Evan Innes - America 2040 Book 02 - Golden World

AMERICA 2040 BOOK II

THE GOLDEN WORLD

Evan Innes

Created by the producers of Wagons West, White Indian, and Children of the Lion.

Bantam Books. Inc.

ISBN 0-553-25922-9

PROLOGUE I

From the journal of Evangeline Burr, official historian, theSpirit of America

On this 4 July, 2043 we began the day with a moment of silent prayer or contemplation, depending upon

the personal beliefs of the members of our company. Everyone was relieved when Captain Duncan

Rodrick did not call a holiday to observe the birthdate of our country. We can honor what President

Dexter Hamilton has called “the crowning achievement of governmental experiments.”

Although theSpirit of America has been a scientific and technological masterpiece and a safe home for

our journey through space, we are tired of breathing recycled air, drinking recycled water, eating artificial

proteins, and having to make do with rationed fresh fruits and vegetables from the ship’s gardens.

TheSpirit of America bears the scars of the dangers we have faced during our long journey. Just

yesterday the captain allowed me to view the starship’s exterior, as seen from the sensors of a scout ship

returning from an exploratory mission. I was shocked. The large, curving plates of the hull are blistered

and pitted. All the paint has been seared away from the multiple jutting rocket engines and the pods that

house the scout ships. The large letters that once proclaimed proudly that our ship was indeed theSpirit of

America have been obliterated, but we don’t need a painted name to remind us of our mission.

After almost three years in space, we have our goal in sight—a beautiful planet, four times larger than

Earth. To see our new home, we merely use our personal screens, walk through a lounge, visit the

observatory, or—as I have done no fewer than three times—obtain permission to visit the areas near the

outer hull of our ship and look with naked eyes through one of the thick, polarized glass ports.

We can also see that odd sun, 61 Cygni B. Our new sun is farther away from our target planet than old

Sol is from Earth, but she’s larger and appears as a swollen, bloated, orange-flaring disc of unusual

beauty.

To say that we face an uncertain future would be nothing new. But when I think about what was facing

the billions on Earth when our ship rocketed away, I count my lucky stars—and there are plenty of them

to count from space. I must soon begin to record and preserve the shocking facts given to me by Captain

Rodrick as to the reasons behind President Dexter Hamilton’s decision to use the dwindling resources of

the United States to build this great starship: Soviet Premier Yuri Kolchak suffered from a rare terminal

disease and was determined to see a Red world or a dead world before his own death. Hamilton’s

choice was a grim one. He had either to stand aside and let the communist forces occupy all the world

except the United States or contest the communists. Kolchak had promised him that the end result of

American resistance would be nuclear war.

So, more than anything else, theSpirit of America is Dexter Hamilton’s creation. He had it built to keep

the spirit of freedom alive in the face of a threat of nuclear war. We colonists are charged with keeping

the American way of life alive in space, no matter what happened on Earth after our takeoff.

When we left Earth, two other starships, the Rus-sians’Karl Marx and the Brazilians’Estrêla do Brasil ,

were making preparations for takeoff. With our communications out, we don’t know the whereabouts of

those ships or their intentions. There are billions of stars in our galaxy, and in theory, many of them will

have habitable planets. Perhaps the Russians and the Brazilians will find their own planets, but I have

heard many people, including some of our officers, speculate that the Russians might want to carry the

old Earth war into space. Should they follow us here to the Cygni system, I know we will be ready.

I also feel confident that our huge new planet is going to be friendly to us. Today, eleven light years from

Earth, over a thousand passengers who represent all civilized skills and all scientific knowledge are busy

preparing to join our scouts and scientists, who have already proven that our new planet is quite friendly

to human habitation. We are all eager to begin. We have the tools, the knowledge, and the expertise to

build a technology and do whatever it takes for Captain Rodrick to return this vast starship to Earth with

her raw materials, food, and most important, a message of hope.

I

OMEGA

ONE

TheSpirit of America was big. She was the largest object ever to be lifted from a planetary surface by

rocket power, or any other power, unless one believed the theory that Venus had been flung out of the

planet Jupiter or that Earth’s moon had been spun off from Earth’s mass during planet formation aeons

past. She was a complicated collection of millions of parts, mechanical and electronic, and Captain

Duncan Rodrick knew that in any mechanical or electrical system lay the foundation of Murphy’s Law: If

something can go wrong, it will.

Humankind’s eternal task, when dealing with machines, was to see that the malfunction didn’t occur at a

crucial time… such as when landing megatons of mass balanced on the pillars of fire of one hundred

rockets.

“Systems check,” Rodrick ordered in his laid-back, informal command voice.

“Communications operative,” Lieutenant Jacqueline Garvey said.

“Computers operative,” said little Japanese-American Emi Zuki.

Ito Zuki, Emi’s husband, spoke from his seat directly beside his wife. “Navigation system operative.

Landing sequence programmed.”

Chief Engineer Max Rosen’s voice came soft and lazy to Rodrick through the communicator. Rodrick

had come to know and value Max Rosen during the years in space, and he knew that Max’s tone of

voice indicated tension.

“Rocket engine firing system armed and ready,” Rosen reported.

Rodrick smiled. He could almost picture Rosen’s face, screwed up into its perpetual expression of pure

agony.

“Hull cooling system operative,” said the electrical engineer, Sage Bryson.

“Weapons system armed and ready.” Lieutenant Commander Paul Warden, the old jock, was stationed

behind the thick armor plates of theSpirit of America ‘s weapons control center, ready to blast any

threatening entity with beams, rays, projectiles, and rockets.

It was easy, Rodrick thought, for some to forget that a ready weapons system was an integral part of the

landing procedure. After all, Jack Purdy, chief scout, had been down on the planet s surface for over

twenty days, and a sizable group of passengers had already been shuttled down to join him. These two

hundred plus people, who now sat on a low, grassy hill to watch the ship come in, were another

indication of Rodrick’s innate cautiousness. TheSpirit of America had never been landed. Should

anything happen on the way down, there would be a solid core of people safely on the surface, to assure

survival of the colony.

All this was going through Rodrick’s mind as he heard Paul Warden’s voice reporting the status of the

ship’s weapons systems, and thinking of Warden in weapons control made Rodrick feel better. He liked

the man, drank with him on occasion, called him, with affection, the no-neck monster because Warden

was built like a wrestler, with a thick chest, big arms, and highly developed deltoid muscles, which made

it look as if his head sat directly on his shoulders.

First Officer Rocky Miller, whose function it was to stand ready to fill any position on the control bridge

in the event of emergency, looked at the captain out of the corner of his eye. Miller was taller than

Rodrick, and more muscular; he spent long hours in the gym. Rocky Miller had not agreed with the

captain’s decision to land two hundred selected people by scout ship. As he let his eyes swing swiftly

over the array of instruments, he was thinking that Rodrick had the looks of a man who had been

spooked. Rodrick, Miller felt, put up a good front, but at times during the trip out, the captain, in Miller’s

opinion, had been on the verge of losing his judgment in tight situations.

Rodrick allowed a few seconds to pass. Jackie Garvey crossed her long legs and looked up at him. She

felt that she knew the captain better than most; one aspect of their mission was the understood but

unstated order that women of childbearing age were to breed children. It had seemed logical, in the

beginning, that she was the perfect choice for the ship’s bachelor commander. He winked at her, but her

answering smile was questioning. Things had seemed so promising early on, and then something had gone

wrong. They had been very good together, and then nothing.

The bridge, although not spacious, was never crowded. The ship had been built to fly herself. The bridge

crew consisted of Emi Zuki, computer programmer; Ito Zuki, her husband and astronavigator; Jackie

Garvey, ship’s communicator, and the first officer, Rocky Miller, on standby. His wife, Dr. Amanda

Miller, was usually on the bridge during interesting maneuvers, but she and the bulk of her Life Sciences

staff, including the medical unit, were now on the surface.

There was one other figure on the bridge, a tall, slim, handsome individual in United States Navy white,

his chest resplendent with ribbons, his back stiff, a cap adorned with admiral’s gold pulled rakishly low

over his piercing, unblinking eyes.

Rodrick swiveled his command seat. “Admiral?” he asked.

“Sir!” the admiral snapped.

It was difficult to remember, sometimes, that the admiral was one of Dr. Grace Monroe’s “boys,” that

those dark, piercing eyes were not really alive, that the impressive figure was built of synthetics, that the

brain behind those eyes was Dr. Monroe’s greatest achievement. An electrical lead seemed to emerge

from the admiral’s rear pocket. It was attached to Emi Zuki’s main computer terminal.

“How do you read?” Rodrick asked.

“All systems at optimum efficiency, sir,” the admiral said.

The admiral had been proven invaluable. His lightning-fast brain, more than a computer, could be

synergically meshed with the ship’s computers. Rodrick had come to depend on the admiral as one more

check on the ship s computer system.

“Put me on all-ships circuit, Lieutenant Garvey,” Rodrick said, and when Jackie had pushed the proper

buttons, he took a deep breath. “This is the captain. In three minutes we will fire retro-rockets

preparatory to landing. Please position yourselves in your gravity couches at this time.”

During the stressful times, two things belied Max Rosen’s attempt to be cool and casual—his face and

his Space Service uniform. During preparation for the landing, Max’s uniform had given up the light and

now looked as if it had been slept in for days. Max’s ability to perform a negative miracle on the uniform

was only one of his qualities that Dr. Grace Monroe found fascinating, especially since millions of dollars

had been spent in research to develop a fabric that would withstand long wear in cramped quarters. In

less than one hour, starting with a fresh uniform, Max could prove that all those millions had been wasted.

As Max watched the digital countdown clock display its ever-changing numbers, he ran long fingers

through his black, unruly hair, managing to muss it even more.

Grace was standing by at a computer terminal. After a bad start, when Grace’s menagerie of robotic

entities had thoroughly annoyed the chief engineer, he’d come to respect her more than any other person

he’d ever known. There were times when he wondered which he liked most about her: her intuitive

intelligence or her mature beauty.

“You look like you could use a drink,” he growled, as the clock counted off the seconds, and around

him, the engine-room servomechanisms clicked and hummed in readiness.

“I feel as if I need a drink,” Grace said.

Rosen was a tall, thin, dark, strong-nosed, wiry-haired Jew. His heavy beard gave him a five-o’clock

shadow all day long, and his black hair was just beginning to be peppered with gray. On him it looked

almost distinguished. He’d worked with Harry Shaw from the beginning in the development of the Shaw

Drive, which propelled the starship through time and space.

In contrast to Max’s disheveled state, Grace Monroe looked as if she’d spent the past few hours with a

makeup, hair care, and fashion expert instead of at Max’s side as they checked the computations again

and again.

Grace was in her mid fifties. Her mature, full-bodied beauty was set off by her mauve suit, accented at

the throat by a paisley scarf. Once, when she’d entered Rosen’s engineering sector dressed impeccably,

he had growled, “Don’t you have any work clothes?”

“These are my work clothes,” she’d told him. Max sighed, wished for that drink, then looked down as

something rubbed at his shin. The thing was catlike in appearance. In fact, Cat, one of Grace’s robotic

creations, had been experimenting of late in growing hair, and the attempt had not been totally successful.

Cat looked to Max like a blue Tinkertoy feline with hog bristles protruding from its odd, elastic body,

composed of material that Dr. Monroe had developed when she was head of Research and

Development at Transworld Robotics, Inc. back on Earth.

“Damned Cat,” Max growled, but there was no fury there, as there once had been. True to Grace’s

design objective, Cat had pulled the ship out of the fire for them, almost literally, by altering its shape to

allow for close-quarters repairs of the rocket-firing system when theSpirit of America was falling rapidly

into a sun.

The digital clock now showed less than one minute to go when Captain Rodrick’s voice came over the

communicator. “Chief, any problem if we go on hold for thirty minutes?”

Rosen looked at Grace, agony on his features, wondering what had gone wrong.

“It’s just that the light isn’t right down below,” Chief Rodrick said.

Rosen snarled and rolled his eyes helplessly. He knew that a filming crew was on the planet’s surface,

waiting to record theSpirit of America ‘s landing for posterity.

“No problem,” he said, but his face showed disagreement. Putting off the landing to wait for better light

for recording the event didn’t rate a very high priority with him.

Grace laughed and began punching buttons. Rosen put the retro-firing on hold, then took Grace’s arm

and said, “I offered you a drink.”

Cat at first led the way, soaring in the nulgrav, zero gravity. The spin had been taken off the ship so that

there was zero gravity in all sections now. Cat had learned to flatten its body into a soaring contour, but

Max, lacking Cat’s abilities, lengthened his stride, opened the door to his quarters, followed Grace

inside, then used his foot to deftly block the robot. Cat scratched on the metal of the door for a few

seconds and then, rejected, slunk off down the corridor, its body turning black with sadness.

The ship’s boozery made a decent gin. Max’s quarters, in contrast to his person, were tidy. He mixed,

handed Grace her covered cup and straw. He’d used a liberal quantity of the fresh orange juice squeezed

from fruit grown in Amando Kwait’s on-board gardens. Max sipped and then exhaled noisily. His smile

showed no sign of tension as he looked at Grace. She was still standing.

“You gonna sit down?” Max asked.

“I think I’ll sit down,” Grace said. She’d learned during the past two and a half years not to be put out

by what some considered bluntness on Max’s part. She took the chair that served as the acceleration

couch.

“You gonna sit down or stand up all day?” she asked, humor lighting her brown eyes.

Max growled. He had never had time to get married. He had been a brilliant young man in a hurry, and

he’d hurried himself right into the most fascinating work, helping to design and test the components of the

huge space stations that had been lifted into space on bellowing rockets. When he had been called to

California to work with a young genius named Harry Shaw, he’d thought his life was complete and could

never get better. Now he had hopes that his lifewould get better because he’d met a woman named

Grace Monroe.

Intellectually she was superior to most men, and Max’s initial response to her had been almost openly

hostile; he was the kind of genius who felt, without admitting it to. himself, that one genius around any

given installation was enough. At first he’d felt that just because Grace was the topmost authority on the

new breed of thinking computers, which utilized amino-acid units for data storage, it didn’t give her the

right to come messing around in his engineering areas and, by God, certainly not the right to turn her eerie

menagerie of robots loose on his ship.

Max prided himself on being an opinionated man, but he was not so self-centered that he didn’t realize

that an opinionated man does not hold opinions, they hold him. Change came hard for him, but it had

taken Grace only a few weeks to begin to break through to the sensitive, warm human being under Max

Rosen’s outer crust.

There in his quarters, waiting out a half-hour hold so that the light would be right for pictures, Grace’s

mental powers were not foremost in Max’s mind. He saw a mature, lovely woman sitting on his

acceleration couch, her classic face in repose. He swallowed, let his thoughts surface, thoughts that he’d

been indulging in only in privacy: He liked looking at her. He liked hearing her talk. He liked being around

her. He liked working with her. She had proven to be a good team worker. She challenged him, all right,

but he was a man who liked challenges. The skull sessions they had during slow times were, to Max,

more stimulating than good booze.

Heknew that the mass of weight that was theSpirit of America was going to behave and sit itself down all

in one piece, but there was just the odd chance— And he’d never even tried to tell her how he felt about

her.

“Grace,” he began, “I just want to say—”

She looked at him with an expectant smile.

“I just wanted to say… that I appreciate your help.”

“Thank you.”

“That wasn’t what I wanted to say,” he muttered, so low that she could barely hear.

She waited.

“I—” He swallowed. “Hell, we make a fine team, don’t we?” he demanded belligerently.

“I think so,” she answered, a tiny smile twitching at the corner of her mouth.

He was, he knew, acting like a lovesick kid. He was, he told himself as he almost turned and left the

suite, too old to get involved in the mating dance of the juveniles. He was a man who always faced

reality. He swallowed and, instead of leaving, took two steps toward her:

“Damn it, Grace,” he said. “I’m out of practice for this sort of thing.”

She had the feeling that if she spoke he’d run for it. She didn’t want him to run. She tilted her head to

one side and looked up at him, a smile on her full lips.

“Oh, hell,” Max growled. “Stand up. ”

She put her drink down slowly, not taking her eyes from his. He took her hands and helped her up, and

she went into his arms. Her eyes closed as his lips found hers.

“I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time,” he admitted after a few moments.

“Well, it took you long enough,” she said.

“I want you tofeel my heart,” Max said in amazement. He put her hand on his heart. It was beating

rapidly.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

He raised his bushy eyebrows in question.

“For feeling that way about me,” she explained.

He grinned. There was an element of pleased disbelief in him, but mostly there was a gladness that she,

so lovely, so sophisticated, could be in the arms of an old bear of an engineer who certainly was not the

prize catch of all time.

“Want to get married?” Max asked.

“What do you think?”

“Yeah, I think so,” he said, pulling her more tightly into his arms. “How much time we got?” he asked,

knowing that she was facing the wall clock.

“Enough for you to kiss me a few more times,” she said, lifting her face.

Now his heart was really going crazy. He felt first hot, then cold. His breath was short and rapid. He

looked into her eyes, and what he saw there, dreamy and beautiful, caused him to gasp.

“Whew,” he exhaled.

“Yes, whew,” she said.

He felt weak. He moved with her in his arms to lean her against a wall so that he could press himself

closer. Their lips meshed. The door opened with a crash, and a boxy, noisy apparition rolled in,

preceded by the streaking Cat. The squat robot on wheels spoke in a softly modulated but obviously

nonhuman voice. “Emergency. Emergency. ”

“Doc!” Max yelled. “Get the hell out of here!”

Doc was another of Grace’s “boys,” a medical robot. Doc could complete a physical examination and

come up with a diagnosis in less than three minutes.

“Do not be alarmed,” the medical robot said, rolling to seize Max in its tentacles, one of which wrapped

around Max’s arm. “You seem to be in a state of excitation, but it is nothing to worry about. I will

administer a mild sedative.”

Grace was laughing so hard that her sides hurt. Doc produced another extension, tipped by an injector

that misted medication painlessly through the skin.

“No, Doc,” Grace gasped, as Max tried desperately to fight off the tentacles. “No sedative.”

“If you say so, Grace,” Doc said, but he was checking blood pressure and temperature and beginning a

quick EKG.

“Get these monsters out of here,” Max wailed. “Damn it, Grace—”

“Doctor,” Grace said mildly, “that will be all.” She was wiping tears from the corners of her eyes.

“I advise you to lie down and relax,” Doc was telling Max. “A good rest—”

“You may leave, Doc, and take Cat with you,” Grace ordered.

Max was glaring at her as the robots left. “Now Max—” she began, but couldn’t keep back the

laughter.

“Did you program that rolling bucket of bolts to keep an eye on my vital signs?” he asked her.

“Guilty,” she said.

“Damn it—” he began.

“Because I care for you,” she interrupted.

He felt his anger melting away. “Now where were we?” he asked, moving toward her.

She pointed toward the clock. Max rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. It was time.

TWO

Jack Purdy, chief of scouts, sat on fresh, green grass with his long legs crossed under him. He had a

bush of blond hair in need of cutting, and a thin, intense face. He had taken the first scout ship down from

theSpirit of America to the surface of the big planet, and against orders, he’d removed his space armor to

breathe air that had not been recycled and to go for an exuberant swim in the ocean, which, from his

vantage point atop a low hill, extended endlessly into the distance. He’d had to spend twenty days

quarantined, alone on the surface—that is, except for other scouts who had recently landed by the spot

on the sand dunes where he’d set up his survival tent. The visitors were envious because they were in

space armor and he was not.

The time alone, especially the nights, had been good for Jack. The dark circles of grief that had been

under his eyes ever since the death of his wife, Dinah, and his best friend, Pat Renfro, of the virus on the

planet were gone, merged into a good tan.

Dr. Mandy Miller sat on the grass next to him, shading her eyes to look up into the sky.

“You’ll hearSpirit before you see her,” Jack said. “When Max opens up one hundred rockets at max

power, she’ll bellow like nothing you’ve ever heard.”

But the sky, to Mandy, was fascinating. Their new sun, 61 Cygni B, a K7-class star, emitted a light that

appeared far more orange than the familiar, yellowish, G star that was old Sol. The sky’s blue was

deeper, darker than an Earth sky, and the few clouds took on a soft, silvery look. The grass on which

she sat was the deepest green she’d ever seen in vegetable matter. In the distance, behind them, a line of

trees near a watercourse gleamed with iridescent yellow blooms as big as her two hands.

“Look,” Jack said, tapping her on the arm. She lowered her eyes. A small herd of antelopelike

creatures, the males with long, curved, silver horns, had emerged from the trees and were grazing toward

them. They were about the size of an Earth goat, their coats a lustrous orange-tan. They seemed not to

notice-the humans congregated on the hilltop. The little grass eaters did not seem, to Mandy, to be alien

at all, and yet they were native to a planet over eleven light years from Earth. As head of Life Sciences,

she had run tests on blood taken from one of the animals by Jack Purdy, and those tests had astounded

her. The difference between the blood of those orangish-tan alien animals and an Earth dairy cow was so

minor as to be almost indistinguishable.

For centuries scientists and writers had speculated about life among the stars, and some of them had

been rather inventive. Then an Earth expedition lands on an alien planet, and the first life form to be seen

was hydrocarbon based, had eyes like an Earth deer, and the same methods of synthesizing protein from

amino acids as a cow.

The meat eaters that preyed on the little antelope were graceful feline types with pleasant heads, sleek,

streamlined bodies, and greenish-tan hides to blend with the native vegetation. The only truly

alien-looking creature to be seen by the expedition to that date were the scavenger birds, several of

which were sitting patiently in the trees along the creek. They were the size of an eagle, feather-less, with

slick-looking, leathery skin, and blunt heads equipped with teeth rather than a beak.

A sudden commotion among the antelope took Mandy’s thoughts away from parallel evolution on two

planets so far from each other. A small, black, definitely not alien dog had dashed toward the antelope,

causing a moment of panic among the animals before the herd bull discovered his courage and ran, head

low, silvery horns a threat, to send Jumper the dog scurrying back to his master, Clay Girard.

Clay was sitting with the McRae family, close beside his foster sister, Cindy McRae. Clay and Cindy,

twelve years old when theSpirit of America left Earth, were nearing sixteen.

The little antelope chased Jumper to within a few yards of the McRae family and then turned, his short

tail jerking, to rejoin the herd. Big Stoner McRae was roaring with laughter at Jumpers expense.

Stoner had already tramped over a few square miles of the new planet. He was a big teddy bear of a

man who had once been a very good professional football linebacker with San Diego—the kind of

gentle, easygoing, big man who, just below the surface, has a solid steel core. Stoner had been chosen

for the expedition because he was the best mining engineer on Earth. Stoner and his wife, Betsy, hoped

to see their daughter, Cindy, and Clay Girard married someday. For the moment, Clay and Cindy were

content to be best friends.

Dapper Clive Baxter, the ship’s head chemist, sat with his wife, Ellen, near Mandy Miller and Jack

Purdy. Ellen was a petite woman, even smaller than Clive. She was the starship’s head dietitian, all

business and quick movement. Clive had become more active in the ships social life since helping to

uncover the identity of the undercover Russian terrorist who had created havoc on the trip from Earth.

Mandy suspected that the small, mustachioed man had developed political ambitions.

“Any time now,” Jack Purdy said, checking his button-watch. It was almost too warm for the

long-sleeved uniform. The scientists had determined that the planet was rotating on a tilted axis, like

Earth’s, and the current season at this location on the new planet was late spring. Jack thought that

summer here might be rather warm.

From far off, seeming to come at them from all directions at once, there was a rumble like low, distant

thunder.

“Come on down, baby,” Jack whispered at the sky. “Come on down.”

A scattering of very high silvery clouds had moved in directly over them from the sea. They blocked the

view, so no one could see the starship as the sound of thunder grew into a throaty roar of multiple

rockets.

Jack had picked up a habit from his wife. As the rumble of theSpirit of America ‘s engines grew and

seemed to shake the ground, he crossed his fingers. He knew that it was a tense time aboard ship.

Down in the armored cubicle that was the heart of theSpirit of America’s weapons-control system,

Lieutenant Commander Paul Warden was the loneliest man on the ship. He braced himself in his couch

and felt first the sharp tug, then the g-forces of deceleration, as the retro-rockets fired, slowing the ship

so that she began her plunge down toward the planetary surface. The knee he’d injured sliding into

second base in the Army-Space Academy Service championship game in 2023 gave him a twinge, just

to let him know it was still there. The knee did that under g-forces or when he had to sit in the

weapons-control room for long periods. He shifted when the rockets stopped firing and he was

Evan Innes - America 2040 Book 02 - Golden World

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