INTO THE NEBULA Page 2

  What was the point in shattering their lives for no reason other than to lessen his own burden, his own isolation?

  In truth, there was no point. There was nothing any of them could do. There was nothing he could do, either for himself or for them. Except keep them safe, for a time, from a truth they had no need to know, a truth that would make their very existence pointless.

  As it had already made his.

  The original Ten Thousand had known from the moment the Hope of Krantin had been launched that they would die in space without ever again setting foot on the surface of a planet—any planet. A dying Krantin was being left irrevocably behind, and the hypothetical worlds that circled the star that was their destination were centuries distant, if they existed at all. If they did not, it would be even more centuries and more generations to the next likely star.

  But the Ten Thousand had been filled with optimism and hope, if not for themselves, then for their descendants, a dozen generations down the line, and for the Krantinese civilization that would be rebuilt on one of those worlds. If they had not, they would never have volunteered. If they had not believed in Koralus and the handful of others who had stood against all odds to get the ships built, they would have thrown all their efforts into the sealing of the cities and lived their lives out on Krantin among their friends and families rather than isolated in mammoth metal canisters drifting through space.

  And Koralus, though he dared not share it with any of the Ten Thousand, not even the one who might otherwise have been his wife, had even entertained some hope for himself personally, for himself and the rest of the One Hundred. If the statistical models proved true, at least one in four of their group would survive the series of hibernations and awakenings. Beyond that, theory said, it was up to them. If during their waking periods they were able to teach and train each new generation, if they were able to maintain the Hope—including their own hibernation chambers—through the centuries, they would survive. If they were able to maintain the reality of Krantin—and of their destination worlds—in the minds of the Ten Thousand through generation after generation of knowing only the world of the ship, then Krantin itself would have a chance, not of surviving but of being reborn through their descendants. Even Koralus himself, fifty years old when the Hope departed, could conceivably live to see the beginnings of that rebirth.

  Or so he had hoped.

  But then, less than ninety years into their journey, barely a month into what had been scheduled to be his first five-year watch, those hopes had been shattered. All of the hopes, not just those for himself personally.

  The drive had failed, not in any of the thousands of failure modes its designers and builders had predicted but in one that none had anticipated. He had awakened nearly a quarter of the One Hundred to try to right the situation, but all to no avail. He had been able only to watch as they lost their lives, slowly and painfully, journeying down the central core past the shield to the drive pod again and again, with nothing gained for their sacrifice except the certainty of failure. The last of the awakened technicians had restored and diverted the power that still maintained life-support and other necessities in the sections forward of the shield, but the drive remained dead, unrepairable without the facilities that were ninety years behind them and probably no longer existed in any case.

  He had donned a suit himself at the last, but he had been met by the final returning party in the core passageway before he reached the shield. The telltales on their suits had already told them they would be dead within days if not hours, but collectively they had had the strength to turn him back and the compassion to convince him that his own death would serve no purpose, could only make matters worse for the Ten Thousand for however many years or decades the Hope had left.

  Repeatedly, then, he transmitted a message to Krantin, tersely informing them of the Hope’s fate, but he had no expectation of a reply. Krantin had been silent for decades; he had no reason to think that word of his failure—if there was anyone still alive on Krantin to hear it—would spur any survivors to new activity. Messages to the other ships were still being sent, though expectations of a reply from that quarter were equally low. Since the first decade after launch, there had been no intership communication. The other ships might have suffered even more disastrous failures than the Hope.

  And even if they were still functioning, even if one of them did reply, even offer to help, Koralus could not accept that help. The others had their own destinations. Diverting them to rendezvous with the Hope would only add more generations and more dangers to their journeys, and that was the last thing he wanted. He could only warn them of what had happened to the Hope and remind them that their own survival was therefore all the more important.

  This particular morning had so far proved little different from the thousands that had gone before. If anything, his decision to yet again delay the announcement had come more easily, more quickly than usual; his memory of the previous night’s resolve was more tenuous, as if he were finally beginning to acknowledge that it was only a ritual, that its only meaning, its only importance was in its contribution to his own psychological survival.

  Tired in spite of his decreasing weight, he climbed—almost floated—the last dozen steps to the entrance to the bridge, his eyes avoiding the other door, the one that led to the total weightlessness of the core and the frost-rimed hibernation chambers where the remnants of the One Hundred waited. Waited accusingly, he imagined for the thousandth time. As accusingly as the Ten Thousand would look at him if they knew the truth, that the Hope was doomed and that he was one of the handful most responsible for their presence on it, for its very existence.

  For a long moment he hovered at the top of the stairs, not so much debating whether or not to continue but simply existing, like a particle caught between two energy states. Finally, as if nudged by an errant breeze from the air-circulation system, he drifted toward the door. He heard his own voice speaking the code that released the door, though he hadn’t been conscious of making the decision to speak.

  The door slid open, as soundlessly as it had the day they had launched from orbit. It, at least, was still in perfect working order.

  He stepped—glided—in.

  And froze, his stomach knotting, his heart suddenly racing.

  On a panel far to the left of the ponderously rotating starfield, a light glowed—a light that had not come alive even once in the years since he had been awakened. A light he had never expected—nor, truth be known, wanted—to see.

  A twin to the light that had been glowing intermittently since his own messages had begun to be transmitted.

  A reply.

  Or at least a signal. From somewhere. The first in more than ninety years.

  Surprised at the intensity of his reaction, Koralus gripped the waist-high handrail and pulled his virtually weightless body to the panel and strapped himself into the seat in front of the glowing light.

  How long, he wondered, had it shone unnoticed? Not that it mattered, he told himself grimly as he fought to keep his hands from shaking as he reached out to the controls. When the nearest possible source—one of the Hope’s sister ships—was half a light-year distant, there was little urgency for an immediate reply.

  And it was far too late for warnings like the ones the Hope continued to send out to be of any use to the Hope itself.

  His stomach twisted painfully as he worked the controls that would play back the message. If there was a message, if the light and the recorders had not simply been triggered by a random burst of static. If it had not been the result of yet another malfunction—

  A voice emerged from the console, a voice that could have been a twin to his own.

  Koralus frowned puzzledly as the brief message began to repeat itself. The words were familiar, but his mind refused to make sense of them. Federation? What Federation? Far back in Krantin’s history, there had been alliances that might have called themselves Federations, but those had been gone for centurie
s. Starship? The Hope and its five sister ships were the only starships. There was no way Krantin could have built more, even if the Plague had reversed itself the very day the Hope had been launched.

  The message was repeating itself for perhaps the tenth time when Koralus finally realized that, despite the fact that the words were in the one surviving Krantinese language and that the voice was almost indistinguishable from his own, the speaker was not from Krantin or any of the Hope’s sister ships.

  It was an alien, from another star system.

  And it was offering assistance.

  A mixture of hope and fear twisted at him as he darted a look at the still-rotating, still-empty starfield and reached again for the controls.

  Picard turned back to the main viewscreen and the slowly rotating alien ship that now half-filled it. The situation was not as bad as he had feared when he had first seen the distorted, almost unrecognizable drive jets. Early on, the Enterprise sensors had shown that, though the jets themselves were useless, the fission reactor, buried deep within the bulbous drive unit, still functioned and supplied power to the habitat cylinder.

  Then the Universal Translator program had mastered the almost melodic language of the alien ship’s automated message, and the evidence of the sensors had been confirmed by the words of one who called himself Koralus.

  But still there was no response to a continuous hail on all EM frequencies within hundreds of megahertz of the frequency that carried the message.

  “Is their receiving equipment functional, Mr. Data?” Picard asked finally.

  “It appears to be, Captain. It is possible they are simply not monitoring it, however, and are not aware of our hail.”

  “How many years have they been traveling?” Riker wondered, seeming to echo Picard’s own thought. “If it’s been as long as their present velocity indicates, it’s no wonder they aren’t listening every minute.”

  “That is true, Commander,” Data volunteered. “In fact, if their life spans are equivalent to those of humans, it is doubtful that any presently aboard were alive when the journey began.”

  “Then it’s certain—they originated in the star system that stumped the computer?”

  “Not certain, Commander, but highly likely. Assuming that their present speed and direction have remained essentially constant, the ship either originated in or passed through that system approximately one hundred years ago.”

  “A generation ship,” Riker said, a touch of admiration in his voice. “Earth was lucky Cochrane came up with the warp drive when he did. Without it, I doubt that we’d ever have gotten outside the Sol system.”

  “If our system were in the same shape theirs is, Number One, I suspect we would not have,” Picard said.

  “Whatever shape that is,” Riker countered. He looked again at the ship on the screen. “I suggest an away team, Captain. From the condition of their drive, they obviously need help, even if they aren’t answering our hail.”

  “Not yet, Number One, not before we gather more information.” The red flags raised by the unexplained sensor interference in the nearby star system still dictated caution to Picard. “Ensign, take us in to a thousand kilometers, quarter impulse.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  “Mr. Data, is there still no evidence of weaponry?”

  “None that I can detect, Captain. The ship itself is completely unarmed, and there are no energy signatures indicating personal energy weapons. Based on the technology level of the ship, however, it is unlikely they would have developed phasers or disruptors. They might still be dependent upon projectile weapons, which our sensors could not detect.”

  Riker shook his head. “Projectile weapons on a spacecraft? Not likely.”

  “Not likely,” Picard agreed, “but far from impossible.” Supposedly intelligent beings had done far more foolish things, he thought as the misshapen drive jets grew clearer on the viewscreen. One, he saw, had folded in on itself and appeared completely sealed, and he couldn’t help but wonder if Koralus’s message had told the complete truth when it spoke of the damage being solely the result of equipment malfunction.

  “How long can they survive on their own, Mr. Data?” he asked grimly.

  “That is impossible to estimate accurately, Captain. The reactor has been repaired in makeshift ways, but it could continue to function for decades, though with increasing radiation leakage. Ultimately, however, the repairs will fail and the reactor will destroy itself and the ship.”

  Picard grimaced mentally, the only outward sign a slight tightening of his lips. He had listened to the endlessly repeating message at least a half-dozen times, and each time the feeling of kinship with the speaker, the one who called himself Koralus, had grown more pronounced. The message was straightforward and to the point, a simple account of the essentially hopeless situation his ship, the Hope of Krantin, found itself in, followed by a succinct description of the warning signs that had preceded the failure of the drive—warning signs that, if reacted to differently and more quickly on other ships, might save them from the same fate.

  Picard hoped that the message was true, but even more he hoped that the man who had recorded it and started it on its snail-like way across the light-years was still alive to see it answered, and not just because of the kinship he felt. If Koralus was dead or no longer in control, if no one responded to their hail and an away team was forced to beam onto the ship with no idea of the current lay of the land—

  “Mr. Data,” Picard said abruptly, “are there unpopulated areas of the ship to which an away team could beam unnoticed?”

  “Many, Captain. The entire central section—the core—is essentially unoccupied except for one large area that might be employed for recreation.”

  “A zero-g rec room?” Riker murmured. “Interesting.” A momentary smile pulled at his neatly bearded face as his words brought a sidelong glance from Picard.

  “There is something else, Captain,” Data went on. “The sensors are beginning to indicate that another part of the core is a hibernation facility.”

  Picard frowned. “In a generation ship?”

  “That is correct, Captain,” Data said, continuing to study the ops console readouts. “Though there are approximately ten thousand fully active humanoid life-forms, there are also approximately seventy similar life-forms whose metabolic rates indicate that they have undergone some type of cryonic preservation. Their life signs were too faint for our sensors to detect at greater distances.”

  “That area would appear to be the place to start, Number One. You can get a look at them without—”

  “Captain,” Worf broke in, “they are responding to our hail.”

  A moment later, the same voice they had heard on the recorded message emerged from the bridge speakers.

  “This is Koralus of the Hope of Krantin. Who are you?”

  So he was still alive! Picard thought with relief. Quickly, he began to identify himself and the Enterprise, but before he could finish, the voice broke in. “That is the same as the message I have already heard, and it means nothing to me. What are you? Where are you from? What is this Federation you speak of?”

  Patiently, fully understanding Koralus’s impatient desire for information, Picard tried to explain, weaving his way around the other’s rapid-fire and often incisive questions. When he finished, the alien was silent for several seconds.

  “This offer of assistance—” Koralus began finally. “You have heard my message, so you understand our situation. What type of assistance can you offer? Can you repair our drive, for example?”

  “Based on our preliminary observations, that would be difficult,” Picard admitted. “It would be easier to return your people to your own world or take you to another habitable one.”

  “Your ship is that large?” The Universal Translator did little to disguise the mixture of skepticism and suspicion in Koralus’s voice.

  “We could handle your ten thousand for as long as it would take to move you, yes.”


  There was a long silence before Koralus’s voice returned. “ ‘As long as it would take . . .’ How long would that be? We are almost a light-year from our own world and farther than that from any other.”

  “A few hours at most,” Picard said. “Transferring your people from your ship to the Enterprise would likely take longer than the trip itself.”

  “You are speaking of subjective time, surely,” Koralus said after a moment, his voice still skeptical. “Even if you approached the speed of light—”

  “We have a way around that particular limitation.” Picard glanced briefly toward Riker. “Perhaps it would be best if some of our people came aboard the Hope to evaluate your situation firsthand.”

  “Came aboard? No, I would prefer no one come aboard at this time.”

  Picard frowned at the hastily spoken protest. Had his feeling of kinship for this alien captain been misplaced? “Why not, Koralus?”

  There was a long silence before the voice returned. “Our nuclear power generator is no longer safe. Our section of the ship is protected from its radiation by a shield, but surrounding space is not. It would be unsafe for you to approach.”

  “We are aware of the radiation levels surrounding your drive unit,” Picard said, certain that the alien had not yet revealed his real reasons. “They do not pose a threat to us.”