Hellflower

by George O. Smith

Big prime movers like battlecraft and stationary installations seldom fell into the hands of an enemy in any condition to be reused. Either the big stuff was shot to hell before the enemy captured it and was therefore unfunctional, or there was time for the crew to render the big stuff useless long before the installation was abandoned. There were booby-traps, of course, but these were usually improvised on the spot, or at least installed from a stock closet at the time of possible capture. No thinking nation would ever install a booby-trap permanently because of the possibility of the operator punching the wrong button.

Self-destruction devices were another item. These came shortly after the Military discovered the electron, and at a time when there were basic new designs of equipment the function of which it had been necessary to keep secret from the enemy. Countless pieces of apparatus had been equipped with self-destruction charges heavy enough to addle the insides of the gear, and possibly bulge the case a bit. But a man could sit on one of them while the charge went off and the most he would get would be a sharp kick in the pants.

But such destruction charges were controlled from a separate panel. There could be no mistake or error; no one could hit the wrong button. Destruction must be performed with deliberation.

And so Farradyne eyed the new installation calmly. It might hold a self-destruction charge, but the probabilities of having the control handy enough to be used in the heat of excitement were remote, especially since such a condition would leave a ship and crew marooned in the depths of interstellar space to die because someone's finger slipped. Farradyne was even certain that not much could happen if he tinkered with the toggle, so long as they were in deep space by some light years distant from anything large and hard.

He took the toggle bar in his right hand and pulled. It did not pull so he pushed. It did not push. He turned the cross-bar slightly and exerted effort. The bar moved downward in a wide arc and as it moved, the seat of the chair slammed upwards against the seat of his pants, and all of a sudden up was up and down was down, and the stars were all in their right places. The toggle came to a stop and the accelerometer read one gravity. The needle on the meter still read halfway into the blue.

Farradyne chuckled aloud. He had it now. If the traffic lights flared blue-green for "GO" and red-orange for "STOP" he had this combination as well. Start your spacecraft and punch the blue button for start. That was the beginning and the warm-up and nothing could happen until the meter read into the blue section of its scale. Then the toggle controlled the action of whatever generator of force was used, more or less as the toggle was advanced or depressed. The equipment stayed in readiness all the time. The red button was undoubtedly the cut-off button to close the gear down once the flight was completed.

It was as simple as that. Farradyne had spent many an hour in spacemen's bars up and down the solar system in spacemen's happy arguments regarding the complexities of exotic equipment, so he could theorize on both sides. The pro side was a matter of insisting that electromechanical principles were universal and therefore an alien bit of gear would function in a recognizable manner. The con side considered the fruitless arguments that something new might be discovered or that the evolution of instruments from the original principles would follow the normal dexterity of the alien life-form involved. But Farradyne knew that buttons are buttons and therefore meant to be pushed, not pulled; and similarly, D'Arsonval had invented the same kind of galvanometer as Ugthrybb, on Vega, with a moving coil between the poles of a magnet, and just because one race was right-handed and the other left, the principle did not change.

Then, being of a practical frame of mind, Farradyne forgot the subject and began to wonder about his position and what he was going to do about it. He squinted into the point-of-drive telescope and caught sight of a tiny yellow star on the cross-hairs. That must be Sol, distant, small, and far weaker than Sol as seen from Pluto. It was a true stellar point from here.

Then he looked through the point-of-departure periscope and automatically cut the drive so that the flare would not blind him.

Behind was the constellation of Lyra and on the cross-hairs was another star of no particular consequence. No more important than Sol. He got out the Spaceman's Star Catalog and opened it to Lyra. Among the listings were a number of the F, G, and K classifications, and one of them, about twenty-seven light years from Sol was listed for the right position in the constellation. Farradyne grunted; it meant nothing to him. It was merely Lyra.