Into the Sea of Stars (3 page)

Panic seized
lan's
face. Cushman knew he had hit the right lever.

"Well, have you?"

"Yes." The answer was barely a whisper.

"She's the daughter of the provincial Governor, you know. I've met Jeremiah
LaFay
any number of times. His
support of the Reform Puritanical Movement is well
known.

"I'd never want to cross him myself—his ability to
have opponents and personal enemies arrested for, how
shall I say, 'alleged violations of public morals' is well
known."

Ian appeared to be on the edge of cardiac arrest.

"Of course, I know dear
Makena
was an aggressive
young lady," the Chancellor continued with a cold, ma
licious grin, "who perhaps did not live up to her father's
personal code of morality. In fact, one of my informants
in the women's living quarters stated that when
Makena
was a student last semester she openly boasted, 'I twisted
an A out of that fat little fool with only one night in the
sack.' Do you know who that fat little fool is, Dr.
Lacklin
?"

A groan escaped from Ian. He couldn't help what had
happened. She had been waiting for him at his apartment
in a state of extreme undress, giving full exposure to her
ample charms. He had tried valiantly to show her the
door, but in the end, simple human nature won out. After
all, it had been several years since...

"But I only gave her a B."

"Ah, only a B.
Only a B! So, you don't deny it!"

Ian shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, my good man, I know about this little B. In fact,
half the females on this campus know about that little B. And with a single phone call I can arrange for our good
friend the Governor to know about that little B! And then
we'll all get to see 'Only a B'
Lacklin
get his butt end
hauled off by some of
LaFay's
gorillas, who would love
to smash you to a pulp for violating the innocence of our
good Governor's virginal daughter."

"Virginal! She attacked me, your Excellency, I didn't
stand a chance."

"Ah, so you admit it, then. Frankly, Ian, I find that
impossible to accept. In the eyes of our good God-fearing
Governor, his Little Precious is purer than arctic snow.
It would break my heart to have to tell him that she had
been brutally violated by one of my staff, who, of course,
has just been fired."

The Chancellor started to smile again. "But never fear,
good friend. Of course I could never do that to the hero of
Kutzburg
Provincial.
Of course not.
I think this little
matter can be forgotten for someone with your stature.
Now, my friend, I do believe we understand each other."

Ian nodded dumbly. There was a seventy-five percent
chance of a quick death in space. But he knew there would
be a hundred percent chance of a couple of broken arms,
and God knows what else, if he stayed.

"Fine, then, just fine, and let me be the first to offer you my congratulations. I'll send the necessary paper
work down this afternoon and the school physician will be by within the hour to start processing your twenty-
three-forty-four. If I might be so bold, I'll help you out
with assigning your medical person and sociologist, and
you can have the liberty of appointing your administrative
assistant. Have a pleasant day, Dr.
Lacklin
. And I'll ex
pect you in my office at nine sharp Monday morning."

The Chancellor closed the door behind him and started
off for the Academic Records Office. There was a little
question of a grade change up to an A that had to be
looked into. After all, he had promised her he would take
care of it. And just to make sure there wasn't an embarrassing change of heart, he would push Ian off-planet
within the week, along with the other embarrassing clowns
on his staff. He could already picture his new office in the National Bureau. He smiled in anticipation.

Ian tried to control the wild panic and for a moment
he contemplated suicide. But that required a little more
courage than he could muster, and he pushed the thought
aside; the reams of work facing him that weekend would
require some help. He'd better give Shelley a call.

Shelley! He leaped out of his chair and pulled open the
door. And there she was. As if waiting for him.

"Dr.
Lacklin
, ah, yeah.
Ah, I thought I, ah, left my
books here..."

Once a week Shelley took him a pile of paperwork.
It
got so that he never even bothered to ask what the in
dividual items where, and he merely signed each docu
ment or memo and affixed his personal seal to it. The
damn woman had written the grant and sneaked it in with the other paperwork, since only a fully accredited instruc
tor could make grant applications to the Ministry.

"Get in here!" Ian shouted, suddenly finding a way at
last to vent his frustration.

"Ah, well, you see, Doctor. I, ah, got this book I want to read. Couldn't I, ah—"

"If you value your life, you better get your butt in here
right now!"

B
razil's tropical heat was finally locked out by the
silent closing of the
liftcar's
door. Ian gratefully sank into
the first available seat and Shelley eased in alongside.
Mopping his face with a soaked handkerchief, Ian breathed
a sigh of relief as the frigid air washed over him. The air-
conditioning in the Brasilia Skyhook Station was again down for "routine inspection," meaning that the incom
petent ground staff would take two weeks to find out what
was wrong. The result had been an agonizing eight hours
of 100-degree heat while waiting for the next
liftcar
. Now
that his fear of dying from the heat was removed, Ian
Lacklin
again had time to curse the fates in general and
Chancellor Cushman in particular.

After the initial shock of the Chancellor's news had worn off, Ian had thought that, bureaucrats being what
they are, it would take a year at the very least before the
mission was cleared for launch. Given that much time, he had naively reasoned there would be ample opportu
nities to gum up the paperwork into such a tangle that the mission would just keep getting delayed, postponing for
ever the dreaded jump into deep space.

But he now realized that the Chancellor had been half a dozen moves ahead of him from the beginning.
lan's
battle plan collapsed in a paper blizzard as the Chancellor
outclassed and outmaneuvered him in every bureaucratic
strategem
possible.

In the final act of a "team spirit send-off," the Chancellor had personally driven Ian and Shelley to the New
Bostem
airstrip for their connecting flight to the Brasilia Skyhook Station. Shelley and the Chancellor had even
managed to have a fairly civil conversation about the pros
pects before them. As a final gesture he gave them a send-
off bouquet of flowers, which made Ian sneeze.

Ian turned in his seat and gave Shelley an appraising
glance. Why he had requested her was beyond him. Per
haps it was revenge for her getting him into the mess. He
knew he wasn't attracted to her in any physical way; she
was all adolescent angles, even though she was already
in her early twenties. She had the air typical of a studious female, one who would forever be bound to a book, wear the most uncomplimentary of heavy wools, and never be
cured of near-terminal acne.

If Shelley had any positive feature, it was her ability to cover his tail when it came to paperwork and organization. Only Shelley could make any sense out of
lan's
data files—if Ian had to run up his data by himself he would soon be totally lost...
lan's
contemplation of Shel
ley ended as the
liftcraft
attendant turned on the infor
mation channel.

"Welcome to Brasilia Station, Skyhook 4. Your
liftcraft
is now preparing for departure."

Shelley turned to Ian with a bewildered look and he
realized that her chair speaker was set for Portuguese. Turning the switch on her armrest to English, he settled
back and tried to calm his nerves.

"We apologize for any inconvenience you may have suffered because of the malfunctioning air-conditioning
system. Now that you are aboard the
liftcraft
you may
rest assured that our crew will see to your every comfort."

Some of the hundred-odd passengers laughed, but their
biting comments about the competence of the staff and the safety of the
liftcraft
didn't help Ian in the slightest.

"Our transit time to
Geosync
Station 4 will be eleven
hours and twenty minutes..." The voice droned on about
emergency procedures and safety regulations, but
lan's
thoughts had already drifted away.

The
liftcar
started to shake, and Shelley's hand dug
into his forearm. "What was that?" she whispered hoarsely.

Ian pointed out the window and smiled at her as if she
were a naive child.

"Why, we've started up, that's all."

The car silently started its ascent up the vertical track, exerting a slight pressure in the pit of his stomach. Sud
denly they cleared the interior of the Brasilia station and
broke into the tropical sunlight. Their speed was already
better than a kilometer a minute and the ground dropped
away.

How
undramatic
this all is, Ian thought sadly, even
though he fully realized that he would have been terrified
by the old way of trans-Earth lift-off. The days of chemical rockets belching scarlet plumes of incandescent flame were
gone forever. Never would he have the chance to go roar
ing into the heavens atop a crackling, thundering throne
of fire. That was gone, long since gone—a distant memory
already half a hundred years past, now that the Skyhook
Towers girdled the equator with a ring of spokes. The
towers rose tens of thousands of kilometers to
geosync
and yet that distance beyond for the necessary counter-weighting. The trip into space was reduced to a simple elevator ride; a very long elevator ride, to be sure, but
lacking the thundering grandeur of so long ago.

Shelley was quickly glued to the window as they rose up and away. At the twenty-kilometer level the curvature
of the Earth was ever so slightly visible, and Ian could
see the deepening indigo of their destination. Pressing up
against the window alongside Shelley, he looked down on
the Earth, which was dropping away with ever-increasing
speed.

For long minutes Shelley stayed pressed to the win
dow, until a faint groan sounded alongside her. "Dr.
Lack
lin
, what's wrong?"

"Just thinking about zero G, that's all"—he moaned
feebly—"just thinking about zero G." And he fumbled
through the storage pouch alongside his chair, making
sure that the white plastic bags were there, ready for his
use.

The acceleration was light but constant, as if a gentle hand were pushing them back into their couches. Zero
gravity would not occur until the car arrived at the
geosync
station, where their velocity in relationship to the
Earth would cancel out their potential rate of fall.

But Ian attempted to divert his thoughts from that
dreaded moment by looking out at the indigo band that
marked the upper reaches of the Earth's atmosphere.

As if on cue, the steward appeared, pushing a cart laden
with the more potent forms of liquid relaxant. Ian handed
over a fiver, pointed with three fingers to a dark amber
bottle, and an icy triple of rum was produced.

He settled back into his chair and took a long, refresh
ing sip. So he was embarking on the great journey, fol
lowing the path of his heroes on their outward reach to
the stars. How often he had tried to romanticize this to
his bored students, who viewed the exploration of space
with not one-tenth the interest that was reserved for the
afternoon video love shows. How he longed for the world
of a millennium earlier, when things were held in their
proper perspective.

Idiots! At least I'm away from them. He took another
swallow. In spite of his fears, Ian felt a tingling, a surge of excitement. He was reaching out along the same path
that millions had followed so long ago. He would at last have the chance to follow them outward and discover the
secret of their odyssey.

The thought set his heart to pounding. He was about
to realize the ultimate fantasy of any good historian—to
come face to face with the past. With luck he might even
find a Mitsubishi Habitat, or one of the old O'Neill Cyl
inders. Ian knew historians who would joyfully have killed
their mothers if it meant a chance to meet with Churchill or to witness the Mongol burning of Kiev. And here was
his chance, his dream coming out to meet him. He could
remember how
Lelezi
dreamed of finding a tape showing
a Saturn V lift-off. Sure, once that would have given Ian
a thrill, but now he was going for far bigger game.

The steward came by again and Ian waved for another
triple. Shelley gave him a frown.

His mind lapsed into happy reverie. He could imag
ine meeting in secret with Smith and the Council of Ten
as they made their momentous decision to abandon Earth
on the eve of the Holocaust War. Yes, Ian
Lacklin
, announcing to a startled world the forming of the Alliance
and the Declaration of Severance...

"It's wonderful, just simply wonderful!"

Several heads turned to look at him, but he didn't give
a damn. Hell no, they can all kiss off. He was Ian
Lacklin
,
noted historian, soon to be explorer. Why, damn it, once
he returned from this voyage, there wouldn't be a pub
lisher in the country crazy enough to turn down his man
uscripts. He'd have it made. Yes sir, he could snap his fingers at the Chancellor, why, even the Governor could
kiss his butt. The thought of such a thing made him laugh
out loud.
And to think that just a week ago he was terrified
about the Governor's ever finding out about him and
what's-her-name.

And the Chancellor, yeah the Chancellor.
Good-bye to
that rotten SOB and all the bureaucratic nightmares of
teaching at a government-run institution. No more damned
memos about using the correct forms, or inventories re
porting how many erasers were missing, or asinine edu
cation courses. No sir, Ian thought, no more faculty
meetings, and most of all, no more educational politics.
"No more!" he shouted out loud. "Say, steward, get over
here if you please, my good man."

Shelley was looking around the cabin in mortal em
barrassment, when an insistent warning beeper suddenly
kicked on. "All passengers, this is your flight director.
Please be sure that your safety belts are fastened." Ian
paid it no heed.

Shelley looked over at Ian and made sure that he was strapped in.

"We have reached maximum velocity; our acceleration
will terminate in ten seconds. You'll experience a mo
mentary sensation of lightness when acceleration cuts out.
We know you'll enjoy it as a pleasant foretaste of zero G
at
Geosync
4. Thank you."

"And you know what I'd like to tell Miss Redding,
Miss C.C. Set Procedures Redding right now?" Ian
shouted.

Shelley looked at him wide-eyed. In her entire sheltered experience of university parents and honors dor
mitories, she had never been forced to deal with a drunken
male.

She was still searching for an apt response when the acceleration cut off. Shelley suddenly felt as if she had been riding an elevator (which indeed she was) and the
vehicle had slowed while she kept going. Her stomach
felt as if it were climbing out her mouth.

And suddenly she no longer had to think of how to respond to Ian. Her only concern now was to find enough
towels to start cleaning up her thoroughly
besotten
pro
fessor.

*
   
*
   
*

"Yes, Dr. Redding, of course."

He tried to back out of the cramped middle cabin, but
the laws of zero G tricked him. His arms flailing like berserk windmill sails, Richard Croce spun across the
room, slapped into the wall, then ricocheted back toward
Ellen Redding, who didn't hesitate for one second with her high-speed outpouring of vitriolic abuse.

"Damn it, woman, help me." Richard groaned as he
did a slow rolling dive straight at her bulging midsection.

Grabbing hold of a support railing, Ellen gently pulled
herself out of Richard's dive-bomb approach. He drifted
past her and smacked into the opposite wall of the cabin,
this time face first, but his outstretched hands grabbed a
padded rail and prevented another pinball-like trajectory.

"Now, Dr. Croce, if you've stopped your acrobatic
display of zero-gravity ineptitude, I would like to sum
marize my argument."

"Damn it, Ellen, I can't do anything about it."

"Dr. Redding to you, Doctor Croce."
There was a sar
castic edge to how she said Dr. Croce— as if the linking
of the two words were somehow impossible.

"All right, Dr. Redding," Richard replied coldly, "I'll
remember your title." The rest of the sentence started to
form but he thought better of it. He viewed doctorates in sociology and collective psychology as having the same
validity as a doctorate in physical education or school
administration.