The Smoke Ring

She flapped spinward, toward Headquarters or the Market. He called after her. “We have a rocket—”

“No. Thanks. I’ll go on foot.” She kept kicking. Rather turned back to Serjent House. He was going to have to do some fast talking…again.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Loop

from the CARM #2 cassettes, recorded year 76 SM, day 1412:

TO DISCIPLINE, YEAR 1435 STATE. RETRIEVE YOUR CREW AND CONTINUE YOUR MISSION.

WHERE HAD IT ALL GONE WRONG? A MESSAGE MAY BECOME garbled across fifty-two light-years of distance and interstellar dust. But this was simple, unambiguous, and repeated—

—as if he were a wayward computer in need of reprogramming. Arrival date: Feb 26,1487 State. Recorded by CARM #2 sixty-one Earth days later.

He’d accomplished his mission! Why this?

He had attempted to follow his new orders. Of eight CARMs he had sent into the Smoke Ring, he located three. The rest must have been destroyed, or worn out, or their sending systems turned off.

From CARM #2 he had learned of the death of Claire Dalton. Claire had died at one hundred and thirty-eight, less than two months before the message arrived. No other survivors were known to the CARMs. Many deathdates had been recorded.

Amazing that Claire had lived so long.

There had been a mutiny. Kendy had stored it in CARM #2’s computer before he erased it from his own memory. Sharis Davis Kendy had mutinied against his crew. Fool, not to have seen that! Their descendants used mutineer as an insult!

He’d made an irretrievable mistake. But how? His reasoning was straight. His orders were unambiguous… weren’t they?

1)…YOU WILL VISIT EACH OF THESE STARS IN TURN. OTHER TARGETS MAY BE ADDED…THE STATE EXPECTS TO SETTLE THESE WORLDS, SPREADING HUMANITY AMONG VARIABLE ENVIRONMENTS, AGAINST DANGERS THAT MIGHT AFFECT ONLY SOL SYSTEM.

2)…THE HUMAN SPECIES IS NOT INVULNERABLE. THERE IS FINITE RISK THAT THE CREW OF ANY INTERSTELLAR SPACECRAFT MAY FIND, ON ITS RETURN, THAT IT HAS BECOME THE ENTIRE HUMAN RACE. YOUR CREW AND THEIR GENES ARE YOUR PRIMARY CARGO. CLASSIFIED.

3) YOUR TERTIARY MISSION IS TO EXPLORE…

How could it be clearer?

Kendy knew how the dinosaurs had died. The State had explored the ringed black giant planet that periodically hurled flurries of comets into the solar system. The State could stop comets now. The solar system was tamed. Ten planets were better than one; cities and industrial sites on thirty moons and hundreds of asteroids were better than none; but the lesson of the dinosaurs remained. Planets are fragile.

Earthlike worlds had been found in the habitable zones of nearby stars. Green life had emerged on two. At Discipline’s departure they were in the process of final terraforming. On twenty-six worlds, poisonous air resembling Earth’s primordial reducing atmosphere had been seeded with tailored algae. In a thousand years some would be ready for further attention. The seeder ramship program had been ru

And Discipline had found a habitable nonplanet!

Humanity was to be spread as widely as possible.

The dangers here were not a planet’s dangers. The Smoke Ring and its enveloping gas torus were dense enough to protect Earthly life from radiation from the old neutron star, and from other radiation too. Radiation sources were normal throughout the universe. A supernova explosion near Sol…a passage of Sol and its companion stars through a region of star-creation…a catastrophe in the galactic core…events known and unknown could cause havoc through Sol system and all nearby systems. But none could harm the Smoke Ring!

His own message to Earth, sent in year 1382 State, was long and detailed. CARM #2 had the record:

Sharls Davis Kendy had abandoned his crew as they explored the Smoke Ring. Three who remained aboard had been invited to take what they needed from Discipline and join the others. He had never given reasons; his secondary mission was CLASSIFIED. He had shut down systems aboard Discipline in a pattern that forced them to the CARMs.

Ah, that explained something: those three had not loved cats. Pure coincidence.

Then, the message from Earth. Put it back the way it was.

How? His crew was dead!

Faced with conflicting orders, he could not function at all. He would be locked in a loop of reinforcing guilt. Kendy had sequestered all data relating to the mutiny and beamed it to CARMs #2, #6, and #7, then erased it all from memory.

How had he gone wrong? Could the message itself have been garbled? Through 200 repetitions?

TO DISCIPLINE, YEAR 1435 STATE. RETRIEVE YOUR CREW AND CONTINUE YOUR MISSION.

No explanations, no elaborations. He’d been reprogrammed like a wayward computer. Why? He’d accomplished his mission!

Was the message genuine? Check the dates:

Kendy’s own mission report, sent 1382 State. Message from the State dated fifty-two point two Earth years later. He was fifty-two point one light-years from Earth. This Shibano had not lingered over his decision, but…it checked.

— Arrived fifty-two point one years after that. Check.

…Odd. Why would the State expect any crew to remain alive? That Claire had survived was partly due to low gravity, good conservative health habits (her mind was that of an elderly corpsicle), youth (via the body of some bright, healthy criminal), and luck. The rest must have been dead decades earlier (and their descendants called him murderer and mutineer and damaged machine).

Shibano for the State. Kendy found it difficult to consider Shibano as separate from the state, but…what could Shibano have been thinking? Rescue after one hundred and four years: it was insane.

Perhaps the State’s medical resources had improved?

Times change. Every generation of mankind has sought longer lives. Thousand-year lifespans might have become common…

Speculative.

But times change. Goals change. Kendy’s route here had been circuitous. The state that had given Kendy his orders was four hundred and fifty-five years old when he reached the Smoke Ring. Five hundred and seven when Shibano spoke. Five hundred and fifty-nine when his message arrived.

Kendy did not normally question orders. Conflicting orders could throw him into a loop. But he had been round and round this loop, while some voiceless subsystem sought desperately for a way out.

Somewhere in a pattern of magnetic fields there was a change of state…and Kendy the man would have laughed. A change of State, yes. Sharls Davis Kendy’s State was a thousand years in the past. Dead. Somehow he must serve anyway. His own goals had been spelled out in detail; he would serve those.

Humankind was to settle varied environments. So be it. What was his present situation?

The receding Smoke Ring covered forty degrees of sky. His mind had been following a loop for just under two months! He’d missed the final stages of the explosion of Levoy’s Star, the foray into the Admiralty might have disintegrated by now…

To work. Discipline’s drive had shut down without his attention. Good! He still had fuel.

He started the drive warming. His orbit was a comet’s, highly eccentric. Equations ran through his mind…fire a short burst at aphelion. Shed some velocity by aerobraking, by dipping into the gas torus around the Smoke Ring, twice. Use Goldblatt’s World as a gravity sling, save a few cupfuls of deuterium that way…