WIN
Q: WHAT WAS THE EXACT NATURE OF THE CATASTROPHE?
IN
Q: WHAT WAS THE EXACT NATURE OF THE CATASTROPHE?
N
Q: WHAT WAS THE EXACT NATURE OF THE CATASTROPHE?
NO ANSWER AVAILABLE
NO ANSWER AVAILABLE
NO ANSWER AVAILABLE
END OF SESSION. PLEASE CLEAR ALL PREVIOUS JUNK AND RESET IF REQUIRED.
*
They are still looking at the window.
Ryan finds himself and his wife and their two children standing in front of the window. His arm is around Josephine on one side and his other arm spans the shoulders of the two boys on the other.
The crowd is talking about them. Ryan feels fear for his wife and children. The crowd talks more angrily, looks at Ryan and his family.
The scream behind the music is louder, the singing more urgent, the drum beats faster, faster, faster.
*
THE SPACESHIP IS ON COURSE FOR MUNICH.
ON COURSE TRAVELLING AT JUST BELOW THE
SPEED OF LIGHT.
THE SPACESHIP IS ON COURSE FOR MUNICH.
*
CONDITION STEADY
CONDITION STEADY
CONDITION STEADY
The light flashes on and off as if trying to warn him of something rather than to reassure him. He frowns at the big sign. Is there something wrong with the hibernating personnel. Something he has not noticed? Something the instruments have not registered?
*
And Ryan awakes sweating in his red, inflatable chair and stares blindly at the minute, flat figures on the television screen.
His body is limp and his mouth is dry.
He licks his lips and sighs aloud.
Then he sets his mouth in a firm line, switches off the set and leaves the room.
His feet echo along the passageway. He reaches a cubicle containing a long white bed. He straps himself on and is massaged.
When he is finished his body aches and his mind is still not clear.
It is now time for Ryan to eat. He returns to his room and gets food. He eats and he tastes nothing.
When he has finished he raises the cover over the porthole screen in his room and looks out through the simulated window into the vastness of space.
For a second he feels that he sees a dark figure out there in the void. He clears his vision rapidly and stares out at the stars.
He cannot see the planet that he and his companions are bound for. He has been in space for three years. He will be in space for another two years. And he cannot see his destination yet. He has only the word of the space physicists that it exists and that it can support the thirteen lives he carries with him. A planet of Barnard's Star, Munich 15040.
He is alone in space, in charge of his ship and the lives of the other twelve. He is more than halfway to his destination.
The sudden remembrance of what he has done sweeps over him. Along with his fear, with the torment caused by the solitude, Ryan feels pride. He causes the cover to sweep down over the 'porthole'. He leaves his room and walks into the control room to continue his duties.
But he cannot get rid of the lingering feeling of depression, the sense of something not done.
This sense of a task unfulfilled makes him work with even greater intensity, even greater efficiency.
He frowns.
There is still something left undone.
He rechecks everything. He runs tests through the computer.
He inspects every instrument and double-checks it to make sure it is reading accurately.
Everything is perfect.
He has forgotten nothing.
The feeling almost disappears.
CHAPTER SEVEN
When he has read his report into the machine Ryan goes to the desk beneath the screen and opens the drawer where his red log-book is lying ready for his remarks.
First he sits down at his desk and hums a song as he completes some calculations. He works quickly and mechanically to complete his task. He lays it aside, satisfied.
He has fifteen minutes free now. He produces the red log-book from the drawer again, rules a line under his formal report and writes: Alone in the craft I experience the heights and depths of emotion untempered by the needs of less mechanical work than I do now, uninterrupted by the presence of others.
He reads this over, frowns, shrugs, continues: This means deep pain and being a prey to my own feelings. It also means great joy. An hour ago I stared out of my porthole at the enormous vista and recollected what I—what we as a group— have done to save ourselves. My mind goes back to how we were, and forward to what we will be.
Ryan's stylus hovers over the page. He makes writing motions over the book, but he cannot phrase his thoughts.
At length he gives up, rules another line under his entry, shuts the book and replaces it in the drawer.
He changes his mind, gets the book out again and begins to write rapidly: The world was sick and even our group was tinged with unhealthiness. We were not lilywhite. We sold out some of our ideals. But perhaps the difference was that we knew we were selling out. We admitted what we were doing and so remained rational when almost everyone else had gone insane.
It is true, too, that we became somewhat hardened to the horrors around us, shut them out—even condoned some of them—even fell in with the herd from time to time. But we had our objectives— our sense of purpose. It kept us going. However, I don't deny that we dirtied our hands sometimes. I don't deny that I got carried away sometimes and did things that I now am inclined to regret.
But perhaps it was worth it. After all, we survived!
Perhaps that is all the justification needed.
We kept our heads and we are now on our way to colonise a new planet. Start a new society on cleaner, more decent, more rational lines.
Cynics might think that an impossible ideal. It will all get just as bad in time, they'd say. Well, maybe it won't. Maybe this time we really can build a sane society!
None of us is perfect. Especially this crew! We all have our rows and we all have qualities that the others find annoying. But the point is that we are a family. Being a family, we can have our arguments, our strong disagreements—even our hatreds, to a degree— and still survive.
That is our strength.
Ryan yawns and checks the time. He still has a few minutes free time to spare. He looks at the paper and begins to write again: When I look back to our days on Earth, particularly towards the end, I realise just how tense we were. The ship routine has relaxed me, allowed me to realise just what I had become. I don't like what I became. Perhaps one has to become a wolf, however, to fight wolves. It will never happen again. There were times, I cannot deny, when I lost hold of my ideals—even my senses. Some of the events are hazy—some are almost completely forgotten (though doubtless one of my relatives or friends will be able to remind me). I can hardly believe that it took such a short time for society to collapse.
That was what caused the trauma, of course—the suddenness of it all. Obviously, there were signs of the coming crises, and perhaps I should have taken more heed of those signs—but then all chaos suddenly broke loose throughout the world! What we tut-tutted at in the manner of older people slightly disconcerted by the changing times I now realise were much more serious indications of social unrest. Sudden increases in population, decreases in food production —they were the old problems that the Jeremiah had been going on about for years—but they were suddenly with us. Perhaps we had been deliberately refusing to face the problem, just as people had refused to consider the possibility of war with Germany in the late thirties. We homo sapiens have a great capacity for burying our heads in the sand while pretending to face out the issues.