable," he said.
It was going to be all right, he told himself. A very crazy setup,
but it would be all right. Perhaps a little spooky and a bit hard to
believe, but probably better, after all, than staying marooned, back
there on the planet. For this would not last forever. And the planet
could have been, most probably would have been, forever.
It would take a while to reach another planet, for space was rather
sparsely populated in this area. There would be time to think and plan.
He might be able to work out something that would be to his great
advantage.
He leaned back in the chair and stretched out his legs. His brain began
to click in a ceaseless scurrying back and forth, nosing from every
angle all the possibilities that existed in this setup.
It was nice, he thought--this entire operation. The Ship undoubtedly
had figured out some angles for itself which no human yet had thought
of.
There were a lot of things to do. He'd have to learn the capabilities
of the Ship and give close study to its personality, seeking out its
weak points and its strength. Then he'd have to plan his strategy and
be careful not to give away his thinking. He must not move until he was
entirely ready.
There might be many ways to do it. There might be flattery or there
might be a business proposition or there might be blackmail. He'd have
to think on it and study and follow out the line of action that seemed
to be the best.
He wondered at the Ship's means of operation. Anti-gravity, perhaps, so
far considered as a source of power.
He got up from the chair and paced, three paces across the room. Or a
fusion chamber. Or perhaps some method which had not been and back,
restlessly pondering odds.
Yes, he thought, it would be a nice kind of ship to have. More than
likely there was nothing in all of space that could touch it in
speed and maneuverability. Nothing that could overhaul it should
he ever have to run. It could apparently set down anywhere. It was
probably self-repairing, for the Ship had spoken of redesigning and of
rebuilding itself. With the memory of his recent situation still fresh
inside his mind, this was comforting.
There must be a way to get the Ship, he told himself. There had to be a
way to get it. It was something that he needed.
He could buy another ship, of course; with the diamonds in the sacking
he could buy a fleet of ships. But this was the one he wanted.
* * * * *
Maybe it had been pure luck this Ship had picked him up. For any other
legal ship would probably turn him over to the authorities at its next
port of call, but this Ship didn't seem to mind who he was or what his
record might be. Any other ship that was not entirely legal would have
grabbed off, not only the diamonds that he had but his discovery of the
diamond field. But this particular Ship had no concern with diamonds.
What a setup, he thought. A human brain and a spaceship tied together,
so closely tied together that their identities had merged. He shivered
at the thought of it, for it was a gruesome thing.
Although perhaps it had not meant too much to that old man who was
about to die. He had traded an aged and death-marked body for many
years of life. Perhaps life as a part of a space-traveling machine was
better than no life at all.
How many years, he wondered, had it been since that old man had
translated himself into something else than human? A hundred? Five
hundred? Perhaps even more than that.
In those years where had he been and what might he have seen? And,
most pertinent of all, what thoughts had run through and congealed and
formed within his mind? What was life like for him? Not a human sort of
life, of course, not a human viewpoint, but something else entirely.
Sherwood tried to imagine what it might be like, but gave up in dismay.
It would necessarily be a negation of everything he lived for--all
the sensual pleasure, all the dreams of gain and glory, all the neat
behavior patterns he had set up for himself, all his self-made rules of
conduct and of conscience.
A miracle, he thought. As a matter of fact, there'd been two miracles.
The first had been when he had been able to set his ship down without
a crackup when the valve had failed. He had come in close above the
planet's surface to find a place to land--and suddenly the valve went
out and the engine failed and there he'd been, plunging down above the
rough terrain. Then suddenly he had glimpsed a place where a landing
might be just barely possible and had fought the controls madly to hit
that certain spot and finally had hit it--alive.
It had been a miracle that he had made the landing; and the coming of
the Ship to rescue him had been the second miracle.
The bunk dropped down flat against the wall and his sack of diamonds
was dumped onto the floor.
"Hey, what goes on?" yelled Sherwood. Then he wished he had not yelled,
for it was quite clear exactly what had happened. The support that held
the bunk had not been snapped properly into place and had given way,
letting down the bunk.
"Something wrong, Mr. Sherwood?" asked the Ship.
"No, not a thing," said Sherwood. "My bunk fell down. I guess it
startled me."
He bent down to pick up the diamonds. As he did, the chair quietly and
efficiently slid back against the wall, folded itself up and slid into
a slight depression that exactly fitted it.
Squatted to pick up the diamonds, Sherwood watched the chair in
horrified fascination, then swiftly spun around. The bunk no longer
hung against the wall, also had fitted itself into another niche.
Cold fear speared into Sherwood. He rose swiftly to his feet, turning
like a man at bay. He stood in a bare cubicle. With both the bunk and
chair retracted, he stood within four bare walls.
He sprang toward the door and there wasn't any door. There was only
wall.
He staggered back into the center of the cubicle and spun around to
view each wall in turn. There was no door in any of the walls. The
metal went up from floor to ceiling without a single break.
The walls began to move, closing in on him, sliding in, retracting.
* * * * *
He watched, incredulous, frozen, thinking that perhaps he'd imagined
the moving of the walls.
But it was not imagination. Slowly, inexorably, the walls were closing
in. Had he put out his arms, he could have touched them on either side
of him.
"Ship!" he said, fighting to keep his voice calm.
"Yes, Mr. Sherwood."
"You are malfunctioning. The walls are closing in."
"No," said the Ship. "No malfunction, I assure you. A very proper
function. My brain grows tired and feeble. It is not the body only--the
brain also has its limits. I suspected that it might, but I could not
know. There was a chance, of course, that separated from the poison of
a body, it might live in its bath of nutrients forever."
"No!" rasped Sherwood, his breath strangling in his throat. "No, not
me!"
"Who else?" asked the Ship. "I have searched for years and you are the
first who fitted."
"Fitted!" Sherwood screamed.
"Why, of course," the Ship said calmly, happily. "A man who would not
be missed. No one knowing where you were. No one hunting for you.
No one who will miss you. I had hunted for someone like you and had
despaired of finding one. For I am humane. I would cause no one grief
or sadness."
The walls kept closing in.
The Ship seemed to sigh in metallic contentment.
"Believe me, Mr. Sherwood," it said, "finding you was a very miracle."
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