Leaping to the Stars

by David Gerrold

  But just in case, we all lined up to make our good-byes to everyone we knew, even if we had no idea if they were still alive or not. And some of us, who had no one left to say good-bye to—we just said good-bye to all the things on Earth we did remember.

  It turned out to be a lot harder than I thought it would be.

  Chris Pavek and I went up to the broadcast station together. We could have recorded our good-byes from our cabins as private messages—a lot of people were doing that—but just as many people wanted to say goodbye to the whole planet, so there were always a few folks waiting in the corridor, or at the far end of the cabin.

  When our turn came, I asked Chris, "Do you want to go first?"

  He shrugged. He was easygoing that way. So I pushed ahead.

  I anchored myself in front of the camera and said, "Good-bye, Earth. Good-bye to all your smelly crowds, all your rude and pushy people, all the traffic and all the lines—all the lousy service and bad manners and selfishness, all the cruel words and bitter taunts. Goodbye to your tube-towns and your poverty. Good-bye to your thieves and beggars and liars and hypocrites. Good-bye to all the cheats and lawyers and politicians and slimy con men. Good-bye to all the bills and all the taxes and all the smog and all the greed and toxic crap. Good-bye to all the hatred and the nastiness. I'm not going to miss you."

  And then I realized how ugly that sounded. And I sat there ashamed for a moment.

  "And thank you too … " I said. "Thank you, Earth, for Beethoven and Saint-Saëns and Stravinsky and Copland and Gershwin. Thank you for Scott Joplin and Van Dyke Parks and William Russo and John Coltrane. Thank you for John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Thank you for Alan Parsons and Jimi Hendrix and Duke Ellington. Thank you for Billie Holiday and Ute Lemper and Kurt Weill and Judy Garland. Thank you for Janis Joplin and Freddy Mercury and Harry Nilsson. Thank you for Philip Glass and … and all the others I forgot to mention. Thank you for all the music. We're taking it with us. So thank you, Earth. Thank you for the music."

  That was all I had to say, and then it was Chris's turn to broadcast his last thoughts—to Earth and Luna and Mars and all the other habitats and colonies in the solar system. He swallowed hard and said, "Hi, Dad. I miss you. I wish you were here with us." And then he added, "I'm sorry for all those things I said. I didn't mean it. And I'm sorry for all the things I should have said and couldn't. I'm sorry we didn't get a chance to really talk. That was my fault—I was scared, I didn't want to hear what you might say. And now, I'm not going to have that chance—I don't even know where you are or if you're even still alive—so I hope you're listening. I need you to know this."

  He gulped and added, "I love you."

  Then he wiped his eyes real quick—

  —and then I was crying too, because everything he'd said, I wished I could have said to my dad when I'd had the chance. I felt it like a physical pain in my chest. What a jerk I'd been. There'd been all those times when Dad had said to me, "Hey, Chigger, is there anything you want to talk about?" And I'd just shrug and turn away and put my earphones back on. I'd had all that time to talk to him and all I did was push him away because I was always so pissed about this or that or the other thing. I couldn't even remember what I'd been angry about. So there was this whole conversation with Dad that I'd always wanted to have, but I just kept putting it off and putting it off because I wasn't ready to have it yet—and then one day I couldn't have it at all. At least, Chris's dad might have a chance to hear what Chris had to say. My dad never would—

  Chris pushed out of the broadcast cabin so fast, it was like he was escaping from the room. He must have been real embarrassed. I wanted to tell him it was okay, he wasn't the only one who felt like that, but he was gone. Maybe later, I'd have the chance to tell him that what he'd said was a good thing—I wished I could have been that brave.

  Chris and I weren't the only ones. A lot of folks were there, and most of them had tears in their eyes. It looked like a funeral, and I guess, in a way, it was. A funeral for a whole planet. There were an awful lot of good-byes to be said. And a lot of it was pretty raw stuff. A lot of apologies and confessions and even a whole bunch of ugly revelations. It wasn't pleasant. But a lot of people were suddenly realizing that they didn't want to drag all their old hurts onto the next world. Commander Boynton said it was like this, every voyage, but that didn't make it any easier for the folks going through it.

  Maybe if we hadn't all been aboard the same starship, it would have made for some pretty good gossip; but for some reason, it didn't feel right to gossip about each other. Like we were all in this together, and we had to be for each other, not against. So if somebody had something to say, they said it, and everybody else was there for back pats and hugs and tissues, if necessary—and if anyone else tried to make it an issue, they got stomped for it. Because that wasn't what we were here for anymore.

  I'd never been in a place before where everybody worked so hard to take care of everybody else. I hoped it would last. But I knew it wouldn't—because it didn't matter that they'd stuck a stardrive engine on the end, we were still living in a tube-town. And I knew how tube-towns worked. Pretty soon, we'd all be hunkered in—

  But meanwhile—it was a sad and solemn time. And people were sending a lot of really sweet and beautiful messages. There were over fifteen hundred people aboard, so it was going to take a while.

  And all of it was going out live—without any editing at all, direct to Earth and everywhere. All over the ship too, so anyone who wanted to could listen. So for a while, it was like we were all just one giant family. And the messages would keep on going out, right up to the moment of transition.

  I hoped there were still people on Earth to hear our good-byes. More important, I hoped there were still people on Earth to hear their own music.

  TRANSITION

  Transit was both exciting and boring.

  Exciting because we'd never done it before.

  Boring because nothing exciting happened.

  First IRMA reported that all the hyperstate flux grapplers were flux grappling. Then she reported that all the synchronizers were synchronizing. Then she reported that all the extrapolators were extrapolating. And all that was left was for Commander Boynton to tell her to initiate, and I suppose all the initiators initiated—because everything sort of flickered and then we were in hyperstate. Only I didn't feel any different.

  After a moment, IRMA reported stabilization of the envelope. After a long series of integrity checks, Commander Boynton ordered the envelope deformed …

  —and then we were traveling faster than light. Three times as fast as light, in fact.

  Outside the ship, the stars looked all rippled and green—like we were underwater. "That's the background radiation of space," said Damron. "Some of it has been shifted into the visible spectrum. Watch as we increase our speed. The colors will shift. It's the aura superlumina."

  "Belay that," said Boynton. He called out a string of numbers—the deformation parameters of the hyperstate envelope. O'Koshi echoed them. IRMA accepted them. She tick-tick-ticked for a moment, then confirmed them. The hyperstate flux grapplers grappled some more and the shape of the hyperstate envelope stretched out imperceptibly.

  —and then we were traveling ten times the speed of light.

  It takes eight and a half minutes for light to get from the sun to the Earth. At our speed, we could cover the same distance in fifty-one seconds.

  It still wasn't fast enough.

  In class, Dr. Oberon had us do the math.

  A light year is the distance light travels in one year.

  At 300,000 kilometers per second, that's 18,000,000 kilometers a minute, or 1,080,000,000 klicks per hour. 25,920,000,000 kilometers per day. 181,440,000,000 kilometers per week. 9,460,800,000,000 kilometers per year. 9.46 trillion klicks.

  At ten times the speed of light, we would travel one light year every thirty-six and a half days. That meant it would take us five months just to get to Proxima Centauri, four and on
e-third light years away. Outbeyond was thirty-five light years away. If we went there directly at ten times the speed of light, without stopping at New Revelation, it would take us 3.5 years. We would run out of food in thirty-six months, even with the farm growing a full set of crops.

  Commander Boynton watched his displays for thirty minutes, allowing the IRMA unit to establish a baseline for stability. Then he ordered our speed increased to twenty C. At this speed, we would reach Outbeyond in one year and nine months. We'd get there hungry, but we'd get there.

  This time, he held the hyperstate envelope at this pitch for a full hour. According to O'Koshi, if something was going to fail, it usually failed in the first thirty minutes. And if it did, we could still get back to Earth. We'd only be a couple solar distances away—a solar distance is the diameter of the solar system. It might take a year or more to get back, because we'd have to decelerate, turn around and accelerate back toward Earth, and then decelerate again on approach, but we could do it. Commander Boynton was being careful. If something was going to fail, he didn't want it to happen in the dark between the stars where we'd have no chance at all of getting back.

  There was a theory—still untested—that a starship's plasma drives could eventually accelerate a ship to a significant fraction of C, the speed of light. Maybe one-third C. But it would take a long time. And I didn't want to be on the ship that had to test it. It would take three years to travel one light year. And that doesn't include acceleration and deceleration time.

  Anyway, what it all meant was that once we were nine light months away from Earth, we were completely on our own.

  Scary.

  I tried not to think about it too much.

  After another hour, Commander Boynton ordered our speed increased to forty C. And an hour after that, he pushed it up to fifty C. Now we were traveling one light year every seven days. If we were going to Proxima Centauri, which we were not because it was on the other side of the sky, we would be there in a little more than a month. At this speed, we could reach Outbeyond in eight months.

  After a few more days of running, Commander Boynton intended to tweak our speed upward toward sixty C. That would shave six weeks off our travel time.

  Inside, we didn't feel any different. How could we? We were in a bubble of real-space, isolated from the rest of real-space around us. The bubble moved, and we moved with it. And whatever speed we had when we entered hyperstate, we would still have that speed when we emerged again on the other side—sort of. There was a whole lot of theory about this too, about how inherent velocity was relative and how it could be manipulated and how if we turned ourselves inside the bubble, or if we turned the bubble, we could use our inherent velocity to our benefit at the exit point.

  The point is, running a starship is hard work. A lot harder than you might think.

  We sat in our couches and we watched the numbers on the display screens and we didn't talk. It was a long shift and mostly it was checklists and double-checks and triple-checks, and then silently waiting to see if any anomalies would show up. Nothing significant did, and the IRMA unit was able to apply appropriate compensations well within the range of optimal operation, so everything was running just the way we wanted it to. And every so often, I'd sneak a look at the little display next to HARLIE and it would be flashing a green confirming signal too.

  At the end of the shift, Commander Boynton turned around and looked at Reverend Dr. Pettyjohn and asked, "Satisfied?"

  "Yes, very much. Thank you." Reverend Pettyjohn looked pleased; he was wearing his polished-apple smile. "I do apologize for the inconvenience, Commander, and I thank you for your courtesy. My parishioners were seriously concerned, and we all appreciate that you've addressed our issues appropriately. We shall include you in our prayers. And of course, you are welcome to join our services anytime."

  "Thank you, Reverend. Now that we are underway, perhaps I will have more time to attend." Then—deliberately?—he turned to the monkey. "HARLIE, may I have your report?"

  HARLIE said, "The IRMA unit is functioning within its normal parameters of operation."

  "Do you anticipate any problems or concerns?"

  "No, I do not." And then, a heartbeat later. "If I may offer a suggestion, however … "

  "Go ahead."

  "There are certain multiplex phasing optimizations possible that are beyond the ability of your IRMA unit."

  "Yes, we know that."

  "These optimizations would allow the ship to safely increase realized velocity to as much as seventy-five C. That would reduce overall travel time by another two months over your top speed of sixty C."

  "And we could achieve these optimizations … how?"

  "Very simple—" said HARLIE.

  I glanced over at Reverend Dr. Pettyjohn. The smile had disappeared. He no longer looked like a polished apple. More like a wrinkling prune.

  "—if you were to install this HARLIE unit as the primary intelligence module of the IRMA engine—"

  "Absolutely not," said Pettyjohn.

  Commander Boynton held up a hand. "Dr. Pettyjohn, you are a guest on my bridge. I am asking the HARLIE unit for a report, nothing more."

  "I apologize," said Pettyjohn. He settled back in his couch.

  But the damage had been done.

  HARLIE concluded politely, "—the symbiosis of two intelligence engines would provide the necessary processing power for—"

  "Shut up, HARLIE," I said.

  The monkey fell instantly silent.

  Boynton looked to me. "Am I going to have a problem with you?"

  "No, sir."

  He raised an eyebrow.

  "May I make my report to the Captain?" Now, even O'Koshi and Damron had turned to look at me. And the two members of the relief crew who were stationed at the back of the bridge as well.

  Boynton nodded.

  I said, "I recommend against installing the HARLIE unit into a command and control position on this ship."

  "Why?"

  "Because of the nature of the HARLIE unit's personality."

  "Go on … "

  "It's my opinion," I began carefully, "based on my personal experience with this intelligence engine, that this unit is cyber-tropic."

  "Cyber-tropic?"

  "I made up the term, sorry. It means that it's attracted to information processing technology."

  "Most intelligence engines are."

  "Well, yes. But … not like this. HARLIE preempts other engines. He co-opts their functions. He's an info-blob, a cyber-amoeba, a techno-predator. He swallows up everything he comes in contact with. And then he uses it for his own needs. I don't know that we can trust him."

  I couldn't have had a more devastating effect on the bridge crew if I'd set off a hand grenade. Even Reverend Dr. Pettyjohn looked at me surprised.

  BOYNTON

  Commander Boynton wasted no time taking me off the bridge-almost dragging me into the briefing room directly behind it. "Do you know what you're saying?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Do you want to explain yourself?" He was angry. Very angry. Worse than I'd ever seen. He must have seen that he was scaring me because he took a moment to calm himself down. He looked away, looked toward the flight deck, took a deep breath, looked back to me, then spoke in a quieter tone. "What's going on, Charles?"

  I swallowed hard. "I—I don't know."

  "Are you scared?"

  "Y-yes."

  "What are you afraid of?"

  "I'm not sure—"

  He took another breath, and when he spoke again, he was even calmer than before. "We're already more than three light days out from Earth. Every minute that passes, we put another fifty light minutes behind us. Every hour, we put more than two light days behind us. I'm responsible for the safety of this ship and the fifteen hundred people aboard her. We brought that HARLIE unit on board because we believed it could get us to Outbeyond, and maybe even back again at some point in the future. If there's something wrong with it, I need to know
."

  "Yes, sir."

  "So talk to me, son."

  For some reason, I noticed I wasn't Ensign Dingillian anymore. Now I was "son." I guess he was trying to make it easier for me to talk to him—but Commander Boynton wasn't a man who was easy to talk to. I respected him, even feared him a little; but I didn't really like him very much.

  He saw me hesitating. "Do you want me to call your brother up here? Would that help?"

  "No, sir."

  "All right, then talk to me. I'm listening."

  So I talked to him. It all came out in a rush, and it probably didn't make much sense the way I explained it, all jumbled together like a jigsaw puzzle. Good and evil. Empowerment and disempowerment. Recognizing the difference. Being right. Arguments. Music. Holding hands. Love-bombs. Everything.

  Boynton listened intensely, as if he were waiting for me to get to the punch line and put it all together. But there wasn't any punch line and there wasn't any way to put it all together. And when I finished, he just hung his head in an exasperated why me gesture for a moment. After a beat, he looked across to me again. "Have you talked to anyone else about this?"

  "No."

  "Your Mom?"

  "Of course not. We're divorced."

  "Your brother?"

  "He's been too busy. He and Mickey."

  "How about your counselor?"

  "Uh-uh."

  "No one at all."

  "Just J'mee, like I told you—and that only made it worse."

  "So you've been carrying all this around by yourself?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "I see." He didn't say anything for a long moment. He stared off into space, obviously thinking about his options. We could make it to Outbeyond with the IRMA unit—even with an untrained IRMA. We just couldn't depend on HARLIE as a backup.

  And if we'd never had the HARLIE at all, if all we'd ever had was the IRMA, we could still make the crossing, and we would still have launched. No IRMA had ever failed in transit, so it wasn't like this was a serious setback …