The Dark Beyond the Stars

by Frank M. Robinson

Selma and Bobby Armijo, Lewis and Iris, Dave and Rich, and the eight hundred and ninety others who had volunteered for the Freeze and never woken up were suddenly vivid in my memory.

  “Why didn’t you just kill me, Mike? Why the purloined-letter routine?”

  He looked surprised. “You were the return captain—if we’d found life, you’d be the one to take the Astronomy back. And if anything happened to me, you were my replacement. I couldn’t kill my own replacement, Ray, that would’ve endangered the voyage.”

  Nobody could endanger the voyage, not even the captain… Two thousand years ago, some minor bureaucrat in charge of programming had saved my life. And then, in anger, a jealous Sparrow made the mistake of saying the obvious.

  “You’ve got one replacement, you don’t need two.”

  Mike’s hand closed around the pellet gun and he aimed it at my chest. He now sounded as indifferent as he had when condemning Noah and Tybalt at their courts-martial, but at least he solved the last of the mysteries.

  “You’re right, Ray. Thrush can act as my replacement. That’s why I had him.”

  He fired. At the same time I jerked to one side, fumbling in my waistcloth for my own pellet gun. I never got the chance to use it. His foot caught me in the stomach and the gun went flying into the other compartment. I felt blood puddling on my skin where the pellet had grazed me; then we were grappling in the center of the cabin.

  It had taken valuable minutes for my friendship with Mike to finally fade, to realize that his own for me had vanished two thousand years before. What power hadn’t corrupted, time had. I had been impressed and affected by what he told me, as he had intended I should be, but he hadn’t impressed Sparrow or Hamlet or the others inside me. They had anticipated deception and prepared me for it.

  ****

  He was strong and quick. But I didn’t suffer from the sense of inferiority Sparrow might have had—I had beaten Mike before. He still had the pellet gun and I grabbed his wrist and cracked it against the ledge. He grunted and kneed me in the groin. I let loose and shot across the compartment, scraping my scalp on the hatch. When I shook my head, a thin stream of tiny red globules jetted into the air.

  I turned back to him and saw his face fixed in the same intense look of concentration that he had when he played handball. He didn’t play to lose.

  I dove for him and he fired the pellet gun again. I twisted aside in midair, crashing into the bookshelf. The air was suddenly filled with bits of paper and plastic and I held my breath when I sailed through them. I grabbed his wrist with my hands and once more tried to loosen his grip on the gun.

  We both had purchase now. He had wrapped his legs around one of the uprights his hammock was tied to and I had gripped the ledge with my own. It was a test of pure strength and he was stronger. The hand that held the pellet gun slowly swiveled until it was pointed dead center at my chest. He could just as easily have aimed at my head; I thought grimly that only our former friendship prevented it. It would have been too much even for him to see my features explode in a mist of bone and blood.

  “I’m sorry, Ray,” he murmured. “This isn’t easy.”

  But it seemed all too easy to me. Inside, I could hear Sparrow silently screaming, not only because I might die and he as well but because if I didn’t, I would probably kill his Captain. Sparrow had never quite recovered from that first meeting on the bridge.

  I had kept my hand on his wrist and jerked it aside just before he pulled the trigger. The gun misfired. Like everything else on board, it was corroded and falling apart. I wrenched it away and threw it in a corner.

  Mike drove an elbow into my rib cage and I flailed backward. He was faster than me in maneuvering in no gravity. My back hit the bulkhead as he wrapped his hands around my neck, his thumbs pressing against my windpipe. I waited until he had set himself, then clasped my hands together and thrust them up between his arms, breaking the hold.

  We flew apart, ending up at opposite ends of the cabin. Breathing was painful and blood was still misting out of my scalp. Across from me, Mike tried desperately to retain an appearance of calm but his skin was shiny with sweat and he was gulping air as hard as I was.

  “In two thousand years, you were the only one I could really talk to… you were my last link to the original crews.” He flashed a smile. “‘The universe is not only… queerer than we suppose, but queerer… than we can suppose.’ That used to be your favorite quote, Ray.” He held out a hand. “Come… with us,” he pleaded, and I swore because I could feel a part of myself respond.

  “Sure, Mike,” I said, and felt no guilt at all when I butted him in the stomach a split second later and wrapped my arms around his waist. I held him in a bear hug and squeezed while he thrashed in the air, trying desperately to catch his breath. When he went limp, I loosened my hold and dragged him through the hatchway into the compartment that contained the preservation crypts of the return crew.

  “Look at them, Mike. They almost look alive, don’t they? Remember Selma? And Iris? There was a time when you thought the world of Iris. And Bobby? He worshiped you, he would have done anything for you, and eventually he died for you. Nine hundred men and women, Mike, and you murdered them all!”

  “I had… no choice,” he muttered, and turned away. I grabbed him by the hair and twisted his head so he was staring directly at the crypts and the silent figures within.

  “You murdered nine hundred people to keep on going and you never found a goddamned thing! You don’t want to go back now because that would be admitting it was all for nothing and you can’t face that!”

  He looked up at me then, his head wobbling, his eyes wide and filled with horror. For two thousand years the Astron had been his stage and he had played The Captain. Now the play was over and once again he was Michael Kusaka, an ordinary man who had lived too long and lost himself among the years.

  “Every sleep period I ask their forgiveness,” he whispered. “And they forgive me, Ray! They forgive me!”

  I couldn’t look at him. I was going to have to choose between pity and justice and I wasn’t sure I could. Mike had become the Wandering Jew, pacing his five hundred meters of steel deck, praying for absolution every night and searching for it every morning. The only crews that had been real for him were his own and mine, the replacement crew, frozen in its preservation crypts. The crews that came after were faded copies, faces he never remembered, names he quickly forgot.

  If Thrush had refused him, Mike would have gone into the Dark by himself, an alienated man whose alienation had finally become terminal.

  For Mike, relative immortality had meant two thousand years of damnation.

  He suddenly squirmed in my hands and I lost my grip, my fingers slippery with blood and perspiration. He darted out from under my arms, his fingers stretched out for my pellet gun which he had kicked into the compartment, where it was now floating a meter away. If he got it, I knew I wouldn’t be as lucky the second time.

  I scooped it up before he could touch it, flipping in midair so I was facing him, the pellet gun in my hand. I watched the color drain from his face and the sanity slowly return to his eyes.

  I fought to catch my breath, the words coming out in short bursts.

  “We’re going back—”

  He smiled and held up his hands. “You win, Ray.”

  His back was to the preservation crypts and over his shoulder I could see the dead faces of Selma and Bobby Armijo and Lewis and Tom and Rich. I was the captain now, and I knew the penalty for what Mike had done, both to my crew and to Sparrow’s. I remembered how Sparrow had felt when he held the blade to Thrush’s throat. I now felt the same way and inside me, Sparrow agreed.

  I knew Mike hadn’t meant what he said. And I knew Sparrow and I couldn’t afford to lose. Not again.

  “—without you,” I finished.

  I pulled the trigger of the pellet gun; at the same time, Mike lunged for me. The pellet caught him in the shoulder and he flew backward, crashing into the one empty
preservation crypt, the one that had once contained me. There was a flash of blue light as the dead machinery sprang to life. In the glare I could see Mike’s look of startled surprise fade to one of acceptance.

  I thought, Christ, it’s still working! and yanked him out. It was much too late. The skin on his face and chest was gray and hard, the soft tissues of his lips and eyes ruptured by the fine ice crystals that had formed almost instantly.

  Michael Kusaka had been raised with a code of honor, but two thousand years had bleached almost all of it out of him. The faint look of acceptance at the end was the only indication that a trace of it still remained. Another time, another place, and if Mike had had a knife his losing might have ended with ritual and ceremony. Both of us would have felt better about it.

  I floated by his side, remembering Relay Station and how we had once been friends. I cradled him in my arms and whispered, “Jesus, I’m sorry…” while inside me, Sparrow wept.

  Mike clutched my shoulders and pulled me close so I could hear him as he tried to work his frozen lips and tongue.

  “No such thing as… free will, Ray… You had no choice, either… You were programmed to go back…”

  Everything they had done to him, they had done to me, Mike had said. Two thousand years before they had wound us up and we had gone through our paces ever since, convinced we were masters of our own destinies. Mike had been programmed to take the Astronomy out and I had been programmed to bring her back. He had known about himself, but I had never known about myself.

  Or maybe he had lied to the bitter end, unable to face the truth.

  I held him, feeling the terrible cold of his chest and head and watching as he struggled for breath and the frost covered him until I couldn’t see his face at all.

  After a minute the air rattled out of his lungs for the last time and what I held in my arms was meat.

  ****

  I drifted back to the outer compartment, gripping my side where I still bled. Crow was waiting for me. He looked sick and I wondered what had happened, then glanced over at Thrush, nursing a bleeding lip. Crow was holding a pellet gun and I guessed he had taken it away from Thrush. Crow had committed violence, and I was grateful that he had, but it would be a while before he forgave himself.

  Both of them stared at me. I had looked seventeen when I pushed into the Captain’s living quarters, but then I had thought I was seventeen. Now I knew my true age was thirty and I looked the part.

  “He wanted to go in,” Crow said. “I didn’t think you wanted him there.”

  “You were right,” I muttered, “I didn’t.”

  I looked at Thrush and saw both of them through Sparrow’s eyes at the same time I saw them through mine. It was an unsettling superimposition. Sparrow saw Crow as larger than himself, thickly muscled with heavy features and an odd air of saintliness. Thrush was handsome, lightly but well built, with a sly look and a seductive arrogance about him.

  To me they were both kids, maybe twenty years old, one pale and skinny and the other husky, with long hair and an open face that would someday get him into trouble with more women than one. The skinny one may have been arrogant at one time, but right now he was badly frightened.

  Had Thrush wanted to help the Michael Kusaka who was the Captain or had he wanted to help the Michael Kusaka who was his father? They were one and the same but they were also quite different. It didn’t matter. In trying to help Kusaka, Thrush had probably earned the right to his own life. When everything was over, I would have to talk to him.

  I turned to tell Crow to call back Inbetween Station, the Lander, and the various floaters, but he read me before I could even ask.

  “They’re on their way.”

  “Lose any?”

  “Maybe Finch—he might be beyond reach.”

  “Tell the Lander to try and pick him up.” I wondered just how far their ability to locate fellow crew members extended.

  He was almost to the hatchway when I said, “Was it a bluff, Crow?”

  “I don’t know, sir.” But he looked stricken and that told me what I wanted to know. They hadn’t run the bluff against Mike; they had known that he was programmed, that he wouldn’t buy it, couldn’t buy it.

  They had run the bluff against Sparrow. They knew if they pressed him hard enough he would confront the Captain to try and save them and then… something would happen. They weren’t sure what, but since the phoenix dated from Year One of the voyage, they knew something would. And they had gambled that the phoenix would win.

  Lucky fools.

  A few hours later, we gathered on the bridge. I sat in the captain’s chair and could feel myself tied into every part of the ship. The chair was a giant terminal pad. The captain ran the ship not just with his hands but with every portion of his body. The chair itself was warm and resilient and I could feel my nerve endings tingle.

  The last time I sat there had been during the shakedown cruise and I remembered the sense of power it had given me. It gave me the same feeling now but this time, I didn’t relish it. I had lived a hundred lifetimes and come out of it with a far different view of life and my place in it.

  They were all there—Ophelia, Snipe, Crow, and Loon, all looking expectant, while Grebe seemed apprehensive and Cato was frowning. Even Escalus was there, his eyes red-rimmed with grief; I knew I would have to watch him for as long as he lived. Finally, there was Thrush, his expression, as always, mocking.

  Nobody was going to dispute that I was captain, but all wondered what I was going to do now. Ophelia, naturally, nominated herself as spokesperson.

  “What are your plans?” she asked, but the question was a formality. Everybody on the bridge knew what I was going to do.

  “We’re going home,” I said.

  But I wasn’t sure there was still a home to go to.

  Chapter 32

  They got to Finch minutes before his air ran out so the only casualties were Tern, Crane, Bunting, and a member of the old crew, Gower. I had known him only vaguely and that bothered me. I would have to make a point of getting to know the crew better; I couldn’t rely on Sparrow’s memories of friends and acquaintances.

  But what bothered me most was Snipe. I had become somebody she had never known, somebody she was uncomfortable living with. She could read me as well as ever, but the person she read wasn’t… Sparrow. During the next sleep period we went through the motions of making love just once and found that it repelled both of us. After that, we were awkward and cold with each other and seldom found reason to talk.

  We worked it out another sleep period when I accidentally brushed her face and discovered her cheek was damp with tears.

  “What’s wrong, Snipe?”

  “I miss Sparrow,” she murmured.

  I stroked her hair and brushed her neck with my lips and a little of Raymond Stone dropped away and then more and more. “Sparrow” had lived perhaps a year; Raymond Stone had lived thirty and could look forward to… what? A thousand years? Two thousand? “Sparrow” would die when his generation on board finally died. Until then, he deserved his own life.

  That sleep period Raymond Stone mentally slapped Sparrow on the back, wished him well, and quietly withdrew. Not completely; there were parts of Stone that Sparrow needed. But it was Sparrow who made love to Snipe, died the little death, and slept the sleep of the just.

  Stepping into Mike’s role as captain was easier than I thought it would be. The computer posed no problems and I set the course for the return to Earth. It would be a straight-line voyage with no star-hopping unless we got undeniable signals in the waterhole frequencies. We had been out a hundred generations at the time of the mutiny and I estimated it would take twenty to return. None of the crew, except Thrush and me, would ever see the Earth, though they realized their not-so-remote descendants would.

  The former Captain’s men posed a problem. I was blunt in warning Cato. He was resentful, but that I expected. He and his men did their job well and until such time as they didn’t, I wou
ldn’t interfere.

  Thrush was another matter.

  We had been on the return course for a month before I felt I had the reins of authority firmly in my hands. Once they were, I sent for Thrush. Crow ushered him in, then made himself inconspicuous by the hatchway.

  I was mostly Sparrow then, with just enough of Raymond Stone to lend Sparrow some distance from his own feelings.

  Thrush had changed very little. Pale, arrogant, suspicious… searching my face to determine how much of me was Sparrow and how much was Raymond Stone. He saw enough of Sparrow to be reassured and just enough of Raymond Stone to keep him off balance.

  We stared at each other in silence. I waited while he became increasingly uncomfortable; finally he blurted: “When am I to be sent?”

  “Sent where?” I asked, mystified.

  “Reduction.” His smile was sardonic. “You’ve won your mutiny but I’m sure you’re worried about the possibility of others.”

  “Mutinies are composed of followers,” I said quietly. “Not just leaders. Who would follow you, Thrush?” He colored and I shook my head, dismissing the fantasy. “If you go to Reduction, it will be because you want to go, not because I sent you.”

  I had been responsible for Mike’s death and that was going to be hard to live down.

  “You knew all along I was the return captain,” I said, curious. “How?”

  He seemed bemused.

  “Being an icon was too… romantic. And even considering the practice time you spent with the computer, you were too good.” He shrugged and for the first time sounded bitter. “The Captain should have sent you to Reduction half a dozen times and he never did. Only one explanation made sense—”

  I cut him off.

  “You’re thinking emotionally and you’re not the type, Thrush. What were the real reasons?”

  He looked impressed and a little uneasy. He was used to dealing with Sparrow. Raymond Stone was unpredictable—and potentially threatening.

  “Both you and the Captain were long-lifers and the roles you played fit a generational ship. But the Astron didn’t have the redundancy that a true generational ship would have had; it fed upon itself and the crew. There had to be another explanation for the Captain and you.”