Ride the Star Winds (86 page)

And Peggy . . .

I turned to look at her as she lay on the bed, still held there by the webbing, the bands startlingly white against her golden skin. She was real enough. Her naked beauty was part of my memories—all my memories.

“Peter,” she said. “Peter, come back.”

From nowhere a tag of poetry drifted into my mind, and I murmured,

“. . . and home there’s no returning.

The Spartans on the sea-wet rock sat down

and combed their hair.”

It made an odd sort of sense.

Thermopylae—the last stand of the Spartans, back in the early dawn of Terran history;
Thermopylae
—one of the great windjammers that sailed Earth’s seas;
Thermopylae
—the last stand of the Spartacists . . .

“Come back,” she called pleadingly.

“I’m here,” I told her. “I’m here. It was just that I had a little trouble getting myself oriented.”

Stretching my right leg I was just able to touch the bulkhead with the tip of my big toe, and I shoved gently. I drifted back in the general direction of the bed. Peggy extended her arm and caught me, pulled me to her.

“Born in the ship,” she scolded, “raised in the ship, and you still haven’t the sense to put your sandals on . . .”

“There was that . . . strangeness . . .” I faltered.

“If that’s what I do to you, my boy, I’d better see about getting a divorce. There’s nothing strange about us. I’m a perfectly prosaic plumber, and you’re a prurient purser, and our names start with a P as well as our ratings, so we’re obviously made for each other. At least, I thought so until just now . . . but when the bridegroom, on his wedding night, starts calling his blushing bride by another woman’s name it’s rather much!” She smiled tantalizingly. “Of course, I had quite a crush on Ralph once—not that he’d ever notice me. Plumbers are rather beneath the captain’s notice. He reminds me so much of my father . . .” Her face sobered. “I wonder what it would be like to live on a real world, a planet, with ample living room and with no necessity to stash parents away in the deep freeze when they’ve lived their allotted span? I wonder if our fathers and mothers, and their fathers and mothers, will ever be revived to walk on grass and breathe fresh air . . . I wonder if we shall ever be revived after we’re put away to make room for
our
children . . .” She reached out for something from the bedside locker—and suddenly her expression was one of puzzlement and disappointment. She whispered, “I wanted a cigarette. I wanted a cigarette to smoke and to wave in the air as I talked . . .”

I asked, “What is a cigarette?”

“I . . . I don’t know . . . I think it would be one of those tiny, white smoldering tubes that characters are always playing with in the old films . . . those men and women who played out their dramas on worlds like Earth and Austral and Caribbea, or aboard ships that could cross the Galaxy in a matter of months.” She said intensely, “At times I hate the Spartacists. It was all very well for them, the disgruntled technicians and scientists who thought that they had become the slaves of capital and organized labor—whatever
they
were—and who staged their futile slave revolt, and built this crazy ship because they hadn’t the money or materials to construct a Mannschenn Drive job—whatever
that
was. It was all very well for
them
, the romantic Durnhamites, pushing out under full sail for the Rim Stars—but what about us? Born in this tin coffin, living in this tin coffin and, at the end, put to sleep in this tin coffin—unless we die first—in the hope of a glorious resurrection on some fair planet circling a dim, distant sun. And we’ve never known the feel of grass under our bare feet, never known the kiss of the sun and the breeze on our skins, making do with fans and UV lamps, taking our exercise in the centrifuge instead of on the playing field or in the swimming pool, subsisting on algae and on tissue cultures that have long since lost any flavor they once had. Why, even on Lorn . . .”

“Even on Lorn?” I echoed.

“What am I saying?” she whispered. “What am I saying? Where is Lorn?”

“Lorn, Faraway, Ultimo and Thule . . .” I murmured. “And the worlds of the Eastern Circuit—Tharn and Grollor, Mellise and Stree . . . Tharn, with the dirt streets in the towns, and the traders’ stalls under the flaring gas jets as the evening falls, and the taverns with good liquor and good company . . . Mellise, and the long swell rolling in from halfway across the world, breaking on the white beaches of the archipelago . . .”

“What’s happened to us?” she cried. Then, “What have we lost?”

“How can we have lost,” I asked, “what we have never known?”

“Dreams,” she whispered. “Dreams . . . or the alternative time tracks that Claude is always talking about. Somewhere, or somewhen, another Peter and Peggy have walked the white beaches of Mellise, have swum together in the warm sea. Somewhen we have strolled together along a street on Tharn, and you have bought for me a bracelet of beaten silver . . .”

“Dreams,” I said. “But you are the reality, and you are beautiful . . .” As I kissed her, as my caressing hands wandered over her compliant body, desire mounted. But there was a part of myself holding back, there was a cold voice at the back of my mind that said,
You are doing this to forget. You are doing this to forget the worlds and the ships and the women that you have known.
And, coldly, I answered myself with the question,
Is there a better way of forgetting? And why should one not forget a foolish dream?

Her urgent mouth was on mine and her arms were about me, and forgetfulness was sweet and reality was all we need ever ask, and—

A giant hand slammed us from the bunk, snapping the webbing, hurling against the bulkhead. The single light went out. We sprawled against the cold, metal surface, held there by some pseudo-gravity, hurt, frightened, still clinging desperately to each other. Dimly I heard the incessant shrilling of alarm bells and somewhere somebody screaming. We felt rather than heard the thudding shut of airtight doors.

The pressure against us relaxed and, slowly, we drifted into the center of the cabin. I held Peggy to me tightly. I could hear her breathing, could feel her chest rising and falling against my own. She stirred feebly.

“Peggy, are you all right?” I cried. “Darling, are you all right?”

“I . . . I think so . . .” she replied faintly. Then, with a flash of the old humor, “Do you have to be so rough?”

There was a crackling sound, and then from the bulkhead speaker issued the voice of Ralph, calm as always, authoratative.

“This is the captain. We have been in collision with a meteor swarm. Will all surviving personnel report to the control room, please? All surviving personnel report to the control room.”

“We’d better do as the man says,” said Peggy shakily, “even though it means dressing in the dark . . .”

IV: JOURNEY’S END

Chapter 17

We were in the control room
—those of us who had survived.

We had made our rounds, armored against cold and vacuum. We had seen the results of our collision with the meteor swarm, the rending and melting of tough metal and plastic, the effects of sudden decompression on human flesh. We had seen too much. Speaking for myself, it was only the uncanny half-knowledge that this was only an evil dream that enabled me to keep a hold on my sanity.

We were in the control room, the seven of us.

There was Ralph Listowel, acting captain, strapped in his seat before the useless controls. Beside him, anchored to the deck by the magnetic soles of her sandals, stood Sandra, acting mate. And there was David Jenkins, ship’s surgeon, and very close to him stood Martha Wayne, ship’s chronicler. There was Peggy, ship’s plumber. There was Claude Smethwick, always the odd man out. There was myself.

We had survived.

We had made our rounds of the stricken
Thermopylae
and had found no other survivors. All the accommodation abaft officers’ country had been holed, as had been the dormitory, the deep freeze, in which our parents—and their parents, and
their
parents—had been laid away, in stasis, to await planetfall. But they had never known what had hit them. They were luckier than our generation, for whom there must have been a long second or so of agonised realization, the horror of bursting lungs and viscera, before the end.

“Report,” ordered Ralph tiredly.

There was a long silence, which Jenkins was the first to break. He said, “We suited up, and went through the ship. She’s like a colander. There are no other survivors.”

“None?” asked Ralph.

“No, skipper. Do you wish details?”

“No,” said Ralph.

“I made rounds with Doc,” said Sandra. “The deep freeze has had it. So has all the accommodation abaft officers’ country. So has most of the accommodation forward of the bulkhead. Second mate, third mate, engineers, catering officer—all dead. Very dead . . .”

“And outside?” asked Ralph.

“I saw what I could from the blisters. It’s a mess. Spars buckled. Twenty odd square miles of sail in ribbons . . .”

“Report,” said Ralph, looking at me.

I told him, “I’ve been through the farm. We haven’t got a farm any more. The tank room and the tissue culture room were both holed. Of course, the deep frozen, dehydrated tissue cultures will keep us going for some time . . .”

“If we had air and water they would,” said Jenkins glumly. “But we haven’t.”

“There are the cylinders of reserve oxygen,” I pointed out.

“And how do we get rid of the carbon dioxide?” asked the doctor.

“Chemicals . . .” suggested Peggy vaguely.

“What chemicals?” he demanded. He went on, “Oh, we can keep alive for a few days, or a few weeks—but we shall merely be postponing the inevitable. Better to end it now, skipper. I’ve got the drugs for the job. It will be quite painless. Pleasant, even.”

Ralph turned to Peggy. “Report.”

She said, “The generator room’s wrecked. The only power we have at our disposal is from the batteries.”

“And their life?”

“If we practice the utmost economy, perhaps two hundred hours. But I may be able to get a jenny repaired—”

“And burn up our oxygen reserve running it,” said Ralph. Then, to Smethwick, “Report.”

“I’ve tried,” the telepath whispered. “I’ve tried. But there’s no contact anywhere. We are alone, lost and alone. But . . .”

“But?” echoed Ralph.

“I . . . I’m not sure . . .” Then, suddenly, Smethwick seemed to gain stature, to change his personality almost. Always until now the shyest and most retiring of men, he dominated us by his vehemence. “Don’t
you
have the memories—the memories of the lives you’ve lived elsewhere, elsewhen? Haven’t you any recollection of yourself as Captain Listowel of the Rim Runners, as Commander Listowel of the Federation Survey Service? And the rest of you,” he went on, “don’t
you
remember? This isn’t the only life—or the only death . . .”

“Lorn and Faraway . . .” I said softly.

“Ultimo and Thule . . .” whispered Martha.

“And the planets of the Eastern Circuit,” said Sandra flatly.

“You remember,” cried Smethwick. “Of course you remember. I’m snooping now. I admit it. You can do what you like to me, but I’m snooping. I’m peeping into your minds. And it all adds up, what I can read of your memories, your half-memories. There’s the pattern, the unbreakable pattern. All the time, every time, it’s been just the seven of us—aboard
Flying Cloud
, aboard
Aeriel
, and now aboard
Thermopylae
. . .

“There’s the pattern . . . we’ve tried to break free from it, but we’ve never succeeded. But we have changed it—every time we have changed it—and we can change it again. Whether for better or for worse I cannot say—but it can hardly be for worse
now.
”

Ralph was looking at Sandra—and once, I knew, the way that she was looking back at him would have aroused my intense jealousy. “Yes,” he said slowly. “I remember . . . hazily . . . even so, wasn’t there some trouble with Peter?”

I was holding Peggy close to me. “There was,” I said. “But not anymore.”

“And what about you, Martha?” asked Sandra. “Do you remember?”

“I do,” she said, “but I’m perfectly happy the way things are now. Both David and I are happy—so happy, in fact, that I don’t welcome the idea of euthanasia . . .”

“Go on,” urged Smethwick. “Go on. Remember!”

“I made a rocket,” muttered Peggy hesitantly. “Didn’t I?”

“And I mixed a batch of solid fuel,” I supported her.

“No,” contradicted Doc. “I did.”

“Some bastard did,” stated Ralph, looking rather hostile.

“Too right,” said Sandra. “And whoever it was put us in the jam that we’re in now. I was quite happy as catering-officer-cum-third-mate of
Flying Cloud
, and quite happy as captain of
Aeriel
, and I rather resent finding myself chief officer of a dismasted derelict, with only a few days to live.”

“
You
might have been happy,” I told her, “but you must admit that the way things were aboard
Aeriel
did not, repeat not, contribute to
my
happiness.”

“My marriage to you was a big mistake,” she said.

“Wasn’t it just!” I agreed. “On
my
part! I should have known better. Give a woman a position of authority and she at once abuses it. ‘I’m the captain, and I sleep with whom I bloody well please. See?’”

“I resent that,” said Sandra.

“Resent away,” I told her, “if it makes you any happier. Resenting seems to be your specialty, darling.”

“But you were such a bloody lousy cook,” she said.

“Like hell I was!” I flared. “I’m a bloody good cook, and you know it.
Aeriel
ate a damn sight better than
Flying Cloud
ever did.”

“I suppose,” she said, “that you mixed gunpowder in with your curry.”

“You wouldn’t know the difference,” I sneered.

“Who would?” she sneered back.

“I think his curry is good,” said Peggy loyally.

“You would,” snapped Sandra.

“The rocket!” Claude was screaming.
“The rocket!”