Going Interstellar

by Les Johnson

  It was a good plan, but she soon understood the flaw in it. She had underestimated the full force of Tie Dye’s rage. He was an engineer, a good one. He knew how to make machines work. She was just settling into the least bothersome position when she heard the slither and click of something coming up the ring behind her.

  The damn crawler! Tie Dye had launched the crawler. She thought of the thin blades of its legs opening, stretching, moving it along the ring. She shuddered, imagining those blades cutting through the soft soles of her shoes. He was serious this time, deadly serious. She was no stranger to trouble, but this had to be the worst.

  Panicked, she wriggled further into the ring, feeling her way in the blackness. The crawler’s mechanical sounds were like the clicking of someone’s arthritic knees, and they came steadily closer, driving her forward. Was it her imagination, or did the ring narrow as it circled the lock? She could hardly move her shoulders, and only just find purchase with her feet and the tips of her fingers, pushing herself along. The maintenance tube of North America had lights, and room for her to move her elbows, bend her knees. This was a nightmare tunnel of blackness and constriction, a coffin indeed. If she were an inch wider, a pound heavier, she would be trapped. Her breathing quickened, and her mouth dried.

  Shit, she thought. A rock and a hard place. There was no choice, nothing she could do but press on. It was all too much like the shelters, choosing between two or more evils every damn day of her life. When she got out of here, she promised herself—and she would get out of here—she was going to make Tie Dye’s life a living hell!

  Anger served her better than fear. She scooted forward through the tube as quickly as her thrusting toes and scrabbling fingers could move her. She felt the chill as the tube arched above the lock, and she refused to think about the black, cold emptiness on the other side of the layers of plastic and rubber and metal. The ring grew even tighter, until she thought she might be stopped, but then, as she wiggled one shoulder and then the other past the most constricted part, she found there was room again. There was still no light, and the sound of her breathing filled her ears almost enough to shut out the gentle scrabbling of the crawler coming behind her. At least she was moving. She was gaining. She held her breath for a moment to listen. She was sure the sound of the crawler had diminished behind her.

  It was then that she felt the slight movement, as if an infinitesimal breeze had touched her cheek. She froze for several heartbeats, holding her breath, trying to determine what it was. The sound of the crawler grew louder again as she paused.

  The darkness seemed to accentuate the sensation, so subtle she could have imagined it. It was more a feeling than a fact. It was a bit like when she could feel the North America preparing to brake, a faint suggestion of something changing, something happening. It was subtle. But it was real.

  It shouldn’t be there, but she had no doubt, as she began wriggling forward again, that she had felt it.

  The crawler should, too. It should stop, and set up an alarm.

  It didn’t. The damn thing really did need redesigning.

  Gasping for air, praying she could reach the opening before the crawler did, she drove herself harder. For what seemed interminable moments, there was nothing in Isabet’s world but her own rasping breaths and the mechanical click and slither behind her. She wriggled, and wriggled, and wriggled, until she thought the skin of her hands and shoulders and knees must be raw. She peered forward, trying to see the glimmer of light that would mean she had reached the panel, and could escape this confining tube.

  And face Tie Dye again. But there was something more important happening now, more at risk than just her problems with Tie Dye. She had a leak to report.

  She sucked in a shocked breath when her hand struck a smooth surface and it suddenly glowed. She had found the instrument panel. She could see that immediately. It was mounted on the inside of the door that was her only means of escape. Tie Dye had shut her into this bloody tube, and she realized, as she struggled to push it open, that he must have secured the clamps on the exit, too.

  He meant her to die in here. She knew he was angry, and mean, but murder? How did he expect to get away with it?

  She couldn’t give up now. There had to be a way to open the panel from inside, to release the clamps. The design couldn’t be that bad. She tried to think, but the crawler was coming up behind her, giving her no time.

  She scrabbled with her fingers, and the touch screens came awake, one by one. She could barely lift her head enough to see them. She saw the temperature measurement, inside and out, she saw the maintenance records—stupid place for them—and the crawler’s interface. The screens faded when her fingers left them, and she frantically pushed with her palms, her fingertips, searching for the right one. If she could find it, if she could input a problem, a big problem, then the alarms would go. Someone would come. She could get out of here.

  If the crawler hadn’t sliced her to ribbons first.

  And then she found it. It looked familiar, measurements from pressure gauges set at regular intervals around the sealing tube. She found the alarm button at the bottom, the part of the screen she and the ring techs were never supposed to touch, and she pressed it as hard as she could with her thumb.

  The screech of the alarm in the lock drowned out the approach of the crawler, but she knew it was coming. Her nerves burned with anticipation of its sharp metal blades cutting into her. She forced herself to focus on finding the crawler’s command screen. She ran her hands desperately across the panel to keep the screens awake, to keep the blue glow alive so she could—

  There it was. Upper right corner, with a convenient little graphic that looked exactly like the grasshopper that had first come to her mind when she saw it. Finally, a design that made sense! She stabbed at it with her finger, and it lit up, showing her the buttons. With a gasp, she turned off the crawler. The sudden cessation of its movement, the end of the threat, left her weak and trembling.

  She lay still in the tube for another half-minute, waiting for the pounding of her heart to slow. The glow of the screens on the instrument panel faded, one by one, until she was in complete darkness again. She listened to the alarm shrilling outside, imagining the running feet, the terror that alarm must strike into every heart aboard Starhold and the North America.

  When the panel burst open, she found herself staring straight into Link’s eyes. His pupils swelled with shock at the sight of her. She said swiftly, “I know this is weird. I’ll explain everything in a minute, but first, there’s a leak in the sealing tube—not fatal now, but it’s going to get worse. Starhold needs to separate from North America, and right away.”

  She was still in Link’s arms, her toes not yet on the floor, when Tie Dye came charging back into the lock, three other engineers hard on his heels. His face flamed at the sight of Isabet being extracted from the sealing tube. He shouted, “What were you doing in there? You’re going on report!”

  Link, as if Tie Dye hadn’t said a word, set Isabet firmly on her feet, then turned her away from the crowd of engineers and technicians converging on the lock to begin the emergency disengage process. Tie Dye, nearly choking with fury, had an emergency protocol he had to follow. He was getting orders, and he was too busy obeying them to come after Isabet.

  Link didn’t steer Isabet back toward the North America. He drew her in the opposite direction, into the habitat she had so longed to visit.

  Isabet said, “It’s a slow leak. But your crawler should have detected it.”

  Link said, “Add the sensors to its other problems. We’ll move the redesign up the priority list.”

  “I have some ideas about that.”

  “I’ll bet you do.”

  They stopped just inside the hold, watching the frantic preparations for disengagement. He glanced down at her. “You want to get back on the ship?”

  “No,” she said. “Not really.”

  “You want to stay here?”

  Breathless wi
th sudden hope, she nodded. “Yeah,” she whispered. “I mean, yes, please. I really do.”

  “I suspected as much.” Side by side, they watched the swarm of people preparing to seal the locks and separate the two vessels. “This could have been a tragedy,” he said.

  “Yes. A leak like that grows pretty fast once it gets started.” She saw Tie Dye turn to stalk back into the ship. She wondered who would be in more trouble, Tie Dye or herself.

  It would all be sorted out at the command level, no doubt. In any case, there wasn’t a damn thing Tie Dye could do now.

  Link guided her into the vacuum elevator, and Isabet grasped the knack of traversing the layered decks in an instant. As they floated downward, he pointed out the level where the cubbies were. “We’ll find a free one for you.” He promised a tour of the gallery and the laboratories before they reached the lowest level, where he deposited her in the hydroponics area. “You can watch the ship leave from here,” he said, pointing to an observation window.

  Her nerves still on fire from her near-miss, she watched the North America pull back from the habitat and revolve in preparation for its return to Earth. She leaned against the chilly plexiglass and imagined Tie Dye standing impotently near the space window to watch Starhold disappear as the ship revolved and prepared to get under way. She started to grin.

  Were Skunk or Ginger or Happy Feet watching in wonder as the ship’s positronic reactors fired and the ship began to vibrate? Did they look around, asking about Isabet, or did they know she was stranded on the habitat? Just in case, she waved her arm in farewell. She kissed her hand to the ship for good measure.

  Yep, she was stuck here. For the duration. Twelve months, at least. Helluva way to score a vacation.

  She laughed aloud as the North America’s rockets bloomed, driving it away toward Earth.

  When she had seen enough, she turned from the window, and stepped out into the ship. With a deft twist of her feet and her hands, she shot upward toward the gallery level. She would ask Link for work to do, find some way to be of use. Maybe in the kitchens, or maybe she could work on redesigning the crawler. It didn’t matter. She’d meet some other people, get to know the place, this first step on the path to the stars.

  She was going to feel right at home.

  TWENTY LIGHTS TO

  “THE LAND OF SNOW”

  Excerpts from The Computer

  Logs of Our Reluctant Dalai Lama

  Michael Bishop

  The first thing most American readers will have to do when reading Twenty Lights to “The Land of Snow” is put aside their preconceived notions of what the crew and culture of an interstellar spacecraft must emulate—western culture. And with the current pace of space exploration in the West, new notions of how it might actually happen are certainly worth considering.

  Awards? Michael Bishop has them: two Nebulas, four Locus Awards, and multiple Hugo nominations. Did we mention that he also writes award-winning poetry? Mysteries? And that he has edited several science fiction anthologies? And, yes, he was an English teacher. . . .

  ***

  Years in transit: 82 out of 106?

  Computer Logs of the Dalai Lama-to-Be, age 7

  Aboard Kalachakra, I open my eyes again in Amdo Bay. Sleep still pops in me, yowling like a really hurt cat. I look sidelong out of my foggy eggshell. Many ghosts crowd near to see me leave the bear sleep that everybody in a strut-ship sometimes dreams in. Why have all these somnacicles up-phased to become ship-haunters? Why do so many crowd the grave-cave of my Greta-snooze?

  “Greta Bryn”—that’s my mama’s voice—“can you hear me, kiddo?”

  Yes I can. I have no deafness after I up-phase. Asleep even, I hear Mama talk in her dreams, and cosmic rays crackle off Kalachakra’s plasma shield out in front (to keep us all from going dead), and the crackle from Earth across the reaching oceans of farthest space.

  “Greta Bryn?”

  She sounds like Atlanta, Daddy says. To me she sounds like Mama, which I want her to play-act now. She keeps bunnies, minks, guineas, and many other tiny crits down along our sci-tech cylinder in Kham Bay. But hearing her doesn’t pulley me into sit-up pose. To get there, I stretch my soft parts and my bones.

  “Easy, baby,” Mama says.

  A man in white unhooks me. A woman pinches me at the wrist so I won’t twist the fuel tube or pulse counter. They’ve already shot me in the heart, to stir its beating. Now I sit and look around, clearer. Daddy stands near, showing his crumply face.

  “Hey, Gee Bee,” he says, but doesn’t grab my hand.

  His coverall tag is my roll-call name: Brasswell. A hard name for a girl and not too fine for Daddy, who looks thirty-seven or maybe fifty-fifteen, a number Mama says he uses to joke his fitness. He does whore-to-culture—another puzzle-funny of his—so that later we can turn Guge green, and maybe survive.

  I feel sick, like juice gone sour in my tummy has gushed into my mouth. I start to elbow out. My eyes grow pop-out big, my fists shake like rattles. Now Daddy grabs me, mouth by my ear: “Shhhh shhh shhh.” Mama touches my other cheek. Everyone else falls back to watch. That’s scary too.

  After a seem-like century I ask, “Are we there yet?”

  Everybody yuks at my funniness. I drop my legs through the eggshell door. My hotness has colded off, a lot.

  A bald brown man in orangey-yellow robes steps up so Mama and Daddy must stand off aside. I remember, sort of. This person has a really hard Tibetan name: Nyendak Trungpa. My last up-phase he made me say it multi times so I would not forget. I was four, but I almost forgetted anyway.

  “What’s your name?” Minister Trungpa asks me.

  He already knows, but I blink and say, “Greta Bryn Brasswell.”

  “And where are you?”

  “Kalachakra,” I say. “Our strut-ship.”

  “Point out your parents, please.”

  I do, it’s simple. They’re wide-awake ship-haunters now, real-live ghosts.

  He asks, “Where are we going?”

  “Guge,” I say, another simple ask.

  “What exactly is Guge, Greta Bryn?”

  But I don’t want to think—just to drink, my tongue’s so thick with sourness. “A planet.”

  “Miss Brasswell,”—now Minister T’s being smart-alecky—“tell me two things you know about Guge.”

  I sort of ask, “It’s ‘The Land of Snow,’ this dead king’s place in olden Tibet?”

  “Good!” Minister T says. “And its second meaning for us Kalachakrans?”

  I squint to get it: “A faraway world to live on?”

  “Where, intelligent miss?”

  Another easy one: “In the Goldilocks Zone.” A funny name for it.

  “But where, Greta Bryn, is this Goldilocks Zone?”

  “Around a star called Gluh—” I almost get stuck. “Around a star called Gliese 581.” Glee-zha is how I say it.

  Bald Minister T grins. His face looks like a shiny brown China plate with an up-curving crack. “She’s fine,” he tells the ghosts in the grave-cave. “And I believe she’s the ‘One.’”

  Sometimes we must come up. We must wake up and eat, and move about so we can heal from ursidormizine sleep and not die before we reach Guge. When I come up this time, I get my own nook that snugs in the habitat drum called Amdo Bay. It has a vidped booth for learning from, with lock belts for when the AG goes out. It belongs to only me, it’s not just one in a commons-space like most ghosts use.

  Finally I ask, “What did that Minister T mean?”

  “About what?” Mama doesn’t eye me when she speaks.

  “That I’m the ‘One.’ Why’d he say that?”

  “He’s upset and everybody aboard has gone a little loco.”

  “Why?” But maybe I know. We ride so long that anyone riding with us sooner or later crazies up: inboard fever. Captain Xao once warned of this.

  Mama says, “His Holiness, Sakya Gyatso, has died, so we’re stupid with grief and thinking hard about how to replace h
im. Minister Trungpa, our late Dalai Lama’s closest friend, thinks you’re his rebirth, Greta Bryn.”

  I don’t get this. “He thinks I’m not I?”

  “I guess not. Grief has fuddled his reason, but maybe just temporarily.”

  “I am I,” I say to Mama awful hot, and she agrees.

  But I remember the Dalai Lama. When I was four, he played Go Fish with me in Amdo Bay during my second up-phase. Daddy sneak-named him Yoda, like from Star Wars, but he looked more like skinny Mr. Peanut on the peanut tins. He wore a one-lens thing and a funny soft yellow hat, and he taught me a song, “Loving the Ant, Loving the Elephant.” After that, I had to take my ursidormizine and hibernize. Now Minister T says the DL is I, or I am he, but surely Mama hates as much as I do how such stupidity could maybe steal me off from her.

  “I don’t look like Sakya Gyatso. I’m a girl, and I’m not an Asian person.” Then I yell at Mama, “I am I!”

  “Actually,” Mama says, “things have changed, and what you speak as truth may have also changed, kiddo.”

  Everybody who gets a say in Amdo Bay now thinks that Minister Nyendak Trungpa calls me correctly. I am not I: I am the next Dalai Lama. The Twenty-first, Sakya Gyatso, has died, and I must wear his sandals. Mama says he died of natural causes, but too young for it to look natural. He hit fifty-four, but he won’t hit Guge. If I am he, I must take his place as our colony dukpa, which in Tibetan means ‘shepherd.’ That job scares me.

  A good thing has come from this scary thing: I don’t have to go back up into my egg pod and then down again. I stay up-phase. I must. I have too much to learn to drowse forever, even if I can sleep-learn by hypnoloading. Now I have this vidped booth that I sit in to learn and a tutor-guy, Lawrence (‘Larry’) Rinpoche, who loads on me a lot.

  How old has all my earlier sleep-loading made me? Hibernizing, I hit seven and learnt while dreaming.