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The Exiles Trilogy

Page 40

by Ben Bova


  Jerlet’s eyes blinked slowly. “Not my idea, son… .Just glad I held on long enough… to meet you… train you___”

  “No—” Linc felt completely helpless.

  The old man’s voice was getting weaker. Strangely, the harshness of it seemed to melt away as it faded. “Listen___”

  Linc bent his ear to the ragged, ravaged face of Jerlet. His breath was gulping out in great racking sobs that were painful just to hear. His whole bloated body heaved with each shuddering gasp. Linc felt the old man’s breath on his cheek. It smelted of dust.

  “You… you know what… to do… ?”

  Linc nodded. His voice wouldn’t work right. His eyes were blurry.

  “The machines… you’ll fix… what they need… to get to Beryl….”

  “I will.” It wasadistant, tear-choked voice. “I promise. I’ll do it.”

  “Good.” Jerlet’s face relaxed into a faint smile. His body-racking gasps eased. His eyes closed.

  “Please don’t die!”

  Jerlet’s eyes opened so slightly that Linc couldn’t be sure the eyelids moved at all. “You can… make it without me.”

  Linc clenched his fists on the edge of the bed’s spongy surface. “But I don’t want you to die!”

  Jerlet almost laughed. “Told you… wasn’t my idea___I’m no … proud-faced martyr, son. Just get back … away… machinery oughtta start… any second—”

  “Back? Away?”

  “Go on… ‘less you want to… be frozen, too “

  Unconsciously Linc edged slightly away from the bed. He stood there for a moment uncertainly, watching the old man lying there. Jerlet’s eyes closed again. All the numbers and the symbols on the wall screen began blinking red, and a soft but insistent tone started beep-beeping. The words CLINICAL DEATH flashed on and off again so quickly that Linc hardly had time to notice them. Then a piercing whistling note howled out of the machines around Jerlet’s bed, as if in their mechanical way they were bewailing his death—or their inability to save him. Then the screen lettered out in green: CRYOGENIC IMMERSION PROCEDURE.

  As Linc stepped farther away from the bed, the screen flashed numbers and graphs so quickly that only a machine could read them. The shining metal things around Jerlet’s bed began to hum louder, vibrate, and move back. Linc watched, frozen in fascination, as Jerlet’s entire bed sank down slowly into the floor. The machines went silent and still as the bed slowly receded through a trapdoor. As Linc stepped up for a closer look, the bed disappeared entirely and the trapdoor slid shut once again. A whisp of white steamy vapordrifted up just before’ it closed completely.

  The machines rolled silently back to their niches in the room’s bare white walls. The viewscreen went blank.

  “Cryogenic immersion,” Linc muttered to himself. His mind started working actively again. “He had this all set up for himself. The machines are going to freeze him, so that he can be revived and made healthy again someday.”

  Even though Linc knew that Jerlet was dead in every sense of the word, that he would never see the old man again because even if he were revived someday it would be so far in the future that Linc would never live to see it, even though he realized all this. Linc somehow felt better.

  “Good-bye old man,” he said to the empty room. “I’ll get them to Beryl for you.”

  (12)

  Despite all his training, despite all he knew, despite Jerlet’s assurances, Linc was tense as he donned the pressure suit.

  It was like being swallowed alive by some monster that was vaguely human in form, but bigger than any man and strangely different. Linc’s nose wrinkled at the odors of machine oil and plastic as he stepped into the suit and eased himself into it.

  And there was another scent now, too. His own clammy sweat. The odor of fear, fear of going into the outer darkness.

  It’s space! he fumed at himself. Nothing but emptiness. Jerlet explained a thousand times. There’s nothing out there to hurt you.

  “If the suit works right,” he answered himself as he lifted the bubble-shaped helmet over his head.

  Just as he had been taught, he sealed the helmet on and then tested all the suit’s seals and equipment. The faint whir of the air fan made Linc feel a little better. So did the slightly stale tang of oxygen.

  Slowly he clumped to the inner hatch of the deadlock. Airlock! he reminded himself. He reached out a heavily-gloved hand for the buttons on the wall that would open the hatch, and stopped.

  “You could stay right here,” he told himself, his voice sounding strangely muffled inside the helmet. “Jerlet left everything in working condition. You could live here in ease and comfort for the rest of your life.”

  Until the ship crashes into Baryta, he answered silently, and everyone dies.

  “What makes you think Magda and the others will believe you? You think Monel’s going to do what you tell him? You think any of them will touch a machine just because you say it’s all right to do it?”

  But Linc knew the answers even before he spoke the questions, li doesn’t matter what they think or do. I’ve got to try.

  His outstretched hand moved the final few centimeters and touched the airlock control button. There was a moment’s hesitation, then the heavy metal hatch slid smoothly aside for him.

  He flicked at the othef buttons, which would set the airlock mechanism on its automatic cycle, then stepped inside the cramped metal chamber. The inner hatch sighed shut. Pumps clattered. Linc couldn’t hear them inside his suit, but he felt their vibrations through the thick metallic soles of his boots. H is pulse throbbed faster and faster as he stood there, waiting.

  The outer hatch slid open. Linc was suddenly standing on the edge of the world, gazing out at endless stars.

  And smiling. All his fears evaporated. It was like being in the observatory. The beauty was overwhelming. The silence and peace of eternity hovered before him, watching gravely, patiently.

  Linc stepped out of the airlock and for the first time saw the ship as it really existed: a huge set of wheels within wheels, starkly lit by the glaring yellow sun that was behind his back. Fat circular wheels, each one bigger than the one before it, stretching away from the central hub where he stood, turning slowly against the background of stars. And connecting them were half a dozen spokes, the tube-tunnels, seen from the outside.

  One of the spokes was lit by a row of winking tiny lights. Jerlet had shown Linc how to turn them on. They were Linc’s guidepath, showing him which tube-tunnel would lead back to the living area in the farthest, largest wheel, where the rest of the people were.

  Linc plodded slowly along the lane of yellow lights, moving carefully inside the bulky pressure suit. He was fully aware that a mistake now—a slip, a stumble—could send him tumbling off the ship, never to return.

  But Jerlet had trained him well. Linc could see that there were footholds and handgrips studding the outer skin of the tube-tunnel. The metallic soles of his boots were slightly magnetized, so that it took a conscious effort to lift a foot off the metal decking. The oxygen he was breathing made him a trifle lightheaded, but he felt safe and warm inside the suit.

  The main trick was to avoid looking out at the stars. After the first few moments of awestruck sightseeing. Linc realized that the ship’s spinning motion made it impossible to stargaze and walk a straight Linc at the same time.

  So, shrugging inside the cumbersome suit, he kept his eyes on the winking yellow lights, on the handgrips and footholds that marked his way back to the Living Wheel.

  Linc had no idea of how much time passed. He was sweating with exertion long before he neared the Living Wheel. He knew that he should feel hungry, because except for sips of water from the tube inside his helmet he had eaten nothing. But his insides were trembling with exertion and excitement. His only hunger was to reach his destination.

  As he neared the outermost wheel, gravity began to make itself felt. The footholds turned into stairs that spiraled around the tube’s outer skin. There was a d
efinite feeling of up and down that grew more certain with each step. Instead of walking along a path, Linc found himself climbing down a spiraling ladder.

  Abruptly, most unexpectedly, he_was there. The last winking yellow light gave way to a circle of tiny blue lights that outLincd the hatch of an airlock.

  Linc stood there for a long moment, his feet magnetically gripping the ladder’s final rung, one hand closed around the last handgrip. He studied the control panel set alongside the hatch. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the stars pinwheeling majestically as the largest of the ship’s wheels turned slowly around the distant hub. He had come a long way.

  With his free hand, Linc pushed the button that opened the hatch. He barely felt the button through the heavy metal mesh of his glove.

  For an eternity, nothing happened. Then the hatch slowly edged outward and to one side. Nothing could be heard in the hard vacuum, but Linc could swear that the hatch creaked as it moved.

  He stepped inside the cramped metal chamber of the airlock, and touched the buttons that would cycle the machinery. What if it doesn’t work? he asked himself in sudden panic. I’ll have to go all the way back to the hub and fight my way down the inside of the tube-tunnel!

  But the machines did their job. The outer hatch slid shut and sealed itself. Air hissed into the chamber. The telltale lights on the control panel flicked from red through amber to green, and the inner hatch sighed open.

  Linc clumped through into the passageway.

  He was home.

  The passageway was empty. It usually is, down at this end, he reminded himself. After all, they call this the deadlock. It’s not a happy place to be.

  He thumped up the passageway, heading for the living quarters. He felt oddly weary and slow, only gradually realizing that here in normal gravity his pressure suit and backpack weighed almost as much as he did himself.

  But he was too eager and excited to take them off.

  He was approaching the farming section when he saw the first people. A group of men were coming out of the big double doors of the farm area.

  Linc wanted to run toward them, but his legs were too tired to make his motion more than a clumsy shamble.

  “Hey… it’s me, Linc!” he shouted and waved both arms at them.

  They froze. Seven of them, sweat-stained and dirty-faced, stopped dead in their tracks and stared at Linc, open-mouthed and wide-eyed.

  “Slav… Cal… it’s me, Linc!”

  Terror twisted their faces. They broke and ran up the corridor, away from Linc, screaming.

  Linc clumped to a stop, laughing. All they see is the suit!

  Slowly he pulled off his gloves and started to undo the neck seal, so that he could remove his helmet and let them see his face.

  They probably couldn’t even hear me, from inside this bowl, he realized.

  Before Linc could get the helmet off, Slav and three others came creeping down the corridor, armed with lengths of pipe. They moved as slowly and quietly as they could, but there was no way for them to hide in the bare corridor. They saw Linc and stopped, crouched, wary, scared.

  Linc held up both hands. Then, realizing that they wouldn’t be able to hear him even if he shouted from inside the helmet, he reached down and touched the radio control studs set into the suit’s waist.

  “I’ve come from Jerlet,” Linc said. The radio unit amplied his voice into a booming, echoing crack of doom. He turned the volume down a little.

  “It’s me, Linc. I’ve come back. Jerlet sent me back to you.”

  One of the farmers dropped his weapon and sank to his knees.

  Slav scowled at him and held his ground. “What kind of monster are you? What have you done with Linc?”

  “Wait,” Linc said.

  He finished undoing the neck seal and lifted the helmet off his head.

  “I’m not a monster at all, Slav,” he called to them in his normal voice. “I’m Linc. I’ve come back to you. Jerlet sent me.”

  Slav and the others fell to their knees.

  It took many minutes for Linc to convince them that he was just as normal and alive as they were, even though he was wearing strange garments.

  The four farmers watched, goggle-eyed with a mixture of fear and fascination, as Linc slid the heavy backpack off his shoulders, unstrapped the support web beneath it, and finally pulled off his cumbersome boots.

  Slav was the first to recover.

  “You… you are Linc!” He slowly got to his feet. The others, behind him, did likewise. A bit shakily, Linc thought.

  “Of course I’m Linc.”

  “But you went away. Monel and the others said you died,” one of the farmers muttered.

  “I didn’t die. Did Magda ever say I was dead?”

  They looked at each other, puzzled, uneasy.

  “I don’t think she ever did,” Slav replied.

  Linc was glad to hear it.

  “I didn’t die,” he said. “I’m as alive and normal as any of you. I found Jerlet. He told me many things, and gave me this suit to protect me so that I could come back to you. And he also gave me good news. The yellow star isn’t going to swallow us. It brings us life, not death.” ‘

  The good news didn’t seem to impress them at all. But at least they didn’t look so frightened.

  Stav walked up to Linc and put out a hand to touch him. He peered closely at Linc’s face. A slow smile unfolded across his broad, stolid face.

  “You really are Linc,”

  “Yes, Stav. It’s good to see you again. Can you take me to Magda?”

  Nodding, Stav answered, “Yes, yes… of course. But I think M onel will be on his way here before we can get to the priestess.”

  Monel did arrive, almost breathless, with four more men behind him. They were all armed with lengths of pipe and knives from the galley.

  Stav and the farmers had picked up the various pieces of Linc’s pressure suit, their faces showing awe more than fear. Linc still wore the main body covering of the suit, and felt slightly ridiculous with his stockinged feet and bare hands poking out of the bulbous blue garment.

  “It is you!” MoneFs tone made it clear that he didn’t want to believe what he was seeing.

  Linc could feel his face harden toward Monel. “That’s right. I’ve come back. Jerlet sent me back to you.”

  “Jerlet? You don’t expect us to believe—”

  “I don’t expect anything from you,” Linc snapped. “I’m here to see Magda. I don’t have time to waste on discussions with you.”

  Monel’s thin face went red. He held up a hand, as if to stop Linc if he should try to move. The guards behind him tensed and gripped their weapons more tightly.

  “You’re not going to see Magda or anyone else until I’m satisfied that you’re no danger to the people—”

  Linc smiled at him, but his words were dead serious: “There’s only one danger to the people, and that’s delay. Jerlet showed me how to save the ship. We’re not going to die; the yellow sun isn’t going to kill us. If we act quickly. There’s a new world waiting for us, if we do the right things to get there.”

  Monel’s chair rolled back a few centimeters, but he insisted, “Jerlet showed you? You mean you talked with Jerlet?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then why didn’t he come with you?”

  “He died—”

  A shock wave went through them. Linc could feel it.

  “Died?”

  “Jerlet is dead?”

  “Yes,” Linc said. “But he’ll come back again someday. When we’ve reached the new world and learned how to live on it. Probably not in our lifetime, but our children will see him when he returns.”

  Even Monel was visibly shaken by Linc’s words. “I don’t understand….” His voice was almost a whisper.

  “I know,” Linc said. “That’s why I have to see Magda. She’ll know what to do.”

  M onel pursed his lips, thinking. The others—the farmers and Monel’s guards—clus
tered around Linc wordlessly. One of the farmers reached out and touched the rubberized fabric of Linc’s pressure suit.

  “We’re wasting time,” Linc said to Monel. “I’ve got to see Magda.”

  He started striding down the corridor, and the others hesitated only a moment. The farmers fell into step behind Linc. Monel’s guards shifted uneasily, eyed their sallow little leader, then looked toward Linc and the farmers.

  “Don’t just stand there!” Monel snapped at them. “Get me up there with him.”

  If anything, Magda was even more beautiful than Linc remembered her. She stood in the center of her tiny compartment, her dark eyes deep and somber, her finely-drawn face utterly serious, every Linc of her body held with regal pride.

  “You returned,” she said.

  Linc stepped into her room, and suddenly the crowd of people that had gathered around him as he had marched down the corridor seemed to disappear. There was no one in his sight except Magda.

  “Jerlet sent me back.”

  But Magda didn’t move toward him, didn’t smile. Her gaze shifted to the people crowding the doorway behind Linc.

  “Leave us,” she commanded. “I must talk with Linc alone.”

  They murmured and shuffled back away from the door. Linc shut it firmly. Then he turned back to Magda.

 

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