Farmer in the Sky Read online

  Things got so dull that it was hardly worth while to keep up my diary, even if I had been able to get microfilm, which I wasn’t.

  Dad and I played an occasional game of cribbage in the evening—somehow Dad had managed to squeeze the board and a pack of cards into his weight allowance. Then he got too busy with technical planning he was doing for the council and didn’t have time. Molly suggested that I teach her to play, so I did.

  After that I taught Peggy to play and she pegged a pretty sharp game, for a girl. It worried me a little that I wasn’t being loyal to Anne in getting chummy with Peg and her mother, but I decided that Anne would want me to do just what I did. Anne was always friendly with everybody.

  It still left me with time on my hands. What with only one-third gravity and no exercise I couldn’t sleep more than six hours a night. The lights were out eight hours but they didn’t make us go to bed, not after the trouble they had with it the first week. I used to fool around the corridors after lights out, usually with Hank Jones, until we both would get sleepy. We talked a lot. Hank turned out not to be such a bad guy as long as you kept him trimmed down to size.

  I still had my Scout suit with me and kept it folded up in my bunk. Hank came in one morning while I was making up my bunk and noticed it. “See here, William,” he said, “why do you hang on to that? Let the dead past bury its dead.”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Maybe there will be Scouting on Ganymede.”

  “Not that I ever heard of.”

  “Why not? There is Scouting on the Moon.”

  “Proves nothing,” he answered.

  But it got us to talking about it and Hank got a brilliant idea. Why not start up Scouting right now, in the Mayflower?

  We called a meeting. Peggy spread the word around for us, through the junior council, and we set it for fifteen-thirty that same afternoon, right after school. Fifteen-thirty Greenwich, or “A” deck time, that is. That made it seven-thirty in the morning for the “B” deck boys and a half hour before midnight for the fellows on “C” deck. It was the best we could do. “B” deck could hurry through breakfast and get to the meeting if they wanted to and we figured that those who were really interested from “C” would stay up for the meeting.

  I played my accordion while they were drifting in because Hank’s father said that you needed music to warm up a meeting before it got down to work. The call had read “all Scouts and former Scouts;” by fifteen-forty we had them packed in and spilling into the corridors, even though we had the use of the biggest mess room. Hank called them to order and I put away my accordion and acted as Scribe pro tem, having borrowed a wire recorder from the Communications Officer for the purpose.

  Hank made a little speech. I figure him for politics when he grows up. He said that all of us had enjoyed the benefits, the comradeship, and the honorable traditions of Scouting on Earth and it seemed a shame to lose them. He said that the Scouting tradition was the tradition of the explorer and pioneer and there could be no more fitting place and time for it than in the settlement of a new planet. In fact the spirit of Daniel Boone demanded that we continue as Scouts.

  I didn’t know he had it in him. It sounded good.

  He stopped and slipped me the wink. I got up and said that I wanted to propose a resolution. Then I read it—it had been a lot longer but we cut it down. It read: “Be it resolved—we the undersigned, Scouts and former Scouts of many jurisdictions and now passengers in the good ship Mayflower, having as our purpose to continue the Scouting tradition and to extend the Scouting trail out to the stars, do organize ourselves as the Boy Scouts of Ganymede in accordance with the principles and purpose of Scouting and in so doing do reaffirm the Scout Law.”

  Maybe it was flowery but it sounded impressive; nobody laughed. Hank said, “You have heard the resolution; what is your pleasure? Do I hear a second?”

  He surely did; there were seconds all over the place. Then he asked for debate.

  Somebody objected that we couldn’t call ourselves the Boy Scouts of Ganymede because we weren’t on Ganymede yet. He got a chilly reception and shut up. Then somebody else pointed out that Ganymede wasn’t a star, which made that part about “Carrying the Scouting trail out to the stars” nonsense.

  Hank told him that was poetic license and anyhow going out to Ganymede was a step in the right direction and that there would be more steps; what about the Star Rover III? That shut him up.

  The worst objection was from “Millimetre” Muntz, a weary little squirt too big for his britches. He said, “Mr. Chairman, this is an outlaw meeting. You haven’t any authority to set up a new Scouting jurisdiction. As a member in good standing of Troop Ninety-Six, New Jersey, I object to the whole proceeding.”

  Hank asked him just what authority he thought Troop Ninety-Six, New Jersey, had out around the orbit of Mars? Somebody yelled, “Throw him out!”

  Hank banged on the mess table. “It isn’t necessary to throw him out—but, since Brother Millimetre thinks this is not a proper meeting, then it isn’t proper for him to take part in it. He is excused and the chair will recognize him no further. Are you ready to vote?”

  It was passed unanimously and then Hank was elected organizational chairman. He appointed a flock of committees, for organization and for plans and programs and for credentials and tests and for liaison, and such. That last was to dig out the men in the ship who had been troop masters and commissioners and things and get a Court of Honor set up. There were maybe a dozen of the men passengers at the meeting, listening. One of them, a Dr. Archibald who was an aide on “A” deck, spoke up.

  “Mr. Chairman, I was a Scoutmaster in Nebraska. I’d like to volunteer my services to this new organization.”

  Hank looked him straight in the eye. “Thank you, sir. Your application will be considered.”

  Dr. Archibald looked startled, but Hank went smoothly on, “We want and need and will appreciate the help of all you older Scouts. The liaison committee is instructed to get the names of any who are willing to serve.”

  It was decided that we would have to have three troops, one for each deck, since it wasn’t convenient to try to meet all at the same time. Hank asked all the Explorer Scouts to stand up. There were too many of them, so he asked those who were Eagles to remain standing. There were about a dozen of us.

  Hank separated us Eagles by decks and told us to get busy and organize our troops and to start by picking an acting senior patrol leader. “A” deck had only three Eagles, me, Hank, and a kid from another bunk room whom I hadn’t met before, Douglas MacArthur Okajima. Doug and Hank combined on me and I found myself tagged with the job.

  Hank and I had planned to finish the meeting with setting up exercises, but there just wasn’t room, so I got out my accordion again and we sang The Scouting Trail and followed it with The Green Hills of Earth. Then we took the oath together again:

  “Upon my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my planet, and to keep myself physically fit, mentally alert, and morally straight.”

  After that the meeting busted up.

  For a while we held meetings every day. Between troop meetings and committee meetings and Explorer meetings and patrol leader meetings we didn’t have time to get bored. At first the troops were just “A” troop, “B” troop, and “C” troop, after the decks, but we wanted names to give them some personality. Anyhow I wanted a name for my troop; we were about to start a membership drive and I wanted something with more oomph to it than “‘A’ deck troop.”

  Somebody suggested “The Space Rats” but that was voted down, and somebody else suggested “The Mayflowers”; they didn’t bother to vote on that; they simply sat on him.

  After that we turned down “The Pilgrims,” “Deep Space Troop,” “Star Rovers,” and “Sky High.” A kid named John Edward Forbes-Smith got up. “Look,” he said, “we’re divided into three troops on the basis of the time zones we use, aren’t we? “B” deck has California time; “C” deck has Philippine time;
and we have Greenwich or English time. Why don’t we pick names that will show that fact? We could call ourselves the Saint George Troop.”

  Bud Kelly said it was a good idea as far as it went but make it Saint Patrick instead of Saint George; after all, Dublin was on Greenwich time, too, and Saint Patrick was a more important saint.

  Forbes-Smith said, “Since when?”

  Bud said, “Since always, you limey—” So we sat on both of them, too, and it was decided not to use saints. But Johnny Edwards had a good idea, just the same; we settled on the Baden-Powell Troop, Boy Scouts of Ganymede, which tied in with the English time zone and didn’t offend anybody.

  The idea took hold; “C” deck picked Aguinaldo as a name and “B” deck called themselves the Junipero Serra Troop. When I heard that last I was kind of sorry our deck didn’t have California time so that we could have used it. But I got over it; after all “Baden-Powell” is a mighty proud name, too.

  For that matter they were all good names—scouts and explorers and brave men, all three of them. Two of them never had a chance to be Scouts in the narrow, organized meaning, but they were all Scouts in the wider sense—like Daniel Boone.

  Dad says there is a lot in a name.

  As soon as they heard about what we were doing the girls set up Girl Scouting, too, and Peggy was a member of the Florence Nightingale Troop. I suppose there was no harm in it, but why do girls copy what the boys do? We were too busy to worry about them, though; we had to revamp Scouting activities to fit new conditions.

  We decided to confirm whatever ranks and badges a boy had held in his former organization—permanent rankings, I mean, not offices. Having been a patrol leader or a scribe didn’t mean anything, but if you were an Eagle on Earth, you stayed one in the B.S.G.; if you were a Cub, then you were still a Cub. If a boy didn’t have records—and about half of them didn’t—we took his Scout oath statement as official.

  That was simple; working over the tests and the badges was complicated. After all you can’t expect a boy to pass bee-keeping when you haven’t any bees.

  (It turned out that there were several swarms of bees sleep-frozen in the cargo, but we didn’t have the use of them.)

  But we could set up a merit badge in hydroponics and give tests right there in the ship. And Mr. Ortega set up a test for us in spaceship engineering and Captain Harkness did the same for ballistics and astrogation. By the end of the trip we had enough new tests to let a boy go up for Eagle Scout, once we had a Court of Honor.

  That came last. For some reason I couldn’t figure Hank had kept putting off the final report of the liaison committee, the committee which had as its job getting Scout Masters and Commissioners and such. I asked him about it, but he just looked mysterious and said that I would see.

  I did see, eventually. At last we had a joint meeting of all three troops to install Scout Masters and dedicate the Court of Honor and such. And from then on the adults ran things and we went back to being patrol leaders at the most. Oh well—it was fun while it lasted.

  8. Trouble

  When we were fifty-three days out and about a week to go to reach Ganymede, Captain Harkness used the flywheel to precess the ship so that we could see where we were going—so that the passengers could see, that is; it didn’t make any difference to his astrogation.

  You see, the axis of the Mayflower had been pointed pretty much toward Jupiter and the torch had been pointed back at the Sun. Since the view ports were spaced every ninety degrees around the sides, while we had been able to see most of the sky, we hadn’t been able to see ahead to Jupiter nor behind to the Sun. Now he tilted the ship over ninety degrees and we were rolling, so to speak, along our line of flight. That way, you could see Jupiter and the Sun both, from any view port, though not both at the same time.

  Jupiter was already a tiny, ruddy-orange disc. Some of the boys claimed they could make out the moons. Frankly, I couldn’t, not for the first three days after the Captain processed the ship. But it was mighty fine to be able to see Jupiter.

  We hadn’t seen Mars on the way out, because Mars happened to be on the far side of the Sun, three hundred million miles away. We hadn’t seen anything but the same old stars you can see from Earth. We didn’t even see any asteroids.

  There was a reason for that. When we took off from the orbit of Supra-New-York, Captain Harkness had not aimed the Mayflower straight for where Jupiter was going to be when we got there; instead he had lifted her north of the ecliptic high enough to give the asteroid belt a wide berth. Now anybody knows that meteors are no real hazard in space. Unless a pilot does deliberately foolish things like driving his ship through the head of a comet it is almost impossible to get yourself hit by a meteor. They are too far between.

  On the other hand the asteroid belt has more than its fair share of sky junk. The older power-pile ships used to drive straight through the belt, taking their chances, and none of them was ever hit to amount to anything. But Captain Harkness, having literally all the power in the world, preferred to go around and play it safe. By avoiding the belt there wasn’t a chance in a blue moon that the Mayflower would be hit.

  Well, it must have been a blue moon. We were hit.

  It was just after reveille, “A” deck time, and I was standing by my bunk, making it up. I had my Scout uniform in my hands and was about to fold it up and put it under my pillow. I still didn’t wear it. None of the others had uniforms to wear to Scout meetings so I didn’t wear mine. But I still kept it tucked away in my bunk.

  Suddenly I heard the goldarnest noise I ever heard in my life. It sounded like a rifle going off right by my ear, it sounded like a steel door being slammed, and it sounded like a giant tearing yards and yards of cloth, all at once.

  Then I couldn’t hear anything but a ringing in my ears and I was dazed. I shook my head and looked down and I was staring at a raw hole in the ship, almost between my feet and nearly as big as my fist. There was scorched insulation around it and in the middle of the hole I could see blackness—then a star whipped past and I realized that I was staring right out into space.

  There was a hissing noise.

  I don’t remember thinking at all. I just wadded up my uniform, squatted down, and stuffed it in the hole. For a moment it seemed as if the suction would pull it on through the hole, then it jammed and stuck and didn’t go any further. But we were still losing air. I think that was the point at which I first realized that we were losing air and that we might be suffocated in vacuum.

  There was somebody yelling and screaming behind me that he was killed and alarm bells were going off all over the place. You couldn’t hear yourself think. The air-tight door to our bunk room slid across automatically and settled into its gaskets and we were locked in.

  That scared me to death.

  I know it has to be done. I know that it is better to seal off one compartment and kill the people who are in it than to let a whole ship die—but, you see, I was in that compartment, personally. I guess I’m just not the hero type.

  I could feel the pressure sucking away at the plug my uniform made. With one part of my mind I was recalling that it had been advertised as “tropical weave, self ventilating” and wishing that it had been a solid plastic rain coat instead. I was afraid to stuff it in any harder, for fear it would go all the way through and leave us sitting there, chewing vacuum. I would have passed up desserts for the next ten years for just one rubber patch, the size of my hand.

  The screaming had stopped; now it started up again. It was Noisy Edwards, beating on the air-tight door and yelling, “Let me out of here! Get me out of here!”

  On top of that I could hear Captain Harkness’s voice coming through the bull horn. He was saying, “H-twelve! Report! H-twelve! Can you hear me?”

  On top of that everybody was talking at once.

  I yelled: “Quiet!” at the top of my voice—and for a second or so there was quiet.

  Peewee Brunn, one of my Cubs, was standing in front of me, looking big-eyed.
“What happened, Billy?” he said.

  I said, “Grab me a pillow off one of the bunks. Jump!”

  He gulped and did it. I said, “Peel off the cover, quick!”

  He did, making quite a mess of it, and handed it to me—but I didn’t have a hand free. I said, “Put it down on top of my hands.”

  It was the ordinary sort of pillow, soft foam rubber. I snatched one hand out and then the other, and then I was kneeling on it and pressing down with the heels of my hands. It dimpled a little in the middle and I was scared we were going to have a blowout right through the pillow. But it held. Noisy was screaming again and Captain Harkness was still asking for somebody, anybody, in compartment H-12 to tell him what was going on. I yelled “Quiet!” again, and added, “Somebody slug Noisy and shut him up.”

  That was a popular idea. About three of them jumped to it. Noisy got clipped in the side of the neck, then somebody poked him in the pit of his stomach and they swarmed over him. “Now everybody keep quiet,” I said, “and keep on keeping quiet. If Noisy lets out a peep, slug him again.” I gasped and tried to take a deep breath and said, “H-twelve, reporting!”

  The Captain’s voice answered, “What is the situation there?”

  “There is a hole in the ship, Captain, but we got it corked up.”

  “How? And how big a hole?”

  I told him and that is about all there was to it. They took a while to get to us because—I found this out afterward—they isolated that stretch of corridor first, with the air-tight doors, and that meant they had to get everybody out of the rooms on each side of us and across the passageway. But presently two men in space suits opened the door and chased all the kids out, all but me. Then they came back. One of them was Mr. Ortega. “You can get up now, kid,” he said, his voice sounding strange and far away through his helmet. The other man squatted down and took over holding the pillow in place.

  Mr. Ortega had a big metal patch under one arm. It had sticky padding on one side. I wanted to stay and watch him put it on but he chased me out and closed the door. The corridor outside was empty but I banged on the air-tight door and they let me through to where the rest were waiting. They wanted to know what was happening but I didn’t have any news for them because I had been chased out.