Free Silent Running by Harlan Thompson Page B

kitchen with Huey following as best he could. Lowell pushed open the door.
    “Wow!” The kitchen was a mess of food trays, wrappers, and garbage.
    Lowell snacked from a cold tray, standing up, for there was no place to sit down. Huey just looked on.
    “Now,” Lowell slammed down his tray, “we’ll hit Main Control.”
    Stepping through the debris, he led the way to the communications center of Valley Forge. With Huey trailing, he pushed into the room filled with communications instruments. He sat before the radio listening intently, tuning it for clarity, but nothing came over but wild static.
    Restlessly, Lowell rose to seek his own room once more.
    He tried to work at his desk, but it was no use.
    He sat staring at the wall, then at Huey.
    “I don’t know . . .” he said to the drone. “The radio isn’t working and neither are you.”
    Acutely aware of Valley Forge’s impotent, mighty bulk plunging through space, and of his own failures, Lowell barged from the room to wander aimlessly over the spacecraft. Huey followed.
    Lowell raised his eyes. There lay the sun. He could picture the ship passing before it.
    “Come on, Huey,” he said. “Let’s go to the forest.”
    Once there, Lowell stooped to powder a dead leaf in his hand. He reached to brush a withering flower.
    “Dying, the trees, the plants, all are dying!” Lowell murmured.
    Lowell fled to his room, with Huey scarcely able to keep up with him. He snatched a book at random from his case. He lay back on his cot staring upward unseeing at the open pages, while his mind reviewed the state of the ship.
    “Kitchen’s a mess,” he murmured. “Main Control’s nothing but static. Cargo hold’s silent, silent. My forest’s clean but going. It’s dying.”
    Lowell’s head dropped forward and he slept. Huey stood by, whirring in a stuttering rhythm.
    In Main Control, though Lowell could not hear it, the radio crackled to life.
    Suddenly a very distant voice—Neal’s voice—queried:
    “ ‘VALLEY FORGE’ . . . ‘VALLEY FORGE’ . . . ‘VALLEY FORGE’ . . . COME IN, ‘VALLEY FORGE.’ THIS IS ‘BERKSHIRE’ TO ‘VALLEY FORGE’ . . . DO YOU READ ME . . . ?”
    But there was no one in the room to read him . . . Lowell slept on in his own room, an open book spilled on the floor beside his cot.
    Valley Forge swept on, but Lowell did not heed. The great ship swirled through a sea of stars, its great flag, once so clean and bright, now barely distinguishable.
    The lone Dome One stood out against the starry sky. Around it lay the scarred empty cradles of the five severed nodes that had held the domes carrying his beautiful forests.
    Out across the hull of mighty Valley Forge something could be seen passing in front of the sun.
    Lowell still slept.
    But suddenly the hiss of the P.A. system engulfed the ship. Again it was Neal pleading:
    “ ‘VALLEY FORGE’ . . . COME IN, ‘VALLEY FORGE.’ THIS IS ‘BERKSHIRE,’ CAN YOU READ ME, ‘VALLEY FORGE’ . . . ?”
    Lowell opened his eyes, startled. Neal’s voice . . . ? How was that possible? How had he tracked him down?
    Neal’s voice continued:
    “LOWELL, ARE YOU ALL RIGHT? GOT A SPOT ON YOU, LOWELL. FANTASTIC! WE’RE LOOKING FORWARD TO SEEING YOU, BUDDY . . . YOU BEAT IT . . . ! YOU PASSED THROUGH SATURN’S RINGS!”
    Lowell was stunned. He leaped from his bed and dashed from the room. His mind whirled with the past—the past, and now here was Neal on the Berkshire, riding orbit somewhere. He’d never expected to see them again.
    Lowell ran toward Main Control, with unidentifiable excited voices in the background catching up with him.
    Then it was Neal again, impatiently pleading:
    “NOW, TRANSMIT, WILL YUH? PLEASE ACKNOWLEDGE, IMMEDIATELY. COME IN ‘VALLEY FORGE.’ . . . CAN YOU READ ME . . . ?” There followed a long pause, then Neal again: “PLEASE TRANSMIT IMMEDIATELY. ‘BERKSHIRE’ TO ‘VALLEY FORGE.’ . . . ‘BERKSHIRE’ TO ‘VALLEY FORGE.’ HOW ABOUT A WORD, LOWELL,