Stars That Sing the Requiem

by Deb Houdek Rule

  Jurnee and the other crew remained in suspense for several hours until Captain returned alone. Calling them all together, she soberly stared at the star until they’d gathered around her.

  “I have news from Earth that affects us all, and affects our mission.”

  A murmur rippled through the crew. To Jurnee and most of the other younglings, Earth was nothing but a distant myth, not something that could actually touch them.

  Captain raised her hand for silence. “It’s a series of messages, we’ve only received later ones. Something happened on Earth. We can’t determine what it was, whether a natural disaster, or war, or what. Whatever the cause, a series of ships were forced to depart from Earth, starting out not more than a decade after us. Like ours, they’re asteroid ships, but constructed in haste, and without full resources, they have the capacity to reach only one destination.” She looked meaningfully at the star again. “This one.”

  Unheard in the noise of the crew’s reaction came Jurnee’s whispered, “Oh, no.”

  Waiting for the shocked speculations to die down, Captain continued. “You understand what this means for us. This message came to us at the speed of light. It’s already several years old. The first of this string of ships will be arriving here within the next fifteen to twenty years. Several million of our brethren will be on those ships… on a one way trip, hoping and praying that we have found a world they could live on.”

  “But, Captain,” the youngest of the planet hunters – one who, like Jurnee, had never even seen a planet – protested, “We’re supposed to send the information back and head on to the next target. What if we don’t find a suitable planet?”

  Captain’s glacial eyes gleamed and Jurnee saw in her the unswerving fervor of mankind, from the deck of a wooden ship to the helm of an interstellar craft, to find the perfect shore. “Failing that,” Captain said, “to make one.”

  “We’re not equipped for any real terraforming projects,” an Original inserted. “We don’t have the resources.”

  Over the thudding in her head, Jurnee barely heard Captain’s answer.

  “The situation has changed,” Captain said coldly. “Those at Home couldn’t wait the years our message from here would take. They’re coming, a formation of ships a light year long, and – whatever the cost, we have to have a place for them when they arrive.”

  ~~~

  Jurnee floated down the corridor, propelling herself with an occasional push against a bulkhead or doorway. Gracefully, she swam through a knot of teenagers doing freefall acrobatics at a junction. Laughing with them, she felt both the joyous freedom of zero gee as well as the concealed pride at being one who reveled in freefall rather than remaining curled up in a wretched ball.

  One kick of her heel took her up the ladder. Flying past Comm she called her usual greeting to Marco who grunted in return. Odd one, he was, she thought as she often had before. Marco neither hated nor loved freefall. As nearly as possible he ignored it, always walking rather than flying. He sat in his chair in Comm as he always had, strapped firmly in place.

  The door of Command slid aside. Jurnee dove through, putting an upward sweep in her movement to carry her up into the viewing dome. Swimming hard against air she managed to stop herself in the center. Against a star-speckled infinity hung their planet. So rich and alive did it seem Jurnee reached to touch it. Perhaps planets had something to be said for themselves after all – as long as one didn’t have to live on them.

  “Crewman Ha’Dastra,” Captain’s stern voice rang out like the voice of God into the heavens in which Jurnee floated.

  “Yes, sir,” Jurnee quickly responded, contorting herself to face down toward the Captain. She swam down beside Captain until she could grasp a chair back and pull herself into an upright position, her feet barely touching the floor. “Sorry, sir,” she added.

  “You know I forbade free floating in Command,” Captain grated.

  Jurnee looked down and blushed. Pulling out her sticky slippers she sat down on air to put them on. Then she pushed her feet against the floor, feeling the carpet cling to her feet. “Yes, sir,” she repeated, blushed again and added, “It’s just that, well, I wanted to do a bit of celebrating.”

  Captain wrinkled her forehead further than normal. “Celebrating? Oh! Yes, of course. We’ve been so busy that time has flown by. It’s your birthday again, isn’t it?”

  Jurnee nodded.

  “We’re hearing the final recommendations and reports on the planet today.” Captain mused, “I wonder if the department heads planned their final reports for this date? Probably not, they’re too focused on their special areas.” She looked at Jurnee, “I’ve asked the senior ship handlers to sit in on the briefing. I’d like you to join us too.”

  Startled, Jurnee looked into Captain’s face. Ship handlers had virtually no involvement in the planetary survey. She’d only heard fragments of the reports, little more than the glowingly positive tidbits released to the cargo. “I’d be pleased to, Captain,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “And I think we’ll need you to be our lucky token again.” Captain glanced up at the radiant blue planet. “Yes, I think we may need it.”

  The briefing took place in Control’s conference theatre. Each department compulsively clustered together, so Jurnee ended up seated between two of her ship handling counterparts, both Originals in their seventies who – Jurnee privately thought – were far too inclined to let the computer do all their thinking for them.

  Captain opened the briefing then turned it over to the department heads. One by one they came to the platform, discussing their findings while the information was shown behind them.

  The droning reports, Jurnee thought, suppressing a yawn, gave a new definition to the word tedium. Why were these research types so fascinated with the sound of their own voices? They spoke in torturously circuitous ways, addressing everything save the point. Closing her eyes, Jurnee floated against the seat strap, listening with half her attention. As she let the information sift itself in her brain a picture formed, one not even the individual departments had, so focused were they on their particular areas of specialty.

  The planet was useless.

  The sum of it was, she sorted from the extraneous flotsam, the planet was too hot for human comfort, except at the poles which had no land. The bulk of the land – except for a small rock atoll in the far north – was gathered around the equator. Though they found no evidence of intelligent life, abundant lifeforms existed. Far from being good news, the first two landing parties returned in tatters, losing over half their numbers despite being heavily armed. Enormous carnivores attacked anything that moved. No human weapons affected them. Nothing short of a nuclear warhead down the throat might stop these creatures. Worse news came from the plant life, which was extremely toxic, even to the slightest touch.

  Never in the past year since receiving the distressing messages from Earth had their full impact reached Jurnee. Dozens of ships, with millions of people on them, stretched in a refugee formation between here and Earth. If the people in this room couldn’t find a way to make that planet habitable they’d all die, every one of them down to the tiniest ship-born baby. They’d decelerate into this system hoping a harbor awaited them. If not… well, the lucky ones might fall into the star and have it done quickly. The others would die in space as their power and resources slowly failed.

  Suddenly the space she loved seemed cruel and cold to Jurnee.

  Jurnee opened her eyes, straightening. She hunted out the Captain’s face in the crowd. Never had the woman appeared more ancient, her face drained of color. Something made her turn, meeting Jurnee’s eyes. A curious sensation of bonding took place in Jurnee in that moment. She felt the weight on Captain’s shoulders as vividly as though they were her own. And in that moment she knew she’d do anything necessary to fulfill the obligations of this ship.

  As the information continued to flow, something began to niggle at Jurnee’s mind, an idea she couldn’t qu
ite grasp.

  When the last monotone report concluded, an uneasy silence fell over the theatre. Everyone stirred, turning toward the Captain. For a long time she sat still, her head down. Then, slowly, she stood. The skritch-skritch of her zero gee slippers echoed absurdly loud. Standing at the podium, she examined every face before her, pausing, it seemed to Jurnee, extra long on hers.

  Everyone leaned forward to better hear, so low was Captain’s voice. “I trust you all understand the full magnitude of these reports,” Captain said. The rustling and blank stares must have told her that they didn’t, for she took a deep breath and continued.

  “We’ve found a perfect Earth-like planet. Unfortunately, we found it too early in its development. While allowing for differences alien in nature, it’s much like our Earth during the Cretaceous period some sixty-five million years ago.”

  Jurnee’s heart slammed her chest with a thud. That was it. That was the memory plaguing her. Her eyes drifted upward. Part of the theatre’s ceiling had been left bare, the hewed out asteroid that was the ship showing in the rough metal-rock surface. Oh, God of all the stars… Jurnee knew what the Captain meant to do.

  ~~~

  Jurnee drifted down the bare corridor, touching the walls gently with her fingers. She loved this ship, couldn’t love it more if it was her own. In a few minutes it would be her own, all hers for the rest of her life. Jurnee chuckled at the black irony.

  The emptiness of the ship reached out to touch her. Hollowness replaced the life and vibrancy that used to echo through these corridors. Pausing in this familiar passageway, she remembered all the times she’d come down it, toward Control. Sometimes there’d been toddlers playing, or teens running races. Sometimes an old couple of Originals walked slowly hand-in-hand as though they were out for a moonlit stroll back on Earth. All that remained of mankind, as nearly as they could tell from the messages reached them, had left their old home behind, coming here to seek a new one. If they couldn’t find it, they’d create it. All of mankind… save one soul. Jurnee was the first ship-born. This was her home, always had been, always would be.

  Old Marco wasn’t in Comm when she went by. He never did pay her much heed, probably didn’t even think to say good-bye to her. Still, it would have been nice.

  The door to Command slid aside and Jurnee looked up, as she always did, to see the wonders arching overhead. A sapphire gem etched with white cloud frosting, the planet shone. If she stared hard at the right place perhaps she could see some of the landers in orbit. Only a small percentage of the crew and cargo fit in those, up out of harm’s way. Yet they must be counted among the brave as well, for they huddled in the crowded ships not knowing if they’d ever have a place to land.

  Turning again to the planet, she tried to pick out the tiny island of rock where the rest of the ship’s company waited. Fortified against the expected quakes, tsunami, and choking plumes of vaporized rock, they watched the sky for the streaking meteor that would signal the end of one world and – if all went well – the birth of a new one. Hopefully, they too would survive to move to the other continents, to seed and reseed the world, to make it over in Earth’s image. Jurnee smiled softly.

  “Crewman Ha’Dastra?” The voice was low and pleasant this time, not that of superior but of equal. Jurnee turned to face Captain Leifsdätter.

  “I’m sorry it had to be this way,” Captain said.

  Jurnee shook her head. “My choice, and the necessary one. We both know the others couldn’t handle the ship on manual.”

  “That’s what I mean. We tried, but the computer control…”

  With a forced grin, Jurnee said lightly, “Resistance is futile. MS Interstellar Explorer 1.1 knows what we want to do, and plunging the ship into the surface of a planet is something it just won’t permit.”

  Captain chuckled. It sounded strained to Jurnee. “Yes, well… Maybe the other ships will have an upgrade.”

  “Oh, I hope not,” Jurnee said seriously. “We don’t want them to crash.” Her grin now was genuine. The Captain matched it.

  “I should stay with my ship,” Captain said, her eyes wandering across Control.

  “Your duty is to the crew and colonists, not to a chunk of rock,” Jurnee said. “Besides, if you stay, I’ll mutiny.” She softened the dread word with a smile Captain returned.

  “Well, then…” Captain said hollowly, but with a tone of finality.

  “One moment,” a gruff voice came from the doorway. Jurnee turned to see old Marco coming toward her. Before she could say a word he caught her up in a bear hug of an embrace. Tears sounded in his voice as he rasped in her ear, “Bless you, child. You always were my favorite.”

  Before Jurnee could react or say a word, he turned and fled out the door. Staring after him, she whispered, “You too, old man.”

  Straightening, she looked toward the Captain again. “Sir, I relieve you.”

  The older woman drew herself to attention, nodded, and asked, “Permission to leave the ship, Captain?”

  “Granted,” Captain Jurnee Ha’Dastra said, turning quickly away toward the helm. She heard the door swish behind her.

  Settling into the Captain’s seat, Jurnee tightened the lapbelt, then freed her feet from the sticky slippers. Positioned at her side was the crudely constructed manual ship handling controls, run by a processor independent of the vast, and stubborn, ship computer.

  When the displays told her the last shuttle had left, Jurnee slowly studied Command, savoring the sight. This was her ship now, hers and hers alone. She could do with it as she pleased. She could leave orbit and head to the next star, or the next, and no one could stop her.

  Yes, she could.

  But she wouldn’t. Glancing at the displays she lingered on the date. As much as there’d been to do, as much as they’d hurried through the preparations, they’d granted her request, waiting a few extra weeks for this special date to arrive again.

  Activating the drive, Jurnee steered her ship toward the planet. It was a grand day, as important to everyone as it was to her. And maybe she would be their lucky token after all.

  “Happy Birthday, Captain,” Jurnee whispered to herself as the ship touched the atmosphere.

  The End

  Those We Left Behind

  “It is a beautiful world… from here,” the voice from behind Diana said. She didn’t immediately turn but stayed facing the window staring at the living globe suspended in the darkness. From beneath it was beautiful too. Sometimes. Sometimes it was nothing more than a well-decorated cage.

  Through a throat threatening to close up on her, she finally managed to answer, “Yes.” Pushing down and away on the handholds, Diana moved out of zero gee zone and back into range of the graviton generators. The somewhat inconsistent artificial gravity pulled her down to the deck.

  “This is your first time out, isn’t it?” the voice said, this time coming from above her.

  Diana looked up to see a man sitting at a small table on what, from her perspective, was the ceiling.

  “Come and join me,” the man said.

  Shaking her head, disoriented, she searched for a way to reach the man. The Escher was something she’d stumbled on in a strange, unmapped corner of Terra Two. The bar was at the junction point of six distinctly different sections of the tangled jumble that made up the station. One wall clearly showed an old NASA marking (she suspected it was fake), and it was rumored that somewhere, buried in the maze, was the old Mir space station.

  Stumbling over the gravity anomaly as the stairs changed their orientation, Diana found herself much heavier. This portion of the Escher was picking up gravitation from a newer part of the station. She closed her eyes for a moment against the nausea of the freefall and varying gravities, then made her way to the man’s table.

  He was a good enough looking man, she decided, not dazzlingly handsome, but with a roguish glint to his eyes that appealed to her. His grin as she sat down was infectious. She smiled back.

  “How could
you tell?”

  “That it’s your first time out?” He shrugged. “Lots of things. Partly the way you hold yourself in the freefall niche, like a cross between loving it and wanting nothing more than to get out of it and throw up.”

  A chuckle seemed appropriate, but Diana didn’t think she could manage that. Instead she said dryly, “The artificial gravity is worse.”

  Catching his drink as it tried to bob up off the table, he nodded. “The field variations take some getting used to.” Diana clutched the edge of the table until the gravitation stabilized.

  “No one else here seems bothered,” she commented, looking around the Escher. People in singles, pairs and a few boisterous groups were scattered over the bar’s oddly angled walls. One rowdy group clung to a tree-like structure in a freefall area. They squeezed out spherical globules of their drinks into the air, then one of their number would swoop like a bat to snatch it in his mouth. They laughed uproariously as one woman impacted the liquor gob in the forehead rather than the mouth, and laughed even harder as a very drunk man overshot the freefall area and was slapped to a deck by the gravitation.