Brian Aldiss - Non-Stop

‘So at least says June Besti. She has been with me again; of course I am grateful fof her help. And I suppose I am lonely. I found myself kissing her passionately; she is physically attractive, and about fifteen years my junior. It was all foolishness on my part. She said — oh, the old argument needs no repeating — she was alone, frightened, we had so little time, why did we not make love together? I dismissed her, my sudden anger an indication of how she tempted me; now I’m sorry I was so abrupt — it was just that I kept thinking of Yvonne, stretched out in dumb suffering a few yards away in the next room.

‘Must arm myself and make some sort of inspection of the ship tomorrow.

‘27.xii.2221. Found two junior officers, John Hall and Margaret Prestellan, to accompany me round ship. Men very orderly. Noah running a nursing service to feed those who come out of the Nine Day Ague. What will the long term repercussions of this catastrophe be?

‘Someone has let Bassitt loose. He is raving mad — and yet compelling. I could almost believe his teaching myself. In this morgue, it is easier to put faith in psycho-analysis than God.

‘We went down to Agriculture. It’s a shambles, the livestock loose among the crops. And the hydroponics! The dry oxygenator mentioned here before has wildly mutated under the bestine influence. It has invaded the corridors near the Hydroponics section, its root system sweeping a supply of soil before it, almost as if the plant had developed an intelligence of its own. With somewhat absurd visions of the thing growing and choking the whole ship, I went up to the Control Room and clicked the button which causes the inter-deck doors to close all along Main Corridor. That should cramp the plant’s style.

‘Frank broke out of his stiffness today. He did not recognize me; I will see him again tomorrow.

‘June was taken with the Ague today. Bright and living June! Prestellan showed her to me — motionless in suffering even as she had predicted. Somehow, treacherously, the sight of her hurt me more than the sight of Yvonne had done. I wish — but what does it matter what I wish? MY TURN NEXT.

‘28.xii.2221. Prestellan reminded me that Christmas has come and gone; I had forgotten that mockery. That was what the drunken mutineers were celebrating, poor devils!

‘Frank recognized me today; I could tell by his eyes, although he could not speak. If he ever becomes Captain, it will be of a very different ship.

‘Twenty recoveries to date. An improvement — room for hope.

‘Adversity makes thinkers of us all. Only now, when the long journey means no more than a retreat into darkness, do I begin to question the sanity behind the whole conception of inter-stellar travel. How many hapless men and women must have questioned it on the way out to Procyon, imprisoned in these eternal walls! For the sake of that grandiose idea, their lives guttered uselessly, as many more must do before our descendants step on Earth again. Earth! I pray that there men’s hearts have changed, grown less like the hard metals they have loved and served so long. Nothing but the full flowering of a technological age, such as the Twenty-first Century knew, could have launched this miraculous ship; yet the miracle is sterile, cruel. Only a technological age could condemn unborn generations to exist in it, as if man were mere protoplasm, without emotion or aspiration.

‘At the beginning of the technological age — a fitting token, to my mind — stands the memory of Auschwitz-Berkenau; what can we do but hope that this more protracted agony stands at its end: its end for ever, on Earth, and on the new world of Procyon V.’

There the file ended.

During the reading of it, Vyann had been forced to pause several times and master her voice. Her usual rather military bearing had deserted her, leaving her just a girl on a bed, close to tears. And when she had finished reading, she forced herself to turn back and re-read a sentence on the first page which had escaped Complain’s notice. Captain Gregory Complain had printed: ‘We head for Earth in the knowledge that the men who will see those skies will not be born until six generations have died.’ Vyann read it aloud in a shaky voice before finally breaking into a storm of tears.

‘Don’t you see!’ she cried. ‘Oh, Roy — the Journey was only meant to take seven generations! And we are the twenty-third generation! The twenty-third ! We must be far past Earth — nothing can ever save us now.’

Hopelessly, wordlessly, Complain tried to console her, but human love had no power to soften the inhumanity of the trap they were in. At last, when Vyann’s sobbing had partly subsided, Complain began to talk. He could hear his voice creaking with numbness, forced out in an attempt to distract her — to distract both of them — from the basic plight.

‘This file explains so much, Laur,’ he said. ‘We must try and be grateful for knowing. Above all, it explains the catastrophe; it’s not a frightening legend any more, it’s something we might be able to deal with. Perhaps we shall never know if Captain Gregory survived, but his son must have done, to carry on the name. Perhaps June Besti survived — somehow she reminds me of you… At least it’s obvious enough people survived — little groups, forming tribes… And by then the hydroponics had almost filled the ship.’

‘Who would have thought,’ she whispered, ‘that the ponics weren’t really meant to be there. They’re… they’re part of the natural order of things! It seems so –’

‘Laur! Laur!’ he exclaimed, suddenly interrupting. He sat up and seized the strange weapon his brother had given him. ‘This weapon! The diary said all weapons except dazers had been destroyed. So this thing must be something other than a weapon!’

‘Perhaps they missed one,’ she said wearily.

‘Perhaps. Or perhaps not. It’s a heat device. It must have a special use. It must be able to do something we don’t know about. Let me try it –’

‘Roy! Be careful!’ Vyann cried. ‘You’ll have a fire!’

‘I’ll try it on something that doesn’t burn. We’re on to something, Laur, I swear it!’

He picked the gun up carefully, training the nozzle towards the wall; it had an indicator and a button on the smooth top surface. He pressed the button, as Gregg had done earlier. A narrow fan of intense heat, almost invisible, splayed out and touched the wall. On the matt metal of the wall, a bright line appeared. It loosened, widened. Two cherry-red lips grew, parting in a smile. Hastily, Complain pressed the button again. The laser died, the lips lost their colour, turned maroon, hardened into a gaping black mouth; through it, they could see the corridor.

Vyann and Complain stared at each other, thunderstruck.

‘We must tell the Council,’ Complain said finally, in an awed voice.

‘Wait!’ she said. ‘Roy, darling, there’s somewhere I want us to try that weapon. Will you come with me before we say a word to anyone?’

They found, with some surprise, when they got into the corridors, that the hunt for the Giant was still on. It was fast approaching the time when the darkness that would cover the next sleep-wake fell; everyone not engaged in the hunt was preparing for sleep, behind closed doors. The ship seemed deserted, looking as it must have looked long ago, when half its occupants lay dying under the rule of the Nine Day Ague. Vyann and Complain hurried along unnoticed. When the dark came down, the girl flashed on the torch at her belt without comment.

Complain could only admire her refusal to admit defeat; he was not enough of a self-analyst to see it was a quality he had a fair measure of himself. The uneasy notion that they might meet rats or Giants or Outsiders, or a combination of all three, obsessed him, and he kept the heat gun ready in one hand and his dazer in the other. But their progress was uneventful, and they came safely to Deck 1 and the closed spiral staircase.