Ben Bova - End of Exile

Linc frowned. “What about Magda?”

“We never see her anymore. She’s locked herself in her room. Monel claims she’s meditating day and night, trying to save us by pure mental concentration.”

Linc looked away from the thick-armed farmer and stared at a viewscreen that showed green curving lines snaking across a gridwork graph. The background of the screen was black, and Linc could see his face reflected in it: tight, hollow-cheeked, thin-lipped, eyes scowling.

“Slav,” he said at last, “meditating isn’t going to save this ship. And nothing Monel can do will save us, either. But I can save us all. I know how to get us safely to the new world. Most of the machines are working now. I need help to get the rest of them in shape.”

“You want me to help you.”

“Not just you,” Linc said. “All the people. Anyone and everyone. Go back and tell them that they can help me… and if they do, they’ll be saving themselves.”

Slav blinked his eyes. Like almost everything he did, it was a slow and deliberate movement. “Not everybody can come here. Somebody’s got to work the farm tanks—”

“I need all the help I can get. We’re in a race against time. Everything’s got to be ready before we get too close to the yellow sun. Otherwise we won’t be able to pull away from it and land on the new world.”

“All right,” Slav said. “I’ll tell the people. Monel and his guards, though…”

“They can’t stop you. Not if you all act together.”

Slav nodded slowly, but he didn’t seem convinced.

Linc paced slowly along the bridge, watching the viewscreens and the men and women sitting at their stations tending the instruments. He felt a warm glow of pride.

The ship works beautifully, he said to himself. My ship. I brought it back to life. I made it work again. He wished for a moment that Jerlet could see it all; how the machines hummed and clicked to themselves. How the people had come to him: Jayna first, then Slav, then two more, a handful, a dozen. Now he had enough people to do all the tasks that needed doing. They didn’t even jump when a servomech trundled past them, anymore. The rocket engines tested out; the connections were solid. The computer had worked out a flight plan to put them in orbit around Beryl.

All that remains to do is to test the matter transmitter. Linc knew. But even if it takes time to get it working, once we’re in a stable orbit around Beryl we’ll have plenty of time. Already the main computer up in the hub was going over all the necessary data and working up a program that would tell Linc how to repair and test the matter transmitter system.

If Jerlet could only see this! He’d be proud of me. But Linc frowned to himself. He knew who he really wanted to see his accomplishments: Magda. But she had never once visited the bridge, his domain.

Monel had come.

Red-faced, thinner, and nastier than ever, he had come flanked by six of his guards and watched—angry and snarling—as more than a dozen people worked at the tasks Linc had assigned them.

“You’ll get no food!” he screamed at them. “None at all! Don’t expect to go against my orders and still get fed.”

Linc countered, “We have food processors at the hub and other levels of the ship. The servomechs keep us well-supplied. We won’t starve.”

Monel spun his chair around and wheeled himself away from the bridge. One of his guards stayed with Linc, a fellow named Rix. “He’s gone crazy,” Rix said. “I’m better off with you.”

Linc didn’t tell everyone that the food processors couldn’t feed a large number of people indefinitely. They would need inputs of fresh food eventually. But by that time we’ll either be in orbit around Beryl or dead.

Monel was back a few days later, this time threatening to have the guards tear people away from the bridge by force, if necessary.

“Violence?” Linc asked.

“Justice!” Monel snarled.

Linc went to a desk top and touched a button. A servomech rolled up to Monel’s chair and stood there, its dome sensors pulsing with a faint reddish light. Monel backed his chair away.

“Those metal arms,” Linc said, “can inflict a lot of justice on your guards. Or you.”

Monel left the bridge. He never returned. Neither did his guards.

And Magda never came at all.

I could go get her, Linc thought. But he shook his head at the idea. No! Let her come to me. She’s wrong and I’m right.

Besides, there was Jayna and a dozen other girls who wanted to be with him now. Let Magda sit in her shrine, Linc told himself. Let her meditate ’til she turns green!

Most of the people came to the bridge to help him every day, then returned to their quarters for meals and sleep. Despite the threats and grumblings, Monel took no action to stop them. Slav and his farmers hardly ever showed up on the bridge, but Linc knew they were on his side.

Linc himself slept in the captain’s lounge, next to the bridge. He ate what Jayna or some of the other girls brought him.

He spent most of his time working on the matter transmitter.

It was incredibly complex, and he didn’t understand the first tenth of what he was doing. But the computer patiently showed detailed diagrams, gave him long lists of parts and instructions on where to find them and how to use them.

And each day the yellow sun grew brighter, bigger. It seemed to be reaching out for them.

Linc was squatting on the floor of the transmitter booth—a» tall cylinder of transparent plastic that stood in front of the system’s roomful of electronic hardware—when Hollie came running up to him.

“Linc,” she called breathlessly, “the astrogation computer is starting to print out the final course corrections!”

Linc scrambled to his feet and wordlessly followed her to the bridge. Hollie was a slim, lanky girl, almost Linc’s own height, and her long legs kept pace with him as they raced down the corridor from the transmitter station to the bridge.

More than a dozen people were crowded around the astrogation computer desk. They moved back when Linc arrived and let him slide into the seat.

Above the desk, the computer’s main viewscreen had split into several different displays. One showed numbers: the exact timing and thrust levels of the rocket burns that must be made. Another showed a picture of their course, laid against a schematic drawing of the solar system that they were finally reaching. Thin yellow lines showed the orbits of the system’s six planets: Beryl was the second-closest to the yellow sun. A glowing blue Linc showed the course that the ship would have to follow; it ended in a circular orbit around Beryl. A flashing green dot showed where the rocket burns had to be made.

Linc studied the numbers and nodded.

“Twelve hours,” he said. “The first rocket burn has to be made in twelve hours.”

They all clapped and laughed. They were excited, eager. Their long weeks of work were finally resulting in something they could see.

But Linc found himself wishing for more time. I’ve got to be in a dozen places at once, he realized. The matter transmitter wasn’t ready for testing yet, and no one else could read or handle the tools well enough to be trusted with it. But he also had to be here on the bridge to make certain that the course-changing maneuvers were done exactly right. Otherwise everything was doomed.

And, he realized, he had to see Magda.

It was night. Everyone was asleep. Linc stood by the astrogation computer and watched all the unsleeping, hard-working instruments of the bridge. The whole ship is at my fingertips. All mine. Just as though nobody else existed.