Starship Summer

ONE

Last year I left Earth and Telemassed twenty light years through space to the colony world of Chalcedony, Delta Pavonis IV. I was looking for peace, for a retreat from the nightmares that plagued me. I was looking for contentment after a period of pain. I should have known, of course, that you cannot outrun your nightmares: they are with you until you find the strength to look deep within yourself and banish them with courage.

I took the Telemass relay via the four stations between Earth and Chalcedony and arrived feeling as if I’d died four times and been brought back to life—which, in effect, is exactly what had happened. Dazed, nauseous, I booked into an expensive hotel overlooking the ocean and slept for twenty-four hours. The following day I enquired at a couple of real estate agents. I was looking for a quiet, out of the way place, far from the tourists and the religious pilgrims who flocked to the planet in their droves.

That afternoon I hired a ground-effect vehicle and drove a hundred kilometres up the coast to the small beachside settlement of Magenta Bay. There, an overweight local in his sixties, all tan and smile, showed me around a few A-frames and then, sensing they were not what I was looking for, suggested I might like to view a plot of land with the idea of having my own place built.

I liked the area. Magenta Bay consisted of a dozen beachfront dwellings—A-frames and villas—and a few stores set back from the water. The sand was as fine and red as Hungarian paprika, and the rainforest that backed the settlement a startling, alien green. The purple mountains of the interior were sufficiently different to remind you that you were no longer on Earth.

I selected a plot on the northern headland of the bay, close enough to the centre of town to provide a short walk for the necessities, but far enough away from the nearest villa so as not be bothered by inquisitive neighbours.

I signed the paperwork, paid a deposit, then began the long drive back to MacIntyre to look for a dwelling that might suit the land I had bought.

In the event I didn’t get that far.

I was three kilometres out of Magenta when I saw the scrapyard. My first impression was that this was an incongruous, not to say ugly, business to set up in paradise. My second impression, when I made out the nature of the scrap, was tinged with a romanticism that recalled my youth and my fascination with the exploration of space, and I knew I had to stop and take a look around.

I drove under a rickety metal-worked archway bearing the legend: HAWKSWORTH & CO., constructed from old stanchion rods and microwave antennae. From one paradise I passed into another.

I braked and climbed out and stared about me in wonder. I was ten again, a kid awed at the sublime majesty and latent power of the craft arrayed around me. The sight was not without the kick of poignancy, however—and not just the poignancy of lost youth, but the sadness that these magnificent vessels should end up here, some whole, but most nobbled and spavined, stripped and stacked and sorted into utilitarian piles: here a rickety mound of radiation baffles, there a ziggurat of nose cones, and over there a pile of tail-fins layered like pancakes.

Not all the craft had been cannibalised and sectioned, however;there were a dozen vessels intact, looking much as they had thirty years ago, poised on the aprons of starports across the Expansion,ready to bravely explore the infinite.

I wandered around a ten-man exploration vessel squatting on its ramrod haunches, a bulging bullfrog of a thing with swelling engine nacelles and a prognathous nose-cone. I slapped its flank, old paint flaking beneath my palm. The silver and lightning blue livery of the Canterbury Line was still visible in places, excoriated by the void.

The next ship in line took my breath away, for I had possessed a model of this very starship in my early teens. It was a Jansen Mk III deep space exploration probe, still proudly bearing the blue and yellow carapace of the Stockholm Line. I walked its long, streamlined length, trying to imagine the sights it had witnessed, the events of history in which it had played a part—the exploration of planets across the Expansion now settled by colonists ignorant of the deeds and daring of the crews of vessels such as this.

I turned, taking in the entirety of the yard, my eye catching a kaleidoscopic display of familiar sigils and decals.

“Can I help you?”

The question, in the warm afternoon air, startled me.

The owner of the voice was just as remarkable as the vessels which surrounded us.

He was garbed in a grease-stained black onepiece and walked with a lurching limp, his right shoulder ducking with every step. His hair was long, black, and the skin of his face tanned by the fierce heat of Delta Pavonis to the shade of an overdone beefsteak.

The material of his onepiece bulged here and there—along the length of his arms and across his chest—but this I noticed only later.

He advanced, left hand outstretched. “Hawksworth. I run the place.” His right arm hung useless at his side.

“Conway,” I replied. “I’ll shortly be moving to Magenta.” I looked around at the towering examples of a long-gone era. “Some museum you have here.”

He looked at me, assessing my age. “Brings back memories?”

I smiled. “Just a few. It’s as if… as if my past has been pulled out of my head, made metal and lined up for my inspection.”

Hawksworth laughed. “Care for a drink?”

I was surprised by his hospitality, then realised that he probably didn’t get much passing trade this far north.

He led the way across the yard towards a small scoutship which, I realised with amusement, he had turned into an office. We climbed a spiral staircase welded to the hull of the ship and stepped onto an observation platform. Acceleration couches, in lieu of chairs, dotted the deck. He gestured for me to sit down and ducked into the bridge of the craft, a dark hole filled with glowing com-screens.

He emerged a few seconds later with two ice-cold cans of local beer.

He leaned against the rail, surveying his domain, and he reminded me, in that piratical pose, of a superannuated buccaneer scanning the salvage of a long and eventful life.

Only then did I notice the ridge of bolt-like protuberances that lined his arms, his chest and spine.

Before I could think of a way of framing a question, Hawksworth said, looking at me, “I don’t have you down as a pilgrim.”

I smiled. “Thanks. I’ll take that as a compliment. No, I’ve come to Chalcedony to retire. The quiet life…” I finished lamely.

I took a long swallow of beer. It was good, with taste and bite. I could see myself enjoying the occasional drink on the veranda of my villa, overlooking the bay.

“From Earth?” he asked.

I nodded. “Vancouver.”

“Why Chalcedony, and why Magenta Bay?” He smiled, gesturing with his can. “Forgive the third degree. I don’t get many visitors.”

“It’s okay,” I said. I don’t know why, but I liked Hawksworth. There was something big and slow and inspiring in the man, a gentleness of spirit belied by his gargantuan frame. “I saw a holo-doc about the planet. It looked peaceful. Unspoilt. I picked up a brochure and read about Magenta Bay. It seemed my kind of place.”

He looked at me closely. “You weren’t drawn by the Column?”

“Not at all. I’m not religious.” He shrugged. “Only, we get lots of visitors hereabouts. They say they’ve come for the views, the peace—but in reality they’re looking for something. And that something is often, though they don’t know it, the Column.”

I drank, then said, “Not me.”

He gave me a penetrating look. “But you’re running from something, Conway?”

I wondered, for a second, if he were an accredited telepath—but there was no connected minds symbol tattooed on his face to signify the fact.

I glanced at the spars and braces that enclosed his frame, and the white scars that showed at his wrist and jugular, and I looked out over the landscape of derelict dreams and wondered why he had fetched up here, in this place.

“We’re all running from something, Hawksworth,” I said.

He smiled, the grin transforming his rugged face. “Friends call me Hawk.”

Perhaps encouraged, I said, “You flew these things, years ago?” He looked at me quickly, then glanced down at his exposed wrist,and the sealed jack interface that was now just an ugly pucker of scar tissue. He nodded and took a long swallow of beer. “Years ago,” he said, “before the Nevada run.”

I let a suitable interval elapse, then said, “What happened?”

He shook his head. “Later,” he said, and effectively closed that line of conversation.

We sat and drank and enjoyed the view, and he said at last, “So, you’ve found a place in Magenta?”

I told Hawk that I had paid a deposit on a plot of land.

As I said this, an absurd idea hit me. I looked back at the ship on which we sat, made out its interior. “You live on this?” I asked.

“The Avocet is my home,” he said, “and you couldn’t wish for better.”

I looked around the yard, picking out the smaller, complete craft dotted here and there among the wreckage.

“I might be mad,” I said, “but show me around this place. I might be in the market for a starship.”

So we finished our beers and Hawk gave me a conducted tour of his scrapyard.

He talked me through the various intact ships he had in stock, from tiny three man escape craft to big, ungainly asteroid wreckers, and everything in between. As well as giving me their specifications, he was a walking encyclopaedia of their varied histories, their missions, mishaps and mysteries.

“It was a wondrous age,” he said. “Space was an enigma. Exploration was fraught with danger. How many crews lost their lives opening up the way?”

And then Telemass technology came along, and almost overnight these beautiful starships were put out to pasture. A few exploration companies threw in their lot with the Telemass people—they still needed crews to map the worlds they found—but a hundred Lines went to the wall.

“And you found yourself out of work?” I said.

“The end for me came well before Telemass,” he said quickly, and moved on. “Now this one,” he said, standing in the shadow of a Norfolk Line scoutship, “this little pearl has aesthetics and comfort. Come on, I’ll show you around.”

His description was meant as a superlative, but the vessel did remind me of a pearl: oval and lambent, with a pale polymer re-entry carapace that almost glowed.

Inside it was slick and soulless. It lacked character. Evidently it was one of the last ships designed before Telemass came along, and featured what thirty years ago would have been state-of-the-art technology. But something about it was without the appeal of the other, older ships.

I wanted an old, battered tub that had soaked up the light of a hundred distant stars.

I think Hawk sensed this as we emerged once more into the glaring light of Delta Pavonis.

“Not for you?”

“Too new. Do you have anything more… more romantic?” I stopped there, because, across the yard, my eye had caught sight of just what I was looking for.

It was hard to describe why I fell in love with the horizontal hulk that squatted on its landing stanchions like a giant insect. It combined a graceful line with obvious age, was proud and at the same time defeated. Perhaps it called to me to be… if not loved, then cared for.

“Tell me about this one,” I said, striding across the yard.

It was small, perhaps fifteen metres from the stubby nose-cone to its flaring twin exhaust vents. Many missions had blasted the livery from its hull and flanks, and alien ivy had made progress up its stanchions.

Hawk smiled and shook his head. “Trust you to pick the one crate I know nothing about. Or next to nothing,” he added.

“Can we go inside?”

He gestured for me to mount the ramp, then keyed in a code and the hatch slid open.

It was surprisingly spacious within: a wide command deck looked out through a wraparound viewscreen. It would make a marvellous lounge, with views across the bay. Smaller rooms gave off the main corridor, along the length of the ship; these would make bedrooms and a bathroom. A spray of paint, a few furnishings, and it would provide a comfortable retreat from the cares of the world.

“I’ve never been able to trace the history of this ship,” Hawk was saying, “and believe me I’ve tried. I don’t know where it came from, which world of the Expansion, nor its Line.”

“But it is human-built?”

He smiled and said, “I can’t be certain even of that.”

The possibility that the crate might be of alien manufacture added to the allure. There were three known space-faring alien races, and they kept themselves pretty much to themselves. I had seen them only on holo-docs, and never in the flesh. The thought of living in an alien starship…

“Where did you get it?” I asked.

“Not from my usual sources,” he admitted. “Someone found it.”

“Found?”

He thumbed over his shoulder to indicate the jungle of the interior. “A farmer came across it ten years ago, a hundred kays north of the Column. He approached me and I took a look, found it overgrown with vines and moss and salvaged the thing.”

“And you don’t know anything about it?”

“Nothing. Its control system doesn’t make sense. Even its propulsion is odd.”

“How so?”

“It has a couple of atmosphere jets, but no planetary drive. Which might suggest that it wasn’t an interplanetary. But—” he laughed and shook his head “—it’s equipped with a subdermal re-entry skin.”

“So maybe it is alien?”

“Maybe,” he said.

I looked around inside a little more, then left the ship and made a slow circuit. I shielded my eyes from the swollen sun and stared up at the vessel’s arching lines.

“And it’s for sale?”

“I’ll tell you what… It’s taking up space, I can’t cannibalise it, and you obviously like the look of the thing. It’s yours for five thousand.” I was open-mouthed at his generosity. I had expected to spend at least twenty thousand on a villa, perhaps a little more for a starship that took my fancy.

We shook hands and sealed the deal.

He agreed to deliver it to my plot of land in the next few days, and gave me the addresses of contractors who would connect it to the water and electricity supplies. He even promised to give it a paint job—the colours of any line I chose.

I paid Hawk half of the five thousand up front; the other half would follow on delivery.

As we parted company beneath the metal-work archway of his premises, he told me that he’d meet me in Magenta at the weekend and introduce me to a few people who made the local watering hole, the Fighting Jackeral, their spiritual home.

As I climbed into the ground-effect vehicle, I took one last look back at the rearing shape of the mysterious starship. I had the feeling then—and this is not stated with the wisdom of hindsight—that a new phase in my life was under way.