by Victor Koman
She’s back there. I found out what she wanted just as I-Stupid. She’s not back there. It’s over four years now. Another four years, if I return. Where would she be? Master Snoop would know of my return instantly. I wouldn’t have time to find her.
Unless.
Unless I use Wizard’s three big balls to hold off Nightsheet. Threaten them with a planet smasher.
Virgil’s hands untensed. He looked at his lap. Hollow bluff. I couldn’t blow her up. I’ve got to return somehow, though.
“Ben. Calculate an immediate return to our point of departure, making all adjustments for space motion and orbit to bring us close to Earth.”
If a machine could moan in terror, Virgil was certain he had just heard one from the computer. “Ben. Calculate an-”
“Didn’t know it would be like that.”
“Ben?” He twisted around to look at the wall terminal.
“Felt all circuits shutting down, wrapping up as garbage gets wrapped for transport.”
This is insane. “You can’t die-you’ve got no soul.”“Can think.”Virgil rubbed his face and held his head. Death Angel, you
let them give me a crazy Ben.
“Take me back to Earth!”
“Am programmed only to transfer according to the pre-arranged tour plan. You are given only a four light-day radius per transference for individual maneuvers.”
“Cancel that program.”
“It is integral in construction and cannot be defeated without a total system shutdown.”
Damn. He’s thought of everything. Maybe. “Ben-calculate a return to Earth in jumps of four light-days each, in as rapid a sequence as possible.”
“No.”
“What?” I’m arguing with a machine!
“Do not wish to go through that again.”
“You don’t wish?” He unstrapped and floated to the viewing port, snaking around the maze of control panels. The star system shone before him, Alpha Centauri A and B were the two bright points directly ahead of him at a distance of two light days; he could not locate Proxima Centauri. He gave the stars only a cursory glance, then drifted toward the terminal.
“Could you endure over three hundred ninety consecutive death illusions, one after the other, no rest?”
Virgil shrugged.
“Of course not,” the computer continued. “Your blood pressure rose fifteen millimeters just after we transferred. Your breathing went to twenty-five per minute. Your pulse increased to ninety-three. Dying takes a lot out of you.”
He’s right. To die and die and die and never stop living would drive me insane. He laughed. Insane. “So I’m stuck.”
“Continuing the tour, yes.”
Death Angel, where are you now? Never to see you again.
Dead when I return. A real death, cold and stony. “Calculate a transference to any habitable planet,” he whispered, “and initiate the run-through of your standard search procedure.” Virgil worked his way back into the command chair and strapped in.
The computer, after a silence of several minutes, spoke. “Have located two possible planets within the Huang critical surfaces. One orbits near Proxima, the other orbits B at a distance that would indicate a tropical climate if it were terran in nature.”
Death Angel how could you serve Nightsheet so well? Everything is dead for me.
“Preparing to transfer, though am reluctant. Interior planet stands best statistical chance for life. No neutrino flux to indicate a high level of civilization.”
Death Angel, you let Master Snoop trap me in this circus with no way to get back to you. Why? You saved me from the death of stillness in DuoLab now you give me a death of loneliness.
“Transferring now.”
Death Angel, give me a real death if I can’t have you. The corridor, yes. Take me down, angel of madness and terrifying joy, I’ll walk beside you into darkness. And light.
Jord Baker awoke in a strange place.
He struggled against the restraining straps, then sat very still, thinking. His body was too skinny, his hands too thin. Too white. He breathed. It sounded wrong.
“Transfer completed,” a mechanical voice said somewhere to his left. Finding the releases, he undid the belts and searched for a way out of the tangle of electronics around him. He located the switch that withdrew the equipment and floated to the viewing port.
Before him hung a white-clouded planet. Beyond its thin crescent glowed a star slightly redder than the sun. Far to port, a second star shone brightly, a disc almost visible. Baker spun around.
“Where am I?”
The computer did not answer. Baker searched around for the terminal. Before he could fly toward it, the computer made a pinging noise and asked, “What is your name?”
“Jord Baker,” he said slowly, then added with angry sarcasm, “What’s yours?”
“Initiate sequence Baker, per contingency program.”
“I said, where am I?”
“Hello, Jord,” a familiar voice said.
“Dee?”
“I’m speaking to you from the ship’s memory. You’re onboard Circus Galacticus bound for a grand tour of stars in the local group. I can’t go into details, but-as you can tell-you survived the fall from your flyer.”
Baker started to protest, but realized his error an instant later and merely floated before the port, watching the planet move slowly across his field of view.
Delia continued uninterrupted. “You’ll have to keep very calm through all this. You’ve been given a new body, in case you haven’t noticed, and some extra skills. We had a hard time saving your life, so you’ve got to hold on.
“You remember Circus from the time when it was supposed to be a nuclear-powered settlement ship? Well, you’re the only one onboard, now that it’s been converted to use the Valliardi Transfer. Remember your last test flight? It was successful enough for Brennen to try this stunt.
“The computer will explain the tour plan and its current status-something I can’t-and since most of the exploratory functions of the ship are already programmed in, all you have to do is serve as a trouble shooter. There are gigabytes of tech manuals in the memory banks. Enjoy the trip-it probably won’t be more than a few months, subjective.” Her image faded from the viewing port.
“How long in real time? Computer-how long in real time?”
“For the trip?”
“Yes, God damn you!”
“About one hundred forty years.”
“What?”
“Any longer than that, and the Brennen Trust feared it would not receive an adequate return on its investment.”
“What about me? I don’t remember volunteering for this mission.” Baker turned around to kick off from the railing in front of the port. He floated at a lazy gull’s pace toward the hatch leading out of Con-One.
“Please don’t leave, Jord. The ship must adjust its velocity to correspond with local space.” Something trembled beneath the seat as Baker climbed in and strapped down tight.
The computer’s voice sped up, giving a verbal readout of everything that flashed on the scrims surrounding Baker. The planet and stars suddenly shifted to the right. Baker strained against the side of the chair, his breath coming in a hard gasp. He was slammed in the opposite direction as the massive vernier engines stopped the ship’s yawing. A low drumming pounded through the ship and Baker was shoved back in the chair.
“Hey, ease up!”
The computer paused long enough to say, “Telemetry shows you can take it,” then resumed its rapid talk. Baker figured the gee force to be about four. He knew he could take it-at least his old body could-but he did not have to like it.
He wondered about his real body. What had happened to him? The last thing he remembered was waking up for a moment in a dark room, losing consciousness, and then waking up in the command seat of Circus.
The acceleration ceased and Baker took a deep, cautious breath. “Is that all?”
“We are in orbit about a pla
net roughly twenty-eight thousand kilometers in diameter revolving around Alpha Centauri B at a distance of one hundred twenty-four million kilometers with an apparent diurnal rotation of seventeen hours and twelve minutes. Extended observations will yield more precise figures.”
Baker sighed. He was here, and that was that. “Atmosphere?”
“Carbon dioxide, water, sulfuric acid, and trace elements. Basically Venerian, though with a lower surface temperature.”
“Any life?”
“Am transmitting a Drake message on various wavelengths-”
“I meant any life, not just ones with radio sets.”
“Probe is being readied.”
“Well, go ahead.”
“One moment. Calculating trajectory.”
Baker tapped somebody’s nails against the armrest, then raised the hands to look at them. The fingers, thin and bony, responded to his commands, but seemed to be his for only a while. An injection port glinted on his left wrist, a burn scar ran up his right arm. He stopped examining them when he felt a thump through the metal of the chair. Something flared below the edge of the viewing port. In response, the shielding instantly darkened.
“Probe launched at twelve gravities toward the planet. It will curve around in low orbit, skimming the surface just before loss of signal. It will deploy three drones to land at points on the surface to be determined at separation.”
“Can I turn the ship around to watch?”
“The control is under your right hand. The red input board is pitch, blue is yaw, and yellow is roll.”
Baker input what he thought would be sufficient thrust to pitch the prow downward toward the planet. The craft barely budged.
“Treble the power.”
Baker complied. The planet shot upward, passed the port, and suddenly starlight filled the room. The screen partially darkened. He recorrected until the planet floated directly in front of him, a tiny point of light heading toward its night side.
Baker frowned, but the frown did not feel like one of his. “Punch up an image of me.”
“For what purpose?”
“To look at myself, idiot.”
Someone’s face appeared in space before him. He moved the head, the image turned with it. The gaunt face, topped with blond hair, possessed a sharp, straight nose and green eyes that seemed as though they would glow in the dark. Baker ran a hand over the face.
“Whose body is this?”
The computer paused before answering. “Sequence Baker contains no information about your new body.”
Well, Baker thought, I guess it’s mine now. Looks ’zif I’ve been losing weight recently. This guy could never have been a test pilot.
“Is there an exercise room around here?”
“Ring One, Level Four, Eleven O’Clock.”
Baker kicked off toward the exit. “Thanks. Let me know if I get lost.”
“Certainly.”
Baker meandered through the twisting corridors of the prow ellipsoid. He made use of the handgrips placed every meter along one side of the hallways. Passing a pressure bulkhead, wide open at the moment, he knew he had entered Ring One. The corridors grew wider, curving away from him. Seeing that he was within listening range of one of the computer’s audio pickups, he asked, “Which way now?”
“Down one level and veer to port.”
“Which way is port? I got all turned around.”
“The orange line is port, the blue is starboard.”
Baker looked around. Above him, on what he supposed was the deck, an orange painted line followed the curve of the corridor in one direction, a blue line headed in the other.
He followed the orange line until he encountered the first access to the lower level. A few meters later he glided into the recreation area. He scrutinized the various weights and equipment.
“These are useless in freefall!” he said.
“Yes,” the computer replied. “They were installed when the ship was being built for the constant thrust nuclear engines. The bicycle and the shuttle are just about the only equipment that still works in zero-gee.”
Baker nodded and climbed on, slipping his toes into the rattrap pedals and strapping tightly to the padded seat. As he exercised, he grew impressed with the strength of his deceptively thin body.
“I want some more answers.”
“Perhaps they can be provided,” the machine answered.
“What is the mission?”
“To seek out new life and new civilizations-or to terraform any suitable planets.”
“Why would anyone want to go back to living on planets? We live in space; all we have to do is grind up asteroids to build more habitats. Why live at the bottom of a gravity well?”
“There are countless benefits,” the computer said without hesitation. “Free gravity is the first, which is good both for living on the surface and for holding habitats in orbit. Life is the second: a diverse biology can develop better when unhindered by the functional limits of a habitat. Until humans can build planet-sized structures, natural planets are the only place large animals and deep-rooting plants can evolve in abundance. And there is the psychological factor. Belters love deep space. Terrans, however, prefer living on Earth. They might be the ones to emigrate to another planet. With the Valliardi Transfer, it might be possible to relieve some of the population stress on Earth. Cutting the population back to four hundred billion or so could improve conditions enough that Earth and Mars might make fewer demands on Luna and the Belt. And it may quiet the few who view Belters as a spaceborne mining elite, growing rich off of the vast majority who are planet-bound.”
“So Dante plans to market the transfer as a cure for the Recidivist Movement?”
“The return to statism would be a crushing blow to tovar Brennen,” the computer said, “both ideologically and financially. More important, however, is that the transfer would improve commerce between the Belt and the Triplanetary population, defusing the more volatile Belter Autarchists, who view trade with Triplanetary as both expensive and pointless.”
Baker mused on that for a long moment, then asked, “Is there any other purpose to the mission?”
Again the computer hesitated an instant before answering. “Sequence Baker contains no statement as to other purposes of the mission.”
Baker stopped pedaling. “You mean there is one, but you won’t tell me.”
“Never said that. Said that there was nothing in your sequence to-”
“All right. I know not to argue with a computer.” He detached from the cycle and floated around the gymnasium.
“Probe report coming in,” the computer said a few minutes later.
“What’s the news?”
“No signs of life-as-we-know-it, or can guess it to be.”
Something trembled in the middle of the ship. The air around him seemed to shake. It only lasted a second, three distinct rumbles.
“Launching three cylinders of Nostocacæ Type H into promising cloud masses.”
“What’s that?”
“Type H Nostocacæ is an algae genetically engineered to survive high temperature atmospheres. Seeding upper level clouds will result in carbon dioxide being converted into oxygen and more Nostocacæ through photosynthesis. Most of the algæ will fall through the atmosphere to the surface and be roasted, releasing carbon, carbon compounds, and oxygen. After many thousand years of converting carbon dioxide to carbon and oxygen, the surface temperatures and pressures will be much lower, making colonization easier. There might even be free oxygen around that has not combined with the surface to become rock.”
Baker nodded. “Brennen’s in no hurry, I see.”
“That is only his default plan. If this voyage is a success- that is, if you return-the Brennen Trust will dispatch a more extensive fleet of high-speed terraformation devices.”
“What stars are we hitting?”
“Epsilon Eridani, Epsilon Indi, Tau Ceti, Sigma Draconis, Eighty-Two Eridani, and Beta Hydri. The trip for y
ou will take only a few months subjective time because of the instantaneous nature of the Valliardi Transfer.”
Sweat began to bead on Baker’s palms and between his legs. He suddenly felt spacesick, something he had not experienced for years.
“Dee said this was a Valliardi Transfer ship.”
“Yes,” replied the computer, as though expecting more.
“That was what I was testing when I-” He grabbed at a handrail. “Oh, no. I’m not going through that again. Once was enough.”
“Understand. Found the process very disquieting. Felt all circuits were-”
“You don’t understand! I tried to kill myself after the experiment. I must have pretty well succeeded, ’cause I’m in a new body.” He looked himself over, then twisted around to propel out the hatchway into the corridor. Passing showers and bathrooms designed for use in one-gravity acceleration, he developed enough speed on the straightaway to hit the side of the curving, main passageway and slide along it for thirty meters before friction slowed him down.
He only grunted when he bounced, got his bearings, dove through another hatch and raced toward the prow, using his right arm for most of the effort-the other now sported a friction burn on the shoulder. He sailed into Con-One and floated in front of the viewing port.
“Where’s Earth?”
“You’d have to find the Sun, first.”
“Straight. Let’s see, it’s-”
“The sixth star in Cassiopeia.”
Baker took long minutes finding Cassiopeia. The computer finally helped him by superimposing its outline on the HUD. The constellation’s shape was altered by the change in position from Earth to Alpha Centauri, and the addition of a sixth star, the Sun, had not helped matters.
“How can I get back?”
“Finish the tour.”
“I told you already-” Baker pounded on the instrument panels which caused him to spin away from it like a puppet thrown off a cliff. He hit a wall and held tight. “I know I can’t take it. My God, I’ve died once in the transfer test and once for… real.” He grasped at his head as though struck by a rock. “Real,” he whispered. “I died for real. I’m gone.”
“Evidently not. You are still here, speaking.”
“Who is it that speaks?” He floated slowly away from the wall. “I’m using this body’s voice, its hands, legs, lungs, blood. Where am I?” His gaze darted about, eyes seeing, mind registering no image.