Chap. 421 The Logbook of 1LT Michael Cook, Pilot.

“They did it,” Jansen said, “Acquisition opened the metal case holding Lieutenant Cook’s logbook.”

“Did it fall apart?” K’ndar asked.

“No. At least they didn’t say so. They got it all scanned into the database and then they resealed it in the metal case.”

“That was smart, I think. I wonder how L’ichen came to have it?”

“He was a time traveling thief, K’ndar. It’s a relief that he’s dead and even more, they way he died. Exposure! I expected he would be breaking into homes or buildings, like that one girl did.”

“I thought he would find a way to get to Southern Hold. I would bet my lunch he was selling to Lord Toric.”

“I didn’t think of Toric, you’re right. We’re not supposed to speak ill of nobles, but he’s not very much of one. We both know he’s been in the market for artifacts.”

K’ndar shook his head. “I still do not understand how L’ichen could just abandon Sorath. Raventh is so much a part of me that losing him would be like cutting off both my arms.”

“I want so badly to read that logbook. How long is it?”

Jansen looked at her computer. “I can’t really say, everyone is pinging their computers, wanting to read it right now. Oh, wait, here’s a message from Acquisition’s Chief.”

Please, everyone, you are crashing my database. I know everyone wants to read the logbook RIGHT NOW. It’s not possible, please. We are going to send it to Chief Elene’s Library database and she has indicated that she’ll have it available in book form as soon as Printing can make copies. In the meantime, take turns downloading it, Data has put set up a numbering system so that you don’t throw HIS terminals into a tizzy. I’ve written a synopsis of it. It appears to be fairly dull reading, after all, it was daily entries for years, consisting of the operations of the starship. So much of it is as stale as week old bread. If you have insomnia, this will cure it.

But there are personal anecdotes, too. I wish to draw your attention to the last page, it is poignant. And brings an unusual and up until now, unconsidered point of view that none of us alive today can really grasp.

We have resealed the logbook into its original metal container in order to preserve it. I intend to donate it to Science Jansen’s museum as part of Pern’s history.

Thanks everyone for understanding.

Jansen cheered. “That’s so nice! Next time I see her I’ll thank Acquisition’s Chief.” She began to plan where to put it  when her terminal pinged with a private message.

“Oh, here’s the synopsis. And a note from Ake’s Chief “Jansen, since your dragonrider found the logbook, you get first download.”

She grinned. Her computer pinged. “Here it is!”

“My word,” she said, “It IS a lot of ones and twosie entries.”

“Well, keep in mind that trip took an awfully long time. Years, I’m thinking.”

“If you don’t mind, I think I’ll just skip to the ‘last page.” she said.

“I don’t mind,” K’ndar said, “Let me get a chair so I don’t have to read over your shoulder.”

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Stardate: I no longer care about the stardate. We are in Rukbat’s system on course for Pern. It is just one more entry into this, my logbook. Writing it was at first a duty, and has now become a habit I will no longer need.  Today is no different than the many others but tomorrow? Tomorrow will be a ‘significant emotional event’, as we said in Starfleet Academy. I don’t know if anyone will ever read this. I will seal it in a metal case and leave it here on the bridge of my starship, my beloved Yokohama, who has faithfully done her duty to me, her pilot, 1LT Michael Cook, of Tranquility Base, Luna.

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Today we jettisoned another cocoon whose occupant went to sleep permanently. He’ll never know he’s the last one to not make it.

I sometimes wonder if we’re leaving a small but significant trail of cocoons behind us, like metallic turds passed through our ship’s cloaca. I wonder if someone might follow them to Pern. Maybe not, as they’re sent out at relatively fast speed. Their occupants were not promised survival, just a chance at making it to Pern.

Today’s deceased colonist’s face, visible through the small, frost covered window, showed no emotion. None of them do, they’ve all been asleep for years, not willing to be awake for the many years it will take to get to Pern.

What do they dream of in their cold, silent cocoons?

Are they still back on the dying Earth? Do they relive the wars, the starvation, the oven heat, the sewage strewn oceans? Did they resort to eating insects and rats, creatures I’ve never seen but are said to be resourceful and prolific?

Not that I had any experience of Earth save for once. All our training classes had been held on the Space Station.  But for some reason, I’m told it was ‘tradition’, the official ‘graduation and commissioning ceremony’ was on Florida Island.  It was mostly for the families of the cadets to witness. My family sensibly stayed home in Luna. It was without a doubt the most interminably long and miserable week of my life. The ceremony involved enduring gravity that almost killed me, with torrid temperatures in what was supposedly ‘winter’. I touched a plant called ivy that made me itch. I ‘caught a cold’, in temperatures well over 100 degrees, astounding me with the amount of mucus I was expelling, never mind coughing. Even the air felt heavy and humid, and smelled burnt and toxic. I would gladly have worn my spacesuit!

 I was so glad to return home, to Luna (they called it ’the Moon’, which I admit it is.) to await my assignment to a starship, which took perhaps a week at most. I spent that last week in quarantine. I didn’t mind, I didn’t want to infect anyone. Although I WOULD wish a cold on my worst enemy.

 My classmates had dubbed me a ‘mole’, an animal that research taught me was small, almost blind and lives its entire life underground. Well, I’m not blind, but I suppose the Terran pejorative is correct.  I was born and raised in Luna. Not on Luna, IN Luna, a distinction my classmates had a hard time envisioning. Luna is a vast, pressurized maze of underground caves and lava tubes that extend for no one knows how far into the interior, because we’re still mining. We breathe clean, if recycled air, and eat food-vegetables and protein grown in hydroponic beds bathed by unfiltered sunshine piped in from the surface. There is just enough gravity to keep you on your feet. You need to wear a space suit if you want to go ‘outside’. Other than maintaining communication equipment, solar panels, the spaceport and lunar traffic control equipment, the only reason to go “outside’ on Luna is to see the stars. Which I did as soon as my parents were able to find a suit that fit me. I rapidly outgrew it, but never outgrew my love of the stars.

I wonder how the colonists aboard my Yokohama will react when they finally reach Pern?

Will the colonists tell their children of their old life? Or will they let those horrors die with them?

Will they allow themselves to rejoice in what a new world gives them? Or will they fall back into the old ways, the exploitation, the overpopulation, the wasteful and wanton destruction-I can only call it murder-of an entire world?

Have they learned from thousands of years to restrain and respect?

Will the animals we bring appreciate the new life? Some are meant for servitude and “real” meat, something that I find absolutely revolting, but some, like the last of our ship’s cats, will be family members. The dolphins, especially, demanded to go. We couldn’t leave the animals, what was left of them. There are beautiful beasts in extra large cocoons. Tigers. Lions. Horses. Antelope. Cows. Birds. How could we have left them behind? They were already doomed, with no wild to return to. We left my species behind to its deserved extinction.  Animals are innocent of the crimes humanity did to earth. They were and are mere victims.

I remember the questions the psychiatrists asked when I volunteered to stand watch on our ship for the long trip to Pern.

Did I need human interaction? Was I the type who suffers loneliness?

No. I have my books and my poetry to protect me. The ship’s computers have a million things to read, to watch, to learn from. Over the years I have learned so much of Earth’s history and realize that only the non-human eras were the most interesting-and beautiful.

They said I was anti-social.

Didn’t I want to sleep the long trip?

Most of the crew rotated in and out of their cocoons. I didn’t. I couldn’t tolerate the cocoon. I panicked the few minutes I spent trying out ‘my’ cocoon. You’ll be weightless in it during the journey, I was told, as if that was supposed to make me feel more at home? Nothing in Luna is even close to the confines of a cocoon. It is a tube of solid steel, with a small window about the length of my forearm from one’s face. I felt as if the tube was shrinking. I screamed in terror and tore my fingernails trying to claw my way out.  Ah, one said, and checked ‘claustrophobic’.

Sometimes when I’m feeling especially brave, I climb into my empty cocoon, making sure the robot nurse does NOT shut it on me, just to see if I’ve conquered the fear. I have not. I guess I never will.

Can you accept that you won’t see anything but the stars? they asked.

Have you actually SEEN a star? From Earth? I asked.

None of the psychologists and counselors and record keepers had ever left Earth. They’d never seen the stars due to the thick atmosphere and the lights that erased even the hint of night. Their job was to sift through the class to find the special person who could do this.

‘You’re strange’, I was told, (unofficially, of course), ‘but people like you are what is needed to man the starship on the journey’.

Maybe so.

I was deemed suitable for this task. Life aboard a starship was not much different than living in Luna. Even had I not been tasked with staying awake, I would have managed to do so. Very few of my classmates were willing to spend years standing watch on the bridge, alone. Many of them didn’t even join the colonists, preferring to pilot spacecraft within the solar system. Oh, I am not totally alone, no. The rest of the crew is somewhere on this massive craft, doing what I do: enjoy their solitude when they’re not standing a watch on the bridge. Or the other myriad tasks that a gigantic starship requires.

  The computer tells me what needs to be done and whose turn it is to do it. We get together now and then, to eat, to work out in the gym to maintain bone density and muscle mass, to manage the ship’s systems that keep thousands of colonists alive and once in a while, to send a dead one into space. We used to share our stories of Starfleet Academy, of growing up in places with odd names, like Kalamazoo and Helsinki and Seoul. I was the odd one, being the only one from Luna. Over the years the anecdotes grew as stale as the air when the filters need cleaning.  

During our classes on piloting a starship, we were told of an explorer named Lowenstern who said, “There is no place where men can become so estranged from each other as on a ship.” And he was right. At first, we had a sense of purpose and camaraderie, with stories and tales that entertained. But now? Not a one of my shipmates is worth my time. They are people I absolutely loathe, the way they talk, their tales of living on Earth, even the way they chew their food. It’s easy to avoid them. The ship is large enough that if I don’t want to interact with someone, I don’t have to.

I’m certain that they feel the same way about me.

I didn’t bother to tell them that my great great I have no idea how many greats grandfather was Captain James Cook who discovered the Hawaiian islands. My family has lived on Hawaii for hundreds of years. I’m the first to have been born elsewhere.

Even after having all candidates’ psyches examined underneath a psychiatrist’s microscope, still, they missed one or two who had no business being a pilot of a starship.

We were forced to stop at Vulcan when the Bahrain’s dilithium crystals inexplicably evaporated. One of her crew took the opportunity to jump ship. She didn’t even say goodbye, just refused to board the transport returning her to her ship.  It is suspected that she sabotaged the crystals so that she could desert, as we were no more than a day out from Vulcan. The Vulcan port authorities came aboard our starships to check our manifest and cargo listings. They were polite, professional and reserved. I believe they’re as ‘cold natured’ as I was described as being. I probably would have fit in well in their society. They invited me down to their planet to ‘sightsee’ but I was struck with fear of leaving the ship. I was glad to resume our voyage.

And on the Buenos Aires! One woman was sexually assaulted by a crewman, despite rape not being easily done in weightless space. Still, it was learned that he’d been stalking and harassing all of the females, not just the victim. How did the shrinks miss his psychopathic mind?

What do you do with a sexual predator on a starship? The men dithered, doubting that it had really happened. The rapist showed no remorse whatsoever, even to the point of saying that a woman’s job was to satisfy a man. That’s when the women on the BA took matters in their own hands. I don’t know the whole story, of course. But from what I gather, they waited until the rapist was asleep-as he’d done to his victim-wrapped him tight in his sleeping bag and stuffed him in his cocoon, then instructed the ship to jettison it.

This is the life I have chosen.

I am alone, as I have been for years, on watch on my starship’s bridge. The screens give me a 360° view of the universe. The computers and the stardrive provide a subsonic hum that, while I can barely hear it, still tells me their health. I could play music, or have the computer read a book to me or go through the computer’s library with several millenia worth of Earth’s history. But I prefer the company of the universe, its views, its sounds. It is not silent. The computers will translate electromagnetic emissions into something I can hear: ‘this is a pulsar” “this is the cry of a star as it is being engulfed by a blackhole ten thousand light years away.” I can even ask to hear snatches of what seem to be voices, radio transmissions from all over the galaxy, most of them unintelligible, even to the computer’s translators.

I am alone, on watch on the starship’s bridge.  All I see is space.

It is not ‘empty blackness’. It is spangled with stars, with galaxies, with globular clusters. The sleepers haven’t seen the stars as I do. Did the stars ever look so clean, so bright, in Earth’s filthy sky? No, many of them had never seen a star, never mind a planet, like regal Saturn who we passed at launching, his rings glittering like diamonds.

Once we escaped the sun’s heliosphere, we entered an unimaginably vast galactic ocean of stars. The computers noted the transition, but there was no momentous celebration of leaving the solar system of our existence forever. None of the cocoons were disturbed. Of course not. The sleepers have no idea of what they’ve missed, the awesome beauty of the universe.

They have not gone through a kaleidoscopic nebula, riotous colors so diaphanous and yet so brilliant.  They’ve never seen a sky so full of stars you can read by them. They’ve never seen a star nursery, newborn suns surrounded by rings of rock that someday will become planets.  They never heard the names of stars that ring with nobility: Aldebaran. Antares. Sirius. They will never see bloated gas giants or double stars.  They will never see pulsars, shooting beams of light as if they were signaling me, you are near. They will never comprehend a neutron star, the creator of the precious metals like gold that Terrans still lust for.

Virtually every star has a coterie of planets. Some larger than Jupiter. Some smaller than Mars. Some full of life, most nothing but gas, or ice, or rock.

The room, the room! There is no boundary.  My ship sails past stars as if they were mileposts, encouraging us to carry on.  There are dwarf worlds or giant asteroids, depending on how you measure it, tumbling through space. Some even have atmospheres and mountain ranges of water ice. There are wandering planet adrift without a sun to warm it. There are stars rampaging on lone journeys, planetless and purposeless. The sounds of space are cacophonous, if you know how to listen. I can hear the cries of a star as it is engulfed by our black hole. I can hear the hiss of the very birth of the universe, the cosmic ray background. I can hear the emissions from planets that I will never see, nor do I know where they are.

One becomes intoxicated with the stars in our eyes. Even as I float in my tethered sleeping bag, chasing sleep, I can see them, at least in my mind.

I chose this long journey, standing watch over thousands of cocoons as we sail the stellar sea. Daily? There is no day, no night, just the endless mutterings of the computers, the comforting hum of the stardrive, the silent meals with my fellows, for all our stories were told long ago. Perhaps once a week, we jettison a cocoon whose occupant will forever sleep.

 I chose this long, long watch. I could not bear being naked and prone in a steel cocoon, robot nurses tending to me as if I were a larva, their electronic eyes and wires relaying my condition to a computer. No.

In space there is no boundary. I can throw my vision a billion light years ahead and know there is even more beyond. My view is infinite.

But I know that one day, soon, it will end. One day soon, my ship will slow to a stop and orbit a planet. I wonder what my life will be like once we reach our new home. I admit to fear, now, it has grown with every passing kilometer.

The robots will begin the long slow process of waking the sleepers. They will spend a week, maybe longer, remembering how to eat, how to walk, although the gravity on the ship is minimal. Then they will drop down to the planet to resume a life, in a new, clean world.

What will happen to me? What will I do with myself? From childhood, all I wanted was to be able to dive into the velvety sky of stars. All I know how to do is pilot a spacecraft.

I will have to deal with people around me all the time.

I will have to learn to walk in gravity.

I will have to adapt to ‘day’ and ‘night’.

I will have to eat meat cut from animals.

I won’t be alone.

Though they tell me that Pern has many caves and volcanic tunnels, I will have to learn to live ‘outside’, a concept that means no walls, no tunnels, where the temperature changes, where it rains or even snows, I’m told, or get what they call ‘sunburn’. I won’t even need a spacesuit. 

I won’t be able to see past the horizon.

What will I do with myself? I am a starship pilot. It is the only thing I know. I belong in space. Maybe I’ll just stay aboard this ship for the rest of my life, someone needs to tend to her, even when her holds are emptied and her journey done. I don’t mind. They can’t force me down onto a world so utterly different from the one I grew up in. I will stay here. I will be asked ‘Why? Are you afraid?” and I will not be ashamed to say it out loud.

Yes. Because I am afraid.

I am afraid.