The Administrator (15 page)

“But won’t the same thing happen when the two races meet? No matter who makes the first contact?”

“No. If the Vorics get to Earth first, they will have the upper hand. We humans, by nature, worship superiority. If mankind hasn’t learned to live together by then, they will probably have destroyed each other. Either way, they will see the Vorics as superiors with advanced technology, and maybe, just maybe, they will think they can’t beat them in a fight.”

“You mean that mankind might not attack the Vorics because they will think they might lose?”

“Right.”

“But they wouldn’t. The Vorics won’t fight.”

“True. But Earth won’t know that. Will they?”

“But how can we be sure that the Vorics get to Earth before man gets here?”

“We can’t, but we can help it along. With what you and I know about space travel, and with the landing craft as a model, the Vorics could conceivably be in space within half the time it would take them alone. Jonas, think about it. If humans get here first, this race will die. At least this way, they have a....” Gordon grinned, “Pardon the pun—a fighting chance.”

Jonas scowled at his friend’s joke and stared out the view port at the vast void of blackness they were racing through. Finally he whispered, “Do you really think...?”

His lifelong friend placed his large, gentle hand on Jonas’ thin shoulders and said softly, “Yeah. I really do.”

Eleven months and three days later, the ship fell into orbit around the planet Voric. The two men stood side by side gazing out the starboard port. Below them the emerald planet circled lazily around its sun.

“Everything ready?” Gordon asked quietly.

“Yes. The schematics and what plans I could find are on the lifeboat. The rest, we’ll just have to try to remember. The ship’s self-destruct will activate two hours after we leave. Nobody will ever find her pieces, even if they look—which I doubt.” Jonas grew thoughtful and stroked his bearded chin, “Gordon, are you sure we are doing the right thing?”

“Have I ever steered you wrong before?”

“Well, there was that time in Singapore.” Jonas snapped.

“Besides that,” chuckled his friend.

They turned in unison and boarded the lifeboat.

As they prepared to land, Jonas glanced out the view port, “Look I think I see the lights of that city. The one we talked about. Did you ever translate its name?”

“You mean, De Mez Vorches?”

“Yeah.”

“Loosely translated it means, The City of Shining Eyes.”

“Hmm. Shining Eyes. I like that.”

“Yeah, me too.”

The Prodigals

She died without a whimper. No one was left to witness her final moments. They had all deserted her eons ago. She was scarred, exhausted and barren, but still she clung to life. Until now.

She silently circled her dying sun, reflecting her father’s feeble, red glow. Her ragged terrain was pock marked from space debris slashing into her frozen, brittle skin. Her seas had long since boiled dry in the last great, coughing flare erupting as the death rattle of the center of her universe.

Her children abandoned her too many ages ago to remember—when she first began to die. They used her up and moved on. The few children left behind died quickly, leaving their bones to litter her crumbling cities. The sobs from her great bosom heaved mountains into the seas and buried her children’s forgotten toys under tons of barren soil. Finally, she settled quietly into cold, lonely isolation—and waited to die.
 

“Do you think it will work?” Carter asked, his thick, bushy eyebrows raised questioningly over deep brown eyes and a broad stub of a nose.
 

“It should. At least, it does in theory.” Shasta replied. She ran her thin fingers over her naked head smoothing nonexistent hair aside—a nervous trait she couldn’t seem to shake.

“Why don’t you let your hair grow? You always fuss with it, even when it’s not there.” Carter grinned and made primping motions with his own shoulder length, wavy locks.

“Too much trouble,” she answered. “I don’t have time. Especially on this mission, and quit teasing me, you bisexual bimbo.”
 

“Bimbo?” He placed his hand over his heart and said, “I’m hurt, really hurt.”

She smiled at his mock pained look and turned back to the view screen. “There it is. Come look.”
 

“Yeah. That sun’s just about as weak as they get. It looks perfect. I’ll check the readings.” His dark face became serious as he turned to the console of blinking lights that was his domain, his field of expertise.

Shasta concentrated on her calculations and carefully measured the distance between their ship and the dying system in her view-screen. “G type sun, nine planets, all the planets are frozen. And for a long time it looks like. Well here we go.” She settled into the pilot’s seat.

Carter, busy at his console, didn’t answer. They had worked together so long that they understood each other’s needs almost before the other could voice them.

Shasta set the auto-pilot, and leaned back. Her thoughts went to the years she and the others had spent putting this experiment together. She thought about the solid complacency of the Council, and how they almost didn’t get permission to try.

The Council leader had scoffed, “Rejuvenate a star? Bring life back to a dead sun? That’s impossible.”

“We believe it is possible, Sir. We have worked on the Thermonuclear Reaction Plasma Theory for 200 years now. Think about it, Sir. The rebirth of dead or dying suns. It could mean the renewal of entire solar systems that have been extinct since before any of us were born. Think what we could learn. We could witness creation. We could be the creators.” She turned to the Council members. “We could find our origins. Where we began. We could find ourselves!”

The Council had gasped collectively. The driving question through all of remembered history, in all the inhabited systems, was where humanity began. The answer was shrouded in legend and myth. Some said that man had always been and would always be, period. Others talked of an omnipresent God who created everything in one great explosion. Still others said that all the human inhabitants of the universe began on one planet and fled from a great cataclysm to spread through the universe. No one knew, but Shasta was sure that the clues were there, and if this experiment worked, the answer might be in one of the dead systems.

That convinced them. The council knew there would be real trouble for them if word got out that they had turned down a chance to fund a project that might lead to the roots of mankind. The fact that habitable planets were not plentiful, and the TRP theory offered a chance to mold planets to suit human life was another point in her favor.

Shasta watched the controls, and thought, So here we are. If it doesn’t work, we won’t get a second chance. But it will, I know it will. She looked at her screen. A strange feeling of peace fell over her, erasing any doubts. “Don’t worry, big fellow, we’ll fix you,” she murmured to the red orb in front of her.

“What? Did you say something, Shasta?”

“No, just talking to Mr. Sun out there.”

“Shasta, why did you pick this system? You never said.”

“I don’t really know, Carter. A feeling I guess. Something told me this was the one for the test when I first saw it on the charts.”

“Ha! Women’s intuition?”

She laughed, “I doubt it. More gut feelings, I think. And a lot of audacity.”

“What if it doesn’t work?”

“It will. We spent 200 years on the theory, that’s one half of my life. If I have to, I’ll spend the rest of it making it work. The answer is out there. I know it, and I’ll find it even if I have to use your lifetime and mine.”

Carter chuckled, “You’ve already used most of mine. Don’t forget that I’m a lot older than you.”

“And if you don’t get back to work, you won’t get any older.” She laughed and threw a food pouch at him.

He deftly dodged the flying missile. “Ya missed me, ya missed me,” he sang and stuck his tongue out at her. A sudden beep from his console demanded his attention. He turned to it and became the serious professional that Shasta could always count on.

She began the last minute calculations. “Of the nine planets, the third looks the most promising for habitation,” she said. “Seems to have been one of the last to go when the sun cooled, and she probably had life at one time. We’ll concentrate on that one when the sun starts to thaw her out.”

“What ever you say, Captain.” He always called her Captain when they were working at something dangerous. It was her cue that he bowed to her superior expertise, and it was time to work. That attitude had saved both of their lives more than once, which was one reason she had chosen Carter for this mission.

“Okay, we’re here. Get ready,” She was all business now.

“I’m ready.” His voice trembled slightly. “Shasta?”

“Yes?”

“What’s the worst case scenario?”

She turned to look at him. “I’m scared too if it helps.”

“It doesn’t.”

“Okay, the biggest problem we have is hitting the target from the right distance. If we’re too far away, we could miss and destroy the whole system, and us along with it. If we’re too close, the system will live, but we’ll be charcoal. Check your tanks and the device.”

He focused the viewer on the exterior of the ship and the giant object it towed. The device was three times as large as their craft but followed along obediently behind them. “Like a puppy following his mama,” he chuckled and turned back to his console. “Everything tests out okay. Gasses, plasma, thermonuclear device. All ready.”

Shasta inhaled deeply and let out a long breath that sounded like a sigh, “Might as well do it. Ready?”

“Ready.”

“On my mark. Three ... two ... mark!”

His expert hands moved at almost a blur over the console. “Device away.”

A streak like a comet’s tail appeared on the screen. “Dead on,” she whispered. Her throat was dry. “Hold on. We’re out of here!” She handled the small craft like a lover, gently but quickly pulling it into the programmed escape mode.

The sudden velocity shoved her against the pilot’s seat like she had just hit a steel wall. She groaned. A moan came from the other seat, but she couldn’t move to look. The ship slowed and fell into her programmed orbit far enough away from the sun for safety, she hoped, and still close enough to observe.
 

She pulled the viewer around and yelled over her shoulder, “Carter, you all right?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m okay.” His voice was choked and hoarse.

A blinding flash that penetrated even the extra flash shields they had built into the ship hit her face, and the craft rocked like a boat in a hurricane. A warning bell sounded.

Carver’s choked warning came seconds later. “Heat shields at the max and more coming. They won’t hold! We gotta’ get back further!”

“Too late.” Shasta’s calm voice quieted Carter’s outburst. “We gotta’ ride it out.”

“But the shields won’t hold.”

“They’ll hold—I built them—they’ll hold.” Her own assurance sounded false to Shasta, and her guts churned with fear, but she couldn’t let it show. “Turn the temperature control off.”

“Off? We’ll freeze.”

“Do it.”

He did it.

The full heat from the artificial nova hit seconds later. Shasta was sure that she felt her blood begin to boil—then blackness.

She opened her eyes and saw Carter bending over her. “Shasta, wake up darlin’. You okay?”

“I’m alive?”

“Yeah, honey, we both are, but I don’t know how. The shields held.”

She jerked upright and reached for the viewer. “How long was I out?”

“Only a few seconds. It worked, Shasta, it worked. Look.”

She watched the readings on his control board as he recited jubilantly, “Internal temperature increasing at a phenomenal rate. Deuterium decreasing, lithium, beryllium and boron decaying. Significant increase in helium. If it continues at this rate, nuclear fission should occur within days, if not hours. After that, it’s only a matter of time before the hydrogen begins to transform to helium.” He grabbed her shoulder and pulled her to him in an ecstatic hug, then he began to dance her around the small floor.

She laughed, and pushed him away. “Not now, you bimbo, we’ve got work to do. How long before we can check out the planets?”

“Not long, the reaction will settle soon, and it will be safe to approach the system, but for now, we better move back or we could still be oven fried beast.”

“Right. We’ll pull back to a safe distance and contact the council. I can’t wait to see their faces, the pompous jerks.” She kissed Carter on the cheek and headed for the pilot’s seat. As she settled in, she caught sight of the giant, red orb with its nine, frozen, little globes dutifully following each other around it and felt an overwhelming sense of awe. She thought, It was alive once and will be again. We can make it so. She gazed at the nine dark planets, and her eyes sought the one that seemed to pull at her—the third one. “I wonder who they were?”