Ben Bova - End of Exile

The machines rolled silently back to their niches in the room’s bare white walls. The viewscreen went blank.

“Cryogenic immersion,” Linc muttered to himself. His mind started working actively again. “He had this all set up for himself. The machines are going to freeze him, so that he can be revived and made healthy again someday.”

Even though Linc knew that Jerlet was dead in every sense of the word, that he would never see the old man again because even if he were revived someday it would be so far in the future that Linc would never live to see it, even though he realized all this. Linc somehow felt better.

“Good-bye old man,” he said to the empty room. “I’ll get them to Beryl for you.”

Despite all his training, despite all he knew, despite Jerlet’s assurances, Linc was tense as he donned the pressure suit.

It was like being swallowed alive by some monster that was vaguely human in form, but bigger than any man and strangely different. Linc’s nose wrinkled at the odors of machine oil and plastic as he stepped into the suit and eased himself into it.

And there was another scent now, too. His own clammy sweat. The odor of fear, fear of going into the outer darkness.

It’s space! he fumed at himself. Nothing but emptiness. Jerlet explained a thousand times. There’s nothing out there to hurt you.

“If the suit works right,” he answered himself as he lifted the bubble-shaped helmet over his head.

Just as he had been taught, he sealed the helmet on and then tested all the suit’s seals and equipment. The faint whir of the air fan made Linc feel a little better. So did the slightly stale tang of oxygen.

Slowly he clumped to the inner hatch of the deadlock. Airlock! he reminded himself. He reached out a heavily-gloved hand for the buttons on the wall that would open the hatch, and stopped.

“You could stay right here,” he told himself, his voice sounding strangely muffled inside the helmet. “Jerlet left everything in working condition. You could live here in ease and comfort for the rest of your life.”

Until the ship crashes into Baryta, he answered silently, and everyone dies.

“What makes you think Magda and the others will believe you? You think Monel’s going to do what you tell him? You think any of them will touch a machine just because you say it’s all right to do it?”

But Linc knew the answers even before he spoke the questions, It doesn’t matter what they think or do. I’ve got to try.

His outstretched hand moved the final few centimeters and touched the airlock control button. There was a moment’s hesitation, then the heavy metal hatch slid smoothly aside for him.

He flicked at the other buttons, which would set the airlock mechanism on its automatic cycle, then stepped inside the cramped metal chamber. The inner hatch sighed shut. Pumps clattered. Linc couldn’t hear them inside his suit, but he felt their vibrations through the thick metallic soles of his boots. H is pulse throbbed faster and faster as he stood there, waiting.

The outer hatch slid open. Linc was suddenly standing on the edge of the world, gazing out at endless stars.

And smiling. All his fears evaporated. It was like being in the observatory. The beauty was overwhelming. The silence and peace of eternity hovered before him, watching gravely, patiently.

Linc stepped out of the airlock and for the first time saw the ship as it really existed: a huge set of wheels within wheels, starkly lit by the glaring yellow sun that was behind his back. Fat circular wheels, each one bigger than the one before it, stretching away from the central hub where he stood, turning slowly against the background of stars. And connecting them were half a dozen spokes, the tube-tunnels, seen from the outside.

One of the spokes was lit by a row of winking tiny lights. Jerlet had shown Linc how to turn them on. They were Linc’s guidepath, showing him which tube-tunnel would lead back to the living area in the farthest, largest wheel, where the rest of the people were.

Linc plodded slowly along the lane of yellow lights, moving carefully inside the bulky pressure suit. He was fully aware that a mistake now—a slip, a stumble—could send him tumbling off the ship, never to return.

But Jerlet had trained him well. Linc could see that there were footholds and handgrips studding the outer skin of the tube-tunnel. The metallic soles of his boots were slightly magnetized, so that it took a conscious effort to lift a foot off the metal decking. The oxygen he was breathing made him a trifle lightheaded, but he felt safe and warm inside the suit.

The main trick was to avoid looking out at the stars. After the first few moments of awestruck sightseeing. Linc realized that the ship’s spinning motion made it impossible to stargaze and walk a straight Linc at the same time.

So, shrugging inside the cumbersome suit, he kept his eyes on the winking yellow lights, on the handgrips and footholds that marked his way back to the Living Wheel.

Linc had no idea of how much time passed. He was sweating with exertion long before he neared the Living Wheel. He knew that he should feel hungry, because except for sips of water from the tube inside his helmet he had eaten nothing. But his insides were trembling with exertion and excitement. His only hunger was to reach his destination.

As he neared the outermost wheel, gravity began to make itself felt. The footholds turned into stairs that spiraled around the tube’s outer skin. There was a definite feeling of up and down that grew more certain with each step. Instead of walking along a path, Linc found himself climbing down a spiraling ladder.

Abruptly, most unexpectedly, he was there. The last winking yellow light gave way to a circle of tiny blue lights that outlined the hatch of an airlock.

Linc stood there for a long moment, his feet magnetically gripping the ladder’s final rung, one hand closed around the last handgrip. He studied the control panel set alongside the hatch. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the stars pinwheeling majestically as the largest of the ship’s wheels turned slowly around the distant hub. He had come a long way.

With his free hand, Linc pushed the button that opened the hatch. He barely felt the button through the heavy metal mesh of his glove.

For an eternity, nothing happened. Then the hatch slowly edged outward and to one side. Nothing could be heard in the hard vacuum, but Linc could swear that the hatch creaked as it moved.

He stepped inside the cramped metal chamber of the airlock, and touched the buttons that would cycle the machinery. What if it doesn’t work? he asked himself in sudden panic. I’ll have to g o all the way back to the hub and fight my way down the inside of the tube-tunnel!

But the machines did their job. The outer hatch slid shut and sealed itself. Air hissed into the chamber. The telltale lights on the control panel flicked from red through amber to green, and the inner hatch sighed open.

Linc clumped through into the passageway.

He was home.

The passageway was empty. It usually is, down at this end, he reminded himself. After all, they call this the deadlock. It’s not a happy place to be.

He thumped up the passageway, heading for the living quarters. He felt oddly weary and slow, only gradually realizing that here in normal gravity his pressure suit and backpack weighed almost as much as he did himself.

But he was too eager and excited to take them off.

He was approaching the farming section when he saw the first people. A group of men were coming out of the big double doors of the farm area.