“Dear Sir, firstly, the chief executive and members of the state commission know better who is to be sent to this flight as a director. Secondly, during the flight everything will be managed by the on-board computer and you will have nothing to worry about; all that is needed it will do on its own. You will need to only control the computer’s course of actions and report everything to us. And when you exit the communication range, you will act according to the instructions given to you by the Mission Control Center. While you are away, we’ll look after your family and help them with anything they need.”
After the meeting, Valentin Valentinovich left the room, feeling his legs getting numb and a voice in his instantly turned dull head that said, “Run, immediately! But where?” Of all people he perfectly knew with a tracker implanted in his head he could only get so far. He would be caught regardless and sent to mine the weed, but this time as a laborer fated to be killed on the wild planet following his service. Nor was it possible to wriggle his way out of the decision declared by the high committee. “I must accept and fly there as director, and if I am lucky then I could eat my fill of this weed and come back immortal.”
And Valentin Valentinovich, taking time to grieve and shed a few tears, began to prepare for the interstellar trip. He negotiated for himself his own food, water and oxygen, his own personal quarters with his own air conditioner so that the terrible GAS could not accidentally put him to sleep, and altered the ship’s subroutines with the additional clause, “Whatever happens, GAS must bring him to Earth with the cargo.”
No matter how hard the developers tried to lessen the total number of the travelers, they were still coming up with fifty people at least – counting the crew, maintenance personnel, and the actual workers, while taking into account the demise of the part of the crew – up to forty percent – due to the prolonged sleep. Of all the crew, the ship’s director and the pilot were off limits for GAS, as well as three refrigerating engineers (to ensure extra control for the machinery and modules with the plant cargo, just in case). As for the others, GAS could dispose of them at any moment without compromising the weed storing prior to departure back to Earth. However, the director, mechanics and pilot was expendable only in the event that the cargo was endangered.
For two years the ship had been built in lunar orbit and equipped with everything that was needed – space shuttles were delivering these resources from Earth. And, finally, not long before the early winter, all of the supplies had been loaded and the final tests of the systems and the machinery had been finished. However, all of a sudden an unforeseen problem had occurred. The HR department for Space Expeditions found it impossible to accrue personnel for this fascinating flight, in spite of the double salary and quintupled reward upon returning to Earth.
It turns out that information about the flight had gotten leaked nonetheless; people began to talk about how it was a one-way trip and that those hired to work on the unknown planet would be abandoned there (or killed) after they gathered some invaluable weed for the Earth’s elites. So, knowing that the executive officials were lying to them, and the rumors were unlikely totally groundless, nobody volunteered to fly there, even with the promise of a big payout. As a result, the expedition’s executives decided to recruit former spacemen who were imprisoned in the special barracks for stealing the lichen and exhaling the state officials’ “property” they had illegally consumed.
Those who agreed to the mission had been promised, in addition to the big pay, that their sentence for their “horrible” crime would be revoked; many had to agree in order to avoid starving to death in the barracks. With a crew now assembled, the spaceship blasted off from its lunar orbit in the direction of the planet Hopus, without any unnecessary fanfare, one hour before the New Year, in order not to interfere with the planned reporting before the chiefs.
The huge starship, externally bearing the resemblance of a zeppelin, had been accelerating for four months, with great effort sped up to the velocity to break away from the Solar system’s gravity, and detached the first acceleration stage. Later on, it was picked up by a stream of the galactic aether which sucked it in like a speck of dust into its fast-flowing river of time, several times exceeding the speed of light. The giant ship merged into it just as a knife dropped into still water, and instantly disappeared into the endless space of the Universe, like a needle in the haystack.
The entire launch and interstellar flight was being vigilantly overseen by GAS; it was relentlessly and meticulously checking all of the parameters of the ship’s engines and systems’ operations, repeatedly calculating and re-calculating the variants of the burn rate of fuel necessary to slow down when approaching the intended destination, and was making adjustments to the possible maximum load for the return trip.
Trouble began on the ship right after blast-off, happening as early as the acceleration stage. The central air conditioning system on the ship started malfunctioning at once, and some cabins were cold and damp. Controlling the temperature and air humidity was impossible – this operation could only be done by GAS, which kept refusing to warm up the cold units on account of economy for the journey back. It was also supplying water to the lavatories for workers according to a strict schedule – for half hour in the morning and for two hours in the evening. And besides, the food for the personnel was meager in serving and tasted awful – no cook was hired for the flight to cut costs and resources, therefore GAS prepared the means using pre-stocked briquettes of frozen meat and fish as well as dried grain products. The uncomfortable accommodations and poor food quality created much hardship for the travelers. Given that the ship’s crew had been assembled at the last moment, it consisted of a ragtag group of individuals who were hard to manage. In addition to the recruits from the special barracks, there were twelve girls working as chambermaids, six guards for Valentin Valentinovich, and, finally, the crew of seven people.
At first, the recruits from the barracks were just complaining, “We didn’t join here to put up with cold and hunger – we’ve had this shit in the barracks in spades!” And then, a couple of months into the flight, those amongst the group who were stronger and cockier began switching up the living arrangements, kicking out the weaker and more timid members from their warmer cabins. This process got out of control, but the guards stayed out of it, having decided that everything would settle down somehow on its own, and being more preoccupied in fooling around with the chambermaids instead; even Valentin Valentinovich was indifferent to the infighting amongst the crew over the cabins, picking for himself the most curvaceous girl of the twelve helps, locking himself with her in his cabin and barely leaving it, entrusting GAS to entirely pilot the ship and manage the crew on its own. As for GAS, having economically considered with its silicon brain that having members of the high-stakes expedition engaged in promiscuous erotic escapades and physical altercations was an extravagant and excessive waste of air, water and food, ultimately decided to put all crew members into hibernation six months earlier than planned. So, on week ten of the voyage, it released the sleeping gas to all ship’s modules induce anabiosis, in the middle of the night time while everybody was already asleep. It also began injecting nutritional supplements into the atmosphere, to make sure that the travelers do not die from malnutrition before arriving to the destination.
Valentin Valentinovich and his mistress alone were spared from this event, as he made his suite completely autonomous from the ship’s general systems pre-flight. They learned that GAS had put all expedition members into stasis the next morning, when they saw a warning sign “Gas! No exiting!” appear above the hallway entrance and discovered that the door was automatically blocked.
Elina, the mistress of the ship’s director for duration of the expedition, was the first to wake up and wanted to sneak out to her friends to chitchat while her paramour was sleeping, but upon noticing the locked door and the alarming sign above shook Valentin awake.
“Valik, wake up! Someone locked us up, and some gas was released.”
Valentin scratched himself for a long while, unable to understand what this dumb broad wanted from him, and when the situation finally dawned on him, he hailed GAS.
“Listen, GAS, what is going on there?” he asked the on-board computer, yawning.
“Good