“There’s nothing here to be frightened of.”
She stepped close to him. “I know that… now.” His arms circled around her automatically.
For a while they stayed together, holding each other, not moving. But finally, Linc gently disengaged himself.
“You’d better go back, before they find out that you’ve come here.”
Jayna looked up at him, her eyes troubled. “Linc…let me stay here. With you.”
“No.” He shook his head. “You can’t.”
“Please.”
His hands reached out to her, almost as if they had a life of their own and he had no control over them. But he stopped them and let them fall to his sides.
“No,” he said firmly. “You’ve got to go back. If you stay, Monel will send his guards here to bring you back. It will be the excuse he needs to try to stop me.”
“They’d be afraid to come in here,” she said.
I want her to stay! Linc realized. But he said to Jayna, “You can’t stay here. Go back to the rest of them. Tell them you’ve been here, if you want to. Tell them what you saw, what I’m doing. Tell them—all of them—that I’m going to save their lives whether they help me or not.”
“I’ll help you.” Her voice was pleading now. “I want to help you.”
“The best way for you to help is to go back and tell them.”
Jayna looked as if she would keep on arguing. But abruptly, she pulled her gaze away from Linc, turned, and nearly ran for the hatch that led to the passageway. She didn’t look back. Linc stood rooted to the floor plates, as if welded there, and watched her open the hatch and flee back to the rest of the people.
Idiot! he snarled at himself. She doesn’t know why you wanted her to leave. After a moment’s thought, he admitted, And neither do I.
Time became a meaningless, endless round of work. Linc slept, ate, and worked. He sent the servomechs back and forth from the bridge to the hub so often that he lost count. He learned what he needed to know from the computer’s instruction screens; and a lot more besides.
Jayna returned for more brief visits. She always brought food, even, though Linc assured her that he ate very well; the servomechs brought food down from the galley in the hub. She stopped asking to stay with him, but hinted subtly about it. Linc ignored her hints.
Beryl grew brighter, and Baryta became a blinding sphere of brilliance that he could watch only through the special filters of the telescopes and viewing screens. Linc finally got the astrogation computer working, and then faced the problem of checking out the controls and wiring that linked the computer’s command system to the ship’s rocket thrusters.
That’s when Slav showed up.
He simply pushed open the airlock hatch and called in his heavy deep voice, “Linc? It’s me, Slav.”
Linc was at the other end of the bridge, studying a diagram on a viewing screen. It traced out the wiring circuits that led to the main rocket engines.
He rushed down the length of the bridge as Slav called again:
“Hey Linc. Where are you? It’s me…”
Stav heard his pounding footsteps and turned to see him. Linc skidded to a halt.
“…Slav,” he ended, his voice going soft.
For a moment, Linc didn’t know what to say. “I… it’s… it’s good to see you, Slav.”
His broad-cheeked, square-jawed face broke into a wide boy’s grin. “Jayna told me she’s been here and the ghosts didn’t get her. I felt kind of silly, staying away.”
“There’s nothing here to be afraid of.”
“Huhn… that’s what Jayna said. Thought I’d come and see for myself.”
Linc waved a hand at the curving Linc of desks and viewscreens that formed the bridge. “Sure… see for yourself.”
Stav paced along, hands locked behind his broad back, and looked at the instrument screens. Nearly all of them were working now, showing views of Beryl, readout numbers and curving graph lines in different colors that reported on how the ship’s power generators and other machines were working. Slav seemed especially fascinated by the computer and it’s winking lights.
“You’ve got all the machines working,” Stav said.
“Almost all of them,” Linc replied. “It wasn’t too tough to do. Most of them just needed minor repairs. Whoever built them made them to last.”
Stav nodded heavily. He was impressed.
“I could use some help,” Linc said.
Stav pursed his lips quizzically. “Monel wouldn’t like that.”
“Is he just as bad as when I left?”
“Worse.”
“Oh.”
“Every day the yellow sun gets closer, the people get more afraid, and Monel gets crazier. He’s got everybody lining up in the morning for firstmeal. If he doesn’t like you, you have to go to the end of the Linc. Maybe you don’t get any food at all. His guards watch us all day long. It’s not easy to do your work with somebody staring at you all the time. If you try to rest for a few moments they yell at you. And then you don’t get any food at lastmeal.”
“And the people are putting up with that?”
“What can we do? I almost wrapped a hoe around one guard’s head, but then I remembered what happened to poor little Peta. I don’t want to be cast out!”
Linc frowned. “What about Magda?”
“We never see her anymore. She’s locked herself in her room. Monel claims she’s meditating day and night, trying to save us by pure mental concentration.”
Linc looked away from the thick-armed farmer and stared at a viewscreen that showed green curving lines snaking across a gridwork graph. The background of the screen was black, and Linc could see his face reflected in it: tight, hollow-cheeked, thin-lipped, eyes scowling.
“Slav,” he said at last, “meditating isn’t going to save this ship. And nothing Monel can do will save us, either. But I can save us all. I know how to get us safely to the new world. Most of the machines are working now. I need help to get the rest of them in shape.”
“You want me to help you.”
“Not just you,” Linc said. “All the people. Anyone and everyone. Go back and tell them that they can help me… and if they do, they’ll be saving themselves.”
Slav blinked his eyes. Like almost everything he did, it was a slow and deliberate movement. “Not everybody can come here. Somebody’s got to work the farm tanks—”
“I need all the help I can get. We’re in a race against time. Everything’s got to be ready before we get too close to the yellow sun. Otherwise we won’t be able to pull away from it and land on the new world.”
“All right,” Slav said. “I’ll tell the people. Monel and his guards, though…”
“They can’t stop you. Not if you all act together.”
Slav nodded slowly, but he didn’t seem convinced.
17
Linc paced slowly along the bridge, watching the viewscreens and the men and women sitting at their stations tending the instruments. He felt a warm glow of pride.
The ship works beautifully, he said to himself. My ship. I brought it back to life. I made it work again. He wished for a moment that Jerlet could see it all; how the machines hummed and clicked to themselves. How the people had come to him: Jayna first, then Slav, then two more, a handful, a dozen. Now he had enough people to do all the tasks that needed doing. They didn’t even jump when a servomech trundled past them, anymore. The rocket engines tested out; the connections were solid. The computer had worked out a flight plan to put them in orbit around Beryl.