Silent Running (3 page)

 THREE 

F
or a moment there was flat silence in Main Control. Lowell stared fixedly at the now dead radio, a look of utter disbelief frozen on his face. Then pandemonium broke loose.

Keenan and Barker jumped to their feet to do a war dance around the room. “Whoopee!” yelled Keenan. “This is it! We’re going home!”

“Yeah!” Barker pounded Keenan on the back. “Aah, I can’t believe it. What’d they say? What’d they say?”

“I told you, I told you: ‘Pack up your domes and go home.’ ”

In the background static of the radio came the indistinct words, “. . . effect jettison and auto-destruct of all forest units. Kiss ’em all good-bye, boys.”

Wolf leaned across the table to put out a consoling hand. “Lowell, I’m sorry,” he said, then added, after a moment’s thought: “Makes sense, though.”

Lowell stared straight ahead of him, still unable to believe what had just come over. Blow up his forests that he’d tended for eight years? Destroy ponderosa pines that could reforest the Sierra dying from smog around San Bernardino? Obliterate his roses and ferns and all of his beautiful shrubs that would someday make Earth unfold and sparkle with new life?

“It’s insane,” Lowell finally managed and rose to his feet. For a second an embarrassed silence fell over the other men.

Lowell moved woodenly out of the room and descended the steps with unseeing eyes. He walked down the stairway and through the main cargo area, then to the tunnel and out into his forest. Through the trees and delicate latticework of the dome his eyes made out Saturn, winking stars, and the distant sun.

Slowly, deliberately, he walked to a switch and flooded the area with a dim suffusing light. “Aah!” He looked around him and walked on to touch a leaf here, a flower there.

A falcon flew from the woods to land lightly on his outstretched arm. He stroked the soft brown feathers, while a bird’s song trilled out its joy from nearby.

For a moment there was silence . . .

Suddenly from the spaceship
Berkshire,
riding orbit with
Valley Forge,
came the sound of a song. It was a song of children playing in the woods—in the sun:

“Fields of children running wild

In the sun.

Like a forest is your child growing

wild

In the sun.”

Lowell paused. His face softened with the music from the radio filling the dome. The song went on:

“Doomed in his innocence

In the sun.

Gather your children to your side

In the sun.

Tell them all they love will die

Tell them why

In the sun.

Tell them it’s not too late

Cultivate

One by one.”

Lowell nodded. It was true. It wasn’t too late. The song concluded:

“Tell them to harvest and rejoice

In the sun.”

For a long moment, Lowell’s face softened and he looked around him. His beloved forest was real. It was there and waiting. But then, reality flooded out his joy. With his rising anger came the sound of a waterfall and a soft breeze sifting through the trees. Lowell moved on, his footsteps echoing against the faceted roof.

“All to be destroyed!” he murmured. “All gone when they should reforest the Earth and make it come alive again.” He dropped to a log. A squirrel came from the underbrush to sit up on his haunches and stare quizzically at Lowell. Lowell gently held out his hand. He sat there for a long time.

Suddenly it was morning. Lowell rose stiffly and walked back through the tunnel to the control room, then up to the mess hall. He glanced around him, painfully aware of the conversation.

Wolf sat at a table. Barker thumbed through a manual, while Keenan and Wolf ate breakfast.

“It looks as though there are two ways to go here,” Barker said, looking up. “Once we set the squibs, we can either blow them with the manual detonators or use the remote detonator in the cargo hold.”

Lowell sank silently to a chair, his mind on the domes.

“How far out do they go before they explode?” Wolf queried.

“About six miles.” Barker smiled. “We should feel quite a hefty jolt.”

Lowell rose mechanically and brought a cantaloupe to the table, still aware of Wolf’s beaming and Keenan’s delighted grin.

“I want a front-row seat when these babies go,” Keenan said, his grin widening.

“I’ll bet you do,” Barker said, then turned to Lowell. “Hey, c’mon, Flowerface, cheer up.”

“You’re cheerful enough for all of us,” Lowell managed.

“Orders are orders,” Keenan shrugged. “Can’t disobey a central directive.”

Lowell slowly began to slice his cantaloupe.

Suddenly Keenan faced Barker. “Hey, how about blowing the domes all at once—all six of ’em?”

“Aah, wait a minute.” Barker leafed through the manual, then stopped with “Sorry.” He read aloud, “No more than two forest units may be severed from the spaceship simultaneously. They must be a pair of one odd and one even number in a single tandem cluster.”

Keenan asked, “How far out do they go before they bomb?”

“About six miles,” Barker answered. “Wolf asked that before.”

Keenan turned to Lowell and pointed to his plate.

“Lowell, you have to eat that stuff in here? It stinks.”

“You never let up, do you?”

“Aw, now you’ve hurt his feelings,” Barker jibed.

“I’d like to know what any of you know about real food.” Lowell faced them all.

“Lowell, what do you mean, ‘real food’?” Keenan demanded. “Grows out of the dirt. That’s real food, isn’t it?”

“That’s right,” Lowell agreed heartily. “This happens to be nature’s greatest gift.”

“To a celibate, maybe,” Barker jibed.

Keenan laughed. “Maybe he knows something we don’t know.”

“Lowell, give me a slice of that cantaloupe, hunh?” Barker swung to him. “Thanks, Lowell, a slice.”

“I’d be delighted to give you a slice of cantaloupe,” Keenan mimicked.

Lowell reared to his feet. His face was livid with frustration and rage. “Just sit down and shut up.” He glared at Keenan. “Sit d-o-w-n!!! Sit d-o-w-n!!! Shut up! Shut up! Leave me alone all of you and let me eat!”

“Hey, what’s the big deal?” Keenan demanded. “I can’t see the difference between that and this anyway.”

“You don’t see the difference! The difference is that I grew it! That’s what the difference is! That I picked it and I fixed it. And it has taste, and it has color, and it has a smell. And it calls back a time when there were flowers all over the Earth, and there were valleys.” Lowell’s face became transfigured. “There were plains of tall green grass that you could lie down in, that you could go to sleep in. There were blue skies and there was fresh air, and there were things growing all over the place, not just in some domed enclosure blasted millions of miles out into space.”

In a flash of memory, Lowell was sixteen again and riding across a wide prairie dotted with clear lakes. Cattle and wild antelopes grazed there, and when they raised their heads, they could see for a hundred miles. It was like the ocean, with the west wind making waves of the tall grass.

Buffalo skulls lay in shallow pits and around rocks where the brutes had come to rub their shaggy bodies free of ticks.

Lowell drew in his breath, remembering.

They had stopped to camp for the night by a river. His father dismounted to build a fire, while Lowell unsaddled the horses and hobbled them for the night.

Supper was a thing of beauty, with the clear river slipping by, singing across rocks.

Afterward they lay around their small fire, stretched out on blankets—staring up at the incredibly close stars, listening to the rattle of the hobbled horses as they grazed, and to the coyotes yipping from hill to hill.

They stretched out to sleep, with the fire nothing but coals . . . And they slept, with the wind sighing through the cottonwoods—the wind that suddenly became a wild, twisting thing that lifted the live coals into the air and scattered them over the parched grass. Oh God!! The wind wasn’t their fault; it was just a freak twister. It took them hours to beat the flames out with their saddle blankets, but they did it.

The next morning they rode on under blue skies in the sunshine with the earth sparkling around them. It was wonderful, clean and wholesome, and filled with nature’s good air above them and lush grass under their horses’ beating feet.

Lowell leaned forward to jab a finger into Keenan’s plate. “Look at that stuff!” he exclaimed in disgust. “How can you guys sit there and really say anything to me about this, this glop?”

Embarrassed laughter went round the table.

He lifted some of the food from Keenan’s plate. “Look at that. Fried synthetic glop! And you’ve become so dependent on it that I’ll bet you can’t even live without it.”

“I don’t even want to, Lowell,” Barker muttered.

Lowell stared incredulously. “Do you realize how pitiful that is, what you just answered? On Earth everywhere you go the temperature is seventy-five degrees. Everything’s the same. All the people are exactly the same.”

He paused and asked in a hushed voice, “And what kind of life is that?”

“Lowell, if it’s so rotten, why do you want to go back?” Barker demanded.

“Because it’s not too late to change it.”

Keenan with a half laugh leaned forward.

“What do you want, Lowell? There’s hardly any more disease. There’s no more poverty. Nobody’s out of a job.”

“That’s right,” Lowell conceded bitterly. “Every time we have the argument, you say the same thing to me. You give me the same three answers all the time. ‘Everybody has a job.’ That’s always the last one. But you know what there is no more of? My friend, there’s no more beauty, and there’s no more imagination. There are no frontiers left to conquer.”

He paused to see the effect. By now, he might have been talking to two hundred million Americans. “You know why . . . only one reason why: the same attitude you guys are giving me right in this room today. And that is . . . nobody cares. Nobody cares!”

Lowell’s voice dropped. “Take any little girl in America. Look at her young face, her laughing blue eyes. Do you know what she’s never going to be able to see?” Lowell’s voice choked up. “She’s never going to be able to see the simple wonder of a leaf in her hand. Because there aren’t going to be any trees.” His voice hushed. “You think about that.” He paused and gave a big sigh. There was a long silence.

Finally, Barker said, “The fact is, Lowell, if people were interested something would have been done a long time ago.” He swung in his seat to Keenan and there was only one thing in his mind now: the bombing of the domes. “Ready?”

“Yeah . . . I’m ready.”

They rose and moved toward the door.

But Lowell threw his body to block them. He put out his hands, reaching to halt them. “Wait! Wait a minute,” he pleaded. “I don’t think you guys understand what this means. Please don’t blow up the domes. They’re not replaceable.” His voice was choked with emotion.

The three men brushed Lowell aside and moved on.

Barker had the squib case, and Wolf had the instructions.

“Which one first?” Keenan asked.

“Outboard cluster, so let’s hit six.” Barker led the way out of the kitchen and down the corridor leading to the deck below.

They reached the cargo deck and walked on through the tunnel toward Dome Six.

Keenan looked at the squibs that Barker carried.

“Kinda small, aren’t they?”

Barker nodded. “I guess, for nuclear squibs.”

They all reached the forest and began searching for something.

Barker held the silver case marked in bright red:

DANGER
CONTAINS AAK (4) ARMED SQUIBS
Read instructions before use.

Together with the other two, Barker thrashed through the bushes, tearing at the foliage.

Lowell stood listening to the retreating footsteps of the three men headed for Dome Six. Through the kitchen window he could see
Valley Forge
drift through the starry night, its hull and girders glistening.

Restlessly, he made his way to Dome One, and walked through the silent forest. But the thought of its beauty being destroyed drove him back to his room.

He threw himself moodily onto his cot and lay there as though in a trance. An air of doom hung over the ship, almost like the throbbing repetitious beat of drums. It might have been a requiem for the domes that were marked for destruction.

Back at Dome Six, the men continued to search for the tubes. Keenan kicked at a clump of gooseberry bushes. Wolf clambered wildly through clump after clump of ferns. Barker leaped over a rock to slip on the wet turf and land on his left arm.

“Ow, my hand!” He raised his right hand dripping with blood.

“Hey, you all right?” Wolf asked.

“You better get Lowell to fix that for you,” Keenan advised.

“Yeah . . . well . . . you and Wolf find the tubes and wait till I get back.”

Barker set off down the ramp to the tunnel, then on toward the kitchen, expecting to find Lowell there.

But Lowell still lay on his cot, and still stared straight ahead.

Barker came to his door and stood holding his injured hand. Blood dripped on the corridor floor.

“Will you help me . . . ?” he managed.

“Oh, yeah . . .” Lowell did not turn his head.

“What’re you doing?” Barker asked.

A moment passed. “Nothing,” Lowell said flatly. Finally he rose to lead the way into surgery, motioning Barker to sit up on the table.

Cleaning the wound in blank-faced silence, Lowell then said, “You did this on a hawthorn, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, if you say so. You know me and bushes.”

Lowell applied a bandage.

All at once an announcement came over the P.A. system:

“ ‘VALLEY FORGE’ . . . ‘VALLEY FORGE’ . . . SAFE DISTANCING MANEUVER IN FIVE MINUTES. ‘VALLEY FORGE’ . . . ‘VALLEY FORGE’ . . . PLEASE STAND BY FOR 1000 HOURS SAFE DISTANCING MANEUVER IN FIVE MINUTES.”

Barker turned to Lowell. “I’m going to need your help for that, Lowell.”