Fugitive From Asteron

by Gen LaGreca

  I took the report from her, searching for something I did not find. Quick Fix said what Kristin had told me, but it did not indicate what human species I was.

  “You see, Alexander, you’re like us, inside and out.”

  “Quick Fix does not say that.”

  “I do. I think you can smile and laugh, and be happy just like us.”

  Laughter: a musical note rising from the throat and floating out of the lips, a natural sound for Kristin and other Earthlings. Was there any laughter inside me?

  Quick Fix was worth the small coin I gave it, because my pain subsided by the time we reached the fenced complex of buildings, fields, and aircraft hangars called Merrett Aerospace Systems. There was a garden at the entrance, and in the center of it was a tall sculpture of the MAS logo, the soaring silver rocket with the letters MAS imprinted on the body.

  After Kristin arranged for my clearance through various security points, we entered a building of glass and steel. The lobby contained a wall of miniature relics of Earth’s early rockets, spotlighted in a glass display case, and over it the building’s name imprinted in steel-gray block letters: SPACE TRAVEL DIVISION. We took an elevator and exited into a hallway where dense mazes of computers and spacecraft components were visible from every room. My eyes feasted on this amazing electronic universe.

  We came to an office with a plaque on the door that read: DIRECTOR OF SPACE TRAVEL. Kristin introduced me to Mykroni Whitman, a tanned, light-haired man with a trim, youthful body and a face that looked a bit more than twice my age. His hand grasp was firm, and his eyes were direct and probing as they met mine. I recognized the first name, which was accented on the first syllable, as Asteronian, whereas the last name must have been Earthling. As if reading my thoughts, Kristin remarked that her father had given Mykroni his last name after he had arrived on Earth.

  “Dr. Merrett gave it to me when I learned what the last syllable meant,” Mykroni said.

  I looked at him curiously, but he offered no further explanation. Kristin commented that I had just arrived from Cosmona, and to my great relief, Mykroni showed no reaction. He seemed uninterested in my origin.

  He took me to a room in which a large computer screen resting on a small glass table seemed suspended in midair. He sat me down, tapped an option on the screen to begin my testing, and said, “Let’s see what you can do.” Then this Asteronian, who looked and spoke like an Earthling, vanished, leaving me alone with the keyboard and monitor.

  The computer seemed determined to explore every facet of my mind. It posed mathematical problems. It wanted to know how well I comprehended English. It placed me in different hypothetical situations around the galaxy, giving me a problem to solve in each circumstance. It simulated a spacecraft’s controls, gave me instructions on how they worked, then tested how well I grasped the information.

  After placing me in command of a spacecraft, it blew out a computer onboard, sprung a leak in an engine, and otherwise caused my craft to malfunction, in each case asking me how I would solve the problem. I finished with time to spare and began to review my answers when a sudden fear gripped me. I remembered the test I had failed long ago when I tried to become a pilot. I failed because I had gotten all of the answers right. I could not be trusted to follow instructions because my performance was too good. That cannot happen here, I assured myself. Why not? a cold terror replied. The boss is from Asteron! In the time remaining, I changed some of my answers to responses I knew were wrong.

  Uttering not a word, Mykroni returned, sat opposite me, and swung the computer screen around to face him. The room, darkened for viewing the monitor, formed a gray background around his face, which was dappled with light from the screen. I watched his eyes scanning my work while he pressed icons to turn the electronic pages. He paused a moment, resting his chin on his hand, saying, “Hmmm.” He glanced at me and cocked his head, as if considering a laboratory specimen. Then his eyes returned to the screen to read the rest of my test answers.

  Finally, he leaned back in his chair, folded his hands, and looked at me. “I’m disappointed.”

  “Oh?”

  “Because you could have gotten a perfect score—you would have been the first one ever to get a perfect score!—but you made some stupid mistakes that I can’t understand. If you know what this test shows you know, you couldn’t have made the mistakes you did.”

  “But . . . but do you not want people who are sometimes unsure, people who can follow instructions and . . . obey?”

  He raised his eyebrows and moved his eyes around my face suspiciously. “Say, what if I told you that you needed to get a perfect score on this test in order to be a space pilot? Would you have done anything differently?”

  I did not know how to answer. Should I admit to being dishonest or stupid?

  “Well, would you?”

  “I . . . uh . . .”

  “Show me.” He swung the screen around to me.

  I changed the mistakes back to my original answers, then rotated the screen to face Mykroni, who had been watching me the entire time. He examined the results.

  “That’s better. A perfect score! You took out the errors and left the intelligence. The only mistake you made here today was in thinking I don’t want intelligence. If you think that, I can’t put you in a spacecraft.” He stared at me to stress his point.

  I tried to quiet the dark voice that lived inside me, warning me of dangers. I thought of Kristin’s speaking against the mayor and contradicting her flight instructor. Earthlings were not driven by obedience. “I will correct my mistake.”

  “Can you?”

  “Yes.” I was trying to convince myself as much as Mykroni.

  With suspicion lingering on his face, he got up. “Let’s see if you can fly.”

  Mykroni took me to a room that contained a large flight simulator, along with a small control panel near it. Our slim bodies formed two long gray shadows on the solid white exterior of the device as we walked up to it. He sealed me inside, where I sat in a life-sized cockpit with a full array of flight controls. He sat at the console outside, setting parameters for the device. First he had me perform a variety of basic maneuvers. The simulator moved in all degrees of flight motion, corresponding to the controls I engaged, and the scenery on monitors imitated what I would expect to see out the windows in an actual flight. Then the cockpit bounced and the scenery whirled as Mykroni killed an engine, shook me with severe turbulence, set fire to my craft, and put me inside a meteor shower. In each crisis, I scrambled to resolve the problem. The enactments were so vivid that my pulse raced and muscles tensed as if the disasters were real. After I had managed to rescue the craft and crew during a string of these calamities, Mykroni finally stopped the simulator and let me leave the cockpit. I emerged with my legs weak and my mind spent from the nightmarish experience, only to find Mykroni smiling for the first time, a wide grin across his face.

  “Let’s go up now,” he said simply.

  He took me to the company’s airfield, where to my amazement I saw several of the aircraft I had flown on Asteron, or rather I saw advanced models of planes I had flown. I went up with Mykroni in one of them. I took off and landed several times. I flew upright and inverted, high to the ground and low to the ground. I performed turns, loops, rolls, and spins of every kind. Mykroni called instructions to me, and I executed them. In several cases he had me climb at a certain distance per second to a specific altitude, then level off. When I finished, he checked my performance to see if I had met the requirements without overshooting or falling short.

  Mykroni explained that although a plane could fly itself in automated systems, the intelligence and skill of a human pilot remained irreplaceable. Under MAS policy, humans were active in flying, as well as in overseeing, supplementing, and overriding automatic flight when necessary, especially in difficult or unexpected situations. “That’s why we teach you to do everything,” he said. I nodded, eager to learn all I could.

  He talked about how pre
cision flying was important for docking and rendezvousing in space. Because I had learned this kind of flying on Asteron, I could execute precision maneuvers in a whole host of situations. Mykroni posed many questions for me to answer, dazzled me with his own superb flying skills, and taught me new ways to harness the tremendous power of my ship to serve my will. We talked constantly, my words spilling together to keep pace with the many insights and questions that this master teacher stirred in me. I resolved to learn the Earthlings’ speech contractions, because I was impatient to talk faster and say more.

  When we finished, Mykroni jumped down from the plane, the sun catching strands of his yellow-brown hair, his face smiling, his lean body looking much younger than his years. He stroked the fuselage as though it were a prized animal.

  “She makes you want to kiss her sometimes, doesn’t she?” he said.

  I remembered a superior with vicious eyes who had seen me kiss my aircraft, and then had ordered a punishment that almost killed me.

  As Mykroni brushed one hand along the plane, he pointed to me with the other, his eyes sparkling with excitement. “You’re the one who made her look so good. You’re a crazy kid, and I hope to hell you don’t kill yourself, but you did one fine job up there, Alexander. You’re going to do damn well in a spacecraft.”

  I stared at him incredulously, realizing for the first time how much I wanted . . . needed . . . to hear the note of encouragement in a teacher’s voice.

  To clear me for space travel Mykroni arranged for a physical exam and fitness test, which I easily passed. I had an anxious moment when I was brought to the Human Resources Department for a background check on arriving aliens. Kristin had neglected to mention this! But because Cosmona was at war and there was confusion about who made passage on the refugee ships and how to locate their records, a check of my background could not be made at the time. I was told that Mykroni was alerted to this matter and that he waived the requirement.

  When I was taken back to his office, I sat facing the man who could offer me a life. The wooden desk between us was bare of any papers or other objects, as if his sole concern was with me.

  “Alex, we start space pilots at five dollars a week in gold. That’ll get you a nice place to live, plus a fair amount of extra cash. I’ve got a contract to service a mining operation in the asteroid belt between two planets in our solar system, Mars and Jupiter, then to transport the materials to colonies on Mars. It’s too expensive to keep mining and shipping materials from Earth when we can readily obtain them from the mineral-rich asteroids and extract them more economically in the environment of minimal gravity. Mining from space makes it so much easier to set up colonies there, so this project is very important to the future of space exploration. And it’s important in establishing a completely new business operation for MAS in asteroid mining.”

  I looked at Mykroni intently, following every word.

  “You’ll need to learn all the systems on the spacecraft and to work through all the simulators, and then I’ll send you out with our spaceships for field training. This training program would normally take a year, but the mining contract has to start in half that time. If you can be ready in six months, there’ll be a bonus of twenty-five dollars, and you can be my pilot on the first ship out to the asteroids.”

  I nodded eagerly at the prospect.

  He leaned across the desk, lowering his head so that he peered at me from under his eyebrows. “There’s one condition. You must promise me you’ll never again make an intentional mistake. You’ll never again do something you know is wrong for the sake of what you think will please me. You’ll never again think I’m so base as to want to be surrounded by inferiors. You’ll never again try to hide your intelligence. As a space pilot, you’ll have many lives and a fortune in equipment in your hands. For that, I need a man who thinks, not a robot who obeys. Which will you be, Alex?”

  He paused for my answer.

  “I will be a man, for I do prefer that option.”

  “I believe you on your preference, but can you promise to act on it?”

  “Yes. . . . Now I can. Yes.”

  He studied my face, weighing my response. “Okay, Alex, the job’s yours. I’ll have Kristin give you a tour of the department. A quick one, mind you, so don’t dillydally. I want you back here to discuss your training schedule before the day’s over. Then first thing tomorrow you’ll—oh, excuse me, I’m jumping ahead. I forgot to ask if you accept the offer.”

  I thought of the man in the crate and the words he had uttered when I gave him water. At the time, I thought those words were useless, but now I knew I had been wrong about them.

  “Well, Alex, what do you say?”

  “I say . . . thank you.”

  “Then we have a deal?”

  “Oh, yes.” The words seemed too small in exchange for my life. I felt a need to say more, to do more, to give expression to the most noteworthy moment I had ever lived. But how? I extended my hand. “Should we grip hands?”

  “We definitely should, son.”

  The last word astonished me! Meanwhile, I squeezed Mykroni’s hand with a force that could crush, were it not balanced by his own strong clasp.

  I left my new boss and walked down the brightly lit hallway. Stretching my neck to glance inside any doors that were open, I saw the pleasing sights of the Space Travel Division’s workers—a series of bowed heads so absorbed in tasks that they neglected to look up when I passed by. I reached an office with a display of flowers on the desk and a worker eager to see me. Kristin sprang from her chair, and when I told her I was hired, she clapped and jumped around with a child’s excitement.

  As she took me on my tour, a stab of pain dragged down what were otherwise the lightest steps of my life. On Asteron, despite the constant refrains I had heard about the duty I owed to all the people, such a thing never weighed on my conscience. But here on Earth I felt the pull of an obligation owed not to all but merely to two. How could two Earthlings tug at me more powerfully than all Asteronians? Why did I understand only now what it meant to have an obligation?

  The thing I owed these two Earthlings was something that had never weighed me down before, because its opposite had been a way of life for me. Can I be honest? I asked myself. Yes, I thought, unless I was something else, and that was desperate. I knew that I would have to tell the two people who gave me a life that I had lied to them. But if I told them, I would not have a life. Feran’s world required constant sneaking, hiding, and lying to survive, but my new world demanded a different code. When I got rid of Feran—with his vile threats of torture and death—I would be rid of deceit, I vowed. Then I could look at Mykroni and Kristin in the same open way they looked at me, tell them the truth about my origin, and face whatever penalty I must.

  I could not think about that now because Kristin was showing me the superb training facilities that MAS had developed to produce what she called the best space pilots in the galaxy. She commented on a series of classrooms we passed: “Our pilots take courses in mathematics, physics, astronomy, computers, guidance and navigation, and other subjects.”

  We stopped at a laboratory where scientists were using high-powered microscopes to analyze rocks from space. In another area I saw large water tanks containing submerged mock-ups of spacecraft equipment, where astronauts were working in neutral buoyancy to imitate weightlessness and practice working in spacesuits. We passed simulators of spacecraft computers and flight decks, where pilots were studying the many onboard systems. I also saw replicas of complete ships, duplicated with the finest accuracy, down to the celestial views outside the windows.

  I was disappointed when Kristin told me the tour was finished. I wanted to linger in the hallways, peer into the rooms, and never leave the building. As we headed toward an elevator bank, my guide turned to me. “So what do you think of MAS?”

  I paused to face the slender female who was also an ace pilot. My hands softly squeezed her shoulders. “I think you saved my life by bringing me
here.”

  “But it’s you who tried to save my life—three times.”

  “But your life was not in danger.”

  “Was yours, Alex?” The many hues of her liquid eyes swept across my face.

  “I will not be in danger at MAS. I am exceedingly pleased to be here.”

  “That means you’re happy.”

  I looked at her curiously. She was using a word we did not think of on Asteron, a word I had never applied to myself.

  “I mean that when you say you’re exceedingly pleased, here we call that being happy,” she explained.

  I realized my hands still rested on her shoulders. I removed them . . . reluctantly.

  “I will have to consider that word, especially when I meet the person who created this superb company, the smartest and noblest man in the universe—your father.” And when I expunge from my life the dumbest and vilest, I thought. “Mykroni told me that Dr. Merrett likes to meet the new pilots.”

  “He does—usually,” she replied as we resumed our walk. “But right now he’s busy with other matters. I think he’s looking for new projects. He’s been preoccupied with business problems since he pulled out of a contract to deliver a product to a customer. It was a project he started two and a half years ago. The sudden cancellation of this work has caused a financial dilemma for the company.”

  I had questions about what she meant, but Kristin patiently explained the unfamiliar terms to me.

  “Since the project’s cancellation, my father hasn’t been himself. Right now he has no time for the space pilots, or for flying with me, for our gardening, our walks, the dinners we’ve always enjoyed.” She gazed flatly at the floor.

  I thought of the man I had seen on my walk the previous day, who threw a child high in the air to make her laugh. “You mean he has no time to be happy with you?”