Into the Sea of Stars Page 2

  "Good. I wasn't sure on that point." The Chancellor cut him an icy gaze.

  "The Alpha 3 was to be retired," Ian interjected. "The damn thing is unsafe; all the other ships of the same design have never returned."

  "Not to worry." And the Chancellor laughed. "I've been assured that little problem has been cleared up. But as I was telling you, Dr. Lacklin, the grant proposal under your signature requested use of that vehicle and, I quote, 'to attempt reestablishment of contact with the seven hundred colonies that abandoned near-Earth space on the eve of the Holocaust War. This will be accomplished by consulting those surviving records, recently uncovered, which indicate the courses of the colonies. Using translight propulsion it will be a simple matter of following the original courses and thus overtaking the units,' unquote."

  The Chancellor fixed Ian with a deadly, penetrating gaze. "Dr. Lacklin, did you write this grant proposal?"

  Ian looked up and started to answer.

  "The truth, Dr. Lacklin, or you'll regret it!"

  "No." His answer came out as a timid squeak.

  In exasperation the Chancellor slammed the proposal onto lan's desk. A flurry of dust swirled around the two men. The Chancellor suddenly reached across the table, grabbed hold of the proposal, and threw it into lan's lap.

  "Then look at this, damn it!"

  Ian picked it up and, adjusting his glasses, he peered owllike at the cover.

  " 'A proposal for the implementation of the Alpha 3 unit for the reestablishment of contact with colonial units of the twenty-first century, submitted by Dr. Ian Lacklin, Provincial University System.' "

  Ian suddenly felt very sick.

  He pulled open the proposal and started to scan it.

  "Turn to the last page, damn you!"

  Ian obeyed the shouted command.

  Proposed Crewing of the Alpha 3 Discovery

  Understanding the extreme limitation on crew space and taking into consideration the isolation from any higher authority, it should be realized that the crew must deal with all contingencies related to establishing contact with human colonies while out of contact with Earth. Crew proposal is as follows:

  1. Pilot of the Alpha 3 unit with previous experience in deep space flight and isolation.

  2. Medical/biological technician with an understanding of medical situations unique to the twenty-first century, since all units contacted will have been isolated with their particular varieties of microbes for the last 1107 years.

  3. Sociological/psychological personnel capable of dealing with the ramifications of cross-cultural exposure and shock.

  4. Assistant to the program director, capable of logging all reports, administering to all reporting, filing, and data management.

  5. Program director, versed in twenty-first-century history, in particular relating to all aspects of the establishment of the self-contained colonies starting in 2019 until the decision to flee near-Earth space in the year 2078. The program director must be familiar with each of the colonial units in question, their engineering, sociological backgrounds, cultural makeup, and administrative organizations.

  Sweat broke out on lan's forehead. He stopped for a moment to look up at the Chancellor and was met with a glacial stare. He returned to his reading.

  The program director should have a full understanding of the process leading to the decision by the seven hundred colonial units to abandon Earth on the eve of the Holocaust War. The program di­rector should be familiar with the trajectories se­lected by the units when evacuating near-Earth space and have reasonable estimates of distance traveled by each unit since departure. All such data is cur­rently on file with the author and is available upon request.

  Ian groaned softly and looked up imploringly at the Chancellor.

  "Look at that signature," the Chancellor hissed.

  Ian did as ordered and stared numbly at the signature and personal seal placed upon the last page of the pro­posal. They were his, all right.

  "Can you explain this?!" the Chancellor demanded.

  Ian could only shake his head.

  "Are those your signature and personal seal?"

  "Yes," he replied weakly.

  "Then, good God, man, this is your grant proposal!"

  "But I didn't write it."

  "Oh, yes you did, Dr. Lacklin, you most certainly did. My contact over at the Ministry has informed me that the grant has been approved and that the decision has already been made that you, as the author of this grant, shall lead the mission.

  "Dr. Lacklin, I don't give a good damn if you wrote this thing or not, but as far as anyone is now concerned, you are the sole author of it and will take responsibility as mission head. I'll not have it said that this document got past my office and then turned out to be a fake. I'd be the laughingstock of the profession. Dr. Lacklin, this one is yours and you are going for a ride with it!"

  "I can't!"

  "What do you mean, you can't? I don't think I'm hear­ing you correctly."

  "You know and I know that those Alpha 3s never came back. Besides, I get deathly sick anytime I travel."

  In his panic he could already conjure up a hundred possible deaths in the mad venture—they could have an engine overload, or misnavigation could send them into a black hole. And the quarters, they were so cramped the claustrophobia alone would kill him. He wasn't going out there, and that was that. He was a historian, a dealer in the safeness of the past—not some crazed adventurer. He simply reported and glorified it all. It sure as hell wasn't his job to go out and actually do it.

  The Chancellor settled back in his chair and with a sudden change of tack started to smile gently. "Come, come, Dr. Lacklin, think of the opportunity. This is your field. Think of the lucrative offers upon your return. By heavens, man, the publishers would even snatch up that book you're working on."

  "I can't go. I'm afraid of flying."

  "Dr. Lacklin, think how ridiculous we'd look if it sud­denly came out that you were not the author of this grant."

  "I don't care if I look ridiculous."

  "But I care, Dr. Lacklin. I most certainly care." There was a note of threat in the voice that carried a distinct warning.

  "Look, Ian"—and the Chancellor leaned forward, trying to put on the suave charm though it was obvious that near-homicidal rage churned just below the surface—"I'll make it as plain as can be. This will put our university on the map. And it will be one of my department people who did it. The regional board of directors will take very favorable notice of a campus with such a success."

  "And over my vaporized body, you'll move into the National Bureau of Education," Ian muttered.

  "What was that?"

  "Oh, nothing, your Excellency, nothing."

  "Then you'll still refuse to take responsibility for this grant and will refuse the position of project manager?"

  Ian didn't answer.

  "You'll be the coward just because of a little physical discomfort and a very slight risk of danger?"

  Ian could only nod his head.

  "All right then, if that's the way you want it." The Chancellor suddenly turned and started for the door.

  Ian slumped back into his chair and breathed an audible sigh of relief. He knew a terrible revenge would be ex­acted for his refusal, but anything was better than going "out there."

  The Chancellor started to open the door and then turned, giving Ian a cold-blooded look of appraisal. "By the way, Dr. Lacklin. Have you ever heard of a young coed named Makena LaFay?"

  Panic seized lan's face. Cushman knew he had hit the right lever.

  "Well, have you?"

  "Yes." The answer was barely a whisper.

  "She's the daughter of the provincial Governor, you know. I've met Jeremiah LaFay any number of times. His support of the Reform Puritanical Movement is well known.

  "I'd never want to cross him myself—his ability to have opponents and personal enemies arrested for, how shall I say, 'alleged violations of public morals' is well known."<
br />
  Ian appeared to be on the edge of cardiac arrest.

  "Of course, I know dear Makena was an aggressive young lady," the Chancellor continued with a cold, ma­licious grin, "who perhaps did not live up to her father's personal code of morality. In fact, one of my informants in the women's living quarters stated that when Makena was a student last semester she openly boasted, 'I twisted an A out of that fat little fool with only one night in the sack.' Do you know who that fat little fool is, Dr. Lacklin?"

  A groan escaped from Ian. He couldn't help what had happened. She had been waiting for him at his apartment in a state of extreme undress, giving full exposure to her ample charms. He had tried valiantly to show her the door, but in the end, simple human nature won out. After all, it had been several years since...

  "But I only gave her a B."

  "Ah, only a B. Only a B! So, you don't deny it!"

  Ian shrugged his shoulders.

  "Well, my good man, I know about this little B. In fact, half the females on this campus know about that little B. And with a single phone call I can arrange for our good friend the Governor to know about that little B! And then we'll all get to see 'Only a B' Lacklin get his butt end hauled off by some of LaFay's gorillas, who would love to smash you to a pulp for violating the innocence of our good Governor's virginal daughter."

  "Virginal! She attacked me, your Excellency, I didn't stand a chance."

  "Ah, so you admit it, then. Frankly, Ian, I find that impossible to accept. In the eyes of our good God-fearing Governor, his Little Precious is purer than arctic snow. It would break my heart to have to tell him that she had been brutally violated by one of my staff, who, of course, has just been fired."

  The Chancellor started to smile again. "But never fear, good friend. Of course I could never do that to the hero of Kutzburg Provincial. Of course not. I think this little matter can be forgotten for someone with your stature. Now, my friend, I do believe we understand each other."

  Ian nodded dumbly. There was a seventy-five percent chance of a quick death in space. But he knew there would be a hundred percent chance of a couple of broken arms, and God knows what else, if he stayed.

  "Fine, then, just fine, and let me be the first to offer you my congratulations. I'll send the necessary paper­work down this afternoon and the school physician will be by within the hour to start processing your twenty-three-forty-four. If I might be so bold, I'll help you out with assigning your medical person and sociologist, and you can have the liberty of appointing your administrative assistant. Have a pleasant day, Dr. Lacklin. And I'll ex­pect you in my office at nine sharp Monday morning."

  The Chancellor closed the door behind him and started off for the Academic Records Office. There was a little question of a grade change up to an A that had to be looked into. After all, he had promised her he would take care of it. And just to make sure there wasn't an embar­rassing change of heart, he would push Ian off-planet within the week, along with the other embarrassing clowns on his staff. He could already picture his new office in the National Bureau. He smiled in anticipation.

  Ian tried to control the wild panic and for a moment he contemplated suicide. But that required a little more courage than he could muster, and he pushed the thought aside; the reams of work facing him that weekend would require some help. He'd better give Shelley a call.

  Shelley! He leaped out of his chair and pulled open the door. And there she was. As if waiting for him.

  "Dr. Lacklin, ah, yeah. Ah, I thought I, ah, left my books here..."

  Once a week Shelley took him a pile of paperwork. It got so that he never even bothered to ask what the in­dividual items where, and he merely signed each docu­ment or memo and affixed his personal seal to it. The damn woman had written the grant and sneaked it in with the other paperwork, since only a fully accredited instruc­tor could make grant applications to the Ministry.

  "Get in here!" Ian shouted, suddenly finding a way at last to vent his frustration.

  "Ah, well, you see, Doctor. I, ah, got this book I want to read. Couldn't I, ah—"

  "If you value your life, you better get your butt in here right now!"

  Chapter 2

  Brazil's tropical heat was finally locked out by the silent closing of the liftcar's door. Ian gratefully sank into the first available seat and Shelley eased in alongside. Mopping his face with a soaked handkerchief, Ian breathed a sigh of relief as the frigid air washed over him. The air-conditioning in the Brasilia Skyhook Station was again down for "routine inspection," meaning that the incompetent ground staff would take two weeks to find out what was wrong. The result had been an agonizing eight hours of 100-degree heat while waiting for the next liftcar. Now that his fear of dying from the heat was removed, Ian Lacklin again had time to curse the fates in general and Chancellor Cushman in particular.

  After the initial shock of the Chancellor's news had worn off, Ian had thought that, bureaucrats being what they are, it would take a year at the very least before the mission was cleared for launch. Given that much time, he had naively reasoned there would be ample opportunities to gum up the paperwork into such a tangle that the mission would just keep getting delayed, postponing for­ever the dreaded jump into deep space.

  But he now realized that the Chancellor had been half a dozen moves ahead of him from the beginning. lan's battle plan collapsed in a paper blizzard as the Chancellor outclassed and outmaneuvered him in every bureaucratic strategem possible.

  In the final act of a "team spirit send-off," the Chan­cellor had personally driven Ian and Shelley to the New Bostem airstrip for their connecting flight to the Brasilia Skyhook Station. Shelley and the Chancellor had even managed to have a fairly civil conversation about the prospects before them. As a final gesture he gave them a send-off bouquet of flowers, which made Ian sneeze.

  Ian turned in his seat and gave Shelley an appraising glance. Why he had requested her was beyond him. Per­haps it was revenge for her getting him into the mess. He knew he wasn't attracted to her in any physical way; she was all adolescent angles, even though she was already in her early twenties. She had the air typical of a studious female, one who would forever be bound to a book, wear the most uncomplimentary of heavy wools, and never be cured of near-terminal acne.

  If Shelley had any positive feature, it was her ability to cover his tail when it came to paperwork and organi­zation. Only Shelley could make any sense out of lan's data files—if Ian had to run up his data by himself he would soon be totally lost... lan's contemplation of Shel­ley ended as the liftcraft attendant turned on the infor­mation channel.

  "Welcome to Brasilia Station, Skyhook 4. Your liftcraft is now preparing for departure."

  Shelley turned to Ian with a bewildered look and he realized that her chair speaker was set for Portuguese. Turning the switch on her armrest to English, he settled back and tried to calm his nerves.

  "We apologize for any inconvenience you may have suffered because of the malfunctioning air-conditioning system. Now that you are aboard the liftcraft you may rest assured that our crew will see to your every comfort."

  Some of the hundred-odd passengers laughed, but their biting comments about the competence of the staff and the safety of the liftcraft didn't help Ian in the slightest.

  "Our transit time to Geosync Station 4 will be eleven hours and twenty minutes..." The voice droned on about emergency procedures and safety regulations, but lan's thoughts had already drifted away.

  The liftcar started to shake, and Shelley's hand dug into his forearm. "What was that?" she whispered hoarsely.

  Ian pointed out the window and smiled at her as if she were a naive child.

  "Why, we've started up, that's all."

  The car silently started its ascent up the vertical track, exerting a slight pressure in the pit of his stomach. Sud­denly they cleared the interior of the Brasilia station and broke into the tropical sunlight. Their speed was already better than a kilometer a minute and the ground dropped away. />
  How undramatic this all is, Ian thought sadly, even though he fully realized that he would have been terrified by the old way of trans-Earth lift-off. The days of chemical rockets belching scarlet plumes of incandescent flame were gone forever. Never would he have the chance to go roar­ing into the heavens atop a crackling, thundering throne of fire. That was gone, long since gone—a distant memory already half a hundred years past, now that the Skyhook Towers girdled the equator with a ring of spokes. The towers rose tens of thousands of kilometers to geosync and yet that distance beyond for the necessary counter-weighting. The trip into space was reduced to a simple elevator ride; a very long elevator ride, to be sure, but lacking the thundering grandeur of so long ago.

  Shelley was quickly glued to the window as they rose up and away. At the twenty-kilometer level the curvature of the Earth was ever so slightly visible, and Ian could see the deepening indigo of their destination. Pressing up against the window alongside Shelley, he looked down on the Earth, which was dropping away with ever-increasing speed.

  For long minutes Shelley stayed pressed to the win­dow, until a faint groan sounded alongside her. "Dr. Lacklin, what's wrong?"

  "Just thinking about zero G, that's all"—he moaned feebly—"just thinking about zero G." And he fumbled through the storage pouch alongside his chair, making sure that the white plastic bags were there, ready for his use.

  The acceleration was light but constant, as if a gentle hand were pushing them back into their couches. Zero gravity would not occur until the car arrived at the geosync station, where their velocity in relationship to the Earth would cancel out their potential rate of fall.

  But Ian attempted to divert his thoughts from that dreaded moment by looking out at the indigo band that marked the upper reaches of the Earth's atmosphere.

  As if on cue, the steward appeared, pushing a cart laden with the more potent forms of liquid relaxant. Ian handed over a fiver, pointed with three fingers to a dark amber bottle, and an icy triple of rum was produced.