A Far Sunset

THREE

In the year a.d. 2012 (local time) three star ships left Sol Three, known more familiarly to its inhabitants as Earth. The first star ship to venture out into the deep black yonder was— inevitably—the American vessel Mayflower. It was (and in this even the Russian and European inspection engineers agreed) the most ambitious, the largest and possibly the most beautiful machine ever devised by man. It had taken ten years, thirty billion new dollars and nine hundred and fourteen lives to assemble in the two-hour orbit. It was built to contain forty- five pairs of human beings and its destination was the Sirius system.

The second star ship to leave Sol Three was the Russian vessel Red October. Though not as large as the American ship it was (so the American and European inspection engineers concluded) Somewhat faster. It, too, was expensive and beautiful. It, too, had cost many lives. The Russians, despite everyone’s scepticism, had managed to assemble it in the three-hour orbit in a mere six years. It was built to contain twenty-seven men and twenty-seven women (unpaired), and its destination was Procyon.

The third ship to leave was the Gloria Mundi. It had been built on a relative shoe-string in the ninety-minute orbit by the new United States of Europe. It was called the Gloria Mundi because the Germans would not agree to an English name, the French would not agree to a German name, the English would not agree to a French name and the Italians could not even agree among themselves on a name. So a name drawn from the words of a dead language was the obvious answer. And because the ship was the smallest of the vessels, its chief architect—an Englishman with a very English sense of humour—had suggested calling it The Glory of the World. It was designed to carry six pairs of human beings: one German pair, one French pair, one British pair, one Italian pair, one Swedish pair and one Dutch pair. It was smaller than the Russian ship and slower than the American ship. Inevitably its target star was farther away than either the American or the Russian target stars. It was bound for Altair—a matter of sixteen light-years or nearly twenty-one years, ship’s time.

In the twenty-first century the British sense of propriety was still a force to be reckoned with. That is why, on the morning of April 3rd, a.d. 2012. Paul Marlowe, wearing a red rose in the button-hole of his morning coat, appeared punctually at Caxton Hall registry office at 10.30 a.m. At 10.35 a.m. Ann Victoria Watkins appeared. By 10.50 a.m. the couple had been pronounced man and wife. It was estimated that three hundred million people witnessed the ceremony over Eurovision.

Paul and Ann did not like each other particularly: nor did they dislike each other. But as the British contribution to the crew of the Gloria Mundi they accepted their pairing with good grace. Paul, a trained space-hand, possessed the skills of psychiatry and teaching and was also fluent in French and German. Ann’s dowry was medicine and surgery, a working knowledge of Swedish and Italian and enough Dutch to make conversation under pressure.

After the ceremony they took a taxi to Victoria, a hover train to Gatwick, a strato-rocket to Woomera and then a ferry capsule to the ninety-minute orbit. They spent their honeymoon working through the pre-jump routines aboard the Gloria Mundi.

Despite many differences in size, design and accommodation, the American, Russian and European space ships all had one thing in common. They all contained sleeper units for the crews. None of the ships could travel faster than light—though the Russians claimed that given theoretically ideal conditions Red October could just pass the barrier—so their occupants were doomed to many years of star travel; during which it was a statistical certainty that some would die, go mad, mutiny or find even more ingenious ways of becoming useless. Unless they had sleeper units.

Suspended animation had been developed years before in the closing decades of the twentieth century. At first it had been used in a very limited way for heart transplants. Then someone had discovered that the simple process of freezing a neurotic for a period of days or weeks, depending on the degree of neurosis, could produce an almost complete cure! Then someone else hit upon the idea of using suspended animation for the insane, the incurable or the dying. Such people, it was argued, could be frozen for decades if necessary until an answer was found for their particular malady.

By the beginning of the twenty-first century, suspended animation had become an integral part of the way of life of every civilized community. Not only the seriously ill and the seriously mad were frozen. Criminals were frozen, suspended animation sentences ranging from one to fifty years, depending on the seriousness of the crime. And rich citizens, who had lived most of their lives and exhausted all the conventional rejuvenation techniques would go voluntarily into indefinite suspended animation in the sublime hope that one day somebody would discover the secret of immortality. Even the dead, if they were important enough and if they could be obtained soon after the point of clinical death, were frozen—on the theory that a few more decades would bring great advances in resurrection techniques.

But whatever the value of suspended animation was for those who hoped to cheat death, the asylum, the executioner or the normal laws of existence, it was certainly the ideal form of travelling for those who were destined to venture into deep space.

It was estimated that the Gloria Mundi could not possibly reach Altair in less than twenty years of subjective time. Therefore a programme of rotational suspended animation had been worked out for the crew. For the first three months of the voyage all crew members would be live and operational. For the rest of the voyage, with the exception of the last three months, each pair would, in turn, remain live for one month (terrestrial time) and then be suspended for five. In case of an emergency all five frozen pairs (or any individual whose special skill was required) could be de-frozen in ten hours.

During the course of the long and uneventful voyage to Altair, Paul Marlowe spent a total of nearly four working years in the company of his ‘wife’. He never got to know her. As a psychiatrist, he would have thought that the absolute isolation of a long space voyage would have been bound to bring two people intimately together. But he never got to know her.

She had dark hair, an attractive face and a pleasant enough body. They made love quite a lot of times during their waking months. They shared jokes, they discussed books, they watched old films together. But somehow she was too dedicated, too remote. And he never really got to know her.

That, perhaps, was why he could summon no tears, could feel no personal sense of loss when she finally disappeared on Altair Five.