The Dark Beyond the Stars : A Novel (16 page)

The watches in the plotting room and at the terminal pads became longer and more nerve-racking. Information.on the Aquinas system was flowing in and had to be broken down and analyzed so Shops could make the necessary adjustments in landing gear. Would we be using balloon probes or would we actually go in with the Lander? Was there anatmosphere, was the surface temperature compatible with human exploration?

There had been no signature that would indicate any form of life, but excitement was running high, especially among those for whom this was a First Landing—they had yet to be disappointed at finding nothing but rock and sand or methane ice and a swirl of deadly gases. I discovered I wasn’t nearly as dubious about the possibilities of life in the universe as I had thought Finally, one particular time period, Crow and I were scheduled to goOutside on a simulated repair and rescue mission of Inbetween Station. No problems were anticipated—the gear had been checked and so had Crow and I, even down to our pulse rates and response times. It was a first-step exercise, meaning they wouldn’t actually launch the station itself. We would leave the
Astron
through a lock and meet at a predetermined spot a kilometer away in open space. The object was to familiarize us with the use of tether lines and teach us maneuverability in space.

“Suit up! Let’s go, Sparrow!”

A group of us were standing in the first-level airlock: Crow,myself , Thrush, Snipe, Loon, and Heron, all of us looking eager—with the possible exception of Thrush, who took great care never to look eager about anything. I took off my waist-cloth and pulled on the inner-weave, making sure the connections were tight and the small tubing was leakproof , then the main suit.

Tybalthelped me on with my helmet and tightened the grippers around the neck disconnect. I ran a quick check of the support system, switching on the transceiver for a final check.

“Can you hear me, Crow?”

I could see Snipe and Ophelia wince. Tybalt motioned with his hand for me to cut the volume.

“Too loud and too clear, Sparrow.”

Crow was smiling in his own helmet and I had a sudden premonition, remembering all too well how the system sun of Seti IV had glinted off the helmets and turned them to gold, completely hiding the faces of their wearers.

There was a yellow glow off to one side in my helmet and Tybalt’s voice filtered through the helmet speakers. “You all right, Sparrow? Your perspiration rate’s way up.”

“Just remembering Seti IV,” I said.

“ SetiIV?” Then, sharply, “Forget Seti IV—concentrateon what you’re doing.”

“Time!”Ophelia called. I waved a gloved hand at her, winked at Snipe, and crowded into the airlock behind Crow. There was a short wait and I could feel the suit stiffen as the air was evacuated from the lock. A moment later, when the hatch rolled open, Crow and I stepped out into nothing. Position, I thought, concentrating on the direction indicators in the heads-up display set in the plastic of the helmet. The course had already been predetermined by computers; all I had to do was keep a small red circle in the crosshairs of the indicators.

I gave the maneuvering jets a brief squirt and watched the ship dwindle beneath me. For the first time I saw the
Astron
from the outside. I could see the three individual cylinders that made up the vessel, located where the hatch was, and then tried to guess the location of the various compartments. The main cylinder was easy: There were the glassteel doors of the hangar deck and the bulge that held Hydroponics and the engine compartment. The bridge was easy, too, and the Captain’s cabin just behind it—plus a whole section directly behind
that,
which I hadn’t even known existed. He lived like a king, I thought. Rank did indeed have its privileges, as he had once told me.

“Quit gawking, Sparrow—pay attention!”

Ophelia’s voice in the headset was so tinny I could tell it was her only by the harshness. I squinted up at the direction indicators, noting the red circle was far off the crosshairs. It was easy to adjust if you were only a little off. If you were way off, it was easy to overshoot.

Which is what I did.

Crow’s voice was a little fainter than Ophelia’s.

“Aim to your right and down, Sparrow…”

I missed the first time but made it the second. Right on course, I thought with relief. The lights inside my helmet had turned a deep orange. When I got back, they would have to drain the sweat from my boots. The ship had become a small blob of light almost a full kilometer away. A few hundred meters distant were the faint flares of Crow’s maneuvering jets, cutting in and out as he maintained position. A little more and we would have circled opposite sides of an imaginary Inbetween Station and met at the “top.”

A brief handshake and back to the
Astron
so the next pair of would-be space explorers could step off.

“Watch your course, Sparrow.”

Ophelia again.I swore to myself. She was one of the fewSeniors who could make me sweat, and my helmet was fogged enough as it was. I turned slowly, taking my eyes off Crow for only a second to stare at the universe around me. There was the thick glow indicating the center of the galaxy, still hidden by the dust clouds in Sagittarius; the clumps of stars outlining the arms; and then the rifts of almost total blackness that marked the space between the arms and between the various spurs that jutted out from them.

The Dark.

The sense of solitude was overwhelming and I quickly turned toward the ship again. This was no time to lose my nerve.

“Heads up, Sparrow.”

Crow was drifting maybe five meters away, his locator lights bright against the blackness. I reached toward him but he stubbornly remained a few meters distant. The arcs that both of us had traveled had straightened into parallel lines but my tether cord was short. I gave a short blast with the maneuvering jets and without thinking tugged on the tether line for more slack. I shot past Crow, my tether line trailing behind.

It had parted somewhere behind me… worn out by how many centuries of use? I felt the same sharp disbelief that I had felt on Seti IV when the climbing rope parted. I panicked. I gave the maneuvering jets full throttle to get back on station and ended up cartwheeling in space, the stars spinning lazily around my head.

“Slack off your jets, Sparrow.” Ophelia’s voice was sharp. “Crow, get back to the ship—that’s an order.” Then, to me: “Use your maneuvering jets to stabilize, Sparrow. Do it.Now.”

I tried several short blasts and the field of stars settled down.

“Turn toward the ship, try a short burst to see if you’re headed right, and then a series of short bursts. Watch your fuel.”

There was a note of worry in her voice.

I pressed the hand switches for a brief burst on both jets. Nothing happened. She was too late with her warning about the fuel; I had already expended the last of it.

In my headphones, Ophelia muttered, “Christ.”

There was chatter from a number of sources now.

“—distance—”

“—half a kilometer, opening fast—”

“—I can get him—”

“—orders, Crow, back to the ship—you haven’t fuel—”

“—have to rescue—”

“—who’s practiced the maneuver?”

“—triage… triage…
triage
…”

The
Astron
had shrunk to a small bulb of light that was rapidly growing dimmer. I didn’t know my own velocity, but I knew that in a few minutes I would be beyond rescue. It would take hours to get a Lander ready for operation. By that time my life-support systems would have failed and I would be nothing more than a frozen, drifting derelict.

Twice within a few months I had come close to death and this time I was convinced it was the end. There was no one to hold my hand, no fond farewells; there would only be an increasing sense of loneliness until I finally suffocated in my body wastes. It had been a short “life” and not an entirely happy one, but this time I couldn’t blame fate or ill luck. I had been foolish. I stared out at the stars and tried to think of nothing at all. I was past panic or even regret. When next I met Crow and Snipe and the others on board, it would be as part of the Great Egg.

****

I floated there in silence, a tiny speck in the immensity of space, staring out at the multitudes of distant stars, shattered bits of crystal set against depths of absolute blackness. Here and there the stars were obscured by faint stretches of luminosity that marked vague clouds of gases heated by the suns buried within.

The darkness itself was smothering, reminding me of times on board the
Astron
when I had been alone in closed compartments and the glow tubes had failed. I was buried alive in a thick, silent blackness where
nothing
had both texture and substance.

The loneliness hit me first. Inside the
Astron,
I had been sandwiched between layers of life, from the hundreds of crewmen who crowded the corridors and the working spaces to the racks of dense foliage in Hydroponics. I had been immersed in the stink and the sweat and the feel of life and now I was alone, surrounded by nothing at all. If the
Astron
had shrunk to the size of a grain of sand, the nearest star system—aside from Aquinas—would have been an impossible ten thousand kilometers distant. I had been a creature on that grain of sand wondering about the possibility of other creatures on other grains of sand on a beach a continent away…

In all that vast arena of nothing, the only life was on board the
Astron.
I suddenly ached for the presence of my fellow crew members. I would have given all my meager possessions just to hear Tybalt belch or smell Abel’s rancid breath.

I shivered and thought of the Captain staring at the stars through the huge ports on the bridge. To me, space was bleak and cold and dead. But when the Captain looked at the stars, he saw only the possibility of life. And if life was not to be found
here,
then perhaps it would be found
there
… or there… or maybe there.

The trouble with possibilities is that there is no end to them.

I shivered inside my suit and had my final revelation. All that was blessed in the universe was on the
Astron
or represented by “that thin green layer of scum,” as Ophelia putit, that covered distant Earth. Like Tybalt , the Captain
believed
and because he believed, he was going to risk us all. Unlike him and Tybalt , Noah and Ophelia and Crow had lost any interest in searching for life without because they had become obsessed with saving the life within and… and… and…

A moment more and I might have solved at least one of the mysteries that had slowly grown in the back of my mind, but the bubble of thought burst with the renewed chatter in my headphones.

“Sparrow!Turn toward the ship!” The voice was a tinny rattle in my helmet, distorted and hollow. I couldn’t tell who it was but from the bark and sense of command, I thought it must be Ophelia. I jerked around and made out the pinpoint of a maneuvering jet and then the faint blur of helmet lights coming closer. It wasn’t Ophelia: The movements were too smooth, too graceful. But even closer up, I couldn’t tell who it was. Their helmet was as foggy as mine and all I could see was a diffused yellow-orange glow with vague features hidden within. Crow, I thought. They had sent Crow back to get me.

When we were ten meters apart, the figure stopped and once again I was drifting away from it. They had tied two or three tether lines together but it was still too short. The figure didn’t hesitate a moment but cut free of the cord and came after me, catching up with short bursts of its maneuvering rockets. It clamped an arm around my own and turned us both back to the small globe of light that marked the ship.

“Are you all right?”

It was hard to make out the words in the distorted rattle that filled my headphones.

“I’m fine,” I said. I couldn’t believe that I was as calm as I sounded.

“Have to find the tether line… short on fuel.”

We would have to search for it in the dark; the tether line didnt glow by itself and there was no light from a primary that might reflect off it. We both moved our hands around in space feeling for it. Neither of us could see anything in the darkness and the chances were very good that we were drifting away from it.

“The stars,” I blurted. “The line will blot out the stars behind it.”

And then I spotted it, a thin black snake moving across the field of broken crystal. There was a sudden blur in front of my helmet, lit by the glow from my warning lights, and I grabbed for it. We pulled ourselves along the line in silence, both afraid to speak for fear we might congratulate each other too soon. The lights of the
Astron
grew rapidly closer—those on board were reeling us in as well. At last the hatch came into view and gloved hands reached out to tug us on board. Moments later I heard the hiss of air,then felt somebody working the grippers at my neck disconnect to lift off my helmet. I gulped fresh oxygen and managed to smile at Tybalt , who tried to look stern but didn’t quite make it. At his side, Crow was grinning in relief.

I gaped. It hadn’t been Crow who had gone out to get me. He hadn’t even suited up. I whirled around to stare at Snipe, behind me, shucking off her suit.

“You,” I said, bewildered.

As usual, she kept her poker face. She said, “I didn’t think anybody could be that clumsy.”

Ophelia interrupted. “Triage, Sparrow. The logical choice was to send somebody who had practiced a rescue maneuver before but whose absence wouldn’t cripple the ship if they failed.”

They had sent Snipe because they could afford to lose her. For a crewman who felt as unimportant as I did, that bit of knowledge was to cement a relationship that lasted for as long as Snipe lived. Ophelia gave Snipe the smallest of approving pats. “You’ll go out again two shifts from now, Sparrow—and next time do it right.”

****

I went back to Crow’s compartment, only half listening to his words of sympathy. Loon sat in a corner and played his harmonica while Crow tried to cheer me up. I stared moodily out at St. Mark’s Square, watching while the projection recycled twice.