Flight of Exiles e-2 Read online

  That’s a big help, Larry complained to himself.

  “He should be released,” Dr. Hsai repeated. “You can have him watched as carefully as you wish, but there is no good to be accomplished by keeping him in the infirmary.”

  “All right,” Larry agreed unhappily. “Let him go.” Hsai nodded and started walking away, toward the nearest hatch leading back to the warmth of life. He glanced over his shoulder once, looking slightly puzzled that Larry wasn’t coming with him, or at least following him.

  But Larry stood rooted to the spot, beside one of the bulky cryosleep couches.

  Dan wants Valery, and he wants to be Chairman.

  “You knew that,” he said softly to himself. “That’s nothing new.”

  Yes, his mind echoed back. But if he is insane, if he has done all these crazy things — including murder—then it’s because of me. The blame is partly mine. Maybe almost entirely mine. Especially if he’s insane. Then he’s not responsible for his actions. But I am. I am!

  “All right, so it’s at least partially your own fault. What can you do about it now?”

  He wanted to answer, Nothing. But instead he knew. You can give him what he wants. Let him have the Chairmanship. Let him have Valery.

  “You know you can’t do that. Not if you want to stay sane. Not if you want to go on living.”

  You can sleep. Right here. Sleep for as long as you want to. Sleep until they’re both dead. Then start a new life.

  “Sure. Or maybe never wake up.”

  It’s your choice.

  With a sudden shock, Larry realized he was standing in front of Dr. Loring’s cryosleep unit. The graphs showed that the old man was still alive, waiting in frozen limbo for a surgical team to be organized for the attempt to save his life.

  Give up the Chairmanship? Give up Valery?

  “No.”

  Then you’ll be pushing Dan even further. He might do something even worse.

  Larry was sweating now. Despite the cold, beads of sweat were trickling down his face. “I can’t do it!” he whispered fiercely. “I won’t let him have his way! I won’t!”

  It was always noisy in the main cafeteria. Big enough to handle three hundred people at a sitting, the cafeteria doubled as an eating place, an entertainment center, and an auditorium. It was brightly lit, gaily decorated, and bustling with crowds nearly all the time. One entire wall was a long viewscreen that showed constantly changing scenes from Earth, from outside in starry space, or from inside the ship itself.

  At the moment Dan entered the cafeteria’s big double doors and stood blinking in the entryway, the long wall screen was showing an ocean beach on Earth: surging powerful breakers rolling up to smash against grim rocks in spectacular sheets of spray. The sky was blue, the sun a golden ball starting to turn red as it neared the horizon. People dotted the tiny slice of beach that lay between the rocks. Farther back, atop the higher rocky cliffs, there were houses.

  Dan stood at the entryway and took it all in: the videotaped scene, the noise and brightness of the cafeteria. After a month in the quiet confinement of the infirmary,- it was like coming to life again after being in cryosleep.

  People jostled through the entryway past him. Several of them smiled at him, or said some brief words of greeting:

  “Good to see you back, Dan.”

  “Hi, Dan.”

  “Hey, pal, how’re ya doin?”

  “Can’t keep a good man down, huh, Dan?”

  He grinned at them, nodded, even shook a few hands.

  Then he saw her far across the room, sitting by herself, looking tense. She had a tray of food before her, but she wasn’t touching it; Valery was merely looking off into space, waiting.

  Dan quickly made his way to the selector wall, punched buttons for the food he wanted, and went to the receiving slot. All the while he kept one eye on Valery’s golden hair. He took his steaming tray straight to her table.

  “I hope I haven’t kept you waiting,” he said.

  She looked up, wide-eyed, almost startled. “Oh—no, I just got here a few minutes ago.”

  He sat down on the other side of the little table. “It was good of you to agree to meet me.”

  She seemed wary, almost afraid. “This is a funny place to meet… I mean, it’s so noisy.”

  A group of half a dozen teenagers appeared on the stage at the other end of the room and started setting up electronic musical instruments.

  Dan grinned. “It’s alive. I like it. Kind of hard on the ears, but it’s fun.”

  “You…you look very good,” Valery said.

  “You’re scared of me,” he realized. “Why? Do you think I’m crazy, too?”

  “Who…”

  He took her hand in his. “Come on, Val. I know what Larry thinks. I know he’s the one who kept me locked up for the past month.”

  Pulling slowly away from his grip, she answered, “Dan, I don’t want you and Larry to be enemies. You ought to be friends again—”

  “I wish we could. I really do. I think I’d even let him keep the Chairmanship, if only I could be sure …”

  He shook his head. “It’d never work. You’re the one I want, Val. If I had you, I’d almost be willing to let the rest of it go.”

  “The rest of it?”

  “Yep… I had a lot of time to think, you know, sitting there in the infirmary. A lot of time. I understand there haven’t been any accidents since I went in.”

  She hesitated, then admitted, “That’s right.”

  “You see? He’s been damned smart about it… damned smart.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s trying to make it look like it’s all my fault. Larry’s got half the people on this ship believing that I’m crazy, that I’ve been causing the accidents, that I tried to kill your father.”

  She stared at him. “Did you?”

  He looked back into her Arctic-blue eyes, sensing all the turmoil, the fear, the pain that lay behind them.

  “Have you asked Larry that question?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean, Valery.”

  “But why?” she asked, so softly that he could barely hear her voice over the cafeteria din. “Why would Larry do it?”

  “Have you ever thought,” Dan asked slowly, “that if there really is a madman aboard this ship, it’s got to be Larry?”

  “No! It couldn’t be!”

  “Couldn’t it?”

  “Dan—you’re wrong. The accidents… they could be just that: accidents.”‘

  “Then why is Larry trying to prove that I’m insane?”

  “He’s afraid…”

  “Afraid of me.”

  The words were gushing out of her now. “Larry’s afraid that if you are sick, you’ll hurt more people, hurt the ship, kill us all.”

  “That’s just what he’s doing.”

  “No…”

  Dan could feel his temper rising, his face getting hot and red. “He’s afraid of me because he knows that I know I didn’t cause any of those accidents. He knows that I can’t rest until I show everyone who did cause the accidents—that killed my father and nearly killed yours. That’s what he’s afraid of!”

  Valery’s voice was pleading, “Dan, listen to me. Believe in me. If you keep going this way, one of you—or both of you—are going to be killed! Stop it now. Let it stop.”

  He shook his head solemnly. “I can’t, Val.”

  “Even if it means my sanity? My life? I can’t stand by and see the two of you tear each other apart.”

  “There’s nothing else…”

  “Suppose,” she said shakily, tears in her voice, “suppose I tell Larry that I’ve changed my mind… that I want to marry you. Will you stop then?”

  He felt suddenly as if he were in the zero gravity hub of the ship, in free fall, dropping, dropping endlessly, spinning over and over again, dizzyingly--He squeezed his eyes shut. Stop it! Stop it stop it stop it.

  Looking at her
again, so intent, so beautiful, so afraid and lonely, he said, “Val… I don’t want you as a bribe. It wouldn’t work that way. We’d end up hating each other. I… no, it’s got to be Larry or me. We’ve got to settle this between ourselves.”

  “You’ll kill each other,” she said, all the energy drained from her voice.

  “Maybe.”

  “You’ll destroy the ship.”

  “That’s what I want to prevent.”

  “You—the two of you—you’re going to destroy me.”

  And she abruptly got up from the table and ran out of the cafeteria, leaving him sitting there alone.

  9

  For more than a month, the four gleaming torpedo shapes of the ship’s automated probes had coasted silently through space, toward the major planet of the Alpha Centauri system. The only link between the probes and the ship was a continuous radio signal, of the lowest possible power, in order to conserve the energy of their batteries.

  Then, as they neared the two main stars of Alpha Centauri, the solar cells along their outer skins began to convert sunlight into electricity. The radio signals gained in strength. Like sleeping servants, one by one the instruments aboard the probes awakened with the new flow of electrical power and began reporting back to the ship. But now the reports—full and complex—were carried by laser beams.

  Some of the instruments took precise measurements of the probes’ positions in space, and their courses as they approached the major planet. This information was studied by men and computer aboard the ship, and minor course corrections were transmitted back to the probes. The probes responded with the correct changes in course, and the men and women aboard the ship congratulated themselves. The computer accepted no congratulations, but took in all data impassively.

  The probes successfully skirted past the steep gravity pull of Alpha Centauri B, the smaller orange member of the two main stars, and let the pull of Alpha Centauri A—the yellow, sunlike star—bring them close to the major planet. Then, more course corrections, more microscopic puffs of gas from the tiny attitude jets aboard the probes’ bodies, and they fell into orbit around the planet.

  Back on the ship, people celebrated.

  Now streams of data began pouring across the near-emptiness of space between the probes and the approaching ship. The data were coded, of course, in the languages that the engineers and computers could translate into meaningful information. Pictures were sent, too, directly over the laser beams that linked the probes with the ship.

  Two of the probes released landing capsules. One never made it to the surface, or at least never sent any information back after entering the planet’s high atmosphere. The other touched down on solid ground and began sending pictures and data from the surface of the new world.

  Larry was hurrying down a corridor on level two, where most of the labs and workshops were. Dr. Polanyi had been excited when he called: the first pictures from the planet were ready to view.

  He saw someone heading toward him, from the opposite direction. The door to the data lab was halfway between them. Larry recognized the blazing orange coverall before he could make out Dan’s face.

  They had kept apart since Dan’s release from the infirmary. Now they met at Polanyi’s door.

  “Hello Dan,” Larry said automatically, as soon as they got close enough so that he didn’t have to shout.

  Dan nodded, his face serious. “Hello.”

  Larry reached for the finger grip on the lab door, but found Dan’s hand was already there and sliding the door back.

  “Polanyi called you, too?” Larry asked.

  “He called all the Council members,” Dan replied. “Any objections?”

  Larry knew he was glaring at Dan. “No objections—as long as you can spare the time from your regular job.”

  Dan gestured for Larry to go through the doorway first. He followed, saying, “The job’s getting done. We finally got all the bugs out of the rebuilt main generator. It’ll go back into service today.”

  “That’s fine. Glad to hear it.” But Larry wasn’t smiling.

  “Ah, the first two here,” Dr. Polanyi called to them.

  He was sitting at a workbench halfway across the big, cluttered room. The data lab was really a makeshift collection of instruments, viewscreens, workbenches, desk, computer terminals, and odd sorts of equipment that Larry couldn’t begin to identify. Half a dozen white-coated technicians were tinkering around one of the bulky, refrigerator-sized computer consoles. A wall-sized viewscreen was set up next to it, on legs that looked much too fragile to support it.

  Polanyi fussed around the viewscreen and verbally prodded the technicians. Larry saw that there were a few chairs set up, so he sat on one. Dan joined the technicians, watching what they were doing from over their shoulders. In about ten minutes, most of the other Council members showed up. The older men and women among them took the available chairs. Larry got up and joined the loose semicircle of younger men that formed behind the seats.

  The technicians finally scattered to various control desks around the big room, and Polanyi turned to face his audience.

  “You recognize, of course, that what we’re going to see will not be holograms,” he said. “There is holographic information in the transmitted data, but we have not deciphered it completely as yet. I thought it would be much more desirable to see what there is to see as quickly as possible, even if it is only a flat, two-dimensional picture.”

  Larry nodded and asked, “Are any of the views we’re going to see from the surface?”

  “Only the last three,” Polanyi answered. “Data transmission from the surface has been very difficult, for reasons that we have not yet determined. The orbital data is quite good, however.”

  Larry suddenly realized that he had lost track of Dan. Turning and looking through the crowd, he spotted him, standing off to one side of the group.

  The overhead lights dimmed out, and Larry turned his attention back to the screen. It began to glow. Colors appeared, forms took shape.

  It was a still photo, taken from far enough away from the planet to show its entire sphere.

  “This is the first photo the probes took,” Polanyi’s voice floated through the darkness. “Probe number one took this one, as you can tell from the numerals down in the lower right-hand corner of the picture.”

  The planet was yellowish. Broad expanses of golden yellow, dappled here and there by greenish stretches. Larry found that he couldn’t tell which was land and which was sea. The entire planet was streaked with white clouds, which obscured much of the underlying terrain. But there seemed to be no major cloud formations, such as the huge storm systems he had seen on tapes of Earth.

  “Next,” Polanyi’s voice called.

  This view was much closer. Mountains showed as wrinkles, like a bedsheet that had been rumpled. The land was yellow, Larry saw. The green stretches weren’t vegetation, they Were water.

  For more than an hour they studied the orbital photos. The planet had no major oceans, only a scattering of large seas. There were no ice caps at the poles.

  Polanyi kept up a running commentary, explaining what they were seeing, filling in information from the other instruments aboard the probes. It all added up to a disappointing picture.

  The planet was actually slightly smaller than Earth, but about the same density. Surface gravity was apparently one third higher than Earth’s.

  Somebody said in the darkness, “1.3 g. That means a ninety-kilo man will feel like he’s carrying thirty extra kilos around with him all the time.”

  “Like hauling an eight-year-old kid on your back.”

  “It certainly will strain the heart,” Larry recognized the last voice as belonging to the chief meditech.

  The air had slightly more oxygen in it than Earth normal, but also had dangerously high levels of nitric oxides and sulfur oxides.

  “Volcanism,” Polanyi explained, pointing to a photo of the planet’s night side, where a series of brilliant red light
s gleamed. “Active volcanoes… many of them. The infrared scans confirm it. The volcanoes are spewing out sulfur oxides and other harmful gases.”

  Larry grimaced.

  The vegetation was a yellowish green. Chlorophyll was there, identified by the spectral readings from the orbiting probes. But the plant life obviously wasn’t the same as Earth’s greenery.

  “What about data from the surface lander?” someone asked.

  “Yes, it is coming up next.”

  The picture on the viewscreen suddenly changed to show a startling landscape. It was golden: yellowish plants everywhere, some of them thick and tall as trees, with ropy vines hanging from their arms. Yellowish sky, even the clouds had a golden tint to them.

  “This photo was taken near local sunset,” Polanyi explained. “I believe that accounts for the peculiar color effect… some of it, at least.”

  It was beautiful. Larry gazed at a golden world, with hills and clouds and soft beckoning grass of gold. Something deep inside him, something he had never dreamed was in him, was stirred by this vision. A world, a real world where you could walk out in the open air and look up into a sky that had sunrises and sunsets, climb hills and feel breezes and swim in rivers—

  He shuddered suddenly. It was like self-hypnosis. This golden world was a trap. It was deadly. A man couldn’t last five minutes on it, not unless he wore as much protection as he needed to go outside the ship and into space.

  The picture changed. Now they were looking off in a different direction. The yellow grass and trees sloped down into a gentle valley. In the distance there were rugged mountains of bare rock, their tops shrouded in clouds.

  “There are at least two active volcanoes among those distant mountains,” Dr. Polanyi said. “The clouds themselves are mainly steam from the volcanoes.”

  It still looked so beautiful.

  The picture changed again. It showed the view from the opposite side of the lander. The hillside swept upward, still covered with golden grass and shrubs. Up near the top of the hill, silhouetted against the bright sky, were four dark shapes.

  “They appear to be animals,” Polanyi’s voice said. “From their distance, we have judged their size to be roughly comparable with that of an Earthly sheep.”