The Space-Born

Book 158: Gateway Essentials

by E.C. Tubb

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Space Opera

Synopsis

Far from Earth, on a ship carrying the 13th and 14th generations of descendants from the original crew, life is short. You are born, learn the tasks needed to keep the ship running, help breed and train the next crew - and your death is ordered by the computer in charge. Gregson, chief of the psych-police, makes sure the computer's death-sentences are carried out quickly and painlessly. His duty is a sacred trust. He knows the intricacies of the system, how it works . . . and how it can be subverted. He is growing old. Rebellious. He also knows his name will soon come up in the computer for elimination. And he has no intention of carrying out his own death-sentence!

Release date: September 29, 2011

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 156

Sample

Jay West, psych-policeman, arrived at headquarters just in time to see a case brought for trial at Ship’s Court. As usual Gregson, his chief, was acting as judge and, aside from Kennedy and the communications man, the office was empty. Jay grinned at the operator, nudged his fellow officer to make room on the bench, and nodded towards the sheet of one-way glass separating them from the courtroom.

‘What goes on?’

‘Waste charge.’ Kennedy didn’t shift his gaze from the scene. ‘Sector four. Know him?’

‘No.’ Jay looked at the accused, a gardener by his green shorts, still marriageable and with the thin limbs and delicate skin of one who had spent most of his life in the low-gravity upper levels. He was nervous, his eyes wide as he stared at the starkly simple appointments of the court-room; looking at him Jay was reminded of an animal, one of the small, brown, helpless animals of distant Earth. A deer, perhaps? Or was it a rabbit? He couldn’t remember, then forgot the problem as Gregson shifted in his chair.

The chief of psych-police was a big, compact man with black eyes matching the gleaming slickness of his uniform. At least twice as old as the accused, he dominated the court by the sheer force of his personality, and as he leaned a little forward over his wide desk, Jay was reminded of yet another animal. A tiger – or was it a cat? He frowned as he tried to recall just when and on what tape he had seen the creatures, and made a mental note to pay more attention to the educational tapes in future. He leaned forward as Gregson’s voice came over the speakers.

‘Goodwin,’ snapped Gregson coldly. ‘15-3479. Charge of criminal waste. Who accuses?’

‘I do, sir.’ An older man, also a gardener, shuffled forward, a large plastic bag in his hands. ‘My name is Johnson, sir. 14-4562. I’m head gardener of sector four. I caught young Goodwin here throwing the plant trimmings into the inorganic waste disposal chute. I wouldn’t have believed it of him if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. I’d always liked him and I never guessed that he was like that.’ The old man sniffed. ‘I’ve always thought of him like my own son. I –’

‘Keep to the point,’ snapped Gregson impatiently. ‘What happened?’

‘I was telling you, sir. We always put all the plant trimmings into the organic waste chute for reclamation. Goodwin here threw them into the wrong chute. If I hadn’t seen what he did they’d have been incinerated and we’d have lost everything but the water content.’ He glanced at Carter, the other occupant of the room. ‘I reported to the officer, sir, and made my charge.’

‘I arrested the accused and brought them both here,’ said Carter unnecessarily. Gregson nodded.

‘Defense?’

‘I didn’t do it!’ The youth licked his lips with nervous defiance as he stared from Gregson to his accuser. Gregson glanced towards the officer.

‘Proof?’

‘Here, sir.’ Carter took the bag from Johnson, stepped forward and emptied it on the desk. About half a kilogram of brown-edged leaves and dry stalks made a little heap of vegetation on the smooth surface. He stepped back as Gregson looked down at it.

‘You found all this?’

‘I did.’

‘In the inorganic waste chute?’

‘Yes.’

‘I see,’ Gregson leaned back in his chair, the tip of one finger idly stirring the heap of leaves. He didn’t speak and aside from the faint rustle of the leaves and the soft, almost imperceptible vibration of the metal walls and floor, so soft and familiar as to be unnoticed, silence filled the courtroom.

‘Waste,’ said Kennedy disgustedly. ‘Gregson should send him straight to the converter.’

‘You think that he’s guilty?’ Jay narrowed his eyes as he stared at the pale, sweating face of the accused. Kennedy shrugged.

‘What …’ He broke off as sound came over the speakers. ‘I didn’t do it,’ insisted Goodwin desperately. ‘I swear that I didn’t do it.’

‘How do you account for this vital material being found in the wrong chute?’ Gregson’s voice was very soft and Jay suddenly remembered what he was reminded of. Not a tiger, but a cat – and the gardener was a mouse. He smiled in quiet pride at his retentive memory. Not bad considering that he had never seen either of the animals except as pictures on a screen. He wanted to tell Kennedy but Goodwin was speaking again so he listened instead.

‘I can’t account for it, sir. Unless …’

‘Unless what?’

‘Johnson’s getting to be an old man, sir,’ blurted Goodwin. ‘He’s afraid that I’ll take over his job and he’s trying to get rid of me.’

‘I wouldn’t throw vegetation in the inorganic chute,’ said Johnson hastily. ‘I know how valuable the material is too well for that. I’ve been a gardener all my life, sir, and I just couldn’t do it.’ He shook his head in apparent despair. ‘It’s these youngsters – they just don’t stop to think, and if they aren’t stopped they’ll ruin us with their constant waste.’

‘This is a serious charge,’ said Gregson heavily; he didn’t seem to have heard the counter accusation and defense. ‘You know that waste, aside from mutiny, is the most heinous crime there is. Both are punishable by death.’ He paused. ‘Is there anything you wish to say before I pass sentence?’

‘I didn’t do it,’ repeated Goodwin desperately. ‘I’m innocent of the charge.’

‘Why doesn’t Gregson test him?’ said Jay disgustedly. ‘Two minutes on the lie detector would clear up the whole thing.’ He frowned at Johnson. ‘I wouldn’t mind betting that the old man’s got something to do with this. Look at him, he’s as guilty as hell.’

‘Better not let Gregson hear you say that,’ warned Kennedy. ‘He knows what he’s doing.’

‘Maybe, but I …’ Jay broke off as the communications man called over to him. ‘Yes?’

‘Call from sector three. That’s your sector, isn’t it, Jay?’

‘That’s right.’ Jay rose to his feet and crossed over to the operator. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘An accident. Man dead on level nineteen, segment three, cubicle four twenty-seven. Call came from a man named Edwards – he said that he’d wait for you by the booth. Clear it up, will you.’

Jay nodded and, leaving Kennedy still staring at the courtroom, walked out into the Ship.

Jay had never seen an ant hill, nor had he ever seen a bee hive, but if he had, then the Ship would have reminded him of both. A huge metal egg, it was honeycombed with concentric levels of cubicles: workshops, recreation rooms, hydroponics farms and yeast culture vats for the production of food; kitchens and mess halls for its preparation and serving. Everything essential to life was contained within the titanic hull, from toys for the new-born to gardens to freshen the air, and the whole incredible mass spun on its central axis, creating an artificial gravity by centrifugal force, a gravity which increased rapidly towards the outer hull and vanished in the central areas.

Men had built it, not on Earth for that would have been impossible, but in space, fashioning it from prefabricated parts hauled by powerful rockets from the planet or brought from the new base at Tycho on the Moon. A mountain of metal had been used in its construction and, when they had finished the shell, they had fitted it with engines powerful enough to illuminate a world, stocked it with seeds and plants, food and fuel, animals and cultures, so that one day the colonists would be able to set up a new Earth beneath an alien sun.

They had planned well, the builders of the Ship. Fired by the discovery of planets circling Pollux, a star only thirty-two light years away, they had determined to smash the barrier between them and interstellar flight. Speed alone couldn’t do it. There was still no way to overcome the Einsteinian equations which set the speed of light as the maximum velocity possible, and at the same time showed that it would take infinite power to reach that velocity. Speed couldn’t do it, but time could, and so they had aimed the ship towards Pollux, given it a speed one-tenth that of light, and hoped that the descendants of the original colonists would be able to do what they were unable to do themselves.

But three hundred years is a long time.

First the name of the ship had been discarded from common usage and it had become known only as the Ship. The sense of motion had soon died also, and to the inhabitants of the Ship, the metal cubicles had become their entire universe, static, unchanging, unalterable. They lived and died within the close confines of their metal prison and, with the slow passage of time, even the aim and purpose of their journey became vague and slightly unreal.

But the builders had planned well.

Edwards was fourteenth generation; Jay could tell that without looking at the identification disc on his left wrist. There was a certain stockiness about him, a calm solidity only to be met in the older people. He stepped forward from the booth as he recognized Jay’s black shorts and led the officer along a passage.

‘He’s in here,’ he paused by a door. ‘I haven’t told anyone yet. I called in as soon as I saw what had happened.’

‘Were you friends?’ Jay didn’t enter the room immediately; the passage was deserted and it was as good a place as any for preliminary investigation. ‘Did you know him well?’

‘Well enough. He worked in yeast and we almost grew up together.’ Edwards shook his head. ‘I can’t understand it. Hans was always a careful sort of man, not the type to mess around with something he knew nothing about. I just can’t imagine what made him do it.’

‘Do what?’

‘You’ll see.’ Edwards glanced down the long passage narrowing into the distance, both ends curving a little as it followed the circular pattern of the rooms. A young couple came towards them, arm in arm, their heads together, lost in a world of their own. ‘Maybe we’d better go inside,’ he suggested. ‘This passage usually carries a lot of traffic and we don’t want a crowd.’

Jay nodded and led the way into the room.

The only two things about the dead man that were recognizable were his yellow shorts and his identification disc. The shorts told Jay that he had worked in the yeast plant: the disc that he was fourteenth generation, his name had been Hans Jensen, and that he had absolutely no right to have done what he apparently had. All electrical gear came under electronics and no one else had the right to remove a masking plate and touch what was behind it. Hans, for some reason, had done just that and had been seared by high voltage current as a result.

Jay dropped to one knee, studying but not touching, his eyes thoughtful as he stared at the evidence. Edwards coughed and shifted his feet.

‘What do you make of it?’

‘It looks like an accident,’ said Jay carefully. ‘He tampered with the connections and got burned for his trouble.’ He looked around the room, a normal two-bunk, four-locker sleeping unit. ‘Did you share?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where were you when it happened?’

‘Down in the recreation room. Hans and I were watching some tapes when he was called away by some young fellow. I waited for him; then, when he didn’t turn up, I guessed that he might have gone to bed. I walked in and found him like this.’

‘I see. How long did you wait before following him out of the recreation room?’

‘I waited until the end of the tape, about fifteen minutes.’

Edwards hesitated. ‘I don’t believe that this was an accident.’

‘What?’

‘I said that this was no accident,’ repeated Edwards stubbornly. ‘I knew Hans too well to ever believe that he would do anything like this. Why should he? He worked in yeast – he wouldn’t want to tamper with the electrical gear. And if he did, he knew enough about high current never to have touched anything.’

‘So you think he committed suicide?’

‘No. I think that he was murdered.’

Jay sighed and, leaning against the wall, stared at Edwards. Against his shoulder he could feel the slight, never-ending vibrations of voices and music, the susurration of engines and the countless sounds of everyday life, all caught and carried by the eternal metal, all mingling and traveling until damped out by fresher, newer sounds. A philosopher had once called that vibration the life-sound of the Ship; while it could be heard all was well, without it nothing could be right. Jay didn’t know about that; all he knew was that he had grown up with the sound, eaten with it, slept with it, lived with it until he was no more consciously aware of it than he was of his own skin.

‘So you think that he was murdered,’ he said slowly. ‘What makes you think that?’

‘Simple. Hans would never have removed that plate. And even if he had, he would never have touched a live connection. Hans wasn’t a fool.’

‘He was an old man,’ reminded Jay. ‘Old men sometimes do senseless things.’

‘Hans wasn’t that old. I’ll admit he was fourteenth generation, but so what? I’m fifteenth and yet I’m only a couple of years younger than he was. Hans was one of the fittest and most sensible people I’ve ever known.’ Edwards jerked his head in irritation. ‘Don’t talk to me about age. I know better.’

And that, thought Jay grimly, was the trouble. Generations could be separated by no more than forty years, because every twenty-year period saw an official change in generation number. Hans could have been forty years older than Edwards, but he could also have been one, and Edwards was suspicious.

‘Have you anything else, aside from your own knowledge of the dead man, on which to base your statement that he was murdered?’ Jay straightened away from the wall as he spoke and stepped toward the burned thing on the floor. Edwards hesitated.

‘I’m not sure,’ he said slowly. ‘What are you getting at?’

‘Had he any enemies?’

‘. . .