Read The Potter of Firsk and Other Stories for Free Online Page A

every watch Jay checked his gyroscope, then spent two or three hours writing in his journal—minutiae of the voyage, vignettes of personal philosophy, observations on the personalities of his shipmates.
    Julius and Bob played cards and chess; occasionally Chiram joined them. Jay played a few games of chess—long enough to find that Julius could beat him as often as he set his mind to it—then gave up. Julius grinned his grin, spoke little; Bob wore his angry parrot’s face, spoke not at all. Chiram kept himself aloof, watched every detail of the voyage with a careful humorless eye, gave what orders were necessary in a carefully modulated voice. And Jay, after a few futile attempts to argue navigational techniques with Chiram, became as taciturn as the others.
    The galaxies slid backward. After every watch Jay peered intently at his gyroscope. One day he called Chiram over.
    “We’re off course. Look—there’s no doubt about it. A whole degree. I’ve been watching it for several days.”
    Chiram looked down a moment, shook his head, half-turned away. “You’ve got a precession somewhere.”
    Jay sniffed. “More likely that those spacer beams between the hulls are out of focus.”
    Chiram glanced down his nose at the gyroscopes, said stonily, “Hardly possible. They’re automatically compensated, double-checked. Two separate sets of spacers are involved, don’t forget—one correcting on a basis of wave interference, the other by correlation of angle and beam strength. They’re perfectly synchronized; if they weren’t the alarm would go off…Your gyro is out somewhere.”
    Grumbling, Jay turned to look at the dial. “One degree,” he mumbled. “That’s a million light years—a hundred million light years—” But Chiram had walked away.
    Jay seated himself beside the gyro, watched the face like a cat at a tank of goldfish. If it told the truth they were irretrievably lost. He dropped to his hands and knees, checked every part of the gyro as well as he could; it seemed in perfect order.
    Jay slouched to the table, where Bob and Julius played chess, stood looking down with hands clasped behind his back. They took no heed of his presence.
    “Well,” said Jay, looking across the room toward the gyro, “we’re goners. We’re done for.”
    “Yeah? How’s that?” asked Julius, moving a pawn.
    “The gyro doesn’t lie,” said Jay. “We’re a degree off course, according to the gyro.”
    Bob Galt darted an unemotional glance up at Jay, returned to the board.
    “I told the old man,” Jay said bitterly. “I told him before we took off that his rig was too damn complicated to work.”
    “We all got to die sometime, kid,” said Julius. “It might as well be out here…I’m not worryin’. We’re eatin’ good; I got old Galt here on the run…” The grin widened.
    Bob sneered. “The hell you say.” He moved a knight to threaten the pawn. “Try that on.”
    Julius bent his heavy head over the board. “Relax, kid, watch the scenery…”
    Jay hesitated, then turned away, crossed the room, flung himself on his bunk, moving his lips in silent curses. He lay quiet twenty minutes, staring up at the hull. A degree off course…
    He rose on his elbow, watched the galaxies flitting past in the vision panels. Stars—millions, billions of stars, curdled into luminous whorls. These out here were nameless, unknown to the astronomers on that far atom, Earth…He considered Earth, so far distant as to be unknowable. How could they ever again locate that precious fleck? Presumably if they returned to the home galaxy Earth could be found. But now—a degree off course! And no one aboard cared a fig either way…Well, by God, thought Jay furiously, these dull animals might not care a nickel for their lives, but he was Jay Banners Junior and he had his whole life to live!…Now then, if he returned the ship to its course, there would still be a chance of hitting the galaxy on the way back. They would thank him