Joan D Vinge - Lost in Space Read online

  His interrupted negotiations with the Anonymous Businessman had been resolved in a very satisfactory manner. When he finished this last, unpleasantly personal act of betrayal, he would be rich beyond anyone's dreams; anyone's except, perhaps, his own. What was his dignity, compared to that? He had lost far more than his dignity in the past. He pulled open the access panel and climbed in.

  Money and death were the only constants left, in a universe where Professor John Robinson had made it possible to get around the speed of light. They were certainly the only things with any meaning for him. After this one final act of sabotage, he planned to disappear, and spend the rest of his life in some idyllic hideaway. What did it matter to him if he doomed the world? He wouldn't be around to see it.

  Self-anointed saviors like Robinson made him want to vomit. They deserved to die, along with their simplistic dreams. It was simply an added bonus that his would be the hand to prove how truly meaningless Robinson and his perfect family were to the universe at large.

  Smith peered out through grate after grate on the lower level, searching for the area of the ship he needed to see. Getting closer. He imagined the smiling faces of the Robinsons spread across ever)' news monitor in the world, as the failure of the Jupiter Mission was announced. How shocking. How terrible… He smiled.

  And then the abyss opened inside him, and swallowed even that ephemeral moment of satisfaction.

  He had believed that if only he could amass enough money, it would fill the empty pit where his soul had been. He realized now that there was not enough money in the universe.

  Well, maybe spending it all will work, he thought bitterly. He had a brilliant mind; everyone said so. He should be able to think of some truly creative ways to amuse himself… He peered out into yet another open space, this time seeing the one he expected. He slid open the service panel and eased himself into the robot bay.

  This room was dimly lit by service lights, like all the others; annoying, but sufficient for his purposes.

  He crossed to the main computer console, glancing right and left, listening for an unexpected footstep. It struck him as ironic that the only thing he profoundly cared about was his own survival… ironic, because his life was completely without pleasure.

  Smith withdrew the small keypad from its housing on the chest panel of his field suit. He jacked into a dormant CPU panel and activated the override program. 'You'll forgive me if I forgo the kiss, my sleeping behemoth," he murmured. "But the time has come to wake." He hit a glowing button on the display panel, and system indicators blinked to life. He input his first command.

  The monotonal voice of the main computer bank responded, "Robot is online. Reviewing primary directives: One, preserve the Robinson family. Two, maintain ship systems. Three—"

  "Spare me the chatter, my steely centurion." Smith's mouth twisted; his fingers rapped the keypad impatiently and the synthesized voice cut off. "Sadly, I fear I have far more dire deeds in store for you." He input the reprogramming commands and hit the button again.

  "Robot is online," the unnervingly flat voice repeated. "Reviewing primary directives: Sixteen hours into mission, destroy Robinson family. Destroy all systems."

  "Now that's more like it." He smiled, unjacking the keypad and reattaching it to his suit. "Farewell, my platinum-plated pal. Parting is such sweet sorrow—" He sent the robot a mocking salute, where it waited in a shadowed alcove across the room. "Give my regards to oblivion."

  He left the control panel and made his way to a chute marked WASTE DISPOSAL. How appropriate, he thought. He climbed inside and began crawling downward. According to his source, it would let him exit the ship in a spot where he would be able to slip away unnoticed.

  He had only gone a short way when the programming module attached to his coveralls began to beep. He activated its built-in comm link, his hands clumsy with sudden nerves. The face of the Nameless Businessman appeared in the air above him.

  "Apparently you have completed your mission on schedule," his contact said, glancing around. "I do so admire a good spot of timely terrorism."

  Smith might have enjoyed the floating head's attempt at droll humor, under other circumstances. But its presence here was endangering his life. "I told you never to call me,'' he hissed. "The transmission could be traced—"

  The holographic face looked unconcerned. "I just wanted to express my most sincere gratitude for your unflagging loyalty," the Businessman said. "Good work, good Doctor. And good-bye." He smiled.

  Smith frowned, puzzled, as the Businessman's smiling face disappeared. The reprogramming module began to emit a sound so high-pitched that it hurt his ears.

  And then there was real pain, as the rapidly overheating module burned its way through the coveralls' equipment shell. Smith ripped the keypad free from its housing, cursing as it seared his palm.

  Before he could hurl it away, the overloaded module discharged. Agony lit up every cell of his spasming body, as the charge passed through him to ground itself in the passageway's metal floor.

  The chute was silent again; as silent as a tomb. Zachary Smith lay very, very still within it.

  Chapter S i x

  The Space Command complex seemed to shine with the light of hope in the dawn of an uncommonly bright new day.

  Inside the launch area, within the bridge of Jupiter One, the Robinson family made their final preparations for a decade-long sleep under Judy's watchful eye. Will and Penny entered their cryogenic chambers first, wearing the gunmetal-and-silver protective suits that, Penny archly declared, made them look like they'd been wrapped in aluminum foil for their stay in the freezer.

  More like seeds, sleeping in silver seed pods… Maureen thought, as she glanced up at the cryo unit surrounding Penny. She pushed the image out of her mind. Smiling at her fidgety daughter, she gently brushed the untidy strands of dark hair away from her beautiful brown eyes.

  "Don't, Mom!" Penny said, brushing them forward again irritably. "Vogue says this will be the style in ten years."

  Maureen took her hand away obediently, respecting her children's efforts to keep their spirits up; knowing how hard it was, for all of them.

  "Can we cut back on her oxygen a little," Will asked, from the next cryo chamber, "so she's not quite so annoying when she wakes up?"

  "Does he have to wake up at all?" Penny shot back.

  "That's it!" Maureen tried to frown, and laughed instead. "I'm turning this spaceship right around!… Sleep good, babies," she said softly, as she had said to them every night at bedtime when they were very small. She kissed them on the forehead, also part of that long-ago ritual, before stepping back to let John take his turn.

  When he reached Will, John put out his arms for a hug… just as Will tried to shake his hand. Father and son gazed at each other in awkward embarrassment before Will backed into his tube, resigned. John ruffled Will's hair and moved away. Maureen stepped into her own cryo unit, waiting as John came to her side. "You get a C in paternal expression, Professor," she said softly. "But an A for effort."

  John kissed her smiling lips.

  She sighed, and touched his face. "You always get an A in that."

  John smiled too, and stepped inside his own unit. "Major," he called to Don West, "she's all yours."

  Don looked up and nodded, canceling the redundant ops program he had been running from the Jupiter's command console. He had put all the systems through their final preflight checks, trying to make himself as unobtrusive as possible while the Robinsons settled in for their ten-year sleep.

  Face-to-face with the actual Robinson family, he found that he couldn't go on seeing them as some kind of animated publicity stunt. They were real people, and even if they were crazy to be doing this, he knew they deserved a privacy his outsider's presence made impossible. And as he watched them together, realizing the kind of trust they had in each other… what kind of love it took, to face what they were doing… he felt more like an outsider than ever.

  He hadn't wanted to s
ee any more, after that. It only reminded him of how much he didn't want to be here; and how, unlike the Robinsons, he had absolutely no choice in the matter.

  But now he turned to look at them again, not having any choice about that either. "I'll try to give you a smooth ride" was all he could think of to say. John Robinson nodded and smiled, and so he supposed it must have been enough.

  Judy Robinson walked down the line of cryo tubes, saying good-bye to her family one more time as she attached their bio monitors. At last she came to her own tube, waiting at the end of the row, and entered it "Mission Control, this is Dr. Robinson. We are in the green."

  The voice of Mission Control answered from the com console behind him: "Roger, Doctor, you are go to initiate cryostasis."

  Impulsively, Don crossed the room. "One question, Doctor," he said stopping in front of her. "Is there room in these tubes for two?"

  Her expectant gaze became a wall. "Barely enough for you and your ego, Major." Her voice flash-froze him where he stood.

  Don turned away, kicking himself mentally. Every time he got near her, his brain seemed to reverse polarities and turn him into an idiot. All he had wanted was not to feel so alone…

  He stopped, suddenly recognizing the emotion he'd glimpsed deep in her eyes, before they had shut him out. He turned back to her and said, almost gently, "Don't sweat it, Doc. I do this all the time." He gestured at the control room, the ship around them.

  Judy nodded, and her face eased into a look of gratitude. "Just drive carefully," she said, and a smile finally touched her lips.

  Lucky smile, he thought. Maybe if he'd had a family like hers, growing up, instead of one he couldn't wait to get away from, he'd know how to act around her.

  Judy reached toward the cryo freeze control panel and pressed one last stud. Don stepped back, watching the biopads on her suit lock into place and the protective shield slip across her eyes. The same thing was happening all down the line, as the windowed shells of the cryopods rotated shut over the Robinsons… as the glimmering frost of the cryo fields engulfed them in sudden blizzard, hiding them from his sight.

  When the pod doors cleared again, Judy gazed out at him through the frost-dimmed glass, unblinking, unseeing, like a fairy-tale princess under a high-tech spell… locked in suspended animation. The cryo tubes began to rise slowly toward the chambers in the hull above him, where they would remain until it was time to wake.

  He took a deep breath, and crossed the silent bridge to take his own place at the com. "Mission Control, this is ]upiter One. The Robinsons are all tucked in. We are ready to fly."

  The voice of Noah Freeman, the head of Mission Control, was music to his ears as it broke the silence around him, "You are at T-minus ten minutes, and counting."

  Don put the transmission on visual, and smiled.

  Freeman and his crew of technicians appeared on the monitor, looking just the way he remembered them from his hurried tour of Space Command: like chaos in motion. Noah grinned, sliding into place before his console; he was even more disheveled than yesterday, if that was possible.

  A couple of technicians waved, shouting, "Hey, Don!" Around them, banks of monitors gave them access to every significant detail of the Jupiter's status. A long view of the launch area and the ship occupied the enormous central screen covering an entire wall of Mission Control. He could see his own face among the multiple views.

  Noah's crew had struck Don's military-trained eyes with the impact of a thrown pie as he met them yesterday: a bunch of gum-chewing, funky weirdos, wearing the most bizarre assortment of clothing he had ever seen outside of a thrift shop.

  But as he met them individually, talked with them, let them show him their equipment, he remembered that they were all there for just one reason: they were the best at what they did. He had begun to see nerd chic as a different sort of uniform, proclaiming their unique identity.

  Now, as he did his final systems checks and the final minutes counted down, he found the company of Noah's crew oddly reassuring.

  "You are at T-minus one minute, and counting," Noah said, giving him a thumbs-up from a monitor screen.

  His other monitors showed him exterior views of the ship, of gantries retracting and equipment lines disengaging. Overhead, the immense dome began to open.

  "Powering main drive system," Don said. He felt the Jupiter come alive around him, as if the ship itself was trembling with eagerness to be under way.

  "Major, your escape vector is clear of all traffic. Op is go on your command," Noah said, his eyes intent now on his own console.

  "Roger, Houston," Don said. His hand hovered over the glowing control panel. Ten years. He was about to erase ten years of his life, for a job any well-trained monkey could do. '"The monkey flips the switch," he muttered, and activated the drive.

  The Jupiter One lifted off, rising into the sky, thundering toward the black edge of space. Don shut his eyes as the g-forces crushed him down into his seat, emptying his mind of regrets and everything else; until at last the Jupiter left Earth's gravity well behind, soaring effortlessly through the blackness as the engines ceased their burn. His thoughts fell back into logical patterns, even as his body drifted against its restraining straps, free of gravity's hold.

  "Jupiter One …" Noah's voice filled his ears as he shook himself out. "You are clear of Earth's atmosphere." He heard a cheer go up in the control room, and fumbled for a smile.

  He input the command that would jettison the booster engines and the outer shielding. The ship shuddered as the explosive bolts blew. He watched his monitors as the cumbersome shields that had protected the Jupiter's second stage during their nuclear-electric ascent drifted clear.

  On his screens now, like a butterfly newly emerged from a chrysalis, was the Jupiter Two: the state-of-the-art interstellar craft that would make the actual journey to Alpha Prime. He had never seen anything like the artistry of its design, the technological grace of its spired, ovate hull. It was beautiful… despite the fact that it was taking him away from everything that mattered.

  "Jupiter One booster disengaged," he said. "Proceeding toward Mercury." He activated the Jupiter Two's drive. The fusion engines came alive, glowing with atomic fire, and the artificial gravity of the ship's acceleration dropped him down into his seat again. He checked the displays and enabled the preprogrammed coordinates that would guide the ship's course inward toward the sun. Damn milk run, he thought, disgusted.

  He watched the Earth fall away, along with all trace of humanity's tentative interface with the universe: satellites; zero gravity manufacturing stations; even the obsolete orbiting billboards that were still visible from the planet's surface on rare semiclear days. The hyper-gate and Stargate City… his entire life. God, he'd never even told Jeb good-bye. It had all happened so fast…

  He stared, transfixed, while the Big Blue Marble on his screens shrank to the size of a real marble, and his eyes ached with longing.

  When the Earth was no longer visible on any of the screens, he replaced it with the image of the sun. The sun showed its true form now, as the nearest star among the countless millions visible out here, where no atmosphere, and no atmospheric pollution, hid them from view.

  No use crying over spilled milk, flyboy. He tried to remember that this journey to another world was probably their last chance at saving their own… that whether it really required him or not, this mission was important.

  He glanced at the time elapsed: still thirteen hours to go until they reached Mercury's orbit… until he had even a single responsibility, or semi-meaningful duty to perform. He planted his elbow on the seat arm, resting his chin on his hand. His other hand began to drum a rhythm on his knee.

  Maybe he'd take a nap. A long one… He leaned back, closing his eyes.

  And all the while, Dr. Zachary Smith slept on, in the service bay on the lower level; blissfully unconscious… for now.

  Don woke up again long before the thirteen hours had passed. He occupied himself with repeati
ng systems checks and performing useless calibrations, wishing he'd at least thought to bring along a magazine, or his VR headset.

  At last Mercury's choleric red face, now nearly the size of Earth's moon, lay centered in the wide viewport. Below it and to one side, a fraction of the sun's surface showed, blindingly bright even through the viewport's integral filters. Don kept his eyes fixed on the image in his monitors as he closed the blast shields over all the ship's ports, readying the Jupiter for its dive into the solar gravity well.

  Now we get to the fun part. He grimaced. His sole responsibility in the upcoming maneuver was simply to lock the doors before he went to bed. He glanced over his shoulder at the last open cryo tube. He wouldn't even be awake to see the real spectacle.

  He activated his headset. "Houston," he said, "diverting all spacecraft controls to the main computer." The CPU was the real commander of this ship. It would calculate the exact angle of their hyperbolic plunge through the sun's immensely powerful gravitational field. It would determine the precise timing and length of the engine burn that would keep the Jupiter from being swallowed by the sun's fusion furnace, and instead sling it back out into space. Using the momentum of their headlong "fall" to play crack-the-whip, they would boost their velocity to near lightspeed, cutting years from their voyage.

  Once the real journey was under way, the computer would take care of everything: maintaining the Jupiter's operating systems; tending to its frozen passengers (including him); making any course corrections; and finally waking them all up, on arrival at Alpha Prime.

  The computer would do it all.

  "Eight years of flight training," he muttered, flexing his restless hands. He slipped one of the three music CDs he'd managed to bring with him into the spare drive on the console, and cranked the volume up. Unstrapping from his seat, he walked to the center of the bridge and activated the navigational holograph. Images of colored light formed in midair above the instrument pedestal, showing Jupiter Two in its position near the sun, at the center of a slowly spinning graphic of the solar system.