The Dark Beyond the Stars : A Novel (4 page)

“Do exactly as I do,” she said. “It’s more difficult than it looks.”

But it wasn’t—it was something I had done before and it didn’t take me long to relearn it. On that first tour, the
Astron
was a world spread over a dozen different levels, with compartments filled with gleaming machinery and passageways that went on forever. Pipit showed me the machine shops where they worked on maintaining the equipment, the enormous hangar deck for Inbetween Station and the Lander plus the balloon and submarine probes, then took me through the various tech shops where I saw exploration suits and support gear hanging in neat rows along the partitions. I even caught a glimpse of a crowded mess compartment with crewmen eating at stainless-steel tables and working in the galley. None of them glanced up when I paused in the hatchway to watch, reminding me of the patients in sick bay. Pipit finally nudged me away, saying that most of the divisions, my own included, had their personal mess.

The next stop was Communications, a large, gleaming compartment jammed with radio equipment and a dozen personnel too busy to pay much attention to us. On the bulkhead outside was a clipboard with a sheaf of the latest weekly messages from a remote Earth printed on crisp plastic sheets. I glanced at one or two, brief summaries of politics and economics, and then Pipit was tugging me away. Hydroponics was in the after portion of the ship. I stared openmouthed at the troughs of green plants racked from deck to overhead in rows that stretched for hundreds of meters. Pipit motioned me to follow her and floated toward a distant section of the compartment, where some plant troughs were hidden beneath the nutrient piping. She pinched off a leaf, crushed it in her fingers, and held them out for me to smell. The fragrance made my nose itch.

“Mint,” she said, reaching over to break off a leaf from another plant.“Anise.” She put her fingers to my lips. “Don’t tell.”

She shot off and I trailed after, still bemused by the different smells on her fingertips. In the stern, I was awestruck by the huge water-filled pool, blue with Cherenkovradiation, that housed the ship’s Locke-Austin fusion engines. The compartment was three levels high, and I spent several minutes gawking at the nearly naked technicians, protected by their shields, hovering around the huge machinery. Then Pipit tugged at me once again, saying it was time to go. The crew’s quarters were small cubicles off the main corridors, subdivided by shadow screens into living spaces for families or singles. All of them were filled with comfortable foam furniture and magnetic tapestries that clung to the bulkheads. I wanted to stop and talk to the crew members I saw inside but Pipit shook her head, frowning.

“There’s too much to see,” she protested.

A number of the crewmen in the passageways wore clear plastic masks that covered their eyes and ears. I supposed they worked in the drive chamber, where the glare of the lights was almost blinding. Unlike the crewmen in the mess hall, several of them nodded and called me by name. I wondered how well I had known them and if we had ever worked together.

One crowded passageway was filled with flickering lights, flashing signs, and colored cloth awnings at which I stared, fascinated.

“It’s the ship’s bazaar,” Pipit said, uneasy.

I took a closer look and decided this was where crew members traded or sold articles they no longer desired or objects they had made. I wanted to see what was for sale but Pipit clung to my arm, shaking her head.

“You’re doing too much,” she warned. “It’s time to go back.”

I was tired, but not
that
tired, and Pipit’s concern had begun to irritate me. I dodged past her down the corridor, losing myself among the awnings and the piles of goods and crowds of crewmen. But even though the shelves were piled high with bolts of cloth, musical instruments, toys, and bedding, the counters themselves were nearly bare. There wasn’t much actually for sale—two or three books of thin plastic sheets, some tiny hangings knotted from colored string, a slate similar to the ones Noah and Abel carried tucked inside their waist-cloths…

What finally caught my eye was a bookseller’s stall. I fingered an ancient volume of poetry lying alone on the counter. The book was beautiful, the print on the plastic pages still crisp and black. I leafed quickly through it, entranced by the words that danced before my eyes.

“How much is this?” I asked the old woman who was selling it. The shelf behind her was thick with volumes but she was only willing to part with the one thin book of poems.

“A thousand hours,” she murmured. “I can’t read it anymore.” For the first time, I noticed the cataracts that clouded her eyes. They shouldn’t have been a problem, not considering the equipment in the infirmary.

Pipit caught up with me and clutched my shoulder. “We should go back,” she warned again. “It’s time to go back.”

I laughed and darted down the corridor. When I spotted a hatchway, I dove through it—and suddenly had to catch my breath. I was at the hub of what looked like a gigantic wheel slowly turning around me. Crew members stood on the distant rim, working with exercise apparatus. Handholds on the rotating bulkhead led to the rim and I grabbed at the nearest one, eager to see what the crew members were doing.

I had no idea I would be among them so soon. I clung for a moment to my handhold; then it was torn from my grasp and I fell to the rim. I clutched at the handholds as they flashed by, breaking my fall, then flattened out on the deck at the bottom, staring up at the oblong hatchway twisting round and round far above my head.

I now had weight and found it difficult to move. My breathing was labored and I could sense that my heart was under a strain.

“You managed to find the gymnasium,” I heard Pipit say behind me. Then, with less sarcasm and more concern: “You ready to go back now?”

I nodded weakly and she helped me to my feet.

“Easy does it,” a voice said. I turned to find Crow steadying me. His skin was shiny with sweat, his eyes as worried as Pipit’s. Others had stopped their workouts with the spring-bars and the exercise cycles to stare at me. I felt foolish, even more so when I noticed the pale-faced crewman among them. Crow and Pipit helped me back up to the hatch. My body ached where I had struck the handholds on the way down and I winced with every movement.

Reentering sick bay, I forgot to brake. I grabbed frantically at something to stop myself,then crossed my arms in front of my face as I sailed toward one of the beds close to my own. I braced myself for a jarring collision with the patient in it, my mouth already forming apologies. The bed and its occupant turned out to be as insubstantial as the air itself. I didn’t stop until I struck the opposite bulkhead, slipping through two more beds and their patients. They winked out of existence as I passed through,then flickered back into view as I receded.

I froze, concentrating on the other patients as they talked among themselves or sat on the edges of their cots while they ate their meals. None of them seemed aware of my sudden entrance or, as usual, that I even existed. I reached out to touch the nearest one and my hand passed through him with no resistance whatsoever.

I had watched them for weeks but never noticed their obvious lack of reality. They slept in beds with no restraints to hold them in, they ate from standard food trays and they sat as flat upon their mattresses as if the sick bay were planet-bound.

I glared at Pipit,then made the connection with the crewmen in the corridor who had been wearing masks.

“Give me a mask,” I said in a voice blurred by anger.

A dozen strips of transparent plastic were tied to a nearby bulkhead peg and Pipit handed me one without a word. I clipped it around my head, staring openmouthed as the familiar surroundings disappeared.

The sick bay was actually a small, almost empty compartment that held half a dozen beds. I was the only patient. The bulkheads were dull and oily looking; I could never have seen my reflection in any of them. The deck was a beaten sheet of metal worn by the passage of generations of magnetic sandals. A few of the glow tubes flickered where the bulkheads and the overhead met; two of them had burned out. The anatomy charts were discolored and chipped; one light panel was broken, the other was dark. There was no glassteel partition through which I could see banks of shining machinery in a spotless operating theater. In fact, there was no operating theater. Nor were there any ports through which I could stare at the stars or watch a planet revolving majestically a thousand kilometers below. I had been looking at the ship as it once had been, not as it was now. Beneath the images formed by the intersecting planes of light, the
Astron
was
old,
old past anything I could imagine. Pipit stood there, biting her lip as she searched for words to calm me. I ignored her and dove for the outer passageway.

On my tour with Pipit, the ship had been spacious and clean, sparkling with chrome and stainless steel. Now it was ancient and cramped, the passageways shorter, the compartments tiny, the bulkheads stained with blotches of rust. The sight and feel and taste of aging metalwas everywhere; the stink of oil was like a fog. I wondered why I hadn’t noticed it before, then realized my eyes had blinded my other senses—I hadn’t smelled the stench or noticed that the bulkheads were damp with generations of human sweat. Communications was a small, cluttered compartment with three crewmen who stared at me curiously, then went back to idly checking their instruments. A writing slate with the latest communication from Earth—a brief message of encouragement—scrawled on it, hung on the bulkhead outside. It was dated from the year before.

The racks of hydroponic tubs were real, though not nearly as extensive as I remembered. The plants were just as green, but some of the grow lights were dim and others had burned out. The compartment that housed the fusion drive, while still huge, seemed smaller than before. There was no mess hall, no files of crewmen waiting in line to be served, no galley filled with gleaming bake ovens and ranges. Where it had been was a small, empty compartment that contained no odors of cooking, no crumbs of food. The old woman was still in the now-bare corridor selling her one precious volume. There was no shelf behind her jammed with other books. She looked at me with pity peeking out from behind the clouded lenses of her eyes. I felt the same for her—the
Astron
held neither the equipment nor the knowledge to heal her sight.

On the way back, I glanced into several of the living cubicles, now devoid of their rich tapestries and elegant furniture. They were tiny cells, equipped with string hammocks, an occasional worn plastic table, a shelf attached to a bulkhead… There was very little else.

I braked more expertly when I entered sick bay this time and yanked off my eye mask. The ports and stars promptly reappeared, as did the compartment beyond with its make-believe machinery. My fellow patients went on about their business, as oblivious of me now as they had been before. I held the mask before my eyes and once again was alone with Pipit.

I was seventeen yearsold, I thought bitterly, a youthful mariner on an ancient ship bound for God only knew where.

Pipit winced at the expression on my face. “You’ve forgotten the compartment falsies,” she said. Then she burst into tears.

I was young and cried too easily, but this time tears were beyond me.

Ispent two more time periods in sick bay, most of it undergoing tests by Abel, who apparently wanted to make sure that my broken bones were healed and I was fit for duty. He poked and prodded, full of unconvincing “ hmmms” and variations of “Does it hurt?” I was wearing the mask over my eyes and ears but neither he nor Noah mentioned it.

“You’re healthy,” Abel finally grunted. “You’re well enough to work so you can earn what you eat.”

I resented his attitude, resented the ship, and was full of sarcasm. “I’m your only patient but you seem to eat well enough.”

Noah smothered a grin but Abel’s plump features hardened with outrage.

“Nobody gets sick on board the
Astron
, they just grow old. Do you want to blame me for that?”

“We work at many tasks,” Noah sighed. “Be patient with us, Sparrow.And with yourself.” He meant well but I was too newly cynical to appreciate it.

The next time period Pipit told me that I had been reassigned to Exploration. I was to report there immediately.

There was nothing to pack; my waistcloth was my sole possession. I hesitated outside the hatchway, Pipit beside me, not knowing how to say good-bye. I hadn’t spoken to her since I had discovered the real
Astron
and accused her of deliberately deceiving me. I recalled too late how she had probably saved my life. I flushed and turned away; I wanted to thank her but a seventeen-year-old’sshyness had made me mute.

Pipit was smarter and more compassionate than I was. She said, “I hope your memories come back, Sparrow,” kissed me lightly on the cheek, and ducked back inside the shadow screen. I was left with my apologies dying on my lips.

It was the end of a shift and the passageways were filled with crewmen hurrying to their living cubicles or to the various shops. They were naked except for their waistcloths, color-coded for the division in which they worked, and their instrument belts. Like the caduceuses worn by Noah and Abel, their specialty insignia were stenciled on their shoulders. A few of them called out to me, but the children playing in the side corridors stared in silence as I drifted by.

I was a man without a past, a freak, and everybody knew it. I anticipated being pitied or patronized and was prepared for it.

I wasn’t prepared for the reality.

Exploration was three levels down and I slipped in unnoticed. The first time I had seen the compartment, it had looked neat and scrupulously clean, the equipment racked in tidy rows against the bulkheads or strapped down in military files along the deck:

Everything was still tightly secured but now the compartment reeked of age, the dust hard-packed in the corners, the ancient exploration suits still holding the shape of the crew members who had worn them last. It was already crowded with tech assistants likemyself and the stink in the air was a thick stench of sweat and herbal perfume.