New Frontiers (7 page)

The big oaf pressed the buzzer again.

Thoroughly piqued at the interruption—no, the invasion of his privacy—Ignatiev growled, “Go away.”

“Dr. Ignatiev,” the Armenian called. “Please.”

Ignatiev closed his eyes and wished that Gregorian would disappear. But when he opened them again the man was still at his door, fidgeting nervously.

Ignatiev surrendered. “Enter,” he muttered.

The door slid back and Gregorian ambled in, his angular face serious, almost somber. His usual lopsided grin was nowhere to be seen.

“I'm sorry to intrude on you, Dr. Ignatiev,” said the engineer.

Leaning back in his desk chair to peer up at Gregorian, Ignatiev said, “It must be something terribly important.”

The contempt was wasted on Gregorian. He looked around the sitting room, his eyes resting for a moment on the pile of abandoned equipment hiding the fireplace.

“Uh, may I sit down?”

“Of course,” Ignatiev said, waving a hand toward the couch across the room.

Gregorian went to it and sat, bony knees poking up awkwardly. Ignatiev rolled his desk chair across the carpeting to face him.

“So what is so important that you had to come see me?”

Very seriously, Gregorian replied, “It's Nikki.”

Ignatiev felt a pang of alarm. “What's wrong with Nikki?”

“Nothing! She's wonderful.”

“So?”

“I … I've fallen in love with her,” Gregorian said, almost whispering.

“What of it?” Ignatiev snapped.

“I don't know if she loves me.”

What an ass! Ignatiev thought. A blind, blundering ass who can't see the nose in front of his face.

“She … I mean, we get along very well. It's always fun to be with her. But … does she like me well enough…” His voice faded.

Why is he coming to me with this? Ignatiev wondered. Why not one of the psychotechs? That's what they're here for.

He thought he knew. The young oaf would be embarrassed to tell them about his feelings. So he comes to old Ignatiev, the father figure.

Feeling his brows knitting, Ignatiev asked, “Have you been to bed with her?”

“Oh, yes. Sure. But if I ask her to marry me, a real commitment … she might say no. She might not like me well enough for that. I mean, there are other guys in the crew…”

Marriage? Ignatiev felt stunned. Do kids still get married? Is he saying he'd spend two centuries living with her? Then he remembered Sonya. He knew he would have spent two centuries with her. Two millennia. Two eons.

His voice strangely subdued, Ignatiev asked, “You love her so much that you want to marry her?”

Gregorian nodded mutely.

Ignatiev said, “And you're afraid that if you ask her for a lifetime commitment she'll refuse and that will destroy your relationship.”

Looking completely miserable, Gregorian said, “Yes.” He stared into Ignatiev's eyes. “What should I do?”

Beneath all the bravado he's just a frightened pup, uncertain of himself, Ignatiev realized. Sixty years old and he's as scared and worried as a teenager.

I can tell him to forget her. Tell him she doesn't care about him; say that she's not interested in a lifetime commitment. I can break up their romance with a few words.

But as he looked into Gregorian's wretched face he knew he couldn't do it. It would wound the young pup; hurt him terribly. Ignatiev heard himself say, “She loves you, Vartan. She's mad about you. Can't you see that?”

“You think so?”

Ignatiev wanted to say, Why do you think she puts up with you and your ridiculous posturing? Instead, he told the younger man, “I'm sure of it. Go to her. Speak your heart to her.”

Gregorian leaped up from the couch so abruptly that Ignatiev nearly toppled out of his rolling chair.

“I'll do that!” he shouted as he raced for the door.

As Ignatiev got slowly to his feet, Gregorian stopped at the door and said hastily, “Thank you, Dr. Ignatiev! Thank you!”

Ignatiev made a shrug.

Suddenly Gregorian looked sheepish. “Is there anything I can do for you, sir?”

“No. Nothing, thank you.”

“Are you still … uh, active?”

Ignatiev scowled at him.

“I mean, there are virtual reality simulations. You can program them to suit your own whims, you know.”

“I know,” Ignatiev said firmly.

Gregorian realized he'd stepped over a line. “I mean, I just thought … in case you need…”

“Good day, Vartan,” said Ignatiev.

As the engineer left and the door slid shut, Ignatiev said to himself, Blundering young ass! But then he added, And I'm a doddering old numbskull.

He'll run straight to Nikki. She'll leap into his arms and they'll live happily ever after, or some approximation of it. And I'll be here alone, with nothing to look forward to except oblivion.

VR simulations, he huffed. The insensitive young lout. But she loves him. She loves him. That is certain.

5

IGNATIEV PACED AROUND
his sitting room for hours after Gregorian left, cursing himself for a fool. You could have pried him away from her, he raged inwardly. But then he thought, And what good would that do? She wouldn't come to you; you're old enough to be her great-grandfather, for God's sake.

Maybe the young oaf was right. Maybe I should try the VR simulations.

Instead, he threw himself into the reports on the automated probes that had been sent to Gliese 581. And their power failures. For days he stayed in his quarters, studying, learning, understanding.

The official explanation for the problem by the mission directors back on Earth was nothing more than waffling, Ignatiev decided as he examined the records. Partial power failure. It was only temporary. Within a few weeks it had been corrected.

Anomalies, concluded the official reports. These things happen to highly complex systems. Nothing to worry about. After all, the systems corrected themselves as they were designed to do. And the last three probes worked perfectly well.

Anomalies? Ignatiev asked himself.
Anomaly
is a word you use when you don't know what the hell really happened.

He thought he knew.

He took the plots of each probe's course and overlaid them against the map he'd been making of the fine structure of the interstellar medium. Sure enough, he saw that the probes had encountered a region where the interstellar gas thinned so badly that a ship's power output declined seriously. There wasn't enough hydrogen in that region for the fusion generator to run at full power! he saw. It was like a bubble in the interstellar gas: a region that was almost empty of hydrogen atoms.

Ignatiev retraced the flight paths of all six of the probes. Yes, the first one plunged straight into the bubble and shut itself down when the power output from the fusion generator dropped so low it could no longer maintain the ship's systems. The next two skirted the edges of the bubble and experienced partial power failures. That region had been dangerous for the probes. It could be fatal for
Sagan
's human cargo.

He started to write out a report for mission control, then realized before he was halfway finished with the first page it that it would take more than six years for his warning to reach Earth, and another six for the mission controllers' recommendation to get back to him. And who knew how long it would take for those Earthside dunderheads to come to a decision?

“We could all be dead by then,” he muttered to himself.

“Your speculations are interesting,” said the AI avatar.

Ignatiev frowned at the image on the screen above his fireplace. “It's not speculation,” he growled. “It is a conclusion based on observed data.”

“Alexander Alexandrovich,” said the sweetly smiling face, “your conclusion comes not from the observations, but from your interpretation of the observations.”

“Three of the probes had power failures.”

“Temporary failures that were corrected. And three other probes did not.”

“Those last three didn't go through the bubble,” he said.

“They all flew the same trajectory, did they not?”

“Not exactly.”

“Within a four percent deviation,” the avatar said, unperturbed.

“But they flew at different
times
,” Ignatiev pointed out. “The bubble was flowing across their flight paths. The first probe plunged into the heart of it and shut down entirely. For four months! The next two skirted its edges and still suffered power failures.”

“Temporarily,” said the avatar's image, still smiling patiently. “And the final three probes? They didn't encounter any problems at all, did they?”

“No,” Ignatiev admitted grudgingly. “The bubble must have flowed past by the time they reached the area.”

“So there should be no problem for us,” the avatar said.

“You think not?” he responded. “Then why are we beginning to suffer a power shortage?”

“The inflowing hydrogen is slightly thinner here than it has been,” said the avatar.

Ignatiev shook his head. “It's going to get worse. We're heading into another bubble. I'm sure of it.”

The AI system said nothing.

6

BE SURE YOU'RE
right, then go ahead. Ignatiev had heard that motto many long years ago, when he'd been a child watching adventure tales.

He spent an intense three weeks mapping the interstellar hydrogen directly ahead of the ship's position. His worst fears were confirmed.
Sagan
was entering a sizeable bubble where the gas density thinned out to practically nothing: fewer than a dozen hydrogen atoms per cubic meter.

He checked the specifications of the ship fusion generator and confirmed that its requirement for incoming hydrogen was far higher than the bubble could provide. Within a few days we'll start to experience serious power outages, he realized.

What to do?

Despite his disdain for his younger crewmates, despite his loathing of meetings and committees and the kind of groupthink that passed for decision-making, he called a special meeting of the crew.

“All the ship's systems will shut down?” cried one of the psychotechs. “All of them?”

“What will happen to us during the shutdown?” asked a biologist, her voice trembling.

Calmly, his hands clasped on the conference tabletop, Ignatiev said, “If my measurements of the bubble are accurate—”

“If?” Gregorian snapped. “You mean you're not sure?”

“Not one hundred percent, no.”

“Then why are you telling us this? Why have you called this meeting? To frighten us?”

“Well, he's certainly frightened me!” said one of the engineers.

Trying to hold on to his temper, Ignatiev replied, “My measurements are good enough to convince me that we face a serious problem. Very serious. Power output is already declining, and will go down more over the next few days.”

“How much more?” asked the female biologist.

Ignatiev hesitated, then decided to give them the worst. “All the ship's systems could shut down. Like the first of the automated probes. It shut down for four months. Went into hibernation mode. Our shutdown might be even longer.”

The biologist countered, “But the probe powered up again, didn't it? It went into hibernation mode but then it came back to normal.”

With a slow nod, Ignatiev said, “The ship's systems could survive a hibernation of many months. But we couldn't. Without electrical power we would not have heat, air or water recycling, lights, stoves for cooking—”

“You mean we'll die?” asked Nikki, in the tiny voice of a frightened little girl.

Ignatiev felt a sudden urge to comfort her, to protect her from the brutal truth. “Unless we take steps,” he said softly.

“What steps?” Gregorian demanded.

“We have to change our course. Turn away from this bubble. Move along a path that keeps us in regions of thicker gas.”

“Alexander Alexandrovich,” came the voice of the AI avatar, “course changes must be approved by mission control.”

Ignatiev looked up and saw that the avatar's image had sprung up on each of the conference room's walls, slightly larger than life. Naturally, he realized. The AI system has been listening to every word we say. The avatar's image looked slightly different to him: an amalgam of all the twelve separate images the AI system showed to each of the crew members. Sonya's features were in the image, but blurred, softened, like the face of a relative who resembled her mother strongly.

“Approved by mission control?” snapped one of the engineers, a rake-thin, dark-skinned Malaysian. “It would take six years merely to get a message to them!”

“We could all be dead by then,” said the redhead sitting beside him.

Unperturbed, the avatar replied, “Mission protocol includes emergency procedures, but course changes require approval from mission control.”

Everyone tried to talk at once. Ignatiev closed his eyes and listened to the babble. Almost, he laughed to himself. They would mutiny against the AI system, if they knew how. He saw in his imagination a handful of children trying to rebel against a peg-legged pirate captain.

At last he put up his hands to silence them. They shut up and looked to him, their expressions ranging from sullen to fearful to self-pitying.

“Arguments and threats won't sway the AI program,” he told them. “Only logic.”

Looking thoroughly nettled, Gregorian said, “So try logic, then.”

Ignatiev said to the image on the wall screens, “What is the mission protocol's first priority?”

The answer came immediately, “To protect the lives of the human crew and cargo.”

Cargo, Ignatiev grunted to himself. The stupid program thinks of the people in cryonic suspension as cargo.

Aloud, he said, “Observations show that we are entering a region of very low hydrogen density.”