Peter Conroy had been born in deep space and
the starship was the only home he knew. It
was a good reason why he must fight for this—
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
June 1958
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
In the deepest level of the mighty Starship I, Peter Conroy layhidden in a cornfield. Around him waved the tall stalks of ripeningcorn; high overhead, near the distant ceiling of the level, blazed theactinic lights that irradiated the broad field.
And nearby, Conroy could hear the stealthy footsteps of Bayliss Kentand his men, searching desperately for him. They had to find him—andPeter Conroy had to keep from being found.
Crouching low, he edged forward between the bending stalks. Kentthought he had Conroy hemmed in, that he had the entrance to thecornfield guarded. Conroy grinned. He had been brought up in theAgronomy section; Kent and his men hadn't. It made a difference.
He looked around carefully, then began moving slowly away from themon his hands and knees. If I can only reach the irrigation tube intime, he thought. If—
It had been over fifty years since the Starship I had left Earth. Formore than half a century, the great ship had been headed toward thestar Procyon and the planets around it—habitable planets, detected bythe Lunar telescope. Fifty years, and there was still a hundred yearsof flight yet to come before the huge ship reached her destination.
Conroy and all the others of his generation had been born on the ship,as had most of their parents before them. The ship, with its vastfarms, its great factories, and its clusters of living centers, was allthe world they knew.
But Bayliss Kent and his little party of malcontents wanted to changeall that. They wanted to go back to Earth.
Suddenly, something crackled under Conroy's knee, and he froze. A dryleaf—nothing more. But had the others heard it?
He couldn't be sure. The searchers were making quite a bit of noisethemselves, and perhaps they might have thought it was one of their owngroup who had made the sound. He decided to risk it, and moved on.
Just ahead of him was the irrigation tube. Again Conroy called on hisspecial knowledge of the Agronomy section. This particular acreage ofcorn was in the harvest season—almost ready to cut. There wouldn't beany water in the irrigation tubes now.
The tube was a little over three feet across and dropped down into thesub-levels of the ship, where the water-purifiers were. Conroy peeredinto the tube's depths for a moment, then lifted up the hinged cover,lowered himself into the tube, and braced his feet against one side andhis shoulders against the other.
Closing the cover, then, in total blackness, he began to lower himselfdown the tube. Hands, shoulders, feet; hands, shoulders, feet. Over andover again, as mountain climbers work their way up and down crevasses.
After several minutes, he was startled by a sudden glow of light fromabove. He glanced up. The opening of the tube was nearly a hundredfeet overhead now. He wondered if they would be able to pick him out inthe darkness, this far down the shaft.
"Can you see him?" called a voice that echoed through the steel tube.Conroy could see a head silhouetted against the light.
"It goes straight down, and there's no ladder," came the reply. It wasBayliss Kent's voice. "I don't see him down there."
"What kind of tu