Hope (Nadyozhda)

by Wil C. Fry

  He agreed with a nod, and turned back to the locker. This time he pulled out a Rolstein needle gun - not one of the tiny, 10-round models that wealthy females carry in large cities, either; this was the secret service version, with at least fifty rounds in the magazine. It would have been a heavy handgun for me, but in Forrest's hand, it looked quite normal, even a little small. He swung the safe's door closed, and turned the dial at the bottom.

  Without a word, he walked past us, and turned left in the passageway, heading aft. Forrest stayed on his heels, while Davidson and I kept up the rear. We turned in to one of the meeting rooms, and the Captain stepped back while Forrest removed one of the access panels from the wall. Then he stepped back and allowed the Captain to enter the corridor first. There were many different ways to get to any part of the ship, we had learned, after Scott's presence was revealed. The service corridors ran throughout the ship, between cabins, under the dining room, over the cryostasis tanks, even in the hull of the ship surrounding the hangar bays. It was somewhere in this maze that Hope had allowed Scott and her robots to construct a cabin, without damaging anything. I wondered what numskull had designed a spacecraft with that much extra space, but I had not dwelt on the thought very long.

  Arriving at Scott's door, the Captain pushed the buzzer. The door slid open, and Scott launched himself from the cabin, taking the Captain with him. Before the knife in his hand reached Cochran's skin, Scott's entire body went limp, and Cochran caught the knife by the handle as it fell. Forrest and Mr. Davidson returned their weapons to their holsters, and helped the Captain to his feet. I had not even moved, it was over so quickly.

  A few minutes later, Forrest stepped back into the ship, closing the inner airlock door behind him. When he got his helmet off, the Captain said, "Well?"

  Forrest continued to pull the rest of the pressure suit off, as he spoke. "Well.... It's done. I don't think you'll have any more problems, Captain. Not from the crew anyway."

  Fortunately, Hope - the computer - knew exactly what was going on, and agreed that Scott had been getting a little psychotic lately, so she continued her functions as outlined in the Policy.

  Anyway, as I was saying, no one went without work. Exercise, eating, working, sleeping, preaching, praying, reading, copulating... everything continued in a steady rhythm as the months passed. All couples had been told before the launching to use every possible form of contraception, because if Banard's Star System contained no habitable planets, there would be no hibernation tanks in which to put newborn babies, for the next jump.

  Then we found out that the next jump would not have to take nearly as long as our first one had been. My darling wife discovered this. She had been poking around in the power plant, where she worked, and peering through the shielded glass at some of the reactor components, when she noticed something strange. She had been about to don a rad-suit when the chief engineer from Crew #2 had come in and reminded her of her status as Crew #1. Janie Fowler had stood by the Policy, which said that any of the crews were expendable to a greater extent than the first crew.

  So, minutes later, Janie was in the rad-suit, sneaking around the inner workings of the power plant. That evening, my wife had told me all about it. Janie had found modifications in the reactor that conserved our fuel greatly. The much more energy efficient reactor had used only 30% of our power source for the trip, when it should have used just over 50%. So Elizabeth looked up the news file from Terra - the whole file, not the synopsis we had read on our first night awake - and found some very interesting things which she had relayed to us at the next executive counsel meeting.

  Elizabeth ran a hand through her almost black hair before beginning. "Due to modifications made to the power plant, reactor, and recycler while en route, we now have 70% of our original power, rather than the 50% predicted." Some eyebrows went up. "And with information received from transmissions from Terra, we are experimenting with new technologies.

  "For example, a mass converter operating on the E=MC2 principle was built on Mars just over a decade ago, and we may be able to convert our ship's power plant, once we arrive in orbit around a planet here in the Banard's Star System. Also, gravity technologies have changed tremendously. When we left, the only applications of Dr. Adams-Muñoz' work was artificial gravity fields, like the one we use here on the Nadyozhda. In 2280, the good Doctor's son, then 180 years old - due to the success of the longevity treatments - finally created the anti-gravity propulsion system, known as 'a-grav' back home. He is now one of the richest men ever, at a decrepit 214 years. These a-grav motors can use the gravity of any body in space to work against, but the bigger and closer the better. Our two probes that Hope launched while we slept and are now sending us all this information-" she held up the pamphlet that Marie had passed out earlier "-about the Banard's Star System are now equipped with a-grav propulsion systems, powered by solar panels. All of our other probes, shuttles, and missiles are still being modified. And by the time we are ready to leave this system, we may not have to use rocket engines at all."

  She paused for breath, and to let this soak in, then continued, "One more thing, Captain. Remember 'Hope City', in lunar orbit? According to the news we received, the workers there have launched three other colonial ships in the last 150 years, heading in other directions. They've also expanded their farming modules and are continuing to sell billions of bushels of food to Luna, Terra, J.U.M., and OSR. Anyway, the ship after ours, the Mayflower, was powered much like ours is, but was much larger, holding just over two thousand people. It was headed toward Tau Ceti, leaving in 2209, with an ETA in 2345.

  "The third ship launched from Hope City - in 2260 - was modified much the way our ship is now, allowing it to carry less fuel per mass, allowing more room for colonists. Called Hercules, it is the same size as our ship, holding 1,000 people, with an ETA in 2510.

  "The fourth one had rockets only as a backup, being powered by a mass converter and using a-grav for propulsion. The Exodus launched in 2302, using the gravity fields of Sol, Jupiter, and Saturn to 'push' against, heading for a star 19 light years from Sol, and planning to arrive in 2340. Gentlemen, that makes her average speed half of the speed of light, or 93 million miles per second, the fastest ship ever. And the kicker: the Exodus carries 10,000 people."

  Cochran's eyes widened, as he spoke. "That means she'll get there before ships two and three reach their destinations, even though they were launched decades earlier! Wow! So what you're saying is this: if we choose to move on from this system after exploring it, instead of another 175 years of sleep, we'll get there in, what, fifteen years?"

  "About eighteen, to be exact, Captain. That is, if they don't invent something else in the meantime."

  Davidson butted in, "Ah'm glad ah'm way out here with all y'all Rip Van Winkles than back there in that System. Jest think of all the new probl'ms they must've invented along with the technol'gy."

  Marie grimaced at his murderous use of the King's English and then said, "Captain, Hope can do these new modifications herself, but it would be much faster with the help of a human crew, besides the fact that the engineers will need to know the setup in case of an emergency."

  "Yes."

  As soon as the two automated probes got close enough to Banard's Star, whose gravity they were reacting with to fly in closer, they began sending back information. As soon as we woke up, the Captain had told us that there were at least four planets in the system, maybe two or three more. A few weeks later, we knew there were six in all. Marie had Hope print us all pamphlets that described as much as we knew about the system, with more specific reports for certain people who needed them.

  The outer planet, BS-6, was larger than Terra, but colder than Pluto. It would be no use to us, except for possibly a place to orbit an unmanned radar station, to be the last defense for the system.

  The next one, for now called BS-5 since we would save naming the planets until later, was a gas giant about the size of Uranus, but with no ring. A dozen or so ti
ny moons whirled about it, in irregular orbits, none of them on the elliptical plane of the system. Perhaps one or two of its moons could be colonized, or at least have a manned station, to conduct mining of fuels from the Jovian-type atmosphere of the planet.

  BS-4 was currently on the other side of her orbit, too far to be specific about anything, but we could tell she was another gas giant, with several moons, about the size of Neptune.

  Then there was an asteroid belt, much larger than the belt surrounding Sol, sometime called the Fifth Planet. There were at least two dozen planetoids in this belt the size of Ceres, meaning that this group of rocks might actually have enough mass to form a "Fourth Planet", which the asteroid belt of our home system did not.

  We were too far out then to tell, but BS-3 and BS-2 appeared to have climates somewhere in the Venus to Mars range, and were both in that size range as well. BS-2 was also on the far side of Banard's Star, so we would swing through the outer planets, still decelerating, and enter a tight parking orbit around BS-3, to engage in further exploration.

  During the nine months of deceleration, which we couldn't feel because of the a-grav field inside the ship, we became a fully functional space crew, not just a bunch of passenger-colonists, like those in the Daniel Boone II, who just went along for the ride, until they got to their destination. We scrubbed and polished the interior of the Nadyozhda, we grew food, we had Church, we discussed possible government setups for the colony, depending on how many of our crews we dispatched on each planet. There was never a dull moment, at least for me; if my life ever started becoming dull, my precious wife helped me to find entertainment.

  By the time we passed the orbit of BS-6, Mr. Davidson and his helpers had produced the first tobacco crop, and everyone who used to smoke, took it up again, and even a few others who said it helped them feel less homesick. Jonathan Gallagher, who turned out to be an good man after all, rigged a still in one sector of the cargo bay area, with the Captain's permission of course, and began producing alcohol. Then Hope said she could do it easier, and soon, many types of liquor were available to those who wanted it, and soon, each dining room became a pub after hours, in each time zone. Limits were set as to how much could be consumed by each person, and Forrest saw that it was enforced.

  Of course, Elizabeth and I abstained from such behavior, not necessarily because we thought it immoral, but because certain activities can soon destroy all respect for a minister, no matter what society thinks is moral for everyone else. And a minister needs the respect of his parishioners if he is to properly influence them toward God.

  At first, we had had a kind of socialist setup on the Nadyozhda, with each person getting their fair share of medical attention, food, and services, as long as they worked their assigned hours, and did not disrupt the schedule. Of course, like most space ships, it was also a military-type organization, with the Captain at the head, and everyone expected to obey his orders, if he chose to give them. Yet, in a way, it was a democracy, since each person had a voice, with which to offer suggestions or complain as the case may be. So we were a Monarchical Democracy, with a socialist economy. But that soon changed. Almost all of us had lived our entire lives in some kind of free-enterprise economies, with varying degrees of laissez-faire incorporated into them.

  So we invented money. This project gave Governor Ortega many headaches, and he delegated these headaches to his assistants on the project. First, the Captain had to be persuaded, which was not too difficult, because he had been used to paying for everything with cash all his life. Then the debates had to go on and on about what would cost how much; should we use dollars, rubles, pounds, crowns, credits, francs, marks, or some new kind of cash; what services, if any, would be free; and many other uncertainties. Finally, a system was worked out.

  We would use "credits" as our monetary unit - not the Solar Credits used by Armstrong and other space habitats, but our own "Galactic Credit." Hope printed out what we would need to get going, and a pay scale was set up. Level one on the scale was for those crew members who just had one position, and would only serve as general labor in any other job. Level two was for the rest of the crew, who held two or more positions. Level three was for the Executive Counsel of each crew, and Level four was for the four "backup" Captains. Level Five was the highest on our primitive pay scale, and was for Captain Cochran alone, the best paid man on the ship.

  Payday was every Saturday, and the money was handed out at the meeting rooms in the bow, by each crew's Political Officer, who also became Paymaster. Within two weeks after this all started, every one of the Paymasters had "hired" Assistant Paymasters, to get a little extra money each week, just for sitting in a chair and handing out money.

  All food had a cost after that, whether you bought it at the dining room - which we came to call the 'restaurant' - or had it delivered to your room or office at other times. Delivery cost extra, because it took up the time of the little robots, or kitchen workers. Alcohol and cigarettes cost, and the only places to buy them were the restaurants, and after dinner. Unless you bought the tobacco straight from the farm, or the alcohol straight from the distillery, which was considered legal. Laundry was free, repairs done by robots were free, and the library was free.

  Repairs done by humans were paid to the M.C.C., which in turn paid the salaries of the repairmen. Monies collected at the restaurant from food sales were funneled to the farm, from where they were sent to the cargo bay, for seeds, or to the power plant for more CO2, which in turn went to the M.C.C., to pay the salaries of the engineers, cargo bay workers, and farmers. Money from the sale of cigarettes went to the cigarette factory, who in turn paid the M.C.C. for paper and the farm for tobacco. And so on.

  At least at first, Hope was the ship's Paymaster General, since she supplied the cash for the payroll, and collected most of it back before the week was over. Elizabeth and I saved a little here and there, since we didn't buy alcohol or cigarettes, but there wasn't much else to use it for, except extra food, or a new jumpsuit every now and then.

  But it was decided that we would continue this same basis for economy when we got on the ground, so maybe our money would come in handy, a few months from now. Soon, Manuel Ortega was appointed Paymaster General, by Hope, and was moved from pay Level three to a new level, invented by Hope, Level 3.5. He opened the "First Interplanetary Bank of Banard's Star", and began loaning money at good interest rates, for those who drank too much, or smoked too much. He also let some of us open savings accounts at somewhat lower interest rates, with the warning that interest could not be paid until one year after we grounded on our new home. For two months after that, only the Chaplain's and their spouses could afford to save money. Then several Captains began saving some too.

  For weeks after our new system started, prices fluctuated widely, while the proprietors tried to figure out how much they could charge for certain things, and still get their money. It did not take long, however, for the "economy" aboard ship to settle down, and for most people to realize how ridiculous the whole thing was. We were the crew of the ship, therefore, we were entitled to food, repairs, et cetera; why should we have to pay for such things? But no one really complained except those on the lowest pay grade who also drank and smoked.

  Then I began to pull in a little extra money from chess matches. When the Captain from Crew #5, Wilson, found out that I played chess, he started meeting me a couple of times a week, to play. I think that maybe he is a better player than I, but he is unable to focus his mental energies on the game. Others eventually found out, and the oldest game in existence began to be my source of extra income. Every time I played, my opponent and I would each lay five Galactic Credits on the table, and the winner would collect the ten credits. Since I rarely lost, and usually only to Cochran, my extra money began to pile up.

  The engineers of the Nadyozhda spent a lot of time studying the new a-grav technology, trying to understand it. Only one made the jump in reason necessary to grasp the concept, according to my wife
, and that was Janie Fowler, from Crew #2. Even so, the other engineers did not find it necessary to understand the technology, as long as they could reproduce it - in much the same way, a preacher did not need to understand the Bible to preach a moving sermon.

  So they began to reproduce the technology, fitting our ten remaining unmanned probes with the equipment used to manipulate gravity fields for propulsion. Then they moved on to the five full-sized shuttles. And finally, just before arriving in orbit around BS-3, they began to work on the ten small shuttles. The space jeeps were not fitted with the a-grav motors, since they were only for use around the hull of the mother ship, and had no significant gravity field to act upon. Of course, if we had been in orbit around a planet, the motors could act on the gravity of that planet, and move in relation to the Nadyozhda, when they needed to repair it, but the piloting skills necessary for such a flight would be a long time in developing. All of this addition to these craft was done by using materials from our cargo bay, units that had been spare parts for the artificial fields of the ship, which with slight modification became a-grav motors.

  I preached, and read, and prayed, and talked, and listened, and worked at the various odd jobs that Ortega assigned to me. Every Sunday, I held a morning service at 10:00 in our dining room, in the grand traditional Christian fashion. Usually I led the singing, since there were not too many people on board who had been schooled in the great hymns of the Christian Church, some dating back to the 19th Century. Usually, I had the lyrics projected behind me on a screen, so those in attendance would have some basis for singing along. For two weeks, we sang a cappella, until I found that Hope had over 600,000 published songs in memory. All she had was what would amount to sheet music, but with the help of Marie Clark and some altered voice circuits, Hope learned to play music. After two more weeks, she (Hope, the computer) suggested to me that the music would sound better if she were allowed to sing the other vocal parts. Marie insisted that she had not instigated Hope's interest in music, but she added that Hope was much more intelligent than most humans, at least in her capacity. She just needed people to love her and talk to her, so she could "grow up." I had refrained from laughing in Marie's face.