Orion Lost

by Alastair Chisholm

  The girl stopped and grinned. “Hello,” she said cheerfully.

  “Hello … Lauryn?”

  Lauryn nodded. “Yeah, but that’s just my normal name. My handle is –” she raised a hand and made some sort of gesture – “Limit. You should call me that.”

  “Limit?”

  “Totally! What’s your handle?”

  “I’m just Beth.”

  “That’s OK, you’ll think of something. This is Mikkel; he doesn’t have a proper name yet either.” Mikkel nodded.

  Lauryn/Limit pointed her pad at Beth. “We’ve been tracking you!”

  “What?”

  “On the pad! I’ve figured out how! We saw you coming down the corridor.”

  “I told her we could ask Ship,” said Mikkel, shrugging, “But she wanted to work it out herself.”

  “Why were you tracking me?”

  “Well … you were the only one I could find. The tracker’s got a limited range. But also because you were so cool when you threw up – bleurghhhh!” She mimed being sick, then turned to Mikkel. “You should have seen it, zero-g sick, it just went everywhere, and then all these cool flying robots came down, and sucked it up, and everyone was, like, eeeeeewww, and—”

  “OK!” snapped Beth. “Yes, I was sick. It was the zero grav—”

  “That’s what I said. That’s why the gravity here is so awesome. In fact, this ship is awesome all over. Have you scanned the engines yet?”

  “Er, no?”

  “You should! They have some sweet automation, it’s all wired to Ship, it’s completely routable everywhere and all the cabling is embedded into the infrastructure and, and…”

  “It’s awesome?” ventured Beth.

  Lauryn nodded wildly. “Totally.” She trotted off down the hallway. “C’mon,” she said, waving her pad. “I want to try this some more.”

  Mikkel followed her and Beth found herself pulled along in their wake. “Try what? Where are we going?”

  Mikkel said, “We are trying Lauryn’s app. It works out who people are by—”

  “By scanning their faces and matching them to the pre-flight profiles they put up, you know, where they introduced everyone. Look—” Lauryn thrust the pad at Beth, who saw a brief glimpse of her passport photo. “It taps into Ship’s processors for the face recognition. Anyway, I want to try it out with a crowd, so – here goes!”

  She paused, and Beth realised that they were at the entrance to the cafeteria. Lauryn dived in, and Mikkel too, leaving Beth standing outside on her own. She shook her head in bemusement, and then grinned.

  Here goes, she thought, and followed them in.

  3

  Vihaan

  The cafeteria was a large, brightly lit space, part refectory, part coffee house, with tables scattered around and a few sofas at the back. The serving area was automated and staffed by small kitchen robots.

  It was noisy, with groups of kids from about nine and up chattering, shouting and running around. There were no adults – instead, Ship was keeping order. She was everywhere, her disembodied blue heads holding dozens of conversations.

  Lauryn was already heading at speed towards a group near the door. They seemed older than Beth, fifteen or so, and she realised that everyone had more or less clumped together into age groups. Lauryn wielded the pad at them and talked rapidly.

  “—Marcus Ackar, you’re from Germany, cool, and you’re Fiona Howard, you’re a gymnast – awesome! – and you like dogs…” The teenagers looked at her with a mix of bemusement, humour and mild contempt, but Lauryn didn’t seem to notice.

  Mikkel and Beth watched her.

  “She’s enthusiastic, isn’t she?” said Beth.

  Mikkel smiled. “She found me when I was ten metres out of my cabin,” he said in his soft, precise voice, “and I think she has not stopped talking yet.”

  They ordered milkshakes from the little serving droids and took them over to the empty end of a table. Mikkel nodded towards a large bright mural of a landscape under a red sun, occupying one whole wall of the cafeteria. “Look,” he said. “Our new world.”

  Beth realised it was a moving simulation of a landscape, with a title: “EOS FIVE”. Their new home… It looked similar to Earth, though the colours were different. Eos was a dwarf star and its light was redder, giving the scene an orange cast. The grass was slightly blue, genetically altered to cope better with the alien light and soil. It stretched across the world under orange-blue skies and soft clouds.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said.

  “Yes… But it does not look like that, hey?”

  “I know,” said Beth. “They’re still cooking it. I saw the stream about the terraforming machines.” Right now, she knew, the colony point at Eos Five was covered in hundreds of machines, robots and terraformers; planting the seeds, carving rivers, encouraging soil microbes, preparing the land. It would be years – decades, centuries, perhaps – before the whole planet was transformed.

  “It’s all really rough and wild out there just now,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said, nodding seriously. “But we are rugged and adventurous.” After a moment Beth realised he was joking and sniggered.

  “That’s me, for sure,” she agreed.

  “I am studying Advanced and Xeno Languages,” he said. “This colony, it is all English speakers, but if we meet an alien I will be ready. I know the Videshi for I surrender – please do not kill me.” Again, his face was absolutely serious, and then he gave a very tiny smile.

  Beth laughed. “Always a handy skill,” she said. “Better than me. I’m doing Command Training.” She always felt slightly embarrassed to say it out loud. “It’s what they give you if you don’t have any actual skills, I think. I don’t know if I’m really the leader type.”

  “I should salute, yes?”

  “Oh, for sure,” she said. “I wish—Hey, is that Lauryn?”

  Mikkel turned. At the other end of the cafeteria a row was breaking out. A large boy was laughing and holding a pad up in the air, and Lauryn was jumping up for it.

  “C’mon, tiny!” he yelled, “You can make it! C’mon!” Lauryn nearly reached it, but the boy pushed her and she fell over.

  “I think it is—” started Mikkel, but he was already alone.

  Lauryn had picked herself up. She was blinking, as if trying not to cry.

  “Please give it back,” she said in a small voice.

  The boy held it out, but he was still grinning.

  “Listen up, tiny,” he said. “You keep your nerdy little toys away from us. Go back to your own end with the preschoolers, OK? Or next time—”

  “Or next time what?” snapped Beth. She shot in between Lauryn and the boy and squared up to him. “You give it back to her now.” Her blood pumped in her ears and she felt the hot, slightly dizzy sensation of knowing she was about to do something reckless.

  The boy looked surprised. “What?”

  “NOW!” Beth shouted. People turned and stared, and the boy looked uncertain, but he didn’t back down. Beth, meanwhile, was realising that he was a good head taller than her and looked like he could fight. But her anger kept her going.

  The boy’s eyes flicked to someone behind Beth, as if for help. Beth whirled round. Sitting across from them, leaning back on a chair, sat another boy – about her age, maybe older, with light brown skin and black, short-cropped hair. He wore a military-style jumpsuit that should have looked dorky but on him seemed right. He gazed at them and smiled, as if he found the scene amusing.

  He stood up and walked across. “Why are you screaming?” he asked Beth. He kept his voice low and calm, but looked at her as if she was an unruly servant.

  But Beth wasn’t about to be intimidated. “This lummock yours?” she demanded. “You like watching him bully people? You proud of that?”

  The boy grinned. His teeth were straight and very white. “Arnold,” he said, without looking away from Beth, “give the little girl back her toy.”

  The ot
her boy – Arnold – threw the pad on to the ground near Lauryn, and Beth heard it scrape as it landed. Lauryn pounced on it and then shouted, “I’m not a little girl!”

  The boy smiled again. “You’re a girl, and you are certainly little. Arnold has explained that you shouldn’t be bothering your elders and betters.”

  His voice stayed calm, quiet. It was hypnotic. Beth felt herself deflating.

  “And who are you to be so bloody mighty?” she managed. “You think you’re so special?”

  He laughed, and so did some of the others around her. But before he could answer, the face of Ship appeared between them.

  “Excuse me,” it said. “This activity is disturbing the other children. Also, property damage has occurred. Is everything all right?”

  “Absolutely,” said the boy smoothly. “We were just advising some of the less mature children on proper behaviour around others.”

  “That’s a lie!” snapped Beth.

  Ship paused for a second and then said, “Your account is inconsistent with the actions recorded in this area, Vihaan. Please clarify.”

  “My apologies,” said Vihaan, still smiling. “I’m sure everything is fine now.”

  Beth hissed, but Lauryn was pulling her away. She heard Ship say, “Your father has asked me to discuss all such interactions with him, Vihaan. Is there anything you wish me to add?” and to her satisfaction she saw a scowl cloud the boy’s face.

  Then they were away, Lauryn on one side and Mikkel on the other. Lauryn stared up at Beth in wonder.

  “You. Were. Awesome.” she said.

  “Not leadership material, hey?” asked Mikkel.

  “Um.” Now it was over, Beth felt only embarrassment. And she noticed the scrape on Lauryn’s pad. If I hadn’t done that, she’d probably have got it back in one piece, she thought. Why did I go rushing in like that?

  “Do you know who that was? Do you know? Do you?” Lauryn was almost dancing along beside her.

  “What? Er, no. Should I?”

  Even Mikkel laughed. “That was Vihaan Joshi,” he said. “Son of Amarjeet Joshi, yes?”

  Beth stopped. “What, really?”

  Amarjeet Joshi. Captain Amarjeet Joshi, commander of the Orion and everyone on it.

  “Oh no.” She clapped a hand over her face. “Mum’s going to kill me.”

  4

  Sleeping

  A week later, the Orion had her official launch party.

  By now she was travelling at over a hundred thousand kilometres an hour and they were far from Earth, well beyond the Moon, and a sizeable fraction of the distance to Mars. The ship had settled in now, with last-minute repairs and reorganisations complete, and they were nearing their first Jump point. The essential part of their journey was about to start, and so Captain Joshi had arranged the launch party to celebrate.

  He stood at the front in his white formal dress uniform, next to a screen that showed a maintenance hatch on the outer hull. As the crowd watched, one of the Gizmos – the large maintenance robots aboard ship – left the ship, carrying a small bottle of champagne. It smashed the bottle against the side of the hull and the champagne vaporised into space, and the sky burst into glorious colour as hundreds of tiny firework microsatellites created a laser lightshow.

  A man came out of the crowd and nodded to the captain. He too wore a white dress uniform, although Beth thought that he looked rather better in his than Captain Joshi. He was younger, and a little shorter; he had high cheekbones and deep brown, almost black, eyes, a very crisp black quiff of hair and a neat stubble beard. He was smiling at the light show.

  “Who’s the man next to the captain?” Beth asked.

  Beth’s mum looked up. “That would be Captain Kier,” she said. “He’s captain of the Sparrowhawk, our scout ship. He’ll be joining us for the whole trip.” She glanced across at Beth. “Handsome, isn’t he?” she asked, sounding amused.

  “Mu-um,” muttered Beth. She felt her face go a little red and ducked her head, and it took her a few moments to realise there was someone standing next to her chair.

  “Good evening, Lieutenant McKay,” said Captain Joshi.

  Beth looked up.

  Captain Joshi was very tall, and his gleaming bald head made him seem taller. He had a long, slightly curved nose, dark eyes and thick eyebrows. He was smiling politely, but his manner suggested he would rather be under enemy fire than at a party. Next to him stood Captain Kier, with one hand tucked in a pocket and a glass of champagne in the other.

  “Good evening, captains,” said Beth’s mum. “May I introduce my husband, Douglas? And this is my daughter, Beth.”

  The captains and Beth’s dad nodded to each other. Captain Joshi started asking questions about the farm, and Kier turned to Beth.

  “Hey,” he said. “I’m Henry.”

  “Hi,” she said.

  He was handsome, she thought, and seemed far too young to be a captain, but he carried himself with a smiling confidence, somehow relaxed and ready for action at the same time. Unlike most adults, whose gaze tended to drift over the children in search of someone more interesting to talk to, he looked directly at her – as if he was genuinely interested in what she thought.

  It was such a surprise she realised that she couldn’t, in fact, think of anything. She coughed. “So, ah… You’re a captain then?” she managed. A tiny voice inside her wailed in embarrassment. Stupid, stupid question. But he didn’t seem to mind.

  “No, I’m just a glorified pilot,” he said, and shrugged. “The Sparrowhawk is a one-person scout ship – she’s tiny, really. But they gave me this suit for free, so I thought I’d try it out.” He held his arms out and posed. “What do you think?”

  She grinned. “Pretty sharp.”

  “Why, thank you.” He grinned back. His accent was Californian, and he spoke with a humorous and self-deprecating twang.

  “It sounds dangerous,” said Beth. “Mum was a scout once, for the army. Some of her stories are a bit scary.”

  But Kier shook his head. “It’s usually very boring. Most missions, the hardest thing I have to do is stay awake! Don’t believe her – you can’t trust anything grown-ups tell you, you know.”

  She smiled. “Even you?”

  Kier laughed. “Oh, especially me!”

  Captain Joshi turned. “Ah, Beth,” he said. “Good evening. I’ve been hearing about you already. I understand you’ve already met my son?”

  Beth’s mouth went dry. Kier lifted an eyebrow. “Um…”

  The captain leaned slightly towards her and held a hand up. “Ship showed me the footage of the incident,” he said. “It takes courage to put yourself between your friends and danger. But – your mother would tell you that courage is useless without discipline, hmm?” He stood up straight. “I understand you’ll be taking the Command classes,” he said. “I’m sure my son will be delighted to see you there.” He smiled at them in a distracted way, as if checking it off a to-do list, nodded to them all and turned to another table. As they left, Captain Kier gave Beth a wink.

  Beth stared at her plate for a moment, red-faced. When she looked up, Mum was looking at her with a strange, appraising expression. Was she smiling?

  “Well,” said Beth’s dad. “First week and already the captain knows your name. You’re clearly on the fast track to success – cheers!” He raised his glass and grinned, and Beth laughed despite herself.

  With the Orion officially launched, they were ready for their first big step across space. The week of acceleration had lifted her up to enormous speed; at her current velocity the Orion could go all the way round the Earth in only twenty minutes. But Eos, the tiny star they were heading towards, was twenty-six light years away – hundreds of millions, billions of kilometres. It would take almost three hundred thousand years to reach it, travelling normally.

  That was why they Jumped.

  “It’s like this,” her mum had explained, many months before, when they were still back on Earth. They’d been eating
dinner, and she pinched two points in the tablecloth in front of them.

  “How far apart are these points?”

  Beth had shrugged. “Half a metre?”

  “Sure. Now, imagine we could do … this.” She lifted the cloth up and pulled the points together so that they touched.

  “Now how far?”

  “But…” Beth had frowned. “But we can’t just do that with space, can we? I mean, what about everyone else … living there?”

  “That’s the freaky thing,” said Mum. “It’s already like that. We think space is like a big room where you go forward, backward, up, down, left, right; but it’s more like … like a ball of string. It seems solid, but it’s actually one long strand wrapped over and over, bumping up against itself. When we Jump, we skip across the bumps.”

  Beth looked at the tablecloth. “Really?”

  Her mum laughed. “Well … honestly, no, it’s a lot more complicated than that. How about this – the universe is really weird, and sometimes we can do really weird stuff and pretend it makes sense. Someone understands it, but it sure ain’t me, kiddo.”

  “Oh. So why do we have to Sleep?”

  “Well … turns out it’s a bit too weird. The Jump does something to our consciousness. Scrambles it. Anything more complicated than a lugworm comes out comatose and never wakes up. It happens to computers as well – circuits fry, CPUs crash. There’s just no way to go through the Jump with your mind intact.

  “So…” She shrugged. “We cheat. We make a copy of our consciousness – everything we know, everything that makes us who we are. The ship copies its memories too. Then we go to Sleep, the ship sets course for a Jump, hibernates … and wakes up a second later. It boots up, downloads its backup, then it downloads our backups, then we Wake – and we’ve travelled about two hundred billion klicks.”

  “Seriously?”

  Mum nodded. “Seriously. I mean, it’s a bit more complex than that. Getting the ship to wake up again was a tricky problem.”

  “But … does the ship know all your thoughts, then?”