Collected Short Fiction, page 593
Hastily he pressed his thumb against the sensitized spot, rolled up the sheet, stuffed it in its little cylinder, and sent it rocketing down the pneumotube to the waiting Brevoort. The Gegenschein had her cargo, barring accidents and possible suicides between now and the seventeenth of the month.
The clock said 1400 hours. The day was over. Mulholland rose, sticky with sweat, eyes aching, mind numb. He was free to go home.
At least you only get Selected once, he thought. I have to go through this every day.
VII
BANGOR Starfield, from which three ships of colonists departed every week, covered sixteen square miles of what had once been virgin forest in northern Maine. The lofty firs were gone, now; the area had been cleared and levelled and surrounded by a fence labelled at thousand-yard intervals, NO ADMITTANCE EXCEPT TO CLASSIFIED PERSONNEL, by order of Colonization Bureau.
Within the fenced-off area there was surprisingly little in the way of construction. Since the starfield was for government use only, not commercial, there was no need for the usual array of terminals, passenger buildings, waiting rooms, and concessions that cluttered every commercial spaceport. The buildings at the Bangor field were few: a moderately elaborate barracks for the permanent staff, a more sketchily constructed housing unit for transients, a couple of staff amusement centers, and a small administration building. All these were huddled together in a compact group in the center of the cleared area. Fanning off in three directions were the blastoff fields themselves, kept widely separated because a starship likes a mile or two of headroom when it can get it.
On the morning of 17 October, 2116, two of Bangor Starfield’s three blastoff areas were occupied. On Field One stood the Andrew Johnson, solemnly alone with a mile of heat-fused sterile brown earth on each side: a tall steel-blue needle that towered erect on its landing-jacks and retractile atmospheric fins. The Andrew Johnson was scheduled for departure on the 20th of the month; tomorrow the service crews would swarm out to Field One to begin the three-day countdown that prefaced every departure of a starship.
At present the service technicians were busily running the final tests on the Gegenschein, which stood in the center of Field Three, slim and straight, glinting golden in the morning sunlight. The Gegenschein was due for blastoff at 1600 hours that afternoon, and with the countdown in its final six hours the service crews scuttled like busy insects through the ship, making certain that everything was in perfect order. Only once, twelve years before, had there been a major starship accident, but it was hoped that there would never be another.
Field Two remained empty. A returning starship, the Wanderer, was due back late that evening, and Field Two was being held open for it. A small service crew was on duty at the Field Two blockhouse, running final checks on the guidance system that would monitor the Wanderer into its landing orbit later in the day. Nothing could be left to chance, not with a hundred-million-dollar starship.
From the upper floor of the housing unit for transients, looking out past the squat yellowbrick edifice that served as the permanent staff residence barracks, both the Andrew Johnson and the Gegenschein could be seen, one at the western end of the field, the other far to the east. Mike Dawes, who had arrived at the Bangor starfield at 0945 hours after an early-morning flight from New York, peered out the window of the small room to which he had been assigned, looking first at the distant blue-tinted Andrew Johnson, then, turning eastward, at the much closer Gegenschein.
“WHICH one am I going on?” he asked.
“The gold-colored one,” said the uniformed Colonization Bureau guard who had shown him to his temporary room. “It’s on Field Three, over there.”
Dawes nodded. “Yes. I see it.”
“You’ve got an hour or so to rest here and relax. At 1100 hours there’s a preliminary briefing session downstairs in the central hall. You won’t be able to miss it, just turn to your left when you leave the elevator. The briefing lasts about an hour. Then you’ll be given lunch.”
“I’m not going to be very hungry,” Dawes said.
The guard smiled. “Most of them never are. But the meal is always a good one.”
At 1100 hours Dawes followed the flickering neon signs down the hall to the elevator, and from there to Room 101. Room 101 was a huge auditorium in the center of the compound; several men in blue-and-yellow uniforms bustled about on a dais, adjusting a microphone, while pale, tensefaced civilians filtered in and took seats as far away from each other as possible.
Dawes slipped into an empty row near the back and looked around, seeing his fellow Selectees for the first time. One hundred people were spread thinly about in an auditorium big enough for ten times that number. He managed an ironic smile at the way each Selectee had managed to place himself on a little island, insulated by five or six empty seats on each side from his nearest neighbor, as if afraid of impinging on the final hours of anyone’s privacy. They seemed to be ordinary people; Dawes noticed that most of them appeared to be in their late twenties or early thirties, and a few were older than that. He wondered whether the colonies were portioned out strictly at random, or whether perhaps some degree of external control was exerted. It was perfectly within the range of probability for the Computer to select fifty men of twenty and fifty women of forty to comprise a colony, but it seemed unlikely that such a group would ever be allowed to go out.
Behind him, the auditorium doors closed. An officer with an array of ribbons and medals on his uniform front stepped up to the dais, frowned at the microphone, raised it a fraction of an inch, and said, “Welcome to Bangor Starfield. I’m Commander Leswick, and your welfare will be my responsibility until you blast off at 1600 hours. I know this has been a trying week for you, perhaps virtually a tragic week for some, and I don’t intend to repeat the catch-phrases and slogans that you’ve been handed for the past seven days. You’ve been Selected; you’re going to leave Earth, and you’ll never return. I put it bluntly like this because it’s too late for illusion and self-deception and consolation. You’ve been picked for the most important job in the history of humanity, and I’m not going to pretend that you’re going out on an easy assignment. You’re not. You’re faced with the tremendous challenge of planting a colony on an alien world trillions of miles from here. I know, right now you feel frightened and lonely and wretched. But never forget this: each and every one of you is an Earthman, You’re a representative of the highest form of life in the known galaxy. You’ve got a reputation to live up to, out there. And you’ll be building a world. To the future generations on that world, you’ll be the George Washingtons and Thomas Jeffersons and John Hancocks.
“The planet you’re going to is the ninth out of sixteen planets revolving around the star Vega. Vega is one of the brightest stars in the sky, and also one of the closest to Earth—23 light-years away. You’re lucky in one respect: there are two colonizable planets in the Vega system, your world and the eighth planet, which is not yet settled. That means you’ll eventually have a planetary neighbor, unlike most other colonies which are situated on the only habitable world in their system. The name of your planet, by the way, is Osiris, from Egyptian mythology—but you can call it anything you like, once you get there.
“THE trip will take about four weeks, even by Einstein drive. That’ll allow you plenty of time to get to know each other before you reach your new planet. Captain McKenzie and his crew have made several dozen successful interstellar flights, and I can assure you you’ll be in the best possible hands.
“The name of your ship, as you know, is the Gegenschein. We draw the names of our ships from three sources: astronomical terms, historical figures, and traditional ship names. Gegenschein is an astronomical term referring to the faint luminosity extending along the plane of the ecliptic in the direction diametrically opposite to the sun—the sun’s reflection, actually, bouncing back from an immense cloud of stellar debris.
“I think that covers all the essential points you’ll need to know at the outset. We’re going to adjourn to the mess hall now for a most significant occasion: the last meal you’re ever going to eat on the planet Earth, and also the first meal you will eat with each other. I hope you all have good appetites, because the meal is a special one.
“Before we go in, though, I’m going to call the roll. When you hear your name, I want you to stand up and make a complete three hundred sixty-degree revolution, letting everyone get a look at you. This is as good a time as any to start getting to know each other.”
He picked up a list. “Cyril Noonan.”
A rangy, powerful-looking man in a front row rose and said, in a booming voice that filled the auditorium easily, “The name I use is Ky Noonan.”
Commander Leswick smiled. “Ky Noonan, then. Incidentally, Ky Noonan happens to be a Volunteer.”
Noonan sat down. Commander Leswick said, “Michael Dawes.”
Dawes rose, blushing unaccountably, and stood awkwardly at attention. Since he was at the back of the auditorium, there was no need for him to turn around. A hundred heads craned backward to see him, and he sat.
“Lawrence Fowler.”
A chunky man in the middle of the auditorium came to his feet, spun round, smiled nervously, and sat down. Leswick called the next name, and the next, until all fifty men had been called.
He began on the women after that. Dawes watched closely as the woman rose. Most of them, he saw, were eight to ten years older than he. But he paid careful attention. There was one girl named Herrick who interested him. She was young and looked attractive, in a wide-eyed, innocent way. Carol Herrick, he thought. He wondered what she was like.
VIII
IT was probably an excellent meal. Dawes did not appreciate it, though. He ate listlessly, picking at his food, unable to enjoy the white, tender turkey, the dressing and trimmings, the cold white wine. Although he had overcome his initial bitterness over Selection, a lingering tension remained. He had no appetite. It was an inconvenience shared by most of his fellow Selectees, evidently, judging by the way they toyed with their food.
The Selectees had been distributed at ten tables. Dawes was dismayed to find, when he took his seat, that he could not recall the names of any of the other nine Selectees at his table. But his embarrassment was short-lived. A round-faced, balding man to his left said, “I’ll confess I didn’t catch too many names during rollcall. Maybe we ought to introduce ourselves all over again. I’m Ed Sanderson from Milwaukee. I used to be an accountant.”
It went around the table. “Mary Elliot, St. Louis,” said a plump woman with streaks of gray in her hair. “Just a housewife before my number came up.”
“Phil Haas, from Los Angeles,” said a lean-faced man in his late thirties. “I was a lawyer.”
“Louise Martino, Brooklyn,” said a dark-haired girl of twenty-five or twenty-six, in a faltering, husky voice. “I was a salesgirl at Macy’s.”
“Mike Dawes, Cincinatti. Junior at Ohio State, pre-med student.”
“Rina Morris, from Denver,” said a good-looking redhead. “Department-store buyer.”
“Howard Stoker, Kansas City,” rumbled a heavy-set man with a stubbled chin and thick, dirty fingers. “Construction worker.”
“Claire Lubetkin, Pittsfield, Massachusetts.” She was a blandfaced blonde with a nervous tic under her left eye. “Clerk in a video shop.”
“Sid Nolan, Tulsa. Electrical engineer.” He was a thin, darkhaired, fidgety man who toyed constantly with his silverware.
“Helen Chambers, Detroit,” said a tired-looking woman in her thirties, with dark rings under her eyes. “Housewife.”
Ed Sanderson chuckled uncomfortably. “Well, now we know everyone else, I hope. Housewives, engineer, college student, lawyer—”
“How come there ain’t any rich people Selected?” Howard Stoker demanded suddenly. “They just take guys like us. The rich ones buy themselves off.”
“That isn’t so,” Phil Haas objected. “It just happens that most of the wealthy executives and industrialists don’t get to be wealthy until they’re past the age of Selection. But don’t you remember a couple of months ago, when they Selected that oilman from Texas—”
“Sure,” Sid Nolan broke in. “Dick Morrison. And none of his father’s millions could get him out.”
STOKER growled something unintelligible and subsided. Conversation seemed to die away. Dawes looked down at his plate, still largely untouched. He had nothing to say to these people with whom he had been thrown by the random hand of Selection. They were just people. Strangers. Some of them were fifteen years older than he was. He had only just stopped thinking of himself as a boy a few years before, and now he was expected to live among them as an equal, as an adult. I didn’t want to grow up so soon, he thought. But now I don’t have any choice, I guess.
The meal dragged on to its finish around 1330 hours. Commander Leswick appeared to announce a ninety-minute rest and recreation period. Boarding of the ship would commence at 1500 hours, sixty minutes before actual blastoff time.
They filed out of the mess hall—a hundred miscellaneous people, each carrying his own burden of fear and regret and resentment. Dawes walked along silently beside Phil Haas, the lawyer from Los Angeles. As they reached the door, Haas smiled and said, “Did you leave a girl friend behind, Mike?”
Dawes was startled by the sudden intrusion on his reverie. “Oh—ah—no, I guess not. There wasn’t anybody special. I figured I couldn’t afford to get very deeply involved, not with four years of medical school ahead of me. Not to mention interning and all the rest.”
“I know what you mean. I got married during my senior year at U.C.L.A. We had a hard time of it while I was going to law school.”
“You—were married?”
Haas nodded. They stepped out into the open air. There was no lawn, just bare brown earth running to the borders of the starport. “I have—had—two children,” he said. “The boy’s going to be seven, the girl five.”
“At least now your wife’s not eligible for Selection herself,” Dawes said.
“Only if she doesn’t remarry. And I asked her to remarry, you see. She’s not the sort of woman who can get along without a man around.” A momentary cloud passed over Haas’ bony face. “Another two years and I would have been safe. Well, that’s the way it goes, I guess. Take it easy, Mike. I suppose I’ll see you at 1500 hours.” Haas clapped Dawes genially on the shoulder and strode away.
At 1500 hours, the gong in the hall rang again. The crisp voice out of the speaker said, “Attention. Attention. All Selectees are to report to the front of the barracks for boarding ship. All Selectees are to report to the front of the barracks for boarding ship, at once.”
IN THE hall, Dawes met Mary Elliot; the older woman smiled at him, and he returned the smile tensely. Several Selectees whom Dawes did not know joined them at the elevator, and they rode down together.
“Well, this is it,” Mary Elliot said. “Goodbye to Earth. I thought this week would never end!”
“So did I!” exclaimed a willowy thirtyish brunette behind Dawes.
“But it ended all right. So—so long to Earth.”
Three motor-coaches waited outside the barracks. Guards in blue-and-yellow uniforms efficiently herded the Selectees into the first coach until it was full, then began channelling people toward the second. Dawes boarded the third coach; by that time, the first one was halfway across the immense spacefield. The uniformed men did their job with a calm impersonality that seemed faintly inhuman to Dawes. But, he reflected, they had to do this three times a week. All over the world, now, people were being herded into starships. By nightfall six thousand Earthmen would be on their way to an uncertain destination.
Close up, the Gegenschein seemed immense. Standing upright on its tail, it reared two hundred feet above the bare brown soil. Its hull was plated with a molecule-thick sheath of gold, by way of ornament; each of the starships had its own distinctive color. The hatch was sixty feet above the ground. To gain entry, you had to ride up a gantry lift that held five people at a time. A catwalk was available for those who wanted to climb.
Dawes was in no hurry. He waited in line for his turn to enter the lift. Turning, he took his last look at Earth, sucked in his last planetside breath of Earth’s air.
It was mid-afternoon. In the quiet isolation of the starfield the air had a clear, transparent quality. There was a tangy nip in it; it smelled of distant fir and spruce. The sun was low in the October sky, and a brisk breeze swept in from the north.
Now, at the moment of shipboarding, Dawes began to think of all he would never see again. Never another sunset on Earth, never the moon full and pale in the sky, never the familiar constellations. Never again the glory of autumn-tinted maples, never the sight of football players racing down a field, never again a hot dog or a hamburger or a vanilla sundae. Little things; but little things added up to a world, and it was a world he was leaving forever behind.
“Next five,” came the guard’s voice.
Dawes shuffled forward and onto the metal platform. The lift rose with a groaning of winches. Now that he was close to the ship’s skin, he could see the tiny pittings and indentations that told of previous service. The Gegenschein looked newly-minted at a distance, but at close range the appearance was far different.
The lift halted at the lip of the entry hatch. Hands gathered them in, and behind Dawes the lift began to descend for its next load. Within, fluorescent lights cast their cold beams on a circular room which opened onto a spiral companionway at either end.
“Men go up, women down,” chanted a space-tanned young man in starman’s uniform. “Men to the fore compartment, women aft.”
