Starman's Quest by Robert Silverberg (best book club books of all time .TXT) 📕

entered a gray fog. It worried him.

"See you tonight," Roger said.

"I suppose so," Alan returned dully. He was frowning.

[31]

Chapter
Three

The Valhalla touched down on Earth at 1753 on the nose, to nobody's very great surprise. Captain Mark Donnell had not missed schedule once in his forty ship years in space, which covered a span of over a thousand years of Earth's history.

Landing procedure was rigidly set. The Crew debarked by family, in order of signing-on; the only exception to the order was Alan. As a member of the Captain's family—the only other member, now—he had to wait till the rest of the ship was cleared. But his turn came eventually.

"Solid ground again, Rat!" They stood on the jet-fused dirt field where the Valhalla had landed. The great golden-hulled starship was reared up on its tail, with its huge landing buttresses flaring out at each side to keep it propped up.

"Solid for you, maybe," Rat said. "But the trip's just as wobbly as ever for me, riding up here on your shoulder."

Captain Donnell's shrill whistle sounded, and he cupped his hands to call out, "The copters are here!"[32]

Alan watched the little squadron of gray jetcopters settle to the ground, rotors slowing, and headed forward along with the rest of the Crew. The copters would take them from the bare landing field of the spaceport to the Enclave, where they would spend the next six days.

The Captain was supervising the loading of the copters. Alan sauntered over to him.

"Where to, son?"

"I'm scheduled to go over in Copter One."

"Uh-uh. I've changed the schedule." Captain Donnell turned away and signalled to the waiting crew members. "Okay, go ahead and fill up Copter One!"

They filed aboard. "Everyone get back," the Captain yelled. A tentative chugg-chuff came from the copter; its rotors went round and it lifted, stood poised for a moment on its jetwash, and shot off northward toward the Starmen's Enclave.

"What's this about a change in schedule, Dad?"

"I want you to ride over with me in the two-man copter. Kandin took your place aboard Copter One. Let's go now," he shouted to the next group. "Start loading up Number Two."

The Crewmen began taking their places aboard the second copter, and soon its pilot signalled through the fore window that he was loaded up. The copter departed. Seeing that he would be leaving the field last, Alan made himself useful by keeping the younger Crew children from wandering.

At last the field was cleared. Only Alan and his father remained, with the little two-man copter and the tall gleaming Valhalla behind them.

"Let's go," the Captain said. They climbed in, Alan[33] strapping himself down in the co-pilot's chair and his father back of the controls.

"I never see much of you these days," the Captain said after they were aloft. "Running the Valhalla seems to take twenty-four hours a day."

"I know how it is," Alan said.

After a while Captain Donnell said, "I see you're still reading that Cavour book." He chuckled. "Still haven't given up the idea of finding the hyperdrive, have you?"

"You know I haven't, Dad. I'm sure Cavour really did work it out, before he disappeared. If we could only discover his notebook, or even a letter or something that could get us back on the trail——"

"It's been thirteen hundred years since Cavour disappeared, Alan. If nothing of his has turned up in all that time, it's not likely ever to show. But I hope you keep at it, anyway." He banked the copter and cut the jets; the rotors took over and gently lowered the craft to the distant landing field.

Alan looked down and out at the heap of buildings becoming visible below. The crazy quilt of outdated, clumsy old buildings that was the local Starmen's Enclave.

He felt a twinge of surprise at his father's words. The Captain had never shown any serious interest in the possibility of faster-than-light travel before. He had always regarded the whole idea as sheer fantasy.

"I don't get it, Dad. Why do you hope I keep at it? If I ever find what I'm looking for, it's going to mean the end of Starman life as you know it. Travel between planets will be instantaneous. There—there won't be this business of making jumps and getting separated from everyone you used to know."

"You're right. I've just begun thinking seriously about[34] this business of hyperdrive. There wouldn't be any Contraction effect. Think of the changes it would mean in Starman society! No more—no more permanent separations if someone decides to leave his ship for a while."

Alan understood what his father meant. Suddenly he saw the reason for Captain Donnell's abrupt growth of interest in the development of a hyperdrive.

It's Steve that's on his mind, Alan thought. If we had had a hyperspace drive and Steve had done what he did, it wouldn't have mattered. He'd still be my age.

Now the Valhalla was about to journey to Procyon. Another twenty years would pass before it got back, and Steve would be almost fifty by then.

That's what's on his mind, Alan thought. He lost Steve forever—but he doesn't want any more Steves to happen. The Contraction took one of his sons away. And now he wants the hyperdrive as much as I do.

Alan glanced at the stiff, erect figure of his father as they clambered out of the copter and headed at a fast clip toward the Administration Building of the Enclave. He wondered just how much pain and anguish his father was keeping hidden back of that brisk, efficient exterior.

I'll get the Cavour drive someday, Alan thought suddenly. And I'll be getting it for him as well as me.

The bizarre buildings of the Enclave loomed up before him. Behind them, just visible in the purplish twilight haze, were the tips of the shining towers of the Earther city outside. Somewhere out there, probably, was Steve.

I'll find him too, Alan thought firmly.

Most of the Valhalla's people had already been assigned rooms in the quarantine section of one of the Enclave buildings when Alan and his father arrived.[35]

The bored-looking desk clerk—a withered-looking oldster who was probably a retired Starman—gave Alan his room number. It turned out to be a small, squarish room furnished with an immense old pneumochair long since deflated, a cot, and a washstand. The wall was a dull green, with gaping cracks in the faded paint, and cut heavily with a penknife into one wall was the inscription, BILL DANSERT SLEPT HERE, June 28 2683 in sturdy block letters.

Alan wondered how many other starmen had occupied the room before and after Bill Dansert. He wondered whether perhaps Bill Dansert himself were still alive somewhere between the stars, twelve centuries after he had left his name in the wall.

He dropped himself into the pneumochair, feeling the soggy squish of the deflated cushion, and loosened the jacket of his uniform.

"It's not luxurious," he told Rat. "But at least it's a room. It's a place to stay."

The medics started coming around that evening, checking to see that none of the newly-arrived starmen had happened to bring back any strange disease that might cause trouble. It was slow work—and the Valhalla people were told that it would take at least until the following morning before the quarantine could be lifted.

"Just a precautionary measure," said the medic apologetically as he entered Alan's room clad in a space helmet. "We really learned our lesson when that shipload from Altair came in bearing a plague."

The medic produced a small camera and focused it on Alan. He pressed a button; a droning sort of hum came from the machine. Alan felt a curious glow of warmth.

"Just a routine check," the medic apologized again.[36] He flipped a lever in the back of the camera. Abruptly the droning stopped and a tape unravelled out of the side of the machine. The medic studied it.

"Any trouble?" Alan asked anxiously.

"Looks okay to me. But you might get that cavity in your upper right wisdom tooth taken care of. Otherwise you seem in good shape."

He rolled up the tape. "Don't you starmen ever get time for a fluorine treatment? Some of you have the worst teeth I've ever seen."

"We haven't had a chance for fluorination yet. Our ship was built before they started fluorinating the water supplies, and somehow we never find time to take the treatment while we're on Earth. But is that all that's wrong with me?"

"All that I can spot just by examining the diagnostic tape. We'll have to wait for the full lab report to come through before I can pass you out of quarantine, of course." Then he noticed Rat perched in the corner. "How about that? I'll have to examine it, too."

"I'm not an it," Rat remarked with icy dignity. "I'm an intelligent extra-terrestrial entity, native of Bellatrix VII. And I'm not carrying any particular diseases that would interest you."

"A talking rat!" The medic was amazed. "Next thing we'll have sentient amebas!" He aimed the camera at Rat. "I suppose I'll have to record you as a member of the crew," he said, as the camera began to hum.

After the medic had gone, Alan tried to freshen up at the washstand, having suddenly recalled that a dance was on tap for this evening.

As he wearily went through the motions of scrubbing[37] his face clean, it occurred to him that he had not even bothered to speak to one of the seven or eight Crew girls he had considered inviting.

He sensed a curious disturbed feeling growing inside him. He felt depressed. Was this, he wondered, what Steve had gone through? The wish to get out of this tin can of a ship and really see the universe?

"Tell me, Rat. If you were me——"

"If I were you I'd get dressed for that dance," Rat said sharply. "If you've got a date, that is."

"That's just the point. I don't have a date. I mean, I didn't bother to make one. I know all those girls so well. Why bother?"

"So you're not going to the dance?"

"Nope."

Rat clambered up the arm of the pneumochair and swivelled his head upward till his glittering little eyes met Alan's. "You're not planning to go over the hill the way Steve did, are you? I can spot the symptoms. You look restless and fidgety the way your brother did."

After a moment of silence Alan shook his head. "No. I couldn't do that, Rat. Steve was the wild kind. I'd never be able just to get up and go, the way he did. But I've got to do something. I know what he meant. He said the walls of the ship were pressing in on him. Holding him back."

With a sudden impatient motion he ripped open the magnesnaps of his regulation shirt and took it off. He felt himself changing, inside. Something was happening to him. Maybe, he thought, he was catching whatever it was Steve had been inflamed by. Maybe he had been[38] lying to himself all along, about being different in makeup from Steve.

"Go tell the Captain I'm not going to the dance," he ordered Rat. "Otherwise he'll wonder where I am. Tell him—tell him I'm too tired, or something. Tell him anything. But don't let him find out how I feel."

[39]

Chapter
Four

The next morning, Roger Bond told him all about the dance.

"It was the dullest thing you could imagine. Same old people, same dusty old dances. Couple of people asked me where you were, but I didn't tell them anything."

"Good."

They wandered on through the heap of old, ugly buildings that composed the Starmen's Enclave. "It's just as well they think I was sick," Alan said. "I was, anyway. Sick from boredom."

He and Roger sat down carefully on the edge of a crumbling stone bench. They said nothing, just looking around. After a long while Alan broke the uncomfortable silence.

"You know what this place is? It's a ghetto. A self-imposed ghetto. Starmen are scared silly of going out into the Earther cities, so they keep themselves penned up in this filthy place instead."[40]

"This place is really old. I wonder how far back those run-down buildings date."

"Thousand years, maybe more. No one ever bothers to build new ones. What for? The starmen don't mind living in the old ones."

"I almost wish the medical clearance hadn't come through after all," said Roger moodily.

"How so?"

"Then we'd be still quarantined up there. We wouldn't be able to come down and get another look at the kind of place this really is."

"I don't know which is worse—to be cooped up in quarantine or to go wandering around a dismal hole like the Enclave." Alan stood up, stretched, and took a deep breath. "Phew! Get a lungful of that sweet, fresh, allegedly pure Terran air! I'll take ship atmosphere, stale as it is, any time over this smoggy soup."

"I'll go along with that. Say, look—a strange face!"

Alan turned and saw a young starman of about his own age coming