Chapter 4
Chryse Haller hovered ten meters from the starship’s airlock and gazed open mouthed at the two men silhouetted inside. One of them reached out to manipulate a control, and suddenly, the sensation of a thousand ants crawling over her skin was gone. One of the space suited figures bent at the waist and swept his arm through a gesture that was almost a parody of a host welcoming guests.
She twisted her backpack control stick and jetted forward, stopping only centimeters from the open airlock. The taller of the two crewmen reached out, grabbed her by the utility belt, and pulled her inside. He secured her safety line to a bulkhead-mounted paddock while the shorter crewman palmed a control. The airlock door closed and there was suddenly gravity around her.
Chryse had been floating with her boots twenty centimeters off the deck, holding herself steady with one hand wrapped around a convenient conduit. Her surprise was such that she did not attempt to soften the blow as she fell the short distance to the deck. The impact was strong enough to rattle her teeth.
“Well I’ll be damned,” she muttered. “Artificial gravity!”
The two crewmen waited for pressure to build up to safe levels—as evidenced when a warning light changed from red to green—then removed their helmets. Both were Caucasians with traces of other racial types in their ancestry. The older of the two was solidly built, dark haired and bearded. His partner was hardly more than a teenager, lanky, and blond.
A hand wheel set in the middle of the inner airlock door turned of its own accord (obviously operated by someone on the other side), and the door swung back on its hinges. The older crewman indicated by means of sign language that she should step through into the ship proper. Chryse nodded vigorously, unsnapped her safety line, and did so. She found herself in a sort of antechamber where four men in uniform gathered around the airlock. She moved into the middle of the chamber, stopped, and surveyed her surroundings.
The uniforms were blue one-piece jumpsuits. Each man wore an insignia on his upper right chest—two gold, eight-pointed stars (one large, the other significantly smaller) with a silver comet arcing away from them. Besides the stars-and-comet design, the men wore ornamentation on their collars that Chryse identified as being their insignia of rank.
The man with four stripes on his sleeves stepped forward and gestured for her to remove her helmet.
She reached up to undog her neck seal. She felt the usual “popping” in her ears, placed her hands on each side of the helmet, and lifted. Once the helmet had cleared her head, she dropped it to the end of its tether and cautiously sniffed the air. It was tangy, but breathable. She turned to her hosts.
“Our apologies,” the four striper said as he executed a passable bow, “for treating you so roughly. You weren’t injured, I trust.”
She blinked. She was almost as surprised by his words as she had been when the gravity suddenly switched on in the airlock.
“You speak Standard!” she said, struggling to keep her voice calm.
“Is that what you call it now? It is still English to us.”
She nodded. Suddenly everything fit. The officer had an accent that was slightly archaic—to match the archaic name he gave to the language. Their badges of rank were those common on Earth all through the twentieth and twenty-second centuries. The emblem on their uniforms showed a system with two stars—one large, one small. She had had a suspicion about the starship’s origin since she first spotted it.
“I take it that you people are from the Procyon system?”
The officer smiled. “Permit me to introduce myself. I am Captain Thomas Braedon, commanding Starship Procyon’s Promise. The gentleman to my right is Chaplain Havanita Ibanez; to my left, Scholar Horace Price; to his left, Scholar Louis Lavoir. The two men who fetched you are Able Spacer Simmons and Cadet MacKenna.
She bowed. “I am Chryse Haller.”
“You honor us with your presence,” the Captain said. “Is there anyone else aboard your ship?”
“No, Captain. I am alone.”
“I hope you will forgive our brusque method of bringing you aboard. It was necessary to make contact with someone from Earth as quickly as possible.”
“I understand.”
“You are most kind...”
“‘Citizen’ is currently in vogue, sir. It applies to both men and women regardless of marital status. The older forms are also used.”
“Thank you, Citizen Haller. As you can see, we Alphans have considerable catching up to do.”
“Alphans?”
“A term less cumbersome than ‘Procyonian.’ It refers to the long name for our home star, Alpha Canis Minor.”
“Perhaps Citizen Haller would like to get out of that bulky suit,” the man identified as Chaplain Ibanez said.
Captain Braedon nodded. “We have prepared a cabin for you if you would care to change. Have you ship wear?”
“Onboard the daycruiser. Perhaps someone could fetch it for me.”
Braedon’s manner changed abruptly. “Simmons, MacKenna, on your way!”
He turned back to Chryse. “It is two hours until the evening meal. Will you do me the honor of being my guest for dinner?”
“I look forward to it, Captain.”
* * *
Chryse Haller lay in an oversize tub and luxuriated in her first hot bath in three days. Luxury-class runabout or no, the daycruiser had included only the most primitive of washing facilities. She had been soaking for twenty minutes, considering the implications of her current situation, when someone knocked on her cabin door. She climbed hastily to her feet, slipped into a robe of some absorbent material, and cinched it around her. She padded across the carpeted deck of the spacious cabin in her bare feet, awkwardly worked the unfamiliar mechanical latch, and slid the door into its bulkhead recess.
A young woman stood in the corridor with Chryse’s kit bag dangling from one hand. She noted her visitor’s gray-green eyes, lustrous black hair, upturned nose, and full figure. She estimated the girl’s age to be twenty plus or minus two.
“Well, hello.”
“Hello,” the girl said, her voice pleasantly husky. “I’m Terra Braedon.”
Chryse reached out to shake hands. “Any relation to the Captain?”
“He’s my father.”
“Glad to meet you, Terra. I’m Chryse Haller.”
“Father asked me to bring your clothes and possibly answer any questions you might have before dinner.”
Chryse opened the cabin door completely and gestured for her guest to enter. “I’m honored that you’ve taken the time and trouble.”
“Oh, no trouble,” the girl said hastily. “He knew he wouldn’t be able to keep me away once I heard a woman from Earth was aboard.” The girl entered the cabin, gave Chryse the kit bag, and closed the door behind her.
Chryse smiled. The girl’s enthusiasm was infectious. “Somehow I got the impression that this ship had an all-male crew.”
“It very nearly does. Except for PROM, I’m the only woman aboard.”
“PROM?”
“Our ship’s computer. She’s a direct descendant of the original SURROGATE module.”
“You speak of this computer as though it were alive.”
“She’s not an ‘it.’ PROM’s female in everything but glands. She thinks, she is aware of her own existence, she experiences emotions. Sometimes, she even gets mad. Don’t you?” This last was apparently addressed to thin air.
“It comes from associating with you flesh-and-blood types,” a feminine voice said from out of a bulkhead speaker.
Chryse looked up sharply. “Has the computer been monitoring me?”
“PROM monitors everyone all the time. That is her function. Would you like to meet her?”
“Yes, I would.”
“PROM, may I introduce Chryse Haller from Earth? Chryse, PROM.”
“Good evening, Citizen Haller. I am honored to make your acquaintance,” the voice said.
“And I yours, PROM. My people have been striving to construct a self-aware computer ever since your ancestor left the system. We haven’t had much luck.”
“True artificial intelligence involves the construction of highly complex computational algorithms. I would have been greatly surprised if you had managed it in the short time we’ve been gone.”
“Short time? It’s been three hundred years!”
Terra laughed. “You’ll have to forgive her, Chryse. Her memories go back thousands of years. Sometimes she takes too long a view of things, don’t you, PROM?”
“I prefer to think of myself as being more mature than my ephemeral associates.”
“And not the slightest bit vain, either.”
“No, of course not. I would like to ask our guest a question.”
“Do you mind, Chryse? You do not have to answer, you know. I’m afraid PROM is a bit of a snoop.”
“Go ahead,” Chryse said.
“I’m curious as to why you are alone so far from home.”
“I’m on vacation. I was curious about the probe, found myself relatively close by, and decided to have a look.”
“If that is the case...”
“Say good night, PROM,” Terra hurriedly ordered. She turned to Chryse. “She’ll pester you to death, if you let her.”
“It was good to meet you, Citizen Haller,” the computer replied. “Call if you have need of me.”
“Good night, PROM.”
Chryse turned to the bed where her vacsuit lay sprawled out like a headless, sleeping monster. She pulled it off the sheet and laid it carefully where she would not trip over it. She untied her robe, slipped it off, and opened her kit bag. She was sorting through the few extra clothes she had brought from Henning’s Roost when she heard a quiet gasp somewhere behind her.
She turned to face Terra. The girl’s gaze was riveted to a bare section of steel bulkhead while her face slowly turned red. Chryse frowned for an instant before understanding came to her.
“Did I just make a mistake? How strong are your people’s taboos against nudity?”
The girl reddened even more. When she spoke, it was with great care. “Among us, one does not disrobe before strangers. Is it not the same with your people?”
Chryse shrugged. “Some places still maintain strong opinions on the subject, others not. Mostly, not.” As she spoke, Chryse selected a shipsuit and slipped into it, smoothing the sticktite seams into place with the palm of her hand. Terra’s reaction had confirmed her suspicions about Alphan society—technologically advanced (as evidenced by Procyon’s Promise), but sociologically retarded. Not surprising, of course. Most frontiers were.
“All right, you can look now.”
Terra turned toward her, obviously relieved, but also a little embarrassed. “I hope you don’t think us backward.”
“No, of course not. Customs differ. I just hope that I haven’t offended you with my own behavior.”
“Oh, no!”
“Good. Then we can be friends?”
“I would like that very much.”
* * *
Chryse continued to make herself presentable while she chatted with Terra. Terra’s desire to talk made it easy for Chryse to steer the conversation in directions she wanted it to go. After ten minutes or so, she found herself listening to Terra’s account of the history of the Alphan colony.
“...Of course, the Founders were dreadfully disappointed when they discovered the Star Traveler base was deserted. A minority wanted to head back to Earth immediately, while most voted to stay and study the estee starships.
“Those early years were busy times. Building the colony had first priority over research, of course, so progress was slow. It was thirty years before anyone learned how to operate the estee strip readers, and another century and a half before the scientists understood enough to build Promise. They launched the first load of steel into orbit the week I was born. We’ve been building ever since.” Terra glanced at the chronometer on the bulkhead over the bed. “It’s getting late, we’d best be going.”
Chryse’s eyes focused on the reflected image of the red glowing numerals in the mirror. “Plenty of time yet.”
“I thought you’d like to see the ship before we go up.”
Chryse grinned, rising hastily to her feet. “I’d love to.”
Procyon’s Promise, it turned out, was even bigger than she had originally thought. Seeing the whole thing in less than twenty minutes turned out to be a physical impossibility. Their first stop was the communications center, where two communicators sat amid the high-speed clicks and whines of the deep space comm net.
“What are they doing?” she asked.
“We’re monitoring your communications, trying to fill in the gaps in our history books. Actually, PROM is doing the monitoring. I hope you don’t think we’re spying on your people, Chryse.”
“Not at all. You would be foolish to barge into the system without knowing what to expect. There have been times when we would have shot first and asked questions later. Luckily, those days are long gone.”
After the communications center, Terra hurriedly showed her through environmental control, the auxiliary power room, and the hydroponics gardens. Whenever they passed a crewman on duty, Terra would stop to introduce her. During the third such encounter, Chryse found herself intrigued by the attitude the crewmen seemed to have toward their captain’s daughter.
Even the most brusque, hard-bitten spacer softened noticeably when speaking to Terra. The first time it happened, Chryse dismissed it as the normal reaction any woman would receive aboard a ship with an all-male crew. A few more random encounters, however, convinced her that what she was seeing was more complex than the operation of the male glandular system. The older crewmen, especially, seemed to view Terra with something approaching avuncular pride.
“You seem to be very popular,” Chryse said.
The younger woman grinned. “Because of the need to expand our population, we’re expected to marry early and have large families. I am eighteen, and already people back home have begun calling me an old maid behind my back. I don’t care. I take after my father. All I ever wanted to do was go into space.
“I remember when he used to take me along on his inspection trips. The technicians thought it was cute of me to be interested in ‘man’s work’. They used to talk to me about the ship. When I was twelve, I applied to the Spacer Academy in First Landing. Everyone was scandalized. When they checked the rules, though, they discovered there was no regulation prohibiting women from taking the entrance examination.
“I came in first that year and they had to enroll me. I worked hard, did well, and graduated at the top of my class. I was assigned as second pilot on one of the scout boats. The rest of the crew seems to have adopted me as kind of a mascot. I don’t mind. I’m where I most want to be.”
They reached an open hatchway through which the sound of many male voices emanated. Terra stopped and gestured toward it. “Here we are. Officer’s Mess—Quadrant Four, Outboard Corridor C-3, Beta Deck.”
* * *
The voices stopped as Chryse stepped over the raised coaming of the entry hatch. A dozen men clustered around the hatch. They all wore dress uniforms, darker blue and with more elaborate decorations than the uniforms she had seen earlier in the day.
“Here she is, Father,” Terra said after guiding Chryse to Captain Braedon.
Braedon nodded. “Thank you, Terra. Citizen Haller, I wish to present my First Officer, Commander Calver Martin.”
“Charmed,” Martin said, leaning forward to kiss her hand, a courtesy that had died out on Earth two hundred years earlier.
“An honor, sir,” she said in return.
“I’ve been looking over your vessel. A beautiful piece of work.”
“It’s a rental. It is beautiful, though.”
While she was busy with the First Officer, a noncom entered through a door opposite the one she and Terra had used. He held a silver bell aloft and tapped on it three times. “Ladies, gentlemen, dinner is served!”
Chryse offered Captain Braedon her arm and found herself escorted to one end of a table carved from dark wood with an intricate grain structure. The table was covered with matching place settings of cut crystal. Braedon held her chair for her, and then moved to take the seat at the head of the table.
Chryse glanced around. Commander Martin had the chair at the foot of the table, with Terra Braedon on his right. When everyone was seated, four white-coated stewards entered and immediately began pouring a red-purple liquid into glasses whose pattern matched those of the place settings.
Chryse watched with interest, suddenly aware that the mood was subtly changed. Where the men around her had been relaxed, they were now alert. There was an air of expectation. When fourteen glasses had been filled, Captain Braedon nodded to the chaplain from the airlock welcoming committee.
“Padre.”
Chaplain Ibanez pushed back his chair and stood up. His voice, when he spoke, was the soft, yet penetrating instrument of a trained speaker. “I will read from the Book of Pathfinder.
“We go out to the stars seeking neither advantage nor dominance. We will not be masters, nor shall we be slaves. We will be proud, but not vain. For with this ship we have finally expunged the sin of fratricide from our souls.
“Thus spake the Prime Councilor of the Council of Sovereign States in the year of our Lord, two thousand, one hundred and ninety six. Let us pray.”
The double row of men in blue bowed their heads in unison. Chryse did the same.
“Father of us all; Creator of the Universe and Man; Builder of Worlds and Suns...” Out of the corner of her eye, Chryse saw several people cross themselves. Others made less recognizable gestures. Ibanez continued: “We, Your servants, are of many faiths. We worship You in many different ways. Some know You as Allah, others as Vishnu or Siva; still others call you Father of Christ, or God of Moses.
“We, who are nothing without Your intercession, thank You for delivering us safely home to Father Sol. We ask that You continue to guide us, that we might once again walk the mountains and valleys of Mother Earth. We further ask, humbly, that You bless this, our greatest undertaking. We have come far with Your help. We beg Your continued assistance in helping us meet our obligations to those who have gone before. This we pray, in the name of Saint George and Saint Francis, of Joseph Smith, and of Your Prophet, Mohammed.
“Amen.”
There were several seconds of silence following what Chryse decided was the most ecumenical prayer she had ever heard. She could only guess at the stresses that had shoehorned so many competing ideologies together, or at the shared goal that must keep them there.
The Captain got to his feet. He was quickly joined by his officers and Terra. Chryse, caught off guard, hurried to follow. Braedon stood, his back straight, his eyes shining with a thin patina of emotional tears. He picked up his wine glass and held it aloft.
“Ladies and gentlemen. I give you, The Promise!”
“The Promise!”
* * *
Chryse lifted her glass to her lips and drained it with the rest of them. When the toast was over, and everyone had retaken his or her seat, she turned to Captain Braedon.
“An inspiring ceremony. What is its significance?”
The captain’s expression showed his puzzlement and some unidentifiable, deeper emotion. “Surely Earth hasn’t forgotten the pledge humanity made to SURROGATE before receiving the gift of the probe’s knowledge!”
Chryse sensed the underlying intensity in his voice. It made her feel like an impostor in church, one who has just been asked to lead the prayer service. She answered very carefully: “I’m well aware that pledges were given.”
Braedon leaned back and gazed upward. “PROM!”
“Yes, Robert.”
“Explain The Promise to Citizen Haller.”
“Gladly,” the computer responded. “As you are aware, Chryse, the main probe personality was destroyed in the attack of 2166. The subordinate personality, SURROGATE, survived, but was a virtual prisoner in the shattered hulk.
“It is difficult for a human to comprehend the depths of SURROGATE’s despair in those first moments after the attack. The probe had been on the verge of obtaining the secret of ftl, and that chance was suddenly lost. The knowledge of how close success had been was too much for SURROGATE. He resolved to follow his parent into oblivion.
“Luckily, he also considered that he owed a debt to the fleet that had defended him. He could not destroy himself without damaging the vessels around him, so SURROGATE contacted the CSS commander and warned him to move his ships to a safe distance. Instead of complying, the commander convinced SURROGATE that the Maker dream would never die so long as any portion of the probe continued to function. He promised that humanity would repay the destruction by building a slower-than-light starship and sending it out to contact the ftl civilization believed to inhabit the Procyon system.”
“The Pathfinder expedition,” Chryse said, nodding.
“That was not the whole of The Promise, however. SURROGATE never intended that the secret of starflight be humanity’s alone. His loyalty was to the race that built him. His contract with your ancestors required that, once the secret of the stardrive was obtained and a starship constructed, that information would be carried to the Makers as quickly as possible.”
Chryse turned to Captain Braedon. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“What PROM is trying to say is that we are honor bound to take what we discovered on Alpha and give it to the race that built the probe. That is one of the reasons we have returned to the solar system. If we are to search out the Maker civilization and share our good fortune with them, we will need Solarian help.”
Chryse frowned. “But isn’t that impossible? After all, the location of the Maker sun was lost when the main personality was destroyed.”
“Not entirely true, dear lady.”
Chryse turned toward the new voice. The speaker was the white haired man from the airlock reception committee: Scholar Horace Price.
“If you would permit an old man to correct you,” Price said, “you are laboring under a common misconception. While it is true that all knowledge of the precise location of the Maker sun was lost; we do have quite a good idea where to start looking. The old records speak of their star being approximately one thousand light-years distant in the direction of the constellation of Aquila.”
“When speaking of a thousand light-years, sir, ‘approximately’ covers considerable territory.”
“So it does,” Price agreed. “Even if we managed to get within a hundred light-years of the Maker sun, we would still have a dismayingly large number of stars to search. In fact, conservative estimates put the number at well over ten thousand. Considering that we lack any knowledge of our target’s stellar type, its precise location in space, or even the number of companions it may have, we admit that our task is far from easy.
“Compounding the problem is our ignorance of the Makers themselves. What do they look like? How large are they? Are they fish or fowl, mammal or reptile, insect or amphibian? What language do they speak? Would we recognize their writing if we saw it? No doubt about it, my lady. When those madmen attacked the probe, they cost us more dearly than they could ever have imagined.”
“So what’s the answer?”
“The answer? Simply that what we seek is no single, isolated star. Rather, we are looking for a quite large globe of stars. You see, practically every inhabited system within reach of the Maker sun was visited by one or more life probes. It will be they who will serve as our guides to the Maker stellar system.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s quite simple, really. The arrival of a life probe must be a red-letter day on any species’ calendar. Since the probes only stop where they find a technologically advanced civilization, there will be records of their visits. Among those records will be astronomical sightings of the direction they took when they returned home. Once we enter the volume of space where the probes once operated, we should be able to make contact with the locals and ask for the direction their probe took on its return voyage.
“Given three such vectors, we will be able to triangulate the location of the Maker sun with considerable precision.”