Into the Sea of Stars

by William R. Forstchen

  "But there does seem to be an airlock."

  "We're not sure its functional," Stasz replied. "Second, there's only one person in here who's had experience with an EVA propulsion device, and that's me. And if you think I'm going out into that floating junkyard, you're crazy. Remember, comrades, if I buy it, who the hell is going to fly you back home?"

  None of them liked to be reminded of that. Stasz was all they had, and as such, he was treated with special care when it came to dockings and explorations.

  "So, who wants to go?" Shelley asked again, and all were silent.

  "We could always tie a tether line to someone, he could push out, and if he runs into a problem we could reel him back in."

  "Well, sister," Richard said reproachfully, "what do you mean 'him'? I thought after that dose of liberation at our last visit, you would be more than eager to prove yourself yet again."

  "Just remember, buster, it was I who saved you from an operation that might have improved your personality."

  "And you never did tell us, sister Ellen, just how sis­terly you and Carrie got. My, my, I would have loved to have seen that show."

  "You rotten son of a bitch!" Ellen stood up with such vigor that she tumbled from her seat and catapulted clear into the forward cabin.

  Her shrieks filled the air and it was some seconds before the rest of them realized that the shrieks were not screams of rage but of terror.

  They pushed forward and Ian felt his heart skip over into a near palpitation as he looked toward the forward window. A mummified face was looking in the window from the outside. But this mummy was grinning and its eyes were rolling. It brought up a space-suited hand and waved.

  "Guess that settles the question of whether we go to the neighbors or the neighbors come here," Richard said. "I better get a bottle, it looks like he needs a drink."

  "Crack one for me, as well," Ellen said hoarsely. "I need it."

  "Elijah, they called me Elijah Crump." He spoke slowly, each word formed distinctly and with effort, as if every syllable was a physical form that had to be worked over before expelled.

  With quiet ceremony Richard drifted forward and of­fered a drink container, but first he shook it lightly. The tinkle of ice could be heard.

  "Richard, should you?" Ellen asked.

  Elijah looked at him, a glint of suspicion in his eyes.

  "Are you from Sagit?"

  "Sagit?" Ian asked.

  "He must mean Delta Sagittarius," Shelley interjected, and pointed back to the front of the ship where the one star now dominated the sky before them.

  "Yes, Delta Sagittarius." He stumbled over Sagittarius but they knew what he had said. "Curious name, what does it mean? We never did know."

  Ian wrestled with so many questions. He had almost leaped upon Elijah the moment he had cleared the airlock, so eager was he to find out why. Why? There were so many whys, but he had to be patient. Elijah was not the typical image of what one expected to come floating in for a friendly visit.

  First off, his suit was downright dangerous. It was of an ancient pattern, last seen in Earth environment a mil­lennium ago. Patched and repatched in a crazy-quilt pat­tern that looked like the efforts of a hallucinating seamstress. He was clothed in a set of coveralls that had been worked on in the same way, worn and threadbare from a thousand cleanings, matching the appearance of the man who wore them.

  Elijah was lean, gaunt, and stretched out thin, his fin­gers long and sensitive, his high forehead fringed with a thin wisp of snow-white hair that matched the long flowing beard framing his face. Eagerly his eyes darted from one to the other of them, drinking in the sight of them; yet his look was also one of suspicion and fear.

  "I haven't spoken to anyone in, how long is it?..." He lapsed into silence again, then noticed the drink still being offered by Richard.

  Tentatively he took the container in his hand and brought the straw to his lips.

  Tears came to his eyes.

  "Bless you," he whispered. "I remember now, it's... it's called alcohol."

  "Gin, my man," Richard replied cheerfully, "and the best to be had in this part of the cosmos."

  "You were saying that you hadn't spoken to anyone," Ian interjected, fearful that Richard would start in on a comparative study of alcohol that would drag their guest into a numbing oblivion. "How long has it been?"

  Elijah nodded his head slowly, took another sip and savored it.

  "I remember a name for it, we called it godt. I had a chronometer aboard, back there." He gestured vaguely back toward the airlock. "It broke after measuring fifty-one godt."

  "That's Old Russian for years," Ian whispered in quiet amazement.

  Elijah took another sip and smiled gravely at them. "I have survived upon that hulk alone. The other survivors died within the first year, and I was left alone. Alone after the destruction. It's been at least fifty years," he whis­pered, "since I have talked to another man." Elijah started to laugh.

  "Alone, alone, all, all alone,

  Alone on a wide, wide sea!

  And never a saint took pity on

  My soul in agony."

  Ian sat enrapt, but it was Shelley who interrupted.

  "I've heard a fragment of that."

  "Coleridge, The Ancient Mariner."

  "We've only a fragment," she continued. "The rest is believed lost."

  "I know it all, right in here," Elijah said, pointing to his head. His voice rose up with a deep sonorous tone that echoed through the ship.

  "I closed my lids, and kept them close,

  And the balls like pulses beat;

  For the sky and the sea, and the sea, and the sky

  Lay like a load on my weary eye,

  And the dead were at my feet."

  He stopped and looked at them.

  "I'm sorry, I was alone, you see. Never a voice to respond, never a soul to listen as I shouted my words to the universe."

  Ian could hardly respond, stunned by the magnitude of what he was observing. Fifty years alone, lost in the endless reaches of the universe! "What happened?" he asked tentatively.

  Elijah took another sip and there was a wild glint in his eye.

  "'For I alone have lived to tell thee this tale!' "

  "What?"

  "You don't realize, my friends, that I've waited two score and ten years to utter those simple words, 'for I alone have lived to tell thee this tale,' can't you see? Can't you see what this means?" His voice broke and he started to sob.

  Ian looked across at Richard and the others.

  "Not now, Ian, don't push him yet. It can wait," Rich­ard said softly. "It can wait, let him have his drink."

  Richard gently took Elijah by the arm and led him astern.

  "A nation, no, a race," he shouted, "and down from across the millennium I am all that is left of my world, for I am Lazarus returned from the realm of the dead to tell thee all!"

  "I was working in the backup reactor housing when they hit us." Ian turned with a start of fear. It was his watch, and as the others slept he had settled back to watch Elijah's slowly tumbling realm and the sharp, cold light of Delta Sag. He had never heard Elijah's quiet approach.

  Ian beckoned for Elijah to join him in the Co's chair. He was no longer wearing the bizarrely patched coveralls, and he was freshly shaved and washed. Elijah looked at Ian and smiled softly. Ian was shocked to notice that most of his teeth were missing.

  Elijah looked out the starboard window and stared at the slowly turning reactor unit.

  "That was my entire world, nay, my entire universe. Main corridor eighty-three meters, fifty-two point one centimeters from main bulkhead to bulkhead. Shall I tell you how many tiles were set in the floor? How many were cracked and what each crack looked like? How about screws securing each air vent? I spent eternity floating, nameless, voiceless, eternally alone. Ah, such will be my eternity in Hell for having endlessly cursed the name of God in my madness."

  Elijah looked back to Ian and smiled again. "I'm no
t mad, Ian Lacklin, not mad at all. Perhaps I am saner than any man alive, for I have learned the power of waiting, but I shall not make you wait. First I will tell you all, then you can tell me what I desire. Will you tell me of the paradise of my grandsires, where you walk upon the outside of your world and all is green and blue skies above? But first I will tell you."

  Ian nodded and smiled encouragingly. He was half afraid that Elijah was tottering on the edge of a complete break­down, and when that came, his message would be lost forever.

  "As I was saying, I was working on the backup reactor when they came."

  "Who?"

  "Ah, yes. From Delta Sagit, the followers of the Fa­ther."

  "The Father?"

  "Ah, yes, forgive me. You don't know. My world... I believe you call them colonies, had at last made Sun Fall. I was, let's see, sixteen that year, and already proven on the reactors and bio support."

  Ian looked at him in amazement. Sun Fall he called it. A journey of a thousand years and at last they make Sun Fall. What it must have been like, arriving in a new realm.

  "I can remember it. Our world was indeed desperate when we arrived. Across the millennium of the voyage some systems had failed, others had gradually been de­pleted, and we needed what our science people called a gas giant with hard-surfaced satellites, so that necessary resources could be mined. Coming in on Delta Sagit also gave us a new energy source, which we had already been exploiting through the use of parabolic mirrors.

  "There are five gas giants around Delta Sagit and we went into, how do you say—" He waved his hands vaguely in a circular motion.

  "Orbit?" Ian prompted.

  "Yes, orbit, that's the word, around the second farthest from the sun. Even as we arrived, they were waiting for us."

  "Who? Was the Father's name Franklin Smith?" Ian ventured.

  Elijah looked at him with incredulous eyes. "How did you know?"

  "We've been following his path since the beginning."

  "They said he was a great prophet," Elijah said, "who spoke of the Satan that had driven them into the Hegira.

  "Our beacon was on as we approached. For five years before orbit we had intercepted some of their broadcasts, and they were aware of us, as well."

  "Who are they?" Ian asked.

  "They are followers of the Father," Elijah repeated in a vague singsong manner.

  "You say they met you?"

  "Remember, Ian Lacklin, I was not even of one score years. We of my age and station had no word of our leader's decisions, you see, our society was ruled by a philosophos."

  "I don't recognize that..."

  "From Plato, at least that's what I remember. I only saw the Father's delegation once, when they first docked with us. They were tall men and women, proud in their bearing, with dark faces and eyes that bespoke some inner vision. At least, that is how I remember, but you know the tricks that memory plays with an old man."

  Ian nodded, trying to envision the encounter between two alien cultures separated by a thousand years from the common cradle of their birth.

  "Our philosophos then told us that we were leaving. He said that they desired of us what we would not give and told us to do what we would refuse. Therefore, we would leave. We had but one month to stock up enough raw material for the replicator machines, and then we left."

  "You had replicator machines?" Ian asked.

  "Yes, a replicator. We always had them, don't you?"

  Ian shook his head. "According to Beaulieu, they were only legend, machines that could be programmed to make whatever was desired, as long as enough raw material was fed in from the other end. Before the Holocaust some ninth-generation devices were used to mass-produce elements for the colonial development, but true replicators, capable of producing just about anything, including models of themselves, were only in the developmental stage when the war came. At least, so Beaulieu thought."

  "Ah, so I see," Elijah said pityingly.

  "What was it they wanted?"

  "I don't know."

  "You don't know?"

  "Have you ever been sixteen and in love? Her name was Rachel..."

  Ian nodded and understood. In the reality of sixteen-year-olds, there were some things even more important than the destiny of worlds.

  "So we left. For six months we accelerated up and away, using the hydrogen mined from the gas giants along with matter/antimatter drives. And then there came the day."

  His voice broke and he looked out the window at the ship.

  "You know, she's over there still," Elijah said softly.

  "Who?"

  "My beloved Rachel. You realize I couldn't send her out with the rest. I found her a year or so after the dark day." He stopped for a minute, as if trying to control himself, and then pushed on. "I found her floating in the wreckage and brought her back. A room in my area had been ripped open to space. I tied my love in there with a cable, so she wouldn't float away. You know, I went to visit her every day and looked through the window at her. I said good-bye to her before coming. I asked her if she wanted to come with me but she said no, she wanted to stay with our world, forever sixteen. I said good-bye to her and she said good-bye to me and said she would miss me...

  "My love she sleeps,

  And may her sleep,

  As it is lasting so be deep,

  Soft may the worms about her creep."

  His voice started to rise and crackle like old parchment being mishandled.

  "It's all right, old boy." Ian turned with a start, and there was Richard smiling at the two of them, drink in hand. Ian sighed with relief.

  "She understands, my good man, she understands," Richard said soothingly. "Here, have a little bracer." And he offered a chilled drink container.

  Elijah snatched the container and took a long, deep pull.

  "You were talking about the day," Ian asked softly. Richard gave him a look of reproach, but he decided to push ahead anyhow.

  "I was working on the reactor, changing a fuel rod. Routine sort of thing. Suddenly it was as if my world had slammed into a solid rock. I thought we had taken a— what's the word?"

  "Meteor... asteroid?"

  "Yes, asteroid hit. I had heard of such things. We had a collision drill once a year. In fact, it was such a ritual that it was a festival day, The last one was the first time Rachel and I..." Elijah suddenly looked at them with cold clear eyes. "But that is gone forever."

  His voice now took on a clipped urgency, as if he were making some official report that had waited half a century to be given.

  "The first salvo hit the torus in sections one through twenty. I went to the primary observation port and saw entire sections going up, exploding outward in flashes of light, tumbling debris, and shattered bodies. I saw it, I saw it! My God, that was my family, my mother and father! Damn you, damn you bastards forever!"

  Richard placed a hand on his shoulder and Elijah looked at him with a haunted expression.

  "Maybe you shouldn't," Richard said.

  Elijah gave him a weak smile. "You know, I never saw them—I mean, who it was that did it. I saw the flash of the beams, but nothing else. I knew at once that somehow the followers of the Father had caught up with us. The beam weapons slashed out, again and again, with such neat surgical precision, slicing out section after section. The imbalance of the cylinder now started its own actions, ripping it apart from the central core that I was in.

  "We screamed in impotent rage as the beam finally caught us out and slashed the core wide open.

  "The section that I was in separated, cut from the main. 'Subreactor one and agro research and development sec­tion one, reporting in. Is there anyone there, is there anyone there?'"

  He looked again at the hulk then turned back to them.

  "Ten of us with air. We had thrown enough emergency locks to seal the section off. Six of them were badly in­jured, mostly from a radiation spill in the containment area.

  "We fought for weeks. Patching leaks, stabilizing the rese
arch lab, and creating an environmental support sys­tem. We alone had survived. We found a couple of suits and rigged up an airlock, and thus started my scavenging operations. I would crawl through the corridors, pushing past the bodies. You know, a body can make excellent fertilizer. Oh, you'll do it if there's need enough. You know, you can do something else, as well. They're frozen dry, all you have to do is add a little water and the meat's almost as tasty as fresh," Elijah whispered.

  Ian was unable to respond.

  "The others couldn't stand it. I watched them go, one by one. They'd crawl into the airlock, some of them crying, others praying. One was laughing. They'd pop the door and take the leap. The Big Leap, that's what we called it. I'd watch them struggle out there, and later I'd go out after 'em. After all, they were fresh..."

  Ian was stunned.

  "There was nothing else you could have done," Rich­ard said, his voice soft and soothing. "There was nothing else for you, it was necessary in order to survive."

  Elijah looked at him and smiled. "Conservation, re­cycling, that was the world, the world of my forefathers. So I lived, I salvaged and lived, forever alone, in a world of floating death. Anyhow, it tasted quite good. Still does, you know."

  He smiled at Richard. "If you want, I'll go out and get you one. I've got a whole stockpile of legs. Only the best for my friends."

  "No, that's quite all right, quite all right, my friend," Richard replied, making a supreme effort not to show his emotions. Ian floated in the corner and tried not to gag.

  "Rachel and I..." Elijah continued. "My poor, dear Rachel who floated in an airless room. And the one book, treasured in the museum. A book from before the Great Sailing. I found it floating in the wreckage. Literature of the English-Speaking People. Oh, I know it by heart, I do. I know it all by heart, for I read it to Rachel every day, and I shouted it to the heavens my entire life as I floated with my dinner in that corridor—eighty-two meters, fifty-two point one centimeters."

  He looked over at the hulk again.

  " 'Let us fly these troubled waters, Ahab, let us come hard about.' "