Into the Sea of Stars Page 6

  The object should have filled him with blind terror, but for some reason Ian felt a certain sense of quiet resolution. The Montezuma and Cortez argument was never far from his mind these days. He was a historian and knew the possibilities.

  So he had, asked Stasz not to tell the others about the device. Cortez had burned his ships to prevent his men from escaping from the expedition. Ian tried to push the thought aside that he might have to burn his ship, as well, before the expedition ended.

  It was no surprise to Ian that Ellen's dinner was ex­cellent. She had even produced the right wine for the occasion, and after the first bottle of Brinar Chablis '64, Richard had, for the moment at least, settled into a polite conversation with their hostess for the evening.

  "But, Ellen, I thought you objected to spirits. Eight weeks ago you wanted to dump my treasured emergency rations overboard."

  "You mean that I wanted to lighten our vessel of a noxious brew one step removed from rat poison." Ellen smiled for a moment, her freckled face lighting up with a malevolent glow. "Of course, it was a mistake, my dear Richard."

  "I'm glad to hear you say that. And I must in return compliment you for this amazing repast."

  "I am thankful for your appreciation, Richard, and I was going to say my earlier move was a mistake. You see, I think keeping that rat poison was just perfect, con­sidering who I hope it will eliminate."

  "Charmed, Ellen, simply charmed," Richard muttered as he produced a cigar and prepared to ignite it. Ian feared an explosion on her part and he knew Richard was simply baiting her. He could see her seething under the red-faced smile but she didn't let go, and there was an almost audible sigh of relief around the table.

  Of course, he could half guess the reason—she would occasionally smile in Stasz's direction. So, the cabin fever was already setting in, and her original disdain for the "ship's driver" was starting to thin. Stasz was attempting to ignore her, but that was difficult with only five people in the room. As the light conversation flowed back and forth, Ian was fascinated by the subtle interplay between the two of them as Ellen tried not to appear obvious, Stasz tried to ignore her while making yet another pass at Shelley, and Richard laid out bait and traps for both of them to fall into.

  Well, this craft is turning in a regular little potboiler, Ian thought as he settled back into his chair, bumming one of Richard's precious cigars.

  He was lost in thought for several minutes until Shel­ley's voice brought him back into the conversation's flow.

  "I said, don't you agree, Doctor?"

  "Agree, ahhh, I'll have to think—"

  "You weren't listening again." There was a soft chas­tisement in her voice, like a mother gently scolding a favorite child. "I was saying that I think the Chancellor is most likely the head of the Provincial Department of Educational Services by now."

  They fell silent for a moment.

  "Yeah, his glory, our lives," Richard muttered.

  "It might be a little more complex than that," Shelley responded. "After all, he had a number of reasons for putting you three out here. You were all known to be an opposition to him in the faculty, and as part of the pro­motion process, you people would be able to evaluate him. I think, however, that there might be more to it than that."

  Suddenly their conversation was drowned out by the electronic wail of the ship's alarm. Ian could feel his heart flutter on the edge of a palpitation. Ellen assumed her classic "oh, my, I'm so flustered" pose. Richard attempted to gently pull on his cigar and exhale with a display of panache, but the sudden tremble of his hand gave it away. Only Shelley and Stasz broke the tableau and, pushing away from the table, they ran forward to the control cen­ter. The ship suddenly lurched and there was a momentary sensation of falling away as the vessel performed a radical shift in its course and the dampening system overloaded in an attempt to compensate.

  "Debris or asteroid," Richard muttered.

  "Holy shit!" It was Stasz's voice echoing down the corridor.

  "Dr. Lacklin, come quickly!" Shelley cried.

  Ian got up from the table and, with a show of bravado, he looked at Ellen and smiled.

  "Would you mind clearing the dishes, Ellen, while I attend to the problem up forward."

  "Shove the damn dishes," Ellen snapped, "let our fat medico scrub them." Pushing Ian aside, she started for­ward, with Ian at her heels.

  Entering the forward cabin, they climbed to the com­mand and control center, where Stasz was already strapped into his couch with Shelley in the nav-com position beside him. The vessel lurched again, nearly knocking Ian off his feet. Climbing up the ladder, he finally came up along­side of Ellen, who was peering over Stasz's shoulder at a display board that was all but incomprehensible to him.

  "How bad is it?" Ian whispered.

  "Bad? It's fantastic," Shelley exulted. "We might have something."

  "What!"

  "Hang on a minute, Doc," Stasz muttered as his fingers raced across the control panel. Hooking on his mike, he watched the display for a moment then started calling up more data.

  "Confirm, configuration, ship relative 21.34.45.01 hours R.A., 00,02 Dec."

  Within seconds the data design snapped across the largest of the monitors on the display board.

  "Jesus, it's a thousand K across," Stasz murmured. "I think we've definitely got something here."

  "What is?" Ellen asked.

  "That's why the alarm went off. I programmed ship's nav to sound an alarm and automatically home onto any largely metallic, object we encountered. Well, here we are."

  Stasz looked over his shoulder and smiled at Ian.

  "You're in luck, Doc, I think we've just found your first colony."

  "But a thousand K across? They never built anything that big," Ian muttered.

  "Yes they did," Shelley said meekly, fearful at cor­recting her mentor. "Solar sails."

  "But out here, why keep them deployed? The solar wind is negligible. There isn't any evidence of a laser drive base behind them."

  "We'll soon find out why," Stasz interjected. "Our ship has already locked on and is three days out with only a mild deviation from our original course."

  He scanned the display board again, called for a re­confirm, then looked back at Ian with a puzzled expres­sion.

  "Curious."

  "What's that?"

  "They're heading inbound toward Earth at point zero one two L.S. I thought you said all these guys were trying to get away. This one is hanging sails to the wind where there is no wind and running inbound."

  Ian looked at the display showing him that soon he would come face to face with a world out of the past.

  He felt the cold stir of fear.

  Chapter 5

  Colonial Unit 181

  First Completion Date: 2031

  Primary Function: Standard Japanese Colonial/Manufac­turing Unit

  Evacuation Date: Estimated June 2083, one of the first units recorded to have completed its conversion and departure.

  Overall Design: Standard Mitsubishi Design Unit Double Torus. Maximum Population Potential (MPP) of 37,500 with standard mix of software/hardware industry and experimental design work on self-replicating process­ing system.

  Propulsion: Solar Sail with matter/antimatter boost.

  Course: Galactic Core.

  Political/Social Orientation: Hierarchical Corporate Model with head of each family responding to subsystem leader. Standard Social Orientation and Interactive Systems.

  "Program engage, jump-down to match V-l, target Al­pha, close to point zero zero one A.U., engage."

  Stasz turned in his couch and smiled at the rest of the crew. "Be sure you're strapped in," he said with a laugh. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the half-chewed stub of an unlit cigar and waved it at Shelley.

  "You sure that belt is strapped tight? I don't want you falling out of your couch, the way you did last time," He reached over as if to help her, but she hurriedly showed him that it was snugged in tight around
her hips and the cross belting of the shoulder harness was properly se­cured.

  A high-pitched warning Klaxon sounded—the thirty-second mark to jump down.

  "Don't worry, folks, this one ain't so dangerous. Only a point twenty-four percent probability of disintegration."

  "How reassuring," Ellen whispered.

  It was their second jump of the day, the last one having been completed only minutes earlier. They had closed in on their target and jumped down to a relative speed of zero in relation to their original trajectory. But since the target was in fact inbound toward Earth, they were taking a short jump to close to maneuvering range.

  "Ten seconds and sequencing start."

  Ian could feel the inertia-dampening system hum to life, and it was almost a signal for his stomach to get ready with its usual reaction.

  The jump-down hit. Overall velocity was still sublight so the effects weren't too bad, but it still took Shelley several minutes to help Ian with his post-jump cleanup.

  Ian could hear the soft gasps of astonishment from Richard and Ellen, and looking past his own tragic prob­lems, he saw a sight that was stunning, after weeks of Doppler-shifted light.

  Even from thousands of K out, the sails of the vessel filled a good part of their visual range.

  "Look, Ian, I think it's a double torus," Shelley said.

  Ian realized that for the first time she wasn't calling him Dr. Lacklin.

  Ian looked to Stasz's radar display and Shelley's keen vision was confirmed by the screen. A standard double torus. Not the most efficient design, but fairly popular nevertheless.

  "Do you have any idea which one it is?" Ellen asked.

  "Too early to tell. Shelley, could you access my ship configuration data file? Cross-check it with known double torus designs that headed out on this trajectory."

  She started working while the others fell into silence as the vessel and its sails filled an ever-larger portion of their field of view. Stasz had programmed their jump to perfection, with just enough residual velocity so they could safely close in.

  Ian suddenly realized he was trembling. He wasn't sure if it was from fear, anticipation, or, most likely, a healthy mixture of both.

  "I know how you feel, my dear friend," Richard said, patting him on the shoulder. "The first night of my mar­riage to Ethel, I was trembling just like you."

  "And she was most likely trembling with disgust until she finally got that divorce," Ellen whispered sotto voce.

  It broke the tension enough that all of them could laugh for a minute.

  As they watched, the double ring came closer into view, so that its central support shaft could soon be made out in the faint glow of deep space starlight.

  "Have you set the radio for the frequencies I sug­gested?" Ian asked.

  "The signal will pulse out on all frequencies you men­tioned, along with several I think might be worth looking into."

  Ian activated his headset and nodded for Stasz to open the line.

  He looked around at his colleagues and tried to conjure up the correct words in Old English.

  "This is Earth vessel Discovery calling, Earth vessel Discovery. Please respond."

  Nothing.

  "Asleep at the switchboard most likely," Stasz said in a reassuring voice. "Hell, there can be times when no one is on the com for hours. I daresay they don't expect a visitor to drop in every day, the way we do."

  "This is Earth research vessel Discovery approaching and requesting docking information."

  "Ah, Dr. Lacklin, try Japanese," Shelley said.

  "How's that?"

  "According to your data, there were twenty-three dou­ble torus designs, of which eight used sails. And of those eight, six were Japanese."

  He tried to remember his Old Japanese, and after a minute or so, he believed he got off a reasonable message. Still no response, so Stasz looped recording of lan's re­quest while they settled back.

  "These ships have automatic piloting systems that de­tect and give alarm for any object bigger than a pea that approaches within ten thousand K," Ian said softly. "It could be that no one has gotten into the control room yet. If anyone's alive in there."

  "There's significant damage to the sail area," Stasz interjected. "Number of lines parted, numerous punc­tures, I detect holes larger than one K in the central area. And I think we're picking up a reading here that indicates a significant holing on the main shaft of the vessel."

  "We'll soon know," Ian muttered as they continued to close in.

  Ian had read about them for years and had watched them on countless videos, but nothing, absolutely nothing had prepared him for the sheer awesome size of a colonial unit. It filled the entire sky, as if it would somehow en­compass the universe. Nothing in his experience could possibly compare with the massive double-curve sweep of the twin torus that slowly wheeled on either side of them as they closed in toward the docking ring on the main shaft.

  The sheer mass of the object was enough to create a minor gravitational disturbance that required Stasz to pro­vide a slightly increased deceleration as they closed in.

  As the four of them floated toward the docking bay, Shelley passed out hard copies of the ship's design and schematics of the blueprints now that the particular des­ignation of the ship had been confirmed by exterior mark­ings. They had already detected half a dozen unrepaired holes in the vessel, one of them a twenty-meter puncture through the main shaft. So there was little if any hope of finding any life.

  Ian was dreading the encounter for fear of what he would find. In the three hours of closing there had been no signal of any kind. There was no sign of interior lighting and no heat dissipation from the coolant radiators.

  Sealing himself into his bulky pressure suit, Ian settled into the docking bay and waited, listening intently as Stasz called out the ever-closing range.

  There was a faint jar as the adjustable docking unit connected with the hull of the other ship. The green light over the docking-bay hatch turned yellow, and he could feel the pressure suit crinkling as the docking chamber depressurized.

  The light overhead changed to red. Ian looked at the other three and nodded. There they were, four heroes, ready to go forward in the name of Democratic Bureau­cracy. Four heroes, and he couldn't help but laugh, his high-pitched giggle sounding somewhat foolish and slightly hysterical.

  He punched the button in front of him and the hatch slid open. They were locked up against the side of the colony, pressed against a nonrotating collar in the middle of the central shaft. A manual docking door was in front of him, instructions in Japanese, English, and Russian written across it.

  Within seconds he had deciphered their meaning, and, grabbing the two handles alongside the door, Ian at­tempted to rotate them.

  He spun in the opposite direction.

  After several minutes of cursing and sweating, the other three helped brace him into position and he tried again.

  As if on rusted hinges, the handles gave way slowly then suddenly they broke free and started to spin of their own volition. The doorway slid open. A slight puff of air came out of the ship. Ian looked up and his mind blanked out in horror as the ship's radio overloaded with his hysterical screams.

  Ellen was back in the corner, still clawing at the escape latch back into their own ship, which would not open with the outside door unlatched. Yes, he could see that now. Panicked, Ian looked around, the only sound his own convulsive breathing and Ellen's soft whimpers coming over the radio set.

  "Ian, it's all right, it's all right." It was a soft, soothing voice. Richard, yes, it was Richard.

  He could feel the hands on his shoulder. His friend's face was barely visible behind the helmet, and his own vision was obscured by the moisture from his hyperven-tilation.

  He looked back and started to turn his head.

  "No, not yet, Ian. Don't look back until you're ready."

  "What—" He started to sob again. "What—Richard, what is it?"

  "It's a
body, Ian," Richard said softly, "it's nothing but a body mummified by the low pressure and dry air. It can't hurt you now, Ian. He just gave you a start when the change in pressure made him drift out of the airlock toward you."

  "Yeah, just a start." Ian could feel his self-possession on the edge of falling apart again.

  "Take a few more deep breaths and when you feel ready you can turn around."

  "Where is he?"

  "Shelley moved him back into the colony's airlock. She's waiting for us in there. I'm going over to Ellen now." He let go of Ian, and, pushing off from the wall, he floated over to where Ellen hung like a cat clinging to a sheer wall. Her sobbing still filled the headset.

  Ian took a couple of more deep breaths and slowly turned.

  As she poked around the interior of the colony's air­lock, Shelley was barely visible except for her headlamp. While she searched around, she absently hung on to the mummified body with one hand.

  Bracing himself, Ian pushed forward into the ship.

  "Dr. Lacklin, I've found the airlock into the main cor­ridor of the central shaft.

  "Wait a minute, we better close the hatch behind us before continuing on in."

  Ian looked back toward Richard and Ellen.

  "Go on without us," Richard said. "I'm taking Ellen back in and giving her a stress pill."

  Stress pill! Hell, he was the one the damn mummy banged into. Out of the corner of his eye he examined the body that Shelley was still hanging on to. A cold grimace of desiccated flesh and bone stared back at him out of lifeless, haunting sockets. He looked away.

  Shelley, ignoring his fear, floated back to the docking door and closed it. Looking around the room, she noticed some Velcro stripping along one wall and without any ceremony pushed the mummy up against it. The fastabs on the body's uniform locked him into place. Leaving him on the wall, she floated back to Ian.

  As she passed by him there was a flash of a smile that made Ian shudder. She was enjoying this!

  "Want me to open this one?" she asked.

  He nodded and closed his eyes. Would he ever be able to open a door again?