Prisoners Bound for Another Planet
A long, long time ago, before mankind had a way to traverse the stars and lived all packed together on one cramped planet, there was something called the “death penalty.” Apparently, they would cover a prisoner’s head with a cloth, sit him in a chair, and choose a lucky candidate from a group of volunteers to be the executioner, who would flip a switch that sent a high-voltage current shooting from the top of the prisoner’s head to the tips of his toes.
On a whim, he talked to one of the prisoners about this while doing his last patrol before turning on the deep-freeze capsules. The prisoner thought about it for a while, and then said, “I like that. It’s a really fair system and doesn’t make for any future troubles.”
I see. Come to think of it, strangely, he thought the man might be right.
These days, they froze prisoners with life sentences and sent them to remote regions of space. The prisoners were worked like dogs until they died on the newly settled planets.
And the crew members of the convoy ships that took them there—well, their circumstances weren’t much different. They went into deep freeze and journeyed across space for decades; and not only that, while they were hopping across the surface of time on their light-speed cruise, centuries passed by on the ground, so the astronauts were completely shot out of the flow of society. It really wasn’t a very upstanding profession.
“Royal straight flush. Federation army,” his colleague said from the other side of the game board, spreading out his hand to show him.
“How the—?” he couldn’t help calling out in bewilderment. Looking at the other man’s cards, he saw that he had skillfully gathered the five picture cards of the federation army suit: judge, sword, revolution, bishop’s staff, and shepherd.
“Liar! No one gets a royal straight flush just like that! You cheated!”
“Sorry, but it’s skill.”
“Then let’s see you do it again. One more hand.”
“It’s almost time. We have to get ready to go into cold sleep.”
“Damn it, winning and running…”
He could at least let me enjoy winning the last hand; he’s got no consideration. Cursing bitterly to himself, he reluctantly cleaned up the cards and game board. The next time I play with these cards will be decades from now; I hope I don’t get rusty during the long cold sleep. (He figured his colleague would say, “You’re not that good anyway,” but no one was asking him.)
He casually gazed outside the special quarter-sphere-shaped glass projecting out in front of the flight deck.
It was an ocean of pitch-black, as far as the eye could see. A cruel environment with no air or water, or even the slightest sound—instead, rays of space radiation flew past each other. But their forebears set out on a whim on a long, long adventure, believing that somewhere in this expanse, there must be solid ground they could land on.
Even if it was a run-down planet, with only a barren wilderness and meager energy resources, the children born there would take root, build cities, and hand down a new planet’s history—but such poetic thoughts weren’t his own; he got them from his colleague.
When he woke up from deep freeze, he would likely be able to gaze through that glass onto a sand-colored planet, wrapped in a hazy atmosphere.
“Hmm?” He happened to glance down and see that his colleague had taken the “exile” picture card from the deck and was sticking it to the dashboard.
“What are you doing?”
“For good luck. So we arrive safely,” he answered, shrugging lightly in his sky-blue work clothes, then made a prayerlike gesture to the exile on the card.
…Damn, this guy likes showing off.
“I’m going on down, you sentimental sap. I’ll take sleep over praying.”
He left his colleague behind and slid down the connector pipe from the flight deck to the middeck’s capsule room.
Now, a little nap before the exile planet in remote space…
