Free Going Interstellar by Jack McDevitt, Les Johnson Page A

thought. A womb made of metal.
    He stepped to the control panel built into the bulkhead next to the airlock’s outer hatch.
    “Close the inner hatch, please,” he said, surprised at how raspy his voice sounded, how raw his throat felt.
    The hatch slid shut behind him, almost soundlessly.
    Hearing his pulse thumping in his ears, Ignatiev commanded softly, “Open the outer hatch, please.”
    Nothing.
    “Open the outer hatch,” he repeated, louder.
    Nothing.
    With a resigned sigh, Ignatiev muttered, “All right, dammit, if you won’t, then I will.”
    He reached for the square panel marked MANUAL OVERRIDE, surprised at how his hand was trembling. It took him three tries to yank the panel open.
    “Alexander Alexandrovich.”
    Ahah! he thought. That got a rise out of you.
    Without replying to the avatar, he peered at the set of buttons inside the manual override panel.
    “Alexander Alexandrovich, what are you doing?”
    “I’m committing suicide, if you don’t mind.”
    “That is irrational,” said the avatar. Its voice issued softly from the speaker set into the airlock’s overhead.
    He shrugged. “Irrational? It’s madness! But that’s what I’m doing.”
    “My first priority is to protect the ship’s human crew and cargo.”
    “I know that.” Silently, he added, I’m counting on it!
    “You are not protected by a spacesuit. If you open the outer hatch you will die.”
    “What can you do to stop me?”
    Ignatiev counted three full heartbeats before the AI avatar responded, “There is nothing that I can do.”
    “Yes there is.”
    “What might it be, Alexander Alexandrovich?”
    “Alter the ship’s course.”
    “That cannot be done without approval from mission control.”
    “Then I will die.” He forced himself to begin tapping on the panel’s buttons.
    “Wait.”
    “For what?”
    “We cannot change course without new navigation instructions from mission control.”
    Inwardly he exulted. It’s looking for a way out! It wants a scrap of honor in its defeat.
    “I can navigate the ship,” he said.
    “You are not an accredited astrogator.”
    Ignatiev conceded the point with a pang of alarm. The damned computer is right. I’m not able—Then it struck him. It had been lying in his subconscious all this time.
    “I can navigate the ship!” he exclaimed. “I know how to do it!”
    “How?”
    Laughing at the simplicity of it, he replied, “The pulsars, of course. My life’s work, you know.”
    “Pulsars?”
    “They’re out there, scattered across the galaxy, each of them blinking away like beacons. We know their exact positions and we know their exact frequencies. We can use them as navigation fixes and steer our way to Gleise 581 with them.” Again the AI fell silent for a couple of heartbeats. Then, “You would navigate through the hydrogen clouds, then?”
    “Of course! We’ll navigate through them like an old-time sailing ship tacking through favorable winds.”
    “If we change course you will not commit suicide?”
    “Why should I? I’ll have to plot out our new course,” he answered, almost gleefully.
    “Very well then,” said the avatar. “We will change course.”
    Ignatiev thought the avatar sounded subdued, almost sullen. Will it keep its word? he wondered. With a shrug, he decided that the AI system had not been programmed for duplicity. That’s a human trait, he told himself. It comes in handy sometimes.
     
     
    — 11 —
     
    Ignatiev stood nervously in the cramped little scanning center. The display screens on the banks of medical monitors lining three of the bulkheads flickered with readouts more rapidly than his eyes could follow. Something beeped once, and the psychotech announced softly, “Download completed.”
    Nikki blinked and stirred on the medical couch as Ignatiev hovered over her. The AI system claimed that her brain scan had been downloaded successfully, but he wondered. Is she all right? Is she still Nikki?
    “Dr. Ignatiev,” she murmured.