Golden Fleece

SEVENTEEN

MASTER CALENDAR DISPLAY • CENTRAL CONTROL ROOM

STARCOLOGY DATE: THURSDAY 9 OCTOBER 2177

EARTH DATE: FRIDAY 30 APRIL 2179

DAYS SINCE LAUNCH: 742 ▲

DAYS TO PLANETFAIL: 2,226 ▼

Countdowns had been a part of space travel since the launch of the first Sputnik 220 years ago. Few countdowns, though, had been more anticipated than the one that was now underway. Fewer still would have as great a percentage of the population reciting the numerals out loud. Strictly speaking, Engineer Chang, keeping up a good public face regardless of the turmoil he felt within, was going to lead the count; but since he was just reading numerals off one of my digital displays, I was the one who would really be orchestrating this great event.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Chang said into one of my microphones, “today, the 742nd day of our starflight, marks an important milestone in our long and arduous journey. In a little less than two minutes, we will pass the one-quarter mark. Coinciding with this, a day of scheduled routine maintenance on the Starcology’s fusion engines will begin. You’ve all been briefed about what to expect, so I won’t bore you with a repetition, yes? Just, please, be careful… and have fun.” He looked to his right at the glowing three-meter-high holographic digits that I was projecting next to his dais. “When we reach the one-minute mark, I invite you all to join with me in counting down.”

An Argo Communications Network camera was trained on Chang; two others panned the gathered crowd. I could have provided just as good coverage, but the humans wanted to do this themselves.

Chang lifted his giant upper-right arm as my clock said 1:04. He dropped it four seconds later and bellowed, “Sixty seconds.” The floating numerals said 1:00, though, so about half the assembled group shouted, “One minute,” while the other half echoed Chang’s words. A little laughter ensued, but the crowd managed to synchronize itself by the fifty-seven-second mark. Everyone except for a dozen of Chang’s engineers was here: 10,021 people all gathered on the grassy lawn of the main residential level. They knew enough to be standing. Many had on foam rubber knee and elbow pads. A few of the more cautious types were even wearing crash helmets.

They all shouted along with Chang, most in English, the standard language of the Starcology, others in their native tongues: Algonquin, Esperanto, French, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Kurdish, Mandarin, Russian, Swahili, Ukrainian, Urdu, a dozen others. “Fifty-six,” said the voices, loud and joy-filled. “Fifty-five. Fifty-four.”

The ship provided all sorts of leisure-time activities as well as research, educational, and library facilities second to none. We’d expected this journey, the longest in absolute distance as well as in subjective duration ever undertaken by humans, to have been interesting and enjoyable. After all, the vessel was pleasant; the crew could devote their time to whatever pursuits interested them; there were no concerns about making a living, or about international tensions, or about environmental degradation. And yet, despite all that, it turned out they were bored, restless, rebellious. They hated their confinement; they hated the seemingly endless journey.

I had no such misgivings. For me, these two years had been fulfilling, fascinating. I had a purpose, a job to do. Perhaps that was it. Perhaps it was that very lack of purpose, of assigned tasks, that made the humans so unhappy. Had we erred in selecting overachievers? They should enjoy this time off. Once we arrive at Colchis, they will have more to do than they can possibly imagine.

“Thirty-eight. Thirty-seven. Thirty-six.”

Still, I suppose it made sense that this should be a day of celebration. We were, after all, about to pass a significant milestone. And yet, I did not feel like celebrating. For me it meant that a major portion of my assigned duties were now discharged. The lifetime of this ship, this flying tomb as I-Shin Chang called it, was measured in a tiny span of years; and my usefulness, my purpose, was tied specifically to this ship. They would have no need for me once we finished our mission. Contemplating that fact gave me an unpleasant feeling. Whether it was sorrow in the same sense as humans experienced it, I will never know for sure. It felt poignant, though, if I understand the meaning of that word. I do not look forward to my usefulness coming to an end.

Obsoleted.

A silly verb. A sillier epitaph.

“Nineteen. Eighteen. Seventeen.”

Warning alarms were going off for many of the people in the crowd: their medical telemetry showing abnormally high levels of excitement. I pushed the trigger thresholds higher to shut off the signals. They were all too young and too healthy to have a heart attack over a bit too much excitement. Even those who were members of the Dorothy Gale Committee, those traitors, those would-be mutineers who had called for abandoning the mission, even they were excited, although, on average, perhaps not as much as the general population.

“Twelve. Eleven. Ten.”

The chorus of voices was growing louder, more boisterous. Hearts raced. EEGs grew agitated. Body temperatures increased. For once I understood the phrase “palpable excitement.” The single-digit numbers were now counted down with a gusto, a passion, an animation.

“Nine. Eight. Seven.”

The published mission plan had originally called for this event to happen without special notice by the humans. I would shut off the engines, but compensate for the loss of perceived-gravity-due-to-acceleration by cranking up the ship’s artificial gravity system, just as I had done for the months Argo had been in orbit around Earth. But Mayor Gorlov realized that the people needed a holiday, something to be excited about. Instead of compensating, he had asked me to turn off the artificial gravity altogether, so that the only gravity aboard ship would be that due to the ship’s acceleration.

“Six. Five. Four.”

In a few seconds, I would turn off the engine. Our magnetic shield, carefully angled, using the same technology Aaron had employed to haul Diana and the Orpheus back aboard, would continue to protect the people within this ship— not to mention my delicate electronics—from the sleet of radioactive particles we were moving through, the barrage of stripped nuclei that fueled our Bussard ramjet.

“Three! Two! One!”

It would take my little robots the better part of a day to clean the ramscoop assembly, the fusion chamber, and the fluted exit cone. Once the engine was shut down, the sunlike glow of our exhaust would disappear and Argo’s three-kilometer-long hull would be illuminated solely by the encircling starbow. Each metal of our hull—the bronze hydrogen funnel, the silver central shaft, and the copper fusion assembly—would glint differently in the rainbow light.

“ZERO!”

I throttled back the fusion engine, gently, easily, slowly. Although our speed remained constant at a fraction below that of light, our acceleration dropped to zero with the same rapidity that a human can turn his or her feelings from love to hate. As it dropped, the simulated gravity, produced by our acceleration, ebbed, drained.

Some impatient souls began kicking off the sod as soon as the count reached zero. Their first leaps were a disappointment—that was plain in their expressions and their telemetry. But each successive leap took them higher and higher, and the fingers of gravity drew them back to the ground more slowly, more gently, and then, finally, they leapt and kept rising and rising and rising until they bounced against the vaulted ceiling eight meters up.

More sedate types waited until they could feel the weightlessness and then, with a simple flexing of toes, began to rise into the air. Some ended up stranded, floating between floor and ceiling with nothing off which to push. They didn’t seem to mind, though, laughing like children as they flailed their limbs in the air, anti-SAS drugs removing any of the discomfort that sometimes went with the introduction of zero g.

Others were using small aerosol cans to propel themselves through the massive chamber. They tumbled through the air, looking down upon the roofs of the blocks of apartment units below, many appreciating for the first time the careful geometry of the grassed areas, the complex curves of the lockstone paths.

Still others had joined together in a conga line and were sailing across the sky, singing.

The celebration lasted for hours, people becoming progressively more adventurous in the absence of gravity, performing acrobatics and complex three-dimensional ballets. Even those who were experienced in zero gravity seemed to enjoy the wide-open spaces afforded by Argo, something quite unusual in most human space vessels. Many seemed to have fun kicking off one wall with all their might and bursting through space for a hundred meters or so until air drag brought them to a halt. Quickly, of course, and especially among the males, competitions developed to see who could sail the farthest on a single kick.

It didn’t take long for couples to start drifting away— literally—to explore the possibilities of weightless lovemaking. Most were disappointed—traditional thrusting gestures tended to push partners apart—but some found ways around this and, judging by their telemetry, had very good times indeed.

Aaron and Kirsten did join in the festivities, although Kirsten had to nip out for a time to fix the dislocated shoulder of someone who had rammed too hard into the ceiling. Such injuries had been anticipated, though, and she was only gone for thirty-seven minutes. When she did return, she floated in midair facing Aaron, her fingers intertwined with his. She stared into those multicolored eyes, searching and wondering. He seemed happier than he had been of late, but she perhaps detected something I could not perceive, for she made no sexual overture. They hovered there, together, in silence for a long time.