Tales of the Flying Mountains (30 page)

So maybe the trouble was in a key subassembly; or maybe Furlow had been mistaken when he gave the computers a clean bill of health; or maybe—whatever the truth was, I might well be weeks about tracking it down: especially if the grid was so impolite as not to misbehave while I was here to observe at first hand.

And double damnation, after five years under Neptune I
needed
the pleasures of Ceres, Odysseus, Mars, Luna, Earth … urgently!

We entered the first of a series of offices between us and the nearest control chamber. Through their transparent walls I could see the banks of meters, displays, blinking lights, switches, buttons, and induction plates which I must master. A low hum filled the air. So did a smell of incense.

Incense?

I glared wildly around. A few rooms held engineering types. They didn't seem to be working especially hard; in fact, I saw one man catching a nap. But where we were, the occupant sat on his desk in the lotus position. He wore a yellow robe and a beaded headband. A joss stick burned in a holder before him. His eyes were closed and his lips moved soundlessly.

“What the devil?” I started toward him.

Furlow halted me. “Better leave him alone. He's, uh, what he calls contemplating the allness of immanence. Or is it the other way around? I keep forgetting which.”

“You let him say his prayers on watch?”

“Not prayers, exactly, I'm told. He's a Reformed Pantheist, Arkansas Synod. He doesn't go into these trances too often, Win. You should see some of our real nut cultists.” Furlow put his mouth to my ear and whispered: “We got to take what staff we can get, you know. I'm afraid you'll find, even in this department, most of them aren't worth diddlysquat.”

I arrived late for dinner. “Sorry,” I apologized at the door. “I got so dirty I had to stop and bathe as well as change clothes.”

“A man of your rank, crawling around in machinery?” Jaspers marveled. “I thought that's what the junior grades are for.”

“So did I. But except for Furlow, the gang's as dreadful a clutch of routineers and outright incompetents as I ever had the misfortune to wade through.”

My friend sighed. “No surprise, is it? Well, come on in.”

The apartment managed to be both vivid and home-like. Anne Jaspers was a small, pert woman whose figure reminded me acutely of how overdue I was for some R & R. We sat down over large martinis, in an aroma of roasting meat and the frolicking of a flute concerto.

“Good to see you again.” Jaspers clinked glasses with me. “How's the universe been treating you?”

“Not often enough.” The ancient joke didn't stretch to cover my embarrassment. “Uh you…?”

Jaspers struck a cigarette. “Ease off, Win,” he smiled. “You know, Anne knows, I know I made a mistake. It was my good luck that I could bug out of the consequences by taking a berth here, and my incredibly good luck that this girl did the same.” He patted her hand. She purred. He added quickly: “Not that she signed on for any of the usual reasons. She truly wants to reach Alpha Centauri. She's a biologist, you see, and the latest probe data prove there's at least one planet similar to Earth, complete with life. By now, she's got me eager, too.”

“But how many aboard are like you, Mrs. Jaspers?” I asked.

“Anne, please,” she replied. “The answer is: our top-echelon officers and scientists. They're going for the sake of discovery.”

“Maybe ten percent of the total crew,” Jaspers estimated.

“But what about the other ninety percent?” I persisted. “Clods, cranks——”

“Crooks,” he finished. “Sure. What else did you expect?”

“What
else?
My God, the greatest voyage in history, and …”

They studied me till Anne said: “You know, I don't believe you've heard about the recruitment problem. The ship was in an early stage of construction when you left … five years ago, was it? Nobody had yet made a serious attempt to collect personnel. The difficulty didn't become plain till, oh, three years back; and the solution wasn't accepted for several months after that.”

“Could that be right, Win?” her husband said. “You never got the news, and nobody's thought to tell you?”

“Seems like it.” I sat back grimly, and don't tell me that isn't possible. “Proceed.”

“Well, it should've been foreseen,” Jaspers said. “I've read a number of sociological treatises demonstrating the inevitability. Wonderfully sharp hindsight. The matter crystallizes out to something very simple. Who wants to leave Utopia?”

“I don't track you.”

“Who abandons a life he enjoys for one where the only certainty is that it'll be different? A few will, scientists, idealists, dreamers. But those are rare. The average man, even the average gifted man, sees no benefit.

“Think. How many noblemen and rich merchants went from Europe to colonize the New World or Australia-New Zealand? Not many! The immigrants were the poor, the persecuted, the malcontents, the criminals—in short, those who couldn't make a proper go of it at home. Same thing happened when space was colonized. That was partly masked by the fact that, in the early days, you couldn't survive without a technical education. Still, you didn't see any noticeable outflow of the genuinely successful from Earth, did you? What incentive had they?”

“Achievement,” I said. “Research. Adventure. Glory.”

“That drew some,” Jaspers conceded, “just as it did to the New World. But they were exceptional. By and large, Americans are descended from the failures of Europe, and asterites are descended from the failures of Earth. A comparative term, to be sure. You might be making a fairish living at home, and simply failing to do as well as you could if you emigrated.”

“The starship is in a still worse fix,” Anne said. “You can't go to Alpha Centauri in the hope of amassing a fortune—or becoming famous—and then returning. If you leave, it's forever. And who leaves Utopia?”

“I'd scarcely call the Solar System that,” I protested.

“Another comparative term,” Jaspers said. “However, wouldn't you include a wide range of individual options in your definition of Utopia?”

“Well … yes, I suppose so.”

“Okay.” He talked with the eagerness and stroboscope rapidity I remembered from earlier times. “You've got it, these days. No wars or pogroms going on, are there? Some governments are kind of arbitrary, but none forbid you to leave if you don't like them. Everywhere on Earth you can enjoy economic as well as physical security, a peaceful, orderly existence. If that starts feeling too stuffy, you can move into space. There the boom guarantees you can find work at high pay, and offers you some chance of getting rich. If you want, instead, to be an explorer, a scientist, a builder, a pusherback of frontiers—why, the opportunities are crying out for men!

“So, barring a very few persons with very special interests, who has any reason for going to Alpha Centauri?”

A tingle went along my spine. I let the martini slide cool over my palate before saying slowly: “I begin to get the point. And it's on the end of a shaft. You need capable men and women for the expedition; and they're happy where they are.”

“Right. Remember, they'd have to spend a substantial part of their lives in transit—in a placid, isolated environment where the only challenges are those they make for themselves. That's a tall barrier for the sort who might otherwise be afire to start off.”

“So the Foundation ended up taking what was available,” I said.

“Right,” Jaspers repeated. “The third-raters. The failures. The loafers. The wastrels. The clunkbrains we've begun breeding again, now that conditions are easy on the terraformed asteroids. The cranks hoping to found their special paradises or find their Lost Galactic Empire or whatever the nonsense chances to be. The handicapped. The crooks.”

Anne said in haste: “Conditions aboard, and at destination, will be rather special. Don't forget that, Winston. For example, a compulsive gambler might ruin himself in the Republic. But what can he bet away that matters between the stars? It'll be his salvation.”

Jaspers chuckled. “Or what can a guy like me steal? How do you forge a check or water a stock issue? You'd be surprised how many nonviolent criminals are coming with us. Excellent people, too, by and large.”

Wanting to change the subject, Anne said, “We've another important source of able personnel, especially officers: the aged. Too old to compete effectively at home any longer—but still alert, still with an eye for fresh horizons, plus the wisdom of their years—yes, I think the eventual governors of this ship will mostly have passed the century mark.”

I scowled into my glass. “Look here, though,” I said. “En route you can get by with inadequates. But what happens when you arrive? The reason for such a big crew is that it'll be needed on the Centaurian planets. Do you seriously think a mess of … of human messes … can survive, let alone accomplish anything worthwhile on totally strange worlds?”

“They don't have to,” Jaspers replied. “They'll have bred a new generation while they traveled. Those will be the explorers, maybe the colonists.”

“There was a terrible controversy when the idea was first broached,” Anne said. “Wouldn't they be just as hopeless as their parents? But the argument was from pure snobbery. The equilibrium concentrations of good and bad genes won't differ significantly between the ship's population and the Republic's. And proper upbringing will prepare the children to cope with Centauri.”

Jaspers leered. “It isn't mentioned—you can't tell your crew straight out they're a bunch of bums—but I feel sure the planners expect to make use of normal adolescent rebellion,” he said. “In this case, it'll be against laziness, sloppiness, hedonism, and the rest. I imagine the kids will grow up almost Spartan, chronically appalled at the behavior of their elders.”

“Of course,” Anne said, “we must have a nucleus of first-class people to run things during the voyage. Not only the machinery and the biosystems … no, they have to steer the human development onto the right course and hold it there.”

“Why don't you join us, Win?” Jaspers suggested. “We'll be a goodly company, we select few. Plenty of work to keep us amused, including the work of human development Anne mentioned. And afterward, given antisenescence, why, we won't be too feeble to tramp across that living planet, fight its dragons and rescue its princesses. Hell, no!”

Unhappiness rose in me. “I hate to dampen your pleasure,” I said, “but the expedition may never come off.”

They regarded me in silence. At last, softly and flatly. Jaspers said, “The power grid problem is that serious, eh?”

“Well, I don't know yet,” I answered. “Probably won't know for some while. As nearly as I can tell, from a general survey today, Furlow is right in claiming the computers are functional. But I had a look at the blown-out unit he'd saved. It wasn't repairable. You can't carry enough replacements, if these breakdowns continue at their present rate. And if it turns out that the whole grid has to be done over—well, I'm not certain the Foundation's funds will reach.”

“Can't you find a simpler solution?” Anne's tone was low but desperate. Her man was at stake. “I've talked with Hodge myself. He thinks the grid is inherently unstable, doesn't he? Couldn't that be compensated for by adjustments to the computers?”

“Perhaps,” I said skeptically.

Jaspers tried to lighten the atmosphere. “I don't care who writes the nation's laws,” he misquoted, “if I may program its computers. Say, love, isn't the food——”

The drink leaped from my hand and splashed across my lap.

Physically, events climaxed one week afterward.

I am no actor. As the days went by, I noticed Furlow's small pale eyes resting on me ever more often. My tests and tinkerings were simply motions. My conversation was brusque. I avoided his company as much as I could. In particular, I declined repeated invitations to dinner in his bachelor quarters, though he was said to be a gourmet cook; and when we happened to meet in the bar, I wouldn't let him stand me a drink.

Also, no doubt, I asked certain questions in a manner too elaborately casual.

On the evenwatch when the charge exploded, I'd stayed after hours. (While the ship idled in orbit, there was no point in manning a post around the clock.) The pretense was that I wanted to finish whipping into logico-mathematical form a notion that had occurred to me about how feedback might become positive in the monitors, so that we could have a computer check whether the notion had any merit. The fact was that I had no such hypothesis and the symbols I scrawled on paper were merely impressive doodles. My plan was to snoop around. I knew better than to try burgling Furlow's cabin or the like; but maybe, somewhere in the files or among the stored tapes.…

Quietness encompassed me. Only the slight pervasive hum, the breathing of ventilators, the soft fall of my shoes, touched my eardrums. The primary control console of the main computer filled two sides of a spacious chamber, from deck to overhead, with blinking, flickering, quivering intricacies. The rest was ancillary machines, desks, cabinets, everything clean and metallic and unhuman beneath cold white fluoropanels. I felt that chill in myself, and a trickle of sweat down my ribs. Its odor was sharp in my nostrils.

A card catalogue listed the programs that had been taped and kept for reuse. They numbered well over a hundred. These computers did more than ride herd on the power grid; they performed calculations relevant to it. For instance, one of them might determine where in the network a large geegee oscillator could safely be connected. Also, a number of separate control programs had been prepared in advance. Special circumstances, like the changeover to the Bussard mode of fueling between stars, would require special approaches to the task of stabilizing the current flow.