Dark Star

by Alan Dean Foster

  The corporal shook his head. He didn't remember. A hand indicated a particular readout.

  "But there is a possibility this time, according to . . ." Doolittle ignored him, still reminiscing.

  What a shame! What a sad memory! And what a colossal disappointment. It nearly broke Powell's heart.

  "Remember what we found when we did get to that world, Boiler? Remember? Was it a race of giant humanoids waiting to welcome us as members of a world-spanning intergalactic civilization? Or a planet of quiet thinkers waiting for a new, vigorous people like ourselves to unload all the secrets of the universe on? Or even a race of intelligent insects? Or revolting giant slugs?

  "No . . . nothing to love, nothing to be friends with, nothing to even raise to a conscious level. Nothing to even hate decently. A joke, a damned mindless vegetable—that's what we found. A limp balloon." His voice rose higher, and both Boiler and Pinback watched him anxiously.

  "Fourteen goddamned light-years for a vegetable that goes squawk and lets out a stink if it's touched! Remember that?"

  "All right, I remember, I remember," confessed Boiler, trying to calm his companion.

  Doolittle was aware that he was once again perilously close to going over the edge. He dropped his voice, would have jammed his hands into his pockets if he hadn't been sitting down. He looked away from the others.

  "So anyway, don't give me any of that 'intelligent life' stuff. Find me something I can blow up."

  Once more an uneasy quiet reigned in the control room of the Dark Star. Each man returned to his station, which had the virtue of not yelling, not screaming, not scratching, and not fighting back.

  They shot along in silence faster than man had ever traveled before, for the Dark Star was the first of its kind. There had been no experimental predecessor; the Dark Star was, in itself, an experimental ship. An experimental starship would have been prohibitively expensive, so it was combined with this first, vital mission, built with knowledge drawn from the unmanned deep-space probes.

  And it had worked out well. Only minor, irritating little things continued to break down. The ship itself continued to operate almost flawlessly—like her crew.

  A sudden series of beeps erupted from Pinback's station. He blinked, leaned forward. A key shut off the noise.

  "Hey," he said after studying the instruments, his expression lighting up, "new star."

  No one reacted. He looked at Boiler, then Doolittle. Maybe they hadn't heard him. "Hey, guess what," he repeated a bit louder, "I got a new star on the readout."

  Doolittle had produced a well-worn deck of cards. He was playing solitaire. Doolittle was very good at solitaire. He didn't lose often because he cheated.

  "What kind?" he asked without looking up.

  Pinback checked the instruments again. "Red dwarf. It's a complete unknown, sir, not even listed on the 'possibles' charts, from what I can see."

  Doolittle put a black queen on a red king, then a black jack on the queen. "Any planets?"

  "Around a red dwarf, sir? Even if there were any the chances of them being inhabi—"

  "I asked you if it had any planets, Sergeant."

  "Oh, all right." Pinback checked the readout again. His expression bulged. "Wow, yeah—it says eight probables here! How about that!"

  "Any of 'em good?"

  "Well," Pinback guessed, "it's kind of hard to tell at this distance, but there might be. Boy, wouldn't that be something? Around a red dwarf?"

  "I mean, are any of 'em bad," Doolittle corrected, putting an ace up.

  "Oh." Pinback sounded depressed, reluctantly checked his readouts again. "Naw, all stable."

  Doolittle just grunted.

  "I suppose that means we aren't going to map them out?" No reply. "Geez, Lieutenant, a red dwarf with eight possible planets—I mean, we at least ought to make an equatorial survey."

  "Not our job," Doolittle said quietly.

  "But couldn't we in this case make one teeny weeny little exception?"

  "No." Black ten on red jack.

  There was peace in the control room for a while, except for the gentle click-clacking of cards flicking down on the computation board. Pinback stared at Doolittle until he was quite certain that the lieutenant had nothing further to say on the subject of the strange new system.

  "Ah," he said finally, "what are you gonna name it?"

  Doolittle hesitated, spoke without looking up again. "What?"

  "Ah, you know . . . that star," Pinback continued anxiously. "What are you gonna name it?"

  "Who cares?" Doolittle responded irritably. "I'm busy, Pinback . . . don't bother me, huh?"

  "But it's a whole new star, Lieutenant. With planets. Eight of 'em. Only a handful of human beings ever got to name a tiny, insignificant thing like maybe a river or a mountain or a sea. A few luckier ones got to name features on the surface of the Moon and Mars and the other planets. You can name a whole star system, Lieutenant."

  Doolittle spared him a quick glance. "Look, don't bother me, please, Pinback? I've almost got this game played out. Leave me alone, hmmm?"

  "Commander Powell would name it," Pinback finished, with the ultimate argument. He folded his arms firmly.

  "Commander Powell's dead," reminded Doolittle for the thousandth time, putting a deuce up on the ace.

  "Well then . . ." Pinback suddenly beamed. "That's it—'Don't Bother Me.' We'll name it 'Don't Bother Me.' " He hunted hurriedly under his station for the small semi-official log he'd been keeping ever since Doolittle had lost interest in making regular entries in the ship's printed log.

  The pencil that was clipped to it was worn to a stub now, and he had to strain to write neatly with it.

  "There," he said after an hour's dedicated scribbling. "All nice and official, with coordinates and everything. 'Don't Bother Me' . . . eight planets." He finished with a flourish. "Congratulations, Lieutenant."

  Doolittle started to shout again, but he turned up the last card he needed to play out and was feeling instantly generous. After all, why pick on poor Pinback just because he was a mite overzealous in his job?

  "Thanks, Sergeant. If any intelligent beings do live there, maybe they'll thank you someday. I know I wouldn't want myself to be visited by anything like me."

  "Uh, Lieutenant," Pinback replied, his face twisted in uncertainty, "I'm not sure I know what you mean by—"

  Boiler's deep tones broke in over him. "Hey, Doolittle, I got a goodie. Definitely unstable. Eighty-five-percent probability of an unstable planet in star system P-one-thirty-eight. Indication of habitable planets in same system ninety-six percent. Chances are it will go off its orbit inside the critical period and hit its star." He looked up from his readouts. "Wanna blow it up?"

  He laughed.

  Pinback eyed him uneasily. Boiler didn't laugh very often, and Pinback could have done without even those occasional displays of humor on the corporal's part. But the information appeared to please Doolittle. He smiled broadly.

  "Real good, Boiler. Real good work. That's what I'm looking for. Chart a course as fast as you can." His mind was singing, one more planet, one more bomb—and then they could go home, go home, go home . . . back to warm, comfortable, feeling Earth, back to real grass and real booze and members of the opposite sex. Back to the other aliens, back where they belonged . . .

  Boiler was working feverishly at his console. "Hey, throw me the chart log, Pinback."

  "Name it, then blow it up. Name it, then blow it up—that's all you guys ever wanna do," grumbled Pinback. But he reached beneath his seat, brought out the thick-bound volume of star charts, and tossed it into Boiler's lap.

  Boiler glowered at him and just held the book for a second. Conscious of the suddenly charged atmosphere in the tiny control room, Doolittle watched the two men. Even Pinback, he realized, could be pushed past a certain critical point.

  Boiler held his stare for a moment longer, then opened the book and started thumbing through pages. Doolittle relaxed. What Pinback might
do if pushed beyond that certain hypothetical region was anybody's guess. Probably go stand in a corner and cry. But you never knew. Sometimes he suspected that Sergeant Pinback had unplumbed depths. Doolittle spent as much time keeping him and Boiler apart as he did running the ship.

  There had never been as much trouble between the two when Commander Powell was alive. But that was all in the past. So much was all in the past, had been lost in Powell's death. You remove one corner of the pentagram, and the mystic symbol seemed to lose all of its power.

  "Let's have some music in here, Boiler," he said carefully.

  "Sure thing." Boiler, showing no signs of recent aggravation, reached for an upper panel. Strains of the song "Benson, Arizona" immediatly floated through the control room.

  Doolittle relaxed. He loved this particular tune almost as much as he hated it. Loved it for the memories it brought back to him, and hated it for reminding him of what he no longer had.

  Pinback spoke up a moment later—his usual obnoxious and cheerful self again. It didn't take Pinback long to break out of one of his pouts. He was incapable, it seemed to Doolittle, of getting really angry at anything.

  "Hey, don't you think it's time to make an entry in the log, Lieutenant? You know, bring the records up to date, record officially the new star, tell about our little amusing troubles, and all that."

  Doolittle turned over three cards, found himself stuck with the last jack buried on the bottom. He switched the jack with the top card, then put it up on the queen and played out the last two cards and the rest of the game. That made 342 straight games he'd played out—an impressive string he had no intention of breaking.

  "What, Pinback?"

  "I said, don't you think it's time for a log entry?" When Doolittle didn't exactly leap to his feet to race to the recorder, Pinback continued pleading. "Aw, come on, Lieutenant. You haven't made a log entry in a long time. One of these days that log'll be history. Little kids will study, it and gasp, and their great-grandparents will say, 'I remember when the Dark Star first did this or that.' The folks back home will—"

  "The folks back home," Doolittle started to say angrily, "won't give a flying . . .!"

  He stopped. It was impossible to get mad at Pinback. The sergeant was a terrible audience. He wouldn't do the decent thing and howl back at you. No, Pinback would either retreat into a heady pout or else try to make a joke out of your most heartfelt furies.

  He could lay it on Boiler, but Boiler would just sit there and ignore him completely. At least Pinback reacted. And Talby, he could talk and yell and complain to Talby, but something in him always rejected the thought of disturbing the astronomer's period of endless contemplation.

  He could always talk to Commander Powell. Even though Powell was technically deceased, his occasionally functioning mind was still capable of random conversation. Sometimes Doolittle found himself closer in feeling to Powell than anyone else. Both men's minds existed in a kind of suspended animation.

  Well, might as well make Pinback happy. And it was part of his duty. And he'd promised himself, once upon a time, that he'd carry out the duties of acting commander to the best of his ability, etc., etc., blah-blah.

  Besides, if he didn't do it, Pinback might, and that would be disastrous if they ever did get back in one piece.

  He reached up and activated the overhead screen. When the READY sign had cleared, he spoke toward the directional microphone. "Ship's Log, entry number one thousand nine hundred and forty-three. Lieutenant Doolittle, acting commander of Dark Star, informing.

  "Ship is presently cruising through sector Theta nine ninety at light-speed multiple enroute to area Veil Nebula for destruction of unstable planet. Our ETA is seventeen hours. Our ability to locate unstable worlds in systems with habitable planets seems to have increased markedly with practice. It almost seems as if they are presenting themselves to us on request. I can only assume that our increased proficiency is due to greater vigilance and familiarity with the necessary instrumentation. In any case it appears that we shall be returning home sooner than expected, ah, and we . . ."

  He hesitated. There was something else, he thought, but he couldn't think of what . . . oh yes. "Ship's internal systems continue to deteriorate. We are compensating, but as the number of malfunctions multiplies, we find it increasingly difficult to improvise from our rapidly decreasing ship's stores."

  Pinback leaned over and whispered to him.

  He nodded, spoke to the screen. "Oh yeah . . . the short circuit in the rear seat panel which killed Commander Powell is still faulty. After much deliberation and thorough analysis of the situation, I have given explicit instructions that no one is to sit in that seat or he will be severely reprimanded."

  Pinback leaned over and whispered again, a mite more urgently this time.

  "The storage . . . what is it now, Pinback?"

  He paused, listened to the whisper. "Oh. And because he is sitting next to Commander Powell's seat, Pinback is continually bothered by the faulty circuit. He is possessed of this unreasonable fear that his rear seat panel will be the next to short circuit.

  I've pointed out to Sergeant Pinback that this attitude is both irrational and asinine, and he—"

  "Is not," muttered Pinback from off-screen.

  "—he persists in reminding me of it." Then the thought he had first been hunting for finally came to him. "Oh, yeah. Storage Area Nine, Subsection B self destructed last week following a circuit malfunction, thus destroying the ship's entire supply of toilet paper. I would request of the folks down at McMurdo that we be immediately resupplied with this important commodity. But am afraid, logistics being what they seem to be at Earth Base these days, that they would ship us the toilet paper in lieu of our desperately needed radiation shielding.

  "As the two materials are not interchangeable in function, I am therefore delaying the request that we be resupplied with the former commodity, although," and he looked over at Pinback, "there are those among the crew who feel that in the long run, the toilet paper is the more vitally needed of the two."

  He stared back up into the screen. "And if anyone ever reading this log finds the present situation amusing, I can only hope that they someday find themselves in a situation where they have to opt for radiation shielding over toilet paper. I think that's all."

  He reached up and switched off the screen recorder, feeling pleased with himself. It was a good log entry, a substantial log entry. It would never get him promoted, of course, but it was sobering to think that someday what he had just recorded might be broadcast to reverent billions all over Earth.

  The music was beginning to grate in its familiarity, both of sound and conjured-up image. He swiveled around to glance at the silent corporal. "Put something else on, Boiler. Something less descriptive. Something more . . . abstract."

  Boiler mumbled something unintelligible, nudged the dial a fraction. Immediately, responsive electric guitars, drums, trumpets, and theremin filled the tiny control cabin, swamped it in an orgy of amplified rhythm.

  Pinback and Boiler began to move in their seats, drawn together by their single, common point of interest—jumping, rocking, snapping their fingers, shaking in time to the music.

  Doolittle tried to join them, to complete the triumvirate. He tried to force himself, but for all his will to subsume himself in the music, all that moved was his head, slightly. Inside, he wondered that he could respond to the music at all.

  Something made him different from even Boiler and Pinback. Yet again, he wondered what it was that he was missing.

  The music reached Talby over the open intercom. He frowned slightly until he identified the source of the interruption and turned it down. It would be unprofessional as well as potentially dangerous to switch the intercom off entirely. He hardly heard the music anyway.

  That music.

  2

  THEY CONTINUED ON that way through space—the Dark Star's drive engines eating up the light-years, each man occupied in his own thoughts. So
no one monitored the detection instruments, no one saw the thing appear.

  Talby was intent on the stars behind them, and his three fellow crewmembers concentrated on the music inside them. So they didn't see the initially faint, still incredibly distant luminosity that had appeared in the path of the ship. Didn't see the twister of free energy that danced and leaped and frolicked among a million-kilometer-long cluster of uneven fragments. Fragments of a long-dead world in a long-forgotten system, perhaps even a system set in a galaxy other than this one.

  Some of these fragments carried a strong negative charge, others positive. Some were neutral, and some possessed electrical properties that would have driven an energy engineer to hysterics. Gigantic discharges of brilliantly colored energy played about the millions of solid components that formed the vortex.

  It was the sixth member of the Dark Star's crew, the one immune both to astrophysical daydreaming and to electric rock mesmerism, who finally noticed the rapidly approaching threat. And it was this sixth member who cut off the music to the control room.

  Pinback, Boiler, and Doolittle slowed, stopped their in-place dancing. At first Doolittle thought that it was just another of the seemingly endless series of mechanical malfunctions. A soft female voice corrected him moments later.

  "Attention, attention, ship's computer calling all personnel. I have been required to disengage your recreational music. Repeat. Ship's computer to all personnel, this is an emergency override. All systems must stand by for emergency directive. Information for procedure will follow."

  "What the hell?" muttered Doolittle.

  Pinback looked over at him wide-eyed, questioning. Boiler just sat and muttered. "Better be something damned important to break into my music."

  "Extrasolar concatenation of solid matter of uncertain properties is approaching at point nine-five light-speed on collision course. Predictions indicate that the body of matter is fairly dense, yet still spread too widely for us to avoid it without risking permanent structural damage to all noninorganic personnel on board."