End of Exile e-3

by Ben Bova

  He started to run his pressure sensor around the neck seal, where the bulbous helmet connected with the blue fabric of the suit. He smiled as he thought:

  A few months ago I would have thought this was an evil spirit or a ghost … it would have scared me out of my skin.

  Satisfied that the suit was airtight, Linc touched a stud on the suit’s belt, and the air sighed back into the tanks on the suit’s back. The suit began to collapse, sag at the knees and shoulders, held up only because the air tanks were fastened to the workroom’s bulkhead wall.

  Linc watched the suit deflate and found himself thinking of Jerlet. He’s been sagging himself lately. Losing weight. Slowing down.

  H e turned to the tiny communicator screen mounted atop the workbench at his right, and touched the red button.

  “Hello…Jerlet. I’ve finished with the suit.”

  The old man’s face appeared on the miniature screen. It looked more haggard than ever, as if he hadn’t slept all night.

  “Good,” he rumbled. “Come on up to the observatory. Got some good news.”

  Linc made his way out of the workroom, down the short corridor, and into the airlock. He moved in the ultralow gravity without even thinking about it now, and when he floated up into the vast darkened dome of the observatory he no longer panicked at the sight of the universe stretching all around him.

  But he still thrilled at it.

  The yellow sun was bright enough to make the metal framework of the main telescope glint and glisten with headlights. Jerlet sat at the observer’s desk, wrapped in an electrically-heated safety suit. But it’s not that cold in here. Linc told himself.

  Obviously Jerlet felt differently. His fingers were shaking slightly as he worked the keyboard that controlled the telescope and other instruments.

  Linc floated lightly to the desk and touched his slippered feet down next to Jerlet’s chair. The old man looked up at him and smiled tiredly. His face was like a picture Linc had seen of old Earth: a beautiful river winding through a valley of scarred, ragged hills and bare, stubbly ground.

  “Finally got the spectral analyzer working,” Jerlet muttered without preamble. “Took all night, but I did it.”

  “You ought to get more rest,” Linc said.

  The old man shook his head. “Rest when we get there. Here…look at this.”

  He touched a few buttons and a view of Beryl flashed onto the main desk-top screen. It was blue-green and beautiful, a lovely gibbous crescent hanging in space, flecked with white clouds, topped by a polar cap of dazzling white.

  “Now watch—” Jerlet touched more buttons.

  The picture disappeared, to be replaced by a strange glow of colors that ranged from violet to deepest red. Squinting at the unfamiliar sight, Linc saw that there were hundreds of black lines scratched vertically across the band of colors.

  “That’s a spectrogram of the planet,” Jerlet said. “A sort of fingerprint of Beryl.”

  “Fingerprint?” Linc asked.

  Jerlet scratched at his craggy face. “That’s right, you don’t know what fingerprints are. Well… what’s on the agenda for lunch?”

  “We’re supposed to go over the route I take to get back to the Living Wheel.”

  “H’mm. And dinner?”

  “Nothing yet.” He and Jerlet had a set routine for each meal. If Linc had any questions that required a lengthy explanation, Jerlet used mealtime to explain them.

  “Okay, dinner. The subject will be fingerprints. Might even tell you about retinal patterns and voice prints.”

  Linc nodded. He didn’t understand, but he knew that Jerlet would explain.

  “Now, about this spectrogram,” the old man resumed. “It tells us what the air on Beryl is made of… what elements and compounds are in the air.”

  Curiosity knit Linc’s brow. “How’s it do that?”

  Jerlet smiled again. Patiently he explained how the light from the planet is split into a rainbow pattern of colors by the spectrograph’s prisms; how the spectrograph is fitted into the telescope; how each element and compound leaves its own distinctive telltale mark on the rainbow pattern of Beryl’s spectrum.

  Linc listened and learned. Usually, he only had to hear things once to remember them permanently.

  “…And here,” Jerlet said, his rough voice trembling with excitement, “is the computer’s analysis, together with a reference to old Earth’s atmospheric composition.”

  He touched a button, and the viewscreen showed:

  ATMOSPHERIC CONSTITUENTS

  BERYLEARTH

  Nitrogen 77.23%Nitrogen 78.09%

  Oxygen 20.44%Oxygen 20.95%

  Argon 1.0I%Argon 0.93%

  Carbon Dioxide 0.72%Carbon Dioxide 0.03%

  Water Vapor: variable Water Vapor: variable, up to 1.8% abs up to 1.5% abs.

  Linc studied the numbers for a few moments. Then he looked back at Jerlet.

  “It’s almost the same as Earth… but not exactly.”

  “Close enough to be a twin,” Jerlet boomed. “And as close as any planet’s going to be. A smidge less oxygen and more carbon dioxide, but that could be because the planet’s a bit newer than Earth. There’s chlorophyll all over the place, lots of it. That means green plants, just like Earth.”

  “We can live there,” Linc said.

  Jerlet pumped his shaggy head up and down. His mouth was trying to form a word, but nothing came out for several seconds. Finally he gulped a strangled, “Yes, you can live there.”

  Linc saw that there were tears in his eyes.

  “I’ll have to tell the other kids about it,” Linc said. “They’ll be terrified by Baryta. They all think that the yellow sun is going to swallow us… burn us.”

  “I know,” said Jerlet.

  Linc went on, “I ought to get back to them as soon as I can. They’ve got to know about Beryl. I’ve got to stop them from being afraid.”

  Jerlet nodded wearily.

  “If they think that we’re all going to die, there’s no telling what they’ll do—”

  “All right!” Jerlet slammed his heavy hand on the desk top. It startled Linc, made him jump and drift away a few meters, weightlessly.

  “I know you’ve got to get back to them, dammit.” In the golden light of Baryta the old man’s paunchy body glowed in radiance, his wild hair looked like a crazy halo. “I know you’ve got to go back. I… it’s just that… I don’t want to be alone anymore. I want you to stay here, with me.”

  Linc reached up for a handhold on the telescope frame and pushed back toward Jerlet.

  “But I’ve got to go back,” he said. “The bridge—”

  “I know,” Jerlet grumbled. His face scowled. “But I don’t have to like it! There’s nothing in the laws of thermodynamics that says I have to like the idea.”

  Linc felt the air easing out of his lungs. He had been so tense that he had been holding his breath. But now Jerlet was grumbling in his usual way, and Linc could let himself grin. It would be all right. He would go back. Jerlet wouldn’t try to keep him here.

  The rest of the day went normally. Jerlet stayed in the observatory, studying Beryl. Linc went down to the workshop and studied the computer’s memory tapes for information on repairing the instruments on the ship’s bridge.

  That’s going to be the toughest part of the job, he told himself. Clearing the dead crew out of the bridge and getting the controls working again. Despite himself, he shuddered.

  At dinner that evening Jerlet launched into a long explanation of fingerprints, retinal patterns, voice prints, and other aspects of detective work.

  Linc felt confused. “But why bother with all that? Everybody knew everybody else, didn’t they? Why couldn’t they just ask who a person was?”

  Jerlet guffawed, stuffed a slice of synthetic steak into his mouth, and then began to explain about crime and police work. By the time dessert was finished and the dishes flashed into the recycler. Linc was asking:

  “Okay, but who figured out
this business of fingerprinting? Kirchhoff and Bunsen?”

  Jerlet slapped a palm to his forehead. “No, no! They worked out the principles of spectroscopy. The fingerprint technique was discovered by some policeman or detective or somebody like that. An Englishman named Holmes, I think. It’s in the computer’s memory banks somewhere.”

  Linc looked down at his fingertips and saw the swirling patterns of fine lines there. Then he looked up, Jerlet’s face was dead white. Veins were throbbing blue in his forehead. Cords in his neck strained.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Ahhrg… hurts,” Jerlet gasped. “Must’ve eaten… too much… too fast—”

  Linc pushed out of his chair and went to the old man.

  “No… I’ll be… all right…”

  Without bothering to argue, Linc pulled him up from his chair and propped him up with his shoulder. He wanted to carry the old man, but Jerlet’s girth was too wide for Linc’s arms to grasp, even though the minuscule gravity made him light enough to carry.

  Linc walked him past his own bedroom and down to the infirmary. Jerlet was panting with pain as Linc eased him down onto the tiny medical center’s only bed.

  Turning to the keyboard that stood on a little pedestal beside the bed. Linc switched on the medical sensors. The infirmary was almost completely automatic, and Linc didn’t understand most of its workings, but he watched the wall screen above the bed.

  It showed numbers for pulse rate, breathing rate, body temperature, blood pressure—all in red, the color of danger. A green wiggly Linc traced out Jerlet’s heartbeat. It was wildly irregular.

  “What should I do?” Linc called out to the automated room. There was no one to hear or answer.

  Except Jerlet. “Punch… emergency input… tell medicomputer… heart attack—”

  Linc did that, and the wall screen began printing out instructions for medicine and setting up an automated auxiliary ventricle pump. Linc followed the step-by-step instructions as they came on the screen. He lost all track of time, but finally had Jerlet surrounded by gleaming metal and plastic machines that hooked themselves onto his arms and legs.

  Still the numbers on the wall screen glared red.

  Linc stood by the bed endlessly. Jerlet lost consciousness, regained, drifted away again.

  Linc fought to keep his eyes open. The only sounds in the room were the humming electricity of the machines, and a faint chugging sound of a pump.

  “Linc—”

  He snapped his eyes open. He had fallen asleep standing up.-

  Jerlet’s hand was fluttering feebly, trying to reach toward him. But the machines had his arm firmly strapped down.

  “Linc—” The old man’s voice was a tortured whisper.

  “I’m here. How do you feel? What can I do?”

  “Terrible… and nothing. If the machines can’t pull me through, then it’s over. ’Bout time, too. I—” His words sank into an indecipherable mumble.

  “Don’t die,” Linc begged. “Please don’t die.”

  Jerlet’s eyes blinked slowly. “Not my idea, son…Just glad I held on long enough… to meet you… train you—”

  “No—” Linc felt completely helpless.

  The old man’s voice was getting weaker. Strangely, the harshness of it seemed to melt away as it faded. “Listen—”

  Linc bent his ear to the ragged, ravaged face of Jerlet. His breath was gulping out in great racking sobs that were painful just to hear. His whole bloated body heaved with each shuddering gasp. Linc felt the old man’s breath on his cheek. It smelted of dust.

  “You… you know what… to do…?”

  Linc nodded. His voice wouldn’t work right. His eyes were blurry.

  “The machines… you’ll fix… what they need… to get to Beryl…”

  “I will.” It was a distant, tear-choked voice. “I promise. I’ll do it.”

  “Good.” Jerlet’s face relaxed into a faint smile. His body-racking gasps eased. His eyes closed.

  “Please don’t die!”

  Jerlet’s eyes opened so slightly that Linc couldn’t be sure the eyelids moved at all. “You can… make it without me.”

  Linc clenched his fists on the edge of the bed’s spongy surface. “But I don’t want you to die!”

  Jerlet almost laughed. “Told you… wasn’t my idea—I’m no … proud-faced martyr, son. Just get back … away… machinery oughtta start… any second—”

  “Back? Away?”

  “Go on… ’less you want to… be frozen, too “

  Unconsciously Linc edged slightly away from the bed. He stood there for a moment uncertainly, watching the old man lying there. Jerlet’s eyes closed again. All the numbers and the symbols on the wall screen began blinking red, and a soft but insistent tone started beep-beeping. The words CLINICAL DEATH flashed on and off again so quickly that Linc hardly had time to notice them. Then a piercing whistling note howled out of the machines around Jerlet’s bed, as if in their mechanical way they were bewailing his death—or their inability to save him. Then the screen lettered out in green: CRYOGENIC IMMERSION PROCEDURE.

  As Linc stepped farther away from the bed, the screen flashed numbers and graphs so quickly that only a machine could read them. The shining metal things around Jerlet’s bed began to hum louder, vibrate, and move back. Linc watched, frozen in fascination, as Jerlet’s entire bed sank down slowly into the floor. The machines went silent and still as the bed slowly receded through a trapdoor. As Linc stepped up for a closer look, the bed disappeared entirely and the trapdoor slid shut once again. A whisp of white steamy vapor drifted up just before’ it closed completely.

  The machines rolled silently back to their niches in the room’s bare white walls. The viewscreen went blank.

  “Cryogenic immersion,” Linc muttered to himself. His mind started working actively again. “He had this all set up for himself. The machines are going to freeze him, so that he can be revived and made healthy again someday.”

  Even though Linc knew that Jerlet was dead in every sense of the word, that he would never see the old man again because even if he were revived someday it would be so far in the future that Linc would never live to see it, even though he realized all this. Linc somehow felt better.

  “Good-bye old man,” he said to the empty room. “I’ll get them to Beryl for you.”

  12

  Despite all his training, despite all he knew, despite Jerlet’s assurances, Linc was tense as he donned the pressure suit.

  It was like being swallowed alive by some monster that was vaguely human in form, but bigger than any man and strangely different. Linc’s nose wrinkled at the odors of machine oil and plastic as he stepped into the suit and eased himself into it.

  And there was another scent now, too. His own clammy sweat. The odor of fear, fear of going into the outer darkness.

  It’s space! he fumed at himself. Nothing but emptiness. Jerlet explained a thousand times. There’s nothing out there to hurt you.

  “If the suit works right,” he answered himself as he lifted the bubble-shaped helmet over his head.

  Just as he had been taught, he sealed the helmet on and then tested all the suit’s seals and equipment. The faint whir of the air fan made Linc feel a little better. So did the slightly stale tang of oxygen.

  Slowly he clumped to the inner hatch of the deadlock. Airlock! he reminded himself. He reached out a heavily-gloved hand for the buttons on the wall that would open the hatch, and stopped.

  “You could stay right here,” he told himself, his voice sounding strangely muffled inside the helmet. “Jerlet left everything in working condition. You could live here in ease and comfort for the rest of your life.”

  Until the ship crashes into Baryta, he answered silently, and everyone dies.

  “What makes you think Magda and the others will believe you? You think Monel’s going to do what you tell him? You think any of them will touch a machine just because you say it’s all right to do it?”

&n
bsp; But Linc knew the answers even before he spoke the questions, It doesn’t matter what they think or do. I’ve got to try.

  His outstretched hand moved the final few centimeters and touched the airlock control button. There was a moment’s hesitation, then the heavy metal hatch slid smoothly aside for him.

  He flicked at the other buttons, which would set the airlock mechanism on its automatic cycle, then stepped inside the cramped metal chamber. The inner hatch sighed shut. Pumps clattered. Linc couldn’t hear them inside his suit, but he felt their vibrations through the thick metallic soles of his boots. H is pulse throbbed faster and faster as he stood there, waiting.

  The outer hatch slid open. Linc was suddenly standing on the edge of the world, gazing out at endless stars.

  And smiling. All his fears evaporated. It was like being in the observatory. The beauty was overwhelming. The silence and peace of eternity hovered before him, watching gravely, patiently.

  Linc stepped out of the airlock and for the first time saw the ship as it really existed: a huge set of wheels within wheels, starkly lit by the glaring yellow sun that was behind his back. Fat circular wheels, each one bigger than the one before it, stretching away from the central hub where he stood, turning slowly against the background of stars. And connecting them were half a dozen spokes, the tube-tunnels, seen from the outside.

  One of the spokes was lit by a row of winking tiny lights. Jerlet had shown Linc how to turn them on. They were Linc’s guidepath, showing him which tube-tunnel would lead back to the living area in the farthest, largest wheel, where the rest of the people were.

  Linc plodded slowly along the lane of yellow lights, moving carefully inside the bulky pressure suit. He was fully aware that a mistake now—a slip, a stumble—could send him tumbling off the ship, never to return.

  But Jerlet had trained him well. Linc could see that there were footholds and handgrips studding the outer skin of the tube-tunnel. The metallic soles of his boots were slightly magnetized, so that it took a conscious effort to lift a foot off the metal decking. The oxygen he was breathing made him a trifle lightheaded, but he felt safe and warm inside the suit.