America 2040 - Golden World Part 1

AMERICA 2040.

BOOK II.

THE GOLDEN WORLD.

Evan Innes.

PROLOGUE I.

From the journal of Evangeline Burr, official historian, theSpirit of America

On this 4 July, 2043 we began the day with a moment of silent prayer or contemplation, depending upon the personal beliefs of the members of our company. Everyone was relieved when Captain Duncan Rodrick did not call a holiday to observe the birthdate of our country. We can honor what President Dexter Hamilton has called "the crowning achievement of governmental experiments."

Although theSpirit of America has been a scientific and technological masterpiece and a safe home for our journey through s.p.a.ce, we are tired of breathing recycled air, drinking recycled water, eating artificial proteins, and having to make do with rationed fresh fruits and vegetables from the ship's gardens.

TheSpirit of America bears the scars of the dangers we have faced during our long journey. Just yesterday the captain allowed me to view the starship's exterior, as seen from the sensors of a scout ship returning from an exploratory mission. I was shocked. The large, curving plates of the hull are blistered and pitted. All the paint has been seared away from the multiple jutting rocket engines and the pods that house the scout ships. The large letters that once proclaimed proudly that our ship was indeed theSpirit of America have been obliterated, but we don't need a painted name to remind us of our mission.

After almost three years in s.p.a.ce, we have our goal in sight-a beautiful planet, four times larger than Earth. To see our new home, we merely use our personal screens, walk through a lounge, visit the observatory, or-as I have done no fewer than three times-obtain permission to visit the areas near the outer hull of our ship and look with naked eyes through one of the thick, polarized gla.s.s ports.

We can also see that odd sun, 61 Cygni B. Our new sun is farther away from our target planet than oldSol is from Earth, but she's larger and appears as a swollen, bloated, orange-flaring disc of unusual beauty.

To say that we face an uncertain future would be nothing new. But when I think about what was facing the billions on Earth when our ship rocketed away, I count my lucky stars-and there are plenty of them to count from s.p.a.ce. I must soon begin to record and preserve the shocking facts given to me by Captain Rodrick as to the reasons behind President Dexter Hamilton's decision to use the dwindling resources of the United States to build this great starship: Soviet Premier Yuri Kolchak suffered from a rare terminal disease and was determined to see a Red world or a dead world before his own death. Hamilton's choice was a grim one. He had either to stand aside and let the communist forces occupy all the world except the United States or contest the communists. Kolchak had promised him that the end result of American resistance would be nuclear war.

So, more than anything else, theSpirit of America is Dexter Hamilton's creation. He had it built to keep the spirit of freedom alive in the face of a threat of nuclear war. We colonists are charged with keeping the American way of life alive in s.p.a.ce, no matter what happened on Earth after our takeoff.

When we left Earth, two other starships, the Rus-sians'Karl Marx and the Brazilians'Estrela do Brasil , were making preparations for takeoff. With our communications out, we don't know the whereabouts of those ships or their intentions. There are billions of stars in our galaxy, and in theory, many of them will have habitable planets. Perhaps the Russians and the Brazilians will find their own planets, but I have heard many people, including some of our officers, speculate that the Russians might want to carry the old Earth war into s.p.a.ce. Should they follow us here to the Cygni system, I know we will be ready.

I also feel confident that our huge new planet is going to be friendly to us. Today, eleven light years from Earth, over a thousand pa.s.sengers who represent all civilized skills and all scientific knowledge are busy preparing to join our scouts and scientists, who have already proven that our new planet is quite friendly to human habitation. We are all eager to begin. We have the tools, the knowledge, and the expertise to build a technology and do whatever it takes for Captain Rodrick to return this vast starship to Earth with her raw materials, food, and most important, a message of hope.

I.

OMEGA.

ONE.

TheSpirit of America was big. She was the largest object ever to be lifted from a planetary surface by rocket power, or any other power, unless one believed the theory that Venus had been flung out of the planet Jupiter or that Earth's moon had been spun off from Earth's ma.s.s during planet formation aeons past. She was a complicated collection of millions of parts, mechanical and electronic, and Captain Duncan Rodrick knew that in any mechanical or electrical system lay the foundation of Murphy's Law: If something can go wrong, it will.

Humankind's eternal task, when dealing with machines, was to see that the malfunction didn't occur at acrucial time... such as when landing megatons of ma.s.s balanced on the pillars of fire of one hundred rockets.

"Systems check," Rodrick ordered in his laid-back, informal command voice.

"Communications operative," Lieutenant Jacqueline Garvey said.

"Computers operative," said little j.a.panese-American Emi Zuki.

Ito Zuki, Emi's husband, spoke from his seat directly beside his wife. "Navigation system operative.

Landing sequence programmed."

Chief Engineer Max Rosen's voice came soft and lazy to Rodrick through the communicator. Rodrick had come to know and value Max Rosen during the years in s.p.a.ce, and he knew that Max's tone of voice indicated tension.

"Rocket engine firing system armed and ready," Rosen reported.

Rodrick smiled. He could almost picture Rosen's face, screwed up into its perpetual expression of pure agony.

"Hull cooling system operative," said the electrical engineer, Sage Bryson.

"Weapons system armed and ready." Lieutenant Commander Paul Warden, the old jock, was stationed behind the thick armor plates of theSpirit of America 's weapons control center, ready to blast any threatening ent.i.ty with beams, rays, projectiles, and rockets.

It was easy, Rodrick thought, for some to forget that a ready weapons system was an integral part of the landing procedure. After all, Jack Purdy, chief scout, had been down on the planet s surface for over twenty days, and a sizable group of pa.s.sengers had already been shuttled down to join him. These two hundred plus people, who now sat on a low, gra.s.sy hill to watch the ship come in, were another indication of Rodrick's innate cautiousness. TheSpirit of America had never been landed. Should anything happen on the way down, there would be a solid core of people safely on the surface, to a.s.sure survival of the colony.

All this was going through Rodrick's mind as he heard Paul Warden's voice reporting the status of the ship's weapons systems, and thinking of Warden in weapons control made Rodrick feel better. He liked the man, drank with him on occasion, called him, with affection, the no-neck monster because Warden was built like a wrestler, with a thick chest, big arms, and highly developed deltoid muscles, which made it look as if his head sat directly on his shoulders.

First Officer Rocky Miller, whose function it was to stand ready to fill any position on the control bridge in the event of emergency, looked at the captain out of the corner of his eye. Miller was taller than Rodrick, and more muscular; he spent long hours in the gym. Rocky Miller had not agreed with the captain's decision to land two hundred selected people by scout ship. As he let his eyes swing swiftly over the array of instruments, he was thinking that Rodrick had the looks of a man who had been spooked. Rodrick, Miller felt, put up a good front, but at times during the trip out, the captain, in Miller's opinion, had been on the verge of losing his judgment in tight situations.

Rodrick allowed a few seconds to pa.s.s. Jackie Garvey crossed her long legs and looked up at him. She felt that she knew the captain better than most; one aspect of their mission was the understood butunstated order that women of childbearing age were to breed children. It had seemed logical, in the beginning, that she was the perfect choice for the ship's bachelor commander. He winked at her, but her answering smile was questioning. Things had seemed so promising early on, and then something had gone wrong. They had been very good together, and then nothing.

The bridge, although not s.p.a.cious, was never crowded. The ship had been built to fly herself. The bridge crew consisted of Emi Zuki, computer programmer; Ito Zuki, her husband and astronavigator; Jackie Garvey, ship's communicator, and the first officer, Rocky Miller, on standby. His wife, Dr. Amanda Miller, was usually on the bridge during interesting maneuvers, but she and the bulk of her Life Sciences staff, including the medical unit, were now on the surface.

There was one other figure on the bridge, a tall, slim, handsome individual in United States Navy white, his chest resplendent with ribbons, his back stiff, a cap adorned with admiral's gold pulled rakishly low over his piercing, unblinking eyes.

Rodrick swiveled his command seat. "Admiral?" he asked.

"Sir!" the admiral snapped.

It was difficult to remember, sometimes, that the admiral was one of Dr. Grace Monroe's "boys," that those dark, piercing eyes were not really alive, that the impressive figure was built of synthetics, that the brain behind those eyes was Dr. Monroe's greatest achievement. An electrical lead seemed to emerge from the admiral's rear pocket. It was attached to Emi Zuki's main computer terminal.

"How do you read?" Rodrick asked.

"All systems at optimum efficiency, sir," the admiral said.

The admiral had been proven invaluable. His lightning-fast brain, more than a computer, could be synergically meshed with the ship's computers. Rodrick had come to depend on the admiral as one more check on the ship s computer system.

"Put me on all-ships circuit, Lieutenant Garvey," Rodrick said, and when Jackie had pushed the proper b.u.t.tons, he took a deep breath. "This is the captain. In three minutes we will fire retro-rockets preparatory to landing. Please position yourselves in your gravity couches at this time."

During the stressful times, two things belied Max Rosen's attempt to be cool and casual-his face and his s.p.a.ce Service uniform. During preparation for the landing, Max's uniform had given up the light and now looked as if it had been slept in for days. Max's ability to perform a negative miracle on the uniform was only one of his qualities that Dr. Grace Monroe found fascinating, especially since millions of dollars had been spent in research to develop a fabric that would withstand long wear in cramped quarters. In less than one hour, starting with a fresh uniform, Max could prove that all those millions had been wasted.

As Max watched the digital countdown clock display its ever-changing numbers, he ran long fingers through his black, unruly hair, managing to muss it even more.

Grace was standing by at a computer terminal. After a bad start, when Grace's menagerie of robotic ent.i.ties had thoroughly annoyed the chief engineer, he'd come to respect her more than any other person he'd ever known. There were times when he wondered which he liked most about her: her intuitiveintelligence or her mature beauty.

"You look like you could use a drink," he growled, as the clock counted off the seconds, and around him, the engine-room servomechanisms clicked and hummed in readiness.

"I feel as if I need a drink," Grace said.

Rosen was a tall, thin, dark, strong-nosed, wiry-haired Jew. His heavy beard gave him a five-o'clock shadow all day long, and his black hair was just beginning to be peppered with gray. On him it looked almost distinguished. He'd worked with Harry Shaw from the beginning in the development of the Shaw Drive, which propelled the starship through time and s.p.a.ce.

In contrast to Max's disheveled state, Grace Monroe looked as if she'd spent the past few hours with a makeup, hair care, and fashion expert instead of at Max's side as they checked the computations again and again.

Grace was in her mid fifties. Her mature, full-bodied beauty was set off by her mauve suit, accented at the throat by a paisley scarf. Once, when she'd entered Rosen's engineering sector dressed impeccably, he had growled, "Don't you have any work clothes?"

"These are my work clothes," she'd told him. Max sighed, wished for that drink, then looked down as something rubbed at his shin. The thing was catlike in appearance. In fact, Cat, one of Grace's robotic creations, had been experimenting of late in growing hair, and the attempt had not been totally successful.

Cat looked to Max like a blue Tinkertoy feline with hog bristles protruding from its odd, elastic body, composed of material that Dr. Monroe had developed when she was head of Research and Development at Transworld Robotics, Inc. back on Earth.

"d.a.m.ned Cat," Max growled, but there was no fury there, as there once had been. True to Grace's design objective, Cat had pulled the ship out of the fire for them, almost literally, by altering its shape to allow for close-quarters repairs of the rocket-firing system when theSpirit of America was falling rapidly into a sun.

The digital clock now showed less than one minute to go when Captain Rodrick's voice came over the communicator. "Chief, any problem if we go on hold for thirty minutes?"

Rosen looked at Grace, agony on his features, wondering what had gone wrong.

"It's just that the light isn't right down below," Chief Rodrick said.

Rosen snarled and rolled his eyes helplessly. He knew that a filming crew was on the planet's surface, waiting to record theSpirit of America 's landing for posterity.

"No problem," he said, but his face showed disagreement. Putting off the landing to wait for better light for recording the event didn't rate a very high priority with him.

Grace laughed and began punching b.u.t.tons. Rosen put the retro-firing on hold, then took Grace's arm and said, "I offered you a drink."

Cat at first led the way, soaring in the nulgrav, zero gravity. The spin had been taken off the ship so that there was zero gravity in all sections now. Cat had learned to flatten its body into a soaring contour, but Max, lacking Cat's abilities, lengthened his stride, opened the door to his quarters, followed Graceinside, then used his foot to deftly block the robot. Cat scratched on the metal of the door for a few seconds and then, rejected, slunk off down the corridor, its body turning black with sadness.

The ship's boozery made a decent gin. Max's quarters, in contrast to his person, were tidy. He mixed, handed Grace her covered cup and straw. He'd used a liberal quant.i.ty of the fresh orange juice squeezed from fruit grown in Amando Kwait's on-board gardens. Max sipped and then exhaled noisily. His smile showed no sign of tension as he looked at Grace. She was still standing.

"You gonna sit down?" Max asked.

"I think I'll sit down," Grace said. She'd learned during the past two and a half years not to be put out by what some considered bluntness on Max's part. She took the chair that served as the acceleration couch.

"You gonna sit down or stand up all day?" she asked, humor lighting her brown eyes.

Max growled. He had never had time to get married. He had been a brilliant young man in a hurry, and he'd hurried himself right into the most fascinating work, helping to design and test the components of the huge s.p.a.ce stations that had been lifted into s.p.a.ce on bellowing rockets. When he had been called to California to work with a young genius named Harry Shaw, he'd thought his life was complete and could never get better. Now he had hopes that his lifewould get better because he'd met a woman named Grace Monroe.

Intellectually she was superior to most men, and Max's initial response to her had been almost openly hostile; he was the kind of genius who felt, without admitting it to. himself, that one genius around any given installation was enough. At first he'd felt that just because Grace was the topmost authority on the new breed of thinking computers, which utilized amino-acid units for data storage, it didn't give her the right to come messing around in his engineering areas and, by G.o.d, certainly not the right to turn her eerie menagerie of robots loose on his ship.

Max prided himself on being an opinionated man, but he was not so self-centered that he didn't realize that an opinionated man does not hold opinions, they hold him. Change came hard for him, but it had taken Grace only a few weeks to begin to break through to the sensitive, warm human being under Max Rosen's outer crust.

There in his quarters, waiting out a half-hour hold so that the light would be right for pictures, Grace's mental powers were not foremost in Max's mind. He saw a mature, lovely woman sitting on his acceleration couch, her cla.s.sic face in repose. He swallowed, let his thoughts surface, thoughts that he'd been indulging in only in privacy: He liked looking at her. He liked hearing her talk. He liked being around her. He liked working with her. She had proven to be a good team worker. She challenged him, all right, but he was a man who liked challenges. The skull sessions they had during slow times were, to Max, more stimulating than good booze.

Heknew that the ma.s.s of weight that was theSpirit of America was going to behave and sit itself down all in one piece, but there was just the odd chance- And he'd never even tried to tell her how he felt about her.

"Grace," he began, "I just want to say-"

She looked at him with an expectant smile. "I just wanted to say... that I appreciate your help."

"Thank you."

"That wasn't what I wanted to say," he muttered, so low that she could barely hear.

She waited.

"I-" He swallowed. "h.e.l.l, we make a fine team, don't we?" he demanded belligerently.

"I think so," she answered, a tiny smile twitching at the corner of her mouth.

He was, he knew, acting like a lovesick kid. He was, he told himself as he almost turned and left the suite, too old to get involved in the mating dance of the juveniles. He was a man who always faced reality. He swallowed and, instead of leaving, took two steps toward her: "d.a.m.n it, Grace," he said. "I'm out of practice for this sort of thing."

She had the feeling that if she spoke he'd run for it. She didn't want him to run. She tilted her head to one side and looked up at him, a smile on her full lips.

"Oh, h.e.l.l," Max growled. "Stand up. "

She put her drink down slowly, not taking her eyes from his. He took her hands and helped her up, and she went into his arms. Her eyes closed as his lips found hers.

"I've been wanting to do that for a long time," he admitted after a few moments.

"Well, it took you long enough," she said.

"I want you tofeel my heart," Max said in amazement. He put her hand on his heart. It was beating rapidly.

"Thank you," she whispered.

He raised his bushy eyebrows in question.

"For feeling that way about me," she explained.

He grinned. There was an element of pleased disbelief in him, but mostly there was a gladness that she, so lovely, so sophisticated, could be in the arms of an old bear of an engineer who certainly was not the prize catch of all time.

"Want to get married?" Max asked.

"What do you think?"

"Yeah, I think so," he said, pulling her more tightly into his arms. "How much time we got?" he asked, knowing that she was facing the wall clock.

"Enough for you to kiss me a few more times," she said, lifting her face. Now his heart was really going crazy. He felt first hot, then cold. His breath was short and rapid. He looked into her eyes, and what he saw there, dreamy and beautiful, caused him to gasp.