The Dark Beyond the Stars

by Frank M. Robinson

  Kusaka had gained control of the Section Three computer, but for the moment he had handicapped his own men more than me.

  I waited for the outer hatch to cycle shut, then smashed the controls set in the frame. Cato and his men were now trapped in the section—three of the Captain’s men I would no longer have to worry about.

  But other things were now more important. My portable glow lamp flickered and died. The darkness was smothering, palpable. I took tiny little steps over the hull, unwilling to break the magnetic seal for more than a fraction of a second. I inched over the pitted steel, careful not to look at where the stars should have been and where there was now nothing.

  Then it became difficult to breathe and I anxiously inspected the heads-up display in my helmet. The air was fine—it was my imagination, I had started to hyperventilate…

  Where was the lock?

  I felt a thin vibration through my boots. Once. Again. I got down on my hands and knees and crawled toward the vibrations, feeling for the thin crevice that marked the edges of the hatch. I beat against it with the dead glow lamp, wondering all the time who was sobbing, then realized it was myself…

  Beneath me, the hatch moved and a glow of golden light pulsed out. I tumbled inside, the hatch cycled shut, and there was the hiss of air filling the lock. Crow had suited up and was waiting, still holding the spanner wrench he had used to pound against the hull.

  The inner lock opened and Crow quickly shed his suit and helped me out of mine. I stood there naked except for the inner-weave and he held me a moment while I shook with reaction. I would never go Outside again.

  When I ceased trembling, he reminded me why I had come back.

  “They’re leaving, Sparrow. Everybody.”

  Chapter 30

  Ophelia and Snipe had taken the ultimate gamble and their audacity was breathtaking. But in the final analysis it was nothing but a bluff. We had underestimated Kusaka and I, at least, should have known better.

  Crow stared at me the way I imagined he had once looked at Hamlet. He was expecting me to come up with answers.

  “Where are they?”

  “The hangar deck.”

  “What about the Captain’s men?”

  “They’re there, too.”

  I kicked off against the nearest bulkhead and shot down the deserted passageway to the hangar deck, Crow following close behind. When we got there the hatch was closed and nothing I could do would open it. I put my ear against the seal and heard the faint shriek of the emergency evacuation siren within. The air pressure was dropping on the deck. Nobody could open the hatch now, not even Kusaka.

  I leaped for the operator’s terminal pad and the peep screen just above it, powered them up, and watched as the view inside wavered onto the screen and solidified. The Captain’s men were firing pellet guns at the open hatches of Inbetween Station and the Lander; they didn’t realize they could have rushed them without worry. In the long run, Ophelia’s bluff might not work with Kusaka—but so far it was working with his men.

  I increased magnification and searched among the anxious faces looking out of the ports of the Station and the Lander, hoping for Crow’s sake that Pipit was among them. I didn’t see her, though she might have been among the crewmen in exploration suits who had taken shelter behind both vessels.

  “What about the birth mothers?”

  “They were freed. Two more crewmen died—Crane and Bunting.”

  Both had been friends of Crow.

  “And Loon?” I asked.

  Crow’s voice came close to cracking. “He was one of those who stole an exploration suit.”

  On the hangar deck, a Captain’s man frantically tried to work the compartment’s control panel.

  “What happened?”

  “Ophelia called a rally. Everybody knew what was going to happen afterward.” There had been no need to talk about it—Ophelia would have made sure of that so no informers would overhear and report it. “The Captain’s men followed them and Ophelia started the evacuation procedure. They were trapped when the hatch closed.”

  “All of them?”

  “I can’t sense normal crew. I think so.”

  I worked with the pad, trying to bring up the sound so I could hear what was going on inside. I was still making the connections when one of the crewmen who had suited up crumpled.

  I swore to myself but Crow reassured me. “He’s all right, he was hit in a shoulder disconnect.”

  On the screen, several of the other figures grabbed their wounded comrade and rushed to the station’s hatchway. I was praying they would make it when there was an explosion of sound from the peep screen.

  “Exit hatches have been sealed. You have fifteen seconds to throw down your pellet guns and come aboard the station …”

  It was Ophelia’s voice on the station intercom. The firing suddenly died. Several of the Captain’s men ran to try and open the compartment hatch manually, but with no success.

  “… deck air’s being pumped out, pressure is now ten p.s.L You have only a few seconds left…”

  The sound now became tinny and faint in the thinning air. One of the Captain’s men threw down his pellet gun and raced for the still-open hatch on Inbetween Station. Another second and the others followed. I saw Banquo among those who disappeared into the safety of the station just as the hatch closed behind them.

  All action on the deck suddenly seemed frozen. I could no longer hear any sound and for a moment thought the speaker had died, then realized the air had become too thin for transmission. Then the shadow screen vanished overhead and the huge hangar doors rolled open.

  On the screen, played out in miniature, Inbetween Station lifted on its jets and silently slipped into space, followed by the overcrowded Lander and several dozen tiny specks of crewmen in patched-up exploration suits. The crew of the Astron, drifting away into the Dark. There was nobody left on board now but Kusaka, Crow, and myself.

  And Thrush.

  ****

  “How long can they last?” I asked.

  Crow was lost in the picture on the screen. I didn’t think he heard me and I repeated it. “How long, Crow?”

  “As long as their air lasts.”

  A dozen tiny patches of light could be seen in the portion of the sky where there was normally nothing but darkness.

  “Will they come back?” Even to myself, I sounded wistful.

  His voice was low and seemed far away.

  “What for, Sparrow? Why not end it here? There’s no future; Kusaka’s killed it.”

  I searched his face, looking for the bluff behind the words, and didn’t see it. I had forgotten that they were mayflies and the last of their kind, living on hope for generation after generation until this one.

  “You’re giving up,” I said slowly. “You’re committing suicide just like Judah.”

  He frowned, trying to put into words what all of the new crew instinctively accepted.

  “We’ve done as much as we can.”

  A bluff’s no good unless the other side is convinced you might carry it out. And in a way I was part of the other side; I was more like Kusaka than I was like them. Would they do it? Would they prefer to die now, or slowly dwindle over the next hundred years? For generations they had voluntarily gone to Reduction when their lives were complete, so that their next generation could live. But now they had seen the end of their generations. Their lives no longer served a purpose.

  What would happen now depended on me. It had always depended on me, no matter what plans were made or what plots were hatched. I was the icon, the phoenix, trying to save the last of the human race, even though it was no longer quite human.

  “Let’s go, Crow.”

  He turned, his eyes still seeing the dwindling dots of light on the screen. Pipit, Loon, a dozen others—all the people he had loved and who had loved him were drifting away into the darkness.

  “Go where?”

  His eyes hadn’t focused on me at all.

  “T
o see Kusaka.”

  We kicked back through the levels until we came to the one that held my own compartment. I retrieved the pellet gun and the ammunition from the folds of the hammock where I had hidden them.

  We sped back through the deserted passageways and memories of my life as Sparrow kept recurring as we passed the various compartments: Exploration, where Tybalt and I had shared a dozen smokes and I had listened raptly to his tales of aliens on the planets he had explored; the nursery and sick bay, filled with the silent squeals of Cuzco and K2 and the other children; the compartment where Pipit had fixed our meals and I had played chess with Noah…

  Pleasant memories, memories I wanted to hang onto because they were what made me “Sparrow.” I couldn’t imagine myself without them.

  The Captain’s compartment was as deserted as the others, without even a shadow screen to close off the hatch. I hesitated, then floated through with Crow close behind me. I held the pellet gun nervously in my hand, wondering if Kusaka was alone or whether Crow had been wrong and some of the Captain’s men had escaped the trap on the hangar deck and were with him now.

  “You took your time,” Thrush said.

  He was sitting behind the Captain’s desk, watching the various astronomical scenes roll across the port one by one, each spectacular view replaced after a few moments by one even more spectacular. The Triffid nebula, the Horsehead, the Lagoon, the bright pink of the region of Eta Carinae, the filaments of the Vela supernova and the bright red burst of the Rood, the purple fires of the Large Magellanic Cloud…

  There was no other light in the compartment, so it was either bright or dim depending on the view just beyond the port. Shadows and colors flowed over Thrush’s pale face, his own lack of color a perfect background for those flickering through the port. But Thrush was thumbing through the images out of idle curiosity; without Kusaka’s sense of awe, they were shabby deceptions.

  “Cato won’t be coming,” I said.

  He looked faintly interested. “You lost him in Section Three? Good for you, Sparrow—I never cared much for him.”

  “Kusaka,” I said coldly, “where is he?”

  Thrush waved toward the after compartment.

  “The Captain’s in there. I imagine he’s waiting for you.”

  “You stayed behind,” I said.

  “I’m not without”—he grinned—“filial feelings. Besides, those who left only have air for an hour or so. They’ll have to come back. It wasn’t even a decent bluff, Sparrow.”

  He was very smug, very confident, but his eyes jumped nervously back and forth between me and Crow, who was staring at him with a terrifying intensity. I doubted that Thrush had ever given much thought to the differences between new crew and old—or maybe he hadn’t even known there were any.

  “It’s not a bluff,” I said. “You and Kusaka are going to have the entire ship to yourselves. Forever. Something to look forward to, Thrush, though you’ll be sick of each other’s company after the first thousand years.”

  His eyes narrowed; he was wondering what I knew that he didn’t.

  “I don’t believe in suicide,” he said firmly. “They’ll be back.” But in his voice was the tiniest shadow of doubt.

  He had no weapon, at least none that I could See. No pellet guns protruded from his waistcloth and no knives or sharp-edged strips of metal clung to the bottom of the desk. Which only meant that he had hidden them well.

  “You came to see the Captain, Sparrow. Nobody’s keeping you from him.”

  “Not even you? When I turn my back?”

  He pushed out from behind the desk and floated over to the hatchway leading to the after cabin. He bowed slightly and made an exaggerated sweep with his arm.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it, Sparrow. Go right in.” His smile was unpleasant.

  I ignored him and pushed through the hatchway into the compartment beyond. I could feel the sweat start to bead on my back. Something was waiting for me in there, something that Thrush was anxious for me to see.

  ****

  In the dim compartment what had looked like rows of filing cabinets seemed to stretch on forever. I made a quick estimate—maybe nine hundred all told. Just beyond, I could see another compartment that was the Captain’s sleeping quarters, brightly lit with glow tubes, though I couldn’t see Kusaka himself through the hatchway.

  I kicked toward it, pellet gun in hand, then caught a floor ring to slow down. I looked again at the cabinets. What a tremendous amount of storage space—and how unnecessary. The computer’s memory matrix held far more information and most of the paper and plastic on board had crumbled long ago anyway.

  Still, they had to hold something.

  I drifted closer and for the first time noticed the thick tubes and cables that wound around the cabinets and plugged into each of them. They weren’t cabinets after all, they were more like… the chamber in Reduction, like coffins standing on end. I pushed over to one and stared at it, the hair at the back of my head sticky with sudden fear. Grease and dust had caked on the front of it and I could see nothing. I reached out a hand and cleared a small circle with the heel of my palm. It came away black with grime but through the circle I could see a sheet of thick, clear plastic and behind that, something pink and fleshlike.

  I wiped away more of the dirt and within seconds was looking at a naked woman, maybe thirty years old, her eyes closed, her lashes lying limp on her cheekbones. She lay there quiet and serene, not seeming to mind the silver tubes that filled the space around her and thrust into her body orifices like so many obscene fingers. She was an odd amalgamation of grease and metal and flesh; for a moment I imagined that oil flowed through her veins and that if she opened her eyes to look at me I would see the cold, impersonal flicker of a camera lens instead of iris and pupil.

  I floated slowly down the row, scraping away just enough dirt from each cabinet to glimpse the bodies within, all of them hooked up to the silver tubes. My nightmare from sick bay had become real.

  At first I didn’t notice the small plaques above each plastic lid. When I finally did, I reached out and brushed away the filth so I could read whatever inscription had been put there.

  Robert Armijo, electronic technician, a young man who reminded me faintly of Loon… Selma Delgado, biotech, a slightly older woman who might have been Ophelia’s grandmother many generations removed… Lewis Downes, communications engineer, a dead ringer for Crow… Iris Wong, dark-skinned and very pretty, agronomist… Thomas Youngblood, muscular and hairy, planetary specialist… Richard Uphaus, very young and slender, his mouth slightly open as if he had been frozen in mid-sentence…

  There were hundreds of others, pinioned by the silver worms like so many butterflies on a tray but looking as if they could open the lids of their coffins and step out at any moment. They were all so lifelike and so familiar… I knew them but I didn’t remember them.

  I paused at the end of the row and stared at the last coffin. It was empty, the plastic lid ajar, the silver tubes moving to and fro in the air currents as if they were searching for another body. I hesitated, then wiped the dirt off the plaque so I could read the name.

  Raymond Stone.

  The memories came rushing back then, without warning, trampling whoever I had been as “Sparrow,” reminding me of a hundred other lives.

  “That was a bad accident, Ray—that’s your name, you’ll remember it and a lot more in another day or two. Accidents like this, the initial shock is severe. I’m sorry about Susan but there was no possibility of saving her. She died immediately. You’ll be out of bed in another two weeks but there’ll be months of rehabilitation. School? Not for a while, I’m afraid. But the Academy has said you’ll be readmitted next year and with good luck and your parents’ permission, you’ll be an apprentice on the moon shuttle during the summer, something to look forward to… I do know how you feel about Susan…”

  I was standing on the highest peak of Hubble V, the most Earth-like planet we had explored so far, or so Shark
claimed. I could feel the cold seeping through my suit but didn’t want to go down yet. There were white puffs of clouds in a faintly yellow sky and the rest of the range lay below me, the golden snow glinting in the sunlight. Perch was a hundred meters down the ridge and waved at me when I glanced his way. We would celebrate once back on board—he had found a bottle of brandy that somebody in the second generation had hidden two hundred years before. Then the snow suddenly gave way beneath his feet and my last glimpse of him was of a torn and battered exploration suit tumbling down the mountain side and bouncing off the rocky ledges below…

  My name was Garnet and I was in the Captain’s cabin, staring out the port with the Captain by my side, his hand on my shoulder, while I gazed in awe at M31, the great spiral in Andromeda. “I’ve explored planets where red suns filled a third of the sky at dawning,” he was saying. “I’ve seen worlds where the tides were made of molten rock, I’ve stood on planets in rain that had been falling for a hundred million years. …” His words flowed over me like warm water. I felt the pressure of each of his fingers against my skin and swore to myself that if he wanted me to, I would die for him…

  We had huddled together around a hologramed fire so real I could feel thelheat. Dorrit had secured the hatch and Marley was trying to persuade me to join the mutiny. “There’s nothing out there, Boz, we’ve explored a hundred different systems and three hundred planets and never found a microbe! The only life in the universe is on board this ship and back on Earth.” As soon as I was free I reported them all to the Captain, then realized too late that I was going to regret it forever when they were sent to Reduction…

  I was hiding in Hydroponics, spying on Napoli, when she heard the rustle in the leaves and turned and saw me. “You’re not supposed to be here,” she said. I grinned and said I didn’t care where I was supposed to be. I took her then, despite her wishes, smothering her screams with her own waistcloth. Roma found us and called Security and a week later I was court-martialed. The Captain told me afterward that I was too old, that I had been a member of the crew too long. I had never known who I was until then but the knowledge did me no good; the next time period I was flatlined and the only thing I remembered afterward was falling from a cliff. …