To The Stars

The question was on Debhu’s lips, but he never spoke it. Halvmork was a prison planet. It no longer mattered why anyone should have been sent here. “Good,” he finally said. “I can use you. We have lost a lot of trained men. Most of the crew have never been in space before. Come with me to the bridge.”

Jan found the operation a fascinating one. He must have arrived on Halvmork in a ship very much like this one — but he had no memory of it. All he remembered was a windowless prison cell on a spacer. And drugged food that kept him docile and easily controlled. Then unconsciousness, to waken to find the ships gone and himself a castaway. It had all happened far too many years ago.

But this was very different. The ship they were aboard was identified only by a number, as were all of the other tugs. It was a brute, built for power alone, capable of lifting a thousand times its own mass. Like the other tugs it lived in space, in perpetual orbit. To be used only once every four Earth years when the seasons changed on this twilight planet. Then, before the fields burned in summer and the inhabitants moved to the new winter hemisphere, the ships would come for their crops. Deep spacers, spider-like vessels that were built in space for space, that could never enter a planet’s atmosphere. They would emerge from space drive and go into orbit about the planet, only then unlocking from the great tubes of the bulk carriers they had brought. Then it would be the time to use the tugs.

When the crews changed over the dormant, orbiting ships would glow with life, light and warmth as their power would be turned on, their stored air released and warmed. They in their turn would lock to the empty bulk carriers and carefully pull them from orbit, killing their velocity until they dropped into the atmosphere below, easing them gently down to the surface:

The carriers were loaded now, with food to feed the hungry rebel planets. Their blasting ascent was smooth, computer controlled, perfect. Rising up, faster and faster through the atmosphere, out of the atmosphere, into the eternal blinding sunlight of space. The computer program that controlled this operation had been written by comptechs now centuries dead. Their work lived after them. Radar determined proximity. Orbits were matched, gasjets flared, great bulks of metal weighing thousands of tonnes drifted slowly together with micrometric precision. They closed, touched, engaged, sealed one to the other.

“All connections completed,” the computer said, while displaying the same information on the screen. “Ready to unlock and transfer crew.”

Debhu activated the next phase of the program. One after another the gigantic grapples disengaged, sending shudders of sound through the tug’s frame. Once free of its mighty burden the tug drifted away, then jetted toward the deep spacer that was now lashed to the cargo of grain. Gentle contact was made and the airlock of one ship was sealed to the other. As soon as the connection was complete the inner door opened automatically.

“Let’s transfer,” Debhu said, leading the way. “We usually remain while the tugs put themselves into orbit and power down to standby status. Not this time. When each ship is secure it is cleared to depart. Every one of them has a different destination. This food is vitally needed.”

A low buzzer was sounding on the bridge and one of the readouts was flashing red. “Not too serious,” Debhu said. “It’s a grapple lock, not secured. Could be a monitoring failure or dirt in the jaws. They pick it up when we drop planet-side. Do you want to take a look at it?”

“No problem,” Jan said. “That’s the kind of work I have been doing ever since I came to this planet. Where are the suits?”

The tool kit was an integral part of the suit, as was the computer radio link that would direct him to the malfunctioning unit where the trouble was. The suit rustled and expanded as the air was pumped from the lock; then the outer hatch swung open.

Jan had no time to appreciate the glory of the stars, unshielded now by any planetary atmosphere. Their journey could not begin until he had done his work. He activated the direction finder, then pulled himself along the handbar in the direction indicated by the holographic green arrow that apparently floated in space before him. Then stopped abruptly as a column of ice particles suddenly sprang out of the hull at his side. Other growing pillars came into being all around him; he smiled to himself and pushed on. The ship was venting the air from the cargo. The air and water vapor froze instantly into tiny ice particles as it emerged. The vacuum of space would dehydrate and preserve the corn, lightening the cargo and helping to prevent the interplanetary spread of organisms.