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Some months after David Kalb's six hundred and sixty-third birthday, a computer-controlled valve on the Sower's Hope closed, stopping the slow drip of metabolic suppressant into his body.
He did not immediately awake; there was still enough of the medication in his system to keep his metabolism suppressed for a couple more weeks, and during this time his body would require extensive preparation for a wakeful state. A bank of magnetic coils induced current into his motor nerves, stimulating his muscles into light contractions, and steadily more vigorous action, restoring tone after years of inaction. The climate controller began to slowly increment the temperature of his hiberpod and his body to match the requirements of his recovering life signs. Oxygen was pumped in at higher levels. As weeks passed, David progressed from artificially-induced hibernation to normal sleep, and then after a few hours of that, to full wakefulness.
While these things were happening to him, they were also happening to nine of the others aboard the ship. He would need them.
He awoke, still feeling stiff and groggy, after six centuries of hibernation, but he was still alive. He shambled around his compartment, put on the clothes that the ship had fabricated during his wake-up, and looked in on the other three hiberpods in the compartment. The first one was occupied by his wife, Rebeka, a crewman like himself; she was sleeping normally, and would awake in a few hours. The second hiberpod's occupant, Haddi Vorsen, was also in normal sleep. A passenger lay in the third hiberpod, and was still in normal hibernation, his vital signs flucuating faintly on his medical display. He went through the hatchway into the outer level passageway, entered the next compartment, and found his first disappointment.
Of the four hiberpods in this compartment, only two contained living human beings. The two deceased were a married couple named Delacasa, from the Confederate States of New Brasilia. He paged back on their medical readouts, and got a touch of crawling fear when he noted that they had died approximately a year apart, roughly one and a half centuries after their departure from Earth. The other two hiberpods contained crew members in normal sleep. He spent a few more minutes looking at the medical recordings from the two deceased, but saw distinctly different readings prior to death, and having nothing better to go on for the moment, tentatively concluded that they had died from different causes.
The third, fourth and fifth compartments with crew held only living people, seven passengers in hibernation and five crewmembers at the final stage of awakening from hibernation. He spent another half hour giving a closer look at the Delacasas' medical results, which further confirmed a lack of foul play: Gomess' blood had high levels of prostate antigens, while Allia's blood showed an astronomically high leucocyte count.
He went to the bridge and refamiliarized himself with the navigational controls, and then began operating the external telescopes. The first external view was breathtaking: In the hard vacuum of space, with no detectable scattered light or atmospheric distortion, David could see in just a few degrees of view more stars than the entire night's sky had ever held for him on Earth, even in the remotest deserted areas. After a few moments gawking at the diamond-dusted sable expanse, he began to look for familiar constellations, and found none whatsoever, confirming that he was indeed far from home.
The ship's navigational systems had already begun the preliminary orbital maneuvers, placing Gamarene, their destination and the brightest star in view, some thirty-five degrees off of fore. The outside of the rotating vessel was also the lowest deck in all places, and no porthole pierced that level, so there was no way to directly observe it. He trained the external telescopes on it, and viewed a magnified Gamarene through the helium spectral emission filter, through which it looked pretty much like Sol.
He felt hungry, and after a bit of time relearning the system, was able to get blocks of food out of the synthesizer in the crew galley. The synthesizer produced food that was nutritionally complete—or so he had been assured—but with nothing else to commend it. It was warm and soft, like unbaked dough, and had a starchy texture. When he chewed it some of the starch broke down and became sweet, but otherwise it had no real flavor to it; it was meant to keep him alive, not entertained. He washed it down with water from the still in the galley, and then went walking up and down the passageways in the ship, looking at the passenger compartments. Of the two hundred passengers and crew who has been placed into hibernation, one hundred and eighty-eight were still alive; the rest had died within the first two centuries of the trip, apparently from different natural causes.
At the aft end of the ship, he discovered the freeze-dried remains of a mouse; it had gotten on board somehow, and was killed when the air was evacuated prior to launch. He was looking for an implement to pick it up when a tone from one of the crew compartments indicated that another of the crew was awakening. He walked fore and entered the compartment from which the sound came, finding the canopy drawn back on Han Hansen's hiberpod, and Han lying awake inside.
"How do you feel?"
"All right, I guess," Han said. "Where are we?"
"Sixty-three light years from Earth."
Han sat up and yawned. "How long have you been up?"
"An hour or two. The ship was programmed to wake me first."
"How are everyone else?"
"About a dozen people are dead, including Gomess and Allia. Everyone else appears fine." He took a jumpsuit from the compartment's dispenser and tossed it into Han's lap. "Here. Get dressed before one of the ladies walks in on you."
Han smiled and got down off of the bed, and started stretching himself. David went out, climbed up to the core level, and activated the ship's diagnostics. Nothing appeared to have malfunctioned, which while fortuitous was not miraculous; the components had been made with a centuries-long service life in mind, and the ship had been far from any known sources of strong radiation for all of its trip. Han joined him several minutes later. "Is that the star?" he asked, nodding towards the filtered display of Gamarene.
David nodded. "I'm not much of an astrophysicist, but it doesn't look that different from Sol." He activated one of the navigational displays, and projected onto it the location of the known stars, as they would appear directly forward along the flight path of the Sower's Hope, at its present location in the Gamarene system. The computer displayed a hundred or so stars; he trained one of the telescopes to point in that direction and merged the image with the projection. The telescope's image rotated, in time with the rotation of the Sower's Hope, and once per revolution the projected stars neatly overlay the stars observed outside. They were, without any doubt, sixty-three light years from Sol, and their friends and loved ones left behind were centuries dead.
The other eight crew members awoke, took the news of the passing of the Delacasas as well as could be expected, and took turns medically examining each other; to ensure that nothing was missed, and help keep everyone in practice, everyone was examined twice.
Rebeka Kalb was getting her second examination, from her husband. "It's eerie the way the Delacasas went at the same time."
David nodded. "Everyone who died during transport went within the first two centuries."
She took his hand, but her eyes were still on the floor. "That's the way I want to go, David. You and I, in our sleep. No pain, no mourning."
"I hope that's how it goes." He set an instrument aside. "There, I'm done. You can get dressed now." He waited while she dressed, feeling no physical desire as he watched her; it seemed to be a side effect of the hibernation, and he hoped that it wasn't permanent. Together they left the exam room and and went fore to the bridge. Passing the galley, he saw Rigo Darigez and Dani Koll, glumly tasting the synthesized food, and signed for them to follow him. The rest of the crew was on the bridge, stargazing, except for Han, who was scrutinizing a short list of names: the deceased.
He addressed them. "If you've looked on the one display over there, you'll see that we are definitely in the Gamarene system, where we will be spending the next six months of our lives. In a moment we'll get to work. Sanna and Han will be determining the cause of death of the unlucky dozen, while the rest of us will begin surveying the system for planets. When we've identified all of the planets in the system, we'll evaluate them for habitability. If none of the habitiable planets are found, we'll pick another star, go back to sleep, and move on. If there's a keeper in this system, we'll wake up the passengers and make our descent. Any questions?"
There were none. This was exactly the plan they had been briefed on before departure. While they had little particular reason to believe that a habitable planet orbited Gamarene, they knew that somewhere out there, a world that humans could walk on waited. The law of averages argued for many such, but stronger proofs were on hand. David glanced at a metal plate mounted over his workstation; made from stainless steel, it was inscribed ATLANTIS WAITS AMONG THE STARS. It was the very plate he and his father had found, and others identical to it had fallen every year afterward since that time. Metallurgical analysis revealed the material to be more than it appeared. It was indeed stainless steel, but its makers, instead of casting or rolling it, appeared to have constructed it atom by atom; X-rays revealed it to be one uniform crystal of iron, carbon, and chromium, with absolutely no detectable flaws in its interior. This was so far beyond the Terran state of the art that it disproved itself to be a hoax. Somewhere out there, a welcome of sorts waited.
With this hope foremost in their minds, they went to work.
Gamarene proved to be the home to no less than eight planets. Two of them were gas giants, of nearly equal size, and a combined mass two-thirds again that of Jupiter. Both were plainly visible on the telescopes of the Sower's Hope, and further examination revealed that they both had a giant storm, comparable in size to Jupiter's giant red spot, in each of their hemispheres, but all four were colored a brownish grey.
Within the orbit of the nearer gas giant were six smaller planets. The innermost was a reddish-tan ball, slightly smaller than Mercury, and tidally locked to present but one face to roast under Gamarene's monomaniacal glare. The second world was too small to hold any atmosphere even half as hot as its lowest possible surface temperature.
The fifth planet was marked down as a very improbable maybe; orbiting at four hundred and forty-one million kilometers from Gamarene, it received, at best, ten percent of the radiation that Earth did, and only an extremely high greenhouse effect could compensate for the difference. The sixth planet had no atmosphere, and at at two hundred degrees below freezing it never would.
The third and fourth planets were both contenders, but the question of suitability could not be definitively settled from where the Sower's Hope hurtled through space.
There was no sign of any comets or belts of asteroids, but that proved nothing for the moment.
Haddi Vorsen and Rigo Darigez together plotted a course that would take them within a million kilometers of the third and fourth planets, while minimising the amount of fuel and time needed. David, and everyone else who wished, checked their figures, finding no errors. Sanna Miko and Bjern Venbergen programmed the course into the computer, David transferred navigational control to this new course, and they were off again.
Because of the risks of exposing the dead bodies to the closed environment of the ship, David ruled out complete autopsies on the deceased. Without the data thereby to be revealed, Sanna and Han were unable to give a definitive cause for death in most of the cases. The hiberpods of all deceased had been evacuated at their death, freeze drying them like the mouse that David had found, preserving them awaiting final disposition. As best as either Sanna or Han could tell, most of them appeared to have died from different types of infections, although two of the women had certainly succumbed to breast cancer and Gomess was victim to prostate cancer.
During the next three months, David drove himself to keep the crew busy; while they all continued to observe the stars around them, only the most ardent stargazer could fill four months of waking hours with that, and boredom would lead to worse problems. There was spare equipment to check, star charts to verify, physical exams to perform, and not a few hours were spent trying to make something interesting in the galley; there were no spices, although Ben found a way to get nearly pure fat out of the synthesizer, which he used to fry up some of the standard rations. When sprinkled with a little salt they were a marked improvement. Within a week everyone was tired of them.
The biggest improvement to their quality of life came when the last lingering effects of hibernation—the loss of physical desire—wore off, and with their arrival at Gamarene V, the six single crewmembers had paired off into reasonably happy couples.
The planet was mostly brown, with patches of water ice, and polar caps of frozen carbon dioxide. On the fly-by, the atmosphere's spectrograph showed it to be thinner than the atmosphere of Mars, being mostly carbon dioxide, with nitrogen, hydrogen, and argon mixed in. Only Rigo had been nurturing any hope that it might be habitable, and not even he was terribly disappointed to see it turn out otherwise.
Gamarene III was the next planet, and with help from a slingshot around the fifth planet, they arrived in roughly a month, and received their second major disappointment. As far as its size, surface gravity, and distance from the star were concerned, the third planet was well within the acceptable range, but its axis of rotation diverged from the axis of revolution by seventy-two degrees. At the moment of the fly-by, it was summer in the northern hemisphere, and baking hot, and conditions were the reverse in the southern hemisphere. The band of temperate climate, just north of the equator, would in six months time be entirely unlivable. The variation between extremes had prevented life from developing, and the air—mostly carbon dioxide—was unbreathable.
The effect on ship morale was palpable; knowing that hibernation was risky, they were reluctant to reenter that state, epsecially now that everyone had someone to live for, but if the fourth planet was unlivable, they would have no choice. The most obvious effect was the absence of the new couples from the ship social life; instead of staying after supper for a few games of cards, they retired to their quarters, leaving the Kalbs and the Venbergens to play bridge and talk about life back on Earth.
Rigo was the first to bare his chest. At the end of the second week on their leg from Gamarene III to Gamarene IV, David and Rigo were looking over the animals that were in hibernation—capuchin monkeys and sheep—when Rigo looked around to confirm that nobody else was around, and turned to David. "Dave, have you ever lost anyone close?"
"Several. The hardest one to bear was our son, Ruben. He drowned about three years before we signed on."
Rigo grimaced. "I don't know what I'd do if I lost Dani."
"That's a risk you take when you love someone," David replied. "We all die, someday. Either you will lose her, or she will lose you, or if you're very, very lucky, you'll go like the Delacasas—together." He paused to give Rigo time to answer, but he was silent. "It helps if you believe in an afterlife. And whether you believe or not, the best thing to do is put it out of your mind, and live for each day."
As they planned the fly-by for the fourth planet, all ten of them at various times got caught up in the pessimistic idea that looking at the fourth planet was a formality, that it was also uninhabitable, that their whole trip was a consummate waste, and that they would have been better off staying on Earth. The preliminary telesopic views did nothing to encourage them, giving a view of mottled browns, greys and tans. The rotational period was about nineteen hours, and the axial tilt around thirty degrees, so it was by far the most Earth-like planet in the system.
At the perigee of the fly-by, when all ten of the crew had their attention on the equipment that was recording the planet's surface conditions, silently waiting for proof, one way or another, of the planet's suitability, Haddi Vorsen broke the silence with a dejected profanity.
"What?" asked the others.
"Look at the atmosphere," she said. She rose from her workstation, and walked over to where Ben worked, resting her hands on his shoulders. He finished the recording of the IR data of the nightside of the planet, and then called up the spectroscopic data she had just collected, which showed that the atmosphere was predominantly gaseous oxides. The entire system was a bust.
"C'mon," she said quietly, patting him on the shoulders. He gave David a glance and then rose, accompanying her off of the bridge, heading towards the compartment they shared. It was a violation of regulation for them to leave the bridge during a mission without David's say-so, but he would have a hard time arguing that it mattered, and due to the nature of their common cause, no punishment could be meaningful without also being excessive.
"We'll pick another star tomorrow," he said.
That evening, while he was reviewing the data on the inner gas giant, Han Hansen and Sanna Miko came up to his work station.
"Yes?" he asked.
Han spoke. "I understand that in the old days, ship's captains had the authority to marry people."
"Yes, but out here, the only laws are the ones we make, so any of us could have the authority. As I understand things, before the Nuclear War there was a nation which empowered any adult man to perform marriages, so it wouldn't be a radical departure if we accorded ourselves the same freedom. There's no requirement in the religion I follow for a wedding to be officiated by any human agent, so if you two just call yourselves husband and wife, as far as I'm concerned, you are."
"A common-law marriage always seemed like shacking up to me," Han said.
"No, what you are doing now is shacking up," David chided pointedly. "Common-law marriage, where it's recognized, is an institution that is as fully legitimate as any officiated marriage, and is just as legally binding on both parties." He gave them a moment to say something, but they were quiet. "Look, marriage is a state of the heart. If you consider yourselves bound for life, God Himself marries you and you don't need any priest, rabbi, minister, ship's captain, or anything else to legitimize it. If you consider yourself entitled to walk away from your partner and take up with someone else, you aren't married, no matter how many ceremonies you go through.
"If you feel you need a wedding in order to be married, then we should have one, of course, and I'll be more than happy to say whatever you want said. Is there anything in particular you would like said?"
Han shook his head, and Sanna as well. "Neither of us are all that religious. You're Jewish, aren't you?"
He nodded. "Restoration Judaism, to be specific. We chucked the Talmud and all of the other commentaries." He stood up. "Would you like me to perform the ceremony now?"
"I guess so," Sanna replied.
David called the other seven through the ship's intercom, and when they were assembled, without announcing his purpose, he turned to Han: "Han Hansen, do you vow before God to forsake all other women in favor of Sanna, for as long as she lives?"
"Yes."
"Sanna Miko, do you likewise vow before God to forsake all other men in favor of Han, for as long as he lives?"
"I do," she replied.
"Congratulations, you are now husband and wife."
When they realized what was happening, Ben and Haddi had queued behind Han and Sanna, and behind them waited Rigo and Dani. David married them in turn, and then they all went to the galley and had some of the synthesized rations, with the sucrose content adjusted as high as the equipment would allow. It was nearest thing to wedding cake they could get.
On an aft telescope of the Sower's Hope nine of the crew watched Sol, a sixty-three light-year distant pinpoint of light, showing at this distance no sign of even her mightiest child, Jupiter. David Kalb sifted the stars forward of their location, like Goldilocks choosing porridge: Not too hot, not to cold, not to big, not too small, but just right. He excluded the handful of binary stars in the mix, and from the remainder chose the nearest one. It was ten light-years away. It would take two hundred and fifty years to travel there.
They programmed the course into the ship's computer, double-checked the figures, and then set about preparing the Sower's Hope for another two and a half centuries of transit. Then came the pre-hibernation physicals, good-byes that might be final, and finally David Kalb bedded the other nine into their hiberpods and activated the nutrient and supressant feeds. After Rebeka—the last he sent into slumber—was enclosed in her hiberpod and unconscious, David watched over them for three days to ensure that nothing was amiss; when their life signs stabilized at the same levels as during their prior hibernation period, he climbed into his own hiberpod, inserted the tubes into himself, and activated the hibernation controls. In a minute he was asleep; in an hour his body temperature was down to a fraction above freezing, and like the others he awaited the coming star.
(c) 2007 by John VanSickle. All rights reserved.