New Writings in SF 19 - [Anthology] Read online

  The police sergeant had taken statements and was now chivvying people away. Saintsbury stood there, one hand on the door of the red convertible, smiling knowingly at Harriet Milsom.

  Harry Hudson walked across and punched the professor clean on the nose.

  ‘That,’ he said as he had once spoken to Thorfin Hernulfsson over the flaxen-haired Gudveig, ‘is to remind you to keep your paws off my girl.’

  ‘Harry!’ gasped Harriet.

  ‘And you—you’re sitting in the back seat with me. Saintsbury can drive.’

  He had no thought of a refusal and, after a strained and momentarily awkward movement, the others seemed to acquiesce in his own determination. He had expected nothing less. Bjarni, even, one Northman renowned for determination, thought twice about crossing Ozuur Thorgeirsson.

  He was beginning to grasp this later age nicely. The man Hudson had a body of which something could be made. All that was necessary now was to continue as he meant to go on. Passing strange, by Odin, that a man should have a second chance at life; but no faring Northman worth the name would refuse it!

  All Hudson’s memories were at his disposal, ranked neatly like rowers on the benches, and he could see there would have to be changes made. No Northman who had breasted the white-foaming seas would suffer himself to be treated like a dog. He stroked his naked chin.

  A strange second life; but, by Odin, he would enjoy it!

  <>

  * * * *

  CRITICAL PATH

  David Coles

  On a long star voyage it would be logical to pair a male-female team for routine spells of duty while the majority slept in deep freeze—but illogical to have an uneven number ...

  * * * *

  Richard was completing the last task before going into deep sleep—packing and tidying the cabin’s appointments. For five months the ten by ten by eight space had been his home; now, as always, he was surprised by the amount of rubbish accumulated during the duty period. It seemed impossible within the confines of a small starship.

  He finished packing his own belongings in the small case and carried it out to his personal locker. They would remain locked in the cupboard during his sleep until he was next awakened for duty.

  Norman, the other on-duty crew member had finished his clean-up operations and stowed his gear, he was reading the small display panel which conveyed messages from the computer. The display now held information about the duration of the coming sleep period and the crew member scheduled to be on duty with each of them next awakening.

  ‘Lucky fellow—you’re up with Susan next time,’ said Norman. Richard nodded. He’d been on duty with Susan before, some ten years ago.

  The ship’s computer selected the on-duty crew on a random basis; notifying the two out-going crew just before their sleep period. This allowed any complaints to be made and a new selection to be made if necessary.

  Complaints were few. Even with the petty annoyances which most human beings provoke, five months is not unendurable. Five months was the minimum period allowed between deep sleep sessions—it allowed the body to re-accustom itself to living. For similar reasons, the interval of deep sleep could not be longer than some five years except in emergencies.

  During the past five months Richard had grown to dislike his crewing partner. There was no open hostility, but Norman’s petty attention to detail, his habitual neatness and other quirks of personality had been enough to annoy Richard, the more lackadaisical of the two. Informality tended to run high among starship crews, most members wore only the lightest of clothing but Norman affected a pair of nattily pressed shorts with creases like knife edges and a continually clean vest. The elegance contrasted rather heavily with the only garment which Richard wore—a less than sartorial pair of drill shorts.

  Richard sighed; a few more minutes and he wouldn’t see his partner for—months.

  ‘Say, I forgot to check how long I’d be in deep sleep.’

  ‘Twenty-four months,’ said Norman, in near anticipation of Richard’s questions. Another irksome habit. The other was too good, his body too near perfection, his mind too poised and alert. With luck, however, the two might never share the same duty again.

  Together they entered the control room to check the instruments. Norman tapped the series of buttons which, one by one, consigned the ship’s many instruments and mechanisms to the control of its computer. After an unknown period of time two more crew members would be roused for a minimum of five months duty to take over from the machine-mind of the ship.

  Each signed his name with light pencil on the log screen and added the time and the date.

  ‘Twenty-two years, eleven months and a handful of days,’ said Norman in the tone of someone making conversation for the sake of appearances. ‘Another thirty some years and we’ll be there.’

  ‘And six months of hard labour and back the quick way.’

  It took all of six months hard and sometimes dangerous work to set up a matter transceiver and the necessary power supply. Sending a complete transceiver would, of course, have been much faster, but because of the size and mass, prohibitively expensive. Instead, only the complex, precision-built circuits were taken on the ship; framework, housing and power supply were variously scavenged from the ship or made from locally available supplies.

  The two men left the control room and walked down the short stainless-steel corridor to the deep sleep chamber. The alternating intervals of duty and catatonic sleep would not be needed for the return trip. When the first jury-rigged transceiver had been built and tuned. Earth would be just a step beyond the threshold. A bevy of technicians would return bringing full equipment and prefabricated parts to build a new and permanent installation.

  Homesteading was just around the corner. ,

  The deep sleep chamber was chilly on their bare skins, the air redolent with the faintly pungent odour of the life-support fluid. There were seven sleep tanks, five of them holding still, white, almost-dead forms immersed in heavy oily liquid. Resilient buffers held the bodies against shocks and a maze of tiny wires and tubes ending in slim needles were inserted into the near-corpses, metering, measuring, sustaining the last feeble flicker of life against the day of resurrection.

  Four men and three girls on their way to the stars.

  The pair, stripped and gleaming from the shower, climbed into their highly custom-built tanks. Transparent covers descended, bonds of pliable plastic restricted movement.

  Richard felt a brief spark of pain as over a hundred slivers of stainless steel lanced into different parts of his body. Some bit deep into the main nerve trunks, others into blood vessels, the lymphatic system, digestive tract. He felt cold, drousy, death but a heart beat away. But the heart beat never came, that vital muscle was stilled and death cheated. Mental oblivion came more slowly; it took long seconds for the electrical energy to die away and for the last shreds of conscious thought to dim.

  ‘Funny number—seven.’ The thought congealed to a memory, hanging like a mutilated cobweb. ‘Why not eight? Or six?’

  * * * *

  He swam up through murky depths, striving towards the lighter regions far above. At last he burst the tight meniscus of consciousness, gaining thought but lacking mobility. His state couldn’t be called full life, merely a parting of his death’s veil.

  The life support medium still surrounded him, its viscous depths blurring vision, cloaking stimuli. Sound carried through the liquid; straining, he could hear voices, see blurred forms above him.

  ‘But we must. We should wake the human.’

  ‘I tell you we can handle the situation. You should have consulted with me before ...’

  Who were they? These vague shapes that called him human? Had aliens penetrated the ship?

  There was a sudden motion from one of the dark forms. Needles stung his flesh and he felt himself sinking once more into Lethe’s still water. Words still reverberated through his emptying skull.

  ‘We should wake the Hum
an.

  wake the Human ...

  and echoed on:

  the Human, man, man ma ...’

  The sounds, amplified in the emptiness of his psyche, followed him down the vortex to oblivion.

  Light again.

  ‘Good.’

  A sound, a trickle, a gurgle.

  Feeling returning.

  He was cold.

  Who was he? Richard, um, Richard—Sammes. Twenty three years subjective, about fifty years old objectively.

  Heat flared gently on his skin. His eyes opened.

  Where was he? On board the starship Spectre.

  He was alive again. Wasn’t he ?

  A face framed in a honey-coloured halo smiled at him. Beautiful, angelic; fleetingly he wondered if he’d crossed the narrow border to death.

  Yes, he was alive.

  ‘Hi,’ greeted Susan.

  ‘Hello, Sue.’ He smiled weakly.

  ‘Be back in five minutes.’ And the head was gone from his cone of vision. The corona of blonde hair had shielded him from the harsh glare of fluorescents, now they struck down.

  He closed his eyes against the painful brilliance and relaxed as the radiant heaters struggled against the cold deep within his body, raising his temperature to a more normal 310 degrees Kelvin.

  A few minutes later he got out of the now dry tank, went to the shower booth on shaky legs. When the hot, needle-sharp jets of water had cleansed the last of the sticky liquid from his skin, he lay in the grip of a massaging machine, enduring the almost pleasantly painful tingle of newly circulating blood.

  By the time Richard was suffering only a slight attack of pins and needles he was dressing and feeling almost human again. The quick, unconsciously voiced thought triggered a half-remembered recollection which caused him to inspect the curiously paired punctures of the life system’s needles.

  ‘Why two of each ?’ The memory nagged but refused to come into the open. Richard shrugged and forgot it. It would be back for examination if it was important enough.

  Susan returned and all else was forgotten.

  ‘Hurry up, lunch is ready.’

  He felt saliva run in his mouth.

  ‘Lunch ? How long have you been up ?’

  ‘A couple of hours—I had to make myself presentable.’

  Richard grinned and made no answer. He remembered that it had happened the last time they had been on duty together. The next few months should be pleasant ones indeed.

  He went to the control room, signed his name, noted the time and date on the log screen and pressed the review button.

  Twenty-three years, seven months. Heavy debris, damage to antennae. Manual replacement.

  It was the only entry of note.

  He left and went on to the living quarters.

  ‘Which cabin have you got ?’

  ‘A.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll just dump my things.’

  He slid back the door to ‘B’ cabin, tossed his bag on to the bunk. On an impulse he slid the door to ‘A’ cabin ajar and poked his head in. Both cabins were, in fact, identical, but somehow Susan’s seemed different. Different from ‘B’, different from the time he’d been in ‘A’. There was already the stamp of the girl’s personality, her character, in the way the covers were drawn up, the few trinkets displayed; something indefinable.

  ‘I was in the kitchen, not the bedroom.’ The whisper sounded close to his ear.

  Richard jumped and Susan laughed.

  ‘Snooper.’

  He coloured. ‘Sorry, I was just looking to see how you had it fixed. I was in “A” last time.’

  ‘I didn’t mean anything, really. I’ll swap if you like, no trouble.’

  ‘Nonsense. It doesn’t matter. Now, where’s the food?’ He blustered.

  ‘On the table—getting cold. After I’ve slaved over a hot cooker all this time.’

  Susan’s hot cooker consisted of a sixty second microwave grill but Richard took the admonishment meekly and sat down to his first meal in two years.

  At last, he sat back wiping his mouth on a napkin.

  ‘Great!’

  ‘I thought you were never going to stop.’

  He looked his partner over while she finished her own food. She’d certainly used her two hour lead to good effect.

  The fair hair framed an oval face set with emerald eyes and white teeth. A tiny blemish above her right eye accentuated her beauty rather than detracted from it. She was tall, approaching his own two metres and some centimetres; trimly figured, graceful of movement. Yes, the next five months or so could be very pleasant.

  Susan looked, catching the tail end of his appraisal, and blushed becomingly.

  ‘Coffee?’ he asked, not attempting to cloak-his admiration.

  ‘I’ll get it.’

  ‘No, no. Sit down, you’ve hardly finished; besides you’ve been slaving over a hot cooker.’

  Susan giggled and Richard got up to switch on the percolator, standing by the kitchenette as it warmed.

  He sat down again and poured the coffee, adding sugar and cream. Susan seemed too feminine for this kind of a job, he thought. To Richard, it seemed that she should have been the horsey type; tweeds and brogues and long country walks type. Not for the lissom Susan the trail blazing to the stars, labouring to build a matter transceiver. Still, the selectors must have known what they were doing, nearly thirty years ago. He knew the brain behind those green eyes, knew that it was as sharp and as neat as the face in front.

  ‘Now, just stop looking at me like that. I feel like a butterfly on a pin—and there’s work to do. First.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Richard lied. ‘I wasn’t focusing.’ And the extra word after Susan’s last sentence turned on a tap somewhere in his endocrine system.

  * * * *

  The work which had to be done was the only real work, saving emergencies, that had to be done during the on-duty period and Richard suspected that it was work for the sake of filling time—all of it could easily have been done by the ship computer.

  First there was the guidance system to check, the new antennae, navigation sightings, dead reckoning checks, real progress against computed. And so on and so on.

  They made tea and took it into the lounge. As he ate, Richard thought about the Spectre’s set-up again.

  A task force of seven. Why seven? Why an odd number? What if there were an accident, something went wrong? Drives could malfunction, it would mean a crash landing on an unknown world. Even a bad planetfall on Halvar might mean damaged control circuits for the transceiver and, consequently, no return. These were the risks which they all undertook willingly but they were human beings, mammals, killer animals. There’d be pairing off and the number seven would lead to trouble. There might be trouble anyway, six months to go in building the transfer unit—more than enough time to spark off acrimony, fights to establish a pecking order and rights to the women.

  Wait now. Perhaps that was the purpose. Bring things to a head quickly, sort out the boss and the bossed. On previous jobs trouble had arrived sooner or later, in spite of evenly divided sexes.

  A crash of chords interrupted his chain of thought, Susan had turned up the player to full volume and Greig burst into the room with a finality which put an end to his reverie.

  ‘I thought that that might rouse you. I can’t have a taciturn man on my hands the first day.’

  Man ? Man, human, wake the human.

  The memory merged with musical chords and was lost again.

  ‘You’re quite right, young lady. Come over here and let’s listen.’

  The quieter second movement of the concerto, reminiscent of springtime rain and breezes brought the two closer. Susan’s head on his shoulder, Richard imagined wide lakes and skittering cat’s paws of wind. Leaves waving in tune to the french horns, slow pools of rain gathering on leaves and falling with the piano solo.

  When the recording had finished, Richard switched on the view screen and dialled tapes on Halvar, their destination. The
tapes were now over a century out of date but the world would not have changed. They showed scenes of a colder world than Earth, a world made up, for the most part, of savage blizzards and blinding snow fields. Orbiting well within the usual single astronomical unit of a star younger and cooler than Sol, the grip of winter relaxed only within the tropics. Between those imaginary lines; spring, a short lived summer, a brown autumn and a long mild winter paraded. Reminiscent of Scandinavia, the country held fertile regions within deep gorges glacier-cut into hard bedrock. Sparkling streams leapt and cascaded from high-perched hanging valleys into a spring of brilliant flowers. Rivers to be fished, reindeer to tame, timber for houses—an unspoilt home.