Into the Sea of Stars (6 page)

Richard wasn't sure if Ian was joking or not, and he
thought it best at this point not to find out.

"Do you mean a fear of alien life forms?"

"Perhaps.
Remember, Doctor, we've only had faster-
than-light travel for the last ten years. In fact, in this
obsolete first-generation hulk, we will be venturing out
farther than anyone from our century has dared, so far.
Maybe we'll meet aliens, but I must confess that I doubt
it. No, Richard, I'm sorry to say that I think we here at
the far end of his neglected corner of the cosmos are truly
alone."

"So what else is there?"

"Ourselves."

"You mean Ellen or
Stasz
or, heaven forbid, that as
sistant of yours. You think that kid is going to get seized by a transport of sexual frenzy and murder everyone else
so that she can have you to herself." Richard chuckled
slightly at the image of
lan's
acned
assistant suddenly
unchained of her prim and proper nature, and as the image
flowed, he realized that in fact it could be quite interest
ing.

"Come now, Richard. Shelley sees nothing in me. Our
relationship is purely professional. I needed an assistant
to manage my data during this trip, and since she wrote
the damned grant, I figured she'd be the one to do it. But
let's get serious now. When I said '
ourselves
,' I meant it collectively."

"You mean those already out there."

"Precisely, Richard.
We've set off on this voyage to
find the Lost Colonies.
'Lost Colonies.'
Lost by
who's
definition? They left us, didn't they? Have any of them
come back?"

"No.
At least, not that we know of."

"Then are they really lost? Damn it, man, it's not like some sixteenth-century sailor getting lost in the Pacific.
The colonies left us of their own free will—they left us
of their own free will, and maybe they don't want anything
to do with us."

"I think that thought's a little foolish," Richard re
sponded.
"After nearly eleven centuries they most likely would be damn glad to get at least one letter from home."

"Maybe they would, but I'm fearful that some might
not want us to drop in for a visit."

"Then if that's the case, we'll just thumb our noses,
hook on the
translight
drive, and tell them to eat our
cosmic dust."

"Don't be so superior about it. That's the biggest trap of all in this game."

"Come on, Ian, aren't you overreacting a bit? If they
don't want to see us, that's fine with me. In fact, I really
don't give a damn if I see them or not. No, let me rephrase
that. I might want to find a colony if they have the right
women. Didn't you say that one of the colonies was a
women's consciousness group, and no men were al
lowed?"

"Yeah,
Colony 122
.
It set off in this general direction.
Reports indicate they had stored enough fertilized em
bryos and frozen sperm to keep them going for a hundred
generations."

"What a paradise."

"I should drop you off on the all-male
Colony 123
."

"Maroon Ellen there.
They wouldn't know what to do
with her anyhow."

"Now, Richard!"

"It is a charming thought, though, isn't it?" Richard
tried to stand up but merely succeeded in banging his
head against a locker.

"Speaking of Ellen, that reminds me. She sent me off
to look for you. She's planned one of her alleged gourmet meals and wanted your opinion on an arcane formula for
something called brie."

"Popular late
twentienth
-century cheese.
Quite big
among the alleged intelligentsia.
I think I could help her
out."

"Well, you better join her in the galley. She wants to
serve up a genuine twentieth-century meal."

"God help us."

Richard turned and started to crawl out of
lan's
hiding
spot.

Suddenly
lan's
hand was on his shoulder, restraining
him. He looked back and saw the strain on
lan's
face.

"What is it?"

"I haven't said it all," Ian whispered.

Richard settled back down.

"Go on then."

"Ellen's dinner points it out."

"How's that?"

"You, Shelley, the Chancellor, in fact, everyone en
visions this voyage as a trip to find the Lost Colonies from eleven centuries ago. Look at Ellen: She's cooking up a dinner from the twentieth century as if she half ex
pects that we'll dock with a colony and they'll come pour
ing aboard in polyester leisure suits, listening to Glenn
Miller music, and ask us how our 'personal space' is."

Ian stopped for a moment and looked at Richard in exasperation. "Well, you're all wrong, all of you. It is the
ancestors of the people that left eleven centuries ago that
we are now looking for. They've had eleven hundred years to progress without the interruption of the Holocaust War.
Good lord,
Richard, that
war took eight hundred years to
recover from. Eight hundred years that we lived on the
edge of extinction, and only in the last hundred years or so have we again equaled the accomplishments of the late
twenty-first century. But those units that left us left intact—their memory banks laden with the sum total of man's knowledge to work on. It's estimated by some—
Beaulieu, for example—that we've lost in excess of ninety-
five percent of all records before 2087."

"So think of the opportunity," Richard said soothingly.

"Just think of it, man, you're the historian. You should be ready to kill for this chance—just to get aboard one of those ships and to be able to tap into its library. Damn
it, Ian, just one ship's library would fill our computer
memories to capacity, and still there wouldn't be enough.
Return with that, my friend, and then see your books get
published. Why, I didn't even think of that—all of us
could get published and get on all the
telepix
interviews.
We'd make a bundle, we would."

"Richard, just listen. You've heard of the Vikings,
haven't you?"

"Barbarians from around the eighteenth century, right?"

"Close enough. Now just picture a Viking wandering
into our society. How would we receive him?"

"Lock him up, most likely."

"My point is made."

"Come on, Ian, we're no Barbarians."

"To them we might be. After all, they've got an eleven-
hundred year jump on us if they progressed after their
departure."

"If they've progressed.
Remember, you yourself said
they were closed ecosystems—chances are they're all
dead. Anyway, I remember that there were quite a few
on Earth that tried to adopt a steady-state system when
the fear of shortages hit in the late-twentieth century. You
yourself advanced the theory in your manuscript that in
a small, closed ecosystem innovation and progress would
probably be banned. So with that logic, chances are they've
not gone much beyond our own capabilities."

Richard took another tug off the bottle and offered it
to Ian. To be polite, he took another swig and then handed it back.

"So there, argument settled then."

"Yeah, I guess so," Ian replied reluctantly.

"You better get back to the galley. I bet Ellen is already
at a rolling boil."

"Tell her I'll be along in a moment or two."

"All right."

Richard crawled out. And, standing up with a groan,
he started for the door. Stopping, he turned and gave Ian
a mischievous smile.

"Think we might find
Colony 122?
You
know,
the wom
en's group."

"I don't think so, but if we do, what makes you think
they'll take you?"

"Hell, Ian, remember I used to be M.D. at the
Auraria
Normal College for Women, in the Dakota Territories."

"And you barely made it across the border before you
were arrested for malpractice and morals charges."

"Ah, now, Ian, you know my uncle the regent of med
icine was able to prove the lie those humorless people had perpetrated against me." With a laugh he closed the door behind him.

Colony 122
, Ian thought. That would be one of the
easy ones. It was the
500
series that he had not discussed with Richard. The last ones up, built in the 70s and 80s.
The exiles.
A fair percentage of them had headed in toward the galactic center along with the more innocuous
1-400
series. What really scared him
was
the exile units and the
500
series. They might be ticking bombs. They were the disenfranchised, the dispossessed of a world tottering toward war—the refugee colonies and the colonies made up of entire ethnic and political groups exiled
away from Earth. The
500
series with its liberation groups:
the Kurd nationalists, the
Botswanian
Liberation Group,
Dr. Franklin-Smith's political penal unit, or L-3 519, and
the Pan-Zionist Russian Nationalists. It was groups like
that which gave Ian the real fear that he could not express
to his comrades.

Such groups seemed slightly romantic now. They were
romantic because 1100 years separated them from the present. And as long as they were so distant, they were
safe and fascinating to an age now safely run by the Dem
ocratic Bureaucracy, wherein nothing could overcome the
inertia of the worldwide state. But he could come face to
face with the direct descendants of groups that might not
feel too friendly about Earth, and the thought gave him
the chills.

He stood up, stretched, and turning, looked down at
the small suitcase-size crate that he had been sitting on.
Stasz
had pointed it out to him while doing an inventory.

Ian had been sitting on a
thermomine
, a nuclear device
capable of vaporizing a quarter-mile asteroid or a million-ton colony in a flash. The Discovery had carried hundreds
of such mines when it briefly served on a navigation-
clearing detail just before being turned over to the grant
foundation. This one mine had not been removed, either
through an oversight, or because the logistics officer didn't
want to go through the paperwork necessary to remove a thermo device and transport it down to Earth.

Ian gazed at the crate, his curiosity aroused. Finally it got the better of him and he unsnapped the fasteners that
held the box shut then peeked inside. It was a little dis
appointing somehow; he had expected warning signs and
sirens to flash on and the mine to look like some incarnation of evil.

It was simply an ugly black ball with half a dozen silver
projections locked upright. An instruction manual was
hooked to one of the projections; picking the booklet up,
he flipped it open.

Notice from the Manufacturer—Clearance Assured Inc.

Congratulations on selection of the enhanced AB-.
23A adjustable-blast clearance apparatus.
Satisfaction assured when operated properly. Any and all complaints looked into at once by our experienced quality control personnel.

Be sure to read this operations manual and attached errata sheet before attempting use.

Ian skimmed through the booklet and found the errata
sheet. It was printed in bright red ink. He examined it
closely.

Warning!!! Warning!!! Warning!!!
Starting with the
23A series, arming achieved by pushing down all
six levers which will trigger warning devices.
In
response to complaints that dropping the device in gravity conditions might cause it to detonate, an
additional triggering is now required. To activate
FINAL COUNT DOWN: pull up, repeat, pull up
last lever. Unless otherwise programmed, detona
tion will then occur in ninety seconds.
Nonradio
detonation has been chosen to prevent arming by
high solar activity or broadcast from transmitters in
nearby spacecraft. Check your manual for timer set
tings. Default detonation interval is 90 seconds. This
safety feature is added at the request of former dis
satisfied users, their heirs, and assigns and has been
implemented for your convenience.