Take No Prisoners (24 page)

"You look very tempting there," he said, trying to smile, his speech slurred, almost as if he were drunk, "but right now I think I'll go and sleep for a while. With your permission, Captain."

It was the first time since our initial, rather strained meeting that he'd called me "Captain" – a title that meant nothing to me, because there was no possibility whatsoever that I would wish to pull rank on him during the mission. For reasons which I am still not wholly able to understand, he resented this petty differentiation between us. He was using the term for the same reason that people can't stop their tongue from probing at a sore tooth. Maybe he was admitting to himself what I was.

"I'm Qinefer," I whispered sadly.

"Qinefer," he muttered wearily. "Sorry, Captain. I'll remember in future."

He stumbled off towards the sleeping quarters.

The command room was uncannily quiet after he'd gone. Of course, there was the steady growl of the distant fusion explosions, but already I'd grown so used to them that I only heard them if I concentrated – if I tried to, as it were. From time to time the computer banks sighed electronically at me, but most of the while I was conscious only of the sound of my limbs brushing together or against the rest of my body as I walked around the room, checking – uselessly! – the equipment. I knew the various procedures outlined in the manual perfectly, but nevertheless I consulted it at every point – for a number of reasons. First because there was no harm in making doubly sure. Second because every electronic system can become corrupted, over time (but isn't that the same for human beings?). Third because I'd been so thoroughly programmed into this business of verisimilitude that it seemed to make a lot of sense to carry on that way even when Andrew wasn't around.

From time to time I allowed myself the brief luxury of staring from Andrew's viewing-screen – its reproduction so perfect that it was hard to persuade myself I wasn't just looking through an open window. I looked at the starfields that lay ahead of us. There was no sensation of motion at all; if it hadn't been for the felt rather than heard thunder of the pulses I would have had difficulty in believing, at core, that really we were heading at ever-increasing speed towards τ Ceti. Of course it would be another few months yet before we'd see the first traces of the relativistic effects that would betray our velocity, stretching the cloth of the universe into a new pattern. Even so, I found the view ahead rather ... tantalizing – the way that someone who's about to be shot must find the muzzle of the gun tantalizing, magnetic, fascinating. Apart from scattered Cetus itself I could see Fornax, Pisces, Sculptor, Aquarius and a part of Eridanus; the rest of the heavenly river seemed to be gushing down to somewhere directly below me.

And then it was back to rechecking the equipment, until the time came when I found myself drawn inexorably back to looking from the viewing-screen at the starscape ahead ...

It was an odd experience, this. A few days later both Andrew and I were blasé about the starscape, but in those hours I found myself torn by sympathy for the ancient astronomers who'd stared through Earth's muffling atmosphere and prayed that some miracle would happen so that they could see what I was seeing. Aye, Johannes Kepler, out here are stranger marvels than your regular convex polyhedra clustered artificially about the sun. From where I'm standing, Tycho, your observations would achieve the highest conceivable accuracy, their sole flaws born from a science you never dreamt of. Hello, Sir Isaac, wouldn't you have liked to see the galaxies dancing to the gavotte prescribed – more or less – by your laws? Even you, the ignoramus Ptolemy, would have willingly sacrificed your life if only you could have had five minutes here beside me.

I was very conscious, too, of being a dust-mote. I was a conglomeration of elements that had been created deep in the hearts of dying stars.

But back to testing the instruments, checking out that each of the counters gave the same reading as I did; otherwise Andrew could make a very foolish decision at some point when I wasn't paying direct attention. From time to time I glanced at the bank of radiation-counters above the array of computer displays; all seemed well, which meant that the shielding had survived the most difficult part of the mission, the initiation of the first string of detonations.

The hours passed quickly, despite my timeless periods at the viewing-screen. It seemed no time at all before Andrew was returning from the sleeping quarters, his eyes bright and refreshed, his ill mood forgotten.

"Nearly finished," I muttered around the length of flex that I'd tucked conveniently into my mouth. "Would you believe it? The only bloody mechanism on this bloody ship that doesn't check out is the bloody flush toilet."

"A vital piece of equipment," he said, striking a heroic pose.

Too true: it was.

"I'll only be another minute or two," I continued, manipulating my screwdriver. "Just one more simple connection to make and then ... there, that's it," as I tightened the screw. "Crap your worst, friend: this bog'll stand by you through thick and thin."

"It's time you had some sleep," he said. "Anyone who comes out with a sentence like that must be half-dead on their feet."

"I'm not sleepy," I lied. Fatigue had been programmed into me, so that every sixteen hours or so I had to switch off – although I'd be ready to "waken" again if there was an emergency.

"Don't be stupid, Qinefer. The crew requests that the captain rests for a while. If you're half-asleep on your feet you're likely to make some bloody stupid mistake. You know that as well as I do."

He pointed imperiously – ha! mutiny! – to the sleeping quarters, and stood there perfectly still, wordless, until I shuffled reluctantly in that direction.

"I'll check your check," he said as I went.

I wasn't in the slightest sleepy whatever the software said, I told myself as I lay down on the broad bunk, feeling the slightly musky warmth that betrayed where Andrew had been lying.

I squirmed down and instantly lost consciousness.

~

We were just over thirteen years into the mission (and it would be thirteen, wouldn't it?) when the rock struck.

It can't have been much bigger than a pea, although obviously it was fairly massive through its relativistic velocity. It took a decent-sized chunk out of the edge of our radiation shielding. Andrew played with the controls of one of the viewing-screens until we could see the hole. It might have been our imaginations, but both of us agreed that we could make out a sullen orange glow through it.

"Well," he said, too calmly, "that's it."

"What do you mean?"

I noticed that my knuckles were doing the prescribed thing as my fists clamped onto the desktop in front of me. They were going pale.

Of course I knew what he meant.

"Even if the rest of the shielding holds up," he said in a controlled monotone, "the radiation coming through that hole will kill us over the next few years. Might as well just flush ourselves out the airlock and finish ..."

"Don't be silly, darling."

"Hmm?"

He turned a gray face towards me, and it was only too plain he was a prisoner of despair. The moment of truth was near. I was going to have to tell him ... but not yet, I prayed, not yet.

"You say ... you say the radiation is going to kill us some time over the next few
years
. Years are a long time, Andrew. A long time for us to
be
together."

I smoothed my tunic over my thighs and was astounded by the fact that the cheap trick worked. You've got to remember, though, that by now he was in his late thirties and I was still – physically – in my early twenties. I
was
the luscious young creature he'd have been looking for around the time of the thirteen-year itch. Some time soon he was going to start wondering why it was that I kept looking so youthful – not a new line on my face, never a sag of the breast. (In future it might be a good plan if the programmers bore such things in mind.)

For a moment he paused, indecisive: screw or savage? I knew it wasn't easy for him. How to go on living your life out when you know that death isn't too far away? Perhaps that's why sentient creatures are never told in advance of the moment of their extinction.

For the next few hours he worked away busily, his fingers drumming industriously on the computer keys or his lips sucked in as he stared in bafflement at the VDU, trying to puzzle out what to do next. Sometimes he spoke directly to the circuits, but for most of the time he preferred the precision of keying. I set myself a simultaneous chess problem, and engaged myself in it. I knew what he was doing: trying to work out, as accurately as he could, how long he and I had left before the radiation debilitated us so much that it would be hard for us even to operate the airlock controls. It was a fool's calculation, of course: there were simply too many variables for any equation to be anything more than a pseudo-mathematical guess.

Still, the work kept him occupied; and, despite its macabre and very personal nature, in a paradoxical way it took his mind off his own mortality.

When he finally came to an end he didn't tell me the answer he'd got. He just looked at me with blank eyes, and then wordlessly led me by the hand to our bunk. There he made love with me much more violently than he ever had before, so that by the time he was finished I hurt all over; it would have been rape except that I hurt him equally badly, and we both wanted it that way.

We lay gasping for a while, the lights turned low. Then he moved towards me again, and this time we made love so slowly and gently and intimately that it was as if there were nothing else in all the universe except our two warm bodies moving together.

He fell asleep after that. I stared at the light coming in through the door from the command room for an hour or so, until I was certain he was well and truly out, and then I crept softly from the bunk and away to the barren-looking bay beside the main airlock. Packed neatly behind a folding door were two spacesuits no one had ever assumed we'd need to wear during the voyage – certainly at journey's end, but not before. I pulled out the one with my name lettered on its breast and hauled myself into it. The rubbery plastic was clammy and cold against me.

Last of all I put on the bubble-like helmet. As soon as I did so I found that the bloody thing had what the people at Mission Control would probably have called a "design fault," in that the visor was shattered into total opacity. They'd probably not thought it worth spending too much effort on something that was, after all, there only for cosmetic reasons. I dragged the helmet off again and chucked it back into the wall-cupboard.

Heigh-ho, Qinefer: into the void. Better not to think about it too much – just do it.

Somehow I'd expected the airlock to give me difficulties; after all, it hadn't been used for thirteen years – there had been no need. (Andrew had, just for the hell of it, gone out on an unscheduled and illicit space walk during the first month, but had found the experience curiously boring. I don't know why. If I'd been him I would have found being a part of the universe as addictive as any drug. But he never conformed to the rules.) The first door rolled open smoothly enough when I triggered the key. I stepped in, hampered only slightly by the heavy maintenance kit and the bulky tube of ferroplastic I'd fastened to the suit belt. A last check had shown that Andrew was still sleeping soundly, and so I had no qualms about the noise as the door snicked shut and the air hissed off into space; the outer door slid open and I found myself dancing aimlessly in a vacuum that stretched to infinity in every direction.

At that moment my mind was taken over by an insane urge to keep on dancing – onward, outward, forever, until my gyrating body was swallowed into the maw of a nameless star. For the first time in my existence I felt complete freedom, not only from the constraints of gravity and the prisons of fixed metal walls but also from the invisible cages of human responsibilities; Andrew would die in a little under two years, according to the computer's guesstimate, whether I was there to keep him company or not. So what reason was there for me to turn down the delicious temptation to dance joyously –
freely
– away from the ship? After all, didn't I have some right to my own self-determination?

Fortunately my body took over from the point where my mind had surrendered; without my making any conscious decision I found that my hand had snagged the safety line onto the clip at the side of the airlock. I paid myself out along the line, manhandling my way along the flank of the ship towards the vast wall of the radiation shielding. Out here in space the constant nagging vibration of the drive through the metal beneath my body was more than just a mere background irritation you could learn to ignore: it was terrifying, it was an extra presence, a malignance that glowered down on me as I slowly moved, a spider on a wall of dust-pocked metal. My hands were shaking with fear as I approached the great floor that was my goal.

The hole, as ill luck would have it, was on the far side of the ship. When I came to the base of the shield I clung there forlornly for a few seconds while the stars watched me unconcernedly and the bone-numbing vibration of the drive tried to shake me from my perch. Then I slowly began, arms and legs outstretched, shuffling like the arachnid I was by now convinced I really was, to move sideways around the ship.

When I was half-standing, half-crouching directly across from the hole, I stopped and pulled a pair of manual suckers from my belt-pouch. At some stage during our flight the craft had developed a slow spin. This would help me work my way out across the floor. Conversely, it would things more difficult for me on the way back, but at that moment I wasn't much concerned about the future. With the suckers on my hands I began to drag my way across the sheer shield. I was aware the whole time that, if I were somehow able to punch my way through the ten-centimeter shielding, I'd find myself looking directly at the blazing storm of the drive. At the same time, of course, I'd be rupturing the local electrical field that shielded the crew quarters from a constant barrage of hard radiation. My stomach and loins were firmly pressed to what was a very flimsy protective barrier. I knew I was at that stage of terror that was beyond fear – my first encounter with such emotions – and so my body and mind functioned with perfect precision as I clawed my way across the gray metal cliff, centimeter by centimeter, feeling the gentle outward tug caused by the ship's slow spin.