Richard Russo - Ship of Fools

He turned back to me one final time and took a step forward. For a moment I thought he was going to embrace me. But we had never done anything like that in all the years we’d known each other, and I couldn’t imagine it even now. Apparently he thought the same thing, for he did not come any closer.

“Goodbye, Bartolomeo.”

“Goodbye, Nikos.”

Istood with Pär at the side of the transport hold, watching the first shuttle slowly move along the track toward the open doors. Apparently someone had christened it the Veronica —her name was painted on the hull in large, bright red letters. I choked up watching the shuttle and those huge letters rumble past, feeling the vibrations deep in my bones. One of the pilots signaled down to us from the cockpit that everything was clear.

“What would she have thought of that?” Pär asked.

I couldn’t answer immediately. I had to struggle against the despair just waiting to overwhelm me. “I don’t know,” I said. “Probably she would have smiled and shaken her head and said nothing.”

The shuttle’s speed picked up slightly as it approached the energy fields across the open doors. Its nose made contact, and a rippling, iridescent hole opened in the field; the launch mechanism cranked forward and the bow supports dropped away as the shuttle was propelled through the opening. The energy fields re-formed and returned to invisibility, and the shuttle was free of the ship.

It drifted away for a minute, then the attitude rockets burned for a few moments; the shuttle’s orientation turned, then the engines fired and it accelerated away from both the Argonos and the alien ship. The acceleration was gentle, but soon the shuttle was gone from view.

I turned to the monitor screen in the bulkhead behind us, my heart racing. Ship cameras had picked up the shuttle, and followed it now as it moved toward the stern of the Argonos , angled away from the hull. The flames from the engines cut off, and I held my breath, waiting…. The shuttle continued on, velocity steady now, but with no other signs of life. No attack from the alien ship.

“Everything looks good,” Pär said, sighing with relief.

“Yes. For now.”

For now. When each shuttle or harvester was ten hours out from the Argonos, a number chosen almost arbitrarily at what we guessed would be a safe distance, it would hold until the others joined it. When we had all arrived and rendezvoused, we would change direction so we were headed for Antioch, then resume acceleration. This time acceleration would continue for some hours. Four and a half months later, if there were no disasters, we would reach Antioch.

I turned around and looked at the five other shuttles in the hold. Every one of them was loaded, packed, ready to go. There were another five shuttles in the second transport hold, and finally the three harvesters in their own bay.

I wanted to send them out two or three hours apart, but that would have been too time-consuming—for many reasons, not the least being the psychological stress on those desperate to leave. Instead, they would go an hour apart. Two more shuttles, then the first harvester; the other three shuttles in this hold, then the second harvester; the remaining five shuttles, then finally the last harvester, loaded only with cargo and manned by three pilots. Pär and I would be on the third harvester, the last to leave.

If anything unexpected happened, if the alien ship came alive and attacked either the Argonos or any of the shuttles or harvesters, the timetable would be abandoned, and everyone would launch immediately, one right after another, scattering in all directions. I prayed—to what or whom I had no idea—that it wouldn’t come to that. At the same time, I could not really believe that we would be able to launch all those vessels without provoking a response from the alien ship.

I turned back to the monitor. The image of the shuttle was larger than I’d expected; but it had now cleared the stern of the Argonos , and was slowly shrinking as it pulled away. I checked the running clock in the lower right corner of the monitor. Nineteen minutes. I breathed in deeply, then slowly exhaled. An hour was going to be a long time.

THEtension heightened three hours later when the first harvester launched. Sixteen hundred people, all at once. The first three shuttles were safely away, with no response from the alien ship, but the harvester was so much larger, and filled with so many people… Pär and I watched on the monitor as the massive cylinder dropped out of the side of the ship, topped by the bubble of the pilot’s cabin. So large, and yet so small when compared to the Argonos and the alien ship. Maybe it could get away unmolested.

Attitude jets fired briefly, orienting the harvester, then the main engines came on, a ring of fire at the vessel’s stern; they burned brightly and the harvester gradually gained velocity. After several minutes, the engines were shut down.

My heart was beating hard and fast, and I kept forgetting to breathe as we watched the harvester head away from us.

“How many more of these do we have to go through?” Pär asked. “How many more hours?”

“Too many,” I replied.

“No shit,” he said. “I’m not sure I can take it.”

We watched for the entire hour, by which time the harvester was only an indistinct fleck on the monitor. Nothing had happened.

I turned and signaled to the pilot in Shuttle Four to prepare for launch.

WHENthe last of the shuttles in the first transport hold was gone, Pär and I headed for the harvester bay. Geller was in the second transport hold, and would oversee the rest of the shuttle launches from there.

The Argonos was so quiet it seemed dead. Soon, one way or another, it would be. I had walked through empty corridors before, particularly at night; I had walked for hours without seeing a soul. But the emptiness now as Pär and I walked through those same corridors was palpable.

“We tried this once before,” Pär said. “Escaping from the Argonos. ”

“Under very different circumstances. This time we’re going to make it.”

Pär nodded. “Yes, it seems so. And it worries me.”

“What?”

“Why they’re letting us go.”

“The aliens?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve thought about it, too. Sometimes I think it doesn’t make sense to try to understand them. They’re alien .”

“But you have some thoughts?”

“Yes,” I said. “Maybe they don’t realize the shuttles and harvesters won’t return. Maybe they don’t realize how many people are inside them. Maybe they do realize those things and don’t care, because they figure we’re all headed toward Antioch, and they believe they can follow any time they want.” I paused, not wanting to say aloud my greatest fear. “And maybe they want us to think we’re getting away so that our terror is all the greater when they come after us.”

Pär smiled and nodded. “You have been thinking about it. I have, too, and I suspect the latter alternatives are closer to the truth.”

“It doesn’t really matter,” I said. “It doesn’t matter what they think, or what they plan to do. This is the only hope we’ve got.”

THEharvester eased out of its berth and onto the launch pad. Stars before us, and no hint of the alien ship, although it would become visible as we emerged from the bay. Pär and I sat in the cabin with the three pilots, strapped into the reserve seats. In a little more than one hour, we would be the last to leave.