Exile-and Glory

by Jerry Pournelle

  "Who're you with?" Kevin asked. He had to talk much louder than he was used to; the low air pressure didn't carry sound very well. Although there were people in the compartments on either side and the partition was only thin nylon, they couldn't understand the conversations in the next cabins.

  "Interplanet." Norsedal continued working with glue and Velcro. The glue smell was strong, but not excessively so. "I hope the air system doesn't have trouble with this," Norsedal said. "I suppose I should have brought water-soluble glue. But I wanted it to dry quickly. Maybe we should ask someone—"

  "I wouldn't worry about it," Kevin said. Interplanet, he thought. That was the Zurich-based international consortium that maintained one of the two bases on Ceres. Kevin couldn't picture Jacob Norsedal as a miner or prospector and he certainly wasn't any kind of construction worker. "What will you be doing on Ceres?"

  "Computer programming. And experiments with the computer system," Norsedal said. "Storekeeping—I'm supposed to set up an inventory control system for them. And work time-effectiveness studies. Anything that needs doing with computers." He seemed very happy about the idea.

  "I—" Kevin hesitated. He didn't want to offend the man. Presumably there would be an opportunity to swap cabinmates once the ship was under way, but in any event there was certainly no sense in getting into an argument with someone you'd have to live with for months. His curiosity got the better of him. "You don't seem like a spaceman."

  Norsedal smiled through his beard. "No. That's what the company said when I applied. It took me a long time to convince them. But look at it this way. A ten-year supply of insulin doesn't weigh very much. Nor does it matter if I'm overweight, not in Ceres' gravity, or in none at all. And I had one very good argument: I wanted to go and I can do the work." He began stowing his gear as he glued fuzz onto it. Decks of magnetic-backed cards. Three wargaming books. When he came to those he looked thoughtfully at the reader screen.

  "I think I can tie that into my computer," Norsedal said. "We can use it for a display. Are you interested in wargames?"

  Kevin had never thought about it. "After a few months in space I expect I'll be interested in anything—"

  Norsedal grinned. "That's what I thought. We'll teach this thing to play Star Trek." He reached out to the screen and touched it, petting it like a dog: nice screen. Pat, pat.

  They had two days aboard Wayfarer before the final boost toward Ceres. Kevin thought it would have been fun if there hadn't been so many people crowded aboard. He learned to eat in free fall, although he still managed to get a lot of the food into the intake grid of the air recirculation system: the only way to spoon food from plastic bags to mouth was in one smooth motion, never stopping. If he halted the spoon on its way, the food kept going to splatter against his face or shoot over his shoulder.

  He also learned to do tumbling in zero-gravity. One of the other passengers organized a pool: the winner would be the first passenger to go in a single leap from A deck all the way to the aft bulkhead. No one looked like winning it just yet; four decks was the record. It was Kevin's turn to try when Captain Greiner ordered all the passengers back to their cabins for boost.

  Weight felt strange. The ship boosted at about ten percent of Earth's gravity, but Kevin found that quite enough. All over the ship loose objects fell to the decks.

  "Last chance." Jacob Norsedal said. "Until halfway there. Anything lost after this boost is done will either go to the air intake grid, or it won't show up at all."

  Ninety minutes later the acceleration ended. Wayfarer was now in a long elliptical orbit that would cross the orbit of Ceres. Left to itself, the ship would go on past, more than halfway to Jupiter, before the Sun's gravity would finally turn it back to complete the ellipse and return it to its starting point. In order to land on Ceres, the ship would have to boost again when it got out to the orbit of the asteroid.

  There would also be minor course-correction maneuvers during the trip, but except for those the ship's nuclear-pile engine wouldn't be started up until they arrived at Ceres's orbit. Then the ship would accelerate to catch up with the asteroid. That wouldn't happen for nine months.

  Nine months was a long time, Kevin had thought, but he was surprised at how quickly time passed. With only ten crewmen aboard, the passengers had to take turns working ship maintenance systems. Kevin was assigned to life support, with the job of cleaning out the sewage-processor. It wasn't his favorite work, but he learned a lot about the algae tanks and chemical processors that took human wastes, including exhaled carbon dioxide, and turned them into oxygen and food.

  There were also large leafy plants: lettuce, spinach, even watermelons and pumpkins. These vegetables furnished variety in their food, but were not really important to the ship's ecology. It takes a lot of surface area to absorb sunlight enough to convert a hundred people's wastes, and the larger the plants the less surface they had for the mass they took up. Algae are not as pretty as strawberry plants, but they are highly efficient.

  The heart of the system was a series of large transparent tanks filled with green water and tropical fish. Once Wayfarer was under way the crew erected large mirrors outside the hull. The mirrors collected sunlight and focused it through Plexiglas viewports onto the algae tanks. A ventilation system brought the ship's air into the tanks as a stream of bubbles. Other pumping systems collected sewage and forced it into chemical processors; the output was treated sewage that went to the algae tanks as fertilizer.

  Kevin called it the "green slime works" and was always suspicious of the food served aboard Wayfarer; harvesting and food processing was somebody else's job, and Kevin didn't want to know the details. He knew that the algae became high-protein flour somewhere along the line—but he also knew what the algae tanks took in. The thought wasn't particularly appetizing.

  He got to know most of his fellow passengers. Ellen was roomed with two other women in a slightly larger cabin on L Deck, not far from the stern. Wiley Ralston was one deck above her. So was Bill Dykes, the miner/prospector Kevin had met on the plane to Baja. Kevin met a number of others as well; he had a very popular roommate.

  Jacob Norsedal was madly teaching his personal computer to play Star Trek, Galactic Empire, Waterloo, Alexander the Great, Diplomacy, and any other game people wanted to indulge in. He had also invented a three-dimensional interstellar war game with a dozen mutually opposing sides, and that seemed destined to be interminable—the players needed a computer just to tell them their options. Norsedal didn't play games himself, but he loved being referee, and his quarters tended to be a meeting place for those with nothing to do.

  Kevin, to his sorrow, wasn't included in that category. On his second day after boost a large man came to the stateroom. "Kevin Senecal?" he demanded.

  "Me," Kevin admitted.

  "George Lange. Senior Daedalus employee aboard. I guess I'm your boss." Lange held out a stack of cassettes. "You're supposed to study these."

  Kevin opened them warily. "That's a lot of reading—"

  "It's just a start," Lange said. "I've got a lot more for you. You're expected to learn something on this trip." He glared at Norsedal's computer, which was marching armies across the reader screen. "There's work waiting out in the Belt."

  "And we've got months," Wiley Ralston said. He came into the stateroom. With four people inside it was crowded, but not badly: Ralston and Norsedal took places near where the ceiling would have been if there had been a floor and ceiling; with no gravity, there was no up or down and any part of the room was as comfortable as any other.

  "There's months' worth of learning to be done." Lange growled. "Look, this ship is it. Either we make some profits out of the Belt, or there won't be more ships going. Not even the big companies can keep up this investment without some return. So at least you, Senecal, will get to work learning what you ought to."

  Later Kevin found he had tapes on general space operations, mining, prospecting, environmental control systems, composition of asteroids, orbita
l mechanics—

  Norsedal helped him study. He claimed to be interested, but Kevin thought Norsedal had probably learned everything on the tapes and was too polite to admit it. Certainly he was a good coach. Anything that could be done with a computer particularly interested him, and he showed Kevin how to do simple programs to solve most of the problems on the tapes. Slowly Kevin found himself learning what he had to know, even though it left him very little time for social life. His studies tended to keep him busy, so that he conversed mainly with Norsedal.

  Three weeks out Kevin finished the first stack of tapes. "I suppose he'll have more," he said.

  Norsedal was sitting yoga-fashion on nothing. He looked like a bearded Buddha. "Probably."

  "So I don't tell him I'm done," Kevin said. He waved at the stack of tapes. "Gripes, according to that stuff we've licked all the problems, but every time I see Lange he gives me this bit about how desperate everything is, and how much work there is to do—" He stopped because Norsedal wasn't amused and it showed. "Are things that bad? I thought we knew how to live in space—"

  "We do," Jacob said. "Technical capabilities exceed requirements by an order of magnitude. But Lange is right all the same. The space colonies aren't self-sufficient, and there aren't many ships. The Luna people want more Earth cargoes, the O'Neill Colony people want the ships, and the big companies can't afford to keep sending ships out to the Belt unless they get something back. I wouldn't be surprised if this were the last ship from Earth until the Ceres refineries prove they can make a profit."

  "You mean it's really up to us?" Kevin asked.

  Norsedal was very serious. "It might be. It's worse than that, really. Earth is so near the edge that if this attempt doesn't make it we may never be able to afford asteroid colonies again."

  It was a sobering thought. Kevin looked at the pile of tapes. "I guess I'd better tell Lange I'm ready to get back to work."

  Chapter Eight

  With 130 people packed into quarters that would have been cramped for half that number it was inevitable that the passengers would get on each other's nerves. Kevin was surprised at just how few fights developed. There were plenty of quarrels and screaming matches, but not many blows. The worst part of it was the almost complete lack of privacy aboard Wayfarer.

  For the first weeks this was no great problem for Kevin: there was too much to do. He had tapes to study, Norsedal's war-games, extravehicular activity practice under supervision of the crew, maintenance duties and other ship's work that was rotated among the passengers—and just plain getting used to living in zero-gravity.

  He spent hours playing with liquids: squirt a dollop of colored water from a syringe, and it immediately became a sphere like a miniature planet. Inject an air bubble into it with a syringe and it assumed a new shape. Blow on it gently to get it rotating and it became a donut of water hanging in space.

  There were rivers of stars to see outside any viewport. He had to learn the constellations all over again; there were just too many stars to let him recognize the old familiar patterns as seen from Earth, so many stars that in a darkened room you could almost read by starlight. But during EVA practice, perched above the ship's telescope tower with nothing ahead or above, he felt as if he were suspended motionless in space, a part of the universe. Kevin was always sad when his time was up and another passenger took his place. He eagerly looked forward to his practice sessions outside the ship, and wondered whether, when he reached the Belt and he would be outside for many hours at a time, he would ever get used to the wonder and grandeur of space. He hoped he would not.

  As weeks went by, though, he found the lack of privacy becoming more irritating. There were 30 women among the 120 passengers aboard Wayfarer. Half of those were married and most of the remainder had formed quasi-permanent attachments. None of this bothered Kevin, since Ellen MacMillan remained at large and seemed to enjoy his company; but he could never be alone with her, and that was annoying.

  Eventually the problem solved itself: they were assigned to environment systems maintenance during the same shift. Dismantling and cleaning sewer pipes wasn't his idea of a romantic setting, but it did have the advantage that no one else was interested in being in the same compartment while they worked. Felipe Carnel, the ship's Chief Engineer, was happy enough to leave the work to qualified passengers once he'd checked them out; and Ellen was as competent and conscientious as he.

  The work was not demanding, merely messy and difficult; they had plenty of time to talk. For some reason Ellen seemed genuinely interested in Kevin and kept drawing him out. She was easy to talk to, and he found himself telling her about his early life, about school, and why he had come to space. Although he was usually somewhat shy with girls it was easy to be friends with Ellen.

  "I think I've told you everything there is to know about me," he said finally. "And I don't know anything about you. You never talk about yourself—"

  "Nothing to talk about." She squinted up at him and made a face. During the week they'd worked together they'd developed a system of signals. This one meant that she had sweat in her eyes and filth on her hands.

  Kevin took a clean tissue and wiped her face. "Thanks." She went back to reaming out the plastic pipe.

  "Come on," Kevin said. "You've made me do all the talking."

  "There really isn't anything to tell," Ellen said. "I don't have any relatives. I was raised in an orphanage—"

  "I didn't think they still had those," Kevin said. "Foster parents and—"

  Ellen shuddered. "I was through several of those foster homes. Horrible way to live. Kevin, did you ever hear of the Futurian Foundation?"

  "No."

  "I guess not too many have. It's an organization that's interested in where—" She laughed. "It sounds silly if you're not a part of it."

  "No, please. Tell me."

  "Well, we're trying to look at where mankind is going," Ellen said defiantly. "Governments look ahead as far as the next election. The big corporations can look a little farther, sometimes as far as ten years. And nobody worries about what's going to happen after that. Nobody except us. We try to look hundreds, even thousands of years ahead."

  "And you're a member of that—"

  "Sort of. They raised me. When I was fifteen they bought me from the foster parents I was with.

  "Bought you? Sounds like slavery."

  She shrugged, a tiny wriggling motion; they had all learned new gestures for use in zero-gravity. She shifted her location, wedging one foot under a pipe clamp so that she could use both hands for the job she was doing.

  "In a way it is," she said. "The state pays the foster parents to raise orphans. It's profitable work. They're paid by the number of kids in their home, so the foster parents don't want to let anyone go. The social welfare people don't want to let you go either—if they don't have orphans to take care of, they can't justify their jobs. So the Futurians had to pay off the foster parents, some lawyers, and two social workers. I'm glad they did."

  Kevin looked puzzled. Ellen laughed. "Nothing mysterious about it. They have a testing program to catch the right people young and get them thinking about the future instead of themselves. That's all there is to it. I've been brought up to be satisfied with enough to live on, not to want anything more except my work—so I've got everything I want."

  "And you think that's not interesting?" Kevin said. "You seem to have found the secret of the ages."

  She laughed again. It was a pleasant sound, even muted as it was by the low air pressure. "We don't keep all our recruits, you know. Most of the kids we bring up go off to normal lives. Only a few of us join the Fellowship."

  "But you did?" She nodded. "I suppose that's like a priesthood," Kevin said.

  His voice had betrayed his thoughts, and she laughed again. "Not really. We're not celibate, you know! Although sometimes you act as if you think I am—"

  "Hey, wait a minute, that's not fair," Kevin protested.

  She was laughing again. "The way cond
itions are on this ship we both might as well be monks—either that or adopt the attitude of monkeys in a zoo, and I'm afraid I haven't got to that point yet. There. That's done. You tighten up the connections while I clean up." She looked down at her hands. "Yuk."

  Kevin pushed away from the bulkhead and expertly floated over to the pipe assembly. He was proud of his hard-won ability to work in null-gravity conditions. He got one foot wedged into the pipe retainer and braced the other against a wire channel, leaving both hands free, and applied a big wrench to the pipes. The fittings turned hard, and everything took at least twice as long to do in zero-gravity as it would have on Earth. Finally he had it done. "You can turn on the pressure."

  The system worked again, with no leaks, and Kevin nodded in satisfaction.

  "Now. We're alone, and this is done, and—" He reached for her. She didn't resist.