Ben Bova - New Earth

Jordan wondered if Meek was putting on a false optimism, too.

Breakfast finished, Jordan and Meek made their way down to the bowels of the ship, to the hangar deck where the landing vehicles were housed. The feeling of gravity was noticeably lower here, closer to the ship’s centerline.

Three sleek, silvery, delta-winged rocketplanes stood side by side inside the big, metal-walled hangar space. One side of the hangar was an air lock large enough to accommodate a rocketplane. Jordan saw that one of the four parking spaces was empty, where the plane that had already been sent to the surface had once been.

One of the planes gone, he thought. And this is only our third day here.

Their footsteps echoed off the metal deck and the bare hangar walls as Meek and Jordan approached the nearest rocketplane. Jordan could see his brother’s face through the windscreen of the vehicle’s cockpit.

Eager as a puppy, Jordan thought. If it were up to Bran, we would have flown down to the surface yesterday or even the night before, ready or not.

Clambering through the plane’s hatch, Jordan made his way toward the cockpit, hunching slightly because of the low overhead. Meek, gangling right behind him, had to duck even lower. The plane’s interior smelled new, unused. That will change, Jordan told himself.

They squeezed through the cargo bay, where a spring-wheeled excursion buggy big enough to carry six people was stowed, together with a pair of inert robots. I hope they work better than the rovers, Jordan thought.

The cockpit had six reclinable chairs. Brandon was already ensconced in the pilot’s seat, and the central screen of the control panel showed Geoff Hazzard’s dark, unsmiling face.

“I’ll be standing by at the remote control panel here in the bridge,” Hazzard was saying. “Your vehicle’s programmed to land itself, but I’ll be right here in case there’s any problems.”

Brandon nodded briskly. “How much of a lag time is there between you and this ship?”

Hazzard’s eyes flickered once, then he answered, “Microseconds. If I have to take over, you won’t even notice a lag.”

“Good.”

“Ready to go?” Jordan asked.

Brandon turned around in the chair and broke into a big smile. “Now that you two are here, Jordy.”

Meek, hunched over so much that his hands were clasping his knees, asked, “Where’s de Falla?”

“Back in the equipment bay, checking out our biosuits and the other gear. Thornberry’s going over the buggy remotely, from the bridge.”

“Shouldn’t de Falla be here when we take off?” Meek asked.

“He will be,” Brandon said.

As if on cue, Silvio de Falla ducked through the hatch, his dark liquid eyes large and round, his teeth flashing as he smiled brightly. “Field equipment checks out,” he reported. “Thornberry says the buggy’s ready. We’re good to go.”

“All right, then,” said Brandon. “Everybody sit down and strap in.”

Jordan slipped into the right-hand seat beside his brother. A tiny control yoke poked out from the instrument panel in front of him, and a console studded with levers and switches sat between the two seats. As he pulled the safety harness over his shoulders he wondered if he should remind Brandon that he shouldn’t touch any of the controls. The ship flies itself, he knew, and Geoff can take over if he has to.

He decided not to mention it. Brandon seemed happy as a kid in a toy store. Why spoil his fun?

Turning slightly in his chair, Jordan saw that Meek and de Falla were in the two seats behind him, fastening their safety harnesses.

Eagerly, Brandon said to Hazzard’s image on the display screen, “You can start the countdown, Geoff.”

Hazzard nodded gravely, then said, “Jordan, mission protocol says you have to give the word.”

Jordan waved one hand in the air. “By all means, start the countdown.”

“Okay,” said Hazzard, “countdown clock is started. You launch in three minutes. And counting.”

Jordan sank back into the chair’s padding and squirmed a little to make the safety harness clasping his shoulders more comfortable. He glanced at Brandon, who was staring straight ahead. Pretending to be a spaceship captain, Jordan thought, smiling inwardly. Bran will never grow up, not completely. That’s my department. I’m the sober brother, all grown up and serious; he’s still something of a boy.

“Pumping out hangar deck,” Hazzard’s voice stated flatly.

Inside the cockpit they barely heard the clatter of the pumps sucking the air out of the hangar. Jordan felt himself tensing, though: excitement, fear, wonder, worry—all of them bubbling inside him.

“Rotating,” said Hazzard.

The rocketplane turned slowly toward the air lock hatch. Out of the corner of his eye, Jordan saw his brother lick his lips.

“Opening air lock hatch,” Hazzard announced.

The massive hatch slid open silently. Jordan saw the infinite darkness of space, speckled by bright unblinking stars. Where’s the planet? he wondered.

“Launch in fifteen seconds.”

As the synthesized voice of the automated countdown system ticked off the seconds, the rocketplane rolled to the edge of the open hatch. Despite himself, Jordan tensed in his chair. Then the rocket engine roared to life and Jordan felt a hard, firm push against his back. The rocketplane flung itself out of the hangar and into empty space.

Given the choice between long life and glory, Anita Halleck chose long life. She was more than halfway through the second century of her life as she stood beneath the glassteel dome of the observatory atop Mt. Yeager, staring wistfully at the Earth.

The observatory was an empty shell now, a tourist attraction instead of a working astronomical facility, little more than a transparent dome and a set of plush couches ringing the circumference of the circular chamber, with virtual reality rigs for tourist visitors dotting its floor. Almost all of the astronomical studies undertaken on the Moon were done at the Farside observatory, which Halleck had been briefly involved with many years earlier.

The lunar nation of Selene lay buried beneath the worn, slumped mountains that circled the giant walled plain of Alphonsus. Above the barren, airless, pockmarked plain hung the glorious blue-and-white globe of Earth, more than half full at the moment, a glowing beacon of life and warmth set in the dark and sterile depths of space.

Halleck sighed inwardly. Nearly a century earlier she had opted to have her body filled with therapeutic nanomachines, virus-sized mechanisms that destroyed invading bacteria and viruses, cleansed her blood vessels of dangerous plaque, rebuilt damaged cells, acted as a superhumanly efficient immune system to protect and preserve her body.

The result was long life. Despite her years, Halleck was as tall and youthful as she had been a century earlier, slim waisted and long legged with a long sweep of chestnut hair draped dramatically over one shoulder and falling halfway down to her belt.

But the cost was to be exiled from Earth, never permitted to set foot on the planet of her birth, the world of humankind’s origin. Nanotechnology was totally banned on Earth. No one carrying nanomachines in her body was allowed even to visit.

More than twenty billion people crammed in there, Halleck thought. How many crazies, how many fanatics, how many idiots who could turn nanomachines into an unstoppable plague that would destroy everyone and everything? No wonder they banned nanotech.