Open Writing

The void.

Black, limitless and eternal, the stars shining with a
clear and unrefracted light. Seen like this, Kerr reflected,
it was possible to believe that the ancients were right, that
each star represented a soul waiting to be born. The idea
that, somewhere in the universe, one of these pinpoints
winked out each time the spark of life was kindled in a
human womb held a certain comforting attraction this far
from home. Seen like this, it was almost possible to
imagine that massive stellar energy being transferred
across the universe to a waiting embryo, kick-starting its
soul as the miracle of the creation of life was
accomplished.

Then again, it could all be a bunch of horseshit.

Smiling sardonically at his own cynicism, Jason Kerr
pushed away from the observation port and allowed
himself to drift with practiced ease toward the far side of
the recreation lounge. Even now, he still found the
weightless sensation exhilarating, the closest thing to free
flight man had ever achieved. With a final glance through
the huge dome at the glittering array of stars that had at
first left him breathless with awe, and still appeared
anything but commonplace, Kerr punched in the codes
that would ensure the next chamber was pressurized and
aerated.

This simple action had, by its sheer necessity, become
second nature to Kerr and all others on board the Asimov.
While some parts of the ship required air, it was neither
necessary nor practical to supply the entire vessel at once.
Most of the huge interior was unoccupied by human life;
any, that is, that required anything but the most basic in
life support. Therefore, when the crew moved from one
part of the ship to another, they took their air with them.

The ship’s drive was non-operational for most of the
voyage, but the fusion plant still functioned, supplying
energy to the ship. The drive, a conventional rocket
system able to be operated for very long periods, was
fueled by hydrogen. Water was separated into its
components, and the energy from each atom of hydrogen
was harnessed by the miracle of the fusion process.
Excess hydrogen was stored against the time when the
drive would be needed again. Any pockets of free
hydrogen the ship encountered in space were scooped and
also stored, while the oxygen was channeled straight to
the life-support system.

Kerr waited patiently beside the airlock for the cycle to
complete itself. Elsewhere in the ship, the other members
of his shift were going about their assigned tasks in much
the same manner as himself. None of their duties was
particularly demanding; the computer that ran the ship did
so automatically, and would have continued to do so even
if no humans were on board. However, no one was
willing to entrust their lives quite so completely to a
machine running untended for so long, not even a
computer as sophisticated as the Asimov’s.

So the alert roster had been drawn up and implemented
from the start of the journey. In groups of five, the
sleepers were awoken and served each tour of duty for
one month, and the number of adults on board, about four
thousand, meant that it was a three-time duty for most of
them. At the end of their tour, they handed over to the
next shift and returned to their individual cryosleep units,
there to remain until their next rostered shift came around.

With a sigh of equalized pressure, the lock finished its
cycle and the heavy titanium alloy door began to swing
open. When it had opened far enough, Kerr pulled himself
through; a dangerous practice, he knew, but one of which
they were all guilty, despite the numerous warnings they
had been given. The consequences of being caught in the
doorway should a malfunction occur, when the door
would automatically close, were not to be considered.

Safely through, Kerr entered the code for evacuation of
the chamber he had just vacated, and the door closed.
During this operation, the ship’s “eyes” scanned the room
for life forms - had it found any, fail-safe devices would
have kicked in, and the evac would be halted. But there
was no one there, and the operation proceeded. The air
was routed to one of the huge tanks where it would be
scrubbed and filtered, purified and stored for later re-use.
Then the cycle would be repeated. And so on, and so on,
forever and ever, amen, thought Kerr, as he drifted down
a long corridor between rows of circuitry. He saw nothing
wrong, nothing that required his attention, as usual. No,
scratch that, he thought. As always.

Kerr continued to drift along the length of the room, so
like many other rooms on the ship. Banks of electronic
machinery lined the aisle he was in, its silver facia
gleaming against the pristine white of the floor, walls and
ceiling. Apart from a faint hum, barely discernable,
everything was deathly quiet. It was the same all over the
ship; the only sounds were those made by humans, five
people who were spread thinly throughout its vastness.

There had never been a failure or malfunction of any
kind in the one hundred and ninety-three years of the
journey’s duration. Even course changes, rarely
necessary, were handled by the ship’s massive brain. It
was enough, reflected Kerr, to make you feel a little
superfluous. Surplus to requirements, even.

Kerr glanced at his chrono, a wafer-thin disc set into
the material of his one-piece coverall, which, along with
underwear, t-shirt and sneakers, was all he and the others
ever wore. Its silvery face told him he had only two point
four hours until his month-long shift was up, and that
suited him just fine. Although they were only one more
shift away from their final destination, he would not be
sorry to return to his sleep cell and join the thousands of
other sleepers in safe oblivion.

Some of his shift had argued that they should pull
double duty, and stay awake with Volkin’s crew. This
proposal had been voted down, and he and the others
would go back to the freezers for one more month. The
knowledge that the next time he awoke they would have
reached their goal gave him a small, nervous flutter in the
pit of his stomach; he pushed it aside. Time for personal
demons later, he thought. For now, concentrate on the
task at hand.

Kerr finished his systems check, and made the
appropriate notations on his slate. After the customary
two-second delay, the figures disappeared, transferred to
the billion-gigabyte ship’s memory. No matter where you
were on the ship, you were always in contact with the
computer. As he donned an environment suit for the five
hundred-meter EVA crossing to the command center,
Kerr reflected how this always gave him a sense of
security, of family. It was something he and the others
had lacked for a very long time.

* * *

Jason Kerr clipped his lifeline to the recessed ring on
the hull’s exterior and watched the lock close. He checked
his suit again while he waited; even though he had done
so while inside, not to do it was unthinkable. Careless
spacemen had a very short life expectancy, and Kerr
planned to live at least a hundred standard years, or more.

Making sure he was clear of the cycling lock, Kerr
studied the environment into which he had entered. Even
if the view from the recreation lounge should one day
pall, there was no danger of that happening here on the
outside. No matter how many times he went EVA, Kerr
never lost his sense of wonder, of awe, at the
immeasurable vastness of the cosmos. Stars sparkled all
around him as he stood on the hull, tethered by his line,
and he checked his suit’s telemetry for the magnetic field
that surrounded the ship, vital to their survival in this
harsh and unforgiving place.

Without the field, they could never move through the
void at their present velocity of more than twenty million
kilometers per hour without sooner or later encountering
one of the objects that fill so-called “empty” space. From
meteorites to dust particles, space abounded with hazards
and obstacles that had to be avoided and overcome. Even
with the computer to guide them, they would long ago
have been compromised, the hull breached and all of them
killed.

Even a tiny particle the size of a pea traveling at such a
speed would penetrate the strongest metal, causing
damage that could range from containable to catastrophic.
The field deflected these tiny pieces of space debris and
absorbed the larger ones, slowing them to a speed at
which they became manageable. Any really large object,
of course, would not be slowed sufficiently, but Kerr and
the others had learned that it was best not to think of such
things. The likelihood of such a collision was extremely
small, and the computer would see it coming and take
appropriate action. Whether through good luck or good
management, probably a combination of the two, they had
come this far without incident.

They were presently moving at more than five and a
half thousand kilometers per second, or just over two
percent of the velocity of light. At this speed, they were
covering the distance from the earth to Luna every
minute. Thought of in those terms, such a rate of travel
never failed to impress Kerr.

Relative to their surroundings, of course, they appeared
to be motionless. There was no sensation of movement,
and the stars and nebulae around him did not move. Or, if
they ever did, it would be over a long period, far more
time than he had. Kerr shook his head. Let the physicists
worry about that sort of thing, he thought. It was enough
for him, a mere systems specialist, to know they were as
safe as they could possibly be from the many perils of
space travel.

* * *

If the computer was the brain of the ship, then the
fusion reactor, the power source that ran all the ship’s
systems, was its heart. It generated the immensely
powerful magnetic field surrounding the vessel; large
enough to power Old New York or London, the reactor’s
energy was largely dormant now. When they neared their
goal, a significant portion of its power would be needed to
bring the ship from its present velocity to a more sedate
speed, and then into orbit around Procyon VII, their
ultimate destination.

Kerr checked his CO2 bottle, and his tether, then demagnetized
his boots and pushed off the hull. Orienting
himself, he faced the command center and touched the
control on his suit’s arm that sent bursts of the gas from
the bottle, constantly replenished by his own exhalations,
propelling him across the gap, his lifeline slowly
unreeling from the spool on the back of his suit. Once he
was moving and on course, he relaxed a little and scanned
the sight below him.

The bulk of the United Earth Ship Isaac Asimov, vast
and silent, lay beneath him, ahead and behind. The
magnetic field, while very efficient, was not perfect, and
small particles did get through from time to time.
However, they were greatly slowed by the field’s
dampening effect, a little like firing a gun into a pool of
water, and did little damage. He had made this inspection
often, covering this section of the hull several times
during his shift. Others of the crew would examine other
sections, and in this way the entire ship would be scanned
at least once every shift.

To date, even after so long in space, no real damage
had been discovered, only the expected pitting and
scouring. Occasionally, an exterior fixture such as a
communications antenna or sensor probe would need to
be repaired or replaced, but such occurrences were rare,
and nothing more serious had ever happened.

Kerr kept his eyes on the hull as he passed over its
rough, dark surface at the prescribed one meter per
second, looking for defects. The huge ship filled all of his
vision; fifteen hundred meters long, it resembled nothing
so much as a latter-day dirigible, a twenty-second century
Zeppelin hanging in space. The hull was a dark gray
color, and as he drifted above it at the regulation height of
two meters, Kerr noticed that one of the communication
probes had suffered some damage. After noting its
location, and sending the information to the computer, he
continued on his way. His shift was nearly over; there was
not enough time to return to the center, get a spare part
out of stores, and replace it. Someone from the next shift
would have to attend to it, he thought, as he entered the
information into his suit computer, and thence to the
ship’s brain. Then, eyes partly on the hull and partly on
his destination, Kerr continued on his way, a small, lonely
figure against the massive backdrop of the ship, and the
tapestry of the stars beyond.

* * *

Jason Ellery Kerr was born in San Francisco in 2092,
the only child of Martin and Judith Kerr. His mother was
a medical doctor, and his father a writer of detective
mysteries, hence Jason’s given middle name. The young
Jason had a good childhood; as he always liked to say, his
parents doted on him, but he managed to emerge more or
less unscathed from the experience, and even enjoyed it at
times.

He was a B-plus student at high school, and early on
showed an aptitude for things electrical and electronic.
The mysteries of laser circuitry, so baffling to most of his
contemporaries, were as clear as crystal to him, and he
raced through the school’s curriculum in record time. The
move to computer science was a small step, and he gained
his degree in 2113 from Stanford at the tender age of one
month past his twenty-first birthday.

Jason went to work as a systems analyst for the United
Earth Federation, which everyone but the politicians still
called “The Government”. Specializing in the
unfashionable science of hardware development, in an age
when virtually everyone was into the more lucrative
domain of software, Jason found the field relatively clear
of competition, and he began to make a reputation for
himself as an expert technician.

He was thirty years old and still unmarried when both
of his parents were killed in a groundcar accident, coming
home from a dinner where his father had received a
Mystery Writer’s of America award for his latest book.
After he had gotten over the worst of the trauma, Jason
took a few months off, traveling to far-flung parts of the
world and belatedly thinking about things in general; his
life, its direction and what he wanted for his future. His
parents had left him well provided-for, with a house in
Pacific Heights and a sizable inheritance. But, having
seen and experienced something of the world, Jason had
other plans, and they didn’t include sitting around a
comfortable neighborhood working for the government
until he retired.

Just after his thirty-first birthday, he heard about the
colonizing mission, and was almost immediately hooked.
He applied, was accepted, and left earth with no regrets,
barely looking back as they blasted off from the Cape in
the shuttle which took them to the waiting colony ship, a
thousand kilometers above the earth.

And now, here he was, boldly going, etc. He grinned
inside his helmet and signaled the computer that he was
approaching the airlock. Time to go bye-byes again, he
thought. Then Procyon, and a new world, a new life.
Eagerly, he entered the codes and waited for the lock to
open.

* * *

Inside the ship, the other four members of Kerr’s shift
were preparing to wind up their operation. In just over
thirty more minutes, the ship’s computer would begin the
process that would culminate in another five sleepers
being revived to begin the final month-long tour of duty.
In the control room immediately aft of sleep center three,
shift leader Mike Sargeson was collating the last of the
data his people had collected. Presently, he sat back and
stretched, then turned to the only other person in the
room.

“Tell you what, Cody,” he said. “Why don’t you go get
Matthews and Le Grice from the infirmary? They ought
to be winding up their inventory about now.”

Janice Cody smiled, her dark eyes reflecting her
feelings for the man. She and Mike had been lovers for
the past two weeks, and both had vowed to continue the
relationship when they reached Procyon VII. She pushed
off the wall from where she had been watching the stars
through a small portal, grabbing her beltcom as she
passed the shift boss.

“Aye, aye, sir,” she smiled, snapping a salute.

The young woman moved towards the door, then
turned and drifted back to where Sargeson was sitting,
embracing him from behind and nibbling his ear.

“Think we can find a spare half-hour before we go
back into the freezers, Mike?” she asked.

Sargeson sat back in his chair, feigning disinterest.

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s only one more month.
Wouldn’t you just as soon wait?”

Janice smiled and nipped his ear. “That’ll be the day,”
she said. “I want a piece of my man before we lock
down.”

Sargeson reached behind himself and pulled her
against him, his hands lightly gripping her trim butt.

“Which part did you have in mind?” he said. Janice
chuckled wickedly and reached down to his lap, lightly
brushing her hand over his penis, which was rising
rapidly.

“Hold that thought, big boy,” she said. “See you soon.”
She floated over to the door and cycled the lock, then
flashed him a final smile full of promise, and was gone.

Sargeson watched her trim form with admiration as she
left the room. Underneath that coverall was the most
exciting body he had ever seen in all his 29 objective
years of life. She could do things in free-fall that…with
an effort, he pulled his attention back to the figures.

Whoa, boy, he thought. That way lies a raging hard-on.
Just thinking about her excited him; they would have to
find some time together before they went back to sleep,
just to last them until the journey’s end. He shook his
head to clear it of lustful images, grinned and began
signing off the shift. All that remained were the last
pieces of data from the others; then, in a couple of hours,
they would be back with the sleepers again, and the next
thing they knew, they would be waking up to a whole new
world. He smiled to himself, and whistled a tune under his
breath as he worked.

(To be continued next Monday)