by Ben Bova
The ship was never designed to function for so long without complete overhaul and repair. Although the ancient generations had been very wise, still they could not keep the ship’s machinery from slowly deteriorating.
As the ship cruised blindly through the depths of interstellar space, seeking the unknown world that was exactly like Earth, the machines that kept the people alive began to break down and die.
Whole sections of the ship became unlivable. The sections that remained intact were quickly overcrowded with too many people. Tempers flared. Violence erupted. And for generations the people of the ship lived in separate warring groups, each hating all the others, learning to fear strangers, to fight, to kill.
The cycle grew tighter and tighter. As more years passed, more and more of the ship’s complex machinery broke down. It became a greater struggle to survive, to keep the air pumps working and the farm tanks productive. Bands of marauding killers skulked through the tube-tunnels, breaking into living areas to steal and murder.
“The most ironic part of all,” Jerlet would say each night to Linc, “was that there was a scientific renaissance going on up here at the same time.”
In the hub of the ship a few dozen people had established themselves in some degree of comfort. They had control of the ship’s main power generators, and could turn off the supply of electricity—which meant warmth, air, life—to any group that displeased them. They tried to put an end to the roving bands of looters, but were never successful at it. On the other hand, the looters never tried to harm them.
The men and women who lived in the hub were scientists. Never more than a handful, they still managed to maintain themselves in relative peace.
“The things they learned!” Jerlet would always shake his head at the thought.
Their work in genetics reached the stage of perfection where they could, if they wanted to, create perfectly normal human children in their lab. The physicists probed deeply into the relationship of matter to energy, in an attempt to find a way to break free of the confines of the dying ship.
“They learned how to turn solid objects into a beam of energy, and then reassemble them back into solid objects again, the way they were when they started,” Jerlet said. “But it took too much power for anything we really needed. We couldn’t get a rat’s whisker off the ship and back to Earth. But when we get close enough to Beryl’s surface, you’ll be able to whisk yourself down to the planet’s surface in an eyeblink.”
“But us, the kids down in the Living Wheel,” Linc always asked. “How did we come about? Why did you make us?”
And Jerlet would smile.
“We finally found a star like the Sun, and it had a few planets around it, although we were still too far away to see if any of the planets were truly like Earth. But we decided to take the risk. We had to…we knew the ship couldn’t last much longer, no matter what we did.
“I was getting to be middle-aged when we started the program to create you in the genetics lab. A hundred perfect specimens, as physically strong and mentally bright as we could produce. A hundred supermen and women.
“Well, we did it. And we set you up in the living section down in the one g wheel, next to the bridge. Six of us stayed with you the first few years, to get you started right. The servomechs did most of the dirty work, of course. But still… it was damned noisy down there!
“Around the time you were learning to walk, some marauders got to us. We protected you kids, but it cost us the lives of two people. One of them was my wife___”
Linc knew that a wife was a fully-grown girl.
“None of us could live indefinitely in a one g environment. We had all spent too much of our lives up here, in zerog. I stayed the longest, and I worked damned hard to make sure that all the machines and servomechs would work right and take care of you until you were old enough to take care of yourselves. Meanwhile, the rest of my friends systematically finished off all the marauders on the ship. We weren’t going to let them raid you again.”
“And then you left us on our own?”
Jerlet would nod his head sadly. “Had to. Gravity got to my heart. I had to come back up here. Then, while you pups were still growing up, the rest of my friends died off, most of them in an accident down on the bridge. I’m the last one left.”
Linc heard the story many times. But one particular night, as Jerlet wound up the tale, Linc said brightly:
“Well, at least you’ll be able to come with us to the new world… if the ship makes it there.”
Jerlet fixed him with a stern gaze. “It’s up to you to make sure this bucket limps into orbit around Beryl. That’s what I’m training you for, Linc. I spent a lot of years waiting for you kids to grow up and come up here and find me. You’ve got to keep this ship going until all you kids are safely transferred to the planet’s surface.”
For several minutes neither of them said a word. Finally, Linc nodded solemnly and said, “I’ll do it. I’ll get us all to Beryl if I have to go outside the ship and push it with my bare hands.”
Jerlet laughed. “That’d be something to see!”
“I’ll get us there. All of us. And that includes you.”
But the old man slowly shook his head. “No, not me. I can’t leave this zero g environment. My heart would go poof if I even tried to walk a few levels down the tube-tunnel, where the gravity starts to build up.”
Linc said, “No… we’ll find a way… something___”
“Listen, son,” Jerlet said calmly. “I’m an old man. I might not even make it to the time when we go into Orbit around Beryl. That’s why I’m pushing you so hard. It’s all on your shoulders. Linc. You’re the difference between life and death for all your friends.”
Book Two
(11)
The inflated pressure suit stood before Linc like a live human being. But its “face”—the visor of its helmet—was blank and empty. Linc tested each joint for air leaks: ankles, knees, hips, wrists, shoulders. All okay.
He started to run his pressure sensor around the neck seal, where the bulbous helmet connected with the blue fabric of the suit. He smiled as he thought:
A few months ago I would have thought this was an evil spirit or a ghost… it would have scared me out of my skin.
Satisfied that the suit was airtight, Linc touched a stud on the suit’s belt, and the air sighed back into the tanks on the suit’s back. The suit began to collapse, sag at the knees and shoulders, held up only because the air tanks were fastened to the workroom’s bulkhead wall.
Linc watched the suit deflate and found himself thinking of Jerlet. He’s been sagging himself lately. Losing weight. Slowing down.
H e turned to the tiny communicator screen mounted atop the workbench at his right, and touched the red button.
“Hello…Jerlet. I’ve finished with the suit.”
The old man’s face appeared on the miniature screen. It looked more haggard than ever, as if he hadn’t slept all night.
“Good,” he rumbled. “Come on up to the observatory. Got some good news.”
Linc made his way out of the workroom, down the short corridor, and into the airlock. He moved in the ultralow gravity without even thinking about it now, and when he floated up into the vast darkened dome of the observatory he no longer
panicked at the sight of the universe stretching all around him.
But he still thrilled at it.
The yellow sun was bright enough to make the metal framework of the main telescope glint and glisten with headlights. Jerlet sat at the observer’s desk, wrapped in an electrically-heated safety suit. But it’s not that cold in here. Linc told himself.
Obviously Jerlet felt differently. His fingers were shaking slightly as he worked the keyboard that controlled the telescope and other instruments.
Linc floated lightly to the desk and touched his slippered feet down next to Jerlet’s chair. The old man looked up at him and smiled tiredly. His face was like a picture Linc had seen of old Earth: a beautif
ul river winding through a valley of scarred, ragged hills and bare, stubbly ground.
“Finally got the spectral analyzer working,” Jerlet muttered without preamble. “Took all night, but I did it.”
“You ought to get more rest,” Linc said.
The old man shook his head. “Rest when we get there. Here…look at this.”
He touched a few buttons and a view of Beryl flashed onto the main desk-top screen. It was blue-green and beautiful, a lovely gibbous crescent hanging in space, flecked with white clouds, topped by a polar cap of dazzling white.
“Now watch—” Jerlet touched more buttons.
The picture disappeared, to be replaced by a strange glow of colors that ranged from violet to deepest red. Squinting at the unfamiliar sight, Linc saw that there were hundreds of black Lincs scratched vertically across the band of colors.
“That’s a spectrogram of the planet,” Jerlet said. “A sort of fingerprint of Beryl.”
“Fingerprint?” Linc asked.
Jerlet scratched at his craggy face. “That’s right, you don’t know what fingerprints are. Well… what’s on the agenda for lunch?”
“We’re supposed to go over the route I take to get back to the Living Wheel.”
“H’mm. And dinner?”
“Nothing yet.” He and Jerlet had a set routine foreach meal. If Linr had any questions that required a lengthy explanation,
Jerlet used,mealtime to explain them.
“Okay, dinner. The subject will be fingerprints. Might even tell you about retinal patterns and voice prints.”
Linc nodded. He didn’t understand, but he knew that Jerlet would explain.
“Now, about this spectrogram,” the old man resumed. “It tells us what the air on Beryl is made of… what elements and compounds are in the air.”
Curiosity knit Linc’s brow. “How’s it do that?”
Jerlet smiled again. Patiently he explained how the light from the planet is split into a rainbow pattern of colors by the spectrograph’s prisms; how the spectrograph is fitted into the telescope; how each element and compound leaves its own distinctive telltale mark on the rainbow pattern of Beryl’s spectrum.
Linc listened and learned. Usually, he only had to hear things once to remember them permanently.
“… And here,” Jerlet said, his rough voice trembling with excitement, “is the computer’s analysis, together with a reference to old Earth’s atmospheric composition.”
He touched a button, and the viewscreen showed:
ATMOSPHERIC CONSTITUENTS
BERYL EARTH
Nitrogen 77.23% Nitrogen 78.09%
Oxygen 20.44% Oxygen 20.95%
Argon 1.0I% Argon 0.93%
Carbon Dioxide 0.72% Carbon Dioxide 0.03%
Water Vapor: variable Water Vapor: variable, up to 1.8% abs. up to 1.5% abs.
Linc studied the numbers for a few moments. Then he looked back at Jerlet.
“It’s almost the same as Earth… but not exactly.” “Close enough to be a twin,” Jerlet boomed. “And as close as any planet’s going to be. A smidge less oxygen and more carbon dioxide, but that could be because the planet’s a bit newer than Earth. There’s chlorophyll all over the place, lots of it. That means green plants, just like Earth.”
“We can live there,” Linc said.
Jerlet pumped his shaggy head up and down. His mouth was trying to form a word, but nothing came out for several seconds. Finally he gulped a strangled, “Yes, you can live there.”
Linc saw that there were tears in his eyes.
“I’ll have to tell the other kids about it,” Linc said. “They’ll be terrified by Baryta. They all think that the yellow sun is going to swallow us… burn us.”
“I know,” said Jerlet.
Linc went on, “I ought to get back to them as soon as I can. They’ve got to know about Beryl. I’ve got to stop them from being afraid.”
Jerlet nodded wearily.
“If they think that we’re all going to die, there’s no telling what they’ll do___”
“All right!” Jerlet slammed his heavy hand on the desk top. It startled Linc, made him jump and drift away a few meters, weightlessly.
“I know you’ve got to get back to them, dammit.” In the golden light of Baryta the old man’s paunchy body glowed in radiance, his wild hair looked like a crazy halo. “I know you’ve got to go back. I… it’s just that… I don’t want to be alone anymore. I want you to stay here, with me.”
Linc reached up for a handhold on the telescope frame and pushed back toward Jerlet.
“But I’ve got to go back,” he said. “The bridge—”
“I know,” Jerlet grumbled. His face scowled. “But I don’t have to like it! There’s nothing in the laws of thermodynamics that says I have to like the idea.”
Linc felt the air easing out of his lungs. He had been so tense that he had been holding his breath. But now Jerlet was grumbling in his usual way, and Linc could let himself grin. It would be all right. He would go back. Jerlet wouldn’t try to keep him here.
The rest of the day went normally. Jerlet stayed in the observatory, studying Beryl. Linc went down to the workshop and studied the computer’s memory tapes for information on repairing the instruments on the ship’s bridge.
That’s going to be the toughest part of the job, he told himself. Clearing the dead crew out of the bridge and getting the controls working again. Despite himself, he shuddered.
At dinner that evening Jerlet launched into a long explanation of fingerprints, retinal patterns, voice prints, and other aspects of detective work.
Linc felt confused. “But why bother with all that? Everybody knew everybody else, didn’t they? Why couldn’t they just ask who a person was?”
Jerlet guffawed, stuffed a slice of synthetic steak into his mouth, and then began to explain about crime and police work. By the time dessert was finished and the dishes flashed into the recycler. Linc was asking:
“Okay, but who figured out this business of fingerprinting? Kirchhoff and Bunsen?”
Jerlet slapped a palm to his forehead. “No, no! They worked out the principles of spectroscopy. The fingerprint technique was discovered by some policeman or detective or somebody like that. An Englishman named Holmes, I think. It’s in the computer’s memory banks somewhere.”
Linc looked down at his fingertips and saw the swirling patterns of fine Lincs there. Then he looked up, Jerlet’s face was dead white. Veins were throbbing blue in his forehead. Cords in his neck strained.
“What’s wrong?”
“Ahhrg… hurts,” Jerlet gasped. “Must’ve eaten… too much… too fast___”
Linc pushed out of his chair and went to the old man.
“No… I’ll be… all right….”
Without bothering to argue, Linc pulled him up from his chair and propped him up with his shoulder. He wanted to carry the old man, but Jerlet’s girth was too wide for Linc’s arms to grasp, even though the minuscule gravity made him light enough to carry.
Linc walked him past his own bedroom and down to the infirmary. Jerlet was panting with pain as Linc eased him down onto the tiny medical center’s only bed.
Turning to the keyboard that stood on a little pedestal beside the bed. Linc switched on the medical sensors. The infirmary was almost completely automatic, and Linc didn’t understand most of its workings, but he watched the wall screen above the bed.
It showed numbers for pulse rate, breathing rate, body temperature, blood pressure—all in red, the color of danger. A green wiggly Linc traced out Jerlet’s heartbeat. It was wildly irregular.
“What should I do?” Linc called out to the automated room. There was no one to hear or answer.
Except Jerlet. “Punch… emergency input… tell medicom-puter… heart attack—”
Linc did that, and the wall screen began printing out instructions for medicine and setting up an automated auxiliary ventricle pump. Linc followed the step-by-step instructions as they came o
n the screen. He lost all track of time, but finally had Jerlet surrounded by gleaming metal and plastic machines that hooked themselves onto his arms and legs.
Still the numbers on the wall screen glared red.
Linc stood by the bed endlessly. Jerlet lost consciousness, regained, drifted away again.
Linc fought to keep his eyes open. The only sounds in the room were the humming electricity of the machines, and a faint chugging sound of a pump.
“Linc—”
He snapped his eyes open. He had fallen asleep standing up.-
Jerlet’s hand was fluttering feebly, trying to reach toward him. But the machines had his arm firmly strapped down.
“Linc—” The old man’s voice was a tortured whisper.
“I’m here. How do you feel? What can I do?”
“Terrible… and nothing. If the machines can’t pull me
through, then it’s over. ‘Bout time, too. I___” His words sank into an indecipherable mumble.
“Don’t die,” Linc begged. “Please don’t die.”
