1,000-Year Voyage (2 page)

Present at the departure ceremony were the People's Prosecutor and the small gathering who had formed themselves into the Government that had deposed Rigilus himself. They now stood in the great control room face to face with the ex-ruler and his colleagues, their animosity typified by the cold barrier that had fallen between them.

“I have executed my duty as I was directed to do,” the People's Prosecutor said, briefly, merely mouthing the words of the legal formula usually meted out to banished travellers, “and thereby, my responsibility ends. You know exactly where your destination will be and no power of yours will alter it. Should you die on the way the ship will continue its journey carrying corpses. And may the Cosmos have mercy upon you….”

Such was the brief, formal ceremony, and then the People's Prosecutor turned and stepped back through the airlock, followed by his colleagues. Rigilus watched them go, a grave smile on his ruggedly-hewn face. He glanced at his comrades for a moment, then turned and crossed to the switchboard moving the lever that quickly closed the immense airlock. The moment the sound of the bolts gliding into place had ceased Rigilus turned and looked about him.

“Upon the injustice of this situation there is very little comment that we can make,” he said, quietly. “The only thing that we can do is make the best of it, and being intelligent men and women, fully gifted with the knowledge of scientific resources we will certainly do that. We are not even burdened with the piloting of the machine since it will pilot itself, so then, let us be on our way. There is just one thing that must be understood before we make our departure, and that is, that within this vessel
I
am still the ruler.”

The others nodded but did not comment. For a reason that Rigilus did not quite comprehend they looked at each other momentarily as though they were exchanging confirmations of some hidden thought. In any case Rigilus was not particularly concerned with his colleagues at the moment, his main objective was to be free of the Earth and out in space where he would be able to plan more freely.

He glanced enquiringly at his comrades. Understanding exactly what he meant they crossed to the airbed racks set against the walls and one by one settled themselves down, buckling the straps across them. Rigilus waited until every one of them was securely bedded down, then he gave his slow, grave smile.

“This, my friends,” he said, quietly, “is quite the most impressive moment in our career. We are abandoning the world of our birth and the Solar System itself, to enter upon a journey the end of which we shall never see. I want each of you to promise now—yes, even before we lift from the surface of the Earth—that you will inculcate into your children nothing but hatred for the world of Earth and the people who now rule it. This moment of monstrous injustice must be avenged no matter how long it takes and no matter how many generations have to be inoculated with the poison of revenge. Do I have promise from each one of you?”

All told there were eleven others besides Rigilus—five men and six women—and although none of them actually spoke each one of them nodded an assent. Rigilus could not help feeling that there was something very perfunctory about that acquiescence, but nevertheless he had to be satisfied with it. He turned to the switchboard, settled in the massive driving seat and then switched on the atomic power engines. Immediately their droning rhythm pervaded the enormous vessel.

As Rigilus well knew there was enough power in atomic form to carry the vessel not for one thousand years but for five thousand if need be, so if by some fluke there ever was a chance of turning back, even when the absolute limit of the journey had been made, the attempt would not be stillborn for lack of fuel.

Such was the final thought that passed through Rigilus' mind before he closed the contact that transferred the enormous potential of power into the rocket jets. The moment that happened the ship lifted with superlative ease, a creation of the finest engineering genius which Earth possessed—which was only another way of saying that Rigilus himself had been the original designer of modern space travel propulsion systems. Because of him space travel had been changed from the dangerous fuel-hungry rocketry that it had been in the beginning to a sublime journeying without any danger between one world and another. True there had been other engineers who had made modifications, but the basis of perfected space travel could always be ascribed to Rigilus I.

Swift as a bird for all its colossal weight, the space liner hurtled far above the master city of the world, the gravity nullifiers operating perfectly to counteract the tremendous drag of the acceleration. Efficient though they were they could not entirely negate that sense of smothering pressures which remained until the vessel was at last clear of the Earth's atmosphere and with every second was beginning to lose the counteracting pull of Earth's own mass.

Rigilus sat on at the controls glancing only occasionally at his supine colleagues. Thus he remained until at last the last traces of gravitational drag had disappeared and the vessel was sweeping onwards into space following the course that the now operative electronic brain had already devised for it. Once free of the Earth's pull, the ship continued to accelerate steadily, and this, combined with the activation of the gravity-plates under the deck, combined to give the effect of an Earth-normal gravity to the travellers.

Rigilus checked the instruments and then got up from his chair, moving thoughtfully into the centre of the control room. He stood there debating whilst his comrades released themselves from their airbeds. One by one they came across to him and there was something in their expressions that he could not quite understand, particularly in the faces of the women.

“Something is troubling you, my friends,” he remarked, towering amongst them, “unfortunately we have plenty of time in which to debate whatever it might be. Perhaps you would care to tell me?”

“That is precisely our purpose. If you will be so good as to come into the lounge, Rigilus,” one of the men responded, “we will make clear what is in our minds.”

Rigilus gave a long, searching look, then with a shrug he complied leading the way down the long corridor into the enormous lounge through the window of which the great rim of the receding Earth loomed against the black void.

With his usual majestic movements Rigilus seated himself and then raised tufted eyebrows enquiringly. Like a debating society the men and women drew up chairs and settled themselves regarding him steadily. He could not escape the certain air of accusation that hung around.

“Rigilus,” one of the men said, at length, looking at him steadily, “you know me well enough to understand that I am well entitled to speak for the others?”

“Well of course, Randos,” Rigilus responded, smiling. “You have been my first in command for long enough. What is it that you wish to tell me?”

“Just this. We have been considering among ourselves the scheme of vengeance that you insist must be inculcated into whatever generations follow us. I am speaking for everybody here when I say that we are not in agreement with your suggestion.”

“Since when,” Rigilus asked calmly, “have you taken it upon yourselves to question my edicts? I have said what must be done, Randos, and done it shall be.”

“Not in this instance. You are forgetting, Rigilus, that you are no longer master of the world and ourselves the members of your immediate clique. You are simply the commander of a space machine on a one thousand year journey. Or, to reduce things to a more common denominator, you are one of us! Ten of us are against your decision and no power that you possess can make us change it!”

“All else apart,” Rigilus said, puzzled, “I'm quite at a loss to understand why you should be willing to bow to the so-called justice of Earth people and do absolutely nothing about it. Am I to understand that you consider the sentence passed upon us was entirely justified?”

“That,” Randos replied, “is neither here nor there. For one thing we can never live to see the result of this scheme of vengeance and therefore it has little or no attraction for us. You have only one supporter in your desire for revenge, Rigilus, and that is Merva Ansof.”

Randos nodded towards her, a slim, dark, intensely sophisticated woman, one who had been Rigilus' right hand through the latter years of his Earthly campaign. She was still only young, but as cool, efficient, and as ruthless as an electronic brain itself.

“At least,” Rigilus remarked, glancing towards her and giving a slight inclination of his head, “it is pleasant to know that I have one supporter.”

“Two against ten,” Randos pointed out. “All the rest of us here are married couples, only you and Merva Ansof are not married. Obviously if the far flung destination of the Alpha Centauri is ever to be reached we must have children, and they in turn must have their children and so on and so on generation after generation until there finally comes that generation which will end the voyage.
But
we none of us propose to bring into this space machine children who will be brought up on nothing else but the gospel of vengeance.

“We prefer to look upon what has happened to us as something which is entirely connected with
our
generation and with that, let it die. Let our children's children find a world on which to start again and not be clouded with the knowledge that they must return across this awful waste of space to deal with the successors of those who banished us.”

Rigilus mused, his massive face thrown half into shadow by the brilliance of sunlight on one side and the pale orange glow of the ceiling lights on the other. Merva Ansof stirred very slightly, her cold green eyes surveying the rest of the assembly with a shattering contempt.

“Fools, all of you,” she said at length, in her low contralto voice. “You are content to let these idiots of Earth do what they will to us and not exact any payment for it? I would be prepared to have children—yes, by Rigilus if need be and if he were willing—and into them I would inculcate day and night by every possible human and mechanical means, the need for revenge! I would educate them upon nothing else but revenge and the scientific powers necessary to accomplish that revenge. That all of you can so lightly set aside the monstrous injustice that has been done to us is something that I cannot understand!”

“One as soulless as you never
will
understand,” one of the women answered quietly.

“I am not soulless,” Merva answered, coolly. “I am merely efficient. But I am the last one to attempt to judge my own character. I will leave it to you, Rigilus, to say what kind of a woman I am.”

“Hard, my dear,” Rigilus smiled. arising from his deep meditations. “Hard as a diamond, yet just as brilliant. Like you, though, I am somewhat puzzled by this humane streak which has developed in the rest of our friends. And not for one moment do I accede. I have stated what must be done and as the commander of the ship I order that there be no diversion from that instruction. You will see to it that progeny are produced and that the necessary doctrine is inoculated in them.”

“No,” Randos said, shaking his head. “We are firmly resolved on that, and any attempt on your part to force the issue, Rigilus, will make things decidedly unpleasant all round.”

Merva Ansof sprang to her feet, a tall lioness of a woman, her fists clenched at her sides. Fiercely she looked round on her colleagues, her marble-white face set with the most ferocious determination.

“Do all of you dare suggest that we crawl out into the void like spineless amoeba, without intelligence, or without the capacity to inflict reprisal upon those who have condemned us to this fate?

“Can you, as men and women of the past regime, so completely forget that Rigilus gave us all the power of the solar system and yet now, when he asks you for the means to give strength back to the future generations, you refuse to comply? You should be ashamed of yourselves, every one of you!”

Rigilus had risen too, standing beside the incensed woman. His massive hand gently touched her arm.

“This is a matter which cannot be done by compulsion,” he said, quietly, “only by co-operation. The fact remains that if no progeny are produced our plan of vengeance is useless anyway, because we shall all die in this space machine long before the journey is completed and with our dying, the tale will have been told.

“Consider it another way, my friends,” he continued, looking on the serious faces around him. “Supposing you follow out the course which you wish—supposing children are born aboard this vessel. They are bound, in course of time, to ask many questions, many of them awkward ones, especially as to why they are living aboard a space ship when they ought to be living on the surface of a planet.”

“They will never know that they should be living on the face of a planet unless we tell them so,” Randos pointed out.

Rigilus shook his head. “You know better than that, my friend. Inherent in every human being is the instinct of where he ought to live, and if he is not in the conditions which are normal to his environment, he is bound sooner or later to wonder why, and inevitably he will ask those whom he feels do know the answer. You will be forced to the point finally of admitting that you have been banished from the world where you ought to be and I hardly think I need add what your children's reactions will be to that.

“They will have within them, knowing you as I do, the proud arrogance of those who have been masters, and they will not be inclined to lie down to the simple truth that their parents have been banished from a planet and nothing has been done about it. It is then that you will appreciate the wisdom of my doctrine. So I beg of you to forget this sentimentality—this archaic inclination to forgive your enemies—and bring into the world future men and women who can hand on to their children the knowledge of how to hit back. We have done nothing of which we need be ashamed. If that were so I would not be so insistent on this scheme of revenge. All that we did was build up the civilisations of Earth from the lowliest beginnings to the greatest of heights. For that we have been banished to the furthest deeps of the Universe and for that we rightly demand a price. Now my friends, make your choice!”