Flight of Exiles

2

Larry sat in his living quarters, in the dark. It was a single compartment, barely big enough for a bunk, a desk, and a chair. The bunk and desk were molded into the curving walls of the compartment. Drawers and sliding partitions to the closet and sanitary blended almost invisibly with the silvery metal of the walls.

In the darkness, as he sat in the only chair and stared at nothing, there was only the residual glow of the viewscreen at the foot of the bed and the faint fluorescence of the wall painting that Valery had done for him years ago, when he had first been assigned a compartment of his own.

So you’ve lost a father you’ve never known, Larry still argued with himself. You’re not the only one. Every one of those fifty frozen people was a father or mother to somebody aboard the ship. Look at Dan; it’s hit him a lot harder.

But as he thought about it, slowly Larry began to realize that something else was bothering him. It wasn’t the deaths. Not really. That left nothing but a cold emptiness inside him. It was something else—

What caused the fire?

According to the ship’s computer records, they had been crawling through the huge gulf of space for nearly fifty years. Twenty-some thousand human beings, exiles from Earth, on their way to Alpha Centauri in a giant pinwheel of a ship. Nearly fifty years. Almost there.

But the ship was starting to die.

The men and women who had started on this long, long voyage were exiles. They had been scientists—molecular geneticists, most of them. The world government had rounded them up and placed them in a prison, this ship, which was then only a mammoth satellite orbiting Earth. Earth was overcrowded, it needed peace and above all it needed stability. The scientists represented the forces of change, not stability. The geneticists and their colleagues offered the ability to alter the human race, to make every baby into a superman or a slave, into a genius or a moron. On demand. Pay your money and take your choice.

The world government was humane. And very human. Its leaders decided such power would be too tempting, too easy to corrupt. So, as humanely as possible—but with thorough swiftness—they arrested all the scientists who were involved in genetic engineering and exited them to the satellite. Their knowledge was never to be used to alter the precious, hard-won peace and stability of Earth.

It had been Dan Christopher’s father—with the help of Larry’s father—who worked out the idea of turning their satellite prison into a starship. The Earth’s government agreed, reluctantly at first, but then with growing enthusiasm. Better to get rid of the troublesome scientists completely. Let them go toward Alpha Centauri. Whether they make it or not, they will no longer bother the teeming, overcrowded Earth.

But the ship itself was overcrowded. Twenty thousand people can’t be kept alive for year after year, decade after decade, for half a century or more. Not on a spacecraft. Not on the ship. So most of the people were frozen in cryogenic deepsleep, suspended animation, to be reawakened when they reached Alpha Centauri, or when they were needed for some special reason. The ship was run by a handful of people—no more than a thousand were allowed to be awake and active at one time. All this Larry knew from the history tapes. Much of it he had learned side by side with Dan, his best friend, when they were kids studying together. Both their mothers had died of a virus infection that killed hundreds of people before the medics figured out a way to stop it. Their fathers had handed the infant sons over to friends to be raised, and went into cryogenic sleep, to be awakened when they reached their destination. If they made it. The people who had built this ship were engineers of Earth.

The people who lived in it, riding out to the stars, were mostly scientists and their children. The ship had to operate far more than fifty years, if they were all to stay alive. The time was almost over, and the ship’s vast intricate systems were starting to break down, to fail. Youngsters trained as engineers and technicians had all the learning that the tapes could provide. But could they keep the ship going indefinitely?

A month ago it was the main power generator that failed, and they began to ration electrical power. Last week it was a pump in the hydroponics section; if they hadn’t been able to repair the pump they would have lost a quarter of their food production, plus the even more important oxygen-recycling ability of the green plants that grew in the long troughs of chemical nutrients. And now the fire. Fifty people dead.

Will any of us make it?

A soft tapping at his door. Fingernails on plastic. Valery.

“Come in,” Larry said, getting up from his chair.

The door slid open and she stood there framed in the light from the corridor.

Valery looked small, but she was actually almost Larry’s height, and he had known since their childhood together that she was as tough and supple as plastisteel. Her face was broad, with high Nordic cheekbones and wide, always-surprised-looking eyes. Changeable eyes; sometimes blue, sometimes green, sometimes something else altogether. Very fair skin with a scattering of freckles. Very, very pretty.

She was wearing a simple white jumpskirt and blouse. Like most of the girls aboard the ship, Valery made her own clothes.

“I heard about your father,” she said, her voice low.

Without waiting for him to say anything, she stepped into the compartment. Automatically, the door slid shut behind her. The room was suddenly plunged into darkness again. In the faint glow from the fluorescent painting, he started to reach for the light switch.

“No—” she said. “It’s all right like this. We don’t need lights.”

“Val—”

She was standing very close to him. He could smell the fragrance of her hair.

“I saw Dan. They took him to the infirmary. He collapsed.”

“I know,” Larry said.

He wanted to touch her, to put his arms around her and let her warmth engulf him. But he knew he couldn’t.

“You’d better… sit down,” he said.

Valery went to the plastic chair in front of the desk. She sat on it and tucked her feet up under her, as simple and feminine as a cat. Larry could see her in the darkness as a gleam of white, like a pale nebula set against the depths outside. He sat on the edge of the bunk.

“I wish there was something I could say,” Valery began. “I just feel so helpless.”

Larry found himself gripping the edge of the bunk hard with both hands. “Uh… how’s Dan?”

“Asleep. The medics have sedated him. He’s… he’s not strong, like you.”

“He does his thing, I do mine,” Larry said. “He shows his grief on the outside.”

“And you keep yours locked up inside you, so nobody can see.”

He didn’t answer.

“I can see it,” Valery said, her voice soft as a star-cloud. “I came over to tell you. I know what’s going on inside you, Larry. I…”

“Stop it!” he snapped. “You’re going to marry Dan in two more months. Leave me alone.”

Even in the darkness, he could sense her body stiffen. Then she said, “But I don’t love Dan. I love you.”

“That doesn’t make any difference and you know it.”

“You love me, Larry, I know that too.”

He shook his head. “No… I don’t. Not anymore.”

Her face was lost in shadow, but her voice smiled. “Larry—remember when we were just six or seven and we snuck into the free-fall playroom… you and Dan and me? And we were playing tag, and you got racing so fast that you flew smack into a wall—”

“It was the ceiling,” he said.

“You hurt your shoulder, but you kept telling us it wasn’t hurt. But I could see your pain, Larry. I could see it.”

“Okay, so I broke my shoulder.”

Suddenly she was beside him, kneeling alongside the bunk. “So don’t say you don’t love me, Larry Belsen. I know you do.”

“It’s no use,” he said, his voice as cracked and miserable as he felt inside. “The computer selection was final. Not even the Council can revoke it. You can’t have people just flying off and marrying anybody they feel like marrying! That’s what happened to old Earth. The genetics went from bad to worse. We’ve got to live by the rules, Val… there’s no other way.”

“And the rules say I have to marry Dan.”

“He loves you, Val.”

“And you don’t?”

He couldn’t answer. Instead, he stared down at her for an infinite moment, then pulled her up to him and kissed her. She felt soft and good and loving. She clung to him hard, warmly. Everything else left his mind and he thought of nothing but her.

When he finally surfaced for air, she asked sleepily, “You don’t have a duty shift, do you?”

Shaking his head, “No. Excused from duty until after the funeral services.”

“Oh.”

He sat there on the bunk, loving her and hating himself. This is all wrong. What I’m doing…

“Larry?”

“What is it?”

“If the Council would allow it, would you want to marry me?”

“Don’t make it worse than it is, Valery.”

“But would you?”

“Sure.”

She sat up beside him. “We can do it, you know. If you really want to.”

“You must be…”

“No, we can,” she insisted. “The Council’s due to vote on the new Chairman in two days, right? The Chairman and the permanent Council members are Class A, aren’t they? Their genetic options are much wider than B’s, aren’t they?”

“Yes, but…”

“I checked it all out. The computer selection rated you and Dan so close together that it wasn’t until the third-order effects were taken into account that it rated Dan ahead of you. And then it was only a shade. But if you’re elected Chairman, then…”

Larry shook his head. “It’s Dan’s turn to be Chairman. He’s a year older than I am. Besides, he wanted to revive his father when we got to Centauri and turn the Chairmanship over to him.”

“But that’s all changed now.”

Larry frowned. “No… Dan and I talked it over a long time ago. He’s a year older than I am, so he’ll get a chance to be Chairman first—”

Very softly, Valery said, “That means in two months I’ll be Mrs. Christopher. Unless you do something about it now.”

“I can’t…”

“Dan’s in no condition to run the Council,” she said. “When they vote, two days from now, he’ll still be in the infirmary. And a lot of the older Council members have always thought he’s much too emotional to be Chairman, even if it’s only for a couple of months. Especially now, when we’re about to make landfall… they’d rather have a stronger, cooler Chairman. You can ask my father; that’s what they’re saying.”

Larry knew. He knew all of it. To be Chairman when we reach the new world. Every eligible young man and woman aboard wanted that honor.

“Do you think Dan could handle that responsibility?” Valery asked, sliding a hand around the back of Larry’s neck.

Not as well as I can, he answered silently.

“As Chairman, you can marry me,” she said.

“Val…”

“Don’t send me to Dan. Please. It’s you I want.”

I CA N do a better job than he would. And marry Val.

“Larry, do I have to beg you?” She leaned her cheek against his. It felt wet. Tears.

“But it’s wrong,” he muttered. “It’s like kicking my best friend when he’s down.”

“It’s the only chance you’ve got, Larry. We all need you, everybody aboard the ship. You’re the best one to be Chairman, everybody knows that. And I need you! I can’t live without you!”

He closed his eyes and heard himself saying, “All right. I’ll do it. I’ll do it.”