Killdozer! by Theodore Sturgeon Page A

the names he called in connection with some famous escapade or other. Harry Voight was our chemist. He is the man who kept two hundred passengers alive for a month with little more than a week’s supply of air and water to work with, after the liner crossed bows with a meteorite on the Pleione run. Bort Brecht was the engineer, a man who could do three men’s work with his artificial hand alone. He lost it in the
Pretoria
disaster. The gunner was Hoch McCoy, the guy who “invented” the bow and arrow and saved his life when he was marooned on an asteroid in the middle of a pack of poison-toothed “Jackrabbits.” The mechanics were Phil and Jo Hartley, twins, whose resemblance enabled them to change places time and again during the Insurrection, thus running bales of vital information to the league high command.
    “Report,” he said to me.
    “All’s well in the control chamber, sir,” I said formally.
    “Brecht?”
    “All’s well back aft, sir.”
    “Quartermaster?”
    “Stores all aboard and stashed away, sir,” said the Biscuit.
    Parks turned to the control board and threw a lever. The air locks slid shut, the thirty second departure signal began to sound from the oscillator on the hull and from signals here and in the engineer’s chamber. Parks raised his voice to be heard over their clamor.
    “I don’t know where we’re goin’,” he said, with an odd smile, “but—” the signals stopped, and that was deafening—“we’re on our way!”
    The master control he had thrown had accomplished all the details of taking off—artificial gravity, “solar” and “planetary” stases, air pumps, humidifiers—everything. Except for the fact that there was suddenly no light streaming in through the portholes any more, there was no slightest change in sensation. Parks reached out and tore the seals off the tape slot on the integrators and from the door of the orders file. He opened the cubbyhole and drew out a thick envelope. There was something in my throat that I couldn’t swallow.
    He tore it open and pulled out eight envelopes and a few folded sheets of paper. He glanced at the envelopes and, with raised eyebrows, handed them to me. I took them. There was one addressed to each member of the crew. At a nod from the skipper I distributed them. Parks unfolded his orders and looked at them.
    “Orders,” he read. “By authority of the Solar League, pertaining to destination and operations of Xantippean Expedition No. 1.”
    Startled glances were batted back and forth. Xantippe! No one had ever been to Xantippe! The weird, cometary planet of Betelgeuse was, and had always been, taboo—and for good reason.
    Parks’s voice was tight. “Orders to be read to crew by the captain immediately upon taking off.” The skipper went to the pilot chair, swiveled it, and sat down. The crew edged closer.
    “The league congratulates itself on its choice of a crew for this most important mission. Out of twenty-seven hundred volunteers, these eight men survived the series of tests and conditioning exercises provided by the league.
    “General orders are to proceed to Xantippe. Captain and crewhave been adequately protected against the field. Object of the expedition is to find the cause of the Xantippe field and to remove it.
    “Specific orders for each member of the crew are enclosed under separate sealed covers. The crew is ordered to read these instructions, to memorize them, and to destroy the orders and envelopes. The league desires that these orders be read in strictest secrecy by each member of the crew, and that the individual contents of the envelopes be held as confidential until contrary orders are issued by the league.” Parks drew a deep breath and looked around at his crew.
    They were a steady lot. There was evidence of excitement, of surprise, and in at least one case, of shock. But there was no fear. Predominantly, there was a kind of exultance in the spaceburned, hard-bitten faces. They bore a