Deathwatch [FICTOID]

Allo brought his grandfather’s evening meal up the long, winding mountain path to the observatory.  Bitter winter winds tugged at his clothes without effect; as a child of the mountains, Allo suffered far worse without complain.

His grandfather’s observatory sat atop the peak, long thin strains of genetically engineered goatsilk trailing out in all directions to neighboring peaks.

Allo knew many people debated the value of the observatory, but what is done is done and as long as it required to extensive repairs, his grandfather would work there.

He passed through the heavily insulated outer doors to his grandfather’s lair.  Allo always felt a thrill of the forbidden when he visited his grandfather.  While his culture did not expressly forbid electronics and computers, they did regard them with suspicion.

Only rarely did they trust someone like Allo’s grandfather to use them.

“Allo, my boy!  Come to me!  What culinary joys have you brought?”

Allo grinned at his grandfather archaic grandiloquent words.  “Same as ever, grandfather.  Hot stew in an insulated contained, fresh greens kept chilled by the night air.  Do you have enough tea?”

“Plenty, my boy, plenty,” his grandfather said before sighing, “Though I may not need a resupply.”

Allo arched an eyebrow.  His grandfather gestured for him to sit and share his evening meal.

“You know the story, don’t you?” his grandfather said between bites.  “How the world once relied on wealth and power, how the wealthiest and most powerful ravaged the planet for their own benefit, and as the world went into spasms as they pillaged it, they built great ships to sail to the stars, looking for a new paradise to plunder.”

Allo nodded, savoring the delicious taste of rat stew.

“They left a thousand years ago, abandoning us, mocking us as they departed, heading to a world so far away it takes the light from its sun almost four years to reach us.”

“I know all that, I do well in my history and science courses.”

His grandfather chuckled.  “I’m sure you do.  Hereditary and all that.  Anyway, they left us, taking flight in a fleet of two hundred and seventy ships, heading to a world they called Proxima Centauri B.
“They thought they planned for every contingency, but they didn’t.  Three of their ships never left this solar system.  The rest failed, one by one.” 

“And they couldn’t return,” said Allo, “because they used half their fuel to leave our solar system and would need the other half to land on the new world.  If they turned around they’d waste all their fuel just getting back, they wouldn’t have enough to land.”

His grandfather nodded grimly.  “Sometimes the failure came mercifully, with abrupt suddenness, sparing those aboard the terror of their fate, sometimes slowly, painfully, like a child drowning under the ice.”

Allo shuddered at the thought.  “Why didn’t the other ships try to save them?”

“They did…at first,” said his grandfather.  He swept his arm over to a huge bookshelf crammed with ancient tomes going back hundreds of years.  “Those of us who manned the observatory over the centuries kept careful track of their reports and messages.  A few of the earliest ships to suffer catastrophic failure managed to get their crew and passengers transferred to other ships.

“But as more and more ships failed, the surviving ships refused any more refugees.  ‘You’ll starve us, use up all our resources,’ they said.  On occasion wars would break out among them, resulting in all ships involved suffering fatal damage.

“Now they are down to one ship.  It entered the outskirts of the new solar system just a few months ago, but they suffered a fuel line rupture.  Now they are falling in a slow spiral that eventually will plunge them into the heart of that sun.

“Not that they’ll live that long.”

Allo looked up quizzically.  “Their pressure hull is breached.  They’re trying to save themselves by sealing off interior compartments one by one, but the bulkheads eventually fail.  Now there’s just a handful of them crammed into their darkened control room, sending out messages, reporting their fate.”

Allo shiver, but not from the cold.  “It hardly seems fair.”

“Fair?”

“These people dying, they aren’t responsible.  Their ancestors plundered this world, built those ships.”

“I might agree with you if they weren’t infected with the same mental disorder that led their ancestors on such a self-destructive course.”  He checked his clock.  “We’re coming into alignment.  Listen, my boy.  Hear what they have to say.”

He turned up the single speaker in his lair.  “This message is from four years ago,” he reminded Allo.  “Whatever was going to happen has already happened.”

Allo strained to hear the tinny voice coming over the ancient speaker.  Any common language his ancestors and the surviving crew and passengers shared long since diverged from one another to the point where he couldn’t understand was the voice was saying…

…but he could certainly hear the tone accurately.

The speaker sounded terrified, yet at the same time oddly entitled.

“They’re demanding anyone who hears this to come and save them,” his grandfather translated.  Over the centuries he and his predecessors carefully noted the language shifts and could speak not only the divergent tongues but the ancient original language of departure as well.  “They’re plunging toward the sun.  They won’t fall in this time but the heat and radiation is intense.  Already several of the weakest people in the control room have died, and the survivors are eating their flesh.”

His grandfather cocked his head to listen more closely.  Allo noticed the speaker’s voice sounded more panicked.  “The bulkhead is starting to buckle,” his grandfather translated.  “They’re going to try to stop up any gaps where air might leak out -- “

Allo and his grandfather heard a short sharp whistle then a dull thud followed by a whoosh…

…and then silence.

His grandfather looked quite thoughtful, almost sad.  “And that is that,” he said wistfully.  He smiled sadly at Allo.  “I’ll finish my report, tell it to the university, but my task here is eventually done.  They can start dismantling the observatory and share the components with others who need the material.”

“What will you do?” Allo asked.

His grandfather smiled more warmly this time.  “What can I do?  I’ll live.”

© Buzz Dixon