ASTRA
1. AWAKENING
IT WAS WARM and there was a light, striking redly through Dard’s closed eyelids. The warmth was good, but he wanted to twist his head away from the demands of that light. To move— but movement required an effort he had not yet the strength to make. It would be better to slip back into the pleasant darkness—to sleep…
A sharp stab of pain shook him out of that floating ease. Dard made a great effort and forced his eyelids up. Cloudy masses of color moved above him, sometimes changing position in quick jerks which removed them entirely from his area of vision. The cloudiness slowly disappeared and lines tightened, drew together. A face-vaguely familiar-hands which descended to his level of sight.
He became aware of the hands moving across his body and another prick of pain followed. There was sound-staccato bursts. Talking-talking-Dard willed his mouth to open, his tongue to move. But obedience came with agonizing slowness, as if those particular motions had not been made for a long, long time. How long? Long-? He began to remember, and his hands turned to feel for the confines of the coffin. But they met no barrier-he was no longer imprisoned in that box!
“Drink up, kid—”
The words sorted themselves into coherent speech as he sucked on the tube which had been placed in his mouth. The drink was hot, warmth tingling inside him as well as without, driving the chill which had immobilized his muscles. Strangely he was drowsy again and this time the hands did not work to keep him conscious.
“That’s right. Take it easy—we’ll be seeing you…”
That reassurance carried into sleep with him. It held through to his second awakening. This time he raised himself up and looked around. He had been stretched on a soft thick pad on the floor of the oddest room he had ever seen. Half lying in a cushioned chair swung on webbing was a dark-haired man, intent upon a wide screen set in the wall before him.
There were two more such seats, each before a board of controls. And Dard saw three more such floor mats as the one he rested upon, each equipped with a set of straps and buckles. He drew his feet up under him to sit cross-legged, while he studied the cabin and put together bits of recollection.
This could not be anything but the control cabin of the star ship. He was awake-had been aroused-which meant -! His hand went to his mouth in an involuntary gesture. Now he wanted to see what was on that screen his cabin companion watched. He must see!
But his body moved so slowly. Rusty joints-slack muscles. Why-he creaked! Hands and eyes told him that he was clothed. Though the cloth of the breeches and blouse was sleek and smooth, like no other fabric he had ever seen, colored in a mixture of brown and green. He put out the feet in their queer soft boots and inched forward to grab at the nearest swinging chair.
The watcher turned his head and smiled. It was Kimber -the same Kimber he had last seen on his way to this cabin on the night the voyage had begun. How long ago had that been?
“Greetings!” The pilot pointed to the chair beside his own. “Sit down—you haven’t got your ship’s legs yet. Did you have good dreams?”
Dard moved his tongue experimentally. “Can’t remember any,” the words came out easily now-at least his voice hadn’t rusted away, “Where are we?”
Kimber chuckled. “Space only knows. But we’re near enough to a reasonable goal for the old girl to awake Kordov and me. Then we added you to the company-and will probably bring around a couple more before we land. See?”
On the screen three specks of light dotted the dark glass.
“That’s it, a new solar system, m’boy! Luck-Lord, Luck’s ridden on our rockets most of the way. That"-Kimber pointed to the largest of the dots-"that is a yellow sun, approximate temperature 11,000 degrees, approximate size-same as Sol. In fact, it could be Sol’s twin brother. And being Sol’s twin we can hope that one of its three planets is enough like Terra to make us welcome.”
“Three planets-I only see two.”
“Other’s behind Sol II now. We’ve seen her-in fact Tas and I have had a week to chart this system since the ship controls roused us. Give us another day and we shall pick out the world we want and land the ship—”
Three worlds-and a yellow sun. Dard wished that he knew more, that his education was better than a collection of scraps and patches. Back on earth under Pax it was a feat to be able to read and write-he had entertained some pride in his learning. But now-he felt that to be nothing at all!
“Why did you waken me?” he asked. “I can’t help with the ship. You said that Kordov and you—” He was trying to remember. There had been a third man to be aroused early-
Kimber’s attention was again given to the screen. Now he answered quickly:
“You were available and you can help Kordov. Lui didn’t make it.”
Lui Skort-that young medico who had been so enthusiastic about Lars’ drug! He bad been that third man.
“What- what happened?”
“We can’t tell now. All of this-the ship, her course, the freeze boxes were constructed on hope alone. We had no way of testing anything properly. The ship awakened Kordov and me. But Lui—”
“How long have we been cruising in deep space?”
“At least three hundred years-maybe more. Time in space may be different from planet time. That is one of the points scientists have argued about. We have no accurate way of telling.”
“Was it only Lui’s box that failed?”
Kimber’s face was grim now as it had been on that night they fought their way back to the Cleft.
“Until we land and start to rouse the whole company we can not tell. The freeze boxes must not be opened until their occupants are ready for revival. And the ship is too small to do that before landing—”
Coffins! Coffins were what they resembled, and coffins they might he for the whole inert cargo the star ship carried! Perhaps the three of them were the only survivors.
“We can hope for a high percentage of survivals,” Kimber continued. “Lui’s box had the special controls-that may have been the trouble, But out of four, three ff us are all right. Kordov—”
“Yes- and what does Kordov do?” asked the hearty voice behind them.
The stocky First Scientist elbowed his way between the two swinging seats and handed the occupant of each a round plastic bulb from which a tube projected. He cradled a third in his own hand as he settled in the other chair.
“Kordov,” he answered his own question, “continues to see after your puny bodies, my friends. And you should be glad of his personal interest in them. You will now consume what you hold in your paws and be thankful!” He inserted the bulb tube in his mouth and took a smacking suck.
Dard discovered that he had to drink the same warm salty stuff that had been given to him on his first awakening. And it satisfied him completely. But he only took one.experimental drag before he demanded:
“I heard about Lui. How many others?”
Tas Kordov wiped his mouth with the back of his square hand.
“That we can not tell. We dare not investigate the boxes too closely until a landing has been made. Yes; all of us want an answer to that question, young man. How many-? We can hope that most came through. I propose to open two more from the crews’ quarters-there are men in them whose skills we need. But-for the rest-their slumbers must continue until we have the new world to offer them. And that too,” he waved at the visa-screen,” presents problems. We have found the proper sort of sun. But remember Sol had nine planets, on only one of which mankind could live at ease: Here are three planets-perhaps a Mars, a Venus, a Mercury, and no Terra. Which one do you think we should try, Sim?”
The pilot drank before he replied. “Judging by the charted orbits, I’ll settle for the middle one. It’s closer to Sol II than Terra was to Sol I, hut it has the nearest approach to a Terran orbit.”
“I don’t knew anything about astronomy,” Dard ventured.”You expect this sun to produce an earth-type planet because it is a ’yellow’ one, but if one of those three worlds is another Terra-what about intelligent life on it? Couldn’t the same general conditions have produced the same type of dominant life form?”
Kordov leaned forward, disturbing the precarious balance of his swinging seat.
“Intelligent life-maybe. Humanoid of Man-only perhaps. If on one planet the primate is the ruling form, on another it may be the insect or the carnivora.”
“Don’t forget this!” Kimber held up one hand and flexed its fingers in front of the screen. “Man’s hand helped to make him the ruling form. Suppose you had only-say, a cat’s paw. Even if intelligence went with it, and I defy anyone to tell me that a cat is not an intelligent creature; its brains may work in a different pattern, perhaps, but no one who has lived with one can deny that it can alter its environment to suit its convenience, in spite of the general stupidity of the human beings that it must deal with and through. But if we had been born with paws instead of hands-no matter what super brains we had, could we have produced tools, or other artifacts? Primates on Terra had hands. And they used them to pull themselves up to a material civilization, just as they used monkey chatter and worse than monkey manners to break up what they themselves had created. No, if we had not possessed hands we would have achieved nothing.”
“Very well,” Kordov returned, “I grant you the advantage of hands. But I still say that some ruling species other than primates might well have developed under slightly different conditions. All history, both man-made and physical, is conditioned by ’ifs’. Suppose your super cats have learned to use their paws and are awaiting us. But this is romancing,” he laughed. “Let us hope that what lies there is a world upon which intelligent life has never come into existence at all. If we are lucky—”
Kimber scowled at the screen. “Luck has ridden on our jets all the way. Sometimes I wonder if we have been a little too lucky and there’s a rather nasty pay-off waiting for us right at the end of this voyage. But we can at least choose our landing place and I intend to set us down as far from any signs of civilization-if there is a civilization-as I can. Say in a desert or—”
“We shall leave the selection of the spot to you, Sim. And now, Dard, if you have finished your meal, you will please come with me. There is work to be done.”
Dard’s attempt to get to his feet unbalanced him and he would have fallen had it not been for the First Scientist.
“These cabins have some gravity,” Kordov explained.”But not as much as we knew on Terra. Hold on and move slowly until you learn how to keep your feet.”
Dard did as he advised, clutching at the chairs and anything within reach until he came to the round opening of the door. Beyond that was a much smaller cabin with two built-in bunks and a series of supply cupboards.
“This is pilot’s quarters during an interplanetary run.” Kordov crossed to the center of the room where a well-shaped opening gave access to the ship below. “Come on down—”
Dard gingerly descended the steep stair, coming into the section where he had been stored away for the cold sleep. And Kordov was going into that very cabin. The three boxes on the far rack were open. On the other rack the coffins were solidly white as if they had been carved from virgin snow.
Kordov pressed a button and the topmost box came down to the floor. He freed it from the arms which had lowered it and trundled his prize to the door with Dard’s help. Together they brought the coffin into a second chamber which was a miniature laboratory. Kordov went down on his knees to read the dials. After a minute inspection he sighed with relief.
“It is well. Now we shall open—”
The lid resisted as if ages of time had applied a stiff glue.
But under continued pressure it gave at last with a faint swish of air. Crisp cold curled up about them, bringing with it chemical scents. The First Scientist examined the stiff body in the exposed hollow.
“Yes, yes! Now we must help him to live again. First-on the cot there—”
Dard helped lift the man onto the cot in the middle of the room. Under direction he rubbed the icy flesh with oils from a bottle Kordov thrust upon him, watching the First Scientist inject various fluids over the heart and in scattered veins. Warmth was coming back into the body as they worked. And when the man had fully roused, been fed, and had fallen into the sudden second sleep, Dard aided in dressing him and helped transport the body up to the control cabin to be laid out on the accelerator mat.
“Who- oh, Cully!” Kimber identified the newly revived crewman. “That’s good. Who else are you going to bring around?”
Kordov, puffing a little, took a moment to consider. “We have Santee, Rogan, and Macley there.”
“The ship’s not Santee’s sort of job, and Cully’s our engineer. Wait a minute Rogan! He’s had space training-as a tel-visor expert. We’ll need him—”
“Rogan it shall be then. But first we shall take a rest. We shall not need a tel-visor expert yet awhile, I believe?”
Kimber glanced at the timepiece set in the control board.
“Not for about five hours at least. And maybe eight-if you want to be lazy.”
“I am lazy when laziness is of advantage. Much of the troubles from which we have fled have been born of too much rushing about trying to keep busy. There is a time for working as hard as a man can work, yes. But there must also be hours to sit in the sun and think long thoughts anddo nothing at all. Too much rushing wears out the body- and maybe also the mind. We must make haste slowly if we would make it at all!”
Whether it was some lingering effect of the cold sleep they could not decide, but they all found themselves dropping off into sudden naps. Kordov believed that the condition would pass, but Kimber was uneasy as they approached the chosen planet and demanded a stimulant from the First Scientist.
“I want to be awake now,” Dard caught a scrap of conversation as he came back from a rest on one of the bunks in the other cabin. “To go off in a dream just when I take the ship into atmosphere-that’s not possible. We aren’t out of the woods yet-not by a long margin. Cully could take the controls in a pinch, so could Rogan, when you get him out of cold storage. But neither are trained pilots, and landing on unknown terrain is no job for a beginner!”
“Very well, Sim. You shall have your pill in plenty of time. But now you are to go in, lie down, and relax, not fight sleep. I promise that I shall rouse you in plenty of time. And meanwhile Cully will take your seat and watch the course—”
The tall thin engineer, who had said very little since his awakening, only nodded as he folded with loose-limbed ease into Kimber’s reluctantly vacated place. He made some small adjustment on the control board and dropped his head back on the chair rest to watch the screen.
During the past hours the points of light had altered. The ball of flame Kimber designated as Sol II had slipped away over the edge of their narrow slice of vision. But the world they had chosen filled most of the expanse now, growing larger by seconds.
Kordov sat down in one of the other chairs to watch with Dard. The sphere on the screen now had a bluish-green tinge, with patches of other color.
“Polar regions-snow.” Kordov commented.
Cully replied with a single, “Yeh!”
“And seas—”
To which Cully added the first long speech he had yet made.
“Got a lot of water. Should be picking up all land masses soon.”
“Unless it’s all water,” mused Kordov. “Then,” he grinned at Dard over his shoulder, “we shall be forced to leave it to the fish and try again.”
“One thing missing,” Culley adjusted the screen control for the second time. “No moon—”
No moon! Dard watched that enlarging sphere and for the first time since his awakening the dream-mood of passive acceptance of events cracked. To live under a sky where no silver globe ever hung. The moon gone! All the old songs men had sung, the old legends they had told and retold, the bit of history they cherished, that the moon was their first step into space, all gone. No moon-ever again!
“Then what will future poets find to rhyme with “June” in all their effusions?” rumbled Kordov. “And our nights to come-they will be dark ones. But one can not have everything-even another stepping stone to space. That was how our moon served us-a way station, a beckoning sign post which lured us on and out. If there is or ever was intelligent life down there-they lacked that.”
“No sign of space travel?” Cully wanted to know with a spark of interest.
“None. But of course, we can in no way be sure. Just because nothing has registered on our screens we can not say that it does not exist. If we were but a fraction off a well- traveled space lane we would not know it! And now, Dard, we have Rogan to rouse. I promised Sim that he would be on hand to share duty.”
Again they made that trip below, lifted out the proper box and brought back to life the man who slumbered in it.
“That is the last one,” stated Kordov when they had established Rogan in the control cabin. “No more until after we land. Hah!”
He had turned to look at the screen and the exclamation was jolted out of him by what he saw there. Land masses, mottled green-blue-red against which seas of a brighter hue washed.
“So we do not join fish. Instead you, Dard, must go and shake Sim back to life. Now is the time for him to be on duty!”
Shortly afterward Dard crouched on one of the acceleration mats beside the unconscious Rogan while the others occupied the chairs before the controls. The atmosphere within the cabin was tense and yet Kimber alone was at ease.
“Rogan come to yet?” he asked without turning his head.
Dard gently shook the shoulder of the man on the next mat. He stirred, muttered. Then his eyes opened and he scowled up at the roof of the cabin. A second later he sat up.
“We made it!” he shouted.
“That we did!” Kordov answered cheerfully. “And now—”
“Now there’s a job waiting for you, fella,” broke in Kimber. “Come up and tell us what you think of this.”
Kordov spilled out of the third chair and helped Rogan into it. Holding tightly to the arms of the seat, as if be feared any moment to be tossed out of it, Rogan gave his full attention to the screen. He drew a deep breath of pure wonder.
“It’s- it’s beautiful!”
Dard agreed with that. The mingling of color was working on him-just as sunsets back on Terra had been able to do. There were no words he knew to describe what he now saw. But be didn’t have a chance to watch long.
“Better strap down,” came the suggestion from the pilot.”We’re going in ”
Kordov plumped down on one of the acceleration mats, pulling the harness which flanked it up over his body, and Dard did the same. He was flat on his back against the spongy stuff of the pad with his head at an angle from which he could not see the screen. They bored into atmosphere and he must have blacked out, for he never afterward remembered the last part of the furious descent.
The ship shuddered, pushing up-or was it down-upon him. He had a misty idea that this must be full gravity returning. Then there was a shock which tore at the webs holding his body and he gasped, fighting for breath. But his hands were already at the buckles which fastened him down as he heard a voice say:
“End of the line! All out!”
And another replied-in Cully’s dry tone: “Neat, Sim, nice and neat.”