Ben Bova - End of Exile

“I know,” said Jerlet.

Linc went on, “I ought to get back to them as soon as I can. They’ve got to know about Beryl. I’ve got to stop them from being afraid.”

Jerlet nodded wearily.

“If they think that we’re all going to die, there’s no telling what they’ll do—”

“All right!” Jerlet slammed his heavy hand on the desk top. It startled Linc, made him jump and drift away a few meters, weightlessly.

“I know you’ve got to get back to them, dammit.” In the golden light of Baryta the old man’s paunchy body glowed in radiance, his wild hair looked like a crazy halo. “I know you’ve got to go back. I… it’s just that… I don’t want to be alone anymore. I want you to stay here, with me.”

Linc reached up for a handhold on the telescope frame and pushed back toward Jerlet.

“But I’ve got to go back,” he said. “The bridge—”

“I know,” Jerlet grumbled. His face scowled. “But I don’t have to like it! There’s nothing in the laws of thermodynamics that says I have to like the idea.”

Linc felt the air easing out of his lungs. He had been so tense that he had been holding his breath. But now Jerlet was grumbling in his usual way, and Linc could let himself grin. It would be all right. He would go back. Jerlet wouldn’t try to keep him here.

The rest of the day went normally. Jerlet stayed in the observatory, studying Beryl. Linc went down to the workshop and studied the computer’s memory tapes for information on repairing the instruments on the ship’s bridge.

That’s going to be the toughest part of the job, he told himself. Clearing the dead crew out of the bridge and getting the c ontrols working again. Despite himself, he shuddered.

At dinner that evening Jerlet launched into a long explanation of fingerprints, retinal patterns, voice prints, and other aspects of detective work.

Linc felt confused. “But why bother with all that? Everybody knew everybody else, didn’t they? Why couldn’t they just ask who a person was?”

Jerlet guffawed, stuffed a slice of synthetic steak into his mouth, and then began to explain about crime and police work. By the time dessert was finished and the dishes flashed into the recycler. Linc was asking:

“Okay, but who figured out this business of fingerprinting? Kirchhoff and Bunsen?”

Jerlet slapped a palm to his forehead. “No, no! They worked out the principles of spectroscopy. The fingerprint technique was discovered by some policeman or detective or somebody like that. An Englishman named Holmes, I think. It’s in the computer’s memory banks somewhere.”

Linc looked down at his fingertips and saw the swirling patterns of fine lines there. Then he looked up, Jerlet’s face was dead white. Veins were throbbing blue in his forehead. Cords in his neck strained.

“What’s wrong?”

“Ahhrg… hurts,” Jerlet gasped. “Must’ve eaten… too much… too fast—”

Linc pushed out of his chair and went to the old man.

“No… I’ll be… all right…”

Without bothering to argue, Linc pulled him up from his chair and propped him up with his shoulder. He wanted to carry the old man, but Jerlet’s girth was too wide for Linc’s arms to grasp, even though the minuscule gravity made him light enough to carry.

Linc walked him past his own bedroom and down to the infirmary. Jerlet was panting with pain as Linc eased him down onto the tiny medical center’s only bed.

Turning to the keyboard that stood on a little pedestal beside the bed. Linc switched on the medical sensors. The infirmary was almost completely automatic, and Linc didn’t understand most of its workings, but he watched the wall screen above the bed.

It showed numbers for pulse rate, breathing rate, body temperature, blood pressure—all in red, the color of danger. A green wiggly Linc traced out Jerlet’s heartbeat. It was wildly irregular.

“What should I do?” Linc called out to the automated room. There was no one to hear or answer.

Except Jerlet. “Punch… emergency input… tell medicomputer… heart attack—”

Linc did that, and the wall screen began printing out instructions for medicine and setting up an automated auxiliary ventricle pump. Linc followed the step-by-step instructions as they came on the screen. He lost all track of time, but finally had Jerlet surrounded by gleaming metal and plastic machines that hooked themselves onto his arms and legs.

Still the numbers on the wall screen glared red.

Linc stood by the bed endlessly. Jerlet lost consciousness, regained, drifted away again.

Linc fought to keep his eyes open. The only sounds in the room were the humming electricity of the machines, and a faint chugging sound of a pump.

“Linc—”

He snapped his eyes open. He had fallen asleep standing up.-

Jerlet’s hand was fluttering feebly, trying to reach toward him. But the machines had his arm firmly strapped down.

“Linc—” The old man’s voice was a tortured whisper.

“I’m here. How do you feel? What can I do?”

“Terrible… and nothing. If the machines can’t pull me through, then it’s over. ’Bout time, too. I—” His words sank into an indecipherable mumble.

“Don’t die,” Linc begged. “Please don’t die.”

Jerlet’s eyes blinked slowly. “Not my idea, son…Just glad I held on long enough… to meet you… train you—”

“No—” Linc felt completely helpless.

The old man’s voice was getting weaker. Strangely, the harshness of it seemed to melt away as it faded. “Listen—”

Linc bent his ear to the ragged, ravaged face of Jerlet. His breath was gulping out in great racking sobs that were painful just to hear. His whole bloated body heaved with each shuddering gasp. Linc felt the old man’s breath on his cheek. It smelted of dust.

“You… you know what… to do…?”

Linc nodded. His voice wouldn’t work right. His eyes were blurry.

“The machines… you’ll fix… what they need… to get to Beryl…”

“I will.” It was a distant, tear-choked voice. “I promise. I’ll do it.”

“Good.” Jerlet’s face relaxed into a faint smile. His body-racking gasps eased. His eyes closed.

“Please don’t die!”

Jerlet’s eyes opened so slightly that Linc couldn’t be sure the eyelids moved at all. “You can… make it without me.”

Linc clenched his fists on the edge of the bed’s spongy surface. “But I don’t want you to die!”

Jerlet almost laughed. “Told you… wasn’t my idea—I’m no … proud-faced martyr, son. Just get back … away… machinery oughtta start… any second—”

“Back? Away?”

“Go on… ’less you want to… be frozen, too “

Unconsciously Linc edged slightly away from the bed. He stood there for a moment uncertainly, watching the old man lying there. Jerlet’s eyes closed again. All the numbers and the symbols on the wall screen began blinking red, and a soft but insistent tone started beep-beeping. The words CLINICAL DEATH flashed on and off again so quickly that Linc hardly had time to notice them. Then a piercing whistling note howled out of the machines around Jerlet’s bed, as if in their mechanical way they were bewailing his death—or their inability to save him. Then the screen lettered out in green: CRYOGENIC IMMERSION PROCEDURE.

As Linc stepped farther away from the bed, the screen flashed numbers and graphs so quickly that only a machine could read them. The shining metal things around Jerlet’s bed began to hum louder, vibrate, and move back. Linc watched, frozen in fascination, as Jerlet’s entire bed sank down slowly into the floor. The machines went silent and still as the bed slowly receded through a trapdoor. As Linc stepped up for a closer look, the bed disappeared entirely and the trapdoor slid shut once again. A whisp of white steamy vapor drifted up just before’ it closed completely.