Jim Baen's Universe

Science Fiction Stories

Murphy's Law

Written by Douglas Smith

Illustrated by Richmont Gan

Dex hadn't planned to save the entire human race. Mostly, he'd been trying not to die, while still keeping his job in the process—two goals that, Dex had learned, were often mutually exclusive. However, since humanity remained unobliterated, from Earth to the outer ring colonies, while Jack Dexter—Dex to his friends—remained broke, he figured that his fellow humans at the House Limit could at least buy him a beer.

The Limit was the only spacer bar on Station Beta One, making it the perfect destination for two things: cheap beer and a good yarn. More importantly, Dex knew that the second could serve as payment for the first.

Crash Carswell was lovingly polishing the long strip of white heat shielding that formed the top of the bar when Dex walked in. The shielding came from Crash's old tug ship, a vessel that had provided both Crash's nickname and much of the décor of the Limit. The big bartender scowled when he saw Dex.

"No credit, Dex."

"Nice to see you too, Crash," Dex said. Tossing his last pay chip on the bar with a sigh, he ordered a beer then made his way to where a crowd of regulars was sitting at the back.

Long, dark, and narrow, the Limit wasn't like the spacious, comfy watering holes that catered to tourists and business types. Everything in the Limit was salvaged from real ships, from the gray plasteel hull plates covering the walls and low curved ceiling to the viewports welded onto deck struts that served as tables. The place had the close, cramped feel of a ship and the smell of too many spacers in too small a space. Dex felt right at home.

Nodding to some familiar faces in the circle, he slipped into an empty chair that had once been a crew seat from Crash's tug. Sly Silverstein was in the middle of a story about transporting Fanarucci viper eggs that had hatched in transit. Dex sat for an hour, nursing his beer and listening to others tell their tales, waiting for exactly the right moment.

It came as Stumpy Burgess finished a rambling and—in Dex's view—uninspired story of how a string of improbable accidents had left his ore freighter drifting towards a black hole.

"Murphy's Law," Stumpy declared. " 'If anything can go wrong, it will.' That's what happened to us."

"Aye," Sly Silverstein agreed. "And it'll pick the worst time and place to do it. Murphy's Law is right."

Like any good pilot—and storyteller—Dex knew an opening when he saw it. "I knew him," he said.

All eyes turned towards him. "Knew who, Dex?" Sly asked.

"Murphy," Dex replied quietly.

Stumpy snorted. "Whaddya mean? There's no real Murphy."

"I heard there was," Sly said. "Some fly-boy on Earth, before the Fall. They say . . ."

"Ah, that's a load of moon dust," Stumpy interrupted.

Dex stood up, both to cut off Sly's retort and to move his chair into the center. "Nevertheless, gentlemen and ladies—and using such terms to describe this audience will be the last time I stretch the truth today—" Dex paused for some good-natured guffaws. "—nevertheless, I knew Murphy. Or rather a 'Murphy.' For ever since our ancestors crawled from the primordial muck, we've had Murphies among us—sad souls who attract more than their fair share of calamity." Noting that he had everyone's undivided attention, Dex glanced at his empty glass.

"Ah, jeez, all right," Stumpy groaned and called to the bar. "Crash, bring Dex a brew on my tab. Just this one, mind you. Some other sucker can spring for the next."

Crash brought the beer and joined the group himself. Dex took a swallow. "Not to denigrate in any way the risks faced by Mr. Burgess in his fine tale, but my encounter with the vagaries of Murphy's Law placed not merely myself and our ship in danger, but also—and I rely on my reputation for veracity here to escape your disbelief—the entire human race."

"Veracity, my ass," Stumpy growled. "Just earn your beer."

Dex grinned and continued.

****

I first met Murphy serving on the MCES Fiscal Restraint, a freighter in the Merged Corporate Entity's fleet. I was first officer. Or chief cook. Or security chief. Take your pick. It kind of depended on the day.

To appreciate how Murphy came to have the impact that he did, you need to understand that the MCE in its corporate wisdom had recently made cost-saving "improvements" across all of its fleet. Most of these savings had taken the form of smaller crews, resulting in double or even triple roles for those of us "lucky" enough to have made the cut. So one day, you might be supervising a jump through a wormhole, and the next cleaning the latrine.

We were refueling at the jump station on Devon II, and I was trolling spacer bars desperately trying to replace the most recent member of our crew to decide that unemployment beat working for the MCE. You see, the MCE's HR policy memo number 1394-A stated that any MCE vessel must maintain a minimum crew complement, to remain compliant with corporate insurance policies. We were currently one short of that minimum, so we'd be stuck at the jump station until I found a replacement. My sales pitch emphasized the "variety" of experience available on the Restraint. But so far, I'd failed to find anyone sufficiently uninformed or desperate enough to sign on with an MCE ship.

Then I met Murphy.

I found him in the Jack High Flush, a bar that makes our present surroundings look classy. Or rather, he found me. I'd run out of candidates and was trying to drink down enough courage to tell Captain Henshaw that we'd have to delay our jump. Henshaw didn't like bad news, and I still was at least three drinks away from not caring.

"Excuse me, but I hear you're hiring," a voice said.

I looked up, expecting to see one of my crew, pulling my leg. Instead, I saw Murphy. Or rather, I didn't see Murphy. You see, he had one of those faces that is so plain that it makes its owner seem insignificant and inconsequential, almost invisible and easy to overlook. Which is what I did. I looked at him, past him, and then back to an intense study of my empty glass, blaming its former contents for my imagining voices.

"Excuse me, but are you hiring?"

I looked up again, forcing myself to focus on him this time, focus on lonely puppy-dog eyes in a round face that sat under black, tousled hair and on top of a small, lean frame.

"Uh, yes. Yes, I am," I said, collecting my inebriated thoughts just enough to grasp at this last straw I now saw before me. I launched into my spiel. "The Fiscal Restraint is the finest ship in the MCE fleet. It boasts—"

"I'll take it," he said.

"—unblemished record of under-budget . . . What?"

"I'll take it. The position. I'd like to sign on to the Restraint."

"You will? You don't want to hear about the medical plan?"

"Not especially."

"Good, cuz it's lousy, and I'm tired of reciting it." I stuck out my hand. "Jack Dexter, First Officer."

"Orville Sod, but most people call me 'Murphy.'" He shook my hand and sat down beside me.

"Why Murphy?"

"It beats Orville," he said, which made sense at the time. Ah, the benefit of hindsight.

"You sure you want to sign on?"

"You're not much of a recruiter, are you?" he said with a sad smile.

I grinned. "I am drunk, Murph, and when drunk, my sense of guilt outweighs my sense of duty. The Restraint is not much of an opportunity. It's an MCE ship, so the pay's crap, but they make up for that by overworking you in lousy jobs."

"You're going to the outer colonies, aren't you?"

"Next jump. As soon as we're at full complement."

"Then I'll sign on."

"I should shut up, but I need to know your experience."

When I heard his background, I figured that I was still out of luck. He had the creds for a senior engineer, having worked on a dozen ships plus a generating plant on a middle ring world.

"Shit, Murph. We aren't looking for an engineer, just a Class III crewman for a bunch of sh— uh, low level jobs."

He shrugged. "I'll still sign on. I want to get to the outer colonies, and I don't mind doing menial work to get there."

I wondered about that, as well as the number of times he'd moved and his short stints with each employer, but he seemed bright, sincere, and likeable enough. And hell, at the time and in that place, I couldn't be picky.

So I signed Murphy on and felt very pleased with myself as we made the jump to Sector Seven . . .

****

"Sector Seven?" Stumpy interrupted. "Where we made first contact with the Gorunds?"

Dexter took a swig, noting that his audience had grown and that mention of the Gorunds had won him everyone's undivided attention. "Yep. If you describe making contact as them T-beaming most of our colonies from orbit." He took another swallow. "Now, where was I? Oh, right. Sector Seven . . ."

****

We made the jump and set course at sub-light for our first colony stop. I assigned Murphy to general maintenance, which included assisting our passengers.

You see, the Restraint was an old freighter converted by MCE, like its crew, to do double-duty. The cabins of my now-redundant former shipmates now served as passenger suites. I guess MCE figured to add some revenue as well as cutting costs, the greedy bastards. We were hauling dome field generators and nano-bot miners to MCE Colony 7-27, one of the few outposts that the Gorund attack had spared.

In our passenger section was Mr. Jackson Thorburn, the new governor of that colony, his wife Millicent, and their ten-year-old son, James. The governor was a little withdrawn, but not a bad sort, and I wondered what past peccadillo had prompted MCE to exile him to a Sector Seven colony. I put his demeanor down to him ruminating on his bleak future—and Mrs. Thorburn.

Millicent Thorburn had the haughty bearing of dowager empress and the personality of a rabid skunk, which is perhaps speaking too harshly of both royalty and skunks. She did not walk around the ship so much as parade through it, commandeering any unwary crewmember she encountered to accompany her to perform one chore after another. These jobs usually involved addressing perceived deficiencies in her "stateroom" or in the conglomeration of medical equipment that constantly surrounded young James.

James Thorburn was the exception to the rule that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. In fact, as I got to know him, I couldn't believe he was from the Thorburn tree at all. He was friendly and bright, with a hunger for any and all information about the ship. He was supposedly, however, in the words of Mrs. Thorburn, "on the very brink of death." The boy lived his life cocooned in a personal force field, to "keep out all the dreadful germs" and accompanied by an array of bio-monitors that floated beside him wherever he went.

Now, to my eye, James was the healthiest-looking resident of death's doorstep I'd ever encountered.

I raised this question with Mrs. Thorburn shortly after they had boarded the Restraint. Mrs. Thorburn had just delivered a litany of instructions for keeping the boy isolated from unnecessary contact with lower life forms such as the crew.

"Mrs. Thorburn, what exactly is young James suffering from?" I asked.

She sniffed. Mrs. Thorburn always sniffed. She seemed incapable of speech without sniffing. I wondered if skunks sniffed too.

"James has a severely diminished immune system. He is susceptible to a wide range of infections and therefore must be protected from contamination—" She fixed me with an icy stare as she emphasized that word, and I had a feeling that if Millicent Thorburn looked up "contamination" in the ship's computer, she'd expect to see my picture. "—at all times. At all times! Do I make myself perfectly clear?"

As clear as a skunk's perfume, I thought. "I've informed the crew that contact with James must be kept to a minimum, Mrs. Thorburn."

Another sniff. "See that they comply. Meanwhile, send someone to our stateroom. One of James' monitors is acting up." With that, she turned on her heel and sailed down the hallway.

Now before anything comes aboard an MCE ship, be it animal, vegetable or mineral, it is scanned, poked, prodded and generally examined five ways from Sunday to determine its exact nature and condition. The Entity wants to know what it's transporting, and most importantly, if any goods are dangerous or illegal. Do not mistake this for a concern by MCE for either the crew's safety or the law. Identifying dangerous or illegal cargo simply allows MCE to charge an even more exorbitant fee for such items.

This screening now extended to our latest class of cargo, our passengers. As a result, young James had likewise been scanned, poked, prodded and generally examined five ways from Sunday before we left by our ship's doctor, Hajib Fasil.

"There's nothing wrong with that kid's immune system, Dex," Haj confided over a bottle of Andusian ale, from a case that had somehow been damaged on loading. We had dutifully inspected the case's contents and found that several bottles needed to be consumed immediately to prevent spoilage. "If you ask me, it's just something that old cow—"

"Skunk," I corrected. "After extensive research, I have determined that her closest zoological relation is a skunk."

"—just something she's invented to keep the boy under her thumb. She's certainly a control freak."

"Control skunk," I corrected. But if Haj was right, then Mrs. Thorburn was needlessly limiting James' ability to enjoy life. Regrettable, but not my problem. At least, it wasn't until Murphy got involved.

We were two weeks out from the jump point and a month from our first colony stop. I was passing through the passenger section when I heard Mrs. Thorburn scream. Now I say "scream" but that word, worthy a verb though it is, conveys neither the volume nor the nerve-grating pitch of that sound. I froze as Mrs. Thorburn exploded from their compartment into the hallway. She set her eyes on me like a Fanarucci viper spying a rodent far from its burrow, grabbed me by a lapel and pulled me inside.

"He's killing my son!" she screamed, shaking a bony finger towards the scene at the end of the room.

James was sitting on the floor—the "disgustingly dirty, germ-covered floor" as Mrs. Thorburn later related to Henshaw—surrounded by his ubiquitous array of hovering bio-monitors. A very worried-looking Murphy sat beside him. Between them lay the small cylinder of James' personal force field generator. I didn't know much about those devices, but I guessed that the sparks and smoke it was spewing out weren't a normal selling feature. I realized then why James looked different—I'd never before seen the boy without the shimmer of his protective force field between us.

"Murph? What happened?" I asked.

"Stop breathing on my son!" Mrs. Thorburn shouted. "Get out! Both of you!" Throwing herself between us and James, she herded us out of the room. "Send someone to fix that generator immediately, someone who doesn't break everything he touches—"

"I didn't break—" Murphy began.

"And make sure you send them in a sealed suit. I don't want another lummox contaminating my son. Now get out!"

She slid the door shut with a slam, almost taking my arm with it. I turned to Murphy. "What happened?"

He reddened. "I don't know, sir. I was trying to fix one of the kid's bio-monitors, like Mrs. Thorburn asked." He shot a look back at the compartment. "She wouldn't let the kid out of there until it was fixed. Not much of a life for him, is it?"

"Murphy, what happened?" I repeated.

He didn't meet my eyes. "I don't know, sir. Suddenly that force field thing just shut down."

He seemed less surprised at the situation than I'd have expected. But part of me was secretly pleased with Murphy for causing Mrs. Thorburn so much grief, so I just clapped him on the back. "Forget it. I'll reassign you to the mess hall. That'll keep you out of trouble and away from Mrs. Thorburn."

Wrong. And wrong.

I was on my way to the mess hall later to grab dinner when I heard a high-pitched whining. Thinking it an alarm, I sped up, rounding a corner only to find the hallway blocked by crew and passengers. It was then I recognized the sound. Mrs. Thorburn. I pushed my way through the crowd and into the mess where I confronted a scene of culinary devastation.

The walls, floor, and even the ceiling were coated in what I assumed were selections from today's menu. Beside each table, the serving apertures that delivered the diner's requested meal continued to spew out food, projecting each helping at high speed across the room. Alone in the middle of this bombardment stood my favorite passenger.

Mrs. Thorburn normally left a visual impression that spoke of hours of obsessive primping. At the moment, however, a gooey yellow liquid plastered her mousy brown hair to her head and face, and long white noodles drooped all over her. On spying me, she stomped her foot, causing the end of a noodle currently dangling from her nose to do a perfect loop around her face and settle on her left ear.

"He's done it again!" she screamed at me, pointing to the far corner. There stood Murphy, trying very hard to look invisible as usual. It wasn't working.

I ordered two crew members to help Mrs. Thorburn back to her room. She began screaming something as I hauled Murphy out, but her no doubt valuable advice was cut off when a white mushy blob from an aperture hit her squarely in the mouth.

Alone in a hallway, I confronted Murphy. "What the hell was that?" I