Ark Royal — George W. Harper

The four QUIZZER personnel are assigned to complete the preparation of a seed asteroid capable of translating into the ylem with a complement of 50,000 crew and settlers and set forth on a journey which will take them completely across the galaxy on a journey which will require roughly 4,500 years of shipboard time before coming to an end some 80,000 light years from Earth. QUIZZER's people learn that the autodocs routinely placed in combat vessels are capable of being modified to rejuvenate humans to their point of optimum point of physical maturity when the replacement of dead cells is exactly offset by the creation of replacement cells and all minor debris and poisons which may have accumulated over the years are purged. This moment of optimum maturity differs from person to person but it generally centers around 30 years. The treatment is not a zip-zap affair and requires roughly two days of induced sleep in the autodoc to restore a year of youth so in order to restore a 70 year-old to his 30 year-old persona requires nearly three months in an autodoc induced coma. This ability of an enhanced autodoc must be kept secret at all costs since releasing it to the public inevitably leads to the extinct of the human species. Even without the immortality idea the then current population of Earth hovered around the 69 billion mark and mass starvation was an ever-present threat. So QUIZZER's people were sent to a remote asteroid drifting in orbit around the galaxy some 80 light years distant where preliminary work is already in progress. They are in mufti and are ostensibly mid-grade navy officers who will be replaced once the ARK ROYAL is completed. As ever, this is not a routine ‘presto-changeo' affair and there are plenty of surprises in store for the unwary reader. This is a story which is all too likely to occur but no one likes to think about it.