by C. Gockel
“Not from me. They ruthlessly dissected my motives.”
“Oh. Did your motivation end up with its guts spread all over the table? Or put back together again?”
“Together.”
Miranda Blum was on the board, but Miranda was only one out of twelve. And Who do you know? was definitely not one of the questions. Miranda had nodded slightly at several points in the interview. But Catharin had no idea what the board thought about what they had heard.
“Care to tell me more about it?”
“To make a long story short, I believe the social, political, and environmental ills of Earth are like a disease. Medically, if a deadly virus reaches a certain point of proliferation, or a cancer metastasizes, you treat symptoms only. The disease will win in the end. That’s where we are with Earth.” Feeling her fatigue, and the larger dismay of the twenty-first century, Catharin settled into the seat and rested her eyes on the cool blue of the sky. “We have to start over again.”
“Making a new start on a new world has been tried before. That’s where we are now—in the New World—but it has as many problems as the Old World. It’s the Same World. Why do you think a new world on the other side of the stars will be better?”
Catharin gave the explanation that had taken her two torturous hours in front of twelve strangers to compile. “If you know what to do when a disease is small, you can cure it. Like antibiotics administered early in the course of an infection, or surgery for a localized tumor. This is an opportunity to do just that for civilization. For the first time in history, we know enough science, sociology, history, and psychology to understand what constitutes a healthy civilization. A new one might be started small and cured of diseases when they first appear, before they’re out of control.”
“Things like toxic pollutants or antibiotic-resistant plague? Or war and violence?”
“Those things are functionally the same. Epidemics of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and of urban drug abuse and violence have very similar results. Civil war that ends in a nuclear explosion leads to radiation sickness. That’s an example of disease beyond cure.”
“That hurts you,” Becca said, so quietly that her voice was almost lost in the engine’s soft roar. “Mind if I ask why?”
“No. The board did. My mother was a diplomat. She was involved in diplomatic negotiations in Turk-Kyrgyzstan ten years ago, trying to establish peace.”
“Ten years ago? Where was she when the bomb went off?”
“Too close to ground zero. She died.”
The coast of California lay ahead, fronting the wide blue Pacific. Catharin let the view absorb her, blunting the old pain that the board had, very systematically, stirred up.
“What about your father?” The second Big Question for starship astronaut candidates was What does your family think?
“Mother’s death left him so alone—they had been such a perfectly matched pair—that he’s been married to his work ever since. He’s the surgical chief of staff at Johns Hopkins. We don’t have the closeness that would make permanent separation unthinkable. We don’t have the bitter estrangement that makes the board suspect unexploded psychological baggage, either. What about yours?”
“My parents have been accepted into the Tiers.”
Catharin had no easy answers. Just a multifaceted idea that felt more compelling ever since the board had forced her to clarify the feelings and experiences behind it. “Modern medicine made possible a lifespan of a hundred and twenty vigorous years. My father is an excellent physician. But he can’t save people from old diseases that they weren’t vaccinated for because the medical infrastructure is breaking down. No one in Turk-Kyrgyzstan will have a hundred-and-twenty-year life expectancy. There’s too much residual radiation. In a way, both of my parents gave their lives to futile work.” She closed her eyes, feeling raw around the edges.
“Ultimate futility is hard to judge,” said Becca.
“Not for me. When gains in knowledge lag behind the best time to apply it, when disease is caught too late to cure, that’s futility. The starship is an opportunity to get ahead of that process for once in history.” It was far easier to talk to Becca than to the board. But once again, as then, she felt frightened. If the board bought it—still a big if, she reminded herself—this idea could compel her to surrender everything else.
In the distance, north of their course, LA Hightower sparkled, a giant skyscraper erected above the murk and sprawl of the huge city like a lotus growing out of a swamp. She liked the vitality and culture of great cities. It wasn’t that she loved nature above all else, hated cities, or had nothing to lose. Nothing as easy as that.
Becca seemed to devote her total attention to flying, checking her instruments and the landmarks below to make sure of the Kestrel’s location. But Becca said, “I like your thinking. I want you to be selected.”
“But it scares me,” Catharin blurted.
“It should. But we need you.”
Instead of angling toward LA, the Kestrel continued westward, its nose pointed toward the Pacific Ocean. Becca explained, “I need to touch base with Catalina Island. It’s my way of digesting what’s happened the last few days. Okay?”
“Sure. My flight back to Baltimore doesn’t leave until evening. And I’m enjoying this.”
The island was an oceanic mountain with a cliff face rising out of a mix of small clouds and sea. Becca seemed to aim the jet directly at the cliff. Catharin was only partly relieved to see a runway carved on the top of the mountain; the runway looked impossible to land on at this angle of approach. Gripping the edge of her seat hard enough to hurt her hands, Catharin wondered how wise it had been to fly with someone she’d only known for three days, all of it safely on the ground.
“This can unnerve even experienced pilots,” Becca told her. “You have to come in just above the cliff. Part of your mind thinks you’re way too high, because it’s so far straight down to the water. But the other part thinks you’re too low, with that cliff staring you in the face. We really will make the runway, regardless of what it looks like!”
“Oh.” Catharin wondered who had come up with the idea of putting an airport here. The island had very little flat terrain at any elevation. The ground for the runway had obviously been prepared by shearing off the top of the mountain.
Just as Becca promised, the Kestrel cleared the cliff to promptly touch down on the runway. But the runway looked as though it lacked the length for a jet and ended in the sky. Catharin gasped loudly enough to activate the intercom.
Becca used thrust reverse and brakes; the deceleration forced them both forward against their seat harnesses. Somehow, against Catharin’s alarmed expectation, the Kestrel ended up with runway to spare. As she taxied toward a parking spot, Becca explained, “That was another optical illusion. The runway’s got a hill in the middle, and if you put your plane down on the numbers, you can’t see to the end and think you’re going to be run off into the blue.” She grinned. “Welcome to the Airport in the Sky!”
“It’s amazing how compelling a mere optical illusion can be,” Catharin said. Her body felt awash in adrenaline.
Becca parked the jet and jumped out, gesturing for Catharin to follow. She was a smaller woman than Catharin, a petite redhead who moved with an air of purpose. Becca waved an arm across the island, which tumbled northward down to the sea. “The first foothold could be a lot like this. They expect to find a rudimentary ecology and an oxygen atmosphere. On an island like this, people could plant grass and scrub oak and build the first ecosystem on the new world.”
The sunlight glazed one tidy town nestled in a bay. Otherwise, a haze on the coast of the island hid most of the evidence of habitation. It could have been a new land on the other side of the stars. Catharin’s heart pounded with strange excitement. Becca’s words were putting flesh on the bones of Catharin’s own idea. Catharin drew in a breath. “I could live that way. Especially if you’re there too.”
Becca replied with a brigh
t grin. Catharin knew they would be become good friends.
“How about lunch?” Becca asked.
The airport cafe had a lovely view of the picturesque town on the bay. Laughing, they ordered things that would be unavailable on the other side of the stars. Catharin lunched on grilled salmon and chardonnay. Becca downed a steak.
Catharin lay motionless in her small cubicle in Aeon, too insomniac to sleep, too demoralized to toss and turn. She wept, missing Becca, who was still in stasis, missing Earth and the Moon, the Pacific Ocean, cities. The tears were oddly empty. She could recognize her homesickness but not really feel it. It surged like the miniature ocean in Habitat, waves behind a glass wall.
The next day went as routinely as possible for the second day after eternity. Catharin opened the flight lab and spent the day there. Nguyen studied his astronomical data; Lary made virtual models of the planet and applied hypothetical terraforming to the models. “It greens up in about a thousand years,” Lary said smugly at lunch. Joel worked out the orbital mechanics of braking and of changing course around the golden sun, the mutually exclusive and final options.
Bix decided that the attitude thrusters had to be fixed. Whether the ship braked or changed course, they needed more reliable control of its orientation. Bix scheduled a repair mission for the following morning.
During the night, insomnia cropped up all around—sick, tired sleeplessness. Catharin dispensed sleeping pills and antinauseants and grimly waited for the third morning.
Even Bix had had a bad night, but he did not mention it while he armed himself and Joel with tools and thruster parts. Catharin took a medical bag and followed them. Before leaving the crew level, they shut down the main engine rather than attempt to repair thrusters on the outer hull of an accelerating ship. The sense of weight faded away. No one talked about the possibility of a failure in restarting the main engine as they glided into the ‘vator that took them into the depths of the ship, no longer necessarily “down.” Lary and Nguyen were left to chase the inevitable items that had been overlooked in securing the crew level for weightlessness.
At the center of the ship, Bix changed the ‘vator’s course. Vertical bands of light marched across a channel near the top of the ‘vator’s front wall, marking the ship’s shells the ‘vator transited until it reached the outermost, the service shell.
In the thruster access bay, a small square room with an airlock on the far end, Catharin powered up the medical EVAmonitor. The men packed each other into spacesuits while she tested the monitor. Joel brandished his tool bag, and his voice came over the radio as he entered the airlock with Bix. “Just making a little house call.” The airlock door closed. “Do you, Cat?”
“Make house calls? Sometimes. I hear you loud and clear.”
A few minutes later Bix’s voice came over the radio. “We’re on the outside of Aeon now. How’s your reception?”
“Fine.”
The hull here had no windows. Bix planted a camera on the far side of the outer door. “Got pix, Cat?”
“The thruster housing looks like a metal hill.”
With dual tethers holding him to Aeon’s skin, Joel ascended the thruster housing. It was slow going, as he had to move one tether attachment at a time. The thruster’s mouth pointed away from the airlock, frozen in that position. Joel leaned into its maw. “Knew we’d have problems with these thrusters.”
“Why?” Catharin asked.
“Weathering. They’re the most exposed part of the ship, plus the fact that their guts are too sophisticated for their own good.” Joel vanished over the top of the hill. Catharin listened to a discussion of replacing valve seats and solenoids.
Joel emerged from the thruster’s mouth. Arms akimbo, he looked up at the stars. His slightly elevated vital signs let Catharin guess that he was taking time out to rejoice.
In the corner of the television picture, Catharin saw Bix tossing a replacement part to Joel on a thin tether. His heart beat slowly and rocksteadily: the Bixby signature heartbeat that stayed the same under circumstances that would send anyone else’s heart pounding wildly. Joel caught the part. “Take the line back, Bix, I detached the friend.”
Catharin asked, “The what?”
“The hook at the end of the tether,” said Bix. “Out in the Asteroid Belt they called it the spaceminer’s best friend. A tether hook that’s both failsafe and easy to operate, even when your hand is in one of these bulky spacesuit gloves, is one of the most damn helpful pieces of space technology there is.”
“Well, obviously,” said Catharin.
Clipping the part onto his short belt tether, then releasing the longer line for Bix to reel in, Joel laughed. “No gadget, including the Trevino Hook, is obvious until somebody imagines it. No plan is, either,” he added.
Joel pushed himself hard. Finally Catharin said, “Joel, take five.” His tether, snaked over the hill, stopped twitching.
“How do you feel?”
“Whew. Okay. Well, better! Mama always said, if you’re half sick, work it off.”
“You mean you feel better than earlier?”
“Yeah, I’ve been kinda sick ever since day before yesterday.”
“We all have. I may prescribe calisthenics all around.”
Joel went back to work. Soon he told Catharin to look for a dial near the airlock. She turned it for him. The housing hill slowly wheeled around. The thruster’s mouth was a cave high on the hillside, with Joel standing in it. His helmet was briefly crowned with bright lights as the beams of built-in flashlights passed across the camera’s lens. He waved.
“Now we go for the bad valve,” Bix said. Alternating safety tethers and bristling with equipment, he joined Joel in the thruster. After that Catharin saw little more than dim motion in the cave. Suitbooted feet emerged at odd angles, sunlight flashing on the white soles.
Relaxing, she thought about less immediate concerns. Bix was so much better at doing than talking, better at judging than explaining his judgment. Not a charismatic Captain, yet a good one: she trusted him enough to follow his lead into anything up to and including the Ramamirtham Maneuver. But Lary and Nguyen did not know him so well.
A microburst of static came over the radio. “Flight deck to Captain!” The voice was Nguyen’s, and he sounded alarmed.
“I hear you. What’s up?”
“Eta Sagittarii isn’t double, it’s triple. The A star has a white dwarf companion, very close, so we didn’t detect it earlier.”
Joel hissed, “Damn! Three’s a crowd!”
“Is the dwarf stable?” Bix asked.
“So far.”
“Check it out, but good!”
Joel asked, “How do the other options look now?”
“Not good for planets with moons. And Catharin wouldn’t like the time frames.”
Catharin found herself shaking. “What’s the matter with Eta Sagittarii?”
Joel said, “A white dwarf star hiding in the skirts of an orange giant is how you get novas. But this probably won’t blow in the century it’d take us to get by.”
Bix growled, “Let’s get this thruster fixed.”
The flight laboratory now looked and smelled used, more natural than the incredibly perfect little facility that Catharin had opened up on the second morning. She glanced at the chronometer. The fourth day’s noon had just gone by. A crew conference was scheduled for 1400 hours. Wearily she finished dissecting a piglet, made notes, and began to clean up. This one had been difficult. Emotional strain and a lack of good sleep had affected her performance. And zero gravity made a routine dissection problematic. Organs did not stay where put.
With the place cleaned and instruments packed up, she lingered by the vault wall. The vault held a variety of animals, mostly dead. Not rotten like the casualties of Seventeen Wedge T: the stasis had never broken here.
Little bodies that had been pumped full of exotic chemicals had turned into glass, not ice, when they were frozen. Their cells remained intact instead of rup
turing with ice crystals. In the vault, the animals looked unchanged, like glass figurines. But their vitreous tissues had deteriorated. The figurines disintegrated when they thawed.
The laboratory stasis log and the dissections told the story. Stasis had destroyed the small rodents first; mice live thirty times faster than humans. The flesh of the cats and dogs began to deteriorate in the second century. They too were dead by now. Two of the four piglets had been alive until she killed them to dissect, mercifully, because they had been decrepit.
The indicators told a different and more hopeful story about a glass parrot. Catharin had no intentions of dissecting him. She was already sure of her results. She turned off the lights and went to the galley.
She met a fork, a used one, tumbling toward the outer wall of the room. Catharin felt too tired to catch the fork and put it away. She anchored herself at the table beside Joel.
Lary bustled in. “Hey, who left a fork adrift?”
Joel said wearily, “Might have been me.”
“You really shouldn’t leave things floating around like that. They can get into our instruments.”
“I know! I know!” Joel stretched to snag the fork, pitching it into the dirty dish bin.
“Yesterday you let that blob of toothpaste get loose in the bathroom,” Lary accused. Joel looked ready to bite Lary’s head off in reply. But Bix arrived just then, with the bad-news glower on his face. Nguyen slipped in behind Bix.
“Crew conference is now,” said Bix. “Nguyen.”
The astrophysicist looked pinched and unhappy. “Eta Sagittarii is too dangerous. Material from the orange giant is building up on the surface of the white dwarf. It could turn into a nova engulfing all three stars.”
“And us,” said Bix.
“Like Judgment Day?” Catharin asked in a low voice.
“Yeah. But more so.”
Lary did not wait to announce his opinion. “And the Book’s other options aren’t worth two bytes each. So we stay here.”