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Four Dancers, One Mutiny
by
H. H. Morris
Wolfgang Kopf glared at Wales, the Susan Constant’s steward, and wondered how the human race had survived generation after generation of such slime. Wales was Ugarte in Casablanca or Judas in every Passion play ever performed. Shakespeare had undoubtedly modeled his traitorous Brutus on one of the steward’s direct ancestors.
Wales said, “You’re the agent for the Four Dollies. Tell me their specialties and how much they charge guys a pop.”
“I arrange their bookings and oversee their accommodations. Despite the Dollies’ misbehavior on occasion, they aren’t hookers and I’m not a pimp. Furthermore, I have the captain’s assurance that. . . .”
“The Old Man is dead. So are the mate and the propulsion officer. Mr. Smith and Mr. Rolfe, the junior officers, are running the ship. They’re taking us to where all but three crewmen agreed to go. Those three are dead, too.”
The steward described mutiny.
“Where are we headed?” asked Wolf.
“An uninhabited planet. We figure we’re ten Adams–eleven, if we let you live–bound for Eden with our four Eves.”
The ratio combined with the men’s criminality sounded like a recipe for murder. An agent knew how to bargain for his clients. Wolf would try at once.
“The Dollies are ladies,” he said.
“Yeah, sure. Ladies who work topless. We’ve heard about their shows. The two officers with us saw one two stops back.”
“It’s an illusion, Wales.”
“What does that mean, Kopf?”
“Show business is about what an audience wants. The majority of the natural resource retrievers on the planets, moons, and asteroids we tour are male. The females among them aren’t glamorous. The Dollies are beauties who make men imagine they’re available. The men who win their full love will treat them like ladies.”
“If we give them a choice,” Wales said, laughing nastily.
#
Babs the raven-haired Dolly, said, “Who needs an agent who negotiates the terms of our rapes instead of our rescue? You’re fired.”
Ann the redhead, said, “Don’t be dumb, Babs. We can’t drive a spaceship. Even if we could figure out how to run this thing, we wouldn’t know which way to go. Wolfie, do your best for us.”
Pam the brunette and Eve the blonde said nothing. Along with Babs they made Ann seem like a genius because she could discuss more than shin splints and mascara. The Dollies were dancers who also sang and acted adequately on good days.
Back in his own cabin, Wolf analyzed the situation. The more he thought about it, the greater his amazement at being alive. He was middle aged and without any skill that promised to prove valuable on an uninhabited planet. He wouldn’t ask his captors questions. This mutiny didn’t appear to be the work of geniuses. The little he knew about military history said that few mutinies worked out over the long run. If the mutineers hadn’t thought about whether he had any value, he wouldn’t tell them he was probably useless.
What could he do for the Dollies? Seemingly nothing until they were rescued. Then he’d negotiate the sale of their lurid account of the adventure–for his usual percentage, of course.
#
“Can you cook?” Wales asked Wolf.
“Simple dishes. Why?”
“Have you noticed the food on the Susan Constant?”
“Monotonous. Typical rations when the owner of a vessel is a cheapskate.”
“When we touch down in a few hours, we’ll hunt and fish and find edible plants. We had to kill our only shipmate who could do more than warm up space rations. You now have a new job, Kopf. Do it well and live.”
Wolf hoped a steady diet of space rations had dulled the mutineers’ collective taste buds. He hadn’t lied when he said he could cook, but he’d never trusted his culinary skills to impress a business contact or seduce a woman. Of course, what he was given to cook would probably pose a more serious problem. The Susan Constant carried no medical personnel. Once the men succeeded in hunting, fishing, and gathering, they’d lack any way of ascertaining which flora and fauna were safe to eat. If his first bad dish didn’t fatally poison all hands, the survivors would probably turn on him. Carbon-oxygen planets had many similarities, so that all could support some form of human life, but even a small difference could prove fatal.
Wolf felt the vessel shiver. The lights blinked off for a minute, then came back on at a lower level and wavered as the voltage varied. The ship yawed. The artificial gravity cut out and Wolf floated out of his chair. He grabbed at the arms, but missed. The gravity came back on and he crashed on the chair hard enough to make his teeth click together. He cursed. The ship shuddered, then fell silent as the lights went out again, the gravity cut off, and the ventilation ceased.
“They killed the only guys who can fly this wreck,” he muttered.
Air began circulating again, although with less force than normal. For a moment, Wolf thought the artificial gravity had resumed working weakly. Then he realized he felt the beginnings of planetary gravity as they penetrated the atmosphere of whatever uninhabited world the mutineers had chosen for refuge. He strapped himself into his chair.
The safest place to land was in bed. With variable gravity and no lights, trying to reach his narrow bunk would be risky. A chair with proper restraints was supposedly almost as safe. Wolf doubted that it mattered where he was when they landed. The mutineers had apparently damaged the ship. Even an expert might not be able to pilot it to a safe landing. He’d rather die sitting up than cringing in bed.
He’d been aware of death’s possibility for the past dozen years since he’d begun traveling with groups of performers. Most vessels were like the Susan Constant: crowded, uncomfortable, smelly, cursed with bad chow. It was a living, though.
A living isn’t a life, he thought.
How should he have done things differently? Wolf lacked time to itemize his regrets. The vessel dropped rapidly toward the planet. The temperature climbed, overmatching the ventilation system. Dying promised to be uncomfortable.
#
Although Wolf didn’t pass out, the pain radiating from the base of his spine was so intense that he remained unaware of his surroundings for an indeterminate amount of time. There’d been sufficient power to save the Susan Constant from a massively destructive crash, so if his chair had contained more padding, he might not have suffered agony and the temporary paralysis accompanying it. One more sin to hold against the vessel’s owner.
The lights remained off. He heard no sounds. Absolute silence was so different from space travel as he’d always known it that he thought for a moment his injury had destroyed his hearing. Then he became aware of scrabbling and squeaking from the passageway outside the cabin.
“Mice?” he muttered.
Even on an interplanetary sty such as the Susan Constant, rodent infestation seemed unlikely. Wolf heard the door open. He saw no change in the blackness.
“Wolfie?”
He recognized Ann’s voice.
“In the chair,” he said. “I’m trying to get oriented. Are the Dollies all right?”
“We’re shaken up, but we remembered to crawl into our beds and hang on. We’re scared. Our emergency lights don’t work.”
He unstrapped himself and stood on wobbly legs. His hands in front of him, he blundered toward a bulkhead. When he reached it, he knelt and felt his way toward the door until he found the cabin’s battle lantern in its wall bracket. He switched it on. Nothing happened. The switch clicked loudly as he pushed it back and forth several times.
“Yours is dead, too?” Ann asked.
“Yeah. It worked when we boarded this ship. Do you hear anyone besides us stirring?”
“Babs and Pam thought they heard moaning. What do we do?”
Wolf said, “We get off this wreck.”
“How?”
“Follow me.”
Dancers, he thought disgustedly. The Dollies had no notion where the nearest emergency exit was. He’d long ago given up nagging performers about safety procedures. They thought him foolish for locating exits and memorizing the most direct routes to them.
Wolf got himself erect, ignored the occasional pains shooting through his legs, and worked his way along the bulkhead. He reached the bulkhead with the door and turned right. He moved a few feet and his hand touched soft warmth.
“Later, Wolfie,” Ann said.
She giggled as he apologized.
He said, “Listen up, Dollies. Go back past your quarters. Before you reach the next cross passageway, you’ll find a small hatch set in the bulkhead to your left. It’s where the hull tapers in sharply. A wheel opens it. The top of the hatch isn’t quite waist high. All right?”
They said yes uncertainly; then Babs added, “You go first, Wolfie. We don’t know where we’re going.”
What else was new?
“Get behind me,” he ordered. “Keep your hands on the bulkhead to your left. Let’s not waste time.”
Wolf put his hand on the bulkhead and began moving. He didn’t dare go too fast because he might encounter debris. He hadn’t heard anything fall or break when the Susan Constant hit the ground, but he’d been so shaken that he could have missed lots of noises. He assumed the first part of the trip would be clear since the Dollies had made it to his cabin.
“Are you keeping up?” he asked.
“Yes,” they said in unison.
He knew he’d reached Babs’ door when he nearly fell through it. She’d left it open, a typical bit of dancer’s carelessness. The species always left evidence of its passage. He still remembered the trouble that ensued when a male dancer he represented had caused a backstage fire by hanging a shirt on the bare light bulbs flanking a dressing room mirror. The shirt was sweaty, he’d said, and he wanted to dry it before wearing it again.
Wolf heard a shriek and a thud behind him.
“You didn’t close your door, you dumb bimbo,” Eve said to Babs. “I’ll have a bruised hip. Wolfie, why didn’t you warn us?”
“If a clumsy agent didn’t fall through the door, why should I think a graceful dancer would?”
Pam said, “Don’t worry about my door, Wolfie. I closed it.”
Babs and Pam roomed on his side of the corridor, Eve and Ann opposite them. Cabins on the Susan Constant were so tiny they barely held one passenger and assorted luggage. Wolf considered that the vessel’s one decent feature. Roommates frequently quarreled.
He touched the bulkhead as lightly as possible. When he reached Pam’s door, it opened under his fingers.
“You didn’t close your door all the way, Pam. Be careful, Dollies.”
He crouched lower in case cables dangled from overhead. He also moved faster, opening up a lead. He didn’t need the Dollies atop him when he tackled the escape hatch. They still squeaked and swore their way past Pam’s door when he knelt in front of the small exit.
The design had been around since shipbuilders discovered how to divide a vessel into watertight compartments. A seal around the hatch’s edge made it fit snugly in its opening, while dogs held it firmly against the bulkhead. A wheel controlled the dogs. Because this was space, where even a tiny leak could cause immediate disaster, a large cotter pin kept the wheel immobile and the dogs in place.
On a properly maintained vessel the pin would have been regularly lubricated so that any adult could pull it out in case of emergency. This was the Susan Constant, though, almost a derelict. Wolf momentarily panicked when his first efforts didn’t dislodge the pin. He breathed deeply several times, then yanked as hard as he could.
“Ouch!” he said, adding profanity as he banged the back of his right hand on one of the dogs.
“Wolfie, are you all right?” asked Pam, bumping into him.
“Yeah. I hope I get a chance to tell the travel agency I’ve used for years why I’ll never book another tour through them.”
“Why’s that?”
“The Susan Constant. This tub should be grounded.”
“It feels as if it is,” Ann said, joining them. “Is this funny little door our exit?”
“Yes. Pam, you’re closest. Grab this wheel and help me twist it.”
“Which way?” she wanted to know.
“Counterclockwise.”
“Which way is that?”
“The top of the wheel moves toward your left as you face it.”
“Oh.”
How could a dancer not know clockwise from counterclockwise? Even though the old-style timepieces were found only in museums, the terms remained current.
“Ready?” Wolf asked.
“Yes.”
He felt her hands fumbling on the wheel.
“On three,” he told her. “One. Two. Three.”
He grunted as he threw his full weight into the effort. The wheel and dogs shrieked and momentarily froze.
“Again,” he said. “Don’t hold anything back.”
He counted and they heaved. The dogs shrieked and broke free. As the wheel spun its full distance, Wolf and Pam got tangled up and fell to the deck. She yelped. He quickly got off her.
“Good work,” he said.
“My butt hurts.”
“You may stay alive long enough to appreciate its quitting aching.”
He dragged the hatch open as the hinges protested. When it hit Pam, she cursed and crawled out of the way. He pushed it against the bulkhead. The Susan Constant had a slight list toward the side they wished to escape from, so the hatch stayed wide open without being held.
“This door doesn’t lead anywhere,” Babs said. “Why’s it the exit?”
Wolf thought of all the brilliant women in the universe–physicists, surgeons, artists, political leaders, theologians–and wondered why he’d got stuck with four dancers. No need to explain double hulls. That he saw no light around the outer hatch and didn’t smell fresh air suggested that the vessel retained airtight integrity. The next wheel should turn easily. Its dogs were part of the edge and went into the hull, not against it. They came with permanent lubrication sealed in. He grabbed and turned. It moved smoothly and almost silently.
It hit the stop. According to the diagram he’d studied, he needed only push outward. The hinges were at the bottom. Gravity should make it open. He pushed. The hatch moved only slightly. He pushed harder. It still resisted him. He pulled his hands back into the passageway.
“I need a Dolly with powerful dancer’s legs,” he said.
“Right here,” Babs told him. “What do I do?”
He coached her into a sitting position beside him, so that the left side of his body and the right side of hers touched as they put their feet and ankles into the space between the hulls. He felt a lot of warm, bare flesh and wondered if all the Dollies were scantily clad. He told Babs to put her feet on the wheel and scoot forward, so that their knees were raised.
“Make sure your feet are on the wheel, not between it and the hatch,” he said. “If you feel yourself sliding out, put your right arm around me and throw out your left to grab the bulkhead.”
He counted to three, his right hand braced on the deck for additional power. Their combined kick made the hatch fly open, drop, and bang against the hull. Bright sunlight blinded Wolf momentarily.
“Yow!” Babs yelled in triumph. “We’re outa here.”
When she moved, Wolf shifted around and stuck his head out the hatch. He saw sandy beach and, not far away, surging ocean. It was about two meters to the ground. He looked forward and aft, but saw no one outside the Susan Constant.
“This will be an easy drop for dancers,” he said. “We’ll head inland in case the tide is out. This craft could topple at any minute.”
Four Dollies dropped, with Ann going last. Each shrieked or squealed as she went out the hatch and landed on the sand. Wolf noted that none wore a lot. The air coming in was warm, however, and he assumed the mutineers would have coveralls that would fit the women if the night turned cold or if they began to burn. If, he thought wryly, there were still mutineers. Two Dollies had heard groans, the only sign of other life in the ship. He had no idea how they’d survive if their captors hadn’t.
Wolf dropped onto the sand, grunting and almost going to his knees. When he looked up a rifle was pointed directly at his face.
“Glad you made it, Kopf,” said Wales. “Four of us didn’t.”
#
They sat in a hollow between dunes and watched the five crew members who were mobile unload supplies. Wolf wondered why they hadn’t ordered him to serve as a mule. A sixth mutineer, immobilized by a broken left leg, sat holding a rifle on them. The Dollies remained quiet. They’d behaved meekly since seeing Wales’ gun.
Most of what the crew unloaded consisted of more rifles and ammunition. They also brought some space rations over to a spot among the dunes. Wolf suddenly noticed that both his slacks and his shirt had developed holes. How had that occurred? Did something in the air corrode certain substances? If so, why didn’t he feel more skin irritation than he normally expected from sand?
He’d resigned himself to death and simply hoped that it came without pain. Neither of the officers had survived the landing. Space crews seldom possessed skills not related directly to their work. Hunting and fishing and gathering plants were no part of space survival. Wolf had fished when he went to the beach as a young man. The water had been so polluted, however, that he’d thrown back his catches and therefore had no idea what an edible fish looked like.
This strip of beach and ocean didn’t look polluted. The flotsam near the water was of natural origin. There were none of the cans, jars, plastic, and garbage humans had dumped in Earth’s ocean for generations. The water itself was a rich blue found only in paintings from the past or a few spots in the middle of the Pacific or Atlantic Oceans.
Finally, the men relaxed. Wales resumed the duty of pointing a gun at Wolf and the Four Dollies. The mutineers griped about the labor and about their failure to land properly. They blamed the two officers and Wolf realized they’d angrily killed them before starting to offload supplies and weapons.
Then one of them said, “It wasn’t all their fault. There’s something weird about this planet. The Susan Constant was coming down fine, headed for a nice spot of prairie near a big river, a place filled with wildlife. Then it was like some outside force took over. We got dragged down here. I think that was the planet, not the people conning the ship.”
“So why all the breakdowns?”
“I don’t know.”
“The soles are coming off my boots,” said another man.
“Nothing works right,” Wales said. “It was a lousy tub.”
A loud crash came from inside the ship.
“Let’s go hunting,” said the man who’d talked about the ship’s strange behavior as it landed. “We don’t know how fast the sun sets because we aren’t sure of the latitude. We’ll also gather sticks and brush as well as scout the land. Wales, they’re your prisoners. They know you. Carter can’t do it all–not with that leg.”
“What makes you think we’re going anywhere?” Wolf asked.
“Shut up,” Wales said.
An agent can’t negotiate when one side won’t talk. Wolf watched the men move along the dunes and then turn inland and disappear eventually into a line of trees. He stretched out on his back and relaxed. He hadn’t been sleeping well recently. Lying in the warm sun might let him take a nap.
#
“Wolfie, wake up,” Ann said urgently. “Our clothes are falling apart and our captors are either asleep or passed out.”
His shoes had separated everywhere that one part joined another. He stood and the tatters of his shirt and slacks fell away. He looked at the Dollies. Eve had on a bra and briefs. Ann and Pam wore only briefs, while Babs was nude. There weren’t nearly enough shreds of clothing on the sand to account for his missing garments.
Carter and Wales wore disintegrating coveralls. Coveralls were standard issue to all space crews, and while their precise composition varied from manufacturer to manufacturer, all were fabricated to repel radiation and to protect the wearer from a variety of other space hazards.
“Fabricated,” he said, looking down to make sure his briefs remained intact. “Cotton is natural. Eve, is your lingerie cotton?”
“Yes.”
“What about your briefs, Pam and Ann?”
They nodded affirmatively.
“And all the other clothing you ladies were wearing was made of synthetic materials?”
They indicated that he was correct but didn’t ask him what it meant. He studied the sleeping mutineers. It wasn’t time to attack. He and the Dollies could easily overpower Carter and Wales, but that left four other men to deal with. Besides, no matter how incompetent the mutineers proved themselves, their presence increased everyone’s chances of survival.
He looked at the ship. Holes had appeared in the hull. It listed more toward the ocean.
Wolf said, “We’ve landed in the Stone Age. Neither chemistry nor engineering remains operational.”
Thirsty, he walked to where the mutineers had stacked the water containers they’d salvaged from the Susan Constant. Only a few of them, those made of glass, had water. The plastic ones had disintegrated. He lugged two jugs to the Dollies while Wales and Carter continued sleeping.
“Drink up,” he said. “There isn’t much water left–unless the local oceans contain fresh water. We may have to check that hope out.”
“I bet it’s fresh,” Eve said. “This doesn’t smell like a real ocean. When I was little, people talked about a saltwater smell.”
“I wonder if our visitors smell,” Pam said. “Talk about way out costumes, they’re wearing some.”
Wolf looked, then yelled, “Wales, wake up.”
“What?” Wales said, groggily sitting up.
“Men carrying spears and wearing skins or furs closing from inland.”
Wales jumped to his feet and pointed his rifle at the newcomers. He pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. He flicked the safety back and forth much the same way Wolf had clicked the battle lantern’s switch on and off a few hours earlier. Then he ejected the magazine and inserted another. The gun still refused to fire. He tossed it aside and yanked Carter’s away from the prone man. He turned and again tried unsuccessfully to fire on the advancing group.
“Time to save our lives, if I can,” Wolf told the Dollies.
He picked up Wales’ discarded rifle and used it as a club, hitting the steward in the right temple with the stock. Wales fell face forward. Wolf raised the rifle and brought it down hard on Wales’ head. The third time he repeated the action, the rifle came apart. He tossed the barrel aside.
“Some of those shirtless men are women,” Babs said. “I don’t feel so exposed.”
He ordered the Dollies to fan out so that they stood in a line. The group moved steadily toward them in an arc that closed in from both flanks. What kind of sign would show peaceful intent? They wouldn’t get a second chance if they blew it.
Wolf said, “Spread your arms wide. Hold your hands palms up or forward and keep them open.”
The party came to within three meters of them and stopped. An older man moved forward and spoke in the Standard language of intergalactic travel.
“Except for the one on the ground, you aren’t part of the crew. What happened?”
“The crew mutinied. These women and I were passengers. The man you just saw me kill has been holding us at gunpoint while four others went hunting. The one lying here is a wounded mutineer. Our rough landing gave him a broken leg and either killed or seriously wounded the others in the crew, save for the four out hunting, the dead man, and us.”
“The four hunters are dead. They tried to fire on us. Do you five want to live?”
“Yes,” Wolf and the Dollies said eagerly.
“We can use the women,” the man said. “You seem to be a fighter, even if you don’t look it. What do you think happened to your ship?”
“The mutineers believed this an uninhabited planet. After we crashed, I heard them say that they were headed for a prairie and something dragged them down on the coast. I’ve figured out that engineering and chemistry don’t work here. Our only clothing that survived is cotton. Our water is in glass jugs, not plastic. I see that you have stone spear points and stone axes. The holes in the ship’s hull and the crashes that have come from inside suggest that alloys aren’t yet part of this environment, or that if they were, their molecular structure would be different.”
“You think better than we did, sir. We were aboard a military exploration vessel. Everything went wrong when we entered the atmosphere and it appears that our last message didn’t make it out because the radio was dead. I’m one of the few original survivors. We’ll kill this mutineer and move away before your wreck disintegrates and starts leaking radiation, if radiation is natural to this planet. Your genes should be useful, so I hope you’re fertile. We need good, young brains to grasp things youth have never seen. It isn’t easy starting over while trying to maintain civilization.”
What happened next proved the speaker’s point. The group speared the helpless Carter. Wolf hoped the Dollies drew the same lesson from the brutal killing that he did. This crowd didn’t tolerate mutiny or dissent. Even dancers should be able to figure that out.
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