AL CLARK (A Sci-Fi Adventure)(Book One)

by Jonathan G. Meyer

  In the orange section, there was a place for security with several interconnected rooms and even a holding cell, waiting for its first jailbird. On a long table in a back room, he found a place to charge the power pack for his pistol.

  From a line of fully charged cells, he swapped the dead battery pack in the weapon for a charged pack and watched as the power indicator went from red to green, indicating a full charge. He checked the safety and pushed the switch from red to green, placing it in the safe mode. Now he was armed.

  His card had not failed to open any doors except the one that would put him in a corridor open to space. He did not even try his card on that door.

  When he finally reached the airlock at the other end of the orange section, he went through to the passage marked YELLOW SECTION. Nearly identical to the other passageways, he followed it to the next airlock and found that insistent red light leading into the green part of the ring.

  Okay, there are four parts to the ring: orange, blue, green, and yellow, with the green section open to space. That would mean there are four ‘spokes.' It was time to see where the spoke shafts would take him.

  ****

  His travels were beginning to wear on him. It had been a long day, but he was determined to get as much information as he could before he slept. He didn’t like the idea of trying to access a spoke lift when one of the doors showed a glowing red light, so he returned to the airlock between the yellow and orange section that was red light free.

  The center control panel was labeled ACCESS TO SPOKE 4, and on it was the standard red and green indicator lights. Below the control panel was bold lettering, STAND OUTSIDE RED CIRCLE. He hesitated for a second before sliding the card through the slot. When he did, there was a series of thunks somewhere up above, and two halves of a circle in the center of the ceiling retracted to each side.

  Through this hole in the ceiling descended what looked like a large capsule, but like no transport capsule, he’d ever seen before. Although he could tell it was old, by its dull coloring and cloudy windows, it was still a thing of beauty. Twelve feet tall and eight feet around, smooth and streamlined, it was a triumph of technology. The entire middle section was clear plastic, except for a man-sized access door toward the bottom.

  As he cautiously stepped into the capsule, the interior lights ‘clicked’ on. The inside of the compartment was empty, except for the simple controller on the wall with a button for the door and a card slot to activate the lift.

  In the center of the capsule—was a tree. Four inches round and topped with three short branches at shoulder height, with three more about half way down the tree. Age had turned it into a dull green with yellow highlights that some might call sculpture, a piece of art in a stark environment.

  He wondered, is it form or is it function?

  The door closed automatically as soon as he used the card and a dull hum could be felt through the floor as the capsule started slowly rising, gaining speed as it went. The pale silver walls of the spoke slid rapidly by, and as the capsule shot up, he noticed his card beginning to float from his chest. He had an idea of what was coming next, so he grabbed for the tree.

  This feeling was something he knew. He was familiar with zero gravity. The tree was the perfect handhold to keep him from floating around and causing himself harm. Functional as well as beautiful.

  The ride to this point had been smooth and silent, but as he got to the top of the spoke, and the lift started slowing down, a vibration began as if it were struggling. He was just beginning to worry when the capsule slid out of the spoke and ground to a halt—into nothing.

  His eyes gradually adjusted, and he saw faraway lights; both in front and behind. To his side were stationary lights similar to the other beacons. A door closed below him and made the distant lights appear more distinct, and slowly, the space could be seen well enough to determine his whereabouts.

  He appeared to be inside a giant metal ball, as seen from the inside, easily one hundred feet across. The lights he saw were the indicator lights of the other spoke lifts as they rotated slowly around. There was the vague outline of two doors, one on each side, and their accompanying control panel lights.

  He had come this far; now it was time to continue his search. With one hand holding the tree, he reached out and pressed the button to open the door. Bright lighting quickly ramped up outside the capsule until he could see the immense open space of the Hub, at the center of the huge wheel. He floated out of the capsule and turned, and a boy was hanging onto a recessed handle; just floating there, with wide open eyes. He was staring straight at him.

  Chapter Three

  The boy made no effort to move and appeared as startled as the man was. The look on his face was one of complete surprise. His unused voice squeaked a little at first until he finally forced out, “Are you…real?”

  The man laughed and shook his head. He said, “Are you?”

  The boy was relatively clean, with blue coveralls, long blonde hair, brown eyes, and a big smile. He was around eighteen, and maybe a little taller than the man.

  The boy told him, “My hibernation pod malfunctioned almost a year ago and I’ve been waiting for someone to show up since. I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you. I’m Christopher Morris…who are you?”

  “Well…for the time being, I guess you can call me Al.”

  “You have more than one name?”

  “Clark…Al Clark.” He looked down, chuckled and said, “It’s a long story, Chris. For now, how about you tell me about yourself.”

  Christopher had been lonely and was talkative. He told Al about the quarters he had been living out of in the yellow section, and they decided to go there to talk. Al pushed himself off and floated towards the lift he came up in when the young man stopped him.

  “I wouldn’t use that lift if I were you…it doesn’t sound right. I use the number one lift, two and three won’t work because we have a red light in the airlock, so one is the only lift that works right.”

  Thinking about the vibration on his way up, he decided he didn’t like the number four capsule either.

  Christopher had picked one of the larger living quarters with three rooms, close to the number one spoke because he liked hanging out in the zero gravity of the hub; to help him relax, he said. He wasn’t worried about housekeeping in his quarters, and it showed by the clothes and trash all over, to the point where Al had to move some things to sit across from him at the small table. The boy offered him an energy bar to which he declined, and they began talking.

  The biggest question on Al’s mind was, “Where are we, Christopher?”

  “Please, call me Chris, and right now we are in a habitat ring located on the front of a spaceship called the Excalibur. You don’t have any idea where you are?”

  “I knew we were in space and pretty sure I was on a space ship of some kind, as opposed to a space station. What I don’t know…is where. Let me ask you this…have you ever seen me before, I mean, do I look familiar?”

  Chris took a close look at Al and replied, “You don’t look familiar, but they rushed me onto the ship at the last minute, and I didn’t meet many people.”

  Al’s disappointment was evident. He took a deep breath and said, “Okay, I guess I need to explain why it is I’m so clueless.”

  Al told Chris about waking up in the box, not knowing where or who he was, and about his excursions so far, up until the time he found Chris staring back at him across the hub.

  When Al finished, Chris told Al about being thrown out of his hibernation pod to an empty habitat ring. For the better part of a year, he had almost gone crazy living by himself and trying to stay busy. A seemingly endless number of long days and longer nights. He now knew the ship like the back of his hand and spent extended periods of time exploring.

  Chris jumped up and grabbed something from the bed and handed it to Al. “I started a journal. I missed the first two days, but I made an entry every day since.”

  Al thumbed thro
ugh the eight by ten notebook and found it surprisingly easy to read, complete with intricate drawings covering a broad spectrum of subjects. The interior of the habitat ring was laid out in detail with several depictions.“These sketches are good Chris. You are going to be glad you went through the trouble, years from now.”

  “What else did I have to do? Some of those drawings took up weeks of my time,” the boy joked.

  Chris described the room with the pod he awoke in, and Al thought it sounded a lot like the room with his coffin-like box.

  They told Chris there were a thousand people on-board, but he didn’t know for sure, as he had been rushed in to fill a last minute cancelation, and had seen little of the ship. He believed the person he replaced probably died before he could get on-board the Excalibur because the lottery they held included hundreds-of-thousands of applicants from all over the Earth. If you had a hundred dollars, and could pass the strict physical and psychological tests, you had a chance. Finally, one-thousand people were picked by the Excalibur committee to be aboard the ship when it left. The lucky ones.

  The Earth had become a difficult place to live; due to runaway global warming changing a significant part of the planet into places where nobody wanted to live. There were wars all over the planet making it seem like half the world was always fighting someone for something. Everyone wanted to go to a place like the planets described to them in the lottery brochures.

  Chris found a card, but it didn’t work all the doors, and because of the limited access he had been unable to get past the hub to the rest of the ship. Trapped in the giant wheel, he spent most of his time in the habitat ring but loved being in the hub because of the zero-gravity.

  He was in the hub when the meteor shower took out the green section just two days ago, and it had almost scared him to death. He told Al the ring could handle small rocks because it was self-healing, but the big ones were unstoppable and made a noise inside the ship that is unimaginable.

  Al sat back and thought, Could it be the meteor shower that woke me? His thoughts were sluggish; fragmented. If it had been two days since he slept, he needed to rest. Al decided he could move into quarters of his own, or help Chris clean this one. To simplify their future planning, he decided to help Chris. The boy was happy for the company.

  Later, with Al just about to fall asleep in one room, and Chris in the other, Al called out through the open door, “If this is a colony ship, where are we going?”

  “We were on a thirty-year journey to a planet called Avalon.”

  “Thirty years, huh? To colonize?”

  “Yeah, that was the plan.”

  ****

  The next morning, after taking turns getting showers, they each dressed in the clothes they had on the day before and headed for the mess hall in the blue section. They each grabbed a food package, heated them up, and took the food to a table to eat.

  Sitting and talking at one of the many empty tables, they agreed that somewhere on this ship there were people waiting to be found. Anxious to get moving, they finished their meals and headed out to find them. As they walked to the number one lift, Chris filled Al in on what he knew of the mission and their ship.

  “This ship, the Excalibur, left earth orbit in 2160. It was decided by the ‘people in charge,' that all colonists and crew would be put into hibernation until three months before the ship established orbit around the planet; to minimize resource usage. At that time, the crew was to be awakened, and then the team would begin waking the scientists, and finally the colonists. When we arrived, we would have been ready to assess the planet, and start sending people down to set up housing almost right away.”

  None of what Chris said jogged any memories. It was like a science fiction story he’d never read.

  Chris continued, “The habitat ring was to be used to house the people after revival until planetfall, and then for the subsequent operations. The ship is fully automated, and the computer was programmed to wake the crew when ready or if there was an emergency. I guess that didn’t work out so well.”

  Something had gone wrong—and the only people awake were Chris and Al. A forty-year-old amnesiac, and an eighteen-year-old kid.

  Chris continued, “When they first discovered Avalon with one of the space based telescopes in orbit around the moon, it was considered a pretty significant find. The planet they found was in a Goldilocks orbit around its yellow sun, and the images sent back showed the world to be a twin to Earth. An early Earth, before the industrial revolution. In other words—Earth, before we messed it up.

  “They got the name Avalon from a mythical island paradise detailed in the legends of King Arthur. It was where they forged his sword Excalibur and where he went to recover after the battle of Camlann.”

  The boy laughed and told Al he had gotten all this from the brochure advertising the lottery. After reading their glorified description, he said he was hooked.

  “Avalon was not the only planet reachable within a thirty-year journey. Four starships were built and sent out in different directions. Assembled in space, in a synchronous orbit around Earth, it required five years to build each ship. As soon as one starship was finished and launched, another was begun.

  “The lottery established for a place on a vessel raked in trillions. Charging one-hundred U.S. dollars per ticket, the money financed the building of the ships and the rest was supposed to help those most affected by rising sea levels, catastrophic storms, species extinction and so forth. The ships turned out to be extravagantly expensive, of course, but the people attempting to save the planet still got almost half, which was a lot of money. Unfortunately, it did little to make the Earth more livable.

  “Our ship, the Excalibur, was the last one built of the four. It benefited from its predecessors in that it had the best of everything. There’s supposed to be a very extensive seed bank for crop promotion, a large hydroponic farm, and the latest design of primary fusion drive that money could buy. The hibernation pods had all the bugs worked out and were the best models built to date. They also said the master control computer was one hundred times better than the computer on the first ship.

  “Our ship is like a modern day Titanic, with everything you need for a long voyage. Except the Titanic was for recreation, and the Excalibur is for survival.”

  Chris was the last one on the last ship. If the Earth blew up just after they left, he would have been the last person allowed off the planet.

  The two shipmates entered the capsule for the number one spoke using Chris’s card. They both grabbed hold of the tree, and Al activated the lift. Watching the walls of the spoke slide by, as they got closer to the hub, Chris began to smile. When the lift reached the top of the tube and stopped, he looked at Al and said, “Is there anything like zero gravity? I will never get tired of it.”

  As soon as the door opened and the lights came on, Chris pushed off and sailed gracefully to the far wall, where he grabbed a waiting handle. Like a monkey, he then swung from handle to handle spinning around the circular hub until he got back to Al, where he stopped, smiled, and said, “Ever flown before?”

  “To be honest, I’m not sure…let’s see.”

  Al pushed off to try and follow Chris’s example. As it turned out, it was trickier than it looked. The lift section was slowly revolving, and they had to be careful not to bang into the raised capsule as it rotated around. In addition, if you landed on the rotating section it would change your trajectory and make you go where you didn’t want to. In the end, the two spacemen proved Al was reasonably proficient, and Chris, who had spent many hours practicing in the hub, was easily deemed an expert.

  Chapter Four

  After a little discussion, they decided to go to the bridge first. Al figured if there were working computers, they would be there, and they could gain a lot of useful information. There may also be a labeled schematic of the ship, or a logbook to tell them where they needed to go. Hopefully, there would be something there to tell them where and when they were. />
  The two doors on both sides of the hub had clear markings. Bold lettering on one door said MAIN SHIP and the other said BRIDGE. Simple, but not very descriptive. There were the standard control panels, and both doors had green lights. Things were looking good so far.

  Chris showed Al how his card wouldn’t work on the bridge door, so Al tried his—and nothing happened. He tried again. Again, nothing happened. He looked closer at the control panel, but it appeared to be no different than the rest. Al looked at Chris and said, “Ok, that didn’t work, how about we try the other door?”

  The door labeled Main Ship sighed, and then slid aside after Al pulled his card through the reader. Inside the door was a smaller version of the habitat ring airlocks. After the first door had closed behind them, they walked across and opened the secondary door. What they found was the bread-basket for the ship.

  Their eyes adjusted to the brightly lit room, and they found before them a long wide aisle with planting beds on both sides going all the way to the other end, where there was another door. Row after row of ten by twenty-foot hydroponic beds, loaded with plants and separated by two-foot walkways, which filled most of the room. In the garden beds was a bumper crop of all kinds of vegetables: corn, potatoes, squash, lettuce, melons, and further down what appeared to be herbs.

  Industriously moving about them, were a dozen three-foot tall robots. Slender enough to fit through the walkways, they looked like sharp pointed bullets, standing on end; with arms. Long spindly appendages that could reach anywhere in a plant bed and were raised straight up when using the walkways. Chris immediately nick-named them, Pinheads.