Outward Borne (7 page)

The Outward Voyager’s memory files
held few images of the entire ship. It may be that the original
crew never got more than a glimpse at some small part of the
spindly ten-kilometer long craft. The Outward was a mostly empty,
stripped down husk. The resting mass was carefully controlled in
order to reduce the immense amount of energy required to accelerate
such a tremendous structure to fractional light speed.

The crew had lived on the Outward
Voyager for months. All through their preparations for launch they
had been weightless, but now they were well into the ordeal of
acceleration. The small crew occupied the outer two levels of the
boxy, fifteen-deck habitat module. This structure and the
counter-balancing anti-module with its laboratories, warehouses and
construction facilities, were located on opposite ends of a long
tubular connecting arm. The near duplicate arm and pair of modules
on the opposite side of the hull were largely empty at launch, but
would be fitted out and furnished in flight as the need developed.
A bridge that passed through the central hull of the ship connected
these dumbbell-shaped arms to form an H-shaped unit. The bridge
served as an axle that would enable the habitat and working modules
to rotate and provide a simulated gravity after the Outward reached
cruising speed and its engines shut down.

Now, during the long period of
acceleration, the small crew was divided between a portion of what
they called the Filim Side module and temporary quarters within the
propulsion unit as they struggled to manage the ship as it
continued to gain speed. After full their full velocity was
attained and the arms rotated to create a simulated gravity, they
would bring the anti-modules into operation, begin fitting out
proper living quarters, and complete the control deck from which
the ship and its robotic modules could be managed. The thirteen
empty levels of the habitat module would, in future, if all went
well, be filled with captive aliens. Duplicate living quarters and
control facilities would ultimately be built in the Farside module
in case of an emergency. All this would take time, but that was a
commodity that they would have plenty of.

The Outward Voyager had a long
hollow central hull. It was a large, long, almost empty tube. The
interior of the hull contained little atmosphere and that was as
cold as the vacuum of space. It was an alien environment where most
of the work was conducted by robots. A cluster of deuterium fusion
engines and the massive electrical generators needed to power the
ship, and even larger units to maintain the fusion process force
fields, were isolated in the rear of the hull, far from the living
quarters. The wide material collection array and chemical
processing equipment were spread across the leading edge of the
ship. Stubby tethering flanges protruded a short way from the hull
to lock and support the module arms during the long acceleration
phase and course changes when the force of the engines provided the
gravity equivalent and would have collapse the anti-modules under
its own weight if they were not supported.

LonRi JonDar and the other
crewmembers had maneuvered weightless within their sparsely
equipped quarters for eighty days preparing the ship for launch,
testing control systems, and initiating a long list of automated
procedures. The rotatable arms were aligned along the hull with the
habitat modules to the rear. The deuterium fusion engines had been
ignited, but it would take many days before the rate of
acceleration of the massive ship increased to where they would feel
some semblance of gravity. The arms would remain in that locked
configuration for over a year that the ship required to reach its
permanent cruising speed, nearly sixty-five thousand km/sec, about
twenty percent of light speed, if the calculations were
correct.

With all engines operational, the
Outward Voyager could have accelerated at a much faster rate, but
its leisurely pace reflected the maximum force that could be
tolerated by the ObLaDas and their land-oriented circulatory
systems. The poor things had some serious problems surviving
prolonged periods of high gravity. The otherwise sturdy beings
inevitably developed painful clots and cramps primarily in their
limbs, if continued for some time, the tissues in their extremities
would undergo partial necrosis with amputation needed for
survival.

The ship and its constraints, so
different from ObLa, would exert a profound influence the crew’s
lives. From the beginning, the ObLaDas were stressed physically and
emotionally by the unexpected demands of their living conditions.
ObLa society held conservative, restricted mores. By their very
nature, the ObLaDas wanted to do their best by the community. The
hormonal control of their emotions made this commitment physical as
well as intellectual. ObLaDas literally felt bad if they did bad.
On ObLa, this translated into a family and community focus that
valued stable relationships and mutual assistance. A child was
raised by the neighborhood as much as the family. The thought of
dabbling with your neighbor's handsome husband's affections was
enough to make you sick.

These societal values would be
maintained during the Outward mission, or so they thought. What had
changed was the society. No one, least of all the inhabitants of
the Outward Voyager, was aware of how his or her biology would
react to the novel circumstances under which they now lived. The
Outward ObLaDas were of a community, but now the community was an
unattached, predominantly female society whose members were not
expected to reproduce in the normal way. Here, all procreation
would be controlled to maintain a healthy genetic mixture that
would not otherwise be possible within such a very small
population. So, what exactly was preferred community behavior in
this new way of living? How would this be subsumed into the Outward
mission? The ObLaDas intrusive biology would tell. It was the
beginning of a social and operational instability that would plague
the Outward Voyager for centuries.

It began to tell, appropriately
enough, on the ships two biologists. LonRi was one of the quieter,
more intense of the crew. Although all ObLaDas looked very much
alike, she was a bit smaller and thinner than most, with a tendency
to wear her emotions on her flexible surface. She took refuge in
her work and was very much aware that the ship was most vulnerable
during launch. With only eight ObLaDas on board, five of them
living in the hull tending the engines, they could hardly afford
losses. Dead or injured crew could be replaced over time and, even
without accidents, the size of the crew would need to be increased,
but that would happen only after she had her cloning laboratory
operational. LonRi felt some considerable anxiety about the coming
days, as might be expected, and it would be months before she could
even get to her laboratory in the Filim Anti-mod

TekLet LonAtt was in charge of the
major manufacturing processes, most of which were performed by her
microbes. The workshop would be active through the coming years
fabricating wall panels, floor modules and most of the large
furnishings for the ObLa habitats, but like LonRi’s cloning
facility, it sat inoperable during the acceleration phase, upside
down as it were, in the distant Anti-module. New construction would
not be needed for some time, not until the ship’s crew was expanded
and habitats were built to accommodate LonRi’s new clones or even
some unspecified alien inhabitants. TekLet had little to do and her
guilt when around the harried crewmates had brought her low. The
stresses of the voyage would build over the generations and lead
the ObLaDa crew to some unfortunate decisions and tragic
behavior.

Chapter 7 Cathia

Intense light and vivid colors
coated the rolling hills of the Cathian high plains. Yellow, gold,
and silver blades and tall windblown stalks were blown in waves
during the double sunlit days and throughout the long cloudless
summers. Broad bands of large orange plants added their vibrant
hues to the valleys that spread across the landscape of this
extraordinary land. Water flowed over numerous steppes as it came
down from the hills and small dams broadened the meandering waters
of the plains before the streams emptied into the sands where the
last of the their moisture sank into the barren ground. Narrow
paths cut through tall plants to connect the villages and farms
that were home to the tough, stocky Cathians. This rugged species
lived along the foothills and broad plateaus that lay between the
endless dessert and the pestilential ocean shores of the planet
Cathia.

Much and little had happened
during the twenty-five centuries that had elapsed since the start
of the Outward Voyager’s mission. They had closely surveyed 173
solar systems and discovered 62 life-harboring planets, of which 42
had been sampled. Only 16 had what might be called intelligent
beings, some of which were too large or fragile to capture. They
had, however, collected ten of these species, seven of which still
survived. Even so, the ObLaDas were disappointed. The idealistic
crew that had launched the Outward Voyager, each one intent on
discovery and filled with wonder, had been succeeded over the
generations by a specialized compassionless company of
tradition-bound operatives. The current list of ObLaDas had become
preoccupied with their single-minded goal of discovering populated
planets and conducting experiments on the life forms that they had
captured. They had no regard for the beings that they
kept.

So far, none of their aliens had
made any progress in the sciences. They displayed only a minimal
ability to grasp mathematics beyond simple arithmetic and were
logical only to the point of being annoying. Training, attempts to
further education, and purposeful breeding were all being pursued,
so far without success. Through all of this, the ObLaDas had become
steadfast, intolerant, and uncaring stewards. They ignored their
captives’ wellbeing to the point that their callous behavior
distorted and suppressed the very attributes they were so eager to
find.

This was all a prelude to the next
unfortunate decision. The ObLaDas were intent on traveling along a
promising stream of mainline stars that were of the optimal age to
contain life and were relatively close together. Unfortunately, the
trajectory needed to reach the next star in this series was at a
low angle from the entry path to the planet Cathia. The ObLaDas
launched their planetary probe, restarted the Outward Voyager
propulsion system, and initiated the star rounding along the outer
edge of the solar system. All went according to plan, but by
traveling at undiminished speed and orbiting at maximum centripetal
force, as much as the ObLaDas could withstand, they would approach
the preferred departure angle to the next star in only
seventy-eight days. A complete rounding of the solar system would
consume another eleven months. The ObLaDa leaders did not want to
waste that much time.

The planetary probe quickly
located an organized and reasonably sized species; one that would
be of value to collect and study, or so the controllers decided.
The very limited time allotted to the mission would not allow the
probe to adequately define the aliens’ living habits, preferred
foods, or sustaining social interactions, all of which would be
needed to adequately maintain this species on board the Outward
Voyager. Nevertheless, and with little concern about the wellbeing
of the Cathians, the probe was instructed to capture as many of the
beings as it could hold, collect whatever food was readily
available, then return within an unprecedented twenty days upon the
planet’s surface.

That bright, nearly white sky, the
twin suns, and long pleasant seasons had become bitter memories for
the captives that had been brought within the Outward Voyager. Dim
corridors, narrow hallways, and small plain rooms were a harsh
contrast to the expansive homeland of the twenty-four aliens. For
them, life became a struggle for survival at a basic level. The
Cathians had maintained a vibrant, clever, industrious society, but
in the Outward that had already degraded badly.

The Cathians had an unusual single
gender society that was both compartmentalized and hierarchical.
Everyone had her place and wanted to stay in it. This thoroughly
organized social structure might have given an advantage to the
captives. Firm authority and organized interactions could help
manage the challenges in this wholly new world, but all of their
highly placed people had fled soon after the Outward’s landing
craft arrived. As a result the captives were all lower cast
individuals who were now, for the first time in their lives,
leaderless and without direction.