Ben Bova - End of Exile

“And then you left us on our own?”

Jerlet would nod his head sadly. “Had to. Gravity got to my heart. I had to come back up here. Then, while you pups were still growing up, the rest of my friends died off, most of them in an accident down on the bridge. I’m the last one left.”

Linc heard the story many times. But one particular night, as Jerlet wound up the tale, Linc said brightly:

“Well, at least you’ll be able to come with us to the new world… if the ship makes it there.”

Jerlet fixed him with a stern gaze. “It’s up to you to make sure this bucket limps into orbit around Beryl. That’s what I’m training you for, Linc. I spent a lot of years waiting for you kids to grow up and come up here and find me. You’ve got to keep this ship going until all you kids are safely transferred to the planet’s surface.”

For several minutes neither of them said a word. Finally, Linc nodded solemnly and said, “I’ll do it. I’ll get us all to Beryl if I have to go outside the ship and push it with my bare hands.”

Jerlet laughed. “That’d be something to see!”

“I’ll get us there. All of us. And that includes you.”

But the old man slowly shook his head. “No, not me. I can’t leave this zero g environment. My heart would go poof if I even tried to walk a few levels down the tube-tunnel, where the gravity starts to build up.”

Linc said, “No… we’ll find a way… something—”

“Listen, son,” Jerlet said calmly. “I’m an old man. I might not even make it to the time when we go into Orbit around Beryl. That’s why I’m pushing you so hard. It’s all on your shoulders. Linc. You’re the difference between life and death for all your friends.”

The inflated pressure suit stood before Linc like a live human being. But its “face”—the visor of its helmet—was blank and empty. Linc tested each joint for air leaks: ankles, knees, hips, wrists, shoulders. All okay.

He started to run his pressure sensor around the neck seal, where the bulbous helmet connected with the blue fabric of the suit. He smiled as he thought:

A few months ago I would have thought this was an evil spirit or a ghost … it would have scared me out of my skin.

Satisfied that the suit was airtight, Linc touched a stud on the suit’s belt, and the air sighed back into the tanks on the suit’s back. The suit began to collapse, sag at the knees and shoulders, held up only because the air tanks were fastened to the workroom’s bulkhead wall.

Linc watched the suit deflate and found himself thinking of Jerlet. He’s been sagging himself lately. Losing weight. Slowing down.

H e turned to the tiny communicator screen mounted atop the workbench at his right, and touched the red button.

“Hello…Jerlet. I’ve finished with the suit.”

The old man’s face appeared on the miniature screen. It looked more haggard than ever, as if he hadn’t slept all night.

“Good,” he rumbled. “Come on up to the observatory. Got some good news.”

Linc made his way out of the workroom, down the short corridor, and into the airlock. He moved in the ultralow gravity without even thinking about it now, and when he floated up into the vast darkened dome of the observatory he no longer panicked at the sight of the universe stretching all around him.

But he still thrilled at it.

The yellow sun was bright enough to make the metal framework of the main telescope glint and glisten with headlights. Jerlet sat at the observer’s desk, wrapped in an electrically-heated safety suit. But it’s not that cold in here. Linc told himself.

Obviously Jerlet felt differently. His fingers were shaking slightly as he worked the keyboard that controlled the telescope and other instruments.

Linc floated lightly to the desk and touched his slippered feet down next to Jerlet’s chair. The old man looked up at him and smiled tiredly. His face was like a picture Linc had seen of old Earth: a beautiful river winding through a valley of scarred, ragged hills and bare, stubbly ground.

“Finally got the spectral analyzer working,” Jerlet muttered without preamble. “Took all night, but I did it.”

“You ought to get more rest,” Linc said.

The old man shook his head. “Rest when we get there. Here…look at this.”

He touched a few buttons and a view of Beryl flashed onto the main desk-top screen. It was blue-green and beautiful, a lovely gibbous crescent hanging in space, flecked with white clouds, topped by a polar cap of dazzling white.

“Now watch—” Jerlet touched more buttons.

The picture disappeared, to be replaced by a strange glow of colors that ranged from violet to deepest red. Squinting at the unfamiliar sight, Linc saw that there were hundreds of black lines scratched vertically across the band of colors.

“That’s a spectrogram of the planet,” Jerlet said. “A sort of fingerprint of Beryl.”

“Fingerprint?” Linc asked.

Jerlet scratched at his craggy face. “That’s right, you don’t know what fingerprints are. Well… what’s on the agenda for lunch?”

“We’re supposed to go over the route I take to get back to the Living Wheel.”

“H’mm. And dinner?”

“Nothing yet.” He and Jerlet had a set routine for each meal. If Linc had any questions that required a lengthy explanation, Jerlet used mealtime to explain them.

“Okay, dinner. The subject will be fingerprints. Might even tell you about retinal patterns and voice prints.”

Linc nodded. He didn’t understand, but he knew that Jerlet would explain.

“Now, about this spectrogram,” the old man resumed. “It tells us what the air on Beryl is made of… what elements and compounds are in the air.”

Curiosity knit Linc’s brow. “How’s it do that?”

Jerlet smiled again. Patiently he explained how the light from the planet is split into a rainbow pattern of colors by the spectrograph’s prisms; how the spectrograph is fitted into the telescope; how each element and compound leaves its own distinctive telltale mark on the rainbow pattern of Beryl’s spectrum.

Linc listened and learned. Usually, he only had to hear things once to remember them permanently.

“…And here,” Jerlet said, his rough voice trembling with excitement, “is the computer’s analysis, together with a reference to old Earth’s atmospheric composition.”

He touched a button, and the viewscreen showed:

ATMOSPHERIC CONSTITUENTS

BERYLEARTH

Nitrogen 77.23%Nitrogen 78.09%

Oxygen 20.44%Oxygen 20.95%

Argon 1.0I%Argon 0.93%

Carbon Dioxide 0.72%Carbon Dioxide 0.03%

Water Vapor: variable Water Vapor: variable, up to 1.8% abs up to 1.5% abs.

Linc studied the numbers for a few moments. Then he looked back at Jerlet.

“It’s almost the same as Earth… but not exactly.”

“ Close enough to be a twin,” Jerlet boomed. “And as close as any planet’s going to be. A smidge less oxygen and more carbon dioxide, but that could be because the planet’s a bit newer than Earth. There’s chlorophyll all over the place, lots of it. That means green plants, just like Earth.”

“We can live there,” Linc said.

Jerlet pumped his shaggy head up and down. His mouth was trying to form a word, but nothing came out for several seconds. Finally he gulped a strangled, “Yes, you can live there.”

Linc saw that there were tears in his eyes.

“I’ll have to tell the other kids about it,” Linc said. “They’ll be terrified by Baryta. They all think that the yellow sun is going to swallow us… burn us.”