The Dark Beyond the Stars

by Frank M. Robinson

  The Captain held up a hand. He looked puzzled and mildly concerned and I made the mistake of taking him at face value, of assuming that he didn’t know, despite the peep screens at his back.

  “Tell me what happened—from the beginning, Sparrow.”

  I took a deep breath and said that I had heard about a disturbance in the detention corridor, went to see what was happening and tried to get the crowd to disperse. I had shouted at Tern to leave but he had been worried about Swift—

  “The guards were posted to keep crewmen away,” the Captain interrupted, frowning. “If anybody wanted to see one of the birth mothers, they should have applied for a pass. It would have been granted.”

  “There were rumors,” I said. “That detention—”

  The Captain interrupted again. “It’s customary to give birth mothers private quarters until their delivery date.” I didn’t know whether he was lying or not. Then, too casually: “What sort of rumors, Sparrow?”

  He was friendly and sympathetic; there was no indication he would penalize me for telling the truth. When I was through, he shook his head in dismay. “Do you think any of those would have been good for the ship, Sparrow?”

  “No, of course not,” I said slowly.

  “Then why would I have ordered them?”

  “They were just rumors,” I defended sullenly. “I didn’t say I believed them.”

  “You tried to get the crewmen to disperse?”

  I nodded. “I did my best.”

  He looked past my shoulder. “What happened down there, Cato?”

  I twisted around. Cato had come in behind me, his expression one of fear of the Captain and anger toward me.

  “A riot in the detention corridor. Some crewmen showed up and threatened the guard; apparently they wanted to take the birth mothers away. One of the crewmen broke past the guard and he was shot—not intentionally, the guard tried to shoot over his head.”

  “Your men need more practice,” the Captain said dryly. He nodded at me. “Sparrow tells me he tried to get them to disperse.”

  Cato’s mouth turned down at the corners.

  “Hardly. He urged them on.”

  I started to protest but the Captain held up his hand to quiet me and said, “Return to your post, Cato, I’ll talk to you later.”

  After Cato was gone, the Captain turned back to me, still friendly. “You shouldn’t antagonize Cato, Sparrow. But I can’t believe you’d urge a crowd to riot.” He pushed out of his chair and drifted over to the port. It was the last time I would see him outlined against the vast expanse of the galaxy.

  “What should I do, Sparrow? The crew doesn’t want to continue with the mission, it’s only myself and a few dozen crewmen who want to keep going.” He clasped his hands behind his back, silent for a moment. Then: “What would you do if you were me?”

  I was amazed that he had faced the truth so easily. Would he think of going back? I wondered. The Captain seemed open to my advice and the temptation was too great. I abandoned all caution and hastened to give it.

  “Go back,” I said. “We can’t make it across the Dark.”

  I couldn’t tell whether he was disappointed or not.

  “You have the figures?”

  I reeled them off from memory—the lack of supplies, the necessary cutbacks in crew size, the diminishing ability to actually maintain the ship—

  The Captain held up his hand with a half smile.

  “Did you know we’ve received signals in the waterhole frequency from the other side?”

  He was giving me a last chance to recant, but I couldn’t bring myself to accept the lie. I tried to argue around it.

  “It doesn’t change the figures.” I stumbled over them once again. He stared at me and I finally saw beyond the look of friendship to the real face beneath. I had forgotten that he was a better actor than I had ever thought of being.

  “But success is there, just waiting for our arrival,” he mused. I wondered if he really believed what he was saying. He turned to gaze out the port. “You know, Sparrow, I’ve done the best I could, for a hundred generations. Until this one. And now people I thought I could trust are holding secret meetings, sabotaging the Astron …”

  I couldn’t beleve he was indulging in self-pity, and I was right—he wasn’t. When he looked back at me, the thin veil of friendship had vanished altogether and his voice was savage and cold.

  “Of all the crewmen on board, you owed me your trust, Sparrow. I befriended you when you needed a friend, I punished your enemies.” By that, I knew he meant Heron, not Thrush. He smiled faintly. “You remind me of another crewman. Hamlet. You know him well, don’t you?”

  I was lost.

  “You’re the icon, Sparrow. But you know it. And because you know it, you’re no longer useful to the ship. You wanted to know who you were and you found out. Poor Sparrow—a little knowledge was a dangerous thing. It turned you against me, against the mission, and against the welfare of the crew.”

  He suddenly hit his desk with his fist, showing me the same kind of out-of-control anger he’d shown Banquo.

  “God, you take me for a fool! You’re the leader of the mutiny; how could you assume I wouldn’t know that?” He pushed over to face me and I could see the veins pulsing in his neck and forehead. “You’re right about the crew numbers for the future. I regret them, but one thing I won’t regret is that we’ll no longer need an icon. But don’t worry about being flatlined—not this time, Sparrow!”

  I was going to be sent to Reduction.

  He drifted back to his desk, dismissing me as completely as he had Noah and Tybalt when he had condemned them.

  When I finally found my voice, I sounded very young and very angry.

  “Your mission was to find life,” I shouted, “but you failed because there isn’t any! Instead, you’re going to kill what little there is because you think you’re God!”

  His face had become friendly and placid once again. The words dried in my throat; I don’t think he even heard what I had said.

  “Of all the crewmen you’ve been, I think I liked Sparrow the best.” He smiled, without malice, and there was honest regret in his voice. “That was because Sparrow liked me as well.”

  He was right, but that seemed like a lifetime ago. The bond between me and Captain Kusaka had finally snapped for good.

  I suddenly felt air currents at my back and realized Banquo had come up behind me. What I did then was automatic, without any thought or warning. I doubled up, kicked off my cling-tites with one easy motion and braced my feet against the desk for leverage. A moment later I had shot past a startled Banquo and through the hatch into the corridor beyond.

  Banquo followed, but it didn’t take much to lose him in the crowded corridors and I suspected he didn’t try too hard to catch me. But now Cato and the others would be looking for me and there was no place on board where I could hide.

  Crow and Loon were alone in their compartment when I burst through the shadow screen without warning. I had fled through corridors filled with milling crewmen, their faces mirroring the shock of Tern’s death. Whether they had seen it or not, I knew they had sensed it and were still reacting to it. Two of the Captain’s men saw me and shouted but I evaded them in the jammed passageways.

  Loon and Crow had been bending over something on the hammock and looked up at me, startled.

  “I’ve been condemned,” I said. “Cato and his men are after me.”

  Loon paled and it was my turn to read him. The mutiny was falling apart; nothing had gone according to plan.

  I tried to sound confident; like everything else I had tried that period, it failed miserably. “I know where to hide—but I’ll need help.”

  Crow moved away from the hammock and I caught a glimpse of what they had been working on. Laid out on the canvas were a dozen strips of metal, one end beaten into a rough handgrip and the other ground to a shiny point. I picked up one of them, tested the grip, and felt a wave of despair.

&n
bsp; “Why, Crow? You’ll never use them.”

  Loon scooped them up and wrapped them in the end of his waistcloth.

  “We’ll try.” He sounded brave and pathetic at the same time.

  I grabbed his arm. “Leave them. If the Captain’s men find you with them, they’ll kill you and claim it was self-defense.” I knew intuitively that wars and riots had a life of their own; if the Captain’s men became nervous enough, our little mutiny would end in massacre. “Find Ophelia, tell her I’ll be in Section Three.”

  He left and I told Crow I had to get an exploration suit; if I were going to hide in Section Three, I’d have to enter from the outside. He didn’t move.

  “It’s over, isn’t it, Sparrow?”

  His courage was gone, at least for the moment. I guessed that half the new crew felt the same way, devastated by Tern’s murder and their first sight of blood. It’s easy to lead when everybody wants to follow; it’s far more difficult when nobody wants to. But Kusaka had left me with no choice. I would have to be everybody else’s courage and lead as well as I could to whatever fate awaited us, even if I was followed only by my shadow.

  I hugged him and said quietly, “It isn’t over until I say it’s over.” I slipped out through the shadow screen. I didn’t look behind to see if he followed, but I knew that he had.

  The corridors were still filled with milling crewmen, but Exploration itself was deserted. I grabbed the suit that looked in best repair, then told Crow to take a spare helmet radio and stay in touch on the team frequency.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Patch into the computer—wreck the ship.” I said it with more confidence than I felt.

  A ghostly smile surfaced then. “Wreck the ship? With us in it?”

  I slapped him on the back. “Not wreck it completely, just enough to scare Kusaka.”

  A ghostly smile surfaced now and we sailed down the corridor, towing the suit behind us, doing our best to avoid colliding with fellow crewmen. We didn’t meet any of the Captain’s men until we were almost to Communications, where we ran into one floating around a corner. He tugged frantically at the pellet gun in his waistcloth and for a moment I thought he might shoot himself in the leg.

  “I’ll fire, Sparrow—the Captain wants you!”

  We didn’t stop. His first shot went wild; then we had kicked through the deserted gymnasium, turning abruptly into a passageway on the other side. One level down and we were at the airlock. Crow helped me into the suit, then grinned.

  “Section Three, right?”

  I nodded. “Tell Ophelia I’ll try and disable the ship from there.” With the Captain’s men looking for me, there was no way I could remain in the main tube.

  I took a portable glow lamp from the row against the bulkhead and stepped into the lock. The last I saw of Crow, he was still smiling, but the smile was painted on and I knew he had little confidence in his ability to stay alive. I was the one Kusaka wanted most, but he and Ophelia couldn’t be far below me on the list.

  A moment later the outer hatch rolled away and I stepped out onto the side of the Astron with no tether line as insurance, only my magnetic boots sticking to the pitted hull. Any sudden move and I could tear myself free and wind up another speck of matter lost in the immensity of the Dark.

  ****

  The main tube was outlined by the warm glow of light coming from its ports. I gradually worked my way over the huge curve of the ship toward the third cylinder. The glow lamp’s batteries were half exhausted by the time I finally located the outside hatch to Section Three. For a moment I thought it was corroded shut, then finally tugged it open. I slipped in, sealed it behind me, and manually cycled the inner lock.

  There was no air, no heat, no light—only the silence of empty corridors and deserted compartments. I was fighting frantically against loneliness and fear when the helmet radio cut in.

  “Sparrow?”

  “Right here, Crow. Give me a few minutes.”

  Three lonely levels down I found the small satellite bridge. Like Communications in Section Two, it had been partially stripped, but the viewing globe and the terminal pad were still intact.

  For a moment, I thought we had lost. Encased in my suit, I had no way of working the pad. And even if I hadn’t been in my suit, at the temperature inside Section Three the pad would be anything but warm and resilient to the touch. I sat in the operator’s chair, cursing silently to myself, then pushed over to the hatch and sealed it.

  I opened the valve on one of my air tanks. The compartment was small; I might be able to pressurize it enough to survive. I watched the air as it escaped in a steady stream, freezing against the deck and the bulkheads. I tripped the levers on my suit heating units and over the next few minutes let the temperature rise until I felt I was roasting. But the frost disappeared from the bulkheads and a few minutes later my suit sensors measured a cold but thin and breathable atmosphere. I stripped off the suit and huddled over the heating units, praying I wouldn’t freeze to death before the compartment warmed enough to be livable.

  I put my hands on the terminal pad, felt my skin adhere to its surface because of the cold, then patiently waited for the pad to soften and spring to life. As in Section Two, there was residual power in the computer. I pressed my palms and fingers lightly into the pad, feeling my way through the programs and making the necessary connections so the terminal could feed off the power sources in the main tube.

  “Sparrow? Answer.” Crow sounded frightened.

  My teeth were chattering and the air felt thinner than that on a mountain peak, but I was alive and well.

  “I’m still here, Crow. For the moment.”

  The strain in his voice didn’t go away.

  “You’re going to have company. Cato and two of the Captain’s men are coming over.”

  I didn’t need the interruption and at the moment I wasn’t mobile, I was pinned in the compartment. They would probably guess where I was and head right for me. I moved my hand on the pad and powered the compartment’s peep screen and the monitor in the airlock area. I thought I had lost my pursuers, then picked them up two corridors in. Three crewmen in exploration suits, armed with pellet guns and carrying portable glow lamps so they were visible on the screen as three bobbing smudges of light, populating the empty passageways with shadows that ebbed and flowed around corners and into deserted compartments.

  Eventually, I would have to suit up and get out. But before I did, perhaps I could leave them with some lasting memories.

  I caressed the terminal pad again and retrieved the compartment inventories. On the peep screen, the glow tubes in the corridors started to flicker on.

  Then I activated every falsie in the section.

  Section Three was suddenly a brand-new ship, with gleaming bulkheads and crowds of crewmen thronging its various levels. On the screen, the Captain’s men froze with shock, unable to tell the real from the unreal. Exploration suits didn’t come equipped with eye masks and I guessed the ghostly crewmen around them would slow their progress considerably. And maybe give me enough time to prepare some surprises for Kusaka.

  I worked the terminal pad feverishly, trying desperately for control of the Astron’s life-support systems. I retrieved the code for the air-circulating and maintenance machinery, had momentary control, then felt it slip away as passwords were abruptly changed and electronic gates slammed shut. Heating and lighting were next, but I was milliseconds too late for each.

  I thought it was Thrush fighting me for control, then realized that while he was good, he wasn’t this good. I was fighting Kusaka and I was losing.

  I finally leaned back, the sweat greasing my nose and gathering in globules in my armpits despite the chill of the compartment. I had been blocked from the main computer completely and it would be a very few minutes before Kusaka had control of the slave computer in Section Three as well.

  “Sparrow?”

  I didn’t know how to tell Crow that we had lost, but I didn’t ge
t the chance.

  “They’re leaving, Sparrow.”

  “Who’s leaving?”

  “The crew.” His voice caught. “They’re deserting the ship.”

  I sat there, my hands still on the pad, not knowing what to say or think or do. Ophelia’s final plan, I thought. It had taken great courage.

  But I didn’t think it was going to work. Not against Kusaka.

  ****

  “I’m coming back, Crow. Meet me at the lock.”

  I didn’t wait for him to reply but took a last look at the peep screen, noted that Cato and his men were only three corridors away, then hastily suited up, unsealed the hatch, and slipped out.

  The trip back to the airlock took far more time than I thought. The crowds of crewmen in the compartment falsies, talking silently to each other in the cold near-vacuum of Section Three, made it difficult for me to keep my bearings. The corridors seemed far longer than they actually were and some of them led no place at all. But the ghosts gliding around me seemed strangely familiar.

  The section had probably looked like this shortly after Launch, all chrome, stainless steel, and polish. I had probably known the crewmen—

  My name was Byron and I was jammed in with half a hundred others at a lecture in Exploration, We were coming up on Lexus, a system with half a dozen planets, two of them in the CHZ. The lecture was boring and my attention had started to drift, focusing on a young man named Masefield two rows ahead, who was staring at me. I guessed why and, as Sparrow, was mildly embarrassed. As Byron, I was intrigued and looked boldly back. …

  The memories were crowding up in my mind at a time when I couldn’t afford them. I turned and plunged down a corridor, which ended abruptly in a small compartment, then closed my eyes to recall the various levels and passageways from the images on the peep screen. I reassured myself that the Captain’s men were having even more difficulty than I was.

  I got my bearings and a few minutes later opened the airlock, ignoring the ghostly operator who made a dumb show of asking for my authorization. I had just pushed into the lock when there was a shower of metal sparks from the frame. Cato and his men were two corridors away and one of them was firing a pellet gun. There was another shower of sparks and I slammed the inner hatch shut and secured it. The outer hatch cycled open automatically. I had just floated through when all the glow tubes in the airlock died.