The Sinners of Erspia

Laedo had a question. “Did you say you are the ship's purser? Excuse me, but the Excelsior vanished long ago. How are you still alive?"

“That's simple enough. I've spent the time in a stasis cabinet. I'm the only one to have escaped Klystar's clutches."

“Then there is a Klystar?” Laedo's eyes widened.

“Oh, there's a Klystar all right,” Garo confirmed bitterly. “You'll find that out. He took all the others and used them for breeding stock. I spent five days hiding in a sewer conduit. When the ship was empty I came out and took to the cabinet. He knows I'm here but he leaves me alone—after all, I'm almost never around. I come out and take a look every few years, and I've an alarm rigged to detect any ship that arrives. Rescue must come some day."

Laedo considered this. A stasis cabinet was a by-product of the star drive. It could slow down time within it. The past century and a half could have been only weeks or days to Garo. Events of long ago would seem of recent occurrence to him.

“Is Klystar here?” he asked. “On this moon?"

Garo reacted nervously to the question. “Yes, he's here."

“Can't you use the Excelsior to get home?"

“No, Klystar saw to that. He junked the star drive and pretty well everything else. I've enough power to run some lighting and the stasis cabinet. And I've food to last. But that's all."

“Tell me about Klystar."

“What is there to tell? He's a monster! But you'll see for yourself. There's nowhere for you to go."

Garo shot a sudden glance over Laedo's shoulder. He went pale. “Here he comes now. I'd better make myself scarce."

Laedo turned to look. A tall ‘something’ had appeared over the nearby horizon. It walked on two long, thin legs, themselves as tall as a man. The body was stubby, the head cylindrical.

Garo was running for the Excelsior . Laedo hesitated. Should he return to his ship and stick with Histrina?

But that would avail little against the almost omnipotent Klystar. Laedo wanted more information. He decided to follow Garo. Scrambling through a service hatch in pursuit of the ex-purser, he found himself in a dimly lit corridor. Looking back, Garo saw him, but shrugged and went on.

The Excelsior was a ghost ship. Corridors and salons boomed to the sound of their footsteps. The air smelled stale. Eventually Garo descended a companionway to a store room in which lay rows of cargo containers. One of them had been opened. What it had contained stood alongside: a cabinet or chamber with a transparent front. And visible within it, a straight-backed chair.

This was the stasis cabinet. The chief use of such a device was to preserve a mortally injured person until medical help could arrive. Occasionally someone would use it to transfer himself to a future century, a less risky procedure than cryogenic freezing. Garo had been lucky to find one among the ship's cargo.

“Look,” said Garo, turning to Laedo, “this is the only stasis cabinet on the ship, and you can see there's only room for one in it. If you get your ship working, please come and get me. I assume you'll do that, with your ethical rating. Otherwise I suggest you make your way to one of the pleasure palaces. They'll look after you there."

“What happens in these palaces?” Laedo asked.

Garo looked at him for a moment. “The people there are servants of Klystar. They just sort of keep things running. The young children who arrive are mostly assigned to sexual duties with the older servants.

Paedophilia is a way of life here, I don't know why. Later they learn general duties."

He paused before continuing in a sombre tone. “Those are the lucky ones. Others are assigned to Klystar's special project.” He shuddered slightly as he turned to enter the cabinet. “I don't want to talk about that. I told you he's a monster."

Laedo put a hand on his arm to detain him. “Wait. Tell me more. What exactly happened to the Excelsior?"

“Klystar seized her, of course, what do you think? Don't ask me how he did it. He gained remote control and brought her here, then took everybody off and put them on the worlds he made. It's some kind of experiment of his. Then he wrecked the engines and nearly everything else."

“How many Erspia worlds are there?"

“I'm not sure. About ten, I think, not counting this moon."

“What keeps them so close together?"

“Are you stupid? They're in a Trojan orbit. There are two brown dwarfs, orbiting half a light year apart, one bigger than the other. The Erspia group forms an equilateral triangle with them."

Laedo nodded. It was a much simpler explanation than he had imagined. Like the Trojan asteroids sharing the orbit of Jupiter, the Erspia worlds would be prevented from drifting away by the combined attractions of the two brown dwarfs, drawn back whenever they began to deviate. It was the only stable fixed configuration of three bodies permissible under gravitational influence.