Richard Russo - Ship of Fools

What had been forgotten, if anything? Minimal food stores, shelters, tools, testing equipment, water and food processors, crates of other, miscellaneous supplies—all had been clandestinely loaded aboard the shuttles earlier in the day. Not enough to long sustain all the people that were going, but there was no choice. There was no room; as it was, people were going to be jammed together like overbreeding laboratory animals. We had one shot at this, one trip down—no preliminary supply drops, no return trips for extra supplies. All or nothing, nothing or all.

Where was Pär? I hadn’t seen him all day; I had been overseeing the loading with Sari Mandapat and Arturo Morales while Pär was off with Alice Springs, helping people prepare. I had recently seen Alice—she told me everyone was ready to go—but no sign of Pär. Could he have backed out, afraid it wouldn’t work?

“Lost your courage?” said a voice behind me. I turned to see the dwarf grinning at me from the shadows.

“No,” I said.

“Then it’s time. A new life, and a new world.”

Yes, it was time. I nodded, then signaled across the transport hold to Sari Mandapat waiting in the holding area.

New lights bathed the hold, reflecting off metal surfaces, illuminating the shuttles, and the stillness was gone. Six groups of people emerged from the darkness and hurried across the metal deck. Scraping sounds, echoes of hundreds of footfalls. Like herds of cattle moving to new feeding grounds; or packs of lemmings rushing to their own destruction.

People were overloaded, which was not surprising, and they dropped things. Someone stopped to retrieve a lost item, and everything jammed up around him. Leave it! I wanted to yell at the man. But he wouldn’t. He scrambled around on hands and knees, tripping someone, reaching for his dropped bag. Finally he recovered it and struggled to his feet, then was swept along toward a shuttle.

The people in front were now flooding through the open shuttle doors, and I watched the pushing and shoving on the boarding ramps, the growing tension and fear. Hissed curses broke out. Near the entrance to Shuttle Three a scuffle erupted, and two bundles went flying; one of them burst open when it hit the ground, scattering the contents.

A man in the middle of the crowd tripped and fell, several others fell over him and each other. Panic and chaos erupted. People started running, grabbing and pulling at each other. The shoving worsened; more people stumbled and fell, dropping packets and bundles that slid across the floor. My stomach tightened as all of our plans threatened to fall apart. There was nothing I could do except watch, and hope.

Toward the back, anxiously working his way forward, was Maximilian, the chief steward who served drinks at all of the Executive Council meetings. He carried a large pack strapped across his shoulders and gripped a pair of well-wrapped bundles in each hand. I caught his attention, and we stared at each other; I imagined I could see resentment and distrust in Maximilian’s gaze, a resentment that had built up during all those years of servitude. I’m helping you now, I wanted him to understand, but I knew that it was hopeless. There are things not easily remedied or forgotten, and this was one of them. He turned and joined the throng pushing toward the shuttles.

Then I saw Catherine, Francis’s sister, in the group loading onto Shuttle Two. I looked all around her, then through the other groups, but saw no sign of Francis anywhere. I wanted to run to her, ask her about him, but I could not leave my station. Too much depended on me, and I couldn’t risk getting trampled in all the confusion. Maybe Francis was already aboard one of the shuttles. I hoped so.

Pär began pacing in small tight circuits beside me. “It will be a miracle if we pull this off,” he said, shaking his head, wiping sweat from his face. He coughed out a nervous laugh.

The noise gradually diminished, and the tension seemed to abate. The six groups had become a single disorganized mob massed up against the shuttle boarding ramps, but the worst of the scuffling had ceased. The majority of people were inside the shuttles now; fueling could finally begin.

“Let’s go,” I said.

I started forward, Pär at my side. I began with Shuttle One, Pär with Shuttle Six. We each keyed in the fueling codes for rapid emergency fueling, set to stop at one-third full—enough to get them down, with a bit to spare. Then we moved to Two and Five, keyed the codes, and finished up with Three and Four.

“Fifteen minutes, right?” Pär said.

“Twenty at most.”

We looked at the crowds pushing into the shuttles, now fewer than forty or fifty people left at each. The timing was right. Get the rest aboard, belongings stowed, everyone secured for flight….

“We’re going to make it,” Pär said.

I nodded. Yes, we were. I moved quickly to the control panels, and punched in another series of codes. I turned and watched the huge, massive transport-hold doors slowly slide apart, gradually revealing the star-filled night sky.

Energy fields maintained the atmospheric integrity of the transport hold—no air was lost, no pressure. That side of the ship faced away from Antioch, and Pär and I saw dozens, then hundreds, and finally thousands of bright stars as the doors continued to open, revealing the cold vastness of space.

“It’s beautiful,” Pär said.

“Yes.”

A deep, heavy clang sounded as the doors locked into place, fully open now. The night sky waited out there for us, and another world waited for us below. My heart was beating hard and fast; I only now noticed it. I could hardly believe we were about to do this. This was not mutiny, I said to myself. This was escape.

I turned away from the stars and stepped out from the wall to check on the boarding. I watched the last passengers go through the shuttle doors. All that remained now was to secure everyone and everything aboard, finish the fueling, and we would leave.

Then I heard Pär cursing behind me.

“Shit,” Pär said. “Shit, shit, shit…”

I turned quickly to look at the dwarf. But it wasn’t Pär that I saw.

Rising into view, hovering outside the open transport-hold doors, gaping maw swirling with nuclear fire, was one of the harvesters. Silent in the vacuum of space, but even more terrible and frightening because of that silence.

A second harvester came into view and hovered beside the first; then the third appeared, all three lined up across the transport hold, blocking out the stars, interior furnaces glowing and burning, ravenous and waiting to consume us all.

I stared transfixed at those three luminescent and monstrous beings of metal and fire; I was unable to move, unable even to breathe.

How could this be? I wondered. Why were they here? They weren’t due back for hours, and they didn’t dock here, they docked in another hold far away on the other side of the ship. Why were they here?

Then I knew. They were here to stop the mutiny. To prevent the shuttles from leaving. A blockade.

Security forces emerged from one of the corridors at the far end of the transport hold, shattering my trance.

“Shit,” Pär said once more; then he disappeared into the shadows.

I watched as more security forces appeared, flooding in from the other corridors, storming across the transport hold and converging on the shuttles. I hesitated only briefly, seeing all of our plans and hopes shattering, then like Pär I backed further into the shadows, turned, and hurried away.

WEwere discovered, and all was lost.

I didn’t know what had gone wrong. I didn’t know how the captain, or the Executive Council, or the bishop, or whoever, had learned of our plans, but somehow, someone had.