When the priest was finished, and the relatives had said their condolences and left, Hennessey continued standing alone in the rain while Linda's four brothers and her father filled in the grave containing a sample of her hair, a few personal belongings, jewelry and such, hair clippings from the children, a toy for each of them, plus another for the probable unborn.
Never very religious, nonetheless Hennessey prayed to God to take care of the souls of his wife and children. As he prayed, his tears mixed with the rain and fell to the ground at his feet. After a long while, he left.
Interlude
There was a planet teeming with life and able to support more life. There was another planet; old, worn out, depleted and allegedly groaning with overpopulation. What could be more sensible than to colonize, to relieve Earth's burden by transferring man to the new world?
Not that it was simple, by any means. No large numbers could be sent off world without some means of either reducing the trip's duration to a few months or putting passengers in suspended animation. For that matter, even with a much faster ship, the number of people that could be carried went up geometrically if they didn't need to be fed and used no oxygen during the trip.
Still… great oaks from little acorns and all. Cryogenic suspended animation seemed possible, but needed work. In the interim, a ship could be built to take at least a token number of colonists off world. This would be expensive, to be sure, but perhaps not so expensive as not sending people off-world.
Design took years. Development of materials to meet the design took more years. Actually building the thing-as important, building the shipyard in space that would build the thing-and its external laser auxiliary propulsion and putting those stations in place took decades.
She was to be called the Cheng Ho, after the great Chinese eunuch explorer. In design, externally, she was similar to the Cristobal Colon, but much larger with a diameter of just at one hundred and seventy meters.
Gravity was a problem, there being serious adverse medical ramifications to extended periods in null g. This was especially bad for a ship intended to carry people to a planet, where they were expected to live, that had gravity almost indistinguishable from that of Earth. No one had yet come up with a true artificial gravity and perhaps no one ever would. Continuous acceleration was deemed impractical. Magnetism was right out. All that was available, known and practical was that an acceptable artificial gravity could be produced through spinning the ship.
Internally, Cheng Ho 's decks were to be cylinders within cylinders, with the exterior living deck providing just under. 4 g's when in full spin. The machinery needed to run the ship was set within the innermost of the cylinders. Storage took up the intervening spaces, together with a modest investment in agriculture, this last being partially a supplement to food storage but equally a means of recycling air.
The Cheng Ho was never expected or intended to land anywhere. It would be built in space, travel in space, and live out its useful life in space, shuttling its cargo up and down. Surface planetary gravity would have crumpled the ship in an instant.
Yet it had to be built somewhere and by something. That something was a toroidal station, put together just inside of the asteroid belt. The station itself spun and that would provide the initial spin to the Cheng Ho. Gravity on the exterior ring of the shipyard was on the order of. 76, a very comfortable load.
Within the toroidal ring of the shipyard the Cheng Ho was built from the inside out, the central cylinder serving in place of the keel of a sea-bound vessel. A series of mining and refining outposts on the moon and in the asteroid belts provided the limited metal needed. Sections that would have been far too heavy if metallic were made of composites, both in space and on Earth, and lifted to the construction site.
Construction of this first true interstellar colonization ship took decades.
Passengers were selected six years prior to launch and subjected to a three-year training program before being allowed to board.
Chapter Six From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun… -Chesterton, "Lepanto"
Cochea, 26/7/459 AC
It was warmth; it was peace.
With the song of birds in the air, Linda and Patricio sat on a blanket spread on the side of a small hillock. To the northeast gurgled the creek in which she had swum as a girl. Between the hill and the creek, on grass weeded and kept smooth by family retainers, Julio, Lambie and Milagro played a game of ball, Milagro, in particular, giggling madly as her two older siblings tossed the ball to and fro over her head.
It was contentment; it was happiness. His love was with him and the results of that love were with them.
Hennessey heard Linda say, "It's hot, Patricio. Here, why don't you have a beer?"
While keeping one eye on the children, he held out a hand for the bottle she offered. As he took it, his nose was assailed by the stench of rotting flesh. He closed his eyes and whispered, "Oh, no."
When he could bring himself to open them again, he looked at his wife. She knelt motionless by his side, flesh turned black with decomposition and bones beginning to show through as the flesh fell away in long rotten strips and irregular pieces. She made no sound.
Pained, frightful cries came from the children. "Daddy! Help us!"
Almost too frightened to look, still Hennessey turned his gaze toward the creek. The children's game had stopped; the ball sat still on the smooth grass. They stretched blackening arms out toward him, pleading, imploring. Even as he watched, little Milagro exploded in a cloud of bone and rancid meat. Lambie and Julio shook and shivered, screamed and begged, as their bodies fell to ruin.
Hennessey looked back to Linda. She was no longer there. In her place lay a neat pile of disconnected bone. The children's screaming stopped. He looked back for them.
In their places, too, were little piles of joints and ribs.
"Martina? This is Patricio. Would it be all right if I stayed with you and Suegro for a little while?"
Finca Carrera, Cochea, 29/7/459 AC
Poor Patricio, thought Linda's mother, Martina. She looked out to where her son-in-law sat unmoving on her front porch, the picture of human misery. Some food she had brought to him lay untouched, except by the flies, on the porch railing.
It's like he's died inside.
He had told them he had no remaining relatives-barring one cousin-that he wished to see in the Federated States. And even with Annie he found it difficult to talk.
When he had called a few nights back, his voice choking with misery and horror, and asked if he might stay for a while, the family had naturally taken him in. Though it seems to have done little good. Still, it can't have been good for him to stay in that house.
Nothing worked. Hennessey took no interest in anything. He just sat there on the porch, day after day. What passed through his mind no one knew. The only interruptions to his vigil came when he took the short walk to Linda's and the children's "grave." Sometimes, too, he slept in the bedroom the family had provided. Just as often, however, he would fall asleep in the chair on the porch. He hardly spoke to anyone. He drank far, far too much.
Arranging some flowers on a table beneath the window, Martina thought, Poor broken man; he's got nothing left. I don't think I've ever seen a sadder sight than the way he just sits there, day after day, no hope or purpose.