Destination: Void: Prequel to the Pandora Sequence by Frank Herbert Read Free Book Online

blocks, refined to a single playback (with probable accuracy quotient logged beside each character), and finally was slowed to make it intelligible for human ears.
    Sure as hell took ’em long enough, Bickel thought. He read the time log, subtracted the distance lag. Almost seven hours. He thought then of the first ships using single channel radio, punching their messages across the solar system with only a few watts—but the error-uncertainty factor built up with distance and cumulative adverse interference. The Tin Egg’s system had been engineered for computer-monitored automatic reports over stellar distances to tell watchers as yet unborn back on Earth how things fared with their star probe.
    The message-ready chime sounded. Bickel keyed the vocoder. The voice of Morgan Hempstead, United Moon base director, rolled out of the speakers, recognizable and still with its iced iron overtones preserved by the AAT’s comparators.
    “To UMB ship Earthling from Project Control. This is Morgan Hempstead. We hope you understand our distress and concern. Every decision from this point must have a prime motive of preserving the lives of yourselves and the colonists.”
    So much for the record, Flattery thought. There are seven nations and four races represented in the hyb tanks — but all just as expendable as the ones who went before us.
    “We have several prime questions,” Hempstead said.
    I’ve a few questions of my own, Bickel thought.
    “Why was Project Control not alerted when the first Organic Mental Core failed?” Hempstead asked.
    Bickel mentally logged the question. He knew the answer, but it was nothing he would ever transmit. Hempstead knew it as well as he did. The Tin Egg had momentum as an idea that had survived six failures. Nothing short of another ultimate failure would stop it. Nothing short of desperate emergency could make them risk aborting the mission by calling for help.
    “Doppler reference indicates you’ll be out of the solar system in approximately three hundred and sixteen days at present stabilized speed,” Hempstead said. “Time to Tau Ceti: four hundred-plus years.”
    As he listened, Bickel pictured the man behind the voice: flintlike face with gray hair and gray-blue eyes—that aura of momentous decision even in his smallest gesture. The psych boys had called him “Big Daddy” behind his back, but they had jumped when he commanded. Now, Bickel focused on the fact that they never again expected to see Hempstead, yet the man still could reach into their midst with his decisions.
    “First analysis indicates these possibilities,” Hempstead went on. “You could turn back to orbit around UMB until the problem is solved and new Organic Mental Cores installed. That would return us to the old problem of sterile control under less than ideal conditions. It also would remove the ship from the situation of probable cause in the OMC breakdowns, perhaps making solution impossible.”
    “He always was a long-winded bore,” Timberlake said.
    “Second possibility,” Hempstead said, “would be for you to convert to a closed ecology and continue at present speed, enlisting replacements from your hybernation tanks or breeding and raising your own crew complement. You would, of course, face high probability of genetic damage through the necessity of staying outside your core-shield areas long enough to build quarters for prolonged occupation. However, food would be your major problem unless you adopted a more closely integrated recycling system.”
    “Closely integrated recycling,” Flattery said. “He means cannibalism. It was discussed.”
    Bickel turned to stare at Flattery. The idea of cannibalism was repellent, but that was not what had caught Bickel’s attention. “ It was discussed .” That simple statement contained volumes of unanswered questions and hidden implications.
    “Third possibility,” Hempstead was saying, “would be to build the necessary consciousness into your