Into the Sea of Stars (10 page)

"Ian, look at that."

Ellen had stopped at the fifty-meter observation plat
form. He suddenly realized that she had followed the right
course of action. They all should have observed the sit
uation carefully before barging down to the cylinder floor.

"What is it?"

"First off, none of the structures down there seems
occupied, they're all overgrown. Second, I've yet to see
a person. But third, look up overhead and about halfway
down the cylinder."

Ian leaned his head back and gazed up to where she
was pointing. It was a shock to see the greenness directly above them, where a lifetime of conditioning had taught
him that the sky should be located. He scanned the distant
floor for several minutes before finally locating what she
had pointed out.

"It looks like smoke."

"Shelley, hold it up for a minute." He looked down
and saw that she was continuing on.

"Shelley!"

She stopped, looked back up, and tapped the side of
her helmet to signal there was something wrong with her
transceiver. Ian gestured for her to hold, but she turned
and kept on going.

"She's full of crap," Ellen muttered.

"I know. Call it youthfulness.
Something that you and
I, my dear Ellen, have started to leave behind."

"Maybe you, Doctor."

"All right, Ellen, all right, let's not
get
into an argu
ment."

He fell silent and looked out over the expanse of green
that had run riot through the ship. His gaze drifted back
up toward the smoke. Was it smoke or condensation venting from a broken pipe? And where were the people? The
system was still running, almost the entire ship could be
programmed to go on automatic, but certain routine repairs definitely required human intervention.

"Shall we go back up the other way and investigate
the smoke?" Ellen ventured.

"Seems a logical place to start."

He looked over the railing for Shelley, but she was nowhere in sight.

"Say, look, Shelley," Ian started, "
don't
give me that
crap about a bad radio. If we get back into the ship and
I discover it to be working, I'm going to kick your butt."

He stopped for a moment. An image of Shelley's back
side flashed in his mind and suddenly, for the first time,
it was an appealing backside.
Naw
,
must be the isolation
of three months out, Ian thought.

"Shelley!"

His voice was suddenly cut off by a loud, piercing
scream.

"Ian!"

"Shelley, what the hell is going
on!
"

"Ian!"

"Shelley.
Shelley, what the hell?"

There was no response.

"Ian, down there to the left."
Ellen was pointing into
the heavy growth, and Ian saw the canopy of brush mov
ing as if something were passing underneath it.

"Ian, this is
Stasz
. What the hell is going on? That girl
of yours nearly busted my eardrums."

"I don't know
,
I just don't know..." His voice tapered off. This is what he had feared from the start. The re
sponsibility so far had been merely to point out a direction
or, at worst, to mediate fights between the team members.
But in his deepest fears he had dreaded this moment. Someone was in jeopardy and he had to decide.
Worse.
He had to
got
into what was obviously a dangerous sit
uation.

He stood frozen by the railing watching the overgrowth
ripple toward the middle of the cylinder. He wished more
than anything to be absolved, to suddenly disappear back to his little cubbyhole in the stern of the Discovery where
he could hide away with his books and forget.

"Ian!" Several voices called at once, all cutting in,
demanding. Vaguely he looked at Ellen and saw her mouth
moving behind her faceplate, shouting at him in exasper
ation.

"Ian, we're coming over,"
Stasz
said. A grunt of assertion surfaced from Richard.

The words started to form in his throat: "Yes, come over and find her, I'm going back to the ship." But that's
not what came out.

"Stay
there,
by the time you suit up they'll be gone.
Ellen, go back for a stun gun, I'll try to follow."

He pushed off from the platform, descending the steps
in long lazy bounds with each jump landing slightly harder
than the one before. He had to be careful not to push off
too
enthusiastically,
otherwise it would be one long jump to the bottom, with an impact at killing velocity. He sud
denly remembered some of the cheap space thrillers he had witnessed on the videos, where strange radiation-
laden mutants preyed on extraordinarily buxom young
nubiles
. He actually chuckled at the thought. Shelley was
flat-
chested
,
acned
, skinny, and bespectacled—he had
never seen a monster eat anyone like that before.

What the hell was he laughing at? Maybe that crap was
true after all. Ian reached the bottom of the stairs and
was confronted by a wild tangle of growth. A virtual jungle
canopied the living units and turned the designed green-
spaces into nearly impenetrable wildernesses. Ian rec
ognized the plant as a variation of the
kudzo
, which still
flourished in the south and had been used aboard the colonies as a quick-growing greenery and food source.

He soon found a number of broken branches, then
another broken branch, ten feet farther on. There ap
peared to be a tunnel. He surveyed it cautiously for sev
eral long minutes, and even as he looked at it, he suddenly
realized that the cylinder was getting darker.

"Ellen, are you still up there?"

"No, I'm back in the ship getting the stun gun.
Stasz
will be coming back with me."

"The lights are shutting down." He felt a chill. His
mind raced over the fact and then the obvious answer
came to him. Even here, a thousand years out, the old
custom of day and night remained. The unit's artificial
sun was shutting down. Well, if he was going to find Shel
ley, he had to push on.

Taking a deep breath, he started into the tunnel. "I'm
entering a tunnel about fifty feet from the base of the
stairs. It seems to run along a walkway now overgrown,
you'll see the broken branches."

He broke into a slow run, but within a hundred yards he had overtaxed the cooling system of his suit and his
own body.

Hell, why am I wearing his pressure cooker? Those
plants are oxygen producers, I should crack the helmet.

But the old Ian was still very much alive—he kept the
helmet on while contemplating the toxic trace elements
that could have filtered into the closed environment.

After several more minutes the twilight seemed to
darken appreciably, and against his better judgment Ian
turned on his helmet light to follow the trail. He knew
that it was a clear beacon of warning, but he wasn't up
to crawling through the dark.

He passed a spidery walk that gently arched over a
complex of glass-walled buildings, all of them covered by
the
everpresent
kudzo
. He estimated that he was nearing
the center of the cylinder.

He stopped for a moment to look back through a break
in the canopy of foliage. The far cylinder wall was visible,
and he saw twin specks of light suddenly appear against
it.

"Ellen?
Stasz
?
I think I can see you."

"Ian, where are you?"

"About halfway into the cylinder."

"I'm facing you right
now,
you should be able to see
my helmet light."

From atop their high perch,
Stasz
suddenly saw the flicker of light, a long way off.

"I think I see you, Ian. Say, Ian, I see something else.
It looks like a fire, can't be more than a couple of hundred
meters beyond you."

There was no response.

"Ian. Ian?"

He looked at Ellen.

"His light just disappeared," Ellen whispered.

"Oh, shit."

"Holy shit," Ian whispered.

The club was poised alongside his head. The
semiclad
woman holding it had already convinced him of the need to remove his helmet by her vigorous hand motions and
waves of the knotted cudgel. He took a deep breath of
the clean-smelling air. Why the hell had he kept that damn
helmet on anyhow?

"What do you say?" the woman asked softly, and as
she spoke several of her companions came out of the
shadows.

Ian sifted through her speech pattern. It seemed to be based on Old English, to be sure, actually Old American,
to be more precise. As his mind searched for the right
words, his thoughts calmed down. He was engaged in an academic problem and when lost to such
efforts, all else was
forgotten.

"
Oly
hit?" the woman asked questioningly.

"No, holy shit," Ian repeated slowly.

"Shit is not holy, only the light is holy; you must be
crazy."
The others around her chuckled.

"Yeah, I think I am for even being here," Ian replied.

"What you say?"

"Never mind."

"Are you of the Dissenters?" a lanky, graying man
asked, stepping from out of the.
shadows
.

"What the hell are Dissenters?" Ian replied.

"He must be crazy," a heavy set man next to the graying
one interjected.

"You dressed like that loud-mouthed girl. She of your
circle?" the woman asked.

"Yeah,
ahh
, yeah, the girl, she's of my circle."

"Tell me, friend, do you accept the concept that individual meditation must occur within a collective body?" the gray one asked. "Or do you accept the right of dissent
from the collective?"

Think
quick
, Ian, he thought frantically. However, he instinctively realized that twenty years of academic com
bat and bullshitting had put him in good stead. Ian noticed
how the graying one said dissent with a note of venom.
He also realized that the gray man held a very big club.

"What say you, friend?" the heavyset one asked softly,
and he slowly hefted his club.

"Of course, what other way is there?" Ian blurted.
"The individual must always be a part within the collective body." He prayed that he got his words correct; most of
the Old American was familiar, but occasional colloqui
alism and, of course, the slang could be deadly. Especially
now, so he tried to speak with rigid preciseness.

He could sense them relaxing.

"Come, friend, and sit with us in the circle of understanding." The woman beckoned for him to follow.

She looked at him with a soft glow, and he suddenly realized how attractive she was in a wild, primitive way. She was almost completely naked except for a brief loincloth that barely covered her broad, inviting hips. He couldn't help but admire her full, rounded breasts, which
were partially concealed by her flowing red hair. She no
ticed his stare and smiled back at him with a seductive
gaze. For the moment thoughts of rescue drifted away.

Primitives, he thought, looking for
all the
world like
Neolithic tribesmen or something out of Eden. Yes, it could be Eden: the lush growth, the warm semitropical
air, and now that the helmet was off, the sounds of birds
and night creatures stirring around him.

Following the lead of the woman, they pushed their
way into a small clearing, illuminated by a roaring blaze.
Several dozen figures sat around the crackling flame, and
one of them was Shelley.

He couldn't help but look at the redhead, even as he
tried to get his thoughts under control. Shelley turned as one of the people by the fire pointed at the new arrivals.

"Shelley, everything, all right?"

"Ian? Well, if it isn't Dr.
Lacklin
, who's finally come
to rescue me."

Was she mocking him, or was there a slight tone of relief in her voice?

Ian stepped into the circle of light and, gazing around,
saw that dozens more had gathered around in curiosity.

He drifted over to Shelley's side, smiling broadly and nervously all the while, noticing that they smiled back
just as broadly. Good lord, why are they smiling like such
damn fools at a total stranger?

"Dinner."
Someone was poking him in the back.

He turned with a yelp and was confronted by an old man bent over with age.

"Dinner," the man said again.

Good lord, was that why they were smiling? They were
going to have them for dinner.