As Jerlet droned on, Magda raised a hand to point at Linc. “What you’ve told us is false!”
The laser was back in Linc’s hand. Without even thinking of it, he fired at the screen. It exploded in a shower of sparks and plastic shards. The crowd screamed.
“You’re wrong!” he shouted at them, waving the laser. “Superstitious idiots… Jerlet was right. Well, I’m going to the bridge. I’m going to repair those machines. By myself, if I have to. And don’t any of you try to stop me!”
No one moved as he stomped out of the meeting room. Either to stop him or to help him.
16
Linc slammed the welder on the desk top in fury.
He was standing in front of the bridge’s main data screen. The access panels of the computer behind the screen were open, and the computer’s complex innards stood bare and revealed to him. They were a heartbreakingly hopeless mess. Something had smashed the plastic circuit chips, melted the metal tracings of the circuit boards, vaporized the eyelash-small transistors.
Hopeless, Linc told himself.
Two servomechs stood impassively behind him, waist-high cubes of metal with little domes of sensors atop them and tiny silent wheels underneath. Their mechanical arms hung uselessly at their sides. They couldn’t handle this kind of work, although they had been invaluable to Linc on many other jobs.
He still remembered how everyone in the corridors had fled in terror when the first few servomechs came through the tube-tunnel hatch and into the main passageway, trundling quietly and purposefully toward the bridge, under Linc’s radio command.
Now I’ll have to send one of them all the way back to the hub for more spare parts. Linc told himself. In the past months, more than one servomech had failed to make it all the way through the tube-tunnels and back again.
Linc frowned. “Well,” he said to the nearest of the little machines, “you’re just going to have to try to get through. I hope there are enough replacement parts left in the storage bins.”
For months now Linc had had no one to talk to except the servomechs. They weren’t very good company.
He programmed the servomech and it obediently rolled out to the hatch, snaked a flexible arm up to the control button, and let itself out of the bridge.
Linc arched his back tiredly. The bridge’s main observation viewscreen was focused on Baryta. The yellow sun was no longer merely a bright star; it showed a discernible disk. Even through the filtered screen display, it was bright enough to hurt Linc’s eyes. Close beside hung a bluish star: Beryl itself was now visible.
But no one came from the people to tell him that they saw Beryl, and that they now believed him.
“Let them meditate and frighten themselves to death,” Linc muttered as he walked tiredly toward the room he had made the servomechs fix up for him. His voice sounded harsh and strained; he hadn’t used it too much lately.
Starting to sound as ragged as Jerlet, he said to himself.
He glanced at the airtight hatch that let to the passageway as he walked down the long, curving length of the bridge. Once in a while he thought he saw someone peering through the tiny window at him, watching him. “Imagination,” he snorted. “You want them to come to you, so you imagine seeing faces. Next thing you know, you’ll start imagining the ghosts are real.”
They had seen the ghosts, all right. When the servomechs, led by Linc, carried the long-dead crew to the deadlock, the people had watched, aghast. No one offered to help. After the first few shocked moments of watching, they had all run into their rooms and shut their doors tightly.
The window in the hatch was dark, as usual, when he looked at—
There was a face there!
Linc stopped in his tracks. He blinked. The face was there, staring at him. The window was too clouded to make out who it was. A hint of yellow hair, that’s all he could see.
After a moment’s hesitation, Linc stepped over to the hatch. The face didn’t go away.
He reached for the hatch’s lever and pulled it open. Jayna stood on the other side, an odd-shaped package in her hands.
“H … hello,” Linc said, his voice nearly cracking.
She stood wide-eyed, frightened looking. But she didn’t run away.
“I brought you some food.” Jayna’s voice was high and trembly.
She looks so scared. Linc Thought. Scared and little and helpless. And awfully pretty.
“Thanks,” he said, reaching out for the package.
“I’ve been here before, but you never noticed me.”
“You should have rapped on the hatch.”
“Oh no… I didn’t want to… to bother you,” she said.
“I would have welcomed some company. It’s been pretty lonesome in here all by myself. Nothing to talk to except machines, and they don’t talk back.”
“Oh.”
They stood awkwardly facing each other, on either side of the hatch’s metal lip.
“Want to come in and see what I’m doing?” Linc asked.
An even deeper fear flickered across her face.
“It’s all right,” he said, smiling. “I’ve cleared away the ghosts and cleaned up the place.” He reached his freehand out for her.
She hesitated a second, then took his hand. Her grasp felt warm and wonderful to Linc.
She stepped inside and Linc swung the hatch shut.
“Do Monel or Magda know you’ve come here?”
Shaking her head, Jayna answered, “No. But I don’t care if they do. They’re going crazy, all of them. Every time we see the yellow star it’s closer and hotter. But they say if we work harder and meditate longer it’ll go away. But it’s not!”
Smiling grimly, Linc said, “It better not. It’s our chance for life. Has anybody noticed the little blue star beside it?”
“Yes. …a few. Monel claims it’s not there. He says it’s a trick, to fool us.”
“Hmp. That ‘trick’ is Beryl. Our new homework!, if we can reach it.” He walked slowly back to the row of desks that lined the far wall of the bridge’s length, and placed the food package down.
“A trick, huh? And who’s playing this trick on everybody? Has Monel blamed anybody for it?”
Nodding, “Yes… You.”
Linc nodded back. “I thought so.”
He showed Jayna the bridge, showed how many of the instruments and sensors he had already repaired. She watched in silent wonder as Linc made views of Beryl appear on the viewing screens that lined the bridge’s curving length.
“The sensors are starting to bring us information on how far away we are, and what changes in our course we need to make to get to the new world,” he explained to her. But it’s all useless if I can’t get the astrogation computer working, he added silently.
Linc showed the girl where he and the servomechs had repaired the hole in the ship’s hull, and how he had fitted out the room next to the bridge—the captain’s lounge, he had learned from the computer plans—for his own comfort. He kept the servomechs still while Jayna was near them; he didn’t want to frighten her with machines that rolled around the floor and blinked lights and used mechanical arms.
She was silent all through the tour. Finally she said, “It’s all wonderful! Linc, what you’ve done is wonderful! You’re wonderful!”
“You’re not frightened of me now?”
“No.” She was looking up at him with those large, sweet blue eyes. “I was scared when I came in… I only meant to bring you some food. I didn’t think I’d have the nerve to really come inside.”