Free One in 300 by J. T. McIntosh Page B

not big enough. Let's look at those possibilities. How many ships

will there he on Mars -- good ships, possible rescue ships? A few score,

perhaps. And not too much fuel. How many lifeships? Hundreds of thousands.

What are the few score going to be able to do for the hundreds of thousands?"
     
     
"I see," said Sammy bitterly. "Go on.
     
     
"Next, the orbit around Mars. Now it doesn't take much drive to edge a

ship into an orbit around a planet. A skillful, experienced pilot could

generally do it with a few seconds of blast. But, unfortunately, there

are only about forty such pilots in existence, and I'm not one of them.

I was a radio officer, remember. I can't do it, Sammy. I'm ready to try,

but I'm no more likely to succeed than an untrained marksman is to hit

a bull's-eye at five hundred yards with one shot."
     
     
"I see that too," said Sammy, his anger dropping to burning resentment

against persons unknown.
     
     
"And as for decelerating safely on the fuel we have -- why we can't do it

is kindergarten mathematics. Roughly, ignoring Earth and Mars altogether,

we have to do as much deceleration as we did acceleration. And we have

only a fraction of the fuel to do it."
     
     
"So what do we do?" demanded Sammy bleakly.
     
     
"I wish I knew. Anyway, we have weeks to think about it. Perhaps we'll be

lucky. We may be one of the few lifeships that the regular ships will be

able to help. Or we may take up an orbit without even trying. But . . ."
     
     
Sammy nodded gloomily. He had dropped from cheerfulness to blazing anger

to black resentment to something very close to despair. "But what?" he

asked.
     
     
"But we can only hope for that," I said, "not count on it."I grinned

suddenly. "Cheer up, Sammy," I said. "We're not actually dead yet."
     
     
Sammy looked up sharply. "I'm not bothered about that ," he said.

"I can face the idea of dying as well as most people. I'm thinking of Homo

sapiens. Two billion living, breathing human beings waiting on Earth to

be fried. And thousands who thought they'd been saved finding now that

all they'd been given was a chance to die some other way. Thousands of

units of eleven people on lifeships who know now they'll never reach Mars,

who know they've been sold -- "
     
     
"Nobody's been sold, Sammy. The lifeships weren't a cruel hoax, as you

feared. They were what it was always admitted they were -- just a chance

to get to another world. . . ."
     
     
But Sammy wasn't listening. I left him there and went out to make my

first check of the lifeship -- my first, and probably last, command.
     
     
     
     
     
     
3
     
     
We found very soon that we had far too much time on our hands.

I manufactured as many jobs as I could for the ten of us to do,

but there was still too little to occupy us.
     
     
There was the job of looking after the hydroponics plant on which we

depended for both food and fresh air. I put Harry Phillips in charge

there. He had had little or nothing to do with water-culture methods

before, but he knew plants. Forced by artificial sunshine, efficient

aeration of the roots, the warmth of the lifeship, and constant care,

the tomatoes, potatoes, and roots grew incredibly fast in their compact

trays. Starvation was not going to be one of our problems. Harry's main

assistant was Leslie; she or Harry was always in the plant, finding

something to do. That accounted for two people.
     
     
The water purifier also had to be looked after. From it came all the

water we used, and into it all the water went back. Betty and Morgan

were in charge of the machine. There wasn't much for them to do, and

they seemed happy together doing it. I still didn't know much about

Morgan and Betty. Clearly, however, they were very much in love, and

wanted no companionship but each other.
     
     
Miss Wallace was in charge of cooking. Little Bessie helped her. Bessie was

a lovely, happy child. I never regretted choosing her. She was