Orbitsville Trilogy

by Bob Shaw

  'Don't worry, son,' Garamond called. 'This won't last long. We'll soon be…'

  'North Field to shuttlecraft Sahara Tango 4299,' a voice crackled from the radio. 'This is Fleet Commodore Keegan calling. Come in, please.'

  'Don't answer that,' Garamond ordered. The clock behind his eyes had come to an abrupt and sickening halt.

  'But that was Keegan himself. Are you mixed up in something big, Captain?'

  'Big enough.' Garamond hesitated as the radio repeated its message. 'Tune that out and get me Commander Napier on my bridge.' He gave the pilot a microwave frequency which would by-pass the Bissendorf's main communications room.

  'But…'

  'Immediately.' He raised the pistol against multiple gravities. 'This is a hair trigger and there's a lot of G-force piling up on my finger.'

  'I'm making the call now.' The pilot spun a small vernier on the armrest of his chair and in a few seconds had established contact.

  'Commander Napier here.' Garamond felt a surge of relief as he recognized the cautious tones Napier always employed when he did not know who was on the other end of a channel.

  'This is an urgent one, Cliff.' Garamond spoke steadily. 'Have you had any communications about me from Starflight House?'

  'Ah… no. Was I supposed to?'

  'That doesn't matter now. Here's a special instruction which I'm asking you to obey immediately and without question. Do you understand?'

  'Okay, Vance.' Napier sounded puzzled, but not suspicious or alarmed.

  'I'm on the shuttle and will rendezvous with you in a few minutes, but right now I want you to throw the ultimate master switch on the external communications system. Right now, Cliff!'

  There was a slight pause, during which Napier must have been considering the facts that what he had been asked to do was illegal and that under Starflight Regulations he was not obliged to obey such an order – then the channel went dead.

  Garamond closed his eyes for a second. He knew that Napier had also thought about their years together on the Bissendorf, all the light-years they had covered, all the alien suns, all the hostile useless planets, all the disappointments which had studded their quest for lebensraum, all the bottles of whisky they had killed while in orbit around lost, lonely points of light both to console themselves and to make the next leg of a mission seem bearable. If he and Aileen and Chris had any chance of life it lay in the fact that a spaceship was an island universe, a tiny enclave in which Elizabeth's power was less than absolute. While in Earth orbit the ship's officers would have been forced to obey any direct order from Starflight Admincom, but he had successfully blocked the communications channels … A warning chime from the shuttle's computer interrupted Garamond's thoughts.

  'We have some pretty severe course and speed corrections coming up,' the younger pilot said. 'Do you want to advise your wife?'

  Garamond nodded gratefully. The sky in the forward view panels had already turned from deep blue to black as the shuttle's tubes hurled it clear of the atmosphere. In a maximum-energy ballistic-style sortie it was understood that there was no time for niceties – the computer which was controlling the flight profile would subject passengers to as much stress, within programmed limits, as they could stand. Garamond edged backwards until he could see Aileen and Chris.

  'Get ready for some rollercoaster stuff,' he told them. 'Don't try to fight the ship or you'll be sick. Just go with it and the restraint field will hold you in place.' They both nodded silently, in unison, eyes fixed on his face, and he felt a crashing sense of responsibility and guilt. He had barely finished speaking when a series of lateral corrections twisted space out of its normal shape, pulling him to the left and then upwards away from the floor. The fierce pressure of the bulkhead against his back prevented him from being thrown around but he guessed that his wife and son must have been lifted out of their seats. An involuntary gasp from Aileen confirmed her distress.

  'It won't be long now,' he told her. Stars were shining in the blackness ahead of the shuttle, and superimposed on the random points of light was a strip of larger, brighter motes, most of which had visible irregularities of shape. Polar Band One glittered like a diamond bracelet, at the midpoint of which Sector Station 8 flared with a yellowish brilliance. The two distinct levels of luminosity, separating man-made objects from the background of distant suns, created a three-dimensional effect, an awareness of depth and cosmic scale which Garamond rarely experienced when far into a mission. He remained with the pilots, braced between their seats and the bulkhead, while the shuttle drew closer to the stream of orbiting spaceships and further corrections were applied to match speed and direction. By this time Starflight Admincom would have tried to contact the Bissendorf and would probably be taking other measures to prevent his escape.

  'There's your ship,' the senior pilot commented, and the note of satisfaction in his voice put Garamond on his guard. 'It looks like you're a little late, Captain – there's another shuttle already drifting into its navel.'

  Garamond, unused to orienting himself with the cluttered traffic of the Polar Band, had to search the sky for several seconds before he located the Bissendorf and was able to pick out the silvered bullet of a shuttle closing in on the big ship's transfer dock. He felt a cool prickling on his forehead. It was impossible for the other shuttle to have made better time on the haul up from Earth, but Admincom must have been able to divert one which was already in orbit and instruct it to block the Bissendorf's single transfer dock.

  'What do you want to do, Captain?' The blue-chinned senior pilot had begun to enjoy himself. 'Would you like to hand over that gun now?'

  Garamond shook his head. 'The other shuttle's making a normal docking approach. Get in there before him.'

  'It's too late.'

  Garamond placed the muzzle of the pistol against the pilot's neck. 'Ram your nose into that dock, sonny.'

  'You're crazy, but I'll try.' The pilot fixed his eyes on the expanding shape of the Bissendorf, then spun verniers to bring his sighting crosshairs on to the red-limned target of the dock which was already partially obscured by the other shuttle. As he did so the retro tubes began firing computer-controlled bursts which cut their forward speed. 'I told you it was too late.'

  'Override the computer,' Garamond snapped. 'Kill those retros.'

  'Do you want to commit suicide?'

  'Do you?' Garamond pressed the pistol into the other man's spine and watched as he tripped out the autocontrol circuits. The image of the competing shuttle and the docking target expanded in the forward screen with frightening speed.

  The pilot instinctively moved backwards in his seat. 'We're going to hit the other shuttle, for Christ's sake!'

  'I know,' Garamond said calmly. 'And after we do you'll have about two seconds to get those crosshairs back on target. Now let's see how good you are.'

  The other shuttle ballooned ahead of and slightly above them until they were looking right into its main driver tubes, there was a shuddering clang which Garamond felt in his bones, the shuttle vanished, and the vital docking target slewed away to one side. Events began to happen in slow motion for Garamond. He had time to monitor every move the pilot made as he fired emergency corrective jets which wrenched the ship's nose back on to something approximating its original bearing, time to brace himself as retros hammered on the craft's frame, even time to note and be grateful for the discovery that the pilot was good. Then the shuttle speared into the Bissendorf's transfer dock at five times the maximum permitted speed and wedged itself into the interior arrester rings with a shrieking impart which deformed its hull.

  Garamond, the only person on the shuttle not protected by a seat, was driven forward but was saved from injury by the restraint field's reaction against any violent movement of his clothing. He felt a surge of induced heat pass through the material, and at the same time became aware of a shrill whistling sound from the rear of the ship. A popping in his ears told him that air was escaping from the shuttle into the vacuum of
the Bissendorf's dock. A few seconds later Chris began to sob, quietly and steadily. Garamond went aft, knelt before the boy and tried to soothe him.

  'What's happening, Vance?' The brightly-coloured silk of Aileen's dress was utterly incongruous.

  'Rough docking, that's all. We're losing some air but they'll be pressurizing the dock and…' He hesitated as a warbling note came from the shuttle's address system. 'They've done it – that's the equalization signal to say we can get out now. There's nothing to worry about.'

  'But we're falling.'

  'We aren't falling, honey. Well, we are-but not downwards…' It came to Garamond that he had no time at that moment to introduce his wife to celestial mechanics. 'I want you and Chris to sit right here for a few minutes. Okay?'

  He stood Up, opened the passenger door and looked out at a group of officers and engineering personnel who had gathered on the docking bay's main platform. Among them was the burly figure of Cliff Napier. Garamond launched himself upwards from the sill and allowed the slight drag of the ship's restraint field to curve his weightless flight downwards on to the steel platform where his boots took a firm grip. Napier caught his arm while the other men were saluting.

  'Are you all right, Vance? That was the hairiest docking I ever saw.'

  'I'm fine. Explain it all later, Cliff. Get through to the engine deck and tell them I want immediate full power.'

  'Immediate?'

  "Yes – there's a streamer of nova dust lagging behind the main weather front and we're going to catch it. I presume you've preset the course.'

  'But what about the shuttle and its crew?'

  'We'll have to take the shuttle with us, Cliff. The shuttle and everybody on it.'

  'I see.' Napier raised his wrist communicator to his lips and ordered full power. He was a powerfully built bull-necked man with hands like the scoops of a mechanical digger, but there was a brooding intelligence in his eyes. 'Is this our last mission for Starflight?'

  'It's my last, anyway.' Garamond looked around to make sure nobody was within earshot. 'I'm in deep, Cliff – and I've dragged you in with me.'

  'It was my decision – I didn't have to pull the plug on the communications boys. Are they coming after you?'

  'With every ship that Starflight owns.'

  'They won't catch us,' Napier said confidently as the deck began to press up under their feet, signalling that the Bissendorf was accelerating out of orbit. 'We'll ride that wisp of dust up the hill to Uranus, and when we've caught the tide … Well, there's a year's supplies on board.'

  'Thanks.' Garamond shook hands with Napier, yet – while comforted by the blunt human contact – he wondered how long it would be before either of them would refer openly to the bitter underlying reality of their situation. They were all dressed up with a superb ship. But a century of exploration by the vast Starflight armada had proved one thing.

  There was nowhere to go.

  four

  They were able to put off the decision for three days.

  During that time there was only one direction in which the Bissendorf could logically go – towards the galactic south, in pursuit of the single vagrant wisp of particles which lingered behind the retreating weather fronts. They had caught it, barely, and the vast insubstantial ramjets formed by the ship's magnetic fields had begun to gather power, boosting it towards light-speed and beyond. It was the prototypes of starships such as the Bissendorf which, a century earlier, had all but demolished Einsteinian physics. On the first tentative flights there had been something of the predicted increase in mass, but no time dilation effect, no impenetrable barrier at the speed of light. A new physics had been devised – based mainly on the work of the Canadian mathematician, Arthur Arthur – which took into account the lately observed fact that when a body of appreciable mass and gravitic field reached speeds approaching .20 it entered new frames of reference. Once a ship crossed the threshold velocity it created its own portable universe in which different rules applied, and it appeared that the great universal constant was not the speed of light. It was time itself.

  On his earlier missions Garamond had been grateful that Einstein's work had its limitations and that time did not slow down for the space traveller – he would have had no stomach for finding his wife ageing ten years for his one, or having a son who quickly grew older than himself. But on this voyage, his last for Starflight, with Aileen and Christopher aboard, it would have resolved many difficulties had he been able to trace a vast circle across one part of the galaxy and return to Earth to find, as promised by Einstein, that Elizabeth Lindstrom was long dead. Arthurian physics had blocked that notional escape door, however, and he was faced with the question of where to go in his year of stolen time.

  His thinking on the matter was influenced by two major considerations. The first was that he had no intention of condemning the 450-strong crew of the Bissendorf to a slow death in an unknown part of the galaxy in a year's time. The ship had to return to Earth and therefore his radius of action was limited to the distance it could cover in six months. Even supposing he travelled in a straight line to one preselected destination, the six-month limitation meant he would not reach far beyond the volume of space already totally explored by Starflight. Chances of this one desperate flight producing a habitable world on which to hide had been microscopic to begin with; when modified by the distance factor they vanished into realms of fantasy.

  The other major consideration was a personal one. Garamond already knew where he wanted to go, but was having trouble justifying the decision.

  'Cluster 803 is your best bet,' Clifford Napier said. He was leaning back in a simulated leather chair in Garamond's quarters, and in his hand was a glass of liqueur whisky which he had not yet tasted but was holding up to the light to appreciate its colour. His heavy-lidded brown eyes were inscrutable as he continued with his thesis.

  'You can make it with time to spare. It's dense – average distance between suns half a light-year – so you'd be able to check a minimum of eight systems before having to pull out. And it's prime exploration territory, Vance. As you know, the S.E.A. Board recommended that 803 should be given high priority when the next wave is being planned.'

  Garamond sipped his own whisky, with its warmth of forgotten summers. 'It makes sense, all right.' The two men sat without speaking for a time, listening to the faint hum of the ship's superconducting flux pumps which was always present even in the engineered solitude of the skipper's rooms.

  'It makes sense,' Napier said finally, 'but you don't want to go there. Right?'

  'Well, maybe it makes too much sense. Admincom could predict that we'd head for 803 and send a hundred ships into the region. A thousand ships.'

  'Think they could catch us?'

  'There's always that chance,' Garamond said. 'It's been proved that four flickerwings getting just ahead of another and matching velocities can control it better than its own skipper just by deciding how much reaction mass to let slip by.'

  There was another silence, then Napier gave a heavy sigh. 'All right, Vance – where's your map?'

  'Which map?'

  'The one showing Pengelly's Star. That's where you want to go, isn't it?'

  Garamond felt a prick of chagrin at having his innermost thoughts divined so accurately by the other man. 'My father actually met Rufus Pengelly once,' he said defensively. 'He told me he'd never known a man less capable of trickery – and if there was one thing my father could do it was judge character just by…' He broke off as Napier began to laugh.

  'Vance, you don't need to sell the idea to me. We're not going to find the third world, so it doesn't matter where we go, does it?'

  Garamond's chagrin was replaced by a growing sense of relief. He went to his desk, opened a drawer and took out four large photoprints which appeared to be of greyish metallic or stone surfaces on which were arranged a number of darker spots in a manner suggestive of star maps. The fuzziness of the markings and the blotchy texture of the background were due
to the fact that the prints were computer reconstructions of star charts which had been destroyed by fire.

  A special kind of fire, Garamond thought. The one which robbed us of a neighbour.

  Sagania had been discovered early in the exploratory phase. It was less than a hundred light-years from Sol, only a quarter of the separation the best statisticians had computed as the average for technical civilizations throughout the galaxy. Even more remarkable was the coincidence of timescales. In the geological lifespans of Sagania and Earth the period in which intelligent life developed and flourished represented less than a second in the life of a man, yet the fantastic gamble had come off. Saganians and Men had coexisted, against all the odds, within interstellar hailing distance, each able to look into the night sky and see the other's parent sun without optical aid. Both had taken the machine-using philosophy as far as the tapping of nuclear energy. Both had shared the outward urge, planned the building of starships, and – with their sub-beacons trembling in the blackness like candles in far-off windows – it was inevitable that there would have been a union.

  Except that one day on Sagania – at a time when the first civilizations were being formed in the Valley of the Two Rivers on Earth – somebody had made a mistake. It may have been a politician who overplayed his hand, or a scientist who dealt the wrong cards, but the result was that Sagania lost its atmosphere, and its life, in an uncontrolled nuclear reaction which surged around the planet like a tidal wave of white fire.

  Archaeologists from Earth, arriving seven thousand years later, had been able to discover very little about the final phase of Saganian civilization. Ironically or justly, according to one's point of view, the beings who had represented the peak of the planet's culture were the ones who removed virtually all trace of their existence. It was the older, humbler Saganian culture which, protected by the crust of centuries, had been uncovered by the electronic probes. Among the artifacts turned up were fragments of star maps which excited little comment, even though a few researchers had noticed that some of them showed a star which did not exist.