Starbound (6 page)
Authors: Joe Haldeman
The first two ships of the fleet are nearing completion; both are already crewed, awaiting weapons systems. They’re somewhat bigger than the projected standard for the other 998, but cruder, rushed into construction in case the Other that left Triton five years ago left behind some belated surprise.
I think the fleet is a tactical travesty from inception to its present and future reality. Gnats attacking an elephant. If you want to protect the future of the human race from the Other menace, those resources should go toward moving breeding populations out far from Earth. Because Earth is unlikely to survive the first second of hostilities from the Others. A diffuse population hidden around the solar system might have a chance.
Or not.
10
NEW WORLD
Namir’s newspaper reassured us a little bit. There wasn’t a huge conspiracy trying to insulate us from reality. It was just a secondary effect of the fanatic security effort. So now we were to get the
Times
and one other newspaper every week. Delivered to your air-lock door.
Times
and one other newspaper every week. Delivered to your air-lock door.
Not a conspiracy, but certainly a pervasive bureaucratic mind-set. You don’t learn anything unless you have an official “need to know.”
It was probably an empty gesture anyhow, presuming to fool the Others with smoke and mirrors. Namir agreed. They had to know us too well for that to work.
What might have worked, if there had been enough advance warning, would have been to shut Earth down electronically, completely, the instant of the Moon explosion.
Even that would only have worked if the Others were just listening to broadcast emissions and not spying on Earth any other way. And it would have been impossible to build
ad Astra
and the fleet without electronic communication.
ad Astra
and the fleet without electronic communication.
The half of our satellite that’s not under Martian quarantine, Little Earth or, to us, “earthside,” serves as a conduit for communicating between the fleet and Earth. There’s a lot of radio and image transmission that can be disguised as innocuous space industrialization—but the part that can’t be disguised is written down or photographed and sent to Little Earth via “transfer pods,” which guide themselves into a net and are sent down the Space Elevator to an Earth address. Messages that can’t wait that long are de-orbited and dropped to Earth by parachute. I wonder how many of them actually make it to the final address.
It’s a fragile house of cards, and we could collapse it just by a minute of frank broadband discussion. I talked with Paul about doing just that. What could they do, fire us?
“No,” he said, “but we could have a tragic accident.” We were talking in VR, walking and bicycling slowly down a country road in Cape Cod, Indian summer, cranberry bogs vivid red with floating berries and the smells of woodsmoke and autumn leaves powerful but relaxing. Squirrels scattered out of our way, and geese honked overhead, swifting south.
“You think they would go that far?”
“Well, I don’t think we’re indispensable,” he said, braking the bike into a short downhill. “They could even manufacture avatar duplicates. They do it all the time with politicians.”
I nodded. “Like that French nonassassination.” The president’s limousine was blown up in a visit to Algeria, and it turned out that neither president nor driver was actually there, actually human.
“My God.” He stopped pedaling but his bicycle stayed upright; VR couldn’t topple the exercise machine outside our illusion. “Could that be why they sent three soldiers?”
“To kill us if we broke the rules? That’s ridiculous.”
“In this brave new world? I don’t know.”
“Be realistic, Paul. If they wanted us dead, this powerful ‘they,’ they wouldn’t have to send three assassins up into orbit. They could push a button and blow all the air out of Mars side.”
He started pedaling again. “That’s why I love you, Carmen. You’re such a ray of sunshine.”
I was sweating a little from the exercise, but a new patch of cold sweat broke out on the back of my neck:
What if we were twenty- four light-years away and decided to do something subversive, like surrender to the Others? The Earth couldn’t do a thing to stop us.
But Namir and Dustin and Elza, for all their quiet and civilized manners, had once been trained to kill. And were presumably loyal to Earth.
What were their orders?
We weren’t headed out to the iceberg for a couple of weeks, but
ad Astra
itself—the habitat we’d be living in on the way to Wolf and back—was up and running, and we wanted to live in it in Earth orbit for a while. If something went wrong, we could always send out for a plumber.
ad Astra
itself—the habitat we’d be living in on the way to Wolf and back—was up and running, and we wanted to live in it in Earth orbit for a while. If something went wrong, we could always send out for a plumber.
Speaking of plumbing, we did have a week or so of roll- up-your-sleeves work before we took off. The large crew who’d set up
ad Astra
had the hydroponics working as they would in the normal one-gee environment, on the way to Wolf. But it would take at least a week of zero gee before we hooked up with the iceberg, and of course you can’t have standing pools of water in zero gee. They turn into floating blobs. So we had plant-by-plant instructions as to what had to be done to keep root systems and everything moist en route.
ad Astra
had the hydroponics working as they would in the normal one-gee environment, on the way to Wolf. But it would take at least a week of zero gee before we hooked up with the iceberg, and of course you can’t have standing pools of water in zero gee. They turn into floating blobs. So we had plant-by-plant instructions as to what had to be done to keep root systems and everything moist en route.
(Good practice. We’d be doing it again at the halfway point, since we’d be in zero gee while the iceberg slowly rotated around to start braking.)
Quarantine rules made the transfer into the Space Elevator a little complicated. Every area had to be sterilized after we passed through—from Mars side through the air lock to the hub, then down the extension tube to where the Space Elevator was waiting. It took three trips, awkward in zero gee, especially for our spook pals, who didn’t have a lot of experience. Finding handholds when your hands are full.
It wasn’t too hard to say good-bye to Little Mars, as much time as I’d spent there. It was actual Mars, the Mars colony, that felt like home. Florida was a distant memory. Another world.
We spent four and a half days in the Space Elevator, first at zero gee, but with increasing gravity as we moved out to the end of the Elevator’s tether.
About halfway, I started feeling heavy and depressed. For years, I’d been used to exercising an hour or more a day in Earth gravity, but it was always a relief to get back to Mars- normal. I’d get used to it in time. But it felt like carrying around a knapsack full of rocks, permanently attached.
There wasn’t much to see of
ad Astra
as we approached, but we didn’t expect anything dramatic. A big flat white box with a shuttle rocket attached. The rocket would maneuver us into rendezvous with the iceberg, then shut down till we got to Wolf, where it would be a landing craft. If the Others let us land.
ad Astra
as we approached, but we didn’t expect anything dramatic. A big flat white box with a shuttle rocket attached. The rocket would maneuver us into rendezvous with the iceberg, then shut down till we got to Wolf, where it would be a landing craft. If the Others let us land.
Going from the Elevator into
ad Astra
was simple. They coupled automatically, and we walked through two air locks into our new home.
ad Astra
was simple. They coupled automatically, and we walked through two air locks into our new home.
It was stunning. It was huge, at least to my eyes. The line of sight was about fifty meters, over the gym and swimming pool and hydroponics garden. I had trouble focusing that far away, and it made me grin.
Namir, Elza, and Dustin were not smiling. By Earth standards, this was not a big place to be locked up in for a large part of your life. The rest of your life, perhaps.
We stacked our boxes and suitcases there by the air lock, next to the life-support/recycling station, and sent the Space Elevator back down, to pick up our Martians. We went off together to explore.
The hydroponics garden was technically a luxury. There was enough dehydrated food in storage to keep us alive for twenty boring years, and plenty of oxygen from electrolysis. But fresh fruit and vegetables would mean more than just variety in the diet. The routines of growing, harvesting, propagation, and recycling had helped keep us sane in Mars, where we had fifteen times as many people, and more than fifteen times as much living space. Plus the chance to take a walk outdoors, which on
ad Astra
would be a short walk. Then light-years long. Eternity.
ad Astra
would be a short walk. Then light-years long. Eternity.
Everything was in a sort of early-spring mode, still a month or more from the earliest harvest. Grape tomatoes and spring onions, from a first look. They smelled so good—nostalgia not for Earth, where I never gardened, but for the Martian garden, where I’d worked a couple of hours a week.
The central space was larger than all the rest put together. There was a padded track for jogging or running around its hundred- meter perimeter. On the “southern” end of it (we decided to call the control room “north”) there was a small Japanese- style hot bath and a narrow rectangular swimming pool, which could maintain a decent current to swim against.
South of that were the exercise and VR machines, similar to what we had in Little Mars, with a relatively large lavatory and an actual shower, and the infirmary, with an optimistic single bed. The lavatory had a zero- gee toilet exactly like the one on the Space Elevator, for the few days we’d be weightless.
Farthest south was the large and rather forbidding Life- Support/ Recycling area, a bright room full of machines. Every metal surface was inscribed with maintenance instructions, I supposed in case the computer system failed. So we could stay alive until we died.
That was an interesting prospect if something did go wrong, and we went merrily blasting away for years, leaving Wolf 25 far behind. Paul said that if we just kept going in a straight line, without turning around midway to slow down, we had enough reaction mass to go more than a hundred thousand light- years. At which point, we’d be twelve years older, while the unimaginably distant Earth would have aged a thousand centuries.
Our seven cabins were in a north-south line along the hydroponics garden. We checked a couple of them, apparently all the same, but very malleable, with moveable walls and modular furniture. The wall that separated them from the hydroponics area was semipermanent, a lattice for vines.
The kitchen and dining room were twice the size of their Little Mars counterparts, where we did little actual cooking. Elza volunteered that Namir was an excellent cook, which was good news. I can just about flip a burger or scramble eggs, and we wouldn’t have either of those.
There was a lounge next to the dining room, with a pool table and keyboard and various places to sit or, I suppose, lounge. I hadn’t touched a piano keyboard in a dozen years. Would boredom drive me back to it?
Between the lounge and the Martian area was a meeting place that would be maintained at a compromise ambience—a little too cool and dark for humans; a little warm for Martians.
At the northernmost area, the lounge led into a library and study, with workstations but also wooden panel walls and real paintings. Then there was another air lock and Paul’s control room. He sat down at the console and ran his hands over the knobs and dials, smiling, in his element.
The spies looked kind of grim. It was understandable. They were losing a whole planet, one the rest of us had written off a long time ago. I did feel sorry for them, especially Namir, shut off from his complex history.
Which he was also bringing with him.
11
GOOD-BYES
After our final briefing in New York, and before we flew out to the Space Elevator, Elza and Dustin and I had been given a few days to settle our affairs on Earth.
We didn’t have to empty out our New York City apartment. Elza had made a clever deal with Columbia University, where they assumed the mortgage and will maintain the place for the half century we’ll be gone. If we don’t come back, it will be a unique small museum. In the unlikely event that we do return, we can either step back into the old place or leave it as a museum and negotiate an alternative—probably more comfortable—living space with the university.
I had to go say good-bye to my father, which I could no longer put off. He has two rooms in a Jewish assisted-living complex in Yonkers, which offers free room and board for people in his situation: he was in Israel for the first stage of the Gehenna attack, and so his body is suffused with the nanomachines that comprise half the poison. The second half could await him anyplace in Israel. People die every year when they return and open an old closet or something. I knew a man who went back and lived for years, then, for a reunion, put on his old army uniform and stopped breathing.
Father had been in New York, staying in my apartment, when the bombs went off in Tel Aviv. I was going to bring my mother back to join him for a tour of the American West.
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