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Short story: maniac takes over space ship, kills crew

Science Fiction & Fantasy Asked on May 27, 2021

I read this short story in the 1960s but it probably dates from the 1950s. American or British author.

For reasons I can’t recall a maniac gains control of a space ship’s control room and kills the entire crew. The only deaths I can remember are two crewmen who try to gain access to the control room by climbing between the ship’s double hull; the maniac finds a way to compress the two hulls, crushing them to death. After having killed everyone the maniac congratulates himself, unaware that the last of the ship’s oxygen has just run out.

Further details:

  • I’m sure I read it in a hardback anthology and not a magazine.
  • The killer was human and I believe the ship was a civilian vessel.
  • I’m pretty sure it was an American hardback.

One Answer

I believe that you are looking for Destination: Void (1965), by Frank Herbert.

In the future, mankind has tried to develop artificial intelligence, succeeding only once, and then disastrously. A transmission from the project site on an island in the Puget Sound, "rogue consciousness!", was followed by slaughter and destruction, culminating in the island vanishing from the face of the earth.

The current project is being run on the moon, and the book tells the story of the seventh attempt in a series of experiments to create artificial consciousness. For each attempt, the scientists raise a group of clones. These clones are kept isolated and raised to believe that they will be the crew of a spaceship that will colonize a planet in the Tau Ceti solar system (Tau Ceti has no habitable planet; its choice—should they manage to reach it—is part of the planned frustration of the crew). The spaceship will take hundreds of years to reach the system and the crew will spend most of their time in hibernation. Along with the crew of six, the ship carries thousands of other clones in hibernation, intended to populate the new colony and, if necessary, provide replacements for any crew members who die along the way.

The crew are just caretakers: the ship is controlled by a disembodied human brain, called "Organic Mental Core" or "OMC", that runs the complex operations of the vessel and keeps it moving in space. But the first two OMCs (Myrtle and Little Joe) become catatonic, while the third OMC goes insane and kills two of the umbilicus crew members. The crew is left with only one choice: to build an artificial consciousness that will enable the ship to continue. The crew knows that if they attempt to turn back they will be ordered to abort (self-destruct).

Answered by AhhGeezRick on May 27, 2021

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