“What’s this all about?” Dan asked.
Nervously, Cranston answered, “I’d rather … it’d be better to talk in private.”
“About what?” Dan insisted.
“Your father.”
Dan was instantly taut with tension. “I’ll come to your place. What’s the number?”
Ten minutes later Dan was tapping on Cranston’s door. Politeness dictated a light tap with the fingernails, the compartments were all small enough for that sort of noise to be heard instantly, and it didn’t disturb the next compartment, just a few steps away But something in Dan wanted to pound on the door with both fists.
Cranston slid the door open He was much shorter than Dan sandy hair, worn long; roundish face, too puffy for a young man but not yet really fat. Nervous, light brown eyes darting everywhere.
“What’s this all about?” Dan said as he stepped into the compartment. It was like all the other living quarters, except that Cranston had covered its walls with graphs and odd-looking sketches that appeared to be printouts of computer-directed drawings.
Cranston gestured Dan to a chair. He himself pulled a large pillow off his bunk, let it drop to the floor, and then sat on it cross-legged.
“I’m with the computer section,” he began.
“You said that on the phone.”
“Yes. Well, earlier today we were running routine statistical checks, inputting those fifty deaths so the computer could keep its memory banks up to date…”
Dan felt his insides churning. “And?”
“Well… when we input your father’s name, a special subroutine must’ve been triggered. We got a message.”
“A message?”
Cranston nodded. “It’s kind of strange— I’m not even sure what it means. But I thought you ought to know about it.”
“What did it say?” Every nerve in Dan’s body was tightening.
Cranston reached lazily up to his desk, beside him. “Here, I had a paper copy made.”
Dan snatched the flimsy paper scrap from his hand. He looked at it, shook his head, and looked at it again. It said:
“It’s gibberish.”
“No,” Cranston said. “It’s just a shorthand that computer programmers used around the time when the ship began the voyage. I checked that much.”
“Then what’s it mean?”
“If I’m right—and I think I am—it means that there’s a priority subroutine number seven, in one of the prime memory banks. Those prime banks date back to the beginning of the voyage.”
“What do the numbers mean?”
“It’s some sort of code index, to tell us where the subroutine’s located.”
Suddenly Dan’s temper exploded. “Subroutine, code index, memory banks…what the hell are you talking about? Speak English!”
Cranston actually backed away from him. “Okay… okay, it’s simple enough. It looks to me like somebody put a special priority message of some sort into one of the earliest memory banks in the computer. The message was to be read out only in the event of your father’s death, because the computer didn’t tell us the message existed until we told the computer he had died.”
“A message from my father?” Dan’s pulse was going wild now. “Could he have suspected … did he know …?”
Cranston was staring at him quizzically.
Dan grabbed the computer tech by his coverall shirtfront. “You find that message, do you hear? Find it as quickly as you can! But don’t tell anyone else about it. Not a soul!”
“O… okay… whatever you say—”
“How quickly can you get it for me?”
Pulling free of Dan’s grip, Cranston said, “I dunno… hard to say. A day or two… if I have to keep it a secret from everybody else, maybe a few days.”
“Get it as fast as you can,” Dan repeated. “And not a word to anybody. Understand?”
“Yeah… sure…”
“All right then.” Dan got up and strode out of the compartment, leaving the computer tech squatting there on the floor, looking dazed and more than a little frightened, slowly smoothing his rumpled shirtfront.
A message from my father, Dan told himself. He must have known what was going to happen to him!
6
The bridge crackled with excitement.
Larry stood at his usual post, behind the curving bank of desk consoles and the seated technicians who operated them. Viewscreens flickered, showing every part of the ship, the pulsebeat of every system.
For an instant the whole bridge was silent, the silence of tense expectation. Everyone was holding his or her breath; the only sounds were the faint whispering of the air fans and the slight electrical murmur of the consoles.
Larry stood rooted behind one of the techs, watching a viewscreen on her console that showed the long glistening cylinders of four automated rocket probes. A red numeral 10 glowed on the screen, down on its lower right corner.
“Still holding at minus ten seconds,” the tech muttered.
Another tech, at the next desk, added, “All systems still in the green.”
On the desk just to the left of where Larry stood was a viewscreen display of a computer-drawn star map. Dozens of pinpoints of light were scattered across it. Off to one side of the screen, one of the pinpoints was blinking. This represented their target, the major planet of Alpha Centauri. It was moving across the screen, heading for a dotted circle drawn in the middle of the map.
Larry watched the map. The blinking dot reached the circle and stopped there.
“Acquisition,” said the tech at that console. “We’re in the launch window.”
The numerals on the picture of the probes began to tick downward: nine, eight, seven…
“Launchers primed and ready.” A light on a console went from amber to green.
“…six, five…”
“Probes on internal power.”
“…four, three, two…”
“Hatch open.”
Larry could see that the metal hatch in front of the probes had slid away, revealing the stars outside.
“…one, zero.”
“Launch!”
The four cylinders slid smoothly away and disappeared in an eyeblink into the darkness of space.
“Radar plot,” a voice said crisply. “On course. Ignition on schedule— All four of ’em are on their way.”
Larry didn’t realize he had been holding his breath until he let it out in a long, relieved sigh. The technicians whooped triumphantly, turned to each other with grins and handshakes and backpoundings. The girls got kissed.
“They’re off and running,” one of the techs said to Larry. Neither of them knew where the phrase had come from, but it sounded right for the occasion.
He stood in the center of the celebrating crew, smiling happily. In another month we’ll have Hose-up data on the planet. Then we can decide logo into orbit or fly past and head out-system.
They were all standing around him now, clapping him on the back and laughing with him.
Larry threw up his hands. “Hey, I didn’t have anything to do with it. You guys launched the probes. I just stood back and watched you. You deserve all the congratulations, not me.”
They milled around for a few minutes more, before Larry finally said, “Okay, okay, you got off a good launch. Now how about the regular duty crew getting back to their stations. Don’t want to give the computer the impression it can run the ship by itself, do you?”
They grumbled light-heartedly, but -most of the techs returned to their desks. The few extra people who had been present for the launch drifted away from the bridge, out the two hatches at either end of the curving row of consoles.