Ben Bova - Exiles 2 - Flight of exiles

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Ben Bova - (Exiles Trilogy 01) Flight of Exiles v0.5 (1971).html
To the Pratt family, with thanks for fine times.
1
"Fire... it's on fire !"
"EMERGENCY, EMERGENCY, EMERGENCY."
"Attention everyone. Emergency in cryonics area six. Damage Control and Life Support groups to cryonics area six
immediately. Emergency."
"The whole area's a mass of flames! The standby equipment is out! Get more men up here, quick!"
The starship had no name. The people aboard merely called it "the ship." It had originally been a huge artificial satellite
orbiting around Earth, a minor city in space, hugging close to the Mother World. Then it was made into a prison for
thousands of the world's best scientists and their families. Now it was a starship, coasting silently from the solar system
toward the triple star system, Alpha Centauri.
Inside the main control center, things were anything but quiet.
"There are fifty men and women in cryosleepers in number six area. If you can't get that fire under control they'll die."
Larry Belsen was standing up on the ship's bridge. It was actually a long curving row of desk consoles, where seated
technicians worked the controls that watched and directed every section of the mammoth ship. Larry's job was as close to a
ship's captain as any job on the ship; he was in charge of this Command and Control center, he had a finger on every
pulsebeat in the ship.
The technicians were hunched over the keyboards, fingers flying over the buttons that electronically linked all of the great
ship's machinery and people. In frontof each of their desks were
viewscreens that showed them pictures, graphs, charts, every kind of information from each compartment and piece of
equipment aboard engines, computers, life support, living quarters, work areas, cryonics units, power systems, all on view
in the hundreds of screens
Normally, Larry thought of the curving ring of screens as the eye of a giant electronic insect, multifaceted to see into all
the areas of the ship He had studied about Earth's insects briefly in a biology course, on the learning tapes But now his
attention was riveted to one particular screen, where the fire was raging in cryonics area six There wasn't much he could
see smoke obscured almost everything
He put a hand on the shoulder of the girl working that console
"Can't you get the emergency equipment functioning?"
She was a thin, dark-skinned girl, with close-cropped hair Glancing up at Larry, "It should've gone on automatically But it
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won't respond at all I've tried . " Her eyes were wide with fear, anxiety
"It's not your fault," Larry said calmly "Don't blame yourself "
"But there are fifty sleepers in there!"
Larry shook his head Without bothering to go across to the life support displays, he said, "They must be dead by now,
Tania No sense tearing yourself up over it"
He took a step to the guy sitting at the next desk console "You in touch with the Damage Control group?"
"Yes they've plugged into a wall phone out in the main corridor, just outside area six "
"Who's in charge?"
"It's Mort Campbell's unit, but he's not the one on the phone "
"Let me talk "
"Is it cryonics six?"
Larry turned to see Dan Christopher at the door down at the far end of the bridge For an instant, everything seemed to
stand still people frozen at the console desks, communications speakers quiet, viewscreens stilled
The two of them looked almost like brothers, at first glance Larry was tall and slim with dark hair that he kept clipped
fairly
short His eyes, though, were a cold gray, like a granite rock floating in space far from the warmth of a star Dan was the
same height and also youthfully slim His hair was a lighter shade, and almost shoulder length It curled slightly His eyes
were fiercely black, deep and flashing Both of them were wearing workshift coveralls, Larry's the blue-gray shade of the
ship's Command and Control personnel, Dan's the howling orange of the Propulsion and Power section
"Is it six?" Dan demanded, his voice rising
Larry didn't answer, he merely nodded slowly
"My father's in there!"
By now Larry had crossed the plastic tiled floor of the bridge and was within arm's reach of Dan He took him by the arm
"So is mine! There's nothing you can do, Dan The Damage Control group's already there, but
"My father!"
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Dan pulled loose and yanked the door open Larry stood there and watched him disappear down the corridor running, until
the door automatically slid shut again
With a sad shake of his head, Larry went back to the control desks and viewscreens
"You still in contact with the Damage Control party?"
The fellow nodded and pointed to the main screen over his desk, in the center of a group of seven screens A scared-looking
teenager was in view He was looking somewhere off camera, coughing in the smoke that was drifting past him
"What's going on up there?" Larry asked sharply
The kid in the screen seemed to jerk with surprise Then turning full face toward the screen, he said
"Mr Campbell and the crew are in there I saw flames coming through the main hatch a few minutes ago, but there's only
smoke now "
"Is anybody hurt?"
"I don't know They're all inside there nobody's come out"
"Did they have smoke masks?"
"Yeah "
"Where's yours?" Larry asked
The kid looked startled again "I uh yeah, it's right here I got it
More gently, Larry said, "Don't you think it might be a good idea to put it on? It can't protect you while it's zipped to your
belt."
Larry found that he was bending over the shoulder of the seated technician. He straightened up and glanced at the life
support screens on the next console. They were blank, dead.
Fifty people in there. Dan's father... and my own.
"Larry... look."
He turned his attention back to the viewscreen. The Damage Control group was trudging wearily back into the corridor.
Their faces' were smudged, their coveralls blackened. The foamers and other fire-fighting equipment they dragged seemed
to weigh tons.
There was hardly any smoke coming from the hatch now. The last man to step out into the corridor slowly undipped his
smoke mask. Larry recognized him as Mort Campbell stocky, slow-moving but always sure of himself, one of the oldest
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men working on this shift—nearly thirty.
Then Dan Christopher came dashing into view. He pushed wordlessly past the first few men of the Damage Control group,
his eyes wild, his mouth open in silent frenzy.
Campbell stopped him at the hatch. Dan tried to dodge around him, but Campbell grabbed Dan by his slim shoulders and
held him firmly.
"Don't go in there. It's not pretty."
"My father..."
"They're all dead."
Watching them in the viewscreen, Larry felt his insides sink. You knew he was dead, he told himself. But knowing it in
your head and feeling it in your guts are two entirely different things.
He knew all the technicians, all up and down the long row of consoles, were staring at him now. He stood unmoved, his
face frozen into a mask of concentration, and kept his eyes on the viewscreen. Inside his head, he was telling himself
overand over, You never knew him. He was frozen before you were old enough to remember him. There's no reason for you
to break up.
Dan's reaction was very different.
"NO!" he screamed, and he twisted out of Campbell's grasp and darted into the still smoky cryonics area. The older man
slipped his face mask back on and went in after him.
"The cameras inside the cryonics area aren't working now," the girl tech said quietly, her fingers still tapping on her
keyboard, trying to coax life back into the dead machines.,
"Never mind," Larry said woodenly. "There's nothing in there that we should see."
2
Larry sat in his living quarters, in the dark. It was a single compartment, barely big enough for a bunk, a desk, and a chair.
The bunk and desk were molded into the curving walls of the compartment. Drawers and sliding partitions to the closet and
sanitary blended almost invisibly with the silvery metal of the walls.
In the darkness, as he sat in the only chair and stared at nothing, there was only the residual glow of the viewscreen at the
foot of the bed and the faint fluorescence of the wall painting that'Valery had done for him years ago, when he had first
been assigned a compartment of his own.
So you've lost a father you've never known, Larry still argued with himself. You're not the only one. Every one of those fifty
frozen people was a father or mother to somebody aboard the ship. Look at Dan; it's hit him a lot harder.
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But as he thought about it, slowly Larry began to realize that something else was bothering him. It wasn't the deaths. Not
really. That left nothing but a cold emptiness inside him. It was something else—
What caused the fire?
According to the ship's computer records, they had been crawling through the huge gulf of space for nearly fifty years.
Twenty-some thousand human beings, exiles from Earth, on their way to Alpha Centauri in a giant pinwheel of a ship.
Nearly fifty years. Almost there.
But the ship was starting to die.
The men and women who had started on this long, long voyage were exiles. They had been scientists—molecular
geneticists, most of them. The world government had rounded them up and placed them in a prison, this ship, which was
then only a mammoth satellite orbiting Earth. Earth was overcrowded, it needed peace and above all it needed stability.
The scientists represented the forces of change, not stability. The geneticists and their colleagues offered the ability to alter
the human race, to make every baby intoa superman ora slave, into a genius or a moron. On demand. Pay your money and
take your choice.
The world government was humane. And very human. Its leaders decided such power would be too tempting, too easy to
corrupt. So, as humanely as possible—but with thorough swiftness—they arrested all the scientists who were involved in
genetic engineering and exited them to the satellite. Their knowledge was never to be used to alter the precious, hard-won
peace and stability of Earth.
It had been Dan Christopher's father—with the help of Larry's father—who worked out the idea of turning their satellite
prison into a starship. The Earth's government agreed, reluctantly at first, but then with growing enthusiasm. Better to get
rid of the troublesome scientists completely. Let them go toward Alpha Centauri. Whether they make it or not, they will no
longer bother the teeming, overcrowded Earth.
But the ship itself was overcrowded. Twenty thousand people can't be kept alive for year after year, decade after decade,
for half a century or more. Not on a spacecraft. Not on the ship. So most of the people were frozen in cryogenic deepsleep,
suspended animation, to be reawakened when they reached Alpha Centauri, or when they were needed for some special
reason. The ship was run by a handful of people—no more than a thousand were allowed to be awake and active at one
time. All this Larry knew from the history tapes. Much of it he had learned side by side with Dan, his best friend, when
they were kids studying together. Both their mothers had died of a virus infection that killed hundreds of people before the
medics figured out a way to stop it. Their fathers had handed the infant sons over to friends to be raised, and went into
cryogenic sleep, to be awakened when they reached their destination. If they made it. The people who had built this ship
were engineers of Earth.
The people who lived in it, riding out to the stars, were mostly scientists and their children. The ship had to operate far
more than fifty years, if they were all to stay alive. The time was almost over, and the ship's vast intricate systems were
starting to break down, to fail. Youngsters trained as engineers and technicians had all the learning that the tapes could
provide. But could they keep the ship going indefinitely?
A month ago it was the main power generator that failed, and they began to ration electrical power. Last week it was a
pump in the hydroponics section; if they hadn't been able to repair the pump they would have lost a quarter of their food
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production, plus the even more important oxygen-recycling ability of the green plants that grew in the long troughs of
chemical nutrients. And now the fire. Fifty people dead.
Will any of us make it?
A soft tapping at his door. Fingernails on plastic. Valery.
"Come in," Larry said, getting up from his chair.
The door slid open and she stood there framed in the light from the corridor.
Valery looked small, but she was actually almost Larry's height, and he had known since their childhood together that she
was as tough and supple as plastisteel. Her face was broad, with high Nordic cheekbones and wide, always-surprised-
looking eyes. Changeable eyes; sometimes blue, sometimes green, sometimes something else altogether. Very fair skin
with a scattering of freckles. Very, very pretty.
She was wearing a simple white jumpskirt and blouse. Like most of the girls aboard the ship, Valery made her own
clothes.
"I heard about your father," she said, her voice low.
Without waiting for him to say anything, she stepped into the compartment. Automatically, the door slid shut behind her.
The room was suddenly plunged into darkness again. In the faint glow from the fluorescent painting, he started to reach for
the light switch.
"No—" she said. "It's all right like this. We don't need lights."
"Val—"
She was standing very close to him. He could smell the fragrance of her hair.
"I saw Dan. They took him to the infirmary. He collapsed."
"I know," Larry said.
He wanted to touch her, to put his arms around her and let her warmth engulf him. But he knew he couldn't.
"You'd better... sit down," he said.
Valery went to the plastic chair in front of the desk. She sat on it and tucked her feet up under her, as simple and feminine
as a cat. Larry could see her in the darkness as a gleam of white, like a pale nebula set against the depths outside. He sat on
the edge of the bunk.
"I wish there was something I could say," Valery began. "I just feel so helpless."
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Larry found himself gripping the edge of the bunk hard with both hands. "Uh... how's Dan?"
"Asleep. The medics have sedated him. He's... he's not strong, like you."
"He does his thing, I do mine," Larry said. "He shows his grief on the outside."
"And you keep yours locked up inside you, so nobody can see."
He didn't answer.
"I can see it," Valery said, her voice soft as a star-cloud. "I came over to tell you. I know what's going on inside you, Larry.
I..."
"Stop it!" he snapped. "You're going to marry Dan in two more months. Leave,me alone."
Even in the darkness, he could sense her body stiffen. Then she said, "But I don't love Dan. I love you."
"That doesn't make any difference and'you know it."
"You love me, Larry, i know that too."
He shook his head. "No... I don't. Not anymore."
Her face was lost in shadow, but her voice smiled. "Larry—remember when we were just six or seven and we snuck into
the free-fall playroom... you and Dan and me? And we were playing tag, and you got racing so fast that you flew smack
into a wall___"
"It was the ceiling," he said.
"You hurt your shoulder, but you kept telling us it wasn't hurt. But I could see your pain, Larry. I could see it."
"Okay, so I broke my shoulder."
Suddenly she was beside him, kneeling alongside the bunk. "So don't say you don't love me, Larry Belsen.ll know you do."
"it's no use," he said, his voice as cracked and miserable as he
felt inside. "The computer selection was final. Not even the Council can revoke it. You can't have people just flying off
and marrying anybody they feel like marrying! That's what happened to old Earth. The genetics went from bad to worse.
We've got to live by the rules, Val... there's no other way."
"And the rules say I have to marry Dan."
"He loves you, Val."
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"And you don't?"
He couldn't answer. Instead, he stared down at her for an infinite moment, then pulled her up to him and kissed her. She
felt soft and good and loving. She clung to him hard, warmly. Everything else left his mind and he thought of nothing but
her.
When he finally surfaced for air, she asked sleepily, "You don't have a duty shift, do you?"
Shaking his head, "No. Excused from duty until after the funeral services."
"Oh."
He sat there on the bunk, loving her and hating himself. This is all wrong. What I'm doing...
"Larry?"
"What is it?"
"If the Council would allow it, would you want to marry me?"
"Don't make it worse than it is, Valery."
"But would you?"
"Sure."
She sat up beside him. "We can do it, you know. If you really want to."
"You must be..."
"No, we can," she insisted. "The Council's due to vote on the new Chairman in two days, right? The Chairman and the
permanent Council members are Class A, aren't they? Their genetic options are much wider than B's, aren't they?"
"Yes, but..."
"I checked it all out. The computer selection rated you and Dan so close together that it wasn't until the third-order effects
were taken into account that it rated Dan ahead of you. And then it was only a shade. But if you're elected Chairman,
then..."
Larry shook his head. "It's Dan's turn to be Chairman. He's a
year older than I am. Besides, he wanted to revive his father when we got to Centauri and turn the Chairmanship over to
him."
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"But that's all changed now."
Larry frowned. "No... Dan and I talked it over a long time ago. He's a year older than I am, so he'll get a chance to be
Chairman first___"
Very softly, Valery said, "That means in two months I'll be Mrs. Christopher. Unless you do something about it now."
"I can't...."
"Dan's in no condition to run the Council," she said. "When they vote, two days from now, he'll still be in the infirmary.
And a lot of the older Council members have always thought he's much too emotional to be Chairman, even if it's only for
a couple of months. Especially now, when we're about to make landfall... they'd rather have a stronger, cooler Chairman.
You can ask my father; that's what they're saying."
Larry knew. He knew all of it. To be Chairman when we reach the new world. Every eligible young man and woman
aboard wanted that honor.
"Do you think Dan could handle that responsibility?" Valery asked, sliding a hand around the back of Larry's neck.
Not as well as I can, he answered silently.
"As Chairman, you can marry me," she said.
"Val..."
"Don't send me to Dan. Please. It's you I want."
I CA N do a better job than he would. And marry Val.
"Larry, do I have to beg you?" She leaned her cheek against his. It felt wet. Tears.
"But it's wrong," he muttered. "It's like kicking my best friend when he's down."
"It's the only chance you've got, Larry. We all need you, everybody aboard the ship. You're the best one to be Chairman,
everybody knows that. And I need you! I can't live without you!"
He closed his eyes and heard himself saying, "All right. I'll do it. I'll do it."
3
The ship was built on the principle of wheels within wheels. It consisted of seven ring structures, starting from a central
bulbous hub. Going outward, each ring was bigger and held more room for equipment and living space. The entire ship
was turning, revolving slowly, to provide an artifical gravity. The outermost wheel, level one, was at one full Earth g, and
everyone felt his normal Earth weight there. Going "upward," toward the hub, weight and gravity fell off consi-tently, until
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at the hub itself, there was effectively no gravity, weightlessness.
The thousand or so people who were awake and active had their living quarters in level one. All the levels were linked by
tubes.
The infirmary was on the second level, where the spin-induced gravity was slightly less than I g. It made for an
unconscious buoyant feeling, a sense of well-being and optimism, that the medics claimed helped to get patients recovered
from their ailments.
The infirmary stretched over a long section of the second level. Instead of viewports looking outside, the main wall of the
infirmary was made up of viewscreens that showed constantly changing pictures of Earth; old Earth, before the bursting
population had torn down most of her forests, ripped open her mineral-rich lands, covered vast stretches of ground with
festering cities.
Dan Christopher was sitting up in his infirmary bed, floating lightly on the liquid-filled mattress. He had drifted in and out
of sleep several times this morning. When he had first been awakened for his morning check by the automated sensor
system at his bedside, the scene on the wall screens outside his plastiglass-walled cubicle had shown an impossible blue
sky and a vista of rugged white mountains dotted by patches of green, under a gleaming sun.
Dan knew that the sun was a star, but it didn't look like any star he had ever seen. Now, later in the morning, the scene was
a deep green forest, where the sunlight filtered down in dusty shafts and strange four-legged animals tip-toed warily
through the underbrush.
Wasting electrical power to show these scenes, he told himself. Dan still felt woozy, as much from the medicines they had
been filling him with as from the dreams that haunted his sleep. The medics had pumped him full of tranquilizers, he
guessed. But underneath their flat calming effect he knew there was a core of terror and rage inside him.
He's dead. The man who gave us this ship, the man who started this mission, the man who gave me life. The most important
man aboard. Dead. A couple of months before we're due to reach our destination. A couple of months before he'd be
reawakened and I'd get to really know him. Now he's dead.
Two nurses walked briskly past his cubicle, chatting together. Dan paid no attention to them. Thechief medic would be
here soon. Dan wanted to get out of the infirmary.
A tapping on his door snapped him fully awake. Through the plastiglass he saw Joe Haller: solid, dependable Joe. A good
engineer and a good friend. Joe's long hair and beard turned off many of the older people, but he was one of the most
reliable and brightest men aboard. Next to Larry, Joe was Dan's best and longest friend.
Dan waved him in, and Joe opened the plastiglass door and stepped into the cramped cubicle. There was no room for a
chair, so he simply stood next to Dan's bed.
"How're you feeling?" he asked.
Dan said, "Good enough. I've got to get out of here today. How long have I been here?"
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BenBova-(ExilesTrilogy01)FlightofExilesv0.5(1971).htmlTothePrattfamily,withthanksforfinetimes.1"Fire...it'sonfire!""EMERGENCY,EMERGENCY,EMERGENCY.""Attentioneveryone.Emergencyincryonicsareasix.DamageControland\LifeSupportgroupstocryonicsareasiximmediately.Emergency.""Thewholearea'samassofflames!Thes...

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