Joan Vinge: The Outcasts of Heaven Belt

There are more stars in the galaxy than there are droplets of water in the Boreal Sea. Only a fraction of those stars wink and glitter, like snowflakes passing through the light, in the unending night sky above the darkside ice. And out of those thousand thousand visible stars, the people of the planet Morningside had made a wish on one—called Heaven.

Sometimes when the winds ceased, a brittle silence would settle over the darkside ice sheet; and it might seem to a Morningside astronomer, in the solitude of his observatory, that all barriers had broken down between his planet and the stars, that the very hand of interstellar space brushed his pulse. Space lapped at his doorway, the night flowed up and up and up, merging imperceptibly with the greater night that swallowed all mornings, and all Morningsides, and all the myriad stars whose numbers would overflow the sea.

And he would think of the starship Ranger, which had gone up from Morningside’s fragile island into that endless night: a silvered dustmote carried on a violent invisible breeze across the cathedral distances of space, drawn from candleflame to candleflame through the darkness…

They would be a long time gone. And what had seemed to the crew to be the brave, bright immensity of their fusion craft shrank to insignificance as they left the homeworld further and further behind—as the Ranger became only one more mote, lost among countless unseen motes in the fathomless depths of night But like an ember within a tinderbox, their lives gave the ship its own warm heart of light, and life. The days passed, and the months, and years… and light-years, while seven men and women watched over the ship’s needs, and one another’s. Their shared past patterned their present with images of the world they had left behind, visions of the future they hoped to bring back to it. They were bound for Heaven, and like true believers they found that belief instilled a deeper meaning in the charting of stars and the tending of hydroponic vats, in their silence and their laughter, in every song and memory they carried with them from home.

And at last one star began to separate from all the rest, centering on the ship’s viewscreen, becoming a focus for their combined hope. Years had dwindled to months and finally weeks, as, decelerating now, backing down from near the speed of light, they kept their rendezvous with the new system. They passed the orbit of Sevin, the outermost of Heaven’s worlds, where the new sun was still scarcely more than an ice-crowned point of light Counting the days now, like children reaching toward Christmas, the crew anticipated journey’s end before them: all the riches and wonders of the Heaven Belt.

But before they reached their final destination, they would encounter one more wonder that was no creation of humankind—the gas giant Discus, a billowing ruby set in a plate of silver rings. They watched it expand until it obliterated more of this black and alien sky than the face of their own sun had blocked in the out in awe at its splendor, the captain and the navigator discovered something new, something quite unexpected, on the ship’s displays: four unknown ships, powered by antiquated chemical rockets, on an intercepting course…

“Pappy, are they still closing?”

“Still closing, Betha.” Clewell Welkin bent forward as new readings appeared at the bottom of the screen. “But the rate’s holding steady. They must be cutting power; they couldn’t do ten gees forever. Christ, don’t let them hit us again…”

Betha struck the intercom button again with her fist, “It’s going to be all right. No one else will get near us.” Her voice shook, someone else’s voice, not Betha Torgussen’s, and no one answered, “Come on, somebody, answer me. Eric! Eric! Switch on—”

“Betha.” Clewell leaned out across the padded seat arm, caught her shoulder.

“Pappy, they don’t answer.”

“Betha, one of those ships, it’s not falling back! It’s—”

She brushed away his hand, searching the readouts on the screen. “Look at it! They want to take us. They must; it’s burning chemical fuel, and they can’t afford to waste that much.” She held her breath, knuckles whitening on the cold metal panel. “They’re getting too close. Show them our tail, Pappy.”

Pale eyes flickered in his seamed face. “Are you—?”

She half-rose, pushed back from the panel, down into the seat again. “Clewell, they tried to kill us!

They’re armed, they want to take our ship and they will, and that’s the only way to stop them… Let them cross our tail, Navigator.”

“Yes, Captain.” He turned away from her toward the panel, and began to punch in the course change that would end their pursuit.

At the final moment Betha switched the screen from simulation to outside scan, picked out the amber fleck of the pursuing ship thirty kilometers behind them—watched it fleetingly made golden by the alchemy of supercharged particles from her ship’s exhaust. And watched its gold darken again into the greater darkness shot with stars. She shuddered, not feeling it, and cut power.

“What—what do we do now?” Clewell drifted up off the seat, against the restraining belt, as the ship’s acceleration ceased. The white fringe of his hair stood out from his head like frost.

Before her on the screen the rings of Discus edged into view, eclipsing the night: the plate of striated silver, twenty separate bands of utter blackness and moon-white, the setting for the rippling red jewel of gas that was the central planet. Her hand was on the selector dial, her eyes burned with the brightness, paralyzing her will. She shut her eyes, and turned the dial.

The intercom was broken. They still sat at the table, Erie and Sean and Nikolai, Lara and Claire; they looked up at her, laughing, breathing again, looked out through the dome at the glory of Discus on the empty night … She opened her eyes. And saw empty night Oh, God, she thought. The room was empty; they were gone. Oh, God. Only stars, gaping beyond the shattered plastic of the dome, crowding the blackness that had swallowed them all… She didn’t scream, lost in the soundless void.

“They’re all—gone. All of them. That warhead… it shattered the dome.”

She turned to see Clewell, his face bloodless and empty; saw their lives, with everything suddenly gone. Thinking, frightened, He looks so old… She released her seatbelt mindlessly, pushed herself along the panel to his side and took his hands. They held each other close, in silence.

A squirming softness batted against her head; she jerked upright as claws like tiny needles caught a foothold in the flesh of her shoulder. “Rusty!” She reached up to pull the cat loose, began to drift and hooked a foot under the rung along the panel base. Golden eyes peered at her from a round brindled face, above a nose half black and half orange; mottled whiskers twitched as the mouth formed a meow?

like an unoiled gate hinge. Betha’s hands tightened over an urge to fling the cat across the room. What right does an animal have to be alive, when five human beings are dead? She turned her face away as Rusty stretched a patchwork paw to touch her, mrr ing consolation for an imcomprehensible grief. Betha cradled her, kissed the furred forehead, comforted by the soft knot of her warmth.