Star Trek: The Original Series - 082 - Federation by Judith Reeves-Stevens, Garfield Reeves-Stevens
Authors: Judith Reeves-Stevens, Garfield Reeves-Stevens
Tags: Fiction, General, Science-Fiction, adventure, Space Opera, Performing Arts, Interplanetary voyages, Star trek (Television program), Television, Kirk; James T. (Fictitious Character), Spock (Fictitious character)
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Cochrane glanced at the viewscreen beneath Sir John’s cane.
The limo was approaching a checkpoint near the Thorsen Central Hub, once known as Victoria Station. The data agencies were reporting that some maglevs to Heathrow were still running.
From there, an orbital transfer plane to any platform would be enough to get Cochrane off planet.
But Cochrane wasn’t hopeful. On the viewscreen he saw the ominous gray hulks of zombies—the name the public had given to the Fourth World mercenaries the Optimum employed—lining civilians up against a wall. Some zombies stood with inhaler tubes from their self-medication kits pressed to one nostril, then the other. Cochrane had been told the drugs took away all fear, and all moral compunction.
And I wanted to take this species to the stars, he thought with repugnance. He was forty-eight years old but felt far older because of what he believed might be his complicity in what was happen-in2 on Earth—nothing less than its destruction.
‘hat sense of reason existed among the humans of this system in the late twenty-first century was exclusive to the burgeoning colonies on the moon and Mars, those orbiting Saturn, and those newly established in myriad other sites around the sun. Those colonies, Earth’s children, had rightly declined to become in-volred in their parent’s self-mutilation.
Cochrane wondered if that ready indifference would exist if the solar colonies were still dependent on Earth for critical supplies and technology. With the extrasolar colonies now, on average, no more than four months away from the home system— about the same time it took to travel across the system in the first decades of the century—the solar colonies for the first time could turn to other worlds. Already manufacturing specialties were emerging in many extrasolar communities: biochemical engineering in Bradbury’s Landing, molecular computer farms in Wolf 359’s Stapledon Center, and continuum-distortion generator design and manufacture on Cochrane’s own Centauri B II.
Brack had been right when he had told Cochrane that every airtight freighter in the system would become an interplanetary vessel when retrofitted superimpellors became readily and inexpensively available. But the en. suing grand, faster-than-light, second wave of human exploration had developed far more siftlv than even Brack had anticipated. Still, the result, also as Brack had intended, was undeniable: Earth was no longer critical to the survival of the human race. And all because of Zefram Cochrane.
Cochrane watched Optimum’s mercenaries on the screen with dismay. and wondered if it might be best if he didn’t escape tonight, if he could somehow find a way to atone for what he had caused to be.
But then he recalled Brack’s voice from so many years ago:
“The genie is out of the bottle and will never go back in.” True enough, once again more rapidly than the industrialist had predicted, there were now thirty-three self-sufficient human colonies on ten extrasolar, class-M planets, and the Optimum had been unable to influence them. It took so much time and effort to restrict the free flow of information and resources on Earth that its leaders could not extend their repressive reach the necessary dozens of light-years. Everything had unfolded exactly as Brack had said it would, because people remained people no matter what new technological advances came their way.
Micah Brack’s successful prediction and analysis of the consequences of the human condition, however, gave Cochrane no cause for happiness. He still couldn’t help but feel responsible.
And guilty.
Cochrane and Sir John shifted against the deep upholstery of the Rolls’s passenger compartment as it dropped gently from inertial-dampened, urban-flight mode to its wheeled configuration, slowing as it approached the checkpoint. On the viewscreen, one of the civilians against the wall they were passing turned to flail wildly at the
Cochrane glanced at the viewscreen beneath Sir John’s cane.
The limo was approaching a checkpoint near the Thorsen Central Hub, once known as Victoria Station. The data agencies were reporting that some maglevs to Heathrow were still running.
From there, an orbital transfer plane to any platform would be enough to get Cochrane off planet.
But Cochrane wasn’t hopeful. On the viewscreen he saw the ominous gray hulks of zombies—the name the public had given to the Fourth World mercenaries the Optimum employed—lining civilians up against a wall. Some zombies stood with inhaler tubes from their self-medication kits pressed to one nostril, then the other. Cochrane had been told the drugs took away all fear, and all moral compunction.
And I wanted to take this species to the stars, he thought with repugnance. He was forty-eight years old but felt far older because of what he believed might be his complicity in what was happen-in2 on Earth—nothing less than its destruction.
‘hat sense of reason existed among the humans of this system in the late twenty-first century was exclusive to the burgeoning colonies on the moon and Mars, those orbiting Saturn, and those newly established in myriad other sites around the sun. Those colonies, Earth’s children, had rightly declined to become in-volred in their parent’s self-mutilation.
Cochrane wondered if that ready indifference would exist if the solar colonies were still dependent on Earth for critical supplies and technology. With the extrasolar colonies now, on average, no more than four months away from the home system— about the same time it took to travel across the system in the first decades of the century—the solar colonies for the first time could turn to other worlds. Already manufacturing specialties were emerging in many extrasolar communities: biochemical engineering in Bradbury’s Landing, molecular computer farms in Wolf 359’s Stapledon Center, and continuum-distortion generator design and manufacture on Cochrane’s own Centauri B II.
Brack had been right when he had told Cochrane that every airtight freighter in the system would become an interplanetary vessel when retrofitted superimpellors became readily and inexpensively available. But the en. suing grand, faster-than-light, second wave of human exploration had developed far more siftlv than even Brack had anticipated. Still, the result, also as Brack had intended, was undeniable: Earth was no longer critical to the survival of the human race. And all because of Zefram Cochrane.
Cochrane watched Optimum’s mercenaries on the screen with dismay. and wondered if it might be best if he didn’t escape tonight, if he could somehow find a way to atone for what he had caused to be.
But then he recalled Brack’s voice from so many years ago:
“The genie is out of the bottle and will never go back in.” True enough, once again more rapidly than the industrialist had predicted, there were now thirty-three self-sufficient human colonies on ten extrasolar, class-M planets, and the Optimum had been unable to influence them. It took so much time and effort to restrict the free flow of information and resources on Earth that its leaders could not extend their repressive reach the necessary dozens of light-years. Everything had unfolded exactly as Brack had said it would, because people remained people no matter what new technological advances came their way.
Micah Brack’s successful prediction and analysis of the consequences of the human condition, however, gave Cochrane no cause for happiness. He still couldn’t help but feel responsible.
And guilty.
Cochrane and Sir John shifted against the deep upholstery of the Rolls’s passenger compartment as it dropped gently from inertial-dampened, urban-flight mode to its wheeled configuration, slowing as it approached the checkpoint. On the viewscreen, one of the civilians against the wall they were passing turned to flail wildly at the
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