Into the Sea of Stars Page 5

"You want the job?" Ian asked hopefully.

  "Are you crazy? At least you're sober more than half the time." He paused.

  "There's always Ellen..."

  "She'd push both of us out the airlock at the first chance, if we ever gave command to her," Ian replied sadly.

  "And after that 'crazy Stasz plays with star drive' routine, I think that issue is settled, as well," Richard responded. "So, friend, that leaves only you—a woolly-headed, slightly wimpish, and, in fact, altogether cow­ardly history professor as our fearless leader. Think of it, Ian, you might be famous someday—statues to our five-and-a-half-foot, overweight, bespectacled, receding hairlined..."

  "Enough. You know, Richard, you're a great psychol­ogist and a real help to someone's fragile ego."

  "Oh, come on, Ian, you'll do all right. After all, if we don't come back, well, I guess that means we don't come back."

  "Remarkably profound of you."

  "Have another pull then, my friend, and let thine ego be restored."

  For several long minutes the two friends sat in silence. Richard, not making the situation easy on Ian, kept him under a steady stare, trying to hold eye contact that Ian attempted to avoid. Finally the barrier broke down.

  "There's one other thing," Ian whispered.

  "I thought so." And there was no note of triumph in his voice, but rather a genuine sense of concern. Some­thing had been gnawing at Ian from the moment of de­parture; maybe he'd finally get the answer.

  "You know history is not the most popular of subjects back home," Ian said sadly. "What with this New Re­naissance of High Tech that everyone is chasing, some of the early lessons have been forgotten. But ever since we launched, I've been thinking about a point that I daresay the folks back home never considered."

  "And that is?"

  "Montezuma and Cortez."

  "I don't follow you."

  "You know the story—Cortez and his six hundred kicked the Aztec Empire into oblivion."

  "Yeah, I have some faint recollection of it."

  "I've been thinking, you know, just letting my imagi­nation run. Suppose Cortez had mixed it up with some­thing different, something with, say, nukes—what would have happened to Spain then?"

  "You've got me, Ian, Let's hear this theory of yours."

  "I know these people, these people out of our past. I know them better than I know my neighbor, my students, or in some ways, even you, my friend. You see, Richard, I've devoted my life to studying those explorers and set­tlers out of the long-distant twenty-first century. I can speak Old English, Old Russian, and Old Japanese fluently, and I can get by in half a dozen others. I've read every single text and document that deals with the great Exodus. I feel more at home with the people of that period than I do in my own age. I can sense their wonder, their purpose, their passionate drive to settle space."

  His voice drifted off for a moment, as if he was lost in thought, then suddenly he continued.

  "Theirs was a grand epic, Richard, those first explorers, and now I'm afraid."

  "Why?"

  "Can't you see? To me it is a dream, a romance. Haven't you ever idealized a woman from afar? Think back to when you were young, Richard. Think of that heart-stopping moment, when the mere sight of her was enough."

  Richard smiled vaguely and nodded.

  "That is the life of a historian. An idealized romance from afar. And remember this, as well, Richard, remember when she was no longer idealized but came to your embrace. And then what finally happened?"

  And Richard nodded sadly and understood.

  "That is my first fear, my friend. The fear that an ide­alist has when reality finally confronts him. But the fears run deeper."

  "As is to be expected from a typically neurotic type such as yourself. Hell, man, you wouldn't be happy if you only had one level of fear."

  Ian shot him a look of reproach.

  "Sorry. Go on then."

  "As I said, I know these people better than I know my own contemporaries. I know the circumstances of why and how they left. Richard, with well over half a thousand units somewhere out there, has one of them ever come back?"

  "Well, as I understand it, you just can't turn a million tons of mass around and 'come back,' as you say. At least I know that much about physics. The energy requirements alone—"

  "Ah, but we're talking about ten centuries, my friend. Why didn't our exploratory teams to the nearest fifteen stars find some sign of them? By God, man, it's logical to assume that some of them would have checked out Centauri or Barnard's. Damn it, there's even a gas giant and iron-nickel asteroids around Barnard's. But we didn't find a single sign of them there. And for that matter, one of them could easily have looped around a star and re­turned. But not a sign, not a single damn sign."

  "And you mention the exploratory teams that haven't come back."

  "I've wondered on that, as well, and I'll place good money that our friend Stasz thinks about it."

  "What are you driving at, then?"

  "Suppose they found something that wouldn't let them come back?"

  "Come on now, Ian, when I said you were neurotic I was serious, but good heavens, man, don't make me di­agnose you as a paranoid, as well."

  "Interesting comment, Richard, 'good heavens.' What makes us associate the two?" Ian muttered as if musing to himself. "Must be medieval tradition and concepts. The heavens aren't good, Richard, they'll kill you in an in­stant. Just think, man, we've got this thin wall"—he tapped the side of the hull, which echoed hollow in the room. "That and an ethereal force field beyond are our only protection as we slip by at translight speed. Think if the nav system miscalculated and ran us up on a chunk of rock bigger than my fist, you wouldn't have 'good heav­ens' then."

  "Stop trying to make me paranoid, too," Richard mut­tered. And with his eyes fixed on the hull behind Ian, he washed down another swallow of gin.

  "But don't worry about it," Ian said with a soft smile, obviously pleased that he had caused a spark of fear in the usually unflappable Richard. "If it did happen there would be such a tremendous flash of energy that we would be vaporized before our synapses could register one screaming instant of fear."

  "Aren't you comforting."

  As if in response, a faint shudder ran through the vessel and Richard winced. lan's heart skipped a beat, but he tried not to show it. The translight nav system worked after all, even while they were talking; sensing an ap­proaching obstacle, it had shifted them around the mass, the inertia-damping system compensating for all but a fraction of the lateral forces.

  "Shall we return to what you were saying?" Richard said softly.

  "Ah, yes, my fears of the hostile universe. After all, if one is going to be afraid, why not make it a really big fear? Why not fear the whole universe? Tell me, good doctor, is there a word in your lexicon for an abnormal fear of the entire universe?"

  Richard wasn't sure if Ian was joking or not, and he thought it best at this point not to find out.

  "Do you mean a fear of alien life forms?"

  "Perhaps. Remember, Doctor, we've only had faster-than-light travel for the last ten years. In fact, in this obsolete first-generation hulk, we will be venturing out farther than anyone from our century has dared, so far. Maybe we'll meet aliens, but I must confess that I doubt it. No, Richard, I'm sorry to say that I think we here at the far end of his neglected corner of the cosmos are truly alone."

  "So what else is there?"

  "Ourselves."

  "You mean Ellen or Stasz or, heaven forbid, that as­sistant of yours. You think that kid is going to get seized by a transport of sexual frenzy and murder everyone else so that she can have you to herself." Richard chuckled slightly at the image of lan's acned assistant suddenly unchained of her prim and proper nature, and as the image flowed, he realized that in fact it could be quite interest­ing.

  "Come now, Richard. Shelley sees nothing in me. Our relationship is purely professional. I needed an assistant to manage my data during this
trip, and since she wrote the damned grant, I figured she'd be the one to do it. But let's get serious now. When I said 'ourselves,' I meant it collectively."

  "You mean those already out there."

  "Precisely, Richard. We've set off on this voyage to find the Lost Colonies. 'Lost Colonies.' Lost by who's definition? They left us, didn't they? Have any of them come back?"

  "No. At least, not that we know of."

  "Then are they really lost? Damn it, man, it's not like some sixteenth-century sailor getting lost in the Pacific. The colonies left us of their own free will—they left us of their own free will, and maybe they don't want anything to do with us."

  "I think that thought's a little foolish," Richard re­sponded. "After nearly eleven centuries they most likely would be damn glad to get at least one letter from home."

  "Maybe they would, but I'm fearful that some might not want us to drop in for a visit."

  "Then if that's the case, we'll just thumb our noses, hook on the translight drive, and tell them to eat our cosmic dust."

  "Don't be so superior about it. That's the biggest trap of all in this game."

  "Come on, Ian, aren't you overreacting a bit? If they don't want to see us, that's fine with me. In fact, I really don't give a damn if I see them or not. No, let me rephrase that. I might want to find a colony if they have the right women. Didn't you say that one of the colonies was a women's consciousness group, and no men were al­lowed?"

  "Yeah, Colony 122. It set off in this general direction. Reports indicate they had stored enough fertilized em­bryos and frozen sperm to keep them going for a hundred generations."

  "What a paradise."

  "I should drop you off on the all-male Colony 123."

  "Maroon Ellen there. They wouldn't know what to do with her anyhow."

  "Now, Richard!"

  "It is a charming thought, though, isn't it?" Richard tried to stand up but merely succeeded in banging his head against a locker.

  "Speaking of Ellen, that reminds me. She sent me off to look for you. She's planned one of her alleged gourmet meals and wanted your opinion on an arcane formula for something called brie."

  "Popular late twentienth-century cheese. Quite big among the alleged intelligentsia. I think I could help her out."

  "Well, you better join her in the galley. She wants to serve up a genuine twentieth-century meal."

  "God help us."

  Richard turned and started to crawl out of lan's hiding spot.

  Suddenly lan's hand was on his shoulder, restraining him. He looked back and saw the strain on lan's face.

  "What is it?"

  "I haven't said it all," Ian whispered.

  Richard settled back down.

  "Go on then."

  "Ellen's dinner points it out."

  "How's that?"

  "You, Shelley, the Chancellor, in fact, everyone en­visions this voyage as a trip to find the Lost Colonies from eleven centuries ago. Look at Ellen: She's cooking up a dinner from the twentieth century as if she half ex­pects that we'll dock with a colony and they'll come pour­ing aboard in polyester leisure suits, listening to Glenn Miller music, and ask us how our 'personal space' is."

  Ian stopped for a moment and looked at Richard in exasperation. "Well, you're all wrong, all of you. It is the ancestors of the people that left eleven centuries ago that we are now looking for. They've had eleven hundred years to progress without the interruption of the Holocaust War. Good lord, Richard, that war took eight hundred years to recover from. Eight hundred years that we lived on the edge of extinction, and only in the last hundred years or so have we again equaled the accomplishments of the late twenty-first century. But those units that left us left in­tact—their memory banks laden with the sum total of man's knowledge to work on. It's estimated by some— Beaulieu, for example—that we've lost in excess of ninety-five percent of all records before 2087."

  "So think of the opportunity," Richard said soothingly.

  "Just think of it, man, you're the historian. You should be ready to kill for this chance—just to get aboard one of those ships and to be able to tap into its library. Damn it, Ian, just one ship's library would fill our computer memories to capacity, and still there wouldn't be enough. Return with that, my friend, and then see your books get published. Why, I didn't even think of that—all of us could get published and get on all the telepix interviews. We'd make a bundle, we would."

  "Richard, just listen. You've heard of the Vikings, haven't you?"

  "Barbarians from around the eighteenth century, right?"

  "Close enough. Now just picture a Viking wandering into our society. How would we receive him?"

  "Lock him up, most likely."

  "My point is made."

  "Come on, Ian, we're no Barbarians."

  "To them we might be. After all, they've got an eleven-hundred year jump on us if they progressed after their departure."

  "If they've progressed. Remember, you yourself said they were closed ecosystems—chances are they're all dead. Anyway, I remember that there were quite a few on Earth that tried to adopt a steady-state system when the fear of shortages hit in the late-twentieth century. You yourself advanced the theory in your manuscript that in a small, closed ecosystem innovation and progress would probably be banned. So with that logic, chances are they've not gone much beyond our own capabilities."

  Richard took another tug off the bottle and offered it to Ian. To be polite, he took another swig and then handed it back.

  "So there, argument settled then."

  "Yeah, I guess so," Ian replied reluctantly.

  "You better get back to the galley. I bet Ellen is already at a rolling boil."

  "Tell her I'll be along in a moment or two."

  "All right."

  Richard crawled out. And, standing up with a groan, he started for the door. Stopping, he turned and gave Ian a mischievous smile.

  "Think we might find Colony 122? You know, the wom­en's group."

  "I don't think so, but if we do, what makes you think they'll take you?"

  "Hell, Ian, remember I used to be M.D. at the Auraria Normal College for Women, in the Dakota Territories."

  "And you barely made it across the border before you were arrested for malpractice and morals charges."

  "Ah, now, Ian, you know my uncle the regent of med­icine was able to prove the lie those humorless people had perpetrated against me." With a laugh he closed the door behind him.

  Colony 122, Ian thought. That would be one of the easy ones. It was the 500 series that he had not discussed with Richard. The last ones up, built in the 70s and 80s. The exiles. A fair percentage of them had headed in to­ward the galactic center along with the more innocuous 1-400 series. What really scared him was the exile units and the 500 series. They might be ticking bombs. They were the disenfranchised, the dispossessed of a world tottering toward war—the refugee colonies and the col­onies made up of entire ethnic and political groups exiled away from Earth. The 500 series with its liberation groups: the Kurd nationalists, the Botswanian Liberation Group, Dr. Franklin-Smith's political penal unit, or L-3 519, and the Pan-Zionist Russian Nationalists. It was groups like that which gave Ian the real fear that he could not express to his comrades.

  Such groups seemed slightly romantic now. They were romantic because 1100 years separated them from the present. And as long as they were so distant, they were safe and fascinating to an age now safely run by the Democratic Bureaucracy, wherein nothing could overcome the inertia of the worldwide state. But he could come face to face with the direct descendants of groups that might not feel too friendly about Earth, and the thought gave him the chills.

  He stood up, stretched, and turning, looked down at the small suitcase-size crate that he had been sitting on. Stasz had pointed it out to him while doing an inventory.

  Ian had been sitting on a thermomine, a nuclear device capable of vaporizing a quarter-mile asteroid or a million-ton colony in a flash. The Discovery had ca
rried hundreds of such mines when it briefly served on a navigation-clearing detail just before being turned over to the grant foundation. This one mine had not been removed, either through an oversight, or because the logistics officer didn't want to go through the paperwork necessary to remove a thermo device and transport it down to Earth.

  Ian gazed at the crate, his curiosity aroused. Finally it got the better of him and he unsnapped the fasteners that held the box shut then peeked inside. It was a little dis­appointing somehow; he had expected warning signs and sirens to flash on and the mine to look like some incar­nation of evil.

  It was simply an ugly black ball with half a dozen silver projections locked upright. An instruction manual was hooked to one of the projections; picking the booklet up, he flipped it open.

  Notice from the Manufacturer—Clearance Assured Inc.

  Congratulations on selection of the enhanced AB-. 23A adjustable-blast clearance apparatus. Satisfaction assured when operated properly. Any and all complaints looked into at once by our experienced quality control personnel.

  Be sure to read this operations manual and attached errata sheet before attempting use.

  Ian skimmed through the booklet and found the errata sheet. It was printed in bright red ink. He examined it closely.

  Warning!!! Warning!!! Warning!!! Starting with the 23A series, arming achieved by pushing down all six levers which will trigger warning devices. In response to complaints that dropping the device in gravity conditions might cause it to detonate, an additional triggering is now required. To activate FINAL COUNT DOWN: pull up, repeat, pull up last lever. Unless otherwise programmed, detona­tion will then occur in ninety seconds. Nonradio detonation has been chosen to prevent arming by high solar activity or broadcast from transmitters in nearby spacecraft. Check your manual for timer set­tings. Default detonation interval is 90 seconds. This safety feature is added at the request of former dis­satisfied users, their heirs, and assigns and has been implemented for your convenience.

  Ian stuffed the sheet into the middle of the book. Then, closing the case to the mine, he stuck the booklet into his back pocket.