Collected short fiction, p.774
Collected Short Fiction, page 774
Or rather, as Alt discovered, in the interest of Stecker himself. At Mission headquarters, he found empty files, shredded records, unpaid bills, loans overdue. Investigation revealed that Stecker had grossly mismanaged the Mission, looted it, and gone aboard Ninety-Nine in flight from the consequences. Indictments were returned, but no papers ever served.
Left bankrupt, the Mission collapsed. Salvage crews broke up the unfinished skeleton of One Hundred and hauled its metal off the site. When the spring rains came, wildflowers bloomed across the Joumado del Muerto, wherever the takeoff radiation had left seed or roots alive.
3
Aboard Ninety-Nine, they found themselves in a room shaped like a generous slice of pie.
“Welcome aboard, Dr. Virili. At the security desk, a tall black woman in Mission gold-and-green stood up to open their bags and take Kip’s Game Gate.
“Why?” Kip protested. “It’s in my mass allowance. And it’s mine.”
“But on the prohibited list.” She turned, explaining to Rima. “Electric devices are possible hazards. They could create anomalous eddies in the conversion field.”
The woman promised to return it after the flight and told them how to find their cabin. “Be there when we take off.” She spoke louder to impress the command on Kip. “Get into your berths when the countdown begins. Secure your restraints. Watch the screen for information. You’ll probably hear a loud sound at takeoff, and see a bright flash. Afterward, you should fed a sudden loss of weight.”
Uneasily, Day looked up at her mother. “Are we going far?”
“Far,” the officer said and nodded when Ritna appealed to her. “Very far.”
“I had to leave Me Me.” Day’s chin trembled. “Can I come back for her?”
“You won’t—” The woman caught herself. “Maybe,” she muttered. “You’ll need these,” she went on, giving each of them a black blindfold, a paper bag, and a tiny envelope.
“Earplugs,” she said. “Insert them after the countdown begins. Cover your eyes. Keep the sick bags ready, just in case.” She asked Kip, “Understand?”
“I won’t be sick,” he told her. “But I’ve got a question. If nobody ever came back, how do you know about the boom and the flash?”
“We don’t. Not exactly.” She turned again to Rima. “What we do know is what we observe at every launch. Conversion does happen. We expect something similar at reconversion, which should occur when we enter an adequate gravity field.”
“What’s a gravity field?”
“The pull of some massive object. Another sun, if we re lucky. We hope to be at a safe distance, with a friendly planet in rocket range.”
“Lucky?” Kip blinked at her. “You don’t know?”
“Not for sure. That’s the thrill of it.” Kip wasn’t sure about the thrill. “We’ll probably come out in free fall, but of course we don’t know how wave flight feels. Or even if there’s time to fed anything.”
“I see.” Kip nodded. “A risk we take.
“True.” She turned to Rima. “If you like, Dr. Virili, we can ask the medics for a sedative.”
“No sedative,” Kip said. “Whatever happens to us, I want to be awake.”
* * *
He nearly forgot the risks as they explored the ship. It was like a round tower with a fast elevator that ran up the center. The landings were small round rooms with many doors. One door on Deck G led them into Cabin G-9, which was theirs.
It was shaped like a very stingy piece of pie. Berths and seats and a little table folded out of the walls. There was a narrow bathroom across the broad end. The big holoscreen on the bathroom wall was like a window that kept moving to let them see the far white mountains and the trucks and cranes driving off the site and even the ship itself as it looked to a holocam in a bunker where the launch crews were waiting.
“Hear this!” Something chimed and a sudden loud voice boomed from now here. “Now hear this!”
The screen lit to show a control room banked with gray-cased consoles and walled with flickering monitors. A stem-faced man in a uniform cap looked out of the screen.
“First Officer Glengarth speaking, to report a change of command. Captain Alt has been replaced by Captain Tory Stecker, who will address you now.”
He stiffened to salute and vanished from the screen.
“A most regrettable event.” Stecker had changed out of his crimson mods into official green-and-gold, but Kip heard no regret in his voice. “Captain Alt has been taken to a Las Cruces hospital for examination.”
“Gerald wasn’t sick,” Rima whispered. “Not when we saw him.”
“Takeoff, however, will not be delayed.” Stecker’s brisk voice lifted. “I’ve assumed command. Final pre-flight checks are now complete. We’re entering takeoff mode. Wave conversion will take place as scheduled.”
His image vanished.
“Gerald Alt was my father’s best friend.” Rima sat staring at the empty screen. “He used to stay with us when he was home from the Moon.” Kip saw her face go hard. “I can’t believe he’s sick.”
She said they should stay in the cabin, but takeoff was hours away. Kip felt bored, longing to be with his friends beyond the Game Gate, Captain Cometeer and the Legion of the Lost, fighting alien enemies on the hostile worlds of the Purple Sun. When he begged, she said he might look the ship over if he kept out of everybody’s way.
He stayed in the elevator on the lower decks, where busy men were rushing, strange machines drumming, freight dollies rolling out of the service shaft, a drill whining somewhere, somebody hammering metal. The higher decks were almost silent. He looked into the galley and dining rooms, vacant now, all bright white porcelain and shining metal, no food in sight.
The gym on the deck above stank faintly of cleaning chemicals and stale sweat. It was a huge dim space where treadmills and squirrel cages and a huge spin-wheel loomed like the monsters of the worlds beyond the Gate. About to leave, he heard a crash and a jangle of falling glass, and saw a man opening a door under a red-glowing sign that said ESCAPE.
“Hola.” The man had seen him. “¿Que tal?” He wondered if he should run. but the man wore blue coveralls instead of a uniform, and he seemed more anxious than angry.
“Bien.” He decided to try his Spanish. “¿Comestas?”
“My name is Carlos.” The man came halfway back across the room. His voice was quick and hushed. “I conceal myself because I wish to ride the ship. I do no harm. Except to break the glass.”
“I’m Kip.
“¡Por favor!” The man spread his hands, and Kip saw that one was dripping blood. “Please! If you will not report me.”
He needed a shave. He didn’t look clean. Perhaps he ought to be reported. Yet he had nice eyes, and the wounded hand needed a bandage.
“Okay,” Kip decided. “The flight is probably dangerous. If you want the risk, I won’t talk.”
“¡Amigo mio!” The man put out his hand, saw the blood, and drew it back. “If you speak to nobody, gracias!”
“Good luck!” Kip told him. “¡Buena suerte!”
With a quick look around the gym, Carlos stooped to gather up the biggest pieces of glass and stepped back through the door. The space beyond was tiny, nearly filled with tanks marked OXYGEN and a yellow-painted space suit. The door shut with a hollow thunk.
Wondering where Carlos came from and hoping now that nobody found him, Kip went back to the elevator.
On the top deck, the door wouldn’t open. Instead, an impatient man in a Mission uniform came into a monitor under a lens he hadn’t seen and advised him sharply to get back where he belonged. He found Day asleep on a berth and his mother sitting beside her. watching the holo-screen with the volume turned low. She turned it all the way down to ask if he was okay.
“I guess.” He hesitated. “But if you think Sleeker lied about Captain Alt—” He stopped when he saw the tightness on her face.
“I don’t know.” Her voice dropped “No matter how it happened, he’s the captain now. We have to respect him. But we don’t have to like him.”
Kip wanted to talk about Carlos, but he had that promise to keep.
“I don’t understand why we came.” He knew the words might hurt her, but he couldn’t stop wondering.
“If we don’t know where the ship will go or anything except that we can’t ever come back, the whole business seems—well, pretty risky.”
“It is.” He saw her bite her lip. “But really Kip, the way things were, I didn’t see much choice.”
He waited, feeling sorry he had spoken as she turned off the holoscreen.
“Your father.” She looked down to pat Day, and sat for a moment looking at nothing before she went on. “I’ve never told you much about him. Maybe I should say more, now that we’re leaving Earth and ah the past behind. If you want to know.
“Please.” The moment was suddenly important. “You did say he went out on Seventy-Nine I’ve always wondered why.”
“For a long time I couldn’t bear to talk about him. Or even think about him.” Her voice was slow, and her face looked older than she was. “I loved him once. He did try to treat us well, at least almost till he left.”
Day had made a little whimper in her sleep. Rima stopped to pull the sheet higher over her and then sat staring at the empty holoscreen as if she had forgotten about Kip.
“My father?”
“I’m sorry.” She shrugged as if to shake her sadness off. “We were both very young. New to the Mission. Going out to plant the human seed in far-off galaxies seemed very wonderful. We planned to stay together, but I’d trained as a bio engineer and he was chief of a launch crew. For a long time we were needed here. Later, when slots did open, you were four and Day was on the way. The medics said I should wait. Your father went alone.”
Still sad, she said no more till he asked. “Why?”
She reached to smooth Day’s hair. “Another woman.” Her face went harder for a moment, but then she shrugged and looked past him, seeing the woman in her mind. “Holly Horn. Blonde and very bright. A quantum engineer. I’d roomed with her at Tech. We were friends. Or had been.” Her lip twisted and quivered. “Of course, she told me she was sorry. Your father said he felt terrible. Maybe he really did. They left what money they had in a trust fund to help with your support. I always tried not to hate them, but—”
Her voice went sharp and stopped, but in a moment she went on more quietly.
“That’s the bare bones of it. The reason we’re here. The trust fund was used up. The Mission is dead. My job gone. I didn’t like what I thought the future would be here on Earth. And Ninety-Nine—”
She smiled at the blank screen as if she saw something beautiful there.
“Who knows? We’re on the last seed ship. Beginning the most exciting voyage I can imagine.” Her voice slowed. “Maybe I wasn’t quite fair to you and Day, but I hope you’ll try to understand.”
“It’s okay, Mom.” He stood up to put his arm around her. “I’m glad we came.”
* * *
Still they had hours to wait. When she turned the holoscreen on again, it was repeating a program about ship safety. A woman in a white cap came on the screen to call them down for a quick meal of soya soup and sandwiches. When Kip got sleepy, his mother helped fix his berth. She woke him when the countdown began and buckled the web over him. Still half asleep, Day whispered for Me Me and crawled into the berth with her.
“Five minutes to launch.” He pushed the soft plastic plugs into his ears, but still he heard the count. “Four . . . three . . . two . . . one minute . . .” His mother called to remind him about the blindfold. He put it on and lay waiting for something maybe like a lightning strike. “Thirty seconds . . . twenty . . . ten . . . five . . .” He shivered and tried to breathe. “Four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . .”
He heard a brittle tock, not very loud. The room was very dark when he slipped the blindfold off, but in a moment the screen lit again with a pale green glow. Day begged again for Me Me, and he felt himself floating off the berth.
4
“Brief me.” Sweating, Stecker rolled his eyes at the maze of dials winking red and green all around the dome. “Ten years, you know, since I finished wave flight training and went into management. I need a quick review of takeoff and flight control procedures.”
“Pre-launch procedures all complete.” Ralston Glengarth settled into the seat beside him. “No flight control possible. Nothing more to do, sir. Not till we’re out of quantum mode.”
“You mean we just lie here?”
“Lie there.” Glengarth swallowed his impatience. “Use your earplugs. Cover your eyes. Wait through the countdown.”
“About the risk.” A hint of panic quivered in Stecker’s tone. “What are our odds?”
“Who knows?”
“All this uncertainty—” Stecker caught himself and muttered querulously, “Not that I’m chicken.”
You’re a coward, thought Glengarth. Worse than a coward, a thief on the run.
After the scene when he came aboard, Glengarth had to believe the Fairshare rumors. Tory Stecker was a pirate. He’d robbed the Mission. Stolen the ship. Stolen the life of Gerald Alt, Glengarth’s friend for nearly thirty years.
Memories of those years ached in him now. He had been Alt’s pilot on Moon Magellan. Driver of the first Moon Ranger. Surveyor of the Farside site till the Mission called him home to become a quantum engineer. On Alt’s vacations since, they’d got together for camping trips so long as they could find unspoiled wilderness left.
“Here’s to the Moon!” Alt used to say, lifting his glass when they saw it rising. “Because of how it teaches you to love the hills and skies and seas of Earth as it used to be. The Mission will be lucky if you ever find its equal.”
“We can hope,” Glengarth used to answer.
Ninety-Nine had been their final chance. Together again when Alt brought him aboard as first officer, they had dreamed again of the virgin world they might have found in some unknown galaxy, an instant and a billion long light-years from Earth.
But for Stecker’s endless chicanery.
Stecker and Jake Hinch. Robber barons, Fairshare had called them, looting the world with the scam of the century. Fighting back, Stecker ridiculed their campaigns to save the stars for the little green men and ordered them kept off the complex.
Alt had refused to believe, but the charges had to be true. Unpaid workers had left the site to picket Mission headquarters. Wrecking crews were already arriving to break up the unfinished skeleton of what should have been the final ship. Now, the Mission murdered, Stecker had come aboard to escape arrest.
* * *
What can I expect?” Stecker nagged again. “After the countdown ends. What then?”
“Then?” Unintended mockery edged Glengarth’s answer. We’ll take a look around us. Try to see where we are. Guess, if we can, how far we’ve left our good Earth behind. Go into rocket mode, if we do find anywhere we want to go within rocket range.”
A computer chimed. Glengarth called ship security to begin the oral count. Muttering something he didn’t try to hear. Stecker adjusted the blindfold and fell silent. The moment came. Glengarth’s breath stopped. His own eyes covered, headphones and safety goggles on, he waited.
And waited.
A brittle crack, like a dry twig snapping. Had it happened? No light had flashed through the goggles. Had the takeoff gone wrong? Were they still in the pit?
He realized that his weight was gone.
“Where?” Stecker’s yelp stabbed through his headphones. “Where are we?”
Glengarth had tried to imagine what this moment would be like. Instant extinction? Or their first glimpse of that pristine planet just ahead, lush green continents and clean seas beckoning? It hadn’t been extinction. He pushed the heavy goggles off.
No actual windows broke the armored hull, but the curved holoscreens created the illusion of a crystal dome. Dead black now, it told him nothing at all. He had to gulp at a moment of nausea. Yet the ship seemed intact. They were at least alive, free to search.
When he looked again, his eyes had begun to adjust. Stars burned through the blackness. A scattered few at first, soon lost in fields of diamond frost and clouds of glowing gas and swarms of steady suns. He touched the keys to sweep them across the dome as if the ship were turning.
Orion? Blazing Betelgeuse, the jeweled belt, the hazy fire of the Great Nebula? Or was this the Hunter’s accidental twin hung somewhere across the universe? Before he could be sure, another object rose. Something dimensionless and white, vastly brighter than ruby Betelgeuse, it dimmed everything around it. He stopped it overhead.
“What the devil?”
He heard Jake Hindi’s hoarse yell from the elevator. Hinch was the Mission auditor, Stecker’s fellow fugitive. Outlined against the elevator lights, he was a withered human rat, long-nosed and long-chinned, bearded head shrewdly tilted beneath the black beret. Not worth hating, Glengarth thought, yet totally contemptible.
“Where the devil?” he was demanding. “Where’ve we got to?”
Glengarth had known him since they met in Mission training and despised him for the lies he told to get there. Despised him for his bald attempts to cheat on the tests he couldn’t pass. Despised him utterly for his arrogance with Mission funds since Stecker had made him auditor.
“What the hell stopped us here?
As a Mission agent begging the world for the funds he used to squander on his women and himself. Stecker had cultivated an easy-seeming if sometimes oily charm.
Hinch, who called himself the hatchet man. had never needed charm, though Stecker had made him mend his language. Clinging now to a handhold at the elevator door, he glared around the dome with the wary hostility of some frightened predator.
“What next?” he yelled again. What now?”
“Take a look.” Glengarth shrugged, with a small tight grin. “What do you see?”
“You say it took a star to stop us?” Clutching with one hand, Hinch leaned to point at that brilliant object.
