Tales of the Flying Mountains (28 page)

“Let me finish my outline, please,” Dworczyk says. “I realize I've been using stereotypes. A book would have to show it was more complicated and interesting than that. Um-m-m … Plenty of Earthmen were explorers, pioneers, innovators, entrepreneurs. And plenty of asterites were scientists, artists, poets, philanthropists. Especially after a large economic surplus became available, private foundations and consortiums undertook nonprofit enterprises—like building a ship to reach the stars.”

He stands up. “That's a rough sketch of what I have in mind,” he says. “I really don't understand what the fuss is about. Let's lay down a truthful outline of what happened. The writers can fill it in with significant and entertaining details. And there you are. Now, either we cut this meeting pretty soon so I can return to my lab, or I'm going to pour me a drink and forget about working today.”

“Bring me a rum and grapefruit juice, then, while you're at it,” Amspaugh smiles. “You've hit the nucleus of our real problem.”

“Which is?”

“Look, we want the youngsters to get a balanced account of the events that led to their being aboard—that made us determine the course of their lives. We want them to become neither nihilistic cynics, such as Colin pretends to be, nor unrealistic ideologues, such as Conchita pretends to be.” Amspaugh wags his pipestem in the direction of those two. “You grapple my meaning, I hope. You're sincere in your basic views, and we want you to express them so we can get as wide a variety of opinions as possible. But in a discussion like this, everybody tends to overstate his own case.” To Dworczyk: “You included. Tom.”

“Okay, I'm off to the bar.” Dworczyk continues talking as he moves. “Tell me how I exaggerate.”

“As regards the possibility of a simple, straightforward account of happenings that were anything else except that. Oh, yes, it can be done for the earlier days. No great harm in ignoring certain complexities and failings among our glorious ancestors. However—” His humor departs Amspaugh. He becomes occupied with his pipe, knocking out dottle, refilling, relighting, “However,” he says slowly, “we can't hide what is in this ship. She's not that big; and the children will have eyes to see what's around them. How shall we teach them to understand, and forgive, the raw truth?”

“Why … that wasn't supposed to pose any grave difficulties, was it?” Dworczyk reaches his destination and gets busy. “Had it been, this expedition would scarcely have started off.”

“True, true,” Amspaugh says. “Nevertheless, it's one thing to decide in theory that such-and-such a human situation ought to work out as planned. It's quite another to try it in practice. That's why the Board—very rightly—ruled that we should decide our own educational policies, after we'd had some direct experience. And my impression, on the basis of that experience, is that the decision's no easy one to make.”

“Correct,” Missy says. “The kids won't have known any world except this ship. They'll take for granted that the order of things here is right and normal … until their school history teaches them that it's exceptional, that other orders exist which are entirely different. The shock of learning this, if it isn't taught with care, could be badly unsettling.”

“I can bear witness to that from the opposite side,” I remark.

“How so?” Echevaray asks.

With hundreds aboard,
Astra
hasn't been under weigh so long that each of us in this room has had a chance to become familiar with the past life of everyone else. This is the more true when the experience I am thinking of was never made public.

“I didn't know what the setup was when I first came here,” I say. “Believe me, it rocked my back teeth to find out.”

“How could you not have heard?” Echevaray wonders. “With the years she was a-building, the thousands of books, 'casts, news stories, debates——”

“But I wasn't in the Belt,” I explain, “or on Earth, Luna, Mars, the Jovian moons, anywhere in easy contact. I'd spent the previous five years on Triton, helping construct the city there for Nasty.”

“For what?”

“Neptune And Satellites TYcoons. Not the official name of the outfit, nor the acronym we used when a big jet came visiting from headquarters.” Nor was this the acronym we used when ladies weren't present. “Anyhow, my contract expired before we got the maser receiver built, so word from the inner System while I was there depended on an occasional supply ship. No doubt the reading matter that came in held some scatty accounts of
Astra
's personnel difficulties. But I didn't happen to see them. After a tour of work”—in rock wastes, the night upon them hardly touched by a sun that was hardly more than the brightest of the stars, their sky dominated and saddened by Neptune's dim gray hulk—“a chap wants a nice piece of … of escape fiction, that is, not serious news analysis from worlds that almost don't seem real any longer. Or he'll go for games, sports, chasing the few unmarried females, and other hobbies. All in all, I came back with no idea of the truth about this project.”

“You must have picked it up quite soon,” Dworczyk says.

“Sure, I would've,” I reply. “But don't forget, by then the policy decision had been made. The subject had stopped being news; everybody took for granted that everybody else knew the facts.

“That certainly was the case in company HQ on Ceres. I checked in with the idea of drawing my back pay and bonuses and really doing the planets on the year's leave I had coming. But they requested me rather urgently to handle one more job first. As you probably know, they were the prime contractor for this ship's internal power grid. It'd tested out well, but had suddenly been reported as giving bad trouble. Nobody aboard seemed able to find out what was wrong, and every qualified engineer on the company's rolls was busy elsewhere. And the system was similar to the one I'd been concerned with on Triton.

“Well, what the deuce, why not? I was interested in seeing the vessel anyway. They sent me in one of their speedsters. That didn't give me much time to study the technical setup;
Astra
happened to be orbiting fairly close to Ceres just then. So I had no conversation with my pilot. I arrived totally unprepared for the kind of men I'd meet. Talk about getting rammed in the rear by a comet!”

Recruiting Nation

At first she was only another spark and would have been lost in the star swarms did she not show the flicker and twinkle of an irregular body rotating in spatial sunlight. But the boat closed swiftly in.
Astra
swelled to a globe, to a city of clustered domes and turrets and housings and machines, to a world filling nearly half the sky. I leaned back in my safety harness and watched the play of radiance and shadow across that medley, as we spiraled toward rendezvous. The low power-hum vibrated in me like the beat of my own blood. The words that came to me from the forward section, where my pilot spoke with a traffic control officer, were laconic; but bugles have sent less of a shiver along my skin.

Here was the ship that would seek new suns.

Not at once
, I reminded myself.
At least two years' worth of work
—
basic work, not the improvements that the crew can make during her long voyage
—
remains to be done. Including this debugging job of mine. And didn't Garrett drop some remark about recruiting troubles, about there not yet being a minimal complement committed to go? I can't understand that. When did a splendid vision ever lack for followers?

An entry port gaped before us. I felt the slight, elastic impact when the mesh field took hold on our hull and eased it into a cradle. The lock closed and air brawled in to repressurize the chamber. My pilot checked his gauges, uttered a final sentence to the control office, opened a master switch, and started unharnessing. “Here we are, Mr. Sanders,” he said.

“Well, thanks.” I undid my own webbing. “You bound straight back?”

“Oh, I may have a cup of coffee first somewhere, if I can find somebody worth talking to. But otherwise, yeah, no reason to stay.” He yawned. “You'll probably be around for days or worse. I do sympathize. Mase us a call the instant you're through, and if it's me that's sent to fetch you, I'll cram on every
g
this boat has got.”

It puzzled me. True, he must have visited the ship fairly often; but weren't she and her folk inexhaustible? I didn't inquire, because the chamber was now airful and the inner gate had swung wide. Two men waited. The pilot opened a valve for me and I clattered down the cradle stairs and across the deck to greet them.

One was grizzled and portly, his most conspicuous feature a rose nose, his garments a zigzag of reds, blues, and yellows so bright that my eyes hurt. He grabbed my hand and pumped it as if hoping I'd spout water. “Winston Sanders, hey?” he boomed. “Welcome aboard, welcome aboard! I'm your friendly chief engineer of interior power; Hodge is my name, Hodge Furlow, that is. When I heard you were making approach, I came right down to meet you personally. Have a nice trip?”

Slightly deafened, I contented myself with saying, “It was okay, thanks. Er—” My gaze went to the other man, who stood or rather loomed behind Furlow. He was a conspicuous object. Though his enormous shoulders hunched forward, he was a head taller than me, and the beer belly that strained his slovenly coverall didn't make him appear less formidable. His face did a little: coarse features stubblefield jaw not much forehead, but at least a vacant grin. “Uh, Mr.…?”

“Oh. That's J. P.,” Furlow said. “My special assistant. You have baggage?”

“A fair amount. I brought my basic gear, instruments, tools, standards … you know.”

Furlow looked hurt. “I assure you we're well supplied in my department, Win.”

“Where you're going, you'd better be,” I said snappishly. I don't like hearing my first name on first acquaintance. “However, I'm used to my own kit. And you've not had any dazzling success with yours, have you?”

“True, alas, true.” Furlow dropped his tone to a dull roar. “Well, J. P. will bring it to your quarters.” Turning to his companion. “You read me, J. P.? Go in that boat. Ask for Mr. Sanders' baggage. Put it on a carrier. Take it to Suite Forty-six on M Deck. Got it?”

“Baggage,” the giant replied. His voice was surprisingly high. “Suite Forty-six. M Deck. Okay.” He slouched off.

Furlow linked arms with me. “Let's make for my quarters, Win. You must be tired. We'll chat over a drink and a smoke till lunch.”

Perforce I accompanied him, into a corridor so long that its ends were hidden by the curvature of the ship. Nothing relieved it except doors and side passages. No doubt the decoration of its metal harshness, and that of hundreds like it, would help occupy the man-years of an interstellar voyage. At present it lay eerily empty and silent. I heard pumps throb, I caught gusts of warm, oily air, but chiefly I was conscious of how loudly our foot-falls echoed.

“I'm not tired,” I said. “Slept well last nightwatch. Shouldn't I pay my respects to the captain?”

“He's not aboard,” Furlow answered. “Seldom is. What would he be doing? The senior officer on duty in the executive department—um, I can't think who that'd be, but it doesn't matter. Some fourth- or fifth-level stripling. I'm sure I rank him, whoever he is. And he's probably still in bed—not necessarily alone, haw!”—a thumb nearly stove in a rib of mine “—and wouldn't appreciate having to act official. If he wants to see you, he'll let us know.”

Oof!
my mind exclaimed in its shock. Before me rose the image of every other spacecraft I'd ever been inside, and unterraformed asteroids, unearthly planets, moons of Neptune. The ultimate thin wall between men and raw space was discipline.
Do they figure to reach Alpha Centauri in this condition?

“Well,” I said harshly, “in that case, let's take a look at the system. The sooner I get to work, the sooner I can hope to crack your problem.”

“Are you the solid-state citizen!” Furlow shook his head and clicked his tongue. “As you wish. To be frank, I doubt if you can accomplish much. No reflection on you, my boy. But your old Uncle Hodge isn't a complete fumblethumb, if I say it as shouldn't. No, he's not quite ready for the last orbit, these old brain cells still have some juice in them—and I've been working for months, Win, months, without getting into trajectory. With my whole team, remember, and a holdful of apparatus. I probably should have hollered to your company earlier, but I thought and I think, if we couldn't track down the cause, nobody can. You see, I don't believe the trouble has any simple cause.”

He showed me to a lift shaft. Actually, we floated down, though that took me by surprise for a moment till I realized what it meant. Unlike more conventional vessels, this one imitated a terraformed asteroid in having Emetts at the center which generated a radial weightfield. The heart of the interior power complex was many decks inward from the hull.

Most of the levels we passed were deserted; nobody was living there yet, or nothing stored, or nothing installed. In a few, workmen were busy. It pleased me to glimpse their clean, efficient movements. “Any of those fellows coming along on the trip?” I asked.

Furlow guffawed. “You have a great sense of humor. Win. I like you. I really do. Tell you what. We'll stop at the Pallas Palace, it's right on the way, and I'll buy you a drink. Don't refuse. Man needs a quick drink, this hour.”

“The Pallas Palace?”

“Our bar. The one that's open, I mean. Goes without saying, we'll need more en route. It's a long dry way to Alpha C, hey?”

We swung ourselves out into a section that looked more cheerful than what I'd seen hitherto. Corridors were painted and padded; an occasional door stood ajar, showing a piece of room and furnishing. Evidently this was where some of the crew—those whose jobs already kept them in the ship part of the time—resided. Probably the work gangs, who'd return home when their tasks were done, used unoccupied cabins elsewhere. Single men in temporary housing wouldn't fix it up this elaborately.