Dark Portal 1

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Text File | 1992-09-02 | 9.4 KB | 197 lines

@"About Turn" By Neale Grant 1994 "Sir," a worried-looking young officer said as he spun in his seat to face the ship's captain. "Yes, Cotter," said the Captain curtly. He was not an unpleasant man, but he tended to bite at his words when he was tense. "The 'New Hope'," said Cotter. "It's... not there." A range of conflicting expressions, including such things as fear, hope, surprise and a look of confirmed expectations, glimmered only briefly on the captain's face. "Not there?" he queried in a voice which was 95% steady. "Definitely not, sir," the nervous young officer assured him. "All scopes are negative." "Run a diagnostic," the captain ordered. "I already did. It came up negative. The instruments are fine." "Parks," said the captain evenly, "any long-range possibilities?" "A few," replied Parks, a man who looked far too burly to be a scan operator. "Several minor radiation sources unmarked on the charts. But the best bet, if our data on the New Hope's emission levels is correct, is about seven light years away. Direction... back along its route." "Seven light years!" exclaimed Cotter. "That's 140 years of journey time. How could they be that slow?" The captain frowned, but he was inclined to forgive the outburst. The inexperienced scanner was obviously annoyed at his inability to detect the ship in their sector, even if it was hardly his fault that it wasn't there. "Nevertheless," he said in measured tones, "as they are not where they should be, they must be somewhere they shouldn't." Unless something catastrophic has happened, he thought. "Make the jump," he ordered the navigator. Captain Ferguson sat in his quarters and thought. He thought of the great Generation Ships, which, despite later advances in technology, were still mankind's most impressive achievement by virtue of their scale alone. He thought of the extraordinary people who had volunteered to colonise the galaxy with their descendents, and by doing so had chosen never again to stand on Earth, or any other planet. He thought of how they were the lucky ones, avoiding the gradual breakdown of world order into an every-country-for-itself war. Scientific progress did not accelerate during the war, as many people believed it would; it was merely redirected into purely military channels. As a result it was another 213 years, 70 years after some semblance of peace had been restored to the world, that the hyperspace drive was perfected. Still, missed opportunities did not greatly concern Captain Ferguson, who was, like most successful leaders, essentially a practical man. When the countdown for re-entry to normal space began he dismissed the irrelevancies of his thoughts and made his way to the bridge. "... 2... 1... 0," intoned Navigator Morton evenly. There were almost two seconds of expectant silence before Cotter exclaimed "Bingo!" "Readings?" asked the captain. "Pretty normal. Less on infra-red than expected, but not a significant deviation," Cotter read from his displays. "Position?" "2000k nearer Earth than us.... No, 2001. Shit on toast, it's going the wrong way!" "Language, Cotter; remember where you are," reprimanded Captain Ferguson. "Comms, see if anyone wants to talk. Navigator, take us in." 217 years after its construction and still the door opened smoothly and silently, an impressive feat of construction and maintenance. But the door was not the only silent thing on the vast vessel; the movements of Captain Ferguson and his boarding party chased echoes down a corridor which seemed to have forgotten the concept of sound. It was immediately obvious, somehow, that the New Hope was a ghost ship. Something in the flat finality of the walls, something in the harsh white lighting, something in the precise timbre of the silence... whatever it was, it made the search a formality. The mighty ship was empty. "Nothing. Not... one... thing. Not even a cat, or a mouse, or even a bloody housefly." Captain Ferguson was raging. "What the hell is going on here?" His usual restraint was long forgotten. "Why is this ship going exactly the wrong way with not a living soul on board? Present company excepted, of course." "Sir," said 1st Boarding Officer Jarrid, making his own gap in the captain's monologue, "we've managed to access the log. Some of the entries have been 'tagged' somehow, highlighted. I think we're meant to read them." Ferguson calmed down significantly with the arrival of this good news. "Right," he said, still pacing the control room, "can you put it up on that big screen?" "I think so." "Do it." # Date: 13th January, 83 S.T. / 2134 A.D. # Entry made by: Joseph Bell (4th Ship's Captain) # Entry commences... It is difficult to know what to say to you who come after us, the descendents of myself and my friends. It is difficult even to describe why I have decided to highlight this log entry. But I feel it is important for me to make an attempt, for it may be that what I have discovered threatens our whole mission. There, that sounds ominous. Perhaps there is no need for this melodrama. Perhaps I am being too sensitive to the mood changes of my friends; but it is my job to be aware of the feelings of my crew, even if they themselves are not. If you of a future generation find that you have the same worry, this may be of some comfort to you. But enough of beating about the bush. I must tell you of the problem which plagues me. Let me start at the beginning, with our ancestors, the First Travellers. I think we have a reasonable knowledge of who they were and of how they thought. Even cutting away the inevitable glorification which has steadily accumulated around them, they were obviously adventurous people. They must have had an excess of the pioneer spirit in them to be prepared to give up their lives like that, and, naturally, we inherited some of their wanderlust. But we have nowhere to wander. Huge though the New Hope is, it is not nearly big enough. It is almost difficult to believe that this matter has not arisen before, because now I have noticed it I find the confinement of the ship oppressive. I dare not share my burden for fear of causing unrest but almost everyone is subtly restless, even though they have not yet realised why. I will put a thirty year delay on this entry, just to be safe. Of course, there is nothing we can do about it, stuck out here between the stars. It is our duty merely to live, so that our descendents will one day have a whole planet to roam... # Entry concludes. # Date: 2nd September, 139 S.T. / 2190 A.D. # Entry made by: Tina Carson (6th Ship's Captain) # Entry commences... At last we have done it. The decision has been made, and even now I feel the ponderous thrumming of the engines vibrating through the walls. We are returning to a world we have never known, yet yearn for every day of our lives with an aching homesickness. We are going to Earth! What attraction could an uninhabited planet possibly hold for us? Why should we have to endure this cold loneliness just because our great-great-great-great-grandparents didn't think about the consequences of their choice? We have restored our pride by taking positive action, instead of just... existing. Morale has rocketed upwards, except for a few malcontent dreamers. And we feel sure that the anarchy reported from Earth during the first few years of our voyage, while we were still in contact with our home, will have petered out by now. In any case, we can hardly find a worse place to live than our deserted planet would have been. There was a 5% chance that it would be uninhabitable but still they sent us. Fortunately they provided enough fuel for us to return if we had to, so we are able to go back now. We have found out what it means to have hope for the future, now that we are heading for our long-desired paradise... # Entry concludes. "Shit," said Ferguson quietly. "So that explains why the ship is so far off course. Oh Christ, why didn't we anticipate this? It should have been obvious. But where are they all?" "There's one more highlighted entry, sir. The very last one." "Put it up." # Date: 4th July, 172 S.T. / 2223 A.D. # Entry made by: Donald Carson Jnr. (7th Ship's Captain) # Entry commences... I wonder why I make this last entry. Mostly I do it from duty, because I am ordered to record all important decisions made by the Ship's Council or, as in this case, by a referendum of the entire population. But I also hope that some day someone will read it, and understand. What does Earth mean to us? Nothing. It is a name in books, and a vague but terrifying concept of a vast, overwhelming lump of rock. A few years before I was born my mother led a campaign to turn our mission around. She won, and the ship was pointed towards Earth. But now even she doesn't care any more, nor do the others who were most in favour of the decision. They tell us that travelling in one direction is no different from travelling in another, and they hate it. We all do. A 90% majority seemed a fair level for such an important decision. In the end we got 97% for, 1% against. For the past week we have been tidying up our affairs, tying up the loose ends of our lives. Tomorrow our fairly ample stocks of carbon monoxide will be introduced to the ventilation system and we will fall peacefully asleep. We have got nothing to live for. I pray that death will offer us more. # Entry concludes.