The Dark Beyond the Stars

by Frank M. Robinson

  The smoke was doing its work and Tybalt looked more relaxed, the lines in his face softer.

  “You’re assuming something, Sparrow.”

  It was my turn with the pipe and I said, “What?” in a strangled voice.

  “That he cares enough to actually want to know us.”

  It was one thing to hear it from Ophelia or Noah, it was another to hear Tybalt say it.

  “I think he does,” I protested.

  He shook his head.

  “He’s seen a hundred generations of us come and go. We live too short a life. I’m surprised he even knows our names.”

  It was Tybalt’s depression talking, I thought, not Tybalt. But I never forgot what he said and eventually it provided an answer when I had none of my own.

  Everybody who could break away from their shifts was present when Thrush’s turn came to testify. I was watching Heron when Thrush was called and was startled by his change of expression. The dull look of hatred was replaced by a combination of hero-worship, hope, and obsession. Heron had faith—he truly believed that Thrush’s testimony would somehow make everything all right.

  This time the Captain seemed more abrupt and on edge. I wondered if it was because he had thought ahead to the trial’s consequences. At the end of it, he would have to pass judgment and I imagined he would find that difficult.

  “It was Heron’s idea that he be detached as a scout?”

  Thrush was respectful but casual.

  “Yes, sir, it was.”

  The Captain looked doubtful.

  “It didn’t happen to be your idea, did it?”

  Thrush hesitated. I knew he was debating whether it was safe to take the credit.

  “It was Heron who asked, sir. I thought it was a good idea and said so.”

  “Then you didn’t think it was dangerous for Heron to go on alone?”

  “I thought it was very brave of him. I also thought he could handle himself.”

  There was a flash of gratitude on Heron’s face. But it wasn’t an answer to the question and the Captain was irritated.

  “I asked if you thought it was dangerous.” The impatience in his voice made Thrush flinch.

  “I did think it was dangerous, yes, sir. We didn’t know what the native life forms might be like.”

  “Obviously Heron didn’t think they’d be so dangerous. He wasn’t interested in them, he was interested in Sparrow.”

  “I didn’t know he was going to look for Sparrow,” Thrush murmured.

  The Captain suddenly changed the subject.

  “I understand Heron is very good with a pellet gun.”

  “He should be, sir, he practices all the time.”

  My eyebrows shot up. An ordinary crewman who practiced all the time was to be commended. A would-be murderer who practiced all the time was to be feared.

  “Your opinion, Thrush: Firing from the rim of the gorge, if Heron had wanted to hit Sparrow, he could have. Am I right?”

  Thrush didn’t hesitate. “Yes, sir.”

  “Even in those conditions of driving snow and poor visibility?”

  “If he could see Sparrow at all, sir, he could have hit him.”

  The Captain stared at Thrush, thoughtful.

  “So he was either trying to frighten Sparrow or Sparrow is right in his contention that Heron was trying to hit the rim above, to bury him in a landslide. What do you think?”

  Thrush might have helped Heron make the case that he had tried to frighten me rather than kill me, but he didn’t even try.

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  Heron looked puzzled. Thrush was damning him with faint praise, and he realized it but didn’t understand why.

  “You’re the defendant’s best friend, am I correct?”

  “I’m a good friend, sir. I don’t know if I’m his best friend.”

  A chasm had opened in front of Heron and Thrush was about to push him in.

  “How would you characterize the defendant? Well liked? Well adjusted? Use your own judgment on the definition.”

  “I wouldn’t say he was well liked, sir.”

  “Why not?”

  “He means well, sir.” Thrush turned and flashed a smile of support at the stricken Heron. “I get along fine with him but others don’t.”

  “Explain.”

  Thrush did, and what emerged from between the lines of his testimony was a picture of a psychopathic personality whom Thrush could barely tolerate. What amazed me was not Thrush’s self-serving monologue but the accuracy of his observations. He had known all along who and what he had been dealing with.

  “Can you explain Heron’s hatred for Sparrow?”

  Thrush was cautious.

  “He probably took offense at some small slight and brooded on it. I can’t think of any other reason.”

  Only one more nail remained to be driven into Heron’s coffin.

  “You were on the hangar deck just before the landing?”

  Heron turned an ashy white.

  “I had gone up there to sleep, sir.”

  “Who else was there?”

  “Sparrow, sir.”

  “Explain what happened.”

  Thrush did, complete with a description of how I had become entangled in the coil of tether line and how he had helped me out.

  “You saved Sparrow’s life.” The Captain nodded his approval.

  Thrush sounded modest.

  “I was glad to help him, sir.”

  I swore quietly under my breath.

  “Was anybody else on the hangar deck?”

  Thrush managed to look appropriately uncomfortable in the role of a friend reluctantly testifying against a friend.

  “Heron, sir.”

  “What was he doing there?”

  “I don’t really know.”

  “Is it possible he knew that Sparrow might go there, so he laid coils of tether line near the hatchway and once Sparrow had entangled himself in them, turned on the take-up reel?”

  “I doubt it, sir.” Pause. “Though I suppose anything is possible.” He said it in a voice just uncertain enough to imply that it was probable.

  Heron looked devastated. The Captain excused Thrush, located me in the audience, and told me to come forward.

  “About that portion of Thrush’s testimony which directly concerns you: Is his version accurate?”

  “I didn’t know Heron was there—”

  “Answer the question, Sparrow.”

  Sullenly: “Yes, sir, that part of his testimony is correct.”

  “Is it your opinion that Thrush saved your life?”

  At the time I had thought so. But I didn’t want to admit it, not here and not now.

  “Yes, sir,” I finally said in a low voice. Those in the audience who knew my hatred for Thrush stared at me in amazement.

  Thrush had managed to destroy Heron and paint himself as my savior all at the same time. I couldn’t think of a reason for either.

  Heron would be next, to testify in his own behalf, but there was no way he could save himself.

  Thrush had made sure of that.

  It wasn’t until I was in my own compartment that I saw the flaw in Thrush’s testimony. The Captain had known too much. There had been no more than three people on the hangar deck: Thrush, me, and, if Thrush was telling the truth, Heron. I hadn’t mentioned the incident to anybody. Heron certainly wouldn’t have, which meant that after the murder attempt on Aquinas II had failed, Thrush had gone to the Captain and betrayed the one man who idolized him.

  Why? I wondered.

  Then I realized with a chill that I had been the target all along. Sometime in the past Thrush had befriended a lonely Heron, who had returned casual friendship with all of his loyalty and devotion. He had begged to be used and Thrush had granted his wish. He probably hadn’t been aware of the contents of the poisoned drink bulb when he tried to give it to me in sick bay—he had merely been running an errand for Thrush. But if I had died, the evidence would have pointed at him.


  Then Thrush had found a way to cock a reluctant Heron as he would a pellet gun. The incident in Reduction was meant not just to prove that he was the alpha primate but also to make Heron mad with jealousy. But it wasn’t Heron who had followed me to the hangar deck, it was Thrush. My talk with the Captain had given Thrush enough time to find Heron and suggest the plot. They planted the coils of line and turned off most of the glow tubes to darken the deck. At the last minute Thrush had deliberately aborted the plan and “saved my life.”

  He had done it to set Heron up as his insurance policy.

  The cocked gun had misfired in the landing on Aquinas. Not only had Heron failed, which was forgivable; he had been caught, which was not. And to make matters worse, there was always the danger he would implicate Thrush.

  But who would believe him, once I testified that Thrush had saved my life?

  ****

  Heron was cross-examined the next time period. The hangar deck was crowded with crewmen, all of them hostile. I could feel the waves of emotion beat against Heron and watched him wither when he felt them. His face paled and his angry expression became one of deep hurt. Once he found Thrush in the crowd, his desperate eyes never left him except to look at the Captain when he was answering a question. I wondered how Thrush could stand it.

  “It was your idea to have Tybalt assign you as a scout?” Heron licked cracked lips and mumbled, “Yes, sir.”

  “When you found Sparrow, you intended to murder him. Is that correct?”

  Once again, I could feel the revulsion of the crowd. Heron’s face twisted with anguish. He couldn’t bring himself to answer.

  “Isn’t that right, Heron?” the Captain repeated.

  “Sparrow’s… a good man,” Heron whispered. The reddened eyes sought me out and I read his lips as he mouthed a silent Forgive me. He was sobbing now, the tears rolling down his face.

  The Captain was implacable.

  “You went to the hangar deck, knowing that Sparrow would be there shortly afterward. Is that correct, Heron?”

  Heron nodded without speaking.

  “You planted the coils of tether line just inside the hatchway, hoping that Sparrow would entangle himself in them. Once he did, you started the take-up reel. Is that also correct?”

  Again, the hopeless nod. By now the expression on his face and every movement of his body begged for a mercy he knew he wouldn’t get.

  And then, for just a moment, the entire trial hung in the balance.

  “Did you have help, Heron? Did somebody whisper all of this in your ear or was it your own idea from the very start?”

  The silence was deafening. Thrush had been clinging to one of the Rovers and now looked as if he had frozen to its side. I had seen him show fear once before. He was terrified now.

  Heron stared directly at him and again moistened his cracked lips. I thought the look of dull hatred and anger would return, but his expression made me look away. Heron was capable of many things in life, including murder, but sacrificing the only man who had showed him even a small amount of friendship and love, however stained and self-seeking, was beyond him.

  “It was… my idea. Nobody helped me.”

  “Your hatred for Sparrow must have been all-consuming, Heron. Why?”

  “Sparrow’s… a good man,” Heron mumbled once again.

  “Then why, Heron?”

  Heron hung his head and let the tears flow. He did not reply.

  The Captain was silent and I thought that he was moved, that Tybalt was wrong, that he might even spare Heron. After a long moment, he made a final notation on his slate and stood up.

  “The prisoner is condemned.”

  The shock was overwhelming.

  We had lined up to leave when the Captain held up his hand. He was crisp, perfunctory—military in a way we had never seen before. I remember thinking how at one time most of us had loved and admired him.

  Now, as in Oryx’s generation, most of us were desperately afraid of him.

  “We’ll resume next time period. All ranks are to be present except those vitally needed for the operation of the ship.”

  Heron was going to die and so, apparently, were others.

  Chapter 21

  It was strange how I reacted to Heron’s sentence. My mind was filled with morbid thoughts about how it would be carried out. Was Banquo not only one of the Captain’s men but also the public strangler? Would Abel give Heron a lethal injection? Or would they lock him in his compartment until he starved to death?

  At the next meal, we stole glances at Thrush but nobody talked to him. Most of us half expected to see Heron at his feet, waiting for some errand to perform. As for myself, there was nothing more to fear from Thrush, or so I thought. He dared do nothing against me, since he would always be the prime suspect. And now that Heron had been condemned, there was no one to carry out his plots by proxy. From now on, Thrush would do his best to see that I remained alive.

  Once condemned, Heron achieved a status that would have astonished him. Attempted murder had put him beyond the pale; but his appearance before the Captain had been so pathetic it captured most of the crew’s sympathy. Even I agonized about the Captain’s sentence—but what should be the penalty for attempted murder? Thirty periods on bread and water? Half a hundred lashes?

  Considered in the abstract, death may have been a fitting punishment, but still… how was he to die? And how would the crew react once they realized that something living, something that could think, something that walked, talked, flexed its fingers and stubbed its toes, had been deliberately deprived of its life?

  I knew a good part of the crew hadn’t believed the Captain would sentence somebody to death. What would happen when Heron’s death became a reality? What would they think? What would they do?

  Heron preoccupied me not only because of the harsh sentence but because I suspected there were more trials to come and I knew what and who they would concern. After we left Aquinas II, we would change course for the Dark. But the Captain wasn’t going to risk the journey with a mutiny brewing. He had tolerated it in past generations, but he couldn’t afford to now. Heron’s trial was the prelude to the crushing of the mutiny.

  I was frightened, not for myself—I thanked God I had stayed clear of plotting—but for Crow and Ophelia and Noah and Loon and the rest of the mutineers. I tried not to think about it but others didn’t have that luxury. After my next chess game with Noah, he folded up the board and handed it to me.

  “This is yours now, Sparrow.”

  It was his most prized possession. I refused to take it, pretending I didn’t know why he offered it.

  “You need it for practice,” I said. “Keep it.”

  He shook his head.

  “That was my last game, Sparrow.”

  Nobody was paying any attention to us but I still lowered my voice to a murmur.

  “You think the Captain will put you on trial?”

  “He’ll lose his ship if he doesn’t.”

  “You shouldn’t be telling me this,” I warned him.

  He shrugged. “You shouldn’t be talking to me, either.”

  I felt miserable.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Sparrow.” He took off his glasses and wiped them with his sash, but his eyes never left mine. “You’re very important to this ship and its crew. You have to realize that—and protect yourself from the Captain and Thrush.”

  “Thrush won’t bother me,” I said confidently.

  He reached over and gripped my hand so tight it hurt.

  “Don’t be a fool. Thrush is like nobody else on board, and yet of all of us, you know him the least. Your ignorance will kill you, Sparrow. He’s your enemy. He has been from the beginning.”

  He was patronizing me, I thought, irritated. Nobody knew Thrush as well as I did.

  “And the Captain?” I asked sarcastically, then immediately felt guilty about my tone of voice. Maybe this was the last time I would see Noah, the last
time he would give me lessons in either chess or life. But a perverse part of me also figured that as long as he was reading tea leaves, I might as well hear what he had to say.

  He took his hand away, leaving the white imprint of his fingers on mine.

  “The Captain,” he repeated. His eyes were no longer focused on me. He was seeing something else, maybe a page in a ledger, perhaps something he had run across in the computer’s memory or in the ship’s fading medical records. “In your own way, you’re vital to the ship, Sparrow. I imagine at one time you were vital to the Captain as well. You still are to us.” Dryly: “But I’m not so sure you still are to the Captain.”

  I was torn between curiosity and sudden fear.

  “Why?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “If I knew, I would tell you. I was depending on you to tell me. I hoped you would remember.”

  They still wanted to know what was buried in my head. But if my memories were important to them, I was certain they weren’t to the Captain—he already knew them, he had been there at the time. I discounted Noah’s warning about the Captain but I wasn’t as quick to discount what he had said about Thrush. Noah was right about my knowledge of him. In one sense, I had known Thrush intimately; but I really didn’t know him at all.

  Noah pressed the board in my hands and turned away.

  “I’ll be facing the Captain in a few hours. I want to spend them with Huldah.” We were alone in the compartment now, the others having gone on shift. At the hatchway he turned and whispered more to himself than to me, “Watch over her, Aaron. At one time, you loved her, too.”

  He wasn’t seeing Sparrow at all when he said it, nor was it just Sparrow who assured him if he were condemned, the entire crew would grieve.

  ****

  The hangar deck was packed but the Captain was late and so was the prisoner, whoever he might be. I hadn’t seen Noah but I had persuaded myself that he was wrong, that the Captain would leave a harmless old man alone.

  When they finally appeared, the Captain floated in front with Noah trailing behind, followed by Banquo and Cato. Both of them wore black armbands to indicate they were in the service of the Captain, and I noticed a number of the crewmen in the audience were wearing them as well. The Captain expected trouble, I thought uneasily, or he was trying to intimidate us.