Flight of Exiles

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 lights 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.”

It was hard to tell their shape. There seemed to be a head, the suggestion of rounded haunches. No tail was visible. You couldn’t tell how many legs, because their lower halves were hidden in deep grass.

The overhead lights suddenly went on, and the picture on the viewscreen faded.

“That’s everything we have so far,” Dr. Polanyi said.

Larry squinted against the sudden glare. And found himself frowning. Looking around, he realized that he had spent his life in a prison. A jail. A metal and plastic confinement, breathing the same recycled air over and over again, knowing every face, every compartment, every square millimeter of space. Out there was a world. A whole broad, beautiful golden world that no one had set foot on, waiting to be explored, to be lived on.

Waiting to kill us, he reminded himself.

They were all murmuring, muttering, a dozen different conversations buzzing at once.

Then Dan’s voice cut through it all. “So we have our first view of the promised land.”

Larry stepped toward him. “It doesn’t look very promising to me. A man can’t live there.”

“We can’t,” Dan shot back, “but our children could.”

“If you make them capable of breathing sulfur and strong as a man-and-a-third.”

“The geneticists can do whatever needs to be done.”

Larry was about to reply, but caught himself. Instead, he said, “This isn’t the place to debate such an important issue. I’d like to have a formal meeting of the Council tomorrow morning. We’ll have to decide if we want to make this planet our home, or look further.”

Dan said nothing. He merely watched Larry, with a quizzical little smile, playing on his lips.

It was late evening. The corridor lights were dimmed. Larry and Valery had eaten dinner in the Lorings’ quarters, with Val’s mother. Now, after a long walk around level one, they were approaching her quarters again, strolling along the empty corridor, hand in hand.

They came to an observation port and stopped. The port was an oblong of. thick plastiglass. A padded bench ran along the bulkhead alongside it. They sat and for a long, wordless while gazed out at the sky.

The stars were thick as dust. One yellow star stood out brighter than all the rest. Nearby it, almost lost in its glare, peeped a dimmer orange star.

“Tomorrow the Council meets to decide,” Larry said wearily.

“Do you think this is the end of the voyage?” Val asked.

He shook his head. “It can’t be. We can’t live on that planet… even though …”

“Even though?”

“It’s so beautiful!” he said. “I saw the pictures from the surface today. It’s so beautiful. If only we could survive there.”

She asked, “Can’t the geneticists…”

“Sure, they can alter the next generation of children so that they’ll be able to live on the planet. But—the kids would have to be brought up in a separate section of the ship. They’d have to be put under a higher gravity, different atmosphere. The parents would have to wear pressure suits just to visit their own children.”

“Ohhhh…”

“And what about the parents? Do you think people can stay aboard this ship, in this cocoon, this prison, and let their kids go down there to live? It won’t work; the planet’s beautiful, but too different from us. If we try to make it work, it’ll tear everybody apart.”

“Then we have to move on,” Val said.

“Right. But Dan won’t see it that way. He’ll put up a fight.”

“You’ll win.”

He looked at her. “Maybe. I wish I didn’t have to fight him.”

“He thinks the ship won’t be able to go much farther,” Valery said. “He’s afraid we’ll all get killed if we try to find another star, another planet.”

In the dim light, Larry could see that Val wasn’t looking at him, but gazing out at the stars. He reached for her chin and turned her face toward him.

“You’ve seen him several times since he got out of the infirmary, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” she said softly.

He let his hand drop away. “I don’t think I like that. In fact, I know I don’t.”

“Larry,” she said gently, “I’m a free human being. I can do what I want.”

“I know, but—well, I don’t want you to see him.”

“Don’t you trust me?”

He felt miserable, tangled up inside himself. “Of course I trust you, Val, but…”

“No buts, Larry. Either you trust me or you don’t.”

“I trust you.” Sullenly.

“Well you shouldn’t,” she snapped.

“Wha…?”

“Oh Larry—it’s all so mixed up! I don’t want Dan to hurt you. He… he said he’d almost be willing to let you stay Chairman if I’d marry him.”

Larry felt his insides going numb. “And you said?”

“I… I let him think I’d do it, if he’d forget about trying to hurt you.”

He knew how it felt to have liquid helium poured over you: scalding cold. “You let him think that.”

“I did it for you!”

“Thanks. That’s an enormous favor. Now he knows that anytime he crooks his finger, you’ll come running to him. All he has to do is start an argument with me, and he’s got you.”

“No… that isn’t…”

Larry’s hands were clenching into fists. “I must have been out of my mind to believe that you’d prefer me over him. You’ve always wanted him. Now you’ve got the perfect excuse to get him.”

He heard her gasp. “Larry… no… please…” Her voice sounded weak, far away.

“All this time you’ve been letting me think that you loved me… it was only because Dan seemed out of it. But whenever he’s around, you end up going for him.”

“You’ve got it all wrong!”

He stood up. For an instant, staring out at the stars, he felt as if he could fall right through the metal and plastic wall and tumble endlessly into the cold of eternity.

“Wrong?” he asked in a near-whisper. “Do I have it wrong?”

And then she was standing up in front of him, her face suddenly blazing with anger.

“You two are exactly alike!” Val snapped. She didn’t raise her voice, but now there was steel in it, hot steel that threw off sparks. “You think that you can own me. Both of you. Well, I’m not a possession. I’m me, and I’m not going to sit around here like some silly Earth flower while you two big strong men fight over me. From now on, you and Dan both can do without me. I don’t want to see either of you! Do you understand?”

Larry staggered a step backward. “Val…”

“If you and your ex-friend want to battle it out, it will have to be over some other reasons than me. I’m not a prize to be handed over to the winner. You two can knock your heads together… I don’t care anymore! I tried to save you, both of you. I love you both! Can’t you understand that? I love you both, but I’ve always loved you best, Larry. I’m the one who made you go after the Chairmanship… because I’m the one who wanted you. But you’re so intent on flexing your muscles and being jealous—You’re scared of Dan! And you’ll never be able to be happy or free or yourself until you stop being scared of him. And the only way that’s going to happen is for you to kill him… or him to kill you. That’s what you’re both heading for. But I won’t have any part of it! Go ahead and kill yourselves! See if I care!”

And she turned away and ran down the corridor.

Larry was too thunderstruck to go after her. Besides, he knew she was right.