End of Exile e-3

by Ben Bova

  19

  They were alive.

  Through the pain that flamed through his chest, Linc realized that basic fact. He pulled himself up dizzily to his feet and looked around. The bridge seemed undamaged. There was no smoke, no fire. The people were dazed, but more from some inner turmoil than any outward fear. Hollie and one of the guards were helping Monel back into his chair.

  He was laughing.

  Linc glanced at the viewscreens. Everything seemed to be working, except that the astrogation display was flashing a red ERROR, ERROR, ERROR sign.

  Linc stepped over to Monel, who was laughing so hard that his eyes were squeezed shut. His head was thrown back and the cackling, screeching sound of his laughter was the only noise in the bridge.

  Linc slapped him.

  With all the fury in him. Linc slapped Monel’s laughing face hard enough to knock him out of the chair.

  No one moved.

  “Get him out of here,” Linc growled. “He’s killed us all: Now get him out of here. All of you! Out! Get out!”

  They grabbed at the sputtering Monel, his face striped with the white prints of Linc’s fingers, and dragged him away. Someone pushed the empty wheelchair. They all scurried out of the bridge.

  Linc turned and saw Magda standing in front of the communications desk, taut as a steel rod.

  “He’s killed us all,” Linc said.

  “You hit him.”

  “I wanted to kill him!” Linc pounded his fists against his thighs.

  “You struck him.”

  “What difference does it make?” Linc shouted at her. “We’re all dead. He’s ruined everything.”

  She shook her head. “No, Linc. Nothing is ruined except your own inner peace. You’ll find a way to get us to the new world, despite Monel. You’ll make the machines do what you want. But you run the danger of turning into a machine yourself.”

  “Leave me alone,” he snapped.

  “I will. You’re not fit for human company.”

  The machines told him what had happened. Someone had deliberately knocked the safety valve off one of the fuel pumps at precisely T minus one second, too late for even the automatic machinery to shut down the rocket firing. It turned out that it was Rix who had done it. Monel told him what to do, and he did it. The explosion wrecked one of the rocket engines and killed him. That much Slav found out, and came back to the bridge to tell Linc.

  The computer told him more. The rocket’s misfiring had still added thrust to the ship’s velocity. Its course had been altered. Not in the precise way that Linc had planned, however.

  He sat gloomily at the desk keyboard and watched the astrogation computer display the ship’s new course. The blue Linc now swung wide of Baryta—they would not be roasted by the approaching star. But it also missed Beryl by a wide margin. No matter how Linc pushed buttons or coaxed the computer, there was no way for the ship to get into orbit around the new world.

  He paced the bridge alone, refusing to see anyone, refusing food, refusing himself even the comfort of sleep. He checked the main computer about the matter transmitter.

  Question: How close to Beryl must we be to use the transmitter?

  Answer: TRANSMITTER EFFECTIVE OVER RANGES LESS THAN 5000 KILOMETERS.

  To the astrogation computer he asked:

  Question: What will be out nearest approach to Beryl?

  Answer: 28,069.74 KILOMETERS.

  Question: Can we get to within 5000 kilometers of Beryl?

  Answer: WORKING. CALCULATED THRUST LEVELS REQUIRED TO ACHIEVE DESIRED DISTANCE FROM PLANET EXCEED STRUCTURAL LIMITS OF SHIP.

  More pacing. Linc’s body felt like a block of hard plastic. He buried the pain from the bruise across his chest, buried his fatigue and hunger. This was a problem he had to solve. Had to! And the machines couldn’t solve it for him.

  Why can’t the matter transmitter work over a longer range? Because it would need more power, and there isn’t any more power available for it.

  Of course there’s more power! Linc realized. There’s all sorts of power in this ship: lights, heat, all the power that runs the other machines —

  Back to the computer. More questions, more answers.

  They all looked shocked when he showed up at the galley. It was lastmeal. Linc knew from the low level of the lighting in the corridor.

  Jayna reached him first. “Linc! You look sick—” She took his arm. “Here… sit down—”

  “No. Not yet.” He gestured to them all to sit down. Only a little more than half the people were in the galley. Magda wasn’t. Neither was Monel.

  “Listen to me. We’ve still got a chance to get to the new world. It’ll be difficult, but we can do it. And if we don’t…then the ship is going to loop into a wide arc. We’ll move away from Baryta—the yellow sun—for a while. We’re already moving away from it. But inside of a year we’ll fall back into it and get burned up.”

  They murmured among themselves. They don’t believe me, Linc thought. They’re tired of hearing me.

  But Jayna asked, “What do we have to do, Linc?”

  “Nothing,” he answered. “There’s nothing for you to do. Except,… when I tell you to move, you’d better all jump.” He snapped out the last word, startling them. “We’re only going to have one tiny chance to make it—one chance for life. You’d better be ready to move when I tell you to.”

  He dragged himself back to the computer desk on the bridge and began programming it. Every gram of rocket thrust… every erg of power… it’s going to be all or nothing.

  Jayna brought him food. He took it without even speaking to her. He ate at the computer desk, while the screens flickered their messages at him. She stood behind him for a long while, not speaking, not interrupting. Linc could see her reflection in the screens, half a dozen Jaynas in half a dozen screens, all looking confused and worried. But she never questioned him.

  He fell asleep at the desk. He awoke again and finished the programming. The computer digested all his instructions and questions, hummed and twittered to itself for nearly an hour—an incredibly long time for such a machine—and then reported with yellow block letters on its main screen:

  “PROGRAM WORKING. ALL SYSTEMS FUNCTIONING AS REQUIRED.”

  Linc asked the machine, “How long before we reach the transfer point?”

  The answer came immediately:

  “76 HR II MIN I4.08 SEC.”

  “Start the countdown sequence at T minus three hours.”

  “ACKNOWLEDGED.”

  “How long will we be within transfer range?”

  “53 MIN I2,6444I SEC.”

  “The matter transmitter will have to be cycled so that it can accept one person every fifty seconds or so. Can it do that automatically?”

  “AUTOMATIC CIRCUITRY NOT OPERATIVE. MANUAL CONTROL NECESSARY.”

  Which means I’ll have to stay aboard until the last person goes through the transmitter. Linc told himself.

  He pushed his chair away from the computer desk and glanced at the countdown sequencer, a few desks down the row. Its central screen read:

  “76 HR I0 MIN 06 SEC.”

  And counting, Linc added silently.

  He spent most of the time up in the hub, away from everyone. He ate from the food machines and slept, a deep, long, restful sleep. Then he returned to the bridge to check the matter transmitter.

  The machine didn’t look as impressive as the long row of desks and controls on the bridge. There was a transparent plastic booth, big enough to hold a person. There was a gleaming metal console that housed complex electronic circuits snaking Out of it. Linc had traced the power cables along the outside of the main tube-tunnel, straight into the fusion generators up near the hub. There was a control desk studded with knobs and switches. Linc would have to operate it smoothly, without a single wasted motion, if he was to save everyone aboard the ship.

  He nodded to himself as he touched the buttons that activated the transmitter’s self-inspection sensors. The chec
king circuit’s green lights glowed at him. The machine was ready to function properly.

  Linc frowned as he tried to fathom what fantastic powers must lie inside this machine. Jerlet had told him what the transmitter did: it transformed the atoms of whatever material was put inside it, changed them into energy that could be beamed like light for a certain distance. There was a receiving machine that had to be at the other end of the beam, which took the incoming energy and transformed it back to the original object. Put a person into the transmitter and he could be beamed instantly from the ship to the new world.

  If there was enough power.

  If the ship was close enough to the planet.

  If the receiver was set up properly on the planet’s surface.

  If the person would actually take the risk of stepping inside a machine that would literally destroy his body completely.

  We can get the power by shutting down everything else aboard the ship. Linc told himself. And the remaining rockets can put us close enough to the planet for nearly an hour. The receiver’s set to blast off by itself; it operates automatically.

  “That leaves only one problem,” he muttered.

  He went to find Magda. She wasn’t in her room, she wasn’t with Monel. She wasn’t anywhere in the living area. Linc checked the library: empty. Then he realized where she must be.

  He dashed up to the second level, soared with giant strides to the observation window.

  She was kneeling on the floor, staring out at the yellow sun. Even through the heavy tint of the polarized window, Baryta glared bright and angry. Linc could see tongues of flame licking from the star’s surface, beckoning to them, reaching for them.

  “Magda,” he called softly.

  She looked up at him. “It’s all right, Linc. I’m not meditating. Come sit beside me.”

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Waiting.”

  “For what?”

  She shrugged and looked back toward the window. “For you. Or the yellow star. Whichever reaches me first.”

  “I’m here.”

  “You’ve found a way to save us.”

  “Yes.”

  She seemed neither surprised nor pleased. “I knew you would.”

  “There’s something I want you to do,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “You’ve got to be the first to go through the matter transmitter.”

  She turned to him, her face perfectly serious, utterly calm.”! can’t be, Linc. You know that. I can’t use your machines… any of them. You see how we were punished when I tried to help you on the bridge.”

  A bright flash flared outside the window, and a long flaming streak dwindled off into the distance, heading for the tiny blue crescent that was Beryl.

  “That’s the receiver. It’s in an automatic rocket that will land on Beryl’s surface and wait for us.”

  Despite herself, Magda looked curious. “How did you make it do that? What did you do?”

  He laughed. “The machines did it. They were built long, long ago by the scientists who lived in the ship. People who were old and gone before Jerlet was born.”

  “They made the machines,” Magda said.

  “Yes, and Jerlet showed me how to fix them so that they’ll work properly.”

  She was still kneeling, her back rigid, her eyes dark and sad. “Linc, I can’t touch your machines. I’ve been thinking about it, and meditating on it. I just can’t. It would be wrong.”

  “It would be right for you to die?”

  “Maybe.”

  “No maybe about it. And not only you—everybody on the ship will die, too. Because if you don’t use the matter transmitter, nobody else will.”

  She closed her eyes. “I’m sorry, Linc. There’s nothing else I can do.”

  He grasped her by the shoulders. “Listen to me! There’s no choice for you. None at all. I’m going to destroy the ship. If you don’t go through the transmitter, you’ll be dead! Not maybe, not a year from now, but in just a few hours. This is for real. There’s no other way. It’s either go through the transmitter to the new world, or die here with the ship. The ship will be falling apart as we leave.”

  Her eyes were wide now. And angry. “You couldn’t! No one would be able to destroy the ship… it’s our home—”

  “Only for another few hours,” Linc answered. “I had to do it, and it’s already done. Just as that rocket took off for Beryl with the matter receiver, that’s how automatically the ship is going to fall apart.”

  “You’re going to kill us all!”

  “I’m going to save you all!”

  “You’ve gone crazy!” Magda screamed. “The machines have turned you into a monster!”

  He stood up, grabbed her by the wrist, and yanked her to her feet. “Listen to me and listen hard. There’s no more time to play your little games of balancing me against Monel. If you want to be a priestess to these people, then you’d better open your eyes to the truth. This ship is going to die in a few hours. Anyone left aboard will freeze, just like the ghosts.”

  Magda tried to pull her hand free, but Linc just held it tighter.

  “If you really want to be the leader here,” he went on, “then you’ve got to lead. If you don’t step into that transmitter booth, none of the others will. We’ll all die. You’ve got to lead us to life, Magda. If you’re really our priestess, now is the time to set an example for everybody. Life or death! It’s up to you.”

  20

  Magda sat at the countdown desk, sullenly rubbing her wrist and glaring at Linc.

  He was at the computer desk, staring intently at a display from the astrogation computer. The blue Linc that marked their course had several kinks in it, each k ink jogging the Linc closer to the planet Beryl. A red flashing dot showed where the ship was at the moment. It was almost at the first kink.

  “The main rockets will fire in another few seconds,” Linc said to Magda. “That is, the ones that are still working.”

  He slid his chair over beside hers and touched a button on the countdown desk-top keyboard. The main screen continued to show the countdown for their transfer to Beryl. The lower left-hand screen of the group now showed a countdown for the rocket firing. It read: T MINUS 00 00 38.

  “Hold on,” Linc told her. “This might be a rough blast.”

  “More violence,” she snarled at him.

  “If you call what I did violence—

  The bridge shook. It vibrated as if some giant’s hand had grabbed it and was shaking it to see if anything inside would rattle out. Linc felt his teeth grating together and he gripped the edge of the desk to keep from falling off his chair. A deep rumbling growl filled the air: the giant’s voice. Magda clutched at Linc, and he put an arm around her.

  As abruptly as it started, the noise and vibration stopped. It didn’t dwindle away; it stopped.

  Magda pulled away from Linc immediately. Linc turned and looked at the astrogation display.

  “Right on course.” The flashing red dot was squarely on the blue Linc, but now it was past the first bend.

  “You should have warned the people about that,” Magda said. “Somebody could have gotten hurt.”

  “There’s worse to come.”

  “There’s going to be more blasts like that?”

  He nodded. Pointing to the screen, he said, “See? Two more. And then we’re on a course that will sweep past the planet. As we fly by it, for a little less than an hour we’ll be close enough to make the jump down to Beryl’s surface. After that, the ship will swing out of range.”

  Magda said, “I’ll go out and tell the people.”

  “No! You stay right her^. You can talk to them on the loudspeaker… two seats down, the communications desk. You used it before.”

  Magda got slowly to her feet. She eyed the hatch that led out to the passageway. For a moment, Linc was afraid that she would walk out on him. Then she stepped over to the communications desk.

  She stared at the ke
yboard for a long moment, then looked back at Linc.

  “The red button next to the microphone,” he said. “It won’t hurt you. Just tap it with your finger.”

  She looked as if he was telling her to shove her hand into a flame. But she touched the red button, pulling her hand away from it almost before her finger reached it.

  “Fine,” Linc said to her. “Now all you have to do is sit down and talk.”

  Slowly she sat at the desk, frowning at the tiny microphone. Then she said, “This is Magda. Listen to me. Don’t be afraid. The blast that we just went through was caused by the rockets firing. Linc has worked out a way for us to get off the ship and reach the new world—”

  As she spoke, Linc flicked the buttons on the computer keyboard that turned on the few TV cameras still working. Three of the screens in front of him showed people standing in the corridors, listening to Magda’s voice. People came out of their rooms to hear her. Linc saw Slav and Hollie. He couldn’t find Jayna in the crowd.

  And there’s Monel. Doesn’t he look happy!

  “…Don’t be afraid,” Magda was repeating. “We can reach the new world. The ship is dying, but Linc will bring us safely to the new world.”

  She turned to look at him. “I can’t think of anything more to say.”

  “Tell them to stand by for my orders. I’ll let them know when they have to move.”

  Looking worried, Magda relayed Linc’s words to the people.

  They began gathering at the bridge after the second rocket blast. Linc didn’t like them clustering around him, but they came anyway.

  Should have locked the hatch, he grumbled to himself.

  But they didn’t get in his way. They stood there silently, watching, staring at the screens that showed so many incomprehensible pictures, words, numbers. Linc could feel them at his back, breathing, waiting, wondering.

  He glanced at Magda. She was sitting at the communications desk, her eyes closed and head bowed in meditation.

  She’s got to go into the transmitter booth when I tell her to, Linc knew. If she doesn’t, we’re going to have a pack of crazy people going wild.