The Exiles Trilogy

by Ben Bova

  “Wrong!” Dan snapped. “Can’t you see it’s wrong? This is where we have to stay. Trying to push farther is just going to kill

  everybody. Is that what you want?”

  “We’ve had this argument before, Dan.”

  “You’re still not convinced?”

  “This planet is a killer,” Larry said. “We can alter the next generation or two or even three… but I still don’t think they’ll be able to survive on Femina. The Planet’s deadly: Guido picked a good name for it.”

  Dan started to answer, but Larry went on, “It’s a huge universe out there. It would be criminal of us to settle for this planet when there’ve got to be better worlds for us. Somewhere. There’s got to be.”

  “We’ll see,” Dan said, his voice shaking. “We’ll see. And soon.”

  Midnight.

  There was no way to distinguish time on the bridge. Along the ship’s corridors and tubes, in the rec areas and cafeteria, the overhead lighting was dimmed during the night shifts. But in the working spaces, such as the bridge, everything looked the same whether it was midnight or noon. Only the people working changed. And the twenty-four hour clocks.

  Larry stood behind the launch monitor, watching over his shoulders the viewscreens that showed the planet below them and the shuttle rocket sitting on the ship’s launching platform, up near the hub.

  The campsite was in daylight now; under the highest magnification of the observation scopes, Larry could see a blackened smudge where the camp had been.

  He turned to the screen that showed the shuttle craft. He could make out the two pressure-suited men sitting side by side in the pilot’s bubble. Estelella’s voice was checking off the countdown routine:

  “Internal power on.”

  “… nine, eight, seven…”

  “Rockets armed and ready for ignition.”

  “… five, four…”

  “Tracking and telemetry on,” said a technician.

  “.. .two, one, zero”

  The electric catapult slid the shuttle craft out past the open airlock hatch. Larry watched the viewscreen. It showed the

  shuttle dwindling, dwindling, becoming one more speck among the endless stars.

  “Rocket ignition,” came Estelella’s voice.

  The speck blossomed briefly into a glow of light. Then even that disappeared.

  “Tracking on the observation telescope,” said a tech.

  Larry turned toward the sound of her voice. The main screen on her console showed the shuttle craft, a tiny red-glowing meteor streaking across the broad golden landscape of the planet.

  “Telemetry and voice communications strong and clear.”

  Larry pressed the shoulder of the tech he was standing behind. “I’m going to my quarters to grab some sleep. Call me when they’ve landed.”

  He stepped out of the glare and bustle of the bridge, into the soft shadowy nighttime lighting of the corridors. His own room was dark. He didn’t bother turning on a light, just slouched onto the bunk and waited.

  The phone chimed. He touched the VOICE ONLY button.

  “Yes?”

  “They’ve landed. Estelella reports all okay, they’re getting out of the shuttle and starting to look around.”

  “Thank you.”

  Larry sat on the bunk, motionless for a long while. Then he turned to the phone again. “Valery Loring, please.”

  A pause. Of course. She’s asleep by now.

  Mrs. Loring’s face appeared on the viewscreen. “Larry, is that you? I can hardly see you. Don’t you have any lights on?”

  “I’m sorry to wake you,” he said. “Is Val there?”

  “I wasn’t asleep,” she said. “Haven’t been sleeping well lately…” Her voice trailed off. Then, “Valery’s up in the observatory. She’s been keeping very odd hours lately.”

  “Oh, All right. Thank you. I’ll call her there.”

  But he knew he wasn’t going to call her on the phone. He had to go up there and see her, face to face.

  Two more nights, Valery was thinking. Two more nights, and then on the third morning the Council meets. Then I’ll have to tell them all the truth.

  Each night for the past week she had been staying up in the observatory, sitting at the desk her father had used. The myriads of stars sprinkled across the blackness outside seemed to make the place feel colder, lonelier. Their light brought no warmth. The huge bulk of the planet was out of sight, down below the floor of the observatory, on the other side of the ship.

  The big spidery telescope bulked blackly against the stars, and the smaller pieces of equipment made a hodgepodge of shadows. Black on black. Dark and darker. Only the little glowlights from the computer terminal and the viewscreens lit Val’s post.

  She tried to stay awake through each night, of course. She actually got quite a bit of work done. But for long stretches of the night the telescopes and cameras and other instruments were doing their tasks and there was almost nothing for her to do. Except think. And—too often—drift into sleep, lulled by the weightlessness of the observatory and the silence.

  Click!

  She tensed instantly.

  The sound of a hatch opening. Val strained her eyes, but could see nothing in the darkness. There were several hatches leading into the observatory, and with the tubes on nighttime lights, there wouldn’t be much of a glow to see when one of them was opened.

  Padding footsteps. Slippered feet walking softly across the observatory floor.

  “Who’s there?” she called.

  No answer.

  Dan went out on the shuttle, she knew.

  “Larry, it’s you, isn’t it?”

  His lean dark form seemed to coalesce out of the shadows. “Yes,” he said quietly, not five meters away from her. “It’s me.”

  Her pulse was racing. “Oh… you scared me… a little.”

  “I didn’t mean to.”

  He was close enough now for her to see his face in the glow of the desk lights. He looked infinitely weary. He pulled up a chair and floated softly onto it. Valery noticed that he didn’t snap on the zero-g restraining belt. As calmly and unhurriedly as she could, she undipped her own lap belt. It clicked loudly and snapped back into its resting sockets.

  “Why… what brings you up here?” she asked.

  For a moment he didn’t answer, merely stared at her. “I just had to talk to somebody,” he said at last. “I… lately, I’ve had the feeling that I’m completely alone. Totally cut off from everybody. No friends, nobody.”

  “I’m still your friend, Larry,” she said softly.

  “It’s hard for us to be friends, Val. After everything that’s happened… we can’t be friends. Not really.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He seemed miserable. “Can’t you see? When you tell the Council that you haven’t been able to find an Earthlike plar.et, they’re going to vote to stay here. They’ll elect Dan Chairman and the geneticists will be put to work preparing the next generation of children for that deathworld down there. Your children, Val! Yours and Dan’s. They’ll be monsters. Sulfur-breathing, gorilla-sized monsters.”

  She had to struggle to keep her voice from shaking. “But what else can we do?”

  “We’ve got to keep on going. Got to find an Earthlike planet somewhere. In this whole universe…”

  “There might not be any,” Valery said. “Maybe Earth is a unique place. Why should we expect anything closer to Earth conditions than the planet down below us?”

  Larry didn’t answer. He just sat there and lifted his head back, gazing up at the stars that crowded all around.

  “I can see why you like it up here,” he said. “It’s peaceful here. Like being alone in the universe… floating free among the stars. It wouldn’t be a bad way to die, just floating out there. Nocares, no weight, just out there in the universe, without the ship to hem you in.”

  “Wh… what do you mean?”

  He snapped his attention back to her. Valer
y felt a chill as his ice-blue eyes focused on her.

  “You got Dr. Hsai to start revival procedures on a team of psychiatrists,” Larry said flatly.

  “I… we talked about it, yes…”

  “Why?” Larry asked, rising up from his chair like a ghost. “I told Hsai it wasn’t necessary. Why did you get him to countermand my decision?”

  “He thought it would be best,” Valery said, her voice going high, the words coming out fast. “I didn’t tell him to do it; he decided for himself.”

  “He didn’t decide until after you talked to him.” He was standing over her now, feet barely touching the floor, looming over her.

  Valery got up from her chair, bumping Larry slightly so that he bobbed away gently.

  “Larry… you and Dan are both certain that there’s a madman aboard this ship. A killer. You think it’s Dan and he thinks it’s you.”

  “So?”

  Carefully, Val edged over in front of the desk and sat on it. Her feet no longer touched the floor. She gripped the edge of the desk with both hands.

  “So shouldn’t we have a psychiatrist on hand to examine him? And—and you?”

  “Me? Why me? I’m not the killer.”

  Suddenly Val didn’t know how to say what she knew had to be sajd. She plunged ahead anyway.

  “Larry—have you ever thought that maybe, if Dan is the killer, he doesn’t know it?”

  “Huh?”

  “He might be doing things that his conscious mind isn’t aware of. And, besides, he hasn’t killed anybody. Not really.”

  “He tried to kill your father. And the fire in the cryonics unit might have been deliberately set. That’s still a possibility.”

  “All right,” Valery said, inching the top desk drawer open with her right hand. “Even if he did… maybe he doesn’t know about it. He might be sick, insane.”

  “That doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous.”

  “I know,” Val agreed. “But—you can understand that he might be doing all these things without being consciously aware of it.”

  Looking puzzled now, Larry said, “Yes… I guess that’s possible.”

  Val held her Nbreath for an instant, then blurted, “Then you can see that it might be you who’s doing it! You could be the sick one and not even know it!”

  “Whhaaat?”

  Larry’s eyes went wide with shock. He seemed to stagger back.

  “No!” he roared. “That can’t be.”

  Tears were springing up in Val’s eyes, and her vision was getting blurry. “Larry, it could be. It could be!”

  “You’re wrong. That’s crazy… it’s not me___”

  Her hand closed on the cold hard metal she was seeking.

  “Why did you come up here tonight?” Val asked. “Why did you come up here the night my father was nearly killed?”

  “No!” he shouted again, and started for her.

  Valery pulled the sonic stunner out of the desk drawer and fired point-blank. The gun made a barely-audible popping sound. But Larry’s body stiffened, his eyes glazed, his arms froze outstretched barely a few centimeters from her. He didn’t fall, he couldn’t in zero-gravity. He merely hung there, unconscious.

  Val found that her hands were shaking wildly now, and she was sobbing.

  Then:

  “Very neat work. The two of you are being very cooperative.”

  Dan Christopher stepped out of the shadows from beyond the desk, grinning.

  (15)

  Valery blinked back her tears.

  “Dan! But I thought you…”

  He was still some distance away from the desk, just close enough to be seen as a tall, lithe shadow. “That was Joe Haller on the shuttle. I asked him to take my place at the last minute.”

  “What… what are you doing here?”

  “The same thing I tried to do when your father first started this nonsense of looking for another planet”

  Val felt completely confused. “But… I thought…”

  Dan laughed. “You made just about every mistake you could make, Val. You thought it was Larry, when all along it’s been me.”

  “You’re the madman?” The question popped out of her involuntarily.

  Still hovering off near the shadows, Dan said grimly, “Wrong again. I’m not insane. It’s not insanity when you fight to protect yourself from your so-called friends. Not when they’re laughing at you behind your back. Plotting against you. Taking everything away from you.”

  “I… never laughed at you, Dan.”

  “Not much.” His voice was getting hard, steel-edged. “You talked Larry into the Chairmanship. You probably got him to kill my father. Don’t tell me the two of you weren’t laughing at me.”

  “Dan, you’re wrong…can’t you see?”

  “I see perfectly. I’ve seen it all along. You kill my father. While I’m mourning him, Larry take over the Chairmanship and you takes over Larry. Then the two of you scheme to move the

  ship on to another planet, another star. Not where we’re supposed to go, where we’re destined to go. Oh no! You’ve got to have your way in everything, don’t you?”

  Valery realized she still held the stunner in her hand. “Dan, it isn’t like that at all.”

  “You even got your father to help you, didn’t you?” he went on. “Searching for other planets. I fixed him. But you wouldn’t

  let it rest there. Now I’ve got to take care of you, too___” His voice seemed to break.

  “Dan? Dan, please.”

  “No,” he said, almost sobbing. “Val, I loved you. I would have given my life for you. But you’ve always been against me. You’ve always loved Larry better than me. You’ve all been against me, all along.”

  “Dan, you’re wrong. Come here,” she gripped the stunner firmly, “and let me prove how wrong you are.”

  “Sure, I’ll come to you.” His voice grew stronger. “As soon as you toss that popgun away.”

  Valery brought it up to fire, but Dan melted into the shadows before she could pull the trigger.

  “It’s a very short-range weapon,” she heard his voice call to her, echoing mockingly. “And very directional. Now this laser I borrowed from the pressure suit is only a working tool… but at this distance it can burn your arm off the shoulder.”

  A blood-red pencil-beam of energy shot past Valery’s ear.

  She screamed and jumped, hitting the edge of the desk with her legs.

  “The next one won’t miss, Val. Throw your gun away.”

  She tossed it from her. The gun went spinning weightlessly into the darkness.

  Dan stepped closer, close enough for her to see his face in the faint glow of the desk lights. He didn’t look wild-eyed or twisted at all. He seemed perfectly at ease, calmer than usual. Serene.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “What can I do?” he shot back. “You’ve left me no alternative. For a while, I tried to figure out some way of getting you to agree to cryosleep, so I wouldn’t have to kill you. But that’s not possible. Not now.”

  “Dan, you’ve got to stop. You can’t kill everyone that…”

  “Everyone that gets in my way? Everyone who takes what’s

  rightfully mine? Yes, I can kill them all. You just watch me do it.”

  “You’re sick!”

  “Sick of being cheated by those who claim they love me.” He gestured with the laser pistol. “Erase all your data tapes.”

  “I…” Val’s mind was racing. “If I do, will you let me live?”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “I’ll go into cryosleep. You can take me down there yourself. Right away.”

  He hesitated a moment. “Erase the tapes.”

  She turned and flicked her fingers over the keyboard. Lights on the computer terminal’s face flickered on and off.

  Turning back to Dan she said, “Well? You don’t have to kill anyone.”

  Dan glanced at Larry’s inert form. “You want me to let him be fro
zen, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “So the two of you can awake together? Never,” Dan said firmly. “He killed my father.”

  “No one killed your father,” Valery said, her voice rising. “It was an accident.”

  “Don’t argue with me!” he shouted. “He killed my father and I’m going to kill him. He’s always been after everything that’s mine. Now he’s going to pay for it.”

  “Then you’ll have to kill me too!” Val shouted back.

  He pointed the gun at her. Val slid sideways, away from the computer terminal. “Look!” she yelled. “It’s not on erase, it’s on record] And I put the intercom on, too. Everything you’ve said for the past minute or two is being broadcast all over the ship. There must be an emergency crew heading up here right now!”

  “You…” Now Dan’s eyes glittered dangerously, and his breath became ragged, gulping.

  “It won’t do you any good to kill us, Dan,” Val said as calmly as she could manage. “Everyone knows now. Just give up and let the medics take care of you.”

  With a bellowing roar, Dan fired the laser into the computer terminal. It exploded in a shower of sparks. Valery leaped upward as the desk lights blanked out, then angled to one side and desperately tried to put as much distance between herself and Dan as she could.

  “I’ll get you!” He was screaming. “Both of you! All of you!”

  Larry! Somewhere in the vast, completely darkened chamber, Larry’s unconscious body floated. If Dan found him first… Valery saw a gaunt framework of shadows moving up toward her. The main telescope. She put out both hands and grabbed at one of the girders, slowing her impact.

  Hanging there weightlessly, she peered into the darkness, letting her eyes adjust to the dim starlight. There. A body floating silently off in the darkness. Is it Larry, or a trick of Dan’s?

  The click and creak of a hatch opening made her turn her attention toward the sound. A shaft of light flickered through the observatory, and Valery caught the shadow of Dan’s form squeezing down through the hatch, then slamming it shut behind him.

  She launched herself across the room toward Larry. Another hatch opened, off to the other side of the observatory, and a man’s voice called out:

  “Miss Loring, are you all right?”

  “I’m here! Get some lights and help me. Larry Belsen’s unconscious.”