Eden Beyond

By J. E. Schuyler

A lucky few escape the hell that Earth has become. They find themselves on a distant planet where they must coexist with the local humanoids. The natives are somewhat short, have tails, and wear as little clothing as possible. They tolerate the strangers despite the fact they can be real jerks. A coming of age tale on another world and a satirical science fantasy. Fictional critics agree: "It has something to upset everyone."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Sep 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9781387209040

Book preview

Eden Beyond

Eden Beyond

Chapter 1

The Cosmic Lottery, or: Good Night and Good Luck

No one worried about going to hell anymore.  Earth was hell, and had been for more than two hundred years.  Everyone who could afford the exorbitant cost of evacuating the planet was eager to leave.

The signs were all there.  The signs had been there for a long time.  Industry continued to deny its role in cataclysmic climate changes, the increased frequency of earthquakes, and the poisoning of air and water.  Coastal cities and tropical islands disappeared under the rising ocean.  Several zones around the globe were too radioactive to sustain life.  Rival political factions and competing religions, fearing becoming outnumbered, urged their followers to be fruitful and multiply despite overpopulation and widespread misery.  Euthanasia vendors made a killing in the market.

Stories about drought, famine, or dying from extreme weather conditions had become much too commonplace to be considered newsworthy and were certainly unpopular, therefore unprofitable.  Speculation about how long it would be until humans became extinct was even more repellent to news consumers, and editors routinely discarded such items.  People with unusual hobbies became front page news more than ever.

Of course, there were fortunes to be made by exploiting this situation.  That was why the United States Stellarcorps came about.  The fantastically high price of rocketry was beyond the reach of nearly everyone.  Not even the US government had been able to afford it for several decades, so Stellarcorps began as a joint venture between the government and private industry.  The American general public paid for the research and development and the salaries of the personnel who operated the program.  The Interstellar Transport Consortium, Incorporated paid to have the equipment built and enjoyed the enormous profits from charging passengers their life savings for the slim chance of landing on a new, inhabitable planet.  The fantastically high price of tickets made relocation an option for the obscenely wealthy and a smaller number of Stellarcorps personnel. 

To the dismay of quantum physicists and science fiction fans everywhere, the long-imagined use of wormholes to quickly cross vast reaches of space was still not yet an option.  In fact, it's so dangerous and complicated it might never be an option, but don't tell them.  All they ever do is complain. 

The next best thing to wormholes___those elusive, giant time-and-space pretzels___would have been spacecraft capable of traveling at a speed close to that of light.  The best the first baker's dozen of the Stellarcorps' starships could reach was what they called half lightspeed.  More accurately, this meant traveling at 43 to 47 percent of the speed of light.  Nevertheless, this represented a significant scientific advance, and there had precious few of those lately.

The other technological breakthrough which made interstellar relocation possible was in the field of suspended animation.  Science stubbornly followed the wrong path of cryonics for much too long.  Finally, it was generally accepted that the frozen head of 20th century baseball great Ted Williams would never be successfully thawed out, attached to a robotic body, and sent on the convention circuit to sign autographs.  Instead, the concept of gravitronic chronoscillation was introduced, extensively experimented upon and eventually perfected.  In this system, all of the molecules within an enclosure are subjected to a heavy dose of sci-fi physics so that, essentially, they vibrate backwards and forwards in time by less than a nanosecond; in effect, time stands still.

With such scientific triumphs occurring in an otherwise failing world, one might think superstition had become a thing of the past.  One would be wrong.  After successfully filling and launching twelve pioneering missions, the Stellarcorps encountered resistance to Mission Number 13 because of its unlucky numbering.  The agency refused to rename it 14 and resorted to deep discounts on fares and relaxed participation requirements.  For example, the minimum age to participate was 12, but Daniel Henrichsen, who was three days away from his twelfth birthday, was welcomed into the orientation program.  The ship was filled with passengers who otherwise could never afford interplanetary relocation, not even to Mars. (As we now know, it is generally accepted that Mars sucks a Texas egg.)

The agency refused to confirm rumors that some discounts were as much as 95%, but they eagerly used the mission to deflect criticism that the program only benefited the rich.  Prior to launch, 400 passengers, mostly working class, filed into the agency's dormitory for its two-week orientation program.  On Launch Day, the civilians joined 50 quasi-military officers and crew aboard the Star Transport Intrepid.  They proceeded as instructed to their individual stasis chambers, stowed their two full-sized suitcases of clothing and belongings in overhead compartments, removed all clothing and jewelry and placed them in a drawer under their units, lay down in their coffin-like chambers as the lids closed over them, and settled in for an indefinite period of suspended animation.  Shortly thereafter, the S.T. Intrepid was successfully launched and promptly forgotten by everyone it left behind except the accountants.

Time passed.  A very long period of time passed.  As a matter of fact, much too much time passed.  This should have been expected because, like all Stellarcorps missions, the Intrepid was launched into deep space with only a rough idea of where it was headed.  If the planet it was aimed at turned out to be Earth-like, it would stop.  If not, it would keep searching, at least in theory.  It really didn't matter what happened.  Once it was far enough away, any data the ship sent back would take decades to reach Earth.  There were no guarantees, refunds or liability connected with this endeavor.  Unsurprisingly, Interstellar Transport's business model came to be the envy of corporate executives around the world.

As previously noted, a considerable length of time passed.  Cadet Patrick Reilly, age 20, found waking up painfully difficult, having spent countless years in a bottomless sleep while tearing through the cold, dark, infinite void at nearly half the speed of light.  Now his first thought in a ludicrously long time was: something's wrong.

He knew he had been freed from his stasis chamber and felt himself being pulled along through zero gravity by mechanical hands.  A sickening stench assaulted him at several points along the way through darkened corridors. An odd sound meant to be a warning siren was straining to make weak, intermittent noises.  Here and there, dim light revealed the shape of a robot, tugging him into a landing craft. He could sense the shaking and lurching of the mothership once he was lowered into a chair and strapped in.  Patrick had been rescued for the moment by one of the mobots, the mobile robots which could go nearly anywhere inside or outside the ship, but whose normal duties did not include pulling crew members out of suspended animation and buckling them into landers.

Who goes there? asked a woman to Patrick's left.

Cadet Patrick Reilly, ma'am.

From the darkness, the woman replied, Private Malaika Kebede. You said cadet?

Yeah.  Not sure why I'm here.  Everything happened so fast.  You gonna fly this thing?

Unless someone else comes along.  Can you fly it?

Hell, no, said Patrick.  I've only been in the simulator a couple times.  Where are the officers?

Malaika leaned over and confided, We cannot tell the passengers this.  The ship has been flying for much, much longer than it was built to last.  It is in bad shape.  We have not been at half lightspeed for a very long time.  But we are orbiting an Earth-like planet and when the mobots have filled the seats we are going to try to go and land there.

How do you know this?

A message played when I was brought in.  I was just barely awake and the sound was very bad.  I would replay the audio file if I knew where it came from.

Behind them, mobots were buckling two or three passengers into seats at the back of the lander.  There was room for 40 civilians and five crewmembers, but the craft was filling very slowly.

So, we are pilot and navigator, Mr. Reilly, unless the 'bots find higher ranking personnel.

Did any other landers take off?

I hope so but I do not know.  Then she spoke even more quietly than before.  I do not like this.  Why would we need to let a private like me pilot this machine?  Why would they not take the time to dress us or let us wake up properly?

None of this is like regular procedure, not even an emergency drill, Patrick noted.

No, it is very strange.

I don't even know why I'm here.  They pulled me out of the cadet program and two days later I was on this flight. No one would tell me anything except 'this is where you're needed.'  It makes no sense!

You are right, Malaika whispered.  And if we must fly this machine, the passengers must not  know that we are unqualified.  We were not issued uniforms.  We can tell them we are officers. They will be very frightened, and it just gets worse if they know the truth.

Are you crazy?  We'll be court-martialed.

That is a bridge we will cross when we get to it.  But perhaps some real officers will come aboard and we can move to the second row.

She unbuckled her harness and, holding tightly to the straps, pushed herself up and around, floating above her seat to see who was behind her.  They are bringing in one more.  That makes five so far.  Seven including you and me.  She pulled and twisted herself from midair back into her seat.

Thirty-eight more seats to fill, Patrick noted.  I hope it won't take long.

A heartbeat or two later they heard metallic scraping and banging sounds as the doors to the lander were firmly shut.  Then, from outside the small spacecraft came a similar but larger noise which sounded like a giant prison door being locked.  It was the door to the airlock between the mothership and the Number 5 launch chamber.  Through the small window in front of them, they saw the flickering lights on the hull doors change from red to yellow.

Oh, my good God.  Oh, Jesus, whispered Malaika.  Only seven of us?  We can only save five?

Maybe time's running out, Patrick answered. We've gotta wake up and get ready to go.

I can't see the controls, she said softly.  Then in a louder voice: System, cabin lights! A few of the lights reluctantly responded.  Whirring and hissing sounds came from the chamber until the air was sucked out.  The huge door in front of them slowly slid open in complete silence.  The hull lights changed from struggling yellow to dying green.

Keep your eyes open, Reilly Malaika said.  If you see me make a mistake, say something; do not be shy.  Here we go.  She pushed a large red button with the palm of her hand and grasped the lever below it, slowly moving it upwards.  As the chamber shook, she eased the lander cautiously out into the dark space above the sky of a new world.  When she felt reasonably sure they were a safe distance from the mothership she pushed the throttle to the top.  Although it felt no different in the cabin, their flimsy life raft was now streaking toward the foreign planet.

Distance to planet? she asked.

No instrumentation.

Trying out the steering rockets, she discovered, It refuses to turn starboard.

Can you compensate for that?

Uh, maybe?

Peering through his front and side windows, Patrick noted green vegetation on both sides of the equator, looks like desert between, a lot of white clouds but I think I see a polar ice cap, and definitely a lot of water.

Any climate and atmosphere data?

No, sorry. I have no instruments over here.  Maybe after re-entry.

Entry, you mean, she emphasized.  We are not from around here!

They exchanged a quick glance.  Then a third voice, a child's voice, posed a question with which many travelers are familiar:

Are we there yet?

A pale boy of about 11 was floating in mid-air behind their heads.  Patrick turned to look at him.

Almost home, young man.  But you shouldn't distract the lieutenant, and you need to be buckled in.  You won't be weightless much longer.  Can you pull yourself down and strap in?

Yes, sir.

My navigator and I will answer all your questions after we land, boy, said the unusually tall woman.  Until then be brave and keep still, yes?"

Yes, ma'am.

Young Daniel Henrichsen was too excited to be groggy.  It felt as though he had left the earth earlier that day.  Now he was the first passenger to see their new world, and the only one to witness Kebede and Reilly's search for a landing point and struggles with the defective controls.  An hour passed quickly and the lander was making an orbit around the planet as the pilot and navigator visually surveyed its daytime side as best they could.  The craft had to fly with its topside toward the ground so the crew could see the surface through the windows.  When Kebede rolled the lander over, Daniel knew it was to position the heat shielding on the underside so they could begin their descent.

During that maneuver, something bumped into Daniel's head.  More surprisingly, it said, Sorry.   A teenage girl hovered weightlessly above his right shoulder.

Come down and buckle up, he said in a hoarse whisper.  They're getting ready to set this thing down.

As the heat shielding came in sudden contact with atmospheric friction, flames leapt from the belly of the craft.  The intense light and waves of rising heat obscured the window views for a couple of minutes, but when that phase passed, the lander was still in one piece and a blue sky became visible.  Flying at a slight angle toward the ground, the boy and the two counterfeit flight officers could see clouds floating beneath them.

Lieutenant, said Reilly, we've passed the green area and we're over sand and rock, with a large body of water ahead.  Can we swing around and get closer to the vegetation?

I want to do that, but the jets will not kick in.  Jet engines were supposed to take over from the rocket systems once the lander entered a planet's atmosphere.

It's fine.  We're at too high an altitude still.  The air is thin and really cold. Try again in a minute.

I will make a very large circle with the rockets.  They are not steering very well but I really do not want to get over the water.

The long, slow turn might have looked graceful at a distance, but inside the lander the shaking and rattling quelled all further conversation, except for the moment the four travelers cheered as the jets finally kicked in.  The engines whined so loudly that Malaika nearly forgot to kill the rockets.  She throttled them down to stand by mode and began taking the lander on a series of small, bouncy steps to lower and lower altitudes.

The idea was to land on the sandy desert, close to where the tree line began.  Without either crew member saying a word, the goal quickly changed to landing safely anywhere at all.  When the time came to lower the landing gear, they thought they heard them moving but like several other gauges, the indicator didn't work.

As the lander came closer to the ground it made new and louder noises, as if it were dying one piece at a time. Then a sudden, violent jolt confirmed the landing gear had deployed and was careening along the desert floor, tearing over rocks and mowing down small plants.  The wheels dug into the sand as the lander skated on its belly, out of control but slowing down, and the noises its systems had been making were replaced by scraping and banging from outside as it bullied its way past rocks of various sizes. Then at last, everything was as quiet as the vacuum of space. 

The battered, antique spacecraft had abruptly stopped when it pushed its nose into a sand dune.  At that moment, a bank of lights on the console briefly lit up. Some of these