The Last Days of Krypton - Kevin J. Anderson [179]
No-Ton, Or-Om, and Gal-Eth—the Council members who did believe Jor-El’s dire prediction—begged him to suggest a project they could undertake—even something desperate and high risk, no matter how little likelihood it had of succeeding.
Although their chances were vanishingly small, Jor-El gave No-Ton and his companions his old plans for the arkships to be used if the red sun threatened to become an imminent supernova. Working with complete abandon, racing for their lives, a frantic army of engineers, builders, and other volunteers from all walks of life stripped down buildings and tore apart bridges, then used the structural girders, alloy plates, and curved crystal sheets as raw materials to build the vast vessels.
No-Ton tried to cajole Jor-El to join them, promising him passage for himself, Lara, and his son. But Jor-El had done the projections, and he knew that there simply wasn’t enough time to build such ships. He had to find another way.
Standing at the base of the vigilant telescopes, Jor-El suddenly wondered if someone else might listen, even though the Council had not. He could alter the big dishes in the great array, convert them into powerful phased transmitters, and shout a signal into the interstellar gulf, begging for aid, for rescue.
But Krypton had only two days left. Even with a transmission spreading out at the speed of light, no rescuers could possibly hear him and respond soon enough. In the time remaining, Jor-El’s call for help would barely reach the boundary of Rao’s solar system.
Even so, when he explained his idea, Lara suggested that he try. “At least someday others would know what happened to us. Maybe our tale will save some other race from their own closed minds.”
“Like the last message from Mars,” he said.
“J’onn J’onzz may have been very much like you, Jor-El.”
The plight of the lone Martian survivor had certainly wrenched his heart. He had never imagined Krypton’s fate would be so similar—and so imminent. When Donodon had visited Mars, the blue-skinned alien had found only dust and the echoes of a lost civilization. If only he had Donodon’s help now.
At that moment, Jor-El would have welcomed a fleet of ships from the kindly alien’s race. With those ships, they might have—
Suddenly his eyes flew open wide and his heart began to pound. “Lara, we have to get back to the estate! There’s a chance—a small chance, but only if I can do it in time.” He could barely catch his breath as the ideas thundered forward. With a shaky hand, he touched their baby’s face. “Maybe I can save us after all.”
The estate was quiet and empty. Jor-El had excused his few remaining servants so they could be with their families during the end. Only his chef stayed behind, claiming he had nowhere else to go. “This is my home. I’ll stay here, if it’s all the same to you.” Neither he nor Lara could complain.
Jor-El hurried to the exotic translucent tower his father had built. Inside, with an intensity brought on by desperation and hope, he plunged into work he had left unattended for far too long.
All the components of Donodon’s small spaceship sat in the middle of the tower room where Nam-Ek had brought them. Over the months he had made halfhearted attempts to reassemble the vessel, but the Commission had not given him much of the ship’s framework or the “nonessential” pieces. Now, he carefully catalogued and organized the components, separated according to mechanisms that Jor-El understood and those that remained unexplained. Alas, the “unidentified” pile was much larger than the other. When he’d worked side by side with Donodon, Jor-El had learned much about the alien vessel, but the two had been intent on the needs of the new seismic scanner, not on understanding the details of the exotic starship. Now he had to do it himself.
Kal-El rested comfortably in a crib Lara brought into the tower. Their time was now measured in hours, and Jor-El felt the oppressive loss of each second that slipped away.