Jenine lifted her head, kissed Ewen tenderly, and looked at the tablets. “What do you want, Ewen?”
“To be with you, Jenine, whatever you decide. Even if I hadn’t promised Inman not to influence you, I wouldn’t want to. I want what you want and I swear I’ll never reproach you.”
She was silent for a long time. “Perhaps I’ve changed my about opinion about Inman,” she said thoughtfully. “Is there anything else in this deal?”
“Nothing that can’t wait until morning.”
“Let’s make love, Ewen.”
Leinka entered the apartment two hours later when they didn’t answer the buzzer. In the subdued light, she looked down at the entwined sleeping couple. There was a scent of love in the air that brought back bitter-sweet memories. She straightened the bedcover, turned away from the bed and looked at the table where she had placed the drinking glasses and the tablets.
She was happy for them at what she saw.
11.
Wakefulness seemed to tread close on the heels of Jenine’s dreams. She was drifting through the central control room of a great ship. It was Challenger Three. There was no need for her to be told that - she knew. There was nothing she didn’t know about the ship now. Its vast environmental control systems; its recycling plants; air-conditioning plants; the farms - all were virtually identical to the systems that she had been trained on in Arama. The difference was that the ship was a mighty cylindrical world, turning slowly on its axis to simulate gravity. But, unlike Arama, one could stand at any point on the surface of the strange world and see every other point.
A noise nearby.
She opened her eyes. There was no sensation of disorientation at finding herself in their apartment in the headquarters building. Ewen was beside her, sprawled on his stomach and still asleep.
“Good morning, Jenine. It’s a lovely morning. Did you sleep well?”
It was Leinka’s bright, friendly voice. A gold-edged blue uniform moving about. Jenine focussed her eyes on the stewardess. She saw that the girl was wheeling an exercise machine into the room.
“Yes - a lovely sleep, Leinka. But I thought we were supposed to sleep for-”
“But you have, Jenine. You have.” The stewardess sat on the edge of the bed. “Do I look different?”
“No - just the same.”
Leinka laughed. “That’s made my day. Time to get up. A busy day for us all. I’ve been working for six-hours. This is the biggest wake-up of all time. Dozens of temps have been drafted in. I bullied my boss into letting me see to you.”
Ewen stirred and opened his eyes. “Can I smell food?” he mumbled.
“He seems to have survived,” Leinka observed.
Ewen sat up.
“There’s a huge breakfast awaiting you,” said Leinka. “But first a few minutes each on this machine.” She dragged the bedcovers to one side. Ewen tried to pull them back and discovered that there was no strength in his hands.
“What’s the matter with me?”
“Nothing that won’t be cured by a few minutes’ exercise,” said Leinka firmly. “Now come on. A busy day. So up. Wear your dressing gowns for now. I’ve got new uniforms for you.”
“Leinka.”
“Yes, Ewen?”
“You look older.”
“Thank you, Ewen.”
An hour later Jenine and Ewen were finishing their breakfast, sitting at the table near the window, when the buzzer sound, and Inman entered the apartment. Leinka followed with new uniforms.
“A busy morning for you, Caudo, if you’re visiting all the crewman,” Ewen observed.
“Just you, Commander,” Inman gestured to Leinka.
“Commander?” Jenine echoed, looking puzzled.
“I have your new uniform, Ewen,” said Leinka, holding out a garment. Unlike the earlier uniform, it was gold-piped and on the breast was the legend:
COMMANDER EWEN SOLENT. CHALLENGER THREE. EARTHSEARCH
MISSION
“What that mean?” Jenine demanded.
Inman gave Ewen a puzzled look. “Didn’t you tell her?”
“I gave you my word that I wouldn’t influence her, Caudo.”
“But you could’ve told her that you are to be the commanding officer,” Inman pointed out, now looking as surprised as Jenine.
“Do you mean to say that you’re the captain of Challenger Three!” Jenine demanded, jumping to her feet, eyes wide with shock.
Ewen stood and put his arm around her waist. “That was the rest of the deal that I said could wait until morning, Jenine.”
“You risked not telling her that you’d be commander, and yet she still agreed to go,” said Inman softly.
“I stuck to our agreement, Caudo.”
“Is there anything else I haven’t been told?” Jenine wanted to know.
Ewen looked uncertainly at Inman who nodded. Ewen turned Jenine around so that they were facing each other. “We’re going to search for the Challenger. We’ve decided that if we find it, or least, what happened to it, then we’ll find the new earth that they might have found.”
“Personally,” said Inman. “I don’t think you will find the Challenger. But my prayers will go with you.”
“I will,” said Ewen with quiet conviction.
Inman looked into those blue eyes and saw an indomitable spirit that surpassed even his iron will. For the first time since he had mapped out his great project to ensure the salvation of humanity, he experienced an uplifting feeling of great pride.
Father and son shook hands.
PART 11.
Prologue to Earthsearth.
In the beginning…
Eighteen thousand million years had passed since the spawning of the giant meteoroid during the cataclysmic event that had marked the foundation of the Universe and the beginning of Time.
It had been an uneventful period for the meteoroid; eighteen thousand million years spent moving in a straight line which, were it not for the ten-mile length of the starship Challenger lying in its path, would be a mere prelude to the total of its eventual lifetime.
The Challenger was the result of seven years’ feverish activity in Earth orbit to construct the first of three ships to journey to the stars to search for an Earth-type planet which would one day become the new home of mankind. It had been conceived and built during a period of unprecedented, world-wide stability and peace when, for the first time in its history, men and women had the confidence to embark on such long-term projects which would not come to fruition within one lifetime.
The accumulated knowledge of three-hundred years’ high technology had gone into the Challenger’s design and construction. She had been fitted with the most advanced planetary surveillance equipment and instrument probes, and had the resources in her vast terra-forming centre to re-engineer potential Earth-type planets by means of robot machines and androids which the Challenger would leave behind.
Maintenance of such a vast ship would be beyond the resources of the starship’s crew, so a workforce army of specialist androids had been designed and built in record time. These machines carried out the countless routine tasks necessary for the smooth running of the ship. They were under the command of the Challenger’s two control computers who were responsible to the commander and crew for the ship’s environment. These computers were known as Angel One and Angel Two and it was inevitable that by the time a second-generation crew had been born on the Challenger during its mission these two entities had become known as guardian angels.
What the designers of the guardian angels had not foreseen was that their creations would, as the years passed by on the Challenger, come to see themselves as more than mere computers. Were they not more intelligent than the men and women that occupied the mighty starship? Did they not have more power and ambition than the puny, two-legged creatures that tried to dominate them? And was not the non-discovery of intelligent life in fifty years a clear indication that they could be the supreme beings of the galaxy? Or even the U
niverse?
The problem was that the guardian angels needed humans to man the main control room. For reasons best known to themselves, the Challenger’s designers had decreed that only people could manoeuvre the starship, despite the fact that machines were infinitely more reliable. To the guardian angels, it was yet another folly in a dismal catalogue of incompetence. Humans fought among themselves and allowed their efficiency, such as it was, to be further reduced by their obsession with sex. To make matters worse, the second-generation crew were becoming disillusioned with the mission whereas the guardian angels wished for it to continue.
The guardian angels decided to rid the Challenger of its adult humans. The problem was how. Using the androids against the crew was sure to fail because most of them were only good at doing those tasks which they had been designed for. To be certain of success, all the adults would have to be destroyed simultaneously.
When the guardian angels detected the presence of the distant giant meteoroid and discovered that it was on a three hundred miles per hour converging course with the Challenger, they decided that fate was on their side. They calculated comparative velocities and angles, and concluded that a collision was inevitable provided the crew were not alerted.
When the meteoroid was one month away they were able to refine their calculations; they made the interesting discovery that the meteoroid would strike the Challenger a glancing blow in the region of the main assembly hall.
When it was three weeks away, they were able to compute the nature and extent of the damage that the collision would cause; the ship would be severely damaged but not crippled. What damage there was would be within the abilities of the service androids to repair.
The meteoroid drew nearer but the guardian angels remained silent. One week before the inevitable collision, they informed the crew that service androids would have to carry out urgently needed maintenance work on the outer hull. The meteoroid alarms were closed down and a hundred service androids swarmed out of the maintenance air-locks and spread themselves along the Challenger’s ten-mile length. They X-rayed seams that did not require inspection; they filled minute, almost invisible particle scars that were too insignificant to warrant attention and they carried out thousands of needless tests on systems that were in perfect working order.
One hour before the impending impact, a team of the more sophisticated androids dismantled the four outer turrets that housed the Challenger’s meteoroid annihilation shields.
The guardian angels switched off the ship’s optical telescopes thirty minutes before impact.
Fifteen minutes before impact and the ship was blind and helpless - defenceless against the million-ton mass of star matter hurtling towards it.
The Challenger’s crew were unaware of the fate awaiting them as they filed into the auditorium to hear their commander’s announcement.
Commander Jonas Sinclair was a second-generation crewman. In common with the majority of the three hundred and twenty men and women sitting expectantly before him, he had been born on the Challenger. At least fifty of the older faces before him belonged to members of the first-generation crew - those who had watched the Challenger taking shape in Earth orbit over fifty years before.
Sinclair was nervous and ill at ease; he would have preferred to make his statement over the crew address system from his day cabin but the two guardian angels had suggested calling everyone together. Despite the protestations of the first-generation crew that the guardian angels were only computers, he had come to value their advice and guidance and even allowed them to decide when the meeting should be called.
Sinclair arranged his notes on the lectern and waited for his audience to settle down. He tapped his liquid-flo pencil gently on the polished surface. The pin microphone in his lapel picked up the soft clicks and amplified them in the air above everyone’s heads. The buzz of conversation subsided.
“Fellow crew men and women,” Sinclair began. “I have called you all together because we have reached an important stage in our mission. For fifty years we have toured the galaxy in search of other earths for colonization. When our parents set out on this survey voyage, it was hoped that one Earth-type planet would be discovered for every ten years shipboard time of the mission.”
Sinclair glanced down at his notes and caught the eye of the four men and four women who were sitting in the front row watching him intently. He knew why they had sought out the front row and he gave them a fleeting smile of encouragement before raising his eyes to the rest of the audience. “As we know, that has not happened, therefore we have continued the work of our parents.”
He sensed the fidgeting rather than saw it and immediately shortened his preamble by several paragraphs. “And now, during the past six months four babies of the third-generation crew have been born to us.”
The four couples in the front row seemed to lean forward in their seats, never taking their eyes off Sinclair.
“The parents of Telson, Sharna, Astra and Darv have petitioned me, saying that they do not wish their children to grow up as they have: not knowing about our home planet Earth. Never to breathe its air; never to feel its grass beneath their feet; never to walk under its blue skies and feel its warm summer breezes on their faces… Ladies and gentlemen - I agree with them!”
There was a stunned silence. No one coughed or fidgeted: 320 pairs of eyes regarded him in amazement.
Sinclair pressed on: “Our parents denied us our home but does that give us the right to pass on that denial to a third-generation crew? I think not. Nor do I believe that it is possible for the Challenger to improve on the success of its mission.”
There was some sporadic clapping from the centre of the auditorium that Sinclair silenced with an upraised hand. “What I have to say now means that we will have to go into suspended animation because-”
As Sinclair expected, there was a loud chorus of protests. The mausoleum-like suspended animation chambers were mistrusted - a mistrust that the first-generation had passed on the second generation with the result that the suspended animation chambers were now rarely used. Also, despite the fact that the technique of reducing the body’s metabolism to the point where it was maintained at the point of death had been perfected over one hundred and fifty years previously, most people still considered that there was something sinister and unethical about going into a death sleep for periods ranging from a few days up to the maximum of fifty years.
Sinclair smiled and held up a hand to help the furore die away. “If you don’t like the idea of suspended animation,” he continued, “then the next phase is going to take ten years in real time. The Challenger is going home!”
The four couples broke the hush that followed Sinclair’s words; they jumped to their feet, clapping and cheering wildly. And then the storm broke as the entire audience rose to their feet applauding enthusiastically and cheering. The thunderous acclaim dragged on for another minute. A woman in the front row jumped on to the rostrum and threw her arms around Sinclair’s neck.
It was the last touch of a woman that Sinclair was to experience. At that moment the giant meteoroid struck the ship.
The cheers of the crew changed to screams of terror as the edge of the meteoroid sliced through the auditorium’s domed roof and severed the fibre optic tracks that controlled the artificial gravity in that level of the ship. Weight vanished and the concept of “up” and “down” became meaningless. An invisible bubble of air which had been the auditorium’s atmosphere erupted into space, sucking up everything that was not a fixture and hurling it into space through the gaping fissure. Some of the crew managed to delay their ejection from the ship by clinging desperately to their seats - their screams diminishing to thin, reedy cries as the air pressure plummeted to a vacuum. Free of the constraints of an atmosphere, their blood began frothing in their veins and arteries as boiling point dropped rapidly to the normal temperature of the human body. After five minutes, death released the grip of the few remaining in the auditorium and the dying a
ir currents eddying into space through the ruptured dome wafted their bodies from the wounded ship.
Ten minutes later the guardian angels sent service androids - their eyes and ears now that so many of their audio and optical sensors had been destroyed - into the wrecked levels of the ship to survey the damage. Eight levels were beyond repair. Surgical androids, the most intelligent of all the robots, reported that there was no hope of the guardian angels regaining control over the central regions of the ship.
The guardian angels’ initial concern at their miscalculation over the extent of the damage that the glancing collision would cause was assuaged when reports came in from the secondary-function androids: one food-production farm was still operational and so was the central water reservoir. The main control room in the prow of the ship was intact, and the photonic drive, ten miles from the control room in the stern of the ship, was in perfect working order. That the main control room escaped damage was particularly good news even though there were not, as yet, any crew left to man it.
Most important of all, two miles away from the devastation, four babies, watched over by nursery androids, were safe, and sound asleep. They hadn’t even stirred during the moments of impact when shockwaves had raced the length of the Challenger.
T H E E N D
Mindwarp Page 39
