Linc started to reply, but found that he had nothing to say.
Jerlet filled in the silence. “I see you’ve cleaned up and changed clothes. Good! How about meeting me in the autogalley? Got a lot of things to show you.”
“The autogalley?” Linc asked.
“The eating room. Where the food selector is.”
“Oh… Okay.”
“Do you know how to find it from where you are?” Jerlet asked.
Linc nodded. “I can find it.”
“Okay, good. I’ll meet you there.” The old man seemed genuinely happy.
He was still smiling when he eased his bulk through the doorway of the autogalley and glided toward Linc. He stuck out a heavy, short-fingered hand.
“Linc, I dunno what kind of customs you kids have put together down in the living section, but it’s an old human custom for two men to shake hands when they meet.”
Thoroughly puzzled. Linc put his hand out.
•Jerlet waggled a finger at him. “No, no… the right hand.”
With a shrug, Linc raised his right hand and let Jerlet grasp it firmly. The old man’s a lot stronger than he looks, he realized.
“Good!” Jerlet beamed. “Now we’re formally met. Got so much to show you.” He rubbed his hands together. “Let’s start with the food selector. Show you how that works.”
They ate well. Jerlet showed Linc all sorts of new foods and tastes that he had never known before. As the food began to make a comfortable warm glow in his middle, Linc found his worries and suspicions about Jerlet melting away.
Then they were up and moving through the nearly weightless world of Jerlet. The old man showed Linc the power generators, the mysterious humming machines that kept electricity going out to all parts of the ship. Then the master computer, with its blinking lights and odd sing-song voices. And a room full of servomechs, standing stiffly at attention, mechanical arms at their sides, sensors turned off.
“Are they dead?” Linc asked, his voice hushed.
“You mean deactivated,” Jerlet replied in his normal booming tone. “Here… look, lemme show you.” He took a tiny control box from a shelf near the door and touched one of the buttons studding its top. The nearest servomech came to life. Its sensors glowed; it pivoted slightly to face Jerlet, moving on noiseless little wheels.
“See?” Jerlet said. “They all work fine.”
Linc shook his head. “Down in the Living Wheel they all died, a long time ago.”
Jerlet snorted. “Well, we’ll have to do something about that.”
He took Linc down the passageway and through a set of double doors into a strange, dead silent room. It felt odd. Linc knew he had never been here before, yet there was a faint odor of something that made his spine tingle and the back of his neck go shuddery. The room was filled with strange glass spheres, long looping tubes, viewscreens, desks, other things of glass and metal and plastic that Linc couldn’t even guess at.
“Genetics lab,” Jerlet said. His voice sounded odd; half-proud, half-sad. “This is where you were born, Linc. You and the others down in the living section.”
“Here?”
Jerlet nodded. “Yep. Took the sperm and ova from those cryofreezers, back behind the radiation shielding over there,” he pointed to a heavy-looking dull metal wall, “and brought the fetuses to term in these plastic capsules. All very carefully done, very scientifically. Each specimen picked for its genetic perfection. Each resulting infant nurtured as meticulously as the psychologists could hope. A generation of physically and mentally perfect children. Geniuses… left to live in an idiotic environment.”
Linc said, “I don’t understand you.”
Jerlet waved his pudgy hands about the laboratory.”! was in charge of the project. I made you. Right here. This is where you were all created. By me.”
10
Before Linc could ask any more questions, Jerlet swept him through the genetics lab and back out into the passageway.
“You haven’t seen the best part yet,” he said.
Totally puzzled by everything he’d seen and heard so far. Linc quietly followed the old man through a hatch into a tight little metal room. It felt cold and scary, like a deadlock. Bui even if he’s crazy, he wouldn’t put us both in a deadlock, Linc told himself. And a tiny voice asked back, Would he?
Jerlet’s massive bulk seemed to completely fill the metal chamber. Linc couldn’t breathe.
“Not too comfortable in here with both of us,” the old man muttered as he fingered a complicated row of buttons. “Not very comfy in here by myself, come to think of it.”
The top of the chamber swung open, and Linc realized it was another hatch. Jerlet grinned at him, then pushed against the sides of the chamber and floated up through the overhead hatch. Linc took a deep breath, glad to feel un-squeezed.
“Come on up and see the view!” Jerlet called. His voice suddenly sounded very distant and hollow.
Linc crouched slightly and sprang straight up. He shot through the open hatch and past Jerlet’s floating obesity—
And nearly screamed in terror. He was in the outer darkness! Surrounded by stars and the blackness of the outside where there was no air or warmth or--
He felt a hand grabbing at his ankle and Jerlet calling, “Hey, whoa, take it easy.” He realized that there was warmth and air to breathe.
Jerlet was chuckling as the two of them floated slowly in the star-flecked darkness. Yet it really wasn’t dark, either. The stars glowed all around them, over their heads, below their feet.
“What is this place?” Linc asked. His voice seemed to float, too, strange and hollow and lost in vast distance.
“Used to bean observatory,” Jerlet’s voice came back toward him, echoing.
Slowly, Linc’s eyes adjusted to the dim light. They were in a vast round room made almost entirely of glass: transparent plastiglass, actually, although Linc didn’t know that yet. The splendor of the stars surrounded them—stars powdering the blackness of infinity with endless points of light. White stars, blue stars, red stars, yellow stars… stars beyond counting, and even swirls and loops of brightness that glowed with strangely cool blues and pinks.
Linc felt his jaw hanging open as he floated in true weightlessness, hanging in the darkened observatory dome, gaping at the enormity of the universe.
And then he glanced downward, toward where his feet happened to be pointing, and saw the yellow star that was so close. He closed his eyes against its glare, but still its image burned against the inside of his eyelids.
“We’ll be there soon,” Jerlet’s voice sounded near to him.
Linc opened his eyes and saw the old man’s face next to him, haloed by the after-image of the yellow star. “It’s coming to swallow us,” Linc whispered. “It will kill us all in fire.”
Jerlet’s booming laughter surprised Linc. It echoed all around the huge dome.
“You’ve got it just about entirely wrong, son,” the old man said. “The yellow star isn’t coming toward us, we’re heading for it. And it’s not going to kill us—it offers us life. Hope. If we can get to it before this bucket falls completely apart!”
Linc started to say, I don’t understand, but it had become such an overworked Linc that he felt ashamed to use it again.
“C’mon down this way,” Jerlet tugged at his wrist, “and I’ll show you something.”
They swam weightlessly through empty air down to a patch of shadows that were deeper than the darkness of the rest of the dome. A spidery framework took shape as they approached, and Jerlet reached out a practiced hand for it.