by Ben Bova
Kori shrugged, “Well, I had good news for you. Greg Belsen said you’d be glad to hear it. But if you don’t want me to tell you…”
“All right… all right. Sit down, wise guy.” Despite himself, Lou was grinning back at Kori. “Now tell me the good news. I could use some.”
“Well… on the shuttle rocket today they brought my holograms. The ones from Starfarer. Dr. Kaufman said I could show them tonight, and you won’t have to talk about your glorious adventures after all.”
“Great,” Lou said. “Best news I’ve heard all day.”
“Greg said you’d be pleased.”
Lou walked Bonnie back to her quarters, while Kori went to find the special compartment that had been set up as a Tri-V studio.
“You can’t stay here in jail.” Lou told her as they walked down the corridor, “I won’t let you.”
“But I can’t go back to Earth and know that you and Kori and the others are trapped here. I just can’t, Lou.”
“Do you think it’ll make me feel any better knowing that you’re staying here because you feel sorry for me?”
They were at her door now. “I don’t know,” Bonnie said. “It’s lousy no matter which way you look at it.”
Lou nodded agreement.
“Would you like to come in and watch Kori’s show?”
“Sure… I tried watching Tri-V shows beamed up from Earth for a while this afternoon. It kind of hurts; comedies and love stories and newscasts… all of it happening where there are cities and trees and mountains and wind and…”
“Stop it!” Bonnie snapped.
He looked at her. “It hurts,” he said.
She put her arms around him and rested her head against his shoulder. “I know it hurts, Lou. I know.”
A loudspeaker set into the ceiling broke in: “Tonight’s special showing of photographs from the Starfarer mission will begin in five minutes.”
Bonnie straightened up, looked briefly into Lou’s eyes, and then turned to open the door.
They sat side by side on the sofabed, the only sittable piece of furniture in the cramped compartment, and watched the viewscreen set into the wall next to the door. The listened to Kori’s voice explaining what the pictures showed, watched the stars, the myriad stars. They saw Alpha Centauri again, and focused on the fat yellow-green planet with its ice-white clouds.
Then suddenly Lou was on his feet, shouting:
“The stars! That’s the way out! The stars!”
He felt as if someone had just lifted a heavy mask from his eyes.
Bonnie was standing beside him, her eyes wide with bewilderment. “Lou, what is it? What’s wrong?”
He grabbed her and lifted her off her feet and kissed her.
“The stars, Bonnie! That’s our escape, that’s our purpose. Instead of staying here in exile, we can leave! Head for the stars! We can turn this prison into mankind’s first starship!”
21
“Flatly impossible,” snapped Dr Kaufman.
Lou was standing at the end of the conference table in Kaufman’s office Kori was sitting at his side The members of the Council showed a full spectrum of emotions from thoughtful skepticism to outright scorn.
“It’s absolutely impossible, the most ridiculous suggestion I’ve ever heard,” Kaufman continued.
Lou held on to his steaming temper. “Why do you say that? The scheme is physically possible.”
“To turn this entire satellite into a starship? Accelerate it to the kind of velocity that Starfarer reached, or even more? Nonsense!”
Kori said, “With the kind of fusion engines we now know how to build, we could accelerate this pinwheel to reach Alpha Centauri in less time than it took Starfarer. After all, the Starfarer was launched nearly two generations ago, it’s a primitive ship, compared to what we can do now.”
“But your own pictures showed that Alpha Centauri’s planets are not enough like Earth to serve as a new home for us,” said Mettler, one of the Europeans on Kaufman’s Council.
“You’re missing the point,” Lou countered “The important thing is that Alpha Centauri has planets. Barnard’s Star has planets, they’ve been detected from Earth. Seven of the nearest ten stars are known to have planets, one of them is bound to be enough like Earth to suit us.”
“Yes, I know. But it might take you a century or two to find a fully Earth-like planet.”
“Let me ask something else,” Charles Sutherland said in his nasal whine. “Have you thought about the structural stresses on this satellite when you hook a fusion drive engine to it?”
Kori answered, “I’ve done some rough calculations. It doesn’t look too bad. I’d need a computer to do the job properly, of course.”
“And there’s no computer here,” Sutherland said, grinning sardonically. “And the government won’t give us one. Neither will they give us fusion engines. So the whole scheme is meaningless.”
“I think they would give us anything we asked for,” Lou said, “if they knew they’d be getting rid of us. Permanently.”
“Oh, it’ll be permanent, all right. One way or the other,” Sutherland said.
Kaufman frowned. “By even asking for permission to try such a stunt, we’d be telling the government that we’ve given up all hope of ever being reinstated on Earth. We’d be admitting that we expect to be exiled for the rest of our lives.”
“Don’t you expect to be here for the rest of your life?” Kurtz asked.
“No!” Kaufman slapped the table with the flat of his hand. “I have friends who are working right now to end this nonsense. I’m sure they are. And I’m sure that they must be making some headway. And so do the other leaders from the other laboratories around the world. The government can’t keep this farce going forever.”
Lou shook his head. “I’ve talked with the General Chairman himself. There’s no doubt in his mind that we’re here to stay.”
“He’s a feeble old man. He’ll be replaced soon.”
“By Kobryn,” said Mettler. “Who is not going to hand out any pardons.”
Greg Belsen turned to Kori, sitting beside him. “You really think you can do it? Get us out to the stars?”
“Of course. It’s only a question of getting the right equipment and support from Earth.”
“And finding the right planet,” Lou added.
“The planet needn’t be exactly like Earth,” Greg mused. “We could modify our children genetically, so they’re physically adapted to the conditions on their new world.”
“But the rest of us could never live on that world,” Kaufman said.
“Mmm… well,” Greg said, “it’s just a thought; we’d still be able to make a homework! for the children, even if we couldn’t find one exactly suited for us. I think it’s worth the gamble. Let’s try it. If nothing else, it’ll give us something substantial to work on.”
“Until the government refuses to give you what you need,” Kaufman muttered.
“Let’s vote on it,” Greg suggested.
“Now wait,” said Kaufman. “Before there’s any voting…”
But there were already three hands in the air: Greg’s, Ron Kurtz’s, and Mettler’s. With a shrug, Tracy, the other European on the Council, added his hand. Only Kaufman and Sutherland were opposed.
Kaufman snorted. “All right. We’ll look into it. Dr. Kori, you can ask your colleagues to help you with the rocketry and astronautics work.” From the tone of his voice, it was clear that Kaufman expected the older rocket scientists to regard Kori as a madman.
Some of them did just that. They shook their heads and walked away from Kori, unbelieving. But a few accepted the idea. More as an amusement, perhaps, than a real possibility. But they toyed with the notion, they started jotting down notes, equations. Within a week the handful of rocket scientists and engineers aboard the satellite were all hard at work, no matter how implausible some of them thought the scheme to be. They soon took over all the desk top calculators in the satellite, watching the nu
mbers flickering fluorescently in the viewscreens, getting more enthusiastic each day.
Greg Belsen was eager from the beginning. He started looking into the possibilities of deep-freezing people, putting them into suspended animation in cryogenic sleeping units. It was done on Earth, in rare medical emergencies, for a few days at a time. Greg wanted to put most of the satellite’s seven thousand people into cryogenic sleep for decades.
“Either most of the people are going to sleep most of the time,” he told Lou, “or we have to rebuild this ship into a gingerbread house. Do you have any idea of how many megatons of food seven thousand people can eat in a century or so?”
Gradually, some of the other biochemists started working with Greg. Even a few of the geneticists let themselves be dragged into the problem, although it was well out of their field.
Within a month, Lou was asking a very suspicious government computer expert for time on high-speed computers. After a week of checking with Earth-bound scientists and government officials, the computer man allowed Lou to establish direct radio and Tri-V contact with a huge government computer in Australia.
“They’re double-checking everything we do,” Lou told Bonnie, “to make sure we’re not slipping in any work on genetic engineering. Slows us down,, but we’re getting there just the same. Kori says he can’t see anything to stop us. If we can get the engines built and the radiation screens, and the other equipment, that is.”
Bonnie nodded at him. She had begged the authorities for more time to stay on the satellite, to help with the work Lou and the others were doing. The General Chairman himself signed the papers that let her stay indefinitely. But if Lou had really looked closely at her, he would have seen that she never smiled anymore, even though she tried to.
It took six months before they were certain. Six months of hectic work, calculations, conferences that lasted all hours, arguments, cajolings. Six months in which Lou saw Bonnie maybe twice or three times a week, sometimes not that often. And always he talked of the work, the plans, the hopes. And she said nothing.
Then, abruptly, Lou was telling Kaufman, “There’s no doubt about it. We can turn this jail into a starship. We can freeze most of the people. We can reach the stars. Now we have to get the government to give us the equipment we need.”
Kaufman said reluctantly, “I’ll ask for a conference with the proper authorities.”
Shaking his head, Lou countered, “The General Chairman once told me that if we needed anything, we could ask him. I’m going to call him. Directly.”
It was one of those moments when time seems to have snapped, and you’re back in a spot where you had been months or years ago. Exactly the same place.
Lou stood in the General Chairman’s office again, Bonnie and Kori beside him, as the elevator doors sighed shut. The room was unchanged. The Chairman called to them from his desk. The past six months aboard the satellite suddenly seemed like a remote and unpleasant dream. Did I actually live aboard that plastic prison? In that artificial little world? After a drive from the rocket field, through the green farmlands and bone-white villages, through the scented winds and steady call of the surf, through the noisy, crowded, living city—the satellite seemed totally unreal.
The Chairman listened patiently to their story, nodding and rocking in his big leather chair, steepling his fingers from time to time, even smiling once or twice. Then Lou finished talking.
For a long moment, the Chairman said nothing. Finally, “Your ingenuity amazes me, in a way. And yet, somehow, I am not truly surprised that you have come up with an amazing idea.” He looked at the three of them, his dark eyes clear despite his many other signs of age.
“I will not presume to comment on why you want to leave our world entirely,” the Chairman said. “I suppose that even death among the stars is preferable to you than a long life of exile.” He laughed, softly, to himself. “I never expected to be faced with such a decision. I never expected man’s first attempt to reach the stars would be made under conditions such as we find ourselves in.”
“Then you’ll allow us to go?” Lou asked eagerly. “You’ll help us, you’ll give us the engines and …”
The Chairman silenced him with a spindly upraised finger. “You say that there are many among you who are opposed to this idea… many who do not wish to fly toward the stars.”
“Yes,” Lou admitted. “Our work to date has simply shown that it’s physically possible for us to make the journey. Dr. Kaufman and many of the others—especially the older people—don’t want any part of it.”
The chairman sighed. “You realize, of course, that it all comes down to a question of money. Everything does, it seems. Sooner or later.”
“Money?”
Nodding, the Chairman explained, “It will take billions to outfit your satellite for a journey to the stars—”
“We’ve figured that out,” Lou said. “It’s expensive, but still cheaper than keeping us in orbit indefinitely. This way, you pay one big bill and we’re gone. If you keep us, you’ll have to feed us, doctor us, everything—”
“I feel like Pharaoh arguing against Moses,” the Chairman complained. “I would be perfectly willing to spend what must be spent and help you on your way, if that is what you wish. But—what of those who don’t wish it? I cannot keep some of you in orbit and still spend the money necessary to send the rest of you out to the stars. It must be one or the other. It cannot be both.”
“Then we’ll have to vote on it,” Lou said.
“Yes,” said the Chairman. “I suppose you will.”
So they left the Chairman’s office, went back down the whispering elevator and into the car that took them back through the semitropical seaside farms of Sicily, toward the rocket field. But now the grass and sunshine and cottages were cruelties, sadistic reminders that the satellite, was real and permanent and they were only visitors in this beautiful world; their prison awaited them.
They rode in the back of the open turbocar in silence, eyes wide and all senses alert to drink in every sight and sound and fragrance that had been commonplace all their lives but now were small miracles that they could never expect to experience again.
A second car followed a discreet distance behind them, and somewhere overhead a helicopter droned lazily. They were prisoners, no doubt of it.
As they got close enough to the rocket field to see the stubby shuttles standing in a row, Bonnie turned to Lou.
“You shouldn’t have brought me with you today, Lou. You shouldn’t have.”
Surprised, “What? Why not?”
“Because I’m not as strong as you are,” she said, shouting over the wind and turbine whine. “I… Lou, I can’t leave all this, not permanently. It’s bad enough in the satellite, when you can see the Earth outside the viewports. But to leave forever… to go out into that blackness… Lou, I can’t do it. If they vote for going to the stars, I’ll come back to Earth.”
“But I thought…”
Even Kori, sitting on the other side of Bonnie, looked shocked.
“I’m sorry, Lou… I can’t help it. I checked this morning. The government will still let me return, if I want to. I can’t leave Earth forever, Lou. I just can’t!”
“But… I love you, Bonnie. I can’t leave without you.”
She put her head down and cried.
22
Lou sat tensely in front of the Tri-V cameras. Next to him sat Dr. Kaufman, in an identical sling chair that creaked under his weight.
They were in the special compartment that had been turned into a Tri-V studio. Everyone in the satellite was watching them as they explained their positions on Lou’s starship proposal.
As Dr. Kaufman spoke in his vigorous, emphatic manner, driving points home with the accusatory thrusts of a stubby forefinger, Lou’s mind was far away.
He kept seeing Bonnie’s stricken face when she admitted that she would never go with him to the stars. Kept seeing the green countryside, the lemon orchards and vineyards, the
safe blue sky and friendly sea that he would never visit again.
“I can’t leave Earth forever, Lou. I just can’t!”
Can I? he wondered. Can any of us? Turn our backs on the whole world, on a billion years of evolution? Is that what I want them to do? Is it what I want to do?
Dr. Kaufman was saying, “It is desperately important that we all realize exactly what is involved here. No one has ever built a manned starship. No one has even attempted to. You all know that we get supplies from Earth, every week. Even though we have closed-cycle air and water systems, we still need replenishments of air and water at least once a month.
“As long as we remain in orbit around the Earth we can get those supplies and replenishments whenever we need them. But if we leave Earth, if we try this foolhardy scheme for going to the stars, we must have air and water and food systems that are absolutely foolproof. Now, I realize that manned missions to Jupiter and Saturn have used closed-cycle systems, and they’ve worked quite well for periods of up to six years.
“But this star-roving we’re talking about will take decades! Perhaps a century or even more! Why, none of us are even sure that a truly Earth-like planet exists out among the stars.”
Kaufman shook his head, making a lock of his gray mane tumble over his forehead. “No, this star-roving idea is too risky, even on purely technical grounds. We just don’t know how to build a starship. And even if the best engineers on Earth were assigned by the government to help us, we wouldn’t be able to keep the ship in working order, once we left Earth. We wouldn’t be able to repair it and maintain it. How many engineers are there among us? A handful. We’re research scientists, not grease monkeys!”
Lou was listening with only half his mind. The other half was remorselessly reminding him: Life is ruled by the laws of thermodynamics, just as all physical processes are. You can’t get anything without paying the price. Not anything. If you want the stars, you must leave Bonnie behind. If you want Bonnie, the price is perpetual imprisonment.
