Ben Bova - End of Exile

Slav turned to Magda. “What do you say, priestess? Is Linc right or is Monel? Should we try to leave the ship and live on the new world, or should we stay here?”

Magda was standing halfway between Linc and Monel. All eyes turned to her.

“I’ve meditated on this for a long time,” she said, her voice low but strong. “I’ve asked Jerlet for guidance, and tried to feel the inner truth of the problem.”

“And…?”

“Linc has shown that our old fears of the machines were probably wrong. He should be allowed to bring us to the new world.”

The crowd sighed. A decision had been reached.

“If we were not meant to live there,” Magda went on, “the machines will fail. Jerlet won’t let us be led toward death. If the machines work as Linc says they will, then we will reach the new world safely and live there in happiness. But if they fail, we’ll stay on the ship. All is Jerlet’s will.”

They seemed satisfied with that. Even Monel appeared to relax. But Linc shook his head. Superstition. Nothing but stupid superstition.

“COUNTDOWN TIMECHECK: T MINUS FOUR MINUTES AND COUNTING.”

Time seemed to stretch out endlessly. Linc sat at the checkout desk, watching the displays on the viewscreens as they flickered past, showing every part of the rocket propulsion system. It all seemed perfectly normal, everything working smoothly.

Three minutes. Two. Sixty seconds… thirty… ten.

Linc suddenly felt as if he were somewhere high above the bridge, looking down on all the people standing there clustered around him, looking down on himself who stared solemn-eyed at the viewscreen displays, hands poised over the cutoff buttons, ready to stop the countdown if anything appeared to be wrong.

“…THREE SECONDS…”

The fuel pump symbol on the viewscreen flashed from green to amber, showing that the pump had turned on exactly on schedule.

“…TWO… ONE…”

Just at the count of ONE the pump symbol flashed red. Linc felt his jaw drop open. He jammed both hands down on the cutoff switch as the computer’s toneless voice said:

“ZERO. IGNITION.”

And an explosion tilted the bridge to a crazy angle, smashing Linc against the desk and sending everyone sprawling.

They were alive.

Through the pain that flamed through his chest, Linc realized that basic fact. He pulled himself up dizzily to his feet and looked around. The bridge seemed undamaged. There was no smoke, no fire. The people were dazed, but more from some inner turmoil than any outward fear. Hollie and one of the guards were helping Monel back into his chair.

He was laughing.

Linc glanced at the viewscreens. Everything seemed to be working, except that the astrogation display was flashing a red ERROR, ERROR, ERROR sign.

Linc stepped over to Monel, who was laughing so hard that his eyes were squeezed shut. His head was thrown back and the cackling, screeching sound of his laughter was the only noise in the bridge.

Linc slapped him.

With all the fury in him. Linc slapped Monel’s laughing face hard enough to knock him out of the chair.

No one moved.

“Get him out of here,” Linc growled. “He’s killed us all: Now get him out of here. All of you! Out! Get out!”

They grabbed at the sputtering Monel, his face striped with the white prints of Linc’s fingers, and dragged him away. Someone pushed the empty wheelchair. They all scurried out of the bridge.

Linc turned and saw Magda standing in front of the communications desk, taut as a steel rod.

“He’s killed us all,” Linc said.

“You hit him.”

“I wanted to kill him!” Linc pounded his fists against his thighs.

“You struck him.”

“What difference does it make?” Linc shouted at her. “We’re all dead. He’s ruined everything.”

She shook her head. “No, Linc. Nothing is ruined except your own inner peace. You’ll find a way to get us to the new world, despite Monel. You’ll make the machines do what you want. But you run the danger of turning into a machine yourself.”

“Leave me alone,” he snapped.

“I will. You’re not fit for human company.”

The machines told him what had happened. Someone had deliberately knocked the safety valve off one of the fuel pumps at precisely T minus one second, too late for even the automatic machinery to shut down the rocket firing. It turned out that it was Rix who had done it. Monel told him what to do, and he did it. The explosion wrecked one of the rocket engines and killed him. That much Slav found out, and came back to the bridge to tell Linc.

The computer told him more. The rocket’s misfiring had still added thrust to the ship’s velocity. Its course had been altered. Not in the precise way that Linc had planned, however.

He sat gloomily at the desk keyboard and watched the astrogation computer display the ship’s new course. The blue Linc now swung wide of Baryta—they would not be roasted by the approaching star. But it also missed Beryl by a wide margin. No matter how Linc pushed buttons or coaxed the computer, there was no way for the ship to get into orbit around the new world.

He paced the bridge alone, refusing to see anyone, refusing food, refusing himself even the comfort of sleep. He checked the main computer about the matter transmitter.

Question: How close to Beryl must we be to use the transmitter?

Answer: TRANSMITTER EFFECTIVE OVER RANGES LESS THAN 5000 KILOMETERS.

To the astrogation computer he asked:

Question: What will be out nearest approach to Beryl?

Answer: 28,069.74 KILOMETERS.

Question: Can we get to within 5000 kilometers of Beryl?

Answer: WORKING. CALCULATED THRUST LEVELS REQUIRED TO ACHIEVE DESIRED DISTANCE FROM PLANET EXCEED STRUCTURAL LIMITS OF SHIP.

More pacing. Linc’s body felt like a block of hard plastic. He buried the pain from the bruise across his chest, buried his fatigue and hunger. This was a problem he had to solve. Had to! And the machines couldn’t solve it for him.

Why can’t the matter transmitter work over a longer range? Because it would need more power, and there isn’t any more power available for it.

Of course there’s more power! Linc realized. There’s all sorts of power in this ship: lights, heat, all the power that runs the other machines —

Back to the computer. More questions, more answers.

They all looked shocked when he showed up at the galley. It was lastmeal. Linc knew from the low level of the lighting in the corridor.

Jayna reached him first. “Linc! You look sick—” She took his arm. “Here… sit down—”

“No. Not yet.” He gestured to them all to sit down. Only a little more than half the people were in the galley. Magda wasn’t. Neither was Monel.

“Listen to me. We’ve still got a chance to get to the new world. It’ll be difficult, but we can do it. And if we don’t…then the ship is going to loop into a wide arc. We’ll move away from Baryta—the yellow sun—for a while. We’re already moving away from it. But inside of a year we’ll fall back into it and get burned up.”

They murmured among themselves. They don’t believe me, Linc thought. They’re tired of hearing me.

But Jayna asked, “What do we have to do, Linc?”

“Nothing,” he answered. “There’s nothing for you to do. Except,… when I tell you to move, you’d better all jump.” He snapped out the last word, startling them. “We’re only going to have one tiny chance to make it—one chance for life. You’d better be ready to move when I tell you to.”

He dragged himself back to the computer desk on the bridge and began programming it. Every gram of rocket thrust… every erg of power… it’s going to be all or nothing.