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Title: White Mutiny
Author: Jameson, Malcolm (1891-1945)
Date of first publication: October 1940
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   Astounding Science-Fiction, October 1940
   [New York: Street & Smith]
   [first edition]
Date first posted: 31 May 2016
Date last updated: 31 May 2016
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1324

This ebook was produced by Al Haines


PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.

As part of the conversion of the book to its new digital
format, we have made certain minor adjustments in its layout.






WHITE MUTINY

By Malcolm Jameson



    You don't have to start a fight and shoot your officers to
    mutiny--and the officers don't have to beat men to drive 'em
    to mutiny!  A rule book skipper in a prize-winning ship is
    dynamite enough for that!




For the first time in his life, Commander Bullard found himself
dreading something--dreading it intensely.  And, oddly enough, that
something was no more than the routine Saturday inspection.  In ten
minutes he would buckle on his sword, that quaint ceremonial relic of
antiquity, put on his awkward fore-and-aft hat, and accompany the new
captain--Chinnery--through the mazes of the good spaceship _Pollux_.

He sighed helplessly, glanced up at Lieutenant Commander Fraser, thence
let his eyes rove to the bookshelf where a fathom's length of canvas
bound stood.  He stared savagely at them.  He had never realized before
there were so many of them.  Heretofore he had done his duty as he saw
it and left chapter and verse to the sky lawyers.

But those fat books contained the awful clauses that regulated the
conduct of the Space Guard.  There they were--eight thick volumes--of
the Regulations Proper.  Ranged next were three volumes more of the
Ordinance Instructions, and five of the Engineering Instructions.  Then
came the set relating to Astragation, and the fourteen learned tomes on
Interplanetary Law; then the ones on Tactics and Strategy, then--

Bullard shuddered.  It was overwhelming.  To violate, even unwittingly,
any provision contained in that compact library was technically
"neglect of duty."  And the new skipper was a hound for regulations.

"From here out," he had told Bullard the week before, on the occasion
of his confiscation and destruction of all the crew's tailor-made
liberty uniforms, "the regulations are in effect.  _All_ of them, not
just the ones that happen to please you."  And Bullard remembered the
sullen faces of what had been a happy ship's company as they tossed
their trim outfits into the incinerator door.  A tapeline in Chinnery's
own hands had revealed the clothing much too tight in the waist, and as
much as three inches too full in the shoulders.  It was, he said, a
clear violation of Article 8878, sections B and D.

So they were destroyed.  It did not seem to matter to Chinnery that no
self-respecting skyman would allow himself to be seen, even in the
lowest dive, clad in the shoddy issue uniform, nor did it matter to him
that each of those uniforms stood their owners two or three months'
pay.  They were non-reg, and that was that.  What if the planet girls
had a way of judging sailors by their clothes?  What if the men sulked
and grumbled at their work?

"A couple of days on bread and water will take that out of them," said
Chinnery tartly when Bullard had protested.  "The question is--are we
going to run the ship the way the department wants it, or are we going
to pamper the men?"

And Bullard thought back to the glowing report of their last admiral's
inspection--that which had brought them all citations and promotions;
and to the plaque in control that stated the _Pollux_ to be the best
all-around ship in the service.  To a young man who had been taught
that success lay in getting things done, that trophy seemed to be
conclusive.  Results, it seemed to him, were what counted, not the
manner of the doing.



There was a rap at the door.  It was the captain's orderly.  Bullard
took the folded paper he bought, read it, frowned, and tossed it onto
the desk.

"Tell the captain I'll attend to it," he said to the orderly wearily.
It was the umpty-umph message of the sort he had received in the past
ten days.

"The captain said you were to answer forthwith in writing," said the
orderly stiffly.  His manner was punctiliously correct, yet there was
the hint cf insolence in the way he said it.  Orderlies of man-baiting
captains soon acquire the manner.

Bullard shot him a hard look, then reached for Volume II of the
Regulations.  The paper was upside down to Carlson, but he could read
it.


From: Commanding Officer To: Executive Officer.  Subject: Duties.
Reference: Art. 2688, SS Regs.

1. It has been brought to my attention that reference is not being
complied with.

2. You are directed to explain in writing at once the reasons for this
dereliction in duty on your part.

CHINNERY.


Bullard found Article 2688, read it and gasped.  It merely said:


    The executive officer shall wind the chronometer.


"Damnation," he muttered, and pushed the button for his yeoman.  He
dictated three terse sentences.  The _Pollux's_ chronometer behaved
perfectly, it was wound daily by the assistant navigator, as was the
practice in the fleet, the executive officer did not understand ihe
commanding officer's allusion to dereliction in duty.

Bullard gnawed his lip while the yeoman rapped out the letter, then
signed it and handed it without a word to the waiting orderly.

Within two minutes the orderly was back.

"The captain says," said the orderly, with even more of an undertone of
insolence, "that he is not interested in the so-called customs of the
service.  He says that the regulations require the executive to wind
the chronometer, and that there is nothing about delegating the duty to
some subordinate.  And that hereafter he wants straightforward answers
to his memos, not evasive alibis."

Bullard glared at the man, the color mounting to his face.  The orderly
returned the look with a cool stare.

"He said you were to acknowledge the--"

"Get out of here!" roared Bullard, rising and thumping his desk.

"He's riding you, that's what, the dumb fathead!" exclaimed Fraser as
the orderly disappeared down the passage.  "He's still sore over the
way you showed him up at that admiral's inspection.  He's envious, he's
yellow--"

"Easy!" warned Bullard.  "After all, he's our superior officer."

"Superior, my eye!" snorted Fraser.  "He's got more rank, yes.  But it
burns me up to oven look at the slob.  And every time I see that
smart-Aleck orderly I want to swing on him.  That goes for that
slippery ship's writer, too.  Think of you having to wind the
chronometer personally!  Why, how--"

"How?" laughed Bullard harshly.  "If you think that's something, look
at this.  He sent it in just before you came."

He tossed Fraser the earlier memo.

"_Phew!_" whistled the gunnery officer, popping his eyes.

"Yes," said Bullard bitterly.  "Article 2751 says that the exec. shall
satisfy himself that the quarterly inventories are correct, but you see
that his nibs construes that to mean an item-by-item personal
check--and that don't mean sampling, either."

"What about all those firebricks in D-66?  I used to do those by the
cubic yard, but they are carried on the books by number--"

"I have to count 'em--the whole damn forty-two thousand some-odd of
'em."

"How will we ever get anything done?" asked Fraser blankly.  He, like
every other officer in the ship, had received his own quota of Captain
Chinnery's curt queries as to this regulation and that.  He had long
since abandoned informal gunnery drills.  All his gunner's mates were
up to their necks, compiling lists of spare parts, motor serial
numbers, and immersed in such other paper work.

"Thar she blows," remarked Bullard dully as the gong began to tap for
quarters.  He reached for his sword and cocked hat.  "Well, let's go
and get the bad news."



Bad news it was.  Smug, plump little Chinnery stayed a long time in
each compartment, blandly pointing out technical flaws.  The only thing
in the ship that seemed to please him were the ill-fitting, badly-dyed
issue uniforms of the crew--made by the female convicts to kill time on
bleak Juno.  The disgruntled, sour looks of the men seemed not to
disturb him at all.  His ambition was to have the perfect ship--on
paper--and his coup had been duly entered in the log.  The reviewer in
the department would read that and know of his zeal, whereas
subtleties--like morale--were not so readily conveyed in cold type.

In sub-CC the inspecting party made its usual pause.  The captain's eye
lit on the old-style annunciator panel hung on the bulkhead above the
intership communication board.  He reached up and struck the glassite
cover sharply wilh the heel of his hand.  A black card bearing the
number "24-B" dropped into view.

"What does that mean?" he barked at the unhappy operator, a recruit
just come aboard.  "What do you do when one of those drops?"

"I ... I don't know, sir, N-no-body ever told me--"

"What!" squealed Chinnery, "Here you are, intrusted with the watch, and
don't know what to do when a magazine is on fire?  Bullard!  What is
the meaning of this?"  He swung viciously on Bullard, puckering his fat
face into what was meant to be a stern expression.

"That board--" began Bullard patiently.  But Chinnery cut him off.

"Never mind that.  I know what the board is.  Why has not this man been
instructed in his duties?"

"Because--" Bullard tried a second time, but the captain was not
listening.

"Never mind the alibi.  Yeoman!  Take a note ... for the commander's
record ... about this.  Let's see, that makes Specification No. 14
under the charge of 'neglect of duty,' doesn't it?"

"Seventeen, sir," answered the yeoman, riffling through the pages of
his notebook.

"Hmm-m," muttered Chinnery.

"But--" objected Bullard, his wrath rising.

"But me no buts, young man.  I am beginning to see that your vaunted
efficiency was mostly luck.  Imagine!  Having a phone operator on watch
who does not know what to do in case of a magazine fire!"

He turned to the now thoroughly frightened lad and, in what was meant
to be a soothing voice, said:

"That, my boy, is an indicator of high magazine temperatures.  If a
number should ever drop, flood that magazine immediately--then notify
me.  The controls are to your right--there."

Bullard, purple with fury, restrained himself.  Then he caught Fraser's
solemn wink and decided to let it go.  Fraser knew as well as he did
that the board was no longer connected with the thermocouples in the
powder storerooms.  The dropping of a number could only mean that the
board had been jarred, a thing that had occurred before, with
embarrassing consequences.  It was for that reason that this alarm
system had been condemned and replaced by a better one in Central.
That was why there was a job order on file for its complete removal the
very next time they were back to the home yard on Luna.

Similar outbursts on the part of the captain took place in other spots,
but it was not until they were inside the port torpedo rooms that his
legalistic mind showed itself in its fullest flower.  He laid his hand
on a curious bulge in the inboard bulkhead.

"What is behind this?" he demanded.

"The original torpedo hoists," replied Fraser, "but we use the magnetic
ones altogether now.  These are blanked off with plating to keep dirt
from accumulating in them."

"Ah," said Chinnery, "I seem to remember."  He sent his yeoman
scurrying back to the cabin for his file of quarterly reports.  After
he had returned, Chinnery turned his scowl on Fraser.

"More negligence," he said.  "No routine tests, no monthly operating by
hand, no quarterly reports for more than three years.  No inventories
or requisitions for spare parts.  Don't the regulations mean _anything_
to you?"

Fraser looked at his captain in blank amazement.

"Tut, tut," said Chinnery testily, "don't stand there like a gaping
fool.  The point is that the hoists are still installed, whether you
use them or not.  And since they are installed, they are subject to the
usual maintenance routine and reports."

"But, captain," interposed Bullard, "the only reason they are still
here is because, being obsolete, the department figured it was cheaper
to abandon them in place and blank them in than to tear them out.
Moreover, we can't run them monthly--the leads to the motors have been
removed."

"Then run new ones," snapped the captain, "and replace the motors, if
necessary."

"Aye, aye, sir," growled Bullard.

This was the last straw.  If Chinnery kept this sort of thing up, the
ship would be a raving madhouse before the month was out--absolutely
ruined as a fighting ship.  There is nothing that takes the spirit out
of men and officers more than useless, foolish work--particularly when
done at the expense of something truly worth while.



Bullard was soon to learn, however, that his troubles had just begun.
In his capacity as executive officer, it fell him to pass Chinnery's
silly orders on to his juniors, who in their turn passed them on to the
men, grumbling and venting themselves of caustic side remarks as they
did.  As for the men, they merely sulked, doggedly doing what they were
told.  Smoldering resentment was obvious everywhere, and it finally
came to a head the day Chinnery slapped four men in the brig and put
Lieutenant Carlson under hack for ten days.  Their exact offense was
not clearly understood, but the captain characterized it as
"officiousness."  They had done something on their own, not waiting for
his direct order.

"But, commander," pleaded Fraser, "we can't go on this way.  We had the
finest ship in the whole damn service, but what have we got now?  A
madhouse!  She's going to hell right under our noses.  The men are on
the verge of mutiny ... both Benton and Tobelman had been disrated, a
rank injustice ... and I hear--"

"Yes, I know," replied Bullard morosely.  He sat a moment in a brown
study.  He knew that a round robin was being circulated, that
committees of petty officers had been formed, and that there were rocks
ahead.

"Get those men up here," said Bullard suddenly, "and Carrick, too, the
pharmacist."

When they came, Bullard looked them over steadily as they lined up
before his desk.  He knew them well, and they him.  They were the
mainstay of the ship--the real leaders of the crew--the men upon whom
the officers depended to get things done.  Men like those could make or
break a captain.  Bullard read their faces and thought buck gratefully
to a certain gruff old bos'n who had tactfully deflated him when he was
a fresh-caught snotty.  Some of that off-the-record discipline from
beneath upward had been hard to take, but he knew now that he was a
better officer for it.

"Men," he said, looking straight at them, "we have a tough assignment.
We have a new captain.  He is ... well, _different_ from Captain
Dongan.  He is more ... er ... regulation-minded, if you know what I
mean."

"Yes, sir," chorused the men, "we know."

"The refuge of an incompetent," blurted out Fraser indignantly.  "He
knows damn well that as long as he sticks to the book they can't hang
him, no matter what happens to the ship.  But just let somebody
exercise a little initiative, a little common sense, and right away his
neck is in a bight.  It _might_ turn out wrong.  He's yellow, I tell
you.  Bah!"

"An outburst like that may relieve the emotions, Fraser," said Bullard
calmly, "but it does not alter the situation.  Captain Chinnery is
still the skipper, and as such he is much more than a man.  He is a
symbol ... the symbol of the supreme authority.  Moreover, every order
he has issued has been strictly legal.  Any refusal on our part to
carry them out merely ruins us and hurts him not at all.  We have no
choice but to comply."

"And see the ship go merrily to hell!"  Fraser was outraged.

"Perhaps."

It was then that Fraser and the three silent enlisted men first noted
the half smile playing on Bullard's lips and the fleeting twinkle in
his eye.

"Supposing," remarked Bullard dryly, fixing his eyes on the rows of
books, "it does.  There will be an investigation, naturally.  Blame
will be fixed.  They always start at the top.  I propose to let them
stop there.  I, for one, do not mean to accept the buck."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning that the only possible course open to us is co-operation."

"Co-operation?"  Fraser's laugh was hard and dry.  Benton and his
comrades remained silent.

"Exactly.  Captain Chinnery complains of misplaced initiative.  Well,
let's cut out initiative.  He wants a 'reg' ship.  Let's bone the
book--turn sky lawyers.  Let's do what we're told--_and not one damn
thing more!_"

Bnllard let his glance drift back to the three stolid men and the
flushed officer before him.  He noted Benton and Tobelman as they wiped
the grins from their faces, and saw Fraser's hot indignation fade as
comprehension dawned.

"Not bad ... not bad," said the latter slowly.  "Fight fire with fire,
eh?"

"We'll pass the word, sir," came from Benton, and the other two men
grinned frankly then, "co-operation it will be."

"Good," said Commander Bullard, and promptly immersed himself in Volume
2 of Regulations.  None but a god, omnipotent and with all eternity to
do it in, could expect to do all the things required of an executive
officer, but he could try, paragraph by paragraph, just as they came.

He looked at 2707.


    From time to time, ihe executive officer shall satisfy himself, by
    personal inspection, that boat boxes are in order--


"Ah," breathed Bullard, "I'll beat him to that one."  And he walked out
onto the broad fin where the boats were cradled.  One hundred and
nineteen items in each boat box--and there were eight boats!  It would
take two days' work, that simple duty alone!



II.

It was about two weeks after that that the rumors began to fly about
the revival of banditry on Neptune.  Only spaceships could cope with
them, for over that jagged and precipitous terrain and in that airless
sky the usual planetary gendarmerie could not operate effectively.  The
scuttlebutt was more and more persistent that one of the larger ships
of the Jovian Patrol was about to be detached and sent there to wipe
the villains out.

Bullard made a wry face when he heard of it, for the most likely ship
was, of course, the _Pollux_.  Ironically enough, Admiral Abercrombie's
last report of her unequivocally pronounced her to be the ship best
fitted for emergency duty.  Yet Bullard knew, as every man jack
aboard--unless Chinnery himself be excepted--that the _Pollux_ of a
scant four months before was a thing of the past, a legend.  Morale?
It was to laugh!  Or weep.

Only three days before, the starboard condenser had sprung a leak, and
when it was reported to the captain he went to have a look.

"Well, pull it down and roll in that tube," he snapped.

Benton's men turned to, pulled it down, and rolled the tube.  Then they
replaced the shell, laboriously made all the connections and put it
back in service.  An hour later two more tubes went.

"Hell's bells!" squealed Chinnery when they told him.  "How can that
be?  You were in that condenser only yesterday.  Couldn't you see those
other two tubes were about to go?"

"You told us to roll the leaky one, sir," said Benton, his face the
ultimate in dead pan.  He might have added that it was not the tubes
that were at fault, but a warped header.  But he was not asked that.

"Such stupidity!" muttered Captain Chinnery.  "Very well, yank it down
again and do it all over."

"The one we did yesterday?" asked Benton, registering faint surprise.

"No, fool, the two that just blew out!"

"Yes, sir."

Bullard looked on impassively.  Chinnery's tart words of a few weeks
past still burned.  "When I want anything done, I'll order it--this
ship is not so complicated that one man can't do the thinking for it."

Yet, as he recalled that, knowing that that very morning the condenser
had been pulled down for the third time, he wondered just how the
_Pollux_ could get to Neptune, if ordered, and what she could do if she
got there.  Bullard shrugged, and dismissed the matter from his mind.
That was Chinnery's worry.  Then he looked up to see the goat-getting
orderly standing by his desk with the inevitable memorandum in his
hand.  Listlessly Bullard took it and read:


    In view of our probable departure shortly for one of the outer
    planets, you will take such action as may be necessary to insure
    that no contraband is brought on board.  Section 10,009, SS Regs.


Bullard straightened up in his chair and frowned.  He knew without
looking what the reference was--it was the _one_ article in the book
that even the most arrant martinet found it expedient to ignore.  That
is, where Neptune and Pluto were concerned.  For Martian _joola-joola_,
the forbidden beverage, was the only known specific against the
mysterious and invisible radiations emanated by those cold and rocky
dim planets.  Out there it did not intoxicate--it was a vital
stimulant.  Yet since the control board were Puritanical Earthlings,
the space guard had never been able to have the article modified.
Hence the unwritten law of the service that its breach must be winked
at.

The young exec knew that the returning liberty party would be well
heeled with the stuff--cleverly enough concealed to save the face of
the O.D., who, at least, had to go through the motions of upholding the
regulations.  He glanced at the clock.  It was well after five, Io
time, and shortly boats would start coming back.  He got up uneasily
and walked out toward the exit port.  He had learned something about
Chinnery's methods and he feared dirty work of some sort.

"What is that gadget?" Bullard asked of Ensign Pitto, the officer of
the deck, pointing to a contraption being erected in the gangway.

"A field fluoroscope, sir.  Captain's orders.  They are setting up the
X-ray tube behind that sheet of canvas across the passage."

Bullard scowled at the layout, then hurried to his office.  Lately he
had learned to suppress anger, but at the moment it was hard.  For he
saw instantly through the captain's malicious plan.  Apparently
Chinnery, when it suited his purposes, knew how to evade the
regulations, too.  To be sure he was right, Bullard snatched down the
volume entitled "Pertaining to Enlisted Personnel."  Yes, it was there.
The men had _some_ rights.


    11,075: Neither the person nor the effects of any enlisted man may
    be searched except upon good and sufficient grounds.  Except in
    cases of suspected theft, and where a man has a known bad record, a
    man's own statement that he posseses no contraband shall be deemed
    sufficient--


"So," he murmured grimly, "a search that is not a search.  A slinking,
slimy way to smear the records of hundreds of men--and to hang me on
the rebound."  He slammed the book shut.  "Well--he'll do neither."



Twenty minutes later, Bullard jumped out of one of the gyrocopters that
were acting as tenders for the ship.  The landing stage was still
empty, but soon it would be full at returning skymen, their arms full
of bundles--innocent purchases--and somewhere else upon them the
forbidden _joola-joola_.  And out at the ship, Captain Chinnery waited
craftily with his trap all set.

"Hold the next boat for the ship until I get back," Bulard said hastily
to Lieutenant Carlson, who was handling the beach guard.  With that he
dashed off to the nearest liquor dive.

On his way he passed a number of the _Pollux's_ men, heading for the
boat landing.  They saluted sheepishly, still painfully self-conscious
for having to wear the unsightly issue uniforms that made them pariahs
on shore.

By the time he reached the liquor joint, though, it was empty.  Or
almost.  In one corner, almost concealed by a post, sat the captain's
yeoman--Ship's Writer Norvick.  As the door slammed behind Bullard, he
saw the yeoman fold up a notebook and slide it into a pocket.  Ranged
on the bar stood a row of flat curved-glass bottles, most of them
empty.  The bartender was filling the others from a huge demijohn of
the delicate violet joola-joola.

"Aha," thought Bullard, "check and double check, eh?  Chinnery's chief
spy is getting the dope at the source!"

He turned abruptly and strode from the place.  He had seen enough.  The
belly flasks lined up on the bar told him how the stuff was being
smuggled.  The presence of the skipper's snooping yeoman, coupled with
the waiting X-ray machine at the gangway of the _Pollux_ told him how
the captain had planned to trip him up--and most of the crew with him.

He bounded toward the landing stage, inwardly raging.  But his anger
did not cloud his thought.  At every step he turned over some new plan
for defeating the captain's scheme.  He was actuated, as he had been
when he had proposed non-co-operative co-operation to forestall overt
mutiny, by the highest motives.  He wanted to save the crew--and the
junior officers--from their small-minded incompetent captain.
Constantly goaded as they were by picayune quibbling and nagging, he
was fearful of an outright rupture.  And in that event everybody would
lose.

It was a situation he found galling, for, like the crew, he was capable
of the fiercest loyalty--if properly led.  It was unfortunate that out
of such a generally splendid service the crack crew of the _Pollux_
should draw a weak sister for a captain, a man who hid his lack of
ability behind the technicalities of the printed word.  But it had.
The thing to do was make the best of it.



Bullard's heart fell when he reached the landing stage.  Carlson had
finished his superficial inspection and already loaded the men into the
boat, which stood waiting to shove off.  That was bad, for if it could
be proved that the men had carried the liquor into one of the ship's
tenders it was the same as having taken it on board the _Pollux_
herself.  Bullard's plan for warning Lhe men while still beyond the
jurisdiction of the space guard was unworkable.  And as he saw the
yeoman Norvick had come along behind him, he knew that calling the
liberty party back ashore so they could get rid of the contraband would
be worse than doing nothing.  Like a flash, he changed his plans.

"Out of the boat, all you men, and fall in on the dock.  Single rank."

Several of the waiting men blinked in surprise at the order, but they
got out of the boat and fell in.

"I have orders," said Bullard slowly, "to see that no contraband goes
aboard.  But before I question you on that score, I will make a brief
uniform inspection."

He turned around to where a patrolman stood behind him twirling an oak
nightstick.

"Lend me that a moment," said Bullard, and took the stick.

He paused before the first man in line and looked him up and down.  The
skin-tight issue trousers afforded no hiding place for anything.  Yes,
it must be all in belly flasks.  Thoughtfully he extended the club and
gently tapped the rigid skyman on his blouse, just above the middle.
There was a faint clink.

_Pam_!  With a quick and unexpected stroke, Bullard brought the stick
down harder.  Then he stepped on to the next man.  Behind him he
thought he heard the _tinkle-tinkle_ of glass fragments raining on the
pavement, but he did not look back.  Again the tentative tap, again the
sharp, sudden blow, again the muffled crash--and a slowly widening damp
spot on the barbarous issue uniform.  Bullard did not give it a glance,
but stepped forward.  Somewhere in the background someone snickered,
but the young exec's face was a sludy in nonexpression.

Fourteen times down that line he detected the telltale clink, and
fourteen times he swatted.  Then he stood back, looking the men in the
face, not at the small, widening puddies of violet something at their
feet.

"Have any of you men any contraband substance in your possesiou?"

"No, sir!"

The yell was in unison, as if previously rehearsed.  Bullard's face
almost cracked into a wide grin, but he managed to get the better of it.

"Embark!" he said.

The men got back into the boat, Norvick among them.  Bullard was about
to follow when he saw a fresh group of men coming down the dock, Benton
and Carrick among them.  Bullard walked to meet them.

"When you get aboard, Carrick," said Bullard in the most matter-of-fact
way, "you had better check up on the operation of your
X-ray-fluoroscope outfit.  Captain Chinnery is using it at the gangway."

"The sunnuva--" began Carrick.

"Pipe down!" growled Benton to Carrick.  Then to the commander, "Thank
you, sir; we'll be coming out in the next boat."

"Splendid," said Bullard, and there was just the slightest little jerk
of his right eyelid.  Benton wheeled and spread out his arms to the
group of skymen assembling for the boat.

"Back, men.  I want to talk to you."

"Shove off," said Bullard to the coxswain, settling himself among the
slightly damp and odoriferous men he had just inspeeled.  He shot one
look at the ship's writer sitting opposite him with a crooked little
smile on his face, as if he was sucking the marrow out of some private
joke, then looked out at the fleeting Ionian landscape.  He shrugged.
There was no contraband in _this_ boat.  Nor, in so far as anybody
could prove, had ever been.



"You're hair-splitting, Bullard, and that is all there is to it!"

Chinnery was fairly screaming with rage.  "You should have arrested
those men, confiscated the bottles for evidence, and brought them to me
to--"

"My orders," said Bullard, struggling for calm expression, "said to
take such action as may be necessary to prevent contraband being
brought aboard.  To the best of my knowledge, none was.  Those orders
are in my safe, awaiting the court of inquiry the _Pollux_ is certain
to have before--"

"The court-martial _you_ are sure to have!" yelped the captain.  "For I
have an independent witness who saw those flasks of _joola-joola_--"

"Saw flasks filled with a pale-violet liquid." corrected Bullard
coolly.  "Unhappily, they were flimsy flasks, and the stuff is lost.
There is no way to prove what was in them.  So far as I know, it was
that perfume they make from the Ganymedian _plimris_ bloom."

A boat bell clanged.

"Never mind," said Chinnery, triumph supplanting his petulant anger,
"step with me to the gangway.  The moment I heard of your pusillanimous
behavior I sent a message to the beach guard that there was to be no
more belly-patting inspections."

Bullard followed along with considerably mixed feelings.  He had the
utmost reliance on Benton's quickness of perception and on his
versatility.  What fruit had the veiled warning he had thrown out
brought?

"Here are three of them," said Ensign Pitto, motioning toward the three
skymen lined up against the bulkhead.  "The rest were clean."

"Aha!" gloated Chinnery, shooting an I-told-you-so look at the
discomfitted Bullard.

The three men were the three outstanding petty officers of the
ship--Benton, Tobelman, and Carrick.  Chinnery stooped and squinted at
the fluoroscope.  Bullard could not help seeing, too.  Each of the men
had a flat, rectangular package under his jacket athwart his navel.
The shape was unmistakable--_jooia-joola_ bottles!  Made of lead glass,
they showed up like a sore thumb.

"Search them--strip them!" yelled the captain, sure of his victory.

"Sir, we protest."  It was Benton who spoke.  "We pledge our word we
have no contraband.  You have no right--"

"Carry out my orders!" screamed the captain, turning in fury on the
bos'n's mate of the watch.

In a moment the jackets were ripped away and the flask-shaped objects
snatched out of the tight belts of the three protesting men.

"W-w-what the--"  Captain Chinnery turned one of them over and over in
his hands, absolutely nonplused.  The slab was slightly curved and of a
sort of plaster.  On the face of it was a crude bas-relief of a heifer
and a scribbled inscription reading, "Souvenir of the Ionian Barium
Mines, made of one of our products--gamma-ray-resisting barium plaster."

For a moment Captain Chinnery stood stupidly staring at the thing he
was twisting in his hands.  Then he dashed it to the deck and strode
off down the passage, combing his hair with agitated fingers and
muttering, "Damn, damn, damn!"  Bullard looked after the departing
figure and began to laugh.  In an instant, the whole corridor was
reverberating with the howls of twenty laughing men as the next
boatload of men poured through the port and down toward their lockers.
Ensign Pitto, mystified and baffled by the entire proceedings, looked
wonderingly on, not bothering to use the now discredited fluoroscope
again.

Benton picked up his plaster _objet d'art_ and stuck it back under his
belt.

"Somebody owes me a quart," he said to a man passing.

"You'll get it," said the man.  "Two of 'em."



III.

The precipitous walls of Kerens Crater ringed them like a huge
Coliseum.  The face of every man in the control room of the _Pollux_
was set in hard, grim lines.  They were anxious, and many of them
wondered whether they had been so smart, after all.  For they were
hurtling straight downward toward the ragged cone in the center at
hideous velocity, and everyone of them knew the ship about them was a
semiwreck.  Half her engine room was torn apart--for routine tests--and
the same applied to her battery.  She could hardly be worked.  It was
problematical whether she could be fought.  And in this crater were
said to be more than a thousand of the toughest rascals who ever slit a
throat.

Yet as each man turned over in his mind his own contribution to the
chaos, he could not help recall some saying of the captain.  Throughout
the cramped room through the mind of one or another of them ran the
memory of such curt and devastating sayings as these--all quotations
from Captain Chinnery:

"When I want information, I'll ask for it."

"I'm long on ideas, young man.  All I expect of you is execution."

"Never mind why--I tell you to do it."

"Of course it handicaps gunfire--but the regulations call for it."

"Cancel the drill--you have three quarterly reports to get out."

"You exceed your authority!  Wait for orders hereafter!"

And on and on.  You were damned if you did, damned if you didn't.  When
a man cannot be pleased, nobody tries.

Captain Chinnery set the counter-blasts to raging, and the fall of the
ship was checked with a shudder.  Fraser was searching the horizon for
the bandit lair.  Then of a sudden the roar of the exhaust sputtered
and stopped.  Chinnery angrily barked into the engine-room communicator.

"Who stopped those motors?"

"Fuel exhausted, sir."

Chinnery paled.  No one spoke, but all knew the inevitable answer.  And
the cause.  They would crash, for the hydrogen tubes could not be
limbered up in time.  And the reason for it was that Chinnery had
refused to O.K. the last uranium requisition on the ground the ship had
already exceeded her quarterly allowance!

Chinnery threw in the antigravity units, but they were weak and it was
too late.  The _Pollux_ struck, at somewhere about ninety miles an
hour, bounced high in the airless sky, then struck again, nose down.
The lights went out, then came on.  Men picked themselves up, nursing
bruises, and looked at one another and the disordered compartments
about them.

"Fire in all magazines!" came the startling announcement over the loud
speakers, "Magazines flooded."

Bullard groaned.  His non-co-operative co-operation had gone farther
than he meant it to.

Pasted on the annunciator hoard in sub-CC were the captain's orders--to
flood whenever any of those unconnected monitors showed!  The jar of
falling had brought them all down, of course, and the operator
following the rule of blind obedience had done as he was told.  The
ship's guns were useless.

Chinnery looked sick, but he still had a grip on himself.

"Get up torpedoes," he directed.  "Seeing us like this, they may attack
at any moment."

"Can't," said Frascr without making any bones of it.  "No hoists
working."

"What!" bleated Chinnery.

"Right.  You wanted those original ones operated--for the record.
Well, we did.  But to do it we had to rob the real hoists of their
motors.  It'll take another day to get them back again."

A bell began a clamorous clanging.

"A number of men headed this way across the crater floor," sang out the
lookout.  "There are tanks with them, and a caterpillar gun of some
kind."

"Do something, Bullard," said Chinnery in a pleading voice, turning
white-faced to his young exec.  "You're a resourceful fellow."

"I am at your command, captain," said Bullard stiffly.  "What is it you
wish me to do?"

"They are setting that gun," the lookout informed them.  "It's due west
of us--nearly astern, as we lie.  The men on foot are deploying at the
foot of the slope."

"Fit out the landing force," managed Chinnery, finding his voice after
the third gulp.

"Sorry," said Bullard, "but the small-arms magazine is flooded.  Our
ray guns are in there, too.  There are no weapons available, unless
it's the cutlery in the galley.  Your order, you know--nothing ever to
be left out of magazines."

The ship shuddered.  There was a quick succession of staccato reports
as a metallic hail beat against her armored sides.  The brigands' gun
was getting the range.

"The party on foot has a heat gimlet," reported the lookout.  "They are
working their way around to the north."

"Commence firing!" squeaked Chinnery.  He was near to fainting.

"What with?" asked Fraser, having no wish to spare him.

Suddenly Chinnery got a grip on himself and straightened up.  Wildly he
looked around at the silent, accusing, unhelpful faces.  Then he
addressed Bullard.

"You win, Bullard.  From the very first I recognized it would be you or
me.  But organized mutiny is too much.  I yield--for the good of the
ship.  Take over.  Do it your way."  His voice trailed away.  Then he
drooped across the chart rack and vomited.  "Black mutiny," he
muttered, over and over again.  "Black mutiny and insubordination."

Bullard's lip curled in scorn.

"What order of yours was ever refused?  What threat was ever made you?
And now, after you've wrecked us, you want to quit.  Because you don't
know what to do.  You're yellow!"

Bullard glared at the cringing figure.

"But," he went on, not regarding the now persistent hail of pellets
against the hull, "under your precious library of rules, you can't
quit.  Not while you are alive and well.  The captain cannot duck his
responsibility--not ever!"

"I'm a sick man," wailed Chinnery, sliding to the deck.

Bullard jerked his head toward the surgeon, Lieutenant Herilon.

"He's sick, all right," said Herilon after an examination of about one
second.  "Diagnosis: blue funk.  Prognosis: terrible.  In other words,
he's unfit for duty."

"Very well, then," said Bullard.  "I'll take over.  But, doc, be sure
that gets in the log."

The doc grinned.  The ship had gotten regulation-minded, all right.



Bullard went into action like a prodded bobcat.

"Benton!  Warm up those old stern tubes and get ready to shoot measured
blasts.

"Harris!  Break out those two heavy jacks and take 'em outside.  Set
one on each side of the ship and slue her around until our stern bears
on that bandit gun.

"Tobelman!  Wangle half a dozen of your torps out of their brackets,
stick 'em on dollies and manhandle 'em the best way you can to the
rocket room.

"Carlson, you compute the ballistic.  I'm firing torpedoes that way.
You know the Neptune gravity, and there's a vacuum outside.  Benton'll
give you the pressure tables."

"The tubes are bigger than the torps," said Carlson.

"I know.  Build up your torps with wire-rope grommets until they fit!"

Bullard paused for breath.  Then he saw Norvick, slightly green about
the gills, huddled in a corner.

"You--captain's yeoman!  Grab your notebook and get busy."  Bullard's
voice was harsh and his eye was hard.  "I want you to put down every
breach of the regulations that happens from now on.  Begin with the
one--whatever its number is--that says you can't divert engineering
material to the use of the ordnance department.  And mind you, if you
miss a single one, you're up for a court!"

"Yes, sir," whimpered the amazed ship's writer, but he dragged out his
bulky notebook.

The lookout was reporting again.

"Those men are about halfway up the hill now.  They have some other
machine with them--can't make it out."

"Fraser!" shouted Bullard.  "How long will it take you to convert that
big exhaust blower in the topside fin to a centrifugal machine gun?  Do
you know what kind of an animal that is?"

"Yes, sir.  I do.  About five shakes of a lamb's lail!"

"Get at it.  Only do it in four."

"Aye, aye, sir.  But ammunition?"

"There are three or four tons of assorted ball bearings in storeroom
D-60.  I'll see that you get 'em."

In a couple of minutes Bullard ceased bellowing orders.  He wiped his
eyes and shook his head.  He was beginning to feel queer, sicky
sensations.  Of a sudden a dread came over him that at any moment he
would cave in.  He took a deep breath, but it did no good.  Then he
noticed his hands were trembling.

"The radiations are getting bad, sir," reporled the doctor.  "Several
men have caved in already.  I'm administering _suprene_, but it does
not seem to be very effective."

Bullard knew then what had gone wrong with him.

"Don't waste time with that stuff," he said impatiently.  "Serve out a
slug of _joola-joola_ all around."

"There's none on board," said Herilon.  "I tried--"

"The hell there isn't!  There's gallons of it.  Just ask Carrick, or
Tobelman, or--"

Herilon had gone, on the jump.

The ship shook.  That time it was from her own recoil.  Carlson had
shot his first torpedo from the stern rocket tubes.  There was a
moment's wait for the spot, then a second one went.

"That group's through," reported Carlson gleefully a moment later.
"Boy!  What a mess those torps do make!"

"Help Fraser with the other crowd."

Ten minutes later, fortified by a double shot of _joola-joola_, Bullard
watched the terrible execution on the downslope to starboard.  First
there was the singing whine as the high-speed motor worked up to
velocity, then the rattle as the hopperful of ball bearings fell
against the swift-revolving vanes.  Then, under the wide-flung hail of
that super-colossal blunderbuss, the oncoming pirates crumpled.  Their
mystery machine stood a moment later alone and untended in the midst of
their piled-up corpses.

"That seems to be all of them," paid Bullard.  "Tell Benton to stand by
to pull out of this hole with the old rockets.  We'll get more uranium
as soon as we get to base."



Admiral Mike Dongan lifted his eyebrows at the mass of paper Bullard
laid before him.  Old Captain Mike, after his promotion, had been sent
to the outer zone as force commander.  So it was to him, in Tethys
Advanced Base, that Bullard reported.

"But--" puzzled the old man.  Bullard had never gone in heavily for
paper work when he knew him on the _Pollux_.

"That first stack," explained Bullard, "are the accumulated charges
against me up to the moment I took temporary command--"

"Bosh," said Admiral Mike Dongan, glancing over the topmost sheet.  He
dumped the lot in the wastebasket.

"The other stack lists the things I did wrong to get the old _Pollux_
out of the hole.  I never knew until--"

"Really?" said Captain Mike, more attentive.  He slid open a drawer of
his desk and carefully laid the damning documents inside.  "These are
more to the point.  I want to forward these to the control board."  He
shut the drawer, then locked it.

Bullard did not know exactly what reaction those papers were going to
bring, but certainly he hud not anticipated _that_.  It was
disconcerting.

"You see," said Admiral Mike, studying the curling smoke from his
cigar, "I have been authorized to prepare another volume of the
Regulations--"

Bullard winced.

"--to be entitled 'Instructions for Procedure in Extraordinary
Emergencies'"--the admiral kept tugging at another drawer--"umph ...
and this ... umph ... is just the sort of thing we want for it."

By then the old man had the drawer open, and out of it he fished a
gleaming crystal beaker half filled with the aromatic forbidden juice
of Mars.  He filled two glasses with the violet liqueur.

"Of course, before Captain Chinnery was put on the retired list this
morning, he did submit quite a lengthy list of your ... er ...
_derelictions_, I believe he called them--"

"Yes?" said Bullard, on tenderhooks.

"Here's to 'em," said the admiral, hoisting his glass, and admiring the
delicate color, he took a sip.

"But fourteen charges and God knows how many specifications--"

"Nobody gives a damn," said the admiral with great decision.  "You got
the bandits, didn't you--all of 'em?  You brought the _Pollux_ in,
didn't you?  What the hell!  Drink hearty, boy--you've got my old job.
You're skipper of the Pollux now!"



THE END.






[End of White Mutiny, by Malcolm Jameson]
