Into the Sea of Stars

Chapter 3

"I thought it essential that we all sit down together before departure and briefly review what we can expect." Ian was trying to speak with an authoritative voice, but it came out more as a strangled croak. He and Ellen Redding had had such a knock-down drag out over who was in control of the mission that he had actually shouted himself hoarse. He looked across at her and tried a wan smile, but from her response it must have looked to her to be a threatening grimace. Nevertheless she said noth ing; his halfhearted threat to call the Chancellor and resign over her presence, for the moment at least, had been the lever to submission.

"Why we've been assigned is the Chancellor's decision and not mine. But I can see where, if anything, he wished to get rid of three tenured faculty and bring in his own people-and, Ellen, I'd think even you'd agree with that." She nodded her head sadly. Most of the campus staff knew about the affair between Ellen and the Chancellor a dozen years back, when he was still the glad-handing, ever-smiling young hotshot assistant to the assistant vice president. Out of that had come the famous nickname "C. C." Redding, which most faculty could guess at but usually would not discuss with anyone less than a grad uate student.

Leminski floated to one side of the table and looked vacantly off into space with a slightly bored expression of disdain.

Ian cleared his throat and tried to continue. " Stasz, are we in trim for flight weight?"

"Yeah, and one kilo under. Croce and me drained off an extra bottle of gin and just discharged it a little while ago."

Oh, great, Ian thought, Richard has a new drinking buddy. The pilot to whom we've entrusted our lives.

"All right then, we've got our ship, everything is loaded, and now we have to decide where to go."

Richard looked up at Ian. "What do you mean, where do we go? Why, I thought this expedition was to look for the Lost Colonies."

"It's not that simple," Ian said softly. "Shelley's grant request mentioned in general terms the seven hundred lost colonies, and indeed if all of them survived, which is highly unlikely, we are now presented with an inter esting piece of math which our dear sponsors never grasped."

"Go on," Ellen said softly, without a trace of anger. When it came to questions of odds and statistics, she was all professional and, in fact, even cordial.

"All right, here is what we know-the givens, so to speak. Starting in the year 2079 the first colonial units came to the decision to abandon Earth in light of the coming war. Their propulsion systems were stationkeep ing units, not heavy-lift devices. Given the tech level of the period, the only propulsion units available were ion drive, plasma drive, solar sail, antimatter, and thermo nuclear pulse.

"Within four years the first unit completed its modi fications and was away. Seven hundred and twenty-three departed before August 7, 2087, when the first wave of EMP detonations on Earth and the subsequent strikes wiped out all communication."

Ian was really getting into form now, and for once he had an interested audience. His was no longer dry his tory-it was the information that would be the center of their lives for the next three years.

"Could more units have left afterward?" Richard asked.

"Possibly. And just that question shows the problems of this quest. There is only one absolute given in this whole scheme. Six hundred and twelve units did pull out of near-Earth orbit and one hundred and eleven others pulled out from various deep-space orbits, including three asteroid mining-survey colonies.

"But the data stops the day the war started, when the tracking facilities on the Moon and Mars were knocked out. So there is the potential that approximately seven hundred other units, which were preparing to abandon Earth orbit, did indeed abandon orbit."

"So that increases our odds tremendously?" Ellen asked cautiously,

"Yes, from next to impossible to almost next to impossible. And I'm not being sarcastic. You see, the Co pernicus site did have the initial trajectory data. In fact, for the units that left several years before the war, the data are pretty darn good, since they had time to do some pinpoint tracking.

"So here we have the raw data of seven hundred-odd colonies to start with, that's great. However, did you ever stop to think"-and Ian was talking in general, but every one could sense that it was directed toward Shelley- "just how big it is out there?"

She smiled wanly and nodded. The stares of the other three focused on her, and she could feel the hostility grow ing as each one thought about the fact that it was the overzealous young student who had pulled them from their more-comfortable niches and sent them to synchron ous orbit.

"It's not that bad," she said meekly.

"Not that bad!" Stasz interjected. "My hand to God, for I speak the truth, it's merely numbing in size.

"How far could they have gone?" he asked, shifting his gaze from Shelley back to Ian.

"Not far. It's estimated that their drive systems at best could take them up to point-one light. Therefore, a max imum of 112 light-years out. That gives us a cubic volume of… let me see."

"Nearly ten million cubic light years." Ellen said softly, obviously proud that she could outdo them all in a little exercise of mental calculation.

"Therefore," Ian responded, "I present our problem- where do we start? We shall be looking for approximately seven hundred units in an area of ten million cubic light- years."

"Can't we eliminate a good part of that?" Richard asked.

"I think so," Stasz interjected. "The fifteen stars nearest to Earth have already been checked out-without any sign of refugee colonies. That eliminates nearly a hundred craft right there, since their trajectories carried them that way. Now, it is of course possible that they went to those systems, slingshoted around them, and went off on tangent trajectories, thereby making predictions of their whereabouts more difficult."

"And I think we can also eliminate two hundred or so colonies because the data we have on them indicates that they would not have survived the journey for long."

"Why so, Dr. Lacklin?" Shelley asked, curiosity overcoming her desire to hide.

"The answer is simple. We are dealing with closed ecosystems. There is a certain amount of free hydrogen available in interstellar space, and if you could accelerate up to ramjet velocities that would be useful, but outside of the propulsion systems, the colonies had to be one hundred percent closed."

"I'm not sure that I follow you," Ellen admitted.

"Well, let us say that a colony had a ninety-nine point nine percent reclamation rate for all combinations of ox ygen. Let's say that across a time period of X, point one percent of the total oxygen supply is lost due to faulty reclamation, leaks, and such. Now, point one is not bad for any vessel if X equals one year. But look at the simple math-in one thousand years, unless another oxygen sup ply was found, the colony would be dead. Now, this equa tion applies to every resource: oxygen, amino acids, carbon compounds, nitrogen, various electronic components, and even worse, any catalysts, substances that are changed by the interaction of a process."

"The first critical point of scarcity," Richard interrupted, "defines the limits of growth or survival." He looked around with a self-satisfied smile, as Ian and the others turned to him.

"Well, it's an ecological point, and that's what these colonies are-closed ecologies. The first point of scarcity will define their possible limit, any bioscientist knows that. So you're saying that a number of these units had limited carrying capacity."

"At least a hundred are most likely dead by now," Ian continued, "unless they entered another star system for resupply and possible colonization. But from what Stasz has said of the. survey, there were no signs of that."

"So far we've checked the fifteen nearest stars," Stasz responded.

"And nothing?" Shelley asked.

"Not a sign."

"It's damn peculiar," Shelley replied. "You'd have thought that the units would have naturally gravitated to the nearest star systems."

"Maybe none of them were appropriate," Richard interjected.

"Two of the systems had planetary bodies that might have been useful for resupply, but the others, except for the energy from the star, were next to useless," Stasz replied.

"Let's get back to the question of which direction to take," Ellen said, sensing that the rest of them would soon be off on a technical discussion that could last for days.

"Ah, yes," Ian responded, as if being drawn back from a drifting line of thought that he wished to pursue. "Which way…" His voice trailed off.

"How about thataway," Richard announced melodramatically, while pointing off vaguely toward the "down" direction of the room.

"Dr. Lacklin," Shelley said quietly, waiting for the laughter at Richard's comment to die down. "Dr. Lacklin, what about toward SETI Anomaly One and the galactic center?"

Ian brightened up at her suggestion.

"Precisely what I was leading to, of course," he said hurriedly. "You see, there was one general trend in the movement. Colonial 237, which was the second unit to depart, was headed straight for the galactic center, and our records show that one hundred thirty-five other units went within ten minutes of arc to either side of that point."

"Well, that narrows the volume tremendously."

"Still a bit of a problem, Ellen," Stasz replied.

Ellen groaned. "It only gives us an area about twenty- one thousand A.U. in diameter to search at a range of fifty light-years out."

Ian chuckled softly and gave Shelley a baleful glance. "I tried to explain this to the Chancellor, but do you think he cared about the mathematics of our search? Oh no. You see, a bright young graduate assistant had convinced a bunch of drone-head bureaucrats that this expedition could work." His normally high voice started to crack into falsetto. "Twenty-one thousand A.U." And shaking his head, he fell silent.

"Why the galactic center?" Richard asked.

"Why not? There were several stars they could orbit into along the path, and somehow it seemed appropriate. Sort of like going to the center of everything, if you will. And if we were to find anything in terms of life, I guess that would be the place to look for it. That, and the SETI contact back in 2018, coming straight out from the galactic center. Even though the contact point was estimated to be four thousand light-years away, it was still something to go for in all that immensity of space."

"Are there any other areas of such promise?" Stasz asked.

"No," Ian said softly, "the other colonies were pretty evenly distributed. A fair number going toward the thirty nearest stars, and, like I already said, the paradox of this is that in the first fifteen checked out so far, not one sighting has been made. If we head toward the galactic center, within a hundred light-years three stars not too far off the trajectory might be worth checking out. Twenty- three units used solar sails as their propulsion, and with our survey-ship telescopies, we can run a computerized scan as we head out. Forty of the units were using the old Orion concept-nuclear-blast pulsing."

"God, how primitive," Stasz muttered.

"Yeah, almost barbaric, but it worked. We might get lucky and detect a detonation or, at least, residual radiation from the pulsers. The ramjets will leave a certain amount of disturbance in their wake, and with luck, we can latch on. We'll have to trust to the nav — detection computer system to pick out anything and hope that there is some semblance of communication between them which we can home in on. Many of the units carried a powerful beacon system and we know the frequencies, so we can track on that, as well.

"So, unless one of my fellow travelers has another suggestion, I guess we should point ourselves into the galactic core and hope."

"We do have fairly precise measurements on colonials 418 and 422," Shelley interjected. "We could try for them first."

"I don't think it really matters," Ian replied despond ently, "so what the hell, enter it into the log as we depart that we're locking onto the tracks of 418 and 422. At least it will make us sound like we're doing something."

"You sound as if you don't expect to find any of those colonies," Ellen responded.

"By the Eye of the Crab," Stasz shouted, and he pointed to Richard and winked. Richard pulled a plastic pouch out of his pocket and tossed it to the pilot, who snatched it out of the air, pulled the straw out, and drained off so much of the contents that Richard's face fell even as Stasz's turned redder and redder.

"As I was about to say, nearly seventy-five percent of these Alpha-3 class survey ships never came back from their surveys. Hell, lady, chances are you'll die before we ever find one of lan's bloody lost friends. Why the hell do you think the government gave this ship to your grant foundation? Two years ago they dumped a pretty penny into overhauling this crate and then the smart boys in Research and Development come up with a safer and faster design. Now if they scrapped this bucket some damn fool antispace senator would scream that we're wasting taxpayers' money. Of course nobody in DSSE wants assignment to this deathtrap, so some bright young fellow comes up with the idea of giving it to you damned stupid educators via the research foundation. Why, that's the perfect plan! This bucket sails off to oblivion, no one at DSSE is to blame, and in fact we get a bigger appro priation to build a replacement."

"So why are you along, my friend?" Richard asked.

'" Cause I had a little run-in with the Governor."

"Oh."

"Did you ever hear of his daughter?"

Richard Croce's and Ellen Redding's howls filled the room. Ian just turned scarlet. Only Shelley was strangely quiet.

"You're all crazy, you are," Stasz shouted. "I'll watch you laugh though when I punch us out of here in three hours. Is it the galactic center, then?"

Ian nodded his head sadly. Why not? Hell, it was as good as any area to search. They'd have to find at least one colony, that was plain. Maybe with a little luck they could score something in a year or so.

With a whispering hiss the Discovery slipped from its docking bay, the faint push from the back of the seat creating a sensation that "down" was at the rear of the command compartment. Ian looked across at Shelley, who was in the couch behind Stasz, and gave a reassuring smile. But she didn't need one. It was her first flight, and for her it was a moment full of wonder.

Ian listened in on the chatter over Stasz's comlink. He never figured out how a pilot could make sense of the nonstop commands as flight control sorted out the dozens of incoming and outbound flights.

" Com Sat Rep 23A, your approach to D-97 on 933 is open. Ah, VCT9 — er, you are cleared for entry into Restrict 9, approach at point-four M per. Discovery 1…"

"That's us," Stasz whispered.

"Out to depart line 8, cleared at your discretion. Good luck."

" Discovery 1 up to point-one G on depart line 8," Stasz replied as his fingers danced across the green-lit board. The quiet hissing was suddenly punched out by a dull rumbling throb that pushed them back into their seats, then the booster flared to life as Stasz punched up an outside view astern on the main monitor so his passengers could watch departure.

The nexus point of the station was already a mile eastern, silhouetted by the backlighting of a half-phase Earth. The skyhook beyond the nexus shone like a diamond, the sharp, straightedged line descended toward Earth until it finally disappeared from view. Jutting out from the cable in all directions a host of spidery weblines curved away into the infinity of space, a halo over 45,000 miles in diameter, hanging above the Earth-the growing hub of civilization's outward reach.

The passengers of Discovery 1 were strangely quiet as each one dealt with his inner fears. Stasz's taunting words had a ring of truth to all of them. The odds were stacked against the voyage, and all because a Chancellor wanted to rid himself of some staff to open up positions for a couple of new cronies.

"Take a good look at old mother Earth." Stasz laughed softly. "You ain't gonna see no blue for a long time to come. Jesus, it got so on my last trip, out that I would think more about blue skies and oceans than I even thought about sex. Funny how the body misses some things more than others out here."

"You're really not helping things," Richard replied.

"Not paid to help things." Stasz laughed. "Paid to fly this crate and point out the realities to you folks. Hang on, I'm bringing her up to three G."

He punched up the control buttons and the rumbling roar increased in pitch as they were pushed deeper into their seats. Ian rolled his head toward Shelley and saw that she was absolutely enthralled with the whole thing.

She gave him an excited smile. "This is what it must have been like for those first voyagers," she said, her eyes alight with excitement. The only response she re ceived were groans from Ellen and Richard.

Within minutes Richard noticed that the half planet of Earth was noticeably receding, so that the entire planet occupied less than half the screen. The Brasilia terminus was still visible, looking more like a jewel in a spider's web than a complex structure that housed half a thousand workers and docking ports for a hundred ships.

Stasz slowly throttled them up to 3.5 G and held the rate there for several long minutes. Ian knew it was simply a matter of showmanship on Stasz's part. They could just as easily have accelerated at 1 G as they cleared near- Earth space-and the ultimate effect would have been no different-but Stasz, like most pilots, wanted to "hot trail" it out and feel the pleasure of raw power under his control.

Let him have his fun, Ian thought. He was surprised to realize that he was enjoying himself. The historian in him was fantasizing, as well-just as Shelley was doing- imagining the feel of an old shuttle or HBV at lift-off. He settled into his couch and let the pulsing roar engulf him in a drowsy state. Suddenly the pressure intensified and he heard a muffled cry of dismay from Richard. Looking across to Stasz, Ian saw that the pilot had slammed the throttle to the wall. Stasz's eyes were wide and betrayed a maniacal gleam: he was getting off on the power.

They inched up past 4 and then started toward 4.5, and Stasz laughed with a high-pitched keen.

Great, the pilot was crazy!

The Discovery thundered away, slashing across space on its outward trajectory. And suddenly the rockets winked off.

A deep rolling sensation rose from lan's stomach as they went from 4.5 to 0 in an instant. He had the unpleas ant sensation that he was tumbling head over heels, and from her low, gasping groan he knew that Ellen Redding was already experiencing the worst of it. Stasz merely laughed.

"And into the universe!" he cried.

The disk of the Moon soon matched the Earth's in size, as Stasz called them to the forward cabin where they strapped themselves back into their cushioned couches.

"I've reviewed it with you once, but for one last time, here we go. We've cleared the major shipping lanes of near-Earth environment, and our nav system has come up clean, but to be on the safe side I've positioned our initial path five degrees of arc off the asteroid belt and will compensate once we've cleared that region. Remember, the translight jump will cause a momentary blackout and all of you will experience some degree of nausea, so have those damn bags ready. After the initial jump the ship's gravity inertia system will kick on, so remember that there will be one G aligned toward the long axis of the ship.

"Are you ready?"

They all nodded bleakly. Ian shot one final look at the small blue-green disk just barely visible on the video dis play. This great adventure was already starting to pale. Just what the hell was he doing there?

"Oh, by the way," Stasz shouted out with a laugh, "in one out of every ninety-seven point four jumps, the ship breaks up. We've never figured out why. Just thought you might like to know."

Ian looked at Ellen. She was tight-lipped but managed a cold grimace of a smile. He wasn't sure if it was a smile of genuine fear or one of resentment at the crazy scheme that had dragged her into space. Shelley, however, had a look of joyous anticipation. Richard was strangely quiet, and Ian suddenly realized that the doctor had narced him self out with a tranq shot.

"Here we go," Stasz shouted. "Crazy Stasz plays with light speed-and don't say I didn't warn you!" He pulled the lever that punched them into star drive. lan's vision blurred. He tried to focus on the disk of the Earth, but it was already lost to view. The sun shot into range of the camera focused astern, its once-yellow disk shifting through the lower end of the visual spectrum to infrared. The darkness of space around it distorted in a hazy shimmer. He could hear Stasz's high-pitched laugh ter and, as if triggered by it, experienced a swirling black ness of nightmarish dreams.