Short Stories by Robert A. Heinlein Vol 2 Part 124

"What," demanded Hugh, "are the 'locked compartments'?"

"Don't you know? There are seven doors, s.p.a.ced on the main shaft in the same bulkhead as the door to Main Control Room. We've never been able to open them."

"Well, maybe that's what we're looking for. Let's see!"

"It's a waste of time," Jim insisted. But they went.

Bobo was taken along to try his monstrous strength on the doors. But even his knotted swollen muscles couldn't budge the levers which appeared to be intended to actuate the doors. "Well?" Jim sneered to his brother. "You see?"

Joe shrugged. "O.K., you win. Let's go down."

"Wait a little," Hugh pleaded. "The second door back the handle seemed to turn a little. Let's try it again."

"I'm afraid it's useless," Jim commented. But Joe said, "Oh, all right, as long as we're here."

Bobo tried again, wedging his shoulder under the lever and pus.h.i.+ng from his knees. The lever gave suddenly, but the door did not open. "He's broken it," Joe announced.

"Yeah," Hugh acknowledged. "I guess that's that." He placed his hand against the door. It swung open easily.

The door did not lead to outer s.p.a.ce, which was well for the three, for nothing in their experience warned them against the peril of the outer vacuum. Instead a very short and narrow vestibule led them to another door which was just barely ajar. The door stuck on its hinges, but the fact that it was slightly ajar prevented it from binding anywhere else. Perhaps the last man to use it left it so as a precaution against the metal surfaces freezing together, but no one would ever know.

Bobo's uncouth strength opened it easily. Another door lay six feet beyond. "I don't understand this," complained Jim as Bobo strained at the third door. "What's the sense in an endless series of doors?"

"Wait and find out," advised his brother.

Beyond the third door lay, not another door, but an apartment, a group of compartments, odd ones, small, crowded together and of unusual shapes. Bobo shot on. ahead and explored the place, knife in teeth, his ugly body almost graceful in flight. Hugh and Joe-Jim proceeded more slowly, their eyes caught by the strangeness Of the place.

Bobo returned, killed his momentum skillfully against a bulkhead, took his blade from his teeth, and reported, "No door. No more door any place. Bobo look."

"There has to be," Hugh insisted, irritated at the dwarf for demolis.h.i.+ng his hopes.

The moron shrugged. "Bobo look."

"We'll look." Hugh and the twins moved off in different directions, splitting the reconnaissance between them.

Hugh found no door, but what he did find interested him even more: an impossibility. He was about to shout for Joe-Jim, when he heard his own name called. "Hugh! Come here!"

Reluctantly he left his discovery, and sought out the twins. "Come see what I've found," he began.

"Nevermind," Joe cut him short. "Look at that."

Hugh looked. "That" was a Converter. Quite impossibly but indubitably a Converter. "It doesn't make sense," Jim protested. "An apartment this size doesn't need a Converter. That thing would supply power and light for half the s.h.i.+p. What do you make of it, Hugh?"

Hugh examined it. "I don't know," he admitted, "but if you think this is strange, come see what I've found."

"What have you found?"

"Come see."

The twins followed him, and saw a small compartment, one wall of which appeared to be of gla.s.s, black as if the far side were obscured. Facing the wall were two acceleratlon chairs, side by side. The arms and the lap desks of the chairs were covered with patterns of little white lights of the same sort as the control lights on the chairs in the Main Control Room.

Joe-Jim made no comment at first, save for a low whistle from Jim. He sat down in one of the chairs and started experimenting cautiously with the controls. Hugh sat down beside him. Joe-Jim covered a group of white lights on the right-hand arm of his chair; the lights in the compartment went out. When he lifted his hand the tiny control lights were blue instead of white. Neither Joe-Jim nor Hugh was startled. When the lights went out; they had expected it, for the control involved corresponded to similar controls in the Control Room.

Joe-Jim fumbled around, trying to find controls which would produce a simulacrum of the heavens on the blank gla.s.s before him. There were no such controls and he had no way of knowing that the gla.s.s was an actual view port, obscured by the hull of the s.h.i.+p proper, rather than a view screen.

But he did manage to actuate the controls that occupied the corresponding position. These controls were labeled LAUNCHING; Joe-Jim had disregarded the label because he did not understand it. Actuating them produced no very remarkable results, except that a red light blinked rapidly and a transparency below the label came into life. It read: AIR-LOCK OPEN.

Which was very lucky for Joe-Jim, Hugh, and Bobo. Had they closed the doors behind them and had the little Converter contained even a few grams of ma.s.s available for power, they would have found themselves launched suddenly into s.p.a.ce, in a s.h.i.+p's boat unequipped for a trip and whose controls they understood only by a.n.a.logy with those in the Control Room. Perhaps they could have maneuvered the boat back into its cradle; more likely they would have crashed attempting it.

But Hugh and Joe-Jim were not yet aware that the "apartment" they had entered was a s.p.a.cecraft; the idea of a s.h.i.+p's boat was still foreign to them.

"Turn on the lights," Hugh requested. Joe-Jim did so.

"Well?" Hugh went on. "What do you make of it?"

"It seems pretty obvious," answered Jim. "This is another Control Room. We didn't guess it was here because we couldn't open the door."

"That doesn't make sense," Joe objected. "Why should there be two Control Rooms for one s.h.i.+p?"

"Why should a man have two heads?" his brother reasoned. "From my point of view, you are obviously a supernumerary."

"It's not the same thing; we were born that way. But this didn't just happen; the s.h.i.+p was built."

"So what?" Jim argued. "We carry two knives, don't we? And we weren't born with 'em. It's a good idea to have a spare."

"But you can't control the s.h.i.+p from here," Joe protested. "You can't see anything from here. If you wanted a second set of controls, the place to put them would be the Captain's veranda, where you can see the stars."

"How about that?" Jim asked, indicating the wall of gla.s.s.

"Use your head," his brother advised. "It faces the wrong direction. It looks into the s.h.i.+p, not out. And it's not an arrangement like the Control Room; there isn't any way to mirror the stars on it."

"Maybe we haven't located the controls for it."

"Even so, you've forgotten something. How about that little Converter?"

"What about it?"

"It must have some significance. It's not here by accident. I'll bet you that these controls have something to do with that Converter."

"Why?"

"Why not? Why are they here together if there isn't some connection?"

Hugh broke his puzzled silence. Everythmg the twins had said seemed to make sense, even the contradictions. It was all very confusing. But the Converter, the little Conver-- "Say, look," he burst out.

"Look at what?"

"Do you suppose -- Do you think that maybe this part of the s.h.i.+p could move?"