The Exiles Trilogy

by Ben Bova

  Dan raised his head and saw the tent’s fabric looming up, flapping wildly, right in front of him Like a nightmare monster.

  Rising up, up, filling all his visions with its rippling, snapping immensity. Then with a whip-crack it flattened out again, only to begin rising once more immediately.

  Can’t go through that, Dan realized.

  He fumbled at his belt for the suit’s tool kit It was almost impossible to feel shapes with the gloves on, but at last he pulled out the little pistol-shaped laser that they used for cutting and welding.

  Hope it’s charged up Dan pressed the snub nose of the laser against the edge of the tent’s foundation and pulled on the trigger The pistol didn’t make a sound or vibration, but after a moment or two Dan could see the plastic fabric of the tent glowing, tearing, separating from the foundation.

  With an agonized screeching sound, the plastic ripped free of the foundation and went billowing into the wind, disappearing into the howling storm like a giant bird suddenly let loose, Dan clung to the foundation’s edge for a long, weary moment, then pulled himself slowly over the lip He dragged himself, using his arms and his one movable leg, groping for the hatch to the underground shelter Desks, chairs, viewscreens, even the heavy computer consoles had been blown over by the wind, bowled away like so much dust Another bolt of lightning struck with shattering force, blinding and deafening Dan for several moments.

  Then his hands found the hatch He pulled himself up onto his elbows, nearly unconscious with pain and exhaustion. Eyes stinging and nearly blinded with sweat, he groped for the control switch. He found it and leaned on it heavily It wouldn’t move. He forced his weight on the tiny switch as hard as he could. Nothing.

  Jammed by the grit.

  He raised a fist, taking all the strength he had, and pounded on the hatch itself. If Cranston’s down there if hes not dead. Even his thoughts were getting fuzzy now. Pound. Raise the fist and let it drop. Raise the fist and let it drop.

  The hatch moved It pushed against his inert arm A straining, rasping sound and Dan could see the hatch lifting slowly a gloved hand was pushing it open from the inside.

  Everything seemed to go hazy, foggy, blood-red and then dead-black Dan could feel his body moving—being moved?—

  and the noise of the wind’s evil howling dimmed, muffled. Somebody was talking to him, urgent words crackling in his earphones. Then the blackness swam up and surrounded him and pulled him downward into oblivion.

  When he awoke, his helmet was off. Cranston was completely out of his suit, dressed only in blue coveralls. The little underground shelter seemed cool and snug and safe. The wind was a distant mumble somewhere outside. The shelter was bright and quiet. Its curving walls and ceiling seemed to gather around him protectively. Its bunk felt soft and comfortable.

  Cranston was standing by the cooking unit.

  “Do you think you could eat something?” he asked, looking worriedly at Dan.

  Dan realized he was sitting on one of the bunks, slouched against the curving wall of the shelter.

  “Yeh…sure.” Every muscle ached. His head throbbed horribly. His mouth felt dry and caked with dust.

  Glancing down at his legs, he saw that Cranston had taken off the bottom half of his suit, as well as his helmet.

  “There was a bad dent on the left leg of the suit,” the computerman said. “I was worried that your own leg might’ve been hurt. It’s bruised pretty bad, but I don’t think it’s anything worse than that.”

  “When …” Dan tried to lick his lips, but his tongue was dry. He croaked, “When did you…come into the shelter?”

  Cranston flashed him a guilty glance, then turned his attention to the cooker. “Uh…I tried calling you on the radio… no answer. I didn’t know what was happening. Then… uh, the tent… it looked like it was going to collapse___”

  “It did,” Dan said wearily. “You did the best thing.”

  “Oh… okay…” He smiled, still looking slightly guilty.

  Dr. Hsai’s quarters looked like pictures of Japanese homes that Valery had seen on the education tapes.

  The compartment was no bigger than any other single man’s quarters. But it looked different. There were living green vines climbing along one wall, reaching upward to the ceiling light panels. A painting filled part of the same wall, showing soft

  green hills and a river with a delicate bridge arching over it. The vines seemed to blend into the picture, the two merged and became a single experience. The bunk was austere, hard-looking, but a beautiful red drape hung beside it. There was no other furniture visible, except two little pillows on the floor and a low-slung black lacquered table.

  Dr. Hsai himself was dressed in a loose-fitting robe of black and white, with just a hint of gold thread at the collar.

  “What a beautiful robe!” Valery said, despite herself, as Dr. Hsai ushered her into his quarters.

  “Thank you very much.” The psychotech smiled pleasantly. “It belonged to my great-grandfather and has been handed down through four generations.”

  “It’s very lovely.”

  He smiled again and bowed ever so slightly. “I am afraid,” he said, “that I have no western furniture for you to sit upon. I usually receive visitors in the office of the infirmary. But you seemed so insistent—”

  “I can sit on the floor,” Val said. She curled up next to the bunk.

  Dr. Hsai offered her one of the pillows, and Val put it behind the small of her back, then leaned against the edge of the bunk.

  “You wish to ask me a medical question?” Dr. Hsai inquired, sitting in the middle of the tiny room.

  “A psychological question,” Val replied.

  He nodded. “I might have guessed. Unfortunately, my knowledge of psychiatry is far from expert, although I have been studying the available tapes on the subject very carefully these past few weeks.”

  “Why?” Val asked. “Do you think there’s a killer aboard the ship, too?”

  Hsai smiled patiently. “Not at all. At least, I hope not. But certain individuals believe that there might be a killer among us, and I am trying to pin down the origins of these fears.”

  “There have been these… accidents.”

  “Yes.”

  “Including my father.”

  “Yes.”

  Valery was starting to feel uncomfortable. What she wanted to ask suddenly began to sound silly in her own mind. Worse

  still, she felt that Dr. Hsai knew what she wanted, but was being too polite to bring up the subject himself

  “Dan Christopher has been under great emotional stress,” the psychotech said, mainly to keep the conversation from faltering “He is a very troubled young man. Perhaps it would have been wise to revive one or more of our sleeping psychiatrists, to examine him thoroughly”

  “Yes, I was wondering why you didn’t do that,” Val said.

  “Larry Belsen said it wouldn’t be necessary As Chairman, he has the responsibility to pass on all requests for revival.”

  “Larry disapproved?”

  “Yes. I asked him specificially if he wanted us to revive a psychiatrist . . It was when Dan Christopher was in the infirmary for observation, and I could find nothing psychologically wrong with him “

  “And Larry said he didn’t want a psychiatrist revived?”

  Dr. Hsai almost frowned “Not in those words, but he told me he thought it would be unnecessary. You know, of course, the difficulties involved in reviving a person, and the limited resources we have. It cannot be done light’y. And we cannot ask the person, once revived, to return to sleep a few days or weeks later It is not medically wise, for one thing.”

  “I know” Valery suddenly realized that she was gnawing on her lip A nervous habit She looked back at Dr. Hsai. “About the question I wanted to ask you .”

  “So?”

  Somehow it didn’t feel so silly now “Could, could a person do things—violent things—and not know it?”

  Hsai looked puzzled />
  “I mean, could somebody commit a murder and then not remember he did it? You know, his conscious mind doesn’t even know what he’s really doing “

  Hsai gave the faintest of shrugs. “I have heard of such cases in my education, of course, but… of course, I have never dealt with such a situation myself”

  Before she could think about it, Valery spilled out, “Do you think that the reason Larry didn’t want a psychiatrist revived is that he was afraid the psychiatrist might find out something about him—about Larry himself”

  For an instant, Hsai looked shocked. Then he dropped a mask of oriental and professional calm over his face “You believe that Larry Belsen might be unbalanced?”

  “My father’s injury was no accident,” Val said, feeling miserable “Somebody did it. Either Dan or Larry . or somebody else “

  For several moments Dr. Hsai sat there silently, his eyes closed. Then he looked up and said, “I will immediately take steps to revive the ship’s best psychiatrists. If your suspicions are even remotely close to the truth, this is an emergency situation There is no need to wait for the Chairman’s approval under these circumstances “

  “The only trouble is,” Val said, “that Dan might already be dead “

  (13)

  Dan knew it was a nightmare, yet it still had him terrified.

  He was running, or trying to. He seemed to be caught in some thick syrupy liquid that made all his motions languidly slow. Something was roaring behind him, getting louder, catching up to him. When he tried to look over his shoulder, all he could see was a giant pair of hands reaching for him.

  He tried to run faster, but couldn’t. The roaring became ear-shattering. Lightning crashed and the hands grabbed at him, caught him, bore him down, pushed him under, beat at him, pummeled him. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t even scream—

  He woke up, wide-eyed and drenched with sweat, trembling. Half a meter above his face was the curving ceiling of the underground shelter. In the bunk below him he could hear Cranston snoring lightly. The hum of electrical machinery was the only other sound,‘beside his own throbbing pulsebeat.

  The wind had died!

  Dan pushed himself up to a sitting position, and his back muscles screamed agony. For a moment he was dizzy. Forcing both the pain and faintness down, he swung his legs slowly over the edge of the bunk and slid down to the plastic flooring. The jolt when his feet hit the floor senta fresh spark of pain shooting through him.

  He shook Cranston awake.

  “Huh … whuzzit…”

  “I think the storm’s over,” Dan said. “You try the radio while I get suited up.”

  Cranston swung out of the bunk slowly. Fora long moment he sat on its edge, head drooping tired ly.

  “What… how… what time’s it?”

  Dan glanced at his wristwatch. It was set on ship time. “We must’ve slept more than twelve hours. Come on, try the radio.”

  “How d’you feel?” Cranston asked as he pulled himself to his feet.

  “Black and blue all over. Otherwise okay.”

  “It’s this damned gravity.”

  Cranston shuffled over to the little desk that bore the communications transceiver, minus viewscreen. As he flicked it on and started talking into the speaker, Dan pulled on the one usable pressure suit they had left.

  By the time Dan was checking the seal of his helmet, he could hear Cranston saying, “No use. Can’t get through to them. No answer.”

  “Interference from the storm?”

  The computerman shook his head. “Not much static. Just silence. I don’t think this set has enough muscle to reach the ship without the main antenna and the amplifier up in the tent.”

  Dan said nothing. He clumped to the airlock, stepped through it, and shut the inner hatch. The airlock cycled through, pumping all its air into storage tanks, then flashed the green “all clear” light.

  Dan reached up and unsealed the outer hatch. He pushed it upward, and a fine powder of yellowish sand and ash trickled down onto his faceplate.

  Stepping up the rungs of the metal ladder set into the airlock’s wall, Dan pushed the outside hatch all the way open and stuck his head up above the opening.

  The camp looked as if it had been bombed. The tent was completely gone, not a shred of it left. The desks and consoles and other gear from inside the tent were nowhere in sight, either. Nothing there but the plastisteel foundation, and even that was buried under several centimeters of powdery sand and ash.

  The sky overhead was gray now, sullen-looking. The clouds were high, but moving with great speed. Dan turned stiffly with the suit and tried to look in all directions. No break in the clouds anywhere: gray from horizon to horizon.

  The refinery was a complete shambles. The big cylinders and spheres were cracked open, blackened and burned. Not much to salvage from it, Dan realized. He knew he should have been glad just to be alive, but somehow he felt terribly dejected, defeated, let down.

  The communications mast was gone, of course. So were most of the trees. The grass was still there, though, poking through the sand and ash, its cheerful yellow strangely incongruous in the somber scene of destruction.

  Dan stepped down the ladder again, lowering the hatch after him. He sealed it, set the airlock to recycling again; the native sulfurous air was pumped outside, the breathable air that had been stored away hissed out of the tanks and filled the tiny airlock once again. When the light flashed green, Dan opened the inner hatch and stepped back into the main area of the shelter.

  He took off his helmet. It felt as if it weighed a ton.

  Cranston was still seated in front of the radio. “No response. We can’t reach them.”

  “They can’t see us, either,” Dan said grimly. “Cloud deck’s still covering us.”

  “Isn’t there any way we can tell them we’re here? Can’t they spot us with radar or infrared or something?”

  Dan plopped on the lower bunk and reached for the zips on his suit legs. “Radar won’t tell them if we’re alive or not. But if we could make a big enough hot spot, IR might pick it up—”

  “A hot spot. With what?”

  Dan shrugged. “I don’t think we’ve got anything bigger than the suit lasers. That won’t do.”

  “Uhmm…” Cranston started to look concerned. “How much air and water do we have?”

  “We pull our oxygen out of the planet’s air,” Dan answered. “Clean out the sulfur and other gunk so we ca.n breathe it. That’s not problem. Water, though … our water purification gear was all topside. It’s gone—There’s probably not more than a couple days’ worth in here.”

  “And how long will the clouds cover us?”

  Dan shrugged. “Maybe we ought to try to figure out how to make a big hot spot.”

  Larry was pacing back and forth along the bridge, followed by Joe Haller and Guido Estelella. The technicians working the various consoles kept their faces turned very carefully to their work.

  “But you can’t let them sit down there without even trying to pick them up!” Haller was shouting.

  Larry whirled and pointed to one of the viewscreens. It showed nothing but gray cloud scudding across the planet’s face.

  “There’s absolutely no evidence that they’re still alive,” he snapped back, lower-keyed but still with an edge of anger to his voice. “You want me to risk our only qualified pilot and our only landing shuttle on the chance that they might have survived the storm?”

  “Hell yes!”

  “I’m willing to try it,” Estelella said.

  Larry shook his head. “We have no idea of what conditions are like under those clouds. The whole surface could be buried under tons of volcanic ash.”

  “We have other landing shuttles,” Haller insisted. “You can order them taken out of the storage depot and reassembled.”

  “Can I replace our one qualified astronaut?” Larry demanded.

  “But he’s volunteered to go!”

  “No.” Larry pushed p
ast Haller and started pacing the bridge again.

  Haller followed doggedly. “You’re killing two men!”

  “They’re already dead,” Larry said. “We’d have heard from them by now if they were still alive. The storm’s been over nearly two days.”

  “Their communications gear might’ve been damaged. They could be hurt, trapped in wreckage…anything.”

  Larry countered, “Nothing survived that storm. You saw the electrical signals we were getting from the lightning. Like a continuous sheet of flame. The wind speeds were right off the scale of our meteorological instruments. Those clouds are still moving at fifty kilometers an hour. How do we know what the wind and weather conditions are like under the clouds?”

  Haller’s shoulders slumped. “How much longer are the clouds suppose^) to last?”

  “Nobody knows,” Larry said. “They’re coming from the chain of volcanoes on the other side of the sea. It might end in a few hours or a few weeks. Nobody knows.”

  “So we’re just going to sit here and wait.”

  “That’s all we can do.”

  Haller looked as if he wanted to say something more, but instead he turned abruptly away from Larry and marched off the bridge. Estelella stood there for a puzzled moment, then, with a shrug, he walked off too.

  Larry turned to the viewscreens showing the planet’s surface. Gray clouds covered almost everything. He shook his head. They’re dead, he told himself. They must be dead.

  But if they’re not, he knew, you’re killing them.

  Abruptly, he went over to one of the technicians and said; “I’m leaving the bridge. Take over for me.”

  The girl looked up at him, surprised, “Where will you be?”

  “You can reach me on the intercom. Page me, if you need me.”

  Larry ducked through the doorway into the corridor that connected to his office. He hesitated for just a moment, then entered the compartment. Without bothering to slide the door shut, he went to the phone and punched it on savagely.

  “Get Valery Loring here, right away.”

  The computer’s voice said calmly, “Working.”

  Valery appeared at his door ten agonized minutes later.