Orbitsville Trilogy

by Bob Shaw

  "I know what you mean." Nicklin was unable to take his eyes away from the screen. "Those lines must be really bright for us to see them at this range. I mean … how far are we away from Orbitsville?"

  "Just over two miks. We passed the two-million mark a little while ago."

  "I never thought this kind of thing would happen to me," Nicklin said. "James Nicklin – space traveller!"

  Hoping he had achieved a natural-sounding change of subject, he tried to work out why the figure Hepworth quoted had drawn a cold feather along his spine. Fifteen hours at say 5G would be … His skill with mental calculation seemed to desert him as he realised that by this time the ship should have been on full gravity, its drive becoming more efficient as the build-up in speed allowed the intake fields to gather increasing amounts of reaction mass. The current acceleration felt more like a third or a quarter of the optimum, and there might have been fluctuations while he was asleep, causing the dreams of falling…

  "Don't overload that walnut you use instead of a brain." Hepworth spoke in friendly tones and returned the flask to Nicklin, good evidence of his not being antagonised. "Under normal conditions we'd have been a lot farther out by this time."

  "I … ah … didn't want to open my big mouth too soon."

  "I know – you were being tactful." Hepworth gave him a quizzical look. "I never noticed you trying to be diplomatic before. What's the matter, Jim – are you sick?"

  Nicklin tried to smile. "I have my off days. What were you saying about the engines?"

  "About the engines? Nothing! Not a word! Not a peep, not a cheep! The engines are fine."

  "But you said–"

  "I said that under normal conditions the ship would be travelling a lot faster."

  "So what's wrong?"

  "Space itself is wrong," Hepworth said peacefully. "You must remember that we're in an anti-matter universe now, Jim. Some things are different here. It's too soon for me to say exactly what the differences are – it could be something to do with the density or distribution of interstellar dust, or it might be something more basic than that.

  "If some nuclear interactions are different – as with cobalt 60 – then some of the ship's performance parameters might also be different. For instance, our intake fields might be slightly porous to anti-matter ions. I tell you, Jim – whole new areas for research are opening up all around us."

  Nicklin took another drink of lukewarm gin.

  I'm going to put all my trust in this man, he thought, repressing a grimace as the alcohol burned in his throat. I'm going to accept everything he says. I'm going to have total faith in him because nobody – not even the Great Prankster – would cast a hundred souls adrift in a ship that can't fly.

  Again, there were dreams of falling.

  In one of them the ship was in orbit around a green planet. The planet had no cloud markings, no oceans, no polar caps. It was a sphere of unrelieved colour – pantomime scenery green, children's paintbox green, remembered holiday green – too rich for normal vegetation. Megan Fleischer had come to Nicklin and confessed that she was unable to fly the pinnace. He had taken over for her, and now he was in the pilot's seat as the little craft plunged – buffeted by turbulent atmosphere – towards the virescent bauble. He glanced down at the controls and terror gripped him as he realised they were a meaningless array of levers and dials. He knew nothing about flying, nothing at all! What madness had made him think he could pilot any kind of spacecraft or aircraft? The poisonous green surface was rushing upwards, expanding, spinning in the windshield. He could see now that it was a swamp – heaving, bubbling, gloating. The pinnace was hurtling into it at many times the speed of sound.

  And there was nothing he could do but wait to die…

  On the following morning, the second day of the flight, Nicklin decided that the only way to survive a prolonged journey was by making himself genuinely useful. The simple disciplines of hard work had sustained him for the year in which the Tara had been dragged, inch by inch, from Altamura to Beachhead City, and the experience had taught him a valuable lesson.

  "You can trust work," he announced to the emptiness of his room as he got out of bed and began to dress. "Work isn't fickle. Work never lets you down."

  There was, he knew, a ready-made outlet for his particular abilities and knowledge. Jock Craig, the electrician, had a good record as a general handyman and had been promoted – in the vague way that Montane handled such things – to the post of "maintenance supervisor". The job would have required Craig to mend anything from a lighting switch to a ventilation fan, but he had been among those who failed to board the ship in time for the escape from Orbitsville.

  Nothing had broken down at this early stage of the voyage, as far as Nicklin was aware, but there was one major item of housekeeping which cried out for his attention. The gangway which passed through every deck had been vital for mobility while the ship was lying on its side in dock. Now it was an encumbrance which hindered access to the single longitudinal ladder which ran the length of the ship – and it was time for it to go.

  Within an hour Nicklin had eaten a solitary breakfast, sought out Montane and appointed himself maintenance supervisor in Craig's place.

  The gangway was made of pressed metal in some places, and in others of simple wooden planks which still bore dusty footprints. Nicklin started at the upper end of the ship, removing sections, cutting them into convenient lengths and storing them in an empty room on 5 Deck. As he cleared each deck he checked that its sliding anti-fire hatch could be moved freely. The work was aided by the low gravity, but hampered by the number of people moving between levels. Having spent one ship day adjusting to their surroundings and getting used to the idea of being in space, the emigrants were beginning to establish the life patterns which might have to serve them for many months.

  Looking along the ladder was, for Nicklin, like taking a core sample of the activities on the seriate decks. In the dwindling companionways he could see knots of men and women in conversation, while others progressed between the two public levels of the canteen and washrooms. Children were visible almost everywhere, establishing their hold on new territories or being harried by adults. At one stage there was a bible class going on below Nicklin, a committee meeting of some kind on his level and what seemed like a choir practice several floors above him.

  Inconvenient though the continual traffic on the ladder was, he derived comfort from the abundant evidence that the human spirit was irrepressible. Many of the emigrants spoke to him in a friendly manner, some – having tapped into an information grapevine – expressing gratitude for the part he had played in getting the ship off the slideway. These men and women were obviously more in touch with the realities of their situation than his anti-religious prejudice had allowed him to expect, and the idea that they might form a viable colony on a new world gradually began to seem less preposterous.

  Twice during the morning's work he saw Zindee White coming towards him. Unable to meet her eyes, he moved as far off the ladder as possible and kept his back turned while she was passing. On the first occasion he allowed himself to hope that she would speak and show some sign of forgiveness, but no contact was made. That's that, he told himself grimly. To use one of Corey's best clichés – I'm reaping what I sowed.

  There was little to tax his mind in the dismantling of the gangway, but he gave the task full concentration, using the physical labour to ease the pressures of self-reproach and recrimination. Having shut everything but bolts, clamps and lashing ropes from his personal universe, he felt a dull sense of surprise when – some time later – he became aware of Nibs Affleck beckoning to him from higher up the ladder.

  Making sure he was leaving nothing in a dangerous condition, he followed Affleck towards the control deck, trying to guess why he had been summoned. He knew that Megan Fleischer was deeply unhappy about the weak acceleration, and that she had been engaged in bitter arguments with Hepworth, but he had no responsibilities in that area. Perhaps
Montane, increasingly concerned with the trivia of shipboard routine, wanted to discuss illumination levels or the canteen rota. Or, could it be … could it possibly be…?

  Orbitsville!

  Nicklin's premonition gave way to numb certainty as he entered the control room.

  In spite of some magnification the main screen now depicted a much greater area of the Orbitsville shell, with the result that the pattern of green lines appeared to have become more intricate. There were hundreds of regularly spaced foci, generating sprays of interlocking curves, resembling flower petals, which confused and dazzled the eye. The vast design had not only increased greatly in brightness, but was now pulsing at a rate of about once a second. Each peak of brilliance washed through the control room, garishly outlining the high-backed seats and their occupants – Montane, Voorsanger, Fleischer and Hepworth.

  "You're entitled to see this, Jim," Hepworth said without turning his head. "Something is going to happen."

  Nicklin moved to stand behind Hepworth. "When did the pulsing start?"

  "A couple of minutes ago – and it's speeding up."

  Frozen, entranced, Nicklin stared at the living image as the tempo of light beats increased. It became an eye-stabbing frenzy, the intervals between the peaks lessening, shrinking to zero. And then the screen steadied at an intolerable level of brightness.

  A second went by; two seconds; three seconds…

  Scott was right, Nicklin thought, sick with apprehension, half-blinded by the glare. Something is going to happen.

  …four seconds; five seconds…

  The incredible filigree of green fire ceased to exist – and in its place there was a new pattern.

  Blue-white crescents suddenly filled the entire screen. Row upon row, line upon line, layer upon layer. The largest were in the centre of the field of view, and outwards from them, graduating downwards in size to star-like points, there ran countless curving meridians of dwindling beads. The farther they were from the centre of the screen the fuller were the crescents. In their entirety they formed concentric gauzy spheres, depth leading to depth, at the centre of which was a small yellow sun.

  Nicklin's gaze fixed on one of the largest of the side-lit globes, but long before he had brought it into perfect focus – identifying the blue and green variegations as oceans and continents – an inner voice had told him he was looking at a new-born planet.

  Orbitsville – equal in area to millions of Earths – had become millions of Earths.

  CHAPTER 19

  The utter silence in the control room lasted for minutes, during which the image on the screen continued to evolve.

  Unable to take his gaze off the spectacle, Nicklin groped his way around the empty seat beside Hepworth and sat down. As his eyes gradually recovered from the punishing overload of green light he began to take in more and more details of the fantastic scene and to interpret some of its elements.

  He saw that the sun was not enclosed by the blackness of space. The multiple layers of planets in the foreground had prevented him from realising that the sun was at the centre of a pale blue disk. The circle of blue exhibited shifting moiré patterns of a paler shade, and – in spite of the alien nature of the visual setting – it looked achingly familiar.

  "That's the sky," he breathed. "I mean … We're looking at the inside of Orbitsville."

  "You're right." Hepworth sounded calm and emotionless, the scientist in him having displaced the merely human observer. "Feast your eyes on it while you can, my boy. You have slightly less than eighteen minutes – then it will disappear for ever."

  "Eighteen minutes?" The precision of the term added to Nicklin's sense of awe. "How do you know that?"

  "Well, it seems that the Orbitsville shell has been converted into smaller spheres, each about the size of a small planet." Hepworth glanced along the row of seats. "Are we in agreement on that one? Nobody wants to claim it's all an optical illusion?"

  Fleischer nodded. Montane and Voorsanger, gaping at the screen, appeared not to have heard.

  "I think we can assume that the conversion was universal and simultaneous," Hepworth went on, seizing the best opportunity he would ever have to deliver one of his impromptu lectures. "That feels right to me, if nothing else. The entire shell broke up all at once, and was converted into smaller spheres all at once – but we can't see it that way because Orbitsville was eighteen light minutes in diameter. For us, the conversion will appear to be progressive…"

  Nicklin lost the sound of the physicist's voice as soon as he had, belatedly, worked out for himself what was happening. He watched in fascination as the blue disk expanded in the view screen, its edge appearing to dissolve and vaporise into a mist of planets. The disk, with its crazed pattern of day and night bands, was the sunlit interior of Orbitsville – but he knew that it no longer existed, that he was seeing it by virtue of light which had started on its journey while he was still in a lower part of the Tara, working on the gangway.

  For the first time in his life, he began to get some inkling of Orbitsville's true size. The vast sphere had already met its enigmatic end, but by virtue of sheer immensity it was clinging to an illusory existence, reluctantly yielding up its substance at the speed of light.

  To suffer a C-change, Nicklin marvelled, into something rich and strange…

  The circle of striated blue expanded off the edges of the screen. Fleischer touched a camera control, dropping the magnification to zero, and the field of view was increased by a factor of ten. The circle continued its growth, spewing millions of new worlds in a silver fog at its rim, but the pace of enlargement slowed with the light front reaching the widest aspect of the shell. It was still racing across Orbitsville's doomed, dreaming landscapes – annihilating them at a rate of 300,000 kilometres a second – but, as the direction was nearly parallel to the watchers' line of sight, lateral change was temporarily minimised.

  There was a period of near-stasis which lasted for more than a minute, then the azure circle began to shrink.

  The contraction was barely perceptible at first, but in accordance with the laws of spherical geometry there was an acceleration – and an acceleration of acceleration. The blue circle dwindled fiercely, boiling itself away in a steam of planetary creation. In a final silent implosion it vanished behind the stellar corona.

  The sun remained – unaffected and unchallenged – at the centre of a spherical cloud of new-born worlds.

  Nicklin was frozen in his seat, breathing at only the shallowest level, staring at the incredibly beautiful display on the main screen. His mind was scoured out. He felt cold, chastened and uniquely privileged – as though the whole of Creation had been reprised especially for his benefit. He felt that he ought to speak – but what was there to say?

  "My eyesight isn't what it used to be," Hepworth came in, "but those are planets, aren't they?"

  Nicklin nodded, forcing his larynx into action. "They look like planets to me."

  Montane emitted a hoarse sobbing sound. "They are not planets! It's all part of the Devil's trickery! It's an illusion."

  "I thought we dealt with that notion at the start," Hepworth said, with a patience which conveyed impatience. "What we have just witnessed was the creation of millions of planets out of the material of the Orbitsville shell. The big question now, or one of the big questions, is – is everybody still alive on them?"

  "Everybody has to be dead," Montane announced. "Everybody is – dead!"

  Nicklin, who had thought his capacity for wonder exhausted, was freshly awed by Hepworth's imaginative power. "How? How could anybody possibly be alive after all that?"

  "How me no hows," Hepworth replied. "I don't think we'll ever understand how it was done. But – and don't ask me to explain this either – to me it seems that the whole exercise would have been pointless unless life was preserved. Don't you see that?"

  "I want to see that. I want to see that very much."

  "How much magnification can you give it?" Hepworth said to Mega
n Fleischer. "A hundred?"

  She nodded, fingers moving on a panel in the armrest of her seat. A tiny red circle appeared near the centre of the screen. It adjusted position slightly to enclose one of the glowing specks, then it began to expand, magnifying the contained area, progressively obliterating the rest of the screen. The object it enclosed was quickly revealed to be a black disk surrounded by a thin circle of brilliance.

  "That one is too nearly in line with the sun," Hepworth said. "We're looking at its night side, but the halo demonstrates an important point – it has an atmosphere. It proves, to me anyway, that whoever dissolved Orbitsville had our best interests at heart."

  "You're a fool," Montane whispered. "The Devil is our enemy."

  "Go out to one side a bit," Hepworth said to the pilot.

  The red circle immediately collapsed to its former size, moved to the left and centred itself on another mote of light. The process of magnification began again, and this time the target expanded to become a bright crescent which was – unmistakably – dappled with green and blue beneath the white curlicues of weather systems.

  "There you are," Hepworth said triumphantly. "A prime piece of Orbitsville real estate, parcelled up a different way."

  Nicklin's mind made a dizzy leap. "Will we be able to see cities?"

  "Possibly, but the trick would be to find them." Hepworth made a sweeping gesture which took in the jewel-dusted margins of the screen outside the crimson circle. "What was the surface area of Orbitsville compared to, say, Earth? Wasn't it something like 650 million times bigger? If nothing has gone to waste, that means we have about 650 million new planets out there – and our little handful of cities would be fairly insignificant."

  "I'll start a radio scan," Fleischer said. "It's a bit soon to expect–"

  "Stop this!" Montane shouted, lurching to his feet, face contorted into a pale mask. "I'll listen to no more of this … blasphemous mouthing!"