Prisoners of Tomorrow (74 page)

So how did people like Howard Kalens feel about Chiron? Colman wondered. Did they think they could possess a whole planet? Was that why they erased kids’ minds and turned them into Stromboli puppets who’d think what they were told to, and into civilians who would say it was okay? But why did the people let them do it? Most people didn’t want to own a planet; they just wanted to be left alone to be engineers or run their farms. Because they played along with the rules that said they were better if they thought the way the rules said they should, and no good if they didn’t.

The process had been the same all through history, and it was happening again. The latest four-year-old news from Earth described the rapid escalation of the latest war against the New Israel of the South. Only this time the EAF was getting involved. The Western strategists had interpreted it as an EAF policy to provoke an all-out war all across Africa so they could move in afterward and close up on Europe from the south. Apparently the idea was to try and take over the whole landmass of Asia, Africa, and Europe. Why did they want to take over the whole of Asia, Africa, and Europe? Colman didn’t know. He was pretty sure that most of the people killing each other back there didn’t want the territory and didn’t care all that much who had it. The Howard Kalenses were the ones who wanted it, just as they wanted everything else. Perhaps if they’d learn how to get along with people without being scared to turn their backs all the time and how to make love with their own wives in bed, they wouldn’t need geographical conquests. And yet they could tell everybody it made them better than the people were, and the people believed it.

He remembered Jay’s mentioning a physicist from the labs in the Princeton module who said that human societies were the latest phase in the same process of evolution that had begun billions of years ago when the universe started to condense out of radiation. Evolution was a business of survival. Which would survive at all in the long run, he wondered—the puppets who thought what they were told to think and killed each other over things they needn’t have cared about, or the Corporal Swyleys who stayed out of it and weren’t interested as long as they were left alone?

Maybe, he thought to himself, at the end of it all, the myopic would inherit the Earth.

CHAPTER NINE

On the day officially designated December 28, 2080, in the chronological system that would apply until the ship switched over to the Chironian calendar, the
Mayflower II
entered the planetary system of Alpha Centauri at a speed of 2837 miles per second, reducing, with its main drive still firing at maximum power. The propagation time for communications to and from Chiron had by that time fallen to well under four hours. A signal from the planet confirmed that accommodations for the ship’s occupants had been prepared in the outskirts of Franklin as had been requested.

December 31, 2080

Distance to Chiron 1.9 billion miles; speed down to 1100 miles per second. Progressive phase-down of the main-drive burn was commenced, and slow pivoting of the variable-attitude Ring modules initiated to correct for the effect of diminishing linear force from the reducing deceleration. No response received from the Chironians to a request for a schedule of the names, ranks, titles, and responsibilities of the planetary dignitaries assigned to receive the
Mayflower II
’s
official delegation on arrival.

January 5, 2081

Speed 300 miles per second; distance to destination, 493 million miles. Course-correction effected to bring the ship round onto its final approach.

January 8, 2081

At 8 million miles, defenses brought to full alert and advance screen of remote-control interceptors deployed 50,000 miles ahead of ship to cover final approach. Response from Chiron neutral.

January 9, 2081

Communications round-trip delay to Chiron, twenty-two seconds. Formal arrangements for reception procedures still not concluded. Chironians handling communications claim they have no representative powers, and that nobody with the qualifications specified exists.
Mayflower II
’s defenses brought to combat readiness.

January 10, 2081

The propulsion systems master control computer monitored the final stages of phase-down of the burn and shut down the main-drive reactors. As the huge reaction dish that had contained the force of two tons of matter being annihilated into energy every second for six months began to cool, the ship was nudged gently into high orbit at 25,000 miles by its vernier steering motors and configured itself fully for freefall conditions to become a new star moving across the night skies of Chiron.

PART TWO

THE

CHIRONIANS

CHAPTER TEN

As the
Mayflower II
wheeled slowly in space high above Chiron, the outer door of Shuttle Bay 6 on the Vandenberg module separated into four sectors which swung apart like the petals of an enormous metal flower to expose the nose of the surface lander nestling within. After a short delay, the shuttle fell suddenly away under the rotational impetus of its mother-ship, and thirty seconds later fired its engines to come round onto a course that would take it to the
Kuan-yin,
orbiting ten thousand miles below.

“Our orders are to . . . precede the Ambassador’s party through the docking lock to form an honorary guard in the forward antechamber of the
Kuan-yin,
where the formalities will take place,’” Sirocco read aloud to the D Company personnel assigned as escorts at the briefing held early that morning. “‘Punctilious attention to discipline and order will prevail at all times, and the personnel taking part will be made mindful of the importance of maintaining a decorum appropriate to the dignity of a unique historic occasion.’ That means no ventriloquized comments to relieve the boredom, Swyley, and the best parade-ground turnout you ever managed, all of you. ‘Since provocative actions on the part of the Chironians are considered improbable, number-one ceremonial uniforms will be worn, with weapons carried loaded for precautionary purposes only. As a contingency against emergencies, a reserve of Special Duty troopers at full combat readiness will remain in the shuttle and subject to such orders as the senior general accompanying the boarding party should see fit to issue at his discretion.’”

“Ever get the feeling you were being set up?” Carson of Third Platoon asked sourly. “If anyone gets it first, guess who.”

“Didn’t you know you were expendable?” Stanislau asked matter-of-factly.

“Ah, but think of the honor of it,” Hanlon told them. “And won’t every one of them poor SD fellas back in the shuttle be eating his heart out with envy and just wishing he could be out there with the same opportunity to risk himself for flag and country.”

“I’ll trade,” Stanislau offered at once.

Sirocco looked back at the orders and resumed, “ ‘The advance guard will fan out to form two files, of ten men each, aligned at an angle of forty-five degrees on either side of the access lock and take up station behind their respective section leaders. Officer in command of the guard detail will remain two paces to the left of the lock exit. Upon completion of the opening formalities, the guard will be relieved by a detail from B Company who will position themselves at the exit ramp, and will proceed through the
Kuan-yin
to post sentry details at the locations specified in Schedule A, attached. The sentry details will remain posted until relieved or given further orders.’ Are there any questions so far?”

The Ambassador referred to was to be Amery Farnhill, Howard Kalens’s deputy in Liaison. Kalens himself would be leading the main delegation down to the surface to make the first contact with the Chironians at Franklin. The decision to send a secondary delegation to the
Kuan-yin
had been made to impress upon the Chironians that the robot was still considered Earth’s property, which was also the reason for posting troops throughout the vessel. As a point of protocol, Wellesley and Sterm would not become involved until the appropriate contacts on Chiron had been established and the agenda for further discussion suitably prepared.

The
Kuan-yin
had changed appreciably from the form shown in the pictures he had seen of the craft that had departed from Earth in 2020, Colman noted with interest as he sat erect to preserve the creases of his uniform beneath the restraining belt holding him to his seat and watched the image growing on the wall screen at the forward end of the cabin. The original design had taken the form of a dumbbell, with fuel storage and the thermonuclear pulse engines concentrated at one end, and the computers and sensitive reconnaissance instruments carried at the far end of a long, connecting, structural boom to keep them safely away from drive-section radiation. The modifications added after 2015 for creating and accommodating the first Chironians had entailed extensions to the instrumentation module and the incorporation of auxiliary motors which would spin the dumbbell about its center after arrival in order to simulate gravity for the new occupants while the first surface base was being prepared.

In the years since, the instrumentation module had sprouted a collection of ancillary structures which had doubled its size, the original fuel tanks near the tail had vanished to be replaced, apparently, by a bundle of huge metal bottles mounted around the central portion of the connecting boom, and a new assembly of gigantic windings surrounding a tubular housing now formed the tail, culminating in a parabolic reaction dish reminiscent of the
Mayflower II
’s
main drive, though much smaller because of the
Kuan-yin
’s
reduced scale. The
Mayflower II’
s designers had included docking adapters for the shuttles to mate with the
Kuan-yin
’s
ports, and the Chironians had retained the original pattern in their modifications, so the shuttle would be able to connect without problems.

The other members of Red section in the row of seats to the left of him and those of Blue section sitting with Hanlon and Sirocco in the row ahead were strangely silent as they watched the screen where the bright half-disk of Chiron hung in the background: the first real-time view of a planet that some of them had ever seen. Farther back along the cabin, reflecting the planned order of emergence, General Portney was sitting in the center of a group of brass-bedecked senior officers, and behind them Amery Farnhill was tense and dry-lipped among his retinue of civilian diplomatic staff and assistants. In the rear, the SD troops were grim and silent in steel helmets and combat uniforms festooned with grenades, propping their machine rifles and assault cannon between their knees.

Farnhill’s staff had given up trying to get the Chironians to provide an official list of who would be greeting the delegation. In the end they had simply advised the
Kuan-yin
when the shuttle would arrive and resigned themselves to playing things by ear after that. The Chironians had agreed readily enough, which was why the orders issued that morning had called for a reduced alertness level. Kalens’s delegation had met with an equal lack of success in dealing with Franklin, and had elected finally to go to the surface on the same basis as the delegation to the
Kuan-yin,
but with more elaborate preparations and ceremonies.

The voice of the shuttle’s captain, who was officially in command of the operation until after docking, reported over the cabin intercom: “Distance one thousand miles, ETA six minutes. Coming into matching orbit and commencing closing maneuver. Prepare for retardation.
Kuan-yin
has confirmed they will open Port Three.”

The image on the screen drifted to one side as the shuttle swung round to brake with its main engines, and then switched to a new view as one of the stern cameras was cut in. Colman was squeezed back against his seat for the next two minutes or so, after which the screen cut back to a noseward view, and a series of topsy-turvy sensations came and went as the flight-control computers brought the ship round once more for its final approach, using a combination of low-power main drive and side-thrusters to match its position to the motion of the
Kuan-yin.
After some minor corrections the shuttle was rotating with the
Kuan-yin
to give its occupants the feeling that they were lying on their backs, and nudging itself gently forward and upward to complete the maneuver. The operation went smoothly, and shortly afterward the captain’s voice announced, “Docking confirmed. The boarding party is free to proceed.”

“Proceed, General,” Farnhill said from the back.

“Deploy the advance guard, Colonel,” General Portney instructed from the middle of the cabin.

“Guard, forward,” Colonel Wesserman ordered from a row in front of Portney.

“Guard detail, file left and right by sections,” Sirocco said at the front. “Section leaders forward.” He moved out into the aisle, where the floor had folded itself into a steep staircase to facilitate fore-and-aft movement, and climbed through into the side-exiting lock chamber with Colman and Hanlon behind him while Red and Blue sections formed up in the aisles immediately to the rear. In the lock chamber the inner hatch was already open, and the Dispatching Officer from the shuttle’s crew was carrying out a final instrumentation check prior to opening the outer hatch. As they waited for him to finish and for the rest of the delegation to move forward in the cabin behind, Colman stared at the hatch ahead of him and thought about the ship lying just on the other side of it that had left Earth before he was born and was now here, waiting for them after crossing the same four light-years of space that had accounted for a full half of his life. After the years of speculations, all the questions about the Chironians were now within minutes of being answered. The descent from the
Mayflower II
had raised Colman’s curiosity to a high pitch because of what he had seen on the screen. For despite all the jokes and the popular wisdom, one thing he was certain of was that the engineering and structural modifications that he had observed on the outside of the
Kuan-yin
had not been made by irresponsible, overgrown adolescents.