Silent Running (7 page)

Lowell checked the drones as they waddled into the cargo hold. Through the monitor screen he watched them methodically run a maintenance check, whirring and clicking intensely. Lowell jotted it all down in painstaking detail.

At length they completed their task. Their manipulator arms retracted and they stood still.

Lowell continued to monitor the data. But suddenly the flow of information stopped. The lights went out and Lowell leaned back in his chair. A fleeting smile of affection crossed his face and he shook his head wonderingly.

He said into the microphone, “Drone One . . . Drone Two . . . proceed with repairs on the ship.”

But the drones did not move; it seemed they were waiting.

More readouts flashed on the console, and Lowell bent to them. All at once, they stopped.

Lowell said into the mike, “Thank you, men,” then went on: “Since we’re so severely crippled, for all practical purposes, we’re stranded out here in space. So we may as well make our adjustments accordingly . . . Huey, Dewey . . . I’m going to sleep for awhile. I want you to go to the forest and begin any necessary repair work there.”

Lowell watched the drones move along the hull of the ship, heading for the dome, then turned toward his quarters.

Once inside his room, he walked to a bookshelf and picked out Loren Eiseley’s “The Immense Journey” and flopped on his bed.

The silence was absolute except for the slight sigh of the air vents. In the quiet, Lowell pondered: What would be the outcome of his own journey? Where and when would it end?

He opened the book and began to read: “It is when all these voices cease and the waters are still, when along the frozen rivers nothing cries, screams, or howls, that the enormous mindlessness of space settles down upon the soul . . .”

Lowell put down the book with a slight shiver. “When along frozen rivers nothing cries,” he murmured, adding, “When on earth no trees wave their branches, no flowers bloom, what then . . . ?”

Lowell did not know. He only felt that Dome One must be saved. Restlessly, he moved out of the door, drawn by his beloved forest.

Once there, he threw off his clothes and plunged into the deep mind-healing water. Sounds of the forest surrounded him—the birds’ singing, the wind’s sighing through the trees. A good feeling pervaded Lowell, like a new day dawning. He dived deep, came up, then dived again.

Nearby, Huey and Dewey performed their maintenance tasks while the
Valley Forge,
like a wounded animal, plunged on and on.

Lowell soaped himself and rinsed by ducking under the waterfall, then rose to wrap himself in a towel. He stepped from the pond to walk toward the drones, smiling broadly.

“Hello, Huey . . . Hello, Dewey,” he said. “Why don’t you check the hull of the ship and see how we’re doing?”

The drones stopped their work, retracted their manipulator arms, and entered the tunnel.

Lowell began to work in the garden. He bent to examine a flowering plant and then spaded up around it. He fed some of the small animals. At length he moved down to his laboratory to work with his seeds and chemicals, and microscope. He hummed happily.

When he finished his work in the dome, Lowell returned to the ship where he cleaned up the surgery, putting things away, scrubbing and polishing. He went on to rearrange his furniture, then dust and restack his books.

Finally, he went to bed but not to sleep.

Sitting up in bed he reached for his sewing kit and began sewing a Saturn patch on his royal-blue uniform. Soft music, the sound of a Debussy prelude, came to an end. Lowell paused, listening, then went on sewing.

He heard the squeaking of a drone’s feet as it walked past his door.

It moved on, followed by the other drone.

Lowell imagined them in their darkly lit room methodically checking each other over, making adjustments, whirring and clicking . . . a bit like two chimps cleaning each other.

At last Lowell turned on his side and slept.

The giant ship swept on . . . and on . . .

 EIGHT 

T
he next morning found Lowell limping among the giant cargo modules, taking inventory on a slate. He had to keep busy, to keep himself from getting bored, from thinking about the past or the future, to keep himself in the present.

Suddenly he had an idea. “Sure,” he said. “That’s it.” He turned and made his way as fast as he could to Main Control.

“Huey, Dewey, please report to Dome One at once,” he ordered.

Pleased with himself, he went down to the cargo hold and got a car, then loaded it up with mulch, some tools, and a tree from one of the nursery modules.

In five minutes, anticipating the work ahead, he drove through the tunnel and out into Dome One.

The two little drones stood on the latticed walk, waiting.

“Oh, so you’re already here. Well—” Lowell climbed from and unloaded the car, then led the way to a small grass plot beside the pool. “Okay, boys,” he said, heartily. “Today, the three of us are going to plant a tree.”

The drones made little bleeping noises and followed Lowell to the site.

Birds sang from the trees, squirrels ran across the grass, and from a tall spruce a crow scolded raucously.

“Now, boys.” Lowell put the little pine on the grass. “We’ll place it right here. Huey, you’ll plant the tree. Dewey, you’ll dig the hole.”

Lowell stood back.

Dewey came forward and with his manipulator arm began to dig the hole.

Lowell felt wonderful. He stared at Dewey, checking him, then up through the bronze-latticed dome that enclosed the forest.

At length, Dewey stepped back. Huey spilled some mulch in the hole, at Lowell’s direction.

“Aah!” Lowell exclaimed. “Splendid, Dewey. Huey!” He stopped to pick up the pine from the grass. “Now, Huey, you plant the tree.” He placed the tree in Huey’s manipulator arm and stepped back.

Huey moved a step forward and extended his arm. The tree tumbled to the ground and lay on its side.

Lowell swung to him in distress. “This is pitiful,” he exclaimed. “The exact opposite of what it’s supposed to be.”

Lowell stood for a moment, then turned to the drones. “Why don’t you just go ahead with your regular maintenance,” he said. “Just do the work that you know.” The drones moved away on padded squeaky feet.

Lowell planted the little pine, then walked back to the service car. There lay two sacks of mulch. Lowell carried the bags over to the grass and began flinging the mulch into a bed of ferns and among some rose bushes.

With this done, he walked back to the car and, climbing behind the wheel, headed into the tunnel.

Suddenly on impulse, Lowell accelerated the car wildly and zipped into the cargo hold and round the giant room as Keenan and Barker had done.

He yelled and swayed the little car, driving crazily around the hold. At length, slightly ashamed of himself, Lowell parked the car and walked back to his room.

Flinging himself on his cot, he lay staring up at the ceiling. Time passed.

The giant
Valley Forge
plunged on with its one bronze-latticed dome riding high on the prow.

Lowell picked up a book, a novel, and started to read. The words swam before his eyes. He flung the book down and made his way back to the forest.

There, he paused before a good-sized telescope on a pedestal and pulled off its plastic cover. Glancing up at the dome-turns he spotted a dot in the sky.

He turned the telescope and adjusted its angle with the knobs, then leaned over to look through the eyepiece.

Millions of stars were streaking through his field of view. He moved the telescope around and finally brought it to focus upon a small, bluish dot.

Lowell pushed a control to center Earth in the alignment reticule; he doubled, then quadrupled the magnification. Some details could be made out on the Earth’s surface as Lowell stood rubbing his eyes.

After a time, Lowell tired of this. Picking an apricot from a tree, he began eating it while strolling from the forest. Time still crawled.

At length, he went back to the ship where he entered Main Control and sat down at the console, still munching his fruit. He looked at the console for a long moment, then turned on the radio to listen. He heard nothing but distant static. Leaving the radio on, he drifted out of Main Control to the recreation room.

He began to play billiards on the versatron, missing some very easy shots. He continued to play, setting up more difficult combination shots on the elliptical table. He was killing time.

At length he moved to the kitchen to wash some fresh lettuce and prepare a huge salad for himself. From out of the window myriads of stars met his gaze.

Nearby the two drones worked as usual, with Huey taking the lead. But to Lowell everything seemed lifeless and dull. Even the stars held no magic, and the hull of the ship seemed to Lowell to have aged greatly in its journey through the rings.

He sat at the table with his salad. But he only picked at it.

Getting up, he walked to his room where he lay down on his bed and closed his eyes.

It was morning of another day. Lowell rose to shower and dress, then shave. Through it all he stared in somber reflection into his mirror.

Breakfast was just something to swallow. Then Lowell moved back to his forest. He pruned some bushes, working slowly, then more slowly, finally stopping.

Throwing down his shears, he left the forest to walk down corridors and catwalks and into the cargo area. He stopped to polish a brass plate, then rearrange a cargo module that was sticking out. He was running out of things to do on a disabled spaceship that was headed who knew where.

Back in Main Control, he listened vaguely to the radio. But only static came through. Leaving it on, he wandered around the control room, looking for anything of interest.

Lowell drifted to his room to sit on his bed. Propped up with pillows he scanned a large picture book from Earth. He frowned and put the book down, then took it up once more to thumb through it.

Suddenly, a color photograph of a forest devastated by fire held him. This was too much for Lowell, this reminder of Earth’s sad plight. He closed the book and returned it to the shelf.

Again he moved to Main Control and, leaning over a solar map, plotted his course. He could see that the map had already been plotted to the vicinity of Saturn, but Lowell marked in a sweeping curve that showed how he was deflected by Saturn into a direction away from the sun instead of around it.

On the screen, he could make out the distant sun and Saturn which was very small now.

“Whew!” He exclaimed. “That
was
a close call.”

For a time, he continued to study the screen, then donned his blue spacesuit and wandered over the hull of the ship as he had explored the hold earlier.

He rounded a catwalk and noted the two drones on a distant part of the hull, working together, moving and gesticulating with their manipulators. They were working in the area in which Louie was lost.

It would be a good time to caution them of Louie’s fate and warn them to be on the alert.

Approaching them, he picked up a piece of Louie’s left foot that had been torn off when he’d been swept overboard.

“You see,” he said, holding it up, “this is what happened when Louie grew careless. Now you both be careful.”

They paused, bleeped, and made other funny noises, making Lowell wish that he’d been more gentle with them.

Lowell fled to Main Control, but still the radio crackled only with static. The recreation room offered nothing better. Lowell tried solitaire, first straight, then cheating, but it all added up to the same thing: boredom.

He had an inescapable feeling of slipping headlong through space toward an unknown destination.

Suddenly an idea struck Lowell.

Back in Drone Control, he leaned over the console and called into the microphone: “Huey, I want you two guys to report right away to the recreation room.”

Lowell walked to a bookcase and brought back a little red book titled: “Official Rules of Card Games.”

He pored over it for a time, then began punching instructions into the drone program keyboard. After a time Lowell quit punching instructions and reached to grasp a small cassette which appeared in a dispenser slot. He lifted it out of the frame. Another appeared and he took it out also.

“Aah!” Lowell smiled and headed for the recreation room.

Lowell walked through the door. Huey and Dewey were waiting, idling quietly.

“Well,” Lowell stopped short. “You’re already here.” He paused a moment, then went on, “I’ll bet you wonder why I’ve gathered us together. Haven’t you, hunh?”

The drones did not bleep.

“Well, I want to beg your indulgence.”

Again Lowell paused, wondering if he’d used the right words. Suddenly he decided not to talk, but reached into his pocket for the two cassettes. After examining them briefly, he placed them into the receptacles on top of each of the two drones, then stepped back.

A whirring came from them. Lowell smiled and waited, curiously.

All at once Huey’s and Dewey’s lights were running fully synchronized. Suddenly their motors stopped and they stood staring at Lowell.

“Now!” Lowell said. “You’ve got your new programs.” He paused a moment, waiting for any negative response. The drones did not move.

“Now—” Lowell motioned. “Huey, come over and sit down here.”

Huey waddled to sit at the little round table.

“Dewey, come right up here and sit down—come a little closer if you want to, Dewey.”

Dewey sidled to the table and sat down.

Lowell felt in charge. He deftly shuffled cards.

“Here’s for you, Huey, and you, Dewey, and
me,”
he said, then leaned back with a smug smile. “Now—I’m about to take you two guys for every dime you’ve got.”

Again he paused and looked across the table.

“Now boys—let’s play cards.”

There followed a long pause.

“Now—Dewey,” Lowell prompted. “How many cards do you want, Dewey?”

Dewey put his manipulator forward and three kings tumbled to the table.