The First Jumper

07: Gerleesh: Betrayed

Thirteen hours later, she was finally where she could engage her hyperdrive. Once she did that, her planet would vanish forever behind her.

This was her most frightening step, for she had received almost no training at all about how to handle the hyperdrive. She knew it was supposed to take her out of normal space, into a place where she could supposedly see to navigate and travel at fantastic speeds, even though she would not appear to be traveling at all. That was almost everything she knew about it, and her training had never gotten to that point. She knew how to activate it, and that was all. They told her she did not have to disengage the reactionless drive. Just flip the switch, and it will all become clear.

That went against everything she had learned about safe ship handling when any kind of big mistake meant death, but it was all the information she had.

According to her instruments, it would take her approximately nine weeks to reach her first planet. All systems showed ready to go, so she took a deep breath and activated the switch.

Nothing happened.

Thinking it was, perhaps, like the activation of the reactionless secondary drive, Gerleesh did a position check. She was still in normal space, still accelerating, traveling at roughly 11% of light speed. She pulled up the diagnostic screen for the hyperdrive, and where it had moments before read "Hyperdrive ready to engage," it now read "Hyperdrive not installed."

She had to read the manual in the main computer to learn how to disable the safety mechanisms and unlock the access panel for the hyperdrive. When she got the panel open, she gaped. It was an empty space. In it was a physical note. She picked up the sheet.

Dear Explorer Gerleesh,

We have no hyperdrive. The technology does not exist, so far as we know, other than as a mathematical possibility. Maybe we could get it working in a hundred years, but we do not think we will have the time. We apologize for the necessity of lying to you and the other explorers, but you probably would not have agreed to go looking for planets, if you knew how many years it would take you just to get to a single other star.

All the rest of your technical training was true, and the technology is valid and proven.

We have learned that only sterile tarshen such as yourself can survive the long solitude of interstellar travel. Tarshen who have already hatched an egg go insane without the mind-touch of others, and tarshen who have never started the hatching process cannot reach far enough outside themselves to make communication with a ship possible, but you have a chance. Your people are counting on you.

There is one other area in which you were misled, and again, we must apologize, but this was for a different reason—we wanted to avoid panic. Despite what you were told, we do have several colony ships under construction, but none have been completed yet. The same reactionless drive used on your ship will work on those ships, but they will go much more slowly. Given the long travel time actually required to go to another star, all would die en route without much better recycling systems than we have had until now. Your single-tarshen ship design is viable, which is why we are sending out as many explorers as we can.

You probably are aware that our sun is about to explode—probably before you complete your mission. When it does, Tarshen will be destroyed completely. Our only hope is to find a home on which we can establish a colony. We only hope that we will have time to complete our colony ships and send them out before that day. We have just perfected the design with the new recycling technology, and the first colony ship will go out in about two months.

A colony ship will follow about three months behind you, on your trajectory. Given the slower speed, however, they will be many years behind you in travel time, and that gap will increase, the farther you go. If you find a planet that is suitable, or you determine that a system is unusable, beam the answer back at Tarshen, and the colony ship will see it, and make appropriate changes.

Good luck, and don't forget to follow your assigned route.

All of Tarshen is counting on you.

Exploration Control 

Shaking, Gerleesh returned to the control cabin. She calculated the route that would get her to her nearest planet, using only the secondary drive. Over a hundred fifty of her years. She had thought it would be nine months. No wonder the recycling system was so robust.

Still in shock, she looked at the numbers for a moment, and then calculated the time it would take her to explore the ten star systems on her list, assuming she spent a local year in each system. Over a thousand years, even if she never came back to what was certainly a dead planet. Even with the best techniques for keeping her healthy, she would nearly die of old age before she completed her mission.

A Tarshen who had given birth could stay alive much longer, but she would go insane.

Gerleesh had known the mind-touches of her mother all her life, but now she would be utterly alone, for the first time now, and for the rest of her life. How could she not go insane? Others like her had done it, so perhaps she could, too. All that time, all alone!

Gerleesh could not even be angry at her betrayer. She was doubtless already dead, and her lie had allowed Gerleesh to live. And, yes, Gerleesh admitted to herself, it might have given Tarshen a chance to live, too. At least, it would if they had more time.

But now there would be no Tarshen. Not now, and not ever. Behind her, she could still see fire spreading across the planet of her birth as it rotated. She began calculating a turn that would put her in the direction of that first star, while keeping her where the radiation from the expanding star would let her survive. Maybe she was the last of her kind. Maybe there was no one, ever, who would follow her. But she would still do her duty, as a last remnant of a lost people. It was the only path she knew.

She would survive, a lost child without a mother or a home or a people, into the endless void that mirrored her heart. She would never know love, she would never hear the songs of her mothers, and she would never have a child of her own. All her hopes, loves, and dreams were behind her, never to be seen again.

Somewhere out there, she thought, I must find a place I can call home, even if all I do is die when I get there. Mother would want that for me, even if I no longer want it for myself.

She spoke to the ship, and told it to set up an agenda for her that would let her complete all the pieces that were still unfinished. She had thought they had given her too many supplies and too robust a ship for a nine-month journey. Now she knew why.

She shook with sorrow as she looked into the emptiness that would be her whole existence, for the rest of a very long life, lived entirely alone.

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