The Seed of Earth
- Автор: Силверберг Роберт
- Год: 1978
- Язык: английский
- Год: Hamlyn Paperbacks
- ISBN: 0 600 38314 8
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «The Seed of Earth». Краткое содержание книги:
Four humans, imprisoned in a cave by alien raiders, awaiting an unknown fate, watching for the inevitable crackup that would hurl each at the others' throats —knowing that whatever they did would determine the future of their colony...
Dawes saw a bulletin board on the wall of the mess hall building. He wandered over. Tacked on it was a mimeographed roster of the Gegenschein passengers.
Only four married couples were included in the hundred names. Dawes wondered how many of the other ninety-two had been married at the time of their selection. A good many, most likely. And how many husbands or wives had been unable to bring themselves to volunteer and thus join their selected mates? How many were leaving children behind?
How many, he wondered, welcomed selection as a chance to escape an intolerable marriage, an unpleasant job, a dreary and useless existence? Selection was not completely a curse, to some.
He returned to his room. The suitcase, he noticed, had been picked up while he had been gone. He sprawled out on the uncomfortable bed, kicked off his shoes, and waited for the time to pass.
At 1500 hours, the gong in the hall rang again. The crisp voice out of the speaker said, Attention. Attention. All selectees are to report to the front of the barracks for boarding ship, at once.'
In the hall, Dawes met Mary Elliot; the older woman smiled at him, and he returned the smile tensely. Several selectees whom Dawes did not know joined them at the elevator, and they rode down together.
'Well, this is it,' Mary Elliot said. 'Goodbye to Earth.
I thought this week would never end!'
'So did II' exclaimed a willowy thirtyish brunette behind Dawes. 'So long to Earth.'
Three motor coaches waited outside the barracks.
Guards in blue-and-yellow uniforms efficiently herded the selectees into the first coach until it was full, then began channelling people toward the second. Dawes boarded the third coach. By that time, the first one was halfway across the immense spacefield. The uniformed men did their job with a calm impersonality that seemed faintly inhuman to Dawes. But, he reflected, they had to do this three times a week. All over the world, now, people were being herded into starships. By nightfall six thousand Earthmen would be on their way to an uncertain destination.
Close up, the Gegenschein seemed immense. Standing upright on its tail, it reared two hundred feet above the scorched brown soil. Its hull was plated with a molecule-thick sheath of gold, by way of ornament; each of the starships had its own distinctive color. The hatch was sixty feet above the ground. To gain entry, one had to ride up a gantry lift that held five people at a time. A catwalk was available for those who wanted to climb.
Dawes was in no hurry. He waited in line for his turn to enter the lift. Turning, he took his last look at Earth, sucked in his last breath of Earth's air.
It was mid-afternoon. In the quiet isolation of the starfield the air had a clear, transparent quality. There was a tangy nip in it; it smelled of distant fir and spruce. The sun was low in the October sky, and a brisk breeze swept in from the north.
Now, at the moment of ship boarding, Dawes began to think of all he would never see again. Never another sunset on Earth, never the moon full and pale in the sky, never the familiar constellations. Never again the glory of autumn-tinted maples, never the sight of football players racing down a field, never again a hot dog or a hamburger or a vanilla sundae. Little things; but little things added up to a world, and it was a world he was leaving forever behind.
'Next five,' came the guard's voice.
Dawes shuffled forward and onto the metal platform.
The lift rose with a groaning of winches. Now that he was close to the ship's skin, he could see the tiny pittings and indentations that told of previous service. The Gegenschein looked newly minted at a distance, but at close range the appearance was far different.
The lift halted at the lip of the entry hatch. Hands gathered them in, and behind Dawes the lift began to descend for its next load. Within, fluorescent lights cast their cold beams on a circular room which opened onto a spiral companionway at either end.
'Men go up, women down,' chanted a space-tanned young man in starman's uniform. 'Men to the fore compartment, women aft.'
Dawes clambered up the ladder that lined the companionway at the top of the circular room. He realized that, in flight, gyroscopic balancers would keep the ship forever upright - but it was difficult to visualize the way the compartments would be oriented.
At the top of the ladder another crewman waited.
'Men's dorm is straight ahead,' he was told.
Dawes found himself in a compartment large enough for twenty-five persons. There was nothing luxurious about the compartment: no money had been expended on plush carpeting, mosaic tile walls, or the other trimmings customary in commercial spacecraft. The walls were bare metal, unpainted, unornamented.
Dawes recognized Sid Nolan, the engineer from Tulsa, already sprawled out in one of the acceleration cradles.
Dawes nodded hello and said, 'What are we supposed to do, now that we're here?'
'Just pick out a cradle and sit down. Once everybody's aboard they'll tell us what happens next.'
'Mind if I take this one?' Dawes asked, indicating the cradle that adjoined Nolan's.
'Why should I mind? Suit yourself.'
Dawes lowered himself into the cradle. It was like an oversize lounge chair, suspended on shockproof cables.
At right and left there dangled safety straps to be buckled before blastoff.
The chamber filled quickly. Dawes recognized Ky Noonan, the husky volunteer, who entered, picked out a cradle, and immediately strapped himself in with an expert hand. Ed Sanderson, the accountant from Milwaukee, was three cradles to Dawes' left.
Dawes' watch said 1520 hours when the chamber was filled. A loudspeaker overhead crackled into life.
'Settlers of the planet Osiris, welcome aboard the starship Gegenschein,' a deep, pleasantly resonant voice said.
'I'm Captain McKenzie, and for the next four weeks I'll be in command of your ship. The compartments you now are in will be your residences for the entire journey - but you won't be as cooped up as it may seem now. There are two lounges, one fore and one aft, and a galley where you'll take your meals.
'The Gegenschein carries a crew of nine, and you'll meet them all soon enough. But I'll have to point out now that this isn't exactly a luxury liner. My crewmen have their own jobs to do, such as navigating, controlling the fuel flow, servicing the ship in flight. You'll be responsible for the tidiness of your own cabins, and each day ten of you will serve with the crew to help prepare meals and clean the ship.
'Blastoff will take place, as you know, at 1600 hours.
The time is now 1523 hours, so, as you see, there are approximately thirty-seven minutes left. The countdown is in its final stages now. At 1545 hours you will all have to be strapped into your cradles; those of you who have travelled in space before may be familiar with the way the straps work, but in any event crewmen will circulate among you to make sure you're all strapped down.
'The ship will rise on conventional chemical-fuel rockets, as in interplanetary traffic. The initial acceleration will be three gravities; you may experience some discomfort, but not for long.
'We will travel on rocket drive for eighty-three minutes. At 1723 hours the rocket drive will cease to be operative, and we will make the Einsteinian conversion to nospace at 1730 hours. Once the conversion is complete you will be free to leave your protective cradles. There'll be a signal given to indicate this. At 1800 hours dinner will be served in the galley.