Voyage to Alpha Centauri: A Novel

by Michael D. O'Brien

  The three moons are substantial in size but smaller than Earth’s, and even if all were in full moon phase at once, combined they would not reflect as much light as dear old Luna.

  No orbiting artificial satellites have been detected. The night-side of the planet continues to offer not a spark that would indicate cities or towns. We are still too far away to be able to see traces of less developed activity, such as simple roads and trails. A few months from now we may be able to pick up such things, if they are there. It is possible that the planet hosts a primitive people that has not yet mastered fire, let alone electricity and atomic energy. There may be dangers for them during the night, predators of some kind, forcing them to spend the dark hours in caves or underground habitations. Or the intelligent life of the planet could be totally different from what we know and would expect. Or there may be no one there at all.

  Day 2506:

  Xue rapped loudly on my door this morning, and when it opened, I saw that he was out of breath as if he had come at great speed. I could also see that he was anxious in his quiet way.

  “Neil, Stron has had a heart attack. He’s in the medical clinic on deck C. He’s asking for you.”

  Xue gave me more details as we hastened along the hallway to the elevator that would take us to the lower concourse.

  “He felt the warning signals while he was writing at his desk. He just had time to get up and open his door before the attack began. He was found lying in the hall outside his room.”

  “When did it happen?” I asked.

  “Two hours ago. I received a call about twenty minutes ago. He’s in the intensive care unit, and there’s a good chance he will survive. He’s very weak.”

  “I’m glad they called you. There aren’t any next of kin onboard—not for any of us.”

  We were now descending in the elevator.

  “I was just with him a few minutes ago. He told me he’d asked the doctors to contact you first, but when they checked their protocols, it seems this was not permitted. I was a second, and permissible. I came as quickly as I could, Neil.”

  “Thank you, Ao-li.”

  A few minutes later, after circumventing the bureaucratic blockage at the clinic’s front desk, we entered the ICU and found ourselves standing beside Stron’s bed. The doctors apparently had done what they could and departed, and the ward contained only the single patient, with a nurse typing into a stats book at the other end of the room. As we stood there looking down at our friend, she finished and left us alone.

  Stron appeared to be sleeping. His face was unusually white, his lips colorless, and both arms were wired and tubed. Monitors beeped faintly on the wall above his bed. The beep was fairly regular with occasional flutters, but it wasn’t strong. I had observed the digital graphs during my own heart tests in the past, and I now could see that Stron’s readings were dangerously weak.

  We didn’t want to disturb him, but without warning, his eyelids twitched and opened.

  “Boys, how nice of you to come”, he murmured.

  “You shouldn’t try to talk, Stron”, I said. “You should rest. That’s what you need most.”

  “No pain t’speak of, laddie . . . not now. It was pretty bad until they gave me the needle. I’m all right. But I am tired . . . so tired.”

  “We’ll stay with you. Try to go back to sleep.”

  “Can’t sleep. Won’t. Feels good to remember the frozen loch and hear the rumbling stones. Click and crack. A sweet sound. And the brooms sweeping clean.”

  Xue touched my arm. “Neil, I’m going to find the medical staff and see what they can tell us.”

  When I was alone with Stron, I realized just how much I cared for the old fellow, and what a terrible loss it would be if he didn’t recover. I pulled a chair toward the bed and sat down on it.

  “Where are we?” Stron mumbled.

  “You’re in the sick bay in C clinic.”

  “Aye, but where is the ship?”

  “On the way to Alpha Centauri.”

  This seemed to irritate him, and he closed one of his eyes in order to scowl at me. “I know that. I mean where are we exactly? How long have I been out?”

  “Not more than two hours.”

  He sighed with relief. “Good. I thought maybe. . .”

  “Promixa Centauri is about 0.7 light-years away. Soon we’ll begin the veer to get around it.”

  “What’s that in parsecs?”

  “I’m not sure. But we’re getting close.”

  He closed his eyes, and for a time, I sat without saying anything, just watching him. I did not want to prompt any more conversation because I could see it was costing him effort—energy he did not have to spare.

  Xue returned and beckoned me out of the room.

  “The doctor tells me there are blocked arteries in the heart, and two of them look ready to blow. He’s trying to schedule a bypass.”

  “How soon?”

  “He doesn’t know at this point. He thinks probably before the end of the day. He’ll send me a message once he knows. He said we have five more minutes, and then we have to go.”

  Xue patted Stron’s shoulder and went off to find Dariush and Pia to let them know what was happening.

  Stron’s eyes were open and alert again, staring at me inquisitively. “So, what are they going to do with this old carcass?”

  “You’re going to be fine”, I said in my most avuncular tone. “Just fine.”

  “Great bedside manner, but the clichés need some fine-tuning”, he croaked.

  “I’ll work on it.”

  “Neil,” he said with a feeble grin, “are you a left-footer?”

  “I’m right-handed, actually. That’s enough talking now. You mustn’t wear yourself out. They hope to schedule surgery for you later today.”

  “To blasted hades with the surgery. Don’t distract me. As I was trying to tell you, we have a saying back home. It’s an old belief that Catholics use their left foot when digging with a spade, and Protestants use their right.”

  “Well, I use both.”

  “I think you mean neither.”

  “I guess that’s true in the sense you mean it—if I understand you correctly.”

  “I certainly wasn’t referring to your fouled-up leg.”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “No reason. Just asking.” He eyed me intensely, though the look was (for Stron) a mild one. “I was writing something out for you when this thing hit me. The paper’s probably still lying on my desk. You go in and get it. Keep it and read it. Preferably often.”

  “All right. What’s your door code?”

  “Chanty-wrassler.”

  “Could you repeat that, please?”

  “Chanty-wrassler. It means a useless, dishonest person.”

  “An irony, I suspect.”

  “It was self-descriptive.”

  “And untrue.”

  “I wish ‘twere so. You know, the thing I hate most about all this isn’t so much their nastiness. There’ll always be bad guys in the world. The thing I hate most is the way they’ve forced us to become liars and sneaks. Don’t use the hyphen.”

  “What?”

  “Chanty-wrassler. No hyphen, no word breaks, all lower case. Let me know what you think. Visit me again soon. Bring a wee polly bottle with you. Preferably full. Take one for yourself, with my compliments.”

  “I’ll be right back. Now close your eyes and be good.”

  The code worked, and amidst a pile of refuse on the laird’s desk, I found a sheet of paper, with an antique mechanical pencil underneath, where I suspect it had rolled when Stron was struck by the first pain.

  The sheet did not have my name on it as addressee, but the tone was unmistakable:

  Three snippets for yee t’ponder, laddie:

  Softe, fooles, softe, a little slacke your pace,

  Till I haue space you to order by degree, I haue eyght neyghbours, that first shall haue a place

  Within this my ship, for they most w
orthy be,

  They may their learning receyue costles and free,

  Their walles abutting and ioyning to the scholes;

  Nothing they can, yet nought will they learne nor see,

  Therfore shall they guide this our ship of fooles.

  and:

  Of the ende of worldly honour and power and of Folys that trust therein:

  On erth was neuer degre so excellent

  Nor man so myghty: in ryches nor science

  But at the ende all hath ben gone and spent

  Agaynst the same no man can make defence

  Deth all thynge drawyth, ferefull is his presence,

  It is last ende of euery thynge mundayne

  Thus mannys fortune of cours is vncertayne

  and:

  Of disordred and vngoodly maners.

  Drawe nere ye folys of lewde condicion

  Of yll behauoure gest and countenaunce

  Your proude lokys, disdayne and derysyon

  Expresseth your inwarde folysshe ignoraunce

  Nowe wyll I touche your mad mysgoueraunce

  Whiche hast to foly, And folysshe company

  Treylynge your Baybll in sygne of your foly

  This was followed by an uncompleted personal message:

  Neil,

  Since your education was sadly lacking, let me explain that the Baybll above refers to the Tower of Babel and the confusion of tongues. The mad misgovernance of our ship is—

  Beside it on the desk was a rare, clothbound copy of The Enigma of the Quasar by Dr. Strachan McKie. Written on a slip of paper sticking out of the flyleaf was the following:

  For Neil, if he can be caught in a good mood.

  I gathered up the book and the Ship of Fools notes and returned posthaste to the clinic, only to find that visitors were no longer permitted, since Stron was being prepped for surgery. I stood waiting at the front desk, hoping for news, and there Dariush and Xue joined me. Pia arrived a few minutes later.

  “It’s usually not advisable to go straight from a heart attack to bypass surgery”, she said with a worried look. “It means his cardiac arteries are so blocked that another, fatal, attack is imminent if he doesn’t have the surgery.”

  “Have you seen the readings on his condition?” I asked.

  “No. He’s not my patient, so I doubt I’ll have access to his records.”

  Xue said, “Why don’t we find a quiet place to wait together?”

  Pia begged off, since she had to return to duty. Dariush said he would like to spend the coming hours in his own room. I, by contrast, felt the need for company. Xue and I went to the Asian restaurant, but neither of us could eat anything. We made attempts at conversation and in the end gave up.

  Day 2507:

  Stron died during surgery. After Xue brought the news to my room this morning, I wanted only to be alone. Later, I went down to Stron’s room to see if there was anything there that should be handed over to Paul. But the room had already been cleaned out. By whom? And why so swiftly?

  I feel too heart-sick to write.

  Day 2508:

  Today a grand memorial service to honor Stron, held in the main auditorium on Concourse A. I felt haunted by the events of another night when I had been in that room, remembering Stron’s flinty handling of the situation. Now, the hall was again full of people. The speeches were stirring, especially one given by the newly appointed head of the on-planet astronomy team, a man who had been a student of Stron’s in Edinburgh. The Captain’s remarks were brief and moving. He referred to the death as our “first loss”. I think most people indeed felt it as loss. Executives of DSI were present but kept themselves on the sidelines, refraining from any attempt to regurgitate pre-digested pablum. If they had tried, I doubt it would have been greeted with anything other than unease or indifference, since it is well known what Stron thought of the department. Even so, life will go on as usual. Though Stron will be missed, the primary concern of the “community” is the expedition—and this will remain so.

  I felt his absence keenly during the service. I felt the absence of something else, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Dariush sat beside me with his eyes closed throughout the entire humanitarian ritual. I wondered if he had drifted off, but then he turned to me at the end of the eulogies, just as the recorded bagpipe music began to skirl, and said, “Each soul is a logos.”

  “What’s a logos?” I asked.

  “It is Greek. It means ‘word’.”

  There was no more time to speak because the crowd of mourners was standing now, the coffin being trolleyed toward the exit by members of the astronomy team. We fell in behind, and accompanied it toward the elevator that would take it down to the holds. Stron’s remains would be kept in a freezer compartment until the burial on AC-A-7. In the contracts we all signed back on Earth, there’s a discreet little section that gives us a choice of where we want to be buried in the unlikely event of our personal demise: “burial” in space, or burial on the destination planet, or one’s remains kept in deep-freeze until return to Earth and internment there. Stron apparently chose AC-A-7.

  When the doors closed over the coffin, I stood with head bowed, in silence.

  Dariush, standing beside me, said quietly, “Stron is not lost to us, Neil. Each person is a unique word, and this is a true word if it embodies its proper role in the celestial language.”

  But I was in no mood for one of his philology digressions. I turned away from him and returned to my room where I could grieve in private.

  Day 2600:

  Can it be so many months since I made my previous entry in this journal?

  I have turned over my entire manuscript to Paul. Pia urged me to do so, arguing that I remain vulnerable to searches and discrediting. She says that someday a book—the true history of the voyage—will be written. Paul tells me he will guard my accounts with his life. With his life? I think he means it. It’s a wonder that men such as this still exist.

  Once a month I am required to submit to blood and urine tests. Pia deals with this by adding the correct amount of trace medication to the samples, enough to convince “them” that I am obedient and ill. From time to time, I act erratically in public. A delicate balance is needed here. If, some day in the future, I am called upon to testify about what went wrong on the voyage, I don’t want to leave evidence that I was completely insane. Addled and erratic, yes, but I was ever thus!

  Recently, I was in a panorama room that I presumed was in the forward section of the ship because the image on the screen displayed the three stars of Alpha Centauri. I spent a half hour strolling to the other end of the ship, interested in what our view to the rear now looked like. Our own home sun, doubtless, would appear as a bright star. Arriving at the rear panorama room, I went in and stopped abruptly when I saw that here too the image displayed our destination. The sudden realization that I could not tell which end of the ship was fore and which was aft left me disoriented. I felt momentarily dizzy, physically nauseated. I returned to my room by carefully following signs. How was it possible that after nearly eight years of living on this vessel I had failed to know the front and back of it? A careful checking of the Manual diagrams showed me where my room was in relationship to Alpha Centauri. I remembered that my quarters were on the port side, and thus the true destination lay to the left whenever I stepped out of my room, and Earth was to my right.

  Day 2614:

  I spend a lot of time in my room. I sleep, I read. I go out each day for my constitutional walk around the concourses. I walk my imaginary dog in the park. I listen to Mozart. Occasionally I swim. I can write very little.

  Every week or so, I wander into one or another of the panorama rooms for a quick glimpse of our destination, feeling some residual nausea whenever I do so.

  No sign of DSI staff for months, though I know their watching eyes and listening ears are upon me. Paul asks from time to time, as does Pia, if I have anything new I want them to store away for safekeeping. I tell them there is no
thing new. And this is true.

  Dariush and I continue our studies of Kashmiri. It is a welcome diversion. We have more-or-less fluent dialogues in that language, though I doubt if any of them amount to an exchange of celestial logos.

  No significant events to record, though some dialogues are worth remembering.

  Day 2637:

  After my tests in Pia’s clinic this morning, she wrote one of her cryptic messages on a scrap of paper, arranging an assignation:

  Doctor’s orders—Rembrandt, 2100, C U there.

  This was Pia-wit, I discovered on a scouting trip. In an alcove on deck C, I found a (probably) facsimile painting of Rembrandt van Rijn’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp, painted nearly five hundred years ago. I returned in the evening, and, sure enough, there she was, gravely analyzing the interior of the poor victim’s dissected arm.

  “Uh, why here, Pia?” I asked, making her jump at the sound of my voice. “Calm, girl, calm. It’s me.”

  “I’m calm”, she said, still jittery. “You just startled me, that’s all.”

  “Sorry about that. What’s up?”

  “I have a few things to tell you. First, you’ll be glad to know that the tests are now no more than routine. During the past month, I’ve delayed submitting my weekly reports in order to see what happens. No one has sent an inquiry. I submit them three or four days late and don’t get any feedback. I think it means they’re no longer worried about you making trouble. You’ll still have to take the medication, but I think you can relax a little.”

  “Oh, that’s good.”

  “Are you feeling okay?”

  “Feeling real sad, actually.”