SILENT RUNNING
The great ship plunges on through the tides of space. Inside, an anguished man ponders what to do. Unless he murders his friends, the children of Earth are doomed to an eternity of sterile dust. Never again will flowers bud and blossom. Never again will arching trees shade and shelter. And if he kills his shipmates, what then? Marooned in outer space, will there be a future for him or the forest?
A fantastic look at the world beyond 2001!
The great ship plunges on through space. Inside, an anguished man ponders his alternatives. Shall he murder his friends or murder the forest? Are there other options? He must decide quickly . . . time is running out.
Copyright© 1972 by Universal City Studios, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Published by Scholastic Book Services,
a division of Scholastic Magazines, Inc.
1st printing September, 1972
Printed in the U.S.A.
TO MY WIFE, GAIL, WITH LOVE
ONE
In eerie silence the giant spaceship, Valley Forge, plunged through weightlessness on its way to orbit the sun. Light shone down on the craft, searching the metal body, streaming through the transparent latticed canopy of Dome One, bringing vibrant life to the forest of young trees and plants.
Beneath the canopy of Dome One, blades of grass rippled in a slight breeze. Forest noises filled the air, along with the faint sounds of falling water.
A huge caterpillar munched on a vast leaf, as a sprinkle of water hit, splashed, then slid down the stem. The sounds of water increased.
Standing waist-deep in a small, lovely pond, Freeman Lowell splashed around, whistling an old tune. He was deeply happy and at home in the forest, and intimate with all of its secrets. He was vitally concerned with every detail of this growing, developing forest of young trees and plants, of insects and small animals.
For one day a voice would take Valley Forge’s forests back to Earth, as well as those of Berkshire and Sequoia riding orbit with it. New trees would be planted, and shrubs and flowers set out. The dying, polluted Earth would be saved.
Lowell, lean and brown, dived beneath the falls that fed the pool, then eased his lithe body to the bank to dress. He wandered along a slatted pathway, watering a group of dense tropical ferns. Lowell had a lean, ascetic face, intense blue eyes, and a warm smile that came most often when working in his forest.
Whistling the same tune, he slowly proceeded along the path to a little patch of grass. Stooping down he cuddled a black and white rabbit in his arms, stroking its ears.
“How are you today, hunh—feelin’ good?” He fished in his pocket. “I’ll bet you’d like something to eat, wouldn’t you?”
He fished deeper. “Here, I’ve got something in my pocket. Here, some goodies.” He spread his hand containing a few nuts. “Here, I’ll set the table for you. That’s good!”
Putting the rabbit gently on the grass, he moved on among the various trees and plants that had little plaques mounted in the ground beside them. The markers specifically identified them, and their country of origin.
Lowell spotted something and bent to look more closely. He lovingly and gently inspected a delicate flower for possible damage. Satisfied finally, he smelled its fragrance with delight.
He straightened and looked around him at the immense forest.
Lowell was dwarfed beneath tall reeds and bamboo trees. He looked up at the huge geodesic roof which enclosed the forest.
Stars shone brightly outside and a cluster of lights near the dome’s peak illuminated the foliage with eerily beautiful shafts of Rembrandt-like lighting. It must be night, he decided.
Around him now worked little drones, Litton-Radclifie L.R. 260’s. They were dwarflike metal robots about three feet high. They had a window for an eye and just below it a lens. From just beneath the lens, a motorized arm worked back and forth while they moved around the hull on short stumps of legs, obeying their programed orders.
Lowell paid them no attention.
From a distance, Lowell suddenly heard the whine of engines and the screech of rubber tires rounding a corner. The sound was hollow, as though in a long tube, and it was growing louder. Lowell swung to face it with a look of anger.
All at once, three small rubber-tired vehicles raced from the mouth of the tunnel connecting Dome One with Valley Forge’s cargo hold. They were driven by three young men. Clean-shaven with crew cuts, they were dressed in jumpsuit-type uniforms similar to Lowell’s. But there the similarity ended.
They hooted and yelled as they approached Lowell standing in their path. They were Keenan and Barker, who were quite young, and Wolf, somewhat older.
Marty Keenan led the rest. He was thin and dark with flashing blue eyes and a cynical mouth. “Hey, Flowerface!” He yelled, cutting close to Lowell, “Get out of my way!”
Lowell glanced protectively at his plants. “Careful!” he cautioned, then tried to hold his ground as Keenan raced past.
Barker swerved his car, missed Lowell and ran headlong into a long row of broad-leafed plants.
Andy Barker was heavier than Keenan. His face was regular, his eyes a smoldering brown and his lips full. He hated the whole project, and lived for the day when he could go back to Earth and Los Angeles, and cars, cars, cars.
The third car, driven by Wolf—heavyset and alert, with a ruddy face—took the turn too wide and side-drifted into a small flower bed. His left front wheel crushed the flower that Lowell had earlier bent to examine.
“Wahoo!” Keenan yelled, waving his hat and grinning at Lowell.
Lowell brought a hand up to his shocked eyes. “That’s enough!” he burst out. He grabbed a rake and headed for his tormentor.
Keenan barely regained his traction in time to avoid Lowell, then his car lurched forward.
Barker’s car, which had narrowly missed Lowell, maneuvered out of the ruined plants.
“Olé!” he called and started away.
Lowell reached for a nearby rake and flung it at Barker’s receding back. Anger overwhelmed him.
John Wolf, not so rowdy as Keenan and Barker, slowed his car and stepped out.
“Nice try, Lowell,” he said, watching Keenan speed away. “You almost got him.”
“Damn it, Wolf,” Lowell swung to him. “Can’t you keep those two guys out of my garden?”
Wolf, big-boned, rather somber, smiled slightly. His brown luminous eyes fell on Lowell’s. Secretly he admired Lowell, without quite realizing why he should be so uptight about a forest.
“Okay, I’ll try to head them off next time—Hey!” He bent to examine something at his feet. “These cantaloupes are really coming along!”
Lowell’s long angular face softened. He smiled back.
“Thanks—I wish you’d try some. They’re really special.”
Again came the whine of motors.
Keenan was racing at the final turn before the tunnel neck and neck with Barker. Keenan made it first into the tunnel, forcing Barker headlong into a deep bed of rare ferns. Barker quickly reversed, tearing out more foliage, then sped into the tunnel, his engine whining hungrily.
A drone moved past Lowell, moving mechanically, toward the damaged area.
Wordlessly, Wolf climbed into his car and drove toward the tunnel.
Lowell too made his way along the path to enter the tunnel and walk through it to the cargo area. He moved past row on row of module cargo containers, coded and marked and towering thirty feet to the ceiling.
Before him Barker and Keenan still raced madly around the cargo area, their engines whining electrically, their tires screeching. They yelled and whooped at each other in crazy glee.
“Hey!” Barker yelled to Keenan, with a look toward Lowell. “Did you see
him throw that rake?”
Keenan nodded. “Yeah. He’ll go nuts when he sees your water hazard in Dome 6.”
But finally their race began to lag as their spirits dampened. Climbing from their cars, they seemed to feel a little guilty.
Wolf drove up and got out, then faced the two boys. “Don’t you guys think you should lay off a little?”
Barker grinned sheepishly. “Aw, we were just having some fun.”
“What else is there to do?” demanded Keenan.
“Well,” Wolf faced him soberly, “this isn’t supposed to be a vacation.”
Keenan motioned toward two drones working over an empty cargo module, lifting it to a place on the rack above them. “With those little guys and others like them around, I don’t know why they need us at all.”
Barker’s face mirrored an edginess, apparent in them all. “We’ve been up here in space six months, Wolfie, with another six to go. Doesn’t that get to you at all?”
Wolf’s face softened. “Okay, but stay out of Lowell’s cantaloupes, will you?”
Barker leaned into his car and brought out a cantaloupe, tossing it to Wolf, exclaiming, “Ugh! What do I do with this?”
Wolf caught it. “You’re supposed to eat ’em, not play with them.” He smiled broadly and turned toward the stairway, continuing, “Don’t you know that fresh fruit puts zip in you?” He lobbed the cantaloupe back to Barker but the throw was over his head. The cantaloupe landed with a “splat!” and burst open, exposing its ripe insides.
Laughing, the three men, followed by a serious Lowell, walked up a stairway leading to the command and living quarters directly above the cargo hold.
On the stairs Barker pointed to some dirt and grimaced, saying under his breath, “Lowell’s manury boots again.”
“Yeah,” Keenan nodded. “He ought to be more careful. We all have to live here.”
Lowell said nothing. His face softened toward them. They were good kids. It was just that he was so engrossed in his work.
They all walked down a long corridor, conversing. They passed a drone which automatically moved out of their way.
“You know, Wolfie,” Keenan said, “with a little luck when we get back, they might condemn this old tub and sell it for scrap.”
Wolf slapped the wall affectionately. “Who’d buy it?”
“Lowell, then he wouldn’t have to keep re-enlisting,” Keenan shot back.
Wolf shook his head, then lowering his voice, went on, “Lowell’s had eight years in precise orbit around the sun—with no women, not even men, to talk to about his plants.”
Keenan nodded. “Yeah, he gave me a ring-a-ding speech this a.m. about how they’re getting ready to refoliate the earth with these very forests.”
“Yes,” Barker nodded. “Me, too. They’ll do it with the six forests under Valley Forge domes, six of Berkshire and six of the same from Sequoia, both orbiting in formation beside us.” Barker paused, then added, “At least that’s his story.”
Lowell seemed almost not to hear their scoffing talk. Glancing from his window he could see Berkshire and Sequoia, sister ships of Valley Forge, right out there sailing along. His face became transfigured. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it to follow the others into a recreation room.
Wolf and Keenan, still chattering, flopped on their couches. Lowell methodically sat down at a table and began making some notes in a thick black book labeled, JOURNAL.
Barker walked over to the versatron and adjusted a mechanical playing arm. The versatron was a sort of pool table except that it possessed a playing arm that could be set. It could be made very difficult or easy, at the whim of the player. Now Barker had set it for an expert.
“How many times,” Barker turned to Keenan, “has this thing beaten you?”
Keenan grinned. What he really wanted to do was get back to New York, get his Porsche, and run up Storm King Highway to his dad’s estate. He wanted to look out over the Hudson River, polluted as it was by his dad’s paper mill, see hundreds of acres of land and say, “Some day this will be mine to blow.”
Now he eyed Barker and said sharply, “It’s adjusted too fast and you know it. Bark! Bark!”
He was kidding but his voice had an edge.
“Yeah!” Barker said.
“Yeah!” Keenan nodded.
They were just making fun, but back of it lay the boredom, the uneasiness of wondering when they’d be called back to Earth.
Suddenly the dam burst within them. Keenan leaped up. Barker came for him. They locked in a wild embrace trying to throw one another to the floor. Chairs flew.
Lowell’s table skidded with Barker’s flying foot. His journal flew under the couch as though it had wings.
The two men—Keenan in his navy-blue jumpsuit and Barker in white—locked tight. In the silence of the streaming ship, they grunted and strained. Sweat stood out on their faces.
They dropped to the floor. First Keenan was pinned, then Barker. At length they began to laugh, and rose to spring apart and laugh some more.
“Kid stuff!” Wolf told Lowell.
Lowell, whose father had been the eminent Californian, Dr. Clayton Lowell, world-renowned authority on air-borne infections, nodded understandingly. Silently he rose and recovered his journal from beneath the couch. Righting the table he sat down.
“Kid stuff!” But it told too much. Fervently he hoped a voice from Earth would summon Valley Forge and Berkshire and Sequoia. It must soon be time to replant. It had to come sometime. Why not now?
Keenan, still puffing, grinned at Barker, then jerked a thumb toward Lowell. “There’s one guy here who can really play the versatron.”
“With lots of time to practice,” Wolf added.
It was clear to all that while the versatron was a sort of billiards, it was much harder to master.
Barker adjusted its speed to very slow, then swung back to Keenan. “How about that now? Think you can handle it?” Everybody, including Lowell, laughed.
Suddenly at the door a drone appeared with an armload of vegetables and melons. It was obvious that he’d been programed to deliver them.
Lowell moved eagerly forward to take them, then walked slowly through the recreation room door and down a corridor toward the kitchen.
Wolf called after him, “Hey, Lowell, how about a little game of poker?”
“Maybe later,” Lowell called back and moved on. Entering the kitchen, he walked past the table to put the vegetables in the sink. He turned on the water, punched a button on the wall with his elbow and began to wash the vegetables while the window in front of him silently beckoned him to an incredible panoramic view of the night sky.
Lowell gazed out while washing the vegetables, and suddenly the public address system came to pulsating life with a rush of static and the shrill beep of a bosun’s whistle as it readied itself for an announcement.
Lowell went on washing the vegetables, even though he glanced out of the window now and then to catch a glimpse of the mighty Berkshire riding parallel orbit. On its hull he saw a huge painted American flag, and a fifty-foot-high sign reading:
U.S.A.
NORTHEAST DECIDUOUS
(WARREN)
BERKSHIRE SECTION 777
It was a sister ship to the one he was riding, Lowell knew, except that on this hull the faded black letters fully fifty feet in height read:
U.S.A.
SOUTHEAST SUBTROPICAL
(BAHIA-HONDA)
VALLEY FORGE SECTION 313
Lowell turned to walk down through the Valley Forge, his mind still on the public address communication. He reached the giant hold and paused to grasp an upright pipe. Without being aware of it, his hands tightened with his thoughts. So much rode on the announcement: his work, his life, the lives of all people on Earth, really.
Then a voice said:
“ATTENTION . . . ATTENTION . . . CONSERVATION FREIGHTERS ‘VALLEY FORGE’, ‘BERKSHIRE’, ‘SEQUOIA’ . . . STAND BY FOR EXECUTIVE DIRECTIVE ANNOUN
CEMENT AT 2100 HOURS . . .”
TWO
With the fading of the announcer’s voice, Lowell sighed. There was nothing to do but wait until 2100 hours. He walked back through the cargo hold, then up the steps and back along the corridor to the kitchen.
Inside, he moved again to the window to stare out at the mighty hull of the Valley Forge. His hands tightened on the sill. The message would be a summons from home he told himself. It must be. Earth was ready for help from all the eighteen forests of Valley Forge, Berkshire, and Sequoia.
He continued to stare out over the ship. He could never quite get used to its size. It was even greater than the largest seagoing freighter. It was made up of several distinctly different sections interconnected by an intricate space-frame network.
Six thrilling geodesic domes dominated the forward bulk of the ship, while the core of the vessel was a complex maze of giant tanks, ducts, and catwalks, trailed by another space-frame grid interspersed with faceted octahedron modules.
Lowell let his gaze follow along the catwalks and bridges. The metal surfaces were like mirrors of gold and silver, with piping and ducts and louvers of opalescent white and matte black. “Stark and dazzlingly beautiful in the raw sunlight,” Lowell murmured.
He looked along the hull with affection noting that it was worn and patched, faded from years in space—then caught his breath. For there beyond the hull, in staggering perspective, hung Saturn, her rings nearly filling the window frame.
Suddenly in the foreground, a drone appeared, walking soundlessly down a catwalk with an odd rocking gait. He was worn and patched, like the other drones around the hull, bearing a stenciled number—2—and, like the ship, had grown old in service.
Lowell watched with fondness as the drone passed over the huge, faded black lettering on the side of the ship’s hull. Suddenly the drone stopped, and its manipulator emerged with a gleaming silver disc. He tilted forward and there was a flash of blue-white incandescence as it welded the disc to a meteoroid fracture in the ship’s hull.
Silent Running Page 1