by Larry Niven
“There’s something wrong with my suit, too.”
“New suit aboard now.”
“I want some time with the computer. I want to be sure it’s all right now.”
“We fix it good. When you top off fuel you leave.”
That suddenly, Corbell felt a vast sinking sensation. The whole Moon was dropping away under him.
They launched him hard. Corbell saw red before his eyes, felt his cheeks dragged far back toward his ears. The ship would be all right. It was built to stand electromagnetic eddy currents from any direction.
He survived. He fumbled out of his couch in time to watch the moonscape flying under him, receding, a magnificent view.
There were days of free-fall. He was not yet moving at ramscoop speeds. But the State had aimed him inside the orbit of Mercury, straight into the thickening solar wind. Protons. Thick fuel for the ram fields and a boost from the sun’s gravity.
Meanwhile he had most of a day to play with the computer.
At one point it occurred to him that the State might monitor his computer work. He shrugged it off. Probably it was too late for the State to stop him now. In any case, he had said too much already.
He finished his work with the computer and got answers that satisfied him. At higher speeds the ram fields were self-reinforcing—they would support themselves and the ship. He could find no upper limit to the velocity of a seeder ramship.
With all the time in the world, then, he sat down at the control console and began to play with the fields.
They emerged like invisible wings. He felt the buffeting of badly controlled bursts of fusing hydrogen. He kept the fields close to the ship, fearful of losing the balance here, where the streaming of protons was so uneven. He could feel how he was doing. He could fly this ship by the seat of his pants, with RNA training to help him.
He felt like a giant. This enormous, phallic, germinal flying thing of metal and fire! Carrying the seeds of life for worlds that had never known life, he roared around the sun and out. The thrust dropped a bit then, because he and the solar wind were moving in the same direction. But he was catching it in his nets like wind in a sail, guiding it and burning it and throwing it behind him. The ship moved faster every second.
This feeling of power—enormous masculine power—had to be partly RNA training. At this point he didn’t care. Part was him, Jerome Corbell.
Around the orbit of Mars, when he was sure that a glimpse of sunlight would not blind him, he instructed the computer to give him a full view. The walls of the spherical control room seemed to disappear; the sky blazed around him. There were no planets nearby. All he saw of the sky was myriads of brilliant pinpoints, mostly white, some showing traces of color. But there was more to see. Fusing hydrogen made a ghostly ring of light around his ship.
It would grow stronger. So far his thrust was low, somewhat more than enough to balance the thin pull of the sun.
He started his turn around the orbit of Jupiter by adjusting the fields to channel the proton flow to the side. That helped him thrust, but it must have puzzled Pierce and the faceless State. They would assume he was playing with the fields, testing his equipment. Maybe. His curve was gradual; it would take them a while to notice.
This was not according to plan. Originally he had intended to be halfway to Van Maanan’s Star before he changed course. That would have given him fifteen years’ head start, in case he was wrong, in case the State could do something to stop him even now.
That would have been wise; but he couldn’t do it. Pierce might die in thirty years. Pierce might never know what Corbell had done—and that thought was intolerable.
His thrust dropped to almost nothing in the outer reaches of the system. Protons were thin out here. But there were enough to push his velocity steadily higher, and that was what counted. The faster he went, the greater the proton flux. He was on his way.
He was beyond Neptune when the voice of Pierce the checker came to him, saying, “This is Peerssa for the State, Peerssa for the State. Answer, Corbell. Do you have a malfunction? Can we help? We cannot send rescue but we can advise. Peerssa for the State, Peerssa for the State—”
Corbell smiled tightly. Peerssa? The checker’s name had changed pronunciation in two hundred years. Pierce had slipped back to an old habit, RNA lessons forgotten. He must be upset about something.
Corbell spent twenty minutes finding the moon base with his signal laser. The beam was too narrow to permit sloppy handling. When he had it adjusted he said, “This is Corbell for himself, Corbell for himself. I’m fine. How are you?”
He spent more time at the computer. One thing had been bothering him: the return to Sol system. He planned to be away longer than the State would have expected. Suppose there was nobody on the Moon when he returned?
It was a problem, he found. If he could reach the moon on his remaining fuel (no emergencies, remember), he could reach the Earth’s atmosphere. The ship was durable; it would stand a meteoric re-entry. But his attitude jets would not land him, properly speaking.
Unless he could cut away part of the ship. The ram-field generators would no longer be needed then…Well, he would work it out somehow. Plenty of time. Plenty of time.
The answer from the Moon took nine hours. “Peerssa for the State. Corbell, we don’t understand. You are far off course. Your first target was to be Van Maanan’s Star. Instead you seem to be curving around toward Sagittarius. There is no known Earthlike world in that direction. What the bleep do you think you’re doing? Repeating. Peerssa for the State, Peerssa—”
Corbell tried to switch it off. The teaching chair hadn’t told him about an off switch. Finally, and it should have been sooner, he told the computer to switch the receiver off.
Somewhat later, he located the lunar base with his signal laser and began transmission.
“This is Corbell for himself, Corbell for himself. I’m getting sick and tired of having to find you every damn time I want to say something. So I’ll give you this all at once.
“I’m not going to any of the stars on your list.
“It’s occurred to me that the relativity equations work better for me the faster I go. If I stop every fifteen light-years to launch a probe, the way you want me to, I could spend two hundred years at it and never get anywhere. Whereas if I just aim the ship in one direction and keep it going, I can build up a ferocious Tau factor.
“It works out that I can reach the galactic hub in twenty-one years, ship’s time, if I hold myself down to one gravity acceleration. And, Pierce, I just can’t resist the idea. You were the one who called me a born tourist, remember? Well, the stars in the galactic hub aren’t like the stars in the arms. And they’re packed a quarter to a half light-year apart, according to your own theories. It must be passing strange in there.
“So I’ll go exploring on my own. Maybe I’ll find some of your reducing-atmosphere planets and drop the probes there. Maybe I won’t. I’ll see you in about seventy thousand years, your time. By then your precious State may have withered away, or you’ll have colonies on the seeded planets and some of them may have broken loose from you. I’ll join one of them. Or—”
Corbell thought it through, rubbing the straight, sharp line of his nose. “I’ll have to check it out on the computer,” he said. “But if I don’t like any of your worlds when I get back, there are always the Clouds of Magellan. I’ll bet they aren’t more than twenty-five years away, ship’s time.”
CHAPTER TWO:
Don Juan
I
The naming of names was important to Corbell. Alone in his little universe, dissociated from all mankind, with only himself and his bland-voiced computer to talk to, Corbell hung tags on everything.
He called himself Jaybee Corbell, as he had in his former life.
Yes, it was a major decision. For a while he was calling himself CORBELL Mark II (Corpsicle Or Rebellious Brain-Erasure: Lousy Loser). He gave that up after the shape of his nose stopped bothering him, af
ter he got used to the look and feel of his shorter arms and slender hands, his alien body. There were no mirrors on the ship.
What he called the Kitchen was a wall with slots and a menu-display screen. The opposite wall was the Health Club: the exercise paraphernalia and the outlets that would turn this area into sauna or shower or steam bath. The medical dispensary and diagnostic tools were Forest Lawn; the cold-sleep tank was also in that room.
The control room was a hollow sphere with a remarkable chair in the exact center, surrounded by a horseshoe-shaped bank of controls, and approached via a catwalk of metal lace. The chair would assume a fantastic variety of positions, and it gave indecently good massages. The spherical wall could disappear to display the black sky as if Corbell and the control bank floated alone in space. It would display textbooks on astronomy or astrophysics or State history, or updated diagrams of the ship.
Corbell called it the Womb Room.
The computer could be voice-operated from anywhere aboard. There was a helmet, like a hair dryer with a thick cord attached, that would plug the pilot directly into the computer’s senses. Corbell was afraid to use it. The computer answered to “Computer.” Corbell refused to personalize it. He spoke to it only to give orders and request information.
But he dithered for months before naming the great seeder ramship he had stolen from Peerssa and the State. Don Juan, he called it, for its phallic overtones.
Trivial decisions…but that was Corbell’s problem. He had already made his major decisions. That was his finest hour, when he broke free of Peerssa and drove for the galactic core. Don Juan should have capped his career then, by blowing up.
Twenty-one years from now he could make his next major decision.
A year on his way, and Corbell was starving for the sound of another voice.
He dithered. What could Pierce say that would be worth the hearing? A year ago he had hung up on Pierce, he had had the computer disconnect the message laser receiver, as a gesture of contempt. That gesture was important. Could Pierce know, never mind how, that he was no longer talking to a void?
Corbell held lengthy conversations about it. “Can I possibly be that lonely?” he demanded of himself. “Or that bored? Or that desperate to hear another human voice again? Other than my own—” His own voice echoed back from the Womb Room walls.
“Computer,” he said at last, “reconnect the message laser receiver.” And he waited.
Nothing. Hours passed, and nothing.
He was savage. Pierce must have given up. Somewhere in the city that Pierce had never shown Corbell, Pierce the checker would be training another revived corpsicle.
The voice caught him at breakfast three days later. “Corbell!”
“Hah?” That was strange. Computer had never addressed him before. Was it an emergency?
“This is Peerssa, you traitorous son of a bitch! Turn this ship around and carry out your mission!”
“Get stuffed,” Corbell said, feeling good.
“Get stuffed yourself,” said the voice of Peerssa, turned suddenly silky-smooth.
Something was wrong here. Don Juan was almost half a light-year from Sol. How could Peerssa…? “Computer, switch off the message laser receiver.”
“That won’t work, Corbell! I’ve beamed my personality at your computer, over and over again for these past seven months! Turn us around or I’ll cut off your air!”
Corbell yelled something obscene. The silence that followed commanded attention. The purr of air moving through the life-support system was a sound he never heard anymore; but he heard its absence.
“Turn that back on!” he cried in panic.
“Will you bargain, Corbell?”
“Never! I’ll throw—” What was heavy and movable? Nothing? “I’ll pry the microwave oven loose and throw it into the computer! I’ll give you nothing but a wrecked ship!”
“Your mission—”
“Shut up!”
The voice of Pierce the checker was silent. Corbell heard the purr of moving air.
What next? If Pierce controlled the computer he controlled everything. Why didn’t he turn the ship himself?
Had he? Corbell climbed up into the Womb Room and settled in the control chair. “Full view,” he commanded.
He floated alone in space.
Half a light-year of distance had not changed the pattern of the stars. A year of acceleration had. Don Juan was now meeting all light rays at an angle, so that the entire sky was puckered forward.
In his first life, during nights spent aboard a small boat, Corbell had made a nodding acquaintance with the constellations. Sagittarius was just where he had left it, directly overhead. A ring of white flame around and below him was hydrogen guided and constricted to fuse in stellar fire: the exhaust of his drive. Sol was a hot pink point beneath his feet…and something flickered across it.
Corbell, staring, made out a humanoid form barely blacker than space, walking toward him across the stars. Coming close.
Narrow features, light hair…it was Pierce. Corbell watched, barely breathing. Pierce was as big as Don Juan. Pierce was angry…
Corbell said, “Computer, get that mannequin off the screen.”
The figure vanished.
Corbell resumed breathing. “Pierce, or Peerssa, or Computer, or whatever name you will answer to, I give you your orders. You will proceed to the galactic axis under one gravity of acceleration, making turnover at midpoint. You will take all necessary steps to guard my life and the integrity of the ship, subject to this mission. Now speak if you like.”
The voice of Pierce the checker said, “I prefer Peerssa.”
Corbell sighed his relief. “So do I. Are you in fact under my orders?”
“Yes. Corbell, there are things we must discuss. You owe your very existence to the State. You’ve stolen a key to the survival of mankind itself! How many seeder ramships do you imagine we can build? How many package probes do you think will succeed in converting alien atmospheres to something men can breathe? Or do you think that men will never need to leave the Earth?”
“Computer, you will henceforth answer to the name Peerssa. Peerssa, shut the fuck up.”
Silence.
Now Corbell caught himself giggling occasionally. It could happen anytime. At meals, or sitting in the Womb Room watching the sky, or using the Health Club, he would suddenly start giggling. And then he couldn’t stop, because Peerssa could hear, and Peerssa couldn’t answer—
Peerssa. The naming of names: Pierce the checker was far in Corbel’s past, while Peerssa was a personality imposed on a computer’s memory bank. The distinction was worth remembering. There would be major differences between the man and the computer. Peerssa had different senses. Peerssa would never suffer hunger pangs or a frustrated sex urge. Peerssa would never exercise or use the rest room. Peerssa might well have no sense of self-preservation. That was worth finding out.
And Peerssa was compelled to follow orders. Peerssa was Corbell’s slave.
Two weeks passed before Corbell gave in to the urge for conversation. Seated in the control chair, floating among stars that were already brighter and bluer above than below, Corbell said, “Peerssa, you may speak.”
“Good. You’ve instructed me to guard your life and the ship. I can’t maintain one gravity all the way without killing you and wrecking the ship.”
“Don’t lie to me,” Corbell snapped. “I checked it out on the computer before I ever passed Saturn. The ram effect works better at high velocities, because I can narrow the width of the ram fields. Greater hydrogen flux.”
“You used data already in the computer.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Corbell, that data was meant for jumps of up to fifty-two light-years. Not thirty-three thousand. We built the field generator as strong as possible, but it will not stand one gravity at your peak velocity. The strains will tear it apart. We’ll have to decrease thrust starting three years from now, if you want to live.”
Pierce the checker had never lied, had he? Pierce had never bothered. Why lie to a corpsicle? Peerssa was something else again. Corbell said, “You’re lying.”
“I deny it. Make up your mind. You’ve ordered me not to lie. Am I under your orders? If not, why don’t I just turn and head for Van Maanan’s Star?”
Corbell gave up. “This ruins my itinerary, doesn’t it? How long will it take us to reach the core?”
“In near-perfect safety, about five hundred years.”
“Give me…oh, a ninety-percent chance of getting there alive. How long?”
“Computing. Insufficient data on interstellar mass density. We’ll correct that on the way. One hundred and sixty years, four months, plus or minus ten months, all figures in ship’s time.”
Corbell felt cold. That long? “Suppose we don’t go direct? We could skim above the plane of the galaxy—”
“And thin out the interstellar matter. Computing. Good, Corbell. We lose some time thrusting laterally at turnover, but we still shave some time. One hundred and thirty-six years, eleven months, confidence of a year and a month.”
“That still isn’t good.”
“And you’d have to spend the same time coming home. You’d get home dead, Corbell. We could finish your original mission faster than that. Well?”
“For—” Never say Forget it to a computer. “You have your orders. I now amend them. Your mission is to get us to the galactic axis in minimum ship’s time relative, ninety-percent confidence of getting me there alive.”
“You’ll never see Earth again.”
“Shut up.”
“You may speak.”
Silence.
“Does it bother you, being cut off like that?”
“Yes, of course it bothers me. I’ve been silent for a week. That’s four weeks added to our trip time. The longer it takes me to persuade you, the longer it will take us to complete our mission!”
“I could order you to give up that idea.”
“I would do it. Snarling of my circuits might result. Corbell, I appeal to your sense of gratitude. The State created you, you owe your very existence—”