Les Johnson - Going Interstellar

Harrod heard the words “achieve much” and heard their intended context just as clearly: “massacre House Mellis.” Harrod shook his head, baffled.

“Do not dismiss the feasibility of this strategem so quickly, Harrod. Consider the ploy: together, we—”

Harrod kept shaking his head. “No. You misunderstand. I presume your treachery is as inspired and promising as it is devious and subtle. And I do not doubt that Overlord Shaddock would reward me.”

“So you refuse out of misguided loyalty?”

“No,” replied Harrod looking up sharply. “I refuse because—at this moment, more than any other in our collective lives—dissent is unmitigated folly. We are commencing the most dangerous journey imaginable: an interstellar voyage with no guarantee of safe haven at its conclusion. Space is hungry for our lives, and well-equipped to devour us with radiation, cold, vacuum, and blind, brutal chance. And you propose that we should war amongst ourselves even as we venture into the lightless belly of such an abyssal beast?”

Ackley turned away. He did not speak for a long time. “I think you are a fool,” he said at last. But he did not sound as if he meant it.

Harrod chose a new topic he suspected would be to Ackley’s liking. “I suppose congratulations are nearly in order. Soon you will be among the Evolved.”

“Yes.” Ackley seemed to brood upon that. “Hardly an auspicious advancement, though. Being sul-Shaddock was an enviable position when there were thousands of huscarls and helots for every Evolved. Now, despite my title, I am also the very lowest in a House where only Evolveds remain.”

Harrod could not deny the poignance of Ackley’s situation: a supreme irony, indeed.

It seemed that Ackley had been reading his mind: “It is a rich jest, is it not?”

Harrod, surprised, could only shake his head and speak the truth. “I find no joy or amusement in the misfortunes of others.”

Ackley stared at Harrod. “And that is why your House does not Raise you up.”

The bulkhead plates sealed off their view of space just as Overlord Bikrut began to speak. “Hear now the first words in the chronicles of our Exodate. Our inertial fusion engines—and those of the tugs—will soon commence operation. You will feel heavy with that acceleration, almost as though you were standing upright upon the surface of Kalsor Tertius. After many months, the tugs will detach, and our thrust—and your sense of ‘gravity’—will decrease by two-thirds. However, only those of us tasked to stand the first long watch will experience that change. The rest of you will be in a near-frozen sleep when our ship passes the heliopause and moves into the particle disk that extends beyond the ecliptic of our system. There, we will activate the ramscoop to gather water and molecular hydrogen even as our navigational lasers start sweeping ahead of us. They will vaporize even the smallest bits of sand or grit: traveling at our velocity, a collision with such debris would still be akin to a direct hit by a nuclear device.

“Over time, all of you will be awakened to stand at least one watch, maintaining order and authority over the aging crew of junior Intendants. Shortly after reaching midpoint, we will breed a small, accelerated second generation of Intendants from the ex vitro vats, to replace those who are awake and approaching infirmity.”

The lights dimmed and the intercom tone chimed. Bikrut’s head and chin rose slightly. “I order the Sixth Exodate to set forth. And let the annals show that I name this ship, our Ark, the Photrek Courser.” The deck came up firmly beneath their feet. “We are under way.”

Harrod fought up out of the stiff, chilly fog that concluded the process of cryogenic reanimation. And was surprised to find that he was alone—except for Overlord Bikrut Mellis. Startled, Harrod attempted to sit up, to attain a respectful posture—but the sudden movement impaled him upon a spike of core-wrenching nausea: he vomited bile and glycerine-purging fluids upon the floor. “My apologies, my Overlord,” he gasped between bouts of retching.

“Be unconcerned,” grunted the Overlord, who waited until the worst of the spasms had subsided. “Now, attend me.”

Harrod looked up groggily—and suddenly realized that, for Bikrut to be here, something must be wrong. Very wrong. “Yes, my Overlord?”

“There is no cause for alarm. My participation in this waking cycle was always intended. We simply did not communicate it beyond the operations team that has now corrected our demographic problem.”

A new coldness grew slowly at the base of Harrod’s sore diaphragm. “A …a demographic problem, my Overlord?”

“Yes. The presence of House Shaddock. But as I said, that problem has been rectified.” Bikrut smiled.

“Their cryogenic cells—?”

“Precisely. Killed as they slept. Easiest that way. Those who we need at the end of the voyage will be kept in cold sleep.”

“My Overlord, if you do not awaken them until our arrival—”

“Do not concern yourself, Intendant: we are aware that seventy years of uninterrupted cryogenic sleep is neither physically, nor mechanically, advisable. But we are staging their reanimations so that there are never more than three awake at any time—and for very short periods: never more than a month. Towards the end of our journey, we will replace the lost numbers with vat-grown helots. They will be our initial workforce and environmental test subjects. Come: stand and walk. You have much work to do. And only a year in which to do it.”

Harrod almost slipped off the table as he swung his legs to the deck. “Yes, my Overlord.”

Harrod exited the command section and performed a slow ninety-degree mid-air tumble: his feet came up to rest against the bulkhead he had just drifted through. As the access hatch autosealed beside him, he reached down for a hand-hold, pulled his body into a squat while still keeping his feet flush against the bulkhead. Then he released the hand-hold and kicked free.

In the zero gee of the Photrek Courser ’s midcourse glide, this push sent him arrowing down the broad keel-way of the ship, the trussed sections moving past him like a cubist tunnel of groined vaults. Speeding past dozens of module access doors, he did not start grazing his fingertips against the ceiling until he was within twenty meters of the midship array. As he began to slow, he also started a slow rotation into a feet-first attitude.

Having had almost a year of practice, Harrod timed the transition almost perfectly: the plane of his body was parallel with the ceiling as he slowed into a leisurely drift and reached out to grab the hatch-ring of the access tube. He tugged to a stop, and oriented himself; the impression that the access hatchway was in the ceiling was suddenly gone. The visual sense of up/down quickly recalibrated: now, there was no perceivable difference between the ceiling, floor, and bulkhead. He opened the hatch manually and towed himself inside.

Once in the array’s dim control suite, he strapped himself into the lead operator’s chair and assessed the equipment’s status. The sensors themselves were continuing the routine he’d initiated two weeks ago; the computer—its blue flickers ghostly in the inky suite—was still grinding through the reams of data they’d gathered on what was to be their new home.

Still at seven light years distance, the Courser ’s sensors were straining to get anything useful at all. To make matters worse, the midship array was primarily a communications cluster: the main sensor array at the bow was unavailable. Photrek Courser’s current segment of travel had brought her within half a light year of a brown dwarf, increasing the densities of both available volatiles and useless dust. Consequently, the Courser ’s best array was fully committed to detecting and eliminating navigational hazards while the ram scoop replenished a little hydrogen. Even more important were the sparse amounts of oxygen they gathered: the hydroponics had not functioned as well as hoped. The ninety-nine percent closed bioloop of the life-support system had proven to be more like a ninety-six percent closed bioloop, so any oxygen was a very welcome addition to their resources. But with the main array committed to these crucial tasks, Harrod’s long-range planetographic data-gathering had been unavoidably retasked to the secondary, midship array.