Given what they were up against, and the primitive state of their technology base, and their woeful ignorance about what the interstellar environment can do to you at relativistic speeds, it’s actually pretty impressive that they got as far as they did. They were almost twelve years out when their crops began failing. As far as anyone could tell from their transmissions, they never did fully understand what was happening. The best guess in the account I read was that the plants were suffering from cumulative radiation damage, compounded over multiple generations until there were just too many mutations for the organisms to be viable anymore. The Ching Shih’s field generators weren’t as efficient as ours, and their Agriculture Section was located in the front third of the ship, apparently on the theory that the humans were the ones who really needed the shielding, so those poor plants were taking a serious beating.
The thing about disasters in interstellar space is that some of them are fast, and some of them are slow—but either kind can leave you really, really dead. The Ching Shih died slowly. To their credit, they documented the entire process, even when it was clear that their situation was completely hopeless, in the interest of making sure the next mission wouldn’t make the same mistakes. They got through most of a year by progressively cutting rations. When it was obvious that wasn’t going to be enough, the mission commander put out a standing request for volunteers to be converted from calorie sinks to calorie sources.
Starvation hurts. She got a surprising number of takers.
It took another three years before she finally faced up to the fact that even if she cut the crew down to the minimum needed to keep the ship running, and maybe still be able to unpack their stored embryos at the journey’s end, they weren’t going to make it. Their Agriculture Section was producing next to nothing by then, and the mission plan had relied on the crops to do a fair bit of their carbon cycling as well as providing food for the crew, so things were falling apart on multiple levels. They were still four years out from Eden when the last twelve crew members powered the ship down, stripped to their underwear, and stepped out of the main air lock.
The Ching Shih is still out there somewhere, humming through the void at point-six c or so—and so, I suppose, are the bodies of those last twelve would-be colonists. I find myself wondering sometimes if someone somewhere might see them zip by someday and wonder where they’re going in such a hurry … and why the hell they’re not wearing suits.
* * *
THE PROBLEM WITH getting kicked out of your room when you live in a rat-warren dome on a planet with a poisonous atmosphere and hostile natives is that there aren’t a lot of places to go. We don’t have theaters. We don’t have coffee shops. We don’t have parks, or plazas, or hangouts. What we have, mostly, is workspaces, the majority of which range from unpleasant (sewage reclamation) to hostile (Security’s ready room). The Agriculture Section is actually not a bad place to be, if you can avoid getting depressed about the feeble state of most of the growing things, but I’m not welcome there except on days when I’ve been seconded out to them, so that’s a no-go.
For lack of better options, I head down to the caf.
It’s on the late side for dinner now, so I don’t anticipate finding a big crowd there, but when I walk through the door, it’s even more sparse than I expected. There’s a group of four at a table near the back, picking over two trays of potatoes between them, and a guy I know vaguely from the Biology Section sitting alone in the opposite corner, nursing what looks like a paste smoothie and staring down at his tablet. His name is Highsmith. He’s a history buff of sorts. I once had a fun conversation with him about the parallels between the Diaspora and the original spread of the human species out of Africa on old Earth. Most of his opinions were wrong, but I had a good time telling him exactly why that was so.
I briefly—very briefly—consider asking if he wants company, before realizing first that my ration is zeroed out for the day, and then how weird it would be for me to sit down across from him in the cafeteria with no food of my own and then try to strike up a conversation. Instead, I take a bench at a table near the door, as far from both him and the others as I can get, pull out my own tablet, and start browsing for a distraction.
After ten minutes or so without inspiration, I finally decide to go old school, with an article about the failure of the old Earth Vikings’ Greenland colony. Their situation, as it turns out, wasn’t all that different from ours in a lot of ways. They tried to build a sustainable society in a cold, inhospitable place where their traditional food crops wouldn’t grow. They got into fights with hostile locals. I assume their leader was kind of a jerk.
Eventually, they starved to death.
That last bit takes me back to Eight, lying on our bed moaning about how he’s digesting his own liver, and to Nasha, going up there probably expecting a fun time and instead getting him-as-me begging her to buy him something to eat.
Something to eat.
Where would they go to get something to eat?
I’m already on my feet before that thought has a chance to finish forming. Highsmith looks up from his tablet as my bench flips over behind me and I scoot over to the door. How long has it been? And how long would it take Eight to talk Nasha into coming down here? And how long would it take them to make the trip? I don’t know the answer to any of those questions exactly, but I can’t help but think that they’re probably converging rapidly. I ping Eight.
<Mickey8>:Where are you?
<Mickey8>:On our way to the caf. Why?
<Mickey8>:Where, specifically?
<Mickey8>:Bottom of the central stairs. What the hell, Seven?
They’ll be coming around the corner in ten seconds.
Maybe less than ten seconds.
It’s okay. I’ve got time. I don’t even need to run, really, just fast-walk down the corridor to the next intersection and take a turn. That done, I lean back against the wall, breathe in deep, and let it back out slowly. What if my brain hadn’t kicked in when it did? What would have happened if Nasha and Eight had walked into the caf to find me sitting there staring at my tablet?
Come to that, what’s Highsmith going to think when he sees me walking back through the door, twenty seconds after I left in such a hurry, with Nasha beside me?
Ugh. With Nasha, and wearing a different shirt. Hopefully he’s not too observant.
Best not to think about that. More importantly, where do I go now?
Can’t go back to my room. I think it’s probably safe to assume that they’ll be headed there as soon as Eight has something in his belly.
I give some brief thought to heading up to Nasha’s rack. She shares with a woman from Agriculture named Trudy. Trudy’s nice enough. She’d probably let me hang around if I told her I was waiting for Nasha—who would eventually actually show up, and probably wonder how I got from my rack to hers quicker than she did, and what the hell I was doing there anyway.
Yeah, that won’t work.
There’s really only one other public space in the dome. Fortunately, this one is pretty much guaranteed to be empty more or less all the time.
I sigh, and straighten, and head for the gym.
* * *
A WORKOUT CENTER is not standard equipment on a beachhead colony. That we have one is a testament to Hieronymus Marshall’s enduring belief in the importance of physical fitness as a component of moral and ethical fitness.