Open Writing

“Well, what do we do now, doc? Any suggestions?”
Holly looked glumly at the image seated next to her in the
computer room. She had returned there with Jase after
they had heard Hoddle’s ultimatum, not knowing what
else to do. At first, she had thought it might be best just to
let Hoddle have his way; after all, returning the Russian
and even Jase to the sleep cells might be the best thing she
could do for them. At least they would be out of Hoddle’s
reach. And anyway, they were going to establish a colony
before; this way, they would still achieve that goal. The
sleepers would never, in their present condition, be able to
do anything for themselves, and there was no real
indication that they would ever be able to.

Then Holly thought of Chrissie, and Cathy Marshall
and Li Chiang. A psychopath had butchered them, and
any concession to their murderer would be a betrayal of
their memory, and all that they had hoped and dreamed.
Also, it seemed pretty clear from what Hoddle had said
that the male sleepers would be disposed of, probably just
murdered out of hand.

Never, she determined. As long as she had breath in
her body, she would resist the madman. The only problem
was, Hoddle seemed to hold all the cards. The computer,
too, was bound to do his bidding, up to a point, and could
not be instructed by Holly to act against him. Holly had
also asked the computer if it could return them to earth,
and it had replied that while Holly could issue that
instruction, Hoddle could just as easily countermand it,
should he gain control of the ship.

But there was one thing of which the Englishman was
apparently unaware. While it was true that the computer
could not harm a human being, it also could not just stand
by and allow a human being to be harmed, if there was
any way it could prevent such a thing from happening.
Hoddle obviously had not been as avid a reader of sci-fi
as Holly herself had. And that might yet be something she
could turn to her advantage.

Asking the computer directly had produced a
frustratingly ambiguous reply. Apparently, the question of
which law superseded which was something that The
Doctor could not speculate on. Every case had to be
decided on its merits, and it had to wait until the situation
actually presented itself before it could know just what it
would do. As it unhelpfully explained, there were just too
many variables for it to be able to give a definite answer.

This, of course, did not help Holly in her immediate
situation. On the one hand, she could return Jase and
Selenkov to the sleep cells; that would make them safe;
safer, at least for the moment, than they would be
anywhere else. But then she would be alone, just her
against a homicidal maniac. Hoddle obviously wanted her
awake for a reason, otherwise he would have told her to
join the others in the cells. What that reason was, she had
no idea, but she knew she wasn’t going to like it when she
eventually found out.

Holly had even speculated to the computer about the
possibility of using one or both of the men against
Hoddle.

“I mean, look at Yuri, Doc. No offense to him, but he’s
a gorilla. If we could get Hoddle close enough to him,
Yuri would rip his arms off and beat him to death with
them.”

There had been a moment of silence, and the Doctor’s
image had flickered in the chair beside her.

“What is it, Doc? What’s the matter?”

“Oh, I just had a picture of what you described in my
mind’s eye, Holly. Very much against my programming.
Gave me quite a turn. I couldn’t allow a thing like that to
happen. If I possibly could, I would have to do everything
I could to prevent it from happening.”

Holly stared at the screen. “What, even though
Hoddle’s going to...”

“Even so, Holly. I cannot allow a human being to come
to harm or, by inaction...”

Holly nodded. “Okay, I get the picture, Doc.”

And there they were, no closer to a solution than they
had been, with Hoddle’s deadline fast running out.

There was also the question of turnover. They were
now less than seven hours from the point where they
would have to either fire the braking thrusters or change
their course if they were to miss the not inconsiderable
bulk of Procyon A. There were only three hours of
Hoddle’s deadline left, and Holly had still not begun the
process of returning Jase and the Russian to their sleep
cells.

There was also another deadline that she was mindful
of: Caleb. The child-man’s environment suit would, if
Hoddle was to be believed, run out of air in about four
hours. And Holly was still no closer to a decision than she
had been an hour ago.

* * *

And an hour later, Holly was still pondering these
weighty questions when Jase drifted into the computer
room. He had been cleaning the cabin where Li Chiang
had been found, and seeing to the Chinese woman’s
remains, a task Holly was grateful to him for completing.
She was sick at heart; everything that had happened since
she had awakened to begin what was to be the last shift of
the voyage had come crowding in on her in the last couple
of hours, and she was close to emotional overload.

Jase moved to her side, and held her tightly while she
wept quietly. After a few minutes, she had regained
sufficient control of herself to at least wipe her eyes and
smile gratefully at him.

“Thanks, Jase,” she said. “I needed that.” She looked at
him lovingly, and touched his cheek. “Thank God I’ve got
you,” she said. “I don’t know how I would have coped on
my own.”

Jase smiled self-consciously. “Aw, you w-would have
been f-f-fine, Holly. Probably better off ’cos you wouldn’t
h-have to worry about m-m-me.”

Holly shook her head and held him, whispering in his
ear. After a minute or two, Jase eased away and drifted
over to the computer console and sat in a chair. Then he
turned and looked at Holly again, and spoke hesitantly..

“I know I-I-I’m not very s-smart, Holly, but could I s-
s-say something?” Holly nodded, and her lover went on,
glancing at the image of The Doctor to include the
computer in what he had to say, his halting speech tearing
at Holly’s heart.

“I h-heard you talking to the c-c-computer before. W-
we have to fire the r-r-rocket to slow down, d-don’t we?”
When Holly nodded, he continued. “And w-we have to d-
do it by f-f-four o’clock?” Again Holly signaled assent.
“S-so,” continued Jase, “what I w-wondered, is there any-
anything to s-s-stop us from d-doing it early?”

Holly stared at her lover, her tired brain not
immediately registering what he had said. Then, as the
implications slowly began to dawn, she stared again, this
time in wonder. Out of the mouths of…. She crossed the
room, hugged him tightly, and said, “Not a thing, Jase Not
a blessed thing.”

Of course! she thought excitedly. Initiate the braking
sequence early. Anticipate Hoddle’s deadline, catch him
off-guard! He won’t be expecting that, he’ll think we’ll
wait right till the end, leave it to the last possible moment
to try to find a way to stop him. It won’t occur to his
massive ego that we may have already found a way.

Excitedly, she turned to the holographic image. “Doc,
can the braking maneuver be initiated before the four am
deadline?”

There was just the slightest hesitation, then the
computer said, “Well, I guess so, Holly. We can fire the
thrusters pretty much any time we want. How much
before?”

She thought for a moment. “I’m not sure yet, Doc. It
all depends…” She trailed off and stared into space,
shocked and dismayed at the idea that had leapt,
unbidden, into her mind. Oh my God, she thought. Did
that come from me? Did I really think of that? It was a
measure of how much the last few weeks had changed her
that she was even able to conceive of such a plan, let
alone actually consider carrying it out. Maynard
Glendenning and Senator Rathbone would not now have
recognized the shy, bookish tutor they had so cruelly
manipulated, and might even have found reason to be a
little afraid of her.

Holly was quiet as she forced herself to think through
the idea and its possible consequences and implications.
Then, gathering her courage, she turned to Jase and the
computer’s image again and began to outline to the
computer the terrible scheme she had devised.

* * *

An hour later, it was eleven p.m., one hour to go before
Hoddle’s deadline expired, and five hours before
turnover. Holly was in her environment suit and heading
for the midships airlock. There had been no time to return
the Russian to his sleep cell, so she had given him a
sedative and shut him in his cabin. Jase, however, had
been another matter.

Her lover had steadfastly refused to be left out of
things, and had insisted on helping her. At first, he had
repeated his desire to come with her, but she had
convinced him that she needed him inside the ship, to
“look after things there”. This was at least partly true, but
she also didn’t want to have to be worrying about him
while she was trying to deal with Hoddle outside the ship.
She knew that if anything happened to Jase, regardless of
the eventual outcome, she would not be able to live with
herself.

Eventually, she had been able to persuade him to stay
in the computer room, where she could be in constant
contact with him and The Doctor. Now, she reached the
airlock and spoke to Jase and the computer on a secure
internal channel, one that Hoddle could not possibly
intercept.

“I’m at the airlock, Jase. You can start the sequence
now.”

Jase stammered an affirmative, and the airlock before
her began to cycle. When the indicator told her the lock
was aerated, she touched the control on her side and the
door swung open. She stepped through and it closed
behind her, then she waited while the small space was
purged of atmosphere. “The l-lock is ready, Holly,” said
Jase.

“Thank you, Jase,” she replied. “Open the outer door
now.”

With an inaudible sigh, the outer door of the airlock
swung slowly open, and Holly gazed out at the sparkling
brilliance of the stars. She had forgotten how they looked
from the outside, and she thought back to the last time she
had come this way. Only a few weeks ago, the ship had
been intact, all of her shift members had been alive, and
the sleepers had been safe and well. And then, because of
one small rock, against almost infinitesimal odds....For a
moment, the sorrow threatened to overwhelm her, and she
took a moment to regain her composure. Not now, she
told herself; later you can mourn them, but not now.

She moved to the edge of the airlock and attached her
lifeline to the recessed ring on the outer hull, then stepped
into space. She drifted slowly up the side of the great
ship, all senses preternaturally alert, using only tiny puffs
from her CO2 jet to propel her. As she cleared the upper
surface of the ship, she looked forward and saw Hoddle
immediately. He was tethered near the bridge section,
almost two hundred meters away. Tethered near him
floated another suited figure, and she knew it had to be
Caleb.

The massive, blazing bulk of Procyon A reared up
behind them; Holly was amazed and a little alarmed at
how much closer they had drawn to the star since she had
last been out here, but she had no time to admire the view.
Palms perspiring inside her suit gloves, Holly switched
her radio to the standard channel; a moment later,
Hoddle’s voice sounded in her helmet.

“What are you doing out here, Holly?”

“I want a face-to-face, Hoddle. I’ve got a proposition
for you. Is Caleb all right?” After a short pause, the suave,
cultured voice came back to her.

“He’s perfectly fine, Holly. Why don’t you come down
here and see for yourself?”

Holly shook her head inside her suit helmet. “No, I
want to speak with him first.”

There was a moment’s silence, then Caleb’s voice
sounded in her helmet. “H-Holly? Tha’ you?”

Holly almost sagged with relief. “Yes, it’s me, Caleb.
You just relax and take it easy, and I’ll have you back
inside in no time.” Then she spoke to Hoddle again. “All
right, Hoddle, I’m coming down. What do I have to do to
make Caleb safe?”

She unhooked her tether and was drifting slowly
towards the two suited figures, still a hundred and fifty
meters distant, and Hoddle’s voice sounded in her suit.
“Holly, I’m disappointed in you. The computer reports
that you haven’t done what I asked. The Russian and your
lover-boy are not in their sleep cells.”

“There wasn’t time,” Holly protested. “The Russian is
in his cabin, under sedation, you can check that. And Jase
can’t possibly be any threat to you, neither of them can,
so why don’t you just let me tell you why I’m here?”
Holly paused, then, “Well? Can I come down?”

Hoddle was silent for a moment, then replied. “You
really are going to have to take me seriously, Holly.
Perhaps you are in need of a little demonstration.” He
reached for the tether holding Caleb to the bridge
superstructure, and Holly cried out in alarm.

“No, please don’t! I’ll do whatever you want.”

Hoddle paused, then let his arm fall slowly to his side.
“Very well,” he said, “I’ll take you at your word. But no
more tricks.”

Holly watched the man as she drifted closer, now less
than fifty meters away. Then he spoke again.

“Come down here, Holly, next to the nigger, and
attach your tether to the bridge housing.”

Inwardly fuming at Hoddle’s deliberate use of the
insulting word, Holly did as she was bid, moving into the
shadow cast by the bridge structure, and the star moved
slowly out of her field of vision. She drifted slowly
towards the two figures, heart hammering. It all depended
on Hoddle, strangely enough. She had to act in total
submissiveness, let him become overconfident. She
continued to advance, the pitted surface of the ship
gliding slowly by beneath her.

Finally, she reached the edge of the bridge housing,
and drifted to a halt alongside Caleb. She smiled
reassuringly at him through her faceplate, and attached
her tether to a recessed ring on the housing, then turned to
face the other man.

“Well, here I am, Hoddle. Now, will you listen...”

Hoddle smiled and produced a small object from one
of his suit pockets. He extended it towards her, and she
saw that it was a dart-gun. The small weapon fired a short
steel shaft about six inches long, propelled by compressed
air from a bottle built into the grip.

Holly knew that it was probably a more deadly weapon
than even a firearm in this environment; all it had to do
was puncture hers or Caleb’s suits. They were too far
from an airlock to regain the safety of the ship in time,
and they would be dead in less than a minute. Holly
looked at the man steadily as she moved protectively in
front of Caleb. As she did so, she saw a suited figure rise
up the side of the ship from the airlock and begin to move
slowly towards them.

Jase! she thought, her heart hammering, it must be! Or
Yuri? No, he was asleep in his cabin, she’d given him
enough sedative to knock out a horse. So it must be Jase.
What the hell was he doing? Desperately, she put the
question out of her mind. She knew she had to keep
Hoddle occupied, keep him talking, to give her lover a
chance to reach them. “What are you going to do with that
dart-gun, Hoddle?” she asked, watching the man
carefully.

Hoddle smiled behind his faceplate. “Why, Holly,” he
said smoothly, his urbane tones sounding in her helmet,
“I’m surprised you even have to ask. You surely must be
aware that I can’t leave you, or any of you, alive. Oh, I
know you think even if you went back to earth and told
all, I and several generations after me would be long
dead before a ship could get back here. However, by
judicious use of the sleep compartments, I will extend my
life well beyond its normal span. So I could conceivably
still be alive when another mission arrived.

“But I have a much more long-term plan in mind, one
that will be far better served by a successful landing on
Procyon Seven. Once that is accomplished, I will send a
message back to earth informing them of the terrible
tragedy that befell you and your fellow shift workers. But,
instead of you, it will be I who survived the meteor strike,
having been awake and monitoring the sleepers in
another part of the ship. I have no qualms about taking
credit for your actions, Holly; it is, after all, only what I
would have done, given the same circumstances.

“I also realize that the message won’t reach earth for
another two hundred years, Holly. But when it does, my
place in history will be assured. I will be a hero, a great
historical figure, the founding father of a new world. I
can’t leave anyone to tell another story. Therefore, you
and the others have to go. I will, naturally, erase all of
this from the computer’s memory, and substitute my
version of the facts.

“But I want to thank you for coming out here and
making it so easy for me. It really is better this way, you
know, in the long run. And by the way, I’m not really
interested in any proposition you might have for me. If, in
fact, you even have one.”

He looked at her mockingly for a moment, then said,
“You don’t do you? You just came out here hoping to
somehow get this...dribbler away from me and then in
some way overpower me.”

Holly grimaced. “I didn’t exactly have much choice in
the matter,” she said. Keep him talking, she thought to
herself, slowly backing herself and Caleb up until their
backs touched the metal wall formed by the bridge
structure. Jase was now less than fifty meters from
Hoddle, and closing fast, pulling himself along the surface
of the ship by handholds.

“So,” she said, “it looks like you hold all the cards,
Hoddle. I suppose you’re going to kill us both with that
gun you’re holding, then go inside and dispose of Jase
and the Russian?”

Hoddle smiled wolfishly. “That’s exactly right, Holly.
I wish we could have been…closer, but I see now that that
is not possible. And that really is too bad. You know, you
passed up a wonderful opportunity. You could have been
one of the founding mothers of a new world. Now, I
suppose I’ll just have to take care of that all by myself.”
He sighed theatrically, then chuckled. “Well, it’s a lousy
job, but someone’s got to do it.”

Hoddle smiled again and raised the dart gun, and Holly
said, quickly, “Just tell me one thing, Hoddle. Are you
going to kill us both now?”

Hoddle frowned, and said, “What does it look like? Of
course I’m going to…” His hand clenched on the gun,
then some instinct told him something was wrong. He
began to turn in the slow motion of space walking, but he
was too late. He had only half-completed the turn when
the flying figure of Jase Kerr crashed into him, and
Hoddle was lifted up and over the edge of the housing
where his tether was still attached. Holly grasped Jase’s
tether as it passed her, streaming out behind the
American, and pulled him back down to her, then called
out to the computer.

“Command Alpha, Doc! Now!”

Hoddle looked around in alarm, then back at Holly.
She pulled Caleb and Jase to her and they flattened
themselves back against the surface of the bridge
superstructure, rising up behind them. Hoddle opened his
mouth to say something, and then Holly was slammed
into the metal housing as the G-force hit her and the two
men, forcing them back against the rough and pitted
surface. Hoddle, who had drifted upward and above the
top of the bridge, seemed to simply disappear as the
braking thrusters fired and the great ship slowed its
forward momentum at a deceleration rate of almost four
gravities.

Dimly, she heard the Englishman’s despairing wail in
her helmet as he continued on at their original speed, his
tether snapped like a gossamer thread. Although there was
no sound from the ship’s engines, Holly could almost
swear she heard them thunder, but she knew it was only
the roaring of her blood in her ears caused by the G-forces
and the vibration through the hull. She cried out, holding
tightly to Caleb and Jase, screaming at them to hold on as
the force of their slowing flattened them against the outer
skin of the bridge.

After an age, which in fact was only one pre-arranged
minute, the computer cut the engines, and Holly sighed
with relief as the pressure was lifted and she and the two
men floated free once more. With Jase’s tether still held
tightly in her gloved hand, Holly rose and peered over the
top of the bridge. Of Hoddle, there was no sign. She
called him on her suit radio, and after a moment, his voice
came in scratchily through the static.

“…didn’t think…had it in you…how…
computer…First Law?”

Holly thought of how she hadn’t been sure how the
computer would react, whether it would, or even could
ignore its programming, which was why she had been so
deliberate in letting it know that Hoddle was about to kill
them. Nor had she told it why she wanted the thrusters
fired, only that she did. How she was going to maneuver
Hoddle into a position where she could give the
command, she’d had no idea; in that respect, Jase’s
appearance had presented the opportunity, and his
intervention had saved them all.

She tried to put this into words, then waited for a reply,
but the Englishman was by now too far away for the suit
radio, meant only for close proximity communication, to
pick him up. After a couple of attempts to contact him,
she gave up and concentrated on the task of getting
herself and Caleb and Jase back inside the ship.

As they moved along the length of the hull, Holly
glanced back at the huge disc of Procyon. For a moment,
she fancied she saw a small dot silhouetted against its
yellow-white background. She blinked, and when she
looked again, it was gone. Then she turned away and
together they drifted towards the airlock, and the safety of
the ship.