Orbit Unlimited

by Poul Anderson

As it happened, the attempt was successful. Communications Officer Anastas Mardikian had assembled his receiver after acceleration ceased – a big thing, surrounding the flagship Ranger like a spiderweh trapping a fly – and had kept it hopefully tuned over a wide band. The radio beam swept through, ghostly faint from dispersion, wave-length doubled by Doppler effect, ragged with cosmic noise. An elaborate system of filters and amplifiers could make it no more than barely intelligible.

  But that was enough.

  Mardikian burst onto the bridge. He was young, and the months had not yet tarnished the glory of his first deep-space voyage. ‘Sir!’ he yelled. ‘A message … I just played back the recorder … a message from Earth!’

  Fleet Captain Joshua Coffin started. That movement, in weightlessness, spun him off the deck. He stopped himself with a practiced hand, stiffened, and rapped back: ‘If you haven’t learned regulations by now, a week of solitary confinement may give you a chance to study them.’

  ‘I … but, sir—’ The other man retreated. His uniform made a loose rainbow splash across metal and plastic. Coffin alone, of the fleet’s whole company, held to the black garments of a space service long extinct.

  ‘But, sir,’ said Mardikian. ‘Word from Earth!’

  ‘Only the duty officer may enter the bridge without permission,’ Coffin reminded him. ‘If you had anything urgent to tell, there is an intercom.’

  ‘I thought—’ choked Mardikian. He paused, then came to the free-fall equivalent of attention. Anger glittered in his eyes. ‘Sorry, sir.’

  Coffin hung quiet a while, looking at the dark young man in the brilliant clothes. Forget it, he said to himself. Times are another. This is as good as spacemen get to be nowadays, careless, superstitious, jabbering among each other in languages I don’t understand. Thank the Lord God there are any recruits whatsoever, and hope He will let there continue to be a few for what remains of your life.

  The duty officer, Hallmyer, was tall and blond and born in Lancashire; but he watched the other two with Asian eyes. No one spoke, though Mardikian breathed heavily. Stars filled the bow viewport, crowding a huge night.

  Coffin sighed. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I’ll let it pass this time.’

  After all, he reflected, a message from Earth was an event. Radio had gone between Sol and Alpha Centauri, but that was with very special equipment. To pinpoint a handful of ships, moving at half the speed of light, and to do it so well that the comparatively tiny receiver Mardikian had erected would pick up the beam— Yes, the boy had some excuse for gladness.

  ‘What was the signal?’ Coffin inquired.

  He expected it would only be routine, a test, so that engineers a lifetime hence could ask the returning fleet whether the transmission had registered. If there were any engineers by then. Instead, Mardikian blurted:

  ‘Old Svoboda is dead. The new Psychologies Commissioner is Thomas … Thomson … that part didn’t record clearly … anyway, he must be sympathetic to the Constitutionalists. He’s rescinded the educational decree – promised more consideration for provincial mores — Come hear for yourself, sir!’

  Despite himself, Coffin whistled. ‘But that’s why the Eridani colony was being founded,’ he said. His words fell flat and silly into silence.

  Hallmyer said, with the alien hiss in his English that Coffin hated, for it was like the Serpent in a once noble garden:

  ‘Apparently the colony has lost its reason for being started. But how shall we consult with 3000 would-be pioneers lying in deepsleep?’

  ‘Shall we?’ Coffin did not know why – not yet – but he felt his brain move with the speed of fear. ‘We’ve undertaken to deliver them to Rustum. In the absence of specific orders from Earth, are we even allowed to consider a change of plans … since a general vote can’t be taken? Better avoid possible trouble and not even mention—’ He broke off. Mardikian’s face had become a mask of dismay.

  ‘But, sir!’ bleated the Com officer.

  A chill rose in Coffin. ‘You have already told,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ whispered Mardikian. ‘I met Coenrad de Smet, he had come over to this ship for some repair parts, and – I never thought—’

  ‘Exactly!’ growled Coffin.

  2

  The fleet numbered fifteen, more than half the inter-stellar ships humankind possessed. It could not cross the six parsecs to e Eridani and return in less than 82 years. But the government didn’t mind that. It had even provided speeches and music when the colonists embarked. After which, Coffin thought, it had doubtless grinned to itself and thanked its various heathen gods that that was over with.

  ‘Only now,’ he muttered, ‘it isn’t.’

  He free-sat in the Ranger’s general room, waiting for the conference to start. The austerity of the walls around him was broken by a few pictures. Coffin had wanted to leave them bare (since no one else would be interested in a photograph of that catboat the boy Joshua had sailed on a Massachusetts bay which glittered in summers now forgotten) – but even the theoretically absolute power of a fleet captain had its limits. At least the men were not making this room obscene with naked women. Though in all honesty, he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t rather have that than … brush strokes on rice paper, the suggestion of a tree, and a classic ideogram…He did not understand the new generations.

  The Ranger skipper, Nils Kivi, was like a breath of home: a small dapper Finn who had traveled with Coffin on the first e Eridani trip. They were not exactly friends, an admiral has no intimates, but they had been young in the same decade.

  Actually, thought Coffin, most of us spacemen are anachronisms. I could talk to Goldberg or Yamato or Pereira, to quite a few on this voyage, and not meet blank surprise when I mentioned a dead actor or hummed a dead song. But they’re in deepsleep now. Well stand our one-year watches in turn, and be put back in the coldvats, and have no chance to talk till journey’s end.

  ‘It may prove to be fun,’ mused Kivi.

  ‘What?’ asked Coffin.

  ‘To walk around High America again, and fish in the Emperor River, and dig up our old camp,’ said Kivi. ‘We had some fine times on Rustum, along with the work and danger.’

  Coffin was startled, that his own thoughts should have been so closely followed. ‘Yes,’ he agreed, remembering strange wild dawns on the Cleft edge, ‘that was a pretty good five years.’

  Kivi sighed. ‘Different this time,’ he said. ‘Maybe I don’t want to go back. We were discoverers then, walking where men had never laid eyes before. Now the colonists will be the hopeful ones. We are nothing but their transportation.’

  Coffin shrugged. He had heard the complaint before, even prior to departure and often enough on the voyage so far. Men cooped together like this must learn to endure each other’s repetitiousness. ‘We must take what is given us, and be thankful,’ he said.

  ‘This time,’ said Kivi, ‘I worry: suppose I come home again and find my job abolished? No more space travel ever. If that happens, I refuse to be thankful.’

  Forgive him, Coffin asked his God, Who seldom forgave. It is cruel to watch the foundation of your life being corroded away.

  Kivi’s eyes lit up, the briefest flicker. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘if we really do cancel this trip and go straight back, we may not arrive too late. We may still find a few expeditions to new stars being organized, and get on their rosters.’

  Coffin tautened. Again he was unsure why he felt an emotion: this time, anger. ‘I shall permit no disloyalty to the purpose for which we are engaged,’ he clipped.

  ‘Oh, come off it,’ Kivi said. ‘Be rational. I don’t know your reason for undertaking this wretched cruise. You had rank enough to turn down the assignment; no one else did. But you want to explore as badly as I. If Earth didn’t care about us, they would not have bothered to invite us back. Let us seize the chance while it lasts.’ He intercepted a reply by glancing at the wall chrono. Time for our conference.’ He flicked the intership switch.

  A televisual panel ca
me to life, divided into fourteen sections, one for each accompanying vessel. One or two faces peered from each. The craft which bore only supplies and deepsleeping crewmen were represented by their captains. Those which had colonists revealed a civilian spokesman as well as a skipper.

  Coffin studied each image in turn. The spacemen he knew. They all belonged to the Society, and even those born long after him had much in common. There was a necessary minimum discipline of mind and body, and the underlying dream for which everything else in life had been traded – new horizons beneath new suns. Not that spacemen indulged in such poetics; they had too much work to do.

  The colonists were something else. With them Coffin shared certain things, too. Their background was predominantly North American, they had a scientific habit of thought, they distrusted government as he did. But few Constitutionalists had any religion; those who did were Romish, Jewish, Buddhist, or otherwise foreign to him. All were tainted with the self-indulgence of this era: they had written into their convenant that no law could touch private morals and that free speech was limited only by personal libel. Coffin thought sometimes he would be glad to see the last of them.

  ‘Is everyone prepared?’ he began. ‘Very well, let’s get down to business. It’s unfortunate the Com officer gossiped so loosely. He stirred up a hornets’ nest’ – Coffin saw that few understood the idiom – ‘he created discontent which threatens this whole project. We’ve got to deal with it.’

  Coenrad de Smet, colonist aboard the Scout, smiled in a peculiarly irritating way. ‘You would simply have concealed the fact?’ he asked.

  ‘It would have made matters easier,’ said Coffin stiffly.

  ‘In other words,’ de Smet said, ‘you know better what we might want than we do ourselves. That, sir, is the kind of arrogance we hoped to escape. No man has the right to suppress any information bearing on public affairs–’

  A low voice, with a touch of laughter, said through a hood: ‘And you accuse Captain Coffin of preaching!’

  The New Englander’s eyes were drawn to her. Not that he could see through the shapeless gown and mask, such as hid the waking women, but he had met Teresa Zeleny on Earth, in the course of preparing for this expedition. Hearing her now was somehow like remembering Indian summer on a wooded hilltop, a century ago.

  Involuntarily, his own lips quirked upward. Thank you,’ he said. ‘Do you, Mr. De Smet, know what the deepsleeping colonists might want? Have you any right to decide for them? And yet we can’t wake them, even the adults, to vote. There simply isn’t room. If nothing else, the air regenerators couldn’t supply that much oxygen. That’s why I felt it best to tell no one, until we were actually at Rustum. Then those who wished could return with the fleet, I suppose.’

  ‘We could rouse them a few at a time, let them vote, and put them back to sleep,’ suggested Teresa Zeleny.

  ‘It would take weeks,’ said Coffin. ‘You should know especially well that metabolism isn’t lightly stopped, or easily restored.’

  ‘If you could see my face,’ she said, again with a chuckle, ‘I would grimace amen. I’m so sick of tending inert human flesh that – well, I’m glad they’re only women and girls, because if I also had to massage and inject men I’d take a vow of chastity.’

  Coffin blushed, cursed himself for blushing, and hoped she couldn’t see it over the telecircuit. He noticed Kivi grin. Damn Kivi!

  A young male colonist added some joke about his task being a sure cure for homosexual tendencies. Coffin fumbled miserably after words. These people were without shame. Here in the great night of God they said things which should have brought thunderbolts, and he had to sit and listen.

  Kivi provided the merciful interruption. ‘Your few-at-a-time proposal is pointless anyhow,’ he said. ‘In the course of those weeks we would pass the critical date.’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked a girl’s voice.

  ‘You don’t know?’ said Coffin, surprised.

  ‘Let it pass for now,’ broke in Teresa. Once again, as several times before, Coffin admired her decisiveness. She cut through nonsense with a man’s speed and a woman’s practicality. ‘Take our word, June, that if we don’t turn about within two months, we’ll do better to go to Rustum. So, voting is out. We could wake a few sleepers but those already conscious are really as adequate a statistical sample.’

  Coffin nodded. She spoke for five women on her ship, who stood a year-watch caring for 295 in suspended animation. In the course of the voyage, only 120 would not be restimulated for such duty, and these were children. The proportion on the other nine colonist-laden vessels was similar, while the crew totaled 1620 with 45 up and about at any given time. Whether the die was cast by less than two percent, or by four or five percent, was hardly significant.

  ‘Let’s recollect exactly what the message was,’ said Coffin. ‘The educational decree which directly threatened your Constitutionalist way of life has been withdrawn. You’re no worse off than formerly – and no better, though the message hints at further concessions in the future. You’re invited home again. That’s all. We haven’t picked up any other transmissions. It seems very little data on which to base so large a decision.’

  ‘It’s an even bigger one to continue,’ said de Smet. He leaned forward, a bulky man, until he filled his screen. Hardness rang in his tones. ‘We were able people, economically rather well off. I daresay Earth already misses our services, especially in technological fields. Your own report makes Rustum out a grim place. Many of us would die there. Why should we not turn home if we can?’

  ‘Home,’ whispered someone.

  The word filled a sudden quietness, like water filling a cup, until quietness brimmed over with it. Coffin sat listening to the voice of his ship, generators, ventilators, regulators, and he began to hear a beat frequency which was Home, home, home.

  Only his home was gone. His father’s church was torn down for an Oriental temple, and the woods where October had burned were cleared for another tentacle of city, and the bay was enclosed to make a plankton farm. For him, only a spaceship remained, and the somehow cold hope of heaven.

  A very young man said, almost to himself: ‘I left a girl back there.’

  ‘I had my personal sub,’ said another. ‘I used to poke around the Great Barrier Reef, skindiving out the airlock or loafing on the surface. You wouldn’t believe how blue the waves could be. They tell me on Rustum you can’t come down off the mountaintops.’

  ‘But we’d have the whole planet to ourselves,’ said Teresa Zeleny.

  One with a gentle scholar’s face answered: That may be precisely the trouble, my dear. Three thousand of us, counting children, totally isolated from the human mainstream. Can we hope to build a civilization? Or even maintain one?’

  ‘Your problem, pop,’ said the officer beside him dryly, ‘is that there are no medieval manuscripts on Rustum.’

  ‘I admit it,’ said the scholar. ‘I thought it more important that my children grow up able to use their minds. But if it turns out they can do so on Earth…. How much chance will the first generations on Rustum have to sit down and really think, anyway?’

  ‘Would there even be a next generation on Rustum?’

  ‘One and a quarter gravities – God! I can feel it now.’

  ‘Synthetics, year after year of synthetics and hydroponics, till we can establish an ecology. I had steak on Earth, once in a while.’

  ‘My mother couldn’t come. Too frail. But she’s paid for a hundred years of deepsleep, all she could afford … just in case I do return.’

  ‘I designed skyhouses. They won’t build anything on Rustum much better than log cabins, in my lifetime.’

  ‘Do you remember moonlight on the Grand Canyon?’

  ‘Do you remember Beethoven’s Ninth in the Federal Concert Hall?’

  ‘Do you remember that funny old tavern on Midlevel, where we drank beer and sang Lieder?

  ‘Do you remember?’

  ‘Do you remember?’

>   Teresa Zeleny shouted across their voices: ‘In Anker’s name! What are you thinking about? If you care so little, you should never have embarked in the first place!’

  It brought back the silence, not at once but piece by piece, until Coffin could pound the table and call for order. He looked straight at her hidden eyes and said, ‘Thank you, Miss Zeleny. I was expecting tears to be uncorked any moment.’

  One of the girls snuffed behind her mask.

  Charles Lochaber, speaking for the Courier colonists, nodded. ‘Aye, ‘tis a blow to our purpose. I’m not so sairtain I myself would vote to continue, did I feel the message was to be trusted.’

  ‘What?’ De Smet’s square head jerked up from between his shoulders.

  Lochaber grinned without much humor. ‘The government has been getting more arbitrary each year,’ he said. ‘They were ready enough to let us go, aye. But they may regret it now – not because we could ever be an active threat, but because we will be a subversive example, up there in Earth’s sky. Or simply because we will be. Mind ye, I know not for sairtain; but it’s possible they decided we are safer dead, and this is to trick us back. ‘Twould be characteristic dictatorsliip behavior.’

  ‘Of all the fantastic—’ gasped an indignant female voice.

  ‘Not as wild as you might think, dear,’ Teresa said. ‘I’ve read some history, and I don’t mean that censored pap which passes for history nowadays. But there’s another possibility just as alarming. That message may be perfectly sincere. But will it still be true when we get back? Remember how long that will take. And even if we could return overnight, to an Earth that welcomed us, what guarantee would there be that our children, or our grandchildren, won’t suffer the same troubles as we’ve had, without the same chance to break free?’

  ‘Ye vote, then, to carry on?’ asked Lochaber.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Good lass. I’m with ye.’

  Kivi raised his hand. Coffin recognized him. ‘I’m not sure the crew ought not to have a voice in this also,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ De Smet grew red. He gobbled for a moment before he could get out: ‘Do you seriously think you could elect us to settle on that annex of hell – and then come home to Earth yourselves?’