Orbitsville Trilogy Read online

  In the 'morning' a sector of cold air which has been sinking steadily for hours suddenly finds itself warming up again and rising, causing anything from clear air turbulence to heavy rain. At nightfall the situation is reversed but can be even more tricky because the air which cools and begins to descend conflicts with currents rising from the still-warm ground.

  All it amounts to, however, is that there are two half-hour periods when the control column comes to life. Not enough to occupy us for the next three to four years, I'm afraid, although we in the lead ship are a little luckier than the others in having a little extra work to do. There is the inertial course reference to be monitored, for instance. It is a simple-looking black box, created by O'Hagan and his team, and inside it is a monomaniac electronic brain which thinks of nothing but the bearing they fed into it. Any time we begin to wander off course a digital counter instructs us to go left or right till we're back on line again, and the rest of the squadron follows suit.

  Linked to the black box there is a one-metre-square delton detector which in a year or two, as we get considerably closer to Beachhead City, should begin to pick up other delta particles and provide course confirmation. Sometimes I watch it, just in case, or just to pass the time, but there isn't really any need. It would feed a fresh bearing into the course reference automatically, and is also fitted with an audio attention-getter. I still watch it, though … and dream about EL. No abbreviations – Elizabeth Lindstrom.

  Day 23. Estimated range: 278,050 kilometres

  We've completed perhaps a fortieth of the journey, having flown a distance roughly equivalent to going round the Earth seven times. Without stopping. Another way to reckon it is that, after 23 days, we've gone nearly as far as a ray of light would have travelled in one second, but that's a depressing thought to anyone who has been accustomed to Arthurian flight at multiples of light-speed. A more positive thought is that we've learned quite a lot about O.

  Somehow, I'd always thought of it as being composed entirely of featureless prairie, but I was wrong. Perhaps it started off that way, eons ago, and the subsequent action of wind led to the formation of the mountains we've seen. None of them was very high, not more than a couple of thousand metres, but with the land area of five billion Earths not yet explored who's to say what will be found? The mountains are there, anyway, and some of them are capped with snow because our flight is taking us into the winter sector, and there are rivers and small seas. Our formation passes over them in a dead straight line, quietly and steadily, and sometimes the telescopes pick up herds of grazing animals. Perhaps settlers will not have to rely exclusively on vegetable protein, after all.

  The unexpected variegation of the terrain is making the journey a little easier to endure, but after a time all seas are the same, all hills look alike…

  When I wrote in an earlier entry that the five of us in the lead ship were luckier than the others in having more to do, I was not thinking about the members of the science staff. Sammy Yamoto in No 4 seems to be fully occupied with astronomical readings, including precise measurements of the width of the day and night bands as we cross them, or as they cross us. He now says that, even with improvised equipment, he could probably take a bearing on Beachhead City which would be accurate to within a degree or so. I suspect he is passing up his turn at the flying controls so that he can carry on with his work. I hope this is not the case, because he is one of the least expert pilots and needs the practice. Although five per ship is ample crew strength, this could be cut down, by illness, for example, and I'm making no provision for unscheduled stops. Any ships which have to go down for long periods will be stripped and left behind. With their crews.

  Cliff Napier in No 2 is filling in free time by helping Denise Serra in a series of experiments connected with recording radiation and gravity fluctuations.

  Sometimes – in fact, quite often – I find myself wishing Denise was on my ship. I could have arranged it at the start, of course, but I wanted to play fair with her. Having turned her down that night, I felt the least I could do was avoid obstructing the field. But now …Now when I dream about Aileen and Chris I dream they are dead, which means I'm beginning to accept it, and with the acceptance my pragmatic, faithless body seems to be nominating Aileen's successor. I feel ashamed about this, but perhaps it is not as purely physical as I was supposing.

  Delia Liggett, who was a catering supervisor on the Bissendorf, is on my ship and two of the other men have a good practical relationship with her – but I can't work up much interest in a hot bunking system. I'm positive this isn't a ridiculous remnant of a captain-to-crew attitude, a notion that I ought to have her exclusively because I had the most silver braid on my uniform.

  Outside the agreed goals of this mission I have, probably with some assistance from the pervading influence of the Big O, completely discarded the old command structure. I do remember, though, feeling some surprise at the make-up of the thirty-nine volunteers who came with me. My first supposition was that they would all be of executive rank and above, career-oriented men and women who were determined to take the Bissendorf incident in their stride. Instead, I found that over half of the seventy original volunteers were ordinary crewmen. Those who remained, after the selection procedure which cut the number down to the precise requirement, I regard and treat as exact equals.

  O makes us equal.

  In comparison to it we are reduced to the ultimate, human electrons, too small to admit of any disparity in size.

  Day 54. Estimated range: 620,000 kilometres

  We have completed our first scheduled landing and are in flight again. After fifty days in the air, the prospect of three days on the ground was exhilarating. We landed in formation on a level plain, the eight fully qualified pilots at the controls, and spent practically all the down-time in gathering grass and loading it into the processing machines. This is what passes for winter on O. The sun is still directly overhead, naturally enough, but with the days being shorter the temperature does not build up as high and has a much longer time to bleed away at night. It results in nothing more than a certain briskness in the air during the day, although the nights are a lot colder. (It makes me wonder why the designers of O bothered to build in a mechanism to provide seasons. If the hostel-for-the-galaxy notion is correct, presumably the designers carried out a survey of intelligent life-forms in their region of space to see what the environmental requirements were. And if that is the case, the majority of life-bearing worlds must closely resemble Earth, even to the extent of having a moderately tilted axis and a procession of seasons. Could this, for some reason I don't fathom, be a universal pre-requisite for the evolution of intelligence?)

  It seems that weather isn't going to be any problem during future stops, but our physical condition might. The simple task of cutting and gathering grass pretty well exhausted a lot of people, and now we are instituting programmes of exercises which can be performed on board ship.

  Day 86. Estimated range: 1,038,000 kilometres

  With more than a million kilometres behind us, it was beginning to look as though our journey time would be better than predicted, but the first hint of mechanical difficulties has shown up. The starboard propeller bearing on ship No 7 has started to show some wear. This is causing vibration at maximum cruise and we have had to reduce fleet speed by twelve kilometres per hour. The loss of speed is not very significant in itself, because it could be compensated for by extended engine life, but the alarming thing is that the propeller shaft bearings on all the ships are supposed to have been made in Magnelube Alloy Grade E. It is inconceivable that a bearing made to that specification could begin to show wear after only 83 days of continuous running – and the suspicion crosses my mind that Litman may have substituted Magnelube D, or even C. (I do not believe he would have done this out of pure malice, but if there was a shortage of blocks of the top grade metal and I had discovered it I would have ordered a redesign or would have stripped some of the Bissendorf's main machinery to get t
he bearings. Either way, Litman would have had a lot of extra work on his hands, and the person he has become would not take kindly to that.)

  We must now keep a careful watch on all propeller shaft bearings because we carry no stocks of Magnelube Alloy and, in any case, barely retain the ability to machine it to the required tolerances. Like archaeologists burrowing deeper into the past, we are retrogressing through various levels of technical competence.

  In the meantime, the flight continues uninterrupted. Over prairies, lakes, mountains, seas, forests – and then over more and more of the same. A million kilometres is an invisible fraction of O's circumference, and yet seeing it like this has stunned one part of my mind. I was taught at school that a man's brain is unable to comprehend what is meant by a light-year – now I know we cannot comprehend as much as a light-second. So far in this journey we have, in effect, encircled twenty-five Earths; but my heart and mind are suspended, like netted birds, somewhere above the third or fourth range of mountains. They have run into the comprehension barrier, while my body has travelled onwards, heedless of what penalties may fall due.

  Day 93. Estimated range: 1,080,000 kilometres

  Like Litman, like the others, I am becoming a different person.

  I sometimes go for a whole day without thinking about Elizabeth Lindstrom. And now I can think about Aileen and Chris without experiencing much pain. It is as if they are in a mental jewel box. I can take them out of it, examine them, receive pleasure – then put them back into it and close the lid. The thought has occurred to me that the life of a loved one must be considered algebraically – setting the positive total of happiness and contentment against the negative quantity represented by pain and death. This process, even for a very short life, results in a positive expression. I wish I could discuss this idea with someone who might understand, but Denise is on another ship.

  Day 109. Estimated range: 1,207,000 kilometres

  We have lost Tayman's ship, No 6. It happened while we were landing for our second scheduled stop, putting down in formation on an ideal-looking plain. There was a hidden spar of rock which wrecked one of Tayman's skids, causing the plane to dip a wing. Nobody was hurt, but No 6 had to be written off.

  (In future we will land in sequence on the lead aircraft's skid marks to reduce the risk of similar incidents.) Tayman and his crew-which includes two women-took the mishap philosophically and we spent an extra day on the ground getting them set up for a prolonged stay. Among the parts we took from No 6 were the propeller shaft bearings, one of which was immediately installed in No 7's starboard engine.

  I suppose the latter has to be regarded as a kind of bonus – fleet speed is back to maximum cruise – but the loss of Jack Tayman's steady optimism is hard to accept. Strangely, I find myself missing his aircraft most at night. We have no radio altimeters or equivalents because the conditions on O will not permit electromagnetic transmission, and the environment also makes barometric pressure readings too unreliable, so we use the ancient device of two inclined spotlights on each aircraft, one at each end of the fuselage. The forward laser ray is coloured red, the aft one white, and they intersect at five hundred metres, which means that a machine flying at the chosen height projects a single pink spot. Looking downwards through the darkness we can see our V-formation slipping across the ground, hour after hour, a squadron of silent moons, and the disappearance of one of those luminous followers is all too apparent.

  Day 140. Estimated range: 1,597,000 kilometres

  Within the space of ten days propeller shaft bearing trouble has developed on five ships, and fleet speed has been reduced by fifty kilometres an hour. Prognosis is that there will be continued deterioration, with progressive cuts in flying speed. Everybody is properly dismayed, but I think I can detect an undercurrent of relief at the possibility of so many aircraft having to drop out at the same time, thus providing for the setting up of a larger and stronger community. I have discussed the situation with Cliff Napier over the lightphone and even he seems to be losing heart.

  The only aspect of the matter which looks at all 'hopeful' is that the ships which have experienced the trouble are No 3 through to No 8, which reflects the order in which they came off the production line. The first and second ships – mine and Napier's – are all right, and it may be that Litman had enough Grade E metal available for our propeller bearings. I put the word hopeful in quotes in this context because, on reflection, it simply is not appropriate. Being reduced to two airplanes at this stage of the mission would be disastrous, and it would take fairly comprehensive technical resources to restore us to strength. Resources which are not available.

  I am writing this at night, mainly because I can't sleep, and I find it difficult to fight off a sense of defeat. The Big O is too…

  Garamond set his stylus aside as Joe Braunek, who had been in the cockpit serving as stand-by pilot, appeared in the gangway beside his bunk. The young man's face was deeply shadowed by the single overhead light tube but his eyes, within their panda-patches of darkness, were showing an abnormal amount of white.

  'What is it, Joe?' Garamond closed his diary.

  'Well, sir…'

  'Vance.'

  'Sorry, I keep … Do you want to come up front a minute, Vance?'

  'This gets us back to square one – is there anything wrong? I'm trying to rest and I don't want to get up without a good reason.'

  'There are some lights we can't explain.'

  'Which panel?'

  Braunek shook his head. 'Not that sort of light. Outside the ship – near the horizon. It looks like there's a city of some kind ahead of us.'

  seventeen

  At first sight, the lights were disappointing. Because the fleet was travelling roughly eastwards, the blue and darker blue bands which represented day and night on other parts of Orbitsville were arcing across the sky from side to side. The lower one looked in the eastern sky the narrower and closer together the bands appeared to grow, until they merged in the opalescent haze above the up-curving black horizon. Even when Braunek had shown him where to look Garamond had to scan the darkness for several seconds before he picked out a thin line of yellowish radiance, like a razor cut just below the edge of a cardboard silhouette.

  Delia Liggett, who was at the controls, raised her face to him. 'Is there any chance that…?'

  'It isn't Beachhead City,' Garamond said. 'Let's get that clear.'

  'I thought there might have been a mistake over distances.'

  'Sorry, Delia. We're working on a very rough estimate of how far the Bissendorf travelled, but not that rough. You can start looking out. for Beachhead City in earnest a couple of years from now.' There was silence in the cockpit except for the insistent rush of air against the sides of the ship.

  'Then what is that?'

  Garamond perversely refused to admit excitement. 'It looks like sky reflections on a lake.'

  'Wrong colour,' Braunek said, handing Garamond a pair of binoculars. 'Try these.'

  'It has to be an alien settlement,' Garamond admitted as the glasses revealed the beaded brightness of a distant city. 'And it's so far from the entrance to the sphere.'

  At that moment Cliff Napier's voice came through on the lightphone. 'Number Two speaking – is that Vance I can see in the cockpit?'

  'I hear you, Cliff.'

  Have you seen what we've seen?'

  'Yeah – and are you wondering what I'm wondering?'

  Napier hesitated. 'You mean, what's an alien city doing way out here? I guess they got to Orbitsville a very long time before we did. It might have taken them hundreds or thousands of years to drift out this far.'

  'But why did they bother? You've seen what Orbitsville's like – one part is as good as another.'

  'To us, Vance. Aliens could see things a different way.'

  'I don't know,' Garamond said dubiously. 'You always say things like that.' He dropped into one of the supernumerary seats and fixed his eyes on the horizon, waiting for the wall of daylight
to rush towards him from the east. When it came, about an hour later, sweeping over the ground with thought-paralysing speed, the alien settlement abruptly became an even less noticeable feature of the landscape. Although it was now within a hundred kilometres, the 'city' was reduced in the binoculars to a mere dusting of variegated dots almost lost in greenery. During the lightphone conversations between the aircraft there had been voiced the idea that it might be possible to obtain new propeller bearings or have the existing ones modified. Garamond, without expressing any quick opinions on a subject so important to him, had been quietly hopeful about the aliens' level of technology – but his optimism began to fade. The community which hovered beyond the prow of his ship reminded him of a Nineteenth Century town in the American West.

  'Looks pretty rustic to me.' Ralston, the telegeologist, had borrowed the glasses and was peering through them.

  'Mark Twain land?'

  'That's it.'

  Garamond nodded. 'This is completely illogical, of course. We can't measure other cultures with our own yardstick, but I have a feeling that that's a low-technology agricultural community up there. Maybe it's because I believe that any race which settles on Orbitsville will turn into farmers. There's no need for them to do anything else.'

  'Hold on a minute, Vance.' Ralston's voice was taut. 'Maybe you're going to get those bearings, after all. I think I see an airplane.'

  Numb with surprise, Garamond took the offered binoculars and aimed them where Ralston directed. After a moment's search he found a complicated white speck hanging purposefully in the lower levels of the air. The absence of any lateral movement suggested the other plane was flying directly away from or directly towards his own, and his intuition told him the latter was the case. He kept watching through the powerful, gyro-stabilized glasses and presently saw other motes of coloured brightness rising, swarming uncertainly, and then settling into the apparently motionless state which meant they were flying to meet him head-on. Ralston gave the alert to the six other ships of the fleet.