Into the Sea of Stars Read online

  Into The Sea Of Stars

  William R. Forstchen

  A Del Rey Book

  BALLANTINE BOOKS • NEW YORK

  Published by Ballantine Books

  Copyright © 1986 by William R. Forstchen

  ISBN 0-345-32426-9

  First Edition: October 1986

  Cover Art by Don Dixon

  Content

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  About The Author

  Dedication

  For Greg in thanks for your friendship and a certain introduction... Frank and the advice that was so often needed, and Rus, the finest historian of them all!

  Prologue

  It was a time of high adventure; an age when men and women could seize destiny and shape it to their will. Can our generation again breed such heroes? I think not, for a golden age of exploration comes but rarely to a race, and ours is now lost forever. They were of the same mold as Alexander at the Asian Gate and Caesar at the Rubicon.

  Look to the choices that lay before them, a thousand years ago in the darkness of the twenty-first century. The world beneath them was poised for the madness of ther­monuclear night; a madness that threatened to reach out to the Earth's thousand colonies. And with that madness came the calling—the calling from Old America, and Eu­rope, and the vast reaches of the Asian giants. A calling for the children to return, to arm themselves, and to join in the war of the parent states. A war that would engulf mankind and create another dark age, from which we have so recently emerged.

  But the colonies were no longer of Earth. They were the new children, those who beheld a new horizon and could look beyond the parochial squabblings below.

  And one day they were gone. Pointing their colonies into the unknown, they abandoned Earth forever. Using plasma drives, ion thrusters, matter/antimatter engines, thermonuclear pulse propulsion, and even solar sails, the colonies broke the bonds and headed off into the un­known—looking for freedom and an escape. Led by such legendary men as Ikawa Kurosawa, Vasiliy Renikoff, and Franklin Smith, the colonies abandoned the parent world to its madness. And then the War came.

  Where are they now? What great wonders have these visionaries of the past created, unhindered by the Holo­caust War of the twenty-first century and the chaos that followed? Will we ever know the fate of the colonies missing for a thousand years?

  From a rejected manuscript by Dr. Ian Lacklin, Missing Colonies and the Heroic Figure in History.

  Chapter 1

  "Mr. Hansin, are you with us, or are you again pondering the earthly delights awaiting you in the women's dormitory?" In disgust Ian Lacklin collapsed into his chair and awaited the response.

  "Ah, oh yes, I fully agree with you, Dr. Lacklin. Of course, you're absolutely right."

  An undercurrent of snickers ran through the stuffy, overcrowded room. Ian stared them down and was greeted with forced looks of attentiveness.

  Idiots. Graduate students, indeed. Every semester he was lectured by the dean that this year's was the best crop yet, survivors of a lengthy winnowing process. The dean made Kutzburg sound like Nouveau Harvard instead of the Provincial University's worst campus, one that ca­tered to ozone-head athletes and near-morons who had failed entry in every other system and, therefore, would become educators.

  "Then, Mr. Hansin, perhaps you could enlighten us all as to the ramifications of the Geosync Positions Com­munications Treaty of 2031 and how it was later cited by Beaulieu as the underlying cause of the Second South American Crisis of 2038."

  "Say, Dr. Lacklin, was that in our readings?"

  "By God, man, yes!" In exasperation Ian rose up to his full five-and-a-half-foot height and pointed a stubby finger at Hansin.

  "Can't you see how important this was? With the crowding of the geosync points in the early part of the twenty-first century came the increasing agitation by the equatorial countries for control not only of the atmos­phere above them but of the geosync positions, as well. Out of that came the abortive attempt to take Powersat 23 from the Sino-Japanese Energy Consortium, which in turn placed in jeopardy the Skyhook construction project in Malaysia. Can't you see how important that is to your life today?"

  Blank stares greeted him. An ocean of blank stares.

  "This room is a vacuum!" Ian shouted, waving his short, pudgy arms. "I know this course is required, I know you were all dragged in here kicking and screaming, but, by God, it's required for a reason.

  "But, of course, you cretins already know that when you are history teachers yourselves, instructions in throwing a ball through a hoop will be far more important than this." Ian realized that his sarcasm was lost on that crowd, but with a note of pleading in his voice he valiantly tried to push ahead. "Don't you realize that you should also be able to teach your students about history, as well? Can't you see that?"

  "Sure, Doc. We see that, but it's Friday, and the shuttle tram's leaving for Bostem in half an hour."

  "Ah, a visit to the fleshpots of Bostem is more impor­tant to you than this, is that it, Mr. Hansin? And you, too, Mr. Roy?"

  Silence.

  "Well, Mr. Roy, don't sit there slack-jawed and drool­ing, answer me."

  "Doc, that's an interesting point, and most difficult to answer."

  lan's cherubic face turned crimson. "Idiots, get out, just get out of here." His voice cracked on a high note, as it always did when he got excited. "Just get out!"

  The mindless herd of thirty-odd students exploded into action and stampeded past him for the doorway.

  "Wait, wait a minute, your reading assignment for next week..." But they were already gone, the corridor ech­oing with the sounds of their cattlelike trampling and muted comments about Lacklin's heritage and physiological shortcomings.

  Another brilliant lecture wasted. Mumbling obscure Old American obscenities, he returned to his desk and started to shuffle a pile of notes into his briefcase. Eigh­teen years! Eighteen years of trying to give to an uncaring mob a brief glimpse of the joys to be found in history. There was an occasional pearl to be found, but for most of them, he was "Lackless Lacklin," master of "Enrich­ment Requirement Number 3: Sputnik to Armageddon— a History of the First Space Era."

  "Excuse me, Dr. Lacklin."

  "Yes, yes, what is it?" He looked up from his desk. "What is it, Shelley, why weren't you sucked into the vortex of that mob?"

  "You were about to give an assignment?"

  He looked at her appraisingly, the pearl of the semester, a gangly six-foot, twenty-one-year old; suffering from a bad case of acne and allegedly responsible to him as a research assistant—assigned by the dean, no doubt, as a practical joke. As a graduate student she was adequate, but she constantly hung around his office looking for sophomoric debates on the real meaning of Lock's the­ories of space sociology or other such foolishness.

  "Do we have an assignment in Beaulieu's book?" she asked eagerly.

  "No doubt, you've already finished it?"

  "Of course, but I wanted to be ready for Monday's class. I can review it over the weekend."

  "Don't worry about it now, why don't you just go along with the others."

  "Here, let me help you back to the office with that." Before he could object, Shelley picked up the model of the Schuder space colony and started for the door.

 
; "Damn it, look out!"

  But it was too late. She brushed against the doorway, knocking the antennae structure off.

  "Oh, Dr. Lacklin, I'm sorry, I—"

  "Never mind, Miss Walker, just take it down to the office."

  With a sigh of despair he picked up the broken plastic and followed after her. It had taken him the better part of a weekend to construct the three-foot-long model of a colony that had once been home to fifty thousand people.

  As they made their way down the dimly lit corridors to lan's subterranean office, Shelley chattered on about a paper she was writing for The Journal of Space Antiq­uities, and Dr. Lacklin occasionally grunted noncommittally, but his thoughts were already light-years away.

  A new copy of the journal had just come that morning, with a lengthy article by Beaulieu concerning the recently discovered ruins of the colony on Mars. The site was one of the biggest finds of the decade and was revealing a wealth of artifacts on early twenty-first-century technology. The article would provide an excellent weekend's entertainment away from students, the school, the world— in fact, an escape from all reality.

  Ian was so wrapped in happy thoughts of escape that he didn't notice Shelley had stopped, and Ian crashed right into her. The Schuder model tumbled to the floor and fractured into fragments that went spinning out in every direction.

  "Uh-oh," Shelley whispered.

  "Damn it, Shelley, why can't you... ?" Ian looked past her and saw the towering figure standing by the doorway to his office.

  "It's Chancellor Cushman," Shelley whispered fear­fully.

  The figure started to move toward them. "Dr. Lacklin, my good man," the Chancellor's voice boomed like a can­non report, "just the person I was looking for."

  Striding forward, hand outstretched, he stepped on broken fragments of the model, grinding them to powder. Grabbing Ian's shoulder, the Chancellor smiled his sin­ister toothy grin, which more often than not was the open­ing signal for a budget cut or an increase in one's teaching load.

  He turned to Shelley with that same grin, but there was a barely concealed disdain about him as he was forced to address a student. "My charming young miss, would you be so kind as to excuse the good doctor and me."

  Before the Chancellor had finished speaking, Shelley was backing away, mumbling something about having to wash her hair; she was gone, leaving Ian to his fate.

  Ian followed the Chancellor down the corridor into the dusty, cluttered closet that was lan's office. There the Chancellor released his numbing grip on lan's shoulder. He ran his finger along a bookcase and snorted with dis­dain when the digit came up black with two decades' worth of dust. Walking around to lan's desk, the Chan­cellor first carefully examined the chair as if expecting it to be booby-trapped, and then, barely satisfied, he low­ered his towering form while pointing Ian to the visitor's chair on the other side of the desk.

  "You know, Ian," his voice boomed, filling the tiny room, "I never could see the purpose of keeping your history program alive. Such things are a waste, in my mind." He smiled.

  It's termination! Ian thought. My God, what will I do?

  "But the Provincial Government of New America," the Chancellor continued, "decreed in the educational charter to this institution that we are to, quote, 'train functioning citizens who shall fit into the framework of our society and appreciate the traditions of our new Federated Republic,' unquote. In other words, my man, we are to train effective cogs for the wheels of the administration. And one of the teeth in that cog must be an understanding of history. Do you agree?"

  Maybe it's not termination! "Of course, your Excel­lency, of course." His voice cracked.

  "I knew you would agree, my good man. Of course, I've always felt that such courses as File Management or Interoffice Communications were far more valuable than your digging up the ancient past, but this is an institute of higher learning so we must be tolerant of minor ec­centricities, mustn't we?"

  "Of course."

  "Tell me, Ian, how many people staff your department now?"

  "I'm the only one. Don't you remember you cut the budget last year, eliminating Mr. Lelezi?"

  "Ah, yes. Mr. Lelezi. He taught the history of the Holocaust War and the Second Dark Age?"

  "Yes, your Excellency."

  "The taped lectures we've made of him are an adequate replacement, are they not? Save us a significant sum, don't they?"

  It would be termination!

  "Tell me, Ian, do we have tapes of your lectures on file?"

  Ian could only nod. The Chancellor had instituted that little trick five years back. The Board of Regents loved it, and the Chancellor was now hailed as a bold new in­novator in education.

  "Good, Dr. Lacklin, very good indeed. Would you be so kind as to write up a study guide for your course, in triplicate, and be sure to use the proper forms. I want it in my office first thing Monday morning."

  The room started to spin. Ian felt as if he were looking -up from the bottom of a deep, deep well, and the only thing he could see at the end of the shaft was the Chan­cellor's wolfish grin.

  "Does this mean," Ian asked weakly, trying to conceal the wheedling tone in his voice, "that my position is to be automated?"

  "Well, my good man"—the Chancellor laughed, ob­viously delighting in this little diversion—"don't be so pale and glum. You don't want to spend the rest of your life in a classroom, now do you?"

  "But history is my life, it's everything."

  The Chancellor's grin suddenly became more sinister.

  "We've other plans for you."

  "Other plans?"

  "Come now, Ian, you now as well as I do that this noble institution supports its staff and encourages it to broaden the field of knowledge through publication. I've been checking on you, my man—in eighteen years of teaching, you've never been published."

  "There is my book, you know! Missing Colonies and the Heroic Figure in History."

  "How many rejections have you had on that?"

  Ian was silent.

  "But that's not what I'm talking about. There are other forms of writing, take grants, for instance."

  He wants me as a grant writer! Endless forms to fill out. I'll go mad, Ian thought. Digging the sands of Mars would be better. Perhaps Beaulieu would take me on as an assistant. But his stomach turned somersaults at the mere thought of space travel and weightlessness.

  "You have some rather good experience with grants, my man. In fact, that's the reason for this friendly chat of ours. It's your grant, Ian. I just got a call from the Minister of Education, who has a brother in the Deep Space Exploration and Surveying Department. I'm talk­ing about your grant proposal."

  "My grant proposal?" I've never written a grant pro­posal. Ian was about to say that he had no idea what the Chancellor was talking about, but then thought it might be better not to admit such ignorance.

  "You do remember your grant proposal?" the Chan­cellor asked suspiciously.

  Ian forced a smile and nodded noncommittally.

  "Right, then. I just wanted to be the first to congrat­ulate you. Your grant has come through. You know what this means for our school? Isn't this wonderful?"

  "It's come through," Ian replied, trying to keep his confusion out of his voice. "Why, that's wonderful." What the hell is he talking about?

  "Well, aren't you excited, my good man? Think of the prestige it will bring to this institution."

  And to your plans for being the next Minister of Ed­ucation, Ian thought.

  "Don't you have anything to say?"

  Ian could only smile weakly.

  "Ah, I understand, of course you're in shock over this whole thing. But you'd better get cracking, my good man. You're to be out of here Tuesday morning. By the way, are your passport and twenty-three-forty-four medical form up to date?"

  "My twenty-three-forty-four?"

  A glint of suspicion appeared in the Chancellor's eyes. He examined Ian as if he were an insect under a magni­fying glass.
<
br />   "Wake up, man, wake up. Your twenty-three-forty-four!"

  "Sir, what is a twenty-three-forty-four?" Ian bleated.

  "Good God, man, don't you understand what I'm talk­ing about?" Exasperated, the Chancellor opened his at­tache case and pulled out a heavy document, bound in a red jacket. There was a quick flurry of pages and the Chancellor started to read.

  " 'All members of the party must qualify for translight travel by successfully undergoing a full twenty-three-forty-four medical review.' Dr. Lacklin, you wrote that in the grant proposal, or don't you remember? It's stan­dard medical policy for anyone traveling aboard the new translight vessels."

  "I'm traveling translight!" Ian shouted in terror.

  The Chancellor stood up to his full six-and-a-half-foot height and advanced around the desk. He loomed over Ian as if he were closing in for the kill, and Ian slipped lower into his seat.

  "Dr. Lacklin, do you understand anything at all con­cerning what we've been talking about?"

  Ian tried to sound self-assured, but only a mousy "no" squeaked out of him.

  A forefinger was suddenly pointed into lan's chest and with each word spoken the Chancellor stabbed at Ian with such force that Ian feared a rib might be broken.

  "Dr. Lacklin, at the beginning of this semester a grant proposal left the history department under your signature. Your department, and your signature, Dr. Lacklin. And this document was addressed to the Department of Deep Space Survey and Exploration. Last year the DSSE announced that an Alpha 3 translight survey ship would be released from active service and placed at the disposal of the Ministry of Education, and grant proposals would be accepted as to its implementation and use. Do you follow me so far, Dr. Lacklin?"

  "Yes."

  "You are aware, of course, Dr. Lacklin, that we have only returned to space within the last hundred years and that translight was only discovered within the last fifteen years. I am sure, Dr. Lacklin, that you realize that there are only eleven translight ships available, and the Alpha 3 is the first such model."

  "Yes, I am a professor of space history," Ian replied, trying to sound insulted over such a simple question.