End of Exile e-3

by Ben Bova

  He turned and saw that the amber control light was still on. As he lifted the access panel back into place, the light turned red and the outer hatch began to open.

  If I slay here, they’ll just take this equipment away from me and do it all over again, Linc thought. There was only one escape route: outside.

  He clumped to the lip of the hatch and stepped outside once again. Grimly, Linc stood there and watched the hatch close.

  He wished he could see the look on Monet’s face when they opened the airlock and he was gone. Would they think he had been whisked away to outer darkness? Or would Monel guess that Linc had somehow escaped?

  Either way, Monel would probably keep a guard or two at the hatch, just in case Linc should try to get back.

  H is earlier weariness was still tugging at him. But now he had the adrenalin-fueled fires of survival and hatred urging him on.

  Carefully he paced along the catwalk built into the Wheel’s outer skin. As Baryta “rose” from behind the curve of the Wheel, Linc could see in its golden light that the metal of the ship was pitted and streaked, marked by time and the vast distances the ship had traveled.

  Here and there were larger holes, actual punctures, and Linc began to understand why some sections of the Living Wheel were closed off. No air. It leaked out of the holes.

  In one place there was a gaping wound in the Wheel’s side. He could peer inside and see an empty room; nothing in it except a few tables welded firmly to the floor. There were some viewing screens built into the tabletops.

  And then Baryta’s sunlight glinted off the rounded hump of an airlock hatch. Linc felt a surge of joy warm his innards. He shouted to himself and dashed toward the airlock as fast as he could.

  It wouldn’t budge. He pushed the buttons a dozen times, but the hatch refused to move. Then, remembering what Jerlet had taught him, he tried the long lever of the hatch’s manual control. It too remained frozen in place.

  Linc wanted to cry. He sank to a sitting position as Baryta slid out of sight. The stars looked down impassively on. the figure of alone, exhausted, frightened young man as he sat and felt the warmth of life ebbing out of his body.

  Then Linc remembered. The hole in the ship. Maybe I can get through there.

  He backtracked and found the ragged hole again. It was barely big enough for his shoulders to squeeze through. Praying that he wouldn’t rip the suit’s fabric. Linc crawled through and put his booted feet down on the room’s bare metal flooring. The tough suit fabric held up. His backpack stuck in the opening for a scary moment, but Linc managed to worm it through. He stood up.

  I’m inside, but it’s just as bad as being outside unless I can get past this room.

  There were two doors in the room. Linc saw in the light of his helmet lamp. One of them looked as if it opened onto a corridor; it was heavy, airtight, as all the corridor doors were. But the other, on a side wall, looked as if it were made of plastic rather than metal.

  Linc tried to pull it open. It refused to slide as it should. He leaned against it, and it bowed slightly. He backed off a step, then kicked at the door with the metal sole of his boot with all the strength he could muster.

  The door split apart.

  Linc stepped through the sagging halves.

  Into the Ghost Place.

  Despite himself he shuddered. Inside the ghosts were mute and immobile, their faces frozen in twisted soundless screams of horror and pain. Their eyes stared; their bodies slumped or sagged; their hands reached for control buttons, the hatches leading out of the bridge, or just groped blindly. Most of the ghosts still sat at the bridge’s control stations, in front of instruments that were mostly dead. Only a pitiful few of the screens still flickered with active displays. Linc saw.

  He noticed that a couple of the ghosts were staring up overhead. Linc looked up and saw that several pipes were split up there, hanging loosely from broken brackets. From the faded colors, Linc knew that the pipes at one time must have carried liquid oxygen and liquid helium.

  They must have been frozen where they stood, when whatever tore the hole in the next room broke the pipes.

  Suddenly, they weren’t ghosts anymore. They were people like himself, like Jerlet, like Slav or Magda or Jayna or any of the others. Real people who died at their posts, trying to save the ship instead of running away.

  There was no fear in Linc now. But his eyes were blurry as he realized that these people had given their lives so that the ship could continue living.

  Slowly, Linc made his way past the dead bridge crew, heading toward the hatch that opened onto the passageway outside. They protected the bridge with airlocks, so that a loss of air outside wouldn’t hurt the crew in here…and then the disaster struck from inside the bridge itself.

  The airlock hatch was frozen shut, of course. It took Linc several moments to remember that there were tools here on the bridge. He found a laser handwelder, plugged it into the bridge’s power supply, and grinned with relief when it worked. He set the tool on low power and played its thin red beam across the hatch mechanism.

  The metal creaked and ticked and finally, when Linc tried the handle for the eleventh time, clicked open. Linc stepped into the airtight compartment between the two hatches, closed the inner hatch and opened the outer one. Warm air from the passageway rushed in, making it hard to push the hatch open.

  But it did open, and Linc stood out in the familiar passageway once again. He started toward the library, hoping that the meeting was still going on. He unsealed his helmet as he clumped along the corridor, after clamping the hand-welder to a clip on the side of his suit.

  No one was in the corridor. That meant they were all in the library, at the meeting. Linc passed his own empty room, and a sudden idea came to him.

  He ducked inside and looked at the tiny screen set into the wall above his bunk. Since he had been a child, it had been untouched. Was it workable?

  He pulled his gloves off and touched the red ON button. The screen glowed to life. He tried several different buttons and got nothing but views of other empty rooms. Finally, just as he was about to give up, the screen showed the library, crowded with all the people.

  “He still hasn’t shown up,” Monel was saying. He was sitting beside Magda, who held her rightful place on the central pedestal. “He’s scared of the truth, scared to face us all with his wild stories.”

  The crowd was muttering, a dozen different conversations going on at once.

  “How long are we going to wait for him?” Monel demanded of Magda.

  She looked down at him from her perch and said, “It’s not like Linc to run away.”

  If Monel felt any guilt at her remark, he didn’t show it. He merely insisted, “Linc demanded that we ask Jerlet’s guidance. I say we should call on Jerlet now, and see what he has to say. Either that, or call an end to this meeting. Linc isn’t going to show up. He’s afraid of Jerlet’s truth.”

  Smiling in the glow of his viewscreen. Linc punched the buttons that activated the computer tapes he had programmed earlier. All the screens in the Living Wheel, including the huge wall screen in the meeting room, suddenly blazed into life.

  A view of old Earth, brilliant blue and dazzling white, swimming against the blackness of space.

  Jerlet’s rough, unmistakable voice rumbled, “That’s Earth, the world where we all came from originally…”

  The view abruptly changed to show an ancient city on old Earth. And Jerlet said, “I’m not sure which city this is, but it doesn’t make much difference. They all got to be pretty much the same--” The crowds and noise were overwhelming. The sky was dark and somehow dirty-looking. Millions of people and vehicles snarled at each other along the city’s passageways.

  Then the scene shifted to show mountains, rivers, oceans of pounding surf. And Jerlet’s voice continued:

  “This is the world of our origin, where our ancestors came from, where this ship came from. It was a good world, long ago. But it turned rotten. Our ancestors fle
d in this ship… seems they were driven away by evil people, although they were glad enough to leave Earth; it had gone sour. They came out to the stars to find a new world where they could live in happiness and peace.”

  The scene changed abruptly once again, showing a telescopic view of Beryl.

  “This is the new world,” Jerlet said. “We can reach it, if we’re lucky. But there’s a lot of work ahead of us if we’re going to make it there safely—”

  Linc left his helmet and gloves on the bunk and strode out toward the meeting room.

  15

  For a moment, Linc felt silly as he approached the library, clumping along the corridor in the bright-blue pressure suit. He hadn’t even bothered to take off the backpack. Only his gloves and helmet were missing.

  But then he thought, I’ll need every bit of impact lean get. If the suit impresses them, so much the better.

  He checked to see if the hand-welder’s power Linc was connected to the suit’s electrical system. It was.

  If Monel tries to send his guards at me, I’ll burn the wheels off his chair.

  He paused at the double doors of the library. Peering through the discolored windows he could see that everyone in the room— including Magda—was sitting with their eyes riveted to the big wall screen. Quietly, Linc pushed one of the doors open and slipped inside.

  The screen was showing engineering drawings of the ship. Specific areas were outlined with pulsing yellow circles, as Jerlet’s voice commanded:

  “The key to the whole damned thing is the bridge. That’s where the astrogation computer and all the necessary instruments are. Can’t start making course corrections until you know exactly where you are in relation to Baryta and Beryl. And I mean exactly. Laser wavelength accuracies, son.”

  Linc smiled to himself. In his mind’s eye he could see the old man’s shambling figure, bloated and almost grotesque, and the intense glitter in his eyes as he tried to get his points across to Linc. Hard to think of him as dead. Linc said to himself. But it was still harder to understand how he could be frozen, like the ghosts on the bridge, and yet someday be brought back to life.

  “The rocket engines ought to be all right; we checked them and repaired them back when you pups were being hatched,” Jerlet’s voice rumbled on. The screen showed red arrows where the thrusters were located. “You’ll have to make sure all the connections are still in place, so when the computer orders a burn the thrusters get the info. That’ll mean some outside work—”

  The pictures went on, with Jerlet’s unmistakable voice explaining them, until they ended with another view of Beryl.

  “That’s the new world, Linc,” the old man rasped. “Your world. Yours and the rest of the kids’. It’s up to you, son. You’ve got to get them there safely. It’s all up to you.”

  The wall screen went blank.

  No one in the room moved. They all kept staring at the screen,’ open-mouthed with awe.

  “I intend to follow Jerlet’s command,” Linc said as loudly and strongly as he could.

  They whipped around to see him. Magda’s hands flew to her face. A girl screamed. Monel sagged in his chair.

  Slowly, deliberately, Linc walked through the shocked people sitting on the floor, up to the pedestal where Magda reigned.

  He turned to face the people. “I’m not dead, as you can see. And I’m not afraid to face you. I’ve been with Jerlet, and he sent me back here to help us get to the new world.”

  Jayna was sitting up front, her face glowing. No one spoke; the crowd hardly breathed.

  Linc went on, “You all saw the pictures on the screen. There’s a new world waiting for us. A world that’s open and free. A world where we won’t have to worry about warmth or food or anything else.”

  “Is it… is it really true?” someone in the crowd asked.

  “Can it be really true?”

  “It’s real,” Linc said. “I’ve seen it myself. The new world really exists. Its name is Beryl. Jerlet named it.”

  “And we’re going there?”

  “We can get there—but only if we fix the machines.”

  “That’s forbidden!” Monel snapped.

  A few people muttered agreement with him.

  “Not anymore,” Linc said. “Jerlet forbade us from touching machinery while we were children, and too young to understand what we were doing. Now he wants us to fix the machines and save ourselves from death.”

  Monel pushed his chair up toward Linc. “How do we know that was really Jerlet speaking to us? We didn’t see his face. And you said Jerlet is dead!”

  A shocked murmur went through the crowd.

  “He is dead, but he will come back to life someday. He left those words and pictures for us, to teach us, to show us what we’ve got to do.”

  “Why didn’t he speak to us directly?” someone asked.

  Monel added, “And all this talk about fixing the machines in the bridge. That’s the Ghost Place! How can Jerlet expect anyone to go there? It’s a place of death.”

  “I was there a little while ago, and I’m not dead.”

  They actually drew back away from him. Monet’s chair seemed to roll backward a few centimeters all by itself. The crowd sucked in its breath in a collective gasp of surprise and fear.

  “I’m telling you,” Linc shouted to them, “that all this fear of the machines is stupid! Do you know what Jerlet thought of us? He called us superstitious idiots! He was ashamed of us!”

  They muttered. They shook their heads.

  “How do we know you’re telling the truth?” Monel demanded. “Just because you say you’ve been with Jerlet, and you say you’ve been to the Ghost Place—”

  Linc found that he had the welding laser in his hand. Its smooth grip felt good against his palm. His fingers tightened over it.

  “This suit I got from Jerlet. None of you has ever seen anything like it, have you?”

  A mumbled “No.”

  “And this…” he held up the welder so that they could all see it, “I took from the bridge—the Ghost Place. Watch.”

  He turned to one of the few ragged books left on the shelves and pulled the laser’s trigger. A pencil-thin beam of red light leaped out. The book burst into flames.

  The people oohed.

  Linc eased off the trigger. He waved the laser in the general direction of one of Monel’s guards. “Put the fire out before it causes some real damage,” he ordered. The fellow hesitated a moment, then went over and smothered the smoldering book with a rag he pulled from his pocket.

  “I have been with Jerlet,” Linc repeated to the crowd. “I have been to the Ghost Place. Your fears are silly. It’s time for us to stop acting like children and start doing what’s needed to save ourselves and reach the new world.”

  “No.”

  Linc turned. It was Magda.

  “You are wrong,” she said. “Misguided. You may honestly think that you’re doing Jerlet’s work, but you are wrong.”

  “I lived with him!”

  Magda’s face was a mask of steel. “There is no proof. You tell us that Jerlet is dead, yet will live again. You say that Jerlet spoke the words we heard from the screen, yet he didn’t show himself to us. You tell us to fix the machines, yet we have Jerlet’s own words warning us that we mustn’t touch the machines.”

  And she pressed the yellow button on the pedestal where she sat.

  The wall screen glowed again, and now Jerlet’s face appeared. Linc knew that it was the younger Jerlet, speaking to them when they had been only children.

  “I’ve tried to set you kids up as well as possible,” the tape began as it always began.

  Linc watched the screen in sullen rage as the old tape unwound its familiar message. How can I get it through their skulls? he fumed at himself. How can I make them see?

  “Now remember,” Jerlet was saying, “all the rules I’ve set down. They’re for your own safety. Especially, don’t mess around with the machines…”

  Magda turned f
rom the wall screen to Linc. “That is Jerlet,” she said. “He still lives. He speaks to us when the priestess summons him.” Her mouth was tight and hard; her eyes burning with—what? Is it fear? Or pain? Or hate?

  As Jerlet droned on, Magda raised a hand to point at Linc. “What you’ve told us is false!”

  The laser was back in Linc’s hand. Without even thinking of it, he fired at the screen. It exploded in a shower of sparks and plastic shards. The crowd screamed.

  “You’re wrong!” he shouted at them, waving the laser. “Superstitious idiots… Jerlet was right. Well, I’m going to the bridge. I’m going to repair those machines. By myself, if I have to. And don’t any of you try to stop me!”

  No one moved as he stomped out of the meeting room. Either to stop him or to help him.

  16

  Linc slammed the welder on the desk top in fury.

  He was standing in front of the bridge’s main data screen. The access panels of the computer behind the screen were open, and the computer’s complex innards stood bare and revealed to him. They were a heartbreakingly hopeless mess. Something had smashed the plastic circuit chips, melted the metal tracings of the circuit boards, vaporized the eyelash-small transistors.

  Hopeless, Linc told himself.

  Two servomechs stood impassively behind him, waist-high cubes of metal with little domes of sensors atop them and tiny silent wheels underneath. Their mechanical arms hung uselessly at their sides. They couldn’t handle this kind of work, although they had been invaluable to Linc on many other jobs.

  He still remembered how everyone in the corridors had fled in terror when the first few servomechs came through the tube-tunnel hatch and into the main passageway, trundling quietly and purposefully toward the bridge, under Linc’s radio command.

  Now I’ll have to send one of them all the way back to the hub for more spare parts. Linc told himself. In the past months, more than one servomech had failed to make it all the way through the tube-tunnels and back again.