The Dark Beyond the Stars

by Frank M. Robinson

  The shadowy figure of Noah had materialized behind me. I had been staring up at the stars, absorbed in the view of Outside, and the ten percent of me constantly on the alert had let down its guard.

  I winked the overhead shadow screen back on, let the glow tubes come up, and floated toward the hatch. “I’ll meet her in her compartment.”

  “Sparrow.”

  I turned around, noting the worried look on Noah’s face and his hands nervously twisting together behind his back.

  “I’ve nothing I want to talk about, Noah.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his eyes blinking furiously behind his thick lenses, “but I do.”

  I shrugged. “You’re here.”

  He lowered his voice, worried that the Captain or some of his spies might overhear.

  “I can’t pretend with you, Sparrow. And you shouldn’t have to pretend with me.”

  “Ophelia told you,” I said coldly.

  “She didn’t have to. You gave yourself away.”

  “To everybody?”

  He shook his head. “Not to everybody. But I know you better than most—and I’ve known you longer.”

  “You knew Aaron and Hamlet, you don’t know me.”

  “Aaron was my best friend,” he said with dignity. “I took an interest in Hamlet. I took an interest in you.”

  “There’s a difference between us, Noah. I don’t think anybody ever tried to murder Aaron or Hamlet.”

  “If they did, I never knew about it.”

  “Well, somebody tried to murder me,” I said bitterly. “But nobody believes it.”

  His face glistened with sweat.

  “I do.” He hesitated. “For the first time, your life—your real life—is in danger.”

  It was one thing to know it myself, it was another to have it confirmed, and it was still another to wonder what he hoped to gain by telling me.

  “Why?”

  “Your memories.”

  “My memories?” I laughed. “I have no memories. It was you and Ophelia and the Captain and the crew—all of you— who agreed to flatline me.”

  “Neither Ophelia nor I could stop it. And at one time it was necessary.”

  Ophelia had told me that and I believed her. But Noah had plans in which I was the linchpin, and he had yet to tell me why.

  “You wanted me to recall my memories when you and Abel came to sick bay,” I said, suspicious. “Or were you just trying to make sure I had forgotten?”

  He shook his head, the sweat flying off his nose and chin.

  “I wanted you to remember. There’s a window of opportunity when it comes to regaining your memories after a trauma… or flatlining. It closes a little with each time period that passes. In another year or so, you’ll have no chance of regaining your memories at all.”

  “And Abel wanted me to remember as well?” I asked in mock surprise. Abel was the Captain’s man, Noah must know that.

  Noah read the insinuation in my voice and stiffened. “I would trust Abel with my life.”

  “Then you’re more a fool than I.” I wanted to remember my life as Hamlet, perhaps even as Aaron. They were closer to me, more immediate. Before that, I wasn’t sure I cared. But Noah already knew my life as Aaron and Hamlet and I had the feeling he was after something more.

  “What do you really want of me?” I asked, frowning. “It’s not the same thing for both of us, I know that.”

  “I want you to remember,” he said quietly. “All the way back.”

  I was incredulous. A hundred different lifetimes… “Why is that so important to you?”

  “Not just to me, to all of us.”

  I stared at him, a thin, aging little man who had taken on the impossible role of opposing the Captain. I couldn’t believe he had gotten this far, then guessed the only way he could have was if the Captain had let him. I suspected a trap somewhere had opened wide and Noah had walked right in.

  “We can’t win a mutiny, Sparrow. Not now. We know that. But there have been other mutinies before this. We don’t know if they go back to the beginning; the computer has no true records of the first five generations. But the crew who started the first one must have thought they could win. They must have known a way they could run the ship without the Captain.”

  I was astonished. No true computer records for the first five generations! I struggled to hide my emotions.

  “How does that involve me?”

  His face became tight with tension.

  “If you could remember—”

  “Then you lose,” I interrupted. “My memories are gone. I’ve tried to recall them. I can’t.” Then, sullenly and very much aware that I was probably saving my own neck: “I’m not a part of your mutiny, Noah.”

  His mouth straightened into a grim line. “You’re of immense value to the Astron, Sparrow. But to some of those on board, you’re more valuable dead than alive. The only possible reason is because they’re afraid of what’s buried in your memories.”

  Every time I had been flatlined, there was the slight possibility my memories might return when I recovered. But if Noah was right, until now nobody had ever tried to kill me because of it.

  “What’s so different this time?” I cried. “Why not before, when I was Hamlet or Aaron or a dozen others?”

  “Because this time we’re going into the Dark,” he said bluntly, “and we’ll never survive.”

  Once again Noah was forcing me to choose between him and the Captain and I couldn’t make the choice.

  “The Captain has his views,” I said stiffly. “I’ve yet to hear them.”

  “You think you owe him that?”

  I nodded.

  Softly: “Then you should pay your debt as soon as possible, Sparrow. For all our sakes.”

  He touched the terminal pad. The glow tubes dimmed and the shadow screen disappeared, to be replaced by the canopy of glittering stars.

  “Going into the Dark is death, Sparrow—inevitable death for everybody on board as life declines and gutters out a dozen generations from now. And probable death for everybody this generation. The more crewmen who decide to die like Judah, the fewer who will choose to keep on living.”

  He turned to face me in the gloom and for the first time, I saw faint tears in his eyes. When he spoke, it was more to himself than to me.

  “We never knew what we lost when we lost Hamlet,” he murmured.

  I watched him go with a sudden surge of shame. Compared to the Captain, he was a nervous, unimpressive little man in a dirty, rumpled halter. I couldn’t imagine anybody following him or being inspired by him. His only qualification was courage and then it occurred to me that perhaps courage was all he needed.

  I left shortly after Noah had gone, to he nervous and impotent with Snipe, then return to my own compartment and try to sleep. Hours went by before I finally drifted off, willing myself to return to the time when I slept in sick bay surrounded by all the faces of crewmen whom I didn’t quite know but all of whom knew me.

  I woke sweating and wet from a dream, swaying gently in my hammock and trying to recall exactly what it was I had dreamt. I had been me but I had also been someone other than me. Someone older and more sure of himself, more willing to take risks, more willing to gamble.

  There had been a kaleidoscope of images of a planetary surface where I had been in charge of a landing party. A very young Tybalt with two good legs was my chief lieutenant and a slender black-haired girl was my tech assistant. We had slid, laughing, down slopes of methane ice, then stood on a cliff overlooking a frozen lake to gaze in awe at a bloated, reddish sun sinking below the horizon at sunset.

  Later, back on board, the girl and I had rolled together in my hammock and made slow but impassioned love. I was awake now but I could still taste her skin upon my lips. Our lovemaking had not been as exciting as mine was with Snipe but it had been… familiar… and its very familiarity had somehow made it more fulfilling.

  The girl was, of course, a very young Ophelia and I
had been Hamlet.

  It was then I decided it hadn’t been a dream at all but the first faint trickle of returning memory.

  Chapter 17

  The invitation to another dinner with the Captain came sooner than I had expected and I wasn’t prepared, though there was probably no way I could have been. If I had discovered nothing at all about Sparrow’s previous lives, how would I act? How young, how immature, how innocent? Would I give myself away by trying too hard, would I trap myself with a word that was out of character or a passing thought that never would have occurred to a seventeen-year-old tech assistant?

  Thrush had not been invited, it was only the Captain and myself, and I thought immediately that I was lost. I was sweaty, nervous, and tongue-tied by the time I drifted into his cabin. When he turned away from the huge viewing port, I could see his eyes narrow with speculation.

  “There’s no more punishment, Sparrow. You were excused from Coventry early because we’re going to need you below and I didn’t want you harboring any grudges.”

  He clapped me on the back and guided me over to the port, where for a long moment we both stared silently at Outside. His hand still rested on my shoulder but it was no obvious attempt to gauge my reactions. Once again, we were to be friends, he and I, and this was to be a pleasant hour spent in casual conversation over a light meal.

  My heart had thumped once when I saw his eyes narrow and I had consigned my fate to the gods, promptly forgetting every artifice I had practiced in preparation for the meeting. I doubt that there was a time when I was more “Sparrow” than in that particular hour with the Captain. I was lucky because he misread my anxiety as fear of punishment and immediately tried to put me at ease. And having misread me at the start, he misread everything that followed.

  Nevertheless, the conversation was anything but casual. The one thing I knew that he knew was that I had yet to join any mutiny, real or imagined. I was sure his eyes among the crew had told him that.

  The meal itself was casual but bland, without Pipit’s usual added tang. Escalus served it in silence, then settled in a corner, ostensibly ignoring me though I knew he watched every movement I made. Along with the meal, he had served drink bulbs filled with a reddish liquid. It had a slightly sour taste and I made a face when I sipped.

  The Captain noted my expression and said, “Wine—it’s usually served with a meal on Earth. You don’t have to drink it if you don’t want to.”

  But after the first sip, I decided I liked it and drank it as if it were water. The Captain smiled slightly but said nothing. Afterward, I wondered if his serving of the wine had been intended to loosen my tongue. But it turned out to be more of a help for me than a hindrance: For the rest of the hour I was very much Sparrow, without a thought for Hamlet or Aaron or any of the hundred others hiding in the recesses of my mind.

  When we were through eating, he drifted back to the port and I joined him to gaze at the field of colorful jewels just beyond. It was a view I never saw when I winked off the shadow screen on the hangar deck and stared at the scattering of hard and unyielding crystal overhead. But rank had its privileges, as the Captain said, and he was entitled to look at whatever view he wanted. I couldn’t deny its beauty.

  He made no comment at first and I was aware once again of the weight of his hand on my shoulder and the emotional impact of touch, the real glue in any human relationship. Right then, it was my choice whether the captain was father, friend, or older brother.

  “You use the computer a great deal, Sparrow,” he finally said. I was too light-headed from the wine to react with any alarm. If he knew of my personal research, then he knew, I thought fatalistically. But his next comment was: “Have you ever studied Earth?”

  I hadn’t, and it struck me that perhaps I should have.

  “Your friends gaze at the galaxy and see it as dead,” he mused. “I look at it and see it as teeming with life.”

  He glanced at me and smiled and once again I was flooded with warmth, ashamed of myself for those few times when I’d had dark thoughts about him.

  “I’ll admit my prejudice—I believe the galaxy is filled with life because we come from a planet that is. There’s no part of Earth that’s not a home for life, Sparrow. I think we forget that life itself is so adaptable. On board the Astron we live at a constant temperature and humidity and pressure and we tend to think that life can only exist under the same kind of stringent conditions. But in actuality, it can exist almost anyplace—and does.”

  This was going to be a lecture, I thought, and I’d had enough of lectures. Then I realized this was the chance I had always wanted. Why did the Captain think the way he did, when every exploration attempt had come up empty-handed? I couldn’t believe it was purely because of conditioning. There had to be logical thought and theory behind his beliefs.

  “Life is everywhere on Earth, Sparrow. Some fish exist in complete darkness, without ever seeing a ray of light. Others swim more than seven miles deep, where the pressure is a thousand times that at the surface. Some microbes exist in the middle of dry, cold rocks and some bacteria live in liquid that’s boiling hot and as corrosive as sulfuric acid.”

  He was looking down at me now but I didn’t meet his gaze, concentrating on the stars just beyond the port. I knew he wanted no interruptions until he had made his point.

  “The Earth teems with life,” he continued, “from the cold deserts of the Antarctic to the ocean depths. Scientists have found tiny animals that can be dehydrated until their moisture content is as low as two percent. They can even survive temperatures from thirty-three to three hundred and seventy-six Kelvin. They’re dormant then but once you add water, they come back to life with no difficulty at all.”

  He left the port and drifted back to the table for another bulb of wine. I didn’t refuse when he offered one to me, though I knew my tongue was getting thick and my movements uncoordinated.

  “It seems impossible,” I mumbled.

  He shrugged. “The fact is that life as we know it is infinitely adaptable. And life as we don’t know it? I can’t imagine there being a limit. Somebody once suggested that life could evolve in lakes of ammonia or oceans of methane, that on some distant planet silicon creatures may be swimming in seas of molten rock…”

  He fell silent and I assumed it was my turn to say something. Of all the questions that I had once wanted to ask, cleverly phrased to hide my lack of conviction and my growing doubts, I couldn’t think of one now.

  “Life,” I muttered, “how it begins…”

  I thought of Thrush and couldn’t continue, suddenly aware that the difference between the start of human life and the development of life itself were separated in complexity by millennia.

  “The building blocks of life are all around us,” the Captain continued gently. “They cluster on the surfaces of meteorites, they hide in the nuclei of comets, they float in the clouds of gas that obscure distant stars. Biology begins with chemistry, Sparrow, and there’s no lack of chemistry out there. That’s one thing your friends can’t deny.”

  He turned away from the port and floated over to a hammock to settle in the netting and rub the stubble of his beard with the back of his free hand while staring at me over his drink bulb.

  “We’ve seen our share of planets. Some are bubbles of gas, others solid rock. Some are covered with deserts, others have oceans of water. Some lack an atmosphere, others are blanketed with clouds and flooded with heavy rains of organic compounds. There’s heat, there’s lightning, there’s billions of years of time, and yet your friends would have us believe the galaxy is lifeless except for one chance occurrence on a small planet orbiting a minor sun.”

  He cocked his head and squinted at me and I wondered if he felt the wine as much as I.

  “Do you really believe them, Sparrow?”

  I wasn’t sure whether he expected me to answer or not. I wondered what Noah would say in rebuttal when I told him. And then I wondered if I should tell Noah anything at all. I was undoub
tedly being watched and I realized I had played a fool’s game up to now. I was important to the mutineers but for some reason I was equally important to the Captain. My memories, Noah had said, were vital to both sides.

  The Captain was staring at me, his eyes large and intense, and I dared not blink or look away.

  “Organic molecules are scattered all through space, Sparrow. Ultraviolet light can even produce them from mixtures of ethane, ammonia, water, and hydrogen, and the worlds that have those are legion. All you need then is energy and a liquid. It can be water or hydrocarbon solutions or perhaps solvents we don’t even know exist. It’s only a step to nucleic acids and proteins and after that life is inevitable. It took billions of years on Earth; on another planet it may only have taken a few million. Who knows?”

  His voice dwindled off and he squeezed out the last of the wine from the bulb he held in his hand.

  “But that’s too simple, isn’t it?” he asked bitterly. Then, to himself: “My God, the Ptolemaics are still with us. The sun and the stars no longer revolve around Earth but they cling to the hope that at least we are still unique…” He said nothing for long minutes and I glanced over at Escalus, wondering if the Captain’s silence worried him as well. He gave no indication of alarm and I tried to smother my own uneasiness.

  The Captain’s next statement shocked me because it echoed one that Ophelia had made.

  “The belief in the utter uniqueness of life is a religious one, Sparrow; it has nothing to do with science.”

  He crumpled the now empty drink bulb and swam over to the port, turning back to me just before he touched the glass.

  “You know how to use the computer better than anybody else. Study the data and make up your own mind.” Then the slight smile slid away and I caught a glimpse of a face that was both sad and terrifying at the same time.

  “I can’t go back, Sparrow,” he said in a low voice. “Too many crewmen have died for the mission and I won’t make a mockery of their sacrifice.”

  I left then, half drunk from the wine and frightened by the implications of the conversation. He had told me to study and make up my own mind. I knew that the next time I saw him he would ask questions and expect me to have answers. But there were answers he wanted to hear and answers he didn’t want to hear.