Mesozoic zigzag

The guys flew up a little inaudibly, with huge leaps, and froze, someone downstairs at that moment opened the door wide from the corridor. Any further movement on their part would have given them away at once and with their heads!

The new captain

– Hey, is anyone here? – heard a vaguely familiar hoarse voice. A long silence followed. The stranger was listening. – Third, why isn’t this door locked?

– Captain, I had no direct orders to do so. And just in case the scientists try to poke their noses into anything outside their assigned corridor, I’ve ordered all the doors in the corridor to be welded shut,” came a guilty voice from the captain’s third mate. – Dummy Mdjey had obviously missed that exit!

– Okay, maybe there’s no one there, and Captain Benaip is trying to upset our plans even after such an ignominious end, – a voice belonging to a stranger hissed gloatingly. – How many loyalists are in the crew?

– Twenty out of thirty-four, Captain!

– All right. Here’s what we’re gonna do. Soon the planet we need will appear. Captain Benaip was very thoughtful, – the stranger chuckled, – in disabling the external seeker. Tomorrow we will “regretfully” report his untimely death and quickly dispose of the body. And tomorrow we’ll announce the discovery of the planet. Let those smart guys study it for us. Right! Now for the main thing. Does anyone know that he – the stranger emphasized the word “he” – is among the crew? And most importantly, have you been able to find out his identity?

– No, Captain, we only know that HE is among the “scientists”, but we have not yet been able to find out which one of them is. Only Captain Benaip, you and I knew he was on the ship.

– Well, all right. Too bad about those smart guys, but it can’t be helped. I do love secrecy. Sometimes it makes things so much easier. Get Mdjey and his crew out here. Have them take this dead idealist and will put his body in order. No one, you hear me, third, no one, must have a shadow of a doubt as to the naturalness of his demise. Otherwise, you can start a rumor about the conspirator – the second mate of the captain. The video of how you killed Benaip, my dear, is just lovely.

– But, Captain, how can you? I’m absolutely faithful to you!

– I know, I know. That’s just me… An old habit, you know. Well, so be it! Consider that this record does not exist. Call the team. You wait for them here, and I think I’ll be going. I’ve got a lot of things to do. That lowlife Zwigg has bled the Empire dry enough already. It’s time to put an end to him and his dynasty once and for all!

After saying that, one of the men who spoke began to slowly walk away while the other radioed for someone. The quick footsteps of several pairs of feet were heard. The third assistant said something to them. The team picked up the body with a barely audible rustle and carried it back down the hallway. The welding machine started up. Soon that door was welded shut as well. There was complete silence.

– F-f-f -u-u-u-u! – Jum exhaled noisily and looked around at his friends. – Wow!

Tana, frozen with horror, only clapped her eyes and could not utter a word. Dak rubbed the map he held in both hands and shook his head as if in disagreement.

– Wow, that’s right! – Abis repeated after Jum. – What is it? They killed the captain! Not only that, they’re conspirators against the Emperor!

– Exactly. You’ve captured the essence! The question is, what do we do with all this now? – Jum replied with a nod of his head.

– Colleagues, have you noticed one, or rather two additional details in this “conversation”? The first is that tomorrow we will be presented with a planet, and the second is that mysterious “HE” that the conspirators were talking about? – Dak said faintly.

– Guys, – Tana woke up, – let’s get out of here, or that Mdjey and his men might show up at any moment. And then we risk sharing Benaip’s fate.

– I take it, – grinned Jum, who had come to his senses, – no one wants to take the new route? Let’s go back. That Cogl will be first again. So, what! We might save the world! Or ourselves… Whatever… Let’s go.

And they began to climb the stairs carefully.

In the wardroom they had to endure a few unpleasant moments after, when asked by Tabit, why they had come empty-handed, Jum had lied that his crew had gotten lost in the main corridor. In response, the entire wardroom, filled with both old and young scientists, burst into laughter. After a quick meal, under a hail of taunts, sometimes good-natured and sometimes mocking (mostly from the team of the again victorious Cogl), the guys with their heads down quickly made their way to Jum’s quarters.

– Honestly, it wasn’t the most pleasant moment of my life! – Tana said gloomily.

– Ahhhh… Never mind. I had to say something, didn’t I? I think we’ll forget all about it tomorrow. We’ve got a lot of other headaches now.

– I agrees! – Abis reacted vigorously. – We have to decide what to do with the information we got thanks to, – he grinned, – Jum’s ingenuity.

– Okay, okay. It remains to be seen if this is so bad. You don’t have to thank me. Let’s think about what to do next! – Jum parried. – Dak, are you still not talking? As the most sensible of us all, surely you have your own thoughts on the matter? Share them.

– All right! – Dak answered after a second pause, – I think so… Don’t say a word to anyone about what we’ve seen and heard. Not a living soul! It’s in our best interest. Tomorrow, when the crew is notified of the captain’s death, we’ll mourn with everyone else. No, Tana, I understand what you’re trying to say.… Not a word to Tabit either! We don’t know if he’s a conspirator too. Until we know for sure who’s loyal and who’s not, not a word to anyone. So, I continue, we grieve, we walk with sad faces. After the report on the planet, we’re going to work together. Finding out everything about the planet could be vital. In that sense, we’re the perfect team.

– Right, – Jum said. – You, Abis, learn all about life, both large and small; Tana, you take care of the planet’s structure; Dak finds out about the atmosphere; and I, if I have any luck with the local population, try to figure out how to communicate with them.

– All that’s great, – Dak said again, – but we mustn’t forget what they might do to us (I mean all the scientists and crew members loyal to the Emperor) after we’ve done all the work for this stranger and the third assistant captain! The good thing is that by tomorrow the name of this stranger will be known. After all, I understand he’s about to proclaim himself captain.

– Guys, what can they do to us? – Tana whispered fearfully.

– That’s what I understand Dak is going to talk to us about! – Abis said. – Isn’t that right, Dak?

– Yes! And I don’t just want to talk. I want to consider every possible hypothesis.

– That’s right! – Jum echoed his thought. – Perhaps our lives, and the lives of most of the people on our ship, will depend on how accurately we predict events.

– That’s true, – continued Dak, – but we have very little incoming information. Let’s try to build a logical chain. First! A usurper we know nothing about. Two! Conspirators on a ship who, for some reason, want to explore a planet somewhere on the fringes of the Empire. Three! A mysterious “HE” who is needed by the conspirators for some reason, but apparently doesn’t know it himself. And he could be anywhere among the scientists. You can say what you want, but I think he’s in danger. I suggest we all go to our quarters to think, analyze and compare. Tomorrow is a busy day. After what each of you can think up and find out more, we’ll get together in the evening and think it over again.

The next morning, just after breakfast, the mournful, but so familiar to them from yesterday’s events, voice of the third mate captain announced over the speakerphone that Captain Benaip had been treacherously murdered. – This atrocious murder was apparently committed by the captain’s first mate, as he is nowhere to be found. Apparently, after the crime, he tried to cover his tracks and was mistakenly thrown into a missile silo, from where, due to a false activation of the automatic ‘ejection’, he was thrown into space. There he goes! We all mourn the untimely passing of our wonderful Officer Benaip. – And so on…

Everyone in the wardroom stood with their mouths open in amazement, unable to believe what had happened. After all, in long-distance expeditions the loss of a leader is an extraordinary event, and the murder of a captain is something unimaginable. In the entire history of long-distance flights of the last hundred cycles, something like this had happened only once. And even then, it was a farce. The captain of that expedition had fallen in love with a beautiful woman on some distant planet and flatly refused to return not only to his duties, but to the ship at all. After that he was taken by force, bound and taken to the ship’s wardroom, where, in accordance with the Charter, he was demoted, subjected to civil execution and thrown back to the planet in the arms of his waiting girlfriend.

And here’s the second case. Not a civilian one, but a real physical death of the captain.

Our four did their best to pretend that they were dumbfounded and grieved as much as the others. Although the apparent murder of the first mate was an unpleasant surprise. Apparently, he had refused to join the conspirators and had signed his own death warrant.

In the middle of the afternoon, ship’s time, the funeral rites for Captain Benaip were somewhat hastily performed, as Chief Investigator Thabit observed.

After the official part, the scientists gathered in their wardroom, where they vividly discussed among themselves what had happened. But both Jum and his crew knew that there was more to come and were eagerly awaiting a new announcement.

And so, it was. Soon a new voice came over the speakers. He announced that in accordance with the ship’s Code and a secret order from the Imperial Chancellery, the second mate, Superintendent of the Imperial Security Service, Obahh, was taking over the duties of the ship’s captain.

– Wow, that’s something! Let’s go to my quarters. There’s something I can tell you. – whispered Jum.

– I know our new captain, – grinned Jum, as they reached his cabin, closed the door behind them, and settled down on the bunk and chairs. – No, not personally, of course. It was purely out of curiosity. I decided once between classes on linguistics of alien civilizations to prepare an essay on the genealogy of the kings of one run-down star system that had recently joined our beautiful Empire. And I was terribly surprised by the similarity of the surnames of their leadership and some of our military leaders. I had to dig through a bunch of old files in the Imperial Library. And you know what I found? First of all, the first settlers in this system were distant relatives of our Emperor’s great-great-grandfather. For some reason, they did not get a place at the throne of the Empire. Why did they, these uncles or nephews, jumped from the surface of the metropolis, I never understood, but my heart feels that if they had not taken their legs away, they would have had them, in the best traditions of those times, pulled out. Yes, what am I talking about… The last name of those immigrants was Obahh! You know what I’m saying?

The Admiral of the Northern Sector is the second man in the space Fleet. Well, the one who saw us off… is his last name not Obahh? – Tana said in surprise.

– Good girl! And now we have another Obahh as our captain. Apparently, ours is a relative of the Admiral, – confirmed Jum.

– And it follows that …, – Dak began.

New Planet

– Attention! Attention! – suddenly said the speaker built into the cabin wall, in the voice of Captain Obahh. – An important message for the entire crew. After many days of travel, the ship’s searcher has discovered a planet worthy of study by our fine scientists! I request the leader of the Tabit Study Group to report to the control room to develop a plan to study the planet. All scientists to assemble in the wardroom to form research teams.

– What’s the hurry? – Abis wondered. – We’re not going to land immediately, are we?

– But I know. Or at least I can guess what’s going on here! – Dak said quietly. – Guys, we have to go now, or there may be questions. But promise me we’ll get together again tonight. Can’t you see they’re trying to get rid of us? “Us” – I mean the entire disloyal crew.

– I see, – Jum waved his hand firmly, – Now everyone goes to get their assignments from their superiors, and then we’ll gather at Dak’s. It’s time to change the meeting place, or the Obahh supporters might wonder why a few scientists aren’t discussing their problems in the wardroom like the rest of us, but whispering in corners.