Chapter Twenty-Two
Barrent's return to consciousness was sudden and complete. He sat up andsaw that he had fallen inside the control room. The metal door wasclosed behind him, and he was breathing without difficulty. He could seeno sign of the crew. They must have gone after the guards, assuming hewould stay unconscious.
He scrambled to his feet, instinctively picking up his needlebeam. Heexamined the weapon closely, then frowned and put it away. Why, hewondered, would the crew leave him alone in the control room, the mostimportant part of the ship? Why would they leave him armed?
He tried to remember the faces he had seen just before he collapsed.They were indistinct memories, vague and unfocused figures with hollow,dreamlike voices. Had there really been people in here?
The more he thought about it, the more certain he was that he hadconjured those people out of his fading consciousness. There had been noone here. He was alone in the ship's nerve center.
He approached the main control board. It was divided into ten stations.Each section had its rows of dials, whose slender indicators pointed toincomprehensible readings. Each had its switches, wheels rheostats, andlevers.
Barrent walked slowly past the stations, watching the patterns offlashing lights that ran to the ceiling and rippled along the walls. Thelast station seemed to be some kind of overall control for the rest. Asmall screen was marked: _Coordination_, _Manual/Automatic_. The_Automatic_ part was lighted. There were similar screens for navigation,lookout, collision control, subspace entry and exit, normal space entryand exit, and landing. All were automatic. Further on he found theprogramming screen, which clicked off the progress of the flight inhours, minutes, and seconds. Time to Checkpoint One was now 29 hours, 4minutes, 51 seconds. Stop-over time, three hours. Time from Checkpointto Earth, 480 hours.
The control board flashed and hummed to itself, serene andself-sufficient. Barrent couldn't help feeling that the presence of ahuman in this temple of the machine was sacrilege.
He checked the air ducts. They were set for automatic feed, giving justenough air to support the room's present human population of one.
But where was the crew? Barrent could understand the necessity ofoperating a starship largely on an automatic programming system. Astructure as huge and complex as this had to be self-sufficient. But menhad built it, and men had punched out the programs. Why weren't menpresent to monitor the switchboards, to modify the program whennecessary? Suppose the guards had needed more time on Omega? Suppose itbecame necessary to by-pass the checkpoint and return directly to Earth?Suppose it was imperative to change destination altogether? Who resetthe programs, who gave the ship its orders, who possessed the guidingintelligence that directed the entire operation?
Barrent looked around the control room. He found a storage bin filledwith oxygen respirators. He put one on, tested it, and went into thecorridor.
After a long walk, he reached a door marked CREW'S QUARTERS. Inside, theroom was neat and bare. The beds stood in neat rows, without sheets orblankets. There were no clothes in the closets, no personal possessionsof any kind. Barrent left and inspected the officers' and captain'squarters. He found no sign of recent human habitation.
He returned to the control room. It was apparent now that the ship hadno crew. Perhaps the authorities on Earth felt so certain of theirschedules and of the reliability of their ship that they had decided acrew was superfluous. Perhaps....
But it seemed to Barrent a reckless way of doing things. There wassomething very strange about an Earth that allowed starships to runwithout human supervision.
He decided to suspend further judgment until he had acquired more facts.For the time being, he had to think about the problems of his ownsurvival. There was concentrated food in his pockets, but he hadn't beenable to carry much water. Would the crewless ship have supplies? He hadto remember the detachment of guards, down below in their assemblyroom. And he had to think about what was going to happen at thecheckpoint, and what he would do about it.
Barrent found that he did not have to use his own food supplies. In theofficers' mess, machines still dispensed food and drink at the push of abutton. Barrent didn't know if these were natural or chemicallyreconstituted foods. They tasted fine and seemed to nourish him, so hereally didn't care.
He explored part of the ship's upper levels. After becoming lost severaltimes, he decided not to take any more unnecessary risks. Thelife-center of the ship was its control room, and Barrent spent most ofhis time there.
He found a viewport. Activating the switch that opened the shutters,Barrent was able to look out on the vast spectacle of stars glowing inthe blackness of space. Stars without end stretched past the furthestlimits of his imagination. Looking at this, Barrent felt a strong surgeof pride. This was where he belonged, and those unknown stars were hisheritage.
The time to the checkpoint dwindled to six hours. Barrent watched newportions of the control board come to life, checking and altering theforces governing the ship, preparing for a landing. Three and a halfhours before landing, Barrent made an interesting discovery. He foundthe central communication system for the entire ship. By turning on thereceiving end, he could overhear conversations in the guardroom.
He didn't learn much that was useful to him. Either through caution orlack of concern, the guards didn't discuss politics. Their lives werespent on the checkpoint, except for periods of service on the prisonship. Some of the things they said Barrent found incomprehensible. Buthe continued to listen, fascinated by anything these men of Earth had tosay.
"You ever go swimming in Florida?"
"I never liked salt water."
"The year before I was called to the Guards, I won third prize at theDayton Orchid Fair."
"I'm buying a retirement villa in Antarctica."
"How much longer for you?"
"Eighteen years."
"Well, someone's got to do it."
"But why me? And why no Earth leaves?"
"You've watched the tapes, you know why. Crime is a disease. It'sinfectious."
"So what?"
"So if you work around criminals, you run the danger of infection. Youmight contaminate someone on Earth."
"It isn't fair...."
"Can't be helped. Those scientists know what they're talking about.Besides, checkpoint's not so bad."
"If you like everything artificial ... air, flowers, food...."
"Well, you can't have everything. Your family there?"
"They want to get back Earthside."
"After five years on the checkpoint, they say you can't take Earth. Thegravity gets you."
"I'll take gravity. Any time...."
From these conversations, Barrent learned that the grim-faced guardswere human beings, just like the prisoners on Omega. Most of the guardsdidn't seem to like the work they were doing. Like Omegans, they longedfor a return to Earth.
He stored the information away. The ship had reached the checkpoint, andthe giant switchboard flashed and rippled, making its final adjustmentsfor the intricacies of docking.
At last the maneuver was completed and the engines shut down tostand-by. Through the communications system, Barrent heard the guardsleave their assembly room. He followed them down the corridors to thelanding stage. He heard the last of them, as he left the ship, say,"Here comes the check squad. Whatcha say, boys?"
There was no answer. The guards were gone, and there was a new sound inthe corridors: the heavy marching feet of what the guard called thecheck squad.
There seemed to be a lot of them. Their inspection began in the enginerooms, and moved methodically upward. From the sounds, they seemed to beopening every door on the ship and searching every room and closet.
Barrent held the needlebeam in his perspiring hand and wondered where,in all the territory of the ship, he could hide. He would have to assumethat they were going to look everywhere. In that case, his best chancelay in evading them and hiding in a section of the ship alreadysearched.
He slipped
a respirator over his head and moved into the corridor.