The Wreck of the River of Stars

by Michael Flynn

  He sat in his sling chair in his room, much comforted by the alignments, but his eyes kept straying to the madly twining calligraphy of Shumar’s print. How could he compute an escape for the cutter when he did not know the parameters? A great deal might depend on whether the radio worked and whether a prospective ship would respond with an intercept. The cutter would have too much initial velocity for a single cage to shed before reaching HoJO, so the only hope was to rendezvous with a ship on the Martian radial. The Lotus Jewel had identified the call signs of a dozen of these vessels and Ship had dutifully plotted a variety of intercepts, searching for one that would fall within the envelope of success.

  Thirteen people might just be able to live in the cutter, if some breathed out while the others breathed in, but for only nineteen days, perhaps twenty if the squeakers counted as half-loading on the system. Grubb was stowing more supplies, but Corrigan didn’t think the boat could hold enough more to matter. The choke point was air regen, not food, fuel, or water. Given the rated MTBF, the air system would last 250 man-days before the CO2 buildup would suffocate the crew. It was the peak loading on the system that was important. It didn’t matter if there were carnic enough for a two-month cruise if everyone had to hold their breath for the last couple weeks of it. Random system failures occur when the load fluctuates beyond the design margin—and the cutter had never been designed to haul an entire ship’s company.

  Ship’s company, less one.

  Less two. He had forgotten Captain Hand.

  Corrigan, suddenly overwhelmed by a longing for the old captain, covered his face. That seemed so long ago, in another era, at one with that of Napoleon or Mehmet Ali. Back in the days of Captain Hand…Hand would have seen his way through this, he thought. Hand would never have brought them to this.

  There is a perverse kind of perspective that comes with the passage of time: Those more distant appear larger than in life. They accumulate legend and power like an old holoplex accumulates dust. Given the passage of enough time, they become gods. Their epigones never measure up for the simple reason that they never actually measure against them. It is always the ideal past against the real present, and the ideal always wins because it has been stripped of all its faults. Whether Hand would have managed the crisis better than Gorgas was both unknown and unknowable. All that can be said is that the crew would have been more pleased to fail under Hand than to succeed under Gorgas; but that was the manna of the late captain. To an objective observer Hand may have seemed no more competent than most, but he had had a friendliness about him that no one else on board could match and within which no rough imperfections could be seen.

  Corrigan had been a victim of that friendliness and knew he ought to feel gratitude toward the man, or to the man’s shade. Competent, but unimaginative, other captains had written of the first officer. Carries out assignments well, but lacks initiative. Hand had laughed these judgments off. A plant needs the right soil, that’s all. Hand had said with that wretched, patronizing benevolence of his. Then you’ll see it bloom.

  That cheerfulness had been more damning than the judiciousness of his other captains, for implicit in it had been the blithe assumption that help was needed, that Corrigan ought to be more than merely competent, dedicated, and hardworking. The first officer had never considered these qualities as sins, and so had never sought forgiveness for them. Hand had been a kind man, but kindness is not wisdom. The most egregious errors have been made from kindness. In any event, Hand had erred, for the right soil had not been found. Why, The River’s AI autoinitiated more often than Corrigan, and the one great idea he had in his seven years aboard had led to the ruin of the ship.

  “Mr. Corrigan, you must pick one of the courses,” Ship pointed out unbidden.

  Corrigan did not at first lift his hands from his face. “Do I? None of them promise success. Should I send us out to die?”

  “Is it better to keep them here to die?”

  “Have you become a philosopher, Ship. I shouldn’t think you’d sink so low.”

  “Philosopher comes from the Greek philo-, meaning—”

  “Abort.”

  “There are several course options that rendezvous with Ido Maru or with Georgia Girl.” Ship was incapable of irritation at being cut off and resumed the thread without so much as a flounce.

  “Which the best transit time is twenty-seven days,” Corrigan said. “And that assumes that those ships will alter course to meet us.”

  “Why would they not?”

  “I don’t know. If I knew, I could pick one.”

  “That is not why you will not choose.”

  Corrigan snarled. “Terminate string.”

  “It is an old conundrum in ethics. The Lifeboat Problem. When the boat cannot hold all—”

  “Who made you so muffing smart? Terminate string, I said! You’re nothing but a network of propagating neurons and a database of book learning.” He performed the arithmetic again: 250 man-days projected reliability, divided by twenty-seven days of loading on the system, equaled 9.26 men. Counting deCant and Akhaturian at half, and he still came up short three people.

  So, who would stay behind? For some must, were the remainder to have a hope.

  If there were justice in the universe, she would demand that the three who had killed the ship be the three that stayed to die with it. And that meant Satterwaithe and Ratline and himself.

  Corrigan unfastened himself from the sling chair and crossed his room to where he had fastened his prayer rug. How long had it been since he had realigned it on the Earth? He thought that the minutiae of those calculations had enchanted him more than the purpose for which they had supposedly been done. All his life he had devoted to that which he could measure—but who could measure God? What radar could ping Him?

  He lowered himself to the carpet and fell slowly on his face. In a three millie accelleration frame, he fell for a long time.

  Mikoyan Hidei wrestled the pneumatic jack into place between the door plate and the disassembled frame. She had been at the task all day and had the sweat-stink and the torn sleeve to prove it. The one thing that made the work bearable was the gentle breeze that caressed her cheek and cooled her through evaporation, and that breeze, of course, was the one thing that made the work unbearable.

  “Stand back,” said Bhatterji, and Miko reached for a monkey bar to yank herself away. The engineer was already swinging the sledge before she was clear, but she didn’t think it was in hope of catching her with it. He was simply in the rhythm of the work. He could not know that it was she who had set Ratline after him with a keen reefing knife and a sorrow even keener. Of course, people did not often wait on knowledge before acting. A guess would do for motivation, or even a wild surmise. Besides, had Bhatterji wanted her hurt, he would not employ a ruse.

  It would be no more than justice if Bhatterji did strike her, and the more just if the blow was unintended. Her own blow had struck Okoye by mistake. Her best friend on the ship now lay sedated—and Ratline too, who lay—unsedated—in a world where only Ratline could go.

  If the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, what road is paved with unintentions?

  Bhatterji’s sledge drove the pneumatic jack into the gap between the great black slab of the airtight door and the inactive drive piston. The whole assembly, the bulkheads and deck as well, rang with the blow, and Miko fancied that they could feel it far away on the bridge, or perhaps even on Europa. Bhatterji himself lifted from his feet with the reaction and coasted backward a few meters, spinning from the swing. “Check the seating,” he called to Miko.

  Miko aimed her cold light into the wall’s interior, where pistons and slide bars and seals showed what a very complicated thing a wall could be. “Looks okay,” she answered. “Right about on the centerline.”

  Bhatterji had caught a ring frame at the cross corridor and brought himself to a halt. “Do it.”

  Miko hit the activator, and the jack snapped open with sudden force, driving the piston
home and slamming the airtight door. Miko regarded the now-sealed corridor without emotion. The gentle zephyr that had caressed her cheek died.

  Bhatterji, when he reached her side, considered their work with considerably more satisfaction. “One more seal,” he announced. “One step closer.”

  “And only fifteen more to go,” Miko replied.

  “A journey of a thousand miles,” Bhatterji told her, “begins with a single step.”

  “So does a journey of a million miles. That doesn’t mean there’s any hope of finishing. What if that step is in the wrong direction? Didn’t the Hebrews wander in the desert for forty years? I’m sure that started with a single step, too.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that. It’s not my fable.” Bhatterji twisted the relief valve on the jack and the air sighed out of it as it collapsed. He braced his feet against the wall and pulled the jack out. “Put the panels back on,” he said, “and make sure the seals are in place. Doesn’t do much good to drop the doors if the wall is full of holes.” He even laughed, as if there were not a problem in the world and this was just routine maintenance.

  (Miko had mimed that last phrase along with him. It was not as if he hadn’t said it five times already, at the five doors they had already seated.)

  Bhatterji examined the butt of the jack where he had struck it with the sledge and saw how badly mangled the end plate had become. He wondered how many more times he could abuse it like that. Fifteen, maybe. “If you think we’re headed in the wrong direction, you can go off in the other direction, with the others.”

  Miko swung a fist and caught him on the chest. “You son of a bitch!”

  The engineer absorbed the punch with more curiosity than hurt. “We can make this happen,” he said, and Miko struck him again. “We only need to keep a steady pace.”

  “Damn you!”

  “Create a small, airtight redoubt and our breathing supply will last until we reach Jupiter.”

  “You’re mad! You’ve been breathing plasma fumes and it’s fried your brain. The ship is a damned colander! What about the passages where there are no doors to throw? Who’ll do the welding? ’Kiru near had her head chopped off, the two squeakers are leaving in the cutter…”

  “One task at a time, Miko. Granted, the work would go faster if everyone helped, but it doesn’t look like that will happen. It’s just you and me.”

  “What are you drinking? When the time comes, I’ll be in that cutter along with everyone else.”

  “If you think all this is a bloody waste of time, why are you out here helping me? Why aren’t you cowering with the others?”

  “Because it’s something to do! Because it’s something to keep me occupied until the muffing cutter leaves.” Miko tried one last punch.

  Bhatterji caught her fist in his palm and held it fast. “Because you love the ship too.”

  The mate blew her breath out, tugged her fist from his grasp. “Yah. That too. It’s a shame to see her go like this.”

  “She’s not going anywhere but Jupiter. Do you know what will happen if you go in that cutter? You’ll run out of air before I do, that’s what. You heard what Grubb and Corrigan reported. That many lungs in that small a volume will overload the system long before rendezvous. What’s the point in that?”

  “But Gorgas said—”

  Bhatterji snarled. “Do you really think Gorgas can make a decision like that? The man has trouble deciding which shoe to put on first, let alone who to leave behind. So I’ll make it that much easier on him. Going out in the cutter is sheer suicide. The numbers don’t add up. So I’ll stay here and save the ship.”

  She had known he would say that. She had known he would stay behind. “A hero?” she gibed.

  “Just doing my job.”

  “You’ll die for stubbornness?” It was the first time she had used the word die to him, to anyone.

  The engineer did not answer, but shouldered the pneumatic jack and picked up the sledge. He turned, stopped for a moment in what appeared to be sudden thought, and turned back to her. “God,” he told her with utter candor, “I miss seeing Rave about.” Then he hardened and added, “Number nine radial corridor, D-ring. Meet me there when you’re done.”

  Miko lifted the wall panel but, the moment he was gone, she threw it down again. “What’s the use?” she asked. Then, louder, wondering if he could hear her yet, “What’s the use!” She had risen from the deck with the force of the throw and waited now until she had settled down again. No one answered her: not Bhatterji, who had paused on hearing her echo two corridors off; not even Ship, who had no pickups in that region of the vessel. She snatched the dog box into which Bhatterji had carefully inserted the fasteners to the wall panel and made to throw it, scattering its contents down the long radial. But she checked her arm and lowered it without doing so. Then, turning, she hefted the panel once more and seated it in its seals, and began driving home the fasteners one by one.

  Miko could feel the air stirring once again, as the flow, frustrated by the door now in its path, drifted off in a different direction.

  “All right,” she told the departed engineer and seated the last fastener with a vicious wrench. “You stay. See if I’ll care.” Then she followed Bhatterji to Radial Nine.

  Corrigan found Gorgas alone on the bridge. All the bridge lights were out save those from the plotting tank and from the sistines overhead. Gorgas had called up the external visual sensor views and it had amused him to so arrange them as to approximate the arrangement of the stars outside the ship, as if all the hull were no more than a metallocene bubble. But he had done so in an inverse sense because the ship was decelerating. Thus, although by rights directly underfoot, Jupiter had been placed on the sistine at the very apex of the room. It satisfied a sense he had that everything had been turned upside down.

  Gorgas himself stood as usual by the plotting tank, with his right hand resting on the top surface, and he gazed overhead toward Jupiter with what Corrigan thought was an expression of utter peace. The first officer hesitated at the foot of the bridgeway, reluctant to disturb the captain.

  “That’s all right, Number One,” Gorgas said, though he had not turned around. “Come on deck. I don’t believe there are any formalities left. There wouldn’t be any point to them.”

  “You’re wrong about that, captain. It’s when they are most pointless that formalities become most important.”

  Surprised, Gorgas turned ’round. “Really? I had always supposed that to you the formalities were the point. The Ding an sich, as it were. Very well, come on deck.”

  “The cutter is ready for departure. We have a window for Georgia Girl during the next four hours. The next window—for Ido Maru—won’t be for six days.”

  “Do you see any purpose in waiting for that one?”

  Corrigan shook his head. “The cutter’s initial velocity would be less by then. Not enough to matter.”

  Gorgas nodded slowly. “I hadn’t thought so.” He turned and faced the sistines once more. “Look at him, Number One. A splendid sight, is it not?”

  “What, Jupiter? I can make out the stripes, I think.”

  “No, not Jupiter. Sol. The sun.” Gorgas pointed to another panel, closer to the notional ecliptic. “Do you see that small dot just to the west of it? Ship tells me that’s Earth.”

  “Is it.” Corrigan grunted. “Vesta is too small to see without amplification.”

  Gorgas turned and cocked his head. “What? Oh, yes. Doesn’t mean the same thing to you, does it?” He faced the sistine and, leaning over the plotting tank, folded his hands under his chin. “I miss her so. Can you miss a barren asteroid warren in quite the same way? I don’t know.”

  “It depends on what one loves,” said Corrigan, supposing that by “her,” Gorgas had meant the planet.

  Gorgas nodded. “Yes, I assume so. And on what one is accustomed to. I grew up on the Little Plain. That’s in Hungary, close by the Austrian border. It was wonderfully rolling country, where a man mi
ght ride horseback for many leagues and never spot a city. And the mountains, oh, they were grand. Peaceful, do you understand? We had a cabin up there, in the mountains. I wonder who lives there now…

  “Captain?”

  “Yes, four hours, you said. Very well. Ship?”

  “Yes, captain?”

  “Captain’s log. First officer Corrigan is assigned to command of the ship’s cutter and is to take as many of the ship’s company as can be accommodated with reasonable opportunity of success and essay a rendezvous with the cargo ship Georgia Girl, out of New Tblisi, Marineris Free State. Departure authorized within four hours of this mark. Mark.”

  “Acknowledged, captain, and not a moment too soon.”

  “Ship,” said Gorgas, “you may spare me the editorials. Yes, Number One, what is it?” Gorgas spoke brusquely on perceiving Corrigan’s hesitation. He had made his decision and had come to a measure of calm, but that did not mean he wished to dwell on it or justify it to others.

  “I had thought,” said Corrigan, “I had thought to stay behind myself.”

  Gorgas’s lip twitched. “I shouldn’t recommend it as an option. In my own case, there is a tradition to uphold regarding captains and their ships. But that does not apply to you.”

  “But if it hadn’t been for me—”

  “Number One, how many board-certified torch pilots have we on board? You, me, Genie. And which of the three of us is the best navigator? No, sir, if we are to give the youngsters and the passenger and the others the best chance we can, you must take the conn. If you wish to berate yourself over certain foolish choices and rash behaviors, you have my leave. Believe me, you shan’t lack for company in that regard.”