Survey Ship (6 page)

Peake thought; even if I could ever come back, jimson
would be an old man and I still young. He had known that, intellectually. Now it became suddenly personal, and frightening. And meaningful, with a horrible personal meaning that left him speechless, staring into the console of the navigation instruments.

“I still think it makes sense to explore outward from the known colonies, in an orderly fashion,” Ravi said. “We should stay in contact with the known human settlements; otherwise the chances we'd ever run across one by accident — well, the old needle in a haystack analogy would be very good odds by comparison.”

“But if we find a planet in a wholly new direction,” Moira argued, “then humanity can spread in that many more new directions without being wholly lost. We'd establish a new beachhead in the Galaxy —”

“You're speaking as if this were a military conquest,” Fontana said.

“Well, it is, in a sense,” Moira said, “us against an empty universe, and we're going and making new paths for ourselves —”

“As we did in America and Australia?” Ravi asked dryly, “by wiping out the Amerinds and the aborigines?”

“We haven't found any trace of intelligent life anywhere,” Moira said. “There was none anywhere in the Alpha Centaurus system, and none on any of Wolf 459's five planets. We may just be alone in the entire Galaxy.”

“I find that approach thoroughly offensive,” Fontana said, “that we have the right to do whatever we please, anywhere, just because we have the technology to come and take over —”

Teague said, ironically, “I thought one of the reasons for getting out into space was to be free of you ecological nuts who want the planet left in perfectly unspoiled primitive conditions!”

“Look, none of this is relevant,” Ching said sharply. “We can debate our various philosophical positions at our leisure, for the next four light-years or so at least! Just now we have to decide in which direction we leave the Solar System!”

“And we asked you to decide that,” Peake said.

“And I told you then, and I tell you again, I will not play God that way! For a decision this big, we need a consensus!”

“You were telling us, a while ago, that we should choose a commander and let the commander make those decisions,” Fontana argued, “and then when we ask you to take that responsibility, you cop out and demand a group consensus!”

Ching felt overwhelmed by the hostility in Fontana's voice. Somehow she had fell that if she won a place on the final crew she would have proved her right to belong, she would have been accepted. Now she realized that nothing had changed; she was simply alone within the smaller group of hostile strangers, that was all. But still alone.

She said quietly, “I don't think you understood me, Fontana. Certainly, if you all agree that it is my decision to make, I'll make it, but I don't think, at this moment, that I have enough information. Moira, you want to establish a new beachhead for mankind — no, wait, we'll argue over definitions later — and Ravi, I think, suggested heading for the known colonies and exploring outward from there in an orderly fashion.”

“I agree with Ravi,” Peake said, “somehow I doubt if our Survey Ships have managed to find every habitable planet in that quarter of the Galaxy.”

Fontana said, “There's good reason for going in that direction. Before the first Survey Ship left, a hundred and five years ago, they surveyed everything they could
from Base One on Alpha Centaurus, and decided it was the most promising area to find new planets and probably intelligent life — or conditions favoring it.”

Teague said, diffidently, “Considering that we have a good deal of information about that part of the Galaxy, isn't it time some crew explored in another direction, and started feeding back information?”

“I don't think that's the point of the Survey Ships,” Peake argued. “We were sent to find a habitable planet, not to add to the general sum total of information. The best place to look for new planets is where planets have already been found.”

Moira demanded, “Why should we do just what other ships have done?”

Ching raised her smooth eyebrows. “Why not?”

“We have here,” said Ravi, “the ultimate difference between the pure scientist and the applied scientist; to find new information about the nature of the universe, or to apply that information to use by mankind. Personally, I think the Academy is applied science; we were given orders to find a planet, not find out new things about the universe. Our job is to find a new planet, and I think we owe it to them. After all —” suddenly his voice cracked, “we'll certainly find out new things, wherever we go. There's — there's plenty to find, out — out there.”

Fontana thought, with detachment, he's scared. After twelve years of supervision in the Academy, we're all scared to death of being on our own. But we've got to get used to it.

Moira, with that eerie responsiveness, almost telepathic, asked, “Isn't all this delay just a way of trying to cling to some — some lifeline of the familiar? Are we afraid to take off into the unknown?”

“If we are,” said Ching, “I don't think it will do us
any good, not in the long run. For what it's worth, I agree with Peake and Ravi; the best place to look for a shell is on the beach, and the best place to look for a planet is where it's been demonstrated that there are many of them.”

Teague said, “Creation doesn't differ from one quarter of the universe to another. It all came from the Big Bang and if there are planets in one place, there are certain to be planets in any other.”

Ching asked, “Do we have a clear majority, then? Peake, Ravi, Fontana, and I prefer to proceed toward previously established colonies; Moira and Teague vote for a new and unknown direction —”

Teague shook his head. “I was commenting about the nature of the universe, not voting. I'm willing to go along with the majority.”

“As far as that goes, so am I,” Moira said. “My objection was purely philosophical; I don't approve of majority decisions or majority rule. Historically speaking, democracy is the worst tyranny ever invented by humanity — if we'd left it to majority rule, Peake's people would still be slaves, we'd all have been brought up praying in school, and there would never have been a space program at all. Majorities always settle for the lowest common denominator and the rule of the uninformed.”

Ching's eyebrows went up again. She said, “Are you going to take the part of the philosophical rebel among us, Moira, always taking the minority position just to prevent any consensus decision?”

Moira's freckled face flushed bright pink. She said, “I don't think that's a fair way of putting it, Ching.”

“No? How would you put it, then?”

Fontana, watching in silence, realized that this was the first head-to-head confrontation any of them had
known. The discipline of the Academy, the knowledge that open hostility would not be tolerated, had downplayed this kind of thing since they were kindergarten age. Should she intervene, tactfully, to defuse it; was this her job as the only psychologist on the crew?

Damn it, she thought, no! Not me! And faced the knowledge that, although she had been crammed with knowledge of psychology, she was only seventeen years old, and no more a psychologist than Peake, with all his knowledge of surgery, was a surgeon. At seventeen they had the rudimentary knowledge of their professions, but they didn't have the experience or knowledge which, alone, could qualify them for their chosen professions.

And there's no way to yell for help when we find we can't handle It.' God, the Academy is ruthless! They know that only young people can survive long enough to do their work at interstellar distances, so they throw us out to sink or swim.' Is that why so many crews go out and are never heard of again?

Ching still looked angry. She said, “Obviously I'm not going to give any command to take the ship anywhere over your dead body, Moira. What I need to know is whether your objection means, 'I am unalterably opposed to going in the direction other ships have gone,' or whether it means, 'I am opposed to majority rule for philosophical reasons but in this particular case I am willing to work with the majority.' I would like to say that, speaking from that philosophical position you were talking about, I don't find majority rule very satisfactory either. Which is why I felt one person ought to have command authority to make last-ditch decisions if a consensus can't be found.”

Moira's flush slowly subsided. She said, “In that case, Ching, I withdraw my objections. I admit I'd like
to take off in a direction humanity has never gone before. On the other hand, I don't think they gave us this ship to satisfy our intellectual curiosity about the universe, either. I'll agree with the others; we go in the direction of known colonies.”

Ching said, “In that case I'll get information about navigation co-ordinates for the known colonies, and we'll head for the most recent of them . . . right, Peake?”

Fontana felt they were all relieved to have avoided a real confrontation. This meant, at the constant rate of acceleration, they would not have to make any more major policy decisions for more than a year, perhaps four or five years just under the speed of light.

And if we can't figure out a way to make them by then, we'll deserve everything that happens to us.

Teague grinned shyly. He said, “I don't have the exact co-ordinates in my head, but it means, I know, that we'll be heading out past Saturn's place in orbit. And we'll get a good close look at it — which I always wanted. Granted the telemetered shots are pretty spectacular; but I always wanted to see it from within a million miles or so.”

Ching said absently, her fingers working on the computer console, “If we head for Colony Five, that will bring us out within two hundred thousand miles of Saturn's rings. We could make it a little closer, but that would mean altering course to avoid coming within orbital distance of one of the moons —”

“Japetus,” Ravi said absently, looking over Ching's shoulder.

Teague demanded, “How the hell do you do that, Ravi?”

His dark face flushed. “I'm not sure,” he said, “I never did know how I do it. It just adds up in my head.”

Ching said formally, “The co-ordinates are on the
console. You can work out a course, Peake, and then, I suppose, it's Moira's business to cut the drives in — ”

Peake looked around, hesitantly. “So that's all there is to it? We simply —go? Just like that? Shouldn't we — let them know, or something? As a courtesy?”

“Courtesy from whom to whom?” Moira asked. “Face it; they don't expect to hear from us again until we bring them a habitable planet. They've kicked the baby birds right out of the nest.”

It's all gone, Peake thought. All the life any of us have ever had, until this moment. And Jimson. He touched the button which cleared the huge window, letting the stars blaze into the control cabin.

“Don't,” Moira said, turning her eyes away, “it makes me dizzy. I think we have to — to get used to it. In stages.”

“We'd better get used to it,” Peake said, savagely, “because it's all there is. All we've got. Any of us. Just what's out there. And we might as well learn to face it now as later! There's no sense staying in the womb!”

Ching felt, still, that there ought to be more to it than this — some formal report to the Space Station that Survey Ship #103 was on its way, some acknowledgement, some formal leave-taking. But they had had all that when they were chosen as a crew ... it was foolish to wish for more. She kept her eyes down on the steady familiar console of the Bridge computer, the numbers and letters which appeared as she touched buttons. She had done this on a similar console many times during her training, and since they had decided to take their course toward the most, recent of the colonies, even the course was one she had plotted before. It seemed almost too simple.

Since there was no other formality possible, she made her voice formal.

“Colonies one and two are in the system of Barnard's Star, at six light-years distance. Colony Three is at Cygni 61; eleven light-years distance. Colony Four is in the Sirius double-star system, eight point eight light-years, and Colony Six is established in the T-5 cluster, nine point three light-years distance.”

“And,” said Teague, “it's very probable that when we get to the T-5 cluster, if that's where we are going, we will find Colonies Seven through Eleven — maybe
through twenty or twenty-four — established there, with no planets left for us.”

Peake shrugged. “Then we start hunting from there, I suppose.”

Moira said, “If we leave the Solar System in that direction, that means we'll be off the plane of the ecliptic and we'll miss the asteroids. No way we're maneuverable enough to get through the asteroid belt without being crashed by a minor asteroid. We could program the ship to avoid the bigger, better-known ones, the more predictable ones, but there are hundreds of thousands of them — maybe millions.”

“I have the precise number of known bodies in the computer,” Ching said, “but does anyone really care?”

“I do,” said Teague, “but it's irrelevant right now.”

Peake looked at the readout from Ching's computer on the panel before him. He frowned, flicking buttons on the pocket calculator at his belt, then started to lay in a course in the general direction of the T-5 cluster. It was still day-shift; Ravi sat behind him, with nothing, at the moment, to do except watch Peake's huge, clumsy-looking hands on the buttons and switches. The fingers were so long, and so large, that they obscured the switches at times.

It was almost frightening to contemplate this kind of freedom, this kind of distance. He did not mind the vista of stars outside the transparent glass dome . . . although he noticed that Moira kept her eyes carefully turned away from it.

Navigating on the surface of the Earth, there were three-hundred-and-sixty directions in which you could go, and some of that was limited by features of the terrain — mountains, water, heavy undergrowth, preexisting roads. In the air you had the full three hundred sixty degrees; he'd grown used to that, flying a light plane.