Then a pang of doubt hit him. Maybe we’re not there! Maybe something’s gone wrong!
The robot slid into his view. It was a semi-anthropomorphic design, man-shaped except that it rolled along on tiny trunions instead of having legs. Its silicone-covered face had two glittering optronic eyes, a slit of a radiator where a human nose would be, a speaker grill for a mouth.
“Are we…?” Jordan’s voice cracked. His throat felt dry, raw.
The robot understood his unfinished question. “The ship has arrived in orbit around Sirius C,” it said. Its synthesized voice was the rich, warm baritone of a noted dramatic actor back on Earth.
“Good,” Jordan croaked. “Good.”
“Diagnostics show that you are in satisfactory physical condition,” the robot reported. “Your memories have been uploaded successfully from the central computer back into your brain.”
“The others…?”
“Their uploads are under way,” said the robot. “You are the first to be revived, as per mission protocol.”
Rank hath its privileges, Jordan thought.
The robot turned away briefly to the row of diagnostic monitors lining one wall of the narrow compartment. When it came back to Jordan’s open capsule it bore a ceramic cup in one metal hand.
“A stimulant,” it said, “and a lubricant for your throat.”
Tenderly, the robot lifted Jordan’s head with one silicone-skin hand and brought the cup to his lips, like a mother feeding a baby. He grasped the cup with both his trembling hands, grateful for its warmth.
Tea, Jordan realized once he’d taken a sip of the steaming brew. Tea with honey. Stimulant, lubricant, warmer-upper. Good old tea. He almost laughed.
“Do you feel strong enough to get to your feet?”
Jordan thought it over, then replied, “I can try.”
The robot gently helped him up to a sitting position. Then Jordan swung his bare legs over the edge of the capsule and carefully, tentatively, stood up. He felt a little wobbly, but only a little. Not bad for a fellow who’s a hundred and thirty-two years old, he thought.
The little cubicle’s walls were bare, off-white. It was hardly big enough to contain Jordan’s cryosleep capsule, a marvel of biotechnology sitting there like an elongated egg that had been cracked open. The life-support equipment and monitors blinked and beeped softly against the opposite wall.
Each member of the expedition had a cubicle of his or her own; the robots assisted with the reawakening process.
Staying at his side, the robot led Jordan three steps to the closet where his clothes were stored. He pulled the door open and saw himself in the full-length mirror inside the door.
He was a trim, well-built middleweight, standing almost 175 centimeters in his bare feet. Normally he weighed a trifle under seventy-five kilograms, but as he looked down at his bare body he saw that his long sleep had cost him some weight. The skin of his legs was still puckered from the freezing, but beneath the wrinkles it looked pink, healthy.
His face was slightly thinner than he remembered it, his arched aquiline nose a little more obvious, his cheekbones a bit more prominent, the hollows beneath them more noticeable. He saw that the neat little mustache he had cultivated so carefully over the years had grayed noticeably; it looked somewhat ragged. I’ll need to attend to that, he thought.
Then, with a shock, he realized that his dark brown hair had turned completely silver.
They didn’t tell us to expect that, he said to himself.
Back on Earth he’d often been called elegant, sophisticated. At this moment, farther from Earth than any human being had ever traveled, he felt shabby, weary, and strangely detached, as if he were watching himself from afar.
Jordan shook his head, trying to force himself to accept where he was and who he was. While cryonic freezing preserved the body, it also tended to degrade the synapses of the brain’s neurons. All the members of the team had downloaded their memories into the ship’s computer before they’d left Earth and gone into cryosleep.
With deliberate concentration, Jordan tested the upload. He remembered leading the team into the ship’s luxurious interior. He remembered climbing into the sleep capsule, watching it close over him. Childhood memories floated before him: the Christmas he deduced that Father Christmas was really his parents; tussling with his brother Brandon; graduating from Cambridge; Miriam—he clenched his eyes shut.
Miriam. Her last days, her final agony.
My fault. All my fault. My most grievous fault.
It would have been good to have erased those memories, he thought.
Slowly, carefully, he pulled on cotton briefs, a turtlenecked white shirt, dark blue jeans, and comfortable loafers. Then he studied himself for a moment in the full-length mirror on the back of the closet’s door, his steel-gray eyes peering intently. You don’t look elegant and sophisticated now, he told himself. You look … bewildered, and more than a little frightened.
Then he realized, “I’m hungry.”
The robot said, “A very normal reaction.” It sounded almost pleased. “The wardroom is less than thirty meters up the passageway, in the direction of the ship’s command center. The dispensers offer a full selection of food and beverages.”
With a crooked smile, Jordan said, “You sound like an advertising blurb.”
The robot made no reply, but it turned and opened the door to the passageway.
Jordan hesitated at the doorway.
“The wardroom is to the right, Mr. Kell.”
Jordan tried to recall the ship’s layout. The living and working areas were built into the wheel that turned slowly to give a feeling of gravity. Leaving the robot behind him, he walked carefully along the passageway. Although the floor felt perfectly flat, he could see it curving up and out of sight ahead of him.
The wardroom was empty as he entered it. Of course, he realized. I’m the first to be revived. I’m the team leader.
It was a pleasantly decorated compartment, its walls covered with warm pseudowood paneling, its ceiling glowing softly. Six small tables were arranged along its russet-tiled floor; they could be pushed together in any pattern the team wanted. At present they were all standing separately, each table big enough to seat four people.
Very comfortable, Jordan thought. Of course, crew comfort was a major goal of the mission designers. This far from home, a few luxuries help to keep us happy. And sane. Or so the psychotechs decided.
One entire wall of the wardroom was taken up by machines that dispensed food and drink. But Jordan’s attention instantly was drawn to the wall opposite, a floor-to-ceiling display screen.
It showed the planet that the ship was orbiting. A lush green world with deeply blue oceans and fleecy white clouds, brown wrinkles of mountains and broad swaths of grasslands. Heartbreakingly beautiful.
Jordan marveled at the sight. It really is a New Earth, he thought.
Data Bank
Even while the massive floods, droughts, and killer storms of the greenhouse climate shift were devastating much of Earth, astronomers were detecting several thousand planets orbiting other stars. Most of these exoplanets were gas giants, bloated spheres of hydrogen and helium, totally unlike Earth. But a few percent of them were small, rocky worlds, more like our own.
One in particular raised hopes of being really Earthlike: Sirius C. It was almost the same size as Earth, and although its parent star was a fiercely blazing blue-white giant, much larger and hotter than the Sun, the planet’s orbit lay at the “Goldilocks” distance from Sirius where its surface temperature was not too hot, and not too cold for liquid water to exist.