Starfarers

by Poul Anderson

  “We will not.” Dayan rose to her feet. “There is no argument.” She came over to stand above him. “I’m experienced, too. How can you imagine I’d accept fifteen years without you, and being too old for children when you got back? Meshuggah!”

  50.

  For thousands of years among the stars, for hundreds of her own years, the ship had been great and proud. She was akin to Envoy in her general plan—seen across fifty kilometers, the unlikenesses were few, the most obvious a proportionately larger hull—but of more than twice the linear dimensions, ten times the burden. Even the wreckage of her had kept majesty; Nansen remembered Machu Picchu, Kerak des Chevaliers, the Lion Gate at Mycenae. It still belonged in the reaches she had sailed; he remembered the Gokstad ship, the Mary Rose, the Constitution, and thought that Fleetwing had found a better ending.

  But maybe the ancient crews had found better deaths.

  He reduced viewscreen magnification, retaining light enhancement, to survey the entirety again. Lesser wounds dwindled out of sight and he saw the forward wheel turning as before, slower than his because it was bigger but creating interior weight as of old. That meant the frictionless magnetic bearings around its hollow axle were there, which meant that the superconductors generating the fields were operative, which meant that a fusion power plant was, which meant that life within the rim might yet be possible.

  The force boom, though, projecting from the hub to make and shape the radiation screen fields, was warped, a fourth of its two-kilometer length snapped off. The outer hull was rotating, oppositely to the wheel, something that should never have happened. That it had not long since grated ruinously against the inner hull was a tribute to the remnants of the bearing system—to the engineers who designed it and the honest workers who built it, dust these many centuries. The eight boats that had docked on the exterior, two sets of four spaced equally around the circumference, were gone. The magnetics that held them fast had failed, doubtless in the moment of catastrophe, and they drifted off with the debris.

  The huge cylinder terminated in ripped and ragged metal. A few interior members stuck out, torn across, like bones in a compound fracture. The inner hull was hidden from view, a stump. No after wheel spun athwart the Milky Way. Its fragments were also forever lost. They might not have receded fast, but in sixteen years they would have traveled into tracklessness.

  Nansen consulted a display of data his instruments had obtained and interpretations his computers had calculated. The dry figures joined with the stark sight to tell him Fleetwing’s story.

  Her normal-state velocity in the galactic frame of reference had been about seventy-five kilometers per second. When the substrate reclaimed the unpaid part of her debt, as much matter decelerated to zero as would carry that much energy at that speed. It occurred in a fractional second, thus with appalling force. In ship terms, the zero-zero engine immediately crashed aft, rending off its section of the inner hull. The pieces rammed into the solid hub at the end. They bore it and the plasma accelerator it supported away. Unsecured, seized by incidental forces—electrostatic, if nothing else—the after wheel withdrew as well. Whirling and wobbling, its axle sleeve struck the outer hull, smashed through decks, entangled structure. Its linear momentum left a hole agape in the stern of the cylinder, its angular momentum left a spin. Fleetwing pitched and yawed. That put more torque on the long, thin mast than it was meant to bear, and it gave way.

  Not that it or its screen fields were needed by then, Nansen thought. This ship will never again race with light.

  Incredible, that the systems up forward could save anything of her, yes, actually restore a kind of stability.

  No, perhaps not really unbelievable. She was made so well that she had already endured everything else the cosmos threw at her. And likewise her Kithfolk.

  He stood in Envoy’s command center with Hanny Dayan and Alanndoch Egis. His second officer was youthful; all aboard from Harbor had seen less life span than he and his wife. She was fair-haired and gray-eyed, tall in her one-piece blue uniform; but starfaring ancestors had bequeathed her her face.

  Consoles, meters, displays, encompassed them. The air at present bore a tinge of pine smell. Retrofits had not changed old Envoy much.

  Alanndoch stared at a radio monitor. The instrument searched from end to end of that spectrum and back again, lest a message come in that the audios were not tuned for. “No answer yet,” she said, uselessly and desperately. “Are they dead, then? Their broadcast goes on.” She was young.

  “It would,” Dayan reminded her. “Automatic. Evidently the best transmitter they could rig was crude, but they built it rugged. The call will continue for decades more, till the power plant gives out.”

  Nansen ran a hand through his hair. It was going white at the temples. “They should have seen us,” he muttered, just as pointlessly. “If nothing else, they could modulate or modify that signal. Interrupting it every few minutes would show that they’re alive.”

  Dayan’s voice bleakened. “Maybe nobody looks out any longer. Maybe they’ve turned off their viewscreens. Sixteen years of watching naked space—”

  “That doesn’t sound like what I’ve heard of Kithfolk,” Alanndoch said.

  “After all this time, under those conditions, what may they have become?”

  “Dead.” Alanndoch’s head drooped. “We’re too late.”

  Seven and a half years—half an Earth-day for them—to the approximate location. Zigzagging to and fro, zero-zero jumps that closed in on the goal. Laying to, straining outward with opticals, neutrino detectors, every capability on hand. The radio signal, barely obtainable, a broadcast gone tenuous over these distances, and no more than a wave band not found in the interstellar medium; yet unmistakably a beacon, proof that somebody had survived the disaster. (Well, Fleetwing was massive, and no doubt bore a considerable tonnage of cargo. Evidently the shock had not jarred her fatally hard.) Homing in on the source. A final approach under normal-state boost. Matching velocities at a safe remove. Quest completed.

  Found: a wreck and a mindlessly radiating monotone, alone amidst the stars.

  Nansen’s fist banged on a console panel. “No, it’s not for nothing,” he said. “At the very least, we’ll learn the details of what happened. The future needs to know.”

  Dayan flung off her despair. “Good for you, Rico!” She clapped his shoulder. “Let’s start.”

  Alanndoch likewise brightened a little. “Oh, yes, we must board.” She regarded the others. “But, Captain, Scientist,” she well-high pleaded, “you shouldn’t. Please reconsider. Don’t risk yourselves. You’ve crew who’re willing, anxious to go. Beginning with me.”

  “Thanks,” Dayan said. “But Rico and I have earned the right.”

  For her, he thought, the right to be not yet used up. To defy time once more, time that has devoured everything on Earth which was hers.

  For me—He spoke in his wonted sober fashion: “We have argued this already. I well know the doctrine. The commander should stay with the ship. However, Dr. Dayan and I have more than training”—brief, though intense. “We have experience”—since before Envoy departed Sol, and at worlds unknown until she fetched up at them, and at the black hole; for a moment it felt to him like the full eleven thousand years. “We have by far the best chance of coping with anything unexpected. Stand by.”

  Dayan’s demand rang heartening. “We’ll certainly want you and the whole crew later. If we find survivors, you’ll have tricky work to do.”

  “At worst,” Nansen finished, “you shall take our ship home.”

  51.

  The wreck swelled in the forward screen until it blocked sight of the stars. Spin brought an emblem into view, scarred and scoured, then took the blue-and-silver wing away, then swung it back. Nansen turned his spaceboat and proceeded parallel to the hull at a distance of meters, seeking a place to make contact. Field drive gave marvelous responsiveness; this was almost like steering an aircraft.

  Almost. Never
quite. Robotics handled most of it, with more speed and precision than flesh could, but the basic judgments and decisions were his, and a mistake could kill.

  He worked his way aft, turned again, matched velocities, and rested weightless in his harness. Before him yawned the hideous hole where the after wheel and plasma accelerator had been. He called a report to Envoy. Dayan, at his side, probed the interior with radar, detectors, and instruments more subtle, still experimental, that employed her new knowledge of quantum physics.

  “As we thought,” she said after a few minutes. “The midships emergency bulkheads must have closed immediately and sealed the front end off. The fusion reactor there is in regular operation, supplying ample current to all systems that are functional.” She frowned. “The readings at the wheel aren’t so good, but from here I can’t make out just what the trouble is.”

  “That’s what we want to discover,” he said. “Ready? Hang on.”

  As slowly as might be, he maneuvered around the hull and forward. A hundred meters from the bow end of the cylinder, he went into a circular path around it—not an orbit; the gravity of even this enormous vessel was negligible. To stay on course required a constant, exact interplay of vectors. He fought down a brief dizziness and concentrated on matching the rotation “below” him.

  And now: approach. He had picked a smooth area, free alike of installations and of damage. However, it spun at nearly two hundred kilometers per hour. A slight miscalculation could mean that a housing slammed into him. The boat stooped. Contact shivered and tolled in the metal. At once he made fast. It would not have been possible to do so speedily enough with magnetics, but an electron manipulator inspired by the Holont gave him talons. Silence washed over him.

  Weight tugged, as if he were hanging upside down. Stars streamed in the viewscreens. Envoy hove in sight, merely a glint among them unless he magnified. “We’re docked,” he told them aboard.

  “Elohim Adirim!” Dayan gasped. A lock of hair had come loose from her headband and wavered like a small flame. “That was piloting!”

  Nansen realized he had been necessary. He also realized he had not by himself been sufficient. “Thank the boat,” he said.

  Her name was Herald II.

  Donning spacesuits and securing equipment to take along was a slow business. Weight amounted to about one-tenth terrestrial, in the wrong direction. They helped one another. Nansen saw Dayan’s distress when he strapped a pistol to his waist. “The last thing I want is to fire this,” he said, “but we simply don’t know.”

  “That’s the horror,” she answered, “that you might have to.” Her neck straightened. “Well, I won’t believe you will until I have to.”

  They kissed quickly before they attached helmets. After that their appearance was unhuman, heads horned with sensors and antennae, blank visages, insectlike eyes that were optical amplifiers. They cycled through the personnel lock, planted gripsoled boots on Fleetwing, and moved off cautiously, a boot always emplaced. Drive units rested on their backs, but a return to this whirling surface would be an acrobatic feat. “Yes,” Nansen murmured, “we two definitely had to be the first. Already I’m finding things to warn everybody about”

  Dayan’s breath was harsh in his audio receivers.

  Step by step, they advanced. A coaming lay in their way. “That’s a lock,” Dayan said.

  “I know,” Nansen answered. They had studied the plans of the ship, taken from the Kith database, with equal intensity.

  “Are you sure we shouldn’t try to go inside here and proceed through the hull?”

  “Yes, I am sure. Too many unknowns.”

  They crept around the portal. “I … I’m sorry,” Dayan said. “That was a stupid question. I’m feeling a bit spinny.”

  Medication staved off nausea but couldn’t do everything. They clung to a sharply curving world that wanted to hurl them from it, blood coursed too heavily in their heads, and a night sky whirled beneath them. “Don’t look at the stars,” Nansen advised.

  Dayan swallowed. “Ironic,” she said. “The stars are what this is all about, aren’t they?”

  They reached the end of the cylinder and crawled over the edge. She lost her footing. He grabbed an ankle barely in time and hauled her back. “¡Nombre de Dios!” he groaned. “Don’t do that!” Twenty meters from them, the spokes of the wheel scythed across heaven.

  “I’m sorry—”

  “No, no, I am. I should have been more careful of … of my partner.”

  He heard a chuckle. “Enough with this modesty contest. But thank you, b’ahavah.”

  Progress became easier, here where the centrifuge effect pulled sideways. It was somewhat like walking in a stiff wind, which lessened as they approached the center. Nevertheless they kept their caution. “I feel well again,” Dayan said after a while.

  “Good.” Oh, more than good, beloved.

  They came at length to an occupied shuttle bay. Although the little vehicle had been designed centuries after those that Envoy bore to Tahir, it seemed crude compared even to the early field-drive models she now carried. Nansen helped Dayan unlimber the tripod that was part of her burden and snug its feet to the hull. It gave her a framework to which she could fasten her instruments. When he had finished, the single sound he heard was breathing. Somehow the stillness made the wheel that rotated on his right all the more monstrous.

  Dayan busied herself for several minutes.

  “I was afraid of this,” she sighed. “It confirms the readings I took aft. The launch control is dead. Probably the power supply to the computer was knocked out in the disaster.”

  “What about the others?” Besides the lost boats, Fleetwing had carried eight shuttles; her people had more occasion to go to and fro than his ever did, and numbered many more. He glimpsed those that were docked in the wheel, whirling past.

  “I can tell from here, the entire lot is stranded, at least on this side.”

  “Well, frankly, I’m not very regretful. I didn’t like the idea of trusting an unfamiliar system that might have been damaged in unobvious ways.”

  “How will we evacuate survivors?” If any.

  “That depends on what the situation is. At the moment, I think the best procedure will be for our engineers to make what modifications are necessary for us to use a shuttle of Envoy’s. We’ll convey it over, steer it to a wheelside bay, and ferry the people across to the hull. First we’ll doubtless have to do some repair work there, too. They can pass through it to an exit port, and our boats will bring them to our ship. That may involve a large number of trips, but it looks to me like the most conservative, fail-safe plan. Meanwhile, let’s repack your gear and execute the maneuver I rather expected we would.”

  Did a sob answer his deliberately impersonal words? He decided not to ask. Dayan went about her tasks as competently as always.

  The truth came out as he slipped a cable off his shoulder and began uncoiling it. Under low weight and Coriolis force, it writhed from him like a snake. He heard her voice gone high and thin. “Rico, I’m afraid.”

  Astounded, he could merely say, “We don’t dare be afraid.”

  “Not for me.” She caught his arm. “For you, darling.” Her free hand jerked toward the wheel. “I’m remembering how Al Brent must have died.”

  “That was long ago and far away.” Six thousand years and light-years. Not enough to grant forgetfulness.

  Her tone firmed. “Let me go first. We can better spare me.”

  “No.” He shook his head, unseen by her within the helmet. “I’ve had much more open-space practice. We stay by the plan we’ve rehearsed.”

  “But if you are—caught—”

  “I won’t be. If somehow I am, you return at once to the boat and take her back. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” she said after a moment. “Forgive my foolishness. It’s just that I love you.”

  “And I you. Which is another reason I cannot let you lead.” Maybe she visualized his grin. “Besides, allow me
my machismo.”

  She laughed shakily and embraced him. Their helmets clinked together.

  The cable, a thin and flexible strand stronger than any steel, floated in an arc. He used the molecular bond attachments to stick an end to the front of her suit. She fixed the other end to the back of his. When he leaped free, she waved, then stood waiting, a soldier’s daughter.

  He activated his drive unit and curbed his outward flight. The next few minutes would be touchier than rendezvous and docking had been. Though turning speeds this near the hub weren’t great, they were opposed; the space between units was narrow; the angular momenta were gigantic. He lost himself in the crossing, as a man may lose himself in battle or a storm at sea or the height of love. Not reckless by nature, he still found in unavoidable danger the fullness of life. The blood sang in him.

  His mind stood aside, wholly aware, coolly gauging and governing.

  He drew near a spoke, fifteen meters from the axle, and adjusted vectors until the eight-hundred-meter length was steady in his eyes. He edged inward. He swung his body around! His boots made contact. The impact was slight. He must have matched velocities within a few centimeters per second. Excellent! He took half a minute to stand triumphant among the marching stars.

  Peering back, he verified that the cable was not fouled. He reached around, undid it from his suit, and attached it to the spoke. “All clear, Hanny,” he called. “Are you ready?”

  “Yes, oh, yes.”

  “Jump.”

  The line began to straighten as her mass moved offside. He caught hold and pulled, hand over hand. Draw her in. He felt how she used nudges of drive to counteract drift. Good girl, grand girl. Probably she could have made it safely on her own, as he did. But why take a needless risk? Whoever met the wheel while flying would spatter through space in chunks. He was better trained.

  That was why he had elected to walk from the boat, rather than flitting directly. The first engineers to come, led by Alanndoch, must duplicate his transit. But they were young and—well—Maybe they could rig a net for those who followed. And eventually they’d have a shuttle from Envoy, for easy passage between wheel and hull.