Racers of the Night: Science Fiction Stories by Brad R. Torgersen (38 page)

Life Flight

Audio Journal Transcript: Day 1

Papa was proud of me when he went to sleep. I’m one of the only boys picked to stay awake—because I’m smart and can do math. Nobody on the
Osprey
is going to be awake for the entire trip. There won’t be enough food, water, or air onboard for everyone. So to start off they picked a couple of adults—and two boys and two girls—to stay up while we begin the trip to Delta Pavonis. Which is a very long way from Earth.

Mama was proud too. She squeezed me so hard before she laid down with Papa and went to sleep. She was crying, but told me it was OK. She wasn’t upset. She just doesn't want to miss anything while I am awake—she thinks I will be older by the time she sees me again. I suppose she is right. She made me promise to keep this journal while she is asleep. So that she can go back and hear my voice, and know all about the time in-between.

Audio Journal Transcript: Day 8

Kroger is the other boy, besides me. I never met him before all the families boarded the
Osprey.
I’m not sure I like him much, and it doesn’t seem like he likes me much either. So the two adults—Kevin and Cassie—have kept Kroger and me apart during the first few days. I help at one end of the ship, he helps at the other. Which is fine. The
Osprey
is big! Cassie showed me a computer model of our ship, compared to a skyscraper. If our ship could stand on its end it would be far taller than anything in New York or Hong Kong.

I’m not lonely, though.

Leah and Molly are the two girls. One short and round like me, the other tall and skinny like Kroger. At first the girls didn’t seem to want to have much to do with me. But by the third day Leah smiled at me in the lunch room—what Kevin keeps calling the
galley.

Back on Earth the girls didn’t pay any attention to me. But Leah pays attention. I found out she likes kitty cats. I like kitty cats too. I wish they’d let us bring some on the ship.

Molly is more like Kroger. Rude. She told me I was fat, and I told her to shut up because it’s mean to call someone that. Molly said the truth hurts, and stuck her tongue out at me. Just like my classmates back home. I got angry, but Cassie told me to not let it bother me. She was going to talk to Molly and would get Molly to be nice.

The teachers on Earth always said the same thing.

It never worked.

Tomorrow Kevin is going to begin showing me how the navigation and nuclear fusion drive computers work. He says the
Osprey
has the best computers money can buy. They run just about everything onboard, including the machines that make the air and keep it clean and full of oxygen. Kevin says he will be teaching me how to program the computers, once I understand how they function. I think that ought to be fun.

Audio Journal Transcript: Day 35

The computers are better than anything I ever had in school. You can talk to them and they actually understand you, and will talk back. They all sound like grown-up women with nice voices. I told Kevin and Cassie that we ought to start naming each of them. Cassie asked me why, when the computers are just machines. Not real people. I told her that if our trip to Delta Pavonis is as long as she keeps saying it is, the computers will learn to be people. They seem smart enough for it.

Leah wants to know why there are only girl computers, and no boy computers. Cassie said it’s because girls are smarter than boys, which made Leah and Molly smile big. I think Cassie was just being funny, but Leah and Molly spent all day feeling proud of themselves. I keep telling them that boys are just as smart, otherwise the adults would have kept four girls awake, instead of two, but Leah and Molly aren’t listening.

I asked Kevin why we have gravity on the
Osprey
when all the videos I saw in school told me that there was no gravity in space. Kevin says it’s because the nuclear motor at the back of the ship is pushing us constantly towards Delta Pavonis, and this makes our bodies press down against the deck. Not as much as on Earth. Yet. But a little more each day. Until we get up to a full
gee
—Kevin’s word for it.

I said before that the
Osprey
is taller than a skyscraper. It’s like a building on the inside too, with decks instead of floors. The Intra-Ship Transit is like elevators—if you’ve ever ridden an elevator that goes a mile high, and back. Everything runs on electricity from the nuclear motor, which takes a lot of gas to work. Cassie said most of the ship is actually one giant fuel tank. We’re supposed to have enough to take us all the way, with gas to spare.

Audio Journal Transcript: Day 78

I’m sorry I missed a few days. I’ve not been feeling very well, and Cassie let me stay in bed today, rather than go out and help with chores. Cassie doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with me, she just says I’m homesick. Maybe she is right? A few days ago I had a really good dream about going to the park and playing with my kite. The sky was bright blue and there were pretty white clouds, and all three of us—Mama, me, and Papa—were running across the green grass and laughing, just like we used to do back home. When I woke up, I wanted so badly to be with Mama and Papa at the park, I cried. And I cried some more. And I kept crying. Enough so that Kevin got worried, but Cassie said it was normal, and would pass.

Meanwhile I have the day to rest.

The Earth is very, very far away now. Kevin can still find it using the computers and the telescopes that are outside on the ship’s skin—what Kevin calls the
hull.
But if the Earth was huge on the first day, now it’s a little ball not much bigger than a pea. Kevin has to tell the computers to magnify a bunch of times for us to see home with any detail.

Cassie says she can’t wait to see our
new
home. The planet the astronomers found at Delta Pavonis is supposed to have lots of water and lots of plants. Weeds and bushes and trees and forests. Or at least that’s what the astronomers think. When I look at the fuzzy pictures Kevin showed me, I wonder if that’s how the Earth looked a long time ago? Kevin thinks maybe so, though the new planet doesn’t have big continents like Earth does. Just hundreds of smaller green and brown blotches—big islands, covered in forests. All over the world. And clouds. Half the planet is white in any given image. Cassie thinks it must rain a lot.

Though, I sure hope there are a few sunny days too. I’ve been looking at the pictures again, while I’m in bed, and wondering what it will be like to fly a kite in the new sky.

Audio Journal Transcript: Day 149

Mama and Papa have been asleep for almost half a year. Some days I miss them so much that I want to tell Kevin and Cassie to go down to the medical bay and wake them up. Because I can’t stand it anymore. But I don’t. I know Kevin and Cassie will just say no.

I think Kevin and Cassie are a good team. I think maybe this is why they got married before we left Earth?

I asked Cassie if she’s going to have a baby soon.

Cassie laughed, and said she already has four babies.

Me, Leah, Molly, and Kroger.

I told her that it was my birthday in another month and that 8 years old is way too old to be a baby!

Cassie just laughed some more. But I don’t think she was being mean. Cassie has kind eyes and kind hands. She gives me hugs when she can tell I miss Mama and Papa. Cassie is soft and warm and reminds me of Mama, but younger.

Kevin’s got all four of us kids going up to the gymnasium now. He says that even though the nuclear motor gives us gravity for awhile, there will come a time in the middle of the journey when we’ll have to turn the motor off and coast for a great distance. Otherwise we’ll have used too much fuel, and won’t have enough left to stop ourselves when we get to Delta Pavonis.

So we have to get used to using the gym, because when there is no gravity the gym will be the only thing that keeps us from getting weak, and unable to do things.

Kroger shows off in the gym. Taller than me, with muscles. He thinks he is so tough. He especially makes fun of me when I use the treadmills, because my stomach jiggles and I get sweaty faster than anyone else. I almost hit him for it, but Mama always said never to hit other boys who hadn’t hit me first, so I just told Kroger to shut up and leave me alone.

Molly laughs when Kroger makes fun of me, so I told her to shut up too.

Cassie told us all—over and over again—to be nice and to learn to work together. But it doesn’t seem to be doing much good. Wherever Leah is, Molly is not. And Kroger spends more time with Molly these days. Which is okay. I like spending time with Leah. She has trouble on the treadmill too, though not as much as me. I don’t think Molly teases Leah the way Kroger teases me, but I don’t think Molly and Leah are friends.

Kevin says if Leah and I both work hard on the treadmill, and also on our stretches and our hand-weight exercises, then we’ll both get in better shape. Then the gym won’t be so hard for us anymore.

Leah and I have made a promise to each other, that we will get so good at the gym that nobody will ever make fun of either one of us again.

Leah is my best friend.

Audio Journal Transcript: Day 288

Kevin had to go outside for our first repair. The
Osprey
has what Cassie calls
articulated
space suits, so that there isn’t any time wasted changing the air pressure between the inside of the ship, and when someone has to take a suit outside to work on something that’s broken. The suit also has motors in the joints, for strength. Kevin looked like a big insect, with balls at his elbows and shoulders and knees. He smiled at me through the window on his helmet, then went out the airlock using strong magnets on his hands and boots to keep him from falling off the ship.

I asked Cassie what was wrong.

Cassie told me not to worry. It was nothing serious.

But Kevin was out there for a very long time, and Cassie had to keep getting additional instructions from Earth, which she spoke to Kevin over the microphone in the
Osprey’s
control room. I kept trying to ask Cassie what was the matter, but she shewed me away and asked me to please not bother her while she was trying to help Kevin with a very important problem.

That hurt my feelings. I am smart. I can help!

Cassie told me I wasn't old enough to help.

I told her that someday I will be the best-trained person on the ship. I know I will. Better than anyone. I will know how to run and repair every single part of the
Osprey.

And then Kroger will be sorry. He’s smart like me, but he’s also kind of lazy too. He doesn’t like learning to work with the computers the way I do. He has been spending more and more time goofing off on the Intra-Ship Transit, or having tantrums in the gym when he thinks no one is around.

Once, after I snuck up to the gym door, I heard Kroger saying bad words and slamming his foot into one of the big rubber exercise balls over and over and over again. He was saying his papa’s name in between the bad words. I am not sure Kroger likes his papa very much? From what I heard, I don’t think so.

I can’t imagine ever saying those things about my Papa.

I went somewhere else until Kroger was done.

One thing’s for sure. Kevin was right. The more I use the gym, the easier it gets. And my stomach isn’t jiggling so much anymore. Though Molly still tells me I am fat.

Audio Journal Transcript: Day 440

I’m going to be ten years old soon.

It seems like such a long time since we left home.

This morning I went down to the medical bay and looked at Mama and Papa through the glass of their stasis bed. They don’t move, and they don’t breathe, though their eyes and mouths are closed like they’re sleeping. I wonder very much if they are having dreams? I hope so. I hope they are having the kind of dreams I’ve been having lately. About Earth. About where we used to live.

There have been messages from Uncle Burt and Aunt Filly, and Gramma too. They say they miss us all very much and are very sad that we were chosen to leave Earth. Because they know this means they’ll never see us again. But they are proud of us too, because all our names are going to be in the history books. The first people to live on a world belonging to a star other than the Sun.

Cassie says this audio journal might wind up being more than just a memento for Mama and Papa when they wake up. She thinks that historians will some day listen to it, to learn what it was like growing up on the long flight to Delta Pavonis. That makes me nervous. I don’t know what I want to say to the future. Which is why it’s been a week since my last entry. I have to make myself only think about my parents, when I talk. I put a picture of them on the wallvid in my cabin and I imagine that they’re talking to me over breakfast.

I wish there was a way for them to tell me what’s on their minds right now, the way I’ve been telling my journal what’s on mine.

Audio Journal Transcript: Day 576

Something hit the
Osprey
yesterday.

Not a big thing, otherwise Cassie says we’d all be dead. In fact she thinks it was very, very small. But this far from Earth there are a lot of pieces of rock and dust all traveling very fast. There’s a giant mushroom-shaped shield at the front of the
Osprey
that’s designed to protect us while we’re moving towards Delta Pavonis. It absorbs all the small pieces that get in our way. The piece that hit us was coming at an angle, from the side. Dumb luck, Kevin said. But it was serious enough that both Kevin and Cassie had to put suits on and go outside to fix the hole.

I’ve studied the electronic blueprints of the Osprey. The part of the ship we all move around in, is actually a very narrow column that runs up and down the center. Outside of that is a wide, hollow tube. And that’s where all the fuel is kept: in the tube, between us and outer space. Liquid-slush isotope, Kevin calls it. Very cold. But if there’s a hole in the hull it means some of the fuel might
sublimate,
which is what Cassie calls it when the liquid-slush turns immediately to gas and goes out the hole.

When Cassie and Kevin came back inside, they were exhausted. All four of us kids helped them get their suits off and made them food and coffee in the galley. Cassie’s hands were shaking so badly that she almost dropped her cup. She said the hole had been a lot bigger than they’d expected, and that they’d had to burrow through the fuel to find the thing that hit us, so that it didn’t contaminate the isotope. Then they had trouble sealing the hole from the outside. Despite the fact that we have lots of extra hull panels stored on the outside, just in case something like this happened.