Starship Home (4 page)

The 20
^th
century Earth physicist, Albert Einstein, had reasoned that in three dimensional space it was not possible to exceed the speed of light. This meant that travel between star systems was not practicable. Light took four and a half years to travel between Earth and the nearest star system and other stars were much further away again.

What the Slarn had learned, was that it was possible to slip sideways out of three-dimensional space into Time itself, travel through Time and re-emerge into normal space.

Machines could not do this, only very rare minds could. These minds belonged only to a few. In history, these few had been sometimes revered as mystics, sometimes burned as witches. Among the Slarn and the Elder Races, they became starship pilots, which was in some ways a combination of the two earlier fates.

After Leaping, the pilots had to rest. They could not Leap again immediately without gross damage to their minds. The pause was not a long one, but it became the critical factor in warfare between the stars. A starship emerging from a Leap was at her most vulnerable. This was the moment when she could be attacked without hope of making a further Leap in order to escape.

The Slarn armada with its captives from Earth emerged into normal space, and found itself under attack by Ursoid pirates.

As the starship emerged from her Leap, the screens in the main control room were blank. Armored Slarn lay in the flat couches waiting for the momentary nausea and discomfort to pass.

Suddenly the screens came alive to show the stars outside. Some of the screens were already tracking incoming Ursoid missiles, and the automatic defence systems were firing, as a hoarse klaxon began sounding.

As the Slarn rolled from their couches onto their feet and began moving for battle stations at a run, one of the screens shivered, and the picture of the stars dissolved into a face. The face was bearlike, covered with hair, and the strong jaw and slashing fangs indicated a hunting carnivorous ancestry. Yet the forehead above the eyes was broad and high. There was room in there for a first-class brain, and when the mouth opened, it was speech that came out.

‘Klarnz mogren ti! Klarnz mogren ti vipsarna! Klarnz mogren ti! Klarnz mogren ti vipsana!’

The repeated demand for immediate surrender was not received well by the Slarn. One officer moved to face the image of the Ursoid and snarled ‘Klarnz mogren ti geffargled bach!’ then hit a pad on the console, killing transmission as the starship shuddered from a direct hit.

Slarn marines were dying in the area of the direct hit. Some died at once, vaporized or partially vaporized at their battle stations. Others took damage to their armor and died in the vacuum beyond the ship. Others died running for the closing safety doors, as the ship sealed itself from further atmosphere loss.

Armored Slarn were running along corridors now, assessing damage. The part of the ship which had been hit had been integral to her defence system. If that shot had got through, more would follow.

And the ship’s pilot felt pain. Loss. Terror.

Another rending crash, another Ursoid shot came through the waning defence system.

In their pods in the honeycomb room, Zoe, Harold, Meg and Zachary listened. They could hear the klaxon, feel the thud and shudder of the ship under attack, hear the beeping battle language.

Zoe was desperate to get out of her pod. She was fighting like an animal to get out.

Harold on the other hand had found some intriguing looking controls behind a panel and was experimenting with them.

Meg was beyond tears, and beyond fury. When she got out of here, someone would be doing some suffering for putting her through this.

And Zachary was saying his litany: ‘I really hate this,’ he was saying, ‘I really hate this sort of stuff.’

A Slarn marine entered the honeycomb room as, above the klaxon, a voice could be heard saying, ‘Scarfold bratcars vipsanatark, scarfold bratcars vipsanatark’. The command to abandon ship was being given.

The starship pilot was on the brink of unconsciousness now, grieving for the lost members of her crew, ashamed that her defences had let the Ursoid shots through.

The Slarn marine in the honeycomb room was at a control board, punching pads, getting the captives off in their pods before attempting to abandon ship himself. The evacuation of the captives should by rights have been automatic, but not now, not with the systems damaged. Each pod had its own pad to press, each pod its own light to go out as it sped from the wounded ship for later recovery.

There were four that were jammed. The Slarn marine slammed his gauntlet against each of the four unresponding pads but the lights stayed on, the pods stayed on board.

Flashes of light left the starship’s sides as the escape pods left, each carrying one human captive.

But in the honeycomb room, four lights stayed lit. The Slarn marine turned and ran to his escape station, leaving Zoe, Harold, Meg and Zachary still in their pods, still on board.

The ship’s pilot felt sudden sense of relaxation. The four faces, the four humans in those pods, were part of a prescient vision. Her own survival was bound up with theirs, as was the survival of others, people she had not yet seen in the flesh. The vision puzzled her. There were people in it who looked as if they were from her own past: men on horses, warriors, peasants, a dark robed priest. She did not understand the vision but knew that all would come clear. All she knew at the moment was that these four humans must stay with her.

On the bridge of the starship, the Commander faced the main screen, and slammed her right fist to the left side of her chest in salute. The fist thudded on the armor above where a human heart would be. Then the Commander moved off the bridge toward her escape station. The ship’s bridge was empty.

There was a brief flash of light as the Commander’s escape pod left the starship. The battle was now moving away. Ships of both Slarn and Ursoid design were accelerating away from the scene of the ambush, winking out of existence as the pilots Leapt. One wounded starship was left, hanging in space, alone.

On the bridge, the sound of the klaxon ceased, the beeping battle language faded into silence. The lights ceased to flash.

Someone was humming. An old tune, with ancient words. A tune that Zachary had strummed on his guitar in the school bus only hours before. In the empty, dimly lit bridge, a woman’s voice was singing
Scarborough Fair
.

There was a thudding noise in the dimly lit honeycomb room. It was Zoe, bashing at the transparent end of her pod with both fists.

Zachary lay still and looked at the ceiling of his pod. He was trying to work out how he had got into this situation. As far as he could see, his main mistake had been to take a regular job. He had abandoned the habit of a lifetime, become a straight citizen, and as a result he had been captured by bug-eyed monsters. He vowed never to take a regular job again.

Meg had made a similar appraisal of the situation and was making a similar vow. ‘If this is what comes of using public transport,’ she yelled at whoever might be listening, ‘I shall never take public transport again!’

Harold was humming to himself. Now that he had learned by personal experiment that his father was not dead but probably only stunned, he was enjoying himself.

It was the best problem ever.

There in front of him was what he took to be an alien alpha-numeric pad. There were buttons to press. He was pressing them in various combinations, knowing that whoever had designed the pod must have designed a way for the occupant to get out.

By pressing one combination of buttons he managed to bring to life the screen above his head. This was more like it, Harold thought. Now there were lines and dots on the screen, which he took to be some form of alien writing.

On the empty bridge, the screens showed various angles of the honeycomb room. Whoever or whatever was controlling the screens was interested in those four remaining escape pods. One of the screens now showed Harold’s face as he concentrated on the controls. A woman’s voice hummed softly in the empty bridge.

Harold felt he was getting nowhere. He paused, he thought, and then he said: ‘Are you voice actuated?’

‘Kolum?’ said a voice. It was the voice of a young woman.

‘Do you understand English?’ Harold said.

‘Ska,’ said the young woman’s voice.

‘Translate ‘ska’,’ said Harold. He was feeling a tingle of excitement. He had made some sort of breakthrough. Now if only…

‘Ska means yes,’ said the voice.

That was it! That was what he had been hoping and praying for. The computer could translate English. ‘Okay,’ said Harold, ‘we’ll communicate in English.’

There was no answer.

He tried again. ‘Are you voice-actuated?’ This was the cruncher. If the computer answered in English…

‘Yes,’ said the voice.

Harold was smiling. The adrenalin was flowing. He had found the key to the locked door. ‘Let me out,’ he said.

‘Define out,’ said the voice.

A smart computer. He had played computer games in which the answer would have been ‘I do not know the word “out”.’ This was a definite step up on those games. He said: ‘Open door.’

‘Which door?’ said the voice.

More than one door?
‘Describe doors,’ Harold said.

‘Door one leadeth into space, door two leadeth into starship,’ said the voice.

Harold noted the slightly old-fashioned way the computer spoke, but let it pass. He was too busy feeling relieved that the computer had not obeyed him by opening the door into space. He had no wish to find out what it was like trying to breathe in a hard vacuum. ‘Open door two,’ he said.

Abruptly, the pod slid out, and he got out of it, looking around. ‘Thank you.’

‘Thou art welcome,’ the computer said.

‘Mum? Dad?’ Harold began moving along the honeycombed wall, looking through the transparent doors to each pod. Beyond each, all he could see was a hexagonal window into the black of space. There was no one inside any of the pods. He began to panic, running along the wall, looking into each pod, but in each pod all he saw was an hexagonal view of stars shining brightly in the black.

Then he heard the thumping sound, turned back, and moved along the wall until he located it. Zoe was looking out at him. He checked the nearby pods and there were Meg and Zachary. He felt the cold tingle of relief knowing that at least he was not alone.

Zoe saw him.
Trust Harold Lewin to find a way out
, she thought, and then ‘Lemme out!’ she yelled.

‘Hold everything,’ Harold said, ‘I’ve got to work this out.’ He looked around and saw the three lights still showing on the control board. He walked over to the control board and looked at it. Three lights showing, with what looked like a control button under each light. The temptation to press the buttons was almost irresistible. He resisted. ‘What doors do these buttons control?’ he asked the computer.

‘Doors one,’ the computer answered.

‘To space, correct?’ He paused. ‘Then open doors two,” whereupon the three remaining pods slid out of the wall, and Zoe, Meg and Zachary got out of them.

‘How’d you do that?’ Zoe was looking at him hard, wondering how a nerd like Harold Lewin could get out of something before she could.

‘We’re dealing with a voice-actuated computer.’

Unseen by them, a panel low on one wall slid back, revealing a furry face with big bright eyes. The face was something like a raccoon’s, something like a cat’s, with a bit of possum thrown in. The Wyzen, for this was both her name and her species, was simultaneously interested and afraid. The Wyzen had lived through space battles before, and she hated the noise, but her beloved ship always gave her warmth and love and biscuits afterward. That was all part of her normal life. This was different: she had never before seen feral humans loose on a starship, and she found the new phenomenon both puzzling and frightening. The feral humans were making talking noises.

‘Is there anyone else here to let out?’ said Harold.

‘Nay,’ the computer answered.

The Wyzen relaxed slightly at the sound of that second voice. That was the voice of the beloved ship.

‘Not my father and mother?’

‘No one.’

Meg could see that she should take charge here. ‘I want to speak to whomever’s in charge.’

‘We’re on a space ship, Miss Henderson,’ Harold put in, but Meg didn’t want to discuss that issue right now.

‘I want to speak to whomever is in charge and I want to speak to them now!’ she said. Zoe decided this conversation was not getting very far and moved off to explore. She had gone three paces when, ‘Zoe Poulos, what are you doing?’

Zoe turned, smiling her very slow smile, the smile that she knew drove parents, teachers and principals up the wall, the smile that took dumb insolence to new heights and said: ‘Looking for
whom-ever
is in charge.’

Meg was not going to answer that. She simply walked past Zoe so that she would be in the lead wherever it was they were going. Harold watched them going and yelled: ‘Hey! You can talk to them in here! The computer’s in charge!’

‘You coming, kid?’ asked Zachary, and followed the women.

‘”Kid,”’ said Harold, ‘”kid”! Who got us out of there?’

‘Thou didst,’ said the computer.

‘Correct! I didst!’ He paused. ‘How come you talk like that?’

‘Like what?’

‘”Thou didst”, that sort of thing.’

‘”Thou didst”, second person singular form of the verb “to do”.’

‘No one says it that way any more,’ said Harold.

‘False,’ said the computer, ‘
I
say it that way.’

Harold thought about that for a moment but he could not fault the logic. ‘Yeah okay. What happened to my father and mother?’

‘If they were on this ship, they did escape with all the rest.’

Harold suddenly felt very alone. He looked toward the doorway the others had gone through, and decided he should go and look after them. They did not seem to understand the situation the way he did. It was only fair that he should go and help them.

As Harold moved for the doorway, the Wyzen’s face pulled back from its viewing port.

Entering the corridor beyond the doorway, Harold was slightly disconcerted when the door behind him slid closed with a
thunk
. He turned and tried to open it, but it would not budge, so he continued after the others, whom he could see along the other end of the corridor.

Meg was striding along in the lead. ‘It’s got to be some kind of experimental aircraft. Russian, Chinese maybe.’

‘Harold says they’re aliens,’ Zoe said, not because she believed in Harold’s theories so much, but in order to see how Miss Henderson The Ice Queen might react.

‘Harold ought to know, he’s an alien himself,’ Meg snapped.

‘I mean maybe we’re in a UFO.’

‘Zoe, the only people who believe in UFO’s are maniacs. Like the man in America last year who said they picked him up and questioned him and were coming back to take everyone away? Maniacs.’

‘Harold…’

‘Harold is not right! On this occasion, Harold Lewin is not right!’

‘He’s right about most things.’

Meg flicked a glance at Zachary. He was unsuitable and wore hair oil and a leather jacket but he was, at least, an adult. ‘The little nerd had the hide to correct me in class the other day.’

‘Was he right, Miss?’

Meg spun round and faced Zoe, continuing to walk backwards as she said: ‘Well he’s not right on this occasion!’

‘So he was right the other day.’

Meg had her mobile phone out and was checking the screen. ‘No signal when you want one,’ she said. ‘Typical. The service provider’s going to hear about this,’ and then found that she had backed herself into a closed door. She turned, looked at it, tried to open it. It would not budge. ‘This is it? This is as far as we get?’

In the wall above and behind them, a panel slid open. The Wyzen looked out at them. They were, the Wyzen decided, more interesting that the ones with hard faces. With these ones you could see what their faces did.

Zachary had been thinking. ‘Hey the kid said the place was run by a voice-actuated computer. Why don’t we…?’

Harold caught up with them in a rush. ‘Don’t. Please. Whatever it was you going to say to the computer, just don’t.’

‘I was just going to ask it to open the door,’ Zachary said, puzzled at Harold’s vehemence on the subject.

‘In a computer game I played last week, I asked for a door to be opened and I got eaten, okay? You could get eaten by a grue, slain by a warrior, killed by a thief, there could be anything on the other side of that door!’

‘I really wonder about the social value of computer games if they induce this level of paranoia in young people,’ Meg said.

‘Ship?’ Harold was asking as Meg continued her psychological analysis of the damage he was taking by playing games, ‘what’s on the other side of the door?’

‘Damage area,’ said the ship.

‘What will happen if you open the door?’

‘The air will leave this area, you will all die.’

They absorbed that in silence. After a while, Meg said: ‘On the other hand, a normal level of paranoia can sometimes help keep us alive.’

‘Would it have opened the door if I’d asked it to?’ Zachary was still shaking a little.

‘Maybe,’ Harold said. ‘It may have a loop in its program stopping it from harming sentient life, but then you’d have to know how its program defined sentient life. That definition might include only the aliens.’

‘I want to see whoever’s in charge.’

‘I am in charge,’ said the computer.

‘No,’ said Meg, with infinite patience, ‘you are a machine. I want to speak to the people.’

‘We are the only people on board,’ said the computer.

‘Great,’ said Meg, ‘it thinks it’s a person. All I needed.’

‘It could be a sort of expert system,’ said Harold. ‘It could incorporate lots of people’s experience. To all intents and purposes it could actually pass the Turing Test and be indistinguishable from a human being.’

Zoe smiled at Harold. ‘I’ve always felt that about you, Harold. You’re indistinguishable from a human being yourself sometimes.’

Harold decided to let that pass. ‘Ship, is there a safe way out of this passage?’

‘Way out to where?’ said the ship.

‘Look, just get us out of here the fastest way, okay?’ Meg’s temporary patience seemed to have evaporated. The way she said it, it was not a question but an order.

A previously concealed door in the wall of the corridor slid open. Meg stalked through it.

The Wyzen, watching from its viewing port, put one paw over her lustrous eyes.

‘Miss Henderson, we should check!’ Harold was saying, but Zachary and Zoe were following Meg through the open doorway. ‘Ship, is it safe in there?’

‘Certes, if thou knowest the password,’ said the ship.

‘Password?’ squeaked Harold, as a series of bangs, screams and yells came through the open doorway. Knowing that his companions would not be able to get through this without the help of his intelligence, Harold ran through the doorway after them.

As the door slid shut behind him, the Wyzen peeked out from under her paw. The Wyzen, who like all its race rated high on empathy, was feeling very sorry for them all.