by Ben Bova
“Why did you warn me? I thought you were Monel’s girl.”
“I couldn’t let him hurt you. And besides…” her little-girl’s face looked hurt, almost teary, “he’s not interested in me. Only Magda. He said he was going to make me priestess, but all he does is stay with her”
“Listen,” Linc said. “You’d better get down to the galley for firstmeal. Act as if everything’s normal. Otherwise Monel and his guards will realize that you’ve warned me.”
The frightened look came back into her eyes. “Oh. I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Go on … I’ll be all right.”
“You’re sure?”
He nodded. Then, as she hesitated, watching him pull on his gloves, she handed him the helmet that she was still holding.
“Thanks,” he said.
Jayna suddenly threw her arms around Linc’s neck and kissed him. “Don’t let them hurt you,” she whispered. Before Linc could answer she let go and dashed off down the corridor, toward the galley.
W ith a puzzled shrug, Linc cycled the airlock hatch open and stepped inside. No sense hanging around out in the corridor where they might see me. But he knew the airlock would be the last place Monel’s guards-would search for him. To them, it was the deadlock, the dreaded place where the dead were sent into outer darkness. No one went there unless they had to.
Linc put the helmet on, connected the oxygen and life-support hoses, and checked out the pressure suit quickly but thoroughly. Satisfied, he touched the buttons that put the airlock through the rest of its cycle. The air pumped out of the cramped metal-walled chamber, into the storage bottles that lay hidden behind the access panels lining the walls. The telltale lights on the tiny control panel shifted from amber to red, and the outer hatch swung open.
Once again Linc was outside the ship. This time, though, he hurried up the outer skin of the tube-tunnel, racing against time to get to the hub of the ship.
He had something less than ten hours before the meeting would begin, just after lastmeal. Less than ten hours to find the tapes he wanted and set them up on the back-up communications system.
I can do it, he told himself. I know lean. He kept repeating it to himself.
It seemed strange to re-enter Jerlet’s domain. His months there were suddenly like a dream, something that had happened only in his imagination. No wonder the others have a hard time believing it, Linc realized. I hardly can believe it myself.
He took off the helmet, backpack, and gloves, then went to work.
It took hours. There were a few tapes where Jerlet’s voice droned over the pictures of Baryta and Beryl. There were no tapes with Jerlet’s picture. Linc found some old tapes in the computer’s memory files, scenes from old Earth that would
show the people where their ancestors had come from. A carefully programmed series of old Earth as seen from the ship, centuries ago, together with similar views of Beryl. They do look alike, Linc saw.
Finally he had the tapes he wanted, arranged the way he wanted them, and programmed them into the communications system.
Then, soaking with sweat, he went back to the airlock and donned the rest of the pressure suit and its equipment. Outside once more, he checked the back-up communication system’s antenna. It looked all right. The test panel set into the ship’s skin, alongside the two-hands-wide, bowl-shaped antenna, glowed green when Linc touched its buttons.
Now he fairly flew down the outside of the tube-tunnel toward the Living Wheel. He took great incautious leaps, spanning a dozen meters in a stride. As he got closer to the living area and the gravity built up, he had to slow down and use the stairs more normally; But still he hurried.
It took agonizing minutes to find the back-up communications antenna down on the first level. It was clear on the opposite side of the wheel from the airlock. Linc located it at last, activated it, and let his breath gulp out in a grateful sob when the panel light flashed green.
All set, then. Wall screens’ll show them everything. All I have to do is get Magda to turn them on. When she calls on Jerletfor guidance they’ll see the new world and everything else I’ve programmed.
Wearily, suddenly realizing how utterly exhausted he was, Linc clumped back along the Living Wheel’s skin to the airlock hatch. He stopped for a moment and watched the stars swinging in their stately course as the ship rotated. It’d be so easy to float off. he knew. So easy to forget everything and just drift away. Float among the stars forever.
But as he gazed out at the swirling stars, his mind’s eye pictured Monel and the way he held Magda. As if he owned her, possessed her. And she let him do it. She let him! She didn’t seem to be happy about it, but she didn’t try to stop him, either.
Linc felt confused. Magda and Monel…Jayna warning him… everything seemed upside down. No one stayed the way they were. Everything was changing.
As the ship swung on its ponderous arc, the yellow sun came up over the curve of the metal wheel. The faceplate on Linc’s helmet automatically darkened, but he still had to squint and look away.
It can bring us death, he said to himself, if we stray too close to it. But it can also give us life, if we act properly.
And suddenly he knew that he could never let himself drift into the oblivion of death, even if it meant spending his final moments among the glories of the universe. He would fight for life. Fight with every gram of strength in him.
Doggedly, Linc pushed his tired muscles back to the airlock hatch. There’s still a lot to do. An awful lot to do.
He opened the hatch and stepped inside the airlock chamber. For a moment longer he gazed outward at the stars. But then he reached up and touched the button that closed the hatch. The pumps hidden behind the metal walls clattered to life; Linc felt their vibrations through the soles of his boots. Soon he could hear air hissing around him. The control panel light went from amber to green, and the inner hatch slid open.
Monel and four of his guards were waiting there.
“Good evening,” Monel said sarcastically. “I’m glad we didn’t sit here through lastmeal for nothing. I was expecting you to return sooner.”
Linc stepped out into the passageway and unfastened his helmet.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said, as he raised the helmet off his head. “I had a lot of work to do.”
“You finished your work? You’re ready for the meeting?”
“Yes. When does it start?”
“In a little while.” Monel seemed to be enjoying the conversation. He was smiling broadly as he said, “Too bad we’ll have to have the meeting without you.”
“You can’t keep me away from it.”
Monel laughed. He raised his right hand and pointed it somewhere behind Linc.
Before he could turn around, Linc felt his arms pinned to his sides by the guards. Someone loosened the straps holding his life support pack and its oxygen tanks. It thudded to the floor.
Monel had Linc’s helmet in his lap.
“It’s going to be my sad duty to organize a search party to try to find you,” he said pleasantly. “After all, when you don’t show up at your own meeting, people will start to worry about you. We’ll find this helmet here in the passageway, right beside the deadlock hatch. Someone will open the hatch to see if you’re hiding in there. They’ll find your body there. Too bad. But that’s what happens to people who tinker with machines. It’ll be a good lesson for everybody.”
Linc was too furious to say a word. His voice gagged in his throat.
Silently, the guards opened the airlock hatch and pushed Linc inside. He fell to the floor in a heap. Before he could get to his knees, the hatch slammed shut.
The green panel light changed to amber. Linc could hear the pumps starting. The air was being sucked out of the chamber.
(14)
Linc scrambled to his feet and clawed at the control panel. No use. Monel had jammed it, somehow. But underneath the panel lights and the regular cycle control buttons there was a red button marked
EMERGENCY OVERRIDE. Jerlet had explained to Linc that the override would stop the airlock’s operation and fill the chamber with air whenever it was pushed.
Linc leaned on it. Nothing. The pumps kept on throbbing, the pulse in Linc’s ears was pounding in rhythm with it.
He’s tampered with the controls! Monel himself has tampered with the machinery!
But the realization wasn’t going to help, Linc knew.
Already it was difficult to breathe. Linc staggered to the access panel where the pumps and oxygen bottles were hidden. He flicked the latches open and the panel slid to the floor with a crash.
An empty pressure suit was hanging limply inside the compartment. Linc grabbed at the helmet and quickly pulled it over his head. There was enough air in it to let him take one quick breath. Blinking away the dark spots from his vision, he saw that there were instructions printed on the wall of the compartment, under a red EMERGENCY PROCEDURE heading.
Blessing Jerlet for teaching him to read, Linc reached for the emergency oxygen Linc that connected to a green metal tank and plugged it into the collar of his helmet. The stuff tasted stale and felt cold, but it was breathable.
Linc quickly sealed the helmet, pulled the oxygen tanks and life support pack from the emergency suit onto his own back, and then disconnected the emergency oxygen supply Linc. He was fully suited up, able to face hard vacuum without danger.
He turned and saw that the amber control light was still on. As he lifted the access panel back into place, the light turned red and the outer hatch began to open.
If I slay here, they’ll just take this equipment away from me and do it all over again, Linc thought. There was only one escape route: outside.
He clumped to the lip of the hatch and stepped outside once again. Grimly, Linc stood there and watched the hatch close.
He wished he could see the look on Monet’s face when they opened the airlock and he was gone. Would they think he had been whisked away to outer darkness? Or would Monel guess that Linc had somehow escaped?
Either way, Monel would probably keep a guard or two at the hatch, just in case Linc should try to get back.
H is earlier weariness was still tugging at him. But now he had the adrenalin-fueled fires of survival and hatred urging him on.
Carefully he paced along the catwalk built into the Wheel’s outer skin. As Baryta “rose” from behind the curve of the Wheel, Linc could see in its golden light that the metal of the ship was pitted and streaked, marked by time and the vast distances the ship had traveled.
Here and there were larger holes, actual punctures, and Linc began to understand why some sections of the Living Wheel were closed off. No air. It leaked out of the holes.
In one place there was a gaping wound in the Wheel’s side. He could peer inside and see an empty room; nothing in it except a few tables welded firmly to the floor. There were some viewing screens built into the tabletops.
And then Baryta’s sunlight glinted off the rounded hump of an airlock hatch. Linc felt a surge of joy warm his innards. He shouted to himself and dashed toward the airlock as fast as he could.
It wouldn’t budge. He pushed the buttons a dozen times, but the hatch refused to move. Then, remembering what Jerlet had taught him, he tried the long lever of the hatch’s manual control. It too remained frozen in place.
Linc wanted to cry. He sank to a sitting position as Baryta slid out of sight. The stars looked down impassively on. the figure of alone, exhausted, frightened young man as he sat and felt the warmth of life ebbing out of his body.
Then Linc remembered. The hole in the ship. Maybe Icanget through there.
He backtracked and found the ragged hole again. It was barely big enough for his shoulders to squeeze through. Praying that he wouldn’t rip the suit’s fabric. Linc crawled through and put his booted feet down on the room’s bare metal flooring. The tough suit fabric held up. His backpack stuck in the opening for a scary moment, but Linc managed to worm it through. He stood up.
I’m inside, but it’s just as bad as being outside unless Icanget past this room.
There were two doors in the room. Linc saw in the light of his helmet lamp. One of them looked as if it opened onto a corridor; it was heavy, airtight, as all the corridor doors were. But the other, on a side wall, looked as if it were made of plastic rather than metal.
Linc tried to pull it open. It refused to slide as it should. He leaned against it, and it bowed slightly. He backed off a step, then kicked at the door with the metal sole of his boot with all the strength he could muster.
The door split apart.
Linc stepped through the sagging halves.
Into the Ghost Place.
Despite himself he shuddered. Inside nbs ghosts were mute and immobile, their faces frozen in twisted soundless screams of horror and pain. Their eyes stared; their bodies slumped or sagged; their hands reached for control buttons, the hatches leading out of the bridge, or just groped blindly. Most of the ghosts still sat at the bridge’s control stations, in front of instruments that were mostly dead. Only a pitiful few of the screens still flickered with active displays. Linc saw.
He noticed that a couple of the ghosts were staring up overhead. Linc looked up and saw that several pipes were split up there, hanging loosely from broken brackets. From the faded colors, Linc knew that the pipes at one time must have carried liquid oxygen and liquid helium.
They must have been frozen where they stood, when whatever tore the hole in the next room broke the pipes.
Suddenly, they weren’t ghosts anymore. They were people like himself, like Jerlet, like Slav or Magda or Jayna or any of the others. Real people who died at their posts, trying to save the ship instead of running away.
There was no fear in Linc now. But his eyes were blurry as he realized that these people had given their lives so that the ship could continue living.
Slowly, Linc made his way past the dead bridge crew, heading toward the hatch that opened onto the passageway outside. They protected the bridge with airlocks, so that a loss of air outside wouldn’t hurt the crew in here…and then the disaster struck from inside the bridge itself.
The airlock hatch was frozen shut, of course. It took Linc several moments to remember that there were tools here on the bridge. He found a laser handwelder, plugged it into the bridge’s power supply, and grinned with relief when it worked. He set the tool on low power and played its thin red beam across the hatch mechanism.
The metal creaked and ticked and finally, when Linc tried the handle for the eleventh time, clicked open. Linc stepped into the airtight compartment between the two hatches, closed the inner hatch and opened the outer one. Warm air from the passageway rushed in, making it hard to push the hatch open.
But it did open, and Linc stood out in the familiar passageway once again. He started toward the library, hoping that the meeting was still going on. He unsealed his helmet as he clumped along the corridor, after clamping the handwelder to a clip on the side of his suit.
No one was in the corridor. That meant they were all in the library, at the meeting. Linc passed his own empty room, and a sudden idea came to him.
He ducked inside and looked at the tiny screen set into the wall above his bunk. Since he had been a child, it had been untouched. Was it workable?
He pulled his gloves off and touched the red ON button. The screen glowed to life. He tried several different buttons and got nothing but views of other empty rooms. Finally, just as he was about to give up, the screen showed the library, crowded with all the people.
“He still hasn’t shown up,” Monel was saying. He was sitting beside Magda, who held her rightful place on the central pedestal. “He’s scared of the truth, scared to face us all with his wild stories.”
The crowd was muttering, a dozen different conversations going on at once.
“How long are we going to wait for him?” Monel demanded of Magda.
She looked down at him from her perch and said, “It’s not like Li
nc to run away.”
If Monel felt any guilt at her remark, he didn’t show it. He merely insisted, “Linc demanded that we ask Jerlet’s guidance. I say we should call on Jerlet now, and see what he has to say. Either that, or call an end to this meeting. Linc isn’t going to show up. He’s afraid of Jerlet’s truth.”
Smiling in the glow of his viewscreen. Linc punched the buttons that activated the computer tapes he had programmed earlier. All the screens in the Living Wheel, including the huge wall screen in the meeting room, suddenly blazed into life.
A view of old Earth, brilliant blue and dazzling white, swimming against the blackness of space.
Jerlet’s rough, unmistakable voice rumbled, “That’s Earth, the world where we all came from originally….”
