Starfarers (65 page)

“How … how long shall we wait before dispatching … reinforcements?” Alanndoch asked.

“Wrong word,” Nansen replied. “Whatever we find inside, it won’t be hostile.”
Or so I pray.
“The enemy is around us.”
The universe, our enemy and our glory
. “Give us twenty-four hours. After that, proceed at discretion, but remember always, your first duty is to bring our ship home.”

“Luck be with you, Captain, Scientist.”

“Thank you.” Nansen switched off and beckoned to Dayan. They entered the chamber.

As Nansen spun the valve shut and lost sight of the sky, blackness closed in. Dayan turned her flashbeam on. In vacuum it threw a puddle of light on the side opposite. Reflections diffused dimly into gloom. Nansen saw her as a bulk of shadow and a few vague glimmers.

He closed the valve. No air gushed in. The pump wasn’t working, either. Groping, he found the command plate for the inner valve and pushed it. As he expected, the servo did nothing. If there was an atmosphere beyond, it pressed on this exit with tonnes of force.

Despair tasted like iron. “Living people would have made repairs,” he rasped.

“Not necessarily,” Dayan said. “Tinkering with embedded circuits, using inadequate tools, could well make matters worse. If ever they had reason to go outside, they could, more slowly, by the backups. Maybe the hydraulics here aren’t jammed. People could maintain those.”

Nansen tried. The truck resisted his hands. He marshaled his strength and heaved. It was as if he were trying to pull his bones apart. Then the truck turned. A faint thread of light appeared before him. Through his helmet he heard the first whistle of inrushing air. The truck turned more and more easily.

Vision hazed. “Frost!” Dayan cried. “Ice on our lenses!” Water vapor. The breath of life.

They trod
into hollowness. Standing on the platform, as their suit exteriors warmed and the rime smoked off, they saw a great shaft stretching emptily upward and upward. Its fluorescence was more chilling than the tomb darkness of the lock chamber. On one side a railcar track converged away into the distance, on the other side a ladder with occasional rest stops. That was a long climb.

“Air.” Dayan’s voice shook. “I’ll crack my helmet and smell it.”

“No, don’t,” Nansen ordered. “Not till we know what it’s like”—pressure, composition, corruption.

“Right. My testing kit—”

“We won’t stop for that yet. We’ll have a look first.”
What we find may make everything else, our whole journey, irrelevant
. “Come.”

The railcar rested inert. He sighed and sought the ladder. As they descended the hundreds of meters, their weight rose toward Earth normal and their burdens grew heavy.

Mute, side
by side, they debarked at the top and went through a bare room into a passageway.

Greenness! Plants in handmade boxes stood as far as they could see, leafing, blooming, fruiting, blanketing trellises, vaulting the overhead, rose, lily, violet, bamboo, pumpkin, dwarf juniper, trumpet vine, grapevine, things that Earth never knew, a riot of life.

“Life
—” Dayan reached, trembling, humbly, to touch a flower.

They had
not gone much farther when three persons met them.

The strangers loped down the corridor with tools in hand that Nansen didn’t recognize. He hadn’t had time to learn everything about this era. The detached part of him supposed they were implements to cope with crisis. The noise he and Dayan made could have signified trouble. His mind sprang to the people themselves.

An older man, a younger man, a young woman, short, dark, lithe, strong-featured: Kithfolk. They were skimpily clad and skinny but looked healthy. Joy roared in him. He unsecured his helmet and clapped it back off his head, to breathe mild air and green scents.

The three had skidded to a halt. They stared, stunned, at the miracle. Time whirred past before the older man whispered, “You—you are from outside?” It was in an old-sounding but comprehensible version of the principal language on Harbor, whither they had been bound.

Dayan had bared her own face. “Yes,” she answered, not steadily. “We’re here to bring you home.”

“After, after … these years,” the woman stammered. “You came.”

The young man whirled about and ran off. His shouts echoed. The woman fell to her knees, raised her eyes, and poured her thanks and her love out to her God.

She wasn’t loud. The other man stood fast. He was gray-haired, his countenance furrowed, clearly a leader. Maybe later the knowledge of deliverance would overwhelm him, but at the moment he had recovered and his tone was almost level. “Welcome aboard. A million welcomes. I am Evar Shaun. My companion here is Tari Ernen. We are crew of
Fleetwing.”

Nansen did not, at once, respond in kind. That it was
Envoy
which lay nearby might have been too much, just now. “We detected the failure of your zero-zero at Harbor,” he said. “We came as soon as we were able. Why didn’t you reply to our calls?”

“We didn’t know,” Shaun said. “Most electronics failed when the thing happened.” Of course, he’d have no idea what the thing was. “We have had no view screens since then.” Luckily—no, not luck; good engineering—such systems as light, temperature, and ventilation were separate, simpler and more robust. “Only by going outside at the end of a cable have we seen.”

Tari Ernen got back to her feet. “Every year,” she said. “We marked every year with a sight of the stars. On our birthdays.”

“How are you?” Dayan whispered.

“We live,” Shaun replied. “We have made ways of life that kept us sane.” After a little: “It will be … not easy … becoming planet dwellers.”

“No children anymore,” Ernen said. “We children grew up. We would not have our own. Not when we knew it would be at least fifteen years before rescue.”

“And likeliest forever,” Shaun added stoically, stating a fact to which he had been resigned, which his emotions did not yet quite recognize was no longer a fact.

“You have lost this ship,” Nansen said, “but we are building more. They will need crews.”

The pair gaped at him. It must be too great a wonder to grasp at once. Then Ernen sobbed, “We
shall
be starfarers again?”

“Thank you, thank you,” Shaun mumbled.

Before everything dissolved in bewildered passion, Nansen threw a question that had been dogging him. “How many are you?”

“A-about two hundred,” Shaun said.

“What, no more? Did you, uh, did you lose many in the disaster?”

His heritage—culture, chromosomes, spirit—arose in Shaun and he could answer quite evenly: “The shock injured
most of us, but few fatally. It did worse and irreparable damage to the life-support systems. What was left could not serve all of us for the length of time we must wait. We would die in poison and filth from our own bodies. You see how we have planted gardens everywhere, to keep the air fresh and provide food, but that was not enough, either.

“The aged and infirm, and others chosen by lot, went into space, one by one. We rebuilt a lock to make it gentle for them. They drift among the stars. Their names live in honor.”

Nansen stiffened. “How did you make them go?” he demanded.

Shaun met his gaze. “There was no need of force. They went freely. They were Kith.”

“They are Kith,” Ernen said. “Forever.”

Dayan bowed her head and wept.

Tended with
devotion, Earth life had spread widely across the estancia in the years of their absence. Again, after millennia, Nansen and Dayan rode out over a plain where grass rippled and groves rustled beneath the summer wind, light streamed long from a westering sun to lay gold over the green, and wild creatures ran and wild wings soared.

For a span they galloped, rejoicing in the surge of muscles between their thighs, flying manes, drumming hoofs, sweet horse odor mingled with smells of soil and growth. When they reined in, buildings were lost to sight. Alone within the horizon, under the enormous arch of sky, the riders continued at a walk. Saddle leather creaked.

“Freedom!” Nansen said.

Dayan glanced at him. “Freedom?” she asked.

A trifle abashed, because he didn’t like dramatics and this
had been an outburst, he explained, “To live our lives as we want.”

Her brows lifted slightly. “Why, we’ve always had that, you and I.” With a look aloft: “Maybe more than anybody else ever did.”

“Not lately. I didn’t think you enjoyed it much, either.”

“M-m, true, I hadn’t known how many
duties
being famous and celebrated involves. But the crowds meant terribly well.” She grinned. “And we—you especially—put it to use.”

“Not very efficient use on my part, I fear. Ceremonies and speeches and having hundreds introduced to me—not my kind of work.”

His mood had lowered. He was dissatisfied with his address to the parliament and people of Harbor. Pieces of it came back to nag at him.

“… Our first starships are ready, ships better than any known before, thanks to the union of human technology with the new knowledge brought from afar. The
Fleetwing
folk are here, ready to counsel, instruct, be officers aboard. More Kith will join with us as we meet with them, on this planet and others. But it will no longer be only they who go starfaring. Henceforward, all can who have the strength, the skill, and the wish …
.

“From
Fleetwing
we have learned of two worlds where humans can make homes. Many more certainly exist, but these are a beginning for whoever has cherished the dream. … The planetary engineering systems that we are building will make settlement easy where once it was hard, and possible where once it was impossible. … Given capabilities like these, and the capital investment that the Venture League is prepared to make, starfaring will become profitable—not marginally, not for a few, but for everyone. Therefore it will go on, growing of itself. …

“… the revelations, the inspirations we will gain from other races than ours … We will awaken those who wish to be awakened, to join us among the stars. …

“…
millions of years, so many starships flying that they
weave universe and substrate together, making existence eternally sure … What we have learned about communication across time suggests that the cosmos may have evolved us in order that we shall at last save it. Can this be true? It is imaginable. …

“For us today, enough: that we are going back to the stars and will never forsake them.”

“I didn’t like the things I said,” he confessed, “nor the way I did.”

“What was wrong?” Dayan inquired. “I thought your talk went fine.”

“Too florid.”

She nodded. “Not your style. Well, it was written for you.”

“I don’t care to be a mouthpiece. And I spoke like a poorly programmed machine.”

Dayan laughed low. “Rico, Rico. You had a job to do, you found it distasteful, and now you worry whether you did it right. Tell me, did that speech express your beliefs?”

“Of course. Otherwise I would not have given it.”

“No, you wouldn’t have. Very well, then, you were being honest. And as for your delivery, I assure you, darling, it didn’t matter. You were
you
, the captain of captains. That was what they wanted and needed.”

“But it’s wrong,” he protested. “I don’t deserve that sort of prestige. Nor do you,
querida
. We didn’t lay the foundation or build the house”—the enduring house of the starfarers. “Wenji, Ajit, Mam, Selim,” four comrades grown gray, “and those who worked with them, here on Harbor,” diligently, patiently, sometimes fiercely, year by year by year, “while we were gone—they are the ones.”

“In a way, yes,” Dayan replied. “In another way, no, not entirely. Our mission, humans bound off to save humans, it … embodied everything. It made people
care
, through all that time. Ajit’s told me he thinks it made the crucial difference.”

“But that doesn’t make sense!”

Dayan shook her head, smiling. “Oh, Rico, when did anything
human make real sense? Our race is crazy. Maybe that’s why it’s the race that’s going to the stars. No, my dear, you’ll never get away from being a symbol, a hero.”

“Well,” he grumbled, “at least you and I will have private lives again.”

“Mostly, I trust,” she agreed. “And raise lots of little Nansens.”

He brightened. “They’ll be Dayans, too.”

The sun went low and the riders turned back. They had come farther than they noticed, and dusk found them still out on the plain. The sky was violet westward, dark eastward, where the lights of home glimmered remote. Above them the earliest stars were blinking forth.

Dayan murmured something.

Nansen glanced at her shadowy form, close beside him. “What?” he asked.

“Oh, I—I was just looking at those stars,” she answered, her voice almost too muted for him to hear. “Some lines came to me. In English—um—
‘Have you curbed the Pleiades?’”

He nodded. “Yes. I remember.
Job
. In Spanish—But a traditional English version has stayed with me. …
‘Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? … or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons?’
What put you in mind of that?”

“I got to thinking. If our children—surely some will—if they travel yonder, we’ll lose them forever.”

“Perhaps not,” he said. “Once we’ve discovered how to build a holontic time communicator—it’ll mean more than the future talking to the past, you know. It’ll mean calling across the universe.”

“And in that way also making the universe one.” She sighed. “A grand vision. You and I won’t live to see it, though.” Mastering forces so mighty would take many human lifetimes. “Unless we, do live on afterward. … No, I can’t say what the limits are for us. That would be as arrogant as to say there are no limits ever. But—”

She was silent awhile. They rode toward the hearthlights. More stars appeared. The wind had gone cold.

“I only know,” she said, “that whatever we may someday become, we will never be God.” Suddenly her laugh rang forth. “But we can have fun trying!”