The cycle grew tighter and tighter. As more years passed, more and more of the ship’s complex machinery broke down. It became a greater struggle to survive, to keep the air pumps working and the farm tanks productive. Bands of marauding killers skulked through the tube-tunnels, breaking into living areas to steal and murder.
“The most ironic part of all,” Jerlet would say each night to Linc, “was that there was a scientific renaissance going on up here at the same time.”
In the hub of the ship a few dozen people had established themselves in some degree of comfort. They had control of the ship’s main power generators, and could turn off the supply of electricity—which meant warmth, air, life—to any group that displeased them. They tried to put an end to the roving bands of looters, but were never successful at it. On the other hand, the looters never tried to harm them.
The men and women who lived in the hub were scientists. Never more than a handful, they still managed to maintain themselves in relative peace.
“The things they learned!” Jerlet would always shake his head at the thought.
Their work in genetics reached the stage of perfection where they could, if they wanted to, create perfectly normal human children in their lab. The physicists probed deeply into the relationship of matter to energy, in an attempt to find a way to break free of the confines of the dying ship.
“They learned how to turn solid objects into a beam of energy, and then re-assemble them back into solid objects again, the way they were when they started,” Jerlet said. “But it took too much power for anything we really needed. We couldn’t get a rat’s whisker off the ship and back to Earth. But when we get close enough to Beryl’s surface, you’ll be able to whisk yourself down to the planet’s surface in an eyeblink.”
“But us, the kids down in the Living Wheel,” Linc always asked. “How did we come about? Why did you make us?”
And Jerlet would smile.
“We finally found a star like the Sun, and it had a few planets around it, although we were still too far away to see if any of the planets were truly like Earth. But we decided to take the risk. We had to…we knew the ship couldn’t last much longer, no matter what we did.
“I was getting to be middle-aged when we started the program to create you in the genetics lab. A hundred perfect specimens, as physically strong and mentally bright as we could produce. A hundred supermen and women.
“Well, we did it. And we set you up in the living section down in the one g wheel, next to the bridge. Six of us stayed with you the first few years, to get you started right. The servomechs did most of the dirty work, of course. But still… it was damned noisy down there!
“Around the time you were learning to walk, some marauders got to us. We protected you kids, but it cost us the lives of two people. One of them was my wife—”
Linc knew that a wife was a fully-grown girl.
“None of us could live indefinitely in a one g environment. We had all spent too much of our lives up here, in zero-g. I stayed the longest, and I worked damned hard to make sure that all the machines and servomechs would work right and take care of you until you were old enough to take care of yourselves. Meanwhile, the rest of my friends systematically finished off all the marauders on the ship. We weren’t going to let them raid you again.”
“And then you left us on our own?”
Jerlet would nod his head sadly. “Had to. Gravity got to my heart. I had to come back up here. Then, while you pups were still growing up, the rest of my friends died off, most of them in an accident down on the bridge. I’m the last one left.”
Linc heard the story many times. But one particular night, as Jerlet wound up the tale, Linc said brightly:
“Well, at least you’ll be able to come with us to the new world… if the ship makes it there.”
Jerlet fixed him with a stern gaze. “It’s up to you to make sure this bucket limps into orbit around Beryl. That’s what I’m training you for, Linc. I spent a lot of years waiting for you kids to grow up and come up here and find me. You’ve got to keep this ship going until all you kids are safely transferred to the planet’s surface.”
For several minutes neither of them said a word. Finally, Linc nodded solemnly and said, “I’ll do it. I’ll get us all to Beryl if I have to go outside the ship and push it with my bare hands.”
Jerlet laughed. “That’d be something to see!”
“I’ll get us there. All of us. And that includes you.”
But the old man slowly shook his head. “No, not me. I can’t leave this zero g environment. My heart would go poof if I even tried to walk a few levels down the tube-tunnel, where the gravity starts to build up.”
Linc said, “No… we’ll find a way… something—”
“Listen, son,” Jerlet said calmly. “I’m an old man. I might not even make it to the time when we go into Orbit around Beryl. That’s why I’m pushing you so hard. It’s all on your shoulders. Linc. You’re the difference between life and death for all your friends.”
Book Two
11
The inflated pressure suit stood before Linc like a live human being. But its “face”—the visor of its helmet—was blank and empty. Linc tested each joint for air leaks: ankles, knees, hips, wrists, shoulders. All okay.
He started to run his pressure sensor around the neck seal, where the bulbous helmet connected with the blue fabric of the suit. He smiled as he thought:
A few months ago I would have thought this was an evil spirit or a ghost … it would have scared me out of my skin.
Satisfied that the suit was airtight, Linc touched a stud on the suit’s belt, and the air sighed back into the tanks on the suit’s back. The suit began to collapse, sag at the knees and shoulders, held up only because the air tanks were fastened to the workroom’s bulkhead wall.
Linc watched the suit deflate and found himself thinking of Jerlet. He’s been sagging himself lately. Losing weight. Slowing down.
H e turned to the tiny communicator screen mounted atop the workbench at his right, and touched the red button.
“Hello…Jerlet. I’ve finished with the suit.”
The old man’s face appeared on the miniature screen. It looked more haggard than ever, as if he hadn’t slept all night.
“Good,” he rumbled. “Come on up to the observatory. Got some good news.”
Linc made his way out of the workroom, down the short corridor, and into the airlock. He moved in the ultralow gravity without even thinking about it now, and when he floated up into the vast darkened dome of the observatory he no longer panicked at the sight of the universe stretching all around him.
But he still thrilled at it.
The yellow sun was bright enough to make the metal framework of the main telescope glint and glisten with headlights. Jerlet sat at the observer’s desk, wrapped in an electrically-heated safety suit. But it’s not that cold in here. Linc told himself.
Obviously Jerlet felt differently. His fingers were shaking slightly as he worked the keyboard that controlled the telescope and other instruments.
Linc floated lightly to the desk and touched his slippered feet down next to Jerlet’s chair. The old man looked up at him and smiled tiredly. His face was like a picture Linc had seen of old Earth: a beautiful river winding through a valley of scarred, ragged hills and bare, stubbly ground.
“Finally got the spectral analyzer working,” Jerlet muttered without preamble. “Took all night, but I did it.”