The Long Voyage, Carl Richard Jacobi [best autobiographies to read txt] 📗

WANTED: A group of married men and women, young, courageous, educated, tired of political and social restrictions, interested in extra-terrestrial colonization. Financial resources no qualification.

After we had been weeded out, interviewed and rigorously questioned, Norris had taken us into the hangar, waved a hand toward the Marie Galante and explained the details.

The Marie Galante was a cruiser-type ship, stripped down to essentials to maintain speed, but equipped with the latest of everything. For a short run to Venus, for which it was originally built, it would accommodate a passenger list of ninety.

But Norris wasn't interested in that kind of run. He had knocked out bulkheads, reconverted music room and ballroom into living quarters. He had closed and sealed all observation ports, so that only in the bridge cuddy could one see into space.

"We shall travel beyond the orbit of the sun," he said. "There will be no turning back; for the search for a new world, a new life, is not a task for cowards."

Aside to me, he said: "You're to be the physician of this party, Bagley. So I'm going to tell you what to expect when we take off. We're going to have some mighty sick passengers aboard then."

"What do you mean, sir?" I said.

He pointed with his pipe toward the stern of the vessel. "See that ... well, call it a booster. Ganeth-Klae designed it just before he disappeared, using the last lot of Indurate in existence. It will increase our take-off speed by five times, and it will probably have a bad effect on the passengers."

So we had left Earth, at night from a field out in Essex. Without orders, without clearance papers, without an automatic pilot check. Eighteen couples and one navigator—destination unknown. If the Interstellar Council had known what Norris was up to, it would have been a case for the Space-Time Commission.

Of that long initial lap of our voyage, perhaps the less said the better. As always is the case when monotony begins to wear away the veneer of civilization, character quirks came to the surface, cliques formed among the passengers, and gossip and personalities became matters of pre-eminent importance.

Rising to the foreground out of our thirty-six, came Fielding Mason, tall, taciturn, and handsome, with a keen intellect and a sense of values remarkable in so young a man. Mason was a graduate of Montape, the French outgrowth of St. Cyr. But he had majored in military tactics, psychology and sociology and knew nothing at all about astrogation or even elemental astronomy. He too was a man of good breeding and refinement. Nevertheless conflict began to develop between him and Navigator Norris. That conflict began the day we landed on Coulora.

Norris stepped out of the air lock into the cold thin air, glanced briefly about him and faced the eighteen men assembled.

"We'll divide into three groups," he said. "Each group to carry an organic surveyor and take a different direction. Each group will so regulate its marching as to be back here without fail an hour before darkness sets in. If you find no sign of animal life, then we will take off again immediately on your return."

Mason paused halfway in the act of strapping on his packsack.

"What's that got to do with it?" he demanded. "There's vegetation here. That's all that seems to be necessary."

Norris lit his pipe. "If you find no sign of animal life we will take off immediately on your return," he said as if he hadn't heard.

But the strangeness of Coulora tempered bad feelings then. The blue hensorr trees were actually not trees at all but a huge cat-tail-like growth, the stalks of which were quite transparent. In between the stalks grew curious cabbage-like plants that changed from red to yellow as an intruder approached and back to red again after he had passed. Rock outcroppings were everywhere, but all were eroded and in places polished smooth as glass.

There was a strange kind of dust that acted as though endowed with life. It quivered when trod upon, and the outline of our footsteps slowly rose into the air, so that looking back I could see our trail floating behind us in irregular layers.

Above us the star that was this planet's sun shown bright but faintly red as if it were in the first stages of dying. The air though thin was fit to breathe, and we found it unnecessary to wear space suits. We marched down the corridors of hensorr trees, until we came to an open spot, a kind of glade. And that was the first time Mason tuned his organic surveyor and received absolutely nothing.

There was no animal life on Coulora!

Within an hour we had blasted off again. The forward-impact delivered by the Ganeth-Klae booster was terrific, and nausea and vertigo struck us all simultaneously. But again, with all ports and observation shields sealed shut, Norris held the secret of our destination.

On July twenty-second, the ship gave that sickening lurch and came once again to a standstill.

"Same procedure as before," Norris said, stepping out of the airlock. "Those of you who desire to have their wives accompany you may do so. Mason, you'll make a final correlation on the organic surveyors. If there is no trace of animal life return here before dark."

Once our group was out of sight of the ship, Mason threw down his packsack, sat down on a boulder and lighted a cigarette.

"Bagley," he said to me, "has the Old Man gone loco?"

"I think not," I said, frowning. "He's one of the most evenly balanced persons I know."

"Then he's hiding something," Mason said. "Why else should he be so concerned with finding animal life?"

"You know the answer to that," I said. "We're here to colonize, to start a new life.