And while the 3,006 lay dormant behind the hyb tanks' water shields in the heart of the ship, their lives were to remain subject to the servos and sensors surgically linked to the OMC.
But now we're 3,003, Timberlake thought with that sense of grief, of shame and defeat. And our last OMC is dead.
Timberlake felt alone and vulnerable now, faced by their emergency controls. He had been reasonably confident while the brains existed and with one of them responsible for ultimate ship security. The existence of emergency controls had only added to his confidence... then.
Now, staring at the banks of switches, the gauges and telltales and manuals, the auxiliary computer board with its paired vocoder and tape-code inputs and readouts - now, Timberlake realized how inadequate were his poor human reactions in the face of the millisecond demands for even ordinary emergencies out here.
The ship's moving too fast, he thought.
Their speed was slow, he knew, compared to what they should have been doing at this point... but still it was too fast. He activated a small sensor screen on his left, permitted himself a brief look at the exterior cosmos, staring out at the hard spots of brilliance that were stars against the energy void of space.
As usual, the sight reduced him to the feeling that he was a tiny spark at the mercy of unthinking chance. He blanked the screen.
Movement at his elbow drew Timberlake's attention. He turned to see Bickel come up to lean against a guidepole beside the control console. There was such a look of relief on his face that Timberlake had a sudden insight, realizing that Bickel had sent his guilt winging back to Moonbase with that message. Timberlake wondered then what it had felt like to kill - even if the killing had involved a creature whose humanity had become hidden behind an aura of mechanistics long years back when it was removed from a dying body.
Bickel studied the drive board. They had disabled the drive-increment system when the second OMC had started going sour. But the Earthling still would be out of the solar system in ten months.
Ten months, Bickel thought. Too fast and too slow.
During those ten months, the computed possibility of a total ship emergency remained at its highest. The umbilicus crew had not been prepared for that kind of pressure.
Bickel shot a covert glance at Flattery, noting how silent and withdrawn the psychiatrist-chaplain appeared. There were times when it rasped Bickel's nerves to think how little could be hidden from Flattery, but this was not one of those times. Out here, Bickel realized, each of them had to become a specialist on his companions. Otherwise, ship pressures coupled to psychological pressures might destroy them.
"How long do you suppose it'll take Moonbase to answer?" Bickel asked, directing the question at Timberlake.
Flattery stiffened, studied the back of Bickel's head. The question... such a nice balance of camaraderie and apology in the voice... Bickel had done that deliberately, Flattery realized. Bickel went deeper than they had suspected, but perhaps they should have suspected. He was, after all, the Earthling's pivotal figure.
"It'll take 'em a while to digest it," Timberlake said. "I still think we should've waited."
Wrong tack, Flattery thought. An overture should be accepted. He brushed a finger along one of his heavy eyebrows, moved forward with a calculated clumsiness, forcing them to be aware of him.
"Their first problem's public relations," Flattery said. "That'll cause some delay."
"Their first question'll be, why'd the OMCs fail?" Timberlake said.
"There was no medical reason for it," Flattery put in. He realized he had spoken too quickly, sensed his own defensiveness.
"It'll turn out to be something new, something nobody anticipated, wait and see," Timberlake said.
Something nobody anticipated? Bickel wondered. And he doubted that, but held his silence. For the first time since coming aboard, he felt the bulk of the Earthling around him and thought of all the hopes and energies that had launched this venture. It occurred to him then what a mountain of hard-headed planning had gone into the project.
He sensed the sleepless nights, the skull sessions of engineers and scientists, the pragmatic dreamers tossing their ideas back and forth across coffee cups and buttmounded ashtrays.
Something nobody anticipated? Hardly.
Still, six other ships had vanished into silence out here - six other ships much like their Earthling.
He spoke then more to keep up his own courage than to argue: "This isn't the kind of thing they'd let go by the board. Moonbase'll have a plan. Somebody, somewhere along the line, thought of this possibility."
"Then why didn't they prepare us for it?" Timberlake asked.
Flattery watched Bickel carefully, aware of how that question had touched him. He will begin to have doubts now, Flattery thought. Now, he will start asking himself the really loaded questions.
CHAPTER 2
The holoscan you are watching at this moment is of our Bickel model, our most successful "Organ of Analysis." He is charged to explore beyond the imprinted patterns of consciousness which humankind inherits with its genes.
TIMBERLAKE ADJUSTED a dial on his console to correct a failure of automatic temperature adjustment in quad three ring nine of the ship's second shell. "We should've been buttoned down in our hyb tanks and on our way over the solar hump to Tau Ceti long ago," he muttered.
"Tim, display the time log," Flattery said.
Timberlake hit the green key in the upper right corner of his board, glanced at the overhead master screen's display from the laser-pulse time log.
Ten months - plus.
The indefinite answer made it seem the Earthling's computer core shared their doubts.
"How long to Tau Ceti?" Flattery asked.
"At this rate?" Timberlake asked. He risked a long glance away from his board. The stare he aimed at Flattery betrayed the fact he had not thought of that possibility, making the trip the hard way - long and slow with a crew active all the way.
"Say four hundred years, give or take a few," Bickel said. "It's the first question I fed into the computer after we disabled the drive increment."
He is too crystal sharp, Flattery thought. He bears watching lest he shatter. And Flattery chided himself then: But the job Bickel has to do requires a man who can shatter.
"First thing we'd better do is bring up one replacement from the hyb tanks," Bickel said.
Flattery glanced to his left where Com-central's other three action couches lay with their cocoon arms open, empty and waiting.
"Bring up only one replacement, eh?" Flattery asked. "Live in here?"
"We may need occasional sleep-rest periods in the cubby lockers," Bickel said and he nodded toward the side hatch into their spartan living quarters. "But Com-central is the safest spot on the ship."
"What if Project orders us to abort?" Timberlake asked.
"That won't be their first order," Bickel said. "Seven nations invested one hell of a pile of money and effort and dreams in this business. They have a purpose which they won't give up easily."
Too crystal sharp, Flattery thought. And he asked: "Who're you nominating for dehyb?"
"Prudence Weygand, M.D.," Bickel said.
"You think we need another doctor, eh?" Flattery asked.
"I think we need Prudence Weygand. She's a doctor, sure, but she can also function as a nurse to replace... Maida. She's a woman and we may need female thinking. You have any objections to Weygand, Tim?"