Flight of Exiles e-2

by Ben Bova

  It was hard to tell their shape. There seemed to be a head, the suggestion of rounded haunches. No tail was visible. You couldn’t tell how many legs, because their lower halves were hidden in deep grass.

  The overhead lights suddenly went on, and the picture on the viewscreen faded.

  “That’s everything we have so far,” Dr. Polanyi said.

  Larry squinted against the sudden glare. And found himself frowning. Looking around, he realized that he had spent his life in a prison. A jail. A metal and plastic confinement, breathing the same recycled air over and over again, knowing every face, every compartment, every square millimeter of space. Out there was a world. A whole broad, beautiful golden world that no one had set foot on, waiting to be explored, to be lived on.

  Waiting to kill us, he reminded himself.

  They were all murmuring, muttering, a dozen different conversations buzzing at once.

  Then Dan’s voice cut through it all. “So we have our first view of the promised land.”

  Larry stepped toward him. “It doesn’t look very promising to me. A man can’t live there.”

  “We can’t,” Dan shot back, “but our children could.”

  “If you make them capable of breathing sulfur and strong as a man-and-a-third.”

  “The geneticists can do whatever needs to be done.”

  Larry was about to reply, but caught himself. Instead, he said, “This isn’t the place to debate such an important issue. I’d like to have a formal meeting of the Council tomorrow morning. We’ll have to decide if we want to make this planet our home, or look further.”

  Dan said nothing. He merely watched Larry, with a quizzical little smile, playing on his lips.

  It was late evening. The corridor lights were dimmed. Larry and Valery had eaten dinner in the Lorings’ quarters, with Val’s mother. Now, after a long walk around level one, they were approaching her quarters again, strolling along the empty corridor, hand in hand.

  They came to an observation port and stopped. The port was an oblong of. thick plastiglass. A padded bench ran along the bulkhead alongside it. They sat and for a long, wordless while gazed out at the sky.

  The stars were thick as dust. One yellow star stood out brighter than all the rest. Nearby it, almost lost in its glare, peeped a dimmer orange star.

  “Tomorrow the Council meets to decide,” Larry said wearily.

  “Do you think this is the end of the voyage?” Val asked.

  He shook his head. “It can’t be. We can’t live on that planet… even though …”

  “Even though?”

  “It’s so beautiful!” he said. “I saw the pictures from the surface today. It’s so beautiful. If only we could survive there.”

  She asked, “Can’t the geneticists…”

  “Sure, they can alter the next generation of children so that they’ll be able to live on the planet. But—the kids would have to be brought up in a separate section of the ship. They’d have to be put under a higher gravity, different atmosphere. The parents would have to wear pressure suits just to visit their own children.”

  “Ohhhh…”

  “And what about the parents? Do you think people can stay aboard this ship, in this cocoon, this prison, and let their kids go down there to live? It won’t work; the planet’s beautiful, but too different from us. If we try to make it work, it’ll tear everybody apart.”

  “Then we have to move on,” Val said.

  “Right. But Dan won’t see it that way. He’ll put up a fight.”

  “You’ll win.”

  He looked at her. “Maybe. I wish I didn’t have to fight him.”

  “He thinks the ship won’t be able to go much farther,” Valery said. “He’s afraid we’ll all get killed if we try to find another star, another planet.”

  In the dim light, Larry could see that Val wasn’t looking at him, but gazing out at the stars. He reached for her chin and turned her face toward him.

  “You’ve seen him several times since he got out of the infirmary, haven’t you?”

  “Yes,” she said softly.

  He let his hand drop away. “I don’t think I like that. In fact, I know I don’t.”

  “Larry,” she said gently, “I’m a free human being. I can do what I want.”

  “I know, but—well, I don’t want you to see him.”

  “Don’t you trust me?”

  He felt miserable, tangled up inside himself. “Of course I trust you, Val, but…”

  “No buts, Larry. Either you trust me or you don’t.”

  “I trust you.” Sullenly.

  “Well you shouldn’t,” she snapped.

  “Wha…?”

  “Oh Larry—it’s all so mixed up! I don’t want Dan to hurt you. He… he said he’d almost be willing to let you stay Chairman if I’d marry him.”

  Larry felt his insides going numb. “And you said?”

  “I… I let him think I’d do it, if he’d forget about trying to hurt you.”

  He knew how it felt to have liquid helium poured over you: scalding cold. “You let him think that.”

  “I did it for you!”

  “Thanks. That’s an enormous favor. Now he knows that anytime he crooks his finger, you’ll come running to him. All he has to do is start an argument with me, and he’s got you.”

  “No… that isn’t…”

  Larry’s hands were clenching into fists. “I must have been out of my mind to believe that you’d prefer me over him. You’ve always wanted him. Now you’ve got the perfect excuse to get him.”

  He heard her gasp. “Larry… no… please…” Her voice sounded weak, far away.

  “All this time you’ve been letting me think that you loved me… it was only because Dan seemed out of it. But whenever he’s around, you end up going for him.”

  “You’ve got it all wrong!”

  He stood up. For an instant, staring out at the stars, he felt as if he could fall right through the metal and plastic wall and tumble endlessly into the cold of eternity.

  “Wrong?” he asked in a near-whisper. “Do I have it wrong?”

  And then she was standing up in front of him, her face suddenly blazing with anger.

  “You two are exactly alike!” Val snapped. She didn’t raise her voice, but now there was steel in it, hot steel that threw off sparks. “You think that you can own me. Both of you. Well, I’m not a possession. I’m me, and I’m not going to sit around here like some silly Earth flower while you two big strong men fight over me. From now on, you and Dan both can do without me. I don’t want to see either of you! Do you understand?”

  Larry staggered a step backward. “Val…”

  “If you and your ex-friend want to battle it out, it will have to be over some other reasons than me. I’m not a prize to be handed over to the winner. You two can knock your heads together… I don’t care anymore! I tried to save you, both of you. I love you both! Can’t you understand that? I love you both, but I’ve always loved you best, Larry. I’m the one who made you go after the Chairmanship… because I’m the one who wanted you. But you’re so intent on flexing your muscles and being jealous—You’re scared of Dan! And you’ll never be able to be happy or free or yourself until you stop being scared of him. And the only way that’s going to happen is for you to kill him… or him to kill you. That’s what you’re both heading for. But I won’t have any part of it! Go ahead and kill yourselves! See if I care!”

  And she turned away and ran down the corridor.

  Larry was too thunderstruck to go after her. Besides, he knew she was right.

  10

  The conference room filled slowly with Council members. At the head of the table, standing there and watching them drift in, Larry thought they looked almost reluctant to get the meeting started.

  They know that a battle’s coming; they’ve got a hard choice to make, and they don’t want to face it.

  His own thoughts kept slipping back to Valery, to the angry, sad, scared look in
her eyes the night before. She can’t stay away from us both, he knew. The ship’s laws were lenient in some ways, but inexorable in others. Valery was at the age for marriage. She must marry. The computer’s genetics program had listed the men who were genetically suited for marriage with her. There was no way for her to avoid it; she had to marry someone on that list.

  Either Dan or me, Larry thought. Then, Or somebody else? No, she couldn’t marry somebody else. She wouldn’t.

  But now there was another part to the problem. If the Council decides to stay at Alpha Centauri, then we’ll have to genetically alter this next generation of children. Val’s children — whoever she marries — will be sulfur-breathing, high-gravity monsters. She won’t be able to live with them; they couldn’t stay in the same sections of the ship, except for brief visits. They couldn’t breathe the same air.

  Someone coughed, and Larry snapped his attention back to the conference room, the Council meeting, the men and women who were now in their seats and looking up at him.

  Only three seats were still vacant: Dr. Loring’s, Joe Mailer’s, and Dan’s. Before Larry could say anything, the door at the far end of the room slid open and Haller and Dan stepped in. Dan was smiling.

  They took their seats at that end of the table, and Larry sat in his chair.

  “I assume you’ve all reviewed the minutes of our last meeting, and know the agenda for today.”

  A general mumble and nodding of heads.

  “We’ve all seen Dr. Polanyi’s data tapes from the probes.”

  Assent again.

  The nervousness that Larry had expected to feel just wasn’t there. He hunched forward in his chair, feeling… detached, remote from all this, as if he himself, the real Larry Belsen was somewhere lightyears away, looking back and watching the meeting, watching the person in his skin the way a scientist watches an experimental animal.

  Leaning his forearms on the table, Larry said, “All right, we can get right down to it. The basic question is simply this: do we end our voyage at Alpha Centauri, or do we go on to try to find a better, more Earthlike planet at another star?”

  For a moment none of the Council members said anything; they looked at each other, none of them apparently willing to start the debate.

  Then Mort Campbell cleared his throat. His voice was deep, his usual speech pattern was slow and methodical. Put together with his solid frame and beefy face, he gave the impression of being a stolid, slow muscleman. But Campbell was the ship’s champion chess player, as well-as its top wrestler. His scientific skills, as chief of the Life Support group, spanned medicine, cryogenics, electronics, and most of the engineering disciplines. When he talked, no matter how slowly, people listened.

  “I can’t really say much about the choice we have,” he rumbled. “But I do know something about the life support equipment on board this shin. We’re in no condition to go farther. The air regenerators, the waste cyclers, the cryonics units, the rest of it—everything’s being held together with that leftover gunk from the cafeteria that the cooks call coffee, plus what little hair I have left.”

  Several people chuckled. Campbell grinned lazily.

  “Seriously,” he continued, “I think it’s foolish to talk about going farther.” He turned toward Dan’s end of the table. “How about you lads in Propulsion and Power? Is your equipment in as bad a shape as mine?”

  Dan gestured with one hand. “We haven’t started pulling out our hair yet, but the reactors and generators aren’t going to last another five-six decades. Not even five or six more years.”

  “And what choice do we have?” Joe Haller asked. “There’s no evidence of a better planet anywhere.”

  “Dr. Loring was searching for such evidence when his accident occurred,” Dr. Polanyi said. “Unfortunately, there was no record of his work in the computer memory core.”

  Larry started to reply, but Polanyi went on, “However, I received a call last night from Dr. Loring’s daughter. She believes she has found some of her father’s handwritten notes, and she would like to tell the Council about them.”

  “What?” Vat’s got evidence of her father’s work?

  Suddenly Larry was totally alert, every nerve tight, every muscle tense.

  He forced his voice to stay calm as he asked, “What do you mean, Dr. Polanyi?”

  The old engineer shrugged. “Exactly what I said. Miss Loring apparently has uncovered some of her father’s notes, and she feels she can tell us something, at least, about the progress of his work.”

  Larry glanced down the table at Dan. He seemed just as surprised as Larry himself felt.

  “Then we ought to hear what she has to tell us,” Larry said.

  Nodding vigorously, Polanyi answered, “Precisely. I took the liberty of asking her to wait in the outer room. Shall I call her in?”

  Larry looked around the table. No dissenting voices. “Yes,” he said. “Ask her to come in.”

  Polanyi got up from his seat and went to the door nearest Larry’s end of the table. He slid it open and gestured; Valery stepped into the conference room. She was wearing a dress instead of her usual slacks or coveralls; she looked very serious. And tired.

  She must have stayed up all night.

  “Why don’t you take your father’s seat,” Larry suggested to her.

  She nodded to him and went to the empty chair. Polanyi held it for her.

  Dan called, “You have some evidence about your father’s attempts to find other Earthlike planets?”

  Valery’s voice was low, weary. “Well, I don’t know if you can call it evidence, exactly. It’s just some scribbled notes that he left in our quarters, in his desk. I found them accidentally last night—I was going to write a letter—” She glanced up at.

  Larry, then turned and looked straight across the table at Polanyi.

  “The notes don’t make much sense by themselves, but they reminded me of some of the conversations we had at home—Father liked to talk about his work, you know.”

  She hesitated a moment. Larry could see that she was fighting to keep her self-control, struggling to keep her mind away from her father’s accident—and who caused it.

  “He was trying to determine what kinds of planets are associated with two particular stars: Epsilon Indi and Epsilon Eridani. Both are orange, K.-sequence stars, somewhat cooler than the sun. Both definitely have planets orbiting around them. That much he was sure of.”

  “There are lots of other stars that are just as close as those two, or closer, aren’t there?” Adrienne Kaufman asked.

  Valery nodded. “Yes, but they’re almost all red dwarfstars— so dim and cool that the chance for finding a planet with Earthlike temperatures, liquid water, and livable conditions— well, the chances are almost nil.”

  “I see.”

  Someone asked, “These planets your father was studying, are they like Earth?”

  “That’s what he was trying to determine,” Val answered, “when… when he was injured.”

  Larry could feel the electric tension around the table.

  “As nearly as I could make out from his notes, and from the few conversations we had on the subject,” Val went on, “he had determined that Epsilon Indi—the nearer of the two stars—had more than one planet. Its major planet is a gas giant, like Jupiter, completely unfit for us.”

  “And the others?”

  She shook her head. “He never found out. He had been talking about building better electronic boosters for the main telescope. I guess he needed better magnification and resolution to study the smaller planets.”

  “We could build such equipment,” Dr. Polanyi said. “But who would use it? Dr. Loring was our only qualified astronomer.”

  “Perhaps we could revive an astronomer who’s now in cryosleep.”

  “Are there any?”

  Valery raised her voice a notch. “If the Council will allow it, I would like to handle the astronomical work myself.”

  “You?”

  “I re
alize that my place is in Computing. But I’ve always followed my father’s work very closely, and I think that I’m the best qualified person here for continuing his studies—Unless, of course, you want to go to the trouble to revive a sleeping astronomer.”

  “But can you make the necessary observations in less than a month? Otherwise we must go into orbit around the Centaurian planet.”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea,” Valery replied.

  “We’re going to have to take up a parking orbit around the planet anyway,” Dan said firmly.

  Everyone turned to him.

  “I’ve been checking with all the different groups on board. Mr. Campbell’s little speech earlier was the last stroke. Just about every group says their equipment needs to be overhauled, repaired, rebuilt— We can’t keep expecting the ship to function indefinitely without major repairs.”

  He pushed his chair back and stood up. “We can’t make major repairs while we’re running all the equipment full blast. But if we go into orbit around the planet, we can afford to shut down some sections of the ship for weeks or even months at a time.”

  “And once we’re in orbit around the planet,” Larry countered, “the temptation to stay and make it our new home might just become overpowering. Right?”

  Dan shrugged. “Could be. All I know is that the reactors need deuterium. Our supplies are too low to last much longer—a few years, at most. That planet has water on it, so there must be deuterium there, too. It’s that simple.”

  “So we must stop. Whether we want to or not,” Larry said.

  Dan nodded, smiling.

  Everyone else around the table was nodding, too. Larry saw that there was nothing he could do about it. He was outmaneuvered, outvoted, outsmarted. The whole business of trying to decide what to do was a complete shambles. They were going to fall into orbit around the Centaurian planet, no matter what.

  “I believe,” Dr. Polanyi said, “that orbiting the planet may have some definite advantages. We will be able to study it close-up, even go down onto the surface with exploration teams. Miss Loring can use the time to make further astronomical observations. And we can repair and refurbish the ship at our leisure. After all, even if we decide to stay at Alpha Centauri, those of us who are alive now will still have to spend the rest of their existence aboard ship. We will not be able to live on the surface.”