“I still see ’em,” Vega said. “Lightning and thunder in the north a couple of times a year.”
“Remember how we used to plan our final getaway?”
“You in trouble?”
“Not just now, but I’ve had too much of this whole damn world. If them ships do go out to find new planets—”
“You’re loco!” Vega laughed. “Crazy as you ever were. Better beg Huntsville to let you back inside.”
Crazy or not, he bought a ticket to El Paso and rang Vega’s number again. The new wife picked up the phone and told him to get lost. He hitchhiked to Las Cruces and found StarSeed headquarters. A busy woman in the front office asked what he wanted, and told him the Mission couldn’t use him. He’d never get to space, not without high-tech skills or high-up contacts.
Yet he stayed to talk to the Fairshare pickets outside. They were protesting a takeoff due that night. He waited with them to see it from the motel parking lot. Sirens howling, the police stopped traffic on the streets and warned people to cover their eyes. Watching through dark glasses, they counted the minutes and seconds.
He found the takeoff itself a little disappointing. The site was still fifty miles away. Mountains blocked most of the flash, though the lifting ship did burn a hot bright line to the top of the sky. The sonic boom was only a muffled rumble, a long time coming, yet the wonder of it woke something he had never felt. If the ships really went out where men had never been …
“Sucker bait!” A Fairshare organizer laughed when he tried to ask how he might get aboard another ship. “Thousands take the hook. God knows how or where they end up. Dead or alive, or nowhere at all. A man’s a damn fool to think about it.”
But he was tired of trouble. He did think about it. A contractor was recruiting a crew to clear a new launch site. Asking no questions, the man looked him over, gave him a pass, and put him on a bus. The job kept him sweating all day in the desert, clearing rocks and charred stumps off the new site, but he could watch the trucks and cranes around a new ship on its launch pad, tall and shining in the sun.
Could StarSeed give him the second chance the prison chaplain used to promise? If he really straightened up, if he learned enough and worked hard enough, like his mother used to say?
He resolved to try.
With the Tex-Mex Spanish he had learned in prison, he got along with the foreman and his fellow workers. The quantum engineers were another challenge. They spoke a language of their own and worked at tasks he never entirely understood. His dream dimmed till he got help from Mort Nunin, the Fairshare organizer who brought his volunteers to march against the Mission.
Nunin was a shrewd, bald, thickset cynic who smoked vile cigars but always had money for beers and time to relay rumors of Mission affairs, most of them ugly. StarSeed was a scam, promoted by crooks who skimmed off the top of the take. Maybe the engineers were crazy enough to think they were sending explorers to the frontiers of paradise; maybe they were just plain crazy.
Aaron Zeeland didn’t care. Maybe crazier than the engineers, Nunin said, but he was president of Fairshare and the chief financier of the war against the Mission, with money to pay for anything Roak could learn inside the fence. Reports of problems in the Mission. Anything to help him kill it.
Roak refused at first. He felt awed by the towering splendor of the quantum craft. He lost heart, however, as he saw ship after ship taking off without him. The girls at the motel reserved themselves for richer men. Drinking Nunin’s beer, he began taking money for the gossip he heard.
Only a few dollars now and then, tips for small facts that never seemed to matter. He’d do better, Nunin said, with a job that would give him better contacts and better information. He let Nunin sign him up for night classes in remedial math and science, let Nunin invent a prettier picture of his past and teach him to speak better English. Sweating less and earning more, he had just been named a launch inspector when the preacher wrote that his mother was dead. The news hardly troubled him.
“Perfect for us!” Enthusiastic about the new job, Nunin drove him to Juarez for fajitas and an evening in the bars. “You’ll be boarding every departing craft to certify the fusion engines and quantum converters. You’ll be meeting officers and engineers, hearing all they know.”
Doubtfully, he shook his head. “They’ll wonder how I got the job.”
“Not if you play it right.” Nunin ordered another round of margaritas. “I’ll drill you on the basics and the patter.”
“I’m afraid—”
“No great risk.” Nunin shrugged. “Don’t talk when you don’t have to. Just ask questions and act like you understand. The takeoffs are all you have to care about. What happens later is no skin off your tail.”
He felt jittery at first, crouching in the bunker time after time to watch ships blazing into oblivion. When none blew up on the pad, he began to enjoy himself. Nunin was generous with the bonuses. He dreaded the takeoff of Ninety-nine and the end of everything.
“Maybe your best luck yet.” Nunin grinned. “Zeeland wants to see you in Albuquerque to talk about a special assignment.”
Nunin took him to Albuquerque in a driverless electric Cadillac. In the Fairshare offices, a leggy blond called Zeeland out to meet them. The financier was a big, soft, fair man with round blue eyes in a round hairless head. He stood a moment blinking as if the light were too bright before he gave them a wide baby smile.
“Mr. Roak, you’ve done good work for us.” His voice was as soft as his warm, pink hand. “Come on in.”
Nunin waited outside, drinking coffee with the blond. Roak followed Zeeland into a huge corner room with a wide view of thunderclouds billowing above the rugged Sandia crest a few miles east. Zeeland waited for him to take in the antique Navajo blanket that hung above the Taxco silver and rare Pueblo pottery arrayed on the mantel above a massive fieldstone fireplace. The wall behind a wide marble-topped desk was covered with photos of crumbling glaciers, flooded cities, and dust-drifted farms.
“The cost of the Mission.” Zeeland scowled at the photos. “The idiots are trashing the planet before they take off.”
“Whatever they did is already done.” He stood wondering what Zeeland wanted. “Ninety-nine’s the final ship.”
“But I want to make certain.”
“Aren’t we certain already? One Hundred’s junked for lack of funds to finish it. Salvage crews are already trucking the wreckage away. The Mission’s over.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m there.” He peered into the smooth baby face, wondering what it hid. “I listen. Top people say it’s dead. Thanks to Mission mismanagement. Funds always short. Paychecks delayed. Bills unpaid. Ugly rumors about Herman Stecker.”
“Let’s talk about it.” Zeeland gestured at a bar in the end of the room. “Over a drink.”
Moving with a shambling, bearlike grace, he brought two glasses of ice, a silver carafe of water, and a bottle of scotch. Waiting, Roak studied the Mexican silver, the Zuni pottery, the Navajo blankets. He thought of the unpaid volunteers he had seen marching under the desert sun. Zeeland had done better for himself.
“My question.” He poured himself a generous drink and pushed the bottle across the desk. “What’s so ugly about Herman Stecker?”
“All I know is what I hear.”
“Let’s have it.”
“Stecker’s run the Mission like his own empire. Flies a luxury jet. Lives in luxury hotels. Entertains like a prince. Charges it all to the Mission.”
“He’s gone too far?”
“Milked the Mission dry. Ninety-nine will be the last takeoff. Old hands used to dream of another hundred ships, but that will never happen.”
“Not if I can stop it!” Zeeland stiffened, that soft, pink jaw set in the scowl of a baby about to lose its bottle. “That’s your new assignment, Mr. Roak. To make damn sure.”
“Really, sir.” Roak shrank back, alarmed by the violence boiling in the financier. “I’m already sure.”
“I trust Mort Nunin,” he muttered at last. “He knows your record, and he says you’re our man for a very delicate errand.”
“Yes?”
He waited till Zeeland asked, “You know why Fairshare exists?”
“I’ve read Dr. Zeeland’s book—was he your father?”
“My uncle.”
“I know his theory that the takeoff trails increase global warming—”
“Theory?” The child voice grew shrill. “Look at the facts! The takeoff flashes disturb the upper atmosphere. Disturb world climates.” He gestured at the photo murals. “Glaciers melting. Sea levels rising. Deserts spreading. Hurricanes, famines, floods—”
Checking himself, he reached for the bottle, set it back, and intently bent closer.
“Mr. Roak, the Mission orphaned me!” His voice had turned bitter. “Let me tell you how. My father had a twin. Classmates at MIT, they were a genius team. They invented the quantum wave drive and got obsessed with the damfool notion that they could sow the human seed across the galaxies.
“The actual founders of StarSeed Mission, they lost control to operators slick enough to peddle the lunatic dream. When the first ship was ready, the promoters granted them passage for only two. Both married by then, they wouldn’t leave their wives. They flipped a coin. My parents went out, and left me with Uncle Harry.
“I’d begged to go, and I felt like I was dead. My uncle felt cheated and soon grew bitter against the Mission. Used his science to model the climatic effects of the takeoff flashes. Tried to warn the Mission leaders, a crazy mix of star-mad dreamers and money-mad promoters. They laughed at him. He set up Fairshare to stop their suicidal project.”
Zeeland was speaking faster, his fat face reddening. He stopped to mop it with a white silk handkerchief.
“Sorry if I seem emotional, but it still gets to me. I came to love my uncle. When he had to give up the management of Fairshare, I promised to take it over. And here we are.” Zeeland caught a wheezy breath and wiped his face again. “That’s my story, Mr. Roak. The reason for this last assignment. Your final job for us.”
Zeeland sat breathing hard till he seemed a little calmer, and went back to the bar for more ice. He filled his glass and pushed the scotch across the desk.
“Let’s drink to it.”
“Not yet.” Roak pushed the bottle aside. “Frankly, sir, I don’t quite get you. I think your victory is already won. The Mission’s dead—”
The round baby face reddened again, and the baby voice exploded. “We’ve tried hard enough to kill it. You can make StarSeed dead to stay.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
“You’re there on the spot. You blow up Ninety-nine as it lifts out of the launch pit. A final public signal that the Mission’s really done for.”
Roak sat shaking his head.
“Fifty thousand.” He felt dazed at the madness behind the baby grin. “Fifty thousand clear. Ten here and now. Mr. Nunin will hold the other forty till he sees the ship explode.”
“Sir …” He held up his hand. “I don’t know….”
Zeeland was again bent over the drawer. Gingerly lifting a heavy little device cased in dull gray plastic, he laid it before him on the desk.
“Two kilos of plastic explosive, already wired to the timer and igniter. You will have it in your briefcase when you make your last inspection. Set the timer for ignition at the moment of the scheduled takeoff. Plant it where it’s safe and get off the ship.”
Three
The cab stopped at the foot of the passenger ramp. She slid out, a trim quick woman in a green Mission jumpsuit, and turned to help the little girl, who held a huge panda doll hugged close against her. The boy was already out.
“Dr. Virili?” The guard read her badge and smiled. “You’re coming with us?”
“Rima Virili. Chief of the bioservice team.”
He looked at his monitor and turned to the children. “Kipler Virili?”
“Kip,” the boy said. “Just Kip.”
“Day Virili?”
“And Me Me.” The girl held up the panda. “Don’t forget Me Me.”
He frowned at the doll and looked at Rima.
“I’m sorry, dear.” She bent to hug Day and the panda. “I told you the ship won’t have room for Me Me.”
“But it’s so big….”
Day choked up and squeezed the doll tighter. The driver was lifting three small bags out of the cab. The guard set them on his scales.
“Too bad.” He tried to warm his voice. “The ship does look big, but we have to load another ninety people. For kids the limit on personal effects is only five kilos. Your bag’s already four point nine. That means your panda friend will have to wait.”
She turned to her mother, blinking hard. Rima gulped and said nothing.
“Please, sir.” She kissed the panda’s nose and handed it back to the driver. “Please won’t you take care of Me Me? Till we get back?”
“Don’t you know—” The driver caught himself and set the doll beside him in the cab. “Sure, sis. I have a little girl named Velda. She’ll take good care of Me Me.”
The guard set the bags on a conveyor. Rima wiped her eyes and paid the driver. Catching the children’s hands, she led them up the ramp and stopped at the edge of the concrete pad, turning with them to gaze out across the fire-scarred landscape.
“Look around us,” she urged them. “All around!”
“Why?” Kip muttered. “It’s all so black and ugly.”
“The ground is burnt here, but look at the hills. Try to remember how white and bright they are, under the new snow beyond the flash-burnt plain. Snow! The sky so blue and clean! Our own good Earth! Take a long look.”
Kip shrugged. Day stood waving after the departing cab. Rima was turning to lead them aboard when Captain Alt came off the ship. A seasoned veteran of space, graying at the temples but still hard and straight in his Mission green-and-gold, Alt had returned from Farside Moon Base to take this last command.
“Rima!” He caught her in his arms and held her away from him to search her face. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“I do want you with us, but the children—” He looked down at them and sharply back at her. “You’re really sure?”
“It’s cost a lot of sleep.” She made a wry mouth. “But you know my situation. The Mission’s gone and my job with it. I’ve got the kids to care for, and this looks better than anything we’re leaving. I talked to Kip about it. He takes it as a great adventure.”
“The greatest.”
He caught her hand for a moment and went on down the ramp to a temporary platform set up for the waiting media.
“Fairshare, sir?” The first question was shouted from the back row. “What do you think of them?”
“I’ve met them.” He tipped his head toward the distant gate. “They’re sincere about environmental harm to Earth. I think they’re wrong, but I agree that we’re flying into danger. Our basic difference is assumption and philosophy. They imagine the galaxies are full of Earth-like planets inhabited by innocent primitives we might mistreat the way Cortés and Pizarro misused the Aztecs and the Incas.
“We’re not conquistadores. We are pledged to respect the rights of any life we find. Frankly, however, we have found no evidence of the friendly universe they assume. We’re launching a hundred wavecraft instead of four or five because we can’t be sure of reaching any world where humankind might survive. An ugly risk, but we’re playing for the ultimate survival of mankind.
“Primitive life-forms may be common, most of them perhaps hard to identify as life at all. All the evidence, however, indicates that intelligence is rare. Ours may be unique. We can be pretty certain nobody else has developed quantum wave technology. Otherwise they’d hav
e been here. If we find a universe empty of sentience, it’s surely ours to claim.”
“Captain?” A lanky man in the front row raised a hesitant voice. “A more personal question, if you don’t mind. With odds like that, what brings you yourself to the Mission?”
“I accept the risks.” He nodded soberly. “Because of our goal. Escape from our gravity trap. Before wavecraft, we were prisoners here, doomed to suffer all the vicissitudes of our small planet and finally perish like the trilobites and dinosaurs. The Mission exists to scatter our seed wherever we happen to land, every ship another pod. When you look at that—the final survival of our kind—odds hardly matter.”
“Have you no regrets?” the reporter persisted. “For your own family? For all the friends you must be leaving? For the world you’ll never see again?”
“It hurts.” He nodded, with a lingering glance at the white dust of snow on the distant mountains. “But I’m ready. My wife’s gone. We had no children. My estate is helping fund this final flight.
“And look at Ninety-nine!”
His weathered face warmed with a sudden smile, he turned to gesture at the wavecraft, a thin silver projectile poised over the launch pit behind him.
“My Farside tour was over. I’d planned to travel, maybe write a history of lunar exploration, play a bit of golf. Nothing that really mattered to me. This command is a new life. It excites me. If you want to know how I feel, think of Magellan. Think of the Apollo astronauts.”
“Jane Blake, Global Vues.” Two rows back, a stocky, rust roan woman slung a holocam to her shoulder and came to her feet, announcing herself in the voice of a hoarse bullfrog. “You’ve been launching these so-called seed ships for nearly twenty years. They’ve cost a lot of money and carried a lot of good people off Earth. Off to nowhere. You’re admitting now that most of them have died. Right?”
Sober-faced, he nodded.
“Your Mission StarSeed?” she challenged him. “It looks to me, to a lot of us, like a very crazy game. Can you explain the game, the risks and the rules? In words that we can understand?”
The Black Sun Page 2