Voyage to Alpha Centauri: A Novel Read Free Page A

list. Like all other buildings I had seen so far, it had only a single story above ground. I was to learn that there were eight more, below ground. A distinctive quality of this edifice was that one whole side was open to natural light, built on the slope of a hill facing north, away from the sun.
    My room was scented with a vaguely oriental perfume, the soft carpet was subtly colored, and the furniture lean in design but luxuriously upholstered. The bed looked like something you shouldn’t lie down on because you would never want to get up again. Framed artwork had cosmic themes: Hubble-8 galaxy photos, the new station on Mars, and an imaginative depiction of the planets of Alpha Centauri. The latter image appeared to be hand-painted, though I expect it was machine made. When I drew back the curtains to see what lay beyond, I had my first sight of the ship. There in the desert, about a mile away, she rested on her cradle. She was immense and very beautiful.
    At first I just looked, amazed, shaking my head. Stunned, actually. The photos and diagrams I had seen had not imparted her three-dimensionality—not even my home holoscreen had conveyed the impact of her substantiality. Neither had the media images captured the sweetness of her ovoid form, like one of those beautiful white stones one finds on beaches in diverse places of the world, the kind you hold in the hand, not wanting to let it go. You always take it home with you. Always. Beauty is radiant wholeness, balance, harmony. The ship was a perfect manifestation of these. It was also the apotheosis of latent power. A week from now, the power would be unleashed.
    *
    Days of briefing followed, lectures from department heads, giving us a sense of the complexity of the expedition as well as delineations of responsibility. There will be flight staff and scientific staff for the voyage itself, and another set of scientific staff for investigation of the planet. Also some tagalongs, such as myself and a few famous names. I haven’t yet met everyone.
    The hand-out sheets we received at one briefing tell us that the warm bodies are divided into the following categories:
    Ship’s flight crew (total 60): captain and subsidiary ranks, navigation people, communications, liaison staff for the following categories.
    Service staff (total 200): food, cleaning, laundry, mundane troubleshooting, all of which is grouped under the title “Maintenance” (our basic needs).
    Scientific staff for voyage (total 171): subcategories as follows: botanists (8); physicians (12); nurses and paramedics (18); pharmacists (8); astronomers of various kinds (10); atmosphere controllers and recyclers (16); atomic fusion engineers (12); technicians assisting the aforementioned (6); anti-matter gurus / overseers (8); computer fail-safe watchmen (8); odd and sundry experts in extremely obscure fields (17). Add to the above categories the following social sciences: psychologists / counselors (16); psychiatrists (4); sociologists (8); community facilitators, a.k.a. social engineers (20).
    Scientific staff for destination planet (total 238): There is some overlap with voyage scientists, because certain people will be working during the voyage and also working on the planet. I’ve subtracted these duplicates to arrive at the following figures for those who will work exclusively at on-ground exploration: botanists (20); zoologists (20); biologists (22); chemists (13); geologists (26); land transport staff (18); pilots for the four ship-to-ground shuttles (8); physicians (4); data analysts (12); astronomers (4); anthropologists (7); archaeologists (16); linguistic geniuses (10); assistants to the aforementioned (10); military support technologists, a.k.a. security and protection from aliens (48).
    Tagalong (total 8): Nobel prize scientists (5); aging trillionaires who contributed money to the project (2); nephew of the current Federation president (1). Stowaways (uncertain).
    And there we have it. The