The Black Corridor

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

When he awakes he feels relieved, alert and refreshed. He eats his breakfast as soon as he has exercised and walks to the control room where he runs through all the routine checks and adjustments until lunch-time.

After lunch he goes to the little gym behind the main control cabin and vaults and climbs and swings until it is time to inspect Hibernation.

He unlocks the door of Hibernation and makes a routine and unemotional check. A minor alteration is required in the rate of fluid flow on Number Seven container. He makes the alteration.

Again the routine checks, the reiteration during the normal conference period.

He then does two hours study of the agricultural programmes.

He learns a great deal. It is a much more interesting subject that he would have guessed.

Then it is time to report to the computer and read the log through to Earth, if anyone is left on Earth to hear it.

He makes the last of his reports for this period: 'Day number one thousand four hundred and sixty-six. Spaceship Hope Dempsey en route for Munich 15040. Speed steady at point nine of c. All systems functioning according to original expectations. No other variations. All occupants are comfortable and in good health.'

Ryan goes to the desk and takes out his red log-book. He frowns. Scrawled across a page are the words: I MUST KEEP BETTER CONTROL OF THINGS It hardly looks like his writing. Yet it must be.

And when did he write it? He has not had time to make any entries in the log until now. It could have been at any time today.

Or last night. He frowns. When...?

He cannot remember.

He takes a deep breath and he rules two heavy red lines under the entry, writes the date below it and begins: All continues well. I maintain my routine and am hopeful for the future. Today I feel less bedevilled by loneliness and have more confidence in my ability to carry out my mission. Our ship carries us steadily onwards. I am confident that all is well, I am confident—— He stops writing and scratches his head, staring at the phrase above the entry.

I MUST KEEP CONTROL OF THINGS

I am confident that my period of nightmares and near-hysteria is over. I have regained control of myself and therefore—— He considers tearing out this page and beginning it afresh. But that would not be in accord with the regulations he is following.

He sucks his lower lip... am doubtless much more cheerful. The above phrase is something of a puzzle to me, for at this point I cannot remember writing it.

Perhaps I was under even greater stress than I imagined and wrote it last night after finishing the ordinary entry. Well, it was good advice —the advice of this stranger who could only have been myself!

It gives me a slightly eery feeling, however, I must admit. I expect I will remember when I wrote it. I hope so. In the meantime there is no point in my racking my brains. The information will come when my unconscious is ready to let me have it!

Otherwise—all O. K. The gloom and doom period is over—at least for the time being. I am in a thoroughly constructive and balanced state of mind.

He signs off with a flourish and, humming, puts the book in the desk, closes the drawer, gets up, takes a last look around the control room and goes out into the passage.

Before returning to his cabin, he goes to the library and gets a couple of educational tapes.

In his cabin, he studies the programmes for a while and then goes to sleep.

He dreams again.

He is on the new planet. A pleasant landscape. A valley. With some sort of digging instrument he is working the soil. He is alone and at peace. There is no sign of the spaceship or of the other occupants. This does not worry him. He is alone and at peace.

*

Next morning he continues with his routine work. He eats, he makes his formal log entries, he manages to get an extra hour of study. He is beginning to understand the principles of agriculture.

He returns to the control room to make the last of his reports— the standard one—which, according to his routine, he first enters in his log-book and then reads out to the computer. He then sits down and picks up his stylus to begin his private entry. He enters the date.

Another pleasant and uneventful day spent largely in the pursuit of knowledge! I am beginning to feel like some old scholar. I can understand the attraction, suddenly, in the pursuit of information for its own sake. In a way, of course, it is an escape—I can see that even the most sophisticated sort of academic activity is at least in part a rejection of the realities of ordinary living. My studies, naturally, are perfectly practical, in that I will need a great deal of knowledge about every possible kind of agriculture when we The computer is flashing a signal. It wants his attention.

Frowning, Ryan gets up and goes over to the main console.

He reads the computer's message.

*******CONDITION OF OCCUPANTS OF CONTAINERS NOT*****REPORTED*******************************

Ryan gasps. It is true. For the first time he has not checked the Hibernation compartment. He realises now that he was so caught up in his studies he must have forgotten. He replies to the computer: ******REPORT FOLLOWS SHORTLY*****************

Reproving himself for this stupid lapse, relieved that the computer is programmed to check every function he performs and to remind him of any oversights, he marches along the corridor to the Hibernation room.

He touches the stud to open the door.

But the door remains closed.

He presses the stud harder.

Still the door does not open.

Ryan feels a moment's panic. Could there be someone else aboard the ship? A stowaway of some kind who...?

He rejects the notion as stupid. And then he returns to the main control cabin and gives the computer a question.

******HIBERNATION COMPARTMENT DOOR WILL NOT OPEN*****PLEASE ADVISE*********************

There is a pause before the computer replies: ******EMERGENCY LOCK EFFECTIVE"

"YOU MUST*********DEACTIVATE AT MAIN CONSOLE*****

Ryan licks his lips and goes to the main console. He scans the door plan and sees that the computer is correct. He touches a stud on the console and cuts off the emergency lock. Was the mistake his or the computer's. Perhaps the emergency lock was activated at the same time as he made the mysterious log entry.

He returns to the Hibernation room and opens the door.

He enters the compartment.