The Dark Beyond the Stars

by Frank M. Robinson

  Noah and Abel had undoubtedly come to the same conclusion.

  “You wanted to be captain,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Perhaps sometime. What else was there to be?”

  “And you would have gone with Kusaka?”

  “I was curious.” A glimmer of his old arrogance returned. “It’s a big universe.”

  Mike would have gone because he had been programmed. Thrush would have gone out of a cold curiosity.

  “You would have been inviting loneliness for centuries.”

  His face darkened.

  “I’m lonely now.”

  There was a certain amount of self-pity in the statement, but it was also true. I wondered if alienation could be transmitted through the genes.

  “You knew you were Kusaka’s son?”

  “Long before he told me.” A brief grimace: “I never identified with any of the crew, and like you, I healed too fast.”

  He had logged computer time for the same reason I had—trying to find out who he was. It explained a lot. What he had discovered made him the prince-in-waiting and I his unwitting competition.

  It was an uneasy moment of identification; I couldn’t forget that he had tried to kill me. I couldn’t afford him, but the Astron couldn’t afford to be without him. He was the only true scientist on board.

  “On the Lander, Thrush—you said you hoped I would die.”

  He looked surprised.

  “You were Hamlet,” he said. “I had no reason to like him.”

  From somewhere inside came confirmation.

  “The drink bulb in sick bay,” I said. “Was that you or Heron?”

  His pale face suddenly shone with sweat.

  “I knew Abel and Noah were going to ask you questions. I wanted to know the answers, too. But you would never have told me.”

  I smiled to myself. It had been a simple truth serum, but how was Sparrow to know?

  “And the tether line?”

  He shrugged. “Somebody’s sloppy work.”

  If he was telling the truth, Sparrow had been a fool. But considering all that had happened, Sparrow had the right. And Thrush was hardly blameless.

  “And on Aquinas II? That was your idea, not Heron’s.”

  He looked cornered, his pale lips lifting slightly away from his too-white teeth.

  “Yes,” he blurted, “that was my idea. But you tried to kill me on the hangar deck. You would have cut my throat!”

  I had come so very close…

  “You drew first blood, Thrush.”

  He shook his head vehemently.

  “I wanted to mark you, not kill you. What kind of a fool do you think I am? Kill the Captain’s replacement? The crew’s icon? I would have been sent to Reduction within the hour.”

  I continued, remorseless.

  “On Aquinas II, you had decided I was too dangerous to live and tried murder by proxy. Of all the crew members, Heron was the only one who loved you, Thrush. The only one who would do anything for you.”

  He hung his head and said nothing.

  “And let’s not forget Pipit,” I murmured.

  He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “You want me to agree I deserve Reduction? Then I agree.”

  I made up my mind.

  “The Astron needs a doctor and you were Abel’s assistant. He didn’t like you, Thrush, but when it came to science, he thought highly of you.”

  “Whatever you say,” he whispered.

  He was a shade too humble and it irritated me.

  “Don’t you want to see the Earth? Aside from myself, you’re the only one who will.”

  He shrugged once again. “It means nothing to me.”

  I thought of his compartment falsie and knew he was lying.

  “I know the Earth firsthand, Thrush. I’ve seen birds whose wings beat so fast they can hover above the ground without benefit of updrafts and I’ve heard other birds imitate a human voice. There are animals that raise their young in pouches, slugs that excrete glue to coat the ground they travel over, and worms that live in the oceans at depths that would crush a submarine…” My voice trailed away. I sounded like Mike so often had.

  The old Thrush shouldered his way to the surface.

  “You’ve seen a lot,” he said sarcastically.

  The Astron needed him but it needed him on its terms, not his.

  “An ice volcano is not the highest achievement of the universe,” I said slowly. “Neither are planetary rings nor a rock sitting in the middle of a lunar plain. You and I are its highest achievements, Thrush—we can think and we can feel and we can run and play games and pick our noses. There’s nothing else in the universe that can do any of those.”

  He gave in then, making a great show of how little it meant to him. “If you want me to be the doctor—”

  I cut him short, letting some of Raymond Stone’s authority seep into my voice. “You’ll do it because I tell you to, Thrush. And because nobody else is qualified.” And then I sweetened it, but only a little. “I also hope you’ll do it because you want to.”

  When he was at the hatchway, I said: “I’m sorry about… your father. At one time he was my friend.”

  “My father let you win,” Thrush said proudly. “He knew all about the mutiny, he could have stopped it at any time. But even after he knew I could serve as his replacement, he didn’t do it.” He looked away. “Captain Kusaka committed suicide.”

  That was one of the few times I ever saw the real Thrush. It didn’t make me like him any more but I understood him a little better. Everybody on board needed someone to “take an interest.” The Captain never had until he knew for sure that Thrush was going to live forever. By then it was too late…

  ****

  My first real test as captain didn’t jump out at me all at once. I became aware of it bit by bit. Fewer and fewer crew members seemed to be wearing eye masks, preferring the comforting illusion of the compartment falsies to the reality of the ship as it actually was. A sullenness also seemed to be spreading through the crew, and too many of them fell silent when I passed.

  “It’s because you’ve taken away purpose,” Snipe said one sleep period when we had curled up in the hammock.

  “I haven’t taken away purpose,” I said, puzzled. “I’ve given it.” She was silent, stroking my legs and tangling her fingers in the hair on my chest. “That hurts.”

  “Sorry,” she said, not sorry at all. Then, trying to explain: “You’ve seen the Earth, Sparrow. They never will. Before, we went from planet to planet and while we never found anything, there was always the hope that we would. And we kept ourselves busy preparing.”

  Mike had made them promises and he was credible because he believed in them himself. If not here, he would say, then there. If not this generation, then next…

  I could promise them nothing for twenty generations and I wasn’t sure I could promise them the Earth even then. And they sensed it.

  “They would rather believe in fantasy?”

  “There’s not much difference, Sparrow. What you promise, they’ll never see.”

  She was right. I also knew I couldn’t live with a sullen crew. I called in Thrush and told him what I wanted, then guaranteed I would get it by suggesting he couldn’t do it. After that, I chose a time when almost everybody was asleep, stole up to the bridge and slipped into the captain’s chair.

  It took the entire period to identify all the compartment falsies as well as those for the various workplaces and assembly areas. I put each of them in a guardian shell, and when the crew woke they saw the Astron as it really was—small, dingy, with broken glow tubes and tiny compartments, ancient machinery and mossy bulkheads. Moments later they became aware of the sweat and the odor of human bodies that filled the air.

  Ophelia was the first to push past Crow and ask for an explanation, her face white with anger.

  “Why?” she demanded.

  “They’ve grown too fond of shadows,” I said.

  “You’ve seen the Earth,” s
he objected. “They haven’t.”

  “They know where they’ve been but they don’t know where they’re going, is that it?”

  I was the Captain, but she had known me too long as Sparrow and didn’t bother to hide her sarcasm.

  “You put it well.”

  “Then go to the hangar deck and take a look,” I said casually.

  She turned suspicious. “It’s been off limits for the past half dozen time periods.”

  I left the chair and drifted to the corridor outside.

  “It isn’t now, Ophelia.”

  She hesitated in mid-tirade, then followed me to the well that led to the hangar deck. The news had already spread and outside the hatchway, the corridor was jammed. Inside, the crew gaped in awe at the prairie spread out before them. The huge expanse was a sloping hill of grass and wildflowers, while at the bottom was a small brook whose surface was broken by the frequent splashes of fish. There were little eddies in the stream and along its banks weeds hung over the water, acting as cover for a dozen croaking frogs.

  Overhead, the sky was a light blue mottled with wispy white clouds. The touch of genius was the occasional bird that Thrush had programmed winging its way toward a distant plot of plowed land. A farmhouse topped a nearby hill; off in the distance was the barely discernible smudge of a city.

  It was the third time I had seen it but it still took my breath away.

  “I’ll turn all the falsies back on,” I assured Ophelia, “but I wanted the crew to know where we’re going.”

  The sullen looks disappeared after that and there was more talk of when we would arrive at Earth orbit and what we might find. I gave Thrush full credit; he accepted the compliments grudgingly, but secretly, I think he was proud.

  I was gambling that such a meadow still existed, consoling myself with the thought that those who admired the fantasy would never live long enough to be disappointed by the reality.

  ****

  In one sense, birth is something that’s best appreciated by the parents and maybe the attending doctors. For an outsider, it’s a bloody, unpleasant, unaesthetic, barbaric business reminding us of the animals we are and the basic bodily functions we share with them.

  But that was Raymond Stone’s view and certainly didn’t reflect that of the Astron’s crew. For two weeks the corridors were crowded with crew members watching the deliveries on peep screens and cheering wildly at the first cry of each baby. They gambled on the sex of each and the most beautiful was always the one that had just been born.

  The women identified vicariously with the various mothers; none of the men openly claimed paternity but each secretly felt the baby of the birth mother he had been with was his.

  Thrush was efficient and stoic, sometimes tending the mothers around the clock. One period, I went with him to sick bay, filled with nursing mothers and their bawling, lusty flock and was deeply moved. Life, I thought, with all its unlimited possibilities…

  I looked around. “Where’s Pipit?”

  “In her compartment. She didn’t want me to attend her after delivery.”

  His face showed no emotions, but his voice betrayed him.

  “Healthy baby?” I asked inanely.

  “A boy. You might recognize him.”

  It was a strange remark. A few minutes later I asked and was granted permission to enter Pipit’s compartment. She was nursing the baby; Crow was beside her on the hammock, ooh-ing and aah-ing and going through the fatherly routine I had already seen a dozen times.

  “Hold him a minute,” Pipit said proudly.

  I did, and promptly regretted it. But that’s what waistcloths are for. His skin was as olive as Pipit’s and his eyes were almost black. I chucked him under the chin and he tolerated it a moment, his dark eyes staring somberly into mine, before crying for his mother.

  I handed him back and congratulated Pipit profusely. I managed to control my shivering until I was out in the corridor, then let the goose bumps form. When young babies stare at you, they sometimes seem far older than their years, and very wise, as if they know something important that you don’t. Unfortunately, by the time they learn to speak, they’ve forgotten whatever it was they wanted to say shortly after they were born.

  That’s more fantasy than theory, but when I looked into the dark eyes of Pipit’s baby, I imagined I saw Michael Kusaka staring back.

  When the excitement of the births had died away and the Astron had settled once more into routine, I asked Crow and Thrush and Ophelia to meet me in the captain’s private compartment. It had been left exactly as it was when Mike had died. The nine hundred crypts sat silent, the figures within looking deceptively natural and lifelike, waiting patiently for the technicians to revive them. Ophelia and Crow inspected them uneasily, noting the names and the various professions. Thrush’s face was as blank of emotion as my own. I didn’t know whether he mourned Mike, but I mourned them all.

  I waited a moment, then cleared my throat and said, “The return crew was cheated—they never had the chance to see Outside as the first crew did and neither did they have the chance to return to Earth to live out their lives and die there as they thought they would. They were my crew and my friends…”

  My voice trailed off but I had more control than to let myself weep.

  “They never received much for participating in the voyage, but they’ve left us a legacy: themselves. Thanks to them, we’ll arrive back on Earth with the same crew complement that we have right now, perhaps a few more.”

  They knew what I meant. The bodies of the return crew would go to Reduction and more than make up for the Astron’s losses during the next twenty generations.

  “You’ll supervise, Thrush. Pick a team. But attend to the job during sleep periods and close off any corridors you’ll be using.”

  He nodded, but Crow and Ophelia still looked mystified, wondering why I had asked them to attend.

  I cleared my throat again.

  “I need witnesses to hear me read the service for the dead.”

  I had found the small book in Mike’s library; now I opened it to the appropriate page and started reading in a low voice. For Selma and Bobby and the hundreds of others, it was the most that I could do.

  When I was through I waved Crow and Ophelia away but asked Thrush to stay behind.

  “Mike’s in the crypt with my name on it. If you want to be left alone…”

  He shook his head and said firmly, “No, I don’t think so,” then glanced around at the crypts and murmured, “I’m surprised they’re still here.”

  I didn’t say anything. Nobody would have helped Mike carry the bodies to Reduction and he would never have asked. The few words I had once overheard came back to me. He had lived for two millennia with nine hundred albatrosses hung around his neck. In imagination I could see him talking to them every sleep period, begging their forgiveness for the ten thousandth time.

  The next few time periods I spent in the captain’s chair in the outer compartment, staring at the simulations just outside the port. I refused to see anyone, even Snipe. The fourth sleep period by myself, Crow and Loon pushed through the shadow screen without announcing themselves. With them were two young women, Starling and Gull, whom I had never gotten to know very well, even during the time when Crow and I had rutted our way through the ship.

  I glanced at them and waved my hand at the port.

  “That’s the solar system—Jupiter and its moons.”

  The two women looked at the view beyond the port and then back at me. They giggled and it occurred to me they hadn’t come to look at simulations of Outside.

  Oh, no, I thought, but Crow read me, nodded firmly, and said, “Oh, yes, Sparrow.”

  My heart wasn’t in it, but they had brought some smoke and Loon played an old tune on his harmonica. Half an hour later our waistcloths were floating limply about the compartment and I discovered that despite everything that had happened, I was still very human and could smile and laugh after all.

  Sometime
during that period Crow murmured in my ear, “It’s life, Sparrow.” Crow had made his point and it was one that I never forgot.

  Life is for the living.

  Chapter 33

  As the months rolled by, I found myself regretting more and more that I was no longer a seventeen-year-old tech assistant. The problems of the ship were relatively easy to handle. The personal problems were trying. When I talked to Huldah now, it was difficult to see her as the matriarch on board. In my mind’s eye I kept seeing her as she was when I was Aaron: She was very young and very pretty, with un-wrinkled skin and large dark eyes that always smiled when they saw me. As Aaron, I had been a friend of Noah’s and Abel’s and all three of us had competed for Huldah. I remembered my hurt when she had finally dropped me, and how sullen I had been around Noah and Abel after that.

  Strangely, I kept seeing the younger Huldah when we met and kept apologizing for it afterward until she finally stopped me.

  “Sparrow, I don’t mind being mistaken for a younger and prettier self. It’s flattering—until you apologize for doing it.”

  We laughed, and once again I saw in her everything that I had admired when she was younger.

  She was curious about the history of the ship and I filled her in from my own memories, surprised that her oral history was so accurate. For many months we met regularly every other time period and I would tell her about events in which I had played a part and remembered so well, but about which she had only heard at second or third or twentieth hand.

  Then one period her interest seemed to flag. I noticed for the first time that she was becoming frail and her skin was turning translucent. She was failing and we both knew it.

  The last time I saw her, we didn’t talk about history but simply about Noah and Abel and us and the hurts and traumas of young love. I kissed her fondly when I left, knowing that we would never see each other again.

  Her successor, as we all knew it would be, was Pipit, who now took Huldah’s compartment and assumed the role of matron.

  Snipe aged well, though there came a time when she pushed me firmly away in the hammock and said she loved me very much but the role she was playing was making her increasingly uncomfortable.